Calvin :)

I love Calvin & Hobbes.

This is one of the really funny ones.

India V/S India

There are two Indias in this country.

One India is straining at the leash, eager to spring forth and live up to all the adjectives that the world has been showering recently upon us.

The other India is the leash.

One India says, give me a chance and I’ll prove myself. The other India says, prove yourself first and maybe then you’ll have a chance.

One India lives in the optimism of our hearts. The other India lurks in skepticism of our minds.

One India wants. The other India hopes.
One India leads. The other India follows.

But conversions are on the rise. With each passing day more and more people from the other India have been coming over to this side.

And quietly, while the world is not looking, a pulsating, dynamic, new India is emerging.

An India whose faith in success is far greater then its fear of failure.

An India that no longer boycotts foreign-made goods but buys out the companies that make them instead.

History, they say, is a bad motorist. It rarely ever signals its intentions when it is taking a turn.

This is that rarely-ever moment. History is turning a page.

For more than half a century, our nation has sprung, stumbled, run, fallen, rolled over, got up, dusted herself and cantered, sometimes lurched on. But today, as we begin our 60th year as a free nation, the ride has brought us to the edge of time’s great precipice.

And one India – a tiny little voice at the back of the head – is looking down at the bottom of the ravine and hesitating.

The other India is looking up at the sky and saying, it’s time to fly.


This was published on front page of "The Times of India" on 1st January, 2007. Gave me goosebumps when I read it.
Very touching, very inspiring!

Cheers!

To kill a mocking-bird - Harper Lee.

Pulitzer-prize winner for fiction.
Harper Lee’s only work.
Story is told from the point of view of Jean Louise "Scout" Finch (age- 6), the young daughter of Atticus Finch, a lawyer in Maycomb, Alabama, a fictional small town in the Deep South of the United States. She is accompanied by her brother Jem and their mutual friend Dill.

“I never expected any sort of success with Mockingbird. I was hoping for a quick and merciful death at the hands of the reviewers but, at the same time, I sort of hoped someone would like it enough to give me encouragement. Public encouragement. I hoped for a little, as I said, but I got rather a whole lot, and in some ways this was just about as frightening as the quick, merciful death I'd expected.”

—Harper Lee, quoted in Newquist—1964

Its rare to find a book that you just cant put down, but even rarer that a book touches your heart so deeply by its simplicity and greatness that you almost feel your heart pounding the same way it did every time you saw that someone special in high school. Please excuse the irrelevant reference to high school, as the book has absolutely nothing to do with that. That is something that all of us remember significantly, hence the comparison. The book according to my take is not one story; it’s about many incidents that life consists of! It is so very clear from the book that what we are is because of what we go through. Never did I construe so clearly that children become whatever they do because of how their parents are! To summarize what it is about – it is about a family – father (Atticus Finch), son (Jem, age-10), daughter (Scout, age-6). Atticus is a lawyer; the children are what children are like. Atticus is defending a black, which is almost a crime at that time in the society which consists of racist white community. Scout is the one who is narrating and I think that is the best part of it all. You see everything from her eyes and wonder how an innocent six year old can be so sensible sometimes. And that is all that I’m going to say about the book because you have to read it to feel what I did. It’s the sheer simplicity of the characters which ultimately is so intriguing.

Some excerpts -

"Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit them, but remember it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird. Mockingbirds don't do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don't eat up people's gardens, don't nest in corncribs, they don't do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That's why it's a sin to kill a mockingbird."

“You never really know a man until you stand in his shoes and walk around in them.”

“When a child asks you something, answer him, for goodness’ sake. But don’t make a production of it. Children are children, but they can spot an evasion quicker than adults, and evasion simply muddles them.”

And lastly a confession – I fell in love with Atticus by the time I finished the book. Other characters are lovable too, but the father…oh boy! A must read for all book-lovers!! Please please read it as early as possible!