The Book Of Your Life

Each day, life offers you a blank page in the book of your existence.Your past is already written & you can’t change that; in it's pages you can find your history, some pages have soft colours, others darker shades…Beautiful remembrances of happy times or pages you wish you could tear out forever...

Today you have the opportunity to write another page.It’s up to you to choose the colours it will have, for even in adversity you can add soft pastels of serenity to turn it into a beautiful experience.

Today..How will you write your day.It all depends on your will and optism to transform today's page in the Book of your life into a page that you will treasure as beautiful rememberances in the future.

If you knew you had only one more day to live,what will you do??

No doubt you would make peace with God and with those around you. You would enjoy the golden sun rays,the gentle breeze,the love and affection of that special person and the many blessings the Lord has given that we sometimes take for granted.

Enjoy the new Day!

Take a mental inventory of all the good things in your life and live each hour with cheer,giving it your best. Do not harm others and be happy to be alive and able to give a smile and offer others a helping hand.

It is never too late to change course,start anew and write frsh pages of happiness and peace in the Book of your life.Thank God for his gift of Today and the opportunity to turn this Day into a beautiful new page in the Book of your existence.

Remember that inspite of adversities,problems and difficulties, it is up to you ,how you live today....as if your First Day were your Last Day...the ONLY Day in the Book of your Life!

REMEMBER THOSE TIMES

I am sure this will bring back a lot of nostalgic memories for most of you and more importantly for your children.....

For us who grew up during the late 70s and early 80s in middle class India.

1. Though you may not publicly own to this, at the age of 5-8 years,you were very proud of your first "Bellbottom" or your first "Maxi"
2. 2. Phantom & Mandrake or Hardy Boys...were your only true heroes. You can also nod your heads to names like Chandamama, Champak, Lote-Pote ,Nandan. The brainy ones read "Competition Success Review"
3. You took pride in turning to the back page of your latest Amar Chitra Katha and ticking off yet another title. How many ever you ticked, you still had many to go.
4. Your "Camlin" geometry box & Flora pencil was your prized possession.
5. The only "Holidays" you took were to go to your grandparents' or your cousins' houses.
6. Ice-cream meant only - either an orange stick, a vanilla softy in a cone or at most - a Choco Bar if you lived in a swanky town.
7. Your first family car ( and the only one) was a Fiat. Or an Ambassador.This often had to be pushed by the entire family to get going.
8. The glass windows in the back seats used to get stuck at the two-thirds down level and used to irk the shit out of you! The window went down only if your puny arm could manage the tacky rotary handle to pull it down.Locking the door was easy. You just whacked the other tacky, non-rotary handle downwards.
9. Your Mom had stitched the weirdest lace curtains for all the windows of the car. They were tied in the middle and if your dad was the comfort-oriented kinds, you had a magnificent small fan upfront, below which screwed to the board was the cassette player.
10. Your parents were proud owners of HMT watches. You "earned" yours after 8th or the 10th standard exams.
11. You have been to "Jumbo Circus" ; have held your breath while the pretty young thing in the glittery skirt did acrobatics, quite enjoyed the elephants hitting football, the motorcyclist vrooming in the "Mautka Gola"and it was politically okay to laugh your guts out at dwarfs hitting each others bottoms!
12. You have atleast once heard "Hawa Mahal" on the radio.
13. If you had a TV, it was normal to expect the neighborhood to gather around to watch the Chitrahaar,Hum Log or the Sunday movie. If you didn't have a TV, you just went to a house that did. It mattered little if you knew the owners or not.
14. Sometimes the owners of these TVs got very creative and got a bi or even a tri-coloured anti-glare screen which they attached with two side clips onto their Weston or Televista TVs. That confused the hell out of you!
15. Black & White TVs weren't so bad after all because cricket was played in whites.
16. You thought your Dad rocked because you got your own ( the family's; not your own own!) colour TV when the Asian Games started. Everyone else got the same idea as well and ever since, no one came over to your house and you didn't go to anyone else's.
17. You dreaded the death of any political leader because of the mourning they would announce on the TV. After all how much "Shashtriya Sangeet" can a kid take? Salma Sultan also didn't smile during the mourning.
18. You knew that "Indira Gandhi" was somebody really powerful and terribly important. And that's all you needed to know.
19. The only "Gadgets" in the house were the TV, the Fridge and the Mixie.
20. All the gadgets had to be duly covered with a crochet covers and sometimes even with ingenious, custom-fit plastic covers.
21. Movies meant Amitabh Bachchan and Rajesh Khanna. Before the start of the movie you always had to watch the obligatory "news reel".
22. You thought you were so rocking because you knew almost all the songs of Abba and BoneyM
23. You had a turntable "stereo" and a collection of LP Records. Your hormones went crazy when you bought "Disco Deewane" by Naziya Hassan & Zoheb Hassan.For others it was Lata,Rafi,Asha and Kishore.
24. You couldn't contain your happiness when you suddenly had knowledge of Grammy awards and Tina Turner, Cyndi Lauper & OMG- even Michael Jackson became familiar names.
25. School teachers, your parents and even your neighbours could whack (beat) you and it was all okay.
26. Photograph taking was a big thing. You were lucky if your family owned a camera. A reel of 36 exposures was valuable hence it justified the half hour preparation & "setting" & the "posing" for each picture. Therefore, you have atleast one family picture where everyone is holding their breath and standing at attention!

Heaven and Hell

A Swami was having a conversation
with Lord Shiva one day and said.
'Lord, I would like to know what
Heaven and Hell are like.

Lord Shiva led the Swami to two doors
He opened one of the doors and the
Swami looked in. In the middle of
the room was a large round table. In
the middle of the table was a large pot
of stew, which smelled delicious and
made the Swami's mouth water.

The people sitting around the table
were thin and sickly. They appeared to
be famished. They were holding
spoons with very long handles that
were strapped to their arms and each
found it possible to reach into the pot
of stew and take a spoonful.
But because the handle was longer
than their arms, they could not get the
spoons back into their mouths.

The Swami shuddered at the sight
of their misery and suffering.
Lord Shiva said, 'You have seen Hell.

They went to the next room and
opened the door. It was exactly the
same as the first one. There was the
large round table with the large pot of
stew which made the holy man's mouth
water. The people were equipped with
the same long-handled spoons,
but there people were well nourished
and plump, laughing and talking.

The Swami said, 'I don't understand.'
'It is simple,' said Lord Shiva.
'It requires but one skill. You see
they have learned to feed each
other, while the greedy think only of themselves.

Worth it-The Kargil War

Horror gripped the heart of a Kargil soldier, as he saw his lifelong friend fall in battle.

The soldier asked his Lieutenant if he could go out to bring his fallen comrade back.
"You can go," said the Lieutenant," but don't think it will be worth it.
Your friend is probably dead and you may throw your life away."
"The Lieutenant's words didn't matter, and the soldier went anyway.
Miraculously, he managed to reach his friend, hoisted him onto his shoulder and brought him back to their company's trench. The officer checked the wounded soldier, then looked kindly at his friend.
"I told you it wouldn't be worth it," he said.

"Your friend is dead and you are mortally wounded."
"It was worth it, Sir," said the soldier.

"What do you mean by worth it?" responded the Lieutenant. "Your friend is dead."
"Yes Sir," the soldier answered,
"but it was worth it because when I got to him, he was still alive and I had the satisfaction of hearing him say....
"Kishan...I knew you'd come."