Sacred relics of Buddha - How close can you get to God?

How close can you get to God? The answer to this question can depend who is answering this question. It has been always been philosophical subject for me to know about God. I have asked this question to my mother when I was a kid and to myself when I grew up. I am not an atheist and believe in god. My belief in god has been a feeling very close to my heart and has given me strength to me in life. But closest I could get to god in physical sense in my life was when I visited any Hindu temple being a Hindu. I am writing this to share my experience of my visit to National Museum in New Delhi. I had not expected it to be a divine experience. I have a fondness for museums but have never gone to one to seek any godly encounter. This visit to National Museum changed my perspective towards Museums. Let me give you more details what I am talking about. It is my visit to National Museum specifically to the Buddhist Art Gallery. It turned out to be a spiritual Journey as it has sacred relics of the Gautam Buddha unearthed from Piprehwa, Distt. Sidharth Nagar in U.P India. The gallery also has other Artifacts (according to the museum website it has - outstanding specimens of Buddhist Art as a global movement, is illustrated through 84 exhibits in stone, bronze, terracotta, stucco, wooden sculptures and painted) Now why do I say it is a spiritual experience? Because Buddha is generally included as an avatar of Vishnu in Hinduism.  Buddha was declared an avatar of Vishnu in several Puranas. So looking at something so closely can get you a feeling of getting close to god. Even if you find this a exaggeration but I am sure you will feel different being so close to sacred relics of the Gautam Buddha. You can look to them very closely take photos so this is a must visit which I will recommend to anyone who is in Delhi.       

Thukpa

So am I a Gourmet or a connoisseur of fine food. “No” infect I am writing about something which I have eaten for the first time in my life. So if you are looking for some expert advice I think you are at a wrong place and you will be wasting your time, you should try zomato.com or some other place. I too am not sure about these websites except zomoto as I am not a foodie types. So why am I writing this? I am writing this as I conceder myself from a class who wants to taste exotic food but will not go to a “exotic” place with 5star tag for oblivious reasons. 

This Dish was “Thukpa” and the place was DILLI HAAT INA market New Delhi. I am going to give you a firsthand report of a layman tasting this dish for the first time. There are stalls for different states selling different foods from their respective states. Cheap and OK standards, at times food is good. It can be a very good outing with family on a weekend if you belong to my category that looks at the right hand side of the menu card first in a restaurant. So let me start on my experience of eating Thukpa. I had a friend who had suggested me Thukpa which he told me is a Tibetan noodle soup, which it is. I was at Dilli Haat and wanted to try this, Wikipedia on my mobile told me --Thukpa is a Tibetan noodle soup. The dish became popular in Bhutan, and the states of Sikkim, Assam, and Arunachal Pradesh in Northeast India. It is also popular in the Ladakh region and the state of Himachal Pradesh. 

Wow!! This information got me excited and could not resist this call to adventure. 

There are few stalls of food at dilli haat where you can get Thukpa.

I went to Manipur food stall as my friend had told me about this stall, but I am not sure which is best out of them, I don’t think I can make out a difference between a good Thukpa or a bad one. I ordered one chicken Thukpa, you get differ Thukpa including a pork and even vegetarian Thukpa. I loved the dish and for sure this will not be the last time I am eating this. So what it is? It is what Wikipedia had told me - a noodle soup. Let me ask you few questions? Do you like clear soups specially clear chicken soups? Do you like noodles? If the answer is - yes. Than this dish is for you. The soup is spicy but not very hot. You can try this with a fruit beer which had very sweet test so if you don’t like extra sweet taste go for normal coke or Pepsi. I have liked the Thukpa… not only liked it but now I am a fan of it, will try it again if you have any suggestion for me, I will be more than happy to know anything you tell me about Thukpa.

दामिनी By Tripti Pandey

आहात हुआ है मन नारी का घायल हुआ है तन नारी का I

बन के दामिनी उठी आवाज परिवर्तन का समय है आज II

तन नारी का नहीं खिलौना जब जी चाह खेल लिया I

नारी ने भी हस्ते हस्ते अबतक ये सब झेल लिया II

अज समय कर रहा पुकार स्वस्थ्य बनाओ अपने विचार I

दीप जलाओ मन में अपने करो उजाला तुम जीवन में II

बड़े गर्व की बात है गर नारी का सम्मान करो I

नारी है अपराजिता इसका हमेसा ध्यान धरो II

बदल रहा हर आदमी है By Tripti Pandey

बदल रहा हर आदमी है 

धरती का फटना लाज़मी है 

न शर्म किसी के पास रही

न मर्यादा की भाष रही

सब अधनंगे से खड़े हुए 

और भ्रस्टाचार से भरे हुए 

हे इंसा इंसानियत को मार रहा 

लज्जा के वस्त्र उतार रहा 

बदल रहा हर आदमी है 

धरती का फटना लाज़मी है 

न इंसानियत की आस रही 

न अक्ल किसी के पास रही 

मिथ आकर्षण मे फसे हुए 

भौतिकतावाद में धसे हुए 

है इंसा चीख़ पुकार रहा 

आपनो को खंजर मार रहा 

बदल रहा हर आदमी है 

धरती का फटना लाज़मी है 

मानवता जिन्दा लाश हुई

आखो से असुरता झांक रही

जीवन में अँधेरा लिये हुए

मै की मदिरा को पिए हुए

नित कोई किसी को लूट रहा

आपनो से दामन छूट रहा

बदल रहा हर आदमी है 

धरती का फटना लाज़मी है 

न कर्मठता की आस रही 

न रोटी सब के पास रही

धन वैभव के आकर्षण में 

है धस्ते जाते दलदल में 

मैं मैं न रहा तू तू न रहा 

यह दुनिया अब अनजानी है 

बदल रहा हर आदमी है 

धरती का फटना लाज़मी है

वक्त का है खेल तमाशा by Tripti Pandey

वक्त का है खेल तमाशा,

आज उम्मीदे कल है निराशा.
आशाओ की डोर है पतली,
उम्मीदो का दिया बुझा सा.
सागर की लहरों के किनारे,
मन मेरा हर वक़्त है प्यासा.
नये नये से ख्वाब दिखाती,
बुझती नहीं कभी अभिलषा.

Entrepreneurship and family owned business.

Entrepreneurship is building a dream more than building a business. A great sense of achievement is the reward which is dear to an entrepreneur more than the financial reward which business gives. Family managed business The micro, small and medium enterprise sector is crucial to India's economy. MSME finance in India are 29.8 million enterprises in various industries, employing 69 million people. This sector accounts for 45 per cent of Indian industrial output and 40 per cent of exports. Although 94 per cent of micro, small and medium firms are unregistered, the contribution of the sector to India's GDP has been growing consistently at 11.5 per cent annually, which is higher than the overall GDP growth of 8 per cent (this is 2013 data). MSME sector is synonymous to family managed business in India but do you know only less than four per cent of family businesses last up to the fifth generation, most families are unable to sustain the entrepreneurial spirit of the first generation promoter. So what is it that is important for sustainability of family run business. To sustain the entrepreneurial spirit of the first generation promoter is the most important task which a small business must undertake. The first generation of business has the enthusiasm which sustain the entrepreneurial spirit but the later generations are more involved in operations and running of exiting business that the entrepreneurship orientation.

Now, What is entrepreneurship orientation? And how important is it for a family owned business? Simply - Entrepreneurial orientation (EO) is a firm-level strategic orientation which captures an organization's strategy-making practices, managerial philosophies, and firm behaviors that are entrepreneurial in nature[i]. It represents the policies and practices that provide a basis for entrepreneurial decisions and actions. Thus, EO may be viewed as the entrepreneurial strategy-making processes that key decision makers use to enact their firm’s organizational purpose, sustain its vision, and create competitive advantage(s)[ii].

Sandra Schillo in article - Entrepreneurial Orientation and Company Performance: Can the Academic Literature Guide Managers?[iii] Explains components of EO –

The most widely used definition of EO is based on work by Miller[iv] (1983), developed further by Covin and Slevin[v] (1989) and many others, and augmented by Lumpkin and Dess[vi] (1996). This conceptualization has been used in over 200 studies focusing not only on entrepreneurship, but ranging from management and marketing to healthcare (George and Marino, 2011)[vii]. The five components of EO in this stream of research are:

1. Risk-taking was historically a key characteristic associated with entrepreneurship. It originally referred to the risks individuals take by working for themselves rather than being employed, but has since been widely applied to companies, for example, when managers make decisions that commit large amounts of resources to projects with uncertain outcomes.

2. Proactiveness describes the characteristic of entrepreneurial actions to anticipate future opportunities, both in terms of products or technologies and in terms of markets and consumer demand. This characteristic was at the centre of early economic thinking in this field: the entrepreneur was thought of as someone who identifies opportunities in the marketplace and proactively pursues them (Lumpkin and Dess, 1996). Translated to the level of the firm, proactive companies are leaders in the market, rather than followers.

3. Innovativeness relates to the types of products and services a company has introduced to the market. For some theorists, innovativeness is intrinsically linked to entrepreneurship in that entrepreneurs create new combinations of resources by the very fact of their entry into the market. In the context of EO, innovativeness is defined more narrowly, emphasizing the importance of technological leadership to the company, as well as changes in its product lines.

4. Competitive aggressiveness refers to the company’s way of engaging with its competitors, distinguishing between companies that shy away from direct competition with other companies and those that aggressively pursue their competitors’ target markets.

5. Autonomy “refers to the independent action of an individual or a team in bringing forth an idea or a vision and carrying it through to completion” (Lumpkin and Dess, 1996) without being held back by overly stringent organizational constraints.  Although this component seems to primarily have “face validity” in the context of large organizations, many researchers have applied it to the context of small companies and obtained statistically significant findings.

The components have typically been measured using questionnaire items with Likert-type scales (i.e. from 1-5 or 1-7), as shown in Table 1. Some researchers have anchored the items of both sides of the scale (i.e., they provided explanations of both the 1 and the 7), while others have only provided a single statement to be ranked (e.g., as shown in Table 1). There is some evidence (Miller, 2011) that suggests that the scale remains robust even with slight variations in the wording of questions or other minor measurement variations.

---

[i]  Anderson, Brian; Covin, Jeffrey; Slevin, Dennis (2009). 

[ii] Rauch, Wiklund, Lumpkin, Frese (2004) Entrepreneurial orientation and business performance: an assessment of past research and suggestions for the future

[iii] http://timreview.ca/article/497

[iv] http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/2630968?sid=21106375518283&uid=4&uid=2&uid=3737496

[v] http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/smj.4250100107/abstract

[vi] http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/258632?sid=21106375518283&uid=4&uid=3737496&uid=2

[vii] http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1540-6520.2011.00455.x/abstract

Cyclone Hudhud

Live: Cyclone Hudhud crossing Vizag coast - The Hindu

weather.com

Bulletin on Hudhud - 1

Bulletin on Hudhud - 2

http://www.usno.navy.mil/NOOC/nmfc-ph/RSS/jtwc/warnings/io0314.gif

Cyclone Hudhud is an active tropical cyclone currently threatening the eastern coast of India. Hudhud is the strongest tropical cyclone of 2014 within the North Indian Ocean. The storm is expected to make landfall near the port-city ofVisakhapatnam on October 12.

Hudhud originated from a low pressure area that formed under the influence of an upper-air cyclonic circulation in the Andaman Sea on October 6. The system drifted westward and intensified into a depresion and subsequently into a deep depression the following day. Owing to favorable environmental conditions, Hudhud intensified into a cyclonic storm on October 8. Its convection consolidated in the following hours, and Hudhud became a Severe Cyclonic Storm on October 9. The following day, the storm developed a microwave eye feature and was upgraded to a Category 1 tropical cyclone by the JTWC and to a Very Severe Cyclonic Storm by IMD. Hudhud underwent rapid deepening on October 11 and was classified a Category 3 tropical cyclone while it developed an eye feature.

The name Hudhud, suggested by Oman, refers to the bird Hoopoe.

reference : (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclone_Hudhud)