Tuesday, August 28, 2007

Hollywood actor Owen Wilson attempted suicide? Depression…sign of the times!




There is a story in there, about people having it all and yet going over the edge.

Now that the official reports show that Police were called to Wedding Crashers ’ star Owen Wilson's home because of an attempted suicide report, it is talked about that the star was depressed and actually calling for help.

Depression is so commonplace and yet so unrecognized, few realized that it can happen to anyone, anywhere.

You do not need the Santa Monica Police Department’s log of weekend calls to show that there are more Wilson around. Anyone depressed is giving out subtle signals that he or she is depressed.

Wilson was found bloody and dazed after trying to commit suicide by overdosing on pills and slitting his wrist in the wake of a blow-up with a close friend, a source told the New York Post.

Fox news also quotes a source close to the "Wedding Crashers" actor, 38, telling "Extra" that the actor did indeed attempt suicide over the weekend, saying Wilson has been depressed for the last few months, but not over a broken relationship.

The source also told “Extra” that Wilson’s famous younger brother, Luke Wilson, found him and that Wilson’s family and friends are shocked.

"It's hard. He's such a wonderful person," a source told the New York Post. "He's such a great guy and so smart and just ... nice. We're just hoping he gets better."

One neighbor told the Post that when she heard the ambulance, she was surprised because Wilson never causes any trouble.

"All the neighbors like him, he's a friendly guy. He never has any crazy parties or does anything wrong," Betty Miller said. But Wilson has a history of depression.

"It's very upsetting. People are complicated. It's not just one thing," a friend of the actor told the Post.

On Monday, Wilson was receiving care Monday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles and was in "good condition," a publicist for the hospital said.

Meanwhile, Wilson asked for privacy in a statement released through publicist Ina Treciokas.





"I respectfully ask that the media allow me to receive care and heal in private during this difficult time," he said.


So this only proves that the new age mantra of ‘Having it all’ is taking its toll. Helen Gurley Browns of the world not with standing, the rage to achieve too much too soon is killing people in the process.

It makes little difference here that Wilson was nominated for an Academy Award for his work on the screenplay The Royal Tenenbaums. He starred opposite the likes of Jackie Chan, Ben Stiller, Gene Hackman, Will Ferrell and Eddie Murphy.

If you are cracking under the pressure, fact is you need help. And if you are so sick with depression that you do not realize you need help, then you better have a brother like Wilson’s who arrived in time to play savior.

Unlike Britney Spears’ family who have been unable to get the ‘Ooops’ Pop tart back on even keel.

People, depression is treatable, just like other (physical) maladies. And like ‘if Mohammad cannot go to the Mountain, the mountain must come to Mohammad’, the family must rally around before wrists are slit…irreparably.

Wednesday, August 15, 2007

India: Partition of a soul














Millions were displaced and killed in the chaos after partition of India in 1947.

I can never forgive the colonist British for their final blow to the jewel in their crown. They proved a simple policy: If we cannot keep it, we will hand it to you in tatters.

People tell of millions of scared Hindus fleeing the suddenly declared ‘Islamic Pakistan’ side of Punjab. Someone said that the train loads of dead bodies kept on arriving till the Hindu leaders on the Indian side of Amritsar border sent a trainload of Muslims dead or near dead.

An article on www.bbc.co.uk provides glimpses into the mayhem during the partition.

The entire act was wrong, say papers unearthed by the son of the now deceased Mr. Beaumont who was private secretary to the then senior British judge, Sir Cyril Radcliffe (the chairman of the Indo-Pakistan Boundary Commission) in 1947.

Radcliffe was responsible for dividing the vast territories of British India into India and Pakistan, separating 400 million people along religious lines.

"The Punjab partition was a disaster," he writes.

"Geography, canals, railways and roads all argued against dismemberment.

"The trouble was that Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs were an integrated population so that it was impossible to make a frontier without widespread dislocation.

"Thousands of people died or were uprooted from their homes in what was in effect a civil war.

As an Indian who has never experienced the pain of partition but has seen it in the eyes of hundreds of survivors, I feel even if the Queen were to apologize, it is not enough. Sindhis lost their entire motherland. The Sindhu river civilization is the oldest and most developed one in archaeological terms, mind you.












Mohenjodaro- The excavations pertaining to ancient India (Sindh) that once thrilled the archaeologists, now in an unconnected surrounding and hold- that of Pakistan.

Today’s Kandhahar, which was the erstwhile Gandhar province of Prince Shakuni of Mahabharatha, is in Afghanistan now. Manasarovar, the Hindu pilgrimage spot is in China held Tibet.

India was a religion, a brotherhood and a way of life…untill the mayhem of Mughal and Arabic invasions destroyed it and the British served the final blow.


Saturday, August 11, 2007

Racial bias and business sense


A friend who works in the US of A said once to me that there may be no overt racial bias seen in the country of Uncle Sam, but it exists!

You do not see it, it is not talked about but lies in subtle happenings. You feel it but cannot say a thing. I wondered how that can be. "The native (read White) Americans work with you by day, but when they can chose who to socialise with in the evenings, you are clearly out! We do not get invited for family outings together or mixing, generally!" That is why, long ago, in India- one often heard- It is better to be an equal citizen in your own (not so developed) country than be a second-rated citizen in another (developed) nation. But with India's 300+ million middle class consumers that even President Bush eyed and mentioned in his visit, the business sense is beginning to prevail, one sees. Like the introduction of the Indian origin American character - Raj Patel- in the Archies comics. Please read the link below to understand the business sense that played a big role in the creation of a very likeable character as Archie's friend.


"...The Archie comic series has undergone a change and Archie now has a brand new Indian friend. There's a new kid on the block in Riverdale. The latest addition to Archie Andrew's gang of friends is an Indian-American- Raj Patel. The creation of Raj Patel comes at a time when the advent of computers and video games like WII and X box is affecting readership for the comic series across America...

Meanwhile, over a million Archie comics are sold in India every year..." I read on the net.


''The fact that there will be an Indian character in our comics on a regular basis will bring more attention to the comic and hopefully more readers in India will vie to read Archie and we will sell more Archie comics in India,'' said Michael Silberkleit, Publisher, Archie Comics (Quoted from NDTV's story http://www.ndtv.com/convergence/ndtv/story.aspx?id=NEWEN20070022253)


For a change, the (Riverdale) boys hobnob with eachother, share agendas and do not fall into racial bias traps.

The creators say a lot of research went into conceiving the Patel family. While they insist it was not intentional, the Patel family is the stereotypical Indian-American success story. Raj's father is a doctor. His mother, who sports a bindi, is a research scientist. .. Says the same NDTV story! Aha!!! I must say, as my heart leaps at the sudden equality!!! As an Indian, I feel that the stereotype of an educated family from India, trying to fit in the American scenario, is a hard earned on.


For generations, Indians have toiled in research laboratories, hospitals and industries as the brains that helped the rise of America.

Now, the children may face less bias, maybe that's the 'pay-back' religion often talks about.
But does this also mean that if India was if India had nothing to offer in terms of market, the racial bias would have remained? Man, Money Talks!!! Doesn't it?

Nature's small wonders


I guess we all are overpowered with a sensation of 'Wow!' over simple things in life. Like wanting to get drenched in a rain shower...sitting in a window and watching the sun set behind the hills or mountains!

My children do plenty of the both.

They love rain, and when in Nasik, my son loves to sit in the window of my sister Jyoti's third floor flat and watch the horizon in the evenings.

This video I am including next is something from the same adventurous flavour we all seek in plain matters of life.

The caterpillars are nibbling away at the leaves with what gay abandon! Watch this is the link to the video I have pasted below.

A member of my yahoogroup shot the video and I have included his note.

Have fun. I am sure you will watch it again and again.


Hi guys,
Here is a time lapse of caterpillar eating awaay the leaf...unfortunately, my cam's battery was over before I could take a much longer video of it.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3263294504127164755&hl=en


Recently, the pets are in the pupa stage and maybe emerge in a day or 2 as a moth or butterflies.The interesting thing was that they made the pupa using there own droppings maybe, because there was no sand or other material I kept for them in the box.
Cheers and good wishes.
Hitesh Gusani