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” 

Love to visit Iraq and Turkey again

There are many places that I would like to visit and explore the local sites but then the IndiSpire topic was about #TimetoRevisit and two countries fall under this category one being Iraq and other being Turkey. Brief recount of my earlier visit and why I would like to go back to those countries is under

Iraq was the first foreign destination at the age of 25 when I took up a job there and I was in this beautiful country for over 2 years. Within this country you had the historical place called Mesopotamia a region between the two biblical rivers Tigris and Euphrates that was also known as the Cradle of Civilization for it was here that mankind started to read, write, create laws and live in cities under an organized government. In addition to Mesopotamia, Babylon with hanging gardens of Babylon one of the seven wonders of ancient world, Mythical Garden of Eden are also there. With so much overdose of medieval history linked with this country I was quite thrilled to be there for I could explore the place to my hearts fill.

Artistic Depiction of Hanging Gardens Courtesy Google

During these two years I have traveled the length and breadth of the country to see the marvels of the ancient country and I have seen remains of Babylon city that had paved roads, mud houses exposed by excavations in those areas, the reconstructed blue tiled Ishtar Gate that was on the northern entrance to Babylon city but then unfortunately we have no photographic records of these as those days we did not have a camera with us; On weekends I have traveled to Mosul, Erbil, Habbaniya, Hillah, Samarra, Karbala and lot more places but then due to the ongoing war between Iraq and Iran there were quite a few restrictions to travel and take photos so in my two years of stay in Iraq I have not documented those beautiful places and this is the reason I would revisit Iraq and explore the country and also take images of the glorious ancient places. #TimetoRevisit (This again is not a possibility now with so much violence happening in that country).

Hagah Sofia Istanbul . Image taken by me

The second country I would like to revisit is Turkey, which like Iraq has so many ancient cultures and places to see and enjoy. In the year 2011 I had to visit Istanbul, Turkey on a official trip and after having 5 days of continuous meeting our host had arranged for half a day sightseeing tour of Istanbul (European side) and in that short span of 4-5 hours we visited the Blue Mosque, Hagah Sofia and Topkafi palace, Basilica Cistern and the Grand Bazaar. You can read my earlier blog about Turkey here. #TimetoRevisit Turkey for the country has lot more places to explored and enjoyed.

This blog is written for IndiSpire idea of the week posted by fellow blogger Anita 

Ripped Jeans

Courtesy Google Images

Recently I watching television and in one of the Bollywood function I saw the stars both men and women wearing ripped and tattered blue denim jeans pants and shirts and this was their fashion statement. I still remember that ripped jeans pants was quite a rage during late 80’s because Kurt Cobain(Nirvana) used to wear these. But then it dropped out of fashion after few years and has resurfaced now with a bang.

Blue denim jeans has been my favorite wear right from the time I started going to college way back in 1974 as they were quite rugged and fashionable as well when worn with matching shirts even those days when jeans were frowned upon by our elders. The more you wear the jeans it used to fade irregularly and more it fades it was considered fashionable. The markets came up with an idea to manufacturing new jeans using stone wash/ acid wash, sand blasting so to fade new jeans to give an appearance of being used over long period by the wearer.

Courtesy Google Images

I can still hear my mother scolding me not to wear the faded, torn and tattered jeans for she used to say it makes me look like a beggar and we used to discard the jeans when the ripping at the knee became too big or if it was not possible to stitch a funky badge over the tear or sometimes we used to convert it to shorts. Seeing the current trend in the market where a tattered and ripped jeans cost lot more than a normal pair and it does makes me wonder as to why we all discarded the jeans then J

Stars and well known personalities from Hollywood and Music industry come up with such crazy ideas of fashion and immediately everyone laps it up including the stars from our country. I have had trouble standing and wearing the naturally ripped jeans for my toes used to go and get stuck at the tear and at time make the tear bigger so I keep wondering how does stars wear the ripped and tattered jeans …possibly they would wear these only once and discard it. Just a thought!!!

The latest 2017 fashion trend in men’s clothing that was unveiled in USA this year was Homeless inspired fashion dress or the street people and this fashion show was mired in various controversies. God knows when the leaf/ loin cloth is going to return as fashion for the trend seems to going back in times.

Experiences at Baghdad in 1980's

Baghdad was one of the most modern cities in the Middle East late 70”s and 80’s with lot of infrastructure projects taking place with the advent of increase in petrol price in the world as Iraq was the largest exporter of oil then. It is in one of the infrastructure project for Amanat Al Asima (Municipality of Baghdad) which was building of 2000 housing units and service buildings that was awarded to an Indian company called Makers Development Services Pvt Ltd.  I had joined the company as a Junior Engineer Electrical and was among the first few engineers who had left India in first week of April 1981 to set up the mobilization works on the ground. Those days on account of the war with Iran there were no direct flights hence had to land at Kuwait city and then proceed by land and you can read about it in my earlier post Carnivores-brahmin.

First few months we were busy with setting up of the camp, setting up prefab factory and other support building for the project and were getting ourselves ready to start the construction phase and  during the second month beginning we had an Israeli Air raid on Baghdad and you can read that in another post  Reminiscing of times at Baghdad. We used to venture out to local market at Al Baaya or go to a theatre there to watch Hindi movies at time (Hindi movies were quite popular among Iraqis) or to the Mall at Al Mansur in the evenings after working hours. Weekends 7-10 of us would pile on to a vehicle and drive down the country side or go to a lake called Razaza and you can read about it in my post Old Memories of Times in Iraq.

Till about 8 months into stay at Baghdad we had never ventured out in the night seeking the fabled nightlife of the city but arrival of a new engineer whose father was in Indian High Commission Baghdad changed it for he was aware of the hot spots of the city . We started going to night clubs and used to have fun with scores of dancers on the floor and female companions to give you company on your table…. What more did we young guys need then :P .One nightclub stood out those day and it was known as Moulin Rouge… yes the same name as the one in Paris but not a franchise and here they used to have similar can-can dance on the stage. This club used to charge us Iraqi Dinar 2 for entry and on table would give us a roasted chicken and a can of beer free. Scores of beautiful girls (Various nationalities..Ceylonese, Egyptians, Lebanese) would line up along the bar or on the sides and you could call them to your table for a drink. A drink that costs you 1dinar would be charged 10 dinar for the girls drink and she would not stay long on the table when she finishes her drink. This was first time we had been there and we never knew the cost of having those girls on the table and we all 7 freaked out there and finally we had to pay a hefty bill in the process. Next time onwards we were pretty judicious with our calling out for these bar girls.

Tried to get to know more about this nightclub on Google but no hits regarding various nightclubs of Baghdad of 1980’s at all except for passing statements that the city was renowned for the nightlife until 1994 when Saddam Hussein shut down all bars and nightclubs. There were few other nightclubs but their names have faded in my memories and am unable to recall them. I believe the nightclubs have opened up once again in Iraq but not much action in Baghdad because of moral policing however up north at Erbil the bars are flourishing without any fear of ISIS or moral policing.

PS: Most of what has been written are my personal experiences during my stay in the country from 1981 to 1983 and at that point of time the rule was we needed to spend 30% of our salary within Iraq and being flush with money during the war times was great. We have had great times as a group there and i always tell my relatives that my assignment there was just like my stay at engineering college... a carefree life it was. Hope you all enjoyed my recount. Thanks for passing by.

Gadgets affecting ones memory

Getting old is the way of nature but then the human mind is pretty sharp right until death unless of course the person is suffering from ailment that affects ones memory. To keep it sharp we need to exercise the brain regularly similar to going to a gym for maintaining good physique. But these days we have new gadgets to help us out and we hardly work out our brain as we have started depending on the devices for simple actions such as recalling a number or doing simple mathematics in our day to day lives and am sure you would agree with it.

Image Courtesy: Google Images

Off late when somebody asks me for a contact’s telephone number I immediately take out my mobile phone and scroll the contacts and give them the number. But this was not the case in good old days (35 years back) before the advent of the mobile devices; for I could remember over 100 telephone and recite them from my memory. Reason for this decline in memory is not due to your grey cells are dying .It is because  that we do not attempt to etch the numbers to the memory like we used to do it earlier days ,as now we have all grown too used to referring the mobile phone’s memory .

Image Courtesy: Google Images

Similarly simple additions, subtractions, multiplication and divisions were done in the mind good old days but now days I have noticed that most people would immediately take a calculator or mobile with that application for simple calculations instead of remembering the basic mathematics that they had studied in their school days. You can notice it quite prevalent in super markets and shops most cashiers use the calculators for working out the balance money to be given back even if the subtraction is a simple one. It is quite possible that they are paranoid of having to pay up from their salary in they make mistake when they calculate without use of devices.

This is just a random ramble of a bored mind and not advocating that gadgets of current times are bad only that I feel bad that the younger generation is too dependent of these gadgets that they can do it in their minds. My suggestion is that each one of you make attempt in memorizing few numbers of your loved ones so that any failures of the devices you depend on does not affect you in contacting them in the event of emergencies.

I sure would love to hear your thoughts about the same and your experiences of utilizing your grey cells J