A Lazy Friday!!!!

FRIDAYS are the laziest days of the week for us....so usually i spend my Fridays getting my beloved early morning sleeps....which m generally deprived of (Actually 9am is also early morn for me :D)...but this week since i already had my fill(Thanks to d cancelled lectures J) ...i thought of getting up real early...i mean people 9 am is like hardly the time of sunrise .....

Ok so after wasting any further time ...moved to the academic block or populary known as the college building of my campus after quickly munching cup noodles .....the reason for coming to college building??? The net connection at my hostel sucks !!!!! and secondly the greatest idea ,innovation and business model of all times...YOU TUBE is blocked in my hostel campus...

So i started my day with the usual gud mornings on GTALK, updating my status message on FB and also seeing that if any extra class has been scheduled ....all ok ....we begin on the journey on self –learning ..

Started with the days headlines on the paper i have recently grown very fond of MINT ....it said SEBI thinking of keeping ELSS out of the tax net.....have to admit it was what we generally call Over Head Transmission (OHT).....did not have a clue ...so then thought of searching the meaning .....what i got to know i would like to share with all ...no copy paste just my understandings in a SHIMPAL language ....ELSS is equity linked savings scheme...basically used as a tool for tax savings....it comes under section 80c wherein the investments to the tune of Rs 100,000 are allowed and would be exempted from the tax calculations from your salary with a lock in period of 3 years....Positives ???? U get what u want....more tax exemption and high rate of return ....Negatives??? There’s a high risk involved with this equity scheme....thats my understanding of the topic ...any suggestions,corrections and improvements are welcome J

Went on further to read about a more financial topic that catches the breath of each and every nation...FINANCIAL INCLUSION...sound nice na??? But for a novice like me this term is new and not understood ....what is financial inclusion....bhai log ...ye kya “bala” hain??? Ok so Financial inclusion as i read it and present before you is just getting the financial services to every citizen of the country ...so that they don’t have to depend on any other individual ...and the country gets better economic life of its citizens....so how do u do it???? The apex bank of the country RBI , has asked the govt to be creative in implementing the programme....because we r not talking of educated customers here who want to know about the benefits or flaws of the scheme ...we r talking of customers prob who don’t even know that such a scheme exists ....we r talking about breaking the barrier of ignorance ...till now around 60% of the country does not have access to financial services ....the potential is huge ...the challenges bigger???? Relaxing the KYC norms is a great initiative but would be difficult enough to make the people understand for once J ...they say financial inclusion is the gateway to the inclusive growth ...which i believe in after reading it in detail ...in short this policy getting the poor also some money in their wallets....and a bank account no too J

All this while i could not have survived without the old hindi songs which make ur heart feel good....which make u at peace with urself....and all this thanks to YOUTUBE....who says this site is only for downloading ...it can provide u continous support also while u r doing something completely different...

Had the entire day to myself....lived it with myself ....enjoyed it fully ...learnt somethings new ...in the end realised i love myself and i love music ...because it is the only thing that hits u hard and still u don’t feel d pain J

Thats it for d day....i sign off.... J

Controversies...controversies and controversies :D

The Sehwag- Randiv controversy has once again brought cricket in news for what its famous now –CONTROVERSIES....time and again various sports and sportsmen have been under the public eye scanner for the wrong reasons....

The irony with cricket is that it is termed as the “Gentleman’s Game” and yet hardly do we see any cricket tournament passing without a controversy ...Ranging from the age old Ashes to the newest form of the game of IPL twenty –twenty ..no form has been left untouched by some or the other news attached to it ...

Controversies know no language ,no boundaries and no limits ...there have been very few players on the list who have never been touched by one or the other “situation” as they term it .......we have the Harbhajan –Symonds controversy ,the Bhajji-Sreesanth dispute ,the Ashes series ...the list goes on..

We all as spectators see the problem as is shown to us and the controversy has already occurred....we see the after effects ...but what causes that kind of behaviour ....these players play for the country but off the field they are friends ....then what causes them to abuse each other even go the extent of slapping each other on the field??

Is it the national feeling or their pride??? What is it that the gentlemen behave in the most indecent of manners??? What drives them to the level that they forget that each and every one of their movements is noticed by the umpires, commentators and above all the media ??

Is it only cricket or does this apply to each game??? the answer is simple ..YES..this applies to each and every game .....just that it gets a bit over noticed by the media ....we have the head –butts of the Zidannes of football too :P ...but then why is it that games like table tennis, badminton etc are usually not the favourite halts for controversies ....

The possible explanation from my side would be that these players have their lives as these games .... its their passion ...its what they excel at ...but then these games are the ones that get them in the news , and the popularity of these games get the players under a lot of pressure ...loosing a number of matches in a row can cost the Indian team hard at the airport reception.... the winner is welcomed by open hands and hearts full of love and appreciation..the loosers are shown the door ...the winner is applauded , the looser is blamed at....

We say and preach that we all should possess the sportsman spirit ...we should take defeats in our strides ...but do we actually do??? Are we not the ones who blame the team of not being worth anything if they loose say five matches in a row??? The coaches of the football teams are fired if their team loses the world cup ....Is the media not equally responsible for building the pressure on the players and then blaming them if they loose ....making a player the headlines if he is out of form for say three matches ?? And don’t we watch that with keen interest ? Yes we do ...

So who is responsible??? We, they or the media??? actually none ....we are all made that way ...we judge people easily without going in the depth of the matter, we take an interest if anything wrong is going on in life of the other person and don’t pay any heed to him if his life is going good...and we definitely don’t take defeat easily....

The media cant be blamed ...as they are doing their business ...the media that used to be the fourth pillar of democracy has long disappeared ....and now what we have are just various channels fighting it out for the TRPs...

We love controversies , we love gossips, we love catfights(till we r the ones involved) ......so we should not be the ones complaining ....so next time a controversy pops up ...just sit back ,relax and enjoy !!!!!!!!!!!!!

The child is the father of man

“The Child is the father of man” quoted William Wordsworth in his famous poem “Rainbow” .They say poems are mostly the reflections of the poet’s thoughts and observations of real life, and rightly so because there can be nothing closer to the truth than the fact that what a man becomes depends entirely on what he was as a child.

Our lives can be understood like the clay moulding process .When the clay is new and totally wet u can mould it the way you like, like the way you can mould the mind of a child .As you grow old and the clay starts getting dry ,the moulding process stops, we become rigid in our thoughts and ways ,and we become the people we live to be.

They say “Home is the first school and parents are the first teachers “which is the universal truth. As children we learn what we see. A child born in a Punjabi starts his day by wishing “Sat-Sri-Akal” to his elders while a UP kid would just go and wish “Pranaam”. We owe our culture, values, principles and the people we are to our homes, our parents and our childhood.

What we learn as a kid stays with us forever as the imprints are always there on the clay unless you dissolve it completely. We often expect the child to follow in his parents’ footsteps, why? That’s because as a child you live in that atmosphere, you see your parents work with passion, enjoy their work and then you aspire to join their league.

We all still remember our mother’s warning “Dont talk to strangers dear” ...dont we??? And till date talking to strangers gets a strange feel in us. We are no longer afraid of talking to strangers yet that warning comes into our minds once in a while. We still believe on the age old superstition of not moving forward if the cat crossed your way...because thats what we were told by our mothers and they were told by their mothers and so the chain continues.

We all were lucky to live in atmosphere where kids played more and studied less...have fun with friends offline ...play under the sky and not in front of the laptop...when marks mattered but were definitely not the subject for life and death..but the Gen next kids ??? they are not so “laid –back” ...they have to compete for that one seat available in KG class of the city’s premier school...they have to top the batch to meet their parents’ expectations ..to get promoted to the next best school....You are not a 98% holder??? Pity you!!!! Is this the way we want to them to be when they grow up???Do we not want them to have a mind of their own but just keep running in the rat race till the point it drives them mad??? They are our future ....we have to give a better upbringing than the one we received...We have to make them free birds so they have their own opinions , their own interests , their own unique personalities and not like twenty others...

Today we are responsible for making the men for tomorrow...and we have to make sure that they develop to become men and not rats....let them be free , pursue their dreams and be the men they want to be....

"A child is a person who is going to carry on what you have started. He is going to sit where you are sitting, and when you are gone, attend to those things which you think are important. You may adopt all the policies you please, but how they are carried out depends on him. He will assume control of your cities, states and nations. He is going to move in and take over your churches, schools, universities, and corporations. All your books are going to be judged, praised or condemned by him. The fate of humanity is in his hands."- Abraham Lincoln

This article owes its title and inspiration to our college and the PRAYATNA guys.....

The whites, blacks and grays

The three primary colours –blue, green and red . Then there are the blacks and the whites. This is what we were told at the start of our lives. Then as we progressed in our lives mom told us about the existence of purples, pinks (which are now the favs for all girls J). Now when we have seen life on our own we have discovered the mouves, peaches and turquoise. No i am not starting a colour teaching session.

All i am saying is that like colours as we grow up we see various facets of life which make us differentiate between the good , the bad and the umm the ok ones .....when we were young we were fascinated by any new colour, any new dress we saw, ant new toy kept on that mesmerising self where the most attractive of products were kept for display.

Now we are bound ....we look at a new dress which seems to draw you towards it....but then we look at the wallet which shouts “This is the budget for this month, dare not spend it “.But our heart still keeps beating for that dress or the one next to it. Trying to make a pact between heart and wallet we settle for the dress which makes the heart happy and the wallet not too angry!!!

Any fight in childhood is solved easily and fast. We shout “She took my candy , I am not talking to him any longer”. The “she” says sorry and mom gives you two candies in compensation. You happy, her happy, dispute resolved...simple wasn’t it??? There was either black or white...even a gray did not exist.

But now there are many sides to an issue, any issue not just shades of gray but spectrum of colours. The good, bad, ok depends on the context, perspective and use. We no longer bluntly accuse her of stealing our candy. We think what she will think, what our friends will say, what her family would say, is it right, is it polite ,blah blah blah...... We keep the spectrum to ourselves, keep matching the best of colour mixes and then present our condition in the most pleasant to eye combination.

Our sadness has grades....i don’t feel good, i feel terrible, i m lost.....and our happiness also has various heights...i m glad, i m happy, i feel good, i m on the top of the world....every emotion we feel has various colours attached to it, every decision we take has various view points attached to it and every action taken by us has various implications to it...

Its said that boys are good in directions and girls in colour differentiations. Guys at times do see the world in whites and blacks but for girls the world is segmented in dark gray, blackish gray, greyish silver and the likes. Hence most of them always end up being confused on which shade to pick up in all matters of life. :P

Thats the youth story but as u grow old and the get into the grandma, grandpa stage we again start seeing the colours again in more basic shades...Reasons??? Your eyesight is detoriating, you are not bothered about others, you have had your share of choices and you do not want any more and last you wanna have a blast in the last phase of life.

You see, feel , realise various colours , various emotions during this journey of life. But in the end you realise that only the whites and the blacks exist, only goods and bad, there are no grays,no oks.... at the end they just seem to be ILLUSIONS of the mind ......