Gandhian

This frail 72-year-old, dressed in white and with a Gandhi cap, has become an icon for India's middle classes, now expressing their anger against a series of corruption scandals. He had undertaken a "fast unto death" to demand stringent anti-corruption laws and in particular a law to create an ombudsman to deal with allegations.

Born Kisan Bapat Baburao Hazare, he is well-known as a social activist in his home state of Maharashtra, where he turned his village of Ralegan Siddhi into an environmental prototype.Mr Hazare managed to motivate the villagers to build dams and percolation tanks, to conserve water and to plant thousands of trees. In less than a decade, Ralegan Siddhi had become a sustainable community so successful the state government officially adopted the Ralegan Siddhi model and replicated it in villages across Maharashtra.

It is this work that brought him national and international recognition by way of awards and gave him the credibility to pursue his campaign against corruption. The scandals prompted Indian social activist Anna Hazare to go on a four-day-long hunger strike to push for stringent new anti-corruption laws.There were demonstrations across India in support of his call and the government eventally agreed to his demands.

BBC News



India's economic growth has been phenomenal, but  corruption has  set pace with the economy. The recent scandals like Commonwealth games, 2G scandal just to name a couple are so big,  they are almost in the Bofors  territory. At one time  humility and kindness were sought after qualities, now its arrogance and greed. That is why we need more Harazes in India today.


Prabhakar

Happy Easter 2011

Happy Easter to everyone celebrating during this Holy week.

Prabhakar

Can you hear me now?

There are always people warning us about new technology. This article was published in the New York Times, edited for your reading pleasure is about cellphone use.

Article;

 In a culture where people cradle their cellphones next to their heads with the same constancy and affection that toddlers hold their security blankets, it was unsettling last month when a study published in The Journal of the American Medical Association indicated that doing so could alter brain activity.
The report said it was unclear whether the changes in the brain — an increase in glucose metabolism after using the phone for less than an hour — had any negative health or behavioral effects. But it has many people wondering what they can do to protect themselves short of (gasp) using a landline.
“Cellphones are fantastic and have done much to increase productivity,” said Dr. Nora Volkow, the lead investigator of the study and director of the National Institute of Drug Abuse at the National Institutes of Health. “I’d never tell people to stop using them entirely.”
Yet, in light of her findings, she advises users to keep cellphones at a distance by putting them on speaker mode or using a wired headset whenever possible. The next best option is a wireless Bluetooth headset or earpiece, which emit radiation at far lower levels. If a headset isn’t feasible, holding your phone just slightly away from your ear can make a big difference; the intensity of radiation diminishes sharply with distance.

So crushing your cellphone into your ear to hear better in a crowded bar is probably a bad idea. Go outside if you have to take or make a call. And you might not want to put your cellphone in your breast or pants pocket either, because that also puts it right up against your body. Carry it in a purse or briefcase or get a nonmetallic belt clip that orients it away from your body.
Some studies have suggested a link between cellphone use and cancer, lower bone density and infertility in men. But other studies show no effect at all. Given the mixed messages and continuing research, Robert Kenny, a Federal Communications Commission spokesman, said in an e-mail, “As always, we will continue to study this issue and coordinate with our federal partners.”

You can get an idea of the relative amounts of radiation various cellphone models emit by looking at their SAR, or Specific Absorption Rate. This number indicates how much radiation is absorbed by the body when using the handset at maximum power. A cellphone cannot be sold in the United States unless an F.C.C.-approved laboratory says its SAR is below 1.6 watts per kilogram. In Europe, the maximum is 2 watts per kilogram.

The F.C.C. maintains that SAR values “do not provide sufficient information” to reliably compare cellphone radiation emissions because certain phones might rarely operate at maximum power. Still, the Environmental Working Group, a nonprofit organization, has a comprehensive list of the SAR values for most cellphones available from major carriers on its Web site. (For instance, the Apple iPhone 4 is listed at 1.17 watts per kilogram, the Motorola Droid at 1.5 and the LG Quantum at 0.35.)
But more important than looking for a low-SAR phone is how you use it. Many cellphones emit the most radiation when they initially establish contact with the cell tower, making their “digital handshake.” To reduce exposure it’s best to wait until after your call has been connected to put your cellphone next to your ear.

Moreover, your cellphone emits less when you are stationary because when you are moving rapidly — say, in a car or train — it must repeatedly issue little bursts of radiation to make digital handshakes with different towers as it moves in and out of range. (More cause to hang up when you buckle up.)
Want another reason to complain about your carrier’s poor coverage? Any situation where your cellphone has a weak signal indicates it has to work harder and thus will emit more radiation. “Fewer bars means more radiation,” said Om Gandhi, professor of electrical engineering at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. Inside buildings and elevators, in rural areas, the Grand Canyon — these are not good places to make a call if you’re trying to reduce your exposure to radiation.

Of course, parents using their iPhones to pacify cranky kids might want to reconsider rattles. Children’s developing brains and tissues are thought to be most vulnerable to cellphone radiation. Health authorities in Britain, France, Germany and Russia have all issued warnings against allowing small children to use cellphones for extended periods, if at all.

There are cellphone attachments that purport to shield users from radiation, and most are “hoaxes,” said Mr. Gandhi. Beware of pendants that sellers claim snatch radiation from the air. Pong Research offers a cellphone case for iPhones and BlackBerrys that it says has been shown by an F.C.C.-approved testing lab to redirect radiation from the phone’s antenna away from the head.


Texting, instead of talking, might be safer. “The whole trend toward texting instead of talking on cellphones is probably a good thing,” said Mr. Slesin at Microwave News.

That is, if you don’t rest your cellphone against your body while typing out your message.

Joy Unbound

AND WHAT A FINISH.

LET'S CELEBRATE.

Can Dhoni's men emulate Kapil's Devils?

The images linger. Kapil Dev, light on feet and brave of heart, plucked a sensational catch at deep mid-wicket to end a rampant Vivian Richards's tenure in the 1983 World Cup final at Lord's. You can freeze the frame.
Now, Mahendra Singh Dhoni's powerful team is just one match away from reclaiming the Cup of Joy. The host faces a formidable rival in the summit clash — the first between two sub-continental teams — of the ICC World Cup in Mumbai on a Super Saturday.
Will another moment of inspiration decide this final? Kumar Sangakkara, another wicketkeeper-batsman, leads a versatile Sri Lankan side of belief and ability.

With a gilt-edged opportunity to make history as the first side to win the World Cup on home soil, India cannot afford any slip .

-The HINDU

GOOD LUCK, INDIA

prabhakar

Are you feeling eudaimonia?

This is an interesting article I read in the Wall Street Journal. Its about being happy and seeking happiness. It has been edited here.



Article;

The relentless pursuit of happiness may be doing us more harm than good. Some researchers say happiness as people usually think of it—the experience of pleasure or positive feelings—is far less important to physical health than the type of well-being that comes from engaging in meaningful activity. Researchers refer to this latter state as "eudaimonic well-being."

Happiness research, a field known as "positive psychology," is exploding. Some of the newest evidence suggests that people who focus on living with a sense of purpose as they age are more likely to remain cognitively intact, have better mental health and even live longer than people who focus on achieving feelings of happiness.

In fact, in some cases, too much focus on feeling happy can actually lead to feeling less happy, researchers say. The pleasure that comes with, say, a good meal, an entertaining movie or an important win for one's sports team—a feeling called "hedonic well-being"—tends to be short-term and fleeting. Raising children, volunteering or going to medical school may be less pleasurable day to day. But these pursuits give a sense of fulfillment, of being the best one can be, particularly in the long run.

"Eudaimonia" is a Greek word associated with Aristotle and often mistranslated as "happiness"—which has contributed to misunderstandings about what happiness is. Some experts say Aristotle meant "well-being" when he wrote that humans can attain eudaimonia by fulfilling their potential. Today, the goal of understanding happiness and well-being, beyond philosophical interest, is part of a broad inquiry into aging and why some people avoid early death and disease. Psychologists investigating eudaimonic versus hedonic types of happiness over the past five to 10 years have looked at each type's unique effects on physical and psychological health.

For instance, symptoms of depression, paranoia and psychopathology have increased among generations of American college students from 1938 to 2007, according to a statistical review published in 2010 in Clinical Psychology Review. Researchers at San Diego State University who conducted the analysis pointed to increasing cultural emphasis in the U.S. on materialism and status, which emphasize hedonic happiness, and decreasing attention to community and meaning in life, as possible explanations.

David Bennett, director of the Alzheimer's Disease Center at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, and his colleagues showed that eudaimonic well-being conferred benefits related to Alzheimer's. Over a seven-year period, those reporting a lesser sense of purpose in life were more than twice as likely to develop Alzheimer's disease compared with those reporting greater purpose in life, according to an analysis published in the journal Archives of General Psychiatry. The study involved 950 individuals with a mean age of about 80 at the start of the study.

In a separate analysis of the same group of subjects, researchers have found those with greater purpose in life were less likely to be impaired in carrying out living and mobility functions, like housekeeping, managing money and walking up or down stairs. And over a five-year period they were significantly less likely to die—by some 57%— than those with low purpose in life.

The link persisted even after researchers took into account variables that could be related to well-being and happiness, such as depressive symptoms, neuroticism, medical conditions and income.

"I think people would like to be happy," says Dr. Bennett. "But, you know, life has challenges. A lot of it is how you confront those challenges."



There is some evidence that people high in eudaimonic well-being process emotional information differently than those who are low in it. Brain-imaging studies indicate people with high eudaimonic well-being tend to use the pre-frontal cortex more than people with lower eudaimonic well-being, says Cariem van Reekum, researcher at the Centre for Integrative Neuroscience and Neurodynamics at the University of Reading in the U.K. The pre-frontal cortex is important to higher-order thinking, including goal-setting, language and memory.

It could be that people with high eudaimonic well-being are good at reappraising situations and using the brain more actively to see the positives, Dr. van Reekum says. They may think, "This event is difficult but I can do it," she says. Rather than running away from a difficult situation, they see it as challenging.

The two types of well-being aren't necessarily at odds, and there is overlap. Striving to live a meaningful life or to do good work should bring about feelings of happiness, of course. But people who primarily seek extrinsic rewards, such as money or status, often aren't as happy, says Richard Ryan, professor of psychology, psychiatry and education at the University of Rochester.


There's nothing wrong with trying to feel happy, psychologists say. Happy people tend to be more sociable and energetic, which may lead them to engage in meaningful activities. And for someone who is chronically angry or depressed, the goal should be to help this person feel happier, says Ed Diener, a retired professor at the University of Illinois who advises pollster Gallup, Inc., on well-being and positive psychology.

Surveys have shown the typical person usually feels more positive than neutral, yet it isn't clear he or she needs to be any happier, Dr. Diener says. But there is such a thing as too much focus on happiness. Ruminating too much about oneself can become a vicious cycle. Fixating on being happy "in itself can become a psychological burden," Dr. Ryff says.

Being happy doesn't mean feeling elated all the time. Deep stress is bad, but the "I don't have enough time" stress that many people feel while balancing work, family and other demands may not be so bad, Dr. Diener says. To improve feelings of happiness and eudaimonia, focus on relationships and work that you love, Dr. Diener says, adding, "Quit sitting around worrying about yourself and get focused on your goals."



Write to Shirley S. Wang

Hope this has been educational . I certainly enjoyed reading this.

Prabhakar

World Cup Update

India PM invites Pakistan leaders- BBC 

India's PM has invited Pakistan's leaders to join him in watching next week's cricket World Cup semi-final game between the South Asian rivals.Continue reading the main story

India will be playing Pakistan for a spot in the final of the world cup. I appreciate Manmohan Singh's gesture to use this opportunity to make some peace with our brothers and sisters. The hugely-anticipated match is due to be hosted in the northern Indian city of Mohali.

I am sure both teams will not disappoint us. Let the game begin. I have been having difficulty in watching the games online. If you have any recommendation please comment. Thanks.

Prabhakar 

Troubled Earth

Things are not looking good for our planet earth. In spite of all our similarities, human beings fight for all the minor differences we have with each other. The fight for democracy presently in the Middle East, is one example.  But all over the planet,  strong men (always men) are holding on to power ruthlessly, imposing their will on citizens.

 On top of this the earthquake and tsunami in Japan has brought a great nation to its knees. Its reported that they are facing a crisis worse than at the end of World War II . But it may get worse , 4 nuclear reactors are in crisis mode and radiation injury may be a long term issue.So far Japan has shut down 11 nuclear reactors with a total capacity of 9.7 gigawatts — the equivalent of 200,000 barrels of oil a day. 

 India and China are betting on Nuclear energy for power supply in the future. India , with 20 Nuclear reactors already in operation , plans to spend an estimated $150 Billion adding new ones around the country. By 2050 nuclear power will supply about a quarter of the country's electricity, a ten fold increase from now(NY Times). India has a pressing need for electricity from nuclear source. Let us hope we dont have to face any bad consequences.

For now the world's eyes are on Japan. If you are able to help these are the organisations which are active in the aid to Japan.

American Red Cross

                                                               Save the Children
                                                                Global Giving

Please help if you are able, and vist their websites.

Prabhakar Devavaram

Strict Non Vegetarian

This  article is from the Wall Street Journal Jan 19th, 2011. I have edited/ shortened  this article

to parts; which I thought were interesting.

At the London restaurant Archipelago, diners can order the $11 Baby Bee Brulee: a creamy custard topped with a crunchy little bee. In New York, the Mexican restaurant Toloache offers $11 chapulines tacos: two tacos stuffed with Oaxacan-style dried grasshoppers.

Could beetles, dragonfly larvae and water bug caviar be the meat of the future? As the global population booms and demand strains the world's supply of meat, there's a growing need for alternate animal proteins. Insects are high in protein, B vitamins and minerals like iron and zinc, and they're low in fat. Of all the known animal species, 80% walk on six legs; over 1,000 edible species have been identified. And the taste? It's often described as "nutty."

The vast majority of the developing world already eats insects. In Laos and Thailand, weaver-ant pupae are a highly prized and nutritious delicacy. They are prepared with shallots, lettuce, chilies, lime and spices and served with sticky rice. Further back in history, the ancient Romans considered beetle larvae to be gourmet fare, and the Old Testament mentions eating crickets and grasshoppers. In the 20th century, the Japanese emperor Hirohito's favorite meal was a mixture of cooked rice, canned wasps (including larvae, pupae and adults), soy sauce and sugar.

Will Westerners ever take to insects as food? It's possible. We are entomologists at Wageningen University, and we started promoting insects as food in the Netherlands in the 1990s. Many people laughed—and cringed—at first, but interest gradually became more serious. In 2006 we created a "Wageningen—City of Insects" science festival to promote the idea of eating bugs; it attracted more than 20,000 visitors.


Insects have a reputation for being dirty and carrying diseases—yet less than 0.5% of all known insect species are harmful to people, farm animals or crop plants. When raised under hygienic conditions—eating bugs straight out of the backyard generally isn't recommended—many insects are perfectly safe to eat.

Meanwhile, our food needs are on the rise. The human population is expected to grow from six billion in 2000 to nine billion in 2050. Meat production is expected to double in the same period, as demand grows from rising wealth. Pastures and fodder already use up 70% of all agricultural land, so increasing livestock production would require expanding agricultural acreage at the expense of rain forests and other natural lands. Officials at the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization recently predicted that beef could become an extreme luxury item by 2050, like caviar, due to rising production costs.

Raising insects for food would avoid many of the problems associated with livestock. For instance, swine and humans are similar enough that they can share many diseases. Such co-infection can yield new disease strains that are lethal to humans, as happened during a swine fever outbreak in the Netherlands in the late 1990s. Because insects are so different from us, such risks are accordingly lower.

Insects are also cold-blooded, so they don't need as much feed as animals like pigs and cows, which consume more energy to maintain their body temperatures. Ten pounds of feed yields one pound of beef, three pounds of pork, five pounds of chicken and up to six pounds of insect meat.

Insects produce less waste, too. The proportion of livestock that is not edible after processing is 30% for pork, 35% for chicken, 45% for beef and 65% for lamb. By contrast, only 20% of a cricket is inedible.

Raising insects requires relatively little water, especially as compared to the production of conventional meat (it takes more than 10 gallons of water, for instance, to produce about two pounds of beef). Insects also produce far less ammonia and other greenhouse gases per pound of body weight. Livestock is responsible for at least 10% of all greenhouse gas emissions.

Raising insects is more humane as well. Housing cattle, swine or chicken in high densities causes stress to the animals, but insects like mealworms and locusts naturally like to live in dense quarters. The insects can be crowded into vertical stacked trays or cages. Nor do bug farms have to be restricted to rural areas; they could sprout up anywhere, from a suburban strip mall to an apartment building. Enterprising gourmets could even keep a few trays of mealworms in the garage to ensure a fresh supply.

The first insect fare is likely to be incorporated subtly into dishes, as a replacement for meat in meatballs and sauces. It also can be mixed into prepared foods to boost their nutritional value—like putting mealworm paste into a quiche. And dry-roasted insects can be used as a replacement for nuts in baked goods like cookies and breads.

Though it is true that intentionally eating insects is common only in developing countries, everyone already eats some amount of insects. The average person consumes about a pound of insects per year, mostly mixed into other foods. In the U.S., most processed foods contain small amounts of insects, within limits set by the Food and Drug Administration. For chocolate, the FDA limit is 60 insect fragments per 100 grams. Peanut butter can have up to 30 insect parts per 100 grams, and fruit juice can have five fruit-fly eggs and one or two larvae per 250 milliliters (just over a cup). We also use many insect products to dye our foods, such as the red dye cochineal in imitation crab sticks, Campari and candies. So we're already some of the way there in making six-legged creatures a regular part of our diet.


Not long ago, foods like kiwis and sushi weren't widely known or available. It is quite likely that in 2020 we will look back in surprise at the era when our menus didn't include locusts, beetle larvae, dragonfly larvae, crickets and other insect delights.


—Mr. Dicke and Mr. Van Huis are professors of entomology at Wageningen University in the Netherlands

- End  of Article

Now few of you may have  a problem with eating insects, but when I find myself in Thailand will definitely eat a bowl of grasshoppers. But till then we have to depend on Naga to give us his expert opinion on this topic. I have more of a problem with all the chemicals the industry has added to our food. If don't believe me start reading the labelling on the  food you buy. You can start with Kissan mixed fruit Jam - it has at least 5 additives which are chemicals.

Prabhakar Devavaram

World Cup Cricket 2011

Yes , It's the World cup time. The 2011 ICC Cricket World Cup will be the tenth Cricket World Cup and will be hosted by three South Asian Test cricket playing countries: India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. It will be Bangladesh's first time co-hosting a Cricket World Cup.  The opening ceremony will be held on 17 February 2011 at Bangabandhu National Stadium, Dhaka, two days before the start of the tournament, with the final on 2 April 2011 at Wankhede Stadium, Mumbai.

But there is a back story behind this. The World Cup was also supposed to be co-hosted by Pakistan, but in the wake of the 2009 attack on the Sri Lanka national cricket team in Lahore, the ICC decided to strip Pakistan of its hosting rights. That was a sad day for Pakistan cricket. No one wants to play in Pakistan and the terrorists have a sort of victory in this issue.

My prediction - INDIA vs PAKISTAN final.

prabhakar devavaram

Power to the people

Though I try to avoid political comments , this is truly a historic movement in our lifetime. Egyptians must feel proud today for having overcome oppression peacefully. They have shown that in spite of all the stereotypes of Arabs in the media,  they have protested peacefully and have overcome a great deal of adversity with this 3 weeks of protest. I hope their hopes and dreams are realized. This blog is dedicated to the people of Egypt, particularly the 300 + people who have died for this cause. The ancient civilization of Egypt can still give peace a chance. 

Prabhakar Devavaram

Pets no more

As I was working on the next blog I received an email from Prem about a study where dogs were found to detect cancer. So continuing on the same theme of finding work for our pets and pests, please read the article from The Boston Globe newspaper.

Dogs may help detect cancer of the colon

Who said we can’t teach an old dog new tricks? Japanese researchers say they’ve successfully trained an 8-year-old female black Labrador retriever to sniff out colon cancer on the breath of a patient. Published  by the digestive health journal Gut, the study adds to previous research suggesting that dogs can be useful for cancer detection. 

Studies over the past few years have shown that dogs can detect melanoma, bladder, lung, ovarian, and breast cancer, also by sniffing the breath of cancer patients.

Their amazing sense of smell allows dogs to identify chemicals that are diluted as low as a few parts per trillion. It’s why we rely on man’s best friend to sniff out bombs and drugs at airports.

In the current study, the black Lab sniffed 33 breath samples from patients with colon cancer and 132 samples from healthy controls, about half of whom had benign colon polyps. 

She correctly identified those who had cancer 91 percent of the time — correctly distinguishing between cancerous and benign polyps — and was correct in excluding healthy samples 99 percent of the time when compared with findings on a colonoscopy.

When the dog was given watery stool samples to sniff instead, she was able to find 97 percent of the cancers with the same specificity rate of 99 percent. The fecal occult blood test, another routine colon cancer screening method that checks for blood in the stool, detected about 70 percent of the cancers and had a specificity rate of 85 percent.

If you’re looking to get out of a colonoscopy, however, no such luck — at least for a while. 

There’s also the matter of training the dogs. “It may be difficult to introduce canine scent judgment into clinical practice,’’ write the study authors, led by Dr. Hideto Sonoda of Kyushu University at Fukuoka, “owing to the expense and time required for the dog trainer and for dog education.’’


End of Article


I think this  study will be a future Ig Nobel Prize recipient. The question we have to ask is what is up Pussycat? The incredibly smart cats have so far have chosen to be quiet about their talents. So what jobs do you readers think a cat can do?


Prabhakar Devavaram

Pest No More

Imagine my surprise when I read this article in the New York Times one morning. Rats have been smart about keeping their secrets talents to themselves


Detecting Tuberculosis: No Microscopes, Just Rats    - NY Times-Jan 3, 2011

Researchers have found a new way of testing for tuberculosis that is fast, cheap and widely available: large rats that can smell the bacteria in a sputum sample. There are expensive and complicated laboratory tests for tuberculosis, and the World Health Organization recently endorsed a new machine that can give accurate results in under two hours. But the device costs $17,000, and each test requires a $17 cartridge.

Whatever else can be said about them, rats are cheaper.

Today, the most commonly used detection method in developing countries is smear microscopy. But unless there is a high concentration of them, the bacilli are easy to miss, and that results in as many as 60 to 80 percent of positive cases going undiagnosed.

Studies suggest that the Gambian pouched rat can do better. The animal, an omnivorous rodent with puffy cheeks and that chillingly familiar rat body and tail, weighs 10 to 15 pounds and thrives in colonies of up to 20 all over sub-Saharan Africa. The Gambian pouched rat apparently can smell the difference between tuberculosis bacilli and the myriad other germs that inhabit human phlegm.

 Writing in the December issue of The American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, Dr. Poling and his colleagues report a test of the rats using samples that were confirmed by laboratory culture as either positive or negative.

The animals’ sensitivity — that is, their ability to detect the presence of tuberculosis — ranged as high as 86.6 percent, and their specificity, or ability to detect the absence of the germ, was over 93 percent. In another test that compared the rats’ success to microscopy, the rats picked up 44 percent more positive cases.

The rats, raised in captivity, are all descended from animals captured in the Uluguru Mountains in Tanzania, or on the outskirts of Morogoro, a city of about 200,000 people in the nearby Tanzanian highlands. This is the same animal, Cricetomys gambianus, that has been trained to sniff out land mines.(It is light enough not to set them off.)

End of Article

This opens up so many possibilities for the many pests which have been bothering us. Now we have to explore unique abilities of flies , mosquitoes, cockroach and the list doesn't end here. I am sure when Indian rats are put to task; they will prove there worth.

Prabhakar Devavaram

Traffic Part 2- Mental Speed Bumps

Based on the overwhelming response for the previous blog on traffic( 4 comments and  2 of them mine) I have decided to write; Traffic Part 2 . My love for the Indian cow continues. Its role in regulating traffic has not been appreciated by everyone. But according to Tom Vanderbilt,  the author a book called "Traffic  -Why we drive the way we do"got this response when he posed  a question to Mr Pereira (a traffic authority in New Delhi) about  Indian cows lying in the street and blocking traffic. 

Mr Pereira said - Let me correct a little misperception. The presence of a cow in a congested urban area is no hazard. Much as I don't like the presence of a cow on the road, when I am advocating smoother traffic and convenience , the presence of a cow  forces a person to slow down. Overall effect is to reduce speed and rash driving. Mr Vanderbilt adds that cows in effect act as 'mental speed bump' a term coined by an Australian traffic activist  named David Engwicht. With regular speed bumps the cars just speed from one to the next, there is no uncertainty about it.

So Once again I salute you the great Indian Cow.

Now I have been wishing everyone happy Pongal or Dasara, right and left, you may say. It was pointed out to me that its too early to celebrate Dasara . Thanks Gayathri Krishnan and Vasanthy for correcting me. Among the millions who have read my blog and started preparing for the Dasara festival, please wait. It will come soon in Oct 2010. Looking back , I mistook Dasara for another festival which is usually celebrated in the North in January called Sankranthi. You can now see why I was confused.

Prabhakar Devavaram

Traffic

This is an exerpt from the Boston Globe a week ago about the new reality of driving in India;

On a recent chilly evening, Gaurav Kumar eased his small truck onto a congested road in the Indian capital and accidentally scraped another vehicle in the honking mass of cars, scooters, and motorbikes.

 Enraged, the other car’s driver blocked Kumar’s truck and attacked him. He pulled the 24-year-old deliveryman out and shoved him so hard that his head hit the sidewalk. An hour later, Kumar died in a nearby hospital. “It was a small scratch. For this he lost his life,’’ Kumar’s widow, Prem Latha, said by telephone from the nearby town of Aligarh, where she lives with her infant daughter.

In another recent incident, a motorist at a crowded toll booth pulled out a gun and threatened the toll collector if he served another driver who had cut in line, local papers reported.

Sociologist Abhilasha Kumari also senses a change in attitude as the country’s new economic wealth makes society more materialistic.“It’s as if Delhi’s centuries-old culture of graciousness has been wiped off and has been replaced by a frenetic and pushy ‘me first’ ruthlessness,’’ .

 Kumari added. “They believe if you have the money, you flaunt it, with your big shiny new car, and you assert yourself forcefully on the road.’’

End of article from the Boston Globe

This is not unique for Delhi , I think this is the new reality of driving in major cities and towns in India.  When did we change into such arrogant people? Why did the driver want to shoot the toll collector instead of the car driver who cut in front? I think the consequences of shooting a poor toll collector is not much.

All we  need is some humility; but that is asking too much. As Dylan sang-  Money doesn't talk, it swears.

Prabhakar Devavaram

The Peacemakers

Today is celebrated as the Martin Luther King Day in the US. 200 years from now; if mankind still exists these are some of the names people will remember. The Hitlers of the world will be long forgotten. So let us take time to remember their contribution to world peace and as Indians our good fortune to have the leadership of Gandhi in the time of the freedom struggle.

The following is my favorite quote from Dr Martin Luther King Jr;

"If you can't fly then run, if you can't run then walk, if you can't walk then crawl, but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward."
— Martin Luther King Jr.

Prabhakar Devavaram

Happy Pongal from Winter Wonderland

The first time I saw snow I went out with a friend and ran in the snow enjoying the moment. Soon I realised that we had run outside without our shoes on. So over time have learnt many lessons to survive the cold and the snow. But I am always amazed by the snow blizzards which we get about 2 -3 times every winter. The whole city changes from its pulsating activity and turns desolate and beautiful.

These pictures are from the latest storm which dumped about 17 inches of snow over 24 hours. The first picture was taken in the Longwood medical area in Boston in front of Brigham and Women's Hospital. The last photo is in front of our house where my daughter build a snowman.

Let me take this opportunity to wish all the readers a Happy Pongal or Dasara Holidays. Please eat a sugarcane for me.

Prabhakar Devavaram

Happy New Year 2011

Dear Friends ,

Wish you all a very happy New Year. I hope that you and your family have a great year. It was pointed out to me that I did'nt write a Christmas blog. It was my fault, will try to be a better blogger in this New Year. And hope all of you celebrating Xmas had a grand time.

I am aware that some planning is being made for a local get together of our classmates in India in August 2011. Once I hear more will let all of you know.

Thanks

Prabhakar