Wednesday, October 1, 2008

In Memory of...

Today is October 2. Let us all rise and observe two minutes of silence in honor of....




Smoking in Public Spaces.
The Ramadoss has finally struck.
But there is the dirty 'I'* word still left as is obvious from this(click on the article "Govt in a spot on smoking ban")
But this is just the first step. "Kyonki battle abhi bhi baki hain."

PS.1 This post was written in a spirit of dispassionate, selfless concern for public welfare. I do not smoke.
PS.2 I can smell someone smoking right now on the floor beneath ours. Viva La resistance!
PS.3 * 'I' is for implementation.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sigh. Every other channel had Attenborough's Gandhi, in different languages. Might have been interesting to compare the diff lang versions if I had the time.

Smoking ban ... I'm wondering about some of my colleagues who cannot do without their smoke... How will they cope? :)

BTW: NDTV/CNN, I forget which, had this headline for the story this morn - Anti-smoking ban ...
Confusing semantics, no?

Prasanth said...

Most channels have gone back to the Attenbourough version because they have got tired of screening the Benegal version and they realize that the old one is in fact new to a lot of people. The circle goes on!

As for the smoking ban, I think a healthy disregard for the dictates of authority is a the keystone of all academia. I am sure the mentioned ones will manage. It's a big issue in the media and blogosphere though. One person whose opinion I would have loved to hear is Khushwant Singh. Sadly the jolly sardar does not seem to be very active these days.

Anonymous said...

Good one. Tomorrow they'll tell us not to have sex on 2nd October, and all national holidays. And they'll probably ban alcohol before that as well.

I do not smoke, and I agree that people who do not have the right to tell smokers not to light up in their presence. But this is just ridiculous. If you're so friggin' concerned, why not ban the cultivation of tobacco and the manufacture of cigarettes?

And SS: won't an anti-smoking ban be a good thing? :-)

Cheers,

Quirky Indian
http://quirkyindian.wordpress.com

Prasanth said...

@QI

The ban is to social engineering what burnt bread is to the palate. I am sympathetic to the logic behind the ban and somewhere deep inside, I perhaps sympathize with the practical impossibilities of any other mode of regulation.

Yet I would still prefer institution-level action, whereby every institution determines its own rules regarding smoking with even this policy tried out first in select areas before being implemented.

My biggest problem is how the ban does not seem to be the effect of any larger plan but a simple way out for the Minister and his acolytes.

As for Gandhi, you should read what the patriarch has to say on some of the human weaknesses like tobacco, alcohol,sex etc. :P