I have always believed that life is ironic. Every time I look around,
I find irony staring at me in the face. That is why I started this
blog. I believe it is easiest to laugh at life when you understand
that it must be laughed at. But sometimes it turns out that the irony
of life is so twisted that it makes you cry.
I have never met Captain Sameer Joel Roy Choudhury. I have been a friend of
his sister Shurobi's for a couple of years now and so had heard about
him in bits and pieces. I visited Shurobi last on Durga Pooja when
she and Nisha couldn't stop talking about Sameer's wedding in
December. I remember wondering what it was about weddings that made
girls so excited.
The next time I heard of Sameer, it was because of a cruel twist of
fate. The irony I keep mentioning.
On Friday, the third of November 2006, Captain Sameer Roy Choudhury, age 26, serving as a Company Commander in a field post of the Assam Rifles was shot fatally. I think it's ironic that he was a couple of weeks away from returning home from his field posting.
He was also a month away from marrying the girl he had loved for ten years.
He had called his mother the day before his shooting and asked her
about the meaning of life. He had called, out of the blue,
friends he hadn't spoken to in years. Consciously, they would never
have known that this would be their last conversation. Clearly, they
would never have hung up if they did.
It is said that the soul knows its time of passing and tries its best
to comfort and prepare those around it before the time comes. But
there is never enough comfort for parents who have lost their only
son, a sister who has lost her only brother or a woman who has lost
the love of her life.
As I stood there in Shurobi's kitchen that Sunday morning watching
people grieve for Sameer, I learnt the greatest lesson in humility
that life has taught me.
I learnt that our plans don't matter. Life doesn't ever turn out the
way we think it should or will. It would be presumptuous for us to
plan. In the big scheme of things, perhaps it doesn't matter if things
go our way. We must simply live every day like it could be our last,
and so live it to be the best expression of who we are. Of what we
believe we are meant to be.
So how do the Roys get back to their lives? How does one get back to
their life once a void as great as this is created? Do they let this
pass and believe Sameer's time with them was over? Or do they look for
greater meaning in Sameer's life and passing? Should it be perceived
as a random act of the cruel universe or a purposeful occurrence that
is part of life? There again is the irony of living. That life, to be
complete, needs death. At its beginning and at its end.
I have always believed life and now even death have greater meaning
than we can comprehend. The purpose of every experience is meaning.
The purpose of death is life. For even those who die live on in the
actions of others. Captain Choudhury will live on through the actions
of those who seek to live their best lives in the honour of his
memory. That is what gives death its meaning. Those who live must live
out the best inspirations of those who don't. In that we honour not
only the lives we live, but also the deaths we choose.
Labels: The brave never fall
Government reinstates Pluto’s status as planetDwarf made planet under OBC quotaThe international astronomical society may have demoted Pluto to the status of a dwarf, but the government today declared that Pluto would remain a Planet under the OBC quota for planets.
A statement released by the HRD ministry declared. “The government is in the process of finalizing a policy for implementation of reservations in outer space. But Pluto is reinstated under the OBC category with immediate effect.”
Noted social activist Kancha Illiah welcomed the move and said “the planets have been dominated by the upper castes for far too long. Pluto was demoted on castiest lines by the upper casts anyway”.
When asked for evidence to support his claim, he added “Pluto was known as the dark planet making it an easy target for discrimination. Even the Sanskrit word for the ‘universe’- Bhramaan, sounds much like Brahmin for my liking”
Rejecting the argument of the International Astronomical Society about the size of Pluto making it ineligible for its status as a planet, Union HRD Minister Arjun Singh said that the only reason Pluto was small was because it was not allowed to grow due to discrimination against it. He hoped that this reinstatement of its status would help it grow and compete.”
Meanwhile insiders say a mad scramble has begun in political circles to lobby for a probe to be sent to Pluto to “investigate the possibility of life and a cast based vote bank”.
In other news, the Knowledge commission declared it was very close to providing a solution for the question of why it was constituted in the first place.
Government announces measures to deal with terrorismTo provide foreign secretary with thesaurusAfter a cabinet meeting lasting nearly three hours in the capital today, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh announced that India would get tougher with Pakistan on the issue of terrorism.
“We are going to provide Shyam Saran with a thesaurus shortly. This will mean sterner responses to any attacks. No more soft letters indicating displeasure, we will use all the words in the 2006 edition of the Oxford press thesaurus to deal with Pakistan,” he said while being patted on the head by Sonia Gandhi.
In an indication of the kind of policy India would adopt, the prime minister said the words the foreign secretary had already looked up were ‘perhaps, maybe and spine.’
In a retaliatory statement, Pakistani foreign minister Kasuri announced in Islamabad that unlike India, the Pakistani foreign office did not need a thesaurus as they were already in possession of a dictionary purchased last week to look up ‘democracy’.
Insiders say that the cabinet discussed various measures to deal with the problem including the idea of airdropping Brinda Karat into Lahore, but decided on this measure on Pranab Mukerjee’s advice. “Saying a lot and not meaning it is a strategy that the left front lives by, and going by their success, it was but a matter of time before the government tried it at the international level,” a source from the foreign office said.
Denying allegations from opposition parties that Indian foreign policy relating to Pakistan was influenced by the United States; the secretary said that the government would formally issue a statement on the matter shortly, “as soon as the fax from Washington arrives”
In other news, the White House has defended US president George bush’s backrub to the German Chancellor Merkel, declaring it his as his attempt to return to the ‘Clinton era’.
Zindane head butts father
Says father insulted mothers cookingIn another startling incident that perhaps indicates world cup fever has not subsided yet, retired French football star Zinadine Zidane head butted his father for what he termed as a “provoking attack on his mothers cooking”.
Reports coming out have indicated that Ismail Zidane may have passed unflattering comments about Mrs. Zidane’s ‘flamed duck in tartar sauce’, which lead to Zinadine attacking him. However Mr. Ismail Zidane denied saying anything about the duck and said that the he was actually insulting the ‘frog’s legs with caviar’.
It is also believed that he later head butted his mother because he felt that the duck did indeed taste like ‘fish in tartar sauce’ as alleged by his father.
In a nationally televised TV address, the French president publicly pardoned Zidane and said anybody insulting French cooking, or insulted French food by cooking it badly deserved to be head butted anyway.
But in what is seen as dangerous copycat behavior, children all across France began to head butt their mothers for serving ‘unpalatable food’. Jean Dufor, a nine year old who had just head butted his mother claimed “her muffins had too much cinnamon” and added “I want to grow up to be a food critic.”
In Britain and the United States, all staff at Burger king and McDonald’s outlets have been provided with protective chest padding.
In other news, to put an end to the Middle east crisis, Miss Universe, Zuleyka Rivera Mendoza was airdropped into Lebanon after she claimed during the final round that she wanted to ‘achieve world peace’.
Citizens group accuses Times of India of publishing News
Says hints of journalism in the last edition.
In a startling accusation that shook the media world today, citizen media watchdog Presswatch.com accused the Times of India of publishing what it termed as ‘news’ in its last edition. The accusation was put up on its website and was instantly followed by a media frenzy that attracted a swift rebuttal from the Times.
Bennet and Coleman, the holding company of the Times in a press release said, “ The Times of India group has been in the publishing business for over fifty years and not once have we been accused of publishing news. We make every effort to keep that sort of thing out of our paper and for that we have an excellent editorial team. An inquiry is being conducted and if it is found that there was any news disguised as an advertisement in the edition, stringent action will be taken.”
The accusation comes after rumors that the Times had begun to hire staff with degrees in journalism, a charge that the group said was ‘false and baseless’. “A marketing degree is still the requirement no matter which department you work in” a spokesperson for the paper said.
Later in an interview to radio Mirchi the country’s number one radio channel as per a report by the Times of India, group chairman Vineet Jain admitted that there might have been a few instances of news accidentally leaking into the paper but “nothing substantial has ever been reported by the paper and so these isolated incidents must not be focused on”.
He also assured customers that no ‘journalists would ever be hired’ by the paper and the increase in the number of pages had nothing to do with news.
In financial news, prices of rubber fell in early trading when Paris Hilton announced her abstinence from sex for a year.
British museum to study MadonnaPop star might be oldest relic ever studied, museum says.The British museum announced today that its next big project would be the study of pop star Madonna. “This project will be our largest and most complicated ever. It will take massive funding and might take an estimated eight years to complete.” Museum director Peter Jenkins said.
Explaining the decision, he said “Madonna is an excellent archeological and anthropological study. We have conducted some preliminary tests and have determined that she might be over eight hundred years old, perhaps even older than Mick Jagger. On the anthropology front, we are looking to determine which culture she belongs to exactly, British, American or Amazon.”
Professor Monty Burns, the man who successfully lead the Bill Clinton study that determined that he was ‘horny as hell’ told mediapersons he was ‘very, very excited’ “I have never worked on something this ancient. It took us three months to do a preliminary study. We couldn’t get her to stop talking about herself and while she did, her accents kept changing and she would scream out things like ‘I am god’ and ‘die you bastards’. “It’s like studying a lost relic, only this one just doesn’t seem to get lost”.
But the project is not without its share of problems. Museum insiders say that her skin samples have not been sent for carbon dating yet because all the Botox needs to be drained first. There are also reports that the museum might not have the funding required to continue the project till the end. “they have already spent a lot of money on hiring language experts to determine her nationality but without any success.”
The British government has promised to help fund the project with the Prime Minister Tony Blair saying “something that is probably older and more controversial than the Turin shroud deserves all the attention and study it can get. Plus if we can prove she is American, maybe I can get George to take her back.”
In other news, Brian Lara accused the wind at Jamaica of acting against the interests of home side by not supplying him with enough ‘hot air’ to win the match.
Government announces strategy to control inflation.
Killing demand is the best way forward, says left.
The finance minister P Chidambaram announced the UPA government’s strategy to control inflation in the capital today. Speaking in front of a packed house, he said “The key is to control the demand supply equation. If the supply side cannot keep up, then demand should be cut. And nobody is better than the congress at killing demand”
The initial target of the strategy would be disposable income, which the minister plans to limit by raising taxes. “Inflation, I was told by D. Raja, is caused by excessive spending. So the obvious thing to do is ensure people don’t have money to spend at all. So we plan to relieve everyone in the country of their money through better and higher taxes. ” he added.
Insiders say that the multi faceted strategy would first ensure that all kind of disposable income is taken away from the middle class through a new tax called the ‘squeeze’ tax. It would be levied at a progressive rate that would be set based on how much money the left thinks you can spend. The idea is to take it all away.
In an interview later, Mr. D. Raja of the Communist Party of India explained that the new tax wouldn’t be fool proof but the left, as always, had a strategy. “What this tax cannot do is take away the spare change that people might cunningly carry around in their pockets. The government has been instructed to put officers at strategic locations on the streets who will take away any spare change in anyone’s pockets. No pockets should jingle, ever again,” he added beaming.
In other news, the CBI today requested the J&K high court to allow its officials to spend longer periods with the scandalous tapes saying “longer periods… alone, with the tapes would help investigations”.
Communist party to induct Saeed al-Sahaf as spokespersonYechury beginning to make sense, insiders say.
The communist party of India announced in the capital today that it would be inducting Saeed al-Sahaf, the former Iraqi information minister, into the party. He would be given the position of party spokesperson. Addressing media men gathered at the CPI office in Delhi, Mr. Basu said “ In a politburo meeting conducted this afternoon, it was decided that Mr. al-Sahaf would be the ideal choice for the party spokesperson. We have taken this decision after carefully considering a number of candidates including Pooja bedi and Navjot Sidhu.”
In the usual frenzy that follows any CPI briefing, Mr. Basu was bombarded with questions about the removal of the present spokesperson Mr. Yechury. “ Mr. Yechury will continue to play an active role in the party, but just not as spokesperson. He will be handling the Sourav Ganguly issue” he added.
However, insiders say that party leaders were upset with Mr. Yechury because he was beginning to make sense to the public at large. On the condition of anonymity, a senior leader quoted “his performance in recent debates was below par. He has consistently failed to frustrate anchors and other speakers. His ranting has also decreased over the past few months. But the last straw was when some analysts actually agreed with him on a TV show the other night.”
Speaking about Mr. Saeed al-Sahaf later, Ms. Karat said that the politburo was impressed by his handling of the US invasion. “Even when the US had completely decimated the republican guard, he insisted they were in control. He was completely unaffected by the facts and kept to his party line. That’s the kind of spokesperson we need.” she said before sitting in for a dharna to protest the decision.
Elsewhere, NASA denied rumors that astronauts were begging to be sent into outer space before the release of Paris Hiltons music album.
