Wednesday, June 23, 2010

The youngling's manch pravesh

My little sister is kathak graduating today. In a sense. She's performing at Stein auditorium at Habitat Centre, and doing a choreography my guru ji (the best guru ji in the WORLD, btw) calls jaan leva. As I type this, I'm waiting for the nail paint on her very tiny little fingernails to dry off. I never knew her finger nails were that tiny until I did this. Its such a typical elder sister younger sister thing to be doing, and we've never done it until today, the day of her big performance, and a couple of months before she leaves for the foreign lands.

I'm even wearing a magnata (magenta, as pronounced by my maths tutor) sari to mark the occasion. Sigh. All senti, this post.

Bleh
Aqseer

Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Caste Consensus

Should a caste consensus be carried out or not? The Headlines Today anchor says that it reinforces the relevance of caste in our society today, something we say we want to rid ourselves of. I think that that’s a real pity, because the argument in weak and crude; in fact, much stronger arguments could be made against the caste census, such as the ones in this piece- http://www.business-standard.com/india/news/surjit-s-bhalla-dishonesty-in-caste-census/395687/ What we do need is a census that highlights the real economic and social depression of alleged backward classes in India. It would save this country and its people a lot of resources and internal conflict if reservations went to the deserving. Some of us have been crying ourselves hoarse, asking for economic reservations rather than caste based ones, a properly conducted census with clear aims and focus is what we need. Not some inflammatory and miserably under thought rhetoric on national TV. You, the media, have a powerful tool at your disposal, please use it constructively.