Value add

"Didi, me and my husband are not having great times nowadays, he had never hurt me earlier, but today he slapped me for a trivial reason....".. my maid tells me .. and she confides in me how she had been losing motivation .. i was quite busy, not really having free time to indulge in some amusing discussion .. for a moment, i thought, what if somebody in the family would have said the same to me ?.. i get the answer - being worried, trying to put some nice thoughts in her, showing her genuine hope and ask her to pray .. i took a minute, called her, sat by her, listened to all what she wanted to say and tried to put some good thoughts, motivation and hopes in her. I really do not know how far my words of wisdom will reach, but surely did i see a spark in her eyes and an expression of relief .. you must be wondering, why am i writing the story of my maid's personal life in my blog :) .. yes, we are generally quite a lot into ourselves and hardly find any interest in discovering the pain points in others' lives n help them out with good thoughts.. all of us, tend to speak about the poverty level of our country, political illness around, economics, intelligence in filmography etc etc.. being asked, "o,rite, now that we know there is so much of poverty in our country, women are still dominated and tortured, people are still having a closed mindset, society doesnt go the right way, blah blah blah, so what value do you add?" .. the natural answer is "oh i do some charity".. which is great .. great indeed.. but, you know what, we are empowered to deliver value in so many other ways by empowering people in turn - think of times when you bear some sort of grief or unrest in your mind what do you feel like ? .. sharing with somebody - simply being heard.. i remember, my sister - i used to call her back every now and then whenever i used to be disturbed @ work, @ home or anything .. she used to lend me a patient ear and that itself used to be a real healer.. now there are so many people around us who change into different personalities altogether, because for prolonged times they are unheard - nobody to hear them out .. people take drastic steps because nobody hears them out and takes interest to show them hope .. do you really think we have to go out and work with NGO's, not really ... we can simply take some time out of the hustle bustle of today's life and spend time with people around us - keep speaking about the hopes of life, take genuine interests in the well being of anybody around.. and you know what, winning over the confidence of people that they can confide in you itself is a blessing.. imagine , you could help someone smile and be hopeful about life simply by being a patient listener.. imagine, a husband wife relationship strengthens because you help the lady change her thought process and be an understanding wife, if her husband comes back home late for work pressure .. my maid comes back with a smiling face and says "didi, you have changed the way i looked at things and react to things, i have tried to think and act the way you told me, me and my husband share a better bond now" .. its a blessing ... now thats what i call a value add ... doing nothing much ... just being a good friend even to people who do not fall under the definition of "near and dear ones" .. and believe you me, empowering people with a powerful thought process when they are in need and rendering confidence is much more powerful than providing financial help, many a times .. let your mind space do some work on this and feel free to share your thoughts ... happy value adding !

you are my soul mate

swinging on her easy-chair in the terrace, she smiles and feels happy seeing the tulsi plant growing.. she has always derived immense pleasure seeing small and sweet things .. she walks back her memory lanes - she had planted two small plants , a "curry patta" one and a bonsai palm .. the plants were not growing and she was very sad as she was not being able to pay attention to them.. she started taking care - watering, putting tea bags , nurturing them with so many things ... in a matter of few days the plants started showing signs of growth ... she remembers, seeing the plants grow, the new buds coming, new leaves coming and new branches spreading out had been some of the best moments in her life ... she has always shared her happy moments with him .. he used to smile and kiss her cheeks .. married for not even two complete years ... happily married .. she remembers - actually happily married :))... after a lot of fuss in the family, finally they had won over the two families to put up the alliance .. :) .. n they were successful .. marriage was a dream come true for her .. she was pretty ambitious about her marriage as in getting married to a person she thought God had "custom made" for her .. funny enough, she was right ... he was absolutely the way she wanted him to be .. nice, humble, kind, smart, intelligent with fabulous looks ;) ... she again smiles as she sips on her cup of coffee .... she likes it with more of milk less of coffee and he likes bitter coffee ... this is after nearly 32 yrs of their marriage :) .. things havent changed .. she remembers ... it was a cold December morning , she was shivering in cold asking for a thicker jacket .. he laughed aloud - "u said u lived in Germany for quite some time, unbelievable ! 18 degrees cant be cold for you !!" .. annoyed at his mockery, she looks up and says firmly, "i need the jacket" ... yes, they had distinct differences .. as time passed by, she started realizing that he has got many other things which are not "exactly the same" way she thought .. haha..life starts here ... actually it took all these years to "find the differences".. she was not quite happy that she cant bear low temperature and he likes cold weather .. she likes sweet and milky coffee and he likes bitter coffe ... she remembers, playing with dogs on roads is not quite sophisticated and hygienic - but he was way too passionate about animals .. one of her qualities that attracted him as he said was the way she sings, she used to sing beautifully - soft romantic songs, ghazals and what not .. he "is" a hard rock person ... February , around 30 years back and her brother in law came to stay with them .. she was extremely happy to have family around and had been the best host she remembers .. surprisingly what she remembers more is her "orientation" to jamming as they called it !! - she had a sharp headache the next day !! ... it was difficult to cope with the differences ... but everytime the differences were absolutely wiped out by calls from her soul .. she could always feel a pull towards him - her heart has always cried for him even in short spans of them not being together .. even after the coldest longest fights his love for her has always won over and cuddled her emotions .. she had been composed, organized, planned, considerate, insightful - he is still a lot impulsive, immediate, disorganized n unpredictably moody, probably the last things she expected :)) ... another sip of coffee and she thanks her stars - she has surprisingly found her soul mate and got married to him :)) .. no difference could be significant as compared to their love, the bond of their souls ... every difference has in fact given them a scope to rediscover their love, the strength of their bond .. every fight has always made it tight :)) .. he has not understood and predicted her fully, but he has always given her the protection of love, he has always given her the space to breathe and grow .. he still leaves the hanger on the bed , he still puts up a grumpy face whenever he gets late, and he still makes her a cup of tea to make it up :)) .. another sip of coffee and she feels his hand on her shoulders ... both of them have developed silver hair and 'not so significant' wrinkles on their faces .. children have grown up .. she looks up and smiles - with a big grin he says "the coffee is good, but its too sweet and milky, i can make better coffee" ... she gets up gives him a hug and says "i m thankful to God that i am married to you honey - you are my soul-mate, the love of my life"... he kisses her forehead and whispers - "so am i, baby" ..

Socializing - Legacy to New Generation

Coffee at Roopali is simply fabulous - until now, i had hardly tried coffee anywhere outside the branded coffee shops like CCD, Costa , Glorea Jeans etc in India. Being a coffee lover, I generally like good quality coffee and spend a lot of time in the popular coffee joints.. Roopali is a road side old restaurant on the famous F C Road in Pune which does not look very appealing to high street fashion shoppers and a coffee indulgent like me to be frank .. a friend had been recommending the coffee there for quite some time and finally we got a chance to experience coffee at Roopali .. the coffee is undoubtedly a league in itself , wonderful indeed , but what caught my eyes was the socializing platform they are providing .. i could see the age range varying from 20 to 60 probably who are sitting and chatting in small groups.. If you follow the discussion threads, those were the general leisure talks accompanied by various facial expression and body languages - smiles, laughs, grief, annoyance, romance, anger , etc etc ... though some were pure play business talks - my friend confirmed that this is a usual place for business talks as well ... seeing these groups of people over coffee is such a delight .. me being me, I am again dragged back to my memory lanes where we used to be in a joint family with all the relatives staying close by ... neighbors used to be close friends most of the times ... ladies in the house used to chit chat throughout the day while doing the household and evening groups of ladies used to catch up in the neighborhood for elaborate chats .. they used to share their laughs n tears together, come back to their homes with happy thoughts in minds .. guys had similar agenda - catching up in the evening and talk over various topics - family, games, politics and what not ... in weddings , birthdays , naming ceremonies, it was big fun to visit all the houses of family n friends to invite them for the event ... every invite used to be largely accompanied by tea times n small chit chats ... functions used to be a collaborative effort from our social circles - mom, aunts , grannys used to cook for the large scale events, children and elders used to do the decoration and event planning , rangolis by the ladies in the family n friends , singing, dancing, drama and a lot more ... Now this is what we knew as "socializing" ... even the thought of those days are so much pleasant to experience.. looks like we have walked a million miles and entered a new generation media of socializing .. ask yourself , the moment we find the word "chat" a google talk / yahoo messenger chat window appears in front of us ... invitations mean "emails" and "phone calls" largely ... chit chats mean sms ... and sharing emotions and experiences - good Lord, its facebook ... Zuckerberg has named this appropriately "face book" .. the most civilized and educated of us nowadays suffer from an epidemic known as "time crunch" , where we do not have time to see each other in person or sit and relax while we speak to each other at peace ... but see , we are at the end of the day humans , we are yet to be cyborgs :)) ... and being human , our instincts and emotions still get going and need a way out .. we still want to be in touch with others , we still want people to empathize , encourage , engage in our day to day affairs , we want to know about whats going on , we want to share our views and so on ... but look at this, we are losing on the human touch and migrating to "machine language" to communicate !! I am not sure whether I should be happy about the advancement of technology to be an enabler letting live human emotions and social touch or should be wondering why are we not being able to maintain the human touch in ourselves !! .. What amuses me is the communication stream nowadays.. parents and children communicating through skype if the distance is long , and text messages if the distance is short and even facebook - mom to son "m glad you finished ur breakfast today on time" , guess what the son does - he clicks on "like" ... how about a husband and wife scenario .. husband posts "An excellent cup of coffee in the morning, my wife makes nice coffee" .. now guess what the wife might have done , she click on "like" and comments "oh honey, its so nice of you, but i didnt make the coffee, it was the maid who made it" ... :D ..."facebook" gets virtually renamed as "face look" , should look at the husband's face :)) ... wedding invites come as "Facebook events" with RSVP !! heights !!! .. no , i m really not criticizing the great advents in technology and the new concepts which are saving a lot of our time and helping us still be in touch with long distance friends and family ... and the thought is not just for the readers, its for myself as well.. thanks to the places like Roopali where the young and old generations still catchup for that chitchats rather than us who catch on google talk !! .. wont it be good to keep the human touch in our socializing alive by putting some efforts in catching up in person !! if not spending time together , we can certainly put efforts and have dinners together, make lunches together and catchup for coffee at home or a coffee shop ... rather than expressing our emotions and thoughts on facebook, it might be a good idea to keep talking to our friends and family in person ... showing a photo album sitting together over a cup of tea would be much of exciting and personal ... i am sure many of us realize that and are putting efforts too ... and yes, we can do it better .. let social media be an extension to our social circle, and personal socializing still rule human kingdom ... feel free to let know your thoughts :)

Discovery of passion

I was lazing on a couch at a coffee joint and reading a book, sipping on my usual strawberry milk shake - "no eye scream" , its 4:30 in the afternoon..Suddenly a warm male voice greeted me "Hello,Good morning" - I looked up and asked "me?" - a pleasant looking gentleman in his mid 60s with a smiling face was sipping on his cup of cappuccino while he was looking at me. He smiled and said "yes lady, i m speaking to you" - the warmth in his voice was very welcoming and I was naturally driven to a conversation with this gentleman.. the natural way of taking a conversation forward is to ask "so, where do u stay" , in my turn of asking the question, Jay (thats his name) answered - "here, close by , New York City" .. amusing as it was, we took the discussion forward and co-incidentally he revealed his son works with the same firm as I do in the United States.. again, naturally our conversation took its natural course to the Indian work culture and the work culture in the West and the differences etc!! .. he was smiling again and passed another interesting statement "I am not working not for last 31 years, i m living my passion" .. he added, "i come and spend 3 days with my parents, thrice a month" ... this time i was drawn into absolute inquisition and i asked - "so, what do you do ? you retired" .. Jay answers - "i fly those little jumbo jets, i m an airline pilot" and Goshhhh that was more than enough for me to close my book and engage in an "intense" discussion with him .. Jay, who had been a finance personnel working with HP in the States, having realized his passion for flying, gave up his job there, got into a flying school and started as a pilot in his early 20s.. he said he had to cut his pay to 1/4th of what he was getting paid , but then at the end of the year, that was more fulfilling as he was "living his passion" .. hearing about my extended working hours and the stress i undergo, he asked me "gurl, whats your passion?" .. Now, i was found myself so dumb to have found no answer for a while !! .. My mind was wandering all around and still could not stop at a place which identifies my passion - that was a shock.. what surprised me was the places where my mind had been halting were tagged "groceries", "cleaning", "reports", "conference calls", "investments", "savings" and the list goes on .. haha .. Jay helped me at this stage a bit .. he started talking about his passion ,he spoke about his office - he gets to see the huge expanse of the sky , mother earth in her best appearance , the pacific , the Atlantic, the Western Ghats, the Alps and all what can fascinate you and takes you in a world full of dreams and colors stealthily :) ... wowwwwwww, Jay's office is in the air , he does not have a mobile phone or internet over there, he sips on a cup of coffee and enjoys the panorama .... he has the liberty of meeting new people every time he flies ... he listen to music, talk to people "no business" stuff and what not ... and what fascinates more is that he has no targets ... Jay mentioned " i do what gives me real happiness" ... "Jayyyy, this fascinates me, you look like a star to me" I almost shout like a child :) .. he flies 12 days a month and rest of the days are leisure ... he doesnt find his work stressful as he can see the sky full of stars on starry nights, he experiences the thrill of thunder while navigating through cloudy skies , he enjoys the blue ether and the oceans below during the day ... n the beautiful faces around certainly add to the charm (he didnt mention that though).. Jay speaks again , "tell me three things you will enjoy doing given you do not have any constraint of earning money or any other factor ...." Jay relaxes and sips on his coffee ... i again take a deep plunge in my ocean of thoughts "what do I like to do ? " .. my heart sinks !!!!! .. My thoughts hold my hand and take me back to my childhood... i sing..i love singing ... i love dancing .. i use to feel like dancing to the tunes of any good music ... ohhh i used to paint - make designs , stitching , knitting and so many things ... but whats my passion ? ... " .. i was trying to discover my passion..in a while my husband arrived and I got busy introducing him to Jay :) ... I did mention to Jay about a couple of things which look like my passion :) .. he left it to my discovery and mentioned life never lets us down in pursuing our passion ... I am extremely fascinated to meet Airline captain Jay who flies Jumbo jets , but what fascinates me more is the seed of discovering my passion he sowed in me ... In our hectic urban lives, we somehow get in the entanglements of activities of life which we call "urgent", "important" etc and lose on an entire life leaving behind our passion ... how about you ? can you just close your eyes and immediately speak about your passion ? .. If not , why dont you spend some time in the discovery - trust me you will enjoy every moment of the discovery time :) ....

Fourth Quadrant

A friend of mine was talking about this quadrant system called Johari Quadrant which provides a framework of assessing human psychology probably .. this has got four quadrants of assessing human nature / traits .. one of the significant ones which I remember is the fourth quadrant .. it says about the specific characters / traits of a person which is not known either to himself/herself or to anybody else known .. and they say that comprises 75% of human traits ... the day i heard about it, i had a weired feeling of thrill having known, that this fact is very well known to all of us, still our brain cells tend to ignore this piece of knowledge ... Quite some time has passed since we had this discussion and then today i discovered how consistently my mind had been mapping this theory to all the interactions i had with people !! .. All right, now look at how our minds work - the character played by Hrithik Roshan in Zindegi Na Milegi Dobara starts as a prety plastic character , money minded , focussed ,ambitious, defined , etc etc and finally falls in love with the lady played by Katrina Kaif within a few days of meeting her .. whats interesting is that my mind started mapping that with the fourth quadrant , that the character played by Hrithik Roshan was not aware of the romantic and random self in him at all, neither were the others .. on the way on realization, i found the gurl played by Katrina being the catalyst in discovery of the fourth quadrant characteristics .. now, think about this - close your eyes, go back the memory lanes and see we have done so many things in our lives that we never thought we will / can do.. we used to get amazed / ashamed at various instances .. even now, we come across a myriad of thoughts, considerations and feelings which give us major surprises - even bigger surprises to people who know us ... Now I am taking our thoughts to another direction, we are generally driven by our subconscious which in turn is driven by pre set expectations to a big extent .. people are often found saying "i never expected you to do this / behave like this / think like this, etc" while dealing with near and dear ones .. many a times in a couple relationship .. i m no exception to this and often wonder why and how people change .. and now that i know of this fourth quadrant, i smile to myself as i get my answer - one human life, so many undiscovered facts about our own selves .. now when i try to find an explanation, our driving self need to unravel the undiscovered traits / characteristics slowly as we move ahead in life .. i wonder life becomes so simple if our mind, brain and ego can actually register the concept of the fourth quadrant traits , that will at least stop us pondering and whining about ourselves and others ... relationships will be sweeter and longer , disputes will be minimal n so on and so forth ... haha .. but , the beauty of human life is that, we cant eliminate the element of surprise and fuzzy behavioural patterns ... and probably thats where predictability of the wonderful human nature stays like a mystery .. i find this absolutely fascinating .. how about you :)

Creativity

its raining heavily, feeling slightly cold , overcast all around, water dripping from the leaves of the little plants in her terrace - a couple of minutes Niharika was absolutely lost in her imagination .. no, its quite sunny outside, few leaves of the palm bonsai have turned brown.. she smiles to herself rediscovering her apparently dormant power of imagination - still alive.. a long time has passed since she has spent some time with herself exploring the creative self of hers - having a strong power of imagination .. since childhood parents used to say she is very creative - making small clay shapes and play with them, painting the faces of Tagore sitting beside her father on Tagore's birthday as a small child of 4 / 5, singing tough tunes of Manna Dey when she was probably three!! Now, these are known to people around .. going back the memory lanes, Niharika wonders - she was more creative .. being raised in small town, they used to face midnight power cuts often.. elders used to fret n sweat and the little Niharika, used to close her eyes - start imagining rain drops formulating beautiful melodies as they hit the tin roofs - tip top tip top n then raining cats and dogs , something like the continuous "aalaps" in Indian Classical music .. and in no time she was deep asleep in her own kingdom of imagination - this is creativity .. growing up, ambitions take over and the usual course of success path absorbs the creativity it seems .. school, college , professional degree, workplace , marriage , children n so on .. Niharika has not spent time with herself since she got married, the regular chores spare her no time .. she often wonders whether her strong power of creativity was still dwelling or has left her due to sheer negligence !! This morning, she had no choice but to lie down - a slight fever has compelled her to take some time out .. she has decided to declare a holiday for all her "important" thoughts and to - do's and revisit herself .. a day with herself and Niharika is extremely delighted to have found herself lost in her world of imagination - yes , she still owns the capability to create the surroundings around her as she wishes , the outside world cant overpower her creative wishful self ..she smiles, pulls a chair to the terrace and sings to herself - "kaharba noi dadra bajaao ulto palta maarchh chhati, shoshikanto tumi dekhchhi ashortake korbe maati" .. one of her favorites from Manna Dey ..

We know everything

Nowadays I find myself time pressed to sit peacefully and write something.. Last couple of months I had been interacting with a lot of people and came across an interesting paradox - "of course i am aware" .. the very first thing that might be presented as a citation is "Smoking is injurious to health" written on a pack of cigarettes and yet people render deliberate ignorance to that :) .. The other day my maid came in the morning n started complaining about her alcoholic husband who had to be admitted in hospital for excessive intake of alcohol, eventually doctor warning him of death if he continues consuming alcohol ... my maid was sure he wouldn't pay any heed to that !! .. naive !! let us take a look at another part of the society in religiously rich India - there is a concept of a religious get together at a certain place which they called "sat sang".. Sat = good , sang = company .. wise teachings n enlightenment about life and people dealing are taught at those places and people listen to those carefully... irony lies in the fact that 'satsang' teaches not to talk bad about people and the moment the preachings are over, you will find the gentry criticizing about the bad habits / bad things about others !! Moreover they intrude in the peaceful noons and evenings of neighbors by far exceeding the permitted loudspeaker levels while they sing the hymns - I thought God can hear our prayers very well even if we softly recite the hymns !!

In the elite class, people are crazy running for power and money and their families are deprived of their time .. a Corporate tycoon earns a million but still he is broke because his family is breaking apart n children are value robbed as he is a "holiday father" or "holiday husband" or a "holiday son" ..... marriages are turning out to be "weekend marriages" , parents die and their children cant see them at their last days as the children are busy chasing money n power in a different continent and cant travel down spending money n "leave" as they are broke !! What surprises you is that, try n put some sense in them and they say "we know what all we need to do, of course we are aware" ...

Standing at the edge of 21st century, a young professional educated enough to be employed by a corporate I wonder where are we heading towards ? Though we are having enough of knowledge and awareness, still we step back while implementing !! Being rich is subjective now , being money rich or power rich is robbing us of time and value ... the next generation suffering from identity crisis and landing up in social epidemics like addiction, divorce , extramarital affairs, dreaded diseases etc ...

At this point of time, I remember the story Robin Sharma starts with about the famous Lawyer in his book 'The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari" .. I myself am trying to gage what could the word "balance" mean to our generation and the coming generation to pass on ... What value do you add ?