Trustworking!

“I'm not upset that you lied to me, I'm upset that from now on I can't believe you” -Friedrich Nietzsche

It was that time of my life when i was still struggling to show that i am no more a teenager, by the virtue of my micro mustache. I had the "first best friend" of my life. We used to play cricket together, and that's all we used to do then. Studies were a mere 'night watchman' to score the runs...urghhh, the marks, to be able to be the part of the cricket team of our class, the following year. So after all the regular processes of winning the confidence of my parents, i was allowed to gift myself a cricket bat, my first ever. I scored 32 not out runs with it the very next day. And then i gave it to my "first best friend" to keep it at his place for the night as his home was nearby the ground. The next morning, when we met at the school, he was without my beloved. When asked, he said what could only suit a pro politician. He lied. Plain vanilla lie, that he knows nothing about the bat. That he never had it. This was the first time in my life that i was cheated upon, the trust was broken. I knew i had a lovely bat, but never thought it to be so good that someone could actually steal it.

"You can't even trust water: Even a straight stick turns crooked in it." W.C.Fields

What comes naturally to humans, trust or distrust? Should we trust everything and everyone until proven otherwise? Or vice versa? Or is it like 'whats the big deal' ? Trust: confident expectation of something. This is how oxford dictionary defines it. I feel, trust is like the oxygen concealed in the air. So, you just don't inhale oxygen, but air and you exhale all that is not oxygen. Trust to me is exactly like this. Ideally you should trust in totality and then leave out all that's not trustworthy. Let me explain. I can trust my bank to keep my money safe (even after Lehman Brothers) but i cannot trust them to not charge me exorbitantly. So what do i do? I negotiate. I keep a check. I exhale. Let's take another example. When i drive i trust the road, my vehicle and the other vehicles. But then i cannot trust them so much that i drive with my eyes closed. And yet i trust them so much that i speed up, over take and follow their indicators(signals). I remain safe and keep moving. I exhale.

Another argument is that these examples are of a system driven trust and not instinct based trust. There's a difference when you trust a bank/road vis-a-vis a friend, family or a stranger. I agree. But, I feel we as a society are obsessed with 'time'. We generally trust everyone and anyone whom we have known for a long time. It starts with the family, the very first people we meet on this earth. For the same reason childhood friends are trusted more than college friends. The old clients, employees, partners, brands etc. are blindly trusted. 'Old is Gold' works. Always? What ails the 'new' is the fear of unknown. Lack of knowledge/consciousness.

"I am fine when i don't know what i don't know. I am restless when i know what i don't know." - Anonymous Scientist.

Actually when we distrust someone/something we are distrusting our knowledge/consciousness of the person/subject and when we trust someone/something we trust our knowledge/consciousness of it. So when its broken or upheld, its that awareness/consciousness that's at work and not the subjects credentials. Just come to think of all those people who have arrived in their lives, they reached that far not by distrusting but by trust. Trust in themselves. So when they happen to meet new opportunity/people their natural and first instinct is to trust, have faith, and nothing else exists. No question of distrust. Such is their conviction in their instinct of trust. Trust is not an emotion. Its an instinctive mental ability, something that enables you to reach the potty seat despite of complete darkness in the bedroom and a sleepwalking body and mind. You trust every step and hence every step trusts you. Its all about you and the consciousness about your self.

"There isn't much difference between 'distrust' and 'destruct', is there?" -Anonymous Terrorist.

Sadly, in the times that we are living, every mother's first lesson to a teenager is of distrust. DO NOT TRUST anything until proven. She doesn't trust her upbringing and teachings. She doesn't trust her trust in her ability to create of a good human being out of a kid. She doesn't trust her very own DNA. And hence so much circumspection around with everything and everyone. I dearly feel, that the do-not-trust epidemic germinates here. The teenager starts feeling so insecure that his first and natural instinct becomes distrust. Which means: Not having confident expectation of something.
So we have a world where we spend big on networking but low on trustworking i.e. the people whom you can trust with your life. I hope to see a world where we grow in life not just because we know and we are known, but because we trust and we are trusted. Reading into the future and sticking my neck out, TRUSTWORKING will work more than NET WORTH and NETWORK both put together. The only way to make the world trustworthy is to trust it. No matter what. I do.

I still trust my 'first best friend', that the bat indeed was too lovely to part away with.

WHY RELATIONSHIPS?

Amongst many things that happen in a life, relationships are the most involving. Relationship invokes and involves all the five senses. It relieves or results in pain. It grows and sometimes grows out. It demands as much as it commands. It involves tears of joy & jolt and fears of loss & loath. Some are made to look good, while others are good but are not looked into. Let us look in.

One off my childhood learning still stays with me. “Bone broken, don’t walk, heart broken, don’t talk”. This advisory was from my cricket coach in class VI, with reference to what to do when one is hurt (physical hurt or ego hurt) while playing. But on second thought, do you think this works? I don’t. The ‘relationship web’ that we weave around ourselves is getting more and more dependent on five triggers: trust, time, talk, taste, and tribe. I call them triggers because they are the cause as well as the clause (part) of a relationship. And any relationship that manages to survive in absence of any of these is living as dangerously as the camp near a volcano.

The first set of relationship that we get inherited with at birth is our immediate family and relatives. Let us name them TRIBE relationships. “Family comes first” has been an old adage is still followed by most of the Indians. In this exponentially changing era it is becoming more and more difficult to keep this ‘tribal web’ intact. There are too many troubled father-son, brother-brother/sister, father-mother, uncle-nephew, cousin-cousin, father-son-in-law etc set of relationships that are either getting suffocating or are on the verge of destruction. Some are being carried off because they carry other relationships, while others are being carried for mutually selfish & ulterior motives. And there are still others that exist because living with them is little less harmful than leaving them. In the times when (phone) call rates are almost equal to zero, the rate at which you call up your family and say “kya haal hai” is also alarmingly close to zero. I can give you reams of examples of relationships that have not spoken a word in the last few years, even as they continue sharing their bathrooms, bedrooms and drawing rooms. But there’s no room for a TALK.

“Best relationship is when the silence between the individuals is comfortable.”

This brings me to the other trigger called TALK. While they say feelings are expressed more through eyes and emotions, what is of paramount need is, to keep exchanging more than a few words. I agree that there are times when you better shut-up and get on with it, but at the end of the life you better have regrets of what unnecessary you spoke than what necessary you didn’t. Ideally speaking the relationship should reach such a stage where the communication happens without a word being spoken or there’s no need to communicate as you develop absolute tacit mutual understanding & compassion. Just look at a new born baby and the mother. To me that’s the ultimate relationship. Because the only communication that they have is the baby’s cry and they both are comfortable only when there’s absolute silence. If ever you want to test your relationship, test it on this parameter, I promise you will never be disappointed. But let me re-emphasize again, talking is must to cultivate any relationship, while your eventual aim should be develop a comfortable silence.

TIME & TRUST are the two axis of relationship graph. You might need time to develop trust, but once the trust is there the relationship becomes timeless. There are people with whom you spent just a few moments (in a journey or at a function) and you trust them for a lifetime. And then there are people you have spent a life with but don’t trust them even for a moment. Like that maid of yours, who has been at your service for more than half of her age but you still reassure her each time that she is still just a maid. Or for that matter a friend of yours with whom you spent all your school life, but you told him of your ‘bigger’ problem, when he asked your help in a ’big’ problem. Alas! I know how rational the world and its ways are and it makes us so rational that even a movie that you know is your true story, you shrug it off saying, it is just an emotional melodrama, and “aisa real life mein nahi hota hai”. Stop cheating yourself. You are as emotional a person as the hero of that movie. You cried and realized, but never took an action by letting the other person (read: parents, cousins, friends or ex-boyfriend/girlfriend) how soft you are at heart, still. And how much you regret not giving your best to them. Wake up, what are you waiting for. TIME is running out, TRUST me!

And lastly, relationships are also made out of your personal choices, likes interests etc, say TASTE. Most of the relationship troubles are because you are concentrating on what’s missing in the other person, whereas however good or bad you feel about your relationship, the person you are with at this moment is the "right" person, because he or she is the mirror of who you are inside.

Finally to sign it off;

“Kabhi kisi ko mukammal jahan nahin milta, kahin zameen toh kahin aasmaan nahi milta.

Tere jahan mein aisa nahin ke pyar na ho, jahan umeed ho iski wahan nahi milta”

All Ears, Always!

The most basic of all human needs is the need to understand and be understood. The best way to understand people is to listen to them. Listening is by far the simplest process a human body undergoes. And still we have not yet explored it, forget mastering. What is even more disgusting is that we are least bothered. While I attempt to bother, I want you to be all ears.

Ear is a radar that picks up frequencies created by any kind of sound and sends them to the brain. This is hearing. Hearing is an effect (of some sound or noise), while listening is an effort. Hearing is just a happening, while listening is a liking. Many of us have only heard and never listened in our lives. Listening is an effort to receive all that comes to the ears in the form of speech or sound and understand it as well as if you have spoken it. A good listener tries to understand what is being said. In the end he may disagree sharply, but because he disagrees, he must know what exactly he disagrees with. Listening is a more involving and evolved process of human consciousness. So the first thing to do is to stop hearing and start listening.

“Knowledge speaks and Wisdom listens”

A thought or two about speaking. “To speak and to talk are two different things. A fool may talk but an intelligent man speaks, said Ben Jonson, the only rightful competitor of William Shakespeare. And when a knowledgeable man speaks only wise man has the ears, heart and wisdom to listen. The wisdom he possesses is not because he is wise, but because he listens. Out of the 5 senses, listening uses the least amount of energy. Perhaps that’s why sound (alarm) is used to wake up from sleep. Listening is a very sensitive process. It has a few variants. Here are some of them.

You don’t just listen to sound outside you. You can listen to your own voice. Try speaking your name, and it sounds like the crescendo of a concert. Try listening to your thoughts, they sound even louder clearer because they are even closer to the brain. Try listening to the feelings of pain, relief, desire, joy, surprise etc. Each of this has a distinct sound associated with it. I would even go to the extent of saying that everything in this world is sound or has sound or makes sound. All you need is a set of ears that can catch, convey and comprehend these sound waves.

“I know that you believe you understand what you think I said, but I'm not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.” Robert McCloskey.

The one factor that will make you a genius listener is patience. There is no barter for patience. The second equally important intention is to get the message right, exact in every sense of the word of the speaker. Then you need is a positive body language make the speaker feel confident that he is making sense to you. This will help him to convey his idea better, so the eventually beneficiary is you, the avid listener.

So following are the thumb rules:

1. Listen to the speaker, not to what you will say in return.
2. Listen as if you are listening to the cancellation of your death sentence.
3. When you speak, make sure that you have finished speaking before the audience has finished listening.
4. Interrupt only when, the speaker wants it.
5. Remember, your ears will never get you in trouble.

So as you start to resolve to be a better listener. Let’s sign off with not so famous lines of a very famous listener:

“If A equals success, then the formula is A equals X plus Y and Z, with X being work, Y play, and Z keeping your mouth shut.” Albert Einstein.

Why Habits?

 

 

First we make our habits, then our habits make us –Charles C. Noble

 

What do we make of habits? Nothing! We pass them off as obvious & granted, as blinking. But they reveal more about a character than even an autobiography. Habits tell you, what a person himself never knew about him. And this doesn’t take an Einstein to do so. Let us explore the world of habits.

For a start, let me define habit. It is a recurrent, often unconscious pattern of behavior that is acquired through frequent repetition. So this definition makes things, like your style of brushing teeth, washing hands, combing hair, wearing socks etc unique to you & your character. They become your DNA. So very much embedded & exact that even your dead body, if allowed, would do it exactly the same way. There are three microscopes through which habits could be observed and analyzed. Have a read.

Pursuits become habits.

If you go down to observe ourselves under, what I call, a “behavioral microscope”, you will find even petty facts like what way you tie the shoe lace, which hole of the waist belt you use, which way do you apply you lipstick, the way you prick nose, your food & eating manners, blah -blah. Just try and reflect upon that unique way in which you apply soap to your body. Or the flowchart of your bathing sequences. Look at the way you hold your pen or the way you write ‘r’ or ‘7”. It also involves observing things like what is the peculiar action you take when you yawn, sneeze or burp. Know them more & the more you will be known. Because, these habits make a “gentleman”.

Now, reflect yourselves under, what I term as, an “attitudinal microscope”. Find the peculiar emotions & thoughts a situation of anger, trouble, frustration, joy, success generate in you. The ethical & moral reactions to these things. Record the exact thoughts and the order, in which they come to your mind when you see, hear, feel, smell or taste anything. Try and put yourselves in various situations & you will have a wholesome database of habitual observations. The more you understand them, the more the World understands you. Let me call such person a “mental-man”.

The third and the most intricate microscope is the “spiritual microscope”. We have so far looked at the primary & the secondary layer of habits. Apart from these habits, there are certain habits pertaining to your subconscious and spiritual self. Try and reason, you feeling ecstatic listening to that favourite song of yours. Or when you visit a particular place, religious, adventurous or scenic, you get a certain sense of calm & nostalgia. Or when you are with the beloved person of your life, everything else ceases to matter. Or when even with no preconceived notions, we find get pulled and bound into some stranger’s aura. While with some the exact opposite happens. Also things like watching a movie, reading a book or even the company of a pet animal or a treasured gift give you an emotional and spiritual high.

While some of you might not agree, but all of these and the kind, form the third and the most important level of your “habitual sandwich”. Although nobody can perfect his spiritual habits, anyone who even attempts to do so, should be called nothing less than a “holy-man”. Look around and you will indeed find a lot of achievers & famous personalities who were aware of their spiritual habits and tried to better the habits.

“Habit is the nursery of errors.”

All the physical pain that exists in this world is mostly due to bad “behavioral habits”, like smoking or junk eating. And the emotional pain happens due to weak “attitudinal habits”, like negativity or depression. If want to see the results of absence of good “spiritual habits” then look at what brings destruction & uncontrolled aggression in the World. Be it a terrorist who explodes a bomb or a politician who makes an opportunity out of agony. A kid who steals co-benchers stationery or son whose parents address is a old-age home. For the world to become a better place to live in, our spiritual habits need to be given due attention and importance.

To cultivate better spiritual habits you need to train yourself on qualities like holistic goal making & goal fetching. The means should be atleast be equally, if not more important than the end. Three commandments for betterment of your spiritual habits can (sense of) Purpose, Patience and Purity.

Finally to sign it off,

“Things start out as hopes and end up as habits. -- Lillian Hellman”   

 

             

 

  

Why Rain?

I have just got up from a ‘heated’ dinner debate about the best season of them all.

One said “winter” for all the comforts it provides. The other said “summer”, firstly because of school holidays and secondly for its scientific importance in facilitating rains. I stood firm. On what? Off course on rainy season.

The reasons I gave them were more technical so that they don’t understand much of it and let me finish the dinner fast. So that I could write this column before the exponentially fast approaching deadline. But when I have actually sat down to write, I couldn’t think of anything but rain.

There’s something very unique and personal about everyone’s perception of rain. None of the other two seasons cause so much alteration of lifestyle, routine & the surrounding. You look at the kind of clothes you wear, the food you eat and the things you do. The very surroundings of the home that looked so boring now sport a new, fresh & vibrant look. It’s like someone has changed the wallpaper of your desktop or the theme of you mobile handset. The potholed roads give you a fun of the Essel World plus Water Kingdom. Getting late now has a royal excuse. Umbrellas are the latest accessories and raincoat the in-fashion clothing.

There are other things too that make rains the ‘king of good times’. This is the only season that affects all the five senses. Follow this.

Which is the best fragrance that a human nose can smell?

The smell of the soil after the first rains of the season.

Which is the most lovable sound to the ear?

The sound of rain droplets on a window pane, on a tin roof or in a lake.

And the best touch ever?

The feel of the rain trickling down on your hands from the spokes of the umbrella.

And which is the most wonderful sight?

The sight of the tallest tree in the locality dancing to the tune of the drizzling rain & gawky wind.

What taste’s the best?

When it rains, just open your mouth and look up into the sky.

Tell me anything in any other season that could provide such joy & pleasure to all your senses. The summer and the winter are too harsh (especially our Nagpur version) to make sense to any of the senses. And you cannot see, taste, hear or smell them. You can just feel it. And feel good or bad subjectively.

Apart from the aesthetic values, there’s a bit of spiritual potential to the rain.

All of the spiritual science talks of controlling & focusing your senses. Rain teaches and enables the same. It demands so much out of you that you forget everything and just loose yourself to it. That’s a prime example of the bhakti rasa. The spirit of compassion. Of devotion and focused attention. You should be in it so much so that nothing that is out of it should matter to you.

Rain does all of this to you. Can you imagine not talking of rain when it’s raining? Can you ignore the lightning that accompanies it? How can you ignore it when it is drenching you in and out? All this is symbolism of what it means to be compassionate. Compassion is always and all inclusive. And this is the process of self-realisation. You focus all your senses on something, so much that you are drenched, swallowed, smelled, seen and heard into it. And then when you have done this all that remains is your “self” and nothing else.

There’s another very personal thing that a famous man said about the rain.

“I like walking in the rain, because nobody can see me crying” – Charlie Chaplin.

LET’S SEX IT UP!

“When a sexagenarian asks where did I come from? The answer lies in philosophy. And when a teenager asks, where did I come from? The answer lies in sex.”

Life’s exciting. More exciting is the way it is created. Yes, you thought it right. Sex! Ok let me ask you some really general questions, of which I want some really personal answers.

1. When did you first come to know about sex?
2. How did you first come to know about sex?
3. What were your first thoughts on sex? (Before & after knowing about it.)
4. When did your first sex happen? (Na..na..i won’t get that personal to ask you “how or with whom”)

You can read this column only if you have answered atleast 3 of them. Because, while I have been given the license to be controversial, I cannot afford to make it a ‘sex education’ column & get CENTRESPREAD ‘banned’.

I will tell you my answers.

First: I came to know about sex at the age of 13.

Second: I came to know when I watched my first ever adult film at a friend’s place whose parents were out for a couple of days.

Third: Before I knew, all I thought was the mother goes to the hospital and a child is born after an operation. After I knew, I thought, what the heck was so dirty or guilty about such a pleasurable & simple act, when I knew how to pee & shit since I was 36 months old. Why is ‘this’ awesome process so personal and ‘that’ filthy process so public?

Fourth: ‘Foreplay’ happened before marriage & the ‘play’ after it.

So now that I am so open to you, let me just explore how & why sex is so interesting but mysterious. Over the years I found out how & why sex is interesting. But even after answering all the four questions above, I still don’t know why it is still kept personal, secret, hidden or mysterious. Why when there cannot life without sex, we keep the living beings unaware of it for many years of their age? Let us attempt to find out.

“Most personal is the most general”

Whatever we do very personally, everybody does it generally. We breathe, bath, breed etc at a very personal level i.e. you do it alone and only for yourself. And everyone does this personally. All alone & for oneself. Sex is also one of these personal, yet so general things. We all do it & all of us know that we all do it. Every child is born with sexual instincts like he is born with linguistic instincts. He is not programmed to speak a particular language but just to speak whatever language he is trained in. As the child grows up, you will find some speak really fluently with superb sense of vocabulary & grammar, while others are really loose/foul in their speech. Some are extroverts, while some of them naturally introvert. Some speak but nobody understands, while some can’t speak at all.

Similarly with his sexual instincts, the child’s sexual orientation, skill, sense & intensity are the results of the environment & beliefs of the contemporary society, law, religion & culture. A child may grow up to be sexually aggressive even to the extent of a rapist while the other may develop into a Casanova. Some other may like his/her own sex while someone both. On the other hand, one might love himself (masturbation). Still someone might not have it in him. I personally feel that as a species (especially Indians) we have failed miserably to understand this simple phenomenon. We might have multiplied into a billion through sex, but we hardly have understood it as well as we understand other things.

What we need to understand is that there are two parts to it. The destination and the journey. Sex & the pleasure derived before & after sex. We mix them up big time. For us kissing and copulation means the same thing. For us touching and fondling is all the same. This is absolutely silly, morally and scientifically. At one place on earth i.e. Tahiti Islands, it is quite common for you to see couples engaged in an intercourse at a public place. (is it why Abhi-ash are honeymooning there?) While on the same planet, you have places where you cannot even see the eyes of the opposite sex. (sometimes even of the same sex). In USA you can kiss in public places but cannot pee; in India you can pee in public places but cannot even touch, forget kissing.

Let there only be co-education. Let there be clothes that look good & sexy. Let there be live-in relationships. Let there be work-in relationships. Let there be dance bars & adult movies. But along with all of this, let there be sex education. Let parents be the sex educators. Let love be love & sex be sex. Let foreplay be foreplay & the ‘play’ be ‘play’. Let me get aroused & excited, but also let me know whats, whys, hows & ifs of the sexual adventure. Let me test & check my character and not the police (moral or immoral).

We are the only species that procreates for joy and not only for reproduction. And if we hide this from each other & our youngsters, the situation will be as dangerous as treading into a rose garden in darkness. The flowers might smell good but the thorns will tear you apart.

Finally to sign it off

“Sex is not the answer. Sex is the question. ‘Yes’ is the answer.”

LET’S FOOL AROUND

In praise of foolishness!

“A fool is known by six things: anger, without cause; speech, without profit; change, without progress; inquiry, without object; putting trust in a stranger, and mistaking foes for friends”. – Arabian Proverb.

I think a foolish person (fool) is the one who knows, does & views things differently. Very different than the wise men, as well as the other fools. And that’s why neither the wise men nor the other fools comprehend, contemplate or communicate with him. And for the sake of convenience & respect the name given to this living thing is “fool”. I thought, this month (April Fools) is a wise time to talk about fools & foolishness.

We always tend to relate foolishness to absence of common sense & knowledge. Fools are unwanted & unentertained everywhere, because we feel they are just not worth it. But if you keep yourself open minded enough you could very well realise that foolishness is not that foolish after all. It is much beyond the logical, rational & unimaginative minds of wise people. I say this primarily for the following reasons.

“Foolishness is not a person, but an event”

You will agree that we all have been foolish at some instance, phase or stage of our lives. And we have seen wisest of the wise men being foolish at times. For instance, famed the scientists & researchers at NASA, U.S. had spent years & millions on finding the right tool to be able to write in the space, because a pen won’t work for the lack of gravity, only to find that their counterpart in the then U.S.S.R (Russia), used pencil to solve the same problem. Now would you dare call NASA, foolish? Even in our daily lives we make a mess due to our silly logics. But we call them ‘mistakes’, because they are not frequent or important enough for our liking to be called as foolish. So the only matter of difference between wise & fools is of the frequency & magnitude of mistakes. Once you have crossed that thin threshold limit between silliness & foolishness you are pretty likely to be called a ‘fool’ by your contemporaries. To me it only means that you have gone beyond the thinking and imagination of your time & its time to move on.

“Those who do not hear the music think the dancers mad”

If orkut was to form a group of fool or mad people, it will surely have these names registered. Copernicus, Isaac Newton, Archimedes, Aristotle, Galileo, Saint Kabeer, Mirza Ghalib etc. All of them, for most of their lives have been called fools or mad by the contemporary society. It happens because they happened to arrive into the world before the world’s was ready for them. The parameters & the purpose with which they came were not even imagined then. It was like repairing a MARUTI 800 with the tools of a Mercedes S class. Complete mismatch of the tools & the machine. A complete mismatch of their talents & their times. So when we judge the fools of our times, we need to wait for atleast a century to confirm that, or else the World then, will laugh at us for laughing at the geniuses of their times.

“Even a stopped clock is right twice a day”

To think fools are useless is foolish. All the real creativity that the World has ever seen has been out of the spark of madness. It took some real madness to prove gravity out a falling apple. It took a real fool to prove to the world about the shape of their planet. It took insanity to look for something into the dark blank sky, and find that we are nothing (compared to the whole universe). Even in our modern times we need to have a relook at everything foolish & everyone mad, for there is a lot of mess that the wise men have created. Who else on this shy planet has got the capacity to do what everyone else is ashamed off? Who else on this tensed planet can make you laugh no matter what? Who else on this logical planet can create what cannot even be imagined? Who else on this falsified planet can trust strangers & foes? Who else on this selfish planet can speak or do without his profit?

Finally to sign it off…

“Man is certainly stark mad; he cannot make a flea, and yet he will be making gods by dozens”

--Michel de Montaigne quotes (French Philosopher and Writer. 1533-1592)