Rich Dad Poor Dad - Which one you want to be ?

Once you start earning money begin to consider ways of leveraging money. This is the art of taking
small sums of money to move larger amounts. Many young people waste their 20's getting into debt
buying flashy products. This is the decade when you usually don't yet have a family and is the best
time to lay the foundation for future riches.

Also live well below what you are earning say 10-20% below. Use the excess money to save and
invest. Learn to get value for money in the products and services you buy.

Ninety percent of people are hypnotized by advertising into becoming consumers. They lazily buy products and services many of which are mere toys to make them feel happy. Advertisement is the biggest source of creating artificial competition, the bigger the better. A bigger TV gives you more happiness, a bigger car brings your family closer …. And you want to be happy. Isn’t? So you keep chasing these products, which are mere ephemeral illusion of happiness.

Ten percent use their imagination and creativity to generate wealth usually by doing something they genuinely love.
We all hear, India is growing, and is soon becoming the largest economy in the world, but what’s in for us? We still get the same paltry hike in our pay-checks, at the end of every year that too, based not on our country’s growth but on the Dollar pricing, the US economy etc. Tomorrow, US can go into deep recession, and may affect the pay packages of many of us , but even if India is growing, can we become the part of India’s growth story?

Yes, we can, but all we need is acumen, a wise thinking, a financially smart mind. When a country grows, all the investment options of that country become lucrative. The Stock market, the real estate, the retail chains, the mutual funds etc, they all become avenue to make money and become a part of India’s growth curve.

The most important thing to remember is, “Don’t work for money, let the money work for you”.
If you keep working and use the money to buy useless flashy products, you will keep working for the rest of your life. But if you curtail your spending and keep the genuine ones on the buy list, and using rest of your money in investment across different Portfolio, you can actually do an early-retirement and live the life on your own terms doing things you like, rather than doing a job for rest of your life.

We all have wishes, hobbies which we would have wanted to pursue like travelling, writing, playing some sports, starting some business or just relaxing in a farm , getting closer to the nature. But we keep chasing ourselves in this rat-race, trying to be better than our peers, working harder and harder but spending our hard-earned money on the gizmos and products which have little use in our daily life, and we keep working, telling ourselves that when we are X amount richer we will do something we really wish to do, and keep on running in this rat-race.

The only way out of this vicious circle is to keep a tab on our spending and start investing smarter.

The financial advisors divide the investment and age criterion into there class:

Below the age of 32: High risk , high returns : You are in your youth and have a whole life ahead of you to make money, so invest aggressively and reap higher benefit

Between 35 and 45: Medium risk : Invest, 40-60 % of your money into safe portfolios like, Government bonds, NSC, bank deposits, long term FD etc.

Above 45 : 80% safe investment


The different portfolios available:

1) Stock Market: --- High Risk
Small Caps - High risk, high return
Medium Cap:
Large Cap – Much safer, low yield

If you like the stock market, begin to notice trends. Look for stocks just staring out. Those in the 50-100 Rs range. Learn all you can about the company, the sector and its products. Use both your intellect and intuition. Ride them to the top.

2) Mutual Funds – Low Risk
SIP: Much Safer, low yield
Bulk buy - Decide when the time is right and what is the mutual fund’s area of growth (Blue chips, Real Estate, infrastructure)
ULIP - Along with investment, you save tax on your investment.

3) Real Estates – High Return, Low Risk
India is starting 43 new townships. Townships are like, Gurgoan, Greater Nodia etc. Each township holds great potential to expand, to provide new businesses and residential opportunities and act as growth enabler for India’s emerging story. Recently a new township in New Rohtak has come up, which is complete with infrastructure facilities and is ready for investment.

So keep reading about the real estate stories and pick something good and more reliable one.


Make yourself financially smarter, this is the way to happy living.

Reading : Rich Dad Poor Dad - Robert Kiyosaki

The Romantics

A few mintues back, I finished reading "The Romantics", Pankaj Mishra, his life around Benaras. Though there is no explicit though provoking by him, but it is a grim reminder of what life I am leading and what I wish to live.

Its been such a long time, when I had thought of visiting Benaras, of getting away from this complicated maze of competitve world, where we do not see ourselves as human being, individuals worthy of their own perspectives and views about life, but a mob, thinking alike, dreaming alike, of becoming more and more prosperous(richer) and in turn do what someone else had done to achieve these goals. We tend to forget that there was a time when we dreamt of things quite differently, when we wished to do things which gave us satisfaction. Our jobs, our career, our self engulfing life, the malls, the fancier things have sorrounded us, both externally and internally. We do not have time to reflect upon ourselves, to feel and touch ourselves, we have just become salesmen, selling ourselves to the higher bidder. We had started living our lives as adviced by the Advertisements. Getting bigger TV, bigger Car,bigger and fancier Refrigerator would give us happiness, would provide for a happy family, as guarantted by the ad-mens. And to achieve this happiness we keep working harder and harder, and keep remembering of the good old days, of satisfied and calm life, of happiness and warmth, but all this would vanish soon under the new thought of mundane pleasure and life would get back to the gyrating circle.

I had such a thought of visiting Benaras, had so many such thoughts for such a long time, but I just kept dreaming that one day I would accomplish them, but wanted financial security before I persue them, had family responsibilities etc and kept waiting and waiting. Now that I am a married man, it seems even more remote.But even when I had this strong desire, to break off all rules and get away from this place and search for some solitude, I had this fear which would grip me. The same fear which gripped Samar(the protagonist), when he saw Mark in Dharamsala. This fear that what I aimed, by breaking all rules, was wrong or stupid. What if it was just an act out of despair to get away from this monotonous cycle of life. This fear would be so strong, so intimidating that all my enthusiam would vanish.

But this novel has given me a new way of thinking about life I have been leading, of experiencing things which , though are so common but so full of their own mysteries.

I dont know when and how, but I have this conviction that one day I would be able to break the rules and live a life which I have been so passionate to lead, for so many years.

Life ... Your Choice

How should one live his life ?

One way,
Enjoy everyday as it comes, go out for party, stay chill, no heavy talks, not getting into serious thinking and just live happy daily.

Second way,
Think about life, think about people around you, try understanding them and also yourself from a third person's perspective, understand their emotions, be there without their explicit need to say so, do things to make them happy and get their pure love and happiness in return. Unwind yourself sometimes over the weekend to some disc etc, take some drink just to feel high and different. Help your friends and peer in all possible manner to the last possible extend. Think about the life which you are leading and where it is heading to. Think about the world around you and understanding the cause and effect of various characteristics displayed by people around you.

By lengthening the latter type, I do not wish to make a stronger statement about the 2ndtype, but just wanted to touch the various aspect which makes the second type. I am sure you would have well understood the different personalities I am talking about.

I belong to some extend to the second half and so was trying to understand, which one seems to be a better choice.

In today's world, where everyone is back biting everyone, where happiness can be bought with money, where success means bringing your peers down( by any means), where friends are meant for only going out for party or movies or shopping, where parents are more of a ATM and where children are more of a "display model" to their guests, where you go to a counselor when you have problems with your wife/husband, where you have a professional spiritual guru to deliver a lecture on the meaning of life, where shopping kills boredom, where boredom is all around, how do you live a life in this environment.

I am sure , most of you will say that KISS is the best policy. The first type of personality is the right one to choose, just chillax and make money and spend it and enjoy life.

I am an idiot, and probably thats why belong to second category. I feel that, we humans are a little different from animals because we are in better position to express our emotions and understand each other(through language etc) and should not keep this gift in a locker and live like animals wandering in the jungle,with not much affection for each other.

I feel very strongly about being sensitive about other people, their feelings and emotions. Because if you do not respect their feelings and emotions, you will find that in a matter of time, they will become emotionless and will loose their innocence, will loose their freshness of life, they will live just the same way all the time, be it happiness and joy because they will find no one around them. But at the same time, if they do not become equally sensitive to you, you will start behaving like them and then you both will end up being insensitive and emotionless. How different is this behavior from a mentally week person, who is made to live in an mental asylum. And who knows how many of them would have come to this stage because of the insensitivity of the environment in which they live.

I feel, if there is at least one good, a very genuine person in your life, with whom you can lay trust without any second thoughts, and who is there to help you, be with you, you will most likely never attempt to commit suicide, because that person will give you a ray of hope, a feeling that world is not all that bad. But he can do this only when he is sensitive to your feelings and emotions, when he devotes time and effort in understanding you, when he thinks, in isolation about the people around him and how they live and think.

Even in everyday life, would we like a person who is genuinely loving you, caring for you and your feeling or you want to just be someone for one night or dance be with other person for something else. I am sure we all would go for the former one, but former ones cannot be created with the Type 1 personality I have mentioned. You need deep thoughts and serious focus to be someone whom everyone wants but no one becomes in this present world.

I am not saying be Swami Vivekananda, or Buddha, be a normal human being but be a human and show humanity. Don't let the corrupt and commercial world around you make you another victim of its mass murder of human innocence, be a human, who has a heart which still feels ...

A Lucky Draw Of Happiness !!

Today I was talking to a friend of mine, who was telling about this friend of her's who has a very strong personality. For ease, lets call my friend as S and her friend as R.

So R was saying that when she is with R, she feels so great, R is so enthusiastic and excited about S , she gives so much attention to S that makes S feel so special. But when R is not with S, she will not even call once or she will make some plans of her's without informing S. Or she will cancel her plans with S, without even informing her.

So, I was trying to understand why R behaves this way, as she would be hurting S. But S says , since R makes her enjoy when she is with her, so she does not care about the other times when she ignore her other times.


This made me think, is S right in her thoughts or is she just becoming a victim.

I am not here to analyze S's thoughts, but just trying to understand the cause and effect of this kind or relationship.

What was special about Hitler? He was an excellent orator, had a charismatic personality.

Why are American so good in marketing, because they show such enthusiasm and attention to their customers that it makes their customers feel special.

This is what is the kind of personality R exhibit. She bring out her strong personality with the masses( say S and others)and she gives them so much attention when she is with them, that she leaves a long lasting impression in them, and successfully makes them her loyal friends(fans), who will be there for her at her beck and call , whenever she feels like, but at the same time, she doesn't have any emotional link with her friends(fans), but her friends feel as strong bond between themselves and her, because of the happiness which they feel when they are with her. So, here itself, there is a mismatch in the equation. One side is emotionally and strongly attached to the other person, and this person R has no emotional attachment with them.

Now, the next problem, or should I say, the reason why R exhibits this behavior. Now R makes a plan to go for shopping. Nobody likes to shop alone, so she will ask her friends(fans), to go shopping with her. Since they all feel so happy being with her, so she will most likely get quite a few no of them, to go with her. So, now all she has to do is to choose them best among the lot and go with her. So, she has solved her purpose of getting one company and thus is able to avoid what most of the people feels so sad about, i.e not finding any company to go out sometimes. So, she is all happy. Now, what happens to the other people whom she asked but didn't go with them. They will feel sad and lonely, and will try to kill time or will try to pick some of their other friends and see if anyone is available and as expected would not find many takes for her plan.

So, what I see here is that R is using people for her own satisfaction and people like S and the likes are her pawn which she always can keep in her pocket and use them at her own discretion. She is a practical woman who's only motive is to think about herself and damm the rest of the world, in a very smart manner.

Can you call people like R, your friends, with whom they can share anything anytime freely and expect a whole hearted reply from her. Or should they keep waiting for the days when R will chose them among the lot of her friends and take them out.

Do you want someone to dictate the happiness of your life or do you want to take command of it yourself and invest your emotions and energy into a friend who can reciprocate the same and doesn't make your happiness a chance of lucky draw among other friends of her?

PS: I have no qualms about R as she is just following the Darwin's theory of "survival of the fittest".

The counsellor

"Ordinary people can do extra-ordinary things, if they find the right guidance. "

This was a quote i read in one magazine today. Pondering over it ,I find it hold a whole world in this sentence. It means that people like you and me can do wonder to not just our life or our family's life, but to our neighborhood, our community , to our country and even to the whole of this world. We all have the most sophisticated and amazing equipment which we call brain, which , if, utilized even at 10-15% of its potential can make us a genius like Einstein or newton.

But how do we know what we can do. For most of us, the aim is to be the best or the better individual in the circle in which our life revolves which includes mostly our relatives, our friends, our teachers and our books. All of these are limited. Family, relatives and friend have their own scope based on the community in which we live. A person in a remote village in India will have a knowledge of the world which will be limited by the knowledge his peer or his elders have.So he/she would not be able to know the world outside his sphere of influence.

So, we live our lives based on what is around us, we do not (mostly) intrude the unknown territory. And that is where a guide or a counselor comes in. He/she tells you based on the wide experience he/she had in his life and use it to guide you through the labyrinth of this bewildered world. And that is the reason why "The Art of living", " Yoga" etc has suddenly come to limelight in India and many other parts of world. We all need guidance/advices , be it on finance, meaning of life, stress, marriage or career. We are so bogged down by everyday work, that we do not have any time to do introspection or retrospection . We are so busy with fighting against this competitive and cut throat world, in order to survive(Darwin's theory) that we find our jobs not a means to make a living but a means of life in itself greater than the social life. We find that there is nothing more important and beyond this money making cycle. "For everything else you have money", this is what our mindset has become, so we just want to accumulate wealth and achieve name and fame, even if it is at the cost of depriving our children/family of the love and affection. And so when we enter into any crisis situation because of this madness of getting there on the top, we are startled, we do not know how to cope with it, and then we rush to a counselor or a guide or a guru.

We need a guide to help us show the different opportunity and possibilities in life, which we not come across or think about because of our naivety in that field.

I have my guide and that is books and magazines. It stimulates my mind, it stimulates my thought , it provides me different perspectives of life or any specific topic, it provides me a much better clarity on a topic and helps me make smarter and better decisions in life. And the most important of all, it allows me to use my mind beyond the everyday triteness of life and understand myself better. Its a never-ending process where we should keep improving as we grow and become a better, more matured and refined human beings.

We all should have a guru, in any form, who can keep a check on us and guide us, when the turbulence is on our way or for improving our life on everyday basis.

Who is your counselor?

Hitler - Control Of Mind

I was watching a YT's video on Adolf Hitler and was amazed to see that whatever I read in the novel 1984 was actually quite real. When I read the book, I thought it was a fantasy mixed with a little bit of reality told in a severe form, but after watching this video, which was produced by some British Director, based on fact or factual evidences, I was amazed at the genius mind of Adolf Hitler.

He had done something, which humanity would condemn but as an individual, as a man with brain and intelligence , he was a true genius. He enticed the youths, the pillars of any country. He gave them everything. He gave the reason to fight, he gave the respect for their country, he gave them the best of the education, he gave them the power of an individual, he gave them food, shelter, clothing and entertainment and all he asked for them was just one thing, complete dedication to his country and more so to his Nazi party. With so much to gain, the youths were all in for this cause, they felt he was a very strong leader and can make their country a superpower.

And the youths were made to follow Nazis principle by heart, by mind and by soul. They were so dedicated to the party that even their family couldn't come in between. He started training them from as early as 2-3 yrs of age, by having a group of around 1 million girls (age 14-17) who would take care of the small children, while their parents were away on jobs. And these gals were the part of the dedicated youths who's heart and soul belonged to the party. So after 10 yrs, Hitler had a huge population of youths who would dedicate themselves to him , not for religious but for nationalistic reasons. They were youths, who would spy their own parents, siblings and would denounce them if they didn't confirm to the party's philosophy and would inform about them , to the Nazi army, which would , mostly put them in labor camp. Such was the control of Hitler on the mind of the youths, that even your own parents , their love, sacrifice and warmth couldn't override the devotion to the Nazi party, these youths had.

And all this was a game of mind. Hitler knew that mind can be altered to understand whatever he wanted to, if he can play with the five senses of the youths, which were the fuel of the mind. He played on the two most powerful senses , hearing and seeing. The youths would see what he wanted to show, i.e show them the bright future, show them that they have the power to do anything and with this power, they can make Germany the strongest country in the world(and indeed Germany became a very strong country in terms of both monetary as well as scientific achievements). They heard what he wanted them to hear, he had taken absolute control of all the private radio/tv . There were only public radio and tv, run by Nazi party. There were hardly any means of listening to the news outside Germany, apart from the one shown (rarely) on public tv/radio. So people made their opinion about things based on what they heard and they heard what Hitler wanted them to hear, so their opinions were basically the whims and fancies of Hitler.

He was inhuman, brutal and a cynic. But he was a genius who knew the power of mind very well.

Philosophy -- A juggernaut of words ?

Recently, I was reading the book, "Philosophy- Who needs it ", by Ayn Rand.
This was my first formal literature on Philosophy. Previosuly , the philosophical aspects were analysed in form of non-fiction or fiction books.

Till now, I had never heard of the fight between different philosophy. Infact I never though that there are different philosophical thoughts in this world. I always thought that all the different philosophies are the mutually exclusive subsets of the whole equation of Philosophy.

It was in this book that I read that there are differen philosophers and most of them have a radically different philosophy of life, which is in contrast to the previous philosophical theory.

The philosophy has three main characters and lot of other supporting actors. The oldest one in this script is Aristotle, who is , supposedly, the first known philosopher who's written accounts are very well documented in the books.
His philosophy was based purely on reasoning. Reasoning the very basic aspects of life and understand, reasoning why good is good and why bad is bad and find a logical answer to that.
Aristotle -- 323BC,Greece.

The second lead role is done by Immanuel Kant, who is known as the father of modern Philosophy.
There was a confusion in the mind of people of this era, as to where does God exists, how was this world started, what is faith and how can faith co-exists with logic.
Kant wanted to provide answer to these question and that is what his philosophy was based on. In his , masterpeice work, "The Critique of Pure Reasoning", he tries to solve the old problem of relation of knowledge and faith.He was convinced that by properly fixing the limits of each he can suceed in furnishing a basis for honorable and enduring peace between them. He gives to knowledge , what belongs to it, the entire world of phenomena and conserves on the other hand, to faith , its eternal right to the interpretation of life and of the world from the standpoint of value.
Kant, 1724-1804, Russia


The third and the final lead actor in this act is Ayn Rand , who, also the author of the book, is a strong believer of the philosophy of Aristotle, i.e philosophy by reasoning, by logic and calls her philosophy, Objectivism. She doesnt believe in philosophy of Kant, infact she believes that Kant has been the worst person in the history of this world, by killing within the people, the power to think, for faith doesnt need logic, it just needs belief, a hope. She believes that Kant has tried to bring about a sad demise of capitalism and tried to propagate Socialism which is a most bizzare way of leading a country ahead. She is a stout believer of capitalism and doesnt believe in charity, helping poor, morality, guilt. She believes that a human being should be selfish, should be egoistic and should have dignity. She believes that we should not hold to hope so tightly that we have nothing left in our hand that the empty hope. And this is the philosophy she has put forward strongly in her two masterpeices -- Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead.
She has divided the world in two parts, metaphysical, i.e nature, which is as it is, and it is accepted without any fight over its existence and the other part is human, which is what can be changed and understood based on the metaphysical aspect of the nature.
Ayn Rand-1905 -1982,Russia
I have just red The Fountainhead, and was impressed one aspect of her philosophy, the ego. I truely believe that every human being should possess some ego, a feeling of pride, for it retains your dignity, it retains some passion in you. If you let your ego die, you basically become a flame without fire. You dont have anything to prove, you kill your dignity. You become a puppet in the hands of other You enslave yourself to other's feeling. Your self is lost and you are a soul without desires. So, in order to keep your flame alive , to keep your desires awake and your dignity intact, I believe, as the Author Ayn Rand says, you should possess some Ego in yourself.

I still have lots of doubts like, should we encourage charity or should we support people who can support themselves, should we believe in the existence of God or should just the logic and reasoning play the complete part in our conscience and sub-conscience mind. But the asnwers to these questions cannot be found in a day or an year, it need generations of time and may still be left unanswered.


-ATG

Procrastination -- A Deadly Friend !!

There are times when you make a resolution, a decision which you feel , can change your life, which can make you reach closer to your dream, to your goal. You get all pumped up, completely energetic, passionate towards this goal. It seems to you like a "eureka" for your dreams.

Then few days down the line, you have the passion burning but the flame is kept low, you think about your resolution,about the future after your resolution and the happy days ahead. And this is where it all starts dying, it all starts becoming a dream , it all starts becoming just another resolution made in thin air. This is when the self-doubt start emerging, low esteem comes into play and the life becomes just as it was few days before , without that resolution in mind, but with the addition of a restlessness and irritation in your nature. Irritation about your callousness, about your attitude or procrastination about your lethargic nature.

Procrastination,doesn't just kills your desire to achieve a goal, to reach towards your dream, it kills your life, silently. As it is said, a known enemy is better than an unknown friend. So is the case here. This procrastination is your unknown friend and the regular job is your known enemy, but because of this unknown friend, you start loosing out on your known friend. And not just that, your whole life comes to a standstill. You just keep postponing your resolution and let your life pass by. You do not touch anything else, any other resolution because you feel this resolution has to be finished and it is a very important one, for your life. Weeks and months pass by, you still stand there, now you have even stopped thinking about your resolution consciencely , only sub-consciencely and just ignore these sub-conscience thoughts in order to prevent yourself from feeling guilty.

After long long time, once again, when this monotonous life starts getting heavy on you, it makes you think again and then the old long lost resolution, ambition comes to your conscience and you again pack yourself up with full energy and feel that now nothing in this world can stop you from achieving it.

Only time will tell if the history repeats itself.

Love Is All You Need ?

“All you need is love,
All you need is love,
Love is all you need …”

I was listening to this song the whole day and it just stuck me, what do I need ?

So below is what I felt :




I had had long thoughts about love marriage and I always wished to have one. But a question came to my mind. I want love marriage or just love. Is marriage being done for the social norm and all I wish is love. But then the practical self comes into focus and says that you cannot live just being in love, it has to lead to something, and that something is in majority of cases, marriage, or sometimes, live-ins. But then is marriage able to sustain love, because marriage is not love, its an arrangement, a compromise, an understanding for each other’s need. So, can marriage hamper love, or does it enhance it. I could not really give an answer to it, but most likely, most of us would say that it enhances love, as it gives a chance to let people be more closely and intimately bound and would allow them to understand the other person in many different situations, but on the other hand, it can kill the feeling of love, by bringing in the everyday trifles and diminishing the importance of each other to nothing more than another person, and the life becomes as usual, it maybe for other arranged marriage couples.

Another thought about love was, what we feel for other person, is it love, lust, infatuation or just the loss of companionship. If we meet someone everyday and talk with each other everything under sun and are comfortable with their nature, and if that person departs, we feel a loss and a very strong feeling of loosing something. Now, does this indicate the feeling of love or just the companionship? In fact I don’t even know the definition of love, but just trying to contemplate the different feelings which we have for the other person and which one resembles closely to love. Love at first sight as they say, is mostly lust at first sight, but there are instances when you see the other person and your body immediately behaves in a very weird manner. It starts to secrete hormones which give you a feel that you are in love, with that person. Now, this is just a lust or infatuation I do not know, but we experience these feeling very often in our life.


I have tried to find which the closest feeling to the feeling of love is and have felt that the feeling of companionship is the closest one. If you miss someone’s company, if you miss someone’s talk, someone’s touch (not the intimate one), I guess you love that person, or at least you are quite close to loving that person.

To me, love is not about having a girl friend and boasting about her, to my friends. Its not about calling her in the middle of the night and saying “I Love you”, or gifting her a huge bouquet of flowers on valentine day or trying to find in desperate attempts to find some gift for her on her birthday. To me love or companionship is quite simple, no frills arrangement, where I don’t need to emphasize that I love her, I don’t need to buy bouquet for her, just because its V-day or trying to find a present for her. If I feel like gifting something, I would do it on the day I get this feeling. To me, she will understand me and so will I. To me, looking into her eyes, holding her hand, walking on the beach, sipping a cup of tea in the lawn, is the kind of experience which will give me a more satisfactory feeling than some crazy shopping and buy a diamond necklace for her. To me, we should be friends, and friends with good amount of understanding. I am not in for some crazy energy relationship; I would appreciate a more settled and maybe mature relationship.

A friend of mine asked me causally, why do we say that somebody has “fallen” in love? Should we not rise in Love. Should we not be more mature and feeling better about ourselves now? I don’t know how this sentence became popular, but I guess what it meant is that one has to fall in the heart of other person, look deep down in that person to feel that person and maybe its what is called “falling”.

Sometimes, I feel that I love to be in love. Just the feeling of love is so lovely that I love it. Here, I do not need any other person; I just need solace and think about how it feels to be in love, to hold someone’s hand, to walk with someone, to look into somebody’s eyes and the feeling which I derive out of it, gives me so much pleasure and satisfaction. So, maybe I am in love with love.


I sometimes feel, why is that I never fell in love, or at least didn’t dive deep in love. I had infatuations, crushes but nothing like a feeling of love, a feeling when your other senses start behaving in a different fashion. When you smile, all alone with any reason, where you are hungry but do not really feel the hunger, where people talk to you, around you, but you do not feel their talks. You are in some other world, a world where only you and the person you are in love, exist. This feeling may sound childish or stupid but I guess this is the feeling when you fall in love, but this feeling is quite different from the feeling of a companionship, so I guess the feeling of love is the initial feeling towards other person. It might be even a funny feeling, but this feeling itself cannot sustain the relationship, because the feeling of love has high energy and as is the law, anything which is has high energy has to come back to the normal level, by releasing energy, either by exploding or by reducing the levels slowly, giving way to the maturity of the relationship. So, we can be in a feeling closer to love, by either being in love, with the high energy levels or we can seek a companion where the level of maturity is there. The first one is crazy, exciting but has less success rate, the second one is simple, no frills, but has a very high success rate.

I personally feel I would like to go in for the relationship of the companion, less exciting and more mature, but sometimes, my hormones drive me crazy when I see a beautiful lass and it makes me feel, I wish I was in love with that gal. I guess the mixture of lust, love and infatuation plays a great role when you feel something for the other person. I am confused and would have to think deeper to understand what I really want. Meanwhile, I will just take a walk in my apartment, feeling not love, but the fresh air.

Long Lost Bharat

Today while casually browsing through wikipedia, I came across article on Aryabhata. The only thing I recollect when I think about him is that he was a great mathematician. But I never cared to find, what he were his achievements. Today, when I read about him, I was stunned to find what all he had achieved centuries back in 400AD. The few achievements of Aryabhata:

1) Value of Pi to 4 decimal places and that is it an irrational number.
2) Finding the area of a triangle, values of sin, cos etc
3) The reason why eclipse happen.
4) The movement of the stars as a relative motion caused by the rotation of the earth.
5) Circumference of earth, which is only 0.2% smaller than the actual value
6) The duration of the day, this is only 0.01 sec more than the actual value.
7) The duration of the year, this is only 3 mintues 20 second longer than the actual value.
8) Earth is rotating around its own axis.
9)Aryabhata algorithm to solve first degree Diophantine equations.

These are few of the key achievements of this genius.

I am sure, rarely would anyone know most of these, barring one or two.

I feel so ashamed that we do not know of a person, a genius who was born in India and we are trying to grasp concepts so many foreign scientists. Is there no self pride, is there no value for the achievement of our own people. Are we shy in acknowledging the amazing insight we Indians had, long before the western developed such theories.

And I think of Vedas and I am blank again. We tend to think that Vedas are just religious sculptures, but we are wrong, they have covered all the different walks of life. Social, Economic, Education, Spiritual etc. They are a storehouse of immense knowledge, but we were never exposed to them. We just get some reference in some religious book etc.

India had been so advanced in terms of the knowledge and understanding of the whole universe, and that was because of the adhyatam, the perseverance to seek the truth and the knowledge and the meditation, which helped the great gurus to seek abundance of knowledge and wisdom. Unfortunately, most of us have never been exposed to this side of the Hinduism and were always shown a too religious face of it. Hinduism is not just about God, it is about understanding the deeper self, its about self realization, its about getting more knowledge and wisdom.

I really wish to learn more about Vedas and the ancient India, which is almost forgotten by us, barring a few historians etc.

What do you feel about this? Should us not rejuvenate our old texts and try to understand what they meant. We still have not understood everything which is being stated in Vedas and Purans, and that is why there are different versions of the same, published by different people.