article for new year 2005

This, everybody, is perhaps the most un-preposing punctuation we use. The Full Stop. A tiny dot that marks the end of every sentence, it curtails the written word at that point, completing a sentence, making a point or breaking a stream of thought. And the full stop makes a point. It says `Stop’, without much publicity, without loud emphasis. It tells you that here is an end and a beginning comes next.

Here, on this page, it makes a complete circle because we have magnified it many times over. For this is the day that the full stop gets its complete due.

2004.

We take a few more liberties here, suffixing the full stop to some more words without actually making a sentence. But we are sure you’ll get the point anyway. For that’s the full stop’s duty, the reason for its very existence.

Communal disharmony.

Hatred.

Selfishness.

Stress.

Unhappiness.

Terrorism.

Greed.

War.

Conflict.

Poverty.

Illiteracy.

If only we had used the full stop in time, perhaps these would never have happened.

Bhopal.

Kumbakkonam.

Tsunami.

Gujarat.

But obviously, life is far from the written word. We may not learn from history and we may be people with a very short memory. Yet, it is the written word that preserves history and all those memories we cannot wish away, so that posterity and the generations to come can read around the full stop and learn that here, were things that happened. Some events were beyond our powers, but some certainly were.

If only the full stop could have been used effectively, and in time. There are those among us who can, who should use it.

And finally, there’s one word to which I certainly would not want to use the full stop upon:

HOPE

Quotes to be scattered about the page to complement running text satish,

Nowhere in the countryside did I find anyone who believed their India was "shining", as the BJP claimed in a government-funded advertising campaign.

Mark Tully
Former BBC India correspondent

"Should Bangladesh begin to disappear under water, people will recall that the administration refused to act to stem global warming despite a virtual consensus of scientific opinion on the subject."
Writer James Traub in May 2004

"I never wanted to be prime minister," Sonia Gandhi

“The sea was full of bodies,”

Sukardi Kasdi, who reached the capital from his town of Surang, Indonesia.

The scene is getting bloodier by the hour. Two days after the tragedy, there is no more time left to identify the bodies - most of them have begun to rot. It's a horrible sight to see bodies strewn along the coast, caught in trees and shrubs

Vijay, Chennai, India