Shankar Mahadevan is so frigging talented. When I watch this especially when they both perform, it makes my hair stand up! This whole song is sung without any pause.
Breathless
August 24, 2011 By Leave a Comment
August 15th – The day I got my freedom
August 15, 2011 By 1 Comment
Every Indian is aware that August 15th is our Independence day – back in 1947 India became an Independent country as well as was divided up based on religion thus causing the bloody partition. It signifies freedom after 400 years of colonial rule. We may not be doing great things yet, but I am sure we enjoy the freedom that we have. Just visit India once to see how its been used and mis-used.
I will always remember August 15th not only for what it means to be an Indian but for what it means to me personally. Long time back (oh God, one sign I feel really old is that – this feels like a long time memory). After I finished my college/MBA in 1998 – I was like any other Indian student. Full of dreams and no sense of reality. I was sure that I would be able to find a job of my dreams and just find that ladder to climb up in the corporate world. So naive I was, but then who isn’t when they are 23.
You should know that India is a very populous country. I mean very. To get a sense of it – ask any guy who is trying to get a job. I used to go to an interview (publicly open to anyone qualified) and then find myself standing in a line with like 200 students in front and back of me. Forget getting to actually have an interview – after 4-5 hours of waiting they would ask us to go away. This was the situation (and sadly it still is for many) for me. I tried my best to find a job for about 6 months and nothing happened. But good thing I was hungry (think I still am). When reality dawned on me I realized that I will have to work it through the lower rungs to get to a place which I like.
And so it happened through my friend I got a very small job (paying about $65/month). The job was in an Internet Cafe. For those of you who enjoy un-interrupted Internet access now – an Internet cafe is a place where you pay hourly to browse internet. Since there was no way I can have my own internet access at home, as it was expensive – I jumped on the opportunity to work there. By work I mean, just making sure all computers are turned on and working fine – make entries about people coming in and sitting at the cash register now and then. I was ok with it. I was looking forward to what it means for me – an opportunity to learn so many new things.
The place sucked like hell. The job was hard – manual labor. I showed up at 9 am and left for home only after 9pm. Sometimes I slept over at work – because there were people who would come in to browse (mostly porn) after 12am. The cafe was open all 24 hours. More than that it was filled with politics. My boss was abusive and constantly putting me down to get more and more work from me. He was kind weird too. More than anything else I hated was the politics. Every employee there was kinda brain washed to manipulate someone for something. They took advantage of my naiveté and made me work like a donkey.
I was completely helpless. Here I was trying to make a career in software but stuck in a place where I have no control on anything and I couldn’t even get close to any programming environment. I spent all day (and sometimes all night) helping people to browse and learn what Internet is. How to use Altavista, Yahoo chat (messenger) and ICQ.
My only way out was to learn something on my own in my own time (I think this trait stuck with me till this date). So, I joined a course to learn Java every evening. My friends were making fun of me about how I am spending more money learning Java than making it on a monthly basis. I was un-deterred. I knew this would show me a way out. So for 3 months everyday I would leave work at 6 and go to a class and try to learn frigging Java (I despise it for various reasons which came up later).
This gave me some confidence that I can escape this crazy job and also make it on my own. So finally after about 10 months of abusive job on August 15th 1999 I woke up (It was supposed to be a holiday for everyone except for people who work there) and decided that I won’t be going to this pain in the butt job any more. I went right back to sleep. My dad was worried as to why I am not up – but I think he was relieved at some level that I am ending this painful experience. I got like 10 calls from my boss threatening me but I didn’t feel anything. I was so happy inside and just didn’t give a shit.
So on this day about 12 years back I became mentally free – which led to the transformation of my life. So powerful was change in my life – that in the following month – me and my friend took a gamble and went to Singapore for work and succeeded in establishing a career. It took me 40 days to do what I really wanted, but my mind was shackled for almost a year in a painful job.
Every year I feel more happy about the choice I made on this day and thank my stupid courage that pulled it off. I will never forget this day.
Jai Hind. 
Where is my Jacket?
August 11, 2011 By Leave a Comment
This happens to me at least once a week. Hehe.
Sahana Flips Over
July 16, 2011 By Leave a Comment
Today Sahana is 5 months old. For the first time she flipped over by herself.
Sahana turns over from Akbar Pasha on Vimeo.
On becoming a Father
July 12, 2011 By Leave a Comment
I have been thinking about what is different in my life after Sahana, my daughter arrived. My friends have asked me what feels different. I didn’t have any right answer for that question as I was busy with being one and never spent time on thinking about it. I think I have my version of what is different now that I am a dad.
I think everyone has preferences, strengths, weaknesses, tendencies etc which can be categorized in 4 categories. Physical, Mental, Emotional and Spiritual. That’s not written in stone but one way to slice it. And among these 4 categories there is order. People over a period of time build a stack of importance using these 4 categories. I think being a dad/father/mother/parent brings a lot of insight, shift in the top categories.
For example: Mine are ordered – Spiritual, Mental, Emotional and Physical (yeah last physical – which explains why I don’t know anything about Baseball and why I carry those extra 20 pounds on me!). I think after Sahana came to our lives, I was affected more spiritually and mentally than emotionally or physically. I mean, I have gotten used to little physical inconveniences like – sleeplessness, more work etc but they don’t discourage me from anything nor they inspire me.
What affected me more was I became more spiritual. The whole experience from the moment I learned that Sangita is pregnant till today is this great spiritual dance. Everything that happens to me, around me has a spiritual meaning tied up with Sahana. I do believe she brought in a lot of luck for both me and my wife. If she brought more patience to Sangita, she brought me more spiritual depth.
As for the mental side – I have shed everything that has short meaning in my life. I used to treat work in a specific way. I wanted it to be more my way and that was the reason why I went to work for myself. But now, after this change – something in that area has shifted for me. I still have the same passion towards my work but less stubbornness. I focus on what is most important and drop everything that is trivial. Thats been very refreshing in the past 3 weeks since I started to work full-time. Especially interesting how it is affecting my 2 other areas of life – emotionally – spending more quality time with Sahana in the evening and physically – going to sleep early and getting more than enough sleep than when I used to work for myself.
I wholly welcome all these changes in my life. I am happy to be a dad.
Deliberate Practice, Habits and Rituals
June 3, 2011 By Leave a Comment
A conversation with friends at dinner made me think about deliberate practice a little bit more tonight. I have been thinking about Habits and Rituals for quite some time. Countless articles and books dissect genius and find out that the success is basically nothing but an outcome of “deliberate practice”. It is said that if you practice anything deliberately for 10,000 hours you would be one of the very few masters of that thing on this planet. I believe it’s completely true. Malcolm Gladwell talks about this and everyday some blog post talks about this.
If we all knew that the secret of success is deliberate practice why aren’t we all super stars in our chosen field already? Because it’s far more harder to do that than to say it. I mean the practice may not be that hard at all, but the deliberate part of it is definitely hard. I have been reading Tony Schwartz’s The Power of Full Engagement. It’s a very interesting idea of looking at our lives from the perspective of *energy*. There are many ways we can divide up our lives. We humans can’t take the whole day by it’s own – we have our own way of chunking and handling our days. Some people divide it by tasks. There is a whole plethora of books, techniques, like GTD, about how to best manage tasks. Some people divide it by time – instead of taking up a task and doing it, they spend certain amount of time on the task at hand, once the time is up they relax take a break and may be decide to spend another chunk of time on it – Pomodoro technique is one of the many available ones.
But Tony Schwartz talks about dividing it up based on energy. He doesn’t completely define or care about how enthusiastic you are at any given time or whether it’s physical energy etc – but it’s more subtle than that. He talks about how we have certain energy (a mix of physical, mental and emotional) and we don’t have whole lot of it. So, his core idea is – to manage energy. How does he recommend it? Rituals.
Think about it, the most successful people around you definitely have some kind of ritual that makes them stand apart. The friends who are healthier than you are the ones who have a ritual of working out religiously. The people who are peaceful are the ones who attend meditation regularly. Similarly people who are good at doing what they do have some ritual which they follow – no matter what comes into their life.
So these rituals are very simple steps that these people follow to make them who they are. The cool thing about a ritual is – once you get a hang of it, once the body and mind gets used to it – its welcomed whole heartedly. And there are theories around that too (like 21 day rule, or 40 day rule etc). But rituals make or break a successful career, path etc.
Next comes habit – once you follow these rituals regularly and get over that hump of resistance – it’s all smooth sailing from there. It will become a habit. Habit is a mental shortcut. It’s what we do without thinking consciously. It’s the mind’s way to store up a whole lot of instructions in very few synapses. Habits can go both ways. Habits could be a mental short cut helping you or they could also be your blind spots. Habits that are resourceful are the ones that help us.
So what does it entail in the end? Why am I talking about this? I think the only way to make deliberate practice easy is to make a habit out of it. And the only way to create a successful habit is through a ritual. I think that pretty much is a sure path to success in whatever you are planning to do.
Being a programmer it’s nearly impossible to keep track of all the technology that flows by. I am like a kid in a toy store when it comes to all the technology around me (no not the gadgets part of it, but the problem solving part of it). But I can’t be successful in what I want to do if I don’t deliberately practice good problem solving in my career. To make my life easier, here are couple of rituals I have been following -
1. First 90 mins of my day are really important – when I wake up, my mind is fresh and anything I take up at that time just gets absorbed. So, for the first 90 minutes of my day I work on stuff that I love most – in this case – Cocoa programming.
2. Priority List – The night before I sleep I make a list of highest priority things for the next day. That way I can just get on the most important things immediately without wasting time.
3. Email and Chat – When I am focusing, I turn off my email and chat – that really helps.
4. While driving (alone) – I take up a idea/concept I learned and try to explain it to the non-present 5 year old sitting next to me. Just try to break it down. (I know I know it’s kinda crazy, but it’s part of my ritual)
5. While idle – I try to chant and focus on my breath trying to stay in present.
There are couple of things I want to add to my ritual like blogging – both personal and technical but I don’t want to overwhelm myself and lose it.
So there you go. The secret of any success is : Deiberate Practice <– Habits <– Rituals. Craft easy and simple rituals and pretty soon you will be successful at what you want to achieve.
Here are some of the books to explore if you want to learn more:
1. The Power of full Engagement
3. War of Art (not the other Art of War)
Dream
December 16, 2010 By Leave a Comment
I had a very bizzaro dream a couple of days back. In the dream I was in a place there were just temples everywhere and I was taking pictures of Gods inside of them. Polaroid pics. As I was taking those pictures I came across 3 kinds of people.
1. Those people who hated me taking pictures as they believed being a muslim I shouldn’t be taking pictures of Hindu gods.
2. Those people who believed that the pictures were Intellectual property of the temples and hence I should turn them in to them.
3. Those who sympathized with me but asked me to abandon the pictures taking project all together.
I remember that I refused to give pictures in and had a long fight with the temple people. And then I woke up. Couldn’t get the dream out of my head for the next 15 mins – felt almost real.
This concept of Manifestation
November 11, 2009 By 1 Comment
If you are like any other normal person you would have seen a flurry of many many new-age gurus talking about Manifestation and how we are in control of our lives. The idea is not new but the packaging is. It used to be learned, used and followed by a bunch of off the track people in an alternate universe – but The Secret -movie, bought it to the mainstream.(You should also check out What the Bleep do we know? – more real and scientific) Quickly the gurus in the movie turned their back on it and started propagating how ONLY they understand the Secret. The main concern of the people who don’t like Secret is – that it’s too goody goody and non-actioney. The Secret doesn’t talk a lot about the action that needs to be done to achieve what you want to achieve. I totally agree – but hey, don’t shoot the messenger.
I have been, like any other person, curious about this idea for quite some time. My personal freedom and my personal creations are extremely important to me and I believe in the concept of being the person who is in charge of my own reality. I have been reading up quite some books on this concept and this blog post is all the that information filtered to my understanding.
The beauty of belief is – everyone tends to create, see and do what their belief systems dictate. So, based on my beliefs – the way I understood it could be totally off from what others see. This is just my one opinion in the million out there.
The (Hi)Story:
This goes back a little. The way I grew up – was in a patriarch family where my dad called shots on everything. Just like most Indian families. For various reasons and causes, I grew up to be an extremely shy and awkward teenager (who didn’t?). When I turned 20 – I decided that I need to change myself. In someway. I didn’t know what to do. I have been scared of Public Speaking but enjoy the whole process of someone taking the stage and entertaining a crowd. So, I thought I will have to face my fear and then I will be fixed! Little I knew about the arduous process of self-change.
I joined a Leadership Training program which was taught by a Genius who was also a chain smoker. Good start eh. Over the period of next 3 months I faced situations where I almost peed in my pants, cried many many times and embarrassed myself. I wouldn’t want to go on stage at all. It was really hard. But in the end, I ended up becoming aware of 2nd things – 1. The power of my mind., 2. I am still going to be shit scared of public speaking!
Things moved on, life happened. The literature I was exposed to made me learn more and more about other self-help books. I started to form a basic model of how this works in my mind. Fast forward – 2003 NYC. I was taking Yoga classes at Sivananda Ashram. In one class the teacher, talked about how our mind is a powerful tool and how it could manifest things that our belief system tells us we can’t. It stuck with me and I was looking for an opportunity to put it to test.
Somehow, by turn of fate one day I ended up standing in line for tickets to see ‘Rent’ on Broadway. They usually have a raffle before the show to give away free tickets to the very few.(It’s actually the first two rows – which are actually the ‘spit fire’ lanes!) Now, I used this “mind over matter” theory to see if it is true. For the next 30 mins – I did everything I could – thoughts wise, feelings wise, emotions wise, images wise, actions wise, behaviors wise etc – immerse myself into defeating my belief system that I have won the raffle and free tickets. It was not easy to convince my beliefs and it looked stupid to try that. But I kept it on. The third name they called was mine! Now I know – those skeptics who are reading this – it could totally be a spooky coincidence. I agree. But it didn’t matter to me. I don’t think I was so ever shocked in my life like I was then. Literally shaking. I didn’t even watch Rent properly. One thought kept pounding in my head – What else can I do?
The Concept:
So, here I am trying to take this blog post as an opportunity to kinda cull my learning into one small piece. Since I usually think better with drawings and visual aids, I am going to draw a image which comes to mind.
This looked far better when I drew it on a paper. Graffling is not my skill. So, I want to explain the numbered points:
1 – Mental State: This is your present mental state. At any given time there are so many thoughts, ideas, images, sounds, smells etc belong to this mental state. You can leave it as it is or you can organize the mental state. This is the origin. Whatever exists here is converted to reality in some form or shape by the vibrational state. We do have control on this. The inputs to Mental state are
- 5 senses
- Internal talk
2 – Vibrational State: I talked about this in the past. This is the state we have no control over. It’s like the inevitable fact. Nothing we do can change this - directly. However, the only way you can make use of this state is to influence upon things indirectly. How? Through the mental states. So, like the candle light is reflected in a mirror – the vibrational state just mass produces anything that the mental state gives.
3. Beliefs: These are the filters. Affecting what is fed into vibrational state as well as what goes out of it. If you have way too many filters then – there is nothing much passing through – meaning, your mental state doesn’t match your reality and vice versa. We have control over this. We can become aware of them and start dropping them off. The more we clear and select our beliefs – the more mental state matches the reality. Of course we will have to start with the primary belief – we can change our reality.
4. Reality & Results: As vibrational state outputs – they come out of us as actions, behaviors, words, theories, ideas etc. Again these are filtered by our beliefs. Depending on how our beliefs are structured – we act, think and talk, there by resulting in our actual reality.
That’s all to it. That’s the manifestation process as I understand it.
The Strategies:
Knowledge is useless without application or action. So, how do we turn these into personal strategies? Here are some of my thoughts:
1. Objectives and Goals: The reason why a lot of people ask and talk about setting goals is – getting clarity about what you want is half job done. In this model – it would apply to the ‘Mental State’ stage. Just writing down all the goals and setting timelines (realistic) is the first step.
2. Meditation: This might sound odd for Manifesting theme. But what meditation does is – it basically lowers the resistance of our beliefs for the time we meditate. I talked about a meditation method in my previous post. So, let me break it down a little in detail. You do meditation for 15 mins every day. Those 15 mins, you try to concentrate on your breath. It’s hard but with practice you will get to stage where you can do that. When you focus on your breath – there are 2 things happening: 1. Your thoughts are being ignored or not given major attention. 2. Focusing on breathing – streamlines it. Slowly after 5 mins, you will notice you are breathing deeper and longer.
This in turn gets you into something called ‘Alpha brain waves‘ – which is a very productive place to be. In that place your resisting guard would be let down and since you already placed your goals and objectives in your mental state prior (through daily goal setting etc) these would be easily conveyed to your Vibrational being which creates actions, ideas and behaviors in you which create your reality.
So, the meditation actually is doing a lot of things under the hood without our knowledge.
3. 21 day habit swap: In his book Psycho-Cybernetics – Dr.Maxwell Maltz originally talked about this 21 day theory. Basically Dr.Maltz was dealing with people who had their body parts removed for various reasons. Some people who lost their arm would still feel pain in it, even though there was no arm. And it usually took 21 days for patients’ body to get over the pain and come to an understanding of new reality. This vital info could be used to form new habits and change how we view and create reality.
Once you set goals – you could start working on them and trying to be consistent for at least 21 days. Most of the time it works. After 21 days, it would become natural for you to work on the goals & tasks.
4. 68 seconds rule: I have no idea why that number – but it’s like number 42 – the meaning of life. If you can manage to do this, it could create some wonderful results. Basically it goes like this – any thought, strongly held for 68 seconds would kick off major changes in your reality. My logical mind doesn’t understand why? I have no data on it – but it has worked for me in various occasions.
So, that’s my understanding of this concept of Manifestation and some strategies involved. I am willing to look at any other info you have to offer to me. But in gist it’s how I understand and it has been working like that for quite some time for me. Please remember – no theory is correct or accurate. We are all blind men groping the Elephant!
Be easy on yourself, play with different methods and most important of all – enjoy the ride, even if it means you are scared of Public Speaking.
Hey Shyama Sundara
July 27, 2009 By 4 Comments
Such a beautiful bhajan. Just stirs & stirs my soul away….
Hey Shyama Sundara Hey Sai Sundara
Parthi Pureeshwara Hey Sai Sundara
Hey Shyam Sundara Hey Sai Sundara
Neela Megha Sundara Neela Chalo Jana
Brahmadanayaka Hey Sai Sundara
