Towards Resurgent & Responsible India

A google search on Time management gives about 1,94,00,00,000 results (0.49 seconds). Time is most sought after and most pervasive commodity. Time is most perishable commodity that we use, it lasts for a miniscule moment, in fact it doesn’t last even for that miniscule moment, it’s in constant flux. Time is the only wealth which is evenly distributed in the world. It is most forgiving and most unforgiving entity. Unforgiving, because once a moment is gone its gone forever, and forgiving because the next moment is always available to you, to be used. To use every moment to its fullest, you need to be present, in real time. That is the only time when the moment is there for you to use, the past is gone, and future is yet to come. You cannot live in your past and expect your future to take care of itself. To succeed in life you must live for today and invest in tomorrow. There are millions upon millions of people who prefer to live their lives in times dead and gone. They dwell on wh...

“It’s a jungle out there!” is the common expression when one defines the life in today’s highly competitive world. Cut-throat competition, Dog eats Dog world, it’s a rat race. Has the life become so difficult and challenging only now? Was life serene comfortable and without any challenges for our ancestors?  In fact primitive humans had difficult lives. Our distant ancestors felt vulnerable to many mysterious forces. In some years food was plentiful; in other years it was hard to find. In some years severe storms, floods, and forest fires killed many people. Sometimes wounds caused people to die, but wounds sometimes healed. Some people recovered from sicknesses that killed others.   Ancient Greeks believed that gods living in the heavens on Mount Olympus controlled the events affecting their lives. In Greek mythology, Pandora was blamed for opening a box that unleashed a multitude of harmful spirits that inflicted plagues, diseases, and illnesses on mankind. Spi...

Asking questions is the self-motivated way a child learns about its world. A bright, active child asks endless questions. A child’s curiosity is inborn; curiosity is not something that has to be taught. More than any other species, we humans are born needling to learn how to survive in this world. Human children are not like insects and small animals born with pre-programmed neurology for finding food and shelter or avoiding danger and predators. “Lower” creatures have their brains hardwired, so to speak. The young can survive very soon without parental protection or help. But the more a creature’s behaviour is pre-programmed, the less its behaviour can be altered through learning. The less pre-programming, the more a creature can alter its behaviour through learning. Needing to learn how to live in this world gives humans many choices. They can find safe environments, create environments that are safe for them, or learn how to survive in a new environment. Curiosity is an...

Going in a bad situation is not under your control but coming out of it certainly is, if you don’t allow that situation to overpower you, and dampen your spirit. You will bounce back; your bouncing back would depend on your resiliency level. Negative things do happen, and no one wants them in their life. When something ‘bad’ happens, if you focus on what you want, keep your mind off what you don’t want or are worried about, and take action, then miraculous things can happen. When hit by life disrupting change, you will never be the same again. You will emerge either stronger or weaker, either better or bitter. You have within you the ability to determine which way it will be for you. As you struggle with adversity or disruptive change, your mind and your habits will create barriers or bridges to a better future. Blaming others for how bad things are for you, keeps you in a non-resilient victim state in which you do not take resiliency actions. Resiliency comes from feeling...

Viktor Emil Frankl , was an Austrian neurologist, psychiatrist who was arrested and was imprisoned in the Theresienstadt Nazi concentration camp, like millions of Jews all over Germany. He suffered same hardships and threats like everyone else in the concentration camp, but he was amongst the few peoplw who survived the Holocaust. After coming out he devoted his life to studying, understanding and promoting “meaning.”   I was searching some reference on the internet when I came across some content from his famous book, “Man’s Search for Meaning”.   It’s a wonderful book which teaches us resilience, a trait, a power, a faculty, a decision, which separates the survivors from victims. This book tells the secret behind Frankl’s survival. What made him sustain and maintain is sanity in one of cruellest and goriest of military camps ever in the history of mankind.   There are many examples like Dr. Frankl’s who have survived various calamities, catastrophes, person...

Today morning, my friend, Guru, mentor and an iconic film maker, sent me a WhatsApp message, it read – “When you think of something as beautiful, something else becomes ugly” This statement made my critical mind work at double pace and my pert response slipped through my fingers and I responded – “Beauty is absolute or relative? We always need a reference point, but when a boy loves a girl the first time, what is his reference point. उन्स (infatuation) का कोई reference नहीं होता है शायद . Comparison is a mind based faculty, but pure love is seated in heart. But yes when we find something beautiful, it may be a function of heart but instantly after it, other things become less beautiful, a bias takes birth. How does a Yogi see beauty? Does he see beauty in absolute terms with no reference from past or present or like us he is also relative in his observation?” After writing my scholarly words, I was admiring myself, more than that; I was thinking-   today I would make g...

In Africa Serengeti plains there is an animal called Wildebeest. The wildebeests, also called gnus, are a genus of antelope. They belong to the family Bovidae, which includes antelopes, cattle, goats, sheep and other even-toed horned ungulates. Out of all the ungulates, wildebeests are unique.   They never run for very long. That’s not because they’ve just realized something important and want to stop and think about it. And it’s not because they’re tired. It’s because they’re so dumb that they forget why they started running in the first place.  They see a predator, they realize they’re supposed to run away, and they start moving in the opposite direction. But they lose sight of what inspired them to run, sometimes at the most inopportune moments. Sometimes they stop right next to predator; sometimes they’ll walk right up to one, as though they weren’t really sure whether this is the same animal that frightened them a few minutes ago. They almost seem to be saying, “He...