Rats, Bharat Mata etc...

First of all, I apologize for the snafu related to the previous post. I had posted the article as usual on the 15th, but a few days later I inadvertently overwrote the index page with a previous file while testing a new laptop and forgot to put the correct file back in. Let me explain.

I had written some time back about how my noutho pasocons, or laptops failed to adjust to the Indian conditions. Both - I had two - were afflicted with the PC version of Delhi belly after a few months in India. A Delhi belly, for those of you who have not heard of it, is something that affects foreign visitors (mostly from developed countries) to India. This usually happens the moment they consume food or water in India, after which they are forced to stay put within a distance of 1 metre from a toilet for a few days. No wonder some of them have this image of India as a toilet, because that is all they get to see during their stay. I don't see this as a negative. I blame the visitors for being weak, for losing their body's inherent strengths by over-sanitising their environs. When the going gets tough, the tough goes to the potty. I must admit that I have lost some of those strengths after staying in Japan, but I'm in the process of rejuvenating myself with my trips to India.

Coming back to my laptops, one of them died though I managed to salvage its hard disk. The second one was half-dead during the latter part of my stay in India. Its C-MOS battery started acting up. I'm assuming that most of you are computer-savvy enough to know what a C-MOS battery is. The PC used to boot up though I had to enter the date and time each time at the start. I couldn't find the specific C-MOS in India and decided to check it out in Tokyo. I checked at the shop where I bought my replacement laptop for dead PC No.1. The guy said that it would take two weeks to get one, and I was in Tokyo only for a few days. "Four-letter expletive" it, I thought. Let's see how far this semi-dead guy goes. Back in Kitami (where I live), the machine survived for a few weeks before it snapped. While it did resurrect itself after I fiddled with it for some time, I decided to buy a new one for safety's sake. I was waiting for the new laptop to arrive when my rat died. I think it's OK to call it a rat, because it is big and bad compared to the current generation of mice. So, I went and bought a new, small rodent for the soon-to-be-dead laptop.

I have a special affinity for PC mice. My project in college was a mouse driver software. There were five guys in the project team. One guy who did most of the work. One guy who quietly assisted him and another guy who kept talking and arguing when supposedly assisting him. Then there were two. Me, and for privacy's sake, let's call the other guy "Chettayi". Well, Chettayi and I were the great facilitators. Our main job was to make sure that nothing came in between the working guys and their work. We wined and dined the lab assistants so that our guys got more time at the terminal etc (not everybody had a PC in those days). We transported stuff and were also involved in getting the project report ready. In fact, if I ever decide to write fiction, I hope the skills I gained by writing that report (which was mostly fiction) would come in handy.

I hope with the above I managed to wean your mind away from the update snafu! Well, the new laptop is here and functioning as demonstrated by the unwanted update, but I'm still using the old one. Don't know why. It's something akin to your inability to throw away a tattered underwear because of some vague sentimental attachment.

Now, we go from underwear to what is under it. A recent news item that attracted my attention was the cancellation of an M. F. Husain show in London because of threats from Hindu fundamentalists. In India, it seems the Hindu right is trying to prosecute him for drawing nude pictures of Bharat Mata and some other goddesses. The current government is also apparently supporting such moves. Nice. Since when did Hindu goddesses start wearing the purdah? When these guys go to temples, what do they do about the scantily clad, buxom female figures sculpted on the temple pillars? Turn their eyes away? I used to draw nude pictures of a female lecturer during my college days for fun, in the classroom, and circulate it. And there were guys who collected some of those pictures. It wasn't meant for titillation. It was just that she was incompetent as a lecturer and failed to hold my attention and that of the rest of the class. I have a feeling that one of these days I'm going to see Bharat Mata in my dream. In the buff, as if in a Picasso-esque painting, with her mammary glands hanging off her ears, one eye where the navel is and another near the ear, legs from her chest and arms below that. Would I be liable for prosecution?

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