The Ides of August

August, one of the longest months of the dog days of summer finally comes to an end. This month of has been hot, has seen lot of political heat in Indian Subcontinent - especially on the flashpoint of Kashmir. The sudden decision of the Modi led BJP to scrap article 370 caught everyone unaware, including India's bette noire Pakistan. 

Its ex-Cricketer and Prime Minister Imran Khan and its puppeteer all powerful Army were caught off guard my Modi's decision. The otherwise confident Alpha male Prime minister who has guided his nation to many remarkable victories in cricket, bedded a number of lasses, fathered at least one known bastard, is behaving confused like a Fox facing headlight and running like a headless chicken. It is apparent from his blabbermouth churning out one nonsense after another on daily basis - the same way I churn out my blogs.

August can be a disturbing month for our Western frontier neighbor. Imran Khan's coronation as Prime Minister coincided with the 30th Anniversary of the death of another all powerful Army man and ex President of Pakistan who once successfully persuaded the charismatic, cricket captain to reverse his decision to retire from cricket. Imran's comeback resulted in him leading Pakistan to win the Cricket world cup only time in history. The President was General Zia Ul Haq.

For the country it would be the case of "The Ides Of August". It reminds me of one muggy day in August many monsoons ago when inside my hostel room in NIT, Rourkela BBC radio broke the news (No Breaking News, the concept was absent then). It was the death of Pakistani President General Zia Ul Haq in a plane crash. 

Zia was a diminutive soldier and a shrewd sstrategist. His regime would shape the politics of the subcontinent for a long time to come. He set the stepping stone to keep its rival India in check by getting his country nuclear and bleeding India in Kashmir and Punjab. He once reportedly said referring to his support to Sikh terrorism - "Keep the water boiling just enough to the right temperature, so that it doesn't spill over but simmers enough to give our enemy, aka India hard time". Hard time he did gave us - so much so that he emboldened ISI enough to subsequently stage spectacular attack after attack inside India successfully protraying India over time as a clueless weak state.

Born in India, studied in St. Stephens College, Delhi he migrated to Pakistan where he rose his way up in the Army. He was frail man with a short height, but a master strategist. He was lucky to be recruited by the British Indian Army as Officers were is shortage towards the end of World War II.

Promotions were hard to come by. But fortune favored him after Bhutto became the PM of Pakistan. He trusted Zia whom he thought as harmless and malleable, as the later was obsequious to the Prime minister. Bhutto promoted him over others by making him the Army Chief superseding others Senior to Zia.

Bhutto used to poke fun at Zia by calling him our "Monkey General" in front of the foreign dignitaries, alluding to the later's short stature and long protruding teeth. Zia would always respond with his inscrutable smile. But these innocuous teeth would later become fangs with a vengeance, delivering a venomous bite to Bhutto as the monkey general had his last laugh by dislodging the PM in a military coup and hanging him in less than couple of years.

It's said that Zia was a champion conversationalist. He would call his contemporary Indian Prime minister Morarjee Desai and flatter him by asking the formers view on benefits of drinking urine (Desai used to drink his own urine first thing in morning). Soon our first PM from Gujarat was conferred "Nishan-e- Pakistan", their highest civilian award. God knows what transpired between them but I am sure the cunning Zia didn't give Pakistan's highest award to the Prime Minister of their sworn enemy for the Desai's sermon on Urine therapy.

An alumni of St. Stephens College Delhi he once invited a delegation of its ex-students, fed them well and gave them free luxury rides across the scenic and historic sites of Pakistan. The entire team, a member of which was K Natwar Singh would heap paeans of praise about Zia's hospitality. At the same time he pushed terrorists into Punjab and Kashmir. This Pakistani general proved himself a master Jekyll and Hyde personality.

The General was a staunch Mullah who permanently veered Pakistan towards fundamentalism. In the movie CHARLIE WILSON's WAR based on the Soviets involvement in Afghanistan actor Tom Hanks who plays the role of the Texan Congressman arrives in Pakistan and immediately proceeds to meet Zia. After meeting he asks for "Rye Bourbon on the Rocks", eager to unwind a long travel from United States. 

He was bluntly told that alcohol is not served in the Presidential palace and he has to shift to a hotel to have his desire fulfilled. In another scene when the Congressman asks Zia (played by Om Puri) if any legislative approval is needed to supply weapons to the Mujahideens Zia retorted "I am the Constitution and my words are the Law of the land". He sure was. Had he survived assassination he could have hung all of Pakistan military 's top brass if he suspected them of involvement.

He allowed Pakistan as a conduit for the Americans to supply shoulder fired missiles (ironically one of the experts in firing them was Osama Bin Laden). Those weapons each costing $50000 brought down Soviet military air crafts which cost millions. The financial loss was devastating on the Soviets already toiling under a bad drought and down spiraling economy. The mighty USSR was brought to its knees so much so that during Breznev's funeral they approached Zia for a face saver exit. But the shrewd Zia knew on which side the tide was and kept quite. Rest we know is history.

Nothing lasts forever. The all powerful Zia's more than a decade of power came to an abrupt end as he died in a mysterious plane crash. It's rumores that KGB took him out as a revenge on him for openly siding with America in their Afghanistan imbroglio, bringing the Soviets to their knees. The truth only Allah knows. Imran should learn something from the Ides of August as he steers through these turbulent times - his nation facing bankruptcy and hardly anyone in the world interested to dance to his Kashmir tune.

A True Tale Stranger than fiction

Have you ever heard true tales stranger than fiction ? This is one bone chilling incident from early 1980s was narrated to me by a close friend when he was growing up as a teenager in Bombay (not Mumbai yet). 

A young man in his neighborhood was in an extremely precarious health condition. My friend had seen him vomiting blood, so much so that the famous Jaslok Hospital where he was admitted returned him back considering his hopeless situation. The doctors advised him to spend his last days with his near and dear ones as the hospital has given up all hope.

As a last resort his helpless, desperate guardians approached a local OJHA or TANTRIK (sorcerer) to see if he can make any difference to their lad's health. The Tantrik after checking opined that the young man was under the influence of some evil spirit which has led to such malignancy in his body and if not treated immediately was going to perish soon.

He queried his patient if he remembers anything unusual around the time he fell sick. The boy was a GWALA or BHAIYYA (milkmen as addressed in Bombay) who used to deliver milk at wee hours of the morning. One day when it was still dark outside, he ventured out on his usual route. Suddenly he came across a woman wearing bright Saree and a huge circle of Red Sindoor (vermilion) on her forehead walking on the opposite side of the road. 

The youthfulness in him gave away to play a prank. So he started whistling from his snorted mouth and made some catcalls at the approaching woman. As he trudged ahead, the lady responded by cursing him to immense suffering. It was loud and clear enough for him to hear her voice. He turned around to take a peek. The woman who was only a few feet from him moments ago wasn't there anymore - as if she simply vanished into the thick, humid early morning Bombay air.

The Bhaiyya ignored this incident and moved on. But now he remembered that no sooner this encounter happened than he fell ill. The Tantrik told him not to worry and went ahead with his POOJA PAATH (Prayers and Rituals). He then assured the boy that the bad energy inside him has been cured and he is going to recover.

Exactly the same happened. The boy who was left for dead by the doctors of the famed Jaslok Hospital not so long ago, miraculously started feeling better. In a few days my friend saw his BHAABI (sister-in-law) helping him to take a bath. In a week he was walking around and in a month he was back to his usual chore of distributing milk. Some tells are truly stranger than fiction. They really are.

UN Security Council meet on Article 370

The UN Security Council meet to discuss the Kashmir issue yielded the expected outcome - no result. Pakistan's all weather friend China supported the rouge nation. Russia accredited India's decision to scrap Article 370 as its internal matter. The rest 3 other veto holding members, US, Britain and France stayed neutral, again as expected.

We, in India being brought up in a Bureaucracy dominated environment consider UN as a big thing. Needless to say, it is the world's biggest, bloated bureaucracy which houses a bunch of entitlement seekers, famous for their inefficiency and lack of accountability. A spineless organization, it is known more for failures than success on its Balance Sheet ever since its inception in 1945. 

A sizable amount of its maintenance is born by the Americans Taxpayers. Now high time it gets dissolved, or US kicks them out of its own soil. What a blatant waste of prime real estate properties in New York and Washington DC for a bunch of freeloaders !!!

The nations in United Nations, in contrary to the name suggests, are hardly United. In spite of tons of money poured into many poor nations (mostly American money), those nations still languish in poverty. Those who have succeeded in moving 10s of millions out of poverty (notably China and India), have done so by helping themselves and with some help from Private charitable agenies, rather than anything remotely from UN.

The Security Council is used as the personal fiefdom of its veto wielding members, to further their own selfish agenda. It has hardly achieved any world peace and stability, which was supposed to be the primary goal when the United  nations was formed 70 years ago.

In June, 1981 following the Israeli strike on the Iraqi Nuclear Reactor on the outskirts of Baghdad, US promptly vetoed any UN resolution against Israel.

I still vividly remember this cartoon by R K Laxman on the front page of Times Of India, where the UN Secretary General says to the recalcitrant, mockingly grimacing Israeli PM - "The more you launch such an attack, you will be condemned more severely".

35 years down the road, not much has changed. Now this behemoth global Babudom is not expected to fix the Kashmir imbroglio. So, more their meets on Kashmir is ignored, better it is. 

At the same time, let's not be under the illusion that every nation on earth shares our hatred towards Pakistan and our BHAKTI (devotional love) laden blind support for each of Modi's decisions when it comes to foreign policy. Just because Modi scrapped 370, every nation on earth will blindly support us - simply because we view India being right and Pakistan is wrong 

International geopolitics is purely self interest driven and everything is not judged black and white. There are tons of gray areas. All politics is local and preservation of self interest laced with hypocrisy is the leitmotif of the foreign policy of every nation. 

Let's take the example of the famous five permanent members of the UN Security Council. They all have all their self interest to grind. Russia is not our bosom friend, it's supporting us because we have been its ally since Cold war days and we buy a lot of military weapons from them. America can't abandon Pakistan due to its strategic interests. China needs to outsource its containment of India to Pakistan to keep India busy. Britain and France had no interest and hence no intention in taking sides.

And there is so much hypocrisy - China forces its Uighur Muslim dissidents to eat pork, drink liquor, cut beards whereas the Islamic world is conspicuously quite. It harasses protesters in Hong Kong while lecturing India on peace in Kashmir. Other nations have their share of hypocrisy, listing all of them is beyond the scope of this blog. All said and done - Each one has it's own self interest to support, oppose or stay neutral to Indo - Pak tension.

Let's say Rwanda and Burundi, two nations with history of fighting start fighting again. India knows Rwanda is the perpetrator but has billions of dollars of business interest in the country. I am sure hardly anyone will bother or raise a voice if Modi takes a neutral position in Rwanda - Burundi issue. He will be hailed as practicing pragmatic geopolitics.

Everything in this world is relative. Someone's terrorist is another one's freedom fighter - rest of the hardly care if unimpacted. Real diplomacy will be long term - which will be more outside UN and how the relevant powers US, China, Russia, Japan, Gulf nations, African Union react as dust settles down. We have to wait to see that. 

Article 370 and memories of Srinagar

Article 370 of the Constitution was scrapped by the Centre. A bold step in the right direction dmhas this overnight decision changed the mindset of the Kashmiris towards India or Indians ? Your guess is as good as mine.

The Kashmiri valley was never with us. During the West Indies 1983-84 tour of India, an One Day International held in Srinagar prematurely scrapped due to the crowd violence. It didn't go unnoticed in the teenager in me the crowd cheering wildly for every wicket India lost and every boundary hit by the Windies. Bottom line - the spectators hated India to the core.

Fast forward by 5 years. Ideally the Article 370 should have been scrapped in the year 1989 when Rubiyya Saeed, daughter of Cabinet Minister Mufti Muhammad Saeed was kidnapped by terrorists. The Central non-Congress government then well supported by BJP acquiesced by releasing some hardcore militants in exchange for the release of a VIP's daughter. This decision had its long unforeseen consequences, emboldening the terrorists and reinforcing the perception of India being a weak state.

Soon Violence took over the Valley. REC (Now NIT) Srinagar was closed Sine die and all the students from Odisha were transferred to NIT, Rourkela. It included some of my childhood friends. We welcomed them with open arms to REC, Rourkela (tagging those on my friend list Ashutosh Mallick Dave Patnaik Asis Kumar Swain) who were among them. Those brilliant brains lost a valuable year due to our Centeral government's indecisiveness and vacillation.

Our new NIT Srinagar immigrants brought us exciting anecdotes from Srinagar. Most of us in our upper teens with adrenaline rushing through our body and fickle minds ruled more by emotions than logic were battered by the events surrounding them. 

The Valley's antipathy towards India and sympathy for Pakistan is not something new. The locals in Kashmir valley hardly considered themselves as part of India, clearly seeing those from the Mainland India as outsiders. The environment inside the Engineering College Campus perpetually resembled a room filled with flammable gas. All it needed was to light a match stick, in form of celebration of a section of students post India's win or defeat in a cricket or Hockey game.

They narrated many interesting and harrowing stories. One of them Ashutosh Mallick, was taunted frequently "SALIM MALIK TO MUSALMAN HAI, TU KAISE HINDU BAN GAYA, "Salim Malik is Muslim, how come you are Hindu", pointing to his last name and referring to Salim Malik, a Pakistani Cricketer.

The students from the Srinagar Valley were mostly Muslims, who kept to themselves and were completely segregated from their Hindu and Sikh counterparts from Mainland India. Except perfunctory interactions of exchanging academic notes and greetings on Eid and Diwali, there were hardly any interactions between them

Pakistan was seen as the Promised Land, the land of freedom & opportunity. When Zia Ul Haq died that fateful day in August, 1988 the mostly Muslims Kashmiris felt bereaved while the rest rejoiced in silence.

Nothing reflected the mental partition and the hiatus based on faith than cricket. The rooms of the Kashmiri Muslims adorned the pictures of Imran, Akram, Miandad and Salim Malik. In their common room, during Indo-Pak cricket encounters they used to sit segregated, with Kashmir Muslims vociferously cheering for Pakistan. Only Indian players who ever got an occasional cheer from the predominantly Muslim Kashmir students were Azharuddin and Arshad Ayub.

Unfortunately for the students from the Mainland, India used to lose often to their traditional rivals. Their hapless supporters had to bear the brunt of taunts from the Pakistani supporters from Srinagar. It's no surprise for the politicians from the Valley to sympathize with Pakistan, for he has correctly assessed the pulse of the locals.

I am sure this will ring a bell to my friends who studied in that institute a quarter of century ago. Though scrapping of 370 is a step in the right  direction Kashmir is still very much a volatile problem - a political issue of extremely complex dimension, which in Engineering parlance is not a fluid dynamics equation which can be solved in minutes or overnight. It needs a political solution and we have a long way to go. 

Dream of PAKHALA Khia Progeny

Yesterday came like bolt from the blue Government of India's surprise announcement about Article 370 on Kashmir which should henceforth allow Indians outside the state to settle down there. The state of Kashmir is often alluded as "Paradise on Earth". On the social media there is a growing wishlist of starting from buying plots overlooking Dal Lake and Chinaar trees, to marrying Kashmir girls.

Most of these flood of wishes can be  caltegorized as pure GULLI KHATTI (nonsense chatting to pass time). But surprisingly I saw a sizable number of serious enquiries if they can marry the nubile, fair skinned Kashmiri girls and settle down in the valley (there is always a perennial craze for fair skinned women in India and Kashmir vouches for most). 

I have little knowledge of Article 370 and little knowledge can be a dangerous thing. From whatever I gather, it is a bold step in the right direction. But how far it will contribute in solving or even ameliorating the well entrenched Kashmir crisis, only time will bear the testimony of that. 

But overnight settling down with Kashmir girls in the turbulent region is strictly fantasy, rather on the periphery of sheer hallucination. This is a classic case of NAI NA DEKHUNU LANGALA, which transliterated from Odia means - "Becoming naked before seeing the river". In other words, jumping into conclusions too fast, too soon.

It brings me flashbacks from the year 1991. Months after Iraq lost the Gulf war to the American Allied forces, there was this serious rumor in Odisha - that there is a dearth of males in Iraq who perished during the war followed by high number of war widows. The Government of Iraq as relaxed its Visa rules to allow every able bodied Odia to enter as full paid house guests to procreate as many children as possible during their stay. 

Added to this myth - Only SANDHA MARKA TOKA (Bullish males) from Odisha, with tremendous physique and immense stamina meeting such demand will be granted this coveted Iraqi visa. Once the demand is fulfilled, the hosts and the guest had enough, plenty of bastards produced, the male is free to return home.

Such kind of fantasy is not unusual, especially in a sex starved milieu. It could be very well be the daydream of an Odia youth feeling hot after consuming a stomach full of PAKHALA for lunch on a hot day afternoon ( PAKHALA is locally consumed water soaked rice blamed for the complacency and laziness of Odias as a race). Yet many bought the story and started enquiring if any agency was there to facilitate such trip to Iraq. 

Now fast forward to almost 30 years, I can see some parallels and history repeating itself. The basic human nature has remained unchanged over the years, only the platform of expression has changed to social media which wasn't there in the year 1991. From Iraq to Kashmir, the dream of delivering PAKHALA KHIA progenies still thrives.

The hypocrisy of cow vigilantism

Recently while talking to a friend of mine, I got enough fodder to write about this latest fad of cow vigilante in India and the staggering amount of lies and hypocrisy involved in it.

First lies - Sundry politicians from BJP propagate the theory that cows exhale Oxygen. I studied basic science in my school and college to be knowledgeable enough to proclaim with confidence that cows don't possess chlorophyll - a compound found in plant which produces oxygen only during daytime. Cows, like all animals inhale Oxygen 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and 365 days a year. In actuality, cows fart enough methane to contribute towards global warming. With such leaders at the helm, God bless our scientific temper.

Next comes the Hypocrisy part - lot involved in tannery and beef exports are Hindus and staunch supporters of BJP.  Many of them are Jains and Marwaris, strictly vegetarian but no qualms about making money out of bovine skin and beef.

In my home state Odisha back home, illegal Challan (transportation) of Cows to Bangladesh has been going on since time immemorial. Only the state of West Bengal separates Odisha from the final destination of Bangladesh - the path though heavily populated, is not a whole lot of distance to cover. 

Many stray cows and bulls roaming around are rounded up and packed liked sardines in trucks in their hundreds of miles of journey. They pass through multiple check gates where hefty bribe is exchanged to let them pass. Upon reaching the border, the ironically called Border Security Force (BSF) manning it let the cows pass through the other side to be butchered which is heartily welcomed by the Islamic majority nation who has no qualms about eating beef.

I am sure an overwhelming majority of folks involved in this trade in the long journey profiteering and taking bribes are Hindus - a good number of them vote for the BJP. No wonder for the BSF folks Bangladesh border posting is coveted and cherished one where they pay hefty bribes for such posting.

My dear Sangh, Bajrang, BJP supporters - if you got guts, go try stopping this cow challan mafia, rather than doing this nonsense lip service of cow vigilantism. If you really want to help our society we have a long list of dirty laundries to clean. Better get your act together and focus on more serious issues facing the nation. Nothing wrong in being a cow lover, or any animal per say - but it's your hypocrisy that sucks.