Jackie Robinson

I just finished reading Randy Pausch’s The Last Lecture. On page 139 he mentions Jackie Robinson and how it saddened him to know that the present generation knows very little about Jackie and some of them do not know about him at all. Since I fall into the latter category I did a quick search on Jacke Robinson to know more about him. Here are some amazing facts about this great personality –

Jack Roosevelt "Jackie" Robinson became the first African-American major league baseball player of the modern era in 1947. He was born in Cairo, Georgia in 1919 to a family of sharecroppers. His mother, Mallie Robinson, single-handedly raised Jackie and her four other children. They were the only black family on their block, and the prejudice they encountered only strengthened their bond. From this humble beginning would grow the first baseball player to break Major League Baseball's color barrier that segregated the sport for more than 50 years.

Due to financial difficulties, he was forced to leave college, and eventually decided to enlist in the U.S. Army. After two years in the army, he had progressed to second lieutenant. Jackie's army career was cut short when he was court-martialed in relation to his objections with incidents of racial discrimination. In the end, Jackie left the Army with an honorable discharge.

In 1945, Jackie played one season in the Negro Baseball League, traveling all over the Midwest with the Kansas City Monarchs. But greater challenges and achievements were in store for him. In 1947, Brooklyn Dodgers president Branch Rickey approached Jackie about joining the Brooklyn Dodgers. When Branch Rickey first met with Jackie about joining the Dodgers, he told him that for three years he would have to turn the other cheek and silently suffer all the vile things that would come his way. It wasn’t Jackie’s nature to do that, he was a fighter, the proudest and most competitive of fighters. But when Rickey read to him from The Life of Christ, Jackie understood the wisdom and the necessity of forbearance.

The Major Leagues had not had an African-American player since 1889, when baseball became segregated. When Jackie first donned a Brooklyn Dodger uniform, he pioneered the integration of professional athletics in America. By breaking the color barrier in baseball, the nation's preeminent sport, he courageously challenged the deeply rooted custom of racial segregation in both the North and the South. He was bigger than the Brooklyn teammates who got up a petition to keep him off the ball club, bigger than the pitchers who threw at him or the base runners who dug their spikes into his shin, bigger than the bench jockeys who hollered for him to carry their bags and shine their shoes, bigger than the so-called fans who mocked him with mops on their heads and wrote him death threats.

Somehow, Jackie had the strength to suppress his instincts, to sacrifice his pride for his people's. It was an incredible act of selflessness that brought the races closer together than ever before and shaped the dreams of an entire generation.
At the end of Robinson's rookie season with the Brooklyn Dodgers, he had become National League Rookie of the Year with 12 homers, a league-leading 29 steals, and a .297 average. In 1949, he was selected as the NL's Most Valuable player of the Year and also won the batting title with a .342 average that same year. As a result of his great success, Jackie was eventually inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1962.

Jackie Robinson's life and legacy will be remembered as one of the most important in American history. In 1997, the world celebrated the 50th Anniversary of Jackie's breaking Major League Baseball's color barrier. In doing so, we honored the man who stood defiantly against those who would work against racial equality and acknowledged the profound influence of one man's life on the American culture. On the date of Robinson's historic debut, all Major League teams across the nation celebrated this milestone. Also that year, on United States Post Office honored Robinson by making him the subject of a commemorative postage stamp. On Tuesday, April 15 President Bill Clinton paid tribute to Jackie at Shea Stadium in New York in a special ceremony.

Official website - http://www.jackierobinson.com/

Deepa's report card

This is the report card of a little girl - Deepa, whom I haven't met yet but hope to do so some day. I'm giving away a very small part of my income to pay for Deepa's education. It takes very little to sponsor a child. Please go ahead and do so, you'll feel great when you get the report card :)

NAME	DEEPA THERON
CLASS	VII
ROLL NUMBER	03
SUBJECTS	FULL MARKS	PASS MARKS	MARKS OBTAINED
Assamese	100	35	54
Mathematics	100	35	44
Science	100	35	42
Social Studies	100	35	48
Hindi	100	35	50
English	100	35	46
Environmental Science	100	35	49
Total	700		333
Attendance	113/133
Conduct	Good

Parijat Academy

a school for underprivileged children

Pamohi, P.O. Garchuk, Guwahati-781035, Assam

Tel: 0361-2740179, 09864041611

Email: parijatacademy03@yahoo.com

How the cab driver saved the day!

I joined my new work place – Radio 2 (Gulf News, Dubai) on the 20^th of August. I landed in Dubai just the previous evening and was all nervous and excited about my new assignment.On D-day I got ready for work dressed in what I thought was my smartest best office wear. Since cabs aren’t easy to find in Dubai, I took a bus to Trade Centre Interchange and hailed a cab from there.

The driver was a friendly and talkative Afghani. In a few minutes he asked me about the sunglasses I was wearing. Thrilled that someone finally appreciated the new Polaroid sunglasses I had bought in India I proudly told him that they were ‘Brand new from India’. He looked at me strangely and said “Par ye aisa kaisa hain? Ek aankh pe hain aur ek pe nahin?” Not knowing what he meant I removed my sunglasses and to my horror found the lens of the left eye missing. It was sitting pretty in the case of my sunglasses which meant that I had walked all the way from home to the bus stop wearing sunglasses with the black lens over the right eye and an empty frame over the left!

I thanked the cab driver profusely – he averted a disaster. Imagine what would’ve happened had I walked into my new office, on my first day at work, looking the way I was!

To answer obvious questions – No – I did not see the world in half black and half normal. Sure something seemed different but I attributed it to jet lag and nervousness. And yes – I did get a couple of stares (but no sneers :-)) and that I attributed to my smartest best office wear :)

Too sheepish to talk about this to anyone I told the cabbie that this was our little secret and we both had a good laugh over it. It’s been five days to this incident now and I laugh about it everyday. I told my husband and a couple of friends about it and they couldn’t believe that I walked around the busy streets of Dubai completely oblivious about the sight I must’ve been.

Thank God I’m able to laugh at myself about this. This is probably the funniest thing that has happened to me in ages and my cab driver sure did save the day!