What are we making of our Life!

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This blog-post is triggered by a weekly blogging exercise practiced at Indiblogger. The topic of discussion there was- "What is it that we are running after? Isn't it time to step back and enjoy life, nature, family or anything we really love"

Most of us get so busy with our lives that we seldom step back to ponder where is it headed. The world is changing so fast, that our topmost priorities always becomes- how to get on and get moving along, lest we get left out!! Changing dynamics of society, increasing materialism, increasing cost of life, all these things make a significant impact on the way we spend our life.

In my opinion, the motto should be simple- "Live, Love, and Enjoy". Imagine if we start loving every simple thing/person around us. Imagine if we love our friends, family, and a stranger poor all alike. Imagine if we start finding joy in living a harmonious life with our surroundings. In stead, most of our life, we keep struggling improving our career or gathering more and more wealth. In the race of gathering material wealth, we ignore our emotional and mental health. As we keep growing up, we keep losing our natural character- which is of joy, innocence and of pursuing what we love. In stead, we end up getting into a never-ending race of gathering wealth and physical commodities. We associate happiness with wealth , and love with convenience. Seldom do we step back and think what actually makes us happy and joyous.

Life is not only about comfort, and material wealth. It's more about our emotional well being and inner happiness. And this is what we need to think about. What brings inner happiness to us? What energises us, and makes us joyous? What makes us playful, bringing out our childhood and innocence back? These questions are what we need to ask ourselves every once in a while. They are the keys to our happiness and emotional well being. Do I love nature, or a hobby which has ceased to become a "hobby" actually? Can't we take some time out from our busy schedules to pursue what we love to do? I am sure we can, and that's what will bring us real happiness. Career and some minimum wealth is necessary, but let's not go blind for them. So let's promise ourselves, that we will find out what we really love about life, and will make it a point to indulge in them. Let's get out finding them out!!

How to remove MPC Cleaner software from Windows PC

I decided to write this blog-post because I never got the solution to this problem on any other blog. 2-3 weeks back this buggy software got installed on my system (Windows 10) while trying to install another software. And I have to confess, this took hell lot of effort for removal. Strangely this was not a standard virus, but more like an adware software which keeps luring you to click some links or perform some action.
Here is what started happening with all my browsers once this adware got installed:-

So two main issues as you can see in above screenshot:-

1. My browsers will always start with the above default landing page. Later on I could close this specific tab, but there was no way to disable this thing. I tried resetting the browser, no effect. I even uninstalled google chrome, and installed again, still no effect. The reason for this was that it was able to do all this through entries in registry. So all the browsers were being controlled through valid registry entries.
2. Another issue, with start up of OS, an MPC icon will appear in the right bottom expand bar menu (as shown in above picture). That application used to keep running. I was able to disable it after starting up, but I was not able to block this application from starting up with start of OS.
3. Third issue was that time to time, it would show a pop-up suggesting optimization of PC using it's interface. I never tried optimizing but I am sure that must lead to more ads or redirect to installation sites. But the pop-ups were irritating like hell.

For two weeks I suffered with this issue-well actually not everyday , but definitely 2-3 days out of the past two weekends. Below are all the unsuccessful steps I took to remove the bugging software:-

1. Of course the first step I took was try to to uninstall the program from the standard "Uninstall or Change a program" window of control panel. Quite shockingly, the software was not listed there. Some websites had mentioned that it shows to be installed with some other name. But I checked all the installed software, and there was not a single unknown/strange software showing up in the window! So the application was installed but it was not being shown in the list of installed software with any name! This is where Microsoft needs to take action. This is surly a windows OS fault. 
2. Next step I took was that I installed various recommended softwares specifically meant for it's removal. Some of those were able to detect this application, but they asked for buying of full version in order to remove the MPC adware.
3. Then I went by another recommended suggestion of deleting all the registry entries related to MPC. And lo and behold, it won't get deleted!! I got this kind of Error pop-up window while trying to delete them.
   
   I tried a lot to enable deletion, I checked the permission for that key, it showed me having full permission. Then I installed a software from Microsoft website which promised to solve this issue by making all key deleteable, but that too didn't work.
4. I tried going to the C:\Program files folder and tried deleting the MPC folder or the files lying inside. I was not able to delete!!
5. The I reached this website page where I saw suggestions by someone named "Jsssssssss". It looked reliable suggestion, so I tried them out. He had suggested to try removal using two of the softwares. Unfortunately that also didn't work. Those softwares were not able to force delete/remove the MPC application.
6. But in the end, that very page gave me the solution. On the next page, another person with the name - "DIDiligentComputing" had given a solution which worked like a breeze for me! In fact, unlike asked by him, I need not run the computer in the safe mode.

The Solution: Removal of MPC software/adware

1. Go to the Malwarebytes website. Download and install the anti-malware tool from there.
2. It has a nice, cool interface. Start a scan using it's easy interface.
3. It shows the step-by-step progress of the scan, as below:-
   
4. After completion, it prompts you for action. It displays the count and list of detected suspicious software, and you can go ahead choose to delete them. And viola, the problem is solved!
   The best thing about this software is that it allows removal of such clever adwares in it's free version itself. It took a bit of time in scanning C drive (in this case above 2 hrs), but then it found more than 200 suspicious programs requiring to be removed! 

My big thanks to the Malwarebytes guys for creating this great anti-malware application and allowing it to be used for free for certain time-period.
Ending it up here. Hope this blog-post helps someone like me out there, troubled with MPC :)

Quick way to clear space on iPhone without any external app

I always face space crunch issue in my iPhone, and uptil recent past, I used to clear the space using an external app downloaded from app Store. But recently I came across a much better way of clearing space. It is through the inbuilt iTunes Store app of the iOS. Since this is pre-installed app on iPhones, so there is no need to install any other app. And clearing space  using this app, works more efficiently too. Actually, clearing space is not the purpose of this app, but somehow it works. It works when you try to download some large movie file from iTunes store, and you don't have enough space for that in your iPhone. It then gives a pop-up message and then goes to clear the local temp and cache files taking space in iPhone. Below is the steps I am detailing one by one:-

1. See the initial screenshot above, which shows my phone having just 63MB space left.
2. In the next step,  I opened the iTunes Store app. 
3. In 3rd step (screenshot below), I open any movie of fairly large size, much larger than the suspected empty space eaten up by temp/cache files. In this case I chose a movie of size of about 4GB
4. And then you have to click to download /buy the movie. Don't worry about the price of movie. It will never be able to download due to it's large size, so no chance of the money getting deducted. In my case though, I have no credit card connected to my account.
5. After choosing to buy the movie, it will show this pop-up given below, which tells that there is not enough space on the phone, for this movie to be downloaded.
6. Just click OK, and that's it!! Come out of the app. iPhone automatically starts clearing space taken by all major apps one by one. It removes temporary files stored by most apps. You can see the "cleaning" word written below some apps, while the process is on. After 2-3 min. check back the available space again in the settings page. The space must have increased. In my case, I was able to reclaim over 900MB of space.

 Note: This might be a temporary hack, and with further upgrade of iOS, it may stop working. But with the latest iOS version 9.3.2, it works pretty well.

The Mountain Shadow: Book Review

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This novel is a sequel to the earlier novel Shantaram. The earlier novel ended with the protagonist Lin (a.k.a. Shantaram) realizing that his friend Abdullah is alive. Shantaram also parted ways with his girlfriend Karla. Karla had married a rich business tycoon and  Shantaram started living with Lisa. The novel also ended with Sanjay taking place of the head of mafia gang and others unwillingly relenting to his command. 

"Writers never really die, until people stop quoting them."

This novel starts with Shantaram's emotional conflicts with Lisa. Lisa was in two minds about Shantaram , and more so because she knew that deep inside, Shantaram still loved Karla. Also, Lisa didn't want to get stuck at a place or with a person. She was also of bisexual nature. All these things started complicating their relationships. Finally, one day Lisa broke up with Shantaram. What hurt Shantaram was not the break-up, but the high expectations from Lisa, even at the time of break-up (like money, loan, car etc.). After that Shantaram goes on his last salvation mission to Sri Lanka, a mission which will free him from the mafia gangs world of Bombay. In his absence, Lisa was murdered by one of Shantaram's enemy. He gets together with his girlfriend Karla in quest of the murderer. Post this point the novel starts revolving more around the Karla-Shantaram relationship. This is one refreshing aspect of this novel. 

Some time later, his friend Abdullah takes him to Idriss- the wise sage on the mountain, who was the Guru of KhaderBhai. A large part of novel is dedicated to the Karla-Shantaram spending time in Idriss's mountain aashram. Devotees and people loving philosophical conversations keep flocking to the Idriss aashram, and Shantaram-Karla duo starts loving this place. 

The novel also deals with Lin's friends Gemini Gorges winning lottery worth millions (actually it was inheritance property discovered), and how they face hassles facing the new-found limelight.

Another plot involved in the novel is the Shantaram-Sanjay-rival gang equation. Sanjay gang's rivalry with opposition gang keeps increasing and it reaches to a point where KhaderBhai's own cousine child  Tariq who was his coming up heir, was killed along with his protector Nazeer. Both these person were very close to Shantaram. Sanjay's working style was being hated upon by more and more people in his own gang. Abdullah was planning for a revolt against him. So there is a three angled crime scene going in the mafia world of Shantaram .

Shantaram moves out of mafia gang and starts living solo, working freelance. Karla starts spending more and more time with Shantaram. Karla's husband was responsible for Lisa's murder, and they finally were relieved to have him dead indirectly. The novel ends with a sad note of a bloody war between Sanjay gang and Abdullah, where both Sanjay and Abdullah dies. Karla and Shantaram's story ends on a happy note finally.

“Truth is the freedom of the soul. We’re very young, in this young universe, and we often fail, and dishonour ourselves, even if only in the caves of the mind”

 Unlike its prequel novel "Shantaram", this novel deals more with the abstract things- the relationships, the philosophical talks, the psychological stuffs and how human minds think on various matters. Love and relationships takes a center stage in this novel. Karla's overpowering character and Shantaram's humble nature has been shown brilliantly. The contrast of fast city life and the soothing life in the lap of mountainous nature too has been focussed. All in all, an interesting read.

P.S.- I have collated together some wonderful quotes from the novel. You can read them here. In case you want to know more about the earlier novel in this series- "Shantaram", You can read the book review of Shantaram here.

The Mountain Shadow: Some Quotable quotes

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In my next post, I will be posting book review of the novel "The Mountain Shadow". But before that I thought to compile all the nice, quotable quotes from the novel. Here they go:-

1. "They’re nothing. Just a fringe group. Nobody listens to them." ‘The fringe usually works its way to the centre that ignores or insults it.’
2. Writers never really die, until people stop quoting them.
3. I stand for your right to create and present art, but I think that rights come with responsibilities, and that we, as artists, have a responsibility not to cause feelings of hurt and injury in the name of art. In the name of truth, maybe. In the name of justice and freedom. But not in the name of art.’
4. One of the great mysteries of India, and the greatest of all its joys, is the tender warmth of the lowest paid.
5. Religion is just a long competition to see who can design the silliest hat.
6. Fiction is fact, made stranger. The truth about anything is a lie about something else. Come on, step it up, Shantaram.
7. The way to love, is to love the way.
8. If you’re not living for something, you’re dying for nothing.
9. Be prepared for war, the more so if you despise war.
10. Do unto others, as you would have them do unto you, and do not do to others, what you would not have them do to you.
11. Good is only half the truth, and truth is only half the story.
12. You know what the difference is, between war and peace?’ the man sitting next to me whispered, a smile in his voice. ‘I’m guessing you’ll tell me,’ I whispered back. ‘In peace time, you sacrifice twenty to save one. In war time, you sacrifice one to save twenty.’
13. People who abhor crime, as I do, often ask why men who commit crimes, as I did, do such things. One of the big answers is that the low road is always easier, until it crumbles away beneath desire. One of the small answers is that when life and freedom are at stake, the men you meet are often exceptional.
14. Truth’s a sweet thing, unless someone’s cutting it out of you, and then it’s a very bitter thing.
15. What is civilisation? Idriss once remarked. It’s a woman, free to live as she wants.
16. When it means nothing to anybody else, and it means everything to us, isn’t that love?
17. If you’re thinking about it, you can also put some thought into the fact that you don’t have the right to take your own life. Nobody does.’ ‘Why not?’ Rannveig like the runway asked, her eyes wide, innocent of the cruel, broken question she’d just asked. ‘Think of it this way, Rannveig, does a deranged person have the right to kill a stranger?’ ‘No.’ ‘No. And when suicide is in your head, you’re the deranged person, and you’re also the stranger, in danger of the harm you might do to yourself. No matter how bad things get, you don’t have the right to kill the stranger that you might become, for a while, in your own life. The rest of your life would tell you, at that point, it’s not an option.’
18. Faith is unconditional love, and love is unconditional faith. Vinson, Naveen and I were men in love, without the women we loved, and faith was a tree without shade.
19. Corruption is a tax imposed on any society that doesn’t pay people enough to repel it themselves.
20. Men don’t like to be that honest about love: to put the gun in a woman’s hand, and hold it against their own hearts, and say, Here, this is how you kill me.
21. Can you define destiny?’ Ambitious demanded. ‘Destiny is the treasure we find in the awareness of death.’- Idriss.
22. The purpose of life is to express the set of positive characteristics to the most sophisticated degree that you can, by connecting with pure intention to others, and our planet, and to the Divine Source of all things.’
23. Generosity is the spiritual language of love, humility is the spiritual language of honour, and devotion is the spiritual language of faith.
24. Teachers, like writers, never die while people still quote them. 

P.S.:- If you haven't read my earlier post on the quotes from this novel's prequel "Shantaram", please catch them here. The corresponding Book review of the Novel 'Shantaram', can be read here.

Indian Speed Star Initiative by GAIL

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In India, athletics always lacked attention. Games are a priority and among games too, Cricket takes the major attention. Athletics take the most neglected position in Indian society. And that's why in world sports arena, we don't manage to get good number of medals. We need to think why do we have this situation in our country. Is it because of the neglect of Govt, or is it because of the lack of "a culture of Sports" in our nation. In many rural areas, we have this old Hindi saying- "padhoge-likhoge banoge nawaab. kheloge-kudoge banoge kharab" (English transalation:- "If you study, you will become a great man. If you play too much, you will turn into a spoilt man"). Well, this may not hold relevant in today's times, but it tells a lot about the society's thinking. So we really need to think over this, as to why our society places so much emphasis on study and looks down upon sports and athletics as things which spoil future.

Thankfully, times are slowly changing, and more and more people are taking to sports. In fact, more and more organisations are sponsoring rather unconventional sports in the country. An example is the "pro-kabbadi" league being organized by corporates. Who would have thought there would be a National level kabaddi tournament organized by private sponsors, and organised with so much fanfare!! Same is with the Indian Super League for Football. So things are slowly changing.

It is in this regard that there seems to be another noble initiative, and thankfully so, in the area of athletics. GAIL - Gas Authority of India Ltd. has started a very nice grassroot level initiative for athletics.  It is named "Indian Speed Star", to find out the fastest runners in 100,200 and 800 mtrs track events. They have teamed up with National Yuva Cooperative Society which has further tied up with Anglian Medal Hunt Company as its Technical Partner for The GAIL Indian Speedstar project. The programme is mainly targetted to find talented children beween 11-17 yrs old, and then train them for 2020 and 2024 Olympics.
A panel of eminent sportspersons like P.T Usha, Rachita Mistry, AnuradhaBiswal& Kavita Raut have been appointed in the selection committee to support selections and guide coaching camps. As members of the selection committee their role would include creating the selection criteria or the GAIL-Indian Speedstar program, and developing the training plan and module for the selected athletes at the National Level.

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District trials were conducted under the watchful eyes of coaches and selectors, appointed by the selection committee. The selection of the athletes was based on talent identification and selection criteria set by the selection committee.

Initiatory, in its first year, earlier this year with initial trials conducted at 55 districts across 10 states in which more than 25,000 children participated out of which 850 children made it to the State level.

Camp and Selection. The first State level camp and trial was organized on 27-28th of February in SawaiMaan Singh Stadium, Jaipur where 60 boys and girls participated out of which 4 have qualified for the next level. The state trials were held in Odisha (14 Selection), Delhi (28 Selection), Kerala (28 Selection) & Jharkhand(4 Selection)followed by Maharashtra and Gujarat in the last week  of April. The shortlisted children from the State trials will then participate in the National camp and selection which is scheduled to be held in May 2016 at Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium, New Delhi. Shortlisted athletes from state trials will attend an intensive national level camp. At the conclusion of the coaching camp, final trials will be held.

This seems to be a really nice initiative by GAIL and I am sure many talented children of our country will get benefited by it. More details about this noble initiative can be found at the website- http://www.gailindianspeedstar.org/. Let's also hope that more and more organisations come forward to sponsor and support such initiatives focused on athletics and other neglected sports.

Shantaram: Book Review

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"So it begins, this story, like everything else—with a woman, and a city, and a little bit of luck." 

Quoted from the novel, this gives a bit of idea what the story is all about. Shantaram is a story about Shantaram and his exile life in Bombay. The life involves his role in Bombay mafia, his love for the girl Karla, and his philosophical journey with his Boss-cum-saviour KhaderBhai. 

What is most remarkable about this novel is that it has been written by a convicted Australian criminal who escaped high security prison of Australia and entered India on fake passport. The author, "Gregory David Roberts" has based the novel on his real life, so the initial part of novel is taken from his own life. But after that he surly has mixed it up with lot of fiction. 

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There are three main characters in this novel- Shantaram, Karla and KhaderBhai. The Novel revolves around Bombay mafia headed by KhaderBhai and stories of people working with him. There are a few more highlighted characters like- Prabakar and Abdullah. The chief protagonist, Shantaram enters India on fake passport, reaches Bombay and tries to mingle in there. Initially, he does some petty criminal jobs like currency exchange and drugs selling, but slowly he gets dragged into the KhaderBhai's Bombay mafia gang. In the initial days when he finishes up with his money, he starts living in slums, where he helps people with his basic first aid skills, opening his own small clinic there. Prabakar was the Bombay tour guide he had hired on his first day in Bombay, and Prabakar becomes one of his best friend in Bombay. The slum dwellers love this foreign guy so much for his simplicity and willingness to mix.

A significant portion of novel describes his life in slum, his willingness to mix with poor people, his compassionate and kind nature for people in suffering. He also eagerly learns the Marathi language. Prabakar takes him to his native village in Maharashtra, and there Prabakar's parents give him the name- "Shantaram". Prabakar himself had given him a short name "Lin", and the slum dwellers used to call him "LinBaba" with respect.

Paralally, the story moves in three more dimensions. First is his hangouts at the famous Leopold cafe, where he makes 4-5 great friends. Second is his love relationship with the girl Karla, who happens to be another foreigner on the run in Bombay. And third is his life in the companionship of KhaderBhai.

His life with KhaderBhai, is what takes major part of the novel. KhaderBhai's mafia used to have a council system where all the privileged council members used to meet at regular intervals to discuss mafia things, and more so, to discuss philosophy- which was the favourite hobby of KhaderBhai! So Shantaram, even though not a council members, used to get invited there for philosophical discussions. And slowly, he grew closer to KhaderBhai. They used to have long spiritual, philosophical discussions many times, and those part of books are really fascinating to read. Like this quote by KhaderBhai- 

"In order to know about any act or intention or consequence, we must first ask two questions. One, what would happen if everyone did this thing? Two, would this help or hinder the movement toward complexity?’

Even otherwise, the novel is full of philosophical quotes which make you stop and think about the deep meaning intended to be conveyed. Like take this one- 

"One of the ironies of courage, and the reason why we prize it so highly, is that we find it easier to be brave for someone else than we do for ourselves alone."

Things take a sudden turn in story when KhaderBhai prepares to leave for Afghanistan to help Afghans in the war with Russians. He was an Afghan and his villagers were involved in the war with Russians. He was going to smuggle arms and money to Afghanistan. He had contacts in Pakistan and so, he left with his entire gang, for Afghanistan, via Pakistan. Shantaram too left along. Somewhere along the journey, he came to know of a very bitter reality about KhaderBhai which made him fight with him. KhaderBhai was like a father figure for him, but he felt betrayed and broken. 

Things moved on, he came back to India, but KhaderBhai got killed by Russians in the journey. After his death, the story takes a downhill. The equation in KhaderBhai's Bombay mafia changes. It becomes "Sanjay Gang", and the story gets rolling fast. Karla gets married to someone else. Shantaram moves in with another girl Lisa. Life slowly moves on for all... till the next series of novel in the sequel. 

The uniqueness of this novel is in it's style of story telling. The story is such a perfect mix of love, betrayal, suspense, thrill, and philosophy. The story gives such an immersive experience to the reader. You get completely involved with the narrative. You will start wishing that everything happens good between Lin and Karla, that their heart comes out of the pains inflicted by the past. You starts wishing well for all the characters. When Shantaram gets a feeling of betrayal by knowing about the reality of KhaderBhai, you also feels the equal amount of shock and surprise. Even though most part of the novel is fictitious, it appears so real. Even though the novel is just too thick- almost 950 pages- it hardly bores you. This is a perfect novel for someone who likes philosophical discourse, as well a love story full of struggle and mystery. Highly recommended novel, if you haven't already read it. 

P.S.- This novel has several, wonderful quotable quotes, and I have put up another blog-post compiling them all. You can read them here.