Well, it's been an eventful week here. The
anti-reservation agitation is once again in the fore-front, and protesting students have been roughed up by the police. Over 200 have been arrested. The politicians are, of course, determined to forge ahead with their vote-bank caste politics - and to hell with sacrificing the lives and careers of so many bright and deserving young people. They're dividing the country on caste lines and, once we go further down this route, we're well and truly frocked up.
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Then a couple of young, enterprising businessmen in Bombay,
Puneet Sablok and his brother, decided to open a restaurant that would 'stand out'.
So, would you believe, they went and opened '
Hitler's Cross', complete with the
Fuhrer's life-size image and a replica of his gun to light the hookahs - with the superb, eye-catching tagline '
Hitler is coming to Kharghar'.
They apparently wanted to do something 'grand' in the
gourmet department as Hitler had done something 'grand' in the course of world
history.
One can't begin to comprehend such intrepid brightness and, since it's a Fast-Food place, one wonders what grand things they intended to serve anyway -
Goering Burghers or
Goebbels Shakes? - and goose-step them over at once, waiter,
schnell!! (as one wit put it)
It was the dream of the Sablok siblings to open a chain of Hitler's Crosses, but the
Israelis got wind of this business empire before it spread and, predictably, kicked up a storm. Fortunately for all of us, before they decided to bomb
India next, the Sabloks were persuaded to back down and drop the name.
They haven't come up with a new one yet. I wonder if the American Embassy will ambush them next for '
Bush's Baghdad Delights' or '
Cheney's Chinese Chow' or '
Condoleezza Rice Place'?
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On the serious side, while it was no doubt incredibly insensitive and stupid, I think the situation could have been handled without the Israelis going straight off the deep aggressive end. A lot of us here feel that they're getting a tad too accustomed to bullying other people in other countries.
The Sabloks are just brainless, publicity-seeking nincompoops, not
Nazi thugs. The closest thing we have to Nazi Ideology here in Maharashtra is the
Shiv Sena, and the Israelis are more than welcome to them.
And besides, if anyone has been dishonoring the memory of the
Holocaust Victims, it's the Israelis themselves as we have seen from their excursions into
Lebanon and
Palestine.
'Never Again', if it had any true meaning, would have translated into respect for all human lives - not just
Jewish ones.
And an Israeli businessman here clearly showed me what he thought of that. He quoted - "In any event, dear world, if you are bothered by us, here is one Jew in
Israel who could not care less."
I can understand the sentiment, of course -they have a long history of persecution and it's not easy living in a country that's constantly at war. And no doubt this person - who's probably very nice otherwise - is under a lot of stress.
But then again, they're not the only ones in history that have suffered, and, for all of our own bloody past,
we've never persecuted them.
A bit of the famous
Jewish humor would have been more in place here than all the overwhelming rage.
Once again,
nobody here is 'out to get them', and the 'You're either with us or against us' mindset is really pass' - best left to certain individuals called George.
Because, applying the aforementioned gentleman's logic right around, if they don't give a shit about the world, why on earth should the world go on caring anymore about what bothers them?
It's always a two-way street, and, c'mon, you only hurt yourself with the 'We won't talk, we won't negotiate, you know what you've done' routine.
I mean, really, leave that to hardboiled cases like
Paris Hilton and
Nicole Ritchie.
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Speaking of Paris Hilton, her "
Stars Are Blind" video isn't getting the green signal over here. Apparently, our blessed government doesn't think we're blessedly adult enough to be exposed to her.
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Speaking of government, Truthdig recommends typing 'failure' in google and checking the first result. This is an old outcome of something called
Google Bomb And as bombs go, pretty hilarious.
