Hindu/Catholic Wedding

We attended a combination Hindu/Catholic wedding held at the Letchworth National Park near Buffalo, N.Y. The Bride (Shashi's daughter) is Hindu and the Groom is Catholic.


Some women from the Shashi's family. From left to right are: Shailaja (Shashi's sister), Grandma (Shashi's stepmom), Maithili (Shashi's sister), Geeta (my cousin) and Sandhya (if you don't know who she is, you have no business viewing this blog).


The tent-like structure where the actual ceremonies were held.


Some of the audience attending the wedding ceremony. From the right: Vishwas (Geeta's son), Prabhakara (also known as Attambi), Shalini (Geeta's daughter), Geeta and Sandhya.


The string quartet was entertainment. They played very well, but tended to repeat themselves.

The newly weds

The newly weds (in the middle). From left: Geeta, Sandhya, Rohini (the bride), Andy (the Groom), Prabhakara and Shalini

Hindu/Catholic Wedding (cont'd)

Letchworth National Park

We recently visited the Letchworth National Park situated midway between Buffalo and Rochester in New York State. Here are a few pictures of the falls in the Park as well as the main building in which the wedding was held.



The falls at Letchworth



The main building



Another view of the Letchworth



Letchworth falls at night

Making of a Constitution

It is no trivial matter to create a constitution. It took six years for the drafting of the American Constitution. And the Americans had the advantage of not having tribal and ethnic issues such as the Iraqis have. Another example of the drafting of a constitution is that of the Indian Constitution. It took the Indians almost four years to draft and adopt the constitution (Of course the process got a little delayed because of partition of India in 1947)

But if you go by the MSM (Main Stream Media)'s pessimism, you would think the Iraqis have failed at drafting their Constitution.

Iraq Constitution

A creative solution, by Patterico, for the worries on the inclusion of religion as a basis for law in the draft Iraqi constitution. He suggests we export all four liberal supreme court justices--Stevens, Ginsburg, Souter and Breyer--to be nominated justices of the new Iraqi supreme court. After all they believe in interpreting the constitution as they see fit (in light of whatever the prevailing liberal mantra is), not as the framers originally intended!

Iraq war

A fascinating and riveting account of an encounter with terrorists in Iraq. Very gripping and a great account. Michael Yon is reporting on this from Iraq and, as always, the writing is very good. Here is the link.

Start of the American Revolution

It was this day, 230 years ago (1775), that the American revolution stared. King George III was reigning at that time and there were 13 colonies that then belonged to the British Empire. A small minority, known as loyalists, were against the war and eventually fled to Canada. They were also known as the Tories. A plurarity (about 45%) was for the war and were known as the Patriots (or Whigs).

The war lasted till 1783 with the Treaty of Paris.

August 15, which is a week before today, is also significant because India was partitioned and independence was granted to India and Pakistan in 1947. The horror stories of what happed in the aftermath of Aug 15th is legend by now. The violence was at its worst in the Punjab where Gandhi did not have a huge following. Gandhi did have considerable influence in the rest of the country and large scale blood baths were prevented.

India is still prospering and getting richer by the day, whilst Pakistan languishes with children growing up only with the knowledge of the Koran--naturally it gets poorer by the day. Anyone who can goes to the middle east where they get treated like dirt because of their dark skins (everyone knows the Arabs look down on dark skinned people).

Rekha called to the Bar!

Sandhya and I went to Edmonton last week, on Wednesday, August 17) to participate in a ceremony presided by the Chief Justice of Alberta to admit Rekha to the Alberta Bar association. This has been a memorable day for us and made us really proud of Rekha. This has been a tough, seven-year slog for her. We're glad she persevered. Her mentor was very eloquent in presenting Rekha's application to the Chief Justice and the Chief Justice in turn spent a considerable amount time extolling Rekha's achievement.
She is now officially a Barrister and Solicitor.
This may sound trite and out of the ordinary now, but the Chief Justice recognized that when Rekha (and Prashant, of course) arrived in Canada in the late 80's, they had no English or French. He expressed his admiration at the fact that she was now fluent in both official languages.
An important point to note is that Rekha will have been the first lawyer in several generations in our families. Counting from my father's side, she is the first lawyer in generations, and from my mother's side she is one of a handful. I say handful, because I don't know how many lawyers there are in her generation back in India. After all most young ones are 'guided' to the the engineering or medical streams (at least they used to be).

Just before the ceremony, at the Superior court

After the ceremony. The Chief Justice is to the right. The lady lawyer on the left presented Rekha's application

Rekha in her fabulous office. What's not obvious is the great view she has from her vantage point.

Rekha's colleagues from work during lunch hosted by her firm, after the ceremony

Kevin's family. Sandhya and I are right in the middle (I'm the guy with the suspenders--known as 'Braces' in Indian English)

The Supreme Court 'Kelo' fallout

The recent (June 2005) ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court in Kelo v/s New London has been one of the more egregious decisions to ever come out of that court. Two months later people all over the U.S. are still outraged over this. Interestingly the liberal leaning Sandra Day O'Conner was in the minority here and against the ruling.

But this ruling may be coming back to bite some of the liberal justices. Both Justices Bryer and Souter own property in New Hampshire and there are popular movements out there that are applying this very same ruling to deprive these two of their property!

Briefly the ruling says that the government can take away private property if one of the reasons is that it will result in increased tax revenue for the city. It basically takes away property rights which is the basis for the American Dream.

The New Hampshire Libertarian Party has started a petition to get the city to invoke eminent domain to rid Bryer of his 165 acre property in that state. In the case of Souter, there is a California resident who has started a nationwide campaign to have the town of Weare, N.H. to sieze Souter's 200-year old home and replace it with a hotel!

This is going to be interesting. If the two justices fight this, it could go all the way back to the Supreme Court. The question is won't all these justices have to recuse themselves? It is possible Chief Justice Renquist would be replaced by then by another conservative and Judge Roberts would have replaced O'Conner.

Let's see how this turns out.

Kyrstal's eye operation

This is Krystal last Wednesday before the operation on her left eye. You can see it is quite red. What you can't see is that it is also dripping.


Here's Krystal's eye with the bandage off (and a missing left eye). Without here left eye, she looks like she has a permanent wink. She seems comfortable enough with only one eye. If anything she seems to have become more active. I had her collar off for a couple of hours and she was happy about that. But then she started rubbing against the stiches of the eyelid (they have stiched it shut) so I had to put the collar back on. Doctor says it's got to be on for a few more days. I'll post a photo later on. Note the transparent hat (or the cone)--you have to look hard because the hat is transparent.

She is sleeping so it is a bit hard to see that her left eye lid is stiched up. I'll post a photo of her when she is awake.

Iran

Seems like the Iranians have developed 4000 centrifuges, according to Alireza Jafarzadeh, who runs the Washington-based think tank, Strategic Policy Consulting. All this under the watchful eye of the IAEA!

Iraq

AP reports that U.S. and Iraqi troops have made some arrests in connection with the death of 20 marines recently. The terrorists must be really lucky to have been just arrested and not killed. Who knows they may even get a trip to club gitmo!

Montezuma's Castle, AZ

This was cited as a good site to visit in the AAA book. We were expecting a real castle, but it turned out to be a bunch of mud huts. Quite disappointing. It is halfway between Williams and Phoenix. The temperature was in the 100's. The last time Sandhya and I encountered such heat was back in Lucknow. It literally saps your strength.

But if you are an archeologist, this is the place for you.

Interestingly, the site documentation states that the Indians (the american type, not the hindu type) suddenly abandoned this site for an unknown reason. Does one need to be an archeologist to find this out? Duh! Who would want to live in a hole in the wall under sweltering conditions? More power to the Indians who quit; I'd say they were smart to do so!

Stay at Williams, AZ

Break fast time on Jul 31

The Grand Canyon Railway Hotel at Williams, AZ. Nicely appointed rooms. Very clean and neat.

Sandhya found a spot for her laptop (all work and no play makes sandhya a happy gal)

The Grand Canyon Hotel from the quadrangle behind the hotel



The train engines that would haul our carriages to the Grand Canyon