What men live by: Leo Tolstoy

This is my first interaction with Tolstoy. Every now and then I have heard of people saying Tolstoy: author of world's greatest novel – War and Peace.
Finally I have got it. My first Tolstoy's book!!

This one is very collection of few short stories, can be found at –
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/6157

All the stories had a moral lesson, but the beauty of it was, all those were "Stories".
I think the simplicity with which Tolstoy put forward the best of lessons in life makes these stories special.

In one of the story, The Coffee House of Surat, we have people sitting in coffee house, each of them belonging to different religion. Each of  them is proud of their own religion and they get into debate, which is
the best?, until wise man amongst them settles the debate.

The other story, rather the most famous of them all, How much land does a man need?, is about greed.

The shortest of them all, Three questions - has the most impact.
How can I learn to do the right thing at the right time?
Who are the people I most need?
What affairs are the most important, and need my first attention?

And, of course the one with from which the book got its name, What men live by, is another one with three questions.
Learn what dwells in man?
Learn what is not given to man?
What men live by?

I am purposely not writing what answers does Tolstoy gives to these questions. Because then someone reading this will miss the beautiful character building of the stories.

This one is smallest of book and the name "Leo Tolstoy" is enough for anyone to pick it up..

Bhagat Singh's Martyrdom day is 23-March-1931

I received message on last year's(2010) valentine day from one of my close friend, message read something like this, "Shaheed Bhagat Singh sacrificed his life for country on 14-Feb-1931 and we are condemned to forget the date, and we are celebrating it as Valentines day"

Being ardent follower of Indian History, I immediately called up my friend and told him, this is damn fake JuSMS and the correct date is 23-March-1931.

This year, the sms came again, now from someone else. Few colleagues of mine were talking about this. I tried to tell as many as can, but to realize that this fake SMS has travelled far to read news in next days newspaper.

http://www.hindu.com/2011/02/16/stories/2011021665731500.htm

News says so called tech savvy people are trying to edit Martyrdom day of Bhagat Singh on Wikipedia and they are making it 14th February. The administrators had to re-correct date so many times, and now they have decided to lock up the page.

This is absolutely stupid behaviour, we are getting some hoax mails, SMS and everyone is just spreading it without verifying the truth.

If someone sends such stupid message to me, then I am definitely going to correct his/her mistake.

If we are not creating History with our deeds, we should not be at least distorting it...