As a proud Indian citizen I continue to get frustrated by people who make the common mistake of using my ethnic-national identity label on others who are not even remotely connected to my country or ethnicity. It makes me wonder if there is even one individual out of the billion plus Indians who feel the same way about this issue.
Every so often things come up in the media that frustrate me to no end. One of the biggest that makes my skin crawl and blood boil is the issue of ethnic identity. Few million "Native Americans" in compliance with few million more Europeans and Africans continuously assault our identity. The first group have the audacity to continue to refer to themselves as "Indians" even though they know that they are not and for that matter never were the owners of the identity label. The second and third groups continue to foment the myth of Indian identity label for Native Americans. What is worse is the fact that over a million real Indians in the United States and a billion plus in the rest of the world are blissfully accepting this labeling without as much as a squeak of protest.
Recently I listened to a radio program on NPR presented by of course the famous Lourdess Garcia-Navarro, International correspondent based in Sao Paulo, Brazil, which was inappropriately titled "Brazil's Indians Reclaim Land Citing Promises, Using Force". Of course she is writing about the indigenous people of Brazil. In her biography page on NPR it is claimed that "Garcia-Navarro captured history in the making with stunning insight, courage and humanity." I wonder where this insight vanished when she is referring to Native Americans or whatever tribal nation they belong to as Indians. This reporter has been feted multiple times in various forums for excellence in reporting.
The reporting excellence seems to vanish when it comes to reporting the truth about Indians - of course the real ones from India and not those who are piggybacking on the label just because of a mistake made by Spaniard Christopher Columbus.
Thursday, August 15, 2013
Indians losing identity - or have we already lost it???
Wednesday, August 14, 2013
Riding the Train to Dallas
I am starting a new job in Dallas on Monday. Since the distance is far, working nights, and of course the rare convenience of train made me contemplate taking the train to commute. In order to check the feasibility for myself I decided to do a trail run and yesterday I bought a $10 ticket to ride from Denton, TX to Dallas, TX. If I drove in good traffic conditions it takes me about 50 mins and by train it took me about 80 mins, a good 30 mins increase in commute time, plus adding the time to drive back and forth from the train station. There is no real savings in terms of time or money. It would cost me just about the same amount of money to drive. The biggest advantage of riding the train is to offset the stress of driving after working a sleepless 12-hr night shift.
The train interiors don't stink, they are clean, hardly any crowd, seats are pretty comfortable, so it is going to be a pretty decent ride home from work I am hoping. The only disadvantage is that there is no service on weekends. I will still have to drive to work on weekends.
Tuesday, August 13, 2013
Twitter down!!!
Twitter the online microblogging platform is down again... or at least that is what it says when I try to login. This is the third time I have tried logging in since morning.... Wonder what the Silicon Valley Geeks are doing...
Sunday, August 11, 2013
Trouble in Myanmar/ Burma
Myanmar has become the latest nation at strife with Muslims. The Buddhist majority nation has begun to experience the influx of illegal immigrants from its western neighbor and of course when Muslims have a little bit of community and a small group they will start trouble. The first step they take is to seek special privileges for prayers and then extra benefits and then territory and then the host nation has to either has to bow down and convert enmasse or perish in the onslaught of terrorism. I sure hope Myanmar doesn't go that direction and the Buddhists will stand up for themselves and preserve the ethnic and religious identity of their nation.
