| Published on 09-11-2006 In General |
| Viewed 3227 times |
| Karmic masala – a divorce, a hanging and a flavoured condom |
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Written by
T. S. V. Hari |
The couple who wanted "to remain united in matrimony for ever" – pop diva Britney Spears and her husband Kevin Federline are about to separate. At least Spears has applied for a divorce in a US court.
Courts?
Courts are the in thing these days.
In India, sizeable portions of the society do not want the Supreme Court's interference in matters one too many.
The other day, it was reservations – a sore point of the government at the centre.
Now, traders in New Delhi are up in arms over the now notorious Supreme Court's "sealing" sentence – which will effectively mean the downing of the shutters of over 40,000 shops in residential areas where they weren't supposed to be in the first place.
Talking of other allied subjects, there is a "great" man who said, "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence."
It is the context of this statement that would raise the hackles of sane people all over the world.
It had to do with the unearthing of the now forgotten "Weapons of Mass Destruction" possessed by the notorious former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein who also is at the receiving end vis-a-vis - the courts.
There was also some talk of Hussein's connections with the dreaded Al Qaeda. At present nobody knows the truth that matters.
Several nations with Muslim majorities – including our friendly neighbourhood terrorist origin – Pakistan – are up in arms against the Iraqi courts decreeing that Hussein should hang for atrocities committed by him in the eighties.
All those who do not support the USA in this endeavour to establish the rule of law in Iraq and punishing a tyrant are similar to those who had supported Nazi Germany, the Americans are saying.
Yeah?
At least this one sounds familiar.
Though many reading this column wouldn't have been born in 1939, a certain Chamberlain shook hands with Adolf Hitler to seal a pact of non aggression westwards. Needless to add Hitler did the exact opposite.
A simple Google search revealed that among others, the westerners were the ones who had supplied Hussein with Weapons of Mass Destruction. Naturally when they didn't find any during sustained searches after occupying Iraq for a second time, they were worried.
Between the late seventies and the mid eighties, it was quite an altogether different story. Iraqis were the good guys "punishing" the bad guys in Iran who had held Americans for ransom and had shamed the world's most powerful nation.
Naturally Iraq got anything it wanted including chemical agents that could kill huge numbers of people.
Hussein, being the compassionate man that he is, used them against his own subjects including Shias, Kurds and generally all those who opposed him.
All those who died in the Iraqi holocaust were mere cannon fodder. The men from Tikrit – the small town that gave birth to the Hussein clan could do no wrong, at that point in time.
One of the people who proudly shook His Excellency Hussein's hand during this period and was thankful for it was the "great" man Donald Rumsfeld, then an ordinary citizen of the USA.
What is important today is the same Rumsfeld is spewing venom against Hussein. That alone is important for us.
Hussein has been arrested for crimes against humanity and the USA has established the rule of law in Iraq – even if it didn't provide solace to a huge multitude of people in that country. There are sudden kidnappings, car bomb explosions and so on – killing tens of hundreds of Iraqis. All this needn't bother us.
One needn't grieve for Hussein – who is adamantly rejecting the offer of the hand of human kindness to hang him. He is insisting on a firing squad.
Perhaps Hussein is simply scared of hanging.
It doesn't matter that the judges who heard his case were changed twice at the instance of the US.
USA can change its mind when it comes to doling out goodies. One day it might support people like Saddam Hussein and the next moment haul him up as an enemy. I only hope that Pervez Musharraf reads this because he has begun doing similar things in Baluchistan - bombing masses by hundreds.
Countries like Iran can receive arms from their worst enemy Israel courtesy USA and the very same Shiite nation can be derided soon afterwards for using the same weapons against the same country when it attempts to produce 'unsanctioned' nuclear weapons.
We have our worries. Our convoluted reservation system will one day become so strong that 99 percent of our populace will be backward, most backward and/or other backward castes.
It might even result in a pogrom against the tiny minority of forward castes for all those imagined atrocities heaped on the majority of the masses. There is nothing new in this, is there? After all, millions of Jews could be gassed by Germany just because they happened to be hard working and earned more money.
Our courts will continue to watch helplessly – as they are doing in connection with the sharing of Cauvery waters, height of the Mullai Periyar dam, the recalcitrance of New Delhi's traders who had put up umpteen illegal shops and the twisting of our Constitution by the politicians in multifarious issues.
We will conveniently forget that actor Khushboo was vilified for her comments on premarital sex and not bother about freedom of expression. We will also not oppose those state governments which will splurge the hard earned money of the masses on worthless movie projects.
And worry we will about Britney Spears – especially her two toddler kids – one year old Sean Preston and two month old Jayden James. For us, it is not important that Spears had annulled her first marriage within 55 hours, had posed nude for photographers when she was seven months pregnant with her second son and that she had become irreconcilable with Federline all in a span of two years.
For us, it will not matter that our own television stations had telecast visuals of a flavoured condom to encourage a brand of sex that is reprehensible to say the least.
We have our Karmic needs of worries – to forget those that concern us and to be seized of those which don't. |
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