Victoria No 203

our train trip to the marathon and the ghoda ghadi ride at marine drive

Ragging the bane of every educational institute

Frankly I dont know why colleges and institution heads are being held guilty for the ragging that rages in their institutions. It cannot be their fault. Very often ragging happens and the teachers and institution heads are the last to know. How can they be held responsible for what happened in their absence. Todays youngsters are brought up in a completely different way from what the youngsters of a decade a ago were brought up.And it's the difference that is the real problem. Parents are working, dont have time to teach their children values or how to cope with difficult situations, it becomes easier for them to tell their children to deal with their difficulties themselves- there's no guidance and as a result the child develops values and attitudes and behaviours that dont gel with that of the society in existence. Now arresting the student who is the aggressor also does not constitute a good healthy solution. It's important that when students enter college they are inducted in a formal ceremony and later on given an orientation about what kind of behaviours can cause them problems while a student. So any deviation from the rules should show up on the students mark sheet. The student could also be sent for counselling...

Constant Sunlight behind Greenland Suicides?/Seasonal affective Disorder

In Greenland, the summers are filled with incessant daylight and scientists say this is the very reason why there is a alarming rise in the number of suicides in that place.This comes from research data accumulated by the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, by a team led by Karin Sparring Bjorksten.which studied the seasonal variation of suicides in all of Greenland from 1968 to 2002.
This is very interesting data for those having an interest in suicidology. It was found that there was a concentration of suicides in the summer months and that the seqasonal effect was specifically more in the north of the country- an area where the sun doesn't set between the end of april and the end of august. In terms of seasonal light variation Greenland is the most extreme human habitat.Greenland is also reckoned to have the highest suicide rate in the world. The research document also records that suicides were almost exclusively violent and increased during periods of constant day. In the north of the country 82% of suicides occurred during daylight months (including astronomical twilight). Most suciides occurred in young men, 95% of the suicides occurred by using violent means like shooting, hanging and jumping from heights. The researchers speculated that light-generated imbalances in the turnover of neurotransmitter serotonin could lead to increased impulsiveness, which in combination with lack of sleep could explain the increased rate of suicides in the summer months in Greenland.
Sounds like seasonal affective disorder can lead to greater propensity to suicide. There are people who get affected by sunmmers, some by winters and some even by the monsoons. Seasons always have had a kind of affect(negative and positive) on the human psyche.People who call us also tell us the same. Of course almost everyone who calls a suicide helpline confesses to being affected by seasonal changes. In the monsoon the head feels heavy, mood is low and there's general malaise and disinterest.In the summer the feeling is of ennervation and lack of energy while in the winter feeling is of gloom and doom. A fragile mind finds it difficult to cope with these pervasive and invasive affectations and this leads to a fracture in the cope-ability of the person!

an appeal!

ok! guys! all those who read this blog and who like to read my posts, I have an appeal, please put your comments or reactions or responses.....my post feels lonely out there...hmm ! there i said it...now common on sign in and let the comments roll...

I was going to write a comment on the earlier post but decided that the post requires a FULL POST.
personally, I agreee that life is about simple pleasures. yes! food, natural sunshine,I love snow too and the sand and all things natural and rural ( I really dont know about love! I know attraction ..does it count???) Ive misunderstood the term many times... its a verb people say ..Ive yet to find out....
anyway, I think that the Buddha came back from his adventures in the jungle for the precise reason that he didnt find enlightment there!
He tried his best, but he found it in the society, people helped him attain what he was looking for...and then he came out with his Madhyamarga..the Middlepath...( extremities of any kind is harmful !) hmmmm!
This is what we have to find out for ourselves..through the hard way ...( I found out I cant drink more than two pegs of vodka,I tend to become emotional and start talking crap...)
so thats life....keep learning and in the process LIVE and be HAPPY... u can be happy if and only if you allow yourself to be in that state...dont take life so seriously yaar!
And avoid the disease called `WHAT WILL PEOPLE SAY`....

Happiness or what?????

We all want to be happy but do we ever attain that state of being? I think happiness is relative when looked at in reference to others.

Prerna Gupta says'

Is happiness really an attainable state for the human mind? I recently read an article in the NYTimes, titled Enlightenment Therapy, about a professor who gave up a tenured position and decided to devote his life to meditation. He spent years practicing and teaching Zen meditation, yet he was never able to attain that elusive state of infinite happiness the eastern religions promise as the reward for such devotion. When Zen meditation failed, he turned to anti-depressants and psycho-therapy, but nothing seemed to work. And now he finds himself visiting a therapist like a regular white-collar American. He is doomed, it seems, to that familiar state of discontentment, loneliness and depression many of us suffer throughout our lives.

How many of us promise ourselves that we'll be happy just as soon as we achieve this or that success and get this or that material possession? And for how many years have we been convincing ourselves that the watering hole is just on the other side of that sand dune? The eastern ascetics will tell us that we need only to detach ourselves from these fleeting pleasures in order to attain happiness. Yet I find it hard to believe that these lonely old men who have spent years in silent isolation are truly happy. On the contrary, many of them seem as consumed by the search for wealth and power as the most "attached" among us. The search for happiness through renunciation of everything human seems misguided somehow; happiness is after all a human condition, created by human impulses in a human brain. Everyone is different, but companionship is a pretty basic requirement for most humans to be happy.

But if there is no happiness to be found through participation in society, and none found through asceticism...then where the hell is it? Perhaps happiness does not exist at all, but is simply a mirage we create for ourselves so we can always strive for more. It is obvious why we might have evolved the propensity to seek happiness, as this unending desire incentivizes us to keep working for more money / status / progress, increasing our chances of survival as a species. Yet by that token it would seem maladaptive to ever actually attain a state of constant happiness, at least while one is capable of being a productive member of society. In that case maybe we should abandon the search for happiness altogether, and just resign ourselves to a life fraught with duality.

It might be true, but I just can't accept it. I have to believe that I am capable of attaining infinite bliss, of sustaining that amazing sensation of ecstasy I glimpse every now and again while wrapped in my lovers arms or surfing a perfect wave in the pacific ocean. I must believe happiness is real, and that I am in fact getting closer to enlightenment every day of my life. If not, then what's the point of it all? What is there to live if not for eternal sunshine? Or, perhaps, if not for the search of it.

Let the businessman seek it in money, the celebrity in fame and the swami in solitude. But I will not seek it thus. For I have found my happiness in simple pleasures and need now only to find a means of sustaining my immersion in those. I live for love, food, music and natural sunshine.