Nandi discussed us Indian being so beholden to the West. Here is Naseeruddin Shah, probably one of the finest actors in India saying the same thing! We have achieved (specially the last generation) so much that there is no need to keep looking to West for feeling good anymore! We just need to assert our worth. "Why these labels? Why do we have to look to the West to recognise our work?," Shah asks reporters at the Osian's Cinefan film festival in the Capital. Read more
A cat at Steere House Nursing and Rehabilitation Center knows when a patient in the center is about to die and curls up near him/her. The cat has been right in 25 cases so far. The cat is the best predictor of death in that center so far. (Nursing home cat can predict impending death) It reminds me of what my mother had told me once, on when someone from a house is about to die, cats start "crying" in front of that house (even when the person who died was in the hospital) - it happened in the case of two deaths in our house. Of course, the cats used to "cry" many times in our neighborhood and I am not sure that someone really died everytime! A US cat that is reportedly able to sense when a nursing home's residents are about to die is baffling doctors.Oscar has a habit of curling up next to patients at the home in Providence, Rhode Island, in their final hours.According to the author of a study in the New England Journal of Medicine, the two-year-old cat has been observed to be correct in 25 cases so far.Staff now alert the families of residents when he sits down next to their ailing loved one."He doesn't make many mistakes. He seems to understand when patients are about to die," David Dosa, a professor at Brown University who carried out the research, told the Associated Press news agency. Read more
A few days back I had brought to you the story of the chance meeting of Swami Vivekananda & Jamshedji Tata and how it affected the future of India in such a profound manner! Here is another story of some compassion and selfless action that gave life and education to two gentlemen in England - who went on to change the world as we know it! A poor Scottish farmer, Fleming, heard a cry for help coming from a nearby bog. He dropped his tools and ran to it. There, mired to his waist in black muck, was a terrified boy, screaming and trying to free himself. Read more
I was recently watching the program on TV about the seven wonders, and what struck me was that even our own Desi Bipasha Basu had to say “Taaj Mahaaal”, and not “Taj Mahel” as it is pronounced. I have constantly been irked by people, especially Indians, who agree with, take pride in speaking in a firangee accent, and even themselves change the pronunciation of things dear to us, even names of our Hindu Gods, to copy the way foreigners speak or write them. The list is endless, but it has now gone beyond the point where it is no longer acceptable. I don’t know when:- Ram became Rama? Read more
Nothing to say. The Cartoon says it all. Powered by Qumana Read more
Here is a nice and informative ilustration from Rediff on the Presidents of India. Read more
Sheila Dixit is by far, one of the best Chief Ministers that any of the Indian state has had in many years! She is a quiet performer and has done miracles in the last few years. Delhi has transformed so much that it is hard to recognize. In the last years - while Bangalore is still working on the ONE flyover near the airport (and even that is a mess!), Delhi meanwhile has built dozens of flyovers and a complete Metro system! In fact, given the monsoon mess in Bombay and inadequate infrastructure in Bangalore, I would argue that Delhi is the ONLY city in India which has a modicum of infrastructure that can withstand any thing! Read more
<img height="264" border="0" width="264" style="float: right" class="" alt="Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket" src="http://i43.photobuc Read more
England is in floods - rare ones! Many people have been evacuated specially in Gloucester and Oxford (BBC update) Says DK Matai on Intentblog: The flooding crisis has broken 60 year records, set in 1947, across England. It continues to get worse as UK's two biggest rivers -- Severn & Thames -- overflow further leaving hundreds of thousands without water & energy across many towns & villages. The total extent can be seen from the two updates that Matai gives: Read more
There is an "epidemic" of sorts in Europe (and Australia). More and more Muslim men are being convicted of rape (often Gang-rape) of European women who dare to stray into Muslim dominated areas unveiled or less than veiled. This barbarism is not just a European issue. Remember Australia's highest cleric and Egyptian-born Mufti, Sheik Taj al-Din al-Hilali equating unveiled women to Uncovered Meat? "If you take out uncovered meat and place it outside on the street, or in the garden or in the park, or in the backyard without a cover, and the cats come and eat it...whose fault is it, the cats or the uncovered meat? The uncovered meat is the problem." Here he was justifying the infamous Sydney gang rapes! Another woman was approached by attackers at the Bankstown train station, who proposed she join them in smoking some marijuana at another location. She was taken to three separate locations by the men, raped 25 times by a total of fourteen men, in an ordeal that lasted six hours. After the attacks the woman was hosed down with a fire hose. The woman, who was known during the trial as 'C' to protect her identity, later told her story to 60 Minutes. She told of how the attackers called her an "Aussie Pig", asked her if "Leb cock tasted better than Aussie cock" and explained to her that she would now be raped "Leb-style" Women were compared to a "private part" by the Prophet himself and lower than men and a danger to them! According to the prophet, a woman in her entirety is just like a private part of sexual temptation and identified her as the greatest danger to the MEN-folks:Muhammad said, "A woman is like a private part. When she comes out the devil holds her high. A woman has ten private parts. When she gets married her husband covers one private part; when she dies the grave covers other nine private parts"… [Al-Ghazali, ibid, volume 2, p.43]Muhammad said, "There will remain no greater danger for the people after my death than women. Fear the world of women." [ibid, volume 3, p.86] Here is a group discussion on this phenomenon: Read more
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