#Wallpaper

Let's talk random.

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Thirty two years since the launch of this amazing comic strip! 18th November, 1985. To Calvin and Hobbes! ♥️ "It's going too fast! We've got to hoard our freedom and have more fun! Time rushes on!" - Calvin

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In the travel bucket list <3

Kashi, the holy city.

Sketched on 2nd September, 2017.

Design credits: shutterstock.com

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Books are pillows we sleep on to dream the undreamt.

Suman D’Silva

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Because the quote was beautiful!

Sketched on 13th August, 2017.

Design Credits: ekdodhai.com

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Wooooohooooooo!!!! 10 posts! 😊

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#Wallpaper turned 2 today!

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Be your own light.

Suman D'Silva

[larstheyeti]

The Awkward Yeti

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In the age of e-mails and social networks, I don't remember the last time I posted a letter to a close friend.

Lost in transit. Period.

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Read Indian

Every August comes with pride for India. The first fortnight of the month brings a different flavour to the air. I am envisioning being drawn away by the school band practices, rehearsals of the national anthem and loud music that forms a part of the usual cultural programme, while I sit at work in office.

But there’s more to August Fifteenth forbye the national anthem and patriotism because it is only the historical corroboration which declares our liberty. But the day lacks genuineness. It is as simple as singing the national anthem for years without knowing what it literally and gorgeously means. We have been assuming our independence for the last sixty eight years; another year appended, this August.

The clamour about still not being uncaged will go on and we all know what is behind the scenes of this shoddy movie. Whether it is ignorance or innocence, egotism or egalitarianism, poverty or indolence; the go is tough. Each action can cause a split and may never help our land ameliorate.

The Indian mind is modish and low on originality. More than being a critic, I’m attempting to convey simple realities. Visualise a middle class Indian household where the son, after class ten conveys to his parents that he wants to choose any stream but science. If this image gave you a pinch, then you were probably one of those many paralysed sons who were unsuccessful in convincing their parents that science isn’t everyone’s cup of tea.

All you can do at that moment is cursing your neighbour’s intelligent son who got a ninety per cent in his pre university and grabbed a seat at a high profile engineering or medical college, because the ‘Indian Neighbour’ is every other Indian’s greatest enemy. You are left with ‘Do it because the neighbour’s son or daughter did it’! And if you fail to do well, you have no brains!

I’ll now keep the Indian neighbours aside and talk about the Indian himself (herself). You are on your way to the court to get a divorce from your two years old husband, and you see an old female friend with a random male at a coffee shop. By the time you reach the court, this piece of news would have already travelled to three or four others. Are we not so much more interested in gatecrashing others’ lives, while we forget to evaluate our own? It’s so surprising sometimes, that you get to know new things about yourself when you hear people talking about you.

Before thinking about working part time at a fast food joint, it is a ritual to be vociferated by parents because ‘people’ will talk. It is a shame to try to earn your own pocket money by wearing a waiter’s cap at a coffee shop.

If we aren’t still free, it’s because we’ve been waiting to follow great people. While reading and digesting a typical Indian’s psychology, one can draw many red lines under certain ways of thinking.

We demand rights. But we hesitate to free ourselves from unnecessary theories. When the tiniest germs are cleared, the atmosphere becomes immaculate. Before talking about having better laws, a cleaner place, a safer nation, a better economy and sensible leaders; we ought to talk about our minds.

If the mind is unchained, progress will without question make its way.

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Life has only given us an opportunity to play our roles and not overdo it.

Suman D’Silva

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The Mindset

Every one of us has, at some point of time come across the ‘decent dressing’ debate or rather been a part of it; either for it, against it or been just a listener. Post every rape case that happens in our country or elsewhere, this controversial idea of whether dressing decently could solve the issue of women being victimised in such heinous crimes, is always discussed upon.

For those filtered young minds, in their teens or early twenties who think the way that suits the present day and of course some other open minded men and women, it may be an utter saturnine thought. But for the others, it is more like a solution – “Dress in a salwar kameez and you won’t get raped”!

I must be forgiven by the ones giving such bizarre solutions, since I am a person who thinks at par with the former. Do the clothes really matter? ‘Yes’ says an aunt of mine, “You don’t attract dirty attention that way...” and I begin to think of the first ever rape case that must have taken place in India maybe centuries ago. Certainly, our Indian women dressed up in saree and salwar kameez back then. But still, the first rape happened.

From a December 2012 article that I had read on The Washington Post website, I learnt that in a 1996 survey of judges in India, 68 per cent of respondents supported the fact that provocative clothing is an invitation to rape. There hasn’t been much alteration in the thinking twenty years down the lane. Such an abstraction, en masse of blaming women for getting raped rather than pumping in effort to fetch justice for the victim, is what I believe, a big mistake.

A female figure has been considered an object or a commodity that gives pleasure from time infinite. My blood boils as I write such a sentence, because I am a woman myself. But the truth remains the truth and the truth is always bitter. Moreover, when a girl is raped, she is considered a blot on society, denied respect and forced to believe that she can never lead a normal life ahead.

If you thumb through internet archives which recite the infamous, tragic and shameful rape incident which shocked Manipal in 2013 or the December 2012 case of gang rape of the braveheart, the victims were adequately dressed, but in vain. It was fate that made them fall prey to the hands of such gross and ignoble men.

If today’s newspapers can spell headlines like ‘Rape of a three year old’ or similar events, where does the ‘dress code’ debate stand? I say, let the country’s women be imposed with a ‘salwar kameez’ dress code for a day, and I bet the number of rapes won’t change because we live in an environment that consists of many chauvinistic men.

Let alone the idea of provocative dressing, our country is famous for other notions too, some of them being, a rape victim can always compromise by marrying her betrayer, it is shameful to admit that you have been raped, the society can never accept a woman who has been raped or she can never find a groom. The list could go on.

A handful of us might object to such baseless viewpoints, but they do reflect the real outlook of most people even as of today.

Isn’t it time to look at it the holistic way? Are these questions that I raise; irrelevant, real or illusory? The answers may lie in the mindset. Changing it for 1.2 Billion people in the country is no protean task and the argument will still continue. The country may have developed, but it lacks edification. The mindset remains stagnant even as we dive in to the future.

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Engulfed by Drama

It has been some time since (almost) every one among us began accepting the fact that we fraternise more via Facebook or Twitter than through real soul to soul talks or physical appearances and visits. While this is easily digested by the lads and lasses of today, the people of the (/in their) fifties and sixties or even older, may look sluggishly towards such a fact. Somehow, these blue coloured monitor faces do not seem to fascinate them in any way. But the presence of a few exceptions cannot be denied.

Belonging to the later generation, I choose to stay away from altercating over the positives and negatives of social networks or the possible reasons for them being liked or disliked by the old or the young. I would rather begin to elucidate the purpose because of which I chose to pen down this article.

The third month of the year 2013 saw a series of innovations on news feeds of social networking sites. A row of confession pages were created, one after the other. Each college, school, locality or group had a “Keep calm and confess” tag on their timeline. And like many others, I was one among those hapless users to have checked my Facebook account on that fateful day!

All that my eyes caught fancy of was confession numbers, people updating statuses about confession pages and some others being highly drunk with these confession feeds. My favourite pages were made a purée of and showed lesser updates for the time being. But in a matter of few minutes, I was inadvertently reading the inputs that flocked one such confession page.

“This is for Ryan Andrew, studying in first year B. Com.

You are so cute and appealing. Do you have a girlfriend? I want you to be mine. Please don’t break my heart. I love you a lot. ”

I was terrified by the partially written words, the terrorising grammar, the intentions of the people who confessed and the demands they had. The above written sample is no match to the real ones I read. Apart from feeling like a detached puzzle, my mind instantly popped up invisible parachutes of thought. The first thing it blurted out was “Love is so inexpensive these days. All you have to do is get a free account on a social network and confess.” And the phrase that followed this was, “THIS IS DISASTROUS!”

No, the block letters and exclamatory mark are not signs of exaggeration. That is how I really felt. If falling in love with somebody makes you stalk them or embarrass them on a public forum, it certainly is not love. I do not know what term could be set aside for such idiocy. The definition of the term ‘love’ only decays as years pass by.

Years of technological upheaval and people sparing no effort in keeping themselves updated, have extracted every bit of naturalness from within us. We no longer smile from our heart. The fake curve on our lips is always on. Who knows? Someone could be capturing us on camera! The pseudo knows no end. Every time I log in to my account, I am never taken by surprise to see superfluously zoomed close up images of damsels who intend to show every layer of their caked up face, not to forget the mainstream pout. A status update that shows one’s degree of sadness so as to attract a series of questions from friends in the network has now become archetypal.

It’s a made up world, with a co-equally made up neighbourhood. Everyone is busy focusing on the drama, while the reality is vanquished. Love is expressed on confession pages and birthdays are remembered because of notifications. Families are broken, but every member of the family is on the friend list. Despondency is overstated and personal lives are made open novels.

As the realism drowns and the multitude accepts it, we have nowhere to go. Staying away from the drama is considered passé and living like ‘yourself’ even after being inundated by it is arduous. Life has only given us an opportunity to play our roles and not overdo it. But we only prefer breaking the rules. And as I close this paragraph, my Facebook account flashes a notification. I just hope it’s not another status update that indirectly says ‘I need attention’!

Disclaimer: The views mentioned herein are purely personal and do not intend to hurt the feelings of readers. Names of persons are co incidental and the mention of social networking sites have not been done to promote any of them.

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Celebrating Cataclysm

Jogging back to the memories of being in school nearly six years rewound, I can thoroughly recall being taught about the significance of June 5th. If there’s anything I remember from my school syllabi, I can satisfactorily declare that parts of my Environmental Studies text book haven’t gone to the waste paper bin.

Remembering the course of an Environmental Studies text is no shocker. I’m pretty confident that all of us remember at least an inch of we’ve been taught in school on deforestation, recycling, acid rain and suchlike. And it hardly matters if any of us can cast our minds back to the portion we studied as a part of E.V.S., like we called it. No one really cares what our E.V.S. books said. And I’m being outwardly honest when I say that.

Whether you celebrate World Environment Day or not; the searing temperatures of Mangalore or any other city are not going to take a dip in cold water, the warm breeze is not going to stop moving around, and neither are people going to stop hewing big old trees to augment streets or to decorate their homes.

In spite of having celebrated World Environment Day for all these years, we have only been successful in melting more glaciers, relinquishing more water bodies and blighting every other natural resource. It is perceived human nature to destroy what has already been half destroyed. And that is exactly what is trending today. It isn’t very laborious to plant a sapling every time a tree is cut. But the question is, ‘Who does it?’

The tempo with which we’re erasing the natural face of the earth shows a much disfigured image of the years to come. A fight between states over water sharing, won’t take much time to amplify in to a fight between nations, and could probably proceed to another world war. And a world dispute over something as basic as water is going to be a thwack on the face of mankind. Realising then, that something should have been done, will go futile.

We live in a flawed environment. There’s nothing that lacks contamination. But doing what’s in our hands at the moment can postpone the aftermath of our actions till date. We don’t have to always keep the tap water running when we brush teeth; neither does anyone lose anything when he/she turns off a tap that’s not being used at a public place. A leaking faucet if repaired, may cost us much lesser compared to what a world war for water will.

I’m not concluding with a message that says, we can wholly restore nature with these efforts; but we definitely can help delay a fracture in our environment that may cause the end of the world.

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A Weekend with Aarushi

The first Sunday of 2015’s August brought in a surprise for me. The books section of a popular morning daily listed a book titled ‘Aarushi’ which immediately drew my attention. It was the image of the book cover that I eyeballed first - blood splattered around the title - the plain red and white - all of it made my thoughts rush back to an old story, the story of a teenager who was brutally murdered many years ago (I couldn’t even remember the year or further details) allegedly by her parents - a dentist couple.

I switched off my thoughts to confirm if they were in the right direction and read the summary given beside the picture of the book cover. It read, “Seven years ago, a teenage girl, Aarushi Talwar was found murdered in her bedroom in Noida. The body of the prime suspect, Hemraj, the family servant, was discovered a day later. Within weeks, Aarushi’s parents were accused, four years later they went on trial and were convicted. But did they commit the crime?”

My mind spoke again, “What do you mean by did they commit the crime? Of course they did it!” I was astonished by such a bizarre summary and dumped the newspaper on the rack. But whatever I did after that Sunday morning was inadvertent.

The question at the end of the summary stuck to my thoughts like superglue. I decided to read further, to improve the little knowledge that I had about the murder mystery. The same evening I googled ‘Aarushi Talwar’ and clicked on the first link which was titled '2008 Noida Double Murder Case - Wikipedia’. It took me nearly a day (because of the slow reader that I am!) to finish reading the entire case on Wiki, but not any more time to decide that I had to read the book authored by Avirook Sen.

The following week I had it ordered online and delivered at my doorstep. But to read it I needed a good stretch of time, which was nearly difficult to get, considering my schedule. I booked my lunch break (at work) of the 14th of August to give the book my first attention. The days after that were anyway a part of the freedom weekend. So I could comfortably finish reading the book.

That afternoon (14th of August), a colleague enquired about my new pass time (that’s what he assumed it to be). It was more of a curiosity read for me. I told him that the book was about the Aarushi Talwar murder case that happened in 2008 at Noida. The man was quick with his next question, “Oh! The parents only killed her right?” I had no answer to that. I just said, “It seems, they didn’t.” What more could I have told him? I had just begun reading the book.

But with each page that I turned, it was one constant thought that occurred to me, “Go bury your face somewhere!” The main reason behind this being paragraph two of page 33, which described the anguish of Dr. Rajesh when handcuffed along with Krishna.

I paused for a while to ponder over the heartache of the Talwar couple, the parents whose apple of the eye was taken away from them - with no warning given, nobody having expected such a thing! How our minds accept what is repeatedly typed in bold letters on daily newspapers and what is baselessly chirped on news channels by reporters! The same mind that believed one May morning that the parents were the butchers of their sole teenage daughter, now believed the contrary!

The Sunday (16th of August) evening with which I wrapped up my reading, with the last few pages of the book, turned my entire view on the case. Two or three nights were spent thinking over what destiny had in store for the Talwars - how a sudden turn of events lit a fire to their happiness - innocent people were dressed up to look like murderers.

Probably every reader of 'Aarushi’ by Avirook Sen would have had similar thought bubbles floating across their minds. But one peculiar question that I still have for readers is, “If tomorrow, a person comes up with a new theory that overturns the material that Sen has provided in his book, will we still stay rooted, strongly believing that the Talwars are innocent?” I hope that wisdom has truly enlightened our perspective on the merciless murder of an innocent little girl, through Avirook Sen and that our beliefs are no more shaken.

Rest in peace dear Aarushi. ________________________

Disclaimer: The content of this article purely bears the thoughts and views of the author and does not intend to cause offence to any person living or dead or to any broadcasting media or any other similar media mentioned above. Also, specific names have not been used to promote or defame any of them. ________________________