Merry Christmas World

Filed under: Uncategorized , christmas greeting, merry christmas

Are We Still a Democracy?

Democracy's Dance of Death (Illustration by Ranjit K Sharma)

Imagine yourself standing next to your neighbourhood shopkeeper and bragging about your son’s smashing performance at the latest exam, while your domestic help appears in front of you all of a sudden only to inform on how your son’s school has sent him back to home today as a punishment for his bullying behaviour. Well, you are speechless, motionless! Isn’t it?

Indians too have found ourselves in a similar situation recently.

While Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen’s words, “mantle of democracy is now very much strongly held by India,” when addressing an audience at Oxford University’s Said Business School, highlight India’s strong democratic credentials, at the same time, the Jallianwala Bagh-like, mid-night crackdown on peaceful protesters, supporting Baba Ramdev’s fast unto death at Ram Lila Ground, New Delhi on Saturday night, tends to accentuate the glaring shortcomings therein.

Not in the distant past, we remember having settled down smugly self-satisfied at the victory of democratic values. The Indian democracy has deepened when members of the civil society such as Anna Hazare and others were included in the drafting process of the Jan LokPal Bill.

But with the above surprise, forced eviction, where thousands were manhandled, Indian democratic credentials have surely come under scrutiny.

Swami Ramdev’s demands might be too far-fetched. He may be a political greenhorn. He might be limelight-hungry. He might have assets worth over a thousand crores!

But that do not justify such undemocratic way of curbing his voice against the government; not to tell AICC General Secretary Digvijaya Singh’s uncalled-for statement of naming Baba a thug.

I think Baba has done the right thing by continuing his fast unto death.

The only positive sign about which he should feel lucky is the fact that he wasn’t arrested by the police, charged with an “attempt to commit suicide”, and force-fed though the nose like Irom Sharmila, who has been doing a Ramdev since November 2, 2000 for protesting against a similar, undemocratic law of the government.

Let’s cross our fingers and watch where we are heading towards!

Filed under: Current News, General Awareness , Discussion, essay, India, Indian democracy, morality, news analysis

SEO Writing Can Be a Fun Way to Great Authorship

Sometimes back, I wrote an article for an American audience with the aforesaid title. Later, I thought it would be good to share it with my readers as this is really going to help those who have decided to write for the web but are unsure of their future. Here it is:

 

 

SEO Writing—the In Thing!

So you have made your mind and are all set to write for the web. You already know what the hell SEO is all about and all its sisters, I mean, jargons such as keywords, meta-tags, alt-tags, social media optimization, etc.

You also are empowered with a flair for writing; you have a good stock of vocabulary, a sound command over the written word, an impeccable knowledge of writing styles, and a fairly good idea about coherence in writing.

And, most importantly, you are also aware of all the monetary benefits, and fame that SEO writing can eventually bring to you.

With all these tools and resources at your hand what is stopping you from taking the plunge and agreeing to the fact that SEO writing can be fun?

Okay, I understand. You must be thinking, “Taking the plunge into SEO writing is fine but I am wondering how this can, in any way, be a ‘fun’, given the fact that it requires so much of pre-preparation!”

“Moreover, I am not an expert, I mean, I am not a PhD in any particular field.”

No issues. You will agree with me, I am sure, if you read further to discover yourself the great fun elements associated with SEO writing.

 

Need No PhD

First of all, let me make it clear that for SEO writing you need not be an expert, writing for the experts. You need not have a PhD in any field to be able to write literary pieces or expert articles interspersed with jargons and technical mumbo jumbo.

So don’t worry; you are already SEO-writing-compliant! And that’s fun.

For writing for the web, you just need to understand the concepts, and organize your thoughts into well-drafted articles that provide the required information to the readers in an interesting way. You are actually writing in common language for the common people like you.

What are your tools then? In order to be a good SEO writer you need to have good commonsense, clarity of thought, and an ability to organize information. I tell you, these are more important than educational qualification, and writing experience.

 

Versatility

Now the other elements associated with SEO writing—versatility! That means, after you start writing for the web, versatility in writing is assured. How?

SEO writing projects are often short, and therefore, most SEO writers are freelancers. As a result, as an SEO writer you work for more number of companies, and write for more number of topics than you would possibly do as an in-house writer in a publishing house, or a content-providing corporate house.

Isn’t it interesting to read and do research on a wide variety of topics and subjects, and then write unique, informative articles on them?

Your areas might touch e-books, copywriting, legal research and writing, medical research and writing, academic research and writing, business and financial writing, corporate brochures, and many other such services. Don’t you become versatile?

 

Freedom

Freedom is the third fun element identified with SEO writing.

In spite of an abundance of topics and subjects to write for, you, as a writer, still have the power to pick and choose only those areas that are close to your heart? You are not straitjacketed by your employer to write only on pre-defined areas like newspaper and magazine reporters who are closely regulated and directed, or like corporate writers who are tightly controlled.

Moreover, as a freelance writer you decide your own working hours, your own working pace, and your own volume of writing.

 

Great Future

A great future is the last, but not the least, element of fun connected with SEO writing in my list.

With your numerous contributions to the web in the form small articles and write-ups, you are actually creating a huge compilation of your published work.

Your résumé is enriched. At a certain point of time later when you plan to write a fiction, or a non-fiction, you have twice as much chance to get a reputed publisher than a non-SEO-writer, who isn’t published yet!

Fun, isn’t it?

With this, let me give rest to my flying fingers, and wish you a happy SEO-writing career and a superb future, waiting to embrace you!

Filed under: Web Metrics , benefits of seo writing, benefits of web writing, content writing, Discussion, essay, guidelines for writing, search engine optimization, seo, seo writing, social media optimization, web writing, writing for the web, writing style

Traffic Control Measures

The Beijing municipal government has passed a new law that limits the number of new car license plates to be issued in 2011. Here’s the news link: http://www.thehindu.com/news/international/article1023254.ece

It is too harsh a measure to curb traffic problems. It is retrograde and highly punitive in nature for those economically backward people who, after years of hard work, have finally arrived at a position to own a car. With it, their dream might remain dream forever. The measure is bound to create a permanent divide between haves and have-nots.

Some forward-looking measures might be:

• making carpool mandatory for regular one-route travellers
• encouraging increased use of public transport through special concessions to regular users
• making cycles available on rent for small-distance travellers
• improving the transport infra-structure, wherever possible
• building double-decker, or perhaps, ‘triple-decker’ roads in addition to multi-storeyed parking lots

Filed under: Current News , Discussion, modern lifestyle, positive measures, positive measures to control traffic, thoughts, tips, traffic control measures

My Workshop on E-Learning Products

Ranjit K Sharma conducting the sales presentation

See me conducting a workshop on the new e-learning projects of Madhubun Books for the national sales personnel.

The event is a part of Madhubun’s annual National Book Launch Conference held between October 4-6, 2010 at Hotel Clarks Shiraz, Agra. It was participated by a strong audience of 200 professionals comprising 150 Madhubun sales personnel and 50 invited dignitaries that included authors of Madhubun books and principals and senior teachers of leading schools from Agra, Kanpur and Lucknow. Dignitaries also included, among others, Sajili Shirodkar, Director, Vikas Publishing; Deepa Baruah, Editorial Manager, Madhubun Books and Sanyukta Ludra, Editor-in-Chief (Hindi), Madhubun Books.

Here are the links to my photostreams:

• My Presentation
• Taj Mahal Visit
•  Just the Day Before
• Inauguration of CCE Series

Filed under: Children's Educational Books , author meet, book launch, books, cbse, cce, cce made simple, children, curriculum, editors, India, Madhubun Books, new syllabus, parenting, reading habit, sales workshops, Vikas Publishing House Pvt. Ltd.

Online Legacy?

The Online Social Leaders (Collage by Ranjit)

Hat’s off to Shail Raghuvanshi for that thought-provoking article on online legacies. With this article you have brought forth an important question among all of us—Netizens of the World!

What will happen to our online identities after our death?

Almost all us have at least an email account. A few lakhs among us might be having a social networking profile on Orkut, Facebook or Twitter. A few thousands might also be richer by a blog or two at Blogspot or WordPress!

So where will these identities end up in after we quit from the mundane world? After we cease to exist both offline and online?

Shouldn’t these online sites have a provision for their users to enable them to choose their successors?

Here also, we know that many of us might never want to bequeath any online wealth to our successors simply because our wealth won’t be palatable enough to our spouses, sons and daughters! After all, how can we reveal our highly objectionable, anonymous online exchanges (interactions between a dishonest father and his illegitimate daughter, dialogue between an unfaithful husband and his second wife or correspondence between an online street Romeo and an unflinching, helpless girl)?

What about a mechanism (a dozen of tick boxes perhaps!) to choose between the clean part and the censurable moiety?

Filed under: Web Metrics , death, Discussion, internet, internet avatar, internet legacy, modern lifestyle, online successor, personal information, Philosophy, social networks, thoughts

God as I Saw Him!

Yours ago I held a very heretic view on God. I even wrote a long diary entry on some day in August 2003, which I happened to stumble upon today evening. Here’s a reproduction of the same. Remember, this is very personal.  

……………….

My Impression of God (Illustration: Ranjit K Sharma)

I have always been a follower of my will. I do not know how many times I have wondered at the question “How can I follow someone whom I do not know?” It was increasingly becoming difficult for me to repose faith on any of the existing Gods! So I went on to create Him as Voltaire once said “If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.” The God I have created is out of my own caprice. I call Him the Unknown.

God is more powerful, beautiful and naive than the most powerful, beautiful and naive being you have ever seen or have thought of. God is larger or smaller than the largest or smallest number you can think of. God is INFINITY (∞) PERSONIFIED. God is larger than all the galaxies of the Universe put together. He is also smaller than the smallest hadron or quark particle. God does not need a Trishul, Chakra or a Wand to protect Himself. He does not need a Dhoti, Saari or a robe to cover His shame! In other words, God is Someone who is beyond the wildest imagination of the human civilisation.

On God, Einstein once remarked, “God does not play dice!” to which I would add, “God does not only play dice, He does not do anything which we mortal beings do.” To some up, I would say God is the Unknown. We can do very little using the knowledge of our present civilisation as tools to understand God.

Can you answer this? If Shri Krishna has created us, why has He given us tribulations to worry about and prayers to appease Him?

We are yet to understand God. Karl Marx once commented, “Religion is the opium of the masses.” Suppose there is a lighted candle placed inside at the centre of a circular room having colourful windows. If we take the lighted candle for God, then each window will be a religion. Since the window panes are coloured, we can never get a glimpse of the True God.

Rituals in any religion do help in disciplining ourselves; but they never help in reaching God the Unknown.

Hinduism never taught me to go vegetarianism. It is a simple discipline which I brought to myself. It is my way of saying, “Yes, I do have control over my thought and deeds.” Similarly by donning the cleanest of clothes after bath and making a prayer to Him, I only feel, “This is the time I am closest to Him.”

If there is self-discipline in you, if you can impose austerity unto you, if you can feel the pain in others then, you are a religious person.

People use religion as the tool to understand God. But by knowing only one religion you can but have a very biased view of God. 

Filed under: Heresy, Philosophy , Discussion, essay, god, Heresy, heretic, hinduism, life, Philosophy, reflective essays, religion, righteousness, thoughts, view

Sex and Murder: Yet another Angle

The Daughter and Her Beau (Photo Courtesy: The Hindu)

“A young school teacher and her male friend have been arrested for allegedly stabbing her mother to death at her Paschim Vihar residence this past week and then trying to pass it off as a murder during a robbery.”

……………….

“The young man brought a bottle of beer with him and the two made themselves cosy in the house. But Sakshi’s mother, who had gone to a religious congregation in the neighbourhood, happened to return earlier than expected. She had the key to one of the entrances and caught the two red-handed. The woman lost her temper on seeing them together and screamed at them.”

These are the lines from a recent news story. Kindly read the story first in order to enjoy the discussions below.

While prima facie the murder seems to be a typical example of Walter Cannon’s fight-or-flight response of human beings towards stress-causing situations, a closure look can reveal deeper implications of the mental make-up that the youth of today possess. The first impression that any keen observer will have at this level is that the daughter displayed a total lack of values.

I am not going into the humdrum of casting aspersions on the very sexual act that was the kingpin behind the brutal murder of a mother at the hands of her own daughter. Let me assume the intercourse as an ordinary act of wrong-doing, one of hundreds of evil deeds that everyone of us does during the span of our lifetime.

Having assumed the act of Sakshi calling her beau and her subsequent engaging in fornication as ordinary, the only extra-ordinary thing that happened on the fateful day was that she was caught red-handed by her elderly mother. And it is easy for us to imagine how she could have reacted to such an unimaginably bizarre act of perversion that her daughter was seen doing—a daughter completely lost in an orgasmic ‘high’ in between ‘breathful’ of penile thrusts from her partner all in front of her mother! It was but natural for her to lose “her temper on seeing them together and [to scream] at them.”

But how natural was her daughter’s reaction to her? Quite unnatural and very disgustedly undesirable. There were hundred other ways of reacting to her mother’s lambasting words than the one that she and her boyfriend Sunny chose to. There could only be one, if any, in a trillion mothers who were dogged enough so as to not forgive her weeping daughter at her feet. And even if she would not be ready to compromise and be bent on handing her over to the police, what loss could the daughter have incurred in even receiving the noose from her mother? At least she would not have been accused of the grave moral crime for which she is imprisoned now.

Filed under: Current News, Philosophy, Relationships , Discussion, essay, good habit, goodliness, human relation, love, modern lifestyle, morality, parenting, reflective essays, Relationships, righteousness, thoughts

Time to Read(?)

Mortimer Adler in 1988 Photo Credit: Wikipedia

When I was in the tenth standard, the following essay by Mortimer Adler had a lasting impact on my mind. It was a part of our English curriculum in the form of a textbook, Learners’ English. Years later, I am still fascinated by its relevance to the current times, more so when the good, old habit of children’s reading books is in its way to the coffin, what with the advent of e-books, intensive study-packages, et al! I am thankful to him (whom I wished I could meet one day; but alas, he left for his heavenly abode in 2001, much before I could afford to visit the U.S.!) and M/s Sawpon Dowerah (who also served as my teacher for sometime) and T. C. Baruah for having included this piece in their anthology. Here, I reproduce the essay in its entirety.

What is a Great Book?

There is no end to the making of books. Nor does there seem to be any end to the making of lists of “great books.” There have always been more books than anyone could read. And as they have multiplied through the centuries, more and more blue ribbon list have had to be made.

No matter how long your life is, you will, at best, be able to read only a few books of all that have been written, and the few you do read should include the best. You can rejoice in the fact that the number of such books is relatively small.

The listing of the best books is as old as reading and writing. The teachers and librarians of ancient Alexandria did it. Quintilian did it for Roman education, selecting, as he said, both ancient and modern classics. In the Renaissance, such leaders of the revival of learning as Montaigne and Erasmus made lists of the books they read.

It is to be expected that the selections will change with times. Yet there is a surprising uniformity in the lists which represent the best choices of any period. In every age, the list makers include both ancient and modern books in their selections, and they always wonder whether the moderns are up to the great books of the past.

What are the signs by which we may recognise a great book? The signs I will mentions may not be all there are, but they are the ones I’ve found most useful in explaining my choices over the years.

Great books are probably the most widely read. They are not best-sellers for a year or two. They are enduring best-sellers. Gone with the Wind has had relatively few readers compared to the plays of Shakespeare or Don Quixote. It would be reasonable to estimate that Homer’s Illiad has been read by at least 25,000,000 people in the last 3,000 years.

A great book need not even be a best-seller in its own day. It may take time for it to accumulate its ultimate audience. The astronomer Kepler, whose work on the planetary motions is now a classic, is reported to have said of his book that “it may wait a century for a reader, as God has waited 6,000 years for an observer.”

Great books are popular, not pedantic. They are not written by specialists about specialities for specialists. Whether they be philosophy or science, or history or poetry, they treat human, not academic problems. They are written for men, not professors. To read a textbook for advanced students, you have to read an elementary textbook first. But the great books can be considered elementary in the sense that they treat the elements of any subject matter. They are not related to one another as a series of textbooks, graded in difficulty or in the technicality of the problems with which they deal.

There is one kind of prior reading, however, which does help you to read a great book, and that is the other great books the author himself read. Let me illustrate this point by taking Euclid’s Elements of Geometry and Newton’s Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy. Euclid requires no prior study of mathematics. His book is genuinely an introduction to geometry, and to basic arithmetic as well. The same cannot be said of Newton, because Newton uses mathematics in the solution of his physical problems. His style shows how deeply he was influenced by proportions. His book is, therefore, not readily intelligible even to scientists, unless Euclid has been read before.

I am not saying that great scientific books can be read without effort. I am saying that if they are read in a historical order, the effort is rewarded. Just as Euclid illuminates Newton and Galileo, so they in turn help to make Einstein intelligible. The point also applies to philosophical books.

Great books are always contemporary. In contrast, the books we call “contemporary,” because they are currently popular, last only for a year or two, or ten at the most. You probably cannot recall the names of many earlier best-sellers, and you probably would not be interested in reading them. But the great books are never outmoded by the movement of thought or the shifting winds of doctrine and opinion.

People regard the “classics” as the great hasbeens, the great books of other times. “Our times are different,” they say. On the contrary, the great books are not dusty remains for scholars to investigate. They are, rather, the most potent civilising forces in the world today.

The fundamental human problems remain the same in all ages. Anyone who reads the speeches of Demosthenes and the letters of Cicero, or the essays of Bacon and Montaigne, will find how constant is the preoccupation of men with happiness and justice, with virtue and truth and even with stability and change itself. We may accelerate the motions of life, but we cannot seem to change the routes that are available to its goals.

Great books are the most readable. They will not let you down if you try to read them well. They have more ideas per page than most books have in their entirety. That is why you can read a great book over and over again and never exhaust its contents.

They can be read at many different levels of understanding, as well as with a great diversity of interpretations. Obvious examples are Gulliver’s Travels, Robinson Crusoe and the Odyssey. Children can read them with enjoyment, but fail to find therein all the beauty and significance which delight an adult mind.

Great books are the most instructive. This follows from the fact that they are original communications; they contain what cannot be found in other books. Whether you ultimately agree or disagree with what they say, these are the primary teachers of mankind; they have made the basic contributions to human thought.

It is almost unnecessary to add that great books are the most influential books. In the tradition of learning, they have been most discussed by readers who have also been writers. These are the books about which there are many other books-countless and, for the most part forgotten.

Great books deal with the persistently unsolved problems of human life. There are genuine mysteries in the world that mark the limits of human knowing and thinking. Enquiry not only begins with wonder, but usually ends with it also. Great minds acknowledge mysteries honestly. Wisdom is fortified, not destroyed, by understanding its limitations.

It is our privilege, as readers, to belong to the larger brotherhood of man which recognises no national boundaries. I do not know how to escape from the straitjacket of political nationalism. I do know how we become friends of the human spirit in all its manifestations, regardless of time and place. It is by reading the great books.

-Mortimer Adler

Filed under: Children's Literature, General Awareness, Philosophy , books, children, curriculum, Discussion, english, essay, good habit, goodliness, great books, human relation, modern lifestyle, parenting, Philosophy, reading habit, reflective essays, relevance, thoughts, tips

Compromise, Thy Name is Life. Do You Agree with It?

Below is an essay which I wrote sometime back for a special occasion. Let me share this small yet interesting essay with you:

Strong and heroic people, like you and they, may not agree to the aforesaid line. So did Napoleon Bonaparte, Hitler and many others. But, all, at one time or the other, have to agree that it is indeed true — Compromise, thy name is life. And I agree with it.

Life, at every point; from the lazy mornings, when you curse your boss for having been the reason for your such a miserable life, to the cozy sweet-doing-nothings of mid-night, when you curse your wife for being such a bad partner; is full of compromises. You don’t like thekaamwali (maid-servant) for being such a frequent absentee, but you compromise and accept her as happily as you are accepted by your wife! Else, she will leave you. You, don’t like the government’s ban on AXN’s World’s Sexiest Commercials, but you compromise with a smile, lest your wife, or for that matter, your little son should call you an old, immoral psychopath! You don’t like the long never-ending queue of vehicles, burping and blowing at the busy crossing on your way to office, but you compromise by mouthing a few chosen adjectives at the system, or at the hefty, bald man, who overtakes his vehicle just in front of yours and makes his way! You compromise, because you just can’t reach out to the system and shout at it for its follies, you just can’t get the better with the hefty, bald man and rough up.

So to say, there is a zillion of example to prove the fact that, we all are the preys to Compromise and at some point or the other we keep on compromising. But, nevertheless, we must keep on fighting with all our might, not to cut a sorry figure in front of compromises. Because compromises keep on teaching us the lessons of patience and perseverance.

Filed under: Philosophy , compromise, Discussion, hum, human relation, life, mod, modern lifestyle, Philosophy, rela, Relationships