All the random thoughts

On a sunless day when I was on the street, walking alone, dragging my feet; with nothing to look forward to, no one to meet, that I heard this voice, gentle and sweet. Amidst the clatter of plates and amidst the chatter of mates, It was a matter of fate, that I could hear more than just prate. I looked around for the source of playfulness among the chores; in a place that was nothing but coarse, the sweetness was quite off course. There it was, the lovely face, less of beauty more of grace, As she moved around the place, the ambience changed to suit her ways. No doubt, she was God’s dear one; His way of saying, ’I’m here son, moving along with this nature woman and not, as you think, beyond the Sun’. I shook my head and looked again, she was ever so elegant and yet so plain. Being earthly there is so much to gain,  that vanity seems like all suffering and pain. It was late in the evening, half past seven I resumed my walk, bright and liven. To sinful m...

These are the two most important things in human life. We all know that each one of us has a reservoir of time meant for ourselves and that the reservoir levels are constantly depleting. Believers in destiny would say that no matter what modern medicine can achieve, one can never refill the reservoir. Near close encounters with death mean nothing because they are never really close if your reservoir is not empty - they'd say. Then there is the money. The one thing that drives human behaviour in the modern society more than anything else. We spend our time for the money, we accumulate it, we measure it, we indulge in mathematics so we can grow our reservoir of money. Our entire being is defined in terms of our tendency to monitor the reservoir of money or otherwise. Someone becomes a Sanyasi because he doesn't want to monitor that reservoir any more. Someone else becomes a super success because they just cannot stop monitoring that reservoir. We have banks and other institutions...

It was The Night, a night of Dreams; of dancing trees, of running Streams. The haunting melody of nature’s song, as it breezed past the flora, or took it along - Oh, Nature ! What is your nature? Artistic? But you are the only artist ! This is a Silent, almost reflective night, a feeling of oneness, of spiritual delight. Then there is this soft, cool zephyr, raging a fire, of passionate desire - Oh, Nature ! What is your nature? Paradoxical ? or is it my innocence? It's every where. Sometimes one needs to make conscious effort to see it and some other times, it is just in your face. I am talking about the Paradox ! Great confusion followed by complete clarity. Worrisome anxiousness followed by complete peace. 'Followed by'? May be not. They just are sitting next to each other and it is really me who is choosing one over the other. In computer terms, the RAM is being loaded with one or the other from the hard disk. If RAM is the active brain then what is the hard disk? More...

I am running out of ideas. May be I am not looking around enough or it is just that the volume of work is finally catching up with the amount of time. Whatever the reason, I have decided to dig deep and disinter something. So here is one I wrote way back when I was still a raw young man (As opposed to raw middle aged man now !) And now I am dead It has been a long time since I had seen the world outside, I am a man - sick, old and frail; about to leave behind a final trail. I have learnt a lot in the past few days, came to know my own people in different ways. It’s strange to know the world’s true hue, just when you are ready to bid adieu. Here comes my wife, wailing and weeping; she has been for long a loyal companion, understanding and caring, at times indifferent. But why is she crying at this hour of the night? There stand my progeny, all looking sad, they had a parent, strict and critical, I wanted them to be like me, I was a complete failure, now as I see. Now I see a lot of neig...

‘Happy New Year to you’ That is a statement fit only for a CEO to blurt out in one of those strategy meetings. ‘Let’s target to be the number one provider of Dog food by so and so year’, the CEO says leaving the rest of the team to wonder how in the hell they are going to meet that objective. How do we go about being number one in the market? What does it mean at a ground level? The CEO can never bother about that and that’s the reason the rest of us have our jobs. We need to work out the details ourselves. We need to constantly remind ourselves that the target is to be number one and therefore that mindset needs to reflect in all of our thoughts, behaviors, discussions, decisions and actions. The CEO visualizes and depends on the rest of the team to actualize the vision. There are posters pasted all around the office proclaiming the vision and serving us the reminder day in and day out. We see that every day and we are expected to work accordingly. At the end of the period for which t...

I was busy the past few weeks with home work, 'class' work and of course watching live telecast of the 'terror' serial on various news channels. It was kind of dejavu for me as I was reminded of the early days of Iraq war of 2003 and watching the live coverage of the war on the various news channels in America. The difference though was, in 2003 the perpetrators of war were broadcasting and in Mumbai 2008 it was the victims of the war who were the broadcasters. As for similarities, there were many. The same underlying insensitivity to the happenings on ground, the shameless passion for sensationalism, 'creation' of news when there was not much to report and so on. Now, if I were watching all that was being telecast, then what moral right do I have to complain? But it is always interesting to comment on 'isolated incidents'. For example, I realized that my passion for news during the period of terror was similar to my wife's passion for some TV serial...

Too much is made out of negative thinking in our society. "Be positive" is the mantra for meeting the requirements of the definition of success. If someone is worried about the outcome of any event, others in the team are quick to soften them up by asking them not to be negative. Depending upon their age, negative thinkers are also termed as 'Devil's advocates' in some groups. Alexander has not become 'the great' by thinking negative. According to Management Historians or Historical Managers, he was either not thinking or was thinking positive. Now what has positivity got to do with anything? It's a good question to ask but I doubt if we will ever get an honest answer from many of these management gurus. Not because there is no answer but it is probably an incovenient truth. Let me take an example. The closest to positive and negative that we can come across is the flow of current. It flows from the negative terminal to the positive terminal. It's ...