Welcome to Earth, baby!

olinguito

Welcome to Earth, Olinguito!
From now on, we will call your species Olinguito.
Don’t you like the name? It does not matter you like it or not, we will call you Olinguito anyway.
You are living in the cloud forests of Colombia and Ecuador. Your colour is reddish-brown. Quite a common colour for the animals living in those forests. You have a cute teddy bear face. Do you know that you have a cute teddy bear face, cutie? You are about 14-inches long and your tail is also 14-inches long. It makes you look so beautiful! You weigh about 2 pounds. So tiny little raccoon! You are the smallest member of the raccon family. You guys were there, but we didn’t know that you were there. We say we have just ‘discovered’ you. You can ask, ‘were we covered?’ No, you were not covered. But you should know that we look like giants but our brains are not yet giants. We do not know about every little thing of earth. We still have limitations. But you should be happy that we are very excited to find you because you are not mere insects, you are mammals. You have hair, you give birth to babies, you breastfeed your children. You are like us!

We never saw animals like you, at least not in those forests. We saw Olingo, your cousins, but not Olinguito, not you. You are the first new species of carnivore that we have discovered in the western hemisphere in 35 years. Kristofer Helgen, a Smithsonian zoologist is the man behind to find you. Don’t worry, we will not kill you off. We will force some of you to leave the forests, but promise we will take care of you. And we will not let you extinct in near future. Personally I do not like carnivore. Wish you were not flesh eating animals. I know you are like cats, dogs, bears etc. Oh no, I love cats. I can love you too if you do not bite me.
Enjoy life, Olinguito! See you soon in zoos!

Gandhi

I am watching Gandhi on an Indian TV. Today is the Independence Day of India. TV channels are celebrating the day. Gandhi is the father of the nation. Showing Gandhi is part of their celebration. Gandhi is an award winning well produced well directed film. The film won eight Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Director (Richard Attenborough), Best Original Screenplay (John Briley) etc. The film also got Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

I always wonder how the film got so many awards when an important part of Gandhi’s life was ignored. Who knows why the film did not show Gandhi’s sex experiments or Celibacy tests! Gandhi’s sex life is very important to know Gandhi the person. Gandhi started sleeping and bathing naked with young naked girls since 1906. He continued to do that until his death in 1948. 16 to 19 years old young girls were forced to sleep with him every night. Manuben, one of the girls who had to sleep with him, wrote her diaries. She described how she was cursed if she ever hesitated to get naked. Gandhi got angry with her whenever she expressed her desire to marry someone. It was possible for Gandhi to do whatever he liked because he was extremely popular and also because Indian society was deeply misogynistic. There was no proof that those girls were not molested by Gandhi. The girls were asked to keep their mouths shut.

Gandhi also used the girls as his walking sticks.

Mohandas K. Gandhi ;Manilal Gandhi ;Mrs. Kanu Gandhi;Pyarelal;Sita Gandhi;Sushila Pai;Raj Kumari

Remembering those days

India got independence from the British in 1947. But the independence brought the partition, based on religion. Pakistan was for Muslims. India was for Hindus. The political leaders of India believed in two nation theory. But the war between East and West Pakistan in 1971 proved that two nation theory was a wrong theory and Muslim unity was a myth. The leaders thought that the conflicts people had would be solved if only they could divide the land where people lived for thousands of years together. But they were wrong. A million people died during the partition. Hatred increased over the years. Muslim and Hindu fundamentalism grew more than ever. And after 66 years of the partition, now we see that India and Pakistan get nuclear bombs, Indians are in constant fear of Pakistani terrorists, Pakistanis are getting killed by talibans and drone attacks, Bangladesh’s secular fabric has been destroyed by the Islamists.

If there were no partition of India, there would not have any war in Bangladesh. 3 million people would not have been killed, and 200,000 women would not have been raped.
Today I am celebrating Independence Day of India by reciting ‘September on Jessore Road’, the poem written by Allen Ginsberg while remembering all the deaths and the homelessness of Bengalis.

Millions of babies watching the skies
Bellies swollen, with big round eyes
On Jessore Road–long bamboo huts
Noplace to shit but sand channel ruts

Millions of fathers in rain
Millions of mothers in pain
Millions of brothers in woe
Millions of sisters nowhere to go

image

One Million aunts are dying for bread
One Million uncles lamenting the dead
Grandfather millions homeless and sad
Grandmother millions silently mad

image

Millions of daughters walk in the mud
Millions of children wash in the flood
A Million girls vomit & groan
Millions of families hopeless alone

Millions of souls nineteenseventyone
homeless on Jessore road under grey sun
A million are dead, the million who can
Walk toward Calcutta from East Pakistan

image

Taxi September along Jessore Road
Oxcart skeletons drag charcoal load
past watery fields thru rain flood ruts
Dung cakes on treetrunks, plastic-roof huts

Wet processions Families walk
Stunted boys big heads don’t talk
Look bony skulls & silent round eyes
Starving black angels in human disguise

image

Mother squats weeping & points to her sons
Standing thin legged like elderly nuns
small bodied hands to their mouths in prayer
Five months small food since they settled there

on one floor mat with small empty pot
Father lifts up his hands at their lot
Tears come to their mother’s eye
Pain makes mother Maya cry

image

Two children together in palmroof shade
Stare at me no word is said
Rice ration, lentils one time a week
Milk powder for warweary infants meek

No vegetable money or work for the man
Rice lasts four days eat while they can
Then children starve three days in a row
and vomit their next food unless they eat slow.

b71-

On Jessore road Mother wept at my knees
Bengali tongue cried mister Please
Identity card torn up on the floor
Husband still waits at the camp office door

Baby at play I was washing the flood
Now they won’t give us any more food
The pieces are here in my celluloid purse
Innocent baby play our death curse

Two policemen surrounded by thousands of boys
Crowded waiting their daily bread joys
Carry big whistles & long bamboo sticks
to whack them in line They play hungry tricks

Breaking the line and jumping in front
Into the circle sneaks one skinny runt
Two brothers dance forward on the mud stage
Teh gaurds blow their whistles & chase them in rage

image

Why are these infants massed in this place
Laughing in play & pushing for space
Why do they wait here so cheerful & dread
Why this is the House where they give children bread

The man in the bread door Cries & comes out
Thousands of boys and girls Take up his shout
Is it joy? is it prayer? “No more bread today”
Thousands of Children at once scream “Hooray!”

Run home to tents where elders await
Messenger children with bread from the state
No bread more today! & and no place to squat
Painful baby, sick shit he has got.
image

Malnutrition skulls thousands for months
Dysentery drains bowels all at once
Nurse shows disease card Enterostrep
Suspension is wanting or else chlorostrep

Refugee camps in hospital shacks
Newborn lay naked on mother’s thin laps
Monkeysized week old Rheumatic babe eye
Gastoenteritis Blood Poison thousands must die

September Jessore Road rickshaw
50,000 souls in one camp I saw
Rows of bamboo huts in the flood
Open drains, & wet families waiting for food

Border trucks flooded, food cant get past,
American Angel machine please come fast!
Where is Ambassador Bunker today?
Are his Helios machinegunning children at play?

image

Where are the helicopters of U.S. AID?
Smuggling dope in Bangkok’s green shade.
Where is America’s Air Force of Light?
Bombing North Laos all day and all night?

Where are the President’s Armies of Gold?
Billionaire Navies merciful Bold?
Bringing us medicine food and relief?
Napalming North Viet Nam and causing more grief?

Where are our tears? Who weeps for the pain?
Where can these families go in the rain?
Jessore Road’s children close their big eyes
Where will we sleep when Our Father dies?

image

Whom shall we pray to for rice and for care?
Who can bring bread to this shit flood foul’d lair?
Millions of children alone in the rain!
Millions of children weeping in pain!

Ring O ye tongues of the world for their woe
Ring out ye voices for Love we don’t know
Ring out ye bells of electrical pain
Ring in the conscious of America brain

How many children are we who are lost
Whose are these daughters we see turn to ghost?
What are our souls that we have lost care?
Ring out ye musics and weep if you dare–

Cries in the mud by the thatch’d house sand drain
Sleeps in huge pipes in the wet shit-field rain
waits by the pump well, Woe to the world!
whose children still starve in their mother’s arms curled.

Is this what I did to myself in the past?
What shall I do Sunil Poet I asked?
Move on and leave them without any coins?
What should I care for the love of my loins?

b71--

What should we care for our cities and cars?
What shall we buy with our Food Stamps on Mars?
How many millions sit down in New York
& sup this night’s table on bone & roast pork?

How many millions of beer cans are tossed
in Oceans of Mother? How much does She cost?
Cigar gasolines and asphalt car dreams
Stinking the world and dimming star beams–

Finish the war in your breast with a sigh
Come tast the tears in your own Human eye
Pity us millions of phantoms you see
Starved in Samsara on planet TV
image

How many millions of children die more
before our Good Mothers perceive the Great Lord?
How many good fathers pay tax to rebuild
Armed forces that boast the children they’ve killed?

image

How many souls walk through Maya in pain
How many babes in illusory pain?
How many families hollow eyed lost?
How many grandmothers turning to ghost?

How many loves who never get bread?
How many Aunts with holes in their head?
How many sisters skulls on the ground?
How many grandfathers make no more sound?

image

How many fathers in woe
How many sons nowhere to go?
How many daughters nothing to eat?
How many uncles with swollen sick feet?

Millions of babies in pain
Millions of mothers in rain
Millions of brothers in woe
Millions of children nowhere to go

image

Happy Independence Day!

Today is August 15. . 66 years ago India got independence from British rule. Let’s celebrate the day.

I was asked by The Hindu, one of he leading newspapers of India to write about my own experience of this country.

Here is what I wrote.

‘When I first visited India in the late ‘80s, I did not for an instant think I was in another country. I felt I belonged here and that it was, in some fundamental way, inseparable from the land I called my own. The reason for this was not my Hindu forebear. The reason was not that one of India’s many cultures is my own or that I speak one of her many languages or the fact that I look Indian. It is because the values and traditions that define India are embedded deeply within me. These values and traditions are a manifestation of the history of the subcontinent; I have been enriched and enlivened by it. I am also a victim of its poverty, colonial legacy, communalism, violence, bloodshed, partition, migrations, exodus, riots, wars and even theories of nationhood. I have been hardened further by my life and experiences in a poverty- and famine-stricken, ill-governed country called Bangladesh.

The intolerance, fanaticism and bigotry of Islamist fundamentalists forced me to leave Bangladesh. I was forced to go into exile; the doors of my own country slammed shut on my face for good. Since then I have sought refuge in India. When I was finally allowed entry, again, not for an instant did I feel out of place. Even after spending decades in Europe, it never felt like home. However, I felt a deep connection with India; I felt I knew the people; I had grown up somewhere very similar, almost indistinguishable. I felt the need to do something for this country and its people. There was a burning desire within me to see that women become educated and independent, that they stand up for, and demand their rights and freedom. I wanted my writing to invigorate and contribute in some way to the empowerment of these women who had always been oppressed and suppressed. Moreover, I wanted to do everything possible to make people aware of the need for secular education to become enlightened, tolerant, rational, and peace loving.

Not many people understand why I, as a European citizen and a permanent resident of the U.S., am so eager to live in India! I know it is not easy to live here; my book was banned in this country, five fatwas were issued against me, prices were set on my head, religious fanatics physically assaulted me. I was bundled out of West Bengal, I was thrown out of Rajasthan, I was put under confinement in a “safe house” in Delhi, I was forced to leave the country — but I did not give up. I came back again and again to live in the land that abandoned me and humiliated me.

I asked why the world’s largest democracy, a secular state, could not shelter a person whose entire life has been spent for the cause of secular humanism, a person without a country to call her own, someone who regarded India as her home. I have been struggling to settle in my beloved country; it has now become a challenge. I want India to prove that a secular state can honour a secular writer. I want India to honour the nation’s tradition of great hospitality and its democratic principle.

India is a land of plurality, with people from different religions, ethnicities, languages and cultures coexisting together. I want her neighbouring countries to learn from India how to secularise the state and how not to violate anyone’s right to freedom of expression. I believe that India, unlike Bangladesh, will triumph over all kinds of fundamentalism. The love and respect I get from Indians makes me feel this is my true home. I still believe that for a sincere, honest, secular writer in the subcontinent, India is the safest refuge, the only refuge.’

Manage your penis.

Suzanne Moore advised men to follow 10 rules to manage their penises. All 10 rules are important. But 3 rules are more important than other rules. If men are unable to follow other rules, they must follow these 3 rules.

2) Do not neglect your penis. I am talking hygiene. Women are subjected to pharmacy aisles full of fresheners, wipes and sprays that encourage us to believe that without them our genital area is just a smelly, slimy mess, but there is no equivalent for men. Surely there is a gap in the market for products to encourage men to stay boxfresh under their boxers. And if they must encase themselves so prominently in Lycra and skinny jeans in this weather … something has to be done. Urgently.

5) Do not ever put your penis into someone who does not want this. Do not ever fool yourself that they really do. Even if they are drunk. Or you are married to them. This is rape. It is not difficult to know the difference between someone who is consenting to penetration and someone who isn’t. There is never any excuse. Ever.

10) Do not mistake your penis for your brain. The silly idea that men possess wicked willies and can’t help acting on impulse is surely rather insulting? If Freud is right and all women suffer from penis envy then all I can say is if I had one I would love, cherish it and put it only where desired. Is that so much to ask?

I am inviting everyone to add more rules for men to manage their penises. I am adding 5 rules: 1. If you suffer from erectile dysfunction, you must inform about it to your would-be partner. Be brave. 2. Correct your erectile dysfunction with available drugs (e.g. Sildenafil) before having sex. Don’t show your dysfunction to your partner. It may inhibit her sexual desire for you. 3. Never lie to your girlfriend about the size of your penis. If your penis is 3 or 4 inches long, tell her that it is 3 or 4 inches long, do not tell her that ‘it is like 9 or 10 inches long.’ It is not good to be caught red-handed later. You should not be considered a liar only because you are embarrassed telling the truth about the size of your penis. 4. You must not insist a woman to suck your penis when you have no intention to give her oral sex. It is not good to make your penis selfish. A selfish penis may end up being a loser. 5.If you have multiple sex partners, you should have blood tests every now and then to see whether you have any sexually transmitted disease. You must not infect any one with your disease. Be clean.

You ban women from singing, laughing, going outside without veils, because you believe men are bad.You insult men.

Muftis are misogynists. If they truly believe in religion, they have no other alternative but to force themselves to become woman-haters.
Grand Mufti in Jammu and Kashmir issued fatwa against music in February this year. He said, ‘music is un-Islamic’.

Leading religious scholar of Jammu and Kashmir, Grand Mufti Mohammad Bashiruddin, on Sunday issued fatwa against the region’s only all-girls rock band run by the teenage girls and against Chief Minister Omar Abdullah for extending support to them.

The Grand Mufti termed the three teenage girls, who formed the rock band, ‘non serious’, saying such an approach leads to ‘gang rape’. “Shameful incidents like gang rapes, that happened in Hindustan recently, are a result of all this. It happens when women are given freedom to roam around, sing and dance,” Bashiruddin told The Tribune.
The fatwa — an advisory by an Islamic scholar, who has knowledge of theology, religious jurisprudence and law — has been issued by the “Supreme Court of Islamic Shariat” headed by Bashiruddin.

The Grand Mufti asked the girls not to get impressed with support from the political leadership. Bashiruddin also criticised Chief Minister Omar Abdullah for extending solidarity with the teenage girls, terming it as “unnecessary support”. “It will be unfortunate if our society leaves the right path and gets entangled in musical instruments,” the fatwa read.

Omar had yesterday extended support to the rock band after it emerged that the teenage girls have decided to shut their band following a barrage of abuses targeting them and their families.

The girls’ band had come to limelight last December when the three 16-year-old girls made their first and the last public performance at the “Battle of Bands” competition here, where they battled against other bands consisting of boys.

And then again the same stuff that we hear whenever women refuse to be shackled that women are nourishing Western culture. Whatever Muftis do not like, is Western, and Western is always bad.

Referring to the girls’ band, Bashiruddin said, “Such non-serious acts are the first steps towards national disaster”. Criticism also poured in from the hardline separatists led by Syed Ali Geelani, who termed the support extended by the Chief Minister to the rock band as “tragic and surprising”. “There are some values (which) a citizen has to adopt to safeguard the ethical, moral and religious traditions. Kashmir being a sacred place of saintly persons, there is no room to nourish western culture and immoral values,” hardline Hurriyat’s spokesman Ayaz Akbar said.

Though it distanced itself from the threats issued against the rock band, Hurriyat said parents of these girls should have ‘rectified’ their behaviour. “No noble family will allow their girls to choose dancing as a profession which is a thing of pleasure for strangers,” Hurriyat spokesman said.

After the fatwa was issued, Muslim girls who had their own all-girls rock band had to stop singing. They were banned.

But Mufti enjoyed men’s music. It is alright if men sing. Then music is not anymore un-Islamic. It is only un-Islamic when women sing, because women’s soft and nice voices must not be heard by men who are not their close relatives.

Now, another Mufti issued another fatwa against women who use Facebook and Twitter.

The Mufti is not pleased about women being on Facebook to make friends and is definitely against them uploading pictures on the social networking site.

“Women should not post pictures on Facebook or anywhere else on the Internet. This is un-Islamic,” he said.

A Maulana from the minority Shia sect too endorsed the Mufti’s views.

“Women are not allowed to show their faces to anyone apart from their ‘mehram’ (male kin like father and brothers). So posting pictures on Facebook is ‘haraam’ (banned),” Maulana Saif Abbas Naqvi said.

Muftis are against women playing music, women posting pictures on the internet, or women moving their butts. Muftis are not alone. Allah is with them. Allah asked women not to go in front of non-mahran men . If Allah knew about the internet, he would have advised women not to post their pictures on facebook or twitter.

Islam prohibits music. Women’s voices must not be heard by non-Mahran men or strangers. Allah (33:32) told prophet’s wives that they must not ‘soften’ their voices when they talk to male strangers, they should rather make their voices firm and rough. But why is this? Isn’t it very easy to guess! It is because male strangers might get sexual desire if they hear soft and beautiful voices of women.

Because singing requires “softening the voice” and since prophet’s wives are the role models for all women, women’s singing is forbidden in front of unrelated men.

Now, you can say everything Islam and Muftis say in very simple words and sentences so that everybody can understand,– ‘if women sing and if men hear women’s soft voices and if women’s faces and hairs are shown to public, or on the internet—men have no other alternative but to fuck those women, because men are so fucking assholes that they do not know how to control their sexual urges.’

Muftis actually insult men, not women, when they force women to wear veils, or prevent women from going outside home, or stop women from singing in public places. Banning on women proves that men are nothing but a bunch of rapists, their brains are made of dicks and their hearts are made of dicks.

A secular baul!

You know about baul, the troubadours of Bengal. Don’t you?

You may know about Lalon too. Lalon was probably the most secular baul in the baul community.

When Hindus and Muslims were hating each other over the differences of their religious beliefs, Lalon sang songs questioning their beliefs!

Lalon was an illiterate poor man living in a Bengal village. He did not go to schools. But he was a self taught secular philosopher. The man from the 18th century probably could not imagine that his country one day would be divided on the basis of religion, and in the 21st century people would continue hating each other for having a different faith or a different cast.

Good that he does not see the atrocities that we see everyday. Hatred and bloodshed in the name of religion everyday.

Sufi Music

Perhaps you know about Sufism. And how Sufism was replaced by Islamic fanaticism in the Indian subcontinent.

Listen to a Sufi song. My favourite.


This song is about Bulleh Shah, the Sufi poet who was asking to demolish temples and mosques. He was against all religious rituals. And very fond of alcohol. Once upon a time he was respected by people of different faiths.

If Bulleh Shah were alive today, he would have been killed by radical Islamists.

They Deserve Buraqs

Allah sent Muhammad buraq, the winged horse, so that Muhammad,the prophet could travel to heaven. He went to heaven on buraq and met Moses, Jesus, a few more bearded guys and finally Allah the almighty.

Now look at the condition of Bangladesh today. They don’t have enough vehicles to travel. Millions of people are travelling to home to celebrate eid, the biggest Muslim religious festival, with their family and friends tomorrow. They are desperate to get some space in the trains,buses,boats. Train roofs and doors are overcrowded. Boats will sink. Many people would die. Allah should have sent Buraqs,the winged horses, to take these poor people home safely and quickly so that they can celebrate eid that Allah asked them to celebrate.

image

People are sitting on the roof of an already packed train while others are waiting in a Dhaka station.

imageimageimage

imageimage

The same crowd previous year.

image

image

image

I feel so sorry and I am so worried for these people. It happens every year. The same tragedy. What does Allah feel? Why doesn’t he make a miracle once for these people? Some winged things to fly home!
image

Not long ago….

Once upon a time but not long ago, women didn’t have the voting right. Most people were against women’s voting right and their right to education. In some parts of the word, women had the right to education, even they had the right to work, but they did not have the right to vote. American women are telling us their stories.

Throughout history, there were people who did not want women to vote. Women would work, they would pay taxes, they would technically be considered citizens… but voting was for men. In America, when the right to vote was extended to include all races, all social positions, and all incomes, women were still not included. It didn’t matter if a man was illiterate, had been to jail, or if he was the town drunk. He could vote, and a woman, no matter who she was, could not.

Women suffragists (suffragettes) began campaigning in democratic countries all over the world to change this, starting in the mid-19th century. Their campaigns were largely peaceful and dignified… at least by 21st century standards. But by 19th century standards, these women were abhorrent and indecent, making fools of themselves by demanding to be treated like men.

One of the most notable things about the arguments put forth by the anti-suffragette movement was how weak its position was. Anti-suffragette arguments relied heavily on emotional manipulation and downright hateful nastiness. Humor was a much-used weapon against suffragettes. They were easy to depict as embittered old maids, brutal scolds, and cigar-smoking transvestites.

Ophelia tells us how 20th century London was.

You can see what kinds of hatred misogynists expressed in their cartoons against women’s voting rights.

image

image
imageimageimageimageimageimageimage

image

image

imageimageimageimageimage

imageimage

imageimageimageimageimageimageimageimageimageimageimage
imageimage

imageimageimageimageimageimage

imageimageimageimageimageimage

image

image

Men could not tolerate that women left home to join suffrage movement in the beginning of 20th century. They were so scared of taking care of their children! They feared that if women could get their rights, men would lose their’s. They still have this fear.

Women got the right to vote. They got the right to access to politics and to education. They go outside to work. They spend money they earn for their family. But still men don’t share chores and child care at home.

The feminists today suffer from the same misogyny the feminists yesterday suffered from. They are humiliated, hated, insulted, abused the way their feminist sisters were humiliated, hated, insulted and abused.

People get shocked today when they learn women were not allowed to get the right to vote and the right to education in the 20th century. People would get shocked tomorrow when they would learn that women were not allowed to get equality in the 21st century.