Rocket Attack on AJ

This young man I know did his Diwali CSR or good deed or whatever one would like to call it by going to an old-age home and join them for a fireworks show. All very good, except that this boy is more-than-normal scared of fireworks. To his credit, he braved the fear and went to the show. He sat quietly, and watched others do the cracker job. Without much warning a "rocket cracker" (0r what was called whistlers in our times) shot across the ground and found a neat target ....... our dear protagonist's toes. The toes were singed, the young man bawled, a doctor was got..... etc. etc. etc.

The moral of the story :
1. At Diwali shows always wear shoes and socks, always wear full sleeved shirt and trousers.

2. It pays to study 'Rocket Science' perhaps ?????? Did the guy who lit the whistler read the science??? At the USA?????

I do not know whether to laugh or to condole, but it re-affirms by belief in 'armoured Diwali garments'.

of parents

Sometimes I miss my parents. A large part of my growing up years was spent with them, and much of what I am today is because I was the world to them, and in turn, they were important in my life. Ma was the first to know of any failure of mine. And Dad was the first to know about any new mountain that I had climbed.

They taught me Freedom. With a capital F and that meant Freedom of the Mind and of the Spirit. They also taught me Responsibility, that may arise out of Freedom ...... or the misuse of it.

Parents tend to fade away into the background over time.
That I guess, is the nature of life.
And children sometimes permit that to happen.

Make your parents relevant to your life.

Relevance. Significance. That is all they need.

All I have is yours to have.

I have been meeting a whole lot of young people lately. I meet and interact with the age 20+ and the age 30+ youngsters as a matter of routine .... as part of my job. Interesting young people, intelligent and bright. They, nearly all, seem to have clear and ambitious schemes ahead of them, and the pursuit of success and status take on a high priority. Clearly ambition and achievement are qualities held in special regard. Objects of material affluence are important to them.
That is the way society works ............
a) Success
b) Money
What the world measures you by.

I treat success with disdain. I smirk at its smugness. A recent mandatory appraisal at my place of work asked me if I was a success at my job. I have never asked myself the question.
Do I measure my success as a professor judging from the few dozen of CEOs and academicians I have tutored?
Or do I judge my success on the fact that hundreds of old students come back every year with girl-friends/boy-friends/wives/husbands/children/a dog, in tow to meet
"My Ma'am. Pronam koro."
To me the latter seems to be more important. Yet, when a publishing house of huge repute recently announced the top five young social scientists of India, three of the five were my students. I walked rather tall that day!
Actually there is only one form of success, and that is how successful you are in your relationships.How do you sculpt a long term relationship?

Of money, the least said the better. Money is so very non-contextual to me. I know that is not what I judge myself by. Neither do I judge others by it. I work hard and earn the money I think I deserve. I never have made money that I did not rightly deserve. I do not spend my earnings ostentatiously. I have all the material things I need, and what I do not have, I do not obviously need. I have earned other riches in life, I have got other wealth. Things money can't buy.

To the bright-eyed youth of today ..... Make money, make it honestly, but never for yourself. Always for someone else. Bring on a smile on someone's face. Let not "I want" or "I want to...." be a catch-word in your life.

I don't own any thing. All I have is yours to have.