A Measure of Desperation

Strict legislation has done little to control the practice of female feticide. According to the latest UNICEF figures, 7000 female feti are aborted daily in India – this figure can at least explain why the female population of India is on the decline. The latest statistics reveal that there are 927 females for every 1000 males.

It’s little wonder then that the Indian authorities have realized that the matter is getting out of hand. They have now changed tactics to try and control this deplorable practice. Instead of banning abortions, it has been decided to offer financial benefits to families which raise daughters.

It has been reported that the government will offer Rs. 15,500 rupees (equivalent to $384) as cash payment to families where daughters are born. Additionally, when that girl reaches the age of 18, the family will be entitled to a further payment of Rs. 100,000 ($2,500) – but only if that daughter is educated and single.

This decision is definitely commendable and certainly comes at a time when the Indian society is feeling the negative aftermath of the lack of female population, one must consider that the success of such a scheme depends upon many other factors as well.

First and foremost, looking down upon daughters as a burden is something which is not restricted to poor families. It is a mindset which dominates quite a few privileged families as well. For such families, more sons are a matter of prestige – while daughters are still a burden (even if they are not a financial burden). The question is how will the government motivate these people to have daughters in their families, and raise them up? Financial benefits would do little to motivate such people, as they are already rich.

Secondly, the government will have to ensure that the cash payment is going to the right people. It is entirely possible that financially challenged families take the requisite money as incentive, but use it for the education and health of their male offspring, at the cost of the same for their daughter. A system of checks and balances will have to be implemented to ensure that the female child is not neglected in these areas.

Also, how will the government determine that the eighteen-year-old girl is educated enough to be entitled for the Rs. 100,000 cash payment? It is again possible that families produce fake certificates which show their daughter to be educated while in reality, she has never seen the inside of a school or she was only allowed to study till matriculation. The government will have to formulate some criteria to ensure that the cash payment goes only to those girls who are genuinely educated.

At the end of the day, however, the monetary benefit should serve as some motivation to mothers who abort their unborn, female child for fear of being ostracized by their family in particular and society in general. It doesn’t hurt to be optimistic about the fact that a girl child who comes along with a government incentive might get some prestige in a family. However, it is too early to come to any conclusion about the effectiveness of this policy. At best, one can only hope that it helps curtail a barbaric practice which sounds as though it belongs in a history book rather than the contemporary, so-called modern world.

Piecing together

Most of us must have solved jigsaw puzzles at some point in our lives. And those who have will always remember the frustrations, patience and eventually the sense of satisfaction in putting the pieces together. The bigger the puzzle pieces, the shorter the span of time to put them all together. And if the pieces happen to be smaller, it can take you ages to solve them, especially if the puzzle is a big one.

With hectic schedules, and other activities, jigsaw puzzles have taken a backseat, particularly with adults. But there is no denying that this game is one mind stimulant, and we need to indulge in it whenever we feel like taking a break from routine. And If you feel you can solve a jigsaw puzzle to rejuvenate yourself, then Jigsaw Land is just the website for you.

Jigsaw Land is a huge collection of puzzles categorised into easy, intermediate and advanced levels. The easy level has larger and fewer pieces, and hardly takes time to complete. The intermediate level has a greater number of small pieces; and the advanced level covers even smaller pieces.

Once you select your level, you need to select the type of jigsaw puzzle you want to solve. There is, again, a wide variety to choose from. There are jigsaw puzzles of animals, locations, sports, food items, nature, cartoons and many more. Each category is divided further so you can solve the exact puzzle that you want to. For instance, if you want to solve a food puzzle, you can select from pizza, cake, cookies, breakfast and fries.

After choosing the puzzle, you will notice that it takes some time to load — the exact time of course depends on your internet connection. But once it is loaded, you can sit back and enjoy. Solving puzzle is a good way to use your head and stimulate your mind. There is absolutely no hassle here — you do not need to sign up for anything or make an account first. Just load the puzzle and go on playing. Of course, if your internet refuses to load the jigsaw in the first place, it is a different story altogether.

At the end of the day, everybody loves jigsaw puzzles. Irrespective of one’s age or time or place, a good jigsaw to rack the brain is always welcome — especially if the number of pieces run in triple digits. And if there is a website to satiate the jigsaw puzzle solving instinct in you, it is so much the better.

For some great, mental exercise, log onto http://www.jigsawland.com.

From cover to cover

“ALRIGHT folks,” said the International Relations teacher to his nervous students at the start of a major examination. “I want all of you to pen a summary of the book review you submitted to me as your term assignment. Write down only the main points. But do this summary before getting down to answering your exam questions.”

Most faces fell ... The reason why the announcement caused a stir among the students was that most of them had just not bothered reading any book. They had simply copied a review from one of the many available websites. Stuck in a difficult situation now, they didn’t have a clue about what to write as a summary. Clearly they were outsmarted by the teacher, who knew his students well.

Reading today has taken a back seat to computers, the Internet and satellite television. The problem is seen mostly among the student population, for whom the word ‘reading’ carries little or no meaning. For them it is equivalent to studying from textbooks.

But this sorry state of affairs can be remedied if teachers and educational institutions also take some interest in their students’ reading habits. In some cases, they are really trying — all primary school children have a library period dedicated to browsing through the school library followed by getting the books that they want to read issued for a week. Then book reviews or reports too are given as frequent assignments.

But as the aforementioned incident illustrates, the fact that many students just don’t want to read even if it is only one book which they have to read and review in six months.

Book reviews, available freely on innumerous websites, serve as a convenient shortcut for doing such assignments when the most impressive review is copied and pasted by the student to be submitted as his or her original work. Few teachers are even able to discern the devious minds of their tech-savvy students. With things like this going on, giving students assignments such as book reviews to brush up on their reading does, however, seem like a futile exercise. So what else can be done?

Firstly, teachers can ensure that whenever they set an assignment involving book reviews, it should be followed by a viva of sorts. This viva may be set from the entire book as well as the review that was submitted. If the kids know that they will be tested this way, it would set off warning bells among those who don’t read books. It would be unlikely that they will turn to the web and submit a book review without even reading through a book.

Second, instead of book reviews or reports, the teachers can also set other assignments regarding books. They can ask students to compare two books by the same author or two books written on the same topic by different authors. This is definitely going to introduce students to a wider variety of books as they launch their search for books to compare. Of course, with the easy availability of term papers online, it is likely that the Internet might again be sought to simplify matters. This again points towards a viva exercise to ensure that the students know what they read and submit.

Teachers routinely do come up with new ideas involving assignments related to books. A business communications teacher at a local university set his students an assignment of compiling an abridged version of a book of their choice. Interestingly, those who went for fiction had a miserable time, especially when they chose books by Dan Brown. However, this was one assignment which definitely required harder work and at the end of the day, it really got the students more involved in the book in order to produce the summarised version.

It is important to remember that in the aforementioned examples, teachers are (to put it rather crudely) shoving books down their students’ throats. Even though it may make them read, it will not really inculcate in them a love for reading. It is a rare pupil who will actually get into reading simply because he or she enjoyed doing it for an assignment and now wants to read further.

A love of reading is something which must be implanted at the primary school level since those are the most formative years of our lives and if the library periods are effectively utilised, they can serve the purpose well.

Unfortunately, even if students are found to be avid readers at that stage, they are discouraged by none other than their own parents, who want them to concentrate on their homework in order to achieve high marks in their school subjects. The obsession with over-achieving ensures that by the time the students get into secondary school, they only consider studying from textbooks as reading. And hence, teachers have to set them more and more assignments in order to get them back on the leisure reading track.

In a nutshell, teachers and educational institutions have to come up with innovative ideas if they really want their students to go beyond textbook reading. As hard as this task seems on the outset, it is not entirely impossible. But with the mushrooming of schools in every nook and cranny of our country, coupled with little or no teacher training system, it is quite unlikely that those at the helm of affairs are really going to be bothered by how much (or how little) their students are reading.

However, there are always some commendable exceptions amongst the majority — the teachers who are really trying to make a difference — and there is no reason why they cannot serve as role models for the rest in order to ensure that the coming generation is well-versed in the art of reading and will be reading books from cover to cover.

Hacked

Until now, I had always believed that hacking was something that happened to others. As it usually happens, unless we come in the line of fire, we cannot really gauge the extent of damage it can inflict. And so, I watched sympathetically from sidelines as people around me suffered at the hands of odious hackers who had (and still have) nothing better to do with their time. But then came a day, when this comfortable notions also shattered to smithreens

It all started when my sister’s email accounts recently got hacked. The twisted hacker apparently made the connection between my sister and me, and soon I got these mysterious password reset requests, which I knew I had not sent. The warning bells began ringing, and without further ado, I decided to ‘clean up’ my email accounts.

Cleaning up any email account, as I discovered the hard way, is no easy task. My account was a goldmine of personal information given the number of times I had notified my friends that my cell number had changed, or the innumerable times I had mass-mailed photos of various occasions. I could only imagine that if there was a maniacal hacker on the loose, what a field day s/he would have with all my personal information, including photos.

So I decided to begin with personal information, using the good old search feature to look up all those emails which contained my contact details. Once they were gotten rid of, the next step was photos. Again, a thorough search using every possible search term from the obvious ‘photos’ to ‘jpg’ yielded a whole bunch of emails. Next step: Select All. Delete.

The internet users who use Gmail must be familiar with their default option of saving chat histories. And since I was in mood to make my conversations with my friends public, I figured the best thing would be to delete that as well. Opening my Chat folder, I discovered a good 142 chats saved there. Now groaning audibly, I set about the task of copy/pasting some very hilarious and enlightening chats into Notepad files and saving them onto my desktop.

An hour or so later, the dull headache which had begun post-photos had evolved into full-fledged throbbing. I attacked my list of contacts next. The potential hacker may get into my account, but I was not going to hand him/her a 400 or so potential victims. Exporting all my contacts into an Excel file, I selected all of them and pressed the delete button. A little pop-up informed me that contacts could only be deleted 20 at a time. Great! I thought. But since there was no other option, I proceeded to manually select 20 contacts at a time and delete them.

Now I could comfortably say that my email account was purged of as much personal information as I could get rid off. Of course, it was only one second later that I realised I had spoken too soon. Yes, I had just caught sight of the folder that contained email exchanges with my husband. And there was another folder of email exchanges with my best friend. And my headache grew worse.

Suffice to say that I managed to save most of my mails that day, and forwarded others to an alternative email account. But this experience highlighted one very glaring fact —our email inboxes contain way too much information about ourselves. Perhaps, if and when you have time and patience, try scrutinising your mail from an outsider’s point of view. You may find that every email seems private.

Since our email accounts are always vulnerable to being hacked, there are a few precautionary measures one can take. First and foremost, keep a suitable password that would be hard to crack. Avoid dictionary words or your cell numbers or names of your relatives. The best way would be to write a long sentence, take the first alphabet of every word and combine it with familiar numbers. You can write it down if you think you will not remember it, but be careful about where you keep the information.

Secondly, make a secondary email address, which is not public. Set up a POP3 account so that every mail from your primary email address gets forwarded there. In this case, even if you lose your primary account, you can still have access to all your important mails, and can also delete from the primary account. Make sure you periodically export your list of contacts to an Excel file on your PC, so that you can import it in another email account when you need it.

Third and most importantly, whenever your account is hacked, immediately notify your email service, and request them to block/disable that account. Also, send out a mass message to your entire list of contacts that they should block and delete the hacked email address, especially from their instant messengers and social networking profiles. This will prevent the hacker from abusing your information or impersonating you online. The latter, of course, is far more sinister and prevalent than you can imagine. Most of the people simply make a new email address and do not understand that someone might just be having the time of his/her life at their expense.

Also, try and keep your inbox free from personal information like cell numbers and photos. Delete these mails immediately after you have sent or received them. If you are having a private conversation with someone over email, save those mails in Notepad and delete them from the inbox. Remember, hackers can be vicious. At the end of the day, you cannot do much about hackers. Neither can you do anything about the time that they have to waste. But what you can do is ensure that your email inboxes contain no personal or sensitive information that would compromise your privacy and security if someone breaks into your account.

In their own write

How often does it happen that you want to write something you feel strongly about, but you know that there are no publications which would cater to that type of subject? There is always a likely chance that, despite a number of magazines and newspapers that cover a diverse range of topics, your choice of subject does not fall in any category, or for some other reason, cannot be published.

On the other hand, you may want to express your views on a topic which has already been extensively covered by the experts, leaving no space for amateurs. This is where Helium comes in.

Helium is a website that caters to people who would like to indulge in creative writing and share their knowledge with others. Of course, all articles are subjected to editing and peer reviews, but at the end of the day, they are published on the website. Needless to say, you will have a worldwide and obviously diverse readership.

The first thing to do when you visit the website is to set up your account. Once you have your login name and password, you can explore its various sections (or channels, as they are called here). If you want to start writing immediately, there are basically two options for you to choose from.

The first is to choose one or more of the channels that you are interested in writing for, and feel you know something about the subject. There is a wide selection of channels from education, health, humanities, food and autos to religion, politics, relationships and travel. Once you have identified your channel(s) of interest, you can read up on the articles which are already there to get the feel of the content before you begin contributing. If you like, you can also participate in one of the ‘debate’ topics, and have your say.

The second option is targeted writing. Here, you do not go straight to the channels. Instead, you access the marketplace and contests. In marketplace, the publishers put up guidelines about specific articles that they require for publication – along with a deadline. If any of the topics here suit your interest, you can write and send it in the stipulated time. Contests, of course, work along the same principle. Probably the most interesting of these contests is the ‘Pulitzer Centre’ where certain political topics are posted every week, and the best five articles are featured on the Helium as well as the Pulitzer Centre of Crisis Reporting’s website.

There are quite a few other interesting features — for instance there is an entire section of resources on citizen journalism. Moreover, if you do not feel like writing just yet, you can read and rate the work of other writers. There is a Helium Community as well, where you can interact with other users of the website.

Overall, there is really no limit to your creativity while you explore and use this website. The main thing of course is to be consistent with your writing, and there is no reason why you cannot use Helium to build up your writing portfolio, even if your profession is completely different.

In order to express your ideas in words, log onto http://www.helium.com

Just Quit It

There are a few precious people in this world who actually go to work enthusiastically. In many cases, people go to work much in the same way as used to go to school: they know they have to go and yet, they lack the enthusiasm. Job satisfaction is a state of mind which very few enjoy, due to rampant underemployment and snooty bosses/supervisors. It is no wonder, then, that at some point or another, people do think seriously about whether or not they are in the right profession, and whether or not it is better to just quit.

If you are one of those who are seriously thinking about quitting your job, then I-Resign might be just the web spot to check out. This is one place which can help you decide whether or not to stick around and brave your current job — provided you read through the entire content carefully.

The website is neatly categorised into sections, and whichever you feel like browsing first entirely depends on your current state of mind. If, at the time of browsing this website, you are only thinking about quitting, then you will find the related section quite relevant and interesting. Here, there are some enlightening articles which delve in some probing and pertinent questions.

For instance, are you thinking about quitting simply because you are bored at work? Can your issues with your current job be solved if you take a leave of absence and go on a vacation to rejuvenate yourself? On the other hand, it may be that you do not want to work under someone, and a business of your own would make better use of your skills. This section is intended to apprise you of all the pros and cons of quitting your job in general, and might just give you a nudge in the right direction.

If, however, you have already decided that you will not stick to your current job, then the ‘Resigning’ section will cater to you effectively. This section aims to help you resign with style. You can find out all you need to know about informing the management about your decision, writing a professional resignation letter and ensuring that you get a good reference. You can also use this section to calculate how much pay you should receive from your employers at the time of quitting. You can also find out how to erase your personal data from your work computer. On a lighter note, you might want to read some spoof resignation letters featured here.

Assuming, on an optimistic note, that all goes well for you and you land in another (and better) job, the section ‘in work’ will be most helpful. This section has details on employment contract, surviving the first week in a new place, handling workplace stress and dealing with the boss. There is a series of articles on how to handle meetings with clients which you can peruse. Also, this section cautions employees about their use of work computers and the different techniques the Big Brother uses in order to keep an eye on them.

At the end of the day, however, you will find out that conditions in most of the jobs are exactly the same: there are more-or-less similar issues in each of them. The only thing that you can change is your attitude towars your workplace in order to make it more worthwhile. Of course, there are times when quitting the job is the best option that you have — the key is to ensure that it does not become the only option, especially when you have just joined a new organisation.

So, feel like quitting from your current job? Log onto http://www.i-resign.com

Say it with a book

‘Say, do you have some money left?’ asked my sister.

I, at that particular time, was staggering under the weight of various Mary Higgins Clarks and Jeffrey Archers, while hunting down the shelves for more books by the same authors. This was a book stall at the Expo and I was determined to make the most of it.

‘I have to buy all these novels. But why do you need money so quickly?’ I asked, protectively holding on to the books, lest I was asked to put some of them back.

She sighed. ‘I think we have just bought half of this expo already. There are all these relatives visiting from abroad, family weddings and numerous other occasions, where gifts have to be given. Mom thought it would be better if we bought all the books here. So put some of those novels back.’

The argument which followed the last statement is another story altogether. But giving books as presents is something which has become almost a family tradition in our case. Interestingly and quite unfortunately, very few people consider books as something worth giving as gifts.

Quite often, it is a matter of mindset. In some cases, the last thing which crosses people’s minds while deciding what to gift is a book. In other cases, where the recipient of the gift is an avid reader, it is generally assumed that it is too risky to give him/her another book, as there is a possibility that it might already be gracing the shelf of the person concerned.

However, giving books as gifts can be quite a hectic task. Most of the time, you have to give a very lengthy explanation to your social circle for your choice of gift. And there is very little chance that the person to whom you are explaining why books make lovely gifts is going to be convinced.

I came in the line of fire recently as I chose to give books as wedding presents to two of my friends who are avid readers and book lovers.

‘Books! Don’t tell me,’ groaned an incredulous gentleman when he heard of my plans. ‘I understand if you give books as a birthday present. But you don’t give books as a wedding present. This is just not done.’


I think we have just bought half of this expo already. There are all these relatives visiting from abroad, family weddings and numerous other occasions, where gifts have to be given. Mom thought it would be better if we bought all the books here.


Apparently, it can be done, as I have discovered over the years while I have watched books being bought and gifted to anyone and everyone, irrespective of the occasion. And sometimes, those who were gifted a particular book, actually ensured that they gave feedback as to whether they liked it — so you could always tell that the book was read and hence, your effort was not wasted.

Buying books for those who are avid readers is a difficult task indeed — but it is not impossible. If you are one of those people who wish to gift books to your book-lover friends and can’t figure out how, there are only a few things you need to do beforehand.

First and foremost, make sure you know what authors your friend likes to read. This will narrow down your search to books written only by those particular authors. Sometimes, it is quite possible that the person for whom you are buying the gift hasn’t had a chance to purchase the latest book of their favourite author.

Secondly, you can always plan an informal trip to the bookstore with the person concerned, and make sure you make a mental note of which books he/she purchases. This will also give you an idea of the type of books the person reads.

The third possibility is probably the easiest option available. Call up the person, ask him/her what books he/she was planning to purchase, and then tell them you’d get those very books as presents. But unfortunately, many people are so caught up in the formalities of giving gifts that they consider it quite preposterous to actually ask the concerned person what he/she really wants. What does it matter if your friend found out in advance what you were gifting? At the end of the day it is well worth it.

The aforementioned steps worked wonderfully in my own case. One of my friends is a die-hard fan of Bill Bryson. As I knew which of his books were already in her possession, it was quite a simple task to buy two others. As for the other friend, well, she and I went to the expo together. The rest, as they say, is history.

Irrespective of the weird gift-giving norm which dominates our society, it is always a wonderful feeling to give someone what they really want and if that something happens to be a book, then so much the better.

What's in a phrase?

How many of you have seen Notting Hill and really understood what the expression ups-a-daisy meant? Why should a tournament be round robin and not round sparrow? All these and more are phrases which we use or come across regularly. Sometimes for people using phrases in daily course of life it gets annoying if it is not understood by the other person– not to mention in such scenarios, the phrase loses its impact as well.

But help comes in phrases.org.uk, a website dedicated exclusively to phrases. Browse this website for a couple of weeks, and you will definitely improve your knowledge about the meaning and usage of commonly used phrases.

To start with, you can read up on the meaning and origin of phrases using the Phrase Finder. This section will apprise you of the exact meaning and how a certain phrase actually came into existence, and why the words used in a phrase will not have the same impact if replaced with other words.

For instance, did you know that the phrase ‘make a bee-line for’ is actually derived from the actual behaviour of bees? The famous ‘beat about the bush’ also comes from actual hunting practices to catch birds by beating the bushes. There are some very interesting backgrounds of the phrases and the best part is that they are only a couple of paragraphs long. The brevity here ensures that you can read and grasp the history pretty quickly.

You will find a phrase thesaurus as well. Unfortunately, you have to pay to use it completely. But if you are able to do that, it will definitely prove to be an invaluable resource. All you need to do is enter a word, and the thesaurus will display a number of phrases which contain that particular word along with its meaning. So when you are writing something, this resource can come in very handy.

Another interesting feature is that you can join and participate in the discussion forums. If you are stuck at a particular phrase and cannot find its meaning, simply post it here, and someone will help you out. Furthermore, if you want to use a phrase in your piece of writing, and you cannot remember the one which would fit there, again, you can seek help from this forum.

This website is also an excellent resource for students of English language who have difficulty with expressions while writing compositions. The best way to use this website is to refer to it whenever you encounter a phrase which you cannot understand. In this way, you will build up your bank of phrases and ways to use them.

To access phrases with meanings, log onto http://www.phrases.org.uk