Love marriage or Arranged marriage ?

     
                                                       Love marriage or Arranged marriage ?

 This has been a never ending debate since centuries. Ask a person about this, and he/she would strongly support any one of these two and would have lots of valid reasons for supporting that. Before sharing my views about this debate, let's discuss the different aspects of  love marriage and arranged marriage.

•  In love marriage, you marry someone whom you already love, and in arranged marriage you have to marry and then love someone whom your family members have chosen for you. And here comes the most crucial part. In some families, they give importance to the opinion and choice of the boy or girl, but in our country most of the families decide who would be their son-in-law or daughter-in-law, according to their choice, and this happens especially with girls. And it is really tough to love someone whom your parents have chosen for you as per their choice. It's true that the parents never want their son or daughter to be unhappy after marriage. They do everything according to their assessment, what they think to be right and appropriate. They choose a family which they think is compatible with theirs..a family where their daughter would be able to adjust easily, or the would-be daughter-in-law from that family would be able to adjust with their family. But compatibility between two families should never be a deciding factor about the compatibility of a man and a lady who are going to marry.

The Rendezvous

Aman lived in Srinagar in a joint family. His grandparents, uncles, their wives and children.. all living under the same roof, in a big wooden house near Dal lake. His father was running their family business of making shawls with his uncles. It was not that much profitable but they were happy with what they earned. Sometimes they had to reduce the expenses at the end of the month, but no one complained with that.

Aman used to play with his cousin sisters and brothers and lots of other friends. Everyday was like a carnival to him. Going to school in the morning, returning with friends after few hours, and then a whole day of playing until the evening set in.... Going to school was very tough in winter. It was time for snowfall, everything outside their house was white with ice, and the roads were blocked. Their school used to continue for few days with that, but finally it was time for winter vacation, Aman’s favourite time of the year. He and his friends threw snow balls at each other, used to fall while running over the snow, again got up smiling and started to play. One thing they all loved to do was skidding down the hills.. Some parts of Dal lake was frozen in winter and they used those as their skiing field. He loved to make new friends. He specially loved to make friends with the tourists who came to visit Kashmir, new friends everyday. His father did not like his habit and he warned him not to talk with strangers, but Aman was Aman, and no one could stop him from making new friends, even if he’s a total stranger. His parents were surprised when they used to go out with him. He talked with almost everyone along the road like he had known them for years. Sometimes he and his friends used to take a shikara ride with his uncle and pick flowers from other shikaras which were selling flowers and vegetables in the lake. 

Then everything started to change.

If you don't mind, Let me be myself ..

The train was standing at the station. It was 5:00 o'clock in the morning. People came running towards the train, checked their names on the reservation chart and were getting into the train. Megha searched for their bogie number, checked their names in the chart and took her seat with rest of the people of their group. She was travelling with her in-laws, her husband Aakash's relatives. Aakash's family had a house at their hometown. Megha, married for six months,had not seen that house. Everyone in his family had settled outside far away from their hometown and they were not willing to keep the house anymore. His family members were negotiating a deal to sell it, and it was almost finalised. So everyone planned a trip for a last visit to the house. This time Aakash's two uncles and their wives, three cousin brothers and one cousin sister were coming with them. His parents, grand parents and rest of the members of their family had already gone to that house.

 The train started to move. Everyone got busy with their activities. Aakash and his brothers took out their books and concentrated on that. His cousin sister placed the headphone of her i-pod in her ears and started listening to music. His aunts opened their magazines. His elder uncle took out the print-out of their e-ticket and started checking it. Megha looked out of the window. She had taken a book but she was not in a mood to read it and was feeling sleepy, as she had to get up early in the morning to catch the train.

"Achha, who is Megha Bose by the way? Is any Megha Bose travelling with us?" 

Aakash's elder uncle asked looking at their group.

My favourite android applications

I was using Nokia N-series mobile with symbian OS since last four years. I have recently switched to Samsung galaxy series with android OS. Android is total fun. I am enjoying the applications very much. Just wanted to share my experience with few android applications which are great for time pass. All these applications are free.

1. Angry birds :
It is a very popular application. There are four variants of the game that I have been using-

     Angry Birds                                                                                                  Angry Birds Seasons

 

     Angry Birds Rio                                                                                             Angry Birds Space 

 

Mother's Day

"Stop this nonsense, and don’t interfere in my life. Do I always have to tell you where I’m going? Let me do what I want. I know what I am doing very well, and I don’t want to mess up my life like yours."  Ruby yelled at Suhana and went out of the house.

Suhana was standing still like a statue with a vacant stare. Ruby, her daughter, was studying in class XI in a reputed college. Her mother Rama went to her and took her to the bedroom.

“Sit down dear. She is quite mature and she can take care of herself. Don’t worry. She’ll be fine.”Rama tried to console Suhana.

Suhana burst into tears. "Can you tell me mother what was my mistake? Did I ever want to bring her up like this? Did I sacrifice my whole life for this day?

Two shows.. opposite picture

  
                                 
                                       photo courtesy:Tribune India photo: Vinod Pundir 

Last week I watched a movie and a TV show. The name of movie was ‘Vicky Donor’,directed by Shoojit Sircar and the TV show was ‘Satmamev Jayate’- first episode, hosted by film star Amir Khan. The content, the message and the presentation- everything in between that movie and the TV show was different, but there is a strange connection in between them. The picture of our society shown in the movie and the TV show are just the opposite to each other.

Searching for Identity

Last week, I went to Darjeeling with family. No need to mention anything more about Darjeeling. It's a great colonial town made by British government, the signs of which can be seen today also. We hired a cab for local sight seeing. The cab driver was gorkha. First, he started to behave badly with us, and stopped the car even before going uphill to the peace pagoda and told us to walk upto the pagoda. It was a long walk uphill, and other vehicles were going upwards to a certain point about 500 meters from where we were standing. So we got into the car and requested him to move further upto that point. He said that if you have come to hills, then you must have to walk. But we remained silent as he was moving the car forwards. He rode to the hill and we visited peace pagoda.

Why fake illness ?

I hate people faking illness for taking advantages. An employee faking it for not going to the office and getting false medical certificate paying money ; an wife, a daughter-in-law or a mother-in-law faking it for not doing household work and let other people at home do it; a husband faking it for not going out with his wife and watch a cricket match..a student faking it for not doing homework..a person faking it to avoid going to a get-together..another person faking it for drawing attention and so on.... I do not like them and all those people who fake illness for even the most trivial cause. 

I would like to tell those people-- only for once, ask a person who has been really suffering from major illness, what illness really is, before faking it again next time. 

That person who has been receiving Cancer-chemotherapy for years, that person who's been taking Methotrexate for Psoriasis, that person who's been taking anti-epileptic drugs or anti-diabetic drugs, that person who's been fighting with H.I.V. with medicines and all those people who have to take regular medications to get relieved from symptoms of chronic diseases-- only they understand how much painful an illness is. 

They cannot stop taking medication or else their disease will recur, and also they suffer from side-effects of those medicines. Very few people give-in, rest of them are fighting, hats off to them. I respect those people who are fighting with serious illnesses. If you do not want to do something, then discuss it with that person who is concerned, you'll find a way out.. But please do not fake illness..illness is very painful..

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Evolution of reading and writing

Reading and writing has been the nature of mankind from the very ancient period. Earlier human beings living in jungles, and fighting with wild animals each and every moment for survival, invented symbols for expressing their emotions. They started writing on cave walls. Those  writings were mostly paintings depicting their day-to-day life story and sometimes nature’s events. After this, with civilisation, man’s thirst for knowledge increased, they wanted to study & communicate with others more precisely. Several forms of writing material were invented. Man started writing on stone tablets, tortoise shells,metal plates, small pieces made of clay, wooden panels using sharp objects like stone, wood or bone as stylus. These writing were used for reading after preparation. Egyptian colourful hieroglyphs were carved in stone for glorified display dedicated to royalty and deities.  

Tortoise shell writing

Hieroglyphs

Stone tablet inscription

source: flickr.com 

History.. our glorious past

I recently went through a very interesting article about Emperor Ashoka of the Mauryan dynasty in a newspaper. People at that time were totally unaware of the great achievements of the most powerful king of Indian history up to eighteenth century in spite of seeing the great creations made by him around us. James Prinsep, a British historian decoded the edicts of Asoka and we all came to know about the great emperor and his empire. This was included in our history book and we used to study about him in school. 

That is what history is,very interesting. It's not something new. Everything around us is part of a history, only we cannot understand or sometimes do not want to know its history. The religious places, the monuments and towers, the buildings and the palaces, the cave paintings and everything that we can see were made by people who are part of ancient, medieval and modern history and our glorious past. 

In spite of studying in science stream, I love history. I like reading about the greatest discoveries of history made by great people who tried to search for something different rather than live the life of a common man. 

But this was not the same when I was in my school. I used to hate history the most in my school life. We had history as a compulsory subject up to 10th standard. And after studying rest of the subjects, it was very painful to memorise the names of the so many kings & emperors throughout the world, the years of their reigns, the boundary of their empire, the years of all the battles fought between them and the date & years of so many other things. I sighed in great relief when I did not have to study history in my +2 standard. 

But now I feel that the way we have to study history in school is not that much scientific and psychological for the young brains studying it. History as a subject in school can be made more interesting. Emphasis can be given more on the subject and content of history rather that the dates, years and other numerical data. No one memorises these after passing history but we are so busy in memorising datas in school life that we cannot concentrate on the subjective contents of history. 

Better we know about the name of the kings & emperors and their achievements, the stages of modern history and the important changeovers & revolutions-- that we can remember even after passing the subject. What is the utility of studying something in rigorous way if we do not remember that afterwards? Commit to memory and vomit that on paper and do not remember thereafter-- this should not go on.

 We are what we are only because of something that is our past i.e. part of our history and we have to proceed towards our future with that. We will not make mistake in our future only if we can remember the mistakes we made in our past and their consequences. We should always keep that in mind.

Mobile revolution

When we were kids, at that time there were landlines telephones in only few houses. First it came with rotary dialler, and we kids had great difficulty in dialling a number. Elder members would dial a number, and we were so much excited to say "hello" and listen to the voice of our dear ones coming over the telephone. Each and every time it rang in the nostalgic cring-cring sound, we ran out to receive the call. 

Image courtesy:  http://bethgeduld.files.wordpress.com

We grew up, and telephones also grew up. New models with number buttons came to the market, and rotary dialler phones became history. Almost every home in our locality got landline connections. 

At that time we used to receive lots of amazing calls, especially from wrong numbers and the kids. It became so easy to dial a number, that the kids used to dial random numbers,and sometimes incidentally the numbers were real telephone numbers. I remember, we used to receive a call, and listen a sweet "hello". The kids used to chat over the phone and we enjoyed this sweet conversation.

After that cellphones came into Indian market. It was very costly then and incoming calls were also charged. Very few people used to buy cellphones, and it became a status-symbol to own a cellphone. I remember one uncle in our neighbourhood bought a cellphone, and each time he had an incoming call, he used to come to the ground in front of his home and talk loudly,may be also because the signal strength was very weak at that time. 

I got admission to my college in the city and had to leave my hometown. Even at that time, mobile phones were not so much widespread like today. Incoming calls were free but outgoing call rate was still high. I stayed at our college hostel, and only a few people there had mobile phones. We used to call home from P.C.O. & at other times it was a common thing to borrow mobile phone from roommates or friends to receive call from home.

In the first month of our college life, only one friend of us had mobile phone. It makes us laugh today when we friends meet that how we used to schedule our incoming calls to her mobile. Our parents were anxious because we were all alone in the new city, so we arranged a fair system. It was like 6 p.m. for me, 6:30 p.m. for anu, 7 p.m. for runu. If any of our parents would give a missed call to her mobile, she used to understand that they wanted to talk to their daughter, and she used to give the phone to that girl, and after few minutes her parents used to call again. Sometimes obviously she used to get irritated, but at that time, we were left with no option and we had to adjust.

 Soon we all bought mobile phones. There were three to four mobile brands in the market, and 2 mobile network providers. All phones were having black icons on the screen with either white or blue, and sometimes yellow background. It were priced between 5000- 9000 INR. We were very happy in composing and downloading ringtones, sending picture messages and SMS. I had only one game in my mobile-snakes, and i was so happy to play it in my mobile, and today, you will find thousands of mobile games.

 Really, in last 8 years mobile phones have evolved a lot. first, phones with colour screens and new operating systems, then new network provider companies, has brought together a new era of mobile network. Call rates started to reduce.. and now when you go to any store to buy a mobile, you will hear android, blackberry, i-phone, symbian, windows and so on... what you cannot do with a mobile now? you can check your location & search for navigation, listen to music, watch movies and video streaming, update status in social networking sites, check e-mails, book tickets online for train-bus-movies-theatres, read e-books from online bookstores, and yes, you can make a call also.. :-)

Image courtesy: Flickr

                                           

Home Sweet Home

 I am coming to my hometown after quiet a long time. For all those people like me who have to stay away from their home for study or job, it’s always so much happiness to come back to your own home. 

 

I have my  train from Howrah. I have reached Howrah one hour before departure of the train. So I have to wait. I have nothing to do now and I really love watching people around me, so I have started doing that. You go to Howrah station at any time of the day, and any day of the week, it’s always the same. Howrah station is always so busy,so crowded and still so vibrant. People are coming like waves of a sea, and running towards different platforms.  It seems that the whole India has come to a station.