On November 18,2007  Kapali Giridhar Swamy , 27 of Decatur, Alabama was traveling in a car along with Gina Gonzalez and Christopher Brett Pennington to Pennington’s residence after  a night out in Birmingham. Along the way, an argument began between Swamy  and Gonzalez that escalated to the point that Pennington hit Swamy. Kapali fell to the ground. When emergency medical personnel arrived a few minutes later, he was found to be without a pulse. Pennington was subsequently arrested and charged with manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide. In January 2008, an 18-member Grand Jury decided in a closed hearing not to indict Pennington on a single charge and he walked free.

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Gulab jamuns, yes. Death threats, no. But Neelam Vir, a desi woman in the Ontario province of Canada has been charged with sending death threats to the staff member of the Premier of the Ontario province of Canada. [link]

“I will feed you gulab jamun and then kill you”
img: via TheStar.com

Neelam, who emigrated to Canada from India in 2002 with a PhD degree was a big fan of the Premier of Ontario province, where she and her husband lived. Hearing that the Premier was a big fan of gulab jamuns, she sent some gulab jamun mix to his staff to be handed to the Premier. Typical desi ishtyle, you think what’s wrong with that? Then later that night she emailed the McGuinty again inquiring if he got her gift. Typical desi ishtyle. But this is where things started to go wrong.

The same night, she emailed McGuinty, asking whether Masciantonio had given him the mix.

“I said, `If she didn’t give it to you, I’ll kill her.’ It’s just slang,” Vir said. “I use this term all the time with my husband and my kids. In Hindi, it’s, `Mein tumarhi jaan nikal dungi.’”

Vir received no reply but, on Nov. 20, after the election, half a dozen police officers showed up at her door. They confiscated her laptop, cellphone, camera and papers, and hauled her to jail on a charge of conveying a death threat. There she spent a frantic six hours until her husband bailed her out. “I was so upset I couldn’t stop crying. I kept asking, `What wrong did I do?’”

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Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, one -time Guru to the Beatles died in Holland today [link] .The Maharishi parlayed knowledge of Hindu scripture into a multi-million dollar empire. He founded the Transcedental Meditation movement. In recent years, his followers have been ridiculed for claiming to have achieved “Yogic flight”.Demonstrations of these usually had a couple of folks, crossing their legs yogically and jumping on their knees. A brief controversy around Mia Farrow briefly clouded his image. That incident obliquely referred to by Farrow in her autobiography has been debunked by other followers like Deepak Chopra. The Maharishi had announced his retirement from normal activities on January 11th stating ” Invincibility is irreversibly established in the world. My work is done. My designated duty to Guru Dev is fulfilled.” [link]

Sir Edmund Hillary passed away at the age of 88 on Jan 11th 2008 of heart failure at the Auckland City Hospital. [link]

“A few more whacks of the ice axe in the firm snow, and we stood on top.”
Sir Edmund & Sherpa Tenzing on the final steps to the summit of Mt. Everest
img: via www.cureblindness.org

Not content with his conquest of the top of the world, Sir Edmund also:
rode to the South Pole in a tractor, [link] ………

Sir Edmund Hillary has reached the South Pole – the first overland explorer to do so since Captain Robert F Scott’s expedition in 1912. The New Zealander and his team arrived safely after travelling 70 miles (113km) through mist and poor weather conditions. They described seeing the round tower of the South Pole for the first time as a “black blob” on the horizon. Sir Edmund and his colleagues had only one drum of petrol left when they sighted the Polar base. This would have been enough for the “tractor train” to travel 20 miles (32km).

rode a jetboat from the mouth of the Ganges river to its source in his now legendary “Ocean to Sky” expedition, [link] ……

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