My life...my thoughts..my views

A tribute to the one and only “Venus of the Indian Screen”

2011-12-03T10:47:00.001+03:00

Those arching eyebrows, those large, languishing brown eyes…that shy sweet smile…the full lipped mouth, the perfect nose…the delicately sensuous figure…a truly rapturous beauty and unarguably the most beautiful woman to have ever graced the Indian movie screen…Madhubala, remains to this day one of the most enduring legends of Indian cinema.
Her mischievous stare was both confiding and questioning, a look that defied the dogma that man is superior to woman. Her sheer good looks overshadowed her acting talents but her swansong…the epic movie Mughal-e-Azam showed the world what this ethereal beauty was capable of. Is it by coincidence that she was born on Valentine’s day? Whoever named her Madhubala couldn’t have done better than that; for even the name translates to honey, fragrant, spring of love.

The Fall Guys

2010-07-28T18:12:00.003+03:00

Here's an interesting article By Rushabh

Are today's CEOs tomorrow's Fall Guys?
by Rushabh Mehta - Wednesday, 28 July 2010, 04:41 PM

Headlines across the world are rejoicing the sacking of Tony Hayward, CEO of BP. He has been tried and convicted by the mass jury comprising of media and public at large.

In February, Toyota’s President, Mr. Akio Toyoda, had to fly all the way to America to apologise in front of a congressional committee for Toyota growing too quickly and overlooking safety issues, specifically the issue of sudden acceleration in some of its vehicles. (Of the 89 deaths attributed to sudden acceleration, many now seem to be from human error).

Nokia’s CEO, Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, will be replaced very shortly because according to the company’s investors, Nokia as a brand has lost its meaning.

These are just three of the many examples of leaders being implicated for problems caused by the companies they lead. While CEOs and top managers do need to shoulder responsibility for any wrongs or nuisances created by their respective companies, it seems that in today’s trigger-happy world, CEOs are increasingly being attributed all the blame. Agreed, Tony Hayward did make a lot of gaffes on record, but so did George Bush. While the “Bushisms” were laughed off on late-night comedy shows, Hayward’s verbal blunders sounded his death knell.

It is common knowledge how expensive it is to replace an employee in any company today. The direct and indirect costs of finding, recruiting, training and (sometimes) relocating make “employee attrition” a feared phrase around the world. These costs multiply as we go up the employee hierarchy. Replacing CEOs costs tens, and sometimes hundreds, of millions of dollars to the companies and their shareholders. Yet, over 30% of the CEO successions in USA in 2008 were forced replacements (Booz Allen). Tony Hayward’s tenure as CEO at BP will be 3 years and 5 months in October 2010, and he will be most likely “exiled” to Siberia as a non-executive board member of TNK-BP with a severance and pension package worth millions of pounds. Bob Dudley, who had to flee from Russia as former head of TNK-BP in 2008 after disagreements with local shareholders, will now become CEO of BP.

While the media and the public demanded Hayward’s head on a platter, has this reshuffling by BP served any real purpose except help the company save some face? The real culprits – the politicians, the legislators, the companies that supplied and ran the rigs, the companies that built the safety devices, the engineers and supervisors meant to look after the safety issues, etc. are all getting away scot-free. The only good thing BP did was to wait till the oil leak was plugged before announcing Hayward’s replacement as CEO. They did not want the incoming CEO, Dudley, to end up holding an uncontrollably flaming torch that Tony Hayward supposedly lit. They probably learnt that lesson from last year’s replacement of the world’s topmost CEO – the American President. Obama is getting all the flak for the fires Bush lit before his tenure got over.

Since childhood, we have been taught to forgive and forget. We have been taught to give people a second chance. We have been taught that someone who apologises is a bigger person than someone who refuses to accept the apology. Why then do we see this archaic “off-with-his-head” attitude every time a CEO’s head pokes up from a crowd? The end result is that a CEO’s tenure gets shorter, his job gets more stressful, more corners are cut to appease stakeholders, and unbelievable amounts of money is spent in recycling the CEO position every few years. This adversely affects a CEO’s performance, and directly affects the stakeholders. If a CEO is bold enough to put his hand up and say that he is responsible, and needs time to correct the problem, why not give him a second chance? Citibank’s Vikram Pandit did that, got a second chance, and delivered on his promises.

And what happens to these laid-off CEOs? Some lie low, going into early retirement, to enjoy their fabulous severance packages. Many come out with their autobiographies, which are lapped up by the same people who criticised them. And some like Carly Fiorina run for the US Senate. At least people today forget easily, if not forgive.

- Rushabh

The Lock

2009-01-29T14:07:00.003+03:00

The prime minister of an ancient kingdom died. It was a custom in that land to choose the wisest man in the country for that post. To this end, many were examined and three were chosen. They were sent to the capital for the final test.
When they arrived in the city, they were tense and worried, wondering what the final test would be– like any student. They asked whoever they met if they could tell them what the test was going to be; and were surprised to hear that everyone knew. The king had built a special room that was fitted with a lock that opened only with a mathematical solution. They would be kept within this room, and the first to come out, would become the prime minister.
Two from among them were very worried, but the third made straight for his room and went to
bed. The other two thought; "Maybe he has already given up!” These two ran to the shops and
bought all books that contained information on locks, and sat poring over them the whole night. They knew everything about everything but locks; for they were neither thieves nor locksmiths, nor engineers, nor politicians. They were in a fix! They made inquiries from locksmiths and mathematicians. They asked engineers; they read all night for it was a question of their future; and the sacrifice of one night’s sleep was not too great.
The third contestant got up refreshed after a good night’s rest. He washed his face, got ready and left for the palace with the others. The rumours were correct. The king took them to the house where the much-talked of lock was, and explained: "This lock opens with a mathematical figure. He who opens it first becomes my prime minister. I shall wait outside.”
The three men entered the room, and the door was closed. The one who had slept all night went
into a corner, and sat with his eyes closed. The other two laughed: "Can locks be opened by closing the eyes?” They jeered. They dismissed him for a stupid fellow, and plunged into their work. They brought out the books they had smuggled in. and began to pore over them.
As soon as the doors closed, they drew out their books. The third man sat for about half an hour.
Then he walked silently up to the door. The other two were too busy to notice him. When he reached the door, he tried the lock. Lo, it was open! All he had to do was to walk out! The king came in and told the other two to fold up their books. He had chosen his prime minister.
”The man who was to come out, has come out!” he said.
”But how could he? He had done nothing!”
”There was nothing to be done,” said the king. ”The lock was merely hung, and not fastened. I had gathered that the most intelligent of you will not first inspect whether the lock was really locked.” Before solving a problem, is it not necessary to first find out whether the problem actually exists? If it exists, it needs to be solved but if it does not, how can it be solved? This man demonstrated his wisdom. He first set out to know whether the problem existed. That is the first sign of an intelligent man.

The Confusion

2009-01-29T12:51:00.003+03:00

When I was working for my earlier company Voltas, we had a driver called Nathan. Nathan had this uncanny habit of using a combination of Hindi and English words in any sentence. Who could have ever thought that one day; this habit of his would lead to such Confusion.
This incident took place when we were doing the Villagio Mall project. Those days we used to operate from the site office and almost the entire project team was newly recruited. We had Milind, the new mechanical engineer - Tall, dark & handsome – just like me – But no he was much taller – about 6 feet 3 inches. The driver Nathan I have already introduced in the beginning.
Then we had – Sadanand, our receptionist, a perpetually jittery character.
And last but not the least we had a new office boy. He was short guy with a very peculiar name - Mohan Kumar Limboo. Hardly anybody called him Mohan, we all loved to call him Limboo, which incidentally means lemon in Hindi.
Now, one day Milind, the tall mechanical engineer had ordered some masking tape from one of the hardware suppliers and asked Nathan, the driver to collect it. As Nathan was going out, Limboo caught hold of him and requested him to buy some bread on his way back.
Nathan reached the hardware stores & approached the salesman at the counter.
“Sir, I’m from Voltas and I’ve come to collect the masking tape.”
“Yes yes - So, which one do you want?”
“What sir?”
“I said which one do you want, white or brown?”
“I don’t know sir”
“If you don’t know then ask your sir”
“Wait sir, I call sir”
Now Nathan called up Sadanand and said
“Can I speak to Lamboo sir, please?”
Lamboo means tall in Hindi. And Sadanand probably didn’t hear him properly and instead of transferring to Milind, he promptly transferred the line to the office boy Limboo. Limboo wondered - why the hell is he calling me? I only asked him to buy bread. And Limboo answered.
“Hello”
But by this time Nathan decided not to confront his boss and gave the telephone to the salesman.
The store fellow said - “Ya, hello – which one do you want white or brown?”
“I beg your pardon?” said Limboo
“Which one do you want? White or brown?”
Limboo replied.
“Anything will do– but it should be fresh”
“Pardon sir”
“I said, It should be fresh”
The counter fellow wondered – Just look at the quality of engineers we have these days –They don’t even know proper English – using an adjective fresh to describe brand new. So he replied
“Don’t worry sir , its all brand new but do you want 35 yards or 45 yards”
Limboo was simply stunned and now he understood, Nathan was trying to pull a fast one on him, so he decided to give him a smart reply
“Whatever it is -I want a sliced one”
“Pardon sir?”
“I said, I want it to be sliced’
This was too much for the counter fellow to handle and he called his supervisor. The supervisor was annoyed.
“Why what happened – can’t you handle simple orders such as masking tape?” He grabbed the telephone and said
"Hello, who's speaking please?"
"Limboo speaking"
"Pardon me"
"Limboo speaking"
"Can I speak to Milind"
Its only when Milind spoke to the shop supervisor that this whole confusion was cleared.

This incident has taught me an important thing - Always address people by their proper names.

From Scarcity to Sufficiency

2008-12-01T22:58:00.006+03:00

Money does not belong to us exclusively. It either belongs to all of us or to none of us. It is one of those great commons that has been created by man. Money, in fact is so much like water. In some people’s lives it flows gushing forth like a river and in others, it flows like a tiny trickle. But whether it flows like a river or a trickle, money brings opportunity. Opportunity to reallocate it for something good, for the people & for this world.

But is this happening, is the money being used for something good? Unfortunately not. Today, huge proportions of the world’s financial resources are going towards destruction, depletion, war, terrorism, weaponry and consumption. And who wants all this?, not me, not you, nobody wants it. All of us want money to move towards what we love, towards life, towards the affirmation of life, for the well being of our species and our planet and our habitat.

So what is stopping you and me from achieving this? It is our mindset of scarcity. All the time we think that things are not enough and so we end up in trying to accumulate more and more, just like tyrants. And when we become busy in scrambling for more and more, we fail to notice & appreciate and nourish what we already have. We have reduced ourselves from citizens to consumers. A consumer consumes, destroys, depletes. And a citizen is somebody who creates, who contributes, who gives. So how can we become citizens once again? It’s quite simple really. All you have to do is use your imagination. For a moment, imagine that there is no scarcity, there is enough for everyone and you will soon realize that actually it is true there is really no scarcity. Our needs are always met one way or the other, and often by ways that we never expected.

This journey from scarcity to sufficiency can be accomplished if you stop trying to get more and more of what you don’t really need. And when you stop this unnecessary accumulation, the result is that it frees up oceans of energy to make a difference with what you already have. When you make that difference, then whatever you do whether it is social work, volunteering, philantrophy, whatsoever little you do, it multiplies, expands, increases. In simple words, what you appreciate, appreciates.

There are 6 ways to begin this journey from scarcity to sufficiency.

Get the clutter out of your life.

Don’t buy unless you can let go of something.

Practice appreciation for what you already have.

Learn to value intangible gifts much more than tangible gifts.

Nourish your body instead of filling it.

Whenever you spend money, ask yourself how is it going to affect the world.

Remember - Scarcity breeds competition, sufficiency breeds collaboration. We all have a duty to perform. We have to carry out the sacred work of reallocating the world resources away from fear and greed and move them towards love and compassion. And the only way to do that is by changing our mindset. Changing it from scarcity to sufficiency.

The humanist mystic

2008-11-21T23:16:00.004+03:00

The Sufi poet, philosopher & humanist, Bulleh Shah left behind some writings, which seem to transcend time. The sheer simplicity with which he has been able to address the complex fundamental issues of life and humanity is a large part of why he appeals to so many. Here’s a small couplet which is in Punjabi & then its English translation.

Padh padh ilm hazaar kitaabaan
Qaddi apnay aap nou padhiya naee
Jaan jaan wadhday mandir maseedi
Qaddi mann apnay wich wadhiya naee
Aa-vain ladhda aye shaitan de naal bandeaa
Qaddi nafss apnay naal ladhiya naee

Yes, yes, you have read thousands of books
But you have never tried to read your own self
You rush in, into your temples, into your mosques
But you have never tried to enter your own heart
Futile are all your battles with Satan
For you have never tried to fight your own selfish egocentric desires

Are you a social prophet?

2008-11-19T00:52:00.007+03:00

Very often we come across the words "Non Profit Sector" or "Non Govt sector" or the "Not for" sector. The words "non" and "not for" have very negative connotations to them. "Non" is an unfortunate label & it gives us a feeling that this is a secondary sector and is not where all the action is. Yet Mahatma Gandhi, Mother Teresa, Martin Luther King and so many others worked in this non sector or not for sector. So if you look at history where things really changed, things that made a profound impact on the world is this very "non" sector. A more appropraite label for this sector should be the social profit sector, because we are generating social profit for our fellow human beings & therefore all of us who contribute to a good cause, for the well being of our species, our planet our habitat are social prophets who are generating social profit.
Are you one of them?

Be a giver

2008-11-18T19:56:00.004+03:00

Why do you want that everybody should respect you? What have you got? Why are you sitting on top of an ivory tower? Why do you want to see yourself important in the eyes of others, in comparison with others? Why do you want that whoever meets you should respect you, love you, and regard you? Why do you desire all this, why do you expect all this? Why do you want to be treated always as His Holiness or Her Highness?

I will tell you why? Because you are basically greedy, you only want to get love, get respect, get greetings from others. You are not looking for email, you are looking for me-mail, don't you feel elated if the email is regarding you, a birthday greeting perhaps, a new year wish perhaps.

Now for a change be a giver. Give love, give respect, give greetings, give compliments to others. Be like a flower, spread your fragrance. Just send love letters, don't bother about the address, simply keep posting. They will reach somebody.

You want to make friends, win hearts, then from today start giving. Be a giver.

Be Remarkable

2008-11-17T22:49:00.005+03:00

Look at the Taj Mahal. This monument has not only changed forever the importance of the city of Agra, but it has also become the hallmark of an entire nation. 377 years have passed from the time that this monument was built, but even today it is officially considered as one of the Seven Wonders of the World . Ever wondered why ? because it is- remarkable.

What is the most common thing that you find in this world ? It is mediocrity. So, what is mediocrity, mediocrity is being average. Now one thing you must get it straight - Mediocrity is for losers. And the reason that mediocrity is for losers is that if you are given a choice of 5 places to have lunch, will you choose a mediocre restaurant?, if you are given a choice of 5 people to hire, will you settle for the mediocre candidate?, if you are given a choice of 5 movies to watch will you watch a mediocre movie? The answer to all these questions is No. Why, because we are always looking for the best, we look for something remarkable.

Imagine you are in Doha like me & you are driving down the corniche road, and you see a date tree, what will be your reaction? "Hey!!...Look a date tree!!" . How many of you will react this way –Nobody. Why? because a date tree is a common sight in Doha. A date tree is as good as invisible.

But if the date tree had purple leaves (considering that this colour ihas become so popular after the US elections), now what would be your reaction? Yes surely you would notice it. So the point is, that the deciding factor about what gets built, what gets changed, what gets done, what gets sold, what gets purchased, what gets talked about is- is it remarkable?

Let's take another example. Have a look at Google’s home page & the have a look at Yahoo’s home page. Is there any difference? Yahoo has exactly 152 links on the same page & Google hardly has a few distracting links. Now why do we go to a search engine? To search – right. And Google helps you to do exactly what you came to do – to search. So it is not surprising that Google is the number one search engine in the world today. Google decided long ago not to be mediocre, not to be average, it decided to stand out from the crowd, it decided to be remarkable.

So how can we be remarkable? It’s very easy. What we have to do is simply refuse to settle for mediocre, refuse to settle for run of the mill, refuse to settle for second rate stuff.

There are 2 things to remember

No 1. Don’t be safe. If you always play safe you will remain what you are now, average. Go ahead, take a risk, remember the old saying, no pain no gain.

No 2. Very good is bad. Every body these days is very good, you have very good architects, you have very good doctors and you have very good toastmasters, so if you are looking for very good they can be bought for a dime a dozen. The need of the hour is not very good, the need of the hour is something that is remarkable.

So what have you decided, will you be remarkable?

Interesting Urdu snippets - part 1 of ?

2008-11-15T23:44:00.005+03:00

Exceptions do not make rules. The exception here is the picture which has little relation with this blog which is about some interesting Urdu phrases. Translating Urdu words into English is a daunting task and the translations do not do full justice to what the deeper meaning is.

Hamari parwaaz ke aasmaan badal gaye hain
We soar in different skies or
We have chosen different ways to progress in life

Jis gaon jaana nahin us gaon ka raasta kya poonchna
Why should I ask you the way of that place which I don't want to go to

Rishtey chheeni ke bartano ki tarah naazuk hote hain ek dafa toot jayen to laakh inhe duniyadaari aur maslehat ki elfi shelfi se jod lein ye jud nahin paate aur aankhon ko chhubne lagte hain
Relations are extremely delicate like China crockery
Once broken, then even if you try to join them using the glue of worldly expediencies
You cannot join them and they are painful to see

Neki apna inaam khud hoti hai
An act of virtue is its own prize

Meherbaan hoke bula lo mujhe cchaaho jis waqt
Main gaya waqt nahin hoon ke aa bhi na sakoon
Do an act of kindness and call me whenever you want
I am not "time" that has passed & will not be able to come back

Raah mein wo mile kahaan
aur bazm mein wo bulaye kyon?
No chance that I could ever meet (him/her) on the way
And (he/she) never called me to (his/her) gathering

Yahaan kutte to aazaad phir rahen hain
aur pattharon ko baandh rakha hai
Here dogs are free to roam around
And stones have been tied up

Waqt khush khush kaatne ka mashwara dete hue
ro pada wo aap mujhko hausla dete hue
Whilst suggesting me to be happy
He himself burst into tears while consoling me

Sone ke kalam se likhne se tehreer to sone ki nahin ho jaati
If I use a golden pen to write, the writing will not become golden

Sahee baat ke saath agar aur magar lag jaaye to baat sahi nahin rahti
If ifs and buts are stated with a correct statement then that statement is not correct anymore

Siyasat ka maidaan bhi stock exchange ki tarah hota hai zara bhi calculation ya information mein galti ho jaaye to baat kahaan se kahaan pahunch jaati hai
Politics is like a stock exchange, a slight error in calculation or information can have disastrous results

Zindagi bhi ek casino ki tarah hai, yahaan aadmi jitna bada daaon khelta hai kaamiyaabi bhi utni hi badi milti hai
Life islike a casino. Here, the higher your stakes, higher is the level of your success

Hakim ki aagadi aur ghode ki pecchaadi se bacchna cchahiye
Be careful about trespassing your master & being at the receiving end of your horse

Taqdeer ne to hum sub ko ek jaisa hi paida kiya hain
ye oonch neech to humne paida kiye hain
Fate has given birth to all of us as equals
These highs and lows are our creation

Maut dikha kar bukhaar pe raazi kar liya
I threatened him with death, so he agreed to something lesser than that

What next after success?

2008-11-12T22:46:00.005+03:00

OK, so you are successful. What next after being successful?

Look at Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple Inc. Steve helped to invent the personal computer, helped to launch the mouse driven graphical interface, helped to launch the MP3 business, helped launch computer animations at Pixar and is currently the Walt Disney Company's largest individual shareholder and a member of its Board of Directors. And he’s not done – right?

The point is, just like skiing, the goal is not how fast to get to the bottom of the hill, but the goal is to have a bunch of good runs before the sun sets.

Revisiting Ghalib

2008-11-09T22:21:00.006+03:00

It was in the year 1992 when I was in Bahrain that I happened to listen for the first time to a few ghazals by Jagjit & Chitra Singh from their album entitled “Mirza Ghalib”. At that time I hardly paid any attention to the poetry as I was simply mesmerized by Jagjit’s soulful & mystical voice complimented by Chitra’s unique crystal clear and sweet vocals.

It was after a gap of almost 16 years that I listened again to the same ghazals but this time Ghalib’s poetic genius was what swept me off my feet. And I started wondering and imagining what kind of a person in real life he must have been. Luckily the entire serial on his life, produced and directed by Gulzar was available on video.google.com.

I thoroughly enjoyed watching it – it was the first time that I was doing that & some of the scenes enacted by Naseerudin Shah, who plays Ghalib & Tanvi Azmi, who plays his wife were so beautiful and realistic that I have nothing but appreciation for them and Gulzar. The entire story about Ghalib’s life has tragic underlying connotations, but nevertheless there are some moments that evoke a smile & even a giggle perhaps. There is a scene where his wife challenges Ghalib to go and marry a second time to which he responds

Paaon ki ek hi beidhee ne mushkil mein daal diya hai

Doosri bhi pehen lee to chalne se hi nachaar ho jaoonga

Meaning

Even the one shackle on one of my feet is causing me problems

If I wear another shackle then I won’t be able to walk at all

Once Ghalib tells his wife that he is very sad, to which she retorts that he never seems to look sad & to this Ghalib replies

Unke dekhe se aa jaatee hein muhn par raunak

Wo samajhte hein ke beemaar ka haal achcha hai

Meaning

As soon as my beloved sees me, my face starts glowing

And she thinks that I am all right & not ill any more

In another scene, Ghalib’s wife nudges him and asks him if he is not even afraid of God? To which he replies with a smile

Darta wohi hai jiske paas koi poonji ho

Tumhare paas eemaan hai is liye darti ho

Aur hamaare paas siwaaye is eemaan wali ke kuch nahin hai

Meaning

The only person who is afraid is the one who has some possessions

You possess faith & therefore you are afraid

And I have nothing except you - the possessor of faith

Which jail is better?

2008-11-09T09:49:00.007+03:00

Mirza Ghalib, one of the greatest poets from India, was once in jail for a period of six months. One morning, he heard a man crying from the adjoining room. On enquiring from the jail attendant, he came to know that a young man had been found guilty of some crime and would have to spend 3 months in custody.

Ghalib went to the man asked him.

"What is the matter my friend, why are you crying?"

"I have to spend three months in this jail...", the man replied between sobs,

"So what?"

"You don't understand, I was about to get married today, and I ended up here..."

"You should thank God for that, that you were just saved from a life sentence. Believe me, 3 months you will spend easily here, but imagine how much you might have suffered being a captive for all your life. You should also be thankful to the policeman who caught you & by catching you even he has inadvertently done something good in his life."

The pen is mightier than the sword

2008-11-09T09:17:00.004+03:00

Woh baadshah hai talvaar ke
Hum kalam ke shahenshah hai

Unka mulk cchin sakta hai
Hamari milkiat koi nahin ccheen sakta

Ghalib

meaning

He is a king by means of his sword
But I too am a prince of the pen

His kingdom can be snatched away
But my property (the art of writing poetry) cannot be taken away by anyone

This applies to bloggers as well I guess!

Definition of homework, profession & vacation

2008-11-06T07:36:00.003+03:00

When you sit at home and worry - you call it homework
When you sit in the office and worry - you call it profession.
When you sit on the beach and worry - you call it vacation.

If you carry your worries with you all the time, your life will remain unchanged.

Right decision for the wrong reason

2008-11-06T00:48:00.006+03:00

There were 3 persons undergoing treatment at a lunatic asylum. The doctor in charge was pretty confident that they were progressing well and would soon be cured. So after a month's treatment he called all the 3 of them in front of a large and deep empty swimming pool. He asked the 1st person to jump in the pool, who gladly did so & broke his hand. The next person also jumped, and he broke his leg. Now the doctor asked the 3rd person to jump.
"No doctor, not me".

The doctor was elated, that at least this fellow was cured.
"Good, go and fetch your things, you can go home now",the doctor told him.
"But by the way, can you tell me why you did not jump".
"I am not mad, doctor, I do not know swimming"

Don't we also sometimes do the same thing? - take a right decision for the wrong reasons, think about it!

Traffic Patient

2008-10-14T13:14:00.006+03:00

Tune in to any radio station of UAE like 89.1 or 101.6 or 95.3 FM and you will always find people calling up the radio jockeys and informing them about traffic jams. The RJ's acknowledge these so called jam busters and advise the people on the roads to avoid a particular road. I sometimes wonder whether it really must be helping people, especially those who want to reach a particular destination and that's the only road that they can take. But yesterday, I was quite amused to listen to a lady who called up the radio jockey and described her woes of being stuck for the last 2 hours in front of a petrol station, and described herself as a "traffic patient". It seems that the people around her had given up and many had crossed the road and fetched themselves tea/ coffee and were standing on the sidewalks enjoying the view. However, more than her story, I liked the term "Traffic Patient" so much, that it compelled me to post this blog. Isn't it such an appropriate term to describe a person's condition stuck in traffic?

A traffic patient can be described as one who has the following symptoms

1. He / she always tends to get stuck in traffic for hours together.

2. He / she has pain in the right leg (feet, toe, thighs, knees) because of applying brake and accelerator after every 15 seconds and sometimes continuously for an hour or so.

3.He / she suffers from hypertension because each car seems to be trying to overtake him / her by doing some manouvres that he / she could never dream of.

4.He / she suffers from chronic headaches, eye stress etc because he / she has to concentrate on the road completely against his / her wishes.

You might have read the famous cliche "Every problem is actually an opportunity knocking at your door". So can the traffic problem also be an opportunity? Yes, if you think along these lines:

1. If you are a doctor, you can advertise that you specialise in treating traffic patients, that you have special medicines to cure headaches, eyes irritation, feet - toes-knees-thighs-aches.

2. You can open a massage parlour that specialises in giving special " anti-traffic" massage. Think of a good jingle to place an ad.

3. If you are a Toastmaster, getting stuck in traffic is the best opportunity to practice your speech. In fact, if your husband / wife dislikes you preparing a speech at home, just go out for some work in the car and prepare your speech while you are stuck in traffic. I have done that several times and no, it does not seem odd to others who look at you because they think that you are speaking to somebody on hands free.

4.Open a workshop specialising in installation of the latest DVD player with a built in 8 inch screen that can play movies of all formats mpeg, avi, flv, divx, wma etc etc. You can market this by telling people that they can gainfully use the time they waste in waiting in traffic jams, by catching up on the latest movies or serials. If priced reasonably, the demand to install these DVD players will be so high that it is an assured way to become a millionaire.

Can you think of more?

But this really - takes the cake- it is what my friend from Dubai had to say about the traffic situation in Dubai. "Sajid, these days I am spending more time in my car than with my wife, but it is difficult to say which is better".

Depriving our children

2008-08-10T10:55:00.003+03:00

If I were to ask you – Are today's children deprived? Most of you would answer with a resounding – No. And why is that? Its because we know that we are providing our children with all the comforts imaginable, good food, airconditioned rooms & cars, the latest games and gadgets (laptops, playstations, mobiles), the best schools, good clothes, holidays overseas every year, the list is endless. We give them all this but do we give them our time? Have we sat with them even for a few minutes for a heart to heart talk about what is bothering them? what are their aspirations? are they feeling intimidated by peer pressure? there could be so many things on their mind. But we are so caught up in meeting our own deadlines – professional as well as personal, in sorting out our own priorities, that we hardly bother about this.
Children, today, are deprived not because we do not give them things, but because we do not sufficiently value what they give us. We need to be alert to welcome what children have to offer. Remember what Kahlil Gibran wrote about children,

You may give them your love but not your thoughts, for they have their own thoughts. You may house their bodies but not their souls, for their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams. You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you. For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday. You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.

Our children are flying forward into areas we have not charted ourselves. If you want to know what the society will be like in the next twenty years, you don't need to read science fiction books, nor do you need to surf the net for articles about this topic, you simply have to go and visit any kindergarten school, you simply have to visit the homes where children between the ages 5 to 10 are living.

Are we teaching our children to be independent, to love, to respect, to laugh or are we busy in bombarding their young minds with what was handed down to us from previous generations – our concepts of right and wrong, our divisive & opinionated beliefs about why we do things the way we do them?

Flirt with Fear

2008-07-22T09:54:00.005+03:00

Once , a disciple went running to his master.
"Master, Master, I am very afraid. I feel that I am going to die very soon. What can I do?"
The Master replied – "Don’t worry, I will solve your problem".
"But first let us have a cup of coffee."
Both of them sat and had coffee. The master then explained to the disciple that fear is just another thought; it is only in the mind. And the mysterious thing about the mind is that it can never hold on to any one thought for a long time. Not even the thought of death you can hold on to for a long time, the fear of death can be washed out simply by thinking about a cup of coffee. So you see how shallow fear is?
Have you seen a cat drinking milk? If you observe carefully, you will see that the cat always drinks or rather laps up milk with its eyes closed. Why? Because she thinks that by closing her eyes, she will be cut off from this world. We human beings also sometimes think that by choosing to ignore fear, fear will vanish. This is not possible, fear will be there whether you like it or not and the only way to counter fear is to develop the courage to fight it. Real courageous people not only fight fear they even flirt with fear.

You see, the very fact that you are alive, means that you have something to lose, and the moment you have something to lose you will always have fear & so there is no point trying to run away from fear. What you have to do is to face it, work on the causes that are creating the fear. Learn to flirt with fear.

The dark side of competition

2008-06-11T11:20:00.003+03:00

Once upon a time there was a wicked king. He was an absolute dictator. In his kingdom there were two men, they were real good friends, and only they had the courage to oppose him, so he ordered his soldiers to catch them and he put them inside jail and sentenced them to death. Soon came the day when they were to be put to death by hanging. They both sat huddled together and the hangman called out the first person's name. "Noori". The first person walked slowly to the gallows. "You are not Noori". "Yes I am not Noori, but I love Noori so much that I want to die before him".

Yes this is real love, this is how love speaks but just think about it - what are we teaching our children? are we teaching them to love?

The answer is NO. We are teaching them competition, we are teaching them ambition, we are teaching them politics. Some of you may disagree with me, you may say that no we teach our children that they should love others. But, have you ever thought about this. The entire structure of our education system is built on competition and not on love. When one boy comes first in a class, the other boy is told that he is lagging behind and this fellow has come first. So what are you teaching him, you are teaching him to compete and get ahead? You are teaching him ego, you are telling him that one who has come first is higher, and one who is behind is lower. One who comes first is awarded gold medals and merit certificates; he is garlanded and photographed, and others, who are behind, what happens to them. They are ignored & even insulted by the system by society.

So tell me in this way when the children are trained in ego, in jealousy and in competition, how can they love?

We are all trying to push others out of our way, we all want to go ahead, and we pull others back, and this happens in case of every person, right from the peon to the president. This pushing and pulling – this is nothing but violence. Look all around you, everybody's hand is at everybody else's throat.

We say that we are teaching sympathy and generosity but how can a competitive mind be sympathetic – it cannot be – the competitive mind is always hard & selfish. Schools and universities today are indirectly teaching violence and we call it education?

The real problem is that we have made success as the center of our lives. When dishonesty increases, we go on shouting and crying that dishonesty is increasing and become unhappy. But , as long as success is the only yardstick, lies, dishonesty, thefts are bound to follow. They are shadows of success. They cannot be removed. We become so blind in becoming successful, we can do anything to achieve success. Why do you think, even the best sports people resort to drugs? They are blinded - by hook or by crook they want to win. So, everything else becomes secondary. And we have been teaching this for thousands of years. But the time has come to change our old paradigm. Success is not of any value. Success is not a matter of great respect or honor. A man must be fulfilled, not successful. Success is not a destination, it is about having fun along the journey.

Don't help others

2008-06-05T11:16:00.003+03:00

A small child was talking to his mother, and the mother said, "Remember always to help others." And the child asked, "Then what will the others do?"Naturally the mother said, "They will help others." The child said, "This seems to be a strange scheme. Why not help yourself, why make things unnecessarily complex?"

The world is full of miserable people & they are helping other miserable people, the blind leading others who are blind. What help can you give? It is a very dangerous idea which has prevailed throughout the centuries.

In a small school the lady teacher told the boys, "At least once per week you should do a good thing." One boy asked, "Just please give us some examples of good things. We don’t know what is good.” So she said, "For example, a blind woman wants to cross the street; then help her to cross the street. This is a good job; this is virtuous."

The next week she asked, "Did any of you remember to do what I have said to you?" Three children raised their hands. She said, "This is not good – the whole class has not been following. But still, it is good that at least three boys did something good." She asked the first, "What have you done?" He said, "Exactly what you have said: One old woman who was blind, I helped her to cross the street."

She said, "That’s very good. God will bless you." She asked the second, "What have you done?" He said, "The same – a blind old woman, I helped her to cross the street." The teacher became a little puzzled – where are they finding blind old women? But it is a big city; perhaps they may have found two. She asked the third and he said, "I did exactly what they have done: helped a blind old woman cross the street."

The teacher said, "But where did you find three blind women?" They said, "You don’t understand: there were not three blind women, there was only one blind woman. And it was so hard to help her to cross the street! She was beating us and shouting and screaming, because she did not want to cross, but we were intent on doing some virtuous act. A crowd gathered, people were shouting at us, but we said, don’t be worried. We are taking her to the other side. But she never wanted to go to the other side!"

People are being told to help others, and they are empty within themselves. They are being told to love others – love your neighbors, love your friends, love your enemies – and they are never told to love themselves.

A person who hates himself cannot love anybody; he can only pretend. And this will only lead to more frustration for the one who is helping and the one who is being helped.

Beyond the Stars!

2008-06-03T12:20:00.014+03:00

Poems, music, paintings and sculptures have always enthused me and I sometimes wonder, how these people could write so beautifully, compose such enchanting melodies, paint masterpieces or carve such elegant things from stone.

Allama Iqbal was one the greatest poets of the last century and I am presenting in this blog one of his famous poems from his poetry book "Bang-e-dara" i.e. "The Call of the Marching Bell".

The poem is first presented in Urdu (transliteration) followed by a translation. In my opinion the translation falls far short of conveying the poet's thoughts, after all language itself is a crutch to express ourselves. But that is the best I could manage. So here goes...

Sitaron se aage jahaan aur bhi hain

Abhi ishq ke imtihaan aur bhi hain

Taahii zindagi se nahin ye fazayen

Yahan sainkdon karawan aur bhi hain

Kanaa'at na kar aalam-e-rang-o-bu par

Chaman aur bhi, aashiyan aur bhi hain

Agar kho gaya ek nasheman to kya gham

Maqamat-e-aah-o-fugaan aur bhi hain

Tu shaheen hai parwaz hai kaam tera

Tere saamne aasman aur bhi hain

Isi roz-o-shab mein ulajh kar na rah ja

Ke tere zamin-o-makan aur bhi hain

Gaye din ke tanha tha main anjuman mein

Yahan ab mere raazadan aur bhi hain

The Translation

Beyond the stars there are other worlds of light

There are more trials of love, besides those on earth.

These spheres are not empty of the pulse of life

There are a hundred forms of life, latent in these spheres

Be not content with this earth, although it has a myriad of colours

There are more gardens, more worlds to be explored

Grieve not if thou losest this abode of sorrow

There are other abodes for thee, for the sighs of yearning and grief

Thou art of eagle breed, born for ethereal flights

Thou hast, beyond those narrowing skies, loftier heavens to roam

Do not get entangled in these deceptive days and nights

Thou has other worlds, beyond linear time and space

Intoxicated in love

2008-06-01T11:23:00.004+03:00

I am not sure if this is a story or a historical fact. But a beautiful one.

Akbar was one of the greatest emperor's of India. One day he had gone hunting in the forest with all his friends, and they all got lost. Evening was descending, the sun was setting and it was the time to pray. So Akbar stopped under a huge tree, tied his horse to the tree and sat on the ground to do his last prayer of the day. And as he was praying, a woman, a young woman, ran just by his side, and collided with him - the collision was so bad that he actually fell down. It seemed as if she was mad or blind. Still, she did not look back. Akbar naturally was very angry.

An ordinary village girl, not caring at all, running like mad and hitting the emperor. Akbar finished his prayer quickly because he wanted to catch hold of the girl. She could not be allowed to do such things. If she could behave with the emperor in such a way, what to say about other people? But he could not figure out – it was getting dark – where she had gone. But he waited, thinking she must come back to the village. He was just outside the village.

And finally she came. Akbar stopped her and said, "Do you remember what you have done?"

She said, "I don’t remember anything. Do you?"

Akbar said, "You seem to be very strange. You don’t understand. You are talking with the emperor of the country."

She said, "I understand, but I don’t remember anything of what you are talking about."

He said, "What am I talking about? I have been praying here and you ran in such a way that you
pushed me, and I fell down. You disturbed my prayer!"

She said, "Perhaps if you say so, it must have been so, but you have to forgive me. I was running because I wanted to reach the spot and wait for my lover just on the road which runs through the forest. I wanted to greet him – he is coming after many years – just outside the village. I could not remain sitting in the house and waiting. I knew that he will be waiting, thinking that I must be standing just by the side of a tree where we used to meet when we were young. That’s why I was so lost in my desire to reach the spot that I did not know I had committed any mistake. Please forgive me, it must have been committed without my knowing at all."

She was so innocent and tears came to her eyes because she had hurt her own emperor. "You can give me any punishment, otherwise it will remain heavy on my heart. But just one question before you punish me: you were in prayer – still you were not so much lost in your prayer as I was, because I don’t remember at all. It cannot be that I hit you ... it cannot be one-sided. Your body also must have touched my body, but I don’t remember having seen anybody on the way – praying or falling or anything. I don’t remember that anybody touched my body. So I am puzzled, and I would like to be clear about it. Is your prayer not as strong as as my love?"

Akbar felt compelled to ask forgiveness from that village girl. He later said that "I have never forgotten her face, and I have never forgotten that my prayer is just formal. If I am lost in my prayer and my love, in my gratitude towards the ultimate, then how can I be aware that somebody has touched me, pushed me, or that my body has fallen? I would not have been aware of anything. But I was aware and that makes it certain that my prayer is just superficial.

Comparison - The Greatest Disease

2008-05-27T13:57:00.004+03:00

From our very early childhood, we are taught comparison. Your mother starts comparing you, not only with other children but also your own siblings, "Look at your brother, see how he is getting good grades, and look at you, wasting your time in playing". The teacher compares you: "Look at Tom, how well he is doing, and you are no good at all! "

From the very beginning you are being told that you should compare yourself with others. This is the greatest disease; it is like a cancer that goes on destroying your very soul – because each individual is unique, and comparison is not possible. I am just myself and you are just yourself. There is nobody else in the world that you can be compared with. Do you compare a lily with a rose? A lily is a lily, a rose is a rose. You don’t compare. Do you compare an orange with an apple? You don’t compare. You know they are different! Comparison is not possible.
Every person is unique. There has never been any individual like you before and there will never be again. You are utterly unique. It is your privilege, your prerogative, it is God’s blessing, that He has made you unique. Don’t compare. Comparison will bring trouble. If you fall victim to this disease of comparison, then you will either become very egoistic or you will become very bitter; it depends on whom you compare yourself with. If you compare yourself with those who seem to be bigger than you, higher than you, greater than you, then you will become bitter.
You will nurture a complaint in your heart "Why am I not greater than so & so? Why am I not like that person? Why am I not physically so beautiful, so strong? Why am I not intelligent? Why am I not this, not that?” And there are millions of things in the world....If you compare yourself with the people who are greater in some way than you, you will become bitter, very bitter. Your life will become poisoned by the comparison. You will remain always in a state of depression, as if you have been deceived , betrayed , as if you have been let down.

And on the other hand, if you compare yourself with people who are smaller than you, in some way lesser than you, then you will become very egoistic. This is one of the reasons why such people collect smaller people around themselves so that they can look bigger than they are by comparison. It is stupid, but one cannot expect anything more from such foolish people.

The vast majority of us, we always look at others’ houses, their successes, their achievements, and feel somewhat bitter. But only a man who understands the uniqueness of everybody , feels immense gratitude for whatsoever God has given to him. If you don’ t compare, then you are neither bigger nor smaller, neither ugly nor beautiful, neither intelligent nor stupid. If you don’t compare, you are simply yourself And in that state of simply being yourself, spring comes, flowers come. It is only from a deep acceptance of life, do we have a deep gratitude towards what God has blessed us with & this helps to bring the spring.

A lesson from fledglings

2008-05-08T07:45:00.003+03:00

On a nearby tree a bird was raising her young. There were two babies & they kept on growing day by day. One day they came out of the nest for the first time. When they came out of the nest, both of them settled on a branch – wonderstruck, trying their wings, thinking should we go forward or not? They had never come out of their nest before, and their mother was sitting on a distant tree giving them a call, a loud call ... she went on calling. Hearing her call, they fluttered their wings. But the attachment to the nest, to the safety was too much. And they had never before opened their wings... Should we open them or not? Will we be able to fly or not? The mother kept on calling, kept on provoking, call after call. It took about half an hour, slowly slowly they fluttered their wings, moved a little further from the nest, sat on other branches of the same tree. They felt a little more confident, flew a little in the air and came back. Confidence grew further and then they flew away... They have not been seen since. They never came back. Why come back? The nest is left behind – two egg shells left in it, broken to pieces.

Birds who have never flown before gather the courage to fly into the sky, but we are human beings, bestowed with unparalleled capabilities & still cannot gather courage. We hesitate, procrastinate, doubt & fear the unknown. Isn't it time that we learn from the baby birds?

Contradiction - that's what life is!

2008-05-08T07:11:00.004+03:00

You see a man who is loving. When the man is loving you think,"Yes, how nice is this man." But the next moment he is angry; then there is a contradiction. He is angry and loving and jealous and possessive, and sometimes so sharing, and sometimes so mean. Have you not seen it?

Sometimes your friend is so sharing and sometimes so mean. This is how reality is. Reality contains all contradictions. Don't you realise how absurd and ridiculous we all are and yet how incredibly beautiful life is. Nothing is contradictory in it. If you were all very, very consistent, life would not be so rich. It would be stale and gray. Life is rich because it is a rainbow, it is psychedelic. It has so many colors and so many changing colors. And it is so unpredictable – that’s why it is absurd. Why do you call it absurd? Because you cannot contain it in your logic. Your logic falls short; it is bigger than your logic. It destroys your logic. Somehow you make a plan, set a goal, toil & burn the midnight oil and then what happens, life comes and destroys everything.

We want to define everything, this is right, this is wrong. We want to impose our moral values on others without realising that we ourselves are nothing but a bunch of contradictions. H.G. Wells once wrote "Self righteous morality is nothing but jealousy with a halo". If you look deeply wherever you find imposed morality, there is bound to be a trace of hypocrisy over there.

Can there be pleasure without pain, light without darkness, up without down ? And we keep arguing on petty matters. The big pine tree and the small rosebush – who is higher? Neither the pine tree ever boasts that she is higher, nor the rosebush ever says that "You may be higher, but where are the roses?" The real height in the roses is in the fragrance, in the flowering. Height itself is not enough to be higher.But the rosebush and the pine tree remain together without any quarrel, any competition, for the simple reason that they both understand that they are part of the same nature.

Truth has its own fragrance.
Love has its own power.

Silence has its own impact.

Words fall short

2008-05-08T07:04:00.003+03:00

Waking up early in the morning,the sun is rising in the garden, the trees are waking up. The smell of fresh earth is in the air –perhaps it has just rained. The dew drops on the grass leaves are shining like pearls. The birds have started singing. A peacock dances, a cuckoo calls. Flowers bloom, the lotuses open their petals. You see all this. It is not beyond your senses, it is within their grasp. It is not unknown to you, it is known. You experience all this beauty. If somebody asks you to describe it in one word, what would you say? Just this: it was beautiful, it was very beautiful. But is this any description? In this "very beautiful" there is no ray of the sun, or fragrance of the fresh earth, or blooming petals of the lotus, or the song of the bird, or the dew drop pearls, or the green of the trees, or the open sky. There is nothing in it.What is in this "very beautiful"? Nothing at all, only a few letters of the alphabet.

Be like a river

2008-05-07T14:06:00.004+03:00

Life is a wandering; it is not a settlement, you have to go. It is a constant flow, river-like – you have to flow till the ocean is achieved. But the journey to the ocean comes naturally to the river. There is no planning for the ocean; the river does not know. The maps don’t exist for a river, of where the ocean is. And the river has no discipline. Sometimes it goes to the south, and sometimes it starts moving to the north, and sometimes in one direction and sometimes in another direction. Have you ever seen the zigzag path of a river? It is not straight. It is not economical. It is not mathematical. It is not the shortcut at all – very zigzag, just goes on, not knowing where it is going, just goes on because the energy is there to go. And one day the river reaches.

If the river is planning, then it will find the shortest route, then it will move in a straight line, then it will never deviate, then it will be very consistent. But then it will not be a river. Maybe a canal, a man-made canal, but it will not be a river. It won’t have any freedom. Canals are ugly. Rivers are beautiful.And life is a hilly track. Move in freedom, move in total freedom, and each moment remember to drop the past. It accumulates like dust. Each moment you have experienced something, and then it goes on accumulating. Don’t accumulate it. Just go on ceasing as far as the past is concerned, dying as far as the past is concerned, so you are totally alive, throbbing, pulsating, streaming, and, whatsoever comes, you face it with awareness.

Synthesising Happiness

2008-04-25T20:37:00.000+03:00

We have been evolving since the last two million years , and one significant change that has taken place is that our brain has tripled in size. It was not just simple fat that was added but also the structure of our brain changed. The frontal lobe was added in which is something called the pre frontal cortex. The major function of the pre-frontal cortex is an experience simulator. With an experience simulator – you can have an experience of something before you actually try it out. Just like pilots have to go through flight simulators before they are allowed to actually fly a plane. So, you can experience something in your mind even before you actually do it. And by the way no animal can do this, no other species on this earth can do this and it is a unique quality which only the human species have the privilege to have.

Lets try out a simple experiment, I want all of you to imagine & try to simulate such an experience - 2 situations – 1st situation – You win 10 million (whatever currency you want) and 2nd – you meet with an accident and become permanently disabled. In which situation do you think you will be happy? I don’t think you will need even a second to decide your preference.

But there has been extensive research conducted on this and the results are very interesting. A person having actually won a large amount of money after about a year’s time and a person who became disabled after a year, the level of their happiness or unhappiness is more or less the same. So why is that? We need to understand two things – First what is called “The impact bias”. Now what is this impact bias. It is the tendency to overestimate the impact of future events. Let us take a few examples of future events - getting married, passing an exam, winning an election, getting a promotion – all these events have far less impact, less intensity and much less duration than what people expect to have.

Second is that we human beings have some kind of inner system that helps us to change the view of the world that they we find ourselves to be in. We can actually synthesize or manufacture or produce happiness but we are under the false illusion that happiness has to be found. Sir Thomas Browne wrote “I am the happiest man alive, I have that in me that can convert poverty to riches, adversity to prosperity and I am so invulnerable that fortune has no place to hit me”. Also Shakespeare has said “There is nothing good or bad, only thinking makes it so”.

Be the master of your own destiny, synthesise happiness, spread happiness -it's all in your hand.

Our Collective Responsibility

2008-04-23T21:52:00.000+03:00

Our universe is about 14 billion years old, our planet is about 5 billion & the human species is about 200,000 years old and therefore as far as the evolutionary history of the universe is concerned, the human species is still in its infancy. For thousands of years we, human beings have survived due to the fight or flight response, but then this response became so well ingrained in us, we have now become the predators on this planet. But there is a saying – a permanently victorious species risks its own extinction. The time has come to replace “survival of the fittest” with the “survival of the wisest”. Predatory relationships have to be surpassed by symbiotic relationships if we have to move further into our next phase of evolution. It is now our collective responsibility to nurture the very web of our existence, our eco system.

Very soon, the playing field for violence will be considerably reduced; soon the superpowers will become irrelevant because conventional weaponry & warfare will not matter. As technology becomes more sophisticated in its diabolical creativity, a single individual with a mobile phone sitting in some remote cave anywhere in the world may be able to cut off electricity to some place, or hijack a plane or interfere with air traffic signals or suffocate people who are on pacemakers or cause the nuclear plants to leak – all this just by moving electrons inside a mobile telephone. Modern capacities and ancient habits is a devastating combination. This is a moment of crisis because we risk our own extinction. If insects disappeared from our planet then all life would stop within 5 years because insects are such an important part of our ecology that we just can’t do without them but on the other hand if human beings were to perish today, then life would flourish on this planet. And nature would simply say that “Human beings were a good experiment that didn’t work”. Technology by itself is neutral, it all depends on us what we do with the technology. We can use the technology to restore the ecosystem, to bring economic empowerment to the poor, eradicate poverty, to create cross cultural exchanges through fine arts – books, poetry, music, entertainment, to harness the power of collective intelligence.

So, now it is up to you and me and all of us to spread this message of becoming responsible for our planet, our eco-system and our environment. If all such like minded people connect and communicate with each other, then one day together they could form the tipping point from where mankind would take a giant leap forward and completely transform this world.

Don’t just do something, sit there

2008-03-19T10:40:00.000+03:00

We live in a world stuck in fast forward, a world obsessed with speed, with doing everything faster, with cramming more & more into less and less time, every moment of the day is like a race against the clock. All of us are running a race, trying to reach a finish line and the finish line is like a mirage, it vanishes when you come closer.

These days it has become a fashion, a craze, to do everything fast, earlier we used to read now we have speed reading, earlier we used to walk, now we have speed walking, earlier we used to dial, now we have speed dialing, earlier we used to date & now we have speed dating. Even things which are by their very nature slow, we try to speed them up too. We are trying to grow test tube babies; we are experimenting with cloning and so on and so forth. But the ultimate was an advertisement I saw in a newspaper “Enroll for speed yoga”. The most current example is this blog that I am writing, I am writing about how to slow things down but have this impulse to finish it off fast. What a paradox!

We are so marinated in the culture of speed that we fail to notice the toll that this takes on every aspect of our lives, on our health, our diet, our relationships, on community, on our work, on the environment. And then what happens - it takes a wake up call for us to alert us & tell us that we are hurrying thru our lives instead of living our lives, living a fast life instead of a good life. And for many people this wake up call comes in the form of an illness or a burnout, eventually the body says I can’t take it anymore or a relationship goes up in smoke. The only way to nurture a relationship is thru’ constant communication but unfortunately we don’t have time to even do that. How much time do we have even for our most loved ones?

So how did we get so fast & is it possible or even desirable to slow down? Factors that have contributed to this fast culture are technology, urbanization, consumerism, but if you cut thru all this you come to some basic issues like how do you perceive time itself. In the west time moves in a linear path, you either use it or lose it. Benjamin Franklin said "Time is money", whereas in the eastern culture time moves in a circular path & can even renew itself.

Why is it so hard to slow down? – and the answer is - well speed is fun, speed is macho, speed is hot - all that adrenalin rush –it's hard to give it up. Slow, has become a cultural taboo in modern times, slow is a dirty word in our culture -slow is equated with lazy. But we desperately need a paradigm shift, so a better way to understand slowness is that there is bad slow and good slow. An example of "bad slow" is getting stuck in the traffic on a weekend evening when you are with your family and longing to reach your destination. An example of "good slow" is to take your time in office to analyze a problem from all angles before taking a decision.

So now the big question is - is it possible to break free from this mindset of doing everything fast? & thankfully the answer is yes. The paradigm of “fast is good” is changing now, and people are finding that slowing down can actually improve their lives, you can eat better, sleep better, make love better.

All over the world, today we have movements for slowing down; a good example is the movement in America and Europe to decrease the number of working hours per week. And they have proof of this - not only does the quality of life improve, even their productivity goes up. If some of the people here in Qatar especially the ones working in contracting companies would come to know what the working hours of people in Finland for example are –they would turn green with envy. More and more companies these days are encouraging employees to take a break, to unplug and sit quietly for some time because that’s the only way to recharge yourself, to rejuvenate yourself and the only way for your brain to slip into the creative mode.

So next time, you feel you must rush out, go somewhere, do something – my advise is –Don’t just do something, sit there!!

The everyday blessing

2008-03-09T09:27:00.000+03:00

All women have desires, right? But what is that one desire that is common to all women? To become slim? To own more jewellery? Or is it to find the best anti-aging cream? No sir, none of these. The singular most common desire for all women is – to have a good and faithful housemaid – no, not a good and faithful husband – a good and faithful housemaid.

I am telling you this from first hand experience. I have seen women from two generations ,my mother's generation and now my wife's generation. And women from both generations continue to have this phobia which I call – maidophobia. Maidophobia can be defined as the fear and the panic that grips women as soon as they come to know
a) that the maid is going to be absent today or

b) that the maid has resigned from the job.
The after effects of both cases is devastating to say the least.

The reasons that the housemaids come up for remaining absent is amazing. Recently, I had been to India for my brother's wedding & one morning I saw my mother answer the telephone. Suddenly, her facial expression changed, she looked worried. "What happened mom" I asked. "Our maid is not coming today" said my mother. "But why?" I asked. "They have elections in their area". "But what is the relation between elections and her not being able to come" was my immediate reaction. My mother explained that during elections, these men and women get a chance to earn upto Rs 500 per day including free food and also some free liquor for the men. The only work that they have to do is to attend election campaigns and be a part of the crowd. The ironical thing is that the same people are the crowd for the ruling as well as opposition parties.

Personally, for me, the absence of the maid always has dire consequences, What happens – Firstly - my wife is in a bad mood because she has to do all the household work - washing and cleaning and so on. And I am assigned two tasks – both I hate - 1) to do the vacumming of all the rooms. And 2) to help my kids clean up their room. On one such occasion, as I was disentangling the wires of the Playstation and trying to arrange things properly, my son came running to me and said "Daddy, I can't find my socks & belt". And then began the quest for the missing socks and belt which lasted for more than an hour. I finally succeeded, but that day I learnt the real value of the presence of a housemaid.

Do you think that only the corporate world faces the problem of employees resigning? Thousands of households are affected when their housemaids leave them for greener pastures. But hats off to my wife - she has devised a foolproof strategy to retain our maid. She has done 2 things - (i) painted an extremely grim picture about all our neighbours to our housemaid, telling her stories about how they ill treat their housemaids etc. and (ii) she has told our neighbours that our maid is so busy with other part time jobs, that it is indeed a miracle that she is finding time to come and do our house work. And let me tell you, her strategy is still working.

Friends, in this so called modern day and age, we have all the gadgets – washing machines, dishwashers, vacumm cleaners, mixers, grinders – the works. But we still need somebody to operate them on a daily basis. Don’t we? But don't worry - the housemaid profession is here to stay and the next time your doorbell rings early in the morning – and you see your housemaid from the peephole – thank the Lord – because she is indeed a blessing who comes to your doorstep everyday.

A trip to the barber shop

2008-01-14T21:13:00.000+03:00

In India nothing is ever well defined and my recent trip to Pune for my brother's marriage brought forth several instances. Here's one which cost me Rs 350.

When I went for a haircut & asked how much they would charge for a facial, I got a reply "Aapse zyada nahin lenge sahab" meaning "We won't charge you much sir". And when I wouldn't accept this statement as an answer to my query, I was told "If we use sandalwood, it will cost Rs 180, if we use fruit it will cost Rs 250". I opted for the cheaper option and instructed the guy accordingly, but to my surprise after about 5 minutes, the fellow came up with a suggestion - "Aapke chehre ko bleach chahiye" - "Your face needs a bleach". The tone in this suggestion was such , that getting a bleach done was a most essential thing for me to do. And I almost had no chance of refusing. But more was to come. A few questions about me & he knew that I had come to India to attend my brother's marriage. So after my haircut, he said "Sir, your hair is not dyed properly. There's a function you have to attend, please allow me to colour your hair properly". He assured me that he would do it so nicely that it would appear natural etc. etc. He was almost playing on my emotions now and while I knew that he was going to fleece me, I relented & let him proceed. After everything was done, I had no option but to pay his bill of Rs 350.

Mumbai's Lifeline

2007-12-13T10:02:00.000+03:00

The prime business areas and major offices of both government and private institutions are all located in South Mumbai and the working population reside in areas quite far away from here, in the "suburbs" of Mumbai. Around 6.5 million residents of Mumbai travel to work using the local trains and this is the daily average & so it is no wonder that the Mumbai Suburban Railways have the highest passenger density in the world. Due to the ever increasing population and the influx of people from all over the country who come to Mumbai to realise their dreams, the local trains have to cater to the transport needs of all these people. A 9 cubicle (or car or bogie) train which is supposed to carry about 1700 passengers is forced to carry 4700 passengers during peak hours. People working in banks, private shops, corporate offices, government agencies, schools, colleges, Bollywood film industry, factories, workshops, garages, hotels, restaurants and many others rely heavily on the local trains and if the trains stop working even for a few hours, life in Mumbai virtually comes to a standstill and leads to chaos, confusion, anger, frustration, stress and sometimes it can also turn into a violent situation. It is therefore only apt to call the Mumbai local trains as Mumbai's lifeline.

And when I landed in Mumbai and started working, I found out more about the local trains. They have a culture of their own. The jam packed cubicles, the heat, the sweat, the clamour, those everyday fights to catch seats, getting in, being vomited out, struggling for that wee bit of extra leg space and elbow room.

There are so many things which are unique about Mumbai local trains.The rakes are designed to seat three people per unit bench installed. However, the brotherhood of Mumbaikars has an undying spirit and has given way to the ‘Fourth-seat’ concept, specifically in the second-class compartments. It is an unwritten law that the people who are lucky to get a seat during the journey will squeeze themselves and allow the fourth person to perch at least 25% of his bottom on the seat. Sadly this fourth-seat concept is yet to penetrate the stiff upper lip culture of the first class compartments.

A large populace of women in Mumbai work, a majority of them out of sheer compulsion as one earning member is not sufficient to support the family. And one has to really appreciate their planning and multi tasking skills. Some ladies actually start preparing the ingredients for the evening dinner by cutting the vegetables in the trains!

Some long distance commuters have formed "Bhajan Mandalis" or "Devotional songs Friend Circles". Equipped with the deity's framed picture, cymbals and their own voices, these groups sing away to glory trying to forget their stressful lives by immersing themselves in the bhajans. Their cacophony also results in passing on the stress to some fellow commuters who are trying to sleep or talk on their mobile phones.

Thanks to the technology boom, more and more commuters are entertaining themselves by listening to their favourite music on their pocket sized MP3 players and some even watch and listen to songs on their small mobile phone screens. Some read books, some solve crossword puzzles, some talk on their mobile phones, some sleep, some just observe others and some are lost in their thoughts, but all have one thing in common, all want to get the hell out of the train and are just waiting for their destination to come.

Getting a job

2007-12-12T09:15:00.000+03:00

For some unknown reason, I found that my confidence level was low and a strange fear would always loom over me whenever I gave interviews. I tried my level best to answer all questions of the interviewers but was obviously not doing too well. It felt very hurtful, when I saw some of my colleagues easily getting jobs in good companies that came to our college for "campus interviews". Some of these interviews included group discussions where a topic was given and about 5 to 7 canditates seated together had to speak for or against the issue, like a debate session. I had never ever done these kinds of things before & I found myself only listening and simply could not speak up or come up with geniuine ideas for conversation. My confidence levels declined further.

A big chunk of my colleagues were appearing for GRE and were gearing up for further studies in USA, but I knew that my father could never afford the high fees and so I never even thought about appearing for these exams. Subconciously, I knew that I was becoming lonlier than ever before and soon I would be on my own with hardly a friend or two left with whom I could share my feelings. For 4 months after having a bachelor's degree in engineering and that too with distinction, I was unable to get a job. My father asked me to apply to all those companies who advertised in the newspapers for fresh graduates. Those days there was no internet, and so my one page CV had to be typed and put inside envelopes and posted. I got a couple of interview calls, and amongst others, one from a factory manufacturing capacitors in Pune and one from a factory manufacturing tyres in Nasik. I had already seen factory life and knew what was in store for me. But beggars cannot be choosers and so I did give the interviews. The first one never reverted, but the tyre factory did offer me a job. Since the factory was located in Nasik, my father felt that I should try for some more time in Pune.

Meanwhile, as I was at home all day long without much to do and to put it bluntly, I was "jobless", my father allowed me to join a computer course (despite the high fees) in "Apple Computers", which has nothing to do with today's Apple Inc. This course was a one year course of Diploma in Computers and the course involved learning programming languages like BASIC and COBOL. And so I had at least something to do and was not wasting my time. My mother must have spoken about me to my maternal grandfather. My grandfather was a very learned man and had accomplished a lot in his career & had retired finally as an IAS officer - as Under Secretary to the Minister for Food & Civil Supplies. He used to work in the "Sachivalay" or the State Legislative Assembly office, which even today houses the office for Maharashtra State's Chief Minister and other council of ministers. He not only had good contacts in the ministries but also had an elite friend circle. One of his friends was close to the CEO of a company called Voltas International, which was a blue chip company at that time. I sent my CV to Voltas International (VIL) and soon got an interview call, did reasonably well in the interview and was taken in as a "Management Trainee" with a starting monthly salary of Rs 1,250 /- fixed by the HR Dept of VIL. As soon as my boss found out about my salary he was shocked and using his authority managed to double the figure to Rs 2,400 /- immediately. For me, at that point of time, the salary figure hardly mattered. The more important thing was that I was no longer jobless. So that's how I got my first job and also began my career.

Glass & Sandwich

2007-11-20T18:03:00.000+03:00

By the time I reached TE (Third Year Engineering), I was adept at GTs, mass copying and mass bunking. For those who do not know what GT is, allow me to explain. It stands for Glass Trace, a brilliant innovation by an undoubtedly genius mind. The simplest version can be assembled using a rectangular transparent glass piece and supporting it at the 2 ends on piles of solid thick text books (like dictionaries). Then put a table lamp of low wattage (as you don't want the glass surface to become too hot) below this glass surface in such a way that the lamp light shines on the glass. Now you are ready to draw and trace even the most complicated diagrams, patterns, designs etc. directly on your paper simply by placing your paper on top of the diagram that you want to copy. The light shines through and viola! you can copy everything. GTs proved to be a blessing especially when one had to copy entire notebooks interspersed with complicated diagrams. One guy named Hiten had made his study table at home with fluorescent lamps mounted below and this was actually part of the furniture of his room!

It must surely have been the brainchild of some intellectual, the idea of giving the engineering students a feel of the industry, of the world out there whilst still in college. This was the Sandwich course, where it was not at all necessary for students to attend college for the 2nd semester of TE and first semester of BE. Instead they would have to go to "work" just like regular employees of the company where they would join as "Trainees". Instead of exams, the student had to complete a project with the help of 2 guides, one from the college and one from the company. The Sandwich Course, also automatically became a platform for various companies to recruit budding engineers and helped foster and build a stronger relationship between the industry and the technical education sectors. But the best part of the course was that the students would get stipend (salary) from the company for the time they worked. And so, this course immediately became popular. Just imagine no exams and being paid as well! Eating a sandwich and getting paid for it!

There was a mad rush and everybody wanted to enroll themselves for this course. But unfortunately there were only 30 seats and applicants were 300 plus. The eliminations were done by interviewing and depending on the scores, the student would get to choose the company he / she wanted to join. Undoubtedly, the students at the top chose those companies who paid the most stipend. Well, I was amongst these 30 but in the bottom half & I along with a partner named Ram joined Bajaj Electricals - who in those days manufactured ceiling fans, table fans etc. The Sandwich students immediately gained an almost celebrity status. The Electrical Engineering Sandwich batch had only 12 boys and 3 girls and obviously because of such a small number all of us became very good friends.

I consider myself to be lucky for getting such an early exposure to the industry atmosphere. I discovered that there existed a definite divide between the "Management" and the "Labour". It was as if both were in a cold war all the time, and we being trainees, had to rub shoulders with both all the time. At times, even against my wish, I had to agree and take sides with some foolish and stupid opinions of these people. The filthy gossip, the back biting and the hypocrisy with which these people lived and continued working day in and day out, I found quite loathsome and subconciously, I made up my mind not to work in a manufacturing set up. Although these thoughts, were the result of my limited awareness and should have been applicable only for that company and for those set of people, I am sure that even to this day there is still a certain divide between the management and the labour.

Apart from this discomfort that I went through during my stay at Bajaj, I was very happy to be earning money and I had to no longer ask money from my parents if I wanted to go for a movie or to buy some small thing. Occasionally when my partner or I felt bored in the factory, we would bluff our mentor in the company that we had to go to college for some important work and would leve early, but this early would always be after we had finished our hot breakfast and chai (tea) in the factory. Then, it would usually end up sitting for a matinee show or just go home and sleep.

F.E.

2007-11-19T11:54:00.000+03:00

From an all English atmosphere for the last 12 years, the sudden change into an all Marathi atmosphere and culture came as a bit of a shock. But for rare exceptions, by and large the FE (First Year Engineering) lecturers at COEP were a bunch of crap. I feel sorry for being so blunt, but after being taught by such knowledgeable, dedicated and devoted teachers for so long, it was quite an anti-climax for me. Bunking lectures, therefore, was a better utilisation of time than attending. The lingo for bunking was ''Common Off'' which meant that all the students had decided not to attend and whoever wanted to were forced not to.

The first year was the year of purchases. I bought a scientific calculator, a large wooden drawing board, a drafting scale, french curves (don't get ideas), a tool box containing carpenter's tools, tinsmith's tools, blacksmith's tools, a blue coverall and other paraphernalia. The tools were used during the practicals we had every week, the subject was called Workshop. When I saw all those hacksaws and mallots and hammers, I wondered whether I had enrolled to become an engineer or somebody else. Frankly, to this day I have not been able to figure out what these workshop practicals were useful for.

My favourite subject was Engineering Drawing and in order to reinforce my drawing skills , I joined Prof. Darade's private tuitions. Prof. Darade taught the same subject to the TE (Third Year Engineering) & BE (Bachelor of Engineering, the fourth and final year) students in the same college. Prof. Darade was simply superb and inspite of his heavy Marathi accent, I just loved to attend his 2 hour sessions twice a week. I still recall going on my bicycle to his place in the chilly winter of Pune, along with my friend for company and stopping at the Pav Bhaji corner near Empire Cinema Theatre (this theatre has been demolished now, I think) on our return journey. We did some more interesting things as well during our return trip but those better not appear on this blog!

Applied Mechanics is a subject that has 2 extremes - either you understand it completely or you don't understand it at all, there is no such thing as part understanding. This is the subject that I can never forget, why? because it is the first time in my life that I failed in any subject, I got 35 marks, 5 marks short of passing marks. But thanks to the ATKT (Allowed to keep term) rule, I could reappear for this subject in the next year. The very sight of the text book ''Applied Mechanics by Timoshenko & Young'' felt like meeting a Dementor (using Harry Potter lingo) - it would drain me of all energy and leave me a nervous wreck. But ultimately, I conquered this fear and achieved mastery over Applied Mechanics, thanks to joining Prof. Deshpande's tuition classes. He was a simple man and taught the complex concepts of ''bending moments'' and ''force'' and ''inertia'' and ''friction'' in such a simple manner that these seemed so easy after he had taught them.

How can my reminiscences of FE be complete without mentioning Prof. Gokahale, who taught Engineering Mathematics- well once again not at COEP but at his residence privately. He admitted only about 50 odd students out of the hundreds of applicants. He had a reputation of being rude and I had heard that he even insulted his students at times, and so when I had approached him to seek admission to his classes, I was not surprised by his reply - ''There is no place, the only place remaining - is on my head''. I felt quite sad and dejected and was tense that I would have to deal with such a difficult subject on my own but when I narrated this incidence to my father, he said -''Let me try''. Being a Professor himself at the Agriculture College Pune and having spent his entire professional life in the academic field, and also being able to speak fluent Marathi - a combination of all this helped when he met Prof Gokhale with his request to take me in and so thats how I got admission to his classes. Prof. Gokhale was indeed a good teacher but I remember him more for the insults he threw at some students rather than his Maths lessons. Once he told a girl (in Marathi) "Jashi tu powder aani lipstick lavun yete, tashi tu chapters ka naahi shikun yete'' and let me translate this ''The way you apply make up i.e. powder and lipstick, why don't you take similar efforts for learning the chapters taught in class''.

Moogat

2007-11-19T05:06:00.000+03:00

Prof. Moogat was of slight build, with eyes that sparkled behind his dark rimmed glasses and his iconic French beard that was always well trimmed. He had a good voice and would modulate the same, whispering, squeaking, hollering, yelling and even shrieking to the top of his voice at times. It was his endeavor to make the subject of mathematics extremely interesting for the students and that is why he would sing and dance, and liberally pepper his words with highly explosive expletives, thereby drawing his students to his lectures in droves like moths to the flame. It was common knowledge that a number of students from the various other colleges in Pune would sneak into the class room occupying every inch of space, even on window sills, in order to lend a ear to his ranting. I have never seen a teacher teach a subject with so much passion, drama and enthusiasm. Despite his unorthodox and innovative teaching methods, Prof. Moogat carved a niche for himself in the rarefied sphere of teaching, with the hundreds of students moving on through the shoals of time to all corners of the globe.

Ask any of his students to speak about him and you will find that their words will echo sincere feelings of love and gratitude for him, giving an insight into the lifetime bonding that has been forged between a teacher and his pupils. He always referred to himself as a 'mad bawa', in true Parsi humourous style and would never hesitate to have a dig at his own eccentric mannerisms. ''Don't think I am mad, I am MAD'' would be his vociferous expression always. That year, Rajiv Gandhi was the Prime Minister of India, and he would coolly say ''You know boys, our PM is an MP'', and when none of us could decipher what was the joke in that, he would explain that MP meant Mad Parsi. Let me narrate a story that he told once. There is a big square shaped land and at the centre is a pot of gold. At the four corners are Superman, Batman, Shaana Parsi & Yeda Parsi. Who will get the gold first? Answer - Yeda Parsi, because the other 3 characters are fictitious!

Also, those days, I remember, the comparisons and I dare say direct competition was very much on the cards (like a cold war) between the Moogatians (i.e. boys who had joined Moogat's private tuitions for Maths) and those who hadn’t or rather were unable to. For some unknown reason, Moogat had decided to start with some portion ahead of what was being taught in school, and so there was a mismatch between what Moogat taught and what we were taught at school by Mr. Shankar Narayan. This led to all sorts of problems and I think in the 1st Unit Test (or was it mid term exams -I’m not sure), most of the Moogatians did not score so well, thereby giving a chance for Non – Moogatians to ridicule at them. Both of them had significantly different methods to arrive at the same answers, the Moogat method being obviously more profound and dramatic – just like his personality and Shankarnarayan’s being cool just like he was. Let me tell you how Moogat taught us to solve matrices – R1 minus R2, R2 minus R3, Lalalee…lalalee…lalalee. Even after 25 years one still remembers the formulas- he had that kind of influence and impact on his students.

He would become emotional and sentimental at times and talk about the rat race for the marks in the S.S.C, and H.S.C. examinations. He considered the educational system and parents responsible at times for pressurizing the young ones to perform beyond their capacities, thus leading to failure or even suicides. Peer and parental pressures, in this world of stiff competition can sound the death knell to sensitive and young minds, he would say. Indeed, those days a debacle in the 12th standard would spell doom; for the aspirant dreaming of getting a seat in an engineering or medical college. In my opinion, even to this day there is still a fixation in the psyche of the majority of our students who only opt for the engineering or medical professions, even if it means having to cough up hefty sums of money for college admissions. One cannot fathom this trend why other professions like the Armed Forces, Merchant Navy, Hotel Management, Architecture, Interior Decoration, Journalism, Law, Financial Accounting or even the high flying civil services fail to attract our young men. This would become an exclusive topic for a blog that I will write some other day.

Prof. Moogat later on became the principal of Nowrosjee Wadia College, the same college where he taught Maths but I am sure he was uncomfortable for his first love would always have been teaching Mathematics.

3 memorable years

2007-11-19T03:31:00.000+03:00

The 10th year at school and the 11th and 12th years at junior college were the ones that I shall cherish forever. I was proud to be part of the 10-A class, which comprised only those who had scored more than 80% in the 9th standard. The other thing that I was looking forward to was to experience being taught by Fr.Oesch, who only taught the 10-A class. Fr.Oesch was regarded very highly by everybody not just because of his seniority but also because of his reputation of guiding and moulding students. He taught us something priceless & intangible like honour, trust, love, friendship, determination, to be a united team, being goal oriented which was not available in textbooks to make us succeed. Almost like the last words of our school anthem - Dare & Do & Win!

We had a healthy competition going all through the year and would wait eagerly for the teachers to read out our marks of the unit tests and exams in various subjects, and the aim was to be at least among the top 3 in each subject. I was doing pretty well, being within the top 10 out of the 50 odd boys. I must mention here that this was the first time that I ever attended private tuitions - ''Dahiwadkar's Classes'', but this was not because of the lack of confidence in the school teachers but due to the over enthusiasm of my parents who wanted me to do well in the exams. Mr. Dahiwadkar was a teacher par excellence (he was himself an ex-Vincentian). His methodical style of teaching Maths and Science, his gestures, facial expressions and voice are still quite fresh in my mind.

The 10th standard final exams or SSC exams went quite well but I was overjoyed to know that I had scored an overall 87.5%, a record that I held for almost a decade in my family, which was broken later by my younger cousin brother who managed to score 89%. It was more out of the herd mentality rather than a concious choice that I continued with St Vincent's Junior college for my 11th standard. The 11th standard had been professed by all as the year to let go and enjoy and I did exactly that. That year I read more novels, watched more movies and spent more time with friends than studying. And then during the vacation after my 11th standard, I joined the vacation batch of Prof.Jog who ran his private coaching classes for 12th standard students. He too was an excellent teacher, specialising in chemistry and the way he taught us, it seemed that the balancing of equations, the periodic table, the concepts of nuclear fusion and nuclear fission were so easy to grasp.

The next year was supposed to be the all important year. It was as if my entire future depended on the results of the 12th standard exams. So this year, I really burnt the midnight oil, and I did so by shifting to my grandparents' house, where I could be away from the disturbance of the daily proceedings, the TV serials etc going on in my house. The only times I would go to my house was to eat and sleep.

It would be unfair on my part if I do not mention Prof. Moogat's name at this point.Prof. Moogat was the most sought after teacher for mathematics for the 12th standard students. He taught the same subject in Nowrosjee Wadia college and took private tuitions in the evenings. Being an ex-Vincentian himself, he had an exclusive batch for Vincentians and another batch for non-Vincentians, and these were the only 2 batches he taught privately. Out of all the 200 students of 12th standard from St Vincents who applied for admission, he admitted only 50 and the remainder 150 had no choice but to be disappointed. He openly admitted of being partial to Parsis, as he himself was one (called himself as a mad Bawa) and also stated that he would give in to letters of recommendation if these came from people he couldn't refuse. There were boys who sometimes managed to get letters from the principal of Nowrosjee Wadia college or even the Chief minister of Maharashtra, requesting him to admit the student for his private tuitions, such was his fame.

I could fill up an entire blog about Prof. Moogat, as there are so many things that I can write about him. So this year, I really worked very hard and it paid off in the end. I scored more than 90% marks in both PCM (Physics, Chemistry, Maths) and PCB (Physics, Chemistry, Biology), which was required to get into the engineering and medical colleges respectively. My father wanted me to become a doctor, and I had been granted a seat in the B.J. Medical College, Pune also, but I had heard that the MBBS course lasts for 5 years and I was unwilling to study for such a long time. Moreover, since all my friends were taking up engineering, I ended up in doing Electrical Engineering at one of the most prestigious college for engineering in Pune - the College of Engineering Pune. It had an exemplary history and was already a 100 years old in 1984, when I joined and I hear that it is now a deemed university. From here began an almost new phase of my life.

High School

2007-11-16T12:52:00.000+03:00

From the 8th standard, as part of the physical training, it was compulsory to join the basic training course of either the army or navy (called the NCC - National Cadet Corps) or civil defence or scouts. It was not out of fascination for the armed forces that I decided to join the army but simply because doing so meant getting grace marks in the 12th standard. It was well known that the army training program was the most difficult one in terms of physical exhaustion and had there been grace marks awarded in scouts, I would have gladly joined scouts - as I not only liked their uniform which consisted of a colourful scarf and a rope but also was fascinated by the fact that in their meetings, the girl scouts from our neighboring all-girls school would join as well.

I had never imagined in the wildest of my dreams that joining the army meant getting up as early as 5 am and assembling for the parade at 6am twice a week, be it summer, fall or winter. The uniform had to starched and ironed ; the belt, NCC badge, berret and shoes had to be brassoed and polished well. A small error in accomplishing these, and one could end up crawling the hard surface of our school playground. The other greater fear was being slapped by Harold Sir. But hardly anybody knew him by that name. His nickname was Hari Baba and boys would literally shiver at his sight, mainly because of his tough looks and his reputation of yielding the stick at the slightest opportunity. Being an ex-army man, one could use his example to define the meaning of discipline. Even the 11th & 12th standard boys nurtured a sense of fear about him.

Talking about nicknames, we had nicknames for almost all the teachers. I am listing the ones that I can recollect in random order, along with the subjects they taught us

Mrs. Coutinho (mother) -English - Senior Katkati
Miss Coutinho (daughter) -English etc. -Junior Katkati
Mr. Augustine - English, History - Chooha
Mr. Chavan - PT - Bhangi
Fr. Edmund -School principal - Bulldog
Fr. Oesch - English & German- Budhha
Mrs. Khan - English - Jawan Budhhi
Mr. Deshpande -Physics - Despo
Mrs.Lokhandwala - Chemistry - Namu
Mr.Khanapure - Mathematics - Tirri
Mrs. Malita Fernandes - English - Machine-gun (baby producing)
Mrs. Bhiladwala - History - Billi
Mrs. Chaubal -Marathi - Champa bai

This also brings forth the memories of all the pranks we played in school. Two teachers were our favourites - Miss Leena and Junior Katkati. More than half of the school had a crush on both. I remember, as soon as Miss Leena entered our class, all the 50 boys would say "Sssssssss........'' together and this would embarass her. She taught us chemistry and at every laboratory session, we had to gather around her to perform various experiments. The rowdy boys would push each other in her direction so fiercely that during almost every session one or two boys would almost fall on her and she would save herself using the support of a nearby table. I now suspect that she must have liked all this attention and was aware what her presence did to all the young boys because I cannot recollect that she ever lodged a single complaint with the principal.Then, there was a boy named Rajeshwar Balkrishnan, who shared his surname with Miss Leena. The class monitor would write the names of the mischievious boys on the black board and whose name do you think would be always on the blackboard before Miss Leena's class started? BALAKRISHNAN would be the only name.

Junior Katkati had the habit of standing in front of the teacher's table whilst teaching. There was a considerable gap between the middle row of benches and the teacher's table. But once she stood near her table and proceeded with her teaching, the back benchers would start pushing all the benches slowly ahead till the front bench would almost sandwich her. Once, a boy planted a real dead lizard on the teacher's table and when she entered and ventured to keep her purse on the table, she just screamed in fright and ran out of the class. I think, we were quite notorious compared to the children of this generation. Of course, its nothing to be proud of but the fact still remains.

About vacations & weddings

2007-11-13T22:45:00.000+03:00

It became quite obvious to me that my maternal grandparents were more affluent than my father or my paternal grandparents and that they had everything in greater measure than we had. At least once a year we would visit them in Santacruz, Mumbai and whilst I enjoyed the trip and the stay at their gigantic apartment, it kindled a desire and dream inside me to have someday such a home for myself .

The vacations were also an opportunity for all the cousins to meet at a single place and since I had an abundant number of maternal aunts, the number of cousins were in equal abundance. I learnt cycling, carrom, chess, cards and real badminton from them and they learnt cricket from us. The Juhu beach was only a km away from my grandparents house and I remember waking up very early morning almost everyday and accompanying my grandfather along with all the interested cousins on his morning walks to Juhu beach. Here we would play in the sea and build sand castles and collect sea shells and make serious attempts to catch crabs.

I had 3 aunts and 1 uncle who were not married at that time and almost every alternate vacation there would be a wedding and the associated celebrations. We would eagerly wait to wear our new clothes on the D-day and show them off on stage. More and more cousin brothers and sisters and kids coming together meant more fun, frolic and fights and I loved every bit of it. My cousins and me adjudged the ceremony as successful or flop based on whether we could consume enough of ice cream and whether we managed to get ourselves in all the photographs clicked during the celebrations.

Junior School

2007-11-08T20:05:00.000+03:00

It amazes me how one can remember things that happened so many years ago. I recollect holding my grandfather's fingers with my little hand and walking everyday to the "Green Lawn Nursery'' which was the first educational institution I attended. I was only 4 years old that time. My grandfather, being himself from the academic background, insisted that I should be admitted to the best English medium school in Pune. And so, I passed my entrance test and joined the I-A class of St. Vincent's High School in 1972. Miss Patsy Fernandes was our class teacher & she had a passion for teaching ''running'' handwriting and it is to her that I owe my curly handwriting.

Being quite frail and short, I was bullied by some boys and was also teased by some as being ''kalia'' i.e. dark skinned and "butqa" i.e. short in height. Although this did hurt my self esteem, all of this was forgotten in the company of the few friends that I made. The 15 minutes mini interval and the 45 minutes lunch interval were the best times of the day in school and I would sit with my friends under a large banyan tree and share our nicely packed lunch boxes with each other. Boys having elder brothers in the same school were feared the most as they would always threaten us with ''I'll tell my brother to thrash you''. During the intervals they would make a blatant display of their prized possessions and we in turn would make a mental note of the boys with whom we dare not mess around.

It must have been my third year in school, when we once again shifted to a new 2 room house in the first floor of Watchmaker's Chawl. The biggest advantage of this house was that my grandfather's house was connected through a common passage and was only a few blocks away. Here, I made new friends two of whom became my best friends - Raju and Bunty. My younger brother also befriended Bunty's brother and we all had lots and lots of fun every weekend playing cricket in a miniscule playground using a broken bucket as stumps. There were unique rules of 4 and 6 runs based on which particular spot the ball crossed in that playground. Hitting the ball on the busy road outside would be declared as ''out''. Other games we played included "Chor Police" (Thief & Police), marbles which itself had multiple variations and shuttle-cock i.e. badminton without net.

We also quickly became notorious for disturbing the peace of the neighbours and one particular Mr.Kazi would always shout all kinds of strange anathemas at us. This is because at his siesta time we would run along the passage on the 1st floor and make sure to jump up and down near the lobby below which he resided.

During every summer vacation, we would join a library from where we would rent comics that cost 20 paise per comic per day and exchange these so that in 20 paise we could read at least 3 comics. I finished the entire series of ''Casper'', ''Wendy'' and ''Richie Rich'' quite early and with each summer vacation I graduated to comics of Phantom, Tarzan, Korak, Mandrake the Magician, Bahadur, the entire collection of Amar Chitra Katha and then went on to the Archie, Tintin and Asterix series.

The Early Years

2007-11-05T23:40:00.000+03:00

Before I embark upon this journey into my early years, first of all, let me inform all the readers that, though I am from Pune, I was born in Mumbai. Also, I am the eldest of 3 brothers.The reason for being born in Mumbai is because my mother is from Mumbai & it was the usual practice for the girls to have their first babies delivered in their hometown, with all financial and moral obligations to be the responsibility of the girl's parents.

My uncle i.e. mother's brother or ''mamu'' as we refer in our mother tongue, was, in those days, pursuing his hobby of photography in a fervid manner and therefore thanks to him, I have quite a few pictures of myself as a baby, which I'm sure my future generations would term as ''priceless''!

I think that my name i.e. Sajid was chosen by my father or maybe my grandfather & I will check up to make sure when I meet my parents next time. Incidentally, Sajid means one who bows down in front of the Almighty. In a more holistic view, it means one who is obedient to the Almighty. Names are paradoxical. One of my college teacher knew a person named Laxmi (the goddess of wealth as per Hindu mythology) who was a pauper in actual life and also knew a person named Pai (the smallest denomination of the indian currency) who was a millionaire. Reminds me of Shakespeare who says in his play Romeo & Juliet ''Whats in a name - That which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet". Don't let this mislead you however into concluding that I am an atheist. No, I do believe in the Creator and am thankful for all his blessings!!

The earliest memories that I have as a child, is a 2 room home on the first floor of a building in an area called Kasbapeth in Pune. I wonder whether that building still exists. Next thing I remember is that we moved into another small but cosy house on the ground floor in Bhawani Peth, and importantly this was very close to my grandparent's house. Almost at a stone's throw distance from thither, was a big playground and I clearly remember that my mother always warned me not to venture into this playground as she was both afraid as well as concerned that I would learn ''bad words'' from the ruffians who would frequent this place. In this house, I remember, my mother humming to popular Hindi movie songs of that time and also remember that I became an early fan of the Binaca Geetmala which played on the radio every week. Well, talking about songs on the radio, the most vivid memory I have is this song called "Khush hai zamana, aaj pehli tareekh hai'', which would translate as "All are happy, its the first day of the month". This song would play on the 1st of every month without fail and as is the case even today, all of us (the working bourgeoise) are happy to receive our salaries at the beginning of each month-aren't we?

...to be continued...

Blogging is serious business...

2007-09-23T01:03:00.000+03:00

So, thanks to my younger brother, I have got kick started into the world of blogging. This being my first blog, I was wondering what I should write about. The easiest thing to write about is your own self, and so I will attempt to do it.

Will I be candid or will I be economical with the truth?

To reveal or not to reveal.....that is the question..

So my next blog should be about ''The Early Years'', now doesn't this title sound like a familiar opening chapter from some classic English novel?