Blog 18 - Mini blog series - Quick read - Order in chaos

 I just realized that when there is chaos about anything (people or into atoms or anything for that matter). One can observe the entire chaos from a distant point might find actors into that chaos moving or acting into perfect harmony. The distance is important as at numerous points of observation, different sets of actors can be seen into harmony although to reach at that point where all the actors are in harmony can be considered as the vantage point. I think if we reach at this vantage point, the actions of all these actors can be predicted perfectly.

Blog 17 - Mini Blog series - Quick read - Birds in the cage

I was visiting a friend of mine... It was a good summer day. We had plans to go out to the beach, I was looking forward to get drunk as it was the long weekend and quite some time that we all here in Toronto came out of the never ending lockdown. The whole city was going crazy when we could actually go out in open, fill our lungs with fresh air enjoy our freedom. Well it is what makes us humans different from the animals as we can express our feeling and talk about things that are troubling us.

I was roaming around my friends house looking for stuff to carry to the beach. Suddenly I saw this cage with 2 birds in it. Lovely pair of birds, I think it was a male and a female cockatiel. I could feel the difference in their songs that made me know it's a pair. When asked about these birds to my friend I came to know that he was fostering these birds for another friend who owned them. Be it as it may, I never liked captive animals, no matter how cute they are.

Blog 16 - Physical Distancing Strategy - Using available Technology

I wanted to do this as the Virus spreads; I think everyone should make use of the technology that we can use not only for convenience but also for our safety.

First of all, there should be minimal exposure to yourself and people. This goes both ways, protecting others and yourself from any possible exposure to the virus.

1. Get your daily chores done yourself; it includes making coffee or cooking food.

2. Things of everyday use, say groceries order it via delivery apps there are a bunch of them.

3. Get video streaming services.

4. Do Yoga, use health bands to monitor your vitals.

3. Try sticking to a vegetarian diet, no relation with the virus, but, bacteria/viruses grow quickly in meat as compared to vegetables. Try eating freshly cooked food every day. That will build up your immune system.

4. Use humidifiers with camphor oil or Eucalyptus oil to disinfectant the air around you.

5. Work from Home if you are sick or otherwise. Use web-based calling apps.

6. Wash hands with soap and water or use sanitizer. If you want to make your own sanitizer, mix 2:1 parts of 90% Rubbing alcohol to Glycerin as the base, you can add essential oils to it. Don’t add any organic products.

6. Avoid travel in public transport unless very necessary. Use cab services.

7. Follow the news from valid sources. Do not believe in rumours.

8. Don’t take any chances, unless necessary. As they say, DONT BE A HERO!!!

9. Disinfect your Laptops, Phones and other gadgets and maintain a regular point to redo it.

10. Be in touch with people who matter to you. Do WhatsApp calls, use the group calling feature. Don’t use apps that have privacy and data concerns.

11. Follow the World Health Organization's personal hygiene procedures. Like for washing hands, taking a bath, coughing etiquette and so on.

Blog 15 - The Walk of Life

कः कालः कानि मित्राणि को देशः कौ व्ययागमौ ।

कश्चाहं का च मे शक्तिरिति चिन्त्यं मुहुर्मुहुः ॥

Consider again and again the following: the right time, the right friends, the right place,

the right means of income, the right ways of spending, and from whom you derive your power.

The quote from above was said by Acharya (Teacher) Chanakya, although there are many other quotes that are said by this great sage, this one got my attention in particular. The following blog could be a gold mine of information if one gets the correct sense of it. I invested months to come up with this blog, however, I had to test the theory too, this is what took a lot of time.

This is how it goes...

One should notice that if in childhood/early-age we were on the top of everything that we did, whatever we wanted to achieve we would achieve it. However, once we entered our adulthood things started to crumble, suddenly everything we wanted to achieve took an awful amount of time or even constant pursuit to achieve and the excitement was not as enjoyable as it was meant to be. On the contrary, we might notice that the undeserving are getting successful in their lives in no matter what they want to do or want to achieve. Have you ever experienced this constant dilemma of what’s wrong has happened to us?. Also, the person that has the capability to move mountains, the person with a will of steel, why do we have to struggle in my life at this stage when we prepared myself for any challenges and to overcome them since childhood. This whole scenario can be vice-versa too.

What I have noticed is that when I needed to have something, the struggle that I have to go through makes me a distance from the people who are close to me, other than my family. Once I am at this place, the struggles come to a conclusion after a long stretch of time. This has happened multiple times now. I started wondering what is it that’s making these ups and downs in my walk of life. I have come to an observation that when I distanced myself from specific people that I’ve known since my glory days things start to work like a clockwork. However, once I get in touch with them again, my life starts taking a dip again and start from the beginning.

What I’ve been experimenting with, is trying to find the exact time-frame of when this "falling apart" started. Once you’ve collected that data try to find what major relationship changes you went through that particular time frame, who were the people you met or left during this time-frame. Who you were close to, who you cancelled totally from your life. Now try to pinpoint the outcomes and the transition in your life, was it better or worst.

Try to draw a road map of all the major events, good or bad with reference to the year and months if possible. Once you’ve done this pinpoint the people who you were in contact or the people you were influenced by. Try to remember the exact opinions or advise these people gave you and how it made you feel. This is important so as to analyze the intentions these people had towards you. Not everyone who is close to you has good intentions towards you. Knowingly or unknowingly there is a sort of positive or negative vibe that these people have, trust me it affects you in such a way that you would never imagine.

Below is a timeline template that you can refer:

The years are clearly marked, the alphabets will be the names. the one thing that is not mentioned in the above timeline is the notable event in our life in that particular year. This event can go below the years marked and associated will be the names of people. This exercise was given to a decent sample of people, the demographics were scattered around the world and the results are still coming in.

Well, you could be on the other side too, this is when we are on the someone's timeline. Notice whether your presence in someone’s life made their life miserable. I think in such a case it would be better off taking an exit from their life in order to give them a fair chance to happiness and not thinking of selfish gains, in other words making the ultimate sacrifice for the people you really care about.

That's for now, I'll be working on a venture so the influx of blogs will be delayed.

Blog 14 - The Poem - Talash

Talash
Dedicated to ISRO (INDIAN SPACE RESEARCH ORGANIZATION), If ISRO was personified.

Chal pada Hoon khud ki talash Mai..
Ye rastey anjaney hai par lagtey kuch kacchey hai..
Socha tha anjaney rastey mileyngey jaroor.. lekar ke jayengay Mujey voh meri manzil Tak, par hongay firbhi pakkey..

Jab thokar lagkar gira toh samja, Jab thokar lagkar gira toh samja, 
anjaney rasto par chaltey nahi asaaman ko dekh Kar,
Anjaney rasto par chaltey hai rah dekh Kar.

Miley kuch anjaney, lagey voh samjaney,
In raho par chaltey hai housala thamey,

Jab housla lagey dagmaganey yaad karna kushi key voh fasaney, 
mileyngey tab, mileyngey jab, pohochogay apney thikaney.

Mann kaheyga laut Janey,
Par sunna mat Mann ki, ye sab hai bahaney.

Sochna kyu nikla tha tu gharsey,
Khud ko dhoondney ya logo ko dikhaney.

Lageyga darr par tu bhi hai nidarr se nidarr,
Padav milenengay bohot saarey, sochna mat yahi hai Tere saharey,
Rehena chaltey jabtak mazil ke Miley na thikaney.

- Parag Phalak.
  09/07/2019 - CHANDRAYAAN 2 LANDING.

Blog 13 - Appearances

"Don't believe what your eyes are telling you. All they show is limitation. Look with your understanding, find out what you already know, and you'll see the way to fly" - Richard Bach

It's been a long time since I have written anything.. taking into account the long weekend and the summer vacation I kept myself busy travelling.. but anyways in my travel, I realized that it would be great if I start observing patterns in the way people behaved. I saw many people including me in a constant loop of sticking and doodling something on our favourite companion, the cell phone. When a famous social media app (let's call it Z) was designed the researchers wanted to link it to the humans when I said link I meant to make it an addiction. They conducted numerous experiments that would determine a harmless factor that would be addictive to humans that would drag us coming back to the app Z. Its the same kind of feeling when we get when we pass an exam or shop something for ourself or even gossip. The harmless factor is the hormone dopamine*, or commonly known as the happy hormone.

Dopamine is the hormone that gives us the feeling of achievement in most cases fake. It's like posting something on the app Z and waiting for people to praise you for that, I've seen people posting weird stuff and their audience like it, praise it and share it too. What I've realized is that one can know about a person based on the types of applications that they have on their phone. Not all the apps are feeding us dopamine, there are other useful apps that help you in a number of ways other than posing ourselves in front of the virtual audience who we may never see in person. In this era of social media and the data generated by them, the huge data and we are manipulated by the companies handling that data. But apart from all this, I think it's the appearances that matter the most.

There are many schools of thoughts that describe how appearances are and how it is influencing our social life. One theory is what got my attention, as makes perfect sense for the different time periods that we had or probably have. Epictetus and his philosophy on appearances is that appearances to the mind are of 4 types, things either are what they appear to be, or they neither are nor they appear to be, or they are and do not appear to be and finally the 4th type things that are not there yet they appear to be. 

This 4th type is the kind of appearance is what I think we are living in. Let's see how.

I would like to suggest an experiment for you all, however, once you get the validity of the experiment it's entirely your choice to keep doing it, I would warn you that it's very addictive. 

Before you start with this experiment you gotta analyze the State of mind you are in, say normal, happy, ambitious or sad. Once you determine this take something from your phone's gallery be it any picture or any quote that you like and post it on a social media platform, I'll say the app Z, you can guess which app I am talking about. Make sure you post it as a story where you can see who has seen your post. You'll get a window for 24 hours. Once this time frame is over once again analyze your mental state and I'm sure you will feel towards the positive side of feeling good, Happy, ambitious or sad. That's the dopamine which will make you feel better. You can let me know the validity**

We believe in what we perceive to be there irrespective of taking the efforts of digging into the truth. The truth is going nowhere but we got to hear it if it is true not just assume in the back of our minds that something is there. The 4th type can be applied to everything, humans, animals, movies social media posts actually everything. In animals, imagine a tiger stalking a gazelle and the gazelle watching the tiger, this is one situation which is there at the present where the tiger sees the gazelle and gazelle sees the tiger. On the other hand, the gazelle stays in constant fear of insecurity where it imagines the tiger being stalking it taking in to account the camouflage that the tiger has in terms of the stripped skin, hence the 4th kind, things that are not but yet they appear to be. The fear is the driving force behind the belief that the gazelle has. We can apply the same analogy to humans where our insecurities do not let is see the things the way they are and the things that just appear to be.

Be curious, dig deep, feed your knowledge don't be a normal goose in the breadline.

Blog 12 - ''Structured Water''

Water is life, thousands lived without love but no one lived without water.

As we all know and might have experienced that one of the blessings that living creatures have is water. Many cultures believe that water is something that is divine or something that is a gift from the divine. Water has been on our planet for more than billions of years. Life started in water and then it evolved. Water is essential for everything. With all that said, I wondered would it be possible that water would hold the information about our past and probably our future. I was curious enough to search if there are any traces of water holding any information; I was shocked to learn that a few years back people have done experiments to determine the very fact if the water holds any information about the events that occurred on our planet. Let’s come back to this in the later part of this blog.

In many cultures, for a number of rituals, water is considered as a medium to communicate or to present the offerings to their spiritual entity. It is the humble nature of humans that makes us grateful to the things in life that we get, thus to show respect to the supreme force that governs this we make a number of offerings to it. Some cultures have termed the water bodies like the rivers or lakes or seas as deities to worship. The Ganges in India is considered as a sacred river for this very reason in the Indian culture. But there is an interesting scientific reason why the Ganges or any holy water source is so important.

If we notice, the human settlements around the globe, the major factor that matters in flourishing these settlements is the availability of water. Even animals migrate to far distances in search of water be it on land or in the sky. Living creatures procreate when there is an abundance of water, which in turn guarantees that presence of food in different forms. In our quest to search for a habitable planet in our solar system, water is considered as the primary element for the development of settlements.

Coming to the research on water and the information it holds, the lead scientist was Dr. Masaru Emoto from Japan. His hypothesis was to determine the structural changes water demonstrates when exposed to different phenomenon, words, pictures or music. The experiment concluded that when water is exposed to the depiction of Happy events our history, the crystals that are formed after freezing this water show beautiful structures, same goes when the water is exposed to stories of great people. On the other hand, when water is exposed to depictions of horrific events the crystal patterns that are formed are just random and ugly. Thus water from different places can have different effects on humans, water can be structured to have a positive effect on the living creatures. Check the pictures of the experiments with both the scenarios. (just for reference, I do not own the copyrights)

There were many theories that scrapped down this experiment; they termed it something called as pseudoscience. It was also publicized that Structured water is a Marketing strategy used by the packaged water companies to sell their product for a higher price. However, I realized that the experiment makes if not complete but relevant sense to me. There have been many instances where water is used to cure some illness where this water was termed as holy. To mention some sources like the water from the Ganges or the water from Mecca called Aab-e-zam-zam or the water from the Holy-Grail* all have traces that say water has magical or healing properties.

Somehow I think there is a link between the experiments performed by Dr. Masaru Emoto and the importance of water mentioned in the holy books. Well it might sound like a good fictional story but think on this for a second, why would anyone term water of all the things as holy, there has to be some relevance to it. It can be like a wild goose chase to keep thinking why not, the science says it the books say it, what matters if we believe in it.