Birthday Special

I walked into the office in the morning and sat at my desk which is right next to one of my senior colleagues in the team who I truly admire for his knowledge, ability and the seamless way by which he handles every possible situation related to stakeholder management to complex problem solving. 

It was my birthday today, but he forgot about it. Just before wishes started pouring in the common office groups online, which would have alerted him, another colleague of mine walked past and wished me. That is when it clicked for my senior and he promptly wished me as well. When he got to know that the magical number for the day is forty-four, he made a statement, ‘Wow! You are in your mid-forties inching closer to fifty’. The immediate response that came out of me was, ‘Not really, I am still in my early forties and a long way to go before fifty!’

While the exchange of words was just an act of communication, I truly felt there was something more to it. Age is just another number, the final count of which will never be known to us. But every birthday serves as a wonderful reminder. How much ever busy we are or how fast we run to get more clients for our business or how many more zeroes get added to our back account, all these will cease to hold any value, if we end up as a picture framed on a wall and our loved ones have nothing to remember about us which could bring a smile on their face.

Career is important, but remind ourselves to live our life fully and ensure that our highest priority always remains as our loved ones!

 

Tunnel Riders

Alex and Nisha were at their parents’ place after a long gap of two years since Covid-19 pandemic ripped the world apart. There were many relatives they had to visit and decided to call on one of their uncles. It was a good feeling to catch up after a long time and all of them were quite happy to see each other after what was probably the worst two years in their entire life till date.

Among the conversation, a topic came up about a friend of Alex who works in Shimla, one of the most beautiful mountain regions towards North East of India. He had invited Alex many times to come over to Shimla and appreciate the magnificent mountains. Alex and Nisha discussed the plans with uncle and aunt to take a flight to Delhi and later a short flight to Shimla from there. That’s when uncle intervened and suggested a better option.

Alex’s uncle had done extensive trips pan India and was quite familiar with the geography across this gorgeous nation. He suggested taking a train from Delhi to Shimla as there were more than a hundred tunnels across the picturesque Himalayas. As soon as they heard this, both Alex and Nisha got quite excited and almost immediately started picturing the awesome trip through the mountains and valleys on a meter gauge train.

While Alex, Nisha and their uncle were soaking themselves in the lovely landscapes in their minds, their aunt who was listening to all the conversation spoke for the first time. She said, ‘What is the big deal in going through so many tunnels. It will be all dark and gloomy’.

The expression on the faces of other three souls present in the room could only be described with one word, ‘priceless’!

The above story is only a cross section of what we see in our daily lives. There are numerous such ‘aunts’ among us, be it in our family or among friends. These poor souls can almost never see the light at the end of the tunnel. Their minds are perennially stuck in the pitch darkness of the tunnels they cross during their lives.

People like these are always lost in the gloominess and in fact miss to appreciate the beauty as the train of life exits the tunnel into the wilderness and the heavenly panorama of lush green mountains and valleys. Instead they only see the train moving from one tunnel to the next and around them they will befriend only darkness and despair.

It indeed is a mindset. We may think that the worst pandemic in the recent history of mankind might have changed people. Even the most negative of people around us who survived the pandemic might have developed an appreciation towards life. Then again, experiences like this promptly corrects us by citing fantastic examples of perpetually negative human beings. These are personalities who could never think of anything positive in life.

Rain or shine, these people live and breathe negative. Imagine you successfully wrap up an extremely strenuous event for which you prepared relentlessly for a month. Everything went well and while you are beaming with joy, one of the above kind will come to you and cite the least of the imperfection and highlight it as the worst thing to have happened in the whole world. They will religiously fail to appreciate you or your efforts. This is a mental makeup in its deepest and darkest of shades.

So what do we do about this? Where possible help these individuals realize that they are treading the valleys of misery and in fact there is a highland of happiness that awaits them if they are ready to change a bit. More importantly when it comes to us, we need to be aware of the fact that human mind could be like a sponge where it could absorb all these negativity. Do not let it happen. But in the likelihood of that happening, ensure that you squeeze them out with an overdose of friendly positivity.

I am quite sure we can work together to bring in the much needed positive vibes and make the world a better place to live!

Being Positive

 Flying around like a beautiful butterfly

With a riot of colours and happiness galore.

The world was on my fingertips

And dreams were all that I adore.

Sky is the limit, was the mantra

Chanting I did, lying on my dewan.

Out from the blue came a bolt of shock

On it was written, Made in Wuhan!

Holed up in the house, feeling arrested

Fun, outing and everything else busted

Even a rare chance of getting out

Was a lost cause with cops all out!

When all hopes seem to be lost

A ray of light shined like a ghost.

All what my heart did was yearning

And the answer to that was E-learning!

Life bounced back with verve

Colours of hope was shining again.

Yes we still felt arrested, but

Happiness was what we did regain.

Lucky indeed am I, to be alive

Luckier in fact is my guessing

A thing my books could never teach

That survival is nothing but a blessing!

The Christmas Miracle

If you gave me a bunch of wires, half a dozen tiny bulbs, a working motor from an old toy car, some hay and a handful of seeds of rice, it probably meant nothing but junk. You give the same stuff to my brother and he’ll create such wonders from them, the making of which will be a sure shot material for a viral video in world as we know today.

Allow me to take you to our world 30 years back. I was just ten and my brother four years elder. I loved getting drowned in the world of books and was quite happy that my parents setup a library at home. My brother on the other hand had a table that reminded me of an electrician’s shop. I never understood what he did with those wires, soldering iron and millions of other electrical things he seems to have fallen in love with.

One fine morning in a weekend during December, I watched him as he started dismantling one of the old toy cars we had. He took out the tiny motor and later pulled out some wires and bulbs from his drawer. The next step was to ask mom for some seeds of rice. Once he had these, he then headed to our backyard and got hold of a big bowl of red soil which when mixed with water allows you to mould anything. The soil was quite fertile as well. He even asked our neighbour and got some hay also. The curios cat in me jumped out, but he said it is all a surprise and asked me to wait and watch!

The next thing he did was to find a suitable corner in front of our house and he did find a good one indeed. He settled down with his stuff and started preparing the soil by mixing some water into it. He then got into the act of moulding and soon enough I could see the contours of a tiny mountain shaping up. On the slopes of the hill he seemed to have left small rectangular patches which I couldn’t make out why. Through the middle of the mountain he also left a provision for what seemed like a pathway. The real reason for all these designs were to be revealed in time.

He then got a few tiny twigs, straight ones, from a nearby tree and started planting them one after the other from top to bottom of the hill. By the time the mould starting setting in, he attached the tiny bulbs to the wires and then connected the string to the twigs. I was still wondering what will the motor do. The answer remained the same. Wait and watch!

Before long, one side of the bottom of the hill was all prepared to look like a small pond, good enough to hold some water. On the other side he kept some cardboard boxes and laid hay around them. It was the turn for the motor to be picked up. His tool box came out as well and he did some of his usual mystical work with it. Before I even knew it he finished connecting the motor to the wires.

It was time to bring the bowl of rice seeds to the limelight. I had seen him not let the clay dry at those rectangular patches I mentioned earlier. He planted the rice seeds carefully in these patches and returned to the remaining set of work.

Mom called out for lunch and so we took a break. Over the next few days I could see him do some fine tuning of his creation. By the time our calendar announced that Advent season will soon come to an end by culminating with Christmas, the mountain of clay he created was beaming with green patches of healthy paddy fields!

On the Christmas Eve, he invited all of us for his ‘magic show’. In the valley where he had placed the hay, he softly placed Mother Mary, St Joseph, the three kings, shepherds and their sheep and a few other animals from our crib set. It was time for baby Jesus to be placed in the middle. Very carefully he carried baby Jesus and placed in the middle of the barn he created. He then reached behind the hill and we all heard a click that sounded like a switch. That’s when the magic got revealed to all of us!

The whole string of bulbs came to life lighting up the hill from top to the bottom. Soon enough we could hear the gurgling of water and to our surprise we could see water flowing from top of the hill through the pathway he created which ended up in the pond. Mysteriously the water never reached the limit of the walls of the pond and didn’t overflow! The secret was that he used the motor to pump the water back to the top of the hill thereby creating a sustainable fountain!

That definitely was one the greatest Christmas Miracles of my life! 

Eucharist 6000 Miles Away

2020 will go down in the history as a defining year for mankind. After a gap of hundred years, human beings are forced to stay totally indoors with the fear of being annihilated by a microorganism, the likes of which the world has rarely seen from the time of inception. A similar incident was cited in 1920s in the form of Spanish Flu.

The day when I turned 39, I started working from home. Five months later, as I write this, sitting in Dubai, the practice still continues with the exception that I’ve started going to office once a week since the last couple of weeks.  

Covid-19 or Corona virus has redefined literally everything in our lives. Starting from grocery shopping to getting a car registration renewed is all done online. E-learning, from being an exceptional form of learning has become a norm for offices and more importantly schools. Business folks who vehemently insisted on the absolute necessity for face-to-face meetings happily conduct sessions online. The world has locked down itself within the perimeter of an electronic screen.

Spiritual wellbeing was equally impacted. Along with everything else, Churches and other places of worship were all shut down. Being a part of the Holy Mass and receiving Eucharist was no longer possible. The Holy Week also was not spared as it came in between the lockdown period. Churches across the world made arrangements for live streaming of Holy events so that people could be a part of it. We started following the routine of taking part in the Holy Mass on TV, something that was never practiced in our lives before. Even with all these, something was still missing.

While we tried to be a part of the Holy Mass on TV from various churches, we truly felt a gap in experiencing Christ. That’s when it happened. One day we chanced upon the Daily TV Mass from the historic Loretto Abbey Chapel in Toronto, Canada. Father Michael J Coutts celebrated the Holy Mass that day. It was magical! He took us to experience the divine feeling of being one with God in that short period of time we were in front of the TV. We didn’t even realize that we were not in a Church. Through his beautiful homily and the prayers that directly touched our hearts along with the lovely songs from the Church choir team, we truly celebrated the Holy Mass as though we were doing it right in the presence of Christ our Lord himself!

It is indeed a blessing to share the experience of having someone holding your hands while standing at an Altar more than 6000 Miles away and still elevate you to be one with the Spirit of the Lord. This we believe is indeed a God sent gift and we all look forward to the days when we could join Fr Michael and share the happiness of Eucharist with the Miles no longer separating us!

We also have a dream that one day when this crazy pandemic ends we would love to visit the chapel and share the bliss we experienced with Fr Michael himself and even celebrate a Holy Mass along with him engulfed in the holiness omnipresent in that historic chapel.

The other side of the coin

We were on our first ever family trip to Europe! Though travelling along with a two year old and a six year old poses its own challenges, we decided to take the plunge. After a few days at Amsterdam and a short stop later at Cologne, we found ourselves on a train to Stuttgart in Germany. The journey was to be an average of three hours. We ensured to book seats for a section in the compartment designated for families especially with the little ones with us.

Kids as usual were super excited about every aspect of a vacation! They loved train rides especially and could feel their excitement in every new sight that came their way. Soon after the train left Cologne a pretty young lady came and sat near our area in the compartment. She had a book in her hand and a headset on one of her ears. As soon as she settled down, we could see her trying to catch-up with the reading. After a while I felt that she was not able to concentrate on the book, with the chatter of the kids. I could see her getting disturbed and I told our little ones to remain quiet.

The calm lasted a few moments as the excitement didn’t let them be seated for long. They were back in action shortly. So was the annoyance of the young lady. She tried to communicate through her glances and we tried without much luck to translate the message to the kids as well. The drama went on for a while.

As the train crossed half the distance we had to cover, the lady closed the book and looked at me. I could see rage burning in those eyes. She blurted out all her irritation on me and asked me to make the kids shut up.

Being a tourist in their country, I tried my best to remain composed and reminded her that she chose to sit at a designated family area and there is a limit to which you could keep the mouths shut of little children. I guess the message was delivered well. Shortly after that she moved to another area where she could bury her heads deeper into the world of imagination with her book.

We thought for ourselves that a trip that was to be full of beautiful memories might have been destined to end up with a bitter experience like this. While we were still trying to pacify ourselves, the train rolled on to the platform of Stuttgart Hauptbahnhof, the primary railway station in the city of Stuttgart. As I was taking out our luggage from the other end of the cabin I could see a middle-aged man approaching my wife and telling her something.

My wife and kids all got down from the train along with our stuff. I could see a glow on her face which did a wonderful job of removing the cloud of gloom that hung above her after the unpleasant incident on the train.

The man earlier told her, “Mam, I’m sorry for everything that happened between you and the young lady. Let her say anything she wanted, please don’t bother. You are blessed with two beautiful angels and I enjoyed every little sound made by your kids. They were music for my ears. The world cannot be deprived of such sheer joy. God bless your family!”

The rest of our trip was one where we could only find positivity all around us! 

Love in Corona

Alex circled red today’s date on the calendar. It had been three months since he started working from home. The concept was quite enticing for him initially, but soon reality hit him! While at office he had some breathing space in between meetings. Whereas now, all what he does is jump from one meeting to another as everyone is on Microsoft Teams and is just a call away.

The day wasn’t different. A series of back-to-back meetings were lined up. Even the space on the Outlook calendar he marked for lunch got double booked a few minutes back. It was going to be a working lunch like many other days. To tell the truth, Alex started to get a feeling that he missed his office! The only thing that held him back was the virus which was still at large outside.

He had earlier made a cup of tea for himself and prepared some coffee and milk for his wife and kids. Soon enough, he got into the crazy schedule of meetings during the day. After a while his tummy started making noise. The internal alarms for hunger started getting active. He was hoping that Nisha will soon have something made for breakfast.

It was closer to 10 o’ clock when Alex got a teeny bit of gap between two meetings. He quickly checked in the kitchen but was welcomed by empty dishes! Nisha was quite busy with E-learning for their younger daughter in Kindergarten. Alex got a bit annoyed as hunger was something he couldn’t hold longer.

Soon he got into the next call and was in between a heated discussion when his elder son barged in shouting ‘Love you Appa’! Alex before even realizing what he was doing, asked his son to get out of the room. The air was getting more tensed with a deadly combination of hunger and disturbance.

The day continued to be very hectic and by the time he got up from his seat it was quite late into the evening. In between the day, which was nothing short of crazy, there were multiple fights he picked up with his wife and two kids. Before even he realized, they had retired to bed even before he could mend the gap and didn’t even get a chance to kiss them good night.

Alex decided to settle down to watch TV for some time. It was his favourite news channel that cracked alive. A news item was in progress about the latest victim who succumbed to Corona, a four year old little girl. The video showed a house in a locality that was quite familiar. In fact it was just two blocks away. Alex recollected seeing the news a week ago about a little girl getting infected and taken to a hospital.

He saw an ambulance leaving the house and the sight of a heart-broken father that will melt even the coldest of the hearts. The father was heard lamenting, ‘They didn’t even show us her face. I couldn’t even kiss my little angel a final goodbye. The last thing she asked me was a simple box of crayons and I denied even that to my child!’ Little did he know that he was going to get a second blow the very next day when his company will announce a round of layoffs and his name was in the list!

Alex never felt his heart so heavy. Grief overpowered him. The series of images on the TV reminded him of how petty were his issues for which he fought throughout the day with those who matter. He switched off the TV and headed to the bedroom. The three souls that meant more than anything else in his life were sleeping. A ray of light found its way into the bedroom. In that dim light he saw the angelic faces of his loved ones. They all seemed to lack the usual shine. All of them appeared disturbed with the experience he gave them through the day.

He sat next to his little one. She was holding her favourite teddy. The words on it read, ‘World’s Best Dad’! Her curly hair had fallen on to her eyes. As he gently parted them, tears started rolling down his cheeks. He tried to stop them, but in vain. They fell on to her lovely little cheeks. He was afraid he’ll wake her up. She stirred on the bed but didn’t wake up. Instead she took his hand and wrapped them around her, one of her most favourite ways to sleep when she experienced the greatest safety in this world! 

Katie’s Mystery

She was welcomed home with a cry of joy! The round little eyes seem to have sparkled when the entire family greeted her as soon as she stepped in. She was truly delighted and was literally flying high!

Katie, that’s what the family decided to name her. Dad, mom and the two little ones in the family were all excited to welcome the third child into the family! She was a born charmer and carried herself with an air of power that held her together. Katie was such an active creature that she was seen all around the house. One moment she’ll be seen hiding behind the curtains in the hall; a few moments later she’ll be hanging besides the kitchen door. She loved to float around and enjoyed the attention everyone bestowed on her.

She was the precious jewel of the family who had this uncanny ability to make everyone filled with happiness! All went well till one day when the little boy of the family noticed something strange about Katie’s legs. They seemed to be losing its strength. The girl appeared to be losing weight from one of her legs! They tried every possible cure that can be given in the world to her. But soon, things went from bad to worse. Katie’s second leg also started appearing malnourished.

None of the medicines seem to have an effect on the little girl. Sadly enough in another few days the mysterious illness got into her arms as well, first affecting her left hand and later the right. They all prayed for a miracle which is all what was left to do for them.

Katie survived for a few more days. With each passing day her body became weaker and weaker. On that fateful day as everyone in the family gathered for an evening prayer, they could see Katie with droopy eyes and a very fragile body looking at the picture of God as if she was receiving her last rites. Soon she slowly descended and let herself lie near the prayer mat.

The little ones in the family tried to lift her up and place her on their lap. All what they heard was a gasp. It was the last bit of air that was left in the helium balloon in the shape of a girl. Ten days back dad was holding the thread while bringing her home from the carnival ground.

RIP Katie.

No Vs Know

We recently went on a vacation to a beach destination. The place we stayed was a lovely house situated right on top of a steep hill overlooking the lovely blue-green waters of Indian Ocean. After getting refreshed, we got out to explore the nearby places. Mia, our little one, was all excited that the steep slope down the hill was something she didn’t pay much attention to. She rushed to the slope and before we could even stop her, had a painful fall. It took a while for us to pacify her. But the fighter spirit in her didn’t let the fall drench the spirit of adventure and the trip went on to become a huge hit!

A few days later, we were back home from vacation and were walking to the parking lot to take the car out. There was a slope that led to the parking lot and Mia was running towards the car. Quite naturally I stopped her by saying, “Don’t you remember what happened during the trip? You’ll fall again”. She looked into my eyes and made a statement that literally left me with a profound thought. She said, “But Appa, I now know how to walk carefully on a slope.”

These are the times when your so-called wise brain gets a shock treatment from a tiny brain as little as a four year old one. It really sends an electrifying pulse to your brain that you have no choice but to sit and think about it. How many times have we stopped a dear one from doing something for the fear of them getting hurt? How many times have these resulted in them losing an opportunity to learn and overcome a fear factor? In fact our action of stopping someone from doing something due to our fear is in fact instilling fear in them as well. If they yield to our request, it is highly likely that they’ll never do that ever in their life, especially if this happens in their childhood.

I’m not generalising. I know quite a few people who have dared their loved ones to go beyond the comfort zones and get themselves experience what’s beyond usual. But if you are someone who set a limit to our dear ones, knowingly but at times unknowingly, we need to be aware that this results in them not getting moulded to overcome the challenges in life.

I remember a cousin brother of mine who was crazy about Navy that he got himself enrolled in a defence academy. One of the initial drills they had was being taken to the open sea on a naval ship. As soon as the ship reached the outer sea, they were asked to jump into the wild waters. Those who showed reluctance were mercilessly thrown into the sea and were left to experience how life will be for a Navy personnel.

While we do not necessarily have to be ruthless as the Navy, the question from my little one was a jolt for me to think differently. I realized the need to unlearn a few things I’ve been following. I really need to give my loved ones the space to learn and succeed than to stop them from doing something and be a perennial failure from not attempting the task.

The attitude becomes so positive when we let people ‘know’ something than saying ‘no’ to them which by nature is quite negative. Having said that, we need to make sure that we don’t cloud our common sense and let our loved ones go into dangers that are evident. The point is to realize the fact that we have a responsibility to make our dear ones experience certain aspects of life and not to deny them an opportunity to make their personalities better.

We all are what we are today, due to someone taking such decisions way back in the past. It could be our parents, teachers, siblings or friends who influenced us one way or other to either stop doing something or jump into and get the experience yourself.

Hence on this Valentines month, here is a warm wish to each one of us to extend our love to dear ones to let them experience what they rightfully should all the while keeping an eye on the boundary of risk by applying our common sense. 

The Fragrance

This was a few years before India started to hear words such as globalization and liberalisation. For a school going kid, a visit from an NRI uncle and family in Gulf had the excitement similar or even more than the annual feast at the local church.

Starting from preparations to receive the family to getting up at odd hours and waiting impatiently to get into a Tempo Traveller to head to the airport, obtaining the pass to the visitor’s gallery at the airport, rushing to find a suitable spot in the gallery, the anticipation of arriving aircraft, opening of the doors, counting the passengers getting down one by one and finally sighting the familiar faces of uncle and family, all contributed to the greatest experience of the year!

The icing on the cake was seeing the number of large bags uncle brought with him since everything about those bags was new to the pre-globalization eyes of a school going kid. As soon as we reached home, the baggage were promptly taken to the room that awaited their visit. Soon enough the whole room will have a very unique fragrance, the likes of which only comes with an NRI Gulf family of those times!

The days ahead will be filled with surprises after surprises. The joy of receiving a gift, the happiness of seeing things beyond your imagination and the overall experience of being with someone who crossed the proverbial seven seas were all adding to the experience.

A month will fly by and soon it will be time for uncle and family to return to their NRI status. I hated the trips to airport to see off someone, nevertheless I did go many times. Through tearful eyes we bid goodbye. It was a heart breaking moment to stand on the same viewer’s gallery and watch the aircraft take off.

You return home and try to relive the happy moments in the now empty room. All that remains is the fragrance from the bags that were in the room.

James Mukkadan, my uncle, who gifted me all those priceless moments is no longer with us as he joined the Creator earlier today (27 Nov 2019), for a well-deserved eternal life. He leaves behind a great legacy.

I now realize something more important. Uncle, what you left behind in that empty room was not just the fragrance from your bags. It is a whole lot of memories that you created with your genuine love and care. You will be deeply missed and remembered forever! 

The Purse Holder

I received an interesting message on one of the WhatsApp groups the other day. The message said money has different names based on the context. For example, money is called offering at church, fees in school, tax for government etc. It ended with the question, “When a man gives money to his wife what do we call it?” I gave it a thought and before sending a response I showed the message to my seven year old son. Promptly came his answer. His said ‘sharing’. Honestly, I couldn’t think of a better answer!

When it comes to a family united through marriage, one of the key factors that will form the basis of everyday living is the cash flow. The obvious question that gets raised many a times is, who is the purse holder? I do not plan to prescribe a recommended way of money management here. All what I intend to do is share a point of view. As the case is with a few other sensitive areas in marriage, this is a decision which couples need to take with a lot of prudence.

The concept of bread-winner associated with men of the family has become a matter of history in many of the families we see around. Women in the past were either not allowed to learn or earn. This obviously led to the man of the family being the sole earning member. Some men associated the earning potential to a sign of power and demanded that they have the final say on the family spend. There were others who literally outsourced the management of finance to their wives and only considered them as mere bread-winners and were least interested in managing the distribution of resources.

Both the approaches mentioned above had its own flaws. The former was quite chauvinistic whereas the latter befriended lethargy. A middle-line seems more acceptable especially in today’s families where earning member is still one person. This is all the more important since the member who remained non-earning is due to their choice than by design.

Most of the families today where women choose to take a break from work due to parental responsibilities do that out of a choice they made for the family. This doesn’t make them any less important than the earning men of these families. In fact their decision needs to be respected even more since if they had decided otherwise the men in these families would’ve never been able to celebrate Father’s Day!

The important fact that needs to be remembered and understood by a couple is that money earned by one or both, is the money earned by the family as one unit. The amount does not belong to the person, instead it belongs to the institution called family. The family members have equal rights on the amount. It is only incidental that one chose to work and the other chose to be a home maker. One is not a premium service than the other. Both these vocations have their own sets of challenges and we’ve heard enough and more stories of how men are known for belittling the volume of work done by the home makers. A true man will always see him at par with his wife and never at different levels of value chain in the family.

There are different ways to ensure that the non-earning member of the family is equally empowered when it comes to the matter of money. Getting supplementary bank cards, maintaining a home purse and ensuring a constant supply of cash, sharing the banking and cash management channels with each other and ensuring transparency in every bit of cash spent are a few tips that can work well to maintain a balance between the parties.

The approach could be slightly different in families receiving two sources of income. A few families I know have decided to use one of the sources for daily expense and the other one is saved totally for investments. There could be many such different ways of money management.

We all need to sit and think which approach suits us the best and implement the method as long as we learn to appreciate the fact that the purse is held by both the parties and together we are responsible for what goes out from it. May you be blessed with the judiciousness for spending well for your families! 

The Toughest Lesson

It was one of the coldest and darkest of the December mornings with the sky appearing to take revenge on mankind with a very heavy downpour. I tried to save whatever heat I could by clinging on to my dear blanket and hugging my pillow even more. I must have been in grade five or six then. I heard the old clock in my grandpa’s room striking five and shortly after that I heard the main door of our home making a creaking noise. With stories from Phantom and Mandrake the Magician running at the back of my mind, I suddenly smelled a sense of adventure!

With some effort and lots of courage I crawled out of my bed and walked into the hall which was quite dark. The mirror in the room shared a faint reflection of the leaves of papaya tree that stood in our backyard. The dim street light in a pocket road next to my home gave an eerie feeling to the whole morning. The door creaked again.

I peeped into the drawing room where the main door stood and saw the figure of a man clad in white T-shirt and a cotton wraparound with a head gear covering the ears. He had an umbrella as well in his hand. Before even I could speak a word he promptly got out and plunged into the rain giving me an illusion of almost disappearing into the darkness! That was my grandfather going out for his usual morning walk, a routine that he followed till an age when his legs could carry him!

Walking was just one of them. He had many more such regular practices in life which he followed quite strictly. Eating on time, sleeping early and catching-up on the newspapers daily were a few among them. All of these and many more were religiously followed by him that the days in my grandpa’s life can be a textbook with pages that showed up as photocopies.

Today, we are living in a world where life is changing at a pace where we aspire to do things differently every other moment. This picture perfect life led by my grandpa now appears to me more like a fantasy. While I would like to classify this as a lesson from a centenarian, perhaps this is one of the toughest one as well. Modern day lifestyle coupled with lethargy makes it quite a challenge for following something as rigorous as this routine. Nevertheless I would prefer to highlight this as one of the most inspiring lessons from my grandpa.

It indeed is a challenge to practice such a lifestyle but with the kind of news we hear around us with respect to health and wellbeing I believe it becomes all the more important to learn from such a life. Our sedentary way of life is one of the primary reasons for many of the ailments we suffer today. The only way out is to make up our mind to kick out the lethargy and find at least 30 minutes in a day, if not more, to involve in a physical activity that will make our body and mind engaged. Initiatives such as Fitness Challenge by the Crown Prince of Dubai is meant to make us aware of the need for this in our life today.

While I have not been doing justice fully to such initiatives I strongly subscribe to the thought that I should really be following some of these learnings from yester years so that it adds value to my everyday life. It is not just our health that becomes better, but the overall quality of life improves with such positive changes that are brought in.

A mere thought may not be sufficient for us to be motivated to do something as challenging as this. What helps many I learned is to set a target which can be achievable and work towards it. It could be something in lines of losing certain number of kilos or comfortably getting into that tight dress in your wardrobe or so.

May we all find that spirit to pull us out of our laziness and push us forward to a healthier and brighter life!

God bless. 

Threshold of expenses

I’ve fond memories of a well spent childhood in our ancestral home built by my grandpa seventy years back. Among the many traditions followed, one I distinctly remember is the annual practice of getting a little bit of pocket money from elders during major church festivals. It was called ‘Perunnal Podi’. While my parents and relatives were generous with the amount, the experience was quite different when it came to getting the amount from my grandpa.

I learned a lot on negotiation skills and bargaining to say the least during these times. Most often it ended up with a win-win situation since I was the only one in the family who was successful in getting whatever amounts I managed from my grandpa. Though the effort didn’t justify the result, getting two Rupees from him was hailed as one of the greatest achievements in my life. Do note that this was a considerable amount for a school going kid especially when you know the fact that these were the times when a mint flavoured candy costed just five Paisa!

Born in 1913, less than a year before World War One started and having lived a blessed life of more than a century, my grandpa has literally seen it all! He had been through both the World Wars and more importantly the great depression of 1930s. Add to this, his father’s untimely death while my grandpa was just a fifteen year old teenager left him in charge of a large family with two recently married sisters and two younger brothers. They had a thriving business with a favourable-on-books financial status where people owed them double the amount of money than the debts they had. But the economic depression broke everyone’s back and many of them couldn’t pay back the amounts owed which forced by grandpa to sell some of his properties and settle his own debts.

This entire experience taught him the value of every single Rupee and that was quite evident in all of his transactions. He literally had an iron grip on his expenses to put it in the nicest possible manner. He used to remind us to be diligent in our expenses each time we ask for money or plan to spend them. This was supplemented with his lifestyle where he hardly created any arena for spending money unnecessarily. He took bare minimum risks when it came to investments and had a strong preference to lead a debt-free life which obviously made him quite comfortable when he hit the bed every night.

Planning the threshold or limits of your expenses is quite a personal decision for each one of us. We could either choose to spend a lot and still be within our budget or could spend a little and save the rest for future investments. Nevertheless there are certain factors to be considered while taking decisions on investments especially the ones that require you to spend from your future income. When you plan the payment for an investment as EMIs you need to ensure that you clearly have an understanding of your income so that the EMIs along with your other expenses don’t leave you high and dry.

If we take a quick stock of the categories of our expenses for a month, some of us could be in for a shock. We might be spending a lot more than we should on certain types of expenses. Be it our shopping or eating out expenses or any other category, we ourselves are the best judges to answer this simple question, ‘Should we be spending so much on this category’?

When you effectively supplement the answer to this question with a planned amount to be spend for that category every month, you’ve already taken your first steps for better planning of your hard earned money. What could be a pleasant surprise is the fact that introducing these checks alone will be enough for you to meet all of your planned expenses and even leave you with an amount as savings.

Once you have optimized your spending limits by applying this check for all your categories of expenses all you need to ensure is that this pattern is followed in your life. Then comes the next logical step. What can be done to increase your income? While for some people both these acts can go in parallel, for others it might be worthwhile to put the checks on the expense first before exploring the options to increase the income. We’ll possibly talk about this some other time.

May you be empowered with the first step to get the threshold of your expenses right and lead a more fruitful and fulfilling life!

God bless.

Independence – The Double Edged Sword!

Article for Bethlehem Matrimonial - May 2018

Many years back when an aunt of mine came home from US for vacation, she made an observation about the families there. I was quite surprised to learn that kids over there are encouraged or many a times even forced to move out of their parents’ home by the time they attain certain age, say 18 years, sometimes even younger. They need to find their own way of living by getting into smaller jobs first and later with the education they obtain, learn to stand on their own feet. Once they are ready and find a suitable partner, they will decide on having a family.

I for sure found it quite hard to digest this as a concept at that time, since in India, staying with your parents was quite normal even after you get married. In the past we even had multiple families staying together under the same roof in an arrangement fondly named joint family system.

There are good and bad about both the arrangements. While the American method makes the kids more independent from early ages, the Indian way provides a well-supported infrastructure of a family which may prove helpful in different phases of life.

While the Indian approach seemed to have worked very well for many decades, the more recent changes in the design of families demand a rethinking of this structure. The number of siblings compared to yesteryears’ generation have come down, leading to a reduction in number of families. My dad and mom both have a family of eight siblings whereas I’ve just one brother. This is the case with most of my cousins where the maximum number of siblings they have is three. When it came to the next generation the trend is not too different with few exception where there are more than three kids in a family.

In addition, the area of education have seen a whole lot of new avenues opening up. It is quite common now for children to go far away from their parents’ home for higher education. They start to lead an independent life and decisions big or small are made many a times all by themselves.

All these and more I believe have led to a need to adopt a hybrid approach to the previous Indian method for families. As a society, Indians are designed to be quite a close-knit unit. Hence it is essential to design an approach where both independence as well as family bonding are addressed.

It is quite natural for parents to be patronizing their children. For parents, a child will always remain as one, how much ever older he or she become. This is genetically designed and can never be changed. Hence it is important for parents to realize that the longer they keep the children under their wings lesser empowered they’ll be. It is important to let go, even if it is emotionally painful.

For young adults especially the ones who are ready to start a family or who started one recently, it is important to learn and handle situations independently. The more you are dependent on your parents the less efficient you will be in handling a family all by yourself. It may seem ironic how our parents achieved this capability all the while being with their parents. The secret of their success lay in the sheer numbers in the family. Just because of the multitude of numbers in families in the past, parents really didn’t have dedicated time to focus on every child. That naturally led to children handling responsibilities independently making them better human beings.

The culture we have in India is such an enriched one that we should reap the benefits that our forefathers have sowed with their lives. Having said that it is equally important to learn to go with the stride so that we don’t fall behind the rest of the world with respect to becoming better human beings.

It is a huge cultural stir and it is quite important that you don’t get drowned in this change. The secret here is to embrace the change by knowing when you can swim against the current and have a safe base to return to in case you get carried away by the current. That’s where parents and children need to agree on a common set terms of how to handle this double edged sword to make best use of the virtue of independence.

Take care and God bless!

In loving memory…. Really?

Article for Bethlehem Matrimonial - Feb 2018

In the last one month I have seen three deaths in my family almost one after the other. All three were uncles and aunts with whom I grew up and spent my childhood. When the news of their death was known, the first thing that came rushing to my mind was some of the good old memories I shared with them. Obviously the number of incidents I remembered with love, varied from person to person.

I would like to call the aunt who passed away, ‘the bond’ of the family. She was the one who worked as the glue between various families on my mother’s side. She was so good with her hospitality that most of us cousins never had a second thought of which house to visit when we get a vacation. A whole lot of fantastic memories associated with my childhood is in and around that house. My aunt was not just a wonderful host but also made sure that her kids, my elder cousins, also extended a warm welcome to each one of us every time!

One of the uncles who joined the good God, taught me some of the basics about humanity. He reinforced the thoughts in me about the importance of treating all people equal. I also learned the ‘joy of giving’ from him, through his various actions. He was a silent teacher where his actions spoke louder than his words.

The people I mentioned above are only a few among many who left us with nothing but a bunch of memories. There are others whom we don’t even recall for good or bad. What’s more important for each one of us will be this question, “Will you be a loving memory after you are long gone?”

We all know we are here in this world for a short period of time. During this time some of us are lucky enough to be born in good families and create ourselves good ones too. What will be interesting is to do an introspection and check if we’re really creating good memories about ourselves. The best way to do this is to check how we lived our life till date and see if anyone will find anything good about it if we became part of history today.

Think about everything that we do for our dear ones. Ask ourselves, is this enough? Is there a room for improvement? Many of us fail to understand the realities that surround us just because we’re not a party to it. As long as we don’t have a first-hand experience of the difficulties faced by our dear ones, our empathies don’t hold much value. It is quite a challenge to overcome some of the practices or habits we have cultivated over a period of time. This includes and is not limited to various behavioural patterns such as addictions, lethargy and indifference to name a few. All these in one way or other increase the suffering of our dear ones either at present or soon in future.

Addictions in all cases destroy both you and your family either directly or indirectly. You’ll be depriving your sweethearts their right to live. Addictions such as smoking and drinking directly kills you and thereby lets your family suffer. Others such as social media or gadgets’ addiction denies them the quality time you should be spending with them thereby shaking the very base of your relationship as a family. All these thoughts are applicable for each one of us throughout our lives and is not just a one off case at some point during our short stay here in this world.

So what’s required for creating good memories of yourself? Motivate yourself to lead a better life. No one has ever said it is easy to overcome addictions or lethargy. It requires a strong will. Accept the fact if you need help and take it before it is too late and do what is required to sustain the change. It will hardly help yourself or your family while you are connected by a bunch of wires in an ICU. Promise yourself to be a better human being and promise again not to cheat yourself and in turn your dear ones.

It requires a lot of courage and strength to create and sustain good memories about yourself. May the good God help you with showers of blessings to find that one motivating factor that will help you push forward to achieve a better life for you and your family!

God bless!

Chamber of Secrets

Article for Bethlehem Matrimonial - Oct 2017

I remember reading a story about how two people saw a dead dog on their way back home and described the scene to their spouse. The first one said, “I saw a dead dog today. The dog must have got run over by a car that its eyes were bulged out and the corpse had blood all over which had an intolerable stench as well.” The second one said, “I saw a dead dog today. You should see its mouth that was wide open. What a beautiful set of teeth it had!”

It is quite short a story but one which conveys volumes about perceptions. The way people perceive the same incident and more importantly the way these people influence others with their description. I’m sure you can easily imagine the facial expression of the first spouse in the story as against the second one. Who do you think felt better listening to the story of a dead dog?

The situation is not entirely different in many of our families too. We all have our own families where a lot of incidents happen on a daily basis. Many of us have the practice of sharing these incidents with our relatives and friends. Just bear in mind the story you just read and imagine the perception you create among the people with whom you share incidents that happen in your family.

We need to realise the definition of ‘family’ while deciding on what to share and what not to. You, your spouse and your kids form your immediate family. Your parents, siblings and their families form your extended family. Anyone other than this, is beyond your extended family.

It is quite natural that negative emotions get registered with people faster and it is quite easy to form opinions based on these compared to the positive ones. Hence the moment you share an incident or a story about a dear one in your family, keep in mind that you are creating a perception in the listener about your dear one. Negative perceptions are easily created and lasted than their positive counterparts.

The person with whom you’ve shared the incident will further think about it with their own perception. If it is a problem, they’ll try to either provide you with their version of solution or may even share this further with their extended family. We need to keep in mind that there are quite a few things in our lives that we need not necessarily share with everyone around us. There has to be a chamber of secrets in every family that needs to stay within the four walls of the family. There should be an honest attempt to resolve issues within the family first. The moment you open the doors to your chamber of secrets, it ceases to be your personal problem to solve. Though there are times when this may lead to solutions, there could be others that opens a whole can of worms.

What could pretty much be resolved between a husband and a wife should ideally be achieved that way. The moment you bring in parents, relatives or friends into a private issue, things could get complicated. You’ll never be able to really predict how either of the affected party will react to the situation. It may even get out of your hands and you’ll totally regret why you even bothered to involve a third person. We need to remind ourselves that if one solution didn’t work we should attempt an alternate one. If and only if you’ve hit a hard wall, try reaching out for helping hands.

If you are one such person who can’t live without sharing your life with others, ensure that you not only share the challenges you face about a dear one but also project the good deeds done by them. At least this will help in creating a balanced perception among others. Else it’ll be like driving through a one-way lane. It is quite natural that people will never get the complete picture of the challenge since the picture you paint in front of them is all what they probably see. They’ll most likely never get to know the other side of the canvas. 

It is important to share. It is more important to know what to share, when to share and with whom to share. May you be blessed with the prudence to maintain the chamber of secrets in your family and the wisdom to know when to open it up for others!

God bless.  

Kitchen Adventures

Article for Bethlehem Matrimonial - Aug 2017 

It is that time of the year again. The time when your home becomes a house. The usual noises and sounds disappear. No dropping of your kid to school, no one to say bye to when you leave to office and no one comes running to you with cries of joy when you return home. It is that time of the year for all those expats who are lucky enough to have their family with them to empathize with the vast majority who do not get to be around their family for a considerable part of their life.

School holidays in Middle East forces many like me to be a ‘bachelor’ when the family heads back to their home countries. I know a few who consider this as regaining the long-lost-freedom. There are others like me who live these days like a zombie. All of a sudden, life seems to lose its charm. Somehow the energy levels become all-time low.

I do try to catch-up a bit on certain aspects for which I don’t get time otherwise. I get to open our library and say hi to all those books which were untouched for a long time. While catching up on these things it is also the time of the year when I get to do a bit of culinary experiments.

I should thank my mom for teaching me the basics of cooking long back so that I don’t have to depend on restaurants for survival. I am a strong believer that both boys and girls in our families should be taught these skills right from the age when they are old enough to handle kitchen duties. Though I am not the one who don the role of master chef in our family, I’m quite sure that my wife will vouch for the meaningful assistance she gets from me in the kitchen.

With the family away and I get to handle the kitchen all for myself, my adventure mode sets in. The most recent attempt was to prepare a dish with green gram. Fortunately it turned out well, at least good enough for me to survive for a few days. I’ve to be honest and admit that this is not the case always.

I still recollect one such bitter experience a couple of years back. A poor cabbage was the victim that day. I decided to try a traditional Kerala recipe for cabbage with a mix of coconut. A nicely chopped cabbage was ready in a few minutes. All the rest of ingredients were lined up and waiting for their turn. The pan was heated up and preparation began. One by one each of the ingredients found its way into the pan. I began to feel proud already. A bunch of items a few hours back that was sitting idle on a supermarket shelf is about to turn into the world’s best cabbage dish! It was nothing less than magic!

The dish was almost ready and the aroma filled the air with the traditional Kerala recipe saluting me for a job well done. I tasted the end-product and was quite confident that both my wife and mom, if around, would’ve given me an award for the preparation. That exact moment was when the devil put an idea in my brain. It was inspired by one of the regular culinary columns from a popular women’s magazine published back home in Kerala. It was a column by a well-known media person who loved experimenting with his dishes.

The thought that I’ve proved my culinary skills with a good dish was not enough. How do I differentiate myself from the lesser mortals like my wife and mom? Needless to say that such thoughts are the after-effects of leading a corporate life. I looked around for that X-factor to differentiate my dish. My eyes got stuck on a bright yellow color. It was an innocent looking lemon lying around with no connection whatsoever with the cabbage recipe. But the creativity in me overruled logic.

Promptly I cut the lemon and squeezed it all over my brilliant dish. I ensured that the lemon reached every corner of the dish. It was time to taste my invention-of-the-century. A spoonful of the dish and my world of pride came tumbling all the way down! It was a disaster to say the least.

A lesson well learned but I’m happy that it didn’t stop me from trying more. This is also a reminder to all of you out there that nothing is out-of-bounds for you in your home. Try your hand on everything. Be happy if it turns out well. Try again if it doesn’t.

My experiments in our kitchen continues even today. God bless you all!