The Race

A blog that I published earlier on Linked In

The stadium was noisy but not full. I could see my family. I was on the track with my bicycle. The referee started giving instructions but I was busy wearing my gear and making final preparations to start off, that I didn't pay attention. I had cycled around this track few times. The organizers had said that they would have something completely different. But, I did not see anything different that day.

The whistle blew and I was first off like a flash. I had left the rest of the participants way behind as I completed the first round and the second. I knew there would be someone to wave the checkered flag to tell me that the race was over. Along the way, I saw my family waving out to me and I waved back. The other participants were just too slow for me. Few rounds and I thought I saw the checkered flag and so stopped at the finish line.

My wife and kids had come closer to the finish line. I was shocked to see them. It was as if they had all grown older. When I started the race, my first child was 5 years old and my second one was 2. They looked as if they were 20 and 17 when I got back. Was something wrong with me? My wife looked older too.

I commented, "I can't understand why these other guys are going so slow? They seem to be more focused on balance, a smile on their face and going slow. Not sure why these organizers have allowed their families to be with them on to the track? Is this the difference they were promising?" Without waiting for a response from my wife, I continued, "Guess what, I fell down few times, got hurt, had to rest as my heart pounded too fast at times and my body is aching all over and I have some chest pain. I need rest and maybe need to go to the doctor."

As I was being rushed to the hospital, my wife said, "Wake up please. The organizers announced that this was a slow cycle race. We were frantically waving at you to read the banner that was up. You didn't pay attention to us. The person who finishes last wins. The person who is happy, has inner peace, has time for his family, etc. wins. It is not about coming first, going fast, not seeing our children grow and spending no time with family. It is definitely not about losing your health in pursuit of that elusive thing called success or winning."

I was jolted out of my slumber. I had run the race wrong. My children had grown older and I had missed not only their childhood but also their teens. I was not by my wife when she struggled to bring up our children. I was not by her when she went through her daily struggles. We were poor people living in the largest mansion. We had all the gadgets that we wanted. We could buy the most expensive of clothes and food. But, we had never found time to sit down as a family and have a meal together. I had spent so much time on conference calls and in the office.

I looked around a bit dazed as I came out of the hospital. The doctors told me that I had a heart problem and high blood pressure. The cholesterol levels were high. I needed to be careful or else it would result in a heart attack. I needed to watch my weight and put more focus on physical fitness. I was advised to slow down and reduce stress levels.

I woke up early in the morning and in all earnestness started my brisk walk. My wife accompanied me. Few minutes in to the walk, we fell silent. There were no common topics of interest and I could not hold a conversation for more than few minutes. It was then that I realized that we had drifted apart mentally and what held us together was the old love and our children. I decided to start working on our relationship. This was the most important relationship in life and there was no way I was going to let go. That walk was the start of a relationship building with one of my oldest friends with whom I had spent years and, now realized, understood little.

I got on to the cycle again. This time, I was more focused on balance and not speed. My wife and children came along with me. I had the old smile (that I always felt was part of my attire) back again. The smile came from within my soul. As I started to pedal, I saw few cycles whiz past me. All I could see were smirks on the riders' faces as they looked at me and wondered why I was cycling so slow and was on the tracks with my family holding my bike!!!. 

The Path - Part 2

Please read my earlier post - The Path - before reading this post  (http://ravi4corners.blogspot.in/2014/12/the-path.html). In this post the word "I" has been used more for ease of writing - it could be read as "You", "We", "S/he". 

I turned around from the temple and walked back. I began a new journey in the same path again. It was very dark and there were no lights. I was not carrying my mobile and so could not switch it on for light. There was a gentle breeze and it brought Belief with it. As I let Belief in, I realized that there was enough light inside me to light up my path and I did just that. It reminded me of what the South Indian Cinema Hero, Superstar Rajnikanth said, "En vazhi, thani vazhi" - translated as "My journey/path is a unique one"...Yes, everyone's journey is unique and only you have to decide it.

As I walked down the path, I was a totally different person. I had always believed that this body and mind was me and that it was there to experience this world around me. When I realized that I am not this body or the mind, I became a different vehicle altogether. A vehicle that included everything and everybody. A vehicle that let me understand that I was part of everything and everybody. A vehicle that lets the gentle breeze of belief in, that shines forth light and that steers through storms. I realized that this new me was going to make a totally different journey this time. Suddenly, all my past journeys in this path flashed in front of my eyes. I could see and remember every journey that I had taken on this path. I could remember and understand all the learnings from the various journeys that I had taken in this path. It was as though I had been on this path hundreds of times. The path became clear, there was no need for light and I seemed to know every nook and cranny.

In all my earlier journeys I had veered from the extreme left to the extreme right of the path. All of these were to ensure that the slush in the path does not dirty my trousers. This time I realized that I was in the stone and in the slush. That my trousers could not get dirty as I was in everything and everything was in me. So, I walked the middle path led by Belief. The path seemed different. I could see millions of other people in their journey. Funny, I had not noticed so many of them earlier. I was touching so many of them and they were touching me. I was talking to them along the way and some liked what I said and were in awe whilst the others moved on.  The different temples that I visited gave me different points of views and the learning was immense.

As I continued on the path, it took me to a garden. I had never seen this in my previous journeys. It was filled with flowers. Each flower seemed to have a word written on it. I bent down to read the words - I could find love, hate, truth, untruth, like, dislike, shallow, deep, God, Devil, good, bad...and the list continued. I looked at all the flowers. They were beautiful individually. However, I decided to sow a seed in the midst of them all. So, I selected a spot and searched for the packet in my bag. I found it. As I pulled out the packet to take out the seed, I saw the word "Belief" written on the packet. So, I took out the seed Belief and sowed it in the spot I selected. I am not sure how long it took to sprout...it seemed a long time. When it did, out came a beautiful plant with a flower. All of a sudden, all the other flowers circled around this flower and became a beautiful composite flower. Belief had brought love, hate, truth, untruth, like, dislike, shallow, deep, God, Devil, good, bad and all the other flowers together. It was one huge composite flower. It was then that I realized that each human being is like this composite flower. We are made up of these smaller flowers. We have everything in us. What we become, depends on what we decide to nurture and how we convert that in to action.

I was reminded of a story. One evening, an old man told his grandson about a battle that goes on inside people. He said "My son, the battle is between two 'wolves' inside us all. One is evil. It is anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority and ego. The other is good. It is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith."  The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather: "Which wolf wins?" The old man simply replied, "the one that you feed".

During this journey, I had decided to feed the good wolf, convert my deeds to be constructive and sow the seed of Belief. When there was light outside, I enjoyed the journey. When it was dark outside, I decided to let the light from within shine forth. I had begun to understand that the light outside is because of the light from within. This new journey filled me with ecstasy and bliss…not just happiness. This is the bliss that I was trying to share with everyone I touched.

Time seemed too short for me to reach everyone in this journey. Somehow, I knew that there were and would be others who would take a similar journey in this path. As I turned the corner, I suddenly saw a bright light. It welcomed me with a wide smile and with arms open. I stopped and looked at the light. I turned around to look at the path and could not see one. I saw a temple had come up right behind me and blocked my view of the path. I turned back confused. The light gestured to me to look beyond the temple to see the path. But I could not find it. I decided to peer in to the temple that had come up so suddenly behind me and without my knowledge. As I peered in I was shocked to see an idol of me and many bowing down to pray.  I came out of the temple and the light was already there waiting for me with a large smile. It gave me a real warm hug as I dissolved in to it.

Look around and you will find cool dudes

The 13 year old woke up in the morning and instinctively reached out for her smartphone. Eyes closed she felt around for the phone. It was not there. Her mind raced – where had she left it? She could not remember. In panic she jumped out of bed. The phone lay on the ground. Smiling, she picked up the phone and the smile quickly disappeared. The glass panel was broken and the phone was not working.

“Mom”, she screamed, “What is going on in this house? Can’t I keep anything safe around here?” Her mom did not even respond. She stomped in to the kitchen and sat in a huff. “This is ridiculous. There is nothing safe anymore. The phone is broken.” Her mom reminded her calmly, “Please say, I broke my mobile.”

She approached her dad tentatively but with a smile and told him of the broken phone. He was busy on his laptop and, without even looking up, he replied dryly, “Leave it on the table. I will send it out for repairs. And, you are not getting a new one.”

It was evening and she was actually waiting for her dad to return. Her mom had a mischievous smile which actually irritated her. When dad came that evening he did not bring good news for her. “It will take another month to get back your phone. They have run out of stock of some parts.” Suddenly, a sinking feeling took over her. How could she manage without her phone? She turned around and asked her mom for her phone and got a prompt “no”. She did not have the courage to ask dad as she knew what the response would be. Her younger brother did not have a phone.

That evening, after months, the family was having dinner together at home. They had never sat at the dinner table together when at home in a long while. It seemed very odd for her. She looked around and, for the first time, saw the other three were chatting and laughing. She quickly got in to the conversation. It was amazing fun. Mom, her brother and she ganged up together against her dad. Being a sport, he just smiled it away and actually even had fun in the whole conversation. That night was not the same for her.

The next day she walked in to school and all her friends asked her as to why she was not on Messenger the previous night. She told them of the broken phone and the time she had with her family. When it came time to get back home in the evening the same sinking feeling took over her. She reached home and sunk in to the sofa set. She could hear lots of children playing outside. She peeped outside through the window. They were all playing. Was this not a game that she liked playing on her phone? She wished she had her phone. Her mom who came by called her and asked her to go down to play. Reluctantly, she followed her mom. She was shy to approach the other children. Her mom helped her get introduced to all the children in the ground. Within few minutes she was playing on the field. It was a completely new experience for her. Till now, she had played only in the confines of her home. Everything was on her mobile. For the first time, she was playing on the field. She was so engrossed that, at first, she did not hear her mom call out her name. Then, she looked around and gestured to her mom to wait for few more minutes. Those few minutes became an hour. This was absolute fun. When she got back home, she took a hot shower and came to the dining table. She was famished. That day was “get at her” day. Her dad joined in the fun and they all pulled her leg. She was such a sport that she could take as much as she could give. After dinner she completed homework, studied, spoke to her mom and her brother and was off to sleep.

One week went by and suddenly she was looking forward to playing on the field, eating dinner with everyone, spending the evenings with her dad, mom, brother and friends. This was so much fun. Yes, these guys were really nice people. There were so many nice people around.

Weeks went by and her dad came over that evening. He smiled and said, “Guess what I have got for you?” And, without adding another word, he pulled out the mobile phone. It was repaired. It looked lovely. But, she had a sinking feeling in her stomach.

The Path

It had rained hard the previous night. As I walked, the path turned from being stony to muddy. There was slush. I looked at the path ahead and saw some stones in the middle of the slush. Stepping on the stones, to avoid getting my trousers dirty, I walked on. The stones took me from one corner of the path to the other. I moved from the middle to the extreme left to the extreme right. But for most of the time I was in the middle.

Suddenly, this path reminded me of life and Buddha as I tread "the middle path". As in life, most of us believe that we can keep our trousers clean and so veer far left or far to the right at times. So long as we get back to the middle, no harm in experiencing the extremes. That is life.

The path begins somewhere and goes all over the place. Many a time, we are unable to guess the twists and turns. It leads us to a destination that we didn't know existed or least expected. What is most important is for us to understand that there will be twists and turns. We must be ready to change given these twists and turns. We must be willing to accept these changes and still live in peace with ourselves. Apart from all this, we must learn to enjoy the journey. If we knew all this, expected all this and if everything that we wanted happened, then, there is no God and this path will not be enjoyable.

The path becomes difficult at times.  It tests our resolve. We breakdown or buckle under the pressure at times. It is during these times that we must remember that the Invisible Hand is available for help. S/He is testing you because S/He believes in you and knows that you have the courage and resolve to see the difficult parts of the path. Further, when you pray for strength, God does not grant it as a wish. S/He makes the path difficult and when you get past it you realize that you have grown stronger.

I am reminded of the story of a potter who had a perfect pot and another one with a hole. He would go everyday to fetch water and by the time he returned he had one pot that was full and another that was half full. The pot with the hole felt sad that it was not giving the potter the productivity of the other pot. So, after a month of delivering 50% water, the pot with the hole asked the potter as to why he did not replace it with a perfect pot. The potter asked the broken pot to see the path they took daily. The side on which the broken pot was carried had beautiful plants and flowers - the water from it had made this possible. The other side was barren. In life too, we see the same in our paths...when we look back the most trying times have been the best times as they tested our core strengths and brought out the best in us. Our lives became beautiful because of those trying times. God's imperfections help provide Life.

I reached the end of this muddy path and walked in to the temple. After I finished praying, I heard a voice inside me telling me to turn around and look at the path that I had taken. I did that and all those points where i thought i had veered to the extreme left were suddenly extreme right now. And, the extreme right was extreme left. Only the middle path remained the same.

Discipline at an early age

We all know how disciplined the Japanese are.  I read a story of how the Japanese fans behaved at a World Cup Match at Brazil. The fans were seated in one side of the stadium. Japan lost the match. After the fans left the stadium, the authorities went to their side of the stadium to clean up. They saw the place absolutely clean. A team from within the fans had brought in garbage bags and cleaned up the part of the stadium. They had also cleaned the toilets as they left.  I just could not believe what I read. Typically, we hear of hooliganism from fans when their country loses a match. Here was a totally different story.  I wanted to find out what the Japanese do to inculcate this culture.  Any attitude or behaviour takes years to sink in. Typically, we need to inculcate these behaviours during childhood days. Else, such behaviours come in only when there are incentives or deterrents.

We were at a self-service restaurant in Bangalore, India. I noticed youngsters walk in, have dinner and then just leave the table uncleaned when they walked away. Some of them took their trays with them but did not bother to take a tissue and wipe the table clean before leaving.  Why does this happen? This is because we have servant maids at home and we believe that it is below our dignity to clean up the table. If it was not a habit, we could try and push for it. However, if it is seen as something that needs to be done by someone else, it is not the best situation to be in.

I was talking to a close friend of mine who lives in Japan and asked him this question. He said that children in Japan have to clean their class room and the toilets before they leave from school. This is from when they are 2 years 6 months old.  They each carry a small towel from home and use that when they eat.  Once they have finished eating, each one cleans her/his place, put the lunch/snacks box away. Each time they use the toilet, they are used to cleaning it up before they leave the toilet.  I was amazed that the Japanese inculcate these lovely habits at such an early age.  It is little wonder then as to why the football fans from Japan did what they did. Cleanliness is ingrained in them.

They say, "Cleanliness is next to godliness". In many countries, it is only a saying...no one seems to practice this. As parents, we tend to focus on personal hygiene and just don't bother about the cleanliness of our surroundings.  This is what the Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi, is focused on. He wants that every citizen of India focuses on not just personal hygiene but hygiene at the society level.

I believe that it is time that we start focusing on cleanliness by inculcating this as a habit for our young ones. It would be great if we, as parents, could do few easy things for our children - clean the table after eating (whether at home or otherwise), rinse the plate before putting it in to the sink, clean the toilet before leaving, polish their shoes, wash their socks, put things back in the place from where they took it and also make their beds after waking up.  

All these will go a long way in making a huge difference to the behaviours as the next generation grows up.

Making a difference

I have written on this before but thought it would serve as a good topic to re-visit - the importance of making a difference to the societies in which we live and work. It is absolutely essential that many of us we see how lucky we are to be living lives the way we do. Nearly 1/2 of the world’s population — more than 3 billion people — live on less than $2.50 a day. More than 1.3 billion live in extreme poverty, that's less than $1.25 a day. 80% of the world population lives on less than $10 a day.

The unequal distribution of global wealth is even more alarming. 20% of the world's population own 83% of the world's wealth and the balance 80% have only 17%. What is worse is that the bottom 60% own only 6.6% of the world's wealth.  With this kind of disparity in income and wealth distribution, we will not get anything other than unhappiness. This results in theft, unrest, civil strife, terrorism, cheating, etc.

So, why do we have the problem of people not wanting to share a small part of their wealth so that others can benefit and pick up their lives to an extent where they become self-reliant? There seems to be few trusted mechanisms that can do that. There are few mechanisms that help get people educated and then get a job. There is an urgent need to re-skill people and get them jobs that are relevant in this fast changing world. Unless this happens, we will not see equitable growth.

Given changes in the economy, many skills just keep dropping off the radar or are not compensated well. This results in people not being able to earn a decent wage for the work that they do. The option would be to keep track of changes in skill requirements and work with the Governments of the day to ensure that they allocate budgets to get people trained on these skill sets. 

The other issue is an ageing population that is unable to support itself. With better health standards in most countries where the population is ageing, it would be worth the while to look at increasing the age of retirement so that people can work for a longer time. However, this could cause problems for organizations to employ youngsters who are coming in to the job market. One option that has worked is where children care for their parents and support them financially.

It is not an easy problem to solve...else, we would have solved this by now. Societies should stop thinking of jobs as an entitlement. This is something that I see in many countries and this has to stop. The Governments of the day must think through changing skill needs of the world and ensure that people can get that additional training to morph their skill sets to meet the new world requirements. I have heard of a community in Germany that faced a situation where everyone in the small town was laid-off. They had superior engineering skills. Today, they are one of the world's best producers of ocean based wind turbines that requires complicated engineering skills. They morphed their skill sets and this skill has now become relevant in the new world that they face. When jobs are thought of as entitlement, then organizations take them to countries that will give them a better cost structure. Economics becomes a leveller.

It is, therefore, the job of every person to start looking to see how each of us can make a difference to the society we live in.  Given the significant level of disparity of incomes and wealth, if every one of us who lives well above the poverty line makes it a point to educate 4 people and help 4 people to find a job that helps break the vicious poverty cycle in which they are stuck, we can change this world significantly. The price we pay for terrorism, theft, unrest, civil strife, etc. is huge and somehow we seem to have accepted it as a way of life. We need not. Let us think for a better tomorrow and help change the societies in which we live.

God, Faith and Tolerance

I was reading an article which stated how few temples in the North and West of India have not agreed on the installation of a Sai Baba Statue in the temple complex. The reason given is that Sai is a human being and not a God. At the same time, these temples have requested the Sai devotees to take the idol and set up a separate temple. The devotees of the temples in which this permission has not been given have been told that they should not desecrate the Sai idols. They quote scripture to say that this is that these scriptures say. But the act of not desecrating the idol clearly shows tolerance to other faiths or beliefs.

When you pray for patience, God does not grant the wish. S/He puts you in a situation where your patience is tested and then you learn the concept of patience. In the situation it could be a human being who is actually testing your patience. Such people are actually representing God.  Similarly, Sai Baba came to millions of people as Hope. Just like Krishna, Christ or Mohammed did. They were all human beings but God sent a message of Hope through them to all those who had lost hope. So, they do represent God in some form. They gave and still give hope to millions of people all over the world. Millions believe them to be God is some form or the other. It is born out of faith and belief. 

Similarly, the devotees in these temples in the North and West of India have a belief that the ancient Gods that we call Shiva, Vishnu, Brahma, etc. are the only Gods and all others are humans. That is their faith and belief.

Instead of criticizing either, it would be good to tell them not to quote scriptures as an excuse for this act but to say that this is what they believe in. There is no harm in any faith or belief so long as you do not step in to anyone else's faith or belief or hurt their sentiments or cause any harm bodily or otherwise to anyone. No scripture or book of knowledge typically talks ill of other faiths or beliefs. It is our interpretation that goes wrong at times.  So, instead of quoting such scriptures out of turn, it would be best to tolerate all beliefs and just get on with life.