Shame and Insult

Suppose that an extremely filthy man points out that there is a spot of dirt on your clothes. What will you feel?

Will you say that the filthy man, being so filthy, has no locus standii to point out the fact that your clothes are dirty? Will you feel insulted?

I don’t know about you, but I’d feel shame, not insult. The fact that the other guy was filthy would make it worse, not better. I would feel humiliated that I had to hear those words from such a man.

The fact that the filthy guy is not evenhanded in pointing out stains in others’ clothing would make no difference to me, because shame is between me and my conscience. Shame is what you feel when you have violated a principle that you hold dear. If you don’t feel shame, then it is easy to make it a point of honour and cry that you were insulted.

Narendra Modi, Gandhi II

Modi has compared his being denied a US visa to Gandhiji being chucked out of the South African train.

That reminds me of a shameful period in our history.

I am referring to the blatant and absolutely uncalled for interference by Gandhiji into South Africa’s internal affairs. By what right did he, a foreigner, ask South Africa, a sovereign and independent nation, to change its internal policies towards Indians and blacks?

Besides, he was also guilty of hypocrisy. How could Indians possibly ask to be provided equal treatment with whites when they were openly discriminating against untouchables in their own country?

Denying the visa was the right thing to do.

I am talking of Narendra Modi, of course. I don’t understand the argument that the Americans are “interfering” in our Internal Affairs. Yes, the fact that he is still the chief minister even after he explicitly gave instructions to his policemen not to protect the muslims who were being killed and raped by his partymen is our “internal affair”, to our eternal shame. But if the Americans won’t let such a man into their country, it is their internal affair too. Yes, he is the democratically elected chief minister of an Indian state, but that is not the Americans’ fault, it is ours.
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What happened?

If you can read this, it means that the problems have passed. The hosting company (Textdrive) Madman was moving us all to went back on its assurance that we could have separate FTP accesses, and after a bit of a fight, they ejected us out of their servers. So Madman, responsive as usual, moved us all to the new site. As far as I can see, there has been no major data loss except some few comments that were posted after Madman backed the site up.

Horrifying attack by blogger on India’s premier newspaper

India’s most reputable newspaper, the Times of India, which many buy, a few read and one or two people trust, has come under attack by a malicious blogger with ulterior motives. The newspaper naturally sent him a legal notice and as a result, the slanderer had to shut down the site.

Now the unfortunate thing about the internet is that it allows one to be anonymous and post whatever they like without any accountability. For example, although an article is taken off from a site, it can often still be found at Google’s cache for days after the deletion, and certain irresponsible people can post copies of the offending article on anonymously hosted sites which are often physically located outside the country. Such a thing seems to have happened in this case. The nineteen posts which the malicious blogger had removed can now be found at another blog. The person who did this should be ashamed of himself. I think it is time we bloggers highlighted the problem.

It is also time we bloggers closed in to protect the reputation of the Times of India from further slander. We should point out that many of the things being whispered about it are NOT true. The Times of India does NOT sell news. I am sure that every article printed by the newspaper is chosen because the editor thinks that it would interest the reader, and not because someone paid the newspaper to run the story. I know from personal experience that the newspaper treats its readers with respect, and does not think that every news item has to be peppered with a photograph of a hollywood starlet in a bikini to make it palatable to him. The unfounded rumours about the newspaper being run by a bunch of overgrown schoolboys who think it more important that headlines contain puns than that they convey any meaning, are absolutely baseless.

Where am I?

I am still mourning having turned thirty three days back. Yes, I am thirty years old. The thought fills me with sadness every time it comes to my mind.

I am old. I’ve reach the age where I can start complaining about kids these days and how they lack the fire in the belly and how their moral standards are not what it used to be. (Though, to be truthful, no age is too young to start aforesaid litany. When I was doing my undergraduation at IITB, seniors would say the same things about freshies. )

Ravages, whose birthday falls a day after mine (Belated Happy Birthday to him, by the way) is only 23. I am seven years older than him. Sigh.

Moving on to happier matters, remember when I restarted this blog? I had promised a better design in the near future. I’ve pulled on for one year after that. I think that now finally the time has come to make the change. Madman will be moving the blog to a new host and a new tool (WordPress) soon. Once he does that, I shall be coming out with a smashing new design which will blow your mind away. There will be lots of changes, including, but not limited to, more frequent and better posts. Stay tuned.

MadMan’s update: As you can see, the site has been moved. 😉

Stranded in snowing Schiphol

As it happens, I am finally back in India after an arduous four-day journey It was entirely my fault I’m afraid. I missed a couple of provisions in the small print of my ticket contract. One said that getting stranded at exotic places like Minneapolis-St Paul and Schiphol (Amsterdam) airports at the passenger’s cost was one of the pleasures that came with the trip at no additional charge. The second was the provision that it takes screams, pleas, dogged persistence and threats of legal action for the airline to do simple things – like reroute passengers after flights are cancelled.

The airline I am referring to is KLM-Northwest. The ineptitude that they’ve shown the two times I have flown with them is beyond belief. My plane got turned back in mid-flight. That was not their fault. Apparently Amsterdam had suffered the worst snow in a generation. But surely it is not that difficult to reroute passengers? After much cajoling they send me off to Amsterdam the next day saying that I am on standby for the Amsterdam-Bombay leg. Once I get to Amsterdam, I find that folks over there have no way of checking if I am on the waitlist or not and no way of adding me to the waitlist. Apparently KLM and Northwest are still different companies – or something like that. So I spend one day at the Amsterdam airport not knowing if I am on the flight the next day or not. The next day I learn that I was confirmed all along.

And of course, I haven’t got my luggage yet. A good thing too. I’d have died of shock if I had found it on the carousel. It would be so unlike the KLM-NW that I’ve come to know and love.

Incidentally, Pradeep, sorry for not calling you up/meeting. I was just too busy this time. But I’ll be coming again any way next month.

What does the Middle Class think?

Dilip D’Souza, who has been time and again trying to generate outrage among us apathetic middle class types by comparing the slum demolitions with the tsunami, makes this extraordinary assertion.

So because they are poor, it’s OK to pull down their homes. Why is it that not one middle-class block of flats has been brought down that I know of, even though so many of those are built flouting FSI and other building regulations, are built paying bribes, are paid for using illegal money, and often have illegal extensions?

Surely Dilip knows that this is wrong? Oh I am sure no “middle-class block of flats” has been brought down. But the demolitions have been reputed to be remarkably evenhanded. For example take this
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Luggage update

I got my luggage within 24 hours, but Northwest is refusing to reimburse me the 35 odd dollars I had to spend on buying new clothes for the next day’s meeting because they claim that their rules say that I can claim only if the baggage is delayed beyond 24 hours. Can I sue?

Incidentally Ohio must be the most boring place in the US. It snowed before I came, then it rained and now it’s snowing again.