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Showing posts from October, 2010

Karmic Philosophy

Swami Gulagulaananda said: " Karma is the greatest philosophy in the world - The only thing that will follow you even after your death " Karma - One of the fundamental principles in Hinduism. Karma, in the simplest sense, is your account. When you do good things or bad things, it is constantly updated. When you do a bad thing, you are in debt, and when you do a good thing, you get a benefit. In Hinduism, after you die, Chitragupta, Yama's accountant will analyse this account sheet and Yama will pass a judgement as to where you are to belong. However, when I look around, I feel that because of the population burst, Yama and Chitragupta are running out of space to store all the data of so many people. So, instead of doing server side processing, they have managed to create a system of client side processing - Yes, I mean that most of your deeds, unless extremely critical, are stored in a local cache, and an automatic system will monitor, and when possible take appropriate a

Symbolism in stories in Hinduism

Swami Gulagulaananda said: " In Hinduism, while the stories are interesting by themselves, the hidden concepts behind them are phenomenal " You might have heard the famous story of Vishnu's Kurma avatar. If you have not, here it is. If you have, you can skip it (or read it again, just to refresh your memory) Vishnu's Kurma Avatar The Devas lost their strength and prowess due to a curse by the sage Durvasa because Indra, the king of the Devas, had insulted the sage’s gift (a garland) by giving it to his elephant which trampled upon it. Thus, after losing their immortality and kingdom, they approached Lord Vishnu for help. Vishnu suggested that they needed to drink the nectar of immortality to regain their lost glory. However, they needed to strive hard to acquire the nectar since it was hidden in the ocean of milk. After declaring a truce with their foes (Asuras), Indra and his Devas together with the Asuras, use the serpent Vasuki as a churning rope and the mount Mand

Quirk gets published

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Swami Nikhilaananda said: " Yay! " My story, titled Quirk got published in Woman's Era, the fortnightly magazine - October first issue. This entry is just to share the good news. If you have not already read it, you can read it here Quirk - [ Read story Quirk ] Other stories that you might want to read Just let go - Story of a man stuck in a theatre with his wife, but he has a nagging feeling to leave, and knows that things will be horribly wrong.... unless he lets go The Medallion - Starts off with a typical Bollywood story, the medallion has a Hollywood ending. A story about a boy with a copper medallion who loses his younger brother in a crowded railway station, and culminates with the twists of fate. Tarka - The story of the escaped convict  - With a police jeep chasing me, I entered a house with a low balcony, only to find my classmate inside with skeletons in her closet... with flesh and blood around it. The Haunted House - A group of four

My Social Experiment

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Swami Gulagulaananda said: " Human psychology continues to impress me " After a certain prank that was played on me recently (If you have not read it, read it here ), and so, I decided to pay him back in his own coin. I also wanted to show others who laughed at me (calling me a fool, of course :P) saying that I was dumb to get tricked. So, before I proceed to how I decided to play back, let me put a short analysis here. So, why did HIS plot work? I had told Mr. X about the different mails I used to get from various people, how they would send screenshots and how people appreciated the fact that the product was given for free. He wrote his first mail incorporating all of these - Now, since I was already getting various mails in the same syntax (if I can call it that, or format, if you must) I did not suspect anything. Some people asked me why I didn't suspect when the person lacked a "social circle" - that is, no online profiles. Several of my friends don't c

Friend aah Figure aah?

Swami Nikhilaananda pondered: " Friend aah Figure aah? " I have another story to share with you guys today, but this one is not my original. In fact, it's an email that I got. First of all, it's a little long, but I am sure you will smile throughout the post. Secondly, you will definitely agree with the first part of the story which classifies a typical engineering class into four categories... see if it makes you nostalgic about your class. And the rest is a nice story with a profound question that many of you would have faced in your life at one point or the other... So, let's begin ----------------- The author of this story is Karthik Lakshmanan, and you can read the original post here The original title of this story is " The Eternal Dilemma " ------------------ A typical class in any engineering college can be divided into various gangs. While the girls in the class are divided into 2 categories – the good looking ones and the not so good looking on

The Dead Girl Is Demystified

Swami Gulagulaananda said: " Seriously? You?!? " The pre-requisite for this post is that you should have read this post earlier... The Girl Who Was A Ghost Before She Died Ok... Now, who could this person be? And why did this person do this? Ok, the person who did this was my friend - Let's call him: Mr. X. So, this is how the analysis started - The weakest link was link the friend Sneha Kumar... I had told one of my friends about her, and he found out more information about her, and told me some details about her. Now that I knew that Sneha Kumar didn't exist, the culprit had to be the friend who fed me that information. But this guy is not the type who would play this on me. But still, this is my strongest starting point. So, now my point was to prove that this guy was the one who did it. So, I started looking for proof against him. Some of these points might appear to be random to you - but when you suspect a person, each and every bit of small points of proof will

The Girl Who Was A Ghost Before She Died...

Swami Nikhilaananda said: " What The Fuck? " I have a very interesting story to share with all of you. This is based on real life incidents... Read it till the end, I promise you, you will not regret it. I was freaked out completely - Believe me, this happened. It starts with short email summaries, and random bits later. But, read till the end... I used to write freeware programs in my spare time during those days. One very popular program was Blaze Composer, a web designing software. Date: 18/06/2008 (mail) I got a mail from a girl called Aparna Joshi who had an email address with IIT-B in it. She said that she had used a web designing tool that I had written and found it useful. She thanked me for offering it for free. Next day, she sent a mail with possible enhancements. I replied to the mail, and she said that she would get back to me if she had anything else. Conversation thread ends on 20/06/2008 Date: 21/06/2008 (mail) Got a mail from her again, saying that she lik

A Dependency Is A Major Weakness

Swami Gulagulaananda said: " There is no greater weakness than dependency " I'm sure most of you are aware of this by experience. A dependency is something that will always pull you down. It is something that makes outcomes of certain events uncertain, and makes certain otherwise strong individuals weak. This post discusses about dependencies in general, and also why auto rickshaws in Bangalore continue to be a problem. So, what's a dependency? I am sure that such incidents would have happened with you or you would have been around or heard about incidents such as the following. A group of children are playing cricket, and one of the children brings his brand new bat. This is the only bat for the group of children to play. When the kid who brought the bat gets stumped and becomes out, he refuses, and says he wants to still bat. The rest of the children disagree, and tell him that it's the next person's chance to play. At his, the kid says that he is going to

The Kannada Sad Film Industry Rules or Industry's Sad Rule?

Swami Gulagulaananda said: " When you see a dog in the manger, throw a stone at it " The Kannada film industry has put a limit on the number of theatres showing non-Kannada movies. The reason? People are watching more non-Kannada movies than Kannada movies. So, basically, if the plants in your garden look like they are dying, then go and wreck your neighbours' garden - Why? Hell, I don't know. Somehow, the KFCC is managing to make their idea not sadistic at all... The idea of movies, people and popularity is simple - Make a good movie, give proper publicity and people will watch it. Why will they not want to watch a good movie? Instead, pathetic movies are made, that get pathetic reviews - Whichever star you pick (As you know, Sandalwood has every actor named like " [Put star Title Here] Star " which could be golden, silver, bronze, crazy, wacky, rebel, mutineer, or whatever... the movie never seemed to get more than one star in ratings, no matter how many

Life is a short mystery...

Swami Gulagulaananda said: " I continue to wonder what exactly is life... It's the strangest thing that I don't quite seem to comprehend. And then there's death " We all live lives - We have dreams, ambitions, wishes, desires, friends, work, parents, relatives, loved ones, enemies... We laugh, cry, shout, shove, fight, beat, run, fly, eat, sleep... And then we die. Frankly, till date, I have never understood what life is all about - We all took birth, we live a life filled with some or all of the above, and then there is death, which will hit everyone. Some people say life was an accident - that due to some random events, life just appeared. Possible. Some say that God created life. Possible. Whatever may be the reason for life, one thing continues to haunt me - What is the purpose of life? If you say that life was an accident, get over it, then I disagree because if it was, then there should not have been such an instinctive drive in all of us to survive and plou