Civilization Love Clash!??

Guess it's just one more example of what I posted a few days back. As Wafa Sultan puts it, "The clash we are witnessing around the world is not a clash of religions or a clash of civilizations...It’s a clash between a mentality that belongs to the Middle Ages and another that belongs to the 21st century".

Idol worship or idle worship or ideal worship?

I came across a thought-provoking post in my organization's discussion board which happens to be a forwarded email. Posting the same here. I am not able to get the pictures from the forward posted here, so will give you just the "irony".

IDOL worship? Or IDLE worship? Or IDEAL worship?

The plight of Ganesha a day after immersion...!

Would you like your Gods bulldozed like garbage?
Left to rot for scavengers to feast... ?

Would you like your Gods to be maimed? Desecrated? Dumped?

And you create a hue and cry when some statue in your city gets ‘desecrated’?

You burn down buses and call for bandhs?

Was that statue a GOD?

OR

Is this GOD only a Statue?

You decide.

Wake Up!

Recently I had read about the various ways to prevent environmental pollution, to save earth which is already suffocating because of the deeds we humans have done and are doing.

I feel instead of looking at what are the ways of a doing a Visarjan so that it doesn't cause any environmental menace, I would rather try to look at the contradictory views people have in the society we live in. People in India don't mind leaving their God away into the waters causing all kinds of environmental hazards to the water-bodies everywhere. If asked, they'd say "it's Visarjan! After few days of worshiping Ganesha, god has to be immersed!”

Ask the same people how they feel when their gods get bulldozed like garbage, you wouldn't find anybody answering!! But when they find someone break their Gods down elsewhere; they make such a BIG fuss about things. Ya, because it's normal people who have done that, but in the former case it's just the Municipality officials doing their JOB!


Can't forget to quote the "burning down of a Chennai-bound bus" on Hosur Road in Bangalore 2 days back, just because TamiNadu CM Karunanidhi made a statement about the God Rama's existence. He didn't go break down any God anywhere, so why was the bus burnt down then?? 2 innocent people were charred to death because of this disgusting act! Should we call such people Hooligans or mere idiots who themselves don't know what they are doing?

Eureka! I found it...

All I could think of was...

'I read that in the TOI newspaper on a Sunday after 25th of Aug or I'd say precisely a day after Kilikili's event. I must somehow find it'.

Having this thought on my mind I have been doing a lot of digging into the pile of newspapers which is in the corner of my room. But couldn't find this newspaper there, though Aug 26th is like less than 2 weeks back!

But all thanks to 'www', I found what I wanted on the TOI website. I have never had a chance to visit this site before because I generally check the bbc or ibnlive from office for sometime in the morning. And when am back home, I hardly check any news on the net coz I manage to watch the important ones on TV.

Oh...! Oops didn't I still tell u what I found? :D .. Here u go...

"The clash we are witnessing around the world is not a clash of religions or a clash of civilizations...It’s a clash between a mentality that belongs to the Middle Ages and another that belongs to the 21st century"

I don't know why I was searching for this for more than a week now. I still don't know. I am just happy that I found it!!

I'd read the complete article 10 days back, but these 2 lines made my mind get lost in thoughts. It may be because I could relate things that have been happening recently with me and around me...with just these 2 lines.

I'm happy I found it! Eureka!! :)

Keerthana and Blessy

So here I come with the latest update of the event held today...

It was another fun-filled day for so many kids and volunteers. The atmosphere was full of everyone wanting to give something, but no one was aware that everyone will have so much to 'take away' at the end of the event :).. a second event with Kilikili couldn't have been better than this!

I reached the venue "Coles Park, Fraser Town" with my brother Pavan who's the newest kid on the block..to have joined me on my weekend programmes with a few organizations :) ...like Toybank and Kilikili.

I met up with all the volunteers whom I'd seen around 2 months back at the first event and had so much fun with, they were amazing last time... But today morning, for me all of this looked like the first event had happened just a week back or so!

We had a "registration team" which registers literally everyone coming to the event viz kids from various schools, volunteers, parents, care-takers and the teachers. Also there are steering committee members and guests too. So the first thing I did was to "register" myself by filling up a volunteer-profile form. Though my details has been with Kilikili for more than 3 months now, it was fun doing it again :).

While I was doing all the "hi-how r u doing-what's up" conversations with many of my friends from the previous event, kids from Goodwill Girls' High School arrived and few mins later the kids from Jyoti Seva - the latter a school for children who are visually impaired, arrived. Within no time, kids from APD - Association of People with Disability also joined us. I was thinking it's going to be one rocking event today!

In the first event we had children from 4 schools, but the objective for the first event was "to make play accessible" even for the kids with disabilities. But like I've mentioned in my previous post Kilikili also aims to lay foundations for a more inclusive society where kids are not discriminated on the basis of their abilities.

Working on the same lines, we grouped a kid from Jyothi Seva or APD with a kid from Goodwill and a volunteer to help them out in using the play space at Coles Park. I was paired up with Keerthana, everyone's favourite kid from the last event and Blessy from Goodwill.

So when me and Blessy started off by helping Keerthana play her fav "swing" in the park, in the next 1 hour, I could see Blessy take so much care of her, helped her play the swing-slide- basketball-swing over and over and am sure she enjoyed every bit of it. That was the idea of the second event today.

We wanted the students from Goodwill to play with the kids with disabilities and hence make them realize the importance of play in their lives and how much they enjoy playing... and also let them understand how important it is to welcome them into the society with open arms.

Thanks to Kilikili and thanks to Kavitha for letting us be part of such an important issue of the society we live in and also for giving us an opportunity to do what all of us would love to do - play with the kids!

Ridiculous is the way this world works!!!

She was so excited the day she met me before leaving...

My friend Priya told me that she'd be going home for a week's time...and was enthu about having a great time back home with her family and friends...

A week flew by and she was back here...but with all that excitement lost in her face... and all the josh locked up somewhere...

She was now telling me about the hardest times she went through handling the most difficult moments of her life so far...

It's been quite sometime now..And she had started realizing that she'd finally arrived at the MOST WEIRD phase of her life.. She was initially finding it almost impossible to digest the fact that she'll now need to step into a "NEW" world with a "PARTNER" into an institution which is unfortunately termed "MARRIAGE"!!!

I am sure almost every Indian girl will go through this difficult phase of her life... where she has a 1000 questions in her mind...driving her crazy day in and day out... and nobody around to answer these...and she'd be left with no choice...but to enter into this so called institution of Marriage... with all the questions unanswered...!!

She was telling me how things were definitely going to change... for good or bad.... which she has absolutely no clue about...

The first question she wanted just anyone to answer was... "Is this change required in my Life NOW?? Am I not happy the way I am...??

It'd taken her 24 years to build this beautiful web of relationships around her... And it's so difficult for anyone who's built this web of relationships around oneself...to come out and force yourself to enter into a TOTALLY NEW one now... !!!

Someone had once said "Change is the only constant thing in Life"…I'd say it's definitely EASIER SAID THAN DONE!!!

And she's now worried about handling the situation where she feels that... she's entered into a A World Turned Upside Down…She still can't believe if this is the same world she lived in all these days....

On the other side were Priya's parents...who felt it's "NOW" the time... that Priya got married...to the "RIGHT" guy... and begin the new phase of her life...!!

I was just thinking if there was any Indian girl who'd "HAPPILY" let all her relationships which she has built up for 24 years now, to take a back seat and get into "MARRIAGE" which the Indian society describes it funnily enough...as the "most sacred thing ever" ...

And more surprisingly...get into MARRIAGE with someone she's known "THE LEAST" all her life...

Isn't this ridiculous?