The Calorie Myth

Usually we live with a notion that only fat and calorie control can make us healthy or slim. While cutting down fat we tend to take more calories in terms of sugar or some other chemical stuff we don't know(Try reading your ingredient of food- how many of terms are known to you or you have seen before.).

To control our diet people often tends to starve themselves and live on some kind of snacks and while doing it they forget that there are missing a lot of ingredients which are essential part of their diet. Human anatomy is very complex, so doing researches are not sufficient to make us healthy, we have to borrow some healthy habit from our culture too.
 One of thing of the greatest line our culture has taught that: 

• Breakfast is very important
• Breakfast can be as heavy as you like it.
• Lunch should be lighter than breakfast
• Dinner should be lightest one
• Summed up:[Breakfast like a king, have lunch like a prince and dine like a poor person]

Breakfast boost our metabolism too, if we skip that then it will be slow for whole day then eating less will be heavy for you. So now we understand that how important is a breakfast. But in the morning we are usually not very hungry so we tend to skip the breakfast. The problem lies how to make breakfast quickly and deliciously. 

Then Kellogg's Cornflakes comes for your rescue. 

Here are some very quick, delicious and easy to make recipes for every occasion.

• Apple Cinnamon 

• Banana Cinnamon Cornflakes

• Cabbage Corn Salad

• Cornflake Coconut Ladoos

• Choco Mint Cornflakes

• Cornflakes Kewra Badam Kheer

• Cheesy Cornflakes

• Cornflakes Crumble Mango Custurd

• Cornflakes Rose Falooda

• Cornflakes Khatta Moong

• Cornflakes Chana Chaat

• Cornflakes Date Shake

• Honey Nuts Cornflakes

• Peach Cornflakes

• Very Strawberry Cornflakes

The video shows how these recipes are suited for a particular occasion or celebration. But you can suit yourself in any way that serves your purpose. Like-: My purpose is to serve my family something new recipes in regular interval of day. I like to cook for my mom especially. She is very found of my chapatis. Usually when she cooks herself, she used to take maximum of 2 of it. But when I cook for her, she never settles less than 3. 4 is the normal count for her if I have made chapatis for her. 

When I saw GuptaJi family on TV and saw how Ms. Gupta can make these awesome breakfasts within few minutes. I can't resist myself wanted to get invited to their house.
I have tried Banana Cinnamon Cornflakes and found it very easy to make by myself and loved it taste. Due to Banana it let my hunger stay away from me for longer time.
Here is how other people wanted the same.

And lastly I want to add one more thing, make sure your breakfast has lots of dietary fibres, carbs , proteins etc. Some amount of fat is not all that bad. 
These are the reason there is a facebook page named as https://www.facebook.com/anaajkanashta . 
i.e. having a cereal breakfast is very important for us.

Find here the channel of Kellog to get more recipes and updates
https://www.youtube.com/user/kelloggindia

Seeking Happiness

Happiness is the word that the whole world is constantly searching for. Many ideas, theories and philosophies are there just to make us happy. So is an international day for it too, therefore 20th March of each year is chosen by UN. 

Now a days we are so much focused on getting success, getting rich and getting famous that we usually forget that we are not getting happiness.  Then despite of being rich, successful and famous we end up with being depressed and unhappy. I am going to share the comprehensive list of  people who suffered major depressive disorder                                    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_with_major_depressive_disorder .

Almost everybody knows that money and fame won't make us happy but still whole world seems to running behind these. I will share one more story I like the most - is a story of small Mexican fisher man and it goes like this - http://bemorewithless.com/the-story-of-the-mexican-fisherman/  or  http://www.lifeprinciples.net/SuccessatLife.html.

You can replace this small fisherman with any villager living in remote village doing some agriculture or farming for his living. I have been to villages too, there you won't find any luxury found in metro cities like - Pubs, Malls , 5 Star Hotels, Gyms, Swimming Pools, etc. But on the parameters of happiness how will you rate Metropolitan city vs a village. Surely everyone knows the answer. If not read this as an example. 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2458600/People-living-countryside-happier-optimistic-towns-cities.html

I am not trying to say that people living in cities can't be happy or famous people can't find happiness. To get happiness we need to visualize the fake happiness and real happiness. A fake happiness is a temporary happiness or I can say happiness for one or two times.

 Examples: Getting a new car will surely make us happy but for how long? After some day we start thinking is it good enough for me, I should have a different model, this car doesn't have these facilities  etc etc. 

For me a real happiness is seeing a child smiling - no matter what's your age, what's your social status, how much deep pocket you get. Every time you see a child smiling, will surely bring smile on your face. And for this kind of happiness you don't have to go to a village or city. 

To get real happiness we need to pause our rat race time to time and think about people and nature around us . 

I am trying to list down some small things that makes me happy 

• Getting chance to play with children
• Seeing any child happy and smiling
• Getting, reading and smelling a new book
• Gardening
• Playing outdoor sports like: cricket, football
• Meeting my old pals after a long time
• Bunking office and have lunch with my love
• Able to help any stranger.
• Talking to parents
• Having coke with Pizza. http://CokeURL.com/96jnc

• Solving a long pending bug.
• Visiting a less crowded temple,park
• A long bus/train ride with windows seat
• Listening the bird chirping 

• Watching the rain 

• Getting a head massage from mom.
• Knowing that daddy will be home with some sweets and getting it.
• Getting a public holiday on Monday or Friday :)

Sequence of moment of devotion

We being in relationship often used to roam around shopping malls, theaters, restaurants, bars,parks etc. Very few of us go to temple before marriage. I am going to present you a small date of ours around a temple. The temple was - "Guffa waala Mandir (Preet Vihar)". 

During my college days I visited this temple earlier on Janamashtmi and I felt very attached to its aura from very first moment. So I wanted to go there again with her. I told her and she agreed instantly.
We went there and we offered our worship there to all God present there and in last we entered to the main part of temple where Aarti is offered to Lord Shiva, Ganesha and etc.

Before Aarti we offered our pray to Shiva and Ganesha. She was little late for prayer as she got a call from her elder sister .But here I want to put her moment of devotion first then I will put mine.
Below is what she wrote.

Around 6 pm at Guffa mandir in Preet Vihar, It was Aarti time. As we entered, pandit ji asked him to ring the bell for aarti. Aarti is something to convey Ur thanks to god and to pray for being blessed. 
Though I don't like high volume sounds, but there is something magical in the sound of the temple bells. It makes Ur mind to concentrate on god. It could vary from person to person and time to time. 

Aarti started. We were in front of lord shiv and Goddess Parvati along with Lord Ganesh. I was standing in between of lord's family and him my future family. Mantra chants started, bell started ringing, once twice thrice.... n kept on going..  I really do believe in God's plans. Just to remind Bhagwan ji. 

Me: " Bhagwan ji, this is the guy behind me who is ringing the bell and I know what he has asked to you.. Will u please please listen to him n bless him."

Lord Shiva smiled. n me too. I looked back, he was still busy in offering his services. By the time I was only able to see, was lord Shiva's family and him. Only sound which were reaching to my mind was bells sound. He looked at me as he is saying "I m here don't worry. I am Okay. My hands are not aching".
I turned back. "Thank u bhagwan ji, I promise I will take care of him throughout my life. Please give me this chance to do so."

This was her moment of inspiration and devotion. At the time of bell ringing I just thought I have to do no matter what it takes. As you already know everybody has preference of God. Somebody likes Krishna more and for somebody else its Hanuman only. I am a big fan of Hanumanji and lord Shiva. As I have to get marry to her I couldn't pray to Hanumanji as he is still bachelor, so I moved to God of love ie Shiva as in every Avatar he married to his love ie ParvatiJi and vice versa.

While she was busy talking to her sister as I said to Shivji," Dekh rahe ho na ye ladki jo mere saath aayi h, Yahi hai wo jiske saath mujhe puri jindagi bitaani hai."
Out of filmy influence I wanted to see her standing by my side at the end of my prayer but her call was little longer than I expected. 

I felt bad when I saw she is not there by my side, but I get the life lesson that it is not necessary every time that  what you think is what you will get, what matters most is to keep trying what you want to achieve. Therefore I waited a little long and she showed up and I got the life lesson that -" Never give up no matter what".

Similar case happened when we were trying to lookup for housing and when I was about to loose hope to get anything genuine, good and within budget. This https://housing.com/lookup webpage gave me the desired boost to start the hunt again. Life is all about looking up for good in every situation.

Together in odds and evens

Destiny as everyone know has its own way of mending our way to meet two persons. What are you  doing now may lead to anything you could have imagined or not. Something it feels good to know that what is happening now, you wanted it to happen, sometimes you don't want and many times it happens for our good without our realisation.

 I found myself in the third situation where things used to happen for my good without my realisation in most of the cases. There are many examples but here I want to tell about how I found my life partner who always remains my side whether in I am in odd phase of life or in even phase.

The story starts with joining my first company. How I joined this company is itself a long story for myself. I have tried to sum up few of the links of past  how I reached my first company. [Click to know].

After joining the company and working with her about 6-7 months I realized that I am totally in love with her. It took further 2-3 months to get enough courage for getting myself ready for the proposal to a girl who had already became a close friend of mine. On a good day I decided to propose her and I got neither approval nor rejection. As that time I was only her one of close friend so it took little time for her to realise how much I love her. Here is the short story I wrote  how we got together.

As both of us know each other very well before starting of our relationship we liked this new togetherness very much. You can also find her part of story how we got together.

After one year after of our relationship we decided to make it official[Read: we wanted to get married in next one year]. Therefore I let my parents know my decision and she let her parents know her decision. Parents of ours didn't approve at the very first moment. But none of us stopped trying to convince them.

I told my parents that you should meet her before reaching any decision. Therefore I planned a very few phone calls before meeting in person. My mom liked her voice as well as well way of her talking and manner. So I won half of the battle over the phone only :). My mom convinced my dad to go with my decision and meet her face to face. Before meeting her I would say they were convinced only 75%(Although they didn't let me know this fact). But after meeting her I could read satisfaction over their faces. So this was part of my story how I convinced my parents. Let's move to her side now.

In India all of the burden of reputation is on Girl's side. Whether its her character, looking , cooking , walking . Everything about a girl is connected to reputation of girl's parent. If she has a boyfriend -parents to be blamed, if she is partying - parents to be blamed. Anything wrong she ever does parents to be blamed whether before marriage or after marriage as if girls are robot who are being controlled by their parents only and they don't have mind of their own.

I knew convincing her parents will be very tough due to social pressure of so called reputation in society. Her parents told her two major reason for the denial

• I don't belong to their caste(or I belong to lower caste)
• I don't have any house or property in NCR.

The first point surely comes in every parents mind due to our social structure built upon caste system. And reputation of one's parent get lower if they don't marry their children inside the caste. I was able to understand their situation but I can't correct it till date as I can neither change my caste nor theirs.

Therefore, we decided to hunt for a property as we know sooner or later we have to do this so why not now. For this point I am with her father's side as any girl's father will ask a stability for her after marriage. He doesn't want her daughter to suffer as tenant. 

We searched every site available whether offline or online. It took our several weekends running around various property dealer and construction sites to get our flat. As far I could read her face she was more serious than me in search of our new flat. 

One day she called me and told me she had found a good flat in budget and in commutable area from https://housing.com . She gave me number of the dealer and deal was done within few days. Then came the difficulty of arrangement of money for the flat as I didn't have much so that bank could give me loan. In this difficult phase we can see who are with us. I could manage to pay for flat with the help of her and  my parents. She gave more than 50% of booking amount , I managed 30% and 20% of amount was provided by my father. So now we #together are proud owner of our flat and looking forward to house warming very soon as soon as construction gets completed. 

The Alone's new Start

My home town belongs to a small town of Bihar called Sasaram. I completed my 10th from Sasaram and 12th from Patna and Btech from Delhi.

 Till my 10th grade I used to live with my parents and younger brother. We have  a small family of only four people.
After 10th I moved to Patna for 12th with my elder cousin. Although my father wanted to send me to Kota(Rajasthan), but I denied and took my first bold decision against my father's will to go to Patna. I decided this due to the fact that going Kota will be more expensive than Patna, in terms of tuition fee and living. I didn't let dad know this fact otherwise he would have forced me to go Kota at any cost.  I just assured him Patna is as good as Kota for the preparation of Engineering exams. This way I Started A New Life in Patna away from home. 
During my years of living in Patna I learnt many life lessons apart from academics lessons. Following are worth mentioning.:-

• Hard work always needs to be in sync with consistency
• You don't need a direct blood relation to take care of somebody. [ My elder cousin let me forget that I don't have any elder brother]
• Health is very important factor if you want to achieve any goal.
• Academics degrees are papers only which can't determine one's intelligence.
• Marketing is a good way to increase your business. Quality takes time to reveal.
• Many students score low only because of lack of quality teachers.
• Paying more won't get you good teacher/faculty/institute.

Although I didn't score well to get into IITs or NITs but scored enough to get into govt colleges in Delhi. Therefore I moved to Delhi alone. Alone here means - In the counselling I was alone(my parents believed in me) and I decided college and branch alone without anyone's help.

After completing my graduation from AIACTR, New Delhi. I got a decent job. And after 2 years of job I decided to buy a flat in Delhi-NCR. Although I didn't have much of savings but I had confidence on my family and friends that they will help me in any situation. 

 I selected few of the flats to take into consideration and asked my parents to come Delhi to see whether I am purchasing a good flat or not. Various sites helped me into selecting the few ones which I liked eg. https://housing.com/.  Here is the ad you can see how it started.

Parents came and visited a few of them. But at the day they were leaving for Sasaram, I was still looking for some more flats as we hadn't reached to any of flats shown earlier. At the time my parents were leaving Delhi, I was dealing with property dealer to get my deal done. My mom said over the phone said "No need to buy it today, you should move out from there, we will it some other day or some other flat." But I took my second bold step and gave the token money to them as I liked the structure, location, reputation of builder and plan.

This way I lead a foundation to #StartANewLife where I will spend a significant part of my life.

Book Review Part 3- Ramayana: The Game of Life - (Shattered Dreams)

When I recall Last time when I did read Ramayana ?-was the class 6th. It was introduced in our curriculum as that time as a complementary of subject Hindi. At that time what we extracted from that book (Sankshipt Ramayana ie Ramayana in short) was the story and adventure of Rama. I think we certainly failed to extract the meaning of our basic things book wanted to convey. Major factor may be our Age. We can't expect ourselves to understand much about life in our standard 6th.

Since my childhood I always wanted to study Ramayana and Bhagwad Geeta to understand the deep philosophy both epics wanted to convey to our society.

There were several factors due which till now I was unable to read any of them. I sincerely want to thank Blogadda for their book review program. I got this book from Blogadda within a week after applying for its review.

This is part 2 of the series Ramayan from Shubha Vilas. Before getting the book I was wondering why the title of book is 'Game of life ' as well as shattered Dreams. Before starting this book I thought "Should I go for the first book or Just start this second part?" I thought I already know much of the Ramayana, so just start the second part at first.

The book starts from the Dashrath's restlessness which leads to his decision of coronation of Rama in hurry. So here we can say that dream of Dashratha was to see Rama as King of Ayodhya. This very dream was in everyone's eye belonging to Ayodhaya except Manthra. And the book ends with shattered dreams of many people when Rama got exiled to Forest for 14 years.

Between these events the writer successfully showed us the Game of life. Game of life title is justified because no one knows when you will face high or low in your life. It's just like you are feeling today on the top of the world and the very next moment you can feel worthless.

Coronation and exile of Rama depicts the same for Rama, Dashratha, Kaushlaya, Sita etc. And same thing can be said about Keikayi when Bharat refused to be king and marched towards Jungle to bring Rama back to Ayodhya.

What I like most about the book is Footnotes. These footnotes provide us clear thinking what philosophy a certain event/author wants to tell us.

These footnotes make this book unique and put this book in a different category. Following are some of important extract fetched from the book.

• Duty of 

1. Father
2. Son
3. Mother
4. Husband
5. Wife
6. Brother
7. King 
8. Teacher
9. Student
10. Follower etc

• Management of

1. Stress
2. Anger
3. Joy
4. Sorrow
5. Confidence
6. Desire etc

And last but not the least one of beautiful line I read was- "All women should be respected and taken care of. Respect towards them is root of all the good happens in society and disrespect towards them is the root of all evil in society."

As I haven't read other Ramayana like Valmiki's or Tulsidas. I cannot say how much engaging those other epics are.

But Game of life by Shubha Vilas Is certainly an interesting read. It keeps you wanting to know more what is going to happen next despite knowledge the story of Ramayana.

Despite Ramayana being a religious book, I would recommend this to any age/gender/race/religion .

Cover: 

Name of Book: Ramayana: The Game of Life -(Shattered Dreams)- Book 2 

Rating : 5 

It is available on amazon. Purchase here