Ambimama - India

It is a simple,powerful and message that TJS George had given through his column in today’s Sunday Express. I have no comments. I just enjoyed reading and felt pity for people and could just pray. I did not get angry over our politicians.
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Loss of sleep, or loss of civilisation?

When the world was straight and simple,
the term WYSIWYG became a slogan
of mankind. What You See Is What
You Get.

Today the world has gone topsy-turvy. What we see is not what we get. What we get is not what we hear. Nothing is what it seems. All is deception.

For example, our Prime Minister says he has
been losing sleep over the delay in the release of Mohammed Haneef, the former terrorism suspect in Australia. Our just-retired President says India must “have a long-term vision” and become “one of the best places to live in”. And our brand new President says “we must fight divisiveness”.

Unexceptionable words. But how detached
from the everyday reality of India they sound. Our reality is wayward, hypocritical. Even our good leaders are trapped by it.

Any Indian caught in a legal-criminal tangle
in a foreign country must of course get the
attention of our Prime Minister. But so do
babies who are systematically aborted in
Orissa’s Nayagarh village with their tiny body parts dumped in garbage pits. So do the young girls raped and killed in Noida, their mutilated limbs thrown into the gutter. So do the pedestrians killed by VIP drivers who then bribe witnesses and police officers to hush up the cases.

So indeed do citizens who continue to be tortured to death in police lock-ups. Yet, we haven’t heard Manmohan Singh say that he has lost a night’s sleep over these atrocities that mar our very civilisation.

He is proud, and justifiably, about India’s rise as an economic behemoth with a growth rate that’s enviable by any standard. But what does economic growth mean when 220 million people (almost the size of America’s population) are below poverty level and live in abject misery in
the slums of India?

Kalam, honourable and admired, asks parliamentarians to make India a great place to live in. Yet, he knows that not one MP or ministe will lift a finger to eliminate the slums that mock at us, and the filth and the excrement and the degrading squalor that is life for most of our population.

Have ‘a long-term vision’? The longest term a politician can envision is till the next election. As Kalam spoke, the TV camera
focused on some netas
- Sonia Gandhi, Sharad Pawar, Laloo Prasad, L.K. Advani, Sonia Gandhi and
Sonia Gandhi. Did any one of us notice any
long-term vision on any one of those faces?
What this viewer noticed was boredom at the irrelevancies they were hearing.

The ultimate irony was when the new
President made her maiden speech and exhorted all citizens to “fight divisiveness”. Could it be that she finally realised that this presidential campaign was the most divisive in history? Her political handlers will keep up the divisiveness because they need it to secure their control on the levers of power in the days ahead.

Under these politicians we will remain a land
of fake encounters, lockup deaths, infanticide, rape-killings, witness-buying and all-encompassing, all-destroying, all-consuming corruption.

We will become an uncivilised civilization.
But we will have the highest growth rate, so it won’t matter if there is some lost sleep over some lost sheep.

Courtesy - New Indian Express, Chennai

I got a beautiful e-mail forward and wanted many people to read. I will send by mail also to my relatives and friends.
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The SON
This is great, take a moment to read it, it will make your day! The ending will surprise you.

Take my Son
A wealthy man and his son loved to collect rare works of art. They had everything in their collection, from Picasso to Raphael. They would often sit together and admire the great works of art.
When the Vietnam conflict broke out, the son went to war. He was very courageous and died in battle while rescuing another soldier. The father was notified and grieved deeply for his only son.

About a month later, just before Christmas, there was a knock at the door. A young man stood at the door with a large package in his hands. He said, “Sir, you don’t know me, but I am the soldier for whom your son gave his life. He saved many lives that day, and he was carrying me to safety when a bullet struck him in the heart and he died instantly. He often talked about you, and your love for art.”

The young man held out this package.
“I know this isn’t much. I’m not really a great artist, but I think your son would have wanted you to have this.”
The father opened the package. It was a portrait of his son, painted by the young man. He stared in awe at the way the soldier had captured the personality of his son in the painting. The father was so drawn to the eyes that his own eyes welled up with tears. He thanked the young man and offered to pay him for the picture.

“Oh, no sir, I could never repay what your son did for me. It’s a gift.” The father hung the portrait over his mantle. Every time visitors came to his home he took them to see the portrait of his son before he showed them any of the other great works he had collected.

The man died a few months later. There was to be a great auction of his paintings. Many influential people gathered, excited over seeing the great paintings and having an opportunity to purchase one for their collection.

On the platform sat the painting of the son. The auctioneer pounded his gavel. “We will start the bidding with this picture of the son. Who will bid for this picture?”

There was silence.

Then a voice in the back of the room shouted, “We want to see the famous paintings. Skip this one.” But the auctioneer persisted.
“Will somebody bid for this painting? Who will start the bidding? $100, $200?”
Another voice angrily.

“We didn’t come to see this painting. We came to see the Van Gogh’s, the Rembrandts. Get on with the real bids!”
But still the auctioneer continued. “The son! The son! Who’ll take the son?”
Finally, a voice came from the very back of the room. It was the longtime gardener of the man and his son.

“I’ll give $10 for the painting.”

Being a poor man, it was all he could afford.
“We have $10, who will bid $20?” “Give it to him for $10. Let’s see the masters.”
The crowd was becoming angry. They didn’t want the picture of the son. They wanted the more worthy investments for their collections.

The auctioneer pounded the gavel. “Going once, twice, SOLD for $10!”

A man sitting on the second row shouted, “Now let’s get on with the collection!” The auctioneer laid down his gavel. “I’m sorry, the auction is over.”

“What about the paintings?”
“I am sorry. When I was called to conduct this auction, I was told of a secret stipulation in the will. I was not allowed to reveal that stipulation until this time. Only the painting of the son would be auctioned. Whoever bought that painting would inherit the entire estate, including the paintings. The man who took the son gets everything!”

Message
God gave His son 2,000 years ago to die on the cross. Much like the auctioneer, His message today is: “The son, the son, who’ll take the son?”
Because, you see, whoever takes the Son gets everything.
FOR GOD SO LOVED THE WORLD HE GAVE HIS ONLY BEGOTTEN SON, WHO SO EVER BELIEVETH, SHALL HAVE ETERNAL LIFE…THAT’S LOVE
Please send this to ten people and back to the one who sent it to you.
Do whatever you like, but remember that maybe “one” of the people you might have taken the time to send this to, may be just the person who needs to hear this message. You have a choice to make.”
God Bless.

Keep your thoughts positive because your thoughts become your words.
Keep your words positive because your words become your behavior.
Keep your behavior positive because your behavior becomes your habits.
Keep your habits positive because your habits become your values.
Keep your values positive because your values become your destiny.

My first ride in Volvo is just wonderful. Even in aircrafts there are turbulence, air packets and we feel a sudden thud and drop.
But in Volvo there is no jerk vertical or horizontal. And they served water and face freshener too!

So I would prefer travelling by Volvo rather than flight which often gets cancelled and you have to carry your own food and water bottles!

Sonia is bold, speaks Hindi and captures the mass.
She does not belong to Gandhi family and yet she is trying a place in the Gandhi family and India. A bold lady, her husband murdered by LTTE, she stands firm.

And Manmohan Singh though a dummy PM acts, takes decisions, which are useful in the long run for India and Globalization.

There are several incidents that SONIA has contributed by her relatives in ITALY to the detriment of India. She is still a bold woman who can lead Congress (I) than the Men, who are after power, money and fooling the public. She was dejected, afraid of Indian Politics. Yet she took a bold decision to bring back Congress to a respectable party.

The Men Leaders in BJP were caught unaware. They BJP has enough and capable leaders are patriotic, Swadeshi and uncorrupt (most of them), they could not politically handle Sonia.

So understanding politics and politicians well is the need of the hour. Else we not comment on what we have misunderstood.

Apart from regional politics, coalition by Maya tactics through Brahmins, is a clever move.

It took 200 years of Civil war to establish United States of America.

And it took months to break the balancing rival USSR. It broke to pieces into so many countries. More abut it later and sure I will answer and address my visitor’s concern and queries.

SANTA MONICA, California - Microsoft said on Tuesday it will hold firm on pricing for its Xbox 360 game console, defying widespread expectations that it would respond to a price cut by rival Sony for the PlayStation 3.

nstead, Microsoft voiced confidence that a slate of upcoming titles targeting both hardcore and casual gamers would be strong enough to give it the lion’s share of consumer dollars in the coming months.
“We have no desire, no need, to react to anything the competition has done,” Shane Kim, head of Microsoft Games Studios, said in an interview.
“We feel really great about the Xbox 360 momentum right now. Customers are voting with their wallets, it’s not just about console units. We feel great about how we’re doing.”
On Monday, Sony cut the price of the PlayStation 3, which competes against the Xbox 360, by $100, or 17 percent, in the United States in an effort to boost flagging sales.
That means the machine, which has a 60-gigabyte hard drive and Blu-ray high-definition DVD player, costs $500, or $20 more than the high-end Xbox 360 Elite that has a 120-gigabyte hard drive but no built-in high-definition DVD player.
Microsoft also has a “premium” Xbox 360 with a 20-gigabyte hard drive that sells for $400, and a “core” version with no hard drive that costs $300.
Sony’s cut also came days after Microsoft said the number of broken Xbox 360s was “unacceptable” and that it would book a charge of up to $1.15 billion for repairs and warranty extensions.
Microsoft also said it had shipped 11.6 million consoles worldwide by the end of June, missing its target of 12 million.
In the United States, Microsoft has sold about 5.8 million consoles, compared to 2.8 million for Nintendo’s Wii and 1.4 million for the PS3, according to data from NPD.
Kim said the decision not to cut prices was unrelated to Microsoft’s goal of making the Xbox business profitable in its 2008 fiscal year, which just started.
Since launching the original Xbox in late 2001, Microsoft has spent billions of dollars fighting Sony’s dominance in the industry yet has shown little, if any, profit.
“It’s really not about meeting the profitability goals. We feel very confident that we’ll meet the profit goals with our strategy that is already in place,” Kim said.
Kim pointed to a line-up of games coming out later this year, including Microsoft’s highly anticipated “Halo 3,” “Grand Theft Auto IV” from Take-Two Interactive Software Inc. and “Madden 08″ football from Electronic Arts.
“This year, that perfect storm arrives again,” Kim said. “And the Xbox 360 is the only platform you’ll be able to play all three of those titles on.”
Microsoft also hopes to attract more casual gamers with two new casual games for later this year. One is a multiplayer “party game” based on its “Viva Pinata” franchise, and the other is based on the movie trivia board game “Scene It?”
Nintendo’s Wii has outsold the Xbox 360 and PS3 this year due to a design and price aimed at drawing in casual gamers.
Kim also said the Xbox Live online service, which allows players to compete online and download movies and games, had 7 million users and would expand to 10 million in one year. He said The Walt Disney Co. (DIS.N: Quote, Profile, Research) would start making some of its movies available on the service.
“Xbox Live continues to just be a huge boulder rolling downhill that is gathering momentum,” Kim said.
Couresy - Reuters