USHERING IN THE NEW YEAR 2010

2009 has been a difficult year for many. The good thing is that there is some optimism that on the economic front things are improving in the US and even in Britain there are some signs of recovery. In India as always there is talk of 7 and 8 % growth but the reality on the ground is very different for the majority of Indians who are living on the breadline. 42 % of Indians live on less than one dollar a day. So nearly 75 % of Indians are living on the breadline. For these people on a subsistence level life has become a genuine nightmare. In 2009 food inflation has been over 20 % and essential foods like potatoes have more than doubled in price. So it is only the salaried upper middle class who are celebrating the so called 7 and 8 % growth in this land of the poor. The others have absolutely nothing to cheer about. Wake up Indians for things are only going to get worse and worse. Global warming and population explosion will impact on India and large regions of the country will be affected by drought and there will be no drinking water in the country in the years to come. Food prices will spiral out of control and the poor will get poorer and the rich will get richer and everyone will choke to death in the cities as pollution levels rise and the traffic congestion increases. The greatest polluters in the world today are China and India. Soon we will be choking on our own fumes. No one in India has the sense or the awareness to change anything. Greed, avarice and competiiton rules the day.

Shaw

MY INDIAN DREAM

Indians have a bullish optimism about India's future and nothing one says can dampen that optimism. This is a good thing in a way but for most Indians The Indian Dream is having better job opportunities and more money to spend on flashy clothes and cars and beautiful homes for just the educated middle class. The poor and downtrodden are left out of this dream. No Indian believes there will be a day when all Indians will enjoy a more or less equal standard of living as they do in the west. Indians love to lord it over other Indians who are lower down the economic scale. A domestic help is a must in every middle class home. These servants eke a hand to mouth existence and they get paid only a small fraction of what a middle class family earns. No one even thinks of these people as part of the Indian Dream. In India no Indian can dream of a India where there will be no poor to wait on them on hand and foot.

India inspite of the 9 percent growth is nothing but a big slum where pigs and cows and buffaloes and humans forage for scraps of food and other articles from the same smelly garbage bins. Half of the people in India defecate on the side of the road and to this day no politician in this country has ever taken the trouble to take steps to address this problem. Heaps of garbage just pile up on the streets and no municipality in the country has ever thought that it is their job to keep their assigned area clean. If people of this country have a dream then it should be one where everyone can live in a clean environment and enjoy a decent life. A clean rural India where everyone has access to a good education, clean drinking water and where they can find fulfilling and rewarding employment. This is my dream for India. A clean and prosperous India where there is genuine equality for all. I urge our political leaders to plan for such a tomorrow where no class or caste distinctions exist. This is My Indian dream.

HIS GRACE ALWAYS ABOUNDS

RAJASEKHAR REDDY WILL BE DEARLY MISSED

Rajasekhar Reddy, the late chief minister of Andhra Pradesh will be dearly missed and remembered by the people of Andhra for a long time to come. During his term as Chief Minister he did everything in his power to provide a better life for the poorer sections of the state. His healthcare scheme for the poor white ration card holders and educational fee reimbursement scheme and a host of other imaginative and well thought out programmes endeared him to the people. He did not however neglect the middle classes for he took heed of their needs too and met their demands for higher wages and dearness enhancements to meet the rising cost of food stuffs. He caterered to the needs of all sections and the state prospered under him. He had a broad outlook and was not some one who pandered to the demands of people just for political gain. He had a real and driving desire to better the lot of the people of the state. On the minus side he was accused of amassing a huge amount of illgotten wealth but no one could pin anything on him. The collapse of Satyam did cast a bit of a shadow on him but nothing could take away from his popularity and his leadership was lauded by one and all in the country.

HOW TO MAKE A BILLION POUNDS

First of all you need to know how many zeros are there in a billion. There are nine zeros and ten digits. I could be wrong of course because my arithmetic is not very good. Anyway to become a billionaire will take you awhile. First you got to make your first million from that point on it becomes easier. So how does one make his first million ? Do I sell something online ? I think there are many opportunities to make money online but spotting them and taking advantage of these opportunities is the tricky part. Personally I have not made any money online. So how did I make a billion pounds ? The truth is I am no where near my target of a billion pounds but I am worth about a million pounds and it took me a long time to get there. The way to make money is to invest in stocks and let me tell you I am a paid employee and on my small income I manage to save a little which I invest in stocks. I started about 15 years ago and the markets had their ups and downs but I always remained invested in 10 of the best stocks fancied by the mutual funds. I would make a reappraisal once a year to see if the mutual funds were still bullish on these stocks. In the last 15 years I have managed get an average return of 20% on my investments and this is a good track record and my wealth has grown. There were times when my average was as high as 30 to 40 % but that was before the recession. So when the markets bounce back my investments will be worth much more. Another free piece of advice you can have from me is don't go for intraday trading unless you want to throw away your money. There is nothing like adopting a good investment strategy to make your millions. I shall share with you some of my trading secrets in future posts. Another thing is even though I am close to being a millionaire I still do not intend to quit my job. I value having a job. Some of my colleagues too have benefited from my advice but they often panic when the markets are shaky. To profit you need to be in the market for the long haul. There are a few who have even done better than me. I have a friend who has a lot of experience and expertise in investing and his advice too has been most helpful to me at times. So it is good to cultivate friends who have a good understanding of the markets but it is your own knowledge alone that will help you pick the best stocks.

THE SINGULARITY AND INDIA

I don't know if any of you have heard of The Singularity. Ray Kurzwell ,a well known inventor and futurist has written a book called the, "The Singularity is Near". According to him The Singularity is a moment in time when there will be smarter than human minds as a result of the exponential advancement of technlogies which could at some point become smarter than human intelligence and artifical intelligence , brain computer interfaces and genetic engineering are just some of the technologies that are headed in this direction. When we reach the singularity (which is also the word for a black hole) we cannot really imagine what will happen as this form of intelligence could be a trillion times more intelligent than humans. There are many respectable scientists too who think this is likely to happen around the year 2040 when Artifical Intelligence Surpasses human intelligence because these technologies are growing at an exponential speed. These machines you could say are getting smarter by the day in a mind boggling way. Personally I think this could happen too but I feel in many ways nothing much has really changed except that we have more pollution and cars on the roads. So what these guys think is that when this (the gingularity) happens the human mind cannot predict what the world will be like after this because these machines will take ove the world and we are not smart enough to fathom the future beyond this point. The articles on this subect are interesting and everyone should read them and form their own opinion of this event.

I feel once the machines take over, India will at long last be rid of all its corrupt politicians and we will have cleaner roads and the machines will see to it that people ae not allowed to use loud speakers to blare out deafening music and political messages and commercials and the sacred cows will have to go too. No buffaloes and humans crapping everywhere. People will to have only one child otherwise the machines will just terminate these guys who break the laws. All law breakers will be thrown in jail and reformed. India will become spic and span and people might even give up their belief in astrologers and pundits and all the other idiots you get in India.

HOW TO AWAKEN SPIRITUALLY

You are already an awakened being. First of all you need to know you are not your thoughts and feelings. They will arise and subside, you are simply not that. You are the emptiness within. Watch your emptiness and you will discover at first that there is nothing there. That is ok. You have made a beginning. You have awakened like the Buddha. Stay in this emptiness. People are afraid of emptiness but all peace and joy and life are contained in it. You are in a world surrounded by pain and suffering but stay rooted in this emptiness. What is the emptiness ? It is the awareness of being when you look within. So how am I going to deal with life's challenges ? Just stay rooted in this awareness.If doubts and questions and fears arise what then is one to do ? Just remain with it. Don't resist these arisings of the mind just examine them intensely. This intense watching is our greatest refuge from all manner of challenges.

END OF BRITISH TROOP PRESENCE IN IRAQ

Britain's troop withdrawal from Iraq has received very little media attention. In all about 179 soldiers were killed there. Britain however has received little appreciation for its role in this war. At the end of the day are the Iraqis happy that old Saddam was ousted from power and later executed? I think they are but in Iraq the Americans and British get little thanks for the hardships they went through and the lives they lost to restore peace and normalcy in Iraq. Muslims look upon westerners with suspicion and distrust. In this world some muslim nations may be aligned with the US and UK but it is only a marriage of convenience and among the people of these countries there is only hatred for them. The muslims cannot trust non muslims because their religion sows seeds of distrust and brands any one who is not muslim as being evil. So was Blair right in allowing himself to be dragged into this war ? I think he wasn't but in the end it all turned out for the best. Pakistan is a steadfast ally of the US and Britain but if you stopped on the street and took a sample of the people who liked westerners you would be shocked because not one would regard them as a friend.

MEDITATION THE RAMANA WAY

Ramana died 58 years ago and has many devotees in the west but few people realize his greatness in India. In India people don't have time for the likes of Ramana because they are too steeped in tradition and are engaged in ritual worship and observing superstitious claptrap. So why is Ramana relevant to us today even after 58 years ? Because his teaching is simplicity itself. No beliefs, no superstitions,no deities,no gods,no poojas,no hatred for people of other religious persuasions. No hatred for Muslims,Christians and so forth. No judging other people for not being like us. So what is his path which is is so simple ? According to Ramana there is no doer at all. We think we are the doers but all things happen because they are preordained. It does not mean however that he advocated a form of fatalism. In a dream so many things happen but can we direct the course of our dream ? So life too is just a dream and things happen as in a dream. So we need to wake up from this dream because it is unreal. We need to know who we really are and so everything we imagine ourselves to be is untrue. You imagine yourself to be a Hindu or a Muslim and in order to defend your beliefs you are prepared to even kill others and this is why we have mass genocide being perpetrated in the name of religion. The Ramana way is very simple. He says you need to investigate your true nature. Once you realize who you really are you cease to be a Brahman, Harijan, Hindu, Muslim and so on. You realize you are the indescribable presence which thought cannot touch. This presence is common to all. So discard all your foolish notions of religion and just try to be aware of the awareness within you. Thoughts will arise. What is a thought ? A thought is the words you use in the language or languages you know. So ignore these words and just watch your awareness which is very simple. You are conscious aren't you ? Just be aware of this consciousness. There will be thoughts but that is OK let them come and go but just stay focused only on your consciousness or awareness. You have nothing else to do just do this when ever and where ever you can and life will take care of the rest. The things you need for your happiness will come to you of their own accord. Stay always with your awareness and life will be good to you in ever way. When worries arise ignore your worries and stay with your awareness, when fears arise ignore your fears and stay with your awareness, when troubles arise ignore your troubles and stay with your awareness. Don't get caught up in the idea that you are your body,thoughts,feelings etc, a separate individual with a personality of your own. You are not what or who you think you are, you are the only reality there is in this world and all else is your false imagination.

THE PAINTED VEIL

I saw the film on DVD yesterday evening. I thought it was so much better than The Iron Man which I'd seen the previous day. It is a touching story about two people who get trapped in a loveless marriage. Edward Norton is Dr Walter Fane, a guy who studies infectious diseases. Kitty the woman who marries him is a vivacious frivolous upper class woman interested only in the good life. She cheats on her husband in Shanghai where he is posted as she finds him dull and staid when compared to the dashing and debonair Townsend. Dr.Fane's services are required in a remote village in China ravaged by a cholera epidemic. So the couple end up in this beautiful place and that's where the rest of the tale unfolds. The movie is a heartwarming love story set in the 1920s. The movie is definitely worth seeing. It is based on Somerset Maugham's novel of the same name.

BOLLYWOOD MOVIES

Actually I am the least qualified guy to be writing about Bollywood films. When I was a kid I had a friend who simply went gaga about Bollywood movies and as we were buddies it was obligatory for me to accompany him to the latest Hindi movie hit that was showing in the city. Actually I always found someway to wriggle out of ending up seeing one of these dreadful movies by resorting to delaying tactics and when we eventually reached the cinema it was often thankfully sold out. Then I would slowly talk him into going with me to a good English language movie and he would reluctantly come along. That guy for some reason always preferred the mushy Bollywood movies to the great Hollywood movies. He would rather see Aradhana than go to watch a great movie like The Great Escape. This friend saw through what I was doing and I think he never forgave me for my meanness. Anyway I think today they have come a long way from the romantic and sentimental melodrama of the old days but I would still rather see a good English language movie on HBO than an Indian movie.

The problem with Indian movies is that the locations they choose are usually foreign and the Heroines are fair skinned babes who don't look one bit like the regular babes we run into on the streets. I prefer the regular Indian babes to these dolled up and made up babes with their affected mannerisms and poor acting skills. Bollywood is crap but it sells and people love the crap and eat it up.

Shaw Kraale