Bitter medicine

I think there are some conflicts and mis-perceptions here . Do we wish the death penalty for any and every rapist? It takes me back to the days of “thugs” when every “thug” was hanged. What resulted was that these thugs killed all their victims to remove any evidence, and as the penalty was death for thugging or killing, they had nothing to lose. This is precisely what will happen here too. If we think that the death penalty will be a deterrent, it seems highly unlikely, as it is seldom a planned crime.  This is more a consequence of a mindset.      Virtually every male is used to passing lewd remarks and commenting on the ‘tits and arse’ of females he sees, more so if they are in company. This attitude requires change, for as the females rightly persists, it’s their body .Often one hears of arguments that their provocative and exhibitive dress acts as an instigation, but then why should the Salmans and John Abrahams go about flaunting their muscles and mach...

A gang rape in the capital, brutal attack on a boy and girl, the press all aghast and alert, the people up in arms. A rape or gang rape is nothing new but such brutalization is.Then every form of protest, and action and punishment seems justified. Why a rape? Many years ago, while speaking on promiscuity in love, I came across G B Shaw’s view that there can be only one true love at a time. What was more pertinent was that for him sex was a primitive reflex, an animal instinct which need not be confined morally to one, as in marriage. Like me, many would beg to differ. To me sex is, and ought to be, the epitome of a truly divine experience in love, the spark at the end of an ecstatic journey in man-woman relationship. It is when we perceive sex as a reflex or instinct that 'rape' takes shape as the culmination of an uncontrollable urge which cannot be stalled. It still does not justify, for at the other end of this reflex urge is another human being with the same feelin...

My first pet was a Pomeranian gifted to me by a colleague. We named him Hector. Over the months he developed an ear for my wife’s school bus. As it rounded the campus block, he would dash for the gate, stick his paws and hid face through the grill and wait patiently for it to stop at the gate. He even learned to recognize the whirr of my scooter. When he was nine months old, we made the blunder of sending him away in a train's dog pound in mid -winter The trains rumbling and clatter must have rattled his ears and senses for he became listless, or was it he missed us as one would miss family. The only life and enthusiasm he showed was when some scooter passed by, hoping and expecting it was me. Days later when I went to retrieve him, I was told he had died three days before.                 Badi der se dar pe ankhen lagi thi,                Bahut der kar di meharbaan...