What is Happiness???

I don't indulge in philosophical subjects as I think myself too young to do that, but then when I see myself age wise ;) I am not young as I used to be. It’s true for everyone. As "They Say, Age is just a number so.....”

One more reason could be the reactions I get from my friends. Since at least I started to write this blog in 2008. It’s not that I haven't had dare to write with these kind of subject. The one subject which I am quite confused about in the past is 'what is happiness?', I am sure everyone is.  One more reason is as it touches us in every way of life and we always aspire to be happy...here is my small effort to analyze it...:).

For me happiness is just a frame of mind, of frames of mind or can we really define it. In this complex world it really difficult to define anything, let alone the happiness. The things we strive to achieve where we think that they will give us happiness eventually don’t come out to be true so what is that make us happy.

For me Peace of mind is the happiness, I am not saying this as I have written this blog by chance but it is true. If you can stop for a second and you can see yourself. It’s quite confusing, but not very difficult to understand with such huge brain of ours..:)

I have always learned that humans are social animal that means he likes to leave in a group, so the places where a human being can find company of the others like family, friends and colleagues etc, he feel happy.

But eventually in this hectic world, we forgot that we are humans and start looking for the happiness in different things, even though it’s in its basic nature that to be with others. That’s..it, it would be the easiest way to be happy...:)

I have read somewhere that "Happiness lays neither in vice nor in virtue; but in the manner we appreciate the one and the other."  To make above statement true, we need to have clear conscience, it altogether a different subject on how one can have clear conscience but one can look at a child whose conscience is always clear and it is always happy for small things... :)

I wanted to write more about it, but it’s an unending topic and would take lot of time, may be one more for the future. Lastly I will one thing, happiness means different to every individual hence it is very subjective. So just be happy for this festival of light and enjoy my future blogs…ha ha ha..


Wish you all a very happy and prosperous Diwali!!!!!!!

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Soaking rumours is Injurious to Health - Soak No More

We are country of misled people where anything can be spread like fire in a forest. Everything from the history to economics, every correct information is manipulated to the personal gains. The blind faith of the normal citizens has been used for gain, may it religious, political or personal. It’s always been the case throughout the human history, where they were misinformed and thus manipulate them.

It’s not that I am a conspiracy persona and don’t believe in everything but I like to cross check the information which I receive before storing that into my stubborn head for future use like, writing a blog..(ha ha). But jokes apart, I always blame it to our culture, which is admired by the world, but surely has its demerits. We are not been taught to cross check and always go to our culture. In our culture we are taught to listen to our elders or so called "Wise men". They can be anyone from political leaders to someone who is friend.

I have seen many a times where people are discussing on the topics which they remotely have any idea about. It’s not that if you don't know about any topic, you should not talk about it. But the fact is we tend to spread the misinformation unknowingly. What I want to point out is, we are a country of uneducated people plus we believe in others quite easily, this is a deadly cocktail for unrest or chaos.

I would not like to touch the history as it is full of Conspiracies and misinformation but still wants to believe in those stories. I would not rather touch it this time, may be something in the future. There are conspiracy stories which I do want to remind you.

The one which first comes to mind is of 'BLACK HOLE, END OF THE WORLD' stories, where news channels played that earth sucking video again and again. I repeatedly got the calls from home town where people were really frightened. They wanted to know about the truth about it, but even then, we have this notion of end of the world in our mythologies and we tend to believe it.

Another one I remember is about the Swine flu. At that time I was in Pune, the place where all the action began. Everyone was afraid of a simple sneeze and think of every other person has it. That time also media did not help, in fact helped to fill people with fear, many left Pune because of that. These news channels only tried to sensationalize the news of number of dead people like it’s a counter and nothing can be done. I thought instead of increasing there TRP’s, they could have focused on the issue at hand i.e. Swine Flu.

And the last but not the least is ‘Ganpanti Idol drinking Milk'. It was way back 15 years, when the news spread that Ganesha idol has started to drink milk, even I also ran too see what exactly happened. The Ganesha Idol was really drinking the milk or it looked like. It was our blind faith in the god and to prove that it exists, we were drinking the misinformation.

Latest one is about the rumours about the attacks against the North East (NE) people. I mean, what’s wrong with us, why can't we stop to spread this. Now the blame is on ‘Pakistan’ but my question to government is why it took so many days to find out. Actually our government has been in this mode, don't know for how many years? Every time they don't find any answer, they blame Pakistan. Can't we do anything to stop it? Does it really take 10-15 days and thousands of North-East people to flee the cities?

My question to them would be, what are they doing about it? They need to stop spreading the misinformation and need to resolve this problem as soon as possible. This has to stop somewhere; we need to start using the logic about these things. I also know that in this age of technology, it is going to be more difficult to stop this. Probably because of that we need to stop for a minute to gauge the every data coming towards us.

For me the misinformation is just the escape route to all the problems. The day we start questioning to the things, why they happen? How they happen? Our mind will see everything quite clear and things won’t happen the way they are happening currently.

It was one chapter from my Marathi book about 'Mahatma Jotirao Phule' which changed my perspective about seeing things in practical way. Try yourself, judge by your logic while considering the today's issues and problems. In my view Mahatma Phule was way ahead of his time, because his thinking is still applicable and will always be applicable for future as well. If we follow his way of thinking of gauging the information we won’t spread it in the first place. At least we won’t be laughing stock in the world where people still feeding milk to idols.. Guys come on. 

Rumors are spread by the people who want to believe in it. 'Soak No More'..

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Dhongi Baba pvt. ltd.

India is a land of spirituality, atleast it was when I heard last time. Spirituality is embedded in us by our parent and elders. Our religion also helps us in that regard, the religion means not only Hindu but also other faiths. We are tought to be respecting elders and our spiritual gurus but this has led to marketisation of spirituality.  

Its an curious question as "Why people run behind these baba's?". One reason I see is in our religion where the path of redemption is carved using help of a Guru. This guru helps us to get the moksha, the one thing which we all Indians(includes all religion) look to find. This is very important concept in life of once.

The guru-shishya tradition is the transmission of teachings from a guru (teacher, गुरू) to a 'śiṣya' (disciple, िशष्य). In this relationship, subtle and advanced knowledge is conveyed and received through the student's respect, commitment, devotion and obedience. The student eventually masters the knowledge that the guru embodies.

Now one will argue that whats the problem with this tradition. To be frank I absolutely no problem with this tradition but if someone is using it is for personal gain then it is not acceptable. Not from the people who are in troubled and tired of there hardships.

One more important thing, as long as I know gods reincarnated (Hindu belief) to be human to teach his or her values but these people declaring themselves as god is act of insanity. If someone is saying that he is god then it is the height of foolishness. These are quite strong words but the act of following them blindly is so childish that these words also pale in front of these acts.

After arguing so much the question arises, Do I believe in gurus? Answer to it is' YES'. For me there are two main gurus, the first guru is our parent and second are our teacher. In my previous blog on Ganeshotsav where even lord Ganesha has shown the importance of our parents. In everyday life, we meet people from them we learn lot of things they are also our guru's in that sense. But if you want to call real guru's then there are only parents and teachers(in my view).

Coincidentally the 'Gurupaurnima' happened few days back. My batch-mates had some gift planned for school where we enjoyed our childhood and also learned few things(:D). In reality we cannot payback what teachers has given us but that was the least we can do. What we can do is remember the teachings of our gurus and implement that in our real life to do some good for others.

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1949 Ambedkar cartoon controversy..not the last one

Babasaheb Ambedkar is one of the most fascinating figures in Indian politics. In layman's terms, if Gandhi is the father of the nation, Ambedkar is father of the Indian Constitution. Both have a legendary status which inspires extreme views. Any critique of them is seen as grave misconduct and evokes furor in the society. Similarly, a 1949 cartoon of Ambedkar and the Constitution in a NCERT textbook has prompted a protest in Parliament and an immediate withdrawal of the cartoon.

Two advisers to the NCERT resigned arguing that the cartoon as a text was not read within the entirety of the context. Two immaculate professionals were abandoned by the education minister in another knee-jerk display of populist politics. The event needs to be analyzed in detail.

First, as records go, neither Ambedkar nor Nehru had any objection to the cartoon. Why would they? They both were educated people and knew the idea about cartoon. They knew that they were politician and this caricature or representation the current situation was a normal thing.

The first objection to the cartoon is based on the assumption that what was good for 1949 may not be suitable for 2012. The argument is as follows. The Constitutional assembly as a ritual process is over. It is now a contract, even a sacrament. Second, Ambedkar is now an iconic figure and to treat an icon to the irreverence of a cartoon is to insult him.

He himself might have felt anger by the scenes of unconstitutional behavior of the people of a particular party who boasts to represent Ambedkar ideology. This is not what he had written or studied for so many years. The Bharat Ratna was always promoter of non violence so the current behavior is not acceptable or need to stop.

We all are proud of the constitution which we have and the man behind it. He was rightly awarded bharat ratna, but in a liberal society cartoon plays a critical role and should not be made such a life and death issue. We have seen what a cartoon row can do when the cartoon of Mohammad came to seen. At that time the issue was related to faith and which needs to be respected.

I am not arguing we can disrespect the people who has iconic status in India, but there is always right way to protest and vandalism is surely not one of them. This mentality of hooliganism is spreading and these political parties who has nothing to do with the upliftment of the dalit's making this as a political fodder.

I know this wont be the last cartoon controversy as we are becoming more and more intolerant society day by day. The extreme behaviors are on the prowl and going to make these matter worse. This blog is not about the cartoon in the books but the cartoons sitting in the parliment and in the society who are disturbing the peace.

There is no need to tell that the constitution has been the one thing which we cherish the most post independence but these cartoon (in the society) are destroying it which is the reason for concern.

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Child labour - A curse for society

Its not an unusual site to see children working in everyday places like small shops, tea stall or at the traffic signals. We even not bothered about to even notice or we never find it little odd that a child is working "as long as it is not our child". These children do all kind of stuff which are very hazardous to even grown men but we tend to overlook.

Till now the questions remains same! What is the fault of these children? They just got born into the poor families so they don't have right to learn and do something better in there life. Children are made for learning and playing for most of there child life. This is what most of my readers must have done and we surely do cherish that time. That is the best of time of our lives but these unfortunate children loose on this. Not just because they are working or forced to work there but because of our negligence of the society toward them.

If one has to know about the laws related to the child labor then surely can visit Child Labor site of the government. As we have laws for every issue and then again laws to implement these laws and again laws for laws. This is been the problem of India, we have laws but they are not properly implemented.

We have been tought in the schools and by parents so do something which we see wrong but over time as we get "MATURE" , we start to forget those teachings. I don't  think these laws are saying something new which our parents hasn't told us. We even taught to pardon the animals, show mercy to them but I get appalled when I see people letting this happen. It is surely against the law and against our culture.

Yesterday I heard about India getting rich and increased prosperity but I would like to one question. "Are we happy to be rich in a country which is build on the labor of children? Are we happy with getting services and goods made cheap by forced child labor?". I am sure that every sane person will answer with "NO" but just saying "NO" wont help this cause, but we need to act on it constructively.

Our children who should be the safest suffer from maximum risks at both inside the house and outside. But I want to ask why should a child suffer because of his parents’ fault? We have been taught by our parents and teachers to have a heart for poor and underprivileged but that's the exact point we tend to ignore. For me ignoring something like child labor is as good as encouraging it so we have to something about it otherwise we would be part of the society which is insensitive which nobody like to see.

Its not that we have to report the problem to the police or NGO but simply letting that person that what he or she is doing is not correct and against the law will surely surely help in long run. Our forefathers who fought against the slavery of the British, would have liked to see India without any type of slavery. This is not what they gave there life for so try to stop child labor and try to make some difference in these children lives.

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