God retires

God of Cricket Retires

              Times Magazine quoted in 2011 on Sachin Tendulkar “"When Sachin Tendulkar travelled to Pakistan to face one of the finest bowling attacks ever assembled in cricket, Michael Schumacher was yet to race a F1 car, Lance Armstrong had never been to the Tour de France, Diego Maradona was still the captain of a world champion Argentina team, Pete Sampras had never won a Grand Slam. When Tendulkar embarked on a glorious career taming Imran and company, Roger Federer was a name unheard of; Lionel Messi was in his nappies, Usain Bolt was an unknown kid in the Jamaican backwaters. The Berlin Wall was still intact, USSR was one big, big country, Dr Manmohan Singh was yet to "open" the Nehruvian economy. It seems while Time was having his toll on every individual on the face of this planet, he excused one man. Time stands frozen in front of Sachin Tendulkar. We have had champions, we have had legends, but we have never had another Sachin Tendulkar and we never will."

              Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar is retiring from cricket. This signifies one thing to me, “ My childhood is over”. I haven’t seen a cricket match without Sachin ever. Sachin is a person who is bigger than cricket. Cricket is a religion in India and Sachin is the god.

            He debuted at the age of 16. He is a record smasher and has broken all the records set before in batting. He has been in Cricket for 24 years and has never made the front page for the wrong reasons. He is the highest earning athelete in India. But he is humble. His life is an inspiration for every cricketer.

            His passion for the game cannot be parallel to anyone else. He played a world cup match the next day after his father’s funeral. No one before in cricket has played for so many years and no one can in future.

            In the words of Mathew Hayden, an Australian Cricketer “ I have seen God, he bats at No.4 for India”

DIWALI

DIWALI

On November 3^rd there were some lights on the sky here at tech. They were fireworks going on. Most people did not know why it was celebrated. It was for Diwali. Diwali is celebrated to enjoy the victory of light over darkness. This is one of the festivals that is celebrated all over India and around the world. This year this festival was also celebrated in white house and from 2009 in 10, Downing Street.

Diwali is just not a Hindu festival, this festival has been celebrated by Jains, Sikhs as well. In a typical household Diwali day starts with taking an oil bath. Then everyone would wear new clothes. Women would have mehandi in their hands. Mehandi is a cluster of designs which is extracted from leaves and applied in hands in different designs. 

The breakfast would be usually heavy and large with more than 30 different foods. Then there would also be a huge chunk of Indian sweets.

Everymember of the family would come together and the younger ones in the family would get blessings from elders. After this everyone would visit the temples in their area. In villages there would be huge food festivals where the rich people would prepare meals and give it to the poor people. As the vening falls in every single house there would be fireworks going on.

For everyone to enjoy diwali all the workers would be given one month of their salary as a bonus. Diwali is also celebrated in Fiji, Trindiad and Tobago, Malaysia, Singapore, Myanmar, Nepal, Bhutan as official state celebrations.

In the evening every house would be lit with oil lamps made of clay. This is to welcome the goddess of wealth into everyone’s home. A week of holidays are given to everyone in the country.

CAUTION AND WARNING

I was talking with my friend in India, and came to know about a group of people living in Varanasi and Kasi in India. I was shocked and terrified about the things he told me about. I could not believe that people like them even live in this world. Let me just tell about them to you.

 

These people do not wear clothes at most times. Sometimes they just cover their sexual organs in clothes. They mostly eat dead humans. Sometimes they drink their water from a human skull, this depends on the hierarchy. These people at the age of puberty smash their sexual organs so that they don’t have children.

These people call themselves as god. They sit on dead bodies and do unspeakable acts. These people have no law or rules or nothing. Sometimes they go on a rampage of killing people. They consider themselves to be the followers of the god of destruction.

 They live in the burial grounds, when bodies are burnt, they determine the hell and heaven for people, although not in the literal sense. They apply burnt human ash all over their body and also famous for drugs.

I am posting a video link to this video in youtube.

CAUTION: WARNING PEOPLE WITH WEAK HEARTS, KIDS, OLD PEOPLE DONOT WATCH THIS VIDEO.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Nd6hM7OrYs&oref=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3D5Nd6hM7OrYs&has_verified=1

India is not just Hindi

Two days ago I was talking with a few of my friends and they asked me if my mother tongue was Hindi. I told them that Hindi is not my mother tongue. They were confused and asked me that since I am from India, the language I speak should be Hindi. It was then I realized that most people think that Hindi is the language of India. I decided that I should explain to all about what India is. Hindi is the largest spoken language of India, but it is spoken by only 250 million people of the 1.2 billion people of India. There are other languages like Bengali, Marathi, Gujarathi, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada, Urdu, Parsi, Punjabi, Assamese, Manipuri, Konkani, etc. There are 30 official languages but there are more than 1000 dialects. So for example if you move from one state to another you cannot expect people to speak the language you speak. It is like this you move from Virginia to West Virginia or North Carolina, people will be speaking different languages. The same way most people think that India is a Hindu country. Again this is totally wrong. India is predominantly a Hindu nation. But you still have a lot of Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Jains, Buddhists, Zoroastrians, some local native religions, Jews, etc. So you meet a lot of people from other faith too. So, to give you an example, we had a Muslim President with a Sikh Prime Minister, a Christian Defense Minister in a nation of predominantly Hindus. The dance forms also vary from state to state as languages differ. So what is unifying India? To be frank there is no unifying or common thing in India other than the feeling of Indian among the people. This characteristic of India is unique. The thing that unified Germany was their race and language, the French their language, and each country has always had its own unifying feature except India.

Ashoka the great

Everyone knows Alexander the great for his wars and the extent of land he had conquered. Ashoka on the other hand was a very different person. Ashoka was the third Mauryan emperor. His reign was from 268 to 238 B.C.  His capital was so beautiful that Megasthenes, the greek ambassador to the Mauryan court said that, no such place can be compared to its beauty and the great greek cities humbled before its magnificence.  He ruled the whole of India and also the parts of present day Pakistan. He defeated some of the Alexander’s successors and killed them. He was a cruel man. He constantly tested the loyalty of his ministers and killed anyone, he doubted. He fought many fierce battles and was ruthless. He even built a torture chamber called “Paradise of Hell” to torture anyone and everyone, he disliked or who opposed him.

There was a small kingdom called “Kalinga” to the east of his empire. He wanted to annex that small kingdom to his empire. He waged a war against them. The people of Kalinga were very proud people. They did not want to lose their independence. Everyone in the empire fought, men and women alike. Young kids were sent to the battlefield and even they died. At the end of the war, Ashoka won the battle. But, all he was left to rule were dead bodies. There was no living soul in Kalinga after the battle.

This was when Ashoka realized that all these deaths were for no good reason. He cried in the battlefield. As he moved into the city he saw how barren it looked without anyone living there. There he met a Buddhist monk, who advised him to give up his pleasure of killing people and adopt non-violence. Ashoka converted to Buddhism, he built Buddhist stupa’s all over the country. He built roads, planted trees, helped the poor, etc. He sent his son and daughter to spread Buddhism to the world. He sent his daughter to Sri Lanka, while his son to China, Japan,etc. After the battle of Kalinga, he did not fight a single battle. He closed down his “Paradise of Hell” and died a peaceful man. This transformation in him resulted in everyone calling him Ashoka the great.