A Bend in the Lane

<Skip this post if you do not wish to get a heavy dose of spirituality or the whole works.> <I told you to skip it. You still want to read? Fine, suffer.> Yesterday, I attended the first in a series of spiritual talks that are being given by a visiting professor, Prof Anil Kumar. I shan't go into all the song and dance of the purpose of these talks, except that they are highly enjoyable not only because of the insane humor the Professor injects into spirituality, but because he tends to address the usual doubts that ail ordinary believers of God. He talks about how God is the truest form of unconditional love and that all human relationships are bound by one or another form of give and take. Human relationships, be it mother-child, wife-husband, guru-sishya, friend-friend rarely are unconditional. (Interestingly, I recently posted about this very point.) That the only love that is unconditional, boundless and limitless is that of God's. Here is a rambling summar...

There are inspiring stories behind all those orgs like Asha for Education, CRY, Habitat for Humanity...But the story behind NICE is very simple. It is the man who is inspiring.  Sri Poornachandra Rao so inspired another man that, a decade after meeting him, the inspired man featured a character based on Sri Poornachandra Rao in his touching road movie Gamyam . I looked up NICE's annual report to find that the org isnt too big for our non-monetary donations (pens, books, chairs) to seem feeble or our monetary donations to disappear in administrative charges. SIN$130 covers a child's 1Y education. $130 for a year of knowledge. That's what I spend on 13 movie tickets. Take a look . Dont be lazy. You may or you may not wish to donate. But read his story.

A towering verse penned by Sri Harivanshrai Bachchan - Tu na thakega kabhi, tu na thamega kabhi, tu na mudega kabhi, Kar shapath, kar shapath, kar shapath, Agneepath, Agneepath, Agneepath. Edited to add meaning as requested - My literal translation: You shall not tire ever, you shall not give up ever, you shall not turn back ever, take the oath, take the oath, take the oath, Path of Fire, Path of Fire, Path of Fire My shallow broad translation: Swear that you will persevere resolutely, with the test of fire, without ever tiring, without ever giving up, without ever turning back.

I was talking to Jayesh about how faith in God should be independent of the joys and misery God puts us through, that Faith should not be conditional. I scorned people who did otherwise. But after the conversation, I got off my judgmental horse and realised that I was talking pure idealism that even I (gasp!) have not matched up to. Most human relationships are conditional. We love because we are loved. We help because we are comfortable.  We feed because we are well fed.  I am not making sense am I?  Oh dear, let me try and explain. Did you ever feed someone - a beggar, your child, mother, whoever - when you were going hungry? Do you love your family/partner/dog without expecting something in return? Did you ever donate your (not your dad's, mom's, ancestral) money to a cause you believed in when money was hard to come by? Perhaps not all of us have been in such situations, so lets just simply ask, have you been unconditional? That one glorious shining moment w...

Like the other 10 million blogs, I have decided to do a post on Senator Obama's speech on Race. Anybody who lives on Earth and has access to mass media could not have missed the Race speech he gave a couple of months ago. Like many of us, I was too busy to read the whole transcript. I just read the excerpts on MSNBC and NYT and saw some clips on Youtube. I thought it was a fantastic speech. That was before I read the whole thing. Yesterday, I decided to read the whole speech. Mid way through, I got so worked up, and eyes began welling up that I knew i had to actually see him utter these magnificent words. So, I went on Youtube and heard him. The whole 37 min. Gentlemen, anybody who heard this speech and still doubts that he can be the president the world needs to have, should quickly move to Mars.The response was overwhelming. My Oxford roommate, who is a poet, actually wrote a poem about Barack Obama after the speech. Here is one response i found online - peaceful easy feeling Sa...

I was looking at all the projects that National Geographic Society is providing grants for when The Genographic Project caught my eye. The Genographic Project, touted as a landmark study of the human journey, is the making of an atlas of the human journey, the tracing of our ancestors steps, where you and I really come from, and how did we get there from that group of African ancestors over 60000 years ago? It sounds phenomenal! A 5 year project involving scientists and IBM researches (for cutting edge genetic & computational technologies) entwining genetics, anthropology and technology. There are some phenomenal visuals about human migratory history in the site. The exciting thing is, you can actually participate in this study. With a painless cheek swab you can sample your own DNA and submit it to the lab. Then the project people run a test to your DNA, it reveals your ancestry and the journeys that they made over 60000-10000 years ago! The project director, Dr Spencer Wells,...

My sister is a gardener. She likes plants. Plants seem to like her too. They bloom under her eye. Take for example the record sized eggplant she grew last year. It actually resembled a bulbous freakish purple monstrosity. I wish I could just show you what a terror it was, but unfortunately, I deleted the pictures she sent me of this monstrosity as they gave me seizures. This spring she managed to germinate many seeds and transfered them into 80 pots. She will soon get her husband to transfer the potted plants to the vegetable patch in the backyard and the flowerbed in the front lawn. She grows her own veggies - carrots, tomatoes, eggplant, okra, or whatever catches her fancy. She also grows flowering shrubs - tulips, poppies (no, not for pot), geraniums, violets, azaleas, blah blah blah. You get the drift? Quaint, innit? Below is a picture of a few of her tulips she planted around a lamppost in their front lawn. I dare say, I contributed to this passion of hers in the beginning. In th...

One needs to learn many things in life. To become wise and stay young at heart. To know the time to pry and the time to be quiet. To know when to shake hands and when to hug. To know when to talk and when to listen. To know when to  carry the joke farther and when to draw the line. To know when to try and when to let things take their course. To know when to have secrets and when to let people in.  To know when to fly the nest and when to plant your roots. To know when to sow and when to work the harvest. To know when to hold on and when to move on. A quarter of a century wasn't quite enough. Would the rest of the 40 be enough?

A fool fills himself with evil a little at a time.