Humility - An Introspection

I felt it was very important to jot down for myself and incidentally share with others a deep realization on Humility that I gained based on introspecting my own feelings.

Because it is penned on 12^th December it is also an uncanny tribute to my beloved Superstar who is however an anti-thesis of my concept but then it is the tributes that are overflowing for him today that set me thinking on this subject...

I have often wondered why humility is associated only with great achievers. 

After all, not everyone is an achiever and not every achiever ends up embracing humility.

If that be the route to be humble then it automatically seems a far fetched trait to possess. 

Our mind automatically post pones being humble to a much later stage of life and makes us focused on show casing ourselves as achievers of something great first.

I think this notion needs to be totally turned on its head for  a more constructive co-existence with others in a society.

When we think of humility, great achievers like Shri APJ Kalam, Rajini, A R Rahman, MS Dhoni, Jonty Rhodes etc only come to mind. 

Simultaneously one starts believing that humility is therefore a successor of achievement.

Today while introspecting on my own life, I started thinking do I want to chase achievements or humility. 

After all being an achiever is not in everyone’s destiny but being humble ought to be in everyone’s control to choose to be.

At the top of my recall, resonated a comment by some famous personality who is supposed to have said about an adversary (I am unfortunately unable to recollect both of them), 

“He is surely humble but then he has a lot to be humble about”.

While this is a tongue in cheek tribute, I felt that this was closest to the notion of humility I was searching for.  

It automatically meant that humility is accessible to everyone whether they have something to boast about themselves or not.

So I dug a bit more into my mind to find out what is the best possible way to express humility even when there is nothing to boast of in the first place. 

That is when I realized that being judgmental is the biggest hurdle in not being able to treat the impostors of success and failure as one and the same.

Invariably we are all judgmental.

Either we judge others or worse we judge our own selves and that too constantly and funnily with or without our own knowledge. 

Even as we exchange pleasantries with others, a little voice in the head keeps saying something like “hey, I thought I am as good as him or her, how come he/she has achieved this much while I have not”, or “I have not achieved anything in my life so far. I have worked for 15 to 20 years and still have not saved enough to consider an early retirement”.

To stop being judgmental of others, we need to first of all understand that everyone’s journey is unique and more importantly a very lonely one.

Someone is your peer at work or a classmate in school by sheer co-incidence or by a concept of time-boxing your life into various buckets.

You need to train your mind into un-boxing your life from these buckets and make it a larger expanse.

What if you had never worked in that company or studied in that school. You would then be running the race with an entirely different set of individuals whom you never knew existed from Adam right?

Perhaps they are even lesser mortals than the ones you compared with and also tasting bigger achievements than them. How would you then feel?. Where will you stop?. 

Isn’t it high time then to realize that life is all about your lonely journey and what you did with your life is all that matters to yourself.

Now after that comes avoidance of being judgmental on yourself.

Consider this. Would you want to be an achiever or Would you want to be known as an achiever.

If you just want to be an achiever it means you can make the attempt without having to fear failure and also there is no limit on the number of attempts you would need. 

The moment you want to be known as an achiever you invite a whole set of pressure variables that make you judge yourself very critically.

If you are able to avoid being judgmental of others (success or failure) and if you are further able to avoid judging yourself, then you automatically become humble for I truly believe by now that the purest form of humility is being non judgmental.   

It makes us someone who radiates positive energy to anyone we come in contact with

1. If we come across a less privileged person, it helps us to empathize with him more
2. If we come across a more privileged person, it helps our stress levels by not adding kilo calories to false notions of measuring the size of our own achievements.

Happiness always appears elusive for it is more of an end point of an arduous journey. The ability to persevere that arduous journey comes from being humble.

The more our spoken word reflects or matches with the inner voice in the head the more the signs of progression in the journey to be humble.

The best way to live is by helping others. 

That is not an easy life to live for many of us chasing personal commitments (so in the spirit of this write up nothing judgmental about it), but at least we should live a life that is not an hindrance to one another.

Even if we radiate a thought of envy at other people’s status or position or achievement in life, we end up being a negative energy in their lives while simultaneously being wretched ourselves.

I personally realized through this self conversation that humility is therefore a starting point that is within the reach of everyone.  

No one needs a role model to get inspired into radiating humility. 

And it is this realization that made me create a blog after many years.

I just wanted to share this in the hope of inspiring others to think "If a guy next door can, so can I. Let me not wait to be an achiever to radiate this state of mind.".

Cheers,

Mahesh

Happiness - A result or An Experience? Ask yourself

Happiness is one thing everyone craves for either explicitly or implicitly.

In fact one would give anything in return for always having a happy emotion.

I strongly feel that everyone approaches happiness as a goal rather than as an experience. Which is why probably people miss the whole thing.

The whole point is that happiness does not exist outside of us and it is totally within ourselves. It is there in that deep reserve of emotions that we possess and is concealed in layers and layers of other emotions and tends to be at the bottom most layer waiting for an outward stimuli to pull it out of its depths onto our face or mind.

Which is why happiness is experienced only together with ecstasy since a mega event is required to prise it out from the depths of consciousness.

This happiness tends to last temporarily for its nature is more physical than emotional.

True happiness is achieved only when the emotion of Happiness pervades all our other emotions.

Wait a minute I am not advocating that one should try to be happy overcoming or suppressing all other emotions. It is not only impossible but also pretty trite to show a wrong emotion at the wrong place.

What I mean is that the emotion of Happiness should act more like a traffic cop in regulating the other emotions in our mind and ensure that each of these emotions exist with a finite shelf life or expiry timestamp.

This kind of happiness is more to do with being contended with what results one gets for any effort and all that should matter at the end of it is a honesty of purpose and intention that backs the effort.

I have seen, and still see, so many close people suffer in life owing to comparison of their lot with that of others as to how theirs is bad or those of others is better.

I was not an exception when it comes to being trapped with these emotions. But a serious introspection of these emotions while being trapped opened my eyes to the fact that the mind is in a trap.

This trap simply stops you from thinking positively and makes you to try and showcase yourself as a success in areas that your heart actually does not want you to be successful at.

You stop chasing your heart and end up chasing your newly established goals thinking that will bring you out of this trap. It unfortunately leads you only to a maze of more stronger emotions that take you farther away from the real person that you are.

I stopped comparing myself with anyone after a few incidents made me realize the total emptiness of the approach of comparison.

Just think for a minute, the same mind that craves for a good result to happen to oneself when you see someone known to you experiencing the same, silently prays to God wanting him not to make you a victim of a mishap that happens to another person.

Why is it that we suffer in comparison only by wanting all the good things that happen to others to happen to us also.

It is only because (a) We are hardwired to chase happiness at the subconscious level and (b) We also have an externalized concept of happiness etched on our mind that it is a sum total of all the positive results that happen to us in life.

And the reason why happiness is therefore elusive to us is that most of the time results are totally an outcome of factors beyond our immediate control, which is why we all still pray to God.

So what then is the secret of all time happiness...Simple, look no further, look inside you and dig really deep.

Detach yourself from results and attach yourself to your inner reserves and strengths that give you the fortitude and maturity to face any situation be it positive or negative.

The more you are aligned to enjoying the efforts you put in rather than saving the enjoyment for later once a positive result is achieved for your effort, the more you will get close to experiencing happiness in a majority portion of your lifetime.

Of course results do matter and they can cause a negative emotion to flow out.

But the detachment from results will ensure that happiness will persist in your mind and ensure that the negative emotions are packed off after a normal expiry period. And gradually but surely you will find that life moves on and most importantly in a direction aligned to goals that are more closer to your heart.

I am an Accountant by core competence (although not by profession) and my version of Karma is the theory that everyone's life is a balance sheet. 

In other words we all have an equal amount of positive and negative things that will occur to offset one another.

I do not mean that all of us will get the same amount of positive and negative things. 

Instead everybody will get as much positive results as they got negative results at an individual level.

This thought process helps me look forward to positive things when I am on a trough of life and stay grounded when I am on a high, both of which are important to break the mind to face the cycle.

I was able to achieve a lot of stability in my emotions, thanks to this approach and today I can look back and feel proud to realize that I have faced quite a lot of emotional challenges with fortitude and the resulting release of tension ensured that my life goes on in a direction aligned to my heart than my ego.

Most importantly this changed the way I prayed. I greatly reduced asking for favorable outcomes and instead prayed for the divine presence within me to ensure that I continue to have the maturity to implement this thought process irrespective of outcomes.

Good luck in implementing this thought framework as suitable to events in your life.

Cheers,

Mahesh

An Ode to Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar

It is not often that you start admiring a sporting icon so much that you almost feel like personally having a lein on his achievements as if it were to add to your own self esteem.

Sachin is one such sporting icon for not just me but for arguably a thumping majority of cricket followers not just in India but across every nation this game has permeated itself.

I still remember that when he was debuting at the age of Sixteen, I was myself debuting as a teenager.

By then I had already soaked in enough of cricketing wisdom from my own family patriarchs and gully cricket seniors in my colony, to show a discerning taste of who had a stamp of permanent class and who was devoid of it.

At that tender age of cricketing viewership itself I was engulfed with needless worries of what will happen to my interest in cricket should a Gavaskar or Kapil Dev or Mohinder or Srikanth were to suddenly retire.

That is when Sachin burst onto the scene to take not just my breath away but with it all my cricketing worries forever or so it seemed till yesterday when I sadly countenanced the distasteful fact that he will no longer be donning the color or emblem of India.

I am mature enough to know the difference that playing cricket for India is not the same as representing the country in an Olympic event and that BCCI is just a club and not the ministry of Sport.

But the argument that Sachin did not represent India because of this trivia is as silly as me considering myself worthless and not having contributed to India’s GDP just because I never served in a Government Job.

Yes, I am fully guilty of several times forgetting my "fanhood" with him and judging him by the results he was part of or not part of. But I know that deep down, it was my unconditional love for his talent that wanted him to be part of every successful statistic in the game of cricket.

I even wanted him to retire earlier. That was not because I had had enough of seeing him. It was because the legion of people who wanted him to go became increasingly louder and I could not keep coming to terms with the success of the “See, I told you” gang grow even an inch more.

Again not that I was sure of such people’s successful predictions. In fact some of his most mature and successful innings have come in 2010 and 2011. 

Just in case some people think I am hallucinating here

1. 7 test tons in 2010 alone. [that left Ponting, who was snapping at his heels, high and dry]
2. The first ever 200 in ODI  [almost like a Roger Bannister record of a mile under 4 minutes] that too against a potent bowling attack like SA, in 2010
3. 175 against Australia [in Hyderabad chasing 350] again in 2010 and 
4. 2 World Cup centuries [albeit in vain] in 2011 

Why I go back to 2010-2011 is not because it is in the recent past but mainly because the impatience for his retirement started as way back as 2010 itself.

The more a player plays, the more the probability of failure (with perhaps an equal probability of success). 

Because of the pedigree of Sachin (both earned and vested) each failure would be magnified by the same proportion of his legendary stature in the game while his success would be immediately ratified by the same stature as something just expected out of him as a basic achievement.

And then there is this economic theory to contend with. That he is blocking the chance of another youngster’s career. As if playing for Indian eleven is the only way a cricketer makes a livelihood these days. 

In fact the only cricketing purpose I see in IPL is its ability to give so many budding Indian cricketers a livelihood despite never being able to play for India. And we have had IPL since 2008 itself, which naturally means Sachin has been liberated of this economic sin in 2008 itself.

I started writing this piece automatically as I was deeply moved inside by his decision to retire from the game. I have no specific sequence in my mind to jot down what he meant to me and my psyche.

To me Sachin represented myself walking down the aisle of the pavilion to play an innings for India. When I used to watch him bat, there were several times I was numbed into thinking that this is a video game where I could just pick the controls from him and play the innings on his behalf.

Every run he scored and every ball he faced used to feel as if it was going into my personal score book. One may wonder whether I felt the same about his bank balance, but thankfully self-pride took over the moment the game ended for the day.

And to me mostly the game ended with Sachin’s innings. 

I would have perhaps been a very horrible team player had I been a cricketer myself as my interest would have been in only my score. But I had the luxury of being a Fan to think this way (Just like others misuse it to throw brickbats at this legend).

If I were to review my cricketing viewership in milestones:

•  Indian cricket reached a new peak in 1983 as world champions only to be immediately humbled 5-0 by West Indies the following year on home soil.
• We as fans took the 1983 victory with a huge pinch of salt till our next arm candy was a lanky lad called Mohd. Azharuddin who scored a hatrick of centuries on debut and revived our faith in our team’s stature.
• Our stature in the world arena was again catapulted with the 1985 WCC victory in Australia (just that I would have loved K. Srikanth to have taken the Audi home and not Shastri)
• Followed by a sensational win over Pakistan in Sharjah after being bundled out for 122 in the final.
•  It was then a very irritating period of repeatedly succumbing to Pakistan which was growing in stature under the leadership of Imran who was keeping that volatile pack together (without succumbing to any commercial temptations and playing true to their potential).

It was particularly during this ascendancy of Pakistan under Imran that it was increasingly stifling to witness loss after loss especially in pressure games. Sunil Gavaskar’s calming presence was soon to be taken away in tests and Kapil was also getting into his twilight and was no longer the tear away rookie he was when he made his debut and who could plunge a hot knife into the heart of Pakistan’s defense (all part of cricketing folk lore that I was fed on).

Srikanth and Mohinder were the most unsung and equally un reliable heroes and Vengsarkar and Shastri epitomized narcissist tendencies. The initial euphoria of Azhar’s heroics was dying down and his feet of clay were being slowly un earthed. Sidhu was at best the equivalent of Sandhu in the batting department. 

A dim light at the end of the tunnel was no doubt being offered by the classy Sanjay Manjrekar but he was also more of test match material without the all round flavor that can make us world champions in ODI again.

It is when the spirit of the Indian fan was sagging that Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar entered the fray as a baby faced cherubic boy. 

As famed as the parable that David and Goliath was. Its message never registered with me till I saw Sachin take a bouncer of Waqar on his nose and defiantly even refused any help from all Pakistani fielders crowding in on him. 

The way he continued his innings that day without being cowed down by brute pace and then even scoring a brilliant 50 in one of the tests and then going on to whack the daylights out of Abdul Quadir (be as it may in a promotional one day) sent mine and many a heart soaring into un chartered territories of happiness.

From that instant to this, the result of India winning or losing did not matter as much as Sachin being in the winning or losing side of a battle. To me the world of cricket was Sachin. I could not care about the status of the match once his influence on that particular game was over.

Did he do well or not do well, was all that mattered to me.

In fact when India won the World cup in 2011, I was elated doubly because Sachin was on the winning side. I was no doubt additionally happy because he would be happy that day.

Why this inexplicable identification with him is something I have myself wondered.

He has brought me pure cricketing joy that none of my past cricketing heroes have ever come even close to. Even among the present crop I do not see anyone coming close to what Sachin produced as internal joy.

Not just his game and its sheer beauty and poise. It is the beauty and grace with which he has played it in the true spirit of the sport originally as founded by the British. Not a single show of dissent or tantrum throughout his 24 year illustrious career, even in the face of jaw dropping dubious lbw dismissals. 

Once when he was on 99 and adjudged LBW by none other than Simon Toufel, Sachin left the middle without a single emotion and minutes later after watching the giant screen Simon Toufel was shown to be shaking his head sideways in a very repenting tone as the ball hit Sachin way above the stump. Such was the decorum observed by this man that he is the ideal role model for every budding cricketer to follow.

Many people say he should have retired along with the 2011 World Cup. In a way, it took us 24 years of not being world champions (we were world champions from 1983 to 1987) to regain it and that roughly is the span of Sachin’s cricketing career and maybe it was pre-ordained to end with such a parallel.

I sincerely take this opportunity to thank Sachin not just for giving the privilege to be his fan and enjoy his game, but for also making it easy for someone so deeply impacted by his game, to come to terms with his retirement in stages.

I shudder to think what might have moved inside of me were he to announce this suddenly at the end of a match I viewed not knowing that I am going to be seeing him play for the last time in an official match.

I salute you Sachin for you are such a rare combination of talent, humility, poise, grace and charm. 

You are a true son of the soil. 

A true Bharat Ratna.

It is a privilege to be your fan and an honor to be your fellow country man

My Tryst With The Supreme Force

I aspired for the sky, You gave me the earth
I learnt to stay grounded

I aspired for a career in finance, You gave me a career in IT
I learnt to widen my horizon

I aspired for a stress free life, You gave me insurmountable issues
I learnt to be resilient

I aspired for a wealthy life, You gave me financial losses
I learnt to live on the edge

I aspired to reach out to You, You hid yourself
I learnt that you were all the while inside me sculpting my soul

I aspire now only to live a life in acknowledgment of your presence in me
I learnt that happiness lies only in the journey and not the destination !

Filtering Times

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Reproducing a brilliant article from a magazine called Frozen Thoughts....but just eliminating a few religious interpretations to make the message more universal in acceptance

This really has to be the most down to earth way of explaining the link between macro economic developments to the micro aspects of our daily life.
>

Though the epicenter of an earthquake is somewhere else, the tremors are always felt way beyond. Though the epicenter of the present economic-quake is in that 'land of opportunities' the rest of the world is feeling the tremors of the failures of their economic systems.

Games are always played by certain rules. You can always question why only eleven players in a team for football or why the cricket pitch has to be exactly 22 yards or why is it 15-luv, 30-luv and suddenly 40-luv instead of 45-luv in tennis. The passionate game-lovers do not think the rules are foolish but will call you a fool for questioning them. Rules are meant to establish a framework to constantly test you and challenge you.

Life too is a game with strange rules that are defined by a force beyond all of us.

What matters in a game as well as life is that you played the game till the end with the same hunger for winning and not even whether you won or lost.

Derive strength from knowing this and play the game courageously.

We had enjoyed good times. We have to endure these tough times. We will experience wonderful times. Falling is not failing. Years of inadequacies in global systems cannot be set right in a day. The rise is always time-consuming and the fall is always instantaneous. The game of life is tough but it isn't a game that cannot be won. Don't call these as bad times but see them as FILTERING times.

What is cultivated is called a crop. What grows by itself is a weed. The crop is a result and effect of human sweat. In a good economy everybody makes money. In a bad economy only the good make money. It is in times like these that you will know whether you are a crop or a weed.

To put things in a macro economic perspective. Investments were yielding more than what work could. So work was beginning to lose its dignity. Work Plus Investments is very good for an economy. But when Investments start replacing work it is the doom for any economy. Money was making so much money that the expressions of human spirit like ability, competence, education, cultivated leadership, experience, expertise and systematic development of organizations were all beginning to lose their value.

What we were going through was a credit card economy, a borrowed economy - an economy where the common man was borrowing disproportionate to what he was capable of earning and returning. It was an economy of FALSE money. An economy of IMAGINARY money. A correction was required and a correction is happening.

Just like the economy, humanity has also been built on certain virtues like commitment, resilience, determination, honesty, loyalty, integrity and the willigness to sweat to arrive.

There was a time when management exploited employees. That was wrong. We have just gone through times when employees used organizations to enhance their resume and trade higher pay packets. This too is wrong. The one who is providing the bread and the one earning it should have to always work in a win-win setting. A correction was required and a correction is happening.

Good times shield the non productive. Bad times filter them. Filtering is happening. More than ever, this is the time for you to be strong and to believe in yourself. So keep moving. Even if you have to slowdown, keep moving. Tire need be, but do not stop.

By refusing to accept life's reverse gear, we throw ourselves into Top Gear.

The new grade separator at Kathipara Junction - Chennai

(Right click on the image and open in a new window or tab for a zoomed in version of the map)
The new clover shaped flyover at the Kathipara junction is sure to remain the pride of the city for a long time to come.

This might not be anything new to the developed world. But sure does cause a lot of excitement to an ardent chennaite like me and many others.

While the government and its departments were busy inaugurating the flyover the news papers were replete with verbose instructions on which road to take if you are going from one place to another.

So much was the confusion that it made my mother to request me to avoid the flyover whenever I go that side :-)

The truth is that you cannot avoid the flyover for certain route combinations and the structure is actually brilliant in its conception that way as it eliminates practically all dependencies and traffic signals in that complicated junction.

A few days later after the inauguration the Times of India did carry a superb elevation visual of the flyover but its principal drawbacks were again

• A slightly side-ish view of the elevation
• Verbose instructions for each segment.
  

I personally was longing to see a really top down view of the flyover supported by simple visual directions and legends that allows us to make our own visualizations for our source and target points on the flyover map.

That is why I spent 3 interesting hours in hand sketching this (using MS office drawing tools) image with just visual arrows and color coding of the same that allows anyone to figure out the route map for any source and target combination.

An interesting thing that I figured out while gazing at the topology was that although adjacent points are given a free left option on the ground (without using the flyover), if you still want to use the flyover desperately due to an initial excitement, you can surely do so by using a combination of the clover loops.

Anyways I just wanted to share my excitement about the new pride of Chennai through my blog!!!

The Truth Within

First hear, then understand, and then,
leaving all distractions, shut your mind to
outside influences and devote yourself
to developing the Truth within you.

There is the danger of frittering your
energies by taking up an idea only for its
novelty, and then giving it up for another
that is newer.

Take one thing up and do it, and see the
end of it, and before you have seen the end,
do not give it up.

He who can become mad with an idea,

He alone sees light!.

- Swami Vivekananda