A friend called me up and said, “I want you to write about something. You said you write for mutiny, please write about this issue.”
Wow! I thought. People call me up to write about important issues.
So I asked him what was the issue. He said,
President of India visited Hampi last week. For security reasons, the entire city was shut down for the whole week, it was evacuated of all tourists and monkeys. All shops were closed and no hotels lodges were allowed to keep visitors.
His concern was that Hampi is a small place, the only source of income that people have there is the tourism industry. If for an entire week tourism and other related business would be shut down, won’t the businessmen face losses? Who would compensate for that loss?
I heard him and in absolute Bollywood style said, “my friend you have knocked the right door, let me do a quick google on the issue and see if I can find some news piece to link to I’ll write about it. After all that is what blogging is, what mainstream media may not report due to political reasons we bloggers would.” Eventually it was him who forwarded the links.
Although I can’t really claim the authenticity of this issue because I couldn’t find any news / article which exactly raised this concern but that doesn’t mean it can’t be there. If only I could interview somebody who actually went Hampi during this time. One such person has written on this discussion thread on Lonely Planet where a certain tourist says he / she couldn’t enter Hampi during that day and that this decision to paralyse Hampi for a week was not announced on any major English daily.
Also, Times of India reported there was a major drive to drive away all the monkeys from Hampi which faced protest by the localites since they worship the Monkey God.
Had I been a journalist I probably would have gone to Hampi to dig more but since I am only a blogger, so I blogged. If any of the readers here have friends or family living in Hampi they can find out more.
———————-
Addendum: For more on this read this comment on Mutiny where this piece is crossposted.
According to the demographics, I should be voting for Hillary Clinton: I’m a white, 60-year-old, highly educated woman from the Northeast. But I’m voting for Obama. I’ve waited all my life for a viable woman candidate for the presidency, but this is not the right woman. I want a woman of the highest ability and virtue, who would serve as a glorious role model to all young women. Hillary Clinton is not that woman.
She rode into power with her husband, and together they’ve acquired a long and seriously flawed history of self-serving and secretive financial and political dealings. The most cursory research will prove that true. She started out her political life supporting the racist Barry Goldwater. She is as comfortable with deception and trickery as George Bush. When I hear woman saying, “Oh, but that’s how you get things done in Washington,” I literally cringe.
I am passionately supporting Barack Obama. He can beat the Republicans; she cannot. Obama has attracted Independents and even Republicans to his camp, and in a general election they would vote for him, but not for Clinton. Clinton voted for the war, and has never apologized for it. Obama has spoken out against it from the beginning. Obama brings us hope–and not just that. Take a serious look at his ideas and experience.
Please, I beg of you, Sisters young and old: wait for the right woman. Then we can be proud.
Diane Wald
LikeLike
On a lighter note.. For a minute i thought Hillary was the one visiting Hampi :)
LikeLike
@ sumne
:-) I actually went back to the post to confirm whether it was Ms. Patil or Ms. Clinton.
@ Diane
Is your country really ready for a black president?
LikeLike