Colors of life

Imagine your life without colors. Everything in black and white, like the movies from 1940s. 

Imagine your day without the magnificent sky. Without the blueness up high.

Imagine your world without the greenery. Without the lushness and the beautiful scenery

Imagine your self without the color. That one thing that reminds you who you are. 

For the first time, I'm participating in  What is your best blog post? contest by The Colors Magazine for the July Edition. And, I'm submitting my post on Wish that I wrote in the month of July.

~Vee...

Fun in Frozen Winters

This is the Minnehaha Falls in Minneapolis completely frozen during winter. And this is how a typical day during winter is, in Minnesota. Personally, the least temperature I've experienced is -40Centigrade (which is also -40Farenheit) in December 2008. Fun place, isn't it?! :) 

Posted for Thursday photo challenge for fun and learning through photographs.

~Vee...

Festival

With lights or colors,

It is joy and jubilation.

Everyone unite!

Written for:

P.S.: Special thanks to Rumya for helping me out with Haikus.

Freedom Struggle

Days of freedom struggle

Thou shalt never forget

Lest history repeats

We cannot take things for granted for our freedom wasn't achieved easily. 

In order to achieve freedom from all the social evils, we have to do our part.

P.S.: My first attempt at Haiku. Will be very happy if my fellow bloggers correct, criticize or comment on my attempt.

Written for

Economic Imbalance

Last night I was reading an article on how China overtook Japan in becoming World's second largest economy. As I dug deeper, I was surprised (read it shocked) to learn that India is World's Eleventh largest economy. May be, I need to read my high school social textbooks again! But, can someone here clarify what Economy means and how India happens to be 11th.

Our ranking based on per capita income is 139 out of 192 countries on the World map. Does this say something? According to an estimate by World Bank, one-third of the people below poverty line in the entire world resides in India. Yet, India is also the country with more than One Lakh super rich people. While the number of rich people account for those pretty numbers which puts our country in the top of the world's charts, nothing much seem to change with the Poor. Except for the fact that the poor gets poorer and the rich gets richer.

I was reading the post Economic Independence I wrote 3 years ago on the occasion of Independence day. Nothing much seemed to change!!! I'm afraid to even think that we are failing. Failing of being a democracy, of being an independent country. Are we? I hope not. Can we do something? Wish, we can.

Image Source: Citizenx.org

Will the call to our Indian rich people by Bill Gates be answered? Will it begin the end of many sad stories we see around? Will there be any difference in the lives of those kids who beg alms when you stop near traffic signals in your luxury cars, when you dine at costly restaurants, when you take your kids to malls?

~Vee...

Goodbye

This post has been published by me as a part of the Blog-a-Ton 13; the thirteenth edition of the online marathon of Bloggers; where we decide and we write. To be part of the next edition, visit and start following Blog-a-Ton.

There are two types of people in this world.

Those who give up and kiss goodbye to the world, those who fight till the end no matter what!

Where do you belong?

Afraid of this materialistic world as an eight year old kid, Amar could have given up when he envied how peaceful his mother looked in death. But he didn't.

Unable to withstand the abuse by her malik where she worked as domestic help, Priti could have ended her life as she didn't have any where else to go and live. But she didn't.

After seeing his world - his wife and little child pulled away by death in the form of mud slides due to the floods, Raheel could have said goodbye to this world. But he didn't.

The long wait for monsoon didn't seem to end to Sivaiah. Not sure if pesticides would work on eliminating pests, but it  sure would have worked on him had he wished to end his life. But he didn't.

Not coping up with the expectations of an engineer father and doctor mother in academics in the competitive world, Vidya could have ended her life. But she didn't.

Brain-washed by the power hungry politicians, Nachiket could have set fire to himself in the name of a protest against ruling government. But he didn't.

Every goodbye is the birth of a memory, except death.

Try to become a memory, not history.

For history doesn't remember the weak!

• Amar means long life. It's unfortunate that many children in our country experience a lot of physical and mental trauma due to poverty.
• All Priti wanted is a little affection and love in her life. There are more than 11 million abandoned children in our country with 90% of them female. What are we doing to ourselves?
• Raheel means the fearless one who shows way to others. It's important to have brave people to lead us, especially in the crucial times. This is also a reference to the current floods situation in Pakistan. May it all end soon.
• Lord Siva sure has Ganga on his head, but not many such Sivaiahs who are taking their lives after untimely monsoon thrashes all the money and effort they put in their fields.
• Suicides by students is one of the things that bothers me a lot. Why do they have to resort to such an extreme step? Isn't it true that today's students are tomorrow's future?
• Nachiketa means fire. And these days we hear many such Nachiket's taking their lives for their politicians! I'm definitely talking about the Telangana issue.

All we need to do is give them a little support and help them face the challenges. I will do my best, I hope you will too.

~Vee...

The fellow Blog-a-Tonics who took part in this Blog-a-Ton and links to their respective posts can be checked here. To be part of the next edition, visit and start following Blog-a-Ton.

This post is also written as a part of Mera-Bharat-Mahan-India-Shining-Proud-Blogadda-Contest  and this is my product of choice from Pringoo.

Itasca State Park

This week's Photo Theme for Thursday is Outdoors. Here it is, a photo shot in the 8 mile bike trail in woods at Itasca State Park, Wisconsin last summer. This is shot using a regular point and shoot camera. Go green!

~Vee...

Did you know?

Did you know that IEEE is coming up with protocol standardization for inter vehicle communications? In near future, vehicles would communicate with each other to avoid road mishaps. With advance in GPS and mapping systems, soon we'll be safe travel experiences on driver-less vehicles. Hows that ? 

Did you know that Sony has recently patented 3D display systems that would enable 2 or 3 share their display system to play video games with personal perspective of 3D experience? Which is with you moving your head while playing games, the content on your TV/monitor would respond accordingly. Of course you cannot get rid of your 3D glasses yet! Bring out the gamer in you.

Did you know that very soon you'll be able to turn off lights in your apartment or control your TV at home from an iPhone app. UPnP technology will let you treat every damn electronic thing in your home as a network device and let you control remotely. Don't worry if you are not an iPhone freak, we'll have multiple options.

Did you know that 3D scanning technologies are picking up to revolutionize the way we do apparel shopping online? With a secure central repository of your 3D body scan which you would get done every once in a while whenever you think you've grown fat or gone thin, you can try the apparel virtually. Shop better!

Our future is bright! Definitely... 

~Vee...

P.S.: More such stuff to come soon!

the dark dreams

A few motivations for this post:

1. Christopher Nolan's take on dreams in Inception.
2. A girl with vision impairment I came across while I was crossing the road the other day (She is very beautiful). Restless's post about dreams of a visually challenged girl also got me thinking about this. This got me thinking about the dreams in point 1.
3. And, an article on research about controlling things on your PC with mind

  Photo Source: Jim Prigoff

I'm a person of dreams and memories. Memories of the past, and dreams for the future. More than 3 years ago I wrote a post My Dream Project on how and what all we need to capture and store dreams. Recently after seeing Inception I was glad to know that I'm not the only one who thinks a lot about dreams. And the movie is in agreement with my understanding about dreams and it also answered some of my questions.

Starting with in perfect agreement with Nolan's Inception on how dreams get influenced by our memories and experiences. Our mind fills up our dreams with the colors, contexts and emotions we come across in real life. But for people who are visually impaired, who don't have a visual perception of color, I wonder if they dream. If yes, how! A little research made me understand that for those whose vision is completely impaired since birth their dream is full of emotions and sounds. After all the advances man has achieved ever, can we not have technology taking care of completely eliminating this problem of vision impairment?

The article on mind controlling is an active research at University of Minnesota about controlling 3D virtual world with signals from your mind. All you would do is wear a cap with 64 electrodes on your head. This article got me thinking! Why not scientists make something to input the visual signals directly to the brain's nerve cells enabling them see in their mind, in dreams? I guess that would require a lot of reverse engineering on how human brain interprets visual signals. But I think its definitely worth putting in efforts for researching on enabling vision for the impaired using artificial methods. Nothing can replace the visual perception of nature for those people.

I hope technology emerges soon to help them dream not in dark. Just a wish, a dream!

~Vee...