AAP: BJP's never imagined problem

In 2009 BJP lost to Congress, it was a devastating period in the NDA Camp. After all it was their 2nd consecutive defeat at the Lok Sabha Elections. 

In 2004, BJP lost in the leadership of Atal Bihari Vajpayee and then in 2009, they lost in the leadership of LK Advani. Since both of their senior most leaders lost one by one, BJP went into depression.

In the next couple of years, Congress did big scams and BJP was somehow delighted with this, knowing this will crumble the UPA govt and obviously BJP will be chosen as the new government, a majority of votes finally looked like a possibility.

In April 2011, Anna Hazare and Arvind Kejriwal, though very active social workers but not popular people started India against Corruption. A movement against the numerous corruptions done by the UPA govt; NDA supported this movement as it was their ladder to being at the centre [in spite of the fact that coal scam is running since the time NDA was at centre and Pramod Mahajan is one of the accused of the 2G scam, but let it be and move on with the post]. Arun Jaitley, Baba Ramdev [associated with BJP], all started behaving like revolutionaries. After all this was the ticket to PMO for a BJP leader. 

It was near the end of 2012, when Kejriwal decided to form a party himself as the Janlokpal bill never came into existence and BJP waved off AK’s Aam Aadmi Party as a non dangerous entity to their ambitions. 

In the mid 2013, it became virtually clear that Narendra Modi will be the PM Candidate for BJP. Congress became synonyms with Corruption and BJP were actually the only choice for people. It was that time when suddenly Gujarat became Gujarat Model and Modi was being projected like Barrack Obama. This even went worse and NaMo became a household term. So, that was it, BJP decided that there isn’t a single party that can beat them at the next LS Elections.

Meanwhile AAP was nothing but a wannabe for everyone who holds power, politicians, media, bureaucrats everyone laughed them off but on 8th December 2013, Arvind Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi Party won 40 percent of the seats in Delhi. This is when NDA skipped a heartbeat and started to worry even though they had more seats than AAP.

AAP formed a govt in Delhi and started working like Vigilantes, they were active all the time, planning things, working on it and sometimes doing mistakes as well but the bigger picture was that here we got a government that looked different and positive and BJP started worrying more and more every day. AK resigned on 14th February 2014 after 49 day governance, the reason was Janlokpal bill not getting enough support from the opposition. You can debate over it as AK wanted to become the PM and not just a CM; but I don’t like to believe that AK doesn’t have an idea that being a PM is not a possibility for him right now, so I respect his decision for showing least affection to a post as important as a CM.

AAP started their election campaign like a national party. AAP is fighting the 16th general elections from more than 350 seats and what could have been an easy BJP Victory is now spoiled by Aam Aadmi Party. Now once AAP declared that they will fight the LS, suddenly the Hindu BJP became a Secular party and the ease with which they used terms like KAR SEVA vanished. 

No matter who wins, but deep within BJP knows that AAP is a pain in the ass for them and will not let them rob the nation like UPA did all these years. Only 50 people from AAP in the LS and every session at the LS will be a disappointment for both UPA and NDA. No matter who becomes the PM, AAP will make sure that never ever again; a bill gets passed by doing a blackout inside the Lok Sabha.

Congress always knew that they will lose at the 16th LS Election; this was a googly for BJP who were anticipating a clean sweep but is now facing a bigger threat. Since when BJP started talking about corruption; let me tell you, BJP has been in opposition for 34 years [with some experience in the centre] and it doesn't make them less powerful. An opposition can stop the govt at many levels to do corruption and if not anything, they can at least develop their constituencies. Why Varanasi is still not developed even though Murli Manohar Joshi, a prominent BJP figure was the MP there. 

But No, every party wants to be at the centre, constituencies are nothing but a number that adds up to become 272.

One Stop Crisis Centre

If you watched the first episode of the 2nd season of SatyaMev Jayate last Sunday, you must have come across this term. But that was not the first time One Stop Crisis Centre [OSCC] was coined in India. In February 2013, The Justice Usha Mehra Commission recommended the establishment of OSCC after the Nirbhaya Gang Rape that happened on December 16th 2012.

This Centre should ideally have a woman gynaecologist, a police officer of at least the rank of an inspector (preferably a woman police officer), a woman counsellor from an NGO which is concerned about rape victims, a forensic expert, a skilled nurse and an approachable Judicial Magistrate so as to record the statement by the victim and ensure speedy action and justice. 

OSCC should be inside designated hospitals. OSCC should have each of these officials available at one place so that a rape victim can explain her trauma at once and not over and over again. Within this centre, there should be a toilet and shower facility.

Government employees in India have a tendency to ignore issues which makes them uncomfortable or if it is a task where there is no money to earn, so the officials recruited for this centre should have a full time job at the One Stop Crisis Centre and they should be paid well.

Apart from Rapes, the OSCC should also handle cases of Sexual Abuse and Child Abuse. In abroad, these centres handle Domestic Violence cases as well, but given the large number of rape cases and domestic violence cases, we need individual centres for each.

Although the recommendation by the Justice Usha Mehra Commission is done more than a year ago, no substantive development has taken place. We as a blogger need to raise our voice in a sophisticated way so I want others to write about this issue and share this article if you can.

Thanks to WriteTribe for making me ask myself, how I am going to contribute to make our country a better place for Woman. 

This article about OSCC awareness is my little contribution.

Happy International Women’s Day

-Amrit Rukhaiyaar

Death

She always fascinated death.

And that night, when those men ran after her, she had a thrilling smile on her face.

They cornered her and stabbed her.

She was dying.

There was blood.

Yet she carried a satisfactory smile all along.

She experienced death after all.

And she knew it’s just a dream.

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This post is part of the Write Tribe Festivals of Words-3 and today's prompt is 55 fiction.

"A Walk To Remember"

This post is part of the Write Tribe Festivals of Words-3 and today's prompt is Inspiring Stories.

I am going to talk about an important event of my life which happened in September 1990, when I was only 11 months old. Yes, you can figure out my date of birth now. When I was a child, sometimes my mother used to tell me this incident whenever I asked her to narrate a story.

So, it was a summer night; my brother recently watched a Naseeruddin Shah’s film. This film had a scene where an infant kid walked when he was only 8 months old. So my ambitious 8 year’s old elder brother thought why can’t his real brother walk, when he is already 11 months old.

He decided he will make me walk the next morning. He slept well that night and woke up with the determination that today my little brother will be walking like that kid in the movie. 

It was 5AM; everyone was still sleeping when my brother was all set to launch me just like a space scientist is all set to launch his Satellite Vehicle. He took me with him and worked hard with me for an hour or two, failed many times to make me learn the way to walk and then he did it. 

I was walking for the first time and he was the first one to witness that moment. Every time my mother used to tell me that story, I used to be so fascinated. Not only with the story, but by the determination with which my brother accomplishes everything, he always had a strong way with life. 

Once he failed in a terminal examination [mathematics, I guess] when he was in standard 8th and he took it to heart so much that he never ever failed in his life again and in the process, he became an IITian, got a job, resigned, then became an MBA from National University of Singapore and got a big shot job at some big shot MNC. I am not bragging about his achievements but trying to explain his point, which is not to lose again ever because failing was a sour experience and he made up his mind that it’s something he will never ever taste again.

Now I am not sure, whether this story is inspiring or not, but yes, this is special, this is real close to my heart.

-Amritt

Director's Cut by MK Raghavendra: Book Review

This post is part of the Write Tribe Festivals of Words-3 and today's prompt is Book Review.

I love films, not only watching it but also reading and knowing it. I can read anything that has Cinema as the background. This is what attracted me to MK Raghavendra's "Director's Cut: 50 Major Filmmakers of the Modern Era."

Director's Cut is a take on the film making styles of the greatest directors of the modern era. The book starts with an introduction section,which explains the pattern using which Mr. Raghavendra chose the best 50 directors among all the great filmmakers we have ever watched. 

The Pattern is actually very intelligent, he chose 1960 as a cut-off date as he believes the french new wave, which is one of the most influential movements in cinema commenced around this time and cinema became Modern only during this era. 

Since the title of the book contains the term Modern Era; we shouldn't have any grudges with the Author for not including legendary filmmakers like Billy Wilder, Alfred Hitchcock, Charles Chaplin and Orson Welles as their greatest works was witnessed before the 1960s. Instead he put the spotlight on directors like Luis Buñuel, Werner Herzog and Béla Tarr. 

There are 50 chapters in this book, each dedicated to a director. Beneath the name of the director, there is a tagline defining the basic theme they have followed in almost all of their films. For example, below Steven Spielberg, you will see the words "Family Matters." 

Spielberg always portrayed family as a valuable entity in most of his films like there was a family that struggled together in "Jurassic Park", hundreds of Polish families were saved in "Schindler's List", a mother and son was reunited in "Saving Private Ryan". A Mecha [Robot] was given the love of a mother in "Artificial Intelligence" and a man returns to his family in The "Terminal." 

MK Raghavendra also included legendary directors Akira Kurosawa, Ingmar Bergman, Woody Allen, Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino, David Lynch, David Lean, Satyajit Ray and many other legends. It's good to see inclusion of acclaimed regional film directors from India such as Adoor Gopalakrishnan from the Malayalam Cinema and Ritwik Ghatak from the Bengali Film Industry.

Some disappointment you may have because it leaves modern directors Christopher Nolan, Paul Thomas Anderson and Alfonso Cuaron. This book also ignores legends like Francis Ford Coppola and Roman Polanski but still the 50 that it talks about are legends and you will love understanding the approach with which they make films.

-Amrit Rukhaiyaar

This review is also associated with Indiblogger and HarperCollins.

Freedom

As a part of Write Tribe festival of words-3, the prompt for today is Free Write. As Evident with the name itself, you need to be free without worrying too much about the words and how it may look and write about anything that comes to your heart. 

The word free or freedom reminds me of many things; I will just write it one by one without caring about how it may sound.

1. childhood:, the time when "free" has its original meaning in your life. As a kid you don't have to do "this" to avoid "that", or any shit like that, a kid just lives and sleeps when he is tired. Being a kid is being free and nothing can be more free like that.

2. Free to spend: Money is not evil, trust me. only you need to spend it. Spend it for good, buy some food and share it with a poor child without worrying about the herd he/she will bring with him/her. Money has a weird rule and it really works, the more you give, the more it will come to you. 

3. Freedom of Speech: We live in a country where freedom of speech is a right. you know the importance of it, don't you? Enjoy it, but do not exploit it. Use it for good, bring a revolution if you see evil things happening around you, what ever you do, do not make a fool of yourself. Let everyone respect you for a speech you make, at least once in life.

4. Freedom also reminds me of Jonathan Livingston Seagull: that bird who chose to learn great levels of flying and wanted to 'live' instead of surviving by finding food with the flock. He chose freedom and solitude for living his dreams. It's a book everyone of you should read. 

Image by Google

Okay, I am gonna stop now and post it like that only. After all you don't get to be free everyday.

-Amritt 

"A Potpourri of Vestiges" #BlogLove

This post is a part of Write Tribe Festival of Words-3 and the prompt for Day 2 is Blog Love. 

Since I am asked to write about a blog I love, the first blog that comes to my mind is A Potpourri of Vestiges.

Image Courtesy: A Potpourri of Vestiges

A potpourri of vestiges is the home to the Avant-Garde, Auteur-Driven, Thought Provoking Cinema, that's how Murtaza likes to define his movie blog. Murtaza follows the best of cinema, that is, from Nosferatu [1922] to Dedh Ishqiya [2014].

As you open this blog, you come across a carousel panel where you find pictures from La Strada, Harakiri, Pyaasa, Citizen Kane or some other classical film by some legendary filmmaker. The reason why I like his blog is because Murtaza is not the regular movie reviewer type but he only chooses the greatest of cinema to review on his blog.

The first time I came across his blog when I was searching about Akira Kurosawa and Google landed me on to his blog. you won't find much of popular cinema on his blog but the critically acclaimed works that has international recognition. Murtaza's Top 100 movies is an authentic list that every movie enthusiast will love. I, being a movie blogger as well, look up to "a potpourri of vestiges" and try to learn anything I can learn about Movie Writing.

About Murtaza [in his own words]

"Murtaza Ali is an independent film critic, sports writer, and blogger based out of Delhi, India. He is the Founder/Editor of the movie blog, A Potpourri of Vestiges. He has been writing movie reviews at IMDB for over five years. He has been associated with F1 India as a content editor. He is also on the panel of reviewers at UltimateReviews, CinemaChronciles, FrontierWeekly, and PaGaLGuY. His education spans science, technology, and management. Cinema is not only his passion but also his greatest obsession. His all-time favorite movie-makers are Akira Kurosawa, Stanley Kubrick, Luis Bunuel, Andrei Tarkovsky, Charles Chaplin, Orson Welles, Federico Fellini, Ingmar Bergman, Satyajit Ray, Fritz Lang, Sergio Leonne, Francis Ford Cuppola, Martin Scorsese, and Lars von Trier." 

-Amritt Rukhaiyaar

"buying" the happiness

"that's the one" his 17 years old son pointed at the Yamaha Electric Guitar in the mall.

"you sure, you want that thing, that's more expensive than our lifestyle" Dad remarked.

"But Dad, I don't wanna learn music on a cheaper one" His son demanded.

"Okay we will work on it some other time" The single parent said.

"Can't you work on buying me some happiness ever?" the motherless son complained for their poverty.

Three weeks later on his birthday, his son woke up to see the same guitar in his bed room.

His son loved the surprise, "thanks dad, you did work on it"

"Yes, Indeed" he replied.

Only it cost him his own kidney.

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This Post is a part of the Write Tribe Festival of Words-3 and today's prompt was a "9 sentence fiction"