Burning Paan

Traditionally in South India betel leaves, areca nut, coconut, turmeric and flowers are given to females on most auspicious occasion and is known as tambulam During weddings this given to both males and females in decorative carry bags when the guests leave the marriage hall. Chewing the combination of betel leaves, areca nut and lime (Chunna) is supposed to help digestion after heavy meals and you can see in most South Indian weddings a plate with these ingredients are place outside the dining hall for the guest. This combination is generally chewed and swallowed.

In North India it is also consumed and is known as Paan and various combinations are eaten. Saada paan that just has betel leaves, areca nut and lime, Meetha paan with additional ingredients such as sweetener and so forth, or with tobacco. Normally the paan with tobacco is chewed and then spat out… you can see splotches of red markings on roads, walls, railway platforms etc in most Indian cities on account of these.  Each of these paan shops try to bring out unique paans with assorted ingredients so as to catch fancy of the consumer and one such paan is the burning Paan. I came across this video about this paan and am sharing this with you all. It is all in the taste of the consumer and I find it quite surprising that such things happen in spite of the health hazards. Enjoy the Burning Paan :)

Adaptation of a book into screenplay

#Screenadaptation

I have always have been an avid reader right from my younger days and have seen quite a few Hollywood movies based on those books. Most movies have been extremely well adapted from the book and as I had read them it was a pleasure to watch the scene unfold in visuals before my eyes. Couple of names of these books crop up in my mind as I write this blog for Indispire as examples

Guns of Navarone a fiction written by Alistair Maclean : A second world war story where a small team of soldiers are inserted behind German occupied Greece to blow up guns that guard the coast so that allied invasion can take place.I read this book long before I saw this movie and re-read the same after seeing the movie . The movie did do justice to the story told in the book.

The Day of the Jackal a thriller written by Frederick Forsyth a story of an assassin who has been contracted by dissent French paramilitary force OAS to kill the then French President Charles de Gaulle . Truly a gripping movie even if you have not read the book. Again the adaption to screenplay is faultless.

Well there are others such as Where Eagles Dare, Puppet on a chain, Way to Dusty death, Angels& Demons, Da Vinci Code, Exodus, The Godfather, Absolute Power, The Count of Monte Cristo, Sherlock Holmes, Bourne Series and lot more that I have read and seen too. As usual in Hollywood the adaptation of the books into screenplay is well done with little changes unlike in Indian film industry where the screenplay is tweaked to cater to our local population thereby changing the entire meaning of the story as written.

Do you believe in Ghosts and do they exists

A lively discussion at home regarding the final rites as per Hindu culture to be done in case of death of the family member and the reason given was that these rituals are conducted so that the soul of the departed is appeased and proceed to heaven. In other words if no rituals are done, then the soul is left wandering as a ghost on this earth forever. Does this mean the persons of other religions who do not have any specific rituals when they die remain in this universe in form of a ghost???

If you do believe in ghosts/ spirits you are not alone in this world since millions of people do believe in them, in terms of percentages of the population it could be in the regions of 30-40% which is pretty high considering the fact that there has been no scientific evidence of the spirit or the ghost. Now why do people believe in them in spite of no proofs is that our fear of our own mortality plays an important role in belief in ghosts. Most of us desperately want to believe in life after death – and the idea of ghosts seems to offer support for such an idea. The belief offers many people comfort — who doesn't want to believe that our beloved but deceased family members aren't looking out for us, or with us in our times of need?

Right from medieval times stories of ghosts or spirits have enthralled and also frightened people in this world. Medicine men or the Oracles have swayed the thoughts & decisions of many Tribal chiefs and Kings by their actions or statements of talking with spirits and deciding the events that were to unfold. They were the most powerful personalities of the times revered even by the kings and people had blind faith in them and their bidding.

Even I used to believe and fantasize about the ghost while I was young and one particular story comes to my mind where it is said that if you get a strand of hair of a woman ghost and hide it in your body beneath your skin then you will get all that you aspire in this materialistic world. Thinking about the way I used to be looking for that strand of hair during my childhood does bring about a smile on my face even today.

The thoughts of ghost may arise as the result of honest misinterpretation of naturally occurring phenomena (for example, seeing faces and figures in the shadows or hearing noises made by animals in the night), or common but frightening anomalous experiences. An example of the latter would be sleep paralysis episodes that can occur between sleep and wakefulness. During such episodes, the sufferer is temporarily paralyzed and may experience a strong sense of presence and a variety of bizarre hallucinations. Although it can be terrifying, sleep paralysis is essentially harmless and I have written about this in a blog titled Amaku Pishsasi (Crushing ghost) few years back. I also wrote of a person hallucinating after excessive drinking while on night duty at Iraq and the blog was titled Neither here nor there..floatingin air.

Well friends many more pages of incidents by people can be written and there would be no end to this blog and so I rest my views here. I am not an believer of ghost or spirit now that i am grown up and added to it the fact that there is no scientific proof of its existence. I do not berate people who believe in them and I would surely like to know your experiences if any of paranormal activities that you have come across or some interesting stories. Please post your comments

Bottoms Up

Well it is not the call to drink up your booze in one go or the capitalizing of the boat but the phrase that popped up in my mind when i saw couple of mallard ducks with their heads under water looking for their food.

This was captured at a water body in Chennai early this year.

Expectations -You can't always get what you want

Mankind is driven by their expectations and for most there is no end it thereby leading a feeling of regret and frustrations throughout their lives and few take extreme steps to escape it. We keep reading almost daily about suicides that takes place due to the stress of not able to achieve their expectations or terrorist attacks and so forth. These expectations can be materialistic, financial emotional, political and so forth and it is normally stems out of the society we live in.  

Now please do not get me wrong that I am advocating that there should be no expectations and goals in one’s life for without any of those there is no life at all. I am only saying that it is natural to a person to keeping increasing their expectations once they have achieved their initial targets. The flames of these expectations are stoked by yourself, your partner or parents in individual’s life and at times it becomes overbearing and unreasonable. We all seem to be in competition with our siblings, neighbors, relatives or for the unknown person elsewhere who is much higher to your present condition. A simple example all of you may agree is that your spouse or parents would want you have better things than that of your neighbor or a known relative like a bigger house, high end model car as the guy who lives down the road or have more properties and money compared to your sibling and so forth. There is hardly any contentment in what you are achieving.

Some do achieve their expectations be it materialistic, financial, and emotional but at a steep cost to oneself and this is never discussed by those who aspire for similar success, for we live in a hypocritical society where the focus of people is in only in the success of the person not failures or pains of that person. If only one is contented with what they have in their lives then they surely would be happy and in peace with their existence. 

Just a random rant that i dreamt last night .On this note I leave an old  song by Rolling stone “you don't always get what you want”