Holding the folds of a pensive in naive ideals
a smile of warmth that held my mind,
vice grips of vermin violating my voice
toll of trust in dirt under cover of amour
yet a sequoia of heart that holds still

Not knowing if it exists yet one can feel it real
a smile of warmth that says all is well,
through the ages of defiant seers and timeless spawns
Followed me, through the ether of space
not to say, the oneness to feel

A smile of warmth that flows into my eyes,
no bard verse can string those pearls, for
it is nothing short of caress unto God.

It is easy to convey such statements, but the moment of truth is different. People behave weird when they have fear.

When love is present, the lovers are fearless, they build – they create – they progress.

The very absence of fear factor, takes one beyond the realms of anything that the person considered impossible in all logical terms.

It is not easy to quit fear. So some aspects that cause a human that fear factor are – death, poverty, disease, respect, failure and rejection of love.

Spirituality in most cases, provides a temporary solace or a mirage against the streams as mentioned. However, it is the material world that causes the fear factor not the spiritual world.

In essence, keys must be found where they are lost and not where there is light.

To lose fear is a conscious decision by the individual, they must be able to look up and say , yes I am not afraid. And make no mistake, this is not the easiest of things to do, it is like swimming with the sharks with a bleeding wound. The task takes a lot of effort to stand up and commit to the cause. But it has been proven that, one who conquers fear conquers the world.

Even if you don’t want the world, you still need to live with yourself, our greatest fear lies dormant in ourselves – in our mind. Find it, conquer it – live in peace ever since.

So, lets just say….why fear, just take the bull by its horns, either you win it or you never need to see the bull again in life… Either ways, there is no fear anymore

Same with love or success… why fear! Give it a shot!

Albert Einstein on Gandhi:
Generations to come will scarce believe that such a one as this ever in flesh and blood walked upon this earth.

—
Come what may, people say many words against the Mahatma, I for one believe that he was a rebel of sorts and he was responsible for a movement that even the greatest of believers in Jesus have not had success implementing ‘show thy other cheek’.
Gandhi was the best bet India ever had and he did a fantastic job in leading the nation into one piece against the empire which had never won a war against a new strategy – Non Violence.

India’s greatest asset is in her spiritual prowess, today not many recognize that.

I want to conclude this emotional note with Ghokale’s words to Gandhi from that movie released in ’82.
“India has many men with too much wealth – it is their privilege to nourish the efforts of the few who can raise India from servitude and apathy.”

I sincerely hope India’s wealthy start implementing what Ghokale wished!

- R

I have been working with people and consultants for a long time now. Typically, earlier days people used to work for their homes and families, many used to work for passion and specifically accumulate wealth for their benefit or others or a combo of both.

Let me make it clear, I am not here to dispute any one who makes / accumulates wealth in any means that is legal. It is their approach towards life, their needs and wants. Obviously they pay their bills and feed their stomachs at the end of the day.

Today, however I see a different world, it is highly pressurized and complicated in terms of competition etc. Money makes a large discussion in any form, what do I  have and am I making enough ?

Want vs need is the topic of the hour , we need a lot of things to run our lives and we want more things than we need to make ourselves social I would say ?

Having a home is a need, having more than one home is a want, call it investment or whatever, it still a want for a base line!

I am not disputing the want, but then how do we want it vs are we worth the want, its something the individual has to decide.

I want to drive a Porshe, it is a want – am I ready for it ? Is that a need that I can convince myself ?

Nope – not now! But here is the deal, my neighbor drives a Porshe ! So now, hypothetically speaking, I would have to upgrade my need of having a car that fits my budget to the Porshe that I want. I will need to do something that beyond me to get that happening for me, clearly given my choices, I have to give something to get something.

The next hurdle is, time, by when do I want to do it ?  If my want becomes greed, I can be totally unrealistic in trying to achieve this within a few weeks or months. If I am practical, I will set a realistic goal of getting to this by all possible logical – effective means within a year or few.

In the employment world, today many people look at what his peer makes, how does my pay compare to theirs. Do we recognize that each person is on his own when it comes to their food on the plate ?

A person can be 25 and blessed with a unique skill of performing a complicated task in 1/3rd of the time of his super senior. His worth is determined by his capacity to perform and brain power not by age or experience.  Usually, capacity to perform increases by experience, which does not mean that we can rest over and nature will roll over and play cool. Today, we must perform or perish, performers always get compensated to their needs and wants and non performers do not, at least in many cases.

A person may have the best of sweets in his plate and be insulin dependent, by law of nature, that can possibly be a balance, wanting to compare and threatening that without justification is against nature of justice, that could possibly lead to repercussion that we may not know.

This world, we all need to keep running, instead of watching out for whats on some one else’s plate, if we focus on what we need and claim that as it is, we are bound to get that working for us.

After all, what we need we will always have, what we want is subject to achievement of our mind and not a figment of some one else’s !

Of course, I am assuming that we are all subject to values and right way of life respecting the science of Karma!

- R

I doubt if this can be called as culture decline as the term varies at different time lines of history. Adapting to later generation ordeals may not be classified as heritage or culture failure.

When Aandal (a devotee / assumed wife of Lord Ranganatha) can call Krishna with his name, i dont know why a woman today cannot call her husband by name.

If we consider Madisar (the sari style in which some Indian women dress) as our culture I am not sure when that joined ours since sangam age (2000 years ago).

I am not trying to be hard on the older thoughts, i am saying its easier to adapt and look at what our generation can learn from positive reinforcement to our younger generation.
Honestly, I care a rat if my child wears a churidhar or jean – i only care if she is good in her life as a human being and useful to the society and promotes good values.

Dressing and figurative speech are a part of fashion trend, to mix that with culture is a older thought that cannot stand for a longer time with the way the world lives today.

If you ask me, even marriage in the current format is a later generation infusion, male dominated for the most part.

Can you explain how the children were taken care of during vedic times ? What was the parental bonding , did the dad / mom sit and feed the kids and teach them math ?

Am positive – these all came in the past few hundred years!!!

I would even say, this parental bonding is one of the reasons for karma builds and expectation of returns from children etc.

PS: I would not go very far into women liberation etc with these petty issues,this planet… is in reality a woman’s world… all along – and most of us know it

- R

Now this is a human who changed the world for once, even went to a point where he almost defined Karma in scientific terms by the theory of relativity.

If I were to chose a few of my mentors, I would definitely name him among a select few – not because he has brains that can challenge the greatest genius till date but he was a man of few yet mighty words.

What is value, and how do you define a value that is concerned with you as a human versus value of an object. To understand value, one must understand the need of value and the concept of evolution with that of greed. We have often seemed to confuse evolution over greed and vice versa.

In a simple way to quote the difference, evolution is using a wooden log to form a wheel – greed is cutting down the entire forest to enforce use of wooden wheels to every one in the village.

Nuclear energy is an evolution, the use of that energy in weapons is pure greed. Today, we have seen people moving in from urban towns to big cities in search of opportunities.

After Indian independance from the British, the country grew slowly yet supported by a strong internal economy until the late 90′s. Times were fast changing with the advent of technology and imports. From simple people who used to believe in the government jobs, we moved on to multi national organizations.
India’s population which was a curse till then became a boon to many corporates. Economical labor then saw an attractive labor market around the globe.

Armed with hard work and pressure to succeed, many ‘baby boomers’ of India (the grads of 90′s), started building their own dreams in their lands or foreign.

Property prices sky rocketed and India was fast becoming a cosmo, a strong one too.

Now as with any upside, we see a larger downside, that’s how nature works unfortunately.

As a side effect, people started finding shorter and easier ways to pull up ways to rake in funds and trick the system. The situation then dries up the gene pool that feeds off the brain wave living.

I am not debating hard work vs smart work, am saying short cut work is too short lived and causes more misery in the future.

The question of value comes when people think about living a life that is the natural way, work with what you feel is a part of your social structure to your community.

Value ultimately depends on how you perceive it but then the famous saying ‘ Do unto others as you would have them do unto you’ , makes perfect sense here.

Value, like true love, has its sense of passion over mundane benefits. The old Indian saying, ‘you are remembered only as long as the last person who remembers you’  just rolls on for a person of value, long after he is gone.

One’s legacy is primarily defined by the value they offer to the society and humans are naturally born to create legacy, lets just do it – nice and fine!

- R

That seems to have definitely got a boost from the recession of the year, Tigers world over are a big time spot light this year.

If I had to say – Two words –  ”About time” !

So whats the scoop, in India, we have Dhoni and so many stars in the lime light and so many youngsters blogging and slogging on the topic world over. Sure that seems a big mass – right or ‘just good business’.

If it was so simple to have a resolve to the tiger , we would have had it to go into 10′s of thousands earlier.

I am very passionate about the tiger, not just because it is a magnificent  feline but it is very close to the Indian heart. It forms a very crucial link on the religion and  it is the national animal of the country.

I just decided to check out my luck in watching the animal in its natural habitat, I knew the odds were against me for sure, but what’s the big deal – I will go for it anyway.

A great series to watch about the tiger

Early this year, I made a trip to the jungle down south to the Tamil Nadu – Karnataka border to a place called Hasanur. I was referred this area by a friend from the WWF. I met Mr.Krishna Kumar, the resort owner and a local wild life expert.

Mr.Krishna Kumar offered to take me into the jungle the next day morning and was up for the task. The jungle was brilliant but as expected no tiger at sight. The trip however made me understand many problems surrounding the tiger population, thanks to Mr.Kumar, I could understand the situation.

A brief history of how brutal we were, until the late 50′s Indian government had allowed game hunting. If you had the license and a gun you can kill an animal. One statement, History repeats itself, has always been right. Today, after 50 years, we realize and smack our heads on what we did to the tiger, while without any thought, we are doing the same to other natural resources.

So typical of our approach.

Lets look at our problems and how we are working at it.

Now we have a great campaign going around saying save the tiger, how exactly are we going about it ? Throwing money at the tiger ? We have a different breed of animals that eat money, unfortunately tigers do not fall in that list. I am not saying that money is not going to help, lets look at that later.

Now there are tiger reserves,we, humans know the boundaries, we created them – unfortunately, tigers do not. Tigers go as they please, as food and mate drive them.

It is clearly crazy to keep talking encroachment as one major issue when it comes to tiger conservation. Humans – villagers – who live in forests, it is difficult to relocate them to other areas, they are not IT engineers, they are simple herders and farmers. For them, the tiger is a problem, it kills their cattle, sometimes even humans. In West Bengal – sundarban villages, at least one family member must have been lost to a tiger. It is an emotional problem.

Tigers use the same resources the villagers do. Tigers need natural prey to keep out of village food (cattle is easy prey).

Villagers graze their cattle in shared water holes with the wild life, this causes problems such as foot and mouth disease to spread into the wild life making them unfit game for the main carnivores.

Tigers find it easier to go in search of prey at water holes which are less agile (such as cows / buffalo) and they eventually may lose out on their fear of man.

When a villager loses cattle, he is set out to ‘fix’ the problem – the tiger. They land up poisoning the carcass with pesticides. This not only kills the main carnivore but other scavengers.

Long story short – the problems are more associated with ground level dealings.

Mainly with humans, not in the cities – but those who fight for survival along side the tigers.

a. They need to be compensated properly (for each loss they incur)

- This is not as easy at it sounds, you need more ground level people – rangers to track and approve of a kill – document it – to validate the tiger involvement vs ‘human’ connection. So more resources – the ones that make sense and are dedicated. Ones who work for a passion and not as a job – even in the grass roots.

b. Vaccinations and Veterinary facilities

- The NGO’s must organize regular veterinary camps and clinics for the villages to take care of the needs on the cattle.

- Govt must do all that it takes to help with this (including promoting Vets as a career path).

c. Enhance the ground force to help getting rid of poachers.

There are other innovative ways of enhancing the food and water supply to both the tiger and its prey, we need a broader mind and dedication to make that count. A half hearted ‘job’ would only fuel the grave faster but it has to be done with passion.

Humans have to share the system with the Tigers, make it a life that is possible to adapt and live – money is just needed for that not for fancy ads and people who cannot make a difference in the act.

Get serious and move faster – that is possible and not by hollow promises.

People like Mr.Kumar and WWF in India are doing a phenomenal job in fighting this battle alone – its time we either helped them directly or form units to help them.

- Ravi

Write to me if you are interested in helping in anyway!

It made me think, what is now happening across the globe and where is all the ‘real’ gold!

There were people who hit the nail and many others did not.

One in a hundred, really found gold and others tried harder and harder. Eventually over a period of time – just gave up and started moving on. Gold rush has always been there, sometimes in terms of the yellow metal and many other times as in unseen potential such as technology or human capital or the green energy as we see now.

It is not just for California, other states such as many along the Mississippi river and even the good ol’ Michigan has seen brilliant ‘gold rushes’ along its history from the leather to timber and then to the autos.

We we fail to understand from history is that – Gold rushes will always be there, be it the auto boom or the Dot com one, the actual gold is the opportunity that surrounds the Gold. And we also over abuse anything – until it burns out and takes us along.

In Michigan, we beat the hell out of the beavers for their skins and then did it with the timber , twice we tried destroying nature without success – we attempted the same ploy on the auto world …almost succeeded too !

The other view… when we had the Gold rush, many California business men made money selling cloths, tools, breakfast etc at that time – they were the ones who struck the actual gold. Their success was more phenomenal than the ones that went for digging.

Lets revisit the American dream – make it big or die trying! Don’t we all have this in our mind somewhere ?

Well, again what is America – it is a genuine mix of the best immigration talent and some awesome spirit that binds a large mass of land into one – the Land of the Free. Being free, as one of the founding fathers mentioned, is a state of mind.

Be free in your mind and try excelling in what you do, whether you serve a burger or help the auditor prepare the files or innovate the way a car runs.

After all, it is the human evolution concept, in a way. We as humans have always tried raising the bar and some have succeeded and some had accepted that they assisted the person trying.  Some always kept complaining about what they never got.

Well, survival of the fittest is the mechanism of nature to show us what we need to do to get there and move ahead.

The gold diggers were there, they disappeared as soon as the gold was gone – but then look at the others, they survived – they expanded – they went ahead to make California the Golden State.

I am not here to judge who did the right thing, all I am saying is – there are opportunities and there are opportunities surrounding the opportunities.

Ultimately, it does not matter what we do – it cannot just be the money – it could be anything from laying out a simple pipe or cleaning a fish tank or building the Erie canal. It takes a lot of self belief for the entrepreneur and faithful belief by others on the person trying to do it.

Being honest to ourselves and try to make it big – or die trying is all what we can do. That gives us the sense of accomplishment of living the life of a human and having tried to evolve.

Success in work is not guaranteed but success of having tried is definitely there!

- R

IPL season 3 has been phenomenal with people all over celebrating the success of the game.

This is a great moment for a lot of Indian cricket fans – seeing their hero images in action in their own back yard. A promising time to youngsters as Jakati or Shekar tiwary who may never have seen light of the international spot at any time or Bhadrinath who may have retired without a single international game to his credit. For them, IPL has been a great source of light.

Cricket is our religion – it is our way of life, it is more powerful than any political party or any contemporary swami’s or kings of our past.

As with any religion, there is money – there are believers who will do anything for their belief! Now looking at the massive amount of fame and money, there was one man who took the idea from another parallel flop show, the ICL and used the muscle of the official cricket club of India and the major league guys as the Khans and Ambanis to get to see the ROI and … LO…. the IPL was born!

Yes it was Modi’s dream, his passion, nothing wrong in copying a concept a-la Google… So anyway, it went on for 3 years and this man was all over the charts more popular than the mighty Khan or Sachin himself, then they had an in- ‘law’ problem and the marriage was in rocks. Now Modi is questioned, Indian politicos are behind him and most likely he will be put to the test, even though my gut says, he will come fine, after all its India !

Now how big is IPL, some say it is a 3000 Crore industry providing solid entertainment for a month or more for Indians globally. Being a cricket fan, I agree it does on the entertainment part.

Now, when people outside look at us and see – its a huge wow! Well, Cricket means money, understandable – India is a nation that has a high imbalance of economic ratios in people. We are one of the poorest and richest nation at the same time.

My point is, India’s empires such as IPL must be used to constructively enhance the life of the average human, build better roads , build a healthy life style, educate the importance of environment responsibility so on and so forth.

Cricket is a very powerful platform to do that, not just the money but the words which must not be met with hollow promises as in ‘Save the Tiger’ (an article for another time).

IPL with or without Modi will run, there is too much money and too many eagles in the circuit. I care a damn who makes what too, but what I care is if our public in the common line will be really benefited by this in the real sense or are we just behaving like Rome with gladiators before its great fall!

A point to think and something to raise a voice. Will IPL help the true India , it can – if it wants!

- Ravi

Next – The 1411 tiger count