Quotes

Saturday, April 11, 2009

If............


If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;

If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with wornout tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on!'

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run -
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man my son!

............................................................................


We never know how high we are
Till we are called to rise;
And then, if we are true to plan,
Our statures touch the skies.
The heroism we recite
Would be a daily thing,
Did not ourselves the cubits warp
For fear to be a king
..................................................................................


We are all blind until we see
That in the human plan
Nothing is worth the making
That doesn't make the man
Why build these cities glorious
If man unbuilded goes
In vain we build the work
Unless the builder also grows.
वो देखो दौड़ के मंज़िल पे जा पहुँचा,
कौन कहता है के,'झूठ के पाँव ' नही होते.


मैं चीख चीख के सब को बताता रह गया,
फिर ना कहना,'दीवारों के भी कान' होते हैं.


सारे हाक़िम लपक कर उसके पाँव छू आए,
तब मैं जान गया,'क़ानून के हाथ' लंबे हैं

Thursday, February 19, 2009

The Trillion Dollar Question : Who will be hoisting the Tricolour this I-Day from the Red Fort?

The mother of all battles- The 15th General Elections in India to determine the power to be for next five year are now less than 10 days away and in 40 days time we will be knowing who will be having the above mentioned honour.

Its early April and the picture is not very clear this time round.

Although a lot of names have popped up for the Prime Ministership ,in fact every leader whose party can win a mere 10 Lok Sabha seats has forwarded his/her name,I see only three real contenders ,with 95% chances that eventually one among them will be the PM.

Situation 1 :The UPA bags 230+ seats [counting SP,RJD & LJP as apart of UPA]

PM:Manmohan Singh
In this scenario, it will not be difficult for UPA to add more people to coalition and muster the required 272 figure to form the government
without any support from Left.Then,the official candidate of UPA- Manmohan Singh will become the PM.


Situation 2: UPA gets ~200 seats but can cross 250 with support from Left
PM:Pranab Mukherjee
This situation may ultimately honour the man who has been long standing in the queue and more importantly has been a desrerving candidate at the same time - Pranab Mukherjee.


Now, Left will never support BJP/NDA.
Also, as far as alliance with Congress is concerned,they have already made it clear that they will not be a part of Congress-led govt. but they are open to the idea of a govt. with outside support from Congress.

But as Left has always done, I expect that this time also, they will eventually back a Congress candidate/be a part of Congress-led govt.
This is where the real dilemma for Left starts.After the
honeymoon being over over N-deal ,they cannot support the candidature of Manmohan Singh.To Left, the image is still of a humble Manmohan turning hostile and going ahead with the execution of N-deal.


Now, Left leaders are enjoying a very good rapport with Mukherjee over the years and this proposal is already doing rounds in WB. Who knows then, Pranab might ultimately get what Madam denied to the most deserving one in Congress back in 2004.




3)Situation 3:NDA gets 200+ seats

This situation will yield the most enterprising deal.I guess that in this situation ,we will have

PM:Lal Krishna Advani
Vice PM:Behen Mayawati

AIADMK,TRS will be among the parties to join NDA.


Right now, NDA doesn't seem to be in that position according to various opinion polls and analysis.But the key is that these analysis can never be valid in Indian Scenario.

Even if Congress saved Delhi and captured Rajasthan towards the end of last year,It lost 12 states on a trot prior to that.So taking any relief from last assembly polls in 2008 will be anything but foolish.

And ,yes, I agree with Amar Singh - there is clearly some understanding between BJP and BSP.

Now, some people think Mayawati will never settle for anything less than PM.But she is shrewd and its her calculated playings . Mayawati realizes that its time to make noises so that she can atleast be Vice PM .If she succeeds in that ,her chances of becoming the next PM rises exponentially.

But its really difficult for NDA to get 200 seats on its own.Same for BJP,it looks like that it will not cross 150 seats.All eyes should now be glued to UP where Varun issue has started polarisation among Hindu.How much BJP is able to make out of it will matter a lot.If even it translates to 20+ seats in UP,BJP can cross 150 seats .


In men whom men condemn as ill
I find so much of goodness still,
In men whom men pronounce divine
I find so much of sin and blot,
I do not dare to draw a line
Between the two, where God has not.




Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Oscar Trivia

1.The shortest performance ever to win a lead acting Oscar is Anthony Hopkins' performance as Hannibal Lecter, with about 16–17 minutes of screen time, in The Silence of the Lambs (1991). Hopkins won the Best Actor Award for his role.

2.George Bernard Shaw is the only person to have been awarded both an Oscar (Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for Pygmalion in 1938) and a Nobel Prize (the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1925).

3.The film which received the most Oscars without winning Best Picture is Cabaret with 8 awards in 1972. Although the film was nominated for Best Picture, it lost to The Godfather.

4.Kate Winslet holds the record for the youngest person ever to have been nominated 6 times for an Oscar.

5.Sophia Loren, The Great Roberto Benigni, Robert DeNiro, Benicio del Toro and Marion Cotillard are the only five actors to win Oscars for performing in a language other than English. In Italian, Loren won for Two Women, Benigni for Life is Beautiful, and DeNiro for The Godfather Part II. In Spanish, Benicio del Toro won for Traffic. And in French, Cotillard won for La Vie en Rose.

6.Ben Kingsley (Gandhi, 1982) is the only male actor to receive Oscar on debut.

7.The highest number of Academy Awards won by any film is 11. Three films have achieved this:


8.Three films have received the so-called Big Five Academy Awards (best picture, director, actor, actress, and writing):
9.Tom Hanks (Philadelphia, 1993 and Forrest Gump, 1994) is one of the two male actors to win consecutive Oscars .


Souce: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Academy_Award_records

Thursday, January 29, 2009

Quotes

A1. If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.
-Henry David Thoreau

A2. Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.
-Carl Sagan


1.If you don't stand for something,you will fall for everything.

2.One can never consent to creep when one feels an impulse to soar

3.You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.

4.My grandfather once told me that there were two kinds of people: those who do the work and those who take the credit. He told me to try to be in the first group; there was much less competition.
-Indira Gandhi

5.To avoid criticism do nothing, say nothing, be nothing.
-Elbert Hubbard

6.What does not kill me makes me stronger.

7.If you can dream it, you can do it.
-Walt Disney

8.We are so vain that we even care for the opinion of those we don't care for.
-Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach

9.Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored

10.When did I realize I was God? Well, I was praying and I suddenly realized I was talking to myself.

11.Experience is not what happens to a man; it is what a man does with what happens to him.
-Adolf Huxley

12.Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see.

13.A successful man is one who can earn more money than his wife can possibly spend. A successful woman is one who can find that man.

14.A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.

15.About all you can do in life is be who you are. Some people will love you for you. Most will love you for what you can do for them, and some won't like you at all.
-Rita Mae Brown

16.I can't give you a sure-fire formula for success, but I can give you a formula for failure: try to please everybody all the time.
-Herbert Bayard Swope

17.To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.
-Oscar Wilde

18.Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.
-Mark Twain

19.Let us so live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.
-Mark Twain

20.I never knew what real happiness was until I got married, and by then it was too late.
-Max Kaufman

21.The important thing is not to stop questioning.
-Albert Einstein

22.Life isn't worth living, unless it is lived for someone else.
-Albert Einstein

23.I dread success. To have succeeded is to have finished one's business on earth, like the male spider, who is killed by the female the moment he has succeeded in his courtship. I like a state of continual becoming, with a goal in front and not behind.
-George Bernard Shaw

24.Bachelors should be heavily taxed. It is not fair that some men should be happier than others.
-Oscar Wilde

25.If you want to make God laugh, tell him your future plans.
-Woody Allen

26.I don't want to achieve immortality through my work... I want to achieve it through not dying.
-Woody Allen

27.If something goes wrong, blame the guy who can't speak English.
-Homer Simpson

28.If you really want something in life you have to work for it. Now quiet, they're about to announce the lottery numbers.
-Homer Simpson

29.I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.
-Galileo Galilei

All these quotes have been taken from the most wonderful site of its kind;
If you want to know authors or find more interesting quotes ,you can visit http://quotes4all.net/.

Saturday, January 24, 2009

What Can Be The Height Of Bad Luck?

Swami Sarvotamananda was delivering a lecture to the gathering. In course of the lecture, he was many a times addressed as Shreesh by his colleauge.

During the discussions, I had a chance of asking him a question too.

After the end of the lecture,we moved out for a cup
of tea. Robin also had a question for him.So,we went to Swamijee again .

We left finally after having our doubts clarified. But Shukla still had some questions after the spiritual session,so I started narrating a story about a similar IIT PhD ,
Shreesh Jadhav-the guy with whose inspiring story I started my blog with ,to Shukla and that was only when Robin told me that Swamijee only is Shreesh Jadhav.

I reacted late and after walking a few meters only,I realized that here he was-one of the heroes of my life and one among the very few alive. I decided to go back and meet him again.On my way back to LTC, a car passed by me from the opposite direction.

So,gone was the hero with whom this blog was started.

I always dreamt of going back to Kolkata and meeting Shreesh Maharaj( Click here ).
And here he was....came down to Pilani from Kolkata.

The consolation, though, is that I met him in person and spoke to him.


Just 4 hours back,while watching a horror movie,Anshul was saying in reference to a scene that in these kind of panicky situations our body's biological mechanisms are 10 times the normal and hence the performance 1 by 10 times the normal. I contradicted saying it was the opposite.That, this was what separated humans from myriad other form of lives/races-Their ability to deliver when the very existence is at stake or when the situations are very demanding. While delivering this Gyaan, not to say, I was feeling proud to belong to the race too. :)

And here was I, after knowing that Swamijee is a B.E.,M.E. and PhD from IITK and the guy sitting next to him calling him Sheeresh many a times, unable to figure out or rather say envisage that he only is Shreesh Jadhav.

I hope thats the Height of BAD LUCK.

Or, maybe its not. The pinnacle would have been had I missed the lecture in the first place. :)

Lekin , what has become usual of late, Ab Dard Nahi Hota- I can't feel ma nervous system Keyser.....

Friday, November 28, 2008

Best One-Liners I Have Come Across

1. 62.15% of all statistics are meaningless.

2. May be this world is another planet's hell.

3.
I was so poor growing up if I wasn't a boy, I'd have had nothing to play with.

4.
I remember the time that I was kidnapped and they sent a piece of my finger to my father. He said he wanted more proof.

5. Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning.

6.
Better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than to open it and remove all the doubts.

7. Don't take life too seriously; you'll never get out of it alive.

8.
First the doctor told me the good news: I was going to have a disease named after me.

9.
Life is a sexually transmitted disease and the mortality rate is one hundred percent.

10.
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing.

11.
Its a waste to argue with fools; first they bring you down to their level and then beat you by their experience.

12.
We must believe in luck. For how else can we explain the success of those we don't like.

13.
Be nice to people on your way up because you'll meet them on your way down.

14.
The difference between fiction and reality is that fiction has to make sense.