Wifey, Sunita, sets up her US immigration law practice

Last updated on: March 2, 2008 at 4:54 pm By Desh Kapoor

In the last few days, I was not only fighting to bring back drishtikone.com but also helping my wife set up her law office. After years of working in the immigration law field and having completed her Masters in Law from NYU, she passed the NY bar. Now she is ready to set up shop and I am helping her out with the office and her web site. Here is a small ad. This is Visa season and the visas will be filed until March before the quota runs out. So, if you or your friend owns an IT consulting firm and want to get visas done, please contact Sunita (713-383-8878/[email protected]). Since she is just starting her office she will have more competitive rates than others. As for her competence, she has experience of doing over 400 visas in the last 2 years for a company with absolutely stellar performance! She has testimonials to back that up and can provide references as well. In any case, its fairly tough for a spouse to talk up another so much, but I can tell you that she is one of the better immigration attorney minds that I have come across. So, I would highly recommend her! Read more

Musharraf makes ordinary Pakistani pay for his expensive jaunt!

Last updated on: March 2, 2008 at 8:33 am By Desh Kapoor

During the Kargil and thereafter, even though most of us Indians loathed Musharraf, but one could admire his utmost commitment to his cause with a "come what may" type of attitude! I had always believed that he was one person who could truly help Pakistan go past its feudal society and also add that basic honesty of purpose in the nation's elite. Read more

Drishtikone is back (it was hacked into)!

Last updated on: February 29, 2008 at 9:50 pm By Desh Kapoor

Friends - drishtikone is back now. It is still not visible everywhere in the world but it is at least back. We are still not 100% "prime-time-ready" yet, but we are working on it. We should resolve most of the issues by tomorrow. Somehow issues were created by spam trackbacks, which we are resolving so it doesn't happen again! Thanks for standing by and encouraging us. Read more

Darul Uloom stands up to the Terrorists and Issues Fatwa against Terrorism

Last updated on: February 26, 2008 at 8:03 pm By Desh Kapoor

For long my grouse with the Moderate Muslims has been that they do say Islam is a peaceful religion, but no one had the guts to stand up to the mischief makers and take the fight where it should be taken. For the first time, a group of Islamic scholars have stood up to the terror minded and said enough is enough. What surprised me was the source. Deoband's Darul-uloom. I have been to that place and to the madrasas being run by it. Let us just say that was not the most progressive minded group when I went there. What they have done now will, however, affect the Islamic world a lot. They have come out categorically to tell the world with a fatwa that Terror and Violence has no place in Islam. Saying this as an opinion was one thing. To dish out a Fatwa is quite another. That is a fatwa that is welcome for a change. I think this act is laudable and is the first meaningful act to save the Muslim world from falling further into the abyss that it is currently. Read more

Overzealous Crime

Last updated on: February 26, 2008 at 7:22 pm By Desh Kapoor

Something is terribly wrong with the air in Mumbai! It no longer produces sane minds. On the heels of the lunacy of Raj Thackeray, here is THE most astonishing crime I have heard or read about! A guy abuses his wife. She calls 3 of her friends to broker peace. Nothing much happens. Wife leaves for her parent's house. But the friends? They are as committed a brokering lot as they come. They find the husband alone one day. Bring kerosene and matches along. Douse him with kerosene and set him on fire. He is in hospital with 35% burns! Now, I can understand that these females have no work to do at home but such overzealousness? If I were the husband of any of these lunatics, I would not even wait to write up the divorce papers. If they can do THIS to their neighbor's hubby, then their own hubbies would be sitting ducks! Read more

Railway notches another record surplus and pays $1 billion dividend to Indian Government

Last updated on: February 26, 2008 at 4:29 pm By Desh Kapoor

There is a always this feeling of uppish-ness in the elites. And those who are raw are generally not looked up at. Laloo Prasad Yadav has not been a stellar personality for most of his life. At best, he is a self serving politician who has lined his owned pocket at the expense of the ordinary poor people. In the rather late game, he comes up with an unbelieveable performance as a Railway minister. A performance that is enough to provide him with a place in Indian polity's Hall of Fame forever. In fact, this is the first time since the Brits created the Indian Railway that we Indians have added something to it! The rise in cash surplus without increasing the tarrifs but taking other measures was unheard of. In fact an outlandish suggestion. But this dimunitive politician from Bihar - that nemesis of a civil operating train system - has done the unbelievable! And in an interesting twist, Railway will pay a dividend of USD 1 billion back to the Indian Government! Read more

A Special girl, Tejaswini, sings at Sa re ga ma pa

Last updated on: February 26, 2008 at 7:13 am By Desh Kapoor

There are many reality shows which showcase mostly commercial things. Saregamapa is special in my eyes. One, it brings real musical talent and whatever people may say, in the end only good singers go out as winners! But even my greatest loyalty to this musical program could not have prepared me for this surprise. Generally, and mostly the film stars come to the show to promote their movies or albums, but here was 2007's most successful Bollywood star, Akshay Kumar, talking about a special girl. She is 18 but she still has a brain development of a 4 year old in social skills. She could not speak until she was 12 years. She used to listen to movie songs and be in her own world. Then at the age of 12, she started singing (without having spoken a word until then!). And SING Tejaswini did! Akshay came to showcase this unfortunate but very specially talented girl. She remembers at least 200 songs by heart and can sing them amazingly! It is difficult to watch all this with dry eyes! Here are two parts of the videos with her. Part I Read more

Youtube, Idol Worship and Fanaticism

Last updated on: February 26, 2008 at 5:16 am By Desh Kapoor

Pakistan's government does not want its people to watch Youtube. Why? Because it has some videos on the Prophet cartoon story. So, they think their youngsters shouldn't be seeing anything on thevideo site including some of the most wonderful videos that can be informative. The madness in closing your mind seems empowering in immediate term but is debilitating thereafter. I am not sure why the Muslims over the centuries do not want to see an image of their Prophet or their God, but I assume its genesis would have been in the negatives of idol worship. And that, in turn, would in the principle (philosophically speaking), be because if you start "capturing" a God in an idol you are basically negating the boundless-ness of God-consciousness. However, who ever came up with this Islamic formulation did not understand another side of the idol worship story: form and name are immaterial - characteristics, however, that you associate with the form or name are more important. Or in other words, how do you define whatever you imagine? Read more

How Jinnah used Ignorance (of the masses) to claim support for his "Two Nation Theory"

Last updated on: February 25, 2008 at 11:39 pm By Desh Kapoor

Some Pakistanis now believe - albeit secretly - that the partition had never happened. Everyone knows partition of India and Pakistan was brought about by the greed of Nehru and Jinnah. But Jinnah's singularly damning role has largely been underplayed in history due to his fortunately Hero-worship in Pakistan. It is a fact that he started the rioting and violence through his "Day of Direct Action" call in July of 1946. Here is an interesting account from the archives of "The Atlantic" where the author at that time was analyzing the craziness of Jinnah's assertion that Muslims will not get enough representation in an Indian democracy. See very carefully how Jinnah used the utter illiteracy of the Muslim masses about the basic democractic norms to exploit their religious insecurities! This article was published in April of 1946. Britain has often been taunted with employing "divide and rule" tactics in India, but the cleverest attempt at dividing and ruling is that of Jinnah. Moslems number only 94.5 millions according to the census of 1941. Compared with the 255 million Hindus, they will always be in a minority in any system of democratically elected bodies. To counter this disability the Moslems, as long ago as 1909, pressed for and secured the electoral device of separate Hindu and Moslem electorates, with seats "reserved" in the legislature on a communal basis. This procedure ensured to Moslems a political representation in excess of their numerical proportions. But it did not satisfy them for long. When Congress ministries took office in seven out of eleven provinces in 1937, Moslem Leaguers (who had polled only 4.6 per cent of the total Moslem vote) were denied any share in the spoils of office. Moslem League propagandists have represented this situation as a denial of their legitimate rights, and as proof of a Hindu determination to dominate India. Read more

"Tere Hundeyan Sundeyan Mehbooba" by Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan

Last updated on: February 25, 2008 at 8:30 pm By Desh Kapoor

This is a very important song/qawwali for me. It has always inspired me to greater thought. I think it best describes the principles of Advaita spirituality. I find it intriguing that somebody could take this advaita thought and then take to such lofty philosophical conclusions is an amazing accomplishment! I have quoted its lines numerously: Anhad di had disdi nahin; had lagdi taan je main howaan. Beautiful lines! Read more