Practise alone makes man, A Donkey

Four to five guys were chit chatting on various issues from call dates to latest gadgets, from philosophy to modern art in the cool night breeze of the august season. Our discussion mainly iterated over the need of practise than knowledge. i along with my friend argued that knowledge is only second to practise, as they say "Practise makes the man perfect" . My other friends disagreed with this view. i gave example of skilled labour, seniority in government services, etc to support my statement.
My friend widened my vision with following story.......................

There was a salt trader in a seashore village who used to sell salt in the nearby villages. every day he used to load two heavy bags of salt on his donkey and rode it to the other villages by crossing a river. One day the donkey, missed his balance while crossing river due to the load and fell in the river. When he stood up and crossed the river, he felt the burden to be lightened as the salt got dissolved in water. Then every time he crossed the river, he fell deliberately and reduced his load. Trader understood the trick of donkey and one day loaded its bags full of sponge. This time, donkey repeated its trick, but to his dismay found the loads burden more as sponge had sucked water and added more weight.

So, donkey lacked knowledge,his practise resulted in dangerous outcomes. Hence they say..........

Intelligent hard work never goes waste!

tipped by,
kanagasabai S

Aal paadi, Aadai paadi

My mom always used to say dress properly, otherwise you would not get the due respect in society. A person naturally judges fellow men by their dressing sense at first. Like body language, it speaks about your interest, attitude and character. You can't expect king's reception even if you are a king and dressed like a pauper, saying that you are humble. Hence, in today's corporate world too, if you don't know anything, at least show off as you know, then only you could survive these dog biting dog days. Dress is an important aspect of the previously mentioned lines. Similarly there are dresses to be adorned only for specific occasions, like full black dress for funerals( american way, white for indian way), etc.Traditional dresses are being discarded these days, or better to say being made as an antique, wore only on special days! these dresses were developed by our ancestors for many generations based on their research for suitable dress for our country's climate.

When you choose a dress for an occasion, you have to keep in mind, where you are going to go? with what type of people you are going to interact with, what you want to express to others and what they should infer from you? Most disappointing aspect is, most of the young people are being carried off by the wrong idea that if you wear today's fashionable dress, you are cool!

I witnessed this mind racking incident..........
A lady, middle aged, say 30-40 years old, a small protruding belly, pony tail hair, tight jeans pant, short shirt, plastic bindi, black coloured skin, facial features resembling that of a pakka south Indian and a child clutched in her hands( definitely, i would say its hers) was busily shopping in a super market nearby. A man came near to her, gave her a rupee, and said " I am sorry, i can provide only this much, and i feel pity on you and your husband for such an apathetic condition of your economic status, as you even can't wear good dress. But you can get more rupees to buy a descent dress, if each and every one here give you a rupee! bye!"

tipped by,
kanagasabai S

Sadako Sasaki

This article was published in hindu, dated aug 5, 2008

Sadako Sasaki was two years old when Hiroshima was bombed. She survived the bombing, but was soon diagnosed with leukemia, the so called "atom bomb disease". A friend told Sadako that if she folded a thousand paper cranes, that gods would grant her wish. Sadako made over a thousand cranes before she died at the age of 12. The paper crane has gone to become symbol of peace. Sadako's friends and classmates wanted to build a monument for Sadako and for all other children who had been killed by the bomb. They collected money and in 1958 a statue of Sadako holding aloft a golden crane was unveiled. Inscribed below are the words:

This is our cry,
This is our prayer,
Peace in the world.

Above incident is not only to read, feel and shed two drops of tear. But not to repeat the mistake, else there would be none to shed tears about it.

We engineers and technologists, shaped by exceptional establishments should bring eminence to our motherland by further enhancing the mankind feats in accordance with nature. As they say a mistake done by architect can be covered by creepers, doctors can be buried and that of a lawyer can be covered by lies, but engineer's stands tall in the society.

ur friend,
kanagasabai S

Is it Timidity or Humbleness?

6th August, 2008

You would have noticed some people being very quiet, talk only when it is necessary and stick with their work. They never boast; leave it, never even speak about their dexterity and achievements. They wait for opportunity, till then they analyze the situation, gather resources and tackle it with full force and always return with absolute result. It gives you opinion that they are not very sociable, do not posses any extra ordinary quality, etc. But when they surprise you with their result, you sit back and re-evaluate your opinion. They often surprise the world and are hard to be expected. I don’t say you were wrong in your evaluation; the fault lies in your inability to differentiate between persons who are timid and those who are humble. There is only hair size difference between them. Best parameter in my opinion is their way of conversation, if they are laconic and polite, it means they are humble and if subtle and polite then they are timid. The former will work out wonders, while later needs guidance and support to achieve same results. Often people miscalculate humble people to be timid ones and land themselves in difficult situations.


Here I want to share with you one of the anecdotes I read about Gandhi. This incident happened in one of his trips from Africa to India in ship. An English gentleman who couldn't tolerate Gandhi’s accomplishments in Africa gave him a set of abusive letters pinned together written by him to Gandhi. Gandhi received it, took the pin from the bunch of papers, kept it safely in his pocket and threw the papers into sea. The irritated gentleman took Gandhi to be a timid and chided him “You had essential advice in those papers, but you wasted them”. Gandhi who was humble replied back “I took what was considerable as worthy for me from it, thank you!”


Tipped by,
Kanagasabai S

Playing as a Team

3rd August, 2008

Team player…….this word is often heard, said and practiced by students who are going to attend placement. They get guidance from seniors about how to be, better to say how to act as a team player! They even have a round called group dynamics in their interview selection. Every social animal is itself a best example to be a team player. My choice is ant, which looks as an ordinary species and very tiny, despite its appearance and vulnerability, it is one of the largest population on earth. All the credit goes to its team playing ability. So what can us infer from ants about team playing?

Every body in the team has a special ability, so no one is useless. Everybody in the team has to co-ordinate with other and adapts themselves to the situation. Optimized usage of resources is required with efficient time management. Better communication is an essential ingredient for humans like us. Most of all, ego must be avoided, no single person is a team leader, it is a well defined democratic set up with one or two representatives for the team.


Most suitable proverb is “Birds of a feather flock together”. Let me quote the incident where I got exposure to team playing, learnt and felt it. A group of six to eight boys including myself were staying back in the college hostel even after the exams for fourth semester got over. Reason we had got arrear in a paper of third semester, “Digital Design and Principles”. It was a black patch of our life, we felt as rusted particles of iron floating in the air. We were not able to face the truth and afraid whether we would clear the paper this time. One of our seniors was also staying back as he had an arrear to clear. The most frightening part of it was, he lost his placement in L&T due to it. We had nightmares haunting us in night and shame tagged to us in the morning. We sat together, came to conclusion that we would split the units among ourselves, learn it and teach it to others. Thus we can learn in depth, devout more time and encourage one another. The ones who couldn’t do it by themselves learnt from us and helped us in checking whether we grasped the contents properly. Hence as a team we struggled our way towards success. The D-Day came and we all, as a birds of a feather flocked together with flying colors!


Tipped by,
Kanagasabai S

Recipe of Oratory

1st August, 2008

Humans are best example of social animal. Generally they like to live in groups, share grieves and happiness together. Their favorite pass time is chit chatting with others. They need a leader to guide them. As man had invented the powerful tool of social life called “The Art of Conversation”, it is very essential for a leader to gain mastery in the ORATORY tactic. This ability not only helps him to achieve a celebrity status, but wealth, and power to change history itself. Historical evidences are from its inventors Greeks, followed my many persons such as Hammurabi, Hitler, to today’s politicians. This flute of power has three holes to control and maximize its music; they are words, expression and time.

Apt words should be added to your speech like salt to a dish. It helps the listener to search out the nucleus of your speech. A striking example is the following message I received in my mobile from one of my friends. There was blind beggar on a busy urban street begging for his alms. He didn’t get enough money and found tough to make two ends of his life to meet. A passerby took pity on him; he wrote some words on a placard and kept it near him. Thereafter the beggar received surplus money. Can you guess what those words would have been? They were “Today is a beautiful day, but I can’t see! “

Suitable expressions are needed to make the speech to be a believable one. It aids the listener to believe your words and realize its importance. Prominent models are the stage artists. At last, but not the least, the time of delivery is crucial. It may add extra spark to your speech or mystify it. The joke must be cut at right time; otherwise it will not be relished by the audience. For this I would like to quote my personal experience itself. It was during my first year of undergraduate course. Our English tutor had asked us to give self introduction. When I mentioned that I did my schooling in Sri Ahobila Math OHSS, my friend raghavan enquired about the uniform of the school. I said it was white dhoti and shirts. Trying to make fun of the situation, one of my classmates, Ms.Suganya shot the question “Didn’t dogs bark at you seeing at your dhoties?” It augmented fire across my veins; I decided to take revenge in the same manner, at the same moment itself. I replied “I am glad to inform you that they didn’t and I think this sad state would have happened with your father and it might have prompted you to pose this question to me, my apologies to you!” The whole class erupted with laughter. This incident not only helped me to save my stake, but also spread my name in the campus.

Tipped by,
Kanagasabai S