paragon of paradoxes

As I was taking an afternoon nap, I was awakened by the message tone of my mobile. I casually scrolled across the message, knowing it was one of those forward messages, but it caught my attention when I read the words ‘INCREDIBLE INDIA’. These two words forced me to read the message altogether again. It was not just one of those forward messages which ask you to forward the message or be doomed. This was a much more meaningful message with a genuine point to notice. It mocked us, Indians.  It was true and it revealed such paradoxes and ironies that would make even the most diehard patriots laugh at the way our nation works. In brief these were the ironies it revealed:

*food grains rot in godowns as people die of starvation

*pizza arrives in 30 minutes, ambulances don’t

*we kill our daughters and pray goddesses

*the public pays to keep the terrorist ajmal kasab safe while it stays in danger

I must admit that these ironies had a lot of humor for the imagery they created. But they showed how incredible India really was! We, Indians, are really incredible, for we have the ability to laugh at ourselves.

But a closer look would show how dark the humor really is! The joke is upon us and so is the tragedy. So instead of just laughing let’s look into, why this happens only in India? Had this question been put on any news channel for public debate, you shouldn’t be surprised if the most common answer is corruption. Corruption is the biggest problem our country faces, but as we will see later that it is not the real problem.

Earlier this year, the media exposed the poor storage facilities, resulting in precious food grains rotting away. It showed how piles of rotten grains were lying in the open in a condition unfit even for the cattle-feed.  In a country where 237.7 million suffer from chronic hunger, it is a tragic irony. Distributing the grain among the public is unviable according to our Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.  According to a recent survey by W.H.O every second hungry person in the world is an Indian. Isn’t it reason enough to vie to make unviable, viable. The problem has been that, though our production levels have grown many manifolds, the same growth rate hasn’t been kept up in the infrastructure for storage of grains. The problem could be either that the administrators ignored the mismatch and nothing was done to improve the condition or that it was noticed but the funds allotted weren’t put into proper use. I would like to believe the latter is the real cause although a bit of ignorance on the part of the administrators is also a part of the cause. The misuse of the public funds has become a persistent problem in our system. The funds instead of being put into where they are supposed, go into the pockets of greedy people. Corruption has eaten away a lot of public wealth and is one of the prime obstacle our country faces.

In recent months, we have seen people speaking up against corruption. The Jan Lokpal bill, believed widely as a way of stopping corruption has become a household name. But I suspect, how instrumental it actually proves in stopping corruption, for the implementation part of it cannot be guaranteed. Corruption can be stopped only when there is a radical change in the mindset of the people responsible and only proper education can do that. By education I don’t mean degrees but the understanding to differentiate between good and bad. So as we have seen, the real problem is not corruption but education. Proper education among people would also ensure that the people in power are not the wrong ones.

As for the other problems, for instance the delayed arrivals of ambulances, is because most of the people don’t understand the need to make way for an ambulance. The pizza boy makes it on time because he puts his life at risk and swerves through the traffic. An ambulance mowing down people in its way to save one life would make no sense. As we see the problem here too is lack of education.

The biggest festival of our country, navararatri, is the celebration in honor of the many forms of the divine feminine. Though when it comes to feminine in our lives-wives, sisters and daughters, Indians show an obnoxious set of double standards. Everyone prays for a male child, to a female god. This is   an irony and a tragic one indeed. Recent census has shown an alarming figure: for every 1000 men there are only 933 women. The problem is that a female child is a double blow-she does not continue the family line and also a lot of money has to be spent for marriage on dowry. Though dowry has been officially abolished, it is still a part of almost every marriage. The advancements in medical sciences haven’t helped either. The sex selection tests at gestation point and pre-implantation selection have only made the task easy compared to the messy task of killing them by suffocation or poisoning. If this trend continues, maybe one day the much talked about ‘DESI GIRL’ whom we all consider to be the ‘SABSE SONI’ might become extinct. People would then be reading about them the way we read about dinosaurs. There is an urgent need to stop this trend and only proper education can do that.

I have heard many people complain about ajmal kasab being treated like a v.i.p.     I don’t buy that India’s most hated person is treated like a v.i.p.  The people who have him in custody are Indians too. I have read about India’s secret torture cells and strongly believe that ajmal kasab frequently visits these cells. You might argue that he is provided more security than a common man, but that is because this man can lead us to the roots of the problem that plagues the entire world and possibly help us in solving it. We can’t expect   the security forces to provide fool-proof security. It is we who have to be more responsible and alert.

As we have seen, all our problems are actually the same. It is the lack of proper education that has always been the real problem and to address this problem must be our prime focus. The day we solve this problem, we can all proudly say we are part of India, ‘INCREDIBLE INDIA’.

light, we can beat you.....

Scientists at the University of Glasgow have, for the first time, been able to drag light by slowing it down to the speed of sound and sending it through a rotating crystal.

Most people may think the speed of light is constant, but this is only the case in a vacuum, such as space, where it travels at 671million mph.

However, when it travels through different substances, such as water or solids, its speed is reduced, with different wavelengths (colours) travelling at different speeds.

In addition, it has also been observed, but is not widely appreciated, that light can be dragged when it travels through a moving substance, such as glass, air or water – a phenomenon first predicted by Augustin-Jean Fresnel in 1818 and observed a hundred years later.

Prof. Miles Padgett in the Optics Group in the School of Physics & Astronomy, said: “The speed of light is a constant only in vacuum . When light travels through glass, movement of the glass drags the light with it too.

“Spinning a window as fast as you could is predicted to rotate the image of the world behind it ever so slightly. This rotation would be about a millionth of a degree and imperceptible to the human eye.”

In research detailed in the latest edition of the journal Science, researchers Dr Sonja Franke-Arnold, Dr Graham Gibson and Prof Padgett, in collaboration with their colleague Professor Robert Boyd at the Universities of Ottowa and Rochester, took a different approach and set up an experiment: shining a primitive image made up of the elliptical profile of a green laser through a ruby rod spinning on its axis at up to 3,000 rpm.

Once the light enters the ruby, its speed is slowed down to around the speed of sound (approximately  741mph) and the spinning motion of the rod drags the light with it, resulting in the image being rotated by almost five degrees: large enough to see with the naked eye.

Dr Franke-Arnold, who came up with the idea of using slow light in ruby to observe the photon drag, said: “We mainly wanted to demonstrate a fundamental optical principle, but this work has possible applications too.

“Images are information and the ability to store their intensity and phase is an important step to the optical storage and processing of quantum information, potentially achieving what no classical computer can ever match.

“The option to rotate an image by a set arbitrary angle presents a new way to code information, a possibility not accessed by any image coding protocol so far.”

courtesy: university of glasgow

Fed up with the bandh

a 48 hour bandh, just fed up with these bandhs.I totally respect the sentiments of the people of telangana and have no issues with their fight for a separate state. Everyone has a right to fight for their cause but the problem arises when your fight starts disturbing life of others. bandhs in my mind are no way of a proper protest. breaking and destroying public property just adds to the nuisance.so i just hope that someone puts sense in the minds of these people...and they protest if they have to in a better way....

signing off............... 

silence....our strength or weakness....

Recently i read an article in 'THE WEEK' which completely shocked me.Did you know that you need a permit from the government to enter Arunachal Pradesh.But the Chinese government allows the people of Arunachal Pradesh entry into the Chinese territory without any visa. The Chinese government claims that why should they ask for visa from people of their own territory.The Chinese government believes that Arunachal Pradesh is part of China. They even go to a extent that the maps printed in china showArunachal Pradesh  as part of  China.
Even google put it that way once...............

     There have been recent reports of china beefing up their military bases on the other side of the border.
The Times of India has outlined steps China is taking to upgrade its military infrastructure along its disputed border with India. The report documents five “fully-operational airbases, an extensive rail network and over 58,000 km of roads” in Tibet, as well as a nuclear missile base in Qinghai province in central China. It is estimated that China can mass two divisions (30,000) at launch pads along the border in as little as 20 days now, far shorter than the three months it once took. In addition to the five airbases, which host advanced Sukhoi-27UBK and Sukhoi-30MKK fighters, China is upgrading other landing strips in Tibet as well.
But the Indian government still does what it does best,stay silent.
we are the status quo champions of the world.We do not covet enemy territory and we have come to terms with what we lost to Pakistan in 1948 and to China in 1962.The only time we intervened militarily to alter the map was in 1971, in what was East Pakistan. We left so early it left not only the world but also the enemies puzzled.
I am not saying its a bad thing. If America had left Afghanistan that way, both America and south Asia would have been much happier regions.
It is just that we need to do somethings which we are not used to or we don't like.These are desperate times with terrorists finding safe havens in Pakistan.
DESPERATE TIMES CALL FOR DESPERATE MEASURES...  
So silence silence is it our strength or weakness?
signing off.... 

HANGING BY A THREAD

priya sharma, a 17 year old , cracked the Patna medical college entrance in her first attempt last year. On 25 January this year she was found dead in her hostel dorm. Apparently she had hanged herself and she left no suicide note. She had recently given her first year exams and her friends say she was afraid, she might fail. She kept wondering what answer she would give to her parents, to her lecturers, to her friends. She just kept wondering, till she finally found the answer. The answer was a rope and the choking it would cause.

  patna has emerged as the suicide capital. According to National crime records bureau data for 2009, 28.3% of the suicides in the city were students.Suicides by the students are on the rise in India-from 4.8% in 2008 to 5.3% in 2009 of the total suicides. In real numbers, 6761 students committed suicide in 2009-2010. It boils down to a chilling statistic-19 students commit suicide everyday in our country.
SOME SPINE CHILLING FACTS-
*77% OF STUDENTS COMMITTING SUICIDE ARE BETWEEN 15 AND 20 YEARS
*148 STUDENTS COMMITTED SUICIDE IN DELHI IN 2009 IN A MONTH

                                       

The problem is that many boys and girls suffer from depression and have no one to discuss their problems. Only a few institutes have helplines for depressed students.
The problem is in the system which teaches us that their is no place for failures, which makes marks more important than lives.We are made to believe that a failure in the entrance exams is the end of life.
The food we eat is similar to our life. You cant eat only sweets all through your life can you, you need some spice.Life is similar it has its moments of both sweetness and bitterness.
The important thing we need to understand is-
LIFE IS NOT A RACE, ITS A JOURNEY.....
               

                                        

straight dive

after the sentimental first post....lets dive straight into what people expect of me....

so people wanna hear things like

but dont you think this is too much...........
so ill tell you some history...obviously the fake one...in my next post....till then
signing off.............