Saturday, October 6, 2012

Temple renovation and a television programme.

The society that we live in and the way that we're brought up induce certain beliefs in us that are followed implicitly, without a question being raised even by the enlightened among us.

And are all the inmates of the country's jails actually guilty of the crimes attributed to them? I'm asking this query because our justice system is based on the noble thought that "let the guilty get the benefit of the doubt so that not even a single innocent is punished, ever".


1. Temple renovation.

     My father's family has inherited a 'Sree Krishna' temple in our village and it's a popular shrine. Over the years, it has been renovated many times over with the generous contributions from the people and the family, so much so that, today, the entire complex looks impressive.

     A couple of months back, there was a request from the priest that the 'sarpakkaavu' - the snake temple - required further streamlining, in that, the ground around the deity and the approaches required levelling and paving of tiles to prevent waterlogging during rains. We'd decided to foot the bill, in toto, and towards that end a sum of fourteen grand rupees was handed over to one of the trustees. But the irony was when a receipt for the amount as well as the insistence on a detail break up of the expenses at project completion was insisted upon, the guy felt offended, says my sister who'd handed over the money. His answer was typical, "these things are a matter of faith and trust and we've already given you our estimates. You've to believe us otherwise, you can take back your money".

How does one educate him that expenses of any kind of public money requires transparency in accounting? The temple trust will be prevailed upon to come around to our way of thinking!


2. Nammal Thammil.

     This is a programme on the Asianet channel on the lines of Barkha Dutt's 'We, the people' on NDTV and boasts of a large fan following. Tonight's episode showed the programme being conducted in one of the jails with an emphasis on women prisoners. The stories of the women prisoners, gave me the impression that they've been punished for crimes they'd not committed - at least, that was the message deduced from the teary narrations of those prisoners!

     The implication was that the cases were distorted at the investigation stage to help out the guilty, who're still at large and continue to live in the society as 'decent and reputed' people!

      Felt very disturbed at the end of it all. Was there even an iota of truth in those heart rending narrations? We need to introspect and provide a remedy! 

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