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