LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

 

 

Listed in reverse chronological order

Israel and Palestinians don't see eye to eye

Editor -- To willfully, conscionably and methodically incarcerate and dehydrate 1.8 million Palestinians over the kidnapping of a single Israeli soldier equates to reaping a thousand eyes for an eye.

When will the cycle of sowing violence and terrorism cease? Has the legacy of diplomacy been beheaded by the enraged adrenal of politics and lethal firepower?

Is the disproportionate use of force and destruction a proven catalyst in the realization of lasting peace and coexistence? Has the international community suddenly lost its axis and integrity as Israel calibrates its chokehold on the entire civilian population of Gaza? Is God on an extended leave of absence or has God been displaced by weapons of mass destruction?

Dom Martin

San Francisco Chronicle

June 30, 2006

 

  

 

 

 

 

MOAB Will Kill Civilian Population

 

 

The testing debut of the Massive Ordinance Air Blast (MOAB) has soundly established America's devastating omnipotence in the arena of conventional firepower. If the deployment of such omnipotence were to swiftly result in Saddam Hussein scrambling for exile or extinction, then, all glory to America's military objective.

 

Unfortunately, it will be the civilian population -- 50% of whom, according to US Senator Robert Byrd, are children -- who will be put to the harrowing test of this horrendous weapon, which has been deliberately designed to send a cataclysmic wave of fire and blast over an enormously enraging radius, and in the process, flatten trees, knock over structures, collapse cave entrances, et al.. In brief, aside from inflicting catastrophic death and destruction within the impact zone, it is also intended to demoralize or subjugate all beings far beyond that zone.

 

Only the survivors of this impending blitzkrieg will narrate if instant death would have been more preferable to the psychological malignancy of the MOAB. And in their narration, America's conscience will either stand trial or vindication.

 

Dom Martin

Coastal Post

March 2003

 

 

 

Playing God With Bombs And Missiles

       In the beginning of time, God was a manifestation without a face. Over the millenniums, artists projected God through conflicting faces, color and gender. At the dawn of the year 2003, the Gods of major religions still remain without any admissible IDs.

       In the realm of politics, however -- and perhaps even overlapping into the religious -- we have one god whose face, gender and color is indisputable: President George W. Bush. The fate of Iraq, North Korea, Iran, Syria and other belligerent states and groups, are at the mercy of his singular omnipotence.

       It would seem that Judgment Day is finally upon us when we stand face to face with god whose wrath is tangible, and whose vengeance is not to be dared or taken lightly!

Dom Martin

Coastal Post

February 2003

 

Sowing Hatred


Sir:

            There's a moral distinction to be made between righteousness coming from the barrel of a gun and that coming from the core of human conscientiousness.  One propagates unimaginable bloodshed and civilian suffering; the other advocates hope through the perseverance of goodwill.

 

If the impending blitzkrieg results with Saddam Hussein's head on the platter of UN Resolution 1441, it might be America which will have irreversibly sown and tilled the soil of hatred in the Middle East.

Dom Martin

San Francisco Chronicle

December 25,  2002          

 

Listening for God amid din of war

Sir:

 

            While each religion has enriched this world with its spiritual culture, it has also indemnified us with uncondonable violence.  In the wake of the escalating crisis in the Middle East, where is everyone's God?  Is God only a myth, made manifest by the material aspirations of the faithful?  When will God's word finally become more vocal and compelling than the sound of gunfire, bombs and missiles?

 

Dom Martin

San Francisco Chronicle

April 7, 2002         

 

Peace Proposal

Sir:

Whether Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah's peace proposal will succeed is secondary to the initiative to test it out. In setting preconditions that are politically and logically untenable, the Sharon government has not and will not successfully avert any violence in the days to come. Violence, with or without Arafat, will continue to proliferate as long as the cause that animates it, persist.

 

The path to a lasting peace is not through overwhelming might but through the realization that all beings are created equal, and that no people are so undignified as to be only worthy of being held against their will. When people are forced down to their knees, they only become fit to sign on the dotted line. Such a manner of effecting negotiations seldom leads to a lasting peace.

 

In times such as these when everyone's adrenalin is pumped up by war-rhetoric, we should engage in the necessity to take a major step back and draw insight from the timeless wisdom of General Omar Bradley:

"We have grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected the Sermon on the Mount. The world has achieved brilliance without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war than we do about peace, more about killing than we know about living."

 

Dom Martin

The Star (Jordan)

March 31, 2002

 

 

Today's New World Order calls for the plucking of too many eyes . . .

 

Sir:

            J. M. Seyfert and Jess Ghannam's letters (March 8) are timely eye-openers to today's gun-toting politics that has gone center stage.  Under the auspices of the New World Order, it is no longer an ‘eye for an eye', but more easily: A thousand eyes for an eye!   The plucking of so many eyes not only makes this world less habitable, but morally blind as well.

 

Dom Martin

San Francisco Chronicle

March 15, 2002

 

 

Terror and Power

Sir:

            Might has the same atrocious tyranny as terror.  After Afghanistan, terror will have a brand new territory, a whole new countenance, and undoubtedly the same objective foe.

 

            There is no foreseeable solution to terror as there isn't to the abolition of the damning might of power.  Yet, only when all beings and nations become one and equal, the power of might shall cease to exist and by its auspicious absence, terror as well.

           

Dom Martin

San Francisco Chronicle

November 14, 2001

 

Denial and Slavery

Sir:

            In walking out of the World Conference Against Racism ("Walkouts rock U.N. conference on racism", Sept. 4), the United States has left the door to ethnic prejudice further ajar.  Whether the dark issue of slavery is condemned or purged from the final declaration is secondary to the bludgeoning fact that no other race has been so savagely uprooted as the inhabitants of Africa, and that, the agony of that uprootal and chains continue to subconsciously reverberate to this present day.

 

            Thus, to not effectively accommodate the reality and repercussions of this uprootal and its corresponding agony is to demonstrate the scope of our cathartic denial.  Such denial makes an alarming travesty of our purported claim to be more civilized in this century than any before.

 

Dom Martin

San Francisco Chronicle

September 5, 2001

 

Durban Conference

Sir:

            In threatening to boycott the Durban Conference Against Racism, the United States will again assert itself as a gun-totting maverick on a bucking horse, and in the process, further diminish its scoring prowess in the field of global good and goodwill.  If nothing else, the Durban Conference ought to sanction compassion as the new order of racism between people and nations.  Through the patronage of such tolerance, the ideals of peace, equality and justice would become prevalent without the need and use of bombs, missiles and other deadly initiatives.

 

Dom Martin

San Francisco Chronicle

August 5, 2001

 

Legal Killing

Sir:

            The path to death by lethal injection for condemned Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, is a celebration of neither justice nor righteousness.  Killing in the name of law, politics or religion, is no less violent and unethical than killing in the name of crime.

 

            From time immemorial, inflicting death by lawful decree has not been a deterrent to heinous crimes.  Nor has mass killings in battlefields secured lasting peace, or deterred the resurgence of new wars.  Death is not a solution to capital crimes or conflicts.  Life is a solution to life itself.  Taking another's life is a heinous crime, and no amount of remorse or death-chanting can undo the crime.  Where the abominable act of one individual leads to the crime of murder, must we, as members of a sane society, participate in weaving the spiteful web of death?

 

             It is almost as if our retributive role in accomplishing death is far more premeditated and conclusive than was the condemned person's gruesome and thoughtless actions towards the victim.

 

Dom Martin

San Francisco Chronicle

June 9, 2001

 

Spying and Mistrust

Sir:

The White House oratory of 'No Apology' ("Bush writes to widow, but not an apology" -  April 9), reorients the world's attention to time's political pendulum, which has a tendency to swing rather haphazardly between values and belligerence, material triumph and vanity, constitutional privacy and invasive surveillance.

 

            Human surveillance is not infallible.  Instead, it is the arbiter of mistrust between people and nations.

 

            If goodwill is to endure between people and nations, it is indeed necessary to first undo the very weapons of mass-surveillance.  Let trust be a non-territorial reservoir between people and nations, and let surveillance be God's almighty means and domain!

 

Dom Martin

San Francisco Chronicle

April 10, 2001

 

Purge of Icons

 

Sir:

Regarding the Open Forum article by Raymond Whitaker ("Real Victims Are the Afghan People," March 9): If some can see God with their eyes shut while others see through sculptured forms, let it be so. The path to God should not be restrained by human dictates or cultural prejudice.

 

In purging Afghanistan of Buddhist statues, no divine point is made or enacted. Only a human one -- the malevolent zeal to destroy with unreasoning contempt that which was created with selfless love for the divine benefit of all.

 

Dom Martin

San Francisco Chronicle

March 11, 2001

 

 

Gun-Toting Rhetoric

Sir:

            Ariel Sharon's gun-slinging rhetoric is the kind that enslaves a subjective ideology to a national calamity.  If there is to be lasting peace in the Middle East, there should first be a franchise of genuine hope.  In the franchise of hope, the sun never sets.  Let there be such hope so that peace may finally sprout amidst the sandstorms of time!

 

Dom Martin

USA Today

February 12. 2001

 

Natural Calamities

Sir:

            If natural calamities have a frightening face, it is to remind us of our fragile place in the unfathomable scope of existence.  Neither nature nor existence has been our blueprint.  Yet, in the centuries gone by, we have dared to singlehandedly alter this blueprint.  We have emerged as the architects of change, turning nature into a wasteland from our warring needs and material aspirations.  The results continue to be catastrophically disastrous.  The earthquake in El Salvador (‘Bay Area Salvadorans Await Word . . . ‘, Jan 14 )  comes as yet another reminder that our very existence will continue to remain an unsettled issue if we do not instantly halt the mass, unorganized grazing and bulldozing of our environment.  The environment is the only nationality to our survival.  Protecting the environment should be our collective and unfailing patriotism.

 

Dom Martin

USA Today

January 16, 2001

 

 

The Curse of Occupation

Sir:

            In a world where existence is punctuated by ethnic rivalries, co- existence remains a suspicious overture.  This overture becomes even more suspicious in a climate where occupation is the ongoing forecast.  Under such climate, obviously, the will to persist becomes as resolute, fierce or defiant as the will to resist.

 

            Thus, Rev. Robert Warren Cromey's letter (Dec. 31) and Jeff Saperstein's letter (Jan. 4) are political reminders that occupation is a damning inheritance and cannot be ratified through the edict of bullets.  And if we are to succeed as human beings, we must first mutually dismember or eradicate our desire to defy or overpower the other's basic right to exist in the common household of survival.

 

Dom Martin

San Francisco Chronicle

January 5, 2001

 

 

AIDS and Profits

Sir:

 

The news report from the AIDS conference in Durban, South Africa, that nearly 28 million African children are expected to lose at least one parent to AIDS by 2010, is a universal reminder that each new disease tests our resolve to survive for the benefit of posterity.

 

It also underlines the alarming disparity between the cost of AIDS-related drugs and the profit racked in by the manufacturers.

 

To profit from disease is to exploit human misery, and unless this franchise of greed is reversed with unconditional humanism, the pain and suffering of the overwhelming majority shall continue to be the caldron of unconscionable wealth for corporations and the affluent and, in time, will equate their guilt to the very sins of the Holocaust.

 

Dom Martin

San Francisco Examiner

July 17, 2000

 

 

Renaming Kala Academy

Sir:

            Naming the Kala Academy Complex after C. Alvares is good.  Naming it after Alfred Rose may be better.  The best might be leaving it the way it is, as any change, however well orchestrated, is likely to engender politics.  And politics is the principal cause of our inability to coexist on a cultural, social, therapeutic or intellectual level.

 

            Recognition, undoubtedly, is a universal need, and its occurrence in everyone's life is a matter of fate.  Recognition which comes timely in one's lifetime is more endearing than that which comes posthumously, or when one is so senile as not to understand it, or so crippled as to not be bothered with.

 

            As mortals, it is in our natural inclination to seek immortality through recognition.  Receiving an award during one's lifetime, or naming an award after oneself, does not assure one's immortality.  History is full of the cacophony of statues erected and toppled, and of historical edifices named and renamed, and some then left to the habitation of dogs and vermins.

 

            For this reason, recognition is not the same as immortality.  Immortality is a faceless halo, and no amount of our immediate trying, chanting or recanting can insert a face therein.  When time, fate and reality are in perfect synchronicity, a face shall find its resurrection therein   In the meantime, there is no harm trying to immortalize our renowned tiatrists, past and present, so long as we don't get too carried away and end up renaming one another with obscenities!

 

Dom Martin

The Navhind Times

September 20, 2000

 

 

Playing God with Bombs and Missiles

Sir:

            From the dawn of intolerance, humanity has been besieged with ethnic-hatred and communal wars.  And on just about the same parallel, we have been struck by natural calamities in the form of devastating earthquakes, floods, hurricanes and tornadoes.  One wonders if there is a co-relation between suffering brought on as a consequence of human intolerance, and suffering decreed by divine intolerance.  As one might have noted -- not too long after the Gulf war -- America was and continues to be pounded by a strand of natural disasters.  Recently, in the midst of the unrelenting bombing of Yugoslavia, an F-5 category hurricane has besieged the states of Kansas and Oklahoma in the U.S. with death and catastrophic devastation.  An F-5 category hurricane is considered the deadliest.

 

            Again, might there be a parallel between the devastation from the F-5 category hurricane in Kansas and Oklahoma, and the devastation that the

U.S. F-15 bombers have wrought in Yugoslavia?  Even more troubling are the images of the hurricane-devastation which bear a rather uncanny resemblance to the images of the devastation that NATO bombs have unleashed in Yugoslavia.  If we can inflict mass terror and death from unseen heights in the sky, can we possibly discern that there might similarly just be another entity higher up, more omnipotent, and capable of retaliating an eye for an eye?  Perhaps, it is time NATO takes a moral step back and question its proprietary-posture of playing God with bombs, missiles and economic embargoes.

 

May 16, 1999

Gomantak Times

Gomantak Building, St. Inez, Panaji, Goa, India

 

 


 

Politics is a Contagious Illusion

Sir:

            Politics is a contagious illusion, and anyone contracting it seriously enough can rise to the occasion of becoming a politician with unprecedented rhetoric.  The downside, however, is that at any given time a duly elected politician can -- against his mushrooming illusions -- be rushed to the nearest intensive-care ward, injected with a massive antidote, and left politically dead on the wayside.  But what keeps the contagion effectively going is the gullibility of the masses.  At its best, politics can vocally fulfil the gullibility of the masses.  At its worst, it can resemble a chicken running about with its head cut off.  And with the controversy seething over Mrs. Sonia Gandhi's place in Indian politics and the dangling fate of her Congress party, the contagion is now widespread.  Or equally divided between those who feel that Mrs. Gandhi is an unfit head, and those who feel that without her, the Congress party will be like a chicken running about with its head cut off.  Consequentially, only time will manifest if the beheaded hen would have laid golden eggs, ostrich eggs, or a colony of eggshells!

 

May 25, 1999

Gomantak Times

Gomantak Building, St. Inez, Panaji, Goa, India

 

 

 

 

If Only Bombs Eradicated Evil . . . .

Sir:

            In the vocabulary of civilization, bomb is not a synonym for peace.  And no country or people deserve to be bombed, even if the bombs are endorsed by the will of the international community.  Nor is there such a rationale as good bombs and bad bombs.  All bombs have a singular intent:  Mass destruction!   And while Kosovo may epitomize mass-evil, there are countless others, of equal or greater propensity.

 

            If bombs have the power to eradicate evil and restore peace, then such catastrophic means ought to be uniformly inflicted, without prejudice.  Otherwise, the selective dropping of bombs will only have a political echo, and vainly remind us that bombs bear the same death-patent as evil and genocide itself.

 

March 25, 1999

San Francisco Chronicle

901 Mission Street, San Francisco, California, USA

 

 

 

 

A Thousand Eyes for an Eye

Sir:

            In the realm of existence is an implied covenant that all life is sacred, and that no one being is more worthy of life than the other.  If the death penalty is a celebration of justice, then the rest of us who are supposedly more righteous, ought to have been rewarded with a life-term of eternity.  We are not.  Our lives, righteous or not, is overshadowed by time's ticking clock.  And by wilfully sending a condemned person to death, we are only leaving our soiled fingerprints on time's clock.

 

            Killing in the name of religion, politics or the law, is no less violent and unethical than killing in the name of crime.  To impose a rationale that one mode of killing constitutes death and the other murder, is to continue to glorify our moral dichotomy.

 

            From time immemorial, inflicting death has not been a deterrent to heinous crimes.  Nor has mass killings in battlefields secured lasting peace, or deterred the resurgence of new wars.  Death is not a solution to capital crimes or conflicts.  Life is a solution to life itself.  Taking another's life is a heinous crime, and no amount of remorse or death-chanting can undo the crime.  Yet, where the abominable act of one individual leads to the crime of murder, must we, as members of a sane society, participate in weaving the spiteful web of death?  It is almost as if our retributive role in accomplishing death is far more premeditated and conclusive than was the condemned person's thoughtless actions towards the victim.

 

            As human beings, we have a moral obligation to preserve and extend life.  It is not our place or prerogative to immortalize capital guilt with death,  And if the Lord breathed life into us, let him take it away.  Let vengeance be the Lord's.  Let him soil his hands by taking an eye for an eye, or if it pleaseth:  A thousand eyes for an eye!

 

February 19, 1999

Indian Express (website)

Express Towers, Nariman Pt.. Bombay, India

 

 

 

 

If we can't relate as humanbeings . . .

 

Sir:

            The tidal rift between Hindus and Christians in India, sadly dehumanizes the condition of the human spirit.  It also brings to trial the divine attribute of human tolerance.  As human beings, none of us have had a conscious choice in determining our place in existence, or the religion we would be reared into.  Instead, we are sowed by fate onto the grounds of existence to sprout and survive as seeds of hope, revelation, fortune, despair, et al.  From that moment after, the burden of having to bear the consequences of being alive unto ourselves or unto others, falls rigidly upon the mind and the conscience of each individual.

 

            Once born, we cannot liberally unborn ourselves.  We must await death to liberate us from the rigors of life.  Similarly, once reared into a particular religion, we cannot undo it as we might undo a garment.  Religion, for the fundamental part, bleaches one's mind with certain prejudice.  To renounce one's religion is tantamount to asking one to bleach the color of one's skin.  Or to unring the bell.  In the ensuing rift between Hindus and Christians, neither side shall succeed in unringing the bell, or in truly bleaching out the other.

 

            In one pre-historic form or the other, we have been proselytized by fate, hope, or circumstances.  The first man or woman on earth was neither a Hindu, a Christian, a Muslim, or whatsoever else is out there.  He or she was merely an alien being, upgraded with a productive mind.  From this productivity came reasoning and prejudice, and the likes of politics and religions.  The rest, has since evolved or deteriorated into what we presently bear witness to.

           

            God, on the other hand, is an abstract thought, made manifest through the presence of places of worship as well as through the allegiance of the faithful.  We don't see God eye to eye.  We attempt or endeavor to see him through the eyes of our fellow beings.  Between God and the hierarchy of fellow beings, is the divine attribute of human tolerance.  If we cannot relate to or tolerate one another as human beings, how can we possibly succeed as Hindus, Christians, Muslims, et al?

 

February 18, 1999

Gomantak Times

Gomantak Building, St. Inez, Panaji, Goa, India

 

 

 

Political Orphans

Sir:

            The droning demise of the Luizinho leadership, would appear to forebode the scenario that politics in Goa is on the fast track to another gun-toting finale.  The problem with politics is that you can't let your frustrations chase it down the block with a gun and pull the trigger.  The reason?  Politics is a lurking gun.  In a dictatorial environment, the gun is single-barrelled.  In a democratic environment, the gun is double-barrelled, with the ruling party constituting one part of the barrel, and the opposition the other.  The major drawback in a democratically- patented gun is that the barrels end up being alarmingly disproportionate.  As a result, it's firing range is sometimes either off the wall or inadvertently deadly.  Or at times, simply going off for no apparent reflex.

            Secondly, the firepower between the two guns are as contrasting as night and day.  While a dictatorial gun uses live bullets, a democratic gun comes pre-loaded with promises.  Unconditional promises!  And finally, the respective manifestos are as prejudicial as racism.  Under a dictatorial gun, the manifesto is usually shoot on sight.  Under a democratic gun, the manifesto is a moving target, and the objective of the target is to provide the poor and the needy with a much better future.  Thus, when time pulls the trigger, it is not uncommon for a democratic gun to miss the target by a good mile or two.  And when the gun starts falling apart from rust, misuse, or faulty components, it is not uncommon for the overseer of the democratic gun to summon the electorate to patent another gun. 

 

            And so it goes.  Each time a gun goes off, some one is either democratically elected or laid to rest, belly-down.  And history is full of political alliances, coffins, hearses, charlatans and fools.  It is not by chance or addiction that we become political or politicians.  It has to do with our uncanny ability to march in utterly opposing political strides while listening to the same hypocritical tune.  It is only when the gun suddenly goes off that we become terribly alarmed, and scurry about as political orphans!

 

February 14, 1999

Indian Express

Express Towers, Nariman Pt.. Bombay, India

 

 

 

 

Peace Blue Print

Sir:

            Death is an awful thought.  Lachrymose indeed. Yet, only death is without prejudice.  Kings, popes, heads of state, paupers, commoners, inmates on death row . . . . it doesn't matter who or where.  When it is our given day in time, it is the moment to go.  It is an inevitable need.  We enter existence through the discriminating doors of life, and exit out the common door marked 'death'.  What we achieve or contribute in the evolving walk between these two doors, determines our place in history.

 

            In this regard, one can adequately say that King Hussein of Jordan left an indelible mark on the ever illusive parchment called "peace".  He might not have succeeded in bringing about peace to the entire world,  but he left a humanitarian blueprint by which other leaders could enlarge the Scope of World Peace.

 

February 12, 1999

San Francisco Chronicle

901 Mission Street, San Francisco, California, USA

 


 

 

Politics on Trial

Sir:

            The trial of William Jefferson Clinton, is not so much the trial of a man who finds himself as a reluctant spectacle on the world's super-pedestal, but the trial of politics itself.  Politics is a sleek, ubiquitous coin.  Heads up, you win.  Tails, you lose!  Or vice versa.  And opinion polls aside, only time will tell which sleek side of the ubiquituous coin truth had so virtuously chanced upon to pick.  Or for that matter, altogether bypass!

 

January 28, 1999

San Francisco Chronicle

901 Mission Street, San Francisco, California, USA

 

 

 

The Dark Moments

Sir:

            Pope John Paul II's condescending stand on the crimes of the Holocaust and the Inquisition, is a stark reminder that from the inception of time, our ideals have been impulsively scripted by the dictates of good and evil.   Obviously, Pope John Paul had no personal part in either of the two dark events in our history.  Therefore, in proffering an apology on behalf of the Catholic Church,  he is neither going to absolve nor halt the modern-day crimes of ethnic cleansing perpetrated in Hercegovina, Cambodia, Kosovo, Somalia, Rwanda and Burundi.  Nor will his apology bring about a cessation of hostilities and ethnic hate in other parts of the world.  Nor will it shed a greater light on the senseless bombing of Iraq, or liberate the people of Tibet from the Chinese inquisition.

 

            In retrospect, it is crudely apparent that humanity's fate has not dramatically edified when the dark deeds of the past were finally accounted for and/or intoned.  The reason being is that apologies are mere rhetorical absurdities in the face of reality.  And reality is not the past, but the harsh, living presence of the present.  How can we thus sensibly point a damning finger to the crimes of the past while being oblivious to the crimes of the present, to the extent as to allow the present to replicate some of the very same dark deeds, i.e., crimes of ethnic cleansing and the annihilation of Tibet's spiritualism?

 

            Indeed, the past should have no less a significant, revered or guiltful place in our conscience than the present.  But if we are to make this world a better place, we need to exit ourselves from being overly obsessed in the past and live manifestly in the present, and in so doing, conscientiously endeavor to prevent the present from sowing or replicating the very same dark deeds of the past.  Otherwise, we shall only evolve to inherit apologies and in the process, draw no closer to the moral equator today than where we found ourselves on the first day of existence.

 

November 10, 1998

The Navhind Times

Navhind Bhavan, Rua Ismael de Gracias, Panaji, Goa, India

 

 


 

You must surely reap the whirlwind . . .

 

Sir:

            The congressional trial of President Bill Clinton once again affirms that no one is above the dictates of the law.  It also casts a monumental light on our vulnerability as human beings, in that, we have the resourceful potential to become mortal victims of our own vices and follies.  But most importantly, it adjudicates the proverbial wisdom that if you sow the wind, you will most surely reap the whirlwind and have none other than yourself to thank!

 

            When all is said and done, it is obvious that neither Kenneth Starr nor Bill Clinton will have themselves or the other to thank.  Nor will it leave too much to the imagination as to who was the wind and who the whirlwind in the saga involving three of the most unnatural elements in the Lewinsky-Flowers-Jones galaxy.

 

            All these dramatically chaotic events no doubt, will give renewed hope to present and would-be defendants.  Because somewhere along the line, truth finally begins to matter and becomes indelible.  And if the question of God's whereabouts still persist, then events such as these continue to painstaking map the contours of his Infinite wisdom and justice.

 

September 16, 1998

San Francisco Chronicle

901 Mission Street, San Francisco, California, USA

 

 

 

 

Of fate and fleeting fame

Sir:

            Truth takes an epic leap into reality when it has hypocrisy as its spokesperson.  This phenomena is no more glaringly apparent then in the presently heightened melodrama following Princess Diana's death.  While the paparazzi has been held in contempt and ridicule for contributing to her death, it was, assuredly after all, the might and sheer will of the paparazzi that gave Princess Diana an unparalleled legacy in life and death.  This legacy is now further enshrined in the public's show of emotion the world over.  And in the midst of this unprecedented extravaganza of flowers, tears, bitterness and remorse, Mother Teresa passes away among the very 'People of the Gutter' in India for whom she had selflessly toiled these past 50 years!

 

            Rarely before, have two great individuals, mutually known and respected, passed within such emotionally-charged proximity of each other, albeit, from vastly contrasting circumstances.  Such mind-numbing events only occur to remind us of our own fragility as humanbeings.  Perhaps more poignantly, to reassure us that in this amphitheater of existence, only a few are destined to take centerstage.  The rest are mere statistics, and their death, singly or otherwise, is without any greater impact or grief.

 

            It also points to the oddity of coming into existence rather empty-handed, without any blue prints, stocks or bonds.  Or not knowing when if ever at all, one's life is to chance upon that moment of fitting precisely square within the world's most illusive lens to fame and fortune.  To the contrary, what remains eternally predominant are two distinct realities to which we stand condemned to from the first moment of existence:  Death is an awful thought, and, Life is a terminal disease!  And somewhere, imminently between this moment and the next, we progressively die.  There are no exceptions, except for eternity.  Only eternity is deathless.  And only death has a glimpse of eternity.

 

            In the final perspective, the paparazzi is about as guilty in bringing about Princess Diana's end as we, the public.  The paparazzi projected Princess Diana through the lenses of our own insatiable curiosity.  Sadly yet, without the media, Princess Diana might simply have gone about her business to become the Queen of England on her given day, live all the years of her life and thereafter, quietly slip into oblivion.  By the same token, without the media, Mother Teresa might just have been another nun working along with a handful of other nuns for the betterment of the poor, the homeless, the downtrodden, the sick and the dying!

 

September 9, 1997

Marin Independent Journal

150 Alameda del Prado

Novato, California 94949, USA

 

 

 

 

Stop the Ping-Pong!

Sir:

            Existence is sadly tinged with the pains of realism.  The realism that some are more privileged than others.  The realism that some are more fair skinned than others.  The realism that some become only fit to remain poor, unimpressive, or unversed.  Yet, all these veins of realism lead to the heartbeat of existence, around which life revolves to engender, sustain and foster the scope of survival.

 

            In Goa, however, a new genre of realism is intensely brewing.  The realism of provoking intolerance towards the other's inherited beliefs and cultural attributes.  Instead of name-dropping and luncheon meetings, people are now being rebuked for their acquired names and culinary traits.

 

            As insecure humanbeings, we are entitled to our dramatic opinions and concerns.  Opinions, after all, are by-products of prevailing truths and are innocuous until they become assertive.  From that point on, they only serve and uphold the subjective values of the assertor.  To be opinionated is to be arrogant.  Arrogance is emotional, and appeals to fanatics.  Wisdom has a more gentle demeanor, and draws a gradually more lasting and expanding an audience.

 

            In times as muddled as ours, it is edifying to recall the profound adage:  "When a man points a finger at someone else, he should remember that three of his fingers are pointing at himself".  Enough said already on matters that appease some at the expense of antagonizing others!  The past has its assured place in museums and archives.  The present burdens us with the obligation to do better.  Essentially, on how to make this world ecologically and culturally more habitable.  These are the real issues that warrant our time, intellect and emotions.  The rest is an eroding game of Ping-Pong!

 

March 24, 1995

Herald

Opp. Municipal Garden, Panaji, Goa, India

 

 

 

A  Gargantuan Grease-ball

Sir:

            Politics is a jugglery of political balls, put forth by political parties and endorsed by the electorate.  Eventually, one political juggler reigns supreme.  But his/her position in the political hierarchy is not without contemptuous envy.   There are, after all, always those who feel they lost because they had been maliciously sent to the podium to juggle with worn-out, dubious, or worthless balls.  And there are others who simply cannot live to the fact that they have once again been juggled-out of juggling the most prestigious political ball!

 

            There is a time-held saying:  "When the going gets tough, the tough get going.".  In politics, I guess, when the going gets tough, the ball gets more slick.  It  is no surprise then that in these last four-and-half years, the Chief Minister's ball in Goa has slipped a total of six times.

 

            What's wrong with Goan politics?  It is any one's wild guess.  Perhaps not!  Perhaps, from the inception, Goa's political manifesto has been one Gargantuan grease-ball!

 

March 1, 1995

Gomantak Times

Gomantak Building, St. Inez, Panaji, Goa, India

 

 

 

Sanctity on Trial?

 

Sir:

            The recent report, "Seminar on the Life of St. Francis Xavier" (HERALD 19/11/94), left me feeling rather perplexed, and somewhat amused.  According to the report, the seminar was polarized by a miscellany of assenting and some dissenting opinions on St. Francis Xavier's credibility as a missionary, and as a saint.  My question now is:  When did we become so virtuous as to evaluate those whom our ancestors have accredited as saints, or so much as even to sit in judgement of their sanctity, or put their sanctity on public trial?

 

            Sainthood is not a matter of political proclamation, or a media hype.  Nor is faith an academic attribute.  Vested interests may elevate an individual to the status of a saint, but what assures that individual's place in the sacred hierarchy is the latitude of public faith.  Such latitude cannot be acquired, or propagated.  It can only be felt, inexplicably.

 

            Christianity, no doubt, brought its share of pain to the inhabitants of Goa.  So did Islam before Christianity.  So did Hinduism before other beliefs, and so forth, until we find ourselves where origin began.  In reality, neither the world nor humanity was intended to be an absolute and undeviating entity.  If in the process of evolution, change makes saints of some and enemies of others, it is simply in the nature of things.  To appreciate these changes, to benefit from the good and steer away from the evil, is to gracefully accept the challenges of being a realized being.

 

            In retrospect, no religion or culture is without some idle resentment or irreverence towards other religions and cultures.  History is full of such resentment and irreverence.  Sadly, however, history cannot be reversed or rewritten by activating resentment or irreverence towards other religions and cultures.  Nor can the present be improved upon by invoking the bitter past.  If  harmony prevails, why agitate it and make co-existence more troubled for those to come?  As mortals, we are not here for ever.  Only saints continue to earn the dignity and immortality that the majority have been slotted to be unworthy of.  Let us, therefore, not pine in wishful resentment, grief or envy.  Leave the saints where they are.  As lay people and commoners, we have our work to do . . . to sit in judgement of our own deeds and vested aspirations.  Let us conscientiously work on that in order to make this world more resourceful in tolerance than resentment!

 

January 3, 1995

The Navhind Times

Navhind Bhavan, Rua Ismael de Gracias, Panaji, Goa, India

 

 

 

 

What is a Hindu?

Sir:

            For some time now,  I have been reading letters questioning or seeking definitions on "Who is a  Goanese?".  Or, on "Who is a Hindu?".  Better yet, on "What is a Hindu?".  I could, conveniently enough, join the ranks of these inquisitors and perhaps, only succeed in stirring communal hatred!

 

            To begin with, no race or religion is a curse upon the other until we allow it to be.  Or putting it in a nutshell:  We are all here to  exist, disproportionately!  So why must we suspect the other's purpose in our midst.  If God exists, does it matter whoever else exists?  The problem with our existence stems from an overwhelming sense of uncertainty.  In this regard, uncertainty is our true religion, for if we could have liberated God from being accountable for our failures, we would just as easily as well liberate our neighbors from being accountable for our material failures. 

 

            For centuries, our minds have been structured by the deeds and ideologies of those who preceded us.  Saints, seers, the natural and the supernatural, all these have become  the footprints to our survival.  In the ultimate sense, no religion or God has completely liberated one group of faithful from the other.  To the contrary, religions have fragmented the core of human existence.

 

            Essentially, we are all humanbeings, bounded by beliefs and territories.  If we can't relate as humanbeings, obviously, we can't succeed as Hindus, Muslims, Christians, et al.  The question becomes:  Must one be accepted or revered for the color of one's skin, or the name of one's God?  Seemingly not!  All this disorientation takes us back to religion.  And religion, of course, is a psychological choice.  It provides us with a belief system that keeps us subconsciously together, or consciously apart.  Christians have fought with non-Christians and Christians alike.  Hindus have fought with Muslims and Hindus alike.  And so forth.  The fact still stands:  Religions of the world have not perfected mankind.  Only Truth has.  But Truth is as illusive as "Who is a Goanese?".  Or "Who is  a Hindu?"  Or for that matter, "What is a Hindu?".  And if Hinduism  -- arguably speaking -- is not a religion, is it the conformity of a nationalistic ideal to survival?

 

March 3, 1994

The Navhind Times

Navhind Bhavan, Rua Ismael de Gracias, Panaji, Goa, India

 

 

 

Mundkar Act

Sir:

            On the anvil of politics, often times, social values are either edified for the benefit of posterity or likewise retrogressed.  The Mundkar Act, unquestionably, belongs in the latter category.  While purporting to be "an agrarian step for the welfare of the poor sections of the community ...", the Act in essence, has largely sanctified the assets of the rich and reduced the middle class to a classless entity.

 

            Whether the Mundkar Act is an agrarian landmark - as politically claimed -- remains to be seen in the light of constitutional wisdom.  The Constitution of India, was founded on the democratic principles of Freedom, Justice and Equality to all.  The Constitution does not endorse the Concept of Equality on the basis of depriving one party in order to improve the status of the second party, and thereupon, leaving the aggrieved party worse off than where it found the now much benefitted second party.  Nor does the Constitution endorse the Concept of Justice to one party where injustice becomes the obvious consequence to the other party. The Mundkar Act, therefore, is unconstitutional from the moral standpoint, as it makes the very values of existence -- which are disproportionate by nature -- even more disproportionate.

 

            Indeed, politics does not reform society; politicians do.  As human beings, it is in our disposition to err.  It is also in our gracefulness to undo our errors as much as it also is in our arrogance not to.  In this regard, the Mundkar Act is not a crime against humanity, but a villainy against the moral distinction between good and evil.  Good heals, evil festers.  An act that finds its essence in what is unrighteous and injurious, can never heal.  It is a permanent sore on society!

 

            Understandably, the Mundkar Act is not the progeny of the present administration.  But unless the Act is reversed, or justly amended, it will only continue to cultivate hatred among fellow beings, who are otherwise sane and civilized enough to comprehend the distinction between good and evil.  The onus, as such, is now upon this administration to exercise judicial wisdom in undoing a political wrong, lest it be judged in no less an incriminating light than the signatories to the Mundkar Act!

 

November 27, 1993

Gomantak Times

Gomantak Building, St. Inez, Panaji, Goa, India

 

 

There is only One God . . .

Sir:

 

            As a retired-failure, living on the streets of optimism, I have the added benefit of occasionally going on some idle excursions.  Recently, while cruising through the internet highway, I overheard some rumblings relating to God's places of worship.  In the agenda of the rumblings was the issue of whether a church could be referred to as a "temple, or for that matter, listed under "temples" and vice versa.

 

            If God was available for comment, what might have been His (or Her) preferences?  Enter a church with his shoes on, or leave them at the entrances of temples and mosques?  Would He be interested in thumbing through or editing our Encyclopedia of Civilization, amassed through centuries of fighting bitterly in His name, and for His Glory?  And thirdly, could he possibly have formullated faith as a common glue, bonding us into humanity rather than dividing us into theological islands?

 

Unfortunately, God is not readily available for comment and on my part, I lack the spiritual faculty to commune directly with Him in the manner Moses and other spiritually evolved beings are able to.  However, when I stepped off the rather congested internet highway and meandered through the wide-open alley of silence, it finally dawned on me that there is only one God and that churches, temples, mosques, synagogues, pagodas . . .  are eloquent manifestations of our subconscious prejudice towards Him!

 

Gomantak Times

Gomantak Building, St. Inez, Panaji, Goa, India