Chicago Architecture

I am currently reviewing one of papa's book 'America East To West', it's been while I have visited America but while reading book it is inevitably  takes back in time when I was there.I have been to many places in USA but after such long period now I remember very few which I feel like I missed it and that is Chicago.

I am not at all great fan of any big city, one reason is obvious big cities put big hole in pocket and other is crowd. I get totally lost in crowded place, just feels pity about life. So I prefer confining myself to smaller cities even though big cities promises tons of entertainments.

But I loved Chicago just for it's architectural marvel. I never thought any city can be such magnifcient, clean and beautiful.Especially Grant Park where you can see Buckingham Fountain (one of largest in world), park greenary and best of all splendid skyline of Chicago. One side you have sea like Michigan Lake and other side, man made structures!

Out of these buildings.. couple of buildings really makes skyline beautiful ..  Sears Tower- once upon tallest building on planet, Red colored CNA center, diamend shaped Smurfit-Stone Building and Two Prudential Plaza, AON Building (two right most tallest buildings). These unique styled architectures makes Chicago skyline different than any other downtown.

My other favorite structure is Marina Twin Towers, 65 story - 19 floors are for parking!

I was so fascinated by these structures, myself and Namrata stayed in downtown (fist and last time). It was youth hostel with common toilet/bathroom. It was cost effective but most importantly we didn't have to travel 2-3 hrs to reach downtown. We were in downtown for 2 days and enjoyed Chicago architecture. Even we did some  night photography at downtown in freezing weather and scared someone mugging us. But nothing bad happened!

Such is magic spell of Chicago Architecture ..

Chicago Water Tower.

Happy Republic Day!!

Whenever I am in India, I always felt 15th August and 26th January as very auspicious days. Whole atmosphere seems to have enthusiasm, early morning white dressed people, NCC cadets rushing towards their respective flag hosting destination is treat to watch.
I used to rush to ground to watch parade and near by college used to have fish-pond function with snack which was great  after early morning activities of getting up and preparing for flag hosting.

Due to explosion of technology and globalization, definition of nation itself has become blur. We came to know what things are bad with India and what are not. We marveled developed nations progress, their cleanliness, their system which keeps most of things accountable. But if you see carefully apart from Europe, rest of countries like USA, Australia first conquered and colonized by white people and later controlled flow of people. Where as in case of India, people are there for ages and running system for more than 1 billion people is not easy.   But some how we survived for 60 years as republic!

But one thing always remained same that is our nation's unconditional love to us, similar to any mother.

Happy Republic Day!!




Police Ground Parade 
Shivajinagar, Pune 

Deewar..

Watching 'old angry young man' Amitabha Bachchan  is such fun. We go through emotional roller coaster while watching his old movies. But from all his movies, Deewar is masterpiece. People might have wrote millions of lines from it's release in 1975.

Initially I watched this movie in my school days but that was more because of Amitabh's fighting other than anything else. As I got more addicted to movies and watched this movie couple of time, I realizing how much this movie is closely related to us.  Don't we follow  same path of Vijay and Ravi? We have same anguish of Vijay regarding establishment and same sincerity about education or good things like Ravi. If you are successful in life, you are Ravi, if you are unsuccessful/failed (as per system), you are like Vijay. And similar to Vijay, mother's heart beat for unsuccessful (according to system) person in family.


Same is true with Vijay's dialogue with God.. how many times we do things which we don't want to do  for loved one?


Rather than this famous dialog
मेरे पास मां हैं। 
My favorite dialogs are 
मै आज भी फेके हुए पैसे नहीं लेता।
and last dying scene of Vijay, that is my most favorite one..
थक  ..थक गया हु माँ .. जिन्दिगिसे लढते लढते बहोत  थक गया  हु माँ।    
I might have used above dialog in every examinations, interviews..

Real Stress Buster

Now a days stress is part and parcel of daily life. We get stress of anything.. be it dead line for project, even we get stressed out by routine work (grocery!) . You add to routine another parameters like investment, loan, children education, parents health and by the time you finish thinking about it, you are completely toast.

Everybody has their own way of  coming out of stressful scenario. Some took solace in watching TV, reading book or do anything which people love.  I used to do sports activities when I was stressed out and it was really useful. Now a days any sport activity also causes me stress! Any other activities like reading book is very difficult when you are stressed out because your mind is not stable.

Recently though I think real stress buster is watching kids which are less than 4 years old!   As far as we don't have to handle him/her, it is just sheer  fun to watch.

To start with, it's miniature figure of human, we  wonder how nature manage to replicate each body part in such perfect tiny proportion.

Eyes are full of  innocence and very optimistic. Baby smell, soft skin is out of world.
Their energy level is comparatively very higher than us. Even they don't get bored with routine activities.

My favorite is watching kid who is completely lost in his own world playing with toy or talking to self.

To be or not to be

Lately I started feeling I shouldn't write blog. Some of reasons are when some activities get routine, I get bored and so it's about time. Also many said to me (in private) blogging/diary is work of people without any work! Hmm.. That makes lot of sense.  

On other hand if you see blogging as penning your thoughts on particular moments, keeps good records of our mental state. We can access it from anywhere unlike our personal diary and most importantly it will last forever (or at least until Google dies). Later based on our historical entries of blog, we can psychoanalyze ourselves, analyze our decision making process. So to me blogging is healthy as having good conversation with good friend and venting our emotions.

Parallel Universe

From Original Star Trek, I have one favorite episode called "Parallel Universe" where mirror image of existing universe present. My favorite character Spock, who is emotion controlled half alien is very emotionally violent in another universe. I love this episode since it deals with fantasy that in other universe we might be something very different.

But if you look carefully in our world, every  entity itself is Universe be it material, plants, animals. It carries complete history from it's origin. e.g. Sample of rock can tell what geographical changes happened from its time of creation to today. Same is true with DNA of animals.

In human world, we have evolutionary path similar which described above. But socio/economic front, we all live in parallel Universe. Take example of any person - his nature, family background, social strata, his mental block.. which create itself universe. We see some orthodox families, once we enter in their house we feel like entering into 16th century feudal's home. At the same time we find some indigenous people living in woods. On other hand we see some technological geek using all latest technological gadgets and wandering future course of humanity. How does nature manage to keep this diverse Universe on one planet?

These are extreme cases which are not majority. What about majority people like us?
We do live into our own Universe, but there are many Universe .. be it family, society. As far as these Universe are parallel there is not much problem but once it start colliding, friction happens and we loose our own tiny Universe and thrown into some unknown parallel Universe.

Will's Will

Last couple of years, I am wondering about creating Will. Not that I have  enormous property which needs to be dispose properly if I die untimely.  I just feel we should have some kind of written documents which we need to fulfill after untimely death, especially some fatherly advice to child at different stages of his/her life. Just penning thoughts for your child's age group (10, 20, 30 yrs etc.) will make us alive for few seconds when child will read it at that time.
Other things we can write down like charity we wanted to do, because of future security we are hesitate to do much in our life time, once we are not around (so our financial burden!!!) we can freely think about some charity.

So I feel like everyone should have one Will, with expiry date set to 2 years, since if we are alive, context might change after year or two and we need to rewrite Will.

 It's very disturbing to think about Will/Death but it's going to happen eventually, even if we consider 100 years of life, (in my case) 30-40% life is already over! Better we act fast and think about our complete life cycle + 10 years before we fed away into nature.

मकर संक्रांतीच्या शुभेच्छा

मराठीत टायपिंग प्रथमच करतोय…
मराठीत मत मांडण्यासारखी मज्या काही वेगळीच आहे.

मकर  संक्रांत मला आवडीते ते केवळ आद्यल्यादिवशीच्या जेवणामुळे..
दुनियेत कुठेही असालोतरी भारतातील भोगीच्या जेवण्याची मजा कुठेच येत नाही.

थंडीतील वांगी, पावटा, गाजर, हिरवा हरभराची तिखट mix भाजी  आणि बाजरीची गरम गरम भाकरी...
कधी कधी असे वाटते मी फक्त खाण्यासाठीच जन्मलो की काय... पण काय  करणार दिवसभराची धडपड शेवठी पोट भरण्यास होतो...

Perspective

We look life from our own perspective; it way starts back from our birth. First it defines our financial environment based on our family background. Once we come out of childhood innocence and abundant energy to play, we shape up our perspective based on environment, education and experience/career.

We can rise to highest point of achievement but later on life will show us bottom point as well and other way round. Here is one example --

I met papa’s long time friend at Pension office. I used to like his friend just because of power he held at his government office. Whenever he walked to his office, staff will be on its tows. Staff will be relieved when he will leave office. And now at Pension office he was not even shadow of himself, waiting for his turn to talk with officer. I told one of clerk about his position in government office. Clerk said laughingly “Here we treat everybody equally –from school peon to collector”. Once you retired, you leave behind position you held. I felt very bad for this friend, such a fine leader on his knees.

Life is great leveler, even it doesn’t allow one to live on past glory.

Loneliness

Loneliness most difficult illness to handle. I have seen people, desperate to meet people, have a chat, touch them and just feel like being with somebody. Especially at older age this problem becomes more apparent, body start showing it's resignation, young lot (if around) busy with their life. With their fast pace and demanding schedule finding time for old lonely person is difficult and nobody prefer to listen after hectic day at work. Everybody wants unwind, relax for next grueling day.

For some people they  feel they are alone in pack. Most of the time we are in pack because of some undue circumstances, be it a job or a family/friends. We just hang around because there is no better place other than pack. But deep inside these people have nervous feeling of loneliness. During that state no matter what you do won't help, you won't able to concentrate or do any fruitful activities.

So from old to young, everybody faces problem of loneliness. If this is the case, think about what will be case of person who is in solitary confinement? Sitting alone 24 x 7 is the harshest punishment any one can get. So how do we cope with this kind of situation.

To me active mind is most  important in this situation. If you observe some of great political prisoners, they have written remarkable books. Even though their body was confined mind was working on their goal. Similarly even if we are lonely by any circumstances, if our mind is working on ultimate goal, we won't feel lonely.

Escapism

How many times do we blame people around us for unpleasant events happened in our life? Whenever unpleasant thing happened in our life, we try to analyze path we choose at different juncture of life. We then start thinking about other alternative paths we might have taken at that time and start imagining around how that path could have lead us to pleasant one. During this imagining period, we start thinking about what forced us to lead this path and try to find person(s) whose opinion(s) caused this to happen. Ultimately it was we walked that path and not others who voiced their opinions. As far other virtual paths are concern those are just dreamy alternatives, what events would have happened on that path is beyond anybody's imagination. So blaming it on people, horoscope etc doesn't make sense. We choose best optimum path which we think is best during that period of time. Since most of our actions are based on short term visualization rather than long term, we will always try to find escape route to our short comings.

Theory Of Relativity

Physics -- my favorite subject during college days. I was fascinated by Newton because of his contribution to subject. I admired him greatly because not only he was great in physics but also in subjects like mathematics. I always wondered how his physical laws perfectly obeyed his equation, be it orbiting of planets or satellites. I was so fascinated with his laws, I tried to even applied it to my daily life like "every action has reaction", law of motion etc. while fighting or arguing  with  friends.

So for me my world was perfectly fitting into Newton's physics. It was almost like I solved puzzle of life, apply physics along with mathematics and you have answers for everything happening around you!

And one fine day, while reading books on universe, come to know terms like "theory of relativity", metaphysics (science of cosmology - universe) and most importantly phrase "Newtons physical laws fails with relativity - with space, time consideration". It was very shattering to know it. My life time philosophy was shattered by space/time and relativity.

Understanding Einstein's theory of relativity is out of scope for my tiny brain since it involves lot of mathematical equations. Conceptual visualizing is also difficult since it requires universe to be seen with 4 dimensions ( or more). So I stopped applying science to life after knowing this theory, considering anyway this theory will not be ultimate.

Recently I met  two old friends. We almost met after 15-20 years. With both friends, I chatted for hours almost continuing our discussion left 15-20 years back. As we started interacting more, one friend was almost same (except gray hair) what he was 15-20 years back.. But other friend was changed, although he perfectly camouflage his current state with old style interaction and manipulation. But he was not same, he duped many friends ( of course including me!)  and cheated his family. Almost same friends with same background but changed with time and more specifically financial condition.

Anyway it was good learning lesson and most importantly I can now co-relate life equation with relativity theory!

Belief -- Manipulated

This is little bit continuation of my previous post "Belief". If we change belief considering it has some fundamental flaw that's fine such as some of superstitious activities. What generally we are not aware that  our thought process get manipulated. Be it's religious/social leaders, state machinery or TV programs.

I believed, if anybody has good agenda, it will  automatically propagate to masses like Buddha taught thousands of year back.  But this is not case anymore since people-people passing of knowledge is history. Now there are technological powerful mediums which can affect mass psyche instantly and that's what happening for last 70-80 years (after invention of radio).

State machineries are always powerful to propagate its belief. Be its socialistic approach in 50-90 or current open market approach.  Example in my previous post is best example of manipulation by two state machineries.

With rise of media especially private TV channels, war of manipulating belief intensified. Now each channel tries to manipulate. Kid's channels are trying to manipulate their habits especially eating habits so that they can potential loyal customers for long term. Same is true for different programs and different group of audience. 

News is becoming more sensational as well as becoming paid one. So even news is arranged program.

This market driven approach is not helping individuals to understands what's their basic/family/social needs and start running after hyped beliefs.  One need to sit quietly, go with what mind says without any medium polluting his/her thought.

Belief

Did you ever notice we trend to change our belief over the time? Most of the time, we become more cynical. Is it age, just we get wiser or adopt to realistic world?
I had some very definitive idea about how we should live life .. although it was center around middle class/socialistic  living -- not to disturb other, respect elderly, spend money if required, seek infinite knowledge, faith in God/Nature (or was it just goodness?).

As you become more urban most of these beliefs start shattering with day-day struggle. Most of belief was shattered by USA -- consumable society -- almost destroyed most of it (except good deeds). Consumption by US society is beyond my imagination.. be it food, cloths etc. When I first saw US production and consequently its consumption and later destroying it. After looking poverty in India, US sounded like ultimate answer to everything to eradicate poverty. So I also started following US dream, work fanatically, consume and create lots of garbage.

I always liked to keep little foot print about garbage in India but in US automatically I started creating garbage, even though I was aware of environmental burden. See change in belief.

I think we should be flexible to most of our beliefs, we never know which situation can demolish it!

Victim..

I don't think there is anybody who had not felt he/she was victimized. Be it circumstantial, system or by the person(s). Sooner or later we understand circumstantial/system related abuse and adjust our behavior according to circumstances and systems.

Most complicated is abuse done by people. That's the reason we have complete judicial system in place. But there are small incidences of victimization which can occur in day to day life and doesn't have merit to go through  judicial system and we need to tackle it ourselves.

Most of person related abuses are because of breach of trust. Since trust is mutual and we blame ourselves not understanding distrustful person well in time. In that case mind keeps reminding repeatedly our painful experience. Funny part of mind is we love good time but also forget those good memories soon compare to painful memories.

Best way to get out of those painful memories is keeping occupied with hobbies/activities. Since these painful memories can cause self pity which eventually causes downward spiral effects on our own psyche. So stopping that effect is most important part of other activities. As long as we are not pressing self destruct, any activity is fine.

Sometimes we see there is pattern for victimization. We land up in particular situation repeatedly because some of our weaknesses. Analyzing those weaknesses and avoiding it in future is must!

Avatar

I wonder if there is anybody who has not seen avatar movie by now. I was waiting eagerly when I saw  promo  and  read about cost of making avatar (Rs. 1200 Crore..  How many generations of PATILs will   survive with this money?). As any sci-fiction addict, I was spellbound watching weird idea of  hanging mountains. How can anybody get this idea?

What puzzling was name of movie -"Avatar". Our Word, so used to it from childhood. I remember mother ( and now wife) talking about my "avatar" all the time. How come English pundit picked this word perfectly!  Some of my cousins had no idea about this word in English and thought typical Hindi movie and refused to watch. I have to tell about language, cost of movie and why it's necessary for us to watch this movie. I strongly feel with this kind of budget, at least movie will have good cinematography.

I was right there at theater on first day. Although it hurts badly to spend 1000 rupees for 4 people. But it was worth journey to outside World. Technological advances are beyond my imagination.

Coming back to name of movie, how avatar got in to English vocabulary? We can understand some of words like guru, pundit. But avatar is very difficult and already it  has predecessor  "incarnation".  Why did produced named "incarnation"?

I remember reciting incarnation in old days. Such a  difficult word for a complicated term and I felt very proud of knowing it. But using Avatar, I felt Angrez are not imperious about their language.
I wish many more Indian words get into English vocabulary, since it will be sweet reverse revenge to Angrez for ruling us.

Celestial Phenomenon

Watching celestial phenomenon with naked eye is once in life time achievement. At start of new year watched partial eclipse of moon. It is always fun to watch celestial events. Since they generally don't occur frequently. Today's eclipse was only third time I watched it in my life time. No wander  people travel so much to get glimpse of solar eclipse.

When I watched Halley's comet, in school days I felt blessed! I wanted to go near that comet and wanted to see each and every part of it's structure.  Especially it's tail, since I haven't seen anything like that before. I read every book available regarding comet and felt really happy I was able to see once in life time appearence of comet ( Every 75-76 years Halley's comet comes close to earth ).

Same is true about our milky way galaxy, I remember watching it couple of times when I woke up middle of night and sky was very clear and was able to see beautiful band of white light.
Because of one of my college professor, I was able to see some of other celestrial bodies like Saturn, Jupiter but I enjoyed most which I was able to see with naked eyes.

Other phenomenon I am still not able to see is "Northern lights". It appears in greenish glow. I should get chance to visit northen or southen hemispher ( and near pole) to see the phenomenon.

Watching NASA pictures of nebula, red/white dwarf star, feels like we should be alive when humans will able to travel such places which are many many light years  away.  I am very optimistic that with in hundreds years we can visualize this place not travelling physical but at least virtually.