Laws of India

So, I was studying a while back (for exams, obviously) and I came across a couple of pretty interesting facts. Did you know Bhutan is still a protectorate of India? I never knew India had ever had a protectorate, let alone the fact that it still has one. In fact, Sikkim was once a protectorate of India as well. Heck, Sikkim was a separate country, became a protectorate, then an Associated State of India(meaning it could throw out Indian control over it at any time and declare itself free again), and finally it became a proper state. And now there's all this hullabaloo over it becoming free again, or a part of China, or whatever. Can't seem to make up their damn minds, the stupid gits.

Also, there actually still exists a free city, after the style of the Greek city-states of old and Danzig et all of the not-so-old. It’s called Trieste, and lies somewhere in Italy. How come Italy has these weird things inside it? Vatican City - the so-called Holy See - and now Trieste? Weird country.

Moving closer to home, did you know the richest law in India happens to be the IT Act of 2005? It’s the only law I've come across that actually has substantial fines, going upto Rs. 1 crore in some cases. Big money, that. You don't submit certain paperwork you're supposed to hand in, you get slapped with a 25,000 Rs fine. Don't keep records - 10,000 for every day you don't get your account books in order. Contrast this with the Trade Union Act, enacted in some year I forget. Failure to keep records means a fine of - hold your breath - Rs. 10 every day such failure continues. Incidentally, this is after revising the fines and charges for various Trade Union activities. I might be wrong here, but as far as I remember, it used to be 25 paise for joining a Trade Union. This has now been increased to the princely sum of Rs.2.

I understand the whole thing about Trade Union law meant for labourers and IT Act meant for the well-off and all that. I get the point that there's bound to be a difference in the amounts both these parties can pay. But, seriously, 10,000 versus 10 Rs. for the exact same offence? Our labourers aren't THAT poor.

The case of Uttar Pradesh vs. Nooh is another little ditty that springs to mind. I came across this while learning about the importance of fair hearing and the maxim Nemo Judex in re Sua - more or less meaning "nobody should be a judge in his own cause". It basically means you can't give any decision in any matter in which you personally are involved, because that would be.....well, silly, really. The whole notion of the impartial decision-maker or adjudicator rests on this maxim. Anyway, what happened was that a departmental enquiry was held against Mr. (or possibly Mrs.) Nooh. The guy who was supposed to be adjudicating on the matter also knew something about the matter and could have been a witness himself. So, well, he decided to go ahead and actually BE that witness. He got up from the enquiry committee, went and gave evidence against Nooh as a witness, then calmly sat back down with the committee and decided against Nooh. And apparently, the rest of the committee let it happen.

Cases like these occasionally (VERY occasionally, actually) make studying law worthwhile. They brighten up my day.

Of course, then I look at the rest of law and the clouds settle firmly back into place. Oh well, tidbits of interest here and there can be taken as a silver lining I suppose.

One should be an eternal optimist.

Shaving the stuff

Well, since I'm not doing anything now, I might as well write down the next incident of note that I can remember. For those who think I don't have anything better to write about, they're perfectly right. I don't. I'm bored, nobody's around, except Saket, and he's about as much fun as a log. He's been pestering me to go to Mocha with him and sit around a hookah while he inhales the stuff, but, thankfully, the auto drivers are still on strike (probably the first time I'm happy about the fact) and I flatly refuse to ride on the brakeless wonder bike his ex-roommate offered to lend. Especially with Saket driving.

Speaking of Saket, I believe I mentioned something about his shaving. We had exams till yesterday, and in keeping with tradition, Saket the cool dude hadn't shaved. He looked like a gorse bush in the middle of the monsoon. We kept telling him to do it, but he always kept saying he didn't have enough time, mostly cause he was sleeping half the day. One day, me and Siddharth were shaving, and we spot him and decide to pester him about it. So we did, and he finally caved in and consented to shave. He started in, and we all gaped in wonder at his technique. I don't know if you've ever seen an axeman felling a tree, but I really thought this was what it must seem like. The guy was scraping away at it like fungus being scraped off a ship. Or am I thinking of barnacles? Either way, something that you scrape with a great deal of vim.

Anyway, once we got over the shock of his hacking, we told him to not shave everything off, but keep a French beard. He thought it would look silly, but we champions of pestering would not give in, so finally he stopped at a French beard and peered at himself in the mirror. Of course, we fell over laughing when he turned towards us and he ran off to shave off the rest, but it was worth it. I do believe he thought it actually looked good for a little while.

Admittedly, I'm not one to critize. For those who don't know, my hair currently looks it belongs to one of those people who wander around in denim jackets and silver chains around their wrists all the time. It was suppposed to be "subtly streaked" with what I imagined would be light brown, but the experiment went kinda awry and I ended up looking highly gay. Not very nice, but at least I really can't complain, since it was my mother who was doing the actual colouring and me directing her. How was I to know it would turn out like this?

Anyway, that's about it.

I'm still bored, but now I have less time to be bored in.

Bye bye to one and all. Have fun, and be good. However, keep in mind: growing old is mandatory, growing up is optional.

Entre

So, this would be my first blog ever. Not a very reassuring thought, but I figured I might as well leave all the brilliant thoughts bubbling around inside my mind to posterity. Since I don't exactly have a backyard to bury a time capsule in, I figured why not use the power of the internet and create a blog. Hence the reason why you, dear reader, are suffering.

So anyway, hello to all. For my very first topic, I shall write about.....


Zombie Stripper. That, for the uninformed, is an actual, honest-to-God movie title. In case you didn't already guess, its a B-rated movie. Which should tell you all you want to know. I highly recommend this movie to all who are tired of The Notebook and Marley and Me.

Let me sketch out one particularly memorable scene for anyone interested. So this guy goes to a strip club, right, and sees this smokin' hot stripper. She turns out to be a really accommodating stripper, the kind lots of people wish they knew. She takes a real fancy to our hero and takes him into the standard strip-club back room. At this point, he's not really complaining, which is quite understandable. She happily proceeds to get down on her knees and - for the sake of the underaged who I really hope will read this blog and learn a lot of life's lessons from it - blow him. So there he is, in proverbial and quite literal heaven, when suddenly she (very rudely, in my opinion) bites away that highly important bit of him and starts chomping away on it like the french fries she buys at the local McDonald's. The guy's stunned, as expected, and all he can do is just lie there, while a fountain of blood spurts out, looking exactly like he's peeing. Except that its red, of course. And looking like she's found the fountain of youth, this highly enterprising and very nippy stripper drinks it all up, showing us all that she is in fact a zombie.

I always thought it was vampires who drank blood, but I guess a few liberties can be taken in a movie like this. Don't ask me what happened to the guy and his love life after this. I cannot tell you, having never really watched the thing. If I do so, and if at all I survive, I shall document it all for your sakes, so that at least the Hollywood ( or, as is very possible, Tollywood) doyens of the 26th century will know the sketchy plots of the typical family movie of the 21st.

Remind me to write about my friend Saket and his shaving sometime.

Have fun all. And remember: growing old is mandatory, growing up is optional.