Happy Independence Day

In celebration of 58 vibrant years of freedom

Communal response to terror? A trap

Israel, the world's most vengeful nation, is in the thick of yet another war. The irony is that it has incidentally thrown light on
(a) the intransigence of communal forces within our country and
(b) India's isolation in the world.

A demonstrator's placard in Bombay said all there was to be said about the communal lobby's game of divisiveness. Addressing the visiting Dr.Abdul Kalam directly, it said: "Mr. President, we have been silent for 58 years. We can't be silent now. Use your missiles."

Against whom? Certainly not against the terrorists holed up in Mahim or Hyderabad. The demonstrator meant that India should fire missiles against Pakistan. Just as Israel is doing against Palestinians. For many patriots among us Israel is the model to follow.

In fact nothing will be more self-destructive for India. Israel gets away with slaughter because America fully supports it. Bush justified even the latest attack with the refrain "Israel has the right to defend itself."

America will never concede that India has the right to defend itself against terror bases in Pakistan. In fact, America will not allow India even to criticise Pakistan. See what its reaction was to poor Manmohan Singh's spirited appeals in St. Petersburg. "Show us the evidence that Pakistan is involved," the Americans told him. One US ambassadorial flunkey even said that India should cooperate with Pakistan in the fight against terror!

The message is clear: The same America that enables Israel to kill and destroy with immunity will not let India fire a gun against Pakistan. India is not Israel and Pakistan is not Palestine. America supports Israel not because its enemies are Muslim, but because Israel is Jewish.

Pakistan, quite adroitly, has led the easily fooled Americans into believing that it is a "frontline state" in America's war against terror. Actually, it is in Pakistan's interest that al-Quaida and Osama bin Laden remain alive and kicking in their mountain fortresses. As long as they are there, Pakistan is assured of the "frontline state" status and all the military and diplomatic privileges ensuing from it. Musharraff is too smart for the Americans. And, it may now seem, for Indians.

For argument's sake, let us say a tough and patriotic party is in power in Delhi and it fires off a missile at a Pakistani target. The finger on the button in that country belongs to a general who had put nuclear warheads on the ready against India in an undeclared skirmish like Kargill. If and when an Indian missile flies in the direction of Pakistan, he will not hesitate to do the worst with an air of injured innocence. Then?

Don't forget that it is not just America that will stand by Pakistan in a moment of crisis. China is a close ally of Pakistan. The European Union is no friend of India's nuclear programmes. Russia is a friend, but it is also a friend of Pakistan. In a showdown India will find itself splendidly isolated.

Manmohan Singh's attempts to please America in everything from nuclear deals to wheat imports will not help India meet the Pakistani terror challenge.This is a war India must fight on its own, by building up an intelligence network that is the best in the world and by adopting tough methods that have helped other countries facing similar challenges. It cannot be fought by polarising Indians along religious lines. That's a trap that will help Pakistan.


TJS George
newindpress.com

The royal sport

If there was anything on the idiot box that bored me the most....... it was Golf.

That was until I got into playing the sport at EME Golf club in Hyd.

In the beginning I was wondering what is the use of the stance, the different clubs, position and all. Can't a person play Golf using a single club rather than using Iron, Wood and all.

The actual game showed the difference. I was surprised at the difference each of the clubs produced. The stance seemed foolish in the beginning but it actually made all the difference. It was my first game and I was trying out my own stances but I could not make as much as a contact between the Club and ball. Surprisingly when I followed the coaches instruction - bent my knees a little, kept my left arm straight, eye sight fixed on the ball, bring down the club in a full swing not only did the club make contact but the ball soared well over 120 yards.

One of the boards on the course said - 'Millions are lost on the green and next to the green'. Before actually playing, I would have never believed that betting actually took place in Golf also.

Pics in Hyderabad

Hyderabad CENTRAL and PVR Cinemas- The grandest shopping mall

The famous Prasad's IMAX complex

NTR Marg - The tomb of late N.T. Rama Rao

............

Looks like the great golden Phoenix has to lay down...... with tears in its eyes.
Tears to heal itself...... its heart...... from the wounds of love.
It loved and loves one...... and it hoped for love in return.
which it was forced to forego.

Hope the day comes.
When the great golden Phoenix has the power to rise once again.
It may be a loser now.
But it definitely is wiser...... a lot wiser.

-myself

Mohith! You are mighty

Just follow the link friends:

http://mohith.youaremighty.com

Cool, isn't it..... just replace ur name with mine in the above url and tryout.

AutoBiography in 5 short chapters

1.

I walk down the street.

There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.

I fall in.

I am lost......I am helpless.

It isn't my fault.

It takes forever to find a way out.

2.

I walk down the same street.

There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.

I pretend I don't see it.

I fall in again.

I can't believe I am in the same place.

but, it isn't my fault.

It still takes a long time to get out.

3.

I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.

I see it is there.

I still fall in. It's a habit.

My eyes are open.

I know where I am.

It is my fault. I get out immediately.

4.

I walk down the same street.

There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.

I walk around it.

5.

I walk down another street.

- By Portia Nelson

Holi hai !

The trees smile with their sprout
of tender leaves and blooming flowers,
Eternal nature with its transient expression
Hails spring! with ecstasy and joy!
Bewildering shades with so many tinge
The land of beauty and greatness India,
witnessing color of happiness and peace.
Nation come alive to enjoy the spirit
A celebration of color- holi!
An experience of content, harmony and delight.

Holika burns amidst merriment and mirth-
Evil overpowered by love and devotion.
A festival to commemorate ‘rash lila’-
an enduring love saga of Radha and Krishna.

Gulal – red, green, yellow and countless
A day’s canvas - a riot of colors.
Lively crowd running hither and thither,
Rainbow of colors, dashing from every nook and corner.
Disregarding their woe and despair fervent folks,
rejoicing at the marvel of colors.
A day filled with luster and gaiety,
A day to smear our dreams-
With a splash of vibrant frenzy colors.
Holi hai! A spring of unbounded fun and frolic …

– Jayati Chowdhury

Chicken soup for the soul

Many years ago, when I worked as a volunteer at a hospital, I got to know a little girl named Liz who was suffering from a rare and serious disease. Her only chance of recovery appeared to be a blood transfusion from her 5-year old brother, who had miraculously survived the same disease and had developed the antibodies needed to combat the illness. The doctor explained the situation to her little brother, and asked the little boy if he would be willing to give his blood to his sister.

I saw him hesitate for only a moment before taking a deep breath and saying, "Yes I'll do it, if it will save her." As the transfusion progressed, he lay in bed next to his sister and smiled, as we all did, seeing the color returning to her cheeks. Then his face grew pale and his smile faded.

He looked up at the doctor and asked with a trembling voice, "Will I start to die right away?"

Being young, the little boy had misunderstood the doctor; he thought he was going to have to give his sister all of his blood in order to save her.

This story is from the book 'Chicken soup for the soul'. I got hold of this book along with 'Chicken soup for the teenage soul' in a book fair where they were selling off surplus material. I've read both the books umpteen times, yet they never fail to feel my clasp whenever they fall in my sight.

Some chicken soup for my soul indeed.

Valentine's Day

Is a wonderful way

To make "I love you"

Easy to say.

History of Valentine:


As early as the fourth century B.C., the Romans engaged in an annual young man's rite to passage to the God Lupercus. The names of the teenage women were placed in a box and drawn at random by adolescent men; thus, a man was assigned a woman companion for the duration of the year, after which another lottery was staged. After eight hundred years of this cruel practice, the early church fathers sought to end this practice... They found an answer in Valentine, a bishop who had been martyred some two hundred years earlier.

According to church tradition St. Valentine was a priest near Rome in about the year 270 A.D. At that time the Roman Emperor Claudius-II who had issued an edict forbidding marriage.
This was around when the heyday of Roman empire had almost come to an end. Lack of quality administrators led to frequent civil strife. Learning declined, taxation increased, and trade slumped to a low, precarious level. And the Gauls, Slavs, Huns, Turks and Mongolians from Northern Europe and Asian increased their pressure on the empire's boundaries. The empire was grown too large to be shielded from external aggression and internal chaos with existing forces. Thus more of capable men were required to be recruited as soldiers and officers. When Claudius became the emperor, he felt that married men were more emotionally attached to their families, and thus, will not make good soldiers. So to assure quality soldiers, he banned marriage.

Valentine, a bishop , seeing the trauma of young lovers, met them in a secret place, and joined them in the sacrament of matrimony. Claudius learned of this "friend of lovers," and had him arrested. The emperor, impressed with the young priest's dignity and conviction, attempted to convert him to the roman gods, to save him from certain execution. Valentine refused to recognize Roman Gods and even attempted to convert the emperor, knowing the consequences fully.
On February 24, 270, Valentine was executed.

"From your Valentine"

While Valentine was in prison awaiting his fate, he came in contact with his jailor, Asterius. The jailor had a blind daughter. Asterius requested him to heal his daughter. Through his faith he miraculously restored the sight of Asterius' daughter. Just before his execution, he asked for a pen and paper from his jailor, and signed a farewell message to her "From Your Valentine," a phrase that lived ever after.

Valentine thus become a Patron Saint, and spiritual overseer of an annual festival. The festival involved young Romans offering women they admired, and wished to court, handwritten greetings of affection on February 14. The greeting cards acquired St.Valentine's name.

The Valentine's Day card spread with Christianity, and is now celebrated all over the world. One of the earliest card was sent in 1415 by Charles, duke of Orleans, to his wife while he was a prisoner in the Tower of London. The card is now preserved in the British Museum.

A jolly trip

The last two days were such fun really, all the boys from our class went out on a fun trip to Tirupati and Talakona.
We started at 7:00 am Friday morning on a bus to Tirupati and went on to Talakona- a place known for its scenic beauty and amazing waterfalls. In fact it is in the midst of a jungle where we climb several hundreds of feet up a mountain to get the amazing view of the waterfalls falling from about 200 feet high. The sight of such a fall had its affect on the whole group of us... we lost no time in darting under the falls.... the water was chilling and within just two minutes all our bodies went numb with cold. Then after a great photo session we returned to Tirupati, watched the movie 'Shock'(an RGV production), had our dinner........and immediately started for the climb of our lives...... to the top of the hill (Tirumala) on foot at 10:30 pm. Everyone of my friends preferred to leave their bags in the transport section, but I chose to climb the hill top with my bag weighing around 7 kgs. It was someting over 10km of climb -including 4000 steps and 5 km walk to the top. it took us 4 hours ....well we were a group so none of us felt tired in the middle of the journey, reached the top at 3:30 am and went off to bed. All the morning we spent roaming around the hilltop and started for the temple by afternoon. We had to wait in the lines for nearly 5 hrs before the darshan of Lord Venkateshwara.
Everything went fine and we returned bk to Nellore at around 1:00 am.

Many of us made through the whole trip without a wink on our eyes..........it was such fun.

Never have I fallen

Your lips speak soft sweetness
Your smile a cool caress
I am lost in your magic
My heart beats within your chest

I think of you each morning
And dream of you each night
I think of your arms being around me
And cannot express my delight

Never have I fallen
But I am quickly on my way
You hold a heart in your hands
That has never before been given away

Someone's boring me, I think it's me!

It's like that, the part of the year when nothing goes ur way.
Or is it just that i'm going nothing's way?

It's really difficult to be me....... Why did I get in at all?
I'm no longer my old self.
Yes I crave for it with my heart. but dont at all have the guts to call it upon me.
Just can't even speak my heart out.
Leave alone speaking.... can't even open my mouth.
Mb I'll have to keep waiting for a chance to open my mouth for the rest of the course.
Stumbling for words.......

No! I'll not let this happen.
I disagree to maintain the silence any longer.
Hope I get the power to do so.
Something tells me that I will succeed.
So I will.

My day with viruses

It all started when I reinstalled the Windows-XP OS in my laptop yesterday. I did not have a proper boot disk to format the primary sector so I went on to install the Windows XP Pro SP2 software atop the already existing and error prone Windows XP FD Professional(a third party release). Lot of the primary sector space was lost in the process(which was recovered on following certain simple procedures), The problem arose when I installed AVG 7.0 trail anti-virus and was searching google for some free key-generator s/w's.
The search showed some websites:

www.seriall.com (the most dangerous)
www.asta-killer.com
www.crackspider.net

I was aware of the danger in merely visiting these sites, but carelessness got the better of me and I continued to browse freely; as a result numerous spywares, several dangerous adwares and viruses got on to the newly installed and still unprotected operating system. The resident Windows firewall was unable to block them as it provided only partial security. The battle is still going on but I'm nowhere near winning. I had to use several anti-virus and anti-spyware softwares to get a partial result.

Affects of the spywares and viruses on the system:

1. One particular spyware spawned the browser and no search process is supported.
2. A huge marquee-scroll comes up on the top of the screen every half an hour warning me of virus.
3. The system shuts down automatically if any anti-virus is running.
4. Even Agnitum outpost 3.0(the best known firewall) is cheated into thinking that several malicious programs were legal ones.
5. System slowdown.
6. Internet explorer gets struck.
7. Funny screen savers come out even if you are working.
8. The notepad opens up automatically and "The user is trying to close some applications with no luck" is typed automatically and is prompted to be saved.
9.The broadband internet connection is always heavy with traffic.

Anti-virus and firewall softwares* I used and extent of their abilities:

1. AVG free edition 7.0: Showed just 3 spyware programs, but failed to clean them.
2. AVG professional edition 7.0.338(the latest available): Showed 15 spyware and adware programs, cleared some spywares but left the Adwares. Showed that the risk levels of all the adwares were very high.
3. Agnitum outpost firewall 3.1 with spyware detector: not too effective, managed to clear out some instances of spywares which reappeared no sooner it had cleaned them.
4. Mc Afee antivirus : I had an older version so I could not use it.
5. Microsoft AntiSpyware beta: Detected just one spyware and cleand it, but could not detect several other instances of other spywares.
6. Sunbelt CounterSpy: Its a dedicated spyware remover. It was the best among all tried softwres, Managed to clear many of the spywares and adwares except 3 dangerous ones.
7. Norton internet security 2006 with latest updates: Pointed out the same spywares and adwares as CounterSpy, failed to remove or quarantine them. The norton internet database says that the adwares are recently diagonised and counter measures are bound to come up.

* All the softwares listed above were used with the latest available updates.

Now, on the advice of a software expert, I cleaned the registry of the malicious programs and am running Norton AntiVirus scan in Safe Mode. If this does not work I'll just have to use Seagate Disk Manager to clean the hard disk and reinstall the OS along with disk partitions, that implies loss of all the valuable data in the laptop, which I'm not favouring to risk. So I'll go on trying to remove the viruses.

A change indeed....

When I was waiting for a change
When I was short of something
One turn of my head changed it all
made me realise what I was missing all along...

A bitter conflict arose
between my mind and heart.
The mind had just given in…
For once in my life the heart had won.

The victory meant one thing-
The poor thing had to abandon me.
My eyes would follow suit
whenever they spot you.

How I long to be with you.
The jingles in your voice
makes me treasure those moments for ever.
The world looks the same no longer.


-Myself

The best ever New Year party

Had a gala time on the night of 31st. A huge party....a big cake....dances....pops....drinks and all as a farewell to a well spent year.
Tee..hee....I danced for the first time in my life.