valuefirst

Dear Daughter, Happy Birthday Baby. I love you now and always will.  As the clock struck in the midnight, one sixteen year old was added to the world.. ....and more importantly, to our world. It sure changed things for us. How does it feel to you? Any different from what you felt yesterday or day before? None, is it? You are sixteen. That’s what turning up a certain age is all about. It’s like you have the license to do many things but don’t know what to fuss over or where to go. You are like an empty page on which many stories await to be written (could turn into a bestseller someday, watch out for it honey). Then there would be things beyond your care while others will be question of life and death. Each emotion will demand equal attention and the whole world will be out there to be conquered. Different people and issues will pull you in different directions. Guys around you will tell you things which you would willingly believe. Nothing wrong with these, sweetheart. Perfe

It’s for the first time that I am writing on a current issue on my blog. The reason being the barbarianism and the horrific act that the nation woke upto, is very much a product of the absence of values that I have been talking about. Why blame the police or the law makers or for that matter even judiciary. This is a systemic failure at one level but the root cause is somewhere else. When you point one finger at others, three are pointing back at you. Want to know where? Us. Our homes. Our up-bringing. Shocked? I am not. For last 48 hrs everyone worth his or her salt, from civil citizens to media to journalists to opinion makers have been crying hoarse against the lapses in protection of the women in public places. Has anyone bothered looking inside homes? What about our safe and secured residence? I am not talking of sexual abuse at home. It’s a gory and a separate issue. In this entire noise, what amazes me is the “blind spot” that people have regarding their own lives. It

It’s that time of the year when one starts preparing a report card of how did the year go by. Very few would grade themselves as A+ or A. Most of us would put B or C because we feel that things did not go as desired or expected. Something more could have been achieved or accomplished. This is because grading is always done with the mind. Listen carefully, the heart says, not to worry, New Year is coming, and then you will do better. “Next year toh , I will give my best and things will be great”. Pause and watch. This conversation does not happen with a stranger or a neighbor or your boss. This is what we tell ourselves.  After all New Year resolutions are legendary. The enthusiasm is infectious and the hope assumes larger than life status. Nothing wrong with this feeling but somewhere in all this planning we lose focus on what we have already brought to fruition. What we are today is because of what we did yesterday and day before and so on. Even the heart misses this important

It’s a beautiful and warm morning when I am sitting to write something to you. Everything is clear and I can see everything. It’s not just visual but also got to do with my own thoughts. It is moments like these that you seem to have the power to overcome any obstacle, solve any problem or live through the downs that may appear in your way. I was just mulling over whether these “bursts of clarity” have anything to do with the time of the day or are these just…sparks which appear and disappear at will. The answer my friend was just blowing in the cool morning air. The key is to continually question and find the answers. On your own. There was something that had caught my attention a few days back when I was visiting an army cantt. On the entrance gate were these words painted “Respect All, Suspect All”. This kept coming back to me time and again specially when I was leaving or entering the premises. The significance of the words was not in its meaning but in its simplicity. You n

Long after all is won or lost we think of that little "extra" that could have made the difference to winning or losing. I often wonder how powerful is this “extra”? Nothing is complete or just right as there is always room for “extra”. It sounds familiar. Come to think of it, it makes a grand difference to everything - be it food, sports, academics and most importantly life. We as individuals are never satisfied with what we have. Maslow's ' self-actualization ' is a distant dream for most people if not all. Everything “extra” that others have or different from us is unabashedly craved for (jewellery, wife and car top the list – exception here being our own child, who is always better than others). Most perceive grass to be greener on the other side of the fence. My humble advice to all my sane fellow human beings is if the grass is greener on the other side, in all probability the water and electricity bill must also be higher. Please check. It will make you h

I am sure you must have experienced this age old cliché generously thrown our way at some point in time (mostly to ‘save our souls’ not an SOS situation at all), “Arre, everyone is doing it !” Sounds familiar to you? It has to. It’s in the air and everywhere we can ‘hear’ around. It’s fairly normal to use it whenever caught doing something ‘out of the way’. Like if you have the good fortune of catching the person who jumps the signal (traffic my dear friend - education or no education; rich or poor; young or old; gender no bar – no traffic sense leave alone other ‘civic’ senses), ask him/her why he/she did so. Answer is “see around, everyone is doing it”. You don’t have to try hard as you will find so many using this everyday for myriad reasons, usually petty ones. Now transfer this to our situation as parents specially whose ‘young adult/s’ are in the delicate “dabba” age (term coined by my mother, when we were growing up, for people between 12 to 17 yrs of age who are eit

Every zero put on the right side of a figure increases it ten times. Come to think of it, in literal sense zero denotes nothing. In life everything begins from a zero and ends in a zero. There is a kind of nothingness in it which makes it great. The power of this "nothing" amazes me. When I come to reflect, there is abundance in zero because you can start anything from zero. Nothing else gives you this power. Even a one added will make it either a one or a ten depending on where you place it, left or right of zero. The result has to be more than zero.  Silence for me is that zero from where anything can be started. Life too can be scripted, once again. Long time back in an in-flight magazine I had read an article written by a Chinmaya Mission Acharya. What I remember of it is that he had described silence as “not just inability of the mute to speak or of the talkative to keep shut or absence of any sound”. I still recollect as it had got me contemplating on this beaut

A small get together of friends over soups, snacks and dinner turned into a “sensitivity workshop”. Not intentional but more out of freewheeling discussions and sharing. The basic content of the conversations hinging around favorite topics like me and my sacrifices; me and others; me and my husband and more on similar lines. The conversations that were happening were self gratifying, self engulfing, self motivational, self glorifying, and self satisfying etc. Some samples - “I did so much for him then why did he not reciprocate in the same way.” “I gave up everything for him but he still doesn’t support me in front of his parents.” " My spouse does  not stand by me but chooses to look the other way on things that hurt me." “I made all adjustments and went out of my way for my in-laws but they still favor my sister-in-law who doesn’t do even 1% of what I did.” “I gave up my career and dreams to build a home for others but no one cares for me.” “I taught him love but he never

Sometimes ending is the most important thing for making new beginnings. Some relationships are such where the best way to "let them be" is by moving out of it, mentally and emotionally. Not all relationships are meant to have forever tag attached to it. This is true not just for romantic relations but true for any family, friendly relations between people. Expiry date is mentioned for most, we sometimes miss it. Or may be choose to ignore it because of weaknesses of our own.  As far as family relations are concerned, its by birth, so there is very little that you can do about it. You will always find some are giving more to the relation than the others. This begins to hurt when you know you are being taken for granted. Only people don't realize that if the relations are stretched too far for comfort, they will break. May be for better. Sometimes people commit the folly of thinking that family members can't see through the designs of the  opportunist or "ext

The most precious commodity and unfortunately the least respected in most quarters by most people. Today I was reading an article on punctuality and it struck that how very few consider it a value to live by. The notion of "IST" - Indian Standard Time - is so very ingrained in us. Being on time means acceptable delay of 15-30 mins. Its normal and forgiven if you ask people. Some organizations do try to build their culture around being on time for everything but then it is looked as an aspect of being professional and not personal belief so much. Personally I strongly feel that p unctuality reflects character.   We do not have the right to waste someone else's time as I would waste mine.       In our day to day existence, we are so casual about time as if it is an inexhaustible resource. In reality it is in "limited edition". In our growing up years we were guided by importance of finishing the task at hand 'right now' and not wait for the 'waki

Your formal education will equip you with all the knowledge, skills and traits required to lead a successful professional life. Living a fulfilling life is possible only through learning to value your support system. Attitude to learning to respect these pillars of strength will give you an advantage which cannot be quantified. It will show in your output and your general way of being. In times of our parents or before that, we had the joint family system which is perhaps the strongest support system that one can have. We take our parents for granted in many such cases without realizing how important they are for our being able to build lives outside home. That's a separate philosophy which I will discuss some other time.  However in today's times when we have to step out and move away from our homes to create our future in new cities, this support system has acquired names like Mukta mausi, Seema tai, Noor, Pinky, maharajji, driver saab etc. They are real and are here to

Freedom without responsibility is anarchy (not said by me). I have always treated my independence as my birth right, a privilege accorded to me without any effort from my side. It’s as natural as breathing, walking, talking, sleeping etc. Every year we celebrate this day with a lot of pageantry and show of emotions anywhere and everywhere.  However this is perhaps the first year when I really got down to thinking as to what independence really means to me as an individual. Is it just a date, a journey, a holiday, an emotion, a privilege, right et al? All these words have importance in context to Independence Day but they don’t resonate with my being. Am I really free? I am afraid of helping an accident victim on road, I am afraid to report abuse if I come across one, I am afraid to step out of the house at night, I am afraid of refusing a bribe for getting work done, I am afraid to help a stranger in need, I am afraid of saying no to things which have social importance attached

The two simple words which define all our actions – Right or Wrong. For most of us we are always striving to be on only one side – right! All others are on the wrong side. More importantly our entire life is spent on just deciding which the right side is and proving others to be perpetually on the wrong one. Normal when you come to think of it. There are as many definitions of right and wrong as different people who have lived, are living and will be born to live on this earth (may be elsewhere in the galaxy too). However many a times I sense uneasiness about the whole thing. Why are we struggling with thoughts as to where will our acts place us in the two halves of life? Doesn’t it stifle our natural style of being? We are always holding back from giving the “me” in everything and coming up with what is expected. The casualty is true self. It is lost in all this translation and normalization.   Today I want to share a secret with you. There’s nothing called right or wrong.

“ When you stop complimenting what is beautiful, you stop thinking what is beautiful” (from RD).   I feel that this art of appreciating others will die a natural death unless we as individuals do something about it. When I think of appreciation I don’t mean a simple selection of the “Like” button in FB. I personally feel many a times we do this even without comprehending what the person is trying to convey in her/his post or picture. It seems more like a socially desirable behavior on part of the FB community to like others as you would want them to like you. Bitter but true.  When you appreciate someone or something it means that you have eyes to see, nose to smell, ears to hear, body to touch and most importantly mouth to speak and hands to write those lines. All our senses are being put to a beautiful and substantial use.  The point I am trying to drive home is that appreciation as a mode of communication and motivation is steadily disappearing. How many times have we mad

I am not sure whether parenting was as difficult 20, 50 or maybe even 100 years ago but am certain modern-day parenting has assumed distinctive proportions and status in minds of most people. Parenting from being an art has slowly transformed into being a science. “ Every action has an equal (mostly magnified) and opposite reaction ”. It is one of those things which can be appreciated and understood only by those who have either lived through or are living. Once a parent, always a parent, I say. Technology I guess has a major if not the pivotal role in bringing about this revolution. Children find it much easier to communicate with the devices rather than indulge in the age old human-to-human contact (read interacting with parents). Not a day goes by when I am not reminded by my daughter “how she is a product of 6 billion years of successful evolution” and I should treat her like one. How about acting like one, my darling by-product? Couple of months back I had the privilege of

I am often reminded of my childhood days when I used to visit my grandparents. My maternal grandfather was a doctor, social worker, writer and most importantly a good human being. He had a story for every night and all the lessons we needed to take. I remember when we used to go to his place he would tell me so many things. He knew “Bhagwad Gita” by heart. He was a doctor by profession but never stopped himself from indulging in hobbies that he loved. He loved music, art, social work etc. He always believed in giving back to society. There is no age to fulfill your hobbies. You can learn playing guitar when you are in your 30’s, go for trekking to unknown places when you are in your 40’s etc. Never ever stop yourself just because you are of certain age. Just remember there are no age limits for learning and for stopping to have fun. Until and unless you bring this balance in your life, work and play, you will never be a happy person. Always keep something’s just for yourself. Do the