Service

When you begin service, it’s actually a natural urge. But at the start, you still have to learn a lot of things..

1) Your urge for perfection makes you bossy and irritates others and they move away

2) Then you may fall into urge for seeking love, attachments, attention, group and deviate

3) In the early days, you have ‘doership’ attitude that ‘I am doing it’, ‘because of me’, which dissolves with experiences

At the end, when you come out of all of it, being human, you keep experiencing traces of it in day-to-day life, but the urge for seva never dissolves. It may reduce for sometime in between, you may not do seva for some time, but the urge is a natural urge.. and when the break is over, you are going to be back to serving.

Are you bigger than the goal?

Do we give the completion of a task a higher priority than the urge to do it by ourselves?

Good work happens when people come together and take individual ownerships. So, at the start, work happens when we take ownership. And later, more work happens when the ownership is given away. To test ourselves, we can ask ourselves a question- For the sake of our goals, are we willing to collaborate and work with a person with whom we experience ego issues? Guruji says that if you have differences, then keep the differences and still maintain harmony.

I recollect a few cases where goals went temporarily haywire - Differences between Lokmanya Tilak and Gopal Krishna Gokhale led to the temporary division of the Congress in the early 1900s. The opposition to Narendra Modi by L. K. Advani was hurting BJP’s goals. Criticism of Arvind Kejriwal by Anna Hazare hampered the IACs anti-corruption movement.

The world is filled with innumerable service projects. If one is complete, the other is ready for you. But the contentment is when we bring more and more people to accomplish the goal.. isn’t it?

Time

Sometimes the clock moves so slow.
With every tick, pain flow.

Why does the creation move so gradual?
Years it takes for change to be observable.

The needle has its distinct traits.
The more you observe it, the more it waits.

Oh, what a wonder, what a mystery!
Each eye perceives the speed so differently.

Time and again, we try to free.
But when will we just let it be?

And as we look behind, we expose a trick.
The present is slow, but the past moved pretty quick.

Not so long back, the events created fury.
But now all that exists is a fading memory.

A roller coaster ride till the end..

Till its end, life is full of twists and turns. Filled with unknown successes and setbacks, this roller coaster ride always has something in store for you..

Recently, I was reading the memoirs of Natwar Singh, the External Affairs Minister of India in the UPA1 government. By the way, he is a very good writer

and I enjoy reading the experiences of his diplomat days. Natwar Singh joined the IFS in 1952. In his memoirs, he recollects how he received a telegram from the UPSC while he was studying at Cambridge for just over two months, to report in Delhi within a week for an interview. He recollects being nervous for those 45 minutes of his interview as that would decide his life. He finally made it to the IFS. In his notes, Natwar Singh mentions about the joy that his family experienced when they unexpectedly got to know about his clearing the most competitive exam while listening to a programme on the All India Radio. The programme was suddenly interrupted to announce the names of the 15 selected candidates, his name being one of them! Life gives events for achievements and celebrations. After a successful career as a diplomat spanning about three decades, he joined the Congress party and rose to become the External Affairs minister in 2004. But then, came the shocker- he was "found to be a beneficiary" in the Iraq’s oil-for-food scam and was later kicked out of the Congress.

All should wonder whether only one person from India can be held responsible for a scam of such huge magnitude. In fact, Congress party's name too had cropped up, but the issue was buried soon. Unlike the recent times when the spirits of the awakened India are such that every scam like Commonwealth, 2G or Coalgate is torn apart and exposed by the media, this scam of the UPA1 govt escaped the public's eyes pretty quickly. The question is- Did Natwar Singh have a choice to say ‘no’ to this scam and still continue as the External Affairs minister of the country? Was he a victim of the flood of corruption that has drowned this country? I feel like pointing out how life, after giving you the best of the best in your earlier years, can throw you in a jeopardy later, where you have no choice but to either take sides of the truth and fight back the tsunami of corruption or to support the corrupt and try to hold your position, which, as we can see now, eventually leads to a massive downfall. But then, the integrity of a person is only tested in such situations. Are you willing to risk your convenience, pleasures, position, comfort and friends to fight against the tides of evil around you?

Manmohan Singh’s story is no different. Scaling through success during his earlier years- from being the RBI Governor to the man who saved India from the severe financial crisis in the early 1990s, he landed up in a net of corrupt Congress politicians in the UPA2 govt. But was he willing enough to hold on to his ethics and fight back?

But unlike Natwar Singh and Manmohan Singh, where you get trapped in a net, some people simply fall prey to their inner greed. Take for example, Rajat Gupta, one of the most famous global CEOs from India. He too has a story to tell. He belonged to

the Indian middle-class- the son of a freedom fighter who went to jail during India’s freedom struggle. Rajat lost his father at the age of 16 and his mother two years later. Being orphaned in his teens, he faught back and ranked 15th in the competitive IIT JEE examination. He graduated in Mechanical engineering from IIT Delhi. From campus, he bagged the elite ITC job offer, only to reject it later in order to pursue an MBA from the prestigious Harvard Business School. He mentions that the first time he saw an aircraft was when he visited the ITC office to inform them that he would not be joining them! His rise to success is very inspiring. But then, what made him lose his path and do something stupid that ruined all the respect that he had earned?? Life can be a very tough learning experience till the very end of it!

Yeh Jawani Hai Diwani!!

Every good movie has a particular scene or dialogue that touches us. I watched Yeh Jawani Hai Diwani recently. Barring a few mis-placed parts, the movie was simply awesome! And the best scene of the movie for me-

The character Bunny (played by Ranbir Kapoor) wants to go around places and see, experience the world. But in that one scene in the movie, where Naina (played by Deepika Padukone) makes him realize that she need not go anywhere else to ‘get it’, she has it all here. For California ki dhoop, she has Mumbai ki baarish; for berry cheese cake, she has gajar ka halwa; for Norway mein opera, she has Maratha Mandir mein DDLJ. Life has everything every where, but fulfillment is now here.. and not where you are not. And if Bunny is craving to go somewhere else to ‘get’ something else, he would miss the beautiful sunset that’s there in front of him at that moment in that scene.

Life throws so much uncomfortable situations to Bunny to make him realize this.. while he’s away from home and into his adventures, he loses his father and gets to know about it only a week later.

Purpose of Pain

I often wondered why God has made experience of physical pain a part life. Every living being on this planet falls ill or meet with an accident and goes through physical pain.

Recently, I had very bad pain in my wisdom tooth. The dentist told me that it needs to be removed. I promptly agreed for the extraction and accepted the pain that the procedure would inflict on me. Now, having learnt and practiced to live in the present moment at least in a few situations, I kept my self away from anxiety of future pain, till, eventually when I settled down in the dentist’s operating chair. At that time, all the thoughts of my daily chores disappeared and fear gripped me! Right from when he applied local anesthesia and injected pain-killers in my mouth through syringes, I had dropped all my other intentions, worries and tasks aside and only kept praying, surrendering and asking Guruji- why am I supposed to go through all this? By the grace, the procedure was completely smooth and painless! But, I realized that possibly, I have an answer for the purpose of pain in life- at least for those moments of anticipated pain, I forgot everything else and brought myself in the present moment and in prayers. The intention of pain, whether physical or emotional should be to bring a person to surrender and prayers at least for some time.

A Beautiful Poem!