Writings on the Wall

On the eve of 26/11, A tribute to the victims of terrorism, not just in Mumbai, not just in India, around the world.



When the Nazis came for the communists,

I remained silent;

I was not a communist.

When they locked up the social democrats, I remained silent; I was not a social democrat.

When they came for the trade unionists,

I did not speak out;

I was not a trade unionist.

When they came for the Jews,

I remained silent;

I wasn't a Jew.

When they came for me,

there was no one left to speak out

May their souls Rest In Peace. AMEN.

"What is passion? It is surely the becoming of a person. Are we not, for most of our lives, marking time? Most of our being is at rest, unlived. In passion, the body and the spirit seek expression outside of self. Passion is all that is other from self. The more extreme and the more expressed that passion is, the more unbearable does life seem without it. It reminds us that if passion dies or is denied, we are partly dead and that soon, come what may, we will be wholly so."

An interesting discussion led me to ask this question to my few followers on twitter. The replies were vastly different, both in wave-lengths and in approach towards the question:

For a high school student, "Passion is the look In a hungry lover's eyes when they first lay on their soulmate. passion is when u blv tht you're done searching for love. when u blv that u've finally found urself in ur soulmate.."

For an under-graduate, through last year of studies, "Passion is a strong feeling of desire. Your driving point. The reason you live."

For a career-woman ,"Willing and believing to be able to live, breathe, sleep ur core desire."

For someone fresh off the hackles of college life, "Passion is the diplomatic synonym for obsession."

And For someone who had seen it all, "Passion is the food for soul."

For an aspiring career woman, look in lover's eye might not be passion and for a high school graduate, Passion is anything but food for thought.

Passion depends on what stage of life you are at, passion is what your priorities are, passion is what keeps you going, passion is anything that YOU ARE, PASSION IS WHAT YOU ARE. Live it up, go, live your passion.

An interesting discussion on Global Warming yesterday took my thought process to a complete new journey which had nothing to do with Climate Change or anything related to that. Its pretty strange how the western paranoia and insecurity of losing the Super Power position is now taking fore in almost all global issues. While discussing Global Warming, a western yesterday complained how world doesn't bother about actual issues like "nuclear proliferation, extreme poverty, infectual disease etc etc etc China." Now apart from the last "so called problems" were pretty much general or non-country specific. But what about calling CHINA a problem?

Now, to make things clear, I am an Indian, a proud one, and its a very well know fact that India lost a border war with China back then in 1962 and the two countries are not the best of friends or neighbours. I also acknowledge that there is no comparison between India and China in any aspect. China is miles ahead let it be its Economic Strength, Military, Infrastructure Development and many things. But at the same time I myself am a critic of poor standards of human rights in China and the frequent unlawful executions.

But, in this blog post, I will write only about the paranoia and insecurity that breeds in the mind of many in the western world. China, the world's most populous country is now the second largest economy (GDP-PPP) in world, second only behind USA. But the important thing is that during the worst recession after 1930s, China is still growing, though at a relatively slower pace whereas USA is contracting. China currently holds a foreign currency reserve equivalent to more than $2 Trillion. China is world's largest exporter of non-defense products and the second largest outsourcing destination in the world. All this combined would definitely make China the world leader if we lived in a conflict free, unmilitarized world. But that said, we don't. And unfortunately thats the only thing which always decides the balance of power in geo-politics.

That is only why USA is still considered the most powerful nation in world. But they know that China is catching up fast and they are doing everything to delay, if not halt, the progress. But, its inevitable and even Obama acknowledged it by visiting China before a Chinese state visit.

The balance is shifting towards the west of west.

An interesting discussion on Global Warming yesterday took my thought process to a complete new journey which had nothing to do with Climate Change or anything related to that. Its pretty strange how the western paranoia and insecurity of losing the Super Power position is now taking fore in almost all global issues. While discussing Global Warming, a western yesterday complained how world doesn't bother about actual issues like "nuclear proliferation, extreme poverty, infectual disease etc etc etc China." Now apart from the last "so called problems" were pretty much general or non-country specific. But what about calling CHINA a problem?

Now, to make things clear, I am an Indian, a proud one, and its a very well know fact that India lost a border war with China back then in 1962 and the two countries are not the best of friends or neighbours. I also acknowledge that there is no comparison between India and China in any aspect. China is miles ahead let it be its Economic Strength, Military, Infrastructure Development and many things. But at the same time I myself am a critic of poor standards of human rights in China and the frequent unlawful executions.

But, in this blog post, I will write only about the paranoia and insecurity that breeds in the mind of many in the western world. China, the world's most populous country is now the second largest economy (GDP-PPP) in world, second only behind USA. But the important thing is that during the worst recession after 1930s, China is still growing, though at a relatively slower pace whereas USA is contracting. China currently holds a foreign currency reserve equivalent to more than $2 Trillion. China is world's largest exporter of non-defense products and the second largest outsourcing destination in the world. All this combined would definitely make China the world leader if we lived in a conflict free, unmilitarized world. But that said, we don't. And unfortunately thats the only thing which always decides the balance of power in geo-politics.

That is only why USA is still considered the most powerful nation in world. But they know that China is catching up fast and they are doing everything to delay, if not halt, the progress. But, its inevitable and even Obama acknowledged it by visiting China before a Chinese state visit.

The balance is shifting towards the west of west.

Ever since I read about Climate Change negotiations, there is one particular term which keeps attracting my attention on the internet- Kyoto Protocol.

So what is this Kyoto protocol and what is its significance in the climate change negotiations. In one line- Kyoto Protocol is the problem and perhaps also the solution.

Kyoto Protocol is a framework for United Nations Climate Change Conference proposed by Australia aimed at tackling global warming. The highlight of the protocol is that the developed countries take binding CO2 and hazardous gases emission cuts while the developing countries be let on themselves to decide the extent of emission cuts. Sounds fair.

But, Kyoto Protocol was introduced in 1997 and ratified in 2005. The arguement that goes against Kyoto is that the Kyoto Protocol doesn't reflect the current realities. At the time when Kyoto was introduced, countries like India, Brazil and South Africa were no where in the global economic picture. China was considered a developing country but had no real strength or say in world politics and policy making.

Come 1009, the situation is completely changed. The United States of America (which is the only country in world which never ratified neither have any intentions of ratifying the Kyoto Protocol) is no longer the only country that exclusively call shots in the working of UNO. Countries like China, India, Brazil, South Africa, Mexico, South Korea, Indonesia have see multiple growth in their economies. The global economic scenario have completely changed. The recent Financial Crisis have actually shifted the balance towards east or rather Asia. With Japan, China, India, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia growing at a slow but sturdy pace while the economies in Europe and America shrinking, the final say in global issues no longer lies with the west.

All said, the Kyoto is an outdated frameworks agreement which was introduced at a time when the current major economies were evolving the needed the space to grow, which they did. But not its time to sit down and reassess the ground realities. The world is actually divided right now between those who wants Kyoto to be dropped (led by US and EU) while those who wants to continue with it (China and India). An interesting development last month was that the developing countries led by China agreed to drop Kyoto in lieu of adequate compensation citing the example that the developed countries already had their economic prosperity achieved by the exploitation of resources and would lose almost nothing even if they were to take binding emission cuts now, whereas the economies of developing countries will suffer a massive blow. EU declared a $200 Billion compensation package, but the developing countries weren't satisfied with that.

In the coming times, during COP15 and UNCCC, Kyoto will feature dominantly all over the media and blogging community. We must accept the world have changed and move on, but also must remember that we cannot continue our forward march on fellow human's corpses.

Ever since I read about Climate Change negotiations, there is one particular term which keeps attracting my attention on the internet- Kyoto Protocol.

So what is this Kyoto protocol and what is its significance in the climate change negotiations. In one line- Kyoto Protocol is the problem and perhaps also the solution.

Kyoto Protocol is a framework for United Nations Climate Change Conference proposed by Australia aimed at tackling global warming. The highlight of the protocol is that the developed countries take binding CO2 and hazardous gases emission cuts while the developing countries be let on themselves to decide the extent of emission cuts. Sounds fair.

But, Kyoto Protocol was introduced in 1997 and ratified in 2005. The arguement that goes against Kyoto is that the Kyoto Protocol doesn't reflect the current realities. At the time when Kyoto was introduced, countries like India, Brazil and South Africa were no where in the global economic picture. China was considered a developing country but had no real strength or say in world politics and policy making.

Come 1009, the situation is completely changed. The United States of America (which is the only country in world which never ratified neither have any intentions of ratifying the Kyoto Protocol) is no longer the only country that exclusively call shots in the working of UNO. Countries like China, India, Brazil, South Africa, Mexico, South Korea, Indonesia have see multiple growth in their economies. The global economic scenario have completely changed. The recent Financial Crisis have actually shifted the balance towards east or rather Asia. With Japan, China, India, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia growing at a slow but sturdy pace while the economies in Europe and America shrinking, the final say in global issues no longer lies with the west.

All said, the Kyoto is an outdated frameworks agreement which was introduced at a time when the current major economies were evolving the needed the space to grow, which they did. But not its time to sit down and reassess the ground realities. The world is actually divided right now between those who wants Kyoto to be dropped (led by US and EU) while those who wants to continue with it (China and India). An interesting development last month was that the developing countries led by China agreed to drop Kyoto in lieu of adequate compensation citing the example that the developed countries already had their economic prosperity achieved by the exploitation of resources and would lose almost nothing even if they were to take binding emission cuts now, whereas the economies of developing countries will suffer a massive blow. EU declared a $200 Billion compensation package, but the developing countries weren't satisfied with that.

In the coming times, during COP15 and UNCCC, Kyoto will feature dominantly all over the media and blogging community. We must accept the world have changed and move on, but also must remember that we cannot continue our forward march on fellow human's corpses.

Some days which you just discard from your life diary can turn out to be probably the best ones of your life. I say this with profound knowledge and experience. Had a terrible day dealing with a Kazakh who didn't know a word of english or arabic neither to read properly. Left office at around 9.30 compared to usual days when I wind things up by 6 or 6.30 at the max. Was so tired by the time I reached home that I just wanted to sleep- sleep, sleep and sleep. Logged on to twitter to check if there is any buzz about Oprah Winfrey and her antiques, well, yeah, but subtle, dying bits, after all, the UAE twitter community cannot stand against a huge celebrity like Oprah, regardless of her insensitive and unverified rheotric.

Ever since I got an iphone, my usual email communication has taken a massive hit. No, I don't say iphone doesn't have a very good email client or lagging push services, infact iphone does pretty good task of pushing your emails through in real time. But, iphone doesn't have as better email integration as a BlackBerry do + the touch screen keyboard makes it even unattractive to reply immediately.

Because of all above reasons, I didn't check my emails all day and was left to deal with them for the later part of evening. One by one, i started reading/answering the emails and amidst of all that replying/forwarding crazy business, I received a couple of emails, which I wasn't expecting to come so soon. First one's a little sketchy and can't be discusses right now, but the second one was probably one of the most exciting 4 sentence email I ever got in my whole life:
 

For someone like me, it was an absolutely breath-taking moment. To blog from the same platform as Greenpeace, Oxfam, 350, World Wildlife Federation etc is nothing sort of unbelievable for a 24 year old from a small city of Rajasthan, India.


What I want to do from Fresh Air Centre is to take the climate change problem to semi-urban, rural households in third world countries. I want people to think about climate change before they think about the threat eminating from a neighbour or from a country situated half way across the planet. No, its we ourselves who is the greatest enemy of human-kind, of our sustainable future. Let's work to get our goal, let's work to get our rightful place in history, as the nurtures of this planet, not as the destroyers.


Appeal: Please check out http://www.350.org/animation to learn more about 350 and how you can help. Remember: Our planet is burning and we need to act, act fast.

Some days which you just discard from your life diary can turn out to be probably the best ones of your life. I say this with profound knowledge and experience. Had a terrible day dealing with a Kazakh who didn't know a word of english or arabic neither to read properly. Left office at around 9.30 compared to usual days when I wind things up by 6 or 6.30 at the max. Was so tired by the time I reached home that I just wanted to sleep- sleep, sleep and sleep. Logged on to twitter to check if there is any buzz about Oprah Winfrey and her antiques, well, yeah, but subtle, dying bits, after all, the UAE twitter community cannot stand against a huge celebrity like Oprah, regardless of her insensitive and unverified rheotric.

Ever since I got an iphone, my usual email communication has taken a massive hit. No, I don't say iphone doesn't have a very good email client or lagging push services, infact iphone does pretty good task of pushing your emails through in real time. But, iphone doesn't have as better email integration as a BlackBerry do + the touch screen keyboard makes it even unattractive to reply immediately.

Because of all above reasons, I didn't check my emails all day and was left to deal with them for the later part of evening. One by one, i started reading/answering the emails and amidst of all that replying/forwarding crazy business, I received a couple of emails, which I wasn't expecting to come so soon. First one's a little sketchy and can't be discusses right now, but the second one was probably one of the most exciting 4 sentence email I ever got in my whole life:
 

For someone like me, it was an absolutely breath-taking moment. To blog from the same platform as Greenpeace, Oxfam, 350, World Wildlife Federation etc is nothing sort of unbelievable for a 24 year old from a small city of Rajasthan, India.


What I want to do from Fresh Air Centre is to take the climate change problem to semi-urban, rural households in third world countries. I want people to think about climate change before they think about the threat eminating from a neighbour or from a country situated half way across the planet. No, its we ourselves who is the greatest enemy of human-kind, of our sustainable future. Let's work to get our goal, let's work to get our rightful place in history, as the nurtures of this planet, not as the destroyers.


Appeal: Please check out http://www.350.org/animation to learn more about 350 and how you can help. Remember: Our planet is burning and we need to act, act fast.