ChinmayC Blog

It's out of piercing anguish and pain that makes me write these lines. The fundamental fact of life is that it has always been imperfect. Nothing about human beings and their society is perfect. Perfection always remains a dream, perhaps the way God desires. The institution of marriage was born and evolved out of sheer necessity. And, since a long time back this system had been marked as one of the most imperfect or even regressive ones. There were love marriages or arranged marriages , but it got proved again and again that there was no guarantee of happiness in either. Divorce thus has become the order of the day in almost all countries and with it women's liberty has been the thundering clarion call. Nothing wrong in that, absolutely. But, what have we got as a result? Mangled and chopped bodies of women in all corners of our country? Yes, you can put in immediately a reference about the horrible dowry deaths, the honor killings, subjugation of the fairer sex within the...

It’s a case of wholesome insensitivity, amounting to zombie-like behavior on which subject we dwelt over much earlier, of nearly all of the so-called digitally conscious citizens of the country, but also nearly all the stakeholders including the national media irrespective of how you’d like to describe them. Apart from this looming post-modern characteristic, the other equally portentous factor of hypocrisy has also been rampant across, primarily, the television news channels and other stakeholders. For the last few years at least the insensitivity factor has been colossal: any kind of tragic incident happening in public places is always ravenously video-graphed along with the selfies of the ‘proud’ beholders and circulated instantly in their digital spaces, instead of trying to help the poor victims many of whom stay alive during such digital orgy. The news channels then get hold of those clips, in direct or indirect ways, and start building ‘stories’ around those while putting the c...

I had the misfortune of going for a movie in 2019 in a big theatre before the Pandemic put a stop to it, titled Pagalpanti (Madness) and was nearly driven mad. It was not my fault as the movie was having a lot of superstars and we went particularly because of Anil Kapoor . But now, after watching the new movie Heropanti-2 (heroism or hero antics) the previous movie seemed to have at least some kind of a method. The question arises then as to why I’ve made the mistake again! Well, firstly it was streaming free where I can ruthlessly go forward at will. And most importantly because I love the kid Tiger Shroff , son of my beloved Jackie Shroff , and ironically, Heropanti (2014) was Tiger’s debut film where his athletic and gymnastic skills plus his lithe, dancing and almost flying body were noticed. I watched only parts of that film some of which seemed a bit sensible, giving Tiger some scope to showcase his acting skills too, perhaps because it was a remake of a Telugu film . Of cours...

Russian President Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has entered Day 14 leaving a trail of devastation and loss of lives across the country. We pointed out earlier that the war was totally unnecessary, and now it seems abundantly clear that it was in the interest of the West that Russia did invade Ukraine so that the latter’s strategic presence in Europe could be checked, if not eliminated. The surprising resistance by Ukraine is mainly thanks to the baits by the West in terms of entry into the European Union and a membership in NATO. Russia also made a mistake by not anticipating the support to be extended to Ukraine by the US, most European nations and other strategic allies to fight the war. The main objective of the Western allies seems to be the justification to impose the economic sanctions to isolate Russia in a bid to force it to submit. But unfortunately, they’ve decided to ignite a dormant volcano instead by ignoring its demands, also as strategic as theirs, and by abandoning the un...

The horrors of this totally unnecessary war have been visible, palpable and real across the television screens, mobile screens and the internet, SOS videos, official release of images and so on. It has reached the 6 th day today in spite of the perplexing Putin offer of dialogues with Ukraine amid flying missiles, the starter of which has in fact been realized in Belarus yesterday, and as feared nothing coming out of it. Only the destruction and despair of the Ukrainians along with fellow global citizens have increased manifold. Now India too is plunged in despair with its young medical student Naveen Shekharappa dying in Russian shelling in the worst affected city of Kharkiv. Around 3500 Indian students are still reported to be stuck in that devastated city and in all, around 16000 students are still undergoing the claustrophobic terror inside the bunkers—hungry, thirsty and crowded like herds of animals.   India, preoccupied with elections like last year when the COVID-19 seco...

According to Sigmund Freud’s theory of ‘Id, Ego and Superego’ the Id trait of a personality was present in the first primitive humans, but not as a part of the brain; in fact, the Freudian tripartite components had nothing to do with the grey cells. The Id trait includes the basic survival, sexual and aggressive instincts/impulses, and it acts unconsciously. Over the centuries the primitive humans started living in communities and societies, and at that time the Ego trait became important as a conscious part of a personality able to distinguish between ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ acts in terms of good or harm such acts could cause to the others. With more maturity the Superego trait had emerged as the ethical ‘conscience’ of human beings, always sending correcting messages to Ego whenever the Id trait overpowered it. Freud indicated that any imbalances in these three traits are bound to lead to personality disorders, like if the Id impulses totally dominate the personality that human being tur...

Notwithstanding the complications and the stakes involved in the Ukraine crisis it is just incredible that in an ultra-modern age where the globe becomes one community, international diplomacy should fail so miserably to prevent a war that could have grave multidimensional impact. Again and again, the lust for the superpower status and strategic presence cum military bases has been driving the US and Russia with or without China launch military assaults, occupations, invasions and wars since the era of the cold war ended. With the same aggressive intent and lust Russia has invaded Ukraine just hours ago. President Vladimir Putin calls it a military intervention or operation that has become inevitable after the nationalist ambitions of the Ukrainians and Ukraine’s drive to integrate itself with the European Union and the NATO have threatened Russia’s national security. Putin’s justification has extended to his chilling warning that should any other country interfere in its ‘necessary’ w...

Honestly, I knew absolutely nothing about an App called the ‘Sulli Deals’ which reportedly appeared in around middle of  the year 2021 and created, as I came know now, quite some thrills around our haplessly vulnerable country. My ignorance, blissfully, is perhaps because of my healthy contempt for most of the Apps, thanks to the simple reason that once you fall prey to an app the latter keeps on disturbing you with endless reminders for updates and messages about how to spread the ‘appeal’ of the app to your friends. For the last week almost all the news channels of the same country have been crying hoarse and shedding crocodile tears about another App called, very captivatingly, the Bulli Bai. Such was the din created by the channels with daily news headlines, visuals, debates and updates that I was forced to search for what it actually meant. And I found that what the concerned Apps, Bulli or Sulli, tried to do was heinous, targeting the prominent women of a minority community. ...

It is very unfortunate that the enlivening ICC Men’s T20 World Cup-2021 should get affected by a largely unnecessary controversy. Did any team ever in international tournaments object to singing their national anthem or any team object to their rivals singing their national anthems? Definitely not, it’s being a celebrated customs in almost all such tournaments across various fields of sports. Therefore, the ‘personal choice’ syndrome never comes up here. Then, why this syndrome has to come up in ‘taking the knee’ for a most noble cause? In our school days our teachers ordered us to kneel down on innumerable occasions, obviously to correct our faults, which is why we are better human beings today. Did we even think of exercising our democratic choice on those occasions? The Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, started in 2013 ‘as a decentralized political and social movement protesting against incidents of police brutality and all racially motivated violence against black people’ the worl...

Just when the bicameral United States Congress was to sit in a rare joint session to certify Joe Biden’s electoral victory mobs descended on Capitol Hill, the celebrated seat of the US Government, and drafted a black chapter not only in the country’s democratic history but also in the world’s democratic traditions. Supporters of the outgoing President Donald Trump gathered in large numbers and breached the security to carry out an unprecedented act of desecration and vandalism. At least four people were killed in the violence, and the security personnel, totally overwhelmed by the surging mob, arrested around fifty rioters. Coming in as a light at the end of the tunnel the US Congress had met later and certified Joe Biden’s electoral victory which means that Biden is now the rightful official President of the country set to take over on the 20 th of this month. As per the latest news reports Trump has finally conceded his defeat and acknowledged Biden’s democratic victory.   The...

  Yes, the title ‘ Ek Doctor Ki Maut ’ (Death of a Doctor) belonged to an award-winning Hindi movie made in 1990 by well-known filmmaker Tapan Sinha (1924- 2009). In the movie the protagonist, a medical doctor played brilliantly by Pankaj Kapoor, makes a rare discovery of a vaccine for leprosy after years of painstaking research, and instead of being recognized for that he is harassed and hounded by the authorities, and the doctor gets deprived of international honour also as he was transferred to a remote village. We cannot dismiss this story as a mere work of fiction, because the movie was based on the real-life story of Dr. Subhash Mukhopadhyay (1931-1981) who became only the second doctor of the world to use in-vitro fertilization in childbirth. Again, instead of honouring him the then West Bengal government and the Indian Government harassed him thanks to the familiar factors of professional jealousy, manipulative politics and bureaucratic negligence making the doctor face ost...