Things worth fighting for

All over the world, countries, communities, organizations, cults and people are fighting for issues ranging from Nuclear Weapons, piece of land, religious beliefs, wealth, power and the list goes on. Most of these issues might look petty when we see some of the extreme situations prevailing in the world in different regions. For instance, the penury which peaks in parts of Africa and Asia, the intolerance in many countries where innocent people are murdered for not following the conservative beliefs, the violation of human rights to an extent that can appall even the toughest men, children not being educated or being misled at an age when they are incapable of deliberating right and wrong, people dying because of the lack of medical facilities and basic hygiene. Some of the things really worth fighting for and history has remarkable examples for these:
-Freedom: Every human is born with this right, although not all of them live it. Some are unfortunate to be born in territories where due to the political or civil conditions they are denied this right.
-Education: Nothing more to say about this, education promotes rationality and survival in the world.
-Live without fear: Every human should be able to live without fear from another human or group, irrespective of his religious , traditional, scientific beliefs.

Its a shame that not every person living on this planet gets to enjoy these basic rights, and we are quite fortunate to be born or living at a place where we are enjoying much more than these basic rights.
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Why

Air France plane crashed into the Atlantic killing 228 people. Sudden astronomical loss of innocent human life. It leaves the mind just baffled & full of anguish. Imagining what those people would have felt in the final moments is just impossible. Such disasters, whether human triggered or nature triggered are no different. In the end , they just leave a group of mourning individuals. When i was looking at the beautiful sunset today, i was just thinking , i wish those 228 people could have seen this sunset if this disaster wouldnt have happened. Life is so ethereal, there is no guarantee of the very next second for any of us, so what exactly makes "what I call, our short stay on this planet as a collection of atoms & molecules weaved into a bodily form" substancial? I dont have an answer for this, and neither is there any justification of sudden disasters, killing innocent individuals. That is the intangible mystery of life and it goes on....

Busy Busy Week

Its Thursday night. Cant believe how the week got almost over. Especially this one was extremely busy , exhausting but a little different. I drove almost 200 miles in 4 days of the week so far. Thats a lot considering it was a working week, not a vacation week :-) and i live a meagre 4 miles from work. Tuesday morning I had to drive to SF for my passport renewal , yesterday for a doc appt, today for a guitar lesson. Now i dont want to drive anymore. There was a time when i used to consider anything under 20 miles as near, no big deal category. Now 20 miles is too much :-). Maybe i am trying to do too many things in too less of a time. These days when i am on the road, i want to drive fast and get to my destination in the least possible time. Earlier i used to drive enjoying and not worrying too much about getting there soon. Maybe all i need is a break from it so that i can start enjoying it again...Or maybe i am falling into that spell, where everyone is always in a hurry, always obsessed with something going on in the mind, always trying to get something done, never leaving the mind blank and pure to enjoy the present, always running a marathon towards the future but the present slipping out of the hands every second. Too philosophical huh? Well test yourself against this statement, are you in this category or close, if you are you got to do something before the spell grips you sternly.

Mango Dal

A recipe after a very long time. This week was pretty good on the food front , as i experimented with new dishes and flavors, all Indian cuisine. This was inspired by the need of me getting bored of the routine stuff and mainly because I had to cook food for someone else this week other than me. Well, that means i can not survive by cooking just twice a week and lasting on those supplies. For a change i cooked almost 4 times in these 5 days of the week. It does make a difference to your cooking when you are cooking for someone else, other than you. From next week i am back to feeding myself though :-).
This week i made Bhindi Kadhi, Aloo Jeera, Bhindi Masala & the delicious mango dal. Here is the recipe:

1. Boil the Arhar Dal (Toor Dal) in a pressure cooker with salt and turmeric powder added to it.
2. Cut two tomatoes, slit 2 green chillies, and cut a green mango into big slices.
3. Heat Ghee in a Kadhai, once hot add cumin seeds and mustard seeds. Wait for them to sputter.
4. Now add the diced tomatoes, green chillies & ginger. Add a pinch of turmeric powder to this and let it become a gravy.
5. Next add the mango slices to the tomato gravy, and let them heat for a few minutes.
6.Once the Dal is pressure cooked, add it to the Kadhai and mix.
7. Garnish with fresh coriander leaves.
8. Serve hot with white rice.

That Land

I miss the sweet smell of the mud after the first rain, and the excited faces of people. The steaming hot tea, and the dazzling street markets bustling with noisy crowds. The guy frying samosas and selling them to the young and old. I miss the excitement of the holiday, spending the day on the road feeling that freedom like no one has. The crowded buses now replaced by the elegant metros, hopping on and off them to reach the malls with utmost ease. I miss the hundred options in a snack shop filled with delicious munches to eat. I miss those PVR shows, with chips and salsa in the intervals of long boring movies. I miss drying my wet hair on the bench in the tender winter sunlight, and enjoying the winter salads on the rooftop. I miss the proud feeling of driving the car to the college for the first time, and the endless times spent in waiting for the DTC buses to use the student pass. I miss the walks to the temple every other day in the fresh and crispy sunlight of the summer. And those juicy leeches and mangoes in abundance every summer.
I miss that land, my own land.

We are

Ofcourse, human beings "Homo Sapiens". A specie which evolved from the apes. Apes which evolved from some early vertebrates, which inturn evolved from sea life , which eventually boils down to some cyanobacteria, the originator of life according to the published theories.

Physically we are all a bunch of atoms and molecules, and we were created as a result of Big Bang. These atoms and molecules we are composed of, keep getting recycled everyday. Everyday our composition is different, but ultimately we are all a result of some comet that might have hit the earth or some fragmentation that formed it in the first place, billions of years back. We are just star dust from Big Bang.

Chemically, we are all (all species of plants/animals) organic carbon compounds with some amounts of other elements like zinc, calcium, phosphorous etc. We inhale oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide and there are many chemical reactions going on in our body to keep us alive.

Biologically we are a bunch of cells, the life forming building blocks. These cells carry information on chromosomes and genes, and they manufacture energy for us by burning the food we eat. The genes are probably what separates one specie from another and organisms within the same specie too.

So what is the meaning of alive or dead in terms of the biological, physical and chemical processes. These processes can be conducted in a science laboratory too? So what is it that makes us fit to be called alive? Soon will we be manufacturing life in the lab using the advancements made in genetic engineering? I think yes, considering the fact that scientists have already created genetically altered species of different plants and animals by disrupting the normal genes..
Would Darwin have imagined such a day would come?

When the going gets tough

Rounds of layoffs, pay cuts, increasing work pressure, increasing work hours..huh..Quite a history making time in economy i guess, after the great depression. These times are tough on pockets as well as minds. What do i think? Maybe at the other end of the tunnel, this time there will be some new trend setting. This could mean new types of jobs emerging in the next decade after the dot com surge, this time it could be green, stress pacifiers :-).
These times could be hard on you so watch out, try to get descent amount of sleep, and enjoy some moments in the day to day life. When the going gets tough, the tough gets going..