Hariyal, the parrot, arrested in Rajura for using abusing language: Why blame the bird, must have been watching the news!

A normal day in India starts with the suspicious death of a 14 year old Dalit for stealing a pigeon, and a controversy over the police taking the kid away, allegedly asking for money to release him and then the boy being found hanging from the ceiling of a neighbouring uncle’s house. At about the same time, two Dalit children in Faridabad are set on fire by a village head because of an old rivalry. Why the caste divide has to be perpetuated even by its denial is beyond comprehension, but we seem to love the ‘them and us’ concept. If the BJP really wants applause, they should take steps to finish the caste system entirely, and end the scourge of the country. Our caste wars have now become even worse than the situation during the apartheid years in South Africa. We have a situation where a 23 year old author Huchangi Prasad is threatened with having his fingers sawn off for writing ‘against Hinduism’, because his book ‘Odala Kichhu’ is anti-caste. [caption id=“attachment_2481198” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Image courtesy: ibnlive[/caption] As the day wears on, a famous singer is charged with molestation and so is a national cricketer. Abhijeet Bhattacharya and Amit Mishra are innocent till proven guilty and the latter represented India in the fourth ODI even after the police issued a notice to him. Bhattacharya and Mishra are accused of engaging in the rising sport of girl-baiting, exactly what caused a teenager to kill herself after the cops refused to take cognisance of the complaint and deal with the three bullies making her life miserable. Another woman raped in Odisha commits suicide in shame and fear. All this against the backdrop of the BBC announcing that Indian women are fighting back against the rising wave of rapes. The death toll- for eating beef, or being accused of eating beef, or saying that it is okay to eat beef- stays at three persons. But Congress corporator Parminder Bhamra has gone on record as saying that cow urine (hello, Morarji) is so pure that hospitals across Mumbai should use it to cleanse their wards and corridors. Still in Mumbai, Bollywood takes on the Shiv Sena over the boycott of all Pakistanis. Mahesh Bhatt echoes the sentiment that blows in the wind on a regular basis; keep politics and art separate. And literature and science, and sport, and music, and whatever else is being hammered on the anvil. While all this is going on, an elderly couple is stranded in an Air India aircraft for 70 minutes after it comes into Mumbai from Hyderabad because there are no wheelchairs. Their demand forms for assistance at disembarkation were correctly filled and the Airports Authority which is responsible for this mistake (not Air India since the crew had to stay on board till the last passenger left) seems indifferent to their plight. If you watch the video you do not know whether to laugh or cry. Seventy minutes in a plane with engines off. The incident regarding a petrol bomb victim in Udhampur translates into a curfew in Srinagar, where separatists have been on the rampage. If all this isn’t enough, the Congress offers its ‘daily dose’ by accusing the BJP of protecting former IPL big boss Lalit Modi, an issue which is so boring that one wishes the Congress lets up on some days and take a break. And in the capital, the Delhi administration under Arvind Kejriwal passes a resolution against Lt Governor Jung for transferring VAT Commissioner Vijay Kumar ostensibly because he ordered raids on several companies. It seems that no good deed goes unpunished. But for eight hours on Sunday the people will stop their antics and focus on the fifth one day decider where tickets are being scaled at three times their face value. The fact that umpire Aleem Dar and commentators Wasim Akram and Shoaib Akhtar have been shooed away from Mumbai by a few Shiv Sena thugs will no longer matter. And in the Indian city of Rajura, a parrot called ‘Hariyal’ is arrested by the police after the owner complained that it was using fowl language towards his stepmother, who is 85. Maybe the parrot was just reading/watching the news and saying…X%$#@*&(%… Why blame the bird. Just another day…