Sagar Kinare - II

Early morning of 21st March i went on an unusual adventure with a group of friends. After 40 minutes of sailing into the sea and reaching this un named rock island in the middle of ocean... I couldn't resist jumping into waters. I don't know how to swim, but i know how to still have fun. A little piece of rope was all i needed to cling onto, over a 30meter deep sea bed.

Why did i do it?

two reasons:

1. It was my birthday

2. Read the last blog.

Sagar Kinare

Oceans have tremendous power to wash away all that is thrown into it...

Man, on land walks unrestrained ... acts loose.. enjoys free will. He choses to do great acts of kindness and sometimes corrupts himself with selfishness and greed.

On Beaches.... oceans meet land...

thus immense cleansing of waters, unleashes itself on the verge...

Whether a walk on the shore... or a dip in the waves...

and sometimes even a deep meditation on the sand... purifies soul.

Renews and rejuvenates.

its real...

and always works...

no matter how weak of a faith... you 've got.

I am waiting...

Democratic Icon - II

Ahmadinejad was born near Garmsar in the village of Aradan, in Semnan province, the fourth of seven children. His father, Ahmad, was an ironworker, grocer, barber, blacksmith, and religious person who taught the Qur'an.

Nasser Hadian, who grew up with Ahmadinejad, says he has always been pragmatic and smart -- even finishing No. 1 in his high school class.

In 1976, Ahmadinejad took Iran's national university entrance contests. He was ranked 132nd out of 400,000 participants that year, and soon enrolled in the Iran University of Science and Technology (IUST) as an undergraduate student of civil engineering. He received a PhD in transportation engineering and planning from IUST in 1997. Ahmadinejad believes deeply in many things. As a young man, he took part in the country's Islamic revolution as a member of the revolutionary guards.

In 2003, elected conservative candidates from the Alliance of Builders of Islamic Iran to the City Council of Tehran. The Council appointed Ahmadinejad mayor.

As mayor, he reversed changes made by previous moderate and reformist mayors. He put religious emphasis on the activities of cultural centers they had founded. He also worked to improve the traffic system and put an emphasis on charity, such as distributing free soup to the poor. This son of a blacksmith was later elected president of the country by promising to give poor people a share of Iran's oil wealth.

After his election to the presidency, Ahmadinejad's resignation as the mayor of Tehran was accepted in June 2005. After two years as mayor, Ahmadinejad was one of 65 finalists for World Mayor in 2005, selected from 550 nominees, only nine of them from Asia. He was among three strong candidates for the top ten list, but his resignation made him ineligible.

Today, Ahmadinejad still lives in the old neighborhood in a small house, doing everything he can to project the image of a modest and devout man.

As of September 2009, the election results remain in dispute with both Mousavi and Ahmadinejad and their respective supporters who believe that electoral fraud occurred during the election. Ahmadinejad won 24,527,516 votes, (62.63%). In second place, Mir-Hossein Mousavi, won 13,216,411 (33.75%) of the votes. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei formally endorsed Ahmadinejad as President on 3 August 2009, and Ahmadinejad was sworn in for a second term on 5 August 2009

Democratic Icons

He grew up so poor, he didn't find out what bread was until he was 7. That was Lula's age when he climbed onto a truck with his Brazilian dirt-farmer family and all their possessions and made the 1,900-mile journey which took 13 days from country's northeastern village for a life in the slums of São Paulo. He dropped out of school in the fifth grade, shined shoes on the street, and went to work in a factory at 14, losing a finger to a lathe machine in an accident at an auto-parts plant. Eventually he rose through the rank and file to become an internationally respected union leader. On 10 February 1980, a group of academics, intellectuals, and union leaders, including Lula, founded the Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT) or Workers' Party, a left-wing party with progressive ideas created in the midst of Brazil's military government. A military junta ruled Brazil back then, and strikes were illegal, but he defied the generals and the bosses and practically shut down the continent's industrial powerhouse in the name of the steelworkers.

Lula first ran for office in 1982, for the state government of São Paulo and lost. In the 1986 elections Lula won a seat in Congress with a reasonable majority. The Workers' Party (Partido dos Trabalhadores, PT) helped write the country's post-military government constitution, ensuring strong constitutional guarantees for workers' rights, but failed to achieve redistribution of rural agricultural land.

In 1989, still as a Congressman, Lula ran as the PT presidential candidate. Lula refused to run for re-election as a congressman in 1990. He ran again for President in 1994 and 1998. As the political scene in the 1990s came under the sway of the Brazilian real monetary stabilization plan, which ended decades of rampant inflation, Lula lost in 1994 (in the first round) to the candidate former ex-Minister of Finance Fernando Henrique Cardoso, who ran for re-election (after a constitutional amendment ended the long-held rule that a president could not have a second term) in 1998, again winning in the first-round. In 2002 Lula became President after winning the second round of the election, held on 27 October, defeating the Brazilian Social Democracy Party (PSDB) candidate José Serra.

Spring again !

Finally and officially; winters are out. Flowers are in full bloom and leaves look fresh. My garden has finally started to take some shape (un uniform, but still its a shape). Plans of heading back to northern hills for a consecutive snow fall, remained a plan this year.

My radio station played a "peace day" transmission yesterday, one year after attacks on Srilankan cricket team in Lahore. We in Pakistan need peace, as much as any other country in this world.

The idea of peace missing from the planet in the first place, has some missing pieces in itself. The salvation army of fine few gentlemen among the elite ruling classes from all corners of the world, don't happen to share the same view of the reality. Commercial interests in the media of developing nations can't do justice with the subject, even in years to come. Peace is a quality of existing in harmony, sometimes its referred as the state in which hostility is either zero or negligible. Spiritual gurus would like to draw more individual meaning of it, while commercial pundits would tend to exhibit a rather more complex, social and far from achieving state of our collective destiny.

Billions of dollars worth of arms, ammunition and war machinery is being sold every month to nations, who have been (in a marvelous orchestration of international diplomacy) brought to think of being hostile to groups, enemy nations and a vague ideology of hatred, violence and bloodshed. Its "Osama" for americans, home grown "alqaeda" for british, "Hamas" for israelis, "Colombians" for venezuelans, "India" for pakistan, "Japan" for China, "North Korea" for Japan, "Yemen" for Saudi Arabia... and so on....

Usually its Nations versus Nations, while sometimes its terrorist, separatists, ethnic nationalists, raising alarms for people through; "round the clock" media and news.

From monarchs to democracies, leaders today are more often thought to be individuals with ability to protect our body and soul, unlike their predecessors who used to inspire masses of dreams and progress. Today populations around the globe, breathing in a mixture of economic and security crisis have started to ponder into ideals, which only in last decade was considered to be cynical.

It was a sorrow full autumn. Followed by a rough winter. Hopefully, with this spring, things will blossom for good.

We all had enough, and nature has its own course.