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Editorial
Is Urhalpool a bridge between the
spiritual world and the
living world? We do
not think so. Urhalpool
does not have any religion, the
same way a language cannot belong to a particular religion. Though
quite often,
we become confused. Many
people think
that Urdu is a language only for those in
Recently Barack Obama won the Nobel
Peace Prize, and the
world’s expectation of him reached the sky.
Only the future will tell if he is the leader at this
historic
juncture. However,
we can say this much:
that it is impossible for him to solve all the problems in the world. At the same time, he may
be the leader to
guide us through these troubled times.
And if we, the people, feel happy and start sleeping
because Obama is
already in office, we will see after our long sleep that Obama will
have gone
and we will still be stuck in the middle of miserable storms. Human civilization has
been choked to death
from terrorist storms, warmongers’ storms, and the storms of religious
orthodoxy. Recently,
one of my friends
told me that among the countries he visited, he found the worst forms
of
poverty in
I have been traveling for ages
through the long long miles
spending much money in many lands
went to see mountain ranges
went to see the river Sindu.
Yet I didn’t see with my eyes open
what lay in front of my own door’s steps;
a drop of dew
on the top of a grain of rice
We see poverty everywhere in the
world. We ignore
long lines in front of soup
kitchens in various industrial towns.
This country, which carries the most powerful currency in
the world, the
US dollar, cannot feed its own citizens, cannot take care of the health
of millions! Like
the millions under old Soviet rule who
used to believe everything about
We see poverty in literature too. The same stories of immigrant experiences, feel good cinematic stories, or even individual experiences of shame or torture; everything is on sale in the main street! On the other hand, worldwide spoken languages are disappearing at an alarming rate. Languages may also follow Charles Darwin’s survival of fittest theory, and some will vanish following the nature’s law, like the many life forms which have already vanished from our planet. We are fighting to save life forms; similarly we need to make conscious efforts to save languages from disappearing. Our planet is beautiful because of its diversity in life forms, diversity in colors, diversity in races, diversity in languages. Maybe these are subjects for debate. We are keeping Urhalpool’s white pages open for the readers to fill them with the ink of straight talk and real conversation. Let many languages use Urhalpool as their creative bridge for conversation.
