Indian Air Force prouds the nation again

The Indian Air Force (IAF) has recently finalised a stretch on the under construction Lucknow-Agra Expressway to build the country’s first road runway for fighter jets.

Earlier, on May 21, Indians had woken up to the front page photographs of an IAF Mirage 2000 landing on the Yamuna Expressway near Mathura. It was a matter of immense pride for the nation.

This was the first time an Indian military plane was carrying out a landing on a road though many countries, including Pakistan, had carried out such landings earlier. Road runways are used for emergency landing and become important if airbases are crippled during war. A dedicated section of the road is prepared with thicker-than-normal surface and a solid concrete base.

Landing on a road requires a high level of professionalism and courage.

There have been instances galore where IAF crew has displayed an exemplary degree of intrepidness, expertise and dedication in peace time operations that have largely remained under the radar.

Imagine flying an unpressurised piston-engine transport plane (Dakota, Packet, IL 14) over the mountain ranges in Kashmir that are much higher than the aircraft’s optimum flying ceiling, necessitating unwieldy oxygen cylinders and cumbersome clothing to protect against the cold. Add to that the bumpiness owing to the weather; only visual flying and landing because of either a lack of, or rudimentary, flying and landing aids; no landmarks available in the winters when the entire landscape wears a shroud of white; no question of any safe forced landing in case of an emergency, and one gets an idea just how tough and unforgiving the conditions could be. Even though from the air the majestic landscape stands out as an unforgettable sight, it is no compensation for the strain and rigors that the crew has to undergo. In the country of their origin these planes did not have to cope with flying in such challenging conditions!

This was the actual situation in the 50s/early 60s. In Ladakh, the IAF played a logistical role – transportation of men and material and supply-dropping. The Army had set up forward posts and since there was a dearth of roads, the men and material had to be airlifted. While Srinagar had some limited flying/landing aids, Kargil had none and Leh had a radio-telephone with a range of few miles. At advance landing grounds (ALG) there was no aircraft-to-ground communication.

Briefing at 4am at the Srinagar airport, take off by 4.30 am, two-three sorties a day, frequent long waits for weather clearance - elements seemed to conspire to make life very difficult indeed! I recall my father getting up at 3am every day, drinking a hot cup of tea made by my mother and leave for the airport on his scooter at the height of the Kashmir winter.

Daulat Beg Oldi (DBO) in Ladakh is a historic camp site located close to Chinese-occupied Aksai Chin area near the base of the Karakoram Pass. It has an airstrip of loose gravel texture quality at an altitude of 16,614feet, and is the world's highest airstrip. It had two runways: one each for landing and take-off, because there was not a large enough level ground to suit both purposes. The runways were on sloping ground. Aircrafts had to take off on the runway sloping down which ended in a precipice. Landing was done up the slope to reduce speed. The base was established during the Sino-Indian conflict in 1962, with the first landing done in a packet fitted with a jet engine, creating a world record. It was operated with packets from 1962 to 1966 (my father did many sorties) and had to be closed down when an earthquake caused loosening of the surface soil.

At Kargil, the landing strip sloped down towards the river and the space available to manoeuvre the aircraft was so restricted that one had to plummet down. Foreign pilots flying UN Observer teams had very seldom been subjected to flying in such conditions and they held our pilots in high esteem.

By 1961 the Air Force started using AN 12s. These aircrafts performed extremely well under difficult circumstances. How hazardous is flying in these parts was underlined by the crash of an AN-12 of 25 squadron in February, 1968 on the Dhakka glacier in Himachal Pradesh, killing all crew and 98 soldiers on board. One body was found 45 years later and four more subsequently. I vividly remember my parents (my father was then the squadron commander of 44 squadron of AN -12s) visiting some of the bereaved families of the crew and personally informing and condoling them.

The situation has changed over the years. In DBO, work was undertaken to make the airfield operational again, and on 31 May, 2008, it hosted an An-32. On 20 August, 2013, a C-130J Super Hercules transport aircraft landed there. However, even with the upgrade of facilities, navigational aids and avionics, flying in these areas is still a perilous activity.

Flying in the north-east has its own set of challenges - high mountain ranges, thick tropical jungles, steep valleys and the mighty Brahmaputra. The surface communication network is sketchy and the road network rudimentary. Flying is the only mode of carrying people and supplies. As in Kashmir, flying is strenuous and dangerous because of the temperatures, overall weather conditions, and the unavailability of flying aids. Since the aircraft is operated at the critical limit of its flight envelope with reduced safety margins, the unpredictable weather calls for a high level of flying skills.

Flying is undertaken only between sunrise and noon. By early afternoon, hill shadows and associated poor visibility make sorties impossible. Unmanageable clear air turbulence, low-level wind shear, and low clouds also pose problems.

In a typical drop sortie by an An-32, while flying at a speed of around 250km an hour and at times just 100feet above the hills, the navigator gives the signal to the ejection crew to get ready; the minus-five degrees Celsius air temperature outside making it very difficult for the crew. When the green light comes on, the flight engineer operates the release unit, dropping the load. With the dropping zones (DZ) situated in narrow valleys, the margin for error is very low and the drop has to be precise so that it doesn’t become irretrievable. The problem is accentuated during the pre-monsoon season because of the jhum cultivation and the resultant smog.

Given the topography, take-off and landing in ALGs is a demanding exercise. The runway surfaces are semi-prepared and they are restricted in both length and width. An ALG is like an aircraft carrier deck but without arrester hooks. The approach to an ALG is steep owing to obstructions, and the landing/take-off circuit is unconventional. Landing in the narrow valleys with wing tips brushing the trees and the mountain side gives an eerie feeling.

At the Vijaynagar ALG, which is surrounded by Bangladesh on three sides, the AN-32 lands over reinforced metal sheets. Even a minor miscalculation in the landing speed could result in the aircraft hurtling into the mountains.

Our helicopter pilots are also doing an outstanding job. An IAF Cheetah helicopter set a new world record in November, 2014 by landing at a density altitude of 25,150feet at Saserkangri near Leh. Before that, another helicopter had landed at a record density altitude of 23,240feet to rescue casualties from a mountaineering expedition, in extremely challenging conditions. The weather was very bad. There was just enough place to hover with one ski on the ledge, in gusty conditions, the whirling rotor just a foot away from the solid mountain cliff.

As a helicopter unit’s motto states -"We do the difficult as a routine; the impossible (may) take a bit longer". This applies across the IAF to all our gallant air crew who work in the most trying conditions, without complaint, as a patriotic duty with the only expectation of being treated with respect and dignity by their countrymen.

Dailyo.in

What happens to your brain when you fall in love

These points and others in the same vein were detailed in a recent New York Times opinion piece called “The Brain on Love” by writer-poet Diane Ackerman. We found it an empathic article, one that celebrates human bonding from the first moment a newborn baby imprints on its mother. Bonding takes place via complex brain mechanisms that follow us throughout our lives.

The human brain is an exquisitely sensitive instrument. It registers the slightest nuance of any experience you have ever had. This is no more evident than in love. Imagine someone whispering, “I love you.” In romantic terms these are desirable words – probably the most desirable any of us will ever hear.

The brain responds to ‘I love you” with an orchestration of positive reactions. People who are in love feel less stressed; their blood pressure goes down. When a couple who enjoys a long-term loving marriage hold hands, even their response to physical pain is strengthened.

The sense of oneness that characterizes a strong mother-child relationship morphs over time. It persists among happily married adults and gives such pleasure, as well as a sense of security, that our brains seek “at-one-ness” the way an addict seeks cocaine. Ackerman is quick to point out that love isn’t exactly the same as cocaine use, but her argument involves the same receptors for morphine-like chemicals in the brain as well as an impressive description of hormonal responses and other neurological particulars.

We have reached such a subtle state of brain research that the materialist fallacy gets trampled by thousands of brain scans “proving” that the brain registers love in so many ways. But the notion that the brain’s pleasure centers are the source of loving feelings isn’t necessarily true.

These centers are used to register and experience love. This is different from saying they generate love on their own. Ackerman is careful to point out that the brain’s pain centers are also vulnerable when we fall in love; the pain of being rejected triggers the same brain response as actual physical pain. Here is precisely where the argument for the brain in love – or on love – begins to fall apart.

If you stimulate a mouse’s brain with a pleasurable experience, such as giving it food, the mouse will return again and again to get more stimuli. This is a predictable, mechanical reaction. The same isn’t remotely true for humans. Put a tempting bowl of pasta in front of a person, and it is entirely unpredictable what the response will be. The person may say such things as “I don’t like pasta,” I’m on a diet,” “I don’t like how this dish is made,” or give no reason at all for pushing the plate away.

We are perverse, if viewed as higher mammals. We make choices that have nothing to do with how the brain is programmed. We make decisions that are new, creative, surprising, and utterly unconditioned.

Unfortunately for materialism, machines follow preset instructions; the brain doesn’t. Its reactions are part of a feedback loop that is ultimately controlled by the mind.

Let’s say you are well loved but it’s 1942, you are French, and the wartime resistance has asked you to go underground to fight the Nazis. Your decision will be based on all kinds of factors: conscience, patriotism, risk, danger, politics, history, and more. The fact that you were imprinted by a loving mother enters the equation, but so what? Many a resistance fighter left behind a loving wife and children.

Nothing could be further from a mouse seeking to increase its stimulated pleasure centers, or even balancing pleasure centers with pain centers. To reduce the choices we make in life to brain functions disregards the complexity of human existence, which is mental in nature.

Materialism is insulting to our spirit, and when new findings about the brain emerge, as they do every day, to explain why you do what you do, feel what you feel, and want what you want, please take it all with a huge grain of salt. For a lover of music, it’s not necessary to know the inner workings of a grand piano; far better to study Mozart and the meaning of beauty.

The bottom line is that our brains allow us to register and express feelings like love and benevolence through electrochemical activation of specific brain regions and neurochemicals. But, we are also imbued with the ability to choose how we wish to deal with those feelings. Mindfully making choices transcends the simple stimulus-response automations of our neural networks and truly defines who we are.

Content Courtesy: thespiritscience.net

EXERCISE

“I have been treating patients using cognitive therapies for almost 15 years, and one of the most successful exercises I have ever seen work to help them re-engage their sense of well-being is so simple that each and every time I convince someone to do it, I am still remarkably struck by how effective it is!” said an anonymous psychiatrist.

Before I share this exercise with you, I want you to know that the difficult part is not doing the activity. It is making yourself believe that the activity will have enough benefit that you will put forth the actual effort to do it, and experience the results.

“Often when I give this assignment to patients, they come back for two or three weeks afterward, still not having tried it. That's OK; I'm so certain they will not try it initially, that I generally don’t even assign it until I have been working with them for several weeks and have had sufficient time to coach them into understanding the benefits of shifting their attention and thinking; how it relates to brain functioning; and how it affects their mood, so that they understand the value of what I am asking them to do.” –the psychiatrist.

OK, so what is THE EXCERCISE?

Keep a pad of paper next to your bed and every night before you go to sleep, write down three things you liked about yourself that day. In the morning, read the list before you get out of bed. Do this every day, initially for a week, then a month maybe.

It does not have to be big things, like I am a kind person, or I saved a terrorist attack.
They can be simple, such as I held the door for my co-worker, or I like that I didn’t lose my temper in traffic today, or I like that I am making the effort to try this exercise even if I’m not sure it will work... Just let small things count.

For someone who is depressed, this activity feels like a lot of effort.

Why?

Research shows that people with depression have what is referred to as an attentional bias, for negative self-relevant materials. They also have impaired attentional control, which means that once a negative schema is activated, they tend to ruminate on it and have difficulty disengaging and shifting their attention to something else; consequently, there is sustained negative effect. Essentially, people with depression generally spend a good deal of time thinking about what they don’t like about themselves and they have a hard time stopping.

The more time you spend thinking about something, the more active it becomes in your mental space and the easier it becomes to access. Also, the more you think of something, the more it primes your brain to keep looking for similar things in your environment, creating a selective filter that not only causes you to sift your environment for things that match up with what you are thinking about, it actually causes you to distort ambiguous information in a way that matches up with your dominant thoughts.

Depression is nowhere a disease but even more dangerous than cancer. You never know getting obsessed with things and build a contour of the same which later transforms into anxiety and then depression. Someone with depression who goes to a party might get 10 compliments, but if one person mentions the shirt he is wearing is “interesting,” that person may likely go home and fixate on the ambiguous comment and turn it into a stream of thinking like this: I wonder what was wrong with my shirt, I probably looked silly in it, I bet they all thought I looked like an idiot. What’s wrong with me? Why can’t I ever get anything right? This is so humiliating. The 10 compliments would have been long been forgotten.

So how will this exercise help you?

Research also shows that it requires more attentional effort to disengage from a negative thought process than a neutral one. This simple-to-do but nonetheless effortful exercise essentially helps you build the strength to disengage from any negative thought stream; redirects your attention to positive aspects of yourself; and retrains your selective attention bias.

As you do this, you not only start to become aware of more of your positive attributes, they become more available to you as you interpret events around you. Compliments become something you can hear and accept because they are more congruent with your new view of yourself. You start to interpret events occurring around you in a less self-critical way. If you stick with it, over time this has a compounding effect that elevates your overall sense of self-worth and, subsequently, your well-being.

And not only depression, if you are through a negative phase in your life, or struggling through career choices, or odds are not in favor, or situation is upside down but at least, you are not dead (humor), this exercise is going to bring a lot better side of yourself and you can yourself witness the same.

But remember: There is no benefit to your mental health in just understanding how the exercise works, just as there is no benefit to your physical health in knowing how to use a treadmill. The benefit comes from the doing, in the same way this very EXERCISE.

Courtesy and Help from:

 _{Rudi De Raedt, Lemke Leyman, Evi De Lissnyder. (2010). Mood-congruent attention and memory bias in dysphoria: Exploring the coherence among information-here. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 48 (3), 219–225}

 _{Marie-Anne Vanderhasselt, Simone Kühn, Rudi De Raedt(link is external). (2011). Healthy brooders employ more attentional resources when disengaging from the negative: an event-related fMRI study. Cognitive, Affective, & BehavioralNeuroscience, 11(2), 207-216 www.psychologytoday.com}

'India against porn' or 'India against porn BAN': Dilemma

Some guys have all the luck. Somewhere out there is a humble bureaucrat whose job is to figure out what porn sites to keep and what porn sites to block. According to reports, the government has sent a list of some 857 porn sites that service providers need to block. Someone scoured through goodness knows how many porn sites to come up with that Most Offensive list. It’s a tough job but someone has to do it. The PM didn’t promise us a Swachh Bharat to have that kind of filth lying around just a click away!

The reaction to the porn blocking has been quick and not surprising.

Shaktimaan Thackeray (@Madanchikna) tweeted “Ban on Tobacco – Lol Ban on Eggs – Lol Ban on Beef – Lol Ban on Porn – THIS IS SPARTA!!”

How revealing that some of us think that the next step from banning porn is banning breathing. But while the echoes of the famous Martin Niemöller poem about Nazis – “First they came for the Socialists and I did not speak out – Because I was not a socialist…” - are unmistakable, there’s one important difference.Beckett’s Kitten (@MrAwwtistic) went down that same vein by tweeting “First they banned homosexuality…Then it was beef..And now it is porn…Soon they’ll put a ban on breathing also…#PornBan.”

Don’t count on any porn-watching festival as an act of conscientious resistance, the way someone might organize a beef-eating festival. Don’t count on anyone coming out the way some gays and lesbians did after the 377 ruling to prove they are not a "minuscule minority". Amul will have a tongue-in-cheek hoarding but there will not be a charming clothing company ad featuring the wholesome porn-watching couple waiting for the parents to arrive.

We are opposing the porn ban for perfectly valid, well-argued rational reasons:

Because this is the creeping assault on freedom of expression;
Because then how are we different from the Taliban and Islamic State (ISIS)?
Because we think it’s futile to block anything in an age of VPNs;
Because HIV prevention and sex education sites will fall prey to the blocking zeal;
Because we wrote the Kamasutra;
Because even Chief Justice Dattu says someone can say “'Look, I am an adult and how can you stop me from watching it within the four walls of my room?”
Because as Ram Gopal Verma reminds us to ban porn saying it will be seen by who shouldn’t see it is like saying to stop traffic because there will be accidents;
Because all porn-watchers should not pay the price for some despicable human beings who drank and watched porn before going out and gang-raping someone.

But we are not opposing the porn ban because WE watch porn OURSELVES.

A disheveled Vikram Seth will not be on the cover of India Today holding a sign saying “Not a criminal”.

But India’s porn watching numbers didn’t swell to such proportions without you and me. A 2014 study in Quartz said it outright, "Indians are among the most prolific consumers of internet pornography in the world, and increasing numbers of men – and women- are streaming it on their mobile phones." According to data from Pornhub, where the world average for pages viewed per visit is 7.6, India scores a respectable 7.2. gGiven our buffering speeds ,that's pretty darn impressive. Mizoram, which either has great internet connectivity or very little else to do, leads the pack with 8.47 while Delhi comes up close behind at 8.02.

The most popular search items include “Indian”, “Indian wife” and “Indian bhabhi”. The biggest dip in traffic happens around Diwali but there’s usually a spike around Independence Day and Republic Day. This is a fascinating portrait of the aam aadmi Indian that we all know but never own up to. Porn is always someone else’s habit.

Simple arithmetic demands that these numbers didn’t happen only because of those MLAs caught watching porn on their mobile phones in the Karnataka Assembly. But I wonder how many of us called MTNL or BSNL and complained “My favourite Pornhub site featuring amateur bhabhi porn is now showing the message ‘The site has been blocked per instructions of Competent Authority’.” Chances are we ran Anti-virus checks over and over again thinking we had downloaded something we shouldn't have during our last porn-watching episode.

Porn is both the great Indian time-pass and the great Indian hypocrisy.

All the internet has done is make it accessible in a way it never was . When you had to rely on the neighbourhood magazine-wallah’s secret stash of xeroxed Penthouse Letters and Hustlers if you wanted anything more exciting than a dog-eared Harold Robbins. In those repressed socialist days, I remember bringing home a forbidden magazine tucked inside my shirt hoping it would not fall out. But in good old jugaad spirit, our neighbourhood pornwallah allowed you to return your porn magazine and get some money back once you were , ahem, done with it – a porn lending library of sorts but without a library card.

But that was only reserved for the good quality porn. As he would say with wink and a nod “Some foreign picture magazines just arrived. Full colour.” That was opposed to those badly reproduced barely discernible pixiellated pictures which were added to homegrown porn booklets and wrapped in yellow transparent wrapping paper for extra luridness. They were almost without exception cookie-cutter coming-of-age stories about a young man involving first a precocious maid, then the buxom neighourhood bhabhi, followed by a schoolfriend’s lonely mother and eventually a winsome girlfriend. For that local flavour, the Bengali ones sometimes used mustard oil as lubricant.

The problem was in a country with scant regard for private space, this porn had to be hidden around the house away from prying parents, inquisitive siblings, or the maid who might get too enthusiastic about dusting. It had to be disposed off periodically because it could not be sold to the neighbourhood raddiwalla along with the month’s newspapers. As for porn videos, those scratchy grainy pirated VHS tapes came with their own dangers. I remember as schoolboys pooling together our money to watch what we excitedly called a “blue film” on one rare day when the parents were not at home. Unfortunately there was a power cut right then, the VCR’s eject button did not work and we were stranded with contraband in the VCR and the parents expected home at any time.

Porn watching was such a stressful endeavour, it was too difficult for it to become a bonafide addiction. It was simply too much hard work. The internet certainly made that easier. And the internet parlours took away the “shame” from watching porn and made it a sort of communal boys-will-be-boys activity across India. If porn suddenly disappeared from our laptops and smartphones, logic demands productivity could go up. Except we'd probably spend much of those extra hours figuring out VPNs to get our fix. But we could also be throwing the baby out with the dirty bathwater since porn, not Google, is the real engine that has powered Internet innovation.

As Business Insider points out it is the needs of porn consumers that pioneered streaming video, bandwidth growth, tracking devices, online credit card transactions, Snapchat technology and much of what we now call e-commerce. “Think of the military as the inventor and creator of a product and porn as the entrepreneur who brings the product to the masses,” writes Ross Benes in the article.

Now if the masses are to be deprived of their opium, will they rise in revolt and hold candlelight vigils at Jantar Mantar with some fasting Gandhian of porn? Unlikely. Will the Opposition stall parliament to stand up for porn watching rights? Certainly not. Even Sunny Leone will not quit Bollywood in protest.

The Niemöller poem ends with the famous line:

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

In the current version of the story, when they came for porn, there were actually millions left to speak up. But then who among us wants to admit that when they came for porn, this time they came for me?

Content Courtesy: www.firstpost.com

Perks You Enjoy If You’re Open About Your Feelings

What matters most is how well you walk through the fire.

In today’s era, such fire is the essence of act where you’re able to speak your mind. The entire deed of speaking your heart out may sound troublesome in the initial stage, but is surely going to take you a long way of no odious prejudices being held against you.

Here are 11 solaces of people who are extremely honest with their feelings enjoy:

1. You’ll never have to remember what lies you said, because ta-da; there weren’t any

Image source

You’re the man.

2. At one point people will start appreciating your honesty

Image source

Sooner or later, yes!

3. Everyone will come to you for an honest opinion

Image source

Haha, totally. (Well, that could be a pain in the ass, but anyway; you’re doing a good job)

4. You might end up arguing with your friends; In the end, you’ll sort everything out

Image source

Those who matter won’t mind, those who mind won’t matter.

5. You’ll probably have only a few friends, but they will be your most prized possessions

Image source

Of course, they’ll cherish your traits.

6. People might construe you wrongly as a rude person, but they’ll soon realize that you aren’t

Image source

In fact, they’ll look forward to you.

7. Your clique of honest people; No lies and straight from the heart talks

Image source

Because sometimes, you’ve gotta run away from the drama.

8. You get rid of all the fictitious people around you, way too quickly

Image source

Without any efforts. Now that’s something.

9. This attitude builds your confidence

Image source

Indubitably and it will never cease.

10. Eventually, people will start to have a lot of faith in you

Image source

Ahuh.

11. You’ll come across as genuinely lovable someone, and that’s worth the call

Image source

Everyone can’t carry the weigh of being an out-rightly open person; it takes a heart of gold to come clean at all times, even when you are wrong. The world be a better place to live in if it had more people who’d come clean about who they really are.

Source: http://www.storypick.com