Brilliant Parallel!!

Got this from a friend, and have been dying to share it since then!

OLD VERSION...
The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long building his house and laying up supplies for the winter. The grasshopper thinks the ant's a fool and laughs & dances & plays the summer away. Come winter, the ant is warm and well fed. The grasshopper has no food or shelter so he dies out in the cold.

MODERN VERSION
The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter. The grasshopper thinks the ant's a fool and laughs & dances & plays the summer away. Come winter, the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while others are cold and starving.

NDTV, BBC, CNN show up to provide pictures of the shivering grasshopper next to a video of the ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food. The World is stunned by the sharp contrast. How can this be that this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so?

Arundhati Roy stages a demonstration in front of the ant's house. Medha Patkar goes on a fast along with other grasshoppers demanding that grasshoppers be relocated to warmer climates during winter. Amnesty International and Koffi Annan criticize the Indian Government for not upholding the fundamental rights of the grasshopper.

The Internet is flooded with online petitions seeking support to the grasshopper (many promising Heaven and Everlasting Peace for prompt support as against the wrath of God for non-compliance).

Opposition MP's stage a walkout.Left parties call for "Bharat Bandh" in West Bengal and Kerala demanding a Judicial Enquiry.CPM in Kerala immediately passes a law preventing Ants from working hard in the heat so as to bring about equality of poverty among ants and grasshoppers.

Lalu Prasad allocates one free coach to Grasshoppers on all Indian Railway Trains, aptly named as the 'Grasshopper Rath'.

Finally, the Judicial Committee drafts the Prevention of Terrorism Against Grasshoppers Act [POTAGA]", with effect from the beginning of the winter.
Arjun Singh makes Special Reservation for Grass Hopper in educational
Insititutions & in Govt Services.

The ant is fined for failing to comply with POTAGA and, having nothing left to pay his retroactive taxes, his home is confiscated by the Government and handed over to the grasshopper in a ceremony covered by NDTV.

Arundhati Roy calls it "a triumph of justice". Lalu calls it 'Socialistic Justice'. CPM calls it the 'revolutionary resurgence of the downtrodden' Koffi Annan invites the grasshopper to address the UN General Assembly.

Many years later...The ant has since migrated to the US and set up a multi billion dollar company in silicon valley.100s of grasshoppers still die of starvation despite reservation somewhere in India ...

As a result of losing lot of hard working ants and feeding the grasshoppers India is still a developing country......

Protests in Kashmir

There are widespread protests in Indian Kashmir over fake encounters. The valley has come to a total standstill.

I appreciate the cause and empathise with the parents who think their children may have been victims.

My question to Kashmiris is:

Why did you not protest when:
1. Your children left homes to join militancy? For decades??
2. Your neighbours were raped, killed and driven out of their homes just because of their religion?

Why did you not protest then? Why did you not bring the valley to a standstill when the militants were touring your villages and recruiting? Did you not know that your children were going out there to kill, rape and victimise?

How many of these photographs being brandished by the protestors, and being lapped up by the media, belong to fake encounters, and how many to young people who left to join the jehad?? Who knows that?

I had no idea that the valley could talk. Wish, really do, that the valley had spoken sooner. Much, much sooner.

PoP Quiz!

I usually keep smarty ideas to myself, and don't particularly like people who put common sense in a bottle, label it, and sell it for a brand.

But this game, I realised, might help some harried parents/uncles/aunts out there, even though it is based on common sense..

The game helps inculcate an interest in quizzing, but more than that, it helps children recognise and notice small things around them, and it helps parents soothe nerves on a long journey or a bad afternoon at home.

Pop Quiz
Pop Quiz can be played by 2-n no. of players. It is best played among children when the parents are just too harried to talk to them. But before that happens parents, you will have to play it with your 2 years olds at least till they start enjoying the game. I have then used it to check their exam preparedness :-)

Rules
1. One player is selected in any way(chits is the safest) to start the first question.
2. The player asks the question. The question is directed at one player and if that player cannot answer it, then the question passes to the left until everyone has been covered.
3. The first person to answer the question gets a point. If no one can answer a question, the person who put the question gets a point.
4. As soon as any player answers a question, he becomes the "Quizmaster" and starts the next question round.

This continues till you reach the end of your journey/afternoon. The kid with the max points wins.

How this game works (For parents only):
1. Kids try to get difficult questions, since each unanswered question gives them an point. They start looking for things around them and observing them, looking for questions to stump others.
2. They also try to second guess their elder sibling's textbooks, because they assume(correctly) that that is where most of the questions are going to come from.

What do you think?