Of Latitudes and Attidudes

"I do not believe in a God or religion which cannot wipe tears of a widow or bring bread to the mouth of an orphan" -Swami Vivekananda Talk by Dr Mahesh Mehta on Dharma in our life - Religion is not important, what is more important is Dharma. It encompasses religion. We often talk about dharma in our daily life, but where are our rights?! Ancient Indian literature doesn't quite account for rights and the reason is very simple. Dharma of each individual gurantees rights of others. Thus, when I follow my Dharma as a son, my father's rights are established. My dharma as a husband ensures rights of my wife, and vice-versa. One may lead to a conclusion that neglecting dharma amounts to taking away someone else's rights. So, dharmic principles may never be allowed to flounder. Succinctly, one may outline 5 major principles of dharma, and they are given below: a) Everything is God - tree, snake, you, I. There is Unity in all. That's why various object...

Sampras and Agassi met, probably for the last time in a grand-slam final, at the US Open final yesterday. Watched the show 2nd set onwards and I'm glad I started late - my man Agassi was being brutally killed the first two sets. However, Andre brought the level of the game up a notch in the third set to send Sampras on a ball-hunt. For the entire match Sampras scored 33 aces while Agassi had ~6, which alone demonstrates where the match was really lost. Set 3 was taken by Agassi when he eventually broke Sampras' serve in his game 6. It was a remarkable event and even the crowd seems very partial in egging Agassi to work harder at it. I was quite disappointed to see Agassi not take the fourth set and hence lose the match. Yet, what hurt most was Sampras' acceptance speech where he seemed to lose all modesty and simply said that he knew he was in a 'zone and once I realized that I was playing well, it was obvious that I would win' -- I wanted to go right thru' ...

Sat night was fun. After several unsuccessful attempts (either it was the wrong saturday or the weather was too bad), I got to do some star gazing at the Lawrence Hall of Science. I went up there with several friends and I think all of us enjoyed the night tremendously! (After that it was movie time w/ 'Tao of Steve' -- a commentary on merging the powerful insights of the Buddha with low end materialistic matters such as getting 'laid'...plenty of aphorisms were strewn throughout the movie and one could watch it again just for the knowledge, however, I would not be that 'one') LHS has several volunteers who set up 10 and 12 inch telescopes for sky gazing. It is hard-work, getting these old beasts to point at just the right steradian. But then, the most patient among us mortals dare to become astronomers. Most of my ilk find it easy to look at beautiful (even artificially colored) images of new discoveries. Seriously, finding a new comet or meteor is highly over-...

This being my first weblog, I should start off by promising (myself and the odd reader) nothing. This disclaimer is necessary particularly because I tend to slack off once my initial enthusiasm wears off. While I do have high hopes for this e-diary, my only qualm is its inability to allow expression of thoughts or ideas in a language other than English. Sometimes, during intense conversations with friends, I've realized that I tend to forget sources for little facts known only to myself. Now, in polite company people may simply attribute to this forgetful nature to work, stress, what not, however, others may tend to eventually view everything I say with suspicion. Hence, this area will also be a place where I can write down things I have heard on the radio, read in books, surfed on on-line newspapers, and ofcourse, add my own comments for completion. Tall order, but like I said earlier, I promise nothing.