P for Passport

Some useless statistics .........

60% of Canadians don't have passports.
80% of Americans don't have passports.
& only 30% of US Congressmen have passport.

Fellow countrymen and neighbors...if you have seen enough of each other ,stop strolling in each others backyard and start seeing the rest of the world.

Congressmen, I'm not surprised at the above figures although English is my second language and I always thought antonym to pro-gress was re-gress......but it's not.

Cheaper by dozen or two

A friend of mine had sent us tickets for a movie premier.Since we reached early we had to wait outside the theatre for few minutes.

The family standing next to us demanded our attention immediately.The daughter was clinging to Dad's legs,two sons were running amock in the lobby ,a toddler trying to free himself from his mother's arms.Another young guy (GAP youth size) was pulling his mothers overcoat and trying to hide under it....This valiant woman seemed undeterred with all this crying , pushing pulling. At the same time she was comfortably involved in girl talk with another woman in the line.They were busy talking about everything under the sun and I was not evesdropping ,they were just talking loud. I could hear the conversation drifting away from the weather to the kids and gradually to how old and how many ? Now I was hearing that was clearly not for my ears ... This woman had 8 kids. She was accompanied with 7 and one was at home and to top that she had no plans to stop , she wanted to have 20.Suddenly this Mom looked mightier than a polar bear who had just hunted down a whale......

I was feeling dizzy by then and it was not the caffeine in my Venti latte.

In my World

I sat through this 2 hr DVD 'The inner and outer world of Shahrukh Khan' .I watched this documentary 'coz my wife loves Shahrukh Khan and with similar sentiments she tolerates Bipasha Basu movies. We call them The Gay & The Tramp respectively for the same reasons also.

Nothing new in the DVD that I didn't know about the Khan.The thing that caught my attention in the documentary ...Largest Mcdonald in the world is in Orlando,Florida and is owned by a Desi.

Amrita Pritam

Renowned Punjabi poetess and writer Amrita Pritam is no more. She was awarded with Padma Vibhushan and Gyanpeeth Award for her literary prowess.

I got a chance to read her autobiography in high school 'Rasidi Ticket'. A lot of it I couldn't understand.I didn't complete it reading but somewhere I continued to follow her achievements, her life.I was also intrigued by her relationship with Sahir Ludhianvi & Imroz.More than anything she lived life on her terms as she wanted to.

Listening her reciting her poems was like watching Yehudi Menuhin in concert. It was an eternal bliss.

Few lines from her last poem were ....

Yeh jism hota hain to sub kuch khatm ho jaata hain,
Per chetna ke dhaage kaynaati kano ke hote hain ,
Main un kano ko chunungi,Dhhagon main lapetoongi,
Aur tumhe main phir milungi .......

From Darkness to Light