deviousways

How to forgive, forget and, live a freer life What does it take to let go of prejudices, pressures or personal loss? How do you break free of bitterness for better things? And would you rather risk all, or rest on your laurels? Well if you haven't yet, start now, because forgiving those who hurt you and freeing yourself from fears or flawed feelings, can leave you healthier, happier. What you need to do is learn how to forgive, move on and grow on. But first, how do you learn to forgive? Dr Fred Luskin, a Senior Consultant in Health Promotion at Stanford University and a Professor at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology, is the go-to man for that. Dr Luskin is globally acclaimed for his work as the Director of the Stanford Forgiveness Projects--an ongoing series of workshops and research projects that investigate the effectiveness of his forgiveness methods on a variety of populations. According to Dr Luskin, very few people actually choose to forgive when people hurt them...

Last night, big man and I stayed up till 3 am to watch the Argentina-Netherlands football match. And before we slept, he and I had a brief conversation. "Let him bunk school," said he. "No, I don't want him to miss school, when he is perfectly well and able," insisted me. Naturally, I woke up to regret that. Got out of bed fuzzy, woolly-headed and utterly disoriented. But also filled with what-a-worthy-mom-am-I pride. I'd had barely three hours of sleep, after all. And there I was doing my best to ensure that my child went to school well-fed, healthy and on time. What an amazing parent I was being, I told myself. Then sitting in the loo, trying to shake the cloudiness from my head, I hear a tinny voice reciting numbers. It's Ayush, our security man Naveen Bahadur's four-year-old. Naveen, his wife Nirmala, Ayush and their new baby boy live in a room in our building basement. And since our flat is a ground floor one, we hear practically everythin...

Godliness... ... not next to cleanliness There's a road very close to my home, which thousands of commuters use every day. As roads go by it is nothing special, not extra wide or four-laned or nicely tarred, even. It's just a linking road, a few hundred metres in length. A redeveloped slum dominates one end of it; at the other, are some indistinguishable homes, a few small businesses and the local Bescom office. Pedestrians invariably have a tough time navigating this road, especially the part that goes past the slum. For there is always traffic whizzing past, children playing about, running helter skelter unmindful of the vehicles rushing past, and worse, you cannot help but gag at the amount of garbage strewn on the road. In short, it is very much like many other roads across Bengaluru. At the same time, this road is the perfect example of how piety scores over both poverty and priorities. There are three shrines on this short stretch of tarmac (there's a ...