Musings that Amuse Me.....

A genius is 1 % inspiration and 99 % perspiration - Thomas Edison. Nature , I guess is 1 % inspiration and 99 % perfection !!. As I was driving through the pictursque route 1 by the side of the pacific, I found myself pulling over and stopping many times to admire the sea, mountains , the clouds and the tiny beaches . They were simply spectacular !! There are moments when language seems to fail and adjectives fall short of describing how we feel - Those moments when we wish we could freeze time !! The moment when nothing else seems to matter!! The Instance when the baggage of past, fear of future vanish and we are completely connected and become one with the moment in hand - What Eckhart Tolle describes as 'absolute connection with the present moment' ! Who said physical beauty declines as we age ? Here are these mountains and oceans, millions of years old and still, breathtakingly beautiful. They were not just scenic, but were also inspiring !! They inspired me to be more of m...

Ah !! Work !! Deadlines, slogging, stress, long hours, that eerie feeling of overworked and underpaid and unrewarded !!! sounds familiar ? Noone escapes it - Somebody s ambition translates into more work for many. Someone wants to add a successful deal to his resume and it ends up burining out so many people s happiness [ down the hierarchy, of course - the last one is affected the most !!] Despite knowing that the deadline is aggressive, commitments are made - only for reality to stare at face soon. Running at top speed to just catch up, stress takes over and overwhelms you completely !! OH yeah !! don t we all take pride at being so busy ? 'No time, too much work !! ' is a statement that never seems to go out of fashion. Make it a point to let everyone know how much you are drowning in work, not having time to invest in personal life and still, accept the last minute change request. I m not being cynical - most of it is actually true - which is the real problem. I was wo...

So often, I have heard the clause 'life turned a full circle' used to refer someone returning to do something done long ago, after trying various options - or, simply, returning to the same point after a long journey. Why circle ? Why not a square or a rectangle or a triangle, which are also closed geometric figures in which we can return to starting point ? This thought was crossing my mind as I was helping my mom in the kitchen , making some chapathis . Now, my mom had taught me the how to 'roll' chapathis in a shape closest to the ' full circle' many many years ago when I was in school. I was very enthusiastic to make them as a kid and the reward i used ask was that I would eat the very same chapathi I made - an easy task since it was the most skewed and shapeless one amidst a pack of 'full circle ' chapathis . Reality was no one else could eat it, but my mom was still proud of what I used to make, as a little boy. As I was making them, I realiz...

A friend of mine posted an interesting question in FB a few days back - Is Self motivation learnt or inherent ? Probably, it applies to every virtue that we can think of. Take enthusiasm and energy levels in a person. Are we born with it ? Or do we learn over our course of life that it pays to be energetic and enthusiastic in life ? My mom travelled for 22 hours and had not slept for 36 hours continuously when she landed in San Francisco last thursday. It was another two hours before she reached home. She is 67. I was feeling so bad for making her go through this gruelling journey. Within minutes, she freshened up and made her way to her world [ the kitchen ] and took stock. Ten minutes and she had a list of things to be bought and she was ready to go out and get them. Now, this levels of energy is amazing. I don t even have on percent of this energy levels. I am very lazy, tend to postpone things and I am almost always fighting fire at work. So much so that at the end of day, ...

What happens when you hear or meet someone after eleven long years ? Do you still connect the same way ? I met my school friends after 17 years and hit off from the first second. Today, I met JK, my classmate in MBA , after more than a decade. Jayakrishnan [ JK, as we used to call him !!] is still the mountain of information he was during my college days. Amazing knowledge of companies, their products, their strenghts, as before. Crystal clear analysis of world economy, its perils, what India should do and not do to deal with China... JK did not change one bit from what he was during my college days. Of course, he was wiser and just like yours truly, had a receding hairline and expanding waistline. But, the connection was just as perfect. Our quest for information connected us then . It is still a factor that kept us involved for six long hours this evening. As during our college days, this was unplanned as well and it just happened when JK was browsing our group mails. Thank heavens, ...

For most of us - I could confidently say all of us, our first idols are our parents. If you had siblings, the eldest is probably the next idol. As we grow like birds and learn to flap wings, our idols stretch out of the nest. Someone makes a mark.... and stays the same. I am not sure how many recollect your first idol outside your family For someone with a memory like mine, no effort is needed. Actress Srividhya won my admiration. In my own childish innocence, I thought she was actually sitting behind the screen and singing the song 'Ezhu Swarangalukkul ethanai paadal' in the opening scene of the movie Apoorva Ragangal[1975]. What an impact !! I was captivated by everything from the first scene. The playback singer of that song [Vani Jayaram ] would become my favourite singer and every letter of the song would stay in my memory for ever !! Till date, I wonder whether it was Vani or Vidya who fascinated me first !! This is infact, the oldest episode I can ever recollect in my li...

Last week, I wound up my residence in Philadelphia and moved to San Francisco. Some golden truths when we wind up a house and move are 1. The packing never ends. Things keep appearing out of the shelves and corners. The house is at its most messy phase. The effort tires you out. 2. Once you reach your new place, the object you want first is always at the bottom and the box containing it is always opened last. 3. The most important things are lost during the move, never to be found again. Of course, I m inflating it, but the experience is not very different for anyone I knew. With more consulting jobs and companies kicking their employees like soccer ball these days, the packers and movers are doing good business. From a luxury, it has matured as an industry and is affordable to many these days. The fundamental question - why relocate at all ? We get tons of reasons - more satisfying job, more spacious house, own house, better quality schools for kids...many of them. The common threa...