Appointment

I had fixed an appointment with a senior executive of an MNC for the presentation of my product. The appointment was given to me at 11.00 AM. It was a one hour drive for me from home so I started at 9.45 am keeping 15 minutes in hand for delay on account of traffic. But on that particular day, the traffic was unusually very bad. And while I was midway, I realized I will be late by ½ an hour. I , therefore telephoned the person whom I was to meet and informed him that I am stuck in traffic jam and I will be late by ½ an hour if it is ok with him. He readily agreed to it. I ultimately reached the place at 11.45 am. I gave my visiting card to the receptionist and told her to give it to the concerned person. I was carrying the laptop with me. The office was very nice and comfortable. I was offered a cup of tea. I waited for ½ an hour and then I told the receptionist to remind the person concerned that I am still waiting for him. After some time, she told me that he is busy with somebody. You just have to wait for another 10 minutes, he will call you. I kept waiting. Another half an hour passed. It was 1 PM now. I turned to the receptionist and told her to remind him once again. She replied. “It is lunch time. He is taking lunch now. You will have to wait till 2pm.” I had no option but to wait. The receptionist also left for lunch after some time. I was all alone in the reception.. The lunch time was over at 1.30pm. I kept waiting till 2.30pm after which I got restless. I asked the receptionist to remind him once again. She checked up with him and said he is still busy. As soon as he is free he will call you. I waited till 3.30 pm. I lost the patience by now and finally told the receptionist that I am leaving for good. I cannot wait any longer. She requested me to wait for another 5 minutes. She finally went to his room and I don’t know what she told him, she came back within a minute and asked me to directly proceed to his room. She pointed her finger to the room where he was sitting. When I finally entered his room, I found him engrossed in discussion with somebody else. I felt humiliated. When he saw me standing at the door, he abruptly ended his discussion with the other gentleman and asked me to take a seat. I expected him to apologise to me for making me sit for hours in the reception. But he did not do so. On the contrary, he said”You know, I am very busy. My boss keeps calling me in between.” You can’t say no to your boss. I lost my temper. This man was not even half my age and had no courtesy to even treat an elderly person like me. I simply told him” Young man, you had no business to make me sit for hours. If you had no time, you could have told me frankly. My time is as precious as yours. I had fixed another appointment at 4.30pm which I am going to miss because of your irresponsible behaviour. I left the place immediately without giving any presentation

Am I exaggerating

If you are honest,straightforward, law abiding citizen, nobody will take notice of you. You will not be in news. Media will be running miles away from you. You stand no chance to fight election. You have neither the money nor the muscle power to attract votes. You commit a fraud, cheat, murder, rape and you come in the limelight. Your photograph with complete background along with the juicy story is flashed in the frontpage of leading dailies. You gain instant popularity. You will be sorrounded by photographers each one struggling to take your snap. You will be in the news for days together in T.V Channels. The TRP of these channels will shoot up. If you are convicted by court of law for your offence and sent to jail, all the better, you become a hero. You become the ideal candidate to enter into politics. Mahesh Bhat will make a film on your lifestyle and you become a role model of our youngsters. Girls will find you macho,daring,courageous,sexy,very interesting character. They will be vying with each other to date you. Political parties will use you as their trump card to garner more votes during election.

When I was Taken for a ride

I had the opportunity to go to Delhi by train en route to Parwanoo, which is a hill station in Himachal Pradesh. As I came out of the old Delhi station, I found it was drizzling. I waited for some time to hire a taxi but somehow all taxis on road were engaged. After some time, a Tanga( Horse Drawn Vehicle) passed by me. Tangawalla (The driver)stopped Tanga, looked at me and asked gently" Babuji Kidhar Jana Hai". I said "Chandni chowk chaloge". Tangawalla replied "Hanji, Chaliye". I got inside the buggy with my small suitcase which I was carrying with me". I was drenched completely in rain by then. I heaved a sigh of relief and thanked God for helping me get vehicle in time. I took out the handkerchief from my pocket and started wiping my hands and face with it. I looked outside the window. It was now pouring heavily. Tangawalla told me "Babuji, Khidki Band Karlijiye, Bahut Jor ki Barish Hai". I closed the window on both sides. I could not see anything outside but I could feel, Tanga was moving constantly. After about half an hour or so, Tanga stopped. Tangawalla shouted. "Babuji, Chandni chowk Aa Gaya". I opened the window. The rains had stopped. I stepped out of Tanga and asked the guy "Kitna Hua". Tangawalla replied "Babuji, 150 Rupees. I paid the money without any hesitation. I mentally calculated how many kilometers Tanga must have covered in half an hour and was fairly convinced that what the guy is asking for is very reasonable. I wanted to catch the train at 6 in the evening to go to Parwanoo. So I had very little time left to do shopping. I finished my shopping in just half an hour. I still had 1 hour to go to reach Delhi station. I stopped a taxi and asked the driver to take me to Delhi station. The driver stared at me and said. "Babuji, apko nahin pata kya station to bagal mein hai. Aap paidal ja sakte ho" (Sir, don't you know, station is just few yards away. You can go walking.)

My Lord

O,Lord, your haunting memory makes me spend sleepless nights.
You have created sun,moon,stars and this whole universe.
It is due to your grace that this planet earth exists.
Little birds flutter their wings in joy and sing in your name
The clouds dance to your tune and bring rains
The rivers flow continuously since ages to mingle with you
You are so great that peaks of mountains bow down in front of you
The rising waves of sea are for ever excited to touch your feet
The flowers in the garden bloom just to get a glimpse of you
Lord, I feel your presence
in the courtyard
in the garden
in the waterfall of fountain
in the eyes of an innocent child
in my heart
in my eyes
in every breath and flesh of mine
whenever I felt helpless,defeated,vulnerable
you only lifted me up
You are merciful,Kind,compassionate,ever ready to help
I bow down and worship you with all my heart and soul

Love and Respect

It pains me a lot whenever I read in newspapers that so and so student has misbehaved with the teacher. I do not blame the students entirely for what they do, the teachers are equally to be blamed for failing to inculcate right moral values among the youth. In my time, there was a deep bonding between the teacher and student. I and my class friends had tremendous respect for our teachers. Likewise, our teachers had profound love for us. They used to treat us like their own children. I remember, when I along with 3 other students who were from higher class were selected to undergo advanced course (Visharad) in Sanskrit language in my school, I was very excited. Our Sanskrit teacher who was a renowned Sanskrit scholar agreed to give us private tuitions free of cost. We used to go to his house in the evenings to take private lessons from him. I recollect very clearly, he used to sit on a raised platform, and we used to sit around him on the ground in a typical Gurukul style. Before he would start giving us lessons, we used to touch his feet and get blessings from him. He would then order his family members to bring food for us after which he used to close the door and start giving us lessons. During the session, nobody from his family was allowed to enter the room. There was no fixed timing for ending the coaching session. He used to start at 8 pm and sometimes he used to get so much engrossed in teaching that session would go past midnight. Let me share with you that Sanskrit language like French is far more difficult than English. We had to struggle a lot to understand the basic concepts. There is lot of grammatical rules one has to follow. Once, he gave us some Sanskrit words and told us to make sentences out of these words. I tried very hard to make sentence out of a particular word “Pravishanti” but failed. Finally, I used a sentence which was actually a famous quote in Sanskrit. It was “Na hi suptasya shinghasya pravishanti mukhe Mriga” which means that Deer don’t enter the mouth of sleeping Tiger on their own. When I narrated this sentence to him, he was very furious. He told me that I betrayed him by copying the sentence from the textbook. In a fit of rage, he threw me out of the room. I was deeply hurt. I then stopped going to him. He was upset that I was not attending his class. He then sent his own family member to call me up. When I met him , I felt very guilty for what I did. I apologized to him for my action. He put his hand on my head and said. “My dear child, whatever, I did was for your own good”. What you did was absolutely wrong.

Parliamentary elections

Corruption is deep rooted in politics. Trying to find an honest leader in today's politics is like searching a needle in heystack. Today's politics is the politics of personal gains and not the politics of national interest. Our netas have no ideologies and principles. They change parties like how prostitutes change clients. Most of the politicians have criminal records. Some of the politicians are so shameless that even if are removed from chairs, they refuse to vacate govt quarters and Bunglows and keep on staying in them at the expense of Taxpayers money. With such people at the helm of affairs, it is difficult to think of a better tommorrow. Under the circumstances, our election process needs to be revamped totally. To start with, funds required to fight election must be raised through collection from honest taxpayers money and not through donations from Business house or corporates or Builders who have vested interest in politics. Second, there should be some criteria to be eligible to fight election such as minimum qualification, past record as to the contribution made by the person in serving the community, declaration of all assets owned by the person to ensure that assets are not disproportionate to the income of the person, whether the person has been convicted for any offence in the past etc. There must be maximum age limit to bar the entry of old and sick people who are sticking to politics till the very end. The average age of our politicians is 70 years plus. We need young people with fresh ideas and not oldies who can barely stand on their own feet.

In a democracy, the power of ballot is much greater than the power of Bullet. We can pull down the corrupt and inefficient government through ballot box only. Every individual who is eligible to vote should seize the opportunity during election and must cast his vote to the most deserving candidate without fail. If we do not exercise our rights during election, we should blame ourselves for the kind of politicians occupying chairs and ruling us. I would not be too harsh if I say

"politicians are like Diapers which need to be changed everytime for the same reason"

Auction of Mahatma's personal belongings

It is ironic that Mahatma Gandhi's personal belongings were possessed by a foreigner and he auctioned them in international market and received 1.8 million dollars as the price. Our government was a mute spectator unable to stop the auction. Fortunately, Vijay Mallya, the liquor Baron was instrumental in taking possession of these items by virtue of being the highest bidder. He has denied any role of the government in his action. It is shameful that Government is now taking credit for what Vijay Mallya did. I won't be surprised if the government imposes import duty on these items at the port of entry. The corrupt ministers and beaurocrates of congress party are miles away from Mahatma's ideals. He is reduced to a portrait hanging on the walls of most of government's offices.

Positive Attitudes

It is not the technical incompetence but the attitude which differentiates between success and failure. Technical competence is required at the very base level but as you go higher up in the ladder, you require competency to handle people. You stop doing work yourself and engage other people to work for you. It is far more difficult to get the work done from others than to work yourself. If a company promotes a person purely on the basis of his performance in the current job, it is taking a great risk. The concerned person after promotion is doomed to be failure if he is ill equipped with the skillsets required to perform the new role. Annual appraisal should consider not only his performance to achieve key result area but his capabilities to perform leadership roles as well. Performance of a person can only demonstrate his efficiency towards the current job but not his capability to assume new role. The person who has positive attitude can create an aura of positivity around him. Such a person can motivate and lead his sub ordinates much better than a person who is critical, suspicious, doubtful,moody etc. People management skill require great inter personal skill, good communication skill, conflict resolution skill,Team building skill,Delegation skill etc. One of the key to motivate sub ordinates is to give due recognition to him for his achievements and to take full responsibility for his failures.

Post Retirement

Post retirement, I am engaged in consultancy assignments not for any monetary benefit but just to engage my mind in doing something constructive. I have enough time at my disposal to do social service which I have long been wanting to do. I have decided to start an independent organisation to help educate poor children. To start with, I will use my own fund to educate some bright but poor children in Mumbai Municipal schools but as more and more children will come under the perview of this scheme, I will need fund from other sources and that is when I will approach businessmen, corporates etc to get more funds.I am doing research on this project right now and once I am ready with complete project plan, I will start implementing it gradually. Nothing will be more satisfying to me than seeing this project through. I have taken enough from the society in my prime time, Now is the time for me to give it back as I think I owe a lot to the society. This is undoubtedly the best phase of my life. I have started taking interest in doing little things which I used to ignore earlier. Like for example, I make it a point to go for morning walk daily along with my wife. On the way back home, I help her in buying vegetables and other household items. I have learnt how to bargain with vegetable vendors to get the best of price. I have enough time in the world to take good care of my health. I have no compulsion to eat outside food which I dislike. I have the privilege to eat home made food and in time. I have enough time to be with my wife. My relationship with her has improved tremendously. I am doing things which I like and not that I have to do it whether I like it or not. I am not under any pressure to finish the project within the deadline set. I have become more spiritual than ever. I have got peace of mind and this is what everybody is trying to get.