SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE- REALITY TOKE OVER FROM THE FAIRY TALE

Rubina the young female star of Slumdog Millionaire has now to pass the night on the street after the hut she was living in with her parents was demolished.

LONGLIVETY IN INDIA - FEMALE LIFETIME

Around 55 of 1,000 girls born every year don't live beyond their first
birthday and 77 per 1,000 births don't live beyond the age of five.

While a girl born in India today is expected to live for 65 years, the average life expectancy of a male child stands at 63.

Similar is the case with Pakistan and Nepal. While the life expectancy of girls in Pakistan stands at 64 and 63 for boys, in Nepal, an average girl child is expected to live till she is 63 and a male child till the age of 62.

In comparison, girls born in Japan will on an average live till they are 86 and those born in China and Sri Lanka will live till they are 75.
The tiny nation of San Marino, which is surrounded by Italy, has the world's lowest child mortality and boasts the longest average lifespan for men anywhere, at 81 years.

This has been revealed by WHO's World Health Statistics 2009.

Globally, WHO recorded 9 million deaths of under five-year-olds in 2007, 28% lesser than the 12.5 million who died in 1990.

India too recorded a fall in infant mortality. While 84 girls per 1,000 population died in 1990 before they reached they reached the age of one year, the number fell to 68 in the year 2000. In case of male children, 82 deaths per 1,000 births in 1990 reduced to 66 deaths per 1,000 live births in 2000.

The under five mortality rate too has decreased in India. While 109 male children per 1,000 births died before their fifth birthday, it dropped to 86 in 2000 and 67 per 1,000 births now.

"The decline in the death toll of children under five can be achieved by scaling up interventions such as insecticide-treated mosquito nets for malaria and oral rehydration therapy for diarrhoea, increased access to vaccines and improved water and sanitation," said Dr Ties Boerma, director of WHO's department of health statistics and informatics.

According to the report, adolescent pregnancy rates remained high across the world. There were 48 births for every 1,000 women aged 15-19 years in 2006, a small decline from 51 per 1,000 in the year 2000.

An estimated 1.2 billion people are affected by neglected tropical diseases every year. In 2007, 546 million people were treated to prevent the parasitic disease lymphatic filariasis.

Out of every 100 deaths worldwide, 51 are due to non-communicable conditions 34 due to communicable, maternal or nutritional conditions and 14 due to injuries.

"Action needs to be taken now to implement preventive interventions, including reductions in tobacco use, overweight and obesity, and high blood pressure," the report said.

Child mortality is one of the millennium development goals adopted by UN member states, with the aim of cutting infant deaths by two-thirds between 1990 and 2015.

But that progress was still slow and sparse, especially in poor countries and in Africa.

In low income countries, $22 per capita goes to health care, compared to $4,012 in wealthy nations, according to WHO.

Pneumonia and diarrhoea kill 3.8 million infants every year, even though both conditions are treatable, WHO said.

Another development goal, maternity mortality, remains largely unchanged since 1990, with a global average death rate of 400 maternal deaths per 100,000 births a year, and more than double that rate in sub-Saharan Africa.

THE ULTIMATE TEST- WHO CAN FLY ?

The early selection of young parachutist recruts by the juvenile section of the Indian Air Force

VEG ART VII

REIKI MEDITATION

An Article from THE SPEAKING TREE IN TIMES OF INDIA

Contact:svn.mittal@gmail.com
THE SPEAKING TREE


Doing Meditation The Reiki Way



V N Mittal



Regular practice of the simple two-way technique of Reiki meditation can not only help you improve your focus and awaken you spiritually, but also can amplify your innate healing abilities to help you achieve holistic health
Maintaining a high level of life force energy, prana, is a prerequisite for holistic health, achieved through practice of various techniques that can generate balance between body and mind, such as yoga, Tai Chi, Quantum Touch, or Reiki, to name just a few. All of them employ one or the other form of meditation as an important component for treatment at the physical, mental and emotional levels.
The two-in-one Reiki meditation technique deftly combines the healing powers of both meditation and Reiki. The benefits accruing from them increase manifold as a consequence of synergy generated by blending them together. What keeps Reiki meditation apart from other meditation forms is its unique ability to strengthen the innate healing capability of the practitioner.
Mikao Usui revived the ancient art of tapping into the universal life force energy for healing known as Reiki. He was once asked by a pupil, "I have practised meditation for a number of years, why do i need to learn Reiki to help me learn to meditate?" Meditation is an integral part of Reiki. In his Reiki practice and teachings, Usui practised meditation as an important constituent. In fact, he often used Gassho (hands held in prayer position) meditation as a means to pass the ability to channel Reiki to the practitioner. Also, Osho Rajneesh who developed Osho Neo Reiki 20 years ago included powerful meditations for a faster healing.
After Usui, a number of forms of Reiki meditations have found their way in Japan and other countries. One of the simplest but effective forms involves the following steps:
1. Sit quietly with closed eyes in a Sukh Asana or upright in a chair, with both hands held in front of your chest in prayer ‘Gassho’ position and the soles of the feet joined together.
2. Connect to Reiki by simple intent or by drawing distant healing symbol.
3. Draw the power symbol with your hand in front of you and say it three times. Visualise white light emanating from your fingers.
4. Visualise the symbol in the third eye chakra and meditate on it.
5. Now allow the symbol to float up as a brilliant light above your crown. Return your awareness to the third eye chakra.
6. When finished, relax and release your all thoughts. You feel fully energised with the healing energy

For those who do not possess the ability to channel Reiki, the Gassho meditation can be performed in this way:
1. Hold your hands a little above the chest in prayer position in such a way that your exhaled breath can be felt at a point where the top of the middle fingers representing fire element meet the hands joined together.
2. Now focus your attention at that point and try to release stray thoughts by focusing at the point repeatedly. Do not try to chase stray thoughts. Return your focus to the point by pressing the two middle fingers against each other.
Practise Reiki meditation for 20 minutes a day or as long as you feel comfortable. Reiki meditation deftly combines the usual healing effects of simple meditation techniques with Reiki and works in more ways than one.
The writer is a Reiki Sensei based in Dehradun. E-mail: vn.mittal@ gmail.com

THE BRONZE GALLERY OF THE GOVERNEMENT MUSEUM - CHENNAI- EGMORE

The bronze gallery features has the finest collection of almost 700 bronzes from South India, mainly from the PALLAVA & CHOLA period (9th - 13th century). They have been saved and retrieved from temples and sites in the region There are many very expressive and impressive of Nataraja (SHIVA) performing the cosmic dance of creation. Other bronzes show Shiva and Parvati. But also Vishnu, Rama,Ramanraya, Sita and Ganesh are shown in differnt positions with their holistic attributes

STREETDOG'S COMPLAINT- FROM BRINDLE

Brindle
Woof! I’m Brindle, the street dog who adopted Bunnylady and Jugfellow some years ago. The reason i’m writing this is because Jugfellow is too upset to write his column himself. Why? Because, once again, some misguided residents of the National Media Centre, the cooperative housing society near Gurgaon where we live, have started off on the so-called ‘stray dog menace’. This happens with unfailing regularity, not just in the NMC but also in that macrocosm of the NMC that we call India. From Kochi to Kolkata, Bagdogra to Bangalore, someone or the other will bring up the stray dog menace, causing a whole lot of innocent, perfectly harmless street dogs to be rounded up and, more often than not, put to death in the most inhumane and cruel manner.
People never seem to understand that the Indian street dog (please don’t call us strays) are hardy, intelligent, affectionate creatures, often much more so that their pedigreed, imported counterparts, who have been viciously inbred by exploitative breeders. Street dogs have to be all these things in order to survive. Far from harming people, they are – when properly vaccinated against rabies and other diseases – man’s best pals, to coin a phrase. They act as excellent guards for the neighbourhood, alerting everyone to the intrusion of strangers by barking. Yet people keep on wanting to get rid of them. Not realising that nature abhors a vacuum and if you get rid of one lot of street dogs, another lot will inevitably take their place.
There is no such thing as a ‘stray dog menace’. There is only a ‘stray human menace’. Who is it that has strayed from the straight and narrow of God’s plan (and please don’t tell me that God is dog spelt backwards, because if i’ve heard that once i’ve heard it for the umpteenth time)?
Is it dogs, who live together amicably in the casteless, creedless democracy of doggydom, who have strayed? Or is it humans, with their caste conflicts and their religious wars, their whites and their blacks, their Hindus and Muslims and Sikhs and Christians, their Maoists and their monarchists, their Indias and their Pakistans, their terrorists and their victims, who are the real strays? And the real menace. Not only to each other, but to all of the rest of creation as well.
It wasn’t dogs who created 9/11, and 26/11, and al-Qaeda, and the Sri Lankan civil war, and the Taliban, and not one but two world wars. All these are human creations. And what wondrous creations. Can you imagine a dog creative enough to devise 65,000 nuclear warheads capable of killing every living creature on this planet a hundred times over? No. Only humans are creative enough to have done that. Though they have yet to prove themselves creative and clever enough to find a cure for the common cold. Or AIDS, or cancer, or a score of other killer diseases.
Humans have been too busy doing other things. Like polluting the planet and destroying its environment. The world’s forest cover has been thinned from 7.6 billion hectares in the pre-industrial age to 2.8 billion hectares. And that’s fast disappearing. Between 1700 and 1900, thanks to human activity, more than 20,000 species of plants, 593 species of birds, over 400 species of animals and 209 species of amphibians became extinct. Today, humans wipe out one species every day on an average. Tell me about the ‘stray dog menace’.
Unlike humans, who think the universe and everything in it was created only for their benefit to do with as they will, we dogs believe in the co-fraternity of all living things. And that includes cats. Cats? Oh, lor, what have Bunnylady and Jugfellow done? They’ve let Himal into the place. And Himal is a cat! Who insists on literally rubbing shoulders with me. Yuck. So, while there’s no such thing as a stray dog menace, if you were to talk about a stray cat menace, you might get me to agree. Or maybe not. For the basic dharma that doggydom teaches is to live and let live. Which means cats too. Where’s that damn Himal gone to…?

Web Linkshttp://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/jugglebandhi/
Contactsjug.suraiya@timesgroup.com

Printed without the permission of Jug Surai... I admire a lot and would like to recommend his books like JUGGLING ACT as compensation

CATOLIC CHENNAI

According to the legend Sant Thomas ( the doubting Thomas), came to South India via Cranganore in AD 52 and spent the next 12 years along the Malabar coast converting the local population. He gradually moved eastwards and finaly settled in Mylapore (is nowadays the old city-centre of Chennai. He spent the last years of his live in a cave on a small hill (on top is nowadays a chappel)from which he would walk each day to the beach. It is said that one day preaching on the Mount of Saint Thomas , he was killed by means of a lance. His body was brought to San Thome, where he was burried in nthe small crypt he had build. This is today the Basilica of San Thome (see pictures). The Portuguese colonized Mylapore in the early 16 the century , lured by the 13 the century Venetian traveller Marco Polo who had visited the earlier Nestorian chapel.The saint holds a special place in the hearts of the Indians and was decreed the Apostle of India in 1972

INDIAN SLEEPING ATTIDUTES & SOME GENERAL CONCERNS

Most homes in India have cots or beds but a sizable proportion do not have a mattress, as the khatiya (rope cot = just the frame of a bed and some belts in between.
According to the recently released INDICUS CONSUMER HANDBOOK a majority of Indians sleep on the floor as the average home area is small ND THERE IS NOT MUCH SPACE FOR ADDITIONAL FURNITURE. Consequently the beds are put for alternative uses, sometimes just used as sofas sometimes as communication centre at family assemblies.

Data collected from various governmental surveys shows that
 86 % of Indian homes have cots or beds
 75 % of the urban homes have a mattress to sleep on.

Contractor to the projected boom, most homes at the country side have no telephone connection and only 36 % of urban homes posses a mobile phone.

And despite the entry of the NANO, the humble bicycle still continiu to be the preferred mode of transportation. ONLY 3 % of Indians have a car!!!

But all this is not a problem at all since Indians are sexualy very active and fertile it is their goal to populate the overall world with small Indians ... London is already taken, the others will come soon. And don't forget once Indian in the next 10 generations you will find merits in the Indian newspapers even if in the mean time you are indian- irish- scottish- polish spanian.... India will welcome you as a king as soon as you might have been able to hit a ball in public, thrown by some proffesional ball thrower ( they call it cricket)

INDIA AT HIS BEST- SODEMIAN LAWS AND GAY MARRIAGES

Based on Mansi Choksi | TNN Article in TIMES OF INDIA of today ( without permission, I deeply regret)


Last week, Durban-based sales advisor Joe Singh and his partner Wesley Nolan solemnized their relationship at a ceremony by an Hindu priest. In the Singh living room, Wesley tied a necklace with a Ganesha pendant around Joe’s neck. The couple, now honeymooning in Mauritius, chose the Ganesha instead of garlands because both of them are “staunch Hindus’’ and wanted the Elephant God to “ward off evil and remove obstacles from their path’’.
The grooms had sent out shimmering wedding invitations weeks in advance, had hand-embroidered shervanis shipped all the way from India, and took their vows before a havan or sacred fire. They spent 18 months preparing for their big day and Joe’s mother Rita Govender said the family had been extraordinarily supportive.

A year ago, a Mumbai based IT professional married his white boyfriend of five years in a boisterous ceremony in Seattle. They too had the shervanis and havan. Roughly 450 people attended, many of them uncles and aunts from Mumbai. The boy’s parents initially had reservations about making their son’s sexuality public. “But by the end of it, his mother was in mother-in-law mode,’’ says one of the guests.

These happy stories may sound unbelievable given the many accounts of social hostility to gay people. But the fact is that same-sex marriage ceremonies have been performed in Indian households, rich and poor, and in cities and small towns alike. The nuptials may not have legal validity but the ritual is remarkable in a country where homosexuality is still considered a criminal act and punishable by up to 10 years in the clink. Ironically, the police cannot bust a same sex marriage because a ceremony cannot prove homosexuality as defined by Section 377 of the IPC.
An activist from Gay Bombay confirms that there are reports of unions every week, be they a lesbian couple in Punjab or Kerala or gay men in Gujarat or Delhi. Ashok Row Kavi, who opened the closet in India, says he knows several gay couples who tied the knot. “There’s one big plus-point about Hindu priests,’’ says Kavi with a straight face. “They’ll forget about everything if you show them a few bucks.’’

While the ‘havan’ nuptials may not have legal standing, the ritual is remarkable in a country where homosexuality is still considered a criminal act punishable by up to 10 years’ in the clink. Ironically, the police cannot bust a same-sex marriage because a ceremony cannot prove homosexuality as defined by Section 377.

Legal status
Homosexual relations are legally still a crime in India under an old British era statute dating from 1860 called Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code which criminalises 'carnal intercourse against the order of nature.' The vague nature of the legislation has resulted in it being used against a wide range sexual behaviour like oral sex (heterosexual and homosexual), sodomy, bestiality, etc. The punishment ranges from ten years to lifelong imprisonment.
The relevant section reads:
Whoever voluntarily has carnal intercourse against the order of nature with any man, woman or animal, shall be punished with imprisonment for life, or with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to ten years, and shall also be liable to fine.[32]

None of the major Indian political parties have endorsed gay rights concerns into their official party manifesto or platform.



A Mumbai activist from Gay Bombay confirms that there are reports of marriages every week, whether it is a lesbian couple in Punjab or Kerala or gay men in Gujarat or Delhi. Ashok Row Kavi, who pioneered the opening of the closet in India, says he knows several couples who have tied the knot. “There’s one big plus-point about Hindu priests,” says Kavi with a straight face. “They’ll forget about everything if you show them a few bucks.”

The marriage can be solemnized but the sodomanian act as to be proved, the bestialities maybe obvious but no police man is able to observe.

Same-sex marriage ceremonies are not an entirely new phenomenon, although they’ve largely stayed under the radar.
Arvind and Ashok were married in an Indian ceremony complete with ‘dhotis’ and ‘agni’. “Ashok and I are very sentimental people; we thought it was a great idea,” he says. It was Arvind’s mother, who had once rejected his sexuality, who came up with the idea. “When my family realised that what I had with Ashok was not ‘timepass’, they accepted us. He is very special to my family.”
Activists say that the same-sex marriage movement has emerged independent of the other issues in the gay rights movement. Most gay activists in India weren’t really pushing for marriage because they believed that homophobia and HIV were more pressing battles. Ashok Row Kavi is one of the more vociferous opponents of marriage, which he calls an “oppressive heterosexual institution”. Yet, say activists, it’s a need that can’t be wished away. “It’s the number one question we get from guys in the gay community: How can I find a man to marry?” says a Gay Bombay activist.