Where is the End ?

I consider myself fortunate than my brothers and sisters living in hell in some other countries.

My daughter is fortunate that she is not being forced to live through the unimaginable mental and physical torture the children in those countries are living by and my family is privileged that they are spared of the harrowing experiences the mothers are going through day in and day out. The turmoil of war is thrust upon them unwittingly and unwillingly. 

Touch wood and I pray for everyone for a similar peaceful life.

I can’t imagine that someone would carry out a meticulous plan to shoot down a passenger jet but then there are few other things also that are happening in today’s world, equally beyond my imagination.

These are truly, and I mean it, beyond my comprehension and rightfully might be yours.

To me, downing of MH 17 is nothing less than the attack on world trade center or the one in our own Mumbai and the others ones carried out in other parts of world.

Planning to shoot down that plane and executing it with scrupulous precision -killing all 297 people on board, is barbarism and atrociousness to the extreme. This is terrorism of the most heinous nature and handy work of them who have turned themselves to demons and ceased to live -forget about their right to demand or ask for anything.  Looks like we are going back to the ages when humans used to only fight with each other and were not a social animal. Other animals are scoring better than us in this aspect.

While I very well understand that a terrorist in one country is a martyr in another and are more perspective driven than anything else, I can, by no means envisage missiling down a full-fledged airplane, to attract attention, killing innocent lives including children.  This is plain and simple capitulation of humanity and dreadful brutality – nothing else.

                                                            Google Images

Coupled with this, whatever is happening in Gaza between Hamas and Israel is another terrible episode of common man decimated to dust for socio-political reasons going out of control gradually.  The fearful faces of children, young and adults with the spumes of spoke bellowing from the buildings at the deafening sound of gun shells are observed all over. The morning scene of the streets gets changed substantially by the evening. While the issue there is of complex political nature and am not trying to justify one over other, I do not understand how deep rooted this anger and hatred can be to instigate such massive and colossal damage of hundreds of lives (hundreds and counting).

The recent Sunni rebellion in Iraq has left the country in tatters. While the country on the banks of Tigris and Euphrates (Persia), once regarded as the birthplace of early civilization and crown jewel of many a fable, was just starting to recover from the savagery of the previous wars, this one had to happen.

I wonder why, instead of development, people are so bogged down with religion and dogmatism that keep them involved in gory battles year after year.

The ego gets more importance than education, health ,growth and all the other developmental parameters of human lives; still there is hardly any intention to put in any effort in that direction.

I am really at my wits end trying to fathom how people could get into such mad rush of belligerent carnage and mayhem of human lives for reasons that make no sense to me.

When will this dance of merciless killing come to an end?  Am deeply pained by what is happening around and expressed it one of my earlier posts here . Borrowing few lines from there I would like to repeat

Mistakes committed in history,

Should not pronounce the future,

Sensible mind and healing touch

Can only aspire a bright pasture.

No poisoning the mind of our children,

In the name of religion and the Lord,

There must be a way to persuade

And exchange a hug for the sword.

 Humbly and earnestly, I, with folded hands, appeal to their good conscience, “Human life is precious. Don’t play with them”.

With My Telepathic Power - short fiction below 400 words

Ekta, my niece, is like my alter ego. She is vivacious, makes friends easily, and is extremely popular among her friends. We make an unlikely couple - I reveling in her sunshine cheer and she in my brooding silences. So, it struck me as a very unusual incident, when she cocooned herself in her den since morning. The first instance that I missed her was when I did not hear the sing song ‘Good morning’, as I sleepily coaxed my toothbrush across my misshapen teeth, standing on the verandah.
 

The day passed by, and we got busy in our mundane jobs - for me, that meant taking the 45 minute sessions of Physics with unmindful boys, who are rather interested in the aerodynamics of paper planes than my interpretation of surface tension in fluids. My mind kept going back to Ekta’s voice and her chatter and by midafternoon I had made up my mind to woo my little princess with her favorite chocolates along with pink roses.
 

Try as I might, I could not figure out what could have caused her changed behavior. Maybe a bout of telepathy and/or mind reading will not be a bad idea either.
 

Though I am convinced that ability to read human mind will only complicate further the already complicated social fabric and have established the same in all my discussions with friends and colleagues, I felt the need of that power now. Walking along the college corridor, I started feeling light-headed and queasy; the next I knew I was laying on the ground with anxious students and staff peering at my face and the security guy all poised with a water jug, ready to slosh me with more water. Suddenly, a wave of nausea swept me and a premonitory haze shimmered before my eyes.
 

I got scared with the ‘telepathic vision’ as I call it as I saw Ekta there.
 

I need to return to her at once to save my little princess.
 

It was clear to me that she is in a serious bout of depression and plans to take the extreme step of finishing her life. She wishes she was never born.
 

While I stand by my conviction of not trying to see more that what is shown to us, thank, God, that I could save one good soul with my timely acquired power.

Engineering Creativity

The other day, on my way back home after a busy day at work, I observed the interesting catchword “Engineering Creativity” on the well decorated face of a company private bus.  The creatively written blue on white wordings are articulation of company’s thoughts of how it wants to project itself and be perceived.

That got me thinking. Isn’t the case with you?

Ok, here it is.

Do they want to engineer creativity or are they engineering in a creative way?

Can creativity be engineered?  Being an engineering company, is that something they intend to do and bring a new perspective that creativity can be engineered?  Who knows?

Nowadays there are so many institutions who boast of specifically designed creative writing and other sessions claiming to unfurl the creative side within one’s self. Probably they have also found out a niche way of doing things to bring out the creative aspects in their clients.

If I am to believe that that connotation is for engineering in a creative way, should “Engineering Creatively” be more appropriate?

With Apple redefining the way engineering should be done, that makes more sense to unearth the best value out of better engineering.  It should no longer be restricted only to better engineering rather creative engineering from aspects of consumer likeliness to reduction of cost of engineering and fitting things in a given form factor. There is a Nat Geo segment titled ‘Engineering Marvels’ which elaborates on how the indigenously developed Nano was designed in India. Though the car has not been a smash hit in the market, there were numerous instances of creative engineering that had gone in the making of it and the narration brings just that. Personally, I was amazed at how each of the aspects was creatively thought out and engineered to fit the size and budget target of the car.

I will be interested to know what you think that the company wants to say through those words on their bus. Look forward to your comments

Thanking you.

Waters

A pond in a village surroundings

Waterfalls

Sea



And a Lake

Back to the Beginning

Ravi’s days are spent hobnobbing with the top echelon of the business community. With sheer determination and indomitable will, success kissed his feet by the time he turned 40.

Despite his current status, he makes it a point to visit the modest place, off Banerghutta Road, every year. His life had blossomed here out of the mire he got stuck with.

He still remembers the day he was literally pulled out of the street and brought here by the gardener.

Initially he hated it, but slowly, the magic of the palace rubbed off on him.

It feels so home here, doesn't it? 

The memories come flooding with smile on his face as soon as he sets foot in his orphanage – the SOS village.

Written 100 words of Saturday prompt it does feel like home, doesn't it?

Popular Story with a twist-1: Race between Rabbit and Tortoise

The rabbit and tortoise took positions. The race commenced at the sound of the gun and both of them were off the block. Rabbit took up its natural speed from the word ‘go’ while tortoise was inching towards the finish line. This was the race of life - a marathon where the distance was longer than what the rabbit could finish on one sprint.

Midway through the race, the rabbit wanted to take a close look at where he was in comparison to where he thought he would be and not where tortoise could reach up to. This was needed for him to re-strategise the race, if needed, of course.

Rabbit was also out of breadth, perspiring and wanted to take a step back to move forward  taking a cue from Vidya’s blog version (negative) 1.0 which he read just a day ago J. Intelligent, Huh! And people thought rabbit was only a snob and not-so-steady.

Planning to take some rest, he did some calculation on approximate time it would take for the tortoise to catch up the distance and set the alarm clock accordingly. He did not forget to keep a buffer of 10 minutes from his overall time estimate just to give himself a fair chance.

Alarm bell went off and he woke up. Seeing his competition still at some distance, he started again and finished the race on time.

I still cannot figure out why the poor tortoise agreed to race with the rabbit. It could be probably due to pressure of expectation from his family and friends. He was to excel in all the fields as dreamt by his parents. His dreams did not matter. 

Knowing fully well his capabilities and shortcomings by then, he concluded enough was enough and decided that racing was not his cup of tea and hence made the most important decision of his life -to look for his core competency area.

Moral of the story: Fast and steady wins the race. Focus on what you are good at. Analyze where you are against your own self and not with your competition.

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Popular Story with a twist-2: Tortoise and the Swans

The swans took to the skies in search of better life along with the tortoise that could not fly. Swans wanted to help the tortoise transport to a new lake to get saved from severe drought in that area. The instruction to tortoise was to hold onto the stick and not to open his mouth lest he fell from a height.

Eventually, after quite a few miles in the flight, tortoise could not stay put up with the condition and opened its mouth to blabber something- the talkative that it was.

Falling from a height, he was trying to figure out ways to save himself and praying hard. Meanwhile he was looking frantically all around for something to hold on to while keeping his cool.

God helps those who help themselves and in this case, God did. The tortoise fell on a big heap of straws in a village and survived with some minor injury. With its presence of mind, it acted smart and created a story to the villagers. He made them believe that was God sent and the villagers should take good care of him for their well being.

He lived through, somewhat happily, for the rest of his life with the villagers' fate moving up and down affected by other factors in life – natural, political, economic.

The tortoise proved once again that one should be ready to face the challenges and should be smart and resourceful enough to convert the situation in his favor.

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P.S: The above writings are not intended to hurt any feelings or sentiments with popular stories.