God and cartoons

There are several cartoons and movies making fun of Jesus on the internet. In the United States, there are even mainstream publications that publish these cartoons, while the primary point of these cartoons is ridiculing the christian right, some of them do come across as ridiculing Jesus.

 My question is  - why is it okay for Jesus to be portrayed in insensitive cartoons and films and not Mohammad?

 We in the south of this country, India, have a strong presence of atheist movements and are used to God-bashing. There is even a Tamil poem that I heard as a child that goes something like this :

''Shiva kept Parvati in his heart,
Vishnu kept Lakshmi by his side,
Brahma kept Saraswati on his tongue,
Where would she pee and poop? Where? ''

Would my faith be any lesser just because some idiots are making fun of my God? Can't people just let these things go? And can't politicians stop trying to get mileage from these fundamentalists' protests and attacks on people who are just expressing their opinion, and crack down on them? While peaceful protests and even taking their case to the law is anyone's right, how is bombing embassies and killing alright? And why are the governments involved trying to pacify these religious hardliners thereby the terrorists groups they support instead of taking severe action against them?

India Vs Bharat and on a totally different topic - Love stories

We all think so much. Our minds are active every waking moment in conscious thought but when it comes to a decision of what chain of thought we want to write about for public consumption, there are a very few that qualify. The reasons are many - we think too much about topics which we think are undeserving of attention enough to write about, too important to be blogged about, topics that would hurt friends, lovers, relatives if they read the blog, etc etc. So, the mighty thought pool gets drier and drier when filtered through for other people to read. Sigh. My filters are just as bad as anyone else's.

So here's the topic for now, India Vs Bharat.

People in every field of business have their own jargon, expressions and language that seem like code words to everyone else who does not have the privilege of belonging there. I'm studying something new and so I want to talk about that.

In the marketing industry, they have something called India and something else called Bharath and they are two entirely different entities.Metros, 2nd tier and even 3rd tier cities are all called India- the people already there have arrived - globalised and at par with everyother consumer( meaning - can and will buy anything at all offered in a free market ) in the world. Whereas Bharath is the 4th tier city, the townies, the villages and the boondocks beyond- where apparently everyone wants to be in India.

Highly debatable, I know, but this is what I understand from the sales,marketing, distribution and ad walas who come to (special guest) lecture us in college.

Topic Change

I have been watching back to back episodes of Bones and hence rooting for Booth and Brennan to get together already which led to thinking whether it’s a good thing to want a great love story personally.
( I mean sure, they have gotten pregnant, but their getting together was hyped so much and hinted at in each episode from the first, but the story arc wasn't as detailed at particular point as it needed to be - because Emily Deschanel got preggers in real life and they needed to write in a pregnancy into the story line. I think there will have to be a flashback - how they actually got together -episode like in Friends (Monica and Chandler:-))

so anyway - It’s every young girl’s dream to have a great love story, although meeting someone wonderful is only the least of it. There has to be almost insurmountable obstacles for the two of them to get together, but finally love should overcome all these reality-related difficulties and they get together to live happily ever after, preferably, with each other.
But the thing is that great love stories do not make for happiness in real life, it’s all angst-y, anxious, nerve wracking and gives people ulcers when actually in them. It is when two people find compatibility that lasts over time that happiness seems to be created- the domestic bliss kind of happiness. (I am seeing how marriages are built every day, each and every one of my close friends is hitched or is on his/her way to getting there.

I keep meeting them during their 1. Initial awkward courtship( no lightning or anything, just two very gauche youngsters trying to keep the other person interested and keep showing interest), 2. More stable couple-ship/dom after having dated for a few months to a year where there are shared glances indicating some shared experiences that they have in common with only each other and a kind of surface level understanding of the other, 3. Early married days when there is disagreement and fief, but grudging adjustments, and then 4. Within a year to three years- this gradual mingling of two distinct personalities into an entity that accommodates the good and the bad of both individuals, that every action of both parties in a social setting with common friends shows that there is symbiosis between the two of them). This kind of thing seems to cement the relationship and then they create a unit/family that goes on growing in unity or call it strength.

As opposed to the passionate- I can’t live without you, I will commit suicide if I can’t have you, I need to rip your clothes off this very second, I will live in an eternal funk and chop all my hair off if you are not in my life, I have never had this kind of chemistry with anyone else it has to be love, etc etc - kinds of love that makes for dramatic stories, wonderful stories that we all root for on screen and stage and book, but which seem to flop horribly in reality. There is such a divide that it seems that what we venerate is the exact opposite of what we need.