TED talk – brain scientist describes the journey of her own stroke ! This is an incredible story and for anyone who hasn’t seen it or read it, it’s an eye-opener.

Jill Bolte Taylor got a research opportunity few brain scientists would wish for: She had a massive stroke, and watched as her brain functions — motion, speech, self-awareness — shut down one by one. An astonishing story. TED has so many inspiring talks on different subjects.

Here’s the link: http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/jill_bolte_taylor_s_powerful_stroke_of_insight.html

I hope our visitors will find this useful.

When things go wrong, as they sometimes will,
When the road you’re trudging seems all uphill,
When the funds are low and the debts are high,
And you want to smile, but you have to sigh,
When care is pressing you down a bit
Rest if you must, but don’t you quit.

Life is queer with its twists and its turns,
As everyone of us sometimes learns,
And many a failure turns about
When they might have won, had they stuck it out.
Don’t give up though the pace seems slow,
You may succeed with another blow.

Often the struggler has given up
When he might have captured the victor’s cup;
And he learned too late when the night came down,
How close he was to the golden crown.

Success is failure turned inside out
The silver tint of the clouds of doubt
And you never can tell how close you are,
It may be near when it seems so far;
So stick to the fight when you’re hardest hit,
It’s when things seem worst that you mustn’t quit!

Taken from encouragement poems

http://www.poem4today.com

Memory lane. What is it? A place where things happen hazily, lazily.

Let me take you to a bright crisp and rather cold morning. It’s an important tournament match for my cricket team (Subroto Park) against the Kirby Place Killers. For the world at large, Subroto Park was the sub-division/ compound/ colony where we lived as children when my father was in the Indian Air Force. And Kirby Place was another such community -in what is known in India as the Delhi Cantonment. The term cantonment was inherited from the British when they were in India and had special areas demarcated as military quarters and military posts. The term has remained. And this is what almost all military areas in India are still called.

Now, back to my memory. I can still relive that initial feeling of fear when our unfortunate eleven realized that the other eleven were much older and bigger than we were… and raring to go. I was the opening bowler for our team: cannon fodder. The presence of my father, a distant figure on the road far back, and the added distraction of a couple of young girls in the makeshift stands, only added to my anxiety.

However, the time had come. There was no backing down now. I reached the top of my bowling run, trying, with a conscious effort to appear as casual and nonchalant as ever, although my insides were churning with volcanic emotions one after another.

Racing down from the top of my run and pitching the ball with all my might and a tad more down the 22 yards to hit the good length spot while gunning adroitly for the leg wicket to send it happily cartwheeling towards the ecstatic wicket keeper “howzzat”!

We, of the “human race” are very similar in our behaviour and life patterns to many lower life forms. Often, we have our children and then conveniently forget about them, except for the bare essentials such as formal education, social graces, etc. Important matters such as one’s values, code of ethics and the like are left to the winds and chance. At least this was so in my case.
I have realized that during their younger years I did not spend the kind of quality time that I should have, with my son. Retirement and my condition have forced me to do so.
In retrospect, I realized that this was the silver lining that graced the edges of my dark cloud.

Time spent with my son during this period opened my eyes to a lot of dimensions, in my son, that I was blind to. The whole exercise was a revelation of startling proportions.
During the course of my travels through the roads less travelled in my son’s psyche I discovered a glaring truth that I as a parent, and perhaps other parents too have missed: viz: when we give birth to a child, we do not create merely a separate physical entity, but an entity that contains within it an immortal soul, and to that extent we are accountable to God (regardless of our religions) for the guidance, training and education that we impart to this recent recruit to the human race. Failure in this regard is pretty rampant and what is worse is that some of us aren’t even aware of the fact that we have failed the test.

My journey of discovery revealed to me, besides a soul, the young individual is also a “universe” unto him/herself, complete: with galaxies, shooting stars, comets, black holes, the lot. So while we, at the conscious level deal with our children as single entities, they are in fact a mix of innumerable complex entities, which is probably why we have problems getting across to them and the reason for the chasms and the great divides that normally exist between parent and child. The reason which we conveniently attribute to a gradual, non-existent communication gap or “generation gap”.
This amalgam of the human entity and universe, might, conveniently, be referred to as the humanvers (if I maybe permitted to coin a new term).
To my surprise and delight, I discovered that my son was a humanverse that was profound, complex and thoroughly exciting with his own thoughts, reactions and responses that were totally distinct from me and mine. Yes, he was a separate entity in the true sense of the word. We were able to have long and detailed conversations that revealed many a new dimensions to me, that I would never have dreamed of, had I not had these talks with him.
These revelations went a long way to explaining my son in 2007 after he was born in 1974.
Kanishka (his name) is a sensitive, warm and caring individual, who is very mature with the ability to view his circumstances objectively and respond to them in a manner that is both mature and appropriate.
His capacity and need for love and warmth is immeasurably more than I could have ever fathomed. He is distinctively aware of right and wrong. I was able to build a strong bridge between self and son. Whether these bridges could transport communication across from one point to another did not matter. What I do know is that the existence of these bridges and their construction have brought great joy to both me and him. And I think that in itself is enough. It justifies the existence of this construction over the inaccessible chasm.
It is also a source of great joy and satisfaction to know that my son is a better human than I am.