Oh - dont forget Asia!

Across the USA and the world the message of change is still perhaps resonating even as the Obama Administration struggles through its series of faux pas in the midst of the global economic crisis and the American entanglement in two wars!

Anticipation and aspiration is still alive.

After 8 years of Bush ignoring Asia, atleast Obama has started on the right note of engaging with Asia.
There was worry and speculation as Asia did not feature strongly on Obama’s campaign trail or even in the run-up to his inauguration.
Yet now it seems Asia represents a new and necessary dimension in America’s foreign engagements.

In the last 8 years Asia has grown immeasurably.
Obama realizes that. The hawkish Hillary Clinton also perhaps does now.
The regions growth is not just in economic terms only. Asians have a growing confidence to deal with their own issues and contribute to global governance.

While Obama has been talking of going more multilateral, he must recognize that the global community now has more stakeholders than just the established powers of Europe and Japan. New forms of global governance and new ways of engaging rising Asian powers (read India, China and Indonesia) will be critical for America’s success.
America’s Asia policy cannot just be a tidy box of simple bilateral relationships alone. There is a need to see broader implications for the region and on the global regimes.

A central challenge will be to link Asia policy with priority global issues.
And the role of India and China has come about even more clearly now in the current global economic crisis.
And the United States cannot ignore this anymore.

Ties with China have to mature despite the differences over issues of Tibet; inflated Yuan and ever increasing military might.
On North Korea, Climate Change and other fronts, USA and China have to learn to manage to co-exist and show the ability to cooperate.

While in India, many claim that it was Bush who first acknowledged India’s rightful stature in the world, is being celebrated. But this I feel can be a mixed blessing - not for India, as much as it for USA to counter explanations on Iran and North Korea getting more room to have a say on nuclear issues.

Can Mr Obama continue the now close relation with India what with an unstable and prickly Pakistan and a 'beyond repair' Afghanistan without bringing in the touchy Kashmir issue?

The new President cannot afford to compartmentalize problems between what are global issues as opposed to issues limited to particular Asian countries. Remember, terrorism and religious jihadist has no borders or loyalty!

While Mr Obama is busy grappling with pressing domestic and global priorities, he has to at critical junctures understand the Asian perspectives. He has to be pragmatic and open minded and has to think newly and differently about Asia.

Mr Obama has already started taking the right steps, even if they are baby steps …..towards Bush’s inattention to a ‘forgotten war’ in Afghanistan.

Relationships depend not only on having a new or the right policies.
Success or failure often rides on the people driving these polices.

Mr Obama, on the whole, has brought this new optimism for solving the problems of the world.
But a difficult agenda lies ahead of him and even the best and the brightest will be challenged!

(ab)normal life!

I always feel awkward when I bump into friends who are married and also have kids in tow!
Especially, I am at a loss on how to behave with their kids…..I usually tend to overdo the ‘oh so cute’ bit or swing the other way by totally ignoring the child.

And I have come to realize that I don’t really know how to behave.

As someone who has never been a mother and with the only children in my life being a 2 month old nephew who is in India, I am unfamiliar with young people and find myself acting unnaturally around them. I simply lack the instincts that parenthood brings along.

At the cost of annoying some parents, I use an analogy, because I love dogs and have had so many, I’m at home with them – when to pat, when not to, how to tickle and I think of nothing in flicking away some dirt on a stranger’s dog even. But it’s a different matter with children.

And by the way no I am not brooding about not having kids as yet.

But now its occurring to me that since I am not married (as yet) and obviously do not have kids as yet….my life’s experiences are obviously very different from those of the majority of ‘normal’ women go through.

Does that make me less of a woman? I am sometimes made to feel so…..(like just today I was told by someone very close to me that I need to step aside and analyze myself)……

Take my long lost friends that I am now seem to be connecting on the face book. The last time we were together, single like me and then in the interim have gotten married and also gotten several kids now.

My mind boggles at how eventful their lives would have been in the past 10 – 15 odd years – meeting a partner, preparing to get married, setting up a home, adapting to becoming a wife, have kids et all………while all this is still alien to me, it’s what ‘normal’ women apparently are supposed to go through! – Seemingly all part of a natural cycle of life.

My life on the other would seem unnaturally arrested.

Though the cares and concerns that I faced in my 20’s are not any different today, not that much has changed either.

And I am not complaining. As I have also maintained there are loads of things to cheer about being single….including the fact that most of my (married) friends commend me on my status and say how lucky and wise I am :)

But as age beckons and also because I am no longer so footloose and fancy free, I do wonder at times if I’ve missed out on the experiences that most ‘normal’ women go through, and am I less complete as a human being because of it (my mother would be most happy to hear this)

I see my friends around…..all so connected with their kids (and yet cribbing) that in my idle moments I am a wee bit curious on what would my life have been – more fulfilled? less self-centered? Frazzled? Guess, it’s the same not being a wife too!

Again I am not looking at couples enviously….it does not matter how I love my single life; it does not matter that I have all the personal space in the world; it also does not matter what I’ve achieved in my career…..but what matters is that I am not married as yet and what matters more is that I don’t have kids as yet!

It does not matter that being in a marriage also, one can be alone and lonely and it does not matter that marriage is not a binding contract or a guarantee of a ‘happily ever after’ life either (99 per cent of the time I am told its true!).

It does not matter how many boyfriends I’ve had or might have; it does not matter if there are men who care for my well being.

Maybe the fact remains that no one has been mad enough about me – and I for him – for us to have embarked on a journey together.

Then is something really wrong me? Is this all there is to life?
Am I not capable of being loved and loving – deeply and permanently?
Am I not good enough? Do I have bad karma? Am I too fussy?
Don’t I deserve more?
Have I failed as a human being?

These BIG facts apart ............ all this is still a little too Puzzling to me – about me!.
Hmmm – anyways these feelings came because I was told so today to analyze myself – step aside of myself and analyze….well if this the current script of my life, then why bother!

It is often said that life is what you make of it, so I am thankful to God for what I have – the alternative could have been worse!