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Sunday, December 25, 2016

Why is Childhood Woeful?

Growing up, did you ever have an elder give you their complete attention?

Psychologists say attention is necessary for the emotional growth of a child. It bolsters our self-worth.

One of my chief complaints about my parents was that they never bothered to give me attention, or to listen to my stories. I remember being dismissed many of the time as 'saying nonsense.' When I didn't pick up fast enough what they were teaching me, they lost patience. When I slowed down miserably, they lost temper. Then it was Indo-Pak war.

After growing up, most children blame their parents for their personality defects. If only they had listened to me, if only they had let me have friends,..

I was no exception. I blamed my parents for my complexes, my insecurities, my lack of confidence -----------------until I had my own children.

The Infinitely patient super-parent

In the beginning it was a pleasure to explain lessons, ask to clean their tables and keep things clean. But soon I learnt that kids were also human. In fact, more human than adults, in that they took their sweet time to learn new habits, to study. In general, they just wanted to have fun.

Countless were the times when I threw my hands up on seeing new toys and school ID cards broken, shirts soiled beyond recognition, Were they taking a perverted pleasure in seeing my frustration?

And then I remembered.

Myself.

I never could remember a single instance in my childhood when I had done my work on my own initiative, of having taken any interest in studies, or keeping my things clean. My parents had a very tough time in getting me to study.


Why oh, why?

So was this payback? 

From the point of Karma, it very likely is. Everything that you had done has to end up somewhere, and the only logical place for it to end up is its source.

Talk about the cycles in nature. The water cycle, the food cycle, etc etc.

Learning to walk again

In many ways, training a child is like becoming a child again. Otherwise, you will not appreciate their situation and their difficulty in learning new things. Especially children who are differently-abled or are just not academically inclined.

You teach 1 to 100 to your six year old. But the next week, she is still stumbling on sixteen and sixty, seventeen and seventy, While the teacher is already onto multiplication...This may happen week after week, month after month, year after year...

It is easy to lose our patience and shout...but I remind myself this is what I am going to get back when eventually I may become a child sometime. If I am patient and tolerating now, I get it back.

Whatever I do, comes back to me.

If I lose it and shout, I'll be doing irreparable damage to the child's psyche. I've to be patient, and think for a better way to explain.

After all, that's the purpose of human existence...to solve life's challenges.



Wednesday, December 21, 2016

Cheapest Solution Yet For A Country to Go Cashless

Smart card wallets communicating

We have dwelt at length on the currency crisis in India here and here.

Now let's move on to the solution. The Government is working on a cash transfer system based on Unique Identification Number (Aadhar). Great.

In the mean time, here's another concept for an alternative for those people who cannot afford a smart phone and therefore, an e-wallet. It's the Smart card wallet.

The Smart card wallet

The Smart card wallet is similar to a smart credit card. It is able to transmit data in a small range of 1 m. This is all the range that is needed in daily transactions in the store, hotel, pubic transport etc.


  • There are the numerals 0 - 9 on one side with special characters, as in a touch pad calculator.
  • It has a solar self charging surface. Or we can also use a piezo electric charger.
  • It has a mini blue tooth (or other transmitter/receiver) of range 1 metre
  • Each card has a unique identification number.
  • Each card is connected to the bank account of the person. The person must transfer money from his/bank account to the Card wallet (by online banking/ ATM/bank branches).


Sending money

The transacting parties switch on their card wallets to transmitting/receiving mode. The sender types the receiver's unique number and the amount into his wallet, and presses send.

The e-cash lands in the receiver's Smart card wallet.

Receiving money into bank account

The receiver can do this in the same way as transferring cash from his/her bank account (by online banking/ ATM/bank branches).

In addition, the smart wallet can be made compatible with all existing payment systems. e-wallets etc.

Precautions

One has to take care of the smart wallet in the same way as cash wallet, to prevent theft. But this can also be prevented with a locking code.

Thursday, December 15, 2016

Be Kind : You Never Know When Luck Strikes!

A road side beggar was singing with a beaten down harmonium in frenetic Mumbai. Old, loose clothes, greyed hair, and a hunchback. People ignored him as they do to most beggars. But a young man was captured by the sweetness of his voice and sat down with him. He complimented him, and while parting, slipped some money into his hands, in the guise of a handshake. The boy's name was Shahbaz Ali.

A few days later, Shahbaz got a call from an NGO that he had been selected for an interview with Sonu Nigam, India's leading playback singer. A man in an Innova car came to pick him up..It was Sonu Nigam who had disguised himself as a beggar, as part of an initiative of Being Human, an NGO.

Watch the video recording of the incident.

Wednesday, December 07, 2016

Trailer | The Journey | Jan Kounen, Anne Paris

Jan Kounen is an acclaimed French film director many of whose films study altered states of consciousness. His films take you into a different state of mind. He had made a film on Ayahuasca, the medicinal drink the Amazonian Indians use for inducing altered states of consciousness.

He has also made Darshan, a film on Mata Amritanandamayi, well known mystic.

In this later film he explores the world of Anne who reached a different plane of consciousness with the help of Dolphins.

Truth is simple, we humans complicate it.

Friday, December 02, 2016

Whither India?

These are just some videos of how life is faring in the national capital, three weeks after the currency note ban.

Sadly, there was no consideration for how the people in the lower economic stata would suffer. How can you expect them to buy a 5000 INR smart phone and start using a mobile wallet overnight? (It's also difficult to withdraw cash from mobile wallets to your bank).

The government should have made IMPS transactions free or developed a system to transfer cash via mobile SMS.

These videos show how the aam admi is faring:










These are all people who are supposed to be working (10 am). Instead, they are standing in queues. How many millions of man hours did India lose on account of this note ban? It's no wonder the GDP is sliding down!

Let's hope nobody gets the idea of invading Pakistan to divert attention from this mess.

Sunday, November 13, 2016

A Solution To The Current Cash Crisis

The Government of India has started a demonetisation policy to curb black money. The higher denomination notes of Rs.500 and Rs.1000 are invalid now. Because the policy was announced without warning, people are finding it impossible to do daily transactions.

Tragic stories

The public is losing patience with this new scheme, having to stand in queue at ATMs for long hours.

Horror stories are also breaking:

The hardest hit are the lower class who do not have credit, debit cards, or internet banking. As business slows down. the economy is taking a huge hit.

I got a first hand experience while eating out with family at Connaught Place yesterday. Shockingly, the underground parking lot did not accept credit cards or mobile cash. Luckily, we had one rupee coins totalling ten Rupees, the parking charge for one hour.

In that one hour we had to shop, eat, and come back. CP is huge and I had to walk 20 minutes to find that shop. We couldn't take a rickshaw to speed up the transits because of the same crisis above.

Somehow managed to shop and get the food packed and rush back to the car! My wife wanted a bag, but couldn't buy as the credit card servers had crashed.

Needless to say, most people will not be venturing out for some time,

To avoid making this scheme into a modern day Tughlaqian reform, the Government should act and act fast.

The 50 % Solution- Mobile currency

India has 616 million unique mobile users as of June 2016. This is 56% of the population. 53% of the population has a bank account as of 2014. 

Enabling Mobile money transfer will solve the problem for at least half of the population, if not more--many family members share a single bank account.

Mobile to mobile transfer of money is already available with almost all the leading operators such as Vodafone, Airtel, Idea Cellular etc.

However, there are many restrictions on mobile to mobile cash transfer:
  • In the multiples of cash that you can send
  • The number of transfers allowed per day
  • The cost--Vodafone for example charges Rs.38 for sending Rs. 2,000 to a bank account. (1.9%!)

What the Govt. needs to do

The Government needs to make all mobile cash transfers completely free. The revenue losses will have been compensated by the black money that is coming in.

In addition:
  • Educative campaign over the media on mobile-to-mobile transfer
  • Encourage mobile cash transfer at all levels
  • Any one with a mobile number (prepaid or post paid) should be able to send and receive cash as many times as needed.
There you have it-- a currency less economy.

It's nothing new. Sweden, Somali land, South Korea, Canada, Kenya and others are already doing it.

Please share this article if you feel it will help.

Sunday, October 30, 2016

The Seat of Consciousness

Where are we in the human body? Scriptures say we are everywhere inside and outside the body as consciousness. However this is a relative world, and we can't comprehend absolute realities while perceiving from a world of relativity. We need a reference point while operating here.

Let us consider the vital organs in the body: people do continue to live without arms and legs. All the organs in the trunk can be replaced, including the heart.

The brain is the only organ that cannot be replaced. There is a very high probability that the seat of consciousness is in the brain.

The Hindu scriptures talk about the thousand petalled lotus in the human brain. Perhaps that is allegoric. For all purposes, we say a person is unconscious or gone to sleep when his brain ceases to function.

It is true that we perceive through every organ. Just as the eyes see, our skin perceives the world through the sense of touch. Still that is about the only sense organ, a part of which resides in the trunk. The other, more critical sense organs of perception-the eye, ear, nose, and tongue are all situated in the head, along with the skin.

The brain  also manages all other organs, in their operation and internal maintenance. Physically also, it is in the highest position.

All of this point out that the brain is the most critical component of the body. So it may well house the most mysterious secret inside the body: us.

Thursday, August 11, 2016

Why Phone Fraud Starts With a Silent Call

http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2015/08/24/434313813/why-phone-fraud-starts-with-a-silent-call

Wednesday, June 01, 2016

Lived And Loved, Truly

The online question answer site Quora is known for the sincerity of answers you can get. Today I read a most unusual but true story of a woman. In answer to a question "What is an incident that changed your life?", a user has written this story of her life......

This is the view point of  a refugee who had been living a normal life like any of us just before everything changed...

Sunday, May 08, 2016

How to Go Out of Business

Today I got a live demo on this - how to go out of business - and fast.

Vacation time was fast approaching and I had to find something to keep the kids engaged or they would turn the home upside down. Being overactive, it seemed they could use some Yoga training to calm down.

I looked up some Kids' Yoga classes in the city and shortlisted a few that were in the vicinity.

Next was the task of calling them up and getting the details of schedule, fees etc.

As I worked through the list, I talked with instructors of different schools. I crossed out several on account of being too expensive, not being pure Yoga (martial arts mix) etc. But the one that really got the black mark was a case study in ruining one's own business. I tried the number because the location was very near our home.

They had given two numbers.

A sleepy male voice answered the first number: Hello?...... Hello?....... Hello?
Obviously he was not hearing me. A full minute went by trying to make myself audible to him. Unfortunately the line was too bad, or he pretended to be so.

Undaunted, I tried the second number. The answerer was female this time. I tried to get the schedule and fees. She seemed to be trying to prevent me from taking the class. This place is too far from your location, How will you reach here?

"No, it is only twenty minutes," I pointed out.

It was really funny, she trying to discourage me from visiting and I reassuring. I finally got it when she couldn't give a schedule for the classes. Tell me your convenient time and we can arrange a trial session for you. No schedule.

No schedule meant no classes. They were not in business.

Why did you list your business in the first place?

Thursday, May 05, 2016

I Killed Her

The gruesome rape, torture, and murder of a 29 year old Law student in Perumbavur, Kerala has sent shockwaves through the country.

However, because she was not in the national capital, and belonged to a marginalised class, the media has not been as vociferous in its outrage as that in the 2012 Nirbhaya rape and murder in New Delhi, which attracted international attention

You can read the gruesome details here, but brace yourself, it is extremely disturbing:

http://www.firstpost.com/india/kerala-murder-2012-delhi-gangrape-jisha-2761770.html

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/life/the-brutal-rape-and-murder-of-jisha-shows-that-life-for-indias-w/

Jisha went without meals, walked to college, yet never complained'...

Shunned by neighbours, she found hope in pen camera...

Jisha's classmates pledge to fight for justice...

Neighbour had threatened to kill my daughter: Jisha's mother...


The investigation will reach its natural conclusion, the widespread outrage all over the state and social media indicate people are not going to rest till the guilty are punished.

But that is not the issue: 
Jisha is not going to come back. She is not going to complete her back papers and her law degree so that she can fulfil her dream of building a house for her old mother and take care of her.

Why? Because some men got weird ideas in their minds through watching porn and were insensitized by drugs and alcohol. They lost their humanity and snuffed out a promising life.

Somehow, I feel that I am responsible. I had consumed porn in the past. 

Metaphysical research agrees with Yogic findings that the thoughts of each one of us affects the thoughts of humanity in general. The atmosphere in a fish market is starkly different from that of a place of worship. One is noisy and chaotic while the other is serene and peaceful.

Each time my mind emitted lustful thoughts after watching porn, it vitiated the atmosphere, It degraded the general quality of humanity's thoughts, in however minuscule proportion it was. Millions of people thinking in the same irresponsible way has a snowballing effect on the thoughts of humanity and can have calamitous results like the above incident.

People are more prone to behave in a licentious, irresponsible way when that is all they see all around. Especially so when those in authority behave irresponsibly like that. However, in the presence of somebody who is disciplined and responsible, we also tend to be more orderly.

So the choices and behaviour of each one of us definitely has a marked effect on society. You should have the conviction to follow your convictions.


If we do not take responsibility and take the effort to raise the quality of our thoughts, they can only go in one direction-- down.

When crimes like this happen, we need to remember that we are responsible in a way, because we have not set a better example of ourselves.

Let's take a pledge now to dedicate our efforts towards uplifting our thoughts and habits.

Earlier I had goals about making money and doing world tours and having fun, but it just does not seem right...when large numbers of people are suffering everyday in misery like this....the farmers who have  committed suicide (over 100,000),...Rape victims....acid attack victims....trafficking victims...

It is time for us to do something. We, the educated, empowered class, need to take responsibility for our actions and thoughts, for they have a part in shaping the destiny of the world.

Monday, March 07, 2016

A Lesson in Honesty From An Orphan Child..

The man in the video is an actor Varun Prithi. However, the video is genuine. You could tell from observing the little girl. It's staggering to realise that countless such children struggle to make a daily living in the harsh, unforgiving cities.

However, the child, little though she is, seems to exude an overpowering positivity and faith in life, that is surely going to see her conquer all odds one day. You can see even in this video how she staunchly stands by her chosen principles.

Great consolation amidst the deluge of negative news inundating our lives.

If she can, why can't we stand up to temptation?

Saturday, January 30, 2016

Cheap Printing With HP DeskJet Ink Advantage

I had bought an Ink advantage printer some time back but never got around to testing it. The claim was that a print would cost around 0.20 ps/page (USD 0.003).

Finally today I had the occasion to print a large quantity in one go. Here are the results:

HP DeskJet Ink Advantage

Number of pages printed: 316
Cartridge: HP 678 (BLACK)
Cost of Cartridge: Rs.550/- including shipping. (USD 8.08)
Printing Cost per page:Rs.1.74  (USD 0.03)

The word count is a bit heavy though: about 450 per page.

Though this doesn't come close to their claim, it still is better than the original Canon printer I had that cost about Rs.10 per print.

Have a look here :Hewlett Packard K9B59AB1H Deskjet Printer/    

Tuesday, January 26, 2016

The 10 Things I Learned When I Died And Came Back To Life

http://thoughtcatalog.com/anonymous/2013/10/the-10-things-i-learned-when-i-died-and-came-back-to-life/

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