Mad Uncle Sam

The US of A has been boggling during the past couple of days with crimes committed against the blacks by the authoritatively armed whites... well, whats new?! The more reasonable and extremely rare sensible and reasonable American must have thought that things might be different now that America has a black president and white rapper for a change... well, how sadly disappointed they must be. With the ability of the American police going up to choke slam people to death and shoot children with toy guns to death, nothing has changed much and tensions did flare amongst people who went to the promised land to try their luck with lady liberty. Meanwhile, their president, their carefully selected leader and early bird Nobel peace prize winner Barrack was concerned about other things in life,  on the radio show 'On Air With Ryan Seacrest', he was worried about picking clothes for Christmas for his "fashionable" wife; he reportedly added, ""On Christmas Day, she will look at it and say 'That's very sweet honey...' and I never see her wear whatever I bought." Well, this is the point where I should reserve my comments and start puking.

Somehow meanwhile, one amongst the rarest of rarest few Americans who I had mentioned earlier, in an interesting twist of events, caught a black woman stealing 5 eggs from a shop. When he figured out that she had stolen the eggs as a last resort to feed her hungry family, he let her go with 7 more eggs in the basket paying for it from his pocket. Incidentally, decently, he was an American, a white and a police man too. Now there seems to be hope for even the dead on the ventilator.   

Why Some Scream

Ever wondered why we scream and shout when with some people many times and in anger all the time? 
Perhaps that is how distant we feel from the person we are arguing with; and the loud noise is only an indicator of the distance we unconsciously feel while with them. We whisper and are comfortably silent and silently comfortable with people we love and are at ease with. 

Bridge the distance and keep that voice down if you please...

Zero This

"0 (zero)" is a number that fulfills a central role in mathematics as the additive identity of the integers, real numbers, and many other algebraic structures. The concept of zero as a number and not merely a symbol for separation is a discovery attributed to India, where, by the 9th century AD, practical calculations were carried out using zero. Indian scholar Pingala (circa 5th–2nd century BC) and his contemporary Indian scholars used the Sanskrit word sunya to refer to zero or void. In 498 AD, Indian mathematician and astronomer Aryabhata stated that "sthanat sthana? dasaguna? syat" i.e. "from place to place each is ten times the preceding," which is the origin of the modern decimal-based place value notation. The oldest known text to use a decimal place-value system, including a zero, is the Jain text from India entitled the Lokavibhâga, dated 458 AD, where shunya ("void" or "empty") was employed for this purpose.

Yet, even after knowing all this and for so long, why do we teach our kids, even in India to learn the number system like our white baboos knew beginning from 1, 2, 3, 4... instead of beginning with 0, 1, 2, 3, 4...?! Are we eternally cursed to remain under the white man's shadow?! How long?!

A Distant Dream From Frozen Memory

A thousand thoughts;

Not a single grounded.

A hundred dreams;

Not one anchored.

Floating like a feather yet

heavy as the anvil,

He stops to turn; to turn, to watch those lonely footprints 

in grains of memories wash away, with every gulping wave by the sea.

Amidst the restless waters and washed away traces,

images still in absolute resolute remains.

Passion vibrant and only known to he who sees,

though silent, still calm, triumphant over ruthless waves, slaveless it frees...

Dummies Guide to Win a Nobel Prize

Year 2009: Obama wins the Nobel "Peace" Prize and says he is "humbled" while a few chuckled and called it a "blunder"; yet, the optimists hushed the few cynics and asked them to wait and watch the difference he would make. 

And then...

Total 7: Number of countries attacked by the US during Obama's reign (so far) that includes: Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen, Libya and Syria

640 billion US$: Annual military expenditure of the US and that is just a staggering 39% of the total military expense of the world 

"I am really good at killing people" brags none other than Obama during the 2012 presidential campaign on his experiments with drones

Between Year 620 to 560 BC: Greek Fabulist Aesop writes in 'The Milkmaid and Her Pail', "Ah, my child," said the mother, "Do not count your chickens before they are hatched."

2014 (again): A few of US us are (still) laughing at the one's who give away those Nobel Prizes; and "hey Nobel guys, if you are listening, just keep one for Idi Amin, one for me and one for my Dad too if you have plenty of those." 

The Three Wise Men

These are days when we look around in dismay at politics, our politicians who can't be seen separate(d) from it and the political scenario in tote; the only politicians available today, fit snugly into the definition of politics when "poly" means 'many' and "tics" means 'a blood sucking parasite'. We hardly have a chance to make any sensible choice these days in a situation where in the name of majority sensible wishes just get heaped beneath a pile of less chosen minorities. Perhaps Pareto Principle works well here according to Murphy's Law for what must go wrong, to go wrong. Yet, yester-years did see some legends whose dedicated work of selflessness has given us a political foundation strong enough on which today's wobbly structure though shaky and weak still manages to carry on. These Three Men I present are very simple people who led a simple life with high thinking and why, oh why, I wonder don't we have people like this anymore...

Ex-CM of TN, Arignar Annadurai, was known for his literary intelligence and classing it up a bit. There are umpteen stories about instances when he delivered his mettle and this is my favourite: Once a kid when offered a candy, looked at Arignar and told him as a matter of fact, "Did you know Sir, that 'sugar' is the only word in English where 'S' is pronounced as 'Shu'?! Our man turned to the kid and without missing a moment asked, "Are you 'Sure'?! smiled and walked on having made his point...

Incidentally, his funeral entered the Guinness Book of World Records for having the highest number of attendees, a 15 million plus.

A rebel, a Communist and a legend, he holds the record for being the longest serving CM from 1977 to 2000 (23 plus years) until his retirement due to ill health; Mr. Jyoti Basu, one of the most loved politician from West Bengal, like in life, a giver, mentioned that his body even after death should be useful for the nation and pledged his body for medical research.

At a time when hideous masks of people who took one Rupee as salary is revealed as we sink our heads in shame, geniuses like this, leave this world literally giving their all and much, much more and above all a legacy of a good life to talk about with pride for the rest of us for a change... Laal Salaam!

Though a school dropout owing to poverty, he became the first to introduce the 'Mid-day meal scheme' so that lakhs of children attending school may have a decent meal atleast once a day; further, he initiated the distribution of free uniforms in schools so that children may learn without any class discrimination based upon the clothes they wear. Even the IIT in the state was introduced during his reign as the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu.

Even after being a CM for 9 years he was known as an extremely simple man full of integrity; after his death in 1975, all that he left behind was 130 rupees, 2 pairs of sandals, 4 shirts, 4 dhotis and a collection of books; yet, he has a a road in Chennai and another in Bangalore, the domestic airport in Chennai and an university in Madurai named after him; he was also awarded the Bharath Ratna in 1976. It is both refreshing and a delight to know that the people of my place (Nagercoil) voted him to power in their constituency during his last tenure; Mr. Kumarasami Kamaraj a.k.a the King-maker, will stand undefeated if he stands an election even today and will always remain victorious in our hearts...

The Unconquered

This poem, Invictus (The unconquered) from the late nineteenth century by William Earnest Henley, is supposed to be Mr. Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela's favourite that kept him going while in the prison in Robben Island. This is a Man who spent 27 years of his life in dingy cells and hard labour, (when many of us would have cracked), just because he stood up for what he considered right. And well, he was.and he is...
May his soul R.I.P. 

A letter from a humble(d) Indian

Dear Rest of the World,

Its been a while I have been wanting to write to you. Been a while since I have been noticing how as one huge community in general, we belittle what we feel doesn't belong to us so much so that we take it for granted, like the ecology for instance and preserve and invest on what we think we owe like the economy for instance. Well, I intended to write not about the too-much-spoken already universal obvious yet a specific issue that bothers me from within the territorial borders of restrictions.

As a country, I have always witnessed that we export the the best of what we have; the best food we produce-grains, fruits, vegetables, butter and cream and what not?! Even the best fish we catch along our coasts we have always given you. Even at times when we gape with hapless awe at the size and quality of what is being caught, packed and boxed to be sent fresh, clean and as quick as possible to you, as we gather the left behind stray from rotting warehouses that we are expected to happy with or perhaps what our merchants consider us worthy of, we are happy for you. We take extra care in stitching the clothes, refining the sugar, tanning the leather, polishing those metals, stones you consider precious, sculptures and everything that you need or care with extra shine before we pack and send it across for you to hold and stare. Look around... even people we send from here are some of the best we had; the doctor, the nurse, the engineer, the teacher, the techie, the dancer, the musician, the singer, the clown, the scientist, the economist, the accountant, the writer, the people and every other professional now working for you. We have always been the slaves you wanted us to be; and you, we are made to consider our masters. Even the money made by hook and crook in our land, we have given it up to be stored in your land. We have even sat close and watched numbing pain, our people starve and even die as we loaded containers to fill your barracks; we smile even then and give you only the best... may be it is natural for us to do that cos our elders taught us so-to give the best we have to others even if it means to take the least of what is left for ourselves.

Well, when there is so much we do to take care of you like a pre-conditioned obligation of reminiscent master-worship by a slave, why in return do you always, every time you get a chance to sign a deal with us, extend a lousy hand?! Discarded cars rotting in your garage, poultry stinking in your cold storage, genetically modified seeds and fertilizers that kill our land, nuclear plants, poisonous gas, unreliable weapons for defense and unnecessary offence, even those pretentious food, drinks and people you send we near with dire suspicion. You send the illness and then too late the cure-both at equal costs we bear, you even chose to export your nuclear waste you consider too dangerous for you to be dumped in our coastal land... Why, oh why do you do this to us?! Godless people are you and heartless too; is it that your founding father's didn't teach you well?!

Get well soon I sincerely pray...

 A humble(d) Indian.