In India Superstition breeds psychopaths, in US social abandonment breeds psychopaths.
Who is a Psychopath?
According to wiki "Psychopathy is a personality disorder characterized by an abnormal lack of empathy combined with strongly amoral conduct, masked by an ability to appear outwardly normal".
I have never known one in my life, but i am sure a few people i know probably are. Who knows? A recent news article on a fakir killing and drinking the blood from a toddler in India made me sit up and say "hey India is full of superstitious psychopaths" . This is outrageous. Education is the problem in India. Although education has infiltrated into small villages, yet we have not yet been able to eradicate one epidemic "Superstition" it does not transfer though bodily contact, but when you simple open your mouth for gibberish.Even if you do not believe in something, eventually you will because your mom believes in it, your mother in law believes in it... and then one day you do not want to take a chance. Of course this is no where close to what the fakir did... but then small beliefs breeds bigger ones eventually. All said and done, that FAKIR and his wife should be killed and not just given life imprisonment...or wait maybe, they should be tortured for a long time before they are killed. Again, who am i to judge... but that was a crooked, mean and horrid thing to do...
The problem in US is completely different. Social attachments with family and friends is not that strong. Loneliness, parental discord, emotional trauma at an early age... i am not saying all these because they are scientifically proven, these are my findings. I live in the US. Being alone all day long makes me go mad. Imagine the plight of millions of people, who dont have any social set up and have lived here for eternity.
Worst part is these people appear so normal outside that you can never say what they are. Thats why they say never trust strangers.
Sunday, July 25, 2010
Saturday, July 24, 2010
Having a child
Having a child? Are you nervous? Are you anxious ? Well, most have mixed feelings like me.
Till you have it you will never know what having a child can do to your life. Before you have child you probably feel, its going to change your life for the worse. I had the same feelings. I remember writing mails to my friend saying, i can never realize my dreams i can never do things i want to do. But you know what, once Shaayan was born, he just changed my life and for the better. I have never been loved before the way he loves me. In fact simply writing this blog, i am finding it extremely difficult to pen down my feelings. Its a feeling that can never be described. Its just a feeling you carry in your arms.
Well to start with when he was born I was very disappointed. I never knew little babies only sleep and poop and sleep more and poop more... there is nothing more to them. Worst of all they sleep through the day and remain awake through the night! I was shocked... I thought i will be able to play with him. I thought he would crawl and giggle and be silly. But he just slept!!! This was not my idea of a baby. I have seen babies in my life, all cute ones who would respond to you and laugh and make cute faces. Never seen a baby like Shaayan. I had to talk in whispers because my mother said, we should let the sleeping baby sleep. Imagine my situation dim lights through the day, talking in whispers. No i was not enjoying this. But soon Shaayan turned a month old and he started sleeping at night and being awake in the morning. Life was getting better.
Today he is the handsomest dude who loves me and 'does not like me' unconditionally. He is only the who can tell me "I dont like you" and still deserve a huge hug from me. He drives me mad and he makes me laugh... he is full on in - house entertainment. He accompanies me to the gym, quietly entertaining himself while i am busy losing weight, he does yoga with me, he plays by himself when i feel under the weather. Best part is he tries to protect me from monsters!!! What more can i want? I feel safe and i feel loved when he is around me. If i scold him, he will come crying to me, If his dad scolds him, he will still come crying to me. How sweet is that!
When he is naughty I can give him a time out after counting 3. He comes to me in the morning with a big bright sunshine "GOOD MORNING MAMMA" so even if i have slept for just 5 hours I wake up and play with him ( try to sleep another time ;-) )
All said and done, this guy drives me mad when he is stubborn, but really who am i to complain. If i rewind, i ll see my mothers horrifying experience raising two kids. If she said A, I would do B. If she said B, I would do A. This was me and this is me even today. If my child is following my footsteps I'd be very worried, but i know i have no choice.
I know every parent loves his/her child and feels they are the best. But thats what parents are... we are emotional fools when it comes to our children. We give them in numerable time outs and after every time out we hug them and kiss them, saying "Its OK, just don't do it next time"
Shaayan is going to school soon, and being the extrovert he is I am sure he will make lots of friends. I just hope going forward he makes a good number of right friends. The kind that I have, the kind you can trust.
He is turning 3 soon. Time flies!!!
Till you have it you will never know what having a child can do to your life. Before you have child you probably feel, its going to change your life for the worse. I had the same feelings. I remember writing mails to my friend saying, i can never realize my dreams i can never do things i want to do. But you know what, once Shaayan was born, he just changed my life and for the better. I have never been loved before the way he loves me. In fact simply writing this blog, i am finding it extremely difficult to pen down my feelings. Its a feeling that can never be described. Its just a feeling you carry in your arms.
Well to start with when he was born I was very disappointed. I never knew little babies only sleep and poop and sleep more and poop more... there is nothing more to them. Worst of all they sleep through the day and remain awake through the night! I was shocked... I thought i will be able to play with him. I thought he would crawl and giggle and be silly. But he just slept!!! This was not my idea of a baby. I have seen babies in my life, all cute ones who would respond to you and laugh and make cute faces. Never seen a baby like Shaayan. I had to talk in whispers because my mother said, we should let the sleeping baby sleep. Imagine my situation dim lights through the day, talking in whispers. No i was not enjoying this. But soon Shaayan turned a month old and he started sleeping at night and being awake in the morning. Life was getting better.
Today he is the handsomest dude who loves me and 'does not like me' unconditionally. He is only the who can tell me "I dont like you" and still deserve a huge hug from me. He drives me mad and he makes me laugh... he is full on in - house entertainment. He accompanies me to the gym, quietly entertaining himself while i am busy losing weight, he does yoga with me, he plays by himself when i feel under the weather. Best part is he tries to protect me from monsters!!! What more can i want? I feel safe and i feel loved when he is around me. If i scold him, he will come crying to me, If his dad scolds him, he will still come crying to me. How sweet is that!
When he is naughty I can give him a time out after counting 3. He comes to me in the morning with a big bright sunshine "GOOD MORNING MAMMA" so even if i have slept for just 5 hours I wake up and play with him ( try to sleep another time ;-) )
All said and done, this guy drives me mad when he is stubborn, but really who am i to complain. If i rewind, i ll see my mothers horrifying experience raising two kids. If she said A, I would do B. If she said B, I would do A. This was me and this is me even today. If my child is following my footsteps I'd be very worried, but i know i have no choice.
I know every parent loves his/her child and feels they are the best. But thats what parents are... we are emotional fools when it comes to our children. We give them in numerable time outs and after every time out we hug them and kiss them, saying "Its OK, just don't do it next time"
Shaayan is going to school soon, and being the extrovert he is I am sure he will make lots of friends. I just hope going forward he makes a good number of right friends. The kind that I have, the kind you can trust.
He is turning 3 soon. Time flies!!!
Housewives, prostitutes, beggars clubbed in Census
All this began with Renu's death. Finally someone believes that the services we render as housewives are invaluable and cannot be replicated.
Renu, wife of Arun Aggarwal died in a road accident recently. Arun Aggarwal was offered a compensation of about 2.4 lakhs INR on the grounds that Renu was not working and did not offer economical support to the family. I do not see why our Indian bureaucrats (also our men) do not see the value that we offer. A working man works from 9-6 or say till 8 pm... we work round the clock, whether we work outside or not we are always working at home. A housewife cares for the husband, the kids, the household chores. The very fact that she stays at home and provided support to the kids, nurturing their growth so that the kids stand on their own feet is good enough reason to make sure that housewives are considered important.
Housewives are clubbed into the same category as prostitutes and beggars, who are said to indulge in not so economically productive activities. First of all with due respect to everyone, we should consider each and every entity as a separate entity. A housewife is different from a prostitute and a prostitute is diff from a beggar. Who are economically productive and who are not we cannot say, everyone is doing something for their family. I am not here fighting for anyone else other than housewives, cos i am one and i know what it is to be one.
I am grateful to the supreme court for taking up this issue. The undying love for the family, the sacrifice by the wife and the mom has finally been recognized. These things cannot be quantified in rupees. Who will take care of Arun Aggarwals kids now? Who will shower them with love and nurture them ? I know, no amount of money can compensate for the loss of a wife and a mother. But at least do not insult the family by giving them 2.4 lakhs.
We may not earn money...but without our support and sacrifice millions of men around the world would not have been able to achieve what they want to. It is time men sit up and recognize this fact and ensure a lifetime of joy for their family.
Thursday, July 8, 2010
Monsterous Experience with Monster Movers Inc
We moved from Columbus, Ohio to Richmond, Virginia more than a year back and had one of the most horrifying experiences of my life with the movers . Let me first accept that this was our first big move in the US and therefore a great learning. You would ask me why am i writing this a year later? I'd say...its one experience i wanted to share with everyone...and since i am writing my blog now...what can be a better time??
We signed up with Monster Mover after taking in atleast 10 quotes to ascertain the best mover based on price. We also looked up these movers on the business bureau like BBB ( better business bureau). These cons had used monster to sound like another mover "Monster Movers" with an extra 's'. i bought the services of these a**holes later and paid them an initial signing amount of $ 175. Somehow after paying up the signing amount we had a feeling of unrest within ourselves and were not sure what it was that was bothering us. Just out of the blue i rechecked on bbb.org with their telephone number and found that MONSTER MOVER had a rating of 'F' and not 'A' that Monster Movers had. Although i was skeptical about going ahead with these guys we decided to go ahead thinking that the F rating was probably for small errors in their business practice. We were also under the impression that since this company was recognised in bbb.org it would not be an illegal company. So after several calls to their office we fixed a pick up date and time, which was saturday the 7th of March between 2-4 pm. We waited and we waited after packing up everything on our own, but there was no sign of the truck and foolishly enough we did not take the drivers number. There was no way we could communicate with the movers as their corporate office is closed of saturday and sunday. We were in a total fix. Our flight tickets to Richmond was booked for 8th March and it was imperative that we send our stuff before that. To our dismay it was 9 pm and they were still not there. Finally we decided to have our friends help us out in our absence with the move with a new moving company. At 11:30 pm as we were having dinner at a friends place, the driver called us. He said he was 15 minutes away from our apartment and should be there shortly. Guess what time they reached our apartment?? It was not before 2 am, much to our chagrin. Our son could not sleep a wink that night. They packed and billed us for another $700 extra over an above the initial estimate. Anyways we paid what we had to and finally slept at 4 am, thinking that the worst is over. How would we know that the worst is yet to come.
Within a few days we called up the moving company and gave them our new address. That is when they informed us that our stuff will not reach us on 16th March as per the bill of laden (as they call it). Over the next 3 weeks we repeated called them to confirm the date of delivery, but they kept postponing the matter giving us excuses like the truck broke down etc etc. We were also told that our inventory was in New Jersey in a storage. However in course of time we realised ( after extensive research) that this company had just one truck operating out of CA. After a few days Natalie Perry (head of customer service, Monster Mover aka North American movers) became extremely rude in her dealings with us and at one point hung up during a call. This came as a rude shock to us and we started researching on North American movers on the net. So far we did not read anything bad about Monster, but North American movers came across as a notorious Moving Company known for harrassing customers. In some cases we also read that they refused to deliver the goods to them. This is when we started contemplating other legal actions against the company. After learning about North American movers, my wife decided to call them the next day to check if they come up with another reason to not deliver our stuff. Much to our surprise they told her that the truck has left and should reach us by the weekend. Surprisingly on friday, Natalie called us up to leave the drivers phone number. We still cannot believe our luck that we finally managed to get everything back and almost intact after exactly a months wait from pick up date.
Our learning from this episode is, always go with a brand name and research 10,000 times before you commit to something as big as this
We signed up with Monster Mover after taking in atleast 10 quotes to ascertain the best mover based on price. We also looked up these movers on the business bureau like BBB ( better business bureau). These cons had used monster to sound like another mover "Monster Movers" with an extra 's'. i bought the services of these a**holes later and paid them an initial signing amount of $ 175. Somehow after paying up the signing amount we had a feeling of unrest within ourselves and were not sure what it was that was bothering us. Just out of the blue i rechecked on bbb.org with their telephone number and found that MONSTER MOVER had a rating of 'F' and not 'A' that Monster Movers had. Although i was skeptical about going ahead with these guys we decided to go ahead thinking that the F rating was probably for small errors in their business practice. We were also under the impression that since this company was recognised in bbb.org it would not be an illegal company. So after several calls to their office we fixed a pick up date and time, which was saturday the 7th of March between 2-4 pm. We waited and we waited after packing up everything on our own, but there was no sign of the truck and foolishly enough we did not take the drivers number. There was no way we could communicate with the movers as their corporate office is closed of saturday and sunday. We were in a total fix. Our flight tickets to Richmond was booked for 8th March and it was imperative that we send our stuff before that. To our dismay it was 9 pm and they were still not there. Finally we decided to have our friends help us out in our absence with the move with a new moving company. At 11:30 pm as we were having dinner at a friends place, the driver called us. He said he was 15 minutes away from our apartment and should be there shortly. Guess what time they reached our apartment?? It was not before 2 am, much to our chagrin. Our son could not sleep a wink that night. They packed and billed us for another $700 extra over an above the initial estimate. Anyways we paid what we had to and finally slept at 4 am, thinking that the worst is over. How would we know that the worst is yet to come.
Within a few days we called up the moving company and gave them our new address. That is when they informed us that our stuff will not reach us on 16th March as per the bill of laden (as they call it). Over the next 3 weeks we repeated called them to confirm the date of delivery, but they kept postponing the matter giving us excuses like the truck broke down etc etc. We were also told that our inventory was in New Jersey in a storage. However in course of time we realised ( after extensive research) that this company had just one truck operating out of CA. After a few days Natalie Perry (head of customer service, Monster Mover aka North American movers) became extremely rude in her dealings with us and at one point hung up during a call. This came as a rude shock to us and we started researching on North American movers on the net. So far we did not read anything bad about Monster, but North American movers came across as a notorious Moving Company known for harrassing customers. In some cases we also read that they refused to deliver the goods to them. This is when we started contemplating other legal actions against the company. After learning about North American movers, my wife decided to call them the next day to check if they come up with another reason to not deliver our stuff. Much to our surprise they told her that the truck has left and should reach us by the weekend. Surprisingly on friday, Natalie called us up to leave the drivers phone number. We still cannot believe our luck that we finally managed to get everything back and almost intact after exactly a months wait from pick up date.
Our learning from this episode is, always go with a brand name and research 10,000 times before you commit to something as big as this
I do not like "I hate Luv Storys"
Oh come on ...from what angle does the movie make sense... they tried to create a differentiation... but the movie was the same old gheesa peeta... love story and to top it all the lead pair cant act to save their life...
Imran and Sonam should think about taking joint lessons in acting... just because your are beautiful will not help you sail through this industry... all said and done... the movie has some really good songs... and the lead pair look yummy... especially imran... just love his get up, hair style everything... ( except his acting ). As far as Sonam Kapoor is concerned i'd like to give her another chance... Will watch Aisha and then decide her fate... Imran has disappointed me in Kidnap and Luck ( which i couldnt watch for more than 10 mins ).
That way Ranbir and Deepika are doing much better. Point to be noted is that they all started their career almost at the same time... R and D's career took off and I and S are still trying to make a point. Maybe Imran should consider getting married. His lady luck might come to his rescue as off now baby you have a long way to go before you can even think about replicating your Mamu's success
Imran and Sonam should think about taking joint lessons in acting... just because your are beautiful will not help you sail through this industry... all said and done... the movie has some really good songs... and the lead pair look yummy... especially imran... just love his get up, hair style everything... ( except his acting ). As far as Sonam Kapoor is concerned i'd like to give her another chance... Will watch Aisha and then decide her fate... Imran has disappointed me in Kidnap and Luck ( which i couldnt watch for more than 10 mins ).
That way Ranbir and Deepika are doing much better. Point to be noted is that they all started their career almost at the same time... R and D's career took off and I and S are still trying to make a point. Maybe Imran should consider getting married. His lady luck might come to his rescue as off now baby you have a long way to go before you can even think about replicating your Mamu's success
Viveka Babajee's untimely demise
The day i read about her untimely demise...all i could think off was what could have set her off so bad that she had no way other than killing herself. Is she a coward? I dont think so... it takes a lot from a person to take such a decision. Lets not judge Viveka...she did what she thought was right for that moment.
I can truly imagine her plight. She just needed someone to talk to, Someone to share her life (the good, bad and ugly) with. She just needed a shoulder to cry on. A friend to laugh with. She had non of what is needed to survive in this world. That makes me think. Money can only get you that far. Beyond that point Boy YOU NEED SOMEONE!. Being alone is the saddest thing that can happen to a person like Viveka... from what i read she was a vivacious and enthusiastic lady. She just needed company. Is it that difficult to have someone in your life?
See its a simple case. For example if you flunk your exams, but back home you know your parents will encourage you to do better in life, and they will support you. You will always feel motivated to do better. But if you fear rejection you will never get back to them. Long time back when i was 13, i remember my brothers friend committed suicide from jumping off a bridge. I still remember that till date. He was a very good student, but the pressure to perform better just got the better off him and soon he could not take it anymore. He died a day before his math board exam. Some trigger went off within him and he had to take that decision.
It is exactly what happened to Viveka, or Nafisa Joseph. Sometimes to get to a certain level you need to give up a lot of things. But when you get there, there is nobody to share your joy with. People around you become selfish and befriend you because, your company benefits them in more ways than one.
Feeling of depression is fierce. A very normal and fun loving person changes completely.
I can truly imagine her plight. She just needed someone to talk to, Someone to share her life (the good, bad and ugly) with. She just needed a shoulder to cry on. A friend to laugh with. She had non of what is needed to survive in this world. That makes me think. Money can only get you that far. Beyond that point Boy YOU NEED SOMEONE!. Being alone is the saddest thing that can happen to a person like Viveka... from what i read she was a vivacious and enthusiastic lady. She just needed company. Is it that difficult to have someone in your life?
See its a simple case. For example if you flunk your exams, but back home you know your parents will encourage you to do better in life, and they will support you. You will always feel motivated to do better. But if you fear rejection you will never get back to them. Long time back when i was 13, i remember my brothers friend committed suicide from jumping off a bridge. I still remember that till date. He was a very good student, but the pressure to perform better just got the better off him and soon he could not take it anymore. He died a day before his math board exam. Some trigger went off within him and he had to take that decision.
It is exactly what happened to Viveka, or Nafisa Joseph. Sometimes to get to a certain level you need to give up a lot of things. But when you get there, there is nobody to share your joy with. People around you become selfish and befriend you because, your company benefits them in more ways than one.
Feeling of depression is fierce. A very normal and fun loving person changes completely.
Monday, July 5, 2010
Abolish Homeopathy??!!!
The recent Times of India article "Will Homeopathy Survive" brings out some serious questions about the survival of alternative medicine.
Homeopathy according to me and i am sure according to a lot of people has been the most safe and effective way to cure a lot of illnesses. You name it, Cough, Cold, Tummy Trouble, Skin Disease anything! This form of medicine takes into account not only the physical but psychological state of mind before prescribing any med. I still do not understand why doctors in UK would want to do away with this form of medicine. I for one, have depended on homeopathy for may be eternity now. It is a slow but sure way of curing any illness and the best part is it doesnt have any side effects. I think the only problem here is that homeopathy has not been able to prove itself in the scientific field. Research in this field has not been able to satisfactorily determine the cause of slow but steady cure of illnesses. Therefore it is deemed useless and wasted. I would say researchers please get me and test on me...I am one person on whom this form of medicine has had drastic positive effects.
For now that is all i have to write.
Please share your comments and lets see how many support homeopathy. And if anyone has had any bad side effects, please share that too.
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