Bribing a traffic ​cop for a traffic violation, 

Cheating on your spouse, 

Accepting/paying money for ​winning contracts,

​Adulteration of milk, paneer, other items,

Buying pirated books…

Usual things happening on a daily basis and we seem to have accepted them as a part of ‘normal’ life and people who don’t accept all this are termed ​’Raja Harishchandra​’ & viewed as not ‘worldly wise’…​Most people want the world to be black and white but in reality it is many shades of grey…​

​It reminds me of a question by a friend that if we know that the world is filled with corruption should we teach our children how to deal with it & live in a corrupt world or that corruption shouldn’t be tolerated? The answer is actually a bit of both but acceptance and non-tolerance rarely stay under the same roof, so the struggle continues…

Here I take a leaf from my fathers approach to his career as a Police Officer wherein he told all his juniors that I will not indulge in corruption and till you work with me do not indulge in it, what you did before or after is your Karma. So you have to steer yourself away from indulging in corruption but be aware that it exists in varying degrees so also know how to deal with it…

There is no right or wrong answer here, it is just where you draw the line….

Zero assumes meaning only being placed after the number, but if placed before some number it is meaningless. Where you place it in your life determines the quality of it. 

Zero(The Source) is always behind the number(Ego), but most people attempt to place it after and chase it as a number to be achieved to acquire riches/power/fame which post acquisition holds no value but by then you are already addicted to the chase and then can’t seem to stop. It is like running downhill at full speed since it is easier than stopping and returning back uphill to find out why you started the chase in the first place. 

This process of stopping and turning back to move uphill is ghar wapsi – Return to Source which has no meaning in social terms and yet the most important thing for anyone to do. Are you prepared to stop and turn back?

​Just came across this final email that Steve Jobs sent himself in his final days of battling cancer and it reminded me of “Ubuntu” – The African concept that signifies “I am because We are”. If we understand this and choose our goals and desires accordingly, then it will be a life well lived. 

The paradox of life is everyone likes a grateful, humble, ever helpful person but no one wants to be one…despite realising that you are playing a limited overs match and you could be bowled out any time, not by your choosing but simply that its game over…It is not about what match you are playing, it is how you are playing it that makes all the difference…

What would be your final email to yourself?

You know it’s time to wake up and smell the coffee when…

You are buying things that you don’t need but buy them anyway since they’re available on discount….

You are preferring chat/screen time over real time with family, friends, nature….

You think that deleting history in textbooks would make it disappear…

You realise there is corruption everywhere but think it is not your problem…

You are only complaining about the problems but aren’t doing anything about resolving them…

You know what is to be done but just don’t do it…

But what do you do when you wake up and smell the coffee?

Everyone invests in self, a few think of family, even fewer think of the society and very few think of the environment.

The way to change the world is to reverse this chain of priority – start a daily SIP(Systematic Investment Plan) by investing efforts into actual initiatives that would improve, in however small a way, the environment, society, family and self… then possibly there is still hope for you and the world… 

​

Mithas dil me ho aur cup me nahi, to baat bani,

Khushi dene me ho lene me nahi, to baat bani,

Muskurahat khul ke bat​i jama​yi nahi, to baat bani,

Kya khoya aur kya paya ye socha tak nahi, to baat bani,

Zindagi se pyar karo jung nahi, to baat bani,

Kuch mera na tera ye samjh gaye, to baat bani

Everyone would agree that the first principle of co-existing peacefully as a society is “First, harm no one” which is the Hippocratic Oath that all Medical Practitioners have to take and also the first tenet of Yoga – “Ahimsa”, but why restrict it only to Medical Practitioners and Yoga Practitioners? Does this not apply to all? It does, but how many choose to follow it? The ones who do are declared saints/Mahatma and are revered but the principle is not embraced, resulting in a broken society/world wherein we know what to do but we simply won’t.

​

​Looking at the current state of affairs wherein the entire world is in war  with each other whether economic or otherwise, with a world leader moving around threatening sanctions in order to reconcile warring parties and expecting to win a Nobel Prize for it, I think we have really lost the plot and have to admit that our collective intelligence to peacefully co-exist has failed. So either each one of us sincerely embraces this simple principle of Ahimsa or we may have to finally hand over the reins to Artificial Intelligence since ours isn’t working….

We are living in the age of information overload and ChatGPT is used to glean through tons of data and present a synopsis but this actually handicaps us in a sense that we forget using the faculty of analysing. There is a reason that we were made to mug up tables upto 20 in school, which was made redundant by use of calculators. We have been given faculties with powers beyond our imagination but we choose to uphold convenience & ignore the loss of abilities… 

What use is information if it does not help you in obtaining knowledge which is gained by experiencing the causality(cause-effect) of implementing the information and what use is knowledge if it is not converted to wisdom which is gained by change in habits by the results experienced in the knowledge phase and what use is wisdom if it does not help you in experiencing the essence of “This too shall pass”….

You simply can’t jump from school directly to PhD, each one of us has to pass through each stage of information – knowledge – wisdom and beyond, there are no shortcuts to maturity.