Suraksha Bandhan

Whilst on vaccation at Mumbai, I am back to the usual habit of browsing the news papers. What is disturbing me is to read the news about road accidents every day.

Someone, I met during an air travel, told me that there is no point in reading the news papers as they give only depressing and 'late' news. Very true. But I couldn't help thinking about the frequent road accidents happening in our country and compare them to the road accidents in other parts of the world.

Whilst in the middle east, I have observed that most of the accidents are due to human errors like over speeding, loosing control and the like, or due to fog, storm and other Acts of God. In contrast, in India, I find many head-on collisions taking place day in and day out, resulting in innumerable loss of lives.

Accidents do not happen; they are caused. Should we not find out the root cause for such accidents?

When you find that this kind of accidents do not happen in the Middle East and many other countries, then you would realise that the fault lies some where else which can be identified and remedied.

Yes. The roads and transport authority should face this issue head on and come out with solutions so as to prevent all head-on collisions happening in our roads. This is very much achievable if all our roads are laid by preventing two way traffic.

I would ask our legal eagles to evaluate if there is any merit in filing a PIL to compel our Roads and transport Authority including the transport ministry to accept their responsibility in failing to construct exclusive two way lanes across the country.

Any road project shall be cleared only if it conforms to a collision proof standard!

Our country is witnessing a number of bandhs and dharnas for reducing the taxes, tolls etc. Why not we have some useful Bandhs to establish safe roads for the masses?

Can we hope to tie a SURAKSHA BANDHAN for all on this Raksha bandhan day?

How to Persuade people?

Haven't you ever felt that some people are really hardnut to crack?.. that you can never persuade them to your way? Have you ever analysed why it happens that, with some people, you can never make any headway with all your tact and persuation skills?

Two type of people are difficult to persuade.

1. Those who are absolutely clear!

2. Those with whom you can never engage a conversation!

On many occasions, you would find it difficult to convince your boss, not because he is absolutely clear, but because he is shutout for any discussion. The same is also true with your close kith and kins.

Our old teachings say that one can use four methods to convince or persuade a person. They are known as 'Sama','Dhana', 'Bedha' and 'Dhanda'. To put it simply, the methods include Consultation, Motivation(reward), Segregation(isolation) and Punishment.

Out of 4 methods, three are useless when it comes to convincing your boss. Only consultation is the best method. But it would be futile if your boss is of any of the afore menitioned types!

With your children, may be consultation and motivation might work provided they are not falling under the above categories.

In any situation, not all four methods are required to be used every time you think of persuading someone. It may be enough, sometimes, if we use one of them, whereas one has to exahaust all the four options but still would fail to achieve the desired result.

Persuation techniques are like a medicine on hand which will cure a particular desease. You would come to know of its effectiveness only when you get an occasion to use it!

Use it with different doses for different people, but with the knowledge that it may not work at all.

Men are simple and women are nimble?

I had been to the Humor club meet last Friday. There were several speakers and performers who made interesting contributions. Needless to mention, it was really an interesting evening as usual. The icing on the cake was the speech given by one Mr Niazi who is a consulting psychologist, specialized in marital relationship problems.

We came to know that he comes to the rescue of those for whom the marital bliss turns to martial blizzard!

His topic was aptly on this subject and quite naturally, evinced lot of interest and attention from one and all. He revealed some keys to happy married life, that came as an eye opener for the audience.

He started with a sweeping statement to the effect,'all married men are naive and simple whereas all women are smart and nimble'!

Men are easily caught on the wrong foot doing 'white mischiefs', or whilst letting loose their rowing eye! They are also blamed for being non communicative when it comes to displaying their love and affection for their partners. Women not only need to be reassured about the 'unadulterated' love by their partners, but also want their immediate circle to recognise it.
He made another interesting statement that all men fear their wives without an exception! He went on to declare that if some one does not fear his wife, then he must be God!

To drive this point, he narrated a joke: One day God of Death,Yama, was addressing men who arrived after death at the auditorium of Heaven. He asked all men to stand in two columns, whereby those who do not fear their wives to form a line to his left side, and those who fear their wives to the right. As expected all men jostled towards the right side, whereas only one person reached to the left side.

Surprised to see this man standing to his left, Yama asked this man, "Were you not afraid of your wife during your life time?"
The man replied, "Oh my lord, this what exactly my wife told me to do, that I stand in left when such a question was asked, and I just carried out her instruction"!

Women on the other hand are good face readers. They can tell from a distance what transpired on a given day at office or what is running on the minds of their men without having to utter a word!

Hearing all this I have two observations to make.

1. Men are too smart before marriage that they somehow tend to attract women of their choice. After marriage... well, they become too predictable that their tricks don't work anymore!

2. We hear a lot about domestic violence, especially by men on their women. After hearing this psychologist, I tend to believe that those men who perpetrate this violence on their women are not normal. Either they are under the influence of intoxicants or need counselling!

Dear readers, you may be curious to know if I am 'fearless'. You should have already realised that I am an exception.

Here I want to remind you that my younger daughter and wife do not visit my blogs.

Now, can we safely conclude that Men are simple and women are nimble?

Namesake!

Have you ever felt the need to have a different name in place of your given name? May be you are different. But during my childhood, suddenly I developed an urge to change my name!

One day, I went to a Tamil movie, along with my siblings.
The movie was euphemistically named'Vietnam Veedu' to signify a family having endless skirmishes. That was perhaps taken during the time of Vietnam war. The daughter of the protagonist would fall in love with a fellow student by name 'Ramani'. She will surreptitiously make phone call(those days telephones are kept in pedestal!)to him. When father passes by, she will switch over to loud conversation addressing the person as her girl colleague, using Tamil phrases in feminine gender, like 'podi Ramani.. vaadi Ramani...!

Back from the movie, my brothers started taunting me by frequently calling out.. 'vaadi Ramani... podi Ramani'! Now I began to hate my name and blame my parents for that as to why they kept such a ridiculous name!

My mother would pacify me saying that the name denotes beauty and suitable for both boy and girl but particularly more suitable for boys! She would also elaborate as to how much thought was given in choosing the name for me!

Most of my class mates and colleagues would call me subu! Some call me P.S, using my initials. My mother would get annoyed whenever someone calls me'subu', although I started liking the substitute name 'subu'!

But the fact remains, even the name 'subu' is an acronym for Subulakshmi!

I tend to get carried away by some names until I find that name also used in both genders.. like the name 'Prassanna', after the famous cricketer, until one day I heard someone calling out the name, Prassanna, when a nice looking girl responded!

Of course, names should not be obnoxious or ridiculous that the person bearing the name would hesitate to get himself introduced.

One day I met a colleague accompanying a foreigner. I got myself introduced to him and in return, he murmured his name to me. Confused, when I asked him again, he repeated his name as,'Titman'. After hearing the name, I realised why he murmured!

There is a custom in South in that, if repeatedly miscarriages happen, the family would keep some funny or obnoxious sounding name so that the child would survive to live longer.

Once somebody gave me a compliment, 'Sir, you look like Arnold Schwarzenegger!' Not knowing the greatness of that name, it sounded to me something like 'Arnackayar', which in Tamil denotes a string tied to waist!

Care and due diligence is required while choosing names for our children. For the younger daughter, we poured over various books on baby names and engaged in discussions well before, so that we could get the birth certificate mentioning the name. This we did because, we had to struggle to get a revised birth certificate for elder one, as the original we obtained, at the time of birth, was without mentioning name.

All said and done, both my children are found using fancy names for their email ids and user names!

Therefore, dear readers, think a lot and take care for NAMESAKE!

50-50!

Reaching 50 is a great milestone, be it in the game of cricket or growing up in age. I have started blogging for some time now and going to reach 50! The other day when I was talking to my elder daughter, whom I consider my guru in blogging, asked me to give some credit! She did not ask for any 'fulus' but wanted me to write about my daughters in my blog!


I have seen my daughter glued to the desktop all the time. I then came to know that she is a regular blogger. She has a registered blogger certificate, which procedure, I do not know even today.

When I started blogging, albeit hesitantly, I did not even think that I will continue to blog this far. Whilst my daughter Bharathee is responsible for my exploration in blogosphere, I should also acknowlege Mr Ragavan and, other journalist friend,Mr Ramesh, for their encouragement to write. The latter has published many of my blogs in his Daily, no matter whatever criticisms they might have generated.

Also my acknowledgements go to my wife Lakshmi and younger daughter, Devika for not reading my blogs! If they had ever read one earlier, I would have stopped blogging long long ago. The reason being simple, both are my virulent critics, who will not spare even if I make a careless mistake in my post!

I should mention here that, way back in 1988, my lady love found fault with my English in the first ever letter I wrote to her!

So, I thank my entire parivar for taking pains to read my blogs or not. Nevertheless, they are contributing by appearing in the anecdotes I have incorporated in my posts.

Well, If I start registering my acknowledgements to my readers, especially those regular ones, like A,Arvind,Latha,Rama,Sadanand,et.al., then it will look as if I am a retiring cricketer. I, therefore, save those words of acknowledgements for special occasions.

There is also a significance of recording the blog at the 50th entry here. Well as I mentioned earlier, I am going to reach the number in blogs... and, come september, I would be reaching that score in age too! INSHALLAH!


Looking back, I have come a long way from a Vagabond to a Bloggard now!