Diwali and silence.

The silence on Diwali is deafening. I am used to the sound of crackers and busy streets during the festival season of Diwali in India and my home-town Jaipur. And here I am, sitting alone in my apartment on Diwali morning. Not much to do. My friends have invited me over for lunch and dinner, and I am looking forward to those but life still feels empty.

I talked to my parents, brother and relatives on the phone but there is still a big human component which is missing. The lights, the diyas, the sweets, setting up my dad's office for "diwali puja", meeting relatives and friends, busting crackers and on the smell of crackers -- the list is endless. Diwali brings back so many memories.

During Diwali, we had a small task force at home. :). My mom would take care of the sweets and all the puja material. My dad would set up the puja place, bring all his new books for the next year's record-keeping and bring out some really cool coins from the days of British rule which my grand-pa gave to my dad. Me and my brother would be in-charge of all that which glitters or makes noise (lights, candles, diyas and crackers).

The best diwali moment I remember is from 2000 when I was home from the first year of my college. It was also the last time when I was home for Diwali. All four of us were together. We had a very nice "puja" place. I and my brother had spent two days setting up the lights around the house. Mom made like zillion sweets. After the puja, I was on the roof with mom putting candles and diyas every 5 feet of so. Putting candles was my favorite part of diwali. I felt empowered to cut all the darkness in the world.

Two of my best friends from school came home. I still can't forget the joy to be with everyone who mattered the most to me in life at that point. We had so much fun. We spent an hour busting crackers, eating sweets and just catching up. I went to my friends' houses after that and had the same experience all over again. I did not realize the importance of those moments then. My only wish today is to somehow re-live those precious moments once again in life. And this time I promise to be more grateful. :)

What happened to BollywoodOnDemand.com

How do you listen to online music? I use Pandora for western and BollywoodOnDemand for Desi music.

For last two months, there have been no updates on BOD website. The old songs still work and website looks completely functional but no updates since Nov 15. I hope they are still alive and it is just a temporary phase because I used to love their shows like many other regular listeners.

So far, I am getting by with listening to old shows at BOD and going back to Raaga every once in while for latest ones.

Rise of Netbooks

There has been a lot of buzz about Netbooks lately. For the uninitiated, Netbooks are small form-factor notebooks based on processors such as Intel's Atom or AMD's Neo. As the name suggests, Netbooks are mostly useful for browsing internet, reading digital books and such. They have smaller screens (typically 10 inches or smaller in diagonal) and consume less power to last twice the amount on the same battery.

With the economy taking a plunge, these $400 devices have gained a lot of popularity and there has been a lot of talk on how Netbooks can actually take over the heavy duty Notebooks.

What amazes me the most is how quickly the face of this industry changes. Just a year ago, everybody was running behind how many cores they had on their notebooks. No body knew if they really needed or cared for this much computing power.

But no matter what, this trend of going back to light-weight processors surely has given a life to AMD, Via and NVIDIA. On the other hand, Intel has been trying its best to keep the notebook and netbook segments distinct.

Let's see how this story unfolds.. :)

The Road Less Traveled

Love Is Separateness

By Kahlil Gibran

You were born together, and together you shall be forevermore.
You shall be together when white wings of death scatter your days.
Aye, you shall be together even in the silent memory of God.

But let there be spaces in your togetherness,
And let the winds of the heavens dance between you.

Love one another but make not a bond of love:
Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.

Fill each other's cup but drink not from one cup.

Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf.

Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone,

Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music.

Give your hearts, but not into each other's keeping.
For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts.

And stand together, yet not too near together:
For the pillars of the temple stand apart,
And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other's shadow.

My Diary 2

Experimenting with few things.

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My Diary

"He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how". - Nietzsche

From the book, Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl.

Man has both potentialities within himself; which one is actualized depends on decisions but not on conditions.

An abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normal behavior.

Love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. The salvation of man is through love and in love.

Love goes very far beyond the physical person of the beloved. It finds its deepest meaning in his spiritual being, his innner self. Whether or not he is actually persent, whether or not he is still alive at all, ceases somehow to be of importance.

Humor was another of the soul's weapons in the fight for self-preservation. It is well known that humor, more than anything else in the human make-up, can afford an aloffness and an ability to rise above any situation, even if only for a few seconds.

Even though conditions such as lack of sleep, insufficient food and various mental stresses may suggest that the inmates (of concentration camp) were bound to react in certain ways, in the final analysis it becomes clear that the sort of person the prisoner became was the result of an inner decision, and not the result of camp influences alone. Fundamentally, therefore, any man can, even under such circumstances, decide what shall become of him-mentally and spiritually.

The way in which a man accepts his fate and all the suffering it entails, the way in which he takes up his cross, gives him ample opportunity-even under the most difficult circumstances-to add a deeper meaning to his life.

Often it is just an exceptionally difficult external situation which gives man the opportunity to grow spirtually beyond himself.

Life is like being at the dentist. You always think that the worst is still to come, and yet it is over already.

It is peculiarity of man that he can only live by looking to the future -- sub specie aeternitatis.

Emotion, which is suffering, ceases to be suffering as soon as we form a clear and precise picture of it.

"Was mich nicht umbringt, macht mich starker". (That which does not kill me, makes me stronger.) - Nietzsche.

"He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how". - Nietzsche


LOGOTHERAPY

Logotherapy focuses on the future, that is to say, on the assignments and meanings to be fulfilled by the patient in his future. At the same time, logotherapy de-focuses all the vicious circle formations and feedback mechanisms which play such a great role in the development of neuroses.

Logotherapy focuses on the meaning of human existence as well as on man's search for such a meaning. According to logotherapy, this striving to find a meaning in one's life is the primary motivational force in man.

The will to meaning is unique and specific in that it must and can be fulfilled by him alone; only then does it achieve a significance which will satisfy his own will to meaning.

Values, however, do not drive a man; they do not push him, but rather pull him.

Mental health is based on a certain degree of tension, the tension between what one has already achieved and what one still ought to accomplish, or the gap between what one is and what one should become. Such a tension is inherent in the human being and therefore is indispensable to mental well-being.

The meaning of life differs from man to man, from day to day and from hour to hour. What matters, therefore, is not the meaning of life in general but rather the specific meaning of a person's life at a given moment.

One should not search for an abstract meaning of life. Everyone has his own specific vocation or mission in life to carry out a concrete assignment whihc demands fulfillment. Therein he cannot be replaced, nor can his life be repeated. Thus, everyone's task is as unique as is his specific opportunity to implement it.

Man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather he must recognise that it is he who is asked. In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible.

The essence of existence: Live as if you were living already for the second time and as if you had acted the first time as wrongly as you are about to act now! It seems to me that there is nothing which would stimulate a man's sense of responsibleness more than this maxim, which invites him to imagine first that the present is past and, second, that the past may yet be changed and amended. Such a precept confronts him with life's finiteness as well as the finality of what he makes out of both his life and himself.

A human being is not one thing among others; things determine each other, but man is ultimately self-determining. What he becomes-within the limits of endowment and environment-he has made out of himself. After all, man is that being who has invented the gas chambers of Auschwitz; however, he is also that being who has entered those gas chambers upright, with the Lord's Prayer of the Shema Yisrael on his lips.