Soma Purana

I use ginger and turmeric liberally in my every morning oatmeal breakfast. I have my own recipe which is basically a lot of vegetables. What I prepare lasts for three days for me and my wife. The general ingredients are: less than one cup oatmeal 2 big long eggplants 2 big red onions lots of frozen vegetables (beans, corn, peas, tindora, amla) Ginger Turmeric Hot chillies Mustard Peanuts Canola oil Tamarind I don't put garlic since I don't like the taste but I have been taking one 2000 mg garlic pill everyday. It will take some time to clearly understand the effects of all the ingredients in my oatmeal breakfast, but I want to start off very briefly with what turmeric and ginger do in this post. Turmeric : turmeric is at the top of the spice class. It is known for its anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties, its use as a digestive aid, and it ability to improve circulation. Its benefits are touted to be improving cardiac health, relief of aches and...

Watched last night this beautiful movie based on a true story about a textile factory worker in a small town in North Carolina. The worker starred by Sally Field gets involved in organizing a union and goes through a lot of hurdles and eventually gets fired. But unionizing succeeds. This movie won best actress Oscar for Sally Field. Ron Leibman as the union organizer is superb and should have won the Oscar too. A moving drama.

When I was a toddler I developed an enormous interest in a machine, our village bus. I was truly fascinated by it. When I was like 4 or 5 years old, my everyday routine was to run in the morning around 7AM to the village bus stand and observe goings on in and around the bus. The bus would leave for Chinthamani at 8AM, but most of my interest was in cleaning and preparing the bus to depart. The first activity was to push the bus to the village tank (this was actually a small dam) about 500 yards from the stand. Why the bus was pushed rather than driven, I don't know to this day. Who would push? Under the approval and direction of the Cleaner of the bus it was the kids like me who would do it. It was a privilege for us. Every bus would have three workers, a driver, a conductor whose job was to collect fare, and the cleaner who job was to keep the bus clean, do minor repairs, haul passengers' luggage to the roof of the bus and bring it down, and to yell "Right" when e...

I am proud of my cousin Ananth Kumar (my paternal uncle's son). He went through a traumatic childhood (see my own experience detailed in several stories published in 2006 living with his eccentric and abusive father) and wandered through several stages before realizing his true purpose. For the last ten years or so, he has been running an unconventional school near Mysore and has changed the lives of many a children. He and his wife Padma have dedicated their lives to run this school which is free and admits kids who are dropouts, opportunity deprived, and essentially considered hopelessly uneducatable. Today, Ananth is attracting numerous volunteers and funding support from across the world because nobility of his purpose and purity of his mind. Ananth is an idea machine. His school is called Kaliyuva Mane (Kannada for "the house for learning") and adopts the premise that the school is for children and not the other way around. The strength of this simple premise is h...

When I went to village school in India, there were not too many girls. Most involuntarily dropped out. My own two older sisters were not allowed to go beyond 4th grade. That has changed now. Even in villages, there are lot more girls pursuing high school education. I was pleasantly surprised to see so many top ranks in 2012 obtained by girls. Look at 2012 top SSLC ranks in Karnataka. Max achievable score is 625. Names highlighted are girls' names. Name Marks NAVYA 623 PALLAVI 621 ANUSHA 621 SHREESHA 621 NAMRATHA 620 S Suhas 620 PRIYANKA 619 MEGHA 619 SOUMYA 619 KRITIKA 619 TEJASWINI 619 AKHILA 618 KARTHIK 618 VASUDHA 618 GAYANA 618 LAKSHMI 618 SRIDEVI 618

Neptune is the farthest planet in the solar system after Pluto was demoted to dwarf planet status. It was discovered mathematically first and then by observation in Sep. 1846 (166 years ago). Neptune completes its revolution around the Sun every 165 years. So, it just completed one revolution since the time of its discovery! It has seasonal changes kind of similar to ours but its season lasts for 40 earth years! It has 13 known moons. Triton, the largest of Neptune's moons didn't form in place but was "captured." Triton was going around the Sun like another dwarf planet but fell into Neptune's gravitational pull and became its moon.

I don't know the answer. No one knows. Whatever one believes it can never be proved. But let me present a scenario that is theoretical and could throw some light into the question. Suppose, I am just a set of molecules organized in some very complicated way. This organization of molecules creates me, let us argue. Then it should be possible to create another being with exactly the same organization, complicated nonetheless. Once it is created the new being possesses the same shape and form as me and it exhibits the same thoughts, consciousness, feelings, emotions, knowledge as me. Then the question arises, who is "me"? Is it me or the other being that just got created. Me and the new being can never be the same since, physically it is impossible for both me and the new being to occupy the same space. Exactly where we physically are at a given time also is a variable that affects how we evolve. Then there should be minute but distinguishable changes that occur between...