Rumi Nations

When celebrities die — and these past few months seem to have seen more than the usual quota of celebrity deaths — we see an overwhelming outpouring of public grief and grieving and reminiscing. What a contrast this is to a true tragedy such as when a baby dies. The doctors at AIIMS recently performed a rare surgery to treat an infant who had been born with her heart outside her rib cage. The doctors created a cavity inside her chest and put the heart where it belongs. However, 22 days later, the baby dies. One story of death in a nation of billion-plus people which didn’t get the attention it deserved. Because of the unique nature of the problem and the treatment, it at least made it to the news media. What I want to say here though is this: what does this story tell us about life? Is there anything we should learn about life or question — does this story have the power to unhinge us to our cores? It’s easy to read about this news item and forget about it in due course. But I’m sure w...

President Obama was in Cairo recently and addressed students of Cairo University. Egypt is of course one of the oldest civilaztions on the planet with the pyramids having been built some 5,000 years ago — the human mind with a human lifespan of 60/70 years is certainly incapable of making sense of a timeframe that long. A city like Cairo must have seen so much through the thousands of years of its history. Today, it stands at the crossroads of the 'Clash of Civilizations' debate between Western and Islamic civilizations. President Obama sought to 're-connect' with the 'alienated' Muslim world by this speech. He addressed some central issues: Iran's march towards acquiring nuclear weapons, Israel's right to exist, the right of the Palestininian people to a homeland, the threat of Al Qaida and Taliban in Pakistan/Afghanistan, the plight of women ... or, the 'right' of women to live the way they want to ... whether they want to get educated and purs...