Day 67 - 2009 in retrospect

As another year comes to an end, media everywhere will be playing 'The Year That Was' and reliving the good and not-so-good times of the year. As we read them we tend to agree or disagree with them and start to form our own opinions. Debates and discussions will range on some topics among friends and new thoughts will gather.

But really the feeling of how the year-that-went was is a personal one. Global events have some impact on what we feel but mostly we would remember or forget the year based on what happened to us.For some it'll be a momentous year that they will never forget while for others it will be a year that they hope they never have to re-live. Today we will all retrospect on how it was for us - moments of happiness, sadness, grief, elation, joy and mix of all feelings. Maybe a new love or a new job or a heartbreak or losing someone - so many things happen across 365 days of a year and across 31,449,600 seconds.

Allow me that liberty of talking about my year as well. You, of course, may not be interested. But if you are.....read on!

2009 started off as a scary year. Businesses were not doing well, economy was looking down and at Citrix we had just announced a 10% workforce layoff. I was thankful to God for saving my and my wife's jobs as we saw some of our colleagues being asked to leave. That was a period of mixed emotions - sad at seeing friends go but happy that we had our jobs intact. One didn't know whether to feel happy or sad.

A change of guard happened at work mid way through the year. The person at the helm of marketing in Asia Pacific changed. With a new leader comes new thinking and new ways of doing things. The job profile changed and towards the latter part of the year even my reporting structure changed. I am still waiting to see if that was a good thing or bad. I guess 2010 will show the true colours in that space. But a good thing also happened with me handling a new region and learning new things. Its always good to take up a challenge that will teach you new things and stretch you a bit. The year has ended on an interesting note work wise and I'm looking forward to 2010.

Tarush started school and that was a momentous thing. He went through his three stages and settled down into school. He had his friends, became much more communicative and interactive, had his cultural programs and seems to be enjoying school. Playschool made him more independent. Today he is a lovable brat who says the cutest things and makes us laugh. Ipsi started her steps towards becoming a teenager and trying to step out of being a girl. This year was a year of shadows for her as she is stuck between cartoons and Hannah Montana - being a kid and becoming a girl. Her questions have started becoming intelligent and yet she retains the innocence that I like.

My friendships became stronger and I thank God that I did not loose any friends. One particular friendship - with Sowmya - became stronger in 2009 and that has made me happy and thankful to God. I pray that that continues into 2010. The GMC had regular meetings and we gossiped a lot. Its my bedrock and I look forward to 2010 with them. The year ended on a high note with me touching base with a friend that I lost touch with twenty years back. That was awesome. Friends that matter most to me remained my friends.

My family remained healthy and strong and prosperous. My parents health was good as was my sister's. My wife and me fought, bickered and loved - like any couple married for 11 years. She threw me a surprise birthday party that blew me away. Our kids forged stronger bonds with their cousins as we hosted our nephews for one month. Then my brother and sister-in-law followed and we had a good time. My parents bought a house, we did some investments, changed furniture, had holidays and were in generally good health.

But the year also bought one of the saddest moments of my life till date. 3rd October 4.30am is not a date or time that I'm likely to forget anytime soon. We heard the news of Gina's passing and the next few days were tears and sadness. GINA is a gap that will be felt very acutely.

I started blogging and have been at it for 5-1/2 months now. 68 blogs in 155 days is not a great achievement but I'm proud of it. Proud of the fact that its not a diary of my daily minute-to-minute happenings but really a collection of my thoughts on varied subjects. I have some readers like you and I Thank You for it.

But the biggest achievement for me in 2010 was the fact that I started exercising. I've lost 8 Kgs in 4 months, lost couple of inches and feeling fitter and better. I'm loving the fact that I can fit into my old wardrobe and the compliments that are coming my way. Thanks to my sister and Ani for teasing me, pushing me, goading me to loose weight and to Ani and Sowmya for being an inspiration for it.

In the end 2009 has been a decent year of its ups and downs and I'm glad that I've crossed that sea with more bouquets and less scars.

Wonder what the blog post of last day of 2010 will say! Here we come!

Day 66 - Tirupati Balaji and money!

I recently visited Tirupati for my annual pilgrimage of Lord Balaji.I've been doing this for about 10+ years now. Every year I thank Him for everything and ask his blessings for the next year.

Tirupati Tirumala Balaji is the second richest religious place in the world, after Vatican. It is visited on an average by over 20 million people each year. Each of them contribute some amount of money to the hundi. On an average TTD - Tirumala Tirupathi Devasthanams - the body that manages and runs the temple collects Rs 35 Cr each month from the hundi alone. That makes it approx Rs. 420 Cr + each year or US$ 84 million each year. The main temple is plated with gold. Business men have been known to donate diamonds and gold freely to the Lord. Vijay Mallya takes every new aircraft added in Kingfisher Airlines to Tirupati for a puja before it flies. He has recently announced that he will plate all 16 doors of the main temple with gold. The hundi has seen donations varying from a bag of coins to shower of diamonds to a gold plated fully functional camera and many odd things. Whatever is dropped in the hundi belongs to the Lord and the Lord asked for it. A myth goes that a mother propped up her small child to drop some coins into the hundi, inadvertently the child fell in. He was not returned to the mother as the priests said that the Lord wanted the child and they will bring him up.

Why am I saying all this? Because I always hear this sarcastic comment from people that Lord Balaji is all about money without knowing the background to it. Do you say this as well? In that case, its time to read this.

As you are aware the Hindu scripture defines four yugas through which the world cycles - Satya Yuga, Treta Yuga, Dvapara Yuga and Kali Yuga. We are currently in the Kali Yuga or Kaliyug. The Kali Yuga will traditionally last for 432,000 years. We've just about started it. Some attributes of Kali Yuga are quite evident today.

I suggest you read the Story of Lord Balaji to get a better picture. I will, however, focus on the money aspect. If you read the story you will realise that Lord Vishnu incarnated Himself as Venkateswara and came to earth in search of Lakshmi, who had taken birth as Princess Alamelu (Padmavati) in the household of Akasa Raju. The princess's father agreed to give his daughter's hand in marriage to Venkateswara if he provided proof of his wealth. Towards this end, Venkateswara obtained a heavy loan from Kubera, the God of Wealth,at a very heavy interest rate. And therein lies the key to the story of the hundi and people putting money into it.

According to Vishnupuran, Lord Venkateshwara will continue to pay Kuber the loan till the end of Kali Yuga. As devotees our contributions to the hundi are a part of the loan that he is paying off to Kuber. In return for the money that we give Him, he agrees to grant our wishes and requests. Hence the key of Tirupati being that devotees ask for something from Lord Balaji and pledge money in return. Most of the devotees collect the money across the time frame and come to drop the same into the hundi after the fulfillment of the wish or request. Lord Balaji is not about money. Lord Balaji is about fulfilling your wishes and requesting money to pay off the heavy loan that he has taken.

So next time you go to Tirupati, don't scorn at the fact that so much money is being dropped into the hundi. Rather remember that you are helping the Lord to pay off his debt and in return the Lord will make all efforts to fulfill your request. Its a matter of give-and-take with the Lord. Don't feel bad if you have asked something from the Lord. Rather remember that if he grants the wish, you better keep your side of the bargain as well.

Day 65 - Thank You God

An award speech invariably begins with 'Thank You God' - at least in US. Then,of course, there is the prayer that is taught to our children - Thank you for the world so sweet, Thank you for the food we eat, Thank you for the birds that sing, Thank you God for everything.

Have you ever thought about how many times you have Thanked God and on what occasions? If you put your mind to it you will realise that most of the times we end up thanking God when good things happen in our lives. An award, a promotion, a relationship going our way, things that we wanted to happen and so on. Have you ever thanked God for something that did not happen according to your wish? I think not.

I think it stems from the fact that we Thank someone when a good thing happens and blame someone when a bad thing happens. If you take that logic then we should be blaming God for everything that goes wrong. Ideally we should but then the basic concept of God is that He / She is all knowing and all powerful. You don't want to make an All Powerful being angry and so we blame ourselves for all wrongs and thank Him for all rights. Why does God have to get all the credit whenever something good happens? He doesn't take the shit when something bad happens? We have to take that!

Don't get me wrong.....I'm not an atheist. In fact I am a religious man and pray daily to Him. I thank him for everything that has happened in my life - good or bad - and ask Him to look after me and my family. I worry about losing my religion and not being able to pass on these values to my children. But at the same time, I do wonder if I can get away with blaming Him for something bad in my life. The problem is that you don't want to take that risk with Him! You don't want to anger Him and face his wrath. Neither do I! In fact I blogged about the situation where if things happen according to your wishes its good but even better if they don't happen according to you wishes on day 20 of my blog.

So as 2009 comes to a close, I Thank God for everything that has happened in my life this year - good and bad - and ask Him to look after me, my family and ones I love for next year as well!

THANK YOU GOD!

Day 64 - Imagination

James Cameroon's latest movie 'AVATAR' has just released in India. Being a huge sci-fi fan I am excited by the prospect of watching the movie. While the rest of the world is excited about the special effects and the story, my interest lies in a different angle altogether.

I am excited by the imagination that the director and the special effects people have put onto screen for a world that lies only in their minds. I am excited about the new kinds of animals and plants that they have imagined. How will the sunset look like on the planet Pandora? How will the flora and fauna be on a planet that exists only in the minds of the designers and the director. While people will be watching the movie and be excited by the look of the Na'vi, on a second or third run I will probably be watching the background more than the actors and the action.

I have a hobby of reading books. I have to have a book to read at all times. While my interest spans across genres, my fascination is exclusively for science fiction. Arthur C Clarke and Isaac Asimov are writers that I swear by and love to read their books again and again. I realised that one of the reasons I love these books so much is the fact that I have to imagine these worlds as I read them. I have to experience what the writers experienced as they wrote and see these new worlds with their eyes. Asimov's Foundation series took me to new worlds of Trantor and Gaia while Clarke's Odyssey of Rama series really pushed the limits of my imagination. I still love to read the Rama series as I believe that I still haven't been able to imagine the Rama world in its true splendor.

Imagination pushes your creative limits. It makes you wonder and trains your brain to think out of the box. When you need to imagine a new place, a new experience, a new location or a new emotion that you have not experienced before it pushes your brain to exercise itself and bring those places to life. Reading Harry Potter was much more fun than watching it. In fact reading the Amar Chitra Katha books of Ramayana and Mahabharata was much more exciting than watching them on screen. We had to imagine the battle of Kurukshetra without ever seeing one ourselves. We had to imagine Hanuman's flight with the mountain at an age when our brain was pushing its limits. I believe that is what made our generation so much more creative.

I rue the fact that in today's generation the books become movies so much faster that children don't need to imagine these worlds. They just have to wait for some time and the world comes to them. But this is the imagination of someone else - not your own. It deprives the children of creativity, of having to make up this world of Hogwarts or Twilight in their own minds. Its so much fun to read and imagine a person turning into a werewolf and then seeing that transformation on screen as compared to watching someone else interpretation of it and taking that as your own.

This generation's imaginative powers are very limited and this will impact the generation when it grows up. Creative powers will be valued much more and most of the generation will follow the vision of a few people. The generation will accept that someone else's vision is the right one because they have been trained to not think but just experience. I rue that fact.

Teach your children to read. Try and cultivate the reading experience in them. Let them read the books first and then watch the movies. Even for our stories like Mahabharata and Ramayana, let them read these first and then watch the serials. Let their brains imagine and go to place where they have not gone.

Let them give wings to their imagination!

Day 63 - Arrogance and Humility

Isn't it interesting that we value humility, abhor arrogance but strive to be the best? How are these three emotions interlinked, you may ask? Please do and allow me to elaborate on my perspective of them.

In our lives we usually strive for excellence or at least are 'trained' to think that we should be the best in whatever we do. The constant 'great statement' that we hear or advice that the successful people seem to make is "Do whatever you want but be the best in what you do". So we strive towards that. Being the best is not an easy task. Its a tough road lined with long hours, hard work, compromise on parties and friends and single minded focus on what we want to be best at. Its not for everybody which is why just a few people get to be at the top of the list. These people have struggled to get there giving up on a lot of things that we took for granted and enjoyed in our youth.But once they get there mere mortals like us look up to them and seek their advice in that field.

Amitabh Bachchan never spent time with his family when he was building his career, Tendulkar was at the nets for hours avoiding that one rupee coin from falling from the stumps while his friends were watching movies, Bill Gates was slogging it out on the lab of his school while his friends were out partying, The Beatles were playing 8 hours daily in Germany while other bands were bedding women and smoking pot and there are many such examples. But once they became BigB, Sachin Tendulkar, Bill Gates and The Beatles all of us are/were in awe of them. Let's be frank.......the slogged their asses out to become who they are.

After all that struggle some of these top percentile of people attain their dream and revel in the fact that they know much better about their subject than others. They realise that the ones who come to them seek answers to problems in the field that are so obvious but they can't see because they didn't hone those skills. As more and more of this happens, they tend to look down on the advice-seekers and become 'arrogant' in our words. But they have earned the arrogance!

As mere mortals we tend to forget the struggle that the person has gone through to attain that status. Probably because we did not go through it ourselves. We watched movies, played games, had fun while these toppers were slogging it out. And we don't want to be reminded about it by them!

We want them to be humble about their success. We want them to say that it was pure luck that they got where they are so that we feel better and think that we were not so lucky. We raise the humble ones on a pedestal and abhor the arrogant ones. Why? Because the arrogant ones make us realise our folly that we did not work as hard when we could have while the humble ones make us feel that we were just not lucky and were not at the right place at the right time as they were.

BULLSHIT! Do you think that a Sachin Tendulkar does not realise that he really IS THE BEST? or an Amitabh Bachchan? But we deride a Shah Rukh Khan because he accepts that he is better than the others and we love an Amitabh Bachchan because he never says that he is the best............even if he desperately wants to. Don't you think that a Sachin Tendulkar or an Amitabh Bachchan want to shout from the top of the roof tops that they slogged their asses out to become the best and that THEY ARE THE BEST? I'm sure they do but we won't let them.

Its time that we changed a bit as well. Arrogance is an earned quality and we should give them the right to be arrogant about it.

Don't you?

Day 62 - The most successful marraiges are based on lies

I just read this quote recently and thought - Wow, this is like opening a can of worms. It's a perfect example of an absolutely un-political statement. Try making this statement at a party and see how you get lynched for it!!

Marriages are based on trust. The partners must trust each other, believe in each other and have faith on each other. Transparency is the key to earning the trust. When you share your thoughts, your feelings and your past with your partner, the relationship becomes stronger. A daily ritual for a successful marriage must involve sitting together at the end of the day and sharing information about the day. By involving your partner and investing that time in the relationship you will get to understand each other better and learn to love each other more. Truth, Trust, Transparency & Time are probably the four cornerstones of a successful marriage.


Really? A poster for marriage and all books probably talk the same lines as above. But how much of truth is there in these lines? Is complete and absolute truth and transparency a basic requirement of a long term successful marriage? After 11+ years of marriage I believe that most successful marriages are based on lies.

Now, don't get me wrong. I don't mean the blatant lies where you are having an affair or are a closet murderer. No, I mean small white lies. Every relationship - and that includes the 'ultimate' one of marriage as well - is based on small white lies. White lies are the ones you say to make someone happy and those that don't hurt anyone outright.

If you don't like her mother coming to your house every few days, don't go and be transparent about it. Telling a small white lie there will only help the relationship. The answer to the question "Do I look fat in this?" can NEVER be a truth. A lie is needed and necessary to answer that question. If you are with your wife and happen to notice a beautiful buxom woman passing by and she catches you, a white lie is needed there - not the truth and transparency. There are many such situations where those four pillars - or three of them at least - are not the ones to follow. Reality does not go by the good sounding poster lines. Reality is always grey and lies somewhere in between.

We are intrinsically liars at heart, at least most of us are. We tend to be diplomatic when faced with situations that can potentially lead into fights. We tend not to like people who are outspoken and always tell the truth or call a spade a spade. So why should we be open, transparent and truthful in our most private and closest relationship? We all tend to lie in our marriages as well but the key is to what extent and on what topics or situations. A successful marriage is determined by that. Do we call our wife beautiful even when she is putting on a bit more weight? Do we tell her that we love her family even if there are some members we could strangle? Do we tell her we are stuck in a traffic jam when maybe this time we left the offive party a bit late? Just some of the white lies.

There are certain things best left untold and in our hearts rather than in the open. I am sure even today our parents have a few secrets that they have kept from each other. I believe that most successful marraiges are based on small harmless white lies.

Day 61 - Being judgemental

Do you take people at face value or do you judge them when you meet them? The answer to this question is a pretty tricky one. You would love to say that you take everyone at face value but in reality you end up judging every single thing they say. A different way to ask would be "Are you a good judge of people?" and I'm sure the answer to that from most of you would be 'Yes'.

But reality lies somewhere in between. As humans it is the easiest thing to do to judge people, their actions and their words. We judge people at all times in different ways. We judge according to status - our servants are always 'kaamchor' while we are not; we judge by religion; we judge by ethnicity - Americans are different than us or Europeans are different; we judge by clothes - a badly dressed person is somehow not as good as a well dressed one even if the opposite is true. How many times have you looked at a shabbily dressed person and thought that he is probably less educated than you or the well dressed person next to him? Many times or maybe always. As I once heard someone day "Even when you don't care, others judge you on your appearance" and how many times have we heard the saying "Clothes make a man".

It is very easy to pass judgment on someone without knowing any details of why the person acted that way or said those things. We all do it. When a friend comes to us and says things about their boss or another person, we judge them and form a perception in our minds. When we hear about someone getting angry or smashing things or a celebrity lashing out at a photographer or a friend, we judge them and form opinions without trying to find out why they did what they did. If our friend comes and tells us that they are breaking up with their partner we automatically assume that the partner must be in the wrong. We form a judgment without knowing the truth.

And therein lies the issue in our lives. We form a judgement about people without knowing the facts. This impacts not just our personal lives but also gets into our professional lives. We form a judgement about our peers, our boss and our colleagues. We forget that unless you are in the same situation as the other person you cannot decide what is a right or a wrong decision and hence have no right to form an opinion about the situation or the person. Every time you try to form an opinion or a judgement ask yourself what you would do in the same situation. If your answer is that you don't know or you have insufficient data, stop there and don't form an opinion about the person. Don't judge!

Being non-judgemental and living by the credo 'to each his own' makes living that much easier. Is it easy? Definitely not. Being judgemental is in our DNA but try it for some situations. It might help you!