Arjun's Corner

Science of the Moment

2011-06-09T22:15:00.000-07:00

After a long spell of being busy, tired and being monotonous robot :-), its time to write back again.

From the morning my mind was stuck on a topic of the moment. I thought of writing something down before it gets evaporated.. :)

What is a Moment?
A phenomena that is happening to you just now>>?? But then what is now?

What is Now?
It is well known what the mind shows and believes it becomes our reality. But what is that which we are sensing right now through our mortal senses. Are the senses giving Input to our Mind or the Mind giving inputs to our mortal senses.

Can I be evolving in the Now?
My opinion yes, through the study of lot of gurus and their teachings and trying to experiencing by my own. I strongly believe, we are changing right Now and we keep on choosing our Fate regardless of whether we are aware of it or not? Awareness is always there but we need to take care of it.

Can I be in the Moment of Now?
Well yes in a way when you are in the present in here, just now as i write my words, thinking nothing but letting words flow out of the inspiration i am in the Moment of Now.

Can I get lost in the Now?
Well what's the problem in getting lost sometimes.. well Now is just Now you only get lost in Past and Future and drawing fancy plans but never coming out of the Loop.! Break the loop with some conditions and you can always be in the Now.

Why Now is a Science?
Well just a personal choice... haha just kidding.. Anything which can be proved with logic is normally termed as Science or with Scientific proof. But about Now you don't have theoretical proof but you have to be in the Moment to experience it, enjoy it.

How important is the Now?
Its only Now which is important. with words keep on flowing and my hands playing on the Keyboard. The Now is important. Now is the purpose of life. Now is everything. Now is never early, never Late, Now is Now, Now is ever changing but feels never changing. Thats the essence and beauty of Now. Now keeps on happening irrespective of whether we want it or not.

Anything Special about Now?
Being ordinary is the speciality of being the Now.

Can everyone or anyone be in Now?
Yes !!

What can I do to be in the Now?
You can watch yourself. As gurus suggest start with breath, then slowly you can watch your self, your emotions and finally everything is gone. You are empty but still Full.

Wanting for more?
Search on the Now and you will find lot of things. But foremost be in touch with yourself to know more of Now.

Prayers and Love,
Arjun

Getting back to Self

2011-03-27T02:45:00.000-07:00

Hej,
Getting back to Self is so important in these days. No matter whatever you do, you need to get back to yourself. In the past there were lot of initiatives which helped me back to me. But with time they perished or lets see something more illusionary took over me. But now its time to get back to expressing self. This expression cannot be a short burst of anything it has to be life long.. or lets phrase it as long as i live..

For this self expression i am doing some things.. and hopefully blogging will also be the medium of the same.. Like everything cannot be blogged. But thoughts have to used in the some way.. Self has to expressed and more expression of thought needs to be done..

I don't wan't to die with lot of regrets but in peace. Yes of course the famous lines. Miles to go before i sleep. Miles to go for i sleep.

Prayers!

Pray For Japan

2011-03-27T02:40:00.000-07:00

Lord, protect our planet, because we live here, and here we dwell with our daily tragedies.
May our daily reconstruction be the result of the very best that we carry within us.
Give us the courage to be able to reconstruct what was destroyed
to be able to recover what was lost
to be able to accept what was gone forever.
May you give us courage to look ahead,
may we never look back nor allow our soul to be discouraged.
Lord, give us enthusiasm, because Enthusiasm reaffirms to us that everything is possible, as long as we are totally committed to what we are doing.
Lord, may the Earth continue to transform seeds into wheat, may we continue to transmute wheat into bread. Do not leave us in solitude.
Have compassion on us, Lord. For we often think we are dressed when we are naked.
Do not forget, in your mercy, our friends in Japan, who are now teaching us the meaning of Courage, Reconstruction, Solidarity and Enthusiasm.

- Thanks Paulo for such an inspirational prayer. God Bless Japan!

Kabir-I Said To The Wanting-Creature Inside Me

2011-02-24T13:32:00.000-08:00

I said to the wanting-creature inside me:
What is this river you want to cross?
There are no travelers on the river-road, and no road.
Do you see anyone moving about on that bank, or nesting?
There is no river at all, and no boat, and no boatman.
There is no tow rope either, and no one to pull it.
There is no ground, no sky, no time, no bank, no ford!
And there is no body, and no mind!
Do you believe there is some place that will make the
soul less thirsty?
In that great absence you will find nothing.
Be strong then, and enter into your own body;
there you have a solid place for your feet.
Think about it carefully!
Don’t go off somewhere else!
Kabir says this: just throw away all thoughts of
imaginary things,
and stand firm in that which you are.
Kabir

Famous Buddhist Quotes & Sayings

2011-02-24T13:25:00.000-08:00

Neither fire nor wind, birth nor death can erase our good deeds.
You only lose what you cling to.
Fill your mind with compassion.
We live in illusion and the appearance of things. There is a reality. We are that reality. When you understand this, you see that you are nothing, and being nothing, you are everything. That is all.
The Four Reliances
First, rely on the spirit and meaning of the teachings, not on the words;
Second, rely on the teachings, not on the personality of the teacher;
Third, rely on real wisdom, not superficial interpretation;
And fourth, rely on the essence of your pure Wisdom Mind, not on judgmental perceptions.
We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make our world.
To be idle is a short road to death and to be diligent is a way of life; foolish people are idle, wise people are diligent.
Let us rise up and be thankful, for if we didn't learn a lot today, at least we learned a little, and if we didn't learn a little, at least we didn't get sick, and if we got sick, at least we didn't die; so, let us all be thankful.
Pay no attention to the faults of others,
things done or left undone by others.
Consider only what by oneself is done or left undone.
What we think, we become.
Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one getting burned.
Do not overrate what you have received, nor envy others.
He who envies others does not obtain peace of mind.
An insincere and evil friend is more to be feared than a wild beast; a wild beast may wound your body, but an evil friend will wound your mind
Words have the power to both destroy and heal. When words are both true and kind, they can change our world.
Anger will never disappear so long as thoughts of resentment are cherished in the mind. Anger will disappear just as soon as thoughts of resentment are forgotten.
Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment.
Words have the power to both destroy and heal. When words are both true and kind, they can change our world.
On life's journey Faith is nourishment,
Virtuous deeds are a shelter,
Wisdom is the light by day and Right mindfulness is the protection by night.
If a man lives a pure life nothing can destroy him;
If he has conquered greed nothing can limit his freedom.
One of his students asked Buddha, "Are you the messiah?"
"No", answered Buddha.
"Then are you a healer?"
"No", Buddha replied.
"Then are you a teacher?" the student persisted.
"No, I am not a teacher."
"Then what are you?" asked the student, exasperated.
"I am awake", Buddha replied.

Jawaharlal Nehru Sundar Kand!

2011-02-24T09:20:00.001-08:00

http://www.andhranews.net/Intl/2007/July/23/Nehru-Edwina-Mountbatten-8970.asp

Are you still stuck in yourself??

2010-06-30T03:39:00.001-07:00

Once upon a time, long, long ago, there were 2 holy men traveling together through the countryside.
They came upon a beautiful young woman sitting and sobbing by the side of a stream. She said she was afraid of drowning and asked them if they would help her cross to the other side of the water. Without saying a word, one of the monks picked up the girl and carried her to the other side of the stream where he gently put her down.
She thanked him and went on her way. The two men then continued their journey. After a while, the monk said to the one who had carried the young woman, "How could you do such a thing? We have taken vows of chastity. It is forbidden to even talk to a woman let alone touch one." The other monk lovingly replied, "When I came to the other side of the stream, I put her down. Why are you still carrying her?"

Story of 2 wolves

2010-06-30T02:58:00.001-07:00

A Grandfather from the Cherokee Nation was talking with his grandson.

"A fight is going on inside me," he said to the boy.

"It is a terrible fight between two wolves."

The young grandson listened intently.

"One wolf is evil, unhappy, and ugly: He is anger, envy, war, greed, selfishness, sorrow, regret, guilt, resentment, inferiority/superiority, false pride, coarseness, and arrogance. He spreads lies, deceit, fear, hatred, blame, scarcity, poverty, and divisiveness."

"The other wolf is beautiful and good: He is friendly, joyful, loving, worthy, serene, humble, kind, benevolent, just, fair, empathetic, generous, honest, compassionate, grateful, brave, and inspiring resting wholeheartedly in deep vision beyond ordinary wisdom."

The grandson paused in deep reflection of what his grandfather had just said. Then he exclaimed; "Oyee! (in recognition).

Grandfather continued; "This same fight is going on inside you, and inside all human beings as well."

The grandson paused in deep reflection and recognition of what his grandfather had just said. Then he finally cried out deeply; "Oyee! Grandfather, which wolf will win this horrific war?"

The elder Cherokee replied, "The wolf that you feed. That wolf will surely win!"

St. Francis Prayer:

2010-06-25T04:30:00.001-07:00

Lord, make a channel of Thy peace that, where there is hatred, I may bring love; that where there is wrong, I may bring the spirit of forgiveness; that, where there is discord, I may bring harmony; that, where there is error, I may bring truth; that, where there is doubt, I may bring faith; that, where there is despair, I may bring hope; that, where there are shadows, I may bring light; that, where there is sadness, I may bring joy.

Lord, grant that I may seek rather to comfort than to be comforted, to understand than to be understood; to love than to be loved; for it is by forgetting self that one finds; it is forgiving that one is forgiven; it is by dying that one awakens to eternal life.

Courtesy: Mother teresa.. (thank you!)

Are we enslaved by our own gadgets? ?/?/?

2010-05-02T01:26:00.001-07:00

Recently i screwed up one my sony ericsson phone. Well then the next option was toswap it my Mum's phone, which is in a pretty good shape.(till day before yesterday).Somehow, now the new phone (from my perspective.) is not working as expected. I am again facing the blame that I am the one responsible for screwing it up again. I don'tknow how to manage my own things and bla bla bla... so my heart drifts into anintrospective mode.:::

1) Are we enslaved by our gadgets?

2) Malfunctioning of a phone does not mean a malfunctioning human being?

3) Are we entrapped in the stupid world of gadgets and more of them?

4) Are the gadgets not created for our own comfort? But alas! we have given prime importance to them which leads to lots of other confusion?

5) Are we identifying ourselves with your own gadgets in a way?

6) Are the gadgets a status symbol but they are now one degree more in our lives?

7) Does GOD also use a gadget to evaluate a human being Karma??

8) Is being not a human not more important than owning a mortal gadget?

9) Does owning a techically advanced gagdet mean we have achieved something?

10) Is spending thousands of rupeess spent for a pieces of hi-fi gadget justified?

11) Are needlessly in need of these gadgets?

12) Are going to carry these things with us when we leave this world..?

... .... ..............

But one thing i know that today morning because of one malfunction of the phone..i

thankfully received lot of words which may have been used some another day..

blessings,

Welcome 2010!

2010-01-01T03:15:00.000-08:00

Hi All,

Firstly new year wishes to all of you... hope this brings all the pleasures in your life, life is destined to move on..

Recently Stumbling on a philosophical topic i found a nice poem.. so i take the opportunity to post as the first post of the new year...

Only our searching for happiness
prevents us from seeing it.
It's like a vivid rainbow
which you pursue without ever catching,
or a dog chasing its own tail.

Nothing to do or undo,
nothing to force,
nothing to want,
and nothing is missing.  - Lama Gendun Rinpoche

I believe after this good start it will fun for me to write on various other topics...

Take care all,

Regards, -A

21st Century Slave Trade

2009-12-11T21:16:00.000-08:00

Such a heart touching article by Johann Hari.. It touched my soul when i was reading it..

Wonder we say that we are moving ahead in technology etc.. but it seems we are equally moving ahead in taking away the dignity of women in every possible way..

Wake up Men! It's time really to understand that the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world.. but Alas! things are getting worse day by day..

Thanks lot Johann for writing out such an eye opener.. Hats off to you!

----This post is taken from post by Mr. Johann Hari dated 15 March 2008 ---

This is the story of the twenty-first century’s trade in slave-children. My journey into their underworld took place where its alleys and brothels are most dense – Asia, where the United Nations calculates one million children are being traded every day. It took me to places I did not think existed, today, now. To a dungeon in the lawless Bangladeshi borderlands where children are padlocked and prison-barred in transit to Indian brothels. To an iron whore-house where grown women have spent their entire lives being raped. To a clinic that treat syphilitic eleven year-olds.

But this story begins like all these stories begin: with a girl, and a lie. Sufia comes to talk to me in a centre for children who have been rescued, funded by Comic Relief – who have their major Sport Relief funding run this weekend. She has only ever talked about it to her counsellors here. But she wants the world to know what happened to her.

She comes into the room swaddled in a red sari, carrying big premature black bags under her eyes. She tells her story in a slow, halting mumble. Sufia grew up in a village near Khulna in the South-West of Bangladesh. Her parents were farmers; she was one of eight children. “My parents couldn’t afford to look after me,” she says. “We didn’t have enough money for food.”

And so came the lie. When Sufia was fourteen, a female neighbour came to her parents and said she could find her a good job in Calcutta as a housemaid. She would live well; she would learn English; she would have a well-fed future. “I was so excited,” Sufia says.

“But as soon as we arrived in Calcutta I knew something was wrong,” she says. “I didn’t know what a brothel was, but I could see the house she took me to was a bad house, where the women wore small clothes and lots of bad men were coming in and out.” The neighbour was handed fifty thousand takka – around £500 – for Sufia, and then she told her to do what she was told and disappeared.

Here, Sufia’s halting monologue stops all together. She looks away; she rocks slightly. And then: “I wasn’t allowed to ever leave. I had to see ten men a day.” Another long pause. “I didn’t know anything about men before. It was the most terrible thing.”

She saw what happened to the older women there. They are forced to “breed”. Their daughters are raised to be prostitute-slaves. After three months, two other girls imprisoned in the brothel approached her with an escape plan. They would save up the sleeping pills they were given at night – to stop them sobbing and howling and putting off the ‘clients’ – and slip them into the drink of the ‘Mashi’ who was imprisoning them. Then they would run as far and as a fast as they could.

It worked. “I had no idea how to get around the city but they were very clever girls,” Sufia says. When she finally saw her parents’ house once more, she made a resolution to herself: “I could never, never tell my family what happened. I told them I had been working as a maid and I missed them too much. I can never, never tell anyone apart from the people here. Never. If I do, nobody will marry me. I would bring disgrace on my family and my life would be destroyed.”

She knows she should have an HIV test. She has booked to have one twice. But she can’t go through with it. She can’t bear to know.

Sufia was sold into an organised trade that crosses continents and deals daily in pounds of human flesh. It continues every day – and unlike Sufia, most women do not escape.

I Into the brothels

On the side of a dirt-track in Jamalpur, a small Bangladeshi city, there is an iron gate. It leads to a dense warren of flimsy huts with iron roofs, and in each one, there is a woman, waiting.

I speak first to Liza, a 19 year old girl wearing elaborate geisha make-up and a broken smile. She is standing outside her hut, talking to a group of girls her own age, smoking a spliff. For a moment, and from a distance, they look like a group of stoned, giggling teenage girls anywhere on earth. But then you see the clump of fat, sweating men waiting for them. They pay 50 to 500 takka – from 5 pence to £5 – depending on what sexual acts they want, and the beauty of the girl.

When I ask Liza how she ended up here, she offers a strange, rambling, incoherent story – she loved a boy, but her parents forebade her to marry him; she wanted to earn her own dowry; so she came here, but now she has lost touch with the boy. She keeps breaking off, awkwardly giggling at her friends. It isn’t amusement; it isn’t even being stoned; it is the lid on a scream. I ask: are you allowed to leave if you want to? She looks nervously around before answering; then says quickly – “Yes.” She shakes her head as she says it.

We are interrupted by the sound of a baby crying. This brothel is full of babies: the women have nowhere else to put them, they tell me. This makes me wonder again how free they are to leave.

Sitting in another hut, I find Beauty, a 34 year old woman. When I tell her I want her to talk about her life, she offers a big, perplexed smile. “My brother-in-law sold me to the Mashi here when I was thirteen,” she explains. “He took me away one day and brought me here. When I arrived the Mashi whipped me and told me I could never leave this brothel. I was devastated. I hated it. I kept thinking about my family, my mother, and crying all the time. But the Mashi just whipped me all the time and told me I had to work.”

She found a fragment of happiness when she was nineteen. One of the men who came regularly to the brothel said he had fallen in love with her – and proposed marriage. He paid to take her away, back to her village to see her mother and sister. It had been Beauty’s dream: “I thought I was going back to the good life.”

But her family rejected her. They had heard she had become a prostitute – her brother-in-law said she chose it – so her sister “tortured me,” she says, calling her names and jeering and making the village shun her. Then, after a while, her husband tired of her too – and sold her back to the brothel once more. She says, “I stopped eating, I wanted to die.”

So here she is. She knows “I can never have a husband or a house.” She will always be shunned, by everyone.

There is one route out of the brothel for these women: to become a Mashi themselves, to set up their own brothel and ‘earn’ their freedom. But Beauty says she can’t do it: “No, no, I would hate to be a madam. I’m a bad girl but I’m not that bad.” She runs her fingers though her hair and says: “I know it’s sad. That’s my life story. It’s not much, is it?”

II Into the borderlands

The border between India and Bangladesh is a long and rippling river. As I stand there, in front of me, there is the world’s largest democratic republic. Behind me, there is a dungeon with iron bars, where Bangladeshi women are held before being sold to India.

All the people here refer to it as “the trafficker’s place”; it is not disguised.

As they gather around in their quiet, muddy village, the locals – a hardened band of farmers – explain that there is low-level warfare going on out here. Over sweet tea on his veranda, with a crowd watching on, their local elected representative Adul Khaleq– a rugged man in his fifties – says he is paying bitterly for taking on the traffickers.

“My brother, Abdu Saleq, was our elected council member here until three years ago,” he explains. His career ended abruptly when he caught red-handed a trafficker who was trying to take a 25 year old woman over to India: “He thought it was his duty to stop them. He thought selling women was wrong.” The freed woman called her father, who came tearfully to collect her.

Two nights later, the traffickers turned up at Abdu’s house. They dragged him from his bed by his hair, took him out into the street, and hacked his body to pieces with an axe as he howled.

“The traffickers told his wife they would kill us too,” Adul says. But the villagers refused to be cowed. They set up a Neighbourhood Watch scheme, to track the traffickers: “We work as a watchdog at night. Who is trafficking? How many girls are being taken? As soon as something is spotted, we are alerted.”

But the story does not end with this black-and-white morality tale: it gets grey. Adul says they cannot go to the police, because they are thoroughly bribed and bought off by the traffickers and simply let them go. Instead, they have to “beat the traffickers mercilessly.” And as a result, the police have framed them, they say – on murder charges. Adul is awaiting trial for a murder in Khulna everybody in the town claims he could not have committed, because they all saw him that day in the village.

I couldn’t slice through the dense thickets of this story – but I could find a total consensus here that the police are in the pay of the traffickers, and merrily arrest anyone who crosses them. So I decided to go to local Police Station – a lovely white-marble building, surrounded with lush, well-tended flower-beds – to question the police. The Sub-Inspector is a handsome thirty-something officer with a brown uniform and a broad smile.

When I ask him if he or his officers take bribes, he waves his hand through the air. “I will not comment on this,” he says. What do you mean, you won’t comment? It’s surely not a difficult question. “I’m not going to talk about it,” he says, firmer now. Okay then: why do you think everyone in this community thinks your people take bribes? He sucks his teeth. “They’ve got an attitude problem. They’re poor. They blame anyone for their problems.” And he laughs. It is only a small laugh.

III Into the street-world

Dhaka – the capital of Bangladesh – is a city of immediate, brain-melting sensory overload. In this megalopolis of fourteen million sardine-people, every crammed street-scene glimpsed for a second is filled with more detail than you could absorb in a week. Swanky Western cars are log-jammed are next to mobile heaps of rust. Ethereal waif-women are wandering between them with babies, begging. Builders are carrying huge loads balanced impossibly on their heads. Children are operating sewing machines on roofs. Painted women ask if you will pay ten takka to see the dancing snake hidden in their wooden box. Men clinging to the top of buses are yelling at rickshaw drivers, who are yelling at pedestrians, who are yelling into their mobiles.

All this happens against an endless soundtrack I think of as the Dhaka tinnitus: the waaaah-waaaaah of car horns and the bring-bring of rickshaws and the eeeek-eeeek of alarms constantly chorusing and the shouting, shouting, shouting.

Amidst this ceaseless roll, there are 300,000 street-children, living (and dying) on their own. They sleep in clusters, around the boat terminal and the bus station and in the crannies of half-built buildings across the city. They are the traffickers’ dream, a pool of prey with no defences.

Sitting on the bridge in the Dhaka boat terminal, I find Mohammed and his small gang of friends. He is a fourteen year old boy with a grubby denim shirt and a ragged mop-head of hair. He looks about ten, with a bony, under-developed frame. He has a Pokemon transfer on his ankle: it is Pikachu, waving. They let me hang out with them for a day.

They spend the daylight hours wandering the streets of Dhaka, collecting pieces of waste-paper and ramming them into a sack. At the end of a good day, they can sell the scraps for ten takka – about five pence, enough to buy a few good meals and a few spliffs. As we wander searching for paper, he tells me he ran away from home four years ago. “I ran away because my stepmother was cruel to me,” he says. His mother left their home when he was a baby to go and work as a maid in Dhaka and send money back for the hungry family. He was left in the care of his father’s other wife – who, he says, hated him.

“She made me do all the washing and cleaning for her sons,” he says, “and she made me collect water for the whole family every day.” Later, he adds, “She tried to poison me. She made me some rice, and I tasted a bit but it was really horrible, it didn’t taste right at all. She told me I had to eat it, so I slipped it to the dog. That afternoon the dog died.” Is this a child’s fantasy? All the street children seem to have similar tales of extreme horror, created to cover their pain; they can’t all be true.

He has been with his posse every since he arrived in Dhaka, hoping he would somehow spot his mother. I ask - do you miss your family? He offers a little shrug of bravado. “I miss my brothers and sisters. I wish I could still play with them. Sometimes I think about them when I’m trying to sleep. But no. I don’t miss anyone.”

They wash in the black, stinking river, which might explain the infected lumps of scabies he is scratching on his arm incessantly. Sometimes they save up to watch movies together – Hollywood action films and Bollywood musicals are his favourite, he says.

At night, they wait outside restaurants for scraps – and then try to steal some more from the all-night fruit market. They lead me there at midnight, to a vast burst of light in the dark of the city. It is a huge crammed vegetable-town, where thousands of sellers perform an elaborate super-speed dance around each other, transporting mountains of potatoes and oceans of cabbages in baskets on their heads, and haggle with grocers and restaurant-owners. As I follow my little gang, seeing them subtly swipe a few fruits as they go, my nose is burned by the chilli that fills the air, and then soothed by the lake of limes.

Then finally, at 3am, they crash in their little corner of the boat terminal, sleeping on and around a large orange bin that says ‘Use Me.’ The sacks they use to collect rubbish-paper become rudimentary sleeping bags; they bunch together for warmth. The terminal is filled with thousands of children and families doing the same, cramming themselves into every concrete crevice they can find. They sleep on the bridge, under the bridge, on top of the roof, in the awnings of the roof – everywhere. Some are burning sacks on a candle, hoping the smoke will keep the mosquitoes and cockroaches away.

The gang smoke a spliff and swallow some sleeping pills they have bought. “If we get stoned, then it doesn’t hurt if the policemen come and beat you in the night,” they explain. The police strut around with large white sticks, waving them menacingly at the kids, who they call “haralput” (pikey). It is only when they see my white face that they back off from this gang, for tonight.

I ask Mohammed what the worst thing about this life is. “I know I’ve ruined my life,” he says matter-of-factly. “I know I’m a bad person, and I’ll never get out of here. There’s no hope, no future, for me. What do you think I should do?” I suddenly realize this isn’t a rhetorical question. He is sincerely asking for advice. I have no idea what to say. But it wasn’t a request for cash: in all my time with them, they didn’t ask me for a single takka.

There are two fears that hang over this gang’s life like a cloud of black smoke. They are terrified of being captured and sent to one of the government vagrancy centres. Mohammed was sent there last year, for a month. He says, “It’s the worst place. You have to work all the time. There is a massive bowl and you are forced to carry it on your back and water the trees, and then you have to sweep the room and scrub the floors and do hard labour and if you ever stop, they beat you really hard. I don’t want to ever go there again. They just beat you so much. They beat us in the shins with sticks. They hate us.” (My request to the government to visit one of these homes was refused.)

But there is an ever greater fear: the traffickers. The only moment when Mohammed betrays emotion is when he remembers a little girl called Muni, who was his friend. One day in June last year, when she was nine-and-a-half, an old man approached and told her she could have a brilliant job if she came with him. She refused, remembering the rumours that spread among the children about what really happened if you went with these men. He snatched her anyway. The other kids tried to tell the police, but they were just chased away.

Her body was found, raped and strangled, three days later. Mohammed is convinced it was because she refused to be fooled by the traffickers’ tales, and refused to just be taken to a brothel: she fought back. “Yes, we are very frightened of the traffickers,” Mohammed says, yawning. He has to sleep: he needs to get up in four hours, to start collecting waste-paper. One of this little gang of urban Mowglis is supposed to stay awake, to keep watch – “but it’s difficult,” he says. I ask him what he would like to own when he’s older, thinking I will get a child’s reverie about having a big house and a car. “Own?” he says. “I’d like to own my mother.” And with that, he grins and closes his eyes.

IV The fight-back

There is a small, determined group of Bangladeshis who saw the theft of their children for commercialized rape happening all around them, and decided – like Muni, with her tiny, futile fists – to fight back. They are funded by Comic Relief, and are dependent on the contributions that will flood in from British people this weekend.

Ishtiaque Ahmed is an intellectual who – in long, statistic-packed monologues – tells me how he created Aparajeyo (Undefeated). It is one of the most compelling anti-trafficking forces in Bangladesh. They run schools on the streets and shelters for the abused children, and they pay for an army of kids who have been rescued from prostitution to fan out across the city teaching other kids about how to thwart the traffickers. They are the William Wilberforces of our time, ending slavery one child at a time.

I first glimpse their work in the roomy top floor of a tower block that has been made into a shelter, housing raped children who have escaped. It looks like any children’s playgroup, anywhere on earth, filled with scampering and skipping and squealing. For a moment, they are not scavengers or prey; they are children.

One tall girl with high cheek bones is singing. She shakes my hand and introduces herself as Shelaka, and says she is sixteen. Then, confidently, carefully, she explains how she ended up here. She grew up in a village three hours from Dhaka, and for as long as she could remember, she loved to sing. “It is the best feeling in the world, to sing,” she says. But when she went through puberty, her fiercely religious parents said it was no longer “appropriate” for a Muslim girl to sing, and she had to leave these “stupid dreams” behind.

“If I tried to sing, they would hit me,” she says. “I didn’t think it was fair, because if I was a boy I would be allowed to sing. It doesn’t make sense. Why should only boys be allowed to choose their own job? Men make women dependent on them, and that’s why they are treated badly.” (Next time somebody tells me feminism is a ‘Western’ concept, I will tell them about Shelaka. She thought of feminism all by herself, in a village in rural Bangladesh.)

So she decided to run away to the Big City, to become a singer. She sold her only nose-ring, and took the bus to Dhaka with the proceeds. When she arrived at the bus station, frightened but determined, she asked where the singing school was. She wandered the streets; as it got dark, she became frightened, and a female cake-seller told her she could sleep at her house in the slums. Shelaka went with her, and the cake-seller was kind. She stayed there for a week – until the cake-seller’s landlord arrived, and said she could only keep Shelaka if he could pimp her out. The cake-seller was afraid and tearfully let the landlord do what he wanted. Shelaka was kept captive by him for three months and raped-for-cash every day, until finally the cake-seller helped her escape. On the streets, she stumbled across one of Aparajeyo’s street schools – and they took her in.

She has lived here for three years now, receiving daily counselling. She says she “loves” it: “They are like the kindest family.” She is enrolled in the Bangladesh Children’s Academy – where she is studying singing. She asks if she can sing for me, and her voice – even with the car horns and rickshaw bells and the babble of children to compete with – has a pure and beautiful calm.

In the bus station, every day at nine in the morning, the street-children are approached – for once – by adults who do not want to beat or rape them. Instead, Aparajeyo brings toys and learning materials, to teach them how to read and write – and protect themselves from traffickers.

The children gather on bright blue mats in the corner of the terminal, excited and gleeful and able to ignore the stench of stagnant water because it has filled their nostrils for so long. They chant the alphabet and practice drawing and vie for the attention of their teacher, waving their hands and laughing. Iman, an 8 year-old, is sitting cross-legged, drawing a frog. He was, he explains, born here in the bus terminal: its walls are the walls of his reality. He lives with his mother by the toilets. “I love the reading games,” he says, concentrating hard on his drawing. “Are frogs green or blue?”

Sitting next to him there is Ammo, another tiny 8 year old, who arrived in the bus station alone a week ago. He thought he would find his runaway brother here, but so far he hasn’t. Are you frightened? “No,” he says, looking anxiously into the distance.

One of the worst problems for street children is that they live from day-to-day in a permanent pressurized present-tense: they can never keep more than a day’s money on them because it would be stolen – so at the start of every day they are back at a desperate square one. Planning for the future – any future – is impossible.

Until Aparajeyo had s stark idea: why not open a bank for street children? Now, every afternoon, at 4pm, the Children’s Development Bank opens in the Aparajeyo shelter, staffed and run by street-children, where any street-child can deposit money. It costs 5 takka – two pence – to open an account. When I turn up, Moyna, who is eleven, is the first customer. She sells chocolate on the street and often sleeps in the shelter here. She tells me proudly she has come to deposit twenty takka, and has 700 saved up. “I am saving up to start a small business,” she says, with a very serious face. “I want to buy a tea stall. I am also saving so eventually I can have a deposit to rent a room of my own…. No trafficker will get me there.” Reams of children come in with ambitions like this, a bubbling-up of dreams. Suddenly, the bank has given them a future tense – and a future.

In the brothels, Aparajeyo has decided to face down all the nuclear-strength cultural taboos of ultra-conservative Bangladesh, and turn around the lives of the brothel-babies. Until the organisation arrived in 2002, the children of the Jamalpur brothel were forbidden from setting foot in a school. They were spat at in the street if they stepped out of their mothers’ iron-prisons. Illiterate, uneducated and prey to traffickers, most ended up becoming prostitutes themselves, with rape cascading down the generations.

Standing outside the brothel, scrubbed and smiling, the children tell me how Aparajeyo fought – using the full force of the law – to get them enrolled into the city’s schools. They provided extra support and tuition – ensuring the top three academic places in the city went to brothel kids, busting the notion among the schools that these kids were “backward”. The children now live in safe shelters near the brothel, and visit their delighted mothers as often as they like.

Parveen, a rosy little ten year old wearing a shiny dress and her hair scrunched into a little bun, tells me: “The brothel was a bad and frightening place,” she says. “Men would be nasty to me, and people smoked drugs and I was scared all the time…. People would call me names, and say my mother was a bitch.” But now? “Now I live in the shelter. I can play games and run around and everything!” As she unties her little bun and lets her hair flop down, she says with a serious look, “now I am going to become a lawyer, so I can help people like my mother.”

IV Into his mother’s arms

In the vast Khalijpur slums, there lies one of Aparajeyo’s proudest achievements. In a tiny, damp barn-room made of mud and metal sheeting, I find Rehana, a 33 year old woman with worry-lines running like rivulets down her forehead. She tells me about how her brother sold her son for 3000 takka – £21.

Rehana knew for years her brother was a trafficker in children. “I was ashamed,” she says. “He trafficked children because he was so poor, but it’s no excuse.” There was no point going to the police, she says: they were bribed. But then, over Eid in 2005, her husband had a huge row with him. Two days later, her brother picked up her six-year old son, Shamsul, from mosque – and sold him. He taunted his brother-in-law, saying his son was now in a brothel in India.

“I went mad, I just went mad,” she says. “I went looking for him everywhere, I spent all day on the streets calling his name. I couldn’t believe it was happening.”

After two years of despair, she spotted an advert in a newspaper. It had been placed by Aparajeyo, and it asked: do you know this child? “It was Shamsul,” she says. The police found him wandering the streets and handed him over to the charity. He didn’t know his name, or address. “When we got him back, he was lean and thin, and he cried all the time,” his mother says. “If he couldn’t see me he would scream. He did some very strange things: he would stare at the sun until he passed out. But to have him back was amazing.”

Shamsul wanders into the house, as the sun sets on the slum behind him. The uncle who sold him has disappeared; Rehana believes he is running a trafficking ring somewhere else. “The traffickers won’t just give up,” she says. “I just thank God every day that there are people like Aparajeyo working to stop them.” Her son clambers into her lap. Here, at least, is one child, saved from a life of rape. He runs one hand through his mother’s hair, and with the other, he hands me a small purple ball, and smiles.

Some names have been changed for child protection reasons.

To save children like Sufia, Mohammed, Shelaka and Shamsul, donate to Sport Relief at www.sportrelief.com or calling 08457 910910 (calls cost no more than 4p per minute from BT landlines. Other operator and mobile rates may vary). You can read a fuller version of this article at www.independent.co.uk

You can see some photos of the people I talk about in this article, and e-mail this article to others, here.

POSTSCRIPT: Whenever I stumble into something horrific, to watch and to write – whether it’s the wars in Congo, the crushing of Gaza, the vast rubbish dumps of South America inhabited by children, or the selling of slave-children in Bangladesh that I’ve written about today – there’s a quote I keep close, to ward off the feeling of impotence and despair.

It was written by the great war correspondent Martha Gellhorn, in a letter to a friend in 1941. She had just heard that the novelist Dos Passos had said people shouldn’t be wasting their time writing at a time of war, and she wrote:

"I am disgusted to see Dos said that writers should not write now. If a writer has any guts he should write all the time, and the lousier the world the harder a writer should work. For if he can do nothing positive, to make the world more liveable or less cruel or stupid, he can at least record truly, and that is something no one else will do, and it a job that must be done. It is the only revenge that all the bastardized people will ever get: that somebody writes down clearly what happened to them."

It’s not much. But it’s something. I have to believe it's something... ..

Two Kinds of Intelligence

2009-11-20T01:19:00.000-08:00

There are two kinds of intelligence: one acquired, as a child in school memorizes facts and concepts from books and from what the teacher says, collecting information from the traditional sciences as well as from the new sciences.

With such intelligence you rise in the world. You get ranked ahead or behind others in regard to your competence in retaining information. You stroll with this intelligence in and out of fields of knowledge, getting always more marks on your preserving tablets.

There is another kind of tablet, one already completed and preserved inside you. A spring overflowing its springbox. A freshness in the center of the chest. This other intelligence does not turn yellow or stagnate. It’s fluid, and it doesn’t move from outside to inside through the conduits of plumbing-learning.

This second knowing is a fountainhead from within you, moving out.

-- Thanks a lot Rumi! for the wonderful insight, more i read about your works, more respect is bourne in my heart for you...

Delhi Calls.

2009-07-26T10:43:00.000-07:00

Delhi metro coming to the depot and i am summoned to help in a system commissioning...

So i have planned my visit in a short span and leave for Delhi... and since i have arrived things are different...

I go to the depot and never think of coming back before night... Some things i observed in Delhi:

&&> Traffic is superb! (u know why i told like this becoz you never know when you will reach the planned destination.. )

&&> Too many cars much like our mind too much crowded with thoughts all the time!.

&&> Working in two shifts if needed.

&&> The management of the project has gone haywire... :)...

well still i am here and trying to experience more things...

Signing off:

Arjun

Poem by Rumi

2009-06-09T22:57:00.000-07:00

A lover asked his beloved,
Do you love yourself more than you love me?
Beloved replied, I have died to myself and I live for you.
I've disappeared from myself and my attributes,
I am present only for you.
I've forgotten all my learnings,
but from knowing you I've become a scholar.
I've lost all my strength, but from your power I am able.
I love myself ... I love you.
I love you ... I love myself.

--Rumi.

Old Pals meet.

2009-06-06T01:55:00.000-07:00

Recently three of my school friends after quite a gap of time. So v four guys/gals decide to go on a short trip to celebrate our reunion..

So we search and find that Tithal is a place to go. I and my friend book the tickets and travel date arrives....

That day was great.. it started very early for us and ended late as well...I and my friend picked up the other two pals and reached station by 5:30 in the morning..

Soon moments began to unfold themselves.. good interaction started between all of us.. everyone spoke about their life, some things good somethings not soo good.. but that's the beauty of life i feel..

Reaching the tithal beach took some time but where the time passed nobody knew...

The beach was good and its calm waters gave us an open invitation to enjoy on its wonderful shores,

Moments again began unfolding this time showing different colours... i spot learned a card game played... (essential learnings can happen anytime... :).. )...

After some slowly hunger took us over... we found a restaurant nearby and had a good food... The food was tagged Punjabi but taste from all over India were present in the food... :)...

Back to beach in some time.. we were actually totally exhausted... but decided just keep talking..

More word started flowing in.. and it was like every aspect of life was touched....

Returning back i was feeling nostaglic.. but it was the present moment at that time.. we spent the remaining time talking as well...

Finally our stop came... we de-boarded the train.. reached our vehicles... and went back to home...

On my way back my mind still lingered in the past.. all those happy moments were still alive in my mind's playfield....

I reached home... went straight to bed.. some happy dreams came to my mind....

In the morning i had to rush back to baroda and finally to office....

Thanks a lot my friends... for making my day wonderful and with memories which i'll cherish for a life time....

Commitment.

2009-01-27T21:35:00.000-08:00

Dear All,

New wishes to all!

Actually last year has been very dry for me in writing even a single blog. Time seemed to have flown away. But this new year has blown fresh air in my writing and i vow to myself to get back to writing.

Thanks ,

Arjun.

Living Alone ;;;!

2007-12-31T03:19:00.000-08:00

Living Alone ; C'est Live.

Living alone can be really so much fun.. :) You can do whatever you want; roam around wherever you want; Cook whatever you like.Recently I had a chance to live alone and discover myself more when i had to live alone for some time. I will share some of the experiences i had during living alone and it is still going. I am living alone for around 6 days or so. But i thought now is the time to write some thing before the thoughts get lost in myself.

I am getting up early these days; i don't know but there is a strong desire to do some things in the morning; like exercising, meditating. I just get up and start doing some things. In the meantime ; i also went some times to the supermarket to get some things for survival. I daily surf and surf and surf... and it seems endless.... I have also started thinking about my whole life. I have realized that whatever i do today is some how affecting my life. I am constantly trying to remember and remind my self who i am and what i am on this earth to do for.

I have also started prepare food for myself. Just the beginners stuff but good enough to feed and nourish my body. I prepare Rice; and rice and some more rice with boiled pulses. I also take eggs in the form of omlette as well as may be some thing but edible.

Professionally i have come attached to my work and also technically i keep on searching and reading new things. Most importantly i am trying out lot of thing these days. I have started jotting down my thoughts and on more regular basis. I do only work that is done in the view of the future... :)

Personally i am now emotionally well balanced; learning how to tackle everyday emotions; getting to myself and in terms with living alone. Initially i was supposed to join my colleague and his wife with a tour to Italy; but some times life is not always what you think;;; I had to stay back because of some foolish reasons. I was some what hurt and frustrated...... but i decided to move on and today i feel lucky that i had to chance to stay alone and learn about myself. I know what are my weaknesses are now and i am trying hard to overcome ; changing my weaknesses to strengths; my preconceptions and blocks about my self seem to get removed.

Ok guys taking your leave; I guess now its time for me to cook some food.... :)

Have a nice day guys/ gals....

Do remember what ever life gives just accept and try to extract the essence from it ; because life first teaches a lesson then gives the moral... :)

So-Called First Crush..!

2007-11-24T10:29:00.000-08:00

Crush and Infatuation are two words which are more or less similar to each other. I had the experience of a crush like situation when i was in the last year of the college.I think for security reasons it would better not to give any names or identity. Let she be person X for all of us.. :-)...

For the first time we all went for a treat in CCD. x was laughing in a coversation & i was skipping heart beats. For several days i had trouble sleeping at night. Because somehow i was occupied with her thoughts & words. For few days i was troubled about what the hell was happening to me??

I had to discuss the problem with two of the most wonderful friends in my life. They counselled me regarding the situation. But somehow for somedays i was not able to study a single word of my so important course study.

These are the symptoms which were observed in me:-
* Restlessness.
* Happiness.
* Complex emotional conditions.
* Constant thought of X.
* Feeling like laughing at any time.
* Sleeplessness.

My mind was getting out of control all the time. I was feeling; everything was beautiful.
It was a different and probably the first experience of me regarding these things. Most of the time my mind floated in air. I feeling like singing songs with X & also may be write some things to her regarding my feelings.

Wherever X was i wanted to be avec her. Steadily my madness ( sorry no better word.) went on
increasing and increasing. I was feeling intensely agitated from time to time. But both of my friends helped me a lot. They told just to hold on to myself. Then i held on that for some time. It reached a peak level and then finally came down to a very normal stage.I was out of it. I knew there is always a fine line between infatuation and true love, for this case it was sheer infatuation. I was happy that i had such experiences. Such kinda of experiences really help you lot in tackling not so technical but the emotional problems.

I really want to thank a lot my both friends, who from their past experiences took me out of
the things.

Regards,

Arjun.

First Trip in an Aerooooo Plane!!

2007-11-10T15:45:00.000-08:00

Hello All,
I am back after a long break. Just got busy in Job and other stuff.Well this time i talk about my first trip ever in my whole life in an aeroplane.

As some of you might know that recently i got an onsite oppurtunity from my company to France. So for some time, i am in France, away from my own country India.I am learning a lot of things in this trip. This is first of them, travelling in plane for the first time!!, I will write about all my learnings & experiences slowly slowly one by one.

Starting with just to describe my tentative itinerary . I start my journey on 21st august evening from Vadodara, the place where i work in India. Then after that i had to catch a International Jet airways plane to Brussels in Belgium from Mumbai. Meanwhile i had to catch up a colleague in Mumbai, as we both have to go for the same mission in France.

I started from my home in Vallabh Vidyanagar , the place where i was born and my parents live, at around 3:45 PM in the afternoon . We took a taxi from VVN to Baroda. It was long for me , i was both excited and somewhat nostalgic at the same time. I also remembered GOD for giving me this wonderful oppurtunity and also i also prayed for my parents, as they were going to live alone for some time without me for the first time!! i was just getting worried about them.

But don't mind guys/gals they are happy for me, and are eagerly waiting for me back in India.. :-)...

Reaching the Vadodara, domestic, airport we took out the luggage. Then the wait started as we were early enough for the flight. My dad was constantly giving me tips for the travel, mom was also telling things. I consoled them that i can manage the things, no problem at all. Then the time came for the initial checkin. I said bye to my parents and went straight to the Jet checkin counter. I checked in the luggage and was given the boarding pass for the domestic as well as the international flight at the same time.

I had to wait for sometime. Finally the moment for security check came. I said a very final bye to my parents ( a very big one... ) then headed for the security check. Just enjoying every moment , i went for the check. It took around 10 mins to get things in place again. Finally the flight boarded. Initially i had to catch a shuttle bus from the airport to the plane itself. I took it and reached near a big/gigantic plane. The plane was standing still and it seemed it like spreading its wings and waiting for the passengers to arrive & fly.

I had a ticket of the economy class, so i had the climb into the plane from the rear side.. :-)..i went inside for the first time, it was a amazing feeling just to climb a plane, especially when you have the bigger picture in mind. I went up to my seat, just to see it was occupied by a girl..! and she was interested in seating on the window seat, and i guess it would not be polite to say no to a girl..:) so i said ok....
Finally i was all set, stuffed with some lime juice, a nice seat belt.. :) the plane got ready for take off. It started slower then fast, faster.. and voila!! it took off.... and the feeling in itself was great!! Oh man m in Plane and flying too....!! In 45 minutes the plane was supposed to land in Mumbai.
Those were some of the most memorable 45 minutes of my life. I felt like dancing in the plane. I thanked GOD for what all he has set up for me. In around 45 min i landed in Mumbai. Then i was taken to the arrival terminal in a shuttle bus.

Reaching the arrival terminal i had to move thru another Jet counter to get some thing like the immigration form etc. then i went to the international terminal. During the whole journey i was thinking about the first experience of the plane. It was really awesome. Finally i reached the international terminal. I waited some time for the colleague. Then we both again went thru the security check etc.

Just at the end it was now time to board the international flight. I was given the chance to board early as some how my seat was in the last few rows.. :) ( last but not the least.. ! ).. I boarded the flight. It was a long journey & found that the seat was slightly uncomfortable for me ... in the beginning but later on adjusted.. :)... I took some food, then some juice.. I entertained myself with the system ( TV) provided by the aircraft. Finally took a cat nap for a while. The whole journey came to an end much early than expected.. :)... Me and my colleague landed in Brussels at round 7:30 in morning next day.. We both took a stroll back at the airport, collected our luggage.

Our boss cum colleague was present there at the airport just to pick us.. ( & such a nice person he is... ). We just stopped for a small coffee at the airport.. Then our boss took us in France, We checked in the hotel first then we went for the first day in new office !! Voila that ended my wonderful trip and i had to get started with some work the same day :(.... In the evening we were taken back to the Hotel by a kind colleague and i just went to my room, had some food and slept... just to get up the next morning... :).. subah ho gayi mamu...

It is really a good experience just to have a ride in plane , for whatever time it may be.. i propose you all reading this blog, just to have a plane ride atleast once in your whole life time.....

A Day Worth A Gem!

2007-07-06T02:29:00.000-07:00

Wikipedia explains Gurdwara as "the doorway to the Guru", is the Sikh place of worship and may be referred to as a Sikh temple. The most famous and the holiest gurdwara is the Harmandir Sahib in Amritsar, in northern India.
Life is what u make out of it. This was my feeling until that day when i had a chance to visit this religious place called 'Gurdwara'. Life is more subtle than we think it to be. There are certain other factors apart from our work which influence our lives.The factors can be GOD,LUCK, our own limiting thoughts ,results of our own past deeds or may be /can be anything. Our thinking is mostly bound to the materialistic pleasures we perceive through our mortal five senses. Our mind is bogged down by the useless thoughts of the past and is busy making plans for the future , in this process we lose our wonderful present.

I have felt how the experience of the present moment can be so much enjoyed.Without diverting your minds much, lets start our journey. Recently i had to chance to visit this wonderland which in worldly terms is called the Gurdwara. Some things happen in your life, when u least expect it. This visit also happened as a sudden surprise. Still this surprise was worth soul stirring. I had been many temples, religious places but never to this place.

Some of friends also came there, i don't know if they had visited before. We were accompanied by one of our good punjabi friend, who had been kind and patient enough to answer some of our religious and common doubts about the religion. She gave us step by step instructions about the rituals which we need to follow in the Gurdwara. I think it won't be wrong to thank her right now only.

As a sign respect, a ritual we need to cover our heads with a cloth before entering the place. This practice triggered a thought like mind is always wandering here and there and gathering useless data, by covering the head we insure that the thoughts are not wondering any more. Our mind are like vessels and covering the vessels with a lid will protect it from getting polluted. It also conveyed to me that by the wearing of the cloth we convey a hidden message to our mind that we are now staying only in the present moment in the memory of GOD. Another thought which came is like GOD is pouring blessings on us, and we collecting it our selves, and the cover is provided so that the blessings stay there forever in our minds and lives.

We needed to climb some steps we could finally enter the place. Before that we had to wash our feet. Washing the feet conveys that we are getting rid of the materialistic dirt which i think knowingly or unknowingly we gather all the time, physically i got rid of the dirt in my feet, and also mentally tried to get rid of the all the burdens which have been carrying knowingly or unknowingly. Next came climbing a few stairs,for which i felt as if my soul is getting elevated after getting rid of the worldly burdens.

Nextly as instructed the thing goes as we need to walk to the Tomb of the Guruji, and touch my foreahead in front of Him. (In punjabi it is known as "Mattha Tekna" erros and omissions expected :-)..... ). Initially i was reluctant to actually walk to the Tomb, but my friend just motivated me to just go for it. I started walking and suddenly i felt very happy as if i have been delighted without any reason. It seemed that all my desires, thoughts are slowly coming to an end. There is no such thing in world as a desire for me. Every step was feeling elevated and it was like a divine force surrounding, protecting me, bestowing blessings on me. I went totally blank for a second or so. Just coming back to my senses i realized that i have reached the last place where i could reach for . I slowly bowed my head, and silently came back. I felt that life with divine intervention is far better than living a aimless life. I found a state like action in inaction and inaction in action.

Then for some time we sat for hearing some religious teachings. I understood little but may be some point of time in life i would to learn from that. Hope at that time my friend would be helping me out ... :-).... in understanding them. Thereafter as planned we had to go for lunch, in Gurdwara it is known as "Langar me khana khana" ( please bear with my so so punjabi/hindi.).. The place was a large mess kind of setup. Every one feeding themselves some good and divine food. With divine food i mean that food prepared in the memory of GOD and also taken as gift of GOD to us. Every face has some kind of satisfaction which was pouring out of them. May i don't because it s there festival, and or there was something which was really working behind them.

After some time i sat for food. There again as sign of great respect we need to ask for food with two hands open , as if we are asking for a blessing from a GOD. I have never seen before such thing but really liked it. We are giving so much respect to our food, that very thought gave me a great feeling.

Finally we all after finishing our food came back from the place. During the journey back home my mind as free as a bird flying high in the sky, as if i have known some thing which i was looking for. It was a holistic experience, and for me it was feeling a void space of my mind with a mystic experience.

I still sometimes remember the whole experience, i am not sure but may be the journey towards attaining GOD and self realization starts from visiting a religious place....

Regards,
G-O-G-O-L.

Case Cleared!!

2007-04-21T08:01:00.000-07:00

Trainings are always the integral part of being in the software industry. This time i had a training on IBM Rational Tool, more details u can find on the website. But in this blog i will try to share some of the experiences i had during the Mumbai visit. The training took place for 2 days, 22-23 Feb. I was accompanied by one my colleagues.
My journey began 21st night in Vadodara express. In the train it self, i had one experience. My place was next to an middle aged couple who had an mentally retarded child. I felt very sorry and emotional for them. May GOD bless just a tolerant and loving parents. Finally i slept after the train started. Carrying a well built body i had to actually adjust a lot in the Upper Birth, especially i have take care that my legs don't hit badly anyone's head :-).... After that we reached Borivalli at around 4:00 in the morning, pretty early for Late Risers like me .. :).... I met one of my friend who was actually travelling by the same and was also familiar with the train timings in Mumbai. Then we started for Andheri as it was our final destination. We reached Andheri around 5:00 a.m. Then went for the guest room provided by the company.

We reached the guest house after some initial struggle as we were new to the state, as well as the city. But finally made it to the room. Reaching i adjusted for the bedroom with one my senior. One interesting thing about the bed :-)... it had a bed sheet which had some radium like dots which glow during nite. I was feeling as if for some time i will sleep in the mystic arms of space.:-).... The day began early atleast for me. We had our breakfast then we started as we had to search for our destination.

In the morning while reaching for the venue, we had first tryst with Mumbaiya traffic. Finally we reached our destination. The IBM fellow hired one space for the training. It was all setup, ready for some serious training. When we entered, there were already some professionals occupied there seats. I talked to them, during that time only some more fellows joined. Finally our trainer joined and the training began. The training was more of a advanced one. I tried real hard just to cop with the things . But for my colleague who had some what less exposure to the tool was sitting confused trying to guess wat things are going around. I even helped her out of the mess. The day went on and on . In between we had lunch , a small introduction session just too feel comfortable. I met with one guy from CapGemini who has just started working on the same tool, so we shared some of the experiences with each other. Then after lunch the session continued.

The day came to an end after much technical bombarding. We went back to our room, had some rest. In evening we went to Juhu beach to relax and just roam around. I had been to Juhu beach on some my previous visits. Happy memories and joyful present filled my mind extreme contentment. On the beach i felt the gentle breeze touching my whole body, as if it took off all my tiredness. I and my senior took off our shoes and went into the sea water upto some length to experience the sand moving below from our feet, when the tides leave the shore. My colleague who accompanied me was intially reluctant, but finally came with us. After enjoying a lot at the shore, we went for some window shopping, especially me. My lady colleague bought some clothes, and me and my senior ended up shopping nothing but just roaming around..:-)...

After reaching home we had rest for some time. We ordered food for dinner. After having dinner we had a long discussion on various topics like Marriage, Love Marriage etc. In our guest room there also servant appointed who also shared is life experiences. Let me tell one funny incident which happened. We were having discussion on a topic of Love Marriages and Inter caste marriages, suddenly out of the blue my lady colleague erupted saying "I don't believe in Love marriages and I don't believe in Inter caste marriages !!" I was about to laugh but some tried to control ( Ha ha ha).. i thought there are still people who have this kind of thinking.. Anyways i don't have any personal or any racist issue wat so ever . Finally we had rest, for me in the mystic lap of space.. :-)...
Next day again began very early for me. :-)... After having jal paan, we got back to the same place. This time again much technical bombs directly targeted on the brains. But this time i was totally ready and faced each bomb shell with shield of courage and knowledge .. :-).. Finally the day got over soon. We came back to room after having intially struggle with auto rickshaw walas. I was planning to have nice rest the get back home, but life had some other plans for me. Suddenly my colleague demanded that we should go to see one of her relative stayin' in Mulund... ( my god again the train journey!!)... also we planned to go for Charni Road near the chowpatty. I said yes but initially not so... happy but finally accepted the truth of life, that watever happens, is for for the best, which i realized after the end of the journey. We started taking up train to Charni Road, we crash landed(that is the word i shud use after experiencing the extreme crowd in the train).. at the station. After some time our senior joined directly from the office. We had great time together. After some khana pina we went for a boat ride, guess wat i wore a life jacket for the first time in my life. During the whole boat ride i was just enjoying and asked GOD a small will these moments ever happen again in my life??? I don't when i will get the answer but i m sure GOD must have registered this question and will give answer in some corner of my life. ....

After this began the great journey to Mulund. For reaching Mulund theoretically we have to change train from Dadar. But as always theory is no where near to practical thing, we took one train to Dadar, Then oh my god wat a crowd at Dadar station.. We had to sprint for the next train, which was jam packed. I felt that before reaching Mulund i wud be thrown out the train from the other entrance. But finally i some how managed to stay in the train. I was struggling like a novice batsman facing the world best bowler . Again crash landed at the station. We met her relatives, had dinner at their place, they were really kind enough to offer us astomach ful of food. After we took a bus back to Andheri, had really less struggle at least boarding the bus. Even i didn't have to worry about intermediate station as Andheri was the last stop.. :).. Reaching back the guest room i really had a sigh of relief. But really that day and the journey had been unforgettable. At last as all the happy beginning come to an happy or not so happy end, we packed our bags, bid adieu to the hosts ,took a local train back to Borivalli and finally a train back to Vadodara. Throughout that whole night i remembered the things i enjoyed, things i learnt , things i experienced. Lastly before parting away I would like to tell you all readers that, Life is all about living in the present. The moments that pass by you and your life are precious, make the most of it. Days will pass so will the years, we may live today and die some day but what will remain after us are these precious moments. ..

Help UNICEF

2007-03-25T21:47:00.000-07:00

Hey All,
Help UNICEF!!!

Have a look at the following link!

http://friends.unicefusa.org/r/029edcf42ca5102a8325

Interpretation Of Eyes: A Perspective

2007-02-13T05:44:00.000-08:00

An Eye has been defined by Wikipedia is an organ which senses lights. But few days back my mind caught hold that eyes and its expression can be interpretrated in many ways. Firstly what i personally feel that eyes depict a human being. Eyes say a lot about human being's character. A human mind's deep emotions can be expressed by eyes. Eyes are like the window to the soul. A eye is one of the most delicate part of the human body. Knowingly or unknowingly our eyes speak. I would suggest u all to stand in front of mirror and bring in some emotions in our heart. I bet your eyes will tell u something related to the emotion. The outflow of emotions firstly takes place through our eyes, then from other senses or organs. I am not a therapist or a doctor or a great person to describe about outflow of emotions through eyes. But i will try to point out very simple and practical things. This blog will not be a guide to the interpretration of eyes but only a perspective of the topic.

Eyes are one of the greatest gift given by the creator of the whole universe. Through eyes we see the world as we like to see. Our mind perceives the truth through our eyes, no matter how it is represented, but the truth is always there, only we mess up with the interpretation. What we believe is what we see in our lives. As soon as this idea came into my mind, i have started observing people and their eyes. I have tried to categorize the types of eyes, in my opnion what i feel. Firstly is the Lazy Eyes, the moment we get up in the morning and wash our face, wishing that the previous night could have been longer... :-).. is what i call is the lazy eyes full of redness, our body is that denying to get up from the sleep.. Lazy eyes can also be found at the time just before sleep, where we let go everything and just go to sleep. Nextly i can say is the Confident Eyes. In this state of the eyes we look straight, our mind is ready to take on any challenge. We feel as if there is nothing like failure. Our eyes and the whole body is filled with a certain surge of energy. Then i have found some Disinterested Eyes. The people having this kind of eyes seems to disinterested in everything they do and feel. Life is like an burden to them. Also there is a category of Selfish Eyes. They look very normally but u can feel that there are hidden motives behind their looks. They try to deceive you in every possible way just to get their motive satisfied by you. They easily get irritated when there motive is not fulfilled.

Going further there is a category of Restless Eyes. In this type,a person continously looks here and there unfocussed all the time. Looking at the surrounding restlessly. They seem to be finding something but cannot find anything. They are having less attention to the work and always worried about the surrounding. Taking one more step ahead i would like to point out about Concentrated/Focussed Eyes. When we deeply concentrate on a task or event in our hands, we reach to a state where every thing transcends into one things that is our aim. Our eyes fail to blink even for a second, we achieve our goals at any cost. It seems that our whole life has only one motive that is fulfill the task. Taking an interesting turn, talking to you about Emotional Eyes. How many times have you cried or ur eyes became wet watching sentimental movies? and this not the only case you feel great amount to emotions when u look at a very pathetic beggar. U tend to melt looking at a hungry animal and u feel for it. U feel as if today wat ever bad is happening to our country, being a responsible for our country we are somewhere some how responsible.( Don't take negative meanings for this line.... ). The people with this kinda eyes are highly sentimental ones, are moved greatly by their surrounding atmosphere. U must be wondering how have i known about emotional eyes?? This is the same case with me... My heart tends to move by the very sight of needy people, animals and wat not??.. But try to get out of it.

Still continuing to explore more lets bend our imagination and look more deeply on type of eyes what i call is the Imaginative Eyes.. They have a different look towards the world. They have different attitude towards life and the way choose to take is always the other way around. They tend to look towards the sky and think that there all dreams will true is very moment. They are usually hard workers and try to fulfill there dreams. They can also be very lazy as they are only dreaming without giving much devotion to the actual work, but this condition is for a very few cases. Finally in my opinion i would like to point to some more types like Mysterious Eyes, these are eyes are always trying to hide something from others. Beware of these eyes always. Nextly taking this discussion to the next level taking about Affectionate/Loveful Eyes, i have no experience wat so ever in Love and atleast i can share some views based on imagination and some observations.... :-).... In love person finds happiness by looking on anything. He smiles in any event. Two lovers look to world thru each other eyes. Their eyes are so soothing and calm as if time has stopped for them. No stress/fear of others wat so ever just the two persons looking at each other.

Its very difficult to identify love in someone's eyes. Actually u don't have to think /look for love in someones eye but it will gradually flow through the eyes, and u will never when love just appears and then disappears. Its like a moment of truth u actually never realize that love was expressed thru ur eyes. Finding love in someone's eyes just like the search of truth. Its like carrying out the most efficient search in google search engine from the web of the heart.
But anyways now wrapping up the blog with some more some categories like Frustrated Eyes, OverConfident Eyes, Doubtful Eyes & Many more which i leave to the imagination of the readers, hope now u will start observing the category of the eyes in your own unique way.

My Visit To Bombay TMS!!

2006-11-03T05:50:00.000-08:00

Hi all, i am back with my next blog.. Now this time i am describing my technical visit with my own point of view and some imagination added. We all the trainees went to the TMS bombay visit from our company on a one fine day. On reaching Bombay central, we came out only to reach a deserted Traffic Management System (TMS) centre besides Railway Recruitment Board centre, i didn't appear for the recruitment board exams :), On entering we first encountered a RPF jawan, who behaved rudely with us, as if we were went there some real bombs.. But we tackled him tactically, and finally reached the office..
On the main entrance i saw three dogs sleeping, i thought like they are the security guards for the office.. The dogs were sleeping innocently as if they have nothing to do with the outside world. We should take lesson from the dog, that whatever happens in life, just stay calm and work hard towards ur goal. Nextly we went in the office only to find that all the concerned officials will arrive at 11.00 a.m, so the question is what to do next, so we all decided to stay there only and wait for some time. So we all were taken to a so called waiting room. To shortly describe the waiting room, it was full of dust with no chairs at all.. It had a tv which has to be banged to get it started. The room had a computer which i tried to play with, but no internet access was there so i left the computer. Then my eyes fell on the the TATA fone, so tried to my hand to the tiny fone and quickly learned the functioning. I tried to call home but cannot as the fone was not having a std connection. We all trainees had a great time in the cabin, hopefully not of a ship, we chatted for a long and pulled each other's leg to the fullest.
As at that time Ganpati Festival was going on, there was short aarti to lord ganesha in the centre. I attended that, my mind got fresh and rejuvenated. I felt completely absorbed in the prayer of God. I silently offered a prayer for myself for bestowing all the blessings on me and my parents, who are the foundation of my life. After this we all outside for roaming around the station as we had to kill time. We went but were forced to return after short while as the sun was 2 scorching for our delicate skins, and we knew nothing about the place. Finally we came back and again began waiting for the officials, our senior to come and make us learn something. Slowly and steadily the moment came we had a chance to learn many things.
My first glance was on very big screen, such big screen i have never seen in my life. It was the main screen on which we can actually see the trains moving in real time. Although it was not a tv kinda stuff, where we can sit and watch our favourite sitcoms. But the very own nature and architecture of the screen was marvellous. It gave me feeling that GOd must be having such kind of screen to watch our actions in real time, other wise how can he take care of so many souls on the planet. Further more we had a chance to learn all the details about how the data is managed on the servers and how the processing takes place. The servers were like our brains, with excellent storage capacity and lightening fast processing power. We learnt the details of the whole system. Then we had a chance to look on the giant screens and total functioning. The screen really swept me off my feet. That excellent look, the screen looked like an angel in front of us. The screen gives and other softwares gives the info about various trains on the tracks and wat not.
After this session, we had a chance to go to at the cabin from where the manual handling of the train traffic is done. The cabin was like an old guy breathing his last and all alive on the mercy of the rattling trains around it. Inside the cabin we had a chance to visit the very own manual relay control panel. The panel had a large layout of track, complex enough to confuse anyone. The persons there were working like anything just to ensure that the trains are running on time and they arrive on the correct platform. We had a chance to see the computerized announcement system, which makes announce ments at regular intervals.
In all the old looking cabin was like the heart of the station. Without it the station would have died literally. I salute all the persons, who are working there day and night just to ensure that we, the ppl are safe enough travelling to our world of dreams without any hindrances what soever. Our visit came to an end eventually and we came back from Bombay with our hearts filled with happy memories and our brains boosted with some serious technical stuff.

A Pen Picture of My Bombay Trip!

2006-09-01T01:31:00.000-07:00

Hi all, this is my first blog as a novice blogger. I am working as a trainee in a software company. Recently we all trainees had a technical visit to Mumbai. During our entire trip my mind has been imaginatively bent and I had tried to view each and every event happening across me very subltely. Well first of all I would like to thank Mr. Praveen Mayakar who is a colleague of mine and the person who introduced to me this wonderful idea of penning down my ideas on blog. Being a new writer please bear with my mistakes, i am confident that through the passage of time i will improve.

Without wasting much time of you all let me start sharing some experiences. The day was thursday and my day began with at 2.00 a.m. in the morning, as i had to get ready to catch the train at 3.15 or so. Hence forth we all trainees gathered at the station to catch the train. My first philosophical thought came upon me, when was getting up on the train and my hand touched the iron rods at the doors of the train, I felt as if they are greeting a welcome to me with a warm hand shake and wished me best of luck for the journey ahead. I felt proud on getting on the train as i was sitting on that prestigious train for the first time. As i settled on the berth i felt satisfied that now i will have a nice sleep...

We all woke in the morning at around 7.00 for the breakfast. I saw from the window a large mountain with wonderful clouds, first thought i struck me was as if our training was passing in front of a large active volcano. The clouds over the mountains were like and smoke balls which usually come of the volcano when it is about to erupt. Slowly the sun came out behind the mountains and the sun-rays came on to my eyes as if sun was looking directly at me and blessing me with all its might. Later a saw a series of mountains and i thought they are just like a mute observers sent by God for observing my actions. I encountered lovely lush green fields through out the way.

The plants on the fields as if they were like swaying like an angel's hair. Once we entered the state,I was looking out side from both the windows of the compartment. I saw two different views of the same place.

One was full of life, clean and civilzed and the other was dirty, full of poverty and semi civilized. I saw sky scrapers on one side and slums on the others. I felt that life changes like anything it can be so evident that if we change perspective from which looking at we get an altogether different world to see. I saw many people on the station hurrying to catch the morning trains it was like what makes them run either it is the train or the life itself?? and also like they are running to catch the trains or they are running after the life which they have chosen to live?? In my opinion life is full of questions only for the thinking minds. On the way i also saw a pond or we can say an outlet from the sea on which there were many boats which were floating, so i thought the situations in life good or bad are like that water only we should concentrate on how not to get drowned in it.

Later we came down to Mumbai Central and again my thought process began. I saw again the hustle and bustle of life but from a very objective attitude. I saw the world around was hurrying and my mind was standstill and watching the flow of life totally detached from the scene. It seemed that the people were in a mad rush to either reach their destination or there has been nothing left in there life accept running and worrying. Well after all these we went to the place to where we destined to. The place was a great place to learn a lot about various technical aspects. On the first floor of the building thru which i was able to see the mumbai central station. This view again changed my mode of mind from normal to the imaginative one. I saw many trains running ruthlessly on the tracks without mercy and with people overloaded on to them. It seems as if the trains were expressing anger on the tracks because they were made the beast of burdens. There was a marvellous sync between the incoming and outgoing trains they seemed like the periodic human heart beat.

The trains seemed to crush the track with their relentless speed. But on the behalf tracks i would like to say that tracks had been large hearted enough to let the trains to stay upon them.. Well it seems that we need think the same about mother earth that how large hearted she has been to tolerate our sins on her without uttering a single word from her mouth. Well that's a different issue as such and lets not divert from the topic.

From the same floor i also some sky scrapers being built and the construction being done by the automatic cranes they seem give an message that building ur life is in your hands and how to build it using cranes like character and ethics is upto u the builder and the most unique creation of God. Then the day passed by we did learn a lot of stuff and finally were relieved. Then we went to see Gateway of India(GOI) on the lovely sea shores. This moments were the best part of the journey we all have enjoyed.

The GOI seems like an piece of heaven cut out from the sky and fallen on that place. The lighting around it were only adding to its glory. In front of it the sea and the superb Taj hotel (TH)at the back perfectly forming a lethal combination of exotic beauty. The carving on the GOI were fascinating and attractive, it gave the impression about the architectural and aesthetic excellence in that era. It conveyed a message to me that we also create such impeccable life if we had the courage, determination and the never ending thirst to excel. Then we went on the boat trip and we wishfully opted for the upper seats. Through out the mind was in the same mode and perceiving different interpretations.

The sea was inviting us both hands and relieving our whole day stress. The sea water silent in nature but constantly i was feeling that it had many secret behind which i could not get. The view of the mountains from the boat was like there is mystery land on the other side of the shore. There were many other ships which were digging in deep in the heart of sea just to dig out oil. I thought it seemed like that many bad habits and our own weaknesses are digging out our power with or without knowledge, so we must be careful enough so stay away from all the wasteful stuff which leave completely no where in our life. Finally we returned from the boat journey and eventually came back to Baroda with my mind totally reinvented, today i am different than what i was on that day.