FIX YOURSELF FIRST

Feeling down and out ?
Lift up your head
and shout -
It's a great day !  - Ruskin Bond

For any problem, generally we seek solution outside.   But, pause for a moment and  look yourself deeply and the solution always always lies within you only.  That's why wisdom masters say Don't try to fix the outside world,  fix yourself first !

Everyone of us must win the daily battles of life by constantly learning from the past mistakes.  If you analyse the reasons of failures, in  majority of cases, the heart is the culprit which don't want to accept logic.  Tame it with hard logic by giving the bait of glittering future.

If you see yourself,   there are two forces that constantly work on you.  One guides you to do this or that for the betterment,  where as  the other force tries to counter it  by imposing ifs and buts.   One entity which sits  on  top of these two forces decides the things on merit and we must strengthen this faculty.

The whole literature of Self Help books try to reiterate this  point.    What you want, can be achieved if you have a strong will to do it.  Joseph Murphy in his magnum-ops The Power of  Your Subconscious Mind, introduces the concept of ''Auto-suggestion''.  He says that auto-suggestion means suggesting something definite and specific to oneself.  He stresses that it may be used to banish various fears and other negative conditions.

The beauty of your mind is, when you want anything from the bottom of your heart, your subconscious mind accepts it and works on it.  When you shout positive words, it means, your voice need not  go to the next street, but it must reach every pore of your body and mind for acceptance.

So experiment yourself and see the magic !

AN OLD MEMORABLE HINDI SONG FOR RELIGIOUS HARMONY

Cinema is an influencing medium to educate masses.

When people become dogmatic and incite violence in the name religion, awareness is the only available pill that cures all the maladies.

When India was on the  verge of getting independence from British Raj in 1947  and the Crown decided Transfer of Power between India and newly created State Pakistan, the partition drama that followed by had widened the  gulf between Hindu and Muslim communities and  insurmountable owes on either side.

When religion raises it's ugly head and human values go into thin air, the intellectual class should not sit silent and must plunge into action.  Cinema  is the best medium that could mend human behaviour.

I just listened a tag of this song in my morning radio today and,  immediately when I dig youtube, I came up with the above result.   This five-minutes song gives the required message in simple lyrics  and the most touching part of the song is when  the  small boy touches his head  to  holy books of Bhagavad Gita and Quran, with utmost  reverence.

So, be in touch with cinema world regularly to know the subtle message for larger good of society  !

HOW TO BE A STRONGEST MAN ?

The strongest man in 
the world is the man who
stands alone - Thomas H. Huxley

Muscle power alone can't denote potency.  Right proportion of mind power with it takes you to the winning path.

 Being strong and sturdy means having self-conviction, perseverance, inexhaustible desire to overcome all obstacles.

The real test is when you get a series of failures but still keeps your head high with one more attempt.  In this process, some times, you are forced to be alone and  failures cast a shadow on your enthusiasm.  Then turn your mind, remind yourself with these  immortal words of Late Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam :

F.A.I.L means : First Attempt In Learning
E.N.D. means  : Effort Never Dies
N.O means      :  Next Opportunity.

The world would always respect those who are real-life heroes instead of reel-life heroes. Mahatma Gandhi personifies this strongest man quality.  This fragile and wiry man shook the British Empire with his one point agenda of  ousting British Raj from India through non-violent ways  finally succeeded.

So be the strongest, physically, mentally, morally and ethically !

STORIES OF MY LIFE !

An autobiography is only to be trusted when it reveals something disgraceful.

                                                                                    - George Orwell

Don't dismiss on one stroke that all back-benchers are not worthy students.

In good part of my academic life, I did not sit on front bench which people fight for it. I am rather a typical boy with a fluorescent bulb-like mind i.e. don't light up immediately ! I can't grasp as quickly as majority of people do. I was correctly gauged two decades ago by one of my former bosses who graded me as a man of average abilities in my annual performance appraisal report.

We are living on daily bites of raw guess. But the beauty of human life is, people generally can't forecast the future of a person exactly. They consider all metrics like his/her traits, strengths, family background, influences, connections etc. But there is a hidden factor that remains dormant i.e. possibility field. The giant may wake up at any moment in one's life.

Like other stories of inspiration, my life too filled with so many surprises. Now if I look back my life, I could smile at myself. I was not at all a bright student in my school life. In fact I am a bundle of failures with a third-class percentage in my Class 10. Stubbornness, hormonal influence, adamancy and wrong friendships somewhat sidetracked my education for certain period. When hell broke loose on me, I was forced to discontinue my studies in Class 11 and worked for half year at a fishing pond as supervisor.

Supervising the labourers in the fields tucked away from the town completely shuttered my spirits. This sudden jolt gave me life's first toughest lesson - Give value to the Education. My day's work from sunrise to sunset in the open fields and reaching the workplace on cycle snaking through dusty lines through graveyard in the midst of burning corpses is a nightmare I couldn't forget.

To make the story short, I finished my Class 12 with High Second Class and did graduation extremely well with First Class. Learning stenography in the middle of college education finally sailed me to the shores of comfortable government service.

Now, it looks that some hidden Force held my hand and guided me all through this treacherous path !

ROOT OF HAPPINESS

Let me confess first that I am writing this piece when crippled  by  the toothache   on a searing afternoon with sweat moisturizing  my body  and it is a daunting task.

Mind is not able to pace up   and fingers are not cooperating  to run  with the ideas on the mind screen.    Still, I pulled up my strings  to march ahead.  Because, the subject is  happiness which is my favorite topic.

A newspaper this morning published the views of four young girls on happiness.  The first girl Vibhuti said : happiness for me means selflessness.  Another girl Neelima said : happiness is getting ready for bed and being excited about tomorrow.  Third girl Layshree said : happiness to me is having coffee in a quiet and tranquil place.  The last girl Ayushka quipped : to me happiness means theater. 

My definition of happiness is summation what all the girls told.  The underlying thread that must connect you is contentment.   Wisdom masters say that if you are happy for reason and if the reason is snatched from you, you become unhappy.  That's why, they tell us to remain happy without a reason.  Easy to say than to convince the heart.   Majority of us use  the hard logic  to conquer the world where as you must win the world  only with an empathetic heart.  The so called hard logic must be used to tame your own wild monkey-like mind.

I don't advocate the idea of becoming hermit.  But my point is,  you can feel like hermit for a while during the day.  It only needs your permission and mental resources.  Never, I say you to contend with activities that shoot up your  intellectual life.  My advice is to have contentment  on   physical comforts which we try to heap in the name of social security, status and image.

A Zen parable correctly advocates this idea of minimum physical comforts without compromising maximum happiness :

Once upon a time, there was a king who had everything he could ask for in life, wealth, health, a loving family and many caring friends. But he could never feel happy. A saint offered him an easy solution. Happiness would come his way if he wore the shirt of the happiest person in his kingdom. So his men searched far and wide and finally found a truly blissful soul in a grimy shanty on the fringes of the town. But they asked him for his shirt, he could not offer one. He had none.

While writing these lines, I am gulping chilled water to sooth my ached-tooth.

Perhaps Almighty listened my prayer and now slowly I reached to a point of no pain :)

BE LIKE RUSKIN BOND

If you have good health, you are young; and if you owe nothing, you are rich.

                          - Ruskin Bond

One of the great influencers on my life is Ruskin Bond.  His book  A Little Book of Life which was purchased on a rainy afternoon in November, 2014 had completely changed the trajectory of my life.

To write means, to project your world, your view point, your moments of happiness, sorrows, influences, blessings or virtually everything under Sun.

One of the secrets of Ruskin Bond being the happiest man even at 82 is his child-like mindset.  To become like him, your stars must also cooperate apart from own willpower.     His another equally power-packed book A Book of Simple Living  - Brief Notes from the Hills  would make you to think, simple, unified  with the world, without loosing your individuality .

There is a high degree of difference from childlike and childish.  What I learnt from the books of  Ruskin is, you should not give up childlike nature though you grow up in age.  This tenderness reflects innocence which keeps you  boundless and eternally joyful.  His argument in favour of imbibing this unparalleled quality must be accepted without a word of dissent :

I have the temper of a child, and a tendency to be mischievous.  and I still retain a childlike trust in grown-ups, which sometimes works to my detriment.  But it doesn't matter.    In the long run, the exploiters and manipulators meet with their comeuppances; they are their own worst enemies. Meanwhile, I will continue being an eight-year-old.   Recently, I was feeling a bit low, so I played marbles with the children. They won all my marbles, but I felt better !

The beauty of Ruskin Bond's literature is, you need not require any physical resources to become like Ruskin.  The only prerequisite is  an open mind to embrace the Truth.  With that mindset, your restlessness dies down slowly leading to good health by which you feel younger irrespective of your age.

When health is taken care of, it depends upon your persona what to grab from the world !

 

UNKNOWN SUFFERINGS :(

A diseased  plant at Sadiq Nagar Park in South Delhi - courtesy : My Samsug E7

The other day while I was strolling in the park which is my morning ritual, I was stopped by this wailing plant.   Certain leaves of  it were with thick boils, eating way it's vitals.    If it is human, all  he could do is, make loud cries to make the world known of his pain.   Where as this pity plant is silently enduring the pain and only the Creator knows it's distress.     My deep gaze on it reminded me what   Acharya Jagadish Chandra Bose, one India's reputed bio-physicist and botanist discovered  decades ago :  plants too breath and feel.   But that discovery can't help us to  gauge their feelings as they they don't have senses like us. 

May be this plant is feeling severe pain, but I can't  understand by seeing it.   

There are so many unanswered questions in  Nature.  May be, unanswerable :( 

MY BLOG ''KNOWEB'' NOW HAS DICTIONARY MEANING

All the main events of my life are deeply interwoven with English which is responsible for my bread and butter.   

In fact, I am a blogger with difference.  I want to keep the flame of learning flickering in all of you.   

A few years ago, on one fine morning, a thought swirled in my mind and soon after  Knoweb was born. The word knoweb is acronym for Knowledge Web.  When I put this word as my blog's title and started writing,  I got a very encouraging response from people.  Then, I  cherished / dreamed  that this word  should appear in English dictionary.

There are so many new words  adding to the dictionary  daily and the load on  lexicographers is now partly offset  with online dictionaries contributing to the language with active public participation.

In my earlier post on ''Oxford Words Blog''  I said that  Language is also like an evolving phenomena. Over a period time, so many new words were added to the English vocabulary.  The Language has embraced so many new words from so many cultures, regions the  world over.  New situations compelled to  express in  new ways. This one characteristic of English Language did not allow to remain sloth. 

Yesterday, a small milestone was achieved when Urban Dictionary.com has accepted my word ''knoweb'' with my meaning as ''Knowledge Web''.  I have also submitted entries to Dictionary.Com and Collins Dictionary and hope in the coming years, my word ''knoweb'' is added to all English dictionaries in the world. 

What a blogger needs more than this honour ?

If you love this word and it's meaning, please vote for me at the below link :

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=knoweb

DON'T WRITE LENGTHY ONE

Avoid long speeches.
The less a man knows, the
longer he takes to tell it.

                   - Ruskin Bond

Five years of blogging with more than 500 articles, I still feel scary of giving advice on a reader friendly post ? In fact, there is no hard and fast rules, but only thumb rules.

Ruskin Bond, the grandfatherly figure told in simple two sentences as above. When I flip through newspapers, magazines or even some blogposts, I feel that some articles/posts drag unnecessarily to the point of frustration. Some times the ideas are narrated in a very pale and drousy way.

To write, you must be an embodiment of patience. Experts say that the attention span of general readers is very short, so in the first three or four lines, you must candidly say what you are going to tell. You need not stick to word count. Don't write with pomp and show as over-stressing is not at all advisable. What you write should not defy the common logic.

Great writing is not a show off business, my father says. The secret lies in striking a chord with readers. With scholarly writing, you would only attract few readers.

So use apt words to fit the context. So my mantra is, redraft, redraft and redraft your content, if possible, so that the prose glides through effortlessly. One umbrella rule for great writing to happen is, read more and observe great writers style, but create your own.

Last, but not least : write the story always from your perspective or lens and people want that only !

ONLINE BEST CHEF

Courtesy : YouTube

The old adage goes like this : Some times you have  to eat  to live; and some other times, you have to live to eat !

Routine food makes your tongue sour.  Imagine, there is an experienced chef who guides you with a hand in making your choicest food.

Here is a Hyderabadi boy called Sanjay who is now a  popular host in mainstream Telegu T.V. channels with his best cooking shows.

If you dig his story, you come to know that he  clinched a gold medal  in National Level Cooking Competition while studying degree.   He is so passionate  with  cooking which rose him as one of  the India's best Chefs and his YouTube channel, with  more than  1500 videos  has already attracted  around 35 crore views offering best cuisine of all tastes.

Click here to visit his YouTube channel :   https://www.youtube.com/user/vahchef

GLASS HOUSE IN JAPAN

Glass House in Tokyo, Japan  - Photo Credit : http://www.archdaily.com/

Those who have great aesthetic sense, generally tilt towards transparent colour.  Glass is extensively used now in the interior decoration, furniture, statues, dolls, utensils etc.

Transparent colour gives a soothing effect on your soul and it's my fondest colour.

Have you ever thought of making a house with a glass ?  Perhaps a strange idea, at least in India where you have huge security issues.  Even with brick and mortar houses, thefts are an endless saga here.  I am yet to recover from the shock of  theft occurred in my block last week where the thieves stealthily took away valuable items from a neighbour's house, in the broad daylight.

In fact, living is an idea and all can't comprehend.  It is an assortment of  comfort, venture and aesthetics.   Japanese are known as warm-hearted people with  high dose of patriotism .   They are technologically advanced with the extensive  use of robotics in daily life.

When a man  reaches  comfortable level in  personal finances, quality becomes the buzzword in every act.  So, it is not wild idea  when  a young couple in Tokyo wanted to build a glass house in 914 square-foot area.   The moment, they got the idea, it was executed by Sou Fujimoto Architects   who say that their clients desire to live as nomads within their own home.

Now the  glass house owner perhaps enjoy Mother Nature nearer than others, but privacy is a huge concern !

But only the rich can afford to buy this idea !

For full story,  click here

MY DREAM REALIZED NOW :))

If I look back my blogging journey, it is so treacherous in the initial years, say in 2011.  I used to spend hours to make it happen in the first place.  In fact,  I have not approached any technical hand in designing part and writing for me was a distant dream then.

But, if a man has strong will, what is not possible ?  At the start of my journey itself, I decided that I don't seek anybody's help with regard to design part.  Why because, I have my own aesthetic sense and confident enough to deal with the problem with my own inner resources.

A wise man rightly said : Demand more from your own Self, than anybody could ever expect from you.  And the beauty of your mind is, it is a faithful servant to comply your orders.  Even to reach this level of awareness, you must grow in life to endure the wounds of  failures.   But the failures definitely become the stepping stones to your forward march and the fuel you needed here is perseverance.

When you have Mission in life, the stumbling blocks on the way test your patience  and your  passion  only drives you to the pinnacle of success.  If you ask me any visible progress I made in my life,  it is this blog.   

In fact, it is not a blog, it is my friend, a part of me sliced out for the readers.   This blog made me to learn a lot and  I made one rule before the start of this blog.   Like Google Founder's,  I decided that I should not commercialize this blog and reduce it as a business entity.  Let me confess that this blog is not aimed to beg for bucks.  It is a Knowledge Blog that will never compromise on quality for the sake of  money.   Never, there was an occasion  that  I compromised  the journalistic ethos while writing even on subjects of raging issues.  The tone I used is always balanced and cheap tricks were never played to earn  popularity.

Much before I started blogging, I read somewhere that your quality stuff would get recognition by search engines for which you should do some hard work/research before writing anything.  Copy-paste phenomena, though may give short term success, but it would put  you on mat in the long run.

Since the beginning of my blogging journey,  I used to search my blog in major search engines, but the result was not encouraging till 2014 when I took custom domain, after which the audience grew phenomenally and now the visibility of this blog in the three major search engines is beyond my wild imagination.  See the snapshot of my blog  above  - Google, the Mother of all Search Engines gives two column search results with my blog links.  Yahoo went a step ahead by providing a dedicated search button to search my articles from my blog.

This encouragement reminds me of my noble responsibility - Responsible Blogging for the common Good of All Netizens !

HIGH HEELS, NO PLEASE !

The joy of looking  taller than others in a crowd is immeasurable.   Here there is no gender-specific behaviour.

I am neither too tall  nor  short, but medium  height with 167 cms. When I wear my 2 inch black shoes and commute in  Metro train, I feel better in height, than most of  my  fellow passengers.  In my local travels, I see majority of girls, women travel wearing about 4 inches of high heels and  jostle through busy metro trains and this high heels is a standard gear they don't want to compromise !

It is acceptable to wear them occasionally, but wearing high-heels, that too 4 inches daily means inviting recurring knee problems.  I think, time has come to reboot the whole idea of high-heel sandals in our lives.

In fact, there are heated debates on high-heels and  there are serious  health issues attached with this kind of fashion. One could predict  hullabaloo from women if you advise on this count.  But facts should be told without hesitation.

 An insightful article in an English Daily depicted  woman's  bitter experiences for wearing high-heels indiscriminately.

Susanna Myrtle Lazarus, in  the opening lines of her newspaper column said that  I went through a phase in my teens where I was convinced that, at 5 feet 4 inches, I was very short. So short that I needed to wear heels every single day. Even though I had to take two buses and a share auto to reach college. Six years later, I have been left with a healthy appreciation for ballet flats and flip-flops, with a side of recurring knee problems.

Susanna further elaborates that  her love for high heels has not diminished in any way.  But she  says that  I still own several pairs — including a six-inch-high pair that makes me feel like The Mountain from Game of Thrones — and give them the occasional outing.

The 'why' of no high heels is dwelt at length here  :    Today, there’s no good reason for high heels: well, there’s one, if you count vanity. And there’s nothing wrong in that, of course. However, what’s worrying is that it has become quite the norm, even in daily life and at the workplace, to expect women to forgo comfort for style. Take the case of a waitress in the USA who was told to wear heels for her next shift, even though her feet were bleeding and she had lost a toenail. Her friend shared a photo of her bloody feet and shoes; it went viral, and has sparked worldwide conversation on archaic and sexist dress codes at work. No one is asking to do away with dress codes and uniforms; just make sure one gender isn’t paying more in terms of both money and sometimes, blood.

So, it is better to learn some quick lessons by woman in the Indian context !

THE UNITY OF LIFE !

Location : Sadiq Nagar Park, South Delhi with my Samsung E7

A couple of years back, another fellow blogger asked me : What is your niche ? and I shot back with this reply. My niche is KNOWLEDGE, the Mother of all Niches.

In fact, I don't want to limit myself to certain niche in my writings as it may limit my area of exploration.

When I get bored with reading, I switch to writing and when that exhausts me, I turn to photography. These alternative activities not only gives  novelty to my blog,  but appease my senses which always want to expose to new kind of things, experiences.

Of all the life on this Earth, plant life is most amazing to me.  If I visit a park on my backyard,  I find hundreds of varieties of plants co-exist in a blissful way where as we humans don't even able to tolerate the difference of opinion  and lock horns virtually with everybody.

In the above picture, I see three kinds of plants interwoven to express unity of Life. The queenly look of purple flowers in this image stilled me to give a glimpse of it for you! 

HINDI FILM HERO EMRAAN'S BOOK - THE KISS OF LIFE

     Book Review

Nobody knows exactly how life takes you from one situation to another. We do have lots of planning to make it as a bed of roses, but when it slaps you on face with a brick, little you could prepare to endure the suffering.

All pain is not necessarily physical.  Psychological pain is the  severest, one could hardly manage.

The hardest of all battles is battle for life and many sufferers have documented their ordeals in the form of books and this book is one such real battle that was ultimately won by four-year old boy Ayaan, son of Bollywood Actor Emraan Hashmi, who came to limelight with his first runaway hit Murder.    People mostly remember Emraan  for his English Movie-like kisses on screen.

I read the sample  of kindle version  of books on my smaratphone. As Emraan  on-screen life is associated with raining of kisses, the author and publishers  cleverly added the word 'Kiss' to the title of the book - The Kiss of Life.   The book has Foreward by another glittering hero of tinsel town, Akshay Kumar, who also experienced the same kind of ordeal when his father died of cancer, and ignorance was the main culprit in his case.

First chapter ''I am batman !'' gives an interesting read of how Emraan subdued his emotional trauma when his son was detected with second stage Wilms' tumour, a type of cancer that affects the kidneys and typically occurs in children.  The way the chapter gives  a gripping account of ordeal ignites the reader's interest to march to next chapters,  and I strongly believe that like Emraan's first movie, this book also  become a big hit .

SKY IS THE LIMIT FOR THIS MAN !

Photo credit: The Hindu  dated  5/19/2016

Some wise man  rightly said this : Don't see first page of newspaper when you wake up in the morning; rather see the last page where sports achievements are  covered.

If you unfold the meaning hidden in these lines, you find that the first page of any newspaper reports violence, failures, corruption, politics which generally catch anybody's eye.  Where as, the last page, mainly stays on Sports, achievements of individuals, breakthroughs in Science, History etc.

But exception is everywhere. Sometimes, the front page of a newspaper also reports some inspiring news and that wonder happened this morning when I flipped through the newspaper.

The news is of a man from  Delhi's slum area who cleared Civil Services Examination . In fact Delhi is the hub for Civil Service coaching centres.  Thousands of civil service aspirants make Delhi as their second home in the process of getting selected.  I was told by a friend  that Mukherjee Nagar in Delhi is known for so many such unsung heroes who come from different parts of the country specially for coaching and some of them stay in sub-human conditions in the name of preparation for this covetous exam.

If we go into the details, Sandeep Kumar who did his BA (Political Science) through correspondence course clinched 780th rank which, he believes would fetch him  either IPS (Indian Police Service) or IRS (Indian Revenue Service).  The crux of the story is,  Sandeep prepared on his own  and achieved this feat without any coaching.  News reports  reveal that this 28 year old  son of autorickshaw driver lives in a 10 x 12 feet makeshift cabin at Anand Parbat, a suburb in Delhi, with his family.

Sandeep said that for the past two years, he had been putting in 10 to 12 hours of hard work everyday.  With this achievement, Sandeep became a overnight celebrity in his colony. He stands as a shining example of what a poor man  with a strong resolve could achieve even without any adequate financial background or guidance from coaching institutes.

Though he did not give any direct credit for any person who mentored his success,  I strongly believe that some great books might have triggered him inspiration to tread a path to success.    

We are all endowed with this hidden potential.  But success embraces only those who believe in themselves and constantly test new waters at every opportune moment !

BE YOUR OWN HERO

Almost anyone can do the first half  of anything; only the people who do  the second half  arrive !

                                                                                   - Ruskin Bond

Most us have weak will  that would have catastrophic effect on our performance.  If somebody demands you to do something and you fail on it,  there is nothing wrong about it.  But, once you decided to do an act  on your own will and if you stop doing it or left in the middle, there is something severely wrong on your part.  You may have convinced the world with your argument, but  you can't shut your inner voice  which ruthlessly points finger upon you !

In fact, it is a struggle  within your head.  It is a wrangling between pro and against forces within your mind.  Who must win is a decision you need to take.

If there is any single cause that makes you as a bundle of failures, it is lack of  perseverance or fall prey to procrastination.   

Listen my story : Around 29 years back, I was at the brink of disaster when my interest to learn stenography started dwindling after a couple of months.   At some point of time, I even stopped practicing it.  But I ultimately tamed my mind to recognize the need to reach the goal I set for myself for the first time in my adult life.   You could imagine the condition of 18 year old young man, who hardly exposed to outside world other than college going.

After so many mental manoeuvres,  I successfully completed and  passed my Stenography exam. It was the fruition  of my life's First Goal.   To cut  the story short,  further successes came to my way with my miracle fuel called willpower.  It sprouted the seeds of encouragement in my mind to lift myself even in the face of  serious setbacks in life.  

So, the home point is , act relentlessly and this world belongs to those who work ceaselessly !

MY MEMORIES WITH JALEBI IMLI

Credit : My Samsung E7

When I run out of ideas,  divine intervention comes through my wife.

Though my wife  exactly directly don't help in my writings, sometimes, she  gives ideas which may blossom into articles.

The image you are seeing is taken from my mobile when my wife brought to me this fallen fruit from the tree nearby my home. It is called  సీమ చింత కయ  in my vernacular -Telugu. I referred to Google Maa to know it's English equivalent.   No sooner had I pinged, the online giant retrieved with this unpronounceable word : Pithecellobium dulce.

In fact,  these are botanical names difficult to pronounce and remember.   In fact,  it  is  basically a thorny tree and the fruit is actually it's pod, a white sweetish edible pulp over black seeds.  In layman's  language,  it is  also called Madras Thorn or Manila Tamarind.  In Hindi, it is called  Jalebi Imli or Ganga Imli.

When I tasted it's pod, my mouth became  sour with it's taste.  But a ripened pod tastes sweeter.   While munching,  it threw me to my childhood memories when I along with my friends  used to visit rice fields in search of these pods and we would return  homes in the evenings with envious collections.

City life of today can't  match with those pleasant days spent in small towns and villages.   Who says that we forget everything on the forward march in life ?  Nope !

KILL EVEN A SMALL SNAKE WITH A BIG STICK

The title of this post is a proverb in my vernacular - Telugu.

Most of us carelessly allow certain unpleasant happenings to repeat in their lives without tightening their belts when they encounter the first ones.  This attitude invites problems or future setbacks.

So crush such avoidable happenings at the bud itself before they take an ugly turn.

Here is a caution for bloggers. Don't allow your  blog'scomments option automatic as it would facilitate certain unscrupulous elements to run riot of the situation.  Even, it is not safe to keep our timeline in Facebook  in the hands of what we call friends.  If somebody  with a mischievous intention gives undesirable or objectionable comments on your social media handlers,  instead of indulging into verbal spat with them, simply block such blacksheeps.

I had a couple of bitter experiences on this count and therefore scrupulously follow this dictum.  So learn the lesson quickly to safeguard your creative life ! 

EXPERIMENT IS KEY TO HAPPINESS

Most of us remain stereotypic and mindlessly follow others' pattern of actions.  In the process, we are out of sync with our own selves.  This is the root-cause of unhappiness.

There is no such thing like bad place or bad circumstance.  Any place or  person can't be stamped out cent percent  unbearable.  Your reaction to it matters.  That's why we are at varying levels  on the social ladder in society.

When Delhi was in the news for all wrong reasons being the world's most polluted city, on one last winter  afternoon, I undertook my walking journey from AIIMS Metro Station to Connaught place, the city's main marketing hub.

Walking through  the stretch of more than 8 kms  was really enticing.   With a book on one hand and another hand in pocket, I was the most happiest man on  Earth on that day.  The journey was pleasant as I   took frequent short breaks  to savour the beauty of  nature and also to read in the surroundings. Words fail to describe my inner serenity.

I do undertake such countless solitary walks  during my weekends and  more, especially in winters.  Such pristine moments give me enough space to think life from the cud of past experiences with a view to  find  new tools for eternal happiness.   Sometimes, the new tools come by way of insights and  one such insight is this :

One source of Happiness is to get new Experience. To get New Experience, you need to Experiment.

It means that  you need to get new experience every now and then which facilitates you to experiment and that experiment with right use of your mental resources put you  on happy path.

That's why our wisdom masters say that Happiness is not a destination but a continuous journey.  You can't live happily today by simply cherishing yesterday's happy moments.  You must also act  today to remain happy.  It means, like your hunger, it must be satiated on daily basis or hourly basis.  Those who can't realize this fact  can't tread the path of Happiness !