Warrier's blog

Honestly I was not thinking about sharing any message today other than wishing Happy Diwali 🎇🪔 to you all 🙏 That was till I received today's Times of India. These days, I first glance through the edit pages of newspapers first. Reason : News on the first page and full page ads preceding first page can wait! When I read the Ramana Maharshi quote in the Sacred Space I changed my mind. Remembered a Sanskrit stanza "Anyatha Chintitam Karyam Daivamanyatra Chintayet!" which my father used to quote often. My mind is a monkey with no training. It had no business to jump to what Arun Shourie wrote about the agony Ramana Maharshi went through with his body in the context of today's quote. My mind connected the words "this hell-like house called body is me, is Narak himself" and the suggestion that "To destroy that false belief and let the self shine as Self, is Deepavali 🎇 " I refuse to elaborate. Happy Diwali 🪔 M G Warrier

Welcome To Warrier's COLLAGE On DIWALI, 2024 Happy Diwali 🪔 🪔 🪔 🎇 Good Morning Every celebration is a reminder that we belong to a species meant to live in harmony in the community, country and the Universe where each one of us get a destined limited time. In a sense, finding happiness or pursuing unrealistic goals which later we find to be mirages is a choice always available. HAPPY DIWALI 🪔 M G Warrier

Welcome To Warrier's COLLAGE On Infantry Day, 2024 Good Morning October 27 is observed in India as Infantry Day : https://www.tnpscthervupettagam.com/currentaffairs-detail/infantry-day-%E2%80%93-october-27?cat=important-days#:~:text=It%20was%20first%20infantry%20action,and%20dedicated%20service%20to%20nation Today's Collage remembers the sacrifice by jawans. Nice Day M G Warrier A Collage friends* All in 20 minutes After a long interval, last Wednesday (October 23, 2024) I thought of spending some morning time in the garden area. Our residential complex has a large garden area where children play, elders walk and all others can meet, play, do exercise or simply sit together and chat anytime of the day. While entering the garden area, I met an old time friend Ranade who stays on a different floor in our 20 storey building. When he was working, I used to meet him in the lobby or the lift occasionally. After he retired, occasions we meet are few and far between....

Who is satisfied here? https://www.speakingtree.in/blog/who-is-satisfied-here/m-lite Excerpts : "Desires are infinite. It's almost impossible to fulfil all of them. It’s like a mirage-effect wherein a thirsty person runs towards a reflection of water in a desert but that reflection keeps vanishing. Sadly, the man continues running in the desert. Yet, there are a few people who are satisfied with whatever they have and they live their life to the fullest. Who are they?..." Yesterday I happened to see a WhatsApp message. One young lady is unhappy and frustrated as the connection chord of her iPhone charger is short. Another elderly lady is saying she has to walk 8 km everyday to bring water. Bhagavad Gita on satisfaction https://gitadaily.com/satisfaction-is-not-just-a-condition-but-also-a-choice/#:~:text=The%20Bhagavad%2Dgita%20(17.16),fasting%20on%20a%20holy%20day Excerpts : "But then, how can we ever have peace and joy if we stay forever dissatisfied? And w...

Speaking Tree Everyday, Speaking Tree appears in Times of India and Economic Times. The content would look familiar and many of us are tempted to postpone reading because more spicy content is always waiting. Last few years, I have been trying to read this column whenever I come across. Till pre-pandemic days I used to get the Times of India Sunday "Speaking Tree" an 8 page pull out (priced 3 rupees) dedicated to spiritual thoughts and allied subjects. It used to contain interesting articles and quotes from Gita, Bible, Quran and Grantha Saheb. Yesterday's ET Speaking Tree https://m.economictimes.com/opinion/speaking-tree/sometimes-i-wish-/articleshow/114436497.cms brought memories of "Time Machine" by H G Wells : Excerpts from Amazon Review : "Embark on a captivating adventure with H.G. Wells' The Time Machine. Witness humanity's future, explore the depths of time, and ponder on profound questions. This unabridged edition guarantees an im...

Welcome To Warrier's COLLAGE On National Nuts Day, 2024 Good Morning Occasional Midweek edition of Collage is brought out when more than one subject is covered in a daily message. Regards M G Warrier Speaking Tree https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/blogs/toi-edit-page/a-calm-mind-is-the-main-ingredient-of-success/ The Bhagwad Gita speaks of serenity of mind as the main ingredient of success. When the mind is calm, intellect is sharp, and action is brilliant. However intelligent or talented you may be, if the mind is agitated, intellect cannot think properly, and action is flawed. No business school in the world addresses this issue. A AI : Nakali Intelligence? The pocket cartoon under Sacred space in The Times of India on October 21, 2024 by Ginni Rometty which just tells us "The key to success with AI is not just having the right data, but also asking the right questions" made me sit back and think. The statement said what I wanted to say and was tr...

Welcome To Warrier's COLLAGE On Sunday, October 20, 2024 Prayer 🙏 Vishnu Sahasranamam https://youtu.be/4sOfZIWeZqM?si=DB53CtoSmXZQnCRt A Collage Editorial Universal healthcare* M G Warrier It's high time India chalks out a plan to provide healthcare to all its citizens, irrespective of their economic status. Other countries are working toward it and have already moved passed us. If the scenario has to improve, we must act faster. Sadly, from Centre and states, so far, only sporadic efforts responding to the needs of specific categories of beneficiaries are being thought of. This includes health insurance for elders, improvement in facilities in primary health centres by state governments and so on. National health cover to address access and affordability issues for ensuring universal healthcare is an idea whose time has come in India. Of late, for compelling reasons, including the comparisons with nations that have moved passed us in this respect, sporadic ...

Welcome To Warrier's COLLAGE On World Students' Day, 2024 Friends Today is World Students' Day. Collage is for students of all ages. I thank all readers of Collage for their kind patronage which keeps this experiment going. Today is my 80th Birthday. I started receiving greetings and blessings two or three days in advance 🙏 I'm humbled by your kind words of love and affection. Though it would have been more appropriate to include some of the greetings received, due to several constraints, I am copying below only one of them and my response thereto in this issue. First about World Students' Day. M G Warrier M 134 A World Students' Day https://www.business-standard.com/amp/world-news/world-students-day-2024-celebrating-apj-abdul-kalam-s-birth-anniversary-nc-124101400348_1.html October 15, Abdul Kalam's Birthday is observed as World Students' Day since 2010 : B Greetings* from Vathsala Jayaraman, Chennai Do you get inspired by famous journ...

Job satisfaction As always, I will recall my own perception about job in the first place and how my own career progressed over a fairly long period of 40 years. By 1963, when I left college and started hunting for a job, I was just 6 months older than the minimum age requirement, which was 18, for applying for any job in India. Aptitude based career option or acquiring skills for a job that one would like to do were all unheard of. Of course, the affluent parents sent their children to medical colleges and if admission for medicine was difficult, the next option was engineering. In my case, college education was a bonanza thrust upon me as I had to anyway wait for almost 4 years when I passed SSLC in 1959. Remembered all these when I read Ratan Tata's view that "I don't believe in work life balance. I believe in work life integration..." Let's try to understand what was in Ratan Tata's mind when he said this. He has gone a long way in implementing the pri...

KENOPANISHAD I'm still glancing through at random, pages of Arun Shourie's book on my table. Every page I try to read takes me back to something I had come across while trying to read some other books. This is the problem one faces when one refuses to be disciplined while reading. But, we can't read a newspaper, a poem, an essay, background notes for a board meeting or budget documents with the same kind of devotion or time allotment per page. This is another subject we will take up another day. Yesterday, I was reminded of the initial stanzas of Kenopanishad : https://www.swaminarayan.org/essays/2009/2204.htm Excerpts: A DISCIPLE’S CURIOSITY The Kena Upanishad begins with a question from an inquisitive disciple: ‘केनेषितं पतति प्रेषितं मनः केन प्राणः प्रथमः प्रैति युक्तः। केनेषितां वाचमिमां वदन्ति चक्षुः श्रोत्रं क उ देवो युनक्ति॥’ – ‘Keneshitam patati preshitam manaha kena prãnaha prathamaha praiti yuktaha. Keneshitãm vãchamimãm vadanti chakshuhu shrotram ka u devo yun...

Media Reports : "Veteran industrialist Ratan Tata died at a Mumbai hospital late on Wednesday, October 9, 2024. The chairman emeritus of the Tata group was 86. For the past few days, Mr. Tata was admitted to the Breach Candy Hospital in south Mumbai. Mr. Tata was hospitalised on Monday (October 7, 2024) owing to age-related issues, and to control his blood pressure." (On Monday, when Tata was hospitalized, a message was sent out on his behalf that he was well and had been admitted for a routine health check up.) Ratan Tata lived a full life with satisfaction in all his endeavours, handling success and failure with equanimity. May his soul rest in peace 🙏 M G Warrier

"Thamaso Ma Jyotirgamaya" This was the caption I gave to my first Blog post, more than a decade ago. Reshmy helped me to start warriersblog.com then. The first post was the last post that year! Now the blog has lakhs of cumulative views, thousands of posts and daily views are consistently in 3 digits. Last year, thinking that every beginning should have a decent end, I decided to discontinuing renewal of my blog link. When I shared the thought with Kiran, he renewed the subscription by 5 years. So www.warriersblog.com is live today 🙏 https://m.economictimes.com/opinion/speaking-tree/devi-delivers-from-the-dark/articleshow/114021942.c I picked up this Speaking Tree article by MN Kundu, primarily because it sinks with the theme of the book I'm reading. If Arun Shourie had remembered the context of Durga in the way Kundu has explained here "Durga Puja" would have received a mention, and perhaps a chapter in the book "Preparing For Death" (I would l...

My reading habits since childhood can be compared to the old saying in Malayalam about "Vaidyan kattil kayariya pole" (The ayurvedic physician who enters the forest finds every plant and tree of medicinal value and forgets for what purpose he entered the forest in the first place : which was to collect some essential ingredients for use immediately). In the process I didn't complete reading books selected by me in any category, be it about spirituality, literature or Economics. Now I depend on good reviews. Here's one in yesterday's The Hindu Magazine : 2024 Booker Prize shortlisted "Stone Yard Devotional" By Charlotte Wood reviewed by Sudipta Datta. The review gives you the feel of having glanced through the book. Once you complete reading the review, some thoughts about the content of the book will linger on in your mind. It could be mice menace, "death, a dreadful truth" or "And yet" depending on what your blotting paper absorbs fa...

Welcome To Warrier's COLLAGE On Sunday, October 6, 2024 (Sunday Collage) Good Morning Happy Birthday to all friends who have Birthday during this week. Today is my grandson Vihaan's Birthday. Happy Birthday to him and Best Wishes 🙏 and Nice Day for all. M G Warrier A Collage Book Review Preparing For Death : Arun Shourie https://www.amazon.in/gp/aw/review/0670092398/RTFYD41ABU6FU?ref_=cm_sw_r_mwn_dprv_WKM976AMK1M3BQ1AS8D9&language=en-IN A Manual for understanding Life Reviewed in India on 5 October 2024 This book was published during the pandemic (2020). After reading some reviews, I had decided not to buy this book. When a senior colleague suggested a mutual friend may consider reading and reviewing this book, based on the impression I got from initial reviews in the media, I discouraged the idea. I didn't want our octogenarian friend to get depressed by laments on fear of the inevitable. But later I felt that the reviews of this book I had access, ...

This morning I was reading the last twelve pages of the book "Preparing for Death" by Arun Shourie. The book has 500 plus pages and I have only glanced through pages 1 to 488. Last 12 pages, I was reading word by word, line by line, para by para. Now, I can, without any hesitation, recommend this book to those who have been following my writings during the last two decades. It's very rarely that one will be able to agree with another person's thoughts on several dimensions of life 🙏. Here, I'm confidently endorsing Arun Shourie's conclusions about life, death and life after death. If confused, the only option to get more clarity is to read the book. Regards M G Warrier

Thoughts on Gandhi Jayanti 2024 Soothing words cannot satisfy the hungry. The Rich & The Powerful who took over the reins of governance from the British gave a lot of reading material to the educated poor and hungry. From an excellent Constitution to several reports on the doables to improve the living conditions. The allocation of two percent of surplus profits for Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is symbolic of the space available in the hearts of the rich for the poor and hungry. With exceptions here and there, the individuals and families remember the "Daridra Narayana" and the real NARAYANA only when reminded by some health issues or when caught red-handed doing something corrupt or criminal. There's no record of M K Gandhi's thoughts during the short period he survived independence. On his Birthday, let us read his "Experiments With Truth" once again 🙏 M G Warrier