http://restlessprincess.wordpress.com

Hey People....I have officially moved to wordpress...just some stray posts on this blog...most of which are also there on the new one....
You can find me at....
http://restlessprincess.wordpress.com/

Wall E

Finally saw the movie! It was one of those very hyped movies for me and a lot of people told me how wonderful it was…and I guess in this case….expectations reduced joy!
It was very cute….but an entire movie without any major dialogues to watch at home is a little difficult! Whenever I am watching a movie at home I have a tendency to multitask…which was not possible with this movie has you had to concentrate and watch it as there was not much being said!
I personally am not so much of a fan of science fiction movies and books…and WallE was exactly that…fiction on what the earth would be like thousands of years from now…we would have destroyed it so much and there would be so much waste accumulated on earth that there would be no place for human’s to stay. Humans would then go an occupy the space and live in space ships. Humans would become fat and lazy as all the work would be automated and done by robos! And plants would didapper from earth and earth would not be able to sustain life!
Well the human race is getting fat and lazy and technology is doing a lot of our work….we are producing a lot of waste which is a problem and the trees are diminishing from earth…So I guess it was not so far from the truth…
There was another track in the movie….about WallE (a robo) falling in love with Eva..while it was kind of a cute concept…I could not really relate to it..
Over all the message of the movie was….save the earth…recycle waste…and plant trees…

The Land of Five Rivers

This was a book of 19 short stories selected and translated by Khuswant Singh.
The stories were around Punjab/Pakistan /Independence. They were nice to read because of the Indian context and I could somewhere relate to them as I have heard my grandparents version on the partition.

Overall, I think the stories lost their charm in translation. The couplets and the phrases which would have been oh so powerful in Punjabi/Urdu became very drab in English.

Many of the stories did not have a punch/twist in the end which is so typical of a short story by a Jefferay Archer type of an author. ….Some just end with a “and life goes on!” type of scenarios and you are left thinking what did I read this story for!!?

In fact one of the stories in the book “The night of the Full Moon” written by Kartar Singh Duggal, was used in the movie “Dus Kahaniya” and it was my favorite story in the movie. It was somehow better portrayed in the movie than in the book…again I think it has been lost in translation.

Overall a nice easy quick read…despite all its flaws….it was one of those books I picked up and actually finished it in about a week.. I have not been reaching the end of too many books I pick up lately so I guess that speaks for itself!

Wordpress Sucks!

I am trying for the last 15 mins to put up my post on my new blog in wordpress http://restlessprincess.wordpress.com/.....but I am simply unable to open it!!!

And it is not the wordpress service that is down...cuase I can view other blogs on wordpress....just Reflections of a Restless Princess is just refusing to open up and that is making me very restless indeed!!!

I wanted to put up a post before 12 in the night to ensure that I have a post credited for today….but looks like it is not happening! :-(
So I though I will just come to blogger and crib about wordpress!
Ciao…going to try it once again!

I Have Moved!

Hey People I have finally moved....to http://restlessprincess.wordpress.com/

Not to comfortable with wordpress and I am still trying to get the hang of it.
I may continue to post on both sites for sometime...and eventually move completely to wordpress.

So people do check out my new wordpress page…update your links if you have linked this one and tell me if I should move on continue to stay here!

Hope to hear from you’ll and see you on http://restlessprincess.wordpress.com/

Cheers!

Law of Karma and Non Vegetarianism

Read an interesting line on this topic in an unlikely source.."India Unbound” by Gurcharan Das (I am just on chapter 3 in this book and there are 20 more chapter to go…so in case I continue to read the book chances are many more posts would be inspired by the book!)

The author writes very well….It is almost like he is talking to you…the English is simple and you can picture the scenes that he is describing without any effort and I think that is what makes a writer great...

His father was a very spiritual man and as a child he used to tell them that one inherited the karma of the animal that one ate and therefore one regressed into the reincarnation cycle of births and death. The goal of ones life was to break free from this cycle and achieve unity with the Absolute. It did not make sense to eat meat and add to one’s karmic burdens.

Now I am not propagating Vegetarianism here…although I am by and large a vegetarian myself…I taste non-vegetarian exotic dishes occasionally… the most exotic non veg dish I have tasted is Szechwan Frog legs in Singapore and it was quite nice. Only once have I ventured to eat a complete chicken burger and I could feel the little chicken jumping in my stomach, maybe it was psychological…maybe it was just to heavy to digest..but that was the end of my ‘eating-eating’ non veg …but I am still open to tasting because I believe in trying out almost everything new that comes my way!

Now there is a significant difference between eating and tasting…and I know what it is for myself but it is difficult to explain…so everything I tell my friends I am a vegetarian…I get sniggers with sarcastic smiles and some ya rite it you say so type of comments…So not I call myself a “pseudo vegetarian” with a tag line of I taste non veg but don’t eat it!

Those are my culinary preferences..now back to the funda that made me want to write this post!
“One inherited the karma of the animal that one eats and so It did not make sense to eat meat and add to one’s karmic burdens”

I think it is interesting though….and it does make some sense…you are killing an animal to eat..and you are preventing him from completing his life and fulfilling the karma that he had come to complete…since you are digesting and assimilating (inheriting) the body and preventing it from completing its cycle….you might as well inherit the Karma also!

The counter argument to this can be..maybe it is the karma/fate of the animal that he was to be killed and become food for someone to eat. It is the animals karmic debt that had to be paid off by being eaten!

I don’t know the answers…the complexities of the “Law Of Karma” are many…the only thing that I am absolutely sure of is that the Law of Karma exsits!

PS- I have written another post few months back on the. The Law Of... Karma. Check it out!

Use Blogging as a Lifeline and not a Deadline!

I was tired and not in a mood to write now…but I have been writing regularly(read everyday) for the last few days so I did not want to have a break in the posts.

It is not that I did not have anything to write, My days are quite interesting, I manage to meet interesting people.. have some interesting conversations....read some interesting books..and I
always have an opinion and a though on everything that happened in the course of the day! So if I sit back and think about the day I would always have atleast 3 things I can write about! I normally write about one…and so I have a back log which if it is very interesting, It comes in one of the subsequent days as a post…..if not if just falls through the cracks.

So bottom line...there is always something to write about ..only if you think!

I was just being lazy and did not feel like writing so I asked a friend I was chatting with if I could skip today and he said…ya you can and this is what he told me as advice..,,

“Use blogging as a lifeline..not as a deadline!”

And that is when I decided…this is what I am going to write on just now!

So what is better?

1. Have a deadline and write a post on regular intervals? (The regular is defined by yourself can be every week/every month/every day)

Or

2. To use it as a “Lifeline” and write whenever inspiration strikes you? And write only when you truly truly feel about something?

Well as usual everything has its pros and cons…

In my current state of mind I would be a propagator of make blogging a deadline…and decide for yourself (you have a choice) the interval you want to write a post and stick to it.

What would be the advantages of having a deadline?

1. It is a small thing but it inculcates disciple within yourself when you keep a promise that you have made to yourself (I wish I could sustain this for other things like exercising/praying/meditating etc!) Osho says..start with small easy things and build up/excersie you will power and this will help you when you need determination for difficut pursits in life )
2. Someone who comes to your blog expecting an update (at an interval specified by you) is disappointed to see the same old post
3. Writing every post is an experience and a learning. It helps to structure your thoughts and you learn something about yourself in the process
4. People say that if you have a deadline the quality of your post may not be very good…well that may be true…but there is no guarantee that even if you write when inspiration strikes you that you will come up with a master piece! Also even if you write a post which is not the best because you have a deadline...chances are that it will give you practice to structure your thoughts and put them down and when inspiration does strike…you would have had enough practice!

So all you blogger out there….I agree in principal to the fact that you should write only when you are inspired…but I would also say…keep an internal deadline for yourself…and write at least something before that deadline…

Bottom Line : Don’t wait for inspiration to strike before you start writing..just start writing and inspiration will strike you while you are writing!

Happy Blogging...! Hope to see regular post from many more people!

PS : I may be going on a vacation next week..so may not be able to put a post everyday unless I manage to put advance posts to be published at regular intervals!