Fwd: Can you identify a fake smile?

Interesting...this is a pretty neat test. Tests our ability to truly understand and gauge the intentions of humans... and that includes family, friends, colleagues, strangers...and if you are good with people then you are, in all probability, good in life!

Can you know a person just by looking at  his face?

No?

Well right...external appearance is mostly tricky.

Can you identify whether a smile is fake or genuine? I went through the following link. It is a test, asking you to identify whether the smile is fake or genuine. Take the test. How much did you score?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/mind/surveys/smiles/

The first 2 questions ask you about your attitude towards life. Select the relevant option. After that you have 20 faces smiling at you, and you have to decide whether it is a fake smile or genuine..

All the best..!

All that is necessary for evil to succeed is that good men do nothing. - Edmund Burke.

When the Nazis came for the communists,
I remained silent;
I was not a communist.

Then they locked up the social democrats,
I remained silent;
I was not a social democrat.

Then they came for the trade unionists,
I did not speak out;
I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews,
I did not speak out;
I was not a Jew.

When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out for me!

--Pastor Martin Niemöller (1892–1984) about the inactivity of German Intellectuals followingthe Nazi rise to power and the purging of their chosen targets, group after group.

Fwd: [SSBB] Fwd: FW: Non-Violence in Parenting - Worth Reading

Dr. Arun Gandhi, grandson of Mahatma Gandhi and founder of the M.K. Gandhi Institute for Non-violence, in his June 9 lecture at the University of Puerto Rico, shared the following story as an example of "non-violence in parenting":

"I was 16 years old and living with my parents at the institute my grandfather had founded 18 miles outside of Durban, South Africa , in the middle of the sugar plantations. We were deep in the country and had no neighbors, so my two sisters and I would always look forward to going to town to visit friends or go to the movies.

One day, my father asked me to drive him to town for an all-day conference, and I jumped at the chance. Since I was going to town, my mother gave me a list of groceries she needed and, since I had all day in town, my father ask me to take care of several pending chores, such as getting the car serviced. When I dropped my father off that morning, he said, ' I will meet you here at 5:00 p.m., and we will go home together. '

After hurriedly completing my chores, I went straight to the nearest movie theatre. I got so engrossed in a John Wayne double-feature that I forgot the time. It was 5:30 before I remembered. By the time I ran to the garage and got the car and hurried to where my father was waiting for me, it was almost 6:00.

He anxiously asked me, ' Why were you late? ' I was so ashamed of telling him I was watching a John Wayne western movie that I said, ' The car wasn't ready, so I had to wait,
not realizing that he had already called the garage. When he caught me in the lie, he said: ' There' s something wrong in the way I brought you up that didn' t give you the confidence to tell me the truth. In order to figure out where I went w rong with you, I'm going to walk home 18 miles and think about it. '

So, dressed in his suit and dress shoes, he began to walk home in the dark on mostly unpaved, unlit roads. I couldn't leave him, so for five-and-a-half hours I drove behind him, watching my father go through this agony for a stupid lie that I uttered. I decided then and there that I was never going to lie again.

I often think about that episode and wonder, if he had punished me the way we punish our children, whether I would have learned a lesson at all. I don't think so. I would have suffered the punishment and gone on doing the same thing. But this single non-violent action was so powerful that it is still as if it happened yesterday.

That is the power of non-violence."

palak paneer

Life is like a Palak Paneerr Curry!!! Everybody wants paneer.

Life is like a Palak Paneerr Curry!!! Everybody wants paneer. They would like to pick up the paneer pieces. But, they seldom realise that given only paneer, they would not appreciate the curry. Palak is a must..the underlying flavour to everything in life. The one who appreciates "palak" is the most satisfied person, as he would really be in want of nothiing....

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USP of a Sai Student

I had the chance to listen to some of the eleders in various meetings and during the course of such meetings, i heard came across one anecdote that had left a deep impression on me.

It seems one of our students expressed concern over the politics in various samithis and the in-fighting going on, when he was being briefed about the need to join the organisation and infuse the values that he had learnt. The elder listened to him very patiently and at the end, made a small comment- " Yes! what you have observed is right! Our generation was not blessed with the opportunity oof listening and being guided by the Avatar of the age- Bhagawan Sri Sathya Sai Baba. Whereas you have been blessed by Swami and have been guided at various stages in your life. It is time that YOU make a change in these so called muddy waters!"

We keep hearing of instances at work place wherepeople become upset as their colleagues do not behave as had been expected! This is because of the fact that one started using the head to resolve issues instead of the heart!

The values and the teachings of Swami have always been to strengthen our heart- moral fibre, etc.In fact, HIS mission statement is (permit me to coin the terminology here)- "..to set right the wicked and not to punish or destroy..." So, when in a situation that demands our presence, it IS heart that has to be used and NOT head....if the best in us has to come out!

Many a management guru would comment saying," one must empathise before making a decision either in favour or against..."

The "heart" has no bias. It is pure love. One can depend on it to deliver justice. The heart understands the circumstancces under which the person had reacted the way he did and so, would address the situation that started the issue and not try to reslove the issue per se.

The expressions vary..but, i am surre the "Heart" would understand!

Review on Movie Saw IV

Strange.. even as I write, I am beginning to wonder if I could ever complete this task! I've never written a review on a movie because, I have the humbling feeling that people always are of some stature before they could be viewed by those around them. SO, to give an opinion would be to view their growth from one angle only...

Saw IV.. basically is a horror movie. I mean, you can not go to a swimming pool and expect all the swimmers to be fully clad; nor can you expect swim wear in a DJ party. Coming to the context of the inspiration that has so cluttered the web with my cumbersome thoughts... I wanted to see this movie as i happened to learn it from the discussions that my friend happened to pass on to me. Well, ... I just concluded that the movie has to be ear marked for viewing.

For those who are not very conversant with the grapevine in movie circles (in this free ware community), one has but to air his desire to view something... the deed would be accomplished in a matter of about 2 nights... no ! you did not read wrong; the BSNL has given a small avenue to enable us to download stuff during the late / early hours of the day ("depending on which part of the country you come from"). So, our community (comps that download are holier than comps that suggest) converts the avenue to a broadway in night time and gets the stuff for all to enjoy.


So, one of the holier comps had done me the favour and i had a chance to see this horror movie SAW IV. Yes! it was what it promised to be.. and more so, as it was gory too! Great! as I mentioned earlier, i did not expect anything different. What touched me was the fact that even though it was not expected to be in the gener that could give out values, it did!

The person who was on his deathbed, being determined to avenge the death of his son who was killed even before he came out of the womb, has been a run of the mill story in the vernacular films that we came across! The "Villain" began to annihilate all those who did wrong in all sectors of the society! (a smell of Tagore?!) He not only strained his brains, he even trained people in that direction! Could he be a pervert or a maniac? No! Unlike Tagore (No, though it was not as gory!and all reviews expressed that the end justified the means!), his means too were taken care of while traversing the path to the end!

In this movie, what made me appreciate is the fact that the person gave choices to the people whom he intended to punish (Kill)! (The means also was glorious in the likening of Aparichitudu,) he had decided on the appropriate means of punishment... (kumbhi paakam etc..) yet, in contrast to what we have all appreciated in that gener of movies, the "Villain" decides to give an option so that each could walk out of the "Death trap" by punishing themselves as THEY deemed fit, voluntarily! This is a novel method. Those who could really evaluate themselves could escape the "punishment" and live! Those who could not, "deserved" their death.

One final theme that has really moved me was... "Every one has to meet their fate... yet, with patience, one can surely come out unscathed.... as, fate does not decree anything bad for anyone." The Fate has only lessons for us to learn.. the sooner we learn, the faster we progress.. and happier would be our lives!

Look out! many lessons abound!!

Recently I happened to learn an invaluable lesson from the handicapped tea vendor in my street and that set me to pen down the following thoughts. Every night when i came out of my house for the customary night walk with my friends, I saw a tea vendor -a handicapped person trying to earn his livelihood by trying to sell tea to the late night workers and watchmen on duty. I realised the observance was mutual when on one night he approached me and asked if i knew of any of my friends who had taken a flask from him along with tea about a week earlier. Since he had still not received the flask, he was eager to trace it and receive it back. After that, every day, he kept looking at me with the fond hope that i would have traced that friend of mine and was able to give the flask to him at least that day.

I walked past him for couple of days and then realised that the person was losing about a third of his income each night as he was not able to supply his buck-u-uppo reagent to the needy warriors of the night.

Many times have i wondered as to what constituted charity!...going with friends to a hotel, having a good time, and then vying with each other to pay the bill for the group or, to drop a tenner to the occasional beggar that came our way. Though, the intention is benevolent- to avoid the hassle of money matters after a night well spent with the dear ones, we may tend to forget that all of us are actually capable of bearing the total expenditure by ourselves!

Before eco friendly reader wonders why i am beating around the bush and destroying the foliage, let me get back to the theme. One day i saw the tea vendor grinning at us and talking very happily to us. So, i picked up the courage (that comes out of the vanquishing the guilt born of subjecting someone to the avoidable stress ) and asked him to serve us a few cups. After we drank and were coming back, i wondered as to how the issue got resolved. It was then that one of my friends told me that he had provided one new flask to the vendor of the nightly elixir.

That set me to think... After all, the amount was paltry compared to the amounts that we spent each day when we went out for dinner or for that matter, procure dinner for all the friends for a group meal. But, the joy it gave to the vendor and the gratifying looks with which he greeted us each day..., i am sure, i can not procure that out of the ten or twenty rupees that i get to save by haggling and convincing the vendors that i am a better connoisseur of the trade nor out of the hundreds spent on my peers!

If we were to bump into a street vendor offering us a small flimsy article for an apparently highly price, we may not appreciate it. After this incident, i began to appreciate the value of ten rupees foregone by refusing to bargain with the needy vendors to the hundreds spent on the flimsy social gesture of paying up for the friends who could as well take care of their needs!

All need not learn through their own experience.May be, some can gain out of others' experiences! I am thankful to my physically handicapped nightly elixir vendor friend for setting right my handicapped thought processes floundering in the black lazy waters of uncaring attitudes.