Genocide and Justice

Forty years ago, this day, Pakistani forces surrendered to Lt. Gen. J S Aurora and Bangladesh became truly independent. As Daily Star (Bangladeshi newspaper) wrote, the false premise of communalism was broken and Bangladeshis 'were proud witnesses to a restoration of their secular heritage'.

Celebrating a military victory after forty years may not be very nice, especially when we are seeking peace with Pakistan, but this is more of a remembrance than a celebration. And a special remembrance not because the number 40 looks fancy, but because, finally justice is being delivered for the victims of genocide that saw targeted killings and rape of Bengali people, especially Awami leaguers, Hindus, and intellectuals.

After 40 years of various roadblocks, Bangladesh has set up International Crimes Tribunal to prosecute the perpetrators of genocide. Though Pakistani officials will escape justice, Bangladeshi men who aided the genocide are standing trial, which is bringing new evidences and horror stories everyday. Let's hope this will bring justice to them.

As Indians, it is also worth noting the pattern of war we fought and contrast it with 'liberation' wars fought in many places including Iraq and Afghanistan. It lasted less than two weeks and Indira Gandhi ended the operation on West Pakistan the moment our objective was achieved, namely the Bangladeshi independence. Indian Army was withdrawn from Bangladesh in under three months. The liberation war was swift, just and meaningful.

PS: These days I mostly write only in Google Plus, even if the post is moderately big. Makes it easier to follow up and comment upon the comments. But till HTML remains unsupported in G+, longer posts will be put up here.

The Trek to Tada Falls

On the way to forest office

On Sunday, 9^th Jan, I and 6 more friends from IITM went to Tada falls (aka Ubbalamadugu Falls - 13° 36′ 35″ N, 79° 50′ 34″ E) near Nellore in Andra Pradesh.^[1] We took a bus from CMBT to Tada (busses to Nellore & Sri Kalahasti go via Tada), where we reached by 11.30; had food at a Tamil Mess (irony! We used to eat @ Andhra Mess near IIT when bored of our mess.) Then we rode in an open share auto till the forest office gate.

Base Camp 1.(Yes, we could have come till here in auto; But we walked 4 kms)

Then we walked for about 4 kms to the base of the hillocks.(Base Camp 1) There I saw the clearest rivulet water I have ever seen. It was so clean that it became difficult to find if water was there or not!

The main falls is located in a hill at a height of about 7000 feet. We started walking after a while and split into two groups. Till a Shiva temple(Base camp 2) the path was, though uphill, mostly sandy and kinda ok with small stones. There we got some guava fruit and crossed the brook again and got into more rocky path.

Climbing rocks!

After that I was enjoying the nature so much that I stopped taking photos. :-( The rocky path went somewhat parallel to the brook and sometimes we had to cross small sub-brooks. We reached the small falls and spent some time admiring nature. Then the path(the non-path) became very hilly and we had to climb high rocks to reach the main falls.

I was thoroughly enjoying it so far and the sight there made me sad. There were quite few youngsters who were swimming and drinking; Beer bottles, both new and broken, could be found around the water pool; The place was filled with so much trash of all kinds(polythene, plastic tumblers, soft drink bottles...).
[Rant: If those idiots wanted to drink, why not go to some pub and drink to their heart's content? Why spoil such a place? Indians exhibit worst behavior when it comes to things like this.]

Along the brook.

We spent few minutes there and decided to return.(I could not stand in that place with all those things going around me.:-( ) We three felt a little elated and adventurous after the climb that we decided to take not the path by which we came, but the downstream of brook itself.

Destiny! [Caption by Mandar ;-) ]

It was not only rocky, but slippery too this time, since algae had grown over rocks due to water. It was exhilarating, and sometimes fearful that we might not take correct route when brook sub-divides and end up roaming till death. :p We finally managed to reach Shiva temple where the brook intersected the pathway and we switched to it. Thereafter downhill was simply sandy cum stony path. :-) Overall I felt happy and elated about the whole affair. :-) A nice experience!


[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubbalamadugu_Falls

Google, China and Evil

I heard of Google -- China fiasco few days back and was waiting for details to emerge before writing this.

This is Google's official statement. (Summary: Someone from China cracked into Google and accessed 'Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists.' So, Google, which had been censoring its search results in China, will not do so any more. Further 'We[Google] recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.')

The very first line states 'we face cyber attacks of varying degrees on a regular basis.' and yet Google had never before done even a small degree of complaining. It means only one thing: that Google thinks this attack was executed by the Chinese government agencies themselves. This surprises very small number of people. Definitely not me. (And not after this.)

But then why is Google statement's tone similar to that of someone being cheated? That's because Google has done many many things to appease China from filtering content to showing Arunachal pradesh to be a part of china(Go to .com or .cn to see it. .co.in shows it in India) and after all that if this has happened, I guess Google has a right to feel cheated. But that does not justify Google's humorous claims of doing this for protecting free speech. where was Google's righteousness till now?

I don't believe this 'I'm doing this for free speech' thing. This is either a publicity stunt or arm twisting of China in a negotiation.

Following quote by Nat Torkington(see this article) is interesting:

... Is there another deal ("let us into your telco market and we won't shame you publicly with the hacking evidence we gathered that links your foreign department directly with cyberspying, we'll just say your machines were gateways for Russians") that's the real focus?

So much for not being evil.

Where are our youngsters going?

I used to believe that the present generation, at least the educated part of it, will come out of the closed mindedness of the caste, religion etc. It turns out that I’m dead wrong. One hour ago I stumbled upon this Orkut community called “The youngsters of [caste name]”. The members are not some semi-literate people who work in obscure data entry company with connectivity. They are well placed professionals, alumni and students (both gender, equally) of top professional(?) colleges including my own (this is how I stumbled upon.) The supposedly toppers of the higher secondary education (?!) of Tamil Nadu.

There was this thread in the forum:

What should do to prevent our community ppl from marryin outside our caste? (Sic)

And one gem I found in that discussion:

There are less no. of girls in our caste than boys. This should be tackled to prevent dilution of our caste.

I was like WTF? Dilution of what? I searched for other castes and sure I found communities with pretty much the same kind of membership for all the caste names that I knew (Though it numbered to only 10, including mine, I’m sure other castes too had communities).
I lost my faith. Completely.

PS: This is a rant. Excuse my grammar.
PPS: Should I be happy that these people condemn female infanticides at least?

பூ

பூ - ஓர் அழகான காதல் கவிதை!

முதல் முறையாக தமிழ் படத்தில் ஒரு பெண் நடித்திருக்கிறார். கதாபாத்திரமாகவே வாழ்ந்திருக்கிறார் என்பதே சரி. பார்வதியின் முக பாவனைகள் அத்தனை அழகு! இயக்குனர் சசிக்கு பாராட்டுகள்.

The Gender Myth

Last week a prominent weekly magazine did a cover story titled "Gender Myths". A few things which were considered true by them( or by the public, since they said, they conducted an opinion poll) are as follows:

• Women make better bosses than men.
• Women can do math better than men.
• Nonsense.
• More nonsense.
  

And no one is protesting. What would've happened if the same magazine said the following things?

• Men make better bosses than women.
• Men can do math better than women.
  

Feminist groups all over the country would've burned the magazine copies.

People resent the notion that intelligence is connected with gender. As long as it's against women, that is. If the bias is against men, then gender somehow makes men less intelligent, perverts, sexual predators and all the bad things a woman can imagine!
Idiots.

தீபாவளி!

இனிய தீப திருநாள் வாழ்த்துக்கள்  :-)

Image courtesy of nkjain.

Insult To Hackers

The Gujarath police thinks that only a techie could hack into an unencrypted wireless internet connection:

 Now, apparently, the word[hacker] means "someone who borrows someone else's open wireless connection." And this, according to the Gujarat police, is not easy to do: they suspect a "techie", a Wipro engineer of having done it.

If its complicated enough for the police technical wing(Is there one?), then it must be hard and hence hacker worthy. :)

Here's a news flash for our police and our equally moronic media: ANYONE with a laptop within a few tens of metres from the building in question could have used the internet connection, if it was unencrypted.

Both the above quotes from Rahul Siddharthan's blog here.

Indian Media is a Ring Circus

I'm amused at the prank played on Indian media.

Kudos to Pen Pricks

ROFTL :)