Desi In Toronto

Well, what can one say about this franchise? J.K Rowling made more than USD 220 million dollars even before the book was released and an additional USD 200 million immediately after it’s release on one book!! The thrill of receiving a copy of the latest Harry Potter can rarely be equaled by any thing these days. I cannot remember the last time I checked for the delivery man every 15 minutes (I had my copy delivered to me from Amazon). I had to wait for a few days as my 17 year old cousin wanted to read it before me and I am usually a sucker for a pppppllllleeeeeeeeeeeeeaaase!!!

The first 3 quarters of the book was pretty standard stuff. The usual quiditch matches, the usual giants, the usual death eaters etc. etc. and just when I thought "oh no, there she goes on the same track as the 5th book", BAAAAM all of a sudden there was action everywhere. By the end of the book all the pieces fell into place and the 7th book was set-up. Harry Potter finally knows what he must do and, more importantly, knows how to do it.

It was pretty obvious from the tone of the book that there was again going to be a death. And it was pretty obvious who it was going to be. But the end was still surprising. I kept repeating to myself for a few days that there has to be a reason why the person died the way he did. There must be a reason. In fact, a lot of my co-readers agreed that there was more than meets the eye in the death of the concerned person.

This was also the only book so far in which Harry Potter was right about all his suspicions. JKR has made him a goofy character who is good at heart, loves his friends and teachers but none the less is no Sherlock Holmes. But in this book, he is correct most of the time and is quite confident of himself by the end of it.

All in all a much better book than the Order Of Phoenix. That book was not at all good. After the heights JKR reached with Goblet of Fire, there had to be one that was not up to the standards of the franchise. But this 6th book has set the scene quite nicely and given direction and a lot to look forward to with the 7th book. And I can hardly wait!!

This morning while going to work I noticed an unattanded bag lying in the middle of the bus on a seat. And all of a sudden the horrors of London and Madrid came crashing into my head. What if?

The bag was so innocent that I would not have given it a second look but if not forthe London and Madrid bombings. How many people had seen such a bag in the trainsand buses or how many had seen fellow passengers with bags similar to their’s and look the other way? What was going through the minds of such people? Didthey realise that their lives would be over in a few seconds? Or that theirlives would be changed forever?

It’s very hard to fathom what can drive a bomber to commit such a heinous crime. LTTE perfected the art of suicide bombers before it was taken up by other militants organisations. LTTE usually chose a victim of government’s anti-terror policies as the suicide bomber. The bomber-to-be was filled with idealogies of the LTTE and the suffering that the bomber-to-be went through because of the government and that’s how they got a live bomber. The most famous example being Dhanu who was raped by Indian soldiers during the Indian Peace Keeping Force exercises in Sri Lanka. She took the ultimate revenge by detonating herself while touching Rajiv Gandhi’s feet at an election rally. Rajiv Gandhi was largely considered to have been blamed for sending the IPKF force to Sri Lanka by the LTTE.

The recruiting tactics have not changed but the targetted bombers-to-be are increasinglynot the victims but rather who perceive their religion to be a victim. Discounting the suicide bombers from the Gaza strip, most of the suicide bombers of today are fellowmembers of a religion who think (and to a degree, are right) that their religion is under attack by the west. And to fight back they must hit where it hurts the most and that is the civilian population of the west. I cannot even imagine how a suicide bomber is recruited. I can imagine that to convert an 18 year old to do this horrendous jobis to play on his/her impressionable mind but for a 30 year old with a wife and kidto support….I cannot think why such a person would do it. Are our religions so powerful that brain washing a sane, educated person is possible? Have we as a populationbecome so dependent on religion that we would blindly follow a path chosen by otherswithout consideration to what the consequences are?

The London bombings proved to be more determental to the cause of the bombers thanif they had tried to show their fellow citizens on how to lead peaceful and loving lives. This just goes to show that what Voltaire said was true :-

“The first religion was created when the first fool met the first scoundrel”

I take the bus to the station from where I then take the train to downtown. On the bus the drivers always have their radios on and it is kept at high volume. The radio is used by the drivers to keep a track of all the conversations going on regarding traffic in various parts of the city, problems with buses, passengers etc. The passengers in first 2 or 3 rows generally cannot help but listen to all the conversations which is where I usually sit as I have to get off the bus as soon as it arrives at the station. The conversations are usually light hearted with most of the drivers on a first name basis with each other and always pulling each other’s leg. But every once a while I hear some south Asian on the radio (it is fairly obvious from the accent) and immediately notice the differences. The person always peppers his/her sentences with ’sirs’ and the tone is always deferential. There is no attempt at humour and whatever humour is thrown at them seems to go ignored.

I have noticed this change in attitude among many of my fellow Asians whenever they are talking to white folk in Canada and the US. Why? Was the servility so ingrained by the British into our brains during the pre-independence days that it’s impossible to get rid of now? What’s the way out of this conundrum? I don’t think there is any way out of it. Even though South Asians and East Asians surge economically and are likely to be in a better place than their western counterparts in another 50 years or so, this inferiority complex will not go away soon. It will probably be many generations before this complex is laid to rest. I am happy to see, however, that the Asians born in North America or Europe are not aware of this issue. And with the growing Asian population in these regions, there is hope for the current generation to rid itself of this servile attitude.

Have you ever had a moment in your life where you know that this moment represents a change in your outlook or change in direction of your life?

I have had 4.

1. When my folks caught me pinching money from them.

   I didn’t change over-night, I am not that clear a thinker. It took me about two years or so to realise the “wrongness” of the action. I think I learned that the consequences of an action is my sole responsibility and over the years I have tried to keep my actions in check to make sure that whatever I do keeps my conscience clear. So far it’s helped me a lot although my folks still keep refering to that incident again and again.

2. When I lost my job in Delhi.

   I was just out of college and joined a company which paid it’s employees excellent salaries. The money went to my head and I became quite irresponsible in my work. I was fired in a few months and had to go without a job for almost 4 months or so. Those 4 months were the most difficult months of my life. I learnt that work brings dignity, work brings satisfaction and work defines who you are to the society. After I got a job with another company (which was a the lowest paying job there), I focussed entirely on learning my new job and was rewarded amply after a year.

3. When I met my wife.

   Things just fell into place perfectly. You know how we Indians keep complaining about “arranged marriage”? The truth is that sometime it works out really well. When I first went out with my future wife to a restaurant I knew right in the first few minutes that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with this woman. I think to date that was one of the very few moments of clarity I have had.
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4. Whenever I look at my daughter.

   Honestly, there are moments when my daughter just drives me up the wall with frustration. It’s at those times I think why oh why do people have kids. But immediately after when she kisses me and hugs me (probably to re-assure herself), I know that my daughter is an extention of myself and my wife The love I feel for her just brings a warm feeling to my heart and a the feeling that everything in this world is perfect. Of course, then she tips over the glass of water I just gave her!!

What about you?

I cannot even imagine what the Londoners are going through at this moment. Such indiscriminate attack, to cause maximum casualty, is by far the most intense form of terrorism. This kind of a terrorist attackis more common in Iraq, Middle East and South Asia but not in a western city. 911 was a shocker. No one expected that kind of audacity from the terrorists and I think I can safety say that nothing like that would happen again.

But who can stop determined suicide bombers like the ones in Madrid and London? It cannot be done militarily. Israel has been trying that for years and it has not worked. The only solution is political. At the moment some disenfranchised youth from Middle East want to inflict some sort of damage to the west because they perceive that the west is causing immense harm to their region. The solution is to engage in an honest political process to convince these youths to give up their extreme religious views and embrace political progress. Very easy to say but very, very, very difficult to follow through. But it can be done.

Even political solutions are temporary. There will always be some terrorists born in some corner of the world no matter how politically stable the world is. One man’s utopia is another man’s hell. Ladies and gentlemen, terrorism is here to stay.

Time and time again we have to face this question. Why is it that the root of all humankind, the continent with abundant resources, the place with a plethora of intelligent people, has perpetually been in so much trouble?

Aids, war, poverty have ravaged that continent. Countries like Zambia and Zimbabwe were well to do by the time the British left in the 70s. But in the past few decades they have become more and more poor and are now a shadow of what they were earlier. Countries like Nigeria and Uganda which have vast resources within their borders are burdened with civil war like conditions. South Africa, the only success story, now has the largest aids population in the world (although it is going to be overtaken by India soon). Sudan is in a perpetual grip of war and famine. Egypt, moderately successful, has terrorism problems which just don’t seem to go away.

Why do these problems keep on occuring in Africa? To answer this we should look at brief generic history of Africa.

Africa was the big unknown a couple of centuries ago. It was the last territory never to be explored on a large scale. What’s beyond the great deserts of Sahara? Where does the Nile begin? What could be found in the forests of mid-Africa? With these intriguing questions began the rape of Africa.

The plunder of Africa by the west is truly astonishing. Slavery began in 1500s and peaked in 1800s as the commercial needs of Europe and (especially) America rose at the same time. These strange black people were seen as a commodity to be traded freely. No matter which way you look at slavery, it was a Holocaust of immense proportions. Recently the western governements have been trying to brush this period under the carpet with justifications which sound hollow. But keep this in mind, the period between 1800 to early last century represents a plunder of the continent off it’s most precious resource….people.

Along with slavery, corporations from the west came into Africa and began to strip the continent of it’s abundant resources. This has also continued till date even though the methodology has changed a bit. Africa has been run for the past 3 centuries or so as a profit centre of the west similar to the way India was run by the East India Company.

Along with slavery and the ownership of the resources by western co-orporations, the west also brought in western style politics. Although this style has been adopted with some success in India, it never really took off in Africa. Why? Is it because Africans do not understand democracy? Is it because the concept it too alien for Africans? The answer to both questions is “NO”.

So we come back to today.

To answer the previous questions of why democracy never took off in Africa let’s look at India. In case of India, the circumstances from 1857 to 1947 were such that it led to a strong participation by Indians as a whole to acceptance of the concept of a democratic India (keep in mind that the concept of a nation was also alien to Indians). That’s one of the problems in Africa. There is no consensus by majority of Africans in Africans states about the idea of an what kind of government is required. I think there is a lot of desire to be able to choose your own government but that desire is superseeded by a desire to find the next meal or to sustain your family. Until and unless there is an improvement in the lives of average Africans, there will be just muted demands for democracy.

Which brings us back to how to improve the lives of the average Africans. This cannot be done without a strong government. A strong government by today’s standard is a democratically elected government which will implement policies to better the lives of the country’s citizens. This is easier said than done. The policies to better the lives of the population are always hard in the short term. The government would have to be a stable one to be able to see the country through the transition. Which means a semi-autocratic style of government is required, especially in the inital period.

And this is what happened in each country in Africa i.e. a single party came to power which put it in unique position to implement policies to bring about stable governance. And in each case (Zambia, Zimbabwe, Zaire, Egypt, Moroco, Nigeria, Angola etc.), this opportunity was lost because the single party never let go of it’s power when demanded by the citizen’s. Which in turn meant that to keep the citizen’s happy, help by the west was sought in form of money (and the west never gives anything for free). Soon the western coporations were entrenched in the economies of the African countries. More loans meant more debt which in turn meant more loans and more debt. Thus, began the first slide to poverty and hardships with rising control of the west over the economies of the countries. At this point if the countries would have turned to democracy, the situation might have been different but a lot countries went on the wrong track. Industries were nationalised, constiutions were changed to control unrest, opposition was curbed and at the same time let west (in the form of IMF, World Bank etc.) dictated terms over the running of African economies. This stew of volatile mixture time and time again erupts. The civil war in Rawanda was a blame game by the dominant tribe over the hardships that the country was facing as a whole (something akin to Nazis blaming Jews for their economic hardships in the early 30s).

To me the problem in Africa is all political. Each country in the continent seems to be grappling with the issue of a stable and strong government representative of all sides of the respective country. And this is where the west needs to step in. They need to guide the countries into a stable political environment. At the moment the political will is being over-ridden by the corporations which are making and have the potential to make a huge sum of money from the continent in it’s current state. The moment a good government comes along, the looting will have to be stopped. The western leaders need to be strong but unfortunately the strength comes from the people of the western countries. So until and unless there isn’t a strong demand by the western countries’ citizens to help Africa, nothing is going to happen there. And looking by the current response from the average people obsessed by Iraq, Afganistan, Middle East, China etc. it is not going to happen some time soon.

Let’s hope things change soon. Once I get my citizenship, I will be pressing my MP again and again on this issue.

This is a must see. The images are of the impactor released by Deep Impact at the speed of 10 km/s into a comet (Tempel 1). Click over to the video section to see the actual impact. It’s truly awesome. The scientists at JPL and NASA hope that the impact will give some insight into the origins of the comet and might even help understand the origin of the solar system.

Although not as big an event as the moon landing, this event does show the technical prowess of NASA and JPL. This impact is akin to a bullet striking a bullet and to be able to achieve it and record the event is truly inspiring. NASA has been an inspiration in space exploration for a number of decades. And to think that some time ago there was a call from a section of the public to reduce the budget of NASA. Thank god Bush prevailed (probably because some of the biggest contracts come from space exploration activities - I know there is nothing good I can say about Bush!!) and a “new era in space exploration” was announced by him during his first term.

Where do we come from? Why are we here? Are we just an accident of nature or are we a process that’s been duplicated elsewhere in space?

These are questions which I think have been around…..uh, lets see…..forever. I am sure that the greats like Galileo, Newton and Einstein started their brilliant careers with generic versions of these questions. I don’t know why there are some people out there who don’t want to know answers to the above questions. Don’t you want to know if our bodies are actually stardust? Don’t you want to know what will happen to our sun after 5 billion years? Don’t you want to know if black holes exist? Don’t you want to know if it’s possible to travel all the way to the stars? I do. And I for one am very happy that NASA is leading the way to seek answers to these questions.