Wednesday, September 22, 2010

PurpleMoon's on a break!

PurpleMoon turns four this October. However, this year it is going to get the gift of complete silence, at least for a year. I have been contemplating a break for a long time. However, the proximity of a medium to express your thoughts and the eagerness to do it right away, has always interfered with that resolve. Since I grew up with increasingly sophisticated technology at my finger tips every year, I am curious to know whether I can hold my thoughts back and ruminate on them a bit. It is going to be just as difficult as it was in school when I was asked not to talk. Sometimes, when no one mentioned not talking, I would be quite for hours at a stretch. However, as soon as someone told me not to, I would get this obsessive compulsive urge to say something.
I think it is going to be an interesting experiment. :)
Thanks for being with PurpleMoon!!
I will see you next year, hopefully.

Sunday, September 05, 2010

Is this what you want Mr. Thakrey?

I have always opined on various issues. Whether it is discrimination against Indians in Australia or Indians in India. Living away from home, it is very easy to read something and fight over it on the internet.
I buzzed about an article in TOI a few days ago that documented the amazingly foolish verbal garbage that the MNS leader seems to dispense from time to time. Little did I know that this time, I am going to get to hear about the 'taste of Raj's own venom' so close to home.
One of my mother's staff members from Maarc Labs Pvt.Ltd., Pune, was bashed black and blue in Simbholi, UP, solely for being a Maharashtrian. He had to spend a week in the hospital.
Milind Paingikar, an engineer who comes from a village near Kolhapur was at the Simbholi Sugar Mills in Uttar Pradesh to carry out a quality control training for the chemists. He was mobbed by a group of goons and bashed unconscious as soon as they found out that he is from Maharashtra.
He recovered from his injuries and came back, only to confess that he is not going to give up his job just because he was beaten up. He is determined to go back to Uttar Pradesh again and continue with his work. He said that the beating did not hurt as much as the pain of being targeted as a Maharashtrian. It is brave of Milind to come back with a new courage but this could also have led to something else.
I don't want to go into a gross generalization but if a young Marathi man, coming from exactly the kind of "humble" background that Mr.Thakrey describes has to go through something so unexpectedly violent for no fault of his own, is Thakrey's propaganda really working?
Linguistic, religious and economic polarization should be stopped. Period.
Indians need to collaborate with other Indians. Any entrepreneur will know the value of nationwide networking.
We have to see through this as Indians and not let political polarization get to the streets, for that will only hurt the innocent.