After our beloved expression ‘Aiyo’ made inroads into the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) as the exclamation in southern India and Sri Lanka, expressing distress, regret, or grief, just last year, we are proud to reveal a host of Indian origin words that have found recognition globally just last month.

From the endearing term, ‘Anna’ to words like Abba, Achcha, Bapu, Bada Din, Bachcha and Surya Namaskar, over 70 new Indian words from Telugu, Urdu, Tamil, Hindi and Gujarati alongside 900+ Indian words that already exist in the OED have turned global.

While the word ‘Anna’ already existed in the dictionary as a noun, referring to the ancient monetary unit of India and Pakistan, equal to one-sixteenth of a rupee, anna too (also Annan) as a noun, has been added.

The word ‘Anna’ is defined as ‘elder brother’ in Telugu and Tamil, often used as a respectful title or form of address.

`Abba’ find mention in the dictionary as the Urdu word for father. Achha which already existed in the dictionary as ‘okay’ has a new additional meaning as an exclamation used to express an emotion of surprise, doubt and joy.

The existing trend shows most Indian words added to the dictionary revolve around relationships, culture and food, reports the Times of India.

Some of the other Indian-origin words that you may or may not know have been recognised by the OED include:

1. Badmash: In Hindi, it refers to “a dishonest or unprincipled man.”

2. Bhelpuri: “An Indian dish of puffed rice, onions, spices, and hot chutney.”

3. Churidar: “tight trousers made with excess material at the bottom of the legs, which falls in folds around the ankles, traditionally worn by people from South Asia.”

4. Chutney: “a spicy condiment of Indian origin, made of fruits or vegetables with vinegar, spices, and sugar.”

5. Dhaba: “In India or Indian contexts: a roadside food stall or restaurant.”

6. Didi: “an older sister or older female cousin.”

7. Ganja: A Hindi word for cannabis, ganja is often used to mean weed or marijuana.

8. Ghee: “Clarified butter made from the milk of a buffalo or cow, used in South Asian cooking.”

9. Keema: In Indian cooking, minced meat.

10. Masala: “a mixture of ground spices used in Indian cooking.”

11. Papad: poppadom in Indian cooking (a large circular piece of thin, spiced bread made from ground lentils and fried in oil.)

12. Pukka: “genuine; excellent; of or appropriate to high or respectable society.”

It became popular as part of Chef Jamie Oliver’s show and was used as a London slang term, to refer to first-rate or excellent. The three descriptions in the dictionary aren’t consonant to any of its Indian synonyms.

13. Puri: “(in Indian cooking) a small, round piece of bread made of unleavened wheat flour, deep-fried and served with meat or vegetables”.

14. Yaar: the colloquial Indian word, yaar, has been defined as a noun to refer to a ‘familiar form of address: friend, mate’.

The Oxford dictionary regularly updates its database four times a year including March, June, September, and December.

Source…. Jovita Aranha  

http://www.the betterindia.com

Natarajan

The International Children’s Peace Prize 2017 will be awarded on December 4, 2017. This is a prize awarded annually to a child who fights courageously for children’s rights.

Established in the year 2005, the first year award was given posthumously to Nkosi Johnson from South Africa, for the outstanding work he was doing with children affected by HIV/AIDS.

Here’s a look at the ten nominees from India this year.

1. Shailendra Singh – 17

Would you believe it if I said that this young boy has personally stopped five child marriages from taking place in his village? He did this by convincing the parents and the children of the ill effects and negative consequences of doing this. He is an active champion for educating children and ensuring that child marriage ends.

He has also been actively working to ensure that child labour ends and that each child attends a proper school. He has been instrumental in getting 33 children out of jobs and into schools.

2. Nikhiya Shamsher – 15

As the daughter of doctors, Nikhiya was never exposed to the perils of poverty. It was a chance encounter that changed the course of her life. She gave her school bag to her house help and the thank you note she received for it made her realise that due to the lack of resources many children in the country are unable to attend school.

This was the reason why she started Bags, Books and Blessings, a project which urges those who can afford it to donate school supplies for those who cannot afford it. With the success of this project she started her second project – “Yearn to Learn” which has so far set up 35 laboratories of Physics, Chemistry, Biology, and Math in 9 schools. Some of these labs are being shared by nearby government schools as well. These labs are benefiting around 6000 students.

3. Sakthi Ramesh – 12

Having spent many nights out on the streets with his family, Shakti has a real sense of what poverty means and can do to one. Since children like him were treated harshly by others in school he dropped out and started working to supplement the family income.

He heard about Hand in Hand India’s which is a residential special training school. Having joined this school his life turned around and he now spends his free time convincing other kids like him to join the school. He has personally been responsible for almost 25 kids ho attend the school.

4. Sumitra Nayak – 17

When she was all of four, her mother left her alcoholic and abusive husband, taking Sumithra and her three younger siblings with her to start a new life. The new life was also one with many hardships. On several days Sumitra would have to sleep hungry because there was never enough money to buy food. In 2008 she was offered the opportunity to study for free and stay at the Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences. She took that offer up and pursued her studies and her ambition to become an international rugby player.

In 2014 Sumitra led her team to victory at the Touraid Under 13 Girls International Rugby Tournament in London. Since then she has been actively involved in training the juniors and is also keen on starting a residential school in her village.

She is truly an inspiration to many.

5. Anand Krishna Mishra – 13

BalChoupal is the name of the organisation that Anand started in the year 2012, primarily with the aim of helping those underprivileged students who wanted to study but were unable to because of financial constraints.

In five years since its inception, BalChoupal has reached over 50,000 children, of whom 750 are now going to school, and provides books, without any government aid to them.

6. Aitisha Marwein – 17

With an abusive father at home, performing badly at school had become a routine for Aitisha. Coming out of that, she empowered herself to fight the abuse and started taking interest in education. Aitisha firmly believes that education is a powerful tool for the protection of children and the safeguarding of their rights.

7. Nidhi Kumar – 15

Nidhi lives in Bihar with her grandparents. Due to acute poverty, her parents could not afford to keep her with them. Despite a lot of opposition from the locals for sending Nidhi to school, her grandfather insisted on getting her educated.

Nidhi is an example of how education can transform lives. She has become a leading member of a children’s group dealing with children’s rights issues at her school.

She conducts rights-based training sessions in colleges and other villages, encouraging people to join the movement for children’s rights. Over 600 people in her village have already signed an oath to uphold the rights of children.

8. Saleha Banu – 17

Right to education and good health for all children are the two areas that Saleha is working towards. She has motivated more than 200 girls in her community, out of which ten girls have returned to school as well. In the past two years, she has spoken to over 1500 teenagers via over 250 sessions on healthy menstrual hygiene practices and other issues related to WASH (Water, Sanitation and Hygiene). Saleha works in the slums of Mumbai to build sustainable community-based interventions to deal with Severe Acute Malnourished (SAM) cases.

9. Kiran Garva – 14

Kiran studied in a government school until her father passed away. Unable to afford to send her to school any longer, her mother placed her and her siblings in the care of her grandmother. Kiran was desperate to study and was always trying to find ways for that.

She was noticed by a team from SOS children’s village, where she now lives and goes to school. Kiran advocates for the right to education, convincing other parents to let their children go to school, and she also conducts workshops on children’s rights. Four children are now attending school as a direct result of Kiran’s advocacy.

10. Poonam – 16

A resident of a slum in Agra, like all the other children there, Poonam was also forced into child labour. She has been working since the age of 5. It was sheer determination to break free that has resulted in where she is today.

Today, she is the district secretary of a federation of street and working children in North India, reporting and intervening in many cases of violation of children’s rights, including child abuse, child marriage, children’s right to education and child trafficking. She has reached over 2000 children to teach them about their rights and help them with their problems.

Nelson Mandela rightly said, “Our children are the rock on which our future will be built, our greatest asset as a nation. They will be the leaders of our country, the creators of our national wealth, those who care for and protect our people.”

Source:::: Vidya Raja in http://www.the betterindia.com

Natarajan

Source: http://media.radiosai.org/

Everyone has Divinity embedded in them, as well as Truth and sweetness. The only issue is one does not know how to manifest that Divinity, how to realise that Truth, and taste that sweetness. So, one carries the twin burdens of joy and grief tied to the ends of a single pole slung across his shoulders. Courage is the tonic for getting both physical as well as mental health and strength. Give up doubt, hesitation, and fear. Do not give any chance for these to strike root in your mind. By means of their inner divine strength, people can achieve anything; they can even become God. To help you give up fear and doubt, keep the Name of the Lord always on your tongue and in your mind, and dwell on the endless forms of the Lord and His limitless glory. Attach yourself to Him; then your attachment for these temporary objects will fall off; or at least, you will start seeing them in their proper proportion as having only relative reality.

Airglow over Little Grand Canyon, Utah

Pl click the above link and read the story as appeared in http://www.earthsky.org

Natarajan

Source….http://earthsky.org

Source: http://media.radiosai.org

The Lord will manifest Himself when the pillar is split with the sword of yearning. Hiranyakashipu did it and immediately the Lord appeared from within that pillar. The Lord did not hide in the pillar anticipating the contingency. He is everywhere; and so, He was there too. The lesson Hiranyakashipu learnt was that the deha-tatwa must be split if the dehi-tatwa must reveal itself. That is to say, the ‘I-am-body’ consciousness must go, if the ‘I-am-embodied’ consciousness, must emerge. So long as you are in the dehi (I-am-embodied) consciousness, no pain or grief, pride or egoism can tarnish you. A small quantity of seawater kept separately in a bottle will smell foul in a few days. As long as it is in the sea, nothing affects it. Be in the sea, as part of it; do not individualise and separate yourself. Do not feel that you are the body (deha), separate from the Indweller (dehi).

For many western countries, doorstep milk delivery is a thing of the past, but in Japan, millions of people still rely on the milkman for fresh milk everyday. Many traditional Japanese homes have milk delivery boxes, which are wooden boxes nailed outside the house where the milkman can drop bottles or cartons of milk—just like postmen drop mails in the mailbox. Some of the newer boxes are made of plastic and has Styrofoam insulation on the inside. Some milk shops even include a recyclable coolant pack with each delivery to keep the milk cold.

“Home delivery of dairy products, such as milk and yogurt, is a service that surprisingly is still available even these days thanks to the marketing efforts of the milk companies to combat lack of consumer interest which had been dwindling throughout the 1980s,” states an article on Phantom River Stone.

According to news report from the Japan Times published in 2003, one of the large dairy companies at that time, Meiji Dairies, had succeeded in reversing the trend and managed to double deliveries made over the prior ten-year period.                                                            

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Photo credit: presentandcorrect.com

Source….Kaushik in http://www.amusingplanet.com

Natarajan

 

Source:http://earthsky.org/

Pl click the link below and read the story as appeared in http://www.eartsky.org

Natarajan

Lone fisherman at Echo Lake

Source:  http://media.radiosai.org/

There are two qualities in every person. One is the animal nature; the other is humanness. Unfortunately people are forgetting their humanness by falling prey to the six enemies of lust, anger, greed, envy, attachment and pride, and misusing God-given talents. They are thereby degrading themselves to the level of an animal. On the other hand, one should use one’s mind, status, and talents to become virtuous, pursue the path of righteousness and strive to raise oneself from the human to the Divine. All things in the world should be used properly, and not misused. A knife can be used for cutting vegetables or another’s throat. How a knife is used depends on the one using it. The person’s mental state should be in proper condition. A person’s conduct is related to one’s thoughts and feelings. The heart is inherently pure. But one’s thoughts can maintain that purity or pollute it. One can make or mar one’s destiny by one’s thoughts and actions.

What Does Bill Gates Carry Around in His Wallet? We’d bet that the vast majority of people reading this, regardless of gender, race or socioeconomic background, carry the same few basic items with them at all times; a phone, some keys, a few dollars, a debit card, and maybe some I.D are all items you’d reliably expect to find if you asked an average person on the street to turn out their pockets. But what would you find if you asked a millionaire, or even a billionaire, to do the same thing? As it turns out, it would appear you’d find they’d produce more or less the same or less from their pockets as the average Joe. For example, Bill Gates rarely seems to carry cash at all, or at least rarely admits to doing so. Gates is frequently asked by both journalist and the people he meets how much money he carries around with him on a daily basis and in most every interview we found, Gates’ stock response is that he seldom carries either cash or a wallet with him. An exception to this was a preamble Gates did to an AMA (Ask Me Anything) on Reddit, where he pre-emptively answered some of the more popular questions he’s found himself being asked in the past, including “How much do you have in your wallet?”. The answer to which, at least at that moment in time, was a single, crisp $100 bill. It should be noted that the next question Gates answered was “Can I have a million dollars?”, which he tactfully answered by explaining he donates the bulk of his money to needy causes. This question, and Bill’s desire to answer it ahead of time, likely explains why he rarely carries cash, or at least doesn’t admit to doing so. After all, nobody can ask you for money if it’s well known you never carry any around. Gates is by no means an outlier and it’s an observable phenomenon that the ultra-wealthy rarely seem to feel the need to carry all that much cash (or even a wallet at all). Reasons vary from billionaire to billionaire, but the most common given we found is that they simply don’t need to. Billionaires are inevitably flanked at all times by an army of assistants and aides who can take care of things like restaurants bills and tips on their behalf, so the need to carry physical currency, credit cards, or even necessarily ID, is diminished somewhat. On the credit card front, it’s also worth noting that in more recent years credit and debit cards have become more of a status symbol than physical currency in some circles; to quote Vanity Fair on the matter: “Possessing two or three of the right cards bound together by an ordinary rubber band now conveys a level of distinction greater than that of any cash-filled Louis Vuitton wallet or purse.” The fact of that matter is that cards like the hyper-exclusive American Express Centurion card – which as we’ve mentioned in another article, can literally be used to buy anything that’s for sale, even if it costs hundreds of millions of dollars – convey more about a person’s wealth than even the crispest stack of hundred dollar bills. Another reason the super-rich don’t need to carry much cash around with them is that their fame largely makes it unnecessary, whether they have any aids with them or not. For example, prior to becoming President, Donald Trump admitted that he didn’t carry a wallet because people usually gave him stuff for free; in his own words from a 2013 interview: “You know it’s very sad. I go to a restaurant and almost every time they say, ‘Mr. Trump, it’s on me,’ the owner: ‘Mr. Trump it’s on me, no charge, Mr. Trump,’ no I never need cash.” This isn’t to say Trump doesn’t sometimes carry cash. In keeping with his penchant for showmanship, Trump did formerly claim to carry around a few hundred dollars at any given time – or at least he did prior to becoming president. He stated this was mainly just in case he needed to hand out tips, rather than the money being used to buy something per se. Beyond money or a wallet, Trump also claimed he usually only carried around two cell phones (an iPhone and a Samsung), which we presume one was for personal use and the other a business phone. How much this has changed since becoming president isn’t clear. Continuing the trend, even before ubiquitous credit and debit cards, the likes of Howard Hughes, John Lennon and even Elvis, reportedly seldom felt the need to carry cash. In Elvis’ case, many of his trademark suits were even made without pockets. In regards to each man, while their reasons for not carrying money varied (Hughes was supposedly scared of being robbed, for example, and was generally surrounded by an army of assistants anyway), their fame made this decision a relatively easy one to live with. For instance, like Trump after him, John Lennon famously expressed puzzlement at the fact that the wealthier and more famous he became, the less he was expected to pay for anything. To wit, biographer Philip Norman stated, “he discovered the strange truth that the richer one becomes the less obligation there seems to pay for anything. Clubs he visited pressed free drinks on him, restaurants automatically waived bills, guitar makers sent him their choicest new models simply for the glory of his patronage.” This segues into another thing previously alluded to that the obscenely rich seldom seem to carry- I.D. Although they likely do own passports and driving licenses, in interviews we trawled through in which the rich and famous were asked to turn out their pockets, few of them seem to bother carrying any form of identification on their person. The most likely reason why being, to paraphrase an obscure band this author likes, that their face is the ticket. A notable outlier to this is the Queen, who goes so far as not even having a passport or driver’s licence. But as we’ve mentioned before, while her face may be one of the most recognizable in the world, the reason she doesn’t have them is not because she’s famous, but because she simply doesn’t legally need them to travel or drive, regardless of where she is in the world. (For the reasons why, see Why Doesn’t the Queen Need a Passport?) Speaking of the Queen, although nobody but herself knows exactly what she carries around with her in her purse, we do know that she similarly never bothers to carry cash except on Sundays, when she traditionally carries a crisp £5 note to place in her church’s collection plate. Other items the Queen has been observed putting into or pulling out of her purse, handbag and pockets include lipstick, pens, napkins and on one occasion, a suction cup she attached to the underside of her table that she then hung her handbag on (which is kind of brilliant, actually). More unusual items the Queen is said to carry with her include personal knick-knacks, dog biscuits, and random mints she hands out to strangers. Going along with the theme that the richer you are, the less likely you are to have to pay for something, one of the more curious items carried by a billionaire we stumbled across was a special card carried by Warren Buffett that lets him have unlimited McDonald’s forever at certain McDonald’s. More specifically, as we’ve talked about before, this card is good for free food for life throughout Omaha McDonald’s and is one of a few items Buffett claims to carry on his person. Other items the famously spendthrift billionaire likes to carry include an original green American Express card from 1964, pictures of his family, and a lucky signed $50 bill from a bank his investment firm Berkshire Hathaway used to own. Curiously, Buffet is unique amongst billionaires we researched in that he’s the only one we found that admits to regularly carrying change. You see, Buffett nearly always eats breakfast at the McDonald’s near his house in Omaha on his way to work, and, curiously, despite literally having a card granting him unlimited McDonald’s for life and billions in the bank, says he pays for the breakfast with exact change. We assume he perhaps does this to avoid calling attention to himself or otherwise being delayed on his way to work by producing his free McDonald’s card. But, unfortunately for us, in the interview where he mentions carrying exact change for this purpose, the interviewer didn’t ask him why he doesn’t just use his free McDonald’s card. Whatever the case, Buffett also carries a few dollars with him to pay for the cans of Coca-Cola he drinks at the office, something he does despite owning about a 10% stake in Coca-Cola. (Bill Gates also once noted in a letter concerning his charitable foundation that Buffet and he were once visiting China together and decided to grab a bite to eat. Naturally, the pair of billionaires decided to dine at McDonald’s… It was at this point that Buffett produced coupons to help reduce their bill…) Another billionaire who kindly admitted to the monetary contents of his wallet in an interview is Elon Musk, who stated he only had about $40 in his wallet at the time. In conclusion, thanks to their fantastic wealth, the uber-rich paradoxically seem to have less need for carrying cash, credit cards, or even ID than us lowly mortals, whether because their army of assistants takes care of these sorts of things for them, or simply because they are less expected to pay for things when they go out. Source….www.today i foundout.com Natarajan

Source:   http://media.radiosai.org

To sit in lotus posture (padmasana) and make the Kundalini shakti(spiritual energy) rise from the Mooladhara (basal plexus) to the Sahasrara (the node in the crown of the head) is not dhyana(meditation). True Meditation consists in recognising the presence of God in all types of work you do in your daily life. God is the indweller of all. To attempt to confine God to one place you choose is not meditation! According to our culture, we first pay obeisance to the work we have to do. Before we undertake any work, we should regard that work as God. That is what the Upanishads teach us, “Tasmai Namaha Karmane – I salute the work I have to do and adore God in that form”. Have you seen a person who plays on the tabla or the harmonium? Before they begin to play on it, they pay obeisance to the instrument. To regard the entire creation as the form of God and to perform your duty in that spirit, is true meditation.