Non-violence in parenting

Dr. Arun Gandhi, grandson of Mahatma Gandhi and founder of the M.K.
Gandhi Institute for Non-violence, in his June 9 lecture at the
University of Puerto Rico, shared the following story as an example of
"non-violence in parenting":

"I was 16 years old and living with my parents at the institute my
grandfather had founded 18 miles outside of Durban, South Africa , in
the middle of the sugar plantations. We were deep in the country and had
no neighbors, so my two sisters and I would always look forward to going
to town to visit friends or go to the movies.

One day, my father asked me to drive him to town for an all-day
conference, and I jumped at the chance. Since I was going to town, my
mother gave me a list of groceries she needed and, since I had all day
in town, my father ask me to take care of several pending chores, such
as getting the car serviced. When I dropped my father off that morning,
he said, ' I will meet you here at 5:00 p.m., and we will go home
together. '

After hurriedly completing my chores, I went straight to the nearest
movie theatre. I got so engrossed in a John Wayne double-feature that I
forgot the time. It was 5:30 before I remembered. By the time I ran to
the garage and got the car and hurried to where my father was waiting
for me, it was almost 6:00.

He anxiously asked me, ' Why were you late? ' I was so ashamed of
telling him I was watching a John Wayne western movie that I said, ' The
car wasn't ready, so I had to wait,
not realizing that he had already called the garage. When he caught me
in the lie, he said: ' There' s something wrong in the way I brought you
up that didn' t give you the confidence to tell me the truth. In order
to figure out where I went w rong with you, I'm going to walk home 18
miles and think about it. '

So, dressed in his suit and dress shoes, he began to walk home in the
dark on mostly unpaved, unlit roads. I couldn't leave him, so for
five-and-a-half hours I drove behind him, watching my father go through
this agony for a stupid lie that I uttered. I decided then and there
that I was never going to lie again.

I often think about that episode and wonder, if he had punished me the
way we punish our children, whether I would have learned a lesson at
all. I don't think so. I would have suffered the punishment and gone on
doing the same thing. But this single non-violent action was so powerful
that it is still as if it happened yesterday.

Randy Pausch

This one took a long time in getting featured in Stimulus. But thats because I wanted to familiarize myself with it.

See this video all the way till the end: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5700431505846055184

To know more: http://download.srv.cs.cmu.edu/~pausch/ and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randy_Pausch

Trust me, this one blows you away.

Babar Ali

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8299780.stm

Go Kiss The World by Subroto Bagchi

I have received this forward many times and its nice to read it every time....very much inspiring!

The Story of the Donkey

One day a farmer's donkey fell down into a well. The animal cried piteously for hours as the farmer tried to figure out what to do. Finally, he decided the animal was old, and the well needed to be covered up anyway; it just wasn't worth it to retrieve the donkey.

He invited all his neighbors to come over and help him. They all grabbed a shovel and began to shovel dirt into the well. At first, the donkey realized what was happening and cried horribly. Then, to everyone's amazement he quieted down. A few shovel loads later, the farmer finally looked down the well. He was astonished at what he saw. With each shovel of dirt that hit his back, the donkey was doing something amazing. He would shake it off and take a step up.

As the farmer's neighbors continued to shovel dirt on top of the animal, he would shake it off and take a step up. Pretty soon, everyone was amazed as the donkey stepped up over the edge of the well and happily trotted

MORAL :Life is going to shovel dirt on you, all kinds of dirt. The trick to getting out of the well is to shake it off and take a step up. Each of our troubles is a steppingstone. We can get out of the deepest wells just by not stopping, never giving up!

Deepak Saha

Helping Hand

Trees for Free

Janet has done an amazing work in planting trees in and around Bangalore. The organisation is called TreesForFree. An article about them has come in almost all major mewspapers.

Extraordinary Indians

This link is constantly updated by rediff to highlight Extraordinary Indians.

QH

Qian Hongyan used basketball as part of her body...an inspiring story...

Malgudi Coffee Shop

Extract:

Dressed in a sunshine yellow and burgundy langa davane, the traditional costume of young south Indian girls, Gouri glides gracefully around the Green Hotel coffee shop. Poised and confident, she is one of 11 young women trained to run the Malgudi coffee shop at the Green Hotel, Mysore. The Hotel is the brainchild of Dame Hilary Blume, founder of the Charities Advisory Trust in London. But Gouri's mother could hardly have dreamed that her daughter would enter such a place

To see this full story with its related links on the guardian.co.uk site, go to http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2009/apr/06/dalit-girls-waitress-caste-taboo

Water

One of the most stimulating videos ever....