From the moment the two 8 year old child stars, Azharuddin Ismail and Rubina  Ali, stepped into the limelight of the film set, of the multi Oscar Award winning film, Slumdog Millionare, they were doomed to becoming the center of controversy.

First there came the complaints from their families, that the children did not receive enough compensation for their acting roles, in a movie that has already grossed over $80 million worldwide.

Controversy has raged over the studios decision to pay for the children’s schooling, but not give them any large amount of money until they are 18 years old. Two months ago Azharuddin’s family were evicted from their slum hovel and the child star has been forced to live underneath a plastic tarpaulin.

There have been a series of clash with the parents over money, as the studios want the children to have long term benefits from their film debut. “People would rightly question whether giving the children a large amount of money was responsible,” says the film producer Christian Colson.

When the studio wanted to take the children to the Oscars, their parents allegedly refused to sign the passport papers, saying they would rather be paid airfares in cash.

Obviously trying to get mileage out of the popularity of the film, with elections just around the corner,  the Maharashtra Housing and Area Development Authority of the City of Mumbai have finally decided to give the two families one-bedroom flats. Azharuddin’s father suffers from tuberculosis, while his mother is blind in one eye. For three generations these families have lived in the sewer ridden slums of Mumbai, always under threat of demolition.

Heroism comes in all shapes and sizes and for many the word has been overdone. However, there are some people who, for whatever reason, are an inspiration to others. People who just never give up, no matter what the odds are. People who are the eternal optimist.

Twenty one year old Douglas Bader’s legs were amputated when he was injured when his RAF plane crashed in 1931. The wing caught the ground while the young Douglas was doing a low level roll, prior to landing.

Douglas never gave up. He demanded some aluminum alloy artificial legs, (prosthese) and learned to drive a car, play tennis and golf and fly a plane without legs. Though discharged medically from the RAF, by 1939, well into the Second World War, Douglas was permitted to rejoin the RAF, after a seven year gap.

The indomitable and legless Bader, was given the challenge of becoming the Acting Squadron Leader of the battle weary, demoralized 242 Hurricane Squadron.  In their first major sortie they took down 12 German planes and never looked back. Bader quickly earned himself a reputation as an ace pilot and became the terror to the Germans. He was among the group of pilots who helped cover the retreat of the British army, at Dunkirk.

August 9th 1941, Baden’s luck ran out and bailed out of his plane, over occupied France, losing his artificial limbs as he fell. He was captured by the Germans. He was recaptured after managing to escape from a hospital unit and had his artificial legs confiscated. He was sent to the high security Colditz Prison, where he became an inspiration to the other prisoners, until his release in 1945. Bador was able to lead his men in a flypast commemorating the end of the war, on September 15th 1945.

Baden survived the war and was not only awarded the DSO for extraordinary leadership, but also the DFC and the Legion D’Honneur and the Croix de Guerre. In 1976 he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth for his service to amputees.

Baden became a legend in his own lifetime with advice like, “Never, never make them persuade you that things are too difficult or impossible. Don’t listen to any one who tells you that you can’t do this or that. That’s nonsense, make up your mind, then have a go for everything”.

His life was immortalized in the British biographical film, ‘Reach For The Sky’, which starred Kenneth Moore, as Douglas. The film strove to teach that problems are merely something to be resolved and that challenges are simply Blue Moon (once in a lifetime) Opportunities to grow. The film won the BAFTA Award for Best British Film of 1956. Captain Bader died in 1982.

Captain Bader will always be held up as a classic example of a person who was never afraid to take a once in a lifetime Blue Moon Opportunity.

Be warned as you read this urban legend, it may or may not be true. Either way it is not only good for a laugh, there is a moral to the story. As Newton’s third law of motion formally states, For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.

A guy decided to work on his motorcycle in the living room of his home, because it had started to rain out on the patio.  He cleaned the engine with some rags and a bowl of gasoline, all in the comfort of his own home.
When he finished, he decided to give his bike a quick start, to make sure everything was still OK. Unfortunately the bike was in gear and ploughed through the glass patio door, with him still clinging to the handlebars.

His startled wife, who was making lunch in the kitchen, came running. She found her husband crumpled on the patio, badly cut from the shards of broken glass. She called 911and the paramedics transferred the unfortunate man to the Emergency Ward at the local hospital.

Later that afternoon, after the doctors stitched the man up, his wife took him home and put him to bed. She cleaned up the mess in the living room and dumped the bowl of liquid in the toilet, not realizing it was gasoline.

When her husband woke up, he lit a cigarette and went into the bathroom for a much-needed relief break. Just as he sat down he tossed the cigarette into the toilet, which promptly exploded because the wife had not flushed the petrol away. The explosion blew the man through the bathroom door.

Hearing the loud explosion and her husband’s screams, the wife ran into the hall where she found her husband lying on the floor, with his trousers blown off and burns on his buttocks. Again she called for the ambulance.

The same two paramedics who had been there in the morning, returned to the house. They loaded the husband on the stretcher once again and began carrying him to the street. One of them asked the wife what had happened. When she told them, they laughed so hard, that they dropped the stretcher and broke the unfortunate guy’s collarbone.

The moral is, whenever you do anything, there will always be an equal and opposite reaction. We seldom foresee all the effects of the equal and opposite reaction, but there are some seriously obvious things we should remember. Small sparks make a large fire and putting cigarettes down a toilet when you are sitting on it, is not a wise idea at any time. Perhaps that is why cigarette smoking has been banned in so many places.

Most married people make it to maybe one or two marriages, unless you are Henry the Eighth, or Elizabeth Taylor. Then the “I do’s” can clock up to eight or nine. Yet even Henry and Elizabeth pale into insignificance in the light of a 68 year old Indiana woman who has walked the aisle 23 times.

Just keeping up with her identification paperwork would be a nightmare that most people would find daunting. Linda Lou, nee Taylor, has had many different names over the past 50 or so years. She now holds a Guinness book record as the most married woman in history.

Linda can’t even remember her husbands in order, but then who was counting? She was married for the first time at the age of 16 to a 31 year old, fresh out of the military. That was her longest marriage, lasting seven years. Her shortest marriage lasted just 36 hours. Not even long enough for her to change her identification papers.

For the past single 12 years, Linda has gone by the surname Wolfe. This was not a marriage of love, but a publicity stunt. Glenn Scotty Wolfe had been up the aisle 29 times, beating Lou by six marriages. How many shelves would their photo albums have covered? Probably the partners now only recognizable by the names printed underneath them. Imagine the mayhem if there was a reunion of all the exs! Days of Our Lives would have nothing on this group.

Scotty died just a few days before they were to celebrate their first year together.

Among Linda’s grooms there have been bartenders, a preacher, a musician, electricians and even a couple of guys who turned out to be gay. Some husbands deserted her, but only one cheated on her. One husband choked her and padlocked her in the refrigerator. Two left her homeless. The strangest vow exchange took place with a one-eyed convict, Tom Stutzman. “He was wrongly accused of rape,” Linda insisted.

Linda is open to any proposals saying, “I’d go again if I was asked. It gets lonely.”

In a modern world where information is king, there are still small remote pockets of people who rely only on tradition and custom, each with their own unique language and ancient way of life. These groups are quickly becoming eroded, as was revealed in Unesco’s recently released comprehensive database of endangered tongues.

Education is not free in the 83 tropical islands of Vanuatu, (New Hebrides), which boasts a staggering total of 110 living languages, in the tiny South Pacific nation. Only Papua New Guinea has more. According to 1997 statistics, which have changed very little, 55.8% of children reach year 6; 26% never go to school at all and only 18.2% have the opportunity to go to high school. Many of their parents can neither read or write and live on under $1 a day.

The International year of languages saw a diverse group of adults from various islands in Vanuatu come together in a workshop, to learn to translate their oral language into the written word. Most only had very basic primary school education. The distinct customs and traditions of their people have been handed down orally over the generations.

“It is the first time most of us have left our remote island home and flown in a plane, or crossed an ocean,” explained Jesse, a mother of two. For most of the students it was the first time they had seen their language in the written form.

Vanuatu is a nation of many endangered languages, with Ifo already extinct on the southern island of Erromango.
·    Only one person can speak Aore in East Santo
·    Ura, another Erromanga language, has only 6 remaining native tongue speakers
·    Only 8 people are able to speak Araki on the southern part of Santo Island
·    10 people only speak Maragus on the island of Malekula
·    Sowa on Central Raga Island has 20 native speakers
·    20 people people speak Nasarian on the Southwest coast of Malekula
·    Tambotala  on Southwest Santo has 50 people who can speak the language
·    50 people speak Mafea on East Santo
·    Dixon Reef is used by 50 people in Southwest Malekula
·    90 people on East Malekula Island speak Repanbitip
·    Lehalurup has only 90 speakers of the language on Ureparapara Island
·    Maii is spoken by only 100 people in the southwest of Epi island
·    Wailapa is used by only 100 people in Southwest Santo
·    Only 105 people can speak Koro on Gaua Island
·    Hiw is used by only 120 people in the Torres Islands

The Island of Santo has a further 8 languages where only 150 people are able to speak them. A further five languages have 200 users, or less.

The question has to be asked, do you spend time and money on trying to keep these ancient languages alive, while the majority of children remain without education, qualifications or any prospects of a job? While we value the beauty of ancient languages, is there a choice between saving the dinosaurs of a living language, or educating the next generation?

More and more our lives are being regimented by rules and regulations. Are the days of individual choice a thing of the past? Are we losing the sight of democracy and the value of personal choice?

Many people have grumbled at the ‘No Smoking’ campaign that has seen not only whole cities placed under the embargo, but entire countries. The tobacco industry, long a high income earning industry, is now forced to search for new markets among the youth of the Asian countries.

Now a new embargo has raised its regimental head. When the Virgin railway station in England, was recently refurbished, it put up a ‘No Kissing’ sign.

The owners of businesses on the station complained that because of the number of smooching couples, the crowd was slowed down. Virgin Rail, happy to put up the ‘No Kissing’ sign, says, “Anyone saying a physical-affection goodbye needs to indulge in it elsewhere”.

How many more areas of our lives are to be regulated? It is beginning to feel as if democracy and the freedom of choice, have taken a long self-destroying nose dive and will one day, in the very near future, be given a royal funeral. Like good little soldiers we will all rise up at a specific hour, eat a specific type of breakfast, march to work, go home to eat from a set menu, watch a limited number of TV channels and all go to bed at a set time, in our well regulated and ordered lives.

Is this the beginning of a One World Government, One World Religion and One World Currency? Is our freedom of choice to be completely overridden? Is the day of the individual almost extinct?

The lovers’ celebration on February 14th, known as Valentine’s Day is second only to Christmas, in card sending. Approximately one billion valentine cards are sent each year, worldwide. Men, on average, spend more than twice as much as women do on Saint Valentine’s Day. Dining out, cards, chocolates, jewelry and flowers are the main thrust of Valentine gifts.

What is this saying about men? Are they more romantic, or it is the valentine card a guilt trip, of something in the past, or some transgression in the future?

Singaporeans, Chinese and South Koreans spend more on Valentine’s Day, than any other nation. In India there are violent clashes between shopkeepers dealing with Valentine items and Shiv Sena die-hards, especially in Mumbai.  Any who violate the warnings not to celebrate Valentine’s Day, are harshly beaten by baton-holding brigands of Shiv Sens, a far right wing political party, who hang around public places, especially parks. They chase young people holding hands, or any others suspected of being lovers. However, it is quite socially acceptable, to see young Indian men publically holding hands.

In Saudi Arabia a black market of roses and wrapping paper has sprung up, due to the religious police claiming Valentine’s Day as un-Islamic.

In folklore, Valentine is portrayed as a priest who refused to accept a law attributed to the Roman Emperor, Claudius II, allegedly ordering that all the young men remain single. The Emperor wanted to improve his army and believed that married men did not make good soldiers. Valentine, however, secretly performed marriage ceremonies for the young men. When the emperor found out, he had Valentine arrested and thrown in jail. On the evening before Valentine was executed, he wrote the first valentine message, addressing it to a young girl merely identified as his beloved. Tradition says it was the jailer’s daughter whom he had befriended and healed.  The Valentine note read, “From your beloved Valentine”.

The wild Australian bush fires burned indiscriminately. Blasting one house away, while leaving two houses either side untouched. A mail box with letters still poked in it still standing, while the house was burned to the ground.

News headlines are only that, though they may shock and horrify the nations of the world. However, it is not until they are given a human face, that they become a reality.

With absolutely no warning, no sirens, nothing on the radio, many communities disappeared in a plume of smoke, as wild fires ravaged the Victorian country side of Australia. The result of extended high temperatures and hot winds, firefighters fought a battle they could not win.

Survivors begin to tell their stories of heartbreak and near misses. For many it was simply an accident of choice that saved their lives, as when a couple fled into an already burnt out field and huddled underneath a wet hessian bag. They survived. Others fled in cars, but were overtaken by the fierce flames.

“The fire moved with such ferocity there was nothing the local brigades could do,” said one survivor. Heart wrenching decisions to withdraw fire trucks in order to save the crew, had to be made on the spot, knowing they were leaving people behind.

A couple who had survived Ash Wednesday in 1983, did not make it through Black Saturday. Their home was eaten in an instant. As the flames reached 50 metres high, with the power to kill from 200m away, a pair of young house-sitters rang their parents to say goodbye.

There are numerous tales of bravery and heroism. Neighbours dragged a badly burnt man into a house, after the fire front had moved on. They took turns to submerse him in a pool, holding his head above water for 10 hours, until help arrived.

A 63 year old woman survived by curling into a square metre cavity underneath the floor of her daugher’s home. It was six hours before she was found.

Temperatures hit an all time record of 46 degrees C in Melbourne, with winds gusting up to 125km/h. Whole chunks of the state were consumed by the wild fires. The smoke rose in a plume 15k high. 5 K higher than most thunderstorm clouds, as numerous lightning strikes were recorded.

One man survived underneath a blanket in a horse trough, while another elderly man died, after arguing with his wife and refusing to leave. The wife was rescued by a neighbour. Sixty people survived huddled together in an oval, while the town around them disappeared in a plume of smoke, leaving 100 dead.

This is the most horrific bushfire in Australian history. Many hard questions will be asked at the end of the day, as the families of 200 victims mourn the loss of their loved ones. 7000 have been left homeless and the injured fill numerous hospitals. The nightmare of this day will not go away, either in the minds of the survivors, or the nation. Cooling rains will come and the ashes will be washed away. The grass will grow again and the hardy gum tree will reshoot. Wildlife will slowly drift back from outside areas and communities will rebuild towns.

Let us pray that the hard lessons learned in this tragedy, will not be forgotten and everything possible will be done, as Prime Minister Rudd says, “That something like this never happens again.”

Intentionally starting a wildfire near the town of Churchill, Victoria, that killed at least 21 people and left a whole town homeless, is asking to be lynched, as emotions run high.

Police have placed the suspected 39 year old arsonist, Brendan Sokaluk, in maximum security, for his own safety. Several looters have also been arrested. Burnt areas are being blocked off by the authorities.

Victorian Police Assistant Commissioner Dannye Moloney said in explanation of secreting the suspect away, “We have an emotive environment out there. The fire victims do not need the added trauma of trying to deal with an arsonist.” Many victims of the fires are very vocal in their opinion of what should happen to arsonists.

Police suspect that arsonists have been to blame for at least two of the wild fires, which have raged across South Australia, destroying thousands of hectares of land, killing over 200 persons and leaving 7,000  homeless.

“it looked more like a volcanic eruption than a fire storm,” one of the survivors said. “We called it the devil’s breath. It was hungry and breathing down our throats,” another one reported. The intensity of the heat from the flames caused death at 200 metres. Dead birds were falling from the sky.

While the southern part of Australia  sweltered in an extended heat wave, firefighters faught hundreds of wild fires, in a battle they couldn’t win. In the north east of the country, Queensland was drowning in flood waters.

Verbal abuse was hurled at the van, believed to be carrying the suspect, as it was seen leaving the courthouse in Morwell. Tempers run high as one victim said, “If this person is not insane, then he should be put in jail for a very long time.” Others would like to have the opportunity to be left alone with the arsonist for a few minutes.

The arsonist has been ordered to undergo psychiatric evaluation. The Magistrate has banned any publication of photographs of the suspect. If found guilty the Sokaluk could face 25 years in prison on one arson charge and 15 years on a second arson charge. That is quite apart from the pornographic material he could be charged on also.

The Australian Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd described the act of an arsonist as possible mass murder. However, murder by arson is very difficult to prove, as is the act of arson itself. Rudd is determined to see that this kind of tragedy does not happen again, “Even if it means cracking heads to ensure that a nationwide fire warning system is in place. A process that has been hampered because of bickering between state and federal officials.”

It is not clear yet that the danger of the fires are completely over.The Victorian fire fighting teams have been joined by volunteers from as far away as New Zealand, as well as insterstate teams, in an effort to make sure the remaining fires are damped down and extinguished.

Should the arsonist be found guilty and sentenced to prison, one can only speculate just how long he would remain drawing breath. Is there any safe place for a known arsonist?

Disasters strike in the most unexpected moment. They often arrive without warning and leave the victims devastated and their lives in tatters. There is no recourse, or second choice, just total devastation.

Whether it is divorce, death, fires, illness, or acts of terrorism, the pain that is caused has a common factor. It hurts! So how do you deal with such overwhelming pain?

First you are overwhelmed by the numbing state of shock and total disbelief, where the reality doesn’t register. This is the body’s way of coping. If the reality hit home immediately. No one would survive!

Then comes the roller coaster ride of a mixture of disbelief, anger, guilt and a whole range of emotions that has your world reeling like a drunken sailor.

Disasters have proven to be times of opportunity. Opportunity that brings out the community spirit, as has been seen in the reaction to the disastrous bush fires that have ravaged the southern part of Australia. Opportunities for the least person in the community to become a hero. Opportunities for people to reach out to others they have never met. Opportunities to show a true sense of empathy with the victims. Opportunities to let others reach out to you. Helping others is often the best and most healing rout you can take, even if it is just in the form of offering a comforting shoulder for someone to cry on.

In disasters, you come face to face with your fears, in living three D.the “what ifs…?” that scare you silly in the wee small hours of the morning, when life is as its lowest ebb. Most people, however, find the imagined fears much harder to cope with than the reality.

Disasters bring you to the reality that life is unpredictable and more often than not you have to deal with the unexpected. Disasters turn you into refugees. People who must forget another way of life. People who know what it is to have nothing. Forced to start all over again. No matter what you feel like, you simply can’t lie down and die when disaster strikes.

Sitting having a pity party is not an option. Feeling sorry for yourself hurts no one but yourself. Disasters are the time you are forced to reach deep inside yourself to drew on strengths you never imagined you even had.

The key to surviving a disaster is that you need to be a realist and an optimist rolled into one, for dramatic circumstances change you forever. You become a different person.

When disaster strikes, your life becomes clearly divided, with before and after the devastation. You will never look at even the simple things of life in the same way. Yet, the end of one thing is always the beginning of something else. It has been proven over and again that human nature will rise again, just as out of the ashes the phantom phoenix rises a new.

How do you survive disasters? You look back and take the lessons onboard from the past, but more importantly you look ahead and take one small step at a time. The highest mountains in the world were conquered by one step at a time. You can do it too. You can take that next step, no matter how painful. Let the future and the big things take care of themselves. Just through today.