MIDDLE AGE- A BEGINNNING OR THE END ??

Life expectancy (unless you live in Afghanistan or travel by Mumbai local) is regarded as 80 currently. So when one turns 40, is it, as has been famously said, that “life begins at 40” or is at actually beginning of the end?
If there is half filled good wine in the glass, it would always be half empty and not half full.
For this equation also, we believe that looking at age 40 will depend on variable factors like whether you are below the poverty line or above it, grayish hair or barren land at the top, happily married or blissful divorcee et al.
It seems you have lot of time (since you are reading this post),let us examine some specifics .
Those with less money tend to age earlier.
From the age of zero to 40, if you didn’t have silver spoon in the mouth, statistical chances are that you will have never. There is nothing wrong in dreaming, getting convinced by a few cases of a few people who came out of poverty in middle years, however the facts don’t change.
On the other hand if you are rich, at 40, you may start with adding to your rare collection of paintings and souvenirs. Add a wife who is envy of all. Move about anti oxidants, grape seed extracts et al. Money is the best anti ageing agents, to have ever been discovered.

At 40 the marital status is fully defined, described and cemented.
If you are married and can’t divorce, chances are that you will remain married regardless of state of your mind. Same is true with a happily divorcee person and if somebody is bachelor, well, somebody above who was making marriages up in heaven, goofed up!!
When you are repaying a loan from the bank, the rate of interest remains the same but the principal keeps on decreasing. There is a theory that marriages also work on the same concept.
While reading this line, whether you have considered love in the marriage to be “principal” or “rate of interest’, is subjective.

If you considered it as rate of interest, you “are” happily married. And if you have considered it as principal, you “were” happily married.

Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder. After middle age beauty do not lie anywhere.
Imagine a beauty pageant or a Mr. Universe kind of a title contest for people who are above the age of 40.

Let it remain an imagination only because it can never be a reality.

If beauty is a bell shaped curve, time wise, and not, figure wise, middle age is top of the bell. The beauty begins to wane. All kind of diseases are the door step. Getting a new job or term insurance for death, both are equally difficult. And beauty is last thing on the mind.

And then there are Gayatri Devi’s of this world that age doesn’t affect.

So life begins at 40??Each one of us will have his or her own answer.

And therein lies the beauty of something we call life.

IT IS JUST NOT ENOUGH

If you divide 22 by 7 what will you get? 3.14285714………. Mathematicians tell us that this (value of pie) can never be answered. Similarly can you answer how much money you need? And even if you have imagined a number, think would that be enough or shouldn’t it be slightly more… Fact of the matter is that it is just not enough….Cut a cake into exactly equal pieces but the one that you will get will never seem to be the largest!!!

Laxmi Lal is a daily wage labourer. He lays brick on brick ,add cement to lay a wall and make a house, and, himself lives in a shanty , the construction of which do not follow any laws of architecture. Manages to earn around Indian Rupees 5,000 per month. He rues that he doesn’t have enough money to ensure that he is able to have, may be not protein rich and fat free but some sort of three meals in a day, every day. Occasionally if a bottle of country liquor, in the night can be there, it will be wonders. Sometimes, when Laxmi Lal manages to have a drink in the night, invariably, lying somewhere outside his shanty, he gets awaken by a cab, at 3:00 a.m. in the night, dropping a BPO employee Bharat Kumar…

Bharat Kumar works for a BPO firm who services their client customers which are based outside India. Though he got very poor grades in his mother tongue Hindi language subject when in school, yet now speaks with an accent which is more American to Americans even.Bharat earns around Indian Rupees 15,000 per month and rues that he doesn’t have enough money to ensure that he is able to have a bike of its own and not depend on call centre cab. Also a secret desire, that bike is costly and impressive enough, to have on the back seat of the bike, beautiful daughter of his next door neighbor Raja Malhotra.

Raja Malhotra is a mid level manager in a private limited company dealing in courier and logistics. For almost all his life he has worked as a slave in this company. Manages to earn around Indian Rupees 60,000 per month. He rues that he doesn’t have enough money that he can start his own business and will not have to work for any other person. Like any other salaried person he feels that he works more but earns less and is indispensable. But the universal truth is that this is never true. Raja has joined “art of living “course and among his friends there is Shalin Gupta

Shalin Gupta is a trader of vegetables and earns hordes of money by hoarding stocks of onions, tomatoes and releasing on premium. Doesn’t like to follow any law of the land, including as complex as jumping red light and as simple as evading taxes. Manages to earn around Indian Rupees 5, 00,000 per month. He rues that he doesn’t have enough money that he can buy a house in the very posh locality of his city of residence. Dreams of living in this area, building a temple and spending his retired life in the company of the real rich classy people like he saw a photograph of Vidyapati Singhania.

Vidyapati Singhania or VS as he was popularly know has recently won “Business Magnate of the Year” award for his path breaking model of low cost mobile phones. VS managed to earn around 50,00,000 per month, however rued the fact that he doesn’t have enough money to have a private premium jet of his own….Anyway was building a premium villa for himself and Laxmi Lal was one of the labourer working on the site…

It is just not enough!!!

GENES THAT DIDN'T GET MUTATED

What is the similarity between pop singer Shakira dancing on song “hips don’t lie’” and Kangaroos jumping up and down in forests?

Life started as a single cell some billions of years ago. It may have been egg first or chicken first or both simultaneously but the fact remains that with the passage of time, various species were evolved. It is said that we, the human beings are the most evolved species. However isn’t it that we are basically from the same stock? The nucleic acids, the proteins, the molecules of life are the same!!.Cement and mortar have to be used, you build a prison wall or a five star hotel.

Presenting, my dear readers, the story of the genes of various species that didn’t get mutated in human beings and continue to be behave in their original fashion.

Imagine hundreds and hundreds of rats. One starts running and suddenly everyone starts running. Nobody neither knows the destination nor the purpose of running but still continues to run and the sole objective is to run faster and ahead of rats who are running alongside. Human beings also run. They want to be richer than their next door neighbor, more successful than their relatives and more beautiful than their mirror. Everyone is racing to have a luxury car, holiday at exotic location, super home, and huge amount of money in bank and so on. Why is incidental.

If a few crabs are kept in a jar and the jar is open, nothing will happen. No crab will get out. They will remain as it is. As soon as one crab gets the chance to climb the wall of the jar, some other crab will pull him down. There are a few employees working in a firm , where the managerial position is vacant. Everyone wants to become the boss but nobody is able to do it. All of them are finding faults in their team members and exposing it to the management. Search for boss continues.

Owls are awake in the night and sleep in the day. You find the youngsters of PG generation (post Google generation) starting their parties at 11:00 P.M. in the night , having a nature’s call break at 2:00 a.m. midnight and then again continuing partying till dawn. And when the sun shines, the eyelids drop and they go to sleep. And we have students who believe that only time to study is night only and sunlight is somehow injurious to learning.

Wisdom is that if a monkey takes away your bag, the best way to retrieve it would be to throw something in your hand, to the ground. Monkey is habituated to copy what they see. They would throw the bag back on the ground on seeing you throwing .In human beings you will find writers copying work of some other one who may have copied from someone else, and what is called as process of “inspiration”. There are musicians who copy someone else tune, distant sculptures, separated by vertex of time and space, look similar. If a celebrity, may be by mistake., starts wearing a cap with flap backwards, it becomes new fashion trend.

Bulls are not only very strong animals but also their sexual escapades are legendary. And then we have Tiger Woods –the ace golfer. Reports have it that if you throw a stone, on any side of the Atlantic, chances are that it will fall on a woman mated by the golfer. In humans sperms are produced in millions but egg by human females in solitary. So male humans like bulls have the urge to mate here and there and they continue to run amok.

Rats, crabs , owls, and then monkeys, and oh my God- bulls also-various species from whole spectrum. What is the conclusion?
Genes don’t lie!!

POST GRADUATE- LIFE FULL OF MISSES

If college life is a three hour comedy,post graduate life is a tragic sequel to it. The university-Special is the same, the environment is the same-the freshers,the elections, the strikes,the festivals,-allsimilar.But suddenly you are not a part of it. You know your college life is over. You also know your professional life hasn't started yet.The tag of SS is attached, indicating not some elite member of secret services, but just Superannuated Seniors.

The first experience is to have a "look' of that enigmatic species-Professor.The famous dons, whom you heard about,read their books, but never saw.There are some initial problems, like recognising and remembering which one has got affiliations with which group. Once you come to grips with politics of the department, then apply diplomacy.The world may have become unipolar,but in your department consisting of different blocs, it is better to be non-aligned.

The schedule of classes is so hectic,particularly in the science departments,the college practice of attending classes in between the rest time has to be reversed.Central Science Library and Central Reference Library are the new meeting points.PerhapsDU authorities recognise that PG students are somewhat different entities,and so we have PG men's hostel and PG women's hostel. Participation in the college elections or festivals, at the expense of bunking classes, which cannot be done now.It is seen that science departments of DU hold regular classes even when there is a joint strike by DUSU,DUTA, etc., Believe it or not!

Taking interest in the opposite sex is hazardous and certainly avoidable. Girls mature earlier than boys, as far as marriage is concerned. So chances are that when a boy and girl are sitting together,the innocent boy may be dreaming of roses, the smart girl thinking about her prospective bridegroom who is coming to her house to see her in the evening. And , one day, when the boy gives her laboriously prepared notes, she gives him her marriage invitation,"I am getting married on so and so date. I hope you will come". Of course, he says he has learnt to act.

A silver lining is there behind the clouds.Post graduation brings the student closer to the subject.The fundmentals become clear, and horizon of knowledge widens.Learning becomes more thrilling and exciting. besides there is a chance of getting taught from the best brains on the subject.For science students, it is stimulating to work out new challenging and exciting experiments in better laboratory conditions. Relationships, if developed here , are more mature and likely to be stable and everlasting.
But has post graduation any value in job market. the answer is no. MA's and MSc's are equivalent to BA's and BSc's except that former are older in age.Unless one goes for still higher studies, there is no use of doing MA or M.Sc

The decision for PG student to go for higher degrees like M.Phil and Ph.D is another dilemma.A student devoted to the subject ,after doing B.Sc and M.Sc(or BA and MA) enrolls for Ph.D.He works for 3 to 4 years, day and night, while the science student is working out experiments in the laboratory and analysing the results, the art student is painstakingly looking into the literature. He now gets the post of a lecturer whose basic pay is very much equivalent to Class-1 officer, who became such by doing simple graduation and clearing the Civil Services examination.

Even the second lieutenant of Indian Army has more or less same basic pay. And if money is everything, industry sources will tell you about exuberant salaries of MBA graduates. So it is obvious that ambitious and hardworking student,even if he is interested in the subject , will take more interest in UPSC and CAT.