N-Tech, No Way

I always thought nuclear technology, for energy or warfare, was a bad idea. As far as Im concerned, there is no such thing as nuclear energy for peaceful purposes.

One, because in our world-conspiracy, nuclear technology (for peaceful purposes. For ‘peaceful’ purposes), is denied to nations (think Iran), because of questionable trustworthiness- This coming from high and mighty, not to mention guilty, US of A.

Two, because of N-tech’s scope for misuse.

And three, because of N-tech’s potential to be hazardous, despite safety measures. All it needs is a tsunami to blow the reactor off the charts.

Japan is reliving pains of historical proportions. Only that this time, it is due to their civilian nuclear energy plants not being able to withstand the recent Sendai earthquake and tsunami.

In these days of energy insufficiency, radical environmentalists go all out in favour of nuclear power. They see it as a suitable compromise, between human supply and human demand, and their own concerns for environmental protection. Nuclear power is said to be a clean source of energy, even considering the dangers of radiation, and the dirty energy that is used to build and run the plants in the first place.

Given all my environmental concerns and activities, I cant agree to this settlement. Charge me with being a radical humanitarian over an environmentalist, but I think it wise to pre-empt problems- nuclear explosions and radiation can lead to irreversible environmental and human damage. Choosing N-tech is going from the frying pan into the fire, from a situation of an energy deficit to a situation of an energy danger.

What swings me away from N-tech is that the dangers are not worth it, given that we are not yet at a Hobsons’s Choice. We have coal. That’s right, I just said we have coal. And I would prioritize coal over living with a millstone around my neck. However I only speak in favour of coal, because policy makers, researchers and developers, haven’t yet found a way to make renewable and clean energy attractive on a large scale. What I truly mean, is that we have the ability to make clean energy more credible. Giving N-tech the kind of importance that environmentalists have given it, is as bad as giving coal the kind of importance that industries have. We are not better than them for having come up with this as a solution to the problem of energy, when it only poses other problems, if not bigger ones.

A note to you if you are concerned about the environment- Do not forget that you are concerned about the environment because at the very bottom of it all, you are concerned about humans. Apart from the fact that there is a public saturation with environmental needs, is the fact that environmentalists turn people off. Environment for environment’s sake is the idealist outlook, and a harder argument for you to sell if you want to gather momentum to the movement. And we are running out of time, that we can all agree on.

Who Says-Smoking

Pop culture has elevated smoking to a status of romance. A cigarette holder placed between slender fingers, while the woman’s rouged mouth is blowing out smoke rings, shrouds her in smoke and mystery. Photographs that show Churchill heavily puffing on a cigar, coupled with his deep set scowl, lend him a power and a damn-care attitude that lets us know that while smoking may kill him, he certainly will die on his own terms. Guevara has been similarly photographed, smoking a cigar from home, while lost in deep thought. Why, even Cruella DeVille was dressed with a cigarette and did it not add to the terror in her character?



However moral codes, health diktats and just plain culture, have rubbished the activity as a hazard and a premise for unproductivity.

So what does it take to be a rebel? How is a rebel any different from a freedom fighter, a social worker or a terrorist? Don’t they all want change, and to do things differently. It is unfortunate that the connotation associated with the term rebel has come to be negative, and a ‘deviant’ is not viewed as individualistic or creative but as an anti-social nuisance.


There is a nation wide smoking ban in India, which was put in place in October 2008. There is also a ban on smoking being portrayed in movies and photographs, unless they were from a period before the ban was introduced. But tobacco is still grown in India, and more frequent than the much needed dustbins in this country, are little tin shops that sell cigarettes, Pan Parag and tea, to the 250 million tobacco users in the country. India is the third largest market for cigarettes in the world, and whether the ban is directed towards people already addicted to smoking cigarettes, or to protect second hand smokers, is anybody’s guess.

Of all the addictions that are considered devilish, I’m taking tobacco smoking on today, and debating it for myself, irrespective of the fact that I’ve already made up my mind about it.

I’m a non smoker but I have several smoker friends. Heck, nearly everybody I know smokes. I never lend them money to buy smokes but I do accompany them sometimes, on their sutta-breaks. This has allowed me to closely observe the social implications of smoking.


From my inferences, smoking gives smokers a social advantage. “Want a smoke?,” “What’s your brand?” and “Have you tried this brand?” are often used conversation starters.


I know students who smoke with their professors outside college and have seen teenagers smoking with adults in the balcony at parties. I once even asked a smoker friend to oblige a beggar, who wanted some of his cigarettes in Delhi (I’ll explain this in another post, another time).


Thus, the old and young, wise and foolish are suddenly equal when it comes to them being smokers. Their life’s Venn diagrams overlap, with no one side judging the others’ values and choices. “How long have you been smoking?,” “How many do you smoke in a day?,” “Have you tried quitting?” and “How come you didn’t succeed?” means that they have all had some common trials, successes and failures and a considerable amount of experience and insight to share, irrespective of their age and maturity. In the sense, this immediately inducts every smoker into a fraternity, and everybody wants to belong.


Contrary to a non-smokers usual dismissal of a smoker as someone who is weak willed, I contest that on the grounds of the active and conscious nature of the addiction. Unlike an alcoholic or a druggie, a smoker hasn’t given himself over to smoking. Smokers smoke on the go, and capably manage their lives with one hand working while the other wields a cigarette. It means that a smoker doesn’t languish in a dark bar, neither does he shack in abandoned houses injecting things into his blood. One wouldn’t see a smoker lying face down on the road, passed out under influence.

Instead every smoke and smoke break is planned for. Several of my smoker friends ration out their money carefully and budget for cigarettes. Thus a smoker doesn’t sit rooted and smoke all day, all at once, but does so at intervals. This gives credence to their self will, because a smoker always carries a pack of cigarettes in his pocket and can feel it every time he reaches for his keys or wallet, but doesn’t always give in.

And thus, a smoker does in fact have cravings and suffers withdrawals if he isn’t able to smoke but this ensures that he is always aware of his addiction. This in turn means that he controls his own addiction to a large extent.


Life is slightly slower for a smoker. Or at least it is well interspersed with pauses and breathing time- something all our lives could use- even if it means they breathe their own toxic exhalations. Sutta breaks give smokers time to reflect on their ongoing day, calm down, and re-strategize for the rest of it. The demand of their addiction, ensures their sanity and subsequent clarity, simply because they took a time out.


And as long as this remains uncontested, who says?

Who Says

Who says you can’t wear short skirts, can’t pierce the same side of your nose twice, can’t be a nine to fiver and be a loud mouthed biker at night at the same time. Who says you can’t go to church and sport a personal tattoo way down under. Who says you got to finish two degrees and then work. WHO SAYS THESE THINGS. And why not me?

The multiplicity of angles, and the multitude of options- whether it is at your neighbourhood restaurant that serves tandoor, Chinese and Udupi, or this drama of a life- has resulted in the lack of reason for us to take any particular side. This leaves things vacant and cluttered.

But only one thing is right and can be. Though there may be degrees of rightness, the one standing will have to be the one farthest away from the wrong, or even the center. Every other option is a compromise.

Every other option has to be debated out, because we can’t afford to make mistakes anymore. And even though some things are universally accepted to be right or wrong, for the benefit of those who err in their ways and seek to justify it, those who know the right should be able to hold up their end.

I plan on featuring posts titled ‘Who Says’ in which I may argue situations, even if I believe much the contrary of what I write. It will be done purely as an exercise, to annoy myself.

Spare Change

Originally written- 28th August 2008
Revised – 2nd October 2008

I have a very generous father. Not to me though. I’ve never been pampered. But we both share the same concern and interest in the welfare of the less fortunate, and he taught me to feel this way.

When we stop at traffic lights, scruffy looking little girls, and young but tired mothers, carrying babies with mucus all over their faces, often push their hands and sometimes their entire selves, through car windows, and auto rickshaws. While waiting for autos or to cross the road, the same faces of poverty, will crowd around you. They crowd around you, like the flies around them, penitently asking for us to spare them some mercy.

However, my father is often grudging with his alms when it comes to these unlucky souls. So I asked him about it. He justified, that this was all a big racket. Those girls who push themselves through tiny hoops, and mothers with bleating babies at their breasts, are all apparently pawns in a game. They all have to hand over their money to someone else, who’s getting rich off their sad faces.

Before you begin wondering about my father, let me tell you, that this is a thought process very common to us educated middle class folks. If you pay close attention, you’ll see that other people who do have a happy jingle in their pockets, refuse the sad empty begging bowls as well. These morally righteous souls are also afraid of supporting this black market, I suppose.

People feel that they are better off not displaying mercy. They fear that if they take out their wallets, it’ll probably be snatched and run off with. Weren’t they better off ignoring?

Returning to the idea of sparing your change and how it can save the world:

My dad and I discussed this, and this is what I had to say:

Give them the change. Maybe it is a racket. But if we don’t give them the money, they’ll have nothing to give to the racket –incharge at sun down, and finally, they won’t have anything for themselves either.

It’s a choice.

CHOICE 1-Would you want them to die of hunger, because you want to be a ‘responsible citizen’ and not allow the racket lord to get rich (because you believe in equal distribution of wealth, or some such other close to impossible ideology)? And remember, you don’t even know for sure if the particular beggar in question is involved in the scam.

CHOICE 2- Or would you just give them the few bloody coins so that they can put something into their stomachs?

So you say you want to be a responsible citizen?

Let me ask you then.

After a satisfying meal at a restaurant, don’t you leave more money on your dinner table as a tip than you give to unfortunate beggars in a whole week? But then, if you didn’t do that 10 percent, you wouldn’t come across as a nice person to the family on the neighbouring table, would you now. Please realize, that waiters and bearers are at least getting a steady and assured salary. I’m sure that they don’t earn much. That I will not dispute. But at least they know where their next meal is coming from. The beggar you just walked past, doesn’t know why he is living, if he is going to live tomorrow or if he should even hope that he lives tomorrow.

If you hire a taxi for a day of sightseeing, don’t you leave the cabbie with some money, so that he can get himself some lunch? You probably don’t have to do that. He probably brings his own ‘tiffin’ from home. But you want to be a nice person, so you give him the few notes.

At certain airports, passengers are informed not to tip the coolies. They are a free service provided by the airport. But most people always discreetly pass them some money.

Please don’t get me wrong. Tip all you want. Just don’t deny some mercy to that bedraggled face that just pushed itself through your window.

Or if you’ve got lots of money to spare, and want to be that nice person we all so earnestly strive to be, give money to everyone who needs it. Just don’t leave out the people that matter.