Fly a kite!

Throw your dreams into space like a kite, you do not know what it will bring back, a new life, a new friend, a new love, a new country.
- Anais Nin

Spring is coming, happy kite flying! :)
Sunny smiles & greetings for Makar Sankranti, Bihu, Pongal & Lohri!

A note from the past

When both your phones conk off, you get the drift. The universe wants to strip away your over connected attachment with the world for you to experience the silent no-phone state; maybe it wants to offer you the opportunity to be a monk. People of the app era have probably forgotten that the phone still has the basic features of dialing the number to call or text/sms to drop a short message, which only acts as a catalyst for the conspiracy.

Oh well, so I was fiddling with multiple stone age phones to transfer a decent ringtone so that the stones do not blare out. I came across many pictures that I took or collected more than four or even five years ago, the ones that I thought were lost forever. There was no Pinterest back then to pin the quotes or pictures you liked or Facebook was not so popular to spam everyone's wall, you just stored them in your own folder.

And one gem image quote from the past flashed right in my face :

Love is not blind. It sees more and not less, but because it sees more it is willing to see less.


True that, even now.

Change is the only constant

We are what our experiences and learning over the years have been. Our environment, friends, families mold us or get accustomed to what we are; you think you know yourself very well.

And just when you think life cannot change, your perspectives and liking cannot change after a certain age, things change.

I'm done with Bombay & caffeine  - says the coffee loving Bombayite

The smart phone conks off

My phone's conked off and the zen like peace minus the incessant notifications is too gratifying to mar with a repair/replacement . Of course I have an office phone which keeps the work & essentials going on. But it's not a smart phone and I guess that keeps me smart with my time and things to focus on.

Book a ticket & just leave

Book a ticket & just leave - It sounds outlandish, crazy & action on impulse without much after thought.

Yet there comes a moment when you feel like doing exactly that, to meet an old friend, to be at your favourite place, to do what you love the most. Your some day is right now.

And I never thought I would be one of those to actually do that. Another win for the new year. 2014 has been rolling out brilliantly so far! Hope the vibe continues all year long :)

Motivation

Inspiration. Sign of leadership.

This is an email shared by a team lead with the immediate reporting team in my organization.

Dear All,

A thought:

While we go about the process of delivery on our KRAs and delegated tasks, each one of us should ask ourselves on a periodical basis the following question:

What have I contributed today? What output have I given for today?

I ask the above question to myself whenever I hit the pillow every night. And I do not always like the answer I receive from my conscience.

While such questions are easy to answer when one is in a line function (eg: as a BM or Area Manager or RBM etc in our structure for example), it is difficult to define discreet output on daily basis in our line of responsibility, but nevertheless, one does get a sense whether one has climbed a few steps during the day or walking against the motion of escalator throughout the day, basically remaining unchanged in position. The next stage is whether the answer moves you or does not move you. If the answer is mostly positive, it is actually good for the person. However, if the answer is mostly negative, and still one does not get moved, it is bad news in the long run.

I keep on telling myself that I first work for myself and then for any organization. What do I mean when I say that I work for myself. I mean that every day I need to produce and contribute value in the world. If I work in an organization, then the world is mostly that organization. Also, in the process of creating value for the organization, I end up learning something new every day, I end up getting an extra experience which makes me more knowledgeable.

Life is short. There is so much to do…in professional life as well as personal life. We have set short term deadlines for ourselves in terms of what we want to achieve and get cracking on the work at hand. Our world is made up of people who surround us like family, relatives, colleagues etc. Let us be known amongst the people we live with as Achievers and Go-getters.

We have got some clarity for ourselves in the last few discussions (oral and written) we have had. Let us get cracking on them (still I feel that we are yet to become fully responsible for our commitments)  and ask ourselves at the end of the day as to what we achieved during the day. I witness myself and others accepting miniscule output as normal, which should not be. I want ourselves to be responsible when we give commitments since we end up often breaking our commitments by explaining to ourselves that outcome was not possible due to whatever reason. I request all of us to stick to our commitments and be known as the best team in Co.

Disagreements

People have different information, but they think the root of their disagreement is that the other person has bad judgement or bad manners or bad values. In fact, most people would share your opinions if they had the same information. The only useful thing is examining the differences in your assumptions and adding to each other's information. Some times that is enough to make viewpoints converge over time.
- Scott Adams, God's Debris

Happy New Year

I've found a reason for me
To change who I used to be
A reason to start over new
And the reason is you.


Footnote [Edit added on 12th Jan'14]:
People come in your life for a reason, season or a lifetime. Pick the good, keep the nice pieces and be thankful for the happy times. Life is short. You only live once.

2013: The year that was

While most of us could be busy thinking about New Year resolutions, I would rather look back at the year that was. 

Listing out the opinions and quotes by friends, acquaintances, colleagues & people that I found profound, interesting, nice or worth a thought... These are strictly from people I have had conversations with, not from social media sites, books, or internet. Oh yes, I have a sharp memory & I will always remember you by your words. 

Sometimes, happiness is just a phone call away.

Discipline of the mind is first step towards tranquility and peace.

Sometimes when you let people do whatever they want to, they give in. The more you try to reason, guide or mold, the more rebellious they feel.

Relationships are supposed to be genuinely nice and free of power play. But people may not operate that way.

Being straight forward makes it easier for everyone, but people will take their time & be diplomatic.

I don't care about one's past, but I surely want to know how much fun that person can be.

Trust the process and it's people. Keep calm.

Equality is a myth in real life. We only derive notional happiness aspiring for it.

People are sometimes kinder than what they portray. The boundaries they build are to test the waters.

The only way to make a bad situation worse is to get angry. It's a useless emotion & doesn't help solve anything.

Silence is understood as acceptance of others' views and that you have nothing to counter it.

Don't take shit from anyone. Ever.

Keep your email messages uncluttered, clean & neat. Avoid fluff.

To be the best, consistently compare yourself with the best.

Always keep your options open, else you will stagnate and time will move on.

It's not about what the role is, it is what you make out of that role. There are innumerable possibilities.

How can any person who is serious about career be partying every weekend? There must be some worthwhile venture apart from the job to keep one's mind sharp. Otherwise time is spent on endless consumption and enjoyment these days. Stop consuming & start creating.

Don't be the 99 percent. Strive to be in the 1 percent. Crossroads be damned.

Have a spectacular new year!

Books & people

Seeing someone reading a book you love is seeing a book recommending a person.

Source: Tumblr

Thoughts for the week

Life isn't about knee jerk reactions or immediate results. No time to stand and stare would have been appropriately penned today as no time to pause and think. With so many distractions, it's easy to forget to pause and take stock. We all need to have the right balance between action and reflection. Self reflection always offers a chance to learn from our experiences. There is strength in acknowledging the past and especially in acknowledging the things learned from the past. There will be little rubs and disappointments everywhere as we are all apt at expecting a lot. Quite often life is unfair and if one scheme doesn't work it's human nature to calculate again. You have to fight through the bad days to earn the best days of your life. Courage is not always about the roaring, sometimes it's modest perseverance that strives to try again next day. For I have learned that the greater part of our misery or unhappiness is determined not by our circumstance but by our disposition. And a cheerful disposition in every circumstance, especially during the grueling ones, lets one walk away with grace. 

Don't give up the search for happiness because you are afraid of getting hurt. Today is the tomorrow you were worrying about yesterday. The future depends on what you do today. The most common regrets are not about what you did, they are about what you didn't do when you had the chance. Take the chance to make a choice to change. As long as people can change, the world can change.

Pale Blue Dot

Carl Sagan post from brainpickings

From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of any particular interest. But for us, it’s different. Consider again that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every ‘superstar,’ every ‘supreme leader,’ every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there — on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity — in all this vastness — there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. The Earth is the only world known, so far, to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment, the Earth is where we make our stand. It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.

Cold

Intense cold makes you aware of your limitations

Time

Time takes away a lot more than one can imagine.

Control

Have mastered the art of not letting storm of one world affect the calmness of the other world.
5th Nov 2013

Holi

Holi reminds me more of those who dislike it & shun the festival, than of those who love the riot of colours. Though the holy fire is lit on previous night for triumph of good over evil, the colour ritual brings out more evil than good the next morning. Those who love it would surely disagree. Personally, I prefer to stay clean, relax, eat Holi delicacies like puranpoli, aam-ras, read a book & admire nature from my window.

Coloured powder need not be smeared on faces to relish a colourful sight. Enjoy the spring colours in nature - bright green leaves of most of the trees' names that I do not know, the pinkish green shades of Peepal tree's tiny new leaves, Lincoln green, dark green - name the shade from your crayon box & you see it the summer Sun in India. Sparrows are rarely to be seen, but there are still the colourful birds chirping around - the bulbul, the parrots, the yellow bird & the little brown bird. Afternoons are usually dominated by the cuckoos, pigeons and the distant woodpecker working away. Evening has its own delight - array of orange or pink & purple strewn across the skies and tree tops glisten merrily like tiny crowns in the sunset glow. 

Sit back, sip a cool drink & watch nature's Holi as often as you can. :-)

#TSBC

The Sunday Book Club has captured my attention since the last few months. For all those who think Facebook/Twitter is a waste of time, here's #TSBC for you every Sunday at 3pm IST on Twitter

You don't have to be among any elite or finest book readers or have quizzing skills, you can simply join the chat on Twitter. Wide variety of topics makes one want to simply participate even if one hasn't read a lot about that particular genre - book collections, comics, crime fiction, travel books, Sherlock Holmes, Indian writing, mythological fiction, self-help, politics & books. The pitter patter of perspectives tweeted in just 140 characters in an hour is one of the most thoughtful weekly interactions that one can witness on Twitter. Warm, friendly founders & participants make you wait eagerly for Sunday afternoon chat on books!

A riot of books, a playroom of topics, TSBC - a book lover's must try fun!

A best friend's wedding

The same warm smile, the nascent naughty glint in the eye, the friendly warm hug as gentle as ever.
The couple on the reception dais, yet time stands still as old friends meet after a forever.
While everyone else is busy on any wedding day, my best friend is all ears to what I may have to say
Amidst the crowd of relatives and the persistent photographer, there is time to sit down and chatter away.
Yes, your bow-tie was perfect and so was your suit, buddy, yours was the best reception I have been to ever.
Cheers to our friendship which is so blissful, peaceful and etched with a shelf-time of forever.
Wish you a caring angel to help you soar to happy clouds of married life for ever and ever.

Living spaces - The Balcony

A walk down the well-to-do areas of a mid-suburb now is very different from what it was a decade ago. The air is still, there is no breeze playing between the then short buildings. You don't see children playing in the building compound, they are busy with their online games and gadgets, which is not uncommon. But missing breeze is very unsettling. Redevelopment of buildings has turned modest sized buildings into huge buildings adding extra floors, multiple walls, extended windows and compromised with the open spaces for ventilation between buildings. Something that was taken for granted to be as part of our living spaces has gone missing.

More often than not, I see these dilapidated buildings with fancy decorative balconies, now covered with dust, half broken and in desperate need of repairs. The new ones of course have a faux balcony with a railing added or worse still half glass wall. Most buildings have these full size windows, effectively saving the builder the costs of bricks & cement for one wall per room & the inhabitants thus not seeing a point in having a balcony. With sliding gates and maximum use of space, the residents seems to think of balcony as just an extension of the window, not really required or just add a grill & dump old stuff in the box-grill. The beautiful balconies adorned with colorful flowers, a quintessential money-plant and the tusli perched decoratively near the half walls with columns are lost forever.

Balcony or the gallery that I recollect of my childhood was like a child's room away from the child's room. The familiar spot where the sun light would stream in, the flower pots arranged in layers to give a feel of a mini garden, spending afternoons in the balcony scribbling on the slates, spotting birds, squirrels on the neighboring trees and waving good byes to family members or relatives. The balcony was my personal living space to spend hours. Looking through the edifices in balcony's wall design to wave my folks good-bye, to spot the flute seller playing a melodious tune, miscellaneous hawkers, passer-bys, street arguments, the processions - marriage, political rallies, ganapati visarjan - you name it and the balcony offered an unobstructed view.

And I am glad that I still have this balcony, that my building is not yet redeveloped. 

A pie in the sky, a space of my own, a balcony every home must have.

Darkest Corners

Khap Panchayat - mirror image of Taliban.
Both are the darkest corners of the times we live in