The gloomy grey clouds, thunder storm and heavy gusty winds of last sat and sunday, brought in very bad news, an asian guy identified as a student of Virginia Tech went into the classrooms and started shooting randomly. It’s such a tragedy and horrible news. Things like this are beyond being fathomable.
It kind of struck a close chord for us. My cousin graduated from thie very university last year and also this afternoon we got an email sent at work today stating that one of the Plant Manager’s son who was a senior at Virginia Tech was amongst the 32 who were killed. I felt so bad…this is so unfortunate, young people losing their lives, their parents losing their hopes, their children, god so many memories just cant be brought back to life, the life of so many just so simply wiped off, just b’coz of a depressed guy who was trigger happy. Ofcourse, the media, the cops, the psychiatrist’s go into deeper lengths to find out what makes “us” behave the way we do. Gun control laws will now be discussed at length, but....
Professor GV Loganathan, Reema, Minal are the Indians among the people who lost thier lives.
As I was walking to my car, I noticed that all the 3 flags in front of my building, the US, Switzerland and Canadian flags are at half staff for the solidarity and respect to the people who lost their lives and to the people who live to remember them.
At the end of the day only a “WHY ?”, will be the question to many, because there wont be any justice for such acts of random violence.
Thursday, April 19, 2007
Monday, April 16, 2007
Serious ranting !!!!!!!
So many things have happened since last blog, and as much as I really want to I’m at loss of words to share. I’m seriously not sure of why I accepted the offer for my new job. Though I don’t miss the people in my old one, I miss the challenges that I rose up to. I admit that things are going to be much different here, but the change in pace, the newness of it is numbing.
BTW, did you ever eat those chocolates with mint layer in it, I don’t mean for flavor, but there is a layer of mint chocolate in between the dark chocolate. I hate them, no really, it’s like eating chocolate with your mouth full of strong “mouth wash”.
So last nite, on NDTV, there was this discussion about how hyper sensitive are Indians about the national flag and anthem. Apparently, a roar broke loose from all sides when Narayan Murthy had played the instrumental version of the anthem at some function. After a big hallah, he felt the need to explain why, in poor choice of words for a man of his stature, he said he didn’t want to “embarass” his foreign dignitaries who wouldn’t obviously know the song, but then all the Indian nationals would stand and sing along, while these firangs woundnt be able to. Makes sense to me…the panel of other contributors (some journalists, govt officials and so on) gave valuable insights of why that might be right and one lady dresses in a pink sari took her stand to say no it’s not acceptable.
Then they continued to discuss the idea of how Sachin Tendulkar cut the cake in SA which was a replica of the Indian flag, ok, I personally don’t see a problem with this either. We cut cakes in “celebration of life”, so most of the audience didn’t seem to mind except one lady who said she felt that in some way it symbolizes mutilating the country, wow ! that’s deep.
From the panel, one guy said, we’ve always cut cakes for various reasons, if I’m cutting a b’day cake with my child’s name on it, that doesn’t mean that I’m mutilating him. WELL SAID ! The mithai-wala’s sell tiranga burfi during the independence and republic day occasions, so why is cake cutting a big deal—good very good. They all agreed that as long as the intention of such occasions are well placed that shouldn’t be constitutional insult!
aah hah…from where I’m sitting (in my darling couch), I’m digressed to another topic, in sexual harassment, it all depends on the perception of the victim. How do you define these perceptions, there is no hard lined rule to say, this might not be perceived as offensive. But it depends on the perception of the other party.
Ok now comes the interesting part, flag burning. How many of you agree to it, well none did ! I was like huh, my spouse of eight years, also agrees, no way to that. I was like why not. The host of the show, mentioned the democracy of other countries allows their citizens to do this, no matter how condemned that is.
For the sake of conversation, I wanted to tip the scales and see the pulse, I said yes to V, if tomorrow, some god forsaken politician, announces, I now give away Kashmir to China and Pakistan, then while I’m at it, I’ll also let Assam have their say to be another country. Ofcourse, V gave me “ok where r u going with this” kinda look, I said I want to protest such things, I’ll be enraged, maybe in that state of mind if I burn the flag, it is to say how disgraceful it is for India, to tolerate such things. I think we should still burn the flag for the judicial system we have in place, but that’s another story. If we are the largest democratic country out there, why cant we practice a little bit of it. By this time, the panel of judges on the show said, burn effigy’s of the PM or the politician, put some banners out, why burn the flag! One of them said, how come nobody says anything, when you give out the plastic Indian flag which are used as hand fan, during some celebrations that are thrown away after the party and somebody eventually brooms them to a corner and maybe even burn them ! Hmm…there u go.
I have immense love for my country, I’ll take a stand if someone is blatantly talking rubbish about her, I have done this during a meeting, where another desi guy was generally ranting off about cows on the street, the weather etc etc, I fought him back, no way.
But I also think, that things like what I said above are of mild importance when we have more pressing matters at hand.
BTW, did you ever eat those chocolates with mint layer in it, I don’t mean for flavor, but there is a layer of mint chocolate in between the dark chocolate. I hate them, no really, it’s like eating chocolate with your mouth full of strong “mouth wash”.
So last nite, on NDTV, there was this discussion about how hyper sensitive are Indians about the national flag and anthem. Apparently, a roar broke loose from all sides when Narayan Murthy had played the instrumental version of the anthem at some function. After a big hallah, he felt the need to explain why, in poor choice of words for a man of his stature, he said he didn’t want to “embarass” his foreign dignitaries who wouldn’t obviously know the song, but then all the Indian nationals would stand and sing along, while these firangs woundnt be able to. Makes sense to me…the panel of other contributors (some journalists, govt officials and so on) gave valuable insights of why that might be right and one lady dresses in a pink sari took her stand to say no it’s not acceptable.
Then they continued to discuss the idea of how Sachin Tendulkar cut the cake in SA which was a replica of the Indian flag, ok, I personally don’t see a problem with this either. We cut cakes in “celebration of life”, so most of the audience didn’t seem to mind except one lady who said she felt that in some way it symbolizes mutilating the country, wow ! that’s deep.
From the panel, one guy said, we’ve always cut cakes for various reasons, if I’m cutting a b’day cake with my child’s name on it, that doesn’t mean that I’m mutilating him. WELL SAID ! The mithai-wala’s sell tiranga burfi during the independence and republic day occasions, so why is cake cutting a big deal—good very good. They all agreed that as long as the intention of such occasions are well placed that shouldn’t be constitutional insult!
aah hah…from where I’m sitting (in my darling couch), I’m digressed to another topic, in sexual harassment, it all depends on the perception of the victim. How do you define these perceptions, there is no hard lined rule to say, this might not be perceived as offensive. But it depends on the perception of the other party.
Ok now comes the interesting part, flag burning. How many of you agree to it, well none did ! I was like huh, my spouse of eight years, also agrees, no way to that. I was like why not. The host of the show, mentioned the democracy of other countries allows their citizens to do this, no matter how condemned that is.
For the sake of conversation, I wanted to tip the scales and see the pulse, I said yes to V, if tomorrow, some god forsaken politician, announces, I now give away Kashmir to China and Pakistan, then while I’m at it, I’ll also let Assam have their say to be another country. Ofcourse, V gave me “ok where r u going with this” kinda look, I said I want to protest such things, I’ll be enraged, maybe in that state of mind if I burn the flag, it is to say how disgraceful it is for India, to tolerate such things. I think we should still burn the flag for the judicial system we have in place, but that’s another story. If we are the largest democratic country out there, why cant we practice a little bit of it. By this time, the panel of judges on the show said, burn effigy’s of the PM or the politician, put some banners out, why burn the flag! One of them said, how come nobody says anything, when you give out the plastic Indian flag which are used as hand fan, during some celebrations that are thrown away after the party and somebody eventually brooms them to a corner and maybe even burn them ! Hmm…there u go.
I have immense love for my country, I’ll take a stand if someone is blatantly talking rubbish about her, I have done this during a meeting, where another desi guy was generally ranting off about cows on the street, the weather etc etc, I fought him back, no way.
But I also think, that things like what I said above are of mild importance when we have more pressing matters at hand.
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