Now gear up to practice Cricket – indoors!

The cricket fans in the bay area have something to cheer about. Next month (September), an indoor cricket practice facility is opening up in Union City. It will have four indoor batting lanes with dedicated bowling machines. Coaching and Training will be available. The facility is located 2 minutes from the Whipple exit on 880.

Fri-Sun 9:00 AM-11:00 PM
Cricket Strike Zone Inc.(CSZ)
2919 Whipple Road
Union City, CA 94587

CSZ will have plenty of options ranging from Team packages, individual packages, kids coaching, one on one training with certified coaches, international player appearances, Bowling machine practice, agility training, sponsoring national teams youth teams etc. This could definitely increase standard of cricket in Bay Area and help produce more national level players from the region.

For more information, call 916-612-1160.

CSZ Indoor Cricket Practice

The facility is promoted by Mukul Kumar – he has been playing league cricket for 3 years and is his way of giving back to the cricketing community, as well satisfy his entrepreneurial spirit. Indoor cricket has been a long missing feature in the rich tradition of playing cricket in Bay Area. As he started playing, he “realized that it is a tremendous task to get people/team together for practice as most of the enthusiasts are hard working full time people”. He also took this on as he wanted to promote the spirit of cricket in the Bay Area by introducing specialized coaching and training which would build character and strength in kids. “Cricket is a game of great skills and concentration. It teaches one everything to learn in life.”

The Kirtan movement – catching on

Its quite heartening to know about the ‘kirtan’ movement, and how active and alive it is the bay area. ‘Kirtan’ means a rendition of music as you pray to the God, a kind of call-and-response chanting performed in India’s devotional traditions (in Sankrit). It is a major practice in Vaisnava north Indian Hindu religious context as well as in Sikhism and Sant traditions. What makes this movemen different in US is that looks like there is rarely an Indian participating in it! So a rare kind of Hindu manifestation that is finding adherents in the West (like Yoga). And talking of such liberal tranditions in American society, where else to find this but in the northern california, and around Berkeley.
Bay Area Kirtan - Marin County Feb 2010
The idea of Kirtan in US started with Paramhansa Yogananda and later spead with Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada. Its becoming increasingly popular at the Yoga Centers.
There are various active meet-up groups that are bringing people together for Kirtans. For example, the Bay Area Kirtan Lovers group is ‘for people who love kirtan, or for anyone who is curious about it. If you enjoy the music of Krishna Das, Snatam Kaur, Jai Uttal, Deva Premal, Karnamrita Dasi, Ragani, Mukti, Jaya Lakshmi, Dave Stringer and other kirtan artists, then this group is for you!’
The group which meets for one kirtan per month in the San Francisco Bay Area. Members sometimes also get together either before or after a kirtan, sharing a meal or dessert/tea, so they can get to know each other better as well and “experience some wonderful synchronities”! ‘Those who haven’t yet experienced kirtan, but are interested in spirituality, yoga, meditation, music, etc. are also welcome to join the group and check it out. Sometimes car-pooling may be available with other members.’
The Kirtan groups shun some commercial aspects, like someone coming to promote yoga classes.
There are various Kirtan updates available on http://www.boloma.com/ – that have further links into various recurring bhakti and Kirtan related events in the San Fransisco Bay Area.

2010 Annual Picnic – Tri Valley Indian Association

TVIA is organizing this year’s annual summer picnic on Aug 21, 2010 at the Shannon Park, Dublin. The time is 11:00 AM to 2:00 PM.
Its of course, a volunteer, bring-stuff-for-yourself-and-everyone-else event. If interested, you could RSVP by sending an email to pritinagda[a]gmail. com with number of people attending and what food item you’d like to bring. Activities on the card are Cricket, art/coloring, water balloons, playing cards, etc.
You could check pictures of the last year’s TVIA summer picnic.tri-valley-2009-picnic

This year’s Holi event at the Emerald Glen park was a hit – some pictures.
The mission of the Tri-Valley Indian Association is to promote Indian culture within the residents of the Tri-Valley area, (especially among children) and the community at large.

Shine’s India Calling – US Job Fair 2010

Shine’s India Calling – US Job Fair 2010 is a unique opportunity for corporates based in India to hire the talent of Indian origin based out of US seeking for a suitable career opportunity in India. They would also help chosen candidates to relocate to India.
Venue : The fair will be held in Santa Clara (and another one in New Jersey as well)

The date is 3rd & 4th September at Santa Clara Convention Center, Santa Clara, CA

As many as 60,000 Indian professionals working and settled abroad returned to India last year from the US. To help more home-bound NRIs realize their dream of a job in India, Hindustan Times brings to you a unique two-day Job Fair each at New Jersey and Santa Clara which will bring recruiters from India and potential NRIs across the table. The experienced professionals working in the US will be able to choose from suitable assignments in India in the field of IT, R&D, Finance, Infrastructure, Retail and Business Development. For recruiters it will be a great opportunity to bring home high quality talent.
To be conducted in association with Shine.com, one of India’s leading career portals, the job fair offers much more than just job opportunities. It will bring for you real estate giants and representatives from top schools in the metro cities across the Indian subcontinent to assist in relocating your family. All this to make your movement back to India happy and hassle-free.
India Calling will attract widespread business attention and will be supported by a high decibel media campaign in India and in the US. The two day event at New Jersey and Santa Clara is expected to draw around 8000 top notch professionals and will feature some of the largest corporates.

Some of the companies that can be targetted by the candidates are HCL, Amazon, GenX, Royal Bank of Scotland, Unisys, Akamai, Mancer, Capgemini, Global Logic, IBM, CSS, Aqua Dolphin, Sapient, Cybage.
The candidates can register here.

Address:Santa Clara Convention Center
5001 Great America Parkway
Santa Clara, CA
Phone No.:+91-984 518 5621
Email Id:[email protected]

Enlightened Parenting

: Raising Kids in the Noise of Non-Violence
By Sri Sri Ravi Shankar

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar is a spiritual teacher and the founder of the Art of Living Foundation, an international nonprofit educational, humanitarian and service organization with centers in over 140 countries. Sri Sri Ravi Shankar travels throughout the world teaching the art of living.
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar gave an extemporaneous talk on youth violence recently at Harvard University. The following article is composed of excerpts from that talk:

If we just take a look at the children, the way they were in schools a few decades back, and then take a look at the children today, we see some marked differences. These may provide some insight into the violence among children today.

Pride in Violence
There is no sense of shame or guilt involved with crime today. Instead, a sense of pride is attached to acts of violence. A few decades back, violence was associated not so much with pride, but with shame. A student used to feel ashamed to do a violent act. But today, due largely to the influence of the media, aggression has become a source of pride. The aggressive students in the classroom get more attention, and they feel proud being aggressive and angry.
When I was a student, if someone was aggressive in the classroom, others would look down on them. That student would feel very apologetic afterwards, and they would have to make it up—by being kinder and doing service in the classroom. But today, we see that aggression seems to be a way of living, a way of moving forward, a way of success, and a source of pride in children. This, in a very subtle way, encourages violence. When aggression and violence are promoted in society, human values diminish.
Today, certain movies and modern music glorify frustration, anger and revenge, and make these status symbols and role models for children. We need to counteract this influence. A sense of shame has to be connected with anger and violence. We need to promote human values, especially love, compassion and a sense of belonging, loud and clear.

Dealing with Emotions
Basically in the teenage years, from about 15 to 20, there is considerable emotional turmoil and turbulence happening within. If teenagers do not find a way to express these emotions, they are stuck with them. These emotions ferment and become violence.
Neither at school nor at home have we taught our kids how to handle their own emotions. Any amount of counseling, talking, or reading books does not help because it is all working at an intellectual level. When emotions arise, they come like a storm; they overtake us—our intellect, our concepts, our ideas. So what to do?
We can compare emotions with the owner of a house, and the intellect or concepts with the gatekeeper. The gatekeeper will stop someone from coming from outside, but if the owner of the house comes in and goes out, the gatekeeper cannot do anything about it, because the gatekeeper is being paid by the owner! So our emotions are like the owner. And the intellectual concepts, the ideas, the promises that we make to ourselves—these do not help at all.
Counseling is dealing with the gatekeeper or the watchman. It is not really dealing with the owner of the house, who is in control. Emotions are more in control of our life than our intellect, our thoughts, our concepts and ideas.

The Importance of the Breath
So how do you tackle the emotions? It has to be done at the existential level, at the level from where they arise. Here, I would say the breath could play an important role. Have you noticed that every emotion has a definite pattern of breath? Suppose you are in the acting field. If you want to show anger, the director would ask you to breathe a certain way. If you breathe faster, then you are able to exhibit that anger. In the same way, there is definite rhythmic pattern of breath associated with every emotion. Joy, frustration, sadness, jealousy, and greed all have definite rhythmic breathing patterns. When we attend to these definite breath patterns, we can gain control over our breath as well as our emotions. Just as in the acting field we can use the breath to show our emotions, in the same way, we can utilize the breath to calm down the emotions.
Certain breathing techniques can be learned that are powerful tools in which every cell of our body becomes energized, and impressions of aggression get released, impressions which have infiltrated the cells of our body. By nature one feels calm and serene afterwards.

A Sense of Belonging
The second thing is lack of a sense of belonging. We have developed a program for the children called ART Excel (All Round Training for Excellence). In this program, I ask the child to make one new friend every day. Let’s say there are 30 to 40 children in a classroom, a child is not friendly with all 30 to 40 kids. Each class has ten groups of three children each. But if a child is unable to be friendly with 30 people over a period of one, two or three years, how are they going to be friendly when they get out of school? We have not taught children the basic values of life: how to be friendly with everybody, how to have a sense of belonging with everyone. So one of the things we teach in the ART Excel program is to make one new friend every day.

Standing in Someone Else’s Shoes
A third thing is to have a child step out of her shoes and get into someone else’s shoes, and see from there. See the other person’s point of view. Here also I give another exercise to the children. Suppose they say they hate someone very much. I would tell them, “Okay, behave like those whom you hate for just 15 minutes, half an hour, or half a day.” They suddenly realize the person whom they hate is loveable too. Do you see what I am saying? Despite the shortcomings of that person, the child is able to like them.

Increasing Self-Esteem
A deep sense of regret and low self-esteem is another cause of aggression. Telling a child continually, “You are no good”—all the time bombarded with this thought: “You are no good”—makes a child lose their self-esteem and become more aggressive. We need to bring up their self-esteem. This is the fourth aspect. For this also, we have several processes that make children feel good about themselves.

Smiling Through Criticism
The fifth aspect is to see that nothing can take away your self-respect. Suppose someone makes a comment about you. You should have the ability to withstand that criticism and smile through it. Most children do not have the strength to withstand criticism. A child should have the ability to criticize boldly and then to withstand any criticism that is given to them, in whatever manner. This opens them up to such a strength within themselves that they are able to move through any ragging or teasing they may happen to encounter.

A Sense of Humor
A sense of humor is very important, and helps children handle teasing. Inculcate a sense of humor in children, so they develop the ability to turn an adverse situation to their advantage by bringing humor into it. A sense of humor helps children withstand criticism and enables them to give criticism in a more playful manner. You will often find that those children who do not have a sense of humor are more aggressive.

Physical Activity
Those children who do not engage in some physical activity are also more aggressive. We need to attend to their exercise. A child who is weak becomes more aggressive. You will not find a child who does a lot of exercise, who goes to the gymnasium, who swims, who has a strong healthy body, being too agitated or angry. Often children who play video games or sit, with very little physical activity, are more prone to violence than those who do a lot of physical activity. So we should take care that a child does enough exercise.

Food
Another aspect is children’s food habits. When they eat too much sugar or drink too many carbonated drinks, they become restless and aggressive. There have been several studies done on this subject. But you can experiment yourself: have more sugar and see how you feel. Your attention gets distracted. Many children have Attention Deficiency Disorder. This is also because of wrong food habits.
Drinking too many soft drinks adversely affects our system and makes us more aggressive. You see, by nature our system is made to breathe out carbon dioxide. But we are pumping carbon dioxide into water and drinking it as soft drinks. So we are doing something against nature.
When a person feels aggressive, he breathes faster. Have you noticed? An aggressive person doesn’t breathe slowly; he breathes faster because the system needs more oxygen. In the process of breathing everything tenses, and that comes out as aggression. This can also happen to someone if they are given a lot of carbon dioxide in the form of soft drinks. So healthy food habits also play a role in causing a person to become less violent.

The Noise of Non-Violence
We need to attend to all these eight factors in order to promote non-violence among young people today. Parents and educators need to place greater emphasis on human values, including compassion, service to society and an understanding of how precious all life is.
Often violence comes with noise. Non-violence happens in silence. People who are violent make a huge noise; they make it known. People who are non-violent are quiet. But the time has come for people who are nonviolent to make noise so that the violence will quiet down. The message of non-violence has to come loud and clear so that it can be heard from a young age.

The ART Excel program (All Round Training for Excellence) for children and teens between the ages of 8-18 is through the Art of Living Foundation. ART Excel (All Round Training in Excellence) is a dynamic program for youth that enables them to eliminate stress, handle emotions, deal with peer pressure, and develop leadership skills. Youth are provided techniques that increase mental focus and facilitate the learning process. The ART Excel curriculum nurtures human values and embraces all cultures, religions, ethnic and racial backgrounds. Kids have fun, as they become creative and responsible leaders of tomorrow.

For more information about the ART Excel program, please contact:
Gungun Kapoor @ 510-456-5121
www.tinyurl.com/KidExcel

New Hindi classes – sessions starts in San Ramon

For the third year running, DAV Learning is going to organize the Hindi learning classes.
The 2010-2011 academic year begins Sunday, August 29, 2010. General registration is on Sunday, August 22 at 1.00pm at 9110-F Alcosta Blvd (Tutoring Club), San Ramon, CA 94583.

For enrollment forms and information, please email [email protected] or call 510-909-8190.

DAV Learning applies an international, certified Hindi curriculum that provides progressive, proficiency-based Hindi classes for kids K and above.

Our adept teachers, excellent facilities, and student rewards system encourages attendance and learning. In addition, we provide colored worksheets and a well-stocked personal binder that completes a full academic package.

  • Excellent Facilities
  • Students Points Reward System
  • Hindi Progressive Classes for Beginners, Level 1, 2, 3 & 4
  • Monthly & Semester Tests, Yearly Certification & Progress Report Assessment for Each Child
  • Recognized International Curriculum

NEW THIS YEAR: More Hours, Vacation-Friendly Schedule, Fully-Electronic Curriculum, Discounted Rates on Tutoring Club classes (Tutoring Club offers individualized instruction with tutors in our exclusive TutorAid programs for math, reading, writing, SAT and ACT preparation, study skills and more.)