સગડ મળે જો તારા ! -હિતેન આનંદપરા

સગડ મળે જો તારા
હું ઓવારી દઉં તારા પર
પાંપણના પલકારા
સગડ મળે જો તારા
મને કોઇ સમજાવો મારી
સમજણ કાચી પાકી
તને શોધવા માટે કેટલાં
જન્મો લેવા બાકી ?
પતંગિયાના કઈ રીતે હું
ગણી શકું ધબકારા ?
સગડ મળે જો તારા
તળમાં હો કે નભમાં તારા
અગણિત રૂપ અપાર
મારી એકજ ઈચ્છા, તારો
બનું હું વારસદાર
તને વિનંતી કરું છું થોડા
મોકલને અણસારા
સગડ મળે જો તારા

3 wishes u can ask for

'3 wishes you can ask for'

(Topic suggested by Anisha Jain-Shah,U.S.A.)

If anyone, say God, tells me that I can ask for 3 wishes of my life & he will grant those wishes; I will have no hesitation about my choices : The 3 wishes I'll like to fulfill in my life are;

1. Learning formal music ( vocal/instrumental/classical whatever possible)
2. Adopting a girl child ( at the time when I can spend enough time for his upbringing)
3. Doing some kind of charity work ( starting organization or working for such group or individually)

I've put a lot of thought & have analyzed my conscience thoroughly before recognizing my ultimate internal desires. But I doubt whether everyone has this ability to analyze & recognize their inner feelings or conscience. Most of them won't be able to answer this question readily & convincingly & even if they do so, there are all chances that they will end up listing the things they want to possess rather than they desire from deep inside. This is because external factors influences our thinking so much that we forget our instincts & think in the terms of materialistic possessions. However, there is no doubt in my mind that each & every person has some unfulfilled internal desires which can give the meaning to their existence. So, let's go to some distance in this cliche looking interesting subject of " The ultimate wishes of your life".

Everyone has wishes to be fulfilled in life because if you don't wish something, you can't get anything. But there is a huge difference between external & internal wishes. External wishes are desires to get or possess some physical objects or subjects i.e. car,house,girlfriend etc. Internal wishes on the other hand are those which don't come from 'having something you like' but they come from 'doing something you like'. It gives you the feeling of inner satisfaction & eternal pleasure which money can't buy. It comes as a result of some good deeds like performing, achieving, creating, helping, donating, leading & so on. Physical wantings breed more wantings but these noble acts breed contentment, joy & happiness all around. These are the things everyone wants to achieve but due to external influences on our conscience, we restrict ourselves to possessing something rather than searching for our inner desires to achieve real success or excellence in life. Buying a latest music system is possession but learning & performing the music in an achievement which you can't buy. It gives you satisfaction, confidence, joy & sense of achievement which a music system cannot give by any means. So the point is, the wishes of our life should mean those wishes which we want to fulfill but haven't done yet because of our worldly commitments or as a result of our lassitude & complacency or due to lack of self-realization. Be more dedicated to making solid achievements than running after swift but synthetic happiness. Most of us get confused between our demands & our desires. Demands are external needs & desires are internal one. To find out your internal desires, ask yourself some questions like;

• What are the things I always wanted to do when I was young?
• What kind of work gives me a sense of feeling good after doing it?
• What kind of work you appreciate when someone does that?
• How will I like people to remember me after my death?
• What are the things I'll like to do before my death?

There can be many more questions you can ask to yourself. Keep asking them until you find the answers. When you find what are your real desires in life, prioritize your wishes on the basis of their relative importance in your life. Then plan your actions towards achieving the goal of fulfilling top 3 wishes first. This may require both short-term & long-term planning. Everything may not go according to your plan every time but don't stop or step back. Have perseverance over your dream. Life always gives chance to fulfill your dream sooner or later. Have patience & do not allow your wishes to slip out of your mind any single moment. If you haven't find time or opportunity to live your dream in young age, have a go at it at the older age. No age is too late to start living for yourself! Assure yourself that if life gives me due time & opportunity, I will fulfill all my desires before my death. But as we know, life is very uncertain. So sooner is better. Try to spare some time for yourself to work towards your dream. You may be find it difficult to adjust initially due to your commitments but let me assure you that doing the things you always wanted to do are never laborious. Rather, they give you such confidence, pleasure & satisfaction that you get recharged for your routine life. So don't hesitate or be complacent. Just follow your dreams & feel how rewarding it is after fulfilling your desires. You end up living in a whole different world! So hold on to your dreams & they are bound to come true! Then the life is all yours to live happily! Rock on!!!

"इन दिनों दिल मेरा मुजसे ये कहे रहा;

तू ख्वाब सजा, तू जी ले ज़रा ।

है तुजे भी इजाजत तू भी कर ले महोब्बत।

बेरंग थी ये बड़ी ज़िन्दगी कुछ रंग तो भरूं,

मैं अपनी तन्हाई के वास्ते अब कुछ तो करूँ;

गर मिले थोडी फुर्सत खुदसे करले महोब्बत।"

Learning lessons from Mangalore

Learning lessons from Mangalore
By Vir Sanghvi

Most of us will have been encouraged by some of the political responses to the attack on pub-goers in Mangalore. Even Rajnath Singh, not usually perceived as a pillar of the liberal establishment, delivered a ringing condemnation of the assaults and most political parties joined the chorus of disapproval.
The politicians - and many media commentators - based their criticisms of the assault on two separate liberal principles. The first was: nobody can take the law into his or her own hands.
It is legitimate to strongly object to something but quite unacceptable to forego due process and take direct action. The second principle was the traditional liberal one of 'live and let live'.
I may disapprove of what you do but unless your actions directly harm me I have no right to stop you. This principle has been used to argue that even if the lunatics on the fringes of the Sangh parivar found the pubs objectionable, they had no business preventing those who liked the so-called 'pub culture' from enjoying it.
Both principles are strong and well-established and I can see why they have been quoted. They are usually used by politicians and editorial writers to condemn attacks on cinema halls showing Fire, on shops selling Valentine's Day cards, etc.But here's my problem: I think we need to go beyond the standard liberal denunciations of the Mangalore violence because the usual objections seem to me to be entirely inadequate here.The real issues run much deeper. Go to the politicians who have condemned the Mangalore attack, ask them a few significant questions and see what responses you get.
Ask Rajnath Singh, for instance, what he thinks of the so-called 'pub culture'. My guess is that he will say that he disapproves of it entirely because it goes against Indian culture.
Ashok Gehlot has already been asked this question and delivered an attack on 'pub culture'. (Later, when it was pointed out to him that his response came off as toeing the Sangh parivar line, he quickly amended it to say that he was only against alcoholism - but by then, the damage had been done.) Go further. Ask this question of L.K. Advani.Of Lalu Prasad Yadav. Of Mayawati.
My guess is they'll all say the same thing: that going to pubs is against 'Indian culture'. That's my problem with the liberal position that is being used to condemn the Mangalore attacks.
Politicians will say they disapprove of the violence and shed tears over the incident. But they will still support the cause and agenda of the goondas.
This was brought out most clearly in the response of the Karnataka Chief Minister who issued the routine condemnation but then followed it up with a ringing denunciation of the 'pub culture'. He was a liberal, he said.
He did not mind if people went out to eat 'non-veg' (wow!). But it was against our very cultural traditions to go drinking in pubs at night.
My fear is that we will allow the politicians to fool us. Because they appear to making the right condemnatory noises, we do not realise that, in essence, their views are no different from those of the hoodlums, who attacked the pub.
It is only the methods that they are quibbling over. At the root of the against-our-cultural-traditions argument is a specious notion of what culture is.
What the politicians are saying is that culture is static; that it is the sum total of social practices at any given time. Any deviation from those practices represents a dangerous drift away from all the things that make us Indian.
This is so flawed an argument that it is plain silly. What is Indian culture, in this sense, anyway? Is it sati? That was an established practice once upon a time.
Is it untouchability? Is it dowry? Is it beef-eating? (We know that the Vedic Aryans ate beef.) Is it forcing widows to wear white? All of us would agree that none of these things represents Indian culture as we know it.
Yet, there was a time when all these practices were part of the cultural consensus. And deviations from them were vigorously opposed as being alien to our cultural traditions.
The truth is that culture is never static; it changes over time. If the BJP wants us to go back to the roots of ancient Indian culture then where do we stop? At sati? At wearing unstitched clothes? It is entirely legitimate for Yeddyurappa or Gehlot or other politicians to disapprove of bars or of alcohol.
But they have no right to define Indian culture or to claim that it should be frozen in time. They are not the custodians of our culture.
And my guess is that politicians don't even understand what culture is anyway. There is a second, worrying element to the Mangalore attacks that, despite Renuka Chowdhury's agitated response, seems to have passed without much comment from other politicians.
Have you noticed how every time male politicians jump up and down shouting about threats to our culture, the issue nearly always involves the freedom and choices of women? Think about it. When Sharad Yadav is in full flow, it is 'baal-katti' women he objects to.
When M.A. Naqvi protests about TV coverage of 26/11, he complains about women who wear lipstick. When R.R. Patil wants to shut down Bombay's beer bars (as he successfully did), it's not the beer he objects to but the women dancers.
When the Sangh parivar wants to ban Fire, it is because the film shows two women in a lesbian relationship. Nobody objects to the homosexual sub-text of Dostana - hell, they probably identify with it.
Similarly, when Hindu communalists attack the crew of Water, it is because the film shows how badly we treat our widows. Make a film about how badly we treat our adivasis or dalits and nobody will care.
Even moral policing, as we call it, is really about keeping women in check. Why do policemen and political hoodlums crack down on courting couples? Only because they think it is 'immoral' or wrong (or 'against Indian culture') for women to be allowed to display affection with men of their choice.
What angers me the most about the Mangalore attack is that the agenda is not really anti-alcohol or about any concern for India's cultural traditions. It is about controlling women.
The pubs had been going for a while but the hoodlums had never attacked them. When they launched their assault it was directed at the women in the pub.
It was the very presence of women, their exercise of their free choice to drink and their decision to sit with men that so angered the political goondas. All this is more worrying than the simple fact of vigilantes taking the law into their own hands.
Of course it is wrong to do that - as all the politicians have dutifully pointed out. But that's not the real issue.
The crisis within our society is not just about random acts of violent political protest. It is the unspoken agreement between politicians across parties that it is entirely legitimate to deny Indian women the same rights as men; that they cannot have any sexual or romantic choices of their own; and that if they dare enjoy themselves in the way that men do (in a pub, for instance), they will be punished and made to suffer.
The BJP holds forth about intolerance and about how women get a bad deal within the Muslim community. But does it have any right to complain about Talibanisation when members of the extended parivar do much the same thing and BJP Chief Ministers suggest that apart from the violence, they agree with these retrograde positions? These are the questions we need to ask - not just of the BJP, but of all of India's politicians.
Let's not be fobbed off with platitudes about how all violence is bad. Let's get to the core issues: what right do these jokers have to define Indian culture? And why do modern Indian women make our male politicians so insecure? Is it because they are even more inadequate than we realise?.

How beneficial is it to start the child's education at a very early age?

(Topic suggested by Anisha Jain-Shah,VA,U.S.A.)

Introduction:-

As a parent, our prime concern for our children is his education for upon it lies his future in terms of his mental growth, knowledge, financial security, social status & above all our sense of fulfillment as successful parents। Our concern here is,'Should the child's education be started at a very early age of his life? How beneficial or not is it for child's growth & development? Our educators in past, had given real thought of concern regarding this matter. That's why, all over the world, it has been widely accepted that primary education of a child should not be started before the age of 5. This is because these are the years of child's physical,mental & emotional development. His cognitive & intellectual skills are not well-developed till this age. He is trying to adjust in his environment by learning different skills. Moreover, he feels insecure in this world because of lack of understanding of its complexities. He needs constant care, supervision & encouragement throughout this period of growth & development. That's why educators advise that child should be in protective environment until the age of 5, by which his linguistic, analytic, social & emotional skills have developed to some extent. But what we find today is that child is pushed into the pre-school education right from the age of 2, first play-group, then nursery, then K.G. & then primary education. We are in a hurry to get our child educated as early as possible.

The reasons or advantages of early childhood schooling:-

• The amount of information & knowledge is growing day by day & the world has become a global hub. The child needs to learn many things not only to earn his livings but also to become really successful in life. So the parents think that it will be good for the child to start learning as early as possible.
• Access to any kind of information is so easy & so influential because of various means of mass-communication that child automatically tends to learn, whether good or bad, new things faster than their older generations. Then why not to use his skills in education rather wasting them at home. Parents think that their children are smarter enough to take loads of early education.
• The competition in the professional field is so fierce that parents don't want to take chance with their children's education. They try to provide best of the available facilities within their resources. They think that if some one's child is behaving smart after joining pre-school then why shouldn't I be doing the same for my child? They don't want their child to be left behind.
• Because of nuclear families, parents have to fight on dual fronts of earning as well as taking care of their child's study. When both parents are working then problem becomes more serious. Parents tend to get their child admitted in pre-school education groups as early as possible so that they can carry on their career without worrying about child's education.
• As the knowledge & education is getting more & more complex day by day, many of the parents find it difficult to cope with it. They are left with no choice but to get admitted their child in an educational institute as early as possible so that he can learn those things which parents can't teach.
• Parents have no choice right now regarding taking decision about when to start formal education of their child. Our education system is such that if you haven't provided proper pre-school education to your child then you won't be able to get your child admitted anywhere later on. You have to be with the system or you are left out.

Problems or Disadvantages of early childhood schooling:-

• The education system is so commercialized that the basic concept of 'learn while you play' has been forgotten all together.
• The child's important years of growth & development are consumed by his schooling.
• The child hardly finds time to play or to develop his interest in any activity he likes because of starting his education very early.
• Due to lake of physical activity child's physical development suffers at a very early age of his life upon which lies the foundation of his future health.
• Due to the competitive structure of our educational system, child is forced very early into the rat-race for materialistic success.
• Because of performance anxiety, a child may face psychological problems very early in his life. He may succumb to the unnatural & unhealthy pressure created by the heavy loads of the study along with high expectations of parents.
• Because of the misconception that good education means getting good marks in exams, child may not learn any subject thoroughly but he will mug everything from the exam-point of view. This may lead to failure in his professional life because of lack of thorough knowledge, both theoretically as well as practically.

Probable solutions or alternatives for the problem of early schooling:-

1. Let us assume that it is not possible to change the current education system & child has to start learning at a very early age, then we should try to find the solution within the system itself. Competitiveness in studies should be curtailed by changing the pattern of exams. The teachers should be trained to deliver thorough knowledge of the subject & children should be encouraged to be creative,curious & courageous in studies. Parents should be assisted whenever required regarding the problems they might be facing for their children's studies. Schools are supposed to be educational temples not shops.
2. Some revolutionary parent groups have started imparting home education to their children avoiding the need for the child to spend time in the school daily. Here parents are at liberty to select what to teach, when to teach & how to teach. But this system only works when parents are well-educated and capable of dealing with various aspects of education.
3. Starting pre-schooling late (i.e. after age of 4) can be another option. That means the whole educational process of the child gets delayed by a couple of years. The only problem is that child starts earning late by 2 years or so. That, in my opinion, should not be a cause of concern these days because average life expectancy is close to 70 in most parts of the world & parents can bear the cost of studies & loss of income from their children for 2 years more. But if we want to compensate the loss, we can increase the age of retirement by 2 years to balance the equation. That seems to be a more logical solution to me, but it requires a great deal of paradigm shift from policy makers, educationists, educational institutes & parents.

What is the role of the parents in present scenario?:-

• Parents should upgrade their knowledge time and again. They should make themselves versed with the latest of information & technologies which help themselves in dealing with their child's education. Reading & effective use of Internet & mass-media can be of great help for them in this regard. You have to learn many things before you can expect your child to learn something.
• Parents should encourage reading habits in their children right from the beginning. This increases their imagination & creativity along with information & knowledge.
• Children should not be insisted only to focus on their studies. Their syllabus only represents a very small portion of the enormous amount of knowledge available in the world. General knowledge, knowledge of current affairs, sports, cultural activities & value education is as important as studies for success & personality development.
• All curiosities of child must be satisfied with utmost interest even if it takes some time out of your busy schedule. Remember, a curious child dissatisfied may turn into a furious child.
• Child should be allowed to learn from the mistakes. Too much of assistance, supervision & protection hampers his abilities to deal with the problems.
• We should not seek to get social mileage out of child's performance. This creates 'performance anxiety' in child's mind resulting in deteriorated performance despite of natural talent.
• Let the child do whatever he wants, not what you want him to do. Don't try to satisfy your unfulfilled desires by means of your child's achievements.
• Don't force him to excel in everything. Try to find out the areas of his interest by trial & error and encourage him to pursue his path in those areas.
• No two children are identical, not even twins. Every child is unique but not everyone is genius. If some child has some extraordinary skill at a very young age, then not necessarily your child should be able to do the same. If he is really interested, he may start learning the same thing late but still excel in it. Have patience with your child. Let him grow at his pace.
• Don't expect too much out of your child every time. He may mess up with his performance occasionally. Make him realize about his faults & encourage him to fight back. Don't be a critic of your child but be a supporter.
• Enjoy & celebrate his success. Give him due rewards but avoid bribery to get his work done every time.
• Let us not confuse education with the capacity to earn. A person can earn money than a scholar even without formal education. earning & education are independent of each other. The purpose of education is to make a person capable to face the realities of life, to make him use his knowledge for the well-being of the society & to achieve the sense of fulfillment by getting real success in his life without compromising the moral values.
• Lastly, before we can expect anything out of our child, we have to look at ourselves first. Mere education is not going to get him anywhere near the success but it requires good personality & great character to achieve the real success. The child learns all the most important values & virtues of life from his parents, which ultimately become the foundation of his personality & character। One cannot instill these values in child just by telling him to follow but you have to forge those values into your attitude, behaviour & character first so that child can realize their importance। Remember, we are their role models। They will listen everything we say but follow only that what we do. Don't worry about your child not listening to you but remember he is always observing you.

"मासूम बच्चों के हाथों को चाँद सितारे छू लेने दो ;

वर्ना दो किताबें पढ़के तो ये भी हम जैसे हो जायेंगे।"

-निदा फाजली

Gandhiji's view on "Ahinsa"

(From the book, "Mahatma-Life of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi" by D.G.Tendulkar, Vol.2, page 421-423.)

"Some days back a calf having been maimed lay in agony in the ashram. Whatever treatment and nursing was possible was given to it. The surgeon whose advice was sought in the matter declared the case to be past help and past hope. The suffering of the animal was so great that it could not even turn its side without excruciating pain. In these circumstances I felt that humanity demanded that the agony should be ended by ending life itself. The matter was placed before the whole ashram. At the discussion, a worthy neighbour vehemently opposed the idea of killing even to end pain. The ground of his opposition was that one has no right to take life which one cannot create. His argument seemed to me to be pointless here. It would have point, if the taking of life was actuated by self-interest. Finally in all humility but with the clearest of convictions I got in my presence a doctor kindly to administer the calf a quietus by means of a poison injection. The whole thing was over in less than two minutes.I knew that public opinion especially in Ahmedabad would not approve of my action and that it would read nothing but hinsa in it. But I know too that performance of one's duty should be independent of public opinion. I have all along held that one is bound to act according to what to one appears to be right, though it may appear wrong to others. And experience has shown that that is the only correct course. That is why the poet has sung:"The pathway of love is the ordeal of fire, the shriekers turn away from it." The pathway of ahinsa, that is, of love, one has often to tread all alone.

The question may legitimately be put to me: Would I apply to human beings the principle I have enunciated in connexion with the calf? Would I like it to be applied in my own case? My reply is 'Yes'; the same law holds good in both the cases. The law, 'as with one so with all', admits of no exceptions, or the killing of the calf was wrong and violent. In practice, however, we do not cut short the sufferings of our ailing dear ones by death because, as a rule, we have always means at our disposal to help them and they have the capacity to think and decide for themselves. But supposing that in the case of an ailing friend, I am unable to render any aid and recovery is out of the question and the patient is lying in an unconscious state in the throes of agony, then I would not see any hinsa in putting an end to his suffering by death. Just as a surgeon does not commit hinsa but practises the purest ahinsa when he wields his knife, one may find it necessary, under certain imperative circumstances, to go a step further and severe life from the body in the interest of the sufferer. It may be objected that whereas the surgeon performs his operation to save the life of the patient, in the other case we do just the reverse. But on a deeper analysis it will be found that the ultimate object sought to be served in both the cases is the same, namely, to relieve the suffering soul within from pain. In the one case you do it by severing the diseased portion from the body, in the other you do it by severing from the soul the body that has become an instrument of torture to it. In either case it is the relief of the soul from pain that is aimed at, the body without life within being incapable of feeling either pleasure or pain. Other circumstances can be imagined in which not to kill would spell hinsa, while killing would be ahinsa. Suppose, for instance, that I find my daughter, whose wish at the moment I have no means of ascertaining, is threatened with violation and there is no way by which I can save her, to put an end to her life and surrender myself to the fury of the incensed ruffian.

The trouble with our votaries of ahinsa is that they have made of ahinsa a blind fetish and put the greatest obstacle in the way of the spread of true ahinsa in our midst. The current-and, in my opinion, mistaken- view of ahinsa has drugged our conscience and rendered us insensible to a host of other and more insidious forms of hinsa like harsh words, harsh judgements, ill will, anger, spite and lust of cruelty; it has made us forget that there may be far more hinsa in the slow torture of men and animals, the starvation and exploitation to which they are subjected out of selfish greed, the wanton humiliation and oppression of the weak and the killing of their self-respect that we witness all around us today than in mere benevolent taking of life. Does any one doubt for a moment that it would have been far more humane to have summarily put to death those who in the infamous lane of Amritsar were made by their tortures to crawl on their bellies like worms? If anyone desires to retort by saying that these people themselves today feel otherwise, that they are none the worse for crawling, I shall have no hesitation in telling him that he does not know even the elements of ahinsa. There arise occasions in a man's life when it becomes his imperative duty to meet them by laying down his life; not to appreciate this fundamental fact of man's estate is to betray an ignorance of the foundation of ahinsa. For instance, a votary of truth would pray to God to give him death to save him from a life of falsehood, similarly a votary of ahinsa would on bent knees implore his enemy to put him to death rather than humiliate him or make him do things unbecoming the dignity of a human being. As the poet has sung:' The way of the Lord is meant for heroes, not for cowards.' It is the fundamental misconception about the nature and the scope of ahinsa, this confusion about the relative values, that is responsible for our mistaking mere non-killing for ahinsa and for the fearful amount of hinsa that goes on in the name of ahinsa in our country."