PROFILE IN COURAGE- BABAR ALI

Very often we come across people and news about people that inspires us.
Sometime it happens that the ideas of these people also make us feel insignificant and sometimes stupid .We think that we always wanted to do this but never could.
Babar Ali is one such teacher and a 16 (yes it is 16)year old head master in Murshidabad district of West Bengal.
Himself from a very poor family , he started teaching the poor and deprived children of his village who could not travel 16 kms. that he travels to reach his own school.
From the age of 12 , he started teaching his very own age group and peers, in the way that he was taught and by making some improvements in the methodology.
Rest of the story you can read on the net by searching"Babar Ali School."
What is important is that it is something you and me thought of doing all this time but did not do it.
Probably because I was afraid of missing the world go past while I served in wilderness.
It is such a simple idea- that any of us could have carried on.
...however I'm happy a teenager with everything stacked up against him has taught me that the simplest of the ideas have the power to become most efficient .
Thank You Babar!

I wandered lonely as a cloud....

At the start of the last winters , circumstances conspired in such a way that I was once again came across some 'daffodils'.
It unfolded in a particular form of lifestyle (that I will not name- so that people do not develop a prejudice to it because of the prejudice they may have towards me).
However this particular form helped me another step in trying to tie up the ends of my HOLISTIC beliefs.
I have always believed that for a person everything that he thinks and does is linked to the outcome of his daily and even immediate happenings.
What he thinks when he gets up and eats for breakfast definitely has link to his performance during the day.
Sorry, I made a mistake - with 2 ladies at home I have to be politically correct and say HER instead of HIS.
Our sudden attack of sinusitis or migraine is definitely linked to what we ate in the morning, which side of the bed that we got up from, how we cringed at the site of that gruesome murder reported in the paper... this all this ends up on our desk for problem solving at 11:00.
Then again the small signals that we ignore in our daily life are the ones that make up our final 'WHOLE' .
Being the son of a dexterous homoeopath- I was introduced to the various human body constitutions , quite early in life - I learnt how just one medicine can treat the person of various ailments that one may not even know that existed.
It was so shocking to learn that my destiny was taking me to work in an environment (physical) which would actually treat my chronic cold . The salty air , I was told by my father was actually the medicine for my cold.
It happened!!!
Now to be back to the experiment that I mentioned in the beginning.
This skill or exercise that I learnt- taught me to treat the 2 sides of the coin 'just the same'(Kipling again). However this was not in the philosophical sense- not those big talks of treating good and bad times equal etc.etc.
This was actually about treating the physically opposed things as same. Painful and good sensations were to be treated equal in actual physical and metaphysical sense.
Then I thought that if this were true then I must try out this theory immediately .
Hence the idea came to try out the opposite in the winter season that was ensuing.
Starting from taking bath in cold water and sleeping with the same type of covering as in summers I tried out the theory.
I would like to emphasize that this was not to show off and the element of 'tolerating' the cold was not to be there.
The results surprised me. Not only I was comfortable in Dehradun , in a T-shirt in the month of December - my famous 45 year old cold also kept away from me. The nagging headache that I used to have after exposure to low temperatures was missing.

Now that the summers are looking up here in Jaipur- I'm still comfortable in the same clothes and 'treating' the environment just the same.
I know Girish is laughing- since he's been in a T-shirt for last 40 years and teasing me.

HAPPY HOLI!!!

THE ANNUAL FESTIVAL

No I'm not talking about Holi or BARAWAFAT- was referring to the presentation of the Union Budget.
Not only does it give a perpetual topic to the "aam" gentleman "aadmi" of the country who decide everything from the India cricket team to the Indian Foreign Policy (except the mundane matters of bringing up the family). It give the Print-Media to fill up the unending pages of the ONE RUPEE newspaper (that costs Rs.12 to print).
It also gives an opportunity for the electronic media to fill those unforgiving minutes (as Kipling said) and invite tuppenny brokers, economists and politicians to their channel.
So strong is the attraction and presence of this annual festival that even my hair dresser asks if he should invest now or after the budget.
In fact a close friend from Dehradun asked the same question yesterday.
Today after the budget was nice and properly out and printed- people were not lauding the extra tax savings that the FM gave them- they were lamenting the rise of fuel prices by Rs 2.76.
Even my father-in -law mourned on the 4800 rupee rise of the vehicle that he's buying.
Did anyone hear a word when everyone's salary's were rising 40% after the 6th pay commission.
But then a person like me who's never paid a paisa as income tax has no right to comment.

However being a strongly democratic country (especially in terms of asserting our rights)- guess it is alright to celebrate this secular festival in times when wishing someone a Happy Holi becomes a risky considering the husband and wife may hail from different beliefs and it may be politically incorrect ( and hazardous) to do so.