The christmas post

My favourite time of the year is here. One day to Christmas! My family has somehow grown together into big x’mas celebrators. I am not sure how it happened. It started innocently enough, with gifts kept under our pillow or stuffed in stockings. Then tiny trees (plants actually that looked nothing like Christmas trees) were brought into the house and decorated. The traditional Christmas cake was added one year. I have a close knit and large family, so everyone together in one evening automatically meant a festive atmosphere. Carols were sung, lights were hung, and mistletoe was discovered. Kids started buying crappy gifts with very little money and lots of love- addressing them to mummy and daddy from Santa Claus! The occasional friend with nothing to do was invited. The tree was upgraded, the cake became bigger, the wine began to flow. Kids turned to adults, started earning and became full fledged Santas in their own right! New kids were born and inherited the love for Christmas. And so a tradition was born. Even if it looks similar to everyone else’s Christmas, to me, I saw it evolve into this and so it is unique, it is ours. Even if it is accused of being commercial nonsense and causes a big hole in our pockets- to me it’s worth it- because it buys me something I can’t put a price on.

But this Christmas, there’s a tingling of unhappiness. Uneasiness might be a better word. Apart from the fact that I have a growing dissatisfaction with the state of my life right now and I am growing into a painful crib, there’s a strange feeling in me- which I am trying to unravel by writing this blog..

When we are little, our world is simple- everyone we love lives in the same house. There’s a mummy and a daddy, perhaps a sibling, a couple of grandparents maybe- a favourite aunt or uncle and some cousins once in a way. And at the times when you want everyone you love around- all you have to do is go home. But then you grow up, and eventually the number of people you love also grows. It may happen at 18, it may happen at 28, but most of the time, it does happen. And what happens then, to my Christmas, or your diwali or birthday- or whatever that time is which you spent with the people you really loved?
I cannot imagine a Christmas away from home. Not decorating my tree, not buying gifts for the same people year after year. Not feeling a tad but disappointed cause I got what I wanted but in the wrong colour!

And yet, Christmas without that someone special- the person you learnt and grew to love. The person you loved, first for what they were and then despite what they were. Some one who for some reason becomes more family than some of your real family. And just like family, you don’t realize how much they matter till something like this comes-a-calling.
If and when I get married, I will have to work it into my wedding vows- that Christmas will always be at my home with my family and my tree!!!
I want that someone, we all do- but I don’t want to give up what I have for what I want. I suppose, in the end, it just sounds like I want everything. Just like a bratty child who has not been good at all the whole year but writes Santa a long list of things he wants. In that case- I’ve got my Christmas spirit bang on. And like the child who does not get everything he wants, but gets something nice anyway, I will heave a sigh, and let the cake , the wine and the singing do the rest.

To all a merry Christmas and a very happy holiday season 

P.B : I want to take a minute to tell all those people who I have learnt to take for granted how much they mean to me- and how they are also someone I want to spend Christmas with. To D, R, both the S’s the A’s and the other S – here’s to a Merry Christmas and a crappy new year (you know it’s not gonna get any better! )

She's blind and there's a damn good reason for it !

A defense for arrested terrorist Mohammed Ajmal Kasab is the new controversy. Why the Shiv Sena (and all its offshoots) chooses time and again to pick up the wrong causes and go ahead and fight for them in the most objectionable ways is beyond me to answer. That they do is once again plain for all to see.

Mobs have threatened, attacked and staged less than peaceful protests against a Lawyer who agreed to defend Kasab. Many lawyers have refused and associations have taken decisions not to defend him.

It would not take an in depth knowledge of the law for us to know that every accused has a right to his or her defense. Equally every lawyer has a right, I understand, to choose not to take up a case offered to him for whatever personal reasons he feels bound by. A defendant (or maybe I should stick for now with the word ’accused’ ) can either defend himself, appoint a lawyer, failing which the state MUST by law provide him with a lawyer. This is the law in letter, which we must follow. But there is also a spirit, however hard it may be at this point for us to see.

It is hard for any of us right now to imagine a credible defense for Kasab, but the issue here is not of any individual or the extent or nature of their crime but of the liberty and justice which our judicial system is based on. It would in fact be a person who believes in justice and fairness above all else who would fight for this man’s right to get the best defense he possibly can. It was the right of Nathu Ram Godse, the right of the accused in the Jessica Lal case, and now Kasab’s right.

Let us put aside, for a second the letter of law, which unarguably insists on a defense for Kasab. I want us to understand that we need this in spirit as we do in letter.

What if he were tried, convicted, and punished without a defense? Would that makes us proud as a country? As a people proud of our democracy, of our fundamental rights and of our justice system it would be shameful, no less. It would be a farce of a case. We would have sinned in punishing a defenseless man. A man, who like all other men, however heinous the crime or certain the guilt, is innocent until proven guilty. And we cannot have proven a man guilty who has not had the chance to defend himself.

It is sad that political parties continually put themselves behind such pointless issues. It is bad enough that people like us often thoughtlessly agree with them. I heard it during the Jessica Lal case, and I hear it now.

Such sentiments do us the disservice of giving people a chance to point a finger at us for assuming someone’s guilt unfairly. They deny us- the people, the right to punish the guilty after a fair trial and to proudly claim that justice has been done.

There was an sms doing the rounds during and after the Mumbai attacks asking where the Sena was now and what it was doing. Well here they are now, and this is what they are doing.

"I do not agree with a word you say, but I will fight to the death for your right to say it"
- Voltaire