FOR SOMEONE SPECIAL [DREAMGIRL]

**SPECIAL**

There is a room called SPECIAL
Deep down inside my HEART
Where no one has entered yet;
Empty, dark and unfilled.

It’s pristine, it’s pure
Because LOVE is its name
It’s secret, it’s sacrosanct
Because it’s the HOLY of HOLIES.

It’s the LILY OF THE VALLEY,
Velvet touch of the moonlight
It’s the dew drops at dawn
Because nothing can be purer...

Now there is someone called SPECIAL
Deep down inside my SOUL
Whose face i’ve never seen
Whose hands i’ve never held.

She is my MISS SUNSHINE
That lights up my darkness
She is the rainbow after the rain
That brings colours of cheers.

She is my MISS SHADOW
That follows wherever i go
She is the CURE of my pain
.....And MANY MORE...

And...
There is a room called SPECIAL
Deep down inside my heart
whose KEY only she’s got
and only who can light and fill.






[Photo source: e-pao.net]

Death Call Numbers: Don't Panic, It's a Hoax

The other day i was talking with my Iteima's little daughter about her upcoming Teacher's Day plans. [She usually sings and dances]. She told me she was planning to sing a song on her school's Teacher's Day celebration for which she wanted to take my brother's [who is doing Hindustani Classical Vocal course here in mumbai] help. At the end of the conversation, she told me, 'Ka Sanjit, these days we don't pick up any unknown numbers.' I muttered, 'why?.' 'Because people who received certain numbers coming on their mobile phones that come in red become paralyzed or already death.'

I didn't hear that. Yes, i heard similar news long time back. But i wanted to know what this is all about. So the first thing that came across my mind, is my best friend, Google, for anything and everything that i have no idea of. So instantly i was online.

Times of India also reported similar news on August 13, 2010. But there are no confirmed reports on that but said it was a hoax. I searched on, on Google and found no major/prominent websites reporting similar news. At last i landed on About.com which had a detailed report on the so called death calls. I decided it's just the hoax, rumors.


History of the Hoax:

The rumor/hoax news first appeared on April 13, 2007 that caused a widespread panic in Pakistan that time. Below is an example of the death call hoax in an email by the name Youssef B., on May 2, 2007, reportedly originated from Pakistan. Following is the email.

Hi All,

Its very important news for all of you. Do not pick up calls Under given numbers.

, 9888308001
, 9316048121 91+
, 9876266211
, 9888854137
, 9876715587

These numbers will come in red color, if the calls comes up from these numbers. Its with very high wave length, and frequency. If a call is received on mobile from these numbers, it creates a very high frequency and it causes brain ham range.

It's not a joke rather, its TRUE. 27 persons died just on receiving calls from these numbers. Watch Aaj Tak (NEWS), DD News and IBN 7.

Forward this message to all u'r friends and colleagues, and relatives

[Courtesy: About.com]


And just a few days back, someone posted a similar hoax news in an online forum on September 01, 2010. Below is the post:

FW: Number za Shetani

Hi Colleagues,

I don’t know how true this is but just take precaution. Please don’t attend to any calls from the following numbers:

* 7888308001 *

* 9316048121 *

* 9876266211 *

* 9888854137 *

* 9876715587 *

These numbers come in red colors. U may get brain hemorrhage due to high frequency. 27 persons died just receiving the calls watch the DD news to confirm. Please inform all your relatives and friends soon it’s urgent.

[Source: About.com]

PLEASE NOTE: In 2007, it was 27 people died. In 2010, it's still the same 27 people died.


It's worthwhile to mention a similar variant was reported in 2004 in South Africa on Independent Online news website.

For further reading:

Red Number' Killer Phone Call Rumor Sparks Panic in Kenya

'Brain haemorrhage' SMS causes panic in Kenya

CCK assures public over mobile phone hoax

State dismisses 'death call' SMS alerts as hoax


But in Kenya right now it's now become a big state issue. The Minister of Information and Communications has called an important meeting over this issue this afternoon.

In India it's a different story. In metros, there is hardly any news on that death call hoax rumor. Maybe because people there are more educated and well informed. But as of now, as far as i know, the rumor mill is milling harder in Manipur than most its other counterparts.

The conclusion is, it's a hoax. Scientists confirmed that mobile phones are incapable of emitting sound frequencies that can inflict injury or cause death. And they also confirmed that there is no scientific basis for mobile phone causing brain hemorrhage. It's a marketing gimmick or a ploy by a few handful to mislead people.
So don't panic. Get a good sleep.

Only Time - Enya

It's a quiet period for me... i don't know how long it will last!


ONLY TIME


Who can say where the road goes,
Where the day flows, only time?
And who can say if your love grows,
As your hearth chose, only time?

Who can say why your heart sights,
As your live flies, only time?
And who can say why your heart cries
when your love lies, only time?

Who can say when the roads meet,
That love might be ,in your heart?
and who can say when the day sleeps,
and the night keeps all your heart?
Night keeps all your heart.....

Who can say if your love groves,
As your heart chose, only time?
And who can say where the road goes
Where the day flows, only time?

Who knows? Only time
Who knows? Only time

Money Only Matters: MP Babudom's 200% Pay Hike?

The other day the Cabinet approved for a 200% hike in our MPs salaries. While i agree that it's long overdue for our 'money only matters MPs, a 200% hike in my opinion sounds little undeserving considering the social economic landscape of this country. Never forget that the country's 40% or more of the population is under poverty line. Farmers who are the 'producers' are committing suicide unabated in this Rising Asian Giant. Even more the recent price inflation has aggravated the sufferings of the common man.

With this 200% hike, a conservative market value of an Indian MP's pay package comes to around 57 lakhs per annum. Now India's GDP per capita income is $3176 purchase power parity. So therefore the disparity between an average Indian income and an MP's income is over 100 times which fares much better than even some of the developed countries like Japan, Singapore, Italy etc. Not satisfied with this hike, one MP even growled that it's an insult to the parliament.

We would have really appreciated if the Cabinet had in mind the plight of the common Indian before its salary review. For instance, who knows if they had seen Peepli Live before its decision, it might be a different story. While David Cameron in the UK is advocating pay cuts for public sector 'fat cats' [read Babudom] to reduce the fiscal deficits, it's a shame on our MPs who are still not satisfied but complaining even after such an astronomical pay hike. In actual, they are the millionaires who are complaining. What can we expect as a common man from millionaires who are complaining about their salaries?

But Indians are not deaf, dumb and blind. They listen, they see and they will speak out soon. Let's wait for the next election.

COMPROMISE?

Today i read something that grabbed my eyeballs. It was an eye opening for me in a long time. Compromise is the word. If I were asked to make one sentence using this word 'compromise', the first and foremost sentence that comes to my mind would be, 'I never compromise'. No surprise that it's coming from a headstrong person like me. Though i am a lot flexible in the way i relate to others. But the bottomline is we don't want to compromise in any way. In other words, we don't want to belittle ourselves before another human being because it's humiliating. Frankly speaking because of my 'uncompromising' stance in the past, i have had break-ups.

'Value compromise. But never compromise your values', was the heading that appeared on TOI. It was a soul searching and soul enriching experience. This is one great truth i wish i had known.

Take an example, even the mighty tree sways a bit, bends down and bows when a fierce and angry wind passes through as if to uproot all that it has, while standing firm. Compromise without compromising your values at core. A simple yet powerful truth.\

Life is a mixed bag of flowers and fruits!

Forrest Gump has been one of my all time favs. I remember one quote from that movie: My mama always said, "Life was like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get." Chocolate. And you know it tastes bitter-sweet. Life's like that. In short, life's a mixed bag of both bitter and sweet. Sometimes it's like a beautiful rainbow that comes after the rain. At times, it's like eating [Manipuri] nongmangkha leaves.

We're all in the game of seesaw jumping up and down. Sometimes it's hard to comprehend why certain things happen contrary to what we thought. But whatever it is, the show must go on. As much as 'beautiful' is glorifying, the 'bitter/sour' should not prevent us from achieving what we set out to accomplish.

Life is beautiful but never forget, it's bitter too.

China Overtakes Japan as World's Second-Biggest Economy

It may come as a great shock to many Indians that China has overtaken the Japan's long held position of the World's second largest economy, only to be placed after the United States, the largest economy in the world. India Rising may have some merits but comparing India to China as equal giants, as many Indian writers ado, is a grossly assumed mistake. On many counts China supercedes the former. Below is the full report from Bloomberg News:


China surpassed Japan as the world’s second-largest economy last quarter, capping the nation’s three- decade rise from Communist isolation to emerging superpower.

Japan’s nominal gross domestic product for the second quarter totaled $1.288 trillion, less than China’s $1.337 trillion, the Japanese Cabinet Office said today. Japan remained bigger in the first half of 2010, the government agency said. Japan’s annual GDP is $5.07 trillion, while China’s is more than $4.9 trillion.

China led the world out of last year’s global recession with an economy that’s more than 90-times bigger than when leader Deng Xiaoping ditched hard-line Communist policies in favor of free-market reforms in 1978. The country of 1.3 billion people will overtake the U.S., where annual GDP is about $14 trillion, as the world’s largest economy by 2027, according to Goldman Sachs Group Inc. chief economist Jim O’Neill.

China’s surpassing of Japan “is a marker of its increasingly dominant role in the global economy,” said Eswar Prasad, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and former head of the China division at the International Monetary Fund. “The resilience of China’s growth during the crisis enabled a number of other countries, particularly commodity-exporting economies, to ride on its coattails.”

The benchmark Shanghai stock index rose 2.1 percent at the 3 p.m. close today, climbing the most this month.

Tricky Comparison

China overtook the U.S. last year as the biggest automobile market and Germany as the largest exporter. The nation is the world’s No. 1 buyer of iron ore and copper and the second- biggest importer of crude oil, and has underpinned demand for exports by its Asian neighbors.

While China’s output was also larger in the fourth quarter of 2009, Japan’s GDP rebounded to exceed China’s in the first quarter, according to data compiled by Bloomberg News. According to IMF data using purchasing-power-parity calculations to adjust for exchange-rate differences, China overtook Japan in 2001.

Quarterly comparisons between China and Japan are “a little tricky because they do not take account of different seasonal patterns between the two countries,” said David Cohen, head of Asian forecasting at Action Economics in Singapore.

China’s economy is cooling as the government trims credit growth from last year’s record $1.4 trillion and discourages multiple-home purchases to cool surging property prices. July industrial output rose the least in 11 months, retail sales growth eased and new loans climbed less than estimated. China Petroleum & Chemical Corp. said last month that its crude-oil processing increased at a slower pace in the second quarter as fuel demand faltered.

Property Collapse

The country’s property market is beginning a “collapse” that will hit the nation’s banking system, Kenneth Rogoff, a Harvard University professor and former chief economist of the IMF, said July 6.

Still, China is on course to overtake the U.S. as the world’s largest economy around 2020, PricewaterhouseCoopers said in a January report.

With China’s growth surging 10.3 percent in the second quarter from a year earlier and Japan expanding 2 percent, the “gap is going to widen” in future, said Shen Jianguang, a Hong Kong-based economist at Mizuho Securities Asia Ltd. “It is not likely that Japan will retake the No. 2 spot given the likely growth rates.”


Four of the world’s top 10 companies by market capitalization are from China, including PetroChina Co., Industrial & Commercial Bank of China Ltd., China Mobile Ltd. and China Construction Bank Corp.

Agricultural Bank

Agricultural Bank of China Ltd. boosted the size of its initial public offering to $22.1 billion this month after selling more stock in Shanghai, making it the world’s largest first-time share sale. The IPO made the nation home to four of the world’s 10 biggest banks by market value, half a decade after the country’s first major state-owned lender went public.

China may be the biggest IPO market in 2010 as companies are likely to raise 500 billion yuan ($74 billion) in Shanghai and Shenzhen, PricewaterhouseCoopers forecast last month.

Since introducing free-market policies, China has lifted 300 million citizens out of poverty, according to the United Nations. The country remains a developing nation, with its per capita gross national income ranked 127th in the world at $2,940 at the end of 2008, behind Angola and Azerbaijan, according to the World Bank.

Cultural Revolution

In the first three decades of Communist Party rule before Deng took power, China’s economy was hobbled by the chaos of the Great Leap Forward, a failed attempt to transform the agrarian nation into an industrial powerhouse, and the Cultural Revolution, a decade of political upheaval led by Mao Zedong’s Red Guards.

“China has a large population, a weak economic foundation, relatively few resources and a large poverty population, which remains our basic situation,” Ma Jiantang, head of China’s statistics bureau, said in January. “Therefore, while we take note of our expanding size of economy and enhancing economic strength, we should also have a sober understanding that China remains a developing nation.”

China’s future influence on the global economy will increase, said Shen at Mizuho. The country’s “double-digit” expansion will contribute a third of global growth this year, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development said in March.

“Japan had a huge impact on the global commodities market and foreign direct investment flows in the 1980s” as China is doing now, Shen said. “The major difference is that China’s population is 10-times bigger than Japan’s, its economy is still growing at above 9 percent per year, and Chinese investors are just beginning to invest abroad. You can imagine that China’s impact will be so much bigger.”

When Love Dies....

The dark grey Mumbai sky hovers above. Seems like the blue has gone for a holiday. The usual vehicular movement and horn noise being heard around. People are busy walking on the road as if they are being chased from behind. Street hawkers too are busy selling so their families could be fed. Amidst these crowd, i am standing alone -- alone in the middle of the road. And i feel terribly alone in this world. Never I thought in my wildest possible dreams, love could take me to this place -- a place where love dies, heart burns and the whole being cries in tears.

Admittedly, love is a strange thing. When it dies, everything seems to die, even if every other thing in life is all right and intact. The power of love -- to break into pieces or to make into a wonderful, spectacular thing. Sadly, the latter never happened. Deep inside, I am not feeling all right. Something seems to simmer inside and eats up like a gangrene. Yes, I've had break-ups before in the past but this one is different. it's had almost killed me.

Ten Ways To Tell If Someone Is Lying To You

No wonder we live in a world full of lies and liars. But truth not to be forgotten.
But how do you know when someone lies to you? Down below is an article by Elisabeth Eaves that digs into these issues.

In business, politics and romance, it would be nice to know when we’re being lied to. Unfortunately humans aren’t very good at detecting lies. Our natural tendency is to trust others, and for day-to-day, low-stakes interactions, that makes sense. We save time and energy by taking statements like “I saw that movie” or “I like your haircut” at face value.

But while it would be too much work to analyze every interaction for signs of deception, there are times when we really need to know if we’re getting the straight story. Maybe a crucial negotiation depends on knowing the truth, or we’ve been lied to and want to find out if it’s part of a pattern.

In fact, being able to distinguish lies from truth is important not just in our personal lives but in the economy at large. Trust lubricates virtually every transaction we undertake. In fact, trust may be worth as much as $12.4 trillion dollars a year in the United States alone, about 99.5% of GDP. It’s no stretch to argue that by reducing trust, liars make us collectively poorer.

Lies told on the printed page or on a TV screen may be the hardest to detect. When a journalist at a respected publication tells a tall tale--like the New York Times’ Jayson Blair or The New Republic’s Stephen Glass--those of us without reams of time on our hands aren’t likely to uncover it on our own. The same goes for deceptive campaign advertisements. Fortunately, at least in the case of politics, we can rely on nonprofit, nonpartisan organizations like Factcheck.org, to review the veracity of political claims coming from both sides of the aisle.

Face to face it’s easier to make our own judgments about whether someone is telling the truth. Psychologists who study deception, though, are quick to warn that there is no foolproof method. Bella DePaulo, a visiting professor of psychology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, writes that “lying is not a distinct psychological process with its own unique behavioral indicators. It does matter how liars feel and how they think.” Indeed, many of the tell-tale signs common to liars, like fidgeting and sweating, can also be signs of ordinary anxiety. It’s tough to tell the difference between a liar and an honest person who happens to be under a lot of stress.

That said, police officers and spies use a slew of interrogation tricks that the rest of us can adopt to improve our detection odds. The professionals look and listen for signs of nervousness, and pay close attention to the content of a suspect’s story. Does it contain a lot of detail? Does it stay consistent through repeated tellings?

Of course, there will always be those who have honed their deception skills to perfection, and they’re never easy to catch. Hardened criminals, especially ones who have been interrogated dozens of times, get better and better at lying, says 20-year New York Police Department veteran Derrick Parker. Magicians also know how to deceive by exhibiting a pleasant manner and relying on spectators’ assumptions. (See: “ In Defense of Trust.”)

For most of us, though, it’s not magicians or criminal masterminds we need to worry about when it comes to detecting deceivers. In fact, we should be most on guard against ourselves. “Often we don’t want to know when somebody is lying,” explains University of Massachusetts psychology professor Robert Feldman. In short, we are programmed to believe compliments and avoid painful truths, both of which make a liar’s task much easier.

[Source:Forbes.com]

Change isn't always pleasant...

Almost a half year gone. Life is going on, on its course though less pacer than anticipated. You know we want our life to run faster and reach our goal sooner. But in real, it doesn't happen that way. Lots of bumps on the road, lots of blockade, economic blockade, non-economic blockade and the like. Lots of obstacles to pass through. It isn't always a pleasant experience to tell you the truth. That's why changes always have to be made but while not changing the target or the goal in mind. Routes are many that you can take to reach your goal even if your main route is in blockade forever like the ongoing economic blockade in Manipur by ANSAM or the UNC. The only difference it's going to make is the time differential. But as i always say time is very important. We mortals are bound by it. Whatever you do, whatever you think, whatever you aspire is bound by time. How i wish we could be freed from time some day. We are all slaves to time. Whether you like it or not.

Even so continue to pursue your dreams.

The world is not always the same. It keeps changing if you keep track of it everyday. We also, if you notice, change. Change is inevitable. In fact, today i am one day older than yesterday. That's a change. There's always winds of change blowing across this universe. And a tree never stands erect when the wind blows over it. It bends even if a little, with the wind direction as it blows. Otherwise it will break itself.

Change with the change of time but never compromise your core values, i.e. that is the character. When it loses, you don't exist. So never lose it. Character. This is where many fail.

There is always this belief, grass is greener on the other side of the pasture. Some truth may be there but not always. Being this belief as premise, many tend to compromise their core values when they accept changes. So when a culture dies, society becomes dead. Change is inevitable but change without compromising your culture.

It's sad to say that Manipur is on the boil again. People of Manipur are facing extreme hardships, pain and agony. Scarcity of food commodities and skyrocketing of prices of essential items have become acute while the two lifelines of the state are being strangulated in the name of economic blockade by hill based ANSAM and UNC. While they may have some reasons in doing so, blockading indefinitely of the lifelines amount to strangulating the lakhs of Manipuris both of hills and valley, which is a crime against humanity.

Change isn't always pleasant.... but change anyway when needed.

All It Takes is a Little Will and an Extra Step Further!

Today is January 31 2010. Sunday. Holiday too. And one month into the year 2010. At the end of the day, every second counts. And we often forget this and time and time again we need to be reminded ourselves of this truth. Why am i saying this? Simple. I have a dream as i am sure you all do. And I don't want to be dreaming in perpetuity like most people do. I want to turn it into a reality sooner. And... because we have become a slave to the entity called TIME and are fettered to its chains. The sad part is you are bound by it. There's nothing you can do about it.

Life has taught me to dream BIG. I still remember one inspirational quote that came across a Competition Success Review issue years back, "Aim for the sky; even if you miss it, you will land among the stars". Yes, there will more mountains ahead of me and i know it's going to be an uphill climb. Also, sometimes i may lose some battles, sometimes my faith may falter, even so, i will keep climbing. Someday when you stand at the top of the mountain and have ice cream there, you will be glad that you never looked behind and you stayed focused and never losing faith in yourself.

Today I was surfing through the Youtube videos, the above video struck me at the core. A Determined Child. Contrastingly a hopeless crowd. We can all take inspirations from a little child. That's a truth. When we were a child, we had full of ideas and full of dreams. Those days at times i even thought i could move a mountain. But as we grow in years, we tend to lose sight of the basics.

So Back to Basics please if you have to. It's needed in our journey. A journey to a life full of life. If needed, start all over again from where you began. As Wisemen said, if you have lost the path in the forest, return back to, from where you began. And then start all over again. It will be worth the walk. Promise!

By the way i am not a big fan of Miley Cyrus, but undeniably i like her songs. Below is one song i most listen to.




Hope, all is well at your end. I will be back. Cheers!

WAKE UP!!!!!

I suddenly realized it's already 11 JAN 2010. Not been even bother to look up at my blog lately. And it's like getting up late in a cold foggy winter morning when you know you're getting late for the office. No, it's mumbai here, Manipur would have been a different world altogether. Here people are alien to the kind of cold snowy winter that we usually have in Manipur. By the way Shimla, Ladakh are a different story altogether.

The problem is... I am just being lazy... and this is the right time to make a choice, though a little late... better late than never. A choice to make things better, a choice that is going to mould and shape my remaining future. That i am not going to be lazy and droopy now going forward. I have wasted a lot of time; now i will not... i will not settle for less than what i am and what i can. I pray for God's help in this and i know he will lead me through to the end.

Hmmm 11 JAN 2010? No, it just may be the day i woke up... 2010. Maybe i have been dozed off quite sometime now. Anyway i am glad i have woken up to the sound of a sweet and saccharine flute echoing from the faraway land, bringing with a sweet nostalgic feeling... feeling of union, feeling of oneness and feeling of belongingness. And everybody wants to be belonged...right?

Here is the youtube video that woke me up! Kudos to the uploader!