Stand Together

I get very excited when I hear Hindi or Telugu being spoken in the malls and entertainment centres of Johannesburg but I also get very sadly disappointed when I speak to my fellow Indians. I have met many people from Hyderabad and other parts of India but all they want to know is where I work and how much I earn before they know my name. I have now started giving them false information about where I live, work and how much I earn. Hey, this is Johannesburg after all, and crime rate is much higher than what is desirable. Better to be safe than sorry. I met a young Telugu family last weekend when I went to watch Inside Out at the cinemas. There was a wife, there was a husband and there were two little children and it warmed my heart to hear Telugu. Unfortunately my conversation with them lasted just a few minutes and once again I couldn’t make friends. Three years of not knowing any Indians in a foreign land does not irk me as much right now. Indian inquisitiveness has ...

In today’s world, most of us are social media savvy. Gone are the days when people used to be categorised as introverts and extroverts. Today we are categorised in terms of our social medial activity. As exciting as it is to be popular and to get infinite number of likes and comments on our Facebook posts, and Twitter feed, it can be very dangerous.  I cringe when I see parents posting pictures of their babies. Parents, please understand the world is not a nice place, especially the online world and the pictures of your children, even the ones aesthetically shot by seasoned photographers can find their way to disturbing paedophile forums. ( Should parents post pictures of their children on Facebook with paedophiles lurking in our midst? ) I have urged several parents, friends and colleagues to not post any pictures, videos of their children on any of the social media platforms and my pleas have mostly fell on deaf ears. I know people who circulate pictures of the chil...