Priyanka Kumari
priyanka_k03@rediffmail.com

FROM SAVE OUR PLANET
TO SAVE OUR PACHAURI

We stand in awe of environment scientists because they unnerve us. In 20 years, the glaciers will melt; earthquakes, tsunamis and typhoons will devastate the earth, and many of the cities we so loved will be submerged under the sea; and half of the earth will turn into a global furnace that human beings will flee forgetting national borders to other regions and time zones. Scary enough we swallow every word as gospel truth to ward off the nightmare. After winning global attention and the Nobel Prize for the Himalayan endeavour, the same scientists say to err is scientific. There is no evidence after all to prove that natural calamities occur because of global warming. Harry Potter now seems more real than the science fiction our environment scientists presented.

Predicting a stock market crash was the favourite pastime of some economists; they forecast with such devastating precision that some thought it was scientific. Later the simple folks realized that the panic button they pressed created its own panic on the market that the prices came tumbling down. Economist Keynes who lost a million dollars but somehow regained it made a classic comment: `You can become a millionaire on the stock market, if you can forecast what a million fools will think tomorrow’. The Japanese believe monkeys make better stock market analysts than human beings and they give the monkey the dart to throw on the board where the major shares are listed. Man has many things to learn from monkeys!

Karthik H

karthik.h.krishnan@gmail.com

BLOOD IN THE UNIFORM

Perversion of Justice has touched its nadir. In India, the law seems to exist only for criminals to escape and for the lawyers to fatten their coffers defending them. In a television debate on Times Now, Ram Jethmalani had the cheeks to say the system cannot be changed just for the sake of one Ruchika.
From Jessica to Ruchika, it was a long tale of miscarriage of justice because the guardians of the law perfected the art of shielding criminals by adeptly destroying evidence. Officers who destroy evidence were promoted and even awarded gallantry medals.
So the trials went without conviction – from Jessica Lall to Priyadarshini Matto, and the raping of Scarlet the British girl to the German girl whose rapist, the son of a DIG, is now absconding. `The law will take its own course’, assured the political brass, whenever no action was intended.
The common man is bedeviled when he finds what the whole world knows cannot be established in a court of law and almost often the criminals go scot-free on flimsy technical grounds. His agonizing suspicion is recaptured by The Times of India in its memorable headline: No body killed Jessica!
People staying across the house of the cannibal of Nithari have spotted Dr Kidney Kumar and the controversial nurse in his van parked in front of the den, signalling the fact that the children of the poor were killed and kidney robbed. Yet no channel or newspaper could report the matter because of the Draconian legal system operating in this country.
When the previligentsia treat the life of the ordinary citizen as cheap as dirt, the lessons of the French and Russian revolutions need to be retold. Will someone stand up and tell him, ``Shut up, Jethmalani. The life of each Indian is precious. If justice is not delivered by the Justice, people will force him to deliver justice, even by changing the system, which is a hangover of the colonial times.’’

Aaheli Bagchi

aaheli.bagchi@gmail.com

NEHA, WE MISS YOU

She was a blooming talent. Just 11. Yet she took her life. Her parents did not allow her to participate in a reality show. Instead, they wanted her to study. `Study, study, study’ is all that most parents want from their children. But do they know their children – who are not just biological accidents? Most parents think they know but do not know, or care to know. This parental ignorance has snuffed out many a life. Good many tender flowers arrive in this world only to be brutalized by their own parents or relatives. Of course, Neha was not one of them. Her only fault was she had talent which she wanted to take to the logical conclusion. She confused virtual reality with reality. To many teens, Shah Rukh Khan and Amir Khan, Aishwarya Rai and Karisma Kapoor or Sachin Tendulkar and Virendra Sewak make their reality. But the shocking reality is that we are all chasing illusions most of our lives, and values are seldom imparted to our children because we ourselves don’t have them. On one extreme, suicide bombers are taking their lives only to drag as many as possible with them. On the other, gentle extreme, people like Neha (Sawant) of Dombivli, Mumbai, snuff out their own lives, hoping they could be happy that way. The people of neither extreme realize the value of life, let alone the meaning of life, because we live in the Planet of Apes – materialistic apes, if you prefer.