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Sudha Murthy on Russian Marriage Custom

From Whatsapp

Sudha Murthy writes…

WEDDING IN RUSSIA

By Sudha Murthy
( Wife of Mr Narayan Murthy of Infosys )
👇

Recently I was in Moscow, Russia.

The Day I Went to the Park, it was aSunday.

It was Drizzling and Cold, though it was Summer.

I was Standing under an Umbrella and Enjoying the Beauty of the Place… when Suddenly, My Eyes Fell on a Young Couple.

It Was Apparent that They Had Just Got Married.

The Girl was in Her Mid-Twenties, Slim and with Blonde Hair and Sparkling Blue Eyes. She Was Very Beautiful Indeed.

The Boy Was almost the Same Age and Very Handsome. He Was in a Military Uniform.

The Bride was Wearing a Pretty White Satin Dress, Decorated with Pearls and Pretty Laces.

Two Young Bridesmaids were Standing Behind Her Holding up the Hem of the Wedding Gown, so as not to let it get Dirtied.

One Young Boy was Holding an Umbrella Over Their Heads, so that They Should Not Get Drenched.

The Girl was Holding a Bouquet and the Two Were Standing with Their Arms Linked.

It Was a Beautiful Sight. I Wondered why They Had Come to the Park in This Rain Soon After Getting Married. They Could Surely Have Gone to a Merrier Place.

I Watched as They Walked Together to the Raised Platform Near the Memorial, placed the Bouquet, Bowed their Heads in Silence, and Slowly Walked Back.

By Now I was Curious to Know as to What Was Going On…

There was an Old Man Standing With Them. He Looked at Me, My Saree, and asked, ‘Are you Indian ?’

I replied, ‘Yes, I am an Indian.’

And We Began Chatting Amicably. I Decided to use the Opportunity to ask some Questions.

– ‘ How Do You Come to Know English ?’

– ‘ Oh, I Worked Abroad.’

– ‘ Please Tell Me Why that Young Couple Visited the War Memorial on Their Wedding Day ?’

– ‘ Oh, that is the Custom in Russia. The Wedding takes Place Normally on a Saturday or a Sunday.

‘Irrespective of the Season, after Signing the Register at the Marriage Office, Married Couples Must visit the Important National Monuments Nearby.

‘Every Boy in this Country Has to Serve in the Military for a Couple of Years at Least.

Regardless of His Position, He Must Wear His Service Uniform for the Wedding.’

‘Why is That ?’

‘This is a Mark of Gratitude.

Our Forefathers Have Given their Lives in Various Wars That Russia Has Fought.

Some of Them We Won, and Some We Lost, But Their Sacrifice Was Always for the Country.

The Newly Married Couple Needs to Remember That They are Living in a Peaceful, Independent Russia Because of Their Ancestors’ Sacrifices. They Must Ask for Their Blessings.

‘Love for the Country is More Important Than Wedding Celebrations.

We Elders Insist on Continuing with this Tradition Whether it be in Moscow, St. Petersburg or any other Part of Russia.

On the Wedding Day They Have to Visit the Nearest War Memorial.’

This Set Me Wondering about What We Teach Our Children Here.

Do We Indians Have the Courtesy to Remember Our Martyrs on the Most Important Day of our Lives ?

We are Busy Shopping for Sarees, Buying Jewellery and Planning & Preparing Elaborate Menus and Partying in Discos etc..

My Eyes filled with Tears at the Thought.. and I Wished that We Indians Could Learn a Lesson From the Russians in This Noble Thought and Custom..

And We Too Could Respect Our Martyrs Who Sacrificed Their Lives For Our Nation.. and For Our Today and Tomorrow Too…

And From the Heart…!
🙏

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There ain’t no weight-loss diet plan

Diet plans continue to surprise us by being predictably useless at helping us keep off the kilos.

Lets say a person is habituated to a particular eating pattern and maintains a weight of 80 kg. He plans to shed five kg. So he embarks on a ‘weight-loss diet’ and huffin’ puffin’ reaches 75 kg. Ah! a well-deserved victory!

Now since he has already reached his goal, he does not need to continue the ‘weight-loss diet’ and goes back to the diet he earlier had which helped him maintain his weight at a steady level of 80 kg. He calls it the ‘steady-weight diet’.

Lo and behold! his weight starts increasing and getting perilously close to the original 80 kg! Why does this happen?

For the plain and simple reason that there is no ‘weight-loss diet’ or even a ‘steady-weight diet’. Consider every diet in the world to be a ‘target weight diet pegged to a particular weight’.

So when he was at 80 kg, the diet he was having at the time was a diet which was pegged to 80 kg. At 80 kg, the diet produced no change in his weight. However, if he is not at 80 kg, the diet will work to ‘pull’ him towards 80 kg. Thus if he has that food while at 75 kg, the diet will tend to bring him to 80 kg and then stay there.

I would like to predict that if he increases his weight to 85 kg and then falls back to the 80 kg diet, he will similarly come back to 80 kg. (Oooh.. wishful thinking?)

If this was not so, then theoretically a ‘weight-loss diet’ would keep on reducing your weight till you are at nil kg. But it does not. In effect, it reduces your weight to a particular point and then makes it stay there. Say at 72 kg. So actually it is not a weight-loss diet but is a ‘target weight diet pegged to 72 kg’. Stay on it indefinitely to help you ‘reach’ 72 kg and then stay at 72 kg indefinitely.

But you uncork the bubbly to celebrate your new found slim waist, and you go back to the diet which kept you steady at 80 kg, then rest assured that you are getting back there. Soon.

Also, as a corollary, you will see that the farther the target weight point of the diet is, the faster it pulls you towards itself. That explains why our weight falls much faster when we start a diet. And when we start approaching the target weight for which that diet is designed, the rate of decrease in weight slows down.

Bon apetit!

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Pitting my wits…

The situation called for some strong-willed action. I shook off my complacency.

My socks were going missing ever so often. I suspected the servant of this cheeky purloining.

Desperate times call for desperate measures.

I started washing my socks myself, and hanging them to dry on my bathroom rod.

Like clockwork, the bathroom rod daily invited a fresh set of washed socks to dry. But only after it had stumped up the earlier set.

The added daily inconvenience of the chore was more than justified by the chuckle it provided of having denied a wrongdoer his evil gains.

Some smugness was certainly called for.

I did not have to wait long.

As I came out from my room, fresh from my ablutions, I encountered the servant, walking by.

“I have foiled your plan”, I declared, barely concealing my Napoleanic pride.

“What plan?”

“Ha! Your plan of stealing my socks.”

“Who wants to steal your smelly socks… My plan was that I should not have to wash them…”

😳😷

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Chinese Aggression – God-sent for Indian Economy

We are in the midst of fighting a pandemic. With our backs to the wall. The last thing we need is picking a fight with an opponent who has walloped us in the past.

But bigger issues are at stake here.

The Modi government has coined wonderful motivating slogans of Make In India and Atmanirbhar Bharat. But nothing beyond that.

If we compare performance of Modi with Xi Jinping, Modi falls way short.

China, through selective protectionism, has nurtured development of its software industry. While Indian software industry takes pride in being support-staff to the world, Chinese software developers have developed indigenous versions of Google, Facebook and Twitter. It could not happened if these multinationals would have been allowed to swamp the Chinese market, as they have the Indian market.

In Modi’s defence, he has tried to reign in the trade deficit with China, which ballooned during the gong-ho UPA years. But it still stands at a scary 48.7 billion USD.

The Chinese misadventure has provided the intellectual and ethical cover for India’s turn to protectionism.

India has made a great start by banning Chinese apps. It should give space for Indian apps to occupy the slots vacated. That would be done by putting road blocks for apps from other countries to prevent them from dominating the Indian market.

Lots of products are being imported from China but which need not be. Like polyester and blended yarns, toys, white goods etc.

Also, a major loophole exists for China to exploit. They dump goods in India using existing FTA Free Trade Agreements with neighbouring countries. Goods originating from China are shown to be from a FTA country which has done minimal or nil value addition. Indian government can easily put a stop to this as the import figures of the exporting neighbour would lay bare its shenanigans.

The new GST regime made it more attractive to import many textile items rather than manufacturing it here in India.

NDA government’s delays in rectifying the above are inexcusable.

Let not a good skirmish go in vain.

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What is a ‘virgin over’?

A bowler bowling a full over wherein the batsman is not able to score a single run, is said to have bowled a ‘maiden over’.

Well then, what do you call an over wherein the batsman has not even able to connect once with the ball?

What else…

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Dirty Two-some of American Society

American society today, suffers from two malignant tumours. These are two groups wielding enormous power. Both of them are holy cows. Both are such that journalists and analysts dither in even naming them. They have achieved the status of ‘he-who-cannot-be-named’ in the Harry Potter novels. They are the healthcare industry and the military-industrial complex. Together, they account for almost half of US federal spending.

Doctors’ earnings in the United States are disproportionately high as compared to other developed nations. This is not just a cost to the nation by itself, but is multiplied manifold as it feeds a nexus of “Bro, I got your back, you got mine”, between the doctors, hospitals, big-pharma and insurance companies.

The biggest problem is the supposed goody-goody image of the doctor as the small town physician, who is barely able to keep up with the rising expenses of maintaining a clinic, because of ahem… the increasing regulations. No columnist is able to mutter a word about this, for fear that his family physician would ditch him, and he would be left without a modicum of medical care. Meanwhile, new software being marketed to the doctors, specifically provides ways by which they can game the system. I.e. charge for a thorough examination of the patient, the form being filled up by the software, even when the cursory check-up by the doctor does not justify the high charges he seeks.

Healthcare in USA today, takes away nearly 18% of the national budget. More than double that in other developed nations. And even after that, it does not provide for universal coverage for its citizens.

Now, for the cancerous tumour no. 2. The defence budget is well and truly a travesty. After the cold war, it should have plummeted. But instead, the graph of comparative defence budgets of the top five countries looks like this :

The United States’ defence budget is more than that of the next twenty largest military spenders combined!!!

Romney remarked during the third presidential debate that the no. of ships owned by the US Navy has decreased. Well, though the U.S. Navy has shrunk since the end of the Cold War, its battle fleet is still larger than the next 13 navies combined — and 11 of those 13 navies are U.S. allies or partners!

On the one hand politicians vie with each other to promise to protect defence spending. Romney wants to increase it further by 20%, by financing it by … tax cuts for the rich. (Don’t expect math from the Republicans. p.s.: Also, do not expect rational climate change science.)

On the other hand, teachers and librarians and park janitors are laid off by the thousands.

The reason is evident. The military spending hugely benefits the private contractors like Halliburton. They got huge juicy slices of the spending in Iraq. They are the ones who payroll the Republican politicians, who in turn dance to their tunes. The no. of jobs created by them are a small sliver of those that would have been created if the same money would be spent in other areas e.g. schools and libraries and public parks. But then those things are not paying for the politicians.

If America is to get itself out of this stinking mess, it is time the average citizen starts to question the basic assumptions at the root of keeping these two groups fattened at the cost of the country at large.

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Manmohan, Protector of Evil?

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 had posted the following link to the Washington Post article lambasting Dr Manmohan Singh, on my facebook page.

I received a comment from a dear friend lamenting the article – ‘another decent person might bite the dust’.

I differ.

Hence this post.

No one can point a finger against Dr Singh’s sterling record and ‘decency’ – ‘before’ he took up the current post with the ruling party.

Unfortunately, it is immaterial if the ill-gotten moolah has landed in his house or someone else’s swiss bank account.

If the ruling party wants to maximize the ‘profits of office’, who would be the best person to install as the prime minister, behind whose back they could carry out their activities unimpeded? Knowingly or unknowingly, Dr Manmohan Singh has been carrying out this mandate from the ruling party to perfection.

With no one else, I repeat, no one else as prime minister, could the present scale of corruption have occurred. If an ‘active – working prime minister’ having electoral responsibilities, had been our PM, say Rahul Gandhi or Sharad Pawar or even Mamta Banerjee, he or she would have been burnt at the stake by now. It is only under the benign protection of our current PM, under his acquiescing silence, that the present travesty could have occurred.

The country is having to pay too high a price for his holier-than-thou image, which is being used to the hilt by his party compatriots.

His dishing out couplets fed to him by the party PR machinery, extolling the virtues of silence, is nothing short of nauseating.

I am normally very sensitive to India’s image being maligned esp. for art – say ‘Slumdog Millionaire’. But here, I feel no such justification to hold back from the truly tragic reality.

If Dr Singh is really clean, not longing even for the palatial PM house, but totally helpless to rein in his colleagues, he should resign.

That, at the bare minimum, would at least remove the shield of the ruling party wrong-doers.

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Arre! But where is Soniaji?

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ow would you feel if Wisden released a list of the best cricketers in the world, but left out Sachin from the list?

Similar, was my astonishment and despair, on seeing the list of the ‘Fab Fifteen’ from Team Anna – the ‘corrupt-est‘ fifteen sons of Mother India.

Astonishment, as to how they could enter the figures in a spreadsheet. I doubt if the latest release of Excel can handle them. But then I realized that if the distance between stars can be measured in terms of light-years, then maybe a similar unit – ‘lakh-crore’ may be used to measure the relative ‘corrupt-ability‘ of our leaders.

But then, how come Soniaji is not in this list, while mere minnows populate it?

The telecom scam, coal-gate, commonwealth games scam – could the money flow anywhere but to the top? It is as sure as the law of gravity.

Why is the press so very hesitant to state that ultimately, it is Sonia Gandhi who calls the shots; and to allege that her underlings have pocketed the loot (apart from some bread crumbs, of course), is to insinuate that she is naive and feckless, which she is not.

In the list of the greatest cricketers, may Sachin top the list, and in that of the most corrupt politicians, may Sonia be the gold standard to which rulers around the world aspire.

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The rules of the game are same…

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I tend to chat up taxi drivers whenever I am travelling, and get some earthy home brewed wisdom in return. I will come to these nuggets of wisdom time and again.

There was this time I was in a taxi in Amsterdam, and struck up a conversation.

“I lived in Bombay (now Mumbai) for some time.”, said the taxi-driver.

“What! You must have found life here completely different after your experience in Bombay.”

“Naah! There’s no difference. Bombay or Amsterdam, it’s all the same.”

“Bombay or Amsterdam… same…?”

“Ya. Bombay or Amsterdam, the rules are the same. If you do not work…, you don’t get food to eat.”