Night comes mourning the death of the day and sits brooding over the huddle of the forests and undulating fields. It embraces treacherous mountains and settles on the babbling brooks, it ravishes the gigantic seas that cower beneath it and complain in a mutter of waves.

Night comes in a silken caress and strokes the aching limbs of swollen lovers, who arch one more time to the heaving music of its velvet shadows.

Night comes in an arrogant stride and falls back as the lighted streets cast neon glares on empty streets and drives it back to the edges of the barren plains and misty hills.

Night comes in blotches of pitch to hide the murky shame of nocturnal haunts, the cracked laughter of audacious whores, the blessed inebriation of compulsive drunks and the diseased wounds of homeless waifs.

Night comes like an avenging messiah to protect its minions, the army of life that crawls and creeps and glides and hops to its celebratory tunes and toasts.

Night comes as an inky accomplice to shroud the dark deeds of those whom the light indicts as anti-social, criminal and base. They transact in cloaked cunning, sharpen their tools, and sell their wares in stealthy glee.

Night comes howling with storm and rain to applaud the witching hour for ghosts and ghouls and their companion bats, rats, cats, owls, snakes and roaches. It greets the netherworld of vampires, voodoo men, banshees and jasmine laden yakshis in placid moonlit groves.

Night seeps in, casting cobwebbed shadows of fatigue and fitful smudges of sleep on minds weary of the day's sore labour. Night soothes the ear with the music of crickets and the rhythmic croak of toads, relieving the mind of the clamour of the day's plastic sounds.

NIGHT! Black as ink, as ebony, as pitch, as despair, as guilt, as sin, as death.

Guy Fawkes Bonfire Night. Krystal Nacht. The Parting of the Yamuna. The Burning of Holika. Halloween Night. The Trojan Horse. Nav Ratri. Alexander kills Poru. Silent Night Holy Night.

Night the only Mother of the New Born Day.

I dedicate this post to fellow blogger Sarath Chandra despite my many differences with him, he remains a person I have enjoyed knowing.

Love me or hate me, my blog page is the only one that consistently generates discussions amongst my ilander friends who enjoy a good discussion/debate. I am proud of the fact that these men and women are great thinkers and we share a great comraderie despite our many differences. Difference is often the key to a good discussion, not consensus. Consensus is the larger good that happens when we have trashed out all our differences. It is generally a mindset that has altered because it has been exposed to other angles. It cannot go back to being the same again.

What happens on my blogs may be unique but it is not particularly praise worthy, because it is just an extension of one of the things I do in life with children and young adults. A discussion is meant to see all sides of an issue and is based largely on facts and valid supportable opinions. A debate that crops up from the discussions where two different people take opposing stands is fought to win. The rules of debating are very different. The side with the best arguments, and the most powerful way of expressing them, wins.

But a debate is a civilized argument. Its first rule is politeness where one may not indulge in name-calling, personal insinuations, sulking, making blanket judgements, or harbouring feelings of rancour and enmity after the duration of the argument.

Debates help us see all sides of an issue, organize thoughts and express them clearly, listen attentively and argue politely, take turns and allow everyone to have a say, use language as a powerful tool, convince and persuade, think quickly on our feet for rebuttals and get a powerful sense of team spirit.

Debating is a life activity. Whether it is about what to order in a restaurant, or who will be Cricket captain, or why India should do the nuke deal, we argue all the time with other people when we have to make group choices. Advertisers, politicians, salespersons and lawyers are some professionals who use arguments to make a living.

Debates are not always benign. The opponents do provoke a counter argument, they do slight and nudge the other team to clarify, explain and defend their points of view. As a structured activity, it is not for the faint-hearted or the fragile. Intellectual alertness, quick thinking, resourceful argument, and tenacity are expected traits to win an argument. You also need to have a way with words, to be sharp and slicing without resorting to foul language or getting personal. Wit is a great aid in this.

A lot of children whine after thy lose and accuse the other team of cheating, bullying, personal grudges etc. These are a result of their immaturity. The way to deal with these problems would be to point out to the opponent the flaw as they see it during the debate and not afterwards. For example: You are being personal, your argument is targeted at slurring my personal image and not at the issue on hand, you are being facetious, your arguments seem to be hollow you need to support them, dismissing my argument is not enough, please supply us with more facts etc. Once you teach them the fallacies of argument they are empowered to say you are resorting to ad hominem or you are slippery sloping etc. Anyone leaving the platform in a huff is not likely to win the gold. And so it is in life, folks. Anyone leaving the arena is not likely to make any changes. If you leave the battlefield, you become a non-entity.

Debating is not part of our school and growing years as part of a life- skills curriculum and therefore as adults we Indians, often do not know how to debate. You will often find people taking umbrage, indulging in vituperative battles, abandoning the issue in favour of personal mudslinging and violence. This happens in the parliament, in any meetings where Indian adults congregate to discuss an issue, we fight like cats and dogs and all of us talk together on TV interviews and chat shows. And shamefully, we carry grudges after that. It is ridiculous.

A good discussion tempers debates. When the format is of a discussion, with debates within, it allow the debators to move out of the ambit of the debate and accept the views of others, or even if they win, to acknowledge the contribution of thought of the other. As adults even if we are in a pure debate we need to do this.

A debator never leaves the field at a loose end. So in my debate with Sarath (Pro-Life Or Quality of Life blog) where the scale of destruction on the planet due to global warming was the issue, this is my clousure. My understanding was that 2/3 or 66% of the population was at stake, which to me is what it must be if what we hear of 'catastrophic' gw consequences is true, and Sarath's was that it was only 'fraction of one percent'. Two extreme and opposing numbers.

Sarath asked me to look up the site:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPCC_Fourth_Assessment_Report

Amit supplied the original IPCC site:

http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/syr/ar4_syr_spm.pdf

Then the debate turned sour and personal with Sarath ready to resign and crying 'unfair' and feeling judged.

But, armed with these sites, when the debate began to turn sour, I did a good read of both sites, especially the 22 page IPCC report. To my surprise, there was no mention of any of Sarath's arguments in these two documents.

His claims were:

1. GW not "anywhere near as catastrophic as you seem to suggest here (2/3rds of us die?)".

2. Food production increase for 4 degree raise.

3. Many disadvantages that are well known and overblown.

4. GHGs stabilizing in 2050.

5. 1% in casualities (not "affected", but "deaths").

6. Talk about disadvantages of GW to reduce emissions, and not use "against nature" argument.

Not one of these 5 points is mentioned in the report. The sixth point is linked to the larger debate of nature vs science and is irrelevant to this context - though it is the original thrust of the blog.

On the contrary, the report takes the opposite view.

The report said exactly what I had read randomly several times. I have also read reports where the writers dismiss gw as 'gw my arse..', so its not that I am unaware of a lobby that says gw is all bunkum and alarmist.

However this one speaks of:

Agricultural land aridity, shrinking and water logged forests, water resources, heat, flooding and droughts, malnutrition, diarrohea, cardio reperatory illnesses, morbidity and mortality, ocean acidification and marine life destruction, heat waves and overload on health services, coral bleaching, eco system imbalances and species lost, low produce in agriculture and fisheries, storms and 30% loss of wetlands, flash floods decrease in snow cover and glacier retreats, polluting megadeltas and escalating aridity. The ill effects of over population, urbanization, economic crises in this web of natural disasters following climate change is predicted throughout the document.

World hunger is a big concern. In fact a 50 % decrease in food in poorer countries by 2020 is predicted. Water stress is a major problem with either flooding or droughts that will be widespread.

To my mind, this kind of interconnected disaster scenario is more likely to see deaths and damage in the vicinity of 66% than 1%. As I said, at the first stage of this argument, rising sea levels will leave people nowhere to run. (Nature punishments are likely to outrun human ingenuity and science) We have not colonized mars or moon to send people out there either. I reckon fraction of 1% which Sarath says is 100million is presumably at 12 b population which is double our present population. 100 million in our 6 and a half billion, is probably lost even now every year to disease, old age and wars. Can those be the death figures post GW disasters?

To clear my doubts and support my hypothesis, I researched global poverty to see how many of our present population could be at risk.

The global poor constitute 80% of world population that is a whopping 4 billion who have less than $ 5 a day as disposable income. (Harvard Study) http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/5529.html

Given the damage to the environment and the various disasters, waiting to happen, these 4 billion will be the first ones to go. When pushed to the wall, where Nature does not discriminate between the rich and the poor, I do not see a lot of altruism flowing. In fact, when put to a crunch, men have a tendency to be most selfish, pugnacious and defensive for their own survival and comfort. This is often witnessed in post earthquake areas, before aid begins to trickle in and order is restored.

So, I conclude that none of Sarath's claims hold water. Debates, I reiterate must stay with facts and issues and not deteriorate into emotional parts where we accuse one another of skullduggery and bullying in order to avoid research, deliberation and debate. That would amount to intellectual laziness and avoidance. To defend one's stance with proper evidenced backup is to truly honour the spirit of debating. Not having any rancour afterwards is to be able to say we are not merely grown up but truly mature.

Indian law needs to be amended. We have problems that must not be given a verdict on the rules laid down in 1820. The world we live in is not the same. Technology has progressed at a rapid rate in the last 100 years and each year has add-on dimensions to this that are mind-boggling. For example, we had no surrogate motherhood or test-tube babies then. We now have a surrogate baby whose Japanese parents are divorced, the mother has disowned the child and the father (now single) cannot adopt a female child. The baby stuck in a Jaipur hospital is all set to be India's first surrogate orphan.

We now have a battery of tests to detect fetal defects and such knowledge of deformity can be devastating. One would imagine that the testing itself precludes the opportunity to make decisions as opposed to earlier times when we just prayed for a healthy child. The age of the foetus when it can be legally aborted is 20 weeks. The basis for this is not clear. By week 6 the baby has even grown rudimentary eyes, ears and digestive tract. It is only in the first two weeks that it is a clump of cells with potential life. By the 13 weeks called the first trimester, when abortion is legal, the baby has all vital organs and a brain to respond to reflexes. So what exactly is legal about killing that life as opposed to 25 weeks when the child has a face and nails and a more developed brain where it becomes worthy of a court battle on the national stage?

The right to life lobby argues that any feticide is fetal homicide or murder. The Pope extends this to the ban on contraception in the assumption that the egg and sperm are potential life. One can then extrapolate to a ban on male masturbation as sperms are lost in ejaculation. If they could control the unconscious reflex of nocturnal emissions, I wonder if they would make a anti wet dream pill mandatory for men? The problem is always about where we draw the line and whether our reasoning is in tune with the laws of nature.

Then there should be a right to 'quality of life' for which there seems to be no group fighting the cause. Ironic. You fight for the foetus and abandon the child. If one were to look around at beggar children sniffing glue and in a state of complete neglect, malnourished, diseased and abused on a daily basis and reflect on the complete lack of groups like the Greenies and Pro- Lifers or even Animal- Rights or Save the Tiger or Global Warming activists to help them, you again come to the question of what moves us and what does not move us as human beings. There is no 'Save the Child' campaign, no opposition to the Pro- Lifers by a group of Quality of Lifers, who demand the right for children to basic roti, kapda, makan or the duty to not have them at all. I have discussed this before in my blog 'The Parent Trap' under Parenting.

Once again if we were to pick up the issue of euthanasia or mercy killing there is tremendous reluctance for legalizing this as we see it as a tool of abuse and extortion or corruption by relatives who might bump off an oldie who is ill but not fatally so. In our earnestness to protect a few we end up putting a large number of terminally ill people who are not only too old but also in great pain from terminating their agony. Again, we choose the rights of some over others. Who gives us the right to do that? On what basis can we as humans stand on judgement over someone else's problems when it is not our own?

Hence, the suffering of humanity goes unchecked and unabated. Our amazing capacity to ignore their pain allows us to shake our heads, click our tongues in mock sympathy, and move on. Farmers commit suicides, the girl child is raped, the anemia of multiple pregnancies in women, horror stories are told of unsupervised orphanages, unrealistic adoption practices keep babies in emotional want even as childless couples yearn to love them, hole-in-the-wall clinics make a killing and corrupt administrations bless them and we have no lobbying, no placards, no sustained media page, no Rights movements to protest.

Actually when I am on the subject of neglect let us look at more killers out there who Protest groups have missed. Passive smoking, noise pollution, road rage, pesticide poisoning; anger, isolation and depression, unbridled urbanization and loss of values, speed and obnoxious economic growth they are all killers. Anyone heard of groups for these causes? Sure we fight their end results which could be anything from food poisoning, global warming, infrastructure shortage to terrorism at a bleat level.

We enjoy looking at symptomatic cures like Alcoholic Anonymous, anti tobacco campaigns, Ban bar- girls groups, anti prostitution laws etc. We are reluctant to look into the deeper malaise that lies at the heart of problems which are given our quick-fix solutions because they are difficult truths to face and require more work than words to be yelled out. And that, is the essential difference between a Pro-Life and a Quality of Life Activist. There is a difference between giving birth and bringing up a child. The difference between an automatic right and an earned privilege.

When I introduce the topic 'Law' to 8 year olds I often ask them, if there was anything in the world you could do and no one found out and there were no consequences to your actions, what would you do? The answers are often innocently mischievous and sometimes out-of-the-box and amusing.

On chat, I find some real answers with real people to that question. Chat is action without consequence and so you can indulge in any form of verbal banter, abuse, diarrhea and slander without anyone finding out who you are.
And the results are amazing. What fascinates me is how this adheres so closely to life.

The community of faceless, nameless people base their words/ moves/ actions on the basic premises that all human communities use: Power Sex Clan. The transient nature of the chatroom where a click of the mouse gets you out and away forever, or the ignore button allows you to hide the a person even as he/she exists for everyone else, (like in science fantasies) adds dimensions to this fundamental areas of human engagement.

Masks allow the person beneath to be of any form or hue. He/she could be snarling, amused, lecherous, bored, wily, conniving but he could put forth a face that is the opposite. The lack of body language and voice allows for gullibility and for misunderstandings galore. In between these, creeps in attitudes and stances that foster groups of dominant and submissive chatizens who prey and are preyed upon. Personal slander, intellectual snobbery, cowardice in appeasing the bully, kowtowing to the verbally astute, envy of those who appear unfazed by the rest, relentless, unbridled propositioning, and brazen soliciting go on with such in-your-face candour that the whole narrative of reticence and self-restraint is written in a new script.

The chutzpah of chat is outrageous and shrouded in cowardice. This gives free rein for every tall claim to be made. Graphic details of what a man is going do to a female chatter as abuse is spread out before a numb-to-shock audience. The irony is that these are everyday people who are characters in a charade of make believe. However, the anger, lust, frustrations, envy are palpable and real. Because these nicknames bond and form cliques there is the 'us' and 'them' syndrome that is operational in chats. Newcomers or purposeful chatters, in order to be noticed and engaged with at a sustained level, therefore dole out more outrage.

There is a reputation to be maintained as personal slander, especially where say-whatyou-please is the norm, can amount to grand scale calumny. The irony is that no one really cares. The vain avenger therefore brandishes his whip, uses his caps lock in a shout mode and virtually draws blood to no avail. For people who watch helplessly, what we have here are masks and handles to cover the real people, who then have virtual identities and reputations which they attempt to protect by playing safe and avoiding confrontations.

Not even a mask can get the man/woman to be honest about a bully. Fear of bullies is so endemic that there is no hope in real of anyone standing up to obvious evil. Don't we know that!

Chat is obsessed with age and looks. 'Old' and 'ugly' are terms of abuse as if such people have no place there. So then, is it a pick up joint? Most men and women would deny that about themselves till they are blue in the face, considering they are there most waking hours, but still use it as a put-down amongst themselves. The 'I am Ok but everyone else is a whore or pimp' is rampant. Many people in life have this problem. The hypocrisy of it is disgusting at worst and amusing at best. The truth about chat is it is not a pick up joint. It is just a place where a lot of bored men and women take a break and yes some get picked up, some actively look to pick up and still others hope there is more to life than their present stations.

There are serial abusers who are often put on ignore. These men and some women come to vent spleen. They are perhaps marginalised people either in their workplaces or homes who desperately need to be vituperative. Their abuse is like a man standing in the middle of a busy square and screaming out loud. The strange bit here is those who indulge in this manner do not respect the rights of others to kick them back. They expect the other to be 'decent' even as they flaunt their malice. I see such double standards in public and political life.

The power game is played out by the intellectually superior, by those who live abroad and talk down to the desis, by those who are 'perceived' to be all male or all female kind, the young against the old, the educated against the not so educated and so on. Power games with masks are lethal. Most often it is just an obnoxious rant and often pathetic despite the apparent advantage.

Finally men and men and women women in stereotypical contexts. Exceptions to these are resented. Men have sex on their mind and will lure, cajole, flirt and flatter to that end. All roads lead to Rome. Men who are masked certainly reveal their unmasked persona. Again the hypocrisy of: I don't care what you look like, how old you are, what you do etc is a standard script written without any cross-referential training. It is like it's programmed in their genes. It is laughable. The assumption that women on chat have unhappy marriages or are there to mingle is what most men hold as truth as this makes the women easy targets. The conservatism in the Indian male is paradoxically very visible once they are masked.

Some women are vain and soppy, play hard-to-get and when got become clingy, sentimental and needy and once hooked are often ill-treated. Women who stand up to men are either called men in disguise or ugly and old. Therefore, there is a pettiness that is sad.

Often men who come across as sensible and non-abusive will remain silent in the face of others who abuse. They will even befriend these to avoid confrontations. The chivalrous or courageous male is almost non-existent. Life does not throw up many of these either. The dominant alpha male kind who is aggro and spewing invectives is feared by men and women who kowtow to them with a lot of ingratiating lolling (laughing out loud) and yes men ship. The very same people will decry them behind their backs. In real life, it is the same or would we be in this state of moral and ethical penury as a nation?

If you are a people watcher, you will enjoy watching chat. If you observe, you will see many trends in human behaviour that will reflect what you already know from life. What is different is you get to view a stage of men and women interacting on a daily basis and see how they shape up like dramatis personae in a tragi-comedy called Life. They are masked and this reveals a great deal more than they would ever let you see in real life. So the value of chat to study human psychology, especially the male/female kind, has been under-utilized.

'Second Life' is a parallel virtual world created on the web where, as expressed in its title, people can have a second life one in which they play God and choose for themselves identities and personas that have been hitherto only dreamt of or achieved by dint of hard labour or genetic happenstance. The lame can walk and the mute can sing. One can get married have kids, do business, own a house and do whatever in the virtual space. To what end? Psychological of course the feel good factor, the delete button that will erase all flaws of now and allow the person to morph into the stud, the superman/woman, the sex bomb, the whiz kid, the millionaire and have another go. Virtual identities and interactions create real feelings and that is the core substance on which these worlds are sustainable not only in terms of interest but also longevity of engagement.

The computer revolution in India as far as the common man was concerned, began in 1993 fifteen years ago, when only a smattering of corporate men and women could afford it thanks to the multinationals they worked in. Then the only function was the email and a few sites which offered what I shall euphemistically call the 'forbidden'. Today we have so much technology and communication that not only have all things clandestine become possible, but they have also become blasé.

The chats began in 1996 and again it was for those savvy to the extent possible in a nascent field, where others were still struggling with one finger typing, who could be on the forum and enjoy the luxury or banality of spending hours with a community that must have seemed like second life seems today.

Chatrooms morphed into many things for many people the most common being the presence of women shrouded by tanatalising nicks, never mind some were men in disguise, who could raise the interest of men who filled the gap with their fantasies. This must have been huge titillation to a lot of repressed men who had little interaction with women socially, especially if they were married, middle aged and adipose. Why even the young, the shy, the reticent would have sought to find that elusive man/ woman in the midst of the crowd stalking the rooms in veils that beckoned.

To be fair there were amongst these people, those who were there to simply meet other people. Though not averse to other pleasures that might serendipitously come their way, they were basically looking for contacts in business or like minded people, be they men or women, to talk to at an intellectual level.

When there is anonymity, the human is a different animal. Like rioting and pilfering when the law is dysfunctional or crisis hit, the masked entity is capable of the kind of culpable behaviour, the kind he would have denied even to himself before the virtual era. The mask unravelled a whole host of desires, behaviours, instincts that were hitherto concealed by the need to be socially accepted in a real world, the id was ready to raise its head.

So, cyber sex, chat rage, power games, serial abusing, cross-dressing, manipulation and in some cases confidence tricks, blackmail and exploitation came to rule chat more than its innocuous label intended. With this, the assumption that only the proverbial loser would be part of chat - be it the pervert, the wastrel, the idle woman, the unemployed man, the sexually starved or the fiend cum manipulator preying on the less fortunate - actually kept most people away from chat rooms.

Yet there was no denying the attractions of escape and sublimation that these rooms made possible. For many who discovered the joys of chatting it was a routine to a full time activity. Many people log on to chat rooms even as they open their mails and remain with chat till the end of day. The new generation of IT young at call centers, BPOs and the like, when put on the bench, bored housewives with time on their hands, young students and retired old men found chat a haven for fulfilling connections.

The community that emerges from such intermingling that happens on a frequent basis, sometimes everyday, becomes a 'real' part of the individual's life. Sometimes this is a mild interlude that is shrugged off as soon as one logs out and at other times it is a devastating intrusion into thoughts and interactions in the real world. Such individuals experience addiction which forces them to go back to the room and engage in the game of blind man's buff, sitting for long hours and neglecting their responsibilities to real life. Like all addictions, there is a drain on time, money, energy and emotional well-being.

With this blog I begin my second year on rediffiland. I have enjoyed this experience and built in a year a body of reflections that I am proud of, but more importantly I am delighted by the astonishing number of minds I have met here and interacted with. There is something to be said of the virtual world where one has both the banal and the profound. Like the pond that has the muck and boasts the lotus in its midst, it is in the end what we choose from whatever media that is to our profit. I thank all of you who have engaged with me in this past year for giving me moments of enlightenment, joy and laughter.

In a lot of countries the politicians flinch under the media glare, people who are in power quial under the interrogation, sweat and squirm in their seats under the relentless badgering they get from interviewers. The press speaks for the people and expresses their anger and frustration coherently. That is the job of the press: to cogently put across the thoughts that all of us have and which a lot of us don't know how to word with economy and punch. If the media does what it is meant to do, people in power will fear it, and worry about coming into positions where they can be asked to account in front of the whole country and made to look like fools. It will stop every criminal and goonda from entering the fray and literally and figuratively having a blast. When is the media likely to understand its own power and stop behaving like hags around a fire?

The special tragedy of this event is that this can happen to any of us. This veneer of democracy in which we live is but a thin veil. The Talwar case has just told us that and we have watched the 'show' and clucked our way through it and 50 nights seems small when we compare it to the undertrials who spend lifetimes waiting for trail. so hota hai yaar.. investigation toh karna padta hai na? .. koshish toh ki na? . ab aage upar wale ki marzi.

Are we for real?

This begs definition of the word 'God'. What is God? Unless we are clear that both the atheist and challenger mean the same thing by the term 'God', the argument will be at cross purposes. God varies from believer to believer. To some it is a spirit, an energy, to others it is a friend who they actually 'see' or 'talk to' or at least believe that they do. To some it is a father figure, a guide, a solace, a crutch, a comfort, a habit, a healer. To others God is wrathful and vengeful, punishing those who have not followed his dictates. For many God is an explanation for the world and its yet unsolved mysteries, an answer to the perennial question: from whence did we come and quo vadis. To a lot of others to believe in God, is to play safe. To ensure that there is reward and avoidance of punishment if there is a God and to lose nothing if there isn't one.

God, at the end of the day defies imagination in his omnipresent, omniscient and omnipotent self, because the human mind is incapable of holding such magnitudes. Hence, we have the anthropomorphic God, one made in our own image and romanticized in the best of our music and art traditions. Any attempt to bring down this anthropomorphic God brings out the savage ire in man who bares his fangs and is ready to draw blood to 'protect' his God.

God is a wonderful excuse for the intellectually lazy. Enquiry, exploration, reflection are all difficult and time-consuming tasks. They require patience, hypotheses, study, thinking, deliberation and dedication. To seek no answers but to explain the apparently unexplainable in a single word attributing to this invisible, unknown, unseen entity a name and a personality, is to solve problems instantly. Then there is the basking in this created light, where many simply by virtue of uttering the name, believe that they become part of the reflected glory. This further inures them from more endeavours inflicted by the need to know the truth. God becomes a convenience.

Humans have therefore given God a stature that enables them to rest in his gargantuan shadow, a shadow so humongous that it defies the imagination and protects anyone who comes into its 'sharan'. The walls of this haven have been fortified by priesthood and temples, songs, drama, and the entire machinery of culture that make it not only desirable but also good.Thus the definition of good becomes synonymous with this nebulous God and furthers the convenience of the men who take shelter.

God is so ubiquitous that He/she becomes a habit. (It has always been a He, till now, in keeping with the patriarchal custom of male supremacy.) When one is conditioned to take a name from childhood the 'oh my God' slips past ones lips quite effortlessly when in a situation requiring succour.

The other use for God is prayer. Man in his fraility and often self-created misery, be it from greed or lust or anger, often needs someone to call to piteously when in pain and despair. God, who need not answer, except by a serendipitous happenstance, when things take their course, is lauded for his mercy and his generosity. God becomes a private counselor and mentor with no real accountability. When things go well, He is the saviour, when things don't work out, He is testing us and we have to bow to his Will. Thus, the old lie goes unchallenged.

Humans being social animals are extremely unhappy when they are alone. Therefore, the public God, who is kowtowed to jointly in temples and churches and mosques, becomes a collective reality. There is great solace in numbers when one is bound to a lie. The same people would have great discomfort if one were to suggest they should henceforth worship quietly in their homes. They also carry symbols of their gods in the manner of their clothes, hair, rituals, and feel the need to proclaim loudly their beliefs. This causes conflict when birds of different feathers meet and that is the excuse from mutual bad mouthing to terrorist attacks. In the name of God, evil is perpetuated without shame or regret.

God is created by fear. Fear of being visited by disease, death, loss, pain if one were to forsake it. If these fail, there is the fear of hellfire and brimstone and many religions expound the horrors of the flesh that hell would subject them to. The devil is again an anthropomorphic creation to give to hell a 'human' representative in case the whole destination becomes abstract and therefore unbelievable. Mythology does its part in spreading the word of belief with stories and parables.

Another convenient rider thrown into the belief equation is that God must not be challenged. Like the tree of knowledge from which one may never eat, God must not be questioned. This is seen as a kind of virtue. Another very clever way of hiding the unknown from inquisitive eyes. God's word is also the ultimate word so you may not ask any more questions of it. God said so, must suffice as an answer to end all questions.

If religions were born to unite tribes who were on the brink of destruction, then God becomes a social refree with his 'thou shalt nots' and a moral policeman who defines the limits of decency and acceptable standards. Socially, God keeps the peace by making sure the fear of the consequences of sin will make people responsible like nothing else will. Fear of the unknown is the best kind of fear, for we know not what it is that we fear.

Finally, the symbolic God. God as omnipresent becomes all things in Nature in pantheistic religions. He is the stone, the river, the monkey, the elephant, the snake, the sea. Nature itself being a rhythm, a scientific rhythm has immense grace and purpose and charm. Nature lends itself well to define the niraakara God. Physical symbols are easy to understand. Abstract symbols require a lot of transference to be understood and experienced.

Now that I have kind of defined God, we can understand the atheist better.

Atheism is a rational exercise. It does not carry the emotionality of the theist, or the physicality of the ritualist. It is therefore almost lackluster in its practicality. It is the difference and the rebelliousness of atheism that gives it its glamour. It is therefore easy to judge people who differ and take a separate stand, as arrogant and negative. There is much anger against any breakaways when the God concept has been constructed with such care, for so long and with so many safeguards in place.

Many atheists are rabid. Richard Dawkins is one. Intelligent, rational and rabid. I don't see any reason for the atheist to overstate his case. Like theism it is a journey that everyman must make for himself.

The other kind of atheist is the 'betrayed theist'. This one has come to his/her conclusions of atheism based on betrayal by their God. Someone dear has died and so belief has been abandoned. This kind of narrow perceptive atheism will be short lived. All it takes is a small miracle of coincidence for them to go running back to the temple with coconuts. Several films that are made, move the God propaganda machinery towards these kind of stories to convince the believers and to warn those who are likely to stray.

Then there is the half-hearted, non-conformist atheist. This one ends his atheism with a 'but' I am an atheist but... There is doubt and there is fear. This one will switch sides in certain company. Confused and befuddled there is a need to be both. Like bi-sexuals they have their own cross to carry. Like the man on the fence they battle snide remarks from both sides.

Atheism is not a badge. It is the right to believe that something does not exist because there is no proof. If proof is found anytime in the future, acceptable proof that is, objective proof, then there will be belief too. And if there is a God I am sure he is wise and just enough to understand that some of us need proof and that is reasonable. :)

True Atheism is about freedom and enquiry. It is about listening to anyone who is ready to reason as opposed to blindly believe. It is opposed to anyone who speculates that it is better to believe, which is just an opinon. It does not limit because it is based on the search for truth and true humility in its resolve to surrender to reason.Atheism is not pretentious for exactly the same reason.

The tag 'atheist' must not be likened to a theist who is bound by patterns of behaviour, rituals, customs, philosophies etc. An atheist on the other hand is an observer, one who appreciates all efforts at seeking the truth, one who can see beyond what is apparent, one who is willing to deliberate with any belief within reason, one who is willing to change his/her belief if there is enough objective evidence to the contrary.

My apologies to Amit for writing a blog on Atheism instead of writing a preamble for a new religion. Amit, that is an idea whose time has not yet come!

Crime and law are partners bound by vigorous handcuffs. They are two sides of the same coin opposites, linked so inextricably, that the boundaries seem to blur and like Orwell's pig and man one cannot tell which is which.

Nowhere is this seamless blending more true than in India where the seats of administration and thereby law are densely occupied by unproven and yet- to- be- proven criminals. The Constitution itself grants them the right to rule.

In such a state of law, the increasing spate of murders and suicides galloping in outrageous succession on a daily basis must not strike despair. However, these are not hardened criminals but our everyday naval officers, aspiring entertainers, wannabe small town migrant girls with stars in their eyes, ubiquitous IT couples, housewives, corporate managers. it could well be you and me.

The surprise is also in the nature of the crime, such, that has been hitherto found only in the annals of serial and psychopathic killers who need to find ingenious ways to stimulate or pacify their chaotic minds. It is not the crime of passion in finding the killer's girlfriend with her lover that startles you, but the manner in which the body of the victim is then cold bloodedly hacked into appropriate tidbits to fit into carry bags and transported to be burnt in a remote forest. After that, the methodical clean up, the shopping, the charade of lodging missing complaints using the aid of unsuspecting friends adds to the drama. It is the stuff Hadley Chase novels are made of.

Coming on the heels of this crime is the Arushi murder case where the girl's parents are suspect and the police are arrest-happy. Our police remand and then ask questions. When nothing is found there is no apology on the part of the police or the judge for the arrest of or trauma to the victim. There is no compensation either by the state as in the West. Under these circumstances there is no special care taken to ascertain facts and the police enjoy wide unfettered draconian powers without accountability. Our CSI non-existant. Our police work is all about 'beating' confessions out of suspects rather than painstakingly collecting forensic, circumstantial and documental evidence that would be admissable in a court, before confronting and arresting a suspect.

Loss of memory regarding the exact chain of events and the details of what clothes the Talwars wore on the night of the murder are seen as major covering up of facts. One cannot begin to comprehend the agony and horror of parents in a situation of finding their only child dead with a slit throat. Their daze must be a part of their survival mechanism. I remember the shock of a parked car pulling out and hitting me in motion. After chasing the car for a good mile, I had no memory of its colour so I am not sure how reliable memory would be when one goes into devastating shock like the murder of a child.

The police are at sea. They have nothing to go on except suspicions. They have no explanations and they expect 'cooperation' and one wonders if that is some euphemism for sub radar pressure to get the suspect to confirm some of their pet theories. When the police botch up they are given gentle raps on the knuckles in the form of transfers, whatever that means. Meanwhile, reputations have been besmirched beyond repair and no on pays. The media abets this homicide by the law, changing colours with a temerity, that would put a flamboyant chameleon to shame.

Even if one were to forgive some extremes in murder investigations, cast your regard on the growing menace of arrests for "abetting suicides". Abetting is defined by the dictionary as approve, encourage, or urge an action or plan. Woe betide the man who has had an affair, been a friend, a sympathetic colleague, mingling single man or divorced ex- husband if the woman in a fit of anger or depression decides to take her own life. His arrest is almost immediate under section 107 of the IPC. He is then paraded by the media for all he is worth. His family, friends, ex girl friends, estranged wives, online buddies are called, questioned, interviewed, slurred, suspected without compunction. His crime? He refused to marry the girl who died. Arjun Menon is the latest of the victims of this kind of knee jerk arrests. However, the MLA husband of Padmapriya the latest latest among the suicide belles, has been spared arrest a point to note your Honour. Interestingly, no woman is picked up when a man she rejected commits suicide.

So if you have the misfortune of having an affair with a weak woman you are looking at your house being searched, your computer hardware probed, your cell phone records scrutinized, being spurned by your friends, shamed in your community and shunned by everyone.

All your women friends stand the risk of being interrogated by our diligent police force because you are not supposed to have any friends of the opposite sex. This could inadvertently damage their reputations by insinuating unhealthy speculations. It is all part of police work because you refused to marry someone or elope with her or whatever and the woman took her life.

Be ready also for financial ruin. You could lose your job, have a jail record which you will need to disclose in a lot of places, you need money to bribe your way out of jail and bad press, not to speak of hefty criminal lawyer fees. Then there will be righteous women's groups and relentless relatives of the dead girl baying for your blood long after the dust has settled.

What kind of archaic law is this? Don't these victims have any rights? Who is going to question the intrusion on privacy? The malicious slander? How does a person outlive that? Who will compensate the injustice and who will pay?

The heat generated by these crime investigations never let up. For weeks, the channels go after the whodunit with salacious delight. Every moment is a screeching ground breaking speculation. The reporters are like vultures asking the most ridiculous questions. I particularly remember that goon Arnab of 'Time Now' asking Nupur Talwar "What did you feel when you saw your dead daughter?" I wonder at his sanity.

Older sensational cases like the Afzal guru case have lost their sheen and simmer on the back burners. Kasliwal's rape victim is suddenly missing and so there is a possibility of a 'no show no case' when it comes up for hearing. Soon the present sansanikez cases will become low in visibility, when fresh gossip comes up and eager audiences lap up new salacious episodes in true soap opera tradition, waiting eagerly for the next installment. Violence and sex in real life is unbeatable. We are all voyeurs even as we make those sympathetic noises.

And so, the brides burn, husbands rape wives and the voiceless screams of abused children get smothered under the family umbrella. Ministers not disclosing their wealth are forgotten, and even as the PM mildly bleats out his austerity measures, they get political immunity. R.R. Patil dithers over the arrest of Raj Thakeray and his goons, who so blatantly beat up innocent Bihari labourers on camera.

Crime stalks our lives in various forms committed by everyone either through commission or omission. The law? What law? When the law is guilty, who, as Lady Macbeth averred, can call it to account?

Lady Godiva rode through the crowded marketplace in the nude because of a dare from her husband. A wager that he would bring down the taxes in Coventary if she dared to do it. The speculation after the event, which shocked the husband, was whether the lady, who was religious, should be canonized for her social largesse or be deemed a repressed exhibitionist who wanted to seek the attention of her bored husband. The whole dynamics of the male female relationship on the subject of nudity is speculated on. The romantics, many among them monks who vowed to claim sainthood for Godiva, circulated stories of how her 'purity' blinded the lecherous and kept her 'clothed' because no eyes actually 'saw' her in the nude state - a reversal of the Emperor of the new clothes fame.

Children growing up in nudist colonies or even offspring of parents who are mindless of being seen nude by them from birth, will have a lower tickle factor at the sight of nude bottoms or breasts or private parts. Repressed societies that cover up all parts except eyes are likely to be titillated at the sight of an imagined wrist or ankle. All things taboo have excited and aroused much more than mere curiosity. Shame has been conditioned early at the cradle stage in human children with the puppy shame business of reprimanding their innocent uncovered bits or with a chee chee. that often stays in the psyche and later emerges as sexual dysfunction of many varieties, not all of them physical.

Anthropologically the Neanderthal was nude but was also too hirsuite to have resembled Adam and Eve in their garden, roaming in idyllic contentment