Scribblings from Life

 

Hi Everyone,

Wishing you all a very Happy Republic Day !

I was just surfing around to see some history about India and some facts. I thought it was indeed something which was nice to share. I think every Indian should be aware of these facts.

• Do we know that the Indian National Flag’s designer is Pingali Venkayya ?
• Do we know that in 1904, Sister Nivedita an Irish disciple of Swami Vivekananda was the first to unfurl the first flag for India which was later called sister Nivedita Flag ?
• Do we know that the music of the current version of “Jana Gana mana” is derived from the composition by “Ram singh thakur” ?
• Do we know that the scientific name of Peacock (Our National Bird) is “Pava Cristatus”
• Enjoy peacock you tube video at Peacock calling
• Tigers are located mostly in eastern and southern Asia

• Do we know that apart from India, Tiger is a national animal for Bangladesh, North Korea, South Korea and Malaysia.
• Do we know that “Banyan” is our National tree ?

I remember when we were in school we use to get some essay writing exercises and one of the topics in there was something like this.

Write an essay on “A day at the Garden”, “An evening in the Garden”.

We had a chance to actually spend an evening at the Empress Garden yesterday and I remember those school days. I thought of scribbling my experiences.

Seriously there is dirth of good Garden in this modern times. Empress Garden located near Race course in Pune hosted a flower exhibition and I can tell you it was truly an experience.

The entrance was well decorated and there were all wild animals (don’t worry they were just the statues) waiting to welcome all the guests. The little ones just freaked out looking at their favorite Elephant, Lion, Zebra and all.

The Garden was completely filled up with all different kinds of flowers and ferns. They were placed at different locations in such a decorative manner that you simply will fall in love.

There were different kinds of competition which were held at the venue. There were artists who showed flower arrangements in Japanese style “Ikebana” . Oh ! it was so cool and looked awesome !

There were quite a few stores which were showing their flowery exhibits and selling seeds and buds.

Different kinds of water fountains added to the beauty of flowers to give it a experience of its kind.

The kids had so much fun at the various outdoor playing instruments that they chilled out.

All in all the day in proximity to nature was indeed quite refreshing experience.

I use to go to the Garden for morning walk. I use to meet and see lots of people there. Today also ,as always, I went for walk in the garden and I saw the same routine there. People were talking on the mobiles, doing physical excersises, resting after a heavy workout and some were just chit-chatting.

 

But in all of that, I saw someone who was looking very different among all of them and looked gloomed. I went to him and asked, Excuse me ! Can i ask u who are you ? and why are you so sad ?

 

Her reply plesantly surprise me. She said I am Nature. I asked but why are you so sad ?  

 

She said God has sent me here to teach you some vauable lessons of life. And the problem is everyone is busy and nobody is looking at me. Do you know why ?  Because I am a free gift from God. And people generally think that anything which is free has no value. But that is not true. Although I am free I am precious.

 

I asked, how ?

 

She replied come closer to me and observe each and every thing that I carry and the things i do and then relate them with your life. you will start learning many things about your life.

 

I said ok, let me try.

 

I went close to nature and I can tell you I learned many valuable lessons of my life. Do you want to know what were they ?

She says I bestow you with colorful flowers and beautiful birds. Nature thus teaches us to enjoy the colors of life, decorate our lives with pleasures enjoy everything that God has given us for enjoyment in form of music, dance, art, work and much more

 

She says I change myself in form of seasons. It thus advices us to adopt ourselves to the changes that occur around us. It advices us to make our surrounding more beautiful with our presence.

She says, I stand firmly even in earthquaqes and famines. It teaches us to empower ourselves to fight and to be able to believe in our strenghts instead of foul cry.

 

She says I believe in being regular. Sun rises and sets at a given time. She therefore teaches us the importance of discipline and timeliness in life.

 

These are some of my observations with my meeting with Nature. I would love to hear everyone’s observations with dear nature and their learnings. You can easily write comments to this and send me your view points and your observations. Let us make this list exhaustive enough that mother nature gets smile back on her face

Watched Taare Zameen Par yesterday. I could not stop myself writing a review for the film after watching it. Simply fabulous work by Aamir. He again proved that he is an actor, director and more importantly a human being destined to make a difference.

I almost like everything in the movie. The concept to begin with was awesome. The acting, direction, photography, music everything was truly phenomenal.

It also made me happy to think that India is changing and changing for good. More and more people are not heading out for all the good causes. India needs a lot more of this and as fast as possible.

The scene in the movie where aamir asks Ishaan’s dad to read in chinese and again the scene where his dad comes to him to tell him that Ishaan’s mom read everything about the disease on the internet were really touching.

With increasingly competitive world that we live in today, the need of an hour is to realize the importance of creativity and make all attempts to nurture it. It is just creativity and innovation which will help any developing nation like India to make a mark in the world and not the flowing dollars. Of course flowing dollars will help, however we should not forget that in doing so if we just forget the basics, we will soon face talent shortage like many other nations today.

For e.g. look at the science and commerce graduates today. The number of such graduates is decreasing significantly. Also the number of graduates doing work which suites their profile lacks more significantly.

Look at the quality of overall education. It is degrading day by day in lack of good teachers. Schools have started becoming an institution of making money leading to students not getting base knowledge and moral values which are much more important than making money.

We are now in a race of making money and losing moral. Let us all think, act and do something to change this so that the rich India and Indian culture remains intact.

-H

I was in the US for a project. I had a chance to visit a small park at Sunnyvale during my visit there. While I was sitting with my friend’s 2 year old, there were a lot of other kids enjoying the bright sunny morning. 

There was this small girl of around 2 yrs sitting next to us. The girl was there with his grand-pa. She was enjoying playing in the sand. She had a small kit and she was playing with sand and water making things. 

After a while, her mom, came to pick her up. She was in the parking lot The girl was overjoyed. She was preparing something out of sand. Till then I did not know what was she making. However after a while she herself told me (I was just sitting near to her) that she was preparing a cake for her mom. She was so happy to see her mom here now that her cake was ready. She also had a small stick as candle for her to blow. 

Then came her hurried mom. She came running at her child. I was happy to see, that her mom also so anxious to meet her daughter. However soon I realized that the anxiety is for something else. For the mom, the car was parked in a non-parking zone and she was very worried for the car to be toed away.

She came running at the kid, who was so eager to tell her mom that she made her a b’day cake. The mom, listened to her, quickly, got some smile to please the kid. The kid then asked her mom, to blow and candle and eat the cake and what not. However the mom had the car totally controlling her mind and so she quickly spilled off the mud, got the kid clean and ran away.

The story ends here. I am not writing any conclusions. This is left to everyone’s interpretation.

 

Every day I get out of my home on pune roads, and every day I wish to write this blog. So finally here it comes. I saw a couple of times in the daily news that pune is short of traffic cops and the administration was assuring all attempts to find out ways to cope with these shortage. Finally they came out of this contract schemes where they contract employees from various NGO’s and other places who helps the traffic police manage pune’s ever increasing traffic.

Although this is surely a welcome move, this does not seem to solve the problem though. The volunteers are doing really nice job. But alternatively what is happening is I see now that the traffic cops are now only at the junctions for collecting money (in whatever form) and the actual traffic management is getting done by the contracted employees.

I don’t understand why there should be more than required traffic controllers at the junction. There are a lot of junctions where 1-2 traffic cops just sit on the bike and do negotiations while the other contracted employees do the traffic management.

Read this quote today.

Did you know the difference between the two democracies : USA and India

In USA, you can kiss in public but not pee. In India you can pee in public but not kiss

Extracts from one of the internet literature

CIOs like to grouse about the paltry pickings of job candidates. But experts say instead of grumbling about it, CIOs should go back to school and help beef up the labor pool.

“While CIOs like to complain about the quality of candidates they’ve been getting, they’re not actually involved in shaping the candidates,” said Samuel Bright, an analyst at Cambridge, Mass.-based Forrester Research Inc.

Enrollment in computer science programs is waning — down as much as 70% in recent years, according to reports. At the same time, colleges and universities struggle to keep their curricula on par with changes in business.

“CIOs have expressed optimism about the future of the IT career, but they don’t necessarily hire at the entry level,” Bright said. “And those that do complain about the quality of the candidates they’ve been getting.”

Bright said computer science programs often struggle to align with the needs of IT organizations because they focus too much on programming. They also teach students about tools that are obsolete by the time they graduate. Bright said schools need to teach students how to work with multi-platform environments. Often they don’t teach key business skills that IT organizations are seeking, such as project management and negotiation.

In a research survey of 281 IT decision makers, Forrester found that most IT leaders do very little to reach out to local universities. Job fairs were the most common form of engagement between schools and IT organizations, with 57% of large IT organizations (500 or more IT employees) and 36% of small IT organizations participating. Job fairs are an effective recruiting tool, but if quality candidates aren’t graduating from the programs, these fairs do CIOs little good.

The next most common type of engagement between schools and IT organizations was service on a university advisory board, with 28% of large companies and 19% of smaller companies participating. Lecturing in the classroom, sponsoring scholarships, serving on curriculum review committees and donations of technology were all relatively rare.

Real world experience

“One of the CIOs I spoke with actually comes into a local university to lecture,” Bright said. “After he was done lecturing a professor said, ‘We don’t have to do two chapters because of what you just said about the challenges of service-oriented architecture. You covered what I would cover in two chapters with what you provided in real world examples.’

Note :- This message came to me as a e-mail forward. However I was touched with the message behind this mail and thought it could be a blog for a wider audience. Hence this blog

This is sure to make you shed tears.

My question to all of you is: Would you have made the same choice?

At a fundraising dinner for a school that serves learning disabled children, the father of one of the students delivered a speech that would never be forgotten by all who attended.

After extolling the school and its dedicated staff, he offered a

question:

“When not interfered with by outside influences, everything nature does is

done with perfection.Yet my son, Shay, cannot learn things as other children do. He cannot understand things as other children do.

Where is the natural order of things in my son?”

The audience was stilled by the query.

The father continued. “I believe that when a child like Shay, physically and mentally handicapped comes into the world, an opportunity to realise true human nature presents itself, and it comes, in the way other people treat that child.”

Then he told the following story: Shay and his father had walked past a park where some boys Shay knew were playing baseball. Shay asked, “Do you think they’ll let me play?”

Shay’s father knew that most of the boys would not want someone like Shay on their team, but the father also understood that if his son were allowed to play, it would give him a much-needed sense of belonging and some confidence to be accepted by others in spite of his handicaps.

Shay’s father approached one of the boys on the field and asked if Shay could play, not expecting much! The boy looked around for guidance and few boys nodded approval, why not? So he took matters into his own hands and said, “We’re losing by six runs and the game is in the eighth inning. I guess he can be on our team and we’ll try to put him in to bat in the ninth inning.”

Shay struggled over to the team’s bench put on a team shirt with a broad smile and his father had a small tear in his eye and warmth in his heart. The boys saw the father’s joy at his son being accepted.

In the bottom of the eighth inning, Shay’s team scored a few runs but was still behind by three. In the top of the ninth inning, Shay put on a glove and played in the right field. Even though no hits came his way, he was Obviously ecstatic just to be in the game and on the field, grinning from ear to ear as his father waved to him from the stands.

In the bottom of the ninth inning, Shay’s team scored again.

Now, with two outs and the bases loaded, the potential winning run was on base and Shay was scheduled to be next at bat. At this juncture, do they let Shay bat and give away their chance to win the game?

Surprisingly, Shay was given the bat. Everyone knew that a hit was all but impossible ’cause Shay didn’t even know how to hold the bat properly, much less connect with the ball.

However, as Shay stepped up to the plate, the pitcher, recognising the other team putting winning aside for this moment in Shay’s life, moved in a few steps to lob the ball in softly so Shay could at least be able to make contact.

The first pitch came and Shay swung clumsily and missed. The pitcher again took a few steps forward to toss the ball softly towards Shay.

As the pitch came in, Shay swung at the ball and hit a slow ground ball right back to the pitcher. The game would now be over, but the pitcher picked up the soft grounder and could have easily thrown the ball to the first baseman.

Shay would have been out and that would have been the end of the game.

Instead, the pitcher threw the ball right over the head of the first baseman, out of reach of all team mates. Everyone from the stands and both teams started yelling, “Shay, run to first! Run to first!”

Never in his life had Shay ever ran that far but made it to first base.

He scampered down the baseline, wide-eyed and startled. Everyone yelled, “Run to second, run to second!” Catching his breath, Shay awkwardly ran towards second, gleaming and struggling to make it to second base.

By the time Shay rounded towards second base, the right fielder had the ball, the smallest guy on their team, who had a chance to be the hero for his team for the first time.

He could have thrown the ball to the second-baseman for the tag, but he understood the pitcher’s intentions and he too intentionally threw the ball high and far over the third-baseman’s head. Shay ran toward third base deliriously as the runners ahead of him circled the bases toward home.

All were screaming, “Shay, Shay, Shay, all the Way Shay”

Shay reached third base, the opposing shortstop ran to help him and turned him in the direction of third base, and shouted, “Run to third!

Shay, run to third”

As Shay rounded third, the boys from both teams and those watching were on their feet were screaming, Shay, run home!”

Shay ran to home, stepped on the plate, and was cheered as the hero who hit the “grand slam” and won the game for his team.

That day,” said the father softly with tears now rolling down his face, the boys from both teams helped bring a piece of true love and humanity into this world.”

Shay didn’t make it to another summer and died that winter, having never forgotten being the hero and making his father so happy and coming home and seeing his mother tearfully embrace her little hero of the day!

AND, NOW A LITTLE FOOTNOTE TO THIS STORY:

We all send thousands of jokes through the eMail without a second thought, but when it comes to sending messages about life choices, people think twice about sharing. The crude, vulgar, and often obscene pass freely through cyberspace, but public discussion about decency is too often suppressed in our schools and workplaces.

If you’re thinking about forwarding this message, chances are that you’re probably sorting out the people on your address list that aren’for the appropriate ones to receive this type of message.

Well, the person who sent you this believes that we all can make a difference.

We all have thousands of opportunities every single day to help realise the natural order of things.”

So many seemingly trivial interactions between two people present us with a choice: Do we pass along a little spark of love and humanity or do we pass up that opportunity, leaving it andmaking the world a little colder in the process? A wise man once said “every society is judged by how it treats it’s least fortunate amongst them”.