Why do we squander precious lifetime chasing things we can’t take with us?

This whole world is besotted with everything else except what it must truly obsess over!

Mutely witnessing the goings on in Tamil Nadu politics, I can’t but wonder how much materialism has caught people in its vice-like grip. Sasikala’s vow to “avenge” at Jayalalithaa’s Samadhi yesterday reeks of such a debilitating, unevolved point of view. Ego, the desire to control, the greed for money, power – all of these are evident in the manner in which she “slapped” her erstwhile friend and mentor’s tombstone. This, even as she was getting ready to go to jail to serve a jail sentence! This, after holding not just 100+ elected representatives hostage, but after holding a whole state’s constitutional machinery to ransom over wanting to grab power. And what about the elected members of the state assembly? What have they subjected themselves to – don’t they even realize they have a fundamental responsibility to serve their constituents? More important, don’t any of these people want to learn a lesson from their recently-departed leader that despite all her success, all her glory, she finally left empty-handed, not able to take any of what she achieved or gained or accumulated – including the infamous disproportionate assets that Tuesday’s Supreme Court ruling talked about over 564 pages – with her?

All this is so unsettling at one level when I look at it as a citizen who is concerned at the state of the polity and democracy. And it is all so banal when I view it as human being who is on a limited-period, single-entry visa, on this planet!  Why don’t people get it, I wonder? Why don’t people get it that they only have this one Life – to live fully, to be happy – and yet they squander away precious lifetime in chasing what they can never take away with them? And they do all this chasing, often at the cost of others, and while being intrinsically unhappy and suffering themselves!

Let us not fail to pick up a key lesson ourselves from all this apparent madness in Tamil Nadu. I am reminded of a song Mujhe Naulakha Mangaadere  from Sharaabi (1984, Prakash Mehra, Amitabh Bachchan, Bappi Lahiri, Kishore Kumar, Asha Bhosle) in which the lyricist Anjaan, listing the different types of intoxicants that people are addicted to, says ‘bring me someone who is not “drunk”’… “…nashe mein kaun nahi hai, mujhe bataao zaraa, kise hai hosh mere saamne, to laao zaraa…”! Indeed, so drunk we are about earning a living, solving our problems, worrying, suffering, so steeped in stupor we are about wanting to control everyone and everything, that we are missing the magic and beauty of the Life we have. Unless we stop clinging on to material things and live happily with what we have, with what is, we will forever be living with insecurity, worry, grief and guilt. And that should explain why we suffer, why we are unhappy.

Therefore, to me, Sasikala and the AIADMK’s theatrics over the past 10 days have only been a metaphor. One that reminds me that this whole world is besotted with everything else except what it must truly obsess over! And that obsession must be over making each moment of your Life count. By living it fully, meaningfully, happily.

Happiness is the ability to sleep well each night, grateful that you have what you need – food on the table, a roof over your head and something to cover yourself. Everything else is a frill. The more you cling on to the frills, the more drunk you are, the less obsessed you are with living. And when you are too drunk and you don’t sleep, well, that’s when you have a hangover!

 

Clearly, you don’t have too much time

A constant awareness of your mortality is a great way to live enthusiastically!

Interestingly, several signs and reminders on death have come my way in the last 24 hours.

It was my father-in-law Venks’ birthday yesterday – he passed on a couple of years ago, so we reminisced about our times with him on the family WhatsApp group. Besides, it was also MGR’s 100^th birth anniversary yesterday. I thought back to the day he had died in December 1987 – when I had walked 18 kms (as public transport had shut down after riots broke out in Madras) to meet Vaani; it was the first time I was visiting her home. I am glad I walked that distance – she’s sure been a great companion who’s walked beside me every step of the way, these past 30 years! A close friend wrote in yesterday saying she hasn’t been able to come to terms with her husband’s passing. A reader pinged me on WhatsApp to say she was catching up with my blogposts after a while because she had lost her mother last week. And then, of course, while watching a movie at a Cineplex last evening, the Tamil Nadu state government’s newsreel melodramatically showcased the funeral of former Chief Minister Jayalalithaa!

For just a brief while, as I lay in bed trying to fall asleep, I wondered if there was any symbolism in so many death-related references and inferences in one day. Given the fractious family I come from, it has been a few years since I have met my father although we live in the same city! Momentarily, my thoughts went to him, his advancing age and fragile health. I may well have begun to walk along the line of emotion and worry, about my inability to repay my family the money I owe them and, at least, repair my credit rating with them, even if I really can’t redeem my relationships there; but my awareness held me in good stead. I recalled Osho’s masterful perspective that Life and death are just two sides of the same coin; that death is accompanying us every step of the way, like a shadow, from the moment we are born. Or simply, as I have come to see it, we are all speeding towards our death, albeit at different speeds. So, no symbolism, there, I told myself as I fell asleep.

This morning, over coffee, glancing at the obituary section in The Hindu, I thought those thoughts again. If death is the absolute, non-negotiable, reality for all of us; if it is indeed that one reason which must compel us to live fuller, meaningful, happier, lives, why then don’t we live that way? Why do we fritter away our lifetimes fretting over petty material pursuits or even pettier squabbles among those that we live with?

I guess the Dalai Lama nailed it when he said, “The problem with humankind is that we think we have a lot of time!” A beautiful song from the classic Choti Si Baat (1975, Basu Chatterji, Yogesh, Salil Chaudhury, Lata Mangeshkar, Mukesh, Amol Palekar, Vidya Sinha) comes to mind. The opening lyrics are: “Na jaane kyon, hota hai yeh zindagi ke saath, Achanak ye mann, Kisi ke jaane ke baad, kare phir uski yaad, Chhoti chhoti si baat…”. They mean: “Why does the mind think up even the smallest memories of those who have gone away, after they have left us…?” The song’s essence (not in the movie’s context though) is a potent reminder of our mortality. It tells us, ever so subtly, that the inevitable is lingering around, just there, somewhere within our immediate circle of impact. It implores us to use the opportunity of this lifetime intelligently – to do what we love doing and to live happily, joyfully, with all those among us, in the time we still have left with us here.

I believe that fearing death or feeling sorry for the dead or for yourself is of no use. The awareness of your impending death, and of everyone you know, must be used very constructively to live your Life fully. To live without squandering even one precious moment. And the only way you can ensure living without wasting any of your finite lifetime is to only do what makes you happy and celebrate the presence of everyone in your Life – even your detractors, for they teach you what not to do! You will no doubt face your share of challenges along the way, not just with the path you have chosen but also with the people you meet on your journey, but your inner joy, your enthusiasm, will make the ride fulfilling, meaningful.

This reflection over the past 24 hours has only reiterated a truth about Life. Death is not the physical passing on of the human form alone, it is also what happens to you in every moment that you don’t live fully when you are alive! Think about it! Clearly, you don’t have too much time. If what I’ve shared here makes sense, then please go live that kick-ass Life you have always wanted to live but have been postponing for a better day and time. Remember: there is never a better time to live than now!

The new BHAG = Be. Humble. Accepting. Grateful.

Only those who change from within when Life changes live a full Life!

A young business leader who I know for some time now connected with me on Facebook. He had been in several of my workshops in the past. I used to then, as a champion of organizational culture and high-performance, lead sessions on Jim Collins’ and Jerry Porras’ Built To Last model. I would exhort my audiences to think beyond goals if they wanted to make their organizations great and build them well enough to last long after they themselves were gone! While introducing Collins’ and Porras’ concept of BHAGs (pronounced bee-hags) – meaning Big Hairy Audacious Goals – I urged teams to draw up their own BHAGs. So, my manager friend, asked me this on FB Messenger: “AVIS, do you still talk about BHAGs?” I smiled at his question. I thought for a moment. And I replied: “I do. Except BHAG now, to me, stands for this – Be. Humble. Accepting. & Grateful.!”

Indeed. For me now, the biggest, most audacious goal anyone can and must have in Life is to just be. To be humble. To be accepting. And to be ever, perpetually, grateful. So, the punctuations in my version of the expansion of the BHAG acronym are not accidental. It is not ‘Be Humble, Accepting & Grateful!’. It is ‘Be. Humble. Accepting. & Grateful.’ (In the strictest sense to just be can never be a goal and it is simple to just be; however, since most beginners, for lack of proper hand-holding struggle with the idea, and to draw a parallel with the material world of BHAGs, I have taken the liberty to suggest that it is an audacious goal! Seek the understanding of all of you who know the value of just being, and are evolved, who are reading this!)

Post my FB Messenger conversation with the manager I reflected on how much I had changed over the years. There I was, some 15 years ago, ambitious, aggressive, sometimes abrasive, hungry for material success; and always impatient and angry with the world. And here I am totally anchored, extremely at peace with, and in, my completely battered and devastated material world – not bitter, not angry and no longer impatient! The way I look at BHAG as a concept now personifies the change in me.

And when I look around me, I see everyone changing. Some of them change, of course, because the wind is blowing in a different direction. But others change because they genuinely feel differently about Life. I always believe that the second category of people are the ones who change from within. Tamil film Super Star Rajnikanth, in his eulogy, the other day, to Jayalalithaa acknowledged that he had made a mistake in the way he had judged her and opined about her. That kind of genuine transformation, honest appraisal, can only come from within. And it is this change, seeing it, seizing it and being it, that is the real wealth in Life.

I guess anyone can have all the fame, all the money and all the power – and yet may not have the ability to just be: to sleep under the stars, to be humble and to acknowledge that Life happens through you and never because of you or for you. But only those who can, in any circumstance, just be – be immersed in the moment, who realize that they don’t control Life and who can accept whatever comes their way with open arms and immense gratitude – only such people really live a full Life.

The manager’s question, my seemingly witty one-liner, and my deep reflection on it reminded me that I have miles to go. But I am happy and grateful that I am on the right road, and am headed in the right direction!

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If you came with nothing and will go with nothing, then why all this drama?

Every time death strikes around us it is serving us a wake-up call.

Somehow the images from Tuesday evening’s public funeral of Jayalalithaa refuse to go away from my mind. Not just yet.

Here was one of the greatest and most powerful leaders of our times, from this part of the world, yet she was so powerless in the face of her own mortality. As I type this, she lies buried some kilometres away. History will surely remember her. People will continue to tell their versions of her story – of her beauty, her fame, her struggles, her triumphs, her power, her wealth, her compassion, her wit and her brilliance – for generations to come. But, for now, her human form lies there alone, at the Marina, in abject surrender to Life’s will.

Death, we must all realize, is a great leveler.

The moment you are born, the only predictable aspect of your Life is your impending, inevitable, death. You cannot negotiate with death. In fact, all of us are speeding towards our death, albeit at different speeds. You have to go when your time is up and your number is called. So, the most intelligent way to live is to live fully, celebrating this lifetime being happy, doing what you love doing.  Yet, thanks to your social conditioning, you go on getting attached to material stuff, wanting to accumulate more wealth and more things, than experiencing Life, its magic and beauty, in all its grandeur and majesty. Simply, you go on postponing living. When you invest your present in grieving over the dead past or in worrying about an unborn future you are not living, you are merely existing.

Think about it. You – and I – didn’t ask to be born. So, this lifetime is a gift. And this gift is perishable. Each of us comes with an expiry date, except we don’t know what date it is. Of this lifespan that we have, assuming we live to be 60 years old, it is only up to the age of 40~45 that you can be reasonably assured of good health. It is only when you are maintaining good health that you can experience Life fully. But think of how most of us are squandering this peak phase of good health, investing precious time and energy in materialism or living our lives trying to please others or brooding over what we don’t have. By the time we wake up, if at all we do, to realize the ephemeral nature of Life, it is often too late. Sadly, some people never quite wake up in realization at all!

Clearly, nobody who has inhabited this planet has ever been able to take anything of what they created or accumulated with them. You come empty-handed and you will go empty-handed. Death unfailingly serves us a wake-up call, reminding us of this unalterable law of Life, every time it strikes around us. But are we listening, are we waking up, are we willing to change the way we think and live?

After watching Jayalalithaa’s funeral on TV as we stepped out on the street for a walk, I found a bed of leaves under a tree in my neighborhood. Intuitively, as I shot a picture to post on Instagram, this line completed the imagery in my head: “If this is where we all have to end up finally, then why all this drama that we enact all through our lifetimes?”
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What we can learn from Jayalalithaa – no matter what or who it is, be yourself!

The key to intelligent living is the ability to overcome the temptation to please others.

Whether it was her meteoric rise to stardom or handsomely surviving in the male-dominated steamy cauldron of Dravidian politics or facing the slew of criminal charges against her or dealing with the victories and defeats in elections or just coping with her sense of loneliness, no matter what it was or who it was, Jayalalithaa was remarkable only because she was always herself.

I remember Jayalalithaa once telling this to NDTV’s Jennifer Arul: “My mother pushed me into films, my mentor MGR pushed me into politics. But for these two instances, I may have wanted my Life to be very different.” Even so, despite the contexts and circumstances that she was placed in, the one thing that made her charismatic – and perhaps, therefore, enigmatic – was her ability to be herself.

During the elections in 1991, which she won leading to her first term in power, I was assigned the task of covering her campaign. I was then working with India Today. Despite several attempts, she refused to grant me an interview. I was persistent though and befriended her personal staff at Poes Garden. They would alert me of her meeting schedules and so I would position myself outside the gate to her residence – in those days, it was just a few police constables and some of us hacks who hung around there; security measures were not so stringent then. For days on end, she would look at me dismissively and drive on each time she left her home. But I persisted. I traveled to her constituency, Bargur, in northern Tamil Nadu, and camped outside the Traveler’s Bungalow for the days that she campaigned there. I made sure she saw me each time she stepped out for a meeting. But no, she would not relent. Then one day I sent her a fax message enlisting the number of times I had tried to reach her and said that I was keen, as a young journalist, to meet and interview the lady who would be the next Chief Minister. That message worked. Later that day when she was driving out of her Poes Garden home, she asked her driver to stop at the gate where I was standing. She rolled down her window glass and told me: “See, I have nothing against you. I admire your perseverance. But I refuse to talk to India Today until Mr.X (my boss, who then was part of India Today’s editorial board and who had done a story on her around that time that she found objectionable) apologizes to me.” I was young, hardly 25, and very aggressive, I guess, back then. So I piped up, “But why are you punishing me for what you hold against my boss?” Pat came her reply, politely, firmly, with a straight face: “Because I don’t need you guys. You need me. Tell Mr.X to reach out and apologize and I will surely meet you.”

Here was a lady who was then wanting to be Chief Minister – it was to be her first time. She would have surely wanted to be in the good books of India’s # 1 newsmagazine India Today. But she refused to give up fighting the good fight – especially if it came to demanding that she be respected as a woman, if it was a question of her dignity. This is the way, for the rest of her Life, Jayalalithaa remained herself – unwilling to ever bend to social, political or gender-related pressures.

And this can be the learning we may want to take away from her Life. From the time we are born – family,  friends, society – everyone wants us to be the way they are. And somehow we grow up pandering to this social conditioning. We view each of our actions in the prism of our mind’s eye always as how we will be perceived by others. In that effort to meet the expectations of those around us, we cease to live the Life we must or want to or are capable of. When we are not living the Life that we are comfortable living, under the circumstances in which we find ourselves, we are not happy. We are not peaceful.

Undoubtedly, Life will place us in contexts we never imagined for ourselves. In each situation, there will be a temptation to please people, society and do what others want us to do. But if we can overcome that tendency and just be ourselves, we will have lived remarkably! 

PS: This post has been edited. The name of my boss has been dropped and I refer to him now as Mr.X.