I originally posted this weblog on July 29, 2006.  On July 11, that year, militants, in an attempt to spread fear and destruction, exploded seven synchronised bombs within 11 minutes on the trains running on the Western Lines of Suburban Mumbai. 209 people lost their lives. 700 were grievously injured.

I remember, people were really scared, in the days that followed. That, in itself, was a great achievement for these terrorists. Bombay is seldom affected by anything. We, Mumbaikars, are one solid bunch. It takes a lot of terror to terrorize the people of Mumbai.

 Apparently, the success of the July 11 bomb blasts — the perfect synchronicity of the explosions, the flawless execution of this intelligently planned terror attack, the scale of destruction & loss of life, the utter failure of government machinery in preventing these attacks, was our threshold. We caved in. Widespread paranoia ensued.

 Eventually, life did snap back into shape. And as these things go, most people forgot. Others, the friends & relatives of those unfortunate men, women and children, who perished or were irreversibly disabled, do not have that luxury.

It was under these painful circumstances, that, with a mix of fear, revulsion and a strange sense of love & tenderness for my great city, I wrote these words.

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Oh hell yes. I’m spent. Spent and lent. I’m not going to make you roll in agony. with my sad prose. My lack of comic timing. My timid hellos and mighty(wannabe) goodbyes. I will not let you tell me that the sun’s still shining. no-permission-no. no permit granted-thank you -Govt. of Maharashtra. jai Bheem, jai Shivaji. jai Maharashtra. My Bombay, but a whore, will look at you and will sleep with you and make ugly babies with you. You yellow-livered-nilly-hearted-fcuk-wasted young-mistress-of-green-paper. I will damn you to hell. never-ever-heal. I will cry foul. I will give you away.

O Apollo-Bundered-Marine-Drived,Mumbadevid-Malabar Hilld-Chowpatty-breasted Bombay. Squatting-potty-clutching-The.Times.of.India(Mumbai Edition). With a Wills Classic Milds in the dark slit between your lips. The bum-bum-Bholenath. The Tadi-Madi-Vikri-Kendras. The Babloo-Da-Dhabas. With it’s Salted-Kebabed Lamb-Balls and Bombay-Ducked Masalla. Critter Fritters. Angry mobs of facist Sainiks-Communist Maharashtrians. Religious Fanatics-the Muslims. The angry fangry. The lolitta-I-fcuked-your-daughter thrice. The Maratha-Proud-Bhenchods. The Musllman-Minority-Madarchods.

The Racist regime. The fcuk-chut-Kamathi-randi-Pura whores. The Bhandup-Sonapur hijras. The Night-Lovers-Mulund-Checknaka. The Fcuk-me-while-you-cans. The Chicks-In-Hot-Panties. The Nirmal-Life-R-Malis of Gutter Gardens. The Kentucky-Fried-McDonalded invisible poor. The shit laden slaughter houses. The Hijra-Bazaars. The general hostility against Muslims. My brothers. My brahmin father. My whoring myself to the world. Accepting the ways of Hindu India-Muslim India-Christian India-Sikh India. Fcuk you, you religio-casto mongrels. You cocker-spaniel-disguised-strays. You St. Bernard-wannabes. You saffron-robed-religious-disinfectants. You green-loving-five-times-namazee-terrorists. You sister-fcuking-tonga-riding demi celebrities. You know what you’re doing to the world????

You half-livered-one-testicled monsters. You religious fanatics. You Hindu-Muslim-Sikh-Christian-Dalit-Agri-Junglee-Jhopadpatti-hating sea-faced-building-walas. O, my Bombay bleeds. My Bombay hurts. You bomb-exploding after-life-harem-seekers. And you, the ones with the smirk on your faces - the saffron-clad-masjid-burning-religious-cleansers. You modern-day-21st-century-many-headed-Hitlers. How many lives will your prejudice claim? Did your father fart you out of his ass that you behave so badly?

You Hindus haters. And, you Muslim despisers. You have done us in.

O joy.

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Originally Posted here.

Images of Dombivili — in the news — a North Indian taxi-driver gets the living daylights beaten out of him, while his taxi is destroyed by activists (read; goonda mowalis) belonging to the Maharashtra Nav Nirman Sena.

Dear Raj — pray, listen — give me a chance to change your mind –

Maharashtra is a great state — and its people; magnificent and kind, upright and honest. In the form of Bombay, Maharashtra has given India, its economic headquarters. Agreed. Remember however, that this prosperity was not born, merely on the basis of the potent Marathi blood. No. When people from the south and the north, and the west and the east — all worked together, in brotherhood and love, the greatness of Maharashtra was enhanced — the glory of our great state, Maharashtra, belongs to not just the good people of the soil, but it is also the property of the rest of India who participated in its growth.

Let us not deny people from outside Maharashtra, their right to a shared prosperity. Remember, always, my brother — that we are a part of a larger entity — India. And the constitution says that every Indian has the right of dwell in any location of his choice and pursue prosperity and happiness. It would be unconstitutional to deny anyone this right. Consider for a moment, the thousands of people of Maharashtrian origin, residing currently in some other state of our vast nation — how do you expect them to be treated? Wouldn’t you feel your blood boil with a strange mix of fury and shame if images of these people being beaten up by the local people of that state started flashing in the news? Expect that feeling to have been evoked in the hearts of the good people of Uttar Pradesh over the senseless violence that has ensued in Dombivali and other regions of the Thane district and parts of Bombay after your speech.

After your speech — must make you really proud — and a little afraid. To wield that kind of power over the collective destinies of millions. Raj, please use this responsibility with great caution. The lives of many thousand men, women and children hang in the balance. It is not very late to make amends. Start fresh  — start with tolerance.

Remember, tolerance was something the great Chattrapati preached — I believe, we have forgotten — its not too late to remember.
 

Jai Maharashtra. Jai Hind.

Amit
A proud Maharashtrian

I met an old friend yesterday — at an Indian grocery store in South Florida. He is one of those people who you know throughout your childhood and one day, without warning, suddenly transform into a grotesque personification of adulthood.

Anyway, after the initial surprise at meeting a friend thousands of miles from home, and the exchange of general questions and answers about our current life and purpose of stay in this foreign land, we decided to drive up to Starbucks for coffee. Knowing that this guy was a, errm, I guess there is no good way to say this — knowing that this guy was a tad rigid with money, I offered to buy coffee. Over coffee, he completely turned me off by singing absurd songs of praise for the American way of life and his perverted, off-the-mark, unfair comparisons between Bombay and Miami.

I admit that the streets here are wider and cleaner and the life here is comfortable, however, I believe it is disgusting when people land in America and immediately make inappropriate  and disparaging comments about the country that they lived in for most of their life — a country to which they have everything to owe, and left just a day ago.

I love South Florida, it is like a second home to me – with it’s warm people, wide roads, sunny beaches, small lakes every few miles, safe residential communities, abundant supermarkets and drive thru restaurants. But, I also love my city, Bombay — where the blood and sweat of 18 million people churns to drive the country’s economy and where mom cooks fish curry and rice every Sunday of the year.

When you reflect on your past, very often, you realize that numerous small, seemingly insignificant events and consequential changes have modified the portrait of your personal reality. Most of these reflections, reveal changes which are small in scale and easily ignored. Some reflections however, shed light on parts of your life which have undergone radical transformation and the result of such unconscious transformation has changed the course of your life.

At such times, you realize that you are no longer the same person you were in some recent memory. If you are sensitive, your mind may react with shock to such conclusion. And you may, if the transformation in question has negative repercussions, start making conscious efforts to reverse the transformation.

Such denial is healthy to a certain extent. Beyond a particular threshold (defined conveniently, by the nature of the situation), such denial can lead to emotional injury. It is important to be wary of such denial and make only controlled and externally aided efforts to negate the change. The most effective external aid is the support of family and friends and such support should be solicited aggressively.

However, a large percentage of the times, the transformation in question is positive and it is important to treat the realization of such transformation with the respect it deserves. Often, celebrating such transformation is important to obtain closure. Closure is the single most important factor in the acceptance of personal change.

e the change you want to see in the world.” ~ Gandhi

What do you say to a fellow who has vowed to destroy his brotherhood? Such violent thoughts. Such vile plans! O the foul aura of his being! O the ungodly spite in his prose! Such a monster ought not to be invested upon. No, never! Such insanity should be cast into the darkest, most evil corners of the underworld.

Why do we permit such evil to exist? Why don’t we just ask the Divine Being to strike such evil down? Why would such monstrosity be allowed to breathe the same air we breathe, live in the same world as we. You and I.

In the increasingly evil, self consumed world that we live in, sometimes, we feel the negative energy drag us down, consume our happiness, destroy our hope, devour our love and infest in us a hardened self sustained source of hatred and materialistic madness.

For a moment, just reflect upon the evil that has plagued our world since the beginning of this new century. We need to wake up to reality. The world is a mess, right now. And we seem to have submitted to the grim stage of evil and destruction it presents today.

Men and women, my fellow citizens of the world, pray for a vocation! A call from the Divine Being Himself. So He may wake us from the deep slumber of ignorance. Escape from the prison of self content and comfort — because these just inspire rest.

Sharpen your blades, O brethren. Let us form an army and restore our world!

Viva Revolution!

Over the last couple of years I have made(for no apparent reasons), deliberate attempts to distance myself from Web 2.0, RSS, WordPress etc. I just had too much going on in my life — transition from student life to professional life, coping with lifestyle related health issues(hypertension, tachydermia etc), health related paranoia, a search for directions in personal and professional life, change of my geographical location and a mental struggle to quit smoking.

 I’m happy to reflect that I did stay on the positive side of most of these issues (and FYI, I did manage to quit smoking — I’ve been smoke-free for over one year now). However, all of these issues kept me away from something I devoted most of my serious student life to — recreational technology and the Internet. Not entirely, however — I did make feeble attempts to keep the fire burning through my much neglected blog at http://www.xanga.com/Too_Brown and I have been avidly reading a number of weblogs and technical forums. 

So, not surprisingly, I had a hard time setting up this website. Most of the issues were caused due to my haste. I initially signed up at blogger(also known as blogspot — a Google service) and signed up for toobrown.com from Google Apps. Google actually uses GoDaddy as the domain registrar. Very soon, I realized that blogger was not what I wanted. I wanted something I had a greater level of control over. Like the ability to SSH into my server and install applications. And use FTP.

 I signed up for these services at HostMonster. However, my domain was (and is) still hosted by GoDaddy. I managed to integrate these by changing the Nameserver DNS hosts over at GoDaddy to those served by HostMonster. However, the change is still propogating to all the DNS systems across the Internet. One peculiar issue I noticed is, while I can access my new HostMonster hosted blog through toobrown.com from here in Florida, an individual sitting in Utah or Arizona still hits my old pages hosted by GoDaddy. I did some research and apparently, it takes a while for all the DNS systems on the Internet to recognize the change.

 Finally, WordPress — I cant really say I had any real difficulties setting it up. I installed the latest version 2.3.1 with reasonable ease on my Linux server and also uploaded some layouts and common plugins. I’m really impressed by the manner in which WordPress has been designed. The design is clean and the implementation is near-flawless, to say the very least.