My country, my life

19.11.2009
My Country, my life – LK Advani

Egregious – outstandingly bad
Moot – uncertain
Moot point – put forward a point for discussion
Swamp – area of boggy or marshy land
Harp on – keep on talking about something in a boring way
Queer – Strange / odd
Repudiate – refuse to accept or support
Iconoclastic – a person who attacks established customs & values
Harbinger – signals the approach of something
Convalescing – gradually getting better after an illness or injury
Despise – hate
Behest – in response to someone’s order
Deceased – recently dead
Ubiquitous – found everywhere
Acquiescence – ready to accept
Incarcerated – imprisoned
Ludicrous – absurd
Injunction – strong warning
Repeal – make a law no longer valid
Trepidation – nervousness
Luminary – influential person
Innocuous – harmless
Salutary – producing a good effect
Rapprochement – renewal of friendly relations between 2 groups / countries
Diatribe – speech or piece of writing forcefully attacking someone
Prerogative – right or privilege belonging to a particular group
Preemptive – take action so as to prevent something happening
Untenably – defend against criticism
Drub – beat repeatedly
Bogey – cause of fear, evil spirit
Canard – an unfounded rumor or story
Anathema – something that you hate
Calumny – making of false and damaging statement about someone
Pejorative – expressing contempt or disapproval
Obduracy – stubbornness
Ostracizing – exclude someone from, a society or group
Parlance – a way of speaking
Harking – recall on earlier period
Jettisoning – discard something
Obliterate – destroy
Whiff – puff of air or odour
Weal – A red swollen mark left on flesh by a blow or pressure
Aggrandizement – make more powerful
Sanctimonious – disapproving
Flagrant – unashamed
Venality – open to bribery
Sleaze – immoral
Iota – extremely small amount
Conscientious – careful and through in carry out on work or duty
Afoot – in preparation or progress
Sordid – dishonest or immoral
Epithet – most important quality
Capitulation – give into an opponent
Vacillate – keep changing mind
Opprobrium – harsh criticism
Dithering – indecisive
Marauder – make raid in search of things to steal
Subjugation – bring someone under control
Exchequer – royal or national treasury
Motif – pattern / design
Replete – filled or well supplied
Bewailing – very sad about
Affront – offend
Desecration – treat something sacred with violent disrespect
De facto – existing or happening
Countenanced – tolerated
Concoction – invent or devise a plan
Consecrated – make or declare something holy
Apocalyptic – having far reaching consequences
Pernicious – having a harmful effect
Hamlet – a small village
Tumultuous – roaring
Sordid – dishonest
Portended – be a sign or warning that something important or unpleasant is going to happen
Crux – the most important point that is being discussed
Buttress – strengthen / support
Erudite – knowledge learnt from reading / studying
Heed – pay attention to
Perfidy – disloyalty
Denouement – final part of a play in which matters are explained
Hyperbole – a way of speaking or writing that exaggerates things and is not meant to be understood literally
Exhortations – an appeal to someone strongly urging them to do something
Watershed – turning point in the state of affair
Hitherto – until this point in time
Demagogy – a political leader who appeals his people’s desires and prejudices rather than using reasoned arguments
Repudiation – refuse to accept or support
Petered – gradually come to an end
Propitious – favorable
Parley – meeting between enemies to discuss term for truce
Chagrin – feeling of disappointment
Ordain – make someone a priest or minister
Nefarious – bad or illegal
Goading – provoke someone to do something
Foment – stir up revolution or conflict
Pogrom – organized massacre of an ethnic group
Abating – become less severe
Harrowing – distress
Tardy – slow to act or respond
Obviate – remove or prevent a need or difficulty
Erstwhile – former
Compunction – a feeling of guilt about doing something wrong
Exigency – urgent need
Scuttling – cause a scheme to fail
Behest – in response to someone’s order
Bonhomie – good-natured friendliness
Sleaze – dishonest behavior
Buttress – support or strengthen
Bigotry – intolerance
Pliant – persuaded
Knaves – dishonest

“ A secular state is not a irreligious state” – Dr. S. Radhakrishnan

Succinctly – Clearly expressed

India’s answer to the question “who are we?” – Hindutva

Elucidation – Make clear, explain

If untouchability is not a sin, then nothing in the world is sin – Balasaheb Deoras

What kind of GDP growth do you want?
I would say that kind in which G stands for Good governance, D stands for development for all regions and P stands for protection for every citizen

To laugh often and love much, to win the respect of intelligent persons and the affection of children, to earn the approbation of honest critics; to appreciate beauty; to give of one’s self; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to have played and laughed with enthusiasm and sung with exultation; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived – that is to have succeeded
- Ralph Waldo Emerson


Unhappy men are all alike. Some wound they suffered long ago; some wish denied; some blow to pride; some kindling spark of love put out by scorn – or worse, indifference – cleaves to them or they do to it, and so they live each day within a shroud of yesterdays. The happy man doesn’t look back. He doesn’t look ahead. He lives in the present

But, there’s the rub. The present can never deliver one thing; meaning. The ways of happiness and meaning are not the same. To find happiness, a man need only live in the present; he need only live for the moment. But if he wants meaning – the meaning of his dreams, his secrets, his life – a man must rein habit the past, however dark and live for the future, however uncertain. This, nature dangles happiness and meaning before us all, insisting only that we choose between them.
For myself, I have chosen meaning. – LKA

India expects more from a group that has always over fulfilled its expectations

LKA about TATA Group



Memory is the diary we all carry about with us – Oscar Wilde


Poem from A.B. Vajpayee – at the age of 10

When have I desired that, after attaining freedom, I should enslave the world?
I have all along taught only how to control one’s own mind.
How many atrocities have I committed in the name of Ram & Krishna?
When did I commit carnages in home after home to convert others to Hinduism?
Will someone tell me how many mosques I break in Kabul?
My resolve has been to conquer not territories, but the hearts of millions of human beings
My body is Hindu, my mind is Hindu, my life is Hindu and the identity of my every blood vessel is Hindu


Another one from Vajpayee about Emergency:

Truth is battling against power
Justice against tyranny
Darkness has thrown a challenge
The last ray of light is vanishing
We have put everything at stake
Stop we now cannot / we might break, but we shall not bend


“This too shall pass”

In religion lies the vitality of India and so long as Hindu race do not forget the great inheritance of their forefathers, there is no power on earth to destroy them. Now a days, everybody blames those who constantly looking back to their past. It is said that so much looking back to the past is the cause of all India’s woes. To me, on the contrary, it seems that the opposite is true. So long as they forget the past, the Hindu nation remained in a style of stupor (nearly unconscious); and as soon as they have begun to look into their past, there is on every side a fresh manifestation of life. It is out of the past that the future has to be moulded, this past will become the future.

- Swami Vivekananda

The facts of present won’t sit still for a portrait. They are constantly vibrating, full of clutter & confusion – William Dixon

“ Freedom & hope do not go hand in hand. They can steal your freedom but can’t take away your hope”

“ Dictatorships cannot afford laughter because people may laugh at their dictator and that wouldn’t do”

“ God defend me from my friends; from my enemies, I can defend myself”- Proverb

Material and physical comfort without human freedom is sufficient only for the well-fed domestic animals & birds.It is not for men – Morarji Desai

Behavior of lemmings, the only species, among all those created by God, which was believed to commit mass suicide

There will be no end to the troubles of states or of humanity itself, till philosophers become kings in this world, or till those we now call king and rulers really and truly become philosophers, and the political power and philosophy thus come into the same hands - Plato

Being defeated is a temporary condition. Giving up is what makes it permanent – Marlyn Vos Savant

I am proud of our inheritance and our ancestors who gave intellectual and cultural preeminence to India? How do you feel about this past? Do you feel that you also shares in it and inheritors of it and therefore, proud of something that belongs to you as much as to me? Or do you feel alien to it and pass it by without understanding it or feeling that strange thrill that comes from the realization that we are the trustees and inheritors of this vast treasure?
- Jawaharlal Nehru

Shivlinga is a symbol of Shiva Shakti union ,which is the source and sustainer of rhythm of life

After the demise of Mahatma Gandhi and sardar Patel,’secularism’ had come to mean allergy to Hinduism – Munshi

The cup of India has always overflowed
With the heady wine of truth
Even the philosophers from the west
Are her ardent devotees
There is something so sublime in her mysticism
That her star soars high above the constellations
There have been thousands of rulers in this land
But none can compare with Ram
The discerning ones proclaim him
The spiritual leader of India
His lamp gave the light of wisdom
Which outshone the radiance
Of the whole of humankind
Ram was valiant; Ram was bold, yielded deftly his sword
He cared for the poorest of poor
He was unmatched in love and compassion

- ALLAMA IQBAL

Oh God, Give me these boons, Never shall I shirk from doing good deeds, Never shall I fear when I go to fight with the enemy, And with surety, I shall attain victory – Guru Gobind Singh

“ Where there is rain, the world enjoys prosperity; when the king rules with justice, his subjects prosper” – Thiruvalluvar
“Tough times don’t last, tough men do”