There was a comment on my post on Zardari's speech. It referred to a blog. While I rejected to publish the comment since it was just a copy-paste of an article on that blog, here's the blog - http://kashmiris-in-exile.blogspot.com/

Call me an eternal pessimist but I am not thrilled by Janab Zardari’s “India has never been a threat to Pakistan” rhetoric.

In the best of the scenarios, he is stating the truth. India as a country has never made any hostile gestures towards the nation that broke away from it in 1947 inflicting untold misery on those who had to flee to the other side of the border – in many cases, overnight. Pakistan, on the other hand, has always paid more attention to how it can destabilize its neighbor - with highly inflammable (pun intended!) terrorists and cross-border infilterations – rather than focusing on strengthening its own institutions. So yes, it has always been Pakistan which has been in a perpetual Jihad mode, whatever that word means.

But in the worst of the scenarios, this is just a lip service calculated to induce India in letting down her guard – by thinning out Indian troops in the Kashmir valley for example. We should not fall prey to this tactic. Talk peace till the hell freezes over if need be but under no circumstances should we relax the security measures. The rosy ideas of factories and mills across Pakistan catering to India’s needs should be implemented with utmost caution and with appropriate fallback plans in place. We are all witnessing how the whole world has caught cold with one sneeze from Uncle Sam. It will be disastrous to engage in extensive economic ties with the nation that has only back-stabbed us in the past. No one knows if Pakistan will ever have a strong democracy but we all know that if it gets a chance to cripple India economically, it won’t miss it for the world.

So let’s accept Janab Zardari’s bouquet of roses with smiles but let’s not forget that there are more thorns than petals in there. We once trusted China till the war came to our doorsteps. Let’s not repeat the history with Pakistan.

Every time there is a calamity the media can be seen in full force interviewing every Tom, Dick and Harry who was evenly remotely involved with it. I wonder what made them miss a key segment when it was found that the people behind the latest bomb blasts were not the madarassa-schooled, illiterate muslims as so many of us naively believed. This key segment is the colleagues, the sub-ordinates and the bosses (I am all for 360 degree feedback!) of the masterminds.

I cannot begin to imagine the shock these people must have received when they found that the people who they saw for the better part of their day, who they shared their lunch with, who they possibly talked to about the blasts over a cuppa tea in the office canteen - were the very architects of these blasts. Were they taken aback? Did they feel cheated? Did they wonder why couldn’t they spot it earlier? Did they tie this up with some vague suspicions felt earlier? And the most important question of all - would they trust any other Muslim colleague again?

It’s possible that the companies concerned have barred their employees from talking to the press. But the media, for once, has missed a chance of thrusting their microphone in the face of someone and posing their classic “How do you feel now?”!

A friend forwarded this delightful SMS:

In a nursery school canteen, there was a basket of apples with a notice written beside it:
"Do not take more than one, God is watching!"

A little further on the counter there was a box of chocolates on which a child had written:
"Take as many as you want, God is watching the apples!" :-)

In Fed we trust!

With the financial institutions around the world stumbling like a pack of dominoes, I am reminded of an old Nursery rhyme which aptly describes the situation:

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall (Street).
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the king's horses and all the king's men
Couldn't put Humpty Dumpty together again.

I hope king's horses and king's men do a better job this time ;-)

Guess what I found when I was cleaning out one of the drawers? My old Sony walkman! I was rather surprised it was still around – I didn’t remember using it since past 2 years, not since I got my phone with the FM radio. “I wonder why I threw it away” I said to myself as I hunted about for its earphones – it doesn’t have a speakerphone facility. It must have been my lucky day because 10 minutes’ of ferreting about in the drawers yielded what I was looking for. I managed to locate a pair of batteries. I was sure I would hear a static as I turned the knob about for reaching any FM station. After silence of a second or so my ears were flooded with crystal clear music. Delighted, I kept turning the knob tuning in to different frequencies. The result was the same.

Now I was perplexed. If the radio was working fine then I must have relegated it to the dusty drawers because perhaps the cassette player had broken down. I felt rather ancient as I opened the drawer that houses a stack of cassettes of my favorite albums – Hindi songs, Marathi songs, Gazals, instrumentals – a collection I just couldn’t make myself throw away. Picking up the nearest one I popped it in the cassette compartment and flicked the switch to “Tape”. Lo and behold! I could clearly hear the song. I was so happy that I almost jumped in the air and did a little jig as if I had suddenly ran into an old long-forgotten friend - for that’s what this walkman was to me before I bought the FM radio phone. :-)

But it’s been 2 years since then and I have been getting rather bored with the constant (and often senseless) chatter of the RJs. How I long for a stream of songs – without anyone interrupting to give me the time of the day or the latest breaking news or the state of the traffic in the clogged city. And now my old faithful friend has come to my rescue.

I am sure one of these evenings the setting sun is going to find me raiding the drawer squealing with delight as I discover cassettes long foregotten.

Now, this thought is truly music to my ears :-)

I am reading a John Grisham novel (The Testament) and that’s making me think about religion! Weird, isn’t it? :-) The reason is Rachel Lane – a missionary who works in the remote Indian villages of Pantanal in Brazil and who gets a visit from Nate, a lawyer from a law firm because she has been left a fortune of 11 Billion US$ by her billionaire dad who fathered her out of wedlock and preferred her over his 6 legitimate wayward children. I must admit that my jaw did drop at the mention of the vast sum. But that changed when Nate finally locates Rachel in a remote tribal settlement and manages to sit down with her for a chat one night.

Rachel tells Nate that she doubts if her father ever bothered about God when he was alive and hence believes that there is every possibility of his roasting in hell as they speak. ‘The hell is a very real place’ she mentions matter-of-factly. Born and brought up as a Hindu, the concept of Hell is not alien to me. But I am a bit fuzzy about how it all works. Hinduism does talk about “as you sow, so shall you reap” – in your next life. That’s what they call your Karma. Over the years I have come to believe that in this jet age you don’t have to wait till your next birth for your sins to catch up with you. It’s all cash-and-carry – pay it now before you leave for the day. But I guess if you have a bad credit history then you will have to carry it with you on your next trip to earth. So you see - I am beginning to wonder what exactly lands you in Hell. I guess it’s clearer for Christanity because they don’t believe in rebirths and multiple lives.

Then Rachel talks about a tribal teenager who was converted to Christanity years ago. “When he has a problem he takes it to God and leaves it there” that’s what she tells Nate. This disturbed me. What’s the point of putting us on this earth if we were to drop all our problems right in God’s lap? I believe in the teaching from the Bhagwad Gita – “Karmanyevadhikaraste Ma Faleshu Kadachan” - do your duties but don’t fret about their outcome. Then there is a saying “God helps only those who help themselves”. So clearly, you are supposed to do all that you can to solve your problems and then leave the rest to Him.

Because though God is powerful, I suspect that He too will be overwhelmed if all of us were to leave all our problems at His doorstep :-)

I had never heard of Pantanal before I started reading this book. Why should I? It isn’t associated with anything that would catapult it in the Breaking News of the day. No genocides, no bomb blasts, no globe-impacting financial catastrophes, no oil – it’s just one of the few remaining places on earth where Mother Nature still rules. In fact, until the last page of the book accidentally flipped open to reveal the Author’s Note I had happily assumed that it’s a fictional place. :-)

And it has plenty of things to make it appear like a fictional place in this day and age of global warming – a sense of timelessness as the life gently floats on the many rivers that appear identical even in daytime, lakes fed by tribunaries, alligators waiting in the swamps, anacondas lying about in the sun, storms that appear out of nowhere and tiny tribal villages where the tribals roam unconcerned about their nudity. I can understand why Nate has hard time believing that he really is where he is. In his shoes, I would have assumed I have managed to slip through some tear in the fabric of time in an era long gone by. There are times when I envy him for his getting away from it all – even if it means having to eat black beans and rice as the Menu of the Week!

As someone who believes in rebirths, I find it odd that the lifestyle of the tribals should seem so alien to me. Who knows, I might have been there and done it all in some past life now hidden in the mist of time. And yet, despite being born and brought up in a city I have always felt an irresistible pull from the mountains and the forest. Who knows, we might be maintaining a link to our past lives through the likes and dislikes developed through centuries of existence. An unbroken thread of life and death! An old song heard sometime when I was a child says – one thread of happiness, hundred threads of grief make the cloth that is human life.

And so when next time the life in the city becomes a burden, when the traffic jars on the senses, when the stress feels like the proverbial last straw that broke the camel’s back and when I decide to go on a virtual vacation, I will find myself in Pantanal. I will see myself traveling in a rundown boat, swinging in the hammock, watching the river float by, miles and miles of water without another human being in sight - no deadlines, no hurry. I will see myself eating a simple meal of black beans and rice, drinking sweet coffee from tiny cups, watching the sun set across the horizon - the only sign that another day has rolled by. And then I will see myself in the primeval village of the natives, in simple huts with straw roofs, smoke curling upwards, children playing about in the village square, people settling down to their last meal of the day just before the darkness rolls over the village, everyone going to bed as the world beyond disappears in inky blackness – just as their ancestors did centuries ago.

But I could do without the anacondas :-)