Heart surgery remedy

🇨🇭MUST CIRCULATE🇨🇭

Recently, one person was admitted to a nursing home at Dharwad, due to severe chest pain. He had an earlier attack  in 2012 and was under treatment. The doctors now suggested Angiography.
 
Upon undergoing Angiography at multi speciality Hospital  Doctors diagnosed multiple blockages for which Angioplasty was ruled out and instead,  suggested 'Bypass Surgery'.

That evening, he was brought home as  doctor suggested his heart being very weak, bypass could be performed only after 10 - 15 days.
 
Meanwhile, after discussing the matter with relatives and close friends, fresh  information came from a family friend.
 
A new treatment known as-"Chelation Therapy" has been introduced into the Indian medical theatre.
 
With this therapy, a patient who has to undergo by-pass need not do so.

Instead, the patient is given about 30 bottles of IV fluids in which certain medicament are injected. The medicine cleans the system and removes all blockages from the heart and the arteries. The number of bottles given may increase depending upon the age-factor and health of the patient.
Cost per bottle may be around Rs.1,500/- .

Currently, only a few doctors in India specialise in this field

One of them is DR. C Shashikant (Dharwad)

He has a list of patients who had to undergo by-pass from major hospitals; but, instead after undergoing the new treatment, they are absolutely fine and are leading a normal life.
Doctor's details for your info are:
 
Dr. C Shashikant
"SPARSH" Cardiac Rehabilitation & Research Center.
MR Nagar
Dharwad 580001

Mob: +919481723663

Please forward this message It Might Help!! Please, don't delete this without forwarding.
I am forwarding it to the maximum I can. Let it reach the 120 crore  Indians and the remaining if any Create Awareness!
It might help someone. Forward to as many as u can.

💐💐 Thank you 💐💐
👆👆👆👆👆
Forwarded as received.

Khushwant singh learnings

Very nice article by Late  Khushwant Singh. Preserve this .😊

How To Live & Die

I’ve often thought about what it is that makes people happy—what one has to do in order to achieve happiness.

1- First and foremost is good health. If you do not enjoy good health, you can never be happy. Any ailment, however trivial, will deduct something from your happiness.

2- Second, a healthy bank balance. It need not run into crores, but it should be enough to provide for comforts, and there should be something to spare for recreation—eating out, going to the movies, travel and holidays in the hills or by the sea. Shortage of money can be demoralising. Living on credit or borrowing is demeaning and lowers one in one’s own eyes.

3- Third, your own home. Rented places can never give you the comfort or security of a home that is yours for keeps. If it has garden space, all the better. Plant your own trees and flowers, see them grow and blossom, and cultivate a sense of kinship with them.

4- Fourth, an understanding companion, be it your spouse or a friend. If you have too many misunderstandings, it robs you of your peace of mind. It is better to be divorced than to be quarrelling all the time.

5- Fifth, stop envying those who have done better than you in life—risen higher, made more money, or earned more fame. Envy can be corroding; avoid comparing yourself with others.

6- Sixth, do not allow people to descend on you for gossip. By the time you get rid of them, you will feel exhausted and poisoned by their gossip-mongering.

7- Seventh, cultivate a hobby or two that will fulfill you—gardening, reading, writing, painting, playing or listening to music. Going to clubs or parties to get free drinks, or to meet celebrities, is a criminal waste of time. It’s important to concentrate on something that keeps you occupied meaningfully.

8- Eighth, every morning and evening devote 15 minutes to introspection. In the mornings, 10 minutes should be spent in keeping the mind absolutely still, and five listing the things you have to do that day. In the evenings, five minutes should be set aside to keep the mind still and 10 to go over the tasks you had intended to do.

9- Ninth, don’t lose your temper. Try not to be short-tempered, or vengeful. Even when a friend has been rude, just move on.

10- Above all, when the time comes to go, one should go like a Person without any regret or grievance against anyone.

Read it...it mean a lot

Cancer cure

Life was a dream for Amit Vaidya, who soared high financially and professionally till he was diagnosed with cancer when he was 27.

Amit Vaidya lived the American dream. A Gujarati, born and brought up in the US, with a Ph.D. in economics, he worked in the entertainment industry’s business department. “It was an active but not a healthy lifestyle as I was an overachiever,” says Amit. His dreams “were shattered” when a few months after his father’s death he was diagnosed with first stage gastric cancer. “The fall was great as I had risen to great heights when I was 27.”

Opting not to do surgery, he went in for “aggressive chemo radiation” in New York. Two years later he went into remission.

Within two months of his recovery, his mother was diagnosed with grade three brain tumour. “Nothing worked and I lost her too. Away in a foreign land, being the only child, I felt lonely and a scan showed my cancer had returned after 18 months. This time it showed up in my liver. Nine months later, in 2011, reports showed I was not responding to treatment and the cancer had spread to my lungs too,” he says emotionally. 

Doctors told Amit that his life too was just a matter of time. “Not wanting to burden my friends, I started planning my funeral.

Soon he planned a trip to India. An aunt also told me about an Ayurvedic hospital in Gujarat that claims to cure cancer in 11 days for just a rupee! Having nothing to lose I wanted to give it a shot.”

So off he went and explains that the treatment was disciplined with yoga, meditation and he was made to drink a mix of _“desi cow milk, curd, ghee and gobar, go-mutra. I was to drink it on an empty stomach. For years everything tasted like saw dust because of the chemo. It was easy to drink something that smelled and tasted as it should. Others there were traumatised by this. I kept faith and did it diligently. I saw no change but felt no worse either.”_

Scans showed that the cancer “had not spread”. Amit then went back to the hospital and lived there for another 40 days. Reports showed the cancer had decreased. “Wanting to continue the therapy,” Amit stayed with a farmer, who opened his house to Amit. _“He offered me a tiny shack on his farm, a cot, a goshala with desi cows, a well and a toilet. I continued the therapy and after months was able to walk. Over time, walks became jogs, jogs became runs and I started finding joy in my mind. The villagers had time for me, which was the best gift I got, especially when I needed time to heal.”_

After 18 months Amit claims he is cancer free and decided _“on planning to live his life instead of planning a funeral. I now talk to people about my journey and that healing is possible. I make time to spend with cancer patients. It is all free. I have started an NGO called Healing Vaidya.”_

He does not plan on going back to the US as _“this country has given me much. I have learnt that people here don’t value what it can offer.”_

Amit has written "Holy Cancer - How A Cow Saved My Life" (Aditya Prakashan, Rs. 495) which was launched in the city recently. The book is available in book stores. For more log on to healingvaidya.org

Also available with amazon and Flipkart. 

http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-features/tp-metroplus/a-journey-from-death-to-life/article7558731.ece

Vaidya is referring to *RM Dhariwal Cancer Hospital at Valsad* - *Gujarat* where Panchagavya is the treatment and charges are Re. 1- only

Quick workouts

20-Minute Arm Workout:

Repeat 4 times for a total of 20 minutes

1st minute: 15 push-ups2nd minute: 15 dumbbell rows3rd minute: 15 shoulder presses4th minute: 15 biceps curls5th minute: 40 seconds jumping jacks; 20 seconds of rest

20-Minute Lower Body Workout:

Repeat 5 times, resting 30 seconds between sets.

30 seconds: Squats30 seconds: Rest30 seconds: Alternating lunges30 seconds: Rest30 seconds: Kettlebell deadlifts30 seconds: Rest30 seconds: High-knees

10-Minute Core Workout:

Repeat 4 times, resting 30 seconds between sets.

1 minute: Jackknife crunches1 minute: Plank

Pressure Doesn’t Have to Turn into Stress

Pressure Doesn’t Have to Turn into Stress

Nicholas Petrie

MARCH 16, 2017

https://hbr.org/2017/03/pressure-doesnt-have-to-turn-into-stress

When I was in my late twenties, I was diagnosed with stomach cancer. Doctors operated and told me to hope for the best. I returned to Japan, where I was working, and tried to forget about it. The tumors returned a year later, this time in my liver. After a long search, the surgeons found a new procedure to remove them, but I knew this was, again, perhaps only a temporary fix. I was a mess for the next six months. The hardest part of my illness was my constant anxiety about it coming back.

Then I met a man who changed my outlook. Dr. Derek Roger had spent 30 years researching why some people in difficult situations become overwhelmed, while others persevere. He taught me everything he’d learned, and as I started applying it, my anxiety subsided, even though my situation didn’t change. In fact, the cancer came back about five years ago and remains relatively stable in my liver. But I no longer worry about it. Derek became my mentor, and over the past 10 years we have trained thousands of leaders to overcome their stress.

The process starts with understanding that stress is caused not by other people or external events, but by your reactions to them. In the workplace, many people blame their high anxiety levels on a boss, job, deadlines, or competing commitments for their time. But peers who face the same challenges do so without stress. Derek and I often meet executives who have high levels of pressure but low levels of stress, and vice versa.

Pressure is not stress. But the former is converted to the latter when you add one ingredient: rumination, the tendency to keep rethinking past or future events, while attaching negative emotion to those thoughts. Of course, leaders must practice reflection — planning for the future or reviewing past lessons — but this is an analytical, short-term process, with positive fallout. Rumination is ongoing and destructive, diminishing your health, productivity, and well-being. Chronic worriers show increased incidence of coronary problems and suppressed immune functioning. Dwelling on the past or the future also takes us away from the present, rendering us unable to complete the work currently on our plates. If you ask ruminators how they are feeling, none will say “happy.” Most feel miserable.

To break this stress-inducing habit, Derek and I recommend four steps:

Wake up. People spend most of their day in a state called “waking sleep.” This is when you pull into the office parking lot but can’t remember the drive there, or when someone in a meeting asks for your opinion but you’ve missed the last few minutes of conversation. Since all rumination happens during this state, the first step is to break out of it. You can do this physically: Stand or sit up, clap your hands, and move your body. Or you can do it mentally: Connect with your senses by noticing what you can hear, see, smell, taste, and feel. The idea is to reconnect with the world.

Control your attention. When you ruminate, your attention gets caught in an unproductive loop, like a hamster on a wheel. You need to redirect yourself to areas in which you can take useful action. Here’s one exercise we encourage executives to use: Draw a circle on a page, and write down all of the things you can control or influence inside of it and all of the things you cannot outside of it. Remind yourself that you can care about externalities — your work, your team, your family — without worrying about them.

Put things in perspective. Ruminators tend to catastrophize, but resilient leaders keep things in perspective for themselves and their teams. We tell people to try three techniques: contrasting (comparing a past stress to the current one, i.e., a major illness versus a missed sale), questioning (asking yourself “How much will this matter in three years’ time?” and “What’s the worst that could happen?” and “How would I survive it?”) and reframing (looking at your challenge from a new angle: “What’s an opportunity in this situation I haven’t yet seen?” or even “What’s funny about this situation?”)

Let go. The final step is often the hardest. If it was easy to let it go, we would have done it already. We find that three techniques help.

The first is acceptance: Acknowledge that whether you like the situation or not, it is the way it is.

The second is learning the lesson. Your brain will review events until it feels you’ve gained something from them, so ask yourself, “What have I learned from this experience?”

The third is action. Sometimes the real solution is not to relax, but to do something about your situation. Ask yourself, “What action is required here?

Israel and how it fights desertification

https://www.israel21c.org/top-10-ways-israel-fights-desertification/

Another amazing example of RWH

http://www.thebetterindia.com/92434/a-r-shivakumar-rainwater-harvesting-bengaluru-karnataka/

Curing cancer the natural way

Please share this post as much as possible.

*Eating Fruit on Empty Stomach*

Cancer patients shouldn't die..

This will open your eyes ! Read to the end and then send it on to all on your e-list. I just did !

Dr Stephen Mak treats terminal ill cancer patients by an "un-orthodox" way and many patients recovered.

Before he used solar energy to clear the illnesses of his patients, he believes on natural healing in the body against illnesses.
See his article below.

"It is one of the strategies to heal cancer. As of late, my success rate in curing cancer is about 80%."

"Cancer patients shouldn't die.
*The cure for cancer is already found - *its in the way we eat fruits.*"

"It is whether you believe it or not."

"I am sorry for the hundreds of cancer patients who die under the conventional treatments."

*EATING FRUIT*

We all think eating fruits means just buying fruits, cutting it and just popping it into our mouths.

It's not as easy as you think. It's important to know *how* and *when* to eat the fruits.

What is the correct way of eating fruits?

*IT MEANS NOT EATING FRUITS AFTER YOUR MEALS!*

*FRUITS SHOULD BE EATEN ON AN EMPTY STOMACH*

If you *eat fruits on empty stomach*, it will play a major role to detoxify your system, supplying you with a great deal of energy for weight loss and other life activities.

*_FRUIT IS THE MOST IMPORTANT FOOD._*

Let's say you eat two slices of bread and then a slice of fruit.

The slice of fruit is ready to go straight through the stomach into the intestines, but it is prevented from doing so due to the bread taken before the fruit.

In the meantime the whole meal of bread & fruit rots and ferments and turns to acid.

The minute the fruit comes into contact with the food in the stomach and digestive juices, the entire mass of food begins to spoil.

So please eat your fruits on an *empty stomach* *or before your meals !*

You have heard people complaining :

Every time I eat *watermelon* 🍉 I burp, when I eat *durian* 🍈 my stomach bloats up, when I eat a *banana* 🍌 I feel like running to the toilet, etc.. etc..

Actually all this will not arise if you *eat the fruit on an empty stomach.*

The fruit mixes with the putrefying of other food and produces gas and hence you will bloat !

Greying hair, loss of hair, balding, nervous outbursts and dark circles under the eyes all these will *NOT* *happen if you take fruits on an empty stomach.*

There is no such thing as some fruits, like orange 🍊 and lemon 🍋 are acidic, because all fruits become alkaline in our body, according to Dr. Herbert Shelton who did research on this matter.

If you have mastered the correct way of eating fruits, you have the  *SECRET of beauty, longevity, health, energy, happiness and normal weight.*

When you need to drink fruit juice - *drink only fresh fruit juice,* *NOT* from the cans, packs or bottles.

*Don't* even drink juice that has been heated up.

*Don't* eat cooked fruits because you don't get the nutrients at all.

You only get its taste.
_Cooking destroys all the vitamins._

But eating a *whole fruit* is better than drinking the juice.

If you should *drink the fresh fruit juice*, drink it mouthful by mouthful slowly, because you must let it mix with your saliva before swallowing it.

You can go on a 3-day fruit fast to cleanse or detoxify your body.

Just eat fruits and drink fresh fruit juice throughout the 3 days.

And you will be surprised when your friends tell you how radiant you look !

*KIWI fruit:*
Tiny but mighty.
This is a good source of potassium, magnesium, vitamin E & fiber. _Its vitamin C content is twice that of an orange._

*APPLE:*🍎🍏
An *apple* a day keeps the doctor away?
Although an apple has a low vitamin C content, it has antioxidants & flavonoids which enhances the activity of vitamin C thereby _helping to lower the risks of colon cancer, heart attack & stroke._

*STRAWBERRY:*🍓🍓
Protective Fruit.
*Strawberries* have the highest total antioxidant power among major fruits & _protect the body from cancer-causing, blood vessel-clogging and free radicals._

*ORANGE :*🍊🍊
Sweetest medicine.
Taking 2-4 *oranges* a day may _help keep colds away, lower cholesterol, prevent & dissolve kidney stones as well as lessens the risk of colon cancer._

*WATERMELON:*🍉🍉
Coolest thirst quencher. Composed of 92% water, it is also packed with a giant dose of glutathione, which _helps boost our immune system._

They are also *a key source of lycopene the cancer fighting oxidant.*
Other nutrients found in *watermelon* 🍉 _are Vitamin C & Potassium._

*GUAVA & PAPAYA:*🍑🍑
Top awards for vitamin C. They are the clear winners for their _high vitamin C content._

*Guava* is also rich in fiber, which _helps prevent constipation._

*Papaya* is rich in carotene; this is _good for your eyes._

*Drinking COLD water or drinks after a meal = CANCER*

Can you believe this ?

For those who like to drink cold water or cold drinks, this article is applicable to you.

It is nice to have a cup of cold water or cold drinks after a meal.

However, *the cold water or drinks will solidify the oily stuff that you have just eaten.*

_It will slow down the digestion._

Once this *'sludge' reacts with the acid*, it will break down and be *absorbed by the intestine faster than the solid food.*

_It will line the intestine._

Very soon, *this will turn into FATS and lead to CANCER !*

_*It is best to drink hot soup or warm water after a meal.*_

Let's be careful and be aware. The more we know the better chance we could survive.

A cardiologist says:
if everyone who gets this msg & share it to other people you can be sure that you'll save at least one life.

So lets do it! 😃😄

Save water and generate electricity at the same time!

http://www.thebetterindia.com/91624/thinkphi-ulta-chaata-rainwater-solar-energy/

Organic farming in cities!

http://www.thebetterindia.com/91718/homecrop-organoponics-urban-farming/

Pumped hydro - another renewable source

http://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2017-03-17/how-seawater-hydro-could-help-south-australia/8363054?pfmredir=sm

Letter from Bill gates to Warren buffet

https://www.gatesnotes.com/2017-Annual-Letter?WT.mc_id=02_15_2017_00_AL2017Twitter_GF-TW_&WT.tsrc=GFTW

Disposing toxic waste

The toxic waste that we generate on the planet can be probably dumped onto another planet once ISRO crosses the threshold to launch satellites at dirt cheap prices at road travel prices.

Waste can be packed into small cannisters made of lead or other similar material that can withstand long distance travel. These cannisters can then be launched using mechanical giant catapults into outer space.

Each  cannister should be labeled with a number and the direction and angle  recorded.  In absence of any matter in space the object would continue to gain momentum until it reaches the gravitational field of a stronger star that starts pulling it towards itself.

If there is life on thst star and if the canister manages to reach the surface of the star undamaged it'd be great. If it is a more intelligent life form than us,, they'd be able to analyze the content and might even figure out where we are judging from the direction.

The only catch is that if there is no life form ever out there and once the canister reaches the outer peripherals of universe (if ever there is any outer oeriphery), it might rebound and start coming back at an even greater speed, a slight miss in direction might see it come back towarda Planet Earth in a million years or so..  So imagine a day once generations much in future wake up to see tiny objects enlightening the sky and missiles being fired to destroy them..

These were random musings in a bus.

A DOG AND A DONKEY

There was once a washer man who had a donkey and a dog. One night when the whole world was sleeping, a thief broke into the house, the washer man was fast asleep too but the donkey and the dog were awake. The dog decided not to bark since the master did not take good care of him and wanted to teach him a lesson.

The donkey got worried and said to the dog that if he doesn't bark, the donkey will have to do something himself. The dog did not change his mind and the donkey started braying loudly.

Hearing the donkey bray, the thief ran away, the master woke up and started beating the donkey for braying in the middle of the night for no reason.

Moral of the story "One must not engage in duties other than his own" 

Now take a new look at the same story...

The washer man was a well educated man from a premier management institute. He had the fundas of

looking at the bigger picture and thinking out of the box. He was convinced that there must be some reason for the donkey to bray in the night. He walked outside a little and did some fact finding, applied a

bottom up approach, figured out from the ground realities that there was a thief who broke in and the donkey only wanted to alert him about it. Looking at the donkey's extra initiative and going beyond the call of the duty, he rewarded him with lot of hay and other perks and became his favorite pet.

The dog's life didn't change much, except that now the donkey was more motivated in doing the dog's duties as well. In the annual appraisal the dog managed "ME" (Met Expectations). 

Soon the dog realized that the donkey is taking care of his duties and he can enjoy his life sleeping and lazing around.

The donkey was rated as "star performer". The donkey had to live up to his already high performance standards. 

Soon he was over burdened with work and always under pressure and now is looking for a NEW JOB... 

Moral of the story… ehmmm, same as above. 

Indian Railways and the Classes

A train journey from Bangalore to Delhi by Rajdhani takes close to 32-34 hrs with an entire one day thrown in. Naturally it becomes boring, sometimes especially if you are traveling alone, so the only place you seek refuge in is either books or some music.

Well this time around in search of company, I happened to go the Pantry car to grab an extra cup of tea and there I sat down to chat with the TCs (Ticket Checkers as they are popularly known). Chatting with three of these TCs for around an hour gave me a good insight into the behavior and way of living of people who travel across different classes in the Indian railways, this was from the perspective of those TCs but nevertheless a very good one, something which took my thoughts back to the STP lessons in my MBA Marketing classes.

A typical Indian railways train is a long serpent making its way through the various terrains of our country, the wagons or bogies as they are more typically known number close to 20, add and subtract a few numbers on either side depending on the booking schedule and festive seasons. The segmentation is done on the basis of various categories of classes it has and they are five in number:

1. General category


2. Sleeper


3. 3rd AC


4. 2nd AC


5. 1st AC

Till here you all too know the same facts, now for some change from the eyes of TCs.

General Category: Utter chaos, everyone talking to everyone else present, total mayhem in place.. Try hard to decipher the common thread of conversation and you wouldn’t find any. Privacy, space for the other person all are alien words here. Travel in this class if you want to get a first hand experience of how to travel with the masses(I believe the campus recruits at HLL each year have to travel in this section too as a part of their initial trainings, they do travel with truck drivers in their zones that’s for certain) You want find unruly young guys here because they don’t have any space to show their antics.

Sleeper: Some order here, people would still be talking around to everyone present but the action would now be restricted to the same coupe, eight people or less engaged in conversation at the same time. There is some common thread, with the vagaries of nature pouring in too to add more action. Here you would find young guys eager for some action, they include the unreserved category people trying to find an inch of space here and there adding to the chaos. Two or three Antakshari sessions in progress in the same bogie is not something unusual.

3rd AC: Ah, the cooling effect is in now.. The vagaries of nature are no longer there as you are shielded by tinted windows on both ends. Conversation between fellow passengers becomes less frequent here as people talk in toned down voices, action is very much restricted to the same coupe and as compared to earlier where one or two were outside the conversation, here at a time only 2-3 people would be engaged in at the same time. One more interesting parameter comes into play here, in the earlier two classes you would find large gatherings of people playing Antakshari or discussing loudly over certain topics , in short enjoying life as it is. That phenomenon is absent here because people pay that lot extra money to get some solace, silence and privacy. Loud talking or chaos here results in TC coming in and reining you in.

2nd AC: The last but one runk of the ladder. Privacy is re-inforced this time by the presence of curtains. On one side you have four people behind the curtain and on other side two people. This class is popular with newly married couples as they find the side which has two seats to be very romantic and private too. Here people hardly talk to each other, nevertheless you would still find some exceptions here and there. An interesting feature of this class is that the TCs have to take extra care here of the passengers and their whims… why? Its because during night time the passengers draw in the curtains and sleep, now if any passerby accidentally hits someone sleeping with his hand or elbow, people raise a din over here because they want that the curtains provide total disturbance free zone, this is not the problem in other classes as none of them have curtains and in the first ac its closed compartments as a whole.

1st AC: Isolated islands in the wagon. Four people each in each isolated island. If people inside the coupe know each other then they talk else there is no point of talking. Each person is lost in his/her thoughts and wants total mental solitude as well. Loud talking, group talking etc etc is out of the question here. Welcome to the elite class.

The Swedish Incident

This incident is more than a year old but definitely worth a narration.

The time was Feb 2006 and I was working out of the Volvo IT premises in Skovde, Sweden.
Quite close to my apartment where I used to stay with two of my fellow Minds, there was a large building on a small hilltop, we could never figure out what was it for as when we used to leave for office in morning it used to be dark outside and when we used to come back in the evening then also it used to be quite dark and hence we missed out on any human activity that
took place in and around the building.

It so happened that one day one of our Swedish colleagues invited us over to his home for lunch and he came to pick us up, after picking us he was briefing us on the various landmarks in the area and in the process he pointed out to that building and said that’s the "Gymnasium". I was like Wow, such a huge gym! Man these guys are something, they really are too much of fitness conscious.

So, the next day I left from office early so as to go to this gymnasium and inquire about their working times and membership charges and all. I parked my cycle at the foot of the hill, climbed the stairs and started searching for the entrance. There were many doors and as is the case with Automatic doors they open from inside only and from outside if only I know the code. So now started my process of testing each door .. In vain.. Now I resorted to next step, of peeping into various rooms and searching for a human soul… again in vain… I was beginning to think that whats wrong with these people, they build such huge gymnasiums with no-one in rooms, no information signs outside when I noticed light coming from one of the rooms.

I peeped in through the Window and hallejulah there were 3-4 pretty girls inside, now this was an even better incentive for me to become a member.. I started tapping the window first slowly then frantically… As my fairy godmother would like it, the prettiest girl of the lot looked up… I was like "Yes, meri to nikal padi"… Now with the help of sign language I started conveying that I want to come inside, she walked over to where I was standing and opened the window and spoke to me… left me wondering why did I resort to sign language in the first place? She asked me to come over to the door on the other side and she would open the door for me.

In the excitement I circled the wrong side of the building and when I didn’t find her there then I realised it must be on the other end.. By the time I reached there, to my utter grief she was no longer there instead she had stuck a broom in the door so that it doesn’t close and I can go in…

Well I picked the broom and entered the premises, my eyes were frantically searching for the girl when a huge gentleman came into the view.. Greetings exchanged and then he says "Ah! You must be the gentleman for whom the young girl was waiting over here, your girl has left and she must be in one of the rooms"

By this time I was like going crazy, God what sort of Gym is this, I have seen everything but where is the equipment?

I told the gentleman.. Sir, I think there is something wrong here in what I know, firstly, that lady isnt my lady(though I'd loved to say the other way) and secondly I want to join this gymnasium. The gentleman reacted in a way as if something real hard stuck him. He said.." You look as an educated person to me" I replied yes I am, I have done my Masters and I am working with Volvo right now. Then he replied "Then why do you want to join the gym?" I replied "To stay physically fit" He wore a puzzled look for sometime and then burst out into peals of laughter. Seeing him laugh so hysterically I also started smiling, though I was completely unaware of the reason.

Then he said.. Young man, you follow the British english right? I said yes, I do.. He said that’s the point .. In British english Gymnasium refers to a place where you work-out whereas in Swedish English it stands for a high school.. And that’s why I was wondering that since you have already done your masters why do you want to come back to the school…

Then he took me to one of those patio windows and showed me the real fitness gyms down the road, this time he led me to the door and ensured that I left safely.
All in all… I came back very disappointed, my joy of being a member of such a huge gym was washed out and my dreams of that pretty girl didn’t even survive beyond one meeting :-( I hope that gym and that girl are doing well, as for myself I and gym continue to play hide-and-seek with each other as always..

Delhi traffic.. Saddi Dilli

Delhi traffic is a classic case of how things can go totally haywire when people have a scant disregard for the laws, rules or regulations (term it what ever you like)
Driving on Delhi roads is much more tough and stressful than Formula-1 racing because over there you have only one type of competitors fighting for the same space – cars, albeit of different make but still cars. On Delhi roads you have as much variety as you would find in a local vegetable market. Small to large, cheap to costly you name it and you have the variety.

For the uninitiated who are unacquainted with Delhi traffic, they might find this all gibber and gabber and would dismiss this article with a shrug saying “Big Deal, same is the situation in all the major metros in India”. But no dear friend, you have to be in Delhi, sit in the driver’s seat and drive around any major or minor road and you would get a first hand experience of what I am driving to.

There are exceptions everywhere and so are here, please don’t include the green heartland of Delhi – Sir Lutyen’s Delhi in this category.. reasons? All other conditions kept the same the security is so tight in this area that as this is a VIP zone that try any of your circus acts here and you wont pass by the next two traffic signals, you would be intercepted by one of the famed Delhi cops beforehand. Trust me when I say this, you’d rather prefer to wait in the serpentine queue for another 10 mins rather than risk having a confrontation with the Delhi cops because they wont distinguish if you are a software engineer or a vice-president. The result of which is that they wouldn’t hesitate even a second to man-handle you and talk to you in such a rural and harsh language resulting in you praying to god that why wasn’t I born as a snail so that I could retreat into my shell this very instant.

Coming back to the main subject, Delhi traffic.. Delhi has by and large the widest streets/roads in the entire country.. No second opinions on this. And Delhi would soon be the city to have the largest number of fly-overs in the entire continent. Still, venture out at any time/hour onto the streets of Delhi, be it the arterial ring road or the by lanes and sub lanes you would never find them devoid of traffic snarls. In short, there is no predictable time when I can venture out and reach my destination in a relatively shorter amount of time. Now why is this so? Primarily because of the various players we have on the Delhi roads.. So I’d give you a vivid description of these players now.

Buses: two types, the state run DTC(Delhi Transport Corporation) and private buses.
The state run DTC buses would keep on rolling on the left side of the street in their lane.. rickety and smoke emitting, they are relics of a by-gone era.. not from the times of Raj though. They are the least of a disturbance as you can overtake them anytime you want, they wont run you down on red-lights because once they stop at signals it takes an equivalent of electric shocks to bring them to life again.

Private buses – Ah!! These are the notorious, street robbers, gangsters, bullies… call them n number of names and they wont suffice. In Delhi these buses make the Page3 headlines each day with the number of people they ran down the previous day on Delhi roads. Popularly known as the Red Line or Blue Line buses, they are operated by private owners who do an excellent job of packing people like sardines in a can in the bus. They are very customer friendly, give them a hand and they would stop for you bang in the middle of the road with a screeching halt, the customer friendliness ends here.. Try haggling with them over the price of tickets and you might find yourself either thrown out of the door or beaten black and blue by the conductors and driver. You might wonder that I am over- exaggerating, ok take a sample size… visit the Delhi Edition of TOI and Hindustan times online for just five days and you would very well get it if I am exaggerating or not.

Cycles, Rickshaw pullers, four wheeled carts and 3 wheeled luggage carts – These guys are the uncrowned kings of Delhi roads primarily because they don’t need a “License To Drive” and hence they do not have any fear of the law what-so-ever. These chaps drive their respective vehicles with such a major disdain bang in the innermost lane, that they very well act as bottlenecks to choke the incoming traffic and smoothline the outgoing traffic. These guys are simply crazy, they change their lanes at the last moment by just lifting their miniature hands a little bit, no consideration at all for the vehicles approaching from the back… screeching sounds of brakes also acts as no deterrent for them. And Dare you, yes Dare you touch even their royal wagons with your peanut vehicle, they’d make sure you don’t leave the place with 2000 bucks less in your pocket.

Two – Wheelers( Motor cycles, scooters) :- These guys are the equivalent of F1 drivers in the motorcycle racing. They live in the truest spirit, nothing can stop them on Delhi roads. If there is a long traffic jam in front of them, they would either mount their vehicle on to the middle partition or take it straight on the sidewalks and wroom wroom they’d start racing again. The act of driving your two wheeler zig zag between vehicles standing on a red light is an art typical in Delhi. I tried emulating the same in Chennai twice/thrice, my pillion friends closed their eyes and started chanting that very instant, that was the last time they sat behind me on any vehicle.


If you have reached so far, then I’d say I am tired of punching out, see you sometime in my neighboring car on one of the Delhi roads and then we too would wroom wrooooom.

Where do we stop

These thoughts have been crossing my mind very lately after arriving here in New York.

When in India most professionals (IT or non IT) want to go abroad as a part of their jobs. For a significant chunk, US is the mecca.. one has to go there at least once. I am no exception. So after reaching here I realise there is wealth, abundance of wealth all around.. New York is bloody huge with massive companies in terms of numbers not employee heads. After coming here you start thinking, you should be here i.e. you should move your base here and earn dollars. You get married and get your spouse here too, both start working and start getting dollars. With the passsage of time your life style changes and expenses increase. So even if you manage to save 20K USD per year, its a big deal by Indian standards but not in US, here it's peanuts.

Then why are you here in the first place? You come here far from your country, start working here much to the anguish of your near and dear ones and finally after 4-5 years you are cribbing..

I think cribbing is the birth-right of every mortal, it begins from child hood itself.

When a person is child, he is always eager to go into the next class and be more big. In the final years of school he wants to be in college so fast so that he lives an independent life. Once in college you start missing your school days and all the fun. Final years of college, students worry about their PG, once in PG you worry about Jobs.

Got a new job, the excitement lasts only for few weeks, only that is the time when the new company is all rosy and everything from reception to vending machines all is great. Few months in the org and the same company now sucks big time and start looking out for change.... and so it goes on and on.

If not each one of us starts dreaming about being a Bill Gates and start enjoying life with the current levels, happiness would prevail at large.

Now this is a preacher at work, the big question is would I practice what I preach? As of now, I dont, I hope I do it in future but am not sure...

Wish me Luck :)

Hi I am back

Hi,

For people who havent read the earlier post please read the post earlier to this and come back to this again. Because its then that what I am saying would make relevance.

I had read the story of 1000 marbles a long time back. Once I had read the story I thought about it for some time and then stored it in one of the folders in my mail-box. But recently, I have felt the need to revisit it again. The primary reason being that more than 4 months in Singapore now, I wasnt doing much apart from my work, reading, music and watching occasional TV.

I felt I was wasting away the weeks of my life, more predoominantly the weekends. Its then i decided that let me make a conscious effort to make productive utilisation(apart from cooking, ironing clothes and all) of all the weeekends that come my way because otherwise most of my weekends I spend just doing mundane tasks or dozing off.

So for the past 3 weekends, I have been trying to move out the confines of my house, and doing somethign extra. the first weekend I had been for the IIT Singapore Alumni Association Holi celebrations. The next weekend I went to donate blood. Last weekend nope didnt do anythign out of house but was at home customising my new lap with new warez to suit my needs.

Today being Saturday, the first day of the weekend, I am writing this article, reading a MCKC report on Latin America. After this I have to read up on some stuff for my D80. Once I am done with the same I have to download some photo tools for my beloved camera.

So, friends Romans and fellow country men what are you guys doing this weekend to make it more productive as compared to just eating, drinking and sleeping?

Enjoy....

See you soon.
Rohin

A Thousand Marbles

Hi guys,

Its after a long time I am making a post this time again its not my words but someone else's words which I am copying here to enable all of you to read it. They are real good. Just take 5 mins to read thru it and after that dont forget it, remember it..

A Thousand Marbles
By Jeff Davis

I’m a Ham radio operator and spend some time working with radios and electronics. So when I heard this story it really made me think! I hope that you will find some application in your own life as well...

A few weeks ago, I was shuffling toward the basement shack with a steaming cup of coffee in one hand and the morning paper in the other. What began as a typical Saturday morning, turned into one of those lessons that life seems to hand you from time to time? Let me tell you about it.

I turned the dial up into the phone portion of the band on my ham radio in order to listen to a Saturday morning swap net. Along the way, I came across an older sounding chap, with a tremendous signal and a golden voice. You know, the kind, he sounded like he should be in the broadcasting business. He was telling whomever he was talking with something about “a thousand marbles.”

I was intrigued and sat down to listen to what he had to say. “Well, Tom, it sure sounds like you’re busy with your job. I’m sure they pay you well but it’s a shame you have to be away from home and your Family so much. Hard to believe a young fellow should have to work sixty or seventy hours a week to make ends meet. Too bad you missed your daughter’s dance recital.”

He continued, “Let me tell you something Tom, something that has helped me keep a good perspective on my own priorities.” And that’s when he began to explain his theory of a “thousand marbles.”

“You see, I sat down one day and did a little arithmetic. The average person lives about seventy-five years. I know, some live more and some live less, but on average, folks live about seventy-five years.”

“Now then, I multiplied 75 times 52 and I came up with 3900 which is the number of Saturdays that the average person has in their entire lifetime. Now stick with me Tom, I’m getting to the important part.”

“It took me until I was fifty-five years old to think about all this in any detail,” he went on, “and by that time I had lived through over twenty-eight hundred Saturdays. I got to thinking that if I lived to be seventy-five, I only had about a thousand of them left to enjoy.”

“So I went to a toy store and bought every single marble they had. I ended up having to visit three toy stores to roundup 1000 marbles. I took them home and put them inside of a large, clear plastic container right here in my workshop next to the radio. Every Saturday since then, I have taken one marble out and thrown it away.”

“I found that by watching the marbles diminish, I focused more on the really important things in life. There is nothing like watching your time here on this earth run out to help get your priorities straight.”

“Now let me tell you one last thing before I sign-off with you and take my lovely wife out for breakfast. This morning, I took the very last marble out of the container. I figure if I make it until next Saturday then God has blessed me with a little extra time to be with my loved ones...”

“It was nice to talk to you Tom, I hope you spend more time with your loved ones, and I hope to meet you again someday. Have a good morning!”

You could have heard a pin drop when he finished. Even the show’s moderator didn’t have anything to say for a few moments. I guess he gave us all a lot to think about. I had planned to do some work that morning, and then go to the gym. Instead, I went upstairs and woke my wife up with a kiss. “C’mon honey, I’m taking you and the kids to breakfast.”

“What brought this on?” she asked with a smile.

“Oh, nothing special,” I said. “It has just been a long time since we spent a Saturday together with the kids. Hey, can we stop at a toy store while we’re out? I need to buy some marbles.”

Steve Job's Speech in Stanford Ceremony

This is an amazing speech by Steve Jobs in Stanford University's graduation ceremony!

Life Re-defined

"The most unfair thing about life is the way it ends. I mean life is tough. It takes up a lot of your time. What do you get at the end of it? A death. Whats that a Bonus?!?! I think the life cycle is all backwards. You should die first get that out of the way. Then you go live in an old age home. you get kicked out for being too healthy. Go collect your pension then when you start work you can buy a gold watch on your first day. you work for forty years until you are young enough to enjoy your retirement. you drink alcohol, you party and you get ready for high school. you go to primary school you become a kid, you play you have no responsibilities, you become a little baby, you go back where you spend your last nine months floating with luxuries like central heating, spa and room service on tap. Then you finish off as an Orgasm!!!! Amen"

And here is a classic to finish it……

"Looking at a cleavage is like looking at the sun. You don't stare at it. It's too risky. You get a sense of it and then you look away"

Tamil – The language and people

The above title would probably make the reader wonder if this is some sort of thesis? No Sir this is no thesis on Tamil it’s a mental recall of my observations of the language and people associated with it.

I have heard many people say that Tamilians( as the Tamil people are popularly known) are very crazy or obsessed with the Tamil language to the extent that apart from learning the English language they are least bothered to learn any other language.

Earlier I used to agree with the above and used to get into an argument with any Tamilian I met that why don’t they learn Hindi language as it’s the National language of India. It took me more than 25 years of my life to realize that Hindi is not the sole national language of India there are 21 other national languages in India, Hindi is one of them. If you find it hard to believe, please check (http://indiaimage.nic.in/languages.htm). When I learned this my view of the people and their language took a full U-turn.

It made me wonder that when we see any European country and its citizens, they are so protective and proud of their respective languages our immediate reaction is “Wow these guys really know how to preserve their language and culture” and when we see the same scene re-enacted in our own country’s state we label them as people who are rigid and stubborn with a nasty attitude.

Having stayed in Chennai for 2 years and having observed the people and their culture from very close quarters, I feel the entire country should be proud of them, they are the sole state as far as I remember who carry their language and their culture proudly on their sleeves as they are proud owners of a language which is one of the oldest languages that exist in the world today being more than 2000 years old and also one of the very few Indian languages totally independent of Sanskrit.

Think of Chennai and what comes to mind is the unbearable hot and sultry climate, but Chennai, the heart of Tamil-Land is also an unparalleled land of Passion.

Chennai is the sole city in India which has the largest Rock-Fan following throughout the country, want a visible proof of the same? Visit Saarang, the IIT-Madras annual cultural festival, no other cultural festival in the entire country has an entire pavilion dedicated to the rock stars who come in from various parts of the state and perform live, day-in and day-out for 4 days at a stretch.

Chennai is the place where you would find Bike-Crazy guys who exhibit a hitherto unseen or unfelt love for the sheer thrill of biking, driving endlessly on the endless ECR road for hours at stretch, performing stunts with their bikes which ends the line between “Man and Machine” and they are one entity in total, talking and breathing to each other oblivious of their surroundings doing just one thing, Enjoying the sheer thrill which is born out of Passion.

Being an Indian who has spend most of his life in North India I was a witness to strange forms of dance in parties or festivals, dances which never made any sense to me as I perceived them as a drill with some music in the background majorly of two forms – Arms high up in the air and jumping up and down and secondly of people dancing in a circle once they clap out and then they clap in. Chennai and its people taught me as to what sheer Passion combined with the right music can do to the art of dancing– It can give a “high” unheard or unseen before by both ways – Either by just watching them perform or jumping yourself into the fray.

Now after reading this you can do 2 things – Either ignore this and move on or jump in the boat with the “Tam” gang and learn there is much more to life than the monotonous routine, there is “Passion”.

The agony of matrimony

In our country there are two broad ways to get married – Love Marriage or Arranged Marriage. In the former one, you fall in love first and then get married and in the latter you first marry and then fall in love. I know many people would have views widely divergent from these two but then this article is not about types of marriages.

Now the past few months have been quite turbulent for me as I have opted for the second path of marriage much to the pleasure and satisfaction of my parents and the utter agony for me. I say agony because one of the worst things I have done in my life is to have searched for a bride for me through matrimonial sites and all.

The experience has been nothing short of disgusting for me as it has gone against my value system, my learning and my principles of life. I feel as if there is no difference between myself and the trader of medieval times standing in an Arabic market place and crying out hoarse rates for young girls standing on a pedestal in a manner that would disgust even the salivating dog. The then girl standing in the middle of the crowd on an elevated pedestal, being scanned from top to bottom as an object of worth underwent a trauma disgustful to be described beyond words, a trauma which killed a part of her self-esteem for the rest of her life. The agony the disgust experienced by woman doesn’t change today they were made to feel as inanimate objects then they are made to feel the same today. Then, most of the men used to feel elated as they were in a stronger role, deciding role and sealing the fates of completely unknown women, today the numbers go down but nevertheless the numbers remain.

I have now seen both sides of the fence from a girl’s angle when my parents were searching for a prospective bridegroom for her and from boy’s angle now.

What makes this “searching” process so demeaning is that girls are treated like objects not even cattle. And the girl’s parents are a willing party to this process makes it all the more frustrating for the girl.

Picture a girl - good looking, well educated, working at a respectable position in one of the best companies of the country, earning a respectable salary and leading a team of 8-10 people at her office. Now in her office setup she enjoys tremendous respect for the way she carries herself and the no-nonsense attitude she has.

She has learned all this from her parents - they have taught her the value of education, the respect one has to give to the work, how to carry herself so that she is respected by one and all.

Now one fine day the same parents tell this girl daughter u have grown up its time to search a potential suitor for u, now since we have seen the world far more than u and we are way more mature than u r we will do the honours.

The girl as always accepts it because its her parents they have never taught her anything wrong and they always wanted her to do the best, Now begins the ordeal. Every weekend when it is an holiday for her and she wants to rest or enjoy with her family begins her parade, she is all decked up and led into the living room by either the mother or sister.

The girl enters the room, she has her family there and a totally stranger family staring at her looking her from top to bottom, scanning her with their mental scanner trying to figure out everything which they have in their mental check list. Multiprocessing in the truest sense – When the scanning is going on at the same time the process is going on as to what wrong can we pick out in this girl so as to reject her and go on to the next house so as to enjoy the fun. All this time the girl is feeling as if “mother earth opens up and she sinks in it” as she has never felt so humiliated and wasted.

Now when the parents are short-listing the prospective grooms for their daughter they can afford to make certain adjustments here and there, they do not look for the best fit groom instead they look for a groom where their daughter can be the best fit. So what if he drinks, he is just a young guy he would improve after marriage, it doesn’t matter much if he is not a post graduate or doesn’t earn upwards of 5 lacs things would certainly improve after marriage. After all we cant go on rejecting guys like this, that way there wouldn’t be any prospective groom left.

Now the other side of the coin the parents are searching for a bride for their dear soon, here even if the girl has the slightest deviation from their ideal daughter-in-law her profile/resume is straight away brushed aside. Little thought is paid to the fact that the girl’s parents have send the resume with extreme high hopes. You are not brushing aside a resume you are extinguishing another lamp which they had lighted with such a lot of care and hope. While brushing aside the resume probably you have forgotten how disappointed you used to be when you used to receive a refusal when you were in the same position and how your heart used to wrench from within.

The demeaning part is not restricted for girls alone, its for boys like me too. When I receive emails from the girl’s parents saying “I request you to please reply back soon”, I feel like why is this gentleman begging in front of me, why is he not confident about his daughter. Or when I receive mails like “attached along with this mail are the particulars of my daughter, if you find them suitable please let us know we can proceed further”, why where did the girl’s consent go? Trust me friends, I have received such sort of mails from fathers of girls who are extremely beautiful, highly educated and well placed in the industry with salaries exceeding my salary.

The entire process has left such a bad taste in my mouth that I have suspended my profile from all matrimonial sites for another one year and would probably never re-activate them or even if I do I would have a proper methodology to go about it.

I get the feeling that what sort of civilized society do we live in? are we even fit of calling ourselves civilized? Our parents are not to be blamed solely because we(both boys and girls) are active participants to the same. Why do girls agree to getting “Exhibited” and why do boys become a part of this process. I am not saying our parents are wrong what I am saying is we have to show them a new perspective of things in the new world and show them there can be a methodology to go about it.

Emotional Intelligence

Your EQ is 140

50 or less: Thanks for answering honestly. Now get yourself a shrink, quick! 51-70: When it comes to understanding human emotions, you'd have better luck understanding Chinese. 71-90: You've got more emotional intelligence than the average frat boy. Barely. 91-110: You're average. It's easy to predict how you'll react to things. But anyone could have guessed that. 111-130: You usually have it going on emotionally, but roadblocks tend to land you on your butt. 131-150: You are remarkable when it comes to relating with others. Only the biggest losers get under your skin. 150+: Two possibilities - you've either out "Dr. Phil-ed" Dr. Phil... or you're a dirty liar.

What's Your EQ (Emotional Intelligence Quotient)?

Dedicated to the Ants

I owe this one to the ants for a long time........

Dedicated to the deceased ants of my room..

Once upon a time long long ago there lived a huge colony of ants underneath the door of the second bedroom of the flat on second floor of the green building in BTM in Bangalore.

Now incidentally this bedroom happens to be mine and Lazy Vadi’s bedroom. To Vadi they hardly made any difference as he is all dark and sour blooded mere mortal but for me they made life hell as I am a fair sweet blooded creation, a gift to humanity from the almightyJ.

Stepping into the room was an ordeal for me each day everyday with the result that I used to spend the better half of my day lying in the other bedroom belonging to Sri and Sattu much to their annoyance or in the drawing room and used to retire to my room only at mid night for obvious reasons.

So one fine day the “Lone Warrior” i.e. myself embarked on a crusade to wipe out the colony for once and all. Little did I know that what I had envisioned as a “One –hour fight” would turn out to be a “7-day battle”.

So on this one fine day which incidentally happened to be the first day of my weekend, I got one pack of M-Seal from the hardware store across the street. Started out with cleaning the hole with a pair of tiny scissors as I didn’t have any other tool for scooping and piercing, what followed was an army set loose on the predator (me) by the ant King. They started guzzling out as a red sea out to swallow anyone in their path. Seeing the enormity of the situation and cursing my short-sightedness with the choicest of words, I rushed to get some water which I poured into the crater and to my utter bewilderment the water all vanished!!

To avoid any further loss of valuable time and armed with M-Seal I approached the crater and covered it up with the long serpentine paste of M-Seal and lo and behold the crater swallowed the entire M-Seal paste and I was barely able to seal the ends of the crater. Satisfied at my job I left the ants to find their way out of the house themselves and proceeded to celebrate my victory as my Mission was accomplished.

So I pull lazy Sri out of his bed and force him to get ready so that we can go for a nice luncheon. What more could have sri asked for? The saying “Andha kya chahe Do ankhein” fits aptly on him as long as he doesn’t have to move any of his limbs and he keeps getting everything ready-made. So we go to Nandhinee Palace and have a nice scrumptious lunch all the time myself narrating long tales or epilogues by now to Sri of my victory in the one-hour war.

We come back home and I take sri to my room to show him my work of art and how my room is ant-free now. But what do I see? The ants have found another way of creeping down to the crater, seems like they had anticipated this D-Day scenario so they had this backup plan ready. The ants are now making their way to the crater by crawling in through the space between the door- frame and the wall. Now what should be my next step? Get more M-Seal and that’s what precisely I did, went down to the store and got more M-Seal. This time the dealer too was surprised as to why do I need so much M-Seal, I appraised him of the fact that there is a mini-war raging in that green building across the street.

Circa – Home again and in that my bedroom. I am busy sealing all possible crevices by the door frame where I could see and imagine ants creeping in. Now I am too tired and hence I retire to Sri’s room( as I am still scared to still sleep in my room in day time as the ants would locate me and kill me!!) for my weekend siesta.

After a more than lazy afternoon I come back to my room in evening and see the ants have found a new way this time they have formed two queues and are marching into the switchboard and from there god knows where. Now this one is easy to manage I get “Lakshman Rekha” the famed magical chalk piece and draw heavy duty lines around the switch board. Hallelujah it works and now the ants are frustrated and perplexed at what this new obstruction is. This doesn’t deter the ants and they search for a new route. I am amazed by their lack of tiredness and persistent approach to accomplish their target.

The pitched battle continued for another 5 days with the ants by now having become more organized and venturing out every morning in groups and searching for possible areas in my bedroom to re-build their colony. Any crack or crevice in wall or floor is their target area on which they target their all energies and start digging it or scooping it as the case may be. All this time I have started buying M-Seal by cartons and my room is taking the appearance as if it is being held together by pieces of M-Seal paste stuck here and there at random places. Little did it strike me that the task is easier since the army is divided now, I can just sweep them all off once or twice and it would be done.

The battle came to an end on the sixth day with myself pulling out all the M-Seal patches followed by a big sweep and mopping exercise and the grand finale – my cook stuffing all the crevices with turmeric powder which finally got my dear room rid of all the ants.

More important than the battle were the lessons I learned from the ants which I too followed resulting in a
mortal blow for them:

Always have a backup plan ready for emergencies: This was beautifully depicted by the ants in the first phase of the “war” as they had before-hand identified the crevices and cracks to be used in emergency.

Persistence- a Never say Die attitude: A tiny creature like an ant can have such a high doze of will power amazed me beyond measure and motivated me to display an even larger amount of the same.

Team Work: The ants were always working in teams – big or small. A single ant had a very high chance of getting lost in the vast expanse of concrete and hence teams. Only once when I did bring in my cook and formed a team with her, I was able to conquer the ants.

Strategy: Without strategy there can be no war, leave alone victory. The ants were intelligent enough to change their strategy form teams and fan out in all directions of the room only to retire some time later in the day to some collective place. I could visualize them all sitting and giving status update about their daily progress to their chieftain.

Speed of Attack: Dexterity is what the ants lacked. They behaved as if they had all the time in the world to go around searching for new locations. In the process I got aware of their strengths and exploited them to my benefit which finally resulted in their defeat. My final mortal blow was again a series of steps executed in a rapid manner – rounding up, sweeping, mopping and finally sealing the crevices with turmeric powder.

Case of Slipping Slippers

Today morning while waiting for the bus to my office I was witness to an incident. It so happened that there was this another guy who was also waiting for some bus like most of us standing at the stop.

The bus comes and this guy jumps on to the bus, in the process one of his sandals slip off from his feet. The bus has gained speed and this gentleman is looking back with a strange regret and hope in his eyes. Hope that probably some miracle occurs and the sandal flies back to his feet. But then we muggles cant expect miracles right? They are only for the wizard community.

Most of the people standing at the stop are staring in his direction and wondering poor guy now he has to buy again or whatever. Poor guy?? Probably because he was wearing a not so costly sandal to office, his shirt was loose, he was unshaved - all these indicate he is not in a position in his organisation where his appearance has any relation with his job. The other side even if he is not in an organisation makes things more difficult for him as he was clearly a man into his early 30s probably he has a family too to feed. A pair of sandal of 300-400 bucks for a lower middle class man can make a lot of difference.

My thoughts instantly went 2 years back down the memory lane. Besant Nagar beach chennai, Summers time(oh the best days of my life!!) just started we all guys have gone to the beach to freak out and we are playing on the beach when I notice my slipper floating away, I run to grab it but another larger wave swallows it and thats the end of the pair of my slippers. My friends asked me to leave the second slipper also there as it was of no use to me. No, I was very adamant I would take this back with me to the hostel it would act as a reminder for times to come and so it adorned my shoe-shelf the loner slipper for the next one year.

Coming back, as I too was a part of the crowd I was also staring back at the guy and then I, the hero stepped on to the road and pushed his sandal to the corner of the footpath so that even if he comes back he wont find it in a trampled state. Now all the eyes at the stop are turned towards me a couple of young girls even giggling off, people whom I might never see again. Within the next 5 seconds my bus arrives I board it and to my utter joy I see the person hopping back towards the stop.

New Bottle Old Wine

While travelling to my office every morning, I happen to cross a small slum-like area and during that time I am a witness to the various funny antics of little toddlers.

Today morning as I was walking down the road from a distance I could see two young girls barely 4-5 years old bullying another girl, one of them was shouting something in Kannada and the other one was hitting the third girl with a make-shift broom made of some leaves. Now this third girl instead of fighting back was walking down the street wailing loudly and both the other girls had a major smile of accomplishment on their faces :). On letting my eyes stroll a little further I could see 3-4 young guys again of the same age making pitiful faces at the wailing girl.

Compare this to another scene where these kids are replaced by young teenagers in college or pre-college mode when the youth is at their prime. Each teenager has a rebel in him waiting to just go loose. The entire scenario would remain the same only the bullying girls would be replaced by some rowdy boys and the onlookers would be more.

Times change, ages change, mentality doesnt change it remains the same.

Thats all for now.
Enjoy