Which jail is better?

Mirza Ghalib, one of the greatest poets from India, was once in jail for a period of six months. One morning, he heard a man crying from the adjoining room. On enquiring from the jail attendant, he came to know that a young man had been found guilty of some crime and would have to spend 3 months in custody.

Ghalib went to the man asked him.

"What is the matter my friend, why are you crying?"

"I have to spend three months in this jail...", the man replied between sobs,

"So what?"

"You don't understand, I was about to get married today, and I ended up here..."

"You should thank God for that, that you were just saved from a life sentence. Believe me, 3 months you will spend easily here, but imagine how much you might have suffered being a captive for all your life. You should also be thankful to the policeman who caught you & by catching you even he has inadvertently done something good in his life."

The pen is mightier than the sword

Woh baadshah hai talvaar ke
Hum kalam ke shahenshah hai

Unka mulk cchin sakta hai
Hamari milkiat koi nahin ccheen sakta

Ghalib

meaning

He is a king by means of his sword
But I too am a prince of the pen

His kingdom can be snatched away
But my property (the art of writing poetry) cannot be taken away by anyone


This applies to bloggers as well I guess!

Definition of homework, profession & vacation

When you sit at home and worry - you call it homework
When you sit in the office and worry - you call it profession.
When you sit on the beach and worry - you call it vacation.

If you carry your worries with you all the time, your life will remain unchanged.

Right decision for the wrong reason

There were 3 persons undergoing treatment at a lunatic asylum. The doctor in charge was pretty confident that they were progressing well and would soon be cured. So after a month's treatment he called all the 3 of them in front of a large and deep empty swimming pool. He asked the 1st person to jump in the pool, who gladly did so & broke his hand. The next person also jumped, and he broke his leg. Now the doctor asked the 3rd person to jump.
"No doctor, not me".

The doctor was elated, that at least this fellow was cured.
"Good, go and fetch your things, you can go home now",the doctor told him.
"But by the way, can you tell me why you did not jump".
"I am not mad, doctor, I do not know swimming"

Don't we also sometimes do the same thing? - take a right decision for the wrong reasons, think about it!

Traffic Patient

Tune in to any radio station of UAE like 89.1 or 101.6 or 95.3 FM and you will always find people calling up the radio jockeys and informing them about traffic jams. The RJ's acknowledge these so called jam busters and advise the people on the roads to avoid a particular road. I sometimes wonder whether it really must be helping people, especially those who want to reach a particular destination and that's the only road that they can take. But yesterday, I was quite amused to listen to a lady who called up the radio jockey and described her woes of being stuck for the last 2 hours in front of a petrol station, and described herself as a "traffic patient". It seems that the people around her had given up and many had crossed the road and fetched themselves tea/ coffee and were standing on the sidewalks enjoying the view. However, more than her story, I liked the term "Traffic Patient" so much, that it compelled me to post this blog. Isn't it such an appropriate term to describe a person's condition stuck in traffic?

A traffic patient can be described as one who has the following symptoms

1. He / she always tends to get stuck in traffic for hours together.

2. He / she has pain in the right leg (feet, toe, thighs, knees) because of applying brake and accelerator after every 15 seconds and sometimes continuously for an hour or so.

3.He / she suffers from hypertension because each car seems to be trying to overtake him / her by doing some manouvres that he / she could never dream of.

4.He / she suffers from chronic headaches, eye stress etc because he / she has to concentrate on the road completely against his / her wishes.

You might have read the famous cliche "Every problem is actually an opportunity knocking at your door". So can the traffic problem also be an opportunity? Yes, if you think along these lines:

1. If you are a doctor, you can advertise that you specialise in treating traffic patients, that you have special medicines to cure headaches, eyes irritation, feet - toes-knees-thighs-aches.

2. You can open a massage parlour that specialises in giving special " anti-traffic" massage. Think of a good jingle to place an ad.

3. If you are a Toastmaster, getting stuck in traffic is the best opportunity to practice your speech. In fact, if your husband / wife dislikes you preparing a speech at home, just go out for some work in the car and prepare your speech while you are stuck in traffic. I have done that several times and no, it does not seem odd to others who look at you because they think that you are speaking to somebody on hands free.

4.Open a workshop specialising in installation of the latest DVD player with a built in 8 inch screen that can play movies of all formats mpeg, avi, flv, divx, wma etc etc. You can market this by telling people that they can gainfully use the time they waste in waiting in traffic jams, by catching up on the latest movies or serials. If priced reasonably, the demand to install these DVD players will be so high that it is an assured way to become a millionaire.

Can you think of more?

But this really - takes the cake- it is what my friend from Dubai had to say about the traffic situation in Dubai. "Sajid, these days I am spending more time in my car than with my wife, but it is difficult to say which is better".

Depriving our children

If I were to ask you – Are today's children deprived? Most of you would answer with a resounding – No. And why is that? Its because we know that we are providing our children with all the comforts imaginable, good food, airconditioned rooms & cars, the latest games and gadgets (laptops, playstations, mobiles), the best schools, good clothes, holidays overseas every year, the list is endless. We give them all this but do we give them our time? Have we sat with them even for a few minutes for a heart to heart talk about what is bothering them? what are their aspirations? are they feeling intimidated by peer pressure? there could be so many things on their mind. But we are so caught up in meeting our own deadlines – professional as well as personal, in sorting out our own priorities, that we hardly bother about this.
Children, today, are deprived not because we do not give them things, but because we do not sufficiently value what they give us. We need to be alert to welcome what children have to offer. Remember what Kahlil Gibran wrote about children,

You may give them your love but not your thoughts, for they have their own thoughts. You may house their bodies but not their souls, for their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams. You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you. For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday. You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.

Our children are flying forward into areas we have not charted ourselves. If you want to know what the society will be like in the next twenty years, you don't need to read science fiction books, nor do you need to surf the net for articles about this topic, you simply have to go and visit any kindergarten school, you simply have to visit the homes where children between the ages 5 to 10 are living.

Are we teaching our children to be independent, to love, to respect, to laugh or are we busy in bombarding their young minds with what was handed down to us from previous generations – our concepts of right and wrong, our divisive & opinionated beliefs about why we do things the way we do them?

Flirt with Fear

Once , a disciple went running to his master.
"Master, Master, I am very afraid. I feel that I am going to die very soon. What can I do?"
The Master replied – "Don’t worry, I will solve your problem".
"But first let us have a cup of coffee."
Both of them sat and had coffee. The master then explained to the disciple that fear is just another thought; it is only in the mind. And the mysterious thing about the mind is that it can never hold on to any one thought for a long time. Not even the thought of death you can hold on to for a long time, the fear of death can be washed out simply by thinking about a cup of coffee. So you see how shallow fear is?
Have you seen a cat drinking milk? If you observe carefully, you will see that the cat always drinks or rather laps up milk with its eyes closed. Why? Because she thinks that by closing her eyes, she will be cut off from this world. We human beings also sometimes think that by choosing to ignore fear, fear will vanish. This is not possible, fear will be there whether you like it or not and the only way to counter fear is to develop the courage to fight it. Real courageous people not only fight fear they even flirt with fear.

You see, the very fact that you are alive, means that you have something to lose, and the moment you have something to lose you will always have fear & so there is no point trying to run away from fear. What you have to do is to face it, work on the causes that are creating the fear. Learn to flirt with fear.