Getting back to my favorite topic, Food! So T and I went to this shop in Sector 22 which I know has existed for a while but we never go to anyway. We happened to find red rice sitting there. Now the last time I ate this rice was in Bhutan except for the Lotus Brand Red Rice that is perhaps the only agricultural export of Bhutan to the US, I have never seen this rice anywhere out of the dragon kingdom. I know it is grown in Manali though and there is quite another variety that is available in Kerala as well.

 So what better to eat the red rice with than some Emadashi. Emadashi is perhaps the most famous food of Bhutan and is cooked in virtually every household.It is a dish that is made out of red or green fresh chills and cheese. I had cooked a variant of Emadashi last week and this time I decided to do Emadashi with potatoes. My stomach had been feeling a bit iffy and I was not quite sure if could handle the neat

by itself. I was quite pleased with the result even though all I did have was processed cheese in the fridge. Hell I do not really care because I have seen the Bhutanese happily cooking with that as well on more than one occasion.

 So I may hasten to add that I have survived the night of the red chills and lived to blog. I am hoping to post some more interesting food experiments in the future. So stay tuned….

This brings me to my main topic. The Delhi High Court has decriminialized gay sex in India but is that really enough when it comes to making the playing field even in our country? Its not about decriminalizing gay sex, it is about making discrimination a criminal act. The courts in India may have decriminalized the very act of making love between two men but thats about it. They have not done anything else. You can still beat the hell out of your son or daughter for being gay. You can still deny a gay couple a room on rent, you can even terminate a gay employee for just having a different sexual orientation but the best part is if you happen to be the government you can deny rights and services that are given without the blink of an eye to “normal” straight couples.

Who is the government to judge people on the type of their relationships? Why should they hold a straight marriage of one day in more esteem than a gay partnership of lets say six years? Do they charge gay people a different rate of tax? Are they exempt from VAT? The fundamental of a democracy is that you get represented if you pay taxes. Where do we see gay representation in this government? The government here goes out of its way to balance a ministry with just the right mix of caste, religion and god knows what else. I am not advocating that this is a right approach in the first place because people in government ought to be nominated because they have the skills. What I am saying however is that there should be no discrimination if some homosexual person does have the skills for the job. Perhaps in a nation of one billion there is not a single gay person up to the mark for being a minister in the Government of India.

I think it is time to expose this sham that there is equality of any sort in this country. People who have a different sexual orientation have absolutely no chance of being able to stand up to governmental bullying unless they demand their fair share. At each step of life the Government of India ensures that the concerns and rights of sexual minorities are simply ignored because they do not want to touch this issue, no not even with a 30 foot long barge pole. The excuses are numerous, opposition from “society”, religion and sometimes they even manage to invoke culture. However the government opposes so many things that are embedded in Indian culture and religions. Why do they protect interests of scheduled castes and tribes? In fact they have criminalized any discrimination against lower castes. They have provided for affirmative action and you know what I agree. I agree that no one should be discriminated against on the basis of how they were born and in which family they grew up. I also demand that no one should be discriminated against on who they choose to sleep with and in what kind of relationship they choose to spend their life.

The Supreme Court has been rambling about live in relationships. Lets just legalize those irrespective of gender and give everyone the same rights. Whether it be straight people who are living together without being married or people of the same gender. I mean the same rights in immigration, the same rights in estate laws and the same rights in being near your loved one when he or she breathes his last breath. It is the responsibility of the state to dispense equality before law but it is also a fundamental right of every citizen in the Indian constitution! Anything less than this would be cheating and thuggery. Just getting courts to drop an unconstitutional law is not enough, the government needs to show that their money is where their mouth is! Otherwise the next time your government decides to preach democracy in the world you might just end up having egg on your face.

1 ) Evade Tax :  Okay the first one is pretty much obvious. It happens legally as well as illegally almost everywhere in the world. Religious organizations and personalities consider it their birth right to swindle the public out of the revenue due to them. By a rough estimate almost 5000 crores of Rupees flow in to India. The largest receiver of the booty is a religious trust run by a late godman who among other things has been accused of child abuse.According to the law none of the money that is received as a donation can be diverted towards a profit making effort, well it would be safe to say that no one really follows that. Oh and the fact that religion is not taxed in the first place directly and only donations for wholly religious purposes are taxed at 50% but most faith based trusts can get wholly tax exempt status. You only have to turn a few pages of a daily paper to read about anonymous donations of diamond studded crowns or ornaments, donations of bullion or other things to realize that people are effectively donating their ill gotten untaxed income to seek forgiveness in their next lives.

2 ) Be a perv : Okay this one is going to touch a few nerves. In a country that looks down upon public nudity of any sorts it is funny that if you are naked in the public for religious purposes. It is quite alright. God forbid if you just want to frolic around in your birthday suit for your own pleasure. There are whole type of fierce mendicants, yogis, monks etc etc happily walking about butt naked. The police will not dare touch them for the fear of being lynched by their angry and equally fierce devotees. However a touch of innocent public nakedness is not all that happens in the garb of faith. Sex orgies in cremation grounds, hanging things by your genitalia and kidnapping minors  for forced sexual acts is quite common. One would be forgiven almost every depravity, in fact you might even get a governmental minister or two to protect your arse depending on who you are just as long as you have them on your followers list. Oh and one of the perks of being a religious leader in India is that you can always release a sex tape. If you do it as a lay person you will be ruined forever but no one cares after a while if you are holier than everyone else.

3 ) Encroach Land : Whether it be private or whether it be government land. Religious organizations of all shapes and sizes are sitting on billions of dollars worth of land in India. Some of them have been doing so for eons and really have no titles to these properties. Some have raised structures over these properties and if the government ever tries to demolish these there is always a danger of a riot or two. Any emerging yoga guru or mini godman’s first act is to open an ashram or 30. Where they get the money to buy this land is seldom investigated. Some of them genuinely get donated patches of land and yet some others decide to just take over a piece or two. No questions asked.

4 ) Start a riot : Even in normal circumstances, Indians are easy to offend. Bring in religious matters and they get quite testy. Strangely they are seldom tolerant of views that differ from theirs. One community openly makes fun or says disparaging things about the others. Various animals are invoked in internet chat rooms to torment each other. Blasphemy after blasphemy follows. Sometimes though things go out of hand and a riot ensues. So far the Hindus have fought the Muslims, Christians, and Sikhs. Its usually Majority VS. Minority though there can be other instances. Several people die, billions are lost in business and many political leaders emerge after every such instance.

5 ) Suppress individual choices : You can get alcohol banned, you can get beef banned, hell one town even managed to get eggs banned. Depends on the geography and the religion but you can get things that you do not endorse banned entirely. It does not matter that there may be people around you that do not share your beliefs. Please adjust. Its ridiculous how religion has managed to elbow its way in to a secular state and impose its will through legislation passed by the state. They do not consider for a second how the laws will affect the broader populace except the community that endorses such a law. The right to live your life the way you want….Forget about it.

6 ) Sell miracle cures : Prayers can heal. Well in some cases they might actually. In others though its more doubtful. We have yoga gurus who make ridiculous claims of healing AIDS and Cancer. In any other country these people would have been stopped from making such claims unless they could demonstrate the efficacy of their claims in a scientific manner. No sir in India you can actually buy TV time to go on air and sell your magic potions for ridiculous amounts of money. Just turn on any channel after midnight and you can buy yourself a cure for everything from Arthritis to Zadik Barak Levin Syndrome.

7 ) Waste public money : The amount of tax payer money that goes in to overtly religious events is ridiculous. Not only does the government spend millions on sending people to pilgrimages, it spends more still on providing security and transport. It effectively is providing subsidies in a secular state for people to practice their faith which is a private affair. Our leaders spend precious public resources attending religious events using transport paid for by the public, security paid for by the public and of course they donate public land to some pretty rich religious organizations.  No one ever dares to question these actions because everyone is afraid of starting a riot anyway.

8 ) Silence all free speech : There are some pretty nasty laws in India that were enacted to keep a semblance of communal harmony. Well if everyone minded their own business anyway there would be communal harmony but in any case these laws prevent free speech which is a fundamental right under the constitution. Politicians and their religious overlords can often use these laws to intimidate people who speak their mind. Banning books should be unheard of in a democracy but its quite usual in the worlds largest one.

9 ) Bring life to a halt : Well this can be both literal and otherwise. Every day or if i dare say every moment there is one faith or another taking out a procession in some city in India. At all times of the day or night. When this happens people choke narrow streets or even highways and block all traffic. God help you if you are an ailing patient in an ambulance or if you are waiting for an emergency crew to rescue you some place when one of these events take place. Although God will probably not be able to. These processions happen and all traffic laws that exist anywhere in the world are put aside. Why? Who gives permissions for these events? Hold your breath. The Police do, they even provide them with escorts…

10 ) Do Drugs  and get drunk: This is a fairly innocent one in my mind but all anti narcotic laws in India can not stop you from doing drugs if you do it for a religious high. Cannabis, opium whatever it may be, you name it. There are events where alcohol is distributed without any regard to public drunkenness laws However if you want to get high on your own you will end up behind the bars pretty quickly.

It was a bit chilly in the evening and as we settled down to our dinner I noticed that the restaurant door was open. It had got stuck perhaps because of a faulty hydraulic door closer. In any case several patrons of the restaurant walked in but none of them had the decency to close the door. I was a bit far away from the door and there were many tables in between the door and us. The open door was especially bothersome because of the draft. After a while a small kid got up and closed the door. None of the full-grown up adults near the door or even those that took advantage of it being open and walked in bothered to close it.

Now the lack of manners in this part of the world has been written about a lot and I certainly do not intend to rant on and on about it but I sometimes do wonder if the way people behave with each other here and how they treat strangers leads to a certain impression on outsiders. We do have a great campaign going on in India about attracting foreign investors and India being a great investment destination but does anyone really want to live and work in a country where people are so uncouth and uncivilised? Alright we can go on and argue great lengths about how standards of culture differ globally but there are certain things that are common across the world.

As I remember growing up Indian people were not that rude actually. As the country grows richer and more prosperous instead of the people getting more refined and cultured an opposite effect can be observed. Nouveau riche sometimes consider it beneath them to really do things that a few years ago were considered essential to function in the world at large. No one holds doors open for other people any longer, no one thanks people for the services they provide, a lot of this new section of our population even refuses to acknowledge that others do exist around them.

So why do we find it so unnecessary to be just a bit nicer? It’s not really something that costs money. It only builds good will among each other and it makes the country a pleasant place for those who take the pains to visit us or do business with us. The answer lies in deep attachments to their own families. I have often observed that the top priority for most people here is the welfare and prosperity of their own family even if it comes at the cost of the society at large. It’s something that can be observed in daily life at large. Be it trying to reach the office earlier than everyone else to suck up to the boss by trying to run a motor rally on the public roads or jumping a queue to get cinema tickets for your own family while elbowing waiting people out of your way.

People have forgotten that if they can elbow their way to get the things that they want or if they only think about themselves at large they are creating a society in which their own children will grow up to be bullied and edged out by those that are considerably stronger than them. Dog eat dog can only last only for so long. Of course I would be stupid and naïve to believe that a blog post can make an impact on how the public at large behaves but I think I would be even more naïve if I just ignored how people behave at large in public and did not write a word about it at all.