Morning Walk

Well, each day is kind of the same for me.

Get up at 6.30 am, brush, then go to school. From school come back at 1.30

pm, then sit on the comp to append to

you guys. Have a bath, then go to tuitions at around 3.30 pm. Come back from the tuitions at 6.35 pm. Sti on the comp or go to run

a bit, and then prayer at 7.30 pm and finally sit

down to study from 8.00pm. I don't know uptil when, but i just go and study.

So I just summed up my daily routine in one paragraph. Gosh! This should be the topic for paragraph writing in the english test!

It feels to me that my days are becoming monotonous. It i

s true to say, "Be born Eveey day!"

Only on the weekends do I find some excitement.

Today, as a sunday, I manage to find some time to indulge in my regular hobbies. Photography for example!

To day, i went for a moring walk, and this is it.

So , the image on the right is where I

go to. It is called the "Japanese gardens" in the city of Nagpur.

It has some wonderful walks!

Also, some vergy g

ood lawns too.

And then you go winding down the path then up thourhg a short hill into climb.

A stoll is what you need to go across the rest, but it is Beautiful!.

The play of nature!

The path is densely forested, and yet nestled in midst of absolute Ctiyscape!

So this beautiful place is also called the Seminary Hills in angpur. Do visit it when you come!

The atheist joke.

One day, an explorer, who happened to be an atheist, went to explore the amazon.

He came across various things there, but one day he happened to meet a jungle tribe. The tribe looked very fierce and he suspected them to be cannibals. It scared his wits out!

For the first time in his life, he prayed to god. "God, I am in a big mess. Help me! Save me! "

God appeared to him out of the clouds. "Son, you are not in trouble. Fear not! Take a big stone and hit the chief of the tribe on his head."

The explorer diligently followed the God's advice. He took a huge stone and smashed it against the Chief's head.

God said," Now you are in trouble!"

Impractical Ideologist: Don Quixote of La Mancha

Gold is not itself useful to adorn a lady.

True. For pure gold is soft and too malleable, thus it bends too easily and cannot be made into ornaments. Thus we require a tinge of silver, or copper, in order to reduce the purity of gold, and allow it to be made into befitting ornaments.

Talking by this analogy, let us take Ideals as gold and practice as copper.

Ideals cannot themselves be very practical in every stretch of our lives. We need our ideals to be working in practice.

If a robber robs you, and you do not retaliate, seeking that non-violence and truth will bring you justice, is lame stupidity.

In another example, it is said not to lie. But has anyone uttered not even one? If a person says so, then no that iteself is a big lie. Has anyone tried to speak every truth? If one has done so... it has only led one into more and more troubles, for absolute truth can damage, ruin or disrupt ourself.

It is not that I am against pure and good ideals. But the fact remains true that we are not so perfect that we may speak the truth all the time.

This is Practical Ideals.

Any person who goes against them is nothing but Miguel de Cervantes's chivalric hero, Don Quixote.

I really liked the book. Miguel de Cervantes y Saavedra articulates in close proximity, the perils of following a complete ideal.

But I go beyond that!

Why not put into practice our ideals! Let us mix Gold into Copper, and in our daily life , uphold our cherished ideals. This is by far the best option of all this debate of Idealsim and Practice.

That is what Mahatma Gandhi did. He asked even the poorest of the farmers to uphold his ideals, in as little way as they could have, and better their lives.

Thus this brings us to a new conclusion and a dawn of the new Ideal Practicalist.

(Adapted and inspired from a writing of Kaka kalelkar)

Prayer

What is prayer?

A question that has made me ponder for a long time. I do not know the answer to it, for I do not know what is it. Wikipedia describes prayer as a "act of addressing a god or spirit for the purpose of worship or petition. Specific forms of this may include praise, requesting guidance or assisttance, confessing sins, as an act of reparation or an expression of one's thoughts and emotions."

This definiton may work out good for everyone else, but for me, it does not.

As a Hindu, and a devotee of Sri Sri Thakur Anukulchandra, I pray regularly. In the evening as well as the morning, twenty minutes of chanting and meditation.

In all cultures, praying is an integral part of the religion they follow. Buddhism focuses more on it that any other religion. Prayer in Buddhism is much more of a meditation than a wish or a dialogue. The Buddhist understand prayer as connection of the individual to the eternal , of purification in the body that leads to the nirvana. This is connection of self -improvement by praying to some supreme power.

In Christianity, prayer is an integral part of one's life. Christians pray for their miseries, for their troubles, and for thanksgiving to the almighty God. Jesus, as he is the the son of the god, often is a central part of the prayer, because he loves all men, and takes the wishes of the righteous to the supreme god.

I can go on quoting various examples from a manifest of religions and philosophies, all concentrate on the same aspect. Gandhi made his 'Satyagraha' philosophy mking prayer as his prime weapon against the oppressive British government of that time; thus is shows the power of prayer : it can shake the very foundations of our society.

But the answer isn't clear yet. I asked 'what is prayer' not how it is.

For me prayer is the crux of all our emotions and deepest wishes that sprout from the depths of our soul.

That is prayer.

Perseid! Perseid!

Ah!

If today's day were clear, I would have rather gone onto the roof to wait until three in the morning.But alas it is not so. However just as I speak, the clouds are clearing. And hopefully I will get to make a wish tonight.

For some of the astronomy-enthusiasts in India, Perseid Meteor Shower is an elusive phenomenon. Not because we can't see it, but because it is mostly overshadowed. Why, I can remember the last time I saw the perseid, it as more than 4 years ago and that too an elusive one amongst clouds. I know it might be no different today, but yet the excitement of meteor showers doesn't stop.

But it was not so for many years!

Up until the 19th cnetury, no one linked meteors to rocks falling from space, but thought of them as Atmospheric phenomenon. Thomas Jefferson wrote "I would more easily believe that a Yankee professor would lie than that stones would fall from heaven." He was referring to Yale chemistry professor Benjamin Silliman' investigation of an 1807 meteorite that fell in Weston, Connecticut. Silliman believed the meteor had a cosmic origin, but meteors did not attract much attention from astronomers until the spectacular meteor storm of November 1833.

This was called the Leonid Storm. There are no photographs of the shower itself, but there are some woodcuts and paintings which survive. Take for example, this on:

This picture shows the magnificence. Over a hundred thousand meteors appeared in an hour, some of them crashing down in the backwards of people.

Generally, Leonid is considered to be most active of the meteor showers. But recently , the comet which brought meteors of the Leonid had a close encounter with the gigantic Jupiter. This

has disrupted the path of the comet, and any plus one hundred thousand meteors per hour is highly unlikely in the near future.

However this leaves us the Perseid. Today, it is the most brightest and spectacular Meteor shower today.

Hopefully, you will see mnore of them tonight, for it attains maximum Hourly Zenithal Rate (the rate of how many meteors appear in an hour) at nearly 3am tomorrow night (i.e 0830 GMT on 13th August 2009). Keep an eye on the Constellation of Perseus. And just above the star

of Algol the Demon (The Winking Demon, Algol) you will see the Meteors rushing through.

Make a wish!

Happy wishing!

In remembrance of Nagasaki....

Today is the day that rocked our understanding of the world. The nuclear device, by some called the 'Fat man' was dropped on the port city of Nagasaki in Kyushu, Japan, leaving the world stunned for the second time in a week.

And I am still aghast.

If you want to know what happened next, better see the picture.

Gone.That is what happened in Nagasaki that day. It is devastatingly bad.

I write today and not on August 6 for I think it would be unjust to the people who died in Nagasaki. I become speechless when some one urges me to tell them my feelings abou

t the atomic bombs used in the world war II. There is no justification for it, no need for innocent civillians to be slaughthered.

This dangerous devil was dropped with the tag that it was to provide a "moral shock" to Japanese: it was intented to make them surrender. Why then, is my question, after seeing the destrucrtion in Hiroshima that the Americans proceeded to frop the devil again from sky?

Didn't the scholars and scientists who invented the "thing" understand the destruction that it can cause?

They did. They did have an idea what the A-bomb could do. One who did not have any idea what it could do is one wi

thout any brains; and it requires a lot of brains in order to make one atom bomb.

I don't hink they would be proud of that scene:

A cloud that humankind will so wnat to forget.

This horridness was caused without any meaning; it was the purest evil in the world.

The worst thing, if there can be anything worst this, is number of innocent civilians who where killed without any warning .

Consider yourself, out for a morning jog, when suddenly a ball of fire engulfs you and you vaporize.... poof! Just as Professor Horace Slughorn mouths in Harry Potter and the Half Blood prince. Life becomes vapor .... poof!

Perhaps it was even worse for the well-tilled land owning farmer. With his harvest ready, he was expecting a good year ahead. BANG! And all his hopes shatter, like the ground that was blasted off by the bomb.

Such innocent people, without any distant realation to the war were killed.

But what realization do we have of it?

Not even a single american government since the Harry S. Truman era has asked a single public apology ever. And this crime is top most one in war crimes era. I do not say that the Japanese were angels. The happenings in the WWII were all very sad, and they only teach us that humans should not war again.

But then why do we still have the devils among us? Devils who still can do some dangerous things. For all weapons that are idle are still weapons. And all weapons can damage us.

They can kill us just by their existence.

In all moral sense they should be abolished. Not only does non-proliferation help us to solve this problem, it helps us live in a threat less world.

It amazes me, that after seeing Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Atom Bombs still exists. Our governments need to start disposing them off, as fast as they can.

Or else, in the next morning, the ones to vaporise could be me . . . . you!

Exams and Education

The Indian Vedanta philosophy describes education as the harmonic intake of information regarding the study of the natural phiosophy.

Wow.

Like that is ever goin to make the heads of our CBSE personnel's head buzz.

Let's face it: our world is a result driven society today. And the prime goal of our students has become to get the results with thinking about the way the problem is solved. No wonder this 'attitude' develops into cheating, corruption, bribery and the sort.

This is what plagues our education system today, and what has caused the nurture of this stupid idea is our idiotic evaluation system, a.k.a Exams.

I am not against exams. In fact,

"Gems are not polished without friction,

nor man perfected without trials"

---------------------------Chinese Proverb

Therefore, as the proverb clearly states the truth of the world, without exams, how will a person know oneself? Exams are an essential feature of our learning lives. Who will ever forget the stress, the triumphs, and the relief after the exams?

They are important.

But at the same time, if exams take the priority over education, it makes things amiss.

For example, the teachers teach what will come within the exam and do not care about the methodology. It is just like trying to concentrate on getting the egg without feeding the chicken!

I vociferously defend the student. They are caught in between what to do? whether to study for exams or conceptual understanding?

According to me, the exam pattern, at least in India should change. Student's aptitude should be given top priority. Exams should be based on conceptual clearance, and not on mechanical practice sums. Also, there should only be three Full Priority subjects and two Half priority subjects. for sports like Volley ball, Football, hockey suffer because students who are good in these fields often hae to make a big choice; and they more often than not choose academia.

Thus, many other disciplines get hampered starting at the school level. People are made to mortifically choose disciplines which they are not good in.

This must change.

Sorry for my delay

Sorry for my delay. But it was inevitable as i was busy in various other schemes and plannings.

I had my exams for one thing, and then I am writing myself a book. So.................... I guess you kinda get the idea why i didn't write anything for so long. However, Now i will voice my pinions once more.