Why you must live your Bliss

Let’s not complicate a simple Life!

Are you being held hostage by your “busyness”?

Beware: “Busyness” is a silent predator. It creeps up unnoticed and ends up enslaving you!

Earlier this month I curated and anchored a very powerful Conversation in our #UncommonLeader Series, hosted by the Madras Management Association. My guest in this Edition was K P Krishnan (KP), co-Founder of Klachak.com and Captr.in, two ventures that are democratizing the visual content creation and management space.

AVIS & KP – #UncommonLeader Conversation; Photo Credit: Raam Frames

I have known KP for over two decades now.

He started off as a factory hand in his own father’s factory and never let anyone know he was the owner’s son. Then, when someone pointed out that he can never escape the fact of who he really was, he quit. After working briefly as an assistant to an ad filmmaker, and after stints at an internet café and a digital marketing firm, he went overseas.  He had a glorious 10-year stint in international sales and marketing that took him to over 40 countries.

In 2011, opting out of a “stagnating career”, KP returned to India to be a photographer. But the fashion and wedding photography scene did not excite him. Instead his sharp entrepreneurial acumen spotted an unstated need in the market: there were far too many talented assistants (to senior photographers) who were unable to launch their careers independently because they did not have the means to acquire expensive photography equipment. Seizing the business opportunity, in 2013, KP co-founded (with his partners) Klachak.com – a one-stop rental portal for all photography equipment and accessories. Today Klachak has 6000 customers across India. Its success led KP to launch Captr.in – a specialist Image Processing Outsourcing service – in 2017. In just two years, Captr has over 600 image processing experts catering to the needs of institutional and retail customers across a diverse spectrum of industries. Between Klachak and Captr, customers can rent cameras, lights and other accessories, shoot images and videos, even rent a studio, and have all their post-production requirements serviced! Simply, KP’s entrepreneurial offerings have democratized the visual content creation and management space. And this has been achieved with a collective, on-board, team size of just 30! (Catch my #UncommonLeader Conversation with KP here.)

Yet, KP’s not the typical, stressed out, forever-running-on-a-treadmill, hyper-obsessed entrepreneur. He’s really a cool, fun, ideas guy! Important, while he invests himself in every idea he conceives, owns and leads, he never gets stuck in any of them. Which is why, despite running thriving ventures, he finds the time to play the drums and jam with his music gang; he cycles and treks, he is an avid wildlife photographer and loves goofing off with his family. To me, he’s able to be this way, only because he is always on his businesses; he’s never in them!

And there lies the big secret to a living full, meaningful, Life. A secret that KP intuitively knows and something that you too can learn.

Which is, at every stage you must pause, reflect and ask yourself these questions: Why am I doing what I am doing? Is what I am doing making me happy despite the challenging, punishing schedule I maintain? Are the outcomes of my efforts flowing freely although there is a lot of hard work involved? Or am I constantly struggling, suffering, harried and unhappy?

Simply, asking these questions help you train yourself in the important skill of being on the business (of whatever you do) and not get mired in it! This means, on a spiritual plane, as the Bhagavad Gita says, learning to live in the world and yet be above it; and as the Bible too says, be in the world but not of it! And in a practical, every day, sense, this means knowing when and where to draw the line between doing something that gives you joy – while engaging you intensely and immersively – and doing something that suffocates you, that drains you of all energy and takes away your Happiness! This further means choosing wisely – choosing not to do most of all that which makes you unhappy.

Beware:“Busyness” is a silent predator. It creeps up unnoticed and ends up owning your Life. It camouflages itself as passion and seduces you with a slew of worldly success measures – fame, money and power. Or it presents itself as seemingly unavoidable social responsibilities disguised as familial needs and cultural values. It often reasons strongly, logically, making you believe that you are doing the right thing by postponing your Happiness. It uncannily keeps warning you that something grave will happen if you don’t busy yourself with more things to do (TTD). And pretty soon, unwittingly, you are a slave of your “busyness”. You keep on doing stuff because you just have to do them; not doing them makes you restless, nervous and scared. Worse, sometimes, you end up doing things only to keep other people happy! Undoubtedly, eventually, “busyness” is an addiction – as ruinous as smoking or alcohol is.

To be sure though, “busyness” is not doing many, many things. It is not about being busy and not having enough time on your hands. It is about inflicting a lot of activity upon yourself without a sense of Purpose, without mindfulness, without understanding what matters most in your Life and why!

I talk from my lived experience. I have lived that unintelligent Life for over a decade. I have forsaken many a family milestone, skipped several school events of my children and have found myself working from cinema halls or dinner tables and even on Sundays and while on vacations. I often convinced myself to be this way with a powerful rationale. I always wanted to grow our business and make it a world-beater. I always wanted fix things at work now, instantaneously. I always thought there would be another day, when there would be no pending TTDs when I could retire, relax and live Life happily ever after. And then the bankruptcy happened in end-2007 – a material state that we continue endure. Thankfully, it jolted me awake up from my stupor! (Read more here in my book: Fall Like A Rose Petal) Else, I may not have lived to tell you my tale, to share what I have learned about intelligent living – from Life!

And this is what I have learned. Your Life is a limited-period offer. Whatever you want to do, must be done in this lifetime of yours. Before it is all over. And believe me when your number is called, you have to go, no matter who you are and how much of your business here, on this planet, remains unfinished. So, don’t postpone your Happiness. Don’t allow yourself to get mired in the business of everyday challenges. Hoist yourself above them all. Review and reprioritize what you want to do daily – surely, choose whatever must be done to earn a living, but please also choose to do all that which makes you come alive! Simply, don’t squander your time here allowing yourself to be held hostage by your “busyness”!

Note: AVIS and Vaani are the happynesswalas. They believe their Life’s Purpose is Inspiring ‘Happyness’! They are going through a fascinating Life-changing experience – a crippling bankruptcy!! Look them up here: www.avisviswanathan.in and www.avinitiatives.co.in.

On Gulzar, Bliss, timelessness and your art becoming immortal!

Bliss has this supernatural, superhuman, quality – it makes Creation speak through you.

We watched Meghna Gulzar’s Chhapaak the other day. It is a simple, powerful, film – great storytelling of acid attack survivor Laxmi Agarwal’s journey, a very nuanced performance by both protagonists, the extremely talented Deepika Padukone (who is also the film’s producer) and Vikrant Massey.

Laxmi’s story is well known. Even if you had not heard of it before, in watching the pre-release promotions for Chhapaak, you are sure to have realized that the film is based on a true story. Meghna makes the film an engaging, engrossing, immersive experience for the viewer. Her brilliance as a filmmaker shines through every frame in the film.

But what stays with you, and keeps coming back to haunt you, again, and again, and again, is the title track of the film.

This song has been written by Meghna’s father, the venerable Gulzar. It narrates the pain and anguish of an acid attack survivor. The lyrics are very disturbing. They stir your conscience. You feel helpless at your inability to do anything about this dastardly, cowardly act. If a lyricist-composer (Shankar-Ehsan-Loy)-singer (Arijit Singh) can evoke that response from within you, it is a remarkable feat! Even so, Vaani and I remain mesmerized by Gulzar’s writing here.

Sample the genius of his lyrics in this song:

Koi chehra mita ke, aur aankh se hata ke
Chand chheente uda ke jo gaya
Chhapaak se pehchaan le gaya

Ek chehra gira, jaise mohra gira
Jaise dhoop ko grahan lag gaya
Chhapaak se pehchaan le gaya…

Aarzoo thi shauq thhe, woh saare hat gaye
Kitne saare jeene ke dhaage kat gaye…

Let me attempt a simple (perhaps not authentic) translation:

A face was erased, was removed from sight…with sprinkling a few drops, in a splash, (someone) took away (my) identity

 A face fell, like a pawn falls, like sunshine is eclipsed, in a splash, (someone) took away (my) identity…

 (My) Aspirations and wishes, all of them have disappeared…So many threads of (my) Life have been snapped/cut away…

Listen to the full song here.

For us, the most evocative part of these lyrics is where Gulzar says, the splash, the chhapaak, from the acid attack, took away the survivor’s identity – pehchaan – and not (just) her beauty!!! Just this line, this brutal truth, leaves you angry and numb.

Gulzar. Gulzar. Gulzar.

I wonder how this man, at 85, still remains relevant, fresh and prolific? And the answer to that question, I guess, is simple. He has always, only, followed his Bliss.

Coming to Bombay from Dina (now in Pakistan), after the Partition, he started his songwriting career in 1963, with S.D.Burman in Bandini. Gulzar believes that discipline and feeling the pulse of the people, the world, around him are the key to his art, his Bliss, continuing to flow through him even after all these years.

In a 2016 interview to Harneet Singh in the Mint, he says: “Yes. Every day I am in my study. I write. I read. I research. You have to. Lafz dhoondne ke liye kaam toh roz karna padta hai (one has to work hard in order to find the right words).”  

In a 2017 interview to fellow lyricist Kausar Munir in the Hindustan Times, he says: ““You ask how I stay relevant even after more than five decades of writing?” He points to his table, “By feeling the pulse of the gully-mohalla, the nation, the globe that I live in. Being master of Urdu doesn’t interest me, being part of the global society does, breathing hope into that society matters to me”.”

 I firmly believe that Bliss has this supernatural, superhuman, quality – it makes Creation speak through you. Gulzar’s amazing, beautiful, expansive, often soul-stirring, body of work is evidence of this belief of mine.

You see, as Khalil Gibran has said so powerfully, we are all created from Life’s longing for itself. Without doubt, we have been born through a physical, biological act that involved our parents – yet they were mere vehicles to bring us into this world. Life created you and me not for us to slave away earning a living, but to do what we love doing, to create art, to create magic.

The real reason for your creation, your raison d’etre, is embedded in you, by Creation, by Life, even as you are born. And that reason is intertwined with your Bliss, with your idea of what makes you truly, deliriously, happy.

So, when you follow your Bliss, magic happens. Life speaks through you and everything you do is art, everything you do touches people, and every offering of yours makes the world a better place. We lose this opportunity to experience and co-create this magic when we sacrifice ourselves on the altar of economic security, often choosing to do what makes us intensely unhappy just so that we can earn a living. To be sure, Gulzar too, when he was Sampooran Singh Kalra and was a painter at a motor garage (Vichare Motors) in Bombay, almost sacrificed himself on this altar. But thankfully for himself, and for all of us, whose Life he has enriched, he followed his Bliss.

As I listen to the Chhapaak title track one more time, I bow my head in salutation, in prayer, in gratitude to Creation. I thank Life for giving us Gulzar. I thank Life for giving me an opportunity to live in his lifetime. And I thank Life for reminding me, through his beautiful journey, that when you follow your Bliss, you become timeless, even as your art becomes immortal!

Note: AVIS and Vaani are the happynesswalas. They believe their Life’s Purpose is Inspiring ‘Happyness’! They are going through a fascinating Life-changing experience – a crippling bankruptcy!! Look them up here: www.avisviswanathan.in and www.avinitiatives.co.in.

When you live a Life of Purpose, you live happily despite the circumstances

Have Integrity of Purpose, all else will follow!

Realize that Life has a reason for creating you…

Your Purpose finds you when you look beyond money circle of Life

Purpose brings meaning to Life

Einstein, ikigai and equanimity

Why I raise a mid-morning toast to Life!

After my morning walk today I remarked to Vaani: “It feels so good to have walked. It is so energizing.”

Just about 15 years ago, I loathed exercise. I was perpetually on the “busyness treadmill” – running from meeting to meeting, traveling 21 days a month, managing people – their shortcomings, attitudes and tantrums – more than harnessing their talent or managing our business! I had diabetes and hypertension; I weighed 95 kilos and had a tobacco habit. I also drank considerably large volumes of alcohol – frequently, sometimes daily.

And look at how my Life has changed in these years!

I read a story on Albert Einstein’s idea of happiness in the papers a couple of days ago. He has said this is 1922: “A calm and modest Life brings more happiness than the pursuit of success combined with constant restlessness.” That was almost 95 years ago, but even today I can relate to his philosophy. Simply because I have lived that restless Life and understood its futility. When we went bankrupt in 2007 (Read more here: Fall Like A Rose Petal), and in dealing with worklessness and pennilessness for most of the past decade, I realized that the greatest wealth in Life is the ability to celebrate what is, to live fully in the present moment. I believe I squandered a large part of my 20s and 30s pursuing success – name, fame, money – and so I was constantly restless. I was searching for something; I don’t ever remember feeling fulfilled or complete at that time. And then – poof! – everything material was snatched away from me, from us. And I was forced to learn to be patient with Life. That’s when – and how – I learnt the value of being calm and of enjoying, savoring, each moment – no matter how tough our circumstances have been.

Interestingly, I am reading ikigai – The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life (by Hector Garcia and Francesc Miralles) currently. ikigai is an ancient Japanese concept that means ‘reason for being’ or ‘a reason to jump out of bed every morning’! The book’s interesting. Though I feel it is more focused on the idea of longevity than on happiness itself. And I come from the Anand (1971, Hrishikesh Mukherjee, Rajesh Khanna, Amitabh Bachchan) school of thought of “Babumoshai, zindagi badi honi chahiye, lambi nahin”!!! (Life must be a grand celebration and not necessarily long!) Even so, I completely relate to the idea of ikigai! Because only when we understand the reason for our being, only when we have a reason to jump out of bed every morning, will we learn to be happy – despite the circumstances!

It’s been a fascinating morning for me…yet another day worth celebrating despite our zillion problems…there are so, so many broken parts of our Life that we don’t know how to fix, but re-reading Einstein’s idea of happiness, living my ikigai, worshipping a carefully cultivated sense of equanimity and relishing every sip of Vaani’s coffee…make me look forward with enthusiasm. To Life!