Say what?

I tuned into NDTV’s news this afternoon, and had to listen to news that the Director of CBI uttered this at a recent event:

If you can’t prevent rape, enjoy it!

And of course, it raised all kinds of responses. It doesn’t matter what event that were. It doesn’t matter what the context was. I have absolutely no clue as to what was running in his head while he uttered this analogy. But it’s wrong. Just wrong. One can’t make a statement like that in public, all the more because of the position they hold. Even if they give out an apology. I can hardly imagine the state of my country, if the Director of CBI, heading a body that investigates crimes, jokes about victims enjoying rape. It’s beyond the context of rape: it’s talking without using his head, and that’s just preposterous to do at the stature that he holds. It’s outrageous. There’s absolutely no defense. I think he ought to leave: be fired, or just resign. It’s important for people to know that statements have consequences. That’s it. Bye bye, Mr. Ranjit Sinha.

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The post I hold

It has been a long time since I’ve posted on this blog. A lot of things have happened in my life in the past months. I progressed well with my research. I made it to quite a few conferences. I learnt french (lots of expressions included). I became a youtube junkie and then weaned off it. I lost my best friend. I started watching a lot of news, Indian news especially (and wikipedia to cover up for my lapses in history). I got married. I got doing long distance with my wife (previously fiancée, and pre-previously girlfriend). I got tickets made to get back home. I’m counting down.

But this blog post isn’t about my recent life history. I’m posting this online, to tell that I have been posting a lot of letters and postcards lately. Whom to, you might ask. Well about half of them flow in to my love. The rest to absolute strangers spread across the world. It’s made possible through this platform called postcrossing. Nick first told me about it, and it was just amazing!

Here’s a brief of how it works: you ask them for a random address in the globe – they give you one with a postcard reference number – you pick a postcard, a stamp, pen down whatever you like and post it – the recipient upon receipt of the postcard registers the postcard – two happy people with random stats on their profiles. But the cooler part is the moment your postcard gets delivered, you get sent one from another random person across. It sometimes really lights me up in the evening when I open the postbox to find letters/postcards from someone other than my bank, caf or the prefecture.

Go on, go ahead and try it. Tongue-fu lady, a gentle reminder to you too. And thanks for reminding me to write. 🙂 Happy postcrossing!

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