Chai Chalk Chatter

When the world stood still to watch the demise of Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam, we the Shillongites - with our fancy cellphone cameras and loud mouths created a celebration of the sad moment. Yes, I was there and this, out of utter disgust, is what I have to say.  At least, the crowd, gathered outside the hospital, where our beloved ex-president breathed his last, were present there and that is the least amount of satisfaction that I can get out of it.  The only contention that has remained with me even after a year of the passing of such a great visionary is the fact that - we as humans of Shillong couldn't give him the fair amount of respect that he undoubtedly deserved, even at his death. We shamed the memory of the man by sticking out those fancy cellphones and recording the entire event with flash lights on. Where was then, the civility and the mannerisms that we Shillongites, so astoundingly boast of? Yet again when the world mourned the death of the gr...

The drafters of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights obviously forgot to take into consideration the situation that prevailed in most newly independent nations which are the developing nations of today. In this short piece, I would like to highlight one such incident especially with reference to India and in doing so, would highlight a conflict within the articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Eleanor Roosevelt couldn’t have probably ever imagined this conflict that is plaguing most developing nations today. India is said to be the Pharmacy of the world, although most of the pharmaceutical industry is dependent on the manufacture of generic drugs. With relatively less investment in Research and Development and the demand for cheap drugs, doesn’t seem to encourage the production the patented drugs which is more of a trend in the countries of the north. This disability cannot be only attributed to the laziness of many Indians but more to the nature of the...

Walking the streets of the small town of Mahabalipuram or Mamallapuram, amidst the hustle and bustle of the tourists moving around, one would most often than not notice only rocks, rocks and only rocks. The rock art carving is simply an enthralling tradition, the art of which has been passing on from generation to generation. It is simply amazing to notice the way these artists work on their rough and crude stones and convert them to works of art. It is very much similar to a painter, painting on an empty canvas. The history of this art form dates back to the 7 th century, during the dynastic rule of the Pallavas, who were also the rulers of Kanchipuram at the time. The advent of the art form can be traced back to the construction of structures like the Shore Temple and other similar structures which have now been declared as UNESCO World Heritage Sites. 

If we go by the ‘Performative Identities Theory’ of Judith Butler, gender is suppose to be performative, which in other words means that gender is defined by how a person behaves and not a mere biological grouping as in the case of ‘Sex’. The idea of masculinity and femininity is one of Cultural Conditioning and changes from time to time. Traditionally, masculinity or maleness has been represented in the media as very manly characters without any feminine traits, especially in the Media Texts of the 1970’s and 1980’s. James Bond, Rambo as well as Arnold Schwarzenegger from the terminator series would be some examples that we could quote here. The popular Super Mario video game which shows the character of ‘Mario’, as a male with certain acquired powers, has to rescue the princess from the monster dragon, portrays ‘Man’ as a protector, which might not be the case all the time. But then again this has been established as a stereotype for a very long time, even through our fai...

“How can a man in a cave out-communicate the world’s leading Communication societies?” -Zaharna (2001) As Joshua K Fowler, in his paper on the ‘New Media Warfare’ ideates the transfer of traditional warfare to the virtual and information front and that in the specific case it becomes necessary to manage and control the respective space by the powers involved. He further suggests that the horizontal power structures that the terrorist organizations like the Hezbollah have are more efficient as compared to the vertical power structures that most conventional militaries have, with reference to information warfare because the red tape involved causes hindrance in the fast and efficient dissemination of information. Now Internet is supposed to be a platform where the freedom of expression is held paramount, at least that is the argument that the US and its other Western allies put forward when the MacBride Commission Report was published in 1980, which led to ...

Article 19 (1) (a) of the Indian Constitution says that all Indian citizens have the right to freedom of speech and expression. In this regard, media censorship should be completely unacceptable, yet the Government does implacably try to impose restrictions on media content. This does raise a lot of questions on how aware and how are we in protecting our rights. Talking only about films, on Introspection, the Cinematograph Act of 1952 and The Cinematograph (Certification) Rules, 1983 itself seems to be against the freedom of expression. Well, it’s quite contradicting when 1 article talks about the freedom of speech and expression and the other talks about censorship of films given that films are an art form and art is an expression. Censorship in India has, in fact, increased the piracy of films in India which should not really make one dumbstruck, since many of the films are not cleared for public screening or distribution in India. Some film-makers have gone to the extent of a...

Article 21 of the constitution of India gives every citizen the ‘Right to Life’ which in other words translates to, that every individual has the right to live, the way they want to live. Under such circumstances, draconian laws like the Sec 377 IPC in fact restrict this very freedom. Article 21 is enshrined for us in our constitution, written by Indians, unlike the Indian Penal Code (IPC) which was written by the British and enforced in the year 1869 much before the constitution came into force. It is in fact a disgrace that the world’s largest democracy follows a Penal Code that was used to enslave it. We must also note that the IPC is based on the Judeo-Christian code of ethics, Christianity being the state sponsored religion of Britain at the time and it does not fit into the Indian definition secularism. The Indian and the western definition of secularism vary to a great extent. For that matter acts like sodomy, same sex relations were very much a part of the India...