SOMETIMES...

Sometimes, I miss all the things that money can buy;
a holiday away from the maddening crowd,

then I remember that it would be the solitude I seek
and not the place I pick

.

Contemplation in solitude is free and God-given,
it is wherever I want to find it
in my prayers
in my supplication in the still silence of the night.

Sometime i miss...
the music from an expensive stereo set
or a full orchestra
then I hear the sounds of the birds chirping in the early morning light

the cooing of the pigeon that fly low in search of food




the call of the azan 5 times daily from the nearby mosque

the recital of the holy verses from the mouth of a child

and I remember that this is all the music my soul needs.

Sometimes I think of...
the bright lights and the fast paced city life,

always wanting more,
always wanting something better;
fancy clothes and expensive restaurants

Then I remember that time travels fast enough as it is
that no matter how expensive the food, you can only eat your fill.
that all what matters now, will one day be left behind
that in the dark and silent world of the grave
what counts is how you fared as a servant of your Master

Sometimes I crave for...
the attention, the passionate embrace of a lover
then I remember that everybody leaves everybody sometime or another
that the only enduring love is that of God for His creations,
that this is truly love in its purest from,
never ending, never fading, all embracing, all consuming.
And that is all the love that I need.

I'm just human and sometimes I forget that I'm truly blessed.

photo credits to deviations from deviant art

My beautiful friend

PERCEPTION; HAVE YOU MISSED ANYTHING LATELY?

Washington, DC Metro Station on a cold January morning in 2007. The man with a violin played six Bach pieces for about 45 minutes. During that time approx. 2 thousand people went through the station, most of them on their way to work. After 3 minutes a middle aged man noticed there was a musician playing. He slowed his pace and stopped for a few seconds and then hurried to meet his schedule.

4 minutes later:
the violinist received his first dollar: a woman threw the money in the hat and, without stopping, continued to walk..

6 minutes:
A young man leaned against the wall to listen to him, then looked at his watch and started to walk again.

10 minutes:
A 3-year old boy stopped but his mother tugged him along hurriedly. The kid stopped to look at the violinist again, but the mother pushed hard and the child continued to walk, turning his head all the time. This action was repeated by several other children. Every parent, without exception, forced their children to move on quickly.


45 minutes:
The musician played continuously. Only 6 people stopped and listened for a short while. About 20 gave money but continued to walk at their normal pace. The man collected a total of $32.

1 hour:
He finished playing and silence took over. No one noticed. No one applauded, nor was there any recognition.

No one knew this, but the violinist was Joshua Bell, one of the greatest musicians in the world. He played one of the most intricate pieces ever written, with a violin worth $3.5 million dollars. Two days before Joshua Bell sold out a theater in Boston where the seats averaged $100.

This is a true story. Joshua Bell playing incognito in the metro station was organized by the Washington Post as part of a social experiment about perception, taste and people's priorities. The questions raised: in a common place environment at an inappropriate hour, do we perceive beauty? Do we stop to appreciate it? Do we recognize talent in an unexpected context?

One possible conclusion reached from this experiment could be this: If we do not have a moment to stop and listen to one of the best musicians in the world, playing some of the finest music ever written, with one of the most beautiful instruments ever made.... How many other things are we missing?


Hear him play...would you have stopped to listen ?

GO KISS THE WORLD~ SUBROTO BAGCHI

A speech so inspiring, it'll be a loss for any parent to miss this and miss being an inspiration in the lives of ther children
(Sorry about the irregular spacing...copied from a friend's mail)

(SUBROTO BAGCHI, CEO MINDTREE and author of runaway best sellers, The High Performance Entrepreneur, Go Kiss the World and The Professional.)


I was the last child of a small-time government servant, in a family of
five brothers. My earliest memory of my father is as that of a District
Employment Officer in Koraput, Orissa. It was, and remains as back of
beyond as you can imagine. There was no electricity; no primary school
nearby and water did not flow out of a tap. As a result, I did not go to
school until the age of eight; I was home-schooled. My father used to get
transferred every year. The family belongings fit into the back of a jeep
- so the family moved from place to place and without any trouble, my
Mother would set up an establishment and get us going. Raised by a widow
who had come as a refugee from the then East Bengal , she was a matriculate
when she married my Father.

My parents set the foundation of my life and the value system, which makes
me what I am today and largely, defines what success means to me today.

As District Employment Officer, my father was given a jeep by the
government. There was no garage in the Office, so the jeep was parked in
our house. My father refused to use it to commute to the office. He told
us that the jeep is an expensive resource given by the government- he
reiterated to us that it was not "his jeep" but the government's jeep.
Insisting that he would use it only to tour the interiors, he would walk
to his office on normal days. He also made sure that we never sat in the
government jeep - we could sit in it only when it was stationary.

That was our early childhood lesson in governance - a lesson that
corporate managers learn the hard way, some never do.

The driver of the jeep was treated with respect due to any other member of
my Father's office. As small children, we were taught not to call him by
his name. We had to use the suffix 'dada' whenever we were to refer to him
in public or private. When I grew up to own a car and a driver by the name
of Raju was appointed - I repeated the lesson to my two small daughters.
They have, as a result, grown up to call Raju, 'Raju Uncle' - very
different from many of their friends who refer to their family driver, as
'my driver'. When I hear that term from a school- or college-going person,
I cringe.

To me, the lesson was significant - you treat small people with more
respect than how you treat big people. It is more important to respect
your subordinates than your superiors.

Our day used to start with the family huddling around my Mother's chulha -
an earthen fire place she would build at each place of posting where she
would cook for the family. There was neither gas, nor electrical
stoves.The morning routine started with tea. As the brew was served,
Father would ask us to read aloud the editorial page of The Statesman's
'muffosil' edition - delivered one day late. We did not understand much of
what we were reading. But the ritual was meant for us to know that the
world was larger than Koraput district and the English I speak today,
despite having studied in an Oriya medium school, has to do with that
routine. After reading the newspaper aloud, we were told to fold it
neatly. Father taught us a simple lesson.

He used to say, "You should leave your newspaper and your toilet, the way
you expect to find it". That lesson was about showing consideration to
others. Business begins and ends with that simple precept.

Being small children, we were always enamored with advertisements in the
newspaper for transistor radios - we did not have one. We saw other people
having radios in their homes and each time there was an advertisement of
Philips, Murphy or Bush radios, we would ask Father when we could get one.
Each time, my Father would reply that we did not need one because he
already had five radios - alluding to his five sons.

We also did not have a house of our own and would occasionally ask Father
as to when, like others, we would live in our own house. He would give a
similar reply," We do not need a house of our own. I already own five
houses". His replies did not gladden our hearts in that instant.

Nonetheless, we learnt that it is important not to measure personal
success and sense of well being through material possessions.

Government houses seldom came with fences. Mother and I collected twigs
and built a small fence. After lunch, my Mother would never sleep. She
would take her kitchen utensils and with those she and I would dig the
rocky, white ant infested surrounding. We planted flowering bushes. The
white ants destroyed them. My mother brought ash from her chulha and mixed
it in the earth and we planted the seedlings all over again. This time,
they bloomed. At that time, my father's transfer order came. A few
neighbors told my mother why she was taking so much pain to beautify a
government house, why she was planting seeds that would only benefit the
next occupant. My mother replied that it did not matter to her that she
would not see the flowers in full bloom. She said, "I have to create a
bloom in a desert and whenever I am given a new place, I must leave it
more beautiful than what I had inherited".

That was my first lesson in success. It is not about what you create for
yourself, it is what you leave behind that defines success.

My mother began developing a cataract in her eyes when I was very small.
At that time, the eldest among my brothers got a teaching job at the
University in Bhubaneswar and had to prepare for the civil services
examination. So, it was decided that my Mother would move to cook for him
and, as her appendage, I had to move too. For the first time in my life I
saw electricity in homes and water coming out of a tap. It was around 1965
and the country was going to war with Pakistan . My mother was having
problems reading and in any case, being Bengali, she did not know the
Oriya script. So, in addition to my daily chores, my job was to read her
the local newspaper - end to end. That created in me a sense of
connectedness with a larger world. I began taking interest in many
different things. While reading out news about the war, I felt that I was
fighting the war myself. She and I discussed the daily news and built a
bond with the larger universe. In it, we became part of a larger reality.
Till date, I measure my success in terms of that sense of larger
connectedness. Meanwhile, the war raged and India was fighting on both
fronts. Lal Bahadur Shastri, the then Prime Minster, coined the term "Jai
Jawan, Jai Kishan" and galvanized the nation in to patriotic fervor. Other
than reading out the newspaper to my mother, I had no clue about how I
could be part of the action. So, after reading her the newspaper, every
day I would land up near the University's water tank, which served the
community. I would spend hours under it, imagining that there could be
spies who would come to poison the water and I had to watch for them. I
would daydream about catching one and how the next day, I would be
featured in the newspaper. Unfortunately for me, the spies at war ignored
the sleepy town of Bhubaneswar and I never got a chance to catch one in
action. Yet, that act unlocked my imagination.

Imagination is everything. If we can imagine a future, we can create it,
if we can create that future, others will live in it. That is the essence
of success.

Over the next few years, my mother's eyesight dimmed but in me she created
a larger vision, a vision with which I continue to see the world and, I
sense, through my eyes, she was seeing too. As the next few years
unfolded, her vision deteriorated and she was operated for cataract. I
remember, when she returned after her operation and she saw my face
clearly for the first time, she was astonished. She said, "Oh my God, I
did not know you were so fair". I remain mighty pleased with that
adulation even till date. Within weeks of getting her sight back, she
developed a corneal ulcer and, overnight, became blind in both eyes. That
was 1969. She died in 2002. In all those 32 years of living with
blindness, she never complained about her fate even once. Curious to know
what she saw with blind eyes, I asked her once if she sees darkness. She
replied, "No, I do not see darkness. I only see light even with my eyes
closed". Until she was eighty years of age, she did her morning yoga
everyday, swept her own room and washed her own clothes.

To me, success is about the sense of independence; it is about not seeing
the world but seeing the light.

Over the many intervening years, I grew up, studied, joined the industry
and began to carve my life's own journey. I began my life as a clerk in a
government office, went on to become a Management Trainee with the DCM
group and eventually found my life's calling with the IT industry when
fourth generation computers came to India in 1981. Life took me places - I
worked with outstanding people, challenging assignments and traveled all
over the world.

In 1992, while I was posted in the US , I learnt that my father, living a
retired life with my eldest brother, had suffered a third degree burn
injury and was admitted in the Safderjung Hospital in Delhi . I flew back
to attend to him - he remained for a few days in critical stage, bandaged
from neck to toe. The Safderjung Hospital is a cockroach infested, dirty,
inhuman place. The overworked, under-resourced sisters in the burn ward
are both victims and perpetrators of dehumanized life at its worst. One
morning, while attending to my Father, I realized that the blood bottle
was empty and fearing that air would go into his vein, I asked the
attending nurse to change it. She bluntly told me to do it myself. In that
horrible theater of death, I was in pain and frustration and anger.
Finally when she relented and came, my Father opened his eyes and murmured
to her, "Why have you not gone home yet?" Here was a man on his deathbed
but more concerned about the overworked nurse than his own state. I was
stunned at his stoic self.

There I learnt that there is no limit to how concerned you can be for
another human being and what the limit of inclusion is you can create.

My father died the next day. He was a man whose success was defined by his
principles, his frugality, his universalism and his sense of inclusion.

Above all, he taught me that success is your ability to rise above your
discomfort, whatever may be your current state. You can, if you want,
raise your consciousness above your immediate surroundings. Success is not
about building material comforts - the transistor that he never could buy
or the house that he never owned. His success was about the legacy he
left, the memetic continuity of his ideals that grew beyond the smallness
of a ill-paid, unrecognized government servant's world.

My father was a fervent believer in the British Raj. He sincerely doubted
the capability of the post-independence Indian political parties to govern
the country. To him, the lowering of the Union Jack was a sad event. My
Mother was the exact opposite. When Subhash Bose quit the Indian National
Congress and came to Dacca , my mother, then a schoolgirl, garlanded him.
She learnt to spin khadi and joined an underground movement that trained
her in using daggers and swords. Consequently, our household saw diversity
in the political outlook of the two. On major issues concerning the world,
the Old Man and the Old Lady had differing opinions.

In them, we learnt the power of disagreements, of dialogue and the essence
of living with diversity in thinking.

Success is not about the ability to create a definitive dogmatic end
state; it is about the unfolding of thought processes, of dialogue and
continuum.

Two years back, at the age of eighty-two, Mother had a paralytic stroke
and was lying in a government hospital in Bhubaneswar . I flew down from
the US where I was serving my second stint, to see her. I spent two weeks
with her in the hospital as she remained in a paralytic state. She was
neither getting better nor moving on. Eventually I had to return to work.
While leaving her behind, I kissed her face. In that paralytic state and a
garbled voice, she said,

"Why are you kissing me, go kiss the world." Her river was nearing its
journey, at the confluence of life and death, this woman who came to India
as a refugee, raised by a widowed Mother, no more educated than high
school, married to an anonymous government servant whose last salary was
Rupees Three Hundred, robbed of her eyesight by fate and crowned by
adversity was telling me to go and kiss the world!

Success to me is about Vision. It is the ability to rise above the
immediacy of pain. It is about imagination. It is about sensitivity to
small people. It is about building inclusion. It is about connectedness to
a larger world existence. It is about personal tenacity. It is about
giving back more to life than you take out of it. It is about creating
extra-ordinary success with ordinary lives.

Thank you very much; I wish you good luck and God's speed. Go! kiss the
world.

(My take on the speech:

Note: Although the parents may seem to be simple people, they hold world class vision and values that would shame many in this materialistic world. World class parents do produce world class progeny, I guess it's true that the apple doesn't fall far from the tree)

Are you ready to be tested?

A short neurological test 1- Find the C below.. Please do not use any cursor help. OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO COOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOO 2- If you already found the C, now find the 6 below. 9999999999999999999 9999999999999999 999999999999 9999999999999999999 9999999999999999 999999999999 9999999999999999999 9999999999999999 999999999999 6999999999999999999 9999999999999999 999999999999 9999999999999999999 9999999999999999 999999999999 9999999999999999999 9999999999999999 999999999999 3 - Now find the N below. It's a little more difficult. MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM MMMMMMMMMNMM MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM MMMMMMMMMMMM MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM MMMMMMMMMMMM MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM MMMMMMMMMMMM MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM MMMMMMMMMMMM This is NOT a joke. If you were able to pass these 3 tests, you can cancel your annual visit to your neurologist. Your brain is great and you're far from having a close relationship with Alzheimer. Congratulations! Oh. One more test.... Find the 44th USA President. Well, congratulations, you're not colour blind either! SENIOR CITIZENS ARE THE NATION'S LEADING CARRIERS OF AIDS! HEARING AIDS BAND AIDS ROLL AIDS WALKING AIDS MEDICAL AIDS GOVERNMENT AIDS MOST OF ALL, MONETARY AIDS TO THEIR KIDS! Not forgetting HIV (Hair is Vanishing) Give me the grace to see a joke, To get some humour out of life, And pass it on to other folk. I'm only sending this to my 'old' friends. I love to see you smile !

Questions for the wise old owl

Kring kring ......

.

`Hello'

And it's your best friend at the other end of the line `Hi, it's me, can I talk to you?'

`Yeah sure, what's up?'

`What do you think if I say I want a divorce?'
(And I'm thinking if you are asking me this question, you DON"T want a divorce! You just think you do)

OMG! Another one million dollar question! (Nowadays it could actually be worth more than this cos a divorce would ultimately require splitting up the couple's marital assets which could easily run into millions given the price of real estate in KL these days)

So as a friend what kind of advise do you give?

My answer was ` Are you free right now? Let's have lunch at so-so..'

Hmmmm....



Barbara Streisand sang in Women in Love:

The road is narrow and long
When eyes meet eyes
and the feeling is strong

How true it is...The myth of living happily ever after, soon after being swept off your feet by Prince Charming is now just that....a myth. On the other hand, the dream of snaring the sweet, submissive, compliant and ever obliging Princess quickly evaporates into thin air.


Good and long lasting marriages were not made like that. These require a lot of sacrifices, a lot of love and plenty of hard work, lots of laughter and shared tears to grow strong and solid. Much like a tree, the annual rings acquired through beautiful weather, drought and stormy rains make the wood beautiful and priceless...you can't get it any other way, just the hard way.

(The cross section of a tree...beautiful isn't it? But the tree has gone through so much character building)

Some see and count sacrifices only in material form. Most men think, working their fingers to the bone providing comfort to the family as the ultimate sacrifice. What precious little time left is heavily invested on their teh tarik buddies, their futsal sessions and their fishing or golfing trips. In fact nowadays, these are actually considered healthy social activities. Better than frequenting clubs and massage parlours, some might even volunteer.


Whereas women, with or without careers, are expected to be the nurturer, the family caretaker, the cook, the mother and provide laundry services to boot. And God forbid if she asks too many questions (5 at a time is considered max!) or if she's no good in bed cos she's just too tired running around making sure all i's are dotted and all t's crossed. Mum, wife ; omnipresent. (Yes, until she drops dead, that is)

This lopsided arrangement will ultimately bring the couple to the forked road. So where do you go from there?

When confronted with the same question again after lunch, I told my friend, ` I am not in a position to offer a solution to your problem. In a marriage, however much you consult with others, the only two opinions that matter is the both of yours'. All I can do is offer a different perspective to what you see as the root cause of the problem.'

Some basic rules:

1) When you are wronged by the other party, drop the holier than thou attitude. If it happened to him/her, it can happen to you too. The other party is just unlucky.

2) When there is any doubt, give the partner the benefit.

3) Do not look a gift horse in its mouth

(MY! this horse needs a dentist desperately)

4) If you ask too many questions, be prepared to be taken for the ride of your life.

5) Hope for the best, but prepare for the worst.

6) Cliche' as it may sound, be prepared to forgive (though you may never forget)

(Now, what did they say? oh yes, broken pieces never make a whole)

7) No matter how strongly convicted you are, never decide in the heat of the moment. Give yourself the time and space, you owe it to yourself.

The wise old owl rests her case. Anymore simple rules to mend a broken heart?