Usually, I follow politics at very superficial level, British politics even more so.  The other day I was watching the BBC when they were anointing Jeremy Corbyn as the leader of the opposition labor party after a tumultuous few months.  Now there was something about his pleasing personality that did ring a bell.  And then the realization dawned on me, and I was convinced in my mind that when my affable brother in law Mike Deleo gets to the age of 65 and beyond, he will resemble very much Jeremy Corbyn!  And the more I saw, the more I thought that Mike will not just look like him in the old age, I don't know whether it was my imagination, but I also discovered some commonality of traits.  The same tall and lanky frame, the relaxed and graceful movement not to mention the amiable demeanor that could be engaged and detached at the same time.  It was quite uncanny really.  If you happen to be reading this Mikey, please don't mind man because I am saying this entirely as a compliment.  As far as I am concerned, it could never be otherwise.

Tuning into BBC, CNN and Al Jazeera every evening, you are brought face to face with a gut-wrenching and a harrowing human tragedy.  Hundreds and thousands of vulnerable and dispossessed people are fleeing their strife torn and civil war ravaged countries in the Middle East and North Africa to seek sanctuary and asylum in more prosperous western and northern Europe on a daily basis.  Devoid of either hope or any kind of legitimate documentation, these people, possessed by frightening audacity, are literally putting their lives at risk in order to get to the Promised Land.  Those migrants who are leaving the shores of North Africa are crossing the Mediterranean and landing in Italy, even though scores of them are dying every month either by drowning in leaky overcrowded boats, or being claimed by sea sickness.

  What has really astounded me no end is the kind of treacherous journey undertaken by those from Syria and Iraq.  Moving entirely on foot, these thousands of men, women and children are first crossing into neighboring Turkey, from there sailing in boats like tightly packed Sardines further west to the Greek islands.  From there on, the journey begins once more on foot, this great mass of humanity marching northward into Macedonia and then into Hungary; their aim being to cross the border to Austria towards west, and then to their final destination of either Germany, France or The United Kingdom.  In that long and arduous journey, they endure all kinds of hardship, from being robbed by the criminal gangs to beating by the police and security forces. It is nothing short of a surreal sight to see all kinds of men, women and small children’s marching down the road with a desperate determination.  Some are escaping persecution by the state and some are running for their lives, from possible genocide. Small children sitting on the shoulders of the elders, frail women some of them pregnant trying to heave their bodies willing them to keep moving until they reach were they want to be. I guess this was the exodus they talk about in The Old Testament.  Even if these people get there, there is no guarantee that they will be able to build a better life for themselves. But their hope lies in the fact that may be, just may be if the fear of death and persecution goes away, they might have a shot. To be fair to the countries in the European Union, they are trying to accommodate as many migrants as possible, but that generosity is fuelling another kind of resentment among the people in the host country.  Some leaders like Erdogan of Turkey and Putin in Russia are taunting the European government that it was there policies along with the U.S that resulted in the crisis in the Middle East & in North Africa in the first place, so it is their moral obligation to help these refugees. On the other hand the European leaders are saying that if the rulers in those countries had put their house in order, this humanitarian disaster would not have erupted.  I don’t know who is right or who is wrong, neither do I have any solution to offer. But every night I am depressingly mesmerized to see this human catastrophe beamed in my living room.

May I know how many perpetrators of the Gujarat carnage of 2002 have been given death sentence and lest I be accused of selective memory, how many people who actively participated in the butchering of thousands of innocents Sikhs on the streets of New Delhi in 1984 been sent to the gallows?  The answer is, none.  And what about those animals who not only violently gangraped and killed a young girl in a moving bus, but also horribly mutilated her body beyond imagination.  Why are they enjoying the state's hospitality in a maximum security prison in the country?
But instead you chose to execute a man who naively believed in your criminal justice system.  By no means am I suggesting that Yakub Memon was not guilty of the conspiracy to commit those horrific serial bomb blasts of 1993 in Bombay that accounted for the lives of more than 300 people, or that he didn't get a fair trial in India.  My limited point is that his involvement in the actual planning and execution in that act of terror was peripheral and not central.  Let me draw an analogy; say I am seriously annoyed with a group of people so much so that I wouldn't mind them being killed, and I find out that my brother is also thinking along similar lines and in fact he is going to do something about it.  As his brother, even though I am aware all along of the conspiracy and the planning to kill those people, I decide to not only keep quite about it but also provide moral support to the whole thing.  So, you can say that I am guilty by association but since i did not directory conceived or executed the operation, I would not be bracketed in the same league as my brother.  That's how I would think anyway, and that is how more or less things transpired.
Call it a prick of conscience or whatever, but the fact remains that Yakub Memon gave up himself voluntarily to the Indian law enforcement authorities in the hope of making a bargain for lesser punishment in exchange of fully cooperating with the investigation and prosecution of that serial bomb blast.  His best hope was a life in prison with no possibility of  parole.  This  is not an unreasonable expectation in any civilized  democracy like ours.  I think because they have not been able to capture the chief executioner of the operation Tiger Memon and underworld lord of the crime syndicate Dawood Ibrahim who was the main financer for this inhuman act, they have taken out all their frustration on the one man who did not get away like those two.  How far this insatiable bloodlust can be allowed to go on just to satisfy the so called "conscience" of society?  As a democratic country keeping in line with the best practices around the world, we must move away from death penalty.  But that is a debate for another day.  If the previous government for the sake of  a vote bank hanged Afzal Guru, then this is a government led by a macho nationalist and how can it let go of a golden opportunity to display its machismo to the faithful and hence Yakub Memon had to be sent to the gallows.

Your whole life is the sum and subtotal of the kind of choices you make.  They say that destiny is the ultimate decider but I think in the larger sense, it’s how you choose determines your destiny.  I am always given to self-analysis especially when I am in a dark mood.  I’ve never opted for regrets for the kind of choices I’ve made; however I deeply regret that I was not given the opportunity to become another kind of man.  A man without baggage, light on his feet, a rolling stone that gathers all the moss but never takes root anywhere.  But here I am, presented with a fait-accomplish and asked to choose. 

  So, I chose knowledge over ignorance, being a discerning individual over being a philistine, expanding of mind over narrowness of thinking, rationality over superstition, struggle over self-pity and Devil over God.  How far have I succeeded in my endeavor is not for me to decide.  Sometimes the net result has been a lot of personal anguish, but those were my choices and I wouldn’t have it any other way.  I hear a voice that says you are lucky, it could be worse.  What is luck after all, but fate’s cheating, giving you an illusion of power.  Whereas the best you can do is to get up every morning and try your best to keep disaster at bay.

I have a vision where anxiety and ambition are consuming each other; they are coalescing and diffusing, inflating and deflating.  I can see time accumulating like grains of sand and it will bury me in the end.

It's been more than 10 HRS, but I'm still reeling from such a high octane contest between Novak Djokovic and Roger Federer.  The quality of tennis was absolutely intoxicating.  Federer threw everything he'd got but Novak gave everything back with interest and some more and was the deserving champion.  He now joins John Mcenroe and his current coach Boris Becker as three time Wimbledon champion.  The more I have seen of Djokovic over the years, the more I have become one of his ardent admirer.
  This guy is one of the finest specimen of human being in terms of physical fitness and almost superhuman reservoir of energy and stamina.  Last evening during the game, Federer surely must have been thinking what do I need to do to derail this man!  Some people might think that Roger just couldn't reproduce the kind of tennis that be played against Andy Murray, but it's also one of the truism of any sport that you can only play as well as your opposition allows you to and in that sense Djokovic just knew what he was doing.  Boris Becker was my earlier hero, he was the most charismatic tennis player I have ever seen and it was because of him that I fell in love with the game in the first place.  So, it was fitting that as Novak's coach, he was cheering from the sidelines.
  As an aside, I could not believe that Kate Winslet was in the house, enjoying the contest, so it was all the more incumbent upon Djokovic to come up with the goods and did he do that or what!

Dear America,
Let me wish you a very happy 4th of July, the day you declared yourself independent from your colonial masters, Great Britain in 1776.  Now you and I have shared a very special relationship over the years.  I have no hesitation in saying that you have contributed immensely to my intellectual growth as a person.  Even though I discovered you a bit late in my life, but through my tireless efforts I have made up to a large extent for the lost time.  Some years ago, when India was a dull place for ideas and inspiration, I found solace in your literature and popular culture.  In not more than 600 years of your history, the way you have attracted the best and the brightest of the whole world at your shores is without parallel.  The dynamism of your people underpinned by the puritan code of delayed gratification and a sense of protestant work ethic have generated unprecedented wealth for your people and quality of life that is the envy of most other nations on the planet.  If the 19th century belonged to your erstwhile colonizer Great Britain, then it can be said without a shadow of doubt that the 20th century has been well and truly yours.

  Whenever the quirks of history have thrown a crisis your way, from civil war to the civil rights movement, from great depression of the 30s to the financial mess of the wall street a few years back, not to mention the ghastly tragedy of 9/11; the intellectual robustness of your people and the technological resources at your disposal have made sure that you have always ended up on the right side of history.

 Of course your society also has its cruel aspect, its dark underbelly, and I'm not blind or impervious to that, but then what society doesn't?  But on balance, you've done well for yourself.  And today is not the occasion to go into all that anyway.  Today is the day to celebrate and cherish the fearless spirit your adventurous people.  Happy Independence day.  

Reading and discovering Naipaul is an exploration into your own self.  Whenever you follow the works of certain authors, you look for some aspect of your inner feelings that will be reflected on the pages.  But somehow Naipaul cuts too close to the bone; and the hurt is a kind of illumination.  I feel a deep empathy when he talks about growing up on a small tropical island in the Caribbean, his manic obsession to get away from all that mediocrity surrounding him, a place that has stopped producing great people, and a place that was exhausted of life itself.

  The anxiety and the ambition.  The former about your place in the larger scheme of things, and the latter about a certain kind of person you want to be.  I get the impression that all my life I’ve been preparing for something, you think that the abstract nature of your education is a kind of freedom, but it can also shackle you into pretending and knowing when you don’t know.  You haven’t anything to go by; the memory does the selection when it comes to examining your own experiences.  The world is what it is.  When your time comes, your time comes.  In that respect, I owe a debt of gratitude to Naipaul for making me gain a better footing on this slippery slope of decay and renewal.