Do not disturb

Nobody likes to be disturbed unnecessarily. Although we Mizos are probably much more patient and polite than others, maybe because we ourselves are so social!

What brought this post about is the advertisement I saw today on 'Vanglaini', October 10-11, 2010, Vol XXV, No 235.

While the rest of India has been grappling with the issue of Unsolicited Commercial Communications (UCC) for the last few years, Mizoram continues to be quite oblivious to our rights. Most of the major mobile services in India are available in Mizoram- Airtel, Aircel, Reliance, Vodafone, BSNL, Tata indicom to name a few. Correct me if I'm wrong, but none of them have a helpline where you can talk directly, toll-free, to a personnel who can help you with your problems and queries.

I use Airtel prepaid services, and I hardly get telemarketing calls on my mobile. Their *121# menu is quite useful. I have registered with  'Do not disturb' registry, and although they occasionally start weird services like 'Good morning sms', 'Cricket updates' etc, I can stop these services through the '121' menu.

On the other hand, Aircel has zillions of numbers where robotic, peppy people on prozac talk to you  in Hindi and English, and they will call you up anytime of day or night. H has a whole 'vai group' of contacts, vai1 to vai22, vaichhia, vainu, etc who share a subtle ringtone so he doesn't have to pick up the calls. But they come up with new numbers all the time. Most Aircel users I know have the same problem and nobody knows how to stop these maniacal callers.

And let's not even start on BSNL.

And now comes this blatant advertisement on our daily newspaper. I am thinking of calling the numbers on the advertisement and warning them of dire consequences if I get even one unsolicited call.


You can check out the present TRAI guidelines on UCCs at http://ndncregistry.gov.in/ndncregistry/index.jsp.
Some salient points:
-Sms 'START DND' to 1909 to register.
- It takes a whooping 45 days to be registered.
-You can check your DND  status by entering your mobile number at the 'DND registration check'  on the same site. Mine is :)
-Rs 500/- is payable by the telemarketer to the service provider (not the customer, bleh) for every first UCC.
-Rs 1000/- is payable for every subsequent UCC.
-The telemarketer's phone number may be disconnected if UCC is sent even after levy of Rs 500 and Rs 1000.
-If the service provider does not comply with TRAI regulations, they may pay upto Rs 5000 for the first, and upto Rs 20,000 for subsequent non-compliance, to TRAI I suppose, not the poor customer.

So there you have it. I am hoping my registration with DND will stop the hopeful advertiser from giving away my number. But this is Mizoram, and anything can happen in Mizoram, especially in ways of flaunting laws. We do need more awareness of our rights, and we need to be more vocal, more staunch, so that vais or fellow-Mizos alike stop abusing our rights.

Snippets

Ruatfeli's hesitance to start walking preyed constantly on my mind, like her failure to become a  fat, chubby little baby like her peers. I tried to play it down, and said she will have her whole life to walk on her own, etc. But you see and hear about  precocious little hussies walking even before they turn one year old, and the mother in you cannot help but hope she does start walking too. 

I guess everything comes in good time. Towards July end, she started standing on her own, but only on the bed. Then she started taking steps, again only on the bed and not on the floor. She's pretty careful, I guess :). Later on, if we gave her something she really likes, like 'vaimim chhum', she would walk all around the house, clutching the vaimim for dear life. She didn't like to walk around empty handed, she'd simply stand till someone gives her a hand, or she'd go back to crawling. At 1 year and 6 months, she was finally walking around confidently, and sometimes she won't hold our hands even when we want her too. I guess she's reveling in her new found independence. Now she goes walking about the house, taking a peek at us sitting in different rooms, and walk away as soon as we call her name. Although we spent so much time worrying about her milestones, I suppose  she's finally caught up with most of her peers. Now all we have to do is worry about when she'll start talking, and then her  schooling :)

On other news, today is Eid. And I was really looking forward to it because I wanted to browse leisurely through Thakthing tlang secondhand market without worrying about being late for work. Every Saturday, the secondhand people from all over Aizawl come and spread their goods at Thakthing, and you can get real good finds here. I usually don't get beyond vegetable shopping on other days because I'd have to go to work. But like I said, it was a holiday today. So I marched up the hill, pregnant and all (yep, it's a little soon ), bypassing vegetables and meat alike, and started riffling through a pile of baby clothes. I checked my bag to see if my purse was still there, and it was. I finally chose a shirt for Ruatfeli's sibling-to-be, and when I reached for my purse to pay for it, it wasn't there! Someone had picked it, in the twinkling of an eye, and I stood up, mind reeling, and all I could see was would-be pickpockets teeming all around me.

I called up H and told him the bad news. His curt reply was 'So what can we do?'. A little commiseration would have been nice, but he'd always said I was careless with my purse, so his reaction was not unexpected.

My purse was quite new, the most expensive one I'd ever owned, purchased in Kolkata for me by Hlimpuii. I didn't carry a lot of cash, around 900/- of my own, and  our department's lunch money in my care, about 500/-. I was more worried about my ATM card, my driving license, my electoral ID, work ID, the key to our almirah, and also....my husband's electoral ID! I am guilty of carrying everything in my wallet. I have to say in my defense I don't usually lose things. I used to be quite proud of myself for not losing cash or mobile phones, unlike some of my hair-brained friends (Padma for one!). Now I feel terrible, I have flashbacks of my fine leathered walllet being manhandled, visions of my poor ATM card getting abused, the thief coming to our house and opening our almirah, the hassle of getting duplicate IDs and license, etc. 

A lot of good Eid brought me, I hope you guys had a better holiday.

Bad news, Bad news

A friend's sister, aged 29, was recently found to have multiple lumps in her liver through ultrasonography. The initial FNAC (fine needle aspiration cytology) showed only blood, so we were hoping the lesion would turn out to be a benign or infective one. But since the family was a little panicky, their doctor immediately referred them to a bigger centre without a repeat FNAC. And now I hear she might be having cancer of the colon which has in fact metastasized to her liver.

And just this week, one of H's close friend's mother was found to have cancer of the colon with metastasis to the liver.

A 22 year old man from Lunglei went to the doctor because the lump in his neck felt 'ugly'. They turned out to be malignant. Biopsy from his nasopharynx showed the cancer started from there.

A 14 year old girl from Saiha has lumps on her neck, which kept growing. Biopsy and CT scan showed she had widespread Lymphoma.

A 9 year old boy has a hugely swollen upper jaw. Investigations proved he has cancer of the maxilla.

We have 360 cases of cancer in Civil hospital, Aizawl so far this year (some duplication possible from FNACs, then biopsies). That is approximately 51 cases per month. The statistics are scary. And the saddest cases are the ones where the patients are still so young!

Homemaker extraordinaire :)

I spent last weekend trying to develop my homemaking skills. Somebody introduced me to homemade soya mayonnaise and I really loved the taste. So I looked up the recipe on the www and it turned out pretty simple to make.

I. Making the soya milk :

• Bought 1 kg of soya seeds from the market. They were mixed with little stones and other debris, so required a good cleaning.
• Soaked a little less than half kg overnight in water. This amount proved to be way too much, a quater kg (250gm) would be more appropriate for personal use.
• Next day, I blended the soya beans with thrice the volume of water in a blender. Since my mixie jar is small, I had to do it in several batches.
• I strained the whole slurry through a muslin (read cotton) cloth and boiled the milk for around 10 minutes.
• I got around 2 litres of soya milk.

II. Making the soya mayonnaise: 
  You need:

1.   1 cup of soya milk
2.   Half a tsp of salt
3. 1 tsp of lime juice
4. 1/4th tsp black pepper powder
5. 2 egg yolks (optional)
6. 1 cup of vegetable oil.

The procedure is simple. Blend 1-5 in a mixer. Add the vegetable oil a few drops at a time and blend till the whole cup is added to the mixture. Adding the oil slowly seems to be the most important part. If you add it too fast, the oil tends to float. I got 2 jars and a half from 2 cups of soy milk. Taste great!! Just like store bought mayonnaise, but better than the Funfood brand. Only problem is you can keep it only for a week or so.

I also made these moist chocolate cakes. I think they taste better than they look :P

And some pictures of Ruatfeli

With her new umbrella...

My take

It was disturbing for me to read that the Mizoram Law Commission was planning to reduce the age of consent from 16 to 14 years.      www.news.outookindia.com/item.aspx?687062

I don't think children at 14 have the required maturity to decide to have sex. Most girls would be undergoing sexual development, with development of breasts, menstruation etc at that age, and full development is said to be at 16 to 18 years. And boys are known to be slightly slower than girls! So even with our changing lifestyle and maybe a slight precocity seen in today's children, 14 is way too young, for males or females, to start having sex.

The argument for the cause is that men who have consensual sex with underaged girls are having to face charges of rape. In my book, serves them right! I don't think any self-respecting, God-fearing, NORMAL man would go around having sex with a 14 or 15 year old even if she happens to be a Lolita. An adult has to show restraint, even the face of great temptation. I don't think it saves him from being labelled as  anything more than a pedophile. And if there is sex between two underaged children, I don't think that makes it any more right. We as parents and adults have to simply try to teach children about the right time to have sex, and taking the extreme shortcut of reducing the age of consent is a terrible injustice done to all  future generations. Because a law once passed, will be difficult to change, if not impossible.

So what will be the possible consequences if this new age of consent comes to pass?

• Much younger children are going to start having early sex. Even with the present age of consent being 16, there are already many underaged children indulging in sex. When it actually becomes legal, we can expect 12 and 13 year olds to start experimenting with sex.
• More men are going to beguile and persuade innocent children to have sex, or rape them, and then say it was consensual in defense. 
• Parents will have to be even more careful and maybe even neurotic, about what their child is upto. I for one will not want to my children to have pre-marital sex, forget about sex at 16. And since even the most careful parents can never completely protect their offsprings, we would be living in constant fear in a world which is growing too fast, too complex for us.
• Studies say early sexual encounters lead to delinquency, poor mental health and adversely affect a child's entire future life. I don't think there is a study that says the reverse. 

So why encourage and legalise something which we already know to be harmful? Shouldn't we instead make sure the present law is carried out more firmly and stringently? The reason there are so many  orphaned children and  divorces in our state is that too many kids have sex without proper education, get pregnant, get an easy marriage and get an equally easy divorce.