Life and Spirituality

By the side of my garden is a gravel patch that runs through the middle of the driveway. Of and on weed comes up through the gravel and needs weeding. The full driveway is shown in the picture at the bottom of this post. Today as I sat weeding a portion of it, a little yellow butterfly kept coming near me, hopping around and sitting near me. I felt it was most unusual. When I put out my hand near it even hopped on. I felt it was most unusual and when one is involved with mysticism as I have been, one interprets such things as a sign from the Lord, a direct message. On reflection I think it was a sign to complete a small work of mystic fiction that has been languishing in my basement for more than a quarter century. I have been a scientist and Professor of engineering with interests in mysticism. Some quarter century ago, I had written the first draft of this small novel. The preliminary name of the book was ‘Butterfly Boy’ and butterflies feature in it. Perhaps the name ...

Recent devastating floods that submerged an entire province in southern India – Kerala - drew my mind back to emergency food supplies for humans caught in natural disasters. Food that can be delivered swiftly to such persons needs to be compact, lightweight, and nutritional with a long shelf life. It can then be stored in emergency relief depots and supplied to disaster management teams swiftly. It should be food that can be consumed without cooking. In earlier posts this author has described precisely such a food in the form of biscuits that aside from wheat flour contain micronutrients and proteins, are organic and easily digestible. They were named OFR biscuits. The interested reader may like to look up these posts too. They can be found here  Aside from disaster relief such a food when available, is useful for travelers. They are useful in homes as a snack, for an occasional quick lunch perhaps along with soup, salad or fruits, or, breakfasts along with tea, co...

For years USA has faced huge immigration problems on its southern borders as large numbers of persons have crossed its border through Mexico. The American response to the problem has varied over the years. Few of its responses have been perfect; few responses have escaped criticism. The most recent response of zero tolerance that consisted of declaring those entering as criminals, separating adults from children and putting them in separate detentions has been criticized hugely around the world. It was described as torture of little children by no less than the UN Human Rights Commission from which America withdrew subsequently, of even babies and of snatching babies from mothers. It has been reversed but thousands of children remain separated while America scampers for alternate policies. This present move may have destroyed future of thousands of children through psychological trauma. It is heaping disgrace upon a once great nation. More tragic still is the fact that inst...

Presently the immigration issues are back in central focus with a ship carrying some six hundred refugees being turned away from Italian shores and finding refuge in Spain, while on American borders the world is horrified in seeing children being torn away from   parents, some babies, while their parents are sent to private prisons. While solutions to these issues will be debated and discussed endlessly just as they have been for the past several years, some temporary solutions found, as presently for the ship in Spain, the problem shall continue until its root cause is dealt with. The present note is about these root causes and the solution. First, the refugee influx into Europe, it arises from instabilities and violence in Middle East and Africa. It will stop effectively when this turmoil stops to conditions as prevailed before WWII in these countries when relative peace prevailed. At the center of the Middle Eastern Crisis is the Israel-Palestinian problem. Around i...

https://www.amazon.com/Ashok-Malhotra/e/B00502LCCI Amazon announces free kindle editions of books from time to time. Those who have a kindle reader or  any other device to read books would find it worth their while to make use of these opportunities to scout their vast libraries and save a lot of money to read some great classical works as well as modern literature or other books on virtually every subject under the sun. Their search tools make it easy to locate a book that you might have in mind or you may just like to browse through and select one that catches your fancy. This week for five days, from Sunday the 27 th of May to Thursday, Kindle editions of five of my books are free too. Do look up on my author page if you caught this post in time. You can scroll through the list of books to see which one’s have a zero price. The link to the author page is here, https://www.amazon.com/Ashok-Malhotra/e/B00502LCCI

Sparrow by   Laitche My home is more than two and a half decades old. I built it in bits as and when I got time off from work in other cities but right from the start I began planting trees around the boundary. Some became too large with the years and had to be removed. They were put to good use. Seasoned and converted into furniture around the home as it expanded. However, the most delightful aspect of the trees was that neighbors too loved the idea and planted more and a variety of birds moved in to nest in them. Their tweets delight the soul all day, beginning well before dawn. A few like crows were irritating but thankfully, they are not visiting the area now and there was that naughty kingfisher that ate all my lovely little fish in a tiny cemented pond in the garden. I stopped keeping ornamental fish since and keep the pond dry most of the year. In monsoons its is used to collect rain water. Unfortunately, a few years ago I had to remove a large bougainvillea bu...

https://twitter.com/kingofkings_99/status/990997969011970048 I saw his image on twitter and was touched by the image. Humanity has driven itself to a sorry state indeed when it is unable to take care of its children and drives them to the street to fend for themselves. The boy has lined up his shoe polishes just like a child might line up his toys at home; he has not slept well last night it seems inside whatever he calls his home; soon a well dressed man in a tie shall come and wake him up for a shoe polish; he shall throw down some coins for the boy to grab, and away the boy shall run perhaps, dragging his hurriedly stuffed bag, to that man who sells those lovely sandwiches down the road, his daily bread that he shall eat sitting on the pavement leaning against the pillar of a shop with the utmost of delight and happiness. Those sandwiches are good, perhaps the kind sandwich vendor stuffs in extra slices of hard boiled eggs for the child in the one sided open sandwich...