44 children ran away tonight

The television tells me that four search parties are out looking for this huge bunch of children that have run away from a Madiwala remand home.  I shudder to imagine exactly how terrible the place must be that the children have chosen to risk being out in the city by themselves rather than sleep in their beds. I hope that they’ll find their way to someplace safe.

I also hope that this means that questions will be asked about remand homes and about how the authorities treat children – some of the most terrible stories of child abuse come out of remand homes…

Update: So they’re considering sending the kids to ‘regular’  jail. Some news reports say that the remand home is one of the better ones of its kind. Although there’s this report, about how a kid killed himself at the place two years back. Was wondering what sort of ‘observation home’ lets kids kill themselves and has over half its population run out…and came across this article about the security problem, and about how 3 people cared for 75 children at the place. By ‘cared for’ I presume they mean ‘guarded’. If 75 children that are disturbed enough to kill, rob and rape have 3 people attending to them…and if that’s the state of things in one of the ‘better’ observation homes, can you begin to imagine how many children we’re ruining? How many, for lack of a little attention, a little affection and direction, will grow up to be mass murderers and psychopaths? Because no one thought that a kid who stole was worth a second thought…

Whoosh

is the sound of blood rushing through my brain. I’m walking, document in hand, towards the room in which the scanner’s kept. And whoosh. I stagger forward and lean against the door. Look round furtively – see three people typing franctically and one on his phone. Lean against the door casually and grin at the two girls that walk by coffee in hand. Sneak a look around, totter into the room and collapse on the chair.

In a few minutes, feeling better, I hop out and start chattering. Whoosh! I flop into a chair. And continue talking. Bless the riots – I didn’t have to stand on the road that day and hope that I would find an autorickshaw before the next whoosh found me. The brother drove me home.

The next day I was happy and thoroughly unprofessional. Little mini-swishes fluttered through my head – it was like that heady delight you feel after you’ve had a little more wine than you should have. I’m waking up now, and I find that I have very behaved badly with someone whose work I admire and respect. I have so much damage to undo, I don’t know where to start…

Why defend a murderer?

from a man who does defend them. A real lawyer.

And then read about these characters that happened to be enrolled in the Indian Bar, and how they disrespected constitutional rights inside a courtroom, and wince.

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People who don’t like music

Not even a bit of any kind of music, scare me.  I’m convinced that they’re evil or something. 

Grumbles from a spoilt girl

Most people hire household help to….well, be helped – to have things taken care of, to not have to worry, to get out of doing chores around the house, to save time and so on.

Ours being a feudalish country, help comes cheap. So we’ve got battalions of people to ‘make our lives easier’. Today I had to spend well over two hours at work trying to contact my army of ‘help’. There’s apparently pandemonium in my house. My grandmother tells me that the cleaning lady’s gone ballistic and has scared the  daylights out of the cook. The cleaning lady refuses to turn up at an hour at which she can be given a stern talking to. The cook who is supposed to double as housekeeper and supervise over the cleaning lady refuses to assert herself. The grandmother who is supposed to give the cook instructions over the phone about housekeeping, instead gives me instructions about not aggravating the cleaning lady because she’ll take it out on the cook (and the cook’s an old loyal employee of my grandmother’s). And so on. All this sitting at a clients place and trying to look like I’m in an important conference call.

I come home to wash the clothes that are unwashed because the cleaning lady refuses to let me tell her what needs to be done. Valiantly choke down some vile-looking pumkin based thing so that the cook’s feelings won’t be hurt. Scrub the dishes before I ate off them the because the cleaning lady had done such a bad job of it.

I thought I was supposed to lead a spoiled cossetted life for a bit!

Sticks and Stones

People are rioting in Bangalore. Burning autorickshaws and buses. Stoning shops. Ransacking houses. Angry people breaking stuff and rushing around acting fierce.

The police walked in swinging lathis at people. A policeman got stabbed so they opened fire and killed a child. It’s pretty awful, all of it.

I’m fortunate enough to be so insulated that for me, the riots are just unusually empty streets, shuttered shops, phone calls to check that everyone’s all right, and video clips of burning vehicles that keep flashing on television. A colleague drove through shattered glass, destroyed shops and flaming cars. Homes down the  street from my friend’s house were robbed and stoned. And I shudder to imagine how terrifying it must be for people without strong gates to hide behind and without vehicles to bear them away from the violence.

The  odd thing is that after a night of destruction, all was normal in the morning. We were all at work, as always, as was everybody else in Bangalore. At dusk, the rioters reasserted themselves and everyone had to rush home, abandoning jazz quartets and movies, to observe the curfew – pay homage to the violence.

I find the rioting a little hard to believe. Bangalore was such a peaceful city. It seems still such a tolerant, happy, relaxed place. Where’s all this coming from?

(The rioting’s some Hindu versus Muslim quarrel, though it’s unclear why exactly they’re quarreling)

One new constitution, coming up…

When I heard about how senior government officials decided to step in an rescue little Shilpa Shetty, and to turn the entire thing into a diplomatic incident, I thought it seemed a little silly.

But it’s nothing close to this…

the Tamil Nadu government was recently told that some of the stuff it’s trying to pull happens to be against the constitution. And against a part of the constitution that can’t be changed too easily either. So the party concerned is not insisting (this is on record and is all over the media) that the constitution be rewritten.

That’s very original reasoning for you. Imagine… the constitution doesn’t do what you want it to…so you demand a new one…and hey presto! It’s done…one new constitution, baked to a crisp.

Vincent

I’ve been feeling a bit out of sorts. And this absolutely wonderful lady I know (she’s over fifty) send me this to cheer me up. And she had no idea that I love this song!

 

The married-middle-aged-lady skill

can get you a job in Mumbai as a customer relation executive. I’m serious. Here’s the advertisement:

“Customer relation executive

Key Skills: Only Female Married Candidate Age 30+ need to apply….

Date Posted: 15 Dec, 06″

It’s from this place (for any married women over thirty that are interest and for impertinent doubters of my cast-iron word)