This is something interesting. Posting by email to a blog post is one of the easiest way to blog. I know of such a feature in Posterous. Posting by email is simple, fast and easy. Anyway this is my first post to wordpress using this feature. I will post more after seeing the post.
“Neither Night nor Day” is a collection of 13 stories by women writers from Pakistan. This book is edited by Rakshanda Jalil. All the thirteen stories have different background, but all centre around the different aspects of women life and their feelings. If one story deals about the dreams of a working woman, the other story will be about a woman who is going to be married to be a housewife. The book gives a picture of the lifestyle of women across the border. Some stories give the impact of the Partition in the lives of the people.
Out of the thirteen stories, the stories which I really liked or really moved me are The Tongue, She who looked for Butterflies, The Breast, The Job Application, The Wedding of Sundri and The Goonga.
The Tongue depicts that even if you remove the tongues of the people, you cannot stop their will power. She who looked for butterflies is a story where a woman is about to receive the capital punishment. The story shows her strength which even amazes the jail warden.The Breast is a story where a woman is deprived of her womanhood for the reason that she fed a child which was not hers. The job application is a story about the dreams of a woman(a widow) when she gets an interview call from a company which will pay her more. The wedding of Sundri is quite a touching story which is about the marriage of Sundri, a twelve year old girl who was killed by the people of the village of her in-laws on the very day of her marriage. The Goonga is a story where a man leaves his village after his own son is not ready to accept him.
This book is really worth reading. It gives a picture about how the life of the women used to be some years ago. While reading this book, I was wondering whether some of these incidents still prevail in the society.
What if these incidents still prevail??
The Internet has changed a lot since its inception. The web in the beginning consisted of only static content, some fixed information. But now information on the web has become dynamic. Each moment sees a change in the front page of websites. From the publisher centric web pages to user centric pages. In fact this is web 2.0 where the users post(upload) the content. Because of this user centric approach, the web has really become a personal diary. Let’s take a simple example. If you are one of those persons who do not delete any mails (I think nobody these days deletes their mails because of unlimited/high storage mail storage space), you can really take a look back into history what you were doing some two years back on this particular day- the mails you have sent to a particular person, the concerns you had, the messages you forwarded or you received. Its really interesting to turn back to the pages of history. Yes I was wondering whether the words ‘turn back to the pages of history’ is correct. There are no pages involved. Our whole approach of looking into history has changed. All of us are part of our history. Each and every action of ours which we do on the net is really a history.
There are sites which help us to plan trips and help us maintain information about the books we have read. I update my personal blog to keep an update on the books I have completed reading. When I look into my personal blog, I can see the tremendous change in my own way of writing. I started my personal blog as a means of record keeping of my personal actions, especially with respect to the books I have read and the places I have visited. Sometimes I just check my blog to see when I did a particular thing.
With the advent of numerous travel and book sites, you can maintain an up to date information on the books you have read and your reviews or even recommendations. There is not even need of going through each and every site and remembering the site names and the passwords. The current web design approach looks like a centralized or a customized home page. A single company will not spend its revenue building cool features for each and every aspect of an individual, rather they concentrate on one particular aspect and provide the API(Application Programming Interface), which can be utilized by any other site to access that particular site. Like the other day, I saw some applications in Linkedin like tripit and Reading List. From user perspective, he/she need not remember all the site names, but rather access everything from a single page.
If you enable logging of your history of browsed pages, you can even find out about your mood and interests in a specific period of time. Really Internet is turning to be a personal diary. It has a vast amount of data of each of our actions, like the friends we conversed with, the friends we avoided, our mood, our purchases. There are a lot of statistics which can be used to target an individual. Only thing that is needed is to make the best use of all the information.
Today I completed reading Ignited Minds. This is my second book of Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam(Former President of India), the first being his autobiography, The Wings of Fire. Through his book, Kalam stresses on the need of working for the development of India to make it a developed nation by 2020. Through many examples from his own personal life, he stresses on the need for team work for nation building. He asks the readers to come out of the compartmentalized thinking and think beyond. He also stresses on the need of moral education in addition to the academic studies. He gives the example of many of our renowned scientists C.V. Raman, H.J. Bhabha who contributed for the science. He also reminds us of the visionaries like Vikram Sarabhai and Satish Dhawan whose contributions has led to India’s advancement in space technology.
He asks the readers to dream big.
After a long time, today I completed reading the book, ‘Who Moved My Cheese?’. The book was quite thin so it took me only some time to complete reading it. The book as the author says, ‘An amazing way to Deal with Change in Your Work and In Your Life’
The book inspires the readers to embrace the Change rather than complaining about it. The book makes use of four characters: two mice, Sniff and Scurry and two littlepeople: Hem and Haw. The story occurs in a maze and all the four characters are looking for cheese. In the beginning, all of them after some search were depending on One single Cheese Station. But slowly the Cheese began to decrease and one day they could not find it.
The book is all about the reaction of these four characters with respect to this particular incident of their lives and their actions.
The author asks the reader to embrace changes and look for the New Cheese when the Old Cheese is no more.
I came back from my hometown today morning. During these few days in my hometown, I visited some of my relatives. I visited my maternal grandparents on Saturday. They were quite happy to see me after a long time.
On Sunday, I attended the Church service in my hometown.
Its after a long time (some two months) that I am coming to my hometown. The train journey was pretty good. Yesterday because of the blasts, there was tight security in the Bangalore railway station.
After entering the train, I took my dinner and started reading some pages from the book ‘The Jesus I never Knew’. Then I slept for a while. I woke up somewhere around eleven in the night. Then it was quite difficult to get back my sleep. And then my thought process began. Started thinking about lot many things, especially the question, ‘If Adam and Eve had not taken the fruit from the Tree which gives the knowledge of Good and Evil’, what would have been the world? When we see ourselves, we can find that all our actions are based on our judgements of good and evil. Before taking any important decision, we keep on thinking about it. What would have been the world otherwise.
I reached home today morning. Papa had gone to work and sister for her classes. I had a small talk with my mother. In the evening, papa and sister came.
I talked to my sister about the Harry Potter book (‘Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban’) I had recently read.
This is my first Diwali in Bangalore. Two years back, I celebrated Diwali in college, the memories of which are still afresh in my mind. Diwali is celebrated in a wonderful manner by the students in our college . I really miss those celebrations : the candles, the crackers, the dance, the lights and the enthusiasm of the students.
When I went out for shopping today evening, I remembered the Diwali celebrations in Chandigarh. Our house owner’s son used to give me and my sister a lot of candles and we used to light them and put them on the stairs and the walls. The whole area looks completely brightened. Then we used to burst crackers with our friends. That was some years back, but the memories of those days are still in my mind.
Compared to Chandigarh, I didn’t find much bursting of crackers. Economic crisis also can be one of the reasons. Also since this is my first Diwali here, I can’t even compare to previous years. Only some of the houses in my locality had electric lights. In very less number of houses, I could see the diyas(earthenware lights) or candles.
Anyway kids as usual were busy with the phuljadhis and crackers. There were less number of people in the shops. Shops were closed earlier than usual. I purchased dresses for myself and my family. But I had to do my shopping quickly. Hope so my family members will like my choice.
After a long time, I am starting back blogging. It was quite a long time I haven’t blogged. There are lot of things which happened in my personal life during this period. I got my first job. I have read some books like ‘The Alchemist’, ‘The Bible Jesus Read’ and ‘Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban’. I will give my review of these books in my subsequent posts.
I have read this book a long time ago (to be precise two months back), but I could not comment on it then. Anyway this book is all about four people who lost their money in shares by investing money in a company called Prospecta Oil. They were all approached by a young man who had recently joined the company at a very attractive salary. Whenever he met some persons, he used to talk about his company and their oil ventures. Unfortunately these four became his victims. The young man David could not be held responsible for this because he too was unaware of the brain of Harvey MetCalfe, the person behind the Prospecta oil. All of these four invested a very significant amount of their income in these shares. But one fine morning when David went to the office, he finds it locked. He too had invested some small amount of money. Fearing legal problems he ran away from there. But these four were in a big trouble
The story is all about how these four managed to get back their money from Harvey Metcalfe. Their ways are quite interesting to read. As the book title says ‘Not a penny more, Not a penny less’. Stephen Bradley took the initiative to regain back the money. He met the other three investors and makes a detailed research on every activity of Metcalfe. He calls the other three to his home and discusses the plan. He said that they would have to work hard to gain back each and every penny they spend for this purpose, not a penny more, not a penny else
Read how these four managed to get the whole money back, including all the expenses they had to beat during this whole venture. But in the last, they failed to get back $1.24.
Did they get it?
Read the climax of the novel. A very very unexpectable incident occurs. Do read to find about it.
