This happened earlier in the week. After all that name calling, accusations, counter accusations and foaming in the mouth with completely biased political points of views without any willingness to listen to the other side of the story – and this is just my Facebook friends’ posts I am talking about – I am yet to watch the debate – I came across a story that completely restored my faith in humanity. I believe my friend Aashu Rahar had forwarded a link in Linkedin.

This is a story of two human beings. You can see both of them in the top picture. The kid was a victim of what is called “witch child” accusations in Africa. You can read up in Wikipedia of this inhumane treatment meted out to young children by adults in parts of Africa out of sheer lack of education, poverty and sometimes worse.

This child came to this world thru no fault of his own. And the same people who is supposed to protect him and feed him and nurture him named him a witch child and threw him in to the streets and left him to die. And he was barely over a year old. He lived for eight months abused in the streets, fending for himself and lived off whatever scraps he could find on the streets.

And there is the other human being here in teh picture. Anja Ringgren Loven – a Danish woman who has dedicated her time and money to help abused kids in Africa. She and her husband David and her young son (who happens to be of the same age as the kid in the picture here) spend most of their time in Africa for the cause. Her foundation is called “African Children’s Aid Education and Development Foundation” (look it up).

One day, she got a call about an emaciated, abandoned kid on the street. That is when she went there and saw this child hopelessly starving, thirsty and to top it, riddled with worms. The picture of she gently feeding him and giving him water drew a lot of attention in social media on January 31 this year. Anja picked the disoriented kid up and took him to the hospital for treatment.

And that is where the vast humanity not seen in the picture comes in. The world at large raised a lot of money for the kid. (My research has come up with very different numbers – the more common numbers are 150,000 pounds and 1 million dollars. The former is more likely to be true). With that money, the kid was brought back to stable condition with a lot of blood transfusions and medicines. Finally, he had to undergo one last surgery to treat a particular body malformation.

Anja named the kid “Hope” and then settled him in a orphan’s home she has created and maintains that houses about 35 other kids.

The pictures at the bottom is the same kid Hope after only 8 weeks (just 8 weeks!!) of treatment and proper food and water!! That is an amazing recovery. Once again proving that sometimes all it takes is a little help, a little care and a little extending of our hands to make all the difference.

And you also realize that there are people like Anja in the world. What grace! What sacrifice! What humility!

What a wonderful human being!!!

For all of us who blame politicians for having made this election an entertainment show, reflect on one simple thing. How have you contributed to this yourself?

There was a time where politicians like Lincoln and Douglas used to write their arguments in paper and pen and publish them. Citizenry used to read them and meet in the marketplace to debate among themselves.

Today, somehow we feel if we miss the words spoken live on TV, tomorrow watching it on Youtube will have absolutely no value. Why? Can we not dissect the words and weigh in in our mind tomorrow?

Now think from the politician’s point of view. Are you reading their manifesto where you stop mid sentence, look up, think about the point and then decide – Yeah, that makes sense or that makes no sense. No! You are watching TV. You cannot stop to think after hearing something. The show has moved on. You are not going on to take a walk mid-show and think what was just said. Their only hope is to get as many sound bites as they can to catch your imagination, alignment, fear etc etc within those seconds.

What else can they do? And you were expecting material discussions?

The politicians did not make this an entertainment show. No, sir!

TV did.

Recognize that before you blame the politicians.

Great talk by the pro wrestler Marc Mero. Many of us who have had kids leave us to go to college can relate to how in the prior couple of years, they seemed to grow away from us as they came of being and their friends became a big part of their lives. The comforting part at the end of the day – while that is not what Marc is reflecting on here – seems to be that they do come back… some later than others.

(Thank you Ajanta Dasgupta for leading me to this video)

Yesterday, like most other days, I got up and set out in my running clothes. The whole idea was to put in a run, take a shower and get to office for all the meetings and such.
Except, I made the mistake of opening up office emails before going for the run. Looking back though, I am glad I did. For there were too many things that had happened overnight that needed my attention and decisions quickly. Weighed in “run and then work” or “work and then run”. Eventually went with the former. The challenge was that I was still in my running clothes – you know those bright ones I wear with matching shoes and all.
Ah, well, I figured if I can reach office very early and get cracking, I should be able to finish in a couple of hours and then go out for a run before anyone showed up at office. And none would be any the wiser.
Like all of those best laid plans of mice and men, five hours later I was still ploughing thru work. The calls had started – and worse, the scheduled video conference calls (thankfully, all were internal) started too. And there I was – in the most ridiculous Friday dress down day clothes you can ever show up in office with 🙂 In fact, I had to explain to all the folks at office when they came in lest they thought I was off my rocker. Well, any more than they already think 🙂
The good news is that eventually around lunch time I had an hour gap – long enough to put in a quick 5K and then shower in the LA Fitness and resume work. The bad news is that I had to run in those hard concrete sidewalks (ouch) under the noon sun.
At least I was far more presentable during the video calls of the afternoon. And since this is me we are talking about, even that was only relatively speaking 🙂

Okay, that was the fourth challenge in as many days days from my FB friends. If I get the general drift, I am being challenged to put up a happy picture of Sharmila and myself  (good luck finding it) for ten successive days (haha! lots more good luck finding them) and then everyday I am to challenge another friend to do the same.

I have certainly no issue on what you want to do with your FB timeline – entirely your choice to post and my choice to ignore them. That being said, my first thought was – What??? What  kind of a challenge is this? Mind you – this is not a request. This is not a suggestion. This is a CHALLENGE to prove my love and happy marriage!!! How many wives do I have these days?

To what end? How are ten pictures of Sharmila and I – and remember – we have to look happy in all of them which dramatically reduces the sample set in our case – going to make one iota of a difference to anybody? Other than of course, setting the wrong expectations to the poor souls that are contemplating on getting married 🙂

By the way, you are not fooling me one bit about your marriage with those pictures. Put some candid pictures – one where you were fighting, one where you completely embarrassed yourself, one where she sent you to sit in the corner, one where you unexpectedly got a surprise…. you know all those small real life things that actually make a happy marriage. All those seemingly happy moments you self-choose does not define your marriage. Those are meant for a Facebook pyramid scheme. If your marriage is anything like mine, its happiness is not derived from a continuous stream of smiling face photo-ups but unrelenting ups and downs with an underlying trust and belief that the other person will always be there for you. You can’t take a picture of that. You have to feel it.

I have to say, I do enjoy sometimes when you occasionally put those happy pictures of you and your spouse. I feel special that you desired to share a happy moment with me. And certainly feel happy for you. Those are special moments. Let’s keep them special. That specialty goes away in my mind when I realize that you are doing this for a “challenge” and worse, you are trying to make a daily habit of it for some time. And that you intend to encourage such behavior from ten other people!

And maybe you still feel you need to do that. Ok. Your call. But why me?? I and the king of TMI in FB. I am the exemplar of hedonism in FB with every bit of my life posted on Facebook. Have you not been warned at all not to encourage me to post more? Even the carriers are going – dude – throttle back – your data use is overloading those snooping NSA servers 🙂

Ok. Now allow me to finish this post, quit searching our photo databases for ten pictures and instead utilize that time to think of one more reason to pick up a fight with Sharmila 🙂

The idea was to cut down on words and make it more pictorial.

About Me

As always, ideas and feedback to improve is very welcome.

… till it hits close to home.

Two Americans killed in the horrific incident in Nice, France. One, an old colleague and the other, his son. 🙁

Sitting out in the woods for the last hour and a half. The crickets are unusually quiet tonight. Once in a while you can hear a plane in the distance. Lots of fireflies all around me. The moon playing hide and seek behind the clouds… 

Reminds me of the early morning quiet times with my dad.

I was waiting for my flight. Thought it would be a great time to catch up with my daily birthday wishes. Tried calling as many people as I could. One of them was Neal. Unfortunately his number stated that it was not a working number any more.

Which was a shame I thought! Last year, I was away on vacation and I had wished him thru email. He had written back about his exciting work in Dell and the healthcare industry. The year before that was also an email exchange. Three years back, I had written to him from India. He had, I still remember, talked about his excitement in working in Dell and the healthcare industry.

I had no idea through all these years that he had been fighting cancer.

Not being able to get thru to him yesterday, I wrote a longer email to him from the plane. And I got a response an hour later. It was from his wife Donna. The email in front of me – that I stared for many minutes at – let me know that a few months after our last birthday email exchange, Neal finally succumbed to his cancer.

My head started spinning in the plane. There were too many flashbacks…. remembering those days over a decade and a half back when we worked together – Neal’s jovial nature, his energy level and above all his ability to keep a positive outlook in a rather acrimonious business culture we were in those days. I just could not believe he was no more.

Above all, I regretted that I wrote emails to him the last few years and did not talk to him to wish him. What a shame!

His wife ended her heartfelt email to me thusly – “My husband was a good man”

Unbeknownst to her, I was nodding my head sitting in the plane – “Yes, ma’m! Truer words have not been spoken”.

Neal Feldheim, as short as the road was that we traveled together, you made it immensely joyous for me.

May you be in peace…

“One short sleep past, we wake eternally
And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die”