of balika vadhus and nagasaki

“ Saans leti hain jo katputliyaan
Unki bhi aati hain koi doliyaan
Aansuon mein bheegi hain khamoshiyan”

Wow! Javed Akhtar has managed, very skillfully, to capture, the imagery of an Indian wedding. These lines never fail to give me goose pimples every time i listen.

Suddenly, I find that a horde of women centric series have mushroomed on the television. Not that they weren’t always that way, but the ones I refer to right now are typically set in some village (obviously in Rajasthan), and churn out episode after episode of glycerine and suffer agonies that Hercules could not have endured.

Which used to make me wonder, why? Is there such a dearth of topics?
And, the other day, I was answered. As a part of the show, one of these sob factories displayed a shocking piece of data. It said that in the recent years, the female population in five states in India has fallen to nearly 800 females per 1000 males.

Living in a metropolis and being born into a well educated family has ensured that such news items remain’ news items’ for me and, thankfully, nothing more. But being an ardent fan of science in general it deeply saddens me that people do have not learnt to appreciate it in its true magnificence.

Knowledge, for its own sake alone, alas, has always been the ‘cake’of a few.
Driven by commercial or social prejudices, humanity is no stranger to its gross misuse. One needs only to look back at two days in a certain August to know what I’m referring to.
I sometimes feel that all those venerable men and women of science were born too early. Decency, compassion and infinite respect for Life should have had more chance to take root.

Like Spiderman said, “With great power comes great responsibility.” And it’s no use having power if you don’t realize this.