Kusum Choppra

Terrorists are not just those that fight with guns; they could just sabotage your relationships and may be your bank balances too. Last week was my encounter with a cyber terrorist. He hacked into my yahoo account and sent out a serial mail hoping to fleece as many of the unawares as possible in my address book. In the midst of my Diwali spring cleaning I got a series of insistent SMSes from a dear friend Rashmi, asking me where I was. When I called, she immediately told me very clear-headedly to change my password immediately as the account had been hacked and told me about the begging mail. The amazing mail, supposedly written from London, stated that I had been robbed of all my cash, cards and luggage and needed 1200 pounds immediately to clear a hotel bill and come back home. Fortunately for me, although the mail sounded plaintive enough, those familiar with my writing style caught on immediately: the style was not mine! The password was immediately changed. In the process, the i...

Karva Chauth is supposed to be a joyous occasion. It is another matter of course that it can border on the ludicrous on its silver screen version – Glitzy sets and huge, laden tables for a Hindu, vegetarian version of an Iftar party, and that curious, perfectly round water body specially created for the event. Anyone who has actually kept the fast knows that real life is quite different. Dressing up is probably the best part of the tedious fast, but making it through the puja and waiting for the moon to rise takes up all the remaining energy. How many actually have the vigor for partying either before or after that? Part of the fun is to gather in a circle to complete the thalis ritual before sunset. Every family has its own hoary tradition (hamare wahan to aisa hi hota hai) of what to do with the diya which is lit on the thali. Most families have one diya, while others have two, one of which goes over the woman’s shoulder after the puja. How would that be possible on the glitzy party ...

These days viewers are flood with ads steering them to the many mythologicals on TV with the tag line “ teach the kids sanskar “, especially from the Ramayan. Now, let’s get a bird’s eye view of some of what the Ramayan and the Mahabharat have to teach our kids: Those dirty old men like Dashrath and Shantanu had so little control over themselves that they went to any extent, made any promises with disastrous political impact for their countries, merely to bed the next nubile young woman who caught their fancy. The net result was that Ram spent 14 years wandering the forest, making conquest after conquest there and returned home to dump his pregnant wife so he could get on with ruling his kingdom. (Wonderful family planning since she never got pregnant during the jungle sojourn). Divorce goes a long way back in our society, does it not? So does deceit in the manner in which Ram dealt with Sigrid; and the rewards of family disloyalty with the way Ram received the brother of Ravan. In...

Is a bureaucrat babu’s blood redder or more precious than than of a soldier? IFS Officer V Venkateshwara Rao and Brigadier Ravi Dutt Mehta were both killed in the suicide bomb attack on the Indian Embassy in Kabul earlier this week. While the Army Officer’s widow will get RS 5 lakh ex-gratia and normal pension benefits as per existing government rules, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has announced special benefits for the widow of the IFS Officer: Rs. 5 lakhs ex-gratia, plus full salary benefits, including due upward revisions when due, until his date of retirement and pension thereafter, with government accommodation until his date of retirement. But for the PM’s intervention, she would have got only the pension and other benefits. One has full sympathy for the young widow, ditto for the Brigadier’s and those of the two ITBP officials who were also killed in the bomb attack. But the question does arise: Why the special package only for the IFS widow? Is Fauji blood thinner than a Babu’...

Whither Technology? Any visit to a doctor, with the most innocuous of ailments, is inevitably followed by a series of tests, the path. Lab., X-ray House, ECG etc. etc. until the results come in, the doc will offer some palliative only, A Placebo? Why do modern day docs, after all those exhaustive training, 6 years for MBBS, 2 for MD and then another three for the M.CH, still require the crutch of various test results to tell the patient what the problem is? Where are those who used to tell the patient the problem by looking at their eyes or ears, fingers, nails or feeling the pulse? Nowadays “qualified” doctors rely on the verdict of a lab. technician to determine the problem of the patient!! It seems the advent of technology has rendered doctors quite clueless in their own arenas. In a related one, investigators rely more and more on forensic science’s advanced tools in brain mapping and lie detectors…only to have people still beat their systems. Are they actually so out of touch with...

This is the dry season. Summer’s heat keeps most indoors, glued to the TV screens which have turned dry too. All the soaps are at a virtual standstill. It is painfully obvious that their script writers are stumped and don’t know what to do with their characters. On the so-called reality shows scene, the less said the better about the imagination of people who turn music which is supposed to usher in peace and quiet and restoration of the soul, into Wars of Music. The language spoken by their propagandists makes one reach for the mute button, rather than listening to the war mongering of Music. Movies are a let down with all producers latching on to identical themes of 2-3-4 heroes performing ridiculous antics, with the heroines reduced to bit players of no substance. What happened to all those multiplex movies and the song writers and musicians? Has Indian talent dried up, along with the influx of the American league style cricket which monopolizes evening TV? Who will now contest ...

Almost twenty five years ago, I had once helped a teacher friend to correct exam papers. Those were the days before centralized examining of papers was done and the aim of the exercise was to finish off the work to head for a movie. At the end of the session, I was astounded to find that out of a class of 48, a handful passed the exam; three scored around 60% and all the rest failed, many scoring less than ten marks. The question that came to my mind then was: Who's to blame for this result, the students or the teacher? Today the same question rises with a Pune report that only 10% of some 1.25 lakh teachers of Std. 1 to 7 could answer all the questions in the English and Math books at a workshop conducted by the State Council for Educational Research. What does this speak of our educational standards and the teachers who impart that education? This is not to criticize our system per se. There has to be something going for our system of education which allows planeloads of our youn...