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This is what Arundhati Roy has to say about terrorism and Mumbai Attacks: The monster in the mirror.

I am a casual and lazy blogger and could never have written anything more beautiful than what she has said. So just a link back.

Update: 15/12/08
If we can somehow can get out of the Deviancy amplification spiral, that is as of now in full swing in India, maybe we can heed some advice from Mr. Tony Benn, "If we can find the money to kill people, we can find the money to help people".

In a recent local election in Punjab I was deputed as a presiding officer along with four polling officers for conducting elections in a village. The experience has been sort of interesting and mixed.

Being a Govt Servant I cannot say much, but shall let these low resolution pictures speak for me.

Get Set...

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Truck Load of Ballot Boxes and whatever (sometimes called polling party)

IMHO There are basically three ways to fight an adversary (though adversary may not be correct word here)

• Sail with the wind. Submit to the adversary even if you may be right. Means one does not have the moral courage required to be considered a human being. Easiest way to survive.
• Fight back/ hit back (use Guns or other violent means including words) kill or be killed. But this is a never ending cycle, one feels itself to be victim in (so called) self defense, for own rights, for country, for people kills another then the other feeling victimised will repeat the same cycle. And eye for an eye. Some what easy, you don't need to think beyond your immediate goals, can behave in a beastly manner.
  

Some times it makes me wonder what made the medieval Raja's/ Kings exert power over the people. Or let me rephrase it what made the people to not revolt against the Kings.

Some possible (maybe incorrect) reasons on how to be a sucessfull King:

• Kings must try to prove itself to be superior and better than the rest, or again let me take the liberty of rephrasing: To be King, it must somehow repress its own people, below its own level. The means to do so may range from religious doctrines to utter violence.

Hell, according to many religious beliefs, is a place or a state of pain and suffering (Ref: Wikipedia.org). And it is not limited to religious text books only. In my limited universe, I can imagin the following Hells that will haunt me besides the usual we can expect in this mortal world.

The Coding Hell

A recent post on drupal.org on The Road to Drupal Hell or rather the classical hack the code to death hell. I do hope most of the software developers must be familiar with this.

My views regarding recent strike in AIIMS though mostly unprintable, may be depicted by this cartoon published in The Hindu some time back.

A Letter to Dr. Manmohan Singh

Respected Dr. Manmohan Singh Ji

For around last one month I have read so much about the reservation and quota issues, so much misinformation and misrepresentation of facts has been around that I to some extent feel I must request the worthy PM that please make sure this blown out of context controversy does not force you from the path of a Welfare Government to a Corporate Government. I have full trust in your worthy leadership, but still as a citizen I feel concerned and thus writing to you.

Recently I had a chance to see an old movie

The Beast.
The Beast is about a Soviet tank crew who get lost after attacking a
village in Afganistan. It shows the ruthlessness of the Soviet army in
dealing with the Afgan rebels. Somehow this movie reminds me of the
Bush vs Saddam war and many others. No comments on that but I do have a quote to share:

When the tyrant has disposed of foreign enemies 
by conquest or treaty, and there is nothing to 
fear from them, then he is always stirring up 
  

Sometimes i do wish i should do a search and replace for the sardar word with: pundit, baniya, mullah etc etc and forward the mail.
Too many sardar jokes and its not too funny.','Here is a very little true story that i have to share with you ppl, though not funny:

I was studying in ACTS-CDAC-Hyderabad. The time was around holi in 2001. A fellow student of mine used to act funny. He knew just too many sardar jokes, he knew there is something called

sardaran ke baran wajde hain

And he enjoyed narrating this to me. When he started crossing limits i had explain him why sardaran de baran wajde ne. I told him how sardars used to get out at midnight and rescue his great great great grand mothers from some tyrant Mougle emperors and Afghani decoits. (Was i rude to him? Sorry M!!)

Action in support of Sergio Amadeu, the Brazilian government official in charge of deployment of Free Software, who is currently enduring criminal proceedings brought forth by Microsoft Corporation.