The Rs.1k Wedding Invite And The Man Who Gave Away Most Of His Wealth

A pompous friend and the modest billionaire Azim Premji help reinforce a key guiding principle in Vaani and me – that the essence of responsible citizenship lies in trusteeship.

This past week, a friend reached out wanting to visit us to invite us to his daughter’s wedding. We requested him to avoid the formality and support our initiative to save paper. So we asked him to send the Invite over WhatsApp. But the gentleman and his wife insisted on coming home. When they handed over the Invite, printed on hot pink paper with gold letters in a ‘custom-designed’ font, our friend said: “Each invitation card has cost us Rs.1000 and surely WhatsApp would not have done justice to our effort. So, we decided to come personally…that way you can see how elaborately we have planned this wedding…it will be the grandest in our family for a long, long time…!”

Even as he made that statement – both verbally and through physically handing over that expensive invitation card – Vaani and I wondered, if each card cost a whopping Rs.1000, then how big, how fat and how wasteful will the actual wedding itself be?

Although Vaani and I don’t see it that way anymore, I concede that weddings are regarded as a socially relevant and important occasion by most families. But do they really need to be pompous events where everything is about outdoing someone else, showing off how much you have and investing in a vulgar, reckless, display of ego, wealth and status?

Thankfully, some of the younger folks we know are leading a change among their families and peers. A few weddings we have been invited to in the last couple of years have been zero-waste affairs; they were bootstrapped and done tastefully with no pomp, with only very close family and friends in attendance.

We believe weddings, if they must be done at all, must focus on making the experience memorable for everyone present while keeping the event a responsible celebration that emphasizes companionship and Happiness. And when everyone wills it so, weddings can certainly be carefully, meaningfully, curated on lower budgets; the money saved can be put to better use – for the couple to travel and see the world or set up a new home or to support a social cause that is seriously starved of resources.

I know it will be a long way before this view is embraced by the majority. But clearly a Rs.1000-a-piece wedding invitation card is avoidable. Surely, you can create beautiful Invites that can be e-mailed or sent over WhatsApp.

Interestingly, again this past week, we were invited to an event where Azim Premji of Wipro was given the Madras Management Association – Amalgamations Group Business Leadership Award for 2019.

Why does the incredibly simple, modest, Premji even need to be feted with an award? This was the thought uppermost on our mind when we arrived at the event.

Image Copyright with Original Creator/MMA

But former ICICI Bank Chairman N.Vaghul nailed the reasoning. He said that in a society where values like integrity and trusteeship are almost extinct, where there is a steady decline in responsible conduct of citizenship, the spotlight on Premji’s principled Life can really help showcase the continued relevance of these values. Through telling the story of his Life, of the world-class institutions he has built (in manufacturing, IT and education) and of how much he is giving away (estimated at close to $ 21 billion) to his charity – the Azim Premji Foundation – we are inviting future generations to pause, reflect and, hopefully, embrace his philosophy of trusteeship (which he says is inspired by Mahatma Gandhi).

Vaani and I took away a key learning from Premji’s acceptance speech. He said that there is only so much that a family can consume. The inference clearly is that whatever is available to a family beyond what they require to meet their basic needs may ideally be given away to support someone else’s need to live a dignified Life.

I didn’t miss the irony from the past week as I sat down early this morning to write this Blogpost. The reality of the world – and the times – we live in struck me hard. Surely there are more people around us who believe that making money and showing it all off is the Purpose of Life. They are like our friend  who vainly insists that even the invitation card to his daughter’s wedding must announce his wealth and social status. And, sadly, there are fewer people like Premji, who despite all their wealth, remain grounded and are invested in social good. Which is why I agree with Vaghul. Every time a Premji is celebrated, the message of intelligent living, of compassion, of giving, is celebrated. And given the circus of greed and one-upmanship that we see incessantly playing around us, this celebration of responsible citizenship is critical to inspire people; to invite them to consider living fuller, more meaningful, lives.

The idea of responsible citizenship is not about doing charity when you are asked to do it. I am sure most people out there have enough goodness in them to stand up and be counted when they are asked to contribute. So, that’s not the kind of reactive behavior that I am talking about. Responsible citizenship is about trusteeship.

 

Think of trusteeship like this. You are a trustee of the Life that’s been given to you. And you are a trustee of the planet that you inhabit. So be responsible with how you live and how you use the planet’s resources. Recognize that you need only so much to live and to support your immediate family. Beyond food, clothing, shelter, education, a reasonable healthcare and retirement plan and hi-speed internet connectivity through a smart device, whatever you have, whatever comes your way, give it away. Give, not because you have to give, not because you are asked to give, but give because you want to give. Recognize that just as this human form, this Life, is a gift, every thing, every resource that you acquire in this lifetime, is also given to you. So, be responsible by employing all that you receive for human good, to make the world a better place.

I too will lean on Gandhi to suggest employing a simple principle to make informed, intelligent, decisions when it comes to practising trusteeship (I have tweaked Gandhi’s original thought to make it relatable to our times): “Recall the face of the poorest – economically, emotionally, spiritually – person you have come across and ask yourself if the step you are about to take will benefit this person? Will this person gain from your making this choice? Will it help restore them to a Life of dignity, love and Happiness? If it will, go do what you are planning to do. If it won’t, well, rethink your choice!”

Apply this principle to my friend’s choice to splurge Rs.1000 on that wedding invitation card. Apply it to Premji’s choice to give away $ 21 billion. And apply it to each of your Life choices – from the past, from the present and to those that may come up in the future. And see how beautifully this principle leads you – every single time – to distinguish between want and need; and to do what is right than what appears to be right!

For Happiness, violent thought in you must cease

Channelize your anger

Your Life too has a Purpose – stay tuned, it will find you!

What you seek will seek you.

“I often vex over trying to understand what is the Purpose of my Life,” said a young man who I met recently. He wanted to know if it was a “good thing” or a “bad thing” vexing over trying to understand your Life’s Purpose.

I smiled. The very fact that a young man, in his 20s, is thinking of Life’s Purpose, I feel, is commendable. I started wondering if my Life has a Purpose at all only when I was in my mid-thirties. And this is what I have learnt from my quest for, and discovery of, my Life’s Purpose.

We must first remember that all forms of creation have a Purpose. Particularly, the human form. To be created a human being, with no significant ‘manufacturing defects’, is a not just a miracle, it is a blessing. If you have been created human, surely, there must be a reason behind it; a Purpose. Else, possibly, you may been created in some other inanimate or non-human form. Think about it. Why are you created human? And the answer really is simple. You are human so that you can experience happiness, so that you can serve other forms of creation using your intellect and your compassion, and so that you live a full, complete Life. But what do we human beings do – we are conditioned by our upbringing and social expectations, so we are stuck with earning-a-living instead of living, we are forever saying we deserve more, instead of serving and because our wants outnumber our needs, we are perpetually unhappy. So, in essence, we are, as a race, a majority of us, missing the whole Purpose behind our creation.

Every human creation has an individual Purpose too. Just as Gandhi’s had, Mother Teresa’s had, Kailash Sathyarthi’s has and Malala Yusafzai’s has. It is a fallacy to imagine that only ‘great’ people’s lives have a Purpose. The truth is that they are regarded as great only because they lived a Life of Purpose. Now, you cannot find your Life’s Purpose by vexing over it. Agonizing over something will only cause suffering. So, just relax. The very fact that you know that your Life has a Purpose and you are seeking it is a blessing – there are so many, many, many millions out there who are merely ‘earning-a-living’ and are imagining that they have been created to slave, earn, save, suffer and procreate. So, you are in a more evolved state than many out there. Celebrate yourself, than agonizing, therefore.

What’s beautiful about Life is that your Life’s Purpose will find you. What you seek will seek you. There’s no way you can explain this. It happens to each one in their own way – over time. Sometimes a cathartic turn of events may awaken you. Sometimes, a flash of an idea may inspire you. Or you may just be in a place by sheer happenstance when you feel a river moving inside you telling you, ‘come, flow with me!’ Purpose is magical. It transforms your Life instantaneously. It makes you want to wake up each morning and go live each day fully, happily, energetically, no matter how debilitating the circumstances are.

There’s a simple way to stay tuned in the direction of your Life’s Purpose though. Make a list of all the activities you are passionate about. Then decide which one or ones are you capable of being world-class, excellent, at. Then focus only on doing those couple of things that you are passionate about and have the potential to be best at in the world. Soon you will come to that one activity where you lose yourself. Which is, when you immerse yourself in it, you lose track of time, sleep and even of your own identity. Ask yourself how can this one activity not just benefit you alone but how can you serve people around you? The answer to this question may well direct you to your Life’s Purpose. Getting to this stage of understanding, evolution and clarity, takes time. So, trust the process of Life and be patient.

And, of course, Purpose and money are unconnected, unrelated. Though living a Life of Purpose may surely lead you to earn money, making money cannot be your Life’s Purpose. Because money is a human invention, a social necessity. Your Life’s Purpose is the reason for your creation, it is why you are, well, human in the first place. It is the reason for your living, for your being. It is Life’s longing for you – to make your lifetime meaningful, to make it count. So, you don’t have to get vexed trying to find it. Just stay tuned to the big question – ‘what is the Purpose of my Life?’ – without agonizing over it, and your Purpose will, over time, find you.

 

Angry kya? The source of all your anger is within you!

Mindless anger is avoidable.

The CEO of a mid-size firm confessed to me that he has anger management issues. He said he gets ‘ticked off on the flimsiest pretext’ and wanted to know how he could ‘control his anger’.

This CEO reminded me of myself. I used to be this way. In fact, even now, at times, I do get angry. But, until a few years ago, my anger was mindless and would last several days. But now, my awareness, cultivated to through the practice of mouna (observing silence periods daily) helps me see the anger rising in me and encourages me to allow it to subside – because I now know that I can’t solve any problem or change any situation that I dislike by merely being mindlessly angry with it!

Let me explain how I have understood to deal with anger.

I used to have a personal assistant who would always, always, mess things up. And his behavior, his body language, his utterances, in fact, his very presence would infuriate me. One day, after another high-decibel screaming episode with him, I remarked to Vaani, in complete frustration, “You know what? I am to blame for retaining this guy with us. He’s not the source of my anger and misery. I am!”

That statement was a Eureka moment for me! Perhaps I was aided by my reflective practice of mouna, maybe I was driven to enlightenment by my frustration with myself, whatever it was, it certainly helped me see the futility of my mindless rage. Clearly. Over the following weeks, I meditated more on this understanding. I realized that whenever you get angry with someone, you have caused that anger within you first. The target of your anger is outside of you – but the anger has risen within you. There is no point working on the target. You must work on the source.

I employed this learning sincerely over the months that followed. In fact, after some years of diligent practice, I still believe this awareness is something you must sustain continuously. You must work on being aware in each moment.

So, every time I get angry with someone or something, I remind myself that just getting angry mindlessly is a waste. Trying to control anger doesn’t work either. Because when you control anger, you are repressing it – which is why you are often not even “seeing” that you are angry, whenever you are angry! You are resisting a natural human response. And whatever you resist, persists. Instead, go to the root cause of your anger. And always, every single time, you will find that your anger is born out of what you expect, out of what you desire. And when you see your desire clearly, ask yourself if you are capable of changing a current reality into an aspirational reality? If you think you can do this, then channelize the energy from your anger to achieve that aspirational state. Employ your anger for a Higher Purpose. (That’s what Gandhi did with the Indian Freedom Movement.) If you can’t, simply let go of your anger.

Anger is like any other emotion – it will rise like a wave in you, as a natural human response to a situation. If you are aware of it you can either use the energy for a constructive outcome or you can let it go. If you are not aware of it, in extreme cases, it can even consume you. But more often than not it makes you feel helpless and miserable! Why would you want to cause your own suffering?

A good starting point to deal with anger is to work on yourself – so begin with letting go of all expectations. Do your best, each time, and don’t set any conditions on the outcome of your efforts. Let whatever will happen, happen. In fact, whether you like it or not, whatever is due to happen will only happen. So, have an open mind, this awareness, all the time. That way, when anger arises within you, as it naturally will when what you don’t like, want or expect happens to you, you will see how pointless it is to get mindlessly angry. See if your anger can be employed to achieve a Higher Purpose. If you see that it can’t be, simply let it go. This is the only way to avoid being mindlessly angry!

PS: If you liked this blogpost, please share it to help spread the learning it carries!

 

Zen and the art of being unfrustrated with outcomes

To be unfrustrated when you don’t get the results you want is a skill that you can teach yourself.

A gentleman asked me the other day: “It must be so frustrating AVIS to endure a bankruptcy for such a long time. Why do talented and ethical people like you have to go through a tough Life?” I smiled back at him. My reply: “Talent and integrity don’t ensure a crisis-free Life. The nature of Life is such that it is one continuous adventure. You just have to deal with whatever comes your way.”

I feel people unnecessarily complicate Life by imagining that they should be free from problems, challenges or crises. To be sure, Life never promised anyone a hassle-free ride. In fact, Life makes no promises. We humans bring our expectations to the party and then we invite suffering into our Life when those expectations are not met. When Life makes no promises, and when you expect something out of Life, and that expectation is not fulfilled, and you suffer, who is to blame? Of course, you have only yourself to blame. So, simply, drop all expectations and Life will be a lot easier to deal with.

In “Gandhi The Man”, Eknath Easwaran (1910~1999), writes about how Mahatma Gandhi drew great inspiration from the Bhagavad Gita to keep the focus only on his efforts and to learn to be detached from the outcomes. The Gita says: ‘Do your allotted work, but renounce its fruit – be detached and work – have no desire for reward and work’. And Gandhi internalized this learning thus: “This is the unmistakable teaching of the Gita. He who gives up action falls. He who gives up only the reward rises. But renunciation of fruit in no way means indifference to the result. In regard to every action one must know the result that is expected to follow, the means thereto, and the capacity for it. He, who, being thus equipped, is without desire for the result, and is yet wholly engrossed in the due fulfillment of the task before him, is said to have renounced the fruits of his action.”

I meditated, during my daily mouna (silence periods) sessions, on this learning for weeks on end some years ago. And over time I cultivated the ability to stay detached from the outcomes of my efforts. Vaani helped me through this process. This is how both of us have been able to deal with our Life with great equanimity.

Internalizing this learning has helped us immensely to remain unfrustrated when we don’t get what we want despite our very sincere efforts and all our integrity. When you are unfrustrated then you see any challenge only as an opportunity to learn patience and to retry. Which is why, when people often ask me, when do I think we will get out of our bankruptcy, I always reply, “I know we will be out of this. I just can’t say when.”

To be unfrustrated is a skill that can be learnt with practice. It requires training your mind to engage with only the present moment, with only the efforts. Simply, when there is integrity of Purpose, when there is relentless, unsparing effort, when you trust the process of Life, then you can never be frustrated with the outcomes!  

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What I learnt from Gandhi, The Man

Gandhi taught us the power and value of living intelligently!

A friend’s Facebook post caught my attention yesterday and set me thinking! My friend announced that he would unfriend anyone who made racist or unqualified remarks about Gandhi. And sure enough he did what he promised – he promptly unfriended those who shared unfounded sentiments about the great man! I liked my friend’s in-the-face approach. Over the past couple of decades, I have been noticing a disturbing trend. People seem to revel in Mahatma-bashing. From calling him names to questioning his ideology to even doubting his relevance, it almost seems like it is fashionable to shred Gandhi.

I have obviously not met Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. But I have studied him – not the Mahatma, not the Father of the Nation, not the political master strategist, but Gandhi, The Man.

My study of Gandhi almost never happened. Way back in 2007, there used to be a bookstore called Connexions opposite my office in R A Puram, Chennai. This was basically a gift store, with a collection of books that the owner personally curated. One afternoon, while browsing through the store, I found Eknath Easwaran’s  Gandhi, The Man, staring at me. I liked the way the book defined its purpose – ‘to tell the story of how one man changed himself to change the world’. Around that time I was embracing mouna, the practice of observing silence for an hour daily. I had begun an inner journey, to understand my Self better even as I was asking several existential questions of me, of Life. While the book interested me, I did not pick it up. I had not heard of Eknath Easwaran then. And I didn’t think then that there was anything new a book could tell me about Gandhi, that I didn’t already know!

But just the next day, I read a newspaper interview in which Rajnikanth, yes – the Tamil film Super Star, named two books that changed his Life. One was Living with the Himalayan Masters by Swami Rama and the other was Eknath Easwaran’s Gandhi, The Man. I had known of Rajnikanth’s spiritual side, but didn’t quite imagine he would read books. Nor did I ever expect that he would name a rather unheard of book, that I had just stumbled upon the previous day. I rushed back to the bookstore and found Easwaran’s book still there. I bought it!

The book changed my Life.

I had for long been dealing with anger. People on my team called me chiefscreamer – punning on my title, chiefdreamer! That’s how lousy my reputation was. Reading Gandhi, The Man, helped me realize that anger was energy, which when channeled, could be deployed very constructively. I also learned from the book how beautifully Gandhi separated the issue from the people connected with it. He famously said, “I don’t hate the English, but I hate the way the English rule my country.” In a way, he practiced ahimsa, not just as non-violent action, as is popularly perceived, but as non-violent thought. But all of this, I realized, Gandhi ingrained in him thanks to his meditations of the Bhagavad Gita. The second chapter of the Bhagavad Gita ends with unveiling the highest state of consciousness a human being can attain. Krishna, replying to Arjuna, says (presenting here only the relevant extract that Easwaran too shares in Gandhi, The Man):

“…He lives in wisdom, who sees himself in all and all in him,

Whose love for the Lord of Love has consumed

Every selfish desire and sense-craving

Tormenting the heart.

Not agitated by grief,

Nor hanker after pleasure,

He lives free from lust and fear and anger.

Fettered no more by selfish attachments

He is not elated by good fortune,

nor depressed by bad.

Such is the seer….”

Gandhi, according to Easwaran, meditated on this verse for 50 years every morning and night and devoted all his life to translating it into his daily action. This was the key to his self-transformation.

I have internalized the essence of this verse too. And I have seen myself transform from being stressed out, angry, worried and insecure, to being centered, anchored and at peace with myself and my Life. I am happy with what is. I work daily on continuing to remain unmoved and unfrustrated about all that which happens to me, around me. I owe this transformation in me to Gandhi for leading the way and to Easwaran for telling me, through his book, how Gandhi changed himself first before attempting to share his way of Life with the world. Just for this one reason alone, though there surely are several other reasons, I feel none of us must ever question Gandhi. We don’t have the right to do that unless we have achieved what he had in his lifetime – which is, to be the change that we wish to see around us!

 

Glenfiddich, the Gayatri Mantra and my awakening!

If we can focus on the essence of a religion or ritual, than merely being dogmatic about it, we will awaken.

In response to my blogpost yesterday on the value of remaining detached – both materially and emotionally, a reader reached out to ask me this: “Sir, is the poonal (the cotton thread worn across the shoulder by Brahmin menfolk, who deem it to be ‘sacred’) an attachment? Or is it a ceremonial identity for those born into a sect?”

Now, I am not going to answer this reader’s questions in specific. But I am going to share what I think of being born a Brahmin; and having given up wearing a poonal, what I have understood about being prayerful, being spiritual versus being ritualistic and religious.

I come from a very conservative Palakkad Brahmin, Iyer, (Palaghattan) family. My upanayanam (sacred thread/poonal ceremony) was performed when I was 13. While, for some inexplicable reason, I took to liking the Gayatri Mantra, even though I never understood its meaning then (just to clarify, I never asked for, nor was I taught, its meaning), I loathed the practice of doing sandhyavandanam thrice daily. Looking back, I feel it wasn’t about the practice, it was the draconian manner in which it was forced upon me that got my goat. As an adolescent, I had more worldly, more physical, more spirited matters to deal with in my body and mind, than to explore the spiritual aspect of living. I simply resisted the whole idea of being Brahmin and having to imagine that I was ‘intelligent, exclusive and exalted’.

Here I was, getting the lowest grades in my class – I was in fact thrown out of PSBB, KK Nagar, by the venerable Ms.YGP, for scoring 8/100 in Geometry in a quarterly. So, far from intelligent, I felt like I was a duffer. Second, all I wanted to do was hang out with friends, watch movies, smoke, have girlfriends and talk about and do stuff that all adolescents indulge in. But no. To do any of that was sinful, I was told. Because a. I now wore a poonal and b. I am Brahmin. I began hating the idea of being Brahmin and privileged even more. So, somewhere, along the way, I gave up doing sandhyavandanam (citing time constraints), but the poonal stayed on – possibly because of the fear-your-God-else-you-shall-be-punished orientation that I had received all through my childhood.

I grew older wearing the poonal. I did stuff that was deemed sacrilegious wearing the poonal – which is, I ate non-vegetarian food, drank alcohol, smoked tobacco and had sex! But the poonal stayed on. And, as they say, history, repeats itself. So, at 13, my son, Aashirwad, had his upanayanam. Vaani and I were liberal with him though. He had a choice to wear his poonal or do sandhyavandanam. Nothing was forced on him. And so, he made a choice not to do either! I don’t think I ever sat him down and helped him understand the meaning and significance of the Gayatri Mantra though. Life just went on for all of us.

Over time, thanks to our bankruptcy, and the cathartic experience that we are going through, I leaned more towards spirituality and started moving away from religion and rituals. This journey was smoother for me perhaps because of my early resistance to being a ‘privileged Brahmin’ and my intense distaste for rituals. I preferred to understand Life than be driven by tradition. So, Osho, Rumi, Gurdjieff, Gandhi, Eknath Eswaran, Kabir, Thich Nhat Hanh, Khwaja Moinuddin Chishty, Shirdi Baba, Sathya Sai Baba and Vivekananda, appealed to me more than the pantheon of Hindu Gods that I have been brought up propitiating. I understood that Life really meant living, not earning-a-living. And living meant celebrating each moment. I realized that happiness and inner peace were intelligent choices available to each of us and that God is within you and me, who must be loved, not someone who controlled you from the outside and who must be feared.

I understood the real meaning of the Gayatri Mantra. There are several ways it can be explained. But two flavors appeal to me the most:

One, Swami Vivekanananda’s single-line Twitter-friendly version: “We meditate on the glory of that Being who has produced this Universe; may He/She enlighten our minds.” (Note – I added the ‘She’ to this to celebrate gender equality!)

Two, what a sage seeker once shared with me:

“Through the coming and going, and the balance of Life,
the essential nature, which illumines existence, remains.
May all perceive through subtle intellect
the brilliance of enlightenment.”

Consider both versions of the Gayatri Mantra’s meaning. Is there any religion in it? Is there any parochial Brahmin supremacy enshrined in it? Then why, why is it preached, promoted and peddled as a Brahminical virtue?

One night, in the summer of 2011, when Aash was down here in Chennai on vacation, both of us sat down to polish off a bottle of Glenfiddich (that Aash had bought for me from his first part-time job’s salary). The ladies of the house had retired. And soon father and son got talking about Life, Purpose, spirituality, religion, rituals, God and almost everything that remains inscrutable to us mortals. I shared with Aash how much Osho has helped me live a fuller and happier Life. And then I talked about the Gayatri Mantra – sharing the two meanings, that I have presented above, with him. I also told him what I thought of the wasted idea of Brahminism – of how important and relevant just being is compared to being ritualistic and religious.

I then poured myself one more drink, and declared emphatically, that what the world needs more is Humanism, not Brahminism. I said we need no more of religion or rituals but we urgently need compassion and spirituality. Aash stopped me short and said, in a dead-pan tone: “But Dad, you are still wearing your poonal, right? Doesn’t all this sound a bit hypocritical to you?!” I looked back into his eyes. I set my glass down, peeled off the tee-shirt I was wearing, removed my poonal, and politely discarded it in the trashcan in the kitchen!

To me, that night was nirvana, enlightenment, moksha – whatever! That night I detached from an idea that had been bothering me from my adolescence – an idea called Brahminism that was based on religion, community, caste and parochial thought! Since then I have abstained from religion – as it is practiced today – and from all rituals. I feel freer, I feel happier and I feel at peace with myself.

This inner peace and joy helps me deal with my Life much better. In the last 5-odd years I have been enjoying my journey of this lifetime more than I have ever for 44 years before that night. I am so much more happier despite my excruciating material circumstances. Maybe this is the enlightenment that the Gayatri Mantra invites us to embrace. At least this is the essence I have picked up – and I don’t see any reason why the whole world shouldn’t be knowing and learning this!

More on why, when and how to “walk away” and the art of “non-suffering”

Don’t allow anything – or anyone – to make you suffer.  

My blogpost of yesterday, and a similar point I made in another post from last week, that dealt with “walking away” from a confrontational or a debilitating situation, has elicited more queries from some readers. One felt that it is important for us to try and convince others of our point of view – while giving them airtime to voice their own. Another opined that “walking away” is a sign of weakness, that if we disagree with someone, we must have the “courage” to face them and debate the issue. Yet another wondered if not enjoining in a debate served any purpose at all – “what is the point of having a view if you can’t share it; perhaps someone will benefit from it, won’t someone’s view of Life change if you can convince them?”

So, let me use this opportunity today to further share my understanding and learnings here on why, when and how to “walk away”.

There are two kinds of people in the world. One who are mature, open-minded, constructive and non-combative. The other kind are those who are closed to others’ views and who are rabid to the point of being controlling and hostile. The first kind are simple to deal with. You can share whatever you feel like with them. And you can choose to disagree with them. They will debate only the issue and never get either personal or rabid with you. The second category, even if they are have a strong argument, do not know how to present it constructively, without affecting the dignity of the others concerned with the issue. They make every discussion a debate and every debate eventually ends up being a slugfest. It is this category of people that we must avoid wasting our time – and energy – on. It is from them that I advise walking away. Because, if they are going to disturb your inner peace, make you restive, anxious, angry and agitated, then it is not worth engaging with them at all. Bottomline: your inner peace is your responsibility – protect it, because nobody else ever will.

Therapists and counsellors advise a process called constructive confrontation in matters where people have divergent views. It is a very healthy method that allows both parties – let us say people in a divorce situation – to have an opportunity to present their views without being emotional about it, to listen to the other point of view, agree to agree or agree to disagree, and amicably settle matters or move on. But what do you do when the other party is unwilling or is simply incapable of being constructive? Why would you waste your emotions, your energy and a precious chunk of your lifetime on unproductive confrontations? It is in these contexts that “walking away” is a practical and intelligent response.

Of course, as it always turns out, not just people, sometimes even situations can be very debilitating. Now, when I say, “walk away”, I am not saying give up at the slightest sign of a challenge. I am only saying if you are suffering with something, with someone, in something, please don’t suffer, choose to walk away. Take my own case here. I have been, with Vaani, battling an enduring bankruptcy. But we refuse to give up. We face it every single day. It is very, very painful. Yet we are not walking away. And we are not suffering either. So, if you can deal with a tough situation or a hostile, abrasive or controlling individual, without suffering, by all means hang in there and keep plowing on. But if you are suffering, if your inner peace is disturbed, then remember, you do have an option to just walk away.

The key here is to be non-suffering. This is an art that can be learnt over time. I have learnt this too, the hard way though, and believe now that the best way to win any battle is not to fight at all. It is on this principle that Mahatma Gandhi based, and so successfully executed, our Independence movement way back in the early 1900s. He called it ahimsa. To be sure, ahimsa is not non-violence – it is the complete absence of violence even in thought. His famous line was: “I don’t hate the English. I hate the way the English rule my country.” So, in effect, “walking away” really means choosing to not suffer, by getting away from the source of negativity or debilitation, yet refusing to run away from the issue, facing it and taking it head-on. Like most spiritual concepts this is downright simple, easy to hold and practice. But if you analyze it and try to intellectually dissect it, you will never understand its value or soak in its essence. The best way to see how – and if – it works is to let go and let it work!

‘Kali’, Dulquer Salmaan, me and the futility of unchannelized anger

Feeling frustrated is a part of everyday living; but it is such a waste of personal energy!

I am just coming out a short spell of being frustrated with my internet connectivity and resultant poor bandwidth-led transactional issues! It was an extremely short spell of frustration lasting barely a few minutes. Just some years ago, I would have been grumpy and pissed off for a whole day. Had it been more human-induced frustration – like the behavior of people around me – I may have even been angry and vengeful, back then, for days on end. Thankfully, mercifully, I have evolved.

Interestingly, just yesterday I watched the latest Dulquer Salmaan-starrer Kali. It is a beautiful Malayalam film. Kali, as I understand, means rage. And Salmaan plays Siddhu, an angry young man who blows his fuse over anyone – and anything – that frustrates him. His uncontrolled rage often lands him in messy situations. Watching Salman on screen, it was both uncomfortable and, strangely, gratifying. It was uncomfortable because as I went back 15 years in time, I thought to myself: “Gosh, is this how I used to look and behave?” It was also gratifying because I felt I have made phenomenal progress, I have evolved over these years, learning to channelize my anger constructively.

I have done bizarre things when angry. I have broken a TV, flung my spectacles out of the window, hurt myself banging my head against the wall, yelled at people and even smashed a new phone to smithereens. Apart from the initial burst of temper, I would carry my anger in me – against people and circumstances – for days on end. Of course I tried reasoning with myself why I was angry and, over time, I concluded that I lost my temper when people behaved unethically with me or when they questioned my intelligence. I also succumbed – yes that’s the word! – to frustration whenever events and circumstances held me hostage. By nature I was a man in a hurry and so anyone or anything that came in my way made me angry!

And then started a phase in 2002~2003, when nothing really went according to a plan that I wove or crafted myself. That phase, almost 14 years later, still continues. In this time, I have understood that you cannot control Life and you can’t control other people. So, I have come to believe that anger is an energy that runs amock when it is allowed to run free. When channelized – and I used the practice of mouna, daily silence periods, to achieve this – anger can bring about great progress. India, for instance, would not have got Independence had one man not got angry over being pushed out of a train in South Africa! When I realized the futility of unharnessed anger, I learnt the value of living intelligent. From being angry, I went on to simply being – in the moment, calm and peaceful!

This doesn’t mean I don’t get frustrated. I do. Like the way I was hopping mad a while ago over my internet connectivity! But my awareness helps me immensely here. I soon move from subject-mode to witness-mode. As a subject you are involved. As a witness you are detached. And therein lies the key to avoid the temptation to be provoked by every small aberration or taunter in your Life.

This is what I have learnt from my anger and from Life: don’t waste precious personal energy being angry or frustrated at everything that comes at you! Start by stopping to giving your anger (or frustration) attention. If you can avoid it, let it go. If you can’t avoid it, you go away from the source that makes you angry or frustrates you! Over time, when you learn to give your anger (or frustration) no attention, it will simply dissolve! Then, you can pick and choose which fights to fight in Life!