RACISM EXISTS

from Gargi Mandal-Mukherjee <mandalgargi81@gmail.com>toservice@youtube.com

date : Wed, Apr 8, 2009 at 1:15 PM
subject Fwd: Comment posted on "Sandy Hook Beach, NJ"
1:15 PM (1 hour ago)

Dear YouTube,

Youtube has been one of my favourite websites for a long time as it has allowed us all to upload and share all our beloved videos. But recently people have been abusing your infrastructure and facilities by propagating racist messages and insensitive comments & videos, provoking ill feeling among international communities.

http://www.youtube.com/user/killswitch6988 : this person is one of them.

This morning I was shocked to find the dirty, insensitive, foul-mouthed comment he had posted in my profile. A visit to his profile revealed a series of racial comments and hate messages that I, being a non resident Indian, found in very poor taste. I intend to post a review to our local newspapers and local magazines and in my blogspace, mentioning the way people are misusing YouTube. I would expect you would take immediate action against this member, and prevent the spread of such racial abuse and dangerous separatisms in future.

I enclose below the forwarded message from your site itself, notifying me of the comment I received this morning.

--- Forwarded message ----From: YouTube Service <service@youtube.com>
Date: Wed, Apr 8, 2009 at 12:07 AM
Subject: Comment posted on "Sandy Hook Beach, NJ"
To: sosostris9 mandalgargi81@gmail.com

- Show quoted text -

killswitch6988 has made a comment on Sandy Hook Beach, NJ:

go the fuck back to your 3rd world country and stay the fuck off my beach and out of my state

You can reply to this comment by visiting the comments page.

© 2009 YouTube, LLC

-- Regards,
Gargi Mandal-Mukherjee (sosostris9)

P.S. I'm sorry guys if you think this post contains offensive language, because I feel the same way too.

Of untimely phone calls and undesirable etceteras

I was indignant at being summoned from the depths of sleep by the monotonous staccato of our landline phone. Thankfully K attended to it and I was just drifting back into sweet slumber when I heard his voice, out in our living room, where he seemed to be talking to a certain colleague back at his offshore office in Kolkata and enquiring about the reason for the call at such an ungodly hour (somewhere around 6.30 am, I think). My first thought was that of killing K, my second was that of killing the same colleague, my third of blowing up their offices both here and back at home. After such successively violent thoughts, you can hardly be astonished if I tell you that I was wide awake. I did my best to keep my eyes shut and contemplate nothingness. But there. I had been rudely woken up by all those unholy noises and there was no going back to neverland. K says I was so angry that when he tried to wake me up gently after my alarm clock rang (an hour or so later) and I showed no sign of reacting to it, that I actually smacked him on the nose and almost damaged his eye as well by flailing my fist wildly in the air. I vaguely recall hearing him groaning in pain and grumbling at his even trying to be affectionate in the morning. It was so obvious that I preferred sleep to him.

But it wasn't the phone calls alone. An elderly couple had been occupying the apartment below ours for an astonishing 19 years. They had recently left and been replaced by a young fellow who seems to have musical fits occasionally and more perplexingly, very early in the morning, that is, just when I'm clinging on for dear life to my last REM session. Well, he was apparently afflicted by the same sort of symptoms this morning, so that all my attempts at retiring back under the comforters proved to be of no avail. The entire world seemed to be conspiring to wake me up prematurely.

Well, I was in the kitchen preparing breakfast and hurling imprecations at every do-no-gooder around me I could recall at that point when I saw the pretty young musical fellow swaggering down the complex path towards the main road, armed with his usual outdoor musical accoutrements (IPod et al). For one minute I seriously contemplated pushing up the kitchen window and screaming out "Damn You" at him but thankfully, the seed in the plum I was dissecting was determined not to be dislodged and its resistance forced me to concentrate on the job at hand, thus allowing better sense to prevail. I did however notice that the creature crossed the road to board a van with the picture of a janitor painted across it, which seemed to belong to some company named 'Worldwide'. After that, I somehow lost the heart to remain annoyed any longer at him.

Talking of companies, things seem to be going very wrong almost everywhere nowadays in terms of jobs. Employees of K's company have been losing jobs left and right in Kolkata and Chennai. When last heard of, 800 of the projected 1400 had been shown the door in Kolkata. Those unallocated for more than a month or more and those with poor annual appraisals are the unfortunate majority to be handed pink slips at the earliest possible opportunity. One indeed wonders how times have changed when you even have a target of sorts to meet in terms of terminating employee contracts. Yesterday, K shocked me with the news of the mysterious 'resignation' of one of his colleagues who'd returned to India to get his visa renewed, had had his papers processed and formalities over, was supposed to fly to the USA next week. His wife and child are still here. In fact, his wife is working here right at this moment. God knows now how they are all going to handle this catastrophe. My heart goes out to them in sympathy. I hope things work out well for them soon. On two disparate occasions, two of K's colleagues, one based in Minneapolis and the other in Maryland (the latter in a managerial position) were prematurely packed off to India and asked to continue in their respective capacities at their original locations. Work hours have been increased on weekdays by an hour (a total of 9 per day), promotions and increments have been indefinitely stalled and all this means we are ourselves living under constant fear of some obscure sword vaguely hanging over our heads. I think I'll try out more recipes and improve my cooking skills (and bring them up to the high standard set by my indubitably superior half) , since we might have to consider alternative avenues of employment very soon.

On a lighter note, we've been going out on regular walks, now that it's spring by universal consensus and the weather is occasionally warm enough to allow the heaters to be switched off, the window let up and comforters left untouched at night. Just by virtue of sitting on our backs at home (to avoid the unmentionable anatomic technicalities), we've managed to gain what small chapbook size self-help by-the-cash-counter books at Walmart are euphemistically terming 'winter fat'. We've bought jogging attire for our considerable (pun certainly intended) selves last Sunday and intend to start on a sober daily regimen of exercise to shed the excess masses of unshapely fat that our bulky and then what we apparently (and obviously wrongly) considered body-friendly winter garments had helped conceal for so long. Amen to that.

Jogging Outfits :

For me :

For K :




Now if only the thundershowers would hold up...

A Rainy Romance

I think I must have some strange bond with the rain, for it makes me come to life as I never do at other times. The poet in me is possessed, stirring up longings and desires suppressed on otherwise arid, sterile days. You have to encounter me on a rainy day to know the real me. Like a slowly peeled pineapple, my rind dissolves, my resistance gives way and you approach my core, me. Then you encounter her who you only glimpse in flashes in my poetry, the perennial peripatetic prophet ; the subtlest manifestation of the soul. I give you all the fruit of my first, fraught romance with the rain :

'Rain evokes nostalgia. Not only in the poet’s mind, but in the mind of every single person who spares a moment to watch the rain from his window and lets his thoughts follow their own course. Invariably, he will find, with bewildered enjoyment, that numerous bitter-sweet memories crowd into his mind and jostle for at least a fleeting, if not elaborate, recollection. And even the most rational person will find the sweet smell of moist green lime-leaves, the fragrance of the pale jasmine, khichudi, Rabindrasangeet and paper-boats transport him into a perhaps lost world, an age of mirthful innocence and simplicity. And if his heart is not yet hardened by cynicism—owing to the bitter struggles for survival he has been forced to go through—he will pause, perplexed by the overwhelming sense of poignant purposelessness, timelessness, that slowly but surely, floods his aching heart.

Rain is a season of pain. The pain of having loved, lived and left behind. And it is a dangerous domain that we now tread—a cordoned-off sacred plane of prolonged private suffering. Of longing, languishing and losing. Of overlooking the obvious—that we learn to love by making mistakes. Having happily hypnotized ourselves into hasty attachments and consuming ourselves thereafter in cold flames of keen, cutting self-contempt. Wishing we had been born wise. And forgetting the fact that we are only human, after all.

Rain reminds us of sleepless nights. Of thunder crashing and streaks of sensuous lightning dazzling the desperately scared senses, yet giving way to a dry dreamless thirst that darts across the heart in flickering flashes and makes us peep out warily through the stark darkness within for only one, two, a few stolen glances at the desolate scene without. And finally going back to sleep with an awed, yet full heart.

Rain causes emotional catharsis. We weep because nature is now wild and furious, aware all the while that we are safe and secure ourselves and that the outside world really means nothing to us. Yet the jasmine is merciless – it drains our heart of a year of pent-up anguish – our mortal misery melts. And as the rain ceases, the Phoenix in us emerges anew. To love and lose. Once again. '