Ignorance may be deceptive

'He who knows not and knows that he knows not is wise.
He who knows not and knows not that he knows not is a fool.'
The Indian media fall in the latter category.

Note the following article in Saturday's The Times of India's Kolkata edition:
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The report is about the Rajdhani hold up last Saturday at Dankuni. In the report it is unabashedly written that the public who held up the Rajdhani were inspired by the Maoist backed forces holding up the Bhubaneswar Rajdhani some days previously. Well, the fact is the reporter has proved himself an ignorant fool. He did not bother to find out that such hold ups are regularly held in the Dankuni-Baranagar Road stretch: at least once in every six months; and no Maoist inspiration was required in the previous occasions. The demands in all the hold ups had been same: why make the local trains suffer in order to make passage for the VVIP trains? Thousands of office-goers, students, businessmen, daily labourers, etc. depend on these everyday.

It is irking to note the degradation in the quality of media reporting. And even more irking to observe their arrogance. If one asks me why am I writing these here, instead of reporting it to their editor, to him I say: the excercise will be futile as it has been on several previous occasions. So, instead I choose to be inspired by Mr. Bachchan and his blog:

http://bigb.bigadda.com/?paged=7

"The media dislikes the blog not because I write on it without their consent. The media dislikes the blog because we have created a family of devoted members in the shape of our FmXt, which believes me and not them."

No-Bail

Guess the next Noble Peace Prize will come to me. You ask why? Well, for not indulging in any violence, of course. If Obama, with his army killing inoocents in Iraq and Afganisthan, can get one, why not I?

The last thing that should have happened is the Noble Committee losng its credibility. But at this rate, it soon will. It's true that they have always been a little potty on the Western side --Mahatma Gandhi didn't get it-- but, Obama! That does it.

Obama should have got No-Bail from prison for the crimes by his army.

Suvo Bijoya

Hey, we meet after a long time. Lets start with the usual Suvo Bijoya.

There was a bout of internals at college (these happen so often that they have lost their significance). Then came the Durga Puja which was gone before I realised it. (I have been observing that the older I get, the shorter the pujas become. It's sort of...

length_of_pujas ∝ 1 / my_age

But can someone tell me that what do our Marxist friends have to do near a puja pandal selling their literature? And I was under the impression that they are atheists. (Do correct me if I am wrong).

And guess what, on Panchami I finished reading The Lost Symbol. And still I will say Angels and Demons was the best of the lot.

Let me conclude today with an interesting thing that happened on train today:

A certain Mr. X was sitting in the seat opposite me when one Mr. Y boarded and squeezed into the little space beside Mr. X though the opposite bench was empty. At this, Mr. X requested Mr. Y to move to the opposite bench. Mr. Y moved over. At this one Mr. Z said to X: "It's good that you requested him to move over. Let me make a request to you. Please don't drop the peanut shells on the floor. Keep them with you and dispose them off later. Otherwise the next time you board a train you will exclaim 'How dirty the trains are!'" Indeed X was dirtying the floor. X could only manage a smile. (Subhas Datta, are you listening?)