Monday, July 29, 2013

Pakistani Driver in NZ faces Racist Passenger

What this Pakistani taxi driver faced is worth publicising.

Not to show the passenger up as a stupid racist and an obnoxious bigot. That is obvious. But for other reasons.

People band together for various reasons - the colour of their skin, the language they speak or the accent they speak it with, the clothes they wear, what they eat or the customs or religion they practice. Anyone who looks or behaves different, especially if they are in the minority, finds it difficult to blend in. To that extent racism exists everywhere and within many of us.

Unfortunately, some folks show their prejudice and suspicion of the hateful "others" in the manner of this passenger. That's when the law keeps everyone safe. Let's be honest. We face racist slurs in India and Pakistan too - with depressing regularity. At the same time we know that not everyone in these countries is prejudiced. It is the same over here, in New Zealand.

Have a look at the comments after the Youtube video. About forty percent are for and sixty against the passenger's racist words.

What's commendable is the way the Pakistani driver keeps his cool however hard the passenger tries to get a rise out of him. What worries me is that anyone with a racist attitude, if he is fitter than the passenger in this taxi, could easily let fly his fists along with his racist slurs.

What I'd like New Zealand to discuss is - what do we do to prevent injury to a driver? Putting up the video camera in all taxis is a good idea. But more needs to be done to keep a taxi driver - in fact both, the driver and passenger - safe from the few rotten eggs that are around.

The official tone taken is that of censure to the passenger. I hope this passenger doesn't get away with a mere rap on his knuckles. He says he is sorry - that he was drunk - probably to escape punishment. Perhaps it would be fitting for him to do some community work within the community he despises so much and pay the driver for a day's worth of business apart from whatever else the NZ courts want to fine him.

Here's the video.



Monday, July 22, 2013

Guest Post - Husband in Hot Water


I first came to know Debajyoti when he let loose a tongue-in-cheek cartoon about bloggers. Something funny with a large dose of truth that makes people uncomfortable even as they laugh! I was hooked. Since, I have visited his posts and have enjoyed not only his cartoons but also his story telling skills. He has an unusual imagination. Want to know about a dog with a positive attitude whose theme song is, “Nirma....Nirma”, visit Debajyoti’s blog. 

But today, please visit his blog to read my guest post about the story of a stroppy wife and her poor, misunderstood husband and the wonderfully amusing cartoon he’s drawn to compliment the tale. Incidentally, this was half my entry for the Harper Collins, "Get Published" contest.

The link again: http://factsandnonsense.com/a-husband-in-hot-water/

Sunday, July 21, 2013

Two Organisations Helping My Veg-Growing / Swapping Efforts

My husband and I have recently taken to gardening. Our enthusiasm must be catching for our daughter has made a very public pact with her brother and cousins on facebook that when they grow old they promise not to bore everyone with their gardening exploits. She belongs to a choir and has promised if we talk of gardening, she'll sing songs at us :). Our response- don't push it till you've tried it. 

Ambitious as I am, without becoming great at gardening and since the NZ government is encouraging city farming (which I've written about on the wonderful Pattu's terraced gardening blog) I've started toying with the idea of a produce swap day in our area. I'm aware that some of the everyday fruits and veggies available in NZ (not talking about exotic ones like hapus keri, the queen of mangoes) use up a lot of fuel to get here. We do have our Saturday Farmers' Market where local growers sell their produce at half the price of supermarkets. But why not take it a step further - get to know the community we live in and help ourselves become more self-sufficient by growing and swapping our own veggies?

This post is about two organisations I feel are helping my efforts. The city council - amongst many things, offers free visits and advice to individual homes. For example, a plot in our garden was overun by weeds. We'd been eyeing it for weeks and were reluctant to use a weed killer. We knew there was only one thing to do. Get the shovel and start digging. After a day of hard labour my husband managed to get one weed out with half its roots. Those roots seemed to reach middle earth. One down, thirty to go. Seeing how hopeless the task was we decided to shut it out of our minds and concentrate on the rest of the garden.

The lady from the city council showed us an easy way to get rid of the weeds and prime our soil for our edibles. She said this particular weed (unfortunately I don't remember its name) is very rich in nitrogen and rather than pull it out we should bury it as it would decompose and enrich our soil. The following diagram says it all.



  • The lime makes the soil acidic
  • the cardboard prevents sunlight and air from reaching the weed
  • the third layer is basically a carbon rich (and dry) layer
  • the fourth is nitrogen rich (and wet) and 
  • all this together slowly decomposes to form more compost ready for the next lot of plants even as we grow our edibles in the compost which is the top layer. 
The Green Gardener has a .pdf document on creating a "no dig garden" that explains it in more general terms - the above was specific to our garden.

Next, I'd like to talk about the free course on starting a project - any project. It is through an organisation which has a strong presence in India. In fact, it is through the Indian branch that I heard about the course. The only qualifier - you can't go it alone. Between 2 and 6 people in a group are invited to enrol for the course -  I asked my neighbour if she would like to do the course with me and she said she would. The course teaches "Human Centred Design" - design based on stepping out of our comfort zones, reaching out to people, formulating ideas, prototyping and evolving them, interview and feedback skills and more. It is a five week course and we are into the second week. All groups - from over 130 countries - keep in touch through google+. We get no certificate at the end of the course - only knowledge to improve our skills of going out into, and dealing with, the community.

Let's see how successful we are. We'll keep you posted. As for our daughter, I'm sure you'll agree, she owes us a song.