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.