Sunday, November 29, 2009

Terror: a state of intense fear

Terrorism: A systematic use of terror, especially as a means of coercion. In 1987 I boarded a Pan Am flight that took me to New York via London for my summer holidays. A year and a half later a terrorist would blow up a plane just like the one I had boarded. On December 21, 1988, Pan Am Flight 103 exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing all 259 people on board as well as 11 on the ground.

This weekend I was in Syracuse and saw a memorial that was created for students that died in the 1988 terrorist bombing. There were 35 students aboard that flight. This brought back back memories from last year. Nov 26th is my mother’s birthday and also a day that anyone who has anything to do with Bombay will never forget. I remember frantically calling all my loved ones and breathing a sigh of relief to know that they were all safe; not everyone was that lucky. As long as there is politics, hate and greed in this world acts of terrorism will continue and people will live with fear and come to terms with grief. It is not fair, and yes, something must be done about it – how and what, I don’t know. It takes a lot to change the world; I hope to see this change in my lifetime.

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Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Parades and such….

I have had bloggers block for the last few weeks; I guess sometimes you just don’t feel like posting and instead of forcing myself I just gave into my complacency. I took these pictures a while back on a bright sunny day when there was a parade in the city. NYC has the most parades, they get monotonous sometimes and of-course wreck havoc with the traffic. Forget about going cross town in a cab when there is a parade blocking all of 5th Avenue. There are actually over 50 parades a year in NYC click here for a list of them.

The first picture is of a mini Turkish festival that had a sufi dancer "wowing" the audience OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

This second picture is one of my favorites; every parade must have a band marching down the street……

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