Are you a Lucid Dreamer?

Hello everyone,

My parents would tell you how many hours of excess sleep I get. Hmm...probably this hightened level of love for inactivity comes from my intrinsic ability for  being...lazy. But my love for sleep and being lazy has also induced me to write about something which all of us experience.


What is  a dream?

Quoting from wikipedia, Dreams are successions of images, ideas, emotions and sensations occurring involuntarily in the mind during certain stages of sleep.  The content and purpose of dreams are not yet understood, though they have been a topic of speculation and interest throughout recorded history. The scientific study of dreams is known as oneirology.

I am just amused at finding out that our brain can actually control our dreams.

Lucid dreaming implies that the dreamer actually is able to control the content of his/her dream. It's as if he/she is visualizing what the subconscious mind is thinking ,however the dreamer is absolutely aware of the fact that he/she is actually dreaming....

This also makes me wonder whether it is divine intervention happening to some in their dreams, making some of it so profound ,that it becomes almost impossible to forget ?

I mean who would want to forget the dream of an out of this world, good looking , good natured vampire showering his attention on ordinary girl? Not Stephene Meyer, for sure, cause she harnessed this concept into a million dollar industry.

So many of  us endure the mundane task of travelling by train/bus/other modes of travel, to reach the point of destination. How many times have we shut our eyes, probably to drift away to some far off location? I need to mention here that during my travel,if i'm not cursing the whole of India for landing  up on the roads of Mumbai ,during peak traffic hours..then probably I'm eyes shut ,trying to forge a peaceful short one minute nap. Anyways, someone somewhere had a jolt of an imagination ,during one such travel nap.

She dreamt of a boy wizard, struggling to find a place in the world. Kudos to JK Rowling for harnessing an imagination into a billion dollar empire.

Lucid dreaming is not new. Tibetian Buddhists have been practicing it for thousands of years.

Infact ,what are commendable innovations in todays modern  world, began as a tiny spark in someone's brain. Surprisingly, this spark seemed to ignite at the time of sleep, when one was dreaming.

Someone discovered the Benzene molecule while dreaming and that's Friedrich August Kekulé von Stradonitz.

 A German born physiologist, won the Nobel Prize for medicine in 1936 for his work on the chemical transmission of nerve impulses.The idea hit off while he was asleep. He woke up to remember what he had dream about.And that's Otto Loewi.

A poor African American woman was suffering from a scalp infection that caused her to loose most of her hair in the 1890’s. Then, she had a dream that solved her hair problems and made her the first African-American self made millionaire. And that's Madame C.J. Walker.

A golfer discovered a new way to hold his golf club in a dream, which he credits to improving his golf game.And that'sWorld-famous golfer, Jack Nicklaus..

So do you ever dream to dream this big?

You know my methods. Apply them.

Hello everyone,

 Aahh ...the famous lines of Sherlok Holmes to his bewildered stalwart, Dr. Watson.....221B Baker Street....with it's magnetic charm that  attracted  mysteries which  required a degree of clairvoyance that a few could ever posses.....nothing seemed to ever escape holmes's  eagle eyes......

Or even  watching  Angela Lansbury play the role of a cherubic retired English teacher, who after being widowed in her early fifties, becomes a very successful mystery writer can be a lot of fun.....Muder She wrote, was loosely based on Agatha Christie's character of Miss Marple..........While the televised episodes of this delightful mystery series aired 2 years before my birth, 25 years later too, it never ceases to catch my attention.

So what is it about the detective drama spiked with comedy- now called dramedy, that makes it so watchable?

A story with a beginning, a middle and an end.....and along the road, comes the twists and turns,the tragedies and the lucky escapes.....all key ingredients of amazing novels as well as televised  serials....NCIS, LAW and Order, Shark, CSIS....all provide intriguing plots ... and ofcourse the seamless exhibition of mindboggling technology....but admist all  this one particular detective plot has caught my attention and has turned me into a complete addict..

For all ya mystrey lovers out there....have a dekkho at Castle.....a tounge in cheek dramedy about a Type A personality of a lady detective and a charming, womanizing, egotistical and fun loving author turned detective sidekick....and you have the adorable combination of Stana Katic and Nathan Fillion...perhaps a modern take at the Sherlok-Watson duo...It's probably the ying and the yang of both the characters of katic and Fillion that gives a new dynamic to solving mysteries. You see a man's point of view always begs to differ from a woman's point of view..But then didn't  Rober Downy Jr. and Jude Law exude male bonding with terrific entertainment of brains and brawns?

What I Know for sure...The Beginning

Hello Everyone,
                 
Thanks for bothering to read by blog. This is the first time that I'm blogging. What better way to put across your thoughts for everyone out there , right? So this is what's playing on my mind......

As a young girl who often globe trotted with her mom and dad, I was fortunate enough to have experienced a melange of cultures....I always have felt a deep connection with those travel shows such as lonely planet or Great Weekends etc....I mean what could be better than getting paid for leisure travel?

 To my Mom, the Japanese epitomise perfection, she keeps insinuating that what on earth could prohibit me from keep a very limited amount of space clean when an entire population, albeit on the other side of the globe ,could remain tidy despite being shaken from their very roots. The lady speaks from experience.

She carried a very heavy/healthy bundle of joy on her visits to Japan, to accompany my dad on his long voyages across the globe. Infact, during one such visit, a Japanese man had once pointed out to her that it was unusual to spot an Indian couple in Japan with an adopted Japanese child...psst....Way back then ,my jet black hair, tiny eyes and good skin made me look very Japanese.

Anyways back to the point...recently she was recounting her visits to Tokyo, Kyoto, Honshu and most importantly Sendai, the capital city of Miyagi  Prefecture. No amount of words, expression or any other human form of communication would be sufficient to express the loss of life to the wrath of mother nature.

I haven't been to Japan recently, but since books are my window to the world, as with a book in my hand and a very active imagination I can apparate to any place on this earth and beyond, I have visited Japan, albeit during a different era . An era before the tech fest hit Japan. . An era when Japan was most famous for her oriental beauties-the Geisha.

Isn't the thought of a young girl, being sold into slavery by her family absolutely demeaning?. But as they say, one gets what one looks for. This thought combined with an absolute mastery of words and an efficiency to romanticise human emotions of love, friendship, betrayal,capitalism and consumerism, Arthur Golden presented his take on the Japanse world of Geisha in the 'Memoirs of a Geisha'.

One could easily be transported to the breathtakingly snow clad mountains of Japan, to the entertainment arenas for the well heeled waiting to be entertained, to the surprisingly modest abodes of those social butterflies who sadly remained aspirational for a better chance at life. The book gives an intricate detail of the Japanese way of life just before the Nuclear bombings.What the movie manages to do is successfully pass off a Chinese actress as a Japanese Geisha, provides beautiful background score and breathtaking cinematography, however like most movie adaptation of novels, it falls short to capture 448 approx pages of human emotions.

One particular quote that caught my attention, was when one Geisha says to the other that " We don't become Geisha because we want our lives to be happy. We become Geisha because we have no choice".

I am glad that as a woman I have the freedom of choice but sometimes I wonder what kind of emotional strength is required to choose to remain supremely calm after earthshattering natural disasters. Is it an indicator of extreme self control of emotions ?