Back from School

Everyone of us would have a specific picture of life which remains as a snapshot of memory and if we happen to witness that again it instigates that wonderful memory, a wondeful thought process.One such favorite snapshot of life is a kindergarden kid walking with his or her mother back from school. A simple snapshot that had instigated powerful thoughts in me.

 

The school bell rings and children repeat the "thank you" prayer and leave their classrooms. There are those two anxious eyes outside the school gate looking eaglerly for its loved one. Once these eyes meets the object of love it lits up. The kid runs to the mother and those tiny little fingers holds the mothers fingers tight. A contact established which means a lot, it means love, it means security, it means care, it means responsibility, it means a guiding force and many more.

 

Walking along the pavement separated by a few centimeters I witness the most contrasting thought process in action. The thought process of the mother is down to earth, thinks of the house hold work, the guest she would have to receive that evening, the budgetting she would have to do that evening. While walking those few centimeters away is a host of thoughts in the kid which is full of fantasy. The most creative thoughts that does not think of any impossibilities. The thought process would be of sending the spaceship toy to the space and fight those dreadly aliens then go on the copter to save a million lives like superman, invent that transportation device which would take us anywhere within no time.

 

As they walk by the road side the kid tends to walk in a irregular path while the mother walks in a straight path. Whenever the kid tries to move in a different direction the link of the hands tries to pull the kid back to the straight line and maintains it within the boundaries of the path to the house. This is what happens in reality to, even in the real life only those thoughts of the kids are appreciated which are down to earth. The moment a thought out of the bounds of relaity is being rejected the kid is being directed to the circle of reality. The kid learns to think of impossibilities. We call it then the kid to have become matured. A quite contrasting thought where in a impossibility would have become a possibility otherwise.

 

If Wright brothers had thought about the impossibility of flying then we would not have airplanes today. So the best approach is to allow the kids to experiment their thought process and relaize the possibilities by themselves rather than imparting our learning process on them. We would then realize what was a impossibility has been transformed to be a possibility by the kid. Let the kid cross the boundaries of reality. The choice is between living in reality versus creating reality.

Dancing in Rain

I was quite inspired by the article written by Azim Premji http://www.azimpremjifoundation.org/downloads/Dancing_in_the_rain.pdf

A very thoughtful article. It talks about how children nowadays are seldom seen playing on the street and are under tremendous pressure of tuitions and studies. It is very true that we see children playing on the street. The little free time they get, they prefer to spend with video games and watch TV. Slowly it is becoming true that children do not know to play together any more. All our good old street games that built team work and thought the benefits of living in harmony are not there any more.

A couple of days back the news about 11 children running away from home was quite shocking. Luckily they were found in a different place and brought back to their parents. The reason was they were not able to handle the pressure of studying. Our education system has become too bad…that it demands a child to keep studying all the time and at the end of the whole process the most of the children are not in the stage of innovating the idea as they have not done proper education just by overdoing it. It becomes very monotonous and creates aversion in children. Children should be allowed to learn in a more practical approach with due importance given to games too. This way they will have healthy body to develop healthy brains.

One of the major things lacking in Indian system is good teachers. People enter teaching profession when there is no option left for them. This is because teaching as a profession in the society is not so attractive. Whereas in western countries teachers are considered to be nobles in the society. This perception needs to be changed. Government should help in encouraging people to come into the profession of teaching and also have programs to measure the effectiveness of education given to the children without introducing stress and pressure in their life.

In the present day scenario children loose their childhood into the pages of the text book. They don’t realize how beautiful their childhood is.

 

Petty things

We often don’t realize the significance of the petty things in life. What seems to be petty for us may be the most significant thing for some one else.

 

Five to Six years back one fine day one of my friend was complaining about the fact that he was not able to find the address of some one, he did not know where to search. Yet another friend said "Search in Google". All of us laughed. Thinking about it now, Google or any other search engine has advanced a lot and also the information gathering role of Internet is working so well that, it remains no more a joke but the first serious thing we would ever recommend to some one. What a sea of change technology has brought in such a short span of time.

 

People complain about confidentiality, but there is a positive side to the whole thing. 2 years back my room mate fell sick and we did a normal checkup in a local nursing home. It was late in the night when the test results indicated that his platelets count in the blood was very low and need to immediately give him blood platelets to prevent him from going unconscious. That is when we realized how hard it is to get a blood platelet. As the blood banks can’t store platelets for more than one day, many of them do not do the extraction. Whoever does it they do in a very limited number. It was late in the night we had tried all our contacts and could not find a place to get platelets immediately. I called up my friend and asked him to do a search in Google to find the list of places. Amazing we got a couple locations out of which MS Ramaiah hospital had blood platelets and was open 24 hours. We did immediately get the platelets and gave it to my friend. My friend recovered over the next 2 days.  I am not sure if the person who had put that information on the net would have realized that the one line of information could save some one’s life. Thanks to the technology that has the capability to get us the right information, if it was not for that I am not sure what could have happened. 

 

This incident made me realize the potential of this whole technology of the web and search engine. What was portrayed as one of the revolutions in technical world could do wonders in life of many people. Today people have a lot of information to share and only very few people write them as blogs. Many think I have all my friends near me and why I should blog in some web site. You may never know how valuable a small piece of information you put in could bring in a change in a person’s life.

 

Of course as my science teacher would say it is a double edged knife it could potentially be used destructively too. There is an element of destruction in everything in this world it depends on what it is used for.

 

The key is to be open to put down the information you like to share, how much ever petty it may be for you, it may be the most significant thing for the person at the other end of the spectrum.

 

"If an apple falling from a tree was a petty thing we could have never reached space today."

Love Actually

Last week in the reading club an interesting point had been brought out "Love is selfish". A thought which I had definitely agreed long time back. But this time it made me think a bit more.

 

"Selfish" is a nature of being concerned about one’s own welfare. Other than love of self, love involves yet another object or person other than self. So how can it be selfish? A further thought about love was a revelation.

 

What is Love?

 

Love has a lot of meanings. In all its form it is a selfless feeling expressed over another entity. Often Love is attached to an episode between a male and a female, which is an astute thought process induced by many movies. The first definition of love in the dictionary describes the affectionate maternal relationship. Then it goes ahead to describe other forms of love,  a feeling of warmth and tenderness between a couple, a sexual desire (lust), adoration of god, admiration of a sport, attachment to nature and so many. Love has so many forms. It is all around you. I get reminded of the first few lines of the song Love is all around from Wet Wet Wet,

 

I feel it in my fingers
I feel it in my toes
Love is all around me
And so the feeling grows
It’s written on the wind
It’s everywhere I go, oh yes it is

 

Whatever form it may appear, it brings and spreads happiness. It speaks about unselfish loyalty of a person towards another. A mother due to the love for her child feels so special about her child and wants her child to get everything the best in the world. This cannot be termed as selfish as there is no self involved here. Love is all around us and many a times it goes unnoticed. If you want to feel and see love evident then the best place to witness it would be an airport terminal. I was waiting for my friend at the Arrival terminal of the airport where I witnessed the real love expressed all around. You see people with lot of smiles, happiness and joy all around receiving their loved ones. Just a block away in the departure terminal people were sad departing from their loved ones, yet feeling happy for their well being. Both are the forms of the same feeling of love towards one another.

 

If love is so beautiful and omni present why is it being considered as selfish. Why does it bring sorrow to certain people in life? Of the various components of love, affection, admiration, infatuation, desire and so on. Desire is the one which causes sorrow. A desire creates expectation in a person. A person wants to possess the object he loves. This expectation creates a feeling of possessiveness which in turn destroys the object of love.

 

There has been many great saints and philosophers who had preached desire is cause of all worries they had never preached love is cause of all worries or neither they had said love is selfish. If love had been selfish then every one would have loved just themselves and not cared about others. A maternal love is limited to the kids, a social worker’s love is for the society he lives in, a patriots love is for his country, a saints love is for eternity, supreme love is for the entire living beings. Love ranges from one self to the universe…whatever form it is, it always wishes for the well being of the object loved for.

 

If there has been a quintessential selfless love everywhere then the world would be a perfect place like the one created by god for Adam and Eve. And history proves the fact that human beings are not capable of living in a perfect world. What makes life interesting for us is its imperfect nature 🙂

 

Now I realize love is not really selfish it is more loyal to the object loved for compared to the other this is what makes the object very special giving it a purpose for existence and there comes the imperfection for survival.

Faster than the speed of light

Science proves, light travels at a speed which is not matched by anything else in this universe. Here is my "metaphysical" thought 🙂

__________________________________________________________

 

There is something in human which travels faster then light…it is nothing but "human thought"… "If you can travel faster than light then you can travel to the past" is the principle of time machine. The thought of a human is a time machine which can travel to the past within no time and come back to the present.

 

Is the speed of thought a finite one…? It seems to be infinite…but on the second thought if it had been infinite then we would have the most perfect world to live in where there is no question that needs to be answered. Hence it is finite, yet to be measured. 

 

Unlike light a thought does not travel continuously… it can stay stagnant at a particular instance. However as light has luminosity, thought has its own strength. The strength of the thought determines the distance it can travel. At this point in time I get reminded of the famous philosophy "Think Big" , it prompts one to strengthen the thought process. Most strong thought process have given this world the most valuable information.

 

A "thought" has reached the moon, the planets, the universes and galaxies before any science could reach them. These are seen evident from most eminent writings of Vedas, Ramayana, Mahabharatha, if not for the thought how could some one written about space ships, other worlds … Sitting in my chair I am able to think about the Harappa culture their life style, the most favorite toy in my childhood, the movie  I had enjoyed the most, the last thing I had bought in a shop, the man who crossed my car in the morning and the content I am typing. All this in no time!!!

Happiness

"True happiness lies in seeing others happy"

 

Imagine a world of people around you always looking worried… you would not be happy. I just realized when my room mate was in a very disturbed mood not willing to talk to anyone. It made me feel not so good about the situation. Just thinking back some of the very good times I still have in my memory is when every one around me were filled with happiness. School and College life were generally very happy because there was hardly anything for anyone to worry about.

 

The magic of happiness is to spread happiness to others. Recently the refrigerator tray in my house broke. We needed a new glass piece to be fit into the frame. I went along with my mother looking for a glass shop where I can get it mended. At last we found one. We showed the piece to the worker in the shop. He took measurement of the glass and removed a large piece of glass from a pile and cut the glass to the required measurement. It perfectly fitted into the frame. He then took a special paper to make the other ends of the glass smoother. As he slid the paper along one of the sides a broken miniscule of glass scratched his finger. Blood started gushing out. He immediately looked for something around and found the celophane tape which he had removed from the broken tray. He rolled it around his fingers to stop the blood before I could stop him. I told him he should apply some medicine. He smiled and said it keeps happening.

 

He continued his craftsmanship of making the glass tray perfect. I walked out of the shop while he was doing it. I looked around and found one general store near by. I got 2 band-aids and came back to the shop. By this time he had finished his work. I handed over the 2 band-aids to him. His face filled with surprise and happiness. He immediately took one of the band-aids and wrapped it around his fingers and I told him to keep the other one for spare. I paid of the tray to the shop owner and was moving out of the shop. The work man came to and thanked me. I told him that he should take proper care of himself. He replied back with a smile "It keeps happening all the time. I go home tonight and eat something very nice..and have a good sleep, it will be alright" I know that the dinner awaiting for him is not a great one..but it is filled with love and affection of his family which heals all the pain of his work.

 

I hardly spent anything that evening, nor I have done something great… but I definitely made some one feel very happy. This feeling made me feel happy. Happiness is contagious it is easy to spread it around. Stay happy and make others around you happy.

Corruption

Corruption – Merriam Webster says it is an impairment of integrity, virtue or moral. It is a departure from the original what is pure or correct.

 

Every one would definitely agree to it. There are lot of articles and survey we see in paper about corruption. The most corrupted state. Often corruption is related to the government. One of my child hood lessons about corruption was thought to me by my friend’s father. He said corruption is nothing but not following "self-discipline". So immediately I exclaimed that all our politicians lack self discipline? He looked at me calmly with a smile and said

"why do you say the politicians are corrupt"

Because "They get a lot of bribe. People have to pay bribe for making the politicians to do what they are supposed to do as part of their job"

"You are right. People in most of the countries give bribe for doing wrong or unlawful things but here we would have to pay bribe for doing right things"

"Huh.. So how can we put an end to this act"

He smiled again, "Do you think only politicians are corrupt?"

"yes"

"You are wrong. I told lack of self-discipline leads to corruption. Lets say at your school there are papers given to you so that it can be used as rough sheets for exams by students, Now you are in need of some paper for your homework, do you think there is a possibility of taking a paper to your home"

"May be I would take it…as I am going to use it for rough work at my home too…"

"But it was intended to be used only in exams…"

"right…but what’s there with one paper.."

"This is the beginning of corruption. You take the paper and feel it is right…you do this because it is under your capability to control paper. What if it is some other more valuable thing tomorrow… you will be tempted to do the same and feel you have not done anything wrong. People getting bribe think the same. They feel it is not any harm. The basic thing both of you lack here is self-discipline. Corruption starts at the cost of self-discipline"

I had no answer…I thought he had the right point. Very often we do not realize that we do corruption at level and complain about others. It is just a matter of time when all people realize this and practice self-discipline. There would be no corruption.

 

Today’s news paper had a very great news taken by Intel to fire 250 employees who produced fake bills. It is a very welcome move by the company to enforce self-discipline. Although it is brutal but is definitely awakening thought.

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1237515.cms

 

The same has been the theme of the tamil movie "Anniyan" also. The movie is a super hit. Great…people do accept that lack of self-discipline is a root cause to evils… would be great if all of us could practice self-discipline.

 

Stress and Temper

Prologue: There are quite a few awakening thoughts that get discussed over a cup of coffee with your friends. This is a series of thoughts over a cup of coffee.

 

Sipping my cup of hot coffee today morning I told Jana and Sandhya "the most stressful job according to me is that of a bus conductor’s". Sandhya smiled acknowledging the thought while Jana took a while to think and then with his usual way said "It is a stress full job but I am not sure if it is the most stress full". He was right neither I was sure. But as far as my knowledge goes I pity these bus conductors.

 

This was not a new thought for the morning, but this had been in my mind since I was traveling to college in a local town bus. I used to see the conductor’s dealing with passengers. It was not at all a pleasant sight. He had to meet all kinds of people. People who get into the wrong bus, people who do not have proper change, school children who travel with bus passes but boarding the bus at different locations, adding to the crowd the vegetable vendors loading a huge gunny bag of vegetables and occupying more place where people could have stood without any problems. I always had a feeling that they try to be amiable and kind and once the number of people causing trouble to their routine crosses the tolerance level then no small mistake is forgiven. It receives its punishment using brutal words and high tone. I was worried that these people may get stressed out soon and may get high blood pressure easily. Walking to and fro on a crowded bus, dealing with people day in and day out… not an easy job to think of. Corporate people have stress management workshops but seldom do these people get such things.

 

Has the government ignored that these significant employees may have a social life and are part of the society. Wait a minute I am complaining about the government too. A government could hardly do anything in highly populated country like India. I found the root cause of the problem. It is the way children are brought up in India. A mistake a child does is corrected by scolding from its parents. This instigates a feeling in the child that any rule can be enforced only by shouting at people. I see this happening on the road every day, a cop gets hold of a vehicle jumping the signal but before the fine amount is paid there is a huge unnecessary argument which would not do any good to any of them. If it had been polite even the law breaker would realize that he had broken a law and pays the fine duly and most important of all does not repeat the mistake consciously. But alas! we are not brought up like that. We are brought up in such a way that we do things right only under fear of receiving a scolding and not for what its worth. The same reason applies for the behavior of the bus conductor too.

I had once seen a discussion program in TV where one of the person said that the moment a parent scolds a child or hits a child it denotes that the parent has lost the battle of explaining the right thing to the child.

 

Hope there is realization soon!

Trust and Fear

Where is there is trust there is no fear…
 
Some kind of a realization that had struck me this weekend. I had been to Stanley’s sister’s wedding in a remote Village near Tiruvannamalai. It was about 30Km from Tiruvannamalai, called Moongilthuraipattu. The village was lush and green and so beautiful. Every where I looked around there was a green carpet spread around lovely blue sky. We had hired a taxi to go there. The moment we reached the marriage hall we had breakfast ready to be served for us. I had called the Taxi driver also to join us for breakfast. The next moment he walked with me. I saw the taxi windows were left open. Something I had become very cautious about since some one had broken the quarter panel glass of my car in Bangalore. I told the driver that he should roll up all the windows before we leave the car.
 
He said "There is nothing to fear…it will be safe". He was definitely true. I just realized where I was. It was a place where people trusted each other and every one lived up to others trust. Why do I fear of trust when I am in Bangalore…it’s because some one have broken the trust I had. My neighbor locks his door because he does not trust people. Of course he could have trusted me I am not a dacoit or a thief. But still there could have been some instance in his life or his friends’ life where some one would have broken this powerful trust. Thus fear gets manifested.
 
Last week we had been talking about this in our reading club, in Canada people leave their doors open as there is no one to come in and steal things. There is no fear in the minds of people. Wish it had been like this.
 
On the hindsight I think about it. The whole notion of theft comes in where there are very visible inequalities in the financial status of the people. Probably Canada or the Village I have been to do not have visible in-equalities. Everyone knows that each one of them is hardworking and values it. In metropolitan cities the situation is quite different. For a moment I recollect the different persons I meet on a day to day life right from the milkman, vegetable vendor, garbage collector, flower seller, the restaurant owner, my colleague, my boss and the most popular actor or actress in Cinema…there are lot of visible inequalities.
 
I am not sure of a definite solution here…but if someone has to take of the fear from people, it would not work by making people trust each other but it should be making people live up to each others trust. A simple concept but applies right from you neighboring house to the neighboring country.
 
A society built on trust worthy individuals how beautiful a thought it is!!!

Innovation in children

Prologue: There are quite a few awakening thoughts that get discussed over a cup of coffee with your friends. This is a series of thoughts over a cup of coffee.

 

Today morning coffee table discussion was on children. "There is a child in everyone" Sandhya started. This had been exactly what I had been thinking for a long time. Now I see someone looking in the same point of view. I said "The child in everyone is what instigates the innovative and creative thinking process in one self". I recently have been reading "Ignited Minds" of Dr. Abdul Kalaam. He is a spectacular personality ever inspiring. He does a lot of talking to children across the nation. He quotes in his book that the speciality in the children is that they do not think of impossibilities. We adults are more worried about impossibilities that we fail to think of a possibility. A very profound statement.

Children in India are raised by the parents in a very controlled manner. They do not allow them to explore things and always put a block or a caution. Sandhya said that she never let that happen to her daughter. She had a point kids are always curious about the items they see and they throw them away once they fully know what it is capable of. They learn, they explore… once you pull off a thing a kid wants to explore they remain with curiosity and do not explore them any more. Many Indian parents are not able to get out of this thought process of controlling their kids for everything, is due to the way they had been brought up in their life. This leads to a situation where in they are not able to choose a career for themselves. They rely on what the parents tell them. What if a child inspires to be an artist or journalists…but the parents force them into engineering or medicine. Our nation had already lost a good artist and a excellent journalist.

I hope this situation might be slowly changing and the innovation in a child is rightly brought out without any obstacles.