Love Hurts

Thou art my soul precious

Thy feet I rest gracious

For they are wholly adorable

Oh my charming beauty amiable

Every breath cry out for thee

Love just overflowing like Ghee

A treasure looking like an angel

Thou art like my new brides bangle

A heart in the earthen vessel

Broken treasure in love tussle

Soul shattered and split

My love for you, so unfit

Tears gush down in grief

Thus heart pause to belief

A story of pain and sorrow

Repeats itself every tomorrow

Its said ‘Love binds two hearts’

Every love hurts whilst it departs

Just like a rose without petals

It pretends to life settles

A poem inspired to know the fact that not every love has joyous ending.

Am I Indian or Westerner?

Why are we in India so embarrassed to recognize our own strengths, our achievements?

We are such a great nation. We have so many amazing success stories but we refuse to acknowledge them. Why?

We are the first in milk production.

We are number one in Remote sensing satellites.

We are the second largest producer of wheat.

We are the second largest producer of rice.

Look at Dr. Sudarshan , he has transferred the tribal village into a self-sustaining, self-driving unit. There are millions of such achievements but our media is only obsessed in the bad news and failures and disasters.

I was in Tel Aviv once and I was reading the Israeli newspaper. It was the day after a lot of attacks and bombardments and deaths had taken place. The Hamas had struck. But the front page of the newspaper had the picture of a Jewish gentleman who in five years had transformed his desert into an orchid and a granary. It was this inspiring picture that everyone woke up to. The gory details of killings, bombardments, deaths, were inside in the newspaper, buried among other news.

In India we only read about death, sickness, terrorism, crime.. Why are we so NEGATIVE? Another question: Why are we, as a nation so obsessed with foreign things? We want foreign T.Vs, we want foreign shirts. We want foreign technology.

Why this obsession with everything imported. Do we not realize that self-respect comes with self-reliance? I was in Hyderabad giving this lecture, when a 14 year old girl asked me for my autograph. I asked her what her goal in life is. She replied: I want to live in a developed India . For her, you and I will have to build this developed India . You must proclaim. India is not an under-developed nation; it is a highly developed nation.

Do you have 10 minutes? Allow me to come back with a vengeance.

Got 10 minutes for your country? If yes, then read; otherwise, choice is yours..

YOU say that our government is inefficient.

YOU say that our laws are too old.

YOU say that the municipality does not pick up the garbage.

YOU say that the phones don't work, the railways are a joke. The airline is the worst in the world, mails never reach their destination. 

YOU say that our country has been fed to the dogs and is the absolute pits.

YOU say, say and say. What do YOU do about it?

Take a person on his way to Singapore . Give him a name - 'YOURS'. Give him a face - 'YOURS'.. YOU walk out of the airport and you are at your International best. In Singapore you don't throw cigarette butts on the roads or eat in the stores. YOU are as proud of their Underground links as they are.. You pay $5 (approx. Rs. 60) to drive through Orchard Road (equivalent of Mahim Causeway or Pedder Road) between 5 PM and 8 PM. YOU come back to the parking lot to punch your parking ticket if you have over stayed in a restaurant or a shopping mall irrespective of your status identity… In Singapore you don't say anything, DO YOU? YOU wouldn't dare to eat in public during Ramadan, in Dubai .. YOU would not dare to go out without your head covered in Jeddah.

YOU would not dare to buy an employee of the telephone exchange in London at 10 pounds (Rs.650) a month to, 'see to it that my STD and ISD calls are billed to someone else.'YOU would not dare to speed beyond 55 mph (88 km/h) in Washington and then tell the traffic cop, 'Jaanta hai main kaun hoon (Do you know who I am?). I am so and so's son. Take your two bucks and get lost.' YOU wouldn't chuck an empty coconut shell anywhere other than the garbage pail on the beaches in Australia and New Zealand ..

Why don't YOU spit Paan on the streets of Tokyo ? Why don't YOU use examination jockeys or buy fake certificates in Boston ??? We are still talking of the same YOU. YOU who can respect and conform to a foreign system in other countries but cannot in your own. You who will throw papers and cigarettes on the road the moment you touch Indian ground. If you can be an involved and appreciative citizen in an alien country, why cannot you be the same here in India ?

In America every dog owner has to clean up after his pet has done the job. Same in Japan ..

Will the Indian citizen do that here?' He's right. We go to the polls to choose a government and after that forfeit all responsibility.

We sit back wanting to be pampered and expect the government to do everything for us whilst our contribution is totally negative.. We expect the government to clean up but we are not going to stop chucking garbage all over the place nor are we going to stop to pick a up a stray piece of paper and throw it in the bin. We expect the railways to provide clean bathrooms but we are not going to learn the proper use of bathrooms.

We want Indian Airlines and Air India to provide the best of food and toiletries but we are not going to stop pilfering at the least opportunity.

This applies even to the staff who is known not to pass on the service to the public.

When it comes to burning social issues like those related to women, dowry, girl child! and others, we make loud drawing room protestations and continue to do the reverse at home. Our excuse? 'It's the whole system which has to change, how will it matter if I alone forego my sons' rights to a dowry.' So who's going to change the system?

What does a system consist of? Very conveniently for us it consists of our neighbours, other households, other cities, other communities and the government. But definitely not me and YOU. When it comes to us actually making a positive contribution to the system we lock ourselves along with our families into a safe cocoon and look into the distance at countries far away and wait for a Mr.Clean to come along & work miracles for us with a majestic sweep of his hand or we leave the country and run away.

Like lazy cowards hounded by our fears we run to America to bask in their glory and praise their system. When New York becomes insecure we run to England . When England experiences unemployment, we take the next flight out to the Gulf. When the Gulf is war struck, we demand to be rescued and brought home by the Indian government. Everybody is out to abuse and rape the country. Nobody thinks of feeding the system. Our conscience is mortgaged to money.

Dear Indians, The article is highly thought inductive, calls for a great deal of introspection and pricks one's conscience too…. I am echoing J. F. Kennedy's words to his fellow Americans to relate to Indians…..

'ASK WHAT WE CAN DO FOR INDIA AND DO WHAT HAS TO BE DONE TO MAKE INDIA WHAT AMERICA AND OTHER WESTERN COUNTRIES ARE TODAY'

Source: Found on Facebook, This is what Dr. Abdul Kalam said.

A New Pope for the World: not a Vatipope

There is a swarm of information and news about the resignation of the Pope. I have been following different sources of news to quench my own thirst for Vatiman; a new man to the Vatican. It has been a surprise for me that the only “power” has managed to resign to the post of Papacy after several centuries. I know well, that this is an august post, which doest even address as post but as a ministry. Well, I do agree with the fact that Jesus assured that He will build his Church on the Rock, Peter. I am sure St. Peter will be surprised to see the pomps and glories of the Vatican. The Chair used by Peter might have been very well a poor foot stool used by the fisher folks of the time. Not to drift into so much history of the Papacy on which my knowledge is trivial. 

Two things occurred to me these days of commotion in the Vatican; firstly, too much energy is spent on who will occupy the Chair of Peter, secondly; in the process of spending our energy on the aforementioned issue, we forget about the pains and sorrows of our brothers and sisters suffering in Quetta, Pakistan. 

I know its somewhat baloney to inter-voice them together because they are separate issues per se. It is painful to hear all about the resignation of the Pope and his successor in all the possible ways. Catholics are too occupied with this at the moment. I am sure its fair to have an able leader who can lead the world and not only the Catholic world. Cardinal Walter Kasper spoke wonderfully to the Italian media recently about the new Pope. He said, “We need a Pope who has charisma and is able to influence faithful. A real shepherd of the people but also a shepherd who knows how to lead the Church. I think what is needed today is experience of the universal Church; knowing about one country or one diocese in particular is not enough.” This makes me absolute sense as why the Church has not progressed. We need man from the world, of the world and to the world. I no longer think he needs to be a shepherd only for Catholics which absurd but its true we are living in a highly secularist world where religion has become a mere ‘old people business’. The new Pope has to know the reality on the ground and send his men accordingly to the mission that Christ intended. He will have hercules task before him. We all know what I mean by hercules task, the issues that bother the Church most at this time. 

Now my worry is, have we forgotten our own innocent brothers and sisters killed on Last Saturday a bomb planted by the group in Quetta, Pakistan killed almost 90 ethnic Hazara and injured 169 others. This was a shocking news for indeed and not so much the Pope’s resignation. I still cannot get my mind around why there is so much violence in the world, particularly in Pakistan. It has always bothered me when I think about violence in Pakistan because they have gone through this suffering for a long time, right from 1948; when Indo-Pak partition took place. Since then my brothers and sisters have suffered so much violence. Everyone should be shocked to hear that and if not act at least feel with the people who are suffering in Pakistan. This will be our ‘new evangelization’ in this era. Just empathizing with the suffering will surely lead to peace and serenity one day if not immediately. 

Lost Civilisation

The Amerindians have been living a life style for centuries that has enhanced the growth. They had their own identity, an identity that is more compatible with nature. They lived a life of seclusion in the remote areas, which is now called hinterland. Their life style was entirely different that of the urban people. Generally urban people called them ‘uncivilized’ race of the earth. Thus the word un-civilization is used to address the Amerindians. Thus extra-ordinary efforts take place in order to ‘civilize’ them. It is a perspective in crisis, a perspective of the elite, a perspective of the aristocrats and a perspective of the missionaries. This perspective considered the Amerindians as non-civilized because they worshipped nature, they dressed scantily, they ate food without cooking, they hunted their food etc. Therefore, according to the ‘civilized’ urban populaces these Amerindians lived a life not worth of living. They needed a change from their old habits to a new, urbanized way of life.

Lost civilization is my topic for this article, because the Amerindians had rich civilization but now it is in jeopardy as the foreign civilization take them to the middle of the ocean and lead nowhere. Who am I to change or impose my way of life, or my ‘civilization’ to a people who have lived their lives for centuries? It is disheartening to hear from the Amerindians now that their children do not speak their tribal language because it has become old fashioned. And once the language dies, a culture naturally sees its demise.

My limited experience with the Wapishana Amerindian community of Guyana has taught me to respect and encourage them to rejuvenate their own way of life. Some expressed to me that most of the good cultural values are forgotten and more individualistic attitude is creeping into their way of life. For instance, the culture of wadaup (a meal cooked by each family and brought to a common place and eaten together without distinction) is seeing its demise. Now this is lost because of individualistic way of life. When I attended a waduap, I felt so happy that the sharing of food brings a community together as a family, and after all we belong to human family. Another example, the Amerindian land is free for an Amerindian which means he can go anywhere in the reserved land and habituate it; of course inform the village leader. But now the barbed wire culture is creeping into the common property. This means barbed wired land is permanently his/her. Which is invariably against the Amerindian way of life.

These are the two examples of ‘lost civilization’. The Amerindians are slowly but surely losing their own identity in the process of civilization. To a large extent Christian missionaries have been responsible in this process. Missionaries created an avenue to the Amerindians to forgo their primitive life style of hunting, nomadic agriculture and community life. But this is all done in the best intention of making them good people other than the reason of saving souls from going to hell. I am not denying the fact that their life style has improved and education has made them more compatible with the wider society. We got listen to our conscience and ask whether they are losing their own identity and culture or they are embracing a life that we think may be compatible for them. If we do a proper analysis, and this article has not done it because it is just a hypothesis, we would not make a beautiful culture wipe away from the face of the earth. Civilization is a question of perspective, what is civilization may not be civilization for another culture. I eat pork; I cannot insist that Muslims eat pork too. That is not right thing to do. I cannot change what is precious for the other, or for that matter I must not even think of doing that. If we try to impose our way of life on the other in the pretext of civilization, I think there won’t be any civilization left on earth. Everyone would enforce and instill their own culture and way of life on the other; reciprocally there will be strong resistance, which will lead to war. Therefore, it is crucial to not to ‘un-civilize’ the ‘civilized’. Every civilization is precious and important, so one has to respect this fact.