Change the World by Changing Me

The Sufi Bayazid says this about himself: “I was a revolutionary when I was young and all my prayer to God was: ‘Lord, give

me the energy to change the world.’ " 

“As I approached middle age and realised that half my life was gone without my

changing a single soul, I changed my prayer to: ‘Lord, give me the grace to change all those who come in contact with me. Just my family and friends,

and I shall be content.’ ” 

“Now that I am an old man and my days are numbered, my one prayer is: ‘Lord,

give me the grace to change myself.’ If I had prayed for this right from

the start I should not have wasted my life.”

SOURCE : “THE SONG OF THE BIRD” ANTHONY DE MELLO, S.

Are You Suffering From Nomophobia???! Well! 'm not!

Nomophobia is the fear of being out of mobile phone contact. The term, an abbreviation for "no-mobile-phone phobia", was coined during a study by the UK Post Office who commissioned YouGov, a UK-based research organization to look at anxieties suffered by mobile phone users. 
"It’s not real until a TV news organization throws a label on it. Nomophobia, according to MSNBC, is the fear of being without your mobile phone, and wouldn’t you know it, it’s on the rise.
The story says that cellphone use is either a healthy way of staying connected or a dangerous obsession. According to a survey cited in the story, 66 percent of people responded with a fear of being without their mobile phones.
The story cites a few particularly sad cases, including a woman who even takes her phone to bed with her (my phone has my alarm on it, so I do this too). She says that she only has real conversations with her child over Facebook and the phone (an improvement over the classic parenting problem of barely talking to your kids at all). She takes it to the shower, she takes it to the bathroom, and reading this article is meant to make you feel that you’re just like her.
It’s hard to pin this on the device itself, though. For me, it’s more the knowledge that I deal with people in different time zones, that speed is essential to my job, and I want to know what people have to say to me, when they say it. It’s a symptom of the oft-cited interconnected world of which I, as a blogger, have become an unwitting apostle. It’s also a nervous tic – don’t know what to do with your hands, check your phone.
Nomophobia is an example of displacing blame onto technology. Blame the phone, not the anxiety or obsessive disorders that make you feel compelled to check it all the time. Phones have a way of bringing out the worst in people like the woman in the article, or me. But in the end, it’s all just a reflection of your own problems." SIC FORBES

Maybe it is wrong to call this a phobia.
For a phobia is generally an 'irrational fear', and that pang of anxiety when you are without your mobile in this brave new connected world is perhaps an understandable feeling.
But either way, for 66 per cent of us, being with your phone at all times is an obsession that occupies every waking minute.
If you think you may suffer from nomophobia - or 'no mobile phone phobia' - then the warning signs are:

• An inability to ever turn your phone off
• Obsessively checking for missed calls, emails and texts
• Constantly topping up your battery life
• Being unable to pop to the bathroom without taking your phone in with you.

The number of people afflicted with nomophobia was revealed in a study by SecurEnvoy, and shows a rise from a similar study four years ago, where 53 per cent of people admitted the fear of losing their phone.
In the latest study, of the 1,000 people surveyed in the UK, 66 percent said they felt the fear.
Young adults - aged between 18 and 24 - tended to be the most addicted to their mobile phones, with 77 per cent unable to stay apart for more than a few minutes, and those aged 25 to 34 followed at 68 per cent.

Bring back the sparrows

Once chirping happily in our backyards, sparrows cannot be spotted easily nowadays. Seen in abundance till 20 years ago, house sparrow, a common species is not so common any longer in cities like Delhi.

While there is no official data on the number of sparrows left in India, it is certain the population of the small birds has certainly declined not just here but world over.

Loss of micro habitats, decreasing spots to lay eggs, change of human lifestyle, architectural changes, changed agricultural patterns, proliferation of urban predators, microwave towers and excessive use to pesticides are some of the major reasons to blame for disappearance of sparrows which evolved with humans and are always found in and around human habitation.

It took people awhile to notice that there are hardly any sparrows now. The decline has been more in coastal areas. Few campaigns by individuals and organisations have been organised to raise awareness on the issue and increasing the population of sparrows has brought partial results.

One such campaign was organised by a Nashik-based environmentalist Mo­h­a­m­med Dilawar in collaboration with Burhani Foundation of distributing 52,000 bird feeders world wide to individuals, NGOs, and other organisations. The effort was to help towards increasing sparrow population.But increasing urbanisation and changed architectural settings in cities have refrained sparrows from thriving like two decades ago since these are birds that lay eggs in human habitats.

A film Beyond the Mirage by Nutan Manmohan on the disappearance of a once common species was scre­e­n­ed at IIC followed by a disc­u­ssion to talk about the issue that hasn’t got its due.

The film talks about how sparrows’ importance has been undermined without realising that big exotic birds can survive only when there are enough small birds like sparrows.
According to the film, 25 per cent of birds in India have gone extinct since 2008 because of lack of nesting places and loss of micro Eco-systems and what can be done to bring them back.

“For the past five years, almost every bird watcher and environmentalist is talking about dwindling sparrows. This is a much larger environment issue. One of the most harmful features has been the increase in the population of dogs and scavengers like crows because of the feed that they get from people in urban areas. These animals finish the bio-sphere,” says Nutan. While dogs scare the birds away, crows, being very aggressive actually end up eating the sparrows’ eggs.

Dr Surya Prakash who specializes in Zoology at School of Life Sciences in Jawaharlal Nehru University and a passionate bird watcher, says the data suggests that human beings themselves are responsible for dwindling sparrows.

“We have homes and buildings these days in which there are no ventilator, no windows which gives leaves the sparrow no space to build their nests. The Electronic magnet signals coming from cellphone towers is also keeping sparrows away from cities. The concept of kitchen garden is also gone,” informs Prof Prakash. The professor has collected data which shows that sparrows have gone down by 80 per cent in Andhra Pradesh and other coastal places, by 20 per cent in Kerala and Gujarat, while there is no information about the numbers on the same in Delhi and Bangalore.

Some steps by people - such as placing wooden or earthen homes, feeding them, putting water pots for them, planting trees and discouraging use of pesticides can be of great help in increasing sparrows. Don’t you want to hear the chirping again?

As in DeccanHerald  by Kusum Kanojia.