Friday, April 04, 2008
Friday, October 19, 2007
WHY WAIT
WHY WAIT
Why does a person wait before “giving” of himself?
Why can’t he make a loving gesture, or act on his own?
Does he always have to weigh what he gets with what he gives
Before he decides to give?
Is life just one long business deal
Of taking first and giving later,
Giving only as much as one receives,
Never giving more than what one gets?
Are we so lacking in generosity,
Of thought word and deed that we only
Give as good as we get never waiting to see
If we can make the recipient happier than he has made us?
Where is the human kindness within us
To think of giving more of ourselves than is necessary,
Be it in the form of material goods, physical exertion
Or even emotionally, by being loyal, dedicated and loving?
Haven’t we heard the maxims –
If you give, you get back with interest?
Or the one that says – You reap as you Sow.
If so why don’t we follow what we preach?
How many of us have made an extra effort
To make people feel loved and thus happy?
To go that extra mile and accommodate
More than what we can in our limited time.
Why then do we expect the Lord to give
And give and give, getting nothing in return
Except what we so selfishly offer
With ulterior motives, only when in need?
Why wait till then, why not start giving now?
To our family, to our friends, our associates at work
To our loved ones who need us more
And above all to the Lord, who gives so selflessly.
Why does a person wait before “giving” of himself?
Why can’t he make a loving gesture, or act on his own?
Does he always have to weigh what he gets with what he gives
Before he decides to give?
Is life just one long business deal
Of taking first and giving later,
Giving only as much as one receives,
Never giving more than what one gets?
Are we so lacking in generosity,
Of thought word and deed that we only
Give as good as we get never waiting to see
If we can make the recipient happier than he has made us?
Where is the human kindness within us
To think of giving more of ourselves than is necessary,
Be it in the form of material goods, physical exertion
Or even emotionally, by being loyal, dedicated and loving?
Haven’t we heard the maxims –
If you give, you get back with interest?
Or the one that says – You reap as you Sow.
If so why don’t we follow what we preach?
How many of us have made an extra effort
To make people feel loved and thus happy?
To go that extra mile and accommodate
More than what we can in our limited time.
Why then do we expect the Lord to give
And give and give, getting nothing in return
Except what we so selfishly offer
With ulterior motives, only when in need?
Why wait till then, why not start giving now?
To our family, to our friends, our associates at work
To our loved ones who need us more
And above all to the Lord, who gives so selflessly.
Kohinoor
DO YOU THINK A WORKING WOMAN IS MORE EMPOWERED THAN A HOME MAKER
Dear Reader,
Simple Logic and Mathematics tell us that 1+1=2, which means 2>1. Right?
Therefore you must agree with this equation as well:-
Home Maker + Working Woman = One Greatly Empowered Woman.
Which means she is 2-in-1.
Here, we are presuming that the Working Woman is indeed a married woman. If, however, she is not, then the equation may not always be true. But let us continue with our original presumption and analyze the situation.
Our typical home maker, is a Great manager. She is a past master in Time Management, juggling various chores all at once, keeping schedules, meeting deadlines, and turning out her best in every aspect of home and public life. There is no question of her compromising on quality, ever. How could you even entertain such negative thoughts?!!! Money Management like budgeting, planning for long term goals and meeting short term goals, are a matter of baayein haath ka khel for her, (if I may borrow from our National Language). Her husband will vouch for this! As for Human Resource Management, do you need to ask? Only she knows, how she manages to get the best out of her husband, children and domestic help, when the need arises, without ever letting any of them know what she is about. No mere workingwoman can top that! She is a Jack-of-all-Arts and trades. Just give her a chance and she can cook, clean, wash, sew, knit, paint, teach, play, sing, dance, play-act, direct, design, counsel, judge, charm, entertain, garden, sculpt, make handicrafts, plan, invest, execute, and manage all these and more, beautifully.
In short we have a Wonder Woman on our hands.
Now imagine, when we make her into a working woman as well, we are taking this highly talented woman and putting her in a field where she competes with men as well as other women and comes out on top. You may ask me why. The answer is simple, she is already a whole lot of women rolled into one, and now the exposure she gets from being in a commercial environment, broadens her horizon beyond imagination. Now she is more knowledgeable of the Outside World. She learns the intricacies of how any business is run. She puts in all her self-taught Principles of Management into action and she is the Boss’s first choice when there is a promotion to be given. She earns her own living and can be economically independent if she desires. She now has more facets to her personality than before. She has the power! The power to hold her own against all human beings, be they men or woman, rich or poor, young or old, Indian or International. What more can you expect of such an empowered woman, but to shine like a well cut diamond – The Kohinoor, no less!!!
Dear Reader,
Simple Logic and Mathematics tell us that 1+1=2, which means 2>1. Right?
Therefore you must agree with this equation as well:-
Home Maker + Working Woman = One Greatly Empowered Woman.
Which means she is 2-in-1.
Here, we are presuming that the Working Woman is indeed a married woman. If, however, she is not, then the equation may not always be true. But let us continue with our original presumption and analyze the situation.
Our typical home maker, is a Great manager. She is a past master in Time Management, juggling various chores all at once, keeping schedules, meeting deadlines, and turning out her best in every aspect of home and public life. There is no question of her compromising on quality, ever. How could you even entertain such negative thoughts?!!! Money Management like budgeting, planning for long term goals and meeting short term goals, are a matter of baayein haath ka khel for her, (if I may borrow from our National Language). Her husband will vouch for this! As for Human Resource Management, do you need to ask? Only she knows, how she manages to get the best out of her husband, children and domestic help, when the need arises, without ever letting any of them know what she is about. No mere workingwoman can top that! She is a Jack-of-all-Arts and trades. Just give her a chance and she can cook, clean, wash, sew, knit, paint, teach, play, sing, dance, play-act, direct, design, counsel, judge, charm, entertain, garden, sculpt, make handicrafts, plan, invest, execute, and manage all these and more, beautifully.
In short we have a Wonder Woman on our hands.
Now imagine, when we make her into a working woman as well, we are taking this highly talented woman and putting her in a field where she competes with men as well as other women and comes out on top. You may ask me why. The answer is simple, she is already a whole lot of women rolled into one, and now the exposure she gets from being in a commercial environment, broadens her horizon beyond imagination. Now she is more knowledgeable of the Outside World. She learns the intricacies of how any business is run. She puts in all her self-taught Principles of Management into action and she is the Boss’s first choice when there is a promotion to be given. She earns her own living and can be economically independent if she desires. She now has more facets to her personality than before. She has the power! The power to hold her own against all human beings, be they men or woman, rich or poor, young or old, Indian or International. What more can you expect of such an empowered woman, but to shine like a well cut diamond – The Kohinoor, no less!!!
Saturday, October 13, 2007
Wednesday, December 06, 2006
GENDER FINDERS
Gender Finder – 1: My dad used to always refer to certain fried sweets/snacks as “gender finders” if they turned out to be too hard to bite into and thus if they could be broken with the teeth they had found out the gender of the eater – masculine gender. This was when I was a little kid and had extremely strong teeth till the age of 19-20 at which time, sadly, I had to go in for braces and my teeth lost all their strength. My teeth were indeed the strongest and like little babies who are teething, I always had a craving for something or the other to nibble at. I always chose, hard nuts, hard snacks, flat, puris which didn’t puff up and were discarded by all others in the house, and hard, sagging tandoori rotis which give me great pleasure in the challenge of breaking them apart. With my teeth of course, what elseJ! I still love to nibble but the weakened teeth have reduced the range of hard foods that I can manage to break. In fact, it was because of this nibbling habit of mine that I earned the name of rat/squirrel/monkey in school. Thus, I always used to be considered a boy by my dad because of this and my general tomboyish qualities of playing all the boys’ games along with my two younger brothers. Those two were just a couple of years younger to me so we were pretty close.
Gender Finder – 2: Now unlike my father, I used to do a different kind of gender finding. As we all know, in the English language, there are three clear genders – Masculine, Feminine and Neuter. Even in Sanskrit we have 3 genders – Masculine - pulling, Feminine - streeling and Neuter - napunsakling. But in Hindi, our national language, we have just two genders, Masculine and Feminine, which are assigned to all things living and inanimate. When they are living things, it is easy enough to find out the gender, but when it comes to inanimate objects, there is just no logic, rule or any other type of guideline one can follow to identify if the said object is male or female.
I have always thought my grammar to be strong in all the three languages mentioned above, but Hindi gender finding was too tough. My friends used to find my mistakes funny and my teachers used to think my Hindi wasn’t good enough and even suggested I go in for some special coaching. I used to try and ask friends how they identified the gender of a, b, c, and so on, but got know proper answers. Most of them spoke Hindi as it was their mother tongue. If only there were that many inanimate objects in the world as there are alphabets in the English language, then I would have mastered the gender-finder art to perfection. So I started devising other ways by listening to people talk and learn from their conversation whether a book was female or a cup was male and so on. But there again I found, not all the people I spoke to were speaking correct language all the time, just as not all of us can spell words correctly all the time despite being well-educated.
Then I hit upon a brilliant idea which worked for me – Hindi movie names and movie song lyrics. Wow! Wish I had thought of it earlier, I could’ve been spared a lot of embarrassment and tension. But never mind, better late than never! I figured that when the movie producers named their movies or when the song writers did their writing, they would definitely have consulted either a dictionary/thesaurus or at least a Hindi pundit.
So they became my Dictionary/Thesaurus and helped me find genders correctly. Well most of the time! Now, whenever I have to speak in Hindi where correct language matters, I just quickly browse through my mental database of song lyrics and movie names and hit upon the correct gender 99% of the time. I now know that it is meri kahaani (my story), so that makes kahani (story) feminine, tera kasoor (your fault), kasoor (fault) is male and so on.
Gender Finder – 3: Having learnt all this myself, I tried to teach my little school-going daughter some of the ways of identifying gender in Hindi, while explaining to her that English and Sanskrit have 3 genders, but Hindi has only 2 genders. There is no napunsakling in the Hindi language. Naturally she believed me, she believed her school teachers and she believed her text books which reiterated all that I had said.
One day she came running to me on her return from school and said “Mummy, you know what?” I asked “What?” She said, “You were wrong, there IS a napunsakling in Hindi too.” I said “No, there isn’t” and started going over everything once again with her, reminding her that the textbooks or her teachers couldn’t be wrong too. She looked at me thoughtfully for a while, with her cute, innocent but intelligent eyes and said, “Then why did our PT sir, say that the Govt. was behaving like a napunsak about the recent release of terrorists from jail in exchange for hostages?” I was clean bowled and effectively rendered speechless.
Gender Finder – 2: Now unlike my father, I used to do a different kind of gender finding. As we all know, in the English language, there are three clear genders – Masculine, Feminine and Neuter. Even in Sanskrit we have 3 genders – Masculine - pulling, Feminine - streeling and Neuter - napunsakling. But in Hindi, our national language, we have just two genders, Masculine and Feminine, which are assigned to all things living and inanimate. When they are living things, it is easy enough to find out the gender, but when it comes to inanimate objects, there is just no logic, rule or any other type of guideline one can follow to identify if the said object is male or female.
I have always thought my grammar to be strong in all the three languages mentioned above, but Hindi gender finding was too tough. My friends used to find my mistakes funny and my teachers used to think my Hindi wasn’t good enough and even suggested I go in for some special coaching. I used to try and ask friends how they identified the gender of a, b, c, and so on, but got know proper answers. Most of them spoke Hindi as it was their mother tongue. If only there were that many inanimate objects in the world as there are alphabets in the English language, then I would have mastered the gender-finder art to perfection. So I started devising other ways by listening to people talk and learn from their conversation whether a book was female or a cup was male and so on. But there again I found, not all the people I spoke to were speaking correct language all the time, just as not all of us can spell words correctly all the time despite being well-educated.
Then I hit upon a brilliant idea which worked for me – Hindi movie names and movie song lyrics. Wow! Wish I had thought of it earlier, I could’ve been spared a lot of embarrassment and tension. But never mind, better late than never! I figured that when the movie producers named their movies or when the song writers did their writing, they would definitely have consulted either a dictionary/thesaurus or at least a Hindi pundit.
So they became my Dictionary/Thesaurus and helped me find genders correctly. Well most of the time! Now, whenever I have to speak in Hindi where correct language matters, I just quickly browse through my mental database of song lyrics and movie names and hit upon the correct gender 99% of the time. I now know that it is meri kahaani (my story), so that makes kahani (story) feminine, tera kasoor (your fault), kasoor (fault) is male and so on.
Gender Finder – 3: Having learnt all this myself, I tried to teach my little school-going daughter some of the ways of identifying gender in Hindi, while explaining to her that English and Sanskrit have 3 genders, but Hindi has only 2 genders. There is no napunsakling in the Hindi language. Naturally she believed me, she believed her school teachers and she believed her text books which reiterated all that I had said.
One day she came running to me on her return from school and said “Mummy, you know what?” I asked “What?” She said, “You were wrong, there IS a napunsakling in Hindi too.” I said “No, there isn’t” and started going over everything once again with her, reminding her that the textbooks or her teachers couldn’t be wrong too. She looked at me thoughtfully for a while, with her cute, innocent but intelligent eyes and said, “Then why did our PT sir, say that the Govt. was behaving like a napunsak about the recent release of terrorists from jail in exchange for hostages?” I was clean bowled and effectively rendered speechless.
Tuesday, November 07, 2006
My Music@Jo.com
Logical Derivation: When Shakespeare said “If music be the food of love, play on” he was making a statement to the effect that Music is a type of food. So the natural corollary of this would be that, “One man’s food is another man’s poison.” In other words, what is music to one’s ears is noise to another’s. I’m sure most people would agree to this piece of logic.
Words vs. Tune: In music either people like the words, or the tune, or both. In my opinion, if you want to appreciate the words, it should be read like poetry, with the mind lingering on each line and then re-read it to digest the beauty of the words, the sentiments expressed therein and the total impact of the poem. But what really touches the heart is the melody of the tune, the soul stirring notes, the way it unwittingly brings out emotions that you never even knew you possessed. If the tune is not appealing to the senses, one may not even pay attention to the words, however good they may be. Try putting a tune to your favorite poetry and see whether you like the effect. If the tune is nice and you are good enough at composing lovely music, then you will enjoy it but otherwise, the beauty of the words is lost. Words are limited in their appeal as they can reach out to only those who understand that particular language. Translations totally ruin the effect. Several times I have loved the lyrics of certain songs, but I would have heard them only after the song was played several times. At such times I wish they had better tunes and I even feel like trying my hand at composing them ;-). Maybe I will one day.
Definition: I would therefore like to define music as - Tunes that soothe the mind, stir the emotions, excite the senses and get that adrenaline flowing. Tunes reflect every mood in existence and that’s why it is easier to identify oneself with almost all types of tunes. There are lilting tunes, hip-hop tunes, racy tunes, rap tunes, soulful haunting melodies or sensual numbers. Some tunes scintillate, others are humorous, some are so terrible, you wonder at the guts of the composer to give us such trash. For a true music lover like me, all types of music are enjoyable as long as the tunes are great. My taste in music moves with the times, while never forgetting the golden oldies. I pride myself in not being biased towards new fangled music, or to turning a deaf ear to what good or brilliant. Why do we enjoy the tunes and rhythm of the African drums, or the chanting tones of religious verses, whatever be the language? The answer is right in front of us – Music knows no language, it is the language of the heart and an expression of art. It acts as a bond between people and connects all races and cultures across the world. Folk music across the world is so well received despite it being very elementary in its compositions and musical value. No language can mar a lovely tune, but badly composed tunes with great lyrics are bound to be disastrous. I am reminded here of one particular line which has inspired me a lot. I think it was from a song by Neil Diamond (please correct me if I am wrong). It went something like this –“…you are the sun, I am the moon, you are the words, I am the tune, Play.”
Words vs. Tune: In music either people like the words, or the tune, or both. In my opinion, if you want to appreciate the words, it should be read like poetry, with the mind lingering on each line and then re-read it to digest the beauty of the words, the sentiments expressed therein and the total impact of the poem. But what really touches the heart is the melody of the tune, the soul stirring notes, the way it unwittingly brings out emotions that you never even knew you possessed. If the tune is not appealing to the senses, one may not even pay attention to the words, however good they may be. Try putting a tune to your favorite poetry and see whether you like the effect. If the tune is nice and you are good enough at composing lovely music, then you will enjoy it but otherwise, the beauty of the words is lost. Words are limited in their appeal as they can reach out to only those who understand that particular language. Translations totally ruin the effect. Several times I have loved the lyrics of certain songs, but I would have heard them only after the song was played several times. At such times I wish they had better tunes and I even feel like trying my hand at composing them ;-). Maybe I will one day.
Definition: I would therefore like to define music as - Tunes that soothe the mind, stir the emotions, excite the senses and get that adrenaline flowing. Tunes reflect every mood in existence and that’s why it is easier to identify oneself with almost all types of tunes. There are lilting tunes, hip-hop tunes, racy tunes, rap tunes, soulful haunting melodies or sensual numbers. Some tunes scintillate, others are humorous, some are so terrible, you wonder at the guts of the composer to give us such trash. For a true music lover like me, all types of music are enjoyable as long as the tunes are great. My taste in music moves with the times, while never forgetting the golden oldies. I pride myself in not being biased towards new fangled music, or to turning a deaf ear to what good or brilliant. Why do we enjoy the tunes and rhythm of the African drums, or the chanting tones of religious verses, whatever be the language? The answer is right in front of us – Music knows no language, it is the language of the heart and an expression of art. It acts as a bond between people and connects all races and cultures across the world. Folk music across the world is so well received despite it being very elementary in its compositions and musical value. No language can mar a lovely tune, but badly composed tunes with great lyrics are bound to be disastrous. I am reminded here of one particular line which has inspired me a lot. I think it was from a song by Neil Diamond (please correct me if I am wrong). It went something like this –“…you are the sun, I am the moon, you are the words, I am the tune, Play.”
Does Cashew Really Slim the Waist?
I remember reading an article about 10 years ago, which swore "Cashew Slims the Waist" :-). However no mention was made of whether that cashew had to be raw or roasted and/or salted as well (We are not talking here about honeyed or caramelized Cashew nuts, 'cause I doubt if those will ever slim the waist - LOL). Nevertheless I would like to believe what the article said and hope that it is true.
Recently I went on a binge of roasted salted cashew nuts myself. While I cannot say if they did anything to my waist, I do know that they didn't go waste. They gave me a high. I savored every exquisite nut because of the perfect quality of roasting and the proportion of salt, which was just what my taste buds ordered. I used to eat so many at a time that invariably the only way to stop eating them was when the tongue started getting ulcers due to the high salt content. Not one to give up easily, I tried slowing down the rate of intake, but not quite the amount!! That way, you see, I would be able to allow the salt from the first couple of nuts, to be washed away by the natural juices of the mouth and then I could continue with my binging.
After ploughing through a whole kilogram of such nuts I called it a day, (not that my craving had gone or that I was totally satiated). But a few days later, I had another attack of what is known as the Meniere's syndrome. This had returned to me after a gap of more than two years. I read up all I could on it and found that it gets aggravated with high salt intake. I can only put it down to the recent binging on those oh so exquisitely salty, roasted cashew nuts. Well waist or no waist, I am not going to allow my body to waste away if I can help it. So perhaps the next time I want to think of slimming my waist through cashew nut intake, I should think of the raw, unsalted ones. Now I’m sure you are thinking that I am truly Going Nuts!!!
Recently I went on a binge of roasted salted cashew nuts myself. While I cannot say if they did anything to my waist, I do know that they didn't go waste. They gave me a high. I savored every exquisite nut because of the perfect quality of roasting and the proportion of salt, which was just what my taste buds ordered. I used to eat so many at a time that invariably the only way to stop eating them was when the tongue started getting ulcers due to the high salt content. Not one to give up easily, I tried slowing down the rate of intake, but not quite the amount!! That way, you see, I would be able to allow the salt from the first couple of nuts, to be washed away by the natural juices of the mouth and then I could continue with my binging.
After ploughing through a whole kilogram of such nuts I called it a day, (not that my craving had gone or that I was totally satiated). But a few days later, I had another attack of what is known as the Meniere's syndrome. This had returned to me after a gap of more than two years. I read up all I could on it and found that it gets aggravated with high salt intake. I can only put it down to the recent binging on those oh so exquisitely salty, roasted cashew nuts. Well waist or no waist, I am not going to allow my body to waste away if I can help it. So perhaps the next time I want to think of slimming my waist through cashew nut intake, I should think of the raw, unsalted ones. Now I’m sure you are thinking that I am truly Going Nuts!!!
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