relatives

With both experience and disappointment I can say that the only people that become your "dear" are those who connect with your world and not who are connected to you by pedigree/by law. Everyone except my near family in the whole bunch of relations hence seem distant to me. I have felt more close to relations I have made over years with people who came into my life and become meaningful and close enough to call a family. All others that are knotted by society are seemingly meaningless, not more than just a social burden, the same burden that I feel when I have to smile to a strange neigbor. So does it mean friends are more important over relatives?

The answer is relative coz so are the relations. It's the same debate of an arranged and love marriage(genuine love). In the former you HAVE TO love the person, which you actually might over time, and in the latter you love the person. There is huge difference in the two! the difference is "HAVE TO". It is obvious that the former starts with an expectation while the latter doesn't keep clauses and conditions. So are relations!! The intimacy can't be talked in words, can't be laid down in rules...it has to be established...without having to give it much of a twisted try. Ironically, it is much easier to walk out of an un-worked relationship, but not so much out of a unintimate relation in law.

So hence someone like me, who is a believer in love, friendship and unselfish connection can't really have a brain to accept this "HAVE TO". Within the realm of my thinking I have decided to accept and reject intimacy in the manner I have known it over years. Only them that i have connected in true sense have over time become my family, everyone else is just going to remain "RELATIVE"

Sea Shells

I brought back from home
A handful of shells
The little hearts inside
Are already dead

I brought back from home
Sand in my clothes
I am dusting it off
But it wont go...

I brought back from home
memories of the beach
the sunrise i cant remember
the dusk has hovered me..

I brought back from home
big winged flight...he flew away..
the little chirpie sandpiper
Still keeps twitting my way

I brought back from home
palms with no shade
With might and might
they looked at me cruising away..

Evolving?

Theories of evolution have tried their best to explain the profundity of the role of nature; how in every manner and degree it has affected the fate of a particular species, its behavior and interactions. Even if you know a little bit of biology you will agree on the fact that nature has the capacity to select and deselect what is an adapative advantage or disadvantage. Increased melanin in the skin of tropical dwellers is the most common advantageous adaptation that I may quote here. For how it deselects here is an example. Most recessive lethal diseases are prevented from inheritance by nature’s mechanism of reproductively quarantining the organism, which means most victims of recessive lethal never survive till the reproductive age or in some cases they are born sterile (sterility although is not a direct symptom of the consequence of this lethal genetic inheritance). In short, nature knows to choose. While doing this I am sure it uses the least energy utilizing and least loss incurring mechanism. Also sometimes the perhaps it uses an adaptive change which is short term and may not be fixed in nature on a longer time scale. Eg. Sex change in south African frogs. Its only the lack of presence of a mating partner that one of the frogs might be changing its sex from all females to male.

So what am I trying to infer or explain? I am try to find out if the increased degree of homosexuality in human beings has an evolutionary significance? Ideally, it should. Consider human beings as an evolutionary entity first and not machines of ethics, religion and principles. Now consider the fact that the human population is expanding gigantically in numbers and its taking over every other species on earth. Wouldn’t nature want to give the human species a time-off or a reproductive pause now? I believe homosexuality is a reproductive pause in the human species. Well, then the question you should ask is, why can’t it wipe off the species by giving a pathogen to develop an advantageous incidence to infect? Yes it is simultaneously doing that, count all the past epidemics along with swine flu now. But because intelligence of human is a very high advantageously selected evolutionary development, it tends to overpower all the other species attempts to fix for themselves a new trait of advantage.

In this said condition apart from other attempts of lowering human population nature has to also select a trait that will help to set a temporary halt to growth of human population. This trait I believe is homosexuality. I would support by theory by several points: 1.  nature is doing this coz this is the least energy expending mechanism for reason that it is going to retain the reproductive capacity and sexual urge but going to change the sex-drive, now towards the same sex person. Thus later in time when the population equilibrates /optimizes, nature does not have to work towards developing a functional reproductive mechanism again, but it can only switch it back to normalcy of sex-drive (between opposite sexes). Homosexuality I believe will thus not get fixed in nature, coz if it does then it will lead to the loss of the reproductive capacity of Humans for ever marking us extinct.

Next time you see two guys kissing or girls licking, don’t you forget to give a little thought to this reproductive pause. Remember, its working as an advantage for us:  the human species!!

The western winds

Wherever I have lived since my childhood, the Diwali days feel the same. There is some kind of unique aroma in the atmosphere, chilly breeze in the air and bright sunshine during these days!! In the house along the backbay of Coloba coast, in the grassland complex on the beautiful 1st floor house of Assam, the row houses of Bhandup, the slope up slope down complexes of Dombivli, the feilds of Mississippi, the grenery of Nashville or now the flatland prairies of Texas; Diwali seems the same everywhere. Slowly, although we have moved from elaborate customs to real short cut diwalis, it seems nature hasn't done that. I rememeber when we were kids we used to draw a rangoli every day till tulsi lagnam, make diwali snacks starting a week before diwali, light lamps all around in the front of the house, make or buy kandil (paper lamps), decorate the entrance with string of lights, invite people and distrubute snacks to everyone in the neighbourhood, gather and play fire crackers and build killas (forts). Slowly as we grew up all these elaborate things we ourself started cutting off. Our parents and grandparents tried their level best by passing on these traditions down to us. My mom never failed to make all the faral (snacks & sweets) in quantities that would last for the entire vacation period of 21 days. She never failed to take us to the market and buy us fire crackers, she taught us how to put rangoli and how to decorate it with lamps. And to this anytime if she would falll short of enthusisam, I would have my uncles & aunts and grandparents to compensate for that. Happiness for whatever part it was, was always been brought in diwali by my mom and she has tried her level best in her capacity to make it the best diwali she can for us. So, even if I have not remained to be a highly traditional, religious and methodical person, it would be neccesary to introduce my kids to these customs. It will be their choice to follow it further or not. And with experience I can say, that even if I do not try to remind myself of diwali, the weather will always motivate me and keep me reminded!!

Happy Diwali

Appreciation

You can only bring a horse to the waters and can't make him to drink it. And that is the same with people.

You will find me smiling once in while on my own thoughts. Each one of us does that and its when we recollect small humorous incidences from our past!! So I just recollected one now, while I am reading this book "How to win friends and influence people" by Dale Carnegie. This has been on my "to-do" list for quite a few years now and apparently I have never been motivated enough to go get and read it. This is one of the best sellers, a very simply written book and I have seen how it can improve interpersonal relations after myself having gone through mere 3 chapters of the book.....

But let me stop here telling you about the book and tell you about the humor in relation to this. Max was reading this book then and he was totally boggled by it. I could see how he was trying to imply all that he was learning. Although, I always thought him even before, to be excellent in dealing with people without being verbose like most marketing guys are. So anyway, as he was going all ga ga over this book he would read me all that he learnt in short every chance he would get an this is how I was introduced to this book. Shankar was well known for his rude (I would say blundered) words especially with girls, i.e. me and marie the only girls at the research station. I guess all the old secretaries liked him as they liked everyone else. Slowly I had stopped feeling bad about his rudeness as I soon realized that shankar (like most other Indians) does not have the flair to talk to people such that they will be pleased always. I told him onetime he should equally appreciate people so they don't mind listening to critcism or taking those word blunders from him. Only criticism is all the way dangerous and it could get him into trouble when he says things sometimes which dont even intend to criticise. Confused? dont be, read it over again. Max told shankar that girls like to be appreciated..this may not necessarily mean flattery but once in a while if you could tell them that their dress looks good and mostly shoes are the safest thing of girls to talk about ..and girls like hearing that. Shankar, seemed to register all that in his mind.

The next day as we all sit and eat at the lunch table (a tradition of group lunching at workplace was only at Verona), Shankar deliberately peeps down the table to carol's shoes who is sitting next to him. Me and Max sitting right in front of him tried our best to control us from bursting out loud in laughter, but shankar guessed it from our faces and rushed into say it. The very next moment he goes "Oh!! you got some lovely shoes today" and we burst out. Carolyn, I don't know what she thinks but sure is moved by Shankar's words, she blushes, her face goes red and she puts her arm around shankar and pats his back, smiles and says thank you :) . A little twinkle in her old eyes tells us that she loved what he said and that she is totally flattered.

Appreciation however intended, when it comes from an innocent person is always considered precious. :)

But, to Shankar we would say "You can bring a horse to the waters but can you make him drink it?"

Garden spree

Having a good size patio to an apartment home is always such a great feeling for someone like me. It is sad to see only 1 out of 15 apartments on our side with patio having plants, every other patio seems unused and empty, not even a chair ...what uninteresting people live on earth. I have always been interested in gardening but much to my and other's dismay have lacked in being regular on that. Even if you would think plant science is all about growing plants in the garden, trust me it is just one of the many aspects that we learn.  Atleast it was never my cup of tea and the best proof is the fact that I have killed many beautiful plants in the past due to lack of knowledge of how to grow plants. E.g. the Zinnia that susan gave me in our tupelo apartment. To this you would say, then how did you get the job of a greenhouse manager. Trust me I didn't know anything about greenhouses, I didn't know anything about flowering plants nor did I know anything about growing plants on a commercial level. But I knew one thing that I had to get this job. The only growing experience I had were the few chilli, watermelon and eggplants that we had stuck in Max's rows in the unused part of his experimental feild. We grew atleast 40 watermelons, 100s of peppers, 10 eggplants in the whole growing season. The only contribution to this gardening effort from my side was to pick the produce and take it home :D. And why do you think was it so easy? The feild was on auto-watering and auto-fetilizer! all you had to do is dossetron the fertilizer to the feeding lines once a week and switching on and off the water tap once a day!! I still think we wouldn't have been good gardeners coz 90 % watermelons were eaten and destroyed by the kayotes. If any other feild experience that I can add is that I watched Susan growing different kinds of peppers in her trial beds. I would walk her crop whenever I got a chance and during the harvest season I served as her chilli taster :)

Since then, the color of peppers has instilled a liking for plants in me. And today after the few month greenhouse experience I have atleast found a good hobby to myself and that is gardening. Soon you will see my patio flowering and lush green with a number of different plants, flowers, vines and it will be a place you will all wait to be at.

I have already planted rosemary, mint, curry plant, oregano and basil. Looking for some garlic chive seeds, walmart is running out of seeds and i cant find any other place selling them for cheap. For the flowers, i have planted mums -golden yellow and pink. I have made 2 hanging baskets one with vinca (white with purple centre) and an airplant. I will be sowing some pea seeds that I have, it will make a beautiful vine in the patio. + I like the purple color of sweet pea flowers. On another end, morning glory would do just great. I wish I find some honeysuckle, ahh the fragrance is very close to jasmine.

For the house plants I have got a nice pink colored bromelaid, in the living room. the color is real amazing, I have always only seen red and yellow colored bromelaids, like the one Kranti  got for me, but  the one we got now is different. For the study room we have a lovely cacti. Lowe's has a good collection of them .  I dont know what would be good for the bedroom, yet. All the three rooms have good light, so I can go part sun-part shade type of plants.

Gardening is making me feel real happy :) Oh yea!! i forgot about the yellow lily. My MIL packed me some seeds of yellow lilies, they are gorgeous. I have attached a picture of it to this  blog. They should grow from spring all through summer.You all are always welcome to visit my garden. :).

The Great-Wall Mart

Yes a little bit of word play there and a whole lot meaning to my blog. I am not going to try to convince you not to buy at Walmart, coz I would be the one amongst many who would have to try not to do that first. I have done it in the past and have followed it strictly, reasons were many and one of them was , me buying for walmart is buying china made which means indirectly supporting communism, rather pseudo-communism. China has grown to a big power in the world market, so much that US is in debt and owes billions to China, but this is at the expense of its own people. Ask a chinese someday, how even if he can't speak good english has wanted to come to the US? and if ever he will want to go back? The answer will be 100%  NO! there are no memories of the country that they want to keep other than family (perhaps). Well, let us not go deep into the debate of that, and lets stick to Wall-mart, oops...Walmart. So why not buy at walmart just coz it sells china made ? OH COME ON!! the whole world is doing that now. Every store has low end china made brands? even the pousche stores? They equally sell stuff made in china and still price it higher than Walmart. Have you ever tried to compare Hunt's diced tomatoes at Kroger and Walmart? its always cheaper at Walmart! So yes what big deal, why not I buy the same product at Walmart, not that I am buying china made/great value walmart product! I am buying HUNT's, did you hear me a NON-CHINA Brand. Seems like a  valid  argument so far, doesn't it?

Why do you think I am writing this post? It should lead me somewhere anti-walmart right? I am writing this so everyone knows that the difference (20 cents/30 cents) we try to save by buying at walmart, comes out for a pretty heavy price for the workers. Have you ever pondered on this question? How can walmart sell this cheap, why no other store tries to over compete by lowering the prices? Walmart saves a lot on depriving its workers of benefits, keeping them on low salaries, not allowing to make labor unions, keeping as many temporary employees as it can and by not maintaining its factory facilites upto the US standards. And this is the price we help them save when we try to save 20 cents on a can of tomato soup. And oh yes! one more thing, have you ever heard of a Walmart Hospital/Walmart primary school/ Walmart orphange? So yes, its one of those non-donating companies too.

Do we care? obviously we dont, that is why we still stuff our houses with great value, home accents and other walmart brand products. Saying NO to walmart will cost 10 dollars extra on our monthly bills, but it would make a huge difference in voicing against communism and in favour of labor laws.

P.S.: Few months back Mumbaities did not allow Walmart to set up its store in Crowford market. Dont feel proud, it wasnt the voice of mumbaikars, nor was it  in the interest of the small shopkeepers, it was the politics of the mall-owners and politicians. How can they have a Walmart sell cheaper when they have jumped the prices of even a 1 rs. worth topaz blade and especially when they are planning to raise towers, to make mumbai at par with Shanghai!!