“If you don’t stop that RIGHT NOW, I’ll kill you!” is a refrain many of us have heard while growing up or even used as parents under extreme stress.
But we all know how hollow those words ring. None of us would dare kill a child, let alone one’s own. And then again, this extreme threat is uttered under frustration, after repeated attempts and requests to stop doing an activity that is irritating, annoying or even downright bad.
How then can school children be gunned down, time and again in remote towns in the USA? Isn’t that the land of milk and honey where the government looks out for its people, has welfare schemes to ensure that each person gets a fair chance, sends soldiers into foreign lands to bring back one of their own?
I can’t for the life of me, imagine how a country that is so advanced in medical science is a champion of the underdog ( so it proclaims ) can allow their young ones to be exposed to random shooters .
The recent shootout at Ulvade Texas is a case in point.
I refuse to follow this case as I stubbornly refuse to follow all such killings because the motive for the killings doesn’t matter. At the end of the day, some trigger happy maniac has had the pleasure of going into a school and shooting at innocent children.
Isn’t this a form of terrorism? And what can possibly justify the killing of children? They are the least involved in any kind of political activity.
Is this what freedom of expression means? Does this justify the right to own firearms?
I doubt it!
An increase in violence
While killing has always been part of man’s DNA, is the constant barrage of news of killings, wars, murders etc, playing some kind of earworm in our heads? Or is the genre of video games where winning demands getting rid of the opponents?
I wonder if there is an increased exposure to violence in general with unmitigated supply of content that is violent whether it is audio ( music that is discordant,loud and disturbing), or visual (movies and books that are dystopic).
Or is it the change of traditional family structures that cause insecurities and deviant behaviour?
Whatever the reason, I do hope the next killer doesn’t target school children but go after someone who can defend himself.
For the past several months I have neglected this blog. No particular reason. I just didn’t feel up to it .
I had made several starts and then stopped mid-sentence or mid-blog completely convinced that blogging was like flogging a dead horse.
I tried reading the AtoZ blog entries but couldn’t get past the first blog. My apologies to you dear bloggers, it has nothing to do with your content. It was all to do with my head. Something kept me from doing everything except eating and sleeping. And the effects are now beginning to show.
Finally, I decided to take up my mobile again and begin flogging my blog – even if it was paralysed into what seems like an irretrievable coma.
Fee Fie Fo Fum
So what brought this about?
A strange smell in Prima Donna’s bathroom. A smell that was unmistakably foul – the smell of vomit.
A thorough search under the cabinet, behind the water closet and even the gap between the wall and the mirror yielded nothing.
Then I spotted a ziplock bag filled with a pale blue substance that was neither solid nor liquid. I held it close to my nose and almost gagged.
Then I remembered. It was something called OOBLECK– a non Newtonian fluid (whatever that means).
I always thought that OOBLECK was a word to describe something akin to playdoh in the twiblings’ fantasy world of DEDARA.
My two grandchildren born six weeks apart are neither siblings no twins but TWIBLINGS a word coined by the family to describe their relationship. Bonded as they are by their almost twin mothers, they share a common language called Dedo or Pinkemoon ( depending on the mood ) so I imagined OOBLECK was a substance in their imaginary world .
“No Aji, “ protested Ma Papaya repeatedly when I insisted that there was no such thing as a substance that is neither solid nor liquid. After all, I had studied science till pre-Med level and had never heard of such a thing when we learnt about Matter .
“I heard about it in EPIC ,” she insisted, citing an Internet source that was sanctioned, nay, encouraged by the school.
I still had my doubts ( being the all-knowing Adult in this situation) and it was only today that I actually checked and found out what it was all about .
Now I have to find out what. Non-Newtonian liquid is all about! Why didn’t Isaac just eat the apple quietly instead of wondering what made it fall on his head !!!!!!
Ciao
With schools breaking up for the holidays you could easily try this activity to keep the little ones busy. But : Remember to keep a watch for a strange smell after a few days !
Pedder Road or Dr. Gopal Rao Deshmukh Marg is one of the main arterial roads of Mumbai. And if you don’t know it , Mumbai is the Financial Capital of India. That is why its streets are paved with gold .
Peddar Road has seen a lot of VIP movement right from the Pope in his Popemobile, the Queen of England, the daily trips from Mantralaya to God Alone Knows where by God Alone Knows Who, and Heads of State, zooming down with screaming Pilot cars including our present President’s latest visit that brought local traffic to a 2 1/2 hour halt.
Well, in a country of 1.3 billion souls,2 1/2 hours is nothing in a lifetime especially if your life is hanging by a thread and comes to an end within minutes because you have missed your scheduled life-saving surgery.
Pedder Road was once lined with elegant bungalows nestled in wooded compounds Today most of the bungalows have been replaced with a hodge-podge of buildings representing Mumbai’s architectural journey – right from Art Deco to modern kitsch. Also most of the time the road is lined up with bored policemen waiting for the VIP movement to pass.
So one would expect that the pavements of this Very Important Road would be well maintained and standable for the policemen of not walkable for the pedestrians who use this road.
But nay, pavements are NOT meant for pedestrians. Whoever thought of that is a total moron!
Mumbai Streets are paved with GOLD.
Come January and the roads are frantically prettified once again ensuring that the annual Municipal Road Maintenance budget is depleted and ready to receive replenishments on April 1st.
As a matter of fact, currently,a swanky new public toilet is being constructed on top of a side lane Murli Deora Marg leading off Pedder Road, for the convenience of numerous policemen patrolling the area. Long needed though it may be, ( the place is crawling with security men in all kinds of uniforms). It won’t be long before the Chowk on top is renamed Sandas Chowk in honour of the new toilet and possibly the Eau de Toilette that will soon waft upwards to the upper floors of buildings whose windows remain steadfastly closed keeping in the cool air-conditioned air..
The more than 1 foot high pavement that has no tiling to speak of. Guaranteed to be a slush machine in the rainsPavement that has a drain cover, uneven surface and broken tiles with wires to trip you up if you haven’t already fallen down
Since most of these people who live in high places have swanky cars to take them even a foot away, there is obviously no need for pavements.
That is why the pavements are made specially to provide the hospitals nearby with enough patients who trip, fall or are killed outright on the road because there is no pavement to walk on .
show me the pavementso much space to squeeze in just hop off the bus and onto the roada pavement is a good place for a junction boxso is the treecovers? broken gutter sloping pavmentfootpath entrepreneursfree parking !garbage tucked away from VIP eyespipe pops up to trip you upfree accommodation on India’s expensive real estatemore free parking
Pavements to walk on are a hangover from our colonial past. And like everything that is British or foreign finds no place in new India which is writing its own history so too are Mumbai’s pavements.
Mumbai pavements are paved in gold.
You can spread out a mat and sell random stuff like underwear or kitchen knives as well as essentials like fruit and vegetables. A pavement shop requires very little investment apart from a petty sum to grease some palms. Besides this is known as doorstep shopping – step out and buy your stuff.
So when pavements are NOT meant for walking, it matters little whether they are paved with pavers or uneven covers of various utility channels running below the street. Not to mention that they are occupied by bus stops or milk booths or trees, or even beggars who own cell phones ( establishing their address proof thereby). And it gets even better when the pavements are a foot high or non-existent in parts.
And if you thought the pavements have it bad, just imagine what goes on under the flyover – the first flyover in Mumbai. It has an entire family living there, working industriously on stuff to sell or just watching serials on their smart-phones !
I just can’t wait for the rains when the water gushes down and camouflages the 1ft high distance between the pavement and the level of the road. That will be the true test of a die-hard Pedder Road Walker who can figure out where the pavement ends and the road begins.
In the meanwhile, I urge the government to make it mandatory to warn everybody
Walking is injurious to health. You are walking at your own risk.
Twenty- five Seven 