जीवन में एक सितारा था

जीवन में एक सितारा था
माना वह बेहद प्यारा था
वह डूब गया तो डूब गया 

अंबर के आंगन को देखो
कितने इसके तारे टूटे
कितने इसके प्यारे छूटे
जो छूट गये फ़िर कहां मिले
पर बोलो टूटे तारों पर
कब अंबर शोक मनाता है
जो बीत गई सो बात गई

जीवन में वह था एक कुसुम
थे उस पर नित्य निछावर तुम
वह सूख गया तो सूख गया
मधुबन की छाती को देखो
सूखी कितनी इसकी कलियां
मुरझाईं कितनी वल्लरियां
जो मुरझाईं फ़िर कहां खिली
पर बोलो सूखे फ़ूलों पर
कब मधुबन शोर मचाता है
जो बीत गई सो बात गई

जीवन में मधु का प्याला था
तुमने तन मन दे डाला था
वह टूट गया तो टूट गया
मदिरालय का आंगन देखो
कितने प्याले हिल जाते हैं
गिर मिट्टी में मिल जाते हैं
जो गिरते हैं कब उठते हैं
पर बोलो टूटे प्यालों पर
कब मदिरालय पछताता है
जो बीत गई सो बात गई

मृदु मिट्टी के बने हुए हैं, 

मधु घट फूटा ही करते हैं

लघु जीवन ले कर आए हैं,

प्याले टूटा ही करते हैं

फ़िर भी मदिरालय के अन्दर, 

मधु के घट हैं,मधु प्याले हैं

जो मादकता के मारे हैं, 

वे मधु लूटा ही करते हैं

वह कच्चा पीने वाला है, 

जिसकी ममता घट प्यालों पर

जो सच्चे मधु से जला हुआ, 

कब रोता है चिल्लाता है

जो बीत गई सो बात गई

- हरिवंशराय बच्चन

Dear Odias worldwide,

Kindly donate for the Cholera affected poor tribals of Rayagada district, Orissa(Odisha). To know about the procedure regarding how to donate and to query about other details, you can write to us at save.rayagada@gmail.com to receive an instant reply.  Please visit- www.eodissa.com/seva for more information.

Thanking You,

Regards,

Navneeta Dash.

A letter from a girl to JRD Tata in 1974

The girl writing as herself.... 

It was probably the April of 1974. Bangalore was getting warm and gulmohars were blooming at the IISc campus. I was the only girl in my postgraduate department and was staying at the ladies' hostel. Other girls were pursuing research in different departments of Science. I was looking forward to going abroad to complete a doctorate in computer science. I had been offered scholarships from Universities in the US... I had not thought of taking up a job in India. 

One day, while on the way to my hostel from our lecture-hall complex, I saw an advertisement on the notice board. It was a standard job-requirement notice from the famous automobile company Telco (now Tata Motors)... It stated that the company required young, bright engineers, hardworking and with an excellent academic background, etc. 

At the bottom was a small line: 'Lady Candidates need not apply.' I read it and was very upset. For the first time in my life I was up against gender discrimination. 

Though I was not keen on taking up the job, I saw it as a challenge. I had done extremely well in academics, better than most of my male peers... Little did I know then that in real life academic excellence is not enough to be successful? 

After reading the notice I went fuming to my room. I decided to inform the topmost person in Telco's management about the injustice the company was perpetrating. I got a postcard and started to write, but there was a problem: I did not know who headed Telco 

I thought it must be one of the Tatas. I knew JRD Tata was the head of the Tata Group; I had seen his pictures in newspapers (actually, Sumant Moolgaokar was the company's chairman then) I took the card, addressed it to JRD and started writing. To this day I remember clearly what I wrote. 'The great Tatas have always been pioneers. They are the people who started the basic infrastructure industries in India, such as iron and steel, chemicals, textiles and locomotives they have cared for higher education in India since 1900 and they were responsible for the establishment of the Indian Institute of Science. Fortunately, I study there. But I am surprised how a company such as Telco is discriminating on the basis of gender.' 

I posted the letter and forgot about it. Less than 10 days later, I received a telegram stating that I had to appear for an interview at Telco's Pune facility at the company's expense. I was taken aback by the telegram. My hostel mate told me I should use the opportunity to go to Pune free of cost and buy them the famous Pune saris for cheap! I collected Rs30 each from everyone who wanted a sari when I look back, I feel like laughing at the reasons for my going, but back then they seemed good enough to make the trip. 

It was my first visit to Pune and I immediately fell in love with the city. To this day it remains dear to me. I feel as much at home in Pune as I do in Hubli, my hometown. The place changed my life in so many ways. As directed, I went to Telco's Pimpri office for the interview. 

There were six people on the panel and I realized then that this was serious business. 

'This is the girl who wrote to JRD,' I heard somebody whisper as soon as I entered the room. By then I knew for sure that I would not get the job. The realization abolished all fear from my mind, so I was rather cool while the interview was being conducted. 

Even before the interview started, I reckoned the panel was biased, so I told them, rather impolitely, 'I hope this is only a technical interview.' 

They were taken aback by my rudeness, and even today I am ashamed about my attitude. The panel asked me technical questions and I answered all of them.

Then an elderly gentleman with an affectionate voice told me, 'Do you know why we said lady candidates need not apply? The reason is that we have never employed any ladies on the shop floor. This is not a co-ed college; this is a factory. When it comes to academics, you are a first ranker throughout. We appreciate that, but people like you should work in research laboratories. 

I was a young girl from small-town Hubli. My world had been a limited place. 

I did not know the ways of large corporate houses and their difficulties, so I answered, 'But you must start somewhere, otherwise no woman will ever be able to work in your factories.' 

Finally, after a long interview, I was told I had been successful. So this was what the future had in store for me. Never had I thought I would take up a job in Pune. I met a shy young man from Karnataka there, we became good friends and we got married. 

It was only after joining Telco that I realized who JRD was: the uncrowned king of Indian industry. Now I was scared, but I did not get to meet him till I was transferred to Bombay. One day I had to show some reports to Mr Moolgaokar, our chairman, who we all knew as SM. I was in his office on the first floor of Bombay House (the Tata headquarters) when, suddenly JRD walked in. That was the first time I saw 'appro JRD'. 'Appro' means 'our' in Gujarati. This was the affectionate term by which people at Bombay House called him. I was feeling very nervous, remembering my postcard episode. SM introduced me nicely, 'Jeh (that's what his close associates called him), this young woman is an engineer and that too a postgraduate. 

She is the first woman to work on the Telco shop floor.' JRD looked at me. I was praying he would not ask me any questions about my interview (or the postcard that preceded it). 

Thankfully, he didn't. Instead, he remarked. 'It is nice that girls are getting into engineering in our country. By the way, what is your name?' 

'When I joined Telco I was Sudha Kulkarni, Sir,' I replied. 'Now I am Sudha Murthy.' He smiled and kindly smile and started a discussion with SM. As for me, I almost ran out of the room. 

After that I used to see JRD on and off. He was the Tata Group chairman and I was merely an engineer. There was nothing that we had in common. I was in awe of him. 

One day I was waiting for Mr. Murthy, my husband, to pick me up after office hours. To my surprise I saw JRD standing next to me. I did not know how to react. Yet again I started worrying about that postcard. Looking back, I realize JRD had forgotten about it. It must have been a small incident for him, but not so for me. 

'Young lady, why are you here?' he asked. 'Office time is over.' I said, 'Sir, I'm waiting for my husband to come and pick me up.' JRD said, 'It is getting dark and there's no one in the corridor. 

I'll wait with you till your husband comes.' 

I was quite used to waiting for Mr. Murthy, but having JRD waiting alongside made me extremely uncomfortable. 

I was nervous. Out of the corner of my eye I looked at him. He wore a simple white pant and shirt. He was old, yet his face was glowing. There wasn't any air of superiority about him. I was thinking, 'Look at this person. He is a chairman, a well-respected man in our country and he is waiting for the sake of an ordinary employee.' 

Then I saw Mr. Murthy and I rushed out. JRD called and said, 'Young lady, tell your husband never to make his wife wait again.' In 1982 I had to resign from my job at Telco. I was reluctant to go, but I really did not have a choice. I was coming down the steps of Bombay House after wrapping up my final settlement when I saw JRD coming up. He was absorbed in thought. I wanted to say goodbye to him, so I stopped. He saw me and paused. 

Gently, he said, 'So what are you doing, Mrs. Kulkarni?' (That was the way he always addressed me.) 'Sir, I am leaving Telco.' 

'Where are you going?' he asked. 'Pune, Sir. My husband is starting a company called Infosys and I'm shifting to Pune.' 

'Oh! And what will you do when you are successful.' 

'Sir, I don't know whether we will be successful.' 'Never start with diffidence,' he advised me. 'Always start with confidence. When you are successful you must give back to society. Society gives us so much; we must reciprocate. Wish you all the best.' 

Then JRD continued walking up the stairs. I stood there for what seemed like a millennium. That was the last time I saw him alive. 

Many years later I met Ratan Tata in the same Bombay House, occupying the chair JRD once did. I told him of my many sweet memories of working with Telco. Later, he wrote to me, 'It was nice hearing about Jeh from you. The sad part is that he's not alive to see you today.' 

I consider JRD a great man because, despite being an extremely busy person, he valued one postcard written by a young girl seeking justice. He must have received thousands of letters everyday. He could have thrown mine away, but he didn't do that. He respected the intentions of that unknown girl, who had neither influence nor money, and gave her an opportunity in his company. He did not merely give her a job; he changed her life and mindset forever. 

Close to 50 per cent of the students in today's engineering colleges are girls. And there are women on the shop floor in many industry segments. I see these changes and I think of JRD. If at all time stops and asks me what I want from life, I would say I wish JRD were alive today to see how the company we started has grown. He would have enjoyed it wholeheartedly.

My love and respect for the House of Tata remains undiminished by the passage of time. I always looked up to JRD. I saw him as a role model for his simplicity, his generosity, his kindness and the care he took of his employees. Those blue eyes always reminded me of the sky; they had the same vastness and magnificence. (Sudha Murthy is a widely published writer and chairperson of the Infosys Foundation involved in a number of social development initiatives. Infosys chairman Narayana Murthy is her husband.) 

Article sourced from: Lasting Legacies (Tata Review- Special Commemorative Issue 2004), brought out by the house of Tatas to commemorate the 100th birth anniversary of JRD Tata on July 29, 2004 .

संस्कृतस्य महता (The Grandeur of Sanskrit)

 

One of my most favourite extracts from the classic 'Autobiography of a Yogi', 2nd ed. (18th Reprint), fn. in Pg. 17, 18 –

The Sanskrit alphabet, ideally constructed, consists of fifty letters each one carrying a fixed invariable pronunciation. George Bernard Shaw wrote a wise, and of course witty, essay on the phonetic inadequacy of the Latin-based English alphabet, in which twenty-six letters struggle unsuccessfully to bear the burden of sound. With his customary ruthlessness ("If the introduction of an English alphabet for the English language costs a civil war......I shall not grudge it"), Mr. Shaw urges the adoption of a new alphabet with forty- two characters (see his preface to Wilson's The Miraculous Birth of Language). Such an alphabet would approximate the phonetic perfection of the Sanskrit, whose use of fifty letters prevents mispronunciations.

The discovery of seals in the Indus Valley is leading a number of scholars to abandon the current theory that India "borrowed" her Sanskrit alphabet from Semitic sources. A few great Hindu cities have been recently unearthed at Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa, affording proof of an eminent culture that "must have had a long antecedent history on the soil of India, taking us back to an age that can only be dimly surmised". (Sir John Marshall, Mohenjo-Daro and the Indus Civilization, 1931).

If the Hindu theory of the extremely great antiquity of civilized man on the planet is correct, it becomes possible to explain why the world's most ancient tongue, Sanskrit, is also the most perfect. "The Sanskrit language," said Sir William Jones, founder of the Asiatic Society, "whatever be its antiquity, is of a wonderful structure; more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the Latin, and more exquisitely refined than either."

"Since the revival of classical learning," theEncyclopedia Americana states, "there has been no other event in the history of culture as important as the discovery of Sanskrit (by Western scholars) in the latter part of the eighteen century. Linguistic science, comparative grammar, comparative mythology, the science of religion . . . either owe their very existence to the discovery of Sanskrit or were profoundly influenced by its study."

-Paramahansa Yogananda.

·         Forbes magazine brought out from the U.S. had published a report in its issue of   July 1987 that of the languages in the world, Sanskrit is most suitable for computer software, which means that is is most useful for modern technology. Therefore, when Western scientists and technologists say that Sanskrit will fill the bill as a scientific language, doubting Thomases must give up their imaginary misgivings and accept the reality as it is.

·         The greatness, magnificence and beauty, glory and grandeur of Sanskrit has perhaps not been described better than by Sri Aurobindo, one of the greatest Rishis and Yogis of Modern India- "The ancient and classical creations of the Sanskrit tongue, both in quality and in body and in abundance of excellence, in their potent originality and force and beauty, in their substance and art and structure, in grandeur and justice and charm of speech, and in the height and width of the reach of their spirit stand very evidently in the first rank among the world's great literatures. The language itself, as has been universally recognized by those competent to form a judgement, is one of the most magnificent, the most perfect and wonderfully sufficient literary instruments developed by the human mind; at once majestic and sweet and flexible, strong and clearly formed and full and vibrant and subtle."

·         The NASA Ames Research Center, California,US, have discovered that Sanskrit, the world's oldest spiritual language, is the only unambiguous spoken language on the planet!

In his article 'Sanskrit & Artificial Intelligence', eminent NASA Scientist, Rick Briggs has said- "Among the accomplishments of the great Sanskrit grammarians, can be reckoned a method for paraphrasing Sanskrit in a manner that is identical not only in essence but in form with current work in Artificial Intelligence (AI)." The discovery by NASA about the multiple uses of Sanskrit language for computer processing in the realm of AI is of monumental significance.

·         Dick Teresi, in his book Lost Discoveries - the Ancient Roots of Modern Science reveals the fact that even several thousands of years before Aristotle, the Vedas had declared that the earth was round and it revolved around the Sun. The hymns also mention that the Sun is the centre of the Solar System and that the earth is held in Space by the Sun. Even 2000 years before Pythagoras, the Vedas had declared that the Solar system was held together by the gravitational pull. The knowledge about the gravitational pull found in the Vedas was twenty-four centuries before Newton discovered the laws of gravity!

·         On Upanishads, Max Muller remarked, 'The Upanishads are the sources of Vedanta philosophy, a system in which human speculation seems to me to have reached its very acme.' Schopenhauer remarked, 'In the whole world, there is no study so beneficial and so elevating as that of the Upanishads. They are the products of the highest wisdom.'

·         The Vaimaanika Shastra (a part of Yantra Sarvasva by Maharishi Bharadwaja), Agastya Samhita (by Agastya), Samarangana Sutradhara, Mayamata (by architect Maya), Yuktikalpataru (by Bhoja) and many other classics give detailed geometrical diagrams, references and descriptions of flying machines/airships called 'Vimanas' which were later used by Germans to make their own missiles & satellites.

(http://scienceinvedas.wordpress.com/2006/11/20/air-planes-in-rig-veda/)

For e.g. - Bharadwaja says, " In the functioning of the vimaana, there are 7 distinct operating forces-udgamaa, panjaraa, sooryashaktyapa-karshinee (extracts solar power), parashaktyaakarshinee (extracts opposite forces), a set of 12 shaktis or forces, kuntinee, and moolashakti or primary force. At set spots in the vimaana, the motors which produce these 7 powers should be installed, duly wired and equipped with springs and wheels, as prescribed.The seven kinds of powers which are required for the Vimaana are produced by 7 motors which are named tundila, panjara, amshupa, apakarshaka, saandhaanika, daarpanika and shaktiprasavaka.

The tundilaa produces udgamaa shakti, panjara produces the panjara shakti, shaktipa produces the power which sucks solar power, apakarshaka produces the power which plucks the power of alien planes, sandhana yantra produces the group of 12 forces, darpanika produces kuntinee shakti, and shakti-prasava yantra produces the main motive power."

David Childress, in his book 'Vimana Aircraft of Ancient India & Atlantis', provides many reports, both recent and from the last few hundred years, that describe eye witness accounts of encounters with UFOs that are no different in size and shape than those described in these ancient Vedic texts.

·         Julius Robert Oppenheimer called the Shrimad Bhagvad Gita “the most beautiful philosophical song existing in any known tongue.” He said: "Access to the Vedas is the greatest privilege this century may claim over all previous centuries."

(Source: India as a Creative Civilization - By N. S. Rajaram)

·         Sanskrit Dictionary- World's greatest/biggest work in lexicography-(by Deccan College, Pune) is in the process of completion-

     http://jayasreesaranathan.blogspot.com/2008/08/sanskrit-dictionary-biggest-work-in.html

·         Here is a lesser-known legend which would further testify how rich and luxuriant Samskritam as a language is- 

King Bhoja was having a competition as usual, where he gives a puzzle-like challenge to the poets of his assembly to be solved within a specified period of time, mostly with the requirement that there is a composition of a verse or poem in the process. One day he declared: I will give you the fourth (last) line of a four-line verse; the challenge for you is to complete the verse most appropriately by filling in the remaining lines of the verse. And the fourth line that he gave was the following: 

ambodhir-jaladhih-payodhir-udadhir-vaaraannidhir-vaaridhih.

The funny (riddle) part of this proposition is that there are six words in this line of verse, but they all mean the same, namely, ‘ocean’The poets of the assembly including Kalidasa dispersed for the day carrying the uneasy burden of this nonsensical-like challenge which required to fill three lines of a verse which in its fourth line did nothing but to repeat the word ‘ocean’ six times. Naturally, all except Kalidasa failed to bring back any worthwhile composition the next day when the assembly reconvened. But Kalidasa brought a delightful verse which not only filled the King’s requirement of poetry but also had an enjoyable imagery involving Lord Shiva and Ganga on his head. The verse composed by Kalidasa ran thus:

ambaa kupyati taata gahane gangeyam utsrjyataam,

vidvan shhanmukha kaa gatirmamashiras-yaavac-ciraat-aadhrtaat, kopaaveshhaad-asheshha-vadanaih pratyuttaram dattavaan,

ambodhir-jaladhih-payodhir-udadhir-vaaraanidhir-vaaridhih

Subrahmanya, the little son of Lord Shiva and Goddess Parvati, goes and complains to his father. ‘Father, please get rid of this Ganga on your head, Mother is very much upset about it’. The Father replies, ‘Oh Six-headed One (Shanmukha), where shall I ask her to go? She has been living on my head for long. ‘The six-headed son is angry beyond bounds. He replies in that angry mood. In fact each of his six heads in succession shoots off the same reply (but in six different Sanskrit words!): Ocean, ocean, ocean, ocean, ocean, ocean!’

(N.B- The authorship is not known, but usually it is ascribed to Kalidasa, probably due to the ingenuity built into it!)