Scribblings from Life

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”.

On 22^nd of this year, India will celebrate yet another festival of lights – Deepawali (Diwali). Deepawali as the name suggests is series of lamps. Entire Indian land seems as if the sky is turn around with stars twinkling in each and every house. The aerial view of the nation on this day is simply phenomenal.

There are quite a few legends behind Deepawali. One saying is that God Ram started ruling Ayodhya from this very day and every one in the country was happy that good days were back. This also meant the birth of “Satyug”. Also goddess “Laxshmi” came to earth on this day and people lit lamps so that lakshmiji can enter their houses. This is also the day when Lord Krishna saved the innocent “Gokul” gwals and gwalins, from Indra and lifted “Govardhan”.

People all over the country have a social get together and parties. They will celebrate the evenings with lots of fireworks. There will be all kind of sweets served.

This land has a unique tradition of enjoying whatever small and beautiful thing that occurs. And there is a science behind everything and every celebration. People clean up their house during diwali. The essence behind this is, after the gloomy monsoon we enter into winter. Its time to clean up the things and we wrapped it up into a festival to do it happily. The same goes for many more Indian festivals. What better way a season of cold (winter) be welcomed than by lighting small lamps to make the whole atmosphere warm! This also marks beginning of a new harvest season and we begin this with distributing and preparing sweets…wow! I am sometimes amazed at the knowledge, creativity and innovation of our great grandfathers. They had everything we crave for today. They were far more knowledgeable far more creative and a lot more innovative than the best of lots today.

However with globalization taking its toll the zeal and enthusiasm of these festivals is getting weak. I see more cards getting exchanged on Valentine day than on Diwali. Most of them might not know why we celebrate valentine day. The warmth of meeting the loved ones is declining. With distributed families all across the globe the greetings are nothing more than a telephone call.

All is not lost yet though. The need is to feel the warmth of a relationship. Distance does not matter, what matters is the warmth of the feeling. Also understanding our culture and the reasons behind them will help associate us more with it. India posses a rich set of heritage and values. It is only when we continue to cherish these traditions and festivals, the heritage will remain intact.

Let us celebrate this Diwali a totally Indian way.

Happy Deepawali.

Life’s:- Child Philosophy

These days I watch Shashank (my 6 month old kid) grow. I simply love the whole experience. Sometimes it is tiring, sometimes very tiring and sometimes painful. But all this just get washed away by a single gentle, true and pure smile of the little one. The innocent face which smiles when you are on the verge of frustration, in the middle of the night, takes out all the pains and compels you to bow down and serve your little one.

Another amazing thing to watch is the passion they posses. The remote control of our TV set is shashank’s best toy. He has tons of them. Stuffed ones and lighting ones but he just loves the plain remote. He will do whatever it takes to get hold of that remote. He can be located anywhere; his sharp eyes will catch hold of the item and yahoo…! Its time for action. He will put all the intelligence he posses with whatever little movement he is allowed as a 6 month old kid to get to the device. He might lose out on energy in the process. This will not put him down. He waits for sometimes. Takes rest and valla ….back to work. Only when he gets hold of that device will he stop. Not that he will play with the device too long though … but that is altogether a different story.

Whenever he wants something and could not get that, the only weapon he posses is cry. He will shout and force you to attend you to get his things done. He will be happy once the thing that he wanted gets done. He cannot explain then very correctly but he continues to cry till you understand him and he is satisfied with the service.

This brings very simple but useful principles. A little kid teaches some of the very fundamental realities of life.

Be focused

Whatever it takes never let your objective affects that and there is nothing in this world that stops you from achieving the goal.

Keep the end objective in mind

Before beginning any task, think of the end. Once you are clear of the end, proceed to make the task a success. All possible ethical methods to achieve the task should be tried out before giving it up.

More to this follows as I learn more ……….

Njoi

These times remind me of the very old tale that my elders use to tell me in my young age. The story goes like this.

There was a small bridge of wood which had a width to just carry one being at a time. There was a river underneath. Early morning two dogs came over the bridge from opposite ends. They converged at a center of the bridge. Since the width of the bridge did not allow both of them to pass by, they got angry. They started barking over each other. The barking and fighting went for sometime till both of them found themselves drowning in the river. After sometime there were two goats that visited the same bridge. They also faced the same situation that the dogs faced. The clever beasts wisely paused and allowed one of the goats to cross the bridge first and the other one crossed later.

I got reminded of this story by traveling through cross roads of pune. Although we are neither goats nor dog, we are even worse than them when it comes to traffic sense. Look at any cross roads in pune where the signal is not working and there is no traffic police. You will just find people making real non-sense by just crossing anywhere and anyhow. The resultant is a mere mess on the center of the road. Unnecessary noise pollution with loads of horns blowing all ways. This also leads to lots of accidents.

Its high time, people need to remember the old adages of the goats and dogs. Let us be wise and clever goats rather than fighting dogs.

Recently I happen to attend pune’s “Sawai Gandharva Sangeet Mahostava”. This was my first ever classical concert. I am not a classical music buff. It all started when the Art Circle from my organization “Persistent Systems” organized a classical event from “Mrs. Aarti Ankalikar”. This was on a sunday. I was looking out for something to spend my sunday evening and a collegue of mine invited me to attend this event. I always had respect for Indian classical music but never had a chance to listen anything. Grabbing this oppurtunity I went to the auditorium to listen to the artist.

The experience…..Amazing. There were no words to describe the experience. I do not have any understanding of the ragas and taal’s. But what I experienced was that I could still enjoy the music to its best. I could feel an aura around the hall that was created where people were hypnotized by the aura of the singer and the musical instruments accompaning the lyrics.

This inspired me to attend the “Sawai Gandharva Sangeet Mahotsav”. This fortunately was just starting 5 days from the entralling experience I had on Sunday. I got the tickets and went to the location.

The aura… continued. Some of the greatest artists performed at the concert. It was pleasant to listen to all different ragas in different styles. On the very first day of the festival Pt. Jasraj delivered a mind-bogling performance. There was such a strong hold on the sur and taal that he could virtually go to any level and come back in the same breath.

The concert is still on and I shall write more about the performances from the artists as I get to enjoy more.

While I was listening to this great performers, I cherished one more reason to celebrate “Incredible India”. The culture, ethics, vitality, depth,knowledge, devotion that India and the Indian culture holds is uncomparable. The more I happen to learn about India the more I cherish. with all this in mind if I look back in history to imagine the India with all this good things at their peak, I had no doubt about the fascination the world had about this great nation.

Another important thing I noticed in these artists is the utter devotion. Most of the artists had more than 9-10 yrs of experience behind them. This however reflects so transperantly in the kind of hold they have over what they perform. They had almost master the basics and the good point is that they just stick to the basics. They just maintain the same “lay” and “sam” and the result is marvellous. Unlike many of the other artists they don’t need to reherse. They are spontaneous and sing with their soul. Once they are into themselves one could clearly watch the experessions on the face clearly stating the submergence.

I know this would not be the right thing to do, but being from software Industry, I tend to compare everything with that . Today we talk of various quality levels like CMM and Six Sigma. I could see the level of precision far more than six sigma in the performances. There were hardly any errors what-so-ever. Also the kind of co-ordination between the singers and the whole range of musical instruments….never needed a CMM-I

Strong basics and utter devotion can take you places. Indian culture has shown this may it be music, yoga,literature,knowledge.

Lohgadh – Nature’s Beauty. We explored this beauty of nature in dripping rains this sunday. The experience – Awesome .
Started at 5 AM in the morning, we(deepali and myself) reached at the train station at around 5:20 only to figure out that venkat who
was suppose to join us has reached to pune station instead of shivajinagar which was the official point. prashant and deepali were worried.
Prashant, though, didn’t reveal that he was worried (he did that later ). But venkat was intelligent to call up and we could explain him the scene.
He mangaged to board the train. I travelled in the old MEMU train after quite sometime (The last being in my college days when I use to move from Baroda to Anand regularly).

The journey in the train itself was simply fab. Nature was at it’s best. Lush green sahyadri (mountain ranges) were decorated by tons of waterfalls to enrich their beauties.

We reached Malwali (near Lonavala) in around 40 mins. I wanted my boot-up tea and so did the rest. We had some good snacks and hot tea at the stall. Even before we finished, the rains gods were ready to accompany us on our trek. It started pouring heavily.

We reached “Bhaje”.This is the place from where the real trek starts. We started on our way at around 8:00 AM. Just as we started we saw a real mighty waterfall gushing on the way. We were tempted ….. Lots of water and we wanted to get drained. But somehow we controlled ourselves promising the water to enjoy his company when we return (And we indeed did keep the promise ).

The fun continued. We continued moving ahead and enjoying the rocks and the greens……

We were accompanied by this tiny little dog from “Bhaje”. Earlier we thought, he might be finding us newbies and might be following us. Little one was not ready to leave. He was determined to trek with us. This was indeed a different experience. He literally followed us and followed us right from the start till we reached the top… and the story does not end here.. he did followed us back at the foothill when we reached back. One very interesting thing happpened there was that at one place there was a very steep climb. Little doggie could not climb that.. He was not happy about it. He tried his best but could not succeed. There was another path-way to reach to the top though. We just signaled him about the alternative path and bravo…. He did understood and manage to catch up with us once again. Later we figured out that he had his home at the fort upstairs and that some fellow living them takes care of him…. So we thought, he might have appointed him as a marketing manager to attract customers to the top for snacks (Zumka-bhakar etc).

Journey is still on… we have now reached about the half-way mark and started getting exhausted…..And wow.. we had a drive-away there…. A small shop (tapri as we call) and we are all set for a cup of hot tea to feel some warmth from the pouring waters…. And there our hero prashant, got a unknown sms wishing him “Happy Friendship Day”…. wow… Nobody did that to me ever …. Prashant used all his memory to recollect and figure out who she was (of-course we take this by default as she )…. We had a good time pulling him while we had a cup of hot tea and continued on our way ……

Now we had reached the fort and we had to climb those big steps to reach to the top. We wonder how the kings and the soldiers in those old ages could have climbed the steps which were so big

We reached at the top and now could see the clouds passing by. But due to the cloudy sky misssed the lovely view of pavana river and the dam……

Lots of greenary all around surrounded us……everywhere we went…..

On our way back we played a lots of games and sang some memorable songs….which might be quite a good memory for a few of us for quite some time………We had good nagging between swapnil and deepali both trying to pull each other down and the result…. fun…….

We had some good lunch in a small hut who provided us with the extra facility of fire-place to warm ourselves…. Ajit was worried since he wanted to reach home before 6… Do you know why…. No… then ask Ajit )

Finally we arrived at the bottom. Of course had some real good fun in the waterfall before that. The whole experience was simply memorable.

Lohgadh – Nature’s Beauty. We explored this beauty of nature in dripping rains this sunday. The experience – Awesome .
Started at 5 AM in the morning, we(deepali and myself) reached at the train station at around 5:20 only to figure out that venkat who
was suppose to join us has reached to pune station instead of shivajinagar which was the official point. prashant and deepali were worried.
Prashant, though, didn’t reveal that he was worried (he did that later ). But venkat was intelligent to call up and we could explain him the scene.
He mangaged to board the train. I travelled in the old MEMU train after quite sometime (The last being in my college days when I use to move from Baroda to Anand regularly).

The journey in the train itself was simply fab. Nature was at it’s best. Lush green sahyadri (mountain ranges) were decorated by tons of waterfalls to enrich their beauties.

We reached Malwali (near Lonavala) in around 40 mins. I wanted my boot-up tea and so did the rest. We had some good snacks and hot tea at the stall. Even before we finished, the rains gods were ready to accompany us on our trek. It started pouring heavily.

We reached “Bhaje”.This is the place from where the real trek starts. We started on our way at around 8:00 AM. Just as we started we saw a real mighty waterfall gushing on the way. We were tempted ….. Lots of water and we wanted to get drained. But somehow we controlled ourselves promising the water to enjoy his company when we return (And we indeed did keep the promise ).

The fun continued. We continued moving ahead and enjoying the rocks and the greens……

We were accompanied by this tiny little dog from “Bhaje”. Earlier we thought, he might be finding us newbies and might be following us. Little one was not ready to leave. He was determined to trek with us. This was indeed a different experience. He literally followed us and followed us right from the start till we reached the top… and the story does not end here.. he did followed us back at the foothill when we reached back. One very interesting thing happpened there was that at one place there was a very steep climb. Little doggie could not climb that.. He was not happy about it. He tried his best but could not succeed. There was another path-way to reach to the top though. We just signaled him about the alternative path and bravo…. He did understood and manage to catch up with us once again. Later we figured out that he had his home at the fort upstairs and that some fellow living them takes care of him…. So we thought, he might have appointed him as a marketing manager to attract customers to the top for snacks (Zumka-bhakar etc).

Journey is still on… we have now reached about the half-way mark and started getting exhausted…..And wow.. we had a drive-away there…. A small shop (tapri as we call) and we are all set for a cup of hot tea to feel some warmth from the pouring waters…. And there our hero prashant, got a unknown sms wishing him “Happy Friendship Day”…. wow… Nobody did that to me ever …. Prashant used all his memory to recollect and figure out who she was (of-course we take this by default as she )…. We had a good time pulling him while we had a cup of hot tea and continued on our way ……

Now we had reached the fort and we had to climb those big steps to reach to the top. We wonder how the kings and the soldiers in those old ages could have climbed the steps which were so big

We reached at the top and now could see the clouds passing by. But due to the cloudy sky misssed the lovely view of pavana river and the dam……

Lots of greenary all around surrounded us……everywhere we went…..

On our way back we played a lots of games and sang some memorable songs….which might be quite a good memory for a few of us for quite some time………We had good nagging between swapnil and deepali both trying to pull each other down and the result…. fun…….

We had some good lunch in a small hut who provided us with the extra facility of fire-place to warm ourselves…. Ajit was worried since he wanted to reach home before 6… Do you know why…. No… then ask Ajit )

Finally we arrived at the bottom. Of course had some real good fun in the waterfall before that. The whole experience was simply memorable.