Arbit Scratchpad

What an excellent movie. No frills, no pretense, no exaggeration, thought-provoking and leaving decisions on the viewer, meaning taking the audience to be intelligent. Ganashatru (An Enemy of the People) by Satyajit Ray is a movie that portrays the lack of principles in those who are actually supposed to be conscious and responsible for the good of the people, especially people in the press and the administration i.e. the government machinery. The story starts with Dr Ashok Gupta (played by Soumitra Chatterjee - Satyajit Ray's favourite) getting a series of patients suffering from a specific kind of jaundice, in Chandipur hospital, where he practices. On sending samples of the water to Calcutta labs, the doctor is able to ascertain the contamination of water, as the results suggest. He wants to publish the findings. His brother (played by Dhritiman Chatterjee) the municipal chairman is opposed to this, as he does not want to bring disrepute to Chandipur, and has helped in building...

Currently reading the bengali novel 'Lajja' by Taslima Nasrin , that was banned by the Bangladesh government and a fatwa was issued against her . Set in Bangladesh, it speaks about the communal frenzy and retaliation against the Hindu community in Bangladesh, after the Babri Masjid was demolished in India, through the eyes of the members of a particular Hindu family. Some info on Nasrin here: [1] , [2] My speed of reading bengali has really come down, need to read more.

A new form of covert imperialism is being gradually unleashed by the USA. It is in the name of democracy, that the US government indiscriminately uses its military might to establish and dislodge governments, at will and is quite unrepentant about it. What is disgusting is that these open displays of human rights violations and use of force are easily ignored in India. Probably we are indeed doing the right thing by making use of their money and power to develop ourselves or is it ? However we cannot be blind to the security concerns that are inherent. We need to guard ourselves against the betrayal that the US government is capable of. We are establishing joint military co-operation with that country, which may be dangerous if not totally foolish. Especially the ultra-liberal Manmohan Singh government may be playing like puppets in the hands of the US and other world bodies controlled by the US, such as the World Bank etc. The Prime Minister was immature enough to criticize Vajpa...