God & I

 Unedited text of the column in the New Indian Express on Jan 2, 2013

1. What is your understanding of God?

The mythological Prahalathan believed God is Omnipresent whether it was a pillar or a fiber, my beliefs are not very different. Hence, I don't believe in Idol worship, if God were indeed so powerful enough to create this universe, god ought to be everywhere.

PS: It's very hard for a true student of science... biological evolution to not believe in that.

2. What are your spiritual beliefs?

I personally do not have any spiritual beliefs. I don't believe that we should not do wrong or do good things to others only because I will get something in 'the end'. I live my life the way I do because it's the right way to do it.

That said, Spiritual beliefs are good for the world, while some fear the law, some fear god to do the right things and they balance out those who fear neither to do the not so right things.

3. What are your spiritual practices?

I visit the temple once a year on my birthday because my Mother expects me to. When I pray I pray for everyone and I don't feel the need to stand in front of an idol.

4. What is your take on miracles?

If you want something strongly enough you are bound to get it or make it happen because there's nothing stronger than human will. If humans haven't made it happen, the 'miracles' can probably be explained by chance.

5. Have you been to any pilgrimage sites? Are you planning to? What are your experiences with them?

During school holidays, I've visited every major temple in Tamil Nadu because the other members of my family, especially my Mother, are extremely religious.

I don't have any intention of visiting any pilgrim sites unless someone I care about makes a reasonable request.

I used to visit old temples around Madurai during college because I found the experience very peaceful and calming.

On the contrary, I avoid going to crowded temples like Tirupathi... Apart from the claustrophobia because of the crowd, I was also afraid of the hairpin bends the last time I visited Tirupathi as a 10-12-year-old 🙂

Happy New Year 2021 - A new hope for a decade of transformation and renewal

Travelling makes the world seem smaller. The #Covid19 pandemic in spite of restricting travel globally and locally has reminded us about humanity in spite of restricting travel.

There are certain islands that may have surmounted #Covid; there will be countries that vaccinate their entire populations even before poorer countries get a single shot. Through second waves & third waves amidst a false sense of security; throughout most of 2021, the virus will continue to remind us that we live in this shared home, planet earth.

Hope the start of a new decade followed by the #PandemicPause will cause self-reflection propelling action among the leaders, elite, and citizens of the world. Like the seemingly invisible virus, we face other seeming invisible challenges like growing inequalities and #ClimateChange. None of us are safe until all of us are

Here's to a #DecadeOfHope, #DecadeofTransformation, #DecadeOfRenewal. I wish you all a #HappyNewYear2021

Before Bhumi - Plan D

2006 was a challenging year for me personally. I had always planned to leave for the UK for my PG. I had given my IELTS and was preparing for PLAB. As if the situation there wasn't challenging already, the changed rules threw my plans into disarray. Plan B was going to Australia, my family wanted me to go to the US, though the USMLE was a relatively tougher exam and hence it was Plan C. My friends from college, Ashiq Ahmed with whom I was preparing for the UK started preparing for Canada, and Mehul Patel was preparing for the USMLE. I spent some months evaluating the options and there was never a Plan D.

At some point I felt two things, one I would always be an outsider in any of these countries, and that any changed rules like in the UK could affect my prospects of higher education. Secondly, I started feeling good about how the group was shaping and started thinking if I should consider staying back in India. I was going through immense personal turmoil during that period and when I think back now, I'm not sure if I was in the right frame of mind when I decided on these things. It's probable, I just gave up without trying too hard …

We continued to meet regularly at either the Gandhi Mandapam park or on the lawn at the entrance of IIT Madras. One day, we were traveling on a bike to one of those meetings I remember Surendran telling me he was leaving Chennai and me asking him if I could start leading the group in Chennai and that's how I got started. And it was only my Plan D …

Have you faced an unexpected situation in life when you had to choose a Plan B which later turned out alright? Leave a comment

Before Bhumi - How I met my co-founder

Social media is a lot of different things to different people, but that's how I met my co-founder :)

Read on…

For quite some time early in 2006 or late 2005 I started seeing posts on Orkut about a social group. Orkut had this feature where users could posts scraps (like a Facebook post) on other people's wall and I kept seeing these posts often. The posts were from members of a group called Bharat uday Mission (BM) & requested people to join the movement with messages like 'rise of a great nation', 'second freedom struggle' etc. I was intrigued and joined the Orkut group. The group in Chennai seemed to be meeting every month and I missed one or two before walking into one sometime around March 2006.

It was a Sunday afternoon, the meeting was at the stadium inside IIT Madras, I remember parking my scooter and walking inside. Someone parked the bike at the same time and we walked in together greeting each other. That was the first time I met Harisankar Namasivayam it was his first meeting too. Hari was still doing in his final year of Engineering.

We learnt about BM how it had been started by an IITian and had several chapters across India and the world. The group had a lot of young people, dissatisfied with the current system and wanting to make a change. This is when I first met  Surendran Balachandran who seemed to be coordinating the Chennai chapter. 

Orkut doesn't exist anymore, what did you consider important 15 years ago that doesn't exist anymore? Leave a comment

Systems vs Goals - How I intend to author my first book

At the age of 22 (2004) on the verge of passing out of Madurai Medical College, I wrote down some goals including wanting to write a book. For quite some, I've felt it had to be about how I we started Bhumi.

For almost two years Vaishnavi Srinivasan has been nudging me to start writing regularly and on Linked In. I've not gotten anywhere among my 'priorities', which is really procrastination, because, I really want to do this.

I have been listening to books on Audible since Jan 2019 and it simply changed the way I consume books and has blown away my annual reading goals. Currently, I'm listening to this book #ToolsofTitans: The Tactics, Routines and Habits of Billionaires, Icons and World-Class Performers Paperback by Tim Ferriss (Amazon.in). The book consists of nuggets from his podcast and one of the chapters is with Scott Adams, the creator of #Dilbert where I learnt systems were better than Goals.

So, here's the system and my public commitment to start writing once every Thursday, and then we'll see how it goes :)

Each post is going to be on LinkedIn as a post, (so there's a 1,300 character limit) and on my blog here

Run for Bhumi at the Bhumi India Run

10x in a 100 days - Be Limitless

Until 2018, my limit to run continuously was ~400m, I would end up panting so much that I started walking faster instead.

On December 31, 2018 I joined a gym and started strengthening and regularly hitting the treadmill.

On April 7, 2019 at the NTT Data #BhumiIndiaRun, Chennai I ran my first 5KM continuously.

There are no limits to what we can achieve beyond the limits in our mind. The strongest thing in the world is human will, once you realise it you can be #Limitless

My next goal is to run 10KM continuously at the next #ChennaiMarathon #SPCM20

Manohar Parrikar on Water Melons and Education

Narrated by Manohar Parrikar.
“I am from the village of Parra in Goa, hence we are called Parrikars. My village is famous for its watermelons. When I was a child, the farmers would organise a watermelon-eating contest at the end of the harvest season in May. All the kids would be invited to eat as many watermelons as they wanted.

Years later, I went to IIT Mumbai to study engineering. I went back to my village after 6.5 years. I went to the market looking for watermelons. They were all gone. The ones that were there were so small.

I went to see the farmer who hosted the watermelon-eating contest. His son had taken over. He would host the contest but there was a difference. When the older farmer gave us watermelons to eat he would ask us to spit out the seeds into a bowl. We were told not to bite into the seeds. He was collecting the seeds for his next crop. We were unpaid child laborers, actually. He kept his best watermelons for the contest and he got the best seeds which would yield even bigger watermelons the next year. His son, when he took over, realized that the larger watermelons would fetch more money in the market so he sold the larger ones and kept the smaller ones for the contest. The next year, the watermelons were smaller, the year later even small. In watermelons the generation is one year.
In seven years, Parra’s best watermelons were finished. In humans, generations change after 25 years. It will take us 200 years to figure what we were doing wrong while educating our children. Unless we employ our best to train the next generation, this is what can happen to us. We must attract the best into teaching profession."
#RIPManoharParrikar