How to start a day?

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I was reading Amandeep Kaur, a life coach, in a daily and feel like recording an extract of her writeup that inspired me much. If one feels concerned with his/ her health and wellness, the advice so contained in the extract is worth following and the readers of this blog can take full advantage of it as a matter of awareness and a meaningful pointer in day today life of every one. The extract under reference is reproduced below:

“How we start our day sets the tone for the entire day. When we begin our day with a grateful heart, contemplating the greatness within and around us, its fragrance spreads throughout the day. Taking out some time for ourself, in the first hour, is time well invested. It could be just a few minutes of quiet time, focussing our mind in meditation or being one with nature looking at lush green trees, the blue sky, chirping birds and breathing all in.”

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Those who can’t help themselves?

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Those who can’t help themselves are the ones whom none else can help for the simple reason that they don’t deserve it. There are instances when you come across the persons whom you want to help but they are not at all receptive it. Initiative on the part of the givers is meaningless if the takers lack it miserably. Why it happens like this? What an individual has to have is a sort of an inbuilt allotment to him by Nature or say destiny in a remote sense and his thought process works accordingly. Strike when the iron is hot is the saying but there could be a person just striking the iron without applying his mind that for the requisite outcome this has to be hot in which case there is nothing to blame the iron but the concerned man himself for not appropriately applying his common sense. A confused mind normally doesn’t land any where; if he allows his confusion to have a precedence over a conscious approach it is he himself to be blamed and not the other exterior channels. If one is conscious enough to pursue his goal with the required amount of conviction, he is sure to succeed as against those who just lack necessary initiative in the matter.

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Maha Shivratri in India:

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It’s Maha Shivratri in India today. The festival is observed not only in India but also in different countries of the world by the devotees of Lord Shiva, the God of Gods according to Indian mythology. The day is also observed remembering Shravan Kumar, a great son who took his parents in a kanwar (a duet sort of a weighbridge) on his shoulders to pilgrimage to fulfil their desire as such as they were too old and weak to walk the distance. It was too tortuous a task for him to carry them like this from one pilgrimage centre to another but he did make it as faithfully committed a son. These devotees of Lord Shiva symbolically repeat the exercise by using ornamentally decorated palkies known as kanwars and those who do so are known as kanwarias travelling long distances from place to place. Like every culture has some ill or the other associated to it, this practice has it in abundance and the kanwarias are seen more as a nuisance than the faithful devotees. They disrupt the traffic at times resorting to manhandling with the other passersby. Several of them are virtually scoundrels behaving as goons. They behave nasty at the first available opportunity. Most of them are not really faithful to their parents, they instead take the ritual as picnic and a pleasure trip. Reports are that they even ill treat their parents at home as against telling the whole world as if they are most faithful and obedient to them in all respects. How very nice it would have been if they  treated their parents really faithfully as their son(s) instead of ill treating them. Maha Shivratri, let us wish, bestows upon them the bliss of love in the real sense instead of playing a mockery of it.**

** This post is dedicated to Shri DN Sharma, a close relation of mine, who inspired me to write it.        This one is the first dedication on this blog.

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Food habits–Is rice really harmful to health?

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There are many a myths in medical area on food intake and so is in relation to use of rice in meals. True, it increases fat and weight but that happens when the intake is too heavy. The digestive system demands that the intake of any kind of food has to be tasty and rice has it in abundance. Tasty food is helpful to health. The need is actually to avoid starch. The ideal way of cooking rice is in the ratio of 1*6 i.e. one cup of rice to be boiled in 6 cups of water without mixing it with any kind of oil or butter. This should be just plain and pulpy without allowing it to get much dried up. The Aayurvedic discipline of medical therapy prescribes that it is better to take rice in meals during day hours avoiding its intake during late hours in the evening or night. Once admitted to Jaslok Hospital in Mumbai for an operation the dietician invariably added rice  to the menu prepared for me. I told her that I was diabetic to which she replied saying that some intake of rice is necessary for health even in the cases of diabetes as the very body needs it because of the rich properties it has. In any case the advice is not meant for those in the habit of taking over heavy meals and is practiceable by the moderates.

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The way you treat yourself matters:

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It  matters much as to how you treat yourself for the simple reason that your normal expectations are that others should behave well with you. Many of those practicing ART OF LIVING themselves do not follow this. Charity begins at home and those who impart preachings themselves adopt the adage they will surely leave a practical message to others to fall in line. Otherwise too, it is a normal common sense that what you sow you reap. Why not take care while sowing to ensure that it elicits the desired fruits when the efforts materialise. Let it not be just a matter of culture, more importantly it is the truth of life. Life is after all what one makes it.

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Thoughts galore:

An unending sort of thoughts continue hovering in our mind but the  moment one decides to give them, or any one of them, a tangible shape, it becomes an arduous task. This difficulty is in its worst form in the case of writers, bloggers, and the poets, and it assumes even a bigger proportion in the case of freelancer journalists. They are the ones supposed to be conversant on all the topics and subjects in the world and, as it is most often said, they are equally supposed to be unique in their writings. They have to write on market, marketing, finance, environment, culture, politics, world affairs in general and what not. To bring the most unbridled chain of thoughts to some solid fold is a job onerous and too difficult to take up, but a journalist has to manage it as it is the question of his entity and existence as such. The better way is to settle down at a specific point with concentration instead of keeping wavering between one thought and the other.

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Time constraint–a real problem or just an apology of it?

People are busy, rather very busy, unable to spare any time for several other matters of equally an important nature. True it is, particularly in to-day’s atmosphere of run and chase for every thing round the clock. Once Gerald Ford, one of the American Presidents, was asked a question by the media as to what sort of any problem he felt after joining office as such, he replied telling that his biggest problem was that he was unable to spare time to timely join his family at dinner. This might have been a very natural problem for a gigantic personality like an American President. There are instances too in contrast to this. A friend of mine, Dr. Sainani of Mumbai, who was also a top rank consultant to the then President of India, told me that even if heavens fall or the doom occurs, “I am the last man to miss my dinner with my wife sharp at 8pm”. These are of course exceptions, but by and large people use busyness as a tool for an excuse. This is in fact a clash in priorities. How much importance you attach to an issue is the matter. If you are not interested to do a particular job, you pretend to be busy, or if you take the task assigned to you seriously, you are the one to extend necessary priority to it and then you are at it instantly. In majority of cases, being otherwise ‘busy’ is an excuse and an apology to cover up your lack lustre and a limping interest in the job concerned. Attending to a task is a matter of will, and if you are interested in it you can very well manage your time for it; if not, you don’t have any time at all at your disposal. This is what I am fully eligible to say having meticulously followed a schedule of working 20 hours plus a day for several decades.

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Handling events:

Events are a task, events are a challenge and events, when they are more grotesque, are tortuous too. Every one has his own way of handling them in a manner that suits him, in a manner that he can afford. Henry Ford said “…when I can’t handle events, I let them handle themselves”. This matches with what M.F. Hussain said “….destiny takes care of every thing.” This sounds like seeking an escape, and contradicts the conviction that all events are a challenge in themselves and they should be attended as such with all courage and faith at one’s command. This is also contrary to the view Swami Vivekanand held “…stop not till the goal is achieved”. This is in fact a matter of will and determination the people concerned have at their command. “If there is a will, there is a way” is the saying, and all the events are supposed to be taken up in that context only. One who lacks will lands no where, he rather gets doomed on account of such a weakness on his part. The starting point for event management doesn’t  lie in taking it as an academic factor, its basic source is one’s own mental built up. Those with strong determination for a cause or mission are sure to succeed overcoming all implied  hurdles some day or the other, but if some one lacks necessary confidence in himself or herself, he/ she is a flop at the outset itself. If events are a challenge, a strong will for the purpose is the key answer to this.

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What does punctuality mean?

Why should a person be punctual to his/ her timings and schedules is the question. Punctuality is a discipline in itself and every one is supposed to adhere to his routine schedules in a meticulous order. Those who are not punctual are not serious about their work, be it to attend a meeting or some other assignment. Charles Lamb used to say that punctuality is meant for the persons who don’t bother about their comforts. The office, where he was working, had timings from 10am to 5pm. Once he was asked by his boss that how come you always come late to attend to your duties and are never punctual. Charles Lamb  replied assertively telling that no doubt he was a late comer to office but this he was doing regularly in a punctual manner adding that he was very punctual in leaving office exactly at 5pm. This was of course a twisted version of punctuality. Punctuality is a discipline, and equally an ethics, which every one has to follow for a methodical way of life particularly in the case of the people who care for their career.

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Element of faith–an essential ingredient for peace:

A cry for peace is common for all every where. Who wants to live with an uneasy mind? No body. And with an uneasy mind, none can pursue his/ her goal with any success. The experts suggest many a ways to procure success like hard work, consistency, necessary zeal and fervour for the purpose, and larger amount of hours devoted to the task. Nothing is possible if one’s mind is not in a proper mode of an ease that inculcates the process of work with a purpose. Peace, after all, is nothing like a commodity to be purchased from some market; the orientation of which lies in within an individual himself/ herself, and it is cent per cent self made. There again, one should have the required amount of a compatible environment. For such an environment, what is required most is ‘faith’. Faith in any thing, a god or goddess, a man, a woman, an animal, sex or even some dead stock or yet even a monster. Such an element of faith has to be unconditional and without any ifs or buts. Once one is able to cultivate it within himself/ herself, this is the end of agonising worries and it is capable of generating peace into the minds of the people concerned; and that becomes the starting point of peace. Once such a peace is attained, there is nothing like any thing impossible in the world.

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When one feels highly perturbed?

There are situations when a person feels disturbed mentally finding it difficult to get out of it. Those, who believe in God, rush to some temple bowing down before the statue of the Deity and beseech in front of Him to seek His blessings. His inner self feels consoled to a greater extent. Those who don’t believe in an element like God, like me who lacks such an amount of faith in a Godly factor, things are too difficult for them, as they have no source available to them to recline upon and shed their tears  flooding out of their mental agony to elicit some solace. In fact the consolation and some peace the devotees to God are able to draw is nothing that comes out to them from outside or as the blessings of the Almighty; it factually springs up from within themselves, the source being their own faith. Their faith, true or false, helps them. Likewise, the non devotees to God too can depend upon their own concepts and belief within themselves, the way Vivekanand did with his concept calling it ‘…I am myself God’. It is self searching, which, if done appropriately, brings tremendous results. Another simple method is to realise that the problems one is facing are not confined to himself; there are many who could be having more of them in a bigger measure. If they can struggle and survive, why not the other individuals, with lesser amount of agony, can do it.

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