News Items of my Interest

The following are the news Items which I have been reading and fascinated or disturbed me,

1 ) Michael Jackson
It was during 1991 and that was the time when MTV came to India. I remember in amazement watching his "Black or White " Video. Right from the beginning , where Macaulay Kulkin kid to the end where the faces change dynamically , it was brilliantly done.
There was so much build up for the days when the videos were going to be release and the next one was "Remember the Time" with Eddie Murphy, I used to watch it so many times and loved it , first time in my life I was able to recite the songs (but I could never dance !!).
After seeing these songs I had the opportunity to see Thriller , its a 4 min song and there was a movie in it. He revolutionized Music videos and in his black or white , all the different dances are from countries , which are predominantly non-white was also a nice concept.
The eventual truth is , everyone dies, but he was coming back from his exile and was starting his second life , he may be a guy with a peter pan syndrome or anything that he is accused of , but we should also understand lot of people took advantage of him and got all his money.
A guy who had sold more number of Albums in the world , died as a Debtor , life is tough and strange.
Let him rest in peace, atleast I would have hoped that he died in a stage after performing atleast a couple of shows to prove that he still has the power to pull people.

2 ) Donation to Thirupathi Temple
There are somethings which infuriate me and make me really mad , one of which was the donation of Rs 45 crore of diamond studded headgear to Lord Venkateshwara of Thirupathi by a Minister.
It consists of 30 kg of gold and 35,554 round diamonds of high quality. Each Belgium cut diamond is processed in-house and carefully handpicked before being set in the ancient manufacturing technique of closed setting.

Lets analyze some irrefutable facts about India
1/4th of Indian population live under Rs 12 per day
77 % of Indian population live under Rs 20 per day
42.5 % of Indian children are malnourished
World Health Organization, states "that about 49 per cent of the world's underweight children, 34 per cent of the world's stunted children and 46 per cent of the world's wasted children, live in India."

I have to state this as per record , Karnataka's minister for tourism and leading industrialist Gali Janardhan Reddy who donated this crown to the temple , is a businessman and he gives work o around 20,000 people , which by itself is a biggest gift, which you can give to god.

In Bible there is concept of Gleaning , which means that all farmers even if the harvest is very good , they will leave a side of their harvest for poor people. For example, ancient Jewish communities required that farmers not reap all the way to the edges of a field so as to leave some for the poor and for strangers. But we give it to god , and this is not the first crown to the god , this is eighth one and the largest one presented to the god.
I have the following questions
1 ) Did the god ask for it ?
2 ) As Rajani says in his song , if there is more money , you should protect it , now there will be more care and protection given to the crown rather than the god itself ?
3 ) For the temple also , why don't they keep it for one year in Gods head and auction it off , there are tons of crazy people who will buy that for 100 crores (Diamonds are worthless after you buy them , but when you add a hint of god the value goes nuts) .
4 ) There was a similar story in which a lady from Swiss donated around 2.4 crores to the Rameshwaram Temple , they bought shares and stocks of the Electricty plant and that plant is using that money to provide electricity and have a lot of people at work , isn't what the money is all about ? Why does god require all this ?
5 ) What can be done with 45 Crores
How many schools , Colleges could have been built ?
How many Hospitals could have been built ?
How many Electicity Grids , cleaner sanitary facilities for people , how many farmers were dying because of no water and food , can this not be used for that ?
Elder care facilities.

I am sure god agrees with me , doing the above mentioned would have raised his asset level much more than showing off that he gave 45 rore to god. Isn't this considered as a bribe , I got something because of you , so I am giving a share to you ? or is he feeling guilty that he had gotten the money the wrong way , obvously he is an Indian minister , and they have absoluetly no accountablity.

3 ) Pirabakaran
I don't know what to say about him , he was a fascinating guy who had his pet Cheetah in all his pictures.
But he is a guy who makes sure that he hides behind his people and make them martyrs. I remember reading an India Today Article , which had said that during March of 1991 , there was a secret meeting between Rajiv and Pirabakaran and Rajiv had assured him of doing his best for his fight.
But two months later , they assasinated him. If you read interviews of Political leaders of that time , its enlightening to know that lot of Indian leaders opposed to India's involovement there. Except for Politicians and obviously MGR because he was born there and had a soft corner. Karunanidhi as per the LTTE was more of an oppurtunist rather than a helper for their cause.

Pirabakaran suffered from depression , mental anxiety and he was an insecure person , also a person who has lived his life always hiding and not trusting others , it would have been very difficult for him to lead a normal life , everytime there was an incident he used to hide himself and use his people as martyrs.
There were some muslims who had leaked information and he made sure that there were no muslims in his area.

But inspire of all this , its interesting to note that his face was clean shaven. Never know what really happened to him , might be a conspiracy theory , Tamil newspaper had it saying that he escaped and India helped , might be true , might be bogus.

Lets atleast wish that , let them have a good time from now onwards, even now they are planning for the agreement which was signed by Rajiv on 1987. Which the LTTE didn't accept , how things change and thank goodness it changed.