A Touching Incidence

In life, we are generally pretty dissatisfied about how our life is progressing. The dream and fantasy for getting more than what we have, never stops. Whatever be the circumstance we always find some or the other ways of cribbing about our situations and blame various people for our present state. I too fall in this category at many times in my life. Today, I came across an incident which moved me to quite a great extent. During our tea breaks in office, we generally go down to a stall outside our office campus. As I approached the place, I saw a very old man sitting on the ground. He was very shabbily dressed and looked quite ill. The delhi winters were at their peak and he was shivering. The chaiwalla handed the old man a cup of tea. The old man had hardly had a few sips of tea, when suddenly the plastic glass fell from his hand. The hot tea burnt his hands and dirtied his clothes. He just kept staring at the fallen cup and his expression changed to full of pity. In a few moments he burst out crying, very sorrowful at his state. The chaiwalla then offered him another cup of tea but the old man got up and started leaving. After a great deal of persuasion, he took the cup of tea and drank it. In a couple of moments he was gone.

After he had left, I felt a deep sense of guilt within me. I had stood there watching the situation but couldn’t do anything about it. Even if I would have given him money, it would have just given happiness for a few days. But, I could not, in any ways support him for a long time. It made me feel very helpless in life.

The incidence made me forget my cribbing and dis-satisfaction. We tend to always forget people lower than us and keep competing with people who are better than us in terms of materialist wealth. This has made many of us very self centered in life.

Today’s incidence may not have made a tremendous difference in my life. But it has definitely made me a more compassionate person.

Dedicated to my Brother

Technology has been changing so fast, that it is hard to even keep a tab at what’s happening around us. When I was doing my graduation, which is just 5-6 years back, I used to read quite a few of my course textbooks and also enjoy the slow and enriching experience. But when I look at my brother who is half my age, I suddenly start feeling that I have become very outdated. He is always hooked on to Google and games. Spends half of his time spoiling his eyes and ears (TV, video games, iPod, mobile), and the other half, sleeping. When I start arguing with him that you need to concentrate on your studies he replies back by saying that “Didi, how much of your studies are you using in your day to day life”. I start giving him my gyan sessions to which he interrupts me by saying that he does spend a lot of time on Google gathering information on topics that interests him. After half an hour of this conversation, I finally give up and he ends up with a satisfied and content expression. I must admit that I do feel a little uncomfortable after the defeat. One day I sat back and actually pondered over a similar conversation that we had, and I realized that the difference of opinion was there, not because of the generation gap, but because we were not allowing each other to enter into our own worlds. Once this realization came to me, I suddenly got the solution also to the problem. After that day, I made conscious efforts to start sharing my experiences, my day to day incidences and a whole lot of time pass stuff with him. To my surprise, I found that he also reciprocated back by allowing me to enter into his world of dreams and fantasies. After about a month of communication, when I again sat down to introspect, I had tears in my eyes. In this whole one month process, I had actually ended up reliving my years of childhood. We as siblings even today don’t agree upon a lot of issues in life, but the one thing that we have developed is the bonding and the compassion to understand each other’s point of view.

Preparation vs Promptness

We have become slaves of preparation. I know this statement might sound quite revolting for many people but it is something that I am facing quite frequently in my day to day life. We have this need to always be in control over everything and want everything planned and smooth. In this whole effort of defining everything in processes we have become very rigid and narrow in our behavior and thinking. I too am a person who is very planned in life and if anything doesn’t go accordingly, it creates a certain amount of discomfort and dissatisfaction. My husband is quite opposite, and through him I have learnt that it does help to be spontaneous in life and be prompt when dealing with situations. Coz how much ever you plan, the circumstance is going to be different and you would have to modify your plan, as it is.
I have realized that sometimes you need to go with the flow and just enjoy the unpredictableness of life. It’s like the more you try to be in control, the more you loose control over things. That’s because, nowadays, life has become very dynamic and there are various situations that you keep facing. What is required is the sharpness and ability to recognize these situations, face them, and move on as fast as you can. If you keep sticking on to things, they would cause a certain degree of pain.
Again, it can be argued that a life without a plan is a life without a vision. I completely agree with that. If you don’t plan anything in life, there would be no focus and you would not know where your life is heading. But one should not get involved in the plan so much, that you cannot look beyond it. There needs to be a balance and flexibility so that you do plan, along with the promptness to change your plan if the circumstance demands. It would reduce the stress in your life and create a feeling of happiness.

Recognize your True Network

In this age where social networking and reaching out to as many people as you can is the norm in the current scenario, I fail to understand that actually how many people are connected to us when we really need them. We end up scrapping, chatting with so many people each day, seldom wondering that where those talks are heading and whether those talks are actually adding value to our lives. And all this hype about staying connected is actually what I really want to do or is it that the society has imposed on me. This thought has been pondering in my head for quite some time and it made me go back to my childhood days where I had lots of friends and we used to fight, laugh, play and have a ball each and every day. I have lost touch with many of those friends. Then as I grew up my friendships became stronger and even the groups became larger. But in that huge crowd there were those one or two with whom I connected with my heart. Whom I could talk to any time of the day or night and with whom I could share my weirdest dreams with the assurance that they would not laugh. They were the ones who supported me despite the fact that I had been mean to them. Then as I grew older, my impressions grew stronger, the world became more competitive and I didn’t know whom to trust and whom not to. I made more number of friends and got all the more confused and got lost. I decided to stop making friends because I didn’t trust them. I hardened in life and decided to not do anything for people, that no one is a friend here, true friends don’t exist and all that crap. But while I was in this whole zone of thinking I came across a set of people who were exactly like me. They cared for me the same way I used to care for my friends when I was small. I don’t know what they liked in me. I think they are genuinely good people. But they helped me get back to my true self. Keeping relations and sticking to your friends. And these are your true friends. How do you recognize them? They are exactly like you. They think the same thing as you do. They enjoy doing the same thing as you. You generally discuss same things. And they are ready to motivate you even at the most silliest of your thoughts. They are your true friends. Please recognize them fast or they will be lost in this rat race and then the only thing that will remain with you is regret. Coz you would have lost true gems of your life. They are the most dependable people and will stand by you, come what may.
This one is dedicated to my “MBA Group” – Baby, Nalineesh, Punnu
Thanks for being my true friends. Everything that you all have done means a lot to me. Taking care of my likings, tolerating my nonsense during projects, my stupid statements “I am not here to make friends”, my nakhras of not coming for outings and always making bahanas and lastly for making my birthday so special that even I could not imagine. I am lucky to have friends like you.

Soulmates

I am a person who firmly believes in the constitution of true love and soul mates. Idealistic relationships are very difficult to even imagine in our dreams and I have many people who criticize me by saying that they don’t exist in today’s time. Many of my friends say that I should have been born in the 18th century when they hear my thoughts and aspirations on the topic of love. But I do believe that every couple has the potential to become a soul mate. Soul mates definitely have some spiritual or karmic connections. Because every couple doesn’t end up being a soul mate. Our Hindi movies have depicted such soul mates superbly and history has many examples of soul mates. Typically people will argue that you never end up marrying your soul mate or love stories always end up in pain or death. But that’s not the case. Because for the two people who are soul mates, they don’t think that it was a journey of pain. It was always a journey of bliss because every breath they took and every road they walked was devoted to first thinking of their partner and then both of them together and never about themselves. It’s the people/society who views their lives; feel that it’s been a journey of pain. But for both of them it has purely been of love and devotion.
The recent movies which have really inspired me on the topic of soul mates have been Veer – Zaara and Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi. The characters in the movie depict the true nature required for couples to become soul mates.
When we analyze Veer-Zaara it starts off with the two people falling in love without knowing backgrounds, castes or any other factors. It’s like as if the entire world was conspiring to make them fall in love. Veer Pratap Singh expresses his love to Zaara despite knowing that Zaara is already engaged. They both realize that their love for each other is true love and all that is important for both of them is to see each other’s happiness. That’s exactly what’s required to make a couple reach the stage of soul mates. Coz throughout their life after they knew that they were in love their sole aim in life was the other person’s happiness. Neither could see a tear in each other’s life. That’s why they devoted their lives fulfilling their partner’s dreams. And both their journey was a journey of bliss. So even if the end would have showcased that they don’t meet, they would still be called soul mates.
Same way if you take Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi, both start their lives together as if it is a compromise and love is only one – sided. But the one sided love is true love. Despite the fact that the Tani doesn’t believe or recognize it. But Suri displays the love of a soul mate where his only aim in life is Taani’s happiness. And he sees God in her. It’s later in the movie that Tani cannot understand how someone can love a person so much. And when she starts seeing God in Suri she immediately forgets Raj and goes back to her soul mate.
Critics and the general masses don’t believe that such stories exist in real – life because they are too good to be true. But when you study and analyze these movies in depth they have had more pain than happiness when looked from the outside world. But the journey has only been of love and that’s why they are so unique and amazingly inspiring.
Now how do you bring to practice this in real life? Firstly true love has to have a spiritual / karmic touch. It’s like both partners need to believe and have that gut feel that there has been some external force conspiring to get them together. And each partner needs to always think about the other partner first and nothing else. That’s when the entire life together will be a journey of love. It need not be without pain but it will truly be one of bliss. It’s like you should always have one thought in your mind that whatever you do and whatever you say should make your partner happy and content. It is very difficult to practice but the steps can be taken slowly and steadily and over the period of years you will realize that there are no confrontations and no arguments. It’s like you glance at one another and there is a feeling of oneness between the two individuals. Those couples are soul mates in true sense.

A Leadership filled with compassion

The turbulent times has demonstrated that greed is the sole trait which has lead to the crumpling of companies across the globe (Lehman Brothers and Satyam). However much people try to ignore this fact, it still holds the crux of the financial crisis. The whole situation has created a huge gap between the top management and the employees. The employee feels cheated when it sees how the top management whom it admired and followed, play with his life and future. The sentiments across the planet are of mistrust and anger. The recession is a signal to all people who see themselves as leaders of tomorrow to wake up and bring about a change.
The leaders of tomorrow need to have a fundamental base of compassion. We actually need to move from a perspective of customer centric to employee centric management. Many of the marketing gurus will argue that sales and profit will get affected with this kind of mindset. But a customer centric view is a very short term view. We forget that whatever is developed is after all a product of our company and when we say our company it means “our employees”. If “our employees” are not happy how can “our customers” be happy? We first need to take care of our internal environment. Once internally things are in place we will automatically see our customers and our external environment falling perfectly in place.