We aren’t taught objectivity in school, unfortunately. It is a vital personal skill. This one skill alone can save countless instances of depression on one hand and varying degrees of megalomania on the other. Considering how many life skills one is compelled to learn- after many a humiliating fall- after one passes out of school, […]
Life Skills
The Art Of Hoping
धीरे-धीरे रे मना, धीरे सब कुछ होय । माली सींचे सौ घड़ा, ॠतु आए फल होय ॥ ~ संतकबीर [Dheere- dheere re mana, dhere sab kuchh hoye, Maali seeNche sau ghada, Ritu aaye fal hoye.] Translation: Be patient O my heart, for everything happens slowly, in its own time. A gardener may irrigate his plants […]
Imperfectly Perfect
Many years ago I read a heart-opening account written by a father, of how they learned to embrace and celebrate the the Imperfectly Perfect completeness of their teenage daughter. The girl was overly emotional apparently. The slightest things would hurt her and she would either dissolve in floods of tears or blow every one away […]
Random Chance
Ravi hitched up his backpack and left. He had come to visit them ten days ago. They lived in a village fifty kilometers away from Nagpur. Dawn was just breaking in the east. The sky was flushed with promise. For no reason at all, Ravi felt braced. Today is the first day of the rest […]
My Phrase for 2013
As the last few moments of this year are about to tick away into the silence of the irretrievable past, I remember that I have a date with myself tonight. For the next twelve months, my guiding principle will be- Earn It..! I am putting at stop to unearned rewards. Sometimes I have been […]
Pushing The Envelope
That was my phrase for 2012. The sub- headings on that would read- To attempt to extend the current limits of performance. To innovate, or go beyond commonly accepted boundaries. Inside the envelope you are safe. There is minimal risk because you are wrapped in a cocoon of the predictable and known. All that […]
Fenced-in
There is a lot to be said in favor of fences. Fences are put around things one is afraid of losing or damaging. They are a way of protecting things, of containing them so they don’t hurt themselves or be hurt. Fences are a sure way of letting a precious thing know how well it […]
The Five Mile Trek
There are two kinds of people I keep myself distant from- the weak and the clueless. Make no mistake, I like people, I even love some of them. But there is also the other end of the spectrum. I have never hated anyone. It has always seemed too much trouble, besides being a pointless waste […]
Power
He is a powerful man, they say. They say it like ‘he’ has tapped into an obscure, secret generator of the universe, forever denied to the rest of humanity. Statements of this kind annoy me. They make me want to take them apart to see what lies behind them and what makes […]
Poised: Hang on World
A Kindergarten teacher was observing her classroom of children while they were drawing. She would occasionally walk around to see each child’s work. As she got to one little girl who was working diligently, she asked what the drawing was. The girl replied, ‘I’m drawing God.’ The teacher paused and said, ‘But no […]