Death Penalty – Crime or Punishment?

Buried deep in the avalanche of infotainment about Yeddyurappa's histrionics, Ashok Chavan’s shok, A.Raja’s largesse that caused heartburn to the praja, Bigg Boss 4, daily updates regarding the number of teams playing in the next edition of IPL, and Suresh Kalmadi’s evergreen saga of games with the commoner’s wealth, a news items that would have otherwise raised hue and cry escaped our collective notice. India is now a member of a select 38 member club that still continues to insist on the necessity of death penalty. Some other members of this ignominious club are, don’t hold your breath, Saudi Arabia, China, USA and Iran. Some select club, right….

I always had an issue with the death penalty. Only a hypocrite nation could give its assent to death penalty and refuse its consent when it comes to euthanasia. A person wanting to live is denied life, and a person inviting death is forced to live. Life is the most personal of anyone’s possessions; yet isn’t it ridiculous that on one hand the state is allowed to grab at the most precious of my possession take my life while on the other hand I am expressly forbidden from taking it myself. If murder by an individual is a crime, and lynching by a mob is a crime, I do not understand how execution condoned by the state is not a crime.

Many proponents of the death penalty point out at the “rarest of the rare clause”; death by hanging in India is given out only in the rarest of rare circumstance. Now would someone tell me what is a rarest of rare circumstance? How can anyone choose between two murderers and assigns one death and the other, life imprisonment? And what defines whether the circumstances were common, uncommon, rare or “rarest of rare”? My definition of rarest of rare is different from yours, and yours is different from a hundred others. In a nation where the judgments are reversed at every level of hierarchy of the judiciary and new precedents are established by the hour, the “rarest of the rare” definition could change one second after the execution.

And then you have the systemic flaws. Any system, by definition, is prone to faults, more so when the system comprises of humans using their judgment. In a judicial system that has seen impeachment of judges due to lack of probity, transfers because of accusations of corruption and judicial impropriety, can we be so utterly confident of a judicial finding that we dare to snuff out a life? And Presidential pardon remains the cherry on this cake. What is implied by it – that the first citizen has intelligence superior to the collective intelligence of the entire legal fraternity? I am not out to spread calumny, but what if the President is hand in glove with the perpetuator? Isn’t it better to have the life sentence as the ultimate punishment rather than have the death sentence commuted to life, quashing the hopes of the victim’s families that bay for the “severest punishment”?

There is also the recurring issue of the duration between sentence and actual execution. With the party in power queasy to carry out the imposed sentence due to fear of alienating some constituents of its vote bank, the sentence imposed gets postponed indefinitely and the issue assumes a political hue instead of being a strictly legal/law and order issue. Consider the case of Afzal Guru. The apex court awarded him the death penalty 2004 for his involvement, alleged or otherwise, in the Indian Parliament attack. It’s been close to six years now and with the UPA government dilly-dallying, BJP on the war-foot every once in a while and the Govt. in Srinagar clarifying that it cannot and will not take responsibility of any events that would take place if the order is carried, Afzal Guru would die a martyr rather than criminal, when executed.

In most of the debates on this topic, there is one aspect of death sentence that is almost never discussed – the effect it has on those that have to perform this distasteful task, those that are directly involved in the execution. The courts’ view of the case is clinical, the medias’ sensational, the publics’ vengeful. It is only the executioner who would actually feel the weight of snuffing out a life. Imagine the guilt and remorse that would rack the prison officials, the guards, the mandatory witnesses, and the executioner. Does the executioner’s need to feed and clothe himself and his family give the state the right to abuse his conscience?

Death penalty is an act of final retribution, retribution of the state, of the society and of the victims and their families. But what if the so called perpetuator has been wrongly accused, is actually an innocent person; an individual whose ill-luck had him at the wrong place at the wrong time? What if the innocence is discovered and he is exonerated just seconds after the execution? Can the state give back life? As Gandalf states in Lord Of The Rings, “Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgment. For even the very wise cannot see all ends.”

Death as a penalty must be banned because it is cruel, an act of vengeance that satisfies society’s craving for revenge. It must be banned because it cannot be undone; because it is no more or no less effective than other forms of punishment/correction, if it were so, there should have been no crimes after the first hanging. It must be banned because no person, court or jury is infallible; because the “rarest of rare” circumstances are subjective. It must be banned because life cannot be given once its taken away and those who cannot give must not take.

Know Your English - 3

This statement, one of my all time favourite, was made in one of the meetings, “Let’s templatize the offering so that the implementation of the solution and the quality of consulting in new sites is consistent and redundancies are reduced”. Believe me, I was traumatized when I was hit with that statement. The rest of the meeting is a blur and it took me a year to fully understand what was intended. If the statement above caused you consternation, this post is dedicated to you. And if it didn’t, I don’t believe you :)

 

Let me today discuss a very important aspect of modern English language; vocabulary that is a must in anyone’s repertoire of words – (loud symphony of trumpets, drums and cymbals) ladies and gentlemen, hold your breaths for an elucidation on the language of the software industry (orchestra fades). The importance of this language arises from the fact that the composition of any group nowadays consists of software guys atleast to an extent of 50% (if you are unfortunate enough to be in a group of Telugus, in a Telugu marriage for eg, the software dominance could be as high as 90%). And knowing how weird English (software) is firsthand and often being guilty of going overboard in its usage, I deem it my duty to tear the veil and reveal the idiosyncrasies of this latest addition (to be referred to as English-S henceforth) to the babel of existing languages. So without any further ado, lets roll up our sleeves and get ready to get our hands dirty.

 

FYI: This is one combination of letters that figures in the most abused list; if the keys for “F”, “Y”, “I” on the keyboard had a right to legal recourse, the software industry would have been engulfed in an avalanche of litigation on over use and physical abuse. FYI is English-S for “For Your Information”. It is used in multiple ways, sometimes to showoff one’s brilliance, other times to expose someone’s ignorance, still other times to scare people witless. FYI comes with various suffixes: 

• FYIO: For Your Information Only. This is used to make the recipient feel privileged, make him/her feel as though (s)he is being let into a closely guarded state secret.  
• FYIA: For Your Information and Action. This is a pressure tactic of the lazy; the sender has reached that state of inactivity that he delegates with aplomb and does it telegraphically. Pity the poor receiver. 
• FYIIA: For Your Information and Immediate Action. Now this is one term that must be banned by the Geneva Convention. What the sender intends is “I care a damn whether it’s a Sunday or whether you are sick. Better complete it or its your posterior on fire.” The sender is undoubtedly a lazy moron. 

PFA: The next most abused acronym, PFA means “Please Find Attached”. This acronym is usually combined with the first to a devastating effect, a gory image of one’s future if the activity referred is not accomplished is clearly depicted. Imagine a mail whose only content is “PFA FYIIA”. It’s a stout heart that doesn’t stop there and then after a single look at the size of the acromyn .

 

Platform: Next time you are in Hyderabad bus stand on a Sunday night waiting to board a bus to Bangalore, and it happens that a person accosts you asking which platform you are on, don’t look upwards and read out the platform number; you might be rewarded with a look of utter derision for your effort. The software engineer friend of yours (come on now, if you haven’t concluded that it’s a software guy even after reading the first part of the first sentence, you are in an urgent need for a course in demographics) would beam at you if your reply is to the effect that you are on some “J2EE” or “dot net” platform. Now don’t ask me what “dot net” or “J2EE” is; after a deep study running close to 3 years, and mind you I could be totally wrong here, I have concluded that they are some sort of grammar rules for the language that humans and computer use to communicate. Anyway dear reader, its now an accepted fact that platforms are no longer those pieces of land where you could buy chips and popcorn of doubtful quality while waiting to board a bus/train and warming up for the tussle that boarding the bus/train would entail. You can no more meet friends on a platform, you meet only ones and zeros that are out to terrorize you to submission.

 

Dropdown: No, I didn’t tell you to drop down onto the floor or to drop something down. A dropdown in the modern dictionary would be listed as a technique used by the software industry to help you select one (and only one) of the many available options (for eg, either a scotch, whiskey or beer). It’s the computer’s way of saying, “I know you are a moron and that you wouldn’t be able to restrict yourself to only one selection so here I am to enforce and ensure only one selection is made”. You know what, I would love to tell the system, “You moron, you drop down and die!!”

 

Key Takeaways: There were those days when takeaways implied that you went to your favourite hotel and after stuffing yourself with all the good stuff, you ask the hovering waiter to pack the rest of the spread so that you can enjoy it at leisure. If today, you are told at the end of a meeting that there are takeaways, do not repeat DO NOT salivate and look around for containers; the time of takeaways that refer to food is long past. Takeaways now a days are those boring things scribbled on your notepad during that dreary meeting you just attended. And key takeaways are those scribblings against which you drew those caricatures of hangman, vomit etc.

 

Production: This is a very finicky term, yet don’t worry; fickle though it might be, I believe that having come this far, you are adroit enough to deal with this term. Production, in the saner days of yore, meant that there was a factory in which a whole lot of complex machinery and efficient men got together and made stuff that eased many a burden. Cometh software and the word dons a new meaning. On the first day of work, I was told by the VP that our company had live production sites in scores of countries. The list sounded impressive, but I wondered, “Why is it that, when world comes to India/China for cheap labour, we are putting up production sites in other counties? And even bigger question, what would the site do – I mean all that you need to do is write the software code on a CD and the product is ready. A simple desktop setup with a CD writer would do right?” That is when the meaning of production was made clear to me. A production site, in software parlance, is a place where the software is being used. If Tata Motors was a software company, then they would call your house a production site if you happen to use Manza. Production indeed….

 

I have hardly scratched the surface and yet it’s time to close the lesson. English-S mirrors a field after war, there are too many unexploded munitions strewn about; unwary handling could lead to damaged psyche. So with this briefest of briefs, I ardently hope that you would be meet with more that the usual succes when you wade through these tumultuous waters of English-S.

 

Nostalgia - Chennai Blues

An article I had written for D&B TU ADSL weekly letter called "TGIF"

A twig floats by the river. As it makes its way along the bank, it encounters many a sojourn, some for a short while and others lengthier. But whatsoever may be the duration of the stopover, the swirling current nudges the twig forward, snapping its bonds and forming new ones. And yet the twig that moved along isn’t the same as the one that lodged itself; a part of the twig remained entrenched in the bank and a part of the bank floated down the river, an irreversible bond having formed.

As I look back, I realize that the Vamsi who left Chennai was not the same as the one who, three years prior, sought its acceptance and shade. There is more sambar in my blood than RBCs; I detect a tinge of typical humor in my psyche that cannot but be attributed to the Tamil land.

Hardly a month has gone by and I seem to ruminate longingly the life I left behind; the friendly chats over coffee, the heated discussions (even over coffee!!), the mind numbing excel sheets, the excitement of Unicraze, every single aspect of the workplace, every moment of iDo, breezy evenings at the beach, the enrapturing tunes in the dusk of the Aadi month, the list could go on endless. And of course, each of us has a special word on the nightmarish experience that goes by the name Chennai Auto Driver (CAD). They say that memories, like wine, get headier with time; it would take eons of fermenting before this bad CAD memory acquires even a passable taste.

So I ask myself, “With this Chennai, with this wonderful people you have had the privilege of knowing, laughing and working with, do you not want to re-establish the link, to stay in touch?” Staying in touch…. who wouldn’t want to. But as the distances get longer and time shorter; deadlines get closer and memories distant, even a hi here and a hello there becomes a big ask. Yet the remorse of not staying in touch must not cloud the happy reminiscences. And with new friends, places and smells, life is too exciting to be lived on a playback mode. Wonderful moments egg us on to create more such moments, a task to be taken up with both the hands and an enthusiastic heart.

If world is really as small as they say, then I look forward to meeting you, the Caribbean beach though it maybe. And if the world is not really that small, then I thank the stars that I had a chance to know, work and laugh with you, even for a short stint.