Random Thought 1

By now you must have realized that this bog is different from most of the other blogs out there. Some blogs relate to the personal life or personal daily schedules of the writers while others discuss the various current domestic or world affairs. After visiting such blogs and reading all that the authors have got to write, I decided to make my blog different.

As mentioned in the introduction of my blog, I have already mentioned that I think and that thinking needs an outlet, since most of it is creative and I need more space which can only be made for the new thinking patterns when I get rid of the old ones. Now, this is the primary purpose of creating this blog. The thinking and the ideas and the necessary elaboration of the issues are indispensable.

So I find myself here again and again trying to give myself an outlet to the creative thoughts that creep into my mind and grow there. Though innumerable thoughts come to my mind every day I am able to relate to a few of them when I start writing. So this is the possible reason for my writing to be restricted to a few topics. I am working on my shortcomings and hope to improve upon them in the short term. I believe that identifying a shortcoming plays an important role in one's improvement plan. This, also, is the first step which a person can take in the positive direction i.e. towards improving. As you might already be aware that improvement need change.

I have already written about how change is the only constant factor in life. Now, change as described earlier is a change in the current situation or a relative difference between the current and previous situation. The change can be in any direction, but when we talk in the two dimensions and that too along the straight line; it could be a positive change or negative change. The nature of the change is dependent upon the how you view it. Broadly, any change which is for the betterment of the present situation can be termed as a positive change and any change which leads to the worsening of the present condition can be termed as a negative change. It takes time for an individual fin realizing whether the steps he has taken have taken him towards positive change or negative change.

As per a popular adage - the journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step and also well begun is half done, tends to highlight the importance of the first step that needs to be taken towards changing . Before this first step can be taken towards change comes the resolve to change and even before that comes the identification of the need for change and the specific areas where change needs to be brought about. Now, we may be able to see that the willingness to change comes after we identify the shortcoming, which is one of our weaknesses.

The identification of one's weakness and acknowledging it is a huge task which required confidence, self-esteem, and objective outlook. The reason why I have included objective outlook as one of the ingredients is because one cannot identify a shortcoming if he thinks of it as "his" shortcoming". The Subjectivism need to be set aside. You are less likely to see problems if you look at them as "your problems", whereas, the problems can be easily be identified if you look at them as merely problems which need to be solved by looking for a solution irrespective of the how’s and whys of it. If you are unable to inculcate this objectivism in yourself then a third person needs to be roped in to do it on your behalf. But let me warn you, he will not be as successful in identifying your deficiencies as you yourself are. His observations are solely dependent on your ability to express your observations.

It is just like hiring an external agent to do the work les efficiently as compared to the efficiency and the utilization of the time when you do it yourself. Nonetheless, do add this as one of your shortcomings in case you need to get an external agent to do it ob your behalf. I relate a quote of the famous industrialist Mr. Anil Ambani of the Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group (ADAG) “do not hire a consultant to tell you the time form your own watch". Also, one you have taken upon the task of improvement, make a strong resolve to abide by the plan that you are going to make. It will be a test of your resolve. If you cannot resolve to improve yourself, you may not be able to resolve to do anything, since most of the thinks need a steel resolve to take up tasks and achieve the goals.

One way of thinking that I read about was the reverse process of our conventional way of thinking. Instead of moving towards our goal from our present position, we identify the goal and trace our path backwards to our current position. Though this way of thinking has its own advantages, I feel that if we use a combination of both the strategies we will be able to plan our line of action and the path towards our goal in a timely and more efficient manner. Add to it the flexibility that we get out of it. At any time if we feel that there is lack of clarity, we can switch strategies. It also boosts are confidence to see that we have alternate courses to work on.

What comes to my mind is a question that I would like to ask you. You must be aware about the electrical earthing that is given to the electrical circuits to make them safer from short circuits and the resulting fires. The wire is connected from the main board and left to the ground. If you catch hold of that wire while the current is passing thru it, you don’t receive an electric shock. But if you touch another wire while the current is passing thru it ad it is connected to something other than the ground then you will definitely get a shock.

Why the difference when the situations are similar - the wires are made of copper, both the wires are carrying current, the person touching the wires in succession is same. The only difference is that one of the wires is connected to the ground and the other is connected to some particular appliance. The reason is that the resistance of the copper wire is less than the resistance offered to the current by your body. In other words, copper is a better conductor of current than your body and electric current takes the path of least cu resistance.

Same is the case is with water. Have you ever observed flowing water or even spilled water for that case? The water will start flowing towards the comparative lower point in the plane. In the case of a stream it always flows down from the mountains or the hills - why? Because it has the force of gravity acting on it which forces it to take any path possible to reach the lowest possible place in its course. What does this mean- this means that there is inherently something that pulls us downwards and prevents us from rising? I remember one of the interviews of Bruce LEE - the famous martial arts expert, quotes “one should be like water and inculcate the habit of taking the shape of whatever vessel one is put in". Simple put this means that one needs to be formless and should adjust oneself in accordance with the situation that one has to face. You put water in a jug- it takes the shape of the jug, you put water in a tumbler- it becomes a tumbler, and it goes this way for any container that might be used to store water in. Can there be any other element as versatile in character as water.

We need to have an attitude and that too a positive on. This is not a difficulty task, maintaining one in the face of adversity is.

We as humans lay our arms in front of nature- our own innate human nature. Let me tell you frankly, we are taming the wrong nature. We must utilize our time on earth to find out new, novel and effective ways of taming the human nature, but instead we are trying to tame Mother Nature. This will prove to be the most fatal mistake that humankind would ever have made, and believe me it is going to but a question mark on the existence of the human race itself. The humans consider themselves to be at the top of the pyramid of living beings due to their ability to think and communicate. But how effectively do we think and what about communication.

We have, in the name of our progress, carried out activities that have led to the extinction of so many species. According to he latest reports available from the WWF, we are losing out; one species is becoming extinct with each passing day. It will not be long before this intelligent species will create conditions when there would be no other species left. The human race will itself be responsible for their own extinction, since Mother Nature will strike back, and with all her fury. Then it will be too late for the humans to realize the extent of damage that has been done, and that they were trying to tame the wrong nature.

The damage caused is irreparable, and the bygones cannot be allowed to be forgotten, but there is still time and the future can be secured by bringing about a huge shift in paradigm of human thinking. It is really a pressing need for us to change the nature that we are trying to tame. Currently we are being myopic in our vision of our future, we are thinking about food for all, housing for all, medical facilities for all. Do u see that the word "all" in common in all the sentences. If we reduce the number in “all" we can reduce the amount of development that is needed, that would lead to a faster pace of the development.

I do not think that we will take his path, as we do to our inherent nature innate to us will be bogged down by the forces of nature. We have a destiny to wards which we are moving thinking that we are progressing, but maybe we are oblivious of the fact that we are crafting our own end which will be the fresh beginning to a new world. In a nutshell, we are going back to the future.

I am the one.

I am the one.
I am the one who is responsible for my actions.
I am the one who will bring about a change.
I am the one who will learn from other's mistakes.
I am the one who will make my own mistakes.
I am the one who will learn from my own mistakes.
I am the one who will let other's make their own desisions.
I am the one who will make my own decisions.
I am the one who will not run away from threats.
I am the one who will not let opportunities pass.
I am the one who will not leave any stone unturned.
I am the one who will work towards success.
I am the one who will fail but will not break.
I am the one who will make failures his steps.
I am the one who will climb those steps to success.
I am the one who will be successful.
I am the one.

What is success according to you..?

I encountered this question in numerous discussions. The first time was at an informal discussion which was not exactly a discussion but a conversation which my co-passenger struck with me while going to college in the college bus.

He was a year junior to me, but I had not thought about that question even them, and he had, so, maybe he was smarter than me. When he saw my helplessness at answering his question he continued that success can be broadly defined in three domains - fame, power or money. He also added that the order was not fixed and varies from person to person. Perspective is the word that he used.

I was surprised at his knowledge level, it had never occoured to me that success could be defined in such broad terms and could vary with a person's perspective. I was of the opinion that you work hard and achieve success. But that there were different aspects to success was news to me. So I requested him to elaborate on his earlier statement. He happened to to be a well read person. Nonetheless, he had read somewhere that success was 99% hardwork and 1% luck. When a person relentlessly puts in hardwork and since hardwork never fails, when a person reaches the threshold of success, other people call it a matter of luck. They fail to understand that it was due to the hardwork which brought success and not luck.

Luck is simply the caumaflage behind which hardwork is hidden. It also serves another purpose-- it lets other people believe that it was simply a miracle or better still the successful person simply got lucky, it was written in the destiny which cannot be changed since the destiny of the person is written at the time of birth. So, people start doing everything they cvan to get lucky. Huge responses to the KBC TV show is proof of that, so is the reason for all the state lottery tickets getting sold every month.

People do not like hard work, after all who likes to work hard? But it is only the person who works hard, who deserved and is able to enjoy the better things in life. I myself had read that money is actually a by product of success. If you work for money, the chances of your earning money are slim. But if you work towards that larger cause, which is providing some service to you fellow humans, such that they come to you for more, they will happily shower their money on you. You need not be innovative to create new attitudes, services etc. You simply need to recreate the magic and fill the void that is waiting to be filled. This void could exist anywhere- it could be the entertainment industry, the service industry, the manufacturing industry or the food products industry.

There is no dearth of opportunities, its just that we are myopic enough to think of life to be static. We simple believe that we have a destiny in place created by the divine powers which cannot be changed. So, we continue toiling and fail to put in hardwork which can save us from all the tough phases which we go thru in life thinking that it is all the part of the master plan which is our destiny.



Being a realist, I do not approve of fantasies. I am not averse to dreaming, for it is our dreams which further brighten our creative spark. It is due to the dreams that we are able to thing about things which do not exist yet. We believe in our dreams and work towards theiur realisation. In the process we work hard, but we do not realise it neither do we experience the pain and exaustion during the course of our pursuit, all because we are interested and enthused by the goal, in which we believe.

But lets look at another situation in which you have been instructed to finished an assignment by the college professor in a manner that makes you feel that it is simply a formality and does not add any value to your learning. Most probably, you would procastinate, and try to delay the task till the last day. As the deadline draws closer, you try to complete it in a hurry, but in vain. At the last moment, you find that it is too late to complete the assignment all by yourself, so you copy it from one of your friends, who reluctantly allows you to do so. After submitting the assignment you find that the professor uses a software program which is capable of identifying the similarities between the submitted assignments ans it has adentified that bothe the assignments are exact replicas of each other, and hence have been cancelled. So, the attitude here was not really averse to hardwork but there was a lack of interest or better still enthusiasm, which also was due to your perception.

On the contrary, look at the same situation wherein you have a pre-concieved notion that you need to present the best possible version of the assignment and it has to be better than any other student in the class. So you toil, and put in loads of hard work. The result is an original piece of work with a avariety of in-depth analysis. The professor is impressed, though not visibly, and recommends your name for the dessertion contest. You get the opportunity of participating in the contest, which was the dream of almost all the people of your class. But since only 3 people could participate, your name was one of them. Upon entering the class, after the announcement has been made, your classmates look at yopu and exclaim that you are one lucky guy to have the opportunity to participate in the contest and represent the college at the same time. Now, you get the picture. This was just a simple example.

What I intend to get across is that success is a step by step process. Each step is very delicately connected to the next step, and no step can be sidestepped. as you may be aware that the shortest path between any two points is a straight line. Also, there is no shortcut to success. So, we can infer that the path towards success has to be a straight line. Now this may look like a hypothetical concept, but actually it is a straight path in that it has the least number of deviations from the main path or cause i.e. an effort needs to be made to reduce the number of distractions, deviations or the pursuit of the lesser improtant goals needs to be minimised in order to preserve the energies and resourced to reach the desired goal.

Branding success in terms of power, money, fame is a futile effort. Such a branding is superficial and does not necessarily reflect the success of an individual. It may work for celebrities, as it makes them look haute and " in sync" with the world of success. But in most of the cases it is not the case. Monet, power, fame are actually all the by products of hard work. You work hard and you may have any on or better still all of them.

So the next time, you meet someone who asks your preference of defining success as money, power, fame, simply smile and wink at him and say whatever you feel like saying.

Realise your helplessness.

Humans are petty helpless people, yet it does come as a surprse that they are sometimes eager to help other helpless people out. Helplessness is inherent to the innate nature of the typical human.

Take any situation for instance, a human being may try to take decisions, however small while looking for a solution towards taking a decision at any point in life. It is seldom that the person in question is himself able to take a decision of his own accord. Mostly, he has to rely, or voluntrarily relies on the advise of other people, and this advice is most often unwanted, is given by other helpless humans who are in no condition to take the decision themselves, they would rateher tell you to do this or that or provide you with an opinion of what is good and wht is bad for you, but more often than not, they will definitely be in no position to tell you what actually will work for you, obviously only you can help yourself in that.

To make my point clear I would take the help of an example. We has a family whih lived near our residense, there were four members n the family, the parents and their two sons, with a age difference of two years. Both were academically intelligent and passed their classes with flying colors. The elder son scored 90+ percent in his class 10 and was admitted to one of the best schools in delhi in the medical stream, later he cracked the coveted medical seat and was the talk of the town with his photos on the pamphlets distributed by the coaching institute, of which he was a student. The parents were proud.

The younger son followed suit and scored more than his brother in class 10, he too was admitted in the same school as his brother after class 10. He to studied hard and reached his goal of a coveted medical seat in Delhi. Th parents were more than happy.

The neighbors were never short of praising the children and their parents alike. Every parent wanted their wards to be the future doctors and do their parents proud as the neighbor's sons. Moreover, they satrted coming to our neighbors with their children to seek advise on as to how to coach their children wo were "not serious" towards studies. Also, they were interested to know about the coaching classes the brothers had been to, they were ready to spend the cash, irrespective of the amount on the coaching to get their children to the threshold of the best medical college.

One such inquisitive family was on with 5 members- parents, elder sister, brother, younger sister. The father was a government employee, the mother ran a beauty parlor, no the on which comes to your mind when you think of it, but one of those hat you encounter at almost every corner of every colony in our country. The elder sister was studying in an engineering college, also she used to teach dance to young children for a minimal fee and help her mother with the parlour in her free time. Where did she get the time to study, is still an unanswered question for me. The brother was also in the same engineering college but a class lower than the elder sister. Well, as for him, he studied almost all the time.

The elder sister graduated and joined a call centre. The money earned was depodited for marriage. The brother after graduating was unable to find a job for sometime and later on joined a bank as a sales executive , a role which made no use of his skills. The younger sister was studying in school in the medical stream when the younger of the two boys of our neighbours was admitted to the medicla college. The mother of the girl thought, if he can then why not my daughter. This led her to chide her daughter for studying. The younger daughter was not that intelligent as the boys who has made it to the medical college. She studied hard. The mother payed the fee of Rupes two lacs to the coaching institute ( which the two brothers had joined earlier). However, afer then exams the results were not in her favour, she was broken .

Her dream of becoming a doctor was shattered. Nevertheless, she decided to give it another shot the next year. Her brother, meanwhile, had found a job with a reatail chain, though his salary was still meagre. The younger sister studied hard, sometimes falling asleep over her books in the process. She appeared for all the exams once again. But as if it was written in her destiny, she was unable to clear the exams. Since she had both medical and non-medical subjects in school, she was also elligible to appear for the engineering exams also. She appeared in the engineering exams and was able to secure payed seat in one of the private engineering colleges in Tamil nadu. The payed seat actually costs 3 times a norml merit seat. Seeing all this, what came to my mind were these question,

Is a normal human being so immature that he cannot recognise his innate capabilities.
Is a human being also, so very influenced by the choices that other peopele, not related to him in any way, make?
In context to the story above... will the girl do her engineering and become successful or will she alwas have a want for the profession that she alwas wanted to pursue?
Would'nt have it been a god idea for her to identify what was actually that she wanted to do, and I might have been neither medicine nor engineering ?
Is following the path that your parents think is right actually right for a student ?
Is it not that the awareness gathered during the student life must be utilised to make further decisions which are bound to affect you for the rest of your lives ?

I know, that I ask a lot of questions... but...give m your viewpoint...and we'll talk about the differnce, if any, which might surface.

लाइफ इस अ कांस्तंत !!

It is said that “the only constant is change “.

Is it really so?

I believe there is a mix of both truth and fallacy in the statement.

Lets take a look at the statements one step at a time.

Change can be described as a difference between the current state and the previous recorded state. This also defines the extent of the change.

Also the difference between the current state and the previous state when compared with the previous state provides us with the details of the rate at which such a change has taken place.

Normally the rate at which a particular change takes place also varies on a variety of factors.

It may be interesting to note that the factors affecting the factors affecting or contributing to such a change also have a degree of variation in them. Some of the facors may be fixed while he others may be variable. Also, the range of such a variation may be extremely small or negligible or huge, having an immensely huge role to play in the final outcome.

I feel that the constant also has a degree of variation in itself.

The degree of variation as talked about earlier may be dependent on a number of factors not in a fixed proportion but a variable proportion. The variation on the various factors may not be a consant variation but an instance of a variable variation of variable factors which themselves. vary according to the situation, which itself is variable.

Now, I feel there is a need to know how to expect a fixed outcome when we have so many factors which prove to be self defeating in our pursuit of reaching a fixed outcome or the constant.

It is a tough task. After looking at the whole story and the extent of variability of the variation, it may be inferred that the constant that we feel is constant is out perspective specific, as the constant for one person may signify a change for the other.
So, in other words the constnt is not itself a constant universally. As the perspective varies from person to person, there we have another factor of variation that can be added to out ever increasing variation while reaching the universal constant.

Can we infer that what actually is a constant to us is in fact a domain of the final value which is the outcome of the factors of variation mentioned earlier ? Or

Is it the constant which has been termed as a constant after it was believed by the representatives of community and agreed upon by others who did not have the time or the mental faculties required in ascertaining the universal constant?

A constant is a series or collection of small variable factors not strong enough in bringing about a change in the constant, of whose they are a contributing factor. The constant has within itself a degree of variation which is due to a combination of factors. This degree of change is extremely insignificant or negligible when compared to the value of the constant, but this change however small contributes to the change in the constant to whatsover small degree it may be.

It is also important to note that the constant does change after some time depending upon the contribution of the variable factors, and thus becomes a variable, since a change has come in the value of the constant. The magnitude of change acually depends upon the magnitude of the collection of the contributing factors.

The constant may further change, whenever the value of the contributing factors become large enough to cross the threshold to bring about a new value of the constant. The constant is nothing but a variable which has a particular value at the current moment,
it will remain a constant some time in the future, the only difference being that it would have a new vaule then, but, still it will remain a cnstant.