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According to this link you can charge your cellphone when you are running. There is this company that has introduced a charger that gives you a one-hour charge for walking for six hours. This may seem like a lot of effort for a charge of just one hour but it is a great way of charging your cellphone when there is no electricity around and you have to walk a lot. This device can be especially useful in rural India where people have to walk for long miles even to fetch water. But you may ask do such people have cellphones? Maybe not.
The technology will be more beneficial if such energy can be derived from other movements too (no, I knew you would think like that, but I’m not talking about bowel movement), for instance cycling, swings in the park, walking cattle, newsreaders, and all those movements that are prolonged and consistent. With millions of cellphones in circulation just imagine how much electricity can be saved by such motion based charging.
Update (08-25-2008): Just read Arundhati Roy’s article in which she says that Kashmir needs azaadi from India. She’s quite a hateful (I mean, she hates) person as far as this country and Hinduism goes. She is full of spite and it drips through her every sentence. I’m not saying you cannot question the policies of the country you live in and cannot dislike a particular religion (many dislike Islam, and Christianity) and I’m not even saying that people like her should be persecuted, but you can see she doesn’t mean well for Muslims as well as Hindus. Incidentally, I found this text:
The Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act of 1967, amended in 2004-05, says, "Secession of a part of the territory of India from the Union includes the assertion of any claim to determine whether such part will remain a part of the territory of India." The offences listed under this law include any assertion or statement "which is intended, or supports any claim, to bring about, on any ground whatsoever, the cession of a part of the territory of India or the secession of a part of the territory of India from the Union, or which incites any individual or group of individuals to bring about such cession or secession".
A good thing about our country is that you can speak up your mind without scores of fanatics stalking you and vying to decapitate you, and people like Arundhati Roy know it well, and that is why – since they need targets to feel important and relevant – they chose soft targets. Everybody knows what a bloody history the Muslims have had and – I hate to talk like this but the fact smacks at your face with amplified clarity almost everyday – the expression Islam and peaceful co-existence is an oxymoron. Salman Rushdie and Taslima Nasreen took up cudgels against Islam and you have seen what happened to them. Arundhati Roy, on the other hand, couldn’t even spend a single day in jail in order to take a stand. She knows pretty well that Hindu fanatics are not going to come after her throat, and she knows that there are many obfuscated and somnambulantly liberated people in the country, and abroad, who are going to support her views.
I’m not writing this to badmouth about a community – this is the last thing I want to do – but as a religion, you can only progress if you can indulge in self analysis and rectification, and this is anathema in Islam. And people who support Islam blindly and criticize other religions irrationally are in actuality doing it a great harm. In Sikhism there is this great saying (written, interestingly, by Bhagat Kabir Das):
Sura so pahchaniye jo lare deen ke he
The real warrior-champion is that who fights for the oppressed. These days it has become a fashion to side with Muslims and Christians – at least in India – even when they commit the worst human crimes; by dint of no possible logic they can be viewed as oppressed. It has become kind of a peer pressure. The majority has, all of a sudden, turned into the Gestapo and every minority is like the Jews in Germany; which is totally wrong. They are playing a dangerous game and every right-thinking person in the country should actively oppose such subversive activities.
The Indian state as usual is at its pusillanimous best. I’m wondering how dare a Pakistani flag be waved on the Indian territory. Such people should be immediately shot, and I’m not saying it in anger. You take your flag to another territory (disregard the Olympics and other international events) when you have taken over that territory. If they want to hoist Pakistani flags and want to chant slogans like Jeevey Jeevey Pakistan. Long live Pakistan, then they should be either put behind bars or packed off to Pakistan. They should be slapped and told: no Pakistani flag on the India-occupied territory. It sucks? Yes, it does; too bad.
The older post follows:
Reading this article in the New York Times, you’ll feel what a repressive regime the Indian government is, and how an average Kashmiri craves for azaadi, and is ready to die for it.
A few waved Pakistani flags. Some shouted praise for Lashkar-e-Taiba, the banned Pakistan-based militant organization that India blames for a series of terrorist attacks in recent years. “India, your death will come,” they chanted. “Lashkar will come. Lashkar will come.”
Another mass gathering, however, is planned for Friday at the martyrs’ cemetery, where two generations of those killed in the conflict are buried, with all the potential to become yet another flash point of conflict.
“Before the storm, there is always a calm,” a Kashmiri woman, Assabah Khan, 34, declared. “The uprising we see now is the latent anger against the Indian state that has erupted again.”
Mehmeet Syed, who only a few months ago could sing her heart out on stage with her five-piece rock band, remained caged in her home, as her city erupted in a series of fiery protests and strikes. On the road leading to the Syed family home, children guarded a homemade roadblock the other day, clutching stones.
On Monday, on the edges of an open field where tens of thousands had gathered to vent their anger at Indian rule, Abdul Gani Mir, 62, marveled at a young man who had scaled a chinar tree to plant a green Islamic flag.
Mr. Mir said being here filled him with hope. “We succumbed, but I don’t think this generation will,” he said, and then he chuckled. “I wish I were young.”
His niece was among 20 unarmed Kashmiri protesters killed by Indian security forces last week, as they set off on a march to Muzaffarabad, in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir.
Sheik Yasir Rouf, 27, said he had never before taken part in a demonstration so large, so intense. He was a child in the early 1990s, when the anti-Indian rebellion was at its peak. “This feeling was always there,” he said. “We are fighting for our one right to be free.”
A BBC article on the similar lines (OK, I know someone is going to say that both have been, surprise, surprise, written by Bengali writers).
The paralysed nature of the talks seemed bearable since the insurgency in Indian-administered Kashmir since 1990 ebbed during these years.
The valley’s population feels that their homeland is essentially occupied, and harbours a deep sense of oppression over several decades and generations by Indian governments.
This powerful sense of unmitigated grievance was triggered by yet another ’slight’ - the decision to transfer land without any consultation with the valley’s people.
Although the second article is a bit unbiased. I was just wondering, in the international press, why don’t we find articles explaining the Indian side. I use the expression “explaining” because I see this propaganda going on unabated and it is not being cleverly countered.
The immense power of this song lies in these two lines:
Mein man ko mandir kar daloon tu pujan ban jaa
Mandir se puja ka rishta mein na bhoolungi
Translation: “Let me make my heart into a temple, and let you be a prayer; I’ll never forget the kinship between a temple and a prayer.”
Arundhati Roy (had a brobdingnagian crush on her when I was single) apparently set people in a frenzy (either she intends it, or such reactions manifest spontaneously) by declaring India needs azaadi from Kashmir as much as Kashmir needs azaadi (freedom) from India. She’s the favorite intellectual villain, for, even the luminaries like Vir Singhvi and Jag Surya (I think he should stick to humor – he’s damn good at it) expressed similar sentiments but didn’t elicit matching vitriol. Perhaps it was the venue: Arundhati Roy said it in Kashmir, in the thick of the happening action, in front of a crowd that had just marched to the UN office demanding independence from India. The point is not that.
A healthy debate means taking a balanced view. It’s no use fuming and frothing the moment something contrary is expressed. Let’s for once think as a person and not as an Indian; what’s good for India and Kashmir? Is it healthy for India for Kashmir to remain a part of it or we’ll be better off without the valley and its recalcitrant-but-otherwise-peaceful people? It’s not about ego, it’s not about national pride (people get confused between national pride and jingoism), and it’s not about further disintegration. It’s about what’s wrong and what’s right for the greater good. What does India stand to lose if Kashmir goes to Pakistan?
- India’s image as a multi-religion, secular, united, etc., etc., country will be destroyed forever
- A beautiful piece of land – heaven on earth – will go to the arch enemy giving it unparalleled satisfaction and bringing to our people great, long-lasting ignominy
- Other separatist groups will get a moral boost and the country will be pushed upon the brink of balkanization
- Bollywood people won’t be able to shoot there (I guess they haven’t been doing that for decades anyway)
- Lots of non-Kashmiri-non-Muslim people will have to be brought to the remaining Indian territory and rehabilitated
- A few other things I cannot think of (please add them in the comment section)
Will there be gains too? Again, please enlighten me.
So you can see it would be a Herculean task to let Kashmir secede to Pakistan, of all countries. More than economic, it’ll be psychological loss. Right now I wonder how much Kashmir financially contributes, rather, I think it’s a white elephant, with so much expense, both human and financial. Crores of rupees are spent to keep the army there, so many of our soldiers have been needlessly killed trying to protect a hostile territory and so much violence seeps into the main land from the valley.
I think if the Kashmiri’s are so eager to join Pakistan just because it’s a Muslim country and Muslims feel safer there, they should be asked to go to Pakistan. Why is it whenever Muslims want to leave India they want to take a big chunk of land with them (as it happened back in 1947)? Many people will give reference to history and say Kashmir belongs to Kashmiri Muslims. Historically, I mean, really historically, Kashmir was a place where Hindus lived, and in fact, the entire Hindukush region belonged to Hindus, and if not Hindus, then certainly not Muslims (there were Jains, Buddhists and others). Muslims came here, mostly forcibly, and settled here. Now if they want to go, they should simply go, leaving the land behind, and I think India will be more than happy to oblige.
This may seem like an unconventional thought, but it’s not. It’ll be a logical culmination: the righting of a millennium of wrongs.
Communal situations, like what’s happening in Jammu and Kashmir in the wake of the Amarnath trust land allocation controversy, should be handled with a mix of firmness and empathy. No side should be favored, no side should be feared, and no side should be targeted. This gives the government a moral high ground, both nationally and internationally. Elements that instigate people from both the sides should be rounded up and packed off to a secret location, and should be kept there until tempers cool down and a compromise is worked out.
The country should also communicate its consistent policies to the international community. Communication is very important under such circumstances.
The problem of Jammu and Kashmir is quite complicated; it is old, it is communal and it incites passion amidst various national and anti-national groups. I don’t have a firm understanding of the situation, but no country likes to give up territory, whether it’s controversial or clean, even if it becomes a thorn, as it can be seen in many other countries. So what’s the solution? Treat those people as your very own. All the legitimate demands of the Kashmiri people should be met with. Also, people who had to flee the valley, for instance the Kashmiri Pandits, should be rehabilitated back there with full security. Mono-religious areas give rise to countries or ghettos. In order to stop Kashmir from turning into a ghetto and a terrorist hub like Afghanistan, people from other religions should be encouraged to buy property (I think currently it’s not allowed) there and settle down. Of course there will be resistance, even from other countries. But this is how revolutionary steps are taking – not everybody needs to agree.
This article refers to a study that has concluded that married couples who have no kids are happier than those who have kids. Although this is an America-based study, I wonder if it applies to parents from all backgrounds. Having kids surely comes with its attached baggage of troubles but so does not having kids. Having a kid is a life-altering event, and in the cases where the birth is not just an accident of having sex, it is a highly courageous and responsible step.
I agree with the study that it is our social conditioning in most of the cases that pushes us towards having a child. It’s like, everybody around you has children, and you feel the odd one out for not having one.
The study says:
No group of parents—married, single, step or even empty nest—reported significantly greater emotional well-being than people who never had children. It’s such a counterintuitive finding because we have these cultural beliefs that children are the key to happiness and a healthy life, and they’re not.
Personally I feel it depends on your situation. It’s better not to have kids if all the time you are going to feel miserable and make their lives miserable too. In fact I know some parents who should be arrested for having kids.
Alka and I have a daughter, and it sometimes feel we’ve never had a life of our own for a long time, but the joy she brings to us is also incomparable, and I’m not saying it just for the heck of saying it. When she is sleeping by my side and when I touch her the entire softness of the world fuses into that moment and I feel that life couldn’t be more beautiful and content.
Abhinav Bindra
Okay, I know the heading sounds like a newspaper heading but being not a great sports fan (at least right now), I cannot conjure up some esoteric heading. Having said that, it was great to hear the national anthem while the Tricolor slowly ascended.
This is a true, inspiring individual feat and the nation has tagged along, as it always happens in India. Bring forward at least one individual other than his family and his coach who was instrumental in this feat. True, Abhinav represented India, but how much did “India” actually contribute, to be so happy and gung-ho about his Olympic gold medal? Did the government help him? Did the society encourage him? The sad thing about India is that people want to see success, but they don’t participate in the struggle involved with that success. Alka was just telling me that once he wanted to import a few guns for training and he was not allowed to do that. In Chandigarh there are no proper facilities for the training he required so his affluent family prepared the training facility (of International standards) at home so that he could train. Now since the government is so happy, why didn’t it provide the needed facilities and equipments? Now since we are so happy, why don’t we put pressure on the government when our sportspersons don’t get the facilities they so desperately need? Almost every state government is rewarding him with millions of rupees and many public sector and private companies and organizations are announcing rewards for him. Why cannot the same amount of money be spent on other struggling sportspersons if we are so much in love with getting gold medals. As Indians we very conveniently rejoice and feel proud when an Indian does great in an International competition, but when it comes to contributing while that Indian is training, we quickly look away. I wonder why there is so much inferiority complex and callousness.
I would have certainly felt proud if we collectively had contributed towards Abhinav’s great success. I’m really, really happy for him as an individual, and I’m also happy that Indians are happy and have a reason to feel proud, but it stops there. Good for him, and I hope he inspires present and future generations and I also hope he causes doors of opportunities to open for other struggling sportspersons – they will be the true mark of pride and joy. You can read more about him at Alka’s blog, and here’s Abhinav’s blog.
Technorati Tags: Abhinav Bindra, Indian Olympic gold medalist
We saw My Sassy Girl (with English subtitles) a few months ago. It’s an excellently made Korean romantic comedy about an engineering student and a girl who has just broken up with her boyfriend. The script, the acting, and the actors looked so fresh and innocent. So yesterday it was a big shock when I exclaimed “It’s a My Sassy Girl remake” even when Mallika Sherawat hadn’t shown up even once, while just beginning to watch Ugly Aur Pagli. They have so blatantly copied the movie, frame by frame, that you can make out the moment the guy’s mother (one of the first scenes) yells at him on the phone. We were so put off that we stopped watching the movie after 15 minutes.
Of course there is a big difference between the original actors in My Sassy Girl and the stale-looking Ranvir Shauri and Mallika Sherawat in Ugly Aur Pagly. Ranvir Shauri no-way looks a young engineering student and Mallika Sherawat over-does whatever she’s trying to do. I really recommend that you watch My Sassy Girl because it’s one of the most original romantic film scripts.
I wonder how much the script writer of Ugly Aur Pagli got paid for “writing” the script. If it’s this easy to become a successful Hindi script writer, I can give them 10 scripts every week after downloading them from online script archives.
After the recent blasts in Bangalore and Ahmadabad I was wondering why there haven’t been major terrorist attacks in the USA after the 9/11 bombings, and why here in India we become targets on a routine basis? We have silly, fumbling ministers, but so do the Americans, so what’s the big difference? I think the big difference is the reaction, a bit of tact, continued surveillance, and of course, the scale of population.
Immediately after the 9/11 bombings America mounted a full-fledged attack on Afghanistan, the citadel of the Taliban at that time. It was a natural reaction; the attack originated from Afghanistan, and so Afghanistan had to bear the brunt (no, I’m not justifying it). Iraq met with the same crooked fate, and even Iran knows, no matter how many ululations its leaders throw at the world in general, that it can be attacked any time. All fundamentalist countries know that they are going to be attacked sooner or later due to their support and sympathy for various terrorist organizations. When you know your home can be hit too, you think twice before hitting another’s home. A single attack has turned Osama into a fugitive, about to die like a rat hiding in a hole. No matter how much they love their heavens and no matter how much they lust for the virgins, the jihadis too fear for their lives when they are chased.
Recently someone told me that the Americans are not allowing new Muslims to enter the country; they simply don’t give them visas. They haven’t made this public and don’t pursue this policy openly and in fact officially they deny this fact. I don’t know if it is true. This is unfortunate, but it does make an impact. I’m not saying that an entire community should be targeted, but the problem is when all major terrorist activities effervesce from a single community and when a significant segment of its population condones violence for religion, you cannot blame governments for following such draconian policies. After all every government needs to protect its citizens and property and cannot (shouldn’t) jeopardize its citizens lives’ just to gain some praises from clueless or politically motivated human rights and civil liberty groups.
In India the somnolent law and order machinery wakes up only when there are a few blasts or terrorist attacks, and after every attack things go back to normal and nobody gives a damn who comes and does what. Result: one blast after another.
India has daunting population and it is simply not possible for the police to monitor all the spots and every individual. As citizens we have to put up a united front and be vigilant at all times. This is because it’s we who have to pay when blasts happen. Scores of lives are lost and hundreds are maimed in a single instance. Just imagine yourself having a good time doing shopping or eating out in your favorite market and in a single second a few of your family members are gone forever and you have lost both your legs. Such tragedies can be averted if we are a little more aware of our surroundings.
The party and ideology that he has served for 40 years has expelled Somnath Chatterjee because he does not want to denigrate the position of the Speaker of Lok Sabha. This is a rare phenomenon among Indian politicians who are used to covering in front of their bosses and madams rather than taking a stand, whether they are prime ministers, finance ministers, home ministers or having any other prominent portfolio.
The people of the country shouldn’t feel surprised at the Left’s decision. The communists are nothing but stubborn kids. They never grew up, and they mainly thrive on misery and disorder. They remind me of Lord of the Flies.
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