Okay, so it seems like after much confusion, I have sort of figured this out.

I've been thinking of reinventing myself on the blog for quite sometime now. Since I have also been thinking of using the film blog, and recently was invited to join a class blog (which I couldn't do with the same account as this blog), I decided to make a change.

I looked around for Wordpress, and found the many different and yet consistently confusing ways of exporting my blogger blog to wordpress. Then I gave up. Went to blogger Help, which really did help! I don't know why I don't trust the Help links on things - I just assume I will have to fend for myself in this big bad web world. Anyway, so blogger Help suggested I add a new author as my new account, and then delete the old author (after giving the new account admin rights, obviously!). So, much like Pakistani politics, I let the new account come in, gain power, and become the sole author by getting rid of the old account. That reminds me, the horrible bomb explosion that happened a day before. Whatever little I heard about it made it very obvious that the blast was a big deal because it happened in a 5 star hotel - "a favorite with foreigners, particularly Westerners". I understand that it makes us uncomfortable when the powerful, the wealthy are attacked. It proves that the attackers are getting bold, and becoming capable of just about anything. Although it makes me sad to think in this capitalist mode, but it seems like even the attackers work with the same ideology. They very well know where it hurts the most.

Moving on, I had something to share related to Chandni's recent post. For a long time now, I have been looking for people, places, things, events, memories, anything that would prove that there was a time in the past when Hindus and Muslims lived happily with each other. Since I wasn't alive to see it with my own eyes, very often I begin to doubt whether it was ever so. With the rise of Hindu fundamentalism since the early 1990's, it seems like a lot of the evidence has been erased. It is almost unbelievable when I do come across a story like the one I share here.

"He spoke often of a time in his childhood when he had been seized by the desire to create a small Hindu temple in his room in Srinagar. He was initially hesitant to tell his parents but when he did they responded with an enthusiasm equal to his own. His mother bought him murtis (mini-idols) and other accouterments and for a while he was assiduous in conducting pujas at this shrine."

Amitav Ghosh writing about Agha Shahid Ali after his death in December 2001.

Going back to blog issues - if you haven't figured it out yet, I have decided to have a separate film blog. Sorry to readers who disagreed. That blog will have my real name and information, just because I would like that one to also work as a portfolio/resume when the time comes.

Am off to Sodus, NY in an hour - visiting a Hispanic church with my professor. It's been raining a bit, so will hopefully get to see some rich green countryside. Immigration officers recently carried out a raid at this church, and since then most of the church-goers (who are undocumented farm workers in the area) stopped going for the fear of being caught. Since then a lot of people, most of whom are non-Christians, go every Sunday to stand outside the church in support of the undocumented people. We're going to do the same. Should be fun. More later :)

P.S. - Piper gave me the Blogging Friends Forever Gold Card! (Standing ovation) Thank you, thank you! ;)