Recently I was going through a large number of newspaper articles on the incident of Singur and the issue of Tata factory being built up there!  I wonder how selfish the industrialists have become.  The capitalism is everywhere and exploitation is the basis of survival in modern society.  The fact may not be directly related with Tata Nano but let me tell you one thing human being needs to eat food and that comes from agriculture. 

So the priority is food crop then industry!  With an empty stomach, you cannot move in a Tata Nano.  I think I am in the right path and telling the damn truth.  Yes, I support Ms. Mamata Banerjee, Trinamul Congress Leader’s stand for the farmer and I think her voice is gradually being heard and it will be heard in the near future!  I really appreciate a voice among the crowd!  In case of industrialization, the state is earning a bad reputation due to the recent Singur incident. 

Agriculture is important due to the following points:

1.  Think of the corn flakes and fruits you eat in breakfast.

2.  Think of the mango you eat in summer.

3.  Think of the vegetable you take in lunch.

4.  Decrease in production due to increasing number of factories in agricultural lands will lead to price hike.

Farmers should not be deprived due to the following:

1.  They go to the field in the morning and I have seen in my field work how hard is the life of a farmer.  I have seen in Maharashtra.  I went Mulgawan village which is far away from Nagpur.

2.  I have seen the hardships of a farmer and the profit made by the middle men.  So these people remain poor.

3.  Please do not deprive these people of their lands.

4.  A farmer’s land is the food for your future children.

5.  Depriving a farmer is a sin and there can be no salvation to this sin.  They produce the crops that help the techies in cities to survive! 

Now the issue of Tata Nano factory…………..

The recent issue of Singur shows how cruel the bureaucrats can be just for their personal gain.  It shows clearly that industrialization has gained importance because of money.  But do you think they will gain further in the long run?  The answer is “No!” 

How many people can affort a Rs. 1 lakh car?

It may be cheap but it is a fact that the job market is tough and those who are getting good salaries they will go for better cars than TATA NANO.  They will say “TATA GOOD BYE” to such a small car!!  They will try to purchase a solid car at a higher price thinking of the longevity.  Always remember a cheap thing does not survive very long. 

Let’s take this example:

I bought a black t-shirt with the hologram “Nike” from Yashoda in Shyambazar.  But the quality of cloth is so good that the t-shirt remained as it is and to this day whenever I wear the t-shirt in my office, my friends appreciate.  I like that and I do not buy garments from shopping mall because “CHEAP THINGS DO NOT LAST LONG.”  Buy better quality clothes at a little higher price than the malls and that will last longer!  Because…….It is “YOUR” hard-earned money.  You have earned it “by the sweat of thy brow.” 

Agriculture provides the nutrition to industrialists to survive.  It brings the food that we need every day and putting a factory in an agricultural land is a wrong step.  A factory should be set up in a barren land.  The land should be returned to the farmers and a part of it should only be used but at a good price! 

Life is hard for a farmer.  Listen from the fieldworker’s mouth who worked among the Kolam tribe in Maharashtra.  They take dal and rice as their food and live in a house which shows that they just take 2 square meals a day!  We have surveyed and found the level of sacrifice they do for us.  They work all the day in the scorching sun and at the end of the day, they get a sum of Rs. 30 to 40.  We surveyed their households and found how miserable their life is.  All the tribal welfare money goes in the pocket of the bureaucrats and very little goes to them!

Thank you for reading this article.  Some opinions expressed in this article might be controversial but I have tried to put down the “harsh facts” in an elaborate way!

New research shows that a number of fishes use electric fields to attract females of their species.  It is also used to intimidate rivals.  An Amazon fish has been taken as a case study.  This research is undergone in Florida International University at Miami.  Behavioral ecologist Vielka Salazar is undergoing research and published it is Live Science.  The gymnotiform fish has been studied.  The male of this species of fishes gives off long electric hums almost like serenades at night.

It is all defect in working memory, which may explain why one child cannot read her history book and another gets lost in algebra.  It is said that 10% of school age children suffer from poor working memory.  The working memory is a measure of a child’s potential.  Tracy Alloway is doing research in Durham University of Britain.  Working memory is now regarded as the new IQ.  It is the single most important predictor of learning. 

There is a way of memory improvement, which Tracy Alloway thinks is ---------

1. Early identification.
2. Memory training.

Working memory function:  It allows people to hold and manipulate a few items in their mind such as phone number.  She compares this to a box.  She thinks that the working memory for an adult is thought to be 3 to 5 items.  People who have more than that on a mental grocery list are likely to forget something.  Take my example, when I have to remember  5 to 6 items, I have to associate and group them and then go to the store.  I have to chalk out a way so that I can remember with association.  Well, that’s my way! What’s yours?  Nelson Crowe of University of Missouri thinks as there is a limit, it is important to put in the right thing.  Irrelavant information will clutter up working memory!

Childhood is the golden era in one’s life.  A new research finds that our childhood effectively ends at age 11!  The parents are increasingly succumbing to pester pressure from their kids.  The researchers found that the children are forcing their parents to authorize freedoms that falsely state their years in contrast with traditional upbringings as experienced by their parents.  Teenagers are being allowed to drink alcohol, stay out late, sleep over at the boyfriend and girlfriends house and have sex!  The little girls are getting mature faster!  The girls do not want to play with dolls!!!!  They do what adult women do-------like ----pierce ears, hair dye, and wearing fashionable dresses. 

The Random House publishers came to the conclusion after studying 1170 parents with kids under 18.  Think where we are heading towards.  Our life has become so complicated.  The social life has changed a lot!  In India, though we have driven our British in 1947, our life has westernized a lot and successful people with lots of money need to go party at night clubs and for them an entire entertainment industry has been set up!  So naturally it has some effect on children! 

I  am a member of Orkut for a long time.  I had good friendship with a man of 40s named Parthasarathi.  He is a member of the popular Bengali band named Eklabya.  He is an oncologist and lives in South Kolkata.  We used to chat through Orkut.  He has a French cut and is a handsome man as it appeared in website and as his profile told me he is an oncologist working at a South Kolkata hospital.  One day he gave me his phone number.  He messaged me his address.  I went one day to his home.  His house is an old building.  I rang the bell at the door and there he is!  A giant with a big French cut beard!  He looked like the ginnie of Aladin!  He has a huge belly!! He has big shoulders.  Below his eyes, he has a thick dark spot.  He told me that he practices late at night.  He is a nice person.  He asked me about my job and everything.  He is a very serious type person.  He told me how people in orkut disturbed him.  He told me how the gay friends disturbs him and the girls disturb him.  I smiled and thought they have not seen the real giant behind. 

Later he blocked me and now I can hardly think of a person like him and hardly want to meet a person.  A person may look sweet in a networking site photo but in reality he might be a devil!  But in real life, I found Parthosarathi is a nice gentleman and lives his pastime with music and he sings in his band Eklabya beside his profession as an oncologist!

One of my Orkut friends met me near my Gariahat office.  One morning I was chatting with him and he told me that he is coming to meet me!  He came straight away and I talked with him.  I saw that he is an ordinary guy with spots in the face like a Dalmatian.  He does not look impressive and in Orkut profile, there is no photo of him, just a picture of “something else.”   Usually it happens that a person not so goodlooking do not give picture in a networking site, they give picture of something else.  So this guy named Amitava told me that he is from a business family background and he used to chat from a cyber café. 

But unusually in both the cases of these friends, after we met, there was hardly any messaging between us.  Probably the curiosity disappeared.  So whenever some of my friends tell me to meet somewhere I just avoid! I am right, isn’t it?

Japanese scientists think that laughter is a weapon that in healthy doses can end the world’s wars.  Professor Yoji Kimura is trying to find a healthy way to measure it.  He is an expert in communications.  He has developed a machine to chart out laughter and a unit called “aH” to calculate it.

From his research, we find that children laugh more freely releasing 10 aH per second.  This is found to be twice as much as adult.  This research has been done by Dr. Kimura in Kansai University at Osaka.  He thinks that adult tend to think whether it is appropriate to laugh and as a result, laughing spontaneously does not come to them! 

Laughing is like a restart function in a computer.  Laughing freely is very important in the course of human evolution.  Human’s laughter is produced in 4 successive stages.  They are:

1. Letting loose.
2. Deviating from the norm.
3. Free laughing.
4. Having the laughter overflow.

He thinks that there is a circuit in the human brain that creates laughter through these steps.  He is trying to understand the mechanism. Dr. Kimura attached sensors to the subject’s stomach over the diaphragm and detects the movements.  Th machine looks 3000 times a second at electric elements normally produced in the body.  According to his theory, he thinks that humor in the brain is discharged directly through the movements of the diaphragm.  The different types of laughter are derision and cynicism.  The device invented by him will be used to determine to see if the person is pretending to laugh.  His measuring device of laughter will be as small as a mobile phone and it will be marketed.  Dr. Kimura planned to present his studies at International Society for Humor Studies.  He looked forward of understanding differences in laughter internationally.

Laughter is something that has almost disappeared from our life.  Our life is mostly rat race and we chase money and power!  We forget to laugh!  Though there are some humor shows and cartoons etc. to make us laugh, it is hard to see people laugh!  Laughing is not so easy as people think twice before laughing! We have laughing clubs in our neighborhood.  In fact the club split later and now 2 laughing clubs are there! Does that mean from laughing to quarelling among members for becoming president and chair persons of the club…and then again laughing??????? Ha ha ha ah aha ah aha ah a!!!! J

Scientists are going to release a Encyclopedia of Life that will have the record of all the animals and plants till date discovered.  The project tries to add 1.8 million known plant and animal species.  Each will have their own web page in an online archive that includes:

1. Photographs.
2. Genetic information.
3. Distribution maps.

In this week,  30,000 pages of the project will be released, which will focus on:

1. Fish.
2. Amphibia.
3. Birds.
4. Large mammals.

This is just a small percentage but the scientists feel happy about the project!  Robert May is a former president of Royal Society thinks this will help them sort species and have a database. 

Wikipedia has started this project with the “mash-up” software to aggregate large amounts of data.  The following institutes are helping Wikipedia.  They are:

1. Natural History Museum of London.
2. Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew.
3. Smithsonian Institution in Washington.

A team is working quite hard!  They have already scanned 2.5 million pages of academic journals, drawing and photographs  have been scanned.

The science of classification began with Carl Linnaeus in 1735.  He had promised to classify all know living thing.  By the time he reached his 13^th and final edition, his original 11 pages expanded to 3000 and it is still incomplete!!

We all know that smoking kills and it causes cancer.  But do we know that smoking raises the risk of suicide.  We often find people committing suicide due to depression, financial reasons, love triangle and many more.  But a new study by the German researchers lead an in-depth study among the people of Bavaria.  The study found a link between a desire to kill oneself and smoking.

Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry in Munich done this research based on the study launched in 1990 among 3021 people aged 14 to 24 living in Munich.  The people interviewed again 4 years later and 2548 volunteers responded.  ¼ of these individuals have not smoked.  Of the rest,

40% ----- Occasional smokers.

17% ------- “non-dependent” regular smokers.

19% ---- addicted smokers.

Among nonsmokers, 15% had suicidal thoughts defined as the following:

1)      Making plans to kill himself/herself.

2)      Spending 2 weeks or longer with the wish to die.

The rate was around 20% on non-dependent smokers but among nondependent smokers suicidal ideation was 30%.

Smoking is injurious to health.  In my life, I had no inclination of smoking. So no such suicidal tendency developed ever in my life.  My father also smoked in early life but left smoking and as he says, “I do not have frequent cough and cold when I was a smoker.” 

Smoking not only affects you but your family members inhaling the smoke becomes a passive smoker.

Ten ways to avoid smoking are as follows:

1. Never imitate your friends who thinks that smoking makes your smart and manly.
2. Never think that smoking boosts thinking.  It reduces your thinking.
3. Eat fruits rather than a packet of cigarette, which is beneficial to your body making your skin glow and leads to health improvement.
4. Nurture a good hobby.
5. Have a good circle of friends who do not smoke.
6. Try to think of your family if you fall in serious illness, then who will take care of your family?
7.   Take care of your body by going to gym or aerobics or yoga.  Taking great care of your body will prevent you from indulging in smoking.
8.  Smoking comes from movies also as movie stars show off their masculinity by smoking.  So it is better to avoid those movies.
9. Always remember wasting money by smoking is just forcing yourself to commit suicide day by day.
10. Think yourself valuable, think your life an important part of this society.  Yes..!! You have the capacity to change the world around you by proper thinking and that wishful thinking comes when you stop smoking!!

Ten ways to avoid smoking are as follows:

1. Never imitate your friends who thinks that smoking makes your smart and manly.
2. Never think that smoking boosts thinking.  It reduces your thinking.
3. Eat fruits rather than a packet of cigarette, which is beneficial to your body making your skin glow and leads to health improvement.
4. Nurture a good hobby.
5. Have a good circle of friends who do not smoke.
6. Try to think of your family if you fall in serious illness, then who will take care of your family?
7.   Take care of your body by going to gym or aerobics or yoga.  Taking great care of your body will prevent you from indulging in smoking.
8.  Smoking comes from movies also as movie stars show off their masculinity by smoking.  So it is better to avoid those movies.
9. Always remember wasting money by smoking is just forcing yourself to commit suicide day by day.
10. Think yourself valuable, think your life an important part of this society.  Yes..!! You have the capacity to change the world around you by proper thinking and that wishful thinking comes when you stop smoking!!

As life moves along…

Trouble may come

Trouble may go

You being firm as a tree..

With deep roots of confidence…

Can withstand the storms of life….

Can withstand the cyclones of life..

Near and dear ones may die..

But never get broken calm..

Calm down…

We all are mortals…

Only things remains..

Are few drops of memory..

You live in my mind…

And I in your mind..

We may build monuments and temple in somebody’s name..

But it soon breaks up and disappears in the earth…

Dust remains…which flies high in air…

No one is stronger than nature….

We still feel weak

When there is an earthquake…

When there is a cyclone..

Only we can predict…

But life is still at stake..

When we are sleeping deeply..

We might weep ..

When your parents die in earthquake..

Upheaviling your tender soul…

Shattering all your dreams and goals…

We are a small speck of sand

In this vast desert…

We might boast a lot..

What what is there in our brain slot..

Only a tiny bit against this vast information

We might be proud of our wisdom..

But do we think seldom how many hours we passed lazily?

As time is valuable

As time is money..

Let’s not waste it

Only one drop wasted

A moment in your life gone

Forever and ever and never comes back!

It goes into our memory stack

Whose password is difficult to hack!

We can never get the moment back!