The enlightened call a person wise when all his undertakings are free from anxiety about results.

— Krishna in The Gita

The mind is everything. What you think you become.
— Buddha



Thursday 29 April 2010

Weight(y) issue

Recently I travelled to India to spend two weeks with my parents and now most of my clothes don’t fit. The downside of Mom’s cooking!

Now I’ve started doing Surya Namaskar in the evenings too, after coming back from work. I know at least one person who obtained her size 0 figure with SN. Kareena Kapoor! Of course she does 50 rounds and I can barely reach 10. My aim is a modest 24, equivalent to 1 hr’s rigorous workout.

One can never be too rich or too thin, but I’ll be happy to remain size 16. Since I eat sensibly, dieting would mean starving myself, which is a no-no. So the only other way is to sweat it out.

I wish I could rope in a fitness trainer or resort to body-sculpting or whatever. Anything that GUARANTEES weight loss. Isn’t it surprising that the rich stand a better chance of staying thin, a fact Monica Ali’s protagonist in Brick Lane observes in the context of the UK. But isn’t that generally true?

Since when did we start obsessing with body weight? As a teenager I never found it to be an issue, whereas my 15-year-old daughter is sooooo conscious. I suspect it started with the expansion of the electronic media, the images of anorexic celebs constantly reminding us how fat we are, and therefore how ugly.

But there is one place in the world where fat women rule the roost. It’s Mauritania, in Africa! I had watched the interview of a young Mauritanian woman on Oprah a year or so before. Apparently, among the white Moor Arab population obesity equals to sexy and young girls are sometimes force-fed to gain weight.
I know, I know…sounds like heaven.

Monday 26 April 2010

Confessions of a technophobe

Last Friday (weekend in the UAE) I attempted two impossible things. One was this blog and the second thing was I decided to be active on Facebook.
The first was relatively easy. The template was there and I just uploaded the first post, leaving the details for the next weekend.

As for the fb, the account was opened two years back by my cousin, Archana, an fb fanatic, saying it was fun and simple, and that “even you can handle it.”
But for two years I managed to ignore the friendship requests.
Last weekend, on a sudden burst of enthusiasm I reactivated my account, accepted the requests and sent out some of my own.

Soon fb messages started pouring in on my yahoo inbox—I could read them, sweet and welcoming—but try however I might, wasn’t able to reciprocate. I clicked on the link, on the photos and all the possible places but my messages wouldn’t go. Now I’m waiting for the weekend so I can rope in somebody for a demo. Meanwhile, I’m sending smses like crazy: “sori 4 nt respnding on fb. Will do on wknd.’

Technology really gets my goat. Anyway I feel most of it is superfluous and will rebound on us. Just an example, ten years back we never felt the need to be accessible 24 hours, but now we do, even while driving on the fast lane.

But I fear more for the next gen that they might be badly out of touch with real people and situations. A recent Reuters report vindicates my dread: American college kids get real withdrawal symptoms if they are denied the Net and social media.
Scary thought, isn’t it?

Friday 23 April 2010

First Step

Did you know that more than two blogs are created each second of each day?

I came upon this bit of info while launching Life.com. Actually I had been trying to select the URL, and realised that whatever name I typed, it’d have been invariably taken.

A quick Google-search and I stumbled upon some eye-popping statistics: the blogosphere is doubling about once every six months or so.

For a procrastinator like me (and a technophobe to boot) there couldn’t be a worse dampener. 200 million blogs and still counting!! At this rate we’ll all turn into writers, with no readers. It’s like we are all trying to speak at the same time…

What the heck…there are still lots of eyeballs left.

It’d be nice if some folks stumble onto this space and stay on, either because they like what I say or totally dislike, showing me an alternative way of looking at things. After all, life is a lifelong learning process.
That's all for today. I'll be writing 2-3 times a week, perhaps more.