I am still in a state of disbelief!!!!!

I have always been against the creation of statues.  Great people should remain in the memories of people or as people about whom we read or whose works we read.  I have always argued against making statues for precisely the reason that even the greatest of human beings will have detractors and therefore will use the statue to vent anger or frustration.  If the title of this post makes you believe that I am shocked at what happened yesterday on the Tank Bund of the Hussain Sagar Lake then you are completely wrong.  I am in a state of disbelief because I did not see the vandalism coming.  When under the able leadership of an academician a call is given for a million march to the Tank Bund, I should have realized that something like this had been planned.  Not that my realisation counts for anything since I am not a person who could have done anything about it, but still.  The statues of some of the greatest writers and social reformers who were Telugu people or that of people whose work has helped the Telugus have been vandalized and not many eyelids are batted.  Pity.  That is why I always believed that statues should not be made.  How many times have upper caste vandalized the statues of Ambedkar and in retaliation how many times have statues of Gandhi been vandalized in return?  It has happened so many times that it is impossible to keep track of these things anymore.  My anguish is that the upper caste cannot see Ambedkar as one of the greats of this country and the Dalit refuses to see the same in Gandhi.  Ambedkar and Gandhi are Indians, not lower caste and upper caste persons, people who have done great for the country and therefore are actually national heroes.  

Similarly,Krishnadevaraya, Annamacharya, Nannaya, Thyagaraja, Kshetrayya, Jashua, Molla, etc are greats among the Telugus.  When they existed there was no Telangana - Andhra divide.  To drag them into the muck and filth of the Telangana-Andhra politics is so sad.  When I say that it sounds so shallow and phony.  What is unacceptable is that an academician presides over these acts.  Politicians were willing to back off about yesterday's programme which was ultimately so disgraceful to the nation but not academicians.  Not only have the statues become victims of the dirt of politics, they also have been given a permanent resting place in possibly the dirtiest and filthiest water body in the country.  Shows how much we respect ourselves and our heritage.  

Yesterday was even more disgraceful because doctors at the Gandhi Hospital went on strike because some of them or one of them were (was) arrested while participating in the million march and left people requiring critical and emergency care in hospital corridors and ambulance vans.  So many of the young children who went to write the 10th class and intermediate exams were put to great inconvenience and reached home late, causing anxiety to parents.  One of the papers today shows a photograph of KCR addressing the mob and where there should have been a statue there are various people standing and sitting and in the middle of them is a boy who must be ten years old, dressed like Shivaji and holding a sword in his hand.  Really early recruitment.  I suppose what one can do when a society is taken over by lumpen elements and lumpen politics is sit back, grit ones teeth and brace for more such shocks.  I can see what the future of youngsters is, I hope they can and do something about it.