salute to America

Barack Obama, the name which people really love repeating these days.... For the past 8 years it feels like America was under the spell of Satan... everything which could go wrong, went wrong... the attacks of 9/11. followed by the so called "war against terrorism" which I doubt did anything better to make this world safer, attack on Iraq, a country, which came towards the end in the long list of countries which had corrupt autocratic governments, the curbs on individual freedom and the rights of the government to snoop on it's citizens and of course not to mention the total seizure of power by the executive with virtually no checks and balances..... Just to make things worse that they already were, the nation faced the worst economic crisis since the great depression....

After all that the American public has gone through for these horrific 8 years, finally they have someone who seems like a person who truly believes in uniting the people, a person who believes in bringing a change. On some levels it feels like a dream, it's as if something completely unbelievable has come true... America has finally risen above the color of the skin and chosen the right path.... It has given hopes to not only millions of Americans but also billions of people living in those corners of the world were "hope" is the last thing you want.... Obama knew what this elections means for the black people, but hardly ever has he fought for it on the basis of the color of his skin... and then we have those parts of the world (aka "India") were virtually nothing goes beyond the talk of caste and reservations for the backward classes....... "backward classes" they call themselves and then demand for reservations... isn't that a complete denigration of oneself and an inherent acceptance of the caste system? Aren't Indians just adding to the problems of the system instead of just solving them?

I hope that this world learns it's lessons from this American presidential election... the virtues of confidence, patience, openness, respect for everyone and rising above the politics of blame games and short sightedness which divide a nation... My salutes to democracy and the people of America who have lived to see this day and make history...

P.S. The photo above is an artist's (Sudarshan Pattnaik) rendition of Barack Obama, a sand sculpture on the beach of Puri, India