#Flash-Fiction Day-2:

Mr. Ashok was counting his steps towards his office at 0545 hrs on an overcast Saturday morning. He's gonna shoot  the 6.3 k.m running expedition with his colleagues, that's going to be started from his office at 0600 hrs. With his feet wide apart, holding a mid range DSLR in his hands was aiming at a banner at his office entrance which's welcoming all the runners with a slogan 'fit for life'. It was his first official shoot for his company and he was so excited to cover the entire run. Ashok was prepared well with the settings and tweaks for this marathon shoot, he took great photographs in his past and he knows that he would repeat the same that day as well. As the run was about to begin, Ashok made his way through the crowded runners to the start line where he could take some flagging shots at the start of the run. He captured those initial candid moments and went along with the crowd for some more stunning shots. Ashok went far and wide with the runners and captured all their emotions along their path. During his photo-shoot, he came across different personalities some of them he knows and some other who knows him running towards a common goal. He noticed that one thing is common among all, as he smiled at everyone he came across they have smiled back instantly at him. Is there something in the camera that made them smile or is that people out there just had this habit of smiling when ever they see a photographer. 

After some time when the sun was out and Ashok was relentlessly moving along with the crowd taking as many photographs as possible. Then he got exhausted a bit and when he tried to capture the runners with a frown on his face, he noticed that the smiles which he saw earlier on the runners were then faded away. Ashok rested for a minute and again tried to capture some more shots. He smiled at a small boy from the crowd who got exhausted but still running towards the finish line, the boy instantly smiled back with a pleasant grin. At that moment Ashok realized that the world around us is a reflection of our inner self. If we're happy and healthy, we shall find the world to be a heaven and vice-versa. He continued the shoot until the finish line and an award function after that with a sense of achievement and pride. His running expedition was a grand success.

#Flash-Fiction Day-1:

Formal meeting in an Office: 

Ms. Manisha stood there like an angel, beside the door and silently watched all the proceedings. Mr. Chetan was standing right in-front of her along with his colleagues and was playing peek-a-boo with her eyes through her nerdy anti-glare goggles. Silence of the conference room was broken with the cool french tune on her mobile ringtone. She asked apologies and went out to attend the call and returned in a minute. He observed that something was wrong with her, otherwise she would have talked on any topic between sky and earth for hours at a stretch. He could clearly see the nervousness in her eyes and tiredness in her face. He tried to console her with his eyes,but she gazed away in a rather perplexed way. Suddenly his mobile sung the tune of the latest single-family multi-starer local-language movie. At that moment she directly saw in to his eyes, they have silent feelings for each other but yet he fail to express them to her because of her complicated relationship status. He unconsciously rejected the call from his childhood friend and asked her apology for disturbing the situation. Though the meeting went on for 30 minutes he felt like it ended in 3 minutes and they parted ways after that.  

Rules and Inspiration for building Effective Mind Maps or Cognitive Maps

What's a Mind Map?

A mind map is a creative and artistic representation used to visually and effectively organize and memorize the important information. A mind map is often created around a single concept, drawn as an image in the center of a blank landscape page, to which associated representations of ideas such as images, words and parts of words are added. Major ideas are connected directly to the central concept, and other ideas branch out from those. Mind maps can be drawn by hand, either as "rough notes" during a lecture, meeting or planning session or as higher quality pictures when more time is available.

Basic Rules to draw a Simple Mind map:

• Start in the center with an image of the topic, using at least 3 colors.

• Use images, symbols, codes, and dimensions throughout your mind map.

• Select key words and print using upper or lower case letters. 

• Each word/image is best alone and sitting on its own line.

• The lines should be connected, starting from the central image. The lines become thinner as they radiate out from the center.

• Make the lines the same length as the word/image they support.

• Use multiple colors throughout the mind map, for visual stimulation and also for encoding or grouping.

• Develop your own personal style of mind mapping.

• Use emphasis and show associations in your mind map.

• Keep the mind map clear by using radial hierarchy or outlines to embrace your branches.

Uses of Cognitive Maps:

As with other diagramming tools, mind maps can be used to generate, visualize, structure, and classify ideas, and as an aid to studying and organizing information, solving problems, making decisions, and writing.

Mind maps have many applications in personal, family, educational, and business situations, including note-taking, brainstorming (wherein ideas are inserted into the map radially around the center node, without the implicit prioritization that comes from hierarchy or sequential arrangements, and wherein grouping and organizing is reserved for later stages), summarizing, as a mnemonic technique, or to sort out a complicated idea. Mind maps are also promoted as a way to collaborate in color pen creativity sessions.

In addition to these direct use cases, data retrieved from mind maps can be used to enhance several other applications; for instance expert search systems, search engines and search and tag query recommender. To do so, mind maps can be analysed with classic methods of information retrieval to classify a mind map's author or documents that are linked from within the mind map.