When Evil is not chosen

It was going to be a long Thanksgiving weekend here as I was wrapping up my work on Wednesday. Two things happened right during that time that left me disturbed. A last minute work just before the holidays is always frustrating, But a terror attack on Mumbai simply silenced me. I did not know how to react when I saw a flurry of twitter messages tagged #Mumbai. Multiple things were going on in my mind. I closed the day by writing one simple twitter message:

I Pray for Love and Peace.

As Humans, we have the power to think, a brain and the mind to help us with that. We call it our sixth sense. When we are able to separate the good from the evil, we are using our power to think. But we have a choice. We can choose to be evil or we can choose to be good. A normal person chooses to be good most of the times, but we do fall trap to the evil once a while. Because, Evil is so evil that it can delude you and make you feel good temporarily. You will know what I mean if you had watched Spider Man 3.

Mumbai was attacked. Attacked by Humans who chose to be Evil, who thought that killing innocent people will bring them whatever justice they were looking for, who thought it will make them feel good for whatever they were thinking about.

As I was driving to the library on Friday, when it was not yet over, I had several things going on in my sub conscious mind. I was in a constant search for an answer to what was happening in Mumbai – Terrorism.

1. A few men entered the city by a rubber boat and went on their attacking spree. India as a country needs to have better National security, Intelligence and infrastructure to support it. When a fellow tweep (@imtipedia) messaged about Commandos arriving in BEST bus, my reaction was WTF. But here is the reality, Security will keep us safe from the terrorists temporarily. Beefing up security will not kill terrorism entirely though. Terrorism will be there and they will always try to penetrate the security.

2. The idea of attacking the terrorists camps and smoking them out and killing the last known terrorist will also only work temporarily. May be this temporariness will be longer than point 1. But when fresh individuals, whoever they may be, begin to take over from where it was left off, we are back to square one. So this means that killing a 100 terrorists is not going to kill terrorism until you identify and fix the root cause.

3. So Can we kill terrorism by fixing the root cause? What is it? Is terrorism caused due to oppression of one community over the other? Is it politics? Is it the envious neighboring countries? Whatever it may be, can we identify the root cause and fix that? Terrorists are not born, they are humans who are converted into being so. So can we fix the problem by looking at their motive? This will be very tedious and it is probably something that can only be done alongside 1 and 2. But even if we fix the root cause, as soon as a new motive/reason begins to happen, terrorism would be born again with a new set of individuals willing to take up the evil side for new reasons.

My solutions were all temporary, but they have to be done.

I reached the library and I dropped what I had borrowed. But I had a choice, I could have been evil and stolen the borrowed materials and hacked into the library system, update it as though I have returned it. But I didn’t, I simply dropped the borrowed materials and left. Why? I chose to be good and Why? I didn’t know why I did that, But I did find the answer I was looking for. It was already said long back by a Tamil Poet named Pattukottai Kalyanasundaram:

திருடனாய் பார்த்து திருந்தாவிட்டால் திருட்டை ஒழிக்க முடியாது.

It means “Only if a thief becomes good and stops stealing, Theft would be eradicated”. Only when a terrorist chooses to be a good person and lets go of the intentions to be on the evil side, Terrorism will be completely eradicated from the face of our planet. This is it, this was the only perfect solution that I could think of and it is completely in one’s own hands, which is every single person on this planet including the Terrorists.

Every single person in this world can think of 2 kinds of possibilities for everything – Good Ones and Bad Ones. If every single person chooses only the Good possibility every single time, Good will win over the Evil, not by a War, not with blood shed, but by simply not choosing the Evil.

When Evil is not chosen, Good need not fight Evil. There will be Love and Peace forever.

Update: I think I didn’t convey my intended meaning properly. From this post, I say that the first 3 points – Security, Attacking the camps, Fixing root cause will all have to be done, in order to save ourselves from the current set of terrorists. But if we want to prevent terrorism from happening in future, we have to choose the last solution that i have shown. Choose good over evil every time. It is hard to explain that, but I am sure you will be able to judge what I really mean by that. I apologize if my point didn’t come out the way I wanted.

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Super Sekar – Death of the Mega Serials

INTRODUCING SUPER SEKAR:

Sekar is an average ordinary young Bachelor. He has no six pack and is not a sportsman, but an average software developer working for a dinky little software company in Bangalore. His ambitions are not high. He likes his beer filled Fridays and yearns to win over a babe someday. He wanted to be a Superman but he was not sure if his company dress code allowed him to wear the underwear on top of his pants instead of the other way around. Like any average person, his life is a roller coaster ride and sometimes he likes to thrill himself with adventures and sometimes he falls into an adventure by accident. Gentle Ladies and Tough Men, I present to you Super Sekar and his adventurous life.

DEATH OF THE MEGA SERIALS:

Mega Serials are the Great Indian Soap opera shows that revolve around Daughter in laws, Mother in laws, Son in laws, Father in laws and their near and distant relatives. The Indian soaps that have been haunting Most Women and some men, episode after episode for nearly a decade, will come to an end.

Several TV channels have not been revealing the latest ratings for their Soap shows. It has found that there has been a start of steady decline of soap viewership right around the end of 2005. Media executives have been scrambling numbers and conducting surveys after surveys to find out what is wrong – is the relationship drama too boring? Do we need to add extra marital stuff? Do people need some explicitly revealing scenes? No was the answer for everything. Perhaps it was the new breed of reality TV shows, but they were not sure either. Till this day the executives are running around like chickens with head cut off and cannot come to any conclusion for this cause.

Super Sekar during his regular friday visit to the pub bumps into a Page 3 crowd which incidentally has some of the media executives. He speaks to these executives but no one seemed to divulge any information to him even after getting hammered with 5 shots of tequila. They just cursed Sekar with profanity and asked him to stay away. Super Sekar was really pissed, not just from the lousy pitcher beer, but for the treatment that he received from those executives and he is determined to get back at them.

Super Sekar decides to look at the market directly and hence he spends a few hours eaves dropping on the viewers and finds out what people were talking about. He travelled in his hypersonic jet to the heart of Chennai at T.Nagar and hears an interesting conversation, as he eats his Sambar rice for lunch “To Go”ed from Saravana Bhavan.

“I like his way of bringing out Humour in everything, that is the part that makes me want more and more”

“Clearly, he has the motivation of entertaining people. Do you know if there is anyone who writes like this?”

“Yeah there are quite a few, Here it is, I track them in my bookmark and visit each of them everyday without fail. The comments section is the best part, that is where all the riot happens. Total time pass”

Super Sekar jots down a few notes and flies in his jet to Mumbai. It was around afternoon at about 3PM as he enters the Dalaal street, the home of Indian stock market. He spots a conversation between two stock brokers and settles there, munching his Vada paav bought from a Push cart shop:

Broker1: “Ab ye dekh, yeh Chote khan apne Kutte ko Badshah bol raha hai” (Now Look, This shorty khan is calling his dog the emperor khan)

Broker2: “Are main inka bachon wali khel nahin padtha hoon. Apun to Bade miyan ka padtha hoon” ( I don’t read these childish fights, I read the Big Guy’s)

Passerby: “Hey guyz, leave those stuff. Did you see how RGV got back at his critics, man that was some juicy stuff”

Super Sekar notes down a few points after hearing the conversation and looking at the monitor full of red colored numbers and arrow marks pointed downwards. He takes off in his jet to the Capital city of the country, New Delhi. He buys a mug of Sweet Lassi on his way and parks himself by an apartment at the 3rd floor. He overhears the conversation of two housewifes:

“Has she delivered yet?”

“She must have, She is past her due date. May be she is still in the hospital that’s why she hasn’t written anything yet”

“Refresh, hit refresh, keep hitting it”

Super Sekar notes down what they were doing and walks away. He stumbles upon a flower pot in the balcony and breaks it. “Who is there” the housewives shout and Super Sekar quickly jumps into his jet that was floating in mid air by the balcony. The housewives see this and pick a small pebble from the broken flower pot and throw it at the jet, and it lands right into Sekar’s shirt pocket. Sekar doesn’t even realize this and he simply concentrates on turning on the jet and flees from the spot.

From there Sekar flies straight down to Bangalore for his final analysis and confirmation of the phenomenon. He lands straight into the campus of the biggest IT office in Bangalore (not his), gets off his jet and runs around the corner of the building carefully hiding himself. He steps on a box on the way. Sekar being the curious type opens the box and is shocked to find a bomb. With his Super duper Bomb diffusing skills he cuts the red wire, blue wire and then a magenta wire and stops the bomb from exploding. Sekar gets up and walks off to continue his mission while just then a security guard walks by and notices Sekar walking away from the box.

“Hey hey stop … you” cries the Guard. Sekar flees into the building up the stairs.

“What the hell was he doing with the power meter that we replaced!” exclaimed the Guard looking at the cut wires.

Sekar slips into a cubicle and tries to snoop in on a conversation. it was around 6PM now and the IT employees were now in a complete chit chat mode. He knows why they do not leave office at that time as they were trying to beat the traffic. To kill the time it seems they were doing the universal time pass task of IT employees – Browsing.

“Ha ha … That was a funny one, let me forward it to my friends.”

“Hey forward it to me, I am going to post it in my blog.”

“In your blog? no way I am going to post it in mine. If you want you can link it to me”

Sekar finally comes to a conclusion as visible in his clever wicked smoldering smile. He has now got what he needs, writes down a few conclusion points and runs away from the place. The security guard comes running down the pavement shouting “Hey, Stop” but Sekar quickly gets into the lift and goes down to the basement where his hypersonic jet is parked. He gets on the jet and starts up the engine. The security guards now gather in a gang and try to chase Sekar in their jeep. But due to a massive difference in horsepower between the ordinary jeep and Sekar’s hypersonic jet, Sekar gets away so fast that he can’t even hear their shouts. He hardly gives them the time to even recognize him.

Sekar flies off straight to the head quarters of the TV channel where the executives who humiliated him in the pub, were working. He peeks through the window and sees the executive sitting in his chair holding a cup and thinking seriously. He picks up a piece of paper and writes down a line quickly. He tries to look around for a weighty object and lo behold finds a pebble in his shirt, a pebble in his pocket thrown at him during his trip to Delhi. He picks the pebble and wraps it around by that paper and ties it with a rope from the Saravana bhavan Parcel potlam (Pack) and gets ready to aim and throw at the executive. Right then, he gets a wicked idea, a what if?

Super Sekar breathes in steadily and firmly. He places the tiny paper pebble bundle in his rear and with the power of the reaction between the Sambar rice, Vada paav with a neutralizing effect of the lassi generates an immensely pressurized gas in his stomach and propels the paper pebble bundle with a loud powerful fart. The bundle flies off in a trajectory in the direction of the window, the executive just then puts the cup down and starts a big lazy yawn. The bundle still flying crashes through the glass of the window and lands straight into the mouth of the executive.

The executive chokes a bit and manages to pull out the bundle from his mouth. He reads:

“It’s the blogs stupid!”

He then wonders, “Hmm… what’s that smell! and What the hell is a blog!”

Super Sekar gets on his jet and flies away as the camera zooms into his wicked smiling face and then into his eyes that seems to say “See you all Soon, Folks!”

SUMMARY: This is an imaginary story to describe how the Blogosphere is gaining popularity among the Indian Media audience and how the Television Soap shows are loosing its luster due to it. The characters and incidents are purely fictional. You should have found that out as soon as you read about Hypersonic Jet in the hands of a Software Developer.

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