‘Musafir Hoon Yaron…Bas Chalte Jaana Hai…!’

Have I given up? Have I grown too old?

I have been trying to convince a legendary actor, who is 75 now, for a conversation I am trying to have with him for my Sunday column (for DT Next) and for my forthcoming Book, “The Happiness Road”. He responded saying he is busy with a mega project involving a Tamizh literary classic and so he did not have the time. I respected his choice.

When sharing this update with my photographer-partner (on “The Happiness Road” project) Vinodh Velayudhan, I added that I found it interesting that I will not be pursuing this actor for a meeting anymore. I told Vinodh that all my Life I had worked with the principle that I should not take ‘no’ for an answer. As a journalist, this principle helped me a lot – I am among the few people who have interviewed Shapoorji Pallonji Mistry (Cyrus Mistry’s father), Vijay Mallya, Ramesh Gelli (Global Trust Bank), C.Sivasanakaran (who I later worked with as Executive Assistant), Rajarathinam (the takeover tycoon who funded all his takeovers by debt) and several other elusive business leaders; I was the only writer-journalist to be allowed on the plane carrying Rajiv Gandhi’s dead body on May 22, 1991 (read my blogpost on that experience here). To be sure, this don’t-take-no-for-an-answer attitude helped me in my business Life too – I stitched together international deals and partnerships with a unique combination of passion, conviction and aggression. Simply, if someone said ‘no’ to me, I pursued them, and like the car rental company’s positioning line, “I tried harder!” And often, I got what I had set out to achieve!

“Why then is today’s AVIS taking ‘no’ for an answer from this actor,” asked Vinodh on WhatsApp. “Is it that you have grown old or is it that you are giving up,” he prodded.

I smiled and replied that I found his questions deeply provocative and reflective at the same time. I said I would answer them through a blogpost. And so, here’s today’s post dedicated to answering Vinodh’s questions.

I believe that to refuse to take ‘no’ for an answer is a good trait to possess. Without ambition, without aggression, there is no progress. When I reflect upon my behavior as a young, firebrand journalist, and later as a young business leader, I feel my primary driver for pushing a door open, when it didn’t open to a knock, was my ambition. I wanted to be famous. And fame, as I believed in back then, came from being among famous people and doing things that others had not done before. I also had this egotistic streak in me – it was pretty well pronounced – so, I always responded with a “How dare you say this to me” whenever someone said ‘no’ to me. This unbridled aggression and drive defined me in the first 15 years of my career – it gave me a lot of fame, a lot of professional success and it gave me this tag that I loved: “AVIS is a man in a hurry, a dreamer, a doer!”

I have no regrets about who I was, and the way I was, back then. But the next 15 years of my Life, from 2002~2017, have really been about me asking far more meaningful questions about my Life. What is the point of success, fame, money? What is the Purpose of Life? Can there be a simpler way to do things – when you do it for the sheer joy it gives you and not necessarily to prove a point or achieve something at the cost of defeating someone else? What is happiness? How are some people happy despite their challenging circumstances? And why are some people unhappy despite the blessings, the abundance, in their lives?

These questions have brought me to this path, “The Happiness Road”, and I am enjoying the journey. I know for sure that there is no destination on this path. There is nowhere to arrive at. On this road, I wrote my Book Fall Like A Rose Petal . I curate interesting, reflective conversations in public spaces, I deliver Talks and I seek to meet people who are willing to share with me – and with Vaani – their idea of happiness. Everything we do – including our Workplace Happiness Firm www.avinitiatives.co.in – is about “Inspiring Happiness” among people who care to pause and reflect.

So, all my ambition is now channelized, directing the energy, inward. It flows uninhibited like always but it flows fueling my inner joy. I am not here to prove anything to anyone – not anymore! I am not preying on famous people so I can become famous being seen in their company. I am looking for fellow voyagers, like me and Vaani, who will sit down for a conversation along the path that we are traveling together on. If someone says ‘no’, I respect their choice. It doesn’t matter anymore who is saying ‘no’ to me; a ‘no’ does not have a debilitating impact on me either. It doesn’t matter if I appear to be behaving like I am too old for being ambitious or that I appear to be giving up. It seriously doesn’t matter!

I am on this path, “The Happiness Road”, and I am blissful here. I am not here pursuing anyone or anything. I am here, I am happy and I know I only have one thing to do on this path – like in the iconic Kishoreda-Panchamda-Gulzar song ‘Musafir Hoon Yaron’ from the 1972-classic ‘Parichay’…Bas Chalte Jaana Hai…I just have to keep walking! 

Nothing, nothing at all, is worth losing your sleep over!

Examine what’s it that’s disturbing you and weed out that factor from your Life. 

I met a senior banker the other day. He said, “A banker’s Life is a dog’s Life! I used to love my work. I still believe I love it. But I don’t know why I am unable to enjoy what I am doing, and of late, I am even unable to sleep well. The stress keeps me awake,” he confessed. I told this gentleman that if he is unable to enjoy whatever he is doing, and if it has reached a point where he is unable to sleep well, he must seriously pause and reflect. I advised him to step out of his “work-work-work zone”, take a vacation and think through his Life!

This is the nub: nothing, nothing at all, is worth losing your sleep over. If you can’t take your mind off work it means one of three things: 1. You don’t have enough reliable support (staff, material, resources) to do what you are doing 2. The system (colleagues, bosses, clients, work culture) at your workplace is highly disorganized and stress-ridden. 3. You are a lousy leader and manager. There could be other reasons. But these three are principal among them. If you don’t enjoy what you are doing, then you must go do what you love doing. Simple. And if you enjoy your work but if any of those reasons is/are prevalent in your work Life, you must get down to fixing them. Simple again!

The idea of living is not about obsessing over earning-a-living. It is not about slogging for 40 years and then hoping to find happiness, inner peace and freedom to do what you want to do at the age of 60. You have been given this Life so that you can be yourself, so that you can go do what you love doing. Now, when something disturbs your equilibrium, you must zero in on what it is and weed it out. Rather than suffer and endure a Life that you don’t want, you must make choices that help you with your inner peace, and help you to find and follow your bliss.

Learn to be free in Life. There will be problems. And you cannot escape those problems. Intelligent living does not mean being free of problems. It means being free, living free, despite those problems. It means choosing not to be a slave to whatever you do to earn a living and not to feel like a hostage of circumstances. What is the point of this Life if you cannot be who you want, do what you want to do, live the Life that you believe in and, at the end of the day, get a good night’s sleep?

There truly is nowhere to reach, nothing to prove and nothing to achieve in Life

If you think deeply, the journey is the only reward!

We met a friend over coffee yesterday. He was curious to know why we curated free public events across the city regularly. He was one of our guests at the Heart of Matter – Happiness Conversations event last Saturday and his question is justified. He asked: “You didn’t make a naya paisa out of such a high quality event you developed and delivered. Why do you do what you do?” To be sure, we are often asked this question. So, we are never surprised.

For Vaani and me, our Life’s Purpose is Inspiring Happiness. My Book Fall Like A Rose Petal, my Fall Like A Rose Petal Talk , the public events we curate, this Blog that I write daily, the value we create for our clients through our Workplace Happiness Firm A V Initiatives, are all part of this journey of living our Purpose. Yes, we do try and monetize whatever we can, whenever an opportunity arises. But we also recognize that not everything in Life is about making money or about being successful in a worldly sense. So, we immerse ourselves in qualitative opportunities, that come our way, where we can inspire people to be happy despite their circumstances. We consider ourselves blessed to be useful even when we are unable to be successful, for the moment, with starting to repay our creditors, climbing out of our bankruptcy and becoming debt-free.

This paradigm shift to being useful, even when there is no money involved, versus always wanting to be successful, has been very rewarding and truly liberating. There’s great joy in simply doing what we love doing, without any sense of wanting to achieve something, to earn something or to prove something. Life is very simple, very beautiful, when you realize that it is the journey that is the reward.

I learnt this lesson way back from a close friend.

My friend is much older than I am; he’s 76. I will call him ABB. He’s the consummate networker, yet he’s a very genteel person – someone who goes out of his way to help people. He has served the Indian Air Force and post his voluntary retirement, he has been a very active member of the corporate circuit in Hyderabad. He’s been an office bearer of many an industry body or management association. And has been a champion of several voluntary causes in South India. I have known him for over 2 decades now. And he has always left me inspired with his energy and enthusiasm. Even so, he’s extremely modest about his achievements and truly believes that he’s just an ordinary person – which is why I have chosen not to name him, but have just used his initials, so as not to embarrass him. Once when I asked him, why he did so much with often no evident returns, he told me : “I am not looking at name or fame. If some work or request comes my way and I feel like doing it, I do it. I have nothing to prove, nothing to achieve, nothing to grab!”

I took away a profound learning from his simple expression: “Nothing to prove. Nothing to achieve. Nothing to grab!” The way we are conditioned – both by our upbringing and through social demands and pressures – we are always doing just the opposite. It is almost as if, if you are not driven, you are wasting your Life. And the word “driven” itself is misunderstood. It has come to mean – prove yourself through your feats, your achievements, your assets, your wealth, your estates. Whereas, we should have been driven by an urge to live fully, to enjoy and celebrate the gift of this lifetime. But in order to prove ourselves, we are postponing living all the time. Osho, the Master, explains the fallacy of living this way and champions living enlightened: “Enlightenment is not an achievement, it is an understanding that there is nothing to achieve, nowhere to go.” Beautiful!

The key to intelligent living lies in internalizing ABB’s and Osho’s philosophy. It means to live Life fully, doing whatever you can with whatever you have in each moment, not really worrying about what you are achieving. When you begin walking, often, the road unfolds on its own. When you let go and live, driven by the urge to live fully, and not by material goals, always, Life takes care of all that it has created. And that includes you – and me! When you realize that Life is not about achieving anything, but is about experiencing everything that comes your way, you can say you are awake, aware and enlightened!

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

Why the man who lives by the ‘serve to deserve’ principle deserves a chance

To do what’s right than what appears to be right is a deeply spiritual and personal choice that we must all learn to make.  

I don’t write on politics. So this post is not about the political context of the occasion – the upcoming Assembly elections in Tamil Nadu.

Raja Krishnamoorthy

This post is about a man who I have known for close to two decades now and who I have great admiration for: Raja Krishnamoorthy. He’s a HR Thought Leader by learning and from experience, he’s an actor by choice and a lover of Life – intuitively inspired by people and nature. He’s now an Independent candidate for the Velachery Assembly Constituency that covers a substantial part of South Chennai including Adyar, Thiruvanmiyur and Besant Nagar. Through this post, I share the Life lessons that I have learnt from Raja and perhaps, through my sharing, you may get an intimate and personal view of who the man is. (Disclosure/Disclaimer: I don’t live in the Velachery Constituency area and Raja is not aware that I am writing this blogpost!)

Raja and I work in the same space – HR, Organizational Transformation, Change Management. Both of us are well-known speakers and are often invited to deliver Talks at various forums. But that’s today. If I am an inspired speaker or a respected professional in the HR and Workplace Happiness (our niche) arena, it is only because Raja has enriched me with his presence and given me the space to grow. I have literally learnt sitting at his feet. Now unless a guru allows such an opportunity how can any shishya ever evolve? So, Raja’s greatest quality is that he’s deeply compassionate. He’s a genuine, self-less giver.

Raja is not someone who wants to impress anyone either with his expressiveness as an actor or his oratorical brilliance. Whatever he says comes from deep within him, from his soul – so it resonates instantaneously with anyone who is seeking and is tuned in. He taught me the value of learning to first ‘serve’ before you say that you ‘deserve’. Until he pointed it out to me, I didn’t quite realize that the word ‘deserve’ would be impossible to spell without ‘serve’ in it. But he urged me to look beyond the spelling and construction of the word. He taught me to understand the opportunity in offering oneself to the Universe, every single time we do something. It may be the work we do, it may the food we make, it may be gardening, it may be tipping someone who’s been helpful, it may be singing or it may be delivering a Talk or taking a picture – whatever you do, offer it as a service. When my wife Vaani and I began a cathartic phase (that we are still enduring) of our Life, this ‘serve to deserve’ principle of Raja’s helped us anchor ourselves. We are still struggling to put our bankrupt business back on track, trying to be successful in a financial and material way, but success (per the worldly sense) is eluding us. So, employing Raja’s principle, we flipped the paradigm and decided to be useful and not just try to be successful. So, we engage with people and communities every single day – even if it is not financially rewarding – and serve by sharing what we have learnt from Life. {I have acknowledged this paradigm shift in detail, and Raja’s role in it, in my Book ‘Fall Like A Rose Petal’ (Westland).} Raja lives by the ‘serve to deserve’ principle, every moment of every single day!

The third, and perhaps most significant, quality about Raja is that he truly fits management guru Noel Tichy’s definition of leadership – he has the ability to see reality and mobilize the appropriate response. So, his leadership skills are not confined by space or time. They are driven by his deep sense of purpose to serve and his unquestionable personal integrity. If he sees something as right he will do it, no matter what. And if he sees something as wrong he will stand up against it. He has the courage – not bravado – to say what he wants to say. I remember, during the 2014 general elections, at a time when there was considerable euphoria over the meteoric rise of the Aam Aadmi Party, he took a principled stand to withdraw from supporting the party’s campaign in Chennai. But he did that by openly writing to Arvind Kejriwal. He didn’t say an extra word and nor did he flirt with other political opportunities. He simply went back to doing what he loves doing – which is living fully, excited about Life, each moment. And there’s a learning here on leadership again – a great leader is one who not only knows what to do and when to do it, but also clearly knows what not to do and why not to do it too!

I believe that within the three qualities of compassion, the willingness to serve and purpose-driven, values-based leadership that Raja has, we, as a people, have an opportunity. There may be the oft-repeated argument that electing one Independent candidate cannot change a well-entrenched and horribly-wrongly-engineered political system. So it may appear to be right to ignore the value that an Independent brings to the table. But engaging with Raja means being part of the change we so desperately seek. It means making that deeply spiritual and personal choice to be the change ourselves. To do what’s right than what appears to be right.