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.

उन्ही जालों में फ़सा,
जिन्हे मैनें बुना था;
जिसे मै दुनिया समझा,
वो मेरा अपना बनाया वहम था;

अब तो बस अपनी खोज बाकी रह गयी है;
मैने कहीं खुद ही सुना,
जो मैने बोला था;
और फिर साफ़ करके,
मेरी अपनी फ़ैलायी हुयी धुन्ध,
मैने देखा मैं खुद को घूर रहा था;

खुद से दूर करके अपने को,
मै खुद के पास आता हूं,
अन्त तैयार करता हूं,
फिर सुरूवात बनाता हूं;
मै ही खुदा था, मै ही खूदा हूं,
खुद को तलाशता हूं:

- प्रद्युम्न

Why does our wisdom lack application?

Our ticket was not confirmed but we wanted to travel to Jammu. I especially was eager to get away from Ahmedabad’s heat. So we took a general bogey ticket, got cheated on a penalty ticket and eventually boarded the train to JammuTawi, HAPA JAMMUTAWI. We were told by our cheater friend that we should find a place to sit somewhere; his way of telling that we were on our own, go find a place!! haha!! So we did. We got on to two empty seats. When the train stopped at Varodara, the reservation holding family showed up. They asked for our seats and we told them that we had none. We might get one. They did not object us being on their seats, may be because there was plenty of space available and we were a good looking nonthreatening young couple or maybe they were just very generous. This is where our story started.

The family had five members, parents and three kids. The husband was a civil engineering and wife a pharmaceutical engineer but they were not involved in engineering jobs currently. The lady was a housewife and husband handled a business. This couple had two teenage daughters and a son. They were really fond of their only son and tolerated all of his monkey business. The lady was very talkative. I enjoyed her talk and listened intently to her and may be that is why she poured all of her knowledge, learning and wisdom on me so dearly. Her lecture was mainly on teachings of Nirankari Sect of which she and her family was a firm believer. Frankly I listened her intently because I was surprised; I did not expect the lady to be so knowledgeable on such matters. Nirankari teachings were designed for people to reach to self realization and make a better happier society. The family of the lady was very involved in the activities of the Nirankari sect. They had printed booklets, leaflet, details of programs etc. She showed me all, gave me a couple of booklets to read and provided address of the ashrams in India and abroad to join. Earlier I used to wonder where the ancient wisdom of India has disappeared. Today was the realization that it still flows as an undercurrent in society for all of us to tap. It was altogether a goody goody talk for a very long time in which I was a mostly a listener. But slowly it dawned on me that it was not the first time I was listening to such a talk. In past, I have listened to such words of wisdom many times from friends, family, and teachers and from people good and bad, weak and strong. I might have trouble recalling it but it was still in back of my mind somewhere. Today’s talk was actually just raking it up.

I also remembered my concluding question beyond which I could not reach earlier. The question was why we Indian never tend to go beyond talking? We may know what is best in a particular situation but when it comes to implement it we behave as if we never learned it. Does our wisdom lack application? Today was a perfect opportunity to observe just that. Since we were at mercy of the lady i.e. we did not have food, a reserved seat or water (we were traveling in summer in sleeper class), it was expected that the lady will be pushed to act on what she preached. I was keen to be proven wrong or at least gain another perspective. So let's see.

In her talk, she mentioned a few things about gender equality but at the same time informed me how she was worried about having a son after her two daughters. Lady’s treatment of her son and daughter belied all her assertions on equality. Her son got special attention on everything from food to where to sleep. It was almost as if her son was a first class citizen and her daughters’ and the rest, second class citizens.

Many times she stressed the value of sharing. And, I agree, she shared her learning. But when I dug a little deep, it became clear that she shared things she found of no value. I say this because later she shared food which she was going to waste and shared space which did not belong to her. I am not fully sure but I believe that she shared her learning because she did not find them of any value herself. They were mere talks to impress or get something of value from others. Many times she flouted her statements so glaringly that it made me think whether she even listened to herself ever.

These observation are not the only one and certainly not to denigrate the lady and her family or any other family for that matter. In the course of my stay in India, similar observation have sourced from many other places, people and even myself. Purpose here is to look for reasons for such behavior.

When I set looking for reasons, our past and our culture always draw my attention. This is where, after all, we have all come from. Educations shapes our mind and also our behavior. In Ahmadabad, I get a lot of opportunities to interact with college kids. This school going crowd reminds me of my schooling in India and the time when I used to focus on excelling in class. I remember the fun and joy of being with friends, and also, a few other things like how being first in the class is all I cared for. It was all about getting more marks. It did not matter what we are studying; all subjects were same. They all were treated with the same mechanical process of reading, mugging and writing in test in that order. This mechanical process could be perfected and many did. But that is not the real question. The real question is what is the purpose of reading all these subjects, course matter etc.? Isn't it to be able to apply them in real life? Aren't all these subjects originated from practical life matters at the first place? I give an example of calculus in class. I learned derivation, integration etc. and perfected it to get good marks. But neither textbooks nor teachers gave any direction or hint on how these things were applicable in real life situations. There was not one example which led me to connect these subjects to real life.

Textbooks are all the same even today and they are not designed for student to see the connection between their abstract worlds of learning and the real world they are part. And we are immersed in this system from start to finish of our lives. I wonder whether this is the real reason behind our inability to apply our learning to real world?

I am curious - what do you think?