Blog@GraceJunction

 
Dear Son,

I want to tell you something that I have been keeping in my heart for quiet some years. This happened thirty years back, when we were a newly married couple and we just wanted to enjoy our married life for the next two to three years before we thought of expanding our family. More than that, in those days I had a not so well paying job of a stenographer in the state government. Your mother had taken up some tuition to help me with the finances and that helped us in making ends meet. (more…)

I wasn’t so scared and afraid earlier during the day as I was now, driving down nervously, with my senses on peak alert, searching everywhere for any signs of rioters and trouble makers. We sneaked thru the streets very close to my house, and I could see all around my house burning cars and trucks, stone strewn streets, shattered glass. I choked, my tongue stuck on the roof, trying very hard to gulp my spit as my mind began to recreate the images of what transpired during the day, when my wife made a distress call. Sobbing uncontrollably and tearful, she was scared and terrorized, while locking her self up in the confines of our house.

I had never attended a call like this before and those moments seem permanently etched in my memory. I was at the factory up on a giant machine, explaining it all to a foreign customer whom I had picked up at the airport early in the morning. While I left home it was all ok, the air was a bit tense but as I drove further from my house I did sense the turmoil in the air. I drove past people, up in small mobs and saw shattered windshields and glass all over the streets. I just reminded myself of God’s love and protection on our lives and confidently drove past all of it, seemingly ignoring it all. (more…)

It’s official! India has added one more dubious distinction to its “shining” cap. In a study conducted by National Crime Record Bureau (NCRB) where they compiled data from 22 countries which included Australia, Argentina, Austria, Bulgaria, Japan, Canada, England and Wales, Germany, Malaysia, New Zealand, Thailand and Srilanka, India has been declared as the ‘murder capital’ of the world!

According to the NCRB report, in 2007 – 08, there were 32,719 incidents of murder recorded in India, which is three times more than its neighbor Pakistan and double the figures in the United States.

Did it catch us by surprise? I don’t think so. The media is peppered with news of gruesome murders every single day. Grover, Aarushi cases are still fresh in our minds. Many other cases go unnoticed. As per the study, India witnessed an average of 90 murders per day! This means that as every hour passes, around four people are murdered in India! A very high number by any standards! (more…)

A very strange trend, definitely looking like a trend, can now be seen in our land. People are becoming very famous in a day. So much that most people know them and about them in a just one day! Every newspaper and news channel covers them, many times for hours together!

Till that day happens, they move about, almost invisible to society, and many times even to kith and kin. They do umpteen things, but these are hardly noticed or even if they are, they are not worth a news. It doesn’t discourage them, and they go about their narcissistic lives with an almost unswerving dedication till the skeletons tumble out of the closet or the time bomb stops ticking and explodes.

What happens is so startling that people discuss it for days and weeks together! Even the judiciary and the investigators get busy and our sensation thirsty media men are kept on their toes. But most often than not, our subject under discussion is not alive any more to respond to the applause and attention! A case of Posthumous fame!! And even if they are alive, then they are either in hiding or in a place, where a lot of attention is also coming from khaki clad body guards (if we can call them so!) and more famous inmates! (more…)

A gun that sends an electromagnetic pulse which causes seizures like that in epilepsy, a microwave gun that ‘beams’ words directly into people’s ears, another that is used as laser dazzler, still another that produces a sound loud enough to disturb the sense of balance, these are emerging non-lethal weaponry in the hands of the ‘Big Boss’. Some however have chosen to call these less-lethal weaponry!

More interesting is a microwave gun that produces a ‘disabling’ artificial fever by heating a person’s body! Though it would perhaps take about 15 minutes to achieve the desired fever effect, it could be used to incapacitate people for almost ‘any desired period’! (more…)