Habit

He said he was no longer furious with God. But pressed, he said: “I’m angry. And he may not even be there. But I love him, too. Because we have loved him for so many thousands of years.”

He being Samuel Pisar, a holocaust survivor.

Planet Chad

Check out this blog. The author is (presumably) a white journalist living in Chad, Africa. Many of us won't know that this country exists.

The blog tells us it's a typical African basket case: poor, lacking water, lacking capable leaders and strong institutions. Hot, sandy.

It seems like another planet. Yet, you also realise: India could be said to house hundreds of little Chads. Like the places in Maharashtra where power is off for sixteen hours a day. Like the places where insurgents live, and the local population pays the price for it. Even if they aren't complicit in harbouring them. Like the streets of Mumbai where children beg, or try to sell things, when they should be at the school.

SUV And Bachchan

Few days ago, Mid-Day pointed out that Mr Bachchan rides around in Lexus, which is an SUV. So do Abhishek and Ash.

SUVs consume much more fuel than other four-wheelers. US is thinking of banning them. And Bachchans, who have been heard and seen voicing concern about environment, possess three of them, Mid-Day said.

That's tabloid journalism at its good.

And this is how Pa Bachchan (or the ghost writer who writes his blog for him) reacted:

...I stand guilty of this most inconsiderate practice of ‘gas guzzling’. Because my riding an SUV within the precincts of my professional journeys in the city has caused damage to the environment through dangerous carbon emissions!! How dare we preach something we do not practice !!

But...Would it not be wonderful if the entire printing press community, stopped burning carbon print for their newspapers. I mean you guys buy the stuff in gallons. Imagine how many villages you would be able to light up if the entire print media stopped the use of this destructive chemical.

And.. I say… tell this chap Tushar to stop using his mobile. Have you any idea what the radio activity each call and sms sent, creates for the environment ?It all adds up deary !! Lets start at home first, no ? So this is fixed then.. no mobile phones ok ! (Tushar is the writer of that piece in Mid-Day.)

Read the complete post here.

This is how Bachchan's reactionary rant can be countered.

It's true that lot of other people drive SUVs. Bachchans alone couldn't have been faulted for their lexus. But when you talk about environment in front of TV camera, the situation changes. Then you've got to practise it.

The Deewar type rant (First get that fellow's signature who tattooed this on my hand...) about environmental sins of others misses the point in SUV issue. Producing a newspaper or using a a cell phone surely leads to destruction of environment; but these activities are intrinsic part of life in the industrialised world. Substitute technologies -- less damaging to environment -- are yet to be found.

In SUV's case, greener options are available. Normal cars consume less fuel, only they don't have SUV's macho look. SUVs are entirely avoidable otherwise.

But of course, the people who ghost-write, and the people who need them for blogging, aren't expected to get this.

Of Dare

NCP's D. Tripathi demanded yesterday that security provided to Bal Thackeray and Raj Thackeray be withdrawn.

Sanjay Raut -- Samana editor -- reacted by saying: We dare the government to do it. (Then see what we do.)

Aah. How Raut blissfully lacks sense of irony. What his dare implies? That Sena has manpower and gumption to create trouble if Thackeray's security is withdrawn. But it doesn't trust the same manpower -- its streetfighters -- to protect the old man. There you need police, eh?

Forgetting To Light Up

Elizabeth Kadetsky writes in NYT:

Alzheimer’s is about living in the present. To exist outside of memory is to occupy the moment wholly. For instance, my mother quit smoking around the time of her diagnosis. As she explained it, she’d have the urge to smoke, would forget to light up before she got her hands on the pack, and so broke a 50-year addiction. It seemed the craving no longer got stuck in her memory circuits, and so easily fell away.

HeartBreak

“I was so madly in love with him that I used to pray to God to change him. I couldn’t understand why he couldn’t love me the way I loved him..."

The story of how Celina Jaitley stumbled upon the world of homosexuals. Your heart goes out to that teenager her.

Food

"A guy would always end up mentioning my weight in some form or other," she says. "They knew they should not go there; it was too painful for me. But they always did. It seemed so simple for them: stop eating, win grand slams, be happy." But Seles knew it wasn't so simple, and that it wasn't just about food.

Read more...