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									<title>Mumbai and Me</title>
									<link>http://www.fropper.com/ezBlog/Raghs4901</link>
									<description>I love Mumbai City that prompted me to write this poem.</description>
									<language>en-us</language>
									<pubDate>2007-Nov-01, 13:52:11</pubDate>
									<lastBuildDate>2007-Jul-26, 15:16:22</lastBuildDate>
				
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						<title>Silicon Memory</title>
						<link>http://www.fropper.com/post/8230</link>
						<description><![CDATA[The Silicon memory&nbsp;   When I started believing that  volatility is the buzzword  that gave birth to change  I prepared for a change   In a challenging world of  shifting paradigms  no factor count  for more than a change   I challenged myself to go  beyond the normality   It was unnerving at first  because I was worrying about  the liberation from  conventional wisdom   When I got extradited  to a satellite world  I felt serenity  and discovered a sacred order   It gave me  silicon memory systems  networked knowledge  and what more!  I used to just log on to it  and enjoy the wisdom   I burdened all of myself to it  and liberated myself  to a world where  only network matters   Today when I look back  I knew that  I lost the autonomy  and renounced control  over my decisions to the  Silicon mind   Why there is a need to have memory!  I have Google, Yahoo,  Wikipedia!  Just tap a few keys and have  the blessings  that&rsquo;s it!   While sitting in the cool comfort of  the glittering silicon world  a question arising out of my mind   Are you concerned about your own memory  before you have a chance  to lose track of it?    No answer so far!                               ]]></description>
						<pubDate>Nov 01, '07</pubDate>
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						<title>Words were not enough</title>
						<link>http://www.fropper.com/post/8034</link>
						<description><![CDATA[ Words were not enough    Where the love has gone  She yelled at me  hobnobbing with my fingers    It was one of those November evening  The sky was bright  A cold breeze passed through  the seashore  and chilled my nerves    My thoughts went back to earlier times    The time was rolling through  the tunnels of life  There was brightness  darkness  happiness  and sorrow   I saw the flame of love  burning in me  on those days    How can I tell her?    The time has changed me  to some other mould  neither good nor bad  but a soul who like to share  the passion   What more?   She put me in dilemma  by asking a question  in such a time  when it cannot be answered    I squabbled with my conscience  and searched for words  to give an assurance  but words were not enough    Time stand still in that vast night  under the infinite sky  when I failed to give her  a definite answer.  ]]></description>
						<pubDate>Oct 20, '07</pubDate>
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						<title>A BRIDGE TOO FAR</title>
						<link>http://www.fropper.com/post/7837</link>
						<description><![CDATA[Ram Setu (Sethu)     The debate on Ram Setu is still going on. The opposition party NDA is in a buoyant mood to keep this alive till the general elections though there is a call by VHP to hold a peaceful rally to show their protest. This is certainly a golden chance for NDA to attract public sympathy about Hinduism, may be followed by a setu yatra (like rath yatra they did earlier). As far as my knowledge goes the background is like this.     What is Setu (Sethu) Samudram Project?     Setu (Sethu) Samudram shipping canal project (SSCP) is a project that has been approved by the Government of India and its work has been started near Kodand Ram Temple. In this project, Palk Gulf and Gulf Mennar will be linked by making a shipping canal through Rameshwaram Island. This will allow ships and boats to navigate in the passage between India and Sri Lanka without having to circle Sri Lanka (as is being done currently). This may save about 400 nautical miles voyage on the West Coast. This project will connect the National Sea Route. This canal will shorten the length of the sea route for ships. Rs. 21 crore per year for fuel expenditure of ships will be saved. Setu (Sethu) Samudram [shipping canal project] is based on the notion that it is inevitable to break the Shri Ram Setu for easy navigation. This will amount to damaging a monument of both, historical and religious importance. According to Hindu scriptures and belief, Lord Ram and his vaanar sena had built a bridge from Rameshwaram to Sri Lanka about 17 lacs 25 thousands years ago. The discovery of Shri Ram Setu by NASA confirms that Hindu scriptures and belief are correct in this matter and that Ramayana is 'history' and not &quot;mythology&quot; as is often construed.    Today I got a mail from one of my friend attaching the following. This is pure humour and I liked it very much and thought to circulate among all of you. Pleasure reading.     *A BRIDGE TOO FAR*        The Lord surveyed the Ram Setu and said &quot;Hanuman, how diligently and strenuously you and your vanara sena had built this bridge several centuries back. It is remarkable that it has withstood the ravages of the climatic and geographical changes over centuries. It is indeed an amazing feat especially considering the fact that a bridge at Hyderabad built by Gammon using latest technology collapsed the other day even before they could stick the posters on its pillars.&quot;   Hanuman with all humility spoke &quot;Jai Sri Ram, it is all because of your grace. We just scribbled your name on the bricks and threw them in the sea and they held. No steel from TISCO or cement from Ambuja or ACC was ever used. But Lord, why rake up the old issue now.&quot;   Ram spoke &quot;Well, Hanuman some people down there want to demolish the bridge and construct a canal. The contract involves lot of money and lot of money will be made. They will make money on demolition and make more money on construction. &quot;   Hanuman humbly bowed down and said &quot;Why not we go down and present our case?&quot;   Ram said &quot;Times have changed since we were down there. They will ask us to submit age proof and we don't have either a birth certificate or school leaving certificate. We traveled mainly on foot and some times in bullock carts and so we don't have a driving license either. As far as the address proof is concerned the fact that I was born at Ayodhya is itself under litigation for over half a century, If I go in a traditional attire with bow and arrow, the ordinary folks may recognize me but Arjun Singh may take me to some tribal and, at the most, offer a seat at IIT under the reserved category. Also, a God cannot walk dressed in a three-piece suit and announce his arrival. It would make even the devotees suspicious. So it is dilemma so to say.&quot;   &quot;I can vouch for you by saying that I personally built the bridge.&quot;   &quot;My dear, Anjana putra, it will not work. They will ask you to produce the layout plan, the project details, including financial outlay and how the project cost was met and the completion certificate. Nothing is accepted without documentary evidence in India . You may cough but unless a doctor certifies it, you have no cough. A pensioner may present himself personally but the authorities do not take it as proof. He has to produce a life-certificate to prove that he is alive. It is that complicated. &quot;  &quot;Lord can't understand these historians. Over the years you have given darshan once every hundred years to saints like Surdas, Tulsidas, Saint Thyagaraja, Jayadeva, Bhadrachala Ramdas and even Sant Tukaram and still they disbelieve your existence and say Ramayana is a myth. The only option,I see, is to re-enact Ramayana on earth and set the government records straight once for all.&quot;   Lord smiled &quot;It isn't that easy today. Ravan is apprehensive that he may look like a saint in front of Karunanidhi. I also spoke to his mama Mareecha, who appeared as a golden deer to tempt Sita maiyya when I was in the forest and he said that he won't take a chance of stepping on earth as long as Salman Khan is around.&quot;   ]]></description>
						<pubDate>Oct 11, '07</pubDate>
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						<title>Some Friends, Indeed, Do More Harm Than Good</title>
						<link>http://www.fropper.com/post/7631</link>
						<description><![CDATA[Some Friends, Indeed, Do More Harm Than Good     This is a good study on friendship. Hope you will like it and would like to discuss it in detail.      Friends are supposed to be good for you. In recent years, scientific research has suggested that people who have strong friendships experience less stress, they recover more quickly from heart attacks and they are likely to live longer than the friendless. They are even less susceptible to the common cold, studies show.      But not all friends have such a salutary effect. Some lie, insult and betray. Some are overly needy. Some give too much advice. Psychologists and sociologists are now calling attention to the negative health effects of bad friends.  ''Friendship is often very painful,'' said Dr. Harriet Lerner, a psychologist and the author of ''The Dance of Connection.'' ''In a close, enduring friendship, jealousy, envy, anger and the entire range of difficult emotions will rear their heads. One has to decide whether the best thing is to consider it a phase in a long friendship or say this is bad for my health and I'm disbanding it.''      Another book, ''When Friendship Hurts,'' by Dr. Jan Yager, a sociologist at the University of Connecticut at Stamford, advises deliberately leaving bad friends by the wayside. ''There's this myth that friendships should last a lifetime,'' Dr. Yager said. ''But sometimes it's better that they end.''  That social scientists would wait until now to spotlight the dangers of bad friends is understandable, considering that they have only recently paid close attention to friendship at all. Marriage and family relationships -- between siblings or parents and children -- have been seen as more important.  Of course, troubled friendships are far less likely to lead to depression or suicide than troubled marriages are. And children are seldom seriously affected when friendships go bad.      As a popular author of relationship advice books, Dr. Lerner said, ''Never once have I had anyone write and say my best friend hits me.''  Dr. Beverley Fehr, a professor of psychology at the University of Winnipeg, noted that sociological changes, like a 50 percent divorce rate, have added weight to the role of friends in emotional and physical health.  ''Now that a marital relationship can't be counted on for stability the way it was in the past, and because people are less likely to be living with or near extended family members, people are shifting their focus to friendships as a way of building community and finding intimacy,'' said Dr. Fehr, the author of ''Friendship Processes.''      Until the past couple of years, the research on friendship focused on its health benefits. ''Now we're starting to look at it as a more full relationship,'' said Dr. Suzanna Rose, a professor of psychology at Florida International University in Miami. ''Like marriage, friendship also has negative characteristics.''  The research is in its infancy. Psychologists have not yet measured the ill effects of bad friendship, Dr. Fehr said. So far they have only, through surveys and interviews, figured out that it is a significant problem. The early research, Dr. Fehr added, is showing that betrayal by a friend can be more devastating than experts had thought.      How can a friend be bad? Most obviously, Dr. Rose said, by drawing a person into criminal or otherwise ill-advised pursuit. ''When you think of people who were friends at Enron,'' she added, ''you can see how friendship can support antisocial behavior.''  Betrayal also makes for a bad friendship. ''When friends split up,'' said Dr. Keith E. Davis, a professor of psychology at the University of South Carolina, ''it is often in cases where one has shared personal information or secrets that the other one wanted to be kept confidential.''  Another form of betrayal, Dr. Yager said, is when a friend suddenly turns cold, without ever explaining why. ''It's more than just pulling away,'' she said. ''The silent treatment is actually malicious.''  At least as devastating is an affair with the friend's romantic partner, as recently happened to one of Dr. Lerner's patients. ''I would not encourage her to hang in there and work this one out,'' Dr. Lerner said.      A third type of bad friendship involves someone who insults the other person, Dr. Yager said. One of the 180 people who responded to Dr. Yager's most recent survey on friendship described how, when she was 11, her best friend called her ''a derogatory name.'' The woman, now 32, was so devastated that she feels she has been unable to be fully open with people ever since, Dr. Yager said.  Emotional abuse may be less noticeable than verbal abuse, but it is ''more insidious,'' Dr. Yager said. ''Some people constantly set up their friends,'' she explained. ''They'll have a party, not invite the friend, but make sure he or she finds out.''  Risk takers, betrayers and abusers are the most extreme kinds of bad friends, Dr. Yager said, but they are not the only ones. She identifies 21 different varieties. Occupying the second tier of badness are the liar, the person who is overly dependent, the friend who never listens, the person who meddles too much in a friend's life, the competitor and the loner, who prefers not to spend time with friends.  Most common is the promise breaker. ''This includes everyone from the person who says let's have a cup of coffee but something always comes up at the last minute to someone who promises to be there for you when you need them, but then isn't,'' Dr. Yager said.      Some friendships go bad, as some romantic relationships do, when one of the people gradually or suddenly finds reasons to dislike the other one.  ''With couples, it can take 18 to 24 months for someone to discover there's something important they don't like about the other person,'' said Dr. Rose of Florida International. ''One might find, for example, that in subtle ways the other person is a racist. In friendships, which are less intense, it may take even more time for one person to meet the other's dislike criteria.''  Whether a friendship is worth saving, Dr. Lerner said, ''depends on how large the injury is.''  ''Sometimes the mature thing is to lighten up and let something go,'' she added. ''It's also an act of maturity sometimes to accept another person's limitations.''  Acceptance should come easier among friends than among spouses, Dr. Lerner said, because people have more than one friend and do not need a full range of emotional support from each one.  But if the friendship has deteriorated to the point where one friend truly dislikes the other one or finds that the friendship is causing undue stress, the healthy response is to pull away, Dr. Yager said, to stop sharing the personal or intimate details of life, and start being too busy to get together, ever.  ''It takes two people to start and maintain a friendship, but only one to end it,'' Dr. Yager said.      Friendship, because it is voluntary and unregulated, is far easier to dissolve than marriage. But it is also comparatively fragile, experts say. Ideally, the loss of a bad friendship should leave a person with more time and appreciation for good ones, Dr. Lerner said.  ''It is wise to pay attention to your friendships and have them in order while you're healthy and your life and work are going well,'' she said. ''Because when a crisis hits, when someone you love dies, or you lose your job and your health insurance, when the universe gives you a crash course in vulnerability, you will discover how crucial and life-preserving good friendship is.''   ]]></description>
						<pubDate>Oct 03, '07</pubDate>
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						<title>Working through the transference of Sigmund Freud</title>
						<link>http://www.fropper.com/post/7626</link>
						<description><![CDATA[Working through the transference of Sigmund Freud.&nbsp;     SIGMUND Freud died 68 years ago, and it remains uncertain whether he is what W. H. Auden called him, &ldquo;a whole climate of opinion / Under whom we conduct our differing lives,&rdquo;. It&rsquo;s still not clear whether Freud was the genius of the 20th century, a comprehensive absurdity or something in between.    Our confusion about Freud is something he predicted &mdash; and also provoked &mdash; particularly in his later work, now largely unread, which is preoccupied with the question of authority. It sheds light on our confused attitudes towards Freud, who always strove for cultural authority. But more important, books like &ldquo;Totem and Taboo&rdquo; and &ldquo;Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego&rdquo; illuminate our collective difficulties with power and particularly with the two scourges of today&rsquo;s world, fundamentalist religion and tyrannical politics.    Probably the best way to understand Freud&rsquo;s take on authority is to consider the mode of therapy that he settled on midway through his career. We might call it &ldquo;transference therapy.&rdquo; Over time, Freud came to see that his patients were transferring feelings and hopes from other phases of their lives onto him. Frequently they sought from him what they&rsquo;d sought from their parents when they were children. They wanted perfect love, and even more fervently, it seems, they wanted perfect truth. They became obsessed with Freud as what Jacques Lacan, the French psychoanalytic theorist, liked to call &ldquo;the subject who is supposed to know.&rdquo; Patients saw Freud as an all-knowing figure who had the wisdom to solve all their problems and make them genuinely happy and whole.    Freud&rsquo;s objective as a therapist was to help his patients dismantle their idealized image of him. He taught them to see how the love they demanded from him was love that they had once demanded (and of course never received) from fathers and mothers and other figures of authority. Over time, the patients might come to view the doctor &mdash; Freud &mdash; as another suffering, striving mortal, not unlike themselves.      One of Freud&rsquo;s key beliefs was that there is no sharp division between the psychologically healthy and the unwell. His patients longed for authoritative fathers &mdash; and so did Freud. In the early phase of his career, he embraced a sequence of mentors (among them Jean Charcot, the French neurologist; Wilhelm Fliess, a German doctor; and Josef Breuer, an Austrian doctor) who had nothing like his mental powers, but whom he vastly esteemed nonetheless. Freud said we all seek such figures, in both political and personal life.    In &ldquo;Group Psychology,&rdquo; Freud wrote about the qualities that a leader-figure, in his most extreme guise, possesses. &ldquo;His intellectual acts,&rdquo; said Freud, &ldquo;were strong and independent even in isolation and his will needed no reinforcement from others.&rdquo;    Well, you might say, it takes one to know one. Freud himself was drawn to authority. He liked to lord it over his disciples; he liked to make pronouncements; he liked &mdash; as schoolchildren say at recess &mdash; to act big. When Freud presented himself to the public, he almost never forgot the lessons that he had learned about authority in his consulting room and through his studies of the church, the army and tribal societies. &ldquo;The autocratic pose&rdquo; clung to him, said Auden.    Freud still manifests himself to us as a grand patriarch. Collectively we have thought about him as the father, as the one who is supposed to know. We have hoped he&rsquo;d confer the truth &mdash; make us whole and happy. Of course, he cannot. But he has been different from all the other aspiring masters in that he has taught nothing so insistently as the need to dissolve our illusions about masters, and to be responsive to more moderate, subtle and humane sources of authority.    Such a figure &mdash; authoritarian and anti-authoritarian at the same time &mdash; cannot help but be confusing. But once we understand our confusion, Freud can also be quite illuminating. Among other things, his ideas about authority help us understand (and in some measure sympathize with) the hunger for absolute leaders and absolute truth that probably besets us all, but that has overwhelmed many of our fellow humans who find themselves living under tyrannical governments and fundamentalist faiths.    But the best of Freud will not be available to us until we can work through the transference he provoked.   ]]></description>
						<pubDate>Oct 03, '07</pubDate>
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						<title>Meanings</title>
						<link>http://www.fropper.com/post/7271</link>
						<description><![CDATA[Meanings&hellip;&hellip;..    Standing for what you believe in  regardless of the odds against you,  and the pressure that tears at your resistance.   &hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;means courage   Keeping a smile on your face  when inside you feel like dying  for the sake of supporting others   &hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;means strength   Stopping at nothing,  and doing what&rsquo;s in your heart,  you know is right   &hellip;&hellip;&hellip;..means determination   Doing more than expected,  to make another&rsquo;s life a little more bearable,  without uttering a single complaint,  Helping a friend in need,  no matter the time or effort,  to the best of your ability   &hellip;&hellip;&hellip;means loyalty   Giving more than you have,  and expecting nothing,  but nothing in return   &hellip;&hellip;..means selflessness   Holding your head high,  and being the best you know you can be,  when life seems to fall apart at your feet,  facing each difficulty with confidence,  and never give up.   &hellip;&hellip;..means confidence  ]]></description>
						<pubDate>Sep 18, '07</pubDate>
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						<title>Six Tips for Lighthearted Thinkers</title>
						<link>http://www.fropper.com/post/7020</link>
						<description><![CDATA[Laughing Towards Truth: Six Tips for Lighthearted Thinkers&nbsp;    Do you believe in the power of your convictions?   It's time to lighten up.   People love attaching themselves to ideas. We can get pretty feisty when one of our beloved beliefs is challenged. We're too busy defending to spend our time analyzing.  Truth has a tendency to get in the way of our beliefs. We like having our rules to live by, our reasons for feeling righteous, and our excuses for ending intellectual exploration. Just as we climb up a ladder, we like counting on certain rungs to hold steady. Thinking about cracks just makes us uneasy.   That approach works if your goal is to reach the top, but it doesn't allow for much examination or lateral growth. Plus, there's always the risk that you'll come crashing down.  Quick quiz: What fills you with more satisfaction--being right or discovering the truth? Of course, the best scenario is discovering that you knew the truth all along. Validation is a huge motivator. That's why we find it more exhilarating to win an argument than to learn more about the other side.   It's like &quot;life is a journey&quot; concept. The thrill is in the seeking. We've forgotten that. It's as though we went on a treasure hunt, stumbled upon what we thought was the hidden booty, and now we've become complacent.   What if what you found wasn't the real treasure? What if the whole point was to keep looking?&nbsp;  Thinkers have been wrestling with the concept of truth for ages. Socrates was fond of saying that there are only two kinds of beings who do not need philosophy: the gods, who are already wise, and the fools, who think they are wise. We want to be in that large middle group of people who recognize their lack of wisdom and continue their quest for truth and knowledge.   It's helpful to be reminded that our role as humans isn't to figure things out--it's to KEEP ON figuring things out. Don't take my word for it. Here are some truisms about truth from some formidable thinkers.   1 &quot;The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd; indeed in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widespread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible.&quot; Bertrand Russell, British mathematician and philosopher.   Can't think of any widely held absurd beliefs? You're not trying hard enough! Fashion, pop culture, politics, (gasp!) religion, and virtually every other arena of modern life is full of examples of ideas that have somehow taken hold but defy logic. Good Thinker rule number one is simply this: Never accept an idea just because everyone else does.   2 &quot;Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.&quot; Albert Einstein, American physicist and nobel laurate.   Leave it to Einstein to maintain that crucial sense of humor and humility. The more we know, the more we get a clue about how much we don't know. At least, that's the way it's supposed to work. You probably know people who haven't quite come around to that realization yet. Get there now. Accept it, celebrate it, and keep on thinking.  3 &quot;Believe those who are seeking the truth; doubt those who find it.&quot; Andre Gide, French writer.   Your best bet is to hang out with those who are happy to admit that they don't have all the answers. As friends, co-workers and party guests, they tend to be a lot more fun, anyway.   4 &quot;Chase after the truth like all hell and you'll free yourself, even though you never touch its coattails.&quot; Clarence Darrow, American attorney.   Play the game and have some fun with it, even if you never score. Remember playing games with your friends way back when you were five? You didn't have a clear sense of the rules or even the point of the game, and neither did anyone else. It didn't matter. The reason you were playing was to simply enjoy the game, even if that meant making it up as you went along.  Approach truth-seeking like a five-year-old playing a new game. Don't get caught up in the regulations, and don't keep score. Who cares who's winning?   5 &quot;And we should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once. And we should call every truth false which was not accompanied by at least one laugh.&quot; Friedrich Nietzsche, German philosopher.   Nietzsche saluted the creative force that feeds us. Despite a life of ill health and misery, he recognized the value of joy in the seeking of truth. Most of us have it a whole lot easier than Nietzsche. We have no excuse for not laughing.   6 &quot;Truth is mighty and will prevail. There is nothing the matter with this, except that it ain't so.&quot;Mark Twain, American writer.  Truth doesn't rise to the surface. You've got to dig for it. Truth doesn't automatically rule; fallacies with excellent public relations campaigns tend to dominate in our culture.  Truth isn't easy, but it isn't supposed to be. If you want to dive into the human experience in all its glory, you're going to be wading through a lot of ideas masquerading as the truth.   Think for yourself, and have some fun with it. Look for truth in the unlikeliest places. Find the absurdity in every idea. The best philosophers have loads of laugh lines. Start creating yours. You'll become a better thinker, a happier truth-seeker, and a more excellent human.&nbsp;                                                         ]]></description>
						<pubDate>Sep 07, '07</pubDate>
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						<title>On Vacation, All by myself</title>
						<link>http://www.fropper.com/post/6810</link>
						<description><![CDATA[A nice story by Pete Jordan for your pleasure reading. Pete Jordan is the author of popular book &ldquo;Dishwasher: One Man&rsquo;s Quest to Wash Dishes in All Fifty States.&rdquo;   On Vacation, All by Myself  By PETE JORDAN&nbsp;   NOT knowing what I&rsquo;d eat &mdash; or if I&rsquo;d be eating at all &mdash; I decided to play it safe and dumped two dozen red multivitamins in a sandwich baggie. I stuffed the baggie into the pocket of my corduroys.  Then I pulled on my coat, grabbed a rolled-up sleeping bag and the brown paper bag that contained my clothes, and left the note on the kitchen table.  As I slipped out the front door of my family&rsquo;s small San Francisco apartment, I shouted &ldquo;See ya later!&rdquo; to my brother Joe &mdash; the only person at home. From the living room, he called back, &ldquo;Where ya going?&rdquo;  &ldquo;Out,&rdquo; I said, then closed the door behind me.  I was 15 years old, and it was August. The note on the table read: &ldquo;I&rsquo;m taking a vacation. I&rsquo;ll call when I get there. Be back in about three weeks.&rdquo;  At the crummy summer camp I&rsquo;d attended when I was younger, every hour of the day was scheduled, which I didn&rsquo;t find very relaxing, and on family vacations &mdash; where a consensus was needed to do anything &mdash; I always had to tag along after my four older siblings. I rarely got to do what I wanted.  So I caught the streetcar to downtown and boarded a Greyhound bus.  I rode five hours, out from under San Francisco&rsquo;s persistent fog cover, to Lake Tahoe &mdash; which had what I considered to be the two key ingredients of an ideal holiday locale: fogless weather and miniature golf. Upon arrival, I folded my coat under my arm and called home, collect. My mom sounded worried.  &ldquo;Are you coming back?&rdquo;  &ldquo;Of course I am,&rdquo; I said.  &ldquo;You&rsquo;re not running away?&rdquo;  &ldquo;Running away?&rdquo; I was insulted. Living in Haight-Ashbury &mdash; a magnet for runaways &mdash; I&rsquo;d met plenty of teens who&rsquo;d fled home to live on our streets and sleep in our parks. This sojourn usually lasted only until a squad car pulled up to the corner where my friends and I were hanging out. The cops would pluck the runaway from the crowd, stick him in the car and ship him back to his suburb/state of origin. It was exactly that environment that I needed a break from.  &ldquo;I just wanted to get away for a while,&rdquo; I told my mom.  &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; she replied, &ldquo;just keep in touch then.&rdquo;  After buying and applying some sunblock, I hiked straight to the miniature golf course. As far as I knew, it was the closest one to San Francisco.  It was also the course where, a couple of years earlier, my brother Joe &mdash; irritated by his inability to direct the ball between the circling blades of the windmill &mdash; had launched his golf club into the air. It whirled above the course like a helicopter before disappearing into the pines beyond. Then he announced that our game was over. Being under his supervision, I had to leave with him, my round unfinished.  This time, I played all 19 holes of the mini-links straight through. By then, the crowd was thinning out, so I bought another round and took my time. If I missed a putt, I took it again and again and again until I got it exactly right.  That evening, in a neighborhood on the California side of the border, only a few blocks from the Nevada casinos, I found a house with tall weeds in the pathway leading to the front door. It appeared to be a summer home for someone who wasn&rsquo;t then summering.  Since I was summering, I hopped the six-foot wooden fence that surrounded the yard. The secluded back porch made for a perfect getaway accommodation. I rolled out my sleeping bag and went to sleep.  The next few days were fantastic. I lounged beside the lake. I climbed a Heavenly Valley ski run. I wandered through the casinos. But mostly, I spent my time &mdash; and money &mdash; miniature golfing.  On my fifth day of freedom, on my way to another morning of sunshine on the links, I stopped into a supermarket for breakfast &mdash; strawberry yogurt and a Jack La Lanne nutrition bar. To stretch the remaining $5 of my golfing/eating budget, I slipped the La Lanne bar into my pants pocket, then paid the 22 cents for the yogurt.  Outside the market, two security goons grabbed me &mdash; one got ahold of my neck, the other twisted my left arm behind my back. I squirmed and wrenched in their grasp, doing everything I could to prevent the yogurt &mdash; which I&rsquo;d paid good money for &mdash; from falling and splattering all over the ground. My resolve was firm. They couldn&rsquo;t get me down.  &ldquo;O.K., all right,&rdquo; I finally said after 30 seconds of grappling. &ldquo;Ya got me.&rdquo; They eased up. My yogurt was still intact.  In the supermarket&rsquo;s security office, Neck Grabber frisked me. He found the nutrition bar. He also pulled from my pocket the baggie of 20-odd multivitamins and held up his prized catch for Arm Twister to appreciate.  &ldquo;Multivitamins,&rdquo; I said.  &ldquo;Yeah, sure,&rdquo; he replied. &ldquo;C&rsquo;mon, where&rsquo;s the rest of it? Where&rsquo;s the broccoli?&rdquo;  &ldquo;The what?&rdquo;  &ldquo;You know &mdash; the Juanita, the Acapulco gold.&rdquo;  Neck Grabber seemed to be convinced that I was running drugs from San Francisco to Tahoe.  &ldquo;If I was dealing dope,&rdquo; I told him, &ldquo;don&rsquo;t you think I could at least afford to buy a Jack La Lanne bar?&rdquo;  Ignoring this logic, Neck Grabber kept grilling me about my &ldquo;operation,&rdquo; using as much out-of-date street slang as he could. The eventual arrival of the police was a welcome relief.  &ldquo;Shoplifter,&rdquo; Arm Twister informed them.  &ldquo;And runaway,&rdquo; Neck Grabber chimed in.  &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not a runaway,&rdquo; I protested to the cops. &ldquo;Just on vacation.&rdquo;  &ldquo;Yeah?&rdquo; one of the cops asked. &ldquo;Where&rsquo;re your parents?&rdquo;  &ldquo;Back in San Francisco,&rdquo; I said. This answer failed to bolster my case.  Stuck in a cell in county lockup for 24 hours, I ate my yogurt, using the lid as a spoon, and thought about what a success the trip had been &mdash; well, up until my apprehension. Little did I realize at the time how much this venture foreshadowed the kind of restless traveling (Greyhound/minimal baggage/half-baked plans) that, as an adult, I would spend more than a decade doing.  My parents were called, of course. They didn&rsquo;t have a car, so they, too, had to get on a bus. When I stepped out of my cell, my dad&rsquo;s face showed a devastating look of disappointment. I&rsquo;d seen it other times, like when he picked me up from our neighborhood police station after I&rsquo;d been brought in for some harmless misdemeanor, but I&rsquo;d never before seen it coupled with quite that look of exasperation. He was surely thinking, &ldquo;If you&rsquo;re going to screw up, can&rsquo;t you at least screw up a lot closer to home?&rdquo;  &ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t run away,&rdquo; I asserted before my folks ever said a word. &ldquo;I just wanted to get away for a little bit.&rdquo;  This claim &mdash; coming as it did while my dad was signing the paperwork to release me from police custody &mdash; fell flat.  On the bus ride back, the three of us sat in silence. My mom read her library book; my dad, various local newspapers. I stared out the window at the sun-drenched sights as we descended from the Sierra Nevada, down through the foothills, across the Central Valley and through the East Bay suburbs.  As we crossed the Bay Bridge on our way into San Francisco, I could see the afternoon fog spilling over Twin Peaks, smothering the city. I put my coat back on for the first time in five days. My summer vacation was over.   ]]></description>
						<pubDate>Aug 30, '07</pubDate>
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						<title>Independence Day</title>
						<link>http://www.fropper.com/post/6657</link>
						<description><![CDATA[Independence Day   The child was staring at the flag  relentlessly  I stood near him and  stared at his alluring face  His flowery fingers  gave me a divine touch  What happened?  I put a stone in his pool of silence!  Why are we not hoisting the flag  more often?  He asked quietly  A smile bloomed in his face  Like a morning flower  I wondered for a while  My reason came like this!  Independence day comes once in a year!   He started walking  I followed through  I noticed a grim smile on his face  Is he dreaming about the freedom  in its entirety!.  Perhaps he is in a dream about  an uninterrupted Independence.   We reached near the  Gandhi statue  He stood in front of the statue  and smiled at the pigeons  resting at its head  Why Gandhiji doesn&rsquo;t come to us  in our dreams more often?  Why he likes only Munna Bhai?  He muttered in my ears  Munna Bhai is a character  not a reality!  my reasoning came like this  Perhaps he must be bewildered  to foresee the changing times  when great people meets  Munna Bhais   We started walking  Holding hand in hand  dreaming about freedom, independence  and Gandhiji  The road was wide open  The cat walk is yet to start  in the heart of the city    ]]></description>
						<pubDate>Aug 23, '07</pubDate>
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						<title>India's Internal Partition</title>
						<link>http://www.fropper.com/post/6514</link>
						<description><![CDATA[The Hindu-Muslim question? It had been meant to solve, once and for all. But in both countries, the two communities have only grown further apart.  Despite their shared culture, cuisine and love for the game of cricket, India and Pakistan have already fought four wars. And judging by the number of troops on their borders and the missiles and nuclear weapons to back them, they seem prepared to fight a fifth.   Comments Mr Ramachandra Guha who is the author of &ldquo;India After Gandhi: The History of the World&rsquo;s Largest Democracy.  I am enclosing his article titled as India&rsquo;s Internal Partition which was published in Newyork Times on our Independence Day, for your pleasure reading.  This is a thought provoking and nicely written article which I read in recent times. I feel you will like it.   August 15, 2007  OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR  India&rsquo;s Internal Partition  By RAMACHANDRA GUHA  Bangalore, India  IN the last months of 1990, a property dispute sparked a series of bloody riots across India. The right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party sought to &ldquo;reclaim&rdquo; for Hindus the birthplace of the legendary god-king Ram, in the small northern town of Ayodhya. That meant demolishing the mosque that had been built there in the 16th century and replacing it with a spanking new temple.  Starting in September, the militant Bharatiya Janata leader Lal Krishna Advani journeyed for five weeks between Somnath and Ayodhya, making fiery speeches at towns and villages en route, denouncing the Indian government for &ldquo;appeasing&rdquo; the Muslims. In many places Mr. Advani visited, attacks on Muslims followed.  In New Delhi, where I then lived, Mr. Advani&rsquo;s march represented a grave threat to the inclusive, plural, secular and democratic idea of India. My boyhood hero had been Jawaharlal Nehru, India&rsquo;s first and arguably greatest prime minister.  When India and Pakistan came into existence in 1947, exactly 60 years ago, Mr. Nehru insisted that India would not be a &ldquo;Hindu Pakistan.&rdquo; Three months after the partition, he wrote to the chief provincial ministers about the Muslim minority: &ldquo;whatever the provocation from Pakistan and whatever the indignities and horrors inflicted on non-Muslims there, we have got to deal with this minority in a civilized manner. We must give them security and the rights of citizens in a democratic state. If we fail to do so, we shall have a festering sore which will eventually poison the whole body politic and probably destroy it.&rdquo;  The Bharatiya Janata Party&rsquo;s idea of India was the opposite. Their ideologues treated Muslims as potential fifth columnists. &ldquo;Pakistan ya Kabristan!&rdquo; (to Pakistan or the graveyard) they cried during the riots. Nonetheless, many million Muslims stayed in India; after the formation of an independent Bangladesh, in 1971, India had even more Muslim citizens than Pakistan.  Yet among my close friends in India there was not a single Muslim. The novelist Mukul Kesavan, a contemporary, has written that in his school in Delhi he never came across a Muslim name: &ldquo;The only place you were sure of meeting Muslims was the movies.&rdquo; Some of the finest actors, singers, composers and directors in Bombay&rsquo;s film industry were Muslims. But in law, medicine, business and the upper echelons of public service, Hindus dominated. There were sprinklings of Christians and Sikhs, but very few Muslims.  As it happened, my first Muslim friend was a Pakistani I met in America. In the mid-1980s, the economist Tariq Banuri and I, both teaching at East Coast universities, were part of a colloquium on third-world development. Our bond was partly intellectual and partly linguistic, for we had grown up speaking Hindustani, that wonderful hybrid of Hindi and Urdu that was once the lingua franca of much of the Indian subcontinent. My hometown, Dehradun, and Tariq&rsquo;s, Peshawar, lay at opposite ends of what was once a common cultural zone, fractured by the partition.  After I returned to India, and Tariq to Pakistan, in 1987, the antipathy between our countries meant I could not visit him. The phone lines were blocked, and the Internet had not been developed. News that trickled in from mutual friends was episodic and desultory; inevitably, we lost touch.  In the winter of 1990, Tariq began appearing in my dreams. I was always on the verge of visiting him in Islamabad, only to be thwarted by hostile immigration officials, barbed-wire fences, massed soldiers or canceled flights. That I dreamt of my friend at a time when my fellow Hindus were mounting frequent attacks on Muslims was surely not accidental.  Back in Delhi, I also came to understand (though not support) why so many Indians had favored building a Ram temple in Ayodhya. Once a center of Islamic civilization, later the center of a white man&rsquo;s Raj, after 1947 Delhi had become a city of the Hindu and Sikh victims of partition. These Punjabi migrants had lost homes and businesses in that bloody summer of 1947. Starting from scratch, they had come to dominate Delhi&rsquo;s commerce and social life. Yet they remained insecure; who knew when catastrophe might come again? And so they hoarded diamonds and maintained Swiss bank accounts.  They also cheated their tenants. In six years in Delhi, my wife and I had four landlords, all refugees from the Pakistani part of Punjab. All four hooked their appliances to our electricity meter, and all kept our deposits when we left.  In 1995, I finally got to visit Pakistan. I saw Tariq in Islamabad and then proceeded to Lahore, illegally, since my visa was for one city only. I met one of the last seven Hindu families in Lahore and visited the tomb of the Sikh warrior-king Ranjit Singh.  Then I went across to the majestic Badshahi Mosque, built by the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb. It was Friday evening, and a large crowd of worshipers was coming out after the weekly prayers. Walking against the flow, I had to jostle my way through.  As I bumped into one worshiper, I was seized by panic. In one pocket of my kurta lay my wallet; in the other, an exquisite little statue of the Hindu god Ganesh, dancing. I am not a believer, but this was my mascot, a gift from my sister, carried whenever I was separated from my wife and little children. What if it now fell out and was seized upon by the crowd? How would that turn out &mdash; an infidel discovered in a Muslim shrine, an Indian visitor illegally in Lahore?  As a liberal and secular Hindu, I should not have been worried about being found out. But my fear was symptomatic also of the deeper failures of partition. It had been meant to solve, once and for all, the Hindu-Muslim question. But in both countries, the two communities have only grown further apart.  Despite their shared culture, cuisine and love for the game of cricket, India and Pakistan have already fought four wars. And judging by the number of troops on their borders and the missiles and nuclear weapons to back them, they seem prepared to fight a fifth.  ]]></description>
						<pubDate>Aug 16, '07</pubDate>
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