Dharun Ravi Sentence - Will 'Justice' be Served, or will he be the Sacrificial Lamb for a Society Unable to Deal with the Winds of Change?

What Dharun Ravi did was wrong, but will justice be done if this young man serves a ten year prison term for the wrong he did, is clearly debatable! If punishment accorded to the guilty in a court of justice aims to improve society, then the Dharun Ravi case does not appear to qualify.

By definition, society is a work in progress. With the passage of time social norms change, as does the social ethos, especially when new ideas and trends make their way into society; women’s suffrage was one such idea, cinema was another, and in recent times it is the advent of the internet that provides quick and easy dissemination of news and information. Our society is blanketed by this technology, and at times reels under its weight, especially that part of society housing the forty plus age group.  However, the same is not true about the younger generation; they have become adept users of trendy technology and at times use it with indiscretion, as did young Dharun Ravi. Youth by definition is foolhardy, and oftentimes falls prey to bravado and peer pressure; this may have been the case with the eighteen year old in question.

It isn’t just the fast changing technology, but also new ideas and new trends that frazzle us. One such trend being the need to acknowledge and recognize gay and lesbian rights unequivocally, and as a nation we are still grappling with this trend. I say grappling because until 2004, same-sex couples couldn’t wed anywhere in the country; however, now, gay marriage is legal in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Iowa, Vermont, Maine and most recently New Hampshire. Nonetheless, it is still 6 states out of 50 that have a clear resolution on gay and lesbian relationships!  In the light of this statistic, would it be fair to expect an eighteen year old Dharun Ravi to be nonchalant about what he witnessed in his dorm room?

Clearly, Dharun Ravi’s case illustrates the limitations of a justice system that along with a puritanical bias  often times selects juries with limited exposure to advanced technology; the Dharun Ravi case is an example.  The wrong of Dharun Ravi is ‘modern’ by definition; nevertheless, deserves punishment as it embeds a wrong, but it also showcases the ills and challenges of the 21^st century which will not be recognized or/and addressed even after Dharun is sentenced because the justice system lacks the know how.  Unfortunately, it is still wearing blinders from the century before.  Our justice system, like our society, has some growing up to do, and expeditiously, so that offenders such as Dharun Ravi will receive punishment that is crime appropriate.

 Every now and again society is confronted with an idea or event that is avant-garde, and it is then that the flexibility and adaptability of a society is tested; the Dharun Ravi case is doing just that. The question here is not whether Dharun Ravi committed a crime with bias; maybe he did, but where did the bias stem from? Is this young man's proclivity unique to him, or do we all share in this prejudice which we often hide by feigning ambivalence? This, is the more significant question the jury and the justice system need to address: Do our fellow gays and lesbians enjoy equal status in society?  Until we, as a society, provide an unequivocal answer to that question, we cannot conclusively sentence a Dharun Ravi whose wrongdoing mirrors the predisposition of his family, his immediate community, and this society at large.  His biases, his thinking or his lack thereof, are a direct reflection of his environment, and yet he, an eigteen year old just out of high school, alone stands trial.  Dharun Ravi is scheduled to be sentenced in May this year, and the chances are he will be put behind bars, for a couple of years at least, with hardened criminals, and all this while a felonious society looks on. Dharun Ravi's wrong doing, a 'webcam case' of invading a dorm-mate's privacy, could well have been regarded as a teenage prank, were it not so closely associated with the larger issue of gay and lesbian relationships about which we as a society are still 'ambivalent'.

On The Fall of a Leaf - "killing time without injuring eternity"?

Another leaf falls.

A testimony

That I am.

To what end?

I know not.

I continue to be;

absorbed.

In a charade,

of chores,

until..

another leaf falls.

A reminder

that

this too shall pass

like it did

the day before.

Forget I will,

like I did

the day before.

While

another leaf falls.

A fear

Will another be?

Just as green?

With flowers

for company?

And then what?

A new canvas?

A new pallet?

With hues familiar

to ponder upon?

Just as..

another leaf falls..

I react.

To move the plant

into the sun.

And water it.

Even talk to it.

For it must grow!

Healthy, happy, tall

And…

Another leaf falls.

'Kahani' - Sujoy Ghosh's Classy Thriller

I have watched one too many Indian movies churned out of the Bollywood film factory where one size fits all, and one story reads all! 'Kahani' broke the status quo!  Indian cinema seems to be coming of age.  Sujoy Ghosh's two hour Indian movie, with English subtitles, had me glued to my seat enthralled.

The female lead, Ms. Balan has done a remarkable job! She is a very versatile actress and is to be commended for her outstanding performance as the overly pregnant Mrs. Bagchi from London looking for her missing husband, who came to Calcutta a month ago, at her insistence, on an assignment with the National Data Center.
A movie not to be missed!

Biafra, the Unacknowledged Holocaust, Documented in "Half of a Yellow Sun" by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichi

"Half of a Yellow Sun" is both a love story and a story of war, and I’m not certain which of the two makes more of an impact on the reader.  I decided to read this novel after I listened to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichi's speech at Narratives for Europe in Amsterdam.  A very entertaining and natural speaker, Ms. Adichi, in the most affable manner, cut President Sarkozy’s speech to shreds! Still reeling under that impact of Ms Adichi’s impeccable articulation, I came across “Half of a Yellow Sun” in my school library, and I couldn’t help but pick it up.

Ms Adichi claims she wrote the novel “because I grew up in the shadow of Biafra, because I lost both grandfathers in the Nigeria-Biafra war, because I wanted to engage with my history in order to make sense of my present, many of the issues that led to the war remain unresolved in Nigeria today, because my father has tears in his eyes when he speaks of losing his father, because my mother still cannot speak at length about losing her father in a refugee camp, because the brutal bequests of colonialism make me angry, because the thought of the egos and indifference of men leading to the unnecessary deaths of men and women and children enrages me, because I don't ever want to forget.”  With so many goals to achieve, Chimamanda set herself up for a difficult task of presenting a war that the world didn’t remember or recognize, and a story of love that unfolds within that unacknowledged war. 

Set in the backdrop of the three year war fought by the secessionist state of Biafra against the Nigerian Federal Military, the novel is stark and even gory in it’s depiction of the senseless slaughter and vitriolic violence that happened in South East Nigeria even as the rest of humanity watched unashamedly, or as Adichi’s alternate storyteller in “The Book” states, “The World Was Silent When We Died.” Admittedly, majority of readers will come out of this reading with a new awareness of the legacy the British left behind in post-colonial Nigeria.  The reader will know how Biafra came to be; who were these Biafrans; why did they choose to secede from the rest of Nigeria; why did Biafra last only three years, and what happened to it at the end of those three years? With her vivid portrayal of a strife torn nation, Adichi compels the reader to wonder why no one intervened to stop this massacre which cost the world a million lives!

The backdrop of the Biafran massacre would not have been as compelling had not Adichi woven some dynamic characters into this conflict ridden landscape.  There are the twin Igbo sisters, Olanna and Kainene, who being born into wealth and status, choose diametrically opposite lifestyles  but share a common zeal for independence and a highly evolved sense of justice.  Ugwu, the thirteen year old houseboy and narrator of the story for the major part, represents the poorer sections of Igbo society. Richard, the shy white British journalist and the world’s only real window into Nigeria at the time, is the paramour of one of the twins. Then there is the revolutionary academician Odenigbo, who lives through the tumult of secession, desperately holding on to his vision of an independent Biafra. The Biafran experience is enmeshed in the lives of these characters as they negotiate peace for themselves and for their people in post colonial Nigeria. It is in the story of their lives in those three Biafran years that love takes on a new meaning as does the definition of loyalty.  The characters take on an environment that is hostile, relentless, and in flux from one moment to the next. Their relationships evolve in this uncertain atmosphere where betrayal is expected but not forgiven, and love lies in the stealth of darkness and death, but there is no silver lining that awaits!

An enchanting and informative read.