Traveller1's Open Salon Blog

Shehla Masood- Muslim Woman Activist Murdered!

Thu, 25 Aug 2011 22:08:57 -0400

Shehla Masood (Right-to-Information activist) from Bhopal was murdered by a bullet in broad daylight outside her residence last week. The 2005 Right-to-Information Act allows Indian citizens to file requests for information to most government bodies. Shehla, 38, was an environmental and anti-corruption activist. She was my friend, my co-alumni, my fan page mate. When she first joined the high school fan page, we recognized each other right away, even though we had never met. She was fearless, forthright and formidable. I asked her if I could showcase her projects and she asked me to join her protest against corruption in India. She asked me to help her voice in Bhopal, for the anticorruption movement headed by Anna Hazare which is all over the international news today. I felt guilty. I did not live there anymore. I was not even a citizen. So I wrote to her saying I would do anything, make posters write letters …anything, but could not see myself telling people back home what to do. Seemed disingenuous. She thanked ME for encouraging her on!

She was shot outside her home in her car. I could not believe it. This is not any ordinary city. This is Bhopal. The city where I finished my high school. The city of lakes. Where inclusivity is a byword. Hindus and Muslims study side by side in Christian schools. My best friend has been a catholic nun. The city that has gone through so much pain with the Union Carbide gas tragedy in 1984. Thinking about it gives me the chills and I stop myself from even speaking of that travesty.

All I could think of was the beautiful Bhopal lake, now with my sister's blood and it did not look pretty anymore. Today it hit me close and I realized again, why humans should not and must not accept tyranny and oppression. Why the human spirit must rise against any form of terrorism. The police in Bhopal were trying to make it out to be a suicide which was intolerable. I could not even breathe until the Central Bureau of Investigation took on the case. Now.. there is some hope, even though the corridors of power are forever ridden with the very corruption Shehla stood up against. New evidence finds illegal Diamond mining project in Chhattarpur district, Madhya Pradesh by Rio Tinto and the political Mafiosi as one of her causes. Is it only me that sees danger in the very name?

Some of you may think.... not if I dont say anything or do anything. Not if I mind the lines that society has laid out for me and stay within boundaries. I say nonsense! Lines were forever meant to be crossed by some so that others benefit. I agree that lines cannot be crossed by all and some lines need not and should not be crossed at all.... That is normal. But those who have the chutzpah to cross those lines and boundaries that must be crossed move societies forward. If this were not true we too would be bound by age old prejudices that other unfortunate societies around the world suffer. We stand on the shoulders of the brave and the fearless. If society does not support them.... who then is worthy of our support? Will the whistle blowers of the world be protected? Ever?

The other point to think about is what we teach our next generation, what we leave for our children and grandchildren. If we teach them to be afraid and fearful of those who dare to crush our spirit. I say we teach them fearlessness. I say we teach them love. I say we teach them to stand up for themselves when and if they can. The world is looking for Muslim citizens who are engaged in society. There are many in India and she was one of the best and brightest. They are not spared by the terrorists.

I ask all of you to join and help me and us move on with words that mean something. Not to lose sight of Shehla’s family, or Bhopal, or even India or anywhere in the world that there is injustice. We all hope for the best and justice... We must remain vigilant and engaged in our today even as we preserve our shared history in this world and take it forward.

Sites discussing issue:

http://www.thehindu.com/news/states/other-states/article2361776.ece?homepage=true

http://letzchangedrulz-miracles.blogspot.com/2009_06_01_archive.html

http://letzchangedrulz-miracles.blogspot.com/2011/08/heart-aches-is-unimaginable.html#comments

http://ibnlive.in.com/news/slain-rti-activist-shehla-masoods-last-tweets/176137-3.html

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Anna-Hazares-supporter-and-RTI-activist-shot-dead-in-Bhopal/articleshow/9622139.cms

http://indiatoday.intoday.in/site/gallery/anna-hazare-suppoters-protest-in-bhopal/1/5338.html

http://in.news.yahoo.com/anti-corruption-crusader-killed-bhopal-091901261.html

http://kafila.org/2011/08/16/statement-on-the-martyrdom-of-shehla-masood/

http://daily.bhaskar.com/article/MP-BHO-shehla-murder-case-eyewitness-detained-bhopal-police-tight-lipped-2373901.html

http://in.jagran.yahoo.com/news/national/crime/5_18_6331474.html

http://www.omct.org/human-rights-defenders/urgent-interventions/india/2011/08/d21392/

http://www.rnw.nl/english/article/my-friend-shehla-fighter-last

http://blogs.wsj.com/indiarealtime/2011/08/22/whistleblowers-demand-greater-protection-after-masoods-death/?fb_ref=article_top&fb_source=profile_multiline

http://www.facebook.com/note.php?saved&¬e_id=10150264960421463

http://www.economist.com/blogs/banyan/2011/08/protests-india

http://ibnlive.in.com/news/shehla-murder-1-lakh-reward-to-nab-murderers/180279-3.html

Candles lit for Shehla Masood at the Fan Page of our Alma mater ...She was one of our best and brightest. We hope for JUSTICE. Otherwise no one ...NO ONE is safe in Bhopal anymore!

GOVERNMENT WORKS!

Tue, 9 Aug 2011 22:08:38 -0400

Toothbrush and mouth wash were packed (we are a dentist family after all!) along with the munchies, as we readied ourselves for the nearly 4000 mile (twelve states) long trip from Buffalo, NY to Yellowstone National Park recently. Our first halt-Chicago.

Reaching late at night did not stop us from sailing out to Buddy Guy’s Legends , labeled the best blues club just outside The Hilton, downtown. The music was smooth and loud, the cocktails were mixed and the dancing was mesmerizing. Maybe it was the alcohol, I loved every bit of it. The next day we hopped on and off double decker buses in a bid to see the Windy City. Saw the now historic Grant Park, ate a deep dish pizza at Gino’s East and hot dogs Chicago style, on the pier. Did the touristy picture deal in the John Hancock building and even bought the package.

We hit Chicago....running

We then drove over to the home of a friend, who I had never met or seen before and spend a most magical evening with the family. I run a roaring Facebook fan page for my High School, St Joseph's Convent, Bhopal (yes, of the Union Carbide tragedy) India and have been making these absolutely fantastic inter-generational, multicultural connections all over the world based upon a shared history! We had a blast reliving old days, marveling at the new phenomenon of finding unknown friends lurking in all corners and discussing the challenges of parenthood so far from the country of origin (India), sans the support of the greater family. Next day, garden omelets in belly…water bottles filled, we pushed off! The first leg of the journey had been promising...

Next up was Mount Rushmore in the Black Hills of South Dakota. The famous Ponderosa Pines with black bark stood tall turning the hillside a stunning but characteristic dark black green. As the morning fog lifted the famous four faces sculpted by Borglum looked out somber and pensive as ever. My Nikon went nuts trying coax out a different mood from them but they did not budge.

Black Hills of South Dakotaand Mount Rushmore below

Not satisfied with the controversy surrounding the memorial we drove off to see Crazy Horse Memorial. Charged $27 for entry vs $ 11 for Mount Rushmore, we learnt that even though it was/is intended to be grander than Mount Rushmore and has the support of Lakota chiefs, the foundation has rejected federal funds, the project was started in 1948, and lies incomplete.

We reached Yellowstone National Park in the dead of the night. Driving at 25 miles per hour along roads which had billowing smoke, passing dark figures and roadside posts it seemed like a two hour Hitchcock movie. Finally we arrived at the historic Old Faithful Inn- our destination. Designed by Robert C Reamer in 1903-04, this was a mother of all log cabins! At 2 a.m. the lobby was deserted and allowed us a fantastic view of this legendary structure and saw the roaring Old Faithful geyser go off early next morning outside the Inn.

Outside the Old Faithful Inn

We spent three days sans TV, telephones or any modern electrical devices, feasting on the myriad thermal features, with the Mammoth Hot Springs taking away the prize, the plants, old buildings, frozen lakes, mud pots, hot springs, snow capped mountain ranges, seven grizzlies, hundreds of bison, elk, geese, ravens, few bald eagles, pelicans, one winter hare, coyote and the famous Lodgepole pines. Adding anymore to the already sumptuous descriptions of the park would be superfluous. Let it be said we loved every single moment; the hikes, the ride on the historic yellow bus, the hikes with and without the rangers, the photographic opportunities. I suggest everyone to join at least one or two guided tours and spend the rest of the time roaming as you please. Nothing quite like it!

A hot spring in the Artist Paint Pot area

Our seventh bear...up close and personal....

The idea that way back in 1872 even before the country had been consolidated there were thinkers in the land who passed the law establishing Yellowstone National Park to be preserved for the “benefit and enjoyment of the people” and its wonders maintained in their pristine form, is mind-blowing today. The government brought together with scientists, artists, mapmakers, photographers and one doctor (Ferdinand Hayden) who loved the wilderness for the sake of future fellow citizens!!! Concept!

Nature observed from the historic yellow bus

No journey can be complete without a twist somewhere ….as we drove away to the South end of the park leading to Teton National Park my husband realized that he had left his wallet at a shop in Mammoth Springs at the North end of the park. That is nearly a 2 hour drive and it was 5 pm! No ranger in sight, no phone number. The internet was not working rendering all 3G connected devices useless. One lone car passed us, turned around and a gentleman came out .Turned out to be a ranger. He gave us one number to call in 5 miles when connection was possible. We did. Long story short, several numbers later we knew the wallet had been found and was being returned to the Ranger’s office for safe keeping.

Upon return, a simple brown envelope awaited us from National Park Service U.S. Department of Interior. They had returned the wallet to us, along with a letter hoping that we had had fun and would return. Now I don’t know about anyone else but when I saw the letter, I knew for certain that my tax dollars was being spent well at Yellowstone National Park. The Park was a natural wonder but this was icing on the cake.

To all those who decry the government I say…chill folks! Only when one has been the beneficiary of such courtesy can one fully appreciate the silent ways in which the government does work.

In the cacophony of things going wrong and people screaming there is something to be said about the ways that the government does work and the hushed silence around it. An aware citizenry is a strong citizenry but let us not throw away everything in this frenzied popular cry against the government.

I say…. Let us cut the waste but let us also recognize the truly precious in the land and then strive our hardest to keep it for our future fellow citizens. Let us discover who we are, what we stand up for, and what makes us tick! Hats off!

Mammoth Hot Spring Terraces...

Some of the 10,ooo geothermal features in YNP

A random hot spring, Yellowstone Lake still partly frozen, snow-capped mountains in the distance.

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Epilogue:

This article is published in "The Indian American" August 2011 -a featured article. The photographs in this blog are taken by me and are new. The editing has been tightened and a few details added.

Rama Dey-Rao

HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY!!!

Sun, 8 May 2011 11:05:21 -0400

The Candian Geese in my backyard have procreated this year again right in time for TODAY!

Storm in the "Three Cups of Tea"- Greg Mortenson

Mon, 18 Apr 2011 17:04:57 -0400

I had posted my review on the talk by Greg Mortenson given in Buffalo on November 10, 2010. Not many people commented on my article here but it caused quite a bit of a stir in India. My brand of cynicism was hailed as unwanted by Greg's ardent fans. I was taken to task by several readers of my blog in “The Indian American”.

Well, a fresh round of questions that have turned up upon an investigation by CBS, which was aired on Sixty Minutes, April 17, 2011... makes me post this with a sense of profound inquiry. I do not feel guilty about having had misgivings before and questioned some of his ideas. That is not the point. I truly wish to know WHY?

So here goes the post as I had written it ….

Greg Mortenson came to town yesterday. An honorary doctorate from 16 universities, twice nominated for the Nobel, I met this shy yet confident personality, who did not seem to be used to the bright light of fame. He spoke from the heart about the work he has been doing in Afghanistan.

I agree that our soldiers, have succeeded in their limited mission and cannot also be responsible for the humanitarian work that must follow wars. Greg’s work is impressive in building schools from stones in Afghanistan starting in Korphe. He has won the hearts and trust of a people who are by nature suspicious of foreigners, the hard way.... school by school, rock by rock.

He started off with a video that showed us the bleak vista which he is helping to rebuild. Even as the camera pans the buildings in Kabul one gets the sense of unadorned simplicity. Here and there are some architectural pieces but they are bombed out of recognition. He talked of the little boy Gul who was so interested in the proposed school project but died by a land mine. Gul’s father’s face was a study in human resilience and suffering. Greg’s personal feelings towards the boy, and Haji Ali were stirring as he went through some of the details in “Three Cups of Tea” to drive home his conviction about the role of education and awareness in bringing lasting peace.

Commentary:

The book is required reading for those in the Army who go to that part of the world to fight, instituted by none other than General David Petraeus! What could be reason to embellish a story that by itself is inspirational? Just to make a book a bestseller? Is that a reasonable explanation by someone who might have been a Nobel Prize winner? Could it be that he simply did not know? Is it a legitimate reason?

I continue from what I posted before…….

Listening to him talk I could not help having a few questions which went unasked. Would Mr. Mortenson have got as much attention, if instead of Afghanistan he had built these schools in Myanmar, Tibet, Nepal, any of the other depressed Eastern Himalayan sector, or even Kashmir? Another author in the past UB reader’s list was Khaled Hosseini who with his thousand splendid suns illuminated the kite runners from Afghanistan.

Afghanistan is then the focus I must deduce. Don’t get me wrong, I think the job is splendid, but why is it that such work is so much more glorified that the quiet teacher in a rural town in the US or anywhere else, who do their job the best they can? Why is it that in ethereal circles of well settled professionals, they commiserate about the sibling teacher sister with hushed voices? Why is it that a child who aspires to be a teacher is met with “Why not a doctor?” It must be more the scope of the project at hand rather than teaching itself. Greg’s scope is admirably huge.

He threw up some slides with known wisdom about education. I could not but think about the one which says “If you educate a boy you educate an individual; if you educate a girl you educate a community” an African proverb. I would take extreme objection to it if I was a male teacher, a responsible father or citizen of the world. This is not to put down the basic principle that yes all girls should be educated and that all children have the basic human right to knowledge. But to separate out females from males by proverbs, which are more socially relevant rather than universal, is surely unnecessary in the US. What about the simple logic that both sexes need to be educated for a healthy society to flourish.

He talked about the importance of “elders” and listening to them and lamented the lack of it in the US or Western world. I come from the East and yes there is a huge advantage in learning from wise elders and talking to them and letting them lead the way. But even Greg would agree that this is an individual honor deserved by the older generation and given by the younger generation voluntarily. Not all elders have wisdom, and I would especially question the elders of Afghanistan who might know wonderful glorious stories of their past but have done very little to take charge of their own society and bring it to modern times. Is it okay for the children there to be so bereft of resources? Is it okay for the warlords to have run the town and kept their own girls down? Aren’t the elders the ones who have actually actively kept the country marking time and confounded them with religiosity, social and cultural taboos? As wonderful as it is for the villages in India to have been hearing the tales from “Ramayana” being told and retold (it is still fascinating, I wholeheartedly agree), or about the British Raj and the Freedom Movement, is it not also incumbent upon society to be proud of their present? Is it not incumbent upon the elders to find ways and means of disseminating knowledge through the means of the newer technologies and thus make the next generation vested in their future? To stick rigidly to history and wishing things to be the way they were without a balancing viewpoint about the present and future is sure the definition of fundamental thought. In fact one of education’s strength is in encouraging creativity and curiosity about the unknown. To make the further correlation that in the Western world there is no inter-generational give and take is not deserved. Modern technology has opened up the world to the silent majority who used to remain quiet in the past and has allowed them to actively participate in discussions.

His idea of empowering local people instead of doing charity rang a bell with me. I have always considered those who label their life work as charity as disingenuous. The word itself has inequality embedded in it automatically presuming that one is somehow better than another and is thus more qualified to be doing “for” rather than “with” someone. Logically helping one’s co-traveler results in a journey being successful, all scientific endeavor is collaborative, we are a society not individual islands. Education is the only way to enlightenment and awareness and has been the shining torch in the world and for me all my life.

As we snaked our way through the lines for his autograph I could not help notice the number of police that had been recruited to keep peace around the man.

Commentary: Why did a man of peace need so much security?

My questioning some of his ideas casued a flurry of negative reactions. A recent investigation by CBS aired this past Sunday on Sixty Minutes found quite a few of the facts in the book simply not corroborated by their research. The dates are incorrect. The schools sometimes do not exist? The kidnapping did not happen. So my question again to Mr Greg Mortenson is WHY? What could possibly be the reason to want to make more money than what the book would have made if it had been true? It is absolutely no(n) sense to me.

The video from AlJazeera English is linked and it makes me upset to think that one of the major programs we might have taken pride in estbalishing contact with minds and hearts where we are fighting is now under fire. Could it not be simple and honest just this once and not be about money Mr Mortenson. Was the idea not big enough for you? Was the work not worthy enough? Did you really NEED this storm in your tea cup which in this case, might take all the good work down with it?

My Contribution to High School Science Education

Tue, 15 Mar 2011 11:03:29 -0400

My reality nearly always crystallizes from the crumbling ruins of normalcy. After decades in research, I spend the past five years working tirelessly to put together Proteomics Resources from scratch at the local Cancer Institute. It was thus a rude shock to be marginalized in 2009 due to the shrinking economy and evaporating positions. I took it in stride. Maybe it was time to use what I had learnt in masspectrometry, proteomics, bioinformatics, in the past five years and get back to basic research.

Deciding to re-make myself, I shook off the ill feelings and set forth searching out newer projects while conducting part-time research in pancreatic cancer at the Institute. I started writing here on Open Salon, The Indian American and News India Times and while doing so, tried to seek out on-line bioinformatics courses to teach. Information technology towers in its scope and vitality. (See Google award this year of 2 million dollars to Khan Academy) I hit upon a research-based science program from Joint Genome Institute (JGI) in the Department of Energy (DOE) and recognized its potential as a dynamic research-based education program.

After much searching, I finally connected with the University of Buffalo. They were interested and when they offered me a part-time clinical assistant professor position, I grabbed it. We applied and were one of twenty selected at JGI headquarters in Walnut Creek, Calif., where we received training in the computer-based Integrated Microbial Genome Annotation Collaboration Tool.

Returned back to Buffalo after the whirlwind training to implement the program as a workshop for local high school teachers who would then take it to their schools. We obtained funding (WIB, DOL) and steamed ahead. Let me just say that it was one of the most satisfying projects I have ever undertaken. I interacted one-on-one at the schools troubleshooting and teaching the kids how to use cutting edge bioinformatics tools for research in genomic annotations.

Our efforts are being prominently showcased by the School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences from March 7, 2011 on the University of Buffalo website in Buffalo Physician http://medicine.buffalo.edu/news_and_events.host.html/content/shared/smbs/news/2011/02/hs_scientists.detail.html

The program ended on 18th December with a Capstone Symposium where 68 area high school science students and seven teachers filed into Farber Hall in the UB School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences. The week before was spent in a flurry of critiquing posters, re-writing and editing. The kids were all humming with energy as they came in to UB that morning posters tucked under their arms protecting them from the snow and rain. Precious cargo indeed!

One of the emails I was forwarded from Director of Planning Buffalo and Erie County WIB spoke of mothers who claimed this to be a life changing program for the kids that I worked with.

Epilogue: Till date I do not have a full time affiliation with any institution. However, I refuse to sit still and wait. If we can get it introduced to enough teachers, maybe it will take hold and the students of Western New York will benefit and be as enthused about science! I realize that someday my clock will simply run out of time .......but in the meantime I intend to keep trying and will not allow them to “take that away from me!” No one said that the pursuit of life, liberty and happiness would be easy as well.

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