Save our tigers

Tiger- perhaps the most majestic animal on the face of the planet, India's national animal is in danger.

Though India is home to the world's largest population of tigers in the wild and according to the World Wildlife Fund, of the 3,500 tigers around the world, 1,400 are found in India but it has come down from 40,000 at the start of the century. This is why it is alarming. World Wildlife Fund for Nature has released its list of the world's 10 most in demand species being bought, sold, smuggled, killed or captured for trade purposes and tiger heads this list. In India right from earlier time, the tiger has been one of the Big Five game animals of Asia. Tiger hunting took place on a large scale in the early nineteenth and twentieth centuries, being a recognised and admired sport by the British in colonial India as well as the maharajas and aristocratic class of the erstwhile princely states of pre-independence India!

Some interesting facts about the tiger below.......

Survive without food and water- FOREVER!

Yes, surviving without food and water is not impossible if some cases are to be believed. Some of you might be aware of "Inedia" or "Breatharianism" where people believe that food and water are not necessary.

There have been many examples of people who have claimed it.- Jasmuheen (born Ellen Greve), Wiley Brooks, Hira Ratan Manek and the one case I am interested in- Prahlad Jani (also called Mataji) who claims he hasn't had anything for 70 years now and has never fallen ill!

PIANO NOTATIONS

* In return for providing the notations that you need for free, just asking you to follow this blog and share it as much as you can. Thanks.

So, you always wanted to learn and know how to play your favorite song or tune on a piano, or harmonium or even guitar or violin? Even if you have never learnt music and still want to play your favorite songs , you don’t have to worry. I am here.

First let me tell you that I am not an expert musician but I have learnt it mostly by myself. And I am mainly interested in the Bollywood, Hindi songs. And whatever song or tune I like, I find out how to play it. Now, even if you don’t have a musical instrument, you need not worry. Even I don’t have one with me! All that you need is a computer and it can become your musical instrument. I always loved being able to play my favorite song and people recognizing it when I did. And since I did not possess a musical instrument and neither did I want to spend money on it, so I found it out through the internet. Yes, internet- the current God!

If you too want it, it is quite simple and free too and just 24 K bytes........

GHAJINI

* This is the original work of Achyut Telang and you may not reproduce or distribute this information in whole or in part and all photos, images etc on this blog post cannot be copied, edited, reproduced or used without the prior written permission of Achyut Telang.

 Just recently I saw the movie Ghajini. For those of you who might not know, Ghajini was originally a south Indian movie made similar to Memento. And this movie was made in Hindi with the other actors and the team being the same except the main actor. The actor in the hindi movie Ghajini was Aamir Khan- the 'perfectionist'
And what a perfectionist he is! Initially he was skeptical about playing this role but others convinced him and he made a wise choice. For this he underwent one year of training to build up the kind of body required for this role.
Below is the portrait I have made from the movie Ghajini:

* NOTE : Click on the drawing for a larger and better view.

MY DRAWING OF AAMIR KHAN IN GHAJINI

Ever since I saw this movie, I have not been able to get it completely out of my mind. And this movie being directly a remake of the south indian movie, they have kept it the same except the last half an hour. It contains a bit too much of violence and is a little gory though, but is essential for a theme of revenge.

The story itself is interesting and something that the audiences would not have come across much- the concept of Anterograde amnesia, called 'short-term memory loss' in the movie in the layman's language. A man affected by this disorder, who forgets everything after 15 minutes, seeking to take revenge of his beloved!..........

Book Review- Mystic's Musings

Book cover of Mystic's Musings

Actually this is not just a book review but also in a way a continuation of my previous post. So those of you who have read my previous post- Enlightened Masters would understand. In that I had written about Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev too and that I had ordered his book.
A few days later, now I have finished that book. I had gone home for 3 days and in those 3 days, I did manage to read it. Actually I managed to finish those 500 pages within two and a half days!

People say that such books- specially, have to be read slowly not just like a novel and it has to be read again and again. But I have never treated Spirituality books any differently. And one of the main reasons I think, which is important for these kind of books is that they are not really for the intellect. So you don’t really have to read and understand as such from the mind. It is difficult to understand because we only know that way and no other but these kind of books have a special purpose which Sadhguru himself said for this book that at certain points there are some keys in it........

Metamorphosis of Cricket (Sport, not insect!)

Cricket sport which originally started as a five day affair, has been changing with time over the years and in today's fast paced world with everything being fast and instant, Cricket too has a new face in the form of Twenty-twenty game, so much so that the previous formats seem no longer relevant.

It is a tough time for Cricket, for the people associated with the game over the years, for the audiences who have been watching and loving the game and its various aspects. It is a clash between the old and the new. For Cricket game as it started, some are advocates of "that's how it's meant to be". It is like the Bible or religion, the first word..the way it's meant to be. They cannot accept it to be changed or even to bring modifications to it. Some on the other hand believe that the time of the original Cricket formats is up and they should be scrapped and a few in the middle suggest bringing in some modifications and changes to make the game more up-to-date and in tune with today's time while avoiding both the extreme options.

Is Test Match the problem or is One day Internationals the problem? And the meaning of 'problem' here is........

Congrats! I bow down to "The God" Sachin Tendulkar

Today is the day when Sachin Tendulkar completes 20 years in International Cricket.

And since we all know that everything has already been said, written and documented very well about Sachin Tendulkar by almost everybody, it is futile for me to write something that has not been already said or written. So this will be a short but interesting post.

It is difficult to believe that it has been 20 long years since the small, curly haired boy was seen playing for India! Any one who saw this cherubic boy with a spark in his eyes could not help but be mermerized. Such a small innocent boy taking on the Pakistanis in their home land would be nerve wracking for anyone but who can forget the incident where he was hit on the nose? And then to stand up again and continue and score a half century as a 16 year old was what made the whole world take notice and really grasp the magnitude of what he really was. And then to take on the wily, experienced Abdul Qadir and to hoick him for 3 sixes announced the world that he was very special indeed; something that happens once in a century or even more. But one thing is sure, there can never be another Sachin Tendulkar. Ever! It is not for nothing that he is called "God" in Cricket..........

Koans

Recently I came across a few questions and while travelling too, few very strange looking questions arose in my mind and it reminded me of a Koan.

For those of you who don't know, A Koan is a tradition in Zen. It is basically kind of a question of a very strange kind that may seem weird or absolutely meaningless and is given to a disciple to think on it. It might even be a question that has no answer but the student has to think over it. It is also to confound the habit of discursive thought or shock the mind into awareness.

Thus, the Koan has a specific purpose. A student or disciple is given a Koan to ponder over, and he goes into his room and sits alone- only he and the question exist and that is the only thing he does. Till the time he finds a solution, he just stays with the question, and does nothing else. And there have been instances where they have done this for days, months and even many years! For years, day in and day out, they only think over the question. And many have become enlightened just by this. This is actually just a method, a device, the question itself is not important and nor is the answer. It is the effort, sincere effort put in by the disciple that does the trick. For these questions, you cannot use your normal ways of thinking and logic and anything else. You have to give yourself to this question and become the question itself.............


The purpose of kōans is for a Zen practitioner to become aware of the difference between themselves, their mind, and their beliefs that influence how they see the world as an aspect of realizing their True nature. Paradoxes tend to arouse the mind for an extended duration as the mind goes around and around trying to resolve the paradox or kōan to an "answer". This is a lot like a dog chasing its tail and, while it's chasing, the mind makes itself more visible. Once a Zen practitioner becomes aware of their mind as an independent form, the kōan makes sense and the teaching point is realized.

And out of the hundreds of Koans that exist, perhaps none is as popular as this one- "What is the sound of the one-hand clapping?" You can hear the sound of two hands when they clap together, so what is the sound of a one hand clap!

PIANO NOTATIONS III

For those of you who don't have a musical instrument and still want to play, please refer to my other 2 posts on Piano Notations where you will see how to turn your computer into a musical instrument and various types of notations.

Here I will be providing normal Western Notations for a few songs-

* I will use lower case letter like a,b,c,d,e,f,g and a#,c#,d# etc for lower octave, upper case letters like A,B,C,D,E and A#,C#,D# etc for middle octave and A+,B+,C+,D+,E+ and A+#, C+# etc for higher Octave...................

Captain Jack Sparrow

Ahoy mates! Savvy?

It always happens with me that a thing- a movie comes, becomes hugely popular, everyone keeps on talking about it, and I wonder what is the matter! Later on, perhaps years later I come across it, actually watch it and fall madly in love with it and it continues on and on while others are done with it by then and that is exactly what happened with The Pirates of the Caribbean movie. I had never before seen a pirate movie, nor did I think it was something I would like; before I came across this one that is!

Now for some background, Pirates of the Caribbean is a film, actually based on the.........

A Test Match that will be remembered

India's Tour of Australia- Sydney Test Match

*The opinion expressed here is personal and should not be taken offensively by anyone as it is not with the intention to raise any controversy of any kind.

In just my previous post,after the First Test Match, having praised the Aussies quite profusely, a huge controversy has arisen after the second Test Match between India and Australia, where the attitude of the Australian players has been questioned. Well that’s how things usually turn out to be.

The hearing after the controversial incident

A lot of things have happened in the past few days in Cricket, with so many opinions from ex-players and many decisions being taken and everyone having their own version and interpretation and analysis of what has happened and why it has happened and what not. Even if I just cover all that has taken place, it would be a huge post by my standards too. But I am not going to do that. You must have already read all that in the newspapers and in the TV news channels who are always coming up with their opinion polls and everything. Cricket has definitely been in the limelight and not for the right reasons, with even Australia’s Tennis player - Hewitt saying he feels like the Indian cricketers, as in being done in by the poor umpiring!..........

Sach Ka Saamna- Moment of Truth

Sach Ka Saamna is the latest television show on Indian television that is being talked about a lot for various reasons. This is the show after Kaun Banega Crorepati on Star Plus that has become so popular with the audiences.

Sach Ka Saamna is actually the Indian version of the popular American reality game show The Moment of Truth and Television & film actor Rajeev Khandelwal is the host of the show. I personally too have been following the show and the concept of the show is indeed interesting and Rajeev Khandelwal seems to fit the bill quite beautifully because this kind of show definitely requires some qualities from the host who has to maturely handle the situations keeping his composure as it brings out some of the most intimate truths from the contestants in front of their family, friends and National Television!

Now, about the show itself, Prior to appearing on the actual show, contestants are asked 50 questions while being hooked up to a polygraph machine. The biological indicators of the contestant, such as pulse rate, blood pressure, etc. are measured and used by the polygraph to decide whether the answer is true or not. The contestant is not aware of the results of the polygraph for his or her answers.........

Cricket- The illogical Game

As you might know, I actually have a very diversified blog with posts covering almost every conceivable topic, ranging from Cricket, Art- drawings, poems, Martial Arts, Spirituality, reviews of books, games and movies, Politics, cooking, interesting websites, Computer games, my musings and experiences etc etc. It is infact a fun exercise because anyone who knows about my blogging like my friends, family or relatives, I tell them that I have a new post and see if they can guess on what topic it is and it is so difficult for them to think about because I am so unpredictable that I can write on any topic and it might be a totally different topic and might have no connection with the previous post. And as someone who had analyzed my blog said, this might be my strength or weakness or both!

But one of my pet topics is definitely Cricket and so far, under the topic of Cricket I have written about particular matches, or about a tour, or the various formats of the game or about a Cricketer. But this time I decided- Why not write about the game itself?

So here it is - a post on the game of Cricket.

(below is a small description of a funny event of Cricket that would take place if The Gods, enlightened Masters, Scientists etc took part in it)
............

Narendra Modi- A different picture

The Indian general elections are just round the corner making this a good time to write about this topic.

First of all, let me tell you that as far as I am concerned, I am a completely 'a-political' person. I cannot understand politics; just like Amitabh Bachchan confesses. And that's why I myself am surprised that I am writing on something related to Politics which I could never have thought!
I don't particularly care for politicians either, whom I consider to be a different species altogether. But still there are a few people in there who do seem to be different from the rest and do seem to be nice people indeed!

Without talking about too many other things, I will come back to the topic that I want to actually write about, but before that a few interesting things about this.............

Gautam Siddhartha- The Buddha

Religion and Spirituality is a topic I absolutely love and can read on and on about it and write too. In fact I even had suggestions or requests to write more on this topic but so far I have only had two posts on it.

Yesterday was Buddha Purnima or Buddha's birthday and called by various other names in various places. It actually encompasses the birth, enlightenment Nirvana, and passing (Parinirvana) of Gautama Buddha which is always on the full moon day. And I felt that the best way to celebrate or observe this day was obviously to go into meditation and also I read and saw videos related to Gautam Buddha on YouTube and specially one of BBC video of around 50 minutes was really good! You can watch it HERE

Observe that I am using the phrase 'going into meditation' instead of 'doing meditation' because it is not an act, it is just the way you are- the state of being as it can be said..........

Poetry- Words from my heart II

* This is the original work of Achyut Telang and you may not reproduce or distribute this information in whole or in part and the content on this blog post cannot be copied, edited, reproduced or used without the prior written permission of Achyut Telang.


DEATH :

There is only one thing in this world
That you can be absolutely sure about
That death is going to come to everyone
And for this there can be no doubt.

Still in their life, people forget this fact
As a matter of fact, they try and ignore it
As the very idea fills them with fear
And, if they could, with death, they'll never meet.

But death is something that has to be faced
And it's possible only if you've lived life fully
If you've lived life the way you've always wanted
Then you'll know even how to die peacefully.

The more you tend to forget death,
The more you get attached to people and things
As, the people you love; you don't want them to die
But death comes to all without the distinction of beggars and kings.

So the lesson for us is to accept death
And to live life blissfully and to rejoice
And to make even the experience of death, a blessing
As doing that is the best possible choice!

Achyut Telang.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Little Known Fact About Death -Maybe people just aren't comfortable using the word 'die'. There are more than 200 euphemisms for death, so we don't have to utter the real words.

Me and cooking!

Regarding this topic, let me tell you that those people who know me, know that kitchen is one of my least frequented places- not because cooking is one of the things I don't have interest in but because I am not a foodie whatsoever. It will be difficult to find a person who is as indifferent (if I can say that) to food as I am!

If you have read my other posts, you will know that I weigh 50 kgs and I clearly fall in the underweight category. As regards food, I have always seen people around me having strong likes and dislikes about food to the extent that they have so much aversion to some foods that they will just not touch it and other food items that they like, they can have any amount of it! ..............

Gambling- a game of chance?

Around a month back, I and a few of my friends had gone to Mahabaleshwar. And most of my friends know that I blog, and a few of them have started too. So there were talks about what I would write in my blog about our trip, with my friends saying that do write about this thing or that thing or don’t forget to mention our names etc. I knew that I wouldn’t write about our trip per se but there was one thing that stuck with me and thus in this way at least there would be some mention of the trip.

There is one thing we did in that trip that I was quite fascinated by later on. And as you can guess from the name of this post, it was a game. I don’t really know if it falls exclusively under the ‘gambling’ category but here is what it was all about................

Portraits- My work of Art!

* This is the original work of Achyut Telang and you may not reproduce or distribute this information in whole or in part and all photos, images etc on this blog post cannot be copied, edited, reproduced or used without the prior written permission of Achyut Telang.

* NOTE : Click on the drawings for a larger and better view.

Yesterday I got a bright idea and I thought - How about including all the other stuff that I do on my blog itself?

If you have seen my profile, you will know that my hobbies include - the very first one being drawing portraits. So for those of you who might be wondering what kind of portraits I make, fret not, here it is, just for you to look at and marvel, if I may say that!

Also note that these pictures that I have made on paper are not scanned but taken by a digital camera without even switching the flash off! So it might not be the best to look at. I will soon update these portraits scanned. So watch out for it...........

Titanic

A voyage into my heart !

Titanic! You all have heard about it, read or seen the movie. You all know when it started and with what fate it met. You remember the movie for the actors and the director and for the awards that it won galore. And yes I know it is also among your favorite movies of all time.

But for me, this movie is really special. As usual I caught up with this movie very late- years after it had been released and after people had watched it a million times! When it burst onto the scene, I did not particularly think much of it. It wasn’t something I thought I would want to watch or something I would like. Little did I know!

A story about a ship, its voyage and the life of mainly 2 people on board in it. Jack Dawson and Rose De Witt Bukater. Two people living extremely different lives. The classic poor boy and rich girl! Even though this is the classic setting, it proves that still it can be successful. The poor little rich girl trapped into this world where she does not belong. Her heart longs for freedom and here she is trapped where no one really cares that she exists, taken for granted. Under social obligation of sorts and under pressure from her mother, she tries time and again to settle and accept this life of hers but her soul longs to break free......