Carnage

A midnight alert on my iPhone reported "Two Explosions in Hyderabad. Many dead. Scores injured". I was perturbed. I immediately called my father who lives in Hyderabad. He was distressed and disturbed. The carnage that was on television was hard for him to see. Body parts scattered in the rubble, maimed bodies in white bandages strewn across crowded hospital beds and women wailing over their loved ones. Two bombs had killed 17 people and left 120 injured in a congested neighborhood of the city. Hyderabad rarely makes it to the international scene; on February 21, it made headlines across the globe for a few hours.

I left Hyderabad in the early 90s and have since returned periodically from my adopted home in Brooklyn, New York. Watching my city from a distance and sometimes feeling a foreigner when I am there, has given me a rare insight into its evolution. The seamless intermingling of Islamic and Hindu culture in this city, has defined everyone's identity for centuries. This aspect has always been a matter of pride and charm for those who have lived here or have passed through. Most Hyderabadi's consider themselves to be part Muslim and part Hindu and can appreciate each other’s food, customs and traditions with very little effort. My father speaks, reads and writes fluently in Urdu, which is most often considered a Muslim language. He grew up in British India, when Hyderabad was a Muslim kingdom and Urdu was the official language of the region and everyone had to learn and speak it. It is no longer the case. For many urban denizens Urdu has become as foreign as German or French.


Growing up in Hyderabad was complicated at times. There would be periodic tension in the air when religious riots would break out in the "Old City". The older part of this 400-year-old city is a congested maze of magnificent beauty and filth. Ancient monuments, majestic palaces and ornate doorways lie hidden among urban blight and narrow alleyways. Hindus and Muslims live packed together in this part of the city as they have for centuries. Their religious public ceremonies dominate the streets during festival season.


Sometimes horror stories of Hindus killing Muslims and vice versa would fill the morning headlines and the whole city would shut down. People living in the new part of town, who were mostly middle or upper middle class, would be left angry, disturbed and befuddled by the violence. Everyone always knew the riots were ignited by the religious mafia and its criminal political cohorts, for reasons beyond most people's comprehension. The dark and painful legacy of the India-Pakistan separation and the butchery that took place along religious lines at that time, always loomed large. A few people would be knifed, the police would declare a curfew, some arson would take place, the city would turn into a ghost town for a few days. Hardworking people and businessmen would be disgusted and distraught. Us children would be happy for not having to go to school. Then life would slowly return to normal until the next flare up.


While the violence during the riots would be senseless, in no measure can it be compared to what took place this week. We never heard of bombs or explosions. In the past seven years Hyderabad has been a victim to at least five explosions that have caused mayhem, gripping the city in fear like never before.


Hyderabad is no Aleppo, Kabul, Quetta, Baghdad or Tripoli. But the city has dramatically changed over the last decade and the population has increased significantly pushing the city to grow in every direction possible, including skyward. IT companies from Microsoft to Infosys all have offices here and the droves that service them keep increasing. Much like the movie industry transformed the fabric of the city in the 80s and 90s, the technology boom has rearranged the city in the last decade, tearing one city into many. The boom has created wealth and economic mobility never seen before. But large sections of the city have not been touched at all by the shine.


Hyderabad has had its share of political upheaval some of which is still on going. The painful violent invasion of Hyderabad in 1948 by the national police, effectively assimilated it into the Indian Union. The Naxallite (peasant revolt) movement which started in the 60s in the rural areas sometimes brought violence into the city. A regional uprising to split the state into two distinct ethnic provinces that started in the 60s, has had a resurgence and has caused chaos on every front over the last few years. So when the recent explosions took place there were a range of groups who could have had a motive to pursue it. But as always, due to the long history of animosity and involvement of Pakistan and its terrorist groups in spreading havoc in India, the obvious glance shifted westward.

As usual the Muslim groups with various beefs to pick with the Indian government came under scrutiny. Pakistan's inbred terrorist groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba and its ilk were mentioned. Then speculation that this attack could be a reprisal for the executions of two terrorists in Indian custody was seen as a possibility. Last November Ajmal Qasab the only surviving gunman from the 2011 terrorist attacks on Bombay was expeditiously hanged. The 25 year old terrorist who had done the bidding of his Lashkar-e-Taiba handlers from Pakistan, by spraying innocent bystanders with bullets, was sentenced to death by a court and executed in secret for populist political reasons. Early this month, Mohammad Afzal Guru, a Kashmiri man who was involved in planning the attacks on the Indian Parliament in 2001 was suddenly pulled out of his 12 year long solitary confinement and put to death in secret. His family was not informed of his impending execution and his body was never returned to them. His trial and sentencing was fraught with controversy and exposed the failings of the Indian justice system and the media. The gaping holes in the case against Afzal Guru were exposed in the press by Arundhati Roy and others.


In reality there are many groups within India that have reasons to cause mayhem only to make a point against a system that has failed to deliver. Human rights violations, extrajudicial killings, lack of social justice, a decrepit justice system and a corrupt and criminal political class have all created a toxic environment. For example, since 1990 when the struggle for self-determination in Kashmir became militant, 68,000 people have died, 10,000 have disappeared, and at least 100,000 have been tortured at the hands of the Indian Army. Whether "Saffron Terrorists" (Hindu Terrorists) or your run of the mill "Islamic Terrorists" carried out these senseless killings in Hyderabad, only time will tell. Maybe an official report ten years too late will reveal something unexpected. But the truth will always remain masqueraded so long as there is no faith in the system. 


Indiscriminate carnage of civilians has become a recurrent phenomenon around the world. Choosing "Soft Targets" has become the order of the day. As a result a sense of depraved indifference has risen in the minds of ordinary citizens, against the system, towards those who kill and those who get killed. May it be terrorist organizations doing the killing or governments and their military establishments (as in the case of Sri Lanka), scenes of mass murder have desensitized the public. Making the shock and the memory of it as short lived as a blink of an eye. There will be no memorials, no hour long TV shows about the victims of the Hyderabad blast. Just return to business as usual. Life is cheap and disposable in a nation of too many.
 
There is no dearth if senseless killing in the world. There never was. From dictators to democracies, they all take part in the art of senseless killing and find means to justify their actions to the world. President Bashar Assad in Syria butchers his own people claiming to be protecting his nation from terrorists. The President of the United States authorizes the use of drones and violates the sovereignty of nations to kill people who supposedly threaten his country. Close to three thousand people have died in US drone strikes mostly in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Yemen. Many of them unproven terrorists. Some women and children as well. China recently contemplated using a drone to kill a drug lord. So it is only a matter of time when other nations will procure flying objects to kill, playing judge, jury and executioner from the sky.
 
Poverty, destitution, uncertainty and a loss of faith in the system often breeds high levels of religious zeal. Spiritual congregation, places of worship and Ashrams fill the void for some. Revolt using violence as a means of expression also fills a void for some who feel they have been wronged. One has to appreciate life to not want to end it. There are too many today, to whom death is but a momentary blip, a speck on the road to oblivion, a way of making an illusory impact. Executing killers makes one a killer and only breeds more killing. Whether you do it from the sky or from the ground, killing can never be an answer or a solution to anything. It is what it is.
 

Invasion

This month American's marked the 40th anniversary of a landmark Supreme Court ruling which commonly goes by the name Roe V. Wade. This Supreme Court ruling was a cornerstone in the evolution of America and legalized the much-stigmatized act of a medical abortion across the nation. Thus saving lives of those who sought these services in the shadows. 

Twenty years ago a minor adjustment was made to that ruling. The court gave individual states the legal right to impose regulations as long as they didn't cause an "undue burden" on a woman's abortion rights. 

That opened the floodgates, and since then states with conservative or Republican administrations have been trying to limit abortion rights of women to the best of their ability. The rationale to do so has ranged from the religious, moral, political to the downright absurd. 

As a result women have suffered yet again, whose consent or approval was largely ignored, as their innards became the property of the state.

Recently Republican Gov. Rick Perry signed a bill into law, which went into effect on February 6th, 2012. The law will force Texas women to undergo an ultrasound, hear a detailed description of the fetus and then wait a full 24 hours before receiving abortion care. Mandatory sonogram bills have since been introduced in 14 states. Arizona, Louisiana and Texas have already enacted ultrasound laws. The Texas law -- which is one of the most extreme, requires doctors to tell a woman the size of her fetus' limbs and organs, even if she does not want to know. The law also forces physicians to make an image of the fetus and the sound of its heartbeat made available to a woman before she can undergo the procedure. Perry, who made the bill an emergency measure, said that the law will "ensure that every Texas woman seeking an abortion has all the facts about the life she is carrying and understands the devastating impact of such a life-changing decision."

Two weeks after the Texas law was passed Carolyn Jones, a journalist, went into a clinic for an abortion. Pregnant with her second child, Jones was told by her doctor that he was worried about the shape of her baby's head. After two sonograms a specialist's office revealed a problem that was preventing her son's brain, spine and legs from developing correctly. The specialist warned that if the child made it to term, he would suffer greatly and need a lifetime of care. Jones and her husband decided they would abort their child. It was an extremely traumatic decision for them to arrive at. Her trauma was elevated to an inhuman level when she had to go through a third mandated sonogram because of the Taxas law. She had to hear the heart beat of her unborn child yet again and listen to a mandated script by the administering doctor, describe the fetus in detail. Jones is still traumatized by that experience so much that she has launched media campaign showing how this law violates a woman's right to chose with a gross invasion of her privacy.

Abortion has always been a contentious issue in America. Despite the progress made by various feminist and women's rights groups over decades, it still dominates the political and social debate like a lightening rod. To a large extent there has been a level of consensus on all sides, when it comes to pregnancies caused by incest or rape. Recently in New Mexico, a Republican "woman" lawmaker Cathrynn Brown, introduced a bill that will force rape victims to carry their pregnancies to term during their sexual assault trials or face charges of "tampering with evidence" which carries a three year prison term. Tampering with evidence shall include procuring or facilitating an abortion, or compelling or coercing another to obtain an abortion, of a fetus that is the result of criminal sexual penetration or incest with the intent to destroy evidence of the crime.

Today in America, four states, Arkansas, Mississippi and North and South Dakota have only one legal abortion clinic. Eight states outlaw abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy. Louisiana has no exception for rape or incest victims and no law prevents rapists from demanding visitation rights. And eight states have mandatory ultrasound laws much like Texas. One factor that unifies all these states is that they are overwhelmingly Republican. So much for progress, in the "land of the free".

In Morocco a year ago, a 16-year-old committed suicide after a law forced her to marry her rapist. Her parents and a judge had pushed through her marriage to save her family's "honor". The incident sparked an outcry forcing the government this month to change a draconian law that allows rapists avoid charges if they marry their victims.

On December 17, 2012, the barbaric rape and murder of a young woman in the capital city of India ignited a nation to its core and sent shock waves across the globe. The debate that followed exposed the depraved nature of Indian society and the people who rule over them. It brought into daylight the criminal nature of its political class, which includes many alleged rapists, it exposed the ineffectual, understaffed and impotent police force and last but not least revealed the true nature of a culture that has lost its social bearings. The horrific incident that took place in New Delhi held a mirror to a nation that needs serious self examining. Since this incident, there have been many that have followed and many more went unreported. Exposing further a scourge that faces a people, whose deities and leaders, present and past are women

The incessant desire to only have male children and using illegal sonograms to abort girl children has lead to a lopsided sex ratio that has had a dire impact on Indian society. The lack of a free social space outside of marriage, where men and women can interact in a healthy manner, has led to a perversion that Bollywood and the internet feed and exploit, causing women to fear for their safety after 7 PM in most parts of the nation. Whether the December 17th incident, which still manages to stay alive in the media, will actually bring forth any meaningful change, is a daunting question that lingers over India like a dense New Delhi fog.

Whether life begins at conception or at birth is a matter of opinion. Whether women have equal status in society is based on geography and circumstance. In most cases, women certainly do not make equal pay for equal work. What is evident though across the globe, is that for a great many women, things are as worse as they have ever been. From acid attacks and honor killings, to rape, date rape and gender discrimination, women in this day and age, in all societies, still face an uphill task. While there is a universal realization that there is a need for change, progress most often is incremental and sometimes comes at a heavy cost. The assumed threat that men fearfully face from a woman's freedom - social, sexual and economic - is immense, and varies from culture to culture and nation to nation. Even though at the heart of the abortion debate, lies the freedom of a woman to choose, it is often wrapped in a moral or religious veil only to inflict guilt and deprivation, a means of taking away the shame from men and placing it on the women. There is no law on this planet that legislates what men can do or not do with their body. But there are a plethora of them when it comes to women.

This week in America there was a ban lifted on women serving in the armed forces. From here on women will be allowed to enter a battlefield with no strings attached. They will be allowed to do the killing, which for a long time has been only a man's prerogative. So now women can both give life and take life if they chose, but only with a gun. Still rape looms large over the American armed forces like a disease with no cure. And through out history rape has also been used as a weapon of choice by marauding armies. Maybe with women being involved things might be different.

Equality does not necessarily mean that women have to do everything that men can do. Equality means for women to have the unequivocal freedom in every way to decide what they want to do with their lives. But there is no doubt that the participation of women in every sphere of life creates a balance, that is so desperately needed if our planet and our species is to survive.

There is a perception that in the urban landscape of much of the world, women are on an equal footing. While this may be true for more and more women, draconian laws do affect them in their personal space. From menstrual pain, birthing pain to menopause, there is no question women have it harder than men. The reasoning behind making it even harder for them can only stem from a desire to dominate and feel power over.

As a father of two girls, I always tell my children that they are no different in any respect and there is nothing they can't do, as long as they set their eyes on the prize. There is no doubt that there are challenges only they will face just because they have a vagina instead of a penis. But then again I am delighted by the fact that they will always have a nurturing quality that will give hope to this world, when all hope is gone.

I am currently making a documentary film about a man who built the first Thermo-Nuclear Weapon or the Hydrogen Bomb. In the many interviews we have done of scientists who were engaged in building these weapons of total annihilation, one question always arose. How is it that humanity has not blown itself to oblivion considering the number of nuclear weapons we have lying around the planet. Is it pure chance, good planning, deterrence or a miracle? An interesting and unorthodox answer came from an octogenarian worldly wise scientist.

He said "Because there are women in this world".

It is what it is.

Again and Again

In the four years I have been writing this blog, there have been three deliberations on mass killings. In July of 2011 Anders Behring Breivik unleashed terror on a youth camp on an Island outside Oslo in Norway. Last year Jared Laughner fired at a US congresswoman in Arizona, in the process killing six. Earlier this year in Colorado at a movie theater James Holms ended the lives of twelve, one among them a six year old. There have been many single shooter mass killings in between these events about which I have refused to write, partly because I had no new arguments to add to the debate. But when this month in Connecticut, the horror was brought too close to home, when little children paid the ultimate price, I was compelled to write yet again about a plague that is eating at a nation and its people. This unconscionable event has reignited the gun control debate with much vigor, as a president shed some rare tears at the loss of innocence in the aftermath of a bloodbath.

As I have argued in my previous postings, the remedy to the abominable violence in America is staring in everyone’s face. The will to act as always is muted and mired in ugly politics. The will to do something meaningful is as short lived as the memory of such tragedies. Whether the memory of this catastrophe will last longer, long enough for a nation, a president and a congress to decisively act, only time will tell. The solutions have never been more apparent.

A day before the shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, half way across the globe a knife-wielding man attacked 22 children and one adult outside a primary school in central China. The latest in a series of attacks at Chinese schools and kindergartens that have left many in shock. While many were traumatized, there were no deaths reported. Japan, a nation that has the toughest gun control laws in the world, saw about twelve people die of gun violence this year. United Kingdom, a western nation with tough gun laws, has one of the lowest gun related homicide rates in the world. So when supporters of gun ownership in America hide behind the 2nd Amendment - an arcane constitutional law that awards every citizen the right to legally own guns - and say that "guns don't kill people, people kill people", the evidence to prove otherwise could not be starker.

 Much like a world without nuclear weapons is unthinkable so is a world without guns. Many solutions have been proposed to tackle this recurring slaughter and many are intelligent and implementable. The solutions have to be practical and realistic. With gun ownership being very high in the US a buy back program –like the one that was enacted in Australia in 1996 and 2003 - is not possible and is prohibitively expensive. Though successful buy back programs have been implemented on a city and state level. Some argue that the fact that people own guns, and there are enough of them who are responsible, it prevents gun violence. While this “deterrence” idea might work with nuclear weapon states, there are numerous examples to show that it simply does not work when applied to individuals. In a country where gun ownership is a state issue, and owning assault weapons is as easy as owning a pet, and where passions around ones constitutional right to own guns run high and deep, the solutions have to be sensible to avert anarchy.

Regulation needs to be on the ammunition side. The constitution gives one the right to bear arms, but does not say anything about the amount of ammunition one can carry. One could conceivably make ammunition extremely expensive, and regulate it like one controls prescription medication and  contraband. The president has already called for a ban on assault weapons in the aftermath of the Connecticut massacre. Sales of automatic and semi-automatic weapons have shot up as a result. The weapon of choice in the recent killing, The Bushmaster, has become a rare commodity. Americans have begun hording guns and ammunition, in fear of regulations that are to come. The NRA (National Rifle Association) has come out swinging, vowing to fight any regulation as they lobby the gun manufacturing industry more than gun owners. Any regulation will be an uphill task in gun crazy nation and it will test the president and the congress' metal. The manufacturing industry, the vendors and the illegal black market need to be tightly managed and policed to see any improvement.

There is no doubt that the culture we live in, not just in America but around the world is increasingly turning violent. From women and children caught in real war zones to fictional wars on larger and larger TV and movie screens, exposure to gun violence is a constant. While some argue that media violence does not directly spawn violence in humans, there is no doubt that it certainly creates an attitude that is numbing towards violence. So when a nation like the United States which clearly has serious mental health issues amongst its citizenry, looks at the symptoms of gun violence, it has to pay attention to a population in crisis. Being the leading manufacturer of weapons, weaponry and violent media in the world, America needs to look within. The shooter in Connecticut was the son of a gun enthusiast, and was on the verge of being committed to an institution for a mental disorder. Proximity and proclivity to weapons created conditions that turned explosive with extreme consequences. In most mass shootings in the US, a similar scenario has been the backdrop.

The debate over guns and its place in our society has been ongoing for decades with very little action. With more and more senseless killings in places where you would least expect it, the debate for the time being has reached a feverish pitch. Leading to a nation waking up in a paranoid state, more suspicious of their neighbor and the community that they live in. This unintended consequence will only lead to a more guarded society, where people will only feel safe by being under the gaze of surveillance cameras at all times or by having a false sense of comfort by having more people in uniform around them. What is needed at this point it to step back and make an assessment of the world we want to live in and understand where as a society we are heading.

In Newtown, Connecticut a memorial was held for 26 adults and children. The president presided over the memorial. There were 28 who died that day. A mother and a son were missing at the memorial. The killer deserved some sympathy as well. He was not born to kill. No one is. It is society that molds an individual therefore everyone needs to bear some blame. To accept the perpetrator as a product of the same society that awards him or her the means to commit a crime, is a place to begin the healing.

It is the end of the year. To end it in an uplifting manner is what one hopes and expects. I was resisting broaching this topic in my year-end post but could not relent. The shooting in Newtown left an indelible mark on America and me. It shook me to the core. Weeks after the incident the conversations in living rooms, cafes and corner shops are still ripe, as the national debate takes absurd turns. Parents are worried, politicians feel an urgency to act, communities are perturbed and schools and innocent children are now expected to prepare for a calamity on a daily basis. So as the year comes to an end it is with hopeful eyes that I look to the future and hope that sanity will prevail. It is what it is.

Homeward Bound

Every year or every other year I make a trip to Hyderabad, India from Brooklyn, New York in search of my childhood. Born and raised in a middle class home in this city, I left for America in my early twenties. Like many in my generation and my socioeconomic class, the search was for change and an education. The year was 1991 and all that I had conjured up of the outside world was through movies, magazines and music. And the drive to see it for real was strong. So I boarded a plane and put on a seat belt for the first time and was off to an American university.

In all the years away, there was always a strong draw to return to the place where I was born, to stay in touch with all those minuscule things that made me who I am. Now that I have two young children and aging parents, the reasons to return have slightly changed. To expose my offspring to the air, aromas and customs that defined my childhood has become a driving desire. To keep them in touch with their acquired "Indian-ness" by birth, is something my wife and I put considerable effort into. As I drive them around my city, through the congested, hot, filthy, chaotic streets, pointing at vestiges of my past, sometimes I find myself boring them with too much detail. To show them the walls I used to climb over to get to school and point at the roadside stalls where I would devour spicy dangerous delectable Indian fast food preparations and to subject their taste buds to a range of flavors hoping it would be an uplifting experience is always a delight. And to spend hours with my octogenarian father over a plate of the best Biryani money can buy, and hear him describe his childhood and the magical kingdom this ancient city once was under the Nizam (the King) is priceless. As I toured the old palace museum where the Nizam once lived and ruled, I could see my father become nostalgic and emotional as he remembered those irreplaceable days of peace, prosperity, piety and just clean, quiet, cool air. As we drove through the congested “old city” he pointed at ornate dilapidated terraces and narrow alleyways, which defined his childhood view, much like I showed mine to my children.

The places where we are born and raised always shape who we are. Whether the beginnings are pleasant or not is immaterial. The friendships forged in those carefree innocent times last a lifetime. Though the friends I search in my hometown have all moved away, and those who are here are caught in the humdrum of life, a phone conversation with an old friend makes everything fresh all over again. An old friend is a movie star, another a successful film director, a schoolmate is the commissioner of police and others own palatial homes and fancy cars, but the memories of when we all played marbles and cricket in an open field, or drove out of the city on motorcycles to catch a late night roadside meal, is what instantly brings us together. People change, the city changes, the country transforms, but somethings never change.

India is a country that is always changing and not changing at all, at the same time. Being the world’s largest democracy, cobbled together by a complicated and tenuous history, it manages to stay together despite all the regional, political, ethnic, religious and communal conflicts tearing at its heart. As some one once said “India is the best functioning chaotic democracy in the world” and nothing can be closer to the truth. At the heart of it are human bonds and relationships that endure time and act as the glue that keeps it all together.

As I have seen my city grow from a quiet, peaceful, southern sleepy town, to a concrete jungle of a metropolis, trying to compete with the great cities of the world, I always seem to ask myself was this inevitable? How much of a role did the nation where I currently reside had to play in this transformation? When I drive around the narrow congested city streets and see BMW SUVs and Mercedes Benz’s on the narrow roads and see brands such as Microsoft, Intel, Accenture and McDonalds displayed on tall shiny buildings where once stood million year old rock formations, the answer is staring at my face. The economic liberalization that took place in India in the early 90s had opened the floodgates. And what was left in its path was a mammoth structural upheaval that is still ongoing.

America’s economic boom of the mid nineties was fueled by the information technology revolution spawned largely in Silicon Valley. Part of that boom was fueled by cheap labor procured in the Indian sub-continent and China. The two southern cities that swallowed a giant share of that business were Bangalore and Hyderabad and that legacy is still intact. Though the progress has slowed as a result of a global economic slowdown, the IT parks and glass facade buildings that were erected almost overnight to house American companies, still define the modernization of India. The IT revolution transformed the social fabric of urban India at a fundamental level. To attract foreign investment Indian cities dreamt of becoming western style metropolises, with giant malls, slick airports, subway systems, high rise apartment complexes and six lane highways. But what was not engineered in a sound fashion was the infrastructure to support such an undertaking. But the Indian’s were adept at adapting to the quirks of a failed state. Having your own dedicated diesel generator solved power shortages, buying your own water solved lack of clean potable municipal water, lack of public hygiene was solved by living in a gated community and driving in air-conditioned cars with tinted windows, served as blinders to the disparity and dysfunctionality that lay outside.

While urban India thrived by gobbling rural India, the lack of a cohesive, effective, honest and just local and federal government had made sure that something’s could never change. People who had money could buy into this dream that there was actual change taking place and their life would only become more and more like the west. And those who did not have much before, suddenly felt they had a chance to climb the ladder. And those who did not have anything had to contend with inflation that was debilitating and downright destructive of their very livelihood. A vision for the nation was lacking at a fundamental level and that is a problem that plagues India even today. There is no plan for a universal health system that could serve everyone equally, there is no vision for an education system that could offer quality education for all, and there is no effort to improve the hygiene conditions as well. Yes India is a large country with over a billion people and to provide effective services for all is a challenge. But when you see federal and state governments constantly mired in corruption scandals of mammoth proportion, you cannot accept that as an excuse. 

Any urban street in any city or town in India serves as a great metaphor for the nation that is India clamoring to make progress. The road is narrow with potholes. You could hit a speed bump or a deep crevice at a moments notice. The traffic lights may or may not light up. The traffic policeman who wears a surgical mask to save himself from the pollution can barely stay awake and in control in the heat and grime. The air-conditioned  SUV, the Porsche, the auto-rickshaw, the cyclist, the bus, the truck, the motorcyclist and the pedestrian all squeeze for space on the same road barely six inches from each other. A sidewalk is non-existent as it has been encroached. Yet no one crashes into each other and the street manages to move on in a loud din of horns and some road rage. And when the traffic light does work and you come to a dead halt, the beggars in the most destitute condition holding babies under their arms knock on the tinted window of the newest car for a hand out. The window sometimes rolls down and out comes a hand with some money and the traffic sluggishly moves on.

If you were to interpret the scenario above, as a slice of the way the nation functions this is how it would appear. Indians can now buy the best cars, afford Italian marble under their feet and breathe air-conditioned air but then the infrastructure to support that lifestyle is riddled with problems and has not progressed much in terms of reliability and  sustainability. The haves and the have-nots each assert their space on the road to success squeezing through by the skin of their teeth. The corrupt government stalls and proves ineffectual and leaves behind a huge population to beg for their existence literally and figuratively. The rich get richer, the middle class struggle to move up buying apartments in concrete high rises and the poor struggle to contend with inflation that makes their basic necessities of life a luxury.

Cellphones and Cable Television have permeated through the Indian population like water. These two technologies have transformed the social fabric by touching almost every social-strata like never before. Cable television with its multitude channels is a relatively recent phenomenon. In over less than two decades it has turned the Indian psyche inside out. Aspirations for consumer products across the board have sky rocketed as a result of what television projects and the lifestyles it promotes. Again American influence in the television space is quite dominating. From Indian versions of franchise reality and game shows to sitcoms and movies, America continues to define the lifestyle for the urban upwardly mobile population. Television in all the various regional languages continues to promote traditional and religious values through mythological stories and TV god-men/women. Channels owned by political parties keep the volatile nature of Indian politics alive in people’s living rooms. The Bollywood juggernaut dominates the media landscape and unifies the nation in a warped sense by not only selling a form of cinema that is largely escapist, but also every other consumer product sold by its many celebrity stars. As an outsider when I flip through the TV channels I struggle to find an identity that I could call Indian. What appears to me is confusion. A space where there is a struggle going on to ascertain who we are as a people, a culture war, a clash of aesthetics and ideas that do not meld together.

With all its complexities and various disenfranchised groups and separatist movements India manages to move forward as a largely functioning democracy. Freedom of expression is largely held sacrosanct. But recently that has also been grossly and fearfully threatened to the discomfort of many. When Aseem Trivedi was arrested on sedition charges for highlighting the corruption in India’s power elite in a cartoon, the ugly bullying nature of Indian politics was exposed. The recent arrest of two young women for voicing their opinion on Facebook about the city of Bombay being shut down for the funeral procession of a highly divisive political ideologue Bal Thackery, showed the mafia element that threatens India’s fragile democracy.

The India I grew up in and the India I visit have grown much like I have. I have put on some weight and have lost hair on my scalp, so has India. But my heart has not changed and so has India’s. In the urban chaos and rural upheaval you can still find people who live close to the earth and embody a life style that is sustainable. They practice age-old methods of recycling and consume only what is equitable in ingenious and clever ways. They need to be encouraged on a national scale. Families stay close and embody the ancient codes passed on through the primordial texts holding the social fabric together. Even though the high uncertainty of life makes people more and more religious and the thirst for gold increases as it is seen as the only reliable source of security, people to a large extent live a secular life, respecting each other’s diversity of religion and ethnic make up. The economic disparity I grew up with seems to have gotten starker but the genuineness among people rich or poor I would like to believe has remained the same.

So as I wind up my recent trip to India I come to a realization that I will always live in two places at the same time. Remembering my childhood with my children and reminiscing with my father of a time that today sounds like a fairy tale, I always am left with one question to ask myself. Will my children think of my time as a fairy tale, or will they remember it as a time when everything began to fall apart and all that was sacred and pure, began to fade way. Only time will tell. It is what it is.

The Real Debate

The debates are done. The countdown has begun. Election day is fast approaching. Many are already in a state of malaise and cannot wait for the election to be over. For others November 6th is “judgment day”, a day of reckoning. The battle lines are drawn and the intensity is building on all sides towards a crescendo. Will the American people come out and vote, will they cast ballots against their own interest or are they aware of what’s at stake to make an informed decision. That is what hangs in the balance.

Over the last few weeks, like many millions, I watched the three-part saga in its entirety. The debates had all the makings of any exciting live television event, with the welcome exception of annoying commercials to disrupt the flow. The first debate had the president in a kind of slumber. Some compared his behavior to the famous Mohammed Ali "Rope-a-Dope" technique, where one purposely loses a fight only to come back and stage a surprise win. In the second one, the two candidates unleashed upon each other, interrupting and overstepping each other in a "presidential" joust. In the third and final round, seated around a table, they managed to make their case for the presidency, by not directly answering questions with flare and adding very little new substance.

The media, which only cares about declaring winners and losers, and analyzing body movement and eyebrow twitches to mold perception, as usual did their level best to sound intelligent. CNN teased the audience constantly with a poll that would determine the winner. The panels they assembled over analyzed even things that were not said. The "fact checkers" tried to keep ahead of the double speak politicians are known for. And FOX News, the Republican Channel and MSNBC the Democrat channel went to absurd lengths to put a shine on their beloved candidate or find excuses for their lack luster performance. In the end pseudo polling declared Romney the winner of the first debate, Obama the victor of the second and the third was declared more or less a tie. Personally I thought the real debate never took place. What took place was a sparing match to determine "best in show".

The first debate dealt with the economy, the second with domestic issues and the third with foreign policy. Tax plans and gargantuan figures were offered to reduce the national debt and create jobs, gun violence and gay rights were fleetingly discussed, healthcare was fought over,  the need for a stronger and larger military was expressed, China was pummeled, Bin Laden was dead and Al-Qaida was declared in decline, Pakistan, Syria, Libya, Iraq and Afghanistan were toyed with and the "rogue" nation of Iran was labeled the biggest threat facing the planet. Both candidates proposed ambitious plans to bring jobs back to Americans. The president wanted the rich to do their part, pay more taxes than they have become accustomed to and Romney held onto a belief that the rich were the ones that created jobs so they should be left alone. Both accused each other that the "math does not add up" and so the voters were left scratching their heads. In the end the real debate around real issues was left to the wayside. The drug war, electoral reform, the overflowing prison system, housing, education, white-collar crime, gun control, immigration, extra judicial drone killings, Guantanamo Bay, illegal and devastating wars past and present, the Israel-Palestine conflict, Gaza, Pakistan and its nuclear threat, were largely kept out of the discussion.

You often hear that the 2012 election is about one thing and one thing alone "the economy". "Jobs, jobs and jobs" are what will define the victor in this race they say. If that is in fact true, then as a voter I feel quite emasculated. At a time when certain Republican candidates like Todd Aikin and Richard Mourdock make comments that inadvertently endorse rape and when the candidate and the party categorically refuse to refute them, the election cannot only be about the economy. When a woman's right to choose contraception is under threat, the election cannot be just about jobs. At a time when there is high unemployment and a growing sixteen trillion dollar national debt and there is talk about another war and a larger military the election cannot just be about numbers. When children do not get a good education and those who do are burdened by a herculean debt, this election cannot just be about hollow ideas. And when good healthcare is only the privilege of the wealthy, this election cannot be about one thing, and one thing alone.

America is a land of excessive choice. When you walk into even a small grocery store on any given day you can buy about fifty brands of potato chips, thirty kinds of beer, fifteen kinds of toothpaste and almost a limitless variety of cosmetics. On an over crowded highway, it is hard to spot two similar car models. A large variety of choice is an American birthright that people have come to accept not only as a matter of pride but also as an indicator of wealth, democracy, freedom and prosperity. The same does not apply to elections. The choice there is extremely limited. Only two parties, two candidates and only two approaches to governing that often have only six degrees of separation. The pendulum swings every four or eight years and with it comes very limited change. There are core philosophical differences between the parties that alter decision-making and agenda setting, but to a large extent Washington operates entrenched in a system of special interests and jockeying Senators and Congressmen. Recently the system of checks and balances which the Congress and the Supreme Court are supposed to provide, have been seen to fail much too often with disastrous consequences. Every time an attempt is made by a third or fourth party to join the fray, it is often beaten as a result of not having the financial wherewithal to reach a national audience. In this election Democrats and Republicans have spent more than 900 million dollars combined on advertising alone. For any viable party to compete on that scale is virtually unthinkable.

On October 17th while President Obama and Mitt Romney were locked in their second debate, there was a picket outside on the Hofstra University campus which largely went unreported in the main stream media. Police arrested Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein and her running mate Cheri Honkala as they tried to enter the debate. The two of them were protesting being barred from participating in the debate despite being on 85 percent of ballots nationwide in this election. The Commission on Presidential Debates, which sponsored the debate, requires any third party candidate to poll at 15 percent or higher to participate. The Democratic and Republican Parties set up the Commission in 1987 and have run it since. In an interview with Democracy Now!, Stein and Honkala said they were handcuffed to chairs for eight hours in a warehouse. They were arrested for blocking traffic after sitting down in front of a line of police officers standing in the street.

What every subsequent outrageously expensive election highlights is that democracy in this nation is under threat. If democracy just means having the choice to buy a desired product or a life style, then the constitutional ideal of "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" is very much alive, as long as you have the means to afford it. But if democracy means an active, diverse and intelligent exchange of ideas, with the media engaging the public with issues that constitute a “real debate”, then one must demand it.  American presidential elections in the recent past have had historical low voter turn out. Often averaging at 50% or less. Is it voter apathy or just a loss of belief in the system as a result of a lack of a "real debate", is hard to tell.

This election like never before could change the trajectory of the nation on many levels. The polarized nature of the electorate reflects the gravity of the situation, on racial, political and gender lines. While Mitt Romney tries to move to the center, hoping to broaden his appeal, President Obama and his campaign hammer away at his flip flopping credentials and other right wing views he has expressed in the past. What will determine this election is not the so called “undecided voters”, those who have either been living in a cave or have been comatose for the last fourteen months for not being able to make up their mind. But the people who will show up on voting day, very clear about what they believe democracy should be and which candidate is most likely to uphold it in their limited way within the American political frame work. When no system is perfect, and no democracy is ideal, one must chose the lesser of two evils.

Bob Schieffer the moderator of the last presidential debate ended the session quoting his mother who used to say to him on election day, “Go vote. It will make you feel big and strong”. In 2008 when Barack Obama became president, many symbolically felt their voting power paid off. To see it happen again, the “real debate” within the voter needs to begin. It is what it is.