India, Pakistan, Iraq, USA, gooooo Wikileaks! *

Finally got to a mirror site to read some Wikileaks. For some reason the links would not work on the sites or Firefox would scare me. Tonight the stars aligned and this site let me in..

This was nice reading. Was hoping to have a laugh at what came out of Delhi but found this one from Islamabad and it was interesting..

These two paragraphs really made it interesting..

Pakistan/India
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¶8. (C) Petraeus said the most important threat to Pakistan was on the western border and internally. Terrorists were an existential threat to Pakistan. Kayani agreed. However, Kayani observed that he had postponed a missile test. The Indians, he said, in contrast, had conducted one just a few hours before. Kayani said he had no intention to resume missile testing as long as the current tensions persisted. He promised to be transparent with allies about his plans and had briefed us about his move of 6000 troops to the Indian border. Kayani said he was determined to exercise restraint in his actions with India. He recounted that he had taken no
ISLAMABAD 00000155 003 OF 003
action the evening that Indian External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee had supposedly called President Zardari and threatened to declare war. Kayani asked to be alerted if the U.S. had any warning of another attack - he understood that the Indians had been warned about the Mumbai attack. He mentioned that discussion of the consequences of a follow-on attack made both India and Pakistan hostage to extremists and increased the likelihood of an attack. “If there is any clue about another attack,” he said, “please share it with us.”

and

Swat Valley
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¶5. (C) Kayani was clear that the GOP had lost control of the Swat valley. He said the police had no ability to come in after the army to “hold” territory. He recounted that half of the 600 police officers, supposedly from the NWFP’s elite police units, destined for Swat had deserted, largely because there was no command structure. Petraeus replied that the U.S. had confronted this same issue in Iraq, describing it as a “clear and leave” strategy, requiring the retaking of the same ground multiple times. Petraeus observed that the police are the most vulnerable, since they are exposed in communities. Petraeus noted that increased measures to control population movements would probably have to be put in place throughout the country, which would require considerable manpower.

Pakistan has similar issues like Iraq when it comes to controlling extremists.

The military leadership is patient enough to not go for war. That is great. Maybe, maybe there will be a lasting peace when India and Pakistan jointly fight extremists.

The USA for its part is playing both sides. Well, that is to be expected!

India could have hastily gone to war and would be in the same boat as the USA. Thankfully there was no war. Looks like India was warned by the US about the attacks and the Pakistanis could not do anything about it either.

Just go through this stuff.. you might even find out who in India was warned about the attacks and what they did when they were warned!

This is one treasure trove of information which shows you that inspite of all that press and google and facebook being ubiquitous and in our face.. the hows and whys are always wrong!

Educated folks react to information thrown at them by the "in your face" media. We assume so many things, sway to popular opinion or in cases where we think we are better than the person who gets their news from facebook friends because we read and read a lot.. well, we read garbage!

If the press did what Wikileaks exposed on a daily basis, a lot of war, bloodshed would have been averted! A lot of politicians would have been exposed and their true colors come to light. People, countries might be more civil towards each other...

Well, maybe..

Go read it!

*.. this one is equally interesting..

The India trip roundup, last stop... Mumbai !!

We spent the last 7 days of our trip in Mumbai. That meant all last minute shopping for clothes, food, books, videos, you name it.. and the usual evening outings to show the kids some outdoor fun.

The only thing about showing outdoor Mumbai fun to kids in August is you never know when it will rain. When it rains it almost always pours!

Here is a sample of the monsoon. We did not have any umbrellas on day 1 because we were still getting used to the concept. This video was taken outside Basu tailor.

All our Mumbai trips start with a visit to Basu tailor on day 1. Why? He stitches custom fit jeans for 400-500 rupees a Jeans (be it for the adults or kids) including any embroidery. Perfect fit jeans measured and stitched within 5 days!

We still have the 2003 batch, the 2007 batch and now the 2010 batch of Jeans. They are still in good condition, were it not for the expanding waistline. There is an entire street in Kings Circle, Mumbai where there are shops like Basu where you walk in, get your measurement taken, then proceed to pick the fabric from the 150 or so samples and walk out with a card. 4-5 days later, voila... you have jeans that fit you perfectly!

The next few days were spent in Mumbai malls as we switched to indoor fun. Have already mentioned the quality of the malls. They are fantastic!

The K-stars mall in local Chembur has a movie theater complex, a food court, a grocery store, a dozen apparel stores, sporting goods, etc. etc. The movie theater was state of the art!

Once we got through this mall three four times in a couple of days, the FIL decided to take us through the new Worli sea link to go to Washi.

The sea link is great. The drive alone with the water on either side is very nice. Reminded me of the umpteen trips we took on the golden gate bridge.

A long ride with a skyline view on one side.

This is the first mall that you see in Washi. Great shops, great ambiance.

Then we went to another bigger mall further down the same road as you exit the sea link. This one was HUGE! It had a food court that had a sampler of every favorite Indian joint as well as the International sampling. The Pizza hut in this mall was really classy. Have not seen any pizza hut like this in the US. Think Olive Garden interior, Pizza hut menu!

There are speciality stores that sell "only Parathas" and those parathas were downright yummy..

This mall has a t-shirt vending machine in the food court. In case you need to hide those marinara stains ?!

We also made it to the Gateway of India area one afternoon.

and went on yet another horsie ride. The kids were obsessed with horsies on this trip!

Just as we were about to get our hands on this "butta" it started drizzling. We made a mad dash to our parked car and by the time we got to our car, everyone was thoroughly drenched!

A couple of shots taken from the moving horse cart..

We also did the usual trips to Mahalakshmi temple (and ate those delicious pakoras after visiting the temple) and Siddhi Vinayak and drove through the Marine drive area a few times.

Mumbai has an ever changing skyline, a constant reduction in available open spaces, and screams "development" from every street corner.

The Taj hotel was ready to be reopened and that was heart warming..

At the end of the trip I told FIL that either Mumbai is going to be a shining example to the world or go into military rule pretty soon! Had good reasons to make that statement because there are big big holes in law enforcement and the society is truly pocketed and segregated.

It is true that when you go to SFO you see Chinatown, Little Japan, Little Saigon etc. etc. and there is a desi pocket. But there are no issues between these pockets or within the pockets (or they do not come out in the news!). Mumbai is different. It is like a reaction waiting to happen. You sense it in the air.. from small things like the Butta vendor requesting we delete his photograph because "things are very difficult for them in the Gateway area" where "them" implied "muslims" to the auto rickshaw drivers choosing select routes to be on the safe side.

This is tricky business for a city that is "going viral" like a hit youtube video!

Now we get to look forward to our next India trip....

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New Delhi and Delhi- 6

We spent one day in Delhi and saw a lot of places, from an evening drive through Old Delhi trying to catch glimpses of the Red Fort in peak traffic,

Moving through Delhi-6 in pouring rain,

sharing the roads with nice horsies which pulled loads

then visiting the Samadhi Complex and a Namaskaram to Gandhi Thatha at Raj Ghat,

It was raining, and within minutes the sun comes up and it is hot .. very hot.

This doggy guarded our van and cooled off at the same time

We had a short ice cream break..

or a chai and lassi break..

driving through the endless series of government buildings and landmarks that grace all currency notes,

a view point only trip of Akshardham temple,

the Bahai Lotus temple,

ISKON temple,

Birla Mandir,

some fast paced shopping at a place called Lajpat Nagar ending with another drive late in the night through the well lit government buildings...

One thing that was really interesting was the "New Delhi welcomes all Kavadi Pilgrims" banners flying everywhere.. There was a heavy congregation of them around this Carol Bagh area with the Giant Hanuman statue..

Did do my best to discourage the group from going to old Delhi, but.. they all wanted to see Delhi-6.

Thought the whole Kavadi thing was a south Indian Murugan temple concept. Did not know that it was prevalent in the north w.r.t. Haridhwar temple. There were guys walking all around Delhi with orange underwear carrying decorated Kavadis. We also saw people blaring religious songs in big trucks with a bunk bed on top of each truck, a motorcycle in each truck and 7-8 guys. The truck also looked like kitchen/living quarters for the 7-8 dudes. One guy runs 2 kilometers with the Kavadi, then he gets on the truck and another guy takes his place.

Apparently it is a Kavadi relay where they keep it going without the thing ever touching the ground all the way from Delhi to Haridhwar. . . It was interesting to watch to say the least.

We picked "the worlds slowest and most careful driver". He had no sense of urgency whatsoever. He stopped for every other car to cross us, slowed down at every yellow light and kept telling us the same diaglogue:

"sir, laal baththi ho gaya naa Sir. Ise liye traffic bad gaya!".. Many a time I was just tempted to clobber him over the head and take over the steering wheel. Still we made it to the Taj Mahal and back in one day.

We were told it is a 5 hour journey from Delhi and it took him a good 8 hours to go and a nice 7 hours to come back.

Spending 15 hours between 6AM and 11PM in a van with two little kids is an experience in itself. With the itch to clobber Mr. Laal Baththi every 30 minutes, it was definitely an interesting experience!

He was a nice guy and a family man.. so he kept giving me a lecture on safe driving. My point was "the risk between going 15 mph to 25 mph is not different"

Next time we will need to have the driver do a little 8 outside the hotel lobby before we get inside the vehicle.

Until then...

ps. on a funny note..

We went to Raj Ghat and Jr.'s sandals (Chappals) tore. So she had to stay put in the parking lot with grandma. Told her we were going to see the place where Gandhi's ashes were stored.

Jr. asked me "Ghandhi is like Martin Luther King for India right? He also had a dream?"

Me : Martin Luther King is like Gandhi for the USA. He had the dream first.. MLK was inspired by Gandhi. Did you know that?

Jr.: ?! (finally Jr. realized what she had learnt in her history class).

Saw this inscription on the way ..

Did not have the mind to post the picture I took of the paan that was spit on the side of this inscription just as you enter the grounds of Gandhiji's resting place.

My heart could not bear it. Who spits paan at Mahatmaji's memorial?

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Dear Mr. Jobs,

If only you bring Vijay, Sun, Jaya TV etc. to the Apple TV box at a dollar a day or less..

you will have a million desi folks buying this gizmo..

So what if the Fox'es and NBC's do not want to go into negotiations with you for rights to play their serials episodes at 99 cents a pop?

When we asked an older relative how much TV serials they watched (on our recent India trip) the answer was..

"not much. Just 4 hours in the afternoon and 6 hours in the evening" and it was a straight faced answer.

That means, there are folks who watch a lot more desi serials.

Please go talk to Ekta Kapoor or Radhika Sarathkumar..

I see a bright future for Apple TV if you pick up that iPhone and make that call..

yours truly,

iPhone lover.

ps. I have only seen this Apple TV at a friends house. They told me that Tamizh serials are not on the list. So please forgive me if you are already ahead of the game.

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Manikaran - heaven on earth

On our last day at Manali, we decided to go all the way to Manikaran and then drive back from Manikaran to Chandigarh airport to catch a 7 PM last flight out to Mumbai.

Left Manali at 6AM and drove in rain through mountain sides where there were many rocks that had fallen on the roads (we did not read the news.. and had no idea that the entire area was taking heavy rains. Leh which was 100 or kilometers away had a cloudburst and many people died that week) and finally reached Manikaran at 8 AM.

Our expert driver told us "if you want to see Chandigarh airport by 6:30 this evening in this weather, you have to be back here by 9:15. That is assuming you get 30 minutes for one break!"

We took him very seriously and went past the bridge, the Gurudwara, the cave, the shiva temple, the durga temple, the ram temple including me taking a dip in the hot springs at the Ram temple!

What an entrance to a temple!

Here is a video where the little one is bugging me about a dog. She has a biscuit in her hand and it is eye level with the dog! Of course she couldn't shake him off!

Another 4000 year plus old temple with the same construct as the Vashisht temple in Manali..

There is a place here where a board says "Shiva and Parvathi are said to have meditated here for 13,000 years".

The bell at the temple entrance echoes through when you ring it.

For a minute you can totally believe why anyone would chose that as a location to stay put for 13k years. The steep green and brown cliffs on one side, the raging river on the other side, the hot springs on yet another side make you feel the power of nature and the ephemeral nature of man.

We did manage to race back to Chandigarh and it was one glorious drive past the airport, the Beas (Byas) Parvathi rivers confluence (sangam)

all the way around the Bilaspur lake, Sundar Nagar and along the Sutlej river into Punjab. We even drove past a new IIT near Chandigarh!

Here is a beautiful but noisy video..

We made it just 45 minutes before our flight, but it was enough for us to get into the plane and be on our way to Mumbai.

One amazing thing at Manikaran is that both the Gurudwara and the Temple have a Langar where they provide free food for anyone who walks in. They do this by throwing in sacks of rice and lentils and potatoes into the hot spring (which is pretty much boiling over) and out comes cooked rice, dal and aalo! Mother nature's kitchen. Should ask the food network to cover this. Truly amazing.

They also take some water and put a tea bag in it and drink instant Chai! Apparently there is a place which is a 2 day hike from Manikaran called Kheer Ganga where the water is hot and foamy that it looks like Milk. There you make Chai Latte!

Our driver told me, "only way is to hike, but the place is beautiful. You should take more time and go with a trained guide. The two day hike is worth it" and I was thinking "let me see. cannot get that kind of time off now with the little kids. by the time they are old enough to join me on a hike like that, I will be too old to hike!"

In any case, if there is a next time, we will try to see KheerGanga.

Happy enough that we got to see Manikaran. It is truly heaven on earth and the ride along the river is truly worth it, rain or rocks!

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