Friday, April 25, 2014

The secret is breathing . . . . .

I have been with Art of Living and practicing the breathing techniques taught by them for close to a decade now. By now I have come to understand and experience the value of breathing right, but always found it hard to explain to a 3rd person about the value of breathing and how it can help control emotions and how the secret to most mental ailments like anger, anxiety and stress can be associated with different breathing patterns and how they can be fixed by fixing the way we breath.  

All was true till I heard this show on NPR called 2 Guys on Your Head and the talk was about road rage. In the talk at one point one of the speakers explain “when you are stressed your breathing is shallow and shallow breath is associated with anger, so when in a situation that you need to vent the steam. Take a few deep breaths, relax your shoulders and . . . . . ”.  I don’t remember verbatim but this fairly close. I can vouch for this as I have personally noticed at the time I am venting my anger out my breathing very shallow (of course its in hind sight).

If you are interested in learning more about the breath and its modulations and how to lead a happier life. Then contact your nearest Art of Living center and ask them about their happiness program. I am sure its worth your time and effort.  

Thursday, April 17, 2014

What is the alternative

Every day I open the online portals of news papers like Times of India, NDTV, Tehelka and so on. I find articles again and again repeating why Modi is a bad choice, lets look at them one by one

  • His model of development is fake: Are my friends who live and visited Gujarat and also this article in Forbes about agricultural development in Gujarat wrong and only the congress and AAP are to be believed?
  • He is a fascist, I don’t even know what this means
  • He is for crony capitalism, I thought more and more industries are moving to Gujarat including precious TATA Nano project from West Bengal to Gujarat
  • The infamous Gujarat riots of 2002: come on guys. With supreme court and number of special investigative teams not able to find him guilty. Why should we believe you? are you guys claiming yourselves above the supreme court of India? Also, if you have proof go to the court and prove him guilty and hang him or send him to jail.
  • The encounters of Ishraat Jahaan : Luckily nobody has brought this up and the one portal that was beating drums with this one (Tehelka) has gone cold right after the arrest of Tarun Tejpal and resignation of Shoma Chaudhary. Even here, I am yet to see the CBI implicating Modi or Amit Shah. 
  • He stands for Hindutva: we don’t have a problem if some one says “I am true to Islam or in Hindi mein sacha musalman hoon” or if a Christian says “ we all are true Sunday church going christians” but we always and invariably have trouble to call ourselves Hindus and we stand behind it as though our religion is some sort of untouchable and to be vary of.

Despite all these, lets for a moment say we believe you and don’t want to vote for Modi and BJP. So what’s your alternative

  1. Rahul Gandhi? – Pappu or Shahzada who can’t even answer questions to a TV journalist and give the power back to commit more scams. I think I am tired of this part,
  2. Mulayam Singh Yadav? – the one who says boys are boys and rapes happen?
  3. AAP Kejriwal – he claims he did a sacrifice by quitting as CM of Delhi but I for one fail to understand it and considering he resigned in 49 days don’t have faith that we will stick longer than 6 months if made PM
  4. Jayalalitha? – if we want to have 1re for lunch and dinner all over India then here is the candidate.

I don’t know others who are contesting for the PM ship.

Monday, April 14, 2014

Composting side effect

Had some left over watermelon on the counter top that were left over night outside the refrigerator, unlike the previous times when in my laziness I wouldn’t have bothered to touch it as it wasn’t refrigerated, this time around I tried the melons, found them good and finished them for breakfast.

Sandhya was cutting Apples for Avni and gave me the core, I cut it into small pieces and realized most everything was human edible and the waste was very minimal (<10%).

Wondering what’s the significance of the above 2 stories, long story short we have started a vermicomposting bin at home. Now to the long story.

Last few months when my in-laws were in town and we were bouncing ideas about composting, my father-in-law came strongly in favor of vermicomposting and he had his good reasons. I said sold and bought the bin and ordered the worms from online store. They all are slowly settling down and eating the food scrap we are providing.

Now that we have the bin, I hate to throw anything to garbage pile which can be fed to the worms. The idea was to throw anything and everything that I thought we don’t want to eat towards them. But there is a catch, in this process of throwing anything and everything I am almost filling up the first tray in less than 2 weeks while in general it is supposed to be filled up in a month (over feeding). So, the solution, eat it if I can instead of throwing to worms for compost. 

When we started it was for getting compost for the garden but never thought of this side effect in the process.

ps: there is a big discount available from city of Austin for the compost bins (75% up to $75).