I had an opportunity to visit Dallas recently on business. I was there for a week, including a Sunday. I decided to check out downtown Dallas. It wasn't too great. Just a lot of buildings and not much else. Nobody on the streets to ask directions from, an isolated McD's here or there and a lot of asphalt... thats what it was. It is the 1st time I have ventured out to explore a city which has disappointed me so much. Anyway, there was one sight that i couldn't miss in Dallas. The Sixth Floor Museum. The fateful building from which Oswald alledgedly shot JFK. I had made up my mind to see it and was there promptly at 10:00 AM - when the museum opens.

Now, I was surprised to see the number of visitors there, more so because of the number of kids that were accompanying their parents. The museum is obviously on the 6th floor. It is an attempt to recreate the life and times of JFK. Lots of pictures, videos and an audio commentary of the events that marked that era. It was a nostalgic hour and a half. There were countless occassions when tears nearly welled up in my eyes. I was surprised. What prompted me to shed tears of mourning for a man who was the president of one of the most hipocritical nations on the planet and that too someone who has been dead for 45 years.

What did I know about JFK? Except for his famous saying "Ask not your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country" and his hush hush affair with Marilyn Monroe, not much, I'm afraid. I remember my dad telling me that he remembered the death of Pandit Nehru. The tiny village that he belonged to came to a stand still when that happened. Even young boys who were left early from school, didn't play football - it was as if even they realised the enormity of what had happened. The world had one less ray of hope.

Seeing the videos of the day when JFK was killed, Isaw the same thing in the eyes of Americans. Nothing would ever be the same again.

Everytime a Gandhiji, a JFK, a Mother Teresa leave us, they leave a gap in the fibre of human site that we as an entire generation are incapable of bridging, yet another ray of hope extinguishing and spreading darkness over our future. These were not extraordinary people. These were ordinary human beings, with as many natural fallacies as you and me. It was just their efforts in rising above those fallacies and in doing so helping others to do the same that made them who they are. We as a generation, a species need to come together and fulfil the one dream that these few souls from different parts of the world saw for us, for our future, for our children - the dream of peace, co-existence and happiness.