Sunday, October 14, 2012

Truth is YOU.

Will you ever care to know the truth?

We feel truth is always the one that you speak out of your like hearing, doing, seeing or others.

Tell me what you saw when you were a witness to a gory crime? This is what the court wants. And what you saw becomes the truth.

Tell me what some one spoke in a rally instigating communal violence, becomes a truth of what you heard.

Tell me what you think about how good I look , when your wife asks, you speak the truth (well may not be really :-)

Thus our perception of this world through our senses make this all a reality?

I think not , for some reason.

Not that Iam going to argue that the world outside changes and your senses are flawed and some one else will perceive them differently.

If we say the truth is in what you see, then the act of seeing happens within you. When you look at a flower, what do you see? Actually you see the flower...but all is well if you have just done that. The flower then occurs in your brain visually, stimulating many neurons. And once a neuron is stimulated, will it ever keep quite? It will stimulate its connections (probably ...Iam not a neurologist to go deep here, nor you would want to understand all that) being a network. Then what remains in you is just a series of thoughts about the flower. The petals are so beautiful and striking red in the sunlight and so on. A poetic brain may start becoming metaphorical and so on. Thus you had probably a micro second or a nano second where the truth was and then it all became your stimulants in your wirings.

The truth we ask for or claim is all manufactured in the confines of our grey matter.

There is very little gap between our sensory perception of the world and its subsequent interpretation in your brain.

A innocent person has probably this gap a bit more. But he may be called childish and may not be taken seriously.

To this effect, one may argue that a photograph is truthful. As it shows what it sees. But the issue here is the photograph is made sense by our wirings when we see it.

Does it mean you dont shut your interpretation in your brain and keep only perception of senses to get the truth? For example, imagine some one telling you he had a great time in a waterfall under the thunderous water hitting his head. You may imagine the waterfall and the feeling. But is that anything comparable if you are actually there and the chill water splashing on you with the roaring sound...Your mind goes numb, isnt it? You feel a bit more truthful as your senses have consumed a whole lot of stuff from outside and I feel it is just a sudden spurt in the information overload that happens on your brain with too much of data feeds from all directions of your body and senses. Your brain suddenly cannot operate. In fact when you come outside, you will find yourself repeatedly telling ' Wow it was great, it was magnificent'...and when some one asks you how it was, you may recollect and tell but you may end up saying, boy you need to be there and you will feel it exactly.

Thus it is clear the sensual perceptions on this world is more truthful narrative of the experience you get and translations in your brain transforms it to a interpretative world.

What do you get if you remove the obstacle of your mind or its thoughts. Then you perceive truth in its fullest. This is also the reason why a calm mind can see the truth better than a agitated mind and why meditation allows to see you the world as it is better.

On a tangential note, if you start speaking what you observe, the truth is gone as speaking comes out of interpretation of your mind. Thus truth cannot be spoken, nor written, nor seen. In fact seeing is more closer than the other two, but only till the point of interpretation. While speaking and writing are purely interpretative.

If truth cannot be seen, spoken, written, then what is it? It is nothing but the YOU without all of this or your interpreting mind. Truth is YOU.





Saturday, October 6, 2012

Dream goals of your life

Time is limited. Yes, this is true especially if you want to achieve something in your life.

Have you observed that time runs fast when you have goals?

Most of us don't know what our goals are in life broadly , I mean till we die.

Why do we need to have goals? Or should we have one at all? All these are questions that have different answers depending on the state of you.

For most of us , most of the time, the immediate livelihood goals hide our dream ones.

However, if you have identified your dream goal you better do that rather than the short-term ones.

If you don't have a dream goal for your life, then start looking for one. That should be your goal.

If you don't want to have such goals and be serious in life, thats absolutely fine.  Leave yourself in this state and life is too long that you will some day surface with a goal or it will show up before you.

If you have a dream goal, then I feel you will also automatically manage your time well. Many a time you will find you don't have much of it and every passing day is taking you farther away.

Having dream goals helps you cut all the noise in your life and helps you focus on few things that are absolutely meaningful.

Having them helps you live your life completely rather than having boredom set in you and you start despising life.

All the people who have such goals I believe enjoy life to the fullest and everything is meaningful for them designed to get you there.




News channels , restlessness and addictions

With the availability of news 24 hours, even if most of it is repetitive, I have certainly got into the habit of checking the news online or on TV once in a hour when I am awake. Fortunately I am still not addicted to this. I can still focus on my work and not bother to see the news.

But I feel this is something that is happening to a lot of people. Addiction to 'What next' syndrome is what the news channels want. Its a constant noise in your brain that makes you bite your nails as to what happened to the corruption charges on Robert Vadra or which is the next SUV launch...?

What if I dont know any of this ?

Nothing happens I believe. I will still be able to breathe, live, eat and sleep.

The important thing is to understand this. Even if you keep away this news channel stuff causing constant restlessness in you, restlessness is something that people cannot do away with on even other stuff like the work. You constantly think of work or some other.

The answer to get rid of it is very easy. Keep reminding yourself that YOU can be absolutely fine even if none of these exist. Thats the key.  Try by leaving it for few days and be sharply looking at you. You will feel you are absolutely fine without it. Remember it is the mind finally which requires this habit of munching in you. Unfortunately it is wired to you and you identify yourself as that. You should understand that if you starve the mind by observing that it is getting into a addiction of some sort by depriving it of what it wants (the bad ones like this), you may be in a better position to handle yourself.

Iam sure lot of you do this. But this is just for those who is looking for a solution to such addictions.
The more you decide what your mind should chew, the better life you will have!

Saturday, September 29, 2012

mother tongue

I have heard many times this.  Mother tongue is the best medium for a child's education. I don't have any shades of doubt about this. However, in the name of promoting a native language, the language fanatics take it too far to denigrate other languages including English and eventually end up forcing this down the throat of some one to compulsorily hold onto one's native tongue.

I have seen this with eminent poets and writers in at least the few Indian languages I have been exposed to like Tamil, Kannada, Malayalam.

These writers and poets have ulterior motive I feel when they insist on native languages. It is also understandable. As most of them have their daily bread and butter (now it is towards Merc and villas) pinned down on people reading and writing in these languages. Obviously if their market share goes down with people taking to English or others because that gives them the opportunities, then how do they survive? I may be criticised for this view but I would like to point out that their view of the world is also  quite narrow and the fact that most of them have rapport with the ruling politicians, who then blindly insist that Tamilnadu for Tamils and Kannada nadu for Kannadigas or Kerala nadu for malayalees.

I feel this kind of soft insistence finally leads to a divided society. Because general public does not have the time to think deeply and they rever these local heroes, their words become so important. When you keep dividing the people, one day you may have to face the division within your own community and family between you and your son and daughter.

A divisive mind does not foster an environment of empathy and love for fellow beings. Instead it frowns upon the existence of others as being a threat to you. I don't say that you speak English and worship it dropping whatever your mother tongue is. I am only telling you to clearly identify these people who create divisions in the society in the name of a language because they have certain gains to make. I also say that there are really good guys out there in the literary circles who are with a broad mind and who are well read and are very clear in their head about larger goals beyond the constraints of a language.

If you enjoy learning a language do it. But not under any one's compulsions. It should be done out of your own will. Whenever you see a trend where you suspect the motive is to divide people, never support it, for it will backfire on you one day.

Ignore people creating divisions and look out for such people in every Indian state.

Try to learn whatever you feel is good for you.  If you enjoy the rich literature of a language enjoy it. But don't take it beyond that. After lot of time thinking about what is in a language, I feel the native language or mother tongue sort of becomes the first and easiest language for you as it is imbibed in you when you had nothing else in your head. But remember that blindly sticking to it because you find it easy and you can express yourself means you are not exploring the richness of thoughts in some other language. That also does not mean that you waste your life learning all possible languages.  The rule of thumb I have is, if I find something interesting, I don't mind learning it, no matter how hard it is. Irrespective of which language a thought was born, we should be able to have a look at it.

People fear that if they stop speaking their mother tongue, then it will die and with it the whole race can extinguish. Every language ultimately gets its due share I believe. Sanskrit died in the spoken world because it probably was not a easy language to use and speak by majority. However, the richness of sanskrit in terms of literature and the vedas or upanishads have not died. It is living and have been migrated into various other languages of the world. Now as long as the essence of the thoughts that originated in the days of vedas has survived, it is only a desirable thing that the language that was used to convey such refined thoughts also survive. But if it did not, then what can you do about it? You cannot force people to learn and speak it. It is not possible.

English as a language has taken within it a lot of others and especially the modern day aspects. It never rested with the Shakespearean literature. It has evolved and adapted because the people of that language  transcended beyond it and tried to understand other cultures. The language also expanded with it. This shows that the need to be 'listening' to others and expanding on one's own language to incorporate new thoughts will go a long way in surviving a language.

Again this does not mean, literally translate everything in English to native language. This is what the French do and probably others like Japanese. I feel the English though they had conquered most countries in the world, had some eye for detail into each culture, documented, contributed and enabled the exposure of the gems in those languages to other cultures because they were being the connecting points by virtue of their conquests. A job probably being done by internet to some extent and I feel it will only increase as internet expands to include more of native languages and by improvements in language translators. This could be a very subtle thing that happened, because the English are not emotionally tied to their language unlike Indians are.

If you drop the emotional tag on the language and start using it to expand your and other's knowledge with it, language is a very powerful tool that can change the history of man's existence. However, with emotion, it leads to fanning of egos and aggression on other cultures who don't speak yours.

Conversations in modern office environments

I happen to stumble across different types of people in my long career working in software companies. I  always had indirectly looked at the ways people converse with others. Being good at communication means different things to different people. I give my observations on this below.

I have seen most of the Indian engineers whom I have worked with are generally far less communicative than their western counterparts. One hindrance is still English being a non-native language. But language is only one aspect. There are several aspects to relaying your thoughts in a crisp and clean way so that the other person exactly gets your intentions.

Beyond the structure and semantics of what languages offer, there is the subject of your communication. You don't need to be flowery on your choice of words. Just getting the point across with the right level of emotion needed is an art.

Some times, I have tried to sound angry when things don't seem to go the right way in projects. But the words that I choose to convey will still convey the right things. I feel it is important to reign in your emotions and be able to express it in a tone that does not spoil what you would have ultimately wanted to convey.

Imagine this, when some one bangs your car on the road, will you still be able to get the facts across that the other person did the wrong   (I am talking about Indian roads..). ?

I doubt you will be able to show controlled emotion and choice of words here. I am obviously contradicting myself between the last bunch of statements I make.

I guess the situation, people etc. makes this difference. In office, surrounded by colleagues, a mistake done by some one can still be dealt in a way with the right choice of words. If there are repeated occurrences, then office procedures are always there to take the action. So, here it is still valid.

However, some one unknown on the road who inflicts a injury to you or to your asset, you still need to react what you feel absolutely.  Does not mean you can be violent in your words or deeds still. Remember again your long innings of 80+ years and this is just a passing thing. So, if you do that long shot thinking, this is not worth spending all your energy and going bonkers over it. So be cool always, as much as possible.

Coming back to conversations, I used to ask my fellow engineers whom I am guiding on design or programming to spell out what they understood. I have seen some repeat like a parrot without thinking. Very few get a summary understanding of a long conversation. It is easy to isolate the people who understood from who have not. Nowadays this is important with engineering degrees being a commodity churned out with the net result of a person standing in front of you with absolutely no clue of what he is supposed to know.

Many books say a good conversation is always levelled. With both the parties listening and conversing in equal measures. But I feel it need not be. Many a time, I have found that simply listening fully and being able to spend all your attention to understand the fellow being, even if you have your opinion, may often find that what the other person is talking exactly reflects your opinion. So no need to waste time enforcing it. If one of the parties take this stand, it saves time and makes your life easy.

However, I find one exception to the above rule. When the other person whom you are talking to is mostly on a subject that is very light, more for entertainment purposes or a casual conversation without a goal to achieve like in a official environment, it is better to follow the rule of maintaining a equal level. Allow them to talk and at the same time find your points through or try to meet your points by interjections, agreeing nods and so on.

The biggest problem I see in most offices are the time spent in making each other known of what I am doing. This has become such a pain that it affects all the time you have to work on your stuff. It is crazy many a time that people come to meetings with less preparations and with a view of just sucking all what some one else's has done putting in hard work and on top of it question them without sufficient thinking just to highlight their knowledge of the subject. These are dangerous as it will set a very bad outlook on your other colleague who has painstakingly prepared to be there. I see this especially when there are the so-called experienced managers who does absolutely nothing....yes I mean it and they simply by the sheer weight of their mostly useless experience tend to absolutely hijack a junior's conversation without understanding what he or she is trying to come out with and instead start concluding on what needs to be done.

Many MNCs have many such folks who have absolutely no clue on what they are there for. But comfortably positioned to execute the orders of their higher ups with no sense of understanding why such a thing is needed and how it really affects the business. This is how the growth of a company shields inefficiencies and over time there are very few who steers the company with so many hanging by the side and the whole thing navigates towards doom.

Every ones position, work and achievements should be under constant scrutiny, not by another person, but by themselves. What is the value Iam adding ? How does it help the business? How am I helpful in my role to my fellow workers? Honestly, I have always had these questions with partially convincing answers most of the time I had spent life in MNCs.

Big companies should still work like a large assemblage of start-ups I feel. This way the purpose will be very clear. However, I do think, biggies don't have great innovations and instead they bask in the glory of what they have innovated in the past. This means the work is pretty much mundane and why put pressure on things which can be achieved with less pressure and mediocre minds?

See Iam contradicting my own theories here again...

thats what should be a healthy conversation in my opinion again!



Friday, June 1, 2012

Be Naked!

Right now, after I quit my job I was doing with an MNC, I feel my life is back to me to live. Iam ashamed to say that this has happened after probably my early childhood. Thats roughly 35 odd years. Imagine how it feels to be imprisoned for such a long time? Nelson Mandela comes to my mind for one of the longest prison stints. But mine is not any less...
Yours may not be any less too..

Why the world does not let you be what you are?

Partially, I feel we are responsible for this misery. While 50% is dependent on your parents who decide your fate, the remaining is your own. You hang on..and on working for X and Y thinking that that is your life. And then you start getting this nagging feeling that there is nothing going on much in life. And then these talks of work-life balance....I feel like laughing. You work or you live I feel. It cannot be both. You can do only one thing at a time. You cannot work and also have a life. Thats something that takes a while to understand. Many don't until the time comes when they can no longer work. Working for some one robs your life from you.

Whatever you do after work does not have your heart in it.

When you do something (I am not calling this work) on your own , whatever it may be, you taste freedom. Freedom is beautiful. It cannot be compared to the misery you undergo in the name of work. Freedom makes you grounded. You no longer fly on this and that. Fly on someone's triggers. You are on the ground, you feel the living.

Do something which you have thought is of importance. If you dont have such thoughts start to question you. You must be happy already in a golden cage thinking that the end of the universe is the bars in the cage and they are not bars but the gold you have always wanted to have.

You create the world. When you do that, you live your life. Every one has the full potential to create what they think. Try to get there at least. Dont be a piece of some one else's thought no matter what it holds for you.

When you are naked you see the truth!

Monday, January 16, 2012

C'mon, Quit your job guys!

This is just a thought and a little serious one lingering in my head for a while. Surely some of you might have done this or thought about this.

When you are in your forties, assuming you have done the standard things, you would be at the peak of your career, got all the best things in terms of pay or incentives and more money does not seem to be doing anything to you other than building a worry on how you would invest it with less tax implications.

Assuming the wife or kids are not in any way making you shudder, thats well out of the equation.

Assuming you have a house to live and a decent bank balance to take care for at least the near future, I tend to ask this question

What is making you get up in the morning, rush through your purification process and then appear in the so called office space to see the same other faces with the same smile or frown and think of getting that extra unwanted salary for that day and month and year?

If you do this, either you dont know what you want in life OR you know and you have resigned to fate OR you are a great cheater that you tend to like this and whatever ....

I would say, the joy of quitting one's monotony and just immersing in a new life where you suddenly have that "precious" commodity called "Time" in your hands.....My God, just the vision of it makes me like a new born!