Just a Mom!

Just a Mom!

While applying for her driver’s license, Deepa was asked by the clerical  staff to state her occupation. Deepa hesitated, uncertain how to clarify herself. “What I mean is” explained the clerk. “ Do you have a job, or are you just a …”

“Of course I have a job.”snapped Deepa.”I’m a mother.”

“We don’t list ‘mother’ as an occupation… ‘housewife’ covers it.”  Said the clerk emphatically.

The next time Deepa found herself dealing with a public office, she again encountered a clerk who asked,  “What is your occupation?”

“I am a Research Associate in the field of Child Development and Human Relations,” Deepa ventured confidently. The clerk paused, his pen froze in midair, and he looked up as though he had not heard right.  Deepa repeated the title slowly, emphasizing the most significant words.

“Might I ask,” said the clerk with sudden interest, “just what do you do in your field?”

Coolly, without any trace of nervousness in her voice,Deepa replied, “I have a continuing program of research (which mother doesn’t?) in the laboratory and in the field (indoors and outdoors). I’m working for my Master’s (the whole family) and already have three credits,( a son and two daughters). Of course, the job is one of the most demanding in the humanities (any mother care to disagree?) and I often work 14 hours a day (24 is more like it). But the job is more satisfactory than just money.”

There was an increasing note of respect in the clerk’s voice as she completed the form. He stood up and personally ushered Deepa to the door.

As Deepa drove back, buoyed by her glamorous  new career she was greeted by her lab assistants – aged 8 and 5.Upstairs,Deepa could hear her new experimental model (the 2 – year old) in the child development program testing out new vocal patterns.  Deepa felt triumphant. She had gone on official records as someone more distinguished and indispensable to mankind than ‘just another mother’.

Does this make grandmothers ‘Senior Research Associates in the field of Child Devlopment and Human Relations? Then the aunts – ‘Associate Research Associates’.

Motherhood… what a glorious career!

It is not what you do but how you see what you do that makes all the difference. 

The Paradox of Our Times

The Paradox of Our Times

Is it that we have taller buildings but shorter tempers

Wider free-ways but narrower viewpoints

We spend more but have less

We have bigger houses but smaller families

More conveniences but lesser time

We have more academic degrees but lesser sense

More knowledge but lesser judgement

More experts, more problems, more medicines but lesser health

We have multiplied our possessions but reduced our values

We talk too much, love too seldom, and hate too often

We have learnt hoe to make a living but not how to live

We have added years to life but not life to years

We have been all the way to the moon and back,

 but have trouble crossing the street to meet our new neighbour

We have our space, but not inner space

We have cleaned up the air, but polluted our souls

We have split the atom but not our prejudice

We have higher incomes but lower morals

We have become long on quantity but short on quality

These are the times of taller men and shorter character

Steep profits and shallow relationships

These are the times of world peace but domestic warfare

More leisure but lesser fun

More kinds of food but lesser nutrition

These are the days of two incomes, but more divorces

Of fancier houses, but broken homes

It is a time when there is much in the show window and nothing in the stockroom

A time when technology can bring this letter to you and a time when you can choose, either to make a difference….or just hit Delete.

                                     -His Holiness, The Dalai Lama

Aurobindo on Spirituality in India

Spirituality is India’s only politics, the fulfillment of the Sanatan Dharma is its only Swaraj. You can’nt cherish these ideas, still less can you fulfill them if you subject your minds to European ideas or look at life from the material stand point. Materially you are nothing! Spiritually you are everything. It is only the Indian who can believe everything, dare everything, sacrifice everything, First, therefore, become Indians. Recover the patrimony of your forefathers. Recover the Aryan thought, the discipline, the character, the life. Recover the Vedanta, the Gita, the Yoga. Recover them not only in intellect or sentiment but in your lives. Live them and you will be great and strong, mighty, invincible and fearless. Neither life nor death will have any terror for you. Difficulty and impossibility will vanish from your vocabularies.

-Aurobindo.

Pt. Nehru at Aligarh Muslim University in 1948

Speech by Pt. Jawaharlal Nehru at the convocation in Aligarh Muslim University in 1948

I am proud of India, not only because of her ancient, magnificent heritage, but also because of her remarkable capacity to add to it by keeping the doors and windows of her mind and spirit open to fresh and invigorating winds from distant lands. India’s strength has been twofold; her own innate culture which flowered through the ages, and her capacity to draw from other sources and thus add to her own. She was far too strong to be submerged by outside stream.-(pp. 335)

I have said that I am proud of our inheritance and our ancestors who gave an intellectual and cultural pre-eminence to India. How do you feel about this past? Do you feel that you are also sharers in it and inheritors of it and, therefore, proud of something that belongs to you as much as to me? Or do you feel alien to it and pass it by without understanding it or feeling that strange thrill which comes from the realization that we are the trustees and inheritors of this vast treasure? I ask you these questions because in recent years many forces have been at play diverting people’s minds into wrong channels and trying to pervert the course of history.-(pp. 335)

You are Muslim and I am a Hindu. We may adhere to different religious faiths or even to none; but that does not take away from us that cultural inheritance that is yours as well as mine. The past holds us together, why should the present or the future divide us in spirit?-(pp. 335-336) 

Prayer is Calling Back Home

Prayer is calling back home

Prayer is, in essence, coming home,

for it brings us into connection with our deeper selves.

It is the way we speak to God,

and its beauty and poetry and devotion should match that in our hearts.

Prayer is the broom that sweeps out our hearts,

so the home we offer to God is an immaculate and pure one.

Prayer is a time when our mouths, our minds and our hearts

are filled with the glory of God,

when we simultaneously speak, think and feel our love for Him.

Prayer is the blanket that wraps itself around our souls.

Prayer is the water that quenches the thirst of a man lost in the desert.

It is the stars that glisten in the dark of night,

giving light to all those who may need it.

It is the sun that shines  in middle of winter,

coaxing the flowers to open their petals.

It is medicine to the sick, food to the hungry, and shelter to the homeless.

--------------------*************--------------------

Marriage

MARRIAGE

You were born together, and  together you shall be forevermore.

You shall be together when white wings of death scatter your days.

Aye, you shall be together even in the silent memory of God.

But let  there be spaces in your togetherness,

And  let the winds of heavens dance between you.

Love one another but make not a bond of love:

Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.

Fill each other’s cup but drink not from one cup.

Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf.

Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone,

Even the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music.

Give your hearts, but not  into eachother’s keeping.

For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts.

And stand together, yet not too near together:

For the pillars of the temple stand apart,

And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other’s shadow.

KHALIL GIBRAN

If There Is to Be Peace in The World

If  there  is  to  be  peace  in  the  world,

there   must  be  peace  in  the  nations.

If  there  is  to  be  peace  in  the  nations,

there  must  be  peace  in  the  cities.

If  there  is  to  be  peace  in  the  cities,

there  must  be  peace between  neighbours.

If  there  is  to  be  peace  between   neighbours

there  must  be  peace  in  the  home.

If  there  is  to  be  peace  in  the  home,

there  must  be  peace  in  the  heart.

                                             -Lao-Tse, the founder of Taoism.

Attitude

One fine day, a bus driver went to the bus garage, started his bus, and  
drove off along the route. No problems for the first few stops - a few
people got on, a few got off, and things went generally well.
At the next stop, however, a big hulk of a guy got on. Six feet eight, built
like a wrestler, arms hanging down to the ground. He glared at the driver
and said, " Big John doesn't pay!" and sat down at the back.
Did I mention that the driver was five feet three, thin, and basically meek?

Well, he was. Naturally, he didn't argue with Big John, but he wasn't happy
about it. The next day the same thing happened - Big John got on again, made

a show of refusing to pay, and sat down. And the next day, and the next.
This grated on the bus driver, who started losing sleep over the way Big
John was taking
advantage of him. finally he could stand it no longer. He signed up for body

building courses, karate, judo, and all that good    stuff.
By the end of the summer, he had become quite strong; what's more, he felt
really good about himself. So on the next Monday, when Big John once again
got on the bus and said, " Big John doesn't pay!"
The driver stood up, glared back at the passenger, and screamed, " And why
not?"
With a surprised look on his face, Big John replied, " Big John has a bus
pass."

Management Lesson: "Be sure there is a problem in the first place before
working hard to solve one."

---

Voice your questions and our experts will answer them

Boss,Read the True History Before Speaking - S. Gurumurthy

Boss, read the true history before speaking

 S Gurumurthy

 Apr 6, 2013 

The label ‘Hindu rate of growth’ was coined by Professor Rajkrishna, a socialist establishment economist, in 1978 to rationalise why India was growing ‘slowly’ despite following the socialist prescriptions.

Karl Marx wrote an article on the Indian economy [June 25, 1853] in New York Harold Tribune. In his article, he was generally positive about the distinct ‘Hindoo’ India’s village system of agriculture and manufacturing which, he said, gave to people their independent organisation and social life. But he said that that had made India changeless for two thousand years. So the British, he said, were doing the right thing, though painful, causing a social revolution by demolishing the village system which Marx described as ‘semi-barbarian and semi-civilised’. Karl Marx, who never came to India, never met any informed Indian, nor read any worthwhile Indian literature dismissed India as a semi-barbarian. His knowledge about India was limited colonial records on India.

Then came Max Weber. He had theorised that only Protestant Christian societies could progress under modern capitalist model since Protestantism alone promoted individualism and enterprise. He was entitled to his comment because he had studied the rise of America and European protestant nations as compared to the Catholic countries which had stagnated. But he impertinently wrote in late 1920s that India and China, which followed Hindu-Buddhist faiths, would not succeed under capitalist model because they believed in karma, rebirth and caste. He too never went to India, perhaps never met a proper Indian, but still adversely commented on Hinduism and Buddhism.

 Studies have established that the Marx and Weber theories had exerted the greatest influence on Indian academic, sociological and economic thinking.

But this colonial theory was proved fake in 1983 -- exactly five years after Rajkrishna trashed Hinduism for India’s low growth. In that year Paul Bairoch, a Belgian economist, came out with his study of the world economy and his findings astounded the West. He said that in 1750 India’s share of world GDP was 24.5 per cent, China’s 33 per cent, but the combined share of Britain and the US was - believe it - just two per cent. Yes only two per cent!

India’s share, Bairoch found, fell to 20 per cent in 1800; to 18 per cent in 1830; and finally crashed to 1.7 per cent in 1900, while China’s crashed to 6.2 per cent from 33 per cent. In these 150 years, the combined share of Britain and the US rose to from 2 per cent to over 41 per cent.

Bairoch shook the West by saying that in middle 19th century, the West had a lower standard of living than Asians - read Indians and Chinese. The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development [OECD], network of rich nations, forthwith constituted a Development Institute Studies under Angus Maddisson, a great economic historian, to conduct a comprehensive research into economic history - the implied agenda was to prove Bairoch wrong.

Angus Maddisson postulated, ‘if Bairoch is right, then much more of the backwardness of the third world presumably has to be explained by colonial exploitation’ and ‘much less of Europe’s advantage can be due to scientific precocity, centuries of slow accumulation, and organisational and financial superiority’. After two decades of hard work, Maddision published his studies titled ‘World Economic History - A Millennial Perspective in 2001’.

His study confirmed Bairoch’s study of 150 years and more, as Maddisson studied the entire 2000 years economic history. Maddisson showed that India was the leading economic power of the world from the 1st year of the first millennium till 1700 - with 32 per cent share of world’s GDP in the first 1000 years and 28 per cent to 24 per cent in the second millennium till 1700.

China was second to India except in 1600 when China temporarily overtook India. India again overtook China in 1700. The global economic play was in the hands of India and China till 1830. And two nations disqualified for development by Weber for following Hindu and Buddhist religions. Maddison confirmed, actually confessed, that [Hindu] India fell only due to colonial exploitation. Now the Maddisson study, endorsed by OECD, is the most authentic economic history of the world. What does it prove? The Hindu rate of growth had kept India going as the most powerful economy of the world for 1850 years out of 2000 years. That is why William Dalrymple described the rise of India ‘as the empire striking back’ -- meaning that India’s rise was not rags to riches story.

The Bairoch-Maddisson studies have sealed the discourse decades back. Their studies have also been corroborated by other studies and records. Some of them are: studies into the Mayuran export-led economic Model Hindu India [American Journal of Economics and Sociology April 1993]; study into consumption during Akbar’s regime as being higher than in Europe by Centre for West Asia Studies Jamia Milia Islamia University; the Economic History of Greco-Roman World which described how two thousand years ago India was bankrupting Roman Egypt of its gold reserves by its export surplus; the history of Indian merchant navy which had a fleet strength of 40,000 ships in Akbar’s time and as many as 34,000 ships before the British arrived and the Bank of International Settlements [BIS] Annual report of 1934-35 which said that between 1493 and 1930 India absorbed 14 per cent of world gold production - which meant that it earned that much export surplus for five centuries continuously.

QED: Hindu rate of growth had made India super power. Colonialism did India down to poverty. Nehruvian socialism made it stagnate even after freedom.

OUR RESOLVE

To plan what you want to do 10 years from now is a joke. To not know what you want to do in the year ahead is a tragedy. Let us turn 2013 -14 into a year of Most and more…with SMART goals.

SPECIFIC: I want to perform better, I want to become richer, I want to become healthier aren’t specific goals. Your mind will come up with a plan of action, only if the goal is made meaningful, by making it specific.

MEASURABLE : We need ways by which we know we know we are progressing towards the finishing line. What cannot be measured cannot be monitored, what cannot be monitored cannot be controlled, what cannot be controlled cannot be directed, and what cannot be controlled cannot become progress. So the goal must be broken up into measurable components.

ACHIEVABLE : There are no ambitious goals; only ambitious time frames. Goals can be born from the heart, but the timeframes must be reasoned out by the mind. That’s why goals can be out of mind.

REALISTIC : Resources yield results. Results need resources. It is not about increasing the turnover from 50 to 100 crores, but can it be done with this team size, this factory space, this capital, this know-how, and in the prevailing market condition? A realistic goal is one wherein there is a specific and scientific correlation between resources and results.

TIME BOUND : Human beings are deadline driven animals. Your mind will not even start working unless you give it a deadline to work for…

MY RESOLVE : Let us turn the financial year 2013-14 into a year of humungous possibility with SMART goals.

Taken From INFINITHOUGHTS, March 2013 issue.

Whatever you say God.

An old ferryman with a long white beard and merry twinkling eyes would carry the travelers from one end of the river to another. Although there were bigger vessels and more luxurious boats to do the same, his simple wooden boat, with a lantern hung at one end and the ferryman at the other, was the most popular. There was something in his demeanor that calmed everyone who travelled everyday with him. He would share stories, laugh, smile and sometimes just be silent-however, it never seemed awkward. There was something about him…

To understand why everyone chose his boat, a rich businessman who owned one of the most luxurious boats there decided to travel with him. Wearing a heavy suit and even heavier scent- he got onto the boat and watched the old man, robed in simple light white clothes, rhythmically bob his head up and down as he happily rowed.

The man asked the ferryman, “So, old man, how long have you been a ferryman Now?”

The ferryman smiled with his eyes and said, “Sir, I do not count years- but I can tell you, for as long as  I remember this river, this little wooden boat and I have been friends…” with that he continued the rhythmic bobbing.

The businessman, despite himself, began to feel calm in the presence of the ferryman and as he unbuttoned his coat, he asked him in a soft tone, “So, why is it that everyone wants to travel in your boat- even though there are better options available?”

The old man looked startled and said, “Sorry sir, but I have no answer. I have never thought about this. I just  do what I love and have never thought of who travels, or doesn’t travel with me.?

The businessman smiled. Something in his heart was melting as he kept looking at the wonderful old ferryman. He said, “Is there some secret you know about the river that we do not?” “No,” said the ferryman and added, “I know no secret… but the river talks to me.”

Extremely curious, the businessman asked, “And what does it say?” He replied by singing a small song in his deep, husky, almost mystical voice:

If you flow with the flow,

The river will take you,

Where you want to go.

If you go against the tide,

It’s just going to be,

One choppy ride.

Why make things so tough,

And make even this beautiful life,

Oh, so rough?

When you can simply flow with the flow,

And river will take you,

Where you want to go…

The businessman looked in wonder at the simple man before him. With no formal education the ferryman seemed to have understood one of the greatest laws of life that all of them were struggling with. There was such a peace in this boatman- because he never went against life… instead he chose to row his little boat with the tides- and never against it.

How true? The life force that takes care of everything-  from the majestic mountains to the little pebbles, from the vast oceans to every little stream, from the celestial bodies to a mongrel across the street- would it not ‘know’ what is good for us, even better than us? If the attraction and repelling forces between the planets shift by even a miniscule amount- the entire galaxy would fall apart. If gravity decided to stop acting upon us for even a nanosecond, there would be chaos- if the sun chose to take a day off- life would cease to exist. And yet- all of these natural phenomena work with such absolute precision- so what makes us think that there is actually something ‘out there’ that can be against us?

The ‘tide’ that the old man speaks of is nothing but Source, God, Force of Nature- whatever name you may call it- that guides everything in our life- from the biggest decisions to the tiniest ones. And yet we sit and fret and fume- wondering why life is not going the way we want it to. How can it? It knows the best- and it will choose its own tide.

The more and more my mind quietens, I realize, the best thing we can actually do in life is learn to empty ourselves. Constant thinking needs to be overtaken by a simple wonder of everything that is.

Resistance to what is, needs to be replaced by acceptance for what is. Emotional turmoil needs to plateau into peace… and in that state- knowingly, or unknowingly, life starts going with the flow rather than against it.

I love the way my beloved guru puts it, “Men of intelligence have all the questions; men of surrender have all the answers.” For my life, God, you are the ferryman… and all I can say to you, right now is, “Whatever you say, God”.  

-----*****------

    

The Fire Inside

When all is lost and hope has fled When fear is strong and strength is dead When love and joy abandon you When mental anguish grows in you When the last of efforts fail to save When your fate is ill, your mind enslaved And when your head hangs low in misery This is when you'll find the key A single ember from deep within Burns hotter and hotter, as flames begin The fire of truth will light the way And help you fight, this lonely day The battle is long, the struggle is rough Never regret not giving enough For when we offer our very best, Our very soul is put to the test Stand tall and true and you'll prevail Just hold on tight and never bail You will survive if you don't quit Victory is there, if you reach for it One day in the future, you will look to the past, And know you had what it takes to last So never give up and good things will come, Not just honor and pride, but a job well done.