[Reader-list] EACH NIGHT(Jamia Shootings)

Aditya Raj Kaul kauladityaraj at gmail.com
Fri Sep 26 11:24:26 IST 2008


Partha ji,

I respect your opinion; and agree with much of it. But, unfortunately, it
has become a trend now that whenever there is some major encounter or arrest
(especially of people belonging to a particular community) etc.; not time is
wasted to directly blame, abuse and malign the Police.

Atleast, we should act as honest and supportive citizens, and back the
Police till they prove the case or fail to do that. Unfortunately, these
days we see state bashing just all the time. Its just sick. Time those
individuals "Wake Up".

The Jessica Lall and Priyadarshini Mattoo Case were much different is every
manner and cannot be compared with this. Terrorism, is a much broader
parasite to be taken care of.

If Jamia V-C wanted he could have helped those terrorists with legal aid
"individually" or "privately". He had no right to use money of the
University. Lets be honest; he did this only to save his head among all the
students and faculty. He would have been lynched in public by the very same
day by the terrorists and their supporters.

Was "Priyadarshini Mattoo" who was a student of Law Faculty, Delhi
University provided any legal aid or help ? The answer is very simple - NO.

It was amusing the other day when protests rocked Jamia campus near Ansari
Auditorium, soon after Hasan spoke. The protesters raised slogans against
Media, Police, State etc. But, what was noticed that; there were slogans
raised against Jamia MCRC students and teachers.... lol

Love
Aditya Raj Kaul

On 9/26/08, Partha Dasgupta <parthaekka at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Dear Aditya,
>
> 1.  I think we would all have to agree that there is a major disconnect
> between
>      the initial 'break through' announcements and the facts that are
> coming
>      out.
>
> 2.  Everything said and done, with some of the people giving exams when
> they
>      were supposed to be in another city, etc., the 'official version'
> is becoming
>      extremely patchy.
>
> 3.  Even with all our patriotism / nationalism, all of us have seen
> enough bungling
>      by the police in a number of cases that we take their claims with
> a whole bag
>      of salt (instead of just a pinch) till the facts match the
> initial claims. The Arushi
>      and Jessica cases are recent examples which make this obvious. Presume
>      you would agree on this as Roots in Kashmir was a part of the movement
>      against miscarriage of justice.
>
> 4.  If someone from my school / college was caught for a crime
> (especially someone
>      I know well), my first reaction too would be disbelief.
>
> Rgds, Partha
> ...................
>
>
> On Fri, Sep 26, 2008 at 10:49 AM, Aditya Raj Kaul
> <kauladityaraj at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Interestingly, majority of these "media persons" who have become the
> enemies
> > of a few are pass out from Jamia MCRC. I think Ambreen, Shohini and
> Sabina
> > would agree with me. Here they learnt the art to capture, visualise,
> story
> > angle and depth.
> >
> > Love
> > Aditya Raj Kaul
> >
> > On 9/26/08, shakeb ahmed <ahmed_shakeb at yahoo.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> EACH NIGHT
> >> Each night when the time to go to bed comes it becomes almost a trial.
> Each
> >> night there is a rage inside me…not against the nameless perpetrators of
> a
> >> heinous crime maybe, but against my own self: am I doing enough to
> scream
> >> against something maybe surely bordering on injustice? Am I? I no more
> can
> >> easily return to my bedside readings of J M Coetzee novels and Ian
> Farell
> >> digital photography guides, they both mock me…can I write what madness
> >> Coetzee shaped into a Waiting for the Barbarians, can I not take
> pictures
> >> anymore, something I make my living from and now when the whole of that
> life
> >> is under an overstretched shadow of suspicion, my finger seems
> perennially
> >> seized, there is no easy shutter release anymore!
> >> Not anymore can I doubt what trauma is?
> >> We saw how a decorated policeman dying (in whatsoever mysterious
> >> circumstances) can completely sanctify a gory event replete with bullets
> and
> >> blood. If he would not have died could we as a people, as a nation, had
> more
> >> permissible courage to question this Encounter (all puns intended!).
> What
> >> enrages me and many more out here is: we then saw the watchdog of
> democracy
> >> then really proving itself to be just that - a watching dog without a
> >> question leashed to its master.
> >> Is it really so hard to shake away the infantile druggedness of the
> twenty
> >> somethings thrown down on the ground zero. We hear their lousy attempts
> at
> >> bad poetry, their facts thrown into some nauseous verse, while
> scampering
> >> like parakeets squelching without a shame to get another soundbyte from
> the
> >> only people not too shocked with the proceedings yet – the Special Cell.
> Are
> >> we not a mature enough nation able to sift through this infantile babble
> >> issued from our television sets. How loudly proud I am in these moments
> that
> >> I don't work for a television news channel! Shame on them and their
> >> ludicrous graphics and sfx jamboree!
> >> It at one time looked as if they can have the tongue enough to ask some
> >> uncomfortable questions off the state, but they all fell in line once
> >> comfortably swamped by the police reeling out information floods. Do we
> >> understand with our healthy democratic grown up minds that if you want
> to
> >> undercut an argument, any argument, the best recourse you have to help
> >> yourself is to release a barrage of information right/wrong/good/bad or
> >> whatever, and then the heads fall so confused under this system overload
> >> that they successfully fail to answer even the maiden names of their
> >> mothers…that's how you hack the password to sanity! So do you see this
> >> happening, the unreeling of a mammoth spool here?
> >> Another fact that lied like a lump in my throats: For days since 19th
> >> September the neighborhoods are inundated with television crews numbered
> >> crazy by these very young footsoldiers. Who are these media techies, the
> >> mouthpieces of India's newfound scintillating prosperity and the freedom
> of
> >> its expression?  They are the happy lot whose steadily though very
> slowly
> >> increasing paychecks make it finally possible for them at last to buy
> their
> >> long desired denim and cool T's, and my god they would have killed to
> get to
> >> them; they are often those finally able to take their mommy-daddy to
> that
> >> aggressively seductive shopping mall they would have maybe not missed
> having
> >> died before ever setting their foots inside; these are the proud lot
> whose
> >> auto and house loans are finally getting approved without any pressing
> need
> >> for much paperwork….what would these kids not do to stomp upon their own
> >> kinds and inch their head a few further inches more high on the
> >>   gargantuan impartial ladder of success!!! Its dog eats dog mister! Its
> >> cut-throat all the way dear sir!
> >> You might find it offensive the stating of this banal obvious or biased
> >> diatribe depending on where you come from or where you want to go my
> friend
> >> - but that's what becomes the addiction and lure that catches them quite
> >> young and maybe never leaves them till their hourly demise! And then
> they
> >> are quite well guided missiles in the arsenal of their elderly, very
> well
> >> meaning business bosses These elders well these are very wise in their
> >> economics as well as politics rooted deep in the knowledge of how
> powerful a
> >> bearing they can have on their brothers sitting in the parliament
> benches,
> >> and what goods-of-heaven can flow from the portals of governance if
> forced
> >> to do the occasional golden handshake! So you see these very hardworking
> >> missives of these very well meaning elders all around, and they
> smilingly
> >> 'extract the trust' from you - they interview you for nearly half an
> hour,
> >> they film your narrow alleys, they make their busy notes and promise to
> >>   tell your side of story! But then you sit in front of your television
> >> sets and suddenly wonder if maybe that fateful interview-day you
> >> hallucinated, you merely conjured up this Reporter in the confused
> >> helplessness your circumstances made you fall into, and otherwise you
> >> actually took a trip to the outer space that day missing the appointment
> >> totally: what it all adds up to is that you are nowhere in the news
> story
> >> running on your screen. Or if you are really lucky,  your witness to a
> tv
> >> camera finally is hacked down, tailored to a different cut, stitched
> into a
> >> pattern which fits to a totally different trend of the holy news making.
> >>
> >> What everybody in the neighborhoods should ask any television crew
> asking
> >> them for an appearance is…how would you edit the material – my
> interview,
> >> pictures of my street, the seemingly innocent pointing of camera at that
> >> bicycle riding skull capped Maulana, or the bearded three friends just
> >> standing around the corner…would you be putting soft music in the back
> >> ground, or loud one beaming a sense of danger and trepidation; would you
> be
> >> picture-aspect squeezing these images of us, running unsaid tickers down
> >> below, then suddenly resizing the picture as you violently solarize them
> >> while the very next moment generously splashing them with the color of
> >> mayhem, the vermilion red!
> >> My humble request then to everybody requested to come to the camera is
> that
> >> they must demand a partnered ownership of his or her story trying to
> >> understand the concept with a ferocious rigor. They must surely make it
> >> their duty to ask how their lines to camera and the pictures of their
> >> neighborhood would be edited together even in the case that they don't
> >> understand what technical News Editing means!
> >> Even if I seem a little partisan let me still put in what at one time
> some
> >> black American filmmakers like Spike Lee and others did: at times they
> >> simply tried making it impossible for any white American at that time to
> >> make films on the blacks…our stories, only we would tell was the motto!
> >>
> >> Let me end at this cruel light note:
> >> Today amidst unprecedented almost surreal presence of police the
> students,
> >> faculty, and the like-minded liberal sympathizers of Jamia University
> >> carried out a peace march. I was talking to some of the friends who live
> at
> >> Zakir Nagar and find themselves caught leftrightcenter in this maelstrom
> >> …one of them related this: when police was asked why Inspector Mohan
> Chand
> >> was not wearing a bullet proof vest when he went upto L18, they gave the
> >> lame excuse that many in the special cell are such marksmen as would not
> >> miss a target once even when blindfolded, and Sharma deemed in his
> judgment
> >> therefore maybe not to wear one (even if these are most dreaded
> terrorists
> >> he was about to take up one on one)…this friend then delivers the punch
> – so
> >> shouldn't we then send these guys to Olympics, what a ruckus it would be
> to
> >> win some more gold's, and nobody needs to die too!
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
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>
>
>
> --
> Partha Dasgupta
> +919811047132
>


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