How I celebrated a flightless year in 2016

Be ready and willing to go through any situation, experience everything, in Life!

“How do you console yourself when you don’t get what you want; when your Life doesn’t go the way you planned it?” This question came to me yesterday from a lady I met at the Help Yourself to Happiness Talk I delivered at a Rotary Club.

The answer I gave the lady is that you must not try to console yourself. Consolation has an air of mourning, of grief, inherent to it – that you tried for something, you did not get it, so it is ‘okay’! There is no ‘okay’ status that works in Life. The best state to be in is to be unmoved. There is no need to either exult in Life nor is there a need to brood or mourn. You must taste, you must experience, everything in Life – success and failure, victory and defeat, joy and sorrow – and eventually you will realize that they are all imposters. You will discover that neither the state when you are exulting nor the one when you are brooding is permanent. So, don’t credit yourself for creating contexts where you exult at your achievements and don’t discredit yourself just because the context is one where grief is gnawing at you, over what you lost or what you didn’t get. Just learn to be unmoved. If you can be unmoved, then everything, every event, calls for a celebration! Then every moment is a celebration!

The lady urged me to explain my point with an example. I shared this story from my Life that I had also recounted to Vaani on New Year’s eve.

I took my first flight in my Life at the age of 10, in 1977, from New Delhi to Madras. I loved the experience. And resolved that I would only fly when I grew up; also I because I find train journeys very boring, very uninspiring. To date, I prefer a flight over a train! My second flight was the one I took at the age of 23, in 1990, from Madras to Bangalore. I was flying on work for India Today magazine and was on an assignment to report on Veerappan, the dreaded sandalwood smuggler. It was a big moment for a young, ambitious lad – flying on company expense. I saved the Indian Airlines (now called Air India) boarding passes of both my onward and return journeys from that trip. I reckoned that when I became ‘very famous, very rich, very successful’ I would display these boarding passing proudly in my office or home, as a trophy of where my ‘high Life’ had truly begun. Soon, I was traveling more and most of my trips were by flight too. And I started collecting my boarding passes. I extended my idea of the saved boarding passes to reflect the number of air miles I had logged in all my active Life. For the longest time, I had this vision of me sitting in my private study and bar, smoking a cigar, and having an entire wall done up with boarding passes from all my flights in my Life. Soon the collection grew. I now have a whole mound of boarding passes saved up – I don’t really think I have lost a boarding pass or missed saving one in my Life. At one time I was taking even three or four flights a week, and traveling 21 days each month. So the boarding pass collection really swelled in good time. Within India I was loyal to Jet Airways and was their Platinum Card holder for several years – in all those years, our family of four, always took vacations on free tickets purchased with my miles! My boarding passes collection reflected the Life I led – busy and flying around! For someone who came from a middle-class background, this was exciting stuff, a sign that you had arrived, in style!

My Mound of Boarding Passes: 1990~2015

 

And then, as I recounted to Vaani on New Year’s eve, 2016 has turned out to be the year of no flights for me. No flights taken in an entire year. Even in the past decade, owing to our bankruptcy (read more here: Fall Like A Rose Petal) my flying has shrunk considerably. But I never bargained for a flightless year, that too in what should have been the 28^th year of an active, professional Life!

So, that’s my example, a story from my Life, I told the lady, who asked me to explain my point about being unmoved. Surely, I am not citing that I have traveled more than anyone else in the world. In fact, my story showcases how such a personal collection of boarding passes appears so vain now in the wake of Life’s larger design and Purpose. I am not even suggesting that I will not fly again or that I will not have that wall in my private study and bar. All I am saying is that I am no longer impacted by whether I am flying or not. It has ceased to mean anything beyond a data point to me. In the last quarter of a century, I flew a lot, then I flew less and last year, I did not fly at all! Simple!

The essence of intelligent living is that you must experience everything in Life. You must be ready and willing to go through any situation. Don’t ever expect Life to only be a particular way. Recognize that what goes up comes down. And what goes around comes around. Life is always flowing and you must learn to go with Life’s flow. This is the way to be unmoved, to celebrate Life’s every moment, no matter what you are faced with or are going through! This is how I celebrated my flightless year – 2016!

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You must always do what you have to do to protect your inner peace

Sometimes, you may have to be firm and tell some people off.

Well-meaning organizations, who necessarily don’t have a budget to remunerate us, sometimes invite us to deliver my Fall Like A Rose Petal Talk. Since the opportunity is in line with our Higher Purpose of Inspiring Happiness we do accept such invitations and I deliver my Talk pro bono in such cases. But we do insist that our travel and logistics are taken care of. Recently, a host who, in our opinion, could have afforded to make our ground transfers more comfortable, was pushing us hard to accept mediocre arrangements. Further, the tone of the email we received was unprofessional and lacked dignity. We refused to accept the arrangements they proposed and canceled the Program. When I shared this instance with someone who was struggling to make a similar choice he wanted to know how we can make such a decision simple. “Doesn’t it appear that you are being finicky about making a small adjustment for a larger good? Isn’t there always this conflict,” he asked.

And I think his question is very pertinent. This happens to all of us, all the time, in all situations. The simplest way I have learnt to reason with this apparent ‘conflict’ is to ask myself if I am comfortable doing what I am being asked to do or what I am setting out to do. If I am not, I immediately withdraw myself from the scene, from the opportunity – whatever may be the context or whoever may be involved.

I have realized that if you don’t draw a line, even in seemingly ‘small or trivial’ matters, you will dither when it comes to making a choice with ‘bigger’ ones. Especially in close relationships where people start taking you for granted.

What do you do, for instance, when people close to want to have an opinion about everything you do. And they, if you are not wary, end up treating you like a doormat. You suffer them because you don’t want to be either petty – like them – or it’s not in your “intrinsic nature” to be “unkind” to people. Now, let’s get this right. There’s nothing “unkind” in asserting yourself so as to protect your inner peace and dignity. Whoever it may be – parent, sibling, child, neighbor, boss, colleague or friend – no one, no one has the right to treat you in a manner in which you don’t like or don’t want to be treated. Period.

So, be firm when you must. Just put people in their place. Protect your inner peace, because no one else will do this for you.

Some of the situations Life places you in will also require you to fight for justice. Often with people who are supposedly close to you. Don’t get clouded by sentiments about close blood relations in such cases either. I am not encouraging you to fight because it is the right thing to do. But what do you do when the situation created by people around you demands a firm response? A friend of mine recently called to say how his older brother, with whom he shares the ownership of the family business, was making it almost impossible for both of them to co-exist and survive. “Neither is he accepting a separation of the business and the assets, nor is he allowing me to lead it and run it well, nor is he running it efficiently. We are bleeding losses month-on-month. He’s challenging me to fight him. If I fight him I can at least save half the family’s fortunes – for my immediate family and for my mother and sister. But how can I fight my own brother? I am not interested in any fight,” lamented my friend. I told him: “Don’t let your ego – in the garb of compassion – come in between you and what you must do. Just do whatever you believe must be done in the interest of all parties concerned, without hatred, without anger, without any rancor.”

In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna says to Arjuna: “Don’t escape from the war… because I can see this escape is just an ego trip. The way you are talking simply shows that you are calculating, you are thinking that by escaping from the war you will become a great saint. Rather than surrendering to the whole, you are taking yourself too seriously– as if there will be no war if you are not there.” Krishna says to Arjuna, “Just be in a state of let-go. Say to existence, ‘Use me in whatever way you want to use me. I am available, unconditionally available.’ Then whatsoever happens through you will have a great authenticity about it. It will have intensity, it will have depth. It will have the impact of the eternal on it.”

Such is Life. When you have to do something to ensure that your inner peace is not disturbed, you have to do it. And only you can do it. Do it also knowing, as Krishna says, that you are a mere instrument, a conduit for something that Life wants done through you! In doing so, you are not being unkind or rude. You are simply responding to a situation that has been created by someone and which you intensely dislike. So, don’t fall short, don’t fight shy. If you don’t do what you must do in such situations, you will cause your own suffering.

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Thanks to the movie, more Life lessons from the “Bliss Catcher” MSD

Can we learn to be unmoved by both success and failure? MSD’s Life tells us, of course, we can!

Yesterday, we watched M.S.Dhoni – The Untold Story (Neeraj Pandey, Sushant Singh Rajput). The film, of course, tells a very powerful, inspirational, story. Of a currently relevant and thriving Indian icon. It could have been much better made, in some parts, but I am not going to complain. I love MSD – who doesn’t? And I love Neeraj Pandey and Rajput! 🙂

The story focuses on the hitherto unknown part of MSD’s Life; of how he gave up being a ticket collector with the Indian Railways to go be the man he is now – cricketer par excellence and Captain Cool! Go watch the movie, mainly for the conversation on Platform 8 of Kharagpur Junction between MSD and his Railways boss A.K.Ganguly – it is almost as if Joseph Campbell (American mythologist and author, 1904~1987) scripted that part because it talks about how MSD really ended up ‘following his bliss’!

But I had a few other, more significant, takeaways. And I am sharing them here.

One, the hero of MSD – the film, is, to me, Paan Singh Dhoni (brilliantly played by Anupam Kher). When Dhoni the son calls from Lahore to validate his success with his father, and asks him if he is happy, Papa Dhoni replies: ‘Haan, mujhe khushi hai…apne galat hone pe mujhe khushi hai’; ‘Yes, I am happy…I am happy to have been proven wrong!’ He concludes the conversation, telling his son to be grounded and to never let the success go to his head. If this is what transpired between father and son in reality, my heart goes out to Paan Singh. One of the greatest qualities a human being can have is the humility to acknowledge a mistake and to be happy accepting it. I think most of the time we struggle with this opportunity to be happy with ourselves. When our intuition or assumptions are proven wrong by Life, and by people around us, we struggle with the new reality. We choose to cling on to an opinion we have had and therefore often suffer. Some see this as a manifestation of ego. I see it as lack of humility. Well, both are actually the same thing. To have an opinion or a sense of something and how it should be is not wrong. But when you are proven wrong, accept the new reality and be happy with it. This makes Life simpler and easier to deal with. Paan Singh, who did not ever wholeheartedly back his son MSD’s choice of a career in cricket, leads the way in acknowledging that he is happy being proven wrong! I clearly take that lesson away from the movie.

My second takeaway is something that is not stated but is evident enough, throughout the movie, to be sensed. Which is the fact that an entire ecosystem toiled to make MSD’s career successful. The coach who urges him to play cricket instead of football, his sister, his mother, his friends – the Sardar who owns a sports shop, Chittu, Santhosh who teaches him the famous ‘helicopter’ shot, his ticket collector friend Satyaprakash, his other friend who goes on to marry his sister Jayanti – and so, so, many more people! I personally felt a huge sense of gratitude to all these people. Without them India would not just have lost a great cricketer, but Indians would have lost an inspiration. And Indian children, particularly those from non-metro, non-urban backgrounds, need that inspiration to dream big and to follow their bliss. Rajesh Sharma, who plays Dhoni’s first coach, steals your heart away in the end, when he gestures, overwhelmed with joy, pride and a sense of accomplishment, after MSD hits the winning six at the Wankhede in the 2011 ICC World Cup, that it was he who had spotted this talent, this national treasure! My takeaway there was that there are so many, often nameless, faceless, people who have selflessly contributed to where we are in Life. You and I may not enjoy the iconic status that Dhoni has. We need not necessarily have it either. But there’s great value in pausing, reflecting and thanking all those who have, in whatever way, contributed to where we are today. Dhoni – the movie, reminded me of this important Life lesson.

Finally, how MSD gathers himself after the tragic death of his girlfriend Priyanka is a revelation. It is hard to imagine now that the early aggression and brilliance of MSD, that catapulted him to cult status with the 2007 T-20 World Cup win, was achieved despite the personal trauma that he was dealing with!  So, the unflappability, the Captain-Coolness, that MSD is famous for…that will continue to be my inspiration. The movie only helped reinforce and reiterate this learning in me – to develop, and constantly hone, the ability to be unmoved by either success or failure, after all, both are mere imposters – and are, well, impermanent!

PS: What rankles me about MSD – the movie is that all through the film Sushant Singh Rajput, while showcasing Dhoni’s love for motorbikes, does not wear a helmet! I understand that Dhoni, in real Life, always wears one. The only time Rajput wears a helmet is when he, as Dhoni, is trying to disguise and save himself from fans!

This is irresponsible film-making. Dhoni is an icon. And impressionable kids are going to come away thinking it is ‘cool’ to ride motorbikes without wearing a helmet; just as they think it is ‘cool’ to not wear a seatbelt while driving a car – because most scenes in Indian films involving leading protagonists driving cars show them without seatbelts strapped on!

Our film-makers must play a bigger role in influencing behavioral change in society. They must utilize the opportunity they have! Seriously!

"Bahut Mazaa Ayega!"

Don’t look for rewards and recognition in Life! In the end, they don’t matter. What will matter is this: did you live the Life you were given – fully, usefully, purposefully, happily?

400+ wannabe entrepreneurs: “The adventure is the reward!”

Yesterday, I was addressing an audience of over 400 students, from different academic streams, on ‘The Spirit of Entrepreneurship’. They were an amazing audience. Full of Life! Raring to go!! Enthusiastic!!! My message to them was that entrepreneurship is not what entrepreneurs bring to the table. Entrepreneurship is what makes entrepreneurs! I said Life, at best, is a big gamble. And both success and failure are mere labels, imposters as the Bhagavad Gita says! So, go have fun, enjoy the ride, because, I said, the adventure is the reward!

Indeed. We must all learn to have fun in Life, enjoying it every moment! Because the challenges that Life throws at us, and which we invariably overcome and conquer, in retrospect are indeed laughable! In school, when I couldn’t get Math right, I would often feel defeated. Now, when I look back, I joke about it! Similarly, when I was out of work, 21 years ago, because my employer shut shop, I thought I had lost in Life. But when I review that period, I smile appreciatively because what I thought was lost really was a new opportunity gained__because I wouldn’t be where I am today without that loss!

In the iconic Bollywood movie “Sholay”, the ferocious Gabbar Singh, often says, in a wicked drawl, “Bahut Mazaa Ayega!”, meaning “It will be so much fun!”. Just repeating this line in the same tone to yourself whenever confronted with a challenge is a great way to remind yourself that Life’s, after all, a big game, a gamble, if you like! But you must keep playing it, as long as there is Life, no matter what! As I left the auditorium after my Talk yesterday, yet another student there wanted my autograph. I wrote: “Just play. Have fun. Enjoy the game of Life. Trust me, “Bahut Mazaa Ayega!””

Awaken to who you really are

Strangely, we have come to a stage, in this time and age, when who we really are needs proving. Because we have started to believe that we are something else.

Think about this: we are all created as good, loving, patient, generous, compassionate, fearless, human beings. But we have become opinionated, confused, impatient, angry, jealous, anxious, fearful and self-centered. Look at children, aren’t they fearless? They are not scared of putting their hands into a burning candle flame or peeping precariously over a balcony railing? They wouldn’t have a problem sharing whatever they have with another. They would gleefully hug, embrace and kiss. They are simple and caring. And look at ourselves: we are complex and are afraid of every step we take, of every decision we make. We are jealous, silently pining to acquire what others have, and don’t have inhibitions demonstrating our hatred for others openly – especially now with social media offering everyone, virtually, ‘freedom to express’. We seek to earn a living but never a want to be living through anything we do. But we also are lost, we are searching for something. So, we enrol for “Bhagavad Gita” classes or church sermons, we read countless books on spirituality or attend Programs on self-improvement. Yet, while all spiritual thinkers and all scriptures champion and point to us going back to being loving, caring and giving as the most intelligent way of living, we demand proof. We ask if this will really work? Ironic, isn’t it? That we need justification and validation to convince ourselves of who we truly are. 

A spiritual seeker, like us, Wahiduddin, has this wonderful learning to share on awakening to who we really are: “The ultimate goal of spiritual practices is beautifully summarized in this centuries-old Zen teaching wherein Master Nanyue Huairang encountered his disciple Mazu Daoyi, who was deep in meditation, and asked him: 

“Noble one, what are you trying to do, sitting there in meditation?” 

Mazu said, “I’m trying to become a Buddha.”

Master Nanyue then picked up a nearby piece of clay tile that had fallen from the roof, and began to rub it briskly on a stone.

Mazu asked, “What are you doing?”

The Master said, “I’m polishing this tile to make a mirror.”

Mazu said, “How can you produce a mirror by polishing a piece of tile?”

Master Nanyue replied, “How can you make a Buddha by sitting in meditation?”

Oh what a wonderful little story this is! The goal of our spiritual practices is not to become something else. Our spiritual practices will never magically transform us into something that we are not. The tile will never become a mirror; that is an unrealistic goal, and an unrealistic goal will be met with failure upon failure. The goal of all our spiritual journeys is not to make us into something that we are not, but rather to awaken us to the truth of who we really are!”

Whether we get the proof we seek or we find ourselves by seeking within, one thing is for sure: unless we go back to the true nature of our creation, to who we really are, we will never find inner peace. 

Reflections on ‘Aashirwad’, Rajesh Khanna and the essence of the Bhagavad Gita

Everything is impermanent. Everything, including your own body, will soon perish.

The TOI story

A story in the Times of India this morning on the demolition of Rajesh Khanna’s erstwhile bungalow, ‘Aashirwad’, on Mumbai’s tony Carter Road, got me to pause and reflect.

The property’s new owner is bringing down the bungalow to redevelop the estate and construct a new building. The bungalow is iconic for many reasons: Rajesh asked for an advance from noted Tamil producer Sandow Chinnappa Devar, which came in the form of Rs.5 Lakh in cash in a suitcase, for buying the bungalow from actor Rajendra Kumar; Devar in turn signed-up Rajesh for ‘Haathi Mere Saathi’ but Rajesh wanted the script re-written and entrusted the project to Salim-Javed; so, in effect, ‘Haathi Mere Saathi’ became the first film that the writer-duo got joint credit – and payment – for! The truth is that had Rajesh not wanted to buy that bungalow, he may not have done ‘Haathi Mere Saathi’ and had he not done the film, Salim-Javed would not be the legends they are today! The film ‘Haathi Mere Saathi’ also marked a critical, upward, inflection point in Rajesh Khanna’s rise to superstardom – the first in Bollywood!

‘Aashirwad’ was also home to many of Rajesh’s relationships – the more known among them being the one with Dimple Kapadia, who he also married; the one with Tina Munim; and, in his later years, the one with his live-in partner Anita Advani. It was on the terrace of this bungalow that, according to a close friend and film journalist Ali Peter John, Rajesh Khanna in a state of drunken stupor, envious and enraged over the aura of Amitabh Bachchan that had taken over the Hindi film industry, looked up at the sky and howled: “Oh God, why me?” So, ‘Aashirwad’ has seen a lot – it has seen success, superstardom, relationships, break-ups, failures and falls. Maybe many, many, more untold tales lay hidden within ‘Aashirwad’. But now ‘Aashirwad’ is gone. Reduced to dust. Just as the superstar who once proudly lived in it has since long been reduced to dust.

When I read the story of the bungalow’s demolition, it struck me that ‘Aashirwad’ was but a metaphor. All our stories will end up that way too – as dust! I remembered how, when our Firm’s fortunes came crashing down, and we had to close down and vacate our office, I physically shredded each of our key statements of intent – our Purpose, Vision and Values statements. It was a numbing, cathartic moment for me. This was a Firm that I had dreamt of becoming a global icon in the consulting space, this was a Firm that my wife and I had grown with love and passion, yet, it had been reduced to nothing – and as it lay defunct, lifeless, it, eerily so, appeared that I was performing its last rites that day in 2012.

As I sipped my filter coffee, and brought my attention back to the ‘Aashirwad’ story in today’s TOI, I reflected on the essence of the Bhagavad Gita:

Whatever happened, it happened well.

Whatever is happening, it is happening well.

Whatever will happen, it will also happen well.

What of yours did you lose?

Why or for what are you crying?

What did you bring with you, for you to lose it?

What did you create, for it to be wasted or destroyed?

Whatever you took, it was taken from here.

Whatever you gave, it was given from here.

Whatever is yours today, will belong to someone else tomorrow.

On another day, it will belong to yet another.

This change is the Law of the Universe.

I believe intelligent living is about pausing and imbibing this learning. Nothing belongs to us. Everything and everyone will be gone some day – including you and me! Clinging on to material possessions and stances and opinions is a total waste of energy and precious time. If we review our lives closely, deeply, we will find that all our insecurities and strife comes from whatever we are clinging on to. The moment you let go of whatever is possessing you, consuming you – a habit or a position or an object or a person or a relationship – you are liberated. You are free. It is only when you are free that you can experience Life – and its magic and beauty – fully!

“With acceptance there is only happiness”

‘The Happiness Road’ is a weekly Series on this Blog that appears on Sundays where I share my conversations with people while exploring their idea of happiness!

This Sunday I feature the dancer couple Shanta and V.P.Dhananjayan.

There’s a glint in the eyes of the Dhananjayan couple that you can’t miss. Over the last three decades, I have noticed the glint every time that I have seen them perform or on the few rare occasions that I have spoken to them. Recently, I met them for about an hour at their Shastri Nagar home. And all through the conversation, I couldn’t but help admire that glint. Perhaps, I wondered, the glint reflects their state of inner joy and peace – what you will find in people who love what they are doing and do only what they love!

Almost as if he is reading my mind, Dhananjayan says, “Happiness is just being.” “It is about being satisfied with what you are doing, with how you are living,” adds his wife Shanta.

Picture by Vaani Anand

Dhananjayan qualifies his earlier remark saying he feels blessed in many respects to have had the “right influences that impact happiness” at different times in his Life. First, he considers himself fortunate to have been born in a family where his father, a school teacher, instilled in him the value of ‘giving’ and taught him to never cling on to anything material. “He gave away everything he had to his sisters, leaving nothing for his eight children. Yet, all of us grew up happy, even if there was no food to eat at home on some days.” Second, living and learning in a gurukulam, at Kalakshetra, helped him understand that “group energy spreads harmony” – a work model that he has preserved over the years. Third, his companionship with soul-mate and partner Shanta, says Dhananjayan, has contributed immensely to the way he has grown through and evolved in Life. “We share each other’s ideology. Our art brings our hearts together. There’s a great understanding between us…we complete each other.”

Picture by Vaani Anand

Dhananjayan believes that when you know what you want from Life, and what makes you happy, you can face any situation, any challenge stoically. Shanta says that when they left Kalakshetra in 1968 they were only in their twenties, but they were already clear that they wanted to dedicate their lives to “putting Bharatanatyam on the world map”. “With the 25 continuous years we have spent conducting our summer gurukulam at Yogaville, Virginia, with the global collaborations we have had with artists from various genres and with the contribution we have been able to make to propagate Bharatiya sanskruti and kala worldwide, I guess we both have had a very fulfilling Life journey.”

But hasn’t there ever been a blemish on the bliss canvas? A challenge that threatened to disturb their inner equilibrium?

“Oh! There have been many,” exclaims Dhananjayan, adding, “But art teaches you humility and gratitude. When you have that attitude you always overcome.” He recounts his 15-year saga to establish Bhaskara, an academy to preserve and nurture the performing arts, in Payyanur in Kerala’s Kannur district. Everyone, from environmentalists to common-folk to a cold bureaucracy to disinterested politicians, came between him and his dream. For years, he soldiered on, investing every available hour and their hard-earned money in the project. Initially Bhaskara was only Dhananjayan’s baby. But when Shanta saw his intent and his passion being challenged by those who were opposing the project, she jumped in too, backing him fully. But “the people who operated the system” queered the pitch every single time. Finally the couple gave up, selling their investment to an educational institution that runs a B-school there now. “I was drained. When people don’t want to understand you, it can be very difficult. Kerala may be God’s own country, but it is also the Devil’s workshop! One day, seeing me frustrated, Shanta pointed out that there was no point in doing anything, even if it is your dream, if your inner peace is going to be disturbed. I saw light in her perspective,” confesses Dhananjayan.

Would he consider the Bhaskara project an epic loss – something that he failed at? “Fortunately, the Bhagavad Gita has taught me to keep my mind steady. Yes, there may be instances when the mind will waver. That’s when my art has helped steady it again. I have realized that there’s no success or failure. I have learnt to deal with both joy and sorrow with acceptance. With acceptance there is only happiness,” explains Dhananjayan.

So, here’s the secret, as I have discovered it, of that glint in Shanta’s and Dhananjayan’s eyes: Do what you believe in and love doing, always be grateful and content, simply accept whatever comes your way and never let anything disturb your inner peace!