The debt debate drama

Image source : ecorealty

Uncle sam seems to be facing a financial crisis. He's running out of money, and needs to borrow, problem is, he is already pretty deep in debt, and  there is a constitutional limit on how much he can borrow,  and has reached that limit. The Obama government, has approached the US congress to vote in favor of rising the debt ceiling, so it can borrow more, but the opposition party, isn't very much in favor of this, with little regard for the consequences. So we have on our hands a raging debate, heck an all out war going on in the country currently between the two parties of the country, i.e the democrats and the republicans. It's explained in a nutshell here

Will the real ABCD please stand up ?

(Image source : wikipedia )

The only reference I had to ABCD growing up was, while learning the alphabet . It was only after living in the USA for a while did I hear those letters in a different context. To those of you reading this, who may still be unaware of what these letters stand for......ABCD is an acronym for American Born Confused Desi. 
It is a phrase which is meant to describe the unique breed of people who are second generation Indian immigrants to the USA, i.e kids who are born in America to parents who are immigrants from India . It is supposedly used to describe the confused state of mind regarding their cultural identity of these category of people, in other words a confusion between their Indian-ness and their American-ness that exists in their minds .

East or West....Mom knows best !

Image source : joansheartart

A few months ago, I came across this interesting article . It is by Amy Chua, author of the book ' Battle hym of the Tiger Mother'. The article and the book caused quite a stir in the American parents' world . Blogosphere and parenting forums  everywhere lit up with reactions ranging from disappointment to disgust, to even calling her an abusive mother. The western world found it difficult to accept a parenting style so polar opposite to common parenting styles in their part of the world. While almost everyone seemed to universally reject her ideas and tried to distance themselves from her (even other asian mothers who said she was giving them a bad name), yet somehow her book remained on the Newyork Times best seller list, so certainly people out there wanted to know what she was talking about .  Here's  an interview of Amy Chua, after the backlash about her article and the book. The wall street journal even posted a rebuttal  article to Chua's article. I haven't read Chua's book (yet), but upon reading the article, I couldn't help but wonder, how I could substitute every place it said 'Chinese' in the article for 'Indian' and it would still be rather true.

The Resilient spirit of Mumbai ??

  Image source : New statesman

My dear Mumbai is hurt again. India's commercial capital was rocked on Wednesday by a series of 3 blasts at 3 major hotspots of the city. Read the full report here .
Growing up in a city which was such a favorite terror target wasn't exactly easy, every now and then the incidents would remind us of the dangers lurking around us. I still remember the very first time my city was injured 12th March 1993, when a series of 13 blasts rocked the city to it's core, as a school going girl then, I couldn't fully grasp the gravity of the situation or why it had happened, but the tension was palpable.
Then in the years that followed, Mumbai has seen around 13 attacks, some worse than others, but each one a hole in city's spirit, the worst one being in 2008, when the city was literally hijacked for days, at the whims of some lunatics, from across the border .
Yet it was always somehow, seen that Mumbaikar's had a tough exterior, they could bounce back from the worst travesty and resume life as they knew it. This was touted as the 'resilient' spirit of the city.

Mirror Mirror on the wall....Who's the fairest...???

.....Of them all.
Strangely enough this dialogue where fairness is used as a word interchangeable for beauty is not from any bollywood movie of India. The fairness fixation of Indians is a well-known phenomenon, and much has been said and discussed on the topic. My reason for making a post on it, is mainly triggered by a few posts I recently read on blogs by western women, who couldn't fathom this obsession of Indians.
The first post was this, followed by another post here . My reply on the first post essentially triggered the second blogger to blog about the topic. I had poured my heart out over the topic on the two blogs, so I felt that maybe I too should blog about the topic in my blog to present my point of view about this confusing and puzzling obsession.

O Canada !!

Happy Canada Day to all fellow Canadians !!  Also, happy 4rth of july for my fellow Americans .
It was my first time celebrating it (since I'm new here ), and I really enjoyed it .
I know most of my posts talk about US, and that's because I've lived there for the past 8 years, and am fairly new to Canada, and still just getting to know the country, so this post is a break from my posts about life in US.
Today I'll share with you some images from the Canada day celebration from my neck of the woods.