While population rises, buy a villa than a flat

Wisdom and common sense are often not well spread. And so till date wealth and virtue not widely distributed.

In a country where population continues to rise but the livable area hasn't, why do you buy a matchbox cube in a building for home.

Put your life savings on an undisputed land and see what it does instead. For future value and children memories of their own land and home.

There are many pros and cons to buying land and building a home. One is that we ourselves have to run after the bureaucratic mess. Well, it isn't as if as owner of an apartment I don't have to do most things myself.
Moreover, in India, you get agents to do almost everything for you at - I say- reasonable price than having to catch on to current laws and running pillar to post.

The next is that for the area you can afford, you have to build multiple floors for comfortable living. Moreover your children don't have the park the society plans.
I say buy remote though you continue to optimise between commute time, school and safety. And then, get used to climbing floors!

Gated community perhaps is a good balance. The paperwork and park requirements are handled. And even if some have common elevation or not, either ways it's worth it.

Hatchbacks for Indian roads

It does not make sense but I see it a lot. Huge SUVs, gasoline guzzlers on indigenous Bharatiya roads. Roads where even on most highways the speed limit is 80kmph. And everywhere else, the roads are typically congested.
Why, and where, does it make sense to have it for your daily routine.

Such a car perhaps can fit, if at all, if you travel weekly on out-of-station sojourns. Even when I'd rather hire a vehicle so I can doze off when I want to than stress myself driving.

Equally for same reasons sedans are not really needed. The trunk space is mostly unused. You may for an airport trip, but an Ola cab or airport taxi makes more sense for these.

The room inside does not justify. Firstly for the average Indian's body size the hatchback is spacious enough, you don't need the SUV. The sedan does not have too much extra room inside compared to the hatchback. At least nothing that justifies it being bought and used as the daily-use car for commute.

Plus the petrol cost in an oil importing country as ours. Why then this obvious waste.

Get a hatchback. And get all the conveniences you want within. You can make all sorts of upgrades to make it comfy. Seats, stereo, rear view, GPS whatever you need...get the fuel efficiency, well at least until battery operated cars get the cost-benefit ratio right!

Your nature is bliss

A marvellous recounting of Sage Bhrigu's sadhana, on the true import of "Tat Tvam Asi":
- First he asks his guru is the body the Brahman. Then realizes it's bound by change and age and death, while the Self does no have this
- Next he asks if the Mind is Brahman. But the thoughts are vacillating
- Third he delves further and asks if the Prana is Brahman. But that too, though potent, is ever-changing force
- Even consciousness comes close, but keeps going away in sleep. So nature still has control over it.
- It is then he realizes that "Bliss" is his true nature. That which cannot change. But has to be realized.

And that is a key learning for all of us. No matter what the situation around us. That the feeling of "Bliss" we feel within, is our true nature. No matter how much the bodily pain when you sit in Vajrasan, or the stress of work, connect back to your feeling of "Bliss". That is you, not the Maya (nature) that seems to influence you. The true nature of your is "Bliss", and when you realize that, Nature has no control over you to erase it.

And the key import of this was, he himself realized this. His Guru just kept encouraging him, asking him to keep searching. The doctor can only prescribe medicines, or tie the bandage; the body has to heal itself. Likewise, the teacher can only guide, the student has to do the learning. 

Test tube babies do have souls

This was a confusion that is being debated and had been a confusion in my mind. Though the scientific, moral and philosophical debate can continue, I for one am clear on the question in my mind: will babies born without a mother's womb have souls. This question has been ever since sheep were cloned in my mind. I have my closure to this now: Yes, they will.

There are loads of texts on why souls try to find the right body for them to fulfill karmic debts, and achieve liberation. One method which Swami Vivekananda recounted in Jnana Yoga says they come via the rain and get in through the food, and form the life in the sperm and fertilize the egg (like the seed on the soil). Even if that is not the means and the soul comes to "possess" a life body already in the womb for them (to put it simply). Or even if you say the sperm is "artificially" created. Either ways you are not beyond the purview of Maya (nature in simplistic terms).

So yes, as long as the conditions are correct, and a life form is formed, a soul will occupy it to fulfill its karmic debt. There is no relation to the parent's body to fulfill the debt. Although I've read that the soul might come to possess some relative, well-wisher, again to settle karmic debts. The reason why we attract or repel to certain people beyond logic in this life.

The next question in my mind is if souls possess every life, even an Amoeba say.

Also if reincarnation is true: Somehow in my mind it isn't..

Is purchasing online like robbing poor small retailers

It is understandable when some items are not conveniently available like it is in the USA, to buy online. In USA, you have to go to a mall for everything because retail shops cannot keep everything. And anything less is not viable in a country that large with a population that less.

But India is not such a case. There are people and retail stores all around. Right now it only feels foolish to buy Mamy Poko diapers at ₹690 retail price when I could buy it at  ₹550 on  Amazon. Let's see who suffers when I do this.

I think the manufacturer does not.  Even at  ₹550 the wholesaler got it to me for,  he the wholesaler,  the manufacturer and  Amazon all have made money.

The guys who lost money in between is the small time retailer,  the only guy who earns less than me in this whole chain.

The mall that doles less discount to me,  the ones who cry crocodile tears and try to win sympathy against the online business in USA, are at the end of the day some corporate.  A business that first mercilessly killed the small time retailer there.  And later lay the coup-de-etat on his entrepreneurial spirit by employing him as a helper in this mall.

But all this should not divert the Bhartiya mindset. That is a different market from this.

You learn about charity being the means to salvation. Then first thing is to not rob those weaker than you of their dignity regarding running something of their own

So here should be your choice sequence when buying an item:
- Is it readily available at the small single retail store
- Is it available with the small retail chain
- Is it available online
- Is it available at the mall

Go ahead, take the walk, speak to people while you make the purchase. It's worth the little extra.

First rebuild the mosque, then build the temple

There is lot of history, but dates back centuries.
The country has disturbed today, chose to open those wounds

Hurt has been caused, it has pained a lot
Repercussions galore, people still pay to date
There was once a temple, but rebuild a mosque there first

Together we can walk, we are one countrymen
And condemn together, the happening at Babri
Both the building of the mosque, and the razing thereof too

The ones who brought the temple, not the innocents of today
But we are the ones, who stole the mosque that stood there now
The devout, the simple, their place of worship stands razed

What has happened, has happened
And build the temple, go ahead
But don't forget to, rebuild the mosque there first

The day recycles

The morning sun energizes us,
The post noon sun saps it up
The evening sun helps us rest
And the moonlight resets it

If every day is cyclic path
Why won't life, and what's so strange

This is where we have come to be
Why not live, this life full steam

Desires frivolous and changing

The candy you fought with sibling for
The same you minded against parents then
That and many such candies mean nothing
The sibling, the parents still mean the world

Desires are such, they distract they deviate
From where our priorities, our goodness lies
Put to test whatever the mind wants
None would forego their child for an angel next door