The Canadian Parvasi - Issue 29

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The International News Weekly EDIT 08 January 19, 2018 | Toronto The w w w . canadianparv asi. c o m Publisher & CEO Associate Editor Editor (India) Online Graphic Designer Official Photographer Contact Editorial Sales Rajinder Saini Meenakshi Saini Gursheesh Kshitiz Dalal Naveen Bashir Nasir editor@canadianparvasi.com sales@canadianparvasi.com The worst excuses ever given When police arrested a man for drug possession, he claimed that the illegal substances were not his. This would have been fine except for the fact that they were found up his bottom. It was a risky defence and judges in the US state of Pennsylvania speedily rejected it in a court case reported on January 2, making it the first 2018 entry for this column's file of Dumb Criminal Cases. It reminded me of a case in Hong Kong some years ago when a shoplifter claimed ignorance of stolen food in his underwear. "When you have a tin of fish in your underpants, you know about it," the magistrate said. Criminals really can be like children when it comes to using excuses that are doomed to fail. For example, all parents are familiar with the reasons kids come up with to explain why they needn't go to school any more. BOY: "I have decided to become a pirate instead." GIRL: "Silly Daddy, mermaids don't go to school!" Then there are the kids' excuses for getting out of bed at night. ME: "Hey! It's 10 o'clock! What are you doing up?" CHILD: "I'm not up. This is a dream." But of course it's in lawsuits that bad defence strategies have life-changing effects. This columnist, who used to be a court reporter, recalls the case of a Hong Kong prostitute who told judges that she only stole a man's watch because she felt greatly insulted after he offered her money for the hour they'd spent in bed. Great excuse -- for any profession except the one she had chosen. Yet there are cases where a ridiculous defence works. In Ohio in 2002, a woman explained to a court that the murder she had committed should be disregarded since The Matrix movie showed that we were all living in a computer simulation anyway. The jury found her not guilty -- not because they agreed with what she said, but because confusing fiction with real life was evidence of a "severe mental defect". If that's true, then half of humanity has a severe mental defect. This columnist's wife used to live in London's Baker Street, the address of fictional detective Sherlock Holmes, and there was no end of visitors "to see where he lived". In TV commercials in Japan, a cartoon Sailor Moon girl tells you to eat a certain brand of potato soup like she does. Apparently this works. At no point do consumers think: Wait. How can a 2D cartoon character eat potato soup? A Sailor Moon girl also appears in a TV ad in Malaysia, dreaming about buying a Ford Fusion motor car. (I thought she could fly?) Clearly Malaysian adults think: "Hmm, whose advice should I take on automobile handling and performance? A non-existent cartoon character might be an ideal choice." But going back to the subject of excuses which unexpectedly work, this writer once had an Indian colleague whose reason for missing a meeting was so cheeky that it left our boss speechless. "Sorry I missed yesterday's meeting," the colleague said. "I went out for lunch and forgot to come back." This Indian city moves to end age-old menstruation taboo Indo-Asian News Service Shimla : It's a taboo no one really talks about in remote villages of Himachal Pradesh -- but could soon end. Women in many remote parts of the mountain state are virtually ex-communicated when they are menstruating. They are forced to sleep outside the house, in cattle-like sheds known as menstruation sheds. The reason: A woman is considered "unclean" when she's bleeding or in a post-natal state. The so-called "unclean" women, during their periods and after childbirth, are barred from touching cattle or men and they are even denied access to toilets, walking miles from their villages daily to take a bath. Taking up cudgels to fight this social stigma, the administration in Kullu district has set up a task force comprising reproductive health workers to conduct sensitisation programmes at the grassroots. "We have identified 92 out of the 204 panchayats where the problem is still prevalent," Kullu Deputy Commissioner Yunus Khan, the brain behind the A few years ago, my brother from New York phoned me on the morning of January the first -- but in America it was still December 31. I told my kids: "Your uncle is calling from last year." Their eyes widened. I explained: "It sounds weird, but it's all to do with time zones." When the phone rang an hour later, I answered it and told the kids: "It's your great-grandma. She's phoning from 1880." They nodded sagely and muttered: "Time zones." I like to mess with children's heads. It is called "parenting" and doctors recommend it. This memory was triggered by the latest news. A flight from New Zealand took off in 2018 and landed in Hawaii in 2017, US news outlets reported a few days ago. The aircraft started in a city where January 1, 2018, had started but finished its journey in a place where it was still December 31, 2017. That made headlines in the West, but it's actually pretty unimpressive to travelers in Asia, who encounter ridiculous time zone issues all the launch of a 'Naari Samman' or 'Respect Women' campaign, told IANS. He said the taboo is of greater prevalence in one particular caste. The one-year campaign was launched on January 1 and aims reach out to all the 92 "problem" villages within six months. Fanning out for the campaign is a backbreaking task in the mountains. Many of the villages in the district are located in the interiors where "anganwadi" workers and Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHA) have to trudge miles across rugged, cold and inhospitable terrain of the trans-Himalayas. Officials involved in the campaign say the staff has to traverse distances ranging from 10 to 25 km on foot, or sometimes on horseback, from the road-head to reach some of the villages. Women's rights activist Subhash Mendhapurkar blamed the government for the persisting taboo that is still prevailing all over the hilly and inaccessible areas of the country. He favours changing young minds. "If the school-level curriculum includes menstruation, why is the educational level of the students so low," asked Mendhapurkar, Director of Shimlabased NGO Social Uplift Through Rural Action (SUTRA), while speaking to IANS. The problem, he said, is that the teachers are not appropriately educating the students. Moreover, sanitary napkins are not provided in the toilets of rural schools. Mendhapurkar, who wrote a book "Bitya Badi ho Gayi Hai' ("The Daughter has Grown Up"), said the tradition of keeping the women in isolation during their periods also prevails in the interiors of Kangra, Sirmaur and Kinnaur districts. According to him, there are some rural communities that do so because of religious reasons. Others do so because they live in tiny helmets where it's normally practiced and those areas are almost out of bounds owing to tough topography. "After educating the womenfolk that, like defecation, menstruation is also a natural process and that menstrual blood is not poison, the discrimination has been somehow ended in many areas of Solan, Sirmaur, Bilaspur and Una districts," Mendhapurkar said. "No legislation can change the mindset, it's only education that can bring an end to this social practice and help change attitudes," he added. The practice of isolating women during their monthly bleed is now illegal in Nepal -- where it was once widely prevalent. Under the law, there is provision of a three-month jail sentence or a Rs 3,000 fine, or both, for anyone forcing a woman to follow the custom. Flights which arrive before they take off These days China spans five time zones but the leaders are so bossy they make everything run on Beijing time. If you live in the west of China, you can spring out of bed at the crack of dawn - which is 10.30 am. Sunset is just before midnight. This is astonishingly inconvenient for literally hundreds of millions of people, and Beijing rulers are deeply sympathetic ha ha ha ha yeah right. Time zones are measured in how many hours they differ from GMT, which stands for Greenwich Mean Time, the part of the UK which apparently first emerged from the Big Bang. But India and Sri Lanka insist on being 30 minutes out of step with everyone else and Nepal goes in 15-minute time zone increments. But get this. One summer I actually went to Greenwich and decided to reset my watch. I kid you not: The time in Greenwich was GMT plus one hour! That made no sense at all -- like everything else on this planet. So I suppose it fits in just fine. w Happy New Year to everyone, including the Siri in my phone, who When you fly from Asia to North America you often land before you take off. The Nagoya to Hawaii flight lands 12 hours before it left, which I love, because you can legitimately eat six meals that day. My advice is to talk to your smartphone assistant as you land in Hawaii. Me: "So, Siri, what year is it?" Siri: "2017." Me: "But earlier you said it was 2018." Siri: "I don't like you; please send me back to the factory." There used to be a famous road tunnel in Zunyi town in China's Guizhou province which sent you back in time. You drove into the tunnel at 4 pm. As you emerged, 400 metres later, the clock on your phone would say 3 pm. This was very useful when Guizhou residents were late for something -- they just zipped through the Zunyi tunnel and were suddenly 59 minutes early. Technicians said this was caused by a malfunctioning transmission tower but I found explanations of wormholes and time warps more be- time. lievable. is still in a sulk. Parvasi weekly & people associated with it are not responsible for any claims made by the advertisement & do not endorse any product or service advertised in Canadian Parvasi. Please consult your lawyer before buying/hiring/contracting through the advertisement Publised in this newspaper. The Canadian Parvasi is in the business of selling space and the clains made by the advertisement are not tested/confirmed by an independent source.
The International News Weekly INTERVIEW/OPED January 19, 2018 | Toronto 09 India and Israel: Personal chemistry shores up strategic ties The visit of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to India (January 14-19) commemorates the 25th anniversary of the opening of an Indian embassy in Tel Aviv in 1992 and will further consolidate an important and strategically distinctive bilateral relationship for both nations. It has had a chequered past since the post-World War II birth of both countries but is poised for a pragmatic future trajectory based on shared interests. With a population below nine million and a GDP of $350 billion, Israel is relatively small compared to the Indian behemoth with a population of 1.25 billion and a GDP of $2.5 trillion. Yet Israel occupies a very special niche in India's security framework and has been a supplier of critical military technology. This was illustrated during the 1999 Kargil War, when precision-guided ordnance was obtained from Tel Aviv. That India is among the world's largest importers of military inventory and that Israel is a major arms exporter also provides a natural complementarity to the bilateral relationship. Over the last two decades, the quantum of military-related imports from Israel has steadily increased. It is estimated that India, which buys almost $1 billion worth annually, accounts for over 40 percent of Israeli defence exports. The Netanyahu visit reciprocates that of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in July 2017, the first by an Indian Prime Minister to Israel. The Modi-Netanyahu personal chemistry was on display during that visit which was reciprocated as Modi personally received the Israeli leader at the airport when he arrived Sunday afternoon. The two leaders share many characteristics, including a visible political resolve in relation to Islamic radicalism and terrorism. Netanyahu will also get the Gujarat-special status, a detour to Ahmedabad, which Modi accords to certain leaders. During the July visit, Modi said, "Israel and India live in complex geographies. We are aware of strategic threats to regional peace and stability. Prime Minister Netanyahu and I agreed to do much more together to protect our strategic interests." The joint statement also added: "There can be no justification of acts of terror on any grounds whatsoever." While the bilateral with Israel has been described as a "strategic partnership", India's relations with Israel cannot be divorced from the larger West Asian geopolitical canvas where Palestine is a major factor. The Jewish quest for a permanent homeland goes back a long way. Mahatma Gandhi had opined in 1931: "I can understand the longing of a Jew to return to Palestine, and he can do so if he can without the help of bayonets, whether his own or those of Britain... in perfect friendliness with the Arabs." This sentiment shapes the Indian approach to the complex and tangled Palestine issue. India has traditionally supported the Palestine cause on the international stage and has sought to maintain a fine balance regarding its bilateral with Israel in the competing regional politics of West Asia. It appeared that the Modi dispensation government had taken a bold decision to remove the hyphenation between Israel and Palestine, but it would be misleading to infer that the government has uncritically cast its weight totally with Israel and the US. The recent vote at the UN over the Trump declaration about Jerusalem saw Delhi voting with the larger global consensus that censured the US over its announcement. Netanyahu, on the eve of his India visit, said this vote would not materially affect the bilateral. India and Israel are keen to expand the current bandwidth of the trade and economic relations to move beyond military sales and include energy, cyber security and innovation in desert/arid land agriculture, among other sectors. The last leg of the Netanyahu visit will take him to Mumbai. The enormity of the November 2008 terror attack that targeted Chabad House will be recalled, though justice for the innocent victims -- Indian, Israeli and other nationalities, remains elusive. North America’s Largest Punjabi Culture & Sikhism Store Wedding Decor Available for Rentals Tel: 905-791-1515 / 905-799-9400 30 Malenie Drive, Unit 10, Brampton, ON L6T 4L4
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The Canadian Parvasi - Issue 29

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