Come! Let Us Join to Pray to Make 2016 A Happy New Year!

Today is Friday, January 1, 2016 according to the Common Era that is now almost global. I wish all a Happy and Prosperous new year 2016!

In my life time so far spanning six decades, our world has progressed much in many fields. But unfortunately, that progress has done little to a good majority of our fellow beings.

Our world is still a world of inhuman acts and chaos, mercifully not everywhere, all the time! As intelligent humans possessing a divinely piloted mind, we have many collective challenges ahead!

The year that just passed, the 2015, was not a pleasant one for millions of our brothers and sisters elsewhere. There have been so many incidences of human cruelty against fellow beings, whether that happened in the name of law enforcement or otherwise. The Syrian refugee crisis and the manner in which other nations responded to that crisis are all there for us to introspect. Then there have been natural calamities aggravated by human mismanagement such as the Chennai floods that happened just recently in 2015.

But on the positive side, I see great humanitarian leaders like Angela Merkel, the Chancellor of Unified Germany who has been reportedly adjudged as the contemporary world's second most powerful person and the most powerful lady. I consider the German people fortunate now to have Dr.Merkel as their national leader having all the desired qualities that a good leader should have- the 4C's representing competency, character, courage and compassion. While all the other world leaders showed varying degrees of arrogance or insensitivity towards the problems of the Syrian refugees due to their lack of courage and compassion, it was Dr.Merkel who stood out as a humanitarian champion for the cause of the refugees courageously facing challenges from within her own country. Nothing surprising then that the Time Magazine had chosen her as the Person of the Year (2015)!

Leaders like Dr.Merkel may be few in this world now. The number of good individuals also may be lesser as of now. But surely and definitely, in the coming generations, such people will definitely increase and this world would gradually change from bad to good!

And I am confident that the present day crisis of the world is a passing phase and our world is not going to be a hopeless disaster facing the ultimate Armageddon, as some pessimists keep believing.

Our collective wisdom will keep increasing as we move forward through the future generations. Our future generations will learn the advantages of being good, rather than being bad people. But the collective learning may not be anything very quick!

Ultimately good will prevail over bad. 

Do you feel an inclination to agree with me?

Come! Join me! Let us pray to make this year and all those coming years to bring joy and prosperity to all! 

There are Many Desirable Things for Us to Learn from Others!

Let me share with you three incidences which show how people progress in their attitudes. We know that some nations are much more developed than many others. Nations show overall progress when more and more of their individual citizens progress in mind and body. 

My own country, India has a rich tradition, culture and civilization. However, for various reasons, this richness is not evenly distributed among the people. India remains as a developing nation, rather than a developed nation. Unless the majority of its individual citizens from its massive population reach to some desirable levels of mind capacity, it can never hope to become a nation devoid of corruption, ugliness and chaos. And that is a great challenge to every Indian. It cannot happen miraculously overnight. It would take a few generations. But even for that future possibility, each and every citizen of India need to have desire to get rid of our negative qualities. We need to learn many things from others.

Unlike the past, many new generation Indians are getting much opportunities to go abroad for studies, jobs, etc now-a-days. More and more number of Indians are seeing the world beyond their own villages, towns and cities of India. 

While they get such opportunities, many of the Indians are getting opportunities for bench-marking themselves with the so-called westerners, the Americans and the Europeans of the present times. While many get jealous of the progress of the Westerners, quite a number of them also get an opportunity for introspecting. 

With the advent of the internet and the social media, some of the Indians have courageously taken up the task of sharing their own mistakes or errors in the hope that it gives some opportunity for more people to introspect for possible corrections of attitudes and outlooks.

Now coming to the episodes which I wanted to share. The first one is one told to me by one of my colleagues a few years ago.

His son became an outstanding IIT engineer and got employed by one large Silicon-valley company in the USA. Soon, the boy also got married to a girl of similar standing working in the same place. The young couple invited my colleague to visit USA. So he went to visit his son and daughter-in-law in the USA.

On a holiday, the young couple took their visiting dad to a nearby park. They sat their enjoying their ice-creams and chocolates. Unlike the Indian parks, this US park was spotlessly clean. There were dust bins placed at few locations for the visitors to put their wastes.

Indians as a matter of habit or culture are reluctant to observe civic discipline, in general. Throwing litter any where out side their own homes is practiced even by the so-called educated Indians without any shame or sense. For many, it gives a kind of pleasure to violate the rules. If the authorities take harsh steps they resent it. If they are liberal they violate it. 

It was nothing different for my colleague as well. He knew about the American culture and civic discipline in the park where he and his children visited. Yet, he did not bother to use the dust-bins to throw the chocolate wrappers. He slowly rolled them to a ball and quietly dropped the ball to the grass. He thought no one noticed and felt relieved. 

A few minutes passed. Then our Indian group in the American park observed an old white lady approaching them from quite a distance. The lady came straight to the place they were sitting. Quietly without telling anything she took the rolled chocolate wrapper, gave a momentary stare on the Indians, proceeded to place it in a dust bin and disappeared. 

While narrating this incident to me, my colleague- a senior technocrat in a renowned Indian organization-told me that he felt ashamed and naked before the old American lady. 

The other incident was told to me by an young businessman from Mumbai. It was the time when electronic products like laptops and cameras were too desired items in India. The Indian customs authorities used to charge heavy customs duties on these products brought to India by returning Indians from abroad. 

My young businessman friend went to the US for some purpose and was about to return. He went to a US shopping mall to purchase a laptop. He selected an expensive brand and quietly made a personal request to the American salesman. He requested him to prepare a bill showing a less expensive model with a lower price. The American could not understand why such a peculiar request from this Indian customer. So he asked him the reason for this odd request. My Indian friend has to explain a bit about the tax laws of India and the advantage he would get back in India by way of reduced customs duties if he had such a bill showing a lower price.

The American retorted spontaneously: " So, dude! You want to cheat your country?"

My rich Indian felt as if naked before this ordinary American sales boy! That is what he told me.

Way back in 1988, I was member of an Indian project team entrusted with the task of designing and executing a large manufacturing facility for my employer jointly with engineers from a large East German company. As per the memorandum of understandings (MoU) the Germans were to work in our Indian office for many months while some of us would  be in their German office if need so arose for some days.

The Germans worked with us  in our office away from their families for months together. We traveled to various vendors in India together for various purposes. My German counterpart was one Mr.Sommer, a mild spoken German engineer who toiled hard to communicate in English as they had only one interpreter for the whole group. 

Though we had occasional official parties, we Indian seldom invited our German friends to our homes during the off days. Perhaps I was one exception, because I took Mr Sommer to my home for dinner once. Towards the completion of the project during the end of 1989, the Berlin wall fell. I still remember the extreme happiness our East German friends had that day. We all had our last official dinner that night as our German friends were returning back to their homes in Unified Germany next day.

In the next month or so, a few of our Indian team members ( me excluded) were to visit their office in Germany for the some final formalities. The work was almost completed at that time and the Indian team had more leisure time than work time at Germany. The Germans showed their extra ordinary hospitality to the visiting Indian team not by hosting any official dinner, but by personally inviting each one of them the respective homes of those engineers who were now in Germany but had been in India with us for several months earlier.

The Indian team members felt very bad now, even while they enjoyed the personal care and hospitality of their German counterparts. They felt ashamed because they never thought of taking care of those German friends while they were in India. And now there was hardly any opportunity for the Indians to reciprocate and repay their obligations! 

My friends after returning to India, told me how the Germans humbled them. We felt too humbled by this act and perhaps we learnt a new lesson.

While you took time to read these, I hope you could realize what I wanted to convey.

Please share your experiences of this kind with others using the comment facility below.

Ruling or Serving : What do we Seek ?

Is there an innate desire in man to rule over others ? I often wonder about this. I do introspect myself on this- do I have this desire to rule over others ? The answer would be in the affirmative. In nature we find this tendency in the animal kingdom. In the lower forms of life, there is a natural leader or king or queen. Insects, animals, birds and fish fight each other to establish superiority of one among it in the group. In a beehive, two queens cannot remain. In a herd of elephants, there can be only one tusker and head of the herd.

We are much more than the animals in our intellectual endowments and naturally we are all natural leaders. We too want to be ruling over others and would do all things possible to make it a reality. Poverty or richness is of no consequence. We want to rule over others, and aspire for it and scheme over it to make it true.

We won't let any opportunity go, if possible. We want to be the kings. What will happen if all of us are kings ? Where would be the common citizens ? That we do not want to waste time to think on such useless thoughts. Our aim is to control others, whether in family, society, office, workplace, anywhere and everywhere, if possible.

We are not bothered to follow the loving advices of great leaders like Jesus Christ about our insatiable ambition of becoming the kings. He had instructed us politely and set an example by himself on this very issue. He said ministering means serving and not ruling. Oh! we do not understand the difference !

We understand rulers as grave looking, non-smiling and serious rough-n-tough people who find sadistic pleasure in making the life of others around them miserable. If we can not make others cry, what is the use of such power to rule? We admire and like to worship great rulers, kings, presidents, prime ministers and the those down the hierarchy who posses such powers to kill, destroy and create havoc for the less powered. We just cannot admire those weak, graciously smiling or pious people who care for all and are compassionate. For us they are cowards!

At the most we may try to imitate the Jesus attire of peace and love till we capture the power! Then, we come to our 'powerful' true attire!

We use our religions, even if it is taught by Jesus himself, for the purpose of gaining the self importance. If we are not the leader our self for the time being, we would like to be with the powerful groups!

We don't agree with others, even when our inner self finds points for complete agreement in others views, because, we are afraid of losing importance and our opportunity for self ascertainment and leadership. Had we been agreement, we could have done great things! But we just don't care!

If we cannot be leaders in the larger group, we try to make smaller groups and try to be kings there. In any case, we need followers, not comrades nor equal partners !

Look at our religions. If our leadership aspirations are at stake with one god, we prefer to make as many gods as we like, or make as many postulates about god as we like to make our inner ambition realized.

Our governments, business corporates, enterprises, governmental and non governmental organizations all would go crumbling if we do not have this inbuilt desire of ruling others in our minds. If that is the case we won't have the politicians, the top officials and the tycoons to lead us. They won't do the tricks and the leg pulling they keep doing to reach the top ruling positions to lead the others!

There could be varying degrees of satisfying our instinct of controlling and ruling others. Some might go to the extreme of killing and exterminating and torturing his subjects to fulfill his desires. Others might be polished to a lesser degree, yet fulfilling the desire of ruling.

My mind keep asking me, is this natural instinct of mine be nourished ? Or is there any other way ? My inner self, tells me yes.

But I am yet to find a compassionate and caring brother or sister or human who has conquered and eliminated the compulsion for acquiring leadership without ego.

[Reproduced from the Author's Blog at SiliconIndia ]

[View the linked list of all Blogs of the Author Here ]

Ivan the Fool and Me !

When I was a boy studying in Class-5 , for the first time ever we had a supplementary text book for Malayalam language study. It was an abridged translation of Leo Tolstoy's classical short story, titled ' Ivan the Fool' . As a boy I was a voracious reader of books in my mother tongue Malayalam. So this supplementary text book was read on the day it was purchased- well before the school opened.

I liked the story very much at that time. I was impressed by Ivan the fool and the manner in which he defeated the devil. More than that as a little boy I liked the morale of the story- of giving importance to working hard with your own hands on the farms rather than making gold and money by deceitful ways.

The details of the story became a forgotten thing over the years. But somehow while thinking about the manner in which the world and my country are moving where easy money making is the primary goal of all, I remembered about this story. I wanted to read it once again.

I was fortunate to google it out and read it full online once again in English.

[If you are interested just try this link to read the story online here: Ivan-the-Fool by Leo Tolstoy ]

The story is compelling for an introspection into my own life. In my childhood days, I had opportunity to get associated in actual farm works in our piece of land in our village. We had cows, goats, rabbits, poultry and honey bees in the many beehives placed here and there. There were plenty of fruits and variety of food stuffs which we used to grow ourselves.

But my parents thought that there is life much more pleasurable out there which could be enjoyed without working with own hands. Brain work was more lucrative. For brain work you have to learn and learn many things. Study hard - that was the advice from the elders at that time.

That I did. Studied and studied. Became an engineer. Got employed in the largest organisation employing engineers. And for all these years I was getting paid for brain work. My hands do not have the hard knots of the peasants.

But am I happy ? I do not know.

Yet I feel Ivan the fool was right. I strongly feel to go back to the farms and work to tender the green plants and the pets. The sweating there is better than the air conditioners. At least that is my thinking now. The sum total of experience gained over decades !

Sorry Ivan, I could not learn fully from your story in the beginning itself !