Food For Thought

              The Human side of life  Life today is so comfortable and easy if we have  earned the right kind of privileges. This, I say, because not everyone gets access to comfort and luxury. User friendly as the term goes for the wonderful tech savvy inventions which make our day to day life simpler. Be it machines or services provided by people and companies trying to make money in whichever way possible. The end result being making it easier all around for everyone. But...is it really that simple or have we complicated life in the name of progress.       Since times immemorial food, clothing and shelter have sufficed as the basics for survival. Presently it's  beyond basics. Gastronomically  speaking it's  more about the palate than the gut. Processed foods, frozen foods, fusion foods, fast foods, gourmet foods all clamouring for a place on your menu. The food industry today has gone haywire with rest...

Man is a social animal so socializing becomes an inherent nature of a human being. While on a nostalgic tour of my childhood,  I reminisced a few habits of social  interactions which now seem extinct. I remember my dad ,my uncle and aunts, my cousins all sitting in the verandah and talking about everything under the sun. Stories of old times, weird habits of friends, families and acquaintances were always a part of these conversations thus making for a jovial and relaxing atmosphere. Ditto at my grandmother's place, only difference being  it was a daily ritual. It was a Railways  staff quarters colony where every evening the womenfolk used to gather in front of the houses and chat till late night sitting in very dimly lit surroundings on grasses which if in the dried form used to itch. That was a pure source of human interactive entertainment during those days until television took over and indoor entertainment took a new definition.    I remember visiting ...

 I remember as a kid when in school my dad never filled in the " caste" column while filling up my details in the blue calendar which we got every year. No one had any objections to it. Just giving your religion info was enough. Fortunately I was brought up in a family where surnames of friends and acquaintances were never a criteria to carry forward a relationship with them. So were we more humanely  evolved then, or is today's progress taking away that realisation that we all, at the end of the day are just homo sapiens.      During earlier times caste defined the profession which a family must have chosen to earn a living for themselves. So we had Kshatriyas, Brahmins, kshudras and then gradually the more closer to their profession ones like the lohars, shimpis, nhavis etc. The Parsis too still have surnames like batliwala, sodawala etc in sync with their businesses.       Having a sense of belonging to a particular community because they ...

 Words   We put forth our feelings and emotions through a string of alphabets which form words and sentences. There is a quote which says" Words are singularly the most powerful force available to humanity." We can choose them constructively for encouragement or destructively using words of despair. Words have the energy and power with the ability to help, to heal, to hinder, to hurt, to harm, to humiliate and to humble.  Thoughts are communicated through words chosen for it's effective use or  misuse. Words create the best communicators and influencers when used precisely for its purpose. Leaders around the world use them to seduce voters, the conniving salesman to connive customers, the journalist to influence readers and then we have glib talkers who have their way with the right choice of words. Diplomacy around the world relies exclusively on connotations...which in effect helps a smooth running of the world.  The legal world is by far the best player of wo...

 God....another perspective Everyone except, I believe Atheists,  worship  some form of God. There can be various ways of worship but the most common is a daily prayer. A Prayer is when you pray to god seeking blessings. Blessings generally are full of mercies, pardons and favours. And when asking for these we display unflinching faith in the almighty that all will be granted without any strings attached. No questions asked, no terms and conditions applied. That is our faith in our imaginary friend. Suppose God decides one day to even the equation what then. Will our stoic faith get shaky or our favours and mercies get redefined. What if God starts responding to our prayers. It's a very easy way with the almighty when we are functioning with him at our level singularly. We seek forgiveness mercies favours and they all get granted in some way in accordance to our faith in him. We perform rituals, fasts, penances to influence the happenings in our lives to be in tandem with...