Some of the most exhausting exercises in life are the ones when one doesn’t exercise at all !

You could wear out your entire energy in just a long winded conversation and at the end of it feel as though you had just run the marathon. The tongue they say is the strongest muscle in the body, and not without reason. It is the tongue that bears the burden of speech and food consumption - both rather consuming exercises !

I have talked my way through most of the day and almost most of the night, today, and there is still some scope for more. I find excessive talking such a waste of energy. Listening is better. Many talk just to be heard, or to make relevant and valid points. Sometimes perhaps, to merely give the impression that they are the ones in control, for they are the ones that are being heard. Wrong ! The ones in control know they are in control. They do not need the consolation of being vocal. Indeed in most meetings of collective intelligent minds, it is the one that has remained the quietest that comes under observation. The one that remains silent is the one you need to fear most !

Quite obviously I was not the one to be feared today. My endless ranting actually increased my appetite, than the increase in understanding the point that I was about to make on the topic of discussion. Once done, I quickly rushed home for a meal than get occupied within an arena that does not want to think so ….

It has always been rare to find the saner elements in life, for so diminished is their number that it becomes embarrassing even to mention them in public debate or conversation. A dearth of the sanity that we require prevails and then everything else either falls into place or gets destroyed.

My head droops in slumber today and my eyes burn with lack of sleep and exhaustion, but writing to the FmXt is primary at any cost, and so it shall be …

Rochelle of NYC, the one that had flown in from NYC to Paris for the Champs Elysees performance and recitation, sent me a pertinent article, which I shall now reproduce. It makes very clear reading ~

KNEE-JERK REACTIONS

If you notice political pundits walking around with neck braces this weekend, it may be because they were whiplashed by the story of Shirley Sherrod.

She’s the Agriculture Department official who was given the bum’s rush out of her job after she made a speech that was clipped by a blogger, that was posted online, that seemed to be racist, that lay in the house that Jack built. Or something like that.

Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack (who up until now was pretty much just the answer to a trivia question) apologized for unceremon iously heaving her from the loft. Seems her comments were taken out of context: that the speech was made long ago, and it was actually about the need to overcome racism in all its nasty forms. Imagine.

The real issue here, however, is not racism. It’s reactionism. For years, Washington and the political media have ramped up the feeding frenzy mentality that passes for news in the same sense that BP passes for an environmental group. The appetite for scandal begat a hunger for instant scandal begat a craving for anything that even looks like scandal, even if the facts haven’t fallen into the furrow.

After all, why coax the seed of truth, when you can pile up the fertilizer of sensationalism? The water falls from the blogosphere, or is piped in by political schemers, many of whom have only a passing familiarity with the truth even on their best days. Their real passion lies in winning. Both sides have pursued this kind of instant, public pillorying with such gusto that each is now terrified of it.

So something like the Sherrod story splashes across the headlines, the damage control police start ringing their alarm bells, and before there is even reasonable time for facts to be determined and weighed, rash action is launched. (As an aside, notice how quickly Washington can move when political image is at stake instead of, oh, say, jobs or the Gulf of Mexico.)

I’m neither defending nor condemning Ms. Sherrod, because I don’t know enough about her case. But others had no problem choosing their course of action, with no more information. And as a result, the Ag Department, the administration, and many in the D.C. media are reaping a bitter harvest.

Hmmmm … interesting !!

The final outcome of the day - if you have patience that is firm and strong, and if you will have the courage of encouragement, you are asking to receive a reward.

But I will respect and honor what is bestowed upon me irrespective of what the adversaries may have in common to say ~

Love

Amitabh Bachchan