Saturday, July 25, 2009

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.

Sunday, July 5, 2009

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........

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