Thanks to Beena Sarwar’s updates, I read this moving account, THE OTHER HALF in ‘Srinagar diary’ by Kalpana Sharma.

… the Indo-Pak peace process, the people to people exchanges, the opening up of meeting points along the Line of Control have
raised some hope that permanent peace is possible. Apart from the larger questions, what concerns the ordinary person is finding ways to increase communication between divided families and communities straddling the LoC. This was the question that engaged a group of almost 50 women from both sides of the State of Jammu and Kashmir.

Fourteen women from the Pakistan side of Kashmir crossed the Wagah border in mid-November, travelled by road to Jammu and then flew in to Srinagar to meet their counterparts on this side of the border.

This was the first time such a meeting was held between women from the two sides.The result was unusual and memorable. For the women from the Pakistan side, it was a deeply emotional moment. Many of them came with preconceptions. They had heard of the sufferings of people on this side of the border. They were upset at seeing the soldiers on the street. They were even more perturbed that they could not call their families and inform them of their safe arrival.

Taslima Nasrin is now a “sensation” of another kind in India. She has attracted the attention of those segments of Indian media that love to sell anything that brings Islam and Muslims related controversies into the public domain. (more…)

Liked this excellent editorial from The News: (more…)

The monks in Burma have resisted the oppression with grace and immense selflessness. I am reminded of a poem The Dictators by Pablo Neruda that captures the hollowness of arbitrary rule and violence that haunts our collective conscience..

An odor has remained among the sugarcane:
a mixture of blood and body, a penetrating
petal that brings nausea.
Between the coconut palms the graves are full
of ruined bones, of speechless death-rattles.
The delicate dictator is talking
with top hats, gold braid, and collars.
The tiny palace gleams like a watch
and the rapid laughs with gloves on
cross the corridors at times
and join the dead voices
and the blue mouths freshly buried.
The weeping cannot be seen, like a plant
whose seeds fall endlessly on the earth,
whose large blind leaves grow even without light.
Hatred has grown scale on scale,
blow on blow, in the ghastly water of the swamp,
with a snout full of ooze and silence

(available online)

An online petition by Avaz can be found here. This group is now placing ads across the global newspapers to raise the pressure on Burmese authorities.

“Writer Arundhati Roy said in an interview last week that at least India’s growing middle class was reared on a diet of radical consumerism and aggressive greed.

Full entry here >>

Blogosphere faces another question – is it “free” enough?

An Egyptian court has sentenced a blogger to four years’ prison for …. read here for more

Admittedly, Soliman was a little harsh in his verdicts on Al-Azhar and the President, but then neither are Divine and infalliable.

Came across the chilling works of Colombian artist Fernando Botero last night. A friend at Berkeley University forwarded me this link that led me to the moving images of the recent paintings by Botero called Abu-Ghraib

Botero, 73, is the modern master of Latin American art. His cheerful magical-realist paintings are well-acclaimed in the West and feature in major museums such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.

Read more here >>

There is talk of war again. There is a familiar web of lies, half-truths and deceit. As if the smouldering cities and dying civilians in Iraq were not enough to quench the blood-thirst, the global war machine now wants another victim. Full entry here >>

Ali bin Abi Talib, the fourth Caliph and son-in-law of the Prophet Mohammed, wrote a long letter of guidance after appointing Maalik al-Ashtar to be Governor of Egypt.

Read entry here >>