5 Reasons Why its Good to be or not to be a Woman -- Women's day special :)

Tomorrow being women's day (march 8th) just wanted to list down top 5 reasons from the top of my head as to why it's great to be one also 5 reasons why it sucks to be one(Though many hold in Indian context):

Now let me start of with the benefits
1.You have to pay less tax on your pay than your male counterparts.
2.Assume you are caught by a traffic police you can always escape with a suggestion of a tear drop same holds for any argument you have on non work environment ( I haven't and will never try this one though ).
3.There is reservation for women in bus , also how can a bill on reservation in election for women that will be put forth tomorrow be forgotten.Also talks about reservation in work place(Trust me we don't need it)
4.You always can experience and express all your emotions without any hindrance.(It could be while watching movies like legally Blonde,Kate and Leopold,Serendipity or Notting hill too :D )
5.You can always keep yourself busy or pep up your mood and never get bored for hours by just window shopping.

Now coming to reasons why it sucks though a huge list is possible let me confine to 5 points
1. Irrespective of how hard/smart you work in most of the places you have to be far better than guys to reach the same position as they do.*
2. Irrespective of your Grey matter it is always the case that you will be judged for your looks than your brains! . Which frustrates any woman with self esteem.*
3.Its always a woman who has to give birth to the child and go through the process and its really unfair that it is neither transferable nor there is a easy upload download method.**
4. I guess this one comes even without mentioning that working women are expected to multitask day in and day out ,as both home and work are now no longer an option but mandatory fields one stimulates emotions and other brain.(A homemaker is taken for granted to do all the work at home)**
5.Last but not the least you have to go in search of restrooms to Pee! and hygiene in bathrooms a major reason for discomfort..

*No offense meant nor it doesn't have any bearing with my employer !!!
**Info based on others experience !

After reading this if it has occurred to you that the tree is totally unbalanced where the negatives by far outweigh the positives , Yes that is the fact though not for people like me but for countless souls struggling day in and day out.
But it is not pity that is expected but respect because every woman is proud of herself , A word of appreciation is all that is needed .
For all the good done without any expectation go now and wish all the woman in your life, be it your mother ,sister,colleague,friend, neighbor...

"Yatra pujyante naari ramante tatra devataha :) :) :) "

Birthday Blast :)

This one is dedicated to one's who made my day on feb 11th :).
As a kid i had always liked to celebrate my birthday with chocolates , cakes etc but it was when i was in 3rd standard when i went to give cake to a newly joined teacher on my birthday that she told that one should not celebrate birthday because it indicates that you are one year older and closer to death so birthday is not worth celebrating and asked how can you celebrate when there are countless souls who dont have this luxury ,though mom said its all bull shit and the words are not worth heeding in some corner of my mind i never forgot those words though i always knew it was wrong i couldn't find an explanation, until recently thanks to john galt a character in atlas shrugged written by ayn rand.

Birthday is a day when you are born ! what other day makes you feel more alive than that day.. Life is a gift which one should enjoy and live by what one thinks is right and only people who dont think their life is worth living or celebrating find solace in thinking of death than enjoy being alive and strive to achieve better :-) .so I had decided i will enjoy my day no matter what but thanks to people around me for making it even better than i thought it would be.

Mom and dad sneak around to make sure they dont wake me up accidentaly(But its a known secret that i would be awake all the time they are around but still act like im asleep just to enjoy the effort they put in and listen to their whisper :P) and wait till my alarm buzzes and then wish.
Then comes the part for which I shamelessly wait to see well thought out gift from my bro :D.

This time there was a added surprise :P it was none other than my 3 yr old niece who came to my room n asked "atte doddamma told your happy birthday is it ?" on acking she started singing the happy birthday song sung in her school with clapping n actions :P once done she asked for a chocolate :P , As i thankfully had i gave one to her but saw her still standing there so i asked her what ? she said elli innu cake chips kotte illa , n mumbled attege gotte illa birthday ge enu madodu anta and she went down and she was calling me hey birthday girl baa , It was really funny .. I always knew she treats me more like one of her age than as her aunt :P but this was heights but i was enjoying nevertheless.

I have to mention a cool surprise given by my college friends by coming to office with yummy cake and also lunch we had in lajwab (where we were ironically made to sit near booze :P though the gandhian in me was busting to revolt I have to admit the colors of those liquids were funny like the one;s u see in magic shows :) ).

But then came the worst part of the day; working after presumptuous lunch , but then am glad that work beat my eyelids, though the battle was close ;O).Then as i reached home mom waiting with all my fav food prepared but wait how can it complete without aru dropping by :) , For past few years aru(my school frnd) has spoilt me by her presence and a pack of sweets :-) .By the time i had dinner eyelids won the battle finally but overall had a gr8 day but am happy that i'm now able to enjoy it without being conscientiously guilty for being happy :P.

Moon now bigger and brighter

Right since i was in high school having watched srk movies ,all movies have atleast one dialogue that when one is love the moon looks bigger and violins play in the background , lol i had never got a chance to experience that even with many love at first sight ( my ipod touch or canon s5 is digi cam or some old geeky prof :D ) but....
It was on 29th January 2010 ,When i was walking from office to bus stop in btp by lake side around 6:20 with a romantic song are jaane kaise kab kahan playing in my ipod touch and me as usual staring either at lake or sky but then there it was staring at my face ,full Moon shining bright and appeared much bigger than as always.It was more like a proud face which anyone would admire.
It was only after coming back after some googling i read that it is 50k kms closer it being at the perigee and thus its going to be 30% brighter and 15% bigger .Thank god i still dont have to doubt my sanity or eyesight :).
so what else but to take out my cam(Not to forget i badly wanted to try some practical of the theory on photography i was reading on here it is
http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials.htm (need to thank bro for this one)) and take some snapshots here are few.

"I" , The individual

Bindra does not make into the shooters list for commonwealth games from india.

shashi taroor's twitter followers count reaches 6L

kareena kapoor redefines size 0 among indian women

captain gopinath merges air deccan with kingfisher , mars marries venus.

Fairness cream gives xxx beauty which elevates social status of him/her.

What is common among all that news , the fact that it is one against/influencing many.It is not about an individual i'm talking about but about the cause and the society which is the target audience.

Why was bindra kept out of commonwealth games just because he respected his self-respect more than NRAI ? I am not trying to justify anyone as all i know is the news from the media which again is a questionable source , but isnt it always that respecting oneself make people hate you?

Now coming to shashi taroor with all due respect to him , as it is not him i'm talking about but this news is just an instance to illustrate what i want to put forward.Before his "cattle class" comment he hardly had 40k twitter followers but then no matter whether people understood it or not he was made an icon .. But did anyone realise that it is us whom he called as cattle class ?

And then when it was his personal opinion to bash foreign policies that was made a huge public cry and that increased his popularity and his twitter follower count reached 6L.But at the bottom line have we questioned ourselves as to what is our view on that and what is it that we really think above all that publicity ? or what is delivered to us.

Now size 0 of kareena kapoor , I remember the very same news coming up as kareena is down with some deadly disease which makes her look like a ghost , but the very same media tweaked it to make a mass market out of it , How many ads do you see that markets size 0 ,right from a basic sugarfree to laptops! all endrosing the same news as though its a newest and best thing to do to oneself and its sad to see so many people falling for it,inspite of reading some one line last page news that lots of anorexic girls having acute bone problems or exhausted to death.

But have we ever questioned whether we want to achieve that at the cost of one's own health ?

doesnt what makes you happy more important than what people think of you ? same holds with the fairness cream marketing inspite of so many news that such creams can damage your skin and also can lead to skin cancer people try to use it , but why just to please some one else ? have we forgotten atleast in india that draupadi/sita much adored beauty were not fair? Why coming to present day priyanka chopra/bipasha basu stand as an example ? Inspite of all this people fall for ads endorsed by actress (who endrose all possible conflicting brands too).

Now captain gopinath started off with a a great motive but why did he choose to giveup his cause ? Man who can concieve the concept of cheap airlines to masses cant be so weak ? I hope his ties with kingfisher airlines turns out well and not dampen his spirit/motive.

With all the above news If you are wondering what the hell i'm talking about it's about "I" the individual.Media and other people's influence have encroached us so much today that it is easy to be led than to lead , thus as we tend to easier way to join the mass but in the process do we realize that we are killing our own self and indiviuality ? Its always an average which is taken when it comes to masses , the spikes are lowered ridiculed and cut down to match the average ..

But it can always be a group and it is not even close to The individual. As long as one does not realize one's individualtiy all that he/she does is it to morph what exists and never add and thus becomes a part of a pronoun "he/she". It may not be ground breaking but atleast an attempt to add your personality to create something new makes a difference , when i say difference it may not be to the world but oneself.

If you have read bhagavatgita/fountainhead its the same; everything upholds "I" the individual.

Nothing explains better than

"nainam chindati shastrani; naina dahati pavakaha |

nahchainam khledayantyapo; nacha badhyanti marutaha|| "

I know its a difficult path but i'm learing to tell "I",because "I wish", "I like" nothing holds unless you know how to tell I.(But the very fact that i have used we earlier makes me an amateur yet :0)).

Why am i writing this? If i expect someone to read and learn how to tell "I" then i become a parasite/second-hander again as i depend on others , so this is more of an introspective writing to help myself.

Solar Eclipse

I have never used my blog till date to share some gyan[:D] , So let me break that routine.Though not sure how many will agree that this news was useful :).

This is about solar eclipse , Friday 15th january 2010 being solar eclipse i'm pretty sure every one in bangalore / southern india will be super excited about it as one can see ~85% of eclipse very close to seeing a ring.

But I'm equally sure that right since we were 3~4 year old's when one was old enough to understand the funda of solar eclipse we were told not to look at the sun and not eat during the period of solar eclipse and also it is prevanlent in many households (I dont think i need to mention that it is strictly followed in my place)to put a dried grass by name darbe into all containers with cooked food stuff and into water.

I remember i had aways resented it and called it stupidity but all such harsh comments gleefully ignored until i turned 10~11 and there was a total solar eclipse visible in bangalore and all my school pals were busy buying some goggles to view solar eclipse and my mom knew that it was inevitable to convince me about it ..

By then i atleast had some sense that eyes have a lens which can concentrate the light and focus on retina to burn it out which can result in blindness, But was a super confident on those goggles and was ready to watch it for minutes, But then it was only when mom explained it to me did i realize , so here i quote though not exact words but on similar lines..

Firslty i have already mentioned as to why one should not look at the sun not only on eclipse but on any day for that matter .

Now coming to goggles what exactly does it do ? All it does is that it reduces the intentisity in the order of 10^6 (Also tries to block uv and IR rays) but still exposure to longer duration beyond say 10secs is still harmful { To prove this you can do simple experiment of using a lens and hold it against sun with a paper held below (once in bright sunlight and then in shade) ,Both the time its going to burn the paper though in shade it may take a little longer.}

Also there is no guarantee that the goggle is conformant with what is it is expected to do and it is not a risk worth considering the gift of vision is at stake.

Now coming to the topic of why to fast during solar eclipse and the usage of darbe.. It is told that during solar eclipse there are certain harmful rays which increases the bacterial growth and thus not advisable to eat , and darbe is known to have great capacity to diffract light and sound waves and thus used to preserve the cooked food."

So when i was about to leave almost convinced but greatly disappointed that i cannot watch eclipse ,

Mom stopped me and gave me a 15"X15"(approx)cardboard and asked me to cut out a 2"X2" hole and paste chocolate wrapper(Aluminum foil also will do). and make a small hole in it and to hold it against the sun and look at the reflection it cast , I didnt believe that it would work but surprisingly it did only later did i know that it was easier version of a pinhole camera.That was how i watched my first solar eclipse and waiting to watch one on 15th :).

Now before i forget I musnt forget how mom and her siblings used to watch solar eclipse in her village , they used to get cow dung and mix it with water in a bucket and used to watch the reflection cast by sun.. cool na I really love how one can go about even the seemingly toughest problem if one wants to do something really badly :).

Now i know i did enter the controversial territory when i quoted about harmful radiations from sun during solar eclipse , yes science says its bullshit but have they been able to prove it completely ? May be some of the facts proven by vedic period have turned out into plain non-sense superstition due to manipulation in stating those facts but we cant deny of all the glory , why dont we try to provide proofs to those facts (either proving them to absolute right or wrong) rather than bullshitting them and trying to hide them as a shame rather than displaying it as a star of our great heritage...

poison Tree

I was angry with my friend:
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe;
I told it not, my wrath did grow.

And I watered it in fears,
Night & morning with my tears;
And I sunned it with my smiles
And with soft deceitful wiles.

And it grew both day and night,
Till it bore an apple bright;
And my foe beheld it shine,
And he knew that it was mine,

And into my garden stole
When the night had veiled the pole:
In the morning glad I see
My foe outstretched beneath the tree

William Blake

Today in bus i realized i was reciting some lines without my knowledge and later i realized it was lines from william blake's poison tree one of my favorite poems from college.
If you think it is a simple nursery rhyme , reread to understand the depth and truth in it , It actually upholds tolereance and frankness which in present society we seem to have lost.

What is stopping Brand india ?Education system ,mindset or election?

A concern about brand India struck me when i was reading an article shared by a friend of mine on google reader , It was about how a 20 year old in UK designed a compact fold able All Europe adapter which could fit into any kind of electric plug , but i was wondering what is so great about it ? I remember having bought such a connector almost a year back in a local shop SP road (Bangalore) which can adapt to Indian/uk/us electrical plugging system and yes it is compact and fold able.

That made me wonder if we are lacking in innovation/creating new things or its just missing out in marketing our strength ?

But it struck me more when i had recently been to a nearby shop(which is a rare sight :)) with my niece and I had to yield to her whims to buy her a chocolate to save myself from creating a scene , when i asked the shop keeper for a diary milk he gave me some fancily covered chocolate, when i insisted that it was diary milk i wanted he started telling me that "madam it is china chocolate imported and see how fancy it is and there is a free sticker along"and he started cajoling my niece to which she yielded as i expected.It is not a new scene to see that most of the cheap gadgets/toys reaching masses have a 'made in china' , So where are Indian markets heading??

Then in sp road again where i wanted to buy something to upgrade my pc , there was a young boy of 8-10 years old who was busy sticking some label on adapters when i asked him what was it he grinned sheepishly as if he was caught redhanded doing something wrong ;He told akka dont tell anyone , see we get people from all small electrical shops around to buy adapters,lights etc and they all ask for china made one's but we get all these adapters lights etc from a small scale industry in peenya(Its in bangalore), so im sticking made in china sticker on it.

I was seriously taken by shock. what the hell is happening here are we hesitant to use our own brands?

Right since vedic period india has contributed greatly to the world be it shushruta in the field of medicine , aryabhata in physics ,bramhagupta in mathematics . How can we forget that it was we who gave 0 to world , I want to call it shunya as that is what explains its greatness , Not to forget arabic numerals is also a tweaked version of our number system.The whole world still follows mahabharata and arthashastra for politics and economics.but with all this heritage why have landed up in a situation where we are hesitant of our brand , Is it because of the british who ruled for 200 years a seeded slavery into our blood stream?

Today even history is tweaked to suit political parties and our heritage is sidelined and lost in the name of secularism , It is this attitude that has made us invertebrates without even having power to raise our voice.

I wonder why secularism should prevent us from acknowledging our heritage and inculcating good things in hinduism ? Vedic mathematics is one of the best way of calculating.Why should we learn from westerners that sanskrit is the most optimized language and the concepts of object oriented programming is derived from its grammar.I have already listed all great books written 1000 years back.

Now coming to made in china, I am not against made in china as i completely understand that globalization is the key in current market and low price and quality are the key but what troubles me is In spite of having diverse crops why do we export only raw material and not finished products? Why is that indian cotton goes to china , uk and comes back to india as peter england , van heusen or whatever and we pay heavy price for it ? Why is it that we grow more to export than to satisfy our own needs first ? Why is it that there are great artists who make great stone artifacts ,paintings , brass items etc in rural india still below poverty line ? Inspite of all the reservations they still find it hard to get a single meal a day ? Why the hell do so many farmers commit suicide when the the food grain and vegetables reaching consumers is sky rocketing ? Why Do we need so many middle men?

Even when India boasts of so many international quality MBA colleges we as India cannot create "brand India" , why do all the educated mass be it so called world class engineers or MBA's run for an MNC job and not be entrepreneurs or take up government job?

But when all the mass are blaming us for not taking up social cause has anyone questioned how fair our politics is? It is the elections whose foundation is based on corruption that has led us to this state . When there are certain decision makers who fall prey for peanuts and sell our country and its brand elsewhere.Right from tadpole legs to turtles to elephant tusks to sandalwood we have been ruining ourselves and not if you shed crocodile tears is it any worth i wonder if in future people will know what alligator is as we have exploited even that.

And all of us know the plight of an honest civil servant who try to serve the cause either they are maimed psychologically for life or may their soul rest in peace.

Now coming to software industry everyone asks the very same question why in india there was no facebook or google revolution created , but before asking this question haven't we thought that it is mainly Indians who constitute a considerable chunk in this industry? but then why not start it , if that is the next question then why don't we have a vocational education which allows individuals to try and do what one is natural at? why does out education system leads us like a shepherd who streamline scape goats ? And when it comes to establishing one;s own firm does our education system provide even basic insights about it and how much support do we get in funding it or can anyone keep a tab of levels of corruption one should go through to get it set up.

That makes an average educated urban Indian careless of what is happening in the country and a rural Indian least bothered about surrounding as he/she has lost hope of a better future.

Isn't it time for us to wake up ? Isn't it time to revisit our education system and inculcate best practices and not deny younger generations of our heritage in the name secularism? Isn't it time to shed our shells and look at what we are and what can be done before it is too late ? and think of creating self sufficiency and creating brand India :-) acclaimed world wide and get back to the level of past glory currently than reading it in history books? Its better to light a single candle than struggle in darkness.