shyaamchi aaee

maajhaa mulgaa hushaar naahi asa koNi mhanTla tar malaa vaaeeT vaaTNaar naahi,
paN maajhaa mulagaa bhitraa aahe asa koNi mhanTla tar malaa tyaachi laaj vaaTel.
- shyaamchee aaee madhye shyaamchyaa vaDilaanche udgaar.

Yesterday I saw shyaamchee aaee on DD Sahyadri. It is as good as any of the Hollywood classics I have seen. Excellent characterisation, first-class acting, perfect depiction of pre-independence rural milieu, and lastly, messages to remember.

So I have added Shyamchee aaee (original in Marathi, not the English translation) in my list of must read books.

It is not the mountain we conquer but ourselves.
- Edmund Hillary, Explorer

Are some people more lucky than others?

A pschycologist by the name Wiseman conducted more than ten years of research to find out says a mail I received some days back. After monitoring the lives of hundreds of men and women who considered themselves either consistently lucky or consistently unlucky, he came up with the following conclusions.

Unlucky people are generally more tense than lucky people, and this anxiety disrupts their ability to notice the unexpected. As a result, they miss opportunities because they are too focused on looking for something else. They go to parties intent on finding their perfect partner and so miss opportunities to make good friends.

Research revealed that lucky people generate good fortune via four principles:
* They are skilled at creating and noticing chance opportunities
* They make lucky decisions by listening to their intuition
* They create self-fulfilling prophesies via positive expectations and
* They adopt a resilient attitude that transforms bad luck into good

Here are Professor Wiseman's four top tips for becoming lucky:
* Listen to your gut instincts - they are normally right
* Be open to new experiences and breaking your normal routine
* Spend a few moments each day remembering things that went well
* Visualise yourself being lucky before an important meeting or telephone call.

Luck is very often a self-fulfilling prophecy!

Again ...
Purity, patience, persevernce are three essentials of success, and above all love.
- Swami Vivekanand

Oh God! It's only Wednesday! Four more days for the week to end. I am so tired ..... but I can't give up. I have to keep going.

My two day week!

It's past 1 a.m. right now, and I am sitting in office hoping to finish today's work - rather yesterday's work, for it's already tomorrow now. These days there are only two days in my week. The first day of the week is Sunday. The second day begins on Monday morning and ends on Saturday night! This time the second day has been even longer - it began last Monday and will end, hopefully, this Saturday. That makes it thirteen days long! And it's still five days before it ends! sigh!

Oh! I think I better push off now, or I will have to wake up before I go to sleep! I'll do the rest of the work when I come back to office today. Good night guys! I hope you are luckier than I am.

Came across the following in thesaurus:

Liliaceae - Includes species sometimes divided among the following families:
Alliaceae; Aloeaceae; Alstroemeriaceae; Aphyllanthaceae; Asparagaceae;
Asphodelaceae; Colchicaceae; Convallariaceae; Hemerocallidaceae;
Hostaceae; Hyacinthaceae; Melanthiaceae; Ruscaceae; Smilacaceae;
Tecophilaeacea; Xanthorrhoeaceae

Wonder whether any sane person can ever spell, pronounce and memorize all these words, or even some of them!

Courage is the price life exacts for granting peace

This quote by Amelia Earhart, foremost woman aviator and the first woman to fly over Atlantic, actually forms the opening line of her poem titled "Courage":

Courage
Courage is the price which life exacts for granting peace.
The soul that knows it not, knows no release
From little things;
Knows not the livid loneliness of fear
Nor mountain heights, where bitter joy you can hear
The sound of wings.

How can life grant us boon of living, compensate,
For dull gray ugliness and pregnant hate
Unless we dare
The soul's dominion? Each time we make a choice we pay
With courage to behold resistless day
And count it fair.


No other quote I have heard, I believe is more closer to truth than this: Courage is the price life exacts for granting peace.

Speaking of courage, Swami Vivekanand says, "From all our vedas and upanishads if we were to pick out just one word that's more important than all others, it's abhih - fearlessness! Always say, 'I have no fear'. It is fear that brings misery, fear that brings death, fear that breeds evil. You have to go beyond all fear. So from this day be fearless."

Indeed, there can be no peace without courage. As I struggle each day towards peace, I pray I shall never fail to have enough courage.

Atomic Pun!
Two atoms sitting in a bar -
One: I have lost an electron
Two: Are you sure?
One: Yes, I am postive!
:-)

Quote for a lifetime .... 4

For seeking wise guidance there's nothing like ancient Hindu epics. Here's
one brilliant piece of advice from the Mahabharat (Shantiparva, chapter 70) :

Be religious, not bigoted;
Virtuous, not self-righteous;
Devout, not fanatical;
Gather wealth, not cruelly;

Enjoy, without elation;
Speak gently, not insincerely;
Be brave, without boasting;
Be generous, not wasteful;
Give, not indiscriminately;

Speak boldly, not harshly;
Make friends, not with the ignoble;
Fight, not with friends;
Seek information, not from the unreliable;

Serve your interest, without hurting others;
Ask advice, not from the unwise;
Praise virtues, not your own;
Trust, but not the evil;
Punish, not thoughtlessly;

Love and guard the spouse, without jealousy;
Be refined, not supercilious;
Feed delicately, not unwholesomely;
Enjoy conjugal pleasure, not over-much;

Honour the worthy, not proudly;
Serve, without deceit;
Propitiate, without fawning;

Be clever, not out of season;
Be angry, not without strong cause;
Be gentle, not to the mischievous;
Worship Deity, without display.