Thus spake George Bernard Shaw

1. The worst sin towards our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: that's the essence of inhumanity.

2. We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it.

3. I'm only a beer teetotaler, not a champagne teetotaler. I don't like beer.

4. We don't bother much about dress and manners in England, because as a nation we don't dress well and we've no manners

5. There is only one religion, though there are a hundred versions of it.

6. [Chess] is a foolish expedient for making idle people believe they are doing something very clever, when they are only wasting their time.

7. The word morality, if we met it in the Bible, would surprise us as much as the word telephone or motor car.

8. All great truths begin as blasphemies.

9. You'll never have a quiet world till you knock the patriotism out of the human race.

10. I have defined the hundred per cent American as ninety-nine per cent an idiot.

11. The reasonable man adapts himself to the world. The unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. All progress, therefore, depends upon the unreasonable man.

12. The fickleness of the women I love is only equaled by the infernal constancy of the women who love me.

13. The test of a man or woman's breeding is how they behave in a quarrel

This is for you Didu

My "Didu"

This is about my grandmother. She is 80 years old and has seen the ups and downs of life from a small village near Chittagong, Bangladesh to another small village in the hinterlands of Bihar. Now she lives in Patna with my masi. So today I was at their place talking with her. Suddenly I asked her if she remembered Surya Sen. My masi hearing this, laughed and said grandma even forgets their names sometimes, how could she remember someone who died 70 years back. 

So I asked again. And Grandma says, "Oh yes I do! I remember Master Surya Sen, Kalpana Dutta and all of them!" Shocked I asked if she had seen them, to this she said yes she had actually met them because she was part of a group of girls who sang a welcome song for them when they came at the Congress President's office at Chittagong. She explain how was Surya Sen dressed and how beautiful Kalpana Dutta looked.  Then came the biggest shock; she sang the whole song!

Surya Sen and most of his motely group of revolutionaries died in early 1930s. Now most Indians do not even know what happened in Chittagong on 18th April 1930. Here is one lady who remembers them all even if she doesn't remember the names of her own daughters. This generation will fade away soon, giving way to the Gen Xs and Ys who do not know and just do not care..

Masterda, this small post is for you, and for my grandparents. I worship you and am proud of them, very proud!

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For the uninitiated, you can read about Suryasen here , Kalpana Dutta here and Chittagong revolt here.

32 ka Dum !

 Long back in the 1960s, Mrs. Indira Gandhi, riding on the groundbreaking slogan of "Garibi Hataao", became the Prime Minister of India. It will never be established how much "Garibi" was removed in those decades of the "Hindu rate of growth" but Garibi Hataao" remained the flagship of the elcetoral battle formation of the Congress in every election. The slogan slowly died a natural death when Corruption became institutionalized and the poverty of the nation and inflation became structural instead of being just monetary.

Today's government is headed by an Economist, with another economist as the Home Minister and a Political Science Graduate as the Finance Minister! No wonder both the Home Policy and the Economic Policy look screwed up to a great extent. After the Anna debacle, the government could actally sense the Trust deficit that has been built up between the rulers and those who make them the rulers. 

Maybe in this moment of difficult, the government rememberd that golden slogan of the 1960s coined by Mrs. Gandhi Senior. "If the talisman could work then, why would it not work now? " - someone must have thought. And hence they decided to give it a try. 

All went well, except a small mess up. They copied it alright but made a mistake with just one syllable of the slogan. So now instead of "Garibi Hatao", it became "Garib Hatao"!

So what does this new slogan translate to? In one masterstroke, the esteemed policymakers of India have eradicated most of the poverty of the nation. How? Well, if you live in a city and you earn more than Rs 32 .00(yes 32!) a day, you are rich; and if its a village, then just Rs 25.00 is enough to shower you with the blessings of Goddess Lakshmi !!! 

The public understood 6 months back that our government is a joke, but this new thing makes them a downright PJ ! 

I remember an excellent blog post by Shubham a few days back in his blog. That a new reality show should be started. 32 ka dum. In this show, ask all these members of the planning commission to survive on Rs 32 per day for a month. The Neta who lives till the end will be declared the winner. How good will it be?

Jokes apart, Dunno about others but am surprised this time instead of getting disgusted as usual. Are these the people who will guide India to Mission 2020? In that case India is better off on an Auto Pilot instead of bearing with these bunch of Jokers in Khaadi and Safaari suits!

The Aryan Myth according to Max Muller

"I have declared again and again that if I say Aryans, I mean neither blood nor bones, nor hair nor skull; I mean simply those who speak an Aryan language… in that sense, and in that sense only, do I say that even the blackest Hindus represent an earlier stage of Aryan speech and thought than the fairest Scandinavians...To me an ethnologist who speaks of Aryan race, Aryan blood, Aryan eyes and hair, is as great a sinner as a linguist who speaks of a dolichocephalic dictionary or a brachycephalic grammar."

- Max Muller (Indologist)