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the happynesswala – "Inspiring 'Happyness'", Sharing Life Lessons from Lived Experiences! Inspired Speaker, Life Coach and Author of "Fall Like A Rose Petal"!

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Two anniversaries converge today reminding us to fall like a rose petal!

Don’t fight. Don’t resist. Simply, trust the process of Life.

August 1 is special for Vaani and me.

It was on this day, in 1996, that we decided to embrace entrepreneurship. I had come back to India in July that year, from Singapore, after serving as the traveling, globe-trotting, Executive Assistant to dealmaker and tycoon C.Sivasankaran. I was clear I did not want to take up another employment. So, Vaani and I conceptualized and set up our venture, imagequity+, with a Vision for it to be the world’s best consulting Firm from India. We grew very fast in the first six years of starting up and were even ranked as a qualitative global player in our space. But a couple of business decisions we took – while choosing to hold on steadfast to our values – led to our Firm going bankrupt and plunged Vaani and me, and our precious family, into prolonged periods of worklessness and pennilessness.

Vaani and I have spent the longest time, as business partners, as a family, these past 10+ years enduring this bankruptcy.

AVIS-Viswanathan-Fall-Like-A-Rose-Petal-CoverInterestingly, it was also on this day, in 2014, that my Book, Fall Like A Rose Petal, was launched. When it became evident to us, in end-2007, that we were heading into a phase of uncertainty, financial distress, cluelessness and darkness, I intuitively started writing a journal, sharing our daily experiences and learnings. I addressed each day’s entries to my two children, Aashirwad and Aanchal (who were then 18 and 13), in the hope that when they turned adults, they may benefit from those Life lessons.

You see, in the early years of my career as a journalist, I wanted to be famous – and rich, and powerful – one day and write an autobiography that would showcase to the world ‘how I had done it’! Clearly, I was not just naïve in my thinking then, I was perhaps conceited and struck by hubris as well! And so, let me tell you honestly, I had never quite imagined that my first Book would be all about my spiritual journey – where I share reflections and lessons on happiness, contentment, compassion, love, forgiveness and faith – my evolution, from a rat race runner to the happynesswala  that I am today! Yet, that’s exactly the way it has turned out to be.

So, that’s our big learning, for Vaani and me, from the past decade that have lived through: no matter what you desire or dream or what you plan, Life has a mind of its own; it always happens at its own pace and in its own time. Therefore, don’t fight Life as it happens to you – simply accept it for what it is. If you want your circumstances to change, go work on them. But without expectation. With total detachment. And in complete surrender. Know this: Life will always bring you to where you must arrive. So, trust the process of Life. This is the key to happiness – this trusting is what taught Vaani and me the art of being non-worrying, non-frustrated and non-suffering. This is what has taught us to be happy despite our circumstances. To be sure, our bankruptcy is far from over, but we have learnt to be resilient, patient and happy while living through it.

AVIS-Viswanathan-The-key-to-Happiness

August 1 is therefore special on two counts. For the first part, it denoted our being successful – when we turned entrepreneurs in 1996; we had broken free from the shackles of employment and, to my then-myopic view of Life, it signified freedom, success and ‘arriving’! And for the second part, with the launch of Fall Like A Rose Petal – interestingly, on the same day that we became entrepreneurs – we had chosen to be useful even when success – which is, fixing our bankruptcy – was elusive.

AVIS-Viswanathan-Fall-Like-A-Rose-Petal-TamilThese past four years, since the launch of my Book, have been eventful surely. But they have also been very, very meaningful. They have been purposeful. Because we still don’t have the means to  travel and promote the Book it may not have made it to bestseller lists. But it surely has connected with all those who have read it. And there’s always someone who is writing in every week to share how our journey and our learnings have made a difference to their Life. Just yesterday, a reader, who had received the Book as a gift from his father, pinged me on Facebook to share this: “Words cannot qualify or quantify the impact you and Vaani have made to my Life through your sharing. I have learnt a very valuable lesson from your Book – postpone everything else, but never postpone your happiness.” Interestingly, at this time, while we don’t have a publisher yet, the Tamizh translation of Fall Like A Rose Petal is ready – it is translated by the veteran writer Charukesi and edited by another legend, V.Ramnarayan; Sivasankari has graciously written the foreword to the translation.

On a day that marks these two anniversaries for us, Vaani and I are soaked in gratitude; we are anchored in equanimity and prayer. We believe that our Life is playing out exactly the way it is meant to be. I don’t know how long this bankruptcy will take to fix and when we will eventually turn zero-debt. But we are eternally grateful for this experience which has taught us what Life truly is, what happiness is and has given our Life a Purpose – which is “Inspiring ‘Happyness’”! So, we continue to share our learnings with audiences who care to pause and reflect – through this Blog, through our signature Talks and curated, non-commercial conversations and our specialized workshops.

And like everything else that has happened in our Life in this past decade, we are sure all our debt will be repaid by us and the Tamizh translation of Fall Like A Rose Petal too will launch in its own time. For our part, we continue to trust the process of Life and well, as the story in my Book goes, we continue to fall like a rose petal! 

 

Author AVIS ViswanathanPosted on August 1, 2018August 1, 2018Categories Fall Like A Rose Petal, Happiness, Inner Peace, Intelligent Living, Life, Spirituality, UncategorizedTags Aanchal, Aashirwad, Acceptance, Anniversary, Art of Living, AVIS Viswanathan, Bankruptcy, Charukesi, Compassion, Entrepreneurship, Equanimity, Fall Like A Rose Petal, Fear, Forgiveness, Gratitude, Happiness, Inner Peace, Inspiring Happyness, Intelligent Living, Life, Life Coach, Life Coaching, Life Lessons, Love, Osho, Prayer, Purpose, Sivasankari, Spirituality, the happynesswala, Total Acceptance, Total Surrender, Trust the process of Life, Uncategorized, V.Ramnarayan, Vaani2 Comments on Two anniversaries converge today reminding us to fall like a rose petal!

Celebrating two anniversaries and the miracle called Life

Life’s ways are inscrutable alright, but they are also beautiful, miraculous and serendipitous.

Today Vaani and I celebrate the 21st anniversary of embracing entrepreneurship. Today, Aug 1, also marks the third anniversary of my Book Fall Like A Rose Petal.

It is unusual that on the anniversary of your Firm’s founding you launch a Book that celebrates the learnings you have picked up going through the Firm’s (and your personal) bankruptcy. But that has been our Life’s journey – a decade on since we went bankrupt, Vaani and I are still dealing with treacherous, long, spells of no work and no money. Even so, we both are not bitter. We have learnt to be non-worrying, non-frustrated and non-suffering. We have learnt to be happy despite our circumstances.

Personally, we are grateful for our bankruptcy – because the experience has brought meaning and Purpose into our Life. Without it, there will be no Book. And without the Book, and my Talks and our curated Events, we won’t be “Inspiring Happiness” and be meeting so many, many, many wonderful people.

The biggest lesson we have learnt through this phase is that Life simply goes on. When we cannot control something, our logical mind will implore us to believe that we are losers and that it is the end of the road. But our experience has taught us that when we find ourselves in situations that we can neither understand nor solve, we must simply trust the process of Life. Look at our story – from the education of our two children in premium global schools, to surviving close to 120 months without even an income stream to cover basic living expenses (of which 52 have been without any income!), to overcoming health challenges, to facing up to legal and police action, to having no idea when the situation will turn around – Vaani and I have been looked after, cared for and provided for by the benevolent Universe. We have seen rank strangers come and help us. We have seen the milk of human kindness flow. Every time we have fallen off the edge of the precipice, we have found that either a miraculous hand has hoisted us up or a safety net has serendipitously appeared to cushion our fall. So, I can tell you without doubt, that it is never the end of the road. Figuratively, your road ends only when your Life ends. Metaphorically, as we understand, the journey of Life has no end. So, the best way to anchor in peace and be happy is to fall like a rose petal – unquestioningly, trusting Life to take you to where you should arrive!

You too can learn to live this way. Just stop worrying about what you can’t control and what you can’t solve. Learn to be non-frustrated when the results don’t add up despite your best efforts. And stop asking “why?” or “why me?”. Simply accept your Life for what it is and keep moving on. Flow with Life. You can only be happy when you live this way!

Post-script:

Here are some moments from the 3-year journey of Fall Like A Rose Petal. Catch a glimpse of the first spiral-bound manuscript from October 2012! Check out the different cover options by Sana Srinivasan, Kumar Narayanan and Sowmya Nagarajan. Sowmya’s design was finally chosen by the publisher Westland. One of the most courageous people you will ever know, the beautiful and supremely talented, Malvika Iyer received the first copy of Fall Like A Rose Petal on August 1, 2014.

FLARP First Manuscript October 2012
The First Manuscript of Fall Like A Rose Petal – October 2012
Fall Like A Rose Petal High Res Front Cover
Sowmya Nagarajan’s Cover Design – The final, chosen, one
10379301_10203920473272707_1719674826_n
Sana Srinivasan’s Cover Design
design 2
Kumar Narayanan’s Cover Design
DSC_0127
Malvika Iyer receiving the first copy of Fall Like A Rose Petal from KK of Westland; with Vaani & AVIS

There’s also an image of a business card from our erstwhile Firm imagequity+ (which went bankrupt) – this card was carried by all new team members when they joined, until they got their own business cards! Our Firm was cool in many respects – for instance, all our team members, mintmakers as we called them, got to choose their own titles and had their caricatures at the back of their business cards!!!

newmintmaker
The famous imagequity+ business card

Vaani and I have a long, long way to go…to rebuild our lives financially and repay all our debt…but we have the faith and are patient with our enduring situation.

Watch out for the Tamil translation of Fall Like A Rose Petal later this year. I am blessed that Charukesi Viswanathan has translated my work and Ramnarayan Venkatraman has edited it.

Do order Fall Like A Rose Petal from here or from Amazon and read it in case you haven’t already. Or order it as a gift for someone who you believe needs a reaffirmation that Life can and must be faced – no matter what the circumstances are!

Author AVIS ViswanathanPosted on August 1, 2017August 1, 2017Categories Fall Like A Rose Petal, Happiness, Inner Peace, Intelligent Living, Life, Spirituality, UncategorizedTags Amazon, Art of Living, AVIS Viswanathan, Bankruptcy, Charukesi, Fall Like A Rose Petal, Flipkart, Happiness, imagequity+, Inner Peace, Intelligent Living, Kumar Narayanan, Life, Malvika Iyer, Non-frustrated, Non-Suffering, Non-worrying, Ramnarayan V, Saintunes, Sowmya Nagarajan, Spirituality, Uncategorized, Vaani, Westland1 Comment on Celebrating two anniversaries and the miracle called Life

“You are happy as long as you choose not to do anything that makes you unhappy!”

As Vaani and I climb up two steep flights of stairs to get to the Café Coffee Day store, where we are to meet Charukesi Viswanathan, we wonder if we made the right choice with the meeting venue. Charukesi is 78. Will he find the stairway difficult to climb? But in a few minutes the man himself arrived and scampered up the stairs easily, with the energy of a 10-year-old. When we pointed this out to him, he smiled and said that he had spent the previous night on a train’s upper berth returning from Thrissur. “Some of my co-passengers were over 80, and the one who was allotted the upper berth had an arthritic condition. So, I swapped my lower berth with him. It was no problem at all. It is all in the mind,” says Charukesi, gleaming!

THR - Charukesi ViswanathanThat nugget of conversation sums up who Charukesi is. For one, he’s the humble, quiet, unassuming giant – having completed 60 remarkable years as a writer recently! More important though, he is the rare sort of person who is very happy and content with anything, anyone, anywhere. And what he doesn’t like – and that includes people – he avoids completely. “You are happy as long as you choose not to do anything that makes you unhappy,” he says.

Charukesi credits his father, a homeopath, with teaching him two principles that have guided him all his Life: “One is to always do your duty without expecting anything in return and the second is to work – and live – in a fashion in which it doesn’t bind you.” Expectations always bring agony, to live without them is an art and this is the key to happiness. Just as it is to work in a detached manner – doing what you can and leaving the outcome to Life. I guess Charukesi’s Life  epitomizes these two principles.

He hated academics, so he never acquired a formal college degree. Yet he has been a writer for 60 years and has worked with Pfizer, the pharma major, for close to 40 years – rising from being a sales assistant to branch manager – and has taught himself to appreciate Carnatic music. His articles on musicians, artistes and their performances, are greatly valued both by readers and publications. We ask him what is the secret of his longevity and relevance in a very crowded, ‘me-too’ space – writing. “I enjoy learning. I don’t see myself as someone who knows everything. In my Pfizer days I have attended workshops on practically everything from housekeeping to production management to quality. I have attended several programs for writers. And when I took to music, I taught myself to appreciate it attending every concert around me. So, I just keep learning,” informs Charukesi.

THR CoverInterestingly, while Charukesi is his nickname, and it is also a very popular Carnatic raga, the story goes that he did not choose the name for himself. One of his friends suggested the name to him and he adopted it. But even as he did that he didn’t know that it was also a famous raga or that he would one day be known for his music reviews. “Honestly, I still don’t know who recommended my name to The Hindu. One day, many years ago, I got a call from the desk at the paper asking me if I could review a kutcheri for them. I accepted…and that’s how the journey began. I don’t think I have done anything great…it just happened,” avers Charukesi. He is not being modest for effect, I know that he means every word of what he says. At the felicitation ceremony, some weeks ago, where the who’s who of Chennai’s literary circles flocked to celebrate him for completing 60 years as a writer, Charukesi sat very, very uncomfortably on the dais. When I asked him why he was so uneasy, he said that he hated the spotlight. “Only politicians like to hear praise about themselves; only they love ponnadais and felicitations. I am not a politician. I am just an ordinary writer.”

Yet, he is no ordinary writer. He has been writing for 60 years. He has written both in English and Tamizh. And he has more than 65 titles to his credit. He is the go-to translator for every major publication and author – from Sudha Murthy to Devdutt Patnaik – who want to see their work in Tamizh.

In such an extra-ordinary Life, there are bound to have been lows. How did he handle them, I ask him. “Oh! There have been lows,” he confesses. One was when he lost his older brother to tubercolosis in 1961. And the other time was in 1997 when his younger brother passed away in a road accident. “I found it very difficult to deal with pain the first time. I suffered a lot. The second time too, I thought I could not handle it. I even considered quitting my job at Pfizer. But the then chairman of the company, S.V.Pillai, who was visiting my branch, sat down with me and asked me to immerse myself in my work to take my mind off the tragedy. That advice really helped me cope. It was through that catharsis that I learnt that Life must be faced; we must take Life as it comes.” At work too, over a career spanning four decades with one company, Charukesi has had to face tough circumstances. In one instance, one of his close colleagues protested when Charukesi was awarded a double increment in salary and promotion, for the third consecutive time. When the politicking got unbearable, Charukesi wrote to the management of Pfizer asking for his reward and promotion to be revoked. “I simply did not want someone’s actions and words to make me unhappy. I thought if this person would be happier if I did not get the raise, let me make him happy,” explains Charukesi. The management of Pfizer and his detractor were surprised with Charukesi’s rather unique response. But through some candid conversations the matter was settled, with the colleague realizing his mistake and the management insisting that Charukesi accept his just reward. “It was through this experience that I learnt the value of never allowing anyone or anything to ruin your happiness,” says Charukesi.

Charukesi CCD Alwarpet 10.16.16Spending time with Charukesi is like taking a crash course in humility. Here’s a man, a colossus, who towers over the bi-lingual writing scene in Tamil Nadu. Yet he is so unassuming. He wanted to know how Twitter works. And as we explained that to him, he listened intently, with a twinkle in his eyes, like the way a child would try to understand a new gizmo or hear a new story. He started writing as a hobby in 1956, for Kannan magazine from the Kalaimagal stable, and got paid a princely sum, then, of Rs.5/-. He still writes today but gives away his income from royalties to support causes from education to healthcare. “I don’t want to talk about my philosophy of giving. I do it because it makes Life better for someone, somewhere. It makes them happy,” says Charukesi brushing aside all suggestions that he’s benevolent.

We ask him for his advice to today’s generation – who seem to be leading very complicated and stressed out lives despite technology having made Life so simple: “Expectations for what-must-be are high and satisfaction for what-is is low. It must be the other way round. Then people will lead fuller, happier lives.”

As we say goodbye to Charukesi and head back home, I admire the simplicity of the man and the beauty of his being. Yet I can’t but help celebrate his father who taught his son the value of being happy and content early on in Life. A lesson, because it was well taken, has helped Charukesi be who he is today!

Author AVIS ViswanathanPosted on June 12, 2016June 13, 2016Categories UncategorizedTags 60 years as writer, Art of Giving, Art of Living, AVIS Viswanathan, Charukesi, Charukesi Viswanathan, Devdutt Patnaik, Expectations, Expectations bring Agony, Face Life, Fall Like A Rose Petal, Giving, Happiness, Inner Peace, Intelligent Living, Kalaimagal, Kannan, Let Go, Life must be faced, Pain, Pfizer, Raga, Sudha Murthy, Suffering, The Happiness Road, The Hindu, Uncategorized, Viswanathan Subramaniam1 Comment on “You are happy as long as you choose not to do anything that makes you unhappy!”
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1. The author, AVIS, shares Life lessons here that he has gleaned from his lived experiences. AVIS has nothing against or for any religion. If the reader has a learning to share, they are most welcome. If the reader makes a communal or inflammatory or derogatory comment, or presents a view which may affect the sentiments of other followers/readers, then this Blog’s administrators may have to regrettably delete such a comment and even block such a follower. 2. The lived experiences shared here and the learnings gleaned from them are unique and personal to AVIS. The copyright for all original content here, that has been written/created by AVIS, belongs to AVIS Viswanathan. Important, AVIS has no interest in either infringing upon or claiming copyright of any referenced material published on this Blog. The images/videos used on this Blog, that are not created by AVIS, are purely for illustrative purposes. They belong to their original owners/creators. The author does not intend profiting from them nor is there any covert claim to copyright any of them.

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