HOW LONG?

I have never felt so sad to be proven correct. Never!!! Ever!!!

Less than 2 weeks back, I posted a hardlined blog. I felt a bit remorseful after that. But today, I feel that my stance was fully justified.

Its high time we hit back. I repeat -- "Shoot dead anybody who is remotely associated or suspected of association with these terrorists." I mean it. And do that publicly. These bastards dont deserve anything less.

I promise, I swear to god, I will never repent this.

May those souls rest in peace. May god give strength to their families to recover from this death blow.
A WEDNESDAY

Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, Jaipur, Ahmedabad, Assam, Malegaon. All these places were bombed in the last few months. Note, this is just the list of the MAJOR blasts in the past few months. The minor crude bombs found before they went off is even bigger. In each of these blasts, the official number of dead and injured is way lesser than the actual number.

With every such instance, frustration and helplessness due to the inaction and lack of concern by the government builds up. The home minister does nothing than display the variety of his wardrobe. The Prime Minister conveys his condolences and declares monetary help to the victim's kin. No one knows if the help ever reaches the intended recipient. Opposition leaders ask for government's resignation and fresh elections. The cops release sketches of suspected individuals and the sketches usually match 1 of every 5 ppl i know. Soon, everything is forgotten till another blast occurs.

And in the midst of all this, I happen to see a new movie -- A WEDNESDAY. Primarily this movie has 2 characters -- the commissioner (Anupam Kher) and the protagonist (Naseeruddin Shah). There are other characters around the plot like a few cops and a few jailed terrorists, this movie is really a ball game between the commissioner and the protagonist.

I will not get into the details of the plot. The movie is too good (I mean it, really awesome movie) to mention the spoilers here, just go and see it.

But realistically speaking, it may not be really possible for a commoner to do what Naseer does in the movie. Atleast I am not so smart and intelligent to mastermind such a thing. But I agree with what he did, no second thoughts.

Shoot dead anybody who is remotely associated or suspected of association with these terrorists. So what if few hundred people are shot dead. India's population is fast threatening to reach 1.2 billion (or has it already). We can easily afford to lose a few hundred (or a few thousand) who threaten the peaceful and safe existence of remaining 1.199 billion.

If anyone ever hijacks a plane with 100 passengers and demands release of 3 terrorists, line up 200 terrorists from the prison in front of the TV camera (with the 3 demanded terrorists at the start of the line-up) and reply back to the hijackers "For every 1 passenger from the plane you kill, 2 terrorists from your outfit will be killed. The 3 demanded terrorists will be the first one to die". This might sounds very harsh, but do this once and I bet, they will never even think twice of hijacking another plane.

There is no smoke without fire. Eliminate anyone who threatens to disturb the peace of our country. Its our country and no one should tell us how to take care of it.
PERFECT BLEND

S and I were in Boston over the Labor day weekend to attend a wedding. S's cousin G was getting married to J after knowing each other for more than 7 years. J is an American and G is an Indian (though an American by citizenship) and so, this wedding was going to be an Indo-American affair.

The wedding was a perfect blend of two individuals, two families, two cultures, two religions and two countries... I cannot stress more on the two words -- "perfect" and "blend" -- really i cannot... Changing the font to bold, italic, underline or some other color is not going to do enough justice... So, i just decided to use those words to name the blog... thats it...

Every aspect of the wedding was very well planned... Here are some salient features of the wedding --

1 - All the ladies (including the groom's immediate family and friends) were dressed in traditional Indian attire and got mehendi done on their hands... The couple's friends even danced to a hindi wedding song from a Karan Johar movie...

2 - The food for the mehendi ceremony was as versatily Indian as it could get and the food for the reception was as equally un-Indian as it could... There was champagne toast to punch bowl. There was fried shrimp as well as Indian Banarasi pan. There was chaat and pav bhaji and gobi manchurian. And then there was lasagna and garlic bread and stuffed turkey. Everyone ate their favorite food to glory.

3 - The groom was dressed in a traditional Kannada wedding attire including peta, dhoti, kurta and chappal... He chanted all the shlokas and mantras with the same fluency that a Kannadiga would... His parents were as interested and involved in the wedding ceremony as any Indian parents would be... Even they wore Indian attire and looked at ease.

4 - The bride walked down the aisle with bridesmaids (her cousins) like any american bride and she was escorted by her uncle (maternal uncle) like any Indian bride...

5 - After the traditional indian wedding was over, the bride and groom exchanged vows like an christian wedding and the head priest from Chinmaya mission administered the wedding oath. The groom's oath was one of the most touching ones I have ever heard.

6 - The reception was as christian as it gets... There was a beautiful cake, a champagne toast ceremony, the first kiss and the first dance... The toast from the "father of the bride" was very touching and if that toast brought everyone on the edge of breaking down into tears, the toast from the "sister of the bride" pushed them over the edge... There was hardly any soul in that wedding hall without a wet eye at the end of that toast...

7 - The dance after the toast ceremony started with a romantic tune and soon blasted into typical punjabi tunes... Almost everyone was on the dance floor and the newly wed bride and groom were perched atop shoulders of their friends...

The points mentioned above were just a glimpse of the entire wedding. Though everyone was looking forward to the wedding, the ceremony surpassed everyone's expectation. It was a memorable event for us too. For S and I, it was a trip down the memory lane to a unforgettable day, exactly 3 years before today. ;-)
FINALLY A BIG ONE

It took me 29 years and numerous attempts to achieve this. I cannot recall the total number of tournaments I might have played in but I can clearly remember that at least at 3 occasions, I faltered at the last step.

The first time, it happened in my first year of engineering. We had a chance to create history by being the first First Year class to win the college championship. We were overwhelmed by the occasion and lost the game miserably.

The second time, we could have defeated the reigning champions and won the Infy championship. We played very well in the first half, but were very tired and were overpowered by the other side.

The third time was last year in the local 20-20 tournament when one person's brutal innings kept us away from the trophy. Sheer brutal power from 1 person crashed our party.

But not this time. This time our team was undefeated in the tournament. We were not even challenged in any games, except the semi-finals (more about the SF below). All our games until the semis were clearly one-sided.

In the semi, we were pitted against a very strong KMCC team which had manhandled us in the regular season. Plus, this time they had imported a very good player just for this match. We started badly and had lost 5 wickets for less than 20 runs. 3 batsmen played very well to push us to 126. They started very well and were 80/3 in 10 overs. Needed 47 in 10 overs with 7 wickets in hand. We never gave up, fought very hard and choked them out. After needing 6 runs off 2 overs with 4 wickets in hand, we tied the game. Then there was a bowl-out (Yes!!!). And how can a Indian team lose to a Pakistan team in a bowl out. We kept the tradition alive ;-) and won the bowl out to go to the finals.

In the finals, we steamrolled a young (and a very good) NCSU team and emerged as the tournament champions. Our bowlers were challenged by each other. Our batsmen competed against one another. The targets was to better our previous best performance. No one could have said that we did not deserve to win.

This is the first tournament victory for me and the fact that wifey was there made it even special.














HALLOWEEN

This is one tradition which might get laughed at in Indian culture. If someone asks an Indian to dress himself/herself and his/her kids as monsters and take them door to door threatening with "trick-or-treat" to get candy, then one would be categorized as "crazy", "psycho" or even someone who practices witchcraft.
But strange are the ways of life in different lands and here in the land of uncle SAM, this tradition is celebrated as as festival and might be the kids favorite amongst all the festivals celebrated in the year. Parents relent to their kids as well as the kid within themselves and thoroughly revel in this festive atmosphere.

Though, ideally, kids are supposed to be dressed as scary and spooky, some parents have taken the liberty to improvise this tradition and dress their kids as something creative. Most common being Animals, Cartoon characters and Superstars (esp, Elvis).

Wifey, being the kid she is, thoroughly enjoyed the day. Her day started with fabulous cup cakes in the office. These cup cakes had spooky ring as toppings. Then there was a goodies bag where all weird items like scary rings and buttons etc. Then, yours truly was dispatched (one day earlier) to buy a bag-full of assorted candy which was loaded on a attractive bowl. There was Diwali decoration on the outside of our home and that served as Halloween decoration for the kids. :-?
As soon as it started getting dark, kids started knocking on our door and demanding candy. A family friend's kids got the unique privilege of getting the goodie bag. A gang of elderly kids got the spooky rings and they were very happy about it. A lot of kids liked our house because our house was one of few ones where they had the freedom of taking all the candy that they could in one fist.

The creativity in the costumes and the make-up was very evident and overall, it was a scary and a enjoyable evening.