Stand Together

Yesterday during the sermon, Pastor Sandeep flashed a slide which was a news paper article from the Deccan Chronicle with the heading "3 girls are raped every day in Andhra Pradesh". We all know that those are the numbers that the police have. We can't say what the real number is.  As I was going home from church, I was thinking what kind of men would commit such a crime. The answer came to me in the evening when I was returning home from my guitar class. I was in  a fully packed 7 seater auto. This auto has a seating capacity of only 12 people including the driver. But in most cases at all times there are more than 20 people, standing and hanging in these 7 seaters. It so happened that there were all women within the compartment and only one man. This man was drunk and he was breathing down upon me and another girl sitting next to me. We continually asked him to stand straight. He moved a little when we began asking the driver to ask this person the get off.  At the next...

There is something about these old ladies that takes me by surprise. I know one such special lady. She is one of my co-passengers in bus number 572, Secunderabad to Rajapet (Nalgonda), one of the district to district buses. She gets into the bus form the ECIL bus terminus and buys a ticket to Rajapet, the last stop of the bus. She mostly sits next to me and out of curiosity I once  happened to ask her how far Rajapet was. She told me that if she gets a bus at 7 in the evening from ECIL she would reach Rajapet comfortably by 10 pm. Comfortably one long journey! This lady looks uneducated and she is. She looks like any other telugu village woman. An old cotton Sari (unstarched) tied so high that her ankles are clearly visible, a blouse that doesnt match the colour of the Sari, dishevelled white hair, a pair of very heavy gold earrings not taken off for a quarter of a century, no footwear and a walking stick is the best desription I can give of her. One day I asked her about her earrings....

Long long time ago in an age far far away...... nope I'm not reciting a fairy tale.  Ahem... Long long time ago in an age far far away (perhaps not so long ago) I used to write poetry which made sense to no one except me. I remember I was in 7th standard, 11 yrs of age. I wrote a small four line poem and showed it to my English teacher. It went something like this "Oh heavenly bodies...." Yep about stars in a sky like any 11 year old would imagine. Coming back to the teacher she didn't believe a single word of what I had wriiten and instead complained to my dear mother that I had copied it from some one. It couldn't have come from my pen she said (I was supposed to be dumbest in the class). Now that was a blow so back then I gave up with my first poem itself. My fingers began to itch once again two years later and this time I didn't show the poems to anyone, kept them secret under lock and key but unfortunately my younger sister found the key and looo.... all ...

Yesterday was All Soul's Day and I always go to the graveyard where my ancestors are buried to lay flowers on their graves. The newest addition being my Dad's grave. But I'm not going to write about something grave and sad. The graveyard or cemetary where my folks are buried is an ancient one. Every time I take a round in the cemetary I'm amazed (by the way I've been doing this since I was three years old). The old graves are so beautiful and magnificient. Most of them are the graves of Britishers. There is a grave of a certain Mr. James Macphearson next to my grandfather's grave. It has a magnificient Cross and an Angel clinging to the  Cross. Sheer beauty in marble. A bit farther away is the grave of a certain Mrs. Florence Hilliers. She must've been a beautiful woman as her grave has her own statue holding a wreathe standing on it. Brilliant piece of art!  But alas! There is no one who lays flowers on these beautiful graves. I and my sisters always take e...

Article 25 of the Indian Constitution gives every Indian the Right to Freedom of Religion. The essence of this article is that every Indian citizen has the right to not only follow but also propagate the religion of his/her choice. It guarantees the right to choose the faith we want to follow.   Do we follow it? Do we believe in it? I think some handfuls of people don’t. I guess this is why we see communal riots occurring so often. We as citizen enjoy this liberty of having the right to make a choice unlike many communist countries but do we respect it enough? In my opinion we will be able to completely enjoy and respect this right only when we learn to respect the choice of others. People chose what they believe in so why turn violent against them and prosecute them in the name of religion? All these fanatic bad examples those are present in every community need to take a chill pill. Live and let others live in peace.

I was still trying to digest the news of the serial blasts in Delhi's famous markets yesterday when I had another shock at 1:30 am at night. I received an SMS from my friend Monty this is what it said. "Emergency! Pray for Churches in Banglore. RSS beat up 36 Pastors; now heading towards New Life College. They have also attacked SIACS. Pray for Bible College students. Please forward this message." Shocked as I already was I switched on the television immediately. To my surprise I saw and heard no mention of Banglore on any news channel. I called Monty after surfing news channels of all languages. This is what he said. Me: Monty is the news you gave true? I don't see anything on t.v Monty: Yes I know even I don't see anything on t.v but I'm sure its true as I got the message from a friend who's from Banglore . He saw a Pastor being beaten up. Me: Okay, I guess it will come in the news by morning. We then wished each other good night but hardly slept. Me,...

Does anybody have any idea how many languages exist in the World? I don't. All I know is that I'm well conversant in three languages and know two partially well. Here in India lot of importance is given to mother tongues or the language you acquire while in your mother's womb. For me its Hindi. I live in South India, a "No Hindi Zone" and the language spoken here is Telugu. I witnessed something really sad amongst students and fellow young citizens like me. They don't like Telugu! They think being heard speaking in a local language is unfashionable. They fall so low as to even announce that they don't know their own language. Shocking isn't it. So much importance is given to English that people forget that they have their very own language at which they are masters. I know English is important but these so called local, regional or vernacular languages are also important. They are our very identity, giving us a sense of belonging a sense of being ourse...