Diana: Princess of hearts

10 years ago, in the early hours of August the 31^st, Princess Diana was killed in a fatal car crash at Paris. She was being chased by the paparazzi.

I was 12 years old at the time. I remember my mother waking me up from my afternoon siesta to tell me of the news. And I remember stumbling out of bed towards the TV, bleary-eyed from sleep and watching the drama unfold. I’d felt numb and shocked. The reactions worldwide ranged from horrified grief to utter disbelief. Though I was never much of a ‘Di-watcher’ (but of course, I wasn’t oblivious to her existence. No one could be, not with her kind of glamour and charisma and all the media coverage she got), her death affected me somehow. Even her life did.

Since her death, thousands of millions of words have been said and written about her.

I cannot think of anything to put down. For I do not know where to begin; whether it should be her incredible beauty and poise, her iconic status, her dedication to the charitable causes she supported, her kindness and strength of mind & heart, or her personal life which was far from happy.

Instead I’ve put up a copy of the eulogy that was given by her brother, Earl Charles Spencer. This was more than a mourning ritual. It was a tribute to and a celebration of a woman, who’s life has touched the lives of many, many others. (And I've taken the liberty to italicize some of the more touching lines.)

Princess Diana Speech by Earl Charles Spencer

I stand before you today the representative of a family in grief, in a country in mourning before a world in shock. We are all united not only in our desire to pay our respects to Diana but rather in our need to do so. For such was her extraordinary appeal that the tens of millions of people taking part in this service all over the world via television and radio who never actually met her, feel that they too lost someone close to them in the early hours of Sunday morning. It is a more remarkable tribute to Diana than I can ever hope to offer her today.

Diana was the very essence of compassion, of duty, of style, of beauty. All over the world she was a symbol of selfless humanity. All over the world, a standard bearer for the rights of the truly downtrodden, a very British girl who transcended nationality. Someone with a natural nobility who was classless and who proved in the last year that she needed no royal title to continue to generate her particular brand of magic.

Today is our chance to say thank you for the way you brightened our lives, even though God granted you but half a life. We will all feel cheated always that you were taken from us so young and yet we must learn to be grateful that you came along at all. Only now that you are gone do we truly appreciate what we are now without and we want you to know that life without you is very, very difficult.

We have all despaired at our loss over the past week and only the strength of the message you gave us through your years of giving has afforded us the strength to move forward.

There is a temptation to rush to canonise your memory, there is no need to do so. You stand tall enough as a human being of unique qualities not to need to be seen as a saint. Indeed to sanctify your memory would be to miss out on the very core of your being, your wonderfully mischievous sense of humour with a laugh that bent you double.

Your joy for life transmitted where ever you took your smile and the sparkle in those unforgettable eyes. Your boundless energy which you could barely contain.

But your greatest gift was your intuition and it was a gift you used wisely. This is what underpinned all your other wonderful attributes and if we look to analyse what it was about you that had such a wide appeal we find it in your instinctive feel for what was really important in all our lives.

Without your God-given sensitivity we would be immersed in greater ignorance at the anguish of Aids and HIV sufferers, the plight of the homeless, the isolation of lepers, the random destruction of landmines.

Diana explained to me once that it was her innermost feelings of suffering that made it possible for her to connect with her constituency of the rejected.

And here we come to another truth about her. For all the status, the glamour, the applause, Diana remained throughout a very insecure person at heart, almost childlike in her desire to do good for others so she could release herself from deep feelings of unworthiness of which her eating disorders were merely a symptom.

The world sensed this part of her character and cherished her for her vulnerability whilst admiring her for her honesty.

The last time I saw Diana was on July 1, her birthday in London, when typically she was not taking time to celebrate her special day with friends but was guest of honour at a special charity fundraising evening. She sparkled of course, but I would rather cherish the days I spent with her in March when she came to visit me and my children in our home in South Africa. I am proud of the fact apart from when she was on display meeting President Mandela we managed to contrive to stop the ever-present paparazzi from getting a single picture of her - that meant a lot to her.

These were days I will always treasure. It was as if we had been transported back to our childhood when we spent such an enormous amount of time together - the two youngest in the family.

Fundamentally she had not changed at all from the big sister who mothered me as a baby, fought with me at school and endured those long train journeys between our parents' homes with me at weekends.

It is a tribute to her level-headedness and strength that despite the most bizarre-like life imaginable after her childhood, she remained intact, true to herself.

There is no doubt that she was looking for a new direction in her life at this time. She talked endlessly of getting away from England, mainly because of the treatment that she received at the hands of the newspapers. I don't think she ever understood why her genuinely good intentions were sneered at by the media, why there appeared to be a permanent quest on their behalf to bring her down. It is baffling.

My own and only explanation is that genuine goodness is threatening to those at the opposite end of the moral spectrum. It is a point to remember that of all the ironies about Diana, perhaps the greatest was this - a girl given the name of the ancient goddess of hunting was, in the end, the most hunted person of the modern age.

She would want us today to pledge ourselves to protecting her beloved boys William and Harry from a similar fate and I do this here Diana on your behalf. We will not allow them to suffer the anguish that used regularly to drive you to tearful despair.

And beyond that, on behalf of your mother and sisters, I pledge that we, your blood family, will do all we can to continue the imaginative way in which you were steering these two exceptional young men so that their souls are not simply immersed by duty and tradition but can sing openly as you planned.

We fully respect the heritage into which they have both been born and will always respect and encourage them in their royal role but we, like you, recognise the need for them to experience as many different aspects of life as possible to arm them spiritually and emotionally for the years ahead. I know you would have expected nothing less from us.

William and Harry, we all cared desperately for you today. We are all chewed up with the sadness at the loss of a woman who was not even our mother. How great your suffering is, we cannot even imagine.

I would like to end by thanking God for the small mercies he has shown us at this dreadful time. For taking Diana at her most beautiful and radiant and when she had joy in her private life. Above all we give thanks for the life of a woman I am so proud to be able to call my sister, the unique, the complex, the extraordinary and irreplaceable Diana whose beauty, both internal and external, will never be extinguished from our minds.

---

This Funeral Speech (Eulogy) was delivered following the death of Diana Princess of Wales - given at Westminster Abbey on 6 September 1997.

When Crime is Glamorized……..

What’s the top fashion accessory of the season? What little trinket is being sported by A-list Hollywood celebs (not to mention the wannabes)? An ankle monitor of course.

For the uninitiated, an ankle monitor( also known as SCRAM or Secure Continuous Remote Alcohol Monitor) is a device that’s strapped to a person’s ankle to monitor the alcohol content in his/her body. The device reads the alcohol content by monitoring the sweat. Needless to say, this device is strapped to a person’s ankle. Every hour the device sends a signal or reading to someone designated by the wearer. Action can be taken if the person starts sweating booze.

This device is being sported by a number of celebs, who are either alcoholics trying to become recovering-alcoholics, or have been arrested for DUI. The media is awash with pics of Lindsay Lohan ( who has been busted twice for DUI ,by the way. even though she was wearing the AM the 2^nd time), Drew Barrymore( who apparently wears one on each arm), Tracy Morgan, rapper Eve & of course the blue-eyed girl of the paparazzi, Paris Hilton.

Paris & Lindsay, brand ambassadors for ankle monitors

Now, in a normal world, having to wear this huge piece of electronic circuitry would be a matter of shame. A person forced to wear this would be seen as a criminal, a drunk, or a miserable imbecile. They’d be seen as a lush.

But there’s no such thing as a perfect world, is there? Like there’s no such thing as bad publicity, when it comes to high-flying (no pun intended) socialites.

Even though this is a serious issue, an offence in fact, with serious consequences, (admitted, that Lindsay & Paris got off light though. Lindsay had a 4-day sentence the 1^st time, rehab the second time. Paris served 3 days of her 23-day sentence, on the basis of some undisclosed ‘health-condition’. Paris was then sentenced to house arrest and the monitor. House arrest??! Her house is probably enough to accommodate 50 families from the Dharavi slum) somehow the media has managed to glamorize this. Photos and video footage of these celebs posing gorgeously, in designer outfits (or bikinis as in the case of Lindsay), have captions that describe them as ’………. looking hot and sexy wearing so-and-so’s designer outfit, and the AM.’ This serves to present them as looking ultra fashinable with their new electronic bracelet, as well as making a non-issue of the fact that their actually wearing one.

Now, this ‘person’ is an alcoholic and most probably a legal offender. Instead of trying to turn a new leaf and to act ( and I don’t mean play-acting) responsibly, most celebs end up as legal offenders, again & again & again. Of course, they’ll get off easy, so why should they bother being responsible? And, as usual the media is there to dramatize the whole issue. We have live reports of the ‘incident’, and the ‘sentencing’ and what not. But they don’t seem to dare to be tough on these drunkards. Nope, they report, but they don’t judge.

So at the end of the day, it’s simply fashionable to be wearing a chunky monitoring device. It’s in style. People will look at you as a rich and feisty socialite. Not a drunk.

Is this what we have become.....?

I’m so ashamed. Ashamed of mankind. And who in God’s name came up with that word, mankind? What is so kind about man?

Yesterday, I saw something on CNN that horrified me. And brought tears to my eyes. Even now, more than 24 hours later, there is a lump in my throat as I try to make sense of it and put into words what I am feeling. The images are seared into my memory. Perhaps forever. Right alongside those of Qutubuddin Ansari pleading for his life during the Gujarat riots.

CNN was reporting an incident that took place in Iraq. No, not another bomb explosion or riot or whatever it is that comes to our mind when we think of that poor war ravaged country. It was not something that had to do with the US troops or the fight against occupancy. There is no way that anyone could justify it or relate it with the ongoing turmoil in Iraq. But it probably had everything to do with the war. It probably is a consequence of the war. Probably.
( Read the whole story on http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/08/22/iraq.boy/)

A 5-year old boy, Youssif, playing outside his house, in the street right in front of it in fact, was doused with gasoline by a group of men and set on fire. By whom? Why? No one knows. And in all possibility, no one will ever know.

But what we do know is that the boys’ life has been changed forever. His childhood has been robbed of all the joy and innocence there ever could be. For the rest of his life, he will have no memory of his childhood, save that of the fateful moment. He will forever feel the searing heat and forever see the flames. The worst scars he will carry won’t be the ones on his face and hands.

No one will ever be able to tell him why he was set on fire. Why he was tortured. Because we ourselves will never understand the hideous act. I cannot even begin to comprehend the level of viciousness and sadism involved. I cannot see a single reason that would justify brutality against a child. Any child. What on earth would cause a human being to commit an act of such evil and barbaric act of aggression on an innocent child? I am sure that the men who committed this brutality don’t have an explanation either. Yes, they may have a reason, or they may think they have one, but they cannot explain it. I refuse to believe they can. But I pray that whatever the reason, there was a reason. No matter how flimsy. Because, if there was none, and this was a random act of aggression, then the bestiality of it has made me lose all hope for mankind.

The report carried an interview with the boys mother. She talked of the horror she was living. She had taken a huge risk coming on air and talking about this. But her sons life and future weighed more than her own.

But there is some consolation in the fact that the plight of this family has gained widespread attention, and there is hope that there will be aid soon.( Read comments on CNN site)Doctors from outside Iraq will probably help to reconstruct Youssifs face and bring back some semblance of sanity and cheer to his shattered life. People who have seen and/or read the report have been horrified and moved in the same way I have. There is hope that there will be some relief for little Youssif soon.

That news report on CNN made me realize that we have reached a new low. And by ‘we’, I mean us, human beings. Mankind as a whole. Yes, there are many horrible things taking place out there in big bad world. And, God forbid, there may be worse things happening right this minute. But this has affected me in a way that I cannot even begin to explain. It has simply left me shaken to the core, rocked all my beliefs and shattered all my illusions about what the world is coming to.

What separates us from animals is not our intelligence, or the opposable thumb, or the fact that we have (religions and) spiritual issues, but our capacity for mindless violence. While animals hunt for food and attack when threatened, we humans wreak havoc, and spread death and destruction on an unimaginable scale, simply because we are capable of doing it.

The Wait

The wait has been unbearable. Unbearably long and tedious. It is unbearable as it is seemingly endless. It is endless as it is filled with uncertainty that, more often than not, melts into utter frustration.

And what is this wait? The wait for the doj or the date of joining. To join Infosys, or infy as it is known. I was recruited by infy at a campus drive about a year back. July 3^rd 2006 to be exact. The day of my parents wedding anniversary and a good friends (Ranjana) birthday.

That was in the 6^th sem. Now it’s been a month since my university exams have gotten over. Me and my fellow infyians under the Kerala University have been sitting in our homes waiting for the doj since July. What made us think that we would get the doj in July? Well, all our seniors joined in July, the year before. So we started waiting….. we started up a Infosys Kerala 2007 community on orkut so as to keep track of all infyians across kerala. We regularly checked out the Infosys2007 community on orkut( which was for all infyians of the 2007 batch). Every daybreak there was false hope. A new rumor…that we would get the doj on so and so…. And every single time, our hopes would be shattered. We would watch as dates, that we had been assured would be ours were given to some batch or the other. We watched as slowly everyone, except keralites, got their calls to join at mysore, bhubaneshwar, pune, wherever.

People were frustrated and high strung. Serves them right. Who the hell asked them to start that stupid community in the first place?? Everyday someone or the other would come up with some new info about the doj that he/she had gotten from someone who’s friends fathers friend worked in the HRD/ Alternatively, there were people who were constantly calling up or mailing HRD to query them about the doj. Then there were new rumors about infy being in trouble because of the rupee going into a downward spiral (hint hint: meaning they wouldn’t be calling us), there were talks about chikanguniya and even about them being biased against keralites (to be fair, it did look lik they had given everyone else dates except us).

Initially I used to follow whatever happened on the community. Then I started getting royally ticked off at the way people started behaving on the basis of rumors and weird logic. The only reason we had gotten so frustrated was because of the community incessantly talking about the doj and endlessly discussing possibilities of the next date. And the next date would always turn out like all other dates. No doj for us. Just because our seniors joined in July last year doesn’t mean that we were going to be called on the exact same date and time. Also, this time the keralites seemed to have drawn the short straw. Last year some other batch was probably in our place, while our seniors joined early.Our batch would join somewhere towards the end. What was so difficult to understand about that? Ok it was tough being bored and having nothing to do. So we should have gotten a temporary job. And it was tough to think that we would get calls as late as November and December, hence wasting half a year of our life. And sure, lots of people probably had plans but couldn't do anything without knowing the doj, (including me and my mom who had to go to dubai) but we had no choice but to wait. It was tough luck. Not partisanship or whatever.What pissed me off was that community members thought nothing of relentlessly hounding the HRD. C’mon guys. Grow up!!! It wasn’t like they’d never call us!!! (Bias or not, rupee downfall or not). We all knew that infy had taken on a lot more people than last time, so they were finding it tough to schedule training sessions for all of us. No matter how much we pestered them they would call us only when they were good and ready. It was our fault for over anticipating. We kept guessing that we’d get a call in July, and later August. When we didn’t get those dates we all got hyper. It’s just been a month of waiting. In fact one of my friends even talked of leaking it to the media. I was like “WTF!!!! Is she insane?? Are they all insane?? What is it that they were going to leak to the media?? ‘Infy biased against keralites; keeps them waiting for a month; calls other batches before them.’?? ”

The only place where I find infy to be at flaw is that they should have send some sort of communication to us, seeing all the calls and mails they were getting from us mallus (and proving how jobless we were, not to mention stupid). They should have sent the mail the recently did, earlier. It certainly would have placated everyone. Here’s the mail I got on

Dear ........,

Congratulations on coming out a winner in the Infosys selection process.

Securing a position at Infosys is more competitive than gaining admission to Harvard. Last year the company had more than 1.3 million applicants for full-time positions and hired only 1 percent of them. Harvard College, by comparison, accepted 9 percent of applicants.) – Fortune magazine, March 2006 edition.

This comparison goes to show your tremendous achievement at such a young age. It is truly a reflection of your intellect and passion for excellence, to have made it through the Infosys selection process. And we are pleased that you chose Infosys to kick start your career. At Infosys, we strongly believe that people are our biggest assets and you are one amongst the best-in-class global talent which Infosys takes pride in.

As we eagerly await your entry to the Infosys family, we wish to share some important information to better equip you during the joining process. Your date of joining will be communicated to you via e-mail, sufficiently in advance so that you can make your travel arrangements. We expect to have you onboard during the months of September to November 2007. We are ramping up our IT and physical infrastructure in tune with our philosophy of providing world class facilities to our people. This process is taking a little longer than what we had anticipated. We are trying our best to even out these issues and confirm your date of joining at the earliest. We will keep this connect going and update you frequently with the latest information from our end.

Looking forward to seeing you at one of the Infosys campuses soon…

Thanks & Regards,

Somnath Baishya

Head - Global Entry Level Hiring & Campus Relations

While this mail certainly did placate everyone including myself, it also worried me. I had been waiting for a call from the Alliance Business School for a long time and had even given hope, when I finally got the call. The gd/pi session was scheduled for Nov23rd and classes would start in Jan2008. I had to fill in the form and send it back with a DD of 1000 bux before Sept20th. I couldn’t do so without knowing my doj. My dilemma was what if the doj was before the last date? Half of me was tired of the waiting and wanted the doj asap. But the other half wanted for me to attend the gd/pi session. What if I did get through? I did want to do an MBA and I wasn’t really into Software.

But then I started hearing stuff about ABA not being that great and the initial salary would actually be less than what I’d get if I joined infy now. So I have a bigger dilemma now; to be or not to be MBA. I was pretty sure that if I took up a job now I wouldn’t be able to take an MBA anytime soon. After marriage maybe. Also, MBA has a huge advantage anywhere, anytime. But was ABA worth the huge fees my folks would have to shell out? I’m in a quandary. But that’s another story.

And finally, it seems that people from Rajagiri College and CET have gotten dojs for sept10th, Mysore. Everyone is relieved that they’ve finally started ‘considering’ keralites and hopeful that the next date in September will come to us. Guess we’ll have to wait and see.

Top reasons that make people run

This is a list of things that make people run.A far from complete list, I might add. now you may wonder what made me compile such a useless list. Well, I guess it's the boredom. And may be the 'Top 10.....' or '100 most.....' countdowns, lists and studies of every single thing imaginable, from celebrities and movies to books and artillery, that we are bombarded with everyday. Every passing media second we have a new compilation of something or the other.So I thought why the hell should I not come up with a list of my own. So here goes...

1) When you have to use the bathroom.
2) If you hear some song on the radio/TV that you’ve been wanting to hear for sometime and you’re in another room
3) When the phone’s/ doorbell’s ringing and you’re not anywhere near enough to answer
4) You’re watching a movie on the telly, and you get up to do some stuff during the commercial break; and you hear the movie resume
5) You’ve left something on the stove; and remember it only when you smell something burning
6) When you’re well on you’re way out of a shop and you realize that the shopkeeper has cheated you out of some money or owes you more money
7) You realize you’ve forgotten some belonging somewhere
8) You see your boyfriend/girlfriend someplace unexpectedly; you run to catch up with/follow him/her
9) You run away from the scene of an unintentional crime. (I assume people walk away like pros from scenes of premeditated crimes)
10) You’re late for an exam/interview/hearing/meeting
11) You see/or hear of a celebrity within 5square kms of you
12) You’ve parked you’re car illegally ( for an errand that you assume would take 5minutes) and you see, from afar,that the traffic inspector has taken an interest in your car
13) A natural calamity