The best way to know the self is feeling oneself at the moments of reckoning. The feeling of being alone, just with your senses, may lead you to think more consciously. More and more of such moments may sensitize ‘you towards you’, towards others. We become regular with introspection and retrospection. We get ‘the’ gradual connect to the higher self we may name Spirituality or God or just a Humane Conscious. We tend to get a rhythm again in life. We need to learn the art of being lonely in crowd while being part of the crowd. A multitude of loneliness in mosaic of relations! One needs to feel it severally, with conscience, before making it a way of life. One needs to live several such lonely moments. One needs to live severallyalone.

Thursday 13 February 2014

USEFULNESS OF PEPPER SPRAY GETS ENDORSEMENT FROM INDIAN PARLIAMENT

Pepper spray, being recommended to women as their useful handy security tool in case of stalkers and other goons after the recent surge in the incidents of crime against women, now gets its endorsement by the Indian Parliament.

A parliamentarian, an MP of the Congress party, proudly used a pepper spray today in the parliament to protect his life as he later claimed that he was acting in self-defense. Another parliamentarian, a senior member of the ruling alliance, claimed that it could have taken lives (saying – ‘strict action should be taken against MPs who had tried to “kill” other lawmakers’).

Now, like any good initiative in India and anywhere in the ‘civilized society’, the field is open to debate. But one thing is sure that after this endorsement of pepper spray at a hallowed platform like of the Indian Parliament, the product is going to get much wider acceptance. It is expected that now even the men will start using pepper sprays for their safety. As a natural corollary, the demand is expected to increase manifold.

As a possible consequence, after this episode, the pepper spray industry is expected to get recognized and organized and, therefore, should get the legal framework to regulate the pepper spray production and sale.



But that should be irrespective of the debate if pepper spray could be life threatening as Mr. Rajeev Shukla said. Mr. L Rajagopal’s claim of pepper spray use to save his life during the Parliament ruckus on the Telangana Bill should be given more credence here as it fits in the trend of the long but harmless use of pepper sprays. A positive development should be supported with positive afterthoughts.

What is noteworthy here is the unrealized potential of the might of pepper sprays. India has seen jump in rape cases and other crimes against women and apart from other precautions, pepper sprays, too, have been recommended as the primary tool to thwart the advances of the molesters and the claws of the rapists. But we had not any credible precedent of it. We were yet to have a ‘follow-worthy’ endorsement for pepper spray highlighting its usefulness in the ‘life-threatening situations’.

Now, that it has come directly from the Parliament and that too with the claims of a parliamentarian that the pepper spray saved his life, we all (not only women, but the men, too) should have no second thoughts about it. 

©/IPR: Santosh Chaubey - http://severallyalone.blogspot.com/