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Happy GITA JAYANTI (11-Dec-2024)

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Happy GITA JAYANTI   Many have argued that time periods will have to be divided as “before and after the Bhagavad Gita,” rather than AD and BC…and why?  My 2 cents…not that I’m knowledgeable in the nuances of this text but even my little journey into this text has made me realize its benefits and hence this is penned as below… History was created thousands of years ago when Krishna (Lord incarnation or Avatar) born amidst us, as Arjuna’s (common man, highly skilled, and had good discrimination to accept Krishna as his charioteer) mentor, guided the embattled Arjuna.   An Arjuna, you and me, who was acknowledged as one of the greatest archers lost even a semblance of his mental balance to give up his arms right there when the battle opponents were all ready and the conch was about to be blown…and does it not happen for us too taking many steps back when we have a mountain of a challenge? Then over the next 1-2 hours, Krishna made Arjuna think with his mind…a mind that ...
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Politics – Gone to dogs? (13-May-2023)

A recent whirlwind trip to USA, after more than 6 years, made me realize once again that a commoner stand inoculated from all the politics – both internal and external.    The Octogenarian President had just announced his plans to contest 2024 elections again, that invited varied remarks from all quarters.    Irrespective of which way the decision goes with his impending court trials, a former President is still beaming hopes that he will contest again.   But then you and I termed ‘proletariat’ are going about our daily routines without looking back. Contrast this with the situation in India where there is total unrest with turncoat politics in full display.   The current epicenter as I write this is Karnataka elections where the polling completed yesterday, and results awaited later this week; there is an expected 3-way fight among the three leading parties.   Which political party is better is not the topic of my discussion, but what it is – is how t...
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Pen is mightier than the sword (03-Mar-2023)

Attributed to the English author Edward Bulwer-Lytton for his 1839 play – Richelieu; Or the Conspiracy, my attempt here is to present a current-day take on this adage.   In essence, it signifies that creative writing using a potent language which conveys messages with a tool called pen is indeed more powerful vis-à-vis destructive violence brought about by waging wars with a tool called sword (read weapon).   While the former creates awareness to influence a thought process, the latter creates panic and fear and loss of lives in the ultimate analysis.   You win with logic and peace what you can’t win with fear and violence.   Last but not the least, the pen makes a lasting impression across generations while the sword cannot produce lasting results but puts lives of many in past tense.   On any given day it is so much more appealing to seek the pen route take the creative path. With a war that has gone a full year, can we believe this is happening in ...
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Walk for good health (24-Dec-2022)

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Walking is considered good for health and is a low-cost activity.   One has to wear comfortable clothes and step into a good pair of shoes.   A cap fits in right if the sun is shining bright.   For someone like me who walks on roads in Bangalore, even though in the quiet neighbourhood, a small hand-held baton helps to ward off any street dogs that typically move around in packs. A conscious effort to walk is the need of the hour given our modern-day sedentary lifestyle.   Hours and hours at the desk on the computer, or in front of the television set watching the favorite channels are the triggers for obesity, diabetes, heart conditions, and other lifestyle diseases.   An intervention in the form of conscious decision making with a high degree of commitment to staying physically active by an individual is the best way forward. Somnambulism – not a desired state of walking.   In continued impaired consciousness, an individual when woken up from sleep may ...
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Tale of two south-indian breakfast dishes (09-Oct-2022)

Dosa or Upma are both 4-letter popular dishes and there ends their similarities!   Innumerable theories can be put forth to gain one upmanship of one over the other.   Starting point for a Dosa is a thought!   Various ingredients in stated proportions that are soaked in water throughout the day offers quick beginning of ensuing process steps.   These ingredients when subjected to few runs in a mixer-grinder yield a batter of optimal consistency.   Soaked overnight, fermentation kicks in to cause raised levels.   The owner earns a good night’s sleep to dream a dish that caters to the entire family. Starting point for an Upma is action!   Rava is roasted in a pan and boiling water is added with continuous stirring to prevent knots.   Garnished with chillies and a few other seasonings – bingo, the steaming dish is ready in a jiffy.   Variations do exist with the starting ingredients to cater to a variety of taste buds.   An old proverb ...
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A ‘Sound’ Economy (29-July-2022)

Honk…honk!  This is my road, and your presence shouldn’t impede my movement.  I use banned horns because I like their shrill sound!  Maybe I love it that I can annoy you! Pyepaar….pyepaar!   We believe in recycling, and you can trust us…we pay cash for your newspaper and other old items of scrap value. Tarakari, hannu, hoova!   We are better than Swiggy’s and Zomato’s…we bring everything fresh to your doorstep.   Trust us…we’re there from time immemorial, before aggregators had a business model, before our own children developed those Apps for the big companies. Jhadoo….jhadoo!   We help to keep your house clean and rid them off cobwebs.   Remember, cleanliness is next to Godliness. Bow…bow…grrr…grrr!   We bark and we howl, and we move around with gay abandon.   Darkness motivates us to chase each other to play and to announce trespass of our own self-marked territory.   We howl but then we don’t know why this disturbs your ...
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RACE – RAPID ACCESS TO ACE EDUCATION (10-June-2022)

RACE – Rapid-access to ACe Education Abracadabra, the rarest of rare sights!   Education should have been spared but that was not to be.   Enter the rat race and one is bound to see unhealthy competition.   It appears an offshoot of the peer pressure that has transcended borders, families, gender, and what not! ‘Rat race’ is today the omnipresent truth.   Look at the loving parents shepherding their ‘generation-of-tomorrow’ young ones into coaching classes at unearthly hours.   This is for a ‘make-believe’ short-cut to success which catapults their wards into the career-path of choice – mind you mostly the parents’ choice!   One is left to wonder where this is leading us! Does the student choose the stream of choice, or blindly follow what is chosen by parents?   Student is at the crossroads when he reaches first the 10 th grade and then the 12 th grade and is misled by “Opportunity never knocks twice,” “Make hay while the sun shines.” The pr...
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WORLD OF QUOTIENTS - A "BCD" STORY (08-May-2022)

Bangalore – I hail from this city.   The city with nicknames such as ‘Pensioner’s Paradise,’ ‘IT Capital,’ ‘Garden City,’ ‘Pub city,’ and many more has lost its charm.   This is true of most Indian cities, unfortunately.   Do we thank globalization, commercialization, growing pains, our politicians apathy, whatever?   This is the new norm that we accept with our heads down.   This write-up is from a couple of years ago but holds good even today! A study then stated that Bangalore’s traffic-related accidents had reduced considerably.   The traffic department made a claim that it helped being pro-active and efficient.   A tricky proposition that raised doubts in my mind; my postulation goes thus… A report stated that Bangalore residents have better DQ – Digestion Quotient!   Report highlighted the city residents are gastronomically initiated to a variety of cuisine and digest them compared to people in other Indian cities.   Be it the weste...
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VIRUS BULLETIN (19-Mar-2022)

  ‘No time to die.’   No not the title of the recent Bond movie. Time now for us to put up a united front.   Let’s discuss in a video conference to strategize our next move.   A Zoom meeting will help collaborate to decide our next course of action!   Participants with a dress code for Zoom praised each other for the variations in their appearance, nevertheless the same end result! “Remember we have travelled all over the world into some 150+ countries, and this is no time to accept defeat and lose our battle.” “Even WHO believes that if we come together, we can mate and mutate while there is every effort from authorities to mitigate the risks that we pose them.” “Listen Omicron, you’ve brought our might down…you are a weakling?!   Why did you lose your potency after you invaded the human body to make them sick? They are calling us a flu virus!” “Why do you have to be jealous about my potency?   I doubled much faster than you and I am the h...
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DOWN THE DRAIN (28-Jan-2022)

  Innovation is the panacea for risk-taking individuals to tackle any challenges. The idiom “Down the Drain” is in usage for a long time and implies to waste something or the means to a futile end.   A water faucet gone kaput which has made it impossible to arrest its wastage or harvest its flow is a good rationale for usage of this adage. Scientists tread the path of research with gusto, though at times their research results in dead ends or delayed results.   Both these situations throw them out-of-balance and make them feel desolate, since they may have to start all-over.   Often their research produce detrimental results too for reasons beyond comprehension and they get branded in the society as anti-social.   Nevertheless, it’s their resilience to take adversity head-on which is an essential element of their success, sometimes a late-stage gain.   They endure and evaluate methods when faced with challenges to prove their hypothesis.   Innovati...
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2-YEAR ANNIVERSARY - https://prasharihar.blogspot.com/

  Earlier this week, specifically on 11-January two years lapsed since I started my blog.   Doesn’t time fly at super-sonic speeds? 2 years – 46 posts – 10,000+ views and some invaluable comments from most of you.   A testament exists in the form of digital footprint of cherished comments that will last a lifetime.   Whose lifetime is a discussion for another day! Each of you have motivated me – your unannounced approval for me to forward the links to my new blogs, the time you took from your busy schedule to read that, and then the time you invested to leave behind a few comments on the blog or sometimes in other social media platforms like FB, WA, LI, that was indeed feedback in real-time. Some of the ones that I enjoyed writing and I received some cool comments include: https://prasharihar.blogspot.com/2020/01/creative-juices-11-jan-2020.html - I started with a great degree of trepidation but then creative juices flowed.  So glad that my procrastinatio...
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HAPPY NEW YEAR – 2022 (31-Dec-2021)

  Wishing you a very happy new year 2022!   Wishing all of us virus-free days in the near future, but then specifically to you let health-wealth-happiness be bestowed in abundance by the Lord Wishing all of us success and merriment, but then specifically to you let the joy of a win in everything that you set forth be a blessing by the Lord Wishing all of us enhanced bonding and friendship, but then specifically to you let our bridge stay strong as an offering to the Lord Wishing all of us travel into the places we love, but then specifically to you to be able to travel to your family and friends as a gratitude to the Lord Wishing all of us peace and prosperity, but then specifically to you let the inner peace and tranquillity be the light shone by the Lord Almost there, ready to step into a new year it mandates us to shine a little but bright light on the days ahead into the future.   Just so that it augurs well, it is imperative to erase the dark days which h...
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CHILD AS THE FATHER OF MAN (19-Dec-2021)

  Famous poet William Wordsworth in his poem “My Heart Leaps Up” wrote “The Child Is Father of the Man.”   It implies that if any experience in adulthood is similar or same as that in childhood it makes it a better experience given the journey through life stages. Human beings are essentially a final product of some balance of nature and nurture components, the underlying substrata of the vast and ever-growing field of psychology.   The debate goes on, like they say till the ‘cows come home,’ as to which component has a stronger influence to shape an individual in later years.   I have no formal education in psychology but a fleeting interest to dabble into a few articles and form my opinion. My take is that in early years one’s genes shape an individual until they experience certain life-defining moments which harden their personality.   Destiny then defines their travel into the deep years of age.   A proverb in kannada which when translated states th...
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GREAT WALL IN A FLAT WORLD (20-Nov-2021)

Opened the book; his autograph brought fond memories given his new role… The World is Flat is Thomas Friedman’s prize winning and popular book where the opening line reads: “No one ever gave me direction like this on a golf course before: ‘Aim at either Microsoft or IBM.’”  This book was published in 2005 and pure coincidence that I worked for IBM, then in my 3 rd year and my work location was Embassy Golf Links office on Intermediate Ring Road in Bangalore that is called out in that line.  A good read that dealt with a contemporary subject of outsourcing of IT services work from USA and other countries and successfully delivered by the Indian knowledge talent pool.  Bibliosmia or book-smell is what I yearned for as I waited to lay my hands on this book.  Same year 2005 on Christmas day, I purchased this book at the airport bookstore enroute my return flight to Bangalore.  The last line of a section on page 5 read “‘Honey,’ I confided, ‘I think the world i...
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SOMANNA – 1st YEAR REMEMBRANCE (03-Nov-2021)

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Albert Einstein quote: “Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile” You lighted our lives to annihilate the darkness of our ignorance You showed us the path of noble virtuous living to tread this life of thorns You lived life as a shining example to others who sought to emulate you You remained an unsolved puzzle despite your completeness   Eulogy to my dear father Somanna on his 1 st anniversary On this day of Deepavali in 2021, today November 3 rd is exactly one year since Somanna left us in his mortal body.  Just the way the festival of lights Deepavali signifies peace and joy, and good vanquishing the evil, Somanna instilled in us a deep sense of morals and principles in both within the family and outside.  In one sense, it appears that Somanna has not left us since he lives on within us every second of the day.  His voice reverberates the four walls within our home, his lively conversations enliven our today’s conversation, his magnetic ...
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