Reflections

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The Soothsayer

Apoorva understood he had great intuition powers right in his childhood. Was it extra sensory perception or premonition or was he an old soothsayer reborn? He grew up as a precocious child, loved by all. His predictions would be more often than not accurate and slowly the neighbours also came to know of his prophesies hitting the target. The neighbours would ask him about their exam results and all sundry matters. He enjoyed all the attention that he got and sometimes he felt he had something extra in him. As he grew up, his miraculous powers were put to lesser use. Family members didn’t consult him anymore and he also forgot that he had any of those fabled capacities. Once it so happened in his late teens, Apoorva and his friends had an altercation with an autorickshaw for a paltry sum. But those were the days when even the small got magnified. In the anger of being cheated, he cursed that the driver would receive his due. Muttering choicest expletives he was walking down to road...

The Panacea

Apoorva, a man in his late thirties, got the key to his longstanding pain through the realisation made from a sitting with his physiotherapist, Dr. Kumar. Not long ago, when Apoorva landed up in the same city where his good friend practiced and taught yoga, he was elated with unbound happiness for two reasons. The first being reunion with the old friend and the second one being the thought of having a blessing that his friend could cure him of a very old pain. A pain that had become his shadow in the last two decades. Apoorva shared his experiences and the pain in his back that haunted him almost every day, a nagging reminder of the years when Apoorva wanted to be a cricketer. A faulty bowling action had left him with a pain for life. Cricket was left behind in search of a job and in the pursuit of excelling in the job. He had no alternative in life, no throwback option available but to succeed in his professional career. Cricket was long gone but the pain remained and reminded him ...

Recipe for failure

As a child grows up, there is a constant reminder fed ad nauseum – you’ve to be successful when you grow up. There was a change in script when arguably the most adored Indian post MK Gandhi took up the cause of transforming young minds. He was loved by all. I haven’t come across any person till date who had something to say against this great man. “Don't read success stories, you will only get a message. Read failure stories, you will get some ideas to get success”, he said. Some recipes for failure is what can be expected from what is commencing here onwards that has been decocted from my life experiences. Hope it helps someone who is just about ready to receive! Be timid and you’re headed down under (not geographically!). Courage has to be up there as the most important ingredient to do anything worthwhile in life. Anyone aspiring a leadership role needs this in generous portions. More often than not courage is misunderstood as having the ability to shoot from the mou...

The Physics of Relationships and Desires

" Osmosis is the spontaneous net movement of solvent molecules through a semi-permeable membrane into a region of higher solute concentration, in the direction that tends to equalize the solute concentrations on the two sides”. A basic scientific phenomenon that we studied in high school science which exists and is at work, with or without our knowledge, for life and other natural occurrences to go on. Life just works, on its own. We don’t control it but there are many such scientific phenomena that have been working since times immemorial, continue to work right now as we are going about our lives at this very moment and will continue to work in times to come and without which life in this planet and other planets, if there is any, would cease. When we delve deep into the relation between this physical phenomenon and our mental make-up, it seems to govern even subtler aspects of our lives – our likes, dislikes, desires, cravings etc. Whom we...

Food for Thought – Thought of Food

Obsessed about good food? Can’t resist the cravings for the sinful delicacies? Sinful?? We don’t only have the “mad-over-food” & “finger-licking” types that we encounter around us and sometimes it is us who fall into this category and we wear the badge of a “foodie” with aplomb. Then there is the other extreme to matters pertaining to food – the “food conscious” types. The consciousness in days of yore happened to be of one type but nowadays we’ve got two varieties of the conscious club. The religious type of food conscious people fret over food that purely appeal to the senses. Sattvik or kosher types are a bothered lot. Always on the lookout for classifying their food, they seem to be a worried lot. They shut themselves out from the world in order to maintain the purity in their food which will ultimately lead to purity in thoughts to achieve the higher and exalted goals, mostly spiritual in nature. We have got the other type of neo-foodies who are conscious about their he...

Perfection

Journey to Perfection Perfection is like a mirage. The closer you get, you realize it’s still further away. It’s the journey and the efforts towards perfection that is what we call life. That is what comprises of our daily activities. The steps taken on a daily basis contribute in their own small way to shape up what we want to be in our future. As a professional, the questions that we always keep seeking is “How do we do it better?”, “What is it that can take us to the next level?”. You don’t need to be a man of wisdom to understand what these factors are because it is common knowledge. But putting down my thoughts, I must. It may help someone in need of an endorsement or a corroboration of similar beliefs. It is with this thought that we get going with what can help a person become a better professional, a better manager. These can be extrapolated to personal lives as well, if anyone wants to. The factors put forth are not necessarily in any particular order. Each of these t...

Lessons from a Catapult

One of the most fascinating “machines” that we used to play with as a child was a catapult or the slingshot. This simple machine done with the help of a “Y” shaped branch and a strip of the tube from bicycles used to be a prized possession of children of yore. These were efficient tools to launch missiles (usually small stones or glass / stone marbles) and were used by me and my friends in the lazy summer afternoons to get mangoes from the trees that had branches hanging out from their fences onto the roads in our neighborhood orchards. Young minds derived thrill from the speed and accuracy with which the missiles could hit the target which was a more efficient and easy way in comparison to hurling the stones by hand. This nostalgic trip was a by-product of my rumination on a topic that has become a buzzword from the anxious parents to boardrooms to political leaders, from studies to businesses to countries – SUCCESS. This word exhilarates, the feeling intoxicates. Deemed elusive...

Am I "truly" happy?

W hen was the last time you were “truly” happy? How does one know that the happiness being experienced is “true” or not? Can this be understood through the amount of time the happiness lingers on and gives us that “good” feeling? Finally, one of the most important of all questions that every one of us ask ourselves many times in a day: Where/how/in whom/in what do I find happiness? For some who seek to dig deeper, the question becomes more pertinent by adding up a “true, long-lasting” before the word happiness in the question above. Whether we are aware or not, whether we consciously or subconsciously seek answers or not, the mind works constantly and consistently to provide us with the feeling of well-being just like water finds its way even through the toughest of barriers. Water seeps through walls, streams find ways around rocks to flow through and surge ahead. Similarly, our mind keeps scanning situations / people / places / experiences to feed us with this feeling of wellbeing ...

The day when the heavens opened up...

12 th July 2014, around 11:00 AM, Lokhandwala Township, Kandivali East, Mumbai. A typical July day in Mumbai, incessant rains had inundated the central crossroad of this township in the western suburbs. Inclement weather and the crowded streets leading upto the Kandivali railway station made me rethink on taking out my bike. An autorickshaw, I thought, would be the best option to post my income tax acknowledgment to probably the busiest Post Box of the world - Post Box No. 1, Electronic City Post Office, Bangalore. As I stood watching helplessly, there was no sight of any mode of conveyance. Just as I was about to return home to get my bike, an almost filled up shared-drive autorickshaw turned up. I hopped onto it for the 2 Km ride. As rain water sprayed onto me from all angles, pouring water from heavens and splashing water from the roads stirred up by the passing vehicles, I was soaking in the experience. Amidst this wonderful experience of petulance, for jostling up for spa...