To my FB friend who posted – “What’s the brouhaha on Trump talking trash? The opponent and her husband are trailer trash, and treated White House like playboy mansion during their previous tenure..no one is a saint, Trump does just the talking, the Clintons implement them.”

I really do not care about who you vote for – Trump or Hillary. That is your choice and entirely yours. Any which way you vote, I and the rest of the country will respect your choice.

My point has little to do with political choices. My point is about you asking “what is the brouhaha” – and thereby condoning “talking trash”. Talking trash??? You know exactly what words were spoken. Even the person – regardless of whether he meant it or not – at least conjured up enough grace to apologize for his comments. For you to suggest there is no big deal would mean that you could not even come up with that much shred of a grace.

The position that this is okay because the other team is worse is like saying Idi Amin was okay because he did not kill as many as Hitler. A wrong thing does not get any more right by comparing it with a more heinous wrong. Has our blind hatred for the other team devoured our basic sense of values? Has everything become relative? Has it become okay to say or do bad as long as it is not as bad as others?

I hope you realize how deeply misogynist a person must be to talk in those terms. You for one, should understand this. You draw your paycheck from a company that has a CEO from a demography that suffers from a lot of hatred in this country.

To repeat myself, your political choices are your political choices. And I hope to never lose a friendship over a political choice. But value systems are something I am willing to lose relationships over. And try, as I might, I have not been able to get over your public condoning of misogynistic words (the argument being comparatively speaking, some other people are saying/doing worse) that the person himself has expressed regret over.

I would like to give you the option – if you so wish – to rebut this (and inadvertently self identify) so everybody gets your point of view in the next day or so. But, after that, allow me to draw the line and end our friendship at a point where I can certainly say that I have deep respect for you after knowing you for so many years; it is just that our value system differed.

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 🙂