I am hollow inside …

No feelings to hold me down;

I'll go where the winds take me –

Wandering, forlorn, through eternity.

A never-ending quest

For that elusive pot of gold

At the far end of the rainbow.

A rainbow of life, of love,

Of my many-hued dreams.

And the treasure I shall find

At the end of the rainbow

Is an elixir – an elixir for the soul

Called hope, called faith …

As simple and as beautiful

As a child wishing on a star –

A fallen star …

My heart asks – why?

Why a fallen star?

Does no heart ache for

Its anguish, its agony?

The anguish of defeat,

The agony of descent.

Yet the world wishes upon it,

Imploring it to listen, to notice,

To act upon their desires.

Destiny can only do so much.

Falling stars may not listen.

It is I, my deeds, my thoughts,

The essence of my being.

That shall guide me forever

To that coveted pot of gold;

The realization – the sweet realization

Of my many-hued dreams …

"In dreams there is truth" - that's what the title means when translated. And how true, I thought, when I read this line somewhere. Clinical psychology describes a dream as a series of images, ideas, emotions, and sensations occurring involuntarily in the mind during certain stages of sleep. But this is how I would describe a dream... a dream that came true on the evening of 13th June...

A lonely seagull flies the winds -
Majestic, soaring, gliding wings.
A single screech sounds from the sky:
Come fly with me... Come here and fly...

My spirit floats to be a part;
I feel the beating of its heart.
My soul, one with this bird of sea,
Now knows the meaning to fly free.

I feel the winds caress my soul,
And soar the streams without a goal.
My being trembles of delight -
A treasure I received tonight...

The seagull's flight of soaring high:
The gift of what it means to fly!!

Cheerio!!

So today is Friday the 13th. And if you're thinking "big deal", you're right. It is a big deal. Such a big deal that nearly $1 billion worth of commerce won't happen across the United States alone, because people are afraid to fly, travel, and shop.

But you're not one of those people, right?

Actually, I'd bet you are. Maybe you're not a paraskevidekatriaphobe. That's the fancy Greek term for people who fear Friday the 13th. Paraskevi is the Greek word for Friday, and dekatria is how Greeks say 13. Phobe, as you might have guessed, relates to phobia. But I'll bet you do things every single day because - know it or not - you are a little bit superstitious.

Many cultures around the world today and throughout history 'have had a thing' for the number 13 and the day Friday falling on the same time. Call it superstition, call it urban legend, call it fact. Whichever way you look at it, there are plenty of sides to this story.

To the ancient Egyptians, life unfolded in stages - 12 in this life and a 13th beyond, thought to be the eternal afterlife. The number 13 therefore symbolized death. The Holy Bible tells us there were exactly 13 present at the Last Supper. One of the dinner guests betrayed Jesus Christ, setting the stage for the Crucifixion. Did I mention the Crucifixion took place on a Friday?

When you yawned this morning (after getting up on the right side of the bed and starting your day off on the right foot), did you carefully cover your mouth? Probably so. It's what we do to be polite. But there's more to it than this--people used to think that your soul would rush out of your body if you issued an unprotected yawn. And the same goes for sneezing. You may say "Bless you!" to be a nice person. But what you're actually doing is carrying on a tradition apparently started by the Roman emperor Tiberius. According to one legend, Tiberius would ride in his chariot blessing anyone who sneezed, because a deadly disease at the time, in its early phases, caused sneezing. The more blessings were passed around, the less likely people were to die - or so the thinking went. This same thinking continued in Europe in the Middle Ages, when people were dying of bubonic plague. Saying "Bless you!" isn't so silly, of course. Combine it with the cover-the-mouth-and-protect-your-soul rule, and you are much less likely to spread nasty germs.

But Friday the 13th is special. It combines Friday, considered an unlucky day by many, with the number 13, which has long been considered bad news. Maybe you never thought of Friday as unlucky. Friday's often payday for working stiffs. It's the start of the weekend. There's even that "TGIF" restaurant that serves great food (if you want to tempt fate and clog your arteries, that is). Friday is also the Muslim Sabbath and is the day for religious gatherings.

But Friday also carries negative connotations. For starters, Eve is rumored to have given Adam the apple on a Friday. Talk about a snack that's spelled eternal heartburn, even in Disney films. What fruit knocked out Snow White? Right. The apple. The really amusing thing, however, is that the old adage "An apple a day keeps the doctor away" has actually been shown to be true.

And the number 13 has been feared for a long time, too. So much, that about 90 percent of elevators don't have a button for the 13th floor. This is simply because the buildings they are in don't have a 13th floor at all. And the fear is historic: A Norse myth has it that a great dinner party with 12 guests was ruined when a 13th crashed the event and killed the God of Joy and Gladness.

So, it's no wonder that we sometimes make a big deal out of Friday the 13th, even today, when we're steeped in science and technology, and know a great deal about how the world works.

We usually think superstitious people just don't know any better, but that's pretty snobby of us. Superstitions are so common that sometimes we don't even recognize them for what they are.

Thankfully, I do. Touchwood to that.

Allwin, you sure have made all us PGites extremely proud. Way to go!!!

The 60 million figure cited in the report is based on country-by-country projections of what the size of a 'perfect population' should be statistically, compared with the actual population. This perfect population, derived by demographers, takes into account natural gender differences in birth and mortality rates where there would be no gender discrimination. The figure, however, is an estimate, and could range as high as 90 million or as low as 40 million.

In China, the difference between this perfect population and the actual one shows 29 million missing females, in India, 23 million, Pakistan 3 million Bangladesh 2 million and West Asia 2 million.

In India, more than 5,000 women are killed every year by in-laws unhappy with the size of the dowries they receive. More than a million children, mostly girls in Asia, are forced into prostitution every year at ever younger ages, to accommodate men fearful of getting AIDS. Every day, 6,000 girls are circumcised, the ritual cutting of girls' genitals that the report described as mutilation. Some 250,000 girls die each year, primarily in South Central Asia and China, because they experience some sort of disadvantage relative to boys. What this is mainly related to is unequal access to health care. Simply put, boys get taken to doctors, girls do not.

There is overwhelming evidence that most women die simply because they are female. Aborted after pre-natal tests revealed their sex, or murdered as infants, or deprived of the same medical care afforded their brothers, or otherwise abused and simply neglected to death.

Crimes against women are vastly under-reported and most gender violence not only goes unpunished but is tolerated in silence. Educating girls is perhaps the only key to curbing the world's population explosion and achieving equality of the sexes. Educating girls is also crucial to changing attitudes about sexual violence. Laws making gender-based violence a crime are also an important step, but only 44 of the 193 nations in the world have enacted legislation against domestic violence, only 27 have laws against sexual harassment, and only 17 regard marital rape as a crime.

Any of these women could be your mother, sister, daughter, wife, friend. She could be suffering in silence. What you can do to help them is what you need to think about, and think positively. The world needs them, and so do you.

My summer project is at JK Industries. I work for Group HRD, and the project therefore spans across the eight businesses of the JK Group - JK Tyre, JK Paper, Fenner India Ltd., JK Agri-Genetics, JK Dairy & Foods, JK Sugar, JK Insurance and CliniRx.

The JK Organisation, founded over 100 years ago, ranks within the elite private groups in India in terms of both assets and sales. The Group's operations can best be characterised as multi-business, multi-product and multi-location, with their head office situated in New Delhi. The Group has a distinguished record of being pioneers in introducing several new products and processes into India for the first time.

It comprises of a number of industrial and commercial companies, exceeding 70 in number, most of them public limited, in which JK Organisation has controlling interest ranging from 35 to 70%. In the major public limited companies, there are a large number of public shareholders aggregating over 8,00,000.

Member units of JK Organisation have total assets of over US$ 2.4bn and these are expected to touch US$ 3bn within the next 2 years.

My project essentially deals with creating a development manual for the 12 competencies JK has identified for its seniority positions - namely, General Managers, Vice Presidents, and Presidents. If this has not made the nature of my project clear, let me tell you something about competencies first.

A competency can be defined as the underlying sets of skills, knowledge, personal characteristics and abilities needed for superior performance of a role in the organisation and help the business to meet its strategic objectives. The combination of these factors lead to defining superior performance and excellence. By using competencies as a basis for selection, development and performance management, an organisation can more effectively align people's attitudes and behaviours with what is needed to be competitive and successful as an organization. Thus, job success is best understood when broken down into its component competencies and behaviors that lead to performance.

JK has identified 12 major competencies essential for its employees holding the three senior positions I mentioned earlier - those of a GM, a VP, and a President. Across the eight businesses of the JK Group, these staff members have undergone a variety of assignments and tests to help identify their areas of strength and weakness as per these competencies. These tests and assignments are conducted at specially designed assessment centers, under the supervision of experts.

So much said and done, my job is to study the results of these assessment centers along with the competency profiles of these assessees. I have to develop a development manual - a handbook or a guide that would help these people overcome their weak areas and attain total competency at work and otherwise.

This essentially means that I have to suggest measures and steps they can follow so as to be able to perform in a superior manner at work and even in their personal lives. hough a daunting task, the project is just too good and I am highly indebted towards JK Industries for making me a part of such a challenging job - one that brings with it an enormous amount of learning and a complete experience, helping me develop my own persona with the development manual.

Well, so long for now. I am certain I shall do my project beyond my own expectations and those of my project guide - Mr. Sudhansu Pathak, Sr. Mgr., Corp. HRD, JK Industries - who I have come to regard with high esteem and immense respect.

JK, I'm absolutely ready, revved up, and striving to make it to the apex of success.