I had so much fun last night. I felt all warm and tingly when I got home. Major smiles. K's studying, R (you don't know her, Girish) is getting married, Y is almost done with her residency, S has just chnaged jobs (and still hasn't quite figured out what a conversation means) and D is still nuts. Good fun. So the deal with Ramya is that she met this guy on Orkut (of all places!!) and checked him out on tamilmatrimony.com (again, Hloy shit!!) and then from there things got a little blurred till he popped the question (I am still not sure if it was just a week after "meeting" on Orkut) and she said ok and they called their respective parents and his came to her home and they met and now all is well and dandy. People do this? People I know?! Anyway, she seems very happy and I guess that's all that really matters. All in a week's work apparently.

So that was saturday.

I went to my grandmother's place this morning with my dad and my aunt and uncle were just shaking the cobwebs off and the cousin was still asleep. The conversation, during the course of several coffees, ranged from just plain weird to really scary. Somehow my aunt and I started talking politics and obviously you can't talk Indian politics without talking about religion and caste. My uncle piped in about how the Karunanidhi is trying to get a bill passed basing reservations based on religions. Now reservation based on caste itself is a contentious issue.. The conversation veered off there with my father and uncle talking about how if the TN assembly passed it the supreme court would strike it down as it is unconstitutional and all that. My aunt and I went off on a tangent. I was my naive self and said something along the lines of maybe politics shouldn't be based on religion. Oh man! She took me down, tied me up and beat the shit out of me. (The sister gave me Earl Grey. Black. It tastes weird. Making weird faces now.) Her arguments made absolute sense. Politics stinks. Religion mixed in copius amounts with politic stinks even more. In India, politics IS religion and caste. The hindus are mostly stupid and fractional and that is why the minorities get away with murder. What really really pisses me off is how American and European missionaries dole out money for conversions. A while ago, apparently a woman's kids had fallen ill. The people she was working with were not in town. The local priest gave her a bag of rice. She took it gratefully. Then a few days later he told her to come to church and take the rice. She did. By then her husband had also got whatever the kids had. She was desparate and this priest was looking like a lifesaver. He then told her to give her children "christian names" or no more rice. She did that. Her children now became "Mary Vimala" and "John Prakash". She was being ostracized by the rest of her family and the community she was living in. Her employer came back and this woman went to her and got money for hospitals bills and all that. Her kids got better, her husband went back to work. They were poor earlier; but they had a basic support system. Neighbours would watch the kids when she was at work, the old women in the slum would give her advise on how to take care of them when they were ill - not big stuff, but important. Now they were still poor, had "christian" names and no friends except for the priest. They converted. Moved to the christian locality within the slum. KNow what she did was probably wrong for them in the long run - with the extended family refusing to see them anymore and having to live with strangers and not really knowing what she had gotten into, but at the same time, know that if it happened again she would probably do the same thing if she was desperate.

The priests apparently get paid "per soul" saved. I have nothing against any religion. I just don't get what people get out of converting others. It is not as if her or her family's life has changed for the better. It is not as if any of them even know what the religion means or what it stands for. It seems like the religions and the people in the know prey on the poor, the needy and the desparate.

I still don't like the BJP or the VHP or the Bajrang Dal or the Shiv Sena. I still think they are a bunch of goons in saffron. I still wouldn't vote for them. But the alternative? Congress?? They pander to any imam or priest who comes calling. They know that if they give them what they want they are assured of most of the 17% muslim vote (or is it 22 now??). And so nothing really gets resolved. The 60 year old woman who got "talak talak talak"'d for no reason almost 10 years ago still gets no alimoney, is not allowed to keep in touch with her children and gets no help from the government because of "Muslim Law". Why are we not equal under the law?

I don't really mind the reservations. But I think the way they are now will only hate the country in the long run. It would make more sense if they first fixed the primary education system. Make more kids go to school. Build more village schools. College education is still for the priviledged. I know people who have had fake "Most Backward Caste" certificates made up because it is easier and cheaper. Well to do people. Sad it is.

Have to go sleep now. Good night.