Rahul Gandhi

To his acute awareness of the risk of being assassinated any day: "I believe in building up a group of leaders because who knows when I get killed."

Outlook India, June 1 issue

Bicycle and Rural Poverty Alleviation

For more than a year now I have been working on the concept of increasing the per household bicycle density especially in rural areas in India to foster accelerated growth in rural incomes. Here's a link to that.

http://thebicyclereport.blogspot.com/

Blogging

For last 2 months internet availability has been scarce for me, and that has resulted in a recession in blog postings :-)

Hope in another fortnight would again be able do more frequently what I love very much, i.e. blogging!

:-)

Wife: Jab bhi main gana gaati hoon tum balcony mein jaa kar khade kyu ho jaate ho???

Husband: Taaki colony waale ye na samjhein ki main tumhaara galaa dabaa rahaa hoon!

Narendra Modi

We all know Narendra Modi for what he did after Godhra episode. 1,000 innocent people lost their lives. If someone has some grudge with some people, he or she should go and settle the score with those people, what is the sense of punishing innocents for that? What difference will there be between a terrorist and him or her?

But on a different note I just happened to come across an interview of Narendar Modi on the development of Gujarat... and I was shocked to see the achievements... also shocked why the media never gave this information.

Some of the points from the interview:

• Manmohan Singh government's targeted agricultural growth of four per cent is stuck at 2.5%. The agricultural growth in my Gujarat is 14%, but no one looks at it.
• And today my state has 100 per cent girl-child enrollment. You don't think this is work?
• From 40%, today we have 80% to 85% of the deliveries happening in hospitals.... But you are not interested in this.
• 'justice delayed is justice denied'...more than one crore pending cases. After our initiatives, there are only 20 lakh pending court cases. Now my target is that by 2010, when Gujarat will complete 50 years, we will make it no-pendency. Cases will be disposed of in the very year they are filed.
• You tell me, since Independence, in the field of justice delivery, has so much work been accomplished anywhere?

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I was shocked with surprize to see these achievements!!!!

1984 Delhi anti-sikh riots

"However, the rioters found my friend Baldev. They thrashed and threw him from the balcony to the road below and then threw a quilt and bed sheet over him before lighting a matchstick. He was burnt alive and I was still locked inside the bathroom.

After about an hour, I and many other Sikhs in the vicinity were rescued by the military. While I was being taken in a military truck to the refugee camp at the Shyamlal College, I could find so many half-burnt bodies all around. There was so much of foul smell all around."

Full article

इंसानों में भगवान भी मिलते हैं, इंसानों में हैवान भी मिलते हैं

पर कभी कभी लगता है, इंसानों में भगवान बहुत कम

और हैवान बहुत ज्यादा मिलते हैं

Cubbon Park Acquarium

Cubbon Park Acquarium, Bangalore...

Click the image to see an enlarged version.

Dasvidania

Watched 'Dasvidania' movie this weekend... there are some movies which remain in you even after the show is over... when they touch your heart... when they stir your soul.

There was a sequence when Vinay Pathak, infinitely shy and hesitant, proposes to Neha Dhupiya... the concept was so beautifully thought and woven... the foundation of dumb charades... and the silent and slow actions of Pathak... his magical smile... the rain, adding to a sense of stress during those moments... very few writers and directors would have shown a scene like this in its very purity, as in the movie.

It was innocent, cute and magical... touched my heart.

Another thing that caught my attention was a scene between Vinay Pathak and his younger brother in the movie, discussing how the mother will be taken care of. Though in last 10 years bollywood has experimented a lot with scenes of a longer duration, and we have had even complete songs being filmed in a single shot without a break, or atleast an apparent break (O chhori, zara nach ke dikha, e.g.), this movie had this very long single shot sequence which was a difficult attempt with so many dialogues and emotions. Perhaps the intensity of the scene would have been marred had it been shot in multiple shots, with discontinuity in emotions depicted by the actors.

Bollywood is evolving surely, thanks to these new generation film makers, and equally the new generation movie watchers, who dont approve a movie on its star value, but on its content!

Definition of Status

Buying things you don't need, with money you don't have, to show people you don't like!


- Sent through SMS by a friend.

Work

When you do things from your soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy.

-Rumi.

Work spares us from three evils: boredom, vice, and need.

-Voltaire.

Jayaprakash Narayan's Open Letter to Indira Gandhi

Searching through internet on various issue, I came across Jayaprakash Narayan's open letter to Indira Gandhi during the thick of Total Revolution Movement and the Emergency.

Link
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Excerpts-

I have pondered over this riddle: Why did not those (Congress-led state) govern-ments act wisely? The conclusion I have arrived at is that the main hurdle has been corruption. Some-how the governments have been unable to deal with corruption in their ranks, particularly at the top level – the ministerial level itself. The corruption has been the central point of the movement, particularly corruption in the government and the administration.


No one has done more to lower the position and prestige of that great office than yourself. Can you ever think of the Prime Minister of a democratic country who cannot even vote in his Parliament because he has been found guilty of corrupt electoral practices?


a party of self-seekers and spineless opportunists and “jee-huzurs” such as the Congress, alas, has become, can never do anything worthwhile.


Please, do not destroy the foundations that the Father of the Nation, including your noble father, had laid down. There is nothing but strife and suffering along the path that you have taken. You inherited a great tradition, noble values and a working democracy. Do not leave behind a miserable wreck of all that. It would take a long time to put all that together again.

जो भी बुरा भला है...

जो भी बुरा भला है... अल्लाह जानता है

बन्दे के दिल में क्या है... अल्लाह जानता है

किस्मत के नाम को तो... सब जानते हैं लेकिन

किस्मत में क्या लिखा है... अल्लाह जानता है

नेकी- बदी को अपनी... कितना भी तू छिपाए

अल्लाह को पता है... अल्लाह जानता है

(नेकी- बदी: goodness and evil)

- These are few lines I like very much from a Jagjeet Singh ghazal, from his album Sajda.

P.S.: This link gives the whole ghazal.

CVV No. and Credit Card Security

You are safe till your CVV number falls in the wrong hands. The police have stumbled on a credit card racket in which CVV numbers have been misused.

When the customer gives the card for swiping, the card number comes in the receipt with other details. All the person swiping the card has to remember is the CVV number. In restaurants, there's even enough time to note it down, along with other details like validity period.

Click here to read the report

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Remember to do the following with your Credit card Information:

1. Scratch out to invisibility the CVV number from the credit card. There's absolutely no need to keep the CVV no. on the card. Keep it in your memory, diary or mobile.

2. Don't write the credit card no. and the CVV number at one place.

3. Apply for the password for online usage for your credit card, the extra security measure.

Education

"The primary purpose of a school is to guide the child in her discovery of herself and her world, and to identify and nurture the child’s talents. Just as every seed contains the future tree, each child is born with infinite potential. Imagine a school which sees children as seeds to be nurtured – here the teacher is a gardener who helps to bring out the potential already present in the child. This is very different from the current view which sees the child as clay to be moulded – where the teacher and parents are potters deciding what shape the clay should take. There is an old (and forgotten) Chinese saying, “Give a seed to a potter, and you will get a bonsai.”

-Wipro Chairman Azim Premji, in a Times of India article on Education.

Two Sufi Poems

Peak experiences make a man healthy and only a healthy man can have peak experience. Peak experiences are profound moments of love, understanding, happiness, or rapture, when a person feels more whole, alive, self-sufficient and yet a part of the world, more aware of truth, justice, harmony, goodness, and so o. Self-actualizing people have many such peak experiences. Not only are these his happiest and most thrilling moments, but they are also moments of greatest maturity, individuation, fulfilment - in a word, his healthiest moments. He becomes in these episodes more truly himself, more perfectly actualizing his potentialities, closer to the core of his Being, more fully human.

A musician must make music, an artist must paint, and a poet must write. If these needs are not met, the person feels restlessness, on edge, tense, and lacking something. It is not always clear what a person wants when there is a need for self-actualization. After self actualisation comes transcendence which is to help others find self fulfilment and realize their potential.

-Abraham Maslow.

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The words in the first paragraph above beautifully, though yet not fully, describe the state of the poet in two sufi poems by two great sufi poets, Bulla ki jana main kaun by Bulle Shah, and Naiharwa by Kabeer. These two poems are written in a state of peak-experience, and actually try to describe the state of the poet.

Sufi poetry is surely filled with many more such gems, but these two poems I would say are two of the best of those few I have read till date.

Both these have been sung in recent past by Rabbi and Kailash Kher resp.

घर से बहुत दूर है मस्जिद

घर से बहुत दूर है मस्जिद, चलो यूँ कर लें

किसी रोते हुए बच्चे को हँसाया जाए...

- निदा फाज़ली

निदा फाज़ली साहब जब पाकिस्तान गए और एक मुशायरे में ये शेर पढ़ा तो बकौल उनके "मुशायरा ख़त्म होने के बाद कुछ लम्बी लम्बी दाढियाँ मेरे पास आयीं और घेर कर बोलीं कि आप कहना क्या चाहते हैं... क्या बच्चा मस्जिद से बड़ा हो गया ? मैं बोला कि मुझे ये तो नहीं पता कि मस्जिद बड़ी है या बच्चा, पर इतना ज़रूर जानता हूँ कि मस्जिद को इंसान के हाथों ने बनाया है, और बच्चे को अल्लाह के !"

Unison of minds

He was raised in poetry, and Sufi and classic music. And that’s precisely the reason, he shares “a great rapport with” the likes of Aamir Khan and A.R. Rahman. “When we are together, we don’t discuss the songs of their next film but share our spiritual knowledge, and talk of sur and sangeet, generally.


-From an interview of Prasoon Joshi, a lyricist, poet and adman.

Living a Simple Life

Liked this article sent by a friend, Nitin Varshney...

Heading the other Way - USHA JESUDASAN


Living a simple life like this is not easy. It will not eliminate the complexity of our modern life to which we are all bound to some extent. But if we try, what it will do, is to allow us to live in harmony with all the complexities around us, so that we do not feel fragmented and soulless.

-From the article.

Paintings

A link that has excellent paintings... what I call true art... compared to the paintings of some other 'renowned' artists.

The paintings are just mesmeric... the isometrics of temples/ forts with sun rays create a completely overwhelming effect... and some other paintings have such a beautiful use of colour, they are just awsome!

http://www.ajaygulati.com/

Article on the artist in The Hindu

P.S.: For a while you may not see any painting, the website may take upto 1 minute to show the painting thumbnails. Like the painters, their websites are also sometimes moody, it seems :-)

आवाज़

A R Rahman ने एक बार कहा था की जब कोई artist पूरी सच्चाई और नेक दिली के साथ जीवन जीता है तो वह पवित्रता उसकी कला में भी आ जाती है । ऐसी ही एक creation मुझे, जब भी मैं सुनता हूँ, महसूस होती है music director राम संपत की एल्बम "Sona" । और जिस गाने पर जिस्म रूह को महसूस करने लगता है... "आवाज़" ... उसे गीतकार मुन्ना धीमन ने अपने लिए ही लिखा होगा, क्योंकि commercial चीज़ों के लिए इतने अच्छे गाने नहीं लिखे जा सकते।