The touch

Touching is a way of transferring one's emotion .We used to touch others to make others feel our warmth,comfort,affection depending upon the situation.The touch can do more things , words cannot do.We use the word "artistic touch" to describe the artistic work in any form.A child like to touch everything it sees,a fan likes to touch his idol if he happens to see.All over the world,a touch in the shoulder mostly denotes the caring.For a person in despair , it is a "healing touch" if one touches his shoulder.It gives him hope that he is not alone and someone is there to care him and guide him.It is this healing touch that has transferred failures into success.
Kino is an acronym for kinesthetic approach which deals with the non threatening physical touch used in flirting.Such approaches do not apply to everyone.But touch as a kino can convey emotion very easily."Touch Wood" is a phrase which is used to refer a superstition action to remove any evil consequences .For example if a person has scored well in exams and if he say to his dear ones, they may say touch wood to ward off evils.Of all the phrases ,which include the word touch, the most notable phrase is the "human touch" which means friendly warmth and humane.
Touch can be used for healing.Reiki is a technique used to transfer energy for healing through touching.It is still practised all over the world

Friends and Friendship

I cannot imagine a world without friends and friendship.Friends are the one we dont get by fate,whereas blood relations and spouse are.There is an old saying that "Tell me your friends, I will tell who you are." This says the significance of friend's in appraising any one's personality.Selecting good friends is an uphill task.Good friends may become close friends when one have faith in them.We have to accept that we may opt friendship for compulsion too.If one have to attend a training which may prolong for a week , then we are forced to accept anyone as friend.In such cases, we like to have friendship with one who may be sitting near to us or the one who we may feel intelligent or the one who we may feel native to us in respect to language,region etc.
The friendship in school days are temporary and we forget them when we change school.Thanks to social networking sites, now we can find them in net.Generally we do have a craze to know about them.It makes one nostalgic.But I dont know whether one can renew the friendship which one had in their school days.They have changed their attitude, they have changed their status and they are not the one whom one had seen in their school days.
The friendship in college days have special bonding .Those days were our grooming days and we enjoyed our youth in the college days.But one may feel that the intensity of friendship may fade over years as one pass out from their institution and move on to their journey of career and family.Here we have to notice that over years as one may get mature, and if one may find new friends then the friendship will be a mature one.But this may not be the case with the friends of college days.They tend to be like the one in college days.
We can classify frinds like good friends,close friends,true friends.Good friends are like the one who we have formal friendship.They are not close ones and we dont share all our details with them.The friendship is exchanged by a "Hi".They are good friends because they dont create harm to us.Close friends are the one whom we share about our feelings, sorrow , happiness.We dont keep formality with them.True friends are identified by time.When we find close friends are not true friends , then we feel that close friends are not friends. Time shows us our true friends.
Nowadays, every one is interested to have friendship with strangers in the internet.They disclose their interestes , hobbies in the net .A lot of them have registered in numerous communities of social networking sites like orkut which give a fake personality of oneself.But if one talks to them , we know that they are not the one , what they have projected of oneself.

The Konkan Railway Route

The konkan railway route starts from Roha to Thokur covering the states Maharashtra, Goa and Karnataka.It has scenic beauty all around its route.The giant and small rivers,tunnels,greenery,villages,waterfalls all you can see in your trip.The route was an engineerng task undertaken and executed well ahead of time by our engineers under the leadership of E.Shreedharan.The track is designed to handle the speed of a train below 160kmph.Hence they have taken care to avoid curves in most of the route.

There are around 1998 bridges , including major and minor bridges along the route.The longest bridge is across the river Sharavati near Honnavar and it is around 2.065 km long.Usually I travel by Netravati Express and it crosses the bridge at odd hours both up and down.The tallest viaduct(bridge composed of several small spans) PanvelNadi ,near Ratnagiri is around 64 metre height and is also the tallest one in Asia.The Karbude tunnel streching for 6km is the longest one in this route .

If you travel by Sleeper class , then you will be annoyed by the resonance sound caused when train moves fast inside the train.You may hear whistle sounds given by staff on duty inside the tunnel.Another irritating thing can be the smoke coming out of the engine when train enters the tunnel.In a tunnel , you have to turn the face away from the window and you are forced to look at your fellow travellers.One may see water flowing from the top , inside the tunnel.

Travelling during monsoon season may extend your travelling time to any extend.Konkan railway has installed devices to detect any probable occurance of landslide along the route.One may see steel nettings on the side where there is vulnarability of rock fall.The konkan railway route can be found in wikimapia website.One can see the tunnels,bridges on the route.

One thing I dont like in this route is the non availability of food in the stations except at Madgaon.One have to depend on pantry car.Vendors may bring local items like chikki, dry grapes , cashew etc..I have tried dry grapes once, I dont find it good enough.It may appear cheap.

The Konkan railway has designed a webpage so that one may find the position of the train in the Konkan route.The URL is "http://www.konkanrailway.com/website/visual/train_position.html" .

Malnutrition among children in India

Recently I came across an article in Frontline on malnutrition among children in India.It revelaed the truth about the failure of our plans and it is shocking to hear that around 2 million children die below the age of 5 in India.Its a shame on us on boasting about economical growth and ignoring such issues.Malnutrition reveals the household income and poverty of the family.The malnutrition among children is more prevalent in rural areas .Contrarily In urban section , over weight and obesity is three times more compared to rural areas.The poorer section are not fully benefitted with governmental schemes.As per UNICEF Report 2009 , India has largest number of underweight children in the world.Both in Sikkim and Madhyapradesh more than 30% of the population lives below poverty line.Interestingly I have read an article ealrier when government planned to implement mid day scheme meals , a lobby of biscuit manufacturers suggested to give biscuits instead of meals.Thank God their intentions did not get positive nod from Government.India has integrated Child Development Services Programme for tackling under nutrition but the programme has not reaped valuable results.I feel more attention is not given to such issues and insignificant issues like cricket is presented in media for discussions.

Trip to Mahabaleshwar & Panchgani

Myself and few of my friends planned to visit nearby tourist spot of Mumbai last year and we finally decided to go Panchgani & Mahabaleshwar.One of our Senior colleague , Santhosh Sir has offered to bring his car , and transporation problem was solved.With little planning , we started our journey.
It was difficult to wake up early in the morning.But we managed and started our journey.It was uncomfortable for us in the back seat because 3 of them were finding space to sit and we didnt realise that it will be uncomfortable for 3 persons to sit in the back of maruti 800.It was not a problem when sleep overpowered us.Santhosh Sir was showing his skill riding at more than 100 kmph.He is an expert in driving.
Our plan was to go through Pune Goa Highway and reach Panchgani.We enjoyed the scenery and on that day due to some blockage , the traffic was diverted to some other road which was a narrow one. It was a thrilling drive on that road.
We were not sure about the route and we were searching for the mile stone on the road to see the direction for Panchgani.We got it and we were on the right way.After refreshment we reached Panchgani.

Santhosh Sir was more energetic, may be he came alone .Pawan was exploring the new poses for photos.Thanks to Digital Camera, otherwise we may shortage of film roles because of Madhumohan. Vishnu performed some acts while posing.



Everyone got the curse of horses too.We have horse ride , ofcourse with the support of horsemen .Each one of us have taken a photograph showing us controlling and commanding horse. Not only Santhosh Sir, the horse too rode with atmost fear while Sir was riding.
After some time we went to see a lake nearby and it was a wrong decision from myself.Others blamed me since we could not find lake , it was around 4 pm and we didnt have our lunch.I can say that we enjoyed the ride through villages since it was a break for us from the city .No pollution, no crowd.After having our lunch very late , we decided to move on to Mahabaleshwar.



We reached Mahabaleshwar in the night.I had a good sleep in the car.We tried to take room in departmental inspection quarters.We told the staff on duty that our Santhosh Sir is a DGM and he has to be allotted room. But unfortunately , there were no rooms.Finally we got one .It will be better to enquire about rooms , charges and fix the trip rather than searching at the last moment as we did.Any how it was an unplanned trip .


In the morning we had a boating ride.If one sees pedalling boat , it creates enthusiasm to ride.Since most of us have rode these pedal boats already , we opted for a row boat with a boatman.Also it is difficult to ride on a pedal boat for long period.A half an hour ride is enough.Otherwise it will make u tired. We tried our skill by rowing the boat one by one.





Mahabaleshwar has certain sceneries which are unique.By visiting all the hill points , one may get bored.The one hill point which comes to my mind is the one in which you can see the birds eye view of the dam .We had a visit to Strawberry farm and had strawberry juice.Pawan enjoyed the trip very much.Madhu Mohan too knew driving , and he had driven for around 50 kms.We departed very late from Mahabaleshwar and Santhosh Sir, rehearsed well so that he can convince bhabhi about being late.

About Blogs and my interest in blogs

Generally I dont read blogs because they usually contain the copy and paste information.Contents are taken from somewhere else , decorated with images and presented in coloured fonts.But indeed , some contain valuable information and Im sure they can create some impact mostly in positive manner on the readers.
I used to search blogs of popular writers of magazines since they are very interesting to read and informative too.In India , Magazines do follow the blogs of film icons and their blogs do share equal space with the columns of magazines.Sure, this has prompted many to follow blogs and to write blogs.In my opinion, blogs may replace the habit of writing in diaries and it is one of the way to present ourselves to the outer world.I dont know whether writing about one's passage of a day will be interesting for others to read.But it can be presented in a readble way.
I do find that certain issues which are not covered in magazines are dealt well in blogs .Thanks to those who write those blogs.They write certain issues from grass root level,but I must be frank that they are uncensored.This is also a drawback of blog where some persons write their views without confirming the truth of the subject .Its upto the readers to confirm and verify the authenticity.Blogs are a boon to the introverts , who may pour their thoughts and views through blogs.
Im sure , in future for the need of fair information , one may have to refer blogs.