The World of Jayaram

Do you feel lucky?

2012-02-08T10:30:00.001+05:30

Father took his son to a village to show how they are living with an intention to teach his son how better their life is. He did not say anything during the trip. Next day morning, he asked his son:

"Son, what do you think about their life?"

Son replied:

"We have only one dog and they have a lot…we have a small aquarium to grow fish and they have big ponds… we need electricity and they do not need that…our house is in a small compound and they have lots of land around…How lucky they are!"

(Courtesy: Swamy Sandeep Chaithanya)

Is there a God? No? Yes? Nos?

2012-01-24T10:28:00.007+05:30

I happen to read somebody quoting Stephen Hawking. It read as follows:

“I believe the simplest explanation is, there is no God. No one created the universe and no one directs our fate. This leads me to a profound realization that there probably is no heaven and no afterlife either. We have this one life to appreciate the grand design of the universe and for that, I am extremely grateful.” ― Stephen Hawking

This lead me to think this way – An atheist and a fanatic/religious zealot has something in common – they both believe in the same God concept.

It is not a good idea to call a scientist an atheist just because he/she do not currently believes in God (or unless he/she explicitly says so). Because, they usually change their opinion/view based on new findings and discoveries. But it looks like, even many scientists (but not Albert Einstein, Dr.Michio Kaku etc) fits into the category I mentioned above. - they have the same God concept, somebody who created this world in 6 days and now lives in his mansion up in the sky. If anybody thinks that is the only possible God form, it is nothing but ignorance.

Who or what is God according to Sanatana Dharma (modern day Hinduism)? Let us take one scripture, Srimad Bhagavat Gita, and two clues from it (amongst over a hundred given).

God is (but not limited to):

Atman, the soul of all entities, the Cosmic Soul...that 'something' without which we are said to be dead or without which we start to decay (Bhagavat Gita 10.20)

Cosmic Consciousness or a Super-consciousness (B.G 10.22)

God is the knowledge and the intelligence contained within E=Mc². It is intelligence that beautifully kept unbelievably heavy objects in the Akasa/space. They are all in motion, with the highest level of precision. God is there in that divine beauty, orderliness and intelligence (isn't amazing that even a tiny water creature like a Tardigrade has a built-in mechanism to absorb oxygen from water in a subtle, smooth eco-friendly way? Look at those migrating birds and butterflies, ants, spiders, weaver birds, corals...)

This consciousness can only be experienced/felt and not experimented/seen. And when one achieves that, that experience can not be communicated or converted into a formula/scientific method using which another scientist can experience the same.

Srimad Bhagavat Gita says:

“Mayi sarvamidam protam sootre maniganaa iva.” Gita 7.7

Meaning, there is absolutely nothing beyond me/God. Everything in this cosmos is connected with a common string (or particle/energy/consciousness/'whatever') like beads are connected in a rosary using a thread or like a thread goes through all the beads in a rosary.

This is the reason why there is this belief in the East that God is present everywhere and in everything....and this is the reason why Lord Buddha did not speak about a God form; not because he had no idea about God. A drop of water in an ocean, a bubble, a wave...all are nothing but the ocean itself though they are different. There is an ocean that goes through every single drop in a subtle way.

Creation happens in God and entire creation dissolves in God. All creation evolves from His two Prakrithi or nature/energy - Para (higher nature) and Apara (lower nature) - Shakti and Shiva or Cosmic Body and Holy Spirit or Yin and Yang..they are the womb of all creations in this entire cosmos.

(Apara prakrithi or Ashtamoola Prakrithi or the lower nature consists of Earth (does not literally mean planet Earth),Water, Fire, Air, Ether, (cosmic) Mind, (cosmic) Intellect and (cosmic) Ego. Para Prakriti is the supreme soul/spirit. And we can find and extension of all these in every one of us; meaning we all are made of these stuffs).

When an atheist could contemplate God in this dimension, the atheist would possibly become a believer and when a traditional /conventional God believer finds out this, he/she might turn into an atheist!!

A Christmas Thought

2011-12-27T04:26:00.003+05:30

The first miracle by Jesus Christ is said to be turning water into wine; but it wasn't to make money. Read Bible a thousand times and you can not find a drunk Jesus Christ.

Getting drunk to celebrate the birthday of Jesus Christ only brings shame to him, not glory...

A Silence

2011-12-18T09:55:00.002+05:30

You and me
Sat beside and
Listened to that song.
A song sung by-
The rain, in the dark

A silence
A breath
A smile

Along the rains
Into the river.
Like a river that
Ever change but
Never change.

A smile
A silence
A breath

Along the river
Into the ocean
Ocean with waves
Floating above and
Calm deep within

A breath
A smile
A Silence

RAINBOW .. Color of Humanity

2011-12-07T11:59:00.002+05:30

Once upon a time the colors of the world started to quarrel: all claimed that they were the best, the most important, the most useful, the favorite.

GREEN said: “Clearly I am the most important. I am the sign of life and of hope. I was chosen for grass, leaves, trees – without me, all animals would die.”

BLUE interrupted: “You only think about the Earth, but consider the sky and sea. It is the water that is the basis of life and drawn up by the clouds from the deep sea.”

YELLOW “You are all so serious. I bring laughter, gaiety, and warmth to the world. The sun is yellow, the moon is yellow, the stars are yellow. Every time you look at a sunflower, the whole world starts to smile. Without me, there would be no fun.”

ORANGE started next to blow her temper: “I am the color of health and strength. I may be scarce but I am precious for I serve the needs of human life. I carry the most important vitamins. Think of carrots, pumpkins, oranges, mangos..”

RED could stand it no longer: He shouted out: “I am the ruler of all of you! I am blood! Life’s blood! I am the color of danger and of bravery. I am willing to fight for a cause. I bring fire to the blood! I am the color of passion and of love, the red rose, the poppy and the poinsettia.”

PURPLE rose up to his full height. He was very tall and spoke with great pomp: “I am the color of royalty and power. Kings, chiefs, and bishops have always chosen me for I am a sign of authority and wisdom.” Finally,

INDIGO spoke, much more quietly than all the others, but with just as much determination: “Think of me. I am the color of silence. You hardly notice me, but without me you all become superficial. I represent thought and reflection, twilight and deep water. You need me for balance and contrast, for prayer and inner peace.”

RAIN began to speak: “You foolish colors, fighting amongst yourselves, each trying to dominate the rest. Don’t you know you were each made for a special purpose, unique and different? Join hands with one another and come to me.”

Doing as they were told, the colors united and joined hands. The rain continued:

“From now on, when it rains, each of you will stretch across the sky in a great bow of colors as a reminder that you can all live in peace and harmony. The rainbow is a sign of hope for tomorrow”

And so, whenever a good rain washes the world, and a rainbow appears in the sky, let us remember to appreciate one another.

- A NATIVE AMERICAN STORY

The Journey

2011-11-28T12:01:00.001+05:30

A train
The journey
A Tear.

There was no choice
But to move away
There was no choice
But to catch a train
There was no choice
But to break a heart

A train
The journey
A tear

Khadakasha

2011-11-18T10:08:00.001+05:30

This universe exists in Akasha or space. There are three main types of Akashas - Mahakasha, Khadakasha and Jalakasa.

Mahakasha is the space we see up, with no limits..growing further and farther.

Jalakasha is the reflection of the Mahakasha in a water body (Jala means water).

Khada means mud pot. There is space in the mud pot which is nothing but an extension of Mahakasha. It exists there because and till there is a pot. It was there before the pot was even born. When the pot dies it becomes part of Mahakasha. Khadakasa has a birth time but it is never born. It has a death time but it never dies.

We are like Khadakasha.

Between You and Me

2011-11-11T10:55:00.001+05:30

Between you and me

There are three 'I's

The I that I know, the

I that I told you and

The I that you know.

The I that I know

May not be the I

That I told you and

I do not know the

I that you know.

God and His Image

2011-11-08T13:21:00.000+05:30

Did God create us in His Image? or What does that really mean?

According to Vedas, the 10,000 year old 'knowledge', we are made of body + 'something' (a Chaithanya).

Our body is made of the Pancha Bhootha (five elements). And we need the same Pancha Bhootha to live.

The food we eat is provided by Bhoomi (Earth). Or this is the Earth Element within our body
There is Jala (water) in our body (just like earth is covered with 70% water, our body too is 70-80% of water)

It is the Fire (Agni) Element in our body that maintains our body temperature and helps with digestion

We breath Vayu (Air) and our blood carries this Element to nook and corner of our body

Whether it is Air or Food or Water, it moves around in Akasha (space) in our body

And when we die, our body goes back to the 5 elements (irrespective of whether we bury or burn it). So, if we are made of His image, how did we became perishable, when God is not?

When we are said to be dead, are we completely dead? or what dies? As we all know, when we are pronounced medically dead, all our organs are NOT really dead. It can live on another human, if it is removed within some specific time. And when those organs are taken, doctors do not have to give us anesthesia coz we do not feel pain anymore. Body can not feel anything without that 'something' or Chaithanya. So, what is gone is that Chaithanya (coz the body is still there and there is kind of 'life' in it). and when it is gone, we are dead...But where did it go?

Ancient knowledge says when we die, we are supposed to go back to from where we came from. So, the body turns back into 5 elements. That 'something' too should go back to the place from where it came from. Though it can not press the 'Home' button just like that, it is meant to be back there. Only then it can fulfill the equation, E=mc²

So, that 'something' or Chaithanya is the image of God and it is present in every one of us. It is beyond religion, faith and race. If that 'something' can be compared to lit charcoal, often it is covered with ash. Once the ash is blown away, it starts shining and glows like fire..and then it is capable of pressing the 'Home' button when our body goes where it came from.

Two Moms

2011-10-27T10:39:00.000+05:30

Among the stuffs I read this week, two of them had something in common - a newborn. One was a news:

Last Sunday (October 23) a newborn baby girl was found abandoned in a Church premise, in Chicago.

Second was a mail from a friend of mine:

One of her (newborn) kittens died. She kept the body on a table and started digging to bury the dead kitten. When she came to pick it, the body was missing. She looked around and found that the mother cat took possession the body and she was keeping it with her. Mom cat was crying in a different voice and kept on licking the dead kitten.

The Woodcutter and the Axe V 2.0

2011-10-14T09:30:00.001+05:30

We all know the woodcutter story, the Aesop fable - Fable of the Woodcutter or Woodcutter and the Fairy or the Golden Axe or The Honest Woodman…

(He was cutting wood by the side of a river and his axe slipped into the river. He prayed and a fairy/river goddess came with a golden axe and asked whether it is his axe for which he said no. Then she came with a silver one and he said no. Finally she came with the iron one which the woodcutter was using and he said yes. Seeing his honesty, she gave all the three axes to him. Thus he became rich)

What happened then?

The woodcutter decided to visit Kerala, God's own country to watch Trissur Pooram, a famous festival also known for its crowd. He lost his wife in the crowd and he started praying. God (or the fairy that helped him last time) appeared and asked what happened. He told that his wife is missing. Then God came with the most beautiful woman in the world and asked:

'Is this your wife?'

'YES' the ex-woodcutter replied.

Fairy became very angry and was about to curse him. Then he told to the fairy:

"Wait, don't curse me. I clearly remember what had happened last time. You came out with a gold axe and a silver one and then the iron one and you gave me all three of them. Now, if I say 'No', you will come with some other woman and finally, all of them will be on my head. And you don't know how much trouble I am having even with one..So, I am happy with this lady"

(As told by Swami Sandeepananda Giri; not verbatim)

Supplements

2011-10-13T07:53:00.000+05:30

The other day I happen to read an article in Yahoo Health. It was about the 5 must have (food) supplements, written by a 'health expert' (who also is an author). He says he pops a handful of supplements every day and carries these 'must have' ones on long trips. According to him, everyone should take a very good multi-vitamin pill every single day. This sounded sheer nonsense to me and I asked him why on earth a healthy human need a handful of supplements on a daily basis, (he did not reply); especially in US where most food comes with added vitamins.

Take the popular cereal Honey Bunches of Oats for example. The carton says it contains:

Vitamin A, D, B6, B12, Iron, Thiamin, Riboflavin, Niacin, Folic Acid, Phosphorous, Magnesium, Zinc, Copper, Sodium and Potassium

More or less same with Froot Loops and Nesquick. Most milk brands has extra vitamin D. Americans generally eat meat/fish every single day and most people here includes some veggies and fruits in their every day meal (mostly in the form of a salad). So, when we pop a couple of supplement pills, there is this possibility of we taking excess vitamins. Some people believe our body is intelligent enough to take what it requires and flush out the rest in case of water soluble vitamins etc. But we need to understand that there is a mechanism which decides how much the body need and how much it need to flush out, even if that theory is right. This clearly means extra work for some of organs.

Yesterday I read another article which says:

"Researchers say those who take multi-vitamins, folic acid and iron supplements may face higher risks of early death"

http://www.nbcwashington.com/news/health/Study-Finds-new-Dangers-in-Vitamins-and-Supplements-131518988.html

and

http://vitals.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/10/10/8256866-some-common-vitamin-supplements-could-increase-death-risk-study-finds

All these days (supplementing) Vitamin E was given this image of something which promotes prostate health (or prevents prostate cancer for that matter). And now there comes new enlightenment - It in fact has the potential to cause prostate cancer in men

http://vitals.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/10/11/8273189-more-bad-supplement-news-vitamin-e-may-be-risky-for-prostate

This clearly shows that the increased prostate cancer rate in the recent days has something to do with vitamin supplements. This reminds me of the similar cures similar principle of Homoeopathy. If 'something' has the potential to cure a disease, that 'something' has the potential to give similar symptoms of that disease in a healthy person (who do not have that disease).

One of the best and wise ways of finding a solution for (increased rate of) cancer is to invest money in finding the (man-made) causes than trying to find a cure.; so that we can prevent it, if it can be prevented. It sure do has something to do with what we eat (genetically modified food for example) and pop.

As we can see, two third of American population takes vitamin supplements and thus contributes their share to this 28 billion (per year) business. It is not a matter of surprise when 1% takes decision on 99%.

I think we have reached a point where we can no more trust these researchers. It all depends on who is funding the research. There was a time we believed that if we eat fruits and vegetables, it will take care of our health, not anymore because most of these fruits and vegetable lost their sanity when we added or removed some genes.

So, it is wise to consult a medical doctor before popping a magic pill, if one is serious about health.

IRA planning the Doomsday style!

2011-10-12T04:08:00.000+05:30

So, the world will end on next Friday, October 21 2011?. But so far, we did not hear anything from Harold this time. Many people even forgot about it. Where is Harold now? Well, it looks like he retired from his job and is in a nursing home. What happened to the money and assets those foolish people donated to him, that is worth millions? This is called a well planned retirement, the doomsday style. The cunning way of planning your IRA account.

When Steve Jobs died, a (new) Church openly said 'Thank God Steve Jobs is dead' and they said they will picket his funeral. They got the cheap popularity they wanted and it's time for donations.

'Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves' - Matthew 7:15

Spirituality, again!

2011-10-11T11:21:00.000+05:30

This is not the first time someone asking me this or me blogging about it - what you mean by spiritual and not religious?. I was asked this question recently when somebody read one of my profiles in internet. I thought I say something new than what I wrote before.

Take this for example:

"You shall love your neighbor as yourself" Mark 12:31

What does that mean? Well, it looks kind of self explanatory unless one hates himself. Why should one do that?, love our neighbor as ourself? It is not that difficult to find an answer for that 'why'. (note that we are not asked to check our neighbor's religion/faith before we love them)

I personally think Mark 12:31is worth meditating.

Let us look it closely. When I read "YOU shall love YOUR.." it becomes "I shall love MY…", if that message is for me. Isn't it so? Then comes this big question - Who am I? There starts the spirituality or the spiritual journey. Don't you think Jesus is asking us to find who we really are?

When we look around and observe those religious people, we can see that, for them, religion is all about God or finding God or blindly following a scripture or attending a place of worship or considering themselves as a servant of God, speaking of 'their' God, following some customs, marketing 'their' God etc etc It happens so because their perception is different, when they read scriptures (when/if they read). I personally know some people who used to visit some particular temple on some particular day of the week. What if they miss a day and something went wrong? They would say it is because they missed the visit and God is angry..then they offeres some extra pooja to please the God. This will not happen with a person who has spiritual inclination though he has this habit of visiting a place of worship and miss a day. A spiritual person do not believe that God sits only in places of worship.

Take the Hindu scripture Bhagavat Gita. There are over 500 translations in my mother tongue itself. Millions around the world read it, study it and many of them can recite it without referring the scripture. Who is Krishna? and Who is Arjuna? If anybody thinks Lord Krishna is just a King (or the avatar of God) who lived 5000 years ago and he gave this pep talk to his buddy Arjuna before a fight and he is going to come again (even Jesus for that matter), I think they did not really get it. Of course Gita can be viewed that way. It is a HIStory book and it is a sanskrit text book too. But the spiritual way of looking at it is bit different. If we say Krishna or Jesus is not going to come again to save the world (the whole universe is HIS creation then who is coming to save whom?), it will create a big indigestion/anger/rage for the religious people not to the spiritual ones.

At one point Jesus says he is the son of God and then we can see him saying he and the father are one. That is spirituality.

Coconut Oil Goes Healthy..

2011-09-20T09:13:00.001+05:30

Coconut oil was the primary cooking oil in my native State, Kerala. But since a decade or two, coconut oil is looked upon as a health hazard by doctors (especially the cardiologists) and those so called nutritionists. They say the 'research' say it is bad for our heart. To what extend we can believe these research and researchers? In this present day world, research results/data/statistics/findings has a lot to do with who is funding that research.

Now, what will happen when a reputed US company starts selling coconut oil? That too a giant from the health and nutrition industry?

I read the following product info:


        Cholesterol Control: 

Not all fatty acids are alike. Lauric acid, for example, is a "good" saturated fatty acid. An analysis of 60 cholesterol research studies shows that the lauric acid in coconut oil helps maintain good cholesterol levels that are already within the normal range, as measured by the ratio of total cholesterol to "good" (HDL) cholesterol.

        Immune System 

The lauric acid and monoglycerides in mother's milk help the immune system of the new-born baby. The same lauric acid and monoglycerides in coconut oil help support the adult immune system.

        Intestinal Health 

By helping maintain the healthy intestinal flora, coconut oil contributes to the healthy functioning of the gastrointestinal tract.


well well well

The Woman

2011-09-13T08:17:00.000+05:30

Some time back I asked a (lady) friend of mine:

"Assume that you are dead but you are given 5 more minutes. What will you do?"

There came the answer:

"I will apply makeup"

Day and Decade

2011-07-27T11:42:00.002+05:30

It was not a day but decade
The walking besides with
Glitter in your eyes.
Your solicitous warmth
Soothed my woes and
That smile on your face
Took my breath away

It feels like it was a day
And not a decade...

The aroma of that Rose
Intoxicated me; the Rose
That you never given to me; and
I know you loved my missives
The missives I never wrote to you

It feels like it was a day
And not a decade, but
It was not a day but a decade

Chosen Ones

2011-07-27T11:24:00.001+05:30

They were the chosen ones
And so they chose to
Walk away...

War and Peace

2011-07-19T01:19:00.002+05:30

“God is one..” – Peace

Preaching on unforgivable sins - the Plot

“...And that one and only God is ours” - War

Pain

2011-06-22T01:06:00.001+05:30

The pain of

Losing heart

To heartless

Religion Fraud and Babas

2011-06-16T03:37:00.003+05:30

Somebody left such a comment on my blog about Harold's rapture prediction

"Frauds are there in your religion too. what about saibaba,nitya,amma etc? they all are frauds"

Thank you..

These kinds of frauds are there everywhere and in every religion. Religion/God/faith based business is a million dollar business, these days.

I do not know on what basis you call Sai Baba as a fraud. If that reference is about materializing stuffs from thin air, vomiting shiv lingams etc, of course it is a trick and he managed to fool a lot of people that way. If we consider his contribution back to the society by way of charities and humanitarian activities, he was a great human being. He did not consider the the other person's religion or faith for that matter and his help was not in exchange of the other person's faith or religion.

Nitya? Nithayananda? The guy who fell into a sex scandal? It was a trap and the videos were there all over the net. I do not know whether he was promoting himself as a celibate monk or not. If he was, this is a double shame.. (in the case of Osho, he did not say ‘I am going to become a celibate monk' and that was his parents major worry). . But there is no justification for his shameful act.

Amma.. Matha Amritanadamayi … the ‘hugging saint'… No idea what ‘fraud’ activity she is into. But it is interesting that her philosophy has some depth and she did not even complete her 5^th grade! Her 'fraud' is yet to become public? no idea... If you know something, please let me know too. I am not her follower.

Note: Hinduism does not believe in religious conversion. Because, the core of Hinduism is spirituality and not blind faith or fear. Hinduism is beyond a particular God or scripture or guru (or fraud :P)

Friends, Coffee and a little Philosophy

2011-05-24T10:57:00.004+05:30

(Happen to remember this story today. Read sometime back and it is everywhere in the net. I do not know who wrote this and what exactly was the title. Credit goes to the author).

A professor stood before his philosophy class with some items in front of him. When the class began, wordlessly, he picked up a very large, empty jar and proceeded to fill it with golf balls. He asked the students if the jar was full. They agreed it was.

The professor then picked up a box of pebbles and poured them into the jar. He shook the jar lightly. The pebbles rolled into the open areas between the golf balls. He then asked the students again if the jar was full. They agreed it was.

Then the professor next picked up a box of sand and poured it into the jar. Of course the sand filled up everything else. He asked once more if the jar was full. The students responded with a unanimous yes.

The professor then produced two cups of coffee from under the table and poured the entire contents into the jar, effectively filling the empty space between the sand. The students laughed.

“Now,” said the professor, as the laughter subsided. “I want you to recognize that this jar represents your life. The golf balls are the important things—family, children, health, friends, and favorite passions. Things that if everything else was lost and only they remained, your life would still be full.”

“The pebbles are the other things that matter like your job, house, and car. The sand is everything else—the small stuff.”

If you put the sand into the jar first, he continued, there is no room for the pebbles or the golf balls. The same goes for life.

“If you spend all your time and energy on the small stuff, you will never have room for the things that are important to you.”

“So. . .pay attention to the things that are critical to your happiness. Play with your children. Take time to get medical checkups. Take your partner out to dinner.”

“There will always be time to clean the house and fix the disposal. Take care of the golf balls first—the things that really matter. Set your priorities. The rest is just sand.”

Then one of the students raised hand and asked what the coffee represented.

Professor smiled and said:

“I’m glad you asked. It just goes to show you that no matter how full your life may seem, there’s always room for a couple of cups of coffee with a friend.”

Judgement Day, Rapture and Harold Camping

2011-05-23T11:08:00.004+05:30

So, the judgment day did not come as Harold Camping predicted, though he said the Bible guarantees it. What does it mean? One way this could mean that he proved Bible is wrong. Who is the loser here? Those fools who believed in him. Many people sold their assets and donated that money to Camping (May be Camping’s people bought these assets at cheap rates), some gave away, there were lots of garage sale…those who did these kind of foolish activities lost everything. And Camping? (He said he will comment tomorrow. That is May 23 2011. May be he need more time to come up with something like 'God said not enough number and hence we need to convert more' ?)

He knew Judgment day is on May 21 2011 6pm pst sharp (So, Jesus is American and he follows pacific time with daylight saving?) But he was clever enough to apply for tax extension for 2011 in advance (now he has more time to file tax returns. His plan B?)

He did not forget to renew his ‘Family Radio’ (owned by him) license for 2012

He asked for donations well in advance (for doomsday advertisement)

I don’t know what this means but they did book meetings past May 21 2011

Look at this evangelist’s financial position:

As per his 2007 Balance sheet, (that is the latest I can find. It is available in MinistryWatch.com site. His ministry is Family Stations Inc) his total assets amounted to $152 million. And as per his 2009 tax returns, he declared that he got $18 million as donations. See? this is self-explanatory...

He cleverly discounted people’s faith and converted that into money, just like many people in God business.

Next is the final episode, which is end of the world, that is going to happen exactly on October 21 2011 (as per his prediction). That is when God is going to destroy Earth by sending fire and brimstones from the sky (and kill 97% of Earth’s population and then send them to hell - 3% was supposed to go to heaven yesterday- OMG!)

When will people learn?

May 21 2011

2011-05-20T22:10:00.002+05:30

So, for some people the world is going to end by tomorrow, May 21 2011. The placard shown by some guy here in Oakland read “Bible guarantees it”. Does it mean that the Pope did not read Bible? Or he did and did not understand anything? Come on..

But this benefited some clever guys (I do not know whether there is a nexus between the sponsors of doomsday and these guys). They came out with new life time insurance for pets at an one time premium payment, at a 'premium' price. The logic behind this scheme is that Jesus will take ONLY selected people with him and as of now animals are not there in his list. So, if the pet owner gets selected, who will take care of the pet? This insurance people takes care of that responsibility, legally. Hundreds of people already took that insurance (as per yesterday's news report)

May be some guy(s) behind this publicity stunt is going to commit suicide and he/they want to take as many scapegoats as possible with him/them… But if he/they survives tomorrow, what is there to lose? He/they got the world publicity he/they wanted and he/they can come up with something for Jesus not coming to save…. Probably a flight delay?

Path

2011-05-20T05:43:00.001+05:30

She said left

He said right

They parted away

A Lioness Woe

2011-05-16T08:30:00.002+05:30

The Lioness in the cage

Had a lovely forest past.

Now she has a city cub and

She doesn’t know how to

Tell her son that they

Do not belong here.

Organic Thoughts and a GPS

2011-05-11T11:46:00.002+05:30

I happen to have some mail conversations and chats with some of my friends regarding my hometown, global warming, organic food, GPS ,maps etc. and this made me think about my own life style change.

The other day I was travelling using the GPS application in my phone. I had to stop for lunch but I forgot to turn the GPS off. I went to the rest room first and as soon as I entered the rest room, the GPS said ‘Turn left….’ and that was kind of embarrassing. I wasn’t using GPS to find where exactly the urinal is but it sounded like that.

These days we use GPS system to find almost every place- like to find a place of worship, post office, rest area, hotel, beach, pizzeria, gas station, mall,…There was no GPS during my childhood and I have not seen anybody using any kind of maps either, to travel. Till I came to US I had not used even a road map to move around (but yes, I had collected some route directions from those who have already been to those places). When we send a search request to find an ATM near us, we don’t even realize that we are sending signals to 4 or more satellites which are thousands of miles away. I have experience of losing way even while travelling with the help of a GPS. This made me wonder about world travellers like Monk Hsuan Tsang who successfully travelled from China to India over a thousand years ago…The three wise men (probably astrologers) travelled hundreds of miles to see Jesus, 2000 years ago…Later, Jesus Christ travelled all the way to India without GPS…amazing.

(They all took help from the sun, moon , stars and the earth’s magnetic field, I know.. but still it is amazing)

Had to tell one of my friends how my native city was some 40 years ago. The tap water was potable and we never even heard of water filter or any such purifying system. Water from the wells tasted great and it never gave any diarrhea, though it was natural home for many insects. Bottled water did not even exist in my place, that time. The air was cleaner and I don’t know whether ‘pure oxygen’ was sold in pharmacy stores like they do these days.

Couple of times, I heard President Obama speaking of the importance of investing in cleaner energy sources. I do not know whether this talk was because of the pressure to stop the oil wars. We had used firewood based ovens for cooking (from firewood to kerosene was a big upgrade that time). Was that a prehistoric way of cooking? Then how come traditional BBQ is still modern and civilized?

‘Don’t forget to switch off the lights during earth hour”…..

We never had any special hour for earth during my childhood, though we loved mother earth. Our tradition taught us to consider earth as a goddess as well as our mother. I happen to see that some of the pathway lights here are on 24/7. And it was surprising for me to see that many corporates here keep hundreds of lights on even during weekends/holidays (when nobody is working). We had very little electrical equipment during my childhood. That table fan of ours was a luxury and we mainly used it when we had guests. It looks like my dad never used an electric iron in his entire life. He ironed his cloths using a traditional coal based iron box till his last days.

We used to grind kitchen stuffs manually – like rice, green gram, black gram etc. We made dough and batter using our hands (with the help of grinding stones etc …there are some other traditional stuffs but I don’t know its name in English) and not with any blender or mixer. We kids ran to grocery stores making vroooom sound assuming that we are driving a car or a motor bike. We walked to school and used bus or taxi only when we had to travel more than 2 miles (or so, or when there is an urgency/emergency). During my childhood I never even thought of machines that could wash and dry cloths. We washed our cloths and dishes with our hands (this I did till I came to US. Here in US, there is no washing soap – we can find it in Asian stores). There weren’t any obese kids in our school (except some from rich families). And hence there weren’t any juvenile diabetes caused by obesity. Kids, parents and even grandparents, everybody did some natural ‘exercise’ every day as part of our day to day activity.. When I was 6 years old, I was able to and used to walk to school which was 3 miles away… Gyms were only for those who are very serious about body building and they were hard to find..

By the way, will switching off lights for one hour save this planet? I asked couple of people in what way this helps prevent global warming and I did not get any proper answer. Yes, it is symbolic and may be it has some chain/cascading effects too but many a times for some people and organizations it is just a fad. Somebody said ‘the heat from the bulb…’ Well, if that is the case, look at this – here in US, most of the cars turn on headlights even during day time. This means a million headlights turned on during day time, very single day (personally I found this useful while driving in freeways) which definitely can increase the atmospheric temperature.

Carbon dioxide is considered (by many ‘scientific people’ and organizations) as the main greenhouse gas. After seeing the US lifestyle, I asked myself this question – where does the carbon dioxide from the carbonated drinks go? Why this aspect is not at all considered as an environmental issue? Here people empty tons of gallons of soda and beer every day. There is no US without soda and beer. It is the same with many European countries. At this point, we need to look into one thing – how many global warming research organizations got funds from soda companies?

Why is China (and India) ALWAYS blamed for CO2 related issues? Even the USA flags we get here in US stores are made in China ! Go to any store here and we find less than 5% ‘Made in USA’ items. Out of that 95%, 80-90% is Chinese products. This means China has lots of industries and factories. US is a capitalist nation and they never want to help a communist country (the Vietnam War is a proof). So?

So, it is clear that this happened so because of corporate vested interest to boost profits by utilizing China’s cheap labor, infrastructure cost and other production costs and not- so- strong environmental laws. If industries in China are polluting the environment, it is for and because of the corporates and MNCs from the west (And this policy is one of the major reasons for the current recession in US). If I have a factory in another country that is polluting the environment, whom should I blame, myself or that country and its people?

So, CO2 is a big problem? Look at the creation. The creator created both plants and animals. Animals breathe in oxygen and breathe out CO2. Plants take CO2 and gives out oxygen…awesome. That means, if we are facing issues related to excess CO2, it also means we need more natural plants and trees (not plastic ones).

Plastic wasn’t a big player during my childhood. I never had a plastic lunch box. We had more of stainless steel, aluminum and copper utensils. We had aluminum ‘school bags’ (box shaped)and metallic pencil boxes.

How did we buy milk, 40 years ago? Some families had cows at home. They used to sell excess milk and we go to their house with some stainless steel utensil. Or, milkmen used to come to our place and he pours milk into what utensil we hand him over to, which usually were stainless steel or aluminum. Then it became glass bottles. These glass bottles were re-usable. Same was the case with soft drinks. There was coke and Fanta during my childhood too but they all were in glass bottles and not in plastic bottles. We used to carry cloth bags to market or grocery stores. Veggies were directly put into those bags and grocery items were packed in paper bags. We hardly used any insecticides and chemical fertilizers. I myself had a small kitchen garden where I had a kind of pea, tomato, green chili, eggplant, ladies finger, yam, plantain/banana etc (and rose, jasmine, shoe flower etc ).

So, 40 years back, I was eating organic food almost every day? I did not know how lucky I were during that time. After all these years of scientific developments and new food pyramids, now we are asked to stay away from genetically modified foods and grab organic ones ….

Years passed and passed....And now? Limiting the use of electric and electronic equipments, daily walking and exercise, organic food, eating more fruits and veggies, going organic, avoiding plastic, car pooling, cotton shirts, handmade soaps and other goods, herbal, natural and alternative medicine, Yoga... what the..?

It is nothing but going back to the roots but at a cost with a strange price tag.

The Easter Feast

2011-04-25T20:20:00.005+05:30

Another Easter just passed....

It was a Sunday morning of some 16 years ago. I heard a knock knock on the door. I came out from my room and saw my then best friend smiling at me, carrying something in her hand. She wished me 'Happy Easter'. She was in a hurry and said she need to go to church (was the lead female singer in an evangelical band. Did some cassettes/records too). She brought something to eat. Her family was going through some hard time, financially, and hence what she brought wasn't anything feasty but something simple and homemade.

What matter is the willingness, intention and heart..

That was the best Easter feast in my life, and it always will be..

Cannibal

2011-04-18T00:33:00.002+05:30

He ate brains to boost his brain
Testicles to boost his sex
Human fetus for his health and
They called him civilized.

I accidentally bit
My tongue and
'Drank' my own blood
And they called me
A cannibal.

It's Libya...

2011-03-23T07:08:00.004+05:30

The US got another war to fight - Libya. In what way Libya’s internal issues concerns the US? If the rocketing gas price in US would not come down after the war, I don’t know what concern it is. Is it because the US love to save the common man in Libya? you got to be kidding..

For a moment, this war made me think about the greatest war that was fought in India, some 5000 years ago. In the long past, there were 6000 odd other wars that were fought here but this war stands out because of the sheer presence of Lord Krishna in the war field which resulted in ever greatest Srimad Bhagavat Gita (He was Arjuna’s charioteer and did not fight).

This war happened some 5000 odd years ago. How civilized were the humans that time? were there any rules for fighting a war that time?

Yes, there were rules and they are clearly mentioned in Mahabharat. Let us look at some of those rules

Warriors in chariots should attack only warriors in chariots, warriors on elephant with warriors on elephant and so on

Soldiers on foot fight with soldiers on foot (a warrior in chariot can not shoot an arrow on to a soldier on foot but has to come down to ground to fight with a soldier on foot)

No war after sunset and soldiers are allowed to visit the other side (just in case any of their friends or relatives are on the other side, which was the case in Mahabharatha war since it was between relatives)

No one will attack someone without any weapon. In that case it is a man to man bare hand fight

No attack on women, kids and elderly people

And now?

Islam and A Blue eyed Blonde Jesus !

2011-01-27T11:36:00.003+05:30

After I moving to US, somebody from the largest Islamic country asked me couple of questions - How do US treat the muslims? Why many Christians change their religion to Islam etc. The question came with a 'what do you think?' prefix or suffix.. In what way my opinion matter if Christians change their religion to Islam when I do not follow neither of the religions? I don't know.

I had never thought about such a scenario till I face this question. But what do I think, if I have to think?

The outlook of the americans towards muslims changed after that 9/11 incident, thats a fact. Bin Laden even gave a direct message to US to accept Islam or face consequences. Attacking US (India too) is jihad for him/them. I live in a place which has considerable muslim population. This area is said to have the largest Afghan population in this State (or even country, not sure). I do not think they are being discriminated here at least in my locality. Or I better say I never felt so (no such news so far).

Why do Christians convert into Islam? I did not think about it. But this question made me recollect certain things that came and gone through my head. First of all, I am not sure about this conversions. But the person who asked me gave Michael Jackson as an example. Yes, thats true, sometimes back I too had blogged about his conversion. Then I realized that an acquaintance of mine too left Christianity and embraced Wicca. Some more conversions too went through my mind. Two of my acquaintances changed their faith to Islam to marry muslim guys (one Christian and one Hindu. Islam and Hinduism has polar difference at this point. There is no exit clause for Islam. If you change religion, you get death. In Hinduism there is total freedom – you worship Jesus, you worship Allah, you worship this or that, you don’t worship anything at all, you worship Satan, you change religion to a cat's of dog's or even donkey's religion, no questions asked. Hinduism do not believe in forcing religion on to others or even among Hindus). One thing common with couple of these people were that they were African Americans or dark skinned people. Is Islam picking up in African countries? Not sure but if it is, I am not surprised coz...

Last week, I was checking (at the largest online store in here in US/in the world) the list of the top selling books here in US . There was an interesting book which tells us about a boy's near death experience (NDE). What is interesting is that this boy claims that he went to heaven and met Jesus and even God (plus angels and some of his relatives -who died earlier- etc). This book is promoted as a true story and people are buying it and giving very high rating too. Surprisingly, lots of them believe that it is for real (personally, I do not believe because the book is written by his father who is an evangelist and the boy says funny stuffs like Angels always carry sword to fight with Satan etc. Sword? Oh yeah? So, they still live in the iron age? I expected at least a Light Saber...if that boy really had an NDE, I don’t think he is telling lies. But his these sort of experience can be very much explained in terms of psychology/para-psychology). But in what way this is connected to Islam?

How did the Jesus look like? He was tall , white skinned and had blue eyes. So, Jesus is a tall white man with blue eyes (there is a confusion regarding the color of his hair; some say its blonde and some say its chestnut). So, Jesus was probably an American?

I spent a lot of time reading stuffs here and there to find how the americans feel about Jesus. Many of the white people like this 'fact', they believe Jesus was a white man for sure (in reality, if they check Jesus's DNA, it would be closer to Bin Laden and not Gorge Bush !). But the problem here is when Jesus gets promoted as a blue eyed blonde white man, may be it is bit hard for the darker skinned people to digest (I have seen some pictures of Jesus where he was shown as a dark skinned man, may be this was to promote Christianity in Africa). But Prophet Mohammad wasn't a white man plus Islam believes in Jesus (as a messenger).

I have heard it from some of the very popular promoters of Islam that when Jesus comes again, he will be coming to testify to Christians that he never said he is God and he will be coming to re-assure the words of prophet Mohammad, the words or Allah, spoken in the Koran. According to Islam, Jesus's message was exclusively for Israel. I spend about 6 hours to listen to the talks and teachings of one of the 'islamic evangelists'. He speaks convincingly. I think even the celebrity evangelist/televangelist Benny Hinn can not counter his points. He says Jesus was a muslim and muslims are more christians than the present day christians because they follow the teachings of Jesus better than the christians....lots of stuffs like that

So, these new Jesus image and promotions could be one of the reasons why Christians are changing their religion to Islam. At least thats one possibility.

Sleep and the World

2011-01-12T09:42:00.002+05:30

Sometime back I wrote about falling asleep during meditation. So, is sleeping heavily bad for spiritual growth? I did not say so. Sleep (at night) is always good. Look at one wonderful thing about sleep (apart from its healing properties).

Science may not accept this at present but at least some people know/think that our thoughts also play some role in creating the environment around us. As we know, thoughts have some connection with our desires because desires can influence our thoughts. Dreams have some connection with our desires. Many dreams, especially the repeated ones, could be the reflections of our deep rooted desires. When do we dream? We dream when we are asleep.

By observing our dreams, chiefly the repeated ones, we can trace some of our deep rooted desires residing within us which could play a role in creating ‘our world’.

So, we can use our dreams as a tool to analyze and assess the strength of our desires and modify it to enhance even our spiritual growth.

See?

Story of Stories

2011-01-11T11:53:00.002+05:30

In every tradition, there are many beliefs and some stories behind it. For example, in India, people used to say

“While sleeping if you keep your head facing towards north, you will die (early)”

To support that they might say the story of how Lord Ganesha got his elephant head (the elephant was sleeping keeping its head facing north. The story has no importance here so I am skipping that). This story will keep kids away from keeping their head towards north.

(Now science has explanation for this belief in terms of magnetism and how our health is affected if we sleep that way)

In my native State, to get relief from neck sprain there is this belief among the elderly to keep a ‘nazhi’ (a round measuring cup) under the neck and rest. Now docs and physio therapists ask us to roll up a towel and keep it under our neck and rest or use a cervical pillow (btw, some people still do not know the logic and insist in keeping exactly the ‘Nazhi’ …..its their ignorance)

If those ‘wise guys’ of the long past knew the reason behind it, why didn’t they say it straight instead of making up some stories?

Ever heard of 'grandma stories'? Yes, every one of us. (But what about grandpa stories? Well, at least I am not sure about such stories). In every country and tradition, it was the grannies that used to tell stories. Women were the one who used to take care of the babies and kids. They used to feed them telling stories; they used to put the babies to sleep telling stories. Some stories were just stories and some stories had something within it.

Women in India never used to go to school in the past. Men were the bread earners and women were the ones who took care of the household things. The beauty those old stories is that everybody can understand it, at least the story part. Those old grannies were illiterate but they always had lots and lots of stories to tell. They gave turmeric telling a story and not telling that its an anti-septic.. they gave pepper with another story...there comes garlic with a glass of story...

We don’t need to be educated to listen to such a story or to tell a story. So, those ‘wise ones’ made things simple (well, in India, they also made stories with super depth, which demands higher understanding, with a different purpose) – instead of trying to explain how things are and making it complicated, they passed the knowledge through stories. It is true that there were lots of people who really did not care for or understood the logic and they kept telling stories ( In this ‘modern' era too many people take even medicines without reading the ingredients!).

Story time…

“Athazhamundal ara kaatham nadakkanam”

(After having dinner, one must walk a little)

A Parallel World !

2011-01-07T06:06:00.001+05:30

Do parallel worlds exist? Look at this:

I live in the ground floor of a wooden apartment (which has three floors). Somebody lives just above my apartment who always creates some sort of noise…. Stuffs falling, heavy stamping.. From my observation, he works from home and that too at night. When I am in the hall, he stamps and pounds just above me.. At night, when I rest in my bedroom, he too moves to his bed room and starts pacing or stamping just above me creating creaky noises and mild ‘bangs’.

I am convinced that parallel worlds do exist !

Christ and Kali

2011-01-06T11:27:00.005+05:30

In some Hindu homes we can see this picture of Goddess Kali. She is the most ferocious and fearful form of God. Her tongue is out and all red.. holds the head of a demon she just killed… holds lots of weapons.. What is the point of having such a God concept? Actually, it is not to scare anybody but to scare away the scary things.

Hinduism teaches to love God. We don’t get scared by those who we love irrespective of their looks. So, when one learns to love such a scary figure treating her as mother, nothing is scary. That is the logic behind it. I personally knew couple of Kali worshippers and they were never scared of the dark.

But what if that picture scares one and keeps them away from that picture at night? I think such a person should remove that picture from the pooja room/place. Hinduism offers lots of God forms (including the formless) to suit all kinds of worshipers. That person better choose something which is comfortable for him/her ( There is a reason/logic why there are many different forms).

Once a Christian friend of mine told:

“We hate Jews because they crucified our Jesus”

I asked:

“Do you have that cross at home? The crucified Jesus?”

I got the answer “Yes”

The very idea of Jesus in the cross is not to remind who killed him (or that is what I personally believe). So, if what that cross bring is the memory of his killers, I think one better replace that with a picture of Jesus holding a lamb close to his heart. I think His life was there to teach love and not hatred.

Winter Sport !

2010-12-22T13:15:00.007+05:30

I have blogged about many of my vacation trips in the past. But I have never done this kind of a trip in my life so far where I almost reached my destination but could not make it…where there were signs/omens but I did not read it…

I was waiting for the winter to come to see some snow and do some winter sport. Since there is no snow in our place, I decided to visit Lake Tahoe where it snows and lot of winter activities happen.

I booked a hotel well in advance to get a competitive rate. The trip was planned on 20^th of this month (December). On 19^th, I did some last minute purchase (some gloves, caps etc) and we were all set. We wished to reach there before check in time (3 pm) coz the sun sets very early and then it will be difficult to drive since there will be snow fall during evening/night.

I could not sleep well at night and I woke up with severe headache and thus the trip got delayed for 2 hours. When I was about to enter the road from driveway, there came a ‘red’ truck and there came a thought in my mind ‘ is that any warning?’ then I thought ‘how can I be such a superstitious person?’. As soon as I entered the road, there came a red car for which I had to stop. Then I thought maybe these are coincidence or just a warning to be a little careful. So, there we gooooo

Since we started late, I wished ‘if only the traffic lights were all green, I could save lot of time’. The first light was green, so was the second, third, forth, fifth… hey this is great !

We had checked the Google map for planning and I use GPS to drive. GPS showed a different route than the Google one. But we followed the GPS. But all of a sudden, for no reason, the GPS said ‘recalculating’ and came with a different route. Usually this happens when there is traffic jam/block etc and it also depends on the settings. This time, we had no idea (usually it is my wife who handle the GPS and route and I just drive. So she is good with GPS stuff than me but even she could not find out why the route changed). We missed a billboard which gave a warning about some road closure. We did not care much coz our GPS has traffic update and it can tell us which road is closed and where the traffic is heavy.

We started climbing hills. The temperature started dropping. 5, 4, 3, 2 …I was thrilled and kept looking at the thermometer. I was waiting for 0 to come and finally there it is minus one…wow. It was a great feeling and there it is – SNOW. I saw a board ‘Chains required’ but did not see any car with tire chains. I have seen similar boards like 'ICY' and something related to tire chains during summer too. So, I thought these boards are always there.

Before traveling we asked one person who already have done this route and he said he did not use any chain though there was snow. And I read that there are places where we can stop our car and put chains and there will be professional people who we can hire. I had practiced how to put chains but since I did not feel any difficulty in driving and saw nobody is using chains, I went on. I thought there will be BIG snow ahead where we might require chains. On and off, I saw these guys who were removing snow from the road driving bulldozer and some other equipment (I still do not know its name)

Then, the GPS stopped working…it could not load maps. There is no phone signal and hence we can not make any calls, nor any search. I told my wife:

“I wonder why we are the only people in this road”

Then there I saw another black car (mine is black) ahead of me. It was a relief but then I saw him turning back. I went ahead and it looked dead end for me. There is no road but HUGE ice or snow or whatever. And there goes a road on to my right. Wife said she is sure that our road was supposed to be a straight road and there is no need to take right turn. We were just 30 miles or less away from our destination

So, I turned back and asked a driver of one of those bulldozers. He said

‘Lake Tahoe is that way but the road is blocked and it might take a day to open this road. You have to go all the way down…..” and he gave us a different route (which was the Google route, which had less trouble).

Then there came another guy and he told me:

“You are not using chains. If the highway patrol see you, you MIGHT get a ticket”

I said thanks to them , turned back and proceeded. My wife started getting worried coz – it is snowing, we need to climb down all the way and this will take longer than we expected, may be 2-3 hours more and by that time it will be night.. and she said

“This is what that billboard said, I guess…it said this road is closed ”

But then why the GPS did not inform us? No idea..It gave us the worst route..…

Everywhere it is snow and ice and it made me happy rather than worried and the happiness weighed more, may be. But this does not mean that I was not worried. And I felt I better put chains but there came a thought:

“the road is closed so, there is no chance for police patrolling this road and that driver said I MIGHT get a ticket so chains may not be mandatory ” and wife just said “yes” she was not worried about the chains but other things coz I was driving without any problem. Then….

I spotted a police vehicle well ahead of me and I pressed break. I was on the right side, obviously, closer to the center of the road, but the car started moving to left, skidding. I am going in the wrong direction. There is no control even after putting the hand brake. The car moved slowly and hit a huge chunk of snow and stopped (luckily, coz I think else we could have fallen into the valley....I do not know coz everything was covered in snow). I wasn’t worried and did not lose my presence of mind and managed to back it slowly and proceed further. By that time the police van disappeared. But I said:

“I think we need to put the chains”

We were going down and hence I thought I will stop at some level/even place or turn out place. There was one such place but it was already occupied by the cop! And he caught the other black car. I stopped my car and started putting the chain. Then the cop reversed his van and asked what happened and I told him that I am putting chains. Then he said:

"Follow me and pull over there". I did.

He came out of the van, so did I (we are not supposed to come out of the car when a cop stop us. But he will come to us. Not like India). He asked:

“So, you stopped there coz you knew that you cannot pass me without chains, right?”

“No, sir… Those bulldozer drivers asked me to put chains and I was looking for a right place…I am driving on such conditions for the first time in my life”

He stared at me and asked:

“Did you see those board reading chains required?, there were many of them”

“Yes”

“Then why you did not put chains while coming up? You were supposed to do that”

I had no proper answer and I said I did not find a proper place. As a matter of fact, I expected some special places with pros available to help (that is what the internet say). He did not agree:

“No, there were lots of places”

I just said “I am sorry sir” and he said “can I see your driver license, registration and insurance?

So, it is a ticket ! So far I have a clean driving record and here I am going to get my first ticket…This really made me very sad.

He asked me to go ahead with my chain thing and wrote a ticket. I was wearing a normal woolen glove and the temperature was minus 5. BIG mistake. There was a chunk of snow between the tire and the body of the car. I wet my hand…when I finished putting the chains, my hand/fingers froze (then I remembered my Romanian friend saying “if you do not protect yourself in minus temperatures, it will result in frostbite. And even might result in amputation” )

Cop gave me lots of advice and issued a ticket. My hands was paining like hell and became numb. I switched on heater and changed into another thicker glove. Slowly the pain started going away and I can feel my fingers…what a relief…

After sometime, the GPS started working and said some direction and then again it failed. This time it did not even turn on. But last time, what it said was to take a left turn. But that left turn was filled with heavy snow (coz snow wasn't removed). I turned and my wheels got stuck, I cannot move at all. Wheels started spinning and the car started coming back. I told my wife:

“It is impossible for us, even with chains. Only 4 wheel drive cars can go through this road”

We were already late (coz of the chain I was driving at 20 miles per hour)..the sun started setting, GPS not working, no phones working, no cars passing, no food to eat, there is no restaurants around, no houses around, it’s snowing and the temperature is minus 5 or 6…

I managed to back my car from the snow, safely and started moving very slowly coz the road has become icy. I went further and said:

“I feel like there is no chain”

I stopped the car and checked…the chain is gone ! we need to turn back safely, go up and get it but what if the cop finds me again without chains?

I was sure that it might have lost in that huge snow.. and yes, it was there buried deep inside that snow I pulled it out but it was damaged !! Luckily I had some tool to fix it. But will it last for the entire trip? No idea.

Chain again and there we go…then the road looked better and I decided to remove the chain. There still was snow on the sides of the road but the middle looked fine. I stopped the car, removed the chain and said:

“what about taking a picture of mine?” and my wife became angry and said:

“Are you crazy? I just can’t believe you, really, I just can’t believe you”

“Ok, fine, no photo then.”

I told I want to make this trip and ready to drive through snow at night, taking the risk. But wife said we better go back home. It was a big disappointment for me. But I said:

“Yes, it looks like something tells us to go back… we are going back home…when you can make a call, call up the hotel and tell them that we cannot make it”

GPS started working and it worked all the way till we reach home and then became dead again.

Finally, its home sweet home….

Man ! , what a trip !

Life in the US - Part 2

2010-12-01T12:27:00.002+05:30

County Libraries are one of the wonderful things here. The membership is free and we can borrow 75 books at a time! But the same reason becomes a con because people take more books than they want and thus most of the popular books will not be available (we can book a book). Libraries provide almost all info we need, for free. Means, they will provide free internet, info on schools and colleges, the California driver handbook, info about social security, upcoming events in that locality etc. There are lots of big print edition books for the elderly people. They keep lots of magazines and lots of other language books too (like, Hindi, Farsi, Chinese, Tagalog etc). Apart from books we can borrow Audio and Video CDs/DVDs too. With a single membership, we can use the facilities of the other libraries that come under that county.

One thing when could not avoid noticing here is the lack of electric switches, in most cases. Most of the panel has only sockets but no switch. This is mentioned by Jackie Chan in his latest ‘Karate Kid’ movie. When the kid says ‘we do not have switch in America’ he says ‘keep switch and save the planet’. Yes, we have 24 hours hot water. Electrical equipment are just plugged into the socket and there is no ‘on or off’ concept, in general (of course there is switch for stuffs like in sink garbage disposer)

Unlike India, we cannot directly consult a specialist. As per the ‘system’ we need to consult our primary care physician and then that doc has to refer to respective specialist. If we break this system and visit Urgent Care or Emergency Room, we will end up paying more money. Some basic insurance might not even cover such visits.

Initially I thought I will take up some university course here. But the reality is education is very expensive here. So, most people (citizens) avail educational loans to study. Back in my native place, lots of people have a college degree and here it is not the case. Even in IT field, many of the locals are not computer engineers. That is one of the reasons why Asians dominate here in IT field.

It’s a rich country, but there is poverty and unemployment here in US too. And at present, it’s very high. Recently the government cut funds for most of the things. But surprisingly they have funds for war, always. One reason for unemployment is the outsourcing. It’s not just some software but lots and lots of other things too. Go to any shop and try to find something ‘Made in USA’ and its tough time to find. Most items are Chinese and Americans really do not like it. They consider it as cheap quality. But there is not much choice left. This might sound surprising, but it’s a reality that Dell do not make any computer here in US, though Dell is a US company. There is not even a single company in US which makes spoons, forks and knives. Same with canned sardine, Levi jeans and cell phones (including iphone4) – none of these are made here. Here the labor cost is high and hence the corporates just invest their money on other countries to double or triple their return.

This country is strange. Here we can find people from almost every other country. Many ‘real’ Americans do not like this (including one of my acquaintances). This country gives citizenship even through lottery system. People from most of the Asian counties like India, Philippines, China etc cannot participate in the lottery system currently since their population is very high here. But people from lots of other country can participate in the lottery and if they win, they can come here and get settled. Looks like the founders of US wanted to make this a cosmopolitan country.

That’s how things are here….

So?

So, God bless America !

Life in the US - Part 1

2010-11-30T09:08:00.004+05:30

It’s my first ‘living anniversary’ here in US. Time just flew. How was my life here, so far? It’s good, of course. No complaints. I said no complaints coz what I am going to write are not complaints but some of my observations.

This is my first firsthand experience living in a capitalist country. I had read a lot about US before, including some travelogues. But travelogues have a different approach. How similar it is the life here compared to a country like India?

Quarter dollar is an important aspect of those who live here. We need them for using public phones, coin operated laundries, parking lots etc. And hence we can ‘buy’ quarter dollar from most of the grocery stores. It comes rolled and a roll will contain 40 coins. So, if any increment comes in coin operated services, we need to pay at least a quarter dollar extra, not 5 or 10 cents.

The public school system here is very good as far as the easiness of admission and interaction with teachers etc are concerned. Every child here has got a seat in the school for sure and there is no choice but to attend a particular school (not talking about private schools). Unlike India, a job in a public school is not a permanent job. One can get fired. Here the teachers are there to teach and not to play politics. Most of the teachers like teaching and they are not there just to make a living. Every school keeps its own fund and every school district has its own fund. If a school district has to cut funds, it even cut teaching jobs. Dental hygiene is important here. And there are no kids with disarranged teeth (like the one I have). They all align it (this has become a common trend, which is good, around the world, these days) when they are teens and it’s a big business too. Head lice is also considered as a serious issue here. Kids can even stay home during the lice treatment period (they have to make some arrangements to pick up homework and assignments).

One aspect I did not understand is the ‘Drugs’ and ‘Drinks’ aspect. One day, when my son told me how to drink wine without getting drunk, I was surprised and I asked who told him that and he said his Physical Education teacher and its part of his job! Drugs are the funniest part. From elementary school they will start issuing the ‘anti-drug’ awareness pamphlets and newsletters. Drugs are a common problem in high schools and some schools are particularly known for drugs. Now, the ‘what I do not understand’ part. It is not a big deal to find out where it comes from, if the police and school authorities work together and use some technology. But why it’s not happening? From where all those drugs are flowing into schools and what is the police doing? Instead of issuing newsletters, why can’t they burst the network? Another ‘I do not understand’ thing is the school bullies. Every year, lots of kids commit suicide here in US coz of bullying. (In India, there is this ‘samam, vedam, krodam and dandam’ principle to up bring kids. Means, first you tell in a way the kid can understand; if that fails, then give advice; if not solved, show anger.. if that too fails, give physical punishment)

There are no small here in US, in general. Almost all retail shops are chains. Target, Home Depot, Trader Joe’s, H&M, OfficeMax, Best Buy, Macy’s, Starbucks, Costco, Safeway, FoodMaxx, JC Penny, Toys R Us, Wal-Mart, K-Mart, Denny’s, Wendy’s, Walgreens, CVS….its a long list. Most of these chains have got their in-house brand and they even sell generic drugs in their label, apart from the pharmacy stores like Walgreens and CVS. Pharmacy stores are not just pharmacy stores. They sell all the medicine plus they stock almost everything else including toys, greeting cards and even alcoholic beverages.

Medicine is divided into prescription drugs and over the counter (OTC) drugs. But there is no need to worry if one wants to do self-medication. Almost all the essential drugs are sold OTC, including some ‘sleep aide’ ones. These sleep aides are kind of cheating. They are all mostly antihistamines (anti-allergy drugs) which has the side effect drowsiness. Apart from this, hormones like melatonin, which has a lot to do with sleep, is also sold OTC. Cold medicines come in two versions – day and night. Night one contains something (usually antihistamine or some decongestant) that makes you sleep/drowsy. Anti-biotic comes under prescription drugs and usually the doc sends the prescription directly to the pharmacy (any pharmacy of our choice) and we can pick up the medicine from the pharmacy store; we cannot choose the brand. Knowingly or unknowingly, most of those who live here take vitamins in excess. This is because most of the bread, milk, cereals etc comes with added vitamins, many a times the same vitamins. Plus many of them take vitamin supplements for no reason at all. Again, B group of vitamins along with some minerals are sold as vitamins for nail, hair, skin etc.

Speaking about the pharmacy, this country is ‘ruled’ by Pharma and Insurance giants. Every year most people take ‘flu shots’ during winter. Do we really need it? How do the scientists know which virus is going to hit this year? What if we catch a cold/flu even after getting vaccinated? Well, don’t ask such ‘stupid’ questions. If you want, get the vaccine or keep quite…Medicines are ridiculously priced. A small tube of antibacterial cream which can be sold for less than 5 dollars costs more than 10 dollars. We can hardly find anything for less than 5 dollar in medicine category. My son had to do a physical exam, a vaccine and a tester drug before his school admission and the bill was over 500 dollars. They make 10 tablets for less than a dollar (by outsourcing) and sell each for nearly 10 dollars. A TT injection for my son was 110 dollars. How can somebody afford it? Angels comes in the form if Health Insurance.

This ridiculous rate makes insurance a must. Will that policy cover our teeth? Eyes? No, we need to get dental insurance and eye care separately. Almost all the primary care docs have got only the basic medical education (in India, if one has only a bachelor degree in medicine, he/she will face a tough time to get patients). Most of the dental ‘work’ can be paid in EMIs. That tells how expensive it is. If one has to do a consultation, a cleaning and couple of root canal treatment with crown, it is cheaper to go to some other country like India and get it done. Same with many surgeries. This was the reason why medical tourism was picking up in India and then all of a sudden a ‘bug’ originated from India which seriously damaged the medical tourism. From where did that bug come from? Who created that? Shhhhh…

Vehicle insurance is another trick. Here the insurance is not for the vehicle. Vehicle insurance is tagged to a vehicle and a person together. In India, insurance is for the vehicle. Anybody who has a valid driver license can drive a vehicle which is insured. So, if there are 5 members (with valid driver license) in a family, all of them can drive/share the same car without paying any additional amount for insurance. Here the insurance goes up when more people are added up. And different insurance agency will give different rate. If we just take a policy we might end up paying more for no reason at all. Some credit card comes with some basic insurance too. But most people, including me do not know the exact terms and conditions for such coverage. Usually car insurance will cost a few thousand dollars per year; it depends on the make of the car, where we drive, the driver’s driving history, age etc

Among the chain stores one is interesting. Costco. This is a wholesale store but for individuals…weird? We need a membership ($50 per year for the basic membership and $100 for the executive). Things are supposed to be less priced here. To what extend it is less? I asked couple of people, including myself and nobody has got a clear answer. The trick is every item we buy from Costco is specially packed for them, in large quantities. If we want a tooth paste, we need to buy a minimum of 5. If we want to buy milk, we need to buy 2 gallon minimum. If something is comes in 100 grams at a normal store, here it comes at 325 or 475 grams. Who is going to compare gram to gram? I admit that I have not done that kind of a calculation so far and as of now, I do not know any CPA here (they might have tried this for sure). Everybody who go there end up spending at least 100 bucks at a time. What if we don’t go? We get this feeling ‘hey I paid 50 bucks for membership. I need to make use of it’. Some of the branded cloths are specially made for Costco and there is quality difference. I am not saying that there is no saving at all, of course there is this cash back. But there are some under currents. The more we spend on in-house brand (Kirkland) the more we ‘save’, possibly. In US, the maximum retail price is not printed on the products in human readable form but only in barcode. This allows retailers sell things at a price of their choice. For a pack of lay’s chips, we have to pay a lot more if we buy from a gas station (there almost everything cost more). And every gas stations sell same gas at different price. If we live in a posh area, they charge more. The first gas station after we exit from a freeway will charge more. We need to pay more on weekends too.

Mobile phone or wireless phone as we say here is another ‘experience’. We need to pay for everything, including incoming calls and texts (Back in India, all incoming calls and texts are free, for all telephone service). If we want an iphone, we do not have any choice but to get service from AT&T (as of now). Each carrier has their models. We cannot simply buy this or that phone unless we are ready to change service provider too. Basic service is only for basic phones and smart phones comes with mandatory data package (In India, we can buy any handset we want and use with our current service provider. No particular service is compulsory. We can buy a HTC android and still stick to basic service if we want).

Here, auto mechanics (and lawyers) are known for charging very high fee. Back in India there was something called ‘servicing’ the car. Means, we can give the car to a workshop for ‘service’. They will do complete checkup (bumper to bumper) go for a trial run and fix problems if any. There are pickup and drop service too. Here they cannot pick up or drop coz they do not have insurance for that vehicle and hence cannot go for a trial run on the road too. Here service is part by part, generally. Most of the workshops have this ‘break package’ ‘oil change package’, ‘timing belt package’, 'headlight package' etc. While doing the wheel rotation, they will check the tire pressure of only 4 tires and the spare tire will be spared. Almost all the time, the labor will cost more than the parts. Hence, a lot of people do most of the minor works by themselves, to the extent possible.

Out of the Box

2010-11-10T11:29:00.002+05:30

It was about why Indians don’t say ‘I love you’ very often just like the people in the west. I was told:

“I hate it when people don’t say it”

Why a typical Indian don’t say ‘I love you’ to his spouse or kids or friends just like that? And why somebody from the west should hate that Indian attitude?

I was thinking about that. My father never told “I love you” to me. Nor did my mother or sister. Never heard that from any of my relatives or Indian friends too….Does that mean that they did not love me? I don’t think so..

Take a generation back. What is the divorce rate among old fashioned Indians who almost never said ‘I love you’ to their spouse? Almost zero (among my parents’ generation, I don’t know even a single relative or acquaintance of mine who got divorced). What about the same with the west? Not much change from the current rate. What does this mean? At least this does NOT mean that those old fashioned Indian did not love their spouse. Btw, this also does not mean that Indians never express their love and care. How do they express is out of scope of this blog.

(I was thinking about my mother tongue. What is the equivalent for ‘I love you’? The closest is – ‘Njan nine premikkunnu’. For us, it is too dramatic. May be we can use it in love notes or in movies but hard to use in a face to face conversation. Of course we can say that in English. But in that case, how can that be part of Indian culture? India speaks over a hundred languages and every language is totally free from English. Zero influence; in fact, Indian language has influence on many other world languages, including English)

There are certain things in this world we should not ‘why’. It is meaningless. For example, in many countries (including India) there is one hand gesture for expressing ‘super’, ‘great’, ‘fantastic’ ‘excellent’ ‘awesome’ etc by touching the thumb and index finger and keeping the other three fingers straight. But this gesture is something filthy in some other countries. If one Indian goes and ‘why’ somebody from that country will that help? Nope. Most of the Asian countries have got traditional dress for wedding. Why can’t they dress like the west, in a ‘modern’ way?

Is there any point in an Indian pointing finger at west and a westerner pointing finger at India without trying to understand the cultures and undercurrents?

Recently Philippines and Indonesia had floods in some parts of their country. When asked, couple of Indonesians started with

“Alhamdulillah…..” (it means all praise only for Allah)

and Philippinos did not start with any particular expression. Why? May be because they don’t have an equivalent expression, as per their tradition, I don’t know.

Once somebody told me

“I have all the answers in my scripture, so I don’t have to read any other one”

Here that person meant the scriptures of other religions.

Some people say:

“My God is the only true God”?

So, all ‘other Gods’ are pirated, right?

Why is it so?

How did ancient Indian Rishis say there is fire deep inside the Earth without even seeing any volcano in their lives, that too thousands of years ago? How did they say it is Earth which is rotating the sun when even glass was not known to humans? (no glass, no telescope). How did they foresee tissue culture, bore well etc? How could they talk about virgins giving birth (thousands of years before Jesus’s birth). How did that happen?

It is the BOX. We all have a box around our ‘thought factory’ the mind or we sit inside a box, when it comes to many things. That is why it is said that we need to think out of the box, at least sometimes.

Albert Einstein stands out from among the past and present scientists (Looking at the earth, he had wondered how earth stays at a perfect distance from the sun so that earth gets the right amount of heat. He could not come out with any equation. He did not think it as a coincidence nor did he believe in the conventional God). So does Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. They were capable of thinking out of the box. Not just them, those ‘rain makers’, inventors, designers, researchers, scientists and most of the ‘successful’ people. If they had seen only the obvious ones, they would not have been there where they are now. Computer, airplane, mobile phone, missile, satellite, submarine….. all those thousands of items around us are there because somebody thought out of the box. Every one of us may not be able to contribute like them. But every one of us has some area where there is scope for a little bit of out of the box thinking….

Keep Moving..

2010-11-08T09:00:00.001+05:30

When I posted the psalm 22, I wasn’t just quoting something from the Bible but it had something to do with something else. Well, God gave me this answer:

‘You are on a journey. In this journey you will see many wonderful things but don’t get caught up by something thinking that it is the most beautiful thing. Keep moving. You might see more wonderful things.…”

Some buts…..

Thank you God for walking with me… Thank you for staying with me, when I stopped….Thank you for pushing me further when I felt tired.

I love you…

Why?

2010-11-04T10:08:00.003+05:30

My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? why art thou so far from helping me, and from the words of my roaring?

O my God, I cry in the day time, but thou hearest not; and in the night season, and am not silent.

Psalm 22: 1-2

Read This too:

http://theworldofjayaram.blogspot.com/2010/11/keep-moving.html

Is This World Real?

2010-10-27T09:43:00.006+05:30

Some 4-5 years ago, I was reading the Indian scripture Yoga Vasishta . It wasn’t easy to understand. Just like any other scripture, we need a teacher. Rishi Vasistha tells this to prince Ram (Lord Ram’s era was 7600 BC) –

‘..this world you see is not real’

(not verbatim or translation).

I did not really think much about it when I read that, coz the concept of maya (illusion) wasn’t anything new to me. So, I thought it in that direction, though I knew that Yoga Vasishta is very hard to digest and it has great depths.

Today, I was checking my son’s school bag and there comes a worksheet about Electromagnetic spectrum. I had studied this and still remember some basic things about it. But I happened to stare at the diagram and then it was a real surprise for me.

Look at the range starting from Extremely low frequency. It goes to super low, voice frequency, very low, low, medium, high, very high, super high, extremely high, radio waves, far infrared, mid infrared, near infrared, VISIBLE LIGHT, near ultraviolet, extremely ultraviolet, soft X-rays, hard X-rays and gamma rays. From the range of 1 meter to less than 1 Nano meter, what we humans can see is ONLY 700 to 400 nm. Not even 10 percent of the whole range.

How does a snake see us? Its vision is infrared vision. They see the world in a totally different way than we humans do. We do not know how every species of living things exactly see this world (scientists say bulls are color blind but I have personally been attacked by a cow when I was wearing a red Tshirt. Same thing happened with my wife on another occasion by another street cow. I still do not understand this)

So, what we see with our naked eye is the only reality?

You and What Army?

2010-10-19T05:31:00.002+05:30

Almost every country in this world has got their own defense department with 3 major divisions to take care of their Land, Air and Water borders – Army, Air Force and Navy. Generally speaking, the duty of these soldiers is to protect their nation or fight for their nation.

What about God’s Army? It’s funny that there exist human armies for God. They are ready to fight for their God (But some do only aggressive marketing of their God). Many of the killings and attacks which have some religious interest were operated by such army men.

May be they never heard of Earthquake/landslide (The Army), Hurricane (The Air Force) and Tsunami/Flood (The Navy)… God speaks through nature and He has his means to handle His things.

You and what army?

A pain for two...

2010-10-18T10:55:00.003+05:30

What could be two possible worst and painful situations in our life?

A believer in God could not pray

An overnight vanishing act by a close friend, when friendship is at its best and the other person sitting a thousand miles away thinking what is happening at the other end …

Math and Sleep

2010-09-24T09:48:00.002+05:30

Some days back, I had to answer a simple mental math question. But it wasn’t easy for me, though I knew how to solve it. It took more than the standard time required. I became sad about it and thought – what is wrong with me? Why is my brain dull today?

After analyzing how my days were in the past couple of days, I zeroed in to one thing – lack of sleep. I observed how well I am with math whenever I had sleepless nights. I found out that many a times it even takes more time to understand a question, hard to recollect the formulas and methods...

Then I decided to write down the names of all the people I know who are good at math and check how well they sleep daily. I had to wait for couple of days to get replies form some people. I knew 15 people who are really good at math and surprisingly, ALL of them sleep very well. Among those 15, there is one particular guy who is kind of math lover. He still keeps his math text books with him and solves problems when he is bored or after a ‘fight’ with his wife. When I asked his wife how her husband sleeps, her answer was:

“He sleeps like a baby”

Should I tell more?

God and Ocean

2010-09-16T04:30:00.004+05:30

The other day I asked one of my contacts how things are at their end. That person knows that we both do not belong to the same religion and responded starting with “my God's blessings…” . That (business) person was very happy because it was festival time and the business was doing well. But again, the festival belonged to people who believed in a different faith than this person. So, most of the money this person received was from people who believed in some other God. And there was no problem in accepting that money. (But I know one lady who asked her son to tear a currency note he received for playing guitar on an occasion held by a different faith group - super faith !!) Isn't it interesting? May be those two Gods made a deal to help their followers, a mutual understanding?

The ‘my God’ in the expression ‘Oh My God’ is different from the ‘my God is taking care of me’ expressed by somebody to a person who believes in another faith.

When the burn a scripture thing was going on, I read a ‘my God can't stand your god anymore' kind of statement. This is sheer ignorance. How stupid it is to believe that God created everything and at the same time He created a set of believers and non-believers and then asked the believers to kill the non-believers to reserve a seat in heaven? But still people believe in that theory in this modern world. And we see the results.

Scriptures are the result of observation of nature and not the other way around (I am talking about the concept and not interpretations). That is, nature is not the result of any scripture but it is THE scripture by itself.

God is like the ocean. It is one water body. It has different names in different geographical locations for a better understanding – The Indian Ocean, the Pacific Ocean, the Atlantic Ocean…they are all one and the same.

Burn A Koran for Instant Popularity ?

2010-09-09T06:01:00.006+05:30

Pastor Terry Jones

The day is nearing , September the 11 and his popularity got shot up. Pastor Terry Jones fond an easy way to super popularity by declaring an international day for burning Koran – 9/11

Look at the people who commented against this – The Vatican, Hillary Clinton, Angelina Jolie…..unfortunately the list includes the church founded by him in Germany too.

He wanted to organize this as a major event and hence even applied for a permit with the Florida fire department (but got denied). But he says he will go ahead with his plan. If this event becomes a success, it will result in political issues between US and some Islamic countries.

This is another example of religion falling in the hands of wrong people. When it happens, a minority or even a single person can cause damage to the majority who might have a different perception.

Isn’t it just a cheap way to instant popularity?

Ladder

2010-09-08T10:25:00.004+05:30

She asked him to

Hold the ladder

So she will not fall.

He held the ladder

Coz he heard her say

She climbed, up

Up, up and away.

Away she went

Alas! She went.

Still he holds the ladder

Coz he can’t hear her say

Science, God and Creation

2010-09-04T08:19:00.002+05:30

The other day a book written by a famous theoretical physicist/scientist came in news. Mainly because of his views on God and creation. He says, the universe is capable of creating itself without God because of the laws of the nature. I am not being sarcastic but it was amusing for me. I don’t have a PhD, I did not win a Nobel either. But I wonder from where did these laws of nature come from?

Dear scientist, its your ignorance about other cultures and their scriptures that lead you to anti God theory. What you are thinking now was already been thought by some wise men, that too 7000-10000 years back.

Science and religions should go hand in hand and not the other way. If somebody want to keep science and religion separate, all the religions in this world goes to one place labeled as ‘Religion’. Isn’t it so? If that is the case, understand that, when we consider the essence of all religions together, it do not think that God is an old man sitting up in the sky with stick to punish us for our sins. The forms of God and different ways of worship came in to existence with some reasons.

My dear scientist, I am not disagreeing with you, but I agree. Your theory about this creation is right. The creator is ‘swyambhu’ which means the one who created himself. This is not any invention but known to some part of the world, thousands of years ago.

Thanks for the book, it looks like things are going in the right direction.

May be one day another scientist would say the cause of creation became the creation itself...

Ramadan Thought for Whomsoever,,,

2010-08-26T10:26:00.002+05:30

This is kind of a long due blog considering my precious response ‘records’. I had a question from one of my acquaintances asking me (mainly) why I didn’t write anything good about her religion (Islam). Plus why I have a pro-Jesus attitude….I am not sure whether that person would come again and check my blogs or not. Still..

I thought about this many times and I don’t know how to express my thoughts in this connection coz this cannot be answered with an one-liner and a lengthy one is not worth the time I need to spend. I lost at least 2 friendships because of my blogs. As Gibran said, friendship is always a sweet responsibility, never an opportunity. True friends do not ditch us just because we have a different opinion on something, I know that…Still

There are two things we should avoid discussing with our acquaintances if we want to maintain a healthy relationship – Religion and politics; provided both share the same views. I lost one friend purely because of one of these reasons. I am an Indian and if I try to explain the whys’, I need to talk both politics and religion and that is the difficult part.

If somebody thinks that I am a pro-Jesus guy, I can’t help it. Sorry, I still love Jesus… This does not mean anything else, especially this does NOT mean that I am against any other religion; after all, I am not a Christian myself (provided the meaning of ‘Christian’ is not somebody who love Jesus).

I am not that religious and I am not against any religion. It’s about how things are getting interpreted and what happens when good things fall into the wrong hands…well, as I said, it’s a loooooooooong topic and its kinda mess.

This is the month of Ramadan. Month of asking forgiveness…. So, please forgive me, if I hurt anybody in anyway…It wasn’t personal or intentional…

Yes , I am asking forgiveness from all of you…

Back in the bench

2010-08-24T10:29:00.002+05:30

I sat on the bench

With tears in my eyes.

You opened the window

And sung a song for me.

I strolled your trails and

You left a fortuitous rose

In my dreams you came alone

And stole my heart from me

Back on the bench with

Tears in my heart…

You opened the window

And sung a song for him…

My world, Your world...

2010-08-19T11:05:00.002+05:30

If this world is for real, there also exists a different world within every one of us which may not be real for others, though we think/feel it is so real.

We create that world with our personal experiences which might differ from person to person for the same thing, prejudices, judgments, feelings, emotions, fears, desires, jealousy, memories, inhibitions, expectations, imaginations, selfishness, love, lust…

If that world can be imagined as a helmet, we all are wearing helmets of different color, design and smell.

My world might not look like your world. But still, we always have a common world to share…

Did I or Did I Not?

2010-08-17T11:55:00.003+05:30

Are the days flying these days? Some days did, if not all days. Two days back, one of my first cousins' husband passed away. Among the elder relatives I have, he was the only one close to me. I last saw him 9 months back.

The world around me is changing. Many familiar faces which still flash through my mind do not have any physical from any more. My mother, couple of my cousins, couple of my uncles.. they all became just memories. Since I was with my mother when she passed away, it is comparatively easy to believe that she is no more. But the death of others came to me as phone calls or mails. So, if I visit those houses, I will not be able to see those familiar faces again. This kind of thoughts are capable of inducing a flavor of fear in us. But they are also capable of giving us some lessons about life. The choice is ours

Sometimes, there is no need for anybody to die to give us a lesson relating to life. Even a broken friendship is capable of doing that. May be the flavor is different, but it still can teach something about how our thoughts and memories becomes pains and how it hurts.

Today, I could not write what I wished to write.. Today, will I be able to console myself telling 'Hey, they are just thoughts, its just a memory, just relax'? I don't know...

I wanted to write something and I ended up writing something else?… I don't know

But I know one thing for sure – there is pain in my heart and it hurts

Just a thought

2010-08-16T09:32:00.001+05:30

I love you when you bow in your mosque, kneel in your temple, pray in your church. For you and I are sons of one religion, and it is the spirit. - Gibran

Stanfording a Dream

2010-08-13T03:09:00.002+05:30

Last weekend, I visited the Stanford University campus (just a drive through). Studying in Stanford was one of my dreams, long ago. But I never thought that this visit would end-up in such a dream which would have given me a heart attack while asleep.

My-sister-in-law tells my father-in-law that I wish to study at Stanford and my father-in-law tells me that he will take care of the expenses!

When I woke up, I pinched myself to make sure that I am not dead but alive and still can feel…

PS: No offence meant to anybody

Hold me !

2010-08-10T06:42:00.002+05:30

A little girl and her father were crossing a narrow bridge over a river.

The father asked his daughter:

"Honey, please hold my hand so that you don't fall into the river."

The little girl said:

"No, Dad. You hold my hand."

"What's the difference?" Asked the puzzled father.

"There's a big difference," replied the little girl.

"If I hold your hand and something happens to me, chances are that I may let your hand go. But if you hold my hand, I know for sure that no matter what happens, you will never let my hand go."

Don’t try to hold HIS hand, let HIM hold your hand.

Friends and Sheep

2010-08-07T22:53:00.002+05:30

You have 100 sheep. One of them is missing. What will you do?

Well, you will hardly notice it….

(Not referring to Bible story)

If you have hundreds of friends, you can afford to ignore/avoid a couple of them, you won’t feel much difference

Friends and Fruits

2010-08-04T07:34:00.002+05:30

Many a times, friends are like fruits. Juicy ones are perishable. Dry fruits might not look appealing but they stay longer..

A Better Tomorrow !(?)

2010-07-29T05:19:00.002+05:30

I happened to put my head into one online discussion. The topic was ‘ A better tomorrow’.

People expressed their views/concerns about war, poverty, women being ill-treated and traded like a commodity, society lacking moral values etc. Some even tried to sell their religion taking advantage of the opportunity…

How can we change this world into a better tomorrow? Is that possible?

How can we prevent war? Here in the US too the gas (gasoline/petrol) price goes up year after year, just like any other country. If I convert the price of stuffs from dollar to Indian currency, for almost everything we need to pay more than double, compared to the price for that item in India in Indian money (I know this conversion is not logical but still this has a point here). One Kg of Lay’s potato chips would cost around INR 200 in India. And it would cost around INR 600 in the US. But look at the cost of petrol, even if we convert it into Indian money, it’s cheaper here. So, the gulf war paid off, right?

Most of the wars we see/seen have/had some political agenda behind it starting from World War I. To what extend can we prevent it (or influence the political system), that too when there always is a section to support the wars/political decisions?

Can we ban the following three things which strongly influence crime and morality?

1.Alcohol

2.Drugs

3.Porn (including so-called adult media in any form)

If we cannot, our tomorrow won’t be much different from today.

We cannot ban religions, can we? The other day I read a Christian saying this:

“We will not forgive the Jews because they killed Jesus”

I see, so, that is how it is…This is a very ‘strong’ view.

I am not talking about a particular religion, but in general. Islamic rulers did damage to Hinduism and India in the past by destroying temples, looting wealth, killing innocent people, forcefully converting people into Islam etc. But this is not the time for Hindus to take revenge in the same coin.

Those who sell religion should understand one fact – Lord Ram, Lord Krishna, Lord Buddha, Lord Jesus, Prophet Mohammed, all these guys became ‘popular’ ONLY after their death. This means even if God is living among us today, in human form, we will come to know about Him only after his death (or probably after somebody kill him).

With the money spent on Gulf war, they could have fed every single hungry human in the world for months (one Tomahawk missile-used in the Gulf war- costs about $600,000. US spent 61 billion USD for this war alone) or even years. And the worst, war creates poverty ! But that is how system works, around the world.

Changing the world should start from us, by we changing ourselves. Better ourselves for a better tomorrow..

Life In A Day - July 24 2010

2010-07-23T01:33:00.002+05:30

YouTube says:

“Life In A Day is a historic global experiment to create the world's largest user-generated feature film: a documentary, shot in a single day, by you. On July 24, you have 24 hours to capture a glimpse of your life on camera. The most compelling and distinctive footage will be edited into an experimental documentary film, executive produced by Ridley Scott and directed by Kevin Macdonald.”

“The film will premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2011 and will be available right here on YouTube. If your footage makes it into the finished film, you ‘ll be credited as a co-director and you could be one of the 20 contributors brought to Sundance to celebrate with Kevin Macdonald.”

For more details:

http://sites.google.com/site/lifeinadayfaqs/

Lake Tahoe and a Jet Ski

2010-07-20T11:44:00.002+05:30

I do not remember when this desire to do a Jet Ski sprouted in my mind. May be it started when I saw a picture or more possibly when I saw it in a movie…still can’t recollect it. But I am sure about one thing – this desire was there in me since many years. What should we do when we get a chance to fulfill one of our long cherished dreams? May be we will try to make it as memorable as possible..

Lake Tahoe is one of the most popular tourist attractions in this part of the world. A lake shared by California and Nevada. This is the largest high altitude lake in the U.S. which is located at 6225 feet. This is the second (16^th in the world) deepest lake in America with a depth of 1645 ft. This fresh water lake is particularly known for being clear and has got 2 million years of story to tell. She is a blue beauty. The surrounding area is known for skiing and snow related activities and tourism is the main income in this area, but this lake never freeze.

When a suggestion came to visit Lake Tahoe, I had nothing to rethink about it because Jet Ski is one of the main water sport activity here during summer. And it is near Reno, the mini- Las Vegas and the ‘biggest little city in the world’ a place with Casinos Casinos and Casinos.

When I sat on the Jet Ski for the first time, I was thrilled. I took my son with me and we both were very much excited to do our first water sport.

Since I had 30 minutes left, I decided to go far from the shore. I was very excited and drove madly. Out of excitement I had no idea where I am going, I even forgot in which direction I am going. Yes, this might sound stupid but I should admit that this is what really happened. When decided to go back and turned and travelled towards the shore, I realized that I am approaching a different shore. I got lost….what a place to get lost….I did not carry my mobile, I cannot see any other Ski people near me . there were some speed boats moving here and there and they did not notice me and it wasn’t easy to attract their attention. Then I saw a ship near the shore and decided to move towards it and I felt it bit difficult to control the Ski. What the hell is this? I looked around and I saw the board ‘Danger Zone’. WOW, I have crossed the boundary and standing in a wonderful wavy place…

For a moment the fun started moving away and made way to fear. From the danger zone I read this on a boat ‘POLICE’. Are they coming towards me? Am I in trouble? I shot towards them and waved my hand for help. They came to me and one of the officers asked me to turn off the Ski. He looked 'cool' and I told him :

“Sir, I lost my way”

“From which shore are you coming from?”

I forgot the name of the shore and I told them the name of the organizer and they could not make out where it is. Even at that stage, the officer was very cool and this made me bit relaxed. Then there came a good Samaritan in a small boat and he looked at my Ski and told them the name of the shore. The officer pointed his finger to some direction and said:

“OK, you go that way”

“Should I cross that?” I pointed to some rocks I saw and then the officer who was driving the boat smiled at me and said:

“Follow us”

They started moving and I followed them. Now that the U.S. marine police is piloting me and what is there to fear about? This made me happy and the fear slowly faded away and I started enjoying the ride. One minute, two minute…we are not reaching anywhere and then I thought we are going in the wrong direction. We were moving slowly and then all of a sudden the boat picked up speed and went very fast. And I too shot after them though it wasn’t easy to control it and at some point of time I thought the Ski will topple…Then I saw the officer to whom I was talking to showing me a ‘Thumbs up’ and now the distance between me and the boat was more. I thought they were asking me to go further all by myself and then my son said

“They are not asking us to follow them any further”

So I stopped and looked around..

But where is my shore? I could not see it from where I was. So I stopped there and looked at the police boat and using some hand signals tried to tell them that this is not my shore. Then I saw the officer asking me to follow them again and this time they reduced the speed. And finally, using hand signal he asked me to go right and there I saw my shore! We both still had some distance and I thought if they get a chance to come near me, they might scold me. But I really wanted to thank them and test the luck. So I ‘ran’ after them and said thanks. To my surprise, he just smiled at me and nodded his head.

It was a ride filled with fun, thrill, action, suspense, horror and what not? I wanted it to be a memorable one and God said

“So be it”

How can I forget my first Jet Ski?

Thank you God !

The feast

2010-07-13T10:45:00.002+05:30

Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me.

-Revelation 3:20

Beautiful Hair...

2010-07-12T11:29:00.002+05:30

He first saw her in that corner café. The first thing that attracted him was her long hair.

‘WOW, it’s beautiful’ he told himself.

He could not take his eyes from her, because of that hair.

She saw him sitting jaw dropped and gave him a glance…

Days passed and they started sharing the same table, enjoying coffee and chit chatting. Every time they met, he did not forget to praise her hair and she giggled.

Months passed and they started sharing the same house, as wedded husband and wife. He was so happy that day, so was she.

One day, when opened his lunch box in front of his colleagues, he found a hair in it and he got embarrassed. He scolded his wife that day.

Days passed and the beautiful hair appeared here and there..in the kitchen, in the wardrobe, in the living room, in the bath room…

“Did you see that hair?” he asked

“Yes, I will pick it up later”

He did not feel comfortable with that and hence he picked it up. Not once but..

He felt some distance…he felt like something is wrong. May be she too felt the same. It looked like all the problems started with a strand of hair but it got branched into many areas and they found this or that reason to blame each other. He realized that life is not just about beautiful hair, or may be eyes, or smile…

Days passed and so did months..

One day, they met in the same café and said:

‘Hi…how are you?’

Driving in California and International Driving License/Permit

2010-07-09T09:34:00.003+05:30

I think I better make this correction regarding driving in California. In one of my earlier blogs which I wrote during the initial days of my CA life, I had mentioned something which could mean that if we have international drivers permit (IDP) we can drive in California. That is wrong and I am sorry if it sounded that way.

The reality is the State of California does not accept IDP as a valid driver license irrespective of our nationality. This does not mean that driving in CA is complicated; the driving rule/law is simple and people friendly.

If you are a visitor on Business Visa (less than or equal to 90 days), just carry the valid driver’s license you have from your country. CA accepts it and no further license is required. If it is in any language other than English, you need to have IDP with you. You can drive a car straight away ( at your own risk ..if you forgot to stop at a red signal, you could get a $500 ticket. If you do not stop (some conditions apply) when a School Bus's red lights are flashing, its a $1000 ticket).

Those who are on long term visa are considered as resident aliens and in that case, things are different. In this case, we have only 10 days to apply for a California driver license (this means our license from home country is valid only for 10 days). But if we have a valid license from home country, upon passing a written test, the motor vehicles department will issue a temporary permit which is valid for 2 months (apart from the student permit which is valid for a year). With this permit, we can drive alone ; means there is no need for a licensed adult sitting next to us. But if we do not take a license within 2 months, we can not renew this temporary permit and hence an adult with valid CA license should sit next to us, when we drive.

Paul the Octopus, Germany and a Soccer Cup

2010-07-08T10:26:00.003+05:30

Paul the octopus was born (some two and a half years ago) in Weymouth (England) and now by profession he is kind of an oracle specialized in soccer match prediction, exclusively for Germany. Currently he lives in a German aquarium. He started predicting Germany’s matches since 2008 and so far, he has 100% accuracy.

In the 2010 world cup, when he predicted Germany’s win over Argentina, many people laughed. How can Germany beat Argentina? Well, Argentina lost the match very badly and from that day onwards Paul is getting many death threats. Now, many people want to kill him (and some even want to eat him).

Some people had predicted that Germany would win this year’s cup based on some ‘magic number’. That number is as follows:

Brazil won the World Cup in 1994; before that they also won in 1970. 1970 + 1994= 3964

Argentina won World Cup in 1986; before that they also won in 1978. 1978 + 1986= 3964

Brazil won the World Cup in 2002; before that they won in 1962. 1962+ 2002= 3964

Germany won the cup in 1990; before that they also won in 1974. 1974 + 1990= 3964

Germany won the cup in 1954 also. So, 3964 minus 1954 = 2010 and hence Germany will win the cup since none of the other team’s data match with 2010.

So I was curious about this year’s FIFA world cup since Paul predicted that Germany would lose the match to Spain in the semi-finals. Many people, including his care taker thought this time he will go wrong. It was said that Germany has good players and Spain had no star players (personally I don’t know. My knowledge about international soccer players and teams are poor) usually I do not watch soccer matches but today I decided to watch the match live, out of curiosity.

Once again, Paul’s prediction became perfectly right and now he has become a big celebrity, who might even need some extra security. The way he predict the winner is like this – his care taker provides same food in two square boxes marked with two flags, one being Germany's and the second being the opposite team's. The octopus predicts the winner by opening and the winner’s box and eating that food first.

For me, octopus was kind of ‘sea-spider’ since it has 8 legs and I never was comfortable with octopus. But just like spiders, they always fascinated me (But whenever I read about spiders, I read it with a little fear). Somewhat same with octopuses too. I did not really like them (so far no octopus came to my dreams as nightmare….touch wood). But just because we do not like octopuses we cannot deny that they are smart, right?

Just like a cuttlefish, an octopus too has 3 hearts. Two pumping blood to gills and one to the rest of the body. These creatures have very complex nervous system and brain functions. It is said that each arm/leg can work with its own intelligence and hence some people say an octopus has 9 brains (I am not sure about this). They have great vision and they observe very keenly and analyses well. This is one reason why many octopuses managed to escape from places where they have kept as ‘captives’. They have some 'extra sense' like cats and dogs, it seems. I saw how Paul open that box and eat his food.

Whatever….. Great work Mr. Paul. Keep predicting.

But won’t his predictions before a match affect the team psychologically?

Kind of a Surprise

2010-06-30T09:30:00.002+05:30

Surprises can offer more happiness (than how it would have been if that thing or situation was expected) when it brings something good. Is there anything which can came as a surprise, neither good nor bad, make us sad and make us happy as well?

Prologue

I watched the Prison Break only recently, after coming to US; though it was aired internationally (most of us might have heard about this very popular American serial. If not, this serial is about a man who got sentenced to death for killing the brother of the Vice President of USA. When this guy’s brother, who is a genius structural engineer, comes to know that his brother is innocent, he deliberately ‘tries’ to loot a bank to lead him to the prison where his brother is and then successfully breaks him out from that high security prison. Though the story looks simple, it’s a brilliant work with further twists and the story was written by different people and episodes were directed by different people).

I am a fan of Clint Eastwood and I have seen most of his popular movies, including ‘Escape from Alcatraz’. Alcatraz was a high security prison built on an island in San Francisco Bay. Only three people ever broke that prison and escaped (they broke the prison and their dead bodies were not found; so it is assumed that they escaped, though some people do not agree). In that movie, Eastwood plays the lead man Frank Morris who made the escape possible. Alcatraz is not a prison anymore but a tourist attraction. Last weekend, I paid a visit to San Francisco to have a sightseeing cruise which included passing this island.

The Surprise

Yesterday night, I felt like checking the mail box at 10 pm (since I wasn’t expecting any mails, I did not check in the afternoon) and there is summons from the Superior Court of California. I checked the address many times, yes, it is addressed to me. I got worried, what could be this? I used to get some calls from the debt collectors. But they were looking for one Italian guy and not me. So, what on earth is this?

I opened the envelope and just below my address line, I read this

‘ Failure to respond to this summons will subject you to a fine, a jail or both’.

Jail? If this innocent man goes to jail, who will break the prison for me?

Looking at my face, my wife grabbed the paper from me and read (she reads at least 10 times faster than me) and told me

“They want you to become a Jury in that court for one trial and you will be paid fifteen dollars’

This is great ! I am the jury of the superior court of California, excellent job ! who care about the pay. I became very happy.

See?

Note: In the U.S. there is this ‘Jury service’ in which the judiciary asks people to become one of the juries. They select people randomly. It is mandatory for that person, including disabled people, to become the jury if one is qualified (it is not educational qualification but some other criteria and the first criteria is that one has to have U.S. citizenship). If one is not qualified, one must inform them. In the case of working people, the employer must give time off. I wasn’t aware of this till yesterday (June 28, 2010)

Can Snakes hear?

2010-06-22T10:35:00.003+05:30

Around the world, in how many countries human(s) depend on snakes to meet their ends? Mostly in India (and a few more countries). For some illiterate village people, snake charming was a profession in India. Even now we can see them here and there (it’s against law). Lately, I happened to see one snake charming video in the Internet where that guy plays the traditional musical instrument to make the snake ‘dance’. Among some comments posted by some people, I read something like this too “you fool, snakes cannot hear” I accept the fact that this charmer is performing this act since it was his tradition and not because he has extensive knowledge about snake’s hearing abilities. But still, are snakes deaf?

I remember that I studied that way in my science class in my schools. Snakes do not have external ears and hence they cannot hear. They sense the vibrations on the ground and they have a special tongue which is capable of sensing on ground, air and water. The end. This is where the science or may be some section of the scientists went wrong – instead of accepting the fact that ‘we do not know’ they made that as a statement. Thus this ‘fact’ became part of biology/science text book.

But there were some biologists and scientists who did not hesitate to say ‘we do not know’ and nobody cared them. Who cares those doesn’t know something? But they were the people who were standing at the right side.

Somehow, some biologists/scientists got attracted to the jaw of the snakes. Snakes have special jaws which help them swallow food bigger than their (mouth) size. But now it is known that these jaws have got ability to pick up sounds. And this mechanism works like two ears and hence they can hear in stereo.

Snakes can hear better when they keep their jaw on the ground but this does not mean that they are deaf if they lift their head off the ground. If we keep a paper in front of our mouth and speak or if we touch the cone paper of a speaker when the speaker is working, we can clearly feel the vibrations. So, snake too should be able to pick up vibrations travelling via air, though it can do that better when grounded. From the jawbones, these vibrations go to the inner ear (to the cochlea, to be precise) and nerves carry this to brain.

Some earlier studies showed that snakes do not respond much to louder sounds. Now the same is interpreted as a defense mechanism exhibited by snakes. It is like soldiers lying on the ground when they hear a ‘bang’. When they ‘hear’ such big sounds, instead of being panic, may be snakes prefer to stay motionless and make use of all its gifted sensing abilities, who knows?

At least snakes understood what Lord Voldemort said, didn’t they?

Acid Reflux Remedies … The Secret Ingredients

2010-06-18T09:20:00.003+05:30

What are the remedies for Acid Reflux, especially the home remedies?

There are so many websites that offer two secret home remedies which they claim as cure for acid reflux or GERD; remedies which just hide in the grocery cupboard in our kitchen. Those sites contain a lot of ‘testimonies’ too. To know what they are, we need to pay 30-40 dollars. That is one way of making money via internet. It is just a business and it usually comes with a disclaimer saying they do not have any responsibility or liability if anything goes wrong..

Here is that top secret ingredients info for free:

1.Apple cider vinegar

2.Honey

(Then comes Chewing gum, milk and 7up, baking soda etc )

I am a person who have faced severe acid reflex and I even underwent endoscopy to get it confirmed or to determine the severity. But I am not writing this to recommend above mentioned remedies but to ‘expose’ those secrets so that there is no need to pay for just two names.

Me being a GERD man, what do I suggest? I suggest doing a neat search in the internet and read more. Give weightage to those sites which are more health and medicine related than sites which sell particular brands of apple cider vinegar or honey. A spoon of vinegar won’t give us any serious damage, even if it backfires. So there is no harm in trying at own risk.

This blog is not about what acid reflux is, its causes and remedies or even how I personally manage it (I might write that…may be next time)

Anyway, I would like to make a special note on this apple cider vinegar (ACV) thing. There are two theories about how it works and they are contradictory.

Look at the two possible situations of acidity – body producing more acid than needed and body producing less acid resulting in indigestion and reflux. In the first case, the theory says if we take ACV, body will start producing less acid considering there already is enough acid. In the second case, ACV helps fill the lack of acid and helps digestion. Which one is right? Second one looks logical but I really do not know. If both theories are right, anybody who has GERD can take ACV, which I don’t think so.

Words and Silence

2010-06-10T08:07:00.002+05:30

When we arrange alphabets in such an order that it appears in the same way in a dictionary, we make a meaningful word. We can make people relax, laugh, cry, angry or even hurt by arranging some alphabets in one way or another. Then it can convey emotions.

Words are not just a collection of alphabets but it also has got some meaning. So is silence, sometimes…

Height of Technology

2010-06-09T04:52:00.001+05:30

The other day, I was listening to radio using my Nokia E51 when I felt like going to toilet. It was too late when I realized that there is no toilet paper. That phone had no SIM and hence I cannot make any call or send any text. I used the phone to connect to my WiFi in offline mode and logged into Gmail and sent one mail with subject line ‘URGENT’ to my wife (who was working from home that day) in her official id. In few seconds the toilet paper got door delivered.

Geee

India, Idols and a Rat

2010-05-21T11:04:00.003+05:30

Following is taken from a mail (my reply) to one of my friends...Yes, copy righted by me. That friend (lives in another country) saw a TV program about Indian culture where they say we Indians eat food with rats (sharing same plate) and we worship animals as God. My friend wanted to know whether I am such a person or not...Interesting

Selamat Pagi !

[ removed some paragraphs which are not connected to the above]

Understanding Indian culture is not easy. Hinduism is not a religion founded by somebody but it’s a way of living. Christians follow Bible, Muslims follow Koran and what about Hindus?

Hindus have 4 Vedas (or may be 5, when we consider Ayurveda, the Indian system of medicine), over 108 upanishads, Smritis, 4 Ithihasas including Ramayana, 18 Puranas, Bhagavat Gita (its part of one of the Ithihasa – Mahabharata), more than 4 Agamas, 6 Darshanas…there is a scripture about love making (Kamasutra) there are books about how to construct buildings (Vaastu)…I really don’t know how many scriptures we have got..we have scriptures dealing with every aspect of our life. What I know very clearly is that one human life is not enough to study all these.

One of the most popular ways or learning basics of arithmetic is by way of using counting frames or Abacus. Initially, a student physically see what is 1 or what does it mean when we say 2. Once the skills are achieved, a student moves on to mental math. The more skilled you are the more you can do mentally ( for example, the Indian math genius Shakuntala Devi can perform all the math YOU teach your students using black/white board or paper and pen/pencil, just mentally).

In a similar fashion, in Hinduism, the idea of a supernatural force (God) starts with forms (pictures, idols etc) and end in a formless God. When a person finally realizes that God is not just a creator but he is there in his creation, they sees God in everything around them and this includes trees, animals etc. Sounds stupid?

Consider that somebody prayed to a formless God and his/her prayer got answered. Had that person prayed to a tree with same intensity and devotion, then also the prayer would have answered. If first one did not work, the second one also would not work.

As per Bible, one is not supposed to worship idols. But as you can see these days, there are lots of Christian denominations (mainly catholic) who worship the idol of Jesus, Virgin Mary, and the Cross. Same with the Hindus too. They go to temples and offer prayers. Are they just fools and idiots?

No, they go there coz their prayers are getting answered (I am not saying every prayer..why is it so? this universe has some subtle logic). It doesn’t matter to whom you offer your prayer, to Allah, Christ or Krishna, it goes to one direction. That’s the reality.

Enough introduction. Now you know why some people worship a snake or a tree, I mean the logic. Some people say the worship or snake started from fear. That has some sense, possible. Worshipping the form is the easiest way of worship. For a 5 year old child, if we show the an idol of Krishna or Jesus and say ‘ That is God’, they can understand it better, than we pointing our finger to Sky and telling there sits the God (An Indonesian’s up is an American’s down. When an Indonesian and American points to sky, they point in opposite direction. When people from different parts of the earth points their finger up, they point to different places of the universe. Either this (God concept) is total nonsense or it means God is everywhere, there is no third possibility)

Then why can’t we directly worship the formless? It is not easy to digest. Osama Bin Laden may be able to recite the whole Koran without looking the Koran. But don’t you think he miss the whole point of spirituality? Did he understand God? When I say this, I am not telling that only those who worship idols understood God better. There are millions who get stuck to the idol itself for their whole life and think that idol is God. On the other side, there are millions who worship a formless God (since they are taught worshipping God in form is sin)and never sees the presence of God in his/her life here (on earth) when they are actually living. For them, God sits up in the sky and stuffs related to God happens only after their death. There are some others who believe God is giving some test here and he/she is going to get the result on the day of final judgment. As a teacher, you know why you are giving your students a test. It is to measure how much they learnt/understood, right? You are testing them because you don’t know to what extend your student know. Why is God giving us a test? Coz he don’t know what we humans know? After all it is He who created us. And he need to give us a test? Then I would say he is not worth calling God.

Now, the straight answer to your question – No, I do not worship a rat or a monkey nor do any of my Hindu friends or relatives (I am very sorry to admit that I had even killed snakes). We do not share food with a rat, which is not at all hygienic (some people eat rats, you know that?). I have never heard of anybody in India doing that. May be some minority sect somewhere might have done that and that TV people got it.

Outside India, people will hear only the bad side of India. India is a nuclear nation, every software you use has some Indian connection, including the one which helps you read this mail, India sends the satellites of many other countries into the space, zero was invented here, we have thousands of years old scriptures which deals with math including trigonometry, airplanes, architecture,.. the first brain surgery was done here (thousands of years ago by Sushrutha). Thousands of years ago, Indians knew that earth is round in shape and it is the earth that is circling the sun and not the other way…we have books on astronomy and astrology.....it’s a long list. But outside world see only the bad things, even today.

A Russian friend of mine thought that in India there are no toilets. Another friend of mine from Paris did not believe me when I said I live in 11^th floor of my apartment coz she thought India is a poor country and we Indians live in small houses and huts. That is how India is being promoted by the west with some vested interest. After that ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ movie couple of my friends from abroad asked me ‘ do you still have such slums?’ they did not ask ‘do you have such brainy boys in your slums?’, do you see? So I am not surprised if you saw such a TV show about India.

[removed the rest]

Rgds

Jay

Internet Security, a Joke?

2010-05-17T09:21:00.002+05:30

Some long time ago, I had mentioned in one of my blogs that Google is one of the major players who is after digging up stuffs from our computer. If we are using any of the Google products, we knowingly or unknowingly share some of our personal details with them - it can be the searches we made, the sites we visited, our IP address when we accessed internet, the browser we use, the operating system with version and service pack, our MAC address, mail ids, passwords…

Now it’s official that they were sniffing on our wireless routers, whether it’s secured or not. If it was secured, they collected the IP and MAC address and possibly the number of connections. If it was not a secured one, well, they might have sniffed out everything that was possible when their Street View cars were passing through our neighborhood roads. To some extent, by combining IP address and MAC address (as a composite primary key in their database) they can even point their fingers to specific people. We already know that they read every mail in we send/receive via Gmail. (since its millions/billions of characters, they use software to read and it’s not read by any individual. But this does not mean that no individual can access these data. The relevant ads we see on sides of the Gmail is placed using Business Intelligence (BI)technology and those who develop that definitely need sample data)

It is said that some (government) agencies are going to check/audit the data they collected by sniffing the wifi networks. Google’s explanation about this spying is too silly and childish. How can somebody inject a chunk of code without the project manager or testing team know? And how can they keep such HUGE data (they sniffed out data from around the world) in their servers without the network admins know? Who were taking the backups then? They say they did not use these data for any of their products. Then why were they keeping these terabytes of data they collected over many years?

It is good that somebody made this public..Now they are going to offer (probably by next week) some secured search engine! As if they care about our privacy !

This Google story was the best joke I read this week…

Golden Day !

2010-05-14T10:21:00.001+05:30

Golden Gate Bridge was in my ‘must watch’ list since months. But ‘the time’ did not arrive till last Saturday, that is May 8^th2010.

I had heard about this bridge loooong back, when we studied about the wonders of the world. But that time, I had no idea that one day I would see it for real. This bridge, built on Pacific Ocean to connect the SF peninsula to the Marin County, is THE symbol of San Francisco. When we consider this was built on 1937, this is really amazing.

Apart from being one of the seven wonders of the world, this bridge holds another credit – United State’s most popular suicide point…. the place where world’s most suicides happen. Now, pedestrians are not allowed in the bridge at night. Somebody suggested and designed a suicide net to prevent the jumps but there is no fund. The documentary film ‘The Bridge’ is based on this bridge and its suicides. I did not watch that documentary yet but it is said that they captured some real suicide jumps. Wonder what was important, filming a suicide or preventing the jump…I don’t know. If they prevent, may be those guys would go to some other place and die.

What if one do not die after jumping from this bridge? Should we call them lucky or unlucky? I don’t know. The bridge is very high (abt 75 meters from sea water) and when somebody jumps from there, he/she reaches at a speed of over 120 km/hour before hitting water. If we fall from such heights to water, it is as good as jumping from a 75 m high building onto the floor. Science says the property of water is like that……its kind of immediate death. But still, some people did not die… lucky or unlucky?

Anyway, I would call myself lucky and unlucky. Lucky, for being able to see the bridge myself…and unlucky?

My Golden Gate visit gave me another everlasting memory. I accidently passed through the FastTrack toll gate without paying toll and now eagerly waiting for my first ticket in the US !

Blog in the Mind

2010-05-13T10:17:00.001+05:30

The other day, one of my acquaintances asked me:

“Why are you not blogging anymore?”

I said:

“Thanks for asking; but I was asking the same question to myself”

Yes, I was kind of regular and I wrote over 450 blogs…

Is it just laziness? Or maybe I was after something else …or maybe it’s a mixture of both

At least one or two of my old blogs need some correction/update...

I will be back, very sooooon

Old Age Home

2010-04-15T08:36:00.001+05:30

The ornamental tree

New leaves got trimmed

Old leaves stayed.

Be Truthful ! Boss bless you .

2010-04-12T06:22:00.003+05:30

Should we always be truthful to our employer?

More than a decade back, one day, I went to my boss’s cabin and said,

“Sir, I want a day’s off day after tomorrow”

“Why?”

“I am going to Cochin to attend an interview”

“Which company?”

I tell him the name of the company and he immediately replied:

“You won’t get that job….they might have already taken somebody else”

I became sad. He read that from my face (I am a poor actor)

“OK, go ahead”

This is the kind of blessing you would get if you are too truthful, idiotically truthful !

Happy Candle ...

2010-04-06T09:28:00.002+05:30

"Thousands of candles can be lit from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared..."

- Gautam Buddha.

Jesus ! A Good News !!

2010-04-02T07:09:00.005+05:30

To veg or non-veg, that is NOT the question.

When a (virtual) friend of mine came to know that I am a vegetarian, told me that she will make me eat cow’s meat when I visit her. Why cow? Because I am a Hindu and Hindu’s (generally speaking) consider cow as a holy animal. Of course, I know she was not serious about it and even prepare some vegetarian dish if I ever visit her. But since cow’s meat got dragged into the talk, we happened to discuss some ‘religions, eat meat !’ things.

Muslims do not eat pork not because it is holy for them but they consider pig as one of the dirtiest animals in this planet, unlike a Hindu’s view on cow who considers cow as mother.

If I am not wrong, Old Testament is applicable for all Abrahamian religions (in general. I understand that there are new religious sects who keep a Bible which has only New Testament and they do not read or follow Old Testament).

The Bible says:

Then God said, "I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds of the air and all the creatures that move on the ground—everything that has the breath of life in it—I give every green plant for food." And it was so.

- Genesis 1:29-30

Adam and Eve were provided with fruits and vegetables, as food, in the Eden garden.

Ah, then comes Saint Paul and his letter to Romans saying all food is clean (Christians who eat pork takes cover under this). More than half of the New Testament is written by St.Paul…. Who is this St.Paul?

During my Bible study period (and even now) I got this feeling of ‘Bible is tampered with or manipulated’ feeling . This St.Paul was not one among Jesus’ direct disciples and the worst, he never even met Jesus. If we check a Red Letter Bible (there is something called red letter bible where whatever is spoken by Jesus is printed in red and rest in black), red letters are very few. It would be just couple of pages. So, I have never taken this St.Paul very seriously and even suspect many things are written by somebody else in the name of St.Paul.

Jesus is considered as somebody who preached love and compassion. There is a popular picture of Jesus with a lamb. When we look at it, what impression we get? Does it look like he is going to kill that animal and eat?

That answer is a big NO

There was a research done on ‘the Last Supper’ picture and it was found out that the food items on the table are growing more and more, though it started with bread and wine. Why there was no meat on last supper? After a decade or so this bread and wine picture will slowly vanish and it can even end up with pork with an apple in its mouth!

So, was Jesus Christ a vegetarian? Recent studies tell that there is high possibility. Some even believe that he indeed was a vegetarian. A Google search ‘was Jesus a vegetarian’ now gives over a million results, see? Lots and lots of people started thinking that way, because he was man of compassion. Lots and lots of people are now curios about his life between his thirteen and thirty period. The journey of Jesus the carpenter to Jesus the Christ…any search on this connection also leads to a million search results…

Read Bible a thousand times and we cannot find a teaching from Jesus which says ‘Have compassion only to humans’. His compassion and love was not just limited to human race. He did love animals and he had compassion for them. How can such a person kill an animal and eat it?

How do we get meat these days? Those animals are grown just for meat. They are genetically grown in such a way that they have more flesh. Thus most of the grown up chickens, pigs and other animals cannot even stand on their feet. Of course they try to stand up since its natural instinct and then breaks their legs. Then its pain, agony…

Just like we humans, animals too suffer from pain. That is why the pharma companies and the researchers try their new medicines including the pain killer drugs on animals… Some religions do not even allow animals to be stunned before being slaughtered. If we check YouTube , we can get some idea how these animals are being killed for meat in modern day….Will Jesus eat meat if he see how this animals are grown, treated and killed? No way !

Jesus in the Cross tried to tell us about such pain…He tried to pass some message....but who cares?

To veg or non-veg, that is NOT the question…

God's Cup of Tea

2010-03-23T10:22:00.002+05:30

How to make a cup of tea?

“If this is the way you make tea, it is better we drink milk”

That’s a comment I heard from a relative when my wife told how she makes tea. The tone was as if my wife is making it in a wrong way or as if she doesn’t know how to make tea. Well, I am not trying to justify my wife but she makes good tea and it’s not at all like drinking milk, in fact she likes to drink strong tea. The statement from that person was unrealistic and exaggerated. But that is not the point here…how to make a cup of tea?

I am not going to tell how exactly we can make a cup of tea because people are different and they all have their own way of making tea or liking tea. It is not like drinking Coke which has a standard around the world. In my native State, if we ask for just tea in ‘Tea Shops’, they might not consider the request complete till we specify what kind of tea we want – Light, Medium or Strong….. India is the second largest producer of Tea in the world and we consume lot of it. Here most of us know how to make a cup of tea the way we like it. So?

So, the thing is if somebody thinks my way is the only right way to make tea and others are wrong, it’s just ignorance.

We gets such comments for almost everything and the worst part is that it's free of charge and we don’t even have to ask for it… the way we have arranged furniture in our home, the color of the car we chose, cot, fridge, our shoes, dress, toothbrush… does everyone in this world has the same likes, dislikes, thoughts, inhibitions, fears, ambitions, emotions, views, talent, aptitude, fantasies…..though God created man in His image? Is nature filled with just one kind of tree, rose, spider, rat, snake, orchid, coconut palm, jasmine, ant, rice, mango, banana….??

The point is making tea is also like believing in God, His forms, and His ways…

Daylight Saving ! Upto 50% off !!

2010-03-19T05:20:00.004+05:30

This was my first experience with saving the light act. Back in India, we never got any chance to save the day light. What people used to save was money and some non-perishable goods. I was trying (some people, including one of my teachers, think/believe that there is nothing like ‘trying’ . Sorry guys, it all depends on the way you look at it), to make my son understand why he has to go to bed an hour earlier than his usual time and wake up an hour early too. Kids are like that, they question us. And, one beauty of being a child is the ability to question things …. An ability many of us lose when we grow up.

I am pretty sure that I had studied about ‘day light saving’ in geography in 7^th grade or so. I don’t remember what it was but definitely they might have told us some reasons and logics. Now I am sure that I might not have properly understood it. I never thought about day light saving after that geography lesson till I got befriended with an American some 4 years ago. I did not see that person online at a particular time for many days (without notice) and I started wondering what might have happened. I got a reply

‘Sorry, I forgot to update you about the day light saving ’.

For us, this year, it started on Sunday the 14^th at 2 am. And how was it?

When I woke up at 7 am on 14^th, the day looked darker compared to the 7 am of 13^th. What is the logic behind this pushing our clocks one hour ahead? Well, there is no logic. Ask any astronomer or geographer and they would just shrug and point their finger at......... So, it is not that easy to make kids understand what exactly is happening.

When we look at the history of this daylight saving time (DST), we won’t see any astronomer or geographer but a biologist, George Hudson. In reality, he suggested that for personal benefit. He was an entomologist and he thought if he gets extended hours (oh yeah, he was willing to get up early) he can use it for collecting specimens. And he even suggested turning the clock two hours ahead. Some other guy supported it because he wanted to play golf after work. Then the politicians took this into their hand and started playing with it with inputs from businessmen. Russia and America hardly agree on anything and hence they never change the clock on the same day. Here in the US, each State has some freedom and hence the congressmen (yes, it’s a political decision to turn the clock at 2 am) in Arizona State decided to not to observe DST, though they are very part of the US.

Why somebody want to extend the time? There are many (controversial) theories. The advocates of DST claim that we can save energy since the usage is less in the afternoon coz of the extended day light. A study by the US Department of Transportation came out with data to support this theory. But the National Bureau of Standards reviewed this data and found incorrect and according to them, the energy saved is insignificant. This is because people wakes up early and starts their life early. A study exclusively on California proved that there is no energy saved because of DST. So, it all depends on geographical factors, life style, technology, way of living and many other factors.

Some people thought it has great health benefits since people wakes up early. But this again went wrong. The group that got benefited by the extra sunlight is those who used it wisely by doing physical exercises or participated in some sports. Some studies show that DST leads to more exposure to sun which is one reason for (more) skin cancer. Another study shows the heart attack rates went up during the early days of the start of DST. Then comes the theory of reduced road accidents. Once again there were data to support this view and there were another set to disprove it. So who actually benefits from this time push?

It is the business world. Retailers can sell more since people gets more time to shop (in the evenings). Since retailers sell more, whole-sellers sell more and thus the manufacturers produce more. There was a study based on the data collected from 7-Eleven stores which showed that their sales increased by 30 million during this DST period (its an old study).

DST disturbs our normal sleep pattern. Those who are undergoing a therapy for insomnia are the ones who are in real trouble during this time shift. Companies with international clients and meetings also face some issues. Some countries abolished practicing DST since it resulted in more health related complications (eg. Kazakhstan ). China and Japan too dropped it. DST is kind of cheating…. sometimes coated with ignorance or vested interests. . I read somewhere that ‘…DST is not Uncle Sam’s idea but it was in existence even in the BC’. Was that really DST?. Those days, people adjusted their activities based on sunset and sunrise and they did not try to push the clock and fool themselves. And the ‘modern’ man? The modern man simply turns the clock forward and says:

‘Look, the sun sets very late these days !, isn’t it awesome?’

I hope, one day, the political leaders from all the countries would sit together and decide:

‘ Ok guys, now on, we will follow the Sun’

High hopes ! (Who said that?)

The Pi Spider Day

2010-03-12T09:03:00.003+05:30

For anything and everything there is a day to celebrate, these days. Most of these days are invented by (greeting) card companies and some other multinational commercial establishments. There are some exceptions too. For example, March 8^th is considered as International Women’s Day. But since it has some socialist connections, it’s not observed in most of the capitalist countries (and its allies?). It is even a holiday in some countries like Russia and China (only for women). But it’s ignored in the U.S.

Is there any such 'day' that I don’t like?

No, it’s not valentine’s day I am talking about but March the 14^th. It is observed as the ‘Pi’ Day. This day fell on March (third month) 14 because the value of Pi is 3.14. So, what about countries who do not follow the mm.dd.yy ? There comes another day to console them, those who follow the dd.mm.yy, the Pi approximation day, which falls on 22ndof July (since the value of Pi is 22/7). Thus Pi enjoys two ceremonial days in every year. But how can I love this day? Math and me never were buddies..

Is that all? Nope, the worst thing is yet to come..

March 14^th also happened to be ‘National Save a Spider Day’ !

What the heck ! Are they going to extinct? It is said that wherever we are, there is a spider within 3-10 feet close to us. They are there everywhere, over 40,000 species of them. On land, in the water, in the air (yes some of them travel by air without Visa and Passport using some balloon technology). Yes, I agree that spiders are one of the main predator of insects, but still, a save a spider day?

I hope there would come at least this ‘National Arachnophobia Day’ to those who have arachnophobia (No, I am not scared of spiders, especially the BIG BLACK SPIDERS !)

M & M

2010-03-02T05:44:00.003+05:30

Mondays and March(s) weren’t friendly for me when I was a school boy. March always brought final exams. Mondays came with blues which disturbed the laziness that we hesitated to part with. I was born on a Monday, I got married in a March and my son was born in another March…

Though students and those who work hate Mondays, Monday is considered as a good/auspicious day in many religions. Fasting on Monday is popular in Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism and Islam. May be it was there in earlier Christianity too but at some point of time they decided to ditch Monday coz they did not want to follow a Jewish custom (and opted Wednesday).

Monday is moon day and moon influence our mind, mood and feelings. Moon has some feminine connections too and in Hinduism, usually it’s the women who observe fasting on Mondays.

It was the start of the year and it is the start of spring…

“When my Lord falls on my Lady’s lap,

England, beware of some mishap”

So, there is hope..

March with a Monday…

Unbirthday

2010-02-25T07:26:00.002+05:30

This year’s birthday had a specialty. This was the first time in my life so far that I ‘celebrated’ my birthday abroad. India is kind of one day ahead of US. Astrologically, our birthday is connected to the day and date of our place of birth. But I decided to stick to US date and hence I got this chance to enjoy my first unbirthday.

Those who follow the tradition has one more day to celebrate. Because we (those who speak my mother tongue) have our own calendar and in that calendar what is more important is the ‘star’ and its ‘weightage’ than a specific date in that month. When I am writing this, I tried to remember my birthday according to our calendar and I realized that that particular data is now stored in a bad sector.

Just another day, but

Not just another day; coz

An unbirthday gift

Comes just another day

We are ...?

2010-02-19T10:20:00.001+05:30

"....we are not our body, mind or emotions. We are divine souls on a wondrous journey. We came from God, live in God and are evolving into oneness with God. We are, in truth, the Truth we seek. Aum."

-Dancing with Siva

Build Credit Fast ??

2010-02-15T10:17:00.002+05:30

“Since you don’t have credit in this country….”

The leasing office lady went on..

“We asked you to keep a deposit based on….”

Read a letter from AT & T, the telecom giant

Since I have a commerce background too, the term credit is in my blood. That is how it is with anybody who was/is into accounting. There is no accounting without debits and credits. But what is this credit they are talking about?

Back in India, people hardly knew that there exists a credit bureau in our country. I had no idea that having a ‘credit’ has this importance here in U.S. till I actually faced the realities.

Here in the U.S., having a good credit has a lot to do with lots of things. I happened to see some ads by some people and firms who offer service to improve our credit. And some people gave some tips on building the credit. But to what extend these are true and how long will it take to build a good credit score?

What is a credit score, by the way? This is a three digit number, ranging from 300 to 850, arrived after doing some statistical analysis on our credit report; where a credit report is a report that shows the history of our past borrowings, repayment etc. There are bodies called credit bureaus who prepare these credit reports. U.S has three major bodies – Equifax, Experian and TransUnion. These organizations collect the information using many sources and tag this to a person’s Social Security Number. Since they collect information from different sources at different time, these reports may not show same score on a particular day.

The statistical method they use was originally developed by Bill Fair and Earl Isaac who then found the FICO (Fair Isaac Corporation). Some say there are other methods too, which I am not sure of. In fact, who knows how the data is analyzed and what formula they apply? At least I don’t know.

So, what is the fast and easy way to build a good credit history if we are new to this country? People might give many suggestions and we might find many people offering their service in this regard, but the reality is there is no easy way. Ask anybody here and the first thing they say is:

“Pay your bills on time”

What are the bills then? Rent, electricity, telephone bills, credit card bills…

To pay rent, we need to get a house for rent and for that we need a credit history (rent can be paid by cash or money orders too. So, in reality, if I am not wrong, rent and utility payments are not directly tracked by major bureaus, unless it’s not getting reported to other agencies like PRBC.). If there is no house to live in, from where does the electricity bill come from? We won’t get a post-paid mobile connection if we do not have a good credit history or else we need to keep a decent deposit varying from 500-1000 dollars depending on the type of phone and plan. None of the credit bureau bothers about the prepaid phones and the top ups we make. So what bill to pay?

So, is it all over?

Look at the entry gates to U.S or the Visas types . Tourists do not need any credit history. Those who are on business Visa are not eligible for Social Security and hence they are ruled out. Then what are left are these H-1B (work permit) holders, long term visa holders and students. H-1B holders already have a sponsor. If somebody can afford education here, they sure can afford some deposits and many a times they might even have some contacts here. Long term people already have their colleagues here. And from this environment arises our savior in the form of a ‘co-signer’.

Getting a co-signer with excellent credit history helps us jump those hurdles with ease. So, it’s not a big deal to start with. Then what are those fast track credit building methods?. Many of them are scams. Look at one scenario. Somebody suggested going for loans and repaying it. If we do not have good credit, first of all, the rate of interest would be high. Taking multiple loans and keeping the EMI small and extending the term might help us create more bills and easy payments. But if somebody thinks we can fool them that way, they are wrong. What are the factors they (credit bureaus) consider while calculating the score? Look at the weightage:

35%- payment history
30%- total debt outstanding
15%- length of time you've had credit
10%- types of credit
10%- new credit

Plus, one major criterion is our income. If we have a big pay check, we build the history fast. There is no fooling around here. Many a times it takes about 90 days for these agencies to track and update our payment history. So, is there any faster way for a good credit, without blocking our money?

Nope.

When AT&T asked for deposit, I felt like insulted coz I never was a defaulter in my life so far. But I know they did not mean to insult and that’s why they sent a personal letter telling that they got my credit info from so and so bureau and I can write to them. It takes some time and it all depends on our income, expenditure and repayment. It is said that it might take 6 months to 1 year to build a good credit.

All we need to do is to understand that this is how it works in this country and have some patience.

Work, Family and Frendz

2010-02-13T08:08:00.003+05:30

"Imagine life as a game in which you are juggling some
five balls in the air. You name them - Work, Family, Health, Friends and
Spirit and you're keeping all of these in the Air.

You will soon understand that work is a rubber ball. If you
drop it, it will bounce back.

But the other four Balls - Family, Health, Friends and
Spirit - are made of glass. If you drop one of these; they
will be irrevocably scuffed, marked, nicked, damaged or even
shattered. They will never be the same. You must understand
that and strive for it."

- Bryan Dyson (CEO of Coca Cola)

Cafe

2010-02-12T03:46:00.002+05:30

I happened to see this unfinished one:

In the Café with rain outside

He sat near the corner stall.

Waiting resulted in nothing

But he waited, just waited

The candle gave not just light

Hot tears fell down the eye.

Vacuity filled the memory chair*

And memories crammed the mind

(*Memory chair - a chair where somebody used to sit whenever he was in the cafe that brought him lots of old memories)

Now, when I read this, I have a different mood. So, what might have happened in the café?

I think the café guy changed the disc in his music player and there came this Michael Jackson song:

“Do you remember the time?

In Unison

2010-02-10T09:53:00.003+05:30

This husband and wife were facing some issues with ‘getting along’. They never agreed on anything and hence one day they went to attend a talk on relationships. The speaker went on and on…

The husband thought: “Hope she got the message. I know the speaker meant her”

For once, surprisingly there was this unity and the wife too thought in the same direction !

Oscar the Cat ...the Enlightened Cat...

2010-02-05T11:24:00.004+05:30

Oscar was born in 2005. I don’t know the day, date or month. I have no idea how he happened to be in an animal shelter though he was cute. He got adopted by Steere House Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Rhode Island (U.S.) as a therapy cat (Cats are known for making people comfortable). He wasn’t that friendly as a therapist and he once even bit a doc. His mission is different, it seems.

When he became a member of that Hospital, he was six months old (There are more therapy cats in that Nursing home). He grew up in the third floor which has the Dementia department (Dementia is a disorder where a person (usually elderly) face problems to reason, think , remember etc. Has links to Alzheimer’s). Some of the staff members happen to notice something. Whenever a patient died, Oscar was in the room.

That was the turning point. And then Oscar got closely observed by the staff, may be especially by Dr.David Dosa (I assume so coz it was he who told the world about Oscar).

Like doctors, Oscar too goes for rounds in the hospital. He enters some room, jumps up to the bed where the patient is lying and sniffs the air. If he don’t find anything odd, he moves on to the next room. If he smell ‘something’, he stays with that patient and sometimes nuzzle the patient. Within a short while, the patient dies.

Not just one or two, but so far Oscar predicted 50 deaths with 100% accuracy. Once when he tried to enter a room, the room was closed and he waited outside for 25 minutes. These days, if the staff see him cuddle with any patient, they immediately inform the patient’s relatives and many a times, they come with a priest.

Sometimes the relatives may not like a cat sitting with the patient and in such case the staff will move the car out. But Oscar will wait outside the door strolling and saying lots of ‘Meaow meaow’ and goes back to his room once the soul leave the body. If he don’t smell any more death, he goes back to his desk.

Oscar

How do this cat do this? I read many theories by many doctors and people from scientific field including a stupid theory by a qualified doc that when somebody is about to die, he/she becomes immobile and the cat finds it and sits there so that it can sit there comfortably (not verbatim). I wonder how a doctor can make such a statement? But many others say that it can smell some hormone that gets released at the last moment.

But there was this incident. Once Oscar was sitting with a patient and all the relatives were there in the room (since the hospital ppl called them) and there was this grandchild of that dying patient too. The child asked

“What is that cat doing here?”

And the mother answered:

“He is here to help Grandma get to heaven”

Whatever it be, one thing is sure. As long as Oscar is there, nobody in that ward is going to die alone. And he sees off the soul with love and compassion.

The 8th Grade

2010-02-02T10:16:00.003+05:30

(Written on Jan-31-2010)

I happened to check my own blog. There are less posts these days. For a moment I felt happy about it coz there passed many blogs through my mind during every sleepless nights, which were in plenty, and had I wrote them the next day, it could have resulted in kind of criticism type blogs about a BIG country in which I live now; not all of the blogs but many of them. But lack of sleep has this ability to wipe off those blogs from my mind rather quickly. If we do not get enough sleep, our brain will not function properly. There will be confusion, short term memory loss, fatigue, acidity and GERD (GastroEsophageal Reflex Disease) and so on…some latest studies say that prolonged insomniac nights could result in early death. Whatever…

I think that is a nice introduction for this blog coz it has nothing to do with what I am going to write. Sitting on this couch with slight back pain, upset stomach, tired eyes, mild headache, and aching toes I was thinking about my 8th grade. It took some time to get a visual of my class room. Once it came into my mind, I wondered why it took so long to remember it coz I do remember that class room.

When I joined this school as a 5th grade student, our division, the ‘I’ division, had no particular class room. We were split into many groups and were accommodated into other divisions. I had no idea why they just accommodate and did not absorb. But 8th grade ended this slavery and we got freedom. A separate division got created and we the ‘I’ division became ‘F’ division. May be 8th I division was English medium, I don’t remember now. We had both English and Malayalam medium divisions in our school and I was in the Malayalam medium. English medium was considered as something ‘above’ Malayalam medium. English medium had no representation from poor people (this does not mean that Malayalam medium was filled only with poor people). I think there wasn’t any extra fee for English medium or was there?

Who was my class teacher? Can’t remember.. it was either John Sir or Titus Sir. I still remember some of my 8th grade teachers, obviously by their nick name. Geography teacher was known as ‘Ambattan’ which means barber and Malayalam teacher was known as ‘Eruma’ which means buffalo. English teacher’s name can’t be written here coz it means something dirty (once I got a very niiiiice pinch from him for trying to imitate his signature).

None of us in that class can forget our Math teacher, Titus. He got transferred to this school that year and ours was his first class he taught. He was a terror. He always carried a cane. He beaten up the students and very soon there came some uproar against him. There came writings and graffiti against him on many walls on the school. Our school was well known for politics (major political parties have their student wings. Our class and school elections were just like president and prime minister Elections of the country. All contestants belonged to one or another political party ) and thus there were kind of rowdy students too in our school. I think Titus became a discussion among them and some of them even called him names, hiding here and there. (Later on, Titus sir left the school and joined a College as a Math lecturer. This wasn't coz of the anti-Titus movement but he always wanted to become a College teacher than a school teacher.)

Our new class room was already occupied by a boy who failed two times in a row (such students have to pay a fee for their next term). Happened to meet my 2nd grade best friend. There were only three students in my class who scored first class in 7th grade and promoted to 8th grade and I was one among them. There wasn’t any competition in my class. If Math wasn’t there as a subject, I would have been the topper all the time in that class, coz the other two always scored more marks than me in Math.

One thing about this school is that, once you pass out from here, you will have a clear idea about almost every filthy word in our mother tongue. This is coz every class had some kids who use abusive words liberally and once there was one ‘filthy word competition’ in our class, when there was no teacher for a period. The class divided into two groups for this purpose and each side had one lead person to shout the swear word and the rest hauled, whistled and made noise tapping on the desk. All of a sudden a teacher appeared and asked who did that (shouting dirty words). Though couple of students including me were against that ‘competition’, we did not name others coz it would have made our lives tough in that school. Some students managed to bring some porn book in the class and they always kept we, the so-called decent guys, at a par and we were warned to not to tell this to the teacher.

The English teacher assigned the work of checking the homework to three (or four?) students and I was one among them. We were selected based on the marks we scored for the first term examination. My old buddy was supposed to show his book to me and he took advantage of my friendship and many a times came without doing the home work. He never took me seriously. Once or twice I gave my book and asked him to blindly copy it into his book.

(went to bed early coz of headache)
(Feb- 1- 2010)

I started wearing full pants from 8th grade. There were only very few students who were still wearing shorts. That boy who failed twice and studying for the third time was wearing shorts (we had uniform. Black pants –half or full- and white shirt. And, on Wednesday we were allowed to wear color). He was a big boy and the reason seemed that he is poor and half pants cost less compared to full one. But he too started wearing full pants, later on; may be its coz he felt embarrassment since only 2-3 boys were wearing half pants and they were small (short) too.

I got befriended with couple of more boys. I was choosy as far as friendships were concerned. None of my friends used any filthy words while speaking to me. There was a gap between those students who do not study well and those who study well. I wasn’t a very studious boy, though I stood 2nd or 3rd in my class. I was attentive at class and used to do the home work. Other than that, I never had this habit of studying each day. If there was no home work, I didn’t study anything. There were moments where I came without finishing home work and then copying it from one of my friends (this boy (usually) never allowed others to copy from him. He stood first or second in the class and he never helped others during exams). I was one among the toppers because our class mostly had boys who do not study well. There wasn’t much competition and hence I never put an extra effort to improve myself.

I started participating in some Hindi language exams (every year till 10th…I passed all those exams with first class and I somehow lost all those certificates when I shifted my city after marriage) and that’s the end of my extracurricular activities. There were some other similar exams but I did not participate. Now I feel very disappointed about that because, I was good at science and I could have attended some science related stuff. Even our class teacher was not interested in sending his top students to any such exams. At home? Who cares about my studies? Mother never cared about what, how or when we study and father felt OK since I always scored a first class (60% or above). It looks like he had no idea about my potentials.

Usually, we used to play something during lunch break. But I don’t remember what I played when I was in 8th grade. But I remember one incident where one of my friends falling into a pit. It was fully covered with long grass and he accidently fell into it. Which was stupid, keeping a pit open in a boys school or playing somewhere which was not meant for playing? Anyway, he was my close friend and I helped him come out of it by pulling his hands. He had pain in his chest, looked like he felt some difficulty to breathe…

We were more active during ‘Sevana Vaaram’. Sevana Vaaram literally means ‘Service Week’. Every year, during/starting October 2nd, which was Mahathma Gandhi’s birthday, we used to celebrate Sevana Varam. That is, there won’t be any class for one week. But we have to come to school. All we had to do was cleaning the school, neighboring roads etc and some helping the poor and needy acts. The school arranged something to eat (steamed tapioca/cassava for example) and drink (usually black tea or coffee). We always enjoyed that week.

There weren’t any change in my home atmosphere, which never wasn’t great. My sister started attending college. The college was very near (just 5 minutes walk from our home). During the initial days she did not like the college and even cried since the medium of instruction was English. That time, I had no idea how it would be when all of a sudden our teachers teaching everything in English. My house owner’s wife, who was an illiterate that time, came to console my sister. Even now I can remember that moment. I can still see it in my mind (?, or whatever. I refer those dream kind of visuals what appear when we think of something).

In our native place we had this educational institutions called ‘Tutorials’ (and ‘Parallel college’ too) which provide tuitions, not for just one subject but for all subjects we learn at school (we had Malayalam I and II, English I and II, Hindi, Math, Drawing, Craft, (P.T.), History and Civics, Geography, Physics, Chemistry and Biology). By default, most of the middle class students (the upper middle class and rich prefer private lessons or one to one tuitions) used to attend one such place and so did I. It wasn’t the best known place for tuitions or teachers (there were such places too) but one which was closer to my home and run by some unemployed guys (who were friends). It was a mixed class and many a times I had butterflies in my stomach when some girls look at me. One of the boys used to wear the cleanest shirts to impress the girls. He was my school mate and if he came home with a dirty shirt (oh yes, we used to make it dirty), he used to wash it and dry it immediately using electric iron and wear it whenever there was evening classes.

There weren’t any boy-girl friendship in my tuition class. Most of the good girls hardly spoke to boys. I faced serious competition from three girls. Many a times I managed to stand with 2 of them in overall marks but never ever bet one girl (her name is Subha). She was very strong at Math. When I recollect those moments now, I realize that I never took any effort to compete with those girls.

Did I have a soft corner for one of those girls?

Everywhere...and Forever

2010-01-28T11:15:00.003+05:30

As the air is everywhere,
Flowing around a pot
And filling it,
So God is everywhere,
Filling all things
And flowing through them forever.

- Ashtavakra Gita

Labels

2010-01-26T06:06:00.002+05:30

Sometime back I witnessed a strange thing. Somebody making tea. What is strange in it? It was done in our traditional way – keeping a utensil with milk and water in the stove, adding tea leaves, filtering it with a tea strainer, adding sugar… that person wasn’t using a utensil which will allow us to easily pour tea into a glass without spilling and naturally I saw tea getting spilled. Spilling...wiping... Once, twice, thrice…I saw it happening every time that person made tea. It looked like a daily ritual. The strange thing is that I saw a perfect utensil for making tea that can be then poured without spilling even a drop. But why that person did not use it?

According to that person, that utensil is for making a particular curry. I came to know that this is because that person’s mother told so.

Do we need to label things around us that way? Do we need to follow our parents blindly in this labeling process?

Everything might have a specific use but it also has a general use too. A safety pin, a swab, a kitchen fork, sewing needle, a rubber band, a dining table, a dining chair, a business card, a screwdriver, pliers, a piece of wood, a tea spoon, a roll of toilet paper, a coin...Prejudice about people, ceremonies, rituals, beliefs, culture, religion, faith etc too gets labeled.

When I saw that labeling, an incident came into my mind. Roughly 20 years ago, I was working in a factory as an accountant. They had lots of machines and tools, including some lathe. That factory used to open by 8 in the morning and the owner used to come around 10. One day, I saw my boss’s car coming early, I stood up in my seat to greet him and here he comes in a hurry and from his face I read that something is odd.

“Call Madhavan” he said

Madhavan was a strange worker there. He was not in our rolls. He was working with that factory as a supervisor but later on resigned and started his own workshop. But still, he comes here and works on an hourly basis. He was the best there..was proficient with every department there. Not just that, he was capable of fixing many things like motor bike, car, clock, electrical equipments, plumbing…he was very very talented.

Why did the boss come this early and call Madhavan?

As usual, he took his morning shower, cleaned his ear with a cotton swab and there it is…the cotton stuck inside his ear. But he did not go to an ENT specialist. This is not because he was a miser. But his trust with Madhavan. He did not label Madhavan as a Lathe operator.

(Madhavan or none of us did not dare to laugh when we came to know why boss called him coz our boss was very very short tempered)

As expected, Madhavan did not fail….

We need to grow beyond labels…Needn't we?

Bimbo n Me..

2010-01-22T06:12:00.003+05:30

Who was the first country singer to whom I listened to? I might have heard some songs without knowing that it was country or who sung it. But the first singer I remember is Jim Reeves. His ‘Bimbo’ is still popular, though he died and early death even before I was born.

Why do I remember this particular singer? When we connect certain things to certain other things, sometimes we remember odd things. It was my then best friend who gave me a ‘Best of Jim Reeves’ cassette. She said she like the song ‘Bimbo’. Did she say she liked the song ‘Just Walking in the Rain?’, can’t remember it ...the incident happened about 20 years ago. Why did she like Reeves? She did not tell me …may be because I did not ask her. But I know its coz his Gospel work and Christian songs. My friend too was a good singer, was highly involved in Gospel work and even sang in couple of music albums.

Why did I remember my then best friend now?

Is it coz I happened to listen to Reeves or is it coz I missed her and hence I listened to Reeves?

Preacher pays

2010-01-15T07:22:00.003+05:30

Sometime ago, I had mentioned about people who are into God business (Benny Hinn for example and more can be found here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_televangelist_scandals). Evangelism is a business for them and they live in super luxuries. We cannot blame them for their followers’ ignorance. If we closely listen to them, we can find out that many a times they say scripture or somebody from the scripture said this and that and they never tell that they believe in what they preach . They escape from places where there is a possibility of them getting exposed and next day they might say ‘God asked me to not to attend that meeting’…

Pastor Tony Alamo is one such cheater. He grew from a news paper delivery boy to a multi millionaire. He married 4 times, sexually abused minor girls and two months ago ended up in a jail with 175 years term. That means he will never come back (good God!). Today’s news said one of the US courts ordered him to pay $500,000 each to 5 women who became victims of his lust when they were minors. 2,5 million US dollars is a big money but he and his missionary has more to spare.

Why all such evangelists and their missionaries are filthy rich though they are not coming from rich families? Too much for a coincidence?

When will people learn?

Jealousy..

2010-01-13T08:41:00.002+05:30

Jealousy is a negative emotion, a negative force or energy. It can work the way the prayer we do (for others), but in a somewhat opposite manner. A prayer we do for somebody else purifies our mind where as feeling jealousy rotten the mind and attracts more negativity. If our prayer for somebody else can do well for them, jealousy can do something bad to them.

To what extend our prayer can do good or our curse can do bad AND to what extend the other person can receive the good or bad from our prayer or curse depends on various factors including the magnitude of our thoughts, the aura around us and them and many other things.

Getting a well paid job, buying new car, an ipod, a laptop, a camera….getting a chance to visit places which many others wish to visit, moving to a better living condition…many such things can make others jealous of you; even if those ‘others’ are friends or family members.

It is in the nature of humans to share our happy moments with our loved ones. I said loved ones.. where divine love is the purest form of positive energy. I am not referring to that love in the ‘ I love you’ originating from lust.

So, when we share good things with others, it is better we think twice to whom and what we share coz it can attract negative energy or even bad luck.

What if we think we made somebody feel jealous of us?

Forgive them and bless them…