Well two things to clarify before I go on. The first is the number “zero” of the resolution. I guess all of you must remember the laws of thermodynamics you studied in school. If not, let me refresh your memory. There are three laws of thermodynamics. Law 1 was the first to be discovered followed by Law 2. After that the discovered a third law too but felt it was the most important one and had to come before 1 and 2. Now renumbering the 1 as 2 and 2 as 3 and the newly founded one as 1 would have been very confusing so they called the “zeroth” law of thermodynamics. Pretty clever, isn't it? The same is with me. I have already posted 4 (1, 2, 3, 4) resolutions and felt this should come before all of them. Why I feel it should come before all others? Just wait for a minute.

Second thing I wanted to say is that this is not a resolution for me but for a large population of our country that was out on the street checking out the “look and feel” of women on the night of 31st December.

It was like a large group of male population in our country decided simultaneously that in the year 2008 they will try to get drunk more often and molest more women, individually or in a group. Now this is one helluva idea for male bonding. Not only did those men made this resolution, they were very prompt in putting it in practice too. They were out on the streets groping women all over the country.

All I am seeing on the front of the New Year this year are the images of the girls being molested by a mob of about 70 to 100 people outside Marriot Hotel in Juhu. So far the following are the incidents of molestation I have heard so far

• Two girls molested outside in Juhu
• Swedish tourist molested in Kochi
• Koena Mitra, who was performing in a New Year party, was attacked by a guy who squeezed her hand before grabbing her
• A few girls in Patna had to lock themselves in their hostel rooms when a group of drunken boys broke in their hostel
with obvious intentions; they were upset that those girls had refused to dance with them in a party.

This is not it. There must be a lot of cases and one thing that is common between them is that no one was willing to take any action on it. It took about 2 days for the Mumbai Police to write a complaint and had the news not been so widely publicized, police would never have written that report. The top cop in Bombay even said that these incidents are common and the media is making a mountain out of a molehill. Saamna-the mouth piece of Shivsena is even suggesting that this is the fault of girls. They were the ones wearing short dresses. This reminds me of a rape in an Arab country where the victim was sentenced to either prison or flogging for being raped. She was condemned because she was traveling with a stranger. We may be growing stronger economically and we may be getting closer to becoming a superpower but we can't deny that the fundamentalist forces in India are growing stronger too and if they have their way we too might start punishing the victims instead of the offendors.

The only exception here was the molestation case in Kochi where the victim didn't file a complaint but still an arrest was made as a case was filed “suo-motu”" for the first time in India.

I would like to know what is the opinion of the deputy chief minister R.R. Patil who closed all the dance bars in the state as he found them offensive. Is he okay with the New Year resolution of the molesters or he is doing something about it.