WASHINGTON: A commonplace schoolboys' fracas acquired an ugly communal hue in New York City when two Pakistani students forcibly cut the hair of a Sikh boy following an altercation.

The incident happened at the Newton High School in Queens, a New York City borough that has a large population from the sub-continent.

According to local news reports, the assault took place in a school bathroom after the students began insulting each others mothers and the exchange escalated.

The Pakistanis allegedly grabbed the victim, 15, removed his turban, and cut his hair. The Sikh faith requires followers not to cut hair.

Umair Ahmed, 17, and another unnamed Pakistani boy of 15 were arrested by the NYPD and face charges of unlawful imprisonment, coercion, menacing and aggravated harassment. The name of the victim was not released.

Another student who provided the scissors but didn't take part in the attack at Newton HS was also arrested.

One report attributed to police chief Raymond Kelly said the Sikh boy had tried to apologize for the altercation but Umair would only settle for a cutting his hair.

A Department of Education spokeswoman told the New York Sun that the incident was ''horrifying'' and said the school will offer counselling to the victim.

The Sikh rights group United Sikhs, which is active in monitoring hate crime against Sikhs, did not return calls seeking comment.

According to the rights group Sikh Coalition, the police said the Sikh student was "cowering in the corner" as his hair was forcibly cut. The boy's hair, which used to be below his waist, is now at shoulder level. The boy's mother and the boy are both very distressed, the Coalition said in a statement.

However, the Coalition commended the Hate Crimes Taskforce of the New York City Police Department for its prompt investigation of this matter. It is working with its community partners in New York City to determine an appropriate response to this horrible incident, the Coalition said. It will also independently review why Queens County prosecutors declined to prosecute two other students who were arrested as a result of the incident, the statement said.

New York City has a large sub-continental population (in the region of 250,000), including many Sikhs. Indians and Pakistanis typically share a cordial and even warm relationship, particularly those who speak a common Punjabi language, and there has rarely been any tension between the two communities.

However, the incident also serves to underscore the increasingly negative and extremist image of Pakistani youth in the west, much to the dismay of the liberal and professional Pakistani class.

Earlier this week, a Pakistani sophomore student at the University of Texas in Dallas was convicted of a weapons charge after prosecutors said he took part in military training for jihad.

There have been several such cases in the US where young Pakistanis have been prosecuted for jihadist activity, even as the government of Pakistan has exerted itself to send students abroad in an effort to remain globally engaged and competitive.

For the above news source, click here

Also click here, to see the press conference video where you can see the accussed sister barging through and interrupting the press conferency by trying to give "her" side of story.


First it was a week of news of some "baba" from a so called "Dera Secha Sauda" trying to potray himself as Guru Gobind Singh Ji, which caused major unrest in Punjab.

Now this...

Why can't we have a world where we can live peacefully without all this dramas... We as human should learn how to tolerate and respect each other beliefs and religion. Only then we wont see all this kind of problems arising..

Labels: Dera Secha Sauda, Hair, NY, Punjab, Sikh

Something that I read from Tapoban Forum which I would like to share. A really thought provoking post.....

I want to save Sikhi;
Well, not really. But I've seen this attitude lately. It's not a bad thing. We need to really do something to help Sikhi out. But, this is easier said than done.

I remember when I used to be involved in camps, the organizers used to have meetings and privately discuss how many amritdharis we were going to "create" with this camp. What lectures we could give to inspire people to take amrit, etc. Ironically, at one meeting like this, me and another organizer were talking and he jokingly asks me "So, what time'd you get up today?" I replied "Seven...hehehe" he replied, "High Five! I got up at Eight! hehehe"

Here we were, two people thinking we were going to inspire people to become amritdhari, and we both realised that we were jokers who didn't even get up for amrit vela ourselves.

This reminds me of a story I read about a Sikh politician who came to visit Bhai Sahib Randheer Singh. The Politician told Bhai Sahib about all his schemes and how the Panth would be helped and he had come to ask for Bhai Sahib's support and backing. Bhai Sahib silently listened to the politician and then once he was finished, asked "That's all fine, but have you done your nitnem today?" The politician was a bit embarassed and replied "no, I've been quite busy today, so not yet" Bhai Sahib then said "How can we have such big ambitions for Panthic Seva if we dont' even do our nitnem?"

The issue is that we need to have "jeevan" of our own before we can be of any real service to the Panth. We need to be living Sikhi before we can hope to inspire anyone. We can never "create" amritdharis, only Guru Sahb can, and Guru Sahib does kirpa on his Khalsa. If someone is being told how great Sikhi is but the preacher doesn't seem to have any of the qualities he's speaking so highly of, I'm not so sure his parchar will be successful.

On the other hand, if there is a Khalsa who lives rehit, does naam and bani, I know from personally seeing this, that just by entering a room, people will take notice and want to learn from such a person. People approach this Khalsa and ask question and want to know how s/he became this way. Without a word, such a person can do more parchaar than 101 other preachers who aren't like this. And that person's words will certainly have an effect.

So please don't take me the wrong way. I know a lot of us want to change the Panth and do parchar, but my point is that unless we live Sikhi ourselves then we can't hope to inspire or change anyone else.

Labels: Sikhi, Tapoban

Well firstly sorry for not blogging for such a long time. I was really busy at work as Microsoft released the Security patches on the 2nd week of May and as I am in the Patch Mgmt team, I was fully involve of patching all the servers in my Company via Msoft SMS. Had so much of problems at work this time around that I even missed meeting up an old friend who was down in KL and of course missing Malacca Barsi as well.

Basically we had this problems:
1) We had HUGE backlog in DDR on one of our central servers. I had to stop all backup services to allow the backlog to be cleared and of course keeping a constant watch on all the corrupt ddr that was creating the backlog. The backlogs were not clearing off resulting that I had to move all the Backlogs to another temp new folder to allow new DDRs to be processed.

2) After one of our primary servers for sms were rebooted, there was error on the transaction replication with the error: "The agent is suspect. No response within last 10 minutes." I tried increasing the polling interval to increase to remove the error msg but it did not work. Tried connecting to our NLB but it kept showing that I am not authorised. Even the engineer on pager holder duty was not able to sort this out. At last found out that the permission for SMS admins were removed. Added that and tadaaa it worked like charm

3) Well on Monday we found out we were not getting any report back to indicate that if our servers were successfully patched or not. So we had to generate the report from all of our primary sites; which resulted that one of our primary were not even showing any reports. After some troubleshooting we found that the primary site had 50gb of data in Dataldr. And most of the data that was being process were of March and April. (well clearly the engineer who was suppose to keep an eye on the infrastructure of this server was not doing a good job). So another horrid day of moving data out (eventually I just deleted the data for March and April) and in the mean time was transferring data for the month of MAY from dataldr SMS\inboxes\dataldr.box\process folder and we actually found the root cause of the problem; another engineer created a script and advertisement for clients to report back full hardware inventory to SMS everyday in the month of April!!!

4) And of course another Primary server NLB was down for 4 hours. (this is still being checked as to why etime the Primary servers for SMS are rebooted there will be NLB down on those servers).

5) Central server is having around 50gb of data in dataldr that is being processed. So all hardware and software inventory were stopped in all the primary to allow this data to be processed over the weekend.

This was just the some of the problems we faced this time arnd. There were of course other problems that were faced and of course loads of other nitty gritty work that we had to do & of course my daily operation work that I have to do.

Well it is fun at times when you can figure out what is going on but when you cant thats when things get really frustrating. Well the % of successful patching via SMS increased this time around (thank GOD!). The remaining of servers which failed to be patched were patched manually. We have around 2300 servers :)

Basically thats what happened for the past 2 weeks.. Next week I am gonna go and hunt a new digital camera for myself b4 my team trip to tioman. It will be either a Sony or Canon.. still have not made my mind up. Okay ta!

Labels: dataldr, Microsoft, Microsoft SMS 2003

Another website that caught my eye :)

Well all of us must be familiar with Youtube. Well I found another similar website with the same concept with Youtube where members can share their videos esp if it is something regarding Sikhi. The site is called Sikhitube.

There are loads of videos that are shared there. For those of you who has any videos do sign up and share it there. Great site to share your sikhi related video and great site for those of us who would like to see sikhi related video without having to go around searching through youtube or google videos :0)

To visit the site click here

Have fun watching!

Labels: Sikhi, Sikhitube, Youtube

I just came across quite an interesting website. Click here for the website : Channel Punjab

A bit information on the website:

It is a tv channel in Uk which you can watch on the internet. It has mostly gurbani programmes and also cultural programmes. To watch Channel Punjab on the internet simply click on the green link that says "Watch Channel Punjab on the Internet"

You will need winamp to view this internet channel.

Have fun watching! :0)

Labels: Channel Punjab, Punjabi

I was going through some of the documents that I had in my computer and I came across this:

Here is a list of raags and their timings. I think the most popular raag that I believe everyone has heard before is Rag Asa. Rag Asa is the rag of hope, and is a morning Rag that gives you hope right after you wake and do Naam Simran.

I also found an interesting article which again was saved somewhere in my computer. This article simply explains the importance of singing Kirtan in Raags. Click here to read the article.

There are between 2-6 rags per time frame.

6 AM - 9AM: Bhairaagi, Devgandhari
9 AM - 12 PM: Saarang, Suhi, Bilaaval, Gujri, Gond, Todi 1
2 PM - 3 PM: Vadhans, Maru, Dhanasari
3 PM - 6 PM: Maanjh, Gauri, Tilang, Tukhari
6 PM - 9 PM: Sri, Basant, Maali Gaura, Jaitsree, Kedara, Kalyaan
9 PM - 12 AM: Bihaagra, Nat Narayan, Sorath, Malaar, Kaanra, Jaijawanti
12 AM - 3 AM: No Raags from Guru Granth Sahib
3AM - 6AM: Aasa, Raamkali, Bhairav, Parbhati

There is a good website that you all can visit to gain more knowledge about raags. There are even notations given and loads of MP3 of shabads that are sung in raag that can be downloaded. Click here to visit the website.

Labels: Gurmaat Sangeet, Raags, Timings of Raags

I did not want to post a topic on this earlier as I did not watch the match. All I know was a friend of mine message me and informed that Man Utd lost 3-0 to AC Milan. At first I thougth he was joking but when I surfed the net it was all TRUE. Reali SAD!

My colleague at work however showed me some of the match highlights and this prompted me to blog about it. Personally I don't know what Man United's problem was. They were timid, they had no rhythm, they looked like they were afraid of playing in San Siro!!! They did not look anything like the Man Utd that has been playing throughout this season.
For the full report click here

Anyway as the Red Devil supporter I just hope they do well now in FA Cup and in EPL. Its time for a quick rebound. Hopefully they can widen the gap this weekend with a win in the Manchester Derby, and of course with a little help from Arsenal against Chelsea. Lets look forward with our head HIGH up.

Labels: AC-Milan, Champions League Final, Manchester United

This incident just happened like a few minutes ago!

Here's what happen:
I was busy tweaking around with my pc to change the the look of my Windows XP machine to look Windows Vista'ish.. Well I got quite a lot done and I got tired. So I thought chal lets go down and have a walk around the swimming pool and the park as it was quite windy.. Well I stay in a Condominium so there's no problem with security :)

So here I was walking about in the park enjoying the night breeze when suddenly I saw a lady.. She was just sitting on one of the benches in the park. It was a quiet night and no one else was there except for me, her and a security guard who was like 10 meters away. So I thougth lets be friendly and say HI.

So me being me, I went and said HI. The lady did not reply. The lights around the park were quite dimmed so I could not see much of her face. Again I thought maybe she did not hear me, I said Hi louder and said "quite a nice windy night." No response! I was kinda irritated thinking here I was being nice and this lady can't even reply and say hi.

The security guard fella who was nearby looked at me and asked if everything is okay. So I just said Bye to the lady and walked to the security guard and told him that everything is okay and its just that I was trying to be friendly with the lady. And he looked puzzle and asked me "which lady". I was like.. come on.. there was a lady who was sitting on the bench like 10 meters away and I was trying to just start some conversation with her. I turned to show him but there was no one on the bench. So at that time I figured she might have left.

The facial expression of the security guard fella changed. He looked really scared! He said there was no one there and the reason he asked if everything was okay was because he saw me talking to myself. Whooo.. that really made the hair on the back of my neck stand. I asked him few times if he is sure and he was pretty determined.

So Quickly I walked away and took the lift and went up to my place. Did "rakhiya de shabad" all the way till I reach my place. Locked the door and came straight to the PC and put on some kirtan (hyms).

This was quite an experience. I am pretty sure I saw someone there in the park earlier but the more I try to think about it the blurrer the picture gets. No more going for walks in the park late nights for me anymore! Thanks to guruji nothing else happened.

I am heading to bed now. Ta for now!

Labels: Ghost, night