Quo Vadis?

Life throws up some wonderful lessons when you least expect it and it is up to you to make use of these lessons. Today was an eye opener; it was not totally unexpected because this was something that was planned however life as I said will constantly surprise you. The Pope has asked for this year to be celebrated as the year of mercy, so small acts of mercy are encouraged by all as a part of our spiritual life. So an outreach programme was planned for the students between class 9-12 today and the chosen venue was Jeevodaya Cancer Hospice. This is a palliative care centre that takes care of those ravaged by cancer and have exhausted the curative options available in medicine and are counting their last days. The sisters from the congregation running this institution do their best to ease their pain and make their days comfortable. Since I was aware of the situation at the centre and I was part of the team that organized the activity I was prepared for meeting the inmates o...

It's going to be a year since I took a first step towards fitness. It was in the beginning of March 2014 that I started walking & slowly moved on to running inside my neighbourhood park. Thanks to the internet I landed on the Chennai Runners page on Facebook & so on April 2nd 2014 I joined a group of runners and started running regularly. From a barely 3km initial run, I started doing longer runs and decided that by December 2014 I will do a 10km in TWCM & lose some weight. I ticked both those boxes earlier than I thought. By December I had completed 2 half marathons & lost 14kgs weight. A lot of people helped me in this effort but Venu Sir who guided me initially & George who trained me on the basics of better running stand out. I will always be grateful to them. Another person who helped me run was Lakshmi who trained with me under George & slowly we ran together & still do. A running buddy can be a great support for new comers & the high ...

In April 2014 I joined a group of runners with an intention of completing the 10km run in The Wipro Chennai Marathon 2014 some 8 months later. Today a day before the TWCM it all feels quite anticlimactic and strangely the excitement of the first race is no longer there. I have already completed 2 Half marathons of which 1 was a trail marathon and 1 10 km run and I am now encouraging new comers to run their first 10km race well. What is more, the group that I run with got named as Tower Twisters and is now over 100 members strong with nearly 40 runners meeting and running regularly. There are many reasons for both the developments but in hindsight I would like to think it is the selflessness of some members especially the senior members of the group who were willing to sacrifice their personal time so that a new comer could run. The term senior refers not the actual age of the member but their age with reference to their running life and some senior runners could be younger tha...

Do you know the time of your birth? Do you know if the time you were born was auspicious? If it was not, do you do you regret it? You skipped your meal because you were busy with work and by the time you decide to eat you notice that it is not the auspicious hour of the day. Do you starve? The doctor schedules a life- saving procedure on a loved one at a time when the calendar says is unsuitable. Do you reschedule? The job interview is in the middle of the inauspicious time of the day. Do you give it a miss? Do you breathe any less or any more during the “auspicious” or “inauspicious” parts of the day? Do you live different during the day despite the ebbs and flows of the good and “bad” times? If you answer “Yes” to any of these questions, I would like to know the reason why.   Time is the most expensive and perishable commodity in the world and why must people set apart time into good and bad? People these days cutting across faiths are checking the alman...

Another Deepavali post about two groups of people who always leave me with mixed emotions. The first group of people are those for whom Deepavali or for that matter any other festival is just another day at work because their job does not permit them a holiday. Look around you the driver who takes you to your home town, the milk man who delivers milk rain or shine every day, the policeman who directs traffic and also keeps the city safe, the corporation sanitation teams who work to clean up the mess we leave behind, the list goes on. I happened to use the Deepavali holiday to complete the shopping for the month and we were fortunate to find one departmental store open where we completed our purchases. I noticed that the staff were dressed very nicely on that day and wished every shopper who came into the store. I asked the girl at the billing section if they had an early closing for the festival and why they were working on the day, she replied very sadly that they have on...

This post is inspired by the CBC. To clarify this is an expansion of a comment I had posted to a query on why people look for arranged marriages. While the stream of comments moved the focus away from the initial question there were some strong opinions for both sides and even some who chose the third option of simply single. As mentioned earlier this post is to expand my point and so read on… (Disclaimer: What follows below are my hypotheses from observations and discussions. You are free to agree or disagree, to prove or to disprove as you please.) The rule of nature is that like poles repel and unlike poles attract for magnets. In life also it may be true. Marriage works well when it becomes a supplementary union rather than a complementary union. If I am not very clear let me explain, two vanilla ice cream lovers go to an ice cream shop, you would expect one or two vanilla ice creams to be consumed by them.   This is a complementary union according to me.   No...

Mobile companies earn good money with the caller tunes. These caller tunes ensure that the caller does not have to listen to the boring ring and can actually make the wait pleasant for those at the calling end. There are so many tunes available of varied genres and churning out these tunes is an industry by itself that runs under the VAS moniker. Companies paying the mobile bill and who are smart marketers end up imposing the corporate tone which is usually the company jingle or a promotional tune. I have wondered if these companies have some instruction that the incoming call be picked up after a few rings so that the caller gets the message. Fortunately my organization has the tune only in the Vodafone network and till date it is an optional tune. However there is an unwritten rule that the caller tunes should be preferably instrumental only. Like the ringtones on the phone the caller tone also can give an insight to the person on the other end. Therefore it is obvio...

Reading about a father who has killed his daughter for the sake of honour made me wince. I paused and looked at my daughter and wonder if honour is worth so much. Will this honour be the same if the daughter was not one of many other children including one or more boys? Will a father react if the daughter was the apple of his eye? Many questions for which reason and common sense may not provide satisfactory answers. I stumbled upon a beautiful piece on mothers and daughters on Facebook, I know that my daughter and her mother would be blessed if the things mentioned would happen but to make anything happen there has to be love.  In the fight for honour, love has been shown the door. I am sure that there are a set of things to do as a father of a daughter but surely in these days there should be a set of things not to do for some misguided parents. I simply fail to understand how honour is maintained by killing the daughter. And what is honour? Honour in isolation is ...

                              “The nation needs to know…” it seems from the expectations for the sentencing of the convicted rapists. My aunt Whatsapps from Delhi to find out about the judgement because her cable was down!!! The Nirbhaya incident has taken more than its share of the media space for several reasons but the collective outpouring of anger and grief seems to be a little misplaced at least to me. I am not for a moment saying that this incident did not deserve this outrage but I am disappointed that only this incident has got it. On a talk show a social activist said that over 90000 cases of rape are pending in court some for many years. Despite this outrage incidents of rape have not reduced or stopped and it does not like stopping either. The reasons are varied and cannot be summarized so easily but the point remain...