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I promise somewhat irregular posts on (in no particular order) Indian politics, cinema, and anything else that catches my fancy... Why "Qalandar"? So-called "liminal" religious traditions are a particular interest of mine, and "qalandar" is the sort of untranslatable, ambiguous, yet enormously evocative word that for me touches upon and articulates the experience of the sub-continent's "little" traditions in a particularly memorable way...not to mention the fact that in popular lingo the word has more than a merely religious/spiritual connotation, and can mean a bunch of other things, including a smart alec, wannabe, what-have-you...

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Jaipur Blasts

May 13th, 2008Related|Filed Under

Shocking news, and in a city which hadn’t experienced this sort of horror to date.

LINK

There Are 20 Responses So Far. »

  1. Comment by Simply Som on 13 May 2008:

    Saw it on tv!! very unfortunate and tragic!!

  2. Comment by NyKavi on 13 May 2008:

    One blast right in front of my uncle’s shop near Hanuman Mandir.
    Bloody Cowards, whoever did this.
    I hope hon’ble PM manages to not sleep well today.
    And hon’ble Cong Yuvraj tries a bit to do something about these quarterly blasts in choice target cities of India.

    BTW, tv channels are saying that this could be related to 10th anniversary of Pokhran.
    The way terrorists are keeping score with important historical dates in Indian history, we will have a blast a day soon.
    But yes, our hon’ble PM will keep managing to get a good nights sleep every night of that damned day.

  3. Comment by Tango on 13 May 2008:

    MF bastards they wont let India rest in peace. Always targetting and massacring soft targets and innocents :-(

  4. Comment by Tango on 13 May 2008:

    I think it is a fallout of SIMI workers being caught in Madhya Pradesh. Common sense yeh bolta hai.

  5. Comment by Qalandar on 13 May 2008:

    Tango: not sure if I’d be as quick to jump to that conclusion, but certainly SIMI elements would be prime suspects.

    It just seems like yesterday that I’d visited Jaipur, now 2 years ago, and was walking around these very areas. It enrages one.

  6. Comment by rockstar on 13 May 2008:

    “BTW, tv channels are saying that this could be related to 10th anniversary of Pokhran”

    , well we have a central government we has not even celebrated 10th aniversary of pokhran shocking

  7. Comment by rockstar on 13 May 2008:

    “BTW, tv channels are saying that this could be related to 10th anniversary of Pokhran”

    , well we have a central government which has not even celebrated 10th aniversary of pokhran shocking

  8. Comment by rockstar on 13 May 2008:

    “And hon’ble Cong Yuvraj tries a bit to do something about these quarterly blasts in choice target cities of India”

    agreed all b.j.p ruled states to be specific , mostly attacking the common place for worship , kuya phark parta hai vote bank to nahi jaata hai

  9. Comment by rockstar on 13 May 2008:

    and ya we need to be strong in will to deal with this last year in mumbai(common people in local trains) , hyderabad(people selling old books in kothi and students) , varanasi, akshardham , gandhinagar, bangalore(iisc, hub of indian mathmetical brain ), parliament(institution of law)etc has shown major establishment of india is under attack for how long u will ignore

  10. Comment by Tango on 13 May 2008:

    Q- “Tango: not sure if I’d be as quick to jump to that conclusion, but certainly SIMI elements would be prime suspects.

    It just seems like yesterday that I’d visited Jaipur, now 2 years ago, and was walking around these very areas. It enrages one.”

    Right, it should enrage all humans. I dont know, but that came to my mind first up.

    BTW- Media are saying its HUJI and LeT.

    Sad day indeed and central govt. should go and see how efficient its intelligence wing IB is.

    It needs an IHF like overhaul.

  11. Comment by Qalandar on 13 May 2008:

    Re: “agreed all b.j.p ruled states to be specific…”

    Rockstar it’s non-BJP-ruled states too: Andhra had a Congress government when the blasts occurred, and U.P. had a Bahujan Samaj party government…

  12. Comment by jayshah on 13 May 2008:

    Bad news…NyKavi hope uncle and shop are fine

  13. Comment by NyKavi on 13 May 2008:

    JS, thanks for your kind words.
    Luckily, everyone escaped unhurt. The blasts were not high intensity types, so the affected target area diameters were small. But due to the crowd density in even those small areas, the death toll was large. Cant imagine what a high intensity blast wudve done, we would be counting dead in the thousands.

  14. Comment by satyam on 13 May 2008:

    Nykavi: Didn’t realise till I saw this comment that you had family in Jaipur. Good to know that your family is alright.

  15. Comment by Ravi on 13 May 2008:

    Good to hear that Nykavi bhai, these frikkin things hit home so often and people just frikkin do not care.

    I remember the blasts in Hyd and my brother was there with his family at the laser show park a couple of hours before the blast there.

    People do not put much premium into the loss of life in India and no one is held accountable for this and like you said don’t think the Italian Server, our Pm or the Yuvraj or any other politician is loosing sleep over this.

  16. Comment by satyam on 13 May 2008:

    Unfortunately life still comes cheap in certain parts of the world and I think we should keep defining this as the ‘third world’. We should try to renegotiate the colonialism implicit in this old term and set a new metric — the third world is where there is massive loss of human life without much of an outcry. So we see 30,000 (and counting) lost in Myanmar in the cyclone and it’s just news for a few days. Similarly 10,000 gone in China and again counting. This is not even accounting for the massive dispossession in each case. Stalin said something along the lines of ‘when 100 people die it’s news, when a million die it’s just a statistic’. We see this chilling insight confirmed each and every day.

  17. Comment by texas_swat on 13 May 2008:

    This is sad. Cowards will always prefer the soft targets.

  18. Comment by Qalandar on 14 May 2008:

    http://content-usa.cricinfo.com/ipl/content/current/story/351055.html

  19. Comment by Qalandar on 14 May 2008:

    Very shocking to hear about your family NYkavi, and your brother last year Ravibhai — glad to hear both were safe. But it really hits home when one hears of a direct “connection”…

  20. Comment by rks on 19 May 2008:

    ‘It makes no sense… If you (the Centre) can allow it (an anti-terror law) in Maharashtra, why not in Rajasthan?’ - Vasundhara Raje

    This war that nobody is fighting

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