I have a sweet, little Black Samsung Mobile bought .
Has all the features from mp3 to camera, Just like a Sixth Finger in my Hand.
It has Mobile Tracker facility where when someone took your mobile and change the SIM , the number of the new SIM will be sent to the mobile number saved in the tracker option.Nice feature heina? But what’s the use of having the feature without using it. Am blaming myself now.
Configured my favorite ring tones ( Jeans theme music for my family and Britney spears voice message - for the friends ) while receive calls.
Generally leave it in my keyboard tray,in office and near to my pillow when @ room.
On friday nite 11:30 PM, june 22 2007, i was reading the Saddam’s biography.On seeing the sony ericsson mobile on the slab,my friend ( Boopash)asked me did Arun came to room today ( Actually my friend arun was leaving home that night and inform to another friend of mine but he had not informed to me or boopash). i just told him, as mobile is there he might have gone out somewhere. But the mobile kept in the slab is not arun and its my other roommate’s mobile( they both have same type of mobiles).So my friend just closed the door without locking the same, so that arun will open it when he comes late.
That pave the way for our beloved thief to steal our mobiles ease.
Next morning, i was sleeping well till 10′o clock. Suddenly Boopash wake up me and asked where is your mobile and not able to find any of our mobiles too.simply told him that arun might be playing da, ask him and continue my morning dreams.He woke me up and told that loosu someone had took our mobiles.
OMG !!! what a lovely start for the weekend!!!3 of our mobiles were lost.
As usual our minds started thinking the fact behind this.We should have closed the door though we felt that arun might come late.Or atleast my friend should have informed to us about his travel.Or atleast one of my roommates who knows arun’s travel should have told us so that we would have locked the door.We searched the entire room.
Thought the possibility of who would have came on morning.
Is the servent maid?
Is the lady who comes to wash the clothes?
Is the guy who drops the Bisleri?
Or the friends of my Ex roommate ( Lot of guys like driver, guy working in a steel industry, guy searching for a home in chennai — these people jus come and go without our knowledge and came to know only when our house owner informed us ).
I went into a mini depression, and naturally thought that someone had stolen it.
But how can i blame anyone without any proofs or doubts. thats not fair.
I did panic, but blamed ourself of not locking the doors or atleast we should have kept the mobiles in the inner room.But more importantly, my trust in people has lost.
I started a mini rant as to how I shouldn’t trust people anymore, how there is no sanctity of private space and so on.
Might someone would have came to room and on seeing us sleeping well, the evil mind would have played the rest.
A satisfactory part is i had kept my IPOD in the backpack on that day alone ( It will be lying beside with me near to the pillow everyday).
Its pain to lose a mobile and the sad part is losing all the numbers.I had cute snaps of my Little darling ( My niece). Few poems which i typed in mobile and saved there itself.,Reminders, Favorite mp3s etc…
Its just like losing your 6th finger…
Even i thought of using the SIM Backup feature opted by HUTCH for taking the backup of all the numbers in the SIM.As usual being a lazy fellow forgot about that and in the midst of busy tasks not able to type a copy of numbers too.That too Leo’s like us will be proud of our belongings and its hard to get our belongings shared to others.
Thank god, when i bought the samsung mobile, my friend told me that common da buy IMATE or a Blackberry.Definitely i would have literally cried when i bought blackberry and lost it.
Then we blocked the sim immediately and went to hutch shop to get duplicate sim to retain the old number.Number got activated and back to my old NOKIA mobile on sunday evening.Sad part is my friends duplicate SIM got activated only on tuesday evening.
Really felt like i was in a lonely land left alone for the two days.We were much used to the compactness and easier way of communication (Usually i always do something with the mobile — Games, change the settings : let me take rest, but why shud my fingers ). Now felt bad with empty hands.But the past generation before 10 years lived without the mobile and used the landlines in the home to make a call. Our generation is void of using the memory. We wont know the numbers we saved in the mobile.Technology gaves us lot of benefits and reduced the time gap and communication but we lost the way to use our memory, planning and lot of basics.Even today my dad used to remember lot of address, phone numbers in his mind. but i wont know even my number sometimes, i have my number saved as MyNumber in the contact list .
Okei…let me use the technology but without compromising to the basics from now onwards…
Anyway every day is a day full of lessons to be learned.
Lessons learned:
Use the utility/features available ( i shud have used the SIM Backup option of hutch to take backup of my numbers, Mobile Tracker option in my mobile to trace the thief)
Avoid Communication gap ( My friend shud have informed us that Arun is going home so that we would have locked the door)
Get Clarified immediately ( atleast me or Boopash shud have asked my other roommate whether Arun have told anything that he will come late or going home)
Aware of Risk and Mitigations ( eventhough Arun will come latenite to room, we shud have locked the door and let we wake up and open the door when Arun comes back)
A tool will be good only as much as you use it…
Thursday, June 28, 2007
Monday, June 25, 2007
The Book Thief...
One of the best novel I have read after long time, it will challenge the most sophisticated reader...
The Book Thief is positioned as juvenile fiction, a story for teenage readers, Some will argue that a book so difficult and sad may not be appropriate for teenage readers…Adults will probably like it (this one did), but it’s a great young-adult novel…It’s the kind of book that can be life-changing, because without ever denying the essential amorality and randomness of the natural order, The Book Thief offers us a believable hard-won hope…The hope we see in Liesel is unassailable, the kind you can hang on to in the midst of poverty and war and violence. Young readers need such alternatives to ideological rigidity, and such explorations of how stories matter. And so, come to think of it, do adults.”
THIS NOVEL IS NARRATED BY DEATH.
The Book Thief is positioned as juvenile fiction, a story for teenage readers, Some will argue that a book so difficult and sad may not be appropriate for teenage readers…Adults will probably like it (this one did), but it’s a great young-adult novel…It’s the kind of book that can be life-changing, because without ever denying the essential amorality and randomness of the natural order, The Book Thief offers us a believable hard-won hope…The hope we see in Liesel is unassailable, the kind you can hang on to in the midst of poverty and war and violence. Young readers need such alternatives to ideological rigidity, and such explorations of how stories matter. And so, come to think of it, do adults.”
THIS NOVEL IS NARRATED BY DEATH.
Usually i always read the preface and check the last episode of the novel to validate whether it has stupid 3 words "To Be Continued" mentioned at the end. And maytimes I buy the novel and read it without having the last episode ( It will be very embarrasing to read a novel without the last epdisode after you come to know by reading till the penultimate episode). And as usual checked this book.
The last lines in The Book Thief, where death says "I'm Haunted by Human's" will attract the readers,without keeping it in almirah to read it later.
It’s just a small story really, about among other things:
a girl,
some words,
an accordionist,
some fanatical Germans,
a Jewish fist-fighter,
and quite a lot of thievery. . . .
While the telling of the story is done simply,there is nothing simple about the novel. It is complex and many-layered.
Consider first the cover with a snaking row of dominoes and a finger about to push the first one over. Think of the layers of symbolism you, in your adult experience, can put to that image without reading the book. Read the book and relate it, in just one instance, to the events which led to the rise of Nazi Germany.
Set during World War II in Germany, this is the story of Liesel Meminger, a foster girl living outside of Munich. Liesel scratches out a meager existence for herself by stealing when she encounters something she can’t resist–books. With the help of her accordion-playing foster father, she learns to read and shares her stolen books with her neighbors during bombing raids as well as with the Jewish man hidden in her basement before he is marched to Dachau.
This is an unforgettable story about the ability of books to feed the soul.
EXCERPT from the Book:
I saw the book thief three times.
BESIDE THE RAILWAY LINE
First up is something white. Of the blinding kind.Some of you are most likely thinking that white is not really a color and all of that tired sort of nonsense. Well, I'm here to tell you that it is. White is without question a color, and personally, I don't think you want to argue with me.
***A REASSURING ANNOUNCEMENT ***Please, be calm, despite that previous threat.I am all bluster--I am not violent. I am not malicious.I am a result.Yes, it was white.
It felt as though the whole globe was dressed in snow. Like it had pulled it on, the way you pull on a sweater. Next to the train line, footprints were sunken to their shins. Trees wore blankets of ice.As you might expect, someone had died.
They couldn't just leave him on the ground. For now, it wasn't such a problem, but very soon, the track ahead would be cleared and the train would need to move on.There were two guards.There was one mother and her daughter.One corpse.The mother, the girl, and the corpse remained stubborn and silent."Well, what else do you want me to do?"The guards were tall and short. The tall one always spoke first, though he was not in charge. He looked at the smaller, rounder one. The one with the juicy red face."Well," was the response, "we can't just leave them like this, can we?"The tall one was losing patience. "Why not?"And the smaller one damn near exploded. He looked up at the tall one's chin and cried, "Spinnst du! Are you stupid?!" The abhorrence on his cheeks was growing thicker by the moment. His skin widened. "Come on," he said, traipsing over the snow. "We'll carry all three of them back on if we have to. We'll notify the next stop."As for me, I had already made the most elementary of mistakes. I can't explain to you the severity of my self-disappointment.
Originally, I'd done everything right:I studied the blinding, white-snow sky who stood at the window of the moving train. I practically inhaled it, but still, I wavered. I buckled--I became interested. In the girl. Curiosity got the better of me, and I resigned myself to stay as long as my schedule allowed, and I watched.Twenty-three minutes later, when the train was stopped, I climbed out with them.A small soul was in my arms.I stood a little to the right.The dynamic train guard duo made their way back to the mother, the girl, and the small male corpse. I clearly remember that my breath was loud that day. I'm surprised the guards didn't notice me as they walked by. The world was sagging now, under the weight of all that snow.Perhaps ten meters to my left, the pale, empty-stomached girl was standing, frost-stricken.Her mouth jittered.Her cold arms were folded.Tears were frozen to the book thief's face.
About Markus Zusak
He is the author of I Am the Messenger, winner of the Children's Book Council Book of the Year in Australia, Fighting Ruben Wolfe, an ALA Best Book for Young Adults, and Getting the Girl. The author lives in Sydney, Australia.
PS: Book is available in LandMark and Odyssey... and the next in my wishlist is " The Reluctant Fundamentalist "by Mohsin Hamid and Saddam - " The Rise and Fall ".
The last lines in The Book Thief, where death says "I'm Haunted by Human's" will attract the readers,without keeping it in almirah to read it later.
It’s just a small story really, about among other things:
a girl,
some words,
an accordionist,
some fanatical Germans,
a Jewish fist-fighter,
and quite a lot of thievery. . . .
While the telling of the story is done simply,there is nothing simple about the novel. It is complex and many-layered.
Consider first the cover with a snaking row of dominoes and a finger about to push the first one over. Think of the layers of symbolism you, in your adult experience, can put to that image without reading the book. Read the book and relate it, in just one instance, to the events which led to the rise of Nazi Germany.
Set during World War II in Germany, this is the story of Liesel Meminger, a foster girl living outside of Munich. Liesel scratches out a meager existence for herself by stealing when she encounters something she can’t resist–books. With the help of her accordion-playing foster father, she learns to read and shares her stolen books with her neighbors during bombing raids as well as with the Jewish man hidden in her basement before he is marched to Dachau.
This is an unforgettable story about the ability of books to feed the soul.
EXCERPT from the Book:
I saw the book thief three times.
BESIDE THE RAILWAY LINE
First up is something white. Of the blinding kind.Some of you are most likely thinking that white is not really a color and all of that tired sort of nonsense. Well, I'm here to tell you that it is. White is without question a color, and personally, I don't think you want to argue with me.
***A REASSURING ANNOUNCEMENT ***Please, be calm, despite that previous threat.I am all bluster--I am not violent. I am not malicious.I am a result.Yes, it was white.
It felt as though the whole globe was dressed in snow. Like it had pulled it on, the way you pull on a sweater. Next to the train line, footprints were sunken to their shins. Trees wore blankets of ice.As you might expect, someone had died.
They couldn't just leave him on the ground. For now, it wasn't such a problem, but very soon, the track ahead would be cleared and the train would need to move on.There were two guards.There was one mother and her daughter.One corpse.The mother, the girl, and the corpse remained stubborn and silent."Well, what else do you want me to do?"The guards were tall and short. The tall one always spoke first, though he was not in charge. He looked at the smaller, rounder one. The one with the juicy red face."Well," was the response, "we can't just leave them like this, can we?"The tall one was losing patience. "Why not?"And the smaller one damn near exploded. He looked up at the tall one's chin and cried, "Spinnst du! Are you stupid?!" The abhorrence on his cheeks was growing thicker by the moment. His skin widened. "Come on," he said, traipsing over the snow. "We'll carry all three of them back on if we have to. We'll notify the next stop."As for me, I had already made the most elementary of mistakes. I can't explain to you the severity of my self-disappointment.
Originally, I'd done everything right:I studied the blinding, white-snow sky who stood at the window of the moving train. I practically inhaled it, but still, I wavered. I buckled--I became interested. In the girl. Curiosity got the better of me, and I resigned myself to stay as long as my schedule allowed, and I watched.Twenty-three minutes later, when the train was stopped, I climbed out with them.A small soul was in my arms.I stood a little to the right.The dynamic train guard duo made their way back to the mother, the girl, and the small male corpse. I clearly remember that my breath was loud that day. I'm surprised the guards didn't notice me as they walked by. The world was sagging now, under the weight of all that snow.Perhaps ten meters to my left, the pale, empty-stomached girl was standing, frost-stricken.Her mouth jittered.Her cold arms were folded.Tears were frozen to the book thief's face.
About Markus Zusak
He is the author of I Am the Messenger, winner of the Children's Book Council Book of the Year in Australia, Fighting Ruben Wolfe, an ALA Best Book for Young Adults, and Getting the Girl. The author lives in Sydney, Australia.
PS: Book is available in LandMark and Odyssey... and the next in my wishlist is " The Reluctant Fundamentalist "by Mohsin Hamid and Saddam - " The Rise and Fall ".
Thursday, June 21, 2007
Stash of substance on your IPOD...
Now you can have the TEXT of great poems, speeches, rants, philosophical doctrines, aphorisms and more on your iPod...
Type the content in the Notepad file and upload in the notes folder in ipod and have a gr88 reading...
My IPOD is full of
> Blake's Innocence & Experience
> More Haiku, Issa for the iPod
> Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
> Selected Haiku
> Two Lincoln Speeches
> Shakespeare Monologues
> U.S. Constitution
> Declaration of Independence
> 3 Gilbert and Sullivan Lyrics
> Billy Collins Poems
PS: More addins for IPOD available....will update in forthcoming posts
Type the content in the Notepad file and upload in the notes folder in ipod and have a gr88 reading...
My IPOD is full of
> Blake's Innocence & Experience
> More Haiku, Issa for the iPod
> Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
> Selected Haiku
> Two Lincoln Speeches
> Shakespeare Monologues
> U.S. Constitution
> Declaration of Independence
> 3 Gilbert and Sullivan Lyrics
> Billy Collins Poems
PS: More addins for IPOD available....will update in forthcoming posts
Wednesday, June 20, 2007
Why didn’t you want me Mommy?
Month One:
Mommy, I am only 8 inches long, but I have all my organs. I love the sound of your voice. Every time I hear it, I wave my arms and legs. The sound of your heart beat is my favorite lullaby.
Month Two:
Mommy, today I learned how to suck my thumb. If you could see me, you could definitely tell that I am a baby. I’m not big enough to survive outside my home though. It is so nice and warm in here.
Month Three:
You know what Mommy, I’m a girl !! I hope that makes you happy. I always want you to be happy. I don’t like it when you cry. You sound so sad. It makes me sad too, and I cry with you even though you can’t hear me.
Month Four:
Mommy, my hair is starting to grow. It is very short and fine, but I will have a lot of it. I spend a lot of my time exercising. I can turn my head and curl my fingers and toes, and stretch my arms and legs. I am becoming quite good at it too.
Month Five:
You went to the doctor today. Mommy, he lied to you. He said that I’m not a baby. I am a baby Mommy, your baby. I think and feel. Mommy, what’s abortion?
Month Six:
I can hear that doctor again. I don’t like him. He seems cold and heartless. Something is intruding my home. The doctor calls it a needle. Mommy what is it? It burns! Please make it stop! I can’t get away from it! Mommy!! HELP ME!! Mommy!!!! . .
Month Seven:
Mommy, I am okay. I am in God’s arms. He is holding me. He told me about abortion. Why didn’t you want me Mommy?
One more heart was stopped.
Two more eyes will never see.
Two more hands will never touch.
Two more legs will never run.
One more child of God destroyed.
One more mouth that will never speak...
Mommy, I am only 8 inches long, but I have all my organs. I love the sound of your voice. Every time I hear it, I wave my arms and legs. The sound of your heart beat is my favorite lullaby.
Month Two:
Mommy, today I learned how to suck my thumb. If you could see me, you could definitely tell that I am a baby. I’m not big enough to survive outside my home though. It is so nice and warm in here.
Month Three:
You know what Mommy, I’m a girl !! I hope that makes you happy. I always want you to be happy. I don’t like it when you cry. You sound so sad. It makes me sad too, and I cry with you even though you can’t hear me.
Month Four:
Mommy, my hair is starting to grow. It is very short and fine, but I will have a lot of it. I spend a lot of my time exercising. I can turn my head and curl my fingers and toes, and stretch my arms and legs. I am becoming quite good at it too.
Month Five:
You went to the doctor today. Mommy, he lied to you. He said that I’m not a baby. I am a baby Mommy, your baby. I think and feel. Mommy, what’s abortion?
Month Six:
I can hear that doctor again. I don’t like him. He seems cold and heartless. Something is intruding my home. The doctor calls it a needle. Mommy what is it? It burns! Please make it stop! I can’t get away from it! Mommy!! HELP ME!! Mommy!!!! . .
Month Seven:
Mommy, I am okay. I am in God’s arms. He is holding me. He told me about abortion. Why didn’t you want me Mommy?
One more heart was stopped.
Two more eyes will never see.
Two more hands will never touch.
Two more legs will never run.
One more child of God destroyed.
One more mouth that will never speak...
Saturday, June 16, 2007
Mission Accomplished...
Finally the D-Day arrives.
for all the Hard work we did for the past 2 years, its time to relax and party. And the masti is, we are going to have our MS Convocation on July 2nd week.
From the day Cognizant had MOU vyth BITS for making the Associates to pursue MS degree, we had only one convocation ( Convocation for the first batch and only few associates turned up and this disappointed the academy a lot and stopped the convocation function at all).
Why not we too suffer bcoz of the past happening.
We decided and had discussion and finally come up with the request of having convocation and promised them our presence.
Cheer up Prabhu...We did it and deserve it...
I had keep up my promise of telling u all "Phir Milenge" on that day...Its ur turn :-)
Waiting for all u guys 2 meet u all soon...
Welcome aboard...
for all the Hard work we did for the past 2 years, its time to relax and party. And the masti is, we are going to have our MS Convocation on July 2nd week.
From the day Cognizant had MOU vyth BITS for making the Associates to pursue MS degree, we had only one convocation ( Convocation for the first batch and only few associates turned up and this disappointed the academy a lot and stopped the convocation function at all).
Why not we too suffer bcoz of the past happening.
We decided and had discussion and finally come up with the request of having convocation and promised them our presence.
Cheer up Prabhu...We did it and deserve it...
I had keep up my promise of telling u all "Phir Milenge" on that day...Its ur turn :-)
Waiting for all u guys 2 meet u all soon...
Welcome aboard...
Monday, June 11, 2007
Dont scream for the change,Be the change you seek in the world...
The reason for the post is beacuse of bad experience of looking at the society and guilty of being one of the inactive person in the society.
Thanks to rediff and my project manager ( Tx jay :-)) to add up more on this post.
It was sunday evening and was rushing for my friends wedding reception.My friend mailed me, called me, sms me, reminded me repeatedly to be there as i had missed her wedding.
Seems like am a gud friend and thats why such reminders :-)
almost reached the place and searched for the reception hall.
There it comes the problem which increase my temper and ignited my dormant volcano inside the mind...
Saw a roadside tent,there lived a a mom, dad and 2 kids sleeping on the street.No one should have to live this way !
The environment portrays the family condition is very poor. Mere a tent where you can see the stars thru the roof of the rent.
The boy wears a short unfit shirt with lot of stitches and holes,trowser was in very bad condition.
In searing heat, a man lies in a fetal position and withers away the last few hours or days of his life.
Further down the gutted street, a cow has succumbed to hunger, thirst and decease.
The carcass lay sprawled across a patch of dirt. The fetid odour of rotting flesh rises unbounded.
Raucous crows and a swarm of flies compete in frenzied feeding off the animal. Pedestrians rush by, preoccupied with their own pain and hardship.
There's no time for the dead or the dying in this city.
The horde of destitute people on the streets is unsettling.
On the other side lived a rich people who is becoming richer and richer and poor is becoming much poorer...
Why such contrasts and difference.
Not only on the living condition,
Look at the traffics, roads, infra structure of the country.
Eventhough the roads are well laid, that will soon be a home for mosquitoes to breed once the rainy season is on……
Dont blame the government alone for not laying the proper roads, but its all because of us who haven’t maintained it properly.
Where has the discipline gone????, where has the mutual help and kindness gone??.
To mention few,the drive from the chennai airport to the city laid bare the unimaginable horrors that India is unfortunately known for.
In utterly chaotic traffic, devoid of discipline, etiquette or courtesy, man, beast and vehicle jostle for space.
Strange smells, jarring noise and shocking sights greet your vehicle at every turn.
The appalling poverty rattles every outsider who visits the place.
The sight of people living, eating and defecating on the streets they call home was gut-wrenching.
There is another story and a different perspective of Chennai and the rest of India.
In recent times, India's numerous success stories have received wide media coverage.
In the last few years, India has become a powerhouse for information technology services.
Educated and skilled in the complexities of computer software technology,
Indian youth are fast becoming the preferred backbone of IT departments of many a Fortune 500 company.
Indian doctors have long had a stellar reputation in the United States. The high cost of healthcare in the US and other western countries has given Indian medical tourism forceful traction.
Indians are also making the news in the fields of science, politics, business and theatre, to name a few.
Indians are Nobel Prize and Booker prize winners, congressmen, business tycoons, astronauts and CEOs of blue chip American companies.
With much publicity and high profile manoeuvering,
Indian business trumpeted its arrival on the world stage by taking control of competing businesses. The fifth richest man in the world is an Indian. His wealth was not inherited nor did he find it in his backyard.
The list goes on.
Clearly India is breaking away the shackles of colonialism and failed economic policies and a renewed confidence is taking hold.
A "can do, will do" attitude pervades the country.
The exceptionally talented and excessively wealthy co-habit the same space as the illiterate, unskilled and the destitute.
How did such a contradiction come about?
Scarcity of jobs is advanced as one reason but, as in any complex issue, there are probably many more. Caste and sub-caste, religion and regional differences feature prominently and frequently as the bane of Indian society. Each segment fiercely protects its turf.
Skewed religious teachings and beliefs have often impeded peaceful co-existence. Karma, the belief that a person's current circumstance is a result of actions in a previous life, often gets in the way of reaching out to the needy with a helping hand.
Some of these beliefs and attitudes have a crippling effect.
Society is fractured along numerous fault lines.
When India does arrive as an economic and military power, what values will it have to offer? What strengths will India project that others
would wish to emulate?
India today displays an insatiable appetite for anything western. Whether it is music, clothing and fashion or malls, morals and values,
Indians have embraced them with an unabashed zeal. But what then of the Indian culture that stretches back a few millennia.
Is there anything of value to be salvaged?
But when you drift back to thoughts of the streets of Chennai.
"How is it that such smart people can allow this to happen?"
It is not clear to us how and when the street people of India will join the mainstream of society and be able to live in dignity.
Yet we do believe that in time to come, India will find its way.
It is timely that India's ascent is taking place in these troubled times.
Perhaps, the answer lies in the religious and spiritual traditions that India has gifted the world.
It is time for calm and circumspect leadership.
The time has come for India to take its place at the table.
Consider ourselves…
Being a software engineer and having a good family background, we live happily.With a big apartment in the Heart of the city,a guard for security,a well trained sniffer dog to add up the security,
a home theater, Television, fridge, computer pc etc ect ect.You wont even have kids at home, but buy a lot of play toys to decorate the showcase . Enjoying the weekends in resorts and pubs and lot more to add up…
But I Hav’nt seen a single chair in the family staying on the roadside
Spending the time in A/C cabins without knowing the outside world ( life is outside and not end within ur cubicle ). U wont get everything by googling guys.
we remember the credit card numbers but not even the Dad's mobile itself ( are you checking ur dad's number in the mobile’s contact list :-))
Eventhough you wont believe in the tradition of Rangoli,you still wont let anyone to walk on it, as it is the creation of your family girls.Why dont you think tis concept with ur fellow citizens.
The Solution :
Believe that while India has several Silicon Valleys within it,
the country also has three Nigerias within.
"The Indian private sector is doing extraordinary things and the country is bursting with energy, yet behind all these is the reality,
"alluding to the rampant poverty that coexists with affluence. That reality,is that there are still close
to 800 million people in India who live on less than $2 a day despite India being a democracy, which is its greatest pride.
In India, democracy has not allowed the rule of the majority.
"What you see issue after issue, state after state is that powerful minorities, farmers, minority interests and landed interests
have been able to capture the political system and extract government benefits for themselves [by way of] subsidies, etc,".
Noting that Indian democracy is wedded to these powerful minorities,this is not an unfamiliar concept in democracy --
in the US they are called special interests.
But in India it has proved deadly because people who do not get represented are the ones who are powerless.
Little wonder, that at the annual United Nations Human Development Index, India fares very badly.
"It is a great shame for Indian democracy. The large majority of people have somehow slipped though the cracks. So you see that India does
worse than Bangladesh, worse than Cuba, worse than Syria, on all these measures. It does worse than many other countries
that have lower per capita GDP [gross domestic product] than India has".
"It is one of the important things that will make it impossible for India to continue
this extraordinary growth and for this growth to trickle down to the masses,". There are all kinds of models of economic policy --
from Hong Kong which was totally laissez faire to South Korea which had lots of tariffs and regulations, to Taiwan which was somewhere in the middle,
to Singapore which was pro-market but had a huge government presence.
"But there were three factors that were in common in all these East Asian models. First was broad hospitality to markets and trade,
investment in education, particularly for the poorer half of the population, and third was the investment in health".
"Those are, so far, lacking in the Indian case" .
When one looks at India's great growth story, one has to ask oneself that if the country does not make significant
investments in education and healthcare -- which is essentially the investment in children that CRY is talking about --
will India be able to sustain the growth rate and sustain it in a way that it spreads to the entire country?
What we have to do in a sense is to take advantage
of the great political strengths that India has -- its openness, its democracy, its freedom and its participation at the civic society sector".
"In other words, if India's strength is the society, not the State, if India's strength is the micro growth,
not the macro growth, if India's strength is the small entrepreneur and not the technocrat, then we have to leverage that
and use that as best as we can".
"That is where you come in because it means that the only way this problem is going to be solved is if Indian society
and the friends of Indian society mobilize and petition the government and get civic society involved, get nonprofits involved...
That is the only way to get it solved -- a broad, multi-pronged, multi-tier strategy that tries to attack the problem".
India is not going to get some "great minister of health or minister of education or minister for children's affair"
who is going to suddenly make all these things happen and therefore there is no point sitting around for a good government.
The only way it could happen is by pressing the government as well as through a charitable solution.
"It has to be bottom up approach and not a top-down approach which means that you can't wait around and hope and wish. We have to reverse them".
"All this sounds very gloomy, but I think it is less gloomy and India growth story is not as fragile as it sounds because of the faith we have on the friends like you
and few organizations which really helps poor a lot. Ignite the Ray of Hope, which one day will glow like SUN.
There are all these problems but there are all these solutions and people, who are interested,
who are motivated and who want to do something and who are beginning to change the dynamic".
If not you, who else buddy. atleast let we do our part instead of waiting for the change to occur.
You love the nasha of doing good things and once u start admiring it, the journey of life never ends...
Henry miller's quotes well on the change...
" I saw the errors I had made and assumed full responsibility for everything.
You know, instead of being a man who would say, ‘Well, it’s a rotten system we live under,’ and griping about politics,
economics and the social condition, I said, ‘Despite all that, I could have acted differently, I could have come out,’ do you see?
And I saw that as being the fault of my own nature, character and temperament.
I accepted it, and once I did that, a great weight fell off me.
I was liberated.
I was able to really enjoy myself."
What you are going to give back to this nation when you are going to sleep on the cradle of graveyard...
We must be the change we wish to see.
Dont scream for the change,Be the change you seek in the world...
Thanks to rediff and my project manager ( Tx jay :-)) to add up more on this post.
It was sunday evening and was rushing for my friends wedding reception.My friend mailed me, called me, sms me, reminded me repeatedly to be there as i had missed her wedding.
Seems like am a gud friend and thats why such reminders :-)
almost reached the place and searched for the reception hall.
There it comes the problem which increase my temper and ignited my dormant volcano inside the mind...
Saw a roadside tent,there lived a a mom, dad and 2 kids sleeping on the street.No one should have to live this way !
The environment portrays the family condition is very poor. Mere a tent where you can see the stars thru the roof of the rent.
The boy wears a short unfit shirt with lot of stitches and holes,trowser was in very bad condition.
In searing heat, a man lies in a fetal position and withers away the last few hours or days of his life.
Further down the gutted street, a cow has succumbed to hunger, thirst and decease.
The carcass lay sprawled across a patch of dirt. The fetid odour of rotting flesh rises unbounded.
Raucous crows and a swarm of flies compete in frenzied feeding off the animal. Pedestrians rush by, preoccupied with their own pain and hardship.
There's no time for the dead or the dying in this city.
The horde of destitute people on the streets is unsettling.
On the other side lived a rich people who is becoming richer and richer and poor is becoming much poorer...
Why such contrasts and difference.
Not only on the living condition,
Look at the traffics, roads, infra structure of the country.
Eventhough the roads are well laid, that will soon be a home for mosquitoes to breed once the rainy season is on……
Dont blame the government alone for not laying the proper roads, but its all because of us who haven’t maintained it properly.
Where has the discipline gone????, where has the mutual help and kindness gone??.
To mention few,the drive from the chennai airport to the city laid bare the unimaginable horrors that India is unfortunately known for.
In utterly chaotic traffic, devoid of discipline, etiquette or courtesy, man, beast and vehicle jostle for space.
Strange smells, jarring noise and shocking sights greet your vehicle at every turn.
The appalling poverty rattles every outsider who visits the place.
The sight of people living, eating and defecating on the streets they call home was gut-wrenching.
There is another story and a different perspective of Chennai and the rest of India.
In recent times, India's numerous success stories have received wide media coverage.
In the last few years, India has become a powerhouse for information technology services.
Educated and skilled in the complexities of computer software technology,
Indian youth are fast becoming the preferred backbone of IT departments of many a Fortune 500 company.
Indian doctors have long had a stellar reputation in the United States. The high cost of healthcare in the US and other western countries has given Indian medical tourism forceful traction.
Indians are also making the news in the fields of science, politics, business and theatre, to name a few.
Indians are Nobel Prize and Booker prize winners, congressmen, business tycoons, astronauts and CEOs of blue chip American companies.
With much publicity and high profile manoeuvering,
Indian business trumpeted its arrival on the world stage by taking control of competing businesses. The fifth richest man in the world is an Indian. His wealth was not inherited nor did he find it in his backyard.
The list goes on.
Clearly India is breaking away the shackles of colonialism and failed economic policies and a renewed confidence is taking hold.
A "can do, will do" attitude pervades the country.
The exceptionally talented and excessively wealthy co-habit the same space as the illiterate, unskilled and the destitute.
How did such a contradiction come about?
Scarcity of jobs is advanced as one reason but, as in any complex issue, there are probably many more. Caste and sub-caste, religion and regional differences feature prominently and frequently as the bane of Indian society. Each segment fiercely protects its turf.
Skewed religious teachings and beliefs have often impeded peaceful co-existence. Karma, the belief that a person's current circumstance is a result of actions in a previous life, often gets in the way of reaching out to the needy with a helping hand.
Some of these beliefs and attitudes have a crippling effect.
Society is fractured along numerous fault lines.
When India does arrive as an economic and military power, what values will it have to offer? What strengths will India project that others
would wish to emulate?
India today displays an insatiable appetite for anything western. Whether it is music, clothing and fashion or malls, morals and values,
Indians have embraced them with an unabashed zeal. But what then of the Indian culture that stretches back a few millennia.
Is there anything of value to be salvaged?
But when you drift back to thoughts of the streets of Chennai.
"How is it that such smart people can allow this to happen?"
It is not clear to us how and when the street people of India will join the mainstream of society and be able to live in dignity.
Yet we do believe that in time to come, India will find its way.
It is timely that India's ascent is taking place in these troubled times.
Perhaps, the answer lies in the religious and spiritual traditions that India has gifted the world.
It is time for calm and circumspect leadership.
The time has come for India to take its place at the table.
Consider ourselves…
Being a software engineer and having a good family background, we live happily.With a big apartment in the Heart of the city,a guard for security,a well trained sniffer dog to add up the security,
a home theater, Television, fridge, computer pc etc ect ect.You wont even have kids at home, but buy a lot of play toys to decorate the showcase . Enjoying the weekends in resorts and pubs and lot more to add up…
But I Hav’nt seen a single chair in the family staying on the roadside
Spending the time in A/C cabins without knowing the outside world ( life is outside and not end within ur cubicle ). U wont get everything by googling guys.
we remember the credit card numbers but not even the Dad's mobile itself ( are you checking ur dad's number in the mobile’s contact list :-))
Eventhough you wont believe in the tradition of Rangoli,you still wont let anyone to walk on it, as it is the creation of your family girls.Why dont you think tis concept with ur fellow citizens.
The Solution :
Believe that while India has several Silicon Valleys within it,
the country also has three Nigerias within.
"The Indian private sector is doing extraordinary things and the country is bursting with energy, yet behind all these is the reality,
"alluding to the rampant poverty that coexists with affluence. That reality,is that there are still close
to 800 million people in India who live on less than $2 a day despite India being a democracy, which is its greatest pride.
In India, democracy has not allowed the rule of the majority.
"What you see issue after issue, state after state is that powerful minorities, farmers, minority interests and landed interests
have been able to capture the political system and extract government benefits for themselves [by way of] subsidies, etc,".
Noting that Indian democracy is wedded to these powerful minorities,this is not an unfamiliar concept in democracy --
in the US they are called special interests.
But in India it has proved deadly because people who do not get represented are the ones who are powerless.
Little wonder, that at the annual United Nations Human Development Index, India fares very badly.
"It is a great shame for Indian democracy. The large majority of people have somehow slipped though the cracks. So you see that India does
worse than Bangladesh, worse than Cuba, worse than Syria, on all these measures. It does worse than many other countries
that have lower per capita GDP [gross domestic product] than India has".
"It is one of the important things that will make it impossible for India to continue
this extraordinary growth and for this growth to trickle down to the masses,". There are all kinds of models of economic policy --
from Hong Kong which was totally laissez faire to South Korea which had lots of tariffs and regulations, to Taiwan which was somewhere in the middle,
to Singapore which was pro-market but had a huge government presence.
"But there were three factors that were in common in all these East Asian models. First was broad hospitality to markets and trade,
investment in education, particularly for the poorer half of the population, and third was the investment in health".
"Those are, so far, lacking in the Indian case" .
When one looks at India's great growth story, one has to ask oneself that if the country does not make significant
investments in education and healthcare -- which is essentially the investment in children that CRY is talking about --
will India be able to sustain the growth rate and sustain it in a way that it spreads to the entire country?
What we have to do in a sense is to take advantage
of the great political strengths that India has -- its openness, its democracy, its freedom and its participation at the civic society sector".
"In other words, if India's strength is the society, not the State, if India's strength is the micro growth,
not the macro growth, if India's strength is the small entrepreneur and not the technocrat, then we have to leverage that
and use that as best as we can".
"That is where you come in because it means that the only way this problem is going to be solved is if Indian society
and the friends of Indian society mobilize and petition the government and get civic society involved, get nonprofits involved...
That is the only way to get it solved -- a broad, multi-pronged, multi-tier strategy that tries to attack the problem".
India is not going to get some "great minister of health or minister of education or minister for children's affair"
who is going to suddenly make all these things happen and therefore there is no point sitting around for a good government.
The only way it could happen is by pressing the government as well as through a charitable solution.
"It has to be bottom up approach and not a top-down approach which means that you can't wait around and hope and wish. We have to reverse them".
"All this sounds very gloomy, but I think it is less gloomy and India growth story is not as fragile as it sounds because of the faith we have on the friends like you
and few organizations which really helps poor a lot. Ignite the Ray of Hope, which one day will glow like SUN.
There are all these problems but there are all these solutions and people, who are interested,
who are motivated and who want to do something and who are beginning to change the dynamic".
If not you, who else buddy. atleast let we do our part instead of waiting for the change to occur.
You love the nasha of doing good things and once u start admiring it, the journey of life never ends...
Henry miller's quotes well on the change...
" I saw the errors I had made and assumed full responsibility for everything.
You know, instead of being a man who would say, ‘Well, it’s a rotten system we live under,’ and griping about politics,
economics and the social condition, I said, ‘Despite all that, I could have acted differently, I could have come out,’ do you see?
And I saw that as being the fault of my own nature, character and temperament.
I accepted it, and once I did that, a great weight fell off me.
I was liberated.
I was able to really enjoy myself."
What you are going to give back to this nation when you are going to sleep on the cradle of graveyard...
We must be the change we wish to see.
Dont scream for the change,Be the change you seek in the world...
Thursday, June 07, 2007
For the Chocolate Lovers...
Come across tis lovely pictures whn i surfed online sites to order Chocolates... 
Elephants have very good memories. This helps them to survive in the wild as they can remember where to find food and water during droughts. There are two types of elephant, the African and the Asian. The way to tell the difference is that the African elephant has much larger ears. An elephant’s trunk has over 100,000 muscles and tendons, lots more than the 600 we have in our entire body.
Fact file: Zebra
Zebras are white with black stripes, and no two animals carry exactly the same markings, the greatest variations occurring around the shoulders. As the zebras move in families, the stripes help them recognise each other, as well as helping to provide a cooling system for their skin. An extinct relative of the zebra is the quagga, the last of which died in a zoo in 1883. There is currently a breeding programme to reconstruct the quagga from DNA, a few remaining skulls, pelts and photographs.
The Piano was invented in the 1720’s by Bartolomeo Cristofori. The name piano is an abbreviation of piano et forte (soft and loud). Despite having about 230 strings the piano is not classed as a string instrument; it's part of the percussion family because the strings are struck by hammers.
Would your little darling be just as sweet by any other name? Apparently not! Statistics reveal consistent favouritism when it comes to naming newborns in the UK. Topping the polls for boys since 1994 is Jack, despite stiff competition from Joshua, Thomas, James and Daniel, who’ve been jostling in the top five since 2002. More fickle are the females, it seems – after five years in the number one slot, Chloe was pipped to the post in 2004 by Emily, Ellie, Jessica and Sophie.
Despite weighing up to three tonnes, a hippo is surprisingly agile, and can gallop at speeds of up to 30kph, but it cannot jump or even step over obstacles. The skin of a hippo is extremely tough and resistant to most land and marine obstacles as well as predators, but it is so sensitive that the hippo has to spend most of its days submerged in water to protect it from sunlight. It opens its huge mouth frequently, not just to yawn but as a display of the power of its huge teeth which are prized.
Cadburies come up vyth a good innovation to promo the Dairy Milk Chocs......
Fact File: Elephant
Elephants have very good memories. This helps them to survive in the wild as they can remember where to find food and water during droughts. There are two types of elephant, the African and the Asian. The way to tell the difference is that the African elephant has much larger ears. An elephant’s trunk has over 100,000 muscles and tendons, lots more than the 600 we have in our entire body.Fact file: Zebra
Zebras are white with black stripes, and no two animals carry exactly the same markings, the greatest variations occurring around the shoulders. As the zebras move in families, the stripes help them recognise each other, as well as helping to provide a cooling system for their skin. An extinct relative of the zebra is the quagga, the last of which died in a zoo in 1883. There is currently a breeding programme to reconstruct the quagga from DNA, a few remaining skulls, pelts and photographs.Fact File: Piano
The Piano was invented in the 1720’s by Bartolomeo Cristofori. The name piano is an abbreviation of piano et forte (soft and loud). Despite having about 230 strings the piano is not classed as a string instrument; it's part of the percussion family because the strings are struck by hammers.Fact File: Naming Conventions
Would your little darling be just as sweet by any other name? Apparently not! Statistics reveal consistent favouritism when it comes to naming newborns in the UK. Topping the polls for boys since 1994 is Jack, despite stiff competition from Joshua, Thomas, James and Daniel, who’ve been jostling in the top five since 2002. More fickle are the females, it seems – after five years in the number one slot, Chloe was pipped to the post in 2004 by Emily, Ellie, Jessica and Sophie.Fact File: Hippo
Despite weighing up to three tonnes, a hippo is surprisingly agile, and can gallop at speeds of up to 30kph, but it cannot jump or even step over obstacles. The skin of a hippo is extremely tough and resistant to most land and marine obstacles as well as predators, but it is so sensitive that the hippo has to spend most of its days submerged in water to protect it from sunlight. It opens its huge mouth frequently, not just to yawn but as a display of the power of its huge teeth which are prized.PS: Being Chocoholic made my cloths fit, as i put up more weight...
Monday, June 04, 2007
A Superhero shud always be a SuperHero...
A Superhero shud be a Superhero...
Do u xpct ur Superhero always havng date vyth a girl, roaming behind her, waiting 2 have candle light dinner with her, behaving like a normal human creature who try to punish his fellow worker, justifying his act of evil...
No way ..!
A Super hero shud always be a Super Hero...
He shud mesmerise us for the entire timeline of d movie.
But where does the strength of the spider gone. where does that heroic act diminished.
Spidey please come soon with ur Heroic acts in forthcoming episode...
Do u xpct ur Superhero always havng date vyth a girl, roaming behind her, waiting 2 have candle light dinner with her, behaving like a normal human creature who try to punish his fellow worker, justifying his act of evil...No way ..!
A Super hero shud always be a Super Hero...
He shud mesmerise us for the entire timeline of d movie.
Cmon spidey, wht happen 2 u..u too fall on the trap :-(
Spidey 3 is full of spideys personal life and no heroism unveiled tis time...He is roaming behind Mary Jane 2 xprs his love...
In a scene,where spidey rescues a lady and the crowd started chanting...
Crowd: [cheering] Kiss him! Kiss him!Peter Parker: Go ahead, lay one on me!Gwen Stacy: Really?Peter Parker: Yeah! They’ll love it!Child in Crowd: [covering eyes] Don’t do it, Spidey![Gwen pulls a part of Spider-Man’s mask down; they kiss]Child in Crowd: Eww…
Mary Jane ( Spidy’s Girlfriend looks at all this )
Mary Jane Watson: That was OUR kiss!
Mary Jane Watson: Let me ask you something. When you kissed her, who was kissing her? Spider-man, or Peter?Mary Jane Watson: Do you want to push me away?Peter Parker: Push you away? Why would I want to push you away… I love you!
wht a pathetic scene to watch, typical Tamil cinemaism...
v slowly gtng irritated and started shouting Arae baba...wht happen 2 tis guy.Chotus and munnas shouting Spidey spidey spidey ..!!!but spidey listens to Mary jane alone.no heroic acts in the movie, mere the climax has the few action cuts that too spideys friend Harry comes to rescue spidey when he was hurt by sandman...
Here s the climax:
Peter and Aunt May are told that Sand man is the guy who killed his uncle Ben. Peter as black spidy kills the sand man and then comes to Aunt May.
Peter Parker: Flint Marko; the man who killed Uncle Ben, he was killed last night.
Aunt May: Oh my… What happened?
Peter Parker: Spider-Man killed him.
Aunt May: Spider-Man? I don’t understand, Spider-Man doesn’t kill people. What happened?Peter Parker: I uh… he… he was… I thought that you’d feel… He deserved it, didn’t he?
Aunt May: I don’t think it’s for us to say wether a person deserves to live or die.
Peter Parker: Aunt May, he killed Uncle Ben!
Aunt May: Uncle Ben meant the world to us, but he wouldn’t want us living one second with revenge in our hearts. It’s like a poison. It can take you over, before you know it, turn you into something ugly…
Peter Parker after breaking off from Mary Jane dates Eddie Brock’s girl friend. Eddie looses the job to Peter
Eddie Brock: Please, I’m begging you. If you do this, I will lose everything. There’s not a paper in town that’ll hire me.Peter Parker: You should have thought of that earlier.
Later on Eddie Brock’s becomes villain,
Peter Parker: Eddie… We can settle this…
Eddie Brock: you got a point there, Parker…
Eddie Brock: I’m thinking… Humiliation. Like what you did to me. You remember, Parker? Remember? You took my girl away from me. Now, I’m gonna take yours away from you.
Peter Parker: Eddie, it’s the suit. You’ve got to take it off.
Eddie Brock: Yeah, You’d like that, wouldn’t ya?
Peter Parker: I’ve been there, Eddie. The power; it feels good. But you’ll lose yourself to it. It’ll destroy you. Take the suit off Eddie, it’s not too late!
Eddie Brock: [“Thinking” about it] Nah… I like being *Bad*. It makes me… -HAPPY…
One more example of how spidey is like a normal Hero of Regional Films:
Harry and Peter are best pal’s but Harry always believed that Peter killed his father. In order to take revenge, Harry tries to take away Mary Jane from Peter. Mary Jane saddened by Peters behavior chooses Harry for the company. Its strange situation when we are rejected by someone we make decisions in haste. Like a creeper which just wants a tree, any tree to climb. Then we realize that we where wrong. Peter ( as black spidy ) takes Harry on even though he is his best pal and hits him badly. Later Mary Jane gets kidnapped by Eddie Brock and Sandman. Peter ( as good spidy ) goes to Harry.
Peter Parker: Harry! I need your help. I can’t take them both, not by myself.
Harry Osborn: [turns to reveal scars] You don’t deserve my help.
Peter Parker: Harry… she needs us.
Harry Osborn: Get out.
But then Harry realizes that spider man didn’t kill his father. Harry has to choose now. His best pal is in trouble. Will he allow his pride and anger or will he help Peter?
Peter fights with sand man.(Flint Marko)
Flint Marko: I didn’t want this. But I had no choice…
Peter Parker: We always have a choice. You had a choice when you killed my uncle.
Flint Marko: My daughter was dying, I needed money. I was scared. I told your uncle all I wanted was the car. He said to me ‘why dont you just put down the gun and go home?’ I realise now he was just trying to help me. Then I saw my partner running over with the cash… and the gun was in my hand… I did a terrible thing to you, I spent a lot of nights wishing I could take it back. I’m not asking you to forgive me, I just want you to understand.
Peter Parker: I’ve done terrible things too…
Flint Marko: I didn’t choose to be this. The only thing left of me now is my daughter.
Flint Marko: I’m not asking for your forgiveness. I just want you to understand.
Peter Parker: I forgive you.Peter Parker: …I forgive you…
Sand man goes away. Sometimes its difficult to understand whats good and bad. Spider man could have fought with sand man but then knowing the intension of the sandman , he decides on not doing so.
Spidy gets hit very badly by Sandman and Brock.
News Reader: This could be a tragic day for the people of New York… Could be the end of Spider-Man…
Harry jumps in from nowhere and puts his hand forward towards spidy.
Harry Osborn: [Helping Spider-Man up] Came just in time
Peter Parker: Actually, a few minutes earlier wouldn’t have been so bad.
Brock makes a deadly move on Spidy. Harry gets in the way and takes the blow.
In the end Harry stays on the laps of spidy waiting to die ,
Peter Parker: Hey, pal. How you doing?
Harry Osborn: Been better.Peter Parker: We’ll get you through this.
Harry Osborn: No.
Peter Parker: I should never have hurt you. Said those things.
Harry Osborn: None of that matters, Peter. You’re my friend.
Peter Parker: Best friend.
Harry dies on the Spidy’s lap.
eee...oooo..ohhhh...
Spidey 3 is full of spideys personal life and no heroism unveiled tis time...He is roaming behind Mary Jane 2 xprs his love...
In a scene,where spidey rescues a lady and the crowd started chanting...
Crowd: [cheering] Kiss him! Kiss him!Peter Parker: Go ahead, lay one on me!Gwen Stacy: Really?Peter Parker: Yeah! They’ll love it!Child in Crowd: [covering eyes] Don’t do it, Spidey![Gwen pulls a part of Spider-Man’s mask down; they kiss]Child in Crowd: Eww…
Mary Jane ( Spidy’s Girlfriend looks at all this )
Mary Jane Watson: That was OUR kiss!
Mary Jane Watson: Let me ask you something. When you kissed her, who was kissing her? Spider-man, or Peter?Mary Jane Watson: Do you want to push me away?Peter Parker: Push you away? Why would I want to push you away… I love you!
wht a pathetic scene to watch, typical Tamil cinemaism...
v slowly gtng irritated and started shouting Arae baba...wht happen 2 tis guy.Chotus and munnas shouting Spidey spidey spidey ..!!!but spidey listens to Mary jane alone.no heroic acts in the movie, mere the climax has the few action cuts that too spideys friend Harry comes to rescue spidey when he was hurt by sandman...
Here s the climax:
Peter and Aunt May are told that Sand man is the guy who killed his uncle Ben. Peter as black spidy kills the sand man and then comes to Aunt May.
Peter Parker: Flint Marko; the man who killed Uncle Ben, he was killed last night.
Aunt May: Oh my… What happened?
Peter Parker: Spider-Man killed him.
Aunt May: Spider-Man? I don’t understand, Spider-Man doesn’t kill people. What happened?Peter Parker: I uh… he… he was… I thought that you’d feel… He deserved it, didn’t he?
Aunt May: I don’t think it’s for us to say wether a person deserves to live or die.
Peter Parker: Aunt May, he killed Uncle Ben!
Aunt May: Uncle Ben meant the world to us, but he wouldn’t want us living one second with revenge in our hearts. It’s like a poison. It can take you over, before you know it, turn you into something ugly…
Peter Parker after breaking off from Mary Jane dates Eddie Brock’s girl friend. Eddie looses the job to Peter
Eddie Brock: Please, I’m begging you. If you do this, I will lose everything. There’s not a paper in town that’ll hire me.Peter Parker: You should have thought of that earlier.
Later on Eddie Brock’s becomes villain,
Peter Parker: Eddie… We can settle this…
Eddie Brock: you got a point there, Parker…
Eddie Brock: I’m thinking… Humiliation. Like what you did to me. You remember, Parker? Remember? You took my girl away from me. Now, I’m gonna take yours away from you.
Peter Parker: Eddie, it’s the suit. You’ve got to take it off.
Eddie Brock: Yeah, You’d like that, wouldn’t ya?
Peter Parker: I’ve been there, Eddie. The power; it feels good. But you’ll lose yourself to it. It’ll destroy you. Take the suit off Eddie, it’s not too late!
Eddie Brock: [“Thinking” about it] Nah… I like being *Bad*. It makes me… -HAPPY…
One more example of how spidey is like a normal Hero of Regional Films:
Harry and Peter are best pal’s but Harry always believed that Peter killed his father. In order to take revenge, Harry tries to take away Mary Jane from Peter. Mary Jane saddened by Peters behavior chooses Harry for the company. Its strange situation when we are rejected by someone we make decisions in haste. Like a creeper which just wants a tree, any tree to climb. Then we realize that we where wrong. Peter ( as black spidy ) takes Harry on even though he is his best pal and hits him badly. Later Mary Jane gets kidnapped by Eddie Brock and Sandman. Peter ( as good spidy ) goes to Harry.
Peter Parker: Harry! I need your help. I can’t take them both, not by myself.
Harry Osborn: [turns to reveal scars] You don’t deserve my help.
Peter Parker: Harry… she needs us.
Harry Osborn: Get out.
But then Harry realizes that spider man didn’t kill his father. Harry has to choose now. His best pal is in trouble. Will he allow his pride and anger or will he help Peter?
Peter fights with sand man.(Flint Marko)
Flint Marko: I didn’t want this. But I had no choice…
Peter Parker: We always have a choice. You had a choice when you killed my uncle.
Flint Marko: My daughter was dying, I needed money. I was scared. I told your uncle all I wanted was the car. He said to me ‘why dont you just put down the gun and go home?’ I realise now he was just trying to help me. Then I saw my partner running over with the cash… and the gun was in my hand… I did a terrible thing to you, I spent a lot of nights wishing I could take it back. I’m not asking you to forgive me, I just want you to understand.
Peter Parker: I’ve done terrible things too…
Flint Marko: I didn’t choose to be this. The only thing left of me now is my daughter.
Flint Marko: I’m not asking for your forgiveness. I just want you to understand.
Peter Parker: I forgive you.Peter Parker: …I forgive you…
Sand man goes away. Sometimes its difficult to understand whats good and bad. Spider man could have fought with sand man but then knowing the intension of the sandman , he decides on not doing so.
Spidy gets hit very badly by Sandman and Brock.
News Reader: This could be a tragic day for the people of New York… Could be the end of Spider-Man…
Harry jumps in from nowhere and puts his hand forward towards spidy.
Harry Osborn: [Helping Spider-Man up] Came just in time
Peter Parker: Actually, a few minutes earlier wouldn’t have been so bad.
Brock makes a deadly move on Spidy. Harry gets in the way and takes the blow.
In the end Harry stays on the laps of spidy waiting to die ,
Peter Parker: Hey, pal. How you doing?
Harry Osborn: Been better.Peter Parker: We’ll get you through this.
Harry Osborn: No.
Peter Parker: I should never have hurt you. Said those things.
Harry Osborn: None of that matters, Peter. You’re my friend.
Peter Parker: Best friend.
Harry dies on the Spidy’s lap.
eee...oooo..ohhhh...
Film Ends vyth a moral:
Peter Parker: Whatever comes our way, whatever battle we have raging inside us, we always have a choice. My friend Harry taught me that. He chose to be the best of himself. It’s the choices that make us who we are, and we can always choose to do what’s right.
Peter Parker: Whatever comes our way, whatever battle we have raging inside us, we always have a choice. My friend Harry taught me that. He chose to be the best of himself. It’s the choices that make us who we are, and we can always choose to do what’s right.
But where does the strength of the spider gone. where does that heroic act diminished.
Spidey please come soon with ur Heroic acts in forthcoming episode...
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
Kal Ho Na Ho...
Death…an eventuality.
When? No one ever knows…
What if you know?
Will you live each day differently?
Will you make amends?
We have often heard people say — “Live everyday as if it were your last”. But guess till we are actually there the import of that would fail to hit us. Cause we are people who think months ahead…will I be promoted? Will I get a hike? Will the real estate costs soar? Should I come back offshore?
We are so preoccupied with all those “planning” that we fail to look at the present…live each day to its fullest. Let me be honest…how much ever I try…I haven’t managed it so far. I just read “Tuesdays with Morrie” by Mitch Albom. Its a real-life experience between a student and a teacher….
Its about Mitch’s Sociology Professor…Morrie Schwartz…who suffers from ALS (Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis) and has few months left to live. Its also called Lou Gehrig’s disease…Stephen Hawking is a victim of the same. As Morrie slowly sinks into his final days…Mitch returns to spend time with him after nearly 20 years. Morrie and Mitch capture life’s essence in their Tuesday meetings…as Morrie gives simple answers to life’s questions on death, fear, marriage,family etc. Morrie can move you with his love…and also his aphorisms - “When you learn how to die, you learn how to live.”
There was another book by Mitch Albom called “Five people you meet in heaven”…on how a keeper at a theme park dies saving a girl…and goes to heaven only to meet 5 people from his life…who offer him answers on his life’s turn of events.
I had done a post on my Grandma…condition is very critical,no more hope of recovery and passed away... Reading about Morrie brought back those memories…I was almost close to tears. Its not a great book in my opinion…but then you never know, most times it’s the simple things in life that impact you deeply. If you are someone who can see beyond words…and appreciate books that allow you some introspection…read this.
“Don’t hang on too long, but don’t let go too soon.” - Morrie
When? No one ever knows…
What if you know?
Will you live each day differently?
Will you make amends?
We have often heard people say — “Live everyday as if it were your last”. But guess till we are actually there the import of that would fail to hit us. Cause we are people who think months ahead…will I be promoted? Will I get a hike? Will the real estate costs soar? Should I come back offshore?
We are so preoccupied with all those “planning” that we fail to look at the present…live each day to its fullest. Let me be honest…how much ever I try…I haven’t managed it so far. I just read “Tuesdays with Morrie” by Mitch Albom. Its a real-life experience between a student and a teacher….
Its about Mitch’s Sociology Professor…Morrie Schwartz…who suffers from ALS (Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis) and has few months left to live. Its also called Lou Gehrig’s disease…Stephen Hawking is a victim of the same. As Morrie slowly sinks into his final days…Mitch returns to spend time with him after nearly 20 years. Morrie and Mitch capture life’s essence in their Tuesday meetings…as Morrie gives simple answers to life’s questions on death, fear, marriage,family etc. Morrie can move you with his love…and also his aphorisms - “When you learn how to die, you learn how to live.”
There was another book by Mitch Albom called “Five people you meet in heaven”…on how a keeper at a theme park dies saving a girl…and goes to heaven only to meet 5 people from his life…who offer him answers on his life’s turn of events.
I had done a post on my Grandma…condition is very critical,no more hope of recovery and passed away... Reading about Morrie brought back those memories…I was almost close to tears. Its not a great book in my opinion…but then you never know, most times it’s the simple things in life that impact you deeply. If you are someone who can see beyond words…and appreciate books that allow you some introspection…read this.
“Don’t hang on too long, but don’t let go too soon.” - Morrie
Take Care while it Matters…
Your grandparents live with you…if not when did you last visit them?
Or when was the last time you spoke to them?
If you don’t remember the answers to these questions…its time you took care of them.
It was my schooltime when i was in 12 th std.
Those past years have been tough for my family and me. My Grandma is in her later stages of life, waging a war between life and death.She walks with 3 legs ( A stick for the balance), that too only for a few metres.
If you have a unfamiliar sound coming on the sleepless nights; If you have a body which covered mere by skin;
If there is a pulse reading you feel while holding her hand, which says the heart beat fine which ensures your saturation is fine…you are alive!
Never mind if you don’t open your eyes or talk or recognize people around you. Measurable parameters are fine, so you are alive??
She has a speacial love and affection on me and the same from me without any selfishness.
Manytimes she urge me to come closer and hold her hand instead of placing her hand on my shoulder, she believes on my affection more than her hope.
She asks questions which she doesn't know what it is and that too repeatedly for countless times. Those days she told me a lot of stories and urge our serventmaid to continue the stories when she feel very tired and she will make sure that he is going in the right direction of the story...…
all 78 years old. She was married at 13 and had taken care of our grandpa's family single handedly with lot of courage and kindness... she was always keen on developing the wealth in terms of land and succeeded too.The house they lived in, stretched from one street to the next….so big a house that you can never manage to cover the place at a glance with lot of serventmaids, cattles, pet animals.Its amazing to hear that she had time for all.Now she hardly talks…if she does talk, it’s slurred.
Her brain is affected and her memory comes in flashes. She fails to recognize my Dad sometimes but can talk about her relatives at the same time.But at times she would surprise you with amazing clarity on looking at me.Did somebody say old age is nothing but second phase of childhood? I cannot but agree more. While feeding her, we usually stand around her,urging her to open her mouth for a teaspoon of water or a coffee whcih she likes much…coaxing her like you would a 1 year old. We await every single word she utters like never before.I pray god for her long life, for her to be back on her feet and talk incessantly as always.
My school days came to end. Finally i had spent a solid 2 months of time especially for my grandpa.Its time for engineering entrance exams,had been away from her for a month, done my exams and came back with ray of hope that she will be brave and bold as like before.But for my expectations, she was very weak and not able to walk too, always lying on the bed where her entire life shrink in a bed.My 12th results came, secured a gud percentile.We have to go to chennai for engineering counselling.But the grandma's condition is very critical and no more hope of recovery.Nothing can be done as my date of counselling is nearing and we left chennai, praying god with tears in the eyes.We were in University...My engineering admission got over and Dad got a call that Grandma is expired.we rushed back home immeditely for the final things to be done for her...
As for the questions at the start,
I make it a point to take care of them at least every fortnight. While we run around with a heat of hope each day, we fail to pause and attend to few things…which might mean lots to others. Not that we don’t want to…just that we don’t realize that such things can make a difference.
Take care while it matters…
Or when was the last time you spoke to them?
If you don’t remember the answers to these questions…its time you took care of them.
It was my schooltime when i was in 12 th std.
Those past years have been tough for my family and me. My Grandma is in her later stages of life, waging a war between life and death.She walks with 3 legs ( A stick for the balance), that too only for a few metres.
If you have a unfamiliar sound coming on the sleepless nights; If you have a body which covered mere by skin;
If there is a pulse reading you feel while holding her hand, which says the heart beat fine which ensures your saturation is fine…you are alive!
Never mind if you don’t open your eyes or talk or recognize people around you. Measurable parameters are fine, so you are alive??
She has a speacial love and affection on me and the same from me without any selfishness.
Manytimes she urge me to come closer and hold her hand instead of placing her hand on my shoulder, she believes on my affection more than her hope.
She asks questions which she doesn't know what it is and that too repeatedly for countless times. Those days she told me a lot of stories and urge our serventmaid to continue the stories when she feel very tired and she will make sure that he is going in the right direction of the story...…
all 78 years old. She was married at 13 and had taken care of our grandpa's family single handedly with lot of courage and kindness... she was always keen on developing the wealth in terms of land and succeeded too.The house they lived in, stretched from one street to the next….so big a house that you can never manage to cover the place at a glance with lot of serventmaids, cattles, pet animals.Its amazing to hear that she had time for all.Now she hardly talks…if she does talk, it’s slurred.
Her brain is affected and her memory comes in flashes. She fails to recognize my Dad sometimes but can talk about her relatives at the same time.But at times she would surprise you with amazing clarity on looking at me.Did somebody say old age is nothing but second phase of childhood? I cannot but agree more. While feeding her, we usually stand around her,urging her to open her mouth for a teaspoon of water or a coffee whcih she likes much…coaxing her like you would a 1 year old. We await every single word she utters like never before.I pray god for her long life, for her to be back on her feet and talk incessantly as always.
My school days came to end. Finally i had spent a solid 2 months of time especially for my grandpa.Its time for engineering entrance exams,had been away from her for a month, done my exams and came back with ray of hope that she will be brave and bold as like before.But for my expectations, she was very weak and not able to walk too, always lying on the bed where her entire life shrink in a bed.My 12th results came, secured a gud percentile.We have to go to chennai for engineering counselling.But the grandma's condition is very critical and no more hope of recovery.Nothing can be done as my date of counselling is nearing and we left chennai, praying god with tears in the eyes.We were in University...My engineering admission got over and Dad got a call that Grandma is expired.we rushed back home immeditely for the final things to be done for her...
As for the questions at the start,
I make it a point to take care of them at least every fortnight. While we run around with a heat of hope each day, we fail to pause and attend to few things…which might mean lots to others. Not that we don’t want to…just that we don’t realize that such things can make a difference.
Take care while it matters…
That fortune is -- MOKSHA...
Continuation of the previous post!
Is there anything superior to even mOksHA?
Of course, Yes! The lustrous body, defeating a grand greenish mountain, the lip that shines better than a ruby, the red eyes that puts a ‘just then blossomed’ lotus to shame;The devotional rejoice, to address HIM as achyuthA (one who destroys the sins of the devotees), to address HIM as Lord of the Lords, and to address HIM as the cow herd boy krisHNa;
The bHaktha thondaradippodiAzhvAr feels that these are even greater than mOksHA itself. He goes on further to declare thus:‘If I get even the indhira lOka fortune, instead of this, I shall not prefer Oh Lord ranganAtHA!’
The original text is from thirumAlai (sacred garland) sung by thondaradippodiAzhvAr.
The Lord who wears it is the ranganAtHA of shrIrangam. ThondaradippodiAzhvAr is one of the 12 AzhvAr(s) of tamil bHakthi cult. The AlvAr(s) are great mystic devotees who lived during the advent of kali yugA. They have sung many poems in praise of the Lord, which also have great spiritual and philosophical significance. Each verse is an ecstatic outpouring of these devotees in their liberated state of mind.
The concerned full verse is:
pachai mAmalai pOl mEni, pavaLa vAi, kamala chengaNN, achyuthA amarar ErE,
Ayartham kozhundhE ennum, ichuvai thavira yAn pOi indhira lokam ALum –
achuvaiperinum vEndEn arangamA nagaruLAnE!
This is a gem of a pAsuram and the most renowned one. We can see this in the inner wall of shrIrangam temple, along with another one.
pachai mAmalai pOl mEni:The AzhvAr perceives the dhivya mangaLA vigraha thirumEni (sacred auspicious idol) of Lord ranganAtHa as a flourishing large greenish mountain. He says it a large mountain (mAmalai) because of its majesty. He addresses it as greenish (pachai), since only a greenish mountain is a treat for the eyes, and definitely not a dry one. The mountain has a unique characteristic. When we see it from a distance, it appears as though it is very near. But, if we actually walk towards it for a while, it appears to recede away from us. The more we go near, the more does it appear to recede! This is just true with the Lord. When we start realizing him, we feel HE is very close, such that we can immediately reach HIM. But, when we actually start our spiritual journey, he plays with us, not coming to our hold so fast.
pavaLa vAi:The AzhvAr is captivated by the lips of the Lord, which shines brighter than a jewel. He compares that with pavaLam/ ruby.
kamala chengaNN:HIS eyes are red and broad like a lotus. Tradition has it that these eyes are the ones that transformed many ordinary mortals to immortal AchAryA(s). The moment they see these, they renounce the material world. Such is the spiritual power of HIS eyes. It holds you completely. You become as if held by a magician at the very second. You renounce money, reputation, relatives, any thing and every thing!
chengaNN: He addresses it as red for two reasons. The eyes become red out of compassion and great affection to HIS devotees. They also become red due to anger, at any harm done to HIS devotees by others.
achyuthA: He is called achyuthA, since he removes the sins of all the bHakthA(s).
amarar ErE ayartham kozhundhE:He is addressed Lord of the Lords, to reveal his universal greatness. On the contrast, he is also addressed beloved krisHNA, who wandered along the cow herd boys in AyarpAdi. He is the master of the world, at the same time very accessible like a boy next door. These are two distinct qualities of the Lord.
When the AzhvAr has the fortune to rejoice the Lord in this way, he considers even the mOksHA as inferior to this. He ignores that completely (achuvai perinum vEndEn). Such is the ardent devotion, he had. The commentators of this pAsuram wish to say vaikunTam/ abode of the Lord as being referred by the phrase - indhira lOkam ALum. They do not want to take the literal meaning as such. They feel that actual indhira lOkA as too low a comparison for this lofty experience.
vaikunTam (abode of nArAyaNa) versus bHUlOkha vaikunTam (shrIrangam) – devotees prefer the latter . Every great soul prefers a life in a dhivya dhEsham, very near to the lord singing his praises for ever, being in the company of similar people.
In the same lines, another AzhvAr wishes to be born as a grass in the mountain of thirumalA. How noble a wish?
Let us also follow the same path and wish soulfully for unwavering devotion and a life at his lotus feet in a sacred place!
Is there anything superior to even mOksHA?
Of course, Yes! The lustrous body, defeating a grand greenish mountain, the lip that shines better than a ruby, the red eyes that puts a ‘just then blossomed’ lotus to shame;The devotional rejoice, to address HIM as achyuthA (one who destroys the sins of the devotees), to address HIM as Lord of the Lords, and to address HIM as the cow herd boy krisHNa;
The bHaktha thondaradippodiAzhvAr feels that these are even greater than mOksHA itself. He goes on further to declare thus:‘If I get even the indhira lOka fortune, instead of this, I shall not prefer Oh Lord ranganAtHA!’
The original text is from thirumAlai (sacred garland) sung by thondaradippodiAzhvAr.
The Lord who wears it is the ranganAtHA of shrIrangam. ThondaradippodiAzhvAr is one of the 12 AzhvAr(s) of tamil bHakthi cult. The AlvAr(s) are great mystic devotees who lived during the advent of kali yugA. They have sung many poems in praise of the Lord, which also have great spiritual and philosophical significance. Each verse is an ecstatic outpouring of these devotees in their liberated state of mind.
The concerned full verse is:
pachai mAmalai pOl mEni, pavaLa vAi, kamala chengaNN, achyuthA amarar ErE,
Ayartham kozhundhE ennum, ichuvai thavira yAn pOi indhira lokam ALum –
achuvaiperinum vEndEn arangamA nagaruLAnE!
This is a gem of a pAsuram and the most renowned one. We can see this in the inner wall of shrIrangam temple, along with another one.
pachai mAmalai pOl mEni:The AzhvAr perceives the dhivya mangaLA vigraha thirumEni (sacred auspicious idol) of Lord ranganAtHa as a flourishing large greenish mountain. He says it a large mountain (mAmalai) because of its majesty. He addresses it as greenish (pachai), since only a greenish mountain is a treat for the eyes, and definitely not a dry one. The mountain has a unique characteristic. When we see it from a distance, it appears as though it is very near. But, if we actually walk towards it for a while, it appears to recede away from us. The more we go near, the more does it appear to recede! This is just true with the Lord. When we start realizing him, we feel HE is very close, such that we can immediately reach HIM. But, when we actually start our spiritual journey, he plays with us, not coming to our hold so fast.
pavaLa vAi:The AzhvAr is captivated by the lips of the Lord, which shines brighter than a jewel. He compares that with pavaLam/ ruby.
kamala chengaNN:HIS eyes are red and broad like a lotus. Tradition has it that these eyes are the ones that transformed many ordinary mortals to immortal AchAryA(s). The moment they see these, they renounce the material world. Such is the spiritual power of HIS eyes. It holds you completely. You become as if held by a magician at the very second. You renounce money, reputation, relatives, any thing and every thing!
chengaNN: He addresses it as red for two reasons. The eyes become red out of compassion and great affection to HIS devotees. They also become red due to anger, at any harm done to HIS devotees by others.
achyuthA: He is called achyuthA, since he removes the sins of all the bHakthA(s).
amarar ErE ayartham kozhundhE:He is addressed Lord of the Lords, to reveal his universal greatness. On the contrast, he is also addressed beloved krisHNA, who wandered along the cow herd boys in AyarpAdi. He is the master of the world, at the same time very accessible like a boy next door. These are two distinct qualities of the Lord.
When the AzhvAr has the fortune to rejoice the Lord in this way, he considers even the mOksHA as inferior to this. He ignores that completely (achuvai perinum vEndEn). Such is the ardent devotion, he had. The commentators of this pAsuram wish to say vaikunTam/ abode of the Lord as being referred by the phrase - indhira lOkam ALum. They do not want to take the literal meaning as such. They feel that actual indhira lOkA as too low a comparison for this lofty experience.
vaikunTam (abode of nArAyaNa) versus bHUlOkha vaikunTam (shrIrangam) – devotees prefer the latter . Every great soul prefers a life in a dhivya dhEsham, very near to the lord singing his praises for ever, being in the company of similar people.
In the same lines, another AzhvAr wishes to be born as a grass in the mountain of thirumalA. How noble a wish?
Let us also follow the same path and wish soulfully for unwavering devotion and a life at his lotus feet in a sacred place!
‘I shall not need, even if I get THAT fortune!’
‘I shall not need, even if I get THAT fortune!’
What is THAT fortune? Is it the food, shelter and clothing? - No, he has the bHagavath prasAdham as food, temple as the shelter, and a dhothi as clothing. He is contented with that!
Or, is it the wealth that he refers as THAT fortune? - No, he has the Lord in the temple as the privileged ancestral wealth. Definitely, not that!
Is it the fame and reputation? - No, he has the fame of the adiyan/ bHAgavathan (servant/ devotee) of the Lord. He is indeed very proud of that!
Is it the relatives and friends? - No, he has the entire sAdHu janam(s) (devotees) as his close relatives. He has no concerns whatsoever regarding that!
Or, is it the fancies of the youth? - No, having seen the grandeur of the Lord’s vigraha thirumEni (idol), he remains captivated by it. The mind by itself does not seek any other external fancy
He seems to be very firm in his determination, at least with respect to this material world!
Ummm… Is it the indra lOka, that is referred by him as THAT fortune? - No, even that place is subjected to the laws of karma. It is after all, a higher version of this world, and for that instance, even more dangerous. And for a person of his stature, is it after all this? No, definitely not!
Ok, I have found it at last. Since, he is a true devotee; he cannot seek anything other than liberation/ mOksHA . Yes, it is the mOksHA at the lotus feet of the lord, to serve him with unswerving devotion for ever.
But, Why does he say ‘I shall not need, even if I get THAT fortune/ mOksHA’. Everyone knows liberation is the greatest fortune for a realized soul. But, he refuses that also.
Is there anything superior to even that? Wow, sounds great! Is it not?
Who is he? What is that he regards greater, for which he is ready to sacrifice even mOksHA?
What is THAT fortune? Is it the food, shelter and clothing? - No, he has the bHagavath prasAdham as food, temple as the shelter, and a dhothi as clothing. He is contented with that!
Or, is it the wealth that he refers as THAT fortune? - No, he has the Lord in the temple as the privileged ancestral wealth. Definitely, not that!
Is it the fame and reputation? - No, he has the fame of the adiyan/ bHAgavathan (servant/ devotee) of the Lord. He is indeed very proud of that!
Is it the relatives and friends? - No, he has the entire sAdHu janam(s) (devotees) as his close relatives. He has no concerns whatsoever regarding that!
Or, is it the fancies of the youth? - No, having seen the grandeur of the Lord’s vigraha thirumEni (idol), he remains captivated by it. The mind by itself does not seek any other external fancy
He seems to be very firm in his determination, at least with respect to this material world!
Ummm… Is it the indra lOka, that is referred by him as THAT fortune? - No, even that place is subjected to the laws of karma. It is after all, a higher version of this world, and for that instance, even more dangerous. And for a person of his stature, is it after all this? No, definitely not!
Ok, I have found it at last. Since, he is a true devotee; he cannot seek anything other than liberation/ mOksHA . Yes, it is the mOksHA at the lotus feet of the lord, to serve him with unswerving devotion for ever.
But, Why does he say ‘I shall not need, even if I get THAT fortune/ mOksHA’. Everyone knows liberation is the greatest fortune for a realized soul. But, he refuses that also.
Is there anything superior to even that? Wow, sounds great! Is it not?
Who is he? What is that he regards greater, for which he is ready to sacrifice even mOksHA?
Silly Point...
The promos of a movie showing a popular film star smoking have led to protests: “Why is smoking being foisted on impressionable young minds?”
The silly point is that we protest about the star shown as a smoker, but not about the same star being shown as a drug-dealing gangster or an underworld don. When movies blatantly exhibit sex, rape, addictions, crime, violence and murder, and when movie stars are today’s perverse role models, isn’t it silly to be shocked when the same happens in society?
Not long ago, Indians were shocked by the news of a Mumbai schoolboy murdering his own mother - just to get money to enjoy like the hero of his favorite movie. Before that, Americans were aghast at a chilling real-life perversion of the violence routine in Hollywood - schoolchildren shooting their teachers and co-students. Movie-makers may rationalize that movies just reflect social trends, but can it be denied that they often initiate, perpetuate and aggravate the vicious circle?
The sillier point is that we readily believe what movies show and stubbornly disbelieve what life shows. We imagine “and they lived happily ever after” - the utopian ending of most movies - will materialize in our lives, while reality glares at us all around - no one lives ever after and no one lives happily. After all, no man is a hero to his own wife and no woman is a wife to her own hero. We believe that we will one day enter the heaven of enjoyment shown in the movies, while the hell of suffering in the world around threatens to suck us in at every moment. We vicariously enjoy as the movie hero as he miraculously dodges every calamity and exults in his three-hour immortality, while we actually shudder as the daily news of natural and human disasters exposes our helpless mortality.
The silliest point is that we forget the person who never forgets us - God, and we remember the people who never remember us - movie stars. We enthrone ephemeral heroes as the kings of our heart, while we banish the eternal hero Krishna from our heart. We search in a false cyber world, for love, excitement, enjoyment and protection, while we blind and deafen ourselves to the source of all love, excitement, enjoyment and protection living within our own hearts. When selfish movie-makers invite us to their hi-tech illusory paradise, we squander our hard-earned money to enjoy it for a few moments. But when the supremely selfless Lord invites us to His eternal spiritual paradise, we are not ready to invest even a few thoughts to probe into its reality.
When we read about a half-man half-spider performing impossible antics in the comics section of a newspaper, we adore him. When we read about the half-man half-lion incarnation of God performing chivalrous pastimes in the sacred scriptures, we deride Him as mytho-logical. Are we logical? We have time to tune to newer and newer channels while watching TV, but we have no time to tune in to Krishna’s channel of devotion in our own heart.Its not just silly, actually. Its tragic. If we don’t give up our silliness, we will have to cry for it. Worse, we will have to continue our silliness - and its attendant suffering - for many more lives.
Fortunately we have an alternative. Irrespective of how silly we become, Krishna remains our benevolent Lord unconditionally. So He gives us an easy way out - His holy names. Attentive devotional chanting of the Hare Krishna mantra acts like a divine torchlight, which exposes the material silliness around us and reveals the spiritual substance within us.
Intelligent people embrace chanting as the most intelligent activity and tune into and enter a blissful world far superior to the “enter”-tainment world, that is the default tuning of the silly.
The silly point is that we protest about the star shown as a smoker, but not about the same star being shown as a drug-dealing gangster or an underworld don. When movies blatantly exhibit sex, rape, addictions, crime, violence and murder, and when movie stars are today’s perverse role models, isn’t it silly to be shocked when the same happens in society?
Not long ago, Indians were shocked by the news of a Mumbai schoolboy murdering his own mother - just to get money to enjoy like the hero of his favorite movie. Before that, Americans were aghast at a chilling real-life perversion of the violence routine in Hollywood - schoolchildren shooting their teachers and co-students. Movie-makers may rationalize that movies just reflect social trends, but can it be denied that they often initiate, perpetuate and aggravate the vicious circle?
The sillier point is that we readily believe what movies show and stubbornly disbelieve what life shows. We imagine “and they lived happily ever after” - the utopian ending of most movies - will materialize in our lives, while reality glares at us all around - no one lives ever after and no one lives happily. After all, no man is a hero to his own wife and no woman is a wife to her own hero. We believe that we will one day enter the heaven of enjoyment shown in the movies, while the hell of suffering in the world around threatens to suck us in at every moment. We vicariously enjoy as the movie hero as he miraculously dodges every calamity and exults in his three-hour immortality, while we actually shudder as the daily news of natural and human disasters exposes our helpless mortality.
The silliest point is that we forget the person who never forgets us - God, and we remember the people who never remember us - movie stars. We enthrone ephemeral heroes as the kings of our heart, while we banish the eternal hero Krishna from our heart. We search in a false cyber world, for love, excitement, enjoyment and protection, while we blind and deafen ourselves to the source of all love, excitement, enjoyment and protection living within our own hearts. When selfish movie-makers invite us to their hi-tech illusory paradise, we squander our hard-earned money to enjoy it for a few moments. But when the supremely selfless Lord invites us to His eternal spiritual paradise, we are not ready to invest even a few thoughts to probe into its reality.
When we read about a half-man half-spider performing impossible antics in the comics section of a newspaper, we adore him. When we read about the half-man half-lion incarnation of God performing chivalrous pastimes in the sacred scriptures, we deride Him as mytho-logical. Are we logical? We have time to tune to newer and newer channels while watching TV, but we have no time to tune in to Krishna’s channel of devotion in our own heart.Its not just silly, actually. Its tragic. If we don’t give up our silliness, we will have to cry for it. Worse, we will have to continue our silliness - and its attendant suffering - for many more lives.
Fortunately we have an alternative. Irrespective of how silly we become, Krishna remains our benevolent Lord unconditionally. So He gives us an easy way out - His holy names. Attentive devotional chanting of the Hare Krishna mantra acts like a divine torchlight, which exposes the material silliness around us and reveals the spiritual substance within us.
Intelligent people embrace chanting as the most intelligent activity and tune into and enter a blissful world far superior to the “enter”-tainment world, that is the default tuning of the silly.
Send a Knee Mail - God will answer you !!!
Nowadays almost everyone is accessible on email.
What about God? He is available on a very special type of email, which is as old as the human race and which requires no internet. Its knee-mail – mailing prayers from our heart to God while standing on our knees.
Almost all the great wisdom traditions of the world urge us to physically express humility while praying. In addition to the kneeling down common in Semitic religions, the Vedic culture recommends prostrating the entire body in panchanga and ashtanga pranamas.
Some people deride rituals as useless show-offs and say that only the inner feeling, bhava, counts. Agreed that consciousness is crucial in communion, but do the externals not affect the internals?
Try this exercise:
Sit relaxed on an easy chair, put one leg across the other, place your arms behind your head, lean backwards – and now try to feel humble. Almost impossible, isn’t it? Our very posture makes us feel bossy. Based on profound understanding of this empirically observable psychophysical science, the Vedic texts prescribed physical activities that facilitate the awakening of divine emotions in our heart. A ritual with spirit becomes spi- ritual.
Most people pray to God when they want something which is beyond their human ability to get. While praying, we often intuitively try to feel and express humility, knowing we depend on divine grace. To receive God’s answers to our knee-mails, we need humility – especially in our brain. Many people lose faith in God when their prayers are apparently unanswered; they feel that either God doesn’t exist or that He can’t fulfill their prayers - or doesn’t care to. But are we not presuming that we know better than God what is best for us? This presumption is rooted in a fundamental philosophical misconception that we can enjoy life in this world and that the main purpose of God’s existence is to provide and protect our material enjoyment. Of course we do need basic material resources for our existence. But as souls we are essentially spiritual and eternal; whereas everything in this world is material and temporary. Due to this inescapable incompatibility, nothing material can make us truly happy.
Often due to our spiritual myopia, we forget this basic fact, but thankfully God doesn’t. A mother sometimes withdraws or withholds toys from her child to ensure he doesn’t neglect his studies and miss out on a bright career. Similarly God sometimes withdraws or withholds our cherished toys – wealth, love, positions, possessions – to ensure we don’t neglect our spiritual growth and miss out on a bright spiritual career in the hereafter. God wants us to be happy in this world too, but not at the cost of our eternal happiness in the next world. A lost child feels so happy when at last he returns home. Then how much more happy will we – the lost children of God - be when God takes us back to our eternal home? God is constantly planning and endeavoring to provide us this supreme happiness. All we need to do is cooperate with His plan by serving Him, come what may. Therefore when our prayers appear to be unanswered, we can pray to God for the wisdom to accept His plan and the determination to participate in that divine plan.
The best prayer - the one prayer that will never fail – is the prayer asking for strength to serve God in every situation. When a child calls the name of his parent, a responsible parent immediately provides his real needs. Similarly when we chant the Holy Names of God, especially the Hare Krishna maha mantra, He will immediately provide our real need - the strength to serve Him.
When we humbly chant and pray for this inner strength, we will find that God will never disappoint us.
What about God? He is available on a very special type of email, which is as old as the human race and which requires no internet. Its knee-mail – mailing prayers from our heart to God while standing on our knees.
Almost all the great wisdom traditions of the world urge us to physically express humility while praying. In addition to the kneeling down common in Semitic religions, the Vedic culture recommends prostrating the entire body in panchanga and ashtanga pranamas.
Some people deride rituals as useless show-offs and say that only the inner feeling, bhava, counts. Agreed that consciousness is crucial in communion, but do the externals not affect the internals?
Try this exercise:
Sit relaxed on an easy chair, put one leg across the other, place your arms behind your head, lean backwards – and now try to feel humble. Almost impossible, isn’t it? Our very posture makes us feel bossy. Based on profound understanding of this empirically observable psychophysical science, the Vedic texts prescribed physical activities that facilitate the awakening of divine emotions in our heart. A ritual with spirit becomes spi- ritual.
Most people pray to God when they want something which is beyond their human ability to get. While praying, we often intuitively try to feel and express humility, knowing we depend on divine grace. To receive God’s answers to our knee-mails, we need humility – especially in our brain. Many people lose faith in God when their prayers are apparently unanswered; they feel that either God doesn’t exist or that He can’t fulfill their prayers - or doesn’t care to. But are we not presuming that we know better than God what is best for us? This presumption is rooted in a fundamental philosophical misconception that we can enjoy life in this world and that the main purpose of God’s existence is to provide and protect our material enjoyment. Of course we do need basic material resources for our existence. But as souls we are essentially spiritual and eternal; whereas everything in this world is material and temporary. Due to this inescapable incompatibility, nothing material can make us truly happy.
Often due to our spiritual myopia, we forget this basic fact, but thankfully God doesn’t. A mother sometimes withdraws or withholds toys from her child to ensure he doesn’t neglect his studies and miss out on a bright career. Similarly God sometimes withdraws or withholds our cherished toys – wealth, love, positions, possessions – to ensure we don’t neglect our spiritual growth and miss out on a bright spiritual career in the hereafter. God wants us to be happy in this world too, but not at the cost of our eternal happiness in the next world. A lost child feels so happy when at last he returns home. Then how much more happy will we – the lost children of God - be when God takes us back to our eternal home? God is constantly planning and endeavoring to provide us this supreme happiness. All we need to do is cooperate with His plan by serving Him, come what may. Therefore when our prayers appear to be unanswered, we can pray to God for the wisdom to accept His plan and the determination to participate in that divine plan.
The best prayer - the one prayer that will never fail – is the prayer asking for strength to serve God in every situation. When a child calls the name of his parent, a responsible parent immediately provides his real needs. Similarly when we chant the Holy Names of God, especially the Hare Krishna maha mantra, He will immediately provide our real need - the strength to serve Him.
When we humbly chant and pray for this inner strength, we will find that God will never disappoint us.
Why Shud a Prince Beg?
Suppose a beggar, who has never seen anything more valuable than currency notes, gets a priceless jewel as alms. Unaware of its value, he puts it aside and keeps begging. Tragic, isn’t it?
Vedic wisdom suggests that most modern humans are like this beggar. All of us are souls transmigrating in various human and subhuman species. All species crave for material pleasures, a craving that makes them wretched like a beggar.
A beggar’s state has three characteristics:
What he wants is not in his control; he cannot force people to give alms
Most of the time, he doesn’t get his wants; most people neglect beggars
Even when he gets his wants, he never gets it as much as he wants. No beggar can become a millionaire by begging.
Similarly,
The sensual pleasures we want depend on many conditions beyond our control. For example, we can enjoy food only when we are healthy, peaceful, the cook is expert and the server is polite.
Most of the time, we don’t get the pleasures we crave for.
For example, how many people can afford all the jazzily advertised food products they desire?
Even when we get sensual pleasures, they are never as much as we want, because, the body inescapably limits our enjoyment.
For example, even if a glutton is allowed to eat free in a five-star hotel, can he enjoy eating continuously lifelong? All bodily pleasures are flickering, whereas our craving is everlasting.
This poverty is imposed on us by our material desires. Fortunately we are now given human bodies, which are like priceless jewels. Why?
As souls, beloved children of the supreme millionaire, God, we are entitled to unlimited happiness. We are eternal, and so is God. Consequently when we love Him, we eternally rejoice in divine love. Only in human bodies do we souls get the intelligence to choose to love God instead of material objects. Just as a jewel, when offered to a jeweler, yields immense wealth, similarly the human body when offered in devotional service to Sri Krishna, yields everlasting happiness. And the most easy and effective form of devotional service is chanting the holy names.
Unfortunately, as we currently know no happiness other than material, we unwittingly put our advanced human intelligence aside and continue seeking animalistic sensual pleasures. Therefore, great sages like Srila Prabhupada, who know the true value of the human body, tirelessly invite us to give up begging for sensual pleasures and be reinstated in our princely spiritual status by chanting.
Vedic wisdom suggests that most modern humans are like this beggar. All of us are souls transmigrating in various human and subhuman species. All species crave for material pleasures, a craving that makes them wretched like a beggar.
A beggar’s state has three characteristics:
What he wants is not in his control; he cannot force people to give alms
Most of the time, he doesn’t get his wants; most people neglect beggars
Even when he gets his wants, he never gets it as much as he wants. No beggar can become a millionaire by begging.
Similarly,
The sensual pleasures we want depend on many conditions beyond our control. For example, we can enjoy food only when we are healthy, peaceful, the cook is expert and the server is polite.
Most of the time, we don’t get the pleasures we crave for.
For example, how many people can afford all the jazzily advertised food products they desire?
Even when we get sensual pleasures, they are never as much as we want, because, the body inescapably limits our enjoyment.
For example, even if a glutton is allowed to eat free in a five-star hotel, can he enjoy eating continuously lifelong? All bodily pleasures are flickering, whereas our craving is everlasting.
This poverty is imposed on us by our material desires. Fortunately we are now given human bodies, which are like priceless jewels. Why?
As souls, beloved children of the supreme millionaire, God, we are entitled to unlimited happiness. We are eternal, and so is God. Consequently when we love Him, we eternally rejoice in divine love. Only in human bodies do we souls get the intelligence to choose to love God instead of material objects. Just as a jewel, when offered to a jeweler, yields immense wealth, similarly the human body when offered in devotional service to Sri Krishna, yields everlasting happiness. And the most easy and effective form of devotional service is chanting the holy names.
Unfortunately, as we currently know no happiness other than material, we unwittingly put our advanced human intelligence aside and continue seeking animalistic sensual pleasures. Therefore, great sages like Srila Prabhupada, who know the true value of the human body, tirelessly invite us to give up begging for sensual pleasures and be reinstated in our princely spiritual status by chanting.
The Secret of Fearlessness
Have you seen how peacefully a child sleeps in the lap of his parent, even in a noisy, crowded local train? The hustle-bustle disturbs everyone, but not the child – due to his implicit faith in the protection of his parent.
All of us strive diligently to overcome our many fears – financial, familial, social, academic and physical. However the necessary security measures like insurances, helmets, buzzer alarms, health checkups fail to free us from a disconcerting sense of insecurity within us.
Why? ...
The Vedic texts explain that all fear originates in an unbalanced, unrealistic material conception of life. The material aspect of our life has its importance; we need to feed, clothe, house and provide for ourselves and our loved ones. However Krishna explain in the Bhagavad-gita (16.10) that when we seek our sense of identity, self-worth, security and pleasure exclusively from our material positions and possessions, we open ourselves to fear. Because the material realm is characterized by constant, unpredictable changes, which often threaten to destroy or harm whatever is dear to us. We prepare ourselves to face some of the small, predictable and controllable changes, but still we consciously or subconsciously dread the huge, unpredictable and uncontrollable changes. Is there any way to overcome this deep-rooted fear?
The more things change, the more we need to embrace the things that don’t change.
The Bhagavad Gita (2.14) describes, “Of the material, there is no endurance and of the spiritual there is no cessation.” Beyond the stage of material activity that preoccupies our mind lies a vast, unexplored realm of spiritual tranquility. We are spiritual beings, souls, originally from a spiritual world, the kingdom of God, who is our eternal loving father. Currently we are occupying material bodies and inhabiting this material world. The more we harmonize with our spiritual nature, the more we become fearless. Understanding that we are, at our core, spiritual and, hence indestructible, fills us with an unshakeable self-security; we recognize that worldly upheavals that affect our material assets have no power whatsoever to hurt us.
Moreover, understanding that a benevolent God is ultimately orchestrating all material happenings helps us to see order amidst change, plan amidst chaos.
The most practical and potent technology to equip ourselves with steady vision of this spiritual reality is divine sound. By chanting the bona fide holy names of God like the Hare Krishna mantra, we progressively experience both our own spiritual identity and God’s the protective presence and guidance in our life. The more we enrich our faith by chanting, the more our devotion for Krishna increases. And when we make our life’s work a devotional offering for His service, we focus more on the object of our service – God and not its fruit – the immediate material result. This shift of focus releases large reserves of mental energy, which are choked by our worry about the future. Chanting gives us the calmness to see that almost all fears are more perceived than experienced.
The more we become free from fear of the future, the more we can fully absorb ourselves in our present duties. Thus spiritual principles and practices empower us to access and utilize even our material talents better and execute even our material duties better. Ultimately spirituality is the only way to conquer the greatest of all fears – death.
For a mature devotee, death is not a fearful termination of existence, but a joyful reunion with God in His everlasting abode. Therefore just as the child stays peaceful amidst chaos, let us become tranquil amidst ups and downs by empowering ourselves with spiritual devotion.
All of us strive diligently to overcome our many fears – financial, familial, social, academic and physical. However the necessary security measures like insurances, helmets, buzzer alarms, health checkups fail to free us from a disconcerting sense of insecurity within us.
Why? ...
The Vedic texts explain that all fear originates in an unbalanced, unrealistic material conception of life. The material aspect of our life has its importance; we need to feed, clothe, house and provide for ourselves and our loved ones. However Krishna explain in the Bhagavad-gita (16.10) that when we seek our sense of identity, self-worth, security and pleasure exclusively from our material positions and possessions, we open ourselves to fear. Because the material realm is characterized by constant, unpredictable changes, which often threaten to destroy or harm whatever is dear to us. We prepare ourselves to face some of the small, predictable and controllable changes, but still we consciously or subconsciously dread the huge, unpredictable and uncontrollable changes. Is there any way to overcome this deep-rooted fear?
The more things change, the more we need to embrace the things that don’t change.
The Bhagavad Gita (2.14) describes, “Of the material, there is no endurance and of the spiritual there is no cessation.” Beyond the stage of material activity that preoccupies our mind lies a vast, unexplored realm of spiritual tranquility. We are spiritual beings, souls, originally from a spiritual world, the kingdom of God, who is our eternal loving father. Currently we are occupying material bodies and inhabiting this material world. The more we harmonize with our spiritual nature, the more we become fearless. Understanding that we are, at our core, spiritual and, hence indestructible, fills us with an unshakeable self-security; we recognize that worldly upheavals that affect our material assets have no power whatsoever to hurt us.
Moreover, understanding that a benevolent God is ultimately orchestrating all material happenings helps us to see order amidst change, plan amidst chaos.
The most practical and potent technology to equip ourselves with steady vision of this spiritual reality is divine sound. By chanting the bona fide holy names of God like the Hare Krishna mantra, we progressively experience both our own spiritual identity and God’s the protective presence and guidance in our life. The more we enrich our faith by chanting, the more our devotion for Krishna increases. And when we make our life’s work a devotional offering for His service, we focus more on the object of our service – God and not its fruit – the immediate material result. This shift of focus releases large reserves of mental energy, which are choked by our worry about the future. Chanting gives us the calmness to see that almost all fears are more perceived than experienced.
The more we become free from fear of the future, the more we can fully absorb ourselves in our present duties. Thus spiritual principles and practices empower us to access and utilize even our material talents better and execute even our material duties better. Ultimately spirituality is the only way to conquer the greatest of all fears – death.
For a mature devotee, death is not a fearful termination of existence, but a joyful reunion with God in His everlasting abode. Therefore just as the child stays peaceful amidst chaos, let us become tranquil amidst ups and downs by empowering ourselves with spiritual devotion.
A Blind Civilization
Imagine a person thrown out of an airplane falling high speed headlong towards the ground.
What would you expect such a person to do? Scream in fear, cry for help isn’t it? If you saw such a person smiling, saying “I am happy, feeling the wind whistling through my ears”, would you not call such a person insane? Practically the entire human race is in exactly the situation of this person. The moment of birth is the moment when we are thrown out of the airplane. From that moment our fall towards death begins. Moment after moment, minute after minute, hour after hour, day after day, month after month, year after year, decade after decade we are pushed slowly but inexorably towards imminent death. But because this change happens gradually, we do not realize the ghastly nature of our predicament. In childhood, in youth and in middle age and for some people even in old age they spend their life absorbed in the petty pleasures of the senses - television, movies, picnics, sports, sex and so on, unmindful of the ruthless slaughter at the hands of death that awaits them.
People, who say, ’I am happy” are either fooling others or fooling themselves because: how long are they going to stay happy? This is not pessimism, but realism. The suffering due to old age, disease and ultimately death is a reality; it is not a negative imagination of a foolish mind. Of course if there were no solution to the problem of death then ignorance would certainly be bliss. But if we could be saved from the awful agony of death, then would not seeking such a solution be foolish and suicidal?
There is a comprehensive, coherent and cogent spiritual science, delineated in the Vedic texts of ancient India, which explains our actual identity, the true nature of the afterlife and the process of conquering death. These texts explain that we are eternal souls, who are entitled for eternal life and enjoyment in an eternal realm called variously as the realm of pure consciousness or the Kingdom of God or the spiritual world. The very fact that we long for immortality in a world where everything is subject to death indicates that we belong to an immortal realm. Modern scientific studies in consciousness, near-death experiences and past life memories strongly suggest that a part of our being survives after death. The Vedic texts assert that only because of misidentification with the temporary material body does the eternal soul have to undergo the trauma of death. By understanding spiritual knowledge and cultivating spiritual consciousness we can all revive our spiritual identity.
God is eternal and so are His Holy Names. By concentrating our consciousness on the eternal sound vibrations of His Holy Names, we can be awakened to our eternal nature. All the names of God have great spiritual potency and for this particular age of Kali, the chanting the holy names the Hare Krishna maha-mantra “Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Krishna Krishna Hare Hare, Hare Ram Hare Ram Ram Ram Hare Hare” is especially recommended by the Vedic texts. By regular spiritual practice when we have harmonized ourselves with the Supreme Lord who is our eternal father, death will then be a joyful reunion with our eternal family in the spiritual world.
Srila Prabhupad would often give the example of a cat holding a kitten and a rat in its mouth. For the kitten the cat’s mouth is a reservoir of maternal love and for the rat it is the source of greatest fear. Srila Prabhupad would say, similarly for a devotee death is actually the representative of Krishna with whom he is reunited after death, but for a non-devotee death is actually the ruthless separating sword of time, which leaves him bereaved of all his loved possessions and relatives.
The choice is ours; do we want to be a kitten or a rat?
What would you expect such a person to do? Scream in fear, cry for help isn’t it? If you saw such a person smiling, saying “I am happy, feeling the wind whistling through my ears”, would you not call such a person insane? Practically the entire human race is in exactly the situation of this person. The moment of birth is the moment when we are thrown out of the airplane. From that moment our fall towards death begins. Moment after moment, minute after minute, hour after hour, day after day, month after month, year after year, decade after decade we are pushed slowly but inexorably towards imminent death. But because this change happens gradually, we do not realize the ghastly nature of our predicament. In childhood, in youth and in middle age and for some people even in old age they spend their life absorbed in the petty pleasures of the senses - television, movies, picnics, sports, sex and so on, unmindful of the ruthless slaughter at the hands of death that awaits them.
People, who say, ’I am happy” are either fooling others or fooling themselves because: how long are they going to stay happy? This is not pessimism, but realism. The suffering due to old age, disease and ultimately death is a reality; it is not a negative imagination of a foolish mind. Of course if there were no solution to the problem of death then ignorance would certainly be bliss. But if we could be saved from the awful agony of death, then would not seeking such a solution be foolish and suicidal?
There is a comprehensive, coherent and cogent spiritual science, delineated in the Vedic texts of ancient India, which explains our actual identity, the true nature of the afterlife and the process of conquering death. These texts explain that we are eternal souls, who are entitled for eternal life and enjoyment in an eternal realm called variously as the realm of pure consciousness or the Kingdom of God or the spiritual world. The very fact that we long for immortality in a world where everything is subject to death indicates that we belong to an immortal realm. Modern scientific studies in consciousness, near-death experiences and past life memories strongly suggest that a part of our being survives after death. The Vedic texts assert that only because of misidentification with the temporary material body does the eternal soul have to undergo the trauma of death. By understanding spiritual knowledge and cultivating spiritual consciousness we can all revive our spiritual identity.
God is eternal and so are His Holy Names. By concentrating our consciousness on the eternal sound vibrations of His Holy Names, we can be awakened to our eternal nature. All the names of God have great spiritual potency and for this particular age of Kali, the chanting the holy names the Hare Krishna maha-mantra “Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Krishna Krishna Hare Hare, Hare Ram Hare Ram Ram Ram Hare Hare” is especially recommended by the Vedic texts. By regular spiritual practice when we have harmonized ourselves with the Supreme Lord who is our eternal father, death will then be a joyful reunion with our eternal family in the spiritual world.
Srila Prabhupad would often give the example of a cat holding a kitten and a rat in its mouth. For the kitten the cat’s mouth is a reservoir of maternal love and for the rat it is the source of greatest fear. Srila Prabhupad would say, similarly for a devotee death is actually the representative of Krishna with whom he is reunited after death, but for a non-devotee death is actually the ruthless separating sword of time, which leaves him bereaved of all his loved possessions and relatives.
The choice is ours; do we want to be a kitten or a rat?
Friday, May 25, 2007
Its all Bcoz of you Mummy...
Its all bcoz of u Mummy...
Its been long time……….. sat on the upstairs, listening songs in my IPOD and watching the blinking starts with the blinking eyes...
Tried again to count the stars 1,2,3,...65...123...oops.no way ! again missed the count...
let me try some other day.Whether i will succeed or not but i will come cross new stars and constellations every time . You love to watch the night sky once you admire it...
Slowly started recollecting the things happened the whole week. few things to be mentioned and has to be analyzed too...
And this one is such an interesting incident ...
One fine afternoon in our office, we started having lunch in the canteen instead of having it in the desktop.
Me and my friend sharon urged our frnds to have lunch in the canteen itself and the reason we told them was "Lets follow the company policy yaar" , but our friends guessed the reason behind v pulled them to the canteen,(guess wot???? GALS……… the entire GMR office comes to canteen for lunch…….)
Good exercise for our eyes…...Had north indian dish and checked whether we had Hindu or Indian express in the curry, finally…. Was happy to c only the curry……..
The topic goes to the Good looking girl who sat next to our table…….that’s when the ‘BULB’ right above my head started glowing (MOZHI effect)……….. and that’s enough for the guys……. I was the BAKRA for the day……………….
Hei Aryan how come the ‘BULB’ knows your Heart and hei that girl is looking you da.Hei man look at your plate and eat.
Teasing… Teasing…. Teasing to the core……. and that’s when I felt I wanna see the gal properly. She has given an wonderful opportunity for my friends to pull my legs for the rest of my lifetime...............
Oops she looks really cute with the Black salwar :-) .Dont think that me too caught in the trap and will start coming to the canteen regularly at the same time.
Day Two:
To my surprise, saw the same girl(and that’s called the fate…….or an another lucky day) , the ‘Black salwar’( the problem is none of us knew her name….. )…… and told my friend…… “hey… is she the same gal….. v saw her durin the lunch right….. next table…… black salwar……………”
MMM….. caught u man, my friend started pulling my legs again……." How come buddy….. none us remember her…… and u pointed out correctly……. Wots happening yaaar???”……….
Me being very clever tried to manage saying,’Chumma,Hoity Toity….. just felt that she might be that gal’….. it was very tough for me to convince them……. Somehow… manged to…. Finally Started praising my favorite Papad to divert the topic.
Day Three:
We came late to the canteen due to some Production issues. The same rocking Gang… showed our presence to the canteen with the loud Decibels.
Am the very innocent, kind hearted, gentle Calm guy in the crowd ( Am being very “modest” :-) ).
There is no such sort of diversion we had on Day 1 & 2. Have to go back soon to check the issues. Now came the topic again and Dinesh asked me, ‘hei dude where is your angel?”.
“Common buddy who's tat??”
And dinesh further cooked up the story, “You are very clever dude, dont act too smart, where is that black salwar who rocks on the other day?”
“But we are surprised…. why are u so keen on that girl who does’nt share her looks on u…. but u never had a crush till date na???”
Are you too busy in your life or no girl attracted you.
Hmmm…. let me start my philosophies...Its time to deliver before the Story goes in a new lane.
Ofcourse we do like many girls and think this/that girl looks good.
Some fall in love ( Guys i have question for which I haven’t received any answer till date. how many of you believe on “Love at first sight” and is that love a real one.)with a good looking girl.
Some fall in love with the girl/boy whom he/she thinks that he/she will be perfect match for their life.
For some,its just a puppy love…. starting at the ticket counter ending in the climax of the film.
Some people will have very great affection to their lovemates and will shed a pure love and the flavors goes on...
I have started analysing myself.
Dont you come across lot of Girls from College to till date ( Hope you asked What about school life man??!!:-) ).
Few attracted you.
Few were in the mind for few days.
Few are good friends for you.
Few seems like a CRUSH, but not.
But you didn't have CRUSH on a single gal even though you have come across very good looking, much affectionate, Caring girls.
Thats right and am not busy in life and wont say that am not interested too.
This depends upon How you were brought up too...
When ever a girl comes into the frame, I will start thinking that She is not like my mother.
Whenever a girl shows affection on me, whatever affectionate and caring, still thinks that this girls affection will never come upto my MOMs.
The way my MOM shows selfless caring, affection, way my MOM look after me every second.
She never compromise with anyone for ME.
Am the life for Her and her life is filled with my love.
When ever i comment that i saw a cute girl today , MOM simply smiles and knows that am just kidding. Who'll have such high trusts and belief ? never and not even my DAD….
Sometimes my friends will have a funny complaint like "I have taken hot drinks yesterday". Ha ha guys you are complaining to my MOM,
She ll never have such wrong assumptions about me and i never do things which I would feel guilty later.
Moreover when your MOM sheds her extreme love on you, you won’t feel like a girl to search for a love/affection. Love and affection from your MOM will definitely make you a caring and matured guy who will have their ambitions as a prior one ( but soemtimes such guys will be very kiddish… vyth childish behaviour... )
They will do all sort of things for their loved ones.
Why shud i fall in love with a girl...I want a girl who is like my MOM to travel with me in the journey called life and i wont think that i would come across such a girl in my life.
So Mamma, am delegating the work to you to find a good girl for me :-)
If not U……. who else can find the perfect match for me……………..
Its all bcoz of you mummy...My heart didn't have a special place for any Girl in the form of Lover... I do have special sisters other than my sibling and i have special love and care for them.
And i am happy for this and still the same kid you saw me from the first day of my life still addicted to chocies,tinkles and cartoons.
Mum, only i know...How Special You Are...
And the story of attraction will Contiue...
Its been long time……….. sat on the upstairs, listening songs in my IPOD and watching the blinking starts with the blinking eyes...
Tried again to count the stars 1,2,3,...65...123...oops.no way ! again missed the count...
let me try some other day.Whether i will succeed or not but i will come cross new stars and constellations every time . You love to watch the night sky once you admire it...
Slowly started recollecting the things happened the whole week. few things to be mentioned and has to be analyzed too...
And this one is such an interesting incident ...
One fine afternoon in our office, we started having lunch in the canteen instead of having it in the desktop.
Me and my friend sharon urged our frnds to have lunch in the canteen itself and the reason we told them was "Lets follow the company policy yaar" , but our friends guessed the reason behind v pulled them to the canteen,(guess wot???? GALS……… the entire GMR office comes to canteen for lunch…….)
Good exercise for our eyes…...Had north indian dish and checked whether we had Hindu or Indian express in the curry, finally…. Was happy to c only the curry……..
The topic goes to the Good looking girl who sat next to our table…….that’s when the ‘BULB’ right above my head started glowing (MOZHI effect)……….. and that’s enough for the guys……. I was the BAKRA for the day……………….
Hei Aryan how come the ‘BULB’ knows your Heart and hei that girl is looking you da.Hei man look at your plate and eat.
Teasing… Teasing…. Teasing to the core……. and that’s when I felt I wanna see the gal properly. She has given an wonderful opportunity for my friends to pull my legs for the rest of my lifetime...............
Oops she looks really cute with the Black salwar :-) .Dont think that me too caught in the trap and will start coming to the canteen regularly at the same time.
Day Two:
To my surprise, saw the same girl(and that’s called the fate…….or an another lucky day) , the ‘Black salwar’( the problem is none of us knew her name….. )…… and told my friend…… “hey… is she the same gal….. v saw her durin the lunch right….. next table…… black salwar……………”
MMM….. caught u man, my friend started pulling my legs again……." How come buddy….. none us remember her…… and u pointed out correctly……. Wots happening yaaar???”……….
Me being very clever tried to manage saying,’Chumma,Hoity Toity….. just felt that she might be that gal’….. it was very tough for me to convince them……. Somehow… manged to…. Finally Started praising my favorite Papad to divert the topic.
Day Three:
We came late to the canteen due to some Production issues. The same rocking Gang… showed our presence to the canteen with the loud Decibels.
Am the very innocent, kind hearted, gentle Calm guy in the crowd ( Am being very “modest” :-) ).
There is no such sort of diversion we had on Day 1 & 2. Have to go back soon to check the issues. Now came the topic again and Dinesh asked me, ‘hei dude where is your angel?”.
“Common buddy who's tat??”
And dinesh further cooked up the story, “You are very clever dude, dont act too smart, where is that black salwar who rocks on the other day?”
“But we are surprised…. why are u so keen on that girl who does’nt share her looks on u…. but u never had a crush till date na???”
Are you too busy in your life or no girl attracted you.
Hmmm…. let me start my philosophies...Its time to deliver before the Story goes in a new lane.
Ofcourse we do like many girls and think this/that girl looks good.
Some fall in love ( Guys i have question for which I haven’t received any answer till date. how many of you believe on “Love at first sight” and is that love a real one.)with a good looking girl.
Some fall in love with the girl/boy whom he/she thinks that he/she will be perfect match for their life.
For some,its just a puppy love…. starting at the ticket counter ending in the climax of the film.
Some people will have very great affection to their lovemates and will shed a pure love and the flavors goes on...
I have started analysing myself.
Dont you come across lot of Girls from College to till date ( Hope you asked What about school life man??!!:-) ).
Few attracted you.
Few were in the mind for few days.
Few are good friends for you.
Few seems like a CRUSH, but not.
But you didn't have CRUSH on a single gal even though you have come across very good looking, much affectionate, Caring girls.
Thats right and am not busy in life and wont say that am not interested too.
This depends upon How you were brought up too...
When ever a girl comes into the frame, I will start thinking that She is not like my mother.
Whenever a girl shows affection on me, whatever affectionate and caring, still thinks that this girls affection will never come upto my MOMs.
The way my MOM shows selfless caring, affection, way my MOM look after me every second.
She never compromise with anyone for ME.
Am the life for Her and her life is filled with my love.
When ever i comment that i saw a cute girl today , MOM simply smiles and knows that am just kidding. Who'll have such high trusts and belief ? never and not even my DAD….
Sometimes my friends will have a funny complaint like "I have taken hot drinks yesterday". Ha ha guys you are complaining to my MOM,
She ll never have such wrong assumptions about me and i never do things which I would feel guilty later.
Moreover when your MOM sheds her extreme love on you, you won’t feel like a girl to search for a love/affection. Love and affection from your MOM will definitely make you a caring and matured guy who will have their ambitions as a prior one ( but soemtimes such guys will be very kiddish… vyth childish behaviour... )
They will do all sort of things for their loved ones.
Why shud i fall in love with a girl...I want a girl who is like my MOM to travel with me in the journey called life and i wont think that i would come across such a girl in my life.
So Mamma, am delegating the work to you to find a good girl for me :-)
If not U……. who else can find the perfect match for me……………..
Its all bcoz of you mummy...My heart didn't have a special place for any Girl in the form of Lover... I do have special sisters other than my sibling and i have special love and care for them.
And i am happy for this and still the same kid you saw me from the first day of my life still addicted to chocies,tinkles and cartoons.
Mum, only i know...How Special You Are...
And the story of attraction will Contiue...
V have shifted 2 a new office named Sun Tech Park & come across a Cute Girl called Akansha :-).
So from now onwards... " A for Akanksha ..."
Thursday, May 24, 2007
Ants and the Grasshoppers...
Brilliant parallel thought…which reveals the country’s present situation…
OLD VERSION…
The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long building his house and laying up supplies for the winter. The grasshopper thinks the ant’s a fool and laughs & dances & plays the summer away. Come winter, the ant is warm and well fed. The grasshopper has no food or shelter so he dies out in the cold.
MODERN VERSION
The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter. The grasshopper thinks the ant’s a fool and laughs & dances & plays the summer away. Come winter, the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while others are cold and starving.
NDTV, BBC, CNN show up to provide pictures of the shivering grasshopper next to a video of the ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food. The World is stunned by the sharp contrast. How can this be that this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so?
Arundhati Roy stages a demonstration in front of the ant’s house. Medha Patkar goes on a fast along with other grasshoppers demanding that grasshoppers be relocated to warmer climates during winter. Amnesty International and Koffi Annan criticize the Indian Government for not upholding the fundamental rights of the grasshopper. The Internet is flooded with online petitions seeking support to the grasshopper (many promising Heaven and Everlasting Peace for prompt support as against the wrath of God for non-compliance). Opposition MP’s stage a walkout.Left parties call for “Bharat Bandh” in West Bengal and Kerala demanding a Judicial Enquiry.CPM in Kerala immediately passes a law preventing Ants from working hard in the heat so as to bring about equality of poverty among ants and grasshoppers.
Lalu Prasad allocates one free coach to Grasshoppers on all Indian Railway Trains, aptly named as the ‘Grasshopper Rath’.
Finally, the Judicial Committee drafts the Prevention of Terrorism Against Grasshoppers Act [POTAGA]”, with effect from the beginning of the winter.
Arjun Singh makes Special Reservation for Grass Hopper in educational
Insititutions & in Govt Services.
The ant is fined for failing to comply with POTAGA and, having nothing left to pay his retroactive taxes, his home is confiscated by the Government and handed over to the grasshopper in a ceremony covered by NDTV.
Arundhati Roy calls it “a triumph of justice”. Lalu calls it ‘Socialistic Justice’. CPM calls it the ‘revolutionary resurgence of the downtrodden’ Koffi Annan invites the grasshopper to address the UN General Assembly.
Many years later…The ant has since migrated to the US and set up a multi billion dollar company in silicon valley.100s of grasshoppers still die of starvation despite reservation somewhere in India …
As a result loosing lot of hard working ants and feeding the grasshoppers India is still a developing country……
Can any one dare to bring India out of this clutches…
OLD VERSION…
The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long building his house and laying up supplies for the winter. The grasshopper thinks the ant’s a fool and laughs & dances & plays the summer away. Come winter, the ant is warm and well fed. The grasshopper has no food or shelter so he dies out in the cold.
MODERN VERSION
The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter. The grasshopper thinks the ant’s a fool and laughs & dances & plays the summer away. Come winter, the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while others are cold and starving.
NDTV, BBC, CNN show up to provide pictures of the shivering grasshopper next to a video of the ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food. The World is stunned by the sharp contrast. How can this be that this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so?
Arundhati Roy stages a demonstration in front of the ant’s house. Medha Patkar goes on a fast along with other grasshoppers demanding that grasshoppers be relocated to warmer climates during winter. Amnesty International and Koffi Annan criticize the Indian Government for not upholding the fundamental rights of the grasshopper. The Internet is flooded with online petitions seeking support to the grasshopper (many promising Heaven and Everlasting Peace for prompt support as against the wrath of God for non-compliance). Opposition MP’s stage a walkout.Left parties call for “Bharat Bandh” in West Bengal and Kerala demanding a Judicial Enquiry.CPM in Kerala immediately passes a law preventing Ants from working hard in the heat so as to bring about equality of poverty among ants and grasshoppers.
Lalu Prasad allocates one free coach to Grasshoppers on all Indian Railway Trains, aptly named as the ‘Grasshopper Rath’.
Finally, the Judicial Committee drafts the Prevention of Terrorism Against Grasshoppers Act [POTAGA]”, with effect from the beginning of the winter.
Arjun Singh makes Special Reservation for Grass Hopper in educational
Insititutions & in Govt Services.
The ant is fined for failing to comply with POTAGA and, having nothing left to pay his retroactive taxes, his home is confiscated by the Government and handed over to the grasshopper in a ceremony covered by NDTV.
Arundhati Roy calls it “a triumph of justice”. Lalu calls it ‘Socialistic Justice’. CPM calls it the ‘revolutionary resurgence of the downtrodden’ Koffi Annan invites the grasshopper to address the UN General Assembly.
Many years later…The ant has since migrated to the US and set up a multi billion dollar company in silicon valley.100s of grasshoppers still die of starvation despite reservation somewhere in India …
As a result loosing lot of hard working ants and feeding the grasshoppers India is still a developing country……
Can any one dare to bring India out of this clutches…
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