News, news

Mr. Modi somberly paying homage at 9/11 site, Hilfiger weighing in on his fashion sense, twitterati comparing his visit to that of Swami Vivekananda, Goswami on the streets of NY, all took a back seat. Amma has been convicted.

I wonder why no one picked up the clues. The fact that the judgement was scheduled on a Friday just before the 10 days high-court holiday should have told us it was conviction and that too over 3 years. As an armchair conspiracy theorist I could speculate all kinds of scenarios. The same prevents me from writing them.

Rain

It poured heavily couple of days ago. The traffic was a bitch, the long, clogged roads with fallen branches torturous, the journey in the dark pot-holed roads with sudden pedestrians precarious. I sat watching the thick curtain of water on the windows of my car, thankful.  

MOM yay!

It was quite thrilling to read the news about Mangalyan entering space orbit. Got reminded of the joke that used to go around during my school days – what does SLV stand for – Sea Landing Vehicle. GSLV – Guaranteed Sea Landing Vehicle, PSLV – Planned… and so on.  And in case you didn't know the actual expansion is Satellite Launch Vehicle. We have come a long long way. What a triumph that Mangalyan is a success in the first attempt.  And the cost effectiveness is astounding. Was a moment to get teary-eyed.

There was also the joke about Indian trains never being on time. That has been put to rest as well.

In the town of Baghdad...

These past months I have switched to getting my daily dose of news stories later in the evening. I settle down on my papasan chair with my shiny new ipadmini and trawl the internet for stories from all over the world. Needless to say, Iraq pretty much dominated the scene this week. There is the usual punditry – its Bush’s mistake, its Clinton’s mistake [or was that Crimea?], it’s Iran, it’s the Iraq government… But fundamentally the pictures and repeated coverage desensitize and dehumanize the stories.  It seems like we are stuck in a time-warp. Though one could argue its just tools, no one talks about the military-industrial complex or the easy access and mass production of the weapons.

Those stories I read as a young girl starting with the time immemorial phrase – ‘In the town of Baghdad’ were much simpler. They didn’t say whether Aladdin was a Shia or a Kurd.

Whats in a blog

After much hemming and hawing I have linked this personal blog to the radhikanathan.com one. Why would any stranger want to know my opinion on sundry matters just because I have scribbled [Okay not quite the manuscript type] a novel, I doubt.  Putting a non-intrusive link feels a little less conceited as opposed to an opinion fire hose in the same blog. On the other hand it is somewhat ironic and somewhat ridiculous to dwell over it so much. When a tree falls in the forest and all that...