Life in India

If you lived in a foreign country for a while and having a regular India trip, then this article is for you. The moment you land, you experience chaos at the airport. All the cars appear to you very small and the traffic extremely unruly. The roads narrow, dusty and people look very poor. You then immediately check if you have taken your shot on time not to get any infection etc. Then you grab the water bottle you purchased at the airport and guzzle some water through your mouth in dis-belief. India will never change. It is the same it used to be 20 years back. But is that right? Barely...

As you stay there for a few days you start getting used to the chaos and the dust. Then everything appears to you normal. If you land in Mumbai you will find your friends house is very clean. More clean than you have ever managed to keep your carpet laden home in USA. You don't feel houses are small because everything is arranged so neatly. Then the door bell rings, doodhwallh comes and delivers milk.After sometimes, kapdawallah comes and takes clothes for ironing. Then phone rings and somebody at the other end asks if you will need any vegetable. Then your friend's wife says "No not today". Then she goes downstairs and gets a bagful of vegetables from the road side vendors just outside the building. You scream in dis-belief "How come you get a bagful of veggies in just 50 rupees"!! Just a dollar for you. Now in your mind you are working on the equation what you get in India and what you loose abroad. You get so much done by people that you have whole lot of time to do the skilled jobs that you are trained for. You just start thinking what your typical working day is.. You get up at 7 A.M, make some tea/coffee then if you can go to the toilet get ready. Then you find the clothes are not ironed, then you press it. Then you quickly grab some ready made crap meant to be breakfast. If you could you try to pack lunch and the leave for work. Night you come back home to discover you have to buy veggies, then you take your car in cold and drive to nearby store that is few miles away and then come back home. You will find dirty dishes in the sink, then you quickly clean some and try to cook. Meanwhile, you can make some tea for yourself. If you have a significant other, then it eases work little bit. But then you end up doing 50% of the entire household work. If you have a kid, then a different story altogether. No breathing time for both of you. Weekends, you clean your house, clean clothes, arrange them, manage to do grocery, invite people over because you are lonely etc. Time passes just like that. On the contrary in India, you get most of your house hold jobs done by people who are efficient in it. You have lots of time to do other things. You can teach your kids, play with them do some reading etc. At what cost? Nothing more than dust and chaos. I can live with it..

In places like Mumbai, you get high speed internet(> 3 MBps - 1.5 Mbps is still considered highspeed in US), gas pipeline, "bai" for 1500 rupees a month and additional Rs 1000 for cloth ironing, gardener etc. So calculating cost of living, apart from your house rent you have all your basic needs including food can be taken care of in 10,000 rupees. The average salary has gone up for a lots of jobs in India. Many people earn atleast 50,000 rupees a month. So, tell me which life will you opt?

clean roads vs Dirty roads
Traffic discipline Vs No traffic discipline
No crowd Vs Lots of crowd
Do all work by yourself Vs Get things done by people
No time for yourself Vs Lots of time for everything else
Food is difficult Vs Food is yummy
Lonely Life Vs People all around you
No Family Vs Family
Nobody cares for you Vs You get lots of love and affection
Whatever you earn pay 45% tax Vs You get lot of tax exemption

Anytime, I will choose B over A. For me spending my precious time doing something that someone else can do and that to that generates job for someone is always welcome by me. The choice is yours after all the life is yours ..

Jai Hind

Social NRIs in USA

There are a lots of Indians all over USA. They usually socialize at different levels. For instance when they are students, post docs, they have their fellow classmates and they visit each other, have simple dinner parties etc. Mostly these parties are very enjoyable, innocent and the participants have no other distraction in life.I consider this to be the best socializing event in somebody's life.

As time passes by and they settle in life they tend to have different types of social groups. These groups usually comprise of spouses and young children. The social gathering usually revolves around their kid's activity - occasionally around themselves. But still this group is kind of OK in terms of socializing.

Few more years passes, kids start going to school, the group dynamism changes slowly. The social activities still revolve around the kids but generally the adults really don't have any social contacts in any true sense. They have by now established themselves in some good jobs, started earning enough money, managed to have a house, started sending their kids to private schools. I have noticed that people(generally adults) in these groups know very little or nothing about each other. They have zero or negative attention span. When one person starts speaking in such a gathering, there are hardly any listeners. The people who are suppose to listen, may be already thinking what "I should be speaking" next instead of listening. They often snatch words from others mouth and drag the topic to something else.

One such group I am part of, where people have known each other for more than 10 years, but still don't know much about each other!! Either they are not interested or they have been focusing on themselves too much. While they tend to know somebody's weak point, but don't usually know their strengths. What are their specializations, what somebody is good at etc. For instance they don't know somebody's surname, where they are from, what are their background etc. I kind of get surprised when they gather around for so many hours together, what they talk? Some people talk politics, some talk about economy, and MANY about somebody's life style!! In Indian population abroad about 90% are there that compete with each other in prosperity contest!! Ladies generally look at what others are wearing, what jewelery somebody has. They tend to ape each other and get the things that will put them in the certain list in their next India trip. They are always kind of very curious to know how much the other person is earning. If they are earning more than them, then they wonder why they are spending less than them and vice versa. People often get judgmental and think that they are better than others in many different ways. Another aspect of such a community is a kind of power struggle. This may sound strange but - its true. There are people who want to prove that "I am more efficient, I know more and I can lead a group better than others". Whatever talent they have or not they tend to display to the the unwilling audience. As a result of which it becomes totally chaotic. Nobody is really there to watch anyone!! All are either in back stage or preparing for the show.One thing I am yet to see is if they help each other in need. Such is the story dearies. If anyone knows anything different I would like to hear your story. Thanks for reading my article.

Blast Rocks Assam

The other day I was having some casual conversation with some of my close friends. They are extremely empathetic towards Muslims and their cause. We had quite a lot of dis - agreement about what is going on in our country and how Muslims are treated etc. Many of my Hindu friends still think that Muslims are ill treated in India. The same thing is written in newspapers and shown in TV. Some international independent agencies also publish reports saying Muslims are not at all treated well in India. Recently I came across a report that said although the percentage of educated Muslims increased the percentage of Muslims employed is going down. Lets see a fact sheet..

Lets go back down the memory lane:

Thousands of years ago, India remained a very peaceful and prosperous country. Then came the Muslim invaders, who attacked India many times over and conquered our country. There were large number of atrocities and many Hindus were forcibly converted into Islam. Many years have passed since then. Hindus have adopted the Muslim culture and they lived in harmony till the British came. just before leaving India, they created rifts and then the country was divided on the basis of religion and there was Pakistan, Bangladesh as Muslim countries. Although India was suppose to be a Hindu nation, it chose to stay as secular -thanks to Gandhi, Nehru and congress.

The handful of Muslims that stayed in India started multiplying at a rapid rate and when they were just 2% of the entire population during independence now they are sitting pretty at 20%. They have managed to get their own shariat law and they are not governed by a common civil code(Thanks to our secularism). In which civilized country that is secular, has such a system? Government has also created special schemes for minority education, minority universities etc. among other countless pro-minority schemes. Still a large proportion of Muslims are poor!! Who is to be blamed for that? Somebody said the other day that Muslims were poor from the beginning so, they continue to be poor still. But, is that a right logic? Most of the Indian Christians were poor when they were converted - but they have managed to come out of it, then why not the Muslims? Poverty lies in the mindsets of Muslims. They believe in having large number of children but don't want to contribute towards their upbringing. They consider the government has the responsibility to raise their children. Does anyone see any logic in them?

Coming to the employment issues, the unemployment is on rise ever since the economic landslide. Then why somebody just publishes on Muslims. It also has happened to Hindus and Christians as well. Even if there is such a thing as Muslims are biased in job selection procedure, then who is to be blamed for that? They have created lack of trust for themselves. Many educated youths having good jobs were involved in terrorist attack, now who will trust them?

Media creates un-necessary reports like Muslim youths are tortured by police and government. I only hope that they had some sympathy towards the innocent people who lost their lives in terrorist attacks. In last 5 years(Again thanks to congress rule), around 1000 innocent people are killed in terrorist attacks. Invariably all the terrorist attacks are by Muslim fundamentalists. I don't understand what makes us still feel sad for these people. When there are some cricket match, these people tend to support Pakistan - and some people ignore this saying that - it is their personal choice. Can we be this liberal? How can we close our eyes to all the violence that is targeted towards innocent people.

The recent bomb blast in Assam tells a thousand tales. How many years we are going to be inert like this? I think time has come that all nationalist join hands to curb such activities on our great nation. Jai Hind..

Gaining "Tempo"

"Gaining a Tempo" has been embedded into all my actions so much so that I am totally perplexed. Finally, today I was trying to analyze the reason behind.

This whole thing dates back to 1987-88-89 when I was in my early teens and was barely out of school( I studied 11th 12th in college), I was into playing chess. Even I won a state championship in one of those years and my photos and interviews flashed in local newspaper. Those days were golden days for me. I would sleep chess, think chess, eat chess and very conveniently studied chess(Needless to mention I ignored my course studies very conveniently). We had a coach(he was a state employee and was teaching chess to kids free of cost) would come to our house once a week and teach us chess. There I learn t this word "tempo". Before that, we used to refer a tempo to an auto rickshaw that is used for transportation. This word suddenly caught my fancy. In chess "Tempo" meant when you have a certain advantage over your opponent by virtue of your move. In other words, the opponent may take one or more moves to neutralize the advantage that you are already having. Many a times a tempo leads to significant advantage and may lead to a piece gain and eventual win..

In my daily life, I keep all my stuff crammed together in a small place keeping the rest of the empty space very empty and un-utilized. I do it thinking that I have a tempo over the space! So, if I get a lots of stuff tomorrow then I don't have to re-arrange everything. This according to me is a tempo. On the other hand my husband will try to evenly scatter everything through the entire available space. This often leads to changing or re-arranging everything very often as we add new things. He would pull the bed to the center of the room, put everything away from wall and cover the whole space.

I also do something like this at work too. I tend to work very hard for a very short period of time keeping the rest of the time as empty as possible. I don't think this is a good habit though..

The first plant that blogs

As weird it may sound, but its true. The first ever living plant that actively blogs is a plant located in a cafe in Japan. The plant is connected to an instrument that records and translates the plants reactions to weather, surroundings etc. Using complex algorithm, the stimuli is converted into words that are directly entered into the blog site.

Here is a link to this video at BBC

Growing vegetable garden

While growing up we always had a kitchen garden. We were never the in charge of the garden but nevertheless were made to water them, weed the garden etc. I had the privilege to watch them grow. In my adult life, until recently I never had opportunity to grow a kitchen garden. Now when I have, I am at complete loss as to how to utilize the resource correctly. Now that the whole responsibility of choosing seeds, checking soil fertility, growing them watering them lies on my shoulder, I feel little bit overwhelmed. This is our first year of growing a vegetable garden and I have done a number of mistakes. Hopefully next year this will not be repeated.

During March/April, I started sowing all the seeds(bhendi, Turai, cucmber, pumpkin, amaranthus, fenugreek, mustard, french beans, beans, tomatoes, poi, karela, egg plant, coriander, pepper mint, mint, chilli pepper, cauliflower, spinach, raddish ) all in a state of frenzy. Although some of them germinated some did not. So, from my experience I would suggest the kitchen gardners to go in the following order:

In March/April:

Sow cucumber, bhendi, Turai, pumpkin, poi and plant them in early May. They are tropical crops and they will start fruiting during June/July/August. depending on your weather condition.

In June/July:

Start sowing tomatoes, egg plant, Karela, french beans, beans, mints, chilli pepper, coriander . These crops take around a week to germinate. Then transfer the plants to their desirable location. Fruits will start coming during early September thorugh October, November.

Late August

Start planting methi, mustard, amaranthus, cauliflower, spinach . Generally they take only about a week time to germinate and most leafy vegetables are available in about 3-4 weeks time.

Applying Fertilizer:
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Its necessary to supplement the soil with the depleted nutrients after each crop cycle. You can start having a compost in one corner of your garden. The dead plants and vegetable peels form the best compost. Try avoiding synthetic manures.

Crop rotation:

Crop rotation has been practiced since time immemorial. The usual crop rotation cycle is to grow a non-leguminous crop followed by a leguminous crop. Legumes are the bean family plants that does nitrogen fixation with the help of a bacteria called Rhizobium. They form root nodules and enrich the soil with Nitrogen.

If you are wondering in your garden how you should rotate then here is a clue. First grown your summer crops(That grows through May/June/July). Follow it by methi, beans etc.

Size of Kitchen garden:

Now you must be wondering how big should be your kitchen garden for a family of 4? For all the climbers/creepers, put them separately near a wall or support. rest of the crops can be grown in an area of 10 X 20 ft. This will be good enough to produce anough for your family. You should have 10 Bhendi plants, 5-6 tomato plants, 10 egg plants, 2 each from Turai ,Karela ,pumpkin,cucumber plants. Grow methi and amaranthus, mustard in an area of 5X7 ft each. You can have 3-4 chilli pepper plants, 1 sq ft. of coriander, 1 sq. ft of mint, 3-4 poi plants, 3X10 ft of cauliflower etc. This will be enough to feed your family for 6 months.

Making Rosogolla

This is one thing I never tried before. Yesterday was Kumar Purnima(The full moon after Dussera). This day is celebrated in Orissa with much fanfare. Often all the kids get new clothes, roam around and get some extra pocket money. When we were growing up - my mom told us in our family we did not have Kumar Purnima, so no new clothes for us this day(I think she tricked us :)). I did not remember celebrating this festival while growing up, but now in grown ups world, I see a lot of enthusiasm about this day. So, bitten by Kumar Purnima bug, I thought let me do something special today that I have not done before. One big challenge seemed like was to make rosogolla. I have heard many horrible stories about this - as how this is very hard to make and it never come out well, it is very time consuming etc etc...So, undeterred by these discouraging remarks I plunged into the foray.

So, here is what I did. I poured half a gallon milk into a pot and put it on stove. I had 3 small lemons. I squeezed all of them, but the entire milk did not seem like breaking. Then I added 2 additional big lemon juice to it. Instantly the milk separated into solid and liquid components. I boiled the whole thing for 5 more minutes, then strained the milk through a porous cheese cloth. Then I tied the cheese inside the cloth and put some heavy weight on it for water to drain put completely. In 4-5 hours all the visible water residues were gone. Then I knead the dough from the cheese. While doing this make sure that it makes a fine dough without any granule dripping out of it. At the same time in a pot I boiled some water and added some sugar and cardamon into it. When the sugar is almost mixed with water, I made small balls out of the dough and put them into the boiling sugar syrup. I allowed it to boil for about 20 minutes. The small balls almost doubled in size.. There you go rasagolla is ready.

Few key points to remember:

1. After making the cheese and before draining water always wash it in water, so that the lemony taste goes away(I did not do it).
2. Try full milk instead of low fat milk.
3. Don't use Ricota cheese for this purpose.
4. Make good dough so that the rosogolla balls don't melt away in water.

I realized one thing very recently is to pressure cook rasagola to make it soft.

I appreciate this types of articles for a change

Daily in Indian news paper I see numerous articles on how Christians were burnt/atrocious acts were done against them , how in Godhra hindu mob kills muslims, how there are caste collision etc. But I wonder in which society such bizarre incidents don't happen? It is about how the media wants to portray things.I have been wondering why the media never speaks the truth. Why they don't have the courage to tell the reason behind such incidents. I wonder if this is a very well planned project to derogate the entire Indian hindu community. Hindus being extremely liberal are just being taken advantage of.If I say whatever I am writing here to my hindu friends, they will defend the action of the media and the politicians. That is just because they are extremely nice and tolerant. All these years I was also not bothering about this. But lately it is looking like the press and the politicians are becoming increasingly anti hindu. What will be the future of our children? They will live in a land where hindus will live in constant fear and as under privileged minorities.This types of things never happen in any country or to any other religion.. This is because we are too tolerant. To give an example - look at the mushrooming yoga classes and the teachings of Patanjali that are being preached by the yoga teachers without even uttering these are parts of hindu philosophy.

Today I came across this very different article published in Express Buzz and I thought to put it in my blog. Very rarely do such such articles appear in any news paper. Enjoy reading..


What made Hindus angry in Karnataka


India Express Buzz
Tuesday, October 07, 2008 10:46 PM IST



François Gautier
First Published : 06 Oct 2008 02:12:00 AM IST
Last Updated : 06 Oct 2008 07:40:54 AM IST

I WAS born in a Catholic family. My uncle was a priest, a wonderful man of warmth and compassion and I spent most my early years in Catholic boarding schools. When I was young I wanted to become a missionary and to ‘convert’ pagans in Asia. What I was taught by priests was that Hindus worship false gods and they needed to be brought back to the True Word by Jesus Christ.

Then of course, I came to India and discovered that actually Hindus, far from being the heathens, as had been portrayed in Europe, not only believed God’s diversity, the wonderful concept of avatar, but had given refuge to all persecuted minorities of the world, whether the Syrian Christians, the Parsis, the Jews (India is the only country in the world where Jews were not persecuted), the Armenians, or today the Tibetans.

I am also aghast at the one-sided coverage by the Indian media of the Christian- Hindu problem: blasts after blasts have killed hundreds of innocent Hindus in Varanasi, Delhi, Mumbai train blasts, Jaipur, etc. Yet, neither Manmohan Singh nor Sonia Gandhi have pronounced once the word ‘Islamic terrorism.’ But when furious Hindus, tired of being made fun of, of witnessing their brothers and sisters converted by financials traps, of seeing a 84-year-old swami and his Mataji brutally murdered, of reading blasphemy about their Gods, vent their anger against churches, many of them makeshifts, the Indian government goes after the soft target which the Hindus are. The same thing applies to the United States: they never warned Muslim organisations in India about the killing of Hindus, but when dollars are used to buy new converts and it angers the majority community of India,Washington has the arrogance to issue a warning, and Manmohan Singh does not have the pride to tell the US to mind its own business.

Neither the Indian press nor the western correspondents bothered to write about what made Hindus angry in Karnataka: Newlife, one important westernfunded missionary centre ( http://www.newlifevoice.org), began making conversions in and around Mangalore by accosting poor people in market areas, or in bus stands, befriending them and then taking them to churches to introduce them to the father.

Upon introduction they were paid Rs 2,500 per person and then taken to the Velankanni shrine, in Tamil Nadu, where they would get another Rs. 3,000.

When they finally converted to Christianity by changing the name, they got an incentive of Rs 10,000 onwards.

Newlife would then give them instructions to abandon wearing tilak on forehead, not to visit and offer prayers at the Hindu temples, replacing the photos and idols of Hindu gods and goddesses with a Cross, etc.

But what really angered local Hindus was when Newlife went one step further and published a book in Kannada — Satya Darshini — which was widely distributed by its missionaries. Here below is the translation of some of the most abusive passages: “Urvashi — the daughter of Lord Vishnu — is a prostitute.

Vashistha is the son of this prostitute.

He in turn married his own Mother. Such a degraded person is the Guru of the Hindu God Rama. (page 48).

When Krishna himself is wallowing in darkness of hell, how can he enlighten others? Since Krishna himself is a shady character, there is a need for us to liberate his misled followers (page 50). It was Brahma himself who kidnapped Sita.

“Since Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva were themselves victims of lust, it is a sin to consider them as Gods. (page 39).

When the Trinity of Hinduism (Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva) are consumed by lust and anger, how can they liberate others? The projection of them as Gods is nothing but a joke. (page 39). God, please liberate the sinful people of India who are worshipping False Gods. (Page 39).” When blasphemy and much worse is brought against the most sacred Hindu Gods, Hindus are supposed to take it meekly as sheep and let themselves be converted to a foreign religion! There are more than 4,000 foreign Christian missionaries involved in conversion activities across different states.

In Tripura, there were no Christians at the time of independence. There are 1,20,000 today, a 90 per cent increase since 1991. The figures are even more striking in Arunachal Pradesh, where there were only 1,710 Christians in 1961, but 1.2 million today, as well as 780 churches! In Andhra Pradesh, churches are coming up every day in far-flung villages and there was even an attempt to set up one near Tirupati.

Christians throughout the ages have strived on the concept of persecution and as a brought up Catholic, I remember feeling bad about all those martyred saints of Christianity. Christians in India like to say that they are only two per cent and can do no harm. But it is a sham: in the Tamil Nadu coastal belt from Chennai to Kanyakumari, there must be now 10 per cent Christians posttsunami and the same may be true in other parts of south India.

My heart goes out to Karnataka Chief Minister BS Yeddyurappa who took a courageous stand against unethical Christian conversions, but is now under pressure from the Centre.

The BJP, having learnt from bitter experience that the Congress has no qualm in invoking President’s rule under fallacious pretexts in states which are ruled by non-Congress governments is in a quandary: it must show some action against militant Hindu groups while remaining true to itself.

This is why Yeddyurappa took some action against Hindu groups while saying that his government will not tolerate forcible conversions and will take stringent action against missionaries involved in conversions.

And ultimately, the blame must fall on Hindus: they are 800 million in India, the overwhelming majority; they have the brains, they have the money and they have the power. But either their intellectual and political class sides with the minorities, out of fear, inferiority complex imbedded by the British or just sheer crass political opportunism, or the bigger mass is indifferent inert, selfish, un-civic conscious. Every Hindu is the inheritor of the only surviving spiritual knowledge which at the moment is under a concerted attack by Christian missionaries, Americanisation, Marxism and Islamic fundamentalism.

Growing Zinnia

Now that I have a yard at my disposal, I keep growing various plants and keep watching them. I am fascinated with plants not just because of my educational background - I simply enjoy gardening.

I have been very fascinated by Zinnia lately because of their color, profuse flowering and summer hardiness. Zinnia belongs to the family of marigold, sunflower where the flowers are assembled into a head or capitulum.


Growing Zinnia can be a very fulfilling experience. Zinnia can be propagated vegetatively by stem cuttings or through seeds. The plant is cross pollinated, so be surprised when you plant seeds the next season. The best season to grow them is during early spring. They continue to flower through hot summer to late fall. Zinnia is mostly disease and pest resistant and needs least maintenance - although now in late fall I see some powdery patches on the leaves. It could be powdery mildew I am not too sure. The plant grows from 12 inches to 48 inches. Sometimes they can grow really tall competing for sunlight. They often have lateral branches, but this can be induced by cutting the apical bud. They occur in varied color, texture and shape. There are some flowers with only a single layer of petals, some with multiple petal layers. Some resemble rose in their shape. The flowers are often brightly colored, showy and occurs in single. The number of flowers per plant can range from few to 40-50 at a time. In order to get best results, take off the old flowers and leaves from the plant as the plant gets older.

A tragedy is a tragedy

On Saturday the 13th Sept 2008, again another tragedy stuck my beloved motherland. There were multiple bomb blasts in New Delhi, the capital city of India - claiming many lives and deforming many others. In this process many innocent little kids lost their parents, grand parents uncles aunts whom they will never see again...

I wonder what someone accomplishes by killing the innocent. Is it on the name of religion? or somebody's satanic desire to see blood bath? I have noticed a pattern in this kind of disasters. Whenever a particular political party is in power this types of tragedy happen more frequently. The vote politics is apparently ruining the very basis of democracy. Ruling parties are scared of implementing stricter rules for the fear of loosing vote bank. Who pays for it? certainly the innocent. The other day I read a news item that said family of one of the suspects in Mumbai train blast were issuing statements from a samajwadi party's MLAs residence. What to make out from this? Someone actually shelters a suspect in a heinous crime - and that person is no one but whom we voted to power.

I think it is time for common people to react and vote out those political powers that are damaging this great country in the name of secularism. They have no trace of nationality inside them, they just act as puppet in the hands of a third party with no commitment towards the safety of this nation.

What we need now is a stricter rule against all anti-national elements and parties. We need to ban all terrorist outfits and impose a stricter common civil code. What are we afraid of in not doing this? For the fear of loosing vote bank?

Jai Hind.

About Writing

When I was growing up, I was wondering what the heck is writing.I had the least respect for the writers. For me then writing would mean sitting down idle and scribbling something meaning less. My father is a poet and he does lots of writing. having a write at home only made things worse for me. I used to dislike the word writing. There were always these essay competitions about many things in school. There I was sitting and wondering why it has to be an essay competition why not a multiple choice test. In our literature exams, there was always at least one essay type question, that needed to have at least 300 words. Oh my gosh that was the horrible part of any question paper for me and it was my weakest mark fetcher. I always wished there was no essay part. In BSc. we had all the questions subject type and that was a big killer. I was freaking out as why everything have to be descriptive.

Now after many years when I sit and think how important it is to put your thoughts into writing, I understand it was not after all a bad idea to train young people into descriptive writing. Now success and failure is determined by your inbuilt ability to be able to write. A good writer convinces grant agencies to trust them to give money. Similarly, a well written paper gets the nod of a reviewer and makes into a good journal. On the other hand if you have great ideas but don't know how to put it down into "convincing" words then you are doomed to be un-successful. Be it academics or industry.

I find blogging is a very interesting concept. Now I am myself into blogging. Its so cool. You can just write about anything. Its like writing your own news paper column without the need to be reviewed. When personal communication is so limited these days, I find blogging is a great way to let yourself heard. So in the end I would say everything boils down into effective communication through writing..

How about counting age by month

August 22nd is my Birthday. While I was celebrating my birthday and a thought crossed my mind. I was just 35 years old last night and have been 35 for a whole year and how all of a sudden now in few hours I will be 36? Do we age like that? certainly not. We age by every second. Of course we can't increment our age by every second or every minute for record keeping sake, but we certainly can make it every month? So, from now on, anyone who is 5 years old will be called as 60 month old and a 36 year old will be 36 X 10 + 36 X 2 = 360 + 72 = 432 months. Lets keep life expectancy as 100 years for common people then we live no longer than 1200 months!! This number is not a great number that we can't administer. I am looking forward to this form of age counter!!

Things Just happen Spontaneously

The other day I was looking at my bathroom window and found a lots of cracks. I thought may be this is light reflection, but it was not. It was indeed a big window crash!! I thought may be somebody hit it with a stone from outside. So we went out to check - but there was another layer of glass window outside that was intact without a scratch. So what could have caused it? I was surprised and was anyway thinking of calling our builder. Since we are living in a new house we are very privileged to have warranty services courtesy DR Horton. As I am a very lazy person and I never find phone numbers/addresses from the file, I have been telling my husband to keep DR Horton phone number on my table so that I can call. And as usual he forgets. So, today I was going to ask him before he left for work to search for the number, but again I forgot...
I was in the bathroom a few minutes back and there was a knock on the door and I just ignored thought some sales guy. Then there was this calling bell ringing and an irritated me reluctantly came to open the door and there he was!! The person from DR Horton office. He just was passing by and thought to check how we are doing. Viola all my problems are in wrapper now. He just inspected and left and gave me his card, so that I can send him an email to open the ticket. Very convenient for me. I just noticed this many times over, whenever I need something badly it just happens spontaneously. Is someone watching me over?

Our experience with Corruption...

Those who live in India must have faced corruption at some point of time or other. I lived in India for the first 30 years of my life before coming to the US. But I am very proud to say that I never had to pay a single bribe to anyone neither did my husband. As were talking over tea table today about who is responsible for corruption? Is it the system, the society, the corrupt employees? No the answer almost always is we..

We are always in hurry. We go to a govt. office and find out that our file has not moved and the clerk concerned is least bothered to do anything unless we pay him/her bribe. What to do in that situation? Just take some more pain, keep going to him more than once and force him to do your job without paying anything. This is a small price that we can pay to prevent corruption at a lower level. The other day we went to the income tax office and there was this attendant whose job is to photocopy documents. My husband approached him, but he just pretended as though he did not hear him. The intention was give me money, I will do photocopy. My husband went downstairs and got it copied outside. That's it. Similarly there was another instance. There was a guy going on the road and cops caught him because he broke some traffic rules. When they asked him to produce his document, he could not because he had no document. Then he was fined some 350 rupees which he refused to pay and instead offered the cop can you take 100 rupees instead and let me go. So who do we blame now.

We often say this is a free country and we will do what we like. But there are certain things like law and order and we have to abide by it.

A Tribute to my beloved motherland

Today is the 61st Independence day of India and I feel very proud to be an Indian. This is regardless of any amount of negative publicity, corrupt politicians, bad infrastructure just to name a few.. I feel vary proud of our history, the great people that were born in this land and the great epics we have produced. Indian civilization is older than 5000 years - and in this 5000 years old history we as a nation have never invaded another country, stolen any body's property or imposed our religion on others. We are peaceful and tolerant people who have allowed cultural invasion from time to time.By 1000 BCE, when Europeans were still living in mud and beating each other with clubs, Indian doctors used the principles of ayurveda to drain fluids, sew wounds, remove kidney stones and even perform cosmetic surgery.

I am proud to be a Hindu as well. For me being hindu just does not mean embracing a religion. Its much more deeper than that. Its all about leading the life in a certain way, to love this motherland and to behave responsibly . Our culture is so full of science, only some of them have been unraveled very recently and lot more yet to be proved in many more years to come through expansive research.

I feel proud of the educational system we have, the great work force, the great potential our country has. We just need to have an unified effort to let the best come out of people than to keep focusing on the negative points.

What I am not particularly proud of is: many of us choose to stay away from our country and being away we just tend to see all that is not well about this country and feel happy and safe that we are not in the same shoes as are other Indians. Another disturbing trend I found with our fellow Indians abroad is the rush to shed their Indian ness from themselves so that they can blend into another developed society. Although these are some of my frustrations, I am very hopeful for a developed prosperous India, where there are no poverty, no corruption, no division on the basis of religion, caste, there are happy law abiding citizens that are ready to help each other. Lets contribute towards the growth of this country by putting our 2 cents such as
* Not paying bribe to get our job done quickly
* Follow the rules and regulations
* Try and educate one family in need
* Try to change lives of 2 children
* Try planting some trees
Jai Hind..

Living Viruses!!

I came across a very interesting article in Nature News that says "'Virophage' suggests viruses are alive"..

For starters viruses are defined as infectious particle with genetic material wrapped with a protective protein cover. They have no machinery to sustain life like activities unless they invade a host cell. They eventually take over the host cell and start making copies of their genome quickly and breakout of the host cell to invade fresh cells.

Interestingly the virophage is called as 'sputnik' based on the name of the man made satellite. The giant virus that is sickened by this virophage is a giant virus named 'Acanthamoeba polyphaga' mimivirus(for mimicking microbe). This virus crossed the bounadary between the viruses and cellular organisms. Another strain of this virus was isolated from the cooling tower in Paris called as 'mamavirus' because it seemed slightly larger than mimivirus.

Mamavirus when infects its host amoeba it produces viral particles using the host machinary like a factory. But when these mamavirus is coinfected with the satellite virus it produces less virulent deformed viral particles something similar to a sick viral particle. This phenomenon has drawn considerable attention currently that a virus can co-infect another virus.

Water our life

When I read some email forwards that say in another 50 years there will be very little potable water - that breaks my heart. Is this really going to happen .. may be.. who knows. Lets look at our habits that contributes to a great extent for such a future. Knowingly or unknowingly we open the tap while brushing teeth. While washing anything on the kitchen tap we keep the water running while doing other stuff. We spend longer time in the bathroom either letting the shower flow or soaking ourselves in the luxurious tubs. These habits waste 80% of the water that we are using everyday. Lets do little bit of maths. There are 6 billion people and if everyone just utilizes only 20% of the water that is given to them in a year we waste as much water as we may use in coming 4 years. So, in our entire life time we consume water that another 4 generations could have happily used!! That is simply disgusting.

Lets do the following:

1. Open the tap in the bathroom only when you need to wash your brush or mouth, then close it immediately.
2. Wash dishes or vegetables in a container and re-use the water if necessary.
3. Plant at least few trees in a year.
4. Don't let grass grow on your front yard/backyard in the entire area, instead grow vegetables, fruit plants, flowering plants and water them regularly.
5. Instead of letting the water flow, drink as much water as possible.
6. Take bath in a bucket or two of water.
Always think while using water as though you were to carry water from a long distance from a very deep well, that will automatically put a stop on your water usage.