Courage...

Theirs not to make reply,

Theirs not to reason why,

Theirs but to do and die:

Into the Valley of Death

Rode the six hundred 

      -Alfred ,Lord Tennyson

Based on these lines from the poem 'The Charge of the Light Brigade' by Alfred,Lord Tennyson describing the disastrous Battle of Balaclava in the Crimean War; where the british soldiers marched on inspite of knowing that they were going to die. Inspired by this, Michael Orr wrote an essay on Courage for his School Paper in the movie The Blind Side which really moved me :

Courage is a hard thing to figure. You can have courage based on a dumb idea or a mistake. But you’re not supposed to question adults or your coach or your teacher because they make the rules. Maybe they know best or maybe they don’t. It all depends on who you are, where you come from. Didnt atleast one of the six hundred guys think of giving up and joining with the other side? I mean The Valley Of Death! That's pretty salty stuff.That’s why courage is tricky. Should you always do what others tell you to do? Sometimes, you might not even know why you’re doing something. I mean any fool can have courage, but honour, that's the real reason you do something or you don't. Its who you are and maybe who you want to be. If you die trying for something important then you have both honour and courage and that's pretty good. I think that's what the writer was saying, that you should hope for courage and try for honour and maybe even pray that the people telling you what to do have some too.

                                                                   

Rituals....Why???

Read this Story in the Sunday Times. A girl called off her wedding just a month before the D-Day. Reason??..She wasnt in love with someone else, She hadnt developed cold feet at the thought of being married. She just didnt agree with the rituals her prospective in-laws believed in. What was the ritual that offended her so much?..She was asked to oil massage her husbands' feet on the wedding night, clean it up and ask for permission to share his bed !!! She was further shocked when her UK-educated Investment Banker fiance did nothing to resist or oppose this.

Now many would think that it was irrational on her part to cancel the wedding on this issue. What was the harm in going through one ritual, afterall, they are just namesake but are they?  Supporters would insist that these rituals are the part of our rich Indian Culture, our heritage ,our values and what not. But why these rituals if I may ask are subservient to the males of our society? Isnt it demeaning and insulting for a woman to oil massage her husbands' feet and ask for permission to share his bed? 

Then there are numerous rituals of Vrats or Fasts that a woman has to perform to make sure that her husband lives a hundred years. Why dont men keep these Fasts? Dont they want their wives to live for a hundred years?

I kept the fast of Karva Chauth this year and my husband fasted along with me because he loves me a lot and when I chose to go hungry for his sake, he reciprocated for mine. Nowadays, many husbands are doing that but what about those not-so-supportive husbands? Its a very big deal and the woman is considered very lucky if her husband fasts along with her but there is no big deal when a woman goes a whole day without food and water- it is expected from her.

Am I sounding feminist here?.. Lets talk logically then. These Rituals are hardly practical. Most of the Women are working these days and time is precious for a jetsetting woman who is juggling between home and office work. Rituals dont ensure that a marriage lasts a lifetime, it is the mutual love, respect and understanding that keeps the big ship of wedding afloat.

Saluting the Martyrs!!!

Today some 80 years ago, Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev and Rajguru sacrificed their lives fighting colonialism and British Raj. This is an ode to our brave freedom fighters who martyred for our independence. They are the symbol of heroism, courage and integrity who selflessly devoted their entire lives for this nation and its freedom.

This is my salute to these brave revolutionaries who will live in our hearts forever. Jai Hind!!

Helpless Democracy....

Mayawati is in news again...'Behenji' has recently spent about 200 crores of Taxpayers' money on the 25th Anniversary of a useless party called BSP. 'Dalits' from all across India were invited, there were about 2000 air conditioned tents and 200 temporary toilets erected for the ocassion.My assumption is most of the poor Dalits gathered there to get a decent meal rather than celebrating 25th anniversary of BSP (I mean when your daily challenge is barely making ends meet..who cares about these things).From erecting her statues and that of Elephants (her party symbol),this lady has left no stone unturned in her brazen display of authority and misuse of  power.

 And when there was a huge furore over the 1000 rupee currency garland that was presented to Mayawati,(allegedly estimated at 5 crores from the look and size of it though BSP has given the cost at 21 lakhs after officially denying the existence of any such garland in the first place!!...they only owned up to it after incessant TV and media coverage which showed close footage of the garland and the currency notes).... BSP has gone ahead and presented another to her today (this time wisely announcing the cost at 18 lakhs) and thanking TV Channels and Media for highlighting the popularity of their 'Behenji'!!!

Why this obnoxiously arrogant display of power??..One would ask why UP people have voted her to absolute majority then??...Is she doing a good job?? (that is seriously doubted)..What option do they have...Mulayam Singh??.....the guy has promised to wipe out IT,Computer and English language among other things from the state when he is elected!

Mulayam Singh has volubly protested on this immense show of wealth by Mayawati ,ofcourse,he has demanded a high level probe into this matter of spending 200 crores of Taxpayers money.Mayawati has indeed ordered a high level probe but to find the reason for hundreds of bees flying when she was giving her speech...She is convinced it was the handywork of opposition to ruin her gathering. Bees were professionally trained though because they just swarmed through without a single sting. We should wait for the day when Street Dogs,Cows,Donkeys etc will also enter politics.

Its time people wake up and vote....Vote for themselves and vote to throw such people out who are making such a mockery of democracy.

Six Suspects...

A very entertaining novel by Vikas Swarup. The central character of the story is Vicky Rai....son of high profile minister...a typical brat. Interestingly, the incidents that the author has associated with Vicky Rai to describe his reckless and complete ignorance of the law are real life incidents of some high profile people in India. For example, the black buck hunting and drunk driving and killing labourers sleeping on the pavement are taken from mishaps that actor Salman Khan has been involved in (and those cases are still going on in the court) and the murder of a cocktail waitress is also a real life incident in which Sushil Sharma was convicted for the murder of Jessica Lal.

The story takes an adventurous turn when this same Vicky Rai is shot dead at his own party. Amongst the glitzy bunch of his guests,police finds six strange characters carrying a gun in their possession. From here starts the investigation into the mysterious,tender and techni-colour lives of all these eccentric six suspects.

Its witty, intelligent,dazzling and presents a kalaeidoscope portrait of contemporary India. Its a must read :)

Google City...for Google Broadband !!!

Google announced in Feb.2010 that it was building an experimental,ultra high speed broadband network across America. In this trial service, about 500,000 people would be provided with ultra high speed broadband with a speed of 1 Giga bit per second...about 200 times faster than the average UK speed of 5 Mb/second. The service will be an extension of Google's existing fiber network, which links its various data centres around the US.



As a result a frenzy of ideas have been put forward including from thousands of Americans across the country. More than 200 groups on Facebook are pushing different cities and counties for Google's broadband plan. Among the ideas submitted includes a group in Baltimore launching a Web site that uses Google mapping to plot the location of more than 1,000 residents and gives their reasons for wanting the service. Other cities in pursuit include Cincinnati, Portland (Oregon), Grand Rapids (Michigan), Rochester (New York), Baton Rouge (Louisiana).

But it seemed to date the most original appeared to be the Kansas capital...The city of Topeka which has named itself  "Google" for the month of March in its bid for hosting the search engines'broadband.
One Facebook group named "Bring Googles' Fiber Experiment to Topeka" has attracted about 14,500 members so far.

Deadlines for the bid are till late March and the selected communities will be announced later this year.

May the Best City win :))

Google Buzz is here!!!

Gmail is the third most popular web-based email in the world, with 176.5m unique visitors in December, based on statistics from comScore, which ranks Microsoft's Hotmail number one, with 369.2m unique visitors, and Yahoo Mail second with 303.7m.

 Now Google has launched a new tool...Google Buzz that will alow the users of Gmail to share their feelings with each other...which means Google is taking social networking Giants Facebook and Twiiter head on by doing this.



Google Buzz allows the users to write their own status messages which the other users can see and it also allows the users to make their own Profile Pages which can be seen not only by friends but the entire web if so desired. It also allows users to post links like videos from YouTube or pictures from Picasa. Another advantage is that the replies to the status updates will be directly sent to the Inbox saving time shuffling a lot of browser windows and collecting social feeds from Twitter and Flickr all into one place.

Google will also introduce its unique Ranking System here (which is what makes it Search Engine so sucessful). Ranking is the idea of using iterative algorithm which corresponds to the principal eigenvector of the normalized link matrix of the web to determine the individual ranking of the site. This in the context of Buzz would mean that updates of friends that have been commented and "liked" by others would be flagged up and hence would be deemed more meaningful than the updates where someone saying what they had for lunch.

Buzz still has some drawbacks however, like its current inability toconnect to Facebook and the status messages posted on the buzz can be 'tweeted' to the followers but the followers' replies cant be seen on the buzz.

But these arent insurmountable problems and given Google's commitment to excellence,the buzz is surely going to go places.

Soccer Wednesday!!!

Went to a friendly soccer match last wednesday.The match was between Germany and Argentina...and although it was a friendly match,the atmosphere was electric.Europeans are as crazy for soccer as we Indians are for cricket and maybe more.

The match was in Allianz Arena in Munich.Its a magnificent stadium with a seating capacity of about 70,000(including standing room) and the only stadium in the world that has changing color outside. The stadium was packed with German supporters and a few Argentinian Supporters scattered around.

We were about 15 Desis and we had hired a bus to go to Munich and come back.Incidentally, I was the only female in the group.The bus ride was pleasant and fun filled with lot of chattering and hot samosas with cold beer.

There was a huge crowd gathered for this match and it took us a while to enter after clearing the security check. The stadium was packed with football enthusiasts who were carrying German flags and wearing team shirts of their favorite players...people were drinking beer...cheering their team...singing and creating a lot of noise in general which made the entire thing a lot of fun. It was a dream come true for me to watch players like Messi, Ballack etc play in person and I even got to see Diego Maradona as he is the coach of Argentinian team for this World Cup. Argentinian defence was amazing and they thwarted a lot of goal attempts by the Germans and at the same time,their centre forwards continuously attacked the German goal. At last their relentlessness bore fruit and Argentina scored a goal just before the half time. There was a long queue for the snacks counter outside and a separate card was needed in order to buy the snacks instead of cash and this card was being sold at another counter.Finally we did manage to buy something and when finally entered the stands again,the match had already started. Compared to Argentinians, the Germans performed rather dismally and players like Ballack,Schweinsteiger,Podolski etc were huge disappointments.All this while Maradona paced the sidelines enthusiastically cheering his players...making quick changes and boosting their morale. In the end,Argentina won the match 1-0.The only dampener was the weather which was very cold and it was really chilly inside the stadium.

German supporters were rather quiet on their way out as their team had lost but we Desis were upbeat because it really didnt matter to us who won.The journey back was pretty much the same...Beer...Post Match discussions....Soccer stats...heated arguments over the correctness of these Soccer stats..bets being placed...Beer Jokes (named it so coz they are really lame but since everyone is high, people laugh at anything being said) etc.

My first International Soccer match in a stadium.....all in all,a very memorable experience. :)

Azincourt...

Read this amazing book by Bernard Cornwell. Azincourt (also called Agincourt) was an epic battle between England and France in the 14th Century. Although these two countries have had many such battles like Crece, Waterloo etc which were more significant strategically and otherwise,the battle of Azincourt holds a special place in the history.

This book gives a graphic account of the war waged by Henry V as the rightful heir of France. A battle which started with the seige of Harfleur,a small harbour city in France and the march towards Calais where the French intercepted the English Army near the town of Azincourt.The seige of Harfleur took longer than expected and by the time it was won and English army started its march towards Calais,it had shrunk to mere 6000,and dysentry raged in the army with many soldiers falling prey to it. This small army was intercepted at Azincourt by the huge French army of about 30,000. Unbelievable it may sound, but the English won this battle with as few as 200 casualties whilst the French lost about 5000 men.

The battle of Azincourt established the power of England and the claim of Henry V but more than anything else it was a battle for Honour and Pride, which were the only motivating factors for the demoralized and suffering army of England when it faced the mighty French Army. This battle reinstated the notion that a battle is never won by numbers,its won by will and the English army proved this through its bravery and resilience as it faced the sea of French Army.

This book also provided a lot of knowledge on the importance and use of Long Bows in the war (English Archers were the main reason England could win this war).I was amazed to find that Long Bows used to weigh atleast 120 Pounds and the Archers who used them had powerful arm,shoulder and back muscled developed by years of training and practice (an archer started training from childhood!!).

All and all an amazing read...a battle that has been celebrated by the English ever since it happened...as Shakespeare put it "We Few....We Happy Few"