- Do you press the elevator button many times in succession? Do you think it can help it move faster?
- If you could have a chance to revisit a certain period of your life, what would it be?
- Would you ever break the law to save someone dear to you?
- What piece of advice would you want to give to a troubled teenager?
- What came first - night or day?
- Do you believe that Science and Religion are inseparable?
- Why do you think night-terrors occur?
- Who is the first person you want to see when you are most happy?
- Do you long to know others secrets?
- Do you possess complete control of your life?
- Do you think your life has a story worth telling?
- Have you been the kind of friend you want as friend?
- Do you bother to keep track of your childhood pals? Does their exponential progress affect you adversely?
- Would you be willing to give away 15 years of your life to turn extremely attractive or famous?
- Do you discriminate people based on their living standards?
- Would you be able to hold glances with your dear ones if some of your secrets are spilled?
- Have you done something that you are proud of?
- Have you ever felt attracted to a particular thought that doesn’t match with your overall personality and way of thinking?
- Have you ever witnessed a death?
- What would you think your age to be, if you are not aware of your real age?
Laparo-Endoscopic Surgeon. Med-Enterpreneur. Free-Thinker. Devotee of Lord Krishna. Non-Conformist. Avid-Reader. Bariatric Surgeon. Philantropist.
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Wednesday, February 29, 2012
20 Questions that are worth their salt.
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10 things to stop doing to yourself.
(1) Stop spending time with the people that are dishonest and bear double-standards. A leopard can’t change his spots; you better change your trajectory.
(2) Stop worrying way too much. Not just it would stud your face with premature wrinkles; it would also misbalance your body’s metabolism.
(3) Stop keeping yourself under self-imposed radar all the times. You have all the rights to fly freely.
(4) Stop judging everyone way too early, and too harshly. Be lenient. Allow generous benefits of doubt. People may behave bluntly as they are often too preoccupied with their problems.
(5) Stop living the alter-ego’s life. You suit best when you fit in the shoes of your own life; its OK to emulate someone you cherish, but then you have to draw the differentiating line somewhere in between.
(6) Stop harming yourself. Kick the butt. Don’t do drugs. Bravery induced by heavy drinking is a mirage. Exercise. Don’t overeat. Don’t overstress. Stay happy.
(7) Stop keeping grudges. Forgiveness can bless you with some of the most cherished relationships in the years to come. Everyone makes mistakes; its best to shoot the breeze and bury the hatchets.
(8) Stop being the Perfectionist Personified. Mistakes have their own charm; and everyone has a distinct learning curve. Sydney or the bush phenomenon is unpractical; things lie somewhere in between.
(9) Stop neglecting the beautiful moments. Stand beneath the lamp post in twilight and see the golden shoots of grass swaying insanely. Get flown in high tide as if you defy the gravity. Talk with the moon. Smell a fresh daisy flower.
(10) Stop expecting too much from others. Give the people their elbow rooms. Burdens of expectations have full potential of hijacking the pleasures from a relationship. Accept your folks in their own face values. Stop being a cynic critic.
Fear is the recipe to disaster.
In the cantankerous ride of life, I have realized the importance of being fearless. A fretful person’s outlook and insight gets blanketed by cynicism; the colors slowly transform to the darker shades of grey, to no beneficial avail. Fear is a primordial reaction of our living beings; but you must learn to evolve as you grow. It offers you no help getting intimidated by a seemingly difficult situation as the pertinent choice would be to master out a plan that serves you right.
Being lily-livered would transform you into dead meat, sooner or later; realize this and don’t be afraid, the dog won’t bite you. Immerse deep into the origin of fear and look out for the collateral options. Fear is not a matter of necessity, for all of us have witnessed people for whom fear had been an alien emotion. The more you doubt your abilities, the more you are prone to succumbing fear. Acquire the larger meaning of life by sheer wisdom, and then visualize the situation from a tangential perspective.
Faint-hearted folks have never been able to realize their full potentials. Take the example from history books and you would find that most of the successful people took some or the other decisions in their lives that breached the dominion of fear. Fear stalks your vision. Fear curbs your rationality. Fear is addictive for the weak-kneed chaps as nothing else provides them a better recluse. So declare war to your innate fear and discover the warrior in you.
As Happy As Larry
When I am happy, I go the whole hog. I smile a lot; I speak at a rate of knots. When I am happy, I want to share the joy with my hospital staff. I become happy when I see someone being discharged from my hospital in amazingly improved condition. I become happy when I learn a new tool of my trade. I become happy when I am able to finish all the day’s assignments on time. I become happy when someone cares to write a letter of good words to me. I become happy when I see my kids working hard to carve a niche. I become happy when I help someone who has lost all hopes.
Happiness is a startling feeling. I feel happy when I finish the last page of an engrossing book. I feel happy when I add a new word in my vocabulary. I feel happy when it’s the festival time. I am a light sleeper, but a heavy dreamer; I feel happy when I am able to recall a dream that had tranquil notes. I feel happy when I take a break from the frenzied life of Delhi to visit Krishna Temple in Vrindavan. I feel happy when I take out my surgical gloves after the day’s successful stint. I feel happy when one of staffs greets me with a super-smile. I feel happy when I finish writing a blog post. I feel happy when I wipe a tear.
The life’s expedition should be to remain nose-deep in the sea of happiness. Happiness is not a physical feeling; it’s womb lies in the layers of mind and soul. Let’s lower our thresholds of realizing the bliss of happiness and enjoy the raptures of life. What else the life is meant for if not for the cause of eternal jamboree?
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7 benefits of becoming a doctor.
You get heaps of professional satisfaction, every passing day. You manage to transform despondent faces to the ones that radiate sheen. You manage to help someone duke out that pessimism and roar back in life. A doctor may not get all the cakes and ale in life; but on the professional frontier, he is a winner on most of the days.
You are generally taken with mighty respect. Generally people consider doctors to be noble and selfless chaps. And generally, people are right when setting their opinions. Barring exceptions, the prevailing lot of doctors is sensible, compassionate and hard-working.
You get to meet a lot of new faces daily. Social insulation might never occur to a doctor, as the prevailing equation of demand-supply ratio is in favor of doctors. By meeting strangers every day and offering them a slice of life, as a doctor, one increases one’s chances of blending in life quite easily.
You understand the importance of being punctual and being regular. As doctors, we have to be there on time, every time. It might not prove to be a sabbath’s day journey in the initial days; however, as the time passes, you don’t need an alarm clock or a manual reminder. You are always on a programmed mode.
People look up to you as a role model. I am not saying that doctors are the only role models of the society; the list of provisional role models is packed like sardines - soldiers, scientists, farmers, honest officers, teachers to mention a few. Being a doctor attracts a plethora of attached emotions; you are looked upon as one of the more responsible citizens of the country. People come up to you to take advices. Kids want to emulate you when they grow up.
People want to befriend you. I must say that in India, there is still a large mental gap between a doctor and non-medico population. A lot of times I feel that my patients get elated when I ask them about their lives, their families and their own spaces. It’s a common perception that a doctor doesn’t make friends easily; though with the changing mind-sets, advent of sophisticated communication channels and evolution of social media machinery, the feeling is fading fast.
Your voice is being sought after. People want to know the reality behind printed medical news, which so often contradicts itself if all the versions are put together. People want to know your opinion about their genuine illnesses; people trust you verbatim. In most of the cases you don’t have to stress a point to make it feel relevant; the fact that you said it twice is enough for a patient to realize its importance.
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
10 gospels to make you stronger.
You can’t change the past. It’s sad, but true. No one has got the authority to meddle with the demsne of past; you can learn some of the hardest lessons of life by actively exploring the past.
A tomorrow is not the certainty. Who know when the world ends? Skeptics fuel to the circulating theories that aim to affix a date for the apocalypse; no one knows the programming basics of this celestial interface. And who can be certain to see the light of the other day? Live in the glory of today, and reap the best out of it.
Death is the only reality. Even a doubting Thomas won’t question the credibility of this fact.
Failure is a part of life. Don’t take a failure rather too personally. Everyone fails; and those who try the most, fail the most. A failure is the stepping stone to the acme of success; no one gets overnight triumphs.
What lies in front of your eyes may not be the truth. The world is complex, and a lot of information lies in the perspective of the observer. Your sensory system may not appreciate the truths that your programmed system is not familiar with. You would only observe the facts, people, emotions and incidences that fall in the habitual territory of your limited mental sphere.
People are, and will be, multicolored. Nature comes with a precise set of opposites. For every ray of lustrous light, there lies a blob of engulfing darkness. So no matter how hard you try the other way around, you would come across hypocrites, liars, conspirers and lechers. You must know how to hitch horses together.
You can be your biggest source of happiness. We tend to oversee the possibilities that lie within us, and wander elsewhere in pursuit of happiness. From soda to hock, you would remain your biggest reservoir of energy, inspiration and happiness. Seek the true you, and feel the elation.
By doing the same thing every day, you are negating your chances of self-growth. You are blessed with a super-charged up sensory system, meticulous motor system and all-encompassing autonomic system. This means a sea of possibilities lie in your existence. It would be impertinent not trying new things; life is a cherry pie for an eager beaver.
Information is the nearest entity to knowledge. Information is not the true knowledge in every case; the real knowledge comes from experience. In a lot of the cases the information would provide a good degree of knowledge, but then you never know what lies beneath without hunting it yourself.
Your actions are reflected back at you. Be a Good Samaritan and enjoy the ride of life with an incandescent insight; be mean to others and you will be dead meat one day. Life keeps a record book of its children, and yes, life never holds a due.
You don't need a password to read a face.
Have you ever tried to percolate inside the gravey face of a laborer? The sun-burnt skin, the wrinkled forehead, the stained teeth, the anxious eyes; all tell a story.
Have you noticed the twinkle in your eyes when you come across the face of a toddler with glowing skin, puffed-up cheeks and impish eyes?
Have you thought to dwell in to the psyche of a senior citizen with a face that reflects thoughtful attire, and a sage like glance?
What feelings do you come across when you see the face of a random stranger crossing the road? The face with sparse eyelids, flared up nasal alae and hollow cheekbones.
Do you forget the face of your childhood teachers? I remember my teachers’ faces to be loving, sagacious and full of authority. Did you ever think of their rides of lives at that particular period?
Did you ever tried to peep inside the foundation coated faces of those models that bear powerful rays of artificial lights every other day? Those florid and forced smiles, sculpted nasal bridge, lustrous skin and probing eyes.
With some experience at observing people, you can easily tell what all a person has gone through by giving a penetrating glance to a face. A pleasant life shows at the exterior, without any exceptions. Cosmetic means can hide to age-related changes to some extent, but when it comes to emotive sketching, the impressions over a face are permanent.
Take out some time to feel people’s psyche by looking at their faces. No face is ordinary; every face has a story worth telling. I am sure this experience would make your thought-process attain a different trajectory; a lovable one.
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Dolce Vita.
It concerns me a great deal when I come across someone who claims to have lost all hopes. In this crazy world of blind race to materialism and ephemeral gains, it means much if you manage to uphold your sanity. Most of us don’t take a lost battle nicely; we tend to take it a bit too personally. And the irony is that most of the times we don’t fight with an opponent; we fight with ourselves. So no matter who wins, you are destined to feel the pangs of defeat in such a stance. It’s high time when we must not glorify the life to be a battle; life is meant to grow, to learn and to enjoy your own existence.
Every other day we comes across various cases of adolescent depression, childhood obesity, refractory panic attacks, suicidal tendencies, road rages, overinflated self esteems and unexplained anxieties. It saddens me without limits.
What has happened to the concept of a dolce vita? Why do we torture our inner selves beyond their thresholds?
Why do you give yourself the screaming abdabs every now and then? Why don’t we decrease the unnecessary burdens that we are carrying just for the heck of it?
Why don’t we see life from a perspective that gives us a view to die for? Why do we fear failures? What is our definition of a failure? Does the definition of failure that you harbor needs to be retouched?
Why do you exhaust yourself with attacks aimed at yourself? It’s a thorn coated life, but that shouldn’t stop you from appreciating the juices inside.
Sunday, February 26, 2012
Redefine the rules, yet again.
You are given a set of DNA to carry your life around; but that doesn’t mean that your existential realities are pre-determined. You are bestowed with mammoth power to see beyond the wall and to think out-of-the-box. The flight of your every day thoughts makes you the person who you actually are. Rekindle hope in your belief; aim to look out for the unseen messages in your daily lives; don’t stop chasing your goals for you never know how close you were at the time of calling it quits.
Every time you experience a melee of thoughts, let the best one prevail. Make your choice a learned one, a conscious one, an unobtrusive one. Get your act together. Get your fingers burned. Give an arm and a leg for something that has a life-changing potential. Aim to clear out the fluff from your spiritual territory. Envision the outcomes. Get enmeshed in the aura of nothingness, and seek out knowing your priorities right. Be a legend of your own time, in your own well-deserved rights. Fail to get fatigued. Rise every time you are declared dead.
There are, and there would be, people who listen to their own calls. They are the path-breakers, the game-players. Be a live-wire. You are the artist; you are the canvas. Taste life, and give the potion to those that deserve a portion. An obstacle’s primary objective is to help you raise the bar; see it as a companion to your race. There are no finishing lines in the race of life. Lighten up with the expectation of seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.
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The World of a Moment.
- Assemblage of emotions that are born out of egregious wombs.
- Listlessness; often of the order to make you start feeling like a blotting paper.
- Dulcet reminiscence of close-held memories while you stare at those framed family photos .
- Aroma of freshly baked muffins.
- The uproar of your happy Labrador.
- Felicity over a trivial achievement; ironical it is - trivial the achievement, less evanescent it’s after-effects are.
- Petrichor. This means smell of earth after it has rained.
- Varicolored desires.
- Sugary promises.
- Flawed fortunes.
- Pandora's box of burdened expectations.
- A pregnant pause.
- To beleaguer your satanic side.
- To be able to touch, and feel.
- Halcyon spirit. Declining to come out of the cocoon.
- The tenacity of friable dreams.
- The affection of morning mist with moon shine.
- Diaphanous delusions.
- Grumpy rides of a less blessed life that fail you all the times.
- To sink in your own inner self, and get drowned helplessly.
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Thursday, February 23, 2012
20 things to make you more efficient at work
- Make a list of assignments that require your immediate attention. Be sure to ease out the fluff and make sure to prioritize even the contents of this list.
- Read a lot of books that deal with your professional expertise. Reading self-development books would also be open the gates of your mind to help you attain a future-proof vision.
- Organize your work-space efficiently. Organize your data, your table and your work schedule.
- Invest in things that make you happy.
- Aim to balance out long term gains with short term objectives.
- Learn to make smashing presentations. Of course you can hire someone for this; but knowing the complexities of basic chores can bring about a bigger change. Steve Jobs used to work relentlessly over his presentations for days till he got the right message with the right color-tone, right visuals and right choice of words with right duration.
- Keep an archive of all your important mails and transactions. Keep a track of all your passwords at a safer place.
- Unsubscribe from all the 3rd party emails that are of no use to you. Keep the appetite of your inbox sane for the want of those useful emails that evoke some professional and personal interest.
- Learn dropbox. Or any other online file storage application. I learnt this, and found this really helpful.
- Learn to bookmark sites. This way you would be able to keep a track of all the useful sites that you would want to visit every now and then.
- Get registered to the conferences in your professional mileu, and make it a point to attend them. The learning phase of a professional should never stop. And the age that we are living in, it must keep on redefining itself with a discovery announcing its presence every other day.
- Make it a point to keep in touch with your colleagues, regularly. Pertinent advises just emanate naturally amidst vapors of freshly brewed coffee.
- Aim to learn a new thing every 3-4 months. It would not just feathers to your versatility; it would also help you in your professional frontier.
- Make it a point to read all human-written emails yourself, and to respond them without fail.
- When you get bored of your professional schedules of the day, browse the internet productively. Surf informative blogs, take a look at most watched photos on flickr, learn some new internet technologies that don’t require you to be an IT geek, get a sneak peek into twitter trends, observe the latest advancements in your professional world, watch educational videos on youtube, find out what’s happening in the world by hitting a credible news site etc.
- Eliminate distractions while you work.
- Give your undeterred attention to one task at a time, and see the remarkable change in results.
- Set out for the most vital tasks at the time when your mind is the freshest.
- Reward yourself with small breaks while at work. Utilize this time to relax yourself, mentally and physically.
- Don’t make others in a position where they had to struggle to read your mind. Communicate.
Do you have a substitute for an ironclad attitude?
Pursue your ambitions doggedly. An ironclad mindset can sail through the wavy patches with commanding grit. There exists a fine line between being stubborn and being resolute; the differential feature is the inclusion of intellect in the latter category. Rather than struggling mindlessly for your cause with faded insight; aim to define your objectives with staunch precision, and then go for the jugular.
Hell-bent attitude would make you withstand toughest blows of the destiny without really calling it a day. Be obstinate. Thwart off melancholy. Love the tit-a-bit of the sojourn that leads you to your choice. It all lies in the mind; closer to being that of the switch on, switch off mechanism. You assume a task to be impossible and your mind sends signals about it to the subconscious, which is not able to decide on its own and relies on the decision of the mind to process it. Once subconscious is presented with any fact, it does its best to make that happen. You must have noticed that as soon as you think a task to be cherry play for you, it actually starts taking shape pretty brilliantly. So the call is to reinforce the belonging to a cause; that way you are feeding your subconscious with your objective and it would ensure that you see yourself in an advantageous position.
Stylize your modus-operandi with little known tools. Opt for tangential cause-effect analysis. Look out for the abstract side of the problem areas. Seek help from your own deepest spaces. Link multifaceted theories together, to arrive at a new platform. Don’t confuse an obstacle with a barrier. Make a lot of side routes that must be looked for when a certain plan doesn’t work. Do brain-storming painstakingly. Don’t mitigate your chances for the lack of your belief in your abilities or in your cause; get up, sport a wide grin and get going.
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
10 Things Everyone Should Know How To Do
- Knowing one’s own blood group. It would further help if you know the blood group of your family members. No one knows when the time puts you in a position where a timely blood donation offered by you saves a priceless life. So head to the nearest lab and get your blood group tested if you are not aware of it by now.
- Knowing basic cooking skills. Don’t take your feet back by the failure of being criticized. Flaunt the what-the-hell attitude and surprise your family. It would also help you in exploring a whole new realm of self-discovery. A shabbily done sandwich might not appear appealing to the eyes, but it holds energy reservoirs to keep you going. And a coffee is a coffee; it tastes awesome even when the amateurs try their hands in.
- Knowing to manage money. Being spendthrift might bring you an acute kick, but to survive in the jungle, you need to know the importance of planning with your financial matters. It happens so often that we underestimate the power of money and look lost in rainy days. Don’t get stupefied by the shine of the nickel in your pocket, treat it wisely. Make budgets. Invest intellectually.
- Knowing first-aid & CPR. You never know when would you be in a position to save a life; in a crowded park, in a busy cafeteria, while crossing the road or while kneeling down in a temple. Heart attacks can occur anywhere; accidents can occur anywhere. Even government in India is encouragingly carrying out lessons in basic life support at a good scale. You don’t have to be a medical or paramedical professional to understand this. Just a knack for serving social responsibility is all it takes. A lost life is disastrous; stand up and pledge to bring about a change.
- Knowing to play with kids. Children have an altogether different time zone; a different world indeed. They spread eleemosynary happiness wherever they step in. Borrow some positivity and innocence from them and shed away those burdensome worries that plague you every now and then. Don’t let you mental muscles fall prey to ageing; it’s best to be as giving as a kid.
- Knowing to operate a computer. Obviously this is out of bounds for the underprivileged population; they are busy toiling hard to make their ends meet. But for the people who can afford, a computer is worth an investment. The future would be relying heavily on technologies that are driven by computers; so its but natural for you to keep abreast. Google a lot. Read a lot. Learn new things.
- Knowing to maintain cleanliness. Untidy spaces clutter your minds as well. Many of us procrastinate tidying up our rooms and homes thinking about the efforts involved. But as you start practicing it, you would find it is one of the most productive exercises ever done. We should not put ourselves in contaminated envelopes; for in the expedition of purity, cleanliness matters.
- Knowing the basics of exercising. Most of us won’t think twice before paying up the fee for a health club; it’s the motivation that starts wavering after initial sessions. Exercising is vital. No matter if you are on the wrong side of forty or on the right side, if you don’t optimize your physical activities, you are lessening your chances of attaining the pinnacle of fitness.
- Knowing the art of listening to others. Random acts of kindness often come when you start listening to people. The more you listen, the more you understand. Blabbering, even when the other person is on a different perspective altogether, would just fatigue your vocal cords and increase the void in your inner-self. Be patient. Be reasonable. Be kind. Lend your ears.
- Knowing to express love and care. Be warm, tender, thoughtful and affectionate. As a doctor, I hold my patients’ hands to let them know that I am there for you. It’s important to share love. What else is the fuel of life, if not love? Love has the power to over rule the greatest odds. A loving soul is the axle of a content life. Love is the only juggernaut of this celestial sphere.
Sunday, February 19, 2012
25 Amazing Moments
- Someone expressed love interest in you. And that someone was not a random someone.
- You got your first job.
- You had your first night-out.
- You helped someone with your pocket money, and no one came to know of this.
- You just cooked your first ever recipe. Though it was anyway far-flug from being perfect; at least you created something that others loved.
- You decided to take your dreams ahead.
- You paid a surprise visit to your mother, when she needed you most but was not expecting your arrival.
- You got your first pay check.
- You ramshackle ordinary expectations and secure exceptional grades in your class. Who the hell ever mentioned you a lousy pupil? Period. Thing of past.
- You managed to just propose to your love interest.
- You observe the twilight with stars in your eyes, open-armed.
- You first touched the fingers of your new born.
- You helped a cupid-couple in distress by arranging ordeals of court marriage.
- You founded your own company.
- You got rid of all the loans.
- You were proven right in one of your decisions that had a life changing potential.
- You woke up to witness your spouse thoughtfully staring your face, seeming lost in the province of love and belonging.
- You just smelled the air containing whiff of wet earth, for it rained first time in the season.
- Your first kiss.
- You shoot a video of your grandson, with the happy family providing the peppy background noise.
- You overcame your addiction. Be it nicotine, alcohol or any other illicit substance.
- You just got your complete body check up and got to know that you are completely healthy.
- You boarded a flight for the first time in your life.
- You open your cupboard to get your hands on old albums, letters, diaries and hand-written chronicles.
- You donated blood for the first time.
Saturday, February 18, 2012
The Bliss of being a Middle Class family.
By middle class, I intend to mention the strata of population that form a common household; that are not extremely affluent in terms of financial prosperity, yet form the major volume of pulse of the nation.
They happily worm their way to the local vegetable market and put in a great deal of time to select the freshest supply of the day. Not everything comes at a bargain price, but yes, vegetables do come, especially when the market is at the verge of exhausting its supply.
They remember most of the less-known festivals and look forward to be a part of them keenly. They organize Satyanarayan Pooja or Mata ki Chowki (on a small scale) in their homes when their adolescent son manages to get exceptional grades in the final exams, or when their brilliant daughter gets her first job.
An evening tea, enjoyed in the company of the spouse and kids amidst smoke-stained air and dying sunlight, brings more pleasure to them than attending an office party in some 3 star hotel.
They make it a point to watch one of the early morning spiritual TV program.
They keep a vigil track over fluctuating gold prices.
They make it a point to visit their parents, staying at their ancestral village, at least twice every year. They carry gifts to be distributed to their siblings and families that have remained in the rural settings.
They love to spend time with their growing kids. At every given or created opportunity, they try their level best to inculcate the flurry of moral values in them.
They hate changes in cultural values.
They believe a lot in traditional methods of treatment.
They are less inhibited in striking amazing friendships with a large part of their neighborhood. They love to be known and to be respected.
They make it a point to watch Republic Day parade and Independence Day speech on their TV sets with the whole family glued together. They understand the fabrics of politics better than some of the best known professionals, yet don’t normally gather courage to stand up and bring about a change. They are expressive, sentimental, large-hearted and keen to learn.
They keep a check on monthly expenditures with eyes of an eagle. They save small amount of money every month to be able to purchase their teenager a laptop on his next birthday.
They invest in their children’s education without any second thought. They would compromise in paying for the premium of their health insurance; but their kid’s tuition fee would always be paid on time.
They surf the classifieds in the hope of a better job every now and then; but prefer not to leave their existing jobs in the end.
They prefer speaking in their mother tongues.
I was born in a middle class family and am proud of this. No amount of money can buy you happiness that the middle class luxuriates in. The joy of smelling the first whiff of morning coffee, the thrill of seeing the plants in your flower-pots grow, the raptures of planning for that local pilgrimage trip with your family, the excitement of trying out that branded shirt, the kick of watching the last over of the much awaited cricket match, the delight of seeing your entire family eating out together in the dining table – Middle class embodies the essence of any culture and any country, any given day.
Friday, February 17, 2012
I love to be a part of Delhi.
Extreme of emotions, extreme of climates.
To get irked at the silliest of provocations seems the primordial paradigm in Delhi. People have abundant affinity to spill the venom by implicating others’ sisters in selected series of swear-words.
The light is red, and red attracts. It’s a very usual sight to find an army of cars, parading from different directions, trying to speed up and cross the intersection, even when the traffic light is red and the traffic policeman is in the uniform.
Graffiti, aimed at simplifying the purposes of DNA Testing, takes a high on the back side of most of the moving 3 wheelers. Pappu Te Lucky De Papa Di Gaddi… and what not. Even the 4 wheelers don’t fall behind the name game; the imaginations become more urbane, and more Haryanvi, not necessarily in that order.
Street-side food stalls. Crispy, succulent, cheap and Pan-Indian.
No matter its day or night, people would look preoccupied. Finicky auto drivers, stubborn clerks, fussy house maids often drown the day in the morning hours itself.
Arrange me a pass; I belong to so and so family. I sometimes wonder how the organizers plan out for a profit. It’s more of a status symbol, a habit indeed, that a lot of affluent or well-connected Delhites are addicted to.
Gaudy weddings. Ostentatious Karwa Chauth celebrations. Omnium gatherum. Protuberant bellies. Flamboyant flyovers. Delhi-belly (made famous by the celluloid adaptation).
Most of the mobile phones don’t work properly in mute mode; hence, when in doubt, keep the ‘General’ profile activated. And this is a phone for which you paid through your nose, so why not talk loud.
Road-rages. Jungle of serpentine metro-tracks. The poor migrants from UP, Bihar working relentlessly at the construction sites to earn one square meal.
Centuries old commercial establishments that haven’t deteriorated in quality of their products.
A moderate amount of alcohol intake is the antidote to most of the worldly problems encountered during the day; this is the axiom by which a lot of Delhites live by.
Ear-splitting noise of fire-crackers the moment Indian Cricket Team wins a crucial match.
The devotees of rumour-mill. The gossipers. The gastronomics. The snazzy feat of cars playing loudest possible club-rock during the dark hours.
The Ice cream carts doing brisk business in the night, irrelevant to the month of the year.
Never-say-die spirit that virtually inhabits the tissues of Delhites. The day is not far away when word ‘Jugaad’ would be included in the Oxford Dictionary with appropriate esteem.
25 Awesome things happening around you
- A friend is helping a friend come over the pain of a failed relationship.
- Two people in your town are falling in love.
- Someone is making an opinion about you.
- A flock of vegetable vendors is arranging the veggies in a nice, decorative way to sell them in the evening.
- A babysitter is stealing a cookie while the baby is watching her.
- Buckets of tears are being shed in your hometown over the afternoon telecast of some particular daily soap.
- A girl is making up her mind to respond in affirmation to the marriage proposal, made by her eye-candy an hour back.
- Someone is on the verge of dying because of extreme hunger.
- A fireman is entering a building, engulfed in fire, to save the strangers.
- Millions of fat-laced fries are being eaten by femme fatales that are tired of trying to be in shape.
- Someone has just experienced a sleep-terror and woken up with shudders down his spine.
- A toddler just managed to take first few steps of his life, without any support.
- A young female made a promise to her boyfriend that would remain unbroken in this lifetime.
- A soon-to-be-bride is busy day dreaming.
- An adolescent just managed to get first ever experience of snorting cocaine.
- A soon-to-be daddy is shopping baby clothes without looking at the price tags.
- Someone donated more than a million dollars to the charity, and proceeded to cook for his spouse.
- An actor has rehearsed for a particular shot for 68th time amidst scorching heat.
- Someone just bought a brand new deodorant, for the very first time in his/her life.
- An Emergency Medical Officer is busy saving one of his patient’s life.
- Someone just got rid of all the debts that kept on lingering for more than a decade.
- Someone is pretending to have fallen slept to avoid lousy company of his guests.
- Someone just helped a blind old lady crossing the busy road.
- A cancer patient just came to know that he has achieved complete remission.
- Someone woke up after sleeping for 28 hours at a stretch.
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
This is important stuff if you are a parent.
A honey-coated intimate talk would always perform better than the harsh scolding.
Inspire them to come out of your shadow, and to create a niche.
Don’t encourage superstitions.
Often an engaging dinner-table conversation provides more calories to the mind than the luxuriant supper; make your child feel loved, and protected.
When your kid is watching some film that requires parental guidance; behave like a parent.
Watch the tendencies of your kids. They bring about a lot of habits, a lot of personality attributes from their past lives; by being a blatant critic you would diminish the chances of pulchritude in your kid’s life. Observe, learn, think, and then react.
Believe in the saying that Mother Nature is the biggest teacher. Organize field-visits and outdoor camps.
Don’t make your child realize that he is meant to top all the subjects. As a parent you are required to lessen the pressure that he is already bestowed with.
Inculcate the power of reasoning in your child. It would help him to combat a lot of problems that eventually seep in the life as adolescence knocks.
Make them aware of the simple, yet so fundamentally essential, financial planning. We often neglect this aspect while raising our kids, only to witness them turning into overspending adolescents with no realization of what the money is all about. Tell them the importance of having a plan in hand. Don’t really depend on your kid’s education system for this; in my opinion, this is your call to make your kid prepare well for the matters involving money.
As a parent, it’s your sacred duty to infuse the essence of sex education in your child. The world is full of satanic perverts; it lies in your dominion to keep your child safe, and feel good in the glory of the world.
Science has proved that junk food lowers immunity. Think about this. Less immunity may also mean that many immunizations won’t work properly, though researches are on to substantiate this theory.
Be a role model. Wake up early. Go for the morning walk. Eat healthy. Think clearly. Practice charity. Love your elders and be responsible to them. Share quality time with your kids. Never use swear words in front of your kids (or for that matter when away from the sight of your kids). Give your bit in household works. Remain organized. Love a lot.
Love is in the air.
Love is the unmitigated joy. Love is beyond controls, and beyond imaginations. Love is the amulet that holds the power to transform lives. Love is the aperture to divinity. Love seeks no explanation. Love is the frontier of redemption. Love is the stellar force that makes a person God-like. Love is the basis of so many creations and so many fundamental truths, religion being one of them.
Love is ageless, and timeless. Love is the magical balm that allays all the co-existential sufferings. Love gives you the power to accomplish what others can not even dream of. Love reinforces the reason of your space odyssey. Love is boundless, and limitless. Love is the brush of fortunes amidst the shredded canvas of life. Love is the loaf of soul.
Don’t oppress love. Support it, display it, and practice it. When you fall in love, you rise in life. Love is the most selfless feeling that one can ever come across. Love needs no instructions. Love is the cardinal code of life so close to us yet so elusive at times. Love as if there is no fear; love as if there is no boundary. Bestow love to all the persons that walk in your sphere of life, and make them understand the real meaning of life.
Love is everywhere. You need to adjust your mental settings to be able to find the presence of love; here, there and everywhere. You need to be more grasping, more free-thinking and less judgmental. Love is the bohemian emotion that Mother Nature empowered us with. Think about love and all you are left with is a stellar feeling of nothingness. Love abolishes uncertainties. Love propels life.
Thursday, February 9, 2012
The Rants of Plants. Who Cares?
It’s official now. Plants can talk. Plants can not only communicate amongst themselves, there are significant reasons to fuel the theory that they sense, feel and react also. Researchers at Exeter University, Britain recently concluded this when they plucked the leaves of cabbage plants and monitored their biochemical reactions and its effect on nearby plants. The monitoring was done by means of highly enhanced video cameras and the recording clearly hints that plants talk to each other in some complex, probably inaudible, language that the humans know nothing of as yet.
Period. So shall we portray more compassion when screaming near plants or trees? How many of us would be able to withstand the news of a sturdy, young tree being chopped down to pieces by emotionally-deprived evolved species of Mother Nature, the human? How many of us would pay heed to get a close eye to our plants’ demands, said and unsaid? What governs the world of trees and plants? Do they also have souls? By logic, they must be having one; just think how incapacitated that soul would be – it’s not easy to be lying there, standing still and experiencing every extreme, without being able to do anything.
Can plants just experience and communicate or there are more realities yet to be uncovered? Plants are laced with a rich assortment of emotions, as experiments have revealed that plants tended to raise alarm to their nearby shrubs when exposed to an imminent danger. So do plants also discriminate when thinking about others, like their human counterparts? I am so mightily flummoxed by the array of possibilities that exist in this nature; what is true to the eyes can be so vehemently false to the soul. What is the purpose of a plant’s life but to act as slaves for the majority of living organisms?
If one day someone discovers that plants cry, how would you feel? As for me, I would feel drowned; even the touch of the feeling has started making me uncomfortable. And its because if they are able to shed tears, I am sure humans and animals incessantly give them all the reasons to cry, all the times.
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