Under the Govardhana

 Once there was a cup It broke, but did not give up The cup said it will live through the pain If, for the world, there could be some gain Thus it served and leaked, but never creaked Always putting its best lip forward One night a lot was put on its head "I have survived lots, will survive this", the cup said The cups around then chirped up "We know you don't want to give up But know this, you are not alone We will be here, after you are gone" The next morning, the cup was dead It had given up, and moved on ahead.

 There is a very interesting TED talk by Carol Dweck where she talks about the difference between a fixed mindset and a growth mindset. The terminology fixed vs growth here should be taken as a person's belief about his or her attributes. People with a fixed mindset believe that they are pigeonholed with a certain set of immutable abilities, while people with a growth mindset are aware that they their abilities can improve. This awareness, as far as I understand, need not be taken as something they are consciously aware of, but its effect is seen in how they react to their success or failure in tasks. Carol talks about various experiments with children which laid bare the existence of these mindsets. Most interesting is the response of children with these two mindsets as the difficulty of tasks is increased. Growth mindset people often see a more difficult task as an opportunity for them to grow, while fixed mindset people are petrified! For fixed mindset folks, they and their abi...

Why do humans (and most other animals that I know) have only two sexes? Only male and female? Of course, I am cognizant of the fact that other genders do exist and the sex column in applications these days has not only male and female. But still, the majority of humans, and majority in other animals I know, are divided into males and females. In fact, Wikipedia defines sex as "Organisms of many species are specialized into male and female varieties, each known as a sex" Further, you need a male and a female for the important act of procreation. But why is there not a male, a female and a gmale? Why is it not that a male and female always gave birth to a male, a female and a gmale gave birth to a female and a gmale and a male gave birth to a gmale? A much interesting rock, papers, scissors form of procreation!  Well, first of us let us find out if there are such cases in the animal kingdom. Of course, there are species which are not divided by gender. Of these, I think, there...

 Is life an onion? You peel it and you cry Keep peeling and crying And finally peel off to get nothing Or is life a mango? You eat and it is sweet You keep eating and you have eaten Now you don't know what to do with the seed Or maybe a banana? You eat and you are happy You drop the peel, take a step And fall flat on your back!