Do they know their job?
To the questions raised by T.R. Bhat in the article “Are our parliamentarians doing their job?” ( The Hindu , Open Page, April 1, 2012), I would like to add one more: how many of those chargesheeted for crimes (before getting elected) are convicted and removed?
One cannot help feeling that the influential and the well-heeled fight elections using questionable means, get elected and “manage” things. There is a strong case for barring candidates who have been charged with serious crimes from contesting polls.
Navjeevan Khosla,
Panchkula
An important question is whether our representatives have a basic knowledge of the issues they make laws on. Poorly made laws offer scope for corruption.
In a corporate house, an employee who does not deliver is sacked without warning. Then why is a parliamentarian given a chance to justify himself?
Shriyaa Mittal,
Hyderabad
Four decades ago, the situation was not as it is today. There were some extraordinary parliament-arians who are still remembered by the people of their constituency. The veteran CPI(M) leader, P. Ramamoorthy, from the Madurai parliamentary constituency, was one such person. He led a simple life. I often saw him walking from his party office in Mandayan Aasari Lane (near the Town Hall road) to a nearby hotel for lunch. Soon after a parliament session, the party would organise a public meeting, especially in the Aarapalayam//Sellur area, where he would explain the debates and the action taken by his party.
I would also like to mention K.T.K. Thangamani, CPI MLA. After every Assembly session, he too would organise a meeting explaining the activities in the House and the outcome.
K. Sankaranarayanan,
Madurai
I entirely agree with Gopal Gokul Menon's views (“Why make politicians the whipping boy?”). Instead of blaming the politicians for every irregularity, why not we look within ourselves and find out how much we are responsible for making them do what they did? Instead of paying a fine when caught by traffic police, we try to bribe them.
If each one of us puts service before self, we will be on top of the world sooner rather than later!
K. Nehru Patnaik,
Visakhapatnam
The taskmaster
Jose Manavalan has said what most husbands dare not reveal (“My wife: a taskmaster,” April 1). In this male-dominated society, unless wives turn taskmasters, husbands get away with indiscipline. To straighten the men, women have to be strict.
I.V. Prabhakara Rao,
Hyderabad
I entered the kitchen after my morning walk. Since milk was boiling and about to overflow, and the taskmaster was not around, I switched off the stove and covered the milk container. The taskmaster barged in and said I had committed two mistakes. One, I did not use the earmarked lid, two I had not allowed the milk to roll boil. One needs a lot of patience to handle taskmasters.
J. Edison Devakaram,
Tuticorin
The problem arises when the woman of the house treats her children and husband alike, in showering affection and enforcing discipline. Her attitude is not confined to the family. Once I visited my cousin with my family. We dropped our footwear outside the entrance.
When we were about to leave, we found our slippers missing. My cousin rushed inside and brought out our footwear, which had been kept safely in a cupboard by his wife who is known for enforcing perfection in any activity.
N. Sampath,
Chennai
I was hardly amused on reading the article. In fact, I pitied the man for allowing himself to be nose-led to keep the home in apple-pie order. I know a woman whose arrival home after work sent her retired husband and schoolgoing children into a paroxysm of fear. Sofas could not be kept apart; they had to be placed together like Siamese twins. The kitchen utensils had to be in their place, spotlessly clean. The woman was so obsessed with cleanliness that she would wipe all the stains on the table herself. All this finally led to symptoms of obsessive compulsive disorder, which had to be treated!
R. Ramachandra Rao,
Hyderabad
Luckily for me, in my over 50 years of marriage I have never been required to lift a finger. I think present-day wives, most of them college educated, want to assert their equality and avenge the real or imagined ill-treatment of their mothers, aunts and women of the earlier generation.
I can cite instances of our homegrown Hemas and Bamas settled in the U.S. taking their ‘liberty' to absurd limits — to the point of treating their husbands as virtual slaves. I am all for husbands sharing domestic chores but when it is demanded as a matter of right, it inevitably creates unpleasantness and tension.
C.P. Srinivasan,
Chennai
Death & doctor
The article “Death and the doctor” made interesting reading. It is no wonder that doctors are the most detached human beings. How else can they cope with the deaths taking place all around them and succeed in their profession? We have no control over births or deaths. We should, therefore, come to terms with reality which the Bhagavadgita calls tatva darshana . The unreal has no existence; the real never ceases to be.
Kala Chary,
Gurgaon
On reading Dr. K. Ganapathy's article, I recalled the first time I came face to face with death in the ICU. It made me jittery because I did not know if I was making the right diagnosis. One thing we are not taught in medical schools is how to communicate death. Many a time I do not know how to break the bad news to the relatives of the dead. I remember the first time I had to do the job. I held the hands of the kin of the elderly man who had died. The bad news was conveyed without a single word being uttered.
K.C. Manoj,
Kozhikode
