The Shooting Star

Living in a 300 year old Ottoman house, an unexpected friendship with a local blacksmith and more adventures, in Safranbolu Turkey.

In the wee hours of the morning, we manoeuvre my way through the cobbled streets and ancient stonewalls of Safranbolu, a small town in the western Karadeniz region of Turkey.

I had been reluctant to leave Istanbul, probably the first big city I’ve fallen so in love with. But as we step back in time into a 300-year-old Ottoman house perched on a slope, I’m glad we came!

Old Ottoman houses perched on the hillside of Safranbolu Turkey.

Genghis, my host, greets me with a warm smile and bits of English, and shows me to my quaint room in the part of the house now converted into a pansiyon (pension aka guest house).

Genghis inherited this house from his great grandfather, and it is one of the…

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How to prevent Head and Neck Cancer

As we live so we make ourselves amenable to continous disease attacks, some of whic curable we tend to care less than those for which there is no proven therapies. Cancer is one of the disease that instills a sense of fear in us as it over and above is termed as an incurable disease. No medical therapies found out for it. But still the health doctors tell us that attack of cancer is not at all a death sentense. Though in curable it can be checked, prevvented if detected early. Among various cancers Head and Neck Cancer seems to be most common cancer that claims a heavy toll every year. Aout 20,000 persons each year die in US alone. As most other cancers Head and Neck Cancer associates with some of the envirnmental and behavioural factors like smoking and chewing tobocco, consumption of alcohol and certain strains of the sexually tansmitted human papillomavirus. Head and Neck Cancer refers to a group of cancers originating in the upper respiratiory and upper digestive tract, the lip, oral cavity(mouth) nasal cavity, paranasal sinuses, pharynx, and larynx.
As there is no therapies to cure it one has to immune oneself by preventing some of the risk factors like consumption of alcohol, smoking etc and practicing some of the protective practices like regular excercise and a healthy diet.
To follow some of the steps precisely are as under:
1) Don’t smoke or use any other tobacco products
2) Don’t drink alcohol frequently or heavily
3) Don’t combine alcohol and tobacco use
4) Don’t go back to smoking or drinking after treatment
5) Have a healthy diet comprising fruits and vegetables and induct regular exercise into your daily regimen
6) Avoid long sun exposure
7) Maintain good oral hygiene and see your dentist regularly
8) Be aware of the danger of HPV (human papillomavirus)

The Dream of a Nuclear free World

 The recent Prauge Speech of Mr. Barack Obama  has since evoked a serious and much concerned  debate on the crucial issue of nuclear disarmament. The is not new to a president of United States. Before him some of the presidents has tried to address the issue in their own way. Mr Bill Clinton has tried to ratify the CTBT( Comprehensive Test ban Treaty) and talked much on disarmament. Though in Mr. Bush’s time the issue never took off it was not dead. From Henry Kissinger onwards so many western personalities have been echoing  the same language for a nuclear free world

 

In this present scenario of non-nuclear states acquiring nuclear war heads( N Korea testing rockets having war heads, satellite launch) the speech of Obama gets significance. He calls for a world rid of nuclear arsenals. Though he becomes a victim of  the apprehension of not achieving the goal within his life time. How true it is! The complete destruction of such a huge compilation of nuclear armaments is simply not possible in near future.  But the President’s concern , his sincerity, his vision is to be felt everywhere.

 

If Mr. Obama is so serious he should concentrate on thre most important things for the interim, however.First, he would reduce the role of nuclear weapons in U.S. national security strategy. Secondly, he was committed to the “immediate and aggressive pursuit” of Senate ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty as the first step towards pushing for the CTBT’s entry into force. Thirdly, a verifiable ban on the dedicated production of fissile material for the manufacture of nuclear weapons would be a top priority.

 

Here again the speech is definitely a step forword from the position maintined by the previous Bush administration. To make it mor meaning ful, not only ratification of CTBT but also  Washington needs to end all work on the design and refinement of new nuclear weapons, whether of the “mini nuke” or the Reliable Replacement Warhead variety.

My idea to start a Book Club

 

 

 

 

 

 

Clubs are generally meant for creating a group of people, always otherwise engaged having no time to make and participate in a group, but having interest to be counted in a forum of completely unknown persons tagged together. Book Clubs like wise consists of persons who never read and study seriously any particular book but veers around all the book headlines and gathers information on books only to recommend its reading to others.

I want to start a Book Club where any one who will never read or write a book can join, exchange ideas and collect information of little value. The importance of the club is to reassure its members that they still live, can prove their existence to the world, and get opportunity to feel that they are the movers and shakers. They pretend to read books, make opinions, draw conclusions and above all prove that they have a sharp brain that the uncaring world is not utilizing it. They can all the abilities of proving themselves as original thinkers that the world can go without them. That all the knowledge, wisdom the world gained so far is nothing in comparison to the sharpness of their brain.

Where is Extraordinariness?

 

Flying High

The Rise

Everyone is overtly of covertly aspiring to be extraordinary in his or her own way, to be something different from the maddening crowd. It is to satisfy his or her alter ego. To be different makes one feel great, leads to a sense of self fulfilment, a self created sense of satisfication. Yes if we actually analyse everyone minutely we will find that nobody is similar, everybody is clearly distinguishable from the other in his or her own way. The different character he/she exhibits makes him/her distinguishable from the other, and it is his /her unique selling proposition. It is the self identification mark. When these characters are well distinguished and defined one should be taught to cultivate these to protray as great and extraordinary in its own way. The real problem is encoutered here how to make these characters great and extraordinary. To make any nuances/ characters great and extraordinary, the character should have all the insticts of becoming useful to the a greater mass, to the society, to the world on the whole.The mass for which the character is to be useful determines its extraordinariness.
the persons contentment in life is directly proportional to these characters embedded to his/her pesonality. The more identifiable these characters in the person the more succesful the person can feel in his/her life. By actions, words and above all his/her behaviour in the society he/she lives these characters are attributed. By constant consciousness of this one can control/modify in a more cultivated manner his / her actions, words and behaviour to portray the unique characters inherent in him/her. Just to feel extraordinay.

Presentation makes a story tick

 Stories are intended to regale others, by the way to teach a lesson with a moral transcript. It can be heard, seen, read, or above all felt. Feeling stories is a completely different art, that can eventually be termed as poetic, the story then elevated to a poem, long or short. Stories are stories to be told, in spite of  availability of a myriad of avenues of presentation, visual,readable etc.

The audience

A typical story presentation

   Telling a story denotes presentation of a story in any form, in any medium.The contents of a story may or may not be good, or of any use, but the telling style, the way it is told makes it conspicuous. All the make or break is decided from its presentation style. How bad a story might be, the style of presentation will make all the difference. Hence telling a story is termed an art.

   There are a number of factors to to be taken in to consideration to prepare a good presentation. Basic things are the theme of the story, the intended audience, the medium, the presenter and the aids of presentation available. Long stories are required to be segmented to provide the audience the required breaks between to ponder and recapture the themes covered. As a number of medium is available it is better to take help of multi-media. Contextual editing to present a homogeneous combination is very much essential in this case. The dictions, visual arts and audible music should be so tuned, synchronized to satisfy the intellectual appeal of the audience.You can call these as science of story telling . Lastly the theme of the ending ie the conclusion is to be chosen as such that should be able to create a long impact on the audiences’ psyche.

Be a Friend in Need

There is a saying in India, God helps those who helps others. I fervently believe that this is applicable all over the world, not only India. As man is a social animal, and so that, man lives among other members of the society and no person is singularly self fulfilled in all respects, one has to depend on others for a variety of purposes and it is ones prime duty, I mean social obligation, to cater to the need of the fellow being, which we call help. With out any body’s help in one way or other nobody can survive, we all will agree.

Helping others in time of need is our sole motto of creating/establishing a society, so to say it is our religion, the aim of life, the purpose of life. How far we go in exploring the new boundaries in knowledge, wisdom, so far we come to conclude that everything is meant for the benefit of the society, which in another way means helping each other within the society. A mutual help and co-operation is all that all the religions, scriptures, literature invariably espouse.

So, on this day of my birth( I turned 45 circumstancially today) I implore others around me to at least be conscious of our fellow beings live within our circle above and in spite of all our sectarian bigotries.

Gods destiny prevails always above all the temporal world.

A Pleasant Trip

I was on a very pleasant trip to Puri, one of the religious places of the Hindus on the Bay of Bengal Beach. The Temperature is soaring unimaginably even in this beach town coupled with a power-cut for four hours continuously and the humidity high enough I could not feel the expected comforts what I was expecting. Yes the occasion was very enjoyable, one of my wife’s sisters was going to be getting married at a very late age of 30 years. In the Hindu culture and the general practice in this locality this age is termed as late. The marriage was against all odds, without a single trace of dowry, with the amazing consent of the bridegroom even after knowing all the mental unbalanced state of the bride. The bridegroom was looking so nice, bt withdrawing from all the ritual expensenses, which was borne by the brides side. As the bride happens to be the the sister of my wife, I found I have a more important role in the marriage, yes of course to my utter surprise. i had to sit along side of the bride, her father, briegroom and the two priests chanting slokas from the Hindu marriage codes. The father of the bride had to ask for my humble permission to get the bride marry off to the chosen person even after all the prerituals performed, my permission was absolutely necessary. I feel it as a utter bogous, a mere customary for which I really can not excercise my prorogatives/ discration at all. This is a somewhat perverted practice as the decision to marry off is taken many many days before and the information of the decision was conveyed to me before. When I have consented for this what is the use of this ritual on the alter of marriage? The practice should be abandoned or reformed in accordance with ratiionality.

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