One world ...

This has been looooong overdue. Have been told by a lot of people that I have the power, that I am the chosen one ! The ability to express through writing is my forte, so I thought it's about time I started utilising my free time in more constructive ways rather than watching the Al Jazeera network all day long ! So ... here goes nothing !

One World ...

What is the one thing that binds us all - people of the world together ? I used to think and believe, if all the human race's beginnings were traced back to a couple of homo sapiens that walked the planet, then we - the inhabitants of this lovely "3rd rock from the sun" should be more alike than different ! I think I'm seeing traces of that every single day.

Be it here in Libya or in Europe, I really get the feeling of a unified race - the human race.

Where do I begin ? The language ? Time and again, I'm amazed to see people from Germany or Libya using words that I use back home in India. From "ananas" meaning pineapple in Marathi and Deutsche to "mushkila" in Urdu and Arabic. "Maujood", "lekin", "hansa" (from the airline, Lufthansa- luft meaning air) to name a few, make my belief stronger in the fact that we were all born from the same womb. Yet, time and again when I watch news channels (and I do that a hell lot more now a days, living alone in the city of Benghazi), I see hatred among people. Be it the Israelis against the entire Arab world, the Tamil Tigers against the Lankans or the Iraqis against the "coalition of the willing" - Bush and his cronies to be more precise. Time and again, day after day ... they don't even make it to the headlines as its so common these days "20 killed" , "40 killed", "a hundred killed". It's a surprise if a day goes by without any violence in the world.

What have we come to ? Makes me want to get up and give one tight slap (like they used to show on MTV) to people who're causing this and say, "hey, look, we're one , we're alike, why fight and shed blood when we can live in peace and harmony ?!". But thats not going to be as easy as it sounds is it ?

Moving over to my second passion in life ... music ... first one being food (doh!), I'm amazed at what the world is listening to. One of the first "english" songs I listened to was "everything I do, I do it for you" - the OST from Robinhood. The first song was "Nothing's gonna change my love for you" - but coming back to the point, in those days, almost everyone my age who listened to "english" music used to listen to Bryan Adams. He was like the first car your family buys - a Maruti - and by default if you didn't listen to him, you were surely missing something in life ! Fast forward fifteen years, here I am, in this land of the Arabs - oops - Reaallllly down south of Europe, in a place called Libya, trying to talk in english ... correction ... broken english .. with a group of people, trying to put across a point as to why a "switch gear truck" is a combination of two isolators and a circuit breaker.... and out of sheer frustration, I start my laptop and play a random song from my i-Tunes player and it sings out, "a lil' love ... just a lil' love .. a lil' love .. can change it all". The guy who usually talks in the following manner ... "you come - me , we go Benghazi city zoo, tomorrow, inshallah !", say, "Bryan Adams, I like !". I'm dumbfounded ... I'm floored by his liking to Bryan Adams' music. "You listen to Bryan Adams too ? I see show in Bombay ... nice nice ... 800 Rupees for show .. ticket !". At this point of time he wears a confused look on his face as to how much money did I really spend on this concert ticket. I reach out for my cell phone and short cut my way to the calculator and say "25 Libyan Dinars". "Very cheap .. India !", he exclaimed. I nodded in silence knowing that his country has all the oil in the world and that is the only reason why we're milking his company and stuffing it in our pockets . That left a grin on my face for roughly fifteen seconds, then it was "snap back to reality" and training the people on the intricacies of Electrical Engineering !