Tryst with Destiny - Nehru

Wanted this speech text to be with me every time, and hence, I am posting it in this blog:

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Long years ago we made a tryst with destiny, and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge, not wholly or in full measure, but very substantially. At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom. A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance. It is fitting that at this solemn moment we take the pledge of dedication to the service of India and her people and to the still larger cause of humanity.
At the dawn of history India started on her unending quest, and trackless centuries are filled with her striving and the grandeur of her success and her failures. Through good and ill fortune alike she has never lost sight of that quest or forgotten the ideals which gave her strength. We end today a period of ill fortune and India discovers herself again. The achievement we celebrate today is but a step, an opening of opportunity, to the greater triumphs and achievements that await us. Are we brave enough and wise enough to grasp this opportunity and accept the challenge of the future?

That future is not one of ease or resting but of incessant striving so that we may fulfill the pledges we have so often taken and the one we shall take today. The service of India means the service of the millions who suffer. It means the ending of poverty and ignorance and disease and inequality of opportunity. The ambition of the greatest man of our generation has been to wipe every tear from every eye. That may be beyond us, but as long as there are tears and suffering, so long our work will not be over.
And so we have to labor and to work, and work hard, to give reality to our dreams. Those dreams are for India, but they are also for the world, for all the nations and peoples are too closely knit together today for any one of them to imagine that it can live apart Peace has been said to be indivisible; so is freedom, so is prosperity now, and so also is disaster in this One World that can no longer be split into isolated fragments.

We have to build the noble mansion of free India where all her children may dwell. The appointed day has come-the day appointed by destiny-and India stands forth again, after long slumber and struggle, awake, vital, free and independent. The past clings on to us still in some measure and we have to do much before we redeem the pledges we have so often taken. Yet the turning-point is past, and history begins anew for us, the history which we shall live and act and others will write about.
It is a fateful moment for us in India, A new star rises, the star of freedom in the East, a new hope comes into being, a vision long cherished materializes. May the star never set and that hope never be betrayed! We rejoice in that freedom,

The future beckons to us. Whither do we go and what shall be our endeavor? To bring freedom and opportunity to the common man, to the peasants and workers of India; to fight and end poverty and ignorance and disease; to build up a prosperous, democratic and progressive nation, and to create social, economic and political institutions which will ensure justice and fullness of life to every man and woman.
We have hard work ahead. There is no resting for any one of us till we redeem our pledge in full, till we make all the people of India what destiny intended them to be. We are citizens of a great country on the verge of bold advance, and we have to live up to that high standard. All of us, to whatever religion we may belong, are equally the children of India with equal rights, privileges and obligations. We cannot encourage communalism or narrow-mindedness, for no nation can be great whose people are narrow in thought or in action.

To the nations and peoples of the world send greetings and pledge ourselves to cooperate with them in furthering peace, freedom and democracy. And to India, our much-loved motherland, the ancient, the eternal and the ever-new, we pay our reverent homage and we bind ourselves afresh to her service. Jai Hind.

As simple as that...

Have you ever tried to answer why Google was/is/will be the most widely used search engine ? How many times have you been surfing the net, landed on a website which initially looked relevant to you, but have turned away from it as soon as you opened it ? Quite often, we come across websites which may have the content to be content with, but lose their "dignity" just because of their first appearance.

We all must have heard about "Time" magazine. I am in no position to question its stature and will not certainly do so, but why is it that "The Economist" will give you a more soothing effect when you compare the two magazine websites. Make no mistake that content wise, they are identical.

If you are a snack eater of the web and prefer small articles and stories rather than big fat meal of novels, you must be familiar with the serenity of The New Yorker, A List Apart and Aldaily.What serenity? You'll know what I mean when you see Jeffery Zeldman's page. Ouch! Did it hurt?

If you are the one who is abreast with happenings around the world and is updated all the time, why do you prefer BBC over CNN on web, when you like the "eat-the-chewing-gum & say-the-news" American accent than "blow-the-wind & spit-the-news" British accent on the television.

It's not that in the above comparisons, I have favored the websites which I personally like, but I have tried to highlight one of the basic rules which the other ones have forgotten while designing their art on web. Color plays a vital role in attracting a reader towards your product, in this case, the website. Your eyes guide your brain and your hand on mouse, immediately as you open a website. If the content has too much of red in it or the links within the web page give you an impression that you'll definitely be lost in this web mosaic, you say a big NOOOOOOOOO and either close that website or move on to the next result which God Google had presented before you. On the other hand, if the page mostly uses a color coding that isn't 'thorn for your eye', you stick to that choice of yours and return to it in the future.

Oh!!! Google!!!.....reminds me of the first question which I had asked about Google's popularity. The answer? Well, Google search page doesn't have more that twenty sub-links,uses a color combination which predominantly contains white that doesn't scare you off and most importantly is very fast. In other words, has all the ingredients in the recipe book.

Lesson ? "Simple is beautiful" .As simple as that my friend........

Eureka!

I am quite surprised myself. In my profile, I have written that it is music which takes place of O2 in my life and is essential for my existence. Then how is it possible that I did not write anything about it till now. So, let me do it rightaway.

As I type these words, while listening to my favorite singer-composer pair; Mangeshkar sister and brother, and its compositions from Shiv Kalyan Raja, I feel that if at all you are a music lover, you cannot resist yourself from venerating the Mangeshkar family. And if you are a Maharashtrian, the three siblings from this family take a place adjacent to your Gods.

So, how's the title of this article related to the Mangeshkars? As I always say, carry on reading....

Three weeks back, I was creating playlists of my favourite songs in my mobile phone. All in all there were six of them, categorized as :

-'Great voice' : which included 'Abhi na jao chhod kar': Mohd Rafi, "I can't help falling in love" : Elvis Presley, "Sweet Caroline" : Neal Diamond etc.

- 'Hindi', 'Marathi', 'English' and 'Misc', having songs from the respective language, 'misc.' having instrumental, Tamil, Telugu and Malayalam songs.

_ 'My Fav' containing songs filtered from all the ones mentioned above and which I would simply love to listen to at any point of day, be it in my sleep as well.

Oh!! I have not mentioned anywhere above, that I worship Shankar Mahadevan. I love every piece of his work, no matter if it is a jingle sung by him ( remember "Kuch Khas hai hum sabhi mein" - Cadbury, you too love it, don't you?), performances with Zakir Hussain, John McLaughlin and U. Srinivas, as a part of 'Remember Shakti', or his timeless compositions with Ehsaan & Loy. I love each one of them.

So, coming back to 'My Fav' playlist, I observed that there was not even a single song by "My God" and the list was dominated by "The Family". The first song in the list was

"Tarun ahe ratra ajuni" ,

Get this widget | Track details | eSnips Social DNA

"Jivalaga" was the next,

Get this widget | Track details | eSnips Social DNA

followed by "Gagan Sadan Tejomay"

Get this widget | Track details | eSnips Social DNA

and then came "Daya Ghana".

The presence of my God had disappeared. I was scared. I was tensed. I questioned myself "Am I becoming an atheist"? I needed to relax. Inadvertently, I started listening to 'My fav' again and "The Family" reappeared.

It was this repetition of the playlist that was "my bath in the tub" and was enlightenment for me. It made me realize that actually the inventions of this family are my sustenance and there are Gods above my God.

VISA Power

It was in my last post that I had mentioned about "The plan" ; the plan to write an article per day. "VISA power, couldn't do it and I am now officially permitted to go to the US of A".

Yes,yesterday was my VISA interview at 0845 hrs. So , I had to go to bed early in order to get up early. I tried very hard, but it was only around 1 'o clock, that I dozed off!

It was a very nice first experience of Visa interview.The CSC brand name showed its effect and within 45 minutes of walking past the front gate of Paigah Palace, the newly opened US Consulate in Hyderabad, I was happily walking back through it again in the opposite direction! The whole process was swift and pretty quick.

The processes before the interview took about half an hour, which involved finger print check, document verification etc. Majority of the people, in the first batch were "going-to-meet-my-son-in-US" parents and it was fun to watch them. Fun in the sense that, I was able to imagine how my parents must have been been looking when they went for their VISA interview a few months back.

Though I know, how difficult it is to narrate a story effectively, I will still give it a shot and narrate my interview experience. My interviewer was a lady, who was taking her first interview of the day. We will call her "Mam" here.

This is how it was :

Mam: Hello!
Me : Good morning Mam!

......Checking the application .......

Mam : For how long have you been with CSC , sir ?
Me : I'll be completing three years in coming July.

Mam : What is the purpose of your visit?
Me : There is a new project, which requires one-to-one training from our on-site folks.

Mam: What is the project ?
Me : Our client, a retail chain in the US .... ( interrupted)

Mam: which one ?
Me : Kroger .

Mam : Oh!!! Kroger, the grocery store .....
Me : Yes, the project will improve the efficiency of their logistics and I will have to come back to India and train my team members here at offshore.

Mam : Okay, sir , your application has been approved !
Me : Thank you , mam !

...........and she took my passport away and I did not resent it at all !!!!!!

Just fot the plan's sake

"The plan is, that there is no plan". Sounds intelligently exciting, isn't it? Heard it in some movie whose name I can't recollect now. Wanted to use since then somewhere and was searching for some pertinent situation. But alas ! Will have to use its modification. Will tell you later . Carry on reading........

Last night, I wrote an entry about Obama's Cairo speech. I had read its text over the weekend. With it, I started my prep for the "reading comprehension" section of GMAT, which I plan to take up in the month of November, 9th to be precise. Anyway, after publishing the entry in my office at 4:oo P.M, I was pretty satisfied with my effort. It was lenghty, but still, the subjects of my article , Obama's speech & my RC prep , are no shorter ! Yes , the Obama speech was long and they say "there is no short cut to master the  RC section" . So,  I did not care much about the word limit. 

I then thought about improving my writing skills as well. Amit Varma (ttrrriiing trrrrinng Indiauncut.com), has said in his blog that it was blog writing that  made his writing crispier. He also said that the reader of your article is actually investing his time, chosing your article out of plethora, when he has all the writings in this world a click away!

Lesson learnt : you have to be mean, lean, short and sweet when you write something.  

I observed that before coming to the main point, I tend to set an ambience for my story , bringing in all the related points or actors into the picture and then BANG ! I shoot !

Yes, it may sound funny and actually is in a conversation, but when you have to write something, be it an article or an SOP :) , you can't afford this story telling and use of weapons! So, I took his advice seriously and planned to write "something" everyday to be precise in my writing.  

OKAY !  You have guessed it ! Yes, this was the plan I was talking about. The plan is, there is a plan to be followed strictly : An article a day ! 

I know the end is abrupt, but can't help ! Have to sleep now, was in night shift yeterday ! 

Cairo Speech - Five point Obama

I know this is a sign of fear. I have read it in an article written by a psychologist that you try to procrastinate tasks when you are unsure of, rather scared of the result. I have started my GMAT prep, have nearly completed SC and CR from OG 11th ed. and now have to take up RC. But instead of opening the RC section in the book, I am looking the World Wide Web to "read and comprehend” various writings. This Sunday was also spent not opening the RC section.

But today was something different, as there were some signs of "hope" in this dodging. After reading few sections on TotalGadha, which I discovered last night, I read the complete text of Obama's speech delivered in Cairo. It was quite a lengthy read, but every second spent reading it was an investment for betterment, both for my RC prep and for me.

Obama's this visit to the Arab countries was seen as a beginning of new relations between the US and Muslim countries and the speech marking it had all the eyes and all the ears in this world paying attention to it. The speech lived up to very single expectation and was indeed a ray of hope. He touched all the important issues which our world is facing today and which have involvement of the Muslim extremists. And yes, Obama was very careful not to use the word terrorists and intelligently euphemized it with extremism throughout his speech.

The speech inspired me as well, but in a sense which Obama hardly must have imagined. You are bound to get impressed whenever any attorney opens his mouth and I was too by Obama's speech. I know that I may not qualify to comment on the oratorical qualities of Obama, but still, it always helps to recall the good things at your bedtime which you saw or heard in your day's work.

As said before, his speech touched upon five important issues that U.S is facing today and which involves Muslims. They were democracy, Afghan-Iran-Iraq conflicts, Israel- Palestine standoff, extremism and woman's rights. All of them had some story to tell and some lesson to teach.

In his speech, you could easily see the perfect use of words that were assertive, showing the powers that he enjoys as the 44th president of the United States of America, the words which accepted the recent mistakes by his predecessor, the words which acknowledged everyone's right to live and umpteen instances and examples from U.S.'s and Muslim history to substantiate the message that he wanted to convey. I could see that he was aware of every boundary within which he was working, but at the same time was showing his strengths as well. Possessing this quality of recognition of your constraints is primal whenever you set some target for yourself and knowing your strengths and capitalizing on them helps you achieve that goal.

He is a democrat and you could easily tell it when he stressed that basic human character needs freedom of expression. He did not want to "force" his ideas on the Arab world, where this freedom is a distant dream, but acknowledged that every culture has its own ways to nurture its followers and what these countries follow is acceptable as long as their rules don't harm innocent people. Anyway, his views about democracy bolstered mine and I learnt that if you want to underscore the importance of your point of view, it is equally important to understand your audiences' views as well, no matter if they are poles apart. Yes, the lesson to be learnt was "no one is more important than you and everyone is equally important as you are".

All and all, the gist of this five point something speech was an advice to the Muslim community, be it in Palestine, Afghanistan, Iran or Iraq, that every other sect has equal right to live and there should be a synergy between the Muslims and the non-Muslims.
For Obama, with his speech he made a fresh start to bridge the gaps and hoped to have cordial relations with the Muslims, but for me, this five-point-someone marked a beginning to my RC prep, which was long overdue.