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It was my first international trip. I had been to internal flights, but not the international. And hence there was no hassle of form-filling or the visa and all. And when you have the company of your loving mom with her friends circle, its kinda bit of feeling odd man out, being the youngest among the lot. But who cared. I was going on my first world tour!

The Srilankan Airlines, were not that good as I expected, but considering the low prices, it did meet the requirements. The flight to Colombo, Srilanka, was in the early morning on Saturday, 15th November 2008. The mini TV behind the seats of international flights was a new thing to me, but before I could search for the movies or any other shows, we had almost reached the Bandaranaike International Airport, Colombo, as it was just a half-one hour journey. There was no breakfast in the flight, and me and mom thanked ourselves that we did had few dosas in the morning which served as the mini-breakfast.The airport was pretty good. It was the first international airport outside India I landed.

It was a start with trouble. The guide who was supposed to pick up at airport did not turn up. We wasted bit of time there and eventually reached to the allocated hotel, with the help of airport travel authorities. The airport had a sight seeing facility of Colombo, with a charge of  USD $10 per person. And to realize that we were charged by the travel agents $15 per person!! Read the rest of this entry »

January 30. The day when the father of the nation, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, was assassinated.

I remember this day from the school. At the assembly, on this day, we would be reminded to follow the silent standing ceremony at around 10 or 10.30 am. The bell would ring at an odd time in midst of the class period, and we would all stand for one single minute in silence to commemorate the assassination of Gandhiji. We considered this break a warm welcome to the same routine of the teaching. In those days, I don’t remember having a break in the morning session.

In the high school, we had to study full history and autobiography of Gandhiji, “My Experiments with Truth”, in the form of English-II subject. Though it was the edited or the simplified version, we had to study his whole life. It was interesting at some points, but from the point of view of exams, it was not. I even once wondered, if Gandhiji was not there, we would have escaped this subject etc!

When I was in school, I remember watching the film Gandhi, on either August 15th, January 26th or October 2nd. But I remember the school book rather than the film. Read the rest of this entry »

These discussions started with me and my friends long back itself. Discussions regarding the beliefs of religion and the existence of God. In all those discussions, I used to agree with them, saying that, ya, I too not sure who is God, why I am following the prayers, etc etc. I could not give a satisfactory answer to myself that time. The same conflict used to happen with me and my mom too. Her extreme devotion and the rituals and prayers used to drive me mad sometimes. Its not that I hate these rituals or I consider them meaningless, but just that anything over-done is unacceptable to me.
Read the rest of this entry »

Hmmm.. the issue of why women behave like this and that, and why men don’t understand many things has been the talk from the time, both were born! Intelligent people blame it on the genes, but I guess its almost true. Its the way the men and women developed themselves over these ages. In some books, they have given the explanation that its due to the pre-historic age, in which man worked for living while women in the cave looked after the family. That gives in for most of the behavior, but it also provides an insight of how human beings evolve over the ages.

The human being itself is a big complicated topic to talk about. Lots of things like God, existence of universe, and also the human beings are all matters to talk about, but the most intricate will be the human mind. There has been lots of theories on artificial intelligence which states how does human brain work, the explanations of various senses, feelings, reasoning, movements, etc etc. Thats too much into science now.

In general, people keep saying women think by heart while men think using mind and are more practical.Does heart think?? Is there something like heart? Whats brain does then? Is mind and brain same? What do people mean by practicality? Coming in terms with reality? Is there something like living in dreams then? Why does people think that only women are weak and men are strong while its just the opposite always!

Don’t we have a subconscious mind like a sixth sense which governs all our decisions? Trained like all other senses to get adjusted to the reality? Which also kindles the feelings of hopes n dreams and wishes named as wishes of heart? Which creates the different feelings of joy, sorrow, pain, disappointment, need, wants, affection, attraction with the help of chemical substances called hormones? Aren’t the terms practicality an abstract term which suppresses our feelings?

And everywhere they keep saying, women are stupid and weak. Why do they love their mothers then? For being stupids and idiots or cos of the love n affection? Why do they feel lonely without girlfriends? Is it only cos of the physical attraction or cos they need someone who understands them? If women are not so practical, then how can they take care of the family and the household? They say women are weak and always takes things to heart, if they too were practical as the guys were, why would ever guys turn to gals for support? Women are indeed practical, but they do think with heart or their instinct, just as how they protected their children n themselves by identifying danger in the prehistoric age. Men do have feelings and emotions more than women, but unlike women, they are used to not to show them out and move on easily.
(So beware, even when a woman says ‘nothing’ that means there is really ‘something’ and she wants the man to understand it implicitly!! But men rarely realizes it, but with age n time, the successful men realize it soon!!!)
Women also can argue and they can reason you out, and they can lead you or the business too, but everywhere they accept the defeat so that their men can win.And cos they are brought up in that way by the time.

Its really pity that some men don’t give the respect to woman as much as she needs and instead keep hurting her…