Five gyaan points from Linkedin

I found this on linkedin. Lately i have almost gone through 4 out of the 5 notions described above. Quite clearly to me, No.3 is the one that i have to really go through and become what i "should be". Here is brief of my thoughts about these -

In my thrity odd years of life on this earth the last twenty of which i quite distinctly remember, i have noticed that quite often it is only a thin ray of hope that you receive from some corner of the cosmos that propels you to finally succeed. I am quite sure that even the greatest achievers had more than their share of people who did not believe in them directly, openly or indirectly and discreetly. They say that "Log Kya kahenge" has killed more dreams than anything ever did...and as a satire to that Neha once told...
"Log kya kahenge, agar yeh bhi ham soche, to phir log kya sochenge". 
So point No.1 - 100% true. Point of caution, please make a distinction between opinion and experience. If you can learn from other persons experience, do learn from it, but do not fear it. 

No.2 is the most common think the achiever experiences. Success breed success. However, it also reduces the endurance against failures. Quite often we start hating ourselves due to the one incidence that happens and trust that life has nothing but misfortune and failure for us. A quote that could perhaps take  you through this when you are really low...
"Today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday". 

An opportunity quite seldom knocks your door if you really haven't worked to build one. I would say luck favors those who really work for it. Lucky charm, Numerology etc if really would have worked would have produce enough billionaires to fill whole of china. These are just mental calming mechanisms. They instill the same time of confidence that believing in god or getting blessing from elders does. This is a topic of psychology and should be perhaps dealt in detail in a later blog post.

The last one really is the icing on the cake. Beginning a day with a grateful heart just is the best stress buster you could ever think of. Our movies have of late portrayed that this is essentially a nerdy un-cool way of starting a day. A day should be fully of energy...blah blah blah...Well A day should be all that and along with that a humble and grateful heart makes the whole thing perfect. Why? When you are humble and grateful for the day, you know that you are only in so much control of the day as it allows you control over it. My dad's quote on this...
" Like the sun becomes smaller as he goes higher, so should the ego of a person as he grows in life". 

That's my 2 cents worth of gyaan on this wonderful placard. 

Memoirs of "His and Her" -2

[Continued from Part 1 available here] 

The time was running out and the train arrival was now just moments away. He was getting worried. He wasn't sure how he could go around with all the bags looking for her. The regular patrolling in the airport meant that if he left the bags there without being around most likely his next few hours would be with the Bundespolizei. 

"Phew" is the english expression to describe the sense of relief. I think the word hardly does justice to the emotions that ran through him when he saw her walking towards him, bewildered by the enormity of the Frankfurt airport. Controlling his anger for her unworried us attitude and at the same time reminding himself that he was at fault by not informing her about the exact train departure time, he asked her to make hurry. 

"ICE" stands for Inter-city express. These are the high speed trains that connect major cities in Germany. These includes not just the capital cities of different states also called Bundesland, but also many other large cities. These trains have separate sections for the first and second class passengers, most often separated by the pantry car. He referred to the chart on the notice board to position himself in a place so that he could easily get into a second class compartment. The sparse density in trains means that there is no mandatory reservation. One pays for this ticket and if he wants a reserved seat he would have to pay slightly more additionally. Back in his country, he wouldn't have a chance in hell to get a seat on one of the express trains if he hadn't chosen a ticket with reservation and even then there was the possibility that someone would encroach his seat. 

Their share of problems hadn't been finished yet. Just a few minutes before the approach of the train, she observed that there was some text being displayed on the screen. He looked up and realized that the position they had chosen to stand would park them directly in front of the pantry car. The coaches in this particular train had been shuffled. 

There are exceptions to every rule. It is not without reason that Murphy's law is such a famous one. On the train he noticed that there was hardly a single seat that was vacant. It was more difficult for him to squeeze his baggage between the seats and the compartment walls, but with the famous Jugaad  technique he did manage to arrange them. The stood capriciously in the corner when she said "I am hungry. But i don't feel like eating anything". He knew that this meant, that she was hungry and because she was worried about spending money in euro's she wasn't willing to have anything. If you would expect that after paying more than forty grand per ticket, you would get a stomach full of meal on an 10 hour flight journey, you are quite mistaken. You do get a meal and a snack, the later of which could be easily mistaken for warm wet sponge. He knew this and had promised himself that he would try to resist his temptation to back calculate the costs from euros to his home currency while spending in Germany. 

Eight euros and Fifty  cents was the bill and he said "Nine please". If it were not for god's remarkable design with her eyes, they would have popped out in surprise. After the waiter made his way back with a nonchalant smirk, she blurted out "Nine? Why?". He smiled. She remembered what he had said, " New country New rules New us". 

He just remembered that his train was running late by thirty minutes. He knew that in a country that was so finical about punctuality, this wouldn't be short of an embarrassment. This country is changing, it is not what it used to be....But wasn't the arrival of likes of him was the effect and cause of the situation. 

Every change has two sides to it. You make the change if the side that you don't like has lesser influence that than the side that you like. They too had taken the decision after giving it a lot of thought. She had chosen to give up a lot for him. Her job, her freedom of speech since in Germany she could be hardly understood without her knowledge of the language, her friends, her family which constituted the better part of half of her home town. For him it was his parents whom he loved, his pampered life, his friends and office team, each member of whose had been hand-picked, supported and groomed in someway by him. 

"I had to inform him. I hope he still waits for us. He has our keys!!", he said to her. He was mentioning about his friend who had collected the keys to his temporary accommodation in Germany. He was supposed to meet them in the Bahnhof. A delay in the arrival of the train would mean that he wouldn't wait or miss them or just assume that something was wrong. How humans behave is unexpected situations is a area under study for several years now. He by no means was an expert at this. 

[To be continued]

Need by night and weed by day

India is a country of 330 million gods they say. Quite clearly the number is inflated and according to vedas there were actually 33 prime gods. Even if we ignore the two numbers and just take a count of the festivals where we have goddess as the protagonist then 3 festivals pop out in my mind, namely Durga Pooja, Kali Pooja and Sharada Pooja. The former two being the biggest festivals in the east of India especially west Bengal. 

Based on the above statements it is quite clear that the feminine divine form did get a lot of mention and power in our religious history and continue to get a lot of attention in our current way of life as well. Having set that context, i would request you to please visit this link ..

If you have bothered to click that and had the time to go through the video, you would realize that a very important question is being posed at us.

1. If these girls are really such a big curse on the society (by the way the society treats them), then why did we create them in the first place. 
2. If we really are not hypocrites then why are we not respecting the women the way they need to be respected.

Personally, i am not against prostitution. It has been one of the oldest thriving businesses from times immemorial. The disheartening part though is that the treatment that these sex-workers get is worse than one would give to a dog. Every business is governed by the principle of Demand-N-Supply. In India approximately two million sex-workers are living in the shadow of fear, insecurity and mostly a bleak future. To have a supply of two million, we do definitely have significant demand in terms of libido outside of the currently "socially acceptable" relationships. 

Our society is the one that doesn't want them by the day but loves to have them by the night. Why shouldn't we legalize prostitution in India, if this can at least guarantee that the industry doesn't have to do things clandestinely.  Though, there is nothing clandestine about it. People know which areas are so called "Red-Light" areas and who are the sex-workers. We only are shy to accept that we know about it. This illegal aspect of prostitution leads to several layers of exploitation for the people who are at the very bottom of the chain, the sex-workers.

In a way every country that doesn't legalize prostitution but also is unable to root it out in a morally right way, is just covering up its cowardice and impotency. Every human being who is not causing harm to another is useful to the society. Why do we have to treat sex-workers as untouchables if it is our carnal lust that led to the flourishing of this industry? 

What could be a morally right way (if we choose to use that solution!!)? you could ask...because this "Dhanda" has been there from vedic times...The solution is simple, reduce the demand...by market law the supply will stop. And provide alternate paths for those involved in the supply part of the chain. To reduce the demand penalize the receiver of the sex-services and protect the provider...

By the way...This could be another way

Neither legalizing it nor uprooting is just like sitting on a time-bomb!!