Enhance Your Life: October 2011

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Enhance Your Life
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Enhance Your Life
How to Survive a Heart Attack Face Book Fiascos Learn to Say No
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n the wake of the world losing a young leader and change maker, we all have a lesson to learn from
Live your Life
the life and death of Steve Jobs. It has almost become second nature to us to complain and lament about the innumerable inconveniences of our daily life what with scams breaking out everyday on all fronts, corruption, avarice, inefficiency, crime, aggression and countless other impediments that make our lives difficult such that we even dont even dare to dream. And to add to this, we are a young country and the youth, given their energies and enthusiasm tend to become impatient and frustrated easily when faced with myriad man-made difficulties.
But look at Steve Jobs life. He was abandoned by his biological mother and landed in the house of working class parents. He had to drop out of college due to financial constraints. He started his company in a garage with his friend and rose to become one of the greatest entrepreneurs of our time when he was kicked out of his own company. He started all over again and reached the zenith, when he had to battle against cancer and come face to face with death. But through all these endeavours, he has been the most amazing human being, who has sought to live a useful life and also try to pass on values to every youth who wanted to emulate him. Given his background, he could have chosen an unsavory path of crime, substance abuse etc., and the society would have still excused him for his transgressions. But he chose to live like a true human being, fighting against all odds and making a difference to the world. In fact, it is in all of us to make such a choice. In
whatever manner we can, we can choose to live our lives. Given the plentitude of opportunities in todays world, youngsters can dare to dream and work towards living the life they want to live. If all of us move towards positivism together, a change can happen which will replace the corrupt systems we are all trying to fight against. This is a totally radical way of trying to bring about a turnaround in the society without expending our energies on trying to set the systems right. Let us all adopt a community-approach to set up our own self reliant communities and move forward. In the meantime, Steve Jobs life is a lesson for all youngsters to surge forward in accomplishing their goals. No obstacle should be an impediment for them to realize their lifes purpose. I would like to conclude by quoting from Steve Jobs address to students at Stanford University, Your time is limited, so dont waste it living someone elses life. Dont be trapped by dogma which is living with the results of other peoples thinking. Dont let the noise of others opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
Ciao,
Swati Amar
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How to Survive a Heart Attack 11
Contents
Facebook Foibles 42
Human Interest 40 Story Club 53 Salt n Pepper Korner 37 Medall Behavioural Feature 56
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Silken Splendour 46
Regulars
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Contents
Eating Right Jest 4 Laughs Teen Potpourri I am the Girl Child The Birthday Party
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Eves Times Vol. 6 No. 177 Rs. 30.00 Cover Pix Courtesy: Sculptora
October 2011
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CEO (Global Operations) : Nischinta Editor-in-Chief : Swati Amar Chief Operating Officer : Kalpana Yuvarraaj Associate Editor : Malini Shankar Editor, Graphics & Design : Sreedevi Photograph and Design Coordination :Kanakraj Production Executiv : Sumathi R Marketing Coordination : Sivakumar Advertising & Marketing : R. Ravichandran : Prashant : Kirtivasan Circulation : Jaganathan : James Expert Panel : Karti Chidambaram : M.R.Venkatesh : Mallika Badrinath : Brinda Jayaraman : Dr.Priya Selvaraj : Dr.V.Mohan : Dr.Rema Mohan : Dr.K.Ravi : Prema Ravi : Dr.Usha Sriram : Dr.Vijay Sheel Kumar : Gurudev Jaggi Vasudev : Vijaya Chamundeeswari : Usha Subramaniam Writers Panel : Nischinta ( San Diego) : Namrata (Jodhpur) : Sumati Ramkumar : Padmini Natarajan : Kanchana Rao : Geeta Canapadee : Deepti Menon : Maya Ganesh : Radha Chandrasekar (Singapore) : Nikita Nevgi ( Singapore) : Nagamani (Malaysia) : Shailaja Mehta(Delhi) : Gomati (Delhi) : Ranjana Goshal (Mumbai) : Nitin (Bangalore) : Kshitij (London) : Amit Desai ( London) Eves Times Group Volume 6 Issue 177 for the month October 2011 Registered Office : #18/1 Second Cross Street Dr.Radhakrishnan Nagar, Thiruvanmiyur Chennai 600 041 E-mail : editoretg@gmail.com Ph: 91 44 24526739/91 44 24521813 Printed by K. Elumalai at Sakthi Scanners (P) Ltd., No 7 Dams Road Chindadripet, Chennai 600 002 Published by Smt. Kamala Balachandran On behalf of Eves Times Group Editor-in-Chief Lata Amarnath All rights reserved Reproduction in any form is prohibited Eves times Group does not take the responsibility for returning unsolicited publication material.
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A Heart to Care
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Have a Heart
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and governments, no one is exempt from the message. It is a worrisome fact that heart disease and stroke are the leading causes of death worldwide. Awareness of risks is the first step in the prevention of heart disease. It is time we woke up to the fact that most of us take our heart for granted and do not worry about the strain it is being put to. We need to understand what works for our heart and what does not, to lead a hearty life. To prevent the risk of Cardio Vascular Diseases we need to implement healthcare practices in our lifestyle.
o you know that 17.2 million lives are lost each year due to heart disease and stroke? 80% of these deaths could have been averted merely by controlling the risk factors of heart disease. According to statistics, 40% of those who get a heart attack die even before they make it to the hospital. Is it possible to reverse this trend?
Are you at Risk?

Risk factors for heart diseases may be those that can be controlled and those we cannot control.
Heart disease and stroke claims 17.1 million lives worldwide every year. World Heart Day was devised by the World Heart Federation to help people realise that the majority of these deaths could be avoided. This year World Heart Day fell on 29 September 2011.
Factors not under your control
Genetic predisposition poses a threat to emergence of heart disease during ones lifetime. A bad lifestyle adds to the risk and is a surefire invitation to heart disease. This year is the eleventh Other factors include year of the event and the theme this year is, One Old age World, One Home, One Heart. The World Heart Family history Federation is urging Post-menopausal women us to become proactive about reducing heart Males proneness to risks disease and stroke. From individuals, right Race - Indians are through to employers, ethnically more prone to health care professionals heart diseases.
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Factors under your control

Elevated levels of LDL or bad cholesterol and low levels of HDL, or good cholesterol Smoking Untreated hypertension Stress Anger and aggression Sedentary lifestyle Obesity Untreated diabetes
What should be done?

Adopting a healthy lifestyle which incorporates fitness, a balanced diet, a cool attitude and good habits reduces the risk of heart diseases. Theres an exclusive on a healthy diet in this issue. Read and follow the counsel therein for a peppy life. As for fitness, we all know that those who are active and have incorporated at least one type of regular exercise in their daily life are normally free from diseases. Other proactive steps to be taken include quitting smoking if you are a smoker, keep away from alcohol and substance abuse and keep your BP or diabetes under control if you have these conditions. It pays to keep your cholesterol levels and triglycerides under good control too. The risk for heart disease escalates with increase in total cholesterol. The cholesterol reading for healthy adults
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should be below 200 mg/dl. HDL, which is called as the good cholesterol, should be above 40 mg/dl in men and 50 mg/dl in women, the higher the better. For healthy adults, LDL should be below 130 mg/dl. A diet which is low in cholesterol, saturated and trans fat is the best way to keep bad cholesterol at bay. Exercise is a must to reduce levels of bad cholesterol and increase
levels of good cholesterol. In some cases, doctors prescribe medications to help manage unhealthy cholesterol levels. Apart from these, the most important action you must take is to keep your weight, anger, stress and negativity under control. Research says that people, who have more friends, are genial and humorous and kind are less prone to heart diseases. Believe that you
will be able to control stress and anger and work towards improving your ambience at home and at workplace. For stress management, take up yoga and meditation or hobbies such as music, dance, sports, reading or anything that relaxes your mind. Work toward improving your heart and your heart will work for you to ensure that you are healthy and happy.
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How to Survive a Heart Attack
By Swati Amar
alking from personal experience, I can vividly recount the horror of seeing my father exhibit symptoms of a massive heart attack some years ago when I was a college student. Years back, there was not much awareness, but the emergency spurred me on to do something anything to save my fathers life. I recalled the procedures we learnt in school about reviving patients undergoing a heart attack and immediately gave a CPR to my father. However clumsy my effort had been, he survived and lived for another wonderful twelve years, rising to great heights in his career and seeing his family settled comfortably. There are two good reasons why everybody should be equipped with the most basic information about heart attacks. Today, it is not an uncommon experience for anyone to suffer from a heart attack, which may include you or someone you love. Secondly, the action taken during the first few critical hours of a heart attack will determine the extent of damage and survival of the person having a heart attack.
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In this context, it is also important to understand what a stroke is. A stroke is a blockage in an artery that supplies blood to the brain. When a clot forms in one such artery and leads to cessation of blood flow, a section of the brain begins to die. The symptoms of stroke dont include any pain or discomfort, and are more likely associated with losing feeling or the ability to move. Usually strokes affect only one side of the body. an acute heart attack. Sudden death is possible due to the erratic fluctuations in the electrical impulses of the heart.
The Basics
A heart attack or a myocardial infarction is the death of heart muscle, caused by a blockage in one of the coronary arteries. When a blood clot forms at the site of an atherosclerotic plaque in a coronary artery ( the site where the artery is thin due to the formation of a plaque), a heart attack occurs The clot blocks the artery and blood flow stops. The heart muscle, being supplied by that artery immediately becomes starved of oxygen, which in medical parlance is known as ischemia and if the blood flow is not restored within a few hours, the heart muscle dies. It is important to differentiate between a heart attack and a cardiac arrest, which is more serious. Cardiac arrest happens when the heart stops pumping blood. With no pumping action, the blood pressure falls and blood is no longer forced into the muscles and organs of the body. There are various reasons for the heart to stop pumping blood. The heart might get weak or the heart beats might be erratic, a condition known as arrhythmia. When arrhythmia happens, it causes the blood pressure to fall dangerously. Cardiac arrest is fatal. If you are able to recognize a heart attack and are able to restore the heart function, cardiac arrest can be prevented. A person who collapses and stops breathing is likely in cardiac arrest and needs a CPR or cardiopulmonary resuscitation to survive.
The First Critical Hours

The first 3 6 hours after the onset of the heart attack are utterly critical. Most of the lethal arrhythmias seen in the case of acute heart attacks occur during the first few hours. If these arrhythmias occur while the victim is under medical attention, they can virtually always be stopped in time to prevent a catastrophe. Further, if the artery can be opened within the first few hours after the blockage occurs, much of the dying heart muscle can be saved, much of the permanent heart damage can be avoided, and the patients risk of death or permanent disability can be greatly diminished. But if treatment is delayed beyond 6 hours, the amount of heart muscle that can still be saved drops off significantly. What this means, of course, is that if a patient having a heart attack tries to ride it out at home for a while, hoping the symptoms are due to indigestion or muscle strain, or if the medical personnel delay instituting therapy for any reason, the delay can lead to devastating and permanent results.
The Aftermath of a Heart Attack

When a part of the heart muscle dies, i.e. a myocardial infarction (MI) happens, it leads to several undesirable consequences in the body. If the damage is large, the patient can develop immediate heart failure and shock and often mortality seems imminent. If the damage is not much, then the heart tries to heal itself. It can enlarge and change shape. This leads to a decrease in cardiac pumping efficiency and may lead to gradual cardiac failure over the following months or years. The consequence of a heart attack depends upon the amount of muscular damage, which in turn depends upon which coronary artery is blocked and where in the artery the blockage has happened. Another very dangerous upshot of a heart attack is lethal heart arrhythmias that can follow, which is basically electrical instability of the heart that happens immediately after
Removing Heart Blockages

Dr.B.Ramamurthy, Sr. Consultant & Interventional
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Cardiologist, Billroth Hospitals, Chennai says Reperfusion strategies are available to open blocked arteries that cause the heart attack or Acute Myocardial Infarction. According to him, a blockage has two components. Initially fatty deposits start occurring upon which the thrombus or blood gets clotted, totally occluding the artery. Thrombolytic therapy uses drugs that open a part of the blockage immediately by removing the blood clot. However, it does not act upon the fibro fatty part of the blockage. Yet, it removes immediate danger to the patient, is affordable and can be done anywhere with the help of an IV set and the drugs. However this procedure has to be done within three hours after the onset of the heart attack. Primary angioplasty using balloon catheters and stents on the other hand removes the blockage completely. It is more expensive and has to be done in specialized centres by trained cardiac surgeons, which can cause delay in the onset of treatment. Initiating the treatment immediately after a heart attack is of paramount importance. Hence you have the new pharmaco invasive therapy which is a combination of both the procedures which will help in initiation of the treatment immediately and also solve the problem of complete removal or the blockage. Once the patient is treated by thrombolytic therapy, he can be transferred to a higher centre for performing angioplasty 6 hours after the drug therapy. This gives the doctors time to transfer and prepare the patients. Billroth Hospitals, Chennai offers this procedure. How to Recognize a Heart Attack? In most men and some women the classic symptoms of a heart attack include intense, sometimes squeezing, chest pressure or pain, often radiating to the jaw or left arm, and frequently accompanied by profuse sweating, or a nearly overwhelming sense of fear or impending doom. Unfortunately, many patients with heart attacks do not have this classic presentation. Their discomfort may be relatively mild, and may be localized to the back, abdomen, shoulders, or either or both arms. Nausea and vomiting, or merely a feeling of heartburn, may be the only symptom. These less classic symptoms may not make patients think of a heart problem, and may keep them from seeking medical help. Indeed, up to 30% of heart attacks are diagnosed by taking a routine ECG long after the fact.
October 2011
This is why people with one or more risk factors for coronary artery disease need to pay close attention to any unusual symptoms involving the upper half of the body. This warning would apply, for instance, for any middle-aged or older person who is obese, sedentar y, a smoker, a diabetic,
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overweight, has high cholesterol, or has a family history of heart disease. (Ideally, of course, such people will have been e v a lu ate d by a competent physician who will h a v e screened them f o r t h e presence of coronary artery disease, coached them on risk factor modification, and heightened their awareness of potential cardiac problems.)
Eves Times
be atypical and sometimes so vague as to be easily missed. The only complaint may be extreme weakness or fatigue.
Symptoms of a Heart Attack

The classic symptoms are: Chest pain Pressure, heaviness tightness in the chest or
If you suspect you might be having a heart attack, ACT!

If you experience any symptoms suggestive of heart attack, especially if you know you have risk factors for coronary artery disease, your key to avoiding death or permanent disability is to get yourself medical help as soon as possible. If you live in an area where paramedics can get to you within a few minutes, and then call them. If it would be quicker to have someone drive you to a hospital. But get help right away. If you are having a heart attack, every minute is vitally important. And while youre waiting for the paramedics, or being driven to the hospital, take an aspirin. The patients reluctance to get medical help is the most common reason for critical delays in therapy for heart attacks. This is one time you really need to listen to your body; if it feels like there is something terribly wrong, there probably is. Studies report that women experienced new symptoms a month before experience a heart attack or Acute Myocardial Infarction (AMI). Most commonly reported symptoms
Pain or pressure in the neck or jaw Pain or pressure in one or both arms (especially the left) Shortness of breath Sweating Nausea Pain or throbbing between the shoulder blades Indigestion
This list is not complete, since many times people can experience a heart attack with minimal symptoms. In
women and the e l d e r l y, heart attack symptoms can
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were unusual fatigue, sleep disturbances and shortness of breath. Surprisingly, women did not seem to have chest pain or discomfort in their chest prior to their heart attack. Symptoms such as indigestion, sleep disturbances, or weakness in the arms, which many of us experience on a daily basis, were recognized by many women in the study as warning signals for AMI.
Sit down and rest. The more exercise or stress you put on the heart, the more damage the heart attack will do. Sit and rest until the ambulance arrives. Have someone gather your medications. If there is someone with you, have them gather your medications or an updated list. Its a good idea to have personal medical information available at all times for the ambulance
crew. Take your nitroglycerin. If you have a prescription for nitroglycerin, take it as directed by your physician. Usually, you put a tablet under your tongue and let it dissolve. Do not take another persons nitroglycerin. Nitroglycerin can make some peoples blood pressure drop dangerously low. If you have had a drug for erectile dysfunction during the
While waiting for the ambulance:
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last 36 hours, dont take nitroglycerin!
Idiosyncrasies
Its believed that women and men have distinctly different symptoms when they have heart attacks. Men have crushing chest pain that runs down the left arm and women do not. The
problem has always been that nobody can tell us exactly how women are likely to feel when they get a heart attack. One consistent difference seems to be that women supposedly dont have chest pain. But remember, both sexes can have heart attacks without
having chest pain. Despite the fact that you dont seem to have the classic symptoms of a heart attack, if youre having some sort of new discomfort in your torso or upper arms, whether it is in the middle of your back or the middle of your chest, dont wait until your heart stops to prove it was a heart attack!
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By Swati Amar
ndia has the highest incidence of heart related diseases in the world and the number of those affected is likely to double in the coming years. Researchers had long been aware that heart disease, which according to the World Health Organization will kill almost 20 million people by 2015, is exceptionally prevalent in the subIndian continent. A major worrisome development is that heart attacks and other heart ailments afflicting women are alarmingly on the rise today. Normally women are not prone to heart attacks. This is because the hormone, progesterone, protects women from heart attacks. For women with early onset of diabetes and hypertension, the benefits of this hormone are lost and the chances of their developing heart ailments are high. According to Dr. Sanjay Kumar, Senior Consultant Interventional Cardiologist, Fortis Escorts Group of Hospitals, Delhi, diabetic women are four times more prone to heart attack than non diabetic women. He divulges that according to a World Health Organization report, India, a country with more than one billion people, will likely account for 60 per cent of heart disease patients worldwide, by 2010. India will become the worlds CAD (Coronary Artery Disease) capital. The budgetary allocation for CAD is said to be more than that of the defence budget in developing countries. CAD involves huge sums of money and India cannot afford this. It is imperative
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that the nation as a whole fights Coronary Artery Disease. According to the report the high incidence in India is due to lack of physical exercise and consumption of lesser salads and fruits when compared to people in the developed countries. Dr.Sanjay says that central obesity ( in the hip region ) due to lack of physical exercise is an important risk factor for Coronary Artery Disease, which is on the rise among Indian women. More and more cases of massive heart attacks in men and to a lesser degree in women in their twenties and thirties are on the rise. Though smoking is lesser among Indian women, it is increasing and is a risk factor for heart ailments. Family history results in the proneness to CAD, which is the same for men and women. Doctor Sanjay Kumar says categorically, There is no excuse for not doing any physical exercise. You must walk 4 to 5 kilometers at least five days a week. Walk during midnight or even 2 a.m., or do the treadmill, but YOU MUST WALK. You must also go for an annual health check up after forty years. Get your lipid profile, cholesterol, blood pressure and blood sugar checked every year. CAD is a silent killer and is often overlooked. Medical check up will unearth any early symptoms. Dr. B.Somaraju, Chief of Cardiology, Care Hospitals, Hyderabad and Chairman of Care Group says that women are fast catching up with men in the incidence of heart attacks. All over the world when smoking has come down in developed countries, in India, it is on the rise and women smoking is an issue today. Life style has had severe impact on the health of Indian women. Fitness is still not a priority among Indian women. According to him, the presentation of the heart attack in women is very different from that of m e n . While the classic
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and radiation may be different in the case of women. Another amazing fact is that the ECG of most women, even those with no heart disease usually reveals abnormality. The reason for this is not well understood. Women often have chest pain due to various reasons and hence even if older women complain of chest pains, there is a tendency to consider and hence diagnose heart attack even by doctors. He feels that public education about heart attacks and heart ailments will go a long way in creating more awareness and prevention of heart diseases. He advises preventive measures such as restricting or avoiding hormone therapy in women, especially if they have risk factors such as diabetes, hypertension etc. Good control of blood pressure, high cholesterol, blood sugar, avoidance of smoking and alcohol, physical exercise and a balanced diet will go a long way in keeping heart ailments at bay. In older women, especially those who are small built, the risk of heart treatment procedures such as by pass surgery, stenting and angioplasty is high because their arteries are small. Considering all these, it makes sense to take measures to ensure that you have a healthy heart. Dr. V.V.Bashi Chief Cardiac Surgeon, MIOT Hospitals, Chennai agrees that menstruating women are protected from heart attacks by female hormones. No ischemic
symptoms of angina are chest pain beneath the sternal bone and radiation of pain to the back and left arm and shortness of breath, these may not be presented explicitly in many women. Often the pain is less severe or the location
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The highest risk factor for heart attack among women is genetic proneness. If heart attack, diabetes and hypertension run in a womans family, she should ensure that she does not get married into a family with similar ailments to prevent passing on the genetic predisposition to her children. This kind of inquiry is more important than matching horoscopes! . Women in whose families diabetes is common should take steps to prevent the onset of diabetes. Around middle age they should start medical check ups to identify proneness to diabetes. Tests such as glycosylated Hb or Glucose tolerance test can help identify risk of diabetes. The most important step to be taken however is weight control. Keep your weight down. This is not a Herculean task. Thirtyforty minutes of walk for at least five days a week will do the trick. If you are busy, you need not walk for a long time at a stretch. You can walk for 15 minutes, twice a day. After a brisk walk your metabolic rate goes up for 2- 4 hours, which is very good. In fact, contrary to the myth that a walk after a meal is undesirable, twenty minutes of walk after lunch or dinner is the best. Also you must realize that no dieting is going to help you. There is no short cut to exercises either. At the same time, vigorous exercises to reduce your weight by joining a gym will help
heart diseases normally occur in menstruating women as long as they are not diabetic, hypertensive, or have a family history of heart disease or obesity. However, heart attacks are afflicting younger women due to life style changes, habits such as smoking and consumption of alcohol. Dr. Bashi has performed bypass surgeries on many young women. After menopause women are almost equal to women. As a cardiac surgeon he cautions women to keep heart ailments at bay, especially considering the difficulty and high risk in performing procedures in women because they have smaller arteries. Surgical results for women are less optimistic when compared to those of men. He advises a complete makeover in the lifestyle, dietary habits and physical activity. For women on family planning
pills, there is a slightly increased risk too because then again the benefit of the progesterone is lost. Moreover, the pill increases her tendency for clotting, which can occur anywhere in the body, including the heart. According to most doctors, above the age of fifty five women become almost unisex. After 55 the ratio of women to men for risk of heart attack is almost equal. Of course, genetic proneness plays an important role in predisposing women to heart attacks. Dr. (Mrs.) Kalyani Nityanandan, Consultant Cardiologist, Chennai dispels certain myths and beliefs about the increasing incidence of heart ailments among women today. According to her stress also seems to have added to the increase in incidence. Since women have taken up serious careers, their stress levels have
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reduce only your wallet and not your weight. Ideal exercises are those that will involve a large group of muscles such as walking, swimming or cycling. If you lose more than 1 to 2 kilos a month, then be sure that you will get it back almost immediately. Your weight loss should be slow and steady. To reduce tension working housewives should resort to planning and modify their mental attitude too. It is good to be flexible about your targets. Make a list of the work you want to accomplish, which need not include only a list of vegetables, but all the activities you can fit into your next day itinerary. Planning your day in advance has always helped. Planning should include even your confrontation or discussion that you want to resort to at home or your office. Also fixing your priorities and being definite about your priorities in the first place are important. Meditation and yoga help reducing tension, as does music. You can do your household chores while listening to music. Also, every woman has worries, which lurk in some corner of our mind and we cannot wish them away. She says, I have found an innovative way to tackle my worries. I set apart some time every day to ponder over the worries which may be about the children, husband, home etc. I call it my worrying time. If during any time of the day my worries surface, I try to relegate them to my worrying time!
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Another habit I have noticed among housewives is that they treat their stomachs like a garbage can. Whatever food is left over, it finds a place in their stomachs. I would suggest that left over food be given to someone or used to feed birds or animals. Do not eat unless hungry, at the same time eat as soon as you are hungry. If you allow your hunger to linger for a long time them you will gorge! This is because it takes about 20 minutes for the centre in the hypothalamus to get the feeling of satiety. When you do feel hungry try o have a salty snack that will immediately help dispel hunger. Try to include a carbohydrate and a protein during your meals always because these food types will stay in your stomach for a long time and even out the plateau of the sugar in your blood. My advice is - Be kind to yourself. Dont cook only for your family. Make food specially for yourself too. Try to have salads and buttermilk whenever you are hungry. If you have practical and attainable targets, enjoy your work, do exercises regularly, eat proper meals at the right time, understand your genetic predisposition to certain health conditions and take adequate precautions and are generally relaxed, then you need not worry about heart attacks. ******
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When I despair, I remember that all through history the ways of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants, and murderers, and for a time they can seem invincible, but in the end they always fall. Think of it--always.
Eating Right Jest for Laughs The girl child The Birthday party
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Mahatma Gandhi
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From Namratas Desh...

led insanity, would have lived to rise up to the level of a CEO of a global company. While we girls keep reiterating to the society that we are equals, if not better than our counterparts, whenever there is a break up in a relationship, it is the girl who is affected more, emotionally. The guy just has to drown his sorrow in a few bottles in the company of his gang if friends in a theatre! The lesson we can learn from this tragic event is that when confronted with such unpalatable events, the best we can do is to think, introspect. Once we do that, we can always work out a way. On the other hand, if we do not rein in our emotions and react, this could be the consequence. We live in a world where we can all make a choice. If the girl had been unfortunate to have had a relationship with such a low mortal who did not hesitate to declare to the whole world about the break up, she would
n the recent past social networking sites have emerged as the reason for disdain in some quarters. Rightly so. Because some of our friends are not using such a remarkable global platform of interaction in its right sense. I believe festivals are times to clean up our stables and let the new in. Especially, Deepavali, my favourite festival seems to convey the message of enlightenment. The lights and colours of this grandiose festival seem to tell us, Hey! Make your life as radiant as possible. Dispel darkness if any, in the corners of your mind and light up your lives. Theres such a lot to do and savour. Let go of all that is causing disturbances to your mind and fill up with happiness and cheer! I write this in the context of the sad event associated with the suicide of a bright young girl who , if she had not given in to a momentary siege of depression
have been better off without him, which was an opportunity she did not see! She could have excelled, met a decent person and soared high in her life. What did she try to prove by ending her life? What about all the years she had lived, working hard to reach where she was? What about all the people, especially her parents, friends and teachers who loved her. If an affair comes to an end, however bitter it may seem at that time, for girls, it is a good thing. Because, had it continued with the wrong person, it would have gone against everything the girl wanted to achieve. This Deepavali let us all, especially girls, take a pledge to live enlightened lives, make our own career and future choices and stand by them, come what may. And if a few unpalatable people come our way and we had not been careful in interacting with them, let us say, Oh! Ok! So this was the wrong person after all. Thank god for small (big) mercies, he is out of the way now! And I am about to conquer the world! Heres wishing all of you out there, a Very Happy, Prosperous, Successful and Dream-filled Deepavali. Way to go! Until next month, Namrata Editor, Teen Mag
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Graffiti
October 2011
Eves Times
ladies going out from our beauty parlour. They may be your grandmothers.
Sign Bored? A sign outside a Home Appliance shop

Dont kill your wife. Let our washing machine do the dirty work.
A Motor Driving School displayed the following sign board

If your wife wants to drive, dont stand in her way.
2. A whale swims all day, eats only fish, drinks a lot of water and.... IS FAT.
3. A rabbit runs and hops all the time and lives only, at best, for 15 years
Outside a Dry Cleaners

We do not tear your clothes with machinery. We do it carefully with our hands.
4. A turtle doesnt run, does nothing.... yet lives for 450 years..!!
Why ? Notice outside a Doctors Clinic

Ladies in the waiting room are requested not to exchange symptoms. It gets the doctor hopelessly mixed up!
A sign board outside a beauty parlour

Please dont whistle at the
If walking is good for ones health, the postman would be immortal.
1 .
5.Politicians dont work, dont attend office, sleep during meetings, eat junk food and yet live for 90 years plus and die while in service.
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11/10/11 10:38 PM
Eves Times
October 2011
he festive season is a time for us to indulge our taste buds. For those who eat right most of the times, indulging during festivals is not a big deal. Hence it is good to develop the habit of eating right through the year and then gorge on your choicest delicacies (within limits!) when it is time for Deepavali. Here is how you eat right Every meal at home should have all the food typescarbohydrate, protein, vitamins and minerals obtained from fruits and vegetables and a little fat. If we eliminate any one food type, then our body is deprived of the nutrients that can be obtained from that food type. Everybody has his or her own food preferences. Hence the tendency is to resist diet patterns which we feel we are imposing on ourselves. Yet, if we can work out our own diet pattern, with the help of a nutritionist which will be closer to our preferences, our activity levels, life style and food habits, we can lead an optimally healthy life. In our diet pattern, we can definitely include a little bit of indulgence i.e.., if we adhere to the diet chart, then once in a while it is okay to indulge a trifle. But rest of the time, we should maintain a
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well-balanced diet. There are some simple rules that we can adhere to when we work on our diet pattern for best result: Our meal should include complex carbohydrates such as unpolished rice, whole wheat etc., which are not only a source of starch but also have fibres that help in digestion. Whole grains are also rich source of vitamins. Stay away from carbohydrates like sugar etc. refined maida,
Eves Times
Carbohydrate is a part of everyones meal. Take complex carbohydrates instead of refined. Also portion control is important. For e.g., we usually take sambhar and rice or roti and dhal. Our source of protein comes from dhal, dried beans, chana, rajma, milk and milk products and proteins of animal origin such as meat, fish and eggs. The ratio between carbohydrate and protein content in our meal is very important. The tendency is to take more carbohydrate and less of protein. For example for a family of four or five only two tablespoons of dhal is used to make sambhar, whereas the rice consumed is a generous portion and vegetables are taken in small quantities. The right proportion for a meal is one cup of cooked rice, one cup of dhal i... one portion of complex carbohydrate, one serving of protein and three hundred grams of vegetables. The protein can be animal or vegetable protein. Try to mix
a variety of dhals every day to get the benefit of all the aminoacids. We get oils and fats as invisible fats naturally. Vegetables can be cooked in their own fat. Hence try to cook with minimum oil. It is important to keep our oil consumption to two tablespoons or four tea spoons per day which will be a combination of mono and polyunsaturated oils. It is better to avoid saturated fats such as butter, hydrogenated oils etc. Vegetables should be a major part of every meal- breakfast, lunch and dinner. Take a variety of vegetables. Include greens, and watery vegetables like gourds. A meal of only potatoes and other tubers everyday is not good. You can also pick up vegetables of different colours. Fruits are rich sources of vitamins. Fruits can be taken
as a snack in the evening or 20-30 minutes before a meal because if fruits are taken along with other foods, they will be fermented. To get complete protein, try to include some nuts and seeds every day. You can use these on your vegetables, cereal preparations or salads. Women can include more of molasses, til and other products rich in high content. Those who like to eat sweets can eat preparations made of jaggery and gain the benefit of both Iron content and taste. Drink a lot of water, at least 8-10 glasses. Instead of buying instant foods, try to use the pressure cooker for faster cooking. Try to bake more instead of cooking.
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Eves Times
October 2011
JEST 4 L
Mrs. Mishra, do you know me? She responded, Why, yes, I do know you, Mr. Gupta. Ive known you since you were a young boy. And frankly, youve been a big disappointment to me. You lie, you cheat on your wife, you manipulate people and talk about them behind their backs. You think youre a rising big shot when you havent the brains to realize you will never amount to anything more than a two-bit paper pusher. Yes, I know you. The lawyer was stunned. Not knowing what else to do, he pointed across the room and asked, Mrs. Mishra, do you know the defense attorney? She replied, Why, yes I do. Ive known Mr. Shankar since he was a youngster, too. I used to baby-sit him for his parents. And he, too, has been a real disappointment to me. Hes lazy, bigoted, and he has a drinking problem. The man cant build a normal relationship with anyone, and his law practice is one of the shoddiest in the entire state. Yes, I know him. At this point, the judge rapped the courtroom to silence and called both counselors to the bench. In a very quiet voice, he said with menace, If either of you asks her if she knows me, youll be jailed for contempt!
Bar-at-Law
The pilot on a small plane announced that the plane was going to crash and its every man for himself. The pilot and co-pilot then grabbed two parachutes and jumped out of the plane. The four passengers, an old priest, a 10 year old boy, a brain surgeon and an attorney, ran to the storage area for the remaining parachutes -- there were only three left. The brain surgeon said, There is only one other doctor in the world that can perform the type of surgery I do, and I can
Punishment
After a family disturbance, one of the little boys closed his bedtime prayer by saying, And please dont give my dad any more children...He dont know how to treat those hes got now.
Senior Citizens!
A small-town prosecuting attorney called his first witness to the stand in a trial -- a grandmotherly, elderly woman. He approached her and asked,
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October 2011
Eves Times
4 LAUGHS
The old priest turned to the young boy and said, Son, take the last parachute, I have had a full life and am at peace with my Maker, you have your whole life to live yet. The young boy was shaking his head No, dont worry Father, he said, we both will be ok -you know that guy who said he had superior knowledge and intelligence -- well, instead of grabbing a parachute pack, he grabbed my backpack!
save thousands of lives, Im too needed to die -- so he grabbed a pack and jumped. The attorney then pushed aside the priest and the 10 year old, grabbed a pack and explained, Since I am an attorney, my life should be saved because I have superior knowledge and intelligence and am very much needed to advise all the thousands of people less brilliant than me, and then he jumped.
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Eves Times
October 2011
Husbands & Wives

Teen Potpourri
osition of a Husband Is just like a Split AC No matter however Loud he is in the Outdoor He is designed to remain Silent indoor... Husband is one who is the head of the family, but his wife is the neck, and whichever way she turns, he goes. A man in Hell asked Devil: Can I make a call to my Wife? After making call he asked how much to pay. Devil: Nothing, Hell to hell is Free. Husband: Do you know the meaning of WIFE? It means, Without Information, Fighting Every time! Wife: No darling, it means - With Idiot For Ever Wife: I wish I was a newspaper, So Id be in your hands all day. Husband: I too wish that you were a newspaper, So I could have a new one every day. Doctor: Your husband needs rest and peace. Here are some sleeping Pills. Wife: When must I give them to him? Doctor: They are for you Wife: I had to marry you to find out how stupid you are.. Husband: You should have known it the minute I asked you to marry me.
Quizzeria ?
Wife: What will you give me if I climb the great Mount Everest ? Husband: A lovely Push...! cheers,
Can you solve this Mystery? What does Nine Pipe Pour Pour Pipe Pour Pipe Pour Pour Pipe mean? Not a Tongue Twister :-) :-) Lallu Prasad giving his mobile number 9544545445
1. Only one color, but not one size; stuck to the ground, yet easily flies. Present in sun, but not in rain; doing no harm, and feeling no pain. What is it? 2. What common English verb becomes its own past tense by rearranging its letters? 3. I have holes on the top and bottom. I have holes on my left and on my right. And I have holes in the middle, yet I still hold water. What am I? 4. A word I know, Six letters it contains, Subtract just one, And twelve is what remains. What is the word? 5. What can run but walks, has a mouth but talks, has a head but weeps, has a bed but sleeps? never never never never
2011 Magic
This year, July had 5 Fridays, 5 Saturdays and 5 Sundays. This happens once every 823 years. This year were going to experience four unusual dates. 1/1/11, 1/11/11, 11/1/11, 11/11/11 and thats not all... Take the last two digits of the year in which you were born - now add the age you will be this year, The results will be 111 for everyone !
6. What object has keys that open no locks, space but no room, and you can enter but not go in? 7. It has no top or bottom but it can hold flesh, bones and blood all at the same time. What is this object? 1. A Shadow, 2 Eat or Ate, 3. A Sponge, 4.Dozens, 5. A River, 6.A keyboard, 7. A Ring
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Answers
October 2011
Eves Times
Just his lover----I am the Girl Child

I am revered as Shakti The symbol of power and fearlessness You worship me, for strength and valor And surrender unreservedly to my might In me you seek the Divine. I am the Lakshmi of your abode The emblem of wealth and prosperity You venerate me, for opulence and affluence No sacrifice is too big for you To keep me in your Shrine. I am goddess Saraswati The quintessence of learning and wisdom Knowledge and creativity I bestow You honor me, you idolize me For my blessings you relentlessly pine. Yet, all this is so futile When you fail to realize That it is I who bears the brunt of the scalpel It is me who you mutilate and destroy Every time an unborn female fetus Is killed in a mothers womb, Because through time immemorial I am the Girl Child.
A lonely figure, she stood Away from the milling crowd Draped in her quiet grief Aloof and dignified Her eyes glistened in the light Yet there was stateliness in her stance. It was a solemn occasion But also one of pride The nation had gathered to pay tribute To a brave son of the soil A soldier who gave up his life And made the supreme sacrifice. With gunfire and final salute His body was laid to rest Family and friends broke down As they bid their final adieu Yet there was no mistaking The contentment in their eyes. Surrounded by multitudes
They accepted the condolences People marveled at their altruism And eulogized their selflessness Of giving up a loved one To be a martyr of the land. Wife and mother, brother, son Father, sister, kith and kin Acknowledged the love and sympathy Their sorrow and their anguish Diminished to some extent By the glory of their loved one. She was there all throughout Unrecognized and alone Neither comfort nor commiseration Came her way --- in silence She paid her last homage; She was just his lover. Chitrangada Chakarverti
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Eves Times
October 2011
Birthday Party
Samosas, gulab jamuns and hot tea.. Thats how I remember birthday parties My father would stop at the halwai Park the scooter, walk in with a smile Announce to whoever cared to hear Its my daughters birthday, you see Nothing on display would satisfy him quite Hed insist of everything being freshly fried Those were days when love counted, not calories And it was ladled out in sweetness and ghee The polythene bags would be nestled in the basket That carried vegetables, fruits, and the groceries Hed come in smiling,
humming a Devdas song And Id grumblingly protest Devdas got it wrong Life is joy and doing and sharing and loving Its not about loving and being morose on losing You have a lot to learn, Gudiya, hed say Though I pray no insurmountable sorrow comes your way Then my mother would join the conversation Adept as she was at rendering order out of commotion Shed send me to fetch the plates and make the tea My brothers would join the small family party No cakes to cut, no candles to blow Just good wishes and lots of love to bestow On their cherished daughter,
the beloved sister Whod bring in tea, steaming hot and sugary And gulab jamuns and samosas in unmatched crockery My brother would sing, wed all listen raptly His voice would weave a spell , as if cast magically My younger brother would threaten to sing as well A tuneless song, and wed smile and hug and let him Because these were the birthday presents, you see . No matter where life takes me, how hard the struggle Those birthday parties Ill be grateful for forever. Priya VK Singh http://priyavksingh.blogspot. com/
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Eves Times
Pol ice Ca rs
German police car... Lamborgini..Gallardo..max speed 320km/hr Spain ......Audi TT max speed 280km/hr Now for the Ultimate Police Car in the World !
France ....Peugeot...Sports gt.. max speed 280km/hr
England ......Porsche ......Do I have to tell the speed...
India s Mahindra Jeep ! Max Speed not disclosed due to Security Reasons ...
Tale piece
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Eves Times
October 2011
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October 2011
Eves Times
Salt n Pepper Korner

Make your kitchen experience exciting using Mallika Badrinaths wise counsel. Mallika has recipes for everyone; even bachelors and children can turn out a delectable meal using her guidance. So go ahead with your kitchen queries and prepare healthy, tasty meals with the help of the Cuisine Queen of south India. I would like to make use of country sugar in my recipes as I have been told that it is rich in iron and vitamins for my growing child. Can you tell me in what kind of preparations I can use it? S.S. Kala, D/o of P.Palanisamy, 12 C South Vellala Street, Singanallur, Coimbatore 641005 It is always better to use natural sugar instead of refined sugar as it is rich in iron and vitamins. You can try to make interesting lassi preparations using country sugar. For children with a sweet mouth you can try dry fruit sweet preparations such as burfis and also use in payasams. For your childs daily milk intake you can prepare milkshakes with country sugar, which is highly nutritive and tasty. You can mix honey to enhance the taste and also add more nutritive benefits. Suppota Sweet Lassi You can make a delectable milk shake using suppota which is very high in nutritive value. Core and peel the fruits after through cleaning and washing. Grind the suppota to a paste adding cardamom and soaked dates and kismis. Add fresh curd and dilute according to taste. You can grind with ice cubes in summer. To this shake add country sugar and honey. This is a highly nutritious after-school meal that is not only tasty, but has protein, fibre, vitamins and minerals. You can think of different varieties of lassis and milk shakes and other sweet preparations using country sugar. The Best Query of the month will win a masala hamper from Mallika Home Product Pvt. Ltd. Cooking has never been a Spicier Experience! Eves Times readers have exciting news! Watch out for competitions on cookery tips and recipes. Dig out exotic recipes and innovative tips and win prizes! Send your recipes/tips with your colour pix to Eves Times #18/1 Second Cross St Dr.Radhakrishnan Nagar, Tiruvanmiyur, Chennai 600 041 or by e-mail to editor@ evestimesonline.com
I have a friend who is two timing her boyfriend. She has a boyfriend at home and she is going around with another boy in the campus in the hostel we stay. The second boy knows about the first one. I dont like her attitude and I have told this to her many times. She just calls me a nerd and tells me that these are the ways of the world. Otherwise she is a very helpful and kind person and we hit it off well together. Sometimes, I feel because I dont like this behaviour of hers, I should severe my
friendship with her. Will it be the right thing to do? While traveling in a risky path, you will be careful to avoid harmful obstacles and you would also want your companion to be careful. Since you foresee some problems in her two timing relationships, you are very concerned about her welfare, which is to be appreciated. Cautioning your friend is the only thing you can do. Calling you a nerd and brushing you aside is totally her option. Your friend is confused about certain values; she probably thinks going around with boys is the in-thing for modern girls. She
Just Ask Brinda
could be elated that two boys are going behind her! What if she damages herself in the process? is a legitimate fear. If you think it fit, you can talk to her parents and see if they can help. If it doesnt work, every action has equal and opposite reaction. You have to wait for the reaction! Thats when she will need your help! Learn to look at the doer and the deed separately. You love the doer; it is only the deed you are against, right? You will not think of severing your ties with her, if you perceive her that way. Whether she is worth your friendship or not, you will be a great friend in need!
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Eves Times
October, 2011
THE TASTE OF DEEPAVALI

Try out innovative sweets this Deepavali. They are not only tasty, but easy to make too. Whats more, you even have special sweets for diabetics in your family. So go ahead and make this Deepavali a creative and memorable festival!
Pineapple Jalebis
Pineapple Yellow food colour Saffron Milk Method
1 can
Food colour Method
green
1 pinch 2 tbsp
Make sugar syrup. Rub in saffron in a little warm milk and add to the syrup. Alternatively, you may add yellow food colour. Mix maida with milk powder or khoya, adding butter, salt and water to make dough. Roll out poories and fry. Add one hot poori after another into the syrup, remove using tongs and place on a place. Place a half pineapple slice on one half of the poori and fold the poori over. Complete all the pooris similarly.
Mix these ingredients and make semi soft dough. Add the dry fruits. Roll into oblong pieces and roll each piece in desiccated coconut. Decorate with chopped pistachios. To get a green colour, add food colour to the dough. Variation for Diabetics Instead of milkmaid add plain milk mixed with sweetener.
Choco Clubs
Ingredients For the pooris Maida Milk powder or khoya (Optional) 2tbsp Butter/oil Salt to taste Oil for frying For the syrup Sugar Water 1 cup cup 1tbsp 1 cup
Kesar Rolls
Ingredients Desiccated coconut Milk powder Milk Maid Dry Fruits, chopped Pistachios 1 cup 1 cup 3-4 tbsp Ingredients Marie Biscuits Cocoa Powder 1 packet 1 tbsp
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Butter 2 tbsp Almonds, cashew and Pistachios Milk powder 1 tbsp optional Desiccated coconut 1 tbsp optional Method Add all the dry fruits to the minced dates and roll out on a tray. Cut into square or diamond shape. For diabetics, it is better to avoid milk powder and desiccated coconuts. Since no sugar is added, it is a good sweet to eat for diabetics, in small quantities. Sugar Double cream Milk Maid
Eves Times
cup 2 tbsp cup (optional) cup
Instant coffee powder 1 tbsp Icing sugar Method Prepare the icing first by beating cocoa, coffee powder with butter. Arrange Marie biscuits one over the other and spread the icing all over. Cover this choco-brick with cellophane paper and keep in the freezer. Remove the brick and cut into horizontal, round slices. Those who want to get a richer taste can make more icing and spread over each biscuit too before placing another one on top. 4 tbsp
Mango/Banana/ Pineapple
Cashew nuts, Chopped, fried in ghee Raisin Almonds Method Pour milk in a thick-bottomed pan and boil till it reaches half the volume. Add the sugar and stir. Add the rice powder pre-mixed with double cream or milk at room temperature (those who want to avoid fat can use plain milk). Mix well and add the fruit pieces, cleaned and chopped finely. Remove the pan from fire and mix the milkmaid and dry fruits. Those who use milkmaid can reduce the quantity of sugar to cup. For diabetics, mix the rice paste first and remove a portion from fire. Then add sugar to the remaining mixture in the pan. To the phirni removed before adding sugar, mix a little of all the above ingredients, excepting milk maid. Add sweetener instead. It is safer to use banana instead of pineapple or mango as these fruits have high glycemic index. 1tbsp slivered, 1tbsp
Fruity Phirni
Dates Burfi
Ingredients Ingredients Dates 1 cup minced Dry fruits such as 1/3 cup Milk Rice Powder 1 litre 1 tbsp
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Eves Times
October 2011
Ways of the World

Human Interest
GODS OWN PUPPET

Chandrika R Krishnan
Life is a roller coaster. It has its ups and downs. Adversities and joys are two sides of the coins. Yes, I too had heard all the above homilies and I too have spouted them all too frequently. But it is indeed difficult to actually experience the same particularly when difficult times seem to stretch on and there seems to be no end to our troubles. I knew 2010 was going to be an important year for my family. Both my children were on the verge of crossing an important milestone in their respective lives. My daughter was finishing up with her graduation and my son his 12 grade. I knew that there was an element of uncertainty as far as their future was concerned. We also planned to shift to our own place by the end of May as soon as all the entrances to the professional examination would be done with. Besides the above problems, I began the year with a setback to my health right from the beginning of February. I had a plethora of abscesses which had to be surgically drained out. My husband lost his cousin in February ( to an unfortunate accident) and I lost mine in July ( to cancer) and if the above wasnt enough, the indecisiveness about the admissions of both my children continued till August. I think the agony of children born to forward community is possible only in India. Despite scoring well in their exams the nativity issues and other quotas can
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cause great deal of havoc on our poor childrens psyche. We heaved a sigh of relief on August 31 when both landed in the best of colleges when the trouble on my husbands professional front began. The last four months found my husband without job (the first of his kind in 28 years of post-professional (ACA) experience) To make matters worse my sciatica problem which was lying dormant for two long years decided to come back with a bang mid September and it continued on till January 7 th when a surgery put the problem to rest after making us lighter by about 1.5 lacs and forcing me to resign from a good job. I read an anecdote, where the captain of the ship prays before he begins his day. In response to the query posed by his crew member, he responds that he prays during fair weather so that he can manage adverse conditions without wasting time on prayers during crucial time. We are like the captain. We pray every day. So it was inconceivable for us why we were having such difficult times particularly for the man like my husband who helped place a number of people in good jobs using his innumerable contacts. To make matters worse, there was no sign of light at the end of the seemingly interminable tunnel. Surprisingly, both our problems got sorted out on the same day, the day of my surgery when a firm offer was made to him. In retrospect, I can say that this lengthy period of difficulty made us realize our inner strengths or lack thereof! It also made us aware and feel blessed for the number of wellwishers we had and it also helped us identify the fairweather friends and relatives. The surgeon who operated on
Eves Times
my abscess suggested a good dermatologist who relieved me from my very long association with a tenacious psoriasis! Even on the verge of dying, my husbands cousin managed to forge a link among all the cousins who had somehow drifted apart as they grew older. It also brought our family closer and taught my children to be more prudent on financial aspects. I have come to the conclusion that, we human beings are mere puppets in the hand of the superior force and unless the person above decides to end our trouble, no amount of fretting is likely to shorten the shelf life of the adverse period. I have started delving on philosophical books and one sentence that made me appreciate the tough period was the statement that The only people without pain and adversity are 6 ft under the ground!
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Eves Times
October 2011
FACEBOOK FACELOSS?
since her boyfriend left her. On the day committed suicide, Malini had an argument with her boyfriend, which led to the breakup. Later her boyfriend left a post on Facebook saying, Feeling super cool today. Dumped my new ex-girlfriend. Happy Independence Day. Based on her father Biswas Murmus complaint, the police booked a case of abetment to suicide under section 306 of the IPC against the boy. If proven guilty, he could be punished by upto seven years of imprisonment. He has since deleted his Facebook account. A shocked IIM-B campus issued a statement after the unfortunate incident. We have lost a bright young person in the prime of her life. On behalf of the entire IIM-B community, Professor Pankaj Chandra, Director has conveyed the deepest distress of every member of the community to Malinis Parents, family and friends. Eves Times will continue a debate on social networking sites like the Facebook Google + etc. Readers can contribute their impressions and views with a focus on how best to use social media for personal and professional advancement as well as how to keep the negative possibilities at bay. This issue, we bring to you two view
Dont Wash Dirty Line in Public Domains
Two young lives were ruined just because a platform to bring public ignominy was available. One bright young life was snuffed out and the other has landed in jailed. What is shocking is that, this is happening among youth who have been fortunate to have the best educational opportunities in the country. Just because there was an avenue to vent out their personal vendetta on public domain, isnt this too much a price to pay? Malini Murmu, 22, a first year MBA student from the prestigious Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Bangalore allegedly committed suicide after her boyfriend dumped her and made the announcement on Facebook. Police say Malini left behind a suicide note saying she was killing herself
No man is an island, John Donne said in one of his poems. A man needs to interact with people. Taking advantage of the fact that man is a social animal; networking sites like Facebook, Orkut, and twitter are facing phenomenal growth over the past few years. While it is an interesting way to get in touch with long lost friends or people who are miles away, it is often an overly used medium of social interaction. As Sonia Gaur, a 40 year old housewife avers, it is outrageous to see a husband and wife wishing each other on their birthdays or anniversary and posting their love for each other for the whole world to see. This misuse of the medium will definitely take away the beauty of face-to-face conversation. We all seem to be enthusiastic and verbose when it comes to interacting with virtual people while losing our ability to communicate to real world. I am not against the social networking sites. As a fact of
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the matter, I have an account in most of them except for twitter. It is a great place to share causes or some activity that really needs to be shared with the world. My 19 year old son finds facebook boring. He prefers meeting people and finds it unacceptable when people tweet or make a status message of every action of theirs public. On the other hand, my advertising professional daughter loves facebook and her group shares links on advertising , photography and the likes and finds time to like or pass a comment on most of their status messages. The recent suicide of an IIM-B graduate was due to the status message posted by her boyfriend ditching her. This is the outcome of such sites that offer a platform for private life being made public and people taking vicarious pleasure in knowing about the lives of their acquaintances. The posting of pictures also seem to have attained a new low. Honeymoon pictures have also found a public platform. People forget that these sites could easily be accessed by people of authority and it reflects poorly if the comments or status message is not suitable for public consumption. While the social networking sites are a great place to get to know more people, one should not become so addictive that it replaces physical interaction. People should be careful before posting their pictures, personal information or messages. Chandrika R Krishnan, Bangalore
Eves Times
Facebook Identity for Multi-purpose Utility

One of the major advantages of the electronic technology and internet in particular is its practical use for various purposes. It is not possible in routine circumstances to go in person everywhere and get oneself introduced both for friendship and for career opportunities. This is more so in regard to contacts with likeminded people or professional colleagues in a country and in various countries in the world. But Facebook does the trick and you are introduced to your friends and professional personalities with which you keep contacts and get much more than it is possible in any other way of communication. I have experienced this in a number of ways. It is when I joined the Facebook that I could keep contacts with key personalities in media and could develop my professional relations. I could interact with both men and women in the field and could have direct dialogue with them so that I could have access to their print and electronic media. My development in this field is possible only due to these contacts which would have been impossible without Facebook. In normal circumstances when we come in direct face to face contact we are not prone to get ourselves introduced unless somebody intervenes to introduce. We wait for such
introduction by other persons. But on Facebook and internet communication we are almost spontaneously inspired to contact the moment we come across a personality with which we feel we should keep contacts. This is more so in the case of women with whom men want to be connected. It is my experience that women are more considerate and sympathetic and respond with a positive approach to professional proposals while male counterparts are diverting by suggesting other means and methods without any direct initiative. Why this is so I do not know. Facebook is also a sort of platform to express your views frankly without any inhibitions so that you get reactions and counterpoints with interesting and entertaining interpretations which you may not find on any other platform. This may be because of a sense of freedom and a sort of realization that you are in contact with various personalities in the world. Regarding misuse and hazards, indeed there are some as there are in any other communication system. I had to change my password when I was informed that somebody is using my password recorded on Facebook. I changed it and continued with the new password. Such experiences are there but the advantages are much more than such incidental risks.
Prabhakar Kulkarni, Pune
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Malavika Srinivasan Be it a six year old who has just learned to write or a sixty year old who is coping with retirement, the new place-tobe is online. Reason? Social Networking!
Facetious Foibles
revolutions are started mainly because of social media and its extensive outreach, one of the biggest examples being the India Against Corruption movement. Apart from this, social networking has become the marketing hub for anything and everything. Be it a small event which needs publicity or the launch of the new iPhone 5, the word spreads like wildfire among social networks. Ms. Lata a young entrepreneur, who owns a boutique, agrees. I photograph most of my clothes and put it up on my Facebook page and the outreach it has is mind blowing. It has increased my business in an exponential way, especially among outstation customers, without any investment, she exclaims. One of the biggest disadvantages of social networking is its virtuality. Connecting to friends over the Internet may seem convenient, but it cannot compare with the joy of actually meeting someone in person. Also to most people, virtual communication is an escape from their identities, because anonymity is easily achieved online. This also gives rise to the question of security. With the kind of information that is encouraged to be put up online, the private lives of almost everyone on a social networking website is exposed for anyone to abuse. Kids on websites like Facebook and Myspace are blissfully unaware of the consequences of exposing their information online. Parents have to constantly monitor their childs activities to ensure healthy browsing, says Mahima, a concerned parent. Granted, there are privacy settings, but nothing that has stopped some shrewd hackers before. Also, the Internet is doing what the television did to kids in the nineties. The famous saying is being altered to go, All Facebook and no play makes Jack a dull boy! Although social networking has enough cons to equal the pros, it has become a sort of necessity now. A world without Facebook is in the likes of the unimaginable for many today. For the experience to be a holistic one, people must be made aware of all the aspects of social networking, so that they can make informed decisions. Social networking is definitely here to stay, but it needs to be used the right way.
Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, Friendster and more recently Google Plus are only the popular few of the million options for social networking that exist today. Ever since their advent, the debate has been on about their positive and negative effects. In my opinion, it is unfair to just side with either. Nothing in the world is ideal; it has its ups and downs. The key lies in finding the balance. On the upside, social networking has made the world a global village. Updates on a per-second basis are available to people all over the world. Says Akash, a student, I just cannot imagine my life without social networking now! I give everyday updates to all my friends who are in hostels across the world mainly through Facebook. Its instant and most importantly, cheap! These sites are also a platform for one to express his/her opinion, and if its valid, it can be heard. Today,
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Traditional Celebration
Deepavali Collections
# 38,North Usman Road,T.Nagar,Chennai-17 Ph:044 28143093

Chennai I Mumbai
www.sundarisilks.com
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latest designs and the best quality. The discerning buyer truly believes in investing more in enduring silks. Realizing the importance of quality, The Central Silk Board has introduced the quality mark to give a fillip to the galloping sales of silks. So if you happen to see a 3 D sticker on your silk sarees, you know it is the exclusive Silk Mark that assures you of the purity and quality of the silk that you have so fondly purchased. The best Indian silk available today in the market is the Chitlagatha silk that most established silk dealers go in for. Chinese yarns are also the most sought after due to their uniform sheen and sheer softness. The number of the warp and weft decides the weight of a silk saree. The minimum weight of quality sarees is around 750-800 grams. Experienced women are able to estimate the weight and quality of the silk just by lifting and feeling the saree. The discerning customer is more quality conscious today and does not believe in being parsimonious as far as investing in silks is concerned The idea is better to pay for good and enduring quality rather than regret later. This drastic change in the mindset is a consequence of the increase in the buying capacity as well as an increase in the awareness. Players like Pothys, Chennai Silks, RmKV and Sundari Silks have established a special niche in the silk market along with titans like Nalli, Kumaran
Silken Splendour
The patina of radiance that envelopes Chennai during Deepavali is an exotic splendor that emanates from world renowned silk and jewelry peddlers, bestowing a special enigma to the city. Yet again, during this Deepavali season, the unbelievably innovative silk merchants have whipped up frenzy for the most magnificent obsession that has captivated the people of Chennai. i.e., silks. The looms are working furiously and craftsmen are toiling night after night to cater to the huge demand for silks that seems to have gripped the market.
Festival and marriage purchases have since time immemorial centred on the obsession for acquisition of the best silks available in the market, a characteristic exclusive to south Indians. While the women of Tamilnadu had swathed themselves in silken splendour round the year in the bygone era, today, the choice of silk is restricted to special occasions. That accounts for the huge crowds that throng silk showrooms during festive seasons. And today, there is no economizing as far as silks are concerned. People want to go in for the
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silks have a uniform sheen. Heavy weight sarees have their own place for ceremonial occasions while light weight sarees are in vogue. The radiance and rustle of silks have always been a part and parcel of the south Indian womens wardrobe. Time-tested south Indian silks have, in recent times, metamorphosed according to the refinement in taste as well as the passion for innovation among south Indian women. The result is a silk explosion, with the launching of myriad combinations of colors, designs, texture as well as embellishments with stones, resplendent thread work, sequins and paintings. It is not an unusual experience to feast your eyes on the most exotic scene from our mythology brought out in threadwork or painting on the pallu with great precision and beauty in any prominent silk store in Chennai. The saga of a silk saree today is a combination of traditional and contemporary aesthetics with international or national flavour. You may have the finest Chinese silk yarn fabricated into a bewitching saree designed with the traditional south Indian art using CAD technology and north Indian sequin or stone work embellishing it. That is the extent of change the enduring five and a half metre of alluring dress has gone through in the world today! And the permutation and combination seem endless!
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There has also been a renaissance in the ready-made garment market with a revival of traditional costumes with modern looks. For women ghagra choli, pavadai and sattai or dhavanis, kurtis, salwars, churidhars, Punjabis etc are the most sought after ensembles during the festive season. They are made with fine silks, chiffons, georgettes and other delicate dress materials with a lot of handiwork, embroidery, sequins or stonework adorning them. For men sherwanis, long kurtas and pajamas with dupattas or short kurtas are the dress for festive occasions. Kids have a world of choice and they too can aspire to lay their hands on the most exquisite silks or delicate dress materials for their choicest festive wear. With the wheels of innovation and creativity rotating at a swirling pace, we can aspire to continue with our exclusive wardrobe revolution for a long time to come!
etc. These dealers stock only the best quality silks while exclusive areas are also set apart for silk sarees with tested zari and other less expensive varieties. Traditional designs and motifs as well as colours are coming back in a big way, with innovative manifestations. Medium-sized borders are the fad today. The future envisions a passion for light weight silks as the younger generation feels feel constrained by the weight of heavy silk sarees. Designer pattu sarees without zari border, but with eye catching designs and zari work in the border are sought after by young girls and working women. They adapt themselves for ceremonial occasions, parties and even office wear. Traditional costumes like the pavadai- chattai and pavadaidhavani have made a comeback, but with a change in designs, colour combinations, zari and other adornments. Chinese
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Youve got to find what you love

Paul Steve Jobs was the co-founder, chairman, and chief executive officer of Apple Inc. Jobs also previously served as chief executive of Pixar Animation Studios; he became a member of the board of directors of the Walt Disney Company in 2006, following the acquisition of Pixar by Disney. We bring to you the text of the Commencement address delivered by Steve Jobs on June 12, 2005. I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest Ive ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. Thats it. No big deal. Just three stories. The first story is connecting the dots. about
The world has lost a visionary and a creative genius. More than anything else, the world has lost an amazing human being. Steve leaves behind a company that only he could have built. His spirit will forever be the foundation of Apple. As the news of Steve Jobs death broke, world leaders, tech figures, and celebrities spoke out to pay tribute to the late tech icon. Newspapers reorganized their plans for the next days papers to honour Jobs on their front pages. In fact, Time Magazine stopped its presses for the first time in more than 30 years to change its cover to pay homage to Jobs. His image was plastered across the Web, displayed prominently on various sites like the Google homepage, Wired, and countless others. An and American entrepreneur , inventor Steven
a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him? They said: Of course. My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.
I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a dropin for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out? It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by
And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldnt see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and
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no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didnt interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.
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label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didnt have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science cant capture, and I found it fascinating. None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and
personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later. Again, you cant connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life. My second story is about love and loss. I was lucky I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation the Macintosh a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And
It wasnt all romantic. I didnt have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5 deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example: Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every
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is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apples current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together. Im pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadnt been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Dont lose faith. Im convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. Youve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you havent found it yet, keep looking. Dont settle. As with all matters of the heart, youll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Dont settle. My third story is about death. When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: If you live each day as if it was your last, someday youll most certainly be right. It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: If
then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating. I really didnt know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away
from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over. I didnt see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life. During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and
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today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today? And whenever the answer has been No for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something. Remembering that Ill be dead soon is the most important tool Ive ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart. About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didnt even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctors code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought youd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes. I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and Im fine now. This was the closest Ive been to facing death, and I hope its the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept: No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven dont want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Lifes change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true. Your time is limited, so dont waste it living someone elses life. Dont be trapped by dogma which is living with the results of other peoples thinking. Dont let the noise of others opinions drown out
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your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary. When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960s, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions. Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. Thank you all very much.
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cover .indd 2 October Eves Times.indd 52 13/09/11 2:27 AM 11/10/11 10:38 PM
October 2011
Rajini Rajesh
Brain Drain
Story Club making Deepavali sweets? I did not hesitate to make a gesture of pulling my hair out when he quipped, Why are you scared? Now, is there anyone who is not afraid of Seenu mama? I believe, even in his office they were prepared to pay him any amount to get rid of him in the garb of voluntary retirement. Now if you ask me why they were so eager to chuck him out, my reply will only surprise you! Seenu had a habit of analyzing everything and everybody and going to great lengths to extract the minutest details of his guinea pigs. Now if you ask me why should this diehard habit of his be a threat to the society, I can cite a number of anecdotes where this unpalatable habit of his brought about disasters. One Sunday he came for a chit chat to my home and tried to analyze the political trends in his own exclusive way, What kind of governance is going on now-a-days? What are the politicians doing? During the days of Nehru, do you know how the country was run? He started his monologue from Delhi and extended it to all the cities, districts, towns and villages of the country, discussing prominent leaders and their ways. Ironically, what has our hero contributed to the society? His
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accomplishments ended with the productions of two scions. Nothing else. While I was trying to find out a way to get out of this enormously constraining situation, my maid made an appearance. Seenu quickly digressed from the political research to the plight of domestic helpers in the country. Who is this tramp? he queried, much to the consternation of the maid, who I always found to be highhanded. While I was quivering in trepidation like an arrow shot from a bow, about the aftermath of his intellectual outpourings , he continued his monologue, now switching to the most alarming topic of gender differences!
Tomorrow is Deepavali. The city is reverberating with the noise of crackers that are attacking our eardrums ruthlessly. My better half was in the kitchen supposedly busy churning out Deepavali delicacies. Gopal! Someone called for me . I peeped from my living room where I was ensconced in front of the television watching the popular pattimandram, where a serious discussion was going on- whether one needed money or love to run their families! And the debate was heating up when the intruder chose to enter! To my horror my eyes rested on the most dreaded person in my life, my neighbour Seenu Mama aka known as Srinivasan. OMG! Now, why has he come here? Where can I hide? as I desperately looked for a place to become invisible, the unwelcome visitor entered my living room and enquired loudly, Oh! Is your wife
Come on Gopu , whatever you say, these days women do not have the strength which our women used to have those days!
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her a medicine. Within a month she became roly-poly, just like your wife! ( OMG! Now I placed my hands over my chest to prevent it from bursting with anxiety!) You know what happened after that? The unfortunate doctor died and we never knew how to get my daughter back to her former shape. No other doctor could help her! Ha ha ha.. His loud guffaws rang like a death knell! Signs of an imminent war emanated from the kitchen. I nearly dragged Seenu mama out of my house and disappeared outside my house. On another occasion my daughter Pinky was down with typhoid. We heard someone ring the calling bell. It was our gracious neighbour making a visit to see our daughter. Darling Pinky, you have typhoid? Dont worry, even as he commenced with suspense, my stomach churned in tension . Unmindful of what impact his ominous utterances would wreak on me he continued boisterously, This is just nothing. You will soon be well. I know a girl who was down with typhoid too. Because of this she lost a lot of hair. She used to look like a ripe tomato, but after the fever she became dark. Her body bloated like a balloon. Not only that, one side of her face became swollen, he disclosed his knowledge about typhoid, which I knew was all wrong. My daughter who spent most part of the day preening herself in front of the mirror
My God! What blasphemy! If he starts shooting off his big mouth, I can never see the end of this. After all, he had the ability to obtain a PhD degree in any topic he chooses to research on! Now, look at my grandmother. After bearing ten children, is she not doing all the household chores effortlessly? Today women dont have the strength to even lift a cooker from the stove; they need help! My better half glared at me from the kitchen! I tried to retort weakly, Now why are you worried? People are different , every household is different. My wife is lazy too; she has got all the gadgets like mixers and grinders to do her chores for her. My wife now expressed her anger by banging a huge vessel
in the kitchen. Seenu mama continued merrily, Today women are gaining weight because they dont want to work. Now this definitely was a time bomb! I placed my hands over my head in sheer fright and desperation. The topic of weight gain was taboo in our household because my wife is a little on the broader side, a little less than what you could say as obese. She was very sensitive about being slighted against, especially if it was to do with her weight. She would forgive a person even if he killed her, but she was merciless if there was even a minute reference to her weight or appearance! Seenu was chartering new directions, Now you see, take the case of my daughter. My daughter was reed thin . I took her to a doctor to see if we could do something about her pathetic body weight. He gave
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and dousing herself with the choicest talcum powders in an effort to look fair, broke down and started crying piteously. This time I did not spare a second to physically drag him out of my house. Unfortunately, my landlord chose the exact moment to enter the compound with a horde of medicines in a bag. He was a senior citizen. He was a hypochondriac who surrounded himself with medicines of all kinds and kept belting out one ailment after another. His room looked like that of a druggist. Moreover, he kept a suitcase in his room which contained all the medical files since he was born, including X-rays taken since his birth! Why are you taking so many medicines? queried Seenu mama , Tell me, I have a lot of knowledge about medicines. The senior citizens face brightened as he cast his eyes on an eager audience. He invited us to his home upstairs . He extended his x rays and all his medicines to Seenu , Oh! Ok! So you know about medicines? Why dont you examine these and tell me what you know? Do you take medicines for BP? Taken over a long time, they will affect your heart. You also seem to be a diabetic. Show me your hand, he said , Now , dont misunderstand me. I know a bit of palmistry and astrology as well. By looking at your hand, it appears that the time is bad for you. I suggest, you be careful, he declared loudly. My landlord knitted his brows and glared at me. As usual, I escaped with this troublesome mortal. On another occasion, when I was going for a walk with Seenu mama, we came across my boss, who was taking a stroll too. Gopu! Are you going for a walk? my boss queried. I shook my head pathetically. Eyeing an eager prey, my boss made the mistake of bragging, My son has gone to the US today. He has got a very good job, he boasted. This was just the right occasion Seenu was looking for, Whats so great about America? So he got a good job there. But remember, the white women there are very attractive. I am sure he is going to bring a white woman as a bride and next year you will have a white grandson calling you, Thatha! My boss stamped his feet in anger and I knew that was the end of the promotion I had been waiting for! Now I hope I have been able to convince you why I am mortally afraid of my neighbour Mr. Srinivasan! As he breezed into my living room and I tried desperately to hide behind the newspaper, he repeated, Looks like your wife is making Deepavali sweets! I mumbled something that sounded like yes. Really? Today which homemaker wants to make sweets at home? Even my wife went to the sweetmeat shop and spent a lot of money buying
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sweets. Gopu, you are truly a fortunate man!
I was surprised and gave a loud sigh. My wife, who happened to hear this compliment rushed out of the kitchen with a beaming face. Uncle! I picked up a recipe from the television. Tell me how it tastes, she said. She reverently placed a halwa made out of banana flower on a plate and gave it to the new guinea pig that had entered our home in an opportune moment. Poor man! I know after he puts the halwa in his mouth he cannot open it for a long time! If you wonder why I have named my story as brain drain, I would like to clarify that indeed there will be a massive drain from your brain if you have such interfering mortals as your neighbour! After all brain drain happens in India in all possible ways!
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taking a risk that they might be rejected or may not be liked. Saying no can be a Herculean task especially for working women who are trying to juggle the expectations from work and personal life. If a woman says no at work her colleagues and employers may conclude that she is not goal oriented or committed to her work and that she does not take her work/ career seriously. On the other hand if a woman says no at home she is tagged as being too career oriented and shirking her domestic responsibilities. Most people, find it difficult to say no because they feel obligated to help and they want to help when asked for. They do not want to ignore or reject a request for help and feel that they should help those who are in need, even if it sometimes means giving up some of their time and space. Some others do not say no because they are afraid of being judged as rude. It can sometimes be misconstrued as being disrespectful, especially in our culture, where we are expected to say yes and do as our elders say. The mind of the Indian woman leads her to sometimes say yes to protect others from losing their face or integrity. One of the most important factors influencing the disability to say no is that they want to be liked by everybody. It is human nature to want to be agreeable and liked by
October 2011
everyone, though not a very plausible desire. This often leads them to saying yes to everything and everyone which can leave them in an unhappy predicament . There is also a fear of conflict or losing a relationship, when they do not comply with a request. Women may equate rejecting a request to rejecting a person, and out of this fear, they often say yes even when they want to say no. Anytime a woman fails to say no these are some of the factors that are constantly playing at the back of her mind. Eventually saying yes to everything and everyone (even in situations when they do not want to) leads to them becoming something they do not want to be. They may be overwhelmed with everything that they agreed to and will be bogged down by all those yeses that they have committed to. They may also feel like they are being taken for granted and that they have become a doormat for people to walk all over, especially when gratitude is not conveyed. Women, who give so much of themselves and their time to others, rarely find enough energy or time for themselves, and sooner or later they become irritable, intolerant, and abrupt and demonstrate little patience. By saying yes to things that are not particularly pressing, they are saying no to so many other things which are necessary and important for them.
N.O. NO!!
or a Woman saying NO goes against everything she has been taught about being a woman. From the time she was a little girl, her parents, family and friends have instilled in her the notion that a woman should not say no when things are asked of her. Society has set certain roles for women and expects them to follow these defined roles. A part of this means that women should be subservient for the most part, and comply with requests, demands and commands made by her parents, husband, in-laws, bosses and other authoritative figures. This of course extends to her role as a mother and she simply cannot say no to her children.
Saying No is signified by society as being selfish, self-centered, aggressive and intolerant all of which a woman is not supposed to be (as dictated by society). Most women have the need to please others and be liked; for them saying no means
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the obligations you have and the requests that have been made and prioritize them according to which one is most important and urgent to you. If you find something that is not as pressing or important, make sure you pass on that. Weigh the yes to stress ratio- think about the different things you are agreeing to and how it will affect your stress levels. Sometimes certain tasks can take up a lot of time and require commitment that may leave you feeling exhausted. Dont say yes if it will mean months of added stress. Take the guilt out of the equation- avoid agreeing to requests that you would rather say no to simply because you feel guilty or obligated. Often working mothers say yes to everything their children ask them for because they feel guilty that they are not spending enough time at home with their children. Think twice- Before agreeing to additional responsibilities, think twice about whether
When to say No
Saying no is difficult as it is, but judging when the right to time to say no, is even more difficult. Some amount of thought would be required to determine which activities deserve most of your time and attention. Some points to ponder while deciding when to say no are as follows. Focus on what matters most- evaluate all
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you can fit it into your schedule.
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10 steps to saying no without feeling guilty

1. Respect yourself. Understand your boundaries, capabilities and commitments which will help you respect yourself so that others will do the same and not take you for granted. 2. Prioritize. Get your priorities right and decide what is most important to you and for you to complete. Write a list if it makes it easier for you. 3. Be responsible for yourself. Saying yes to everything people ask you to do maybe a way of deferring responsibility and not making decisions for yourself. Take responsibility and make sure that you are responsible for your own decisions. 4. Clarify. Get a clear picture of what is asked of you before you agree to take it upon yourself. Analyze the situation and what you are required to do before saying yes.
5. You dont always have to be nice. If you say yes to appear nice all the time even when the task does not appeal to you, you might get through it halfheartedly; this might be evident to the 8. It is the request and not the person who asked for your help. person. Remember that when saying no you are not rejecting the person but 6. You have the right to say No. You do declining the request made by him/her. not always have to say yes, you do have the right to say no even without giving 9. Be assertive. Dont be too apologetic an explanation. about saying no. Make sure you
you do not have the time, a sandwich response would be that sounds like an interesting project, unfortunately I currently have my handful with another project, perhaps you could ask Sita who Im sure would be delighted to help with this project.
communicate to the person that you 7. Sandwich approach. Start your are unable to help them out right now. answer by giving a positive comment to the person, followed by your Practice. Saying no in front of the decline, followed by a suggestion for 10. mirror and role playing can help you say an alternative. This softens the blow no more confidently when the situation when you are saying no. For example: calls for it. when your boss asks you to take on an additional piece of work for which
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While saying No, keep in mind the following:

Use assertive body posture Decide on your position before you speak Wait for questions Decide on your wording, what and how to say it Dont apologize when it isnt needed Dont defend yourself or make excuses Dont ask for permission to say no Strengthen your position Become a broken record if message isnt getting across Dont wait for acceptance Accept the consequences Saying no plays an important
role in simplifying and managing your life. Saying no doesnt mean that you are being selfish by refusing to help someone else, rather you are adhering to your prior commitments and doing justice to them. By saying no to an opportunity or a task that may not be as pertinent to you as it would to someone else, you are giving an opportunity for that person to rise up to the occasion. This way you are not only allowing someone else to contribute, but you are also not wasting your time and energy on something that is not as important to you. This would give you ample time to focus on some other tasks that are more appealing to you. Always saying yes isnt healthy. When you agree to taking on so much more than you can
handle, you may often find that you are not able to put in as much time or effort into each of those things as you would have liked. In such cases, it is prudent to keep in mind that one should not bite off more than they can chew. Saying No can be difficult but at times it is easier than saying yes, especially when what you are saying yes to is actually more difficult. Leela.B and Y.G . S a m y u k t h a , Psychologists, Medall Behavioral Health Services.
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Enhance Your Life: October 2011

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July 2011 October 2011

Enhance Your Life

final cover .indd 1

final cover .indd 2

Enhance Your Life

How to Survive a Heart Attack Face Book Fiascos Learn to Say No

October Eves Times.indd 1

Live your Life

How to Survive a Heart Attack 11

Contents Eves Times www.evestimesonline.com

I enclose cheque No Dated Rs..

Are you at Risk?

Factors not under your control

Factors under your control

What should be done?

How to Survive a Heart Attack

The First Critical Hours

The Aftermath of a Heart Attack

Removing Heart Blockages

Symptoms of a Heart Attack

If you suspect you might be having a heart attack, ACT!

women and the e l d e r l y, heart attack symptoms can

While waiting for the ambulance:

last 36 hours, dont take nitroglycerin!

From Namratas Desh...

Sign Bored? A sign outside a Home Appliance shop

A Motor Driving School displayed the following sign board

Outside a Dry Cleaners

Why ? Notice outside a Doctors Clinic

A sign board outside a beauty parlour

If walking is good for ones health, the postman would be immortal.

October Eves Times.indd 27

Husbands & Wives

Just his lover----I am the Girl Child

France ....Peugeot...Sports gt.. max speed 280km/hr

England ......Porsche ......Do I have to tell the speed...

Salt n Pepper Korner

Just Ask Brinda

THE TASTE OF DEEPAVALI

Pineapple Yellow food colour Saffron Milk Method

Food colour Method

Ways of the World

GODS OWN PUPPET

Dont Wash Dirty Line in Public Domains

Facebook Identity for Multi-purpose Utility

Prabhakar Kulkarni, Pune

# 38,North Usman Road,T.Nagar,Chennai-17 Ph:044 28143093

Youve got to find what you love

Eves Times Eves Times

September 2011 October 2011

Y I-STUD UN CARE POLICY

UNITED INDIA INSURANCE COMPANY LTD.

Solutions that bring back smiles... real fast

October Eves Times.indd 53

10 steps to saying no without feeling guilty

While saying No, keep in mind the following:

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Registrar of Newspapers for India Registration Number TNENG/2005/16719

Regn. No: TN/ CC (S) Dn 354/ 11-13

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