सुखाचं मंत्र

This is making the email chain rounds and for once, it's both worth reading and forwarding. Very well written by Dr. Vijaya Vad.

चला सुखी होऊया…

१) रोज दहा ते तीस मिनिटे मोकळ्या हवेत चाला आणि हो! अगदी सुहास्यवदनाने.
२) रोज किमान दहा मिनिटे स्तब्ध…शांत राहा. एका जागी! शांत!
३) रोज ७ तास शांत झोप काढा. शांत झोप…सुखाचा मूलमंत्र!
४) जगताना तीन गोष्टी नेहमी लक्षात ठेवा, स्फूर्ती, उत्साह आणि दिलदारी.
५) रोज थोडे तरी खेळा. मनोविनोदन होईल.
६) गेल्या वर्षापेक्षा मी थोडीतरी अधिक पुस्तके वाचीन असा निश्चय करा.
७) खूप मुबलक पाणी प्या. पाणी म्हणजे जीवन!
८) फळे, फळभाज्या, पालेभाज्या असे शेतातले, बागेतले, डोंगरावरले पदार्थ रोज पोटात जाऊ देत. थोडे समुद्रातलेही! तन सुखी तो मन सुखी!
९) जरूर लक्षात घ्या की सकाळचा नाश्ता राजासारखा, जेवण राजकुमारासारखे नि रात्रीचे जेवण मात्र भिकारऱ्यासारखे असावे! म्हणजे काय राव? नाश्ता दमदमीत. दुपारची लंच राजस; पण रात्रीचे जेवण मात्र अगदी अगदी थोडे, पुरते तेवढेच. कारण झोपेत कुठलीच शारीरिक हालचाल नसते.
१०) रोज ध्यानधरणा करा. प्रार्थना करा. आपल्या धावपळीच्या, दगदगीच्या जीवनांत तेच एक इंधन आहे जे सुख-शांती-समाधान देईल.
११) जागेपणी स्वप्न बघा. त्याचा ध्यास घ्या. त्यांच्या पूर्तीसाठी प्रयत्न करा.
१२) खूप आनंदी राहा. हसून खेळून, मिळून मिसळून! आप चंगा… तो जग चंगा.
१३) एक नियमच करून टाका. रोज मी किमान तीन लोकांच्या ओठांवर स्मितहास्य फुलवेन.
१४) आपले चैतन्य, आपली बहुमोल ऊर्जा लोकांबद्दल वायफळ बोलण्यात, त्यांची कुचेष्टा करण्यात वाया घालवू नका.
१५) ज्या गोष्टी आपल्या अखत्यारित नाहीत, ज्या परिस्थितीस तुम्ही बदलू शखत नाही त्याबद्दल दुःख करीत बसू नका. त्यापेक्षा माझे वर्तमान कसे सुधारता येईल, ते पहा.
१६) ७० वर्षांवरील वृद्ध माणसे आणि ६ वर्षांखालील छोटी मुले यांच्यासमवेत दिवसातील थोडातरी वेळ नियमित घालवा. वृद्धांना जगण्याची उमेद द्याल नि छोट्यांकडून ऊर्जा घ्याल!
१७) हे जीवन फार छोटे आहे. दुसऱ्याचा हेवा, मत्सर, द्वेष करण्याइतके खचितच मोठे नाही.
१८) स्वतःचा फार गंभीरपणे विचार करू नका. इतरांना तुमची काही पडलेली नाही. ते तुमचा इतका विचार अजिबात करीत नाहीत.
१९) भूतकाळातील अप्रिय घटना विसरून जा. आपल्या जोडीदाराला त्याच्या भूतकाळातील चुकांसाठी टोकणे, चटकन लागेलसे बोलणे, टोचत राहणे सोडून द्या. त्यामुळे आपला जोडीदार पुन्हा पुन्हा दुखावला जाईल आणि आपले वर्तमान बिघडेल. त्याचे काय हो! सो? लॉक द पास्ट, एन्जॉय द प्रेझेंट!
२०) रोज विद्यार्थी शाळेत जातात. जीवन ही आपली शाळा समजा. एनी प्रॉब्लेम? अहो तो बिजगणिताचा तास समजा. एखादा प्रॉब्लेम नाही सुटला तरी तास संपतो! संपते ना? पण त्यातून आपण काहीतरी धडा शिकतोच! तसेच जीवन आहे. काही समस्या सुटत नाहीत; पण त्यातून मिळालेल्या धड्याने आपण शहाणे होतो हेही नसे थोडके!
२१) प्रत्येक वेळी तुम्हीच कसे जिंकणार? इतरांनाही थोडी संधी द्या ना!
२२) दुसऱ्याच्या आयुष्याशी आपली तुलना नको. त्याचे वरवरचे सुखविलास पाहून मत्सरग्रस्त होऊ नका. तो आतून काय 'भोगतोय', काय 'सोसतोय' ते तुम्हास कोठे ठाऊक आहे?
२३) क्षमाशस्त्र ज्याचे हाती त्यास काय तोटा? आनंदाच्या वाटा शोधा आनंदाच्या वाटा!…क्षमाशील झालात की सुखाची रांगोळी आपल्याच दारात!…
२४) दुःखाचे, तणावाचे दिवस आहेत? संपतील राजा! परिस्थिती कायम बदलत राहाते. लाल सिग्नल नंतर हिरवा येतोच की!
२५) तुमच्या आयुष्यातला सर्वोत्तम काळ अजून यायचा आहे! हे धरा मनी. पहा… कसे आशादायी नि प्रसन्न वाटेल.
२६) तुमचे कुटुंब तुमचा सर्वात मोठा आधारस्तंभ आहे. त्यांना प्राधान्य द्या.
२७) काय वाटेल तो पसंग येवो! धैर्य सोडू नका. उठा, उत्तम वेश परिधान करा व धैर्यांने जगास सामोरे जा.
२८) तुमचा आत्मा सुखी आहे! मग तुम्ही दुःखी? का? कशासाठी? सुखी राहा.
२९) हे सारं आवडलं ना? मग आपल्या आवडत्या मित्रांना कळवा जरूर! मला हा सुखाचा संदेश माझ्या आवडत्या मित्रानेच पाठवलाय जो मी आवडत्या वाचकांपर्यंत पोहोचविलायं! बी हॅपी!

Salute to Rahat Taslim

Nothing gladdens one's heart more than a story of one woman's courage and determination to make it despite all odds. Rahat Taslim's winning the ₹1,00,00,000 (Rs. 1 crore!) grand prize in the 4th season of Kaun Banega Crorepati (India's version of "Who Wants to be a Millionaire") is one such story. With her win, she's catapulted herself into the history books. She's the first and only woman to win the grand prize in all of KBC's four seasons. And thus far, the only winner in KBC4.

And her story makes one leap for joy! Rahat is from a very small town called Giridih in Jharkhand, one of the most backward and destitute states in India. Her mom thought her to be unlucky because she was born a girl. In spite of being very intelligent and smart and with grand ambitions, being from a Muslim family, she was married off at 18 and had two children in quick succession. She still graduated with honors with a BA after her marriage, while juggling house and kids and a side-business. With a fire still inside her, she studied for two government exams which she was prevented from appearing for because her husband did not want a working wife. She settled for being a housewife but still ran a tailoring school business which supplemented her husband's meager ₹8000 a month salary. Her husband worked in Kochi while she and kids lived in Giridih. They were barely scraping by running two houses and bringing up kids on his salary and the small income from her business. But Rahat had bigger dreams. On an off-chance, just as the lines were about to close, when she happened to have ₹3 worth of talktime on her phone, she decided to call up KBC to try her luck. She was quite confident she would know the answer and when asked a question about Hindu mythology, she made it in and was asked to come for an audition in Mumbai. All contestants were told they had to have a bank account and a PAN card to participate. Rahat had never had a bank account nor did she have a PAN card (a taxpayer ID card in India) and the first thing Rahat had to do when she got back from Mumbai was to open a bank account in her own name and file for a PAN card. The rest is history. On the show, filmed on November 8th and aired on the 18th, she made it to the hot seat in the nick of time before the week ended, struggled in the beginning, but made it after using her lifelines very intelligently. And beyond the ₹3.2 lakh mark, she breezed through the questions. Asked later, she said she really knew all the answers as she'd studied hard and was up-to-date on current affairs. With a final answer on who was the first African woman president, she won the big prize of ₹1 crore, catapulting herself into the history books and immediately becoming a nationwide celebrity.

Watching her on the show and afterwards, one senses a humble, genial and very straightforward woman who has become the toast of the Nation, a symbol for Indian women, a path for economic movement for the underprivileged, a lesson in how life should be lived and a heartening story for the New India establishing intelligence, smarts and merit as the path to success. Madhuri Dixit, appearing on this Tuesday's KBC, said the first thing she wanted on the show was to meet the woman who has made all Indian women beam with pride. Rahat doesn't appear to have realized (it probably hasn't sunk in yet) just what she has achieved, the full significance of what she has done and why she is now a household name and a celebrity in India. One wishes her the most success for her future plans to use the ₹67 lakh (post-tax) wisely to open a clothes boutique as a designer, and her wish to spend the money on giving her kids a good education. One hopes her husband will support her and not prevent her from the grand things she's envisioning for herself and their family.

Rahat Taslim, I salute you!

An Asia with a different Pakistan

Following the Pak media these days, just out of curiosity and interest, I've come across articles that express worry about being left behind as the rest of Asia powers on with high economic growth, led by the twin engines of India and China. And I felt I needed to express, in the hope that Pakistanis read this and see what is possible, how I've always been baffled at how Pakistan has squandered all the opportunities it has for becoming a prosperous country at peace with itself and its neighbors, and I've tried to see what could have been and could still be, were Pakistan a different country devoid of its twin self-destructive obsessions of Islam and hatred for India/Hindus.

As a premise: Imagine that Pakistan was not a fanatic Muslim country with a raison-d'être of being not-India. Imagine that each and every one of their policies was not about being anti-India - whether it was controlling Afghanistan to gain strategic depth against India, the nature of their budget-spending or obsessing over territorial issues.

From my Mumbaikar perspective, such a country would have been and could still be a paradise on earth.

1. It has vast natural resources and a relatively small population (imagine the population is not Islam-obsessed). This makes for a great combination to launch a modern educated country.

2. It is geostrategically well-situated. Imagine freeways and railways allowing people to drive or travel from Mumbai to Paris, and on to Indo-China and China. In fact, until the 60s, it used to be commonplace to travel by road between Germany and India. We used to get European tourists all the time who had traveled by road via Greece-Turkey-Iran-Pakistan. Goods being transported all over from Turkey to Shanghai. The attendant economic benefits to Pakistan would be enormous in terms of tolls, roadside malls, eateries where people would stop to shop and eat, leading to employment for Pakistanis, a construction boom, lower prices and better products due to speedy transport of goods, and tax for the Pak state, not to mention that the country would be well-integrated into the global economy. India and China are building highway and railway systems connecting the two via Indo-China. There is no reason why these should not be extended to West Asia and Europe. It is a known fact that the American freeway system built in the 50s led to massive economic growth by creating new employment opportunities and speeding up the transport of people and goods.

And of course, Pakistan would also stand to get a lot of revenue from ushering gas from West Asia to energy-thirsty countries like India.

3. Pakistan's upper reaches like the Swat and Neelam valleys could easily become Asian tourism destinations, dare I say, akin to Switzerland in Europe.

4. As a neighbor to India, Pakistan has such a gigantic and hungry market right next door for all kinds of goods that it produces from simple foodgrains to sophisticated stuff like automobiles. Again, leading to huge employment and prosperity for Pakistanis.

5. Kashmir could become a place that Pakistanis could visit just by driving over or taking a bus or train, like they used to before Partition.

6. Pakistan would be standing shoulder to shoulder with India, China, Indonesia etc as we define the Asian future and secure the interests of developing countries that we all are.

India's problems in comparison are of an astronomical scale. With about 10 times the population of Pakistan, a population that's mind-bogglingly diverse with identities based on language, state, faith, caste, tribe, sex, political ideologies, economic class to mention a few, where 40% of people are poorer than sub-Saharan Africa and female feoticide and infanticide is rife, India is still moving ahead. Slowly and steadily, inch by painful inch, we get closer to realizing the vision of our Constitution. Pakistan has got it good, in comparison. They have no excuse for languishing in a state worse than India's on the HDI scale.

I could go on, but suffice it to say that were Pakistanis to leave (or had they left) their anti-India obsession aside, as well as their state's mission to impose supremacy of Islam on all of us non-Muslims (and let's not be under any illusion that this isn't exactly what is being attempted), it could very easily (have) become a paradise on earth and a model to emulate for the rest of the developing world. The early years were a pointer that this was a possibility. So much time has been wasted for absolutely no reason, fighting a windmill and wallowing in a stupor of Islamic purity. It is really up to Pakistanis to decide if the next 50 years are going to be more of the same.

A dilemma over washing machines

So it's time for us to buy a new washing machine. And the way the market has exploded these past few years, there's plenty to choose from. For the first time ever, Indians like us have a dilemma of choice. While it doesn't quite make me hark back to a simpler time when there were just 2-3 options to choose from, it does make the prospect of buying a new one a lot more daunting. I wasn't involved in the purchase of the old one which was about 8 years ago, and so I start with scratch on researching this fascinating gadget, and thought I'd post some brief findings here in case it helps some other soul looking for similar info.

Besides the usual differentiators for electronic gadgets (like brand, warranty and support characteristics in India for both domestic and international manufacturers) and specific ones for washing machines like size and features, there are two main types to choose from: front loading and top loading, depending on where the door is.

Secondly, the machine can be an horizontal axis (or h-axis) one or a vertical axis one, depending on how the washing drum in the machine is oriented.

Typically, front-loaders are h-axis machines and top-loaders are v-axis. However, in Europe, particularly in France, top-loading h-axis machines are popular. And my research tells me that they're the best of all worlds.

As distilled from Wikipedia and Google results, front loaders are universally better than top-loaders when it comes to the actual washing. They are ultra-efficient in using water, electricity and detergent. They're also much more gentle on clothes because they use gravity to shake clothes around rather than have a harsh motor-driven agitator that stretches clothes and reduces their lifetime. And they also supposedly result in much cleaner clothes than top-loaders. In addition, because they're capable of much higher rotation speeds than v-axis machines, clothes come out much drier than top-loaders. All these advantages come from the fact that they have h-axis drums.

Front loaders do come in second however, when it comes to ergonomics and price. Because the door is usually low, one needs to kneel or bend to put clothes in or take them out. For elderly people or people with bad backs, this is a deal-killer. They're also generally more expensive than top-loaders – top-loaders start around ₹6000 and front-loaders start around ₹15,000 (check out the latest pre-discount prices at compareindia.in.com/products/washing-machines/). Top-loaders are much better for loading and unloading and for your wallet, though they are a bad deal when it comes to all the other aspects. There are innovations like the Godrej Tilt Drum Washing Machine where the h-axis drum is slightly tilted upward to make it easier to load and unload. I haven't been able to see one of these in person however anywhere in Mumbai - I've hunted for them at Vijay Sales, Croma, Sony Mony and other places all over the City.

Imagine my delight when I found out that there are machines which combine the best of all worlds, the advantages of top-loading with the benefits of an h-axis drum. They're also called top-load h-axis washing machines. Made by Miele or AEG, they're ubiquitous in places like France. Unfortunately, they haven't made it to India. Not yet, anyway.

Researching the world of washing machines, and all the amazing advances made in this technology, seemingly mundane on the surface, has been fun and quite revelatory. While we take them pretty much for granted these days, it's been interesting to delve into the nitty-gritties of how they actually work, and the minutiae of their various features and USPs. As for me, I finally decided to go with a front-loader as I'm too much an environmentalist to reconcile myself with a top-loader v-axis machine. As for the bad back issue, we're going to put the machine up on a platform so that the door is at stomach-height, making it easy to load and unload clothes. A decidedly low-tech, straightforward and Indian solution to the problem :).

Reserve Bank of India to issue ₹10 (10-rupee) polymer notes

While Googling around for news on the Rupee, I found some interesting articles about how the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has been trying to improve the production and distribution of currency. I was surprised to learn that a note only stays in circulation in India for 6 months before it is so dirty, torn or crumbling that it gets turned in to a bank for a replacement with a fresh one. We've all noticed that in the past few years, the number of such mutilated dirty notes that we handle has gone down drastically — none of the notes in my wallet strikingly enough are in so much as a creased state which was unheard of a few years ago. I used to put this down to luck, but was enlightened by this article about the RBI's Clean Note drive that puts this down to active effort by the RBI than random chance. It also talks about how the coin situation has been drastically improved. In the past, coins used to be Holy Grail material. People would hoard them and would be loathe to part with them. Transactions would end up abandoned because neither party was willing to part with their much-prized 50p, ₹1, or ₹2 coins. While the tendency to hold suspect anyone who hands out a whole amount note expecting coin change in return, as having nefarious designs to finnagle coins out of you is still there due to the history of our experience with the dearth of coins in circulation, it is disappearing due to the abundance of these coins these days, again due to the drive mentioned above which has dramatically improved production capacity. As part of this drive, the lifetime of a banknote has also been extended as banks have been prohibited from stapling notes which they used to do with abandon earlier, leading to mutilated notes being put into circulation right at the bank.
Also interesting and the reason for this post, is that the RBI is expected to issue 100 crore ₹10 (Rs.10) polymer or plastic banknotes by the end of the year (another article about this). These notes have loads of top-of-the-line security features such as the see-through plastic feature seen on Australian notes which is nearly impossible to counterfeit, have much higher durability (RBI estimates a polymer note to last in the Indian market for 5 years as opposed to the 6 months a paper note does), can be washed and are very difficult to tear or otherwise mutilate. It is expected to save the Exchequer ₹580 cr (Rs. 580 cr) per year in production and distribution costs due to the frequent need to replace paper notes. I understand that the polymer technology would need to be licensed from the Reserve Bank of Australia which was the first central bank to introduce and fully convert to polymer notes in order to beat counterfeiters. While there are definitely problems seen in countries like Thailand and Mexico with the print on polymer notes fading in a couple of years, sticky notes being difficult to handle and so on, I'm still looking forward to the ₹10 issue - it's great technology, clean washable notes in my wallet will be a plus, I'm curious to see the design for these new notes, and I wonder how Indians will react to them.

Secularism rules!

I am so glad that the constituent assembly that wrote the Indian constitution gave us a secular republic. Yes, they did many things wrong - they should have called for a complete reconstruction of the civil services (the police for instance), should have written a uniform civil law and should have called for better structuring of affirmative action policies — but by clearly separating religion from state, they gave India, a country of myriad different religious viewpoints and identities, a stable polity to build on. Debates like this one where Pakistanis endlessly and fascinatingly debate the role of Islam in the country, just bring out in relief (pun intended) just how much Indians have benefited from a secular polity. And I say this, as a practicing Hindu.

Rupee symbol (₹) now part of Unicode

The newly minted Indian Rupee symbol (₹) is now part of Unicode and has been assigned codepoint U+20B9 in the Currency Symbol block.While we await the OS manufacturers to ship out updates to add this symbol to their system fonts and also make it available for typing in when one installs Indian locales - the Indian government has apparently mandated ^⌥R (Ctrl-Alt-R) as the combination to be used to input the symbol - individual font designers have already come out with easily usable fonts for the symbol at the correct codepoint. The first one to be published is the Rupakara (रूपकारः) font designed by Mr. Michael Everson from Ireland and made available for free via an open licence. You can download it from these locations:

http://www.evertype.com/fonts/rupakara/

http://blog.foradian.com/rupakara-first-font-with-indian-rupee-symbol

To use it on a Macintosh, download the 4 TTF files, select them all and open them in FontBook, and click on "Install Font" to install the font on the system. After you do this, you should be able to see the symbol correctly on any documents or webpages that encode it at the Unicode codepoint U+20B9. As a test, the following sentences should make sense to you and display the symbol correctly:

• The evidence of massive runaway inflation is all around us: In Mumbai these days, you can buy a litre of dairy farm milk for ₹36 and a kilo of dahi (Indian yogurt) for ₹60 which is almost double the price a few years ago! Onions have gone from ₹7 a kilo in 2008 to ₹36 today!!
• आजकल मुंबई में एक लीटर दूध का भाव ₹३६ है और एक किलो दही का ₹६०, जो कुछ ही सालों के मुक़ाबले दुगना है!
• ₹36/litre = ~$3.15/gallon @ $1 = ₹43 as of today.

While you can view the symbol, in order to type it, you need to jump through a few more hoops, until Apple releases a keyboard shortcut for the Rupee (ideally, it should be⌥ (Option) followed by some key in keeping with the Mac custom). In the meantime, you have two options:

• Use the Unicode Hex Input utility: This allows you to type in Option followed by the codepoint (20B9 in our case) to have the symbol encoded at that codepoint to appear. It's available in the Input Source viewer once you have enabled it through  > System Preferences > Language and Text > Input Sources.
• Use the Character Viewer utility to pick out the Rupee symbol and add it to Favorites. Whenever you need to insert the symbol, pick it from the Favorites list and click Insert. You can also use the Clipboard for convenience.

If you have any questions about any of this, feel free to send me a comment. It's quite simple and straightforward, so Enjoy!