Never thought I would write a poem! In fact, I looked away from poems, because to me, they contained complicated words, many times unable to be understood. Okay, I got to be fair when I say this that this is from a “layman” perspective – not your Bell curve’s extremities!
And then came a day when I was looking at this picture, and I just decided to write a poem – my first official one.
Photo by Qingbao Meng at UnSplash.com
By the way, I should probably thank Qingbao Meng for making me a poet, because many times I have tried to rhyme words, but never got the courage to express the words as a poem AND publish it!
I write about environment, different aspects of it. I take the voice of the trees, animals, and the nature, and talk from their perspective. Because they need a voice. More than ever, now!
See you soon, at my YouTube channel and the Instagram account! I hope you enjoy my poetry!
Sometimes, anger can just be pent-up, unspent energy. Have you ever felt sometimes that you have no reason to be angry on someone, but you just feel like being angry, and you express that towards the person that’s close to you or near you?
A whole lot of things can be the reason for this held-up energy. Your physical body needs a release – be it spending all the energy that it has – and not exercising or giving work to the body could be a reason for this. Your mind also needs release – in terms of its creativity expressing itself, etc.
“Work” is not just the job that you do. Work is an expression of yourself as a physical manifestation. A beautiful piece of art, a well-done software, an wonderful architecture of a building, are all examples of work. Work releases the expressive nature of your body, mind, and energy as a physical manifestation. We all need to ask ourselves how is our work expressing itself in the world?
If we are not able to express ourselves (even though we are paid for our jobs), it creates a block in our system, and that could manifest itself as anger. This anger could be short-lived and just go away after a while, or it could ingrain itself into our system and become hard-seated, and show up again and again.
Hence, when we feel angry, we need to look inside ourselves, and ask ourselves what’s going on, and why do we feel angry. That’s the first step. The answer may not be forthcoming, and we need to ask additional questions to figure out. But, this is a good exercise, as compared to showing the destructive power of anger towards someone or something, which may not be good for anyone.
I always like to do things – by hand, by thought. I have been denied opportunities to do things quoting several excuses – ‘Oh you are too young to do that’, ‘Oh, you don’t know how to do that’, ‘Oh, we have all the connections in the town, so we will get it done quickly than you’, etc. But these denials turned out to be great motivators for me to build myself to actually DO things, to learn, and get the satisfaction that I can accomplish things.
Today, business leaders are quoting that keeping the tabs on every first-line aspect of a business is the key to succeed in a business. What does that mean? Caring to the things that you actually do as a business – making sure that the threads are sorted properly in an yarn business, making sure that the ingredients are cleaned and kitchen is disinfected in a food business, making sure that items are sorted and ready to ship in a trading business.
If you delegate, making sure that the person is doing it has all the right tools, methodology, and ingredients to do it correctly. Keeping tabs on what’s going on and keeping the ears to the ground, I would say, is THE most important thing on anything that you aspire to do.
Starting from taking care of yourself to running the most complicated large businesses in the world, and to being spiritual – one thing is key – and I am giving it to you right here:
ATTENTION
If you pay enormous attention to your field or area, success is imminent. It can’t evade you. With undivided attention comes the awareness and knowledge, and the action follows.
Practice it, and let me know what you find out in the comments! All the best!
Several self-inquiry schools towards self-realization seem to encourage the seeker to ask the question ‘Who am I?’
‘Who am I?’ is a question that would evoke an answer relating or associating the person to something. For example, ‘Who is Venkat’ could invoke the following answers:
A techie
A son
Lives in Bangalore
Likes Tea
Tall
and so on…
You will note that in all these, the person ‘Venkat’ is associated with something or someone to identify himself – Technology, Parents, Place, Food/Drink, Physical characteristic.
The whole self-inquiry process is to break the chains with something or someone and to exist as a free spirit.
If I sit with my eyes closed, I should be void of anything. If you keep your body in great shape, it won’t complain or make noise! Likewise, mind could become silent through meditation. In that state, I exist, not associated with even my body and my mind.
In such a state, the question ‘Who am I’ does not makes sense, because I am not related to anything!
Then the question ‘What is this’ would make sense.
Also, questions like: what is this that exists here? where did it come from? where will it go? when the body dies, what will happen to this? when I don’t have any thoughts, what is the use of mind? etc.
Give it a try, and let me know what you experience, in the comments!
To me, it has become the way of life these days. Do I like something, write a blog about it. Do I have to put out great content to develop my business? Write a blog. Do I have to improve my professional chances? Write a blog. Do I have to rant about my city’s and my country’s state? Write a blog.
This is the reality. Often, with the topics that I deal with on a day-to-day basis, it looks like I have to write a blog daily. I am not that much of a writing person, although I like to share stories. I am a storyteller. So, I feel like starting my blog as ‘So, what happened was…’!
Be it blog, a tweet, or a Facebook post, I realized that writing and letting others know has become imminent. Sharing builds communities. In today’s interconnected world, we make contacts and friends whom we have not even met. Although the ‘windows’ through which we engage them are limited to the context and scope, I found that it’s still valuable and nurtures connections.
Putting out something in public is not easy for everyone. There could be concerns relating to privacy and security. And then there is this “If you write something in Internet, it stays for ever!” There was this meeting in one of my previous companies, where a very zealous ‘manager’ declared the above statement while talking about sharing something in the company intranet. We all humored him by saying, “Before the company takes action, I (the writer) will be dead!” So, one has to overcome this “out there in the Internet” fear too.
In spite of all these, one still has to write, speak, and be visible to be successful, to build contacts, connections and get opportunities. I used to be a lab-rat for many years. I didn’t build my connections based on my skill-sets. But, no regrets, I am here now. And writing.
It was one of those strenuous days in 2017. I had too much to do in 3 or 4 activities spread across the day. I like focus, and that’s the way I have been for the past many years. I like channelizing my mind, body and my energies in a task. But then, there are some boring moments when you would like to just get off for a minute or two, wander your body and your mind, and then get back to the task.
Social media (Facebook, Twitter, et al) have been a cure (or a curse on how you see it). That one of two minutes of wandering of the mind away from the task using social media extended to 10 minutes, 20 minutes, and before you know, it had consumed a full 43 minutes!
“Well, that’s not good”, I told myself. I decided to take a mental inventory of HOW the time is spent on social media. I sat down and wrote a diary of all the posts I read, I liked and shared, and just “browsing”. Though it was just my break time that I spend on social media, I wanted to justify myself on how the time is spent, because it’s my precious breath and life after all, moment after moment, before I die!
My findings!
The notes I saw alarmed me. 89% of the time was just browsing post after post in Facebook and Twitter, without any focus, learning or practicing a skill. A typical “browse” Facebook session contained a book advertisement from a book club, an advertisement on how to “opt-in” more customers to your blog site, a post in a school group asking whether this school is better or that, a post in a music group with a picture of a guy with a violin, a group post about the latest trend in western cinema, a post in a railway group about that fantastic engine….You get the drift.
A rattling mind and the consequences
If your mind travels this fast with no focus on a specific subject or related thinking, you know where you will get to – nowhere. It not only puts your brain in an ever-shifting mode, it will strain your brain to no-end resulting in nervousness, a sense of loss, depression, anger and a deprived feeling! Many studies have also shown the same.
Social media tools for streamlining
Social media tools that help you segregate topics as streams based on hashtags or keywords are helpful. It helps browse through the social media posts and organize your thoughts on one direction, learning a thing or two about a topic and participating in a discussion. But many of us do not use those tools on a native basis, but login to the social media sites directly. In this year, I have reminded myself to use these tools instead of logging into social media sites directly, and save myself of the mental stress! If I ever wanted to take a 2-minute break, that should not be and won’t be on the social media sites, but a short walk, a visit to the restroom, a cup of water and then back to work again.
Not just the break time!
We all know the three things that are required to excel – Learn, Practice, Network. A typical successful person’s time management has these components. For all of these, accessing the Internet has become a necessity. For learning and networking, social media has become important. We just need be careful that our learning and networking time is used productively, not just during the break time, but during our work time also, and be conscious that our precious time is not wasted in endless, mindless browsing.
So…
I thought I would just share my thoughts on this, which I had been postponing for a while now. I wrote a Facebook post (there you go!) on this sometime back, but not sure how many people it reached, so here I am, writing a blog. Hopefully it’s useful for you!
Thanks for listening!
I’m ever-stuck with 1994-95. That was when I was working in Chennai, and had a chance to go to many movies and enjoy the music. So, I can’t believe that 20 years have passed by.
During that time, many Rahman composed movies released. I had a walkphone, and many a times, some of the songs were always in loop.
Especially, ‘Kannalane…’ from Bombay was a crazy hit. I wondered if the music was so juicy, or the juice in me was making me enjoy the music. Could never tell.
I would like to highlight three songs that I loved, which came about almost around the same time :
Kudos to A.R.Rahman, and many more years of music!
I’ve been having Vodafone for several years now! I was attracted to Vodafone by one of the ZooZoo advertisements!
Here are the credits:
Vodafone signal is very good even in the remotest areas, which I am happy about.
The one thing that I am not happy about are the call charges. Per minute and per seconds charges are too high, and there’s no competitive monthly pack for STD and local non-Vodafone calls. If this is taken care of, I will be one happy customer!
Congratulations! Delhi is the 2nd most populous city in the world! Sounds as though we are lifting some trophy in the World Olympics Championship! Not! The bomb had already ticked a lot, and it now exploded! Now it’s time for the triage. Looky looky here!
That article talks about two things: (1) Condoms & sex education, (2) migration from other places.
Do you actually believe that a person living in a large city is unaware of the consequences of unprotected sex? If yes, do we know what percentage? Or should we take an SMS poll to figure out that number?
Yet, average people are bogged down by the mental challenges of handling their family, friends and circle for not having a kid. If they are really up to not having a biological baby, there are multiple options available: (a) stay single, (b) get married but decide not to have kids, (c) get married, but adopt instead of having biological children (in fact, the office of CARA, the department for adoption enablement under Ministry of Women and Child Welfare, is right there in Delhi!)
Migration from other places because of lack of opportunities, jobs, and sheer ambition to make it big in a city are also important reasons. While the state governments have to take care of the basic amenities in the rural and towns, and provide moderate growth opportunities, so that people don’t move to the cities, it’s the people who are in the cities who have lots of opportunities to do something about containing the India population.
Why do I say that? Because urban people are mostly (hopefully) educated; they have access to information; they have independence to think through and make personal choices like not having kids; and they have means to adopt children if they wish to, from orphanages and homes,and give them a home.
Delhi Government cannot keep building metro over metro, double-decker metro, underground triple-decker monorail, etc. It’s the urban people who need to take responsibility, if they want to live well in a city state, which is around 1500 sq.km in size (including NCR), but has around 25 million in population. That’s roughly 16700 persons per sq.km, while the healthy population density for India is 197 persons per sq.km.
Please feel free to re-blog this blog. This is public information, written for awareness for everyone’s well-being. Spread it far and wide.
Some 10 years back, I left coffee. I was told by someone that coffee and tea are nervous stimulants, which, when taken without discretion, will lead to nerves weakness. The effect of nerves weakness will be the inability to sit peacefully at one place. No, I am not talking about meditation. Even for getting your work done at your computer, looking and attending to files in the office in a careful way, doing any work diligently, studying for your exams be it school or college, you need calm and alertness, which will be available to you only if your system is stable.
Coffee and tea will give you the sudden briskness with which you can carry on with your immediate tasks, but on a long run, it will lead to inability to focus and sit calm and alert to attend to whatever you are doing.
More so in the old age, when you have nothing much to do – you are retired, your kids are settled, and you enjoy your bliss – if you find yourselves restless, that will be very sad. Your mind will want to be active, but your body won’t co-operate, and you will be a mess.
There’s one more aspect to it – which is milk that’s added to the coffee and tea, in the Indian context. If you don’t add milk, it’s even worse, because the ill-effects is more-prone and immediate.
But, if you have coffee and tea with milk, just consider where the milk is coming from. In western countries, there are complaints that cows are being artificially milked and they are sent to death long time before they are supposed to die – because they extract the milk faster and faster, and the cow loses the ability to give milk pretty soon. Even in India, you might have seen loads of cows and buffaloes being carried in lorries and trucks. Where do you think they are being taken to? To get killed because of their inability to give milk.
Food that goes inside us is supposed to nourish us and give energy. Cow’s/buffalo’s milk, however, makes us dull and lethargic. Cows’ milk is meant for calves, and not for humans.
And food that goes into us is supposed to be a blessing and enable us to become better human beings. Food that come from sources as mentioned above, and having the properties that tend to negatively influence our ability to perform at our full potential may not be good food options, isn’t it?
Especially in the context of India Population, where loads of milk is consumed by millions of people, it’s pretty necessary that we consider.
Please feel free to re-blog this blog. This is public information, written for awareness for everyone’s well-being. Spread it far and wide.
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