The collective dreams

‘Aim high’, ‘Dream big’, ’Reach for the stars’ are some of the favorite terms used nowadays. There are the inspirational writers to help you get the maximum out of you.

In a free country I can dream of anything. But in a state controlled country, like Cuba, even your dreams are controlled. You have to achieve what the state tells you. Even if you don’t meet the expectations it is perfectly fine but you cannot cross the limit they have set out for you.

So if you ask anyone where he will prefer to live, the answer will be quite predictable. Everyone will prefer a place with minimum laws to control them. Since our media filled our news space with ‘achievers’, we always aspire to be one among them. Recently I got hold of a book which had the author interviewing a few business tycoons of India. I was surprised about a common claim made by all. They say that they rose to the top without paying a single paisa as a bribe. Anyone who read it will immediately get the picture that any honest man can do a business and reach the top.
But is it the case in real life? Until the 80’s Indians idolized the common man striving to make his ends meet. Our film stars were coolies or middle class students or honest cops without getting promoted because of their ideals. We loved the ordinary politicians like Lalu. We believed in the saying ’Behind every great wealth lies a great crime.’

But soon Indians graduating from American B schools came back home to do business. As markets opened up more and more young Indians took the plunge. We developed a dream somewhat similar to the great American dream. So our ideal man shifted from the common hero to Ambanis and Tatas. Our film heroes started living in palatial homes with a helipad and pool in their home.

The Indian youths started aiming for the top slots. It became pretty ok to bypass a few inconvenient laws or influence the Finance Minister to tweak a few laws for your sake. The Indian businessmen started extending their influence in media. Media closed their eyes towards their small mistakes and started whitewashing our business tycoons. So it doesn’t matter if you have achieved your wealth through the wrong means as long as you are favorite with the media.

These two incidents happened recently:
The Andhra CM died recently in copper crash. He brought Congress back to power both in state and centre. He became the poster boy of the party and so when he died it was conveniently forgotten how he openly abetted bribes. People forgot about how his son Jagan made a fortune for the family when his dad was the CM
Down here in Kerala the young scion of a business family was killed by some goons. It was ordered allegedly by a rival hotel group from whom Paul had snatched a prime plot of land. Instead of looking into the involvement of real estate mafia behind this, media got itself busy in finding out the connection the goon had with the son of a minister. The attention of the public was diverted.

So in short nobody cares what your dreams are. Nobody cares how you chase it. What matters in the end is you have to get it. The success or failure merely depends on the end result.

I always wanted to watch ‘Requiem for a Dream’. All my friends who loved good movies had recommended this one. But it was only recently that I got a chance to watch it.

In this movie we get to see four people with a dream of their own.

The mother wants to see his son settled down and married. She gets hooked to a talk show and she dreams about appearing in it wearing her favorite red dress.
Her son, his girlfriend and his other friend all have the dreams of their own which is somewhat like making it big in terms of money.
The mother fails to slim down by dieting. So she turns to a doctor for help. The doctor prescribes pills to which she gets addicted. Her behavior changes and she is hospitalized in the end.
The son and his friends turns to heroine trade, They plan to open up a boutique with that after earning some cash. But things go wrong. His girl friend turns to prostitution for earning the drug. His friend ends up in jail and has to do hard labor and fight with the withdrawal symptoms and the son has his arm amputated.

The final scene shows all of them in bed curling in to foetal positions dreaming about their dreams.

Achieving our dreams gives us a high or in other words a sense of fulfillment. People who couldn’t get there will look for alternative means. It needn’t be drugs. It can be blogging (in my case).

While our text books and media glorify the men who scaled the heights we fail to see the people who fell by the wayside. We must be able to draw inspirations out of them.

We criticize and reject caste system. I am one among them who hates it. But I cannot stop myself from wondering about the positives of it. In a society we need different varieties of people engaged in different activities, for its self sustenance. In a free society every one aims for the top and so the people who fail is discriminated against. May be caste system was created visualizing to give equal status to everyone in society. It might be our mistake that we misused it.

The Smile

Hey, you guys ever thought of this. Our human race has advanced like anything. We are able to dominate any creature, any situation to our advantage. But can we prevent our body from getting eaten by worms. Not always.

I have been hearing about this book for a long time. I was trying to get my hands on it, but to no avail. This Onam exhibition as I was walking through the stalls I came across a book stall. I was just browsing through when my eyes fell on this book. I grabbed it with both my hands. Thus my dream for some time had been fulfilled even though I had to put away buying some other things I had planned for the day.
It is a Malayalam book written by K.S. Aniyan on the incidents that happened in the life of Dr. V.P. Gangadharan. He is an oncologist working with the Cancer patients. The stories in the book are enough to melt the heart of even the cold blooded. I don’t have any copyright for the thing. But since I believe this story is going to touch anyone who stumbles on my blog, I am compelled to write.
The name of the book is ‘Miracle called life’. I am just translating story here. May be I would rather say it is an abridged version.

No matter how much pain a man has been through, he will be very reluctant to leave his life. He tries to hold on to his last thread of life as his time comes. May be this world is too beautiful to leave.
But it was the first time the doctor was witnessing such a situation. As Sophiya is entering her last days she is smiling more and more. She had a cancer no woman wanted to have- breast cancer. Removing a woman’s breast was like removing her womanhood. But here he is standing perplexed. Because normally he is meant to comfort her. But here she is lying on her bed with a smile and asking for her best friend, Sunandha. Her husband was staring in to the lake through the window with no emotion on his face. That man perplexed the doctor more.
‘Even he is getting bored of this place’, she said.

When she was brought to him cancer had entered in to the most advanced stages. A wound had opened up in the breasts and worms were wriggling in the pus that oozed out. He was shocked. She has been suffering all this pain silently.
‘Didn’t u feel like coming here earlier?’, he asked a bit shocked and a bit angry.
‘Doctor, she didn’t tell anybody about this. We found out when we went for a visit.’ The nuns who brought her here told him.

What were these nuns doing here? Why she is suffering all this as if she is enjoying the extreme pain. The husband who is staring listlessly, unmindful of the happenings around him, not knowing that his wife had a breast with pus oozing out. Doctor could not draw a clear picture out of this story. He was eager to weave together these mysterious threads.

One day as he reached the room during his routine rounds, he heard a crying. He saw woman crying over Sophiya. That was Sunandha, Sophiya’s best friend and someone the doctor wanted to meet. And it was she who unfolded the clear picture of Sophiya’s life story.
‘Sophiya was brought up by nuns in a catholic run orphanage.‘

‘Although she was an orphan, she was talented and very beautiful’

‘Sophiya....beautiful???’ he could not visualize this human skeleton as ‘once up on a time..Beauty-queen’.

‘When she was married off to a well off family everyone felt happy for her. At last she is getting a secure future and a family to call her own. But she had been cheated. The family didn’t reveal that their boy was a mad man.’

‘But it was his brothers who became mad due to lust when they saw her. They dreamt about having sex with the wife of their retarded brother. One day one of the brothers beat her for refusing to sleep with him. Hearing the sound Sophiya’s husband came. The retard started beating her up, hearing the lies of his brother. This became a daily routine. Either let her brother in laws fuck her or get beaten by her husband. The beauty of hers became her curse’

Now the fog lifted. Everything became clear. She is suffering all the pain to destroy her body, destroy her greatest curse. She is smiling because from now on no one will have a lust for her, no one will want to take off her chastity. She had prevailed over all the flesh eaters who wanted her body.

The husband sat in the corridor staring into nothing.

(The story is titled as ‘Smile of fire’. The way I wrote this story won’t come even come close to the real one. So if you get the book don’t think twice. Grab it. And remember this is not a fiction a real life story.)

Seasons change....Do we?

In college, my favorite pastime used to be going for movies. I waited eagerly for Friday papers to know which movie is releasing in which theatre. My preference used to be some entertainer with enough masala to get my paisa vasool.
Today, after 2-3 years, going for movies is the last thing I would do on a holiday. I love sitting at home and read or do some writing. I don’t want to go for a movie and waste some 3-4 hours. I am not saying the quality of our movies have deteriorated in 3 years. May be I got enlightened.
But recently I saw one of the best movies I ever seen in a theatre. It was none other than Shyamaprasad’s ‘Rithu’. I am not good in reviewing and nowadays I hate those category of people who does review with hidden agendas and thus churn out stuff ultimately destroying the good movies.


Cinema is perception of director on some subject. His ultimate success lies in how well he communicates his ideas. I believe the viewer has also an important role in understanding what a director is trying to say. The greatest curse today is people read the review first which most probably is a paid one or done by someone with some pre conceived notions. Cinema viewing is passive participation in the making of that cinema.
I want to list out some thoughts I got off from the movie ‘Rithu’. The perspective with which I saw might be different from what someone else has seen

Director has been careful not to portray an ideal character. He has simply painted the characters we see around today. It is left to viewers to choose his role model. Before I proceed three cheers to Joshua Newton who came up with a great thought provoking script on debut. I have read his blog and this man has shown class. Hope he goes a long way. As I said the story is a usual story but the way he transformed this story to tug at a few strings in our heart is amazing.


1. Sharath comes down from USA. He gets a better opportunity here. He comes from a family with leftist background and he himself carries a revolutionary fire in him. He calls up his friends, who are now working for different software MNC. He dreams about carrying on with his passion. Here we see a basic trait seen in us all (especially Mallus). We may have dreams and we may be passionate about them. But we make sure we don’t risk anything chasing them. We always take a safe path.
Here there is also an indication of failed revolutionary who is afraid to take the same path their parents have taken. The older generation is also afraid to commit that their path was the right one. Hence we surrender our dreams to live a ‘settled life’. With time our dreams gets polluted by materialism.
We also measure success in terms of money and other solid assets. Success has become a quantitative term. We measure a student’s performance by the marks he gets and not by the hard work he puts in. Ethics has taken a back seat. Today ends satisfy the means.

2. Sharath expects that his friends not to have changed. But he forgets to look into himself how much he himself has changed. Sunny and Ria has become more materialistic and detached from the reality. The escapism that we see in the people around is seen in their actions. But director has also stated his reasons. Sunny comes from a family with an abusive father. Varsha’s father ran away with another woman. In order to escape from this degraded system they identify more and more with the system. Among the three Sharath comes from a stable family. But in worldly terms a failed family in terms of success. Director points out the tendency to measure value in terms of success. People mistake that everything is a market commodity, even values.
The film says that the erosion of values or moral degradation is not something seen exclusively in the youths of today. The roots have come from the false values imparted from the previous generation. We are witnessing the results now.

3. Another class of people the director has painted is the ones displaced due to the internet city project. As a token they have been relocated somewhere else and were promised jobs in the booming internet city. Director uses a person to represent the whole community. The jobs they have been promised are menial ones. The director has not named the character so I am naming him as DP. DP is forced to move on from one job to another because he is not able to keep up with the pace. At last he is beaten by a gang for not cooperating with their unlawful activities. He tearfully asks ‘Why did you do this to us? At least we could have earned a honest living earlier.’ This is a question to us in large. In order to satisfy the needs and luxuries of a minority, a majority is made to sacrifice their lives. This majority is ignored by all from the ruling class to media. There are few scenes in which Sharath looks at DP. A silent stare with no words or smiles. Have we bothered to look into the lives of people living in the fringes. People who do menial labor for us. I always wonder if I can survive without the man who cleans my toilet in office. But I don’t know his name yet!

4. Then there is Sharath’s boss who dreams about conquering the empire. Her meek husband proves an ideal foil. She is aggressive, stylish and in terms of today’s world ‘successful’. But as movie goes on we come to know that they have sacrificed their family life for material success. She asks if it is worth it to bear children and sacrifice this success. The husband meekly gives in to her wishes. But asks pointed question once in a while ‘Is there any purpose in this?’. A refreshing change from normal filmy situations where men happen to be aggressive. But this situation is on the rise all around. A question to everyone in corporate world ‘Which comes first – Family or Career?’


5. Sunny is a typical character seen around. He had a dream of going abroad and he decides to sacrifice all his ethics and friendships for that. He spies for his boss against his best friend Sharath. Later he cheats the company and tries to sell a secret. In the end he is fell by his own sword. If you play by a rule get ready to fall by it. In this ‘rat eat rat’ world get ready to be eaten by a bigger rat.




6. Sharath’s parents are another set of characters representing a generation who finds it difficult to find any relevance for their principles and ideals in this world. Sharath and his family finds it difficult to understand each other. But his father persuades him to take up writing which ultimately turns out to be his redemption.

When Sharath sits alone at their previous getaway, an old man come and asks him ‘So your friends have gone and you are alone. Look at this tree. It came here in a flood. Took roots here and sheds leaves unchanged for years.’


The childhood friends drift apart from each other. They understand they changed too much to maintain their old relation.

In the end an ultimate question- Have we changed with the seasons? Have the dreams we nurtured once got corrupted with neo materialism? What are our priorities now?

My friend Matt, friend from my school days makes it a point to keep in touch with everyone from our batch. Although I feel a bit irritated at time, in the end I am thankful to him for keeping the old friendships going by acting as a link

Onam and some food for thought

Onam is a festival celebrated by all Malayalees no matter what his caste, creed or religion is or no matter which part of the globe he is from. Athapookalam is a kind of multi coloured design made on the ground with the flower petals.

It is a really funny sight to see men dressed in their gym outfits(Tight Tees and tracks) sit down on ground and pick the flower petals to do a Pookalam. It happens in our gym and I am quite sure it never happens in any other.

Kerala Police started this gym in the name ‘Kerala Sri’ to increase the interaction and cooperation between the common man and police. It is really cheap but has all the multi specialty equipments and so is worth it.
The man who really needs to be mentioned is our Nixon sir. He is a simple man coming from a simple background. He went on to win the Mr.Kerala in ’85 and is still passionate about body building and does heavy workouts even in the age of 40s.
I have heard people making fun of him behind his back for his simplicity (they will never do it in front of him). Today if you are not able to stand up and claim your achievements and some of other people’s you end up nowhere. Nixon never goes around boasting but he is one guy responsible for people’s participation and thus achieve the purpose of ‘Kerala Sri’. But we are reluctant to realize the achievements of a common man and so whatever he does is taken for granted.
Nixon organizes programmes on festive occasions like Onam, Christmas and anniversaries. This Onam was one with a difference.

We do need a lot of money for the celebration and Kerala Police is never able to contribute anything. So we members have to pool in the money. But Nixon makes sure that one member is only disturbed once awhile and members mostly never complains. This year I did my part in buying the flowers for the decoration.
On the morning of 20th August we gathered in our gym in the early hours and started picking the petals of flowers. We don’t have much budget so we ended up buying flowers of the basic colours. A guy from the forest department draws the design using chalk on the floor and we arrange the flowers over it. This time there were some flowers left over and we managed to make the extra petals into another design.
As a chief guest we had a Dr.Kusumam from Regional Cancer Institute. There are really few doctors who does what their duty demands them to nevertheless anything out of duty. Dr.Kusumam is one among those. In a country like India the healthcare facilities are really limited and Cancer is something that needs lots of attention and care and not the least- money. The sad part is majority of the people who falls prey to this disease has no means to get any of the three.

Children with cancer have got more chance to survive. But somebody has to boost their morale to stand up and fight the side effects of chemo, the hair fall, the weight loss. The parents of these children will be in a worse mental shape than them. Most of them would have taken leave from their job, and if it is daily wage labor they would have lost any means to support their family. The worst part is asking for help and donations from people around. You will need large amount daily and so you would have gone around searching and begging at any door you come across. The last thing a man would want to lose is his honour.

That is what she said while receiving the amount members had collected for the cause of the children suffering from cancer.
There is a famous song in Malayalam regarding Onam.
‘During the days of Mahabali all men were one.’
Does it mean that there was no rich and poor, fool an wise, healthy and sick. No that is not what the song means. All had the feeling of oneness. Those who had the resources shared with the people who needed that. It is not just the money. It can be your time, talents, love.
This Onam take some time to spend your time and love with some less privileged around you. Not necessarily someone poor. It can be some one among your circle who needs your love and care.

Happy Onam!!!!!!!!!!!

Independence-62

One more Independence day passes by. I hate this year’s independence day because it fell on a weekend. I lost a holiday (break from job), which is my birthright. As years passes
I-day becomes more and more irrelevant for us. Ever since getting into a US based company, I have started following the independence day of USA because it is also kind of another holiday I don’t know if I-day makes any difference to me be it in US or India.
After 62 years has the relevance of our I-day reduced to that of any other holiday.

Basheer came into contact with Gandhi when he was doing his high school. At that time Kerala had a very unusual law by which low caste were prevented from entering any temple. Against this inhumane act some prominent people started an agitation. Gandhi came down to Kerala in support of this agitation.
Basheer was not in to politics then. He went to the lake side out of curiosity. Thousands and thousands lined up on the shores to get a glimpse of this great man. When the boat carrying Gandhi came near the shore atmosphere was filled with ‘Bharath Matha ki jai’ and ‘Mahatma Gandhi ki jai’. Basheer in his boyish desperation wanted to touch Gandhi. As the car carrying Gandhi passed by he desperately jumped to the side he lost balance and so he caught on to Gandhi in order not to fall down. Gandhi smiled at him.

Gandhi called Indians to break the salt law peacefully. By salt Satyagraha Gandhi meant the beginning of end of all the injustice meted out at Indians.
Gandhi declared ‘Either I will achieve what I demanded or my dead body will float in the sea.’
This statement was enough to shock the ordinary Indians in to actions. Thousands of people from different parts of country including men, women and children marched in to the seashore on the auspicious day. Irrespective of the caste and creed people from all over the country participated in the Satyagraha. But similar to places all over India police was waiting with boots, lathis and bayonets. Peaceful protesters were mercilessly beaten. Small children lay on the beaches with heads broken by the horse hooves and ribs by the lathis.
This incident provoked the consciousness of the ordinary people.


Basheer was an ordinary boy. He came from an ordinary Muslim family and at that time Muslims had not been drawn much into the struggle. Basheer saw the charisma and passion around. He was pretty sure that his country was about to be set free and he wanted to play a role in that. But he was just a boy.
One afternoon as his mother was cooking his lunch, he asked her for a glass of water. After glancing at his mother, he left the house to sacrifice his life for the cause of freedom. He reached a town from where he wrote a letter to a friend who was a known freedom fighter..
He got a reply soon ‘I am in the jail now. You stay there and don’t do anything or go anywhere until I am released’.
Meanwhile Basheer’s parents had started searching for him.


Basheer didn’t want to wait for his friend. So in a hurry he went to the Congress office and asked for a membership. He was met with some apprehension because Muslims rarely joined the Congress.
He was standing in the office of congress secretary while the scrutiny was being made. He went out to take a piss when the secretary saw his diary. On seeing the scribbling in Arabic the doubts doubled. Basheer could probably turn out to be an informer.
‘Are you really a Muslim?’
‘Yes’
‘Are you ready to come with us tomorrow for breaking the salt law?’
The next day morning Basheer along with others got ready to march at the sea. But he never got a chance to do so. The early morning he was surprised to see a bunch of police officers barge in to their room and arrest them.


On reaching the station, Basheer for the first time saw the bayonets and lathis lined up on the wall. He felt like his courage being drained away. One by one the arrested men were taken up into a room and beaten. Basheer stopped counting after it reached twenty. The next day he couldn’t get up or walk. A fellow fighter massaged him with oil.
He was sentenced to 3 years into prison. The prison was a small room with a small jug full of urine in one corner. As lunch they got worm infested broth. They had to remove the worms before eating it.


Gandhi Irvin pact was signed months later. All the political prisoners were released. Basheer didn’t know where to go or what to do. He had one purpose in life now. To kill the officer who beat him up brutally in the lock up. But he had no option of obtaining a weapon. He stole a pen knife from the motel he was staying.
That was when he met Achuthan. Achuthan was surprised Basheer hadn’t gone back home after being released. Achuthan talked with Basheer. Basheer revealed his secret desire for vengeance.
‘Then why do you claim to be a satyagrahi.’
Achuthan told him sufferings the freedom fighters had to go through. He narrated the story of how the Mahatma lost a tooth. Achuthan explained to Basheer that police was another helpless tool in the hands of this corrupt and oppressive regime. He persuaded Basheer to go home and paid him the bus fare.
But Basheer was still unwilling to do so. He was too ashamed to face his parents. One night he finally made his decision. He walked to his home in the midnight.
He saw light in his home
‘Who is that?’ his mother called out.
When she saw Basheer asked him as if nothing had happened ‘Have you eaten anything son?’
She set out the table for him.
‘Ma how did you know I will be coming today?’
‘No son I was waiting every night for you’. She waited every night for him, for months.

Our present life of abundance is embedded with past full of sacrifice and deprivation and loss by innumerable ordinary men and their families.

So when skinny NRI babes in USA celebrates our I day wearing bikinis spotting our tri colors, I believe that would be the best way to remember our freedom fighters who had to spent the lion’s share of their youth in lock up with no much food and clothes. Anyways these girls also have made us proud of our tri colors and identified themselves with the freedom struggle.

Bharath Matha ki Jai!!!!!







Basheer later became one of the greatest writers in Malayalam- Vaikkom Mohammad Basheer

This post is a rough translation of the short story of the great writer ‘Mother’

True love

I write this post with a heavy heart. I don’t know why I feel sad. I am like that sometimes. But I try to put a happy face in front of my friends and family. But how long will the mask stand?
The most of the agonies that I went through in life is related to some woman- direct or indirect. This heaviness in my heart is also because of a woman. She didn’t do me any harm. In fact, she cannot harm anyone.

Other than my Mom, there are two women who have influenced my life the most. The first one was from my college days. She had such a great character and personality. I am her biggest fan to this day. I believe she has got steel balls. (Haven’t got a chance to check it out yet)
Two weeks back Sandra came into my life uninvited. I haven’t seen Sandra to this day. I have only spoken to her once and that too for a few minutes. I believe she must be beautiful because she knows nothing but love. Even when she is cheated, she waits expectantly for the love to come back some day.

She taught me what love is. I have spent most of my life in cities. May that’s why I link romanticism with economics. I always believed that people who fall in love and marry also weigh the financial strength of the opposite sex. I believe the rich man- poor girl or the rich girl –poor man love stories are things of the past. Even they don’t show it movies nowadays. I had to sadly agree to the fact that everything was up for sale and even relationships are not spared.

Sandra was from a lower middle class family and she got into a great IT company far away from her home. She had an attractive personality and so had great gang of friends around. Arjun was one of the gang members. He was good looking and jovial and favorite of all girls. The marital status of Arjun was ‘single and ready to mingle’.

May be it was because of the work pressure. May be it was peer pressure. They grew fond of each other. Arjun gave the poor girl lots of hope. The parents from both the sides were notified and all the planning was completed. Sandra’s hearts bloomed with hope of a happy family and future.

Fate can sometimes be cruel with those pure in heart. She was transferred to a place far away from home. She consoled herself with the fact that it is just a temporary transfer. Besides love strengthens when the lovers are separated. Arjun called her the first day and there was no hint of unusualness.

But she was in for a shock. She got a call from him the next day.
‘I don’t think I will be able to fulfill the promises I made you. I realized that I don’t love you. It was just an infatuation. I was too lonely and away from home and there was no one to advise me. There is no love in me for you.’

The mutual friends tried to intervene for a easier break up. But Arjun was too adamant.
The heart broken Sandra had no one to console. She was on the verge of suicide. Old friends tried to console her through the phone.

She wrote Arjun a letter.
‘I won’t be there in your life as an obstacle for your happiness. Live your life happily and in the way you want to.
I am writing this letter to tell you everything that was left to say.
I was ready to change my caste. I was ready to leave my family for you. But still you are unwilling to accept me. Didn’t our friends warn you against the consequences? Why do you say that there was no one to advise you?

Thanks for the love you gave me for a month. You say it was an infatuation. For me it was love. What I gave you back was love. You will realize it someday.
If you had a bit of love for me you would have told this when I was there with you. I have no one here to cry with me. Did I hurt you that much to deserve this?

I am not sure even if you will read this. But I just wanted to say the one month you were there with me was the happiest period of my life. Thank you again for all the happy moments’

Sandra, I don’t think you will read this but I pray that you will find the love you lost in someone who will be there for you to the end.
Readers, all the characters are real. So if you happen to read this take a moment to wish Sandra good luck.

When I finished this I am feeling some burden lifted from my heart. I was feeling the struggle inside me for past few days while I was converting my thoughts to words.

The Beer Summit

The sensational news in Washington in the last week of July was not suicide bombing in Iraq, Taliban invasion in Afghan or economic recession. The sensation was the arrest of a professor and the reason it made headlines was that the professor was black and the officer a white.

Gates was a professor specializing In African American history. On the fateful night he was returning tour to China. The cab driver was a black too. On reaching home Prof. Gates discovered that his door was jammed and there was no one else at home. And it was too late to search for an alternative option. So Professor decides to break into his own home with a little help from the cabbie. Don’t know if the cabbie had prior experience. As they went on with their ‘perfectly legal’ house-breaking, a neighbor was watching all these. It seems now that the neighbor didn’t know who was staying next door. She called up the police.

Cometh the second hero, Sergeant Crawley.

Sgt. Crawley like all efficient officers arrives at the scene in a jiffy. What happened thereafter remains a mystery to this day.
Crawley claims he asked the professor for identification which he refused at the same time showering choice words at him.
Gates says he showed the officer his identification papers proving that it was his house. But Crawley refused in his arrogant style and detained him.

But one thing is for sure. Professor Gates was arrested for breaking into his own home.
The humiliated Gates claimed that he was detained because he was black and the sergeant could not come to terms with the fact that a black person could own a house in a posh neighborhood. The entire NYPD sided along with Crawley claiming Gates was trying to distract the investigation by giving it a racial color.

The third world media saw this as an opportunity for America bashing and chance for a dent in ‘equal opportunity’ image. I rejoiced on seeing the agonized face of Gates, I hate self righteous nations like USA. At least here is our answer to allegation by US based human rights organizations that in India there was no religious freedom for minorities.

The incident would have remained in the newspapers had not our chocolate boy hero Obama headed into the scene with his take on the incident. Obama remarked that Crawley had acted ‘stupidly’. NYPD was not sure if it has to stick with its earlier stand or stand with their president and in the process sacrificing one of their faithful. This turned in to a national issue and a potential racial misunderstanding. It seems that Americans have not come to terms that they have elected a black to be their president.
So this became an international issue with people like me eagerly waiting for a racial riot or something of that sort.

Then the bad boy played the good boy too. Obama called both the main characters of the story for a coveted visit to white house. Well, if he had called them to a bar or a park they could have refused... But here is a chance no one would have the guts to refuse and which won’t obviously come again.
The two men met in the white house just as they were about to begin their tour. After some awkward moments the air cooled and it didn’t take much time for them to become friends. Gates remarked ‘when Crawley isn’t arresting you he is a good guy’. They agreed to meet over lunch some time

Later along with Obama and Biden they shared some beer and munched on nuts. The media dubbed this exercise as ‘The Beer Summit’.

Barack Obama is in a peculiar situation. The whole America is watching if he can cut across racial divides and reach out to all people and thus become an icon for whole world. Therefore he won’t get the privilege George Bush got, to be treated as another dumb kid in the white house. He is expected to do a lot.
Whatever he is going to say or do will attain a racial profile. So ultimately each and every statement he makes will be judged based on the racial impact it is going to make. People watch if he is biased and in the process compromising on the values.

What I love about the man is his ability to judge the situation and make the apt decisions. Even in this case when both the men met no one was asked to make an apology. The president wanted to set up a platform for them to meet and listen to each other. And both couldn’t ask for a better venue than the White House. And both spoke to each other without anyone to meddle in between.
‘We stated our perceptions and stuck on to it. We decided to revisit our perceptions some time later.’ this is what they said about the meetings.

This is what I loved about it. If anyone was asked to compromise on his statement it would have been equivalent to humiliation and a racial hurt. But they were asked to listen to each other. The first step for any kind of reconciliation is dialogue.

When Obama was elected to office there was a book that caught the attention of the world. It was Irving Wallace’s ‘The Man’. It was published in 1964. It’s the story about a black man becoming the president by accident. It was written before the 25th amendment of constitution. At that time the order of succession when a president dies was Vice president, Speaker, President Pro Tempore of the senate. Vice President was already dead. The president and speaker get killed in a freak accident. To their utter shock they discover that next in line was a black man, Dilman, who was elected as the President Pro Tempore of the senate as it was a namesake seat and that would give an impression of racial equality to the government.

In fact this book caused such uproar that the copies were burnt and it had to be pulled off the shelf. This was published when segregation still existed and all blacks were considered as crooks.. The advisers of Dilman hoped he would be a push-over and they could pull the strings. But at a crucial point Dilman sticks to his stand. They conspire to bring him down.

Dilman had appointed as his secretary a white lady, Sally, who had a troubled past. Sally joins with the conspirers and frames a sexual harassment against Dilman. They bring in an impeachment motion against Dilman.
But as the impeachment draws to a close Dilman gets inconclusive evidence that the charges against him were falsely framed. But he refuses to present it before the committee because that would reveal that Sally is a mental patient.

When I read about the Beer summit in the newspapers, this was the book that came into my mind. What we need in this world divided by race and religion may not be a stubborn stand but a tough stand covered by the softness of love. The courage to admit that you were wrong when you said or did something.

Hope Obama lives up to our expectation….