They revolted against me, fully aware that they were to get crushed and destroyed. The anarchists came with visions of reform -half conceived with reason and the other half conjured with irrational emotions. They hammered away at the high stone walls I had erected around myself, failing miserably, panting but not giving up. I heard them out in silence before crushing the uprising of these naive dreamers. Soon their mangled bodies lay at my feet, their placards burnt and blood stains erased by the raindrops. I watched the drenched spectators disperse. Scared, confused and troubled with incoherent thoughts. They will all forget it soon, but I will have the cries to torment me for long:
We're not gonna take it No, we ain't gonna take it We're not gonna take it anymore
We've got the right to choose and There ain't no way we'll lose it This is our life, this is our song We'll fight the powers that be just Don't pick our destiny 'cause You don't know us, you don't belong
We're not gonna take it No, we ain't gonna take it We're not gonna take it anymore
Oh you're so condescending Your gall is never ending We don't want nothin', not a thing from you Your life is trite and jaded Boring and confiscated If that's your best, your best won't do.
At Heathrow Airport the police officers perform routine ‘random searches’ to prevent terrorist attacks. This ‘random’ search is basically a process where armed officers go around checking passports of non-whites. They looked at my documents too, and a smirk appeared on their lips when they found that I stay in the US. It was the same smirk many Londoners carry when they refer to USA or when their leading daily, ‘The Mirror’, comes out with an issue titled ‘How can 5 million people be so stupid?’ with a photo of Bush on the front cover. Obviously their sense of self-righteousness never allows them to remember that they were also equally stupid in electing Mr. Blair to office -the man who is often referred to as Bush’s pet dog by the US media. The verification process for my documents took some five minutes or so, and I realized that their so called ‘random’ search was based on a sort of a racial profiling in disguise. I do not mind even if these people were racist. Nor do I resent the fact that they wanted to see my passport; they actually helped me to kill five minutes of my six hour transit time, but what I do resent as a researcher is that they were using a sophisticated mathematical concept like ‘random’-ness so frivolously. I wanted to sit with them and teach them the probabilistic meaning of randomness but refrained from doing so as I feared an arrest.
The Qantas outside my window
As I sat at terminal 4, waiting for my next leg of a 10 hour flight to India, I watched the red and white Qantas Boeing Jumbo jet 747 standing outside the glass pane of the terminus. The jet stood proudly with ‘The spirit of Australia’ painted in black on the front part of the fuselage, just below the cockpit. The electronic display near the boarding gate informed that it was to fly from London to Australia via Singapore. Indeed this aircraft carried on its wings the onerous duty of keeping the island nation connected with the rest of the world. I sat watching it with admiration, exchanging silent glances with it. I had probably fallen in love with the plane. Yes, fallen in love with an inanimate object, and I will go on to say that it was perhaps the most purest form of love as it was most spontaneous and free from lust. I know that you are saying that I am weird, but I protest. I voluntarily distance myself from you all too humans. You, humans, try to define love in a very conservative way, and as a matter of fact you don’t even want to separate love from lust. And those who protest against it are branded by you all as weirdoes. It was perhaps those few hours of silent glances and a strange affection for that body of duralumin that made me a bit depressed when I heard the news that QF30 had suffered a minor accident on its way back from Melbourne to London. I hope that one day I will be able to get on board that flight and make a journey of a lifetime across the great oceans to the island continent.
Aubergine on British Airways
The British Airways is now serving pathetic aubergine curry and rice on its long distance flight to India!-what can be more fascinating than to have an allergic reaction and an itchy lip at thirty seven thousand feet above the sea level for some nine hours or so?!
I used to think that only food on domestic airlines sucked, but it turned out that food on British Airways flights between UK and India was even worse. To incease your exaspertation, you should contrast it with the food on the flight from US to UK, which is substantially better, and definitletymuch more edible. I guess that maybe the ‘first-world’ countries need to meet out different treatment when it comes to service on flights to ‘developing’ countries. Gate Gourmet, the official caterer for BA has angered me even in the past; the last time I cose BA in the fall of 2005, their workers went on an indefinite strike, forcing me to fly all the way from Calcutta to London on a breakfast of one samosa and a piece of sandwich. So my experience is that the food on British Airways is always substandard. They should start following the path laid out by their American counterparts where they literally serve peanuts on a 7 hour long flight from Philadelphia to Los Angeles.
Landing in Calcutta
The first thing you get to notice that the international terminal still doesn’t have the jet bridges to let people enter the airport premise directly from the aircraft. And the next thing I noticed was that my fellow traveler emerging out of the executive class of the BA flight was none other than Biman Bose, CPM leader party Secretary of West Bengal -a true patriot and the leader of the poor against Western imperialist powers, who divides his time wisely between denouncing the bourgeoise class and indulging in a little bit of luxury and a few yearly visits to the enemy lands.
Fireworks above Museum of Art, Independence Day celebrations, 10:30pm:
Some people have can't afford to take a break! This is what I found outside my house at 11pm when I returned from the Fireworks show: (Two cars were involved in an accident on one of the busiest roads and then the drivers started fighting)
The two things together make Philadelphia a proper city!
I have often wondered if democracy has ever been a very successful concept. Well it is certainly a great concept, much better than a totalitarian regime for sure, but my question is more about whether democracy has been able to evolve beyond simply enfranchising the masses to something closer to a system where an elected Government is really a Government "of the people, by the people, for the people". In addition we must not forget that this Government is also expected to be reasonable so that democracy does not lead to the "tyranny of the majority".
Aristotle's view of democracy was based on freedom and justice, which is reflected in his views: "...one factor of liberty is to govern and be governed in turn; for the popular principle of justice is to have equality according to number, not worth, and if this is the principle of justice prevailing, the multitude must of necessity be sovereign and the decision of the majority must be final and must constitute justice, for they say that each of the citizens ought to have an equal share; so that it results that in democracies the poor are more powerful than the rich, because there are more of them and whatever is decided by the majority is sovereign."
Today different forms of democratic frameworks exist in many countries of the world, at least most pretend to have one in place. But have we fulfilled either of the major objectives of democracy? Have we been able to prevent "tyranny of the majority" or make the poor "more powerful than the rich"?
First of all my opinion is that in a democratic framework, "tyranny of the majority" is inevitable. In a democracy every party has a manifesto or ideals and priorities, and people expected to vote based on these issues. The minority by definition are those who did not agree with the ideals of the elected party, and therefore it is inevitable that the aspirations of the minorities will not be met.
Secondly we have not seen much instance of the 'poor' enjoying more power than the 'rich', even Communists also couldn't bring that to happen.
Thirdly I think democracy is a futile exercise unless people are able to make their choices judiciously, but for which they need to be educated and be substantially informed about the realities and be able to think through the possible consequences before making their choice. An average person is simply not capable of doing that; it has been proved time and again by the wrong choices that people have made, and sometimes they even make choices that go against their self interest without realizing it. In other words I do not think that a utopian concept like democracy can ever be in the safe hands of ignoramuses (which unfortunately includes not only a huge illiterate population but also many so-called educated ones). The problem with democracy is that we assume that all human beings are equal -an idea that sounds good but is simply untrue in real life- I will not talk much about that here. Human beings are never born equal in terms of their background, never get equal opportunities, and are never equal in their tastes, qualities, talents and merits. Therefore I opine that Democracy is a good, but a flawed concept and it is surely not a panacea for all social problems. Majority doesn't mean right necessarily, if we were to decide everything by some democratic methods then probably we would still be believing that the sun revolves around the earth.
This post is mostly for myself, a way to quickly listen to any of my favorites at any time instead of searching on Youtube. But you are also welcome to listen...
Mozart: Symphony no. 25 k. 183, Wiener Philharmoniker, Conductor: Karl Bohm (Remember those old Titan Advertisements?! Listen at 1:40 mins)
Jacques Offenbach: "Orphée aux Enfers" (Can Can)
Khachaturian: Sabre dance, Berliner Philharmoniker, Conductor: Seiji Ozawa
Rossini: William Tell Overture, l'Orchestra della Scala, Conductor: Riccardo Muti
Rimsky-Korsakov: Procession of the Nobles
Rimsky Korsakov: Flight of the bumblebee, Berliner Philharmoniker, Conductor: Zubin Mehta
Carl Orff: Carmina Burana, O fortuna. (Remember the Old Spice advertisement?)
The Philadelphia Orchestra Venue: Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts Wednesday, June 25 at 7:00 pm.
Conductor: Rossen Milanov
Compositions:
Musorgsky: A night on Bald Mountain
Rimsky-Korsakov: Caproccio espagnol
Tchaikovsky: Waltz from 'The sleeping beauty'
Rachmaninoff: Vocalise, Op.34, No.14
Prokofiev: "Montagues and Capulets" from Romeo and Juliet, Op.64
Shostakovich: Symphony No.5 in D minor, Op.47
Strvinsky: Suite form 'The Firebird'
Very impressive performance, it was completely enjoyable even for a person like me without any background in music. Although some patrons chose to sleep through the program, perhaps dragged in after a tiring day at office by their music loving wife, the majority in the hall was wide awake and applauded at the end of each piece enthusiastically. It was a place for snooty, high-class people and so I had to dress up and had to even wear a tie, polish my shoes and comb my hair. Tomorrow I am going back to listen to pieces of American composers like Bernstein and Souse. I hope that it will also be equally enjoyable.
FUNERALSHIRE, 31 Feb- Sir Andrei Valet (Pronunciation: \ˈva-lət, ˈva-(ˌ)lā, va-ˈlā\), CBE, eminent social activist and owner of StolenAuto Corp., has passed away in his sleep last night. He was 99 years, 364 days old. His physician, Dr. Sarcophagus, reported that over-excitement from anticipation of the congratulatory birthday card from the Queen, which he was supposed to receive the next day, led to a massive cardiac arrest. Sir Valet is survived by his wife, 7 children (3 legal, 2 disowned, 2 never-owned) and 25 grandchildren. He is credited with conceiving the idea of 'Valet Parking', a kind of parking service that is now widely offered by posh restaurants and hotels in North America, where a personnel from the establishment will park the customer's car, thereby saving the hassles of 'self-parking' to incompetent drivers.
Although Valet Parking is nowadays offered as a service, Sir Valet, then known as Andrei Azmakhov Valenolovich, had originally used this idea to fool rich customers into handing over the keys to him for parking, and thus allowing him to steal the expensive cars quite easily. This innovative approach in automobile theft caught attention of the international media in early 1930s when Sir Valet, then a mere auto-thief in a Moscow shanty, boldly used the pretext of 'Valet Parking' to steal Comrade Joseph Stalin's official red limo outside the 'People's and Worker's Restaurant' -a Moscow downtown restaurant which at that time was restricted to only high profile members of the Government. That night Stalin was accompanying famous Englishman, George Bernard Shaw, to dinner. Andrei fled Russia in fear of persecution and traveled to United Kingdom where he sought political asylum. The British tabloids lavishly praised him for his courage to stand up against a tyrant by daring to steal his car. However Bernard Shaw, who was supposed to be a witness to the incident, refused to testify before any Magistrate whether it was indeed Andrei Valet who had stolen the car that night, and instead claimed that Stalin would have never agreed to 'valet park' his favorite red car. Officials however had dismissed Mr. Shaw's statement since he was well-known for his sympathetic views towards Stalin's regime. Whatever the truth might have been, it is often suggested that later in his life Sir Valet had helped the British intelligence to plot similar attempts to steal Herr Hitler's car. Upon personal recommendation from Sir Winston Churchill, Andrei was awarded the Knighthood in 1954, although his critics alleged that Churchill was bestowing this honor on Andrei to prevent him from coveting Churchill's brand new car which he had purchased that year with his Nobel prize money.
Sir Andrei Valet became a successful auto-parts dealer in his own right and even started his own manufacturing company in 1948, the StolenAuto Corp. -a name that suggests Sir Valet's love for good humor. However his company's reputation has suffered greatly in the recent years following several legal battles over complaints of real stolen cars being repainted and resold with new registration numbers. In a note scribbled on tissue-paper that Mr. Thug, the Vice-President of StolenAuto Corp., has sent to our News Bureau, he described that "the Company employees will always remember Sir Valet as a formidable boss" and "although everyone is grief-stricken, tomorrow we will be having a grand party at the HQ as per the last wishes of Sir Valet, which he had mentioned only to the trustees and stockholders in private." Sir Valet leaves behind a legacy of a courageous man, a visionary, a philanthropist and a life-long activist for human rights. A funeral mass will be held in his memory tomorrow afternoon by Rev. Grave at the local Catholic Church, where Lord Banter, Earl of Shortford, will be reading a condolence message from the Queen.
