Here comes the 13th instalment of Incredible India with those only-in-India stories.
* India is one of those unique countries where humans are routinely treated worse than pigs. But dogs are now being treated better than humans. So what if several hundred million Indians lack proper homes and live in crumbling structures amidst filth and squalor. Who cares how people live when we can all feel proud that pets like guinea pigs, dogs and fishes now have fine guest houses in India.  Here’s an excerpt from the Times of India story:
A client of one of the pet guest houses who had gone to visit his in-laws in Assam this winter said he was totally satisfied with way his dog was cared for.
“My dog was treated like a VIP,” says Ankit Desai who had kept his pomeranian junior at the guest house while he and his wife had gone for more than 15 days on vacation.
* If Tamil melons like Khushboo and Namitha can have temples, why not clowns like Lallu Prasad Yadav and his wife Rabri Devi. A temple is being built for Lallu and Rabri in a village in Kaimur district. The temple will have life-size idols of Lallu and Rabri and cost Rs 5.4 million.
* Notorious Indian thug and Member of Parliament Pappu Yadav has always left a trail of disaster in his wake – murder and a host of other crimes are only some of the disasters he’s inflicted on Indian society. Now out on bail, this Bihari goonda has morphed into a student leader and claims to be doing a course in disaster management at IGNOU. Only in India, folks.
* India is home to a thousand different kinds of protests – Hartals, bandha, rasta roko, relay fast et al. But two prisoners of the Saidapet sub-jail in Chennai took their protest to new heights by climbing a tree, refusing to come down and refusing to eat anything. Apparently, it took quite some effort to get the two monkeys to get down.
* An 18-month-old infant was charged by the Indian police with insulting someone with the intention of breaching peace. Folks, we are not making this up. Read this story in Bihar Times.
Mera Bharat Mahaan.
Incredible India – 13; Treat Dogs like Humans and Humans like Pigs added by SearchIndia.com on
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bihar times? you push yourselves very hard sometimes you know….
SearchIndia.com Responds:
Well, it’s Bihar.
To modify an old Niky Tasha kitchenette ad, Anything and Everything is Possible in Bihar.
The Bihar Times story may be an IANS story or vice versa. Pl see this IANS story.
That “Mera Bharat Mahan” at the end of every Incredible India post is the most satirical phrase of this blog.
You posted at length about the nonsense that took place in Mumbai in November.
Any thoughts on this – http://thecrickettier.com/2009/03/04/subcontinental-safety-an-oxymoron/
SearchIndia.com Responds:
1. Interesting piece.
Sportsmen are not immune to being shot at or taken hostage in that perilous region.
As you suggest in your post, the Pakistani policemen were most likely in cahoots with the terrorists.
For those too lazy to click on the above link, here’s an excerpt from Gora’s post:
Pakistan is a state on the precipice of collapse.
2. As the Mumbai attacks of November proved, the Indian police is no better.
For the most part, Indian policemen are a bunch of potbellied, corrupt animals swaggering around with a lathi (wooden baton) and salivating at the sight of a 5 Rs note (that was 15-20 years back, thanks to inflation the minimum bribe must be 100 Rs now).
We’d venture to say that 70-80% of Indian policemen have never fired a gun in their lives, not even during their training.
The lower rungs of the Indian police force is not comprised of officers but of semi-literate clowns. No kidding. Straight out of a circus or zoo.
3. Bottomline, foreign cricket teams/players visiting India should obtain extra insurance and say an extra goodbye to their family.
You know, just in case they fail to return.
I just finished reading this piece by Mukul Kesavan. http://www.telegraphindia.com/1090305/jsp/opinion/story_10623200.jsp
I’m sure you’ll clearly appreciate when he says about halfway through, “Even a cursory glance at the record of South Asian police forces ought to have persuaded the Sri Lankans that ‘presidential-level security’ in the subcontinent is a threat, not a promise. You only have to count the number of heads of government or former heads of government who have died grotesquely violent deaths to know that.”
From Mahatma Gandhi to Rajiv Gandhi and beyond.
SearchIndia.com Responds:
Wonder if you are aware that former Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated by her own policemen/security guards in 1984.
Yup, the Sikh bodyguards and then the whole anti-Sikh violence that ensued afterwards.
I am thinking that the terrorists never intended to kill the SL cricketers (if they were Indian or English players, they may have gone for the kill).. why would such highly trained terrorists leave their intended victims alive.. It was more like a warning than anything else. Even the two shot cricketers probably got caught by ricochets.
SearchIndia.com Responds:
Hard to say one way or the other. Who knows what their gameplan was/is.
We’d be skeptical of your phrase ‘highly trained terrorists’.
Most of these guys seem like feeble-brained, brainwashed whackos with itchy fingers.
It’s just that the police force in the sub-continent is ill-equipped to handle any crisis.
I am going both ways on this.
The Australian umpire Steve Davis was asked today if he thought the goal for the terrorists was to take them hostage and he said something along the lines of ‘No, because they just kept shooting at our bus instead of trying to board it.’
I think about the fact that they missed the rocket launcher shot from close range and they screwed up on the grenades too. The fact that they “left” all that ammunition behind seems not to be a mistake to me. They probably left all those weapons, or planted the stash on purpose so that it would be found with the hope that it would scare the shit out of everyone letting their imaginations run wild with what could have happened.
Ijaz Butt came out and said that Chris Broad’s statement was full of lies and that his policemen are heroes for dying etc. But Simon Taufel and Davis wholeheartedly supported Broad’s version of events. Then a short time later more video footage was released showing one cop who hid between the two white vans in the roundabout and played dead. When the coast was clear, the video shows commandos approaching him and he gets up off the ground and starts pumping his fists in the air in celebration while two other cops are dead on the ground just a few feet away. In the same video there is an image of another cop sitting in a flower bed, hiding, and doing absolutely nothing for the duration of the attack. A separate video shows a Pakistani officer declaring his resignation because he doesn’t want to die like the other officers and would rather be a farmer.
Another report says that the police station for Liberty Square was less than 200 yards from where the shooting took place, yet backup did not arrive until 30 minutes after the first shot was fired.
No one directly involved has been arrested. Too many thoughts to put down. The police were in on it or at least knew and did nothing. The police who were there were cowards. The terrorists could very easily have killed, taken hostage, done anything. They had free reign. The absolute ease with which they literally walked away from the scene is embarrassing, startling, and so many other words. So at some moments yes, it would appear that they chose to fire weapons to miss on purpose. But the fact is that several of the Sri Lanka players came within inches of serious injury and death as well as the umpires. At the end of it, I think they ended to kill everyone, but as SI duly noted, they are feeble-brained.
I can’t figure out who was more inept: the terrorists for not killing more people when they had the resources and the unrestricted access to do so, or the police for abandoning and not responding to the situation. Seeing the image of the one cop celebrating he is alive after playing dead and hearing the story about the cop jumping into the match officials fans and claiming he doesn’t know how to drive when they were pleading with him to aid their escape leads me to select the police and security as being the more inept ones. After all, it wasn’t any cops or security that saved the Sri Lankan players, it was their civilian driver.
SearchIndia.com Responds:
1. With the killing of Benazir Bhutto and now the brazen attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team, the terrorists did achieve one thing – they told the world they could attack anyone at anytime. No one is beyond their reach.
2. BTW, were you aware that the long arm of the Taliban nuts has now reached Pakistanis living in NYC area?
3. But for U.S. support, Pakistan would have been in deep trouble long ago.
4. Bottomline, Where Religion Reigns, Only Bloodshed Results.
Indians for all the noise they make about religion are not that religious really compared to their neighbors. Indians are more motivated by lucre than the love of the Lord or the fear of Lucifer.
If SRINIVAS were brought up in a fundamentalist (is there any other kind) Madrasah, he (being easily brainwashable) may have become a hindu-hater.. luckily for us, we have one less terrorist.
SearchIndia.com Responds:
Now, don’t give him one more justification for his anti-Muslim, anti-Christian rants
Arent Pakistani police amazing. I sometimes wonder why we dont just drop a nuke there and end the whole saga. Maybe Pakistan somehow planned to blame the attack on India, gain some sympathy factor to balance the odds after the Mumbai attacks.
I dont know why, but I hate the sight of Pak’s foreign minister. Two-faced rat!
SearchIndia.com Responds:
You write above: I sometimes wonder why we dont just drop a nuke there and end the whole saga.
Many decades back, we had a Tamil Iyengar friend whose fond hope was to do the same.
@asha – Adi Paavi! I never expected you to talk like that.. what about the 1000s of innocent civilians.
SearchIndia.com Responds:
1000s? More like Millions.
Yeah, I know! I guess that was my evil twin talking! 😉
SI: 1000s? More like Millions.
may be only 1000s are still ‘innocent’ there 😉 …