What would those idols inside the Ka'aba looked like?

Imagine this: that someone would rise up someday and say: the Tirupati temple is sacred, that is,  the structure is sacred, built in a sacred spot, but that the idol of Venkateshwara inside should not be worshipped, but should be smashed...
And then that person would say: you're worshipping the wrong way, and you need to do it my way. And then those worshippers would say: let us pray to  our Venkateshwara idol the way we want. And then that person would say: no, you need to give up that idol, but you can worship that structure in which the idol stood, and the place where it stood is holy.
So finally, a new religion is born; the worshipers of the idol finally give up the idol and the temple after years of war, and the idol is duly smashed, and the building in which the idol used to stand becomes the center of the new religion.
That, roughly, was what happened in the 7th century when the idols inside the Ka'aba were given up by the Meccan tribes, after they were militarily defeated . Prophet Mohammed smashed the idols inside, but the Ka'aba became the centre of the new religion, Islam. Muslims believe that the Kaaba is holy because it was built by the Prophet Abraham.
As an idol-worshipping Hindu myself, I always wondered what those idols would have looked like, inside the Kaaba.
Well, an ancient kingdom, Lihya, excavated in Arabia, threw up massive statues. Those statues are on  display at an exhibition in the Louvre, which is on now. Though those statues are thought to be of the Lihyan kings, they give us a clue as to how, artistically, those idols in the Kaaba may have looked like. The massive 2.5 meter polished red sandstone statues show amazing sophistication. Even more likely is another statue, with minimalist design, titled 'suffering man" which is probably closer to what those idols may have looked like.
I'm attaching a link to the exhbition, which has the pictures of both the Lihyan statue, and the 'suffering man', and details of the exhibition
.http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-07-26/saudi-king-a-no-show-as-treasures-glitter-in-louvre-show-jorg-von-uthmann.html

You can be sure that the Saudi King, the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, is not too happy with people excavating statues from Arabian sands, 14 centuries after the Prophet destroyed all the idols of Arabia....

The Neo Colonialists

A hundred years back, no white man in India felt that he or she should be subjected to any laws by any "native Indian"'. Only an Englishman could judge or be trusted to judge an Englishman fairly. The result: no Indian, however senior, could be a judge over any case that involved the British. British judges, in cases which involved blatant transgressions by the whites, including murder, were mostly racist, and the accused got away lightly. The Times of India would be the watchdog for the British, utterly parochial and racist, keeping guard that no justice would ever be done to any Indian.
If you thought those days were over, you just have to follow the case of Blackberry, the global multinational which provides cellphone services across the world. In blatant violation of the conditions under which it was allowed to operate in India, it has been encrypting its services, and Indian enforcement officials have not been allowed to "listen" to selected customers.
During the Mumbai attacks, the terrorists were using Blackberries, not the "satellite phones" that we have been told they were using. Our police have neither been able to eavesdrop nor trace the calls, thanks to Blackberry's non-cooperation. But Blackberry has been allowing US officials eavesdropping facilities in America, and also other governments in much of the world. They apparently have problems only with places like India.
Blackberry had the nerve to refuse the Indian government which wanted both the code and listening facilities, at a meeting last month. The UAE banned Blackberry services after a similar refusal by Blackberry last month there, and one hopes that the Indian government follows the lead of that tiny country.
The only refreshing change has been the attitude of the cheerleaders, watching from the sidelines.Unlike Times of India a century ago, the New York Times today has a refreshingly non-racist attitude to the whole thing, which you can read below:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/10/opinion/10falkenrath.html
The NYT concludes its analysis of the case in a simple way : "But in the end, it is governments, not private industry, that rule the airwaves and the Internet. The Emirates acted understandably and appropriately: governments should not be timid about using their full powers to ensure that their law enforcement and intelligence agencies are able to keep their citizens safe."
Ofcourse, we'll probably hear the US ambassador in the next few days drop a veiled warning that banning Blackberry services in India will hit US investment, or CII/FICCI, issuing a statement, urging the Indian government to reconsider the situation in the interests of the Indian image abroad. Bet every single businessman whose company is a member of CII or FICCI is one of the estimated one million Blackberry users in India....at times watching these jokers in action reminds one of the Marxist's axioms about the "comprador" class in each country, the handmaiden of international capital.....

Barkha Dutt's "Scoop" : allowing Syed Geelani to preach on prime time

Anybody who has followed Syed Geelani's words and deeds over the years would know how much
of an India-hater he is, and what a Pakistan toadie he is.
The other day, I was flipping channels, and there he was, on NDTV, pontificating and posturing, pretending to be a dove.
Barkha Dutt was interviewing him, and it seemed that, in return for "scooping" other channels by allowing to be interviewed, she had decided to give him a free run.
I watched, as he spoke non-stop, mixing hate with lies, sanctimonious, and when Barkha tried to feebly interrupt,
just silencing her by raising his voice.
She looked totally out of breath, and totally out of control of her own interview.
If I were teaching journalism students how not to interview, this would be one interview I would show them: an interviewer who is ill-prepared with her questions, who is docile and awed by her subject's hostility, and finally an interviewee who can keep talking without having to pause for breath.
Geelani's ilk believe women are just animals, and  would choose an Islamic hell over a secular Heaven, given a choice. A clever interviewer would have exposed those attitudes: but alas....how I wished it was Tim Sebastien or Wolf Blitzer doing this interview: confrontational, irreverential, in-your-face, humbug-exposing...
Despite her  friendship with Omar Abdullah, Barkha Dutt is the kind who is referred to as a "heli-copter" journalist, who drops in on any news-making event, running down from Delhi, as though jumping out of a helicopter, and start yapping non-stop. That she was of the helicopter kind got confirmed, as the interview went on, and Barkha kept watching him open-mouthed, totally out of her depth...

Khudhah Key Liye

Last weekend, just by chance, i flipped through DD National, and found the Pakistani hit, "Khudah Ke Liye" being screened. Sceptical at first, I was finally gripped by the central theme: the damage that fanaticism of any kind can do to a person's character. It is a powerful PR film for the secular cause, and trust DD to air it without any kind of publicity. In the media clutter, with hundreds of programmes being on in any given evening, it would have made sense for DD to advertise about when the film was being aired...
Coming, as it did, with India-Pakistan talks going in the background, it provided a powerful commentary on the illness that has overtaken Pakistan.
Thus do our PR coups go unnoticed....

Grinning like a jackass..

http://www.hindustantimes.com/Akshay-Kumar-called-a-jackass-for-being-insensitive/Article1-571578.aspx
It seems to be a great PR idea.
When you are making a movie around a cartoonist, a famous one, and that too, around his "common man', why not visit the actual guy, who is in his deathbed at a hospital ?
And invite the cameras in, for a great photo-op?
That's what Akshay Kumar, actor did: he walked into the ICU ward where cartoonist
RK Laxman is struggling for life,
and sat next to him, grinning, as one critic put it, 'like a jackass".
Well i dont know what a jackass is...but the picture sure made my stomach turn.
Akshay with a wide grin on his face, as though he's just got an Oscar, jubilant and healthy.
Laxman, frail, confusion showing on his face, tubes poking out of his body, staring at Akshay kumar.
Akshay should fire his PR consultant, for sure.
Knowing when a PR idea can become a disaster is sure tough, eh ? Those kids coming  out from IIMC better be careful...film promotion has limits, right?

Is democracy really better than old-style monarchy?

On 6th of July, I got out of office at 6 pm. From my office (Lodi road) to home in Andrewsganj is just 2.5 kilometres. I reached home at 7.30 pm, a full one and a half hours after i set out. The roads were totally gridlocked. To add to this, was the convoy of Shiela Dixit, Chief Minister of Delhi, with sirens blaring, impatient to get out of the mess into which her adminstration had pushed us into. None of us gave way to the convoy (we physically could not have, unless they had winched our cars out by helicopter),,so finally they went back to her office, without attending the function which she was supposed to attend. (The function was the inauguration of a foot-bridge across the ring road, by the way). That gave us some collective satisfaction. Half my tank of diesel was over, because i kept my A.C switched on , as it was very hot and humid.

All this happened within an arms' reach of Humayan's Tomb. The vision the Mughals had for the dead, our government is unable to have for the living!! The irony...

SSSSSSSnakes in the Grass..

All practioners of Public Relations would do well to follow the McChrystal episode in American politics closely. One of America's well known Generals, the top military man in Afghanistan, he made the singular error of loosening his mouth around when a journalist was around. Thinking that whatever he said was "off the record", he and his entourage carelessly badmouthed everybody in the Obama administration, in the presence of a journalist from "Rolling Stone", who hung around with them for a week, sharing their drinks, eating their food, and eavesdropping on everything they said in their private moments. The journalist went back, and wrote a profile on Gen McChrystal, titled "The Runaway General". The article added up bits and pieces of whatever the hapless General said to his underlings, and put out a picture of military disrespect and insolence for civilian authority.  When the article got published, not surprisingly, Obama sacked the General. The magazine claimed that the General knew that everything he said was on the record. They further claimed that they had sent the article to the General before they published it. What they actually did was send an innocuous little questionnaire, called a fact-checker, which did not even reveal the countours of the devastating article....
Funnily enough, the General actually had a "Media Advisor", who had invited the journalist to spend a week with them...
Moral of the story? Never trust the press to actually put out the story you want them to put out. They are there to make their living by spitting on you.  Never, never let your guard down.
As we know, there is no corporate tycoon or a politician out there without his little "Media Advisor", who would  be able to string together two decent sentences, or sniff a PR disaster, even when it stares him in the face....