Friday, May 18, 2007

Debate on Discrimination


These are the few points that I read somewhere on Discrimnation. It is about discrimnation based on casteism which is prevalent in India on a very large magnitude. Till date there are things like community from "higher cast" and community from "lower cast". Casteism is doing nothing but just fragmenting Indian people based on birth in certain classified family. Every year millions of people quarrel and thousands of people die fighting for or in the name of their cast. With education and awareness this is reducing and I hope it just fades away with time, for everybody's good! If you agree with me on this just read through the lines below you will find it just---Comforting.




          • Casteism is racism of another sort.

          • Its fighting against all kinds of discriminatory practices that racism implies. They are as the UN resolution, has classified, "based on race, color, descent or national or ethnic origin"

          • It is the violation of the fundamental principle of human rights, which proclaims that all men are equal, not necessarily in income, wealth or capabilities, but in DIGNITY.

          • Cast practices may be quite different from racial practices. But the subjects of those practices are all subject of gross violation of human rights and every state must accept the responsibility to redress that violation.

          • Human Rights must get precedence over all other concern.

        The line which impresses me the most is every citizen in this world might no be equal in Income, Wealth or Capabilities but everybody is equal in DIGNITY!!!And that's the Morale of the story. We got to respect each and every individual irrespective of the nature of his caste.

        "Caste cannot be abolished by inter caste dinners or stray instances of inter caste marriages. Caste is a state of mind. It is a disease of mind." By: Dr. B.R. Ambedkar

        The Indians need to understand the harm that poison of casteism is doing to them in such a progressive world, they also need to understand that if they take proper measures and manage to come out of this vicious net of social evil there can be no looking back in terms of social,political and economical progress of their society.

        I can just spread the word around and would pledge you too to do that!!!

        "LONG LIVE THE WORLD, LONG LIVE THE HUMANITY"








        Monday, May 14, 2007

        Persuit of Excellence


        • " Excellence is doing ordinary things extraordinarily well."


        • "We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit."


        • "Perfection is not attainable. But if we chase Perfection, we can catch Excellence."


        • "If you want to achieve excellence, you can get there today. As of this second, quit doing Less-Than-Excellent work."


        Excerpts from "To Kill a Mocking Bird" by Harper Lee


        I just fell in love with the kids in the novel rather I fell in love with every character of the novel.

        Here am writing the few lines from the novel which left impact-deep like ocean, on me.


        Father saying about his thirteen year old son:


        " Sometimes I think I am a total failure as a parent, but I am all they have got. Before Jem (son's name) looks at anyone else he looks at me, and I have tried to live so I can look squarely back at him,....If I connived at something like this, frankly I couldn't meet his eyes and the day I can't do that I will know I have lost him. I don't want to loose him and Scout, because they are all I have got."

        Saturday, May 12, 2007

        Excerpts from "THE GOD OF SMALL THINGS" by Arundhati Roy

        I read this 1997 Booker Award winning title in 2001, when I was in 3rd year of Engineering.
        I really appreciated the work by ArundhatiRoy.


        As I read through the novel there where few writings in between, particularly the excerpts where a normal thing was expressed in such a manner which exuded a rich class of writing and touched deep down the heart.


        From time to time I flip through the old pages to read, not "WHAT" she has expressed but more because "HOW" she has expressed.

        I am sure you will enjoy them the same as I do.Go ahead and indulge... :

        • "Strange insects appeared like ideas in the evening"

        • Describing an Old man- "Loose flesh that stretched willingly off his bones, like chewing gum"

        • "She was Eighty-Three. Her eyes spread like butter behind her thick glasses"

        • "Only the vines(trees) kept growing like the toe-nails on a corpse"

        • "She said and closed her face like a cupboard"

        • "Her grief and bitterness at her daughter's death coiled inside her like an angry spring"

        • "Perhaps its true that things can change in a day. That a few dozen hours can affect the outcome of whole lifetime. And that when they do, those few dozen hours, like a salvaged remains of a burned house - must be resurrected from the ruins and examined. Preserved. Accounted for"

        • " It began long before Christianity arrived in a boat and seeped into kerala like tea from a teabag"

        • "Rahel's new teeth were waiting inside her gums like words in a pen."

        • "He hadn't been to college which accounted for his schoolboy humour."

        • "He drove the thoughts away angrily. It returned and sat outside his skull like a dog."

        • " Velutha dipped a thin cotton towel in an earthen pot of water. He squeezed the water out of it (savagely, as though it was an unwanted thought)."

        • "The smoke rose in dense fumes and arranged itself in complex patterns against the sky"

        • "Secrets of the great stories is that they have no secrets. The great stories are the ones you have heard and want to hear again. The ones you can enter anywhere and inhabit comfortably. They don't deceive you with thrills and trick endings. They don't surprise you with the unforeseen. They are as familiar as the house you live in. Or the smell of your lover's skin. You know how they end, yet you listen as though you don't. In the way that although you know that one day you will die, you live as though you won't. In the great stories you know who lives, who dies, who finds love, who doesn't. And yet you want to know again.--- That is their mystery and their magic."

        • "She thought of Chacko's laugh, and a smile stayed in her eyes for a long time."

        • "She had come to Ayemenem to heal her wounded world and had lost all of it instead."

        • "His mind hummed like a table fan."

        • "A sound you hardly noticed, but would miss if it stopped"

        • "She couldn't help thinking that the man he had become bore so little resemblance to the boy he had been. His smile was the only piece of baggage he had carried with him from boyhood to manhood."

        • "The man standing in the shade of the rubber tree with coins of sunshine dancing on his body...."

        • " He left behind a hole in the universe through which darkness poured like liquid tar."

        • "Comrade Pillai realize that what we really needed was the process of war more than the outcome of victory"

        I love all of the above but my favorite ones are "The secret of the great stories........" and "Perhaps its true that........" .In few words she has conveyed a lot.


        I hope you enjoyed reading this.

        Tuesday, May 1, 2007

        HISTORY ABOUT MY READING

        Reading has been my passion since my childhood. As I recall when I was young I remember my father bringing me lots of kid Books -on History, on lives of Freedom Fighters, Books on General Knowledge, Japanese and Chinese story books, books which were on Rich and Real subjects.I never read a Fairy Tale or stories about Mermaid.

        As I grew up I got exposed to lots of subjects and lots of writers writing on similar subject. That's when I started being cynical about reading.As my childhood had seen only classics and Quality books and writers now I can not settle for anything less.I realized now the time has come to do what my father used to tell me - There are thousands of Books and Hundreds of writers but choice is ours to take the input which feeds our brain.

        That's from where my quest for reading only the proclaimed and know writers began, from whom I can expect nothing but quality.

        For the last several years I have done lots of reading and off & on I have tried to keep note of , experts which have made an impression on me and also keep note of what went through my mind while reading the book.

        That's what I will take up in my coming blogs. Few of my writings/experts/comments are misplaced/lost in catching with other important things in life which pains me to even think of.Still I will share with you whatever is left and once that's covered you will become my partner in the Journey of my reading from this point on to the END, of my Life which will bring the End of my reading too!