Hari Sud’s International View

  Marriage - A Shimla boy marrying a Shimla girl. This is my story and I am the Shimla boy marrying a Shimla girl who has not yet been identified. In Shimla, in the good old days, everything happened by word of mouth. The era of shadi.com or matrimony.com was about 35 years hence. The ultra conservative Sud/Sood community, mostly looks within the community to find a match. My mother back in Shimla was in an overdrive to find a match for me. My parents had moved back from Shimla to the warmer climate of our village in Kangra district after a lifetime of business in Shimla. They had less contact with the next generation, so my mother made frequent trips back to Shimla to find a decent girl for me. My sister in Shimla often wrote about her arrival and departure, but never threw a hint about the purpose. My mother’s main requirement for the girl was ‘pretty, highly qualified (matching mine) and if possible qualified in the kitchen also’. On her third trip, someone mentioned that a gi...

 Tales of Shimla I belong to roughly the same period in Simla's 1950s as the Group Captain Yadav wrote about. The schools were only a few and far away from home. Most of my classmates were Punjabi speaking Lahoriayas as a large number of them had arrived after the partition. We the locals (I am from Kangra) mixed well with them, but sometimes experienced problems. The docile ones were from the upper Himachal (Mahasu District) or the locals from in and around Shimla. They never picked up a fight and spoke their dialect of Pahari. On occasion, we called them “khaddus”, but we had no idea what that meant. That was a term for us to call them names in a classroom quarrel. They seldom picked up a fight, always helpful. Only after the good Group Captain’s note in the Tales of Shimla that I know after 60 years that Khaddu is an important personification. I have no idea where these  classmates of mine are today. It has only recently come to my attention that one of them has retired as ...

  Tragedy of Managing Covid Pandemic in US The US has a sophisticated medical system and is currently capable of dealing with most medical emergencies. It has defeated most pandemics in the past. May it be the AIDS of eighties and nineties, SAARS, Swine Flu of early this century and everyday adult or childhood diseases, it has found the cure and beaten it back. In this case, why can't they manage the brand new pandemic of COVID-19? There are 16/17 million people who have been tested positive in the US for this virus and over three hundred thousand have died. Although at the time of writing, two pharmaceutical companies have come out with the vaccine, but vaccinating the whole country on a war footing is probably 8 to 10 months away. To date, the spread of the disease has not been contained. I do believe that this sudden inflow of COVID-19 virus from China caught them by surprise. It took them a while to realize the dimensions of the whole issue, although the Chinese played a major ...

  Chinese Propaganda War on India and Others. After the Chinese lost the battle of LAC to India in August 29/30, when India occupied Kailash Heights in Ladakh, the Chinese launched their propaganda offensive. They were unable to get the height(s) vacated hence propaganda was the only battle tactic they were left with. Their English language mouthpiece The Global Times was one of the key weapon. Furthermore, they have built an enormous network of influence in western media by spending an average of $10 billion a year over the past 10 to 12 years to get their point of view, no matter how false, broadcast or printed. In the past six weeks, there have been four glaring examples, three against India and one against Australia. 1. It was a surprise that a respected London media outlet, "The Times," wrote an outright lie that the Chinese were using a "direct energy weapon" (microwave) at the LAC to chase Indian troops from the hills. The report was denied by the forward Ind...