Desiderata

Desiderata, in Latin means '' desired things''. It is a 1927 prose poem written by Max Ehrmann. Few days back I stumbled across this and could not resist from sharing it. The approach in life, so neatly penned.

''Go placidly amid the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible without surrender be on good terms with all persons. Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even the dull and the ignorant; they too have their story. Avoid loud and aggressive persons, they are vexations to the spirit. If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain and bitter; for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself. Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans. Keep interested in your own career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time. Exercise caution in your business affairs; for the world is full of trickery. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals; and everywhere life is full of heroism. Be yourself. Especially, do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love; for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment it is as perennial as the grass. Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth. Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness. Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should. Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be, and whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your soul. With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.''

Versatile blogger award

I thank Nilu A for passing on to me this award. This is the second award from her. She had awarded me with ABC award earlier. I thank you with all my heart.

Rules of the Versatile Blogger Award:-

1. Link back to the person who gave you the award.

2. Share seven things about yourself.

3. Pass the award to fifteen bloggers who you think deserve it. 

4. Contact the people you’ve picked.

More 7 Facts About Me:-  

1) I like to learn about everything, be it anything. It gets difficult sometimes, but I cant stop to learn.

2) I believe in Karma. Have experienced it too.

3) I am close to my friends than to my parents

4) I never and ever give up. If I think to do something I will do that by hook or crook. 

5) I am an atheist.

6) I am hardworking. 

7) I bite my nails.

The Nominees for these wonderful Awards are:-

• Rahila of Tales of curiosity

• Brendan of Brandy,whiskey and all that.

• Namrota of Coffee beans

• Deepa of Random Photography

• Jiggyasa of shrimaan shrimati.

• Wisdom times  wisdomtimes

• Sakshi of  Between Write and Wrong

• Maniparna of Scattered Thoughts

• Athenas take of athenas take

• Steve of A christian view

• Raj of elixir of knowledge

• Farzana of farzana aliasgarmukhtiar

• Anshu of those unsolved conundrums

• Visala of telugu post

• Pravin of Valuable Insights

Plato and Platypus walk into a bar

Inorder to understand any thing while reading, imagining it is very important which is the crux behind any read. In our nursery and primary levels books were more picturesque helping us to visualize but as we grew older and jumped to higher classes, the books were filled with texts and very few pictures and animations.With a lot of reading we make our brain visualize the content. When we study about academics, images or examples or real life examples substantiate our understanding. Or sometimes good discussion with peers or colleagues imbibes the learning deeper into our brain. But sometimes, the complexity of the subject restricts us to visualize further and that is when we are at a juncture either trying hard to understand or hate that subject. For example subjects like science, religion, philosophy, psychology, etc it is so very important to substantiate our learning with some images or case studies or stories etc. More often we rather prefer discussing and upon getting interested we pick a good book to read but unfortunately find the language with twists and turns which disappoints us. I blame the book not the reader.

When I started reading philosophy, I  enjoyed reading it and was baffled by the ideas which were all the time in front of my eyes but I was blind to them. Before I read a lot of books on this topic, I took help of the internet and friends. Most of the books I read were somewhat complicated and made reading difficult to me. May be the subject is so deep that it requires such writings. Recently I found the book, Plato and Platypus walk into a bar by Thomas Cathcart and Daniel Klein. It is an introduction to philosophy and that too in a comical way. The authors made fun of almost all philosophical concept and ideas like metaphysics, epistemology,ethics,philosophy of language,feminism, fuzziness, logic etc. They didnt even spare the philosophers. Each case was very well explained by few jokes which made the read hilarious. This surely makes the understanding of the concept easy. This book is enough to understand the complexities of philosophy easily. As an example,

 "A guy comes home from a business trip and finds his wife in bed, a nervous look on her face. He opens the closet to hang up his coat, and finds his best friend standing there, naked. Stunned, he says, "Lenny, what are you doing here?" Lenny shrugs and says, "Everybody's got to be someplace." In this gag, Lenny is giving a Hegelian answer to an existential question. The question is about the existential circumstances in the here-and-now, but the answer is from a grand, universal vantage point, what the latter-day Hegelian Bette Midler called “seeing the world from a distance."

The book starts with a dialogue between Tasso and Dimitri, and their conculsion is the start of a philosophical concept which is well explained by hilarious illustrations.The book continues to entertain and simultaneously educate the reader with its gags on philosophy with the same intensity from its first to last page. If you are looking for an introduction to philosophy or want to have a feel of it or if you want to understand something complex easily then this book is for you. This book can also be picked by any avid reader as it falls more in the humor genre than to philosophy. This book wont disappoint the reader at all at any instant and would surely entice the reader to walk in the labyrinths of philosophy. 

Buddhist Monastery - Jeerang, Odisha

Odisha is full of historical places, unfortunately they are not well preserved and maintained due to sheer lack of interest by the government and by the people too. I found the Buddhist monastery to be very clean and well maintained, may be it was built only in 2006, or may be that is how the monks want it to be.You can see around many Tibetans/ Burmese,Bhutanese here.  Jeerang being away from the city, on a hilly terrain, poses challenges to people who visit. Lately the roads are better and somewhat easier for travelling. It is 100km from Berhampur, a town bordering AP and Odisha. On the way we can visit  Taptapani ( extinct volcano, now turned into sulfur springs). To my surprise, the Dalai Lama had visited this place too. On the day of my visit, I could see many foreign tourists. I never knew it was such importance. If you are in and around of Odisha or are planning a trip here, then it is a must see place. Some snaps of Jeerang.

Main entrance to the monastery 

After entering, the temple building, inside of it is Buddha

Statue of Buddha

Another view of inside the temple 

Prayer drums

Nikola Tesla: Imagination and the Man That Invented the 20th Century

Do you really know who Tesla was? When I asked this question to most of my friends who are in the field of science, their answers were rather disappointing. People either knew a lot about him or knew nothing. Obviously the type of person he is, you can’t resist to just take him away from your mind. The non science graduates didn’t have to ever read about him in their course. But I am sure you would have got an opportunity to read about this great man either online, from friends, novels, movies, documentaries etc. Or at least you would have heard distant whispers about him. I don’t know how much does this person make anyone curious but he surely made a huge impact on me. He was a man who was ridiculed initially and later praised for his ideas. Failing most of the times but he never lost his focus. His life epitomizes selflessness, humbleness, hard work and lastly genius.

I accidently happen to read the book, Nikola Tesla: Imagination and the Man That Invented the 20th Century by Sean Patrick.  This book has three chapters. The first chapter arrives meticulously at the definition of a ‘’genius’’ by comparing IQs and the ability to excel. It states that, there is nothing called as ‘’God’s gift’’, it is just the amount of constructive hours you put in your work. More than anything, what differentiates the genius and people with all traits to be a genius is their ‘’imagination’’. Their ability to imagine and actually see their ideas in their imagination. Ideas and knowledge is waste if there is no imagination. The author lays focus on imagination and in the second chapter talks about the genius, Nikola Tesla. He briskly runs through his major inventions and focuses on the ‘’ war of currents’’ between Tesla and Edison. The author also slightly gives an idea of the feud between the giants, Edison and Tesla. Personally I felt that to make money and to achieve fame we should have good marketing strategies, which Edison had. Actually in one of the passages, Tesla talks about his idea of an AC motor, whose design has been laid in his mind. When everyone rejects his idea, he waits patiently and gets a potential investor. After building the model, he just says that, ‘’ this is as I had imagined’’.  The author gives a brief introduction of his life and failures. He also talks about his patent fight for discovering radio waves against Guglielmo Marconi. After Tesla’s death, he was declared as the ‘’ real father of radio’’.  Tesla even rejects his noble prize which was supposed to be shared with Edison. Just by reading this brief introduction, you would know that, he is so humble, selfless and down to earth. In one instance when the Westinghouse company was bankrupt, and was supposed to pay 1million dollars as royalty to Tesla, he simply says that, ‘’ when no one had faith in my ideas, you were the one who showed confidence in me. You are my friend and you helped me a lot. Now I shall tear apart the papers and you no need to give me any royalty,’’ His idea was just to help the mankind and not money minting. He died penniless and alone. Such a tragic death to the genius. The third chapter talks about creativity. Creativity is not an innate quality but it is something which you gain by imagination and the most creative persons have good imaginations and the best imagination leads the path to be a genius. Say Picasso, Michelangelo and the list is endless.

This book is excellent read for people who want to know about Tesla in brief. Actually I would recommend this book for school kids, for its simple and easy language. Generally a large volume doesn’t motivate the kids, but this short one would surely do.  But if you are looking to read about Tesla’s biography, then this is the wrong book. Wikipedia offers much more information.

If you dont know this man, know him soon. He will inspire you in every possible way. Lastly, thank you Tesla for lightning our world with your ideas and selflessness. 

Anniversary of my blog

So finally today I celebrated another anniversary of blogging . I started as a non serious blogger in 2010 and had a lean time of blogging for 2 years and then on Nov 4th 2012, I started to blog with seriousness. Today is my first anniversary of dedicated blogging. Back then, I had just one follower and it was only me, but now, I have 25 and also my page views increased drastically and so as the posts. I also got one Leibster, ABC and versatile blogger award. Thanks to my fellow bloggers for awarding me. 

I had a fruitful experience reading fellow blogger's posts. People have so many talents, some are good at story telling, poetry, painting, photography , opinions etc. It surely motivated me. It taught me many things and also has changed my perspective. I think, it was the right decision to join indiblogger. I seriously dont regret the decision.  I thank all of them, and I wish to develop my content and blog much productively. 

Guide of my love

My friend is a avid prose writer but never tried her hands on poetry. And her first poem was excellent. I am posting it here, with her permission.

saying I love you would,
belittle my love for you,
you have been my wing man,
helped me picking up from pieces,
putting them together.

you gave me a panoramic view of love,
helped me capture the rainbow of life,
drying my tears into pearls of affection,
shimmering your sparkle on me,
teaching me unconditional love.

the warmth of your love,
touches me gently every moment,
despite the distance,
holding my hand and mending my heart,
giving me the hope in you.

the love in you shines
through the sparkle in your eyes,
like the diamond on my ring,
making you the apple of my eye,
and the guiding light of our love!