The Sun, the moon and the Stars...
One of my favorite memories from childhood is going to bed and my grandfather reading me bed time stories...there was story of the king and the queen whose children are taken away and how they get them back, then a story about a washer man, lots of tales from China and Russia...and of course when he didn't want to tell me a story and was trying to dodge the bullet...there would be the story of the boy who cried wolf...not one of my favorites :)
But my GrandFather or Baba as we used to call him...did a lot of funny and interesting things with us, he gave us puzzles to solve, math problems to do, i owe my high grades in Math to him, take us for walks and tell us jokes, taught us how to sit in the sun on a cold winter afternoon and eat sugarcane by ripping off the skin with our teeth...eat roasted sweet potato and peanuts...
When we had jaundice, he made sure we didn't eat boring food, so he would improvise with the little that was allowed, and would make us drink that awful papaya juice, he would climb on a ladder, propped against the papaya tree and get the juice out of the fruit! pretty incredible but back then i didn't think so, i would make faces and howl for i disliked this juice so much...now i feel silly having created such a scene even after i knew how much effort he had put into this.
My Baba is the perfect example of the grand parent who spoils his grand children rotten, dreams big for them and loves them so much...
He's one of the biggest reason why I want to go for a vacation to India, I miss sitting with him in the sun and discussing politics or talking on the phone with his clients and helping him decipher some of the game show questions so we could win some prizes...
Grand Parents are a luxury and I am glad I have all these wonderful memories to cherish...
Thursday, January 25, 2007
Monday, January 08, 2007
I spoke with a friend recently after 9 years!!! we spoke briefly and then chatted and i was super-duper nostalgic, remembered the silly jokes we have shared, the giggling sessions we have had, the crushes, the icons, the gossips, the coffees, the shopping, the late nights, the teasing, the families, the clowns, the friends, the class-bunking, the movies....
old friends are like the sunshine after days of rains, or the first rain after a long summer. it's yahoo messenger at 2 am in the night and sipping coffee to stay awake knowing perfectly well that the next day you have to go to work but the fingers dont stop typing and the mind a playground of old memories...
old friends are like the sunshine after days of rains, or the first rain after a long summer. it's yahoo messenger at 2 am in the night and sipping coffee to stay awake knowing perfectly well that the next day you have to go to work but the fingers dont stop typing and the mind a playground of old memories...
Tuesday, January 02, 2007
Capital Punishment
In the past few months, there have been a few instances of sentencing criminals (in the eyes of the said law) to death. And I have been trying to evaluate my thoughts on the subject. Earlier i thought I was against it, for i didn't think that humans had the right to decide if another human had committed a crime and that his life was therefore theirs for playing with. But that was not the only reason for my aversion to this rule, i have often wondered how people could change after a crime, agreed that at the time the crime is committed, it personifies what the person's made of..but if after 5-6 years or more he is punished, is it ever investigated if the person is still the same, if his opinion on the damage he has caused has changed, it's not as though "once a thief, always a thief" or "once a rapist always a rapist".
That was in the past, sure i still think that courts need to re-evaluate a defendant's morals when deciding on a punishment, but i know what my problem with capital punishment has been. I think that the people in the society in which the crime was committed should be the judge of the criminal and how he/she should be punished. For instance I do not like the way the Husein family (Uday, Quasy, Saddam) has been dealt with. The crimes that all these three committed were against Iraqi people and not against US, what then gives US troops to kill the two sons and say we have brought justice to the people of Iraq, no they have not, nothing makes them law enforcers or the savior of the people of Iraq, it's the people who should decide how the three people should have been punished, surely they met with an easier death if everything we know about them is true, if they did the things they are said to have them, aren't the people mad that they didn't get the chance to be a part of the punishing process? I would feel betrayed by the process if i had been a victim of their cruelty.
Now that is my problem with capital punishment, every rapist, murderer (with the wrong intentions for a murder) should positively be executed but given that the law is enforced by the people who were the victims, not some third party which just decides to take action for it forwards their means and ambitions.
So i do condemn the hanging of Saddam Hussein for it was not given the treatment it was meant to be given, it was not fair and certainly not handled properly!
In the past few months, there have been a few instances of sentencing criminals (in the eyes of the said law) to death. And I have been trying to evaluate my thoughts on the subject. Earlier i thought I was against it, for i didn't think that humans had the right to decide if another human had committed a crime and that his life was therefore theirs for playing with. But that was not the only reason for my aversion to this rule, i have often wondered how people could change after a crime, agreed that at the time the crime is committed, it personifies what the person's made of..but if after 5-6 years or more he is punished, is it ever investigated if the person is still the same, if his opinion on the damage he has caused has changed, it's not as though "once a thief, always a thief" or "once a rapist always a rapist".
That was in the past, sure i still think that courts need to re-evaluate a defendant's morals when deciding on a punishment, but i know what my problem with capital punishment has been. I think that the people in the society in which the crime was committed should be the judge of the criminal and how he/she should be punished. For instance I do not like the way the Husein family (Uday, Quasy, Saddam) has been dealt with. The crimes that all these three committed were against Iraqi people and not against US, what then gives US troops to kill the two sons and say we have brought justice to the people of Iraq, no they have not, nothing makes them law enforcers or the savior of the people of Iraq, it's the people who should decide how the three people should have been punished, surely they met with an easier death if everything we know about them is true, if they did the things they are said to have them, aren't the people mad that they didn't get the chance to be a part of the punishing process? I would feel betrayed by the process if i had been a victim of their cruelty.
Now that is my problem with capital punishment, every rapist, murderer (with the wrong intentions for a murder) should positively be executed but given that the law is enforced by the people who were the victims, not some third party which just decides to take action for it forwards their means and ambitions.
So i do condemn the hanging of Saddam Hussein for it was not given the treatment it was meant to be given, it was not fair and certainly not handled properly!
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