The discriminating eye

When it comes to choosing our life partners, there will be many factors that come into play for each of us.

Some people consider religious beliefs and family backgrounds. Some people give consideration to financial or educational backgrounds. Some may choose based on skin colo(u)r and appearances. And for some, personal habits and vices will play an important role. We all have different yard-sticks to measure up our future life partners.

Recently, a blog by solitaire stirred up quite a debate around whether a person's marital past should play a role or be used as a criteria. I think its safe to say that almost everyone agreed that it was wrong to discriminate based on the marital past.

This raised some thought-provoking questions. If one considers the above as discrimination, then would the following not be considered in the same category?

Would you really give a person who, in your view is not good-looking, a chance to get to know them and see if they have the potential to be your future life partner? Or would you rather not bother with that person?

Would you give that chance to a person who works at a job which is way below your professional level? Do you even take notice of such people?

How about a person who has a criminal past, but is no longer into crime? Or would you rather stay away from such people?

Assuming you are not handicapped, Would you give a handicapped person a chance for that matter? Or is the attention they get from you out of pity or charity?

And what about a person whose color of the skin is very opposite that of yours? Do people of a certain skin colo(u)r freak you out and make you lock your car-doors as you drive past certain neighbourhoods?

After careful thinking and doing some soul-searching, the answers turned out to be not that easy to come by ..

A roller-coaster ride called Africa

I always wondered why is it that Africa lags behind the rest of the world when it comes to economic and social progress.

The answer lies in the recent history of the African continent. Here is what I found, thanks to the Internet:

The 19th century brought colonial rulers to Africa. They stripped the land off its riches: minerals, crops and even people, all for economic gains. This continued through the 20th century.

Finally in the 1960s, the African nations started to gain independence. However, the countries lacked a working economy, basic infrastructure, and educated people. What they did not lack was ethnic divisions. All this undermined development.

The cold war came next. Many of these African countries were used as pawns in the big game being played by the super-powers. Corrupt dictators were supported by both the superpowers to advance their own needs leading to gross human rights violation, rampant corruption and ethnic cleansing.

This in turn led to rebellion and civil wars. To the outside world, these wars made no sense. But if one looked closer, one could see the true reasons: control for natural resources. Africa was rich in gold, diamonds, minerals, and oil. Many of the civil wars were supported by developed powers and big corporations to once again further their own interests.

When the cold war ended, the powers moved on leaving African behind in the dust. Aid was cut off, and the crumbling economies came crashing down. What followed was more civil wars, genocide and misery.

I wonder no more ..

The silver lining is that Africa is recovering from all these twists and turns. Things are slowly turning around. And maybe one day in the near future, we will have a strong and healthy Africa competing against the rest of the world.

A language fades away

Soma Devi is 82 years old and her health is failing. And when she passes away, she will take with her something that only she knows .. her knowledge of the language of Dura. She is the only person in the world that can speak this ancient ethnic language. Her family and off-spring never learnt to speak it.

This is how languages fade away. Its usually because parents fail to pass it down to their children. Or its because children do not have an interest in learning their mother-tongues.

Living in a distant land, one can very easily realize the gravity of this situation. Especially when our mother-tongue is not the national language. It becomes harder for parents to teach a child multiple languages. And just teaching them is not enough. A language has to be practised in order to be retained.

For now, I have decided to teach my kids English and Hindi. One is the medium of education, and the other is the medium of communication with our home-land. And as they go through the education process, they will learn a third language that the schools offer. Against this backdrop, teaching a fourth language is going to be a challenge.

I hope that the story of Soma Devi will be my inspiration to face up to the challenge ..

Satisfaction

Is there such a thing as complete satisfaction in one's life?

I don't think so.

Can we ever reach a state of total satisfaction, at a point where we are happy with everything in and around our lives?

I do not ever see that happening.

We always seem to be complaining and finding faults. Its either too hot or too cold. Our jobs always suck. Traffic is always bad. Flights are always late. Everything is too expensive. Everyone else always seems to be making better progress than us. We always wish for the grass on the other side of the fence. And when we are given the chance to cross the fence, we complain about the fence being too high. And after crossing the fence, the grass is not as green as we expected it to be.

Is this human nature? Is it something in our genes? Is it the way we are bound to be, or is it an outlook or quality that we can modify and improve upon?