Senility is not a sin!!!

I visited a couple of old age homes recently. It makes me shout where are the damn children of these old people when they ought to take care of their parents!!! At an age when their critical faculties start diminishing and health is deteriorating isnt it the responsibility of the son or daughter to take care of them. Had they been left unattended or not tendered care during their childhood do they stand a chance to be where they think they are today? They should bear in mind and be prepared that they will be treated in the same way by their children. Taking care of ones parents is the primary responsibility of any person of any religion. LETS NOT NEGLECT OUR PARENTS WHEN THEY ARE OLD!!!

Recipe for a wonderful tea

Yo hold your pens if you are writing it down, or start dragging the cursor if you are ready to do a Ctrl;here is a wonderful recipe for making a good hot cup of tea.

All you need is:-

1.A tea cup

2. Hot water

3.Tea Bags

4.Milk

5.Tea Spoon

6.Microwave if you have one.

7. A bit of patience

The steps:-

Fill your cup with water and sugar.

Dip the tea bag in it.

Put the cup with the tea bag in the microwave.

Set it for 15 secs and start heating it up. You may observe that the tea bag starts to swell up. Thats the right time to turn it off.

Remove the tea bag.

Stir the dark solution well.

Now add little milk over the top. If you prefer black tea ignore this step.

Stir it well.

Sip it hot:)

Go back to work!!!

Of Chips and Of Fatherhood!!!

Confusing!!! A chip designer can experience the joy of being a father technologically. When the chip you have designed with all ur effort and time comes back in a cute little nail size package, you feel elated. Your creation has taken shape. When you switch on the power supply and lo the chip comes to life and you get to see all those funky waveforms on the CRO i guess you get the same feeling as a father who watches his baby taking its first little steps and trying to say some garble!!! Its your brainchild. You have designed it and if it behaves to a close approximation of what you have envisioned at the first place then you feel as if you are on cloud thirteen hundred and forty one jumping with ecstasy.......of course your child is terminally demented and just repeats the same function over and over again...Time to start creating a new baby:-) Long live the chip designers!!!..(Enuf of bragging for today:-))

Life is like a Rose Garden

Life is like a Garden.......Its full of fragrant beautiful roses with thorny stems amidst the multicoloured butterflies flying around ......The more we want to catch them the farther they fly away....Stay still and feel the cool breeze and scent of the flowers-the butterflies will come to you and gracefully sit on your shoulders....

The beautiful flowers are our achievements and accomplishments,the thorny stems are the unvoidable hurdles we face....the weeds are our shortcomings......The butterflies are the things we want in LIFE.......

Water the flowering plants inspite of the thorns.....Remove the weeds frequently and feel the breeze of life and let the butterflies come to you......

Kachcha Kachcha Pacca Pacca!!!

Quite after some time it has RAINED in Bangalore. After beating the sweltering heat for some time I felt like singing “Rain Rain Come Again”. I guess everyone in Blore must have welcomed the rain.
True to my wish yesterday it rained again. I wanted to rush home after my gym to catch on the last episode of KBC. After watching the tantalizing promos for this star studded show and some teasing emails with “Aaj tho ghar jaldi jaana padega” in the subject line (with the snapshots of the show), I really didn’t want to miss it. And lo rain almost played a spoil sport. There was a very big rain with lots of lightening and thunder which left many people(count myself also) stranded everywhere. For over an hour it showed no signs of relenting. I wanted to sing “Rain Rain come again but not at primetime again!!!”…..As the rain subsided to a drizzle I started pacing towards my home. U wouldn’t call it a drizzle as I got half drenched before I went a quarterway(less than halfway) distance. I had to bring all my hopping skills to the fore jumping from one visible land mass to another trying to avoid my shoes from getting soaked up.(Hop and Balance! Hop and Balance!). Well I felt like the hero of the movie I saw some time back who jumps from one landing stone to another while trying to reach for a treasure..Hehe….

I almost reached the corner from where I had to go another half a kilometer to reach my home. But there formed a mini sagar I mean a fairly big puddle thanks to the wonderful(read awful) state of the road. My good old jogging shoes were getting a long due wash! The puddle was for quite a stretch and water was about 5 inches above the ankle. That number was a guesswork as I watched few brave souls who cared less for their footwear and walked through the mini pool. Few foot ware conscious souls like me didn’t have enough courage to wade through the muddy waters and reach our destinations. But we had the courage to ask two wheeler riders passing by to give us a lift to the other side of that small pond. And frankly speaking these guys were so nice to give us a pillion ride across the pond. I luckily found one guy who took me till the “half a kilometer” distance. I thought its only because of these kind hearted ppl that Bangalore is still getting rains or conversely these rains must have given them a chance to display their kindness. Finally I reached home fully drenched and caught all the action on Star TV after missing half an hour of the show.

Talking about the show. I followed the first few episodes and the last two. I liked it very much. I regret missing rest of the episodes. Sharukh Khan was at his usual exuberant self. A really charming host who has a spontaneous sense of wit and humour and a incorrigible urge to hug his contestants ala “Jaadoo ki Jappi”. Jappi bhi detey hai aur pappi bhi letey hai:-)( he literally forced Priyanka and kareena to give him a pappi on his cheek). I wonder after missing the chance to act as Munnabhai which he was supposed to do,he was holding the baton for Sanjay Dutt in the real world!!

Well the contestant pairs were a study in contrast. Let’s take the first pair Priyanka and Kareena. Well kareena looks like an Indian version of the characteristic dumb American blonde. I mean she gets so hyper for every silly question and the too much of the girly waving of her hands in a frantic manner is very irritating. Priyanka looked like an intelligent executive next to her and she must have been wondering why the hell this nutty gal is sitting beside her. Imagine! there was a question about Kareena’s great grandfather (Prithviraj Kapoor - he figured as one of the four options for the question) which she was very doubtful about. She doesn’t even know whether her great grandpa was elected to Rajya sabha anytime. Let’s forgive her patriarchal irreverence(or ignorance) in this matter. But then there was another question regarding some X Gibbons(don’t remember the first name), an art director at MGM. This question was about what he was credited for. Among the options were the Superman’s costume, The oscar statuette,the Majestic Theatre(hey we do have one at blore too) and some other option I don’t remember!!. Kareena promptly and “intelligently” replied it must be the Superman’s costume. Her reasoning was that MGM had made the superman movie. And Priyanka corrected her that superman was a comic strip and there was no chance of his costume being designed by a famous MGM art director which was later borrowed by some Joseph Shuster(I just looked it up in google for superman’s creator) ...How dumb she is!!Right I hope you agree with me.

And next pair was the Super duper star(sharukh said that) Salman khan and Katrina Kaif. Well Salman seemed to be in high spirits on this show(Must have had a couple of pegs I suppose. (Thank heavens- he didn’t say “Hello everyone!Hic!!!” “Lets take a break. Hic!!!”). Katrina was all composed and poised and looked regal. Salman was all like a hyper active naughty prankster let loose and one who forgot that he was in front of a national television. He never sat properly(or steadily) in his chair and frequently used to get down from his hot seat(must have been really hot for him) either to hug sharukh or to show off a karate stunt or to put his hands on his head to perform a "pradakshina" around the hot seat and the host seat chanting “balaclava”(it’s a monkey cap it seems). Katrina was looking at Salman repramandingly all the time. She looked like a gal SPL embarrassed by two hyperactive cranky kindergarten kids. She tried her best to control Salman but gave up wishing she should have prevented him from having that second peg! Then there was this question related to Arabic and Islamic holy sites. The star contestants were contemplating phoning a friend to find out the answer. My friend wondered if Salman would make a call to Abu Salem or Dawood Bhai. (Hello Dawood Bhai!Hic!!!). Salman took every opportunity to pull Katrina’s leg(and was literally trying to grab her hand at the slightest chance while she admoshingly pushed him away). Meanwhile she was pulling her hair unable to make sense of the hindi the two Khans were speaking. In the end it was all fun and farce(I suppose it was all preplanned). Salman’s unsteady way of sitting and his casual jokes and all those loony things he did. We all watch TV for entertainment. I hope everyone was entertained on this day and let’s not complain that they have made a big joke of KBC. Looking forward for the next season with Sharukh!!! Till then Boys and Gals Umm Ummm Ummmaa!!!(Sharukh khan Istyle)

First Day "First Show"

Chiranjeevi the name spells magic to many of his ardent fans and his movies are the most awaited ones….You should just see to believe the kind of fanfare on the day of his new releases, And it continues for the first few weeks if the movie is really good. Its just short of a small town fair sans the merry go rounds and Columbuses(remember that big swinging ship at the exhibition). If you happen to adore him you can feel the same thrill and joy as you watch some of his movies. And Watching it on the first day- Boy that’s an “I scaled the Mount Everest” kinda Feeling…..

Being a very big fan of this awesome hero I fancied myself watching this movie called TAGORE on the first day when I bought the audio cassette ….(my childhood hero….i used to get inspired by his fights and wanted to kick the wrong doers or the ones who were trying to play fools with me!!!First signs of violence in a kid) …In fact I bunked the first half of the college to grab the first audio cassette that hits the stores. This kind of rebellious or “unstudently”(pun intended) behaviour was much respectable among my peers than getting a moronic 20/20 in the midterm test in an equally moronic subject.

I guess I was held up during the morning session doing some hopelessly abstruse practical work in our electronics lab….well there was never a motivation to get the circuit working or to obtain a believable result at least…I direly wanted to rush out of the lab as soon as possible to catch on my best hero’s flick.

You have to imagine the kind of frenzy that was there when we reached the theatre. My best friend Surya Prabhakar was also with me. It was an evening show or in earthy terms first show

Already three shows were gone by (apart from morning show and the matinee there is also a special fans show very early in the morning) and the movie generated good talk among the public. People were fighting for the tickets as if Chiranjeevi had himself come to give autographs on the tickets. (There goes a legend about two fans conversing about their respective hero’s newly released films. The first dude proudly states that there were fights in the movie right from the first scene onwards. The second one casually replies ”What fun for my hero there was fighting from the booking counter itself.” You may wonder why such craze for the fights in telugu movies. They is always an abundance of violence and brutality in the big heroes flicks than the war films that have won the OSCARS).
WE discovered much to our disappointment that all the tickets were sold(or so they were feigned to be sold) and tried for the Black tickets. Well we were a bit worried as to how much those tickets might be sold for. Usually people can make a good fortune(and also eke out a living just) by selling black tickets for chiru’s movies, some unconfirmed reports say that chiru’s movie tickets get sold for over 1000 bucks as well. Of course we were not prepared to spend that much to watch the movie.

Then suddenly my friend found someone(a very distant acquaintance) nearby. We approached him. Voila! he said he said he could get us two tickets but they were rs10 tickets. Coming from respectable families it doesn’t look good to be sitting in those front rows. But our love for the hero (read thrill of watching it on the first day) overcame our ego and pride. And that too no one wants forfeit a chance when a Rs 10 ticket comes for Rs 15..…Wow that was a great achievement. Getting a black ticket for chiru’s movie for such a meager hike was unbelievable. As I recall that day I think Gods willed that we watch the movie.( Let there be tickets! Let Prabhakar and Sravan watch this movie!! ). We rushed into the hall amidst the crowd and occupied our seats.

Well as the credits rolled on fans flew well cut small pieces of papers onto the screen (they come in varied shapes. A crude and different form of Origami just for exaggeration). A tinge of a disappointment as I expected garlands!!!…And then TADAAAA…Chiranjeevi comes walking onto the screen.( you shouldn’t miss his entrance, First his big soled shoes are shown from ankle onwards;then the camera jogs along his frame and comes 180 degrees to show his deep eyes and then zooms out to show him full fledgedly and the mood is amplified by the stunning background music. But don’t expect a dramatic entry in this movie. He is shown simply typing furiously at a computer and sipping coffee from a cup with the popular caption “Team work means more we less I”. I wonder how many such cups have been sold out after this movie).

Imagine watching your favorite hero from the fourth row…..I wondered why he was much adored by all those front benchers or so called masses. As I experienced it was just the sheer thrill of proximity to their hero’s image. He was much closer to them to their eyes than those comfortably sitting in the balcony…..The movie was ultimate. People went hysterical as chiru danced to the lilting tunes of the songs and uttered powerful dialogues on the screen. It was really an fantastic experience. The movie was a block buster…Ran for 100 days in sooooo many centers much to the craze of number-happy telugu audience.

Well as soon as I came out of the hall I called up home and proclaimed “I watched chiru’s movie on the first day” as if I had just secured a State RANK in a CET and some topicless TV channel crew is going to come and interview my folks and my neighbours as well ….
Well I don’t know how proud or happy I made my folks and the people reading this by disclosing my adventure or so called achievement but I am very much thrilled till this day and will tell this to my children,grand children and great grand children and it will become a part of my legend..Hehe…..

Chip Designing For Dummies

VLSI flow was evolved similar to the flow involved in Building Construction.Now let us dwelve in to the constuction flow to better understand the VLSI Chip design flow development.
When ever we start to construct a building, we will have an architecture, how the building should look like , the exterior looks and all, similar to that we will be designing an architecture in the chip-design, based on the requirement of the product, what the product is addressed for and whom to serve what needs, the so called specification, will having the modules.
Now lets go in to the implementation part of both the Building & Chip.
We at first come with the floorplan of the building, similarly we come with the floorplan of the Chip, Based on the connectivity/accessibility/vaasthu we place our rooms, similarly we have the constraints to place the blocks. Like we build the building with bricks, for Chip Design we have libraries, which are like pre-designed bricks, for a specific functionality.
Now let us try to understand the power-structure or electrical connectivity in our Building. Initially we have an Electrical plan for our building, where we have a requirement that all our electrical gadgets needs to get power. Similar to that we have a Chip power requirement, The required power is supplied through the power-pads, over a ring like topology to have a uniform distribution across all corners of the chip, and the supply has to reach all the standard-cells(bricks for Chip-Designing).,this is called as power-grid topology in the Chip-Design, now the requirement is how well we design our Power-grid, to reduce the IR-drop so that our standard-cells get proper power requirement.
I would not make justice, if I dont discuss about clock and clock-tree in the Chip-Design flow. We have synchronous way of designing and asynchronous way of designing(difficult to verify). Majority of chips follow Synchronous way of coding, for which Static Timing Analysis is possible. For the relevancy of the flops the clock to those flops should reach at the same time from the crystal, with in some skew targets with in the chip.In order to make this happen, a step called as clock-tree is performed after power-grid is created.
Let us try to visualize the concept behind Place & Route in Chip Design. We need to undergo lot of modelling concepts, to understand the process of Chip-Designing. To have a better understanding of this concept of place and route, let us assume a society where people who are speaking different languages are living , and let us visualize that people talking of the same languages are living in a community, then the communication is much easier , similar way in the chip-designing, the standard-cells who are having design relation-ships, are placed closer in the Placement flow this concept is called as regioning. Now with in the regioning, of the groups of the standard-cells, the cells which are really sharing data, has to placed close-by so that there timing is achieved and well optimized.This step is called placement, Connectivity across the standard-cells is called as routing, the challenge is having optimized or reduced wire-lengths.
Now let us try to try to understand the concept behind signal integrity in the Chip-Design , often called us SI Effect. As our process is shrinking day by day, and our silicon-realestate is costly, we try to accommodate more and more standard-cells in the limited area, so the cells are placed in very close proximity, so the switching of one can have an impact over the others behaviour, which can make the path to be faster or slower, this issue is called as signal-integrity. So similar way in our construction in order to maintain the integrity with in the house(neighbour free-zone), within the limited zone of modurality, we try to create fences, across buildings, similarly we can think of a concept called as Shielding, the high frequency signal net with the power-nets running across. We perform spacing across the buildings, similar way we can perform spacing across the nets, which are in close proximities.
In order to validate the silicon from the manufacturability issues, the concept in the Chip Desigining is Design for Test(DFT). One of the DFT techniques is scan-chain. To understand the concept of the scan-chain, we can visualize that we have a front-door entry and a back-door exit, and a person passes from the front-door and exits from the back-door exit of the building, that we are sure that there is no blocking within the rooms in the building, to make that person stuck , similar to this analogy the flip-flops are connected to-gether creating a scan-chain and test-input values are passed from the scan-chain input of the chip and expected data is visualized in the scan-chain output of the chip, then the assumption is the chip is free from manufacturability issues like stuck-at faults(stuck-at one or stuck at zeros).
This is just a tip-of an ice-berg...
(courtesyhttp://balamurugan.selvaraj.googlepages.com/home)

PS: This article was stolen from a VLSI forum neverthless it just gives a flavor of the tasks a Chip designer is entrusted with. Whenever ppl ask me what I do in Chip Designing , I end up giving an impression of either a braggart(talking too much about his work or ppl may think this dude is exaggerating what is doing or supposed to do) or a guy who does some arcane stuff (and make ppl believe this guy should be held in awe for what he is doing or stay away from him because he talks something gibberish) …… Phew now I can make them visualize what I really do. But now I fear I might end up being looked upon as a glorified MASON.

A Doggerel About Love!!!

On feb 13th 2005 i had this wicked idea to test everyone's literary skills(patience to be precise).Read on this little(read long) doggerel.

Just read on if u have guts!!!
Later dont complain that u have gone nuts!!!




the first time we met she was so simple,
i thought she had a nice dimple,
her voice was melliflous ,
wondered what her name was,
like the oyesters were her eyes,
she was a celestial beauty in guise,

when she asked my name,
i was close to fame,
being acquianted with this "dame",
I never again felt the same,

i was always in a state of reverie,
oblivious of things around me,
when she took my number,
how many times i called her up i can't remember,

One day i resolved to speak my heart....,
to tell her that i love her a lot,

i wished to give her a big boquet,
as huge as the milkyway,
i dressed at my best,
and rehearsed for the tryst,

the number of roses were hundred,
of colours yellow ,white and red,
i wrapped the flowers ,
in soft colourful covers,

as she came along,
i broke into a song,
but as her stare was long ,
i sensed something wrong,

i propsed to her,
said i love none but her,
she said she had no such feelings for me,
i felt as if jolted by a "tsunami",
her words hit me like a thunder,
and broke my heart asunder,

then she went away,
never to come back my way,
i stood there dumbfound,
feeling a void around,

i sat on the bench,
not budging an inch,
i looked at the flowers,
still fresh after many hours,

then i noticed a group of old people,
making something with leaves of peepal,
to my way they gestured,
to be their company in this orchard,

i took some flowers for them,
they praised me "you are a gem",
at their sudden affection my eyes moistened,
and looked like droplets on a rose petals's end,
as i bid them goodbye,
i saw them cry with joy,

now my heart felt lighter,
and life looked much brighter,
then i saw a group of children,
picking up rags under the sun,

i gave them the flowers i was left with,
and watched them jump with mirth,
they gave me boats made of paper,
and dolls of chocolate wrapper

my heart's joy knew no bounds,
hearing their shrieking joyful sounds,
rising out from the ocean of despair in which i was drowned,
now to the eternal kingdom of happiness i was crowned,


-Sravan

Never crib or cry over unrequited love, instead shower ur love on people who need it most!!!


Where is the reason for the guy in this poem to be heart broken...he never gave his heart away and it is still intact with him...he was never betrayed either....so this guy remained happy as ever showering his love on everyone without asking anything for return...thats true love.....He is LOVE!!!

PS:Now dont complain you had bouts of headaches and nightmares after visiting my blog:-)

BE LIKE A COFFEE BEAN.....

A young woman went to her mother and told her about her life, and how things were so hard for her. She did not know how she was going to make it, and wanted to give up. She was tired of fighting and struggling. It seemed as one problem was solved a new one arose.
Her mother took her to the kitchen. She filled three pots with water. In the first pot, she placed carrots, in the second she placed eggs and the last she placed ground coffee beans. She let them sit and boil without saying a word. In about twenty minutes she turned off the burners. She fished the carrots out and placed them in a bowl. She pulled the eggs out and placed them in a bowl. Then she ladled the coffee out and placed it in a bowl.
Turning to her daughter, she asked, "Tell me what do you see?" "Carrots, eggs, and coffee," she replied. She brought her closer and asked her to feel the carrots. She did and noted that they got soft. She then asked her to take the egg and break it. After pulling off the shell, she observed the hard-boiled egg. Finally, she asked her to smell and sip the coffee. The daughter smiled, as she smelled and tasted its rich aroma. The daughter then asked, "What's the point, mother?"
Her mother explained that each of these objects had faced the same adversity- boiling water-but each reacted differently. The carrot went in strong, hard and unrelenting. However, after being subjected to the boiling water, it softened and became weak. The egg had been fragile. Its thin outer shell had protected its liquid interior. But, after sitting through the boiling water, its inside became hardened. The ground coffee beans were unique, however. After they were in the boiling water they had changed the water.
"Which are you?" she asked her daughter. "When trials and adversity knock on your door, how do you respond? Are you a carrot, an egg, or a coffee bean?"
Think of this: Which am I?
Am I the carrot that seems strong, but with pain and adversity, do I wilt and become soft and lose my strength?
Am I the egg that starts with a passive heart, but changes with the heat? Did I have a fluid spirit, but after a death, a financial hardship or some other trial, have I become hardened and stiff? Does my shell look the same, but on the inside, am I bitter and tough with a stiff spirit and a hardened heart?
Or, am I like the coffee bean? The bean actually changes the hot water, the very circumstance that brings the pain. When the water gets hot, it releases the fragrance and flavor. If you are like the bean, when things are at their worst, you become better and change the situation around you.
When the hours are the darkest and trials are their greatest do you elevate to another level?

Listening Better

Here is a wonderful article on listening better. Read on and apply it and make more friends.....


Brenda Ueland
The art of listening

It is through this creative process
that we at once love and are loved

I want to write about the great and powerful thing that listening is. And how we forget it. And how we don't listen to our children, or those we love. And least of all - which is so important, too - to those we do not love. But we should. Because listening is a magnetic and strange thing, a creative force. Think how the friends that really listen to us are the ones we move toward, and we want to sit in their radius as though it did us good, like ultraviolet rays.
This is the reason: When we are listened to, it creates us, makes us unfold and expand. Ideas actually begin to grow within us and come to life. You know how if a person laughs at your jokes you become funnier and funnier, and if he does not, every tiny little joke in you weakens up and dies. Well, that is the principle of it. It makes people happy and free when they are listened to. And if you are a listener, it is the secret of having a good time in society (because everybody around you becomes lively and interesting), of comforting people, of doing them good.
______________________________________________________
Who are the people, for example, to whom you go for advice?
Not to the hard, practical ones who can tell you exactly
what to do, but to the listeners; that is, the kindest,
least censorious, least bossy people you know.
______________________________________________________
Who are the people, for example, to whom you go for advice? Not to the hard, practical ones who can tell you exactly what to do, but to the listeners; that is, the kindest, least censorious, least bossy people you know. It is because by pouring out your problem to them, you then know what to do about it yourself.
When we listen to people there is an alternating current that recharges us so we never get tired of each other. We are constantly being re-created.
Now, there are brilliant people who cannot listen much. They have no ingoing wires on their apparatus. They are entertaining, but exhausting, too.
I think it is because these lecturers, these brilliant performers, by not giving us a chance to talk, do not let this little creative fountain inside us begin to spring and cast up new thoughts and unexpected laughter and wisdom. That is why, when someone has listened to you, you go home rested and lighthearted.
When people listen, creative waters flow
Now this little creative fountain is in us all. It is the spirit, or the intelligence, or the imagination - whatever you want to call it. If you are very tired, strained, have no solitude, run too many errands, talk to too many people, drink too many cocktails, this little fountain is muddied over and covered with a lot of debris. The result is you stop living from the center, the creative fountain, and you live from the periphery, from externals. That is, you go along on mere willpower without imagination.
It is when people really listen to us, with quiet, fascinated attention, that the little fountain begins to work again, to accelerate in the most surprising way.
I discovered all this about three years ago, and truly it made a revolutionary change in my life. Before that, when I went to a party, I would think anxiously: "Now try hard. Be lively. Say bright things. Talk. Don't let down." And when tired, I would have to drink a lot of coffee to keep this up.
Now before going to a party, I just tell myself to listen with affection to anyone who talks to me, to be in their shoes when they talk; to try to know them without my mind pressing against theirs, or arguing, or changing the subject.
Sometimes, of course, I cannot listen as well as others. But when I have this listening power, people crowd around and their heads keep turning to me as though irresistibly pulled. By listening I have started up their creative fountain. I do them good.
Now why does it do them good? I have a kind of mystical notion about this. I think it is only by expressing all that is inside that purer and purer streams come.
It is so in writing. You are taught in school to put down on paper only the bright things. Wrong. Pour out the dull things on paper too - you can tear them up afterward - for only then do the bright ones come.
If you hold back the dull things, you are certain to hold back what is clear and beautiful and true and lively.
Women listen better
I think women have this listening faculty more than men. It is not the fault of men. They lose it because of their long habit of striving in business, of self-assertion. And the more forceful men are, the less they can listen as they grow older. And that is why women in general are more fun than men, more restful and inspiriting.
Now this non-listening of able men is the cause of one of the saddest things in the world - the loneliness of fathers, of those quietly sad men who move along with their grown children like remote ghosts.
When my father was over 70, he was a fiery, humorous, admirable man, a scholar, a man of great force. But he was deep in the loneliness of old age and another generation. He was so fond of me. But he could not hear me - not one word I said, really. I was just audience. I would walk around the lake with him on a beautiful afternoon and he would talk to me about Darwin and Huxley and higher criticism of the Bible.
"Yes, I see, I see," I kept saying and tried to keep my mind pinned to it, but I was restive and bored. There was a feeling of helplessness because he could not hear what I had to say about it. When I spoke I found myself shouting, as one does to a foreigner, and in a kind of despair that he could not hear me. After the walk I would feel that I had worked off my duty and I was anxious to get him settled and reading in his Morris chair, so that I could go out and have a livelier time with other people. And he would sigh and look after me absentmindedly with perplexed loneliness.
For years afterward I have thought with real suffering about my father's loneliness. Such a wonderful man, and reaching out to me and wanting to know me! But he could not. He could not listen. But now I think that if only I had known as much about listening then as I do now, I could have bridged the chasm between us. To give an example:
Recently, a man I had not seen for 20 years wrote me. He was an unusually forceful man and had made a great deal of money. But he had lost his ability to listen. He talked rapidly and told wonderful stories and it was just fascinating to hear them. But when I spoke - restlessness: "Just hand me that, will you? ... Where is my pipe?" It was just a habit. He read countless books and was eager to take in ideas, but he just could not listen to people.
Patient listening
Well, this is what I did. I was more patient - I did not resist his non-listening talk as I did my father's. I listened and listened to him, not once pressing against him, even in thought, with my own self-assertion.
I said to myself: "He has been under a driving pressure for years. His family has grown to resist his talk. But now, by listening, I will pull it all out of him. He must talk freely and on and on. When he has been really listened to enough, he will grow tranquil. He will begin to want to hear me."
And he did, after a few days. He began asking me questions. And presently I was saying gently:
"You see, it has become hard for you to listen."
He stopped dead and stared at me. And it was because I had listened with such complete, absorbed, uncritical sympathy, without one flaw of boredom or impatience, that he now believed and trusted me, although he did not know this.
"Now talk," he said. "Tell me about that. Tell me all about that."
Well, we walked back and forth across the lawn and I told him my ideas about it.
"You love your children, but probably don't let them in. Unless you listen, you can't know anybody. Oh, you will know facts and what is in the newspapers and all of history, perhaps, but you will not know one single person. You know, I have come to think listening is love, that's what it really is."
Well, I don't think I would have written this article if my notions had not had such an extraordinary effect on this man. For he says they have changed his whole life. He wrote me that his children at once came closer; he was astonished to see what they are; how original, independent, courageous. His wife seemed really to care about him again, and they were actually talking about all kinds of things and making each other laugh.
Family tragedies
For just as the tragedy of parents and children is not listening, so it is of husbands and wives. If they disagree they begin to shout louder and louder - if not actually, at least inwardly - hanging fiercely and deafly onto their own ideas, instead of listening and becoming quieter and more comprehending.
But the most serious result of not listening is that worst thing in the world, boredom; for it is really the death of love. It seals people off from each other more than any other thing.
Now, how to listen. It is harder than you think. Creative listeners are those who want you to be recklessly yourself, even at your very worst, even vituperative, bad- tempered. They are laughing and just delighted with any manifestation of yourself, bad or good. For true listeners know that if you are bad-tempered it does not mean that you are always so. They don't love you just when you are nice; they love all of you.
In order to listen, here are some suggestions: Try to learn tranquility, to live in the present a part of the time every day. Sometimes say to yourself: "Now. What is happening now? This friend is talking. I am quiet. There is endless time. I hear it, every word." Then suddenly you begin to hear not only what people are saying, but also what they are trying to say, and you sense the whole truth about them. And you sense existence, not piecemeal, not this object and that, but as a translucent whole.
Then watch your self-assertiveness. And give it up. Remember, it is not enough just to will to listen to people. One must really listen. Only then does the magic begin.
______________________________________________________
We should all know this: that listening, not talking,
is the gifted and great role, and the imaginative role.
And the true listener is much more beloved, magnetic
than the talker, and he is more effective and learns more and
does more good.
______________________________________________________

We should all know this: that listening, not talking, is the gifted and great role, and the imaginative role. And the true listener is much more beloved, magnetic than the talker, and he is more effective and learns more and does more good. And so try listening. Listen to your wife, your husband, your father, your mother, your children, your friends; to those who love you and those who don't, to those who bore you, to your enemies. It will work a small miracle. And perhaps a great one.
________________________________________
Brenda Ueland, a prolific Minnesota author and columnist, died in 1985 at the age of 93. Her father was a lawyer and judge, her mother a suffrage leader. From a collection of her essays, "Strength To Your Sword Arm: Selected Writings by Brenda Ueland." Copyright 1992 by The Estate of Brenda Ueland. Reprinted on this webpage by permission of Holy Cow! Press, Box 3170, Mt. Royal Station, Duluth, Minn. 55803. Phone/Fax: 218-724-1653

My first Post

Well I take this oppurtunity to express my views and ideas here in Sravan's World. Thanks to internet and special thanks to Ms.Satyadarshini Sharna, my dear didi from whom i got the inspiration to create my own blog.