Dancing with Dogs: Interesting debate

Interesting debate

Here is an interesting conversation going on at Sandeep’s blog - Seriously Sandeep: Indebted to Dilip D’Souza - between Sandeep, his readers and the journalist, Dilip D’Souza.

Prafool, do you hear me? I am available for a “debate” with you anywhere, anytime - hellooo, anyone home?

Posted by shanti at August 18, 2004 2:13 PM

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Mr D’Souza hasn’t objected to being referred to as a “journalist”, so presumably he considers himself one. But he is as much of a journalist as several others like Rajiv Srinivasan, Varsha Bhosle, Aravind Lavakare, Subhash Kak, Arindam Banerji, Ashiwn Mahesh etc who write in Rediff are. Most of those who started their writing with webzines are techies like you and I.

The refusal to come down from their ivory towers to the level of lowly readers and engage them in one-on-one interactions is one of the strategems by which Indian hacks maintain their journalist-mystique. This also helps them keep a straight face when they peddle their lies, because they have abstracted readers away into a non-reality. This naturally makes us feel awed when one of them, even if for whom column-writing is only a hobby that graduated to a part-time activity, condescends to hold a dialogue with us. Please don’t mistake me, but I do believe that the day to rejoice would be when powerful journalists — the movers and shakers and the power brokers who believe that the vantage positions they occupy in information dissemination makes them law unto themselves — are forced to acknoweldge readers’ exposure of their manipulations and prejudices. If blogs can do that, that would be the day blogs would have truly arrived.

All of this definitely means more blogs, not less. So let a million blogs bloom!

(I’m too lazy to run one though ;)

Shanti, I set forth the tone of this debate? Really? I wonder, for all your applause for blogs do you guys on these blogs EVER get to exchange views with people who differ?

After all, this whole thing started with Sandeep writing this in his blog:
—-
To sum its “achievements,” the Congress is responsible for: […] Indians to feel unpatriotic about their own country: Resident Idiot, Arundhati Roy, Romila Thapar, and Dilip D’Souza, to name a few. These are people who typically draw the world’s attention to India’s negatives and who have made careers out of trashing India and peddling lies.
—-

But when I react to a guy who says I’ve made a career out of trashing India, that I peddle lies, that I make Indians feel unpatriotic about their country, it’s me who “sets the tone”?

best,
dilip d’souza.

One Dilip at a time…

Mr. D’ Souza, at the point Sandeep made his post, he was so irritated by the rants of Praful Bidwai and Arundhati Roy (both of whom haven’t yet met a dictator they cannot side with or a democracy they cannot bash) - I know about both of those and Sandeep’s words apply to them definitely, but I have not read enough of your columns to say if you are really on par with them.

One will have to be really obtuse to be on the same level as Roy or Bidwai and may be you are not, in which case Sandeep probably included you because your viewpoints coincide with them most of the time…may be. After your response though, Sandeep’s new post was very respectful and I think you did start of the comments in a snide tone after that.

As for disagreements on the blog, you will only have to read a few posts of mine in the Iraq category to see what real blog arguments look like - I have been taken to task by Gaurav Sabnis, Dilip and plenty of others over my opinions, so we do disagree freely with each other.

Now for our regular Dilip - you have been a regular reader of mine and you have seen posts of mine disagreeing with Praful Bidwai’s columns and the lies in them which is easy as shooting fish in a barrel. At some point, it becomes pointless to debate it since it is the same lies repeated over and over again. That is the reason why I call Praful “Prafool” and leave it at that.

We call him “Resident Idiot” to counter the outrageous things he says about NRIs all the time in his columns. I have little respect for the man’s intelligence and don’t care if he gets his feelings hurt by my comments :)

One thing I’ve learned from reading your blogs the past year or so is that you are a strongly opinionated woman and don’t tend to mince your words. Great. I think thats how everyone should be — no beating about the bush; make your point loud & clear and let it speak for itself. However I do think there is value in maintaining a certain amount of civility in a discussion irrespective of what the other party is doing/saying. Firstly it serves to garner more respect for you and your views from people who are watching both sides of the discussion — and secondly it separates you from your debater in a major way. You don’t fall in the same moronic league as him/her.

I urge everyone to take a page out of Jairam Ramesh’s book. I have been reading Kautilya (his column in India Today) and simultaneously Mani Shanker Aiyar/Tavleen Singh’s columns. Unlike MSA/TS, Jairam tears arguments to shreds with his fantastic grasp of economics and virtually just about any topic under the sun but without stooping to hit below the belt. I may be wrong but thats been my take so far.

To each one his own, I guess…

Dear Shanti,

Please call me just Dilip, that’s fine.

> After your response though, Sandeep�s new post
> was very respectful and I think you did start of the
> comments in a snide tone after that.

I see. So it’s OK to make a slew of snide remarks (you know, the “trashing India”, “peddling lies”, that sort of thing) right off the bat, because that’s just him being irritated, poor guy, and anyway his readers like you will overlook that and blame the guy who reacts — me, in this case — for the snide tone that he (Sandeep) started with anyway?

Did I get that right?

So how come I don’t get the same consideration? Hey, maybe I’m irritated with some other blog somewhere that I just happen to think Seriously Sandeep agrees with. So that lets me off the hook and I can be snide and it’s Sandeep to blame again?

You start with the abuse, it’s going to turn around and bite you. Simple. You respect my views, even if you disagree, you will get precisely the same respect from me. I assure you that much.

However much you disagree with A Roy and P Bidwai, does it strike you that these are serious writers who do their homework and don’t come to their views and writings lightly? In other words, they come to their views just as seriously as, let’s say, Varsha Bhosle or Swapan Dasgupta or you. Not that AR and PB need me to defend them, but I’m trying to ask: who do you fool, but yourself, if you start off by calling them “idiot”, or “fool”, or “obtuse”?

It’s funny, now that I’ve been in this exercise for a few days: you guys don’t get a response from journalists, you decide it’s because they are in their “ivory towers” and are “arrogant” and don’t come down to the level of “lowly readers”. But why should a journalist respond to someone who’s calling him Prafool, or a Resident Idiot, or, for that matter, says he is “peddling lies”? Would you respond to someone who called you those things?

Blogging is fine democracy, as someone here or on Seriously Sandeep said. And so it is. But the essence of democracy is not so much holding journalists’ feet to the fire — which seems to be the point you guys are applauding, and for which I’m happy to offer my feet anyway — but debate. Respect for differing views. Dissent.

When you start by firing insults about (and then blame the man who reacts to those insults for them), there’s not much respect on display, and you’re not going to get much of a debate.

I’m no paragon of virtue here, I’ll freely admit. One of the hardest lessons of my years writing is this business of respect for others’ views. It is very hard to truly understand that the other guy is looking at the SAME things I am looking at and coming to entirely the opposite conclusion: yet if I have to understand and live in this country of mine, I have to understand that first.

A few years ago, I spent months arguing some of these very issues with a guy in AZ, I think. After nearly a year, out of the blue he sent me a note that said: “I still don’t agree with your views. But I look back at the abuse I used in my first few messages to you, and I am ashamed at how bigoted I was.” That’s when I knew the exchange had been worth it. And what’s more, I felt like I understood at least partly where he was coming from. Even if I, too, still disagreed.

yours,
dilip d’souza.

Dilip, I think you are definitely behaving in an admirable fashion respinding to your critics - not all journalists do that, as has been mentioned above. The reason why we give a pass to Sandeep’s tone while we pick on yours is that a weblog is supposed to be a lot more personal than a professional column is. You are being paid to express your opinions, so we expect a lot more work and restraint in your tone in your columns than in Sandeep’s post.

I understand that it can be really galling when you hear people calling you names - I think it is part of being famous and being called a journalist. You are automatically respected and heard by a lot more people than me or Sandeep. This gives us a sort of license (deserved or not) to be free to say things that a journalist might not be allowed to say in his columns.

On the opposite side, the very fact that people who we “think” are either lying on purpose or are too dumb to see the truth are being paid to speak their minds to thousands of readers and are getting away with it “almost unchallenged” is equally galling to us. I don’t claim to be all-knowing or even cleverer than most of the journalists I write about in my blog. But when I see things that can be refuted with something as simple as Google search, I feel like I don’t have the patience to be all “Dear Sir” to a man who has at his fingertips a lot more resources than I do.

Gotta go to lunch, so more on this later…

The reason why we give a pass to Sandeep�s tone while we pick on yours is that a weblog is supposed to be a lot more personal than a professional column is. You are being paid to express your opinions, so we expect a lot more work and restraint in your tone in your columns than in Sandeep�s post.

I am sorry — this is false dichotomy. A responsbility is a responsibility in whatever forum you tend to exhibit your actions. The key here is ideas being expressed in a public forum. In what way do you think a blog is “personal”? If you mean in terms of expressing your personal opinions then you are right but if you are thinking in terms of “I-get-to-decide-who-reads-my-posts” then that is obviously wrong. Sandeep’s blog (as is every blog due to trackbacks and pingbacks) would be fairly widely read. So he has an implicit (call it moral if you will) responsibility (arguably not bound by anything tangible like money) to do his homework before posting counterpoints. If he cannot do that, then IMHO he does not have the right to talk back to anyone. I am not saying Sandeep is doing this — I am just using his blog as an example. I apologize if it doesn’t come off right.

On the opposite side, the very fact that people who we �think� are either lying on purpose or are too dumb to see the truth are being paid to speak their minds to thousands of readers and are getting away with it �almost unchallenged� is equally galling to us.

This is the point I have trouble coming to grips with. How can you be so sure? How can you be sure what is truth or what is right or what is wrong or what is a lie? The very fact reasonable people argue about the most basic things in life proves there is no place for absolutism anywhere. As you pointed out elsewhere maybe Bidwai has a lot of resources at his disposal using which he has come to the conclusion expressed in his columns. Your own admission says you do not have such luxury, then how can your contradict him with the limited set facts you possess? And where are they getting away with it? Did Dilip D’ Souza get away with his viewpoints? Hordes of people pounced on him from the blogosophere. Today everyone reading your blog knows what you and your friends think of Praful Bidwai. Never underestimate the reach of your blog.

Moreover you are making this a little too simplistic — “too dumb to see the truth”? Come on Shanti — thats exactly the kind of attitude one should stay away from.

But when I see things that can be refuted with something as simple as Google search, I feel like I don�t have the patience to be all �Dear Sir� to a man who has at his fingertips a lot more resources than I do.

Google search will throw literally millions of different viewpoints if you have the time & patience to browse through all the hits. That doesn’t prove anything. As I said topics require debate and has to be dealt with on a case-to-case basis — if you don’t have the inclination to rebut thats your business. All you are allowed to have is disagreements — thats it. Descending to name calling is going to get you nothing except maybe make you feel good.

continuing from the previous comment…

My job is to produce software - the blogging is my hobby. If I were being paid instead to do this, I think I would be a lot more responsible in what I say, since now I am not just in this for myself, but I now represent my employer and I should do a good job of writing instead of hashing out half-baked ideas. We assume (or hope) that when someone is writing professionally, they know something about what they are writing than most of the pay people. When it doesn’t seem so, there is a decline in respect and I wouldn’t call a journalist names that I wouldn’t call another blogger if I thought that blogger was writing stupid stuff. That is just me.

In conclusion, I guess we hold journalists and bloggers to different standards since you are in charge of and capable of shaping public opinion - bloggers are the public opinion.

As for being called names, I have been called plenty over the course of my blogging and have learned to deal with them - you will soon enough :)

Ok, first to Dilip D’Souza - LBJ and central, huh! Pretty cool - I worked for a while in Ausint too. Fun place!

Now to Dilip - if we talk responsibility, everybody is responsible for themselves - definitely - but I am far more responsible for the software that I produce, since I am obligated to do a good job there, than on my blog. It is like the difference between you helping a friend move and working for a moving company. With your friend, you can do a very good job or a half-assed job, but for your company, you are required to put your best foor forward.

The reason why I said the stuff about being too dumb is again simple - let us say I write a column about why 2+2=5 and the imperial hegemony of eevil USA or eevil NRIs are oppressing people who want to make the truth heard. If the truth according to you is that 2+2 is actually 4, then you have two possible explanations for my behavior - either I know the truth and I am lying, or I am too dumb to grasp that 2+2=4. When someone can write a whole column full of half-truths, barely truths and plenty proven lies, you have got to wonder about that person. If you cannot call a dumb person dumb, should I say “mentally challenged” in PC-speak?

Shanti,

First of all, I�d like to thank my namesake for this: �A responsibility is a responsibility.� I could never have put it so simply and clearly.

You say:

> You are being paid to express your opinions, so we expect a lot more work and
> restraint in your tone in your columns than in Sandeep�s post,

and later

> the blogging is my hobby. If I were being paid instead to do this, I think I would
> be a lot more responsible in what I say,

Tell me, are you being paid to be a good mother to your children? To love your husband? To spend time with your friends? To pursue some other hobby? (I am serious, and I mean no offence).

I presume not. But I bet you do all those things with a sense of responsibility, don�t you? Why? Because you know as well as I do: it�s not just money that produces responsibility.

Take the flip side of this. One of the things about my writing career is that I write a fair amount without pay, or for very little. (I just got done writing something for a small Pune journal where I won�t be paid, I�ve written for Manushi and refused payment, I write a monthly column for another small magazine that pays me Rs 300 a shot, etc). Is my responsibility to turn out something reasonable less in the case of the Rs 300 people, or nonexistent in the case of the free stuff? Do you think if I slapped together some nonsense and sent it to the Pune people, let�s say, they would lap it up just because it�s free and they don�t expect me to be responsible for what I write? No, they�d fling it back at me and probably ask me never to write for them again, and I�d deserve it too.

Also, you compare my columns to Sandeep�s blog and say you expect �restraint� in my columns. Fine, so tell me, have you found any column that I�ve written in which I�ve called people �idiot� or �fool�?

> I guess we hold journalists and bloggers to different standards since you are
> in charge of and capable of shaping public opinion - bloggers are the public
> opinion.

A recipe for disaster, if you ask me. Meaning if you want journalists to be superior human beings simply because they are journalists, you�re going to be disappointed. Also, am I, as a journalist, not part of the public opinion? What puts me in charge of it, but unable to participate in it?

Let me reiterate Dilip�s point about your �too dumb to see the truth� phrase. And let me add: you fool only yourself by pretending that these guys whose views you don�t like � Bidwai or Roy or whoever � are �dumb�. For example, I�ve met both Varsha B and Dinesh D�Souza, both of whose views, not too put too fine a point on it, I can�t stand. But here�s the thing: both are fine people, and extraordinarily bright. They have thought deeply about their views, just as deeply as I like to think I�ve thought about mine. Apart from being utterly wrong, I�d be the mighty idiot to dismiss them as dumb.

Finally, about being called names. I�ve had my share of them, thank you: �idiot� and �traitor� and �pope-fucking bastard� and �low life rat� and �sick and slave-minded� and �riding on some some priest�s diseased pole� and �white ant� (? never figured that one out). They tell me all I need to know about the guys who use them: that they really don�t even believe in themselves, which is why they need to lash out.

Is there still an Ethiopian restaurant somewhere just south of SMU? Used to go there a lot and get drunk on honey wine.

Yours always,
dilip d�souza.

Why is it a gross mischaracterization to call Bidwai a “fool”? Is it the most apt word to describe him, really? Are we, in fact, by calling him a “fool”, achieving the opposite of what we intend to?

Praful Bidwai calls India’s software engineers “computer coolies”. That gives an interesting insight into the mindset of these marxist fundamentalists whose coronary arteries are — it is claimed — perennially leaking for the proles and the peasants. That allegd empathy for the underdog, and alleged respect for dignity of labour notwithstanding, the epithet that Bidwai uses to insult those that would not join his brand of politics is “coolie”. That’s like an anti-caste reformer abusing his rivals with casteist epithets.

Moreover, another trick in the armoury of the marxists is to driving a wedge in the society by inventing categories such as “producing” castes and “parasite” castes. Landowning castes, brahmin priests, merchant castes etc are ‘parasite’ castes in Marxist demonology allegedly because they don’t expend any labour themselves but rely on that of the proles and peasants to get their work done.

We don’t know what Bidwai is producing but we sure do know that software engineers are contributing handsomely to India’s foreign exchange kitty.

Put all this together, and you’ll see how hypocrisy runs in the veins of Bidwai and gang. And I have only touched upon on the least ugliest aspect of this species.

So is “fool” an appropriate word to describe ithe said species?

RR

The correct approach is to counter the technical aspects of his arguments

This reminds me of the time Arun Shourie countered the technical aspects of the arguments of Eminent Historians.

The Eminences had just alleged that MM Joshi altered ICHR’s charter from “rational” to “national” and that he deleted some of its original objectives. Their moles in the media — of which there is no short supply — having duly planted the allegations in “mainstream” publications, the Eminences themselves then published them in a Marxist mouthpiece.

Shourie did his reseach and showed that the Eminences allegations’ were all imaginations of a feverish brain. He then added, as an aside:

if an RSS publication publishes even an
interview with me, that is further proof of my being
communal; but so tough are the hymen of these
progressives that, even when they contribute signed articles
to publications of the Communist Party, their virginity
remains in tact !

Eminences seized upon the “technical” apspects of the debate. That is, that self-elected spokesperson of Indian Women, Brinda Karat, stepped into the ring and declared that Shourie insulted women. A host of other “women’s” outfits joined raising the din. The Eminences themselves added their might to it. When the dust settled, the real technicalities that Shourie raised — the truth about ICHR’s charter and the Eminences lies about it — remained unanwered.

Dilip Noname’s concerted effort here at projecting the issue as one of being “lack of civillity” reminded me of that time when Karat & co tried to divert attention away from Shourie’s exposure of Eminences’ lies to his alleged disrespect for women.

Cheers,
Raghu

Mr Ravikiran,

Thank you for ref. In linked article, this is the only reference to “cyber coolies” (forgive, I do not know how to use italic and so forth) —
****

The situation is even worse at the level of call centres. Here, young women and men work painfully long hours practising cultivated American accents to sell products they have never seen or give invisible customers information they don’t remotely comprehend (eg about a restaurant’s location in Memphis, Tennessee) — all for a pittance. This disembodied, alienating relationship to work, and low levels of skills and wages — lower than even a bank chaprasi’s [peon’s] — are turning these people into almost mindless cyber-coolies.

****

Mr Bidwai is not saying our software engineers are becoming coolies (as Mr Raghu wrote above), he is saying that about people who work in call-centres. These are two different things. Softare engineers do not work in call-centres. I think it is wrong of Mr Ragu to write that Mr Bidwai says this.

Mr Bidwai’s comment is something I am thiking about. I won’t agree fully with it. But I don’t see it as degrading even to call-centre people. There is some concern for the kind of work they have to do. I have two relatives in call-centres, and Mr Bidwai’s description of the work is applies to them.

But anyway it is not true to say he called software engineers as computer coolies.

Mukta Khanna.

Dilip Noname,

Desperate to shift focus?

I think its a waste of my time to argue with anyone..

Typical of your tribe. Fold tail. Tuck it in between legs. Flee. Claiming: “it’s not me! it’s you!!”

Mukta Khanna,

I’ll buy all of your gallant defence of poor, much-misunderstood Bidwai as soon as the latter dude publishes a column calling Indian workers in the gulf “Oil Coolies” or some such thing.

By the way, here’s what yours truly posted on Rediff back in June 2003 as a comment in response to Bidwai’s bilge . Enjoy.

RR
———-

The author seems to be gloating that some US states are planning
to legislate against the migration of service-sector jobs to
India. Now that is very strange. As a Marxist and
“internationalist”, Bidwai should be arguing that international
borders must be thrown open for free movement of jobs and labour
as much as they are thrown open for unrestricted movement of
capital and goods. Moreover, Bidwai never lost an opportunity to
attack the US on various issues, even where Indian and American
interests converged. He spent much energy denouncing the US’
moves against Iraq and Afghanistan. The US according to him is
such an evil that India should not ‘help’ it by sending troops to
Iraq. So, given his anti-US track record, why is the thrust of
his current argument the denigration of India’s IT workers as
“cyber-coolies”, rather than a condemnation of the protectionist
moves of his bete noire: the US of A?

There are two reasons for this. First, we must look at his
objects of feigned scorn, the Indian IT workers, the way he
really looks at them.

The Indian IT worker is educated, belongs to the middle-class,
and by Indian standards (the bank chaprasi comparison is the de
rigeur Bidwai hyperbole), a good wage-earner. Being a thinking
person, and financially secure, he has no use for genocidal,
gobbledygook theories like Marxism. Moreover, idelogically his
sympathies might lie with — horror of horrors! — the Hindu
“rightwing”. His counterparts in the US have certainly tended to
be on the side of this “rightwing”, and probaly have called
Bidwai’s bluff face-to-face during the latter’s sponsored junkets
and roadshows in the US. Well aware of these facts, Bidwai also
knows that enticing the software types into participating in the
leftwing agitprop circus in any significant number is a well-nigh
hopeless project. Hence his abuse for them. Would he dare call
the gulf workers “gulf coolies” for instance?

This goes to show that your average Indian Marxist reserves his
most intense hatred for those of his own compatriots who see
through his game, than even for his great ideological enemies,
like that Great Satan, the imperialist US. Surprised? I’d be if
you are!

The second reason for Bidwai’s weird obsession for the wrong end
of the stick is in a give-away sentece of his article:

“in Britain, The Sunday Times carried the ‘shock and horror’
headline: ‘Banks prepare to shift 200,000 jobs to India.’ This
has so alarmed British trade unionists that they have decided to
launch a campaign against India’s call centres and software
industry which, they feel, are big ‘job-snatchers.’… These are
not all ‘crying-wolf’ scare stories.”

Now, now, isn’t that absolutely a horror!? That Indians are
threatening the jobs of Bidwai’s soulmates, the leftwingers, even
if they happen to be Brit leftwingers!? (British labour unions
are heavily pro-Left). How can Bidwai, a trueblue Marxist, remain
silent when his brothers in Britain are affected by the vile
designs of Indians!? After all, haven’t his illustrious communist
ancestors refused to cooperate with Gandhiji’s Non-Cooperation
Movement because it threatened the livelihood of Manchester’s
mill-workers!?

Mr Ragu,

You are telling me this —
****
I�ll buy all of your gallant defence of poor, much-misunderstood Bidwai as soon as the latter dude publishes a column calling Indian workers in the gulf �Oil Coolies� or some such thing.
****

And yet you are accussing someone else (Mr Dilip) that he is “shifting focus”?

Please do not evade the focus Mr Raghu! Which is that you said “Praful Bidwai calls Indian software engineers computer coolies”, and actualy he did not. I am not in agreemnt with Mr Bidwai for his article, but he did not call Indian software engineers computer coolies. you are saying he did do that, maybe only to make software people angry with him, maybe because you are angry with him.

I liked some earlier points you made Mr Raghu, since many days, but it is very dissapointing that you do not have simple honesty to write that “I made a mistake. Praful Bidwai did not call softwre engineers coolies. He has called call-centre workers coolies, which I still do not like it.”

I never read Mr Bidwai articles before. I did it now only because thought “cyber-coolie” was very bad word for computer engineers, but I wanted to read why he used it. I am not defending Mr Bidwai. (Please note again, I do not agree with him). I am saying only your this claim about him is false. If you are making false claim here and then shifting focus, it will make people suspect other points of yours Mr Raghu.

Mukta Khanna.

Dilip (D’Souza), I went a little silent since the discussion seemed to have taken a different turn out here for a while - just a couple of points from your last comment on the debate…

Responsibility - I think there are varying degrees of responsibility - a class leader in school obviously has a lot less responsibility than maybe a minister in the government.

I firmly believe that weblogs are an informal way of communication as compared to other published media, though we are all in the same public domain as the other Dilip pointed out. When you are speaking to your peers informally, your tone of voice is way different from when you are speaking to strangers. That I think is the biggest reason why webloggers often take and irreverent to nasty tone in their posts (not that I support nastiness). It is like the way you would discuss a movie actress with your buddies - you are not going to be all “Oh, Mrs. Madhuri Dixit this” and “Ms. Aishwarya Rai that” are you?

It has been fun talking to you (I have to find out about the Ethiopian place - honey wine sounds wonderful) - keep dropping by :)

Desperate to shift focus?

From where to where? Shanti, Dilip D’ Souza and I were never discussing any specific article by any specific person. We were simply in general having a debate on the need for civility. From nowhere you jump out of the woodwork and talk about shifting focus, hypocrisy when you yourself exhibit all these traits nicely in your posts. Talk about pot calling the kettle…

Typical of your tribe. Fold tail. Tuck it in between legs. Flee. Claiming: �it�s not me! it�s you!!�

Whatever dude. You are da man. We having a saying in Tamil that when a stray dog barks at you when you walk down on the road, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to bark back. See, then there’d be no difference between you & the dog. Some things in life you just have to ignore…

Shanti:

> When you are speaking to your peers informally,
> your tone of voice is way different from when you
> are speaking to strangers.

Point taken.

Still, I also hope you see where I’m coming from when I say I reacted to the “peddling lies” and “teaching Indians to feel unpatriotic” stuff from Seriously Sandeep.

It’s been good to talk to you too. I did look at the prior references to me in your blog, and I hope this exchange now has given you a slightly better idea of, again, where I’m coming from. Yes, I take away something as well, about you and your views (and Sandeep’s, for that matter).

And I shall take the comparison with film actresses as a compliment … I think?

Honey wine is an excellent way to get drunk. Smooth and slow.

so long,
dilip d’souza.

Hello Mukta Khanna,

How do you do. This is Shanti’s blog, for chrissakes. I don’t want to be a party to an attempt to turn this into a gutter, but for whatver it is worth …

Which is that you said “Praful Bidwai calls Indian software engineers computer coolies”, and actualy he did not.

Actually, he did. Tough luck. Deal with it. Like I said, if only you will produce that column of his where he called gulf workers “oil coolies”, that would radically change my perception of the dude, I promise!

, it will make people suspect other points of yours Mr Raghu

You don’t say so! Frightening! Is it true? Or are you blackmailing me?

——

See, then there’d be no difference between you & the dog

I get a good idea of your notion of ‘civility’ now, chap. Actually, it’s truly impressive that you could hold it back that long. Gotta be a personal record of sorts for you, I guess.

Cheers,
RR

RR, whoever you are,

I’ve been hanging around watching this generally interesting exchange. I have to say, I’m appalled by your latest salvo at Mukta Khanna. If I go by the way you have reacted to your critics so far, I know syaing this will only produce an intemperate attack on me now. I will wait for that!

The fact is, Mukta showed up your lie about Prafull Bidwai. It’s good to see that at least somebody reads deeper behind these grand allegations guys like you make, showing us in this particular case that all you’re trying to do is damn Bidwai by lying yourself. Mukta did exactly that and showed you up.

I realize nobody likes to get caught with their pants down. But your blustering around about “oil coolies” fools none of us who, as Dilip wrote, “have followed your posts elsewhere in the blogosphere”. Because we see you for what you are.

Is it impossible to defend the Shiva Sena and criticise fellows like Bidwai without lying? Hmmmm! I think I may be onto something here. What do you say?

Cheers yourself,
Sudhakar Nair

The fact is, Mukta showed up your lie about Prafull Bidwai.

“Mukta” didn’t do anything of that sort, dear “Nair”. Poor girl she just got misled by Bidwai’s codswallop and plunged headlong into defending that which she didn’t even read carefully. “IT Experts or Cyber-Coolies?” asks Pra-non-fool. And Mukta somehow got it into her head that Pra-non-fool asked “ITES Experts or Cybercoolies?” (As if insulting ITES workers is okay.) And thus she invented this little theory that Pra-non-fool denigrated only call-center workers (poor fellows, they deserve it, eh?) and not software workers and ergo Pra-non-fool is kosher.

There’s a sort of eerie resemblence between how “Mukta” insists that she is the official interpreter of Pra-non-fool, and mullas insist that they are the official interpreters of the scripture. Mercifully, though, “Mukta” hasn’t declared a fatwa on me yet. I’m expecting one anytime now, though, albeit maybe not from “Mukta Khanna” but in all likelihood from “Preity Mukherjee”. Which fatwa will no doubt be seconded by “Sharukh Menon” and “Salman Krishnakutty”. Everybody and uncle will soon be making a beeline for Shanti’s blog, just to tell me how I cannot fool any of them.

I got myself into trouble. Only I am to blame for my misery. I am crying now. Will you please lend me your hankie? Gotta blow my nose.

But your blustering around about “oil coolies” fools none of us

“None of us”!? How many persons rolled in one are you, “Sudhakar Nair”, that you see yourself as a whole goddam cooperative housing society!?

Go see a shrink TODAY! Multiple personality disorder is not to be taken lightly!

There’s already a gutter here and guess what? You dug it.

And you — you seem to be wallowing, nay, luxuriating in it, dude. Natural habitat, I guess.

Cheers,
RR

PS: Say, why not take this to some other place that ain’t anyone’s property, dear Sudhakar Khanna/Mukta Nair/CooperativeSociety, so that I may oblige you with a flamefest you will so love that you won’t forget in a hurry?

Yo RR —

You didn’t disappoint me!! The intemperate attack arrived, embellished with the conviction that you’re the ustaad of flamefests, and the not-subtle-enough implication that all your critics are really just ghosts!!

Oh RR, it must really feel pretty (okay, “preity”)) poorly to have your pants yanked down, no? How unfortunate that your frantic hand-waving doesn’t sidetrack the issue — you lied about Bidwai and got caught.

Taking this to another place? Definitely. You have my email address. Now wether I reply to you is another matter. You’ll have to find out, won’t you? Sure, dear RR, only we ghosts disagree with you. Of course, of course. Pssssst: wanna buy a bridge?

Have a fabulous day now, got that?

Sudhakar
(Or hold it, is it Salman? Shantiswaroop? Srivatsan? Or Satyanarayanarajagopalachari? Tell me, RR! All of us Cooperative Societies cooperatively wanna know!)

August 18, 2004

Interesting debate

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