A Leader is ...

One who feels for the common man?
One who bolsters the economy?
One who strengthens the military to make us a powerful nation?
One who ensures equal opportunity to underprivileged minorities?
One who revives/reinforces faith and morality within the country?
One who quells civil unrest and maintains peace within the country?
One who funds research and academia to make ours a technologically advanced nation?

These are some of the questions an informed voter would ask himself before he casts his precious vote, and so I did, and I got some interesting but puzzling answers. As a result I changed my tactics and instead of asking those pertinent questions, I focused upon some world leaders who have made their mark and tried to figure out what was it that made/makes them tick. While doing this, I made an interesting discovery that sometimes there were two world leaders even three, sometimes from the same country, that shared various leadership traits, and so I bracketed them together:

John F. Kennedy( USA)/ Rajive Gandhi (India) (youthful appeal)
Idi Amin (Uganda)/ Pervez Musharraf (Pakistan) (might under duress)
Dmitry Medvedev(Russia)/ Anwar Sadat (Egypt) (groomed politicians)
Gamal Abdel Nasser (Egypt)/ Mikhail Gorbachov (USSR) (visionaries)
Ernesto Zedillo/Vincent Fox (Mexico) (supporters of a globalized economy)
Yasser Arafat/Mahmoud Abbas (Palestine) (empathetic leaders)
Che Guevara /Fidel Castro (Cuba) (revolutionary freedom fighters)
Ayatollah Khomeini/ Mahmoud Ahmadenijad (Iran) (moral/religious reformist)
Evo Morales (Bolivia)/ Hugo Chavez (Venezuela) (aggressive economic policies)
Nicolas Sarkozy (France)/Bill Clinton (USA) (charismatic)

These groupings and the cited characteristics are all purely subjective and may carry little weight. However, what is interesting is that these leaders, disparate as they may be, are still recognized as having made a distinct impact on the people they lead. We have a Nasser and a Sadat, both lead Egypt, yet how differently; a Clinton and a J. F. Kennedy, both picked by an American electorate, but stand worlds apart in what they brought to the plate as heads of state. The above mentioned are all illustrious individuals who rose to the occasion and delivered, yet each delivered a different package! What was relevant then may not apply now; the need of the hour then may not even be recognized as a need any more. Our world exists within a time continuum that produces some dynamic socio economic equations which need real time solutions in order for humanity to prosper and evolve. In the light of this realization it is not the leader who is important, but it is the specific need of the hour which is and thus needs to be profiled and then disseminated to make for an informed electorate which can then vote for a candidate who has the ability to provide the country with a solution to its specific socio economic equation. Does that imply that people will always find a leader who will deliver? Certainly not, and we have innumerable examples in history and in our recent past of leaders who unfortunately delivered a nation to disaster and despair. In the same breath we have had the Mandelas and the Gandhis who brought out the best in the millions they lead!

The finding of an apt leader will depend on how informed and free an electorate is to be able to determine its need of the hour! In fact it's not the ability of the leader that defines a period in history but the awareness levels of the people who he leads during his reign. In the light of that finding, my plans for a leader profile are aborted/abandoned!

Teachers of the world unite, we all have an electorate to inform, awaken, and empower to ensure the existence of peaceful and productive nations.

Bloggers Unite for Human Rights

"While the words might change from country to country and are sometimes taken for granted, human rights represent one of the universally agreed upon ideas — that all people are born with basic rights and freedoms that include life, liberty, and justice. This year marks the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the United Nations.

Bloggers Unite For Human Rights challenges bloggers everywhere to help elevate human rights by drawing attention to the challenges and successes of human rights issues on May 15. What those topics may include — the wrongful imprisonment of journalists covering assemblies, governments that ignore the plight of citizens, and censorship of the Internet. What is important is that on one day, thousands of bloggers unite and share their unified support of human rights everywhere."

“	...recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world	”
—Preamble to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 194

Yet...

there is Censorship in China

Beijing Faults on Tibet

genocide is funded in Darfur

China's all-seeing eye
(courtesy Eccentric Optimism)

Writing a novel...

How is a novel born? What makes one decide to write such a lengthy composition? Why do writers write a work of fiction?

A colleague and friend of mine has recently written a novel, and I had the privilege of being the first one to read the final draft. That is when a barrage of questions started flooding my mind; questions that I had always carried within but never articulated thus far. Not being able to contain myself I asked my friend turned novelist some rather pointed questions about her new vocation. Her witty and wholesome answers but only whetted my curiosity about novel writers. Why do they write?

Does a writer start off knowing she is going to write a 500 page novel or does the novel simply grow out of what started as a short story? Do the pages of a novel grow to a plan or are they at the mercy of a character that breaks loose and takes the story hostage?

After pondering over these questions for the longest time and finding no palpable answers I turned to the big-wigs of Literature to see what they had to say about novelists and the writing of a novel... I'm not so sure that helped!

Toni Morrison put it this way: “If there’s a book you really want to read but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.”

Saul Bellow feels " A novel is balanced between a few true impressions and the multitude of false ones"

Faulkner says "every novelist wants to write poetry first, finds he can't and then tries the short story...failing that...takes up novel writing."

Camus defines the novel "a philosophy put into images."

Chesterton says a "a good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author."

Hemingway believes a novel "should create living people; people not characters."

Henry James says "The only reason for the existence of a novel is that it does attempt to represent life."

A Master Artist!

Playful painter brandishing his brushes

Yellows, pale pinks, and grassy greens
Running amuck while nature preens

All eyes agog, where next the stroke
to basic brown ‘n mellow maroon
poised pink does prettily croon

Awakening alas, a master craftsman
stretching and flexing his moves so tender
lazily blending color into grandeur

Even the wanton yawn does bring
Hues and colors most sublime
The painter’s an artist, perhaps divine

(Click on pictures to enlarge)

Puppy Love

It comes back to rest on me,
a gaze that all ensnares.
Her presence all around me
with words that do caress.

Is it romance unsought?
My mind is all besot;
in rapture of a fleeting touch
imagination's caught.

Unwanting, I seek her out;
the strings of heart undone.
Softly I hear me sing
tunes long forbidden

How long until 'tis over?
They say it goes away.
This puppy love of mine
is perhaps here to stay.

Dominican Diaz Wins Pulitzer for "The Brief Wondrous Life of Wao"

"I'm just this Dominican kid from New Jersey," says Junot Diaz, after winning the Pulitzer for his first novel "The Brief Wondrous Life of Wao"!

Junot Diaz's - The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

I read about Junot Diaz sometime last year in the New York Times, and it was his Dominican heritage that caught my attention. Over the years I've befriended numerous Dominican immigrants who have always impressed me with their joie de vive at the same time surprised me with their machismo that they flaunt with such proud abandon. It was my dichotomous reaction to Dominicans that got me interested in reading Diaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. I was curious to know what a Dominican writer had to say about the immigrant experience; something I'd read and heard extensively about from my Dominican friends, but never from a Dominican writer of Mr. Diaz's fame and caliber. Junot Diaz is perhaps the first ever Dominican writer to have hit the literary scene in such a big way with his debut novel, and is recognized as a contemporary writer with a very distinct writing style.

Diaz came to the US as a seven year old carrying memories of his homeland that he vividly brings alive in his writings. In this novel I was hoping to find a voice that was Diaz'z own. However, neither the womanizer narrator's nor the male protagonist's voice could be pinned down as the voice of Diaz. That may have been Diaz's strategy to have the reader guessing which of these two Dominican males was the typical one. It could also be that Diaz was trying to prove a point here that not all Dominican males are Yuniors, the narrator, who though madly in love with Lola, Oscar's sister, keeps his libido in full gear with other women. But then neither is Oscar the typical either as the overweight nerdy and serious romantic who is constantly involved in serious matters of the heart, unfortunately with women he can never have. Diaz has woven a web so wily where the reader hears the chronicles of a serious lovelorn Oscar from Yunior, a glib 'n easy college roommate of Oscar who is shocked by Oscar's depth of emotion and says he'd "never in... life met a Dominican like him...”

Diaz has produced a very humorous and gripping novel by providing a story that is both endearing and shocking. Oscar, the hero, and his encounters with love and relationships in general make for some humorous and touching reads. Meanwhile, the tapestry against which Oscar is presented is not only vast but also grim and sordid, and it has the capacity to shock. Oscar's story goes back two generations and across two countries to introduce us to his grandparents, the eminent Carbajals, and to his not so honorable parents, Belicia an unwed mother and his father a criminal in cahouts with Trujillo, one of the cruelest dictators in History. With an illustrious family tree such as this it is no surprise that the life of Oscar is both brief and wondrous, and it is to Mr. Diaz's credit that he spun into this 'wondrous' story a historic depth and meaning without alarming his reader. He kept the reader in easy suspended disbelief with his fluid sometimes raunchy language rife with colloquial spattering and identifiable contemporary references; even when he was taking the reader some eighty years back into the history of a small island once called Hispaniola.

Pure coincidence that this may be, but just before reading this novel, I read Amitav Ghosh's The Glass Palace which also spans across three generations and which includes a coming of age story of an individual within an immigrant family. What a contrast the two reading experiences proved to be! Where I finished Junot Diaz's novel over a weekend and in two sittings, Ghosh's novel took me all of three weeks and uncountable sittings to come to that last page. Storytelling is not an easy art, and writing is perhaps even more difficult, as the writer gets no immediate feedback like the story teller does, through eye contact and body language. Mr Diaz apparently sensed the pulse of his audience because The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao proved a riveting and delightful read.

There is one question though that I would pose to Mr. Diaz if I ever got a chance: how does a novel like this bring him closer to his goal of 'community activism'? What will make this delectable piece of literature irresistible to the majority of fellow Dominican Americans who
"never thought writing was interesting or viable"?

Primates Afterall - An Ode to all that's 'Human'

You may not hear it
or see it
but when shrapnel tears your guts
you sure do feel it
You may not call it hatred but...
it can still be it!

You don't condone it
rarely display it
but when a Simpson gets acquitted after double murder
you could resent it
Judge Ito did not call this crime of passion but...
it can still be it!


You may not fear it
or regret it
but at the bulleted Buddhas in Bamiyan
you wondered at it
Politically incorrect to call it ignorance but...
it can still be it!

You don't talk about it
or sometimes ignore it
but when a Katrina happens
you do behold it
Bushes of the world wouldn't term it racism but...
it can still be it!

You may try to hide it
desperately deny it
but when Charles spurned a Diana in favor of a Bowles
you did witness it
decried by all as love forbidden but...
it can still be it!

The natural instincts of man,
every now and again,
do surface to pain.
Much to the chagrin of our moral police
where instinct is taboo
and acquired behavior reigns!

Too evolved to call ourselves human but...
we are still it!