A wise man's letter to his son

This one was forwarded to me and I am glad that it was :-)

Following is a letter to his son from a renowned Hong Kong TV broadcaster/Child Psychologist. The words are actually applicable to all of us, young or old, children or parents! This applies to daughters too. All parents can use this in their teachings to their children.

Dear son,

I am writing this to you because of 3 reasons

1. Life, fortune and mishaps are unpredictable; nobody knows how long he lives. Some words are better said early.

2. I am your father, and if I don't tell you these, no one else will.

3. What is written is my own personal bitter experiences that perhaps could save you a lot of unnecessary heartaches.

Remember the following as you go through life

1. Do not bear grudge towards those who are not good to you. No one has the responsibility of treating you well, except your mother and I. To those who are good to you, you have to treasure it and be thankful, and ALSO you have to be cautious, because, everyone has a motive for every move. When a person is good to you, it does not mean he really likes you. You have to be careful, don't hastily regard him as a real friend.

2. No one is indispensable, nothing in the world that you must possess. Once you understand this idea, it would be easier for you to go through life when people around you don't want you anymore, or when you lose what/who you love most.

3. Life is short. When you waste your life today, tomorrow you would find that life is leaving you. The earlier you treasure your life, the better you enjoy life.

4. Love is but a transient feeling, and this feeling would fade with time and with one's mood. If your so called loved one leaves you, be patient, time will wash away your aches and sadness. Don't over exaggerate the beauty and sweetness of love, and don't over exaggerate the sadness of falling out of love.

5. A lot of successful people did not receive a good education, that does not mean that you can be successful by not studying hard! Whatever knowledge you gain is your weapon in life. One can go from rags to riches, but one has to start from some rags!

6. I do not expect you to financially support me when I am old, neither would I financially support your whole life. My responsibility as a supporter ends when you are grown up. After that, you decide whether you want to travel in a public transport or in your limousine, whether rich or poor.

7. You honor your words, but don't expect others to be so. You can be good to people, but don't expect people to be good to you. If you don't understand this, you would end up with unnecessary troubles.

8. I have bought lotteries for umpteen years, but I never strike any prize. That shows if you want to be rich, you have to work hard! There is no free lunch!

9. No matter how much time I have with you, let's treasure the time we have together. We do not know if we would meet again in our next life.

Love,
Your Dad.

चांद का क्या कसूर अगर रात बेवफा निकली
कुछ पल ठहरी फिर चल निकली
उनसे क्या कहे वो तो सच्चे थे
शायद हमारी तकदीर ही हमसे खफा निकली

While browsing Nehru Planetarium's site, I came across an interesting article about Astrology. No, I didn't mean Astronomy. I mean Astrology. Here it is.

Private Down Under - James Patterson

A prominent businessman's son staggers into a bash - both his eyes gouged out - and breathes his last. A broker (need I say wealthy?) has mysteriously disappeared and his wife is afraid to go the cops because she isn't sure what her husband does is completely legal. A famous rock star is worried that his manager is doing all he can to bump him off so he can join the club of musicians who died when they were 27. The wife of a wealthy citizen is found brutally murdered a few distance away from her home - stabbed in the back multiple times and fake money stuffed in her body. Turns out she is the first victim of a serial killer hell bent on murdering rich housewives. The PI agency seems to have its hands full after opening their branch in Australia.

And I wondered how the author is going to tie all the threads for 4 criminal cases in one novel. But he manages to pull off this seemingly impossible feat spectacularly. The only thing is that by the time I turned the last page, I felt as if I have had too much of crime and blood and gore.

Of course, Patterson is not to be blamed for that. It's just that I have been reading too many of these crime thrillers lately. Time to take a break!

Can't make sense of all the budget jargon? Check out the following 2 links to figure out what has changed as far as the Mango Man is concerned:

Unfair to mutual fund investors

Tax breaks make the middle class smile

A friend forwarded following lines from The Guru Granth Sahib:

तेरी किस्मतका लिखा तुझसे कोई ले नही सकता
अगर उसकी रहमत हो तो तुझे वो भी मिल जायेगा
जो तेरा हो नही सकता

The first message read as follows:

The budget is a ray of hope to the housewife burdened by rising prices. It places utmost importance to women empowerment and girls' education - PM Narendra Modi

Ummm....shouldn't it read 'It places utmost importance on' or 'It gives utmost importance to' instead? I am also not sure why a housewife (BTW, the politically correct word for this is 'homemaker' now!) has been singled out as the victim of inflation. We are all in the same boat.....that's rocking from side to side and leaking at the same time :-( I am yet to read all the budget related analysis so wonder what reference to "girls' education" is.

The second message came soon thereafter:

Budget14: Relief to taxpayer Slab raised to 2.5 lac For Senior citizens - 3 lac Saving limit increased to 1.5 lac Home loan interest benefit raised to 2 lac

Succinctly put! But a little punctuation would have gone a long way in making the message more legible. For a moment there are I thought that the tax slab has been raised to 2.5 lac for senior citizens and wondered what has changed.

All said and done though, it felt good to receive messages from Ministry of Information and Broadcasting of India. I just hope they will keep at it now that the budget has been delivered.

Cockroaches - Jo Nesbø (translated by Don Bartlett)

Tonje, Bjarne, Bjorn, Atle - I have no idea how these names are pronounced.
Osterdal, Dovregata, Holbergs Plass, Welhavensgate, Sunnmore, Orsta - places I had never heard of before.

That's because I have never been to Norway and I have never before read any book written by a Norwegian author. Perhaps that is what prompted me to check it out. Am I glad I did it? I am not sure. When I turned the last page, I was aware of an overwhelming feeling of gloom and sadness. Maybe it had to do with the fact that the novel has 'child pornography' as its backdrop. Maybe the protagonist's hopeless outlook to life was the reason. Seriously, I haven't still been able to fathom it out.

Now to the novel's plot. A Norwegian ambassador to Thailand is found murdered in a shady motel. Harry Hole is dispatched from Norway to assist the Thai police in the investigation. As usual, there are people with motive, opportunity and means but no clear suspect. And somewhere mixed up in all this is the sickening business of child pornography.

Honestly, at times I found it difficult to keep the various Norwegian names sorted - especially when I picked up the novel after a gap of a day or two. But beyond that, I was unable to figure out who the murderer is right till the very end. :-) And the translation is so good that the novel doesn't feel like it has been translated.

I, however, am unlikely to pick up another Harry Hole novel in near future.

P.S. No idea why the novel is called 'Cockroaches'.

Bones Of The Lost - Kathy Reichs

I used to be a fan of the show 'Bones' and of Dr.Temperance Brennan. So I was glad to have found this book in the library. But the Tempe I knew from the show seemed to be different than the one portrayed here. She is in her 40s in this novel - with a daughter who is old enough to have taken the decision of joining the armed forces. Maybe age and motherhood has mellowed Tempe down to the extent that she can feel others' pain. That was certainly a huge shock. :-)

Well, the storyline is simple. Tempe is investigating the death of a young girl who prima facie seems to be the victim of a hit-and-run. But Tempe knows that there is more to this than meets the eye. I should have said Tempe "feels it in her bones" :-) But before she can sort matters out, her soon-to-be-ex husband pops in to ask a favor. His friend's son, who is posted in Afghanistan, is charged with deaths of two civilians. And since it has been some time since the victims were buried, Tempe's expertise - of analyzing mortal remains - is needed to figure out whether he is guilty as charged or not. The bonus is that she will get to meet her daughter at the base. So Tempe packs her bags and heads out to Afghanistan - only to discover that the two cases are linked.

There is certainly not much of forensics here. But this is my first - and I hope not the last - Tempe Brennan novel. And I liked it. :-)

An Ode To A Coffee Cake, Costa Coffee

Relax! There isn't going to be any ode. :-) There wouldn't have been any visit to Costa Coffee if it weren't for the fact that for a good-sized mall, High Street Phoenix doesn't boast of too many places that cater to the proverbial Indian 'sweet tooth'. Sure, there is Haagen Daaz and Mad Over Donuts and Gelato. There is one shop that sells Indian sweets and Food Hall has the same. But that's about it. If you are looking for cakes, it is either Costa or the newly opened Starbucks, which happened to be overflowing with people when we walked there. To be fair, I like the Costa outlet - especially the seating arrangement for four at the back. So no grief there.

We ordered a caramel flavored Classic Cooler and then my eyes fell on a beauty labeled as 'Mocha Italia Coffee Cake'. It was love at first sight :-) God bless the guy who took our order because he asked whether we would like to have it with vanilla ice-cream. Why not? To hell with the calories, clogged arteries and triple bypass. I am going to have my cake and eat it too.

Mocha Italia Coffee Cake

So it was served with the sticky chocolaty sauce and a dollop of pearly white vanilla ice-cream. And it tasted great! Whosoever said that "Life Is Beautiful" got it bang on target. Except that they should have tacked on the words "With Costa's Mocha Italia Coffee Cake' in the end. :-)

Noodle Bar, High Street Phoenix

The physiotherapist wasn't thrilled when I told her that I have to go out for lunch over the weekend. I seem to have pulled a muscle somewhere in the lower back and she has prescribed 5 sessions along with the restriction that I don't travel on Mumbai's roads for that duration. 'It's not something that I can wiggle my way out of' I said by way of explanation. And that was that.

That's how I ended up at Noodle Bar - after a considerable period of time, if I might add. They seem to have changed the menu because I couldn't see the option of ordering a gravy dish with plain white rice. After perusing the menu for a while, I settled for Teriyaki. I couldn't quite fathom why the word 'veg' was mentioned along with it. Maybe, they want to emphasize that the dish is available in its veggie avatar. So I told the server that I want it with chicken. He promptly blew my theory to bits when he explained that the dish is only available in its vegetable version. 'You mean you cannot add chicken to it?' I asked incredulously. He replied in the negative. It took me a while to process (and digest!) this bit of astonishing news. Never before have I been told that an oriental dish cannot be made with meat. I would have very much loved the opportunity to ask the chef why it is so. But since I didn't, this must remain one of life's unsolved mysteries. 'Fine, Teriyaki it is' I said as I ordered Thai Chilli Basil Rice and asked with some trepidation 'Can you make this at least with chicken?'. 'Yes' he said and vanished with the menu card.

When the dishes were served I thought of the buffet the restaurant used to serve a couple of years back. The veg and non-veg appetizers served at the table used to be huge. The buffet spread used to have an equally huge variety of dishes. And the desserts were something to die for - mango and strawberry mousse, fried honey noodles with vanilla ice-cream and so on......

What was being served now was a mere shadow of the past. Inflation! Gets to all of us in the end I suppose. I sighed and brought myself back to the present. Don't get me wrong! The Teriyaki was good and so was the rice, though it tasted more Chinese than Thai in my humble opinion.

We ordered chicken momos as an afterthought. A disclaimer - I generally don't go for anything boiled or steamed, the only exception being sweet corn! So my opinion isn't going to be 100% unbiased. It was a bit too bland for my taste and a bit too boiled. :-(

Maybe we didn't choose wisely (as the old man advised in the Indy movie!). Maybe they got a new chef. Maybe I remember too much of the old buffet. Whatever the case, I am unlikely to go back again anytime soon.