Three Stories

Today I got a forward mail containing three wonderful stories. I am posting them here as I don't want to lose them :)

The Turtles

A turtle family decided to go on a picnic. The turtles, being naturally slow about things, took seven years to prepare for their outing. Finally the turtle family left home looking for a suitable place. During the second year of their journey they found a place ideal for them at last!For about six months they cleaned the area, unpacked the picnic basket, and completed the arrangements. Then they discovered they had forgotten the salt. A picnic without salt would be a disaster, they all agreed. After a lengthy discussion, the youngest turtle was chosen to retrieve the salt from home. Although he was the fastest of the slow moving turtles, the little turtle whined, cried, and wobbled in his shell. He agreed to go on one condition: that no one would eat until he returned. The family consented and the little turtle left.Three years passed and the little turtle had not returned. Five years...six years... then on the seventh year of his absence, the oldest turtle could no longer contain his hunger. He announced that he was going to eat and begun to unwrap a sandwich.At that point the little turtle suddenly popped out from behind a tree shouting, 'See! I knew you wouldn't wait. Now I am not going to go get the salt.'

[Some of us waste our time waiting for people to live up to our expectations. We are so concerned about what others are doing that we don't do anything ourselves

The Frogs

A farmer came into town and asked the owner of a restaurant if he could use a million frog legs. The restaurant owner was shocked and asked the man where he could get so many frog legs! The farmer replied, 'There is a pond near my house that is full of frogs - millions of them. They all croak all night long and they are about to make me crazy!' So the restaurant owner and the farmer made an agreement that the farmer would deliver frogs to the restaurant, five hundred at a time for the next several weeks.The first week, the farmer returned to the restaurant looking rather sheepish, with two scrawny little frogs. The restaurant owner said, 'Well... where are all the frogs?' The farmer said, 'I was mistaken. There were only these two frogs in the pond. But they sure were making a lot of noise!'

[ Next time you hear somebody criticizing or making fun of you, remember, it's probably just a couple of noisy frogs. Also remember that problems always seem bigger in the dark. Have you ever laid in your bed at night worrying about things which seem almost overwhelming like a million frogs croaking? Chances are pretty good that when the morning comes, and you take a closer look, you'll wonder what all the fuss was about.]

The Pretty Lady

Once upon a time a big monk and a little monk were traveling together. They came to the bank of a river and found the bridge was damaged. They had to wade across the river. There was a pretty lady who was stuck at the damaged bridge and couldn't cross the river. The big monk offered to carry her across the river on his back. The lady accepted. The little monk was shocked by the move of the big monk. 'How can big brother carry a lady when we are supposed to avoid all intimacy with females?' thought the little monk. But he kept quiet. The big monk carried the lady across the river and the small monk followed unhappily. When they crossed the river, the big monk let the lady down and they parted ways with her. All along the way for several miles, the little monk was very unhappy with the act of the big monk. He was making up all kinds of acussations about big monk in his head. This got him madder and madder. But he still kept quiet. And the big monk had no inclination to explain his situation. Finally, at a rest point many hours later, the little monk could not stand it any further, he burst out angrily at the big monk. 'How can you claim yourself a devout monk, when you seize the first opportunity to touch a female, especially when she is very pretty? All your teachings to me make you a big hypocrite The big monk looked surprised and said, 'I had put down the pretty lady at the river bank many hours ago, how come you are still carrying her along?'

[This very old Chinese Zen story reflects the thinking of many people today. We encounter many unpleasant things in our life, they irritate us and they make us angry. Sometimes, they cause us a lot of hurt, sometimes they cause us to be bitter or jealous .. But like the little monk, we are not willing to let them go away.We keep on carrying the baggage of the 'pretty lady' with us. We let them keep on coming back to hurt us, make us angry, make us bitter and cause us a lot of agony.Why? Simply because we are not willing to put down or let go of the baggage of the 'pretty lady'. We should let go of the pretty lady immediately after crossing the river, that is after the unpleasant event is over.This will immediately remove all our agonies.There is no need to be further h urt by the unpleasant event after it is over.]

Thank you Vidya for sending me the mail :)

From Strike City to Striking City

All the auto drivers of Mumbai have gone for three days strike from Monday midnight. When commuting to office has become really difficult for a big section of the population in Mumbai sub-urban area, the rest population is not complaining though. The roads had never been so jam-free! So, for those who do not take their cars out but prefer to avail other alternative instead after suffering hours of motionless driving, it's time for them to celebrate.

For me the days of strike days in Kolkata are back. The roads are empty and everybody speaking about 'strike'.

But my question is, why blame Kolkata only for strikes?

Baichung not playing? Who cares? Amir, Saif hai na!!!

Everything is filmy in India. Even Olympic is.

Olympic is an event that unites the sportsperson and athletes from all across the globe in one place. But when it comes to India, more than the sports, its Bollywood that speaks louder. When all countries bestow the rarest honor to carry the Olympic Torch on the shoulders of their celebrated sportsperson, it’s film actors in India who get that privilege. This year the honor is showered on two popular Hindi movie stars – Amir Khan and Saif Ali Khan. Mikhail Singh will ALSO join them while taking a walk in the rajpath of Delhi.

Recently, Baichung Bhutia announced that he wont carry the Olympic Torch following the Tibet issue. But is there anyone bothered? Both media and public are concerned what Amir Khan and Saif Khan has to say on this issue. They don’t disappoint us; both have their own SAY over the matter. So, please don’t mind over the fatuous comment they make, because it’s Bollywood who seems to be only one to bring bread-butter to the media. So there comes a report on torch carrying issue for Olympic 2008 with images of two film-stars in their vests flexing their muscle giving a killer look.

Probably this explains the focus of a nation and also the fact that why its national game cannot even qualify to enter the Olympics.

English...errrrr...German......

We generally come across thousands of forward mails a year. This is a mail that I really liked and thought to share with it with my readers as well as save here permanently. Here it goes:-

The European Commission has just announced an agreement whereby English will be the official language of the European Union rather than German, which was the other possibility.

As part of the negotiations, the British Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a 5- year phase-in plan that would become known as 'Euro-English' .

In the first year, 's' will replace the soft 'c'. Sertainly, this will make the sivil servants jump with joy. The hard 'c' will be dropped in favour of 'k'. This should klear up konfusion, and keyboards kan have one less letter. There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year when the troublesome 'ph' will be replaced with 'f'. This will make words like fotograf 20% shorter.

In the 3rd year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible.

Governments will enkourage the removal of double letters which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling.

Also, al wil agre that the horibl mes of the silent 'e' in the languag is disgrasful and it should go away.

By the 4th yer people wil be reseptiv to steps such as
replasing 'th' with 'z' and 'w' with 'v'.

During ze fifz yer, ze unesesary 'o' kan be dropd from vords kontaining 'ou' and after ziz fifz yer, ve vil hav a reil sensi bl riten styl.

Zer vil be no mor trubl or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi tu understand ech oza. Ze drem of a united urop vil finali kum tru.

Und efter ze fifz yer, ve vil al be speking German like zey vunted in ze forst plas.

If zis mad you smil, pleas pas on to oza pepl

Here comes back my old friend!

The summer seems to have started again and so has my sleeplessness! Last night when I required to have a tight sleep more than anything following my week long activities of various kind, I actually kept wondering the entire night - 'why I cant sleep when I'm so tired'? This is a mystery to me!

As I met Him...

...I started hopping and jumping not even caring that the salty water was wetting my kalamkari salwar and the off-white edges of my dupatta! I was ecstatic…like others… But I guess I was happier than others as it was the first occasion I was touching the sea…the endless sea….the limitless sea….. I had read and written so much about its magical beauty! But nothing I could think of then except for listening to the heavy gurgling of the waves and watching them coming one after another…relentlessly…..

And then I met Him....the sea...the virile sea

Jodhaa Akbar - my take

Yesterday I saw Jodhaa Akbar, finally. I had got so many negative feedbacks before going to watch this. Still I knew that I would definitely be watching it and would definitely like it. And yes, I did like it.

I always loved to study the history of Rajputs and Mughals. My two years of experience as travel writer gave me more exposure to that when I wrote extensively on Delhi and Rajasthan. So, the fact of Akbar’s getting married to Jodhaa Bai of Amer, Akbar’s immense faith on Moinuddin Chisti of Ajmer (Akbar actually walked in bare feet from Agra to Ajmer Sharif), Akbar’s rebellious brother-in-law whom he couldn’t kill in order to keep his promise made to his sister, his roaming around in the streets in disguise to know his own people, etc. are not unknown to me. The history also says that Jodhabai was the mother of Jahangir and there’s a mahal in Fatehpur Sikri in her name, which was not shown in the movie though.

But I really liked the way Ashutosh Gowarikar did his thorough research. The forts, palaces are still there but they are now surrounded by more than one examples of modern era. It must have been a headache for the director to take the shot at proper angle in order to avoid the lamp posts, electric wires, hoardings and thousand other examples of modernization. And he never gave up.

The fight sequences are too good. The language was Hindi, but I felt like watching a Hollywood movie. No wonder, people who are listening to their moron friends and not going to watch the movie, are not even aware what they are missing.

But I must admit, I missed something in this movie too, the same way that I missed in Swades. It’s Amir Khan. I didn’t miss him on the screen, but I missed his intellect that bridges the gap between a class mind and a mass mind; just like it did it in Lagaan, Rang De Basanti and Tare Zameen Par. No wonder, Ashutosh Gowarikar is a wonderful director but somehow he misses to induce the ‘punch’ in his story telling that he finally misses out to catch the pulse of audience. Since the same story repeated with both of his post-Lagaan movies, probably we can guess whose head worked stronger behind the success of Lagaan.