Holy Cow - it's a UFO

First it was the cows that were being sucked up from the farms and now the missiles are being misfired - apparently because of the UFOs. What's with CNN telecasting such banal stories from the US? Have they run out of serious subjects? Here's Larry King sitting along with 3-4 authors of books on UFOs and alien abductions. An angry dude pops in from time to time claiming that "he was right there when it happened". Reminds me of that mad scientist character from "The Independence Day".

Is this an attempt to divert the general populace's attention from the soaring prices of oil and the nosediving economic scenario? Or is it that the aliens are visiting earth because they have some retirement plans in mind for Mr. Bush after November? :-)

How I wish I was back in the classroom of the professor who taught the Merger and Acquisition class in my B school :-( I fought a losing battle against drooping eyelids all through that semester – in his post-lunch classes. And this despite the fact that his sessions were always interesting!

But the reason I am thinking of his classes now is because I am wondering how lively the discussions must be these days in that class. Apart from the regular case studies I am sure the students must be asking him a lot of questions on all the interesting M&A sagas happening in the corporate world right now – Essar and Esmark, RComm and MTN and Bharati (vs RIL?), Ranbaxy and Daichi, Sun and Taro and of course Yahoo and Microsoft. Wish I had an invisibility cloak like Harry P so I could creep back in that class :-)

There is another beautiful story about happiness. When Brahma made humans the Gods thought that humans were very powerful and could be a threat to the kingdom of heaven in future. Hence they decided to hide their happiness so that the constant search for happiness would keep the humans away from the thought of conquering the heavens. But where could the happiness be hidden such that the humans would find it difficult to locate it?

Narada solved the problem by suggesting that the happiness should be hidden in the human mind because that is where humans are least likely to look for it. Since then all of us have been chasing happiness though it resides right within us.

There is another story of a beggar who used to sit at the same spot year after year begging from the passers-by. One day he died there. When the people took to cleaning the site after removing his dead body they found a lot of gold buried under the ground. So the beggar was sitting on a pot of gold and yet kept begging all through his life never realizing it.

Aren’t we all like this – going through life looking out and chasing that rainbow over the horizon as we go on ignoring the little butterflies of happiness that are all around us?

Faith can move mountains

All of us have heard that faith can move mountains. I came across a beautiful story about faith the other day in the Economic Times (Cosmic Uplink section).

There was once a religious man who was very well known for his knowledge. He had a cottage on one bank of a river while all his household supplies used to be brought over from the other bank. One milkmaid used to bring his daily quota of milk.

One day she was late. The man was very angry with her because her delay resulted in the delay of his daily pooja. So he scolded her. She replied that the water level in the river was high and no one was plying the boats so she was stuck. Thereupon he remarked that she should have walked on water to perform her duty. The maid kept quiet but wasn’t late again.

A couple of days later it rained heavily and the man heard that the river was overflowing. Still, the maid came on time. He was surprised at this and questioned her. She simply said that as told by him she had walked on water. He found it hard to believe so he took her back to the riverbank and asked her to show it to him. The maid really walked on water.

The man was astonished. ‘If this simple maid can achieve this, I can do it too’ he thought. But just as he stepped on water he fell.

The essence of the story is that it isn’t important who your teacher is - your faith is what counts.

Oh and BTW, there is a case mentioned by Archer of a Patel family (parents and sons) who were in jail for beating up their daughter who had taken to earning her living as a prostitute. And Archer mentions that they were a Sikh family. I don't know about you but at least I haven't heard of any Patel who is a Sikh :-)

There was a haunting quote in Archer's last prison diary - by Oscar Wilde

I never saw a man who looked
With such a wistful eye
Upon that little tent of blue
Which prisoners call the sky

We take freedom for granted, don't we?

It's raining Jeffrey Archer for me. After finishing his last prison diary I have brought home his "Matter of Honour". Haven't read much of it yet so will post about it in a day or two.

I almost forgot to mention that before reading Archer's last prison diary, I had got Joseph Heller's Catch-22. Don't know why, but I could not progress beyond the first 2 chapters. :-(

After reading 2 volumes of Jeffrey Archer’s Prison diaries I wasn’t sure if I wanted to go for the third (and the last) one. How different could that one be from the other two? But I wanted to complete the trilogy and if there were one or two interesting things in the last volume why not try it? So I am reading it now.

As expected, there isn’t anything drastically different – except for the fact that since he is in a D-cat prison he is not locked up all the time – in these pages. But now and then there are a few touching stories and amusing anecdotes (like that of a fellow prisoner - who is in for driving without license - whose high-caste Indian girl friend has to choose her would-be husband from 3 guys who come to England over one weekend from India!)

Then there is this prisoner who is sent on a town visit for the first time in over 31 years and finds the changes bewildering. In this day and age when you find a city changed noticeably even if you were away just for a year, I can’t imagine the shock the guy must have felt.

There is a reference to a book “The Driving Bell and the Butterfly” by the late Jean Dominique Bauby that Mr. Archer read while in prison. He mentions that the author of the book was left paralyzed and speechless after a massive stroke. However, he mastered a letter code with the one eyelid that he could still move and dictated a book with it. I am going to find out more about this book.

Oh and BTW, all you Sachin Tendulkar fans, your idol also finds mention in this book. His presence at the crease was apparently what put the smile back on the face of one distraught prisoner who was also a cricket fan!