The Last Birthday

It was an awesome evening! The whole gang was there at his place to celebrate his birthday. His mom made a sumptuous dinner for him and his friends as she knew this birthday was really special for him. Turning 33 was perhaps the most important milestone in his life.

Dinner was quite heavy and they all were relaxing under the dark blue sky showered with numerous stars. It was as though the whole celestial beings turned up for his birthday. He was in an animated conversation with someone up there in the skies and didn’t notice his best buddy John coming over. ‘Many more happy returns of the day brother’, wished John. They shared a very special bond. Both of them knew what it was like to be brothers though from different mothers.

He looked up and their eyes met. But he didn’t thank John for his loving wish since he already knew that this day will never return. His eyes searched for his mom and saw her clearing the dishes and will soon begin to prepare the bed. Her eyes were moist with tears fighting their way out. Was it the tears of happiness of a well celebrated birthday or tears of realization that everything good needs to end one day? Did she know how close the end really was?

‘What’s wrong?’ John asked. This man was everything for him. Friend, philosopher, brother, mentor and what not. He couldn’t stand the sight of a dear one writhing in so much of mental agony especially on a day when he must be really happy!

He heard the question and looked at John. Two people whom he kept close to heart were the only ones who seem to be concerned about him today. He got up from his place and took John straight to his mom. He placed John’s hand in his mom’s palm and said to his mother, ‘Mom behold your son’! He then looked at John and said, ‘Behold your mother’!

He knew he’ll say these exact words four months later to both of them looking high up to him lying on a crucifix on top of Golgotha!

Portraits of a manager

Managers, they come in all shapes and sizes. More importantly if they are to be a portrait on a corporate wall they’ll definitely resemble one or other beings or things around us. Here is a take on portraying the various managers from my experience of working with a bunch of them till date.

Microscope: This is a genre of managers who love to have a deeper sense of understanding of anything and everything that goes on with their team. They can’t stand being far off from the team and ensure that the team does not miss their presence at all during every course of action. It takes a lot of perseverance to continue working with these type of managers since you need to be at your best not just once, but forever! Though it could be quite demanding, you’ll possibly see the benefit of working with people like these in the long run.

Loud Speaker: The way these people talk! They talk and not just that, they ensure the world around them know when they talk. These are the managers who prefer to be quite loud with their words and actions that the people who work with them need to have an armour that could protect them from embarrassment each time they are with their bosses. It is not necessary that these are the bad guys, just that they love all the attention. There is also a possibility that you may have lots of fun with such bosses and may even end up like them someday.  

Robots: Process, process, process! Managers who absolutely stick to laid down processes can at times be taxing especially if you are not a process oriented person yourself. For the rest of them, your life with these people can be as good as driving a car blindfolded. You don’t have to worry about blind spots at all since these people will ensure that there are none. They usually love those who can be systematic and tend to develop a great sense of disappointment towards the rest who cannot follow a defined path.

Parents: These are specifically those managers who develop a parental affection towards you. These people, obviously are highly emotional beings. Working with them can only be in extremes, depending on the genetic nature of parenthood they inherited. It could either be the easiest person to work with or the most difficult one to please irrespective of your highest level of productivity. All is fair in love!

The Wall: Probably one of the most challenging among the portraits. These people can be absolutely a nightmare with the nature of being a wall where none of your thoughts or suggestions can penetrate them. They are born with a mind that cannot be tuned to understand the concept of listening. It may be best to find an alternate option if you have a strong personality yourself. Else God save you. 

Einstein: This is a bonus! To work with managers who are a constant source of innovative ideas is a blessing. Not something you are bound to get very often, but if you ever happened to work with one try not to lose them. As is the case with many good things, there can be a different side for this as well. All innovations do not always result in production. Hence some of the activities you’ll be involved will rarely see the light of the day. Nevertheless one thing is always guaranteed. You’ll never have a boring day at work!

Gladiator: You should be truly luck to work with someone like this. They’ll die for you! These are the managers who knows your true potential and will go to any extend to ensure that the world around sits and notices you as well. They are the true blue genre of managers who deeply appreciate your capabilities and values your presence as a team member for eternity.

The Fox: The name itself says it. Probably the type of managers you need to be really careful with. These are the ones who don’t mean what they say. If you are too naïve you won’t survive them for long. Learn to tackle them and that’s your only means for existence.

The list is endless. There are many more portraits of managers that we can draw and hang on the wall. We see them all around us every other day.

So what’s the portrait that you want to paint?

A WhatsApp Horror Story!

Alex was in a naughty mood when he saw a few messages in his family WhatsApp group. He has a cousin brother who keeps posting messages that lean heavily towards sarcasm directed at wives. Alex generally refrains from commenting on them. As a matter of fact he is a staunch advocate for gender equality especially in families. Nisha, his wife, was quite proud of her husband for this nature of his.

For some weird reason that day was to be different. God only knows what made him post a comment on one such messages which was definitely uncalled for. He soon got a shocker when the usually silent women members of his family started reacting one after the other! There was an avalanche of messages. One of the cousins even left the group! That was a favourite cousin sister of Nisha.

His shock soon gave way to horror when he saw a notification on the WhatsApp group. It said, “Nisha is typing...” and then all of a sudden it appeared on the screen:

This message was deleted

A ghostly silence followed…

Times when you failed me… my love!

Close to a decade of bachelorhood, away from my family,

A new person, a new life and I started complaining about ‘My Space’.

That’s when you taught me the feeling of togetherness,

And failed me first time… with your love!

When petty differences started to show up,

And silly fights soon became my second name.

That’s when you taught me the power of walking the same path,

And failed my ego… with your love!

Then came the toughest of tests in our life,

Where I lost all my hope and was destined to flop.

That’s when I saw the angel in you,

Who failed my despair… with your true love!

Soon enough my career hit a roadblock,

And struggling seems to be the only way of life.

You stepped in again and showed me the path out,

And failed my anguish… with your love!

Time and again I proved to be difficult,

Losing my temper among many other things.

To your full credit, you held the fort together,

And failed my qualms… totally with your love!

Promise I do, again and again,

To happily fail for you, all through my life.

If and only if, that true and pure heart of yours,

Continue to fail me in your love, forever!

From Hail to Holy

Imagine yourself as a young girl from a small family in your neighbourhood who recently got engaged. All of a sudden, one day you are elevated to the highest pedestal a human can ever reach. This is the story of a young girl named Mary who was transformed from a least known mortal to the one who is empowered with the ability to salvage souls of lesser mortals!

The prayer Hail Mary starts with a salutation to a humble soul where the Archangel congratulates Mary for being the chosen one. The angel then appreciates her for the good life she led till then, knowing all the while that she was pre-destined by the Father to be the mother of His Son in Holy Spirit. A transformation is initiated next with the statement ‘Lord is with you’. It is quite natural for anyone, especially an unmarried woman who got recently engaged, to get a shock of her life to hear the kind of message that followed. Hence it was quite important to prepare her for the news by telling her that you are not alone. You are one with Lord now, literally and figuratively!

Millions of women were born before her. Many lived around her, far and near. Many more will be born after her. But she is the blessed one and that is what set her apart. Next came the biggest revelation in the history of mankind. A virgin who had never known a man gets told that she is carrying. From that moment onwards she realized that she is no longer just another girl. She is a mother! A mom who was lucky to carry God Himself in her womb and know the name of her baby exactly at the time the tiny life started growing in her.

The transformation is now complete. The young girl who was once hailed for her good life is now the holiest among the holy ones!

The title ‘Mother of God’ does not need any further detailing. The startled youngster in her previous life is now bestowed with tremendous powers to pray for those beings among whom she once shared her living moments. She, the one who was born without sin, is given the right to pray for all of us, who were born into and lives in a life surrounded with sins. This power of hers if we invoke daily, works wonders as it is a shield that protects us from the sins that are omnipresent. It is all the more important that we invoke this power of hers everyday as it provides the much needed support to our soul at the exact moment it departs from our body, the time of which is probably the greatest mystery for humans!

Mary is called by the Supreme Power to be the mother of Jesus. But her greater calling is being the mother of the whole universe where she is entrusted with a task of our redemption for generations that went by and many more that are yet to come.

This wonderful invocation perhaps is the shortest prayer that bridges BC with AD. The prayer transcends the boundary before Jesus was born and after he was crucified and died. Hence the bridge between these history dividing events.

Let us walk the path from hail to holy along with our mother.

God bless!

Learner for life

A few years back I was at home during a vacation showing my new ‘smart phone’ to my dad and brother. While I was walking them through the new features of the phone, my grandpa, who was in his early nineties came across and listened to me. I was quite surprised to see him more curious and way more inquisitive than my dad and brother put together! He in fact showed a lot of interest in how modern day technology helps in connecting people and how smart phones are meant to change the way we live.

This was not the first time he asked me questions about what’s happening in the world around and expressed interest about latest happenings. I distinctly remember the days in the past when a shiny silver-black radio, the size of a shoe box, which used to come to life everyday afternoon exactly a few seconds before 1 o’clock. That was when my grandpa switched the radio on to listen to the news broadcast of the day in Malayalam from the only radio station available then, All India Radio or better known as Akasha Vani.

News from radio was not the only source for him. He used to interact quite frequently with the regulars he met during his routine morning walk. The daily visits to church and the discussions with the clergy as well as folks there added to the world of information around him. This was well supported by a detailed reading of one of the well-known newspapers in Malayalam named ‘Deepika’. It was so detailed an activity that there will be hardly a word left unread by the time he puts the paper down.

He was indeed a scholar with all these sources feeding him valuable information day-in day-out, though with his father’s untimely demise, he had to stop his formal education with ‘4^th Form’ which, in the pre-independence era of 1920s, was equal to high school today. What classified him was his perpetual passion to know what’s new in the world every day and can be rightly called a ‘learner for life’!

I consider myself lucky enough to have lived during his lifetime to see such an undying spirit exhibited by a man who went on to cross the magical number of 100 years in a lifetime. It is a lesson for many of us who tend to be contended with the formal bit of learning we have in our early stages of life. After this we spend time in ‘earning’ and quite naturally ‘learning’ takes a back seat. With the advent of social media though there are enough and more that comes to us even without being asked, the question that is relevant today is how much of that constitute ‘real learning’?

While our parent’s generation is relatively lucky, I’m quite sure that we and our next generation are not that fortunate to avoid the clutches of this social media driven ‘learning’. The very nature of this sort of learning provides less of valuable insights and more of junk which adds no substantial benefit to our grey matter that includes the regions of the brain involved in memory, speech, decision making and self-control among other vital functions.

While I pen this down, I’m well aware of the fact that I’m no exception to the sharpened claws of social media learning. Having said that I whole-heartedly appreciate my dear ones for alerting me of this social media evil that is spreading its wings around me that literally makes me learn less every day. I definitely need to trace my steps back to the days of my grandpa who taught me with his life the value of real learning. Without this, all of my education how much ever great that be, will be totally futile.

Here is an honest appeal to each one of you to reflect upon yourself and your ways of real and useful learning. Ask yourself, when was the last time you really learned something new that truly added value to your grey matter. How many of us can really say that our time spent in the few hours that we are awake every day is effectively spend in learning and not just feeding junk to our brains?

Stop. Introspect. Change.

God bless!