Republic Day - India at 60

Once again...India displayed its military might and cultural heritage on 26th January...once again amidst tight security. 

There were reports of firing from across the border. The same newspaper that carried images and reports of Aman ki Asha also carried images of a fence cut open and the report talked about possible infiltration of terrorists with an aim to destabilise the nation. Tensions from the auctioning of players are still echoing across cricketing nations. Concerts are being organised to reinstate faith in harmony and peace....

We got to see a refurbished, remixed version of 'mile sur mera tumhara' dominated by film personalities and playback singers...TV channels aired movies throughout the day. The list of Padma awardees look like a list of film industry achievers with a name here and there for people from other streams almost as an afterthought....We learnt that a crater in moon will be named after one Mr.Shahrukh Khan who wants another crater named after Mr. Amitabh Bhachhan...

We got one day off from work...and watched all these on TV.

We are a nation full of people craving for hope and faith!

Jai Hind....or should it be Jai ho?

Book: For One More Day - Mitch Albom

"Have you ever lost someone you love and wanted one more conversation, one more chance to make up for the time when you thought they would be here forever? What if you got it back?" 

The book in a single line would be - A suicidal former baseball player is granted one more day with his dead mother.


It's a gripping story of a shattered family that's superbly written. Mingled with moments that wring the heart, it is in a fluid style where a broken Charles 'Chick' Benetto narrates the story of his life. 


The book is about Chick's failure to build a a professional career and his even more serious failure with his family, job and finance. It's about his failure to discern what is right and what is wrong, failure in realising the most important people & things of his life. It's about his blind faith in his father that leads him to do so many irresponsible things like dropping out of college and lie to his mother. One day he leaves home for a game, he leaves her birthday party, without declaring the real reason of course...he shuts the car door as his mother speaks to him...that's the last he sees her alive. She dies as timely medical help is not available. And our Benetto lives in regret of all those times he didn't stand up for his mother. 



The book starts with a shocking question about why he wanted to commit suicide. As he takes us along his life one cannot help but feel sorry for him. One can actually empathise with the kid for the shallow ambitions without any preparation.


As a father, as a husband, as an individual he manages to become a pathetic loser in all of these aspects. He plans his suicide and is not able to go about it the way he wanted. He meets with a road accident from where the story leads us to his meeting with his mother. And then he returns, loaded with the lessons from his mother that he got during the one day that he spends with her in his town. 

The moments they spend together is very insightful and touching. This results in patching up the broken bond between the two. Their discussion about lives of different people they visit, the final moments of people known to them and finally their discussion about the one woman who would have drawn the utmost hatred....an amazing trip about people and relationships.



The mother. She towers above all the chaos. Incidents of times when the mother stood up for him...and times when he didn't stand up for her  that dot the book are amazing. We take our parents for granted. Particularly the mother. But she comes out of it all much stronger than anyone else in this book. And gives him one more day in his life to realise what he had done with his life. And then, magically, he gets to live on...to correct his mistakes and earn back the faith and trust of his daughter. The revelation of the listener's identity in the end is a pleasant surprise and proves that he actually succeeds in getting his daughter back.



The transformation he undergoes after meeting his mother is nicely captured. After all, not every one gets to learn from one's mother after her death. It's one thing to remember what she stood for but it is another to live one full day again with her to learn from her and get a lot of issues clarified in person. The plot develops in a captivating way, capturing the different aspects of relationships beautifully.

A wonderful lesson that ends with a longing statement  "I would like to make things right again with those I love". 

Of course yes, we would all love to do just that, but have never found the time to do so. 

We are all two people

This is some improvement - the second post for 2010.  

This year is meant to be action oriented and it will be predominantly driven through goals & related actions. So, obviously I am pretty caught up deep into stuff like Goals, Goals to action, motivation and related topics.

I really liked this article which talks of two of each of us that we deal with on daily basis. One is the real one that happily flows with the stream and the other one that I like to call as the aspirational version of our self. Thanks to Motivation 123 for this simple yet hard hitting article on making both the versions meet. What a wonderful realization that could be!

I am planning to modify the Homework part a bit to suit my life but here goes the actual version from Jason Garcia

We are all two people.

The man or woman who gets up in the morning, drinks a cup of coffee, drives to work in a daze and snaps out of it a few hours later before repeating the cycle the next day.

And then there is the New You, the man or woman who is confident and cool, in control and able to make things happen. The rock star, the adventurer, the renowned expert. The best-selling author, the CEO, the tri-athlete, the supermom or the superdad.

The New You is the ideal you, the dream you.

Nearly everyone I know will live their whole lives without ever stepping into those shoes.

They'll dream about, sure, but they'll never be it. It will always be a fantasy.

But it doesn't have to be. You can become that person. You can become the man or woman you've created in your head. It all starts with a definition.

A Homework

You can't hit a target you can't see, so the first and most important step is defining the New You.

At some point in the next thirty minutes, get a pen and sheet of paper and describe, in detail, your dream life.

What are you like? What is your personality? Are you calm, patient, lively, nuts?

Where do you live? What kind of house do you own? What do you do for work? How do you feel about it?

What do you have for breakfast? Lunch? Dinner? Who do you have it with?

What do you do after work? What do you think about on the drive home? What do you talk about with your kids and spouse? What do you do on Saturdays? Sundays?

Most people won't take the time to do this, and they're the same people who will never step into the shoes of their rock-star selves.

But if you do, if you put your heart and mind into the exercise, I promise it will pay off. You'll finally have a picture of the life you're going to build.

It's the only place to start. Get started.

And remember, if you want to start 2010 off on the right foot, check out our Motivated Mind special.
http://www.motivation123.com/prd-tmm.html

Have a great weekend and don't just think about doing something. Instead...

Make something happen,
Jason

2010 - A Start

As 2009 folded up, Life is a treat as a blog was one of my personal things that were reviewed among other things. And not surprisingly, it ended up in the bottom pile in terms of my performance. Of course, it has to be there, rightfully.


No, I am not talking of performance in the usual sense of a blog here. Not about traffic, followers or comments. Anyway these were hardly anything to write about, almost nil. I am talking about MY performance...performance as in number of blogs posted in 2009.  


With just 10 posts in the whole year, 2008 was slightly better with 22 posts but 2007 was even better at 41 posts in just six months. I had started blogging in May that year. I can't believe how much I wrote those days. 

In 2009, at the rate of not even one post a month, and considering that even I didn't visit this blog for months at a stretch, I shouldn't have bothered to analyse the reasons at all. Reasons..believe me, there are  so many of them when I think of them but they are at best excuses.


So, at the end of yearly analysis, this blog turned out to be a showcase for my laziness and more alarmingly a decreasing level of communication with my self. One of the symptoms of doing too much of work at the cost of my personal space all around. Officially it was a great year...yes..really great. A lot of things done...lot of new areas touched and developed...but all of them were at professional level. Personal matters were generally the last thing on my mind last year.


Well, not any more. I have started a number of activities to take my personal aspects up a few notches this year. May be, I will write about them here sometime later.


Goals for this space:
1.One post a month: That's one of the easiest goals I have set for 2010...atleast it looks like that now. Let's see. At 12 posts per month, by the time this year closes, I would have performed better than the 10 posts for 2009. Let's leave it at this and we will evaluate this goal's validity in Dec 2010 :) 


2.Write for myself: This may sound clichéd but that's how I feel about it. I should be capturing a lot of conversations with myself here that should be available for me any time I wish to.

Dumbledore: "I use the Pensieve. One simply siphons the excess thoughts from one's mind, pours them into the basin, and examines them at one's leisure. It becomes easier to spot patterns and links, you understand, when they are in this form."

Harry: "You mean... that stuff's your thoughts?"

Dumbledore: "Certainly."

    -Albus Dumbledore to Harry Potter

At first I thought I should use a digital diary...even downloaded a few and tried them...then I thout this blog is as good as my personal diary...anyway no body visits here..so I have the assured privacy! Also in a blog, unlike a password protected digital diary in my password protected laptop, I have to honour what I commit here.

Even if anyone reads my posts by mistake, here goes the the mandatory piece..

Statutory Warning: You are at your own risk of exposure to my monologues (read boring stuff) and whatever you may feel after reading my posts is not intentional but do leave your thoughts...Welcome, my friend!

3. Write about new topics: This is to widen my horizon which is part of another bigger goal. I should be writing new topics that weren't touched here earlier.


4.Energizers: This blog should act as an energiser for me at low tides. This was done earlier but so erratically. Now, I will make this space my personal library for energisers.


5. Books: Last year I set a goal of reading 40 books but didn't even complete 10. I even had an excel sheet with identified list of books but could hardly complete 10 books throughout the year. Unbelievable performance...I should be flogged for this, seriously.

This must be the lowest number in the last decade. Symptom of ignoring self. Must change this year. I am committing the goal of reading 30 books here. Conservative but decided on a play-it-safe strategy here. 30 is definitely better than 10, right? Also, I want to set it lower than last year's target to make it look achievable. I will also be writing about the books with a tracker count of the progress in the year. It would be fun to track this count of books one reads for life, isn't it?  Found a good site - goodreads.com, have to explore there further.


Well, that should be enough for starters. 
Due for review next month!