Dil pe mat le yaar!!

• There was a day, when I was sad...I had failed my college exams;
• Then again I learnt new things in life during that time, I was happy;
• I passed, finally...I was happy...soon I had to struggle finding job...I was unhappy
• I found a job, I was happy; But, I had to work...I was not happy;
• I kept making progress in professional life, I was happy; but that took me away from my parents, I was unhappy
• I come Home once in while, I am Happy; I know, I will soon go away, so I am unhappy
• I have a wonderful family, I am happy; then there are always ups and downs there as well;

There can be lot more such examples, but the point is made!

I have witnessed quite a few triggers in life which either bring happiness or sadness, and now they have lost their effect...I most of the times only witness those events without much attachment!

Whatever happens in my day to day life, these moments of Happiness and Sadness always keep coming in for sure, can I control them? maybe to a small extent, but grossly - I cant do much!;

So why take it to heart, be it happiness or sorrow?

Andhra/ Telengana...a creative solution!

Let us first understand the matter -

1. Telengana remains backward and other areas are flourishing (maybe a perception, however this needs to be addressed)

2. Hyderabad will become a point of contention, it is much larger than just which geography it belongs. Whole world has invested and it should be viewed in that way

3. For a common man it is just the telugu pride, what will happen all over the world is telugu's get divided and that is not good.

How do we provide a solution to all the above?

Let us research if there is a creative way of creating 2 governing bodies, but one state...something like "United States of Andhra Pradesh"...If it has not been done before, maybe then it is a constitution amendment, should explore.

This will sell well, because, telugu sentiment is very high and people don't want to be divided that way. Telengana public also only want extra focus on Telengana and their governance.

A sample idea could be

1 Chief Minister and 2 separate assemblies one each for Telengana and others, headed by separate speakers, these assemblies also will function from their location/ city of convenience...This can be tried for 5 years and even then there is no satisfaction, then we can get back to other solutions...

Divorce

There was a marriage materialized between Andhra Pradesh and Telengana, 50 years ago. They were not an ideal couple but when they were not fighting, they did well, like any couple in the world.

One of the fruits of this successful/ unsuccessful marriage is a child called Hyderabad (at least the modern version of it). Now mummy, papa have fallen out completely and are heading for a divorce. Both of them are saying - "Woh toh theek hai, lekin baccha mere saath hi rahega"

... this is the real problem in any divorce, kid's suffer. Or like in western world, let the kid go his way, equi-distant from both parents, when the child is old enough!

kya yeh possible hai?

this is a real drama of politics, ego and power

Intelligence & Emotions

Intelligence helps you to know what is coming next, already & that will reduce the emotional impact, you are more prepared!

while this may seem like one somebody who is intelligent is not emotional, but he or she has gone through it already and as it was internal and with no evident reason, it goes unnoticed.

//the reason I am writing this is not yet clear to me, but I wanted to keep it documented for my re-reading later//

Moment of truth @ Midnight!

..Please skip this if you are not a gulte (telugu)

That day, it was raining outside, there were an old couple who were getting out of a store. The lady was evidently not able to walk freely, she must be going through lot of pain in her legs, she is slowly coming out of the shop, though holding an umbrella in one hand as walking itself was so much stress, her focus was not on it and she was getting wet anyway. She came out looking for an auto...husband was possibly still in the store, he must be concluding the sale...He appears in a few moments, he is carrying a tricycle, you know these tricycles especially one for small children are set of pipes fixed into a awkward bulky shape, though not very heavy, makes it difficult to carry...Well, he was walking, almost hopping, because he wanted to avoid slipping in the rain as well as he wanted to catchup with his wife.

Now this wife and husband are standing next to a street, looking for a auto..."Auto, Auto...ikkada" old man shouts for a passing auto, that one occupied and zipped past without stopping..."Nenu cheppina, nuwwu enduku ee wanalo rawatam, nene poyi konukkoni wastha kada ani...kaani cheppina maata nuwwu ekkada intawu, ippudu chudu, vaana lo..." husband is exhibiting anger on his wife, but it was more driven from concern..."emi, emantunnaru...e sabdala lo emi inapadadu"...not sure if the husband heard that reply either....

"Auto" ...calling for one more auto...the auto slows down and "kidhar jana""..."Tarnaka..., wasthawa..." The auto just departs, no answers, no reasons given..."hmm! ee auto wallaki chaala poguru, walla intiiki poye towalo unte ne passenger ni ekkichkuntaru"...five minutes passes in a similar way...they are almost wet already! "10 ghantalouthondhi...mari poddhunni airport ki kuda wellala, ee auto eppudu dorukuthundo..." worried wife says...

there is a taxi, dropping some passengers where they were standing..."aa taxi ni adagandi, wasthademo" says wife..."taxi waadu, chaala aduguthaadu, neeku eepudu edhi ekkuwa costly untundo ade ishtam!" husband says irritatingly...after a few moments, when the taxi was reversing, possibly because he was concerned that his wife was getting wet in the rain and all that inconvenience...old man walks to the taxi hurriedly to catch him before he left "taxi, taxi" car stops and the driver lowered the window to listen to the husband..."Tarnaka...wasthawa...?" Taxi driver thinks for a while and " wastha, akkada ekkada"...they further talk about location and husband says "meter meeda iythe ne, nahi toh hum nahi aathe...". Possibly taxi driver had to go that way only....he agreed.

Husband loads the tricycle in the back seat next to his wife and he himself seats next to the driver, you see a person who doesnt travel by car so much, wants to sit in the front seat of the car...maybe he will think he is almost driving the car, its a man's thing!!...

husband and wife were relieved...husband, looking at driver - "yeh barish, pareshan ho gaye bhai", "hmm..." driver doesn't talk much

"cyclu, bommalu, entha baagha unnayo...edi idawabuddi kaaledhu..."
"neeku ekkadaa leni utsaham...paapodu americalo chudani, adani bommala..." replies husband...

taxi, continuous to go further...

"awunu...podduna airport ki car mataladera", "ledu, rendu saarlu phone chesina ewaru ettha ledu, ippudu poyi malli chestha", "ayyo, letayi poyindhi kadandi...ardha raatri rendu ghanatalaku waadu wastado ledo...", "sare, sare...ippudu pothune chestha...nuwwu nannu urke satayinchodu"

taxi journey continuous...

in the dim light from the street lights, the husband sees that there is "vaasu" painted on the windshield...he looks at the driver and proudly says - "vaasu, maa manamani peru, repu maa koduku, kodalu, manamadu wasthunaaru, poddunna 4 ghanatalaku flight...america nunchi", ..."mubarak ho peddayana"

..."next right chodke, daani next chowrastha lo right turn tisuko"...thats how we give directions in India..."hm, hm...idhar nahi next..."
"bas, bas...ikkade, aa inti mundara nilupu..."

husband and wife exit the car...take the tricycle out...bending towards the driver - "meter entha iyyindhi", "90 saab"..., husband is putting his hand in the pocket...takes money out...counting the money...they realize, it is only 85 rupees..." yeme...nedeggara 5 rupayilu unnaya" husband asks wife, "ledhu, nenu purse kuda teledhu"..."sare, undu babu...nenu intlo poyi testha...", "ikkada e peddayana, 5 rupay ke liye endhuku pareshan awutawu..."

"shukriya", he gave the money and they both walked away from the car into their home...

husband and wife come home, it is already 1030...wife says, she is tired and will lie down!
"naaku assalu emi aakali ledhu, raatri niddara kuda sarigga undadhu, nenu alage padukunesthanu...meeru podduna chesina annam, pappu undhi tineyandi"
husband is already busy - "hello, hello...khasim unnara"...he is calling the car fellow..."ekkada poyinaaru...maaku car kaawala ani rendu rojula krindate chepemu kadha, ippudu meeru emi cheppaka pothe maaku entha kashtam", " sare wasthune phone cheyamani cheppandi", "mee peru emi, abbas?, sare"

"emanta, e car wallanu assalu nammete ledhu...ippudemi chesedhi" realizing the contents of phone conversation wife says from her sleeping position itself...
"call cab wallaki phone cheyandi...", "naaku chaalayipoyindhi, nenu ewariki phone cheselledhu, nee ishtam nuwwe chesuko"

"hello, maaku taxi kaawalandi"...wife had got up and picked the number from the newspaper and called the city cab..."repu podduna rendu ghantalaku...", "emi, endhuku"...she disconnected the phone...
city cab wallaku carlu freega lewanta, 5 ghantalakithe wastharanta..."
"eppudu ee car la godawa ne..."

"nuwwu addam kaawe, emite adhi awutundhi...edi dorakaka pothe...oka auto thisukoni podhamu..."
"sare...meeru bhojanam cheseyandi", "nenu emo chestha le, nuwwu koncham rest thisuko"...he says this and relaxes on the sofa...

both of them were fast asleep in the next few minutes, husband sitting on sofa itself and wife on the diwan...they must have been tried, stressed and excited.

When the husband woke up, lights were all on, he hurriedly looked at the wall clock, it showed - 130..."yeme, leyi...time iyyindhi"..."ayyo...entha niddara wachesindhi"..."sare, sare, nuwwu ready kaa...nenu kuda ready i-tha, podhamu..." husband, made a last try call to khasim...no response...

"nuwwu baagha sweater wesuko, muffler kuda kattuko, mari chawu noppi adi wasthe kashtam...", "hmm..hmm"
"meeru", "nenu wesukunna le"

"purse, dabbulu pettunkunnaraa...", "hmm, petukunna"

they go out and were about to close the door..."tring, tring...tring, tring"..."phone andi...aa car wademo", husband walks enthusiastically inside..."hello, hello...", "cut ipoyindhi"...,"sare, sare inka late iwuthundhi podham pada..." they lock and step outside.

old man and woman, walk out onto the main road...rain had stopped but as it was very early in the morning, it was very cold. They were both covered with woollen stuff..."meeru kuda mufler kattaukowalasinde...", "sare naaku module inapadadhu, inka mufler to aiythe anthe mari...poyi edina autono, taxino chudaala"..."mellaga, nuwwu mellega naduwu"

There are not many people on the street at that time, it was still dark and not much was seen..."sare nenu koncham aa cross waruku poyi chustha...", "undandi, ikkade edina wasthundo emo..."...by that time husband was already walking...maybe he did not hear as well!

As he was walking few steps, he saw that there is a car parked under a tree opposite to their home itself, he wondered if it was a taxi, or it could be somebody's car parked as well...usually there are quite a few people parking their cars on the road itself...he changed his course and walked towards that car...as he went closer, he saw red words "Taxi"...now there was hope in him, walking a little faster, he peeped through the window and tried to see if the driver was inside...indeed, there was somebody sleeping in the driver seat..."yeme...", "ikkada oka taxi undi, driver kuda unnatte undhi" he said loudly to his wife..."waakili kottandi"...slapping the driver seat glass.."babu...wasthawa... babu"...as for all this noise, the person inside the car, woke..., slowly, he came out and yawningly asked..." emi saar"..."wasthawa?...airport ki wellala...", "sare...", by this time, wife walked upto the car..."wasthadanta...pada" so, there was excitement, cold and eagerness to go, so hurriedly they sat in the car..., driver picked a bottle from under his seat, maybe water...went outside and splashed some water on his face, cleaned his mouth, had a sip of same...and came back to drive.

"Perumalle-nandi, sahayam chesedu...leka pothe, taxi intha sulabanga ela dorukutundhi...", "sare, dorikindhi kadha"...

car started going...it was dark most of the places, but, once in a while, the sodium lamps was lighting them up...
"naaku chaala aaturanga undandi...eppudu eppudu papodni chustana ani wundhi...", "hmm..., sare inkemi oka ghanta sepe kadha"

as this journey continued...old man saw...the car interior felt familier..."haa..." there was the same "vaasu" on the wind shield..." old man, raised himself a little and went closer to the driver, "babu...nuwwu, nuwwe kadha ninna raatri...", "awanu sir, nene..." husband, looks at his wife and says...ee taxi, ninna angadi nunchi manam intiki wachina dey...", there was a momentary shock in their expressions...how come they got the same taxi? why did he park himself here?...very surprised!

"babu, maaku emi mataladalo teliayatledu...", "you dont know how much favor you have done to us", said the old man emotionally. "iysa kyun kiya tum?"
wife literally had tears in her eyes..."devudu neeku tappakunda manche chestaadu..."

"peddayana, pedamma...ekkuwa pareshan kaawaddu...", "ninna mee iddarrini chuse, chaala pareshan pareshan awutunnaru, mimmalni widichi poyeka wellutu unte naaku maa amma, nanna gurtiki wacheru", mee matalu yaad wachinayi......sare ippude intiki welli elagu nenu chesedhi kuda emi ledhu, ikkade car lo padukonni, meeku airport teeskelthe meeku kuda maddad awuthundani, return wachchi ikkade unna...", "meeku vere car dorikithe manchidi...leka pothe, nenu help chesinattu untundhani..."

what to say...the old couple were very emotional...indeed, this taxi driver exhibitted devine characteristics... more importantly he didnt make it look like a sacrifice or a great act, it was very simple thought process for him. Most of the times, if we make only one step move towards helping the society, God will add multiple steps to it and people will be immensely benefitted...

"peddayana...paisalunnaya ledha...ninna raatri 5 rupayilu kuda baaki undhi"...all of them laughed...

Human Values are @ the core of Success!

Below is a speech delivered by Subroto Bagchi, CEO-1 @ Mindtree, he is a man of multiple faculties, he a thought leader, author of multiple books an eminent speaker and a successful entrepreneur...

His speech below (@ IIM, Bengaluru in 2006) will connect with our life incidents so much, our parents, their value systems and all that, I am not sure I or this current generation is successful in living and propagating such values...

I owe all my 'better's' to my parents and all my 'not so better's 'to my basic failure to emulate their life...

Below one line poem sums my thoughts around this topic -

Purano – purani kaho, nayi suno; Nayon - nayi kaho, purani suno…

---- Speech Begins here -----

I was the last child of a small-time government servant, in a family of five brothers. My earliest memory of my father is as that of a District Employment Officer in Koraput, Orissa. It was, and remains as back of beyond as you can imagine. There was no electricity; no primary school nearby and water did not flow out of a tap. As a result, I did not go to school until the age of eight; I was home-schooled. My father used to get transferred every year. The family belongings fit into the back of a jeep - so the family moved from place to place and without any trouble, my Mother would set up an establishment and get us going. Raised by a widow who had come as a refugee from the then East Bengal, she was a matriculate when she married my Father.

My parents set the foundation of my life and the value system, which makes me what I am today and largely, defines what success means to me today.

As District Employment Officer, my father was given a jeep by the government. There was no garage in the Office, so the jeep was parked in our house. My father refused to use it to commute to the office. He told us that the jeep is an expensive resource given by the government- he reiterated to us that it was not ”his jeep” but the government’s jeep. Insisting that he would use it only to tour the interiors, he would walk to his office on normal days. He also made sure that we never sat in the government jeep - we could sit in it only when it was stationary.

That was our early childhood lesson in governance - a lesson that corporate managers learn the hard way, some never do.

The driver of the jeep was treated with respect due to any other member of my Father’s office. As small children, we were taught not to call him by his name. We had to use the suffix ‘dada’ whenever we were to refer to him in public or private. When I grew up to own a car and a driver by the name of Raju was appointed - I repeated the lesson to my two small daughters. They have, as a result, grown up to call Raju, ‘Raju Uncle’ - very different from many of their friends who refer to their family driver, as ‘my driver’. When I hear that term from a school- or college-going person, I cringe.

To me, the lesson was significant - you treat small people with more respect than how you treat big people. It is more important to respect your subordinates than your superiors.

Our day used to start with the family huddling around my Mother’s chulha - an earthen fire place she would build at each place of posting where she would cook for the family. There was neither gas, nor electrical stoves.The morning routine started with tea. As the brew was served, Father would ask us to read aloud the editorial page of The Statesman’s ‘muffosil’ edition - delivered one day late. We did not understand much of what we were reading. But the ritual was meant for us to know that the world was larger than Koraput district and the English I speak today, despite having studied in an Oriya medium school, has to do with that routine. After reading the newspaper aloud, we were told to fold it neatly. Father taught us a simple lesson.

He used to say, “You should leave your newspaper and your toilet, the way you expect to find it”. That lesson was about showing consideration to others. Business begins and ends with that simple precept.
Being small children, we were always enamored with advertisements in the newspaper for transistor radios - we did not have one. We saw other people having radios in their homes and each time there was an advertisement of Philips, Murphy or Bush radios, we would ask Father when we could get one. Each time, my Father would reply that we did not need one because he already had five radios - alluding to his five sons.

We also did not have a house of our own and would occasionally ask Father as to when, like others, we would live in our own house. He would give a similar reply,” We do not need a house of our own. I already own five houses”. His replies did not gladden our hearts in that instant.

Nonetheless, we learnt that it is important not to measure personal success and sense of well being through material possessions.

Government houses seldom came with fences. Mother and I collected twigs and built a small fence. After lunch, my Mother would never sleep. She would take her kitchen utensils and with those she and I would dig the rocky, white ant infested surrounding. We planted flowering bushes. The white ants destroyed them. My mother brought ash from her chulha and mixed it in the earth and we planted the seedlings all over again. This time, they bloomed. At that time, my father’s transfer order came. A few neighbors told my mother why she was taking so much pain to beautify a government house, why she was planting seeds that would only benefit the next occupant. My mother replied that it did not matter to her that she would not see the flowers in full bloom. She said, “I have to create a bloom in a desert and whenever I am given a new place, I must leave it more beautiful than what I had inherited”.

That was my first lesson in success. It is not about what you create for yourself, it is what you leave behind that defines success.

My mother began developing a cataract in her eyes when I was very small. At that time, the eldest among my brothers got a teaching job at the University in Bhubaneswar and had to prepare for the civil services examination. So, it was decided that my Mother would move to cook for him and, as her appendage, I had to move too. For the first time in my life I saw electricity in homes and water coming out of a tap. It was around 1965 and the country was going to war with Pakistan. My mother was having problems reading and in any case, being Bengali, she did not know the Oriya script. So, in addition to my daily chores, my job was to read her the local newspaper - end to end. That created in me a sense of connectedness with a larger world. I began taking interest in many different things. While reading out news about the war, I felt that I was fighting the war myself. She and I discussed the daily news and built a bond with the larger universe. In it, we became part of a larger reality. Till date, I measure my success in terms of that sense of larger connectedness. Meanwhile, the war raged and India was fighting on both fronts. Lal Bahadur Shastri, the then Prime Minster, coined the term “Jai Jawan, Jai Kishan” and galvanized the nation in to patriotic fervor. Other than reading out the newspaper to my mother, I had no clue about how I could be part of the action. So, after reading her the newspaper, every day I would land up near the University’s water tank, which served the community. I would spend hours under it, imagining that there could be spies who would come to poison the water and I had to watch for them. I would daydream about catching one and how the next day, I would be featured in the newspaper. Unfortunately for me, the spies at war ignored the sleepy town of Bhubaneswar and I never got a chance to catch one in action. Yet, that act unlocked my imagination.

Imagination is everything. If we can imagine a future, we can create it, if we can create that future, others will live in it. That is the essence of success.

Over the next few years, my mother’s eyesight dimmed but in me she created a larger vision, a vision with which I continue to see the world and, I sense, through my eyes, she was seeing too. As the next few years unfolded, her vision deteriorated and she was operated for cataract. I remember, when she returned after her operation and she saw my face clearly for the first time, she was astonished. She said, “Oh my God, I did not know you were so fair”. I remain mighty pleased with that adulation even till date. Within weeks of getting her sight back, she developed a corneal ulcer and, overnight, became blind in both eyes. That was 1969. She died in 2002. In all those 32 years of living with blindness, she never complained about her fate even once. Curious to know what she saw with blind eyes, I asked her once if she sees darkness. She replied, “No, I do not see darkness. I only see light even with my eyes closed”. Until she was eighty years of age, she did her morning yoga everyday, swept her own room and washed her own clothes.
To me, success is about the sense of independence; it is about not seeing the world but seeing the light.

Over the many intervening years, I grew up, studied, joined the industry and began to carve my life’s own journey. I began my life as a clerk in a government office, went on to become a Management Trainee with the DCM group and eventually found my life’s calling with the IT industry when fourth generation computers came to India in 1981. Life took me places - I worked with outstanding people, challenging assignments and traveled all over the world.

In 1992, while I was posted in the US, I learnt that my father, living a retired life with my eldest brother, had suffered a third degree burn injury and was admitted in the Safderjung Hospital in Delhi. I flew back to attend to him - he remained for a few days in critical stage, bandaged from neck to toe. The Safderjung Hospital is a cockroach infested, dirty, inhuman place. The overworked, under-resourced sisters in the burn ward are both victims and perpetrators of dehumanized life at its worst. One morning, while attending to my Father, I realized that the blood bottle was empty and fearing that air would go into his vein, I asked the attending nurse to change it. She bluntly told me to do it myself. In that horrible theater of death, I was in pain and frustration and anger. Finally when she relented and came, my Father opened his eyes and murmured to her, “Why have you not gone home yet?” Here was a man on his deathbed but more concerned about the overworked nurse than his own state. I was stunned at his stoic self.

There I learnt that there is no limit to how concerned you can be for another human being and what the limit of inclusion is you can create.

My father died the next day. He was a man whose success was defined by his principles, his frugality, his universalism and his sense of inclusion.

Above all, he taught me that success is your ability to rise above your discomfort, whatever may be your current state. You can, if you want, raise your consciousness above your immediate surroundings. Success is not about building material comforts - the transistor that he never could buy or the house that he never owned. His success was about the legacy he left, the memetic continuity of his ideals that grew beyond the smallness of a ill-paid, unrecognized government servant’s world.

My father was a fervent believer in the British Raj. He sincerely doubted the capability of the post-independence Indian political parties to govern the country. To him, the lowering of the Union Jack was a sad event. My Mother was the exact opposite. When Subhash Bose quit the Indian National Congress and came to Dacca, my mother, then a schoolgirl, garlanded him. She learnt to spin khadi and joined an underground movement that trained her in using daggers and swords. Consequently, our household saw diversity in the political outlook of the two. On major issues concerning the world, the Old Man and the Old Lady had differing opinions.

In them, we learnt the power of disagreements, of dialogue and the essence of living with diversity in thinking.

Success is not about the ability to create a definitive dogmatic end state; it is about the unfolding of thought processes, of dialogue and continuum.

Two years back, at the age of eighty-two, Mother had a paralytic stroke and was lying in a government hospital in Bhubaneswar. I flew down from the US where I was serving my second stint, to see her. I spent two weeks with her in the hospital as she remained in a paralytic state. She was neither getting better nor moving on. Eventually I had to return to work. While leaving her behind, I kissed her face. In that paralytic state and a garbled voice, she said - “Why are you kissing me, go kiss the world.” Her river was nearing its journey, at the confluence of life and death, this woman who came to India as a refugee, raised by a widowed Mother, no more educated than high school, married to an anonymous government servant whose last salary was Rupees Three Hundred, robbed of her eyesight by fate and crowned by adversity was telling me to go and kiss the world!

Success to me is about Vision. It is the ability to rise above the immediacy of pain. It is about imagination. It is about sensitivity to small people. It is about building inclusion. It is about connectedness to a larger world existence. It is about personal tenacity. It is about giving back more to life than you take out of it. It is about creating extra-ordinary success with ordinary lives.

Thank you very much; I wish you good luck and God’s speed. Go! kiss the world.