Why is it that I want everything else and everybody else around me to be in a certain way to enable me to be in a certain way? Why can’t I remain the way I want to? Which is a bigger tragedy – others not being my way? Or I not being my way? Cleary the latter is a far more significant problem than the former.

The whole point with “I” is that it is already the way it has to be. My perception is so clouded with these damn thoughts about work, home, family, properties that I acquired so on and so forth that I am unable to clear my sense of perception. These thoughts transform themselves into such strong emotions that after a while there is no perception – only emotions and thoughts. And that brings me back to my original question – why emotions?

What does emotion need to exist? Obviously something is driving its existence and pushing it into the realm of the mind. What is that something? When Ï” am a complete being being by myself whatis the need for a horrible crutch like emotion? Ok – I don’t know by experience that I am a complete being but yes without it being complete it couldn’t be the source of creation. When will I destroy myself to let this source of creation take form and express itself? For that to happen I need to break all that I identify myself with. Including these compulsive emotions. How well they disguise themselves to confuse me about myself?! It is amazing that the amount of distance they build within me between Ï”and my desire to experience Ï” seems to be infinite but also a matter of a moment of deep realization. THis crippling duality and the absolute stillness – when will I make the journey? Have I started? Or am I just standing on the shores waiting for the river to invite me? Unless I let go of the bank I won’t experience the river, but if I knew how to jump into the river – the question remains whether I would have chosen to do so?

The question arises mainly because even after having tasted the Divine I am unable to break away from my compulsions and shortcomings. I continue to live with them and do not seem to have escaped from them.

But then I had given my word. I went there – near the gate. Stood for a second and just started with my mind kind of stunned into silence I guess. It went blank. I started lifting my hands and putting them together with a smile to welcome whoever walked into the gate. Everytime someone walked in – I would do it. It was a ritual and I did it. Some people responded. Some didn’t. Initially my namaskarams depended on the response. If they smiled back then I would hold on a little longer otherwise it would drop off.

Then something incredible happened. I decided to welcome whoever came in with the same complete (as complete as I could do) namaskaram irrespective of their response or who they were – children, adults, etc. I was trying to create a condition inside myself that ‘whatever happens to you (the visitor) inside here will be good’. As I started doing this, my hand ache, my elbow ache, the pain in my legs, everything went out of my mind. I was offering myself completely to each person who was walking in with 100% sincerity and a blessing of ‘good will happen to you here today’. The smile came on automatically, I didn’t have to put it on. It turned into one of the most enjoyable experiences. Imagine getting the opportunity to welcome 10,000 people with a blessing. Won’t you smile on your own? Oh sure, anyone will. I guarantee you.

Now comes the even better part. As this enjoyment increased, I could sense growing excitement inside me. I would start looking outside the gate waiting for people to come. As soon as I spotted a visitor, I would bow down to them. Looking at me everyone responded. Even no-response meant that it was a response because they weren’t used to a person bowing down to them. And I used to get excited seeing people entering the venue with a feeling of ‘Ok. I have come to a good place where something good will happen to me’. I began seeing at as an opportunity to break some constraint inside them, unblocking some block inside their minds to let them be free and take in whatever is being offered by Sadhguru completely.

The namaskarams just got more intense as I kept creating more intense conditions inside me. Then came the point where something inside me broke and took me to a totally different plane. I saw no difference between me and the person coming in. It was the most intense experience of my life. The namaskarams were not being done anymore, they were happening as an expression of joy. Tears started flowing out of my eyes. But I was smiling. I could see people coming in were also moved. Of course, a few of them got scared too. But this didn’t carry on for a great while. This must have happened for a few moments. And that was it. That’s when I understood that anything that we do can take us beyond our current state of experience of the body and the mind. It depends on how willing we are to break whatever we have created inside ourselves – free will, determinism, whatever – and concentrate and give ourselves totally to what we are doing.

I must say thank you to the faculty and staff of the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information for inviting me to give your convocation address. It’s a wonderful honour and a privilege for me to speak here for ten minutes without fear of contradiction, defamation or retaliation. I say this as a Singaporean and more so as a husband.

My wife is a wonderful person and perfect in every way except one. She is the editor of a magazine. She corrects people for a living. She has honed her expert skills over a quarter of a century, mostly by practising at home during conversations between her and me.

On the other hand, I am a litigator. Essentially, I spend my day telling people how wrong they are. I make my living being disagreeable.

Nevertheless, there is perfect harmony in our matrimonial home. That is because when an editor and a litigator have an argument, the one who triumphs is always the wife.

And so I want to start by giving one piece of advice to the men: when you’ve already won her heart, you don’t need to win every argument.

Marriage is considered one milestone of life. Some of you may already be married. Some of you may never be married. Some of you will be married. Some of you will enjoy the experience so much, you will be married many, many times. Good for you.

The next big milestone in your life is today: your graduation. The end of education. You’re done learning.

You’ve probably been told the big lie that “Learning is a lifelong process” and that therefore you will continue studying and taking masters’ degrees and doctorates and professorships and so on. You know the sort of people who tell you that? Teachers. Don’t you think there is some measure of conflict of interest? They are in the business of learning, after all. Where would they be without you? They need you to be repeat customers.

The good news is that they’re wrong.

The bad news is that you don’t need further education because your entire life is over. It is gone. That may come as a shock to some of you. You’re in your teens or early twenties. People may tell you that you will live to be 70, 80, 90 years old. That is your life expectancy.

I love that term: life expectancy. We all understand the term to mean the average life span of a group of people. But I’m here to talk about a bigger idea, which is what you expect from your life.

You may be very happy to know that Singapore is currently ranked as the country with the third highest life expectancy. We are behind Andorra and Japan, and tied with San Marino. It seems quite clear why people in those countries, and ours, live so long. We share one thing in common: our football teams are all hopeless. There’s very little danger of any of our citizens having their pulses raised by watching us play in the World Cup. Spectators are more likely to be lulled into a gentle and restful nap.

Singaporeans have a life expectancy of 81.8 years. Singapore men live to an average of 79.21 years, while Singapore women live more than five years longer, probably to take into account the additional time they need to spend in the bathroom.

So here you are, in your twenties, thinking that you’ll have another 40 years to go. Four decades in which to live long and prosper.

Bad news. Read the papers. There are people dropping dead when they’re 50, 40, 30 years old. Or quite possibly just after finishing their convocation. They would be very disappointed that they didn’t meet their life expectancy.

I’m here to tell you this. Forget about your life expectancy.

After all, it’s calculated based on an average. And you never, ever want to expect being average.

Revisit those expectations. You might be looking forward to working, falling in love, marrying, raising a family. You are told that, as graduates, you should expect to find a job paying so much, where your hours are so much, where your responsibilities are so much.

That is what is expected of you. And if you live up to it, it will be an awful waste.

If you expect that, you will be limiting yourself. You will be living your life according to boundaries set by average people. I have nothing against average people. But no one should aspire to be them. And you don’t need years of education by the best minds in Singapore to prepare you to be average.

What you should prepare for is mess. Life’s a mess. You are not entitled to expect anything from it. Life is not fair. Everything does not balance out in the end. Life happens, and you have no control over it. Good and bad things happen to you day by day, hour by hour, moment by moment. Your degree is a poor armour against fate.

Don’t expect anything. Erase all life expectancies. Just live. Your life is over as of today. At this point in time, you have grown as tall as you will ever be, you are physically the fittest you will ever be in your entire life and you are probably looking the best that you will ever look. This is as good as it gets. It is all downhill from here. Or up. No one knows.

What does this mean for you? It is good that your life is over.

Since your life is over, you are free. Let me tell you the many wonderful things that you can do when you are free.

The most important is this: do not work.

Work is anything that you are compelled to do. By its very nature, it is undesirable.

Work kills. The Japanese have a term “Karoshi”, which means death from overwork. That’s the most dramatic form of how work can kill. But it can also kill you in more subtle ways. If you work, then day by day, bit by bit, your soul is chipped away, disintegrating until there’s nothing left. A rock has been ground into sand and dust.

There’s a common misconception that work is necessary. You will meet people working at miserable jobs. They tell you they are “making a living”. No, they’re not. They’re dying, frittering away their fast-extinguishing lives doing things which are, at best, meaningless and, at worst, harmful.

People will tell you that work ennobles you, that work lends you a certain dignity. Work makes you free. The slogan “Arbeit macht frei” was placed at the entrances to a number of Nazi concentration camps. Utter nonsense.

Do not waste the vast majority of your life doing something you hate so that you can spend the small remainder sliver of your life in modest comfort. You may never reach that end anyway.

Resist the temptation to get a job. Instead, play. Find something you enjoy doing. Do it. Over and over again. You will become good at it for two reasons: you like it, and you do it often. Soon, that will have value in itself.

I like arguing, and I love language. So, I became a litigator. I enjoy it and I would do it for free. If I didn’t do that, I would’ve been in some other type of work that still involved writing fiction – probably a sports journalist.

So what should you do? You will find your own niche. I don’t imagine you will need to look very hard. By this time in your life, you will have a very good idea of what you will want to do. In fact, I’ll go further and say the ideal situation would be that you will not be able to stop yourself pursuing your passions. By this time you should know what your obsessions are. If you enjoy showing off your knowledge and feeling superior, you might become a teacher.

Find that pursuit that will energise you, consume you, become an obsession. Each day, you must rise with a restless enthusiasm. If you don’t, you are working.

Most of you will end up in activities which involve communication. To those of you I have a second message: be wary of the truth. I’m not asking you to speak it, or write it, for there are times when it is dangerous or impossible to do those things. The truth has a great capacity to offend and injure, and you will find that the closer you are to someone, the more care you must take to disguise or even conceal the truth. Often, there is great virtue in being evasive, or equivocating. There is also great skill. Any child can blurt out the truth, without thought to the consequences. It takes great maturity to appreciate the value of silence.

In order to be wary of the truth, you must first know it. That requires great frankness to yourself. Never fool the person in the mirror.

I have told you that your life is over, that you should not work, and that you should avoid telling the truth. I now say this to you: be hated.

It’s not as easy as it sounds. Do you know anyone who hates you? Yet every great figure who has contributed to the human race has been hated, not just by one person, but often by a great many. That hatred is so strong it has caused those great figures to be shunned, abused, murdered and in one famous instance, nailed to a cross.

One does not have to be evil to be hated. In fact, it’s often the case that one is hated precisely because one is trying to do right by one’s own convictions. It is far too easy to be liked, one merely has to be accommodating and hold no strong convictions. Then one will gravitate towards the centre and settle into the average. That cannot be your role. There are a great many bad people in the world, and if you are not offending them, you must be bad yourself. Popularity is a sure sign that you are doing something wrong.

The other side of the coin is this: fall in love.

I didn’t say “be loved”. That requires too much compromise. If one changes one’s looks, personality and values, one can be loved by anyone.

Rather, I exhort you to love another human being. It may seem odd for me to tell you this. You may expect it to happen naturally, without deliberation. That is false. Modern society is anti-love. We’ve taken a microscope to everyone to bring out their flaws and shortcomings. It far easier to find a reason not to love someone, than otherwise. Rejection requires only one reason. Love requires complete acceptance. It is hard work – the only kind of work that I find palatable.

Loving someone has great benefits. There is admiration, learning, attraction and something which, for the want of a better word, we call happiness. In loving someone, we become inspired to better ourselves in every way. We learn the truth worthlessness of material things. We celebrate being human. Loving is good for the soul.

Loving someone is therefore very important, and it is also important to choose the right person. Despite popular culture, love doesn’t happen by chance, at first sight, across a crowded dance floor. It grows slowly, sinking roots first before branching and blossoming. It is not a silly weed, but a mighty tree that weathers every storm.

You will find, that when you have someone to love, that the face is less important than the brain, and the body is less important than the heart.

You will also find that it is no great tragedy if your love is not reciprocated. You are not doing it to be loved back. Its value is to inspire you.

Finally, you will find that there is no half-measure when it comes to loving someone. You either don’t, or you do with every cell in your body, completely and utterly, without reservation or apology. It consumes you, and you are reborn, all the better for it.

Don’t work. Avoid telling the truth. Be hated. Love someone.

You’re going to have a busy life. Thank goodness there’s no life expectancy.

As you know, I did my Yoga class again this June. But this time round there was a grand climax to the class. All the participants would get to meet Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev [To know more about him, click here] in a Maha Sathsangh on Sunday, June 22 2008. Though I call it climax, this was not a climax to an end but a climax to an all new beginning. Since I had done the class I was also there at the Maha Sathsangh appropriately titled “Ananda Sangham”.

It started at 6.00PM or so. We started our Yoga practices in unison. Imagine around 8,000 people doing Yoga together and chanting “Aum” at once. The vibrations that I felt was a divine experience! As we finished, Sadhguru appeared clapping to the tunes of ‘Sounds of Isha’ – Isha Foundation’s own musical band. All of us stood up and tried getting as close as we could to catch a view of Sadhguru but I guess I was outdone by the pace of others. Though I went up and near I found I did not have a place to squat, so I came back to roundabout the same place I was before. And this was the last row of the gathering. I sat down with my legs stretched out. Araam se!

Sadhguru started with the story of his great grandmother who lived for 114 years and who he met only during his summer vacations. This was when he was in his early teens. His great grandmother renounced the world and family and left for her vanaprastha at the age of 69. She built a small temple on someone else’s land and lived there despite her family owning thousands of acres of ancestral land that left her family members wondering what she was upto. She used to come back to her ancestral home whenever Sadhguru and his cousins came for vacation and stay for a while. During this period Sadhguru observed that she used to do lot of the so-called crazy stuff. She would feed half of her meal to the ants in the house and watch with tears of happiness flowing down her eyes as they ate what she offered. She would go into the Pooja room and laugh loudly, cry with happiness, offer flowers to the Gods through her feet and do all kinds of stuff that people labeled her as a crazy woman. Nobody ever understood what was happening. Whenever Sadhguru approached her and asked her to explain her actions she would apparently let out a loud laugh and say nothing else. Sadhguru always wondered at the large-heartedness of his great grandmother. How could she give away half of what she was supposed to eat to the ants?

“Here I am with a few marbles that I cannot part with. Even when friends asked me for those marbles I would give them with great reluctance and maintain accounts at the same time. I would ensure I had it recorded somewhere, even if its only in my brain, that to whom I have given how many marbles. And in front of me is a lady who cries with happiness donating half of what she is supposed to eat to the ants! How is that?”, wondered Sadhguru. And as usual whenever he asked her anything about any of her actions, the only response he ever remembered getting was loud laughter. Sadhguru never quite got to the bottom of it considering that she died at the ripe old age of 114 years that too because she was fighting cancer for the last couple of years. Cancer affected her due to the habit of chewing tobacco leaves that she caught on from the age of 24 or so.

“This does not mean that if you chew on tobacco leaves, you will live for 90 years. [Laughs] Imagine the number of years she would have lived had she not chewed on those leaves”, said Sadhguru to which the crowd responded through loud applause. Sadhguru wanted to drive home the point of offering yourselves completely to whatever you do. It did not matter what you did. Even feeding a few ants would then become such an act of pleasure that anything in this life could be made joyful. In fact life is joyful

Being joyful is the fundamental position of a human being. Shambhavi Maha Mudra [Link] is a powerful process of immeasurable antiquity. Sadhguru said that it (the Mudra) was being used in an elite circle of Yogis and enlightened people till now because they did not want such a powerful technique to get into the hands of the common man as it might be used for the wrong purposes. But he has apparently toned it down into a capsule and administered it into us so that we can attain happiness out of it for sure but if and when we try to misuse it, it will not work. That’s they way he has built the course.

“For most of you, the happiness from the Mudra might not be evident as yet but then the seed has been planted. The seed will grow into a plant and a tree if you provide the right conditions for it to grow. The conditions have been taught to you in the class. If you do not provide the right conditions for the seed to grow then it will be equivalent to keeping the seed on a rock. Nothing will happen. If you try to use the positives arising out of the Mudra for foretelling the future or something like that it won’t happen because that is the way it has been designed”, said Sadhguru. “If you have a problem doing the practices twice a day for 40 days and then atleast once a day for 6 months, then do it twice a day for the entire six months!”, he concluded to a rapturous applause.

Then it was question and answer session. We were given chits of paper on which we could write down whatever questions we had for Sadhguru to answer before the program started. People had different kinds of questions to which Sadhguru had quick, intelligent and most importantly un-redoubtable answers. One question and answer I remember very clearly was this:

Q: Sadhguru, how do we get over the death of a dear one?
A: [Sadhguru breathes in and out heavily and asks] “What is this? Life? Right?”
[Sadhguru breathes out once and stops for a while before asking] “What is this? Death? Right?”
“Now, someone or the other is dying in my family on a daily basis. What should I do about it? You don’t understand? This universe full of people is my family. How should I get over it? Get over what? You mean to get over the fact that the body, mind and emotions that you recognised the person by is no longer here, right? But when you could feel all of that of that person what did you do with that? The very fact that you want to get over it means that there is something that you did not do for the person which you ideally wanted to do when the person was alive. Do you know what that means? The person died but is alive inside you.

Everything happening in this world is happening where? Inside you. Am I right? I am talking here, where is it happening? Inside you. The tree is there but where is it actually? In your eyes, again inside you, right? You know all that nonsense of light falling on that image is getting reflected and creating an inverted image on your retina that is being read by your mind and shown to you in the way that it is, right? So where is everything happening? Where is the world? Inside you. Whatever is happening here is actually happening inside you. The moment it comes into your experience the world is inside you. So where is death of a dear one happening? Inside you?

This January when I was at the World Economic Forum, there was this nonagenarian lady who came upto me and narrated her experience. As a 13 year old she was from some part in Europe that was being conquered by Hitler and they were systematically exterminating the Jews and other people as well. It was at a time when her parents had disappeared, assumed dead, and she was left with her 8 year old brother at the railway station for around 4 to 5 days waiting for a train that would take her somewhere. As soon as they got on to the train, she noticed that her kid brother was not wearing shoes. He had missed it somewhere. The temperatures there are freezing cold. She got enraged and wrenched her brother’s ears for not wearing his shoes and scolded him almost throughout the journey. The boy did not respond even a single line. As the train reached its destination the boys and the girls were separated and taken away to their respective camps for extermination. The girl survived the camp and came out alive after 4 or 5 years and never saw her brother again.

To this day she remembers this incident with lot of emotions. But she said that she made an important decision from then. The last thing that she ever gave her brother was admonishment and hence whoever she met from that day on she spoke to them as if it was the last word she would ever speak to them. Please see how you interact with people at home, neighbours, colleagues, people on the road and others. Imagine if it was the last word you would ever speak to them and speak to them from now on. How would you speak? Would you still speak the same way or would there be a change in the way you spoke to them? In fact it is a reality. Look at it – you are here now, I am speaking to you. Is there any gaurantee that you will be here next moment or tomorrow? Not that I want all of you to die or disappear suddenly, in fact I wish and pray that all of you lead long and happy lives [folds his hands in prayer], but can you gaurantee me that you will be alive the next moment for me to speak to you?

Now the reason that you want to get over the death of a dear one is because somewhere deep down you feel you have not done or said something that you ideally wanted to do for the departed. Now that the person has departed you feel you have lost the opportunity of doing whatever you wanted to do. Imagine if you spoke and lived as if it was the last time you ever saw the person. Would there be any reason for you to get over death at all?

While doing this program, Anandha Alai, two of my volunteers have had an accident and have broken their skulls and died. Two others of my family, very loved ones, very dear ones have passed away recently. If we have done whatever we wanted to do for them then we continue to live joyously, right? We don’t have to let sadness affect us because they have passed away. We can be joyful and happy when our conscience is clear”

There were many other questions and answers. This one answer particularly created a deep imprint. There were questions on how to move my body energies from one chakra to another and many other topics that Sadhguru handled with typical elan and wit. The Q&A session ended by 8.45PM or so. I have no idea about the timings because I did not carry a watch with me. I did not want any distractions while I was with Sadhguru. Sadhguru asked us all to stand up and sing along with him. He sang a song in the praise of Lord Shiva and we sang along. Then ‘Sounds of Isha’ took over and played some soulful music. And Sadhguru was walking off the stage while saluting all of us. As he came to the edge of the stage he stopped and turned. The music was playing all along. He was still saluting us, but this time round his expression seemed to be more serious. This routine, of Sadhguru walking upto the edge of the stage and returning to the center, repeated itself again and by the fourth time I was close enough to the stage to see tears streaming down Sadhguru’s eyes. Sadhguru had tears streaming down his eyes, uncontrollably, and his hands were tied in an eternal namaskaram. Seeing him like that something happening inside me. I went into a daze. He finally walked off the stage after around ten minutes on the stage. (Any reference to absolute time or period of time is absolutely a figment of imagination. I have no idea how long anything took)

In the same dazed state, I too walked off. I sensed that ‘Sounds of Isha’ had continued their music and there were people dancing blissfully to it. But in my daze, my feet took me to the chappals stand. My chappals were exactly where I had left them! Imagine 8,000 people and still your chappals have not even moved in their position by an inch! I was amazed that in this daze I could actually analyze something to this extent. And walked to the parking lot. All the way I was looking only one way – down at my feet. I didn’t look at anyone else or anything else. This I realised only later.

As I reached the parking lot and got to my bike I broke down. I cried uncontrollably. Tears came out as if they were just waiting for years to come out. I had no idea why I was crying. At the same time as I was crying my mind was telling me, “Adi, what is this? why are you crying? this is a public place. stop crying. don’t be a fool”. I had no idea what was happening to me. Initially I tried to stop the tears and the crying, I was hugely unsuccessful. I did not know if it was the effect of anything at all. I do not know, even now, why I cried. I just cried. It kept coming. There was no way of stopping it. Then my mind realised it knew how to stop me from crying. It asked me to call my wife and tell her that I was on my way back home. I realized that was not such a good idea later.

I picked up my phone from inside my bag. I remember seeing the time then as 9:23PM and all the timings you see here are a reverse calculation from here. I called my wife.

Me: “Hello”
My voice broke.

My wife: “Hello, hello, hello….”

Me: “It’s me Aditya speaking”
Wife: “What’s wrong? Your voice does not seem alright”
I broke down completely. I was sobbing uncontrollably again. And at the same time, since it was a parking lot and had rained the day before, a enfield bullet guy fell down as he was taking his bike out. I went forward to help him, all this while I am sobbing uncontrollably. I lift his bike up and he leaves.

Me: “I will come home and speak”
Wife: “Hope everything is alright?”
I don’t remember if I answered the question or not. Because I do not know, even now – after almost a day has passed, if everything was alright.

I got on to my bike and started driving home. On the way tears just kept streaming down my cheeks. My helmet was completely wet by the time I reached home. It was a good 20 to 25 minutes drive. And nothing seemed to stop my tears. I assumed that once I get back home I had be normal.

I got back home. I picked up my 14 month old son and sat down on a chair while he was on my laps . My wife came and sat down next to me near my legs in a very concerned manner. She knew something was wrong but was not sure whether to broach the topic or not in front of the kid. The kid would get disturbed to see his father sobbing like a child. But I guess she could not control and asked, “So, how was it? What happened there?”

I started my reply with something I don’t quite remember but broke down midway again. This was shocking. Tears again. My son was thankfully looking at the Sun TV music that was playing loudly. He loves that music. My wife said, “Ok stop now. Don’t cry in front of him. He will get scared”. I don’t know if I understood what she said but nevertheless I controlled it somehow. As I went to change my dress, I found tears coming. And I guess that was the last instance I saw of it. Then we sat down for dinner and it was all fine. Post dinner I watched Star Movies that was playing “Rang De Basanti” which is one of my all-time favourite movies and I slept after that.

I am going to leave this post untitled because I don’t know what I can call this experience. Something inside me changed for sure. I am not trying to analyze why the tears came or why I cried or what happened. It just happened and that’s the truth. I wanted to share my experience with all of you and hence the blogpost. It might sound like just another story when you read it on this blog, I know that and despite that I am posting it here because I wish and pray that everyone in this world goes through an experience that is so deep that putting it down in words becomes impossible. I want to end this post with my utmost gratitude to Sadhguru. I am yours Sadhguru. Do what you want with me.

Yoga is expected to take you beyond the usual experience of yourself which is limited to body and mind. And Isha Yoga has a good track record of doing that. During my earlier course with them they had transformed me into something else. Rather that sentence should be rephrased to this: during my earlier course they helped me find my true self. I had realised that all the while I was trying to be someone else and never my true self. And true states are always ecstatic states to be in. That’s why we find sadhus and munis to be in an eternal state of happiness – they have found their true state and are on a journey to explore further. I don’t expect to find anything different in this course either. Plain simple myself. And I am confident that ‘I’ am capable enough to handle whatever life throws at me henceforth. The only thing I wish not to repeat this time is: to disconnect from the practices being taught in class. I want to hold on to them and do them for the rest of my life.

Yes, sometimes it’s a great strategy. As one of my friends decided to give me the royal ignore because of one of my blogposts. I thought he was being childish. And tried every means of getting in touch with him. Finally he gives me some bs that his phone was lost and all kinds of nonsense. Anyway by then there was an irreversible void that was created that I don’t think will ever be bridged. He can ignore people in the future also, but atleast now he will know the costs of it or so I hope. So if his final desired result was distance from me then he deployed the ignore strategy to great effect. But if you want to build a great relationship please give attention to the other person. Ignoring only makes matters worse.

I am not sure where I am going with this post. So let me not go on with more random stuff. So if you ignore this, there is going to be distance between us! :D One way of not ignoring is by commenting! Thanks in anticipation :)

Parents, some of them, do not realise that they are overstepping their roles under the garb of ‘caring for their children’. In fact overstepping would be the wrong term to use. They would cease to be parents when they don’t understand what’s the best interests of their children. There are some parents I know who always are with their children, physically present I mean. As absurd and practically impossible as it might sound, I know some of them who do this. A manifestation of this is seen in the mentality of the parents while deciding on sending their children out of station for studies. That child has to make a living on his/ her own and you need to give him/ her the best possible education. If the best means outside the city you are staying in, then so be it. What is the big deal? The kid will stay outside your shelter during his/ her formative years and will learn to deal with the world on his/ her own terms. This will help the kid become a much better person. Why can’t parents understand this?

I know a father of two who had to send his younger daughter for her MBA to a city that’s around 300+ kilometers away from his home city. He reacted as if the daughter was being pushed into the dungeons knowingly. It took me quite some time to convince him and then his wife started off with her usual “She is a kid, will she be able to manage?” kind of stuff. Well, I told them, its precisely why she should be sent there so that she will learn to manage. Manage herself, her friends, her stuff, and pretty much everything that relates to her. Hostel life is something that teaches you what you need to do yourself to become successful in life. And such overprotective parents really affect the development of the child. Today the child can walk into a railway station all alone, spot her train, get into it and reach the destination without any pangs of pressure. Just ask her mother to do it – she cant travel alone even to save her life! Even her dad (the mother’s dad) is not sure if she will reach the destination for which she is seated in the train! And she wants to bring her daughter up to become like her.

Some parents just take it as their right to direct their children even after marriage. This is specific to parents of daughters! They want their daughters and their families to stay with them for the rest of their lives. The reason that they will give you if you ask is that they want to play around with the grandchildren. Oh sure, but why is it so difficult to go over to your daughter’s home and do the same? But they won’t do it. They would prefer it if their daughter and the family go over to their house. The underlying thing is that they believe that their daughter will be more ‘comfortable’ in their house than in her own house. First of all they will bring up their children as if they were made of butter or something and would melt if they ventured out under the sun and they want to keep them inside the refrigerator for the rest of their lives. Great! Don’t get them married please and ruin the life of the spouse. The spouse might not be a refrigerator person you know!

Then there is this trend of dropping and picking up the child from college! Please note I said College. The word in itself is synonymous with freedom for me. But here the father will go himself or if he can afford a car and also affords a driver then the child will be picked from there and brought home safely. Don’t you know there are hundred accidents happening on the roads of our cities every day? How ignorant of you! Has the child heard of the thrill of driving? Well, yeah sure to learn driving you need to kiss the road once or twice. But after that phase have you ever realised how much independence driving gives a person? This independence really makes the child kiss the sky! How much does it take for the parents to realise that independence can really help their child grow? Become more responsible. If you think he/ she is going to use it to go down the other side of things, then that reflects on the upbringing and the atmosphere in which the child is growing up. There is a definite check required then. But please don’t use that as a pretext to shield your child so much that the child can never open its eyes when exposed to the sun. The child should learn to face the sun knowing what it is.

Picking this one from the trend shown in the movie – the father gives the son what he likes and not what the son likes. Generally, as far as I have seen, this happens with a slightly different twist. The father gives the son more than what the child requires even before the child can ask for it. This gives rise to two things: The child never understands what its wants/ needs are. And two, the child will assume that it will always get what it wants and more. The latter can be very high-cost damage when life decides to expose reality to the child. Life is not always giving – it takes away more than what it gives – why would you die otherwise?! :) And the first point leaves the child in an extremely confused state of mind for the rest of its life trying to decide between what it likes and also how it will come to him/her or how much… So many questions will pop up in the mind that the child will stop thinking about it. And this act of the parent also screws around with the value system majorly.

I guess I have used the movie as a good platform to put my views out on these select topics. Don’t know whether they are right or wrong. Feel free to add/ crticise in the comments section.

I had invested all my effort, days and time into making a report for one of our investee companies (I am an investor now. Check out my about page). I spent two nights sitting awake completely, purely working on this document. I had, for some strange reason, taken this assignment as a do-or-die for me. There had been many fingers raised and pointed at me for my lacklustre communication in official documents, maybe that was the reason. My boss guided me a lot on putting it all together. She is a good friend and a well-wisher who I knew before joining this organization.

Finally, the d-hour came when my super boss saw the document. He is known to be a stickler for detail and presentation. To get a document through him is equivalent to getting a piece of paper through a shredder unshred! As he opened it, I could feel my heart in my mouth and could have donated it to him since he anyway did not have one, atleast while looking at written documents. The first word he said just blew me away. “Good!”. Thankfully nobody was looking me because I had broken into an involuntary grin! And somehow could never bring my lips together to shroud my teeth! Yeah that’s how much I was grinning. I mean imagine SB (super boss) saying it was good. Good! Good?!! As he browsed through the document he said thrice “Good”, “very good” and “good”. And capped it off with another “Good, looks like lot of work has gone into this document”. That was it! That pretty much sealed it for me for all the work I had done.

Post Script: SB is not always looking at criticizing. He is actually a very stable and balanced person. He rarely has any biases against anyone or anything. It’s just that his standard of quality expectation from a common man like me is very high. But it’s good because now I know that if I stretch myself I can reach the standards he expects out of me. That’s what actually is making me feel good. The belief that I can do it. Had lost it somewhere along the way. The regaining process has just recieved its first boost!

It was the shooting of the final episode of the TV program “Ooh… la.. la.. la..“. My brother-in-law Girinandh [Link to one of the news articles on the formation of their band] leads a band called ‘Oxygen’ which has entered the finals. A R Rahman was the judge for the final round. After Oxygen’s performance, Girinandh and his band members went to Rahman to get a group photo done. Apparently, Girinandh had asked my wife to call me [while he finished with his group photo] so that he could introduce me to Rahman. [Can you imagine being introduced to A R Rahman?! As compared to meeting him as yet another guy on the road!] My wife ran up two flights of stairs to call me and I will be eternally grateful to her for the physical strain she undertook at 3AM in the morning.

As soon as I came to know what was happening I dashed downstairs and was standing next to the stage in a jiffy. Girinandh was still involved with the group photo. A R Rahman presented them [all the band members of all the finalists] with an autographed “Pray For Me Brother” DVD. And the band members dispersed after thanking Rahman. On his way back from the stage Girinandh spotted me and waved asking me to come onto the stage. I ran.

I was standing next to ARR. Girinandh introduced me to him, “He is a great fan of yours and blogs about you regularly”

ARR needn’t have reacted at all. But he did. He turned to me and asked (with a smile), “Nice. Which blog?”
I said, “Mysorean”. I was out of my wits and couldn’t even complete my one word answer of ‘mysorean dot com’.

ARR, in fact continued the conversation, “What did you write about me?” [I didn't notice if he had any tongue-in-his-cheek because I was like Oooohhh... is this really happening?]
“About the Bangalore concert” [Link]

ARR said, again, “Hmm….”. He meant it in a way that he remembered reading about it sometime.
I said, “You even commented on it”.[Link]

ARR said, “Oh yeah yeah…” vigorously nodding his head this time. He was being just so nice. He didn’t have to be.
I said, “Can I have one snap with you please?”
“Sure”

Girinandh clicked:

And Girinandh had clicked one more before, while we were conversing:

Sitting in a room right next to the TV Room was my kid-cousin Akshay. He was sitting on the computer browsing the net or doing some complicated stuff. He was totally unruffled by the noise and excitement in the adjoining room. In fact from where he sat he could easily see us jumping. He was the youngest in the family (then) and was having such a composed look on his face while we were behaving like children at a zoo! Cricket didn’t matter to him. Everytime there was a roar from our end he would just shout, “what happened?”, to us. We would reply, “Yuvaraj just smashed Harmisson for a boundary! Only 30 runs to go and 4 overs remaning!”. He would reply, “Oh aste na. sari”.

But his best reaction was when we were all thrilled when India won the match. He casually walked out of his room and said, “Did India win?”. He said that, he didn’t ask because nobody answered!

We were all totally surprised by the total rejection of cricket! Our family is known to go bonkers about the game. Anyone you meet, even those whose name you don’t remember, and you don’t know how to start a conversation you can just say, “Don’t you think Simon Taufel should be sacked for his LBW decision against Sachin Tendulkar when he was on 91?”. That’s it – you have started a conversation! But be careful it can flare up emotions like nobody’s business.

Born into such a family, Akshay was an outlier. He almost hated cricket though he never said that. And we never realised which other sport excited him untill we saw him sitting in front of the TV every Sunday without fail. Schumacher it was, who captured this boy’s imagination with his consistent victories and stamp of supremacy on F-1. Formula-1 racing caught Akshay’s fancy like nothing else could. And Akshay was and is our one-stop shop for anything on Formula-1. Today he has decided to share his passion with the blogsphere at http://axf1page.blogspot.com/

Akshay writes well. To testify my appreciation, here’s what my good friend Anand Balaji has to say about him,

Amazed at the clarity of thought; highly impressed by the manner in which you pepper a topic such as F1 racing with your little exciting twists and turns; speechless at the way in which you have dealt with the subject in an engaging way.

It’s not often that one comes across a good writer. You are one. Having spent a considerable amount of time as a journalist in the print media, I am well-equipped to judge good copy from bad. Your effort is laudable.

So, this is the link you need to go to, to keep yourself updated about Formula-1 racing.

(Akshay Iyengar is pursuing BE in Computer Science from Mysore. He can be contacted at axman1000@gmail.com)