Kaanch ki barni aur do cup chai!

Recently, I read a story which I would like to share with everybody. So the story was titled as:  “A glass jar and two cups of tea”. It was like this- Once a professor came to the class with an empty glass jar and little stuff. Professor started filling the glass jar with stones till there was no possibility of adding more, than he asked the students weather the jar was full. The students replied: “yes!” Then he started filling small pebbles in the jar, the pebbles made their way through empty spaces between big stones, and he keep filling them till brim, he again asked the students if the jar was full and he got an affirmative answer. Then he started filling sand in the jar, and the glass could take that too. Again students replied that the jar was full. Then he poured two cups of tea in the jar and the sand absorbed the tea. The students were amazed!

He explained that each element represents the components of our life; stones are the important parts like family, work, relationships. Pebbles are our responsibilities, attitude and nature. Sand represents the small issues or woes which we come across in our routine life. If he would have filled the jar with sand first, then there would have been no space for pebbles and stones, the same way in life if we keep ourselves busy and occupied with problems and unimportant issues than there would be no time for important things.

One student asked: “what did tea represent?” Teacher explained that no matter how busy we are with stones, pebbles or sand, we should always take out some time for having tea with our close friends. That is by spending some time with friends we can forget our day to day problems, which is very important for a healthy life!

The small story tells us about how sometimes we are so involved in our daily problems that we neglect the important things of life. And do not enjoy the gift of family and friends given by the god.

Let us pray today that god shall always keep us healthy, fit, with friends and family and we shall not be acquired by the small issues and problems of life and enjoy it to the fullest! Amen.

Being Indian

To start with, I am very much influenced by hindi movies and so that would reflect in my blogs too. 
Please bear with that!

The hottest topic of discussion  these days is the falling rupee and the increasing price of onions 
{ahaan?}. I, like many others was taking it as yet another story and how much and for how long 
will it affect me until one day when my phone flashed with a forwarded wats-app message from 
a friend. At first I ignored thinking of it to be just another message but then the text caught me 
off guard. It said that we ourselves are responsible for the sorry state of the Rupee!{How? When? 
What did I do dude?}. My mind was filled with all these questions and then I thought  a dialog 
from RDB

"zindagi jeene k do hi tareeke hote haiek jo ho raha hai hone do chup chap sahte jaodoosra jimmedari uthao usse badalne ki"

Now, we all are and can keep cribbing about government and its policies for all this, but you and 
I very well know that government will do what they want to, and we cannot make or change their
decisions. So here, I am not focusing on why this happened and who is responsible for this, but I 
wanna focus on what can be done to fix this? Is there anything that I can do from my part to help
the Rupee stabilize? Or the Inflation to stop growing anymore?

The wats-app message said "If I buy and use made in India products, the Rupee value will increase!
Like in china people use only made in China and their economy is booming. I was not among the 
ones who would blindfold-ly believe, so I tried finding out how will that happen, and here is what I
understood:

When we buy made in India products, it increases the liquid money in the domestic market which 
in turn help increase the net domestic consumption and can result into curbing CAD (current 
account deficit). {OHKAY!}

The next step for me was to find out what are the products that are made in India, and off-course I
wanted to know if it will be feasible enough to use such products. Very soon I got those answers too!
, and then I thought if just by making minimal changes to the brands of my every month shopping
list can make a difference, I definitely wanna do that. After all, 

don't under-estimate the power of  a common man.  

I am not asking others or expecting all to do the same, it's an individual's choice - and obviously if
we already own something which is not made in India we would not throw it (in my case it is my 
Samsung smartphone :P). So it just depends, I am doing something which I felt I can and should 
do for improving the state of the country. And if you are interested to know which brands you 
should be using, I would be happy to help! ;)

Also, obviously we are not expected to stop using ALL foreign products, because that will decrease 
the FDI's for Indian market and also can have a negative impact on the economy! The ask is to just
use stuff which we do not prefer of a specific brand and can easily switch to a different one!

Please bring on your comments/suggestions on this post or if you have anything else that can be 
done to help improve the situation!

Lastly, 

"koi bhi desh perfect nahi hota, use perfect banana padata hai!"

For those who are still interested, can read through these references:

http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/the-india-of-2013-is-not-the-india-of-1991/
article5068745.ece

This article on "The Hindu" says India is not in the same condition as that of 1991 and hence 
government need not have to take the extensive big steps that we took at that time. 

The reason behind falling market is:

Investors are losing trust in the Indian market. We need to reduce our imports and our 
dependencies on the foreign investments.

http://www.business-standard.com/article/economy-policy/gold-import-norms-tightened-
further-113090301156_1.html

This article on business standard says that RBI has further tightened the gold import norms. The
rule of 80/20 has been stricter and any gold import outside of SEZs or EOUs will have to suffer 
these rules. However, an investor feels that it won't make much of a difference on the bearish 
sentiment of the market.

http://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/currentaccountdeficit.asp

A nation is said to have a trade deficit if it is importing more than it exports.

From <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Current_account>