Mentorship

Duryodhana and Arjuna go to Krishna at Dvaraka to ask for his and his army's help. Duryodhana arrives first and finds Krishna asleep. Duryodhana chooses a seat at Krishna's head and waits for him to awaken, while Arjuna sits and waits at Krishna's feet. When Krishna woke up, he saw Arjuna first and gave him the first right to make his request. Krishna tells Arjuna and Duryodhana that he would give the Narayani Sena to one side and himself as a non-combatant to the other. When given the choice of either Krishna's army or Krishna himself on their side, Arjuna chooses Krishna,. Arjuna asks Krishna to be his charioteer, who agrees.

Bhagavad Gita is the collection of dialogues between the Mentor (Sri Krishna) and the Seeker (Arjuna). It is a great guide that defines the relationship between the mentor and the seeker. It also defines the qualities of the mentor and the seeker. Lord Krishna is the ideal and perfect mentor one can aspire to have. Throughout the dialogues, Lord Krishna exemplified the power of persuasion, influence and inspiration.

Brick walls are there for a reason. They let us prove how badly we want things

The legendary investor Warren Buffett talked about his mentor and professor Benjamin Graham, “I knew Ben as my teacher, my employer and my friend. In each relationship — just as with all his other students, employees and friends — there was an open-ended, no-scores-kept generosity of ideas, time and spirit,” he says. “If clarity of thinking was required, there was no better place to go. And if encouragement was needed, Ben was there.” Ben Graham didn’t coax his thoughts to his seekers, instead used an open mind to invite discussions, debates and dialogues to mentor his seekers.

Mentoring is the process by which people help a protege to promote the protege’s personal and professional growth for organizational success. Mentoring is routinely seen as manifesting soft skills such as the classical virtues of kindness and generosity. 

Krishna saw the needs as well as the potential of his young friend and built a successful mentoring relationship. He was leader, manager, negotiator, manipulator, motivator, influencer, all rolled into one. As the account of not just the war but the entire Pandava saga shows, Krishna’s help would enable Arjuna to surmount obstacles and achieve success personally as well as professionally i.e in his duties as a warrior and a prince.

1. Stop Worrying: It is rightly said in Gita, “Whatever has happened, happened for the good. Whatever is happening is happening for the good. Whatever will happen, will also happen for the good”. We should stop unnecessary worrying and live life to the fullest by living in the present. 
2. Develop a Pragmatic Approach: We need to develop a balanced outlook towards events happening around us. We need to learn how to accept and respect other’s perspective even if we don’t agree with their perspective.
3. Change is Inevitable: It has been clearly mentioned that Change is the Law of The Nature! Nothing in this universe is permanent other than change so we shouldn’t be reluctant to the changes in our lives. If you want to be successful be more open to change, adapt to new circumstances, be innovative and look forward to explore different opportunities. 
4. Be More Acceptable and Forgive Easily: You never know what life will throw at you. If it throws lemons at you, make lemonade. In short, make utmost out of the situation whatever may the situation be. Acceptance and tolerance helps us to overcome the hardships of life with poise and calmness. You should forgive others for your own good as that will help you to get over with resentment and animosity. These two values help you to build stronger relations like Pandava brothers. 
5. Be Positive: Learn to control the flow of thoughts in your mind through meditation. Meditation is the source of self-enlightenment and helps you to keep negative thoughts away from your mind and be positive towards life. 
6. Don’t Work for Fruits: ‘Karm karo, phal ki chinta mat karo’ is the sagest message given in the Bhagwad Gita. In today’s world we work either for money, a car, a better house or for a secure future. We are so result driven that if we don’t achieve that result, we get disheartened and feel dejected.
7. Stay Calm and Compose: When you know how to stay calm and compose during hardships half the battle is already won! A calm and compose mind helps you to react in a balanced way during life crises. 
8. Give Back to the World: These days people believe in only taking from others or the universe. They don’t think about being empathetic towards others or the universe. Gita teaches us to be selfless and work towards the benefit of all.
9. Don’t Be Afraid: “You came empty handed, and you will leave empty handed. What is yours today belonged to someone else yesterday, and will belong to someone else tomorrow.” When nothing belongs to you and your soul is neither born nor does it die then why you should be afraid of anything or any consequences. You should live your life in present by being fearless and worriless.

Jonathan Livingston Seagull

Practice makes perfect. But are we machines that we are striving for perfection? Shouldn't it be practice makes better. The more we practice, the better we get.

Good morning fellow toastmasters. Today I want to share the story of Jonathan Livingston, a seagull. Seagulls are not known for their flying. but Jonathan wanted to fly. 

He wanted to push the boundaries of what flying meant. So he practiced day and night. The first thought in this head when he woke up was to find way to fly better and fly faster. He spent his days just doing that. This obsession with flying made it difficult for him to fit in with his flock. Where his parents and siblings were content in finding food, Jonathan loved flying for its own sake. This attitude of his made him a suspect, his parents pressured him to conform to society.

This lack of support and after a lot of failures Jonathan decided to quit and live the life of an ordinary seagull. At this point he had a vision, an epiphany: if he few on his wing tips he could fly faster. Jonathan was able to attain a speed of over 200 miles per hour. Jonathan is overjoyed, he returns to his flock, excited and eager. He wants to share his knowledge with his flock, but to his dismay, the flock kicked him out. Now he was an outcast shunned by this community.

Jonathan thought, by learning to fly, seagulls could lift themselves out of ignorance, and find themselves as creatures of excellence and intelligence and skill. If we could learn to fly, we could be free! What he had hoped for his flock, he gained for himself, and he was not sorry for what he had lost. Boredom, fear and anger are the reasons that a person's life is short and with those gone he can live a long infinite life.

One day a pair of gulls came to take him to another realm where he could be with his own kind. So, this is heaven, he thought. Heaven was just another plane of existence. A place where he was understood. He could continue to grow and learn. But this place seemed empty. "Where is everybody?" Jonathan, the place where you are at only one-in-a-million make it here. Countless of lives have gone through before we even got the first idea that is there more to life then eating, or flighting or sleeping. Slowly we find the purpose of life, the life that leads to perfection. We choose our next world through what we have learned in this one. This pursuit and then attainment of perfection is what heaven is.

So, is there no place called heaven? Heaven is not a place nor is it time. Heaven is being perfect. Perfection doesn't have limits. A person who scorns perfection for the sake of life goes nowhere. Those who put aside life for the sake of perfection go everywhere. The trick is to stop seeing oneself trapped inside a limited body. The trick is to know that our mind is limitless, and it can go everywhere at once across space and time. Fear of learning is what holds us back from heaven.

Finally I would like to share a quote from the book "Jonathan Livingston Seagull, a story" by Richard Bach - “The simplest questions are the most profound. Where were you born? Where is your home? Where are you going? What are you doing? Think about these once in a while and watch your answers change.”

Jonathan Livingston Seagull : Richard Bach : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

When bad things happen to good people

 Why do bad things happen to good people?

  There is an Iranian folk proverb “If you see a blind man, kick him; why should you be kinder than God?” 

"More sincere payers are said in hospitals then in temples."

As I read this line over and over again in the hall of the hospital waiting for my father to win the fight against Covid, one thing kept going through my mind “why do bad things happen to good people”?

It reminded me of this book that I had read many a moon ago by Rabbi Harold Kushner who asked the very same question after his teenage son died of a rare disease. He a man of God to have lost his child to an incurable and one in million diseases, devastated him. 

He asked himself the meaning of GOD. If god existed, if he was minimally fair, let alone loving and forgiving, how could he do this to me?

Kushner in his book presents God not as an omnipotent dispenser of favors or punishments but as a deity who has created a universe over which he has limited power.

My speech today is not a religious one nor is it philosophical, I just want to share some thoughts with you, that has helped me make sense of the world we live in.

Everything in life happens for a purpose

A few weeks back, me and couple of my friends were driving down to Pokhara and along the journey we started talking about Karma. We all carry our own Karma be it good or bad and there is a great big register where everything is being recorded.

Really? So, what about misfortunes that befall to those whom we consider good. So should their suffering be justified as some settlement of past Karma?

It was 1996, my uncle who had just turned 30 passed away. I was 15 at the time. As the rituals started, I was asked to perform the last rights. His 4-year-old daughter kept looking for her father after she didn’t see him for a few days. What do I tell her?

The elders in the family, the visiting relatives all talked about some big plan of god. A plan that we cannot and should not question.

Sometimes there is no reason.

A man snaps, picks up a gun, runs out on the street and starts shooting randomly. Mr. Hari who leaves his house at exactly 8:30 am suddenly happened to be running late but Mr. Shyam who never leaves his house before 9 am had a meeting today and left early at 8:30. My Shyam got shot and Mr Hari was saved. I can understand the man snapping but what I cannot understand is the logic of who dies and who gets to live.

Why do we have to insist on everything being reasonable? Why cannot the universe have a few rough edges? Shouldn’t these random acts angers and saddens God as much as it angers and saddens us.

There is no exception for nice people.

A friend of mine gets into an accident, his car is completely totaled but he walks away with barely a scratch. Later he tells me, “Thank god, he saved me. God must be looking out for me” I am thinking “really” you? God looking out for you? Is god that blind?

Soldiers in war do not talk about whether they deserve to die or not or the person across their gun is a good person or not. They only talk about the bullet with their name on it or their number coming up.

God can't do everything, but he can do some important things

If God didn't cause our problems and can't fix them, why pray? Two reasons: The prayers of others can make us aware that we are not facing our problems alone. Payer, when it is offered in the right way, redeems people from isolation. If assures them that they need not feel alone and abandoned. And God can give us the strength of character that we need to handle our misfortunes if we are willing to accept it. 

Like every one of us at one time or another have faced a scary situation, prayed for help, and found out that you were a lot stronger, and a lot better able to handle it, than you ever would have thought you were. In your desperation, you opened your heart in prayer and what happened you didn't get a miracle to abort a tragedy but you discovered people around and God beside you and strength within you to help you survive the tragedy. I offer that as an example for prayer being answered.

forlorn words

Wow from writing every month I have come down to writing one every year. I haven't written for so long that i don't even know how to write anymore.

The things in the past were so easy, a single life, a single person, i could do what i want, i could eat whatever I wanted to. Now i have a family - wife, kids. life has taken a turn for the better.

I sit here thinking what I can write and nothing comes to mind. My mind is blank....very blank

Moving on

here I am again.

something we are always running after - love. when we get it we are the most happy people on this earth and when we loose it we are the saddest. why?

why love is one emotion we seem to have no control over. how we feel before, during or after love. there is no explanation.

when we have it we feel no one can understand how we feel and when we loose it we still think no one can understand it. yet all of us go through the same feelings. if i got a room full of people and asked each one of them how they felt when in love and when they lost it they would have the same stories to tell. yet we want to believe that our situation is unique. we want to feel we are an individual in this crowded world.

one thing i have found common on all people who lost love is the need for a closure. if only he would love someone else, if only he would through away all my gifts to him, if only i can love someone else, if only.....I will have that closure. yet it never comes. we spend minutes, days, years waiting for that closure to come.

if only.....

loosing love is loosing a part of the soul. i sympathize with anyone and everyone who has lost it. but i have no love lost for people looking for that closure. cause closure comes from within not from someone else...you fell in love with that person and now it's ur responsibility to fall out of love too.

a girl i know waited for 3 years looking for the closure. one kiss she had asked of him. that one kiss. she hated him, she wanted to erase every memory of him but still waited for the closure.

someone once told me to marry the girl who loved me the most since it's not who I love but who loves me. that way i will have love in my life always. what about the girl. wouldn't she want the same love. how long do you think she can hold on to that love if she doesn't get it back in return.

it's wonderful that you can make someone feel loved but it has no meaning unless the person makes u feel loved to.

over the years i have heard so many reasons for people moving on. the one that gets me is when someone wants to leave cause they think they are not good enough for the person they love. come one people get a spine. if a girl loved you is cause of who you are. if you were any better or worse she wouldn't be in love with you. and who are you to judge if you are good enough for her. did you ask her, did she tell you that you are not good enough. you are going to have differences that that is what makes the relationship worth it.

i would rather be stranded in an island with a doctor than with a computer geek. i am one and what good am i in a deserted island.

having said that i don't want someone who is different either.

but coming back to moving on - stop looking for closure, stop looking for excuses. when you didn't ask why he loved me, stop asking why he stopped loving me. he did and that should be good enough. move on. find someone who can make you feel loved and who you can love.

Yes I am There

Where loneliness pinches
Where companions seem distant
Where longing belongs
With hope still constant

Scared and shrinking
My heart I see
Ever wondering
Who will I be

A beacon of hope
A story untold
A friend for life
Or lonely and quiet

Why do I look for joy around
When I know peace lies within
Am I right or am I wrong
To think and believe that I am strong

Sharing and caring
Forgiving and forgetting
Loving and smiling
Still shining

A shoulder to cry
To sense I belong
A challenge to crack
Is all I ask

A friend who will hug
A conversation forthcoming
A smile ready to embrace
Keeps me going

A kid in me beams and says
Everyday is a new beginning
Hold your head high and march along
The sun will shine today and carry you far

All I do is run along
Hoping against hope to work it all
Painting a picture of endless possibilities
Of joy and dreams and undying trust

--Anonymous (means that i know but will not tell)

Ramblings of an insane man

as easy as it used to come, these days writing has just become that much more difficult. when the mind is clear and the destination clear you can think and you can do anything. anything else and the most natural of things become the most difficult one.

life has not been the same for a while. with every passing day things change for better or worse.

10 mintues and life happened

This is a different kind of post from the onces that i have been writing in the past for a couple of reasons. one it comes after a year of my last post and second it is not abt a situation it's abt a part of my life and as it happened.

of all the strange things in life i think the most strangest relationship is friendship. there is no guarantee how it will start and where it will lead to. i remember my very first best friend became my friend so that i would not snitch on him after he beat the crap out of me in 5th grade. and now though i can beat the crap out of him (justice from god) the friendship has survived 2 continents, 3 years of no contact. but we are not here to talk about that friendship. we are here for something different. a very different kind of friendship that started while waiting for a bus in high school.

every morning started with the same anticipation of meeting her at the stop and spending those precious few minutes talking to her. the strange thing was we never talked about anything in particular. just random conversations. there was no attachment either. just random conversations. and when we got on the bus, we went our own way. 10 minutes and nothing more.

that is what is strange about friendship. you don't need nothing to start it and nothing to keep it going. 10 years on we have become very good friends and it is still those very random converstations. whenever i talk to her, it is just magic. i remember the final days of high school, i met her outside the school, she was upset and when she saw me she started crying. that is the kind of friendship we shared in those 10 minutes. funny thing, we never met outside of the bus stop. the evenings on the way back from school. those 5 minute walks were magical. we lived in the same neighborhood. and yet we never met outside of the bus stop. 3 years later she moved to states for her higher education and before she left i met her once.

we never write to each other, we never chat and we hardly talk to each other but the relationship is special.

friendship is magical. the other day i was talking to her and she told me how during those high school days her friends kept telling her , i had something for her. that i was in love with her. crazy huh. i was having my own share of hormonal issues but trust me she was not part of it. she was just a special person at the bus stop that i looked forward to talking to everyday. the day she would not come would end up being the longest day. but it was not for being in love with her. it was for she made life so normal. talking to her made me think nothing mattered. things were so ordinary. we were not talking abt failed relationships, crushes or any of those high school drama. we were talking abt the weather, as if that is the only thing that mattered.

life would be wonderful and everything would take care of itself in those 10 minutes. it was one friendship that just happened. to till date i don't know much abt her and she doesn't know anything abt me. but when we talk the weather is wonderful and like takes care of itself for that 10 minutes.

Trust

Seriously, this is crazy. I am not being able to write anything that I want. This has never happened before. I always have something to talk and say about.

Trust is really important and any moron will tell you that and all of them say so too. But I was talking to this person on the phone the other day and she made a strange point which got me thinking. What does trust mean and how much are we willing to bet on it. I have said this before, in life all I want from my girl is that I can trust her and have a five minute conversation with her. And I never really understood why I thought that until yesterday. If you can trust someone, you automatically close your mind from all possibility of deceit and that means one less person to worry about in your life. And if you have to worry about trusting the person you are spending your life with, that is not a pretty thing. Believe me it is not.

You are walking down a street and you stop to ask for directions. What happens? Somebody gives you one. If you reach your destination you forget about the person but if you do not make it you start cursing the person. You tell ten of your other friends what a jerk that person was. You don’t forget the person for a long time. See how easy it is to just trust someone and not worry about it then not trust someone and then think about it for the rest of your life. Relationships are like these two people giving directions to the destination of your life. It is so very important to be able to trust the person so that we can listen to them.

Whenever we make contact with a new person, we start with some kind of trust. Now it’s up to the two people involved either to confirm the trust or to break it. But it’s all in our hands to do it. Life is difficult and people around us can either make it easier or difficult for us. But let me take a minute and say something here. To save the trust one person, you should be careful not to break the trust of someone else. Recently someone did that to me and it was not pretty. Life is full of surprises and you don’t want to loose one friend to make another one. Each one in your life are special and they should remain the same. Don’t ever compromise the trust of one friend to gain the trust of the other. It is not worth it. No one likes it. You won’t like it either if that happens to you.

Well I so wanted to tell this story that I lost the chain of my thought.

But this summer has been simply amazing. I met so many people. Goodbyes are always so difficult.

Oh yeah I got it. Trust right. It’s so random. I met this random girl, really random, out of the blue and we started talking, within an hour we were talking about our life, about my life, about her life. I looked into her eyes and all I wanted to do was trust her. It was so easy. I just wish it would/could mean more ………

It’s so easy to get caught up with major things in life that we forget that there are other things that matter. Trying to plan for a life time they forget to plan for the moment. Someone once told me, “Smile when you answer the phone, the person across can hear your smile.” And I believe that.

People get caught up in their career, in their relationships, in so many things that they stop paying attention to smaller things. I have an angel I talk to, she is 5 years old and whenever I call her up, she brightens up my day. Why is that, cause she is innocent. So innocent that I know whatever I tell her, she is not going to be biased. I am tired of biased opinion from people. I talk to a friend and he will tell me things that I want to hear cause he is my friend. But this angel, she tells me what she things, no strings attached. Aren’t we just complicating our lives with all the things that we do. With more people that become part of our life, the more complicated it becomes, and then it is no longer about me and my life, it’s about so many other things.

Isn’t it simple when it’s just about me. I mind sound obnoxious but look at the life of a 2 year old. He only cares about himself, it’s always about him, if he is hungry, he will cry, if he is lonely he will cry, if he wants to play he will cry. He doesn’t care how much difficult it is for you or me, for him it’s simple, “I am uncomfortable here, do something to make me happy”. There you go, no strings attached.

I want people around me I can trust and who in turn can trust me. Oh yeah that reminds me about this conversation I had with a friend about trust and friendship. According to her she would never ever talk to a person.

The Velvet Lounge

Great works of art are synchronized and complete. Look at a piece of painting, if it is great it will be complete. Synchronized with itself and with the surrounding.

I m sitting here at the velvet lounge, chicago, home of jazz, listening to music. Some of the best thing ever. What makes it truely amazing is the setting and the music. It's insane. So full of life so complete. Everything makes sense. Everything fits together. The people, the music, the surrounding and the friends. And that my friend is music. That my friend is art. Truely great art, if your soul can associate with it. If the thing completes your soul that is truely a great art and the greatest form of life.

Eye for detail and the passion for perfection. That's what seperates the mediocre from the great. Art and music is filled with madness. Madness of self, madness of thought. To see pattern in chaos, to see life in death, to see design in free space.

When the forces of nature combines with mind, soul and body what results is beautiful. What results is a work of art.

Sometimes a life time is not enough

A restaurant, five of us, three of them I had just met, two hours and I know more about them than I do about most of the people I have known for a life time. The fourth person I had known for ages but still he surpised me with a few things about him which I had not known before. I would like to dedicate this blog to one special person from that group for it was her inspiration that I am writing this blog.

Isn't that the story of life. People walk in and walk out of it but some linger on like a puff of smoke then disappear and some stay on forever. And everyone of those relationships are important, have meaning in your life for their own special reasons. But what caught my fancy was how well do we know all those people that we claim to know. Converstation is a strange thing. As well as you can use it to convey yourself, you can use it to hide yourself too. You read in paper of crimes being committed by people who were thought to be least likely to have done it by the people close to them. That says a lot. No matter how well people claim to know us, there will always be some part of us which is private. We don't share it, we don't let people see it.

Friendship is a strange thing. Family we are born into, friends are of our own choice. Sometimes they are formed at the first meeting, sometimes they take a life time and somethings a strange happening or a awkward situation. I have never been able to fathom why. There are two most common traits I have seen. One there is something common to base the friendship on and second there is something that the other person has that I need. You might be aware of both or you might not be but generally there is always things that you talk about that are common punctuated by exchange. Of love, effection, things, thoughts, knowledge or a million other things. But there is always a give and take going on and that keeps our interest in the other person intact. If the other person could not give us anything we loose interest in that person and that's the start of a failed friendship.

Friendship is like love, when you find the right one, it can last a life time.

Everyone has a Special Story

For over two months I have been wondering what to write. Things happened, ideas came and went but nothing triggered my interest to write. You know the feeling when you are just not yourself and tired of living multiple lives. The life that I lead here is different from the one that I lead on day to day. This is the place to get away from the monotonous daily routine. Today is new year and I wanted to share something special with friends and welwishers. I just wanted to write something special. Special enough that when I read them two years, ten years, twenty years down the line they still are special. So I thought I will write about life. Over the months that I have been writing, I also have had the pleasure of reading a lot of blogs.

And you know what I found in these blogs. Stories. Yeah Stories. Special Stories, Lovely Stories, Everyday Stories. Stories written as stories, as essays, as movies, as poems, as scripts and as pictures. No matter how they were conveyed there was something in all of them. There was something about all these stories. They were special. They made me feel special. They made me feel that I belong. I was part of these peoples lives and it was special.

Isn’t that what we all want to be? Special. Be loved and love back. We are looking for people in our lives that make us feel special we all have our own definition of what special means but we are all looking for the things that make us feel special. Some feel special just being there by that special someone in a coffee shop and some feel special by the headcount of people who attended their birthday party. But the idea is to feel special.

Every life has a story behind it. Stories of love, Stories of life, Stories of affection, Stories of hate, Stories of anger. Some stories live on for generations and some die with the people. But every story is special in it's right. Stories inspire us, Stories move us, they despise us, they make us happy, and they make us sad. Stories change with life. New life new stories but the same effect. Everyone of us are speical and our stories still more special. Use it wisely for they define who we are and what our destiny is. Every story starts with a journey and ends with destiny.

Happy New Year 2006

Love & Life

My Sister just gave birth to a baby boy. So I thought I would take this opportunity and talk about life. Life as it happens. I have written a lot about both love & life but never touched this aspect of it ever. Simple reason I am a guy. What do I know about it? Not much. Anywz here are a few simple thoughts about it.

There are two kinds of pain that has been discribed as the most unbrearable. One is some kind of illness I forgot the name of and second one is delivering a baby. A birth of a new life. Amazing. One pain no one wants to go thorugh even once. And the other you would want to go over and over.

One place you will see unconditional love. Love at it's purest form is right there. The nine month that a mother spends with her baby inside her body. It is her life, her soul. A birth of a new life.

In a relationship it's always about me and us: my life, my happiness, my wish, our life, our happiness. But throw a baby in the mix and everything changes. It's no longer me or us. It's always the baby. We move on to the higher life form.

The eyes that always saw dreams for itself, suddenly sees dreams for it's child. The hand that always extended to protect itself extends to protect that tiny life form. Decades of love for oneself becomes so insignificant for the love of a few years.