Flower Fest - R for Rose

I made my debut at flower fest with Pansies and Petunias. I do not know of any flower names that start with Q, but I am going back for R.

I posted this one long time back on my travel blog


But what can one about a rose?
A rose is a rose is a rose ...

Then there are Ranunculus.


Ranunculus, pronounced as ran-UN-kew-lus, is a latin word meaning "little frog". It has its origins in the middle east, hence it is also called as Turban Butercup.

Ranunculus belong to the Buttercup family (Ranunculaceae) and is the cultured cousin of the Marsh Marigold.

It has bright, rounded flowers atop dense green parsley-like foliage. It comes in a wonderful array of colors, with shades of red, purple, yellow, white, pink, and orange. You can even find copper ranunculus flowers and also ranunculus flowers with dark and yellow circles

Yaadei.n (ek baar phir)

Memories -

An endless flow
Like water in the rivers
Waves of thoughts
Ripples of faded pictures

Like a cloud in the hills
A wisp of smoke that lingers
Drifts away on closing the palms
Floats from between the fingers

Yaadei.n -

Jaise ek nadi ka paani
Jaldhaaraa bahati anant si
Khayaalaat ki chanchal laharei.n
Dhundhle drishyo.n ki ek tarang si

Parvato.n mei.n Thahre baadal
Dhuei.n ki lakir se
Ungliyo.n se fisal jaate hai.n
Band hatheli ke beech se

Not-so-Great Expectations

Do not expect anything from anyone - this is a golden rule that I have followed for many years now. It saves one from a lot of pain and hurt sentiments. You expect something from other people - and when they fail to fulfil it, intentionally or unintentionally, you get hurt. No amount of words or self-consolation can soothe the pain that you have thus inflicted upon yourself. So, the best possible way is not to have expectations of anyone else.

Keeping this in mind, I have not kept any expectations when providing help to people, even though going out of my way at times. Many of them were very friendly while they were in the need of my help. As their need reduced and finally ended, so did the amiability. I felt good earlier, and now I feel sad, about the state of things.
This is undoubtedly a very natural process. With the fast-paced lifestyles and ambitious gaols, people do not have much time to socialize without a purpose. Since I realize this, my state of mind causes me to seek an answer.

Am I expecting something that I consciously do not realize?
What was it that I felt happy about earlier? Was it the peace of mind induced by a harmonious existence with your fellow beings and camaraderie brought about by exchange of friendly banter? Was it the feeling of confidence or self-importance arising from "being able" to help?
And what makes me unhappy now? Is it the loss of camaraderie [can perhaps be viewed as a limited case of a "broken relationship"?] Is it a feeling of having been manipulated?

Bringing these thoughts from the sub-conscious to the conscious mind was not an easy task. It was still difficult to put them in words. And it is going to be further difficult, if not impossible, to find the right answer.

Saaye Mei.n Dhoop - I

It was almost two months back that I expressed my intention to share some excerpts from Dushyant Kumar's ghazal collection 'Saaye Mei.n Dhoop'. Well, better late than never :-)

Here are some of the 'ashaar' I liked ...

Lafz ehsaas se chhaane lage, ye to had hai
Lafz mane bhi chhupaane lage, ye to had hai

Aap diivar giraane ke liya aaye the
Aap diivar uthaane lage, ye to had hai

Khamoshi shor se sunte the ki ghabraati hai
Khamoshi shor machaane lage, ye to had hai

*** *** ***
Sar pe dhoop aayee to darakht ban gaya mai.n
Teri zindagi mei.n aksar mai.n koii wajah raha hoo.n

Kabhi dil mei.n aarzoo sa, kabhi mu.nh mei.n baddua sa
Mujhe jis tarah bhi chaahaa, mai.n us tarah raha hoo.n

*** *** ***
Rehnumaao.n ki adaao.n pe fida hai duniya
Is bahakti huii duniya ko sambhaalo yaaro.n

Kaise aakaash mei.n soorakh nahi.n ho sakta
Ek patthar to tabiyat se uchhaalo yaaro.n

*** *** ***

Well, I doubt that someone is ever going to put them to soft music, and make an album out of these. The sentiments expressed in his words are too stark. They are the words of the common man - who has suffered the sad realities of life, who is pained by the naked truth, yet aspires to bring about a change in the indifferent society. I am really not too aware of the life and times of the great poet, or his political affiliations; but I could sense a distinct socialist inclination here.
It was much later that my hunch about his socialist ideology was confirmed by my father, who was familiar with the poet's name and career, but he did not share my enthusiasm about his poetry - perhaps because he is aware of the social and political scene that existed then, while I am not. I am glad that I "found" Dushyant Kumar through his poetry, his words. And one of the first lines written by him that I read, remain amongst my most favorite poems...

Geet gaakar chetna ko var diya maine
Aa.nso.n ke dard ke aadar diya maine
Preet meri aasthaa ki bhookh thi, sahkar,
Zindagi ka chitra poora kar diya maine.

One-liners

A collection of one-liners I liked a lot!

• Back Up My Hard Drive? I Can't Find The Reverse Switch!
• Nothing is fool-proof to a sufficiently talented fool.
• Madness takes its toll. Please have exact change.
• A conclusion is simply the place where you got tired of thinking.
• Diplomacy - the art of letting someone have your way.
• If things get any worse, I'll have to ask you to stop helping me.
• Tell a man that there are 400 billion stars and he'll believe you. Tell him that a bench has wet paint, and he has to touch it.
• No one is paying attention to you until you make a mistake.
• To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism, to steal from many is reasearch.
• If everything seems to be going well, you have obviously overlooked something.
• All those who believe in psychokinesis raise my hand.
• Whose cruel idea was it for the word 'lisp' to have an 's' in it?
• Why is abbreviated such a long word?
• Why are there 5 syllables in the word 'monosylabic'?
• War doesn't determine who's right, just who's left.
• Help stamp out, eliminate, and abolish redundancy.
• I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy it thoroughly.
• Insanity is hereditary; You get it from your kids.
• I still miss my ex-husband, but my aim is improving.
• A meeting is an event where the minutes are kept, and the hours are lost.
• I considered atheism but there weren't enough holidays.
• A fact is anything you can make someone else believe.
• A life? Cool! Where can I download one of those?!
• A lot of people mistake their imagination for their memory.
• Money doesn't bring you happiness, but it lets you look for it in more places.
• Your conscience may not keep you from doing wrong, but it sure keeps you from enjoying it.
• Middle age is when broadness of the mind and narrowness of the waist change places.
• A person who can smile when something goes wrong is a person who has found someone to blame it on.
• Isn't it a bit un-nerving that doctors call what they do practice?
• Drive defensively. Buy a tank.
• Nothing is illegal until you get caught.
• If you cannot convince them, confuse them.
• Lead me not into temptation; I can find it myself.
• Confidence is the feeling you have before you understand the situation.
• Multitasking: Screwing up many things at once.
• History is a set of lies agreed upon by the Victor.

Inconsequential Trivia

I was given great encouragement by my blog friends for the photography competition, and was asked to share the results. The results were declared late last week. I did not manage to get into top ten, and I would not be honest if I say that I am not disappointed. The question is not really about winning (the prize, if any, was just a token something). I thought I had good pictures there [don't we all ? ;-)], but obviously something was missing - I would have liked to know what. Apart from the winner, there was only one picture I admired [it was really pretty, taken by the resident expert. I guess it was not given a prize because the expert would quite likely have been one of the judges].
The subject for next round is "Color". I am giving this one a miss, as the time given for this one was hardly 4 days.

*** *** ***

The other day, while driving to office, we came almost head-on with a guy driving on the wrong side of the road. This part of the road is not heavily used as yet, and people take liberties - drive extremely fast, drive on the wrong side, etc, but I think that there is no valid excuse for not following simple rules. Well, so there we were, driving carefully and in moderate speed, on our side of the 4-lane divided road. We were on the right lane, as the left one was broken in many places, when we encountered this fellow who was coming from the opposite side in the same lane. He displayed his irritation at having to slow down. We motioned to ask him why was he on the wrong side. And instead of feeling guilty in the least, he gestured angrily to make way for him, and that who were we to question him!!
Now what would you call this? I am at a loss of words to describe that man's behavior.

*** *** ***

This scene was described to me by my father. He was driving through the busy town of Ballabhgarh. There is a big market right next to the highway, and in this market there are many fruits and sweets shops. In one of the sweets shops, the flies had managed to enter the glass enclosed counter. An innovative shop-assistant had an unmatched idea to get rid of the flies - he was happily spraying Baygon spray on the flies [and the trays of sweets over which the flies were hovering].
Did I hear someone say "Yuk!" ???

Flower fest

Flower fest is currently involved in Posy Picking with P.

I have been eagerly awaiting this round for 'P' ever since I "found" the site when the round for 'M' was going on.



My entires are:

Flower: Pansy
Medium: Photography
Lovely grown in pots, troughs, or as mass plantings, pansies have never gone out of fashion. These lightly scented flowers are available in a huge range of colors. The dark centers in some flowers are thought to resemble little faces. They grow only six to ten inches high and can spread up to ten to twelve inches across. They grow well in sun or semi-shade, and can tolerate cool weather.

Flower: Petunia
Medium: Photography
Petunias are one of the best summer flowering annuals for massed display, and they also look good in pots and hanging baskets. The color range is huge, with varieties available in every color except orange. You can expect blooms throughout the summer and into autumn if faded flowers are removed regularly. Plants quickly grow to a height of 10-16 inches. The basic petunia flower is funnel shape, but hybridizers have created many variations including singles and doubles with petals that have wavy or fringed margins. Many patterns are available in stripes, speckles and borders in an extensive color palette that includes purple, mauve, lavender, pink, red, white and yellow. Leaves and stems are sticky to the touch and have a distinctive odor.

Flower: Poinsettia
Medium: Photography
The poinsettia's species name pulcherrima means "most beautiful" and that it is! Euphorbia pulcherrima is named after Dr. J.R. Poinsett, and was introduced to gardeners in the early 19th century. The species is a tall, rangy shrub that grows to a height of 10 ft. It has large, dark green, oval leaves that are "toothed" on the sides and pointed at the tips. They emerge from smooth green erect stems. Flowers are borne at the stem tips in winter. The actual flowers are quite small (they are the yellow structures at the center of the brilliantly colored "bracts") The bracts are actually modified leaves - in the species there usually are 8 to 10 bracts that are 4-7 in long.

Uploading Hindi content on the web

Can I actually write in hindi ? That is what Google says - you can do it phonetically! Without actually using complicated mapping codes!
Now you can blog in hindi

Lets try it out ....

सलिल कण हूँ या पारावार हूँ मैं
स्वयम छाया स्वयम आधार हूँ मैं
बँधा हूँ स्वप्न हूँ, लघु वृत्त हूँ मैं
नहीं तो व्योम का विस्तार हूँ मैं

[from 'Parichay' by Ramdhari Singh Dinkar]

I will agree that it is quite a simplistic model, compared to using any one of the actual devnagri fonts. Although it gets the text correct with almost 70-80% accuracy, there are quite a few problems - it does not appear as actually written hindi should - and this makes it quite difficult to read. I found a few hindi blogs, which looked very interesting, as far as the content goes. But I found it so difficult to read, that I gave up.

Reading small snippets written in this font is a manageable task, but reading any non-trivial article is a non-trivial task. Spending a lot of effort in comprehending what the word actually was, breaks the flow. Few things that I found rather irksome while trying to read/write:

- You cannot write half-letters, and they are abundantly used - you could not probably write a single sentence without using one of those (e.g., vyom, swayam, vistaar). The font adds a 'halant' under the corresponding full-letter to make it sound the same, but the truth is that it is difficult to read. And this, perhaps, is my biggest grouse with the font.

- You cannot put the 'choti e ki maatraa' (as in vistaar) at the right place. I managed to fool the editor in case of 'salil' but I could not spell 'vistaar' correctly. (when the 'maatraa' has to applied to the first 'akshar'). Even then, to correct the 'maatraa' in 'salil' I had to use a multi-step editing process.

- Adding the correct 'Na' (as in kaN), or adding the correct 'bindu' ('bindu' or 'chandra-bindu') again require corrective editing and selecting.

I love to read and I would prefer to enjoy whatever I am reading rather than struggling to read the written text. That is why, I prefer those old-time fonts, which are difficult to write (because of the complex mapping schemes), but are pure joy to the reader. My favorite devanagri font in this respect is Shusha. Here is an example:
Aag Ki Bheekh (Ramdhari Singh Dinkar)
Isn't it beautiful? [I mean the font - there is no scope of doubt about the poem :-)] And it is not very difficult to learn (once upon a time I had attained a proficiency in it that I could write something in plain-text editor, and it would appear quite right when viewed with the correct fonts :-) ] The only problem that I find with it [apart from learning the character-set] is that this is a true-type font (TTF) ; and so you have to have a font server running on the site to allow readers to view it. So I cannot possibly use it on my blog. [If anyone knows otherwise - i.e. how to use TTFs on blogs etc, please please please let me know].

That time of the Year

It's that time of the year - the period filled with eager anticipation - one which ends with smiles or frowns, but mostly the frowns [and a sudden spurt of good-bye mails]. Yes, it is the time of yearly raises/increments/hikes. The newspapers carried reports of healthy rises, so much so, that it prompted [or rather, forced] the HR of my company to take "proactive" action - all the managers duly called a meeting, in which they informed their worker-ants [ the term subordinates sound way too dignified for what we really are - the worker-ants ;-) ] that the newspaper reports were over-hyped, the HR conducted surveys and found that the average increments across the industry were not all that lucrative. This is what is termed as "setting the expectations right" in the management jargon - though what it almost always translates to is "your hopes are going to be short-lived". Thus armed with the "right expectations" [from the perspective of the management, that is], people entered the dragons' dungeons [their respective managers' offices], and returned with crushed dreams, disappointment written large on their faces.
It is also the time of the annual promotion cycles, and the people who are promoted are encouraged [read nagged ;-)] to treat their team to pizza, lunch outing etc [some miserly souls have had their name written in black letters in the history for getting away with a lesser treatment, but that is another story ;-)]. This also has the similar results as above - smiles or frowns, but mostly the frowns [and a sudden spurt of good-bye mails].
These two factors combined have given me a great inspiration - a brainwave, an innovative idea like I never had before -
Mail to : All team
Subject : You are invited for a treat
Venue : My cubicle

And then, welcome them with a bowl of PEANUTS.

Criminal negligence or Crying Shame ?

I have recently been on a trip to Dharamsala - known for being the seat of Tibetian government-in-exile. It is a small, beautiful hill town - where one can see the snow-covered peaks of the Dhauladhar range in the backyard. But, it suffers from a deadly disease - the one which plagues almost all our "hill-stations" - a criminal negligence towards the environment.

The biggest problem that all hill-towns suffer from is the lack of waste management. The waste of the entire city, including that of the eating-joints that constitute every second shop, is just dumped down the hill side. You are leisurely strolling on the road, admiring the beautiful sights of the distant hills, covered with a dense growth of Deodars, and then you happen to glance down the side of the mountain, and you are greeted by the ugly sight of chips and biscuit wrappers and discarded plastic bottles. We are very conscious about where we throw the empty wrappers and bottles - we carry them with us until we find a proper dustbin. But, I think, to what end ? Someome, who is in charge of cleaning that bin, will take and throw them down the hill. One day, we bought an ice-cream, and looked around for a dustbin to throw the wrapper. Seeing our dilemma on finding none, the shopkeeper took it from us and said he will dispose it off. And even before we turned about, he threw it in the small drain right in front of the shop!

Still worse is the treatment meted out to the rivers in the country where rivers are worshipped as "mother goddesses". Just before they reach the city, the rivers are so clean and pure, and from within the city, the entire drainage is channelled through the streams into the river. The amount of waste thrown in beautiful Beas, which flows right through Manali, is a crying shame. Dharamsala boasts of a stunning waterfall; to reach it one has to trek up a rocky pathway for at least 1.5 km. After your effort, you expect to be rewarded by a wonderful sight. But alongwith it, you get an eye-sore - two cold-drinks-and-snacks shops right at the foot of the fall. Even as we watched, one of the shopkeepers started washing a tubfull of dirty utensils in the pool of (which was clean an pure so far) water of the fall.

And the ongoing deforestation and construction - it is not just robbing these citites of their natural beauty, it is destroying the environmental balance. Everywhere you go, you find trees are being uprooted and the sides of the mountain are being cut to erect more and more hotels and apartment complexes. Where does that leave the beauty of the place ?

We all love to go to the hills to enjoy the weather and the view. Why cant we keep them clean and beautiful ??