United Nations : Warrier's Collage 22082020

Warrier's Collage 22082020 : United Nations Thotakashtakam https://youtu.be/er9Hs6HzSlY For stress relief Good Morning Today, please read my article "Never stop learning" (at F1) and E X Joséph's response. Contributions from S/Shri Babusenan, Dr Surendran and Karunakaran included under E Readers Write. M G Warrier M 134 A Interaction 1) K Ramasubramanian " Mr. Babusenan's depiction of this great literary event eulogizing the great honesty of Nakkeeran is well filmed in THIRUVILAYADAL being telecast on Vinayak Chathurthi day in Sun TV" (Thanks for the update-Collage) 2) K P V Karunakaran " Thanks for the nice Collage. Conversation with Lord Ganesha was very interesting." B Lead Story : "ICON" By M G Warrier https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/readersblog/warriersviews/informal-committee-of-nations-icon-2020-24941/ Suggesting an informal world body to follow up issues the United Nations dodge. C United Nations 1) V K Krishna Menon Menon's speech at UN, 1955 (Excerpts) https://youtu.be/3NylEYe-Tik 2) UN Charter https://www.britannica.com/topic/Charter-of-the-United-Nations Introductory 3) UN-Democratic https://youtu.be/UMwiewNOWb4 Understanding the irrelevance of UN : Veto Power 4) UN and COVID19 https://reliefweb.int/report/world/secretary-generals-un-covid-19-response-and-recovery-fund-april-2020 Included for information 5) Optional : WHO and Universal Healthcare https://www.who.int/health_financing/universal_coverage_definition/en/ D Current Affairs : World Bank Report COVID impact on Indian Economy https://www.timesnownews.com/business-economy/economy/article/covid-effect-world-bank-may-project-steeper-contraction-of-indian-economy-for-fy21/639791 E Readers Write 1) V Babusenan Kunchan Nambiar's Satire " In any literature, there will be no derth of great poets, but effective social critics among them will be rare and rarer still will be poets who expose the sham of society through the medium of humour. In Malayalam, the topmost poet of the last kind is ,undoubtedly, Kunchan Nambiar of the 18th century. Through his 'thullals' (they were many) Nambiar brought to the mostly illiterate common people of Kerala many stories in Ramayana and Mahabharata.He converted , through the magic of his words, all the characters in the epics to Keralites, high and low, and did not miss an occasion to lampoon his own people's hypocrisy and idiocy. For instance, when he deals with the subject of Dhruvacharitham, he will not lose the opportunity to ridicule Dhruva's father, Utthaanapaada, for keeping two wives. He will say: "Randu kalathratthe vacchu porukkunna Thandu thappikku sukham illorikkalum (The fool that keeps two wives will never get a moment of happiness) In literary life, such occasions were umpteen. In real life too they were not very rare. We are familiar with one: The anecdote of the 'bitter paayasam '. We shall deal with another one now: The Maharaja of Travancore, under whom Nambiar was serving, had a grand lamp pillar(Deepastambham) constructed, probably, in the Padmanabhaswamy temple. Just after its grand inauguration, the Maharaja asked the singers and poets gathered there to sing or recite poems in praise of the event. Each of them was offered a bag of gold coins at the end of his performance. The Maharaja noticed that Nambiar was keeping quiet. He asked: "Nambiar,don't you have anything to say?" "Yes, your highness : " Deepastambham mahaascharyam Namukkum kittanam panam " (The lamp pillar is quite wonderful. I too should be paid money) Everyone, including the Maharaja, was flabbergasted. There was a tinge of shame in their sudden surprise." 2) Dr T V Surendran *A beautiful true story* In England in *1920* there was a graduation ceremony for a batch of *new doctors*. It was attended by the British Prime Minister of that time. During the ceremony, the dean who was in charge of that batch, gave the necessary advice to these new graduates. He told them the following incident which happened with him sometimes earlier : "It was after midnight, and I heard a knock on my door. It was an old lady, and she said to me: 'O my doctor, my child is sick and in a very serious condition, so please do something to save him. I rushed out to follow her to her house without worrying what will happen. It was a stormy night, and very cold. The rain was pouring down very heavily. I did not fear for my life. Her house was on the outskirts of London, and after a difficult journey, we reached her house. She lived in a small room with her son. When I entered the room, I saw her son at the corner of this room groaning and deeply in pain. After I did my duty towards the sick child, the mother gave me a small bag with money. I refused to take this bag and I told her gently that I can't accept that payment, because I felt sorry for their situation. Then I promised her that I will take care of her child until he gets better." The dean continued his speech by saying: " *This is the true profession of medicine, and being a doctor is the closest profession to mercy and one of the closest to God*" As soon as the head doctor finished his speech, the *Prime Minister* jumped out of his seat and headed to the podium. " *Permit me Sir, to kiss your hand*. *For twenty years now and I am looking for you. I am the child you mentioned in your story just now*. *Oh, my mother will be happy now and she will rest in peace. Her only wish was for me to find you and to reward you, for that goodness you did for us at the time we were living in poverty*" That poor child who became the Prime Minister of England was: *"Lloyd George"* *Plant goodness wherever you go, even if it is not on your place*. Because it will never get lost wherever you will plant it. It is even more nice if your goodness lasts longer. Because no one shall harvest that goodness except the one who has planted it. *Doing goodness to others will always purify your heart, and it will fight any kind of evil which comes your way*. The owner of goodness does not fall, if he falls he will fall on a pillow to comfort and support him. 🙏🙏🙏 *May God make us among the people who always do good to others*. 3) K P V Karunakaran *A very interesting story* *One Sunday morning, a wealthy man sat in his balcony enjoying sunshine and his coffee when a little ant caught his eye which was going from one side to the other side of the balcony carrying a big leaf several times more than its size. The man watched it for more than an hour. He saw that the ant faced many obstacles during its journey, paused, took a diversion and then continued towards destination.* *At one point the tiny creature came across a crack in the floor. It paused for a little while, analyzed and then laid the huge leaf over the crack, walked over the leaf, picked the leaf on the other side then continued its journey.* *The man was captivated by the cleverness of the ant, one of God’s tiniest creatures. The incident left the man in awe and forced him to contemplate over the miracle of Creation. It showed the Greatness of the Creator. In front of his eyes there was this tiny creature of God, lacking in size yet equipped with a brain to analyze, contemplate, reason, explore, discover and overcome.* *A while later the man saw that the creature had reached its destination – a tiny hole in the floor which was entrance to its underground dwelling. And it was at this point that the ant’s shortcoming that it shared with the man was revealed.* *How could the ant carry into the tiny hole the large leaf that it had managed to carefully bring to the destination? It simply couldn't!* *So the tiny creature, after all the painstaking and hard work and exercising great skills, overcoming all the difficulties along the way, just left behind the large leaf and went home empty-handed.* *The ant had not thought about the end before it began its challenging journey and in the end the large leaf was nothing more than a burden to it. The creature had no option, but to leave it behind to reach its destination. The man learned a great lesson that day.* *That is the truth about our lives too.* *We worry about our family, we worry about our job, we worry about how to earn more money, we worry about where we should live, what kind of vehicle to buy, what kind of dresses to wear, what gadgets to upgrade......only to abandon all these things when we reach our destination –* *The Grave.* *We don’t realize in our life’s journey that these are just burdens that we are carrying with utmost care and fear of losing them, only to find that at the end they are useless and we can’t take them with us.....* What a beautiful teaching by an ant ! 🙏 F Blogs and Links 1) M G Warrier : Never stop learning https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/readersblog/warriersviews/never-stop-learning-24915/ Response from E X Joséph : " Thank you dear MG for your kind words. I always remember you as a bright young man. You are very right. I was offered a parliament seat which I declined. Well, one does not know about where one's life takes. Strange turns life takes. You will be surprised to know that Shri. Vajpayee used to like me very much. I could have asked him for any position which he would have gladly given me. But I never. He also wanted me in Parliament. I am content and supremely happy about the integrity and very principled way of practising law that drew a lot of admiration from Supreme Court Judges. That is nearly 15 years back. Today's Supreme Court, we are experiencing through Bhushan's case. I love to meet you. Well, let us remain in touch. I am also happy that I could come back to the house where I was born. We may go next month to US. I often rembet CSV." 2) B R Ambedkar on democracy https://www.readersdigest.in/conversations/story-lessons-for-indias-democracy-126370 Speech delivered in 1949. 3) Speaking Tree : Connecting to life https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/blogs/toi-edit-page/death-of-the-ego-connects-us-to-life/ We can be certain about uncertainty.