More on Tijo Jose gets 70 lakhs offer from Google

More on Tijo Jose gets 70 lakhs offer from Google

About Tijo JoseI am Tijo Jose (Tuttu) An M.Tech. (CSE - Mathematical Foundations and Algorithms) Student of National Institute of Technology, Calicut.  I did my B.Tech. in Computer Science and Engineering from Viswajyothi College of Engineering and Technology, Vazhakulam.  I live with my family in Vazhakulam (The Pineapple City), Muvattupuzha, Ernakulam Dt., Kerala, India. (Presently, at NITC Hostel) I am color blind. The only one with this 'ability' in my class during school days. Found a partner in college, though. Even I have a brother, who shares the quality. Don't think I am doomed... That makes me special in a special way!!! Well, I wanted to become an astronomer. That was my best, first and foremost vision. I was and am fascinated by the deepest and darkest mysteries of the premises of the earth. Stars used to tickle me in my dreams. The way stars are born, live young and old, and die! Oh! how exciting it is just to hear that. And they live after their death as black holes or pulsars. And the nebulae of the universe. The jewel in the crown. To study extra terrestrial, to explore extra terrestrial, to capture extra terrestrial, to understand extra terrestrial. Oh! how I dream them. But now, I am on the way of becoming a computer engineer. Still, my vision is with me. I'll never let go.  May be you can call me a Maths wizard. B'coz the only area I found interesting in school was the study of Mathematics. And to be honest, I did it well too! Isn't it wonderful to play with numbers? Like the countless stars in the sky, the count of the countless numbers is just addictive to me. I love proving this and that in maths, which may be of really no use to anyone (sometimes, it really is useful...you see...that is how great mathematicians are born), but is of great satisfaction to my mind. There lies the greatest pleasure, when you enjoy something, like anything. The part of math I love most is everything except nothing.  I luuurrrvvv to do programming. But ain't no hero at it. In the upcoming stage. Can do almost medium rated programs myself in a relatively few languages I know. I enjoy reading books. Not study materials but library materials.
Born on March 3, 1990

INDIA DAUGHTER IS STILL CONTROVERSY

           

              The message of the Indian state is clear from its response to the documentary India’s Daughter. Rape is permissible and normal, but a film which is an insult to the nation state is taboo. When culture is under threat, the vulnerability of women, the obscenity and the banality of rape are inconsequential. Controversies have a way of fragmenting the narrative of stories. They also have a touch of scandal which generates not merely outrage but also an epidemic of political correctness. The recent ban of the BBC documentary, titled India’s Daughter, on the Nirbhaya rape case, is an example. I sat and watched the documentary. It is powerful and compelling. What holds one’s attention are the fragments of conversation from the convict and the quiet responses of the family. What is irrelevant or possibly elliptical to the movie is the commentary of the NGOs that spread out like politically correct icing. The reactions of Krishnan, Kanth, Seth, all sensitive people, are reasonable in themselves but they do not touch the core of the narrative.

                       The story, presented in its rawness the rapist’s narrative and its various thematic elements. Listening to the narrative, I was sickened by the sheer lack of humanity. I felt as if I did not want to be part of the human species. I was wondering where I had watched a similar display of responses and the sheer ordinariness of the comments reminded me of Hannah Arendt’s study of Eichmann in Jerusalem, a controversial but classically relevant book.

Arendt’s book talked of Eichmann, wondering how to make sense of the sheer ordinariness of the man and the enormity of his crimes. Eichmann claimed he was merely obeying orders; that he was an officer enacting his daily chores. He appeared “normal”, or as one psychologist admitted “more normal than I was after interviewing him”. The nature of the crime here is different. Adolf Eichmann committed genocide; our rapist killed and disembodied a woman, a paramedical student, removing her intestines as if it was a bit of garbage.

         The rapist in this case becomes not a pathological case, but a symptom of the normalcy of our culture. In fact, it is the sickness of our culture that we witness through the words, the attitudes, and the body language of the perpetrator.

             The rapist seems ordinary, dressed in a T-shirt and with the makings of a beard. He could be sending arakhee message to his sisters, full of mild complaints rather than talking of the woman he raped. There is no remorse, no sense of loss; he sounds like a man who has had a meal and appears to be complaining about it. In fact it is the sheer normalcy, the patriarchal normalcy of the story that creates a link to Arendt’s analysis. What one witnesses is the sheer absence of guilt, the banality of culture.

             The narrative opens simply. Our friends have had food, also a bit of alcohol. They are now tempted to move across their personal Maslovian hierarchy to fun and sex. They decide to ride towards GB road, where such activities are reputed to take place. The picture is clear, these are ordinary men in ordinary pursuits, following predictable urges.

         However, they are also folk sociologists theorising on modernity and the city. They reflect on the human condition and talk about the vagaries of the city. They express their sense of urban anxiety, about women walking the city at night, and hint at the seduction and temptation of women floating freely around. For these men, a freely moving woman is an act of licence.

          Such a woman becomes classified as dirt. Dirt, as the anthropologist Mary Douglas defined it, is matter out of place. As dirt, the women threaten order and classification and order has to be restored. They have to be put in place. The liminality, the ambiguity, the threat of a woman violating male order is clear. As patriarchs and pedagogues, the men must teach the women their rightful place.

     The rapist confesses. He wanted to teach the young couple a lesson and also cure the standard masculine itch. If it is collective itch, they resort to gang rape. He complains that the victim was not pliable; that if she had submitted passively, she would have been subject to less violence.