Dr. Bharat Desai's Blog

Just owning a camera does not make you a photographer! You have to learn the fundamentals of photography and technical know-how of cameras, or you will come out with dull and irritating photos. I request my friends to be kind enough to see the image, its light and contents ("the subject") appearing in the frame before using the "CLICK" button.

After Parsis, Anavils ( Anavil Brahmins , અનાવિલ બ્રાહ્મણ ) are the fastest decreasing community. The total population of Anavils around the world does not exceed two lakhs figure and that is also fast reducing day by day. Days are not far, beyond a century or so, when they will have to be seen/found in records, photos, and videos. Why? Because,    - they get married too late,    - many are dying unmarried,    - they wait for the career to be settled before the first (and maybe the only) childbirth. So,    The number of children per couple is either one or zero.    It is certain that nothing can save this community from extinction - vanishing! Let me try to introduce this community. Mr. Klass W VanDer Veen - a Dutch scholar and Professor at Amsterdam University prepared a thesis on "Anavils" and wrote a book "I Give Thee My Daughter ". He concluded, "Anavils are smart, efficient, and clever but heavily disunited....

The sun is hot, so provides heat... It's enlightened, so provides light... Gujarati synonyms for the sun are  Suraj (સૂરજ), Bhaskar (ભાસ્કર), Ravi (રવિ )... Here is a coincidence to quote: The father's name was Bhaskar (Sun) till he started the school And the son's name was Ravi (Sun) till he started the school Their parents changed their names in school as Bharatchandra and Rahul , respectively!

Being a member of the male-dominated culture and having an Anavil inheritance of male-ego, I was wrongly considering myself superior to my wife Dr Bhavana Desai (Devyani). I want to confess, I was wrong.

We visit Saputara (the only hill station in Gujarat) round the year for pleasure trips. Similarly, the devotees of Sai Baba visit Shirdi frequently. For a change and possibly a better experience, I’d like to suggest you visit Shivarimal (a Free Residential School for Visually Impaired (Blind) and Physically Challenged Children), about 20 km from Saputara and 93 km away from Bilimora on Bilimora-Saputara road. Let me tell you my reasons for details. My close friend Piyushbhai Dharaiya formed a charitable trust in the name of his wife Late Jyotsanaben and decided to donate the interest away, every year. I suggested him to visit Shivarimal School for Blind Children and experience the emotions of blind students. We finally visited this place on Sunday, February 16th, 2014 and the result is this introductory article.

Whatever idealistic discussions we do, there are certain emotions that come out without our will – involuntarily. Hatred is one of them. I shall introduce the subject first. Penguin dictionary describes Hate as a deep enduring intense emotion expressing animosity, anger and hostility towards a person, group or object. So, hate is deep and emotional dislike created by ideas, individuals, entities or objects.

Computer users having internet connection are most of the time restricted to Social Media like "Facebook" or just reading E-mails received. Here is a book for them to teach all the details on the subject. Author Raghu Pandey (an Expert on the Internet)  has spent more than 18 months in preparing this book to make us understand the subject in the most simple and easy way. This is a book for all! Raghvendra “Raghu” Pandey I personally know Raghu - the author - for more than a decade now. His way of living life has impressed me in many ways. He is open to experimenting with life on himself and for that earning money is just a byproduct. The intense desire to teach students the subject Internet has made him spend nearly one and half a year to write this book. Let me say: it was this virtue of doing social service for self-satisfaction and desire to express knowledge in the simplest and easy to understand the way that led him to write this book.

Respect : If someone respects you, you like that. If someone respects you, you reciprocate by respecting him/her. (The person concerned may be good or bad.) So, it is worth respecting people around, your respect is certainly going to be maintained.

Destination Wedding : It is a wedding event generally held far away from residences of the would-be couple. Here, the wedding is hosted in a location where guests have to travel long to reach the said wedding place... the DESTINATION. Guests are expected to stay long for the event. Places are usually grand like Palace, Resort, Beach. In India, Goa, Udaipur and some resorts near Mumbai are typically considered. It is one's imagination and choice. Elopement : This is a way of getting married... often unexpectedly... without inviting guests to the wedding. Usually, such weddings are without consent and/or knowledge of the parents. Such weddings, when informed to relatives, are often a surprise.

Praise : We are fond of being a man in the crowd of the herd, having a herd mentality, just copying and doing what others do... be it praising Sachin Tendulkar or anybody else for that matter. We shall never find out our own Hero around us doing great social service worth appreciating and do that.

We often get impressed by someone very easily and carried away to praise, appreciate and raise above oneself. All around us follow and a big crowd of followers is created around a wrong person. By the time we realise our mistake and decide to throw them down, great social damage has already occurred.

Take a pledge this Dasserra: Decide the dates for meeting parents staying away If by chance your parents are staying away from you, fix minimum two to three of these days every year for meeting the parents: Your own birthday Your wedding anniversary New year day morning Holi Raksha-bandhan Makar Sankranti Independence/Republic Day or Any date suitable to you every year

Your Relations/Friends and You ! Every relation has three possible situations: Relation with both Love and Respect Relation, but neither Love nor Respect  Relation with either of the two: Love Or Respect Now whatever one of the above three you find about any given relationship/friendship, the ideal approach is to respond all with love and respect in total. Just try...

Check whether you have any one of the following: You have stopped long walks, though you are not physically unfit. You have started eating more than you were eating for last few years. You have stopped learning new things and studying. You have started counting your assets and bank deposits. You have accepted and started liking your obesity and big abdomen. If any one of above is "YES", you are mentally an OLD-PERSON needing mental care or your end is imminent.

I say, do not remove shoes outside the house! People expecting or demanding you to remove the shoes outside their entrance must be sure of a clean and smooth walkable floor, or they should provide an alternative disposable pair of shoes/slippers to the visitor. What do you say?

Agenda: ‘Lecture on Organ Donation and Body Donation’ – by Dr Prafull Shiroya (Lokdrushti Trust, Surat) ‘Problems of a Blind Person & Her/his Development through Modern Technologies’ – by Dipak Raval (National Association for Blind, Navsari) Felicitation of Organ/Body Donors’ Family Members Contact information: Dr Bharatchandra M Desai Desai Eye Hospital , Feeder Road, B/h Bilimora Bus Depot, Bilimora – 396380 Mobile: +91-9924063045 Phone: +91-2634-284620 Venue Details:  Jalaram Mandir Hall, Somnath Sankul, Bilimora - 396321 View Larger Map NOTE: This is an open event. There are no entry charges. Invite your friends to this event via Facebook .

Present generation young people talk and express their views most of the times in English . But when it comes to expressing personal emotions of love and affection, they sing Hindi songs. Ironical, isn't it?!

Facebook activeness demands offering/sharing your views and getting the responses from your FB friends. If you do not share anything, all you are left with is responding your friends views.

Our recent tour of Kutch landed an interesting coincidence. I (Dr Bharat Desai), my wife Dr Bhavana, and our friends Dr Vijay Desai, his wife Meena Desai, Bepsi-ben and Villoo-ben made three nights and four days plan for Kutch - Bhuj.

Workshop by parents of a son and/or daughter on marriage is a must. Parents should enlist and explain in details the Do's and Dont's for success of married life. Just having good look, good qualification and good earning does not make a marriage successful. These things can only work as a base for agreeing to marry. Inter-personnel manners, care for each-other and maintaining dignity of relations makes the most important issues. Or failure is certain!!!

Creative genius Swami Vivekananda gave guidance to the youth of the world and showed the light to all. Mr A R K Sharma, a Gold medalist in Science and Electronics and Telecom Engineering, wrote this book – Out Of The Box Thinking – telling about how to become a successful person, businessman or monk by Swami Vivekananda's way. Out-of-Box thinking is the way of solving problems by looking at them from an unexpected perspective. It implies that we think differently, unconventionally. It involves discarding the past experience, leaving behind traditional modes of thought and discarding the preconceived notions.

For those who do not learn from history, history teaches them a lesson at a great cost. We - the Indians - neither create history nor read history, and so writing the history is far from even dreaming of. Therefore, more often than not, we became silent spectators and slaves praising the people who made marks in history. History is repeated every often because we never read it and so never learn anything whatsoever. We do not have a record of history beyond 2000 years because we never found it worth writing and keeping a record of. No wonder, books of history give us their viewpoint – biased – written by either Mughals as Babarnama, British or Chinese student Hu-En-Sang. It was not before 1000 years that Indian scholar Acharya Hemchandra wrote Siddh-Hem telling a total history of the said period of Kind Siddhraj Jaisinh rule. Again, a blackout occurred.

In a lifetime, we often face a situation called PROBLEM. And facing this makes us tense and stressful. I am trying, in this article, to come out with a formula for this state of mind. I will try to be precise, but I shall expect you to be with me all the while – your full attention and total concentration is a must.

When I started writing on my blog , I used to ask myself if I should write at all. If yes, why? I would like to share my views on this topic with you. I write for myself . This may sound egoistic, but it is self-explanatory as well. Because I want freedom from my thought cycle, I get mental catharsis by just writing out whatever it is. While having some serious events with myself, say the death of my mother first and then father , writing down makes a record of my emotions at a given time which I’m never going to repeat.

A student of History has to understand Geography, Economics and Anthropology simultaneously. A person curious to know about world history has to proceed step by step, learning his own state first, then country and then only one can understand world history. Well, appreciating above facts, I am starting my study with History Of My State Of Gujarat . I have put it in order of time and later described important states and rulers.

Time spent in reading the newspapers and magazines we buy regularly: Most of the morning passes with newspapers and the rest of the available time is spent in reading magazines we have subscribed. Is it really worth? How much reading time allotted to both is ideal?

Friends and friendships in a freeze : If you did not have any meeting, letter-exchange, SMS or phone conversation in the last 365 days (one full year) with your friend, it means you are not considering any need to do so. I consider such relations 'frozen' and reopening them may not be that simple for such a taken-for-granted relation.

Everyone knows and understands the difference between the close-ones and the distant. But nobody would love to hear oneself being introduced as a distant relative and at the said introduction of the 'distant' relative, one feels insulted. So better avoid the word 'distant' while introducing anyone.

Continuation of Basics of Christianity The Holy Bible : This time I am going to detail on New Testament of the Holy Bible. As you all know, the holy bible is a religious book on Christianity guiding us and teaching us the religion. In the collection of 66 books written by more than 40 authors over a span of 15 countries, God has incorporated all truths, we should know about ourselves.

Because of the fashion of the day, most of the invitations with the tag of lunch and/or dinner are having buffet style of serving food; sitting on the floor with paper dishes, leaf-dishes or stainless steel dishes for dinner is gradually losing its style. Buffet dinner has the advantage of keeping oneself mobile and of having the facility of meeting people of choice at ease and deciding quantity of food according to one's need; it has disadvantages also. The main being inconveniences of carrying heavy weight dish loaded with multiple items served. The idea is to have table and chair for eating and serving the items as per demand by the volunteers as seen in five-star programmes, but it is not that common.

I am introducing here world spread religion having 5.5 million followers, mainly in India and abroad like USA, UK, Canada, East Africa and many other countries in one of the six greatest religions. Word "Jain" is derived from "Jina" meaning conqueror. "Arihant" is one who has destroyed his inner enemies like anger, greed, passion and ego.

As we know, a birthday comes once every year. We are not talking here about many birthdays a year for some secret reasons. And it is a story of the past when nobody was aware or cautious about remembering, greeting or celebrating the birthday and the said day was passing unnoticed just like any other day. Greetings and celebrations are must nowadays for many causes like birth, marriage, inaugurations and getting some award, appreciation success. And so birthday celebrations are a must. I want to talk about ways and time of birthday greetings and emotions that followed.