Same old story

Time to get euphoric over India's cricket tour to Pakistan and talk about their hospitality, people to people contact, generating goodwill through sports, how we all look alike and so on... thereby hoping for improved relationship and reduced terror attacks. Thus forgetting the fact, that the terrorism exists because of the State's desire to achieve its political goals by means of terror, which has affected many of our lives. Their people has little or no influence on the Pakistan government, therefore whatever goodwill generated through these events would not bring any change to the ground reality. Of course we can ignore all these terror acts to feel good about our general conscious by blaming everything on so-called minority persecution or on riots, as some bloggers try to persuade us. Let us keep sport a sport without attaching any connotation to it. By the way, Good Luck to India & Pakistan, may the best team win!...oops i almost forgot, Happy Retirement, Ganguly!.

Apathy towards baloch people!

No civilized & responsible nation will use jets, gunships and heavy artillery against their own people unless of-course if the government thinks otherwise and doesn't care about them. World remains impervious towards the atrocities and brutal crimes committed by the pakistani army on baloch people. Some persons & the media in our country are more concerned about jeopardizing our relationship with Pakistan than noticing the tragic suffering of fellow humans in Balochistan. Our Uncle Sam who champions freedom and democracy all over the world remains indifferent in raising the issue with his number one ally, Major Non-NATO ally and trusted friend "Pakistan".

Below is the picture of a little girl and more gruesome images can be seen here
(Courtesy: http://balochvoice.com)


No democratic country in this world is willing to come forward to listen to pleas of numerous pakistani politicians, irrespective to their political affiliation or to the pakistan based group called Alliance for the Restoration of Democracy(ARD):

"The ARD appeals to the Western democratic forces to support the oppressed people instead of dictators, endorse the views of the ARD and other democratic forces and stop the (Pakistan) government from using force to suppress the fundamental and human rights of the people of Balochistan."

Anyway, Why anyone should come forward? and what is in for them? Specially when we all forgot about humanity long time ago!.

Ps: My sincere apologies to those unsuspecting readers for exposing you to such a gruesome picture.

Fixation with anglicizing native names

I was least bothered about recent controversy over change of name of Bangalore city to Bengaluru until i stumbled on a discussion in a internet forum. It made me to ponder about the mentality of some people, who oppose any such change because new official name does not sound cool and old name has historic significance since British times(only among english educated). This discussion reminds me of a event in my childhood, On my annual summer school holidays i went to my grandmother's village with my mother and brother. Villagers frequent my grandmother's house to meet my mother, since she visits her parents once in a year, on one such occasion, a person playfully asked, "what i was doing here, when my house is in Haidarabad?", another person objected to his pronunciation of Haidarabad and requested me to pronounce it for him, i proudly said its Hyderabad and instantly that person suggested to his companion, that he should utter the city's name in a way i did, otherwise people will think he is old fashioned.

This experience amused me and thought that as these people are uneducated, so don't know how to pronounce my city name. Only years later i realized my folly and our fixation with anglicizing native words. My village is in between Tirupati and Cuddapah, which is almost equidistant from Bengaluru and Chennai cities, people there and parents of my kannada friends call it by its original name: Bengaluru. Both names coexisted for all these years, Bengaluru is more popular in the country side and Bangalore among cities & english educated people, but when people say Bangalore sounds more cool, then it represents their state of mind( & perhaps lack of self esteem over ones culture) and standards which they are applying to judge, isn't compatible with the native culture and it is totally nonsensical comparison, same can be said when we apply native standards to judge foreign words.

When it comes to changing names of cities, What can i say about our state of mind, after hundreds of years of subjugation, In this secular nation still we let the city Shahada in India to retain its name, when Shahada is the central statement of Muslim faith and it means "There is no god but Allah and Mohammed is his Prophet" and more to it, if you say with intent, then uttering this single word can officially make you Muslim!.

Wow, Flying 290Km in a second!?

I was astonished when The Tribune reported that Iran has tested surface to sea missile known as Silkworm, which has a speed of 290 kilometers per second and with a range of 110 kilometers. Only if i was not in my conscious, i would had considered it as a big news when compared to Russia's "super weapon", which is capable of both flying along ballistic trajectory at hyper-sonic speed(more than 5 times the speed of sound) and can also change both altitude and direction of its flight in the atmosphere, which analysts believe can overcome any future missile defense systems. What i'm saying is, here we have a missile developed by Iran which can reach its target in a blink of an eye, is it not amazing!?. Accepted, most of the Indian defense journalists have no clue in defense related matters as Kaushik Kapisthalam notes:

The report claimed, for instance, that the Indian Navy had to buy Israeli Barak missiles, because the naval version of the Prithvi missile was delayed. That is funny because the Barak is a Surface-to-Air missile while the Prithvi is a Surface-to-Surface missile. This was unlikely to be a one-off mistake because the report went on to call the Nag anti-tank missile a Surface to Air missile as well.

When i checked other Indian news sources (and few other foreign sources too), who had obtained Iran's missile testing news item from "Associated Press", all most all of them repeated same mistake blindly. As Kaushik states:

it is still a shame that much of the defense reporting in India is left to people who just reproduce what their 'sources' tell them, without doing any fact-checking. That their 'sources' could have an axe to grind seems to be lost with these people. And very rarely do these negative reports contain quotes from those who have an opposite point of view.

and in this case our journo/editor had proved that they don't even use their common sense before reproducing news item from their source!.

Condom vending machines: Serious aberration?

In today's Deccan Edition it was reported, that on Monday women from Jamaat-e-Islami Hind held protest rally in Chennai against installing condom vending machines in public places. Jamaat-e-Islami Hind women's wing convener Fathima Jalal Said:

"The government is spreading condom culture through these vending machines under the pretext of fighting AIDS. By this our society will grow more permissive and our youth will be ruined"

People who express such ridiculous views need to take serious note of graveness of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. The fact that at least 5.1 million people are living in India with HIV refutes their claim, that the society will become more permissive, to the contrary, figures suggest that we are already more indulgent and its better to accept the fact & should take precautions than denying it. Since we are having world's second largest HIV infected population and considering that 20 million people had already died all around the world and 40 million are effected with HIV, we need to be much more sensible and be proactive in dealing with the crisis. Fathima goes further by announcing that:

"The rally today is just the beginning. We will not rest until all these machines are removed. We will involve all the women's organisations, not just Muslim, in our fight against this dangerous decision,"

Also Government-appointed chief qazi, Salahuddin Mohammed Ayub declares:

"Islam prohibited use of condoms. This is not a right move"

Protesters displayed placards, which states that:

Condom vending machines are a "serious aberration" and they condemn it. They also proclaimed that the only way to protect society against HIV/AIDS is "to fear God and change our lifestyle".

These machines are placed in public places for easy accessibility and to encourage their use. These religious fanatics have no business demanding anything in our secular, free & pluralistic society. Importantly, none are alluring these religious people to use them!, they can die their own death when contracted with AIDS but they cannot take away others right to have easy access to condoms, so they can safeguard against this epidemic!.

Miracles do happen in this world!

When residents of Kamsar refugee camp in POK were digging in search of missing bodies of quake victims, they found Naqsha Bibi, who was buried alive for 63 days in the rubble. Dr Abdul Hamid said that she was admitted in ICU and she weighed only 25kgs and when asked whether anyone could survive for such a long without food and water he said:

“Medical science will hardly accept it, but you know miracles do happen in this world.”

Yes they do!. In fact she is very lucky, just when residents of the camp were unable to feed her, German Team visited the camp right on time to handover vaccinations to Pakistan Islamic Medical Association officials and the residents referred Naqsha Bibi to the German Team.

These kind of unbelievable survival stories from disasters, be it quake or tsunami they indicate us untapped potential of human body and the mind.

Operation Duryodhana

In Aaj Tak news channel 11 Members of Parliament belonging to different parties (BJP, Congress, RJD, BSP) were shown accepting bribes to ask specific questions in the parliament and this sting operation which was named as "Operation Duryodhana" was carried by Aaj Tak along with internet portal cobrapost.com. Repercussions of this revelation was swift, Lok Sabha secretariat has sent Show Cause notices to these MPs and in Rajya Sabha matter was referred to Ethics Committee. All parties had suspended their respective MPs without raising any questions on authenticity of those tapes or without indicating any conspiracy theory to defame them, which was not the case when Tehelka exposed way defense deals were done during NDA government or when Ajit jogi of Congress caught trying to induced MLAs with monetary benefits to form government. Since issue involves MPs from more than one party and none were prominent politicians at national or state level, therefore it was easy for political parties to take action against them.

At the end of the day, every politician is a gentleman & sincere towards serving people unless caught red-handed, err.. as long as he/she enjoys support of the public irrespective of his/her guilt!.