Thirsty for food

Planning to give your friends, a party at a newly opened hotel joint in your vicinity? Well we need to rethink!! I am sure by now that each one of you would have heard of the rising food prices and the ladies in the house cutting down on making new recipes and the dal fry you had thrice a week is now made only once a week ,all thanks to the prices of dal being sky high. How will the middle class families survive? Forget about the people below the poverty line.
We all have the right to clean and proper food but how can one afford all this at such hiked rates? Just go to a vegetable vendor and the daily necessities in the kitchen like tomatoes, cabbage, green peas, onion, potatoes have become double the prices, the tomatoes which were previously Rs 12 per half a kg is now for Rs.20. The situation is only going from bad to worse. The person who used to have his lunch at hotels now may opt may bring the lunch from home or consume junk food from a roadside vendor as that food is cheaper and fits into the common man’s pocket. The common thali which was Rs.30 per plate now costs Rs.40. The tea, coffee stalls which gave the cutting chai for Rs.4 now charges Rs.7-8 as a result of the rise in sugar prices . Also there’s no option left with the hotels and restaurants as it would be even hard for them to drive their business with the rise in the basic food items and so they will obviously put forward this burden on us ,ultimately it all boils down to the common man suffering .
Food prices are on a exponential rise right since the year 2000 but recently year 2008 has seen a big loop in this whole process. Also the weather being uncertain there are no proper rains posing threat to farmers also encouraging them to ultimately give up their lives and committing suicides. The poor countries in the world will be the most affected as the poor countrymen’s ability to buy food will be undermined. There’s a noticeable rise in the amounts of deaths happening in the country due to starvation. The whole demand and supply curve indicates that there will be no correction in this price hike for at least a decade or more. The countries like India and China whose population is increasing by leaps and bounds every single day, their need for meat and dairy products will rise too. There are several places where farmers neither have access to proper farming facilities, irrigation nor they can feed their own families.
If all this continues, like the food riots breaking out in many parts of the world due to the soaring prices, forget fuel , world food crisis will be the question of worrying for many of us. How can one eradicate this thirst for hunger? World can provide food to all .It just needs a well maintained balance between the food importers and exporters , government providing farmers with necessary knowledge and investing in research to boost the productivity of the crops.
Forget about the recession. There’s more to this. We should pay attention to a man’s basic needs. i.e the roti, kapda and makaan, i.e. food, clothing and shelter.

Let's do our bit to conserve energy

Today when I went for my early morning walk, the climate was cool, indicating the onset of winter but there was one more thing I noticed and that was smoke covering the city skyline. It was smog and not fog. With the Climate summit happening in the Copenhagen and also there’s a batti bandh campaign happening in the city to create awareness among the masses. . It’s time we all do our bit to conserve energy else there will surely be days when we will feel the complete blackout-no electricity-no water –no lpg. It’s time we wake up.
Here are some simple steps we all can practice to do our bit for the world.
1. Turn off lights when leaving your room and check if you don’t leave any lights on while going out on a vacation. Also try and use fluorescent light bulbs if possible.
2. Use air-conditioners only when it’s absolutely necessary. Else keep open the windows of your cars to let the breeze in the evenings .Try to keep your house ventilated.
3. Please check that you don’t leave the water tap open when you are done washing your utensils, using your washing machine, try not to take showers for long hours and waste water unnecessarily.
4. Try to separate the dry and wet wastes and don’t just throw the garbage out of your balcony into your society premises.
5. While cooking try to cover the utensil with a lid while boiling as it will fasten up the process.
6. Use public transport wherever you can or give lift to your friends and neighbors’ if you are going to the same place.
7. Once you are done with charging your mobile phones please take out the adapter and switch off the light.
8. Keep the temperature of your refrigerator to the normal level.
9. When at office , keep your PC on a sleep mode if you are away from your desk for more than 15 minutes.
10. While leaving for home shut your PC as it will save a lot of carbon emissions and also encourage your colleagues to exercise the same.
11. When you watch Television just don’t put it off via remote, get up and switch off the lights .
12. If you use geysers at home try to use it for minimum amount of time as it consumes a lot of electricity.
13. If you happen to hit the gym regularly, please remember to switch off the power supply once you are done cycling and running on the treadmill.
14. When at office, switch off the lights of your washrooms and cubicles when you leave the place.
15. Also try and increase the temperature of the air conditioners at the office if you don’t need much cooling as even rising the temperature saves the electricity
16. While you do all this, please try to pass on this message to as many people you know as Together we can and we will make a difference.

Reflexions

When you start your journey, you have a lots of co-travellers who walk beside you but as the journey is on, one by one you start to realize that not all the souls you started your journey with are present with you now as nothing is eternal and every passing moment signifies change.A change big or small transforming your life every minute.Similarly when you tread along the journey of life, you start walking holding the hands of your parents, then in the course of time you come across many people may be in the disguise of friends,foes,relatives but as the sandclock works, not all the sand remains with you.As days crawl,seasons fly and years swim you start filtering out the unwanted ones and there you stand aloof unaware of the fact that the number of people who actually matter to you in so many years can hardly be counted on your fingertips.If out of these someone's am talking about are really your closed ones you need to realize that these are the ones you can walk upto when in sad or happy times and they are your true reflection ,a mirror that will hide nothing from you and show you nothing but reality...bitter or sweet.And this reflection can only be one ,a person who you may call as your soulmate. So have we identified the mirror in which our feelings reflected and a soul whose heart beats just for you ..Life's beautiful and destiny a cool mystery .In between all this I wish you a very happy jouney

Raaz Peechle Janam Ka -Review

Raaz Peechle Janam Ka –Review

Ever believed in re-incarnation? No matter what caste, creed and religion we belong to we all have heard and talked something about these from our grandparents, ,friends etc. This has always been a intriguing question for decades. It’s like if we believe in God then we can believe in our previous births too.
Ever since I saw this ad about a reality show starting on this topic of re-incarnation I could not help but wait eagerly for their first show to air on 7th December ,2009 at 9.30 pm on NDTV imagine. Ravikishen did a fabulous job as an anchor for the show. Looks like he has improved manifold and looks great and radiant on the stage. The sets are painted in dark blue shades, creating the environment for getting in
touch with your inner soul. The show is an attempt to find answers to the problems people face like having phobias or they see same images again and again or some recurrent situations happening with them. It’s about finding the main root cause of a series of events happening in a person’s life.
The first contestant Swati , who stayed in Bhopal who herself didn’t believe much in this re-incarnation had come to the show, expecting even she may find some answer to her phobia from heights. She dreaded sitting in the plane, especially when the flights take off and landed. She had come there along with her husband and a relative to witness what all she will say when in a state of deep sleep.

Ravikishen asked her whether she was ready to take this test and she said a yes. She was made to lie down on the bed and asked several questions which revealed the ultimate truth that she was a sailor in her last birth and had died in the plane crash. She said everything right from her name, to seat number, to flight number and also the co-passenger , Dr. Homi Jehangir Bhabha, India’s famous scientist.
I was spell-bound. I just could not believe my eyes. Also the contestant Swati herself was speechless. The concept of the show is quite unique and will surely attract a large pool of audiences.

Communication is the key

We had a reading hour in school wherein all the students were expected to read stories form the novels available in the school library. I was in 8th grade then. As the reading hour was about to get over our professor asked all of us that who all read times of India newspaper.
I could not raise my hand unlike the other students as only a gujarati newspaper was read at my house. Almost all my friends had their hands up and so my sir started discussing in detail the sports section and the headlines etc. I was patiently hearing everything and the conversation between my friends and my sir. Then the sir asked all of them to tell their favorite section and my class sounded like a zoo where monkeys were screaming and yelling and jumping from here and there. Sir said in a loud voice-pin drop silence kids...and it was finger on your lips for all of us . Then a girl told sir that her favorite section was the Speaking tree column which was accompanied by the sacred space. Sir was too impressed and said that it was indeed a good piece of writng and all of us should read it. I thought that there was some tree which could actually speak and there's some news about it. As the bell rang, reading hour was over and I just forgot about the whole thing.

Next day I was sick and was on a leave. When I went to school the other day I went to my class teacher and showed her the leave note in my calendar signed by my father, she asked as to what went wrong and was I feeling well now. It was such a simple question but somehow I struggled for words and didn't reply anything. The teacher didn't say anything to me . Probably she felt I was still feeling sick.

But my problem was completely different . I knew what I wanted to say but I could not say that in English. I started fumbling and somehow felt blank. It was an big eye opener for me . The whole day I was upset. I thought to myself that being a girl who is studying in an English medium school and already in Secondary section can't speak english. What a shame!I just made up my mind that I will make my command over the english language nad even my mother tongue so strong that never ever in my life I should fumble or struggle for words.

I told my mom to start taking the Times of India(TOI) newspaper. When I read the TOI for the first time I came across this section called the speaking tree which had lovely stories about life, humanity, emotions, and a sacred space which had spiritual quotes. I realized that what happened back in school was that everybody in the class was discussing about this column which I thought of as an actual tree which could really speak. How foolish was I!

I started reading newspaper everyday, reading the wren and martin grammar books, solving exercises, I just spoke in English all day, there were times I was teased by my friends that I am trying to show off and be different than others but it all fell on my deaf ears. I was determined enough to learn and also let others learn. But my friends didn't understand my motive. I read essays ,novels and even bought an english dictionary. Whenever I came across a new word I used to note it down and then look back to refer in the dictionary. I didn't know when I fell into the habit of reading the dictionary itself. A year passed by and then I decided to participate in an english essay writng competition. I still remeber the topic given to us was "Importance of Value Education". I just wrote it and was very satisfied with the way I had written. When the result was announced on the mike by my principal and we had speakers in every classroom in the school. It was the last lecture and the bell rang and so there was a lot of noise and I could not hear that who won the prize. I was not even expecting my name as there were more scholars in the class. But when I went out of the school all my friends congratulated me and then I realized that it was me. I was so happy. It meantt hat whatever hardwork I was putting in was showing results. By the time I stepped in tenth grade my teacher asked me to write essays and make grammar asignments which she then gave to the whole class. I was now spreading the knowledge gained.

My clasmates who teased me for always speaking in english now came and asked me for advice. The situation had turned around. When I entered college I continued to get awards for writing essays and there were compliments written on my answer papers that " I wanted to give you a 11 on 10 " , "you write very well" and the " keep it up" notes. I almost started taking tutions for my cousins and kids in my neighborhood. When I entered into engineering , we had a subject called presentation and communication skills which we called as PCT and I was asked to give an impromptu speech and I chose to talk on smoking.The audiences loved it and my professor was happy too. Since that day my professor always read my case studies and took interst in my group discussions and then I went on to conduct a presentation called Fashionista which we as a team of 10 people performed very well and audiences were all praises.

I never stopped learning. I then started reading the GRE word list and the barron's and books like "Word power made easy" and what all people do to prepare for a toefel exam and then I appeared for the CAT MBA examination where the verbal ability, reasoning and the rc's i.e the reading comprehensions have a lot of weightage. Not only I concentrated on enhancing my vocabulary and the way I speak but also increased my reading speed to almost 1000 words a minute.

Even today I am learning and finding out ways to put my skills to test everytime because communication is really important in every walk of life , be it making friends, in the professional life, to be able to talk to the world in face and feeling confident.

I wrote this article in an effort to share that it's only we who can make a difference in our lives. If we think we can , we will !

else as the saying goes " Either you make the choice or the choice will make you "

Love Marriage Vs Arrange Marriage

Hi, this has been a question of debate for ages now and one can talk on this for years to come .

I personally believe that arrange maariage is a simple plain vanilla "Lucky draw".
Thinking why do I say so? That's because you don't know the guy whom you gonna marry much instead his family , it's like you got to trust on what people say and you can know the utlimate truth only once you are married to that guy/girl. So if you are lucky you may get a very nice life partner and if not then you may end up spending the rest of life like a compromise.

Talking of love marriage, in most cases you know the person whom you are marrying and many more things about him.You consciously at your will take a decision to spend your life with him/her . Therer are situations where even love marriages don't work but that's a completely different ball game.After all there are exceptions everywhere.It's atleaast a fair game and not a blind man's bluff .

Marriages are a ride of events which somebody organises, and someones acting and audiences i.e our guests are the ones really enjoying. Loading the stomach with mithais and so many cusiines and cocktails, almost a week long celebrations , family memebers taking up every responsibilty taking the avatar of event managers

Everybody trying to look picture perfect and greeting everyone with a smile .
A series which starts almost one year almost in advance by the bride/groom hunting in case of arrrange marriage or in case of love marriage couples are busy dating and getting to know each other more and more , trying to impresss each other's families and once both the parties family gives a thumbs up then starts the round of exchanging horoscopes, calling a pundit ,fixing a date for engagement and then the part girls love and guys do love it this time...that's shopping.... and here starts the countdown for the D-day.

Just one look at the would be brides and the grooms face and you can see their cheeks glowing ,eyes have a rather unusual sparkle , even the most shy and reserved person on earth now has a reason to talk, smile and mingle. It's the best phase in every individuals life.

The speed with which the gold prices are rising am wondering that how does one manage the jewellery shopping.Everything is so costly, getting the invitation cards ready, finding the right venue, appointing the right caterers and selecting a prpoer menu, fixing an appointment for facial and make up, contacting the right dress desiger. After all , it is the most important day of your life and you can take no chances!!! Oh god!!! there's so much. All friends and relatives from every corner of the world are send invites,emails,couriers and then you got a beeline in your house almost a week prior to the marriage.

Whether it's a match made in heaven or on earth, you most importantly find your better half, a partner for life who will share your sorrows and double your joys. You will start to have a family and your soulmate!!!!

To all the married guys and gals ...I wish you all a happy married life

and to all the bachelors I gotta a question..love or arrange...????

Till then keep smiling...you never know whose falling in love with it !

I am awaiting your comments on this article....