Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam : President of India

 Quotes

1.            "Thinking should become your capital asset, no matter whatever ups and downs you come across in your life."

2.      "Thinking is progress. Non-thinking is stagnation of the individual, organisation and the country. Thinking leads to action. Knowledge without action is useless and irrelevant. Knowledge with action, converts adversity into prosperity."

3.      "When you speak, speak the truth; perform when you promise; discharge your trust…. Withhold your hands from striking, and from taking that which is unlawful and bad…"

4.      "What actions are most excellent? To gladden the heart of a human being, to feed the hungry, to help the afflicted to lighten the sorrow of the sorrowful and to remove the wrongs of injured…"

5.      "All God's creatures are His family; and he is the most beloved of God who tries to do most good to God's creatures."

6.      "Away! Fond thoughts, and vex my soul no more! Work claimed my wakeful nights, my busy days Albeit brought memories of Rameswaram shore Yet haunt my dreaming gaze!"

7.      "I will not be presumptuous enough to say that my life can be a role model for anybody; but some poor child living in an obscure place in an underprivileged social setting may find a little solace in the way my destiny has been shaped. It could perhaps help such children liberate themselves from the bondage of their illusory backwardness and hopelessness?.."

8.      "My worthiness is all my doubt His Merit – all my fear- Contrasting which my quality Does however appear "

Take a chill swill

The monsoons are here, and it is cooler, yet Srikanta Taparia continues to be flooded with demands for her sharbats. While home-made sharbats are no novelty, her flavours are. The usual suspects include orange, pineapple, aam panna, kesar, rose, badam, thandai and badam-kesar. The off-beat ones are mogra, chandan, jamun, juhi, phalsa, lemon ice tea and cold coffee. Taparia uses fruits, flowers and spices to revive old flavours and create new ones.

Thanda thanda cool cool
The speciality of her sharbats is the absence of colour or preservative that bring in a synthetic taste. These sharbats also have ingredients with therapeutic value. The jamun sharbat is good for diabetics, the variyali or saunf for indigestion and chandan cools the body. However, much depends on the availability, quality and price of the raw ingredients. She laments on the quality of juhi flowers, rues the unavailability of chandan and sighs over the high prices of phalsa.

Dadi ma ke nuskhe
Taparia prepares her sharbats using her grandmother’s recipes. She says, “I grew up in Kolkata where humidity levels are high. So sharbats are always welcome.” Taparia has been making sharbats for almost 35 years. But it was only six to seven years ago that she started taking orders. Though she employs help, she insists on concocting the sharbats herself. She says, “It’s my hand that makes all the difference. Also, while making sharbats it’s important to get the proportions right.” A bottle of fruit or flower- flavoured sharbat is priced between Rs 110 and Rs 140. The ones with badam, kesar, chandan are priced slightly higher.

Lahiri's new book is NYT's bestseller

Indian American Jhumpa Lahiri's new book Unaccustomed Earth, which has been receiving rave reviews in the US press, has zoomed to the top in the list of best-selling fiction within two weeks of its April 1 launch.

The book, New York-based Lahiri's second collection of short stories, debuts at No. 1 slot in the list to appear in the Times on April 20, a paper's blog said Thursday.

"It's hard to remember the last genuinely serious, well-written work of fiction - particularly a book of stories - that leapt straight to No. 1; it's a powerful demonstration of Lahiri's newfound commercial clout," the blog Paper Cut said.

Lahiri's first collection of short stories, Interpreter of Maladies, won the Pulitzer Prize in 2000. But she is better known for her novel, The Namesake, which was turned into a movie last year by Mira Nair, starring Tabu and Irfan Khan.

Major US papers have promptly reviewed Unaccustomed Earth, a collection of eight stories. The New York Times Book Review featured the book on the cover Sunday.

USA Today wrote about the book: "Immigrants may be the stories' protagonists, but their doubts, insecurities, losses and heartbreaks belong to all of us. Never before has Lahiri mined so perfectly the secrets of the human heart."

The gushing review continued, "In part, Lahiri's gift to the reader is gorgeous prose that bestows greatness on life's mundane events and activities. But it is her exploration of lost love and lost loved ones that gives her stories an emotional exactitude few writers could ever hope to match."

Publishers Weekly said, "Lahiri's stories of exile, identity, disappointment and maturation evince a spare and subtle mastery that has few contemporary equals."

Interestingly, Lahiri, of Bengali descent, who is on a month long US tour to promote her book, has hardly looked at the reviews for her new book.

"I feel like I should be more hardened at this point, but in a way I feel more vulnerable. With this book I decided not to look at anything at all. Perhaps in the future I'll ask my editor or someone to show me a few reviews that she thinks could really benefit me somehow," she told The Atlantic