When you focus on being a blessing to others, God makes sure that you are always blessed in abundance.
The doctor is found where patients gather. So too, the Lord is always with the suffering and struggling. The patient who desires to improve must have faith in the doctor and carry out the instructions. Unless you have obeyed the orders of the doctor strictly and to the very letter, you have no authority to pronounce judgement on the doctor. Also remember that the doctor’s treatment will vary with each patient – it will depend upon the ailment, the age, the virulence of the disease and the treatment already undertaken. Apart from the prescription, one has to also adhere to the dietary and other regulations that the doctor recommends. That is to say, it is not merely practices like japam and dhyanam (Remembering God’s name and meditation) that will have to be done, but in order to supplement the effect of these, you have to lead a regulated life, a life conducive to good thoughts, with Sathwik (virtuous) food and pursuits.
Restlessness (ashanti) is on the rise because of attachment, hate and infatuation. These are born out of ignorance, which causes delusion. Things seen in darkness cannot be clear – a rope is mistaken to be a snake, a piece of glass may be coveted as a diamond. So this indistinct light, that is, this mistaken notion, must go. This can happen only when the methods of discovering the truth are learnt. That is what the Scriptures and the learned ones teach. They guide you to direct your outward seeking senses inward. The inner realm of impulses, instincts, habits, prejudices and attitudes must be cleansed before God can be reflected clear and bright therein.
Reporter Narayan Pargaien, of the News Express channel, sits on the shoulders of a flood victim. Photo: Screengrab
An Indian television journalist reporting on the deadly floods that have swept northern India has defended his decision to file a report while perched on a survivor’s shoulders.
Narayan Pargaien, who works for the local News Express channel, told Indian media website newslaundry.com that the criticism he has faced since the video was posted online was unfair.
The report was supposed to be telecast only with footage of me chest-up. This was entirely the cameraman’s fault, who… tried to sabotage my career by shooting from that distance and angle and releasing the video.
“People are talking about us being inhuman and wrong but we were actually helping some of the victims there,” Mr Pargaien said.
The reporter claimed that the slight man who carried him, who can be seen wobbling under the strain while standing in ankle-high water, had hoisted him onto his shoulders as a sign of respect.
The man “wanted to show me some respect, as it was the first time someone of my level had visited his house. So while crossing the river he offered to help by carrying me… between which, I thought of reporting”, Mr Pargaien said.
The journalist also attacked his cameraman for framing the shot so it showed him sitting on the floods survivor’s shoulders and accused him of posting the video online.
“The report was supposed to be telecast only with footage of me chest-up. This was entirely the cameraman’s fault, who… tried to sabotage my career by shooting from that distance and angle and releasing the video,” he said.
“I was wrong as well. That was the wrong thing to do, and the wrong time to have shot that sequence. But what my cameraman did was even more unacceptable.”
The Youtube video of the incident has been viewed more than 11,600 times since it was posted on Saturday.
source:::: Brisbane times .com
natarajan
God does not want the flower or fruit that you can buy in the street. Instead, bring to Him the fragrant flower of a pure heart and the fruit of your mind, mellowed from spiritual practices (Sadhana). That pleases Him the most, not the items that are readily available in the market for purchase. Those items that you buy do not elevate your mind – however, your spiritual practices will do it for you! To get a taste for that kind of effort, you must keep the company of the good and great, and take delight in noble thoughts. By whatever means that is available to you, increase your stock of bliss and improve your discrimination. Try to store as many of these as possible, so that you draw up from the reservoir of your storage, whenever the need arises.
The Uttarakhand tragedy casts shame on India’s disaster management
It’s headquartered in South Delhi’s plush Safdarjung Enclave. It holds press conferences about human tragedies in luxurious five-star hotels. The Prime Minister is its ex officio chairman, and its vice-chairman equals a Cabinet minister in status. Other members, mostly retired bureaucrats and police officers, rub shoulders with ministers of state. Welcome to the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA).
With its performance – or more accurately, the abysmal lack of it – in the rain-ravaged Himalayan state exposing its defunct status, the NDMA stands exposed for the great man-made tragedy it is.
Its National Executive Committee has not met at all between 2008 and 2012. Seven years after it came into being, the authority doesn’t even have a working plan.
The Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) has slammed the NDMA’s functioning in a report tabled in March 2013. Most NDMA projects, conceptualised soon after it was constituted in May 2005, have failed to get started.
The body formally came into existence in September 2006. Projects like earthquakes, flood and landslide risk mitigation have been in cold storage despite being approved way back in 2007. Due to improper planning, projects are abandoned midway or are lying incomplete.
A senior bureaucrat in a state government who closely worked with the NDMA in the last two years explains what plagues this body.
“The absence of strong leadership at the centre of this body is a key problem. Since the prime minister is its ex officio chairman, the onus of leading it on a day-today basis falls on the vice chairman,” he says.
According to the officer, the NDMA, which has several senior retired bureaucrats as members, needs a very strong vice-chairman.
“At present, we’ve felt many times that there is a lack of coordination in the chain of command,” the officer says.
All that translates into a disaster: evaluation of the disaster preparedness at all levels of government has taken a severe hit. The Uttarakhand situation underlines this with blood.
NDMA chief M. Shashidhar Reddy doesn’t agree. He puts the onus for the NDMA’s latest failure on the meteorological department.
“Lives could have been saved if the weather office had issued precise forecasts. The IMD followed a standard format of weather forecast and used certain terminologies like rainfall, heavy rainfall, but how are we supposed to translate it into action? They need to pinpoint where and how much it is going to rain,” he says.
Not even the most terrible statistics can wake the NDMA. For instance, the CAG says that as much as 59 per cent of the nation’s land area is prone to moderate and severe earthquakes; 23,000 lives were lost in six major earthquakes between 1990 and 2006. And it doesn’t take an official report to realise that landslides in the hills and floods in some parts of the country are an annual feature.
Some of the key roles that the NDMA is expected to perform are: lay down policy on disaster management, approve national Disaster Management plan, lay down guidelines to be followed by Central ministries and state authorities, and provide such support to other countries affected by major disasters.
“The performance of NDMA in terms of project implementation had been abysmal. So far, no major project taken by NDMA had seen completion. It was noticed that NDMA selected projects without proper ground work and as a result either the projects were abandoned midway or were incomplete after a considerable period,” the CAG report says.
“In many cases, NDMA realised midway that some other agency was already executing projects with similar objectives. Timelines in most of its projects were absent and where ever they were given, they were not adhered to,” it says.
Reddy’s response? “We are ready to work on it but the government auditor needs to be sensitised about disasters,” says the NDMA chief.
The National Disaster plan (NDP) hasn’t been formulated even after seven years of the enactment of the Disaster Management Act. The NDP was to define the guidelines for prevention of disasters, preparedness and roles and responsibilities of different arms of the government.
One of the key objectives of the NDMA is proactive prevention of loss of life and property in disasters. Even here the NDMA has failed miserably
The less-than-satisfactory role played by the NDMA in the relief and rescue operations in Uttarakhand raises serious questions over its relevance.
Created to serve as the nodal agency in times of emergency, the NDMA has instead served to provide sinecures for out-of-work politicos and retired babus.
How seriously it takes its job is evident from the fact that its national executive committee didn’t meet even once between May 2008 and September 2012.
ABHISHEK BHALLA and BHUVAN BAGGA in mailonline.com India
natarajan
Satyam Kumar, a Bihar farmer’s son who is just 13-years old, has cleared the fiercely competitive Indian Institute of Technology-Joint Entrance Examination (IIT-JEE) for which 150,000 candidates had appeared this year.
Satyam, who passed his class 12 exam last year, secured an impressive all-India rank of 679.
“We are proud of him. He has done something special at this age,” Satyam’s father Sidhnath Singh, a farmer, told IANS.
IIT-JEE (Advanced) results for admission into IITs were declared Friday.
According to IIT-JEE website, Sahal Kaushik from Delhi was the youngest person to have cracked the exam in 2010 at the age of 14. But now this record is held by Satyam.
“Now Satyam is the youngest to crack the IIT-JEE,” an IIT official said.
Satyam, who hails from Bakhorapur village in Bhojpur district, had last year qualified for admission into IIT at the age of 12-and-a-half years after he got a special permission from the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE). He had then secured an all-India rank of 8,137.
Not satisfied with his low rank, he appeared for the IIT-JEE preliminary examination this year again and qualified.
“Satyam has improved his rank by his hard work and determination,” his father said.
He appeared for the entrance examination in Kota, Rajasthan, where he had been studying. He was one of the 150,000 candidates who appeared for the examination this year.
Earlier, Satyam Kumar had said he wanted to establish a software company on the lines of social networking website Facebook.
source:::::siliconindia news net
natarajan
Students from underprivileged families crack the IIT-JEE Advanced thanks to Anand Kumar’s Super 30 educational programme.
Pranav Kumar, Bhanu Pratap, Ankit Kumar, Shivangi Gupta, Abhishek Kumar, Santosh Kumar and Hanjala Shafi cleared the fiercely competitive Indian Institute of Technology Joint Entrance Examination (IIT-JEE) this year. These students and 23 others from Anand Kumar’s Super 30 share one thing in common: all of them come from poverty-stricken families.
While the intelligent and hard-working youngsters studied for the JEE, their parents were fighting for survival and earning their livelihood by working as labourers, landless farmers, electricians, salesmen, smalltime shopkeepers and magazine vendors. These poor folks never dreamt that their children will become part of prestigious IIT campuses, but thanks to Super 30, a free coaching centre for underprivileged students in Bihar, it was made possible.
Super 30 is an innovative school run by Anand Kumar in Patna since 2002. Each year, Kumar selects 30 meritorious students — mostly from poor families — and grooms them for the IITs. The students stay with him; they are provided free food and lodging. And Kumar bears the expenses on his own, with no financial help from anyone.
And the main feature of Super 30 was reflected yet again in this year’s results, announced last Friday — of Kumar’s 30 wards, 28 cracked the examination and will make it into an IIT.
The mood at Kumar’s residence in a congested lane in Patna’s Jakhanpur locality, from where he runs Super 30, was overpowering as successful students basked in their newfound glory.
Joy knew no bounds for Bhanu Pratap from Uttar Pradesh. His father Rampyare Pratap is a labourer and the sole breadwinner in the family; they have often had to go without food. Along with Bhanu’s mother Geeta Devi, he was at Kumar’s house celebrating their son’s achievement. “You have shown us a day we never even dreamt of. We shall always be obliged to you,” said Geeta Devi, as her husband nodded.
“I think Anand Sir not only prepared us (for IITs), but also gave us the confidence to excel, even in the face of difficult odds,” added Bhanu.
And there are many like Bhanu who were part of the Super 30 this year.
source::::rediff.com
natarajan
The chief source of bliss is dedication to God. Nothing else can give that genuine and everlasting joy. Become conscious of your kinship with the Lord – it is not mere folklore or a fairy tale or a faked theory. This kinship has existed from the beginning of Time and will persist till the very end of Time. Every individual is born in the path of righteousness (Dharma Marga), journeys through the path of action (Karma Marga), rushes through the path of sages (Sadhu Marga) to reach the Supreme Reality (Brahma Marga). The path of action and the path of the Sages are illumined by the Jnanendriyas (organs of perception). Keep the Jnanendriyas and the Karmendriyas(sense organs) uncontaminated and pure. The cow eats grass and drinks gruel and gives sweet, sustaining milk. So too, let the experiences you gather through the organs, help in the production of sweetness and kindness. With pure devotion, lead your lives in peace and bliss.
In a heart-rending act of animal kindness, a stray dog steps in where no human would and buries a dead puppy by the side of a road.
Onlookers watched in awe as the mongrel circled and sniffed the lifeless pup after finding it in a ditch where it had been left to rot in the midday sun.
But rather than leave it to scavengers, who would inevitably have torn it limb from limb, she spent more than three minutes gently raking sand over the corpse with her snout with extraordinary care.
But there were no sermons, ceremony or quiet reflection at this impromptu canine burial service… not even a bark.
Once she is happy that the puppy’s body is entirely covered, the black-and-white dog simply turns around and walks silently away.
It was an extraordinary act of respect rarely seen in the animal kingdom and is sure melt hearts across the world
It is unclear whether she was a grieving mother burying one of her litter or just a passing stranger with a caring heart.
Nor is it clear where the moving scene, captured on a bystander’s mobile phone, was filmed but Arabic script on it’s YouTube page suggests it may have been made in the Middle East or the Persian Gulf.
Dogs are known to bury bones and toys to come back for later, but it is rare to see a dog burying another dog
Proper job: The mongrel goes to extraordinary lengths to ensure the dead pup is completely covered in sand
No ceremony: Once she is sure the puppy’s entire body is covered, the black-and-white dog simply turns around and walks silently away
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2347261/Heartbreaking-moment-stray-dog-discovers-dead-puppy–painstakingly-buries-stunned-onlookers.html#ixzz2X9MnEG3J
It echoes pictures taken in December of a dog in China standing guard over his dead mate in a busy road where she was mown down by a speeding car.
Those heartbreaking pictures, taken in Zhangzhou, in China’s Fujian Province, show the animal carefully nudging the female dog after she was hit and killed by a car.
Vigil: The dog refused to move from her side despite the female lying in the middle of the busy road
Moving: The male tries licking the top of her head as he tries to revive her
After he fails to wake her, the male refuses to leave and stays within feet of his mate for six hours.
The male was seen repeatedly licking the face of dead dog and keeping a watchful eye on her as he dodged the oncoming traffic. But he never strayed more than a short distance from her side.
When he got tired the dog lay down next to her as he kept up his vigil for hours.
source::::;mailonline .com
natarajan
