Easy life is easy to get. Tough life is tough to get.

Some of us do not want a easy life. They crave for a tough life - a life full of challenges. Give them an easy life - no work, vacationing at seven wonders and all other things you think essential for an easy life and these people will be fed up in a few days. Amazing, isn't it? I even venture to say that there are more people who want a tough life than those who want an easy one. And this is the reason that competition for the tough life is tough too.

Mulayam Singh is a politician in Uttar Pradesh, India, not an inspirational personal exactly but look at him. He is living a life as pseudo-socialist. Eking out a living from what, in my opinion, plain and simple nonsensical politics of a bunch of musclemen. I do not understand what is that pressing reason that keeps him moving. It is not that he has any principles, he can easily leave it all and live life in comfort with what he has collected from years of corrupt practices. But still he would be a politician and live the "tough" life.

One’s destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things.

I will be linking stuff from other blogs for the time being. I read two blogs, one from a travel - holic and one from a philosopher -

what a quote,

"One’s destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things." –- Henry Miller'

Amazing idea: This quote only reverberates my thoughts about life. People travel, join new jobs, meet new people, try new cuisines etc all to find the newness or to get out of the humdrum life. But the reality is that the newness of life is in our eyes. Our perception is a choice. For example, to make things appear new, we can choose to see old things in new ways. But it is true that seeing new things is easier.
http://juntopahdna.blogspot.com/?expref=next-blog

Haha!! life in a nutshell -




















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Absurdism

I am nobody
in nobody's land
doing nothing
but strange!!
It is peaceful

Commentry: World is unreal. It exists by you. You inflate and expand the world like a baloon. Something meaningful for you is bogus for others and vice-versa. Therefore, a debate on what is wrong, right or best for you is essentially open ended and omnidirectional and also, with no end and no direction. You know already what is right, wrong or best for you. So stop looking elsewhere, search within. Do whatever suits you or you find meaningful to do. You will always be nobody, doing nothing in nobody's land but it would be peaceful.

If you want to do good, work hard for self-interest

I was travelling to Howrah and a woman with a “Dholak", a type of drum, came to me begging. I have faced such scenes before and most of the time I have been asked by my conscience to pity people and shell out some money. I do not know what this time was different, maybe I was resolutely after a solution or maybe I was sick of it. Women was creating the most pitiful, painful and tearful look on her face to get maximum out of me. I was staring at her but did not know what to do. I do not know what went in my mind after sometime that I moved and touch the feet of the woman with both hands. She was startled. She stopped beating drums and was gaping at me. I heard myself saying next moment that I can never give her more than what she is capable of giving me and given her family and the world. I beg you to not ask me to pity you. I do not want to lower you and degrade you and consequently, all women and men. I did not immediately understood myself the full meaning of my actions. Later my mind cleared & full meaning came forth. When we pity people we lower them. When we pity ourselves, we lower ourselves. Pity in any form lower’s human dignity. The bad effect of pity is seen in charity. Thousands of villages are reduced to begging because of charity. Villagers with charitable institutions & good charity stop thinking that they can do themselves.

If one has to do something good, they should do business. Create market and hire people who can trade, grow & transact money. One should empower people to initiate enterprise which can employ people and give them work. A way to earn money is the most dignified gift a person can give to another.

The best way to do good is to stop thinking about doing good totally. Work hard for selfish need of yours, and deal with people to get work done for your own good. Be courteous but do not abandon your intellectual. Understand motives & interest; align them for your own good. Only through your own improvement, you can realize a progressive society.

Inspirational hard working people

My wife and I went to look for an apartment in the old city A. House belonged to a lady with a teenage daughter and son. We have learned from our friend who stayed at the same house that the owner was widowed. Auntie prepares and sells food to earn a living and support education of her children. Food was a big draw for me to go look for the apartment and so it was quite natural for us to request for food. Although auntie's family already had their dinner, they still made food for us. At one point when we were checking out the apartment, my wife asked where she can get clothes washed. Auntie's daughter replied in a very natural tone that auntie washes clothes too. During our conversation, we realized that Auntie cooks for a few families in the city, rents out her apartment, washes clothes and also occasionally cooks out for functions. I was inspired by the courage of auntie, her ability to take any form of work to keep her family going.

I want to work with these types of people who know nothing other than hard work. Type of people who do not complain, whine or cheat, people who roll up their sleeves when faced with crisis and say lets do it. These people bring change. We asked auntie if she can cook for people in our office. After P auntie who used to cook for us, we order food thorough a tiffin service that does not seem very healthy. Auntie food could be customized to suit our needs. This way both Auntie and office staff could benefit from the arrangement.
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What brings people together on Rathyatras - Learnings from our cutural festivals

Recently, it was time for annual festival of Jagannath Rathyatra in India. Ahmedabad too had a Rathyatra. In the Rathyatra festival, a chariot carrying Lord Jagannath is toured around the city. It is said that God comes to see his/her devotees on this perticular day. It was a great feeling to be a part of this festival. One sees happy, dancing people all around. With the lords chariot come many other shows such as bodybuilders, bamboo fighters, drummers etc. Other than this one can see a bevy of people running around to organize everything from water, food to crowd control.

Yesterday, I found myself deep into this spectacle after a long pause of 12 year. Among many delightful things, I noticed how organized this event was. There were supposedly more than 20000 people on the narrow streets of Ahmedabad. But there was a feeling of resposbility shared by people all around me. They were contributing in their capacity for the success of this event and having fun at the same time. It was as if there was an invisble force moving them towards service. I wondered then why we do not have the same sense of duty towards our nation or myraid other things such as environment or water management or our parents.

I feel service to an unknown force which is considered beneficial is more convincing than something which is not as mysterious.

Nation as a concept seems to be abstract or hard to grasp. Its benefits are yet not clear to Indian society. Nation has mystery but it is not perceived to have power over destiny of people. And so people ignore it.

Looking things from others perspective. How?

Why billions of dollars in aid package for resolution of humanitarian crisis end up doing nothing or something quite opposite? Why kids listen to their parents but do things totally unrelated? Why couples never seem to 'understand' each other and squabble all the time? Why people always seem to do things which we have no clue about? As if they are in their own little worlds, doing their own unconnected little things, in their own ways. The answer to all this is that they are actually in their own world, doing things in their own ways.

We all see world through our own lens or in other world, we have perspectives. It is also true that perspective are strongly linked to culture (culture: a set of beliefs and values imparting us a distinct pattern in our way of working). And people belonging to same culture have similar perspectives. Those who want to make an impact on people or a group have to deal with looking things from others point of view. It is something leadership should be adapt in doing. Because leaders have to deal with bringing people together on a common objective. It is not possible to bring people together unless they understand what leaders are talking about.

The more important question in understanding perspective is not why we want to do so but how we can do so. It is hard to see things from others point of view. Recently, in a seminar given by a well known design company representative, I learned a few tricks.

Designers have to understand others perspective all the time. They, after all, most often designing products for people. Designers have to understand the need of the product from the users perspective. In order to make a successful product, designers have to see the product from users eyes. But they do not always have opportunity to experience what other people are experiencing. So the key question is how you can still see and feel what others are seeing and feeling. The major insight offered here was that we still can understand others perspective through collective observation followed by contrasting interpretation. According to the designer, we tend to interpret as we observe. This practice does not allow us to go beyond our own way of thinking and doing. What we instead need to do it to make pure observations first without assuming anything. Then combine several contrasting observations (this is why diversity is necessary in deign company) to interpret observations.

The orator offered many examples of the process. According to one of them, a company making fishing net approached the design company for advice. The fishing industry was facing the problem of declining sales for a long time now. This company wanted the design company to help understand the underlying reason for the declining sales. Design company took the assignment and made a team to observe the buying pattern of families in Walmart. The team made pure observations and then met to discuss and interpret the data. They found from their observation/interpretation exercise that in most cases father and son due come to purchase the fishing set. However, when they come to fishing sports section of the Walmart they are met with a disarraying set of choices in the fishing sets. Most of the folks do not have deep knowledge of the fishing equipments and therefore, they feel baffled by the large number of choices. In such situation, fathers end up moving to other section and usually buy other sports equipment which seem simpler to choose such as football, tennis racket etc. The team successfully extracted conclusion from this experience and made a simple fishing set containig all needed things for fishing.