Emergent Noise

This cartoon by R.K Laxman is most illustrative (no pun intended) of the affairs of the state…

Prediction comes true.

Google Talk

Enuff said.

There is a reason why I am not into farewell parties at IIT , I inevitably end up like this :

But thats the usual stuff, you want to see something unusual ? Anyone who knows Maya will be shocked when they see what the sincere, sidhi-saadhi almost pious Maya is doing here : :0

And finally, Pavanish, vision vector is straying , I am not sure where…

The British crossed seas, suffered India’s summers and often fell to malaria, all to build an empire. Fifty eight years after a famous independence, the Indian fate is still touched by the empire. Times Review looks at outdated laws that have survived, and at colonial systems and infrastructure that we use, somewhat ungratefully

By Swati Deshpande, TOI

Flying a kite needs Civil Aviation clearance

The Aircraft Act of 1934 describes the aircraft as “balloons fixed or free, airship, kites, gliders and flying machines”. According to this act the Director General of Civil Aviation has the powers to regulate operations of an aircraft, which by Indian law, could be a kite or a balloon that’s floating in the air or fixed to a child’s hand. While there have been considerable attention on laws that guard Indian skies, it is not clear why there is not yet an intelligent description of what constitutes an aircraft.

Your wife is your property

One of the many pleasures of not being male is that a married woman involved in an extramarital relationship is legally innocent while the man who is having an affair with her will be committing a criminal offence, and could be imprisoned up to five years or fined or made to endure both under Section 497 of the Indian Penal Code of 1860. Such is the law that an adulterous woman cannot be punished for even the abetment of crime. In most countries both genders are equally held responsible in this matter and their straying will not constitute a criminal offence. The inequality in the Indian law is a consequence of the Victorian notion of those times that a wife is her husband’s property and a man who is having an illicit relationship with her is trespassing or damaging his property. Also, in the age when this law was made, which was long before women’s magazines had helpful sex columns, a woman was not seen to have sexual individuality.

Why the courier company calls your love letter ‘document’

Among the many exclusive privileges the government has granted itself, is the right to send letters. The Indian Post Office Act of 1898 says so. It does kindly suggest that a friend or an employee could deliver a letter for you but no one other than the Central Government can charge for such a service. A letter has been defined by the Act and it does not include ‘documents’. That is a reason why courier companies usually scribble ‘document’ on the envelope containing any written matter.

I’m registered. Your camel may come in

Hotels are still described as ‘inns’ or sarias in The Sarias Act of 1867. It clearly states that only ‘inn-keepers’ who are registered as inn keepers can grant entry to lodgers, their vehicle, sheep, elephant, camel and other animals. The duties of the inn-keepers include chopping branches of sprawling trees to prevent thieves. Also, it’s binding on the innkeeper to give drinking water to any person who asks so. In fact there is a recent case of the Delhi Civic body taking a five star hotel to court for not providing free drinking water to a passerby. It must be the legal intuition, if not knowledge, that makes most Udipi hotel owners in Mumbai keep a tray of glasses at the counter.

By law, these guys are uncivilised

The British found the Sonthal tribe totally “uncivilised” and so passed The Sonthal Paraganas Act of 1855 to put them outside the ambit of other laws. The Act says that law was not being followed, “by the uncivilsed race of people called Sonthals”. So it removed the tribe from the jurisdiction of such laws. Hundred and forty five years after the law was enacted it still stays.

When a public servant must feed an elephant

The Cattle Trespass Act of 1871 describes cattle not only as, “elephants, camel, buffaloes,” but also diligently goes ahead and gives the genders of various animals like “horse, mares, geldings, ponies, colts, mules, asses, rams, ewes, sheep, lambs, pigs, goats”. Worse, it states that if there is an eye-witness account of cattle (as defined above) grazing on private property, the witness can have the animal arrested. It will be sent to the pound. The pound keeper is a public servant who has to feed and water the animals.

Failed suicide is punishable

In a country that largely believes that human lives are deservedly recycled, a probable Christian hangover still exists in its laws. India does not accept a person’s right to end his life. So if you have not been careful in executing your suicide, you will go to jail under Section 309 of the Indian Penal Code of 1860. However, the Supreme Court has opined that this law is cruel to one who did not want to be alive out side the jail in the first place.

During sex, be in the right place

The moral values of the nineteenth century that has survived the assault of modernity presumed that there’s one natural method of having sex. That’s why anal sex, other adventures of bored couples or the compulsions of homosexuals are punishable under Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code of 1860. The section falls under the heading ‘offences affecting the human body’. It seeks to punish anyone who “voluntarily has carnal intercourse against the order of nature with any man, woman or animals,” with even life imprisonment. As per a survey, most married couples can be punished under this antiquated law that was meant to ban to homosexuality among men. Lesbians do not come under its purvey. Like most men, it seems even the Constitution does not know what exactly lesbians do. In an interpretation of Section 377 of the IPC today, magazine tips on oral sex and other adventures, could be construed as unlawful directives.

A very interesting article, that helps put content on the blog when I dont feel like writing anything….

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Biologists have long understood that monogamy is rare in mammals. Of about 4,000 mammalian species, only a handful has ever been called monogamous. The tiny list includes beavers and a couple of other rodents, otters, bats, certain foxes, a few hoofed mammals, and some primates-notably gibbons and the tamarins and marmosets.

So may be the whole fuss over exclusivity, monogamy or fidelity is not warranted. May be it is time to accept ‘wayward behavior’ as an inherent

human quirk.

Scientists in the US are now focusing on a ‘monogamy gene’ in mice which is said to promote monogamous behavior. When a certain type of mice was injected with the monogamy gene from another similar type, there was a noticeable change in its behavior. Instead of mating and immediately moving on, the injected mice would show more of an attachment to its mate! But scientists say that the ‘monogamy gene’ would not work similarly for humans. The monogamy gene is broken down into three parts – lust, romance and attachment – and in some cases these three don’t work together. This may cause strong attachment to one person and mad romantic love for another.

What makes monogamy or sexual fidelity important for humans? Obviously, monogamy gives a strong sense of family values to individuals and few would doubt that emotionally stable men and women would contribute to a healthy society. Imagine a society where children grew up in families where they were able to perceive that there was something wrong in the relationship between their parents. Or they grew up seeing their parents with multiple partners. Most psychiatrists would agree that it would have a detrimental effect on their emotional health.

However forced monogamy may have its critical downside as well. Some studies show that many men experience performance anxiety because they try to curb their natural, authentic sexual response which may be interpreted as promiscuous or lustful, which has immediate great negative connotations. This conditioning creates the foundation for guilt and performance anxiety. Thus sometimes sex in marriage conflicts with the male’s powerful early conditioning. When he feels inclined to stray or ‘cheat’, he ultimately and invariably is bombarded with guilt and self-hatred.

Expressed in another way, the man and woman in a permanent, exclusive relationship may be having sex at cross purposes. For him, traditionally, sex has meant challenge and conquest and a variety of women. This is missing in marriage. For her, sex meant belonging, intimacy and security. Since men invariably try to accommodate female needs rather than fulfill their own, whether ‘right’ or ‘wrong’, ‘good’ or ‘bad’, they will may well be living a huge lie which would lead to unconscious resentment against their partner. Only when the marriage finally ends, when and if it does, can a man fully feel and admit the intense sexual frustration that was pent up.

There is another school of thought who believes that free love or multiple partners are not unethical. They say that physical intimacy is an act similar to others like jogging or going for a movie which can be done and enjoyed with several people. These are things that people can do together. When they do it together, they do not expect their partner to only do such an action with them only. Sex, as far as our society is concerned, is the only thing which we should limit to one individual. But perhaps that limiting nature of a physical relationship is what makes it beautiful among two people.

So, in other words, you marry one person, you remain faithful to that one person for all of the remaining days of your life. Impossible? No. Easy? No. Necessary? Well, that one has no one answer.

The formula for any successful relationship is trust. Therefore, whether or not monogamy is necessary is something that must be decided before the relationship begins and the decision must be honoured or you have violated your partner’s trust. Most people assume that issues relating to ‘affairs’, ‘cheating’, ‘extramarital affairs’, etc, are based solely on sexual intercourse. This is not true. The real issue at stake is the violation of trust. So, what does that mean for you, in your current relationship?

That depends. First of all, do you want to have more than one sexual partner? Is this something you have already discussed with your current significant other? Do you trust your partner enough to share your thoughts with them? The best course of action, naturally, is to have these decisions cleared up before the relationship begins. However, if you are in a long term relationship, and your feelings have changed, that’s a deeper, more revolving situation. That problem will depend on the outlook of both partners and the way the matter is handled. No one should be forced to do something they do not want to do-that includes sharing partners or having a single partner.

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