Aarushi Rant.

I don't usually post about cases like these.

Hell, I don't usually post at all.

But I ended up ranting about the Aarushi Case on Facebook Chat a while back.

the Transcript goes a little like this.

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Dylan:Was it you, who posted a link on FB

about Arushi Talwar case

Me:yeah\

I got that from Mystiques blog though

Dylan:is there any way you can get it agaian?

Me:yeah one sec

http://www.openthemagazine.com/article/nation/worse-than-a-daughter-s-death

Me:whats the occasion? fancy a re-read?

Dylan:Just wanted to link it to Samadrita.

Me:

Ah. She hasn't read it?

Dylan:maybe she has read it

I dunno.. but she says she thinks that the parents killed her

Me:oh shiiii-

But who can really tell, man?

I mean, the article was compelling and all

Dylan:Yeah I guess

Me:but what kinda ninja would get into a house, kill two people, get out, and not even steal anything AND not wake anyone.

Dylan:http://twitter.com/#!/AuraofDreams/status/61027885619744768

Me:This looks like a job for detective school Q

Dylan:yeah its all very strange

Dylan:sad

Me:Sad?

whats sad is that a shitload more people die everyday in various places in our Country

it never gets reported, and the police pin the blame on someone convenient and call it a day

the only reason this one got attention is cause the victim was well to do

Dylan:...and with the murder pinned on the dad the media could sensationalise it

Me:also, Aarushi was a 'Gen Y' person or whatever.

so she was more relatable

'Today her. Tomorrow it could be you'

thats what the media was trying to say

Nobody mentioned the servant

who was also killed

Dylan:oh yeah

Collateral damage

Me:cause he's poor. Who gives a fuck about poor people if they aren't starving in africa, ay?

those kind of people aren't relatable to the average TV news viewer

give more coverage to the rich kid, pull out her facebook pictures, check her 'morality' and shit

Middle class people gonna lap that up

Me:...

wow

Dylan:and they did

Me:I'm ranting aren't I

Half a mind to copy paste this and put it up on my blog

would you mind if I did?

Dylan:Not at all

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I just got down to watching 'Natural Born Killers' recently. Maybe thats why this topic stuck in my mind when it was brought up.

The movie, for those of you who haven't seen it, is basically about how society perceives violence vs. how murderers perceive violence. It's filled with caricatures of media people and thinly veiled parodies of 'America's Most Wanted'.

Lemme break it down to explain what the problem is:

The media loves violence. I doesn't mean to encourage it, or foster it, No sir, don't get the wrong idea.

But violence is powerful stuff for a media person, and thats because the general public gravitates to it like flies on meat.

Why?

Maybe it's ingrained somewhere in our collective psyche. Maybe we're all creatures of violence and thats why we're so fascinated by it. It taps into some primal part of our psyche and just can't look away.

I don't mean in television or the movies or whatever. Few months ago I saw a drunk man on a railway station get clipped on the shoulder by a train when he stumbled too close to the edge of the platform. Poor guy was bleeding out right there on the platform, and people walking by at the peak of Rush hour stopped in their tracks.
Seconds ago, they had things to do and places to be, but then they all took time out to watch the man bleed.
And don't tell me it's because they were going to help. Most people were content to make comments in the crowd, about how drunk people were the worst, he deserved it, yada yada.

Simply put, it brought out a sort of morbid curiosity in people.

Maybe its evolutionary. If we see what happens to our fellow man, we may be better prepared for if it happens to us.

Whatever the reason, it works.

It stays in your mind, and thats exactly what the media wants. In a nutshell, they want your attention, and they get it by getting you nice and afraid.

Thats basically what was done with the Aarushi case. Victim was a bubbly, sweet, mall-going, facebook using, 'Gen Y' teenager. The kind of person we all might know. Someone we could relate to

They never used the exact words, but they presented all the facts with the implied underlying meaning that said 'If it can happen to her, it could happen to you'.

At that point you might step in and say that te media can do as they want, it's up to the people to make their own decisions.

The problem is, all the media attention put greater pressure on the investigators. For all we know they may have manipulated evidence just to get the case closed as soon as they could. Or they may have done their job well, we don't know. Fact remains though, the minute they declared that the victim's Dad was the prime suspect, it was almost as if every news network in India had a simultaneous orgasm.

The case turned from murder to family drama. They called it the breakdown of the Indian Family. Irrespective of the fact that over 40% of murders occur between victims and offenders who are relatives. No, hell with that, THIS case is where Indian Family values have been killed, never to be seen again.

Then they started questioning the victims 'character' which just fucked my mind completely. Who gives a shit about that? Would you abandon the investigation if it turned out that the victim had 'loose morals' (whatever the fuck that means)? Are you saying that promiscuous people deserve to die?

And there, the media could finally link things to the other big daddy eyeball magnet of the masses. Sex. The 3 things that always interest the middle class. Scandalous Scams, Sensational Violence, and Salacious tales of Sexual escapades. If they managed to link, lets say, a land scam to this, I'm sure a lot of journalists would have been able to make enough to retire right then and there.

No respect for the dead. No peace for the living. Her parents must've gone through hell by that point. And thats why I'm ranting.

Come on,man. Have some respect. Honor that girls memory and don't be dwelling on those aspects of her life that got nothing to do with anything.

After all, she's someone we can relate to, right? A mall-going, facebook using, 'Gen Y' teenager

Realism in Romance

I'm not a big fan of the romance genre. A chance sms from a friend fuelled my thought processes on this topic today, as to WHY I don't like it. WHAT exactly was wrong with it, and how would I correct it, If I really had to.

This started off as a random string of thoughts but wound up becoming a short story. Initially it was just a boredom thing, but as it grew in length, It became more like a challenge to myself. To prove to myself that I could still swing a mean pen.

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Too often I hear of crappy love stories-ridiculous, over the top tales filled to the gills with every cliché imaginable. It’s very nearly unbearable to a reader like Yours Truly, and what really annoys me is that I know it doesn’t have to be this way. It shouldn’t be that hard to write romance with realism in it. All you do is actively ignore the standard tropes of the genre, and you should be good to go.

Unfortunately, I haven’t come across something like this as yet. Which is why, I’ve decided to type out the gritty, hard hitting record of the personal life of one Sunny

Keep in mind, Dear Reader, that when I mean realistic, I don’t mean shaky cameras and grayscale color schemes. Things may not go the way you’d like them, especially if you’re a fan of the usual fluff. This is chiefly because we’re dealing with realistic relationships here, and realistically, sometimes people do strange things because, well, that’s just how they are.

Our journey begins with Sunny Spoonwaala, at the sprightly age of 22. Vijay represents

that vast stratum of society who one usually wouldn’t notice. Ever.

So plain in terms of looks that it wasn’t even funny, he looked like basically 70% of society. Average height, weight, intellect, physique. He was Mr. Average. The Mayor of Plaintown. The King of Normal-ia.

Downright boring, he was.

And so, Dear Reader, what we have here is a stock character you may no doubt recognize from works such as ‘The Purple Headed Soldier’ or ‘Scarlet Wayfarer’ or whatever the hell they’re naming women’s porn nowadays. Those in the pulp novel industry call it the ‘Straight Man’ type character, and pair him off with a contrasting female character, usually ‘The Psycho’ or ‘The Shrew’.

But it’s not quite cliché yet. It’s justified, in this case, by the fact that it’s realistic to be normal.

So Sunny, at his new workplace, meets an attractive young lady named Sharmili. She too, was a fresher, at looked pretty hot.

I’m not going to say she had eyes like pristine lagoons or hair like black velvet, cause she didn’t.

Hell, nobody does.

All I’m saying is that she was pretty hot, a 7 on 10 in my book.

Also, a word of caution, Dear Reader, if you’re starting to read too much into the character names. Maybe you’re starting to think that Sharmili is the shy type or that Sunny is a cheerful young lad who’ll win over the lady with his exuberant charm.

You Are? Are you challenged or something? Names don’t work that way, you dumb fuck. If they did, I’d change my last name to WIN and name my three kids ‘Somuch’, ‘Madeof’, and ‘Epic’. This isn’t James Bond, where a guy with a name like Oregano Angercock is a Mexican bull wrestler, or chicks have names like ‘Miwana Bangbang’.

It’s just a name.

So anyway, Sunny falls in love at first sight ( If you expected this then you obviously can’t take a hint)

Gets to know Sharmili over the course of a few months and strikes up a friendship. This was easy since he wasn’t at Marylin Manson levels of creepiness, and also because they had been assigned to the same project (Their first project teams were based on alphabetical order of last names. Sharmili’s last name was Sparda. Still realistic!)

Eventually, Sunny gets a serious case of boneritis, understandably, because, you know, 7 on 10…

Gentleman that he is, he decides to win over the lady’s heart with all the charm he can muster.Which, as he eventually realizes, is not much.

So he takes up a different approach, shock and awe.

For weeks he spent his time talking to Sharmili, trying to figure out her interests and tastes. He was pleasantly surprised to find that they both shared the same taste in Music, Movies and pencils (They were both into 2B’s).

As time went on, and he got to know her better, Sunny realized that he was developing real feelings for this woman, distinct and separate from the ‘Dayyyuum look at that ass’ category of feelings. It was at this point that his story went from a quest for booty to a labor of love.

Now, if I was writing a novel to be published by Rupa or somebody, I would have a 62 page filler arc right about now involving a convoluted series of misunderstandings or a long drawn out faux philosophy lesson. Fuck that. I’m going to do what I do with those books and just skip to the end.

His final expression to her, after months of preparation, simply defies description. I would probably include the lines of the ballad he had composed for her, or describe his glorious speech where he confessed his undying love, but I totally wouldn’t do justice to it. Suffice to say, it was pretty heavy. Their co-workers had tears in their eyes, going so far as to say that here was the most beautiful thing they had ever seen one creature do for another.

Sunny was then rejected, because Sharmili said she wanted to focus on her job. In reality she just wasn’t into him. Even though he loved her around 10 tons, she wasn’t interested because, well, that’s just how it was. No reason.

Sunny was kinda totally devastated with this shit. But he still held on to hope.

He thought to himself ‘I won’t give up, one day I’ll make her understand how much she means to me’.

Buuut, that never happened. He basically stalked her for a week and then got tired of the whole thing. He got married a few years later to some Wheatish Complexion B.Ed First Class girl his parents picked out for him, and forgot all about Sharmili. Even though he had been ready to give his left ball to be with her a couple of years back, because, well, that’s just how it was. No Reason.

As for Sharmili, she met someone herself a few months after the big rejection. An old classmate named Anirudh.

Now, surely you’re thinking, if she picked him, he must probably be 10 times the man that Sunny was. Smarter, probably? Or more Sensitive? Or more Rugged? All of the above?

Nope.

He basically had a nice car and a shitload of money. Also a nice house. And a nice car.

Did I mention the car?

‘Surely’, I hear you say, Dear Reader, ’The man must be a total douchebag. No doubt she’ll dump him once she realizes that’.

Buut no. Anirudh surprisingly wasn’t that bad a dude. Just because he used his immense wealth to get with the ladies didn’t make him a douchebag.

They finally settled down together and lived happily ever after.

Until they died.

And so ends the story, with Sharmili dying at 39 from a heart attack. I guess a rich lifestyle isn’t what it’s cut out to be, what with the increase risk of heart disease. But I kept all of this in, all for the realism. Life can be like this sometimes, because, well, that’s just how it is. No Reason.*

*Wait a minute. There is a reason. It’s high cholesterol. Ignore that last line.