Aqsa

“An ambassador is an honest man sent abroad to lie for his country“

-Henry Wotton.

Cosmologist Stephen Hawking tasting weightlessness on a zero gravity flight that allowed the leading expert on gravity to briefly escape from his wheelchair.

“For most of history, Anonymous was a woman”

-Virginia Woolf.

Received this image in a forwarding mail.

Actions speak louder than words?
This ain’t some Photo Shop fantasy. Try googling with keywords: President Bush eating a cat.

After the bloodshed at Virginia Tech… a shoot out in NASA… a man intending to make the Virginia massacre look “mild�, by threatening to go on a “killing spree� in schools in Yuba city and Marysville… north of California and the US Presidential contender Republican John McCain singing, “bomb bomb bomb Iran�… I guess Americans seriously need help!

Instead of bombing others and plunging in to wars one after the other the Bush junior must spare sometime for his own electorate. The US is turning out to be a belligerent state and it is high time it should start thinking of the after-effects of war on its own countrymen if it cannot feel the pain of others!

Violence begets violence!

I have all my sympathies to the common people of the country in question, which is pointlessly being thrown into war. People want peace be it America or some third world country. No nation on the face of the earth is invincible even if it’s the biggest superpower of the world. Something or the other can create tribulations and in this case is the inner randomness in the minds of the Americana youth. Too much violence leads to hysteria, which is evident from a number of such cases that happened in America, time and again.

August 1966: Charles Whitman killed 15 people and wounded 31 at University of Texas campus in Austin.

March 1998: Two boys aged 13 and 11 killed 4 students and a teacher at Westside Middle School in Jonesboro, Arkansas.

April 1999: Two students killed 12 other students and a teacher at Columbine High school in Littleton, Colorado, before killing themselves.

January 2002: A student dismissed from Appalachian school of Law in Virginia killed the Dean, a professor and a student, wounded 3 others.

September 2006: A drifter took six female high school students hostage in Bailey, Colorado; molested them, then shot one to death and killed himself.

(Source: TOI)

I wonder what kind of a “fancy� term can be given to such issue less killings of innocents. Humanity needs empathy and compassion instead of coldness that’s dragging humanity towards annihilation.

“It’s a folly to be wise, where ignorance is bliss”

-Anon.

Stuck!
Now and always
Suffocating, helpless, desperate
Struggling to escape
To be free
To fly away
To the red planet
Away, somewhere…
Just anywhere…
All efforts… in vain
Alas!
There is a dearth of wings
Wings, strong wings
Not Daedalus’ wings
Breaking through all shackles
Tugging at those
Innumerable chains that bind
Some, thin like the charkha’s cotton thread
Broken with ease
Some like those that bind a convict
To the executioner’s chair
Impossible to break lose
Myself… writhing in pain
No matter what I do
How hard I try
I know I can’t
Destiny, fate, determine it all!
My thoughts, my actions
Deeds
All predetermined!
They stand stagnant still grubby
Rotting dead
Flee I must
I don’t know where
May be… just anywhere
Perhaps… to the red planet
Or may be in the deep dark woods
To hide inside a bush
Now and always
Depressed, disillusioned, at the doldrums I stand
Now convinced that
All is fake
Nothing exists that seems to exist
Flee I must
Away from all maladies
Somewhere
Just anywhere

-Sudipta Mukherji
(Adapted from the annual magazine “Hans� of Hans Raj College)

The fact that Muslims need reforms in each and every sphere of life is an open truth. Education being the most important one. When it comes to education, I need not give any stats to prove one simple fact that Muslims have a long way to go. Still, education for Muslims is the most politicized one. We have seen enough of drama about the minority status of the most revered educational institution for Muslims in India, i.e. the Aligarh Muslim University. In no time, questions were raised about the seat reservation in Jamia because it offers a 50% reservation for Muslims. What I fail to understand is, why only Muslim institutions?

In a country like India, where we have educational institutes run by different religious organizations like the DAV society, which is a chain of schools and colleges run by RSS, the Khalsa schools and colleges and numerous convent educational institutions. Convent schools and colleges too have a 50% reservation for Christian students. Some Convent schools in Delhi offer a seat to a non-Christian student if the family of the student agrees to bear the expenses of a Catholic child for a year. Whereas colleges under the Khalsa board give a preference to Punjabi students. Even those Punjabi students who are lagging behind academically make it to their desired courses in Khalsa. There’s virtually nothing wrong with these institutes if they give preference to students from their own community, the reason as to why only those institutes that prefer Muslims are put to test is hard to understand.
Can we have the same yard sticks please?

Time and again this issue is raised dramatically, soon acid support is gathered from all nooks and corners of India without even thinking about the rest of the minority institutions that enjoy the same status as AMU and Jamia. What’s wrong with the rationale and the conscience of those who think that everything that’s Muslim is going to prove fatal? The secular identity that India brags appears to be a distant dream when such issues are raised.

 

“We meet to create  memories, we part to preserve them”

-Anon.

Well the saying holds good for none other than the female version of Salman Rushdie. Oops! I mean Tasleema Nasreen.The lady takes offence when people in the literary circles describe her as the female version of Rushdie. But why is she taking them so seriously?Anyways, the most interesting thing about the woman is the delusion in which she thrives.

She contemplates,

“We don’t need any shariat courts; we don’t need any religious code in a democratic and secular country. What we need is a common civil code. I don’t think shariat courts are civilized, women suffer a lot under it�.

Now a million dollar question is when did she become a part of “we�? My finite knowledge tells me that she still owns a Bangladeshi passport. After the turmoil she created by her boisterous blabbering about Islam and her exile that followed, she took refuge in the land of the free and the liberals… the wild Wild West! Again, she was disowned by her phirang friends, now the poor damsel is in a fix and seeks asylum in India. After two unsuccessful attempts of urging the Indian government to grant her Indian citizenship, this is her third endeavor. I guess someone needs to remind her that she is still a Bangladeshi with no legal rights to poke her nose into matters that concern

India and Indians. She is only trying to fish in troubled waters. Her over indulgence in our internal matters will only add fuel to the flame. If she understands the depth of her own proclamation,

“I want to make the state secular and humanistic�.

Then she should stop poking her nose in something as personal and individualistic as religion. She is just cutting a sorry figure by taking advantage of the already disturbed atmosphere in India.

My only advice to the lady is to get over her childhood nightmares!