God Help Them !!

I am not exactly sure how should I go about writing this post. I have so many feelings to express but I could not find the appropriate words to pen them down. I am not sure what point I want to put forward through this post, so let us just assume that this post describes my views on one of the recent happenings in one part of the world, which has left me with an aching heart. Please bear with me if this post lacks a proper flow of ideas, it is going to be a random accumulation of my feelings and thoughts.

When I was in Class-10th, I read a chapter as part of our coursework, “The Ultimate Safari”. The chapter was a story about a young black Mozambican girl living with her grandmother and brother in a refugee camp. The story described how she lost her parents, how her village was burnt down by bandits, and how they were forced to flee to a refugee camp in order to save their lives. The way the author had narrated the story was extremely gripping, it used to make me cry and I just loved the story. But I always read it as a fictitious story. I used to assume that such a situation can never occur in reality in the recent times where everything around the world is so well organized. But my delusion was broken when I came across some of the recent happenings in Somalia and the harsh times people are facing there. In case you haven’t still guessed it, this post is going to be about the recent issues in Somalia. I by no means intend to propose solutions for the Somalia crisis in this post, I hardly know much about the issues, to suggest anything. This post is just going to express the views towards the Somali happenings from a lay-man’s perspective.

For those who abhors coming face-to-face with newspapers or news-channels, let me start with describing where Somalia lies in the world map. Well, Somalia is an African country and lies in the eastern-most part of Africa. It shares its borders with other countries like Kenya, Ethiopia and Djibouti. Somalia lacks a concrete government since 1991 and has been one of the most poorest and violent countries since then. Most of the southern parts of the country are controlled by the Islamist group Al-Shabab, which has been declared as a terrorist group owing to its connections with Al-Qaeda.

The conditions in this war-prone and poor country have further been worsened by the long-lasting drought in major parts of the country. There is hardly any food to eat or proper shelters to live. Millions of people have already died and even more are on the verge of death because of starvation. Parents are watching their children die and children are losing their parents every day. There are only meager hospitals around and even they lack proper equipments and medicines. Cholera and diarrhea are spreading like an epidemic. Most of the people are fleeing to refugee camps across the borders to save their lives. These camps are already over-crowded and living in horrid and stinky conditions.

The worst part is that this is not all. Had this been any other country of the world, there would have a hope of amelioration. But Somalis have yet to encounter their most terrible nightmares. UN has already declared famine in many regions of the country. Government and UN aid organizations are trying to help, but they are facing severely hard times because of the regions controlled by the Shabaab group. The leaders of the group are stubborn to accept that Somalia has been famine-hit and they are hostile against the aid agencies and their workers. People are also not allowed to leave the Shabab territory and most of them are living as prisoners. The group’s activities are turning Somalia’s famine into the worst humanitarian disasters mankind would ever face.

I always used to think the world has evolved as a great place to live as compared to ancient times. The world is advancing in every sector. We are all living in the most digitalized times, with the coolest of the gadgets, sophisticated vehicles. We are exploring the space, the moon and designing innovative colossal buildings and structures. Luxuries are being defined and redefined.  Sophisticated chips are being fabricated, super-computers are becoming more powerful and humane-like robots have hit the market. But the Somali crisis have made me ponder that all these advancements fail to serve their purpose if we could not save tens of thousands of fellow human beings from dying in the most unacceptable conditions. There were immense number of warnings issued by United Nations about the drought hitting Somalia, but still we failed to take the right measures to prevent or at least deal with it correctly. The countries around the world have the most advanced armies, highly sophisticated weapons, but we still fail to curb a small terrorist group from some remote part of the world. I wonder why US doesn’t play their Godfather role here and jumps to save the Somalis, as they faked to do in Afghanistan. May be because they cannot find any immediate political interest in the Somalia crisis. Anyways, we should let poor US deal with their own debt crisis firstly.

I think it is time for me to end this post, I need to take rest, need get up early tomorrow, lots of work to be done. Well, this sounds to me like an irony. When I am working towards improving the shopping experience of people living in one part of the world; there are millions of people in other part of the world who are dying of starvation. Makes me laugh at myself and the kind of work I am doing. But it also raises an important question in my mind, “Are we born equal?” What fault do these Somalis have apart from being born in part of the world which is poor?

The Somalia crisis calls for the powerful countries worldwide to get unified and provide Somalia with the military, monetary and medical aid that the country beseech at this time. All the constitutions of the world stand void, if we cannot provide all the people of the world the basic “Right to live”. I believe that we do not have the right to claim that “we are advancing” or at least to claim that “we are advancing in the right direction”, until we can ensure that each and every individual in any part of the world has an equal right to live and an equal opportunity to grow. If we still haven’t achieved this goal, then mankind certainly has a long journey to complete.

After reading Acts: 16:31 of Bible, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shall be saved, and thy home”, the only prayer I can do is that God, please help these people strengthen their faith in you.

PS- 1) Frankly I did not write this post as an appeal for people to donate money primarily because I am not sure how much that could help. But still if you feel like you could donate, then here is one of the sites I found - http://givethemshelter.org/donate .

2) My knowledge about Somalia and recent issues is demarcated by whatever little time I get to read newspapers and Internet news articles. It is by no means exhaustive and I really apologize if I have unknowingly shared a wrong fact in this post.

3) As always, pardon me for any grammatical or spelling mistakes. Drowsy I am.

And so dies Mr. Obama, oops Mr. Osama. Now what ???

After almost 10 years, 2 wars, many many lives, billions of dollars and a plethora of political drama, Mr. Osama is finally dead. Was the life of one person worth such investment? Well, I won’t discuss this shit here, who am I to make this decision, let the media and the leaders fight over this issue. I would just try to describe the situation from a common man’s perspective or rather from my perspective, the changes I have observed since yesterday. As I have been ill since yesterday and haven’t gone out, so all the news I have got is through TV (Idiot box as they call it), radio (yes, I listen to it sometimes), Internet (I am always online here) and a few telephonic conversations with my friends.

            Ohk, so the first question which pop up in a lay person's mind is, so am I any safer now? No silly, certainly not. Though America might picturize the whole situation as if they have uprooted terrorism, it’s completely fake. First, I heavily doubt if a 54 year old man in deteriorated-health conditions and nowhere to go would be involved in planning any terror attacks. Second, instead of mitigating terrorist activities, this incident might have just sent vibes of vengeance among the terrorist groups. This doesn’t mean that I oppose Osama’s death, but the reality is that it might just result into sudden rage among terrorists. Anyways, “My name is Vijit, and I am not a terrorist”, so am not sure how they would respond, but yes I am certain that they won’t get any terrified (though I wish they should).

            Anyways, so I was notified of the incident early morning through the radio tuned to 98.3. My reaction as I was trying to brush my teeth, pressurising open my brain, “Oh yeah, Osama, oh was he still alive?? so he is dead...hmm... but does that mean today is a national holiday?? no. then I need still need to go to college.” When I came to some senses, the first question I thought of was how did they confirm it was him, there were so many cloned-Obamas running around, how was the confirmation made. Later, I read somewhere or someone told me (I couldn’t recall- thanks to the medicines), that they did made the DNA testing for the confirmation. Still I coudn’t buy this reason, primarily because when did they catch him earlier to get his DNA at the first place. Also, I guess they have buried him in some sea/river soon after his death, so is DNA testing such a fast process, I am not aware of it and I don’t even plan to research into it.

            The funny incident took place in the evening, when I called one of my friend and he wished me “Congrats”. I got excited and started wondering, what have I done which I am even not aware of. All my excitment was brought down to shackles, when he told the wishes were related to DEAD Mr. Osama. “Fuck You”, I already knew this, you pumped up an ill person for no reason. Anyways, in the night I called another of my friend, and thinking wishing on Osama’s death is the trend of the day, as soon as he picked up the phone, I wished him “Congrats”. Though he didn’t get much excited, but I became very furious when he said, “Who is Osama??” WTF man, is there anyone around who doesn’t know Sir Osama. People might not know who our President is, but everyone knows Osama here, but this dude was different. Anyways, after making much efforts to make him recall about 9/11 and stuff, he finally recalled who Mr. Osama was (10 years, duh !!!).

            That was my outlook, now let us see how the world is perceiving the whole incident. Well, first of all its gold raining for news channels, they are making the most of this incident. “The Royal Wedding” has now been replaced by “The Royal Death”. Channels are busy in making their own pathetic stories showing how Osama was killed, where was he killed, what was he doing when they killed him, what bed he used to sleep on, which medicines he used to eat, which company sleepers he used to wear. I wonder if the US forces had called the channels to shoot this all up before they started the mission. And channels like IndiaTV, the way they show their news, I wonder if someday I would end up breaking my TV set.

            Well, similar are the situation in the political world as well. They have got the chance to play their favorite game, “The Blame Game”. Pakistan is busy trying to prove that they were not aware of Osama’s residence in Pakistan and that the whole incident was unofficial and unethical (how does that matter thought??). US is busy showing that they finished this operation all alone with no help from any other country. Also, this would certainly boost up Mr. Obama’s chance of coming back to power in the next term. He surely must be very excited (One of the post related to Obama’s excitement I found on Internet, “I would have been terrified had I been Ms. Michelle Obama’s *****” .India I believe is not very sure about its response. Mr. Singh must be wondering if he should wish Pakistan officials or not. Probably, Ms. Gandhi might help him take some decision. And I am waiting for the opposition to put some allegations on the UPA government, though I wonder what it would be, but opposition leaders are sharp, let there be happen any incident around the world, and they would make up a very apt allegation against the government and then this ultimately result into a halted session (well I would discuss Indian government sometime later).

            Osama has died. But his death has surely left many unanswered questions behind him. Many days of crispy news material, media has found. And countries and politicians have found a lot to fight over. For me, I have got my software engineering assignment to finish for tomorrow, so I would rest my post here.

PS- 1) I haven’t read today’s newspaper which I should have read before writing this post.

2) I haven’t re-read the post since I have stuff to finish before sleep. So, I am not very sure what exactly have I written. Please ignore any mistakes. And the formatting sucks as well.

3) I am not drunk.

Disclaimer- I didn’t mean to hurt anyone’s sentiments through this post. If someone is too emotional about the 9/11 or Osama’s death and find my post to be oppressive or abusive, then I heartily apologize. 

Save ELECTRICITY, whenever you can !!!

Before you commence reading this post, I would suggest a small exercise which would get you in the same mood as I am while writing this post. Switch off the fan/AC of the room you are sitting in while reading this post. Turn off the lights. If you are on your laptop and your battery is fucked up like mine, then switch off the power supply and try reading the post, before your battery drains out. If you are on a desktop, switch off the power supply and start listening to those irritating UPS sounds. How does it feel ? I bet its not a serene feeling. If you are indeed following this activity, then for the next few moments you would be experiencing the life me and many many others have been living in summers. Now, lets get started with the post.

I reside in Ghaziabad and like everyone else would admit that I unconditionally love my city. So, all those who ask me why don’t I stay much in hostel, this is certainly one of the reasons that I like spending time here. Summers had always been more enjoyable at my place until 2 years back  in 2009 when we started to face acute power shortages. I still very well remember those summers, I was supposed to complete a project in 20 days and we used to get electricity only for 8-10 hours daily. I used to sit in front of my laptop, with fan and lights turned off to save Inverter power . Didn’t use to listen to music to save my laptop’s battery. That was certainly one of the worst times I had faced in life. Every year I feel that the conditions would improve, but the conditions have only worsened since then. Now the power-cuts are much longer, more erratic and the appliances would hardly work with the voltage they supply.

Anyways, the purpose of this post is not to discuss my personal woes, I still believe we are the better-offs, we have got inverters/generators as our saviour. The conditions are more wretched for the lower classes of society, especially the lower-middle class and the lower class who could not afford alternate sources of power (And what about the people below poverty line? Ha...they hardly have homes to live, but let’s not get into poverty here). Electricity I believe have become one of the basic necessities of life, sadly there are large sections of the society who are still deprived of this facility. As SunnyD would have said here, “Power Cuts pe Power Cuts, Power Cuts pe Power Cuts, yahee toh miltee aaye hai humein, nahin millee toh 1 ghante ki bhi bijlee” or SRK would have said, “ek ghante ki bijlee ki keemat, tum kya jaano babujee” (In case you didn’t understand the context of the dialogues, please skip).

Anyways, these experiences have made me understand that one does not understand the importance of things one possess (“Ghar ki murgee daal barabar”- couldn’t recall the appropriate english version). Take it or not, all of us end up wasting a lot of electricity, I myself never realized its importance. But after my recent experiences, I have become cautious regarding my usage of electricity.

In case you are still wondering, why the heck have I written this post, so let me reveal that the purpose of this post is to discuss some measures we could take in our day-to-day life to save electricity. I bet we all are well-aware of them, but somehow they always shift beyond our conscious mind. So, here they goes:

• Turn off fans and lights or any other electric appliances when not in use- Some people wonder, whoa, that’s so basic, who leaves them switched on. But is this really true??? Believe me, I find a lot of fans/lights switched on in classes and hostel rooms. Try to develop the habit of turning them off before leaving. Also, if you find them switched in any classes, please make some efforts to switch them off.
• Switch off appliances in your home when not in use- I wonder if we could be omnipresent and could use all the appliances in all the rooms at once, atleast the way I have found people using appliances in their homes, it makes me feel that they believe in omnipresence. In many of my relatives’ and friends’ places, I was surprised to see that they keep fans, lights, TV in all their rooms switched on. When I confronted them and asked why, they replied, that they never noticed. That’s why I made an explicit point here, instead of merging it with the first point, so that you dont’ leave them unnnoticed.
• Turn off your computer monitor when not in use- Many a times, we use our computers just to listen songs or sometimes we leave leave our workplace when the computers are executing some task. In such situations, you should consider switching off your monitors.
• Use Air-conditioners optimally- We should realize that ACs should be used for the purpose of cooling, not for freezing. One of the studies I read mentioned that 23-24 degrees is the optimal temperature for Indian urban homes.
• Use fluorescent lamps wherever possible- Try using fluorescent lamps instead of bulbs whenever you can. I don’t have the exact statistics, but they save a lot of power in comparison with their yellowish-counterparts.
• Be wise in following the above advice- I have just made some suggestions, but you need to be WISE while following them. For example, if you are leaving your room for a minute or less, then switching off appliances and switching them on would consume more energy, then keeping them switched on for these very short spans.
• Spread the word- Share this knowledge with your friends, family and relatives. Try to explain them them various ways to save power. WARNING- Some of them might start considering you paranoid but atleast a few would understand. Also, if you know of other ways to save power, do share them in the comments.

PS- For those who did follow the activity I mentioned in the beginning, they must have realized the agony. And as I continue to work in similar situations, you could turn on your fan/light/AC/power-plugs :)