Witness your thoughts. Say what?

Mukund and I spent 5 blissful days at the Sivananda Ashram at Neyyar Dam during our Christmas vacation. The days passed in a blur of back-bending (literally!) yoga classes and mind-blowing (again, literally!) meditation and Bhagavad Gita classes. Every day, we spent 4 hours in yoga classes, 3 hours in meditation and singing bhajans, 1 hour at the Gita class, and 1 hour doing karma yoga – helping to clean the ashram. We even attended a workshop on Bharatnatyam and tried out a few steps!

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Never thought sports would teach my daughters these FIVE life lessons. Seriously!

I love Table Tennis

Both my daughters, Anaga (16) and Ananya (12), are avid table tennis players. They love the game, take it as seriously as possible and try to never miss a practice session or a tournament. Well, at least most of the time :-). Of course, I would not classify them as top notch players, but they do their best and that is the most I can ask of them.

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An affair too pedestrian to remember

Yesterday, I had the chance to walk down from Kadavanthara junction to my house in Vyttila. The reason why I had to walk is too complicated to enumerate here – just let it be understood it was not of my own wish, and I did not have a choice. So, I walked roughly 2 kilometers through one of the busiest roads in Kochi, and at peak time too – around 6 PM.

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The rape of our Gods in our temples

As the  word “rape” becomes de facto in our daily news and life, I would like to draw your attention  to a real problem that lakhs of devotees face everyday when visiting temples – the rape and abuse of our Gods.

Bear with me for a few minutes as I explain what I mean. This is based totally on my personal experience, and that of a few close friends who shared their experiences once I related mine. My intention is not to hurt any religious sentiments, but as true devotees we need to be fearless in voicing our anger when the system is wrong.

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The Freedom to Write. Responsibly.

Responsibility is the price of freedom” – Elbert Hubbard

People demand freedom of speech as compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use” – Soren Kierkgaard

Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes” – Mahatma Gandhi

As I celebrate India’s 67th Independence Day, I am amazed at the freedom kids and adults have, to speak what is on their minds. And text, tweet and email it. Even before a thought appears on their tongue, it seems to have appeared in their social media accounts.

So when engagements get broken and friendships take a back seat due to free speech, what is our responsibility as a free society that gets to gab all we want, online and offline? Can we say the first thing that comes to our mind? Or should we think through, calculate the pros and cons and then message it out? Sure, some thoughts don’t need any filter (“Good morning! How are you?”), but what about the ones that hurt, assume, implicate, exploit or anger?

Hmm, tough one, isn’t it? How do we know what will cause negative emotions, and what will not? How do I know if a simple message like “these politicians are morons” will not cause a state-wide bandh and an arrest? How do I know if what I sincerely feel does not set off a ticking bomb? Does this mean I do not voice my angst and my anguish? Does this mean I keep quiet when injustice happens? How else can I share and support the good things happening around me?

Questions are endless. So probably are the answers. The only person who can answer this honestly is you. The freedom to write brings with it the bondage of responsibility. We are accountable for what we write, and every word we write has to be weighed against facts and common sense.

Write every word as if it reflects your integrity. Therein is the true freedom of expression. And probably why great men’s words continue to be spoken time and again.

Wishing you all a year filled with love, freedom and mistakes! And the floor is now open for responsible discussions!!!

 

 

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The “Call It As I See It” content marketing update Google must adopt. Now.

Alternate title for SEO:  “Rants from a content marketer about content marketing”

Cartoon from andertoons.com

It was bound to happen. Content marketers (the good ones, that is) spent time and money creating quality content while content farms went laughing all the way to the bank. Then came Google (hero/villain depending on which side of the SEO fence you are in) and turned these content farms out of the playpen. All is well with content marketing.

But Google’s work is not done. Panda, Penguin and other wild animal updates have not touched the real issue in content marketing today. To cut a long rant short, is it just me, or are content marketers looking to make things as complex as possible? Have we ended up creating a hyper- demand for content, and thus become the victim of our own scam? Are we creating content for the sake of creating it?

So here is my update to content marketing that I insist everyone (including Google) need to adopt. Immediately. Presenting the “Call it as I see it” update. Drum rolls please…..

  • Content will no longer be classified as tweet, FB update, LI status, blog, case study etc. All content will be classified based on the purpose – to hoodwink, to sell, or to bore you to death.
  • If content is not original – that is, not rewritten from at least 3-5 different “expert” sources – please call it rehashed.
  • If content is really original and relevant, and cannot be copied, lifted, rehashed, or plagiarized, don’t bother. We marketers see no use for it. Go write a book. And win the Booker.
  • Move over Google. Bing and Yahoo too. We are tired of you dictating what we see. I want a new search engine that brings me only 1 result – exact answer to what I asked. If I ask “When is the next full moon day in January 2013”, why in heaven’s name do I need to see 350,86,456 results in .00002 seconds? Just give me the frigging date for God’s sake.
  • And no, when I ask this question, I DO NOT want to see ads to “Orgy at Newcastle on Full Moon day”. Nor do I want to see “How to create a new full moon?”, “Tired of the current full moon and want a change?” and a list of news, information, images, and events related to full moon. I know I am stretching here, but you get the point, don’t you?

What say, mate?

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The trials and tribulations of working from home

Work from home? Easier said than done. No matter how many smartphones, ipads, laptops, and wifi you arm yourself with, nothing can make working from home easy. That’s because we forget a small factor called “Life”.

Think I am exaggerating? Hmmm, methinks an illustration is in order.

9:30 AM: The Palak lady – Spend 10 minutes searching for 18 Rs – she needs exact change, and since neither my cook nor the maid has any, they invite me into this. At this point, since my laptop is starting up, I don’t mind the invite.

10:15 AM: Caretaker – to give receipt for the check I had written that morning. Ordinarily he does not ask for me, but the receipt is incorrectly worded, and he wanted to check if that is okay. I say, fine. And then spend 5 minutes chatting on the issue of finding good gardeners and security guards and iron men. (of the ironing kind, not the WWE)

10:20 AM: Call from courier service asking for the exact location of my house. Spent 7 minutes describing the location from every possible direction, since he was not sure where he was going to come from. Sigh!

11 AM: Call from my daughter’s school: Report card is posted online, please check before coming for Parent Teacher meeting on Friday. Additional appeal for donations for the local musical that the students are planning in January. I try, very ineffectively, to prevent my cash outflow, but end up promising to to do “something”.

11:AM to 11:15 AM: Rushed online to look at my daughter’s report card. Could not log in initially, and once I did log in, the report card was not updated. Sent an email reporting the problem.

12:30 PM: The caretaker again: He had corrected the receipt (even though I had assured him that the earlier one was fine) and wanted the other one back. I had already balled it up and thrown it in the trash can, so had to retrieve it, dust it, smoothen it and give it back.

1:30 PM: I call my cook, tell her to tell anyone else who calls or rings the bell that “I am not there”

2:30 PM: My daughters rush in, one excited as I was working from home, the other equally disappointed since she cannot watch “Grey’s Anatomy” on Star World. After explaining in minute detail of their escapades at school, they rush off for their lunch and bath. Time to really get my work done.

3:30 PM: The cook rings my room bell from downstairs, and when I come out of my room, she asks loudly – “Madam are you there or not? The courier man is here.”

I switch off my laptop, sign the courier receipt, join my kids for lunch, and launch into their homework, table tennis, yoga, and music lessons the rest of the day.

Please do keep in mind that the above schedule is in addition to the multiple bathroom breaks (I am a firm believer of the “2 liters of water a day” school), snack and chai breaks, and stretching my legs in front of the TV. Also do keep in mind that not all days are like these. There are worse.

Still think I should work from home? Hold on, there’s the door bell. I’ll be right back. But don’t hold your breath.

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Lessons from my flower seller’s daughter-in-law

When the bell rang at 6:15 am on Monday morning, I sighed. It was my flower seller again. At least her daughter-in-law. She has been ringing the bell at that ungodly hour for the last 3 days with one excuse or the other – which flower do you want, when am I going to get paid, you forgot to keep the puja plate for the flowers. I desperately wished for her mother-in-law to come back from her vacation soon. She never bothered me about such details, and accepted money whenever I paid, without even checking the account book I maintain.

As I held my temper and opened the door, she stood in front of me with the usual jasmine flowers. She dimpled and asked, “Do you want a couple of lotuses also for your Krishna?”

The surest way to my heart is to talk about Krishna, and here she was offering lotuses. Ignoring the possibility of my kids missing the bus and going without their hot lunch boxes, I smiled and extended my hands greedily.

I showed her my new Krishna idol I had purchased just the week ago from Guruvayur, and then asked her if she sells in that temple town. (Her husband buys flowers in bulk from Coimbatore and sells to nearly most of the well-known temples in and around Kochi). She said she would love to, but she does not have the time.

I asked her how she could not have time when she finishes her door-to-door selling by 9 AM. Her schedule for the rest of the day shocked me into sitting down on the doorstep. She wakes up at 4 AM, starts her door-to-door selling from 5 am, wraps it up by 9, then boards the inter-city train to Coimbatore at 10 AM. Reaches there by 2 PM or so, then starts buying up flowers, loads them into an auto, and reaches the station by 6 PM or so.  Boards a return train to Kochi to let herself into her home close to midnight.

Why do you work so hard, I asked. What about your children? Don’t they help out? Her first daughter is doing her final year (Bachelor of Science) and wants to go on and do her B. Ed. and get a lecturer job in a good college. Her second daughter is doing her second year Engineering, and her youngest (a son) is doing a Diploma in Engineering. “I do not want them to work the way we do. I am doing all this for them.”

By now my second daughter was reminding me about lunch boxes and I hastily thanked her for the flowers. She smiled back and went her way.

I have not stopped thinking about my flower-seller’s daughter-in-law since then. Sincerity, hard work, love for her children – these were the easier lessons she could teach me. But her attitude (no expectations of anything in return from them) and her sense of duty and responsibility?

It put to shame my daily grumblings. It exposed my ignorance of a “real day’s work” in the real world. It touched me in a way no status update, tweet, or email from my friends or family could.  It taught me that life’s real lessons will hit me when I least expect it. I wonder how many of these real lessons have passed me by as I huff and puff my way through a day’s work in my world-class office inside an IT park in urban India?

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