SLEEP YOUR WAY TO A HEALTHY LIFE

I had just read in a magazine about the importance of adequate sleep at night for a healthy living. It has been said that lack of adequate sleep can cause serious health disorders and diseases. Researchers have found that during the sleep our brain produces a hormone called Melatonin which is responsible for a natural reduction of heart rate and Blood Pressure at night during sleep. The production and release of this hormone is stimulated in the brain only during sleep and in the absence of light and that is why the importance of an adequate sleep at night.

The Melatonin along with cortisol and oestrogen prevent our body from contracting a lot of diseases including certain types of cancers.

So friends, whatever may be your busy work schedules and social commitments, please make sure you get a good night’s sleep as this would not only keep you physically and mentally refreshed, but also would protect you from serious diseases.

“MOTHER” – VOTED MOST BEAUTIFUL WORD IN THE WORLD

I read in a news item in rediff.com, that the British Council conducted a survey of about 40,000 people from 102 countries to identify the most beautiful word. “Mother” was voted to be the most beautiful word and nonetheless the most beautiful relationship too.

It is indeed heartening to see that in this materialistic world that we are all living in, the sanctity of the relationship of Mother and child is still respected and valued. It is the most natural, pure and uncorrupted relationship, not based on any materialistic consideration, unfortunately one-sided in many cases, when the children consider their aged mother a burden once they have a family of their own. But I think, I should not relate this scenario to “many cases” and instead it would be better to put it as applicable to only in “some cases” as that is the reason “Mother” is still the most beautiful word.

But unfortunately the survey gave the “Fathers” a very bad deal as it did not make it to the list of beautiful words at all. I honestly think that the roles of fathers are equally respectable and important too. Since the father is the backbone of the family, his importance and value is seen only after he is gone, when the whole family structure disintegrates into small disjoint units.

I also equate the relationship of “Friends” very much to that of mother, in terms of its value based on purity, spontaneity and the absence of any material consideration. If the mother is the pillar of strength, nutrition and development in your childhood and the first quarter of your life, then friends are your source for identity, confidence, personality and the pillars of strength for the rest of your life.

A PARALYSED STATE OF MIND

The arrest of the Kanchi Kamakoti Mutt Seer Sri Jayendra Saraswathi has made me perplexed. My conscience is forcing me to write a post on the event and the person himself, who definitely is not among my list of enlightened spiritual leaders. But my respect for the institution, Kanchi Kamakoti Mutt, and the highly respected and worshipped spiritual leaders it had earlier produced, is preventing me from making any utterances that would amount to demeaning the institution.

Caught between my conscience and respect for spiritualism, my mind is not able to move forward and come out of this inertia. May be I should listen to my conscience and write with its guidance, with due respect to my spiritual feelings.

In my efforts to come out of this state of confusion, I decided to stay on a semi-fast yesterday, being the Skanda Shasthi day, living on couple of fruits and milk. It was quite hard as I had to carry out my office duties also but it was quite an experience and made me realize a lot of things, some of which I am listing below :

1) Even one day without salt, vegetables and cooked food made it quite difficult to pass through and irritating at times when my colleagues were munching away mouth watering snacks in front of me. I could well imagine the state of mind of the millions of poor people in our country who live this way for most part of their lives and it is not at all surprising that some of them indulge in heinous crimes in their effort to eliminate their hunger which later becomes a handy profession for them to survive and flourish.

2) My father is a diabetic and also suffers from hypertension. He has been advised to have food without sugar or salt. He looks a very dejected man now despite having everything else in life. Only now I could understand his predicament, that even if you have everything else at your disposal in life, if you are not able to have proper food of your choice, you still feel like a very poor man. It is not the heart but it is the tongue that is the lifeline of a person. You survive with your heart but live only when your tongue is happy.

3) I also read a book where it was written that if you continuously live on food without spices, salt and oil, you tend to become less sensitive, less emotional, more calm and lose all desires. This is so because it is food that is the prime requirement of every living being and tasty food is what drives each of us crazy. The less taste you bring on your food, the less will be your consumption and so without spices, salt and oil in your food, you will tend to consume only the minimum for survival. So if one is able to live on this tasteless and saintly food, thereby consumes only the basic nourishment required to survive, he will lose all other desires in life and that is the point where you turn truly spiritual, where you look beyond yourself and have space in your mind to seek God and see God in everything, everywhere, in every action and every happening.

As everything seems to begin and end with food, I felt it really important to analyse the food habits of the so-called spiritual leaders in our country, including the Shankaracharya of Kanchi, to check whether they have really overcome all their desires for material achievements and reached a state of mind for pure spirituality.

I AM ALREADY FEELING HUNGRY.

AN INSIGHT ON DECISION MAKING

Decision making is not only a key principle in the theory of Scientific Management, but also a very important aspect and function of every human being in everyday life. The importance of this function is all pervasive and sees no barriers like wealth, religion, caste, race etc, in its applicability. We all make decisions in our day to day life both in our official capacities and in our personal life.

Here is a story that tests the human function of Decision-making and let me tell you, in a crunch situation, the line of division between the right decision and wrong decision might be wafer thin. And what more, in such times, you may not be able to justify your decision just on the basis or right or wrong itself. We see a lot more intervening terms like appropriate, populist, rational, compulsive etc.

The Story goes like this……
A group of children were playing near two railway tracks, one still in use while the other disused. Only one child played on the disused track, the rest on the operational track. The train came, and you were just beside the track interchange. You could make the train change its course to the disused track and saved most of the kids.

However, that would also mean the lone child playing by the disused track would be sacrificed. Or would you rather let the train go its way?

Let's take a pause to think what kind of decision we could make................

Most people might choose to divert the course of the train, and sacrifice only one child. You might think the same way, I guess. Exactly, I thought the same way initially because to save most of the children at the expense of only one child was rational decision most people would make, morally and emotionally. But, have you ever thought that the child choosing to play on the disused track had in fact made the right decision to play at a safe place?

Nevertheless, he had to be sacrificed because of his ignorant friends who chose to play where the danger was. This kind of dilemma happens around us everyday. In the office, community, in politics and especially in a democratic society, the minority is often sacrificed for the interest of the majority, no matter how foolish or ignorant the majority are, and how farsighted and knowledgeable the minority are.

The child who chose not to play with the rest on the operational track was sidelined. And in the said case, if he was sacrificed, no one would shed a tear for him.

The friend who forwarded me the story said he would not try to change the course of the train because he believed that the kids playing on the operational track should have known very well that track was still in use and that they should have run away if they heard the train's sirens.

If the train was diverted, that lone child would definitely die because he never thought the train could come over to that track! Moreover, that track was not in use probably because it was not safe. If the train was diverted to the track, we could put the lives of all passengers on board at stake! And in your attempt to save a few kids by sacrificing one child, you might end up sacrificing hundreds of people to save these few kids.

While we are all aware that life is full of tough decisions that need to be made, we may not realize that hasty decisions may not always be the right one. Any decision is better if made with a long sighted attitude as in a short sight a decision may seem to be right in terms of compulsion, appropriateness, rationality and so on. But it is always better that we think of the ultimate end and evaluate whether our decision would stand the test of correctness at the end of it all.

"REMEMBER THAT WHAT'S RIGHT IS NOT ALWAYS POPULAR... WHAT IS POPULAR IS NOT ALWAYS RIGHT."

THE DIWALI FERVOUR

I see a blog on Diwali (pardon me Chakra) in almost all the Indian blogsites and so I suddenly developed the fear of being alienated for not publishing one on mine.

This is one festival which is universally celebrated all through India beyond the barriers of caste, creed and religion, unlike certain other festivals which are celebrated only in some states of the country. When I say religion, I mean we can see even Muslims and Christians bursting crackers in their houses.

Frankly I am no different and even now I nurture the same passion for this festival as I used to do in my childhood days. May be it is one of those things that remains with you forever. The only difference is that now I have begun to look beyond myself in terms of celebration. I realise this is one festival that glaringly brings out the difference between the have’s and have-nots. All other festivals in India has more religious value and celebrated within the four walls of our home, but for Diwali, which is known more for its extravaganza in terms of display of dress, sweets and crackers. I am not a socialist or against such extravagant celebrations. After all those who spend work hard for earning it and can also be said to be fortunate enough to be blessed with the fruits of hard work.

We always used to go for a drive in the night of Diwali just to have a feel of the festivities going around in the city lit with various kinds of illumination and crackers and it definitely helped forgetting the term “darkness” atleast for a moment. But this drive also used to expose us to lot of poor and less fortunate children without even the basic dress on them searching the roads and pavements trying to pick some un-burst crackers and jumping in inexplicable joy when they find a single piece of cracker. It is an irony that despite the illuminations and light all around, these children are still not able to fight their darkness. We all know that you cannot measure darkness and it is most striking only when there is light all around.

If you visit T.Nagar in Chennai or for that matter any shopping center in India now, you would find that demand far exceeds supply and people are ready to spend any amount of money to celebrate this festival. In this scenario, I don’t think I would be asking for too much if each of the shops collect a small cess from the customer, on each purchase made and use the amount collected to provide some new clothing and cracker to the underprivileged children, so that they do not remain in darkness atleast for this one day in an year, when the whole world around them is illuminated.

This work can also be done by some voluntary organization by collecting donations through house to house campaign, but the fact remains that when it comes to donation many of us would think twice to give that extra rupee at the same time, we would not mind paying even ten rupees extra to get our choice of dress material. So sometimes a shopkeeper can collect ten rupees from a particular customer as cess, where we can get only one rupee in the form of donation.

WHAT I SAID ABOVE IS JUST A SMALL THOUGHT AND NOT MEANT TO DISSUADE ANYBODY FROM CELEBRATING DIWALI EXTRAVAGANTLY BUT ONLY TO INSPIRE US INTO HELPING SOME MORE PEOPLE TO CELEBRATE IT EVEN IF IN A VERY SMALL WAY.

A BUDDING NOVELIST

For those interested in reading novels from new and fresh authors, please visit this blog : randomexpressions.rediffblogs.com, created by Deepak Jaiswal. There is also a link to this blog from my site.

I am not a very frequent reader of novels since most of my time is occupied in Law Journals but still I found a whiff of fresh ideas and lateral thinking in the narration of Deepak Jaiswal, a novelist in the making. His short narration or short story (I may be excused for the wrong terminology) titled “HATE – A Love Story” published in his blog on the 29th October,2004 has all the ingredients required to make a good reading.

I think Deepak is ideally using the blogsite as a platform not only to showcase his talents but also to groom it in the right direction with the help of some good constructive comments from the fellow bloggers who should also ideally be voracious readers.

My best wishes to you Deepak for success in your endaevour and I think your success would be a value-addition to concept of blogging, which is already growing versatile by the minute.