No, this is not a history lesson :)

Last November, I went around Secunderabad clicking pictures with a borrowed Nokia 3650. Now, I'm going public with the outcome of that exercise :) The pics are hosted here and my personal favorite among them would be the one below, coz of the contrast in colors:

I've got nothing more to loose(n)!! Not my purse strings coz there ain't much in it, anyway. Not my morals too, I suppose............. not that i'm a very upright person, but I prefer safety, more than anything else. Not my belt definitely..... it has to be in its tightest position, considering my purse and its scarce contents. Maybe I need to loose my sanity, so that the things around me don't affect me much.

I've always been a looser. Loose contacts make me loose contacts - exactly when someone on the Net who I think is interesting reciprocates interest, the loose connection takes over and I end up loosing all my patience. At other times, a slew of viruses are let loose on my PC (they say you need to watch out for these things before deciding to visit those sites) and I loose all my valuable files, including those downloaded (instructional) video clips.

I hate all the loose things. Loose change....... not good for anything unless you have amassed a real pile - even then, people look up and down if you do decide to use your stockpile to pay for anything. What a way to loose respect! Loose remarks......... i've made a lot of them only to end up loosing the love of my near and dear ones. Loose motion....... well! no further explanations!! Loose nuts........ especially those on the two wheels of your two wheeler. You could be loosing your life coz of some nuts, like it almost happened to me once. Luckily, there was a temple in the vicinity and divine mercy showered on me, preventing the inevitable (a God-fearing mechanic's explanation, not mine) Loose clothes......... never trusted their wearers - the popes, the priests, the nuns, the swamis, the mullas, the sants, the babas, the monks. Ain't it funny that they all dress similarly? They successfully made me loose faith in God and religion.

I better stop and don't loose any further time and sleep writing this blog........

Disclaimer: No pun intended at the expense of some of my favorite bloggers :D

A few days ago, a Panchayat (village court) in Madhya Pradesh ordered a weird form of punishment which was also carried out to perfection - that three women of a given family be raped. Their offence? Being the kith and kin of a rape accused. Tit for tat! If this sounds like law of the jungle, then what do we make of the High Courts and the Supreme Court that pass death sentances to accused criminals?

There's a raging debate going on, on whether Dananjoy Chaterjee should be hanged or not. For the latecomers, he happens to be awaiting his execution for raping and murdering a school girl, some 13 years ago. His mercy petition is now before the president. "Beasts like him should be put to death, and shown no mercy" and other such typical middle class sentiments have been echoing across the media. Joining the bandwagon are the women's lib types (just coz the crime-list included 'rape') stepping up the general decibel levels, thereby obfuscating the fundamental question of whether death sentance is a dark justice or not.

Do the courts have the power to take one's life? Unfortunately, they do, in this country. But should they have that power? Who gave them that? Who legalized their murders? If the courts are justified in passing death sentances, then isn't the above-mentioned panchayat too justified in passing the verdict it thought fit? Dont both examples involve a tit for tat? A revenge? If a society is justified in taking a collective revenge against its offenders (the rapists, murderers, assassins, terrorists and the likes), then in what way is the collective psyche of that society any better than that of the offenders themselves (who are labeled 'beasts' and so forth, by the glitterati that appear on television debates)? Is an 'eye for an eye' the only solution that we could think of, after thousands of years of progress?

Monetizing expertise........ Currency of the information age.... Knowledge capital...... buzzwords galore! For a species that's taken to packaging and marketing water, or even air....... this is not a very deviant behavior. Attach a price tag for everything. Mother's womb for rent! What else?

Evolution - the ongoing process which resulted in micro-organisms eventually transforming themselves into humans (who are now digging into the very same micro-organisms and inventing new forms of life in the name of genetic engineering). 'Evolve' was what all these life forms did, whenever the going got tough. They evolved and overcame whatever limited them. Those that couldn't, perished. The bacteriae got bigger, the fish jumped on to the land, the crawlers / the reptiles developed strong legs to stand up and run faster, the giraffes stretched their neck out to reach those high-hanging leaves, and the four legged baboons stood erect and walked on two feet - stories of how life evolved to get the better of adversities.

The humans evolved too - discovered fire, wheel, medicine, agriculture, weaponry, housing, power - their potential knew no bounds. They kept evolving - transferring whatever they learnt between each other, spreading knowledge like fire. Their collective wisdom propelled them to greater heights - the heights that we are in today. Tempting science fiction writers to dream the undreamable...... and normal folks like us to wish for the impossible........

Now i'll apply some brakes. Humanity faces some of the worst diseases and the cure that is available is beyond an average human's reach. In fact, the segment which is most prone to acquire the disease is the least likely to afford the cure. While knowledge freely flowed like water in the earlier times resulting in a 'collective upliftment' of the species, we now have a situation whereby knowledge is pocketized - available only in isolated pockets.It has become an exclusive preserve and is contributing to a 'selective upliftment' of the species, in contrast to the earlier times.

Knowledge is on its way to becoming a rarity. It's junk that's floating around in the garb of 'information overload'. Whosoever originates real knowledge holds on to it dearly in the name of 'intellectual property', making it unavailable for the rest of the humanity. It's a different matter that their creations borrowed heavily on inherited wisdom, for which no royalties / compensations are considered necessary. The fundamental laws of science and arts, intelligence acquired over thousands of years, all those go uncompensated for and get leveraged without a second thought. But the '