Ganesh Chaturthi

Wish you and your family members a very happy Ganesh Chaturthi. May lord remove all the obstacles in your current and future endeavors.

The festival involves installing clay Idols of lord Ganesh, which are worshipped for ten days with different variety of herbal leaves, plants and immersed at the end of the festival in a water(lake) along with the Idol. After adding herbal and medicated plants and leaves(patri) in lakes, the water in the lake becomes purified. This was in practice because, in early days people used to drink lake water, and to protect people with infections and viral diseases especially in this season, this tradition was introduced.

I am not sure if the leaves used purifies water and protect people from viral diseases , but below are the Sanskrit and Botanical Names and their medicinal usage of 21 types of patra/leaves used in lord Ganesh Puja

1) Machi Patram - Artemisia vulgaris/Imperata Cylindrica
Used for curing skin diseases (leprosy, leucoderma), nervous diseases, and abdominal related

2)Brihathi Patram - Solanum indicum/Carisssa Carandass
Used for asthma, cough, constipation. Also used for women in post natal period

3)Bilva patram - Aegle marmeolus
Used for Dysentery. It also purifies water. Bilva leaf is very popular in the worship of Lord Shiva

4) Durvara Patram - Cyanodon dactylon/Cyanodon Dacry
Used for Skin diseases, arresting bleeding, anemia.

5)Dattura Patram - Stramonium
Used for joint pains, abdominal, skin diseases, hair fall. Also used in poisonous bites

6)Badari patram - Zizyphus mauritiana/ Z.jujba
Used for digestive disorders, wounds and injuries, blood impurities. Also used for maintaining the voice.

7)Apamarga Patram - Achyranthus Aspera
Used for digestive disorders and also used for poisonous bites.

8)Tulasi patram - Ocimum sanctum
Used for respiratory diseases, skin diseases, purifies air, water and surroundings.

9)Choota Patram - Azadarcata indica/ Mangifera indica
Used in Diabetics, for cracked heals, diseases of throat.

10)Karaveera Patram - Thevetia Nerifolium/Nerium indicum
Used for leprosy, wounds and injuries, hair fall, lice.

11)Vishnu Kranta Patram - Evolvulus Aisinoides/Convolvulus pluricaucis
Used for Nervous related, memory power

12)Daadimee Patram - Punica granatum
Used for Dysentery, Vata/Pitta/Kapha dosha

13)Devadaaru Patram - Cedrus deodar
Used for skin diseases, wounds/injuries

14)Maruvaka patram - Cedrus deodar
Used for Joint pains, skin diseases, heart diseases

15)Sindhuvara Patram - Vitex nirgundo
Used for Vaata related problems and also used in anti poisonous drugs.

16)Jaji Patram - Jasminum grandiflorum/Myristica Fragrams
Used for skin diseases, Mouth related problems and also in indigestion.

17)Gandaki Patram - Sterculia Urens/Latha Durva
Used for Heart related, Piles, Skin diseases.

18)Shami Patram - Prosopis specigera
It is used for respiratory problems.

19)Aswatha Patram - Ficus religiosa
Its bark is used in preparation of many medicines. It is also used for arresting bleeding. The significance and importance of this tree is so much that it is considered as Trimurthi (Trinity) swaroopa (Trinal Lords, Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva). We find people performing Naga Devatha Pratishta under this tree.

20) Arjuna Patram - Morinda Tinctoria/Terminelia Arjuna
Used for Joint pains, Vata/Pitta/Kapha related, heart diseases, wounds and septic conditions.

21) Arka Patram - Calotropis Procera
It is used in poisonous bites, wounds and injuries, curing skin diseases, leprosy, tumors, joint pains, etc… It is said that it has 64 varieties of medicinal usage. It is called as a healing herb. We find usage of this leaf on the day of Ratha Sapthami. It is associated with the worship of Sun God, Lord Hanuman and also Lord Ganesha.

Happy Pongal

Pongal / Sankranthi - harvesting festival or Indian thanksgiving day - What more can you say on this day other than thank farmer and say "Jai Kisan" for producing crop that would feed a billion+ people inspite of natural calamities (flood/excessive rain/drought) and man made calamities (no electricity / no seeds/fertilizers on time / middle man / no proper storage/warehouses ).

Wish, Hope and Pray that this year and years to come we get good rainfall that is sufficient to meet the needs of all people, trees/plants and animals and wisdom to people not to contaminate and stop encroachment of water bodies.

Suggestions for Success

How do we see the colors

Today is the festival of colors - Happy Holi.

This is how men and women see the colors :-)

What I do

What is Recession

A forward mail, I received...
 
This Story is about a man who once upon a time was selling Hotdogs by the roadside. He was illiterate, so he never read newspapers. He was hard of hearing, so he never listened to the radio. His eyes were weak, so he never watched television. But enthusiastically, he sold lots of hotdogs. He was smart enough to offer some attractive schemes to increase his sales. His sales and profit went up. He ordered more a more raw material and buns and use to sale more. He recruited few more supporting staff to serve more customers. He started offering home deliveries. Eventually he got himself a bigger and better stove. As his business was growing, the son, who had recently graduated from College, joined his father.

Then something strange happened. The son asked, "Dad, aren't you aware of the great recession that is coming our way?"

The father replied, "No, but tell me about it." The son said, "The international situation is terrible. The domestic situation is even worse. We should be prepared for the coming bad times."

The man thought that since his son had been to college, read the papers, listened to the radio and watched TV. He ought to know and his advice should not be taken lightly. So the next day onwards, the father cut down the his raw material order and buns, took down the colorful signboard, removed all the special schemes he was offering to the customers and was no longer as enthusiastic.  He reduced his staff strength by giving layoffs. Very soon, fewer and fewer people bothered to stop at his hotdog stand. And his sales started coming down rapidly, same is the profit.

The father said to his son, "Son, you were right". "We are in the middle of a recession and crisis. I am glad you warned me ahead of time."

Moral of The Story: It's all in your MIND! And we actually FUEL this recession much more than we think!!!

Scams in India since Independence

1948 - Will not Die

Good work by the person who compiled it.

Liar Paradox

Everything I tell is a lie.

Someone asked me why most of your pencil sketches are of women. I replied, "I don't know enough about women to say they are beautiful, cool, caring, friendly, fun-loving, independent, kind compassionate, nice, rational, sane, strong, sensitive and understanding gentle human beings".

Let it Go

Once upon a time there lived a holy saint with his disciples. Saint was a true celibate and Sanyasi. He travels with his disciples to all the places, teaches and propagates his philosophy through discourses.

On his philosophical tour to a village saint had to cross around 100 to 200 feet stream of water. Being a rain season the water force was high and it was little difficult to cross. As soon as he approached the stream with his disciples he saw a very beautiful woman finding it difficult to cross the stream. Saint asked the women, if he can help her cross the stream and the woman agreed. Saint lifted the woman in his both hands, with one of his hand around the legs and other around her back and crossed the stream. After reaching the other end of the stream saint slowly dropped and helped her to stand. Woman thanked the saint and left.

Astonished by what the saint has done, disciples were thinking about the woman and what the saint has done. “Guruji lives a celibate life and follow a true brahmacharya, then why did he lifted the beautiful woman and carried her?”, was the thought going on in the disciples mind and they discussed among themselves, but no one has dared to ask the saint why he has done that. The woman and the action of the Saint had not gone out of their minds for month, even though they left the village and they were travelling along with the Saint. Disciples several times discussed among them about the woman and the incident.

After a month or two when disciples are doing seva to guruji one of the disciple asked, “Guruji, around a month back when we visited a village, you have lifted the woman and helped her cross the stream, we follow brahmacharya, is doing this a right thing?”

Saint replied, “I have lifted the woman and dropped her at the other end of the water stream, and you are still carrying her till now (in the mind)”.

How many of us keep “certain” things either about us or about others and does not let it go?

Father of C

#include <stdio.h>
main()
{
    printf("Hello World");
} 

Many of us would have started with this program to enter into the world of computer programming language.

Dennis Ritchie, creator of the C programming language and co-creator of the Unix operating system, is reported to have died. "The C Programming Language" book written along with Kernighan is an amazing reference to C programming language.

"UNIX is basically a simple operating system, but you have to be a genius to understand the simplicity." - Dennis Ritchie.

Dennis Ritchie's death leaves a "void" in the "main" of the computing industry, undoubtedly one of the greatest computer engineer and Genius.

/* Thank you Dennis Ritchie, RIP */

Research and Conclusions

How our mind reads?

Airdoccng to a rsrechecah at Cadmrbige Ustvieriny, it deson't matetr in waht oedrr the lterets in a wrod are, the olny iemorptnt tinhg is that the fsrit and last letter msut be at the rgiht palce. The rest can be a ttoal mses and you can siltl read it wtuhoit ploberm. Tihs is bseauce the hmuan mnid does not read evrey letetr by itlsef, but the word as a wlhoe.

Are you able to read the above sentence?

Now read the sentence below in the triangle.

Are you sure you have read the sentence correctly?

Read it once again word by word. There are two ‘the’ in the sentence, if you have missed that when you have read it for the first time, your mind does not read every word by word, but the sentence as a whole  :-)

Santa and Banta were also approached by some organization and funded the study on cockroach.

Santa, Banta started their research work.

Banta placed the cockroach on the table and cut one of its legs. And he said to him, "WALK!”.
The cockroach moves forward.
Then Santa cut its second leg and shouted, "WALK!".
The cockroach manages to move forward.
Banta then cut its third leg and commanded, "WALK!" The cockroach manages to wriggle forward on one leg.
Finally Santa cut its fourth leg and shouted, "WALK!”.
The poor cockroach could not move and lay helplessly on the table.
Santa, Banta repeated the same experiment with over a hundred cockroaches. And they found all results matched.
Santa, Banta were jubilant, "Now! Our research study is over!"

They proceeds to write down the conclusion of the study: "When all four legs of a cockroach are cut it becomes deaf!"

Citizens Ombudsman

Yesterday, Pranab Mukherjee in his reply to the debate on the three demands of Anna Hazare in the parliament requested speaker to convey, "in principle agreement" of the three demands and the sense of the house along with the entire debate proceedings to the sanding committee for their consideration in the preparation of the Lokpal bill. Even though there is no binding on the standing committee to include all the three demands in the draft Lokpal bill to be submitted back to the cabinet / parliament, non-inclusions will only lead to a serious political implications.

Inclusion of PM, Judiciary may or may not effect common man on a day to day basis but the three demands Anna has made will have an effect. These 3 demands are inclusion of lower bureaucracy, citizen’s charter, appointment of lokayuktas – inclusion of public servants of state.

Citizen’s charter is more like a service level agreements (SLA) by the government office to the citizens / customers to whom they provide service with certain penalties. Section 25 of Jan Lokpal bill talks about the Citizen’s Charter.

Section 25 (2) says, “Every citizens' charter shall enumerate the public authority's commitments to the citizens which are capable of being met within a specific time limit and shall designate the officer whose duty would be to fulfill the commitment of the public authority”. This is similar to SLA.

Section 25(5) says, “Each public authority shall designate an official called Public Grievance Redressal Officer in each station where the public authority has an office, to whom a complaint could be made for any violation of the citizens' charter”. This section talks about the mechanism to address the slippages of the SLA (Grievances).

Section 25(9) says,“The Lokpal after hearing the Grievance Redressal Officer would impose suitable penalty not exceeding Rs. 500/- for each day's delay but not exceeding Rs. 50,000/- to be recovered from the salaries of the Grievance Redressal Officer”. This section talks about the penalty to Grievance Redressal officer for not getting the grievance redressed within the specific period of 30 days a complaint.

We see and hear about people paying bribe for two kinds of things:

1. You pay bribe to make the officer to do the work they are supposed to do - You have all the required documents or submitted the required documents to get the service from government office, still your work is delayed or not done as the officer asks or expects money from you to provide the service (on time).
2. You pay bribe to do the work which they are not supposed or intended to do – You do not have all the documents or do not have required things as per the rules. People pay bribe to the officer to ignore or by pass things to get the service done.

In my opinion Citizen’s Charter would minimize the first kind of bribes if not the later and hopefully we see and sense in all the government offices what Gandhiji said about customer, “A customer is the most important visitor on our premises, he is not dependent on us. We are dependent on him. He is not an interruption in our work. He is the purpose of it. He is not an outsider in our business. He is part of it. We are not doing him a favor by serving him. He is doing us a favor by giving us an opportunity to do so”.

Shubh Arambh

Last week, I called my friend who writes blog and asked her, “I want to start writing, which blog site is better to create my profile? “, she immediately answered “Wow! Shubh Arambh, Kuch meetha ho jaye”.

There is an Indian concept of having something sweet before every auspicious work we do, with a hope that it leads to a favorable outcome. There is a belief and also importance given for starting the work on an auspicious day and have something sweet. Is it not that we all want “Shubh Anth”(Anth-End can be logical end) irrespective of when and how it started?

Even some of the popular festivals we celebrate like Diwali , Dussehra are the celebrations or remembrance of some “Shubh Anth”.

putrotsahamu tamdriki

putrudu janiyimcinapudu kalugadu, janul a

putruni kanugoni pogadaga

putrotsahambu “nadu” pomdura sumati !

One of the famous telugu sumati shatakam poem (100 moral poems written by Bhadra Bhupala) which translates to “Father does not get the happiness when son is born, he gets the true happiness only when his son has grown up and people recognize and praise his achievements”.

I replied back to my friend “Well, What I ever write on the blog is not going to end up as a ‘Shakespeare’ work, so there is no need of ‘meetha ho jaye’. If I am able to articulate properly and write regularly then the ‘Arambh’ would make some sense“.

To get a second opinion on the blog sites, I called another friend and asked him, “Tell me a good blog site to create a profile and start writing?”

“Shubh Arambh, Kuch kadava ho jaye”

Men will be men!