The 99999 Campaign

IT was Exnora’s campaign -99999 (09-09-09-9PM-9 minutes) for switching off lights at 9PM; for 9 minutes. To show that we do care for the environment and we would like to contribute to prevent global warning. Indeed it was a good idea in times of the threat of global warming hanging over our heads; like the proverbial Damocles sword. The media had publicized this campaign quite a bit. And we participated in that campaign religiously. Sharp nine, we switched off all the lights; including the wet grinder which was running. From the terrace we looked towards the city to see the magic. How many environmentally conscious middle class and upper middle class people were there doing the same? To our dismay, we found lights on everywhere in our neighbourhood. The homes everywhere were brightly lit up with light peeping out through the windows of those airconditioned rooms! Of course, there were few people who switched off their lights; and the flat complex where the faculty and staff of the Institute of Mathematical Sciences reside were dark during that nine minutes. Thank God! There are still some people who care for the environment. And the day after, we were out at 5 AM; we were driving to the central station to pick up Appa and Amma and the Satyamurti Bhawan, the Tamil Nadu Congress Committee’s headquarters off Mount Road was illuminated with hundreds of bulbs. The occasion was that of the visit by the charming prince Rahul Gandhi to some parts of Tamil Nadu; mind you not in Chennai). So they had decided to light up the whole building. Besides this, hundreds of flexi boards were on display- the young Gandhi, sister Gandhi and mother Gandhi and the at the bottom, the photo of the chotta local leader at the feet of THE family. I am not totally disheartened – What do you expect of the politicians and political parties otherwise. I still prefer to believe that we and others who switched off the lights for nine minutes made a small difference. And I shall continue to do it where it matters. We don’t have to wait for a catastrophe to happen to amend ourselves. Do we?

Newspapers carried the photo of the Ripon building which is housing the Chennai corporation without lights and I appreciate their move.

YS RAJASEKHARA REDDY and others

Our politicians are benevolent kings. History will definitely write about them. Like we learnt by rote that how emperor Ashoka built roads and planted trees etc, or how Akbar built Fatheh pur Sikri and so on in our school days, the generations to come will end up reading by rote (thanks to our education system) how 21st century kings built flyovers, smart cities, SEZs and their children followed suit. When YS Rajasekhara Reddy, the chief minister of Andhra Pradesh and the major money spinner of the Congress died in a helicopter crash (while he was on his way to visit his subjects in a village), no wonder, it made headlines for a few days and newspapers taking the role of investigation agencies (a new trend in journalism) and looking into the crash from all ‘angles’. They did give expert opinion on the weather conditions, condition of the chopper; compared it with the other choppers and more importantly giving a chronology of deaths in air crashes. Well. My television is not connected to any cable now and hence lost out on the theatrics.

We, Indians are the most courteous people in the planet so we do not talk about the dark sides of a person after his death. So there were condolence messages about what the nation lost with his death- a vibrant, pro poor politician, etc, etc, they conspicuously buried his detrimental relationship with mining mafia in the state and many such things. One of those days, the news papers also carried a four line report that 6 more farmers committed suicide in the Vidarbha region. They added to the statistics of 136 suicides in the last one year due to the debt trap. Of course it does not have a news value; hence it would not make news. After all they do not belong to the ruling class; they are the subjects. And the fact that the peasants happen to be the people who feed and clothe the nation would not make any difference. Nor are they celebrities.

WOW! NATO did it again!

NATO admitted that its air strike in the northern province of Kunduz killed and injured many civilians. It was ‘just’ a mistake as they thought there were no civilians in that area. The strike was reportedly ordered by a German commander after Taliban militant hijacked two fuel trucks on a NATO supply route from Tajikistan. Of course, German chancellor Angela Merkel ‘deeply regretted’ the loss of civilians in the attack. I am sure God may take pity on Angela’s deep regret and give back lives to those innocent victims. This International Security Assistant Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan think that they are doing a great service to the nation as well for the humanity as they are saving the planet from Islamic terrorism. They had had their share of cleaning up in Iraq and in the process we have also come to know what some of the soldiers were doing. You act as a world police man and enter anybody’s b ack yard and fcuk up sovereign nations in the name of democracy. Life is precious everywhere – whether the lives of the people who got killed on 11 September or the lives of the people doomed in the Hiroshima & Nagasaki or the people perished in Vietnam or Palestine or the civil war victims in Sri lanka or the innocent civilians killed in the indiscriminate bombing in Afghanistan. Explosives burn you skin irrespective of its colour. That gives the worst memories to the one who has to live with the injuries and agonies about the beloved ones who died. The famous bible quote “for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword". This is relevant to the good terrorists and bad terrorists.