Grouchy zen like me sat in the car and waited for the illusive film-maker to show. When she did show up she was in a chatty mood and wanted to know who, what, where, why etc about my life. Barely capable of stringing words together i mumbled that now was not a good time and please can we speak later. Note to self- between honesty and tact sometimes it is better to choose tact!
anyway, turns out the filmmaker was currently the queen heroine of a dramatic bollywood plot that cast her as the lead heroine. A resident of one of the poshest Blore gated communities, she was held hostage to male testosterone driven power lust, had a fake FIR filed against her and her husband and had to cower n bow down to "urban thugs mascarading as Presidents to ensure she was not arrested.
The hazy details that I captured were this...
lady wanted to go the gym with her trainer. the guards did not like the idea at all. decided to forbid her from entering by standing as a human gate between her n the gym. When she insisted on entering, they raised their voices and like a army attack commenced to march towards her, her hubby was sent panicked smses and he rushed down to see 3 men towering over his wife. So he did what a normal hubby did, pushed the man away from his wife.
Lo and behold that was THE BIGGEST MISTAKE OF HIS LIFE!!!!
The next thing they knew, the guards has filed a police complaint on the instance of the President of the residential association against the couple. All the vendors, the electricians all went on strike, the husband had to book an emergency crisis flight back from Mumbai where he had flown and in his absence the wife was terrorised by threats that cops would be ringing the doorbell anytime.
By the end of it, this couple had to pay 4000 rupees, to the cops to withdraw a false complaint and entertain a RSS kind of person, who was the head of the security forces that they were sincerely apologetic and would never ever commit this error again!
RESULT? - Law abiding citizens, with education, awareness and knowledge of rights were reduced to frustrated helpless blumbering people powerless in the face of urban intimidation. As lawyers, our advice is sound but infeasible and shall do little to protect them from the wrath of the bullies the next time around...
Returning to the drive, that by now was charged with indignation at the plight of the filmmaker and the dreamy smiles of the approaching rain.
We were headed to Akshay Patra! (http://www.akshayapatra.org/)
What a place and what a story. Having successfully fed the millions of people at the temple daily, they decided to feed the children of a nearby school 1 meal a day. The results were dramatic, children who were almost never spotted at school began to return and soon the phone was ringing off the hook as more and more school queed up to be fed ....Today the NGO runs a gravity kitchen, spotlessly clean the workers begin thier day at 2 am to cook 6 tonnes of rice, 72 tonnes of Dal and 8 tonnes of vegetables so that by 11 am each child in the school has a hot meal to eat. So efficient is this system that if something was to go wrong they can work backwards to determine which drum made the batch of rice that fed a child.
All this is the vision of 1 center 1 person.
Relying on the whims of the government for grants, they are battling a huge system to get 1 simple mission across ... let a hungry belly not keep a child away from education....
More on them later..... the work we shall do with them is promising....
hot idlis and filter coffee consumed on a rainy day, i took little belgian chocolate to the safari and the zoo!!!!!! ;-) I love my life, the ability to work and spend wednesday afternoon gazing at the antics of tiger cubs is definately a indication of a GOOD life!!!
It was amusing to see Indians react to a white man. He was almost gazed at like an animal himself and they laughed at his intense glee at spotting a porcupine and seeing the huge hippos prancing on thier dainty legs. The cutest scene of the zoo was watching the white tiger cub and the YELLOW tiger cub spoon and sleep with each other. where each of them more restless than sleepy insisted on pawing the other one ust for the sheer joy of annoying the daylights of the other person....
i hate zoos.
i love zoos
i want to free the animals
i want to hug the monkeys
i want to flee from the snakes
and shake the stoned immobile crocs to life
i wonder at the resons for hippos to exist
and what must be the musings of a star backed turtle, as they stick their necks out of the water
a regal zebra strides alone, while a dainty white peacok swings on the beam
day in and day out they gaze and stare back
confined and alone
wonder what they did to deserve this
Somethings make no sense... but i still do like going to the zoo. Was my favourite place in the whole world. and def scored above a circus! no questions asked ;-0
am off to the hills.. yeyeye
and belgian boy is gng away ;-(
hate goodbyes
sigh
anyway, turns out the filmmaker was currently the queen heroine of a dramatic bollywood plot that cast her as the lead heroine. A resident of one of the poshest Blore gated communities, she was held hostage to male testosterone driven power lust, had a fake FIR filed against her and her husband and had to cower n bow down to "urban thugs mascarading as Presidents to ensure she was not arrested.
The hazy details that I captured were this...
lady wanted to go the gym with her trainer. the guards did not like the idea at all. decided to forbid her from entering by standing as a human gate between her n the gym. When she insisted on entering, they raised their voices and like a army attack commenced to march towards her, her hubby was sent panicked smses and he rushed down to see 3 men towering over his wife. So he did what a normal hubby did, pushed the man away from his wife.
Lo and behold that was THE BIGGEST MISTAKE OF HIS LIFE!!!!
The next thing they knew, the guards has filed a police complaint on the instance of the President of the residential association against the couple. All the vendors, the electricians all went on strike, the husband had to book an emergency crisis flight back from Mumbai where he had flown and in his absence the wife was terrorised by threats that cops would be ringing the doorbell anytime.
By the end of it, this couple had to pay 4000 rupees, to the cops to withdraw a false complaint and entertain a RSS kind of person, who was the head of the security forces that they were sincerely apologetic and would never ever commit this error again!
RESULT? - Law abiding citizens, with education, awareness and knowledge of rights were reduced to frustrated helpless blumbering people powerless in the face of urban intimidation. As lawyers, our advice is sound but infeasible and shall do little to protect them from the wrath of the bullies the next time around...
Returning to the drive, that by now was charged with indignation at the plight of the filmmaker and the dreamy smiles of the approaching rain.
We were headed to Akshay Patra! (http://www.akshayapatra.org/)
What a place and what a story. Having successfully fed the millions of people at the temple daily, they decided to feed the children of a nearby school 1 meal a day. The results were dramatic, children who were almost never spotted at school began to return and soon the phone was ringing off the hook as more and more school queed up to be fed ....Today the NGO runs a gravity kitchen, spotlessly clean the workers begin thier day at 2 am to cook 6 tonnes of rice, 72 tonnes of Dal and 8 tonnes of vegetables so that by 11 am each child in the school has a hot meal to eat. So efficient is this system that if something was to go wrong they can work backwards to determine which drum made the batch of rice that fed a child.
All this is the vision of 1 center 1 person.
Relying on the whims of the government for grants, they are battling a huge system to get 1 simple mission across ... let a hungry belly not keep a child away from education....
More on them later..... the work we shall do with them is promising....
hot idlis and filter coffee consumed on a rainy day, i took little belgian chocolate to the safari and the zoo!!!!!! ;-) I love my life, the ability to work and spend wednesday afternoon gazing at the antics of tiger cubs is definately a indication of a GOOD life!!!
It was amusing to see Indians react to a white man. He was almost gazed at like an animal himself and they laughed at his intense glee at spotting a porcupine and seeing the huge hippos prancing on thier dainty legs. The cutest scene of the zoo was watching the white tiger cub and the YELLOW tiger cub spoon and sleep with each other. where each of them more restless than sleepy insisted on pawing the other one ust for the sheer joy of annoying the daylights of the other person....
i hate zoos.
i love zoos
i want to free the animals
i want to flee from the snakes
and shake the stoned immobile crocs to life
i wonder at the resons for hippos to exist
and what must be the musings of a star backed turtle, as they stick their necks out of the water
a regal zebra strides alone, while a dainty white peacok swings on the beam
day in and day out they gaze and stare back
confined and alone
wonder what they did to deserve this
Somethings make no sense... but i still do like going to the zoo. Was my favourite place in the whole world. and def scored above a circus! no questions asked ;-0
am off to the hills.. yeyeye
and belgian boy is gng away ;-(
hate goodbyes
sigh
sad abt ur friend.. this is just not fair.. and abt the Belgian boy.. :-( which hill u going to?
ReplyDeletehey there.. just got back from coonoor! and i miss the belgian too !! where is ur blog that I can follow/read?
ReplyDelete