I Can Dream About You

Ok
Last video for this month :D I promise ….
Really love this song wasn’t able to post the video till now…
Sounds great…. Maybe the lyrics aren’t too deep :P… good one from the 80’s…

I Can Dream About You- Dan Hartman

No more timing
Each tear that falls from my eyes
I'm not hiding
The remedy to cure this old heart of mine

I can dream about you
If I can't hold you tonight
I can dream about you
You know how to hold me just right
I can dream about you
If I can't hold you tonight
I can dream about you
You know how to hold me just right

Moving sidewalk
I don't see under my feet
Climbing up from
Down here below
Where the streets see me lonely for you

I can dream about you
If I can't hold you tonight
I can dream about you
You know how to hold me just right
(I can dream about you)
I'm gonna press my lips against you
And hold you tight to me
(I can dream about you)
You know you got me spellbound
What else can it be

Moving sidewalks
I don't see under my feet
Climbing up from the pain in my heart
'Cause it's you that I need

I can dream
Whoooa-oh, oooh, oh-oh, oh
(Whoooa-oh, oooh, oh-oh, oh)
I can dream
Yes I can dream
Whoooa-oh, oooh, oh-oh, oh

I don't understand it
I can't keep my mind off loving you
(Not even for a minute)
Oooh, now baby,
I'm caught up in the magic I see in you
There's one thing to do

I can dream about you
If I can't hold you tonight
I can dream about you
You know how to hold me just right
(Whoooa-oh, oooh, oh-oh, oh)
I can dream about you
If I can't hold you tonight
Oooh, I can dream about you
Oooh, I can dream..

Sometimes Love Just Ain't Enough - Patty Smyth & Don Henley

another classic...........

Patti Smyth & Don Henley - Sometimes Love Just Aint Enough : .

Now, I don't want to lose you, but I don't want to use you
just to have somebody by my side.
And I don't want to hate you,
I don't want to take you, but I don't want to be the one to cry.

And that don't really matter to anyone anymore.
But like a fool I keep losing my place
and I keep seeing you walk through that door.

(Chorus)

But there's a danger in loving somebody too much,
and it's sad when you know it's your heart you can't trust.
There's a reason why people don't stay where they are.
Baby, sometimes, love just aint enough.

Now, I could never change you, I don't want to blame you.
Baby, you don't have to take the fall.
Yes, I may have hurt you, but I did not desert you.
Maybe I just want to have it all.

It makes a sound like thunder, it makes me feel like rain.
And like a fool who will never see the truth,
I keep thinking something's gonna change.

(Chorus)

And there's no way home, when it's late at night and you're all alone.
Are there things that you wanted to say?
And do you feel me beside you in your bed,
there beside you, where I used to lay?

And there's a danger in loving somebody too much,
and it's sad when you know it's your heart they can't touch.
There's a reason why people don't stay who they are.
Baby, sometimes, love just ain't enough.

Baby, sometimes, love... it just ain't enough.
Oh, Oh, Oh, No.

Somewhere Out There

I was going to just post the lyrics of the Linda Ronstadt ,James Ingram song “Somewhere out there”…. It’s a love song …give it whatever meaning you will, I’ve always thought of “someone” as the soulmate , who I’ve never met …. Who might be looking up at the same blue night sky as I ….(a really remarkable fancy.. when you think of it….)

Somewhere Out There

written by James Horner, Barry Mann, Cynthia Weil

Somewhere out there beneath the pale moonlight
Someone's thinking of me and loving me tonight

Somewhere out there someone's saying a prayer
That we'll find one another in that big somewhere out there

And even though I know how very far apart we are
It helps to think we might be wishing on the same bright star

And when the night wind starts to sing a lonesome lullaby
It helps to think we're sleeping underneath the same big sky

Somewhere out there if love can see us through
Then we'll be together somewhere out there
Out where dreams come true

And even though I know how very far apart we are
It helps to think we might be wishing on the same bright star

And when the night wind starts to sing a lonesome lullaby
It helps to think we're sleeping underneath the same big sky

Somewhere out there if love can see us through
Then we'll be together somewhere out there
Out where dreams come true

Anyway, the reason I like or even know the song is because , it’s from one of the animated movies of my childhood , An American Tail, read the wiki..it’s about a mouse searching for his family….. I watched the video today after many years and it made me cry…*again…and again!!!*,( it always did) , I miss my family ....
They don’t make animated movies like they used to, this was great….kids these days don’t know what they’re missing!!!!

The idea of India

From here.

18 January 2006
The idea of India
Shashi Tharoor on India's mosaic of multiplicities

India’s constitution recognises 18 official languages, and there are 35 that are spoken by more than a million people each

When India celebrated the 49th anniversary of its independence from British rule in 1996, its then prime minister, HD Deve Gowda, stood at the ramparts of Delhi’s 16th-century red fort and delivered the traditional Independence Day address to the nation in Hindi, India’s ‘national language’. Eight other prime ministers had done exactly the same thing 48 times before him, but what was unusual this time was that Deve Gowda, a southerner from the state of Karnataka, spoke to the country in a language of which he did not know a word. Tradition and politics required a speech in Hindi, so he gave one – the words having been written out for him in his native Kannada script, in which they, of course, made no sense.

Such an episode is almost inconceivable elsewhere, but it represents the best of the oddities that help make India India. Only in India could there be a country ruled by a man who does not understand its ‘national language’; only in India, for that matter, is there a ‘national language’ which half the population does not understand; and only in India could this particular solution have been found to enable the prime minister to address his people. One of Indian cinema’s finest ‘playback singers’, the Keralite K J Yesudas, sang his way to the top of the Hindi music charts with lyrics in that language written in the Malayalam script for him, but to see the same practice elevated to the prime ministerial address on Independence Day was a startling affirmation of Indian pluralism. For the simple fact is that we are all minorities in India. There has never been an archetypal Indian to stand alongside the archetypal Englishman or Frenchman. A typical Indian stepping off the train, let us say a Hindi-speaking Hindu male from Uttar Pradesh, may cherish the illusion he represents the ‘majority community’, an expression much favoured by the less industrious of our journalists. But he does not. As a Hindu, sure enough, he belongs to the faith adhered to by 82 per cent of the population. But a majority of the country does not speak Hindi. A majority does not hail from Uttar Pradesh, though you could be forgiven for thinking otherwise when you go there. And, if he were visiting, say, my home state of Kerala, he would be surprised to realise a majority there is not even male.

Worse, this archetypal Hindu male has only to mingle with the polyglot, multi-coloured crowds – and I am referring not to the colours of their clothes but to the colours of their skins – thronging any of India’s major railway stations to realise how much of a minority he really is. Even his Hinduism is no guarantee of his majorityhood, because his caste automatically puts him in a minority. If he is a Brahmin, 90 per cent of his fellow Indians are not. If he is a Yadav, or another ‘backward class’, 85 per cent of his fellow Indians are not. And so on.

The question of nationhood

If caste and language complicate the notion of Indian identity, ethnicity makes it worse. Most of the time, an Indian’s name immediately reveals where he is from or what her mother tongue is: when we introduce ourselves, we are advertising our origins.

Despite some intermarriage at the elite levels in our cities, Indians are still largely endogamous, and a Bengali is easily distinguished from a Punjabi. The difference this reflects is often more apparent than the elements of commonality. A Karnataka Brahmin shares his Hindu faith with a Bihari Kurmi, but they share little identity with each other in respect of their dress, customs, appearance, taste, language or even, these days, their political objectives. At the same time, a Tamil Hindu would feel he has much more in common with a Tamil Christian or a Tamil Muslim than with, say, a Haryanvi Jat, with whom he formally shares the Hindu religion. What makes India, then, a nation? What is an Indian’s identity?

When an Italian nation was created in the second half of the 19th century out of a mosaic of principalities and statelets, one Italian nationalist (Massimo Taparelli d’Azeglio) wrote ‘We have created Italy. Now all we need to do is to create Italians.’ It is striking that, a few decades later, no Indian nationalist succumbed to the temptation to express a similar thought. The prime exponent of modern Indian nationalism, Jawaharlal Nehru, would never have said ‘we have created India, now we have to create Indians’, because he believed that India and Indians had existed for millennia before he articulated their political aspirations in the 20th century.
Nonetheless, the India that was born in 1947 was in a very real sense a new creation: a state that made fellow citizens of the Ladakhi and the Laccadivian for the first time; a state that divided Punjabi from Punjabi for the first time; a state that asked a Keralite peasant to feel allegiance to a Kashmiri Pundit ruling in Delhi, also for the first time.

So, under Gandhi and Nehru, Indian nationalism became a rare animal indeed. It was not based on any of the conventional indices of national identity. Not language, since India’s constitution recognises 18 official languages, and there are 35 that are spoken by more than a million people each. Not ethnicity, since the ‘Indian’ accommodates a diversity of racial types in which many Indians have more in common with foreigners than with other Indians – Indian Punjabis and Bengalis, for instance, have more in common ethnically with Pakistanis and Bangladeshis, respectively, than with Poonawallahs or Bangaloreans. Not religion, since India is a secular pluralist state that is home to every religion known to mankind, with the possible exception of Shintoism. Not geography, since the natural geography of the subcontinent – the mountains and the sea – was hacked by the Partition of 1947. And not even territory, since, by law, anyone with one grandparent born in pre-partition India – outside the territorial boundaries of today’s state – is eligible for citizenship. Indian nationalism has therefore always been the nationalism of an idea.

It is the idea of an ever-ever land – emerging from an ancient civilisation, united by a shared history, sustained by pluralist democracy. India’s democracy imposes no narrow conformities on its citizens. The whole point of Indian pluralism is you can be many things and one thing: you can be a good Muslim, a good Keralite and a good Indian all at once. The Indian idea is the opposite of what Freudians call ‘the narcissism of minor differences’; in India we celebrate the commonality of major differences. If America is a melting-pot, then to me India is a thali, a selection of sumptuous dishes in different bowls. Each tastes different, and does not necessarily mix with the next, but they belong together on the same plate, and they complement each other in making the meal a satisfying repast.

So the idea of India, as Rabindranath Tagore and, more recently, Amartya Sen have insisted, is of one land embracing many. It is the idea that a nation may endure differences of caste, creed, colour, conviction, culture, cuisine, costume and custom, and still rally around a consensus. And that consensus is about the simple idea that in a democracy you don’t really need to agree – except on the ground rules of how you will disagree.

Hindutva and history

That consensus has been threatened in the last two decades by the rise of Hindu nationalism, offering an alternative view of Indian identity – one that is explicitly narrow and definitional (pro-Hindu and pro-Hindi, sectarian and anti-secular). Its followers asserted their idea of Indianness most spectacularly in the destruction of a disused sixteenth century mosque, the Babri Masjid, in 1992, and most brutally in the murder of up to 2000 Muslims in sectarian killings in the state of Gujarat ten years later.

To them, an independent India, freed after nearly a thousand years of alien rule (first Muslim, then British), and rid of a sizeable portion of its Muslim population by Partition, had an obligation to assert an identity that would be triumphantly and indigenously Hindu. They are not fundamentalists in any meaningful sense of the term, since Hinduism is uniquely a religion without fundamentals: there is no Hindu Pope, no Hindu Sunday, no single Hindu holy book, and indeed no such thing as a Hindu heresy. They are, instead, chauvinists, who root their Hinduism not in any of its soaring philosophical or spiritual underpinnings – and, unlike their Islamic counterparts, not in the theology of their faith – but rather in its role as a source of identity. They seek vengeance in the name of Hinduism-as-badge, rather than of Hinduism-as-doctrine. To most Indian Muslims, the debate over identity goes to the heart of their place in Indian society. For decades after independence, successive Indian governments had guaranteed their security in a secular state, permitting the retention of Muslim Personal Law separate from the country’s civil code, and even financing Haj pilgrimages to Mecca. Three of India’s presidents have been Muslims, as also innumerable cabinet ministers, ambassadors, generals, and Supreme Court justices (and chief justices). At least until the mid-1990s, India’s Muslim population exceeded Pakistan’s. The destruction of the mosque and the killings in Gujarat seemed an appalling betrayal of the compact that had sustained the Muslim community as a vital part of India’s pluralist democracy.

The irony is that the advocates of Hindutva are profoundly disloyal to the religion they claim to espouse, which stands out not only as an eclectic embodiment of tolerance, but as perhaps the only major religion in the world that does not claim to be the only true religion. All ways of worship, Hinduism asserts, are equally valid, and religion is an intensely personal matter related to the individual’s self-realisation in relation to God. Such a faith understands that belief is a matter of hearts and minds, not of bricks and stone. The true Hindu seeks no revenge upon history, for he understands that history is its own revenge.

Geography helps, because it accustoms Indians to the idea of difference. India’s national identity has long been built on the slogan ‘unity in diversity’. The ‘Indian’ comes in such varieties that a woman who is fair-skinned, sari-wearing and Italian speaking, as Sonia Gandhi is, is not more foreign to my grandmother in Kerala than one who is ‘wheatish-complexioned’, wears a salwar-kameez and speaks Urdu. Our nation absorbs both these types of people; both are equally ‘foreign’ to some of us, equally Indian to us all.

For now, the Hindu chauvinists have lost the battle over India’s identity. The sight in May 2004 of a Roman Catholic political leader (Sonia Gandhi) making way for a Sikh (Manmohan Singh) to be sworn in as prime minister by a Muslim (President Abdul Kalam) – in a country 82 per cent Hindu – caught the world’s imagination. India’s founding fathers wrote a constitution for their dreams; we have given passports to their ideals. That one simple moment of political change put to rest many of the arguments over Indian identity. India was never truer to itself than when celebrating its own diversity.

Because today is Ganesh Chaturthi

From here.
Also Shashi Tharoor reminds me of childhood stories here .

Live Alone and Like It

touché!!!??!!

Live Alone and Like It
If you like to be alone, there's the assumption that you're a month away from becoming the old woman with the weedy yard and decrepit house.
By Anna Quindlen
Newsweek

August 7, 2006 issue - Somehow I wound up leading the same summer life my mother led. With school over, the household was transplanted a hundred miles away, in a place defined by weather: silver sunlight, soaking rains, calamine lotion, citronella candles, fishing tackle, raveling towels. The children were the centerpiece of the enterprise—sticky, grubby, unappreciative of an idyll engineered by others, always faintly sunburned on shoulders or nose despite the best efforts of the adults who dogged them with sunscreen. The fathers arrived on Friday night bringing the mail, their city clothes incongruous in the thick and buggy air.

My mother, who died young, missed the next act in this summer-stock production. The children grow; they come, they go. Mostly go. They have their own cars, their own plans, their own sunscreen. Faint webs grow in the corners of the barbecue grill during the week. The Bactine is past its sell-by date. No one has needed stitches for the longest time. It's so quiet here.

And that's just fine. I like solitude. I can spend days happily alone, eating Raisin Bran for dinner on the porch instead of bothering with a starch, a stove and a napkin. Eldest of five, mother of three, veteran of noisy newsrooms: is it any wonder that I like the sound of silence? It has a good beat, and you can dance to it.

Why does that sound like the kind of admission you'd make at a 12-step meeting? If you like to be by yourself, there's the assumption that you're antisocial, antifamily, a month away from becoming that old woman down the street with the weedy yard and the decrepit house, or the Unabomber. Those who choose not to marry or have children are still viewed with some suspicion; those with spouses and kids are assumed to want to be with them 24/7. People covertly embrace faux solitude, the places in which they can be alone among others: the plane, the car, the pew.

Being alone is out of fashion, or maybe it was never acceptable at all. Take a spin through any decent dictionary of quotations, and lots of the people you'd normally credit are negative about being alone. "Solitude is dangerous to reason," says Dr. Johnson. "The safeguard of mediocrity," says Emerson. Erica Jong is onto something: "Solitude," she wrote, "is un-American." No kidding. This country seems to be the official home of the big dinner, the family reunion, the party hearty. The response to solitude is set to music, with a deep, sympathetic Perry Como croon: "Oh, no! You're all by yourself?"

Yep, and liking it. The evangelists may have it that Jesus went into the desert for 40 days to fast and pray, but it's worth remembering that they were part of the increasingly large crowd that had begun to follow the guy everywhere. Maybe he just wanted to be by himself. Lack of solitude is probably why most political figures are slightly deranged. Between the aides, the staff and the Secret Service, the president is never, ever alone, and senators ricochet from meeting to charity lunch to meeting to fund-raising dinner to yet another meeting. Every once in a while, I have a day like that, and at the end of it I have not had a single coherent thought. It's like mosquitoes buzzing around your ears while you're trying to sleep. You can't dream through the din.

Modern life means living with the din: of television, of small talk, of strangers selling on the phone, of co-workers using PowerPoint to explain what could easily be drawn on the back of a cocktail napkin. The span of our collective concentration has narrowed accordingly. Over the years America has been described as beset by a variety of human ailments and conditions: right now there's no question that it's attention-deficit disorder. It's so hard to focus.

When the beds of the former children are all nicely made and their rooms quiet and still except for the buzz of a stray fly strafing the screen, I miss those summers past. But there's no question that they were exhausting. A family of five produces so many dishes. And when it rained for days, when Mr. Mustard in the library with the lead pipe had outlived his usefulness, like my mother before me I was sometimes driven to desperation. A good soaking never hurt anyone. I personally invented a game called How Many Worms Can You Find in a Puddle?

A much older friend once talked of how she resented those who dropped in on her, convinced that the fact that she lived alone must mean she was always desperate for charity company. "People can't seem to figure out the difference between alone and lonely," she said tartly as she walked me to the door. It's a simple distinction and it has to do with choice. Be forced into solitude by circumstance, and you may well be disconsolate; choose it, and you are simply, perhaps happily, alone. Lean Cuisine and "Law & Order." I can be the life of the party when necessary, but sometimes I just need to hear myself think. After all, if we can't hear ourselves thinking, is any thinking truly going on?

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/
id/14098151/site/newsweek/page/2

The way we were....

Carrie: Your girl is lovely, Hubbell.
Mr. Big: I don't get it.
Carrie: And you never did.

I’ve discussed this topic with friends before; , and yesterday when I saw the episode of Sex and the City( I mean no one claims Sex and the City is representative of women’s lives, some times it’s way over the top.. but it’s a good show …I definitely know of people who can relate to some of the story lines) . Anyway it was the episode where Carrie finds out Mr. Big has gotten engaged to his present girlfriend…
All the while Carrie used to think that the reason that Mr. Big and she didn’t get married was because Big didn’t want to get married at all, but now she realized that it was that he didn’t want to get married to HER.

I think one of the aspects of growing up is that alongside your female peers who’ve gotten married , you also see that your male friends start tying the knot, maybe people from your past, those whom you might have then voted “One with the most commitment issues” , is married to a nice girl, and you for all your hoity toity ness , are in just the same place you were five years ago , not that it’s a bad thing, but it’s just one of the changing dynamics that comes as part of growing up right now, its one thing when your girl buddies get married, but what about guy pals. And by pals ..i don’t mean just ‘pals’ (includes crushes, and higher)!!!! I now realise that guys have had to deal with old flames getting married off since time immemorial..."Oh, you poor things!!!!"


Anyway how does the episode end ..so Carrie kind off bears no grudge against Big and quotes lines from the movie “The way we were” ,this movie is next on my netflix queue (supposed to be one of the best romantic movies ever, read the Wiki, good story!!!) .Carrie realizes that maybe it wasn’t her fault , not that it was necessarily Big’s fault ; but maybe he wasn’t the one to ‘tame’ her (i.e. get married to her, i.e there wasn’t anything wrong with her…. Big was the one with the problem!!)

Maybe some women aren't meant to be tamed. Maybe they're supposed to run wild until they find someone -- just as wild -- to run with.

Carrie: Ladies, I'm having an epiphany. THe world is made up of two types of women. The simple girls and the Katie girls. I'm a Katie girl.

Simple girl’s fare better in love.

Katie girl refers to Barbara Streisand’s character in the movie “The way we were”

So this is what Carrie says, I have a feeling “simple” girls will resent being called simple, and well Katie types will resent being called unlucky in love!! Classifications suck, but figure out which one you think you closely match…
BTW –Simple I think means Simple to understand, simple to love…..

Discovery of India

Ok, so I got my copy of Jawaharlal Nehru’s “The Discovery of India”.. I think I can read the book only after a few months, but going by the fact that I’ve had a copy of 'Letters from a father to a daughter' (gifted by a father (and mother )to a daughter) for around twenty years and don’t remember having read a page..(it was something the father and mother read)..and there’s this other collection of essays .. again for parental consumption.... Maybe I’ll take the book with me when I go to India next , and they'll read it before I ever will.. any how, wanted to read the book , it seems “Bharat Ek Khoj"was based on it.. I haven’t seen the entire series but the bits I have seen seem interesting

Anyway just skimming through the book..(and I’m sure I’ll find a lot of interesting stuff as I get further into it…).
In the section The Epics, History, Tradition ,and Myth, I find these lines from ‘The Digit of the moon”, by F.W. Bain
Here we are presented a legend or fancy on the creation of women….

A Digit Of The Moon - F.W. Bain translation (1901)

In the beginning, when Twashtri (the Divine Artificer) came to the creation of woman, he found that he had exhausted his materials in the making of man, and that no solid elements were left. In this dilemma, after profound meditation, he did as follows. He took the rotundity of the moon, and the curves of creepers, and the clinging of tendrils, and the trembling of grass, and the slenderness of the reed, and the bloom of flowers, and the lightness of leaves, and the tapering of the elephant's trunk, and the glances of deer, and the clustering of rows of bees, and the joyous gaiety of sunbeams, and the weeping of clouds, and the fickleness of the winds, and the timidity of the hare, and the vanity of the peacock, and the softness of the parrot's bosom, and the hardness of adamant, and the sweetness of honey, and the cruelty of the tiger, and the warm glow of fire, and the coldness of snow, and the chattering of jays, and the cooing of the kokila, and the hypocrisy of the crane, and the fidelity of the chakrawaka ( a kind of duck I believe), and compounding all these together, he made woman and gave her to man. But after one week, man came to him and said: Lord, this creature that you have given me makes my life miserable. She chatters incessantly and teases me beyond endurance, never leaving me alone; and she requires incessant attention, and takes all my time up, and cries about nothing, and is always idle; and so I have come to give her back again, as I cannot live with her. So Twashtri said: Very well; and took her back. Then after another week, man came again to him and said: Lord, I find that my life is very lonely since I gave you back that creature. I remember how she used to dance and sing to me, and look at me out of the corner of her eye, and play with me, and cling to me; and her laughter was music, and she was beautiful to look at, and soft to touch; so give her back to me again. So Twashtri said: Very well; and gave her back again. Then after only three days, man came back to him again and said: Lord, I know not how it is; but after all I have come to the conclusion that she is more of a trouble than a pleasure to me; so please take her back again. But Twashtri said: Out on you! Be off! I will have no more of this. You must manage how you can. Then man said: But I cannot live with her. And Twashtri replied: Neither could you live without her. And he turned his back on man, and went on with his work. Then man said: What is to be done?

Very poetic and all ..but ...

"In the beginning, when Twashtri came to the creation of woman, he found that he had exhausted his materials in the making of man?? "

Why this second class treatment ,and not only here..Eve was also created as an after thought…

Modal wives and why it is hard to marry well...

Modal Husbands???!??? !!? Heck no!!!!! Or wait, I wonder how this links to the soulmate /kindred spirit concept???

I was browsing through the Marginal Revolution Philosophy archives and found this…..

Modal wives and why it is hard to marry well
I define a modal wife (or husband) as a person you would have married (could have married?) had you met them at the right time, unattached, and under normal life conditions. The number of modal wives is typically greater than or equal to the number of real wives, although clever philosophers will recognize possible [sic] counterexamples.
Under one view, you have hundreds or thousands of modal wives, most of whom you never meet. (How many does the average person meet, how soon do you know when you meet one, and how confused would you be if they were all in the same room at once?) Your correct dating strategy is to cast your net very widely, and hope to find and marry one of these people.
Under another view, modal wives are no big deal. Your so-called "modal wives" are no better for you than, say, the best woman you could pick out of a lot of thirty eligibles. The key inputs for a good marriage are attitude and a minimum degree of compatibility, not search and discovery.
If this is true, searching for modal wives, or perhaps even thinking about the concept, can make you worse off. The quest for the perfect mate makes it harder to come to terms with what is otherwise a compatible marriage. Which perhaps is all you are going to get anyway. Marriage is good for you, and don't be too fussy, this is not iTunes. Too much choice, or too much perceived choice, is problematic.
The two views offer directly conflicting advice (TC: My views are closer to the first position, although attitude remains all-important). Yet we may be uncertain which view applies to us and to what extent. You could put all your eggs in one basket and pursue just one strategy, but what a risk if you are wrong. You could act upon some weighted average of the two views; I suspect this is what most people do. But then the two strategies are constantly undercutting each other.
That is one reason why it is hard to marry well.
.

Also the comments are good so please read

The Girl With the Apple

I love this story..must have read it in a chicken soup for the soul… just found it in Beleifnet…..

The Girl With the Apple
One of the world's most incredible--but true--love stories began in the worst place imaginable.


By Herman Rosenblat
Reprinted with permission from Guideposts

August, 1942. Piotrkow, Poland. The sky was gloomy that morning as we waited anxiously. All the men, women, and children of Piotrkow’s Jewish ghetto had been herded into a square. Word had gotten around that we were being moved. My father had only recently died from typhus, which had run rampant through the crowded ghetto. My greatest fear was that our family would be separated. “Whatever you do,” Isidore, my eldest brother, whispered to me, “don’t tell them your age. Say you’re sixteen.” I was tall for a boy of 11, so I could pull it off. That way I might be deemed valuable as a worker. An SS man approached me, boots clicking against the cobblestones. He looked me up and down, then asked my age.

“Sixteen,” I said. He directed me to the left, where my three brothers and other healthy young men already stood.
My mother was motioned to the right—with the other women, children, sick and elderly people. I whispered to Isidore, “Why?” He didn’t answer. I ran to Mama’s side and said I wanted to stay with her. “No,” she said sternly. “Get away. Don’t be a nuisance. Go with your brothers.” She had never spoken so harshly before. But I understood: She was protecting me. She loved me so much that, just this once, she pretended not to. It was the last I ever saw of her.

My brothers and I were transported in a cattle car to Germany. We arrived at the Buchenwald concentration camp one night weeks later and were led into a crowded barracks. The next day, we were issued uniforms and identification numbers. “Don’t call me Herman anymore,” I said to my brothers. “Call me 94983.” I was put to work in the camp’s crematorium, loading the dead onto a hand-cranked elevator. I, too, felt dead. Hardened. I had become a number. Soon, my brothers and I were sent to Schlieben, one of Buchenwald’s sub-camps near Berlin. One morning I thought I heard my mother’s voice. Son, she said softly but clearly, I am sending you an angel. Then I woke up. Just a dream. A beautiful dream. But in this place there could be no angels. There was only work. And hunger. And fear.

A couple of days later, I was walking around the camp, behind the barracks, near the barbed-wire fence where the guards could not easily see. I was alone. On the other side of the fence, I spotted someone —a young girl with light, almost luminous curls. She was half-hidden behind a birch tree. I glanced around to make sure no one saw me. I called to her softly in German, “Do you have something to eat?” She didn’t understand. I inched closer to the fence and repeated the question in Polish. She stepped forward. I was thin and gaunt, with rags wrapped around my feet, but the girl looked unafraid. In her eyes, I saw life. She pulled an apple from her woolen jacket and threw it over the fence. I grabbed the fruit and, as I started to run away, I heard her say faintly, “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

I didn’t believe she would come back. It was much too dangerous. But I returned anyway, the same time the next day. And there she was. The same girl. She moved tentatively from behind the tree, and once again threw something over the fence. This time, a small hunk of bread wrapped around a stone. I ate the bread, gratefully and ravenously, wishing there had been enough to share with my brothers. When I looked up the girl was gone.

I returned to the same spot by the fence at the same time every day. She was always there with something for me to eat—a hunk of bread or, better yet, an apple. We didn’t dare speak or linger. To be caught would mean death for us both. I didn’t know anything about her—just a kind farm girl—except that she understood Polish. What was her name? Why was she risking her life for me? Hope was in such short supply, and this girl on the other side of the fence gave me some, as nourishing in its way as the bread and apples.

Nearly seven months later, my brothers and I were crammed into a coal car and shipped to the Theresienstadt camp in Czechoslovakia. “Don’t return,” I told the girl that day. “We’re leaving.” I turned toward the barracks and didn’t look back, didn’t even say good-bye to the girl whose name I’d never learned, the girl with the apples.
We were at Theresienstadt for three months. The war was winding down and Allied forces were closing in, yet my fate seemed sealed. On May 10, 1945, I was scheduled to die in the gas chamber at 10:00 A.M. In the quiet of dawn, I tried to prepare myself. So many times death seemed ready to claim me, but somehow I’d survived. Now, it was over. I thought of my parents. At least, I thought, we will be reunited. At 8:00 A.M., there was a commotion. I heard shouts, and saw people running every which way through camp. I caught up with my brothers. Russian troops had liberated the camp! The gates swung open. Everyone was running, so I did too. Amazingly, all of my brothers had survived; I’m not sure how. But I knew that the girl with the apples had been the key to my survival. In a place where evil seemed triumphant, one person’s goodness had saved my life, had given me hope in a place where there was none. My mother had promised to send me an angel, and the angel had come.
Eventually, I made my way to England, where I was sponsored by a Jewish charity, put up in a hostel with other boys who had survived the Holocaust and trained in electronics. Then I came to America, where my brother Sam had already moved. I served in the U.S. Army during the Korean War, and returned to New York City after two years. By August 1957 I’d opened my own electronics repair shop. I was starting to settle in.

One day, my friend Sid—whom I knew from England—called me. “I’ve got a date. She’s got a Polish friend. Let’s double date.”

A blind date? Nah, that wasn’t for me. But Sid kept pestering me, and a few days later we headed up to the Bronx to pick up his date and her friend Roma. I had to admit, for a blind date this wasn’t so bad. Roma was a nurse at a Bronx hospital. She was kind and smart. Beautiful, too, with swirling brown curls and green, almond-shaped eyes that sparkled with life.

The four of us drove out to Coney Island. Roma was easy to talk to, easy to be with. Turned out she was wary of blind dates too! We were both just doing our friends a favor. We took a stroll on the boardwalk, enjoying the salty Atlantic breeze, and then had dinner by the shore. I couldn’t remember having a better time.

We piled back into Sid’s car, Roma and I sharing the backseat. As European Jews who had survived the war, we were aware that much had been left unsaid between us. She broached the subject. “Where were you,” she asked softly, “during the war?”

“The camps,” I said, the terrible memories still vivid, the irreparable loss. I had tried to forget. But you never forget.

She nodded. “My family was hiding on a farm in Germany, not far from Berlin,” she told me. “My father knew a priest, and he got us Aryan papers.” I imagined how she must have suffered too—fear, a constant companion. And yet here we were, both survivors, in a new world. “There was a camp next to the farm,” Roma continued. “I saw a boy there, and I would throw him apples every day.”

What an amazing coincidence that she had helped some other boy. “What did he look like?” I asked.
“He was tall. Skinny. Hungry. I must have seen him every day for six months.”

My heart was racing. I couldn’t believe it…this couldn’t be.… “Did he tell you one day not to come back because he was leaving Schlieben?”

Roma looked at me in amazement. “Yes.”

“That was me!” I was ready to burst with joy and awe, flooded with emotions. I couldn’t believe it. My angel. “I’m not letting you go,” I said to Roma. And in the back of the car on that blind date, I proposed to her. I didn’t want to wait.

“You’re crazy!” she said. But she invited me to meet her parents for Shabbat dinner the following week. There was so much I looked forward to learning about Roma, but the most important things I always knew: her steadfastness, her goodness. For many months, in the worst of circumstances, she had come to the fence and given me hope. Now that I’d found her again, I could never let her go. That day, she said yes. And I kept my word: After nearly 50 years of marriage, two children and three grandchildren, I have never let her go.

Invisible Borders

Barkha Dutt

Managing Editor, NDTV 24x7

Sunday, July 30, 2006:

As an adamant agnostic I don't have a religious identity. But if I were religious, I'm pretty sure I would hate to be a Muslim in India today.

Think about how claustrophobic it must be to find yourself sandwiched between two horrifying realities: -to confront the fact that nearly two hundred people were killed in the name of your religion, by someone who also prays to your God; and then to have to justify yourself over and over again to a country trembling with rage.

On the one hand is a twisted and sick world of those who claim to act on your behalf, a world to which you do not belong; and on the other side is a No Entry sticker plastered across the front door, a world that treats you with suspicion and hostility.

Sadly the secularism debate in India mirrors these two extremes. Minority-bashers will paint the entire community in the same broad stroke; and the liberal orthodoxy will pretend that radical Islam has no roots in India.

Well it's time to end the pretence.

The Bombay blasts have hammered home one terrible truth. The Indian Muslim is no longer entirely immune to the insidious influence of global extremism. We may recoil in discomfort when we hear the phrase "Islamic fundamentalism," but like it or not, the global pattern is slowly beginning to leave it's imprint on India.

And this is our failure, both as a society and a nation.

By now we all know how President Bush had asked the Prime Minister in Washington, just how it was that in a country with 130 million Muslims, not one could be linked to the Al Qaeda. What did India have, he wanted to know, that other countries didn't?

For years we have gloated about our secularism and rubbished theocracies with a barely disguised contempt. We have watched countries like Pakistan, Malaysia, and Indonesia struggle to build a bridge between Reason and Radical Islam. And we have always said proudly: look at us. There are more Muslims in India than in any other country in the world except Indonesia. But while the rest of the world wrestles with an increasingly politicized Islam, we have always boasted about how our robust democracy has helped us sidestep the storm

Can we really and truthfully say this any longer?

Like you, I can barely follow the elaborate twists and turns of the Mumbai investigations. But if the cops are to be believed an ominous new face of terror is slowly taking shape. The hammer and chisel may belong to Pakistan-based terrorists, but the clay is Indian.

Look at the arrests made so far. They include a doctor, an engineer, an electrician from Dubai; most are professionals with no criminal background; they could just as easily be the neighbors down the road from your or my house.

Earlier when terror hit our nerve centre, we could always blame Kashmir. The valley, we would say, had become a launching pad for violence; desperate terrorists were trying to spread their tentacles outwards to capture headlines and derail peace. And then we would use the Kashmir conflict as an example of how well integrated the Indian Muslim is. We would tell the world that not single a Indian Muslim had ever backed the separatist movement in the valley; that Kashmir was a political conflict, not a religious one; and that pan-Islamic sentiments could never capture public imagination in the Indian mainstream.

But for the first time perhaps, the cops have found no significant link between Kashmir and the Bombay Blasts. Nor are the investigating agencies able to point a finger at the Underworld.

And the question we must ask ourselves is this: If in all these years groups like the Lashkar failed to mobilize a single Muslim outside the Kashmir valley, what has changed now?

Are we ready to look homegrown terror in the eye? And are we ready to look at the fact that this is a scathing comment on our failure to be an integrated society?

And no, this is not, and cannot be, about falling back on justifications. Such politically correct formulations are also an example of extremism, just of a different kind.

So those who point to the horrific Gujarat riots of 2002 to explain the Bombay blasts should be careful. Extend that argument another level, and you won't be able to counter Narendra Modi who also rationalized the anti-Muslim riots as an emotional outburst against the torching of the Sabaramati Express in Godhra. To locate responsibility in the endless cycle of cause and effect is not just over-simplistic, but also self-defeating.

Yet, there's no doubt, that ultimately the war against terror is a war of the mind; extremism can only grow roots in soil that has been under-watered and under-nourished.

Anti-Muslim riots in which the state secedes responsibility will in turn break down trust. But a riot is still an event, an aberration if you will. Sometimes it's just the business of living that is tougher.

Bombay's biggest icons may include Aamir Khan and Shahrukh Khan. But ask an ordinary Muslim in the city just how tough it is to rent a flat in a regular building; the glitzy acceptability of Bollywood makes no difference to his daily life. Our cities are collapsing into ghettos, with invisible borders dividing our people.

And the statistics tell their own sorry story. Less than four percent of India's police force is Muslim; no more than two percent of India's bureaucracy is Muslim; and Muslims are five percent behind the national literacy rate, making them the most educationally backward religious community. Yet if a government appointed committee attempts to gather data on just how representative our political and military institutions are, we accuse it of fomenting communalism.

If the Indian Muslim remains on the margins of development, isn't there a good chance that he will remain on the periphery in every other way as well? It's this imbalance; the sense of being an outsider; a person with no stake in the system that could provide the perfect breeding ground for terror.

So next time, don't just stare at the bearded man with the skullcap.


Look beyond, and look within.

Love in time of War

Growing up we used to frequently visit to the neighborhood supermarket just in front of our building, I had a friend around 3 years older than I was ,the supermarket had a nice greeting card section that also stocked posters, my friend was always on the lookout for war time love posters ..at the time I preferred posters with the comic character Garfield on them ,and didn’t really get what the fuss was over black and white posters with the people doing nothing more exciting than running behind a departing train ( possibly an American lady saying goodbye to her love ,who was off to fight a war)…

But thinking back ..there was something to those stories ..imagine loved ones parting not sure if they’ll ever see each other again( when ‘I’ll never ever see you again’ meant just that… pre VOIP, Instant messaging , improved international travel ,and Orkut accounts.)…now when journeys around the world seem like no big deal;imagine the long sea journeys from one continent to the other to meet your loved one ….. love in the South Pacific, survivors of the Holocaust falling in love ;reuniting with their loved ones, or others who fell in love with their saviors;
The case where Anne Frank and Peter Van Daan could not explore their relationship further because a they passed away before their time , when in times of so much strife and tragedy people found time for love, when one of the sisters from fiddler in the roof (Jewish) fell in love with a Russian Non-Jew around the time of the Russian Revolution .. in the Sound of Music.. love happens at the time of impending Nazi occupation.


I know we have wars happening in the present age as well….but I feel right now it isn’t as encompassing and the effects are not felt directly by as many people as it was then…not that I’m asking folks to go to Iraq. I’m just thinking how lucky we are that right now when we are lucky enough to find true love ( which should probably should be in abundance given the war and relative tragedy free times we live in ), the reason we have for love not reaching fruition is “our parents will object”.. amongst others . I know the stories above are exceptions… and a lot more arranged marriages were happening at the time…..but even then…………………….

On a seperate note, as a child I used to imagine how it would be if I were born at another time in the past and in another place than I actually was…some of these time periods include… Prince Edward Island ,Canada at the beginning of the 20th century …just because my favorite books growing up.. Anne of Green Gables and the Avonlea series were based there………….. maybe as a cowgirl in the American Wild West….before the turn of the past century … I guess the United Kingdom fit in in my imaginings somewhere as well( more fictional though, based on my Enid Blytons’).
As you can see I was rather influenced by the books and TV programs I watched at the time .I have to confess I never wanted to be born a 100 years ago in my native place in India …some how the thought of child/baby marriage doesn’t particularly appeal to me…I’m quite happy being an Indian woman born the time I was…

Some more thoughts....

A Soulmate

A soulmate is someone who has locks that fit our keys, and keys to fit our locks. When we feel safe enough to open the locks, our truest selves step out and we can be completely and honestly who we are; we can be loved for who we are and not for who we're pretending to be. Each unveils the best part of the other. No matter what else goes wrong around us, with that one person we're safe in our own paradise. Our soulmate is someone who shares our deepest longings, our sense of direction. When we're two balloons, and together our direction is up, chances are we've found the right person. Our soulmate is the one who makes life come to life.

Richard Bach


Relationships are Hard

Relationships are hard. It's like a full-time job, and we should treat it like one. If your boyfriend or girlfriend wants to leave you, they should give you two weeks' notice.
There should be severance pay, and before they leave you, they should have to find you a temp.

Bob Ettinger

Marriage

Then Almitra spoke again and said, "And what of Marriage, master?"
And he answered saying:
You were born together, and together you shall be forevermore.
You shall be together when white wings of death scatter your days.
Aye, you shall be together even in the silent memory of God.
But let there be spaces in your togetherness,
And let the winds of the heavens dance between you.
Love one another but make not a bond of love:
Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.
Fill each other's cup but drink not from one cup.
Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf.
Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone,
Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music.
Give your hearts, but not into each other's keeping.
For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts.
And stand together, yet not too near together;
For the pillars of the temple stand apart,
And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other's shadow.

Khalil Gibran

Where Does Love Begin?

It is difficult to know at what moment love begins; it is less difficult to know it has begun. A thousand heralds proclaim it to the listening air, a thousand messengers betray it to the eye. Tone, act, attitude and look, the signals upon the countenance, the electric telegraph of touch - all these betray the yielding citadel before the word itself is uttered, which, like the key surrendered, opens every avenue and gate of entrance, and renders retreat impossible.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow



Nothing is Random
Nothing is random, nor will anything ever be, whether a long string of perfectly blue days that begin and end in golden dimness, the most seemingly chaotic political acts, the rise of a great city, the crystalline structure of a gem that has never seen the light, the distributions of fortune, what time the milkman gets up, the position of the electron, or the occurrence of one astonishingly frigid winter after another.
Even electrons, supposedly the paragons of unpredictability, are tame and obsequious little creatures that rush around at the speed of light, going precisely where they are supposed to go. They make faint whistling sounds that when apprehended in varying combinations are as pleasant as the wind flying through a forest, and they do exactly as they are told. Of this, one can be certain.
And yet there is a wonderful anarchy, in that the milkman chooses when to arise, the rat picks the tunnel into which he will dive when the subway comes rushing down the track from Borough Hall, and the snowflake will fall as it will. How can this be? If nothing is random, and everything is predetermined, how can there be free will? The answer to that is simple.
Nothing is predetermined; it is determined, or was determined, or will be determined. No matter, it all happened at once, in less than an instant, and time was invented because we cannot comprehend in one glance the enormous and detailed canvas that we have been given - so we track it, in linear fashion, piece by piece. Time, however, can be easily overcome; not by chasing light, but by standing back far enough to see it all at once.
The universe is still and complete. Everything that ever was, is; everything that ever will be, is - and so on, in all possible combinations. Though in perceiving it we imagine that it is in motion, and unfinished, it is quite finished and quite astonishingly beautiful.
In the end, or rather, as things really are, any event, no matter how small, is intimately and sensibly tied to all others. All rivers run full to the sea; those who are apart are brought together; the lost ones are redeemed; the dead come back to life; the perfectly blue days that have begun and ended in golden dimness continue, immobile and accessible; and, when all is perceived in such a way as to obviate time, justice becomes apparent not as something that will be, but as something that is.
Mark Helprin

Dulcinea
I have dreamed thee too long
Never seen thee or touched thee
but known thee with all of my heart
Half a prayer, half a song
Thou hast always been with me though
we have been always apart
Joe Darion
Dulcinea, from the musical "Man Of La Mancha"

After a While

After a while you learn
The subtle difference between
Holding a hand and chaining a soul
And you learn that love doesn't mean leaning
And company doesn't always mean security.

And you begin to learn
That kisses aren't contracts
And presents aren't promises
And you begin to accept your defeats
With your head up and your eyes ahead
With the grace of a woman
Not the grief of a child

And you learn
To build all your roads on today
Because tomorrow's ground is
Too uncertain for plans
And futures have a way
Of falling down in mid flight

After a while you learn
That even sunshine burns if you get too much
So you plant your own garden
And decorate your own soul
Instead of waiting
For someone to bring you flowers

And you learn
That you really can endure
That you are really strong
And you really do have worth
And you learn and you learn
With every good bye you learn.

Veronica A. Shoffstall

Prelude and Sequel to The Invitation

Part of the “Invitation” series

Prelude

What if it truly doesn't matter what you do but how you do whatever you do?

How would this change what you choose to do with your life?

What if you could be more present and open-hearted with each person you encounter working as a cashier in the corner store, a parking lot attendant or filing clerk than you could if you were striving to do something you think is more important?

How would this change how you want to spend your precious time on this earth?

What if your contribution to the world and the fulfillment of you own happiness is not dependent upon discovering a better method of prayer or technique of meditation, not dependent upon reading the right book or attending the right seminar, but upon really seeing and deeply appreciating yourself and the world as they are right now?

How would this effect your search for spiritual development?

What if there is no need to change, no need to try and transform yourself into someone who is more compassionate, more present, more loving or wise?

How would this effect all the places in your life where you are endlessly trying to be better?

What if the task is simply to unfold, to become who you already are in your essential nature - gentle, compassionate and capable of living fully and passionately present?

How would this effect how you feel when you wake up in the morning?

What if who you essentially are right now is all that you are ever going to be?

How would this effect how you feel about your future?

What if the essence of who you are and always have been is enough?

How would this effect how you see and feel about your past?

What if the question is not why am I so infrequently the person I really want to be, but why do I so infrequently want to be the person I really am?

How would this change what you think you have to learn?

What if becoming who and what we truly are happens not through striving and trying but by recognizing and receiving the people and places and practises that offer us the warmth of encouragement we need to unfold?

How would this shape the choices you have to make about how to spend today?

What if you knew that the impulse to move in a way that creates beauty in the world will arise from deep within and guide you every time you simply pay attention and wait?

How would this shape your stillness, your movement, your willingness to follow this impulse, to just let go and dance?


The Dance

I have sent you my invitation, the note inscribed on the palm of my hand by the fire of living. Don't jump up and shout, "Yes, this is what I want! Let's do it!" Just stand up quietly and dance with me.

Show me how you follow your deepest desires, spiralling down into the ache within the ache. And I will show you how I reach inward and open outward to feel the kiss of the Mystery, sweet lips on my own, everyday.

Don't tell me you want to hold the whole world in your heart. Show me how you turn away from making another wrong without abandoning yourself when you are hurt and afraid of being unloved.

Tell me a story of who you are,
And see who I am in the stories I am living. And together we will remember that each of us always has a choice.

Don't tell me how wonderful things will be . . . some day. Show me you can risk being completely at peace, truly OK with the way things are right now in this moment, and again in the next and the next and the next. . .

I have heard enough warrior stories of heroic daring. Tell me how you crumble when you hit the wall, the place you cannot go beyond by the strength of your own will. What carries you to the other side of that wall, to the fragile beauty of your own humanness?

And after we have shown each other how we have set and kept the clear, healthy boundaries that help us live side by side with each other, let us risk remembering that we never stop silently loving those we once loved out loud.

Take me to the places on the earth that teach you how to dance, the places where you can risk letting the world break your heart. And I will take you to the places where the earth beneath my feet and the stars overhead make my heart whole again and again.

Show me how you take care of business without letting business determine who you are. When the children are fed but still the voices within and around us shout that soul's desires have too high a price, let us remind each other that it is never about the money.

Show me how you offer to your people and the world the stories and the songs you want our children's children to remember, and I will show you how I struggle not to change the world, but to love it.

Sit beside me in long moments of shared solitude, knowing both our absolute aloneness and our undeniable belonging. Dance with me in the silence and in the sound of small daily words, holding neither against me at the end of the day.

And when the sound of all the declarations of our sincerest intentions has died away on the wind, dance with me in the infinite pause before the next great inhale of the breath that is breathing us all into being, not filling the emptiness from the outside or from within.

Don't say, "Yes!"
Just take my hand and dance with me.

-Oriah Mountain Dreamer

Read The Invitation here

What Clash of Civilizations?Why religious identity isn't destiny.

“The response to Islamic fundamentalism and to the terrorism linked with it also becomes particularly confused when there is a general failure to distinguish between Islamic history and the history of Muslim people. Muslims, like all other people in the world, have many different pursuits, and not all their priorities and values need be placed within their singular identity of being Islamic. It is, of course, not surprising at all that the champions of Islamic fundamentalism would like to suppress all other identities of Muslims in favor of being only Islamic. But it is extremely odd that those who want to overcome the tensions and conflicts linked with Islamic fundamentalism also seem unable to see Muslim people in any form other than their being just Islamic.
…………….”

Thanks friend for the link..may be you all have a point ..there is definitely more to my friends than being Muslim..as there is much more to me than just being a Hindu….But the fact remains that the muslim world gets a lot of bad press …not all of which it deserves……..

What Clash of Civilizations?Why religious identity isn't destiny.
By Amartya Sen
This essay is adapted from the new book Identity and Violence, published by Norton.

That some barbed cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed could generate turmoil in so many countries tells us some rather important things about the contemporary world. Among other issues, it points up the intense sensitivity of many Muslims about representation and derision of the prophet in the Western press (and the ridiculing of Muslim religious beliefs that is taken to go with it) and the evident power of determined agitators to generate the kind of anger that leads immediately to violence. But stereotyped representations of this kind do another sort of damage as well, by making huge groups of people in the world to look peculiarly narrow and unreal.
The portrayal of the prophet with a bomb in the form of a hat is obviously a figment of imagination and cannot be judged literally, and the relevance of that representation cannot be dissociated from the way the followers of the prophet may be seen. What we ought to take very seriously is the way Islamic identity, in this sort of depiction, is assumed to drown, if only implicitly, all other affiliations, priorities, and pursuits that a Muslim person may have. A person belongs to many different groups, of which a religious affiliation is only one. To see, for example, a mathematician who happens to be a Muslim by religion mainly in terms of Islamic identity would be to hide more than it reveals. Even today, when a modern mathematician at, say, MIT or Princeton invokes an "algorithm" to solve a difficult computational problem, he or she helps to commemorate the contributions of the ninth-century Muslim mathematician Al-Khwarizmi, from whose name the term algorithm is derived (the term "algebra" comes from the title of his Arabic mathematical treatise "Al Jabr wa-al-Muqabilah"). To concentrate only on Al-Khwarizmi's Islamic identity over his identity as a mathematician would be extremely misleading, and yet he clearly was also a Muslim. Similarly, to give an automatic priority to the Islamic identity of a Muslim person in order to understand his or her role in the civil society, or in the literary world, or in creative work in arts and science, can result in profound misunderstanding.

The increasing tendency to overlook the many identities that any human being has and to try to classify individuals according to a single allegedly pre-eminent religious identity is an intellectual confusion that can animate dangerous divisiveness. An Islamist instigator of violence against infidels may want Muslims to forget that they have any identity other than being Islamic. What is surprising is that those who would like to quell that violence promote, in effect, the same intellectual disorientation by seeing Muslims primarily as members of an Islamic world. The world is made much more incendiary by the advocacy and popularity of single-dimensional categorization of human beings, which combines haziness of vision with increased scope for the exploitation of that haze by the champions of violence.
A remarkable use of imagined singularity can be found in Samuel Huntington's influential 1998 book The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order. The difficulty with Huntington's approach begins with his system of unique categorization, well before the issue of a clash—or not—is even raised. Indeed, the thesis of a civilizational clash is conceptually parasitic on the commanding power of a unique categorization along so-called civilizational lines, which closely follow religious divisions to which singular attention is paid. Huntington contrasts Western civilization with "Islamic civilization," "Hindu civilization," "Buddhist civilization," and so on. The alleged confrontations of religious differences are incorporated into a sharply carpentered vision of hardened divisiveness.
In fact, of course, the people of the world can be classified according to many other partitions, each of which has some—often far-reaching—relevance in our lives: nationalities, locations, classes, occupations, social status, languages, politics, and many others. While religious categories have received much airing in recent years, they cannot be presumed to obliterate other distinctions, and even less can they be seen as the only relevant system of classifying people across the globe. In partitioning the population of the world into those belonging to "the Islamic world," "the Western world," "the Hindu world," "the Buddhist world," the divisive power of classificatory priority is implicitly used to place people firmly inside a unique set of rigid boxes. Other divisions (say, between the rich and the poor, between members of different classes and occupations, between people of different politics, between distinct nationalities and residential locations, between language groups, etc.) are all submerged by this allegedly primal way of seeing the differences between people.
The difficulty with the clash of civilizations thesis begins with the presumption of the unique relevance of a singular classification. Indeed, the question "Do civilizations clash?" is founded on the presumption that humanity can be pre-eminently classified into distinct and discrete civilizations, and that the relations between different human beings can somehow be seen, without serious loss of understanding, in terms of relations between different civilizations.
This reductionist view is typically combined, I am afraid, with a rather foggy perception of world history that overlooks, first, the extent of internal diversities within these civilizational categories, and second, the reach and influence of interactions—intellectual as well as material—that go right across the regional borders of so-called civilizations. And its power to befuddle can trap not only those who would like to support the thesis of a clash (varying from Western chauvinists to Islamic fundamentalists), but also those who would like to dispute it and yet try to respond within the straitjacket of its prespecified terms of reference.
The limitations of such civilization-based thinking can prove just as treacherous for programs of "dialogue among civilizations" (much in vogue these days) as they are for theories of a clash of civilizations. The noble and elevating search for amity among people seen as amity between civilizations speedily reduces many-sided human beings to one dimension each and muzzles the variety of involvements that have provided rich and diverse grounds for cross-border interactions over many centuries, including the arts, literature, science, mathematics, games, trade, politics, and other arenas of shared human interest. Well-meaning attempts at pursuing global peace can have very counterproductive consequences when these attempts are founded on a fundamentally illusory understanding of the world of human beings.
Increasing reliance on religion-based classification of the people of the world also tends to make the Western response to global terrorism and conflict peculiarly ham-handed. Respect for "other people" is shown by praising their religious books, rather than by taking note of the many-sided involvements and achievements, in nonreligious as well as religious fields, of different people in a globally interactive world. In confronting what is called "Islamic terrorism" in the muddled vocabulary of contemporary global politics, the intellectual force of Western policy is aimed quite substantially at trying to define—or redefine—Islam.
To focus just on the grand religious classification is not only to miss other significant concerns and ideas that move people. It also has the effect of generally magnifying the voice of religious authority. The Muslim clerics, for example, are then treated as the ex officio spokesmen for the so-called Islamic world, even though a great many people who happen to be Muslim by religion have profound differences with what is proposed by one mullah or another. Despite our diverse diversities, the world is suddenly seen not as a collection of people, but as a federation of religions and civilizations. In Britain, a confounded view of what a multiethnic society must do has led to encouraging the development of state-financed Muslim schools, Hindu schools, Sikh schools, etc., to supplement pre-existing state-supported Christian schools. Under this system, young children are placed in the domain of singular affiliations well before they have the ability to reason about different systems of identification that may compete for their attention. Earlier on, state-run denominational schools in Northern Ireland had fed the political distancing of Catholics and Protestants along one line of divisive categorization assigned at infancy. Now the same predetermination of "discovered" identities is now being allowed and, in effect encouraged, to sow even more alienation among a different part of the British population.
Religious or civilizational classification can be a source of belligerent distortion as well. It can, for example, take the form of crude beliefs well exemplified by U.S. Lt. Gen. William Boykin's blaring—and by now well-known—remark describing his battle against Muslims with disarming coarseness: "I knew that my God was bigger than his," and that the Christian God "was a real God, and [the Muslim's] was an idol." The idiocy of such bigotry is easy to diagnose, so there is comparatively limited danger in the uncouth hurling of such unguided missiles. There is, in contrast, a much more serious problem in the use in Western public policy of intellectual "guided missiles" that present a superficially nobler vision to woo Muslim activists away from opposition through the apparently benign strategy of defining Islam appropriately. They try to wrench Islamic terrorists from violence by insisting that Islam is a religion of peace, and that a "true Muslim" must be a tolerant individual ("so come off it and be peaceful"). The rejection of a confrontational view of Islam is certainly appropriate and extremely important at this time, but we must ask whether it is necessary or useful, or even possible, to try to define in largely political terms what a "true Muslim" must be like.
******
A person's religion need not be his or her all-encompassing and exclusive identity. Islam, as a religion, does not obliterate responsible choice for Muslims in many spheres of life. Indeed, it is possible for one Muslim to take a confrontational view and another to be thoroughly tolerant of heterodoxy without either of them ceasing to be a Muslim for that reason alone.
The response to Islamic fundamentalism and to the terrorism linked with it also becomes particularly confused when there is a general failure to distinguish between Islamic history and the history of Muslim people. Muslims, like all other people in the world, have many different pursuits, and not all their priorities and values need be placed within their singular identity of being Islamic. It is, of course, not surprising at all that the champions of Islamic fundamentalism would like to suppress all other identities of Muslims in favor of being only Islamic. But it is extremely odd that those who want to overcome the tensions and conflicts linked with Islamic fundamentalism also seem unable to see Muslim people in any form other than their being just Islamic.
People see themselves—and have reason to see themselves—in many different ways. For example, a Bangladeshi Muslim is not only a Muslim but also a Bengali and a Bangladeshi, typically quite proud of the Bengali language, literature, and music, not to mention the other identities he or she may have connected with class, gender, occupation, politics, aesthetic taste, and so on. Bangladesh's separation from Pakistan was not based on religion at all, since a Muslim identity was shared by the bulk of the population in the two wings of undivided Pakistan. The separatist issues related to language, literature, and politics.
Similarly, there is no empirical reason at all why champions of the Muslim past, or for that matter of the Arab heritage, have to concentrate specifically on religious beliefs only and not also on science and mathematics, to which Arab and Muslim societies have contributed so much, and which can also be part of a Muslim or an Arab identity. Despite the importance of this heritage, crude classifications have tended to put science and mathematics in the basket of "Western science," leaving other people to mine their pride in religious depths. If the disaffected Arab activist today can take pride only in the purity of Islam, rather than in the many-sided richness of Arab history, the unique prioritization of religion, shared by warriors on both sides, plays a major part in incarcerating people within the enclosure of a singular identity.
Even the frantic Western search for "the moderate Muslim" confounds moderation in political beliefs with moderateness of religious faith. A person can have strong religious faith—Islamic or any other—along with tolerant politics. Emperor Saladin, who fought valiantly for Islam in the Crusades in the 12th century, could offer, without any contradiction, an honored place in his Egyptian royal court to Maimonides as that distinguished Jewish philosopher fled an intolerant Europe. When, at the turn of the 16th century, the heretic Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake in Campo dei Fiori in Rome, the Great Mughal emperor Akbar (who was born a Muslim and died a Muslim) had just finished, in Agra, his large project of legally codifying minority rights, including religious freedom for all.
The point that needs particular attention is that while Akbar was free to pursue his liberal politics without ceasing to be a Muslim, that liberality was in no way ordained—nor of course prohibited—by Islam. Another Mughal emperor, Aurangzeb, could deny minority rights and persecute non-Muslims without, for that reason, failing to be a Muslim, in exactly the same way that Akbar did not terminate being a Muslim because of his tolerantly pluralist politics.
The insistence, if only implicitly, on a choiceless singularity of human identity not only diminishes us all, it also makes the world much more flammable. The alternative to the divisiveness of one pre-eminent categorization is not any unreal claim that we are all much the same. Rather, the main hope of harmony in our troubled world lies in the plurality of our identities, which cut across each other and work against sharp divisions around one single hardened line of vehement division that allegedly cannot be resisted. Our shared humanity gets savagely challenged when our differences are narrowed into one devised system of uniquely powerful categorization.
Perhaps the worst impairment comes from the neglect—and denial—of the roles of reasoning and choice, which follow from the recognition of our plural identities. The illusion of unique identity is much more divisive than the universe of plural and diverse classifications that characterize the world in which we actually live. The descriptive weakness of choiceless singularity has the effect of momentously impoverishing the power and reach of our social and political reasoning. The illusion of destiny exacts a remarkably heavy price.

From Slate

Listen to Albatross

Found a version of Albatross on Youtube..the video is like a promotion for a cruise ship..so ignore the vid. listen to the song!!!

The Pro's and Con's of ...... Wearing your Heart on your Sleeve

As the first part of what I hope to be an ongoing series..i will attempt to first look at the pro’s and con’s of……………………wearing your heart on your sleeve….

Pro’s

-You can easily voice out thoughts and ideas that would otherwise have tormented you(and only YOU!!!) had you kept it to yourself.

Cons
-it makes it all the more easier for someone to rip out your heart, shred it into itty-bitty pieces and then stomp on it.

-if your heart is on your sleeve it might act faster and more recklessly than it would have had your head told it to stop.

-You cry whenever you feel like it, this may not be such a good thing it might make the people around you uncomfortable or might make everyone else wonder what in the world you are getting senti about .

-people can easily tell when you’re happy, sad, angry, in love, bored out of your wits etc etc…. (it’s not a good thing!!!)

-the whole world knows what’s in your heart ..and you have only yourself to blame…

-most people you meet tend to be heart on the sleeve-less, which can potentially lead to a lot of heartache for yourself .

-somehow your heart on the sleeve ,tends to give it more importance than your brain , than if it were say..where your heart is supposed to be in the first place!! Because of this unnatural position you tend to give more importance to things like gut instinct, the idea of “Love” ,the concept of soulmate and go about saying things like “I don’t like this guy …just because!!!” etc etc , than if you gave your brain the most importance…..

And in spite of all the cons………….. we still haven’t learnt to be heart in the sleeve-less!!!

Share your Secret...

Seen the ads in the Secret Deo “Share your Secret” campaign?? I’ve seen the TV ad’s and just saw a print ad featuring Indian women…..thought I’d go to the website and see if they post secrets and things..and they do !!!
Here are a few from the most read secret category ..some secrets are touching, some are interesting ,and some are kinda dumb!!!

Tagline: Look into the souls of strong women, whose candid secrets reflect their character - flaws, frailties, intelligence, nerve and wit.
`
My fiance thinks I’m 8 years younger.

Ok, let me start by saying that I feel terrible about this. It started as an innocent lie, but now it’s spun out of control. I was going to tell him, I promise! But I didn’t expect him to ask me to marry him so soon! Maybe I’ll tell him tonight over dinner. Or after dinner. Or just before bed. I don’t know…On the bright side, I can pass for 32!

I don't miss him--I miss what we once had


I sent those flowers you thought were from your boyfriend.
Remember the day you lost your job? You were feeling so down. I had to do something to cheer you up. And that gem of a boyfriend of yours sure wasn’t going to do anything nice for you. So I sent them. When I got home and found out the jerk had taken credit for them – and saw that you were so happy about it – I just couldn’t bring myself to disappoint you. But now that you’ve dumped him, it’s time to come clean! Yay!


I think I am in love with my best friend
Him and I dated in the past, and I am not sure how he would feel. I am afraid to tell him my real feelings. (mostly because we share an apartment with seperate bedrooms)

I’m a CEO, and I hate my job.
Just because I run the company doesn’t mean I like running the company. I’d much rather be traveling the world or painting or reading a good book. I have to drag myself out of bed every morning just like everyone else.


I called the cops on my own party because I wanted to go to sleep
Back in College, it was 4am and I had to sleep because I was a bit hungover so I called the cops to get everyone out - nobody ever knew it was me.

I was abducted by aliens.
It really wasn't that bad. They just need a new water source

I have a huge crush on a guy that I grew up with...
I have known this guy since I was in middle school, and he is the only person that I can honestly imagine ever marrying. Our families are already great friends, but I am afraid that, that is all we will ever remain, friends. He doesn't even know that I am interested.

I tested false positive for AIDS.

I'm in engaged to a man I technically never met...

I broke up with Donald Trump When We were in high school not knowing he would be so rich.

I still love my ex.
Although we've been apart for nearly 7 years and he's since gotten married, I still love my ex-fiance with all of my heart and probably always will.


I started dating my husband after we got married. Maybe we'll have children when we get divorced.

I've had several secret blogs for 8 years now
...and I've been published in newspapers around the country under my anonymous online name. And asked to contribute my writing to a book.

I was married once before and my family doesn't know

I wish I had the courage to follow my dreams


I still think about my old friend and feel bad that we no longer talk.

I'm over thirty and occasionally watch sesame street when there is absolutely NOTHING else on the t.v. to look at.

I got a D- in Home Economics because I couldn't sew.

More here if you’re interested….check out the most read section.. the rest can get pretty banal!!!!

B.L. and I

God bless America and all that.. I’m going to use initials ..ok here B.L. stands for public enemy number one … you must have guessed it, the entire world has one major public enemy right now…

So I was in India during 9/11 , a few days later the name of the perpetrator was unveiled as a terrorist organization led by a certain O.B.L., that guy was a fanatic, it was really sad watching the whole September 11 tragedy happening on TV, I can imagine how it would be for people directly affected…. Any way it wasn’t the first time I’d heard the name B.L. , I hadn’t heard of this particular person, but from a very young age I was acquainted with his family ..my aunt ( you know how in India ,any lady who may or may not be related is your Auntie) , anyway we felt a close kinship with our Aunt, she is Mangalorean Catholic by the way, my dad and his other good friends ( my uncles ;who in my childhood away from blood relatives served as family (god bless them all !!) were paying guests with this Aunt and Uncles family in their bachelor days….any way my aunt worked here ..see picture (interesting huh!!!)


So courtesy my aunt we used to have stationary with the name inscribed throughout our stay in Dubai( in fact most of my school life i wrote exams on a clipboard courtesy the BL company ) ,we used to go to the office whenever my mom needed to borrow Femina’s or Eve’s Weekly from my aunt … apart from the fact that the office is located across the road from the house we used to stay in !! So yea we were familiar with the name from a very early age. My aunt worked there before I was born and she still works there (that’s a pretty long time !) . I think she rather likes her employers….

So when all this happened and we found out the tyrants name it was all a bit surprising… “That guy is related to the folks Aunty works for , the people who own that rather boring looking ( by Dubai standards) building … we even have stationary with the last name inscribed!!! …hmmm” , we didn’t throw away the stationary…. How ever much we abhor(red) the Jihad “martyr” psychos ..the fact is we didn’t throw away the stationary (atleast the last time I checked ) … because we understood that one man didn’t represent his entire family(it’s a big family) ….and just extending a bit does not represent his religion .

The Clash of Civilisations !!??!!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!

Inspired by this post in Sepia Mutiny. Excerpt:

“Given that one of the objectives that led to 9/11 was Al-Qaeda’s desire to prompt a Clash of Civilizations between the West and Islam, is this evidence that the terrorists are winning?”

I recently had a conversation with a friend , he thought we would probably see a major world war in our lifetime, and it wouldn’t be between countries as such but between religions/civilizations , given the mixed religious makeup of most countries nowadays it probably meant civil wars within , and more interesting was the idea of what could be the cause ? Well , the fact that people in other parts of the world resent the idea of western dominance and the idea that the western way is only way ( yes maybe but may be not, I’m eastern..and I’m in the US right now!!) , anyway it was an interesting concept.

Thanks to the SM post I looked up the Clash of Civilizations theory, while I don’t believe it, and surely don’t want it to happen i.e. the fact that for some people religion may be more important than country , (but who says country is most important?? Shouldn’t it be world or universe ??) .I appreciate however that the theory looks into the reasons such jingoistic religious feelings may exist , we should at least try to understand where such feelings (if any)come from….

From the wiki on clash of civilizations

In his book Terror and Liberalism, Paul Berman proposes another criticism of the civilization clash hypothesis. According to Berman, distinct cultural boundaries do not exist in the present day. He argues there is no "Islamic civilization" nor a "Western civilization", and that the evidence for a civilization clash is not convincing, especially when considering relationships such as that between the United States and Saudi Arabia. In addition, he cites the fact that many Islamic extremists spent a significant amount of time living and/or studying in the western world. According to Berman conflict arises because of philosophical beliefs between groups, regardless of cultural or religious identity.

It has been claimed that values are more easily transmitted and altered than Huntington proposes. Nations such as India and Japan have become successful democracies, and the West itself was rife with despotism and fundamentalism for most of its history. Some also see Huntington's thesis as creating a self-fulfilling prophecy and reasserting differences between civilizations.[citation needed] Edward Said issued a response to Huntington's thesis in his own essay entitled "The Clash of Ignorance." Said argues that Huntington's categorization of the world's fixed "civilizations" omits the dynamic interdependency and interaction of culture. According to Said, it is an example of an imagined geography, where the presentation of the world in a certain way legitimates certain politics.

Another question , so yeah the western world may have committed intrusions in the Middle east , but why are they attacking India ?? I haven’t been keeping track but I know of the bombings in Mumbai , (the wars with Pakistan are territorial disputes)..and India has been attacked by non muslim terrorists as well……

Any attack is bad ,sad as they are in some cases we have to admit they were probably retaliatory Mumbai Blasts of ’93 -> attributed as response to the Babri Masjid demolition ; the Mumbai Train Bombings ->possibly in response to Gujarat violence (Godhra)


I’m a practicing Hindu, and I find all the previously mentioned acts of terror horrifying. ( I wont try to call myself a liberal hindu, there is no such thing as a radical hindu,it goes against the very essence of our religion, if you find your self getting riled up , read what God says and take a chill pill, we are supposed to be the most chilled out people on the planet, and that isn’t a bad thing , no I don't think we run the danger of being wiped out of the face of the earth!! I'm not saying that we are the only ones doing wrong and everyone else is innocent, but i don't think the religious twist everything is taking nowadays is helping,especially when what we see around are the most irreligious of acts!).


Like I learn at Gita class...we are in Kaliyug... in the face of the evil around just chant the name of the lord, remember him/her ,have faith and he/she will save you.

Rhythm of my Heart

In spite of some corny lines like “the rhythm of my heart is beating like a drum “. This song is one of my favorites ;I don't completely get the meaning..but it's cool nonetheless!

Rod Stewart › Rhythm Of My Heart

Across the street the river runs.
Down in the gutter life is slipping away.
Let me still exist in another place,
Running down under cover
Of a helicopter blade.

The flames are getting higher
In effigy.
Burning down the bridges of my memory.
Love may still alive
somewhere someday
where they're downing only deer
a hundred steel towns away.

Oh, rhythm of my heart
is beating like a drum
with the words "I Love you"
rolling off my tongue.
No never will I roam,
for I know my place is home.
Where the ocean meets the sky,
I'll be sailing.

Photographs and kerosene
light up my darkness,
light it up,
light it up.
I can still feel the touch
of your thin blue jeans.
Running down the alley,
I've got my eyes all over you, baby.
Oh, baby.

Oh, the rhythm of my heart
is beating like a drum
with the words "I Love you"
rolling off my tongue.
No never will I roam,
for I know my place is home.
Where the ocean meets the sky,
I'll be sailing.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, I've got lightning in my veins,
shifting like the handle
of a slot machine.
Love may still exist
in another place.
I'm just yanking back the handle,
no expression on my face.

Oh, the rhythm of my heart
is beating like a drum
with the words "I Love you"
rolling off my tongue.
No never will I roam,
for I know my place is home.
Where the ocean meets the sky,
I'll be sailing.

Oh, the rhythm of my heart
is beating like a drum
with the words "I Love you"
rolling off my tongue.
No never will I roam,
for I know my place is home.
Where the ocean meets the sky,
I'll be sailing.

The rhythm of my heart
is beating like a drum
with the words "I Love you" rolling off my tongue.
No never will I roam,
for I know my place is home.
Where the ocean meets the sky,
I'll be sailing

The Anatomy of a Grudge..

I know grudges don’t have anatomies…. per se but you know I thought this title was nice…. .

So I’ve been going on and on about thinking how life in general sucked, how people just weren’t nice and had it in for me.. I was dreading an upcoming meeting…. Anticipating nothing good out of it, after all that lady wasn’t concerned about my wellbeing…but I couldn’t put it off any longer and it happened…it wasn’t too bad at the outset, and further on into the meeting I found out that the person who had it in for me actually went out of the way to do something I really wanted to have happen ;but didn’t imagine ever would. How cool was that?

I guess I came out of the incident thinking that though people may not be the best , everyone is mostly good ….that’s what makes us human..

So what if someone totally ruined you life ??( and believe me they have!!)..it doesn’t mean that they can’t treat you to an ice cream some time ..I guess its not black or white, good and bad , its all grey…. I’ve held grudges and not spoken to people for years on end( extremely childish I know , I usually did the silent treatment thing as a kid ) anyway it would have gone on and on ( me not speaking to them) but the universe had other plans and one way or the other I was made to patch up.. which wasn’t such a bad thing ..because the negative energy due to these bad vibes is really draining!!! But can things go back to how they were before ??? I know I may be this highly enlightened soul ;)…. But what about the other person? Will they go back to thinking I’m a doormat ..and therein lies the conflict of truly forgiving and forgetting….

I have learned something though , before I would have called this appreciation of the fact that everyone has good and bad points ( though it may seem at times that the bad outweighs the good ), and being good to people even if you can't really stand them Hypocrisy, now I realize it isn’t as clean cut as all that…. Howard Roarkism takes a back seat for a while I guess…….