Why do people living in metro cities keep having small ailments every few weeks?

Body aches, sinus, headaches, throat infections, a variety of stomach issues, joint pain, backache, skin allergy, fatigue. Even stuff like chronic sinus, stress-related disorders or Type 2 Diabetes.

Familiar? Feels like our bodies are mildly under attack!

As someone who has lived in major metros for 30 years, I think I can answer this question.

These things are responsible:

1. Lack of fresh oxygen, no natural air. This is due to living in an air conditioned environment most of the day(and night). It deprives us of the natural temperature flux our bodies expect. Plus it circulates and recycles stale air lacking in beneficial negative ions found in abundance outdoors. Even those who go for a jog or walk in the morning end up clogging their lungs with polluted air. Metro air pollution from cars, industry, and high population density can irritate lungs and accumulate over decades as there is nowhere for the air to escape and there aren’t enough trees to filter the air.

2. No grounding on earth for days or even weeks. This goes for people living in high rises who only go out for work and partying/shopping. Rest all is taken care of by Blinkit.

I have a special, personal problem with people living on floors so high that they can’t even take the stairs and the lift becomes their lifeline. I can’t sleep hundreds of feet away from the ground! It feels like I’m on a jet plane stuck in the sky. There is constant anxiety being at such a height inside a man-made structure. Blood pressure is not normal being away from the ground.

3. EMF rays all around. Constant proximity with wi-fi, 5G and bluetooth signals day and night.

4. Lack of nature around us: Trees absorb body radiation, but if we live in concrete buildings all day we can’t help it.

5. Eating processed foods: Outside food, sugary drinks, snacks like Maggi etc. 98 percent of processed food has sugar, salt, refined flour, palm oil and other seed oils. These all are bad for the body.

6. Bad milk: pasteurized, homogenized, chemicalized dairy consumed all the time. The most common thing we heard from the Doctor’s mouth was IBS(irritable bowel syndrome), before heart attacks became fashionable.

7. Visiting candy stores disguised as coffee shops!

8. Consuming a whole lot of bakery products like bread and pastries. Also on the bad food list are pizzas, burgers and pasta. Most of us have it regularly.

9. Screen time is more than 5 hours a day. If we have 2 phones, one laptop, one iPad and also include the car dashboard screen, the total screen time exceeds 10 hours a day. If we add the LED TV screen, well, I don’t know.

10. Unnatural sleep patterns, sleeping late(while watching Netflix or Instagram Reels or being on Twitter/X). Getting up groggy in the morning. The circadian rhythm disruptions and early alarms leave us chronically sleep deprived.

11. Eating after sunset, something that almost everyone does in north India and across the world.

12. Alcohol in any quantity.

13. Lack of sunlight, and too much dependence on artificial lighting in home/office/malls. And for all of the educated idiots out there, it’s not just about Vitamin D. That was something you learned in school, and keep repeating to sound intellectual. The sun has a whole lot of other benefits.

14. Bad water: Many cities have outdated water infrastructure, exposing us to more contaminants in tap water. RO water is acidic. The newer alkaline models are just trying too hard to fool us. The best water is the natural sweet water from underground, but no one told you that so you won’t believe it. Stick to Bisleri with those micro plastics going inside your stomach!

15. Constant Stress: The fast pace and pressure of big cities keep our fight-or-flight response engaged, leading to inflammation and burnout over time. Relaxation is then artificially inserted in the body using stuff like alcohol.

16. All that Noise: The constant sirens, honking, and loud music subject us to draining sensory overload. We have to use heavy-duty noise-canceling headphones/earphones to handle that. Not many can afford it and they carry their own problems like radiation and a slow-fry of our brains. Not many can use it all the time too.

17. Crowded places with lonely people: There are too many people around us all the time, and it gives another level of uneasiness, even if we are stuck in our cars in a heavy traffic jam. Ironically in the crowds of cities, many feel disconnected and unrooted. This is because of the superficial and/or hostile people around us.

18. Fear of crime: A constant fear lurks due to all the crime around us, leading to stress that builds up over time. Everything is locked, and CCTV footage is crucial.

We talk of mental health nowadays because it is heavily promoted by the media, but even if we leave this current fad, the core problem is still there. And now you know why.

Any other points that I am missing here? What can we do about this? Not everyone can leave the city and go to the village!

Vikram

The world of work is changing at lightning speed thanks to artificial intelligence. In just the past year since ChatGPT burst onto the scene, we’ve seen a massive shift in how businesses operate and the types of roles that are in demand. The safe, steady corporate job for life is quickly becoming a thing of the past. To stay employable in the future, you need to upgrade yourself to an AI-powered startup owner.

Big companies are aggressively adopting AI to slash costs and get work done faster. They are outsourcing more tasks to freelancers and consultants rather than hiring full-time employees.

We’ve already seen thousands of layoffs across major corporations like Google, Microsoft, and Amazon as AI handles more of the workload. This trend will only accelerate.

As an individual job seeker, you are extremely vulnerable. But as the owner of an AI consultancy, you control your own destiny.

You need to stop thinking of big companies as employers, and start thinking of them as clients.

We are seeing thousands of new AI products being launched every month, automating every aspect of work.

Most tasks that an employee does, sitting in the office, are now being automated. This include:

• Customer service
• Data entry and processing
• Financial analysis
• HR tasks, such as recruiting and screening candidates
• IT tasks, such as network administration and security
• Legal tasks, such as contract review and discovery
• Marketing tasks, like content creation and social media management
• Medical diagnosis and treatment
• Product development
• Quality assurance
• Research and development
• Software development including extensive coding
• Technical writing
• Translation
• Asset management
• Investment banking
• Lending
• Market research
• Pricing and promotions
• Risk assessment
• Sales forecasting
• Supply chain management

And it goes on!

The prospective candidate looking for a job is at a huge loss if he does not become AI-centric, fast!

The Advantages of Becoming an AI Startup Owner

Becoming an AI-powered startup owner has massive advantages compared to being an individual candidate searching for traditional employment. Consider these benefits:

- Be Your Own Boss: You have 100% control over your work rather than relying on a boss for assignments, promotions and job security. You can choose your clients and projects.

- Leverage AI for Efficiency: With AI assistants like ChatGPT, you can get work done 10x faster than normal. Deliver better results before tight deadlines.

- Low Overhead: No need for office space, equipment or large team. Slash costs by using AI instead of human employees.

- Flexible Hours: Work when and where you want rather than being tied to 9–5 in an office cubicle. Take on as much or as little work as desired.

- In-Demand Skills: Every company needs help unlocking the potential of AI. They will pay premium rates for your expertise as an early adopter.

- Higher Earning Potential: Bill by the project or hour as a high-value consultant rather than being limited by employee salary caps.

How to Make the Leap to AI Startup Owner

Evolving from individual job seeker to AI startup consultant may seem daunting but it is entirely achievable by taking a few key steps:

- Pick Your Niche: Identify an industry or domain where you have existing skills and experience that can be enhanced by AI. For example, marketing, writing, data analysis. Position yourself as an AI expert in that niche.

- Learn AI Best Practices: Take online courses and certifications to master platforms like ChatGPT. Understand the art of human + AI collaboration. Stay on top of new advances.

- Build Your Brand: Create a personalized website and content that highlights your AI superpowers. Get active on LinkedIn showcasing client success stories.

- Offer Premium Services: Provide high-value, white-glove services like AI-powered analytics, personalized content creation, predictive modeling, and more.

- Leverage AI Assistants: Use ChatGPT and other AI tools to speed up your work, reduce costs and maximize what you can deliver for clients.

- Automate Tasks: Streamline repetitive parts of your business like billing, reporting, communications using no-code AI automation platforms.

The Future Belongs to AI-Powered Businesses

In this era of rapid automation, traditional jobs will become fewer and farther between. But for those who reskill themselves as AI experts, the floodgates of opportunity are wide open.

Small, lean startups can compete with — and beat — the biggest companies by harnessing the power of artificial intelligence. Become an AI startup owner and take control of your career by future-proofing your skills.

The future belongs to those who evolve.

Vikram Arora

My hands were deprived of a God-thread,
A knot of life, love, and purity, A bond of protection,
The rudraksh of God, without which i was almost dead.

Thanks to my eternal angel,
I am able to fulfill a promise,
made a year ago in a village wonderful,
To God’s little angels,
Now my wrist is also rich and colorful.

My angel is always connected with me,
I am nothing without my love,
I am her shield and her shiv,
The heavens are watching from above.

Back in the 90s, as a teenager, I was hooked on to the alt-rock music of that time, most of the time. The soundtrack of my dorky teen life was Radiohead, Nirvana, Stone Temple Pilots, The Cranberries, and many others. MTV used to play music all day.

Officially, I was in training(reluctantly) with my business tycoon dad, who used to make me run errands and take me to strange places, like a lawyer's office, almost every week.

I vividly remember that self-obsessed lawyer, who used to shout at his secretary(sitting in a different cabin)from his office. I asked my dad why do we wait for him to see us, every time. My dad said that’s because he is a busy man, and he has knowledge, position and leverage to do things that we ourselves cannot do.

He had some forms and applications locked up in his locker. In those days, there was no internet, so the forms could not be downloaded from government websites, at least in India. These documents were sought after, and extremely hard to obtain. They couldn’t be photocopied too, as they had serial numbers. One mistake in the filled form used to set us back by weeks. It was as if things were designed to be hard.

The knowledge hoarding and ‘scarce resource’ monopoly of that time, luckily, is now gone. We no longer feel the need to buy a CD with 12 songs, because, for that amount of money, we can get Spotify for a year, getting about 50 million songs.

Traditional book publishers are like my dad’s lawyer. They are from an age where when things were not accessible and were deliberately complex. These people are soon to be history.

A book publisher typically goes through hundreds of manuscripts before committing to spending resources on a few of them which look promising(from his ‘expert’ view). Small-time publishers typically charge a hefty amount to publish a book, and both kinds of publishers do not offer any tangible, long-term marketing and promotion benefits. After publishing a book, most authors are on their own.

We mistakenly believe that getting our book published is the final step of the cycle. It’s actually the first step.

Self-Publishing

Many of us have personal journals, academic writings, a half-finished biography, or an attempt at a good story lying on our laptops. Sometimes for years. We think they are not good enough to be published. We are wrong.

Traditional book publishing cannot keep up with the number of great stories and other content that budding authors have written, and could have a potentially large market. Their limited mindset and profit mentality only allows them to greenlight ‘safe’ content that they think will do well. Skip this old tollgate and go for Self-Publishing.

Self-publishing is now an increasingly common and accepted form of getting published.

E-Publishing

Like Medium.com blogs, YouTube videos, Apple Podcasts and many other platforms that let you ‘broadcast’ your creativity, e-publishing is a great way to swiftly reach billions of readers. Here are five reasons you should take the e-book route and e-publish your content right now!

1. Save A Tree, Save Everything: According to Google, The United States uses 30 million trees per year to publish all the print books that are sold. The unsold ones aren’t counted in the figure. That’s a lot of trees. Ebooks, on the other hand, do not require cutting down millions of trees. Each printed sheet of paper takes up three gallons of water to manufacture, so that’s another thing to ponder. You also end up saving a lot of energy and cost that is required to paginate, print, pack and transport a printed book. One estimate is that having an e-book only model saves 10 billion dollars a year in the US alone.

2. No Logistical Issues: I remember the time when Amazon only used to sell printed books, and nothing else. E-books weren’t published in those times, and a printed book used to take weeks to reach India from the UK in 2002. Now, as we are in the middle of a once-in-a-century global health crisis(the year now is 2020), logistics is a huge concern. Any business model that required road, sea and air transportation suffers during war or other global crises. Thankfully, this is the age of digital consumption, which remains unaffected by war, famine, climate change and other crisis situations. Case in point: Netflix, a digital-only service, added 16 million new subscribers in the first quarter of 2020, even though they don’t have any new content.

When we e-publish a book, anyone across the world can download/buy it and start reading it within a few seconds on their favourite device, like an iPhone, iPad, or a Kindle Reader. An E-book means Instant Availability, with no friction or time gap between paying for the product and consuming it.

3. Make Money While You Sleep: A successful digital product coupled with a secure payment gateway, configured online, has the ability to earn thousands of dollars for you, while you sleep. This will make you wonder why people do back-breaking jobs for peanuts. Imagine waking up and getting a notification on your phone that fifty people bought your e-book while you were asleep. True freedom is when you have the money and time to do what you want. You don’t need to rush anywhere. Get up and do relaxing Yoga. People would be buying your e-book while you breathe in and breathe out.

4. Post-Publication Editing: One of the major headaches of my corporate job at a major publication house was the authors and journal editors fuming over wrong, incomplete, or inaccurate information being published in paper form, and already distributed around the world. It was always something like a name or title misspelt or a wrong caption below a figure, that was overlooked and approved by them in the earlier stages. The ‘e’ part of that content, available online at various paid portals and premium websites, was easily corrected, but the gripe was always the printed form, which would now remain incorrect forever. E-publishing skips over this problem as it is digital content, easily controlled, edited, and updated even after years in publication.

5. Published Author Status: E-publishing your book, suddenly provides an individual with the coveted ‘Published Author’ status. Even if the e-book is just a free download on Apple iBooks, the exposure that one gets with a good body of work helps accelerate one's career in multiple ways.

Take The First Step.

Vikram Arora

Founder, E-Pub.in

E-Pub.in is a homegrown startup that publishes your digital content in a matter of weeks and at extremely affordable rates. This startup is the dream of a few individuals with years of corporate publishing experience in the best publishing houses in the world. Your precious work is digitized, edited, formatted, paginated and finalized by E-Pub.in and published in Amazon, Kindle, and Apple iBooks, making it available to billions. For queries e-mail at epub@outlook.in

Many of us have our memoirs, diaries, recipe books, research notes, academic writings, or journals locked inside our computers, waiting to be seen by the entire world.

Publishing a book is generally considered a time-consuming process, involving a lot of energy and resources. We At E-pub.in are here to bust the myths about publishing your manuscript online, making it an extremely affordable, quick and hassle-free process.

Traditionally, authors wanting to publish their work approach big-ticket publishers who typically reject hundreds of manuscripts before selecting one. Small-time publishers tend to ask for a hefty amount to publish a book. Self-publishing is now an increasingly effective way to get your work out, fast.

The global crisis has put online learning/education and electronic publishing of books on the forefront, and the world is now moving towards 100% digital consumption of books.

Enter E-pub.in. With our quick services, your manuscript would be formatted, copyedited, paginated and published on 11 portals of Amazon, Kindle and Kindle Unlimited(book subscription service) and Apple iBooks, making it available for immediate consumption to billions of people. All this in just 4 weeks!**

We even design the cover and provide sales assistance, along with marketing and promotion of your ebook.

You get to keep all your royalties, book rights and a large portion of profits of the sales of your book. Our service is a quick ‘get-in, get-out’ way to publish your digital manuscript and make it available on a respected platform so that you can start enjoying the status of a published author. Our newer services include creating your own podcast and publishing on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

For our extremely affordable pricing plans, please contact at epub@outlook.in or visit www.e-pub.in

Vikram Arora

E-pub.in

**Subject to the readiness of the manuscript.

What is a Village Trek?

A Village Trek is trekking + bike ride with a social cause. It involves meeting local villagers and can be about:
1. Donating clothes/stationary/sweets to kids
2. Donating books
3. Having a home-cooked lunch or dinner hosted by villagers, or a weekend guest.

This makes the trek IMPACTFUL and evangelizing. There is lots of interaction with the locals, and they get to have money for the food or shelter that they provide us, helping them in several ways.

Normally we spend thousands in cafés and restaurants, but spending even a few hundred rupees in a village is impactful and goes a long way. The money they earn is used in buying household essentials and family expenses, and the money you give to Starbucks only makes the rich people richer!

We get to see unexplored and amazing places in a Village Trek, places where there is no commercial activity, yet it is not a camping trip in a jungle.

A Village Trek is an antidote to the crazy, noisy, polluted city life. The food is a welcome change from the ultra-processed psuedo-edibles we eat every day. Being in the greens, walking barefeet in nature and bathing in a river will make you more connected with earth.

Let's all come together and explore the unexplored in Star Trek India's #VillageTrek

Vikram Arora

Twitter and Linkedin: @neoviky

www.facebook.com/StarTrekIndia

In this post-millennial existence, many of us are still stuck in our boring jobs, which we may also find unpleasant and stressful.

It is becoming increasingly apparent that our lives are going nowhere while we doomscroll on our phones endlessly, destroying our mental health and eating junk food, wrecking our bodies too.

You are not going to attain glory by:

1. Working hard for 40 years in a dead-end job(or a series of jobs) and then retiring. It’s too dull and boring. You eventually die, and it’s business as usual for the world after a few days.
2. Winning the Lottery(which any lottery winner will tell you has nothing to do with wealth). The money you get via a lottery win or by robbing a bank only makes you a poor person with some money in hand.
3. Instant fame on social media. The world will pull you down, even if you do get those fifteen minutes of fame and glory. Don’t play the short-term game with life.

Nope, none of that is happening.

Here are ten decisions you can take, ten sincere determinations, that can fast track your life towards true glory, sooner than you can imagine.

1. Learn to say “No.”

Learning to say ‘No’ to people frees up lots of time for self-care as we are liberated from procedural, obligatory, and other people’s work.

Learn to say No to people who take up your time and energy, but also to consumerism (which only makes people like Jeff Bezos richer!) by embracing minimalism and saving a lot of money.

2. Wake up early.

Start getting up early and get the unfair advantage of two to three free hours to live and shape your life. Time is Money. Waking up in the Brahma Muhurata, according to ancient Indian wisdom, has tremendous benefits for our health, well-being, and quality of life.

3. Discontinue Pseudo-Work.

Learn to do what’s important rather than what seems urgent. Answering that email or picking up the ringing phone looks like urgent work, but it is pseudo-work and not benefiting you in the long run.

4. Put That Phone Down.

Stop spending too much time on smartphones. Learn to disconnect, and turn those notifications off. Distractions can kill your productivity. Social media is to be used only if it is for work purposes.

This will enable you to reach a “flow” state at work, making anything you do creative and high-quality.

5. Resign from your job.

Quit your job if it is stressful and unfulfilling. If you aren’t valued as a team worker, or even if every morning you simply dread going to work, that place isn’t for you.

In most cases, your job may have sucked your life out. Just the bait of paying your bills may have kept you in your organisation, like a mouse trapped in a wheel, running non-stop, lured by a piece of cheese.

6. Practice Ikigai.

Identify three tenets: What you love doing, what you are good at doing (key skills or core competency), and what can get you paid. Whatever is revealed after you converge them, do that for the rest of your life.

7. Develop Your Personal Brand.

Use online resources, learning channels, and self-study to research and fine-tune your skills, staying up-to-date. Set up professional profiles and use social media to build your own brand.

Your personal brand, which you can call “Brand You,” can also be enhanced by doing Yoga, while you eat right and sculpt yourself towards glory.

8. Turn off Netflix.

Don’t waste time watching TV, Netflix or playing computer games. You may think you are killing time, but time is killing you. A better way to use your free time would be to catch up on your sleep or practise mindfulness.

9. Concentrate on People.

Start being loveable and polite to everyone around you. Call up your old enemies, who are sometimes more useful than your friends, and disconnect with overly toxic and negative friends. Building relationships and strengthening your network will pay off, sooner or later.

10. Get Rid of Clutter.

Remove all clutter from your surroundings and donate old clothes, shoes, and appliances, clearing the way for your success and glory, as it unclutters your mind. According to the Indian tradition, which is thousands of years old, the Goddess of wealth, prosperity, and glory, Lakshmi, only visits a clean place.

Apart from the above 10 key decisions, you can keep asking questions, making mistakes, and practising gratitude while blocking anxiety and worry. These lifestyle changes will point your life compass towards glory.

Vikram

The cold quiet morning is suddenly buzzing with chirps and squeaks.
The eastward mountain has a bright yellow crack in it!
The hue of the sky is changing every minute.
The orange ball of fire is getting more and more glorious.
Why does it seem curiously quicker than it used to be?
The shape of the mountain is getting carved with more details.
The orange beacon of light filling in the sharpness.
Meanwhile, the western hills are getting painted in orangish shades.
The natures daily miracle has happened again today.
And only the birds seems to applaud.

Part 1: Life

Her pretty face has frantic eyes and a salivating tongue all the time.
She may be hungry but she does not care of her own self anymore.
It is the hunger of her three dark-colored puppies.
She goes on searching and begging for scraps.
Crossing a giant road teeming with monsters and killers.
Sometimes I help her cross the road, touching her on her neck to make her stop.
Sometimes I buy her food so that she does not come outside to cross the deadly road.
Sometimes I get worried when her babies are alone and go searching for her.
The milk needed from her makes her weak, yet responsible.
Her inner strength compensates for her fragile, sick body.
She has worry, anxiety, and toil written on her lovely sweet face.
She stopped sleeping many months ago.
Her life has a selfless mission.
Her life is not hers anymore.
The whole day and night she runs for her loved ones.
She plays with one of them, happy for a few seconds.
Her life is in her babies.
She is an incarnation of motherhood.

Part 2: Death
The monsters and the killers take their course, and I am helpless and clueless.
Only one of the three babies remained alive, adopted by a good soul.
The mother is surviving hell, enduring every pain that comes every day.
I somehow feed her and take care of her, in my limited way.
The moment I finally plan something better for her, she is brutally taken away from me.

Part 3: Remorse
I try to find her but it is destiny I am fighting against.
Where did they take her?
Why was she injured so badly?
What did those butchers do with her?
Is there a chance she may be still alive?
We live in a jaded, heartless, and selfish world. I got a bitter taste of the same.
I still feel a pain in my heart whenever I think of her.
I feel I couldn’t do enough.
If only had I acted sooner.
If only had I embraced her forever, like I once did.
Why did I ever leave the most beautiful soul with the most poignant eyes?
She always haunts me, maybe she was waiting for me.
Is she cursing me for not saving her?

Part 4: The Prayer
I am sorry, dear Angel, I really am.
Please forgive me and may God bless you.
Your very existence spelled love, motherhood, and was filled with selflessness, and purity.
Living in the streets and mud, you may have been dirty from the outside, but inside your heart always shined like the sun. Your eyes always sparkled with hope and a longing for a better life.
Maybe I will see you on the other side.

I hope you come back to my life as a loved one.
I will recognize your spirit.

Disclaimer: This post is devious. Intelligent people will find it thought-provoking and dumb people will find it only provoking.

Non-Vegetarian people are Amazing.
They could argue till death about how right they are in eating flesh. Their arguments range from the shape of their teeth to human evolution and even the food chain. Some even quote Ramayana and Mahabharata episodes to justify.

I can't help but see the negative animal energy inside them from decades of meat consumption manifesting itself, bursting from the inside. a mere suggestion of a vegetarian diet is enough to boil their blood and it's amusing to see their violent reactions. Logical discussion is thrown out in favour of loud and aggressive taunts and justifications. Suddenly they turn into a highly paid criminal lawyer with specialization in murder cases. They eat meat because it is tasty and they are addicted, but their explanations range from proteins and amino acids to global warming.

They think they have a right to eat whatever animal they wish and some even are considering cannibalism, in many parts of the world. They mock vegetarian people as sissy and self-righteous. They accuse the animal loving section for killing bananas and eating mangoes.

They don't cut open and kill the animals themselves, as it is cooked and provided to them, so they erroneously assume they don't take part in the vicious and cruel bloodshed. They are not better off than the Butcher who killed the animal.

The violence becomes a part of their ego, thought process, and life decisions. Slowly and slowly the animals they have relished and devoured start coming out of their eyes, noses, mouth and in their actions. The face, the eyes starts to show the dead animals. Whenever they sit quietly, alone, they feel restless and start to sweat. There is a certain unease in them. It can manifest in many forms: lust, gluttony, sloth, you name it.

There is fear and death inside them, always. The bullet-proof arguments they have made to others and themselves start to break down when they are alone. The demons are not under their bed, but inside them. They try not to let them out, but that is impossible.

I love Non-vegetarian People.

Vikram