Reaching There

Oneness and Interdependence T he culture of a society comes from its people. My actions are the driving factor in the rise or fall of the society I live in. It is as simple as that.  So when, Yongtang, our driver in Leh said, "Film stars are not our heroes. The  jawans  on the border are our heroes", it gave me an insight into the culture of Ladakh. Ladakh is both a beauty and a beast. It has some of the most divine places lying within treacherous Himalayan mountain passes and arid lands. It is a region so cutoff from the mainland India that it is sometimes difficult to imagine that it is India too. Yet, when I look at the people I see a connection hidden to my city boy's naked eyes. A couple friends and I decided to go on a trip to Ladakh in July this year. Apart from some bouts of altitude sickness the trip was a beautiful eye-opener. It introduced me to the land of "Juley". Before the trip I did my bit of research on what...

The best way to start anew is to start simple yet big! Simplicity is attractive in any form; whether it is the simplest form of an idea, design or even a human being. It carries with it the power to affect thousands when complexity restricts itself just to a handful. There are numerous examples around us where a simple idea became a big time hit! Whether it was Apple's iPod, Google's home page or Indian " jugaads ". Ideas like Mahatma Gandhi's non-violent movement, Nelson Mandela's efforts on reconciliation (forgiveness) or more recently Juan Mann's free hugs campaign were simple yet powerful enough to carry their effect through the human biases. The inherent infectious nature of these real simple ideas leaves us happily vulnerable to unknown outcomes that always follow them. As I welcomed 2011 into my life I was asked by someone whether I had any new year resolutions. A confession here, I am not a resolution kinda guy. But that set aside I thought why ...

The  ego  gropes in darkness, while the Self lives in  light   Sometime back I wrote a post about my writer's block . I just couldn't create a new piece of writing. Although there were thousands of thoughts jumping inside my mind but I was unable to latch onto one. This inability leads to frustration which made the process even more difficult. Anybody would tell this period of inactivity is unavoidable. And my mind has been under the influence of this atrocity for over a month now. The coupling of helplessness and uncertainty leads to stagnation of not only intellectual growth but the emotions took a beating as well. In a writer's life these periods are as common & unpredictable as the seasons in a year! The last post was about the symptoms and after effects of this disease. In this post I would walk through the cure for this. I must admit the inspiration behind this post came from my father. On reading my previous post he said something that st...

A week ago I was on a train from New Delhi to Kanpur. As the train whizzed along the outskirts of Delhi it momentarily halted near a wasteland. Needless to say it was full of garbage, covered with wild bushes with a small murky water body in the center. Obviously it was a dumping ground for all the waste human beings can generate. Something I wouldn't have given a second look had it not been for what I heard next. "Itni achchi jagah main itna saara kooda, (Such a beautiful place but so much waste covering it)" remarked a child, staring out of the window with curious eyes. Of course his parents didn't pay any heed to this. But this simple observation stuck with me for sometime. It made me take a second look at the land. Now I noticed it was a green patch of land with some wild plants and a few lotuses floating in the water. Surrounded by a lot of half-constructed houses this land may have been a small playground. I could even make out a few wild flowers that had sprun...

I was wondering how unusual a relationship I have with God. A small devout petition to the Almighty and I expect my problems to be solved and my desires to be fulfilled. I blame Him for the problems but still reach out to Him for fixing them. Sometimes I just treat Him as an ombudsman whom I expect to be ever ready to hear me out. I expect Him to carry me through the difficult times yet I forget Him once I have entered the land of happiness. Ain't that the strangest form of expectation in a relationship? I expect Him to protect me in times of sorrow and guide me through the stormy sea of despair. When He does bail me out through ordinary or extraordinary circumstances I sometimes do hail Him as the savior but more often than not I "judge" His actions based on what the result was for me. Everybody trusts His fairness. Yet the "fairness" of His judgement is constantly evaluated based on the outcome. Ever wondered how simple God is? I pray to Him with great exp...

There are some movies you enjoy and a few you admire. Peepli Live definitely falls into the latter category. The admiration comes partly from the entertainment portion and partly from the things you can draw out from the movie. The movie, in general, is perhaps the most expressive form of art that directly affect the human consciousness. The images, whether moving or stationary, play a very important role for the human society as well. This form of art carries with it two contradictory forms; openness and mysteriousness at the same time. The qualities were aptly described in another good movie, The Brothers Bloom. In it one of the characters describes photograph as a secret of a secret; the more it tells you the less you know. Good movies, or photographs or books take you to a certain place and leave you there to make your judgement whether about a character or a situation. They are not trying to tunnel your thought process but just providing with certain additives which would help you...

Source of Inspirations for this blog post. -Peter Bregman's article on Harvard Business Review -Dead Poet's Society -Mark Ruffalo If we look back at our life so far we would always pull up a list of things we should have done. This list of should haves' and could haves' has always bothered us. But do we have to carry this burden continuously? The answer is of course, yes! This is burden is ours' and ours' alone. Whew! That's a lot!    This brings me to my next inspiration. It is a movie called Dead Poet's Society. In it Mr. Keatings (played by Robin Williams) talks about getting a chance to write a verse of our own in the book of universe. As Pushkar Bajpai I am being given a chance to write something new every day. Although some of it may have already been written by others or others' words have inspired me. But every word I write down I am aspiring myself to elevate to the next level. This aspiration inspires me and fills within me an ener...

Am I growing? If I am, what is the parameter of my growth? Is it the right parameter to measure my growth? These are the questions that bugs me often these days. I try to ignore these questions. But they keep stirring in my mind as small storms which don't cause much disruption but gives a feeling of restlessness. I had a meeting  with HR department a couple of days back. The objective was to listen to employees' concerns on various matters. In a room full of twenty employees the majority of questions were about finances, promotions and hikes. All relevant questions but it left me a bit dumbfounded. Is this all to it, are we living the life with a sole aim of planning the finances? Is this the only way we measure ourselves, with the money we take home at the end of each month? So as long as my paycheck increases every year I am growing? I hope it is not the parameter of my personal success. I hope I can find and experience something beyond the bills in my hand. So what is a b...

I recently watched two interesting talks on www.TED.com . It has an eclectic collection of talks by speakers all around the globe. The two speakers that got me thinking were Stephen Wolfram and George Whitesides . The former, a American chemist, talked about "Towards the Science of Simplicity. While the later, a mathematician, physicist & the developer of Mathematics, spoke on "Computing A Theory of Everything". The talks were interesting from two aspects. One, both the speakers are trying to bare down a phenomenon or a system to its' basics Dr. Whitesides is moving towards simplifying things as he quoted Antoine de Saint-Exupery as " A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away. " He is working on creating a "lab" which is cheap and would be useful in quick diagnosis. While Dr. Wolfram is using mathematical computation to develop a computation engine for inf...