Orcae ita: 2006

Wednesday, December 20, 2006

Gil Shohat - Israel Chamber Orchestra

Gil Shohat (Composer, Conductor and Pianist) of the Israel Chamber Orchestra performing at GNB-Bangalore.

He was accompanied by 2 Violins, a Viola and a Cello

They performed some of Shohat's own compositions in addition to J.Brahms' Piano Qunintet in F minor and S. Rachmaninoff's 7 Preludes.

The performances themselves were brilliant, but interrupted now and then by cell-phone rings. At one point Shohat mimicked the ring-tone on the piano and the whole audience burst out laughing. That person would probably never again attend a concert with his/her mobile-phone.

The pics haven't turned out that great as I was experimenting with the Olympus C-700's various aperture settings. The Olympus courtesy Vinod.

About Gil Shohat: www.gilshohat.com

Tuesday, December 12, 2006

Yes Sidhu, the entire nation is with you...

On December 27, 1988, Gurnam Singh was dragged out of his car and bludgeoned to death by joker turned cricketer turned Member of Parliament turned killer, Navjot Singh Sidhu and his friend Rupinder Singh Sandhu. On December 6, 2006, 18 years later, the division bench comprising of Justices Mehtab Singh Gill and Baldev Singh of the Punjab and Haryana High Court convicted Sidhu for "culpable homicide not amounting to murder". The sentence…a 3-year jail term and Rs. 90,000 (about $2000) to be paid to the widow of Gurnam Singh. Lady Justice did catch up but 18 years too late...blindfolded and without her sword. Meanwhile, these two murderers have been roaming free for 18 years (not that this is about to change anytime soon). 3 years for a murder? An engineering course takes 4!!! And Rs.90,000? (the price of a bike!) ...is that all a man's life is worth?

The Times of India (Dec 7, 2006) ... "a smile flickered for a brief moment on Sidhu's face as the judges pronounced the sentence". A smirk, if you ask me. These were his witless comments when he came out of the court to hordes of waiting supporters, "For me what is not morally correct is also not politically correct and I am happy that the entire nation is with me". This really sums it all up. Now you know how abysmally low the morals of our MPs are and what our parliament is really made up of and how these people got there.

Only a day earlier, Union minister Shibu Soren was convicted of killing his secretary and got a life sentence. A "rarest of rare" judgment in my opinion - some consolation. Ideally, he should've hung.

We the people are the ones who vote for and send these criminals to our parliament. Read again what Sidhu said, "For me what is not morally correct is also not politically correct and I am happy that the entire nation is with me". Yes, Sidhu, the entire nation shares your guilt.

... and to think that Mohammed Afzal almost did this country a favor...

Thursday, December 07, 2006

Chained to the mistakes of the past?

Tuesday, December 05, 2006

Smile you're on...

There's a trend I notice these days. Praise & Worship meetings are beginning to resemble mini-concerts. Right from the coordinated 1-2-3-4 starts and heavy intros to the elaborate interludes...the emphasis seems to be on 'getting it right'. Everything has to be as per the 'original' - right from the style, the beat, the chords, the sequence, the scale, even right down to the vocal intonations and tonal inflections. It doesn't really matter if it's a scale only Sandi Patti can sing as long as it is the 'original'. (Of course, 'original' gets redefined every now and then; when someone brings a CD they claim is the 'original' original). Heavy lead guitars and punchy bass virtually drown out the congregation (you just can't compete with 1000++Watts of house speakers + stage spillover). In fact, it's better to just clap and listen than try to sing, especially when you can't hear yourself. Yet, it all climaxes in a heady protracted ending where long after the singing has stopped, the lead guitar and drums continue racing to a grating finish at the rising crescendo of 'spontaneous' applause. BTW...that's just about as spontaneous as the congregation gets. Then there is a brief hiatus as the band regroups for the next 1-2-3-4...

Back in the heydays, theme parties were a rave... nowadays 'theme' worship seems to be cool... instead of everyone dressing up in cowboy attire...the whole service is rigged to 'glory'… you just can't miss it. It's all pre-programmed. The welcome, exhortation, songs, and the sermon (thankfully it hasn't affected the benediction yet!) are all woven in thematically.

Animated backdrops that blend graphics and special effects are perfectly timed to the beat to create the mood. Video cameras pan and zoom in on the band as they 'perform'. Backed up by back-up singers and a 50-member choir, the church's walled garden squad puts on a good show.

With all this now beamed directly to the couch, courtesy "God's TV channels"....the accent seems to be on being 'picture perfect' or should I say....TV perfect. So smile...who knows...someday, sometime, when you least expect it....you could be on God's TV.

lol.... just a tongue-in-cheek animadversion of the way I see things... but the bottom-line is that the Church must march on. It must evolve as it has over the millenniums to keep the hope of salvation alive in an ever evolving generation. Every generation has their share of criticisms and in time themselves turn aristarchs. Nobody is right, yet nobody is wrong. Jesus did not bother much about the mode or method... He was concerned about people. People change, modes and methods change, but Jesus does not. Thank God, amidst all this change, there is a God who never changes. Yesterday, Today, and Forever the same.

Saturday, December 02, 2006

All-sovereign

In the Septuagint, Pantokrator is the Greek equivalent of El Shaddai 'The Almighty' who visited Abraham in Genesis 17.

In our standard English versions of the New Testament pantokrator is generally translated as, 'Almighty'. As Sidlow Baxter says in Majesty, "It certainly does mean almighty, but it is almightiness with a distinctive complexion. The prefix, pan, means 'all'. The remainder, krator, means power, but especially power in the sense that the word, krator, is united with pan in the adjective, pantokrator means all-dominion. The nearest English translation of it is 'all-sovereign'".

StudyLight.org ( www.studylight.org) defines Pantokrator as:

1. he who holds sway over all things

2. the ruler of all

3. almighty: God

In the New Testament, the word pantokrator is found only in Revelation (except once in a quotation from the Old Testament – 2 Corinthians 6:18 ).

Here are the references to Pantokrator (Almighty in KJV) in Revelation

Rev 1:8 - I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty.

Rev 4:8 - And the four beasts had each of them six wings about him; and they were full of eyes within: and they rest not day and night, saying, Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, which was, and is, and is to come.

Rev 11:17 - Saying, We give thee thanks, O Lord God Almighty, which art, and wast, and art to come; because thou hast taken to thee thy great power, and hast reigned.

Rev 15:3 - And they sing the song of Moses the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb, saying, Great and marvellous are thy works, Lord God Almighty; just and true are thy ways, thou King of saints.

Rev 16:7 – And I heard another out of the altar say, Even so, Lord God Almighty, true and righteous are thy judgments.

Rev 16:14 - For they are the spirits of devils, working miracles, which go forth unto the kings of the earth and of the whole world, to gather them to the battle of that great day of God Almighty.

Rev 19:6 – And I heard as it were the voice of a great multitude, and as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of mighty thunderings, saying, Alleluia: for the Lord God omnipotent, reigneth.

Rev 19:15 - And out of his mouth goeth a sharp sword, that with it he should smite the nations: and he shall rule them with a rod of iron: and he treadeth the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty, God.

Rev 21:22 – And I saw no temple therein: for the Lord God Almighty, and the Lamb are the temple of it.

Jesus Christ is Pantokrator (All-Sovereign)
Revelation 1:7-8 refers to Jesus Christ as the Pantokrator . "Behold He comes with clouds, and every eye shall see Him, even those who pierced Him and all tribes of the earth shall wail over Him. Yes, truly. I am the Alpha and the Omega, says the Lord God, who is, who was, and who is coming, the Almighty (Pantokrator)."

Here's the definition of Pantokrator from Wikipedia:
Pantocrator literally means "Lord (or master) of Everything (the universe)". It is one of the names given to Christ. At the Council of Nicaea, the divinity of Christ was officially defined as Pantokrator, the master of everything. The word is usually translated as "almighty" in English but has a subtler meaning, indicating an active creator who remains fully engaged in the world. It identifies Christ as the Logos, "without whom was not anything made that was made," and with the Alpha and the Omega, "who was, and is, and is to come."

Friday, December 01, 2006

Just another excuse for a party

Tis the season to be jolly, Fa la la la la la la la la la…

December, the mother of all weekends is here. In a world where "work hard, party hard" seems to be the general philosophy, weekends are a rave. We leave our offices early and hurry to the nearest bars, cafes, malls and discotheques. We have worked hard the whole week (or so we like to think), now it's time to unwind. From Miller time on Friday to Sunday dinner time we sleep, eat, drink and splurge like there is no tomorrow.

Come December, and it's no different.... Take any average weekend magnify this many times (approx. 15 times), throw in a fat man in a red outfit… some holly, mistletoe, a fir tree, some trinkets, lights and voila...we have X'mas!!!

X'mas like any other festival has become an excuse. For what? To let our hair down, to have a ball. All in the name of Jesus. Which Jesus? 100s of Jesuses are being born daily in Latin American countries. Surely not those Jesuses!!! The Jesus I know is the Christ, the Savior of the world. Where is He in all the festivities? He is nowhere (at least visibly). He is working silently in the hearts of those who are reaching out to Him for grace.

X'mas is no longer only for Christians. Why else would non-christian far eastern countries start decking up the place as early as early November? Or why would my non-christian neighbour buy an X'mas tree and have it all decked up? It's time to celebrate. It doesn't matter what or why. While marketeers race to "cash in" on the season, for the average Joe, it's an invitation to start his year-end celebrations. After that it's a whole month of eat, drink, party and shop till we drop. All this culminates with one final binge on New Year's eve. Come Jan 1 and half the world wakes up with one massive hangover that lasts the whole month, not to mention new year blues. Once again we trudge through the whole year waiting for that mother-of-all-weekends at the end of the year. The cycle repeats.

Oh ya, then there are some of us who sit on our haunches the whole year and suddenly spring into action with plays/chorals/shows to "evangelize" the whole world. Hiding behind the façade of X'mas we hope "they" get the "message". Having done our bit, we then settle down to another year of contemplation and complacency.

At the core of almost all festivities lies it main ingredients: Lots of food, drink, revelry and gifts (read materialism/consumerism). Add to this small lamps, (diyas), crackers/fireworks and presto we have Diwali, the Indian festival of lights. Or add parades, colorful floats, samba music and naked ladies and it's Mardi Gras! Or paper dragons and lanterns, and we have the Chinese New Year.

What has changed? Nothing. We just need an excuse to celebrate.

Wish you a merry(hic) Christmas and a weary new year!

Wednesday, November 22, 2006

Supreme Justice

On the evening of November 3, 2003, while returning from the home of a classmate, 7-year-old Raj Preet Kaur (alias Guddi) a 2nd standard student was allured to the cotton field of Amrit Singh, a farmer from Ramgarh estate in Shahpuria, Punjab (India).

31- year-old Amrit Singh raped the little girl. She died of excessive bleeding from her private parts. Her dead body was recovered from the field late that night.

He was arrested on the basis of a statement of a witness who had seen the victim in his company on the fateful evening. M.S. Chohan, Additional Sessions Judge, Mansa, sentenced Amrit Singh to death after holding him guilty of raping a minor and then murdering her. The sentence was later upheld by the Punjab and Haryana High Court.

Investigators had pointed out that the little girl had resisted the 31-year-old Amrit Singh. Some black hair was found in her hand, which they felt was Singh's.

He had refused to offer his hair sample for a DNA test.

The victim's body bore the sign of extreme brutality. She was smothered and grievously assaulted by Singh. His lawyer had sought to give a twist to the case saying some other persons who were not arrested might have raped and killed her.

Amrit Singh moved the apex court challenging the conviction. On November 13, 2006, three years after the ruling of the trial court, the Supreme Court of India, commuted the death sentence to life imprisonment.

Times of India (November 13, 2006)

A Supreme Court Bench comprising Justices S B Sinha and Dalveer Bhandari also agreed with the trial court and the HC about the guilt of the accused and felt that Amrit was rightly convicted for rape.

However, it had serious doubts about fastening the murder charge on the accused. "The death occurred not as a result of strangulation but because of excessive bleeding," the Bench said quoting the doctor's report, which noted that at that age, a girl has two litres of blood in the body and as she had bled half-a-litre of blood, it was enough to cause death from shock.

"The death occurred, therefore, as a consequence of, and not because of, any specific act on the part of the accused," said Justice Sinha, writing the judgment.

It refused to classify the gruesome act as a "rarest of rare" case which had resulted in the death of a girl who was ostensibly being escorted home by the accused, her neighbor, on the evening of November 3, 2003.

Courts impose a death sentence only after being convinced that the case falls in the rarest of rare category.

The apex court imposed rigorous imprisonment for life on Amrit Singh, but when judged by the standards used in the Hetal Parekh case, the Bench may seem to have taken a lenient view of the heinous crime.

The Supreme Court Bench said: "Amrit Singh had no premeditation for commission of the offence. The offence may look heinous, but under no circumstances can it be said to be a rarest of rare case."

"Momentary lapse" as a mitigating factor may be cited by the defence attorney of a rape case accused. "The way the girl was raped may be brutal, but it could have been a momentary lapse on the part of Amrit Singh, seeing a lonely girl at a secluded place."

(The above news has been compiled from sources such as Ind Law News, The Tribune, DNA India. The latter portion was compiled from “Victim dies, rapist spared the noose” Times of India, dated November 13, 2006.)

Life imprisonment in India usually means 14 years. That means Amrit Singh would be a free man before he is 50 (maybe even 10 years earlier). Imagine if he was not rescued by the Supreme Court, he would be a dead man. What were the trial courts thinking while awarding Amrit Singh the death sentence? Can’t they empathize with a 31-year-old man who was burning with lust? All he did was give vent to his primeval urge – never mind it was on an 7-year-old girl. He did not mean to leave the little girl bleeding slowly to her death in the cotton field. As Justice Sinha noted, death occurred “not because of any specific act on the part of the accused”. At least he did not strangle her. It was, after all, just a “momentary lapse”. Don’t we all err some time or the other? As the court said, it only “looked heinous”.

To empathize with a person, one has to be of a similar bent of mind. Thank goodness our Apex court has people who can empathize with criminals like Amrit Singh!

It’s time Lady Justice took off her blindfold.