Pupils Make Pals Meet!

Have you ever thought of defining the term EXPERIENCE??

Well, I always thought EXPERIENCE is what happens to you.  Be it learning, outcome of life, challenges, practical scenarios of being, events you encounter etc.

Have you ever thought of CREATING EXPERIENCE!

Yes! I mean CREATE. i.e build, craft, foster, conceive, make it happen.

Please note, let me be clear, I don’t mean EXPERIENCE in the context of business or customers.

There are very few in life who can CREATE EXPERIENCE for NO GAIN. And there are very few blessed ones like me who receive such experiences, live those moments with those episodes befitting a cherishable memory, heralding to another exciting story of my life.

At receiving end – if one feels blessed, at other end the one who bestows it stands at an altitude – probably like angels who work behind you – just to ensure to bring an ARDENT SMILE on your face.

This is a sensational and an incredible experience and story of my life – Part 2 - “Pupils make pals meet”.

Hold your breath – and read through, what does it take to create experience:

It was in 2004 that I wrote my last letter to my pen pal. One of the most unique and remarkable experience of my life. 

(Refer: http://dwellingreflections.blogspot.in/2012/09/pen-pal.html)

Years have passed by, and I treasure his gifted books and letters and read through when I can squeeze time. Few very close friends have heard about him. An unknown face with an enlivening tale. Attempts to search have been staggering and sporadic.

It was on December 2^nd 2017 that few of my students of other program attended a module of Life Skills – on THINKING & COGNITION.

Post the session, at home – they wanted to glance at my home library. Amidst of it, came a large greeting card – another exclusive hand made one’s from my CoreEL team, which got an exclamation of WOW!

Well, I said, this is one of them, and I carry some exceptional reminiscences and showed them a five feet folded white sheet elucidating my personality which was fifteen years old.  They were stunned looking at its details and niceties.  Yet again! I had to narrate the story behind it.

It was that day again, I narrated about my unknown pen pal and my students were super curious to know more about him.  They probed me in all angles, and enquired to extract all known facts, but I had very less information which was valid for more than a decade now. The day’s excitement ended and we moved on respectively to our own dwellings and lanes.

December 11^th 2017 – Post a counselling session at 9:45pm,  I came out of the room to discover four of my students sitting and waiting for me for more than two hours which was little unexpected late in the night.  They handed over a piece of paper and said to solve a puzzle. I went literally speechless, and tried little harder to solve. The puzzle led me to my library of books, where I found another colored piece of paper with another puzzle, which then directed me to kitchen. Yes! They made me play ‘treasure hunt’ 😊. 

To add to the stratum, my search was getting video recorded ‘live’. 😊 

From kitchen came to living room, then to my musical instrument, then on to dining hall, which at last led to outside home to hunt for a POST.  

Coming out of the main door – I saw a big red colored wrapped box with a small black opening like a POST BOX.  There seemed to be surprise implanting hundreds of thoughts in my mind. A gift, a letter, something to play, or some books or a show piece…lot of speculations and assumptions.

I unsealed it carefully to find an enfolded brown mid sized envelope – with a 2017 Diary. I opened the envelope to see a folded A4 size sheet of two pages, two cadbury diary milk chocolates, a pack of sketch pens. 

I opened the sheets -------------------------------------------------------------------------.

I just read first three lines, there surged my tears of joy & ecstasy. I just could not hold myself from hugging my adorable student.  

THEY HAD CREATED AN EXPERIENCE.

THEY HAD REOPENED A SO CALLED SEALED STORY

Yes! The letter which was in my hand was dated 10^th December 2017 written by my pen pal after a span of nearly 13.5 years. His handwriting was as legible, flawless and neat even after so many years.  

How! From where! How did that happen! – Is an invigorating story they had made it happen.   

Call it a risk, an attempt, a venture or a luck – be it any, they had unearthed the presence of my pen pal nearly 350kms away from Bangalore.  Three of my students had ventured out with sheer confidence to give it a try with all the clues they had collated. Travelling through cold night of December from Bangalore, waiting early in the morning before sun rise in an unknown desolated bus stop, exploring to villages like strangers, enquiring with new set of people, travelling back again with some hint of unacquainted address to another district of Karnataka, waiting in a medical care unit for untiring three hours – at last they sat in front of Dr. BS Manjunath – my good old pen pal introducing themselves as my students.

The first paragraph of the letter read – that even to this day such students or more precisely called DISCIPLES exist. And I felt so delighted and jubilant to be calling them as MINE. I proudly say ‘They belong to me’.

Unknown pen pal has no more a mask, unidentified friend is no more in some corner of this earth.

If these three little angels of mine would not have discovered him – Probably I would not have known him at all. I would not have been in a position to recognise even if he was right in front of me.

Blessed souls on earth are few, and I am definitely one among them – to have experienced the showering of affection, warmth and care just for a SMILE on my face in return.

Those little adorable angels are Supriya, Shubhanka and Raghu.

Their current punch line is ‘Impossible is only untried’. 

Five reasons why adolescents need ‘Emotional Intelligence’.

Scenario 1: During a workshop whose audience were high school students we asked to list challenges they would want to get it disappeared from their lives. We received assorted responses. 
Major baskets were -

a) Examination                
b) Competition                
c) Pressure        
d) Confusion of right versus wrong                         
e) Rivalry & Jealousy      
f) Anxiety           
g) No worrying of future and few more. 

Scenario 2: During few individual counselling sessions, I encountered below statements chronically:
‘I prefer to spend time on net, visit social media to destress myself than talking to others at home’
‘I don't want to play with others as I don't think it's a fair play’. 
‘I can’t control myself when I don't get what I want’. 

Scenario 3: Below statements sounds to be funny, but they are true discourses during an interview process -

a) There is no necessity to think and remember, google gives me all answers
b) If I speak little louder, I have read that it’s a sign of confidence
c) I haven’t fought with any, I think I have good leadership skills. 

Well, the main reason to write this snippet were few live experiences listed above. All this were with teenagers, and adults within 25 years, who have just spent less than one third of their lives and when we contemplate little deeper and envisage their future lives assuming these traits gets nurtured because there is none to either over rule it or influence to erase the perceived definitions, and the way they would build their personalities plus belief systems, social circles and relationship management - there is an alarm ringing. Upon that, industry and organizations emphasize on emotional intelligence being one of the primary job skill required by 2020 and in years to come.

Emotional intelligence is still implicit and misconstrued. Very strongly I sometimes feel it is abused. But what we do discern is that emotions play a very critical role in the overall quality of our personal and professional lives, more critical even than our actual measure of brain intelligence and IQ. While tools and technology can help us to learn and master information, nothing can replace our ability to learn, manage, and master our emotions and the emotions of those around us.   

While most parents accentuate on academic intelligence, scores and IQ levels flaunting with Olympiad and NTSE scores, they miss to understand what enables IQ is EQ- the emotional intelligence index which is a catalyst serving to make more accomplished individuals.

We don’t need our children to google search – How to develop thinking process? Or How to build better rapport with people sitting with gadgets inside doors.

While there is natural physical, psychological, cognitive and intellectual development in this critical age, it becomes more important to give them right course of self management embedded with fundamentals of emotional intelligence.

According to the World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report, emotional intelligence will be one of the top 10 job skills in 2020.

The awareness that emotional intelligence is an important job skill, in some cases even surpassing technical ability, has been growing in recent years. In a recent Career Builder Survey of more than 2,800 hiring managers and human resource professionals, 74% stated they valued emotional intelligence in an employee over IQ; 75% said they were more likely to promote a highly emotionally intelligent employee and 49% claimed they’d pass up a candidate with a high IQ but low emotional intelligence.

While organizations and many others in arena are putting such high premium on Emotional Intelligence, here are top five reasons why should it be nurtured right from teenage.

1) Introspection to understand oneself – What makes my personality? What leads to me being with my habits, behavior and perception? – With introspection de-cluttering starts enabling one to answer more critically and logically. The rational approach decreases stress providing even temperament, helping to regulate with mood swings and avoids depression. Mental well being affects attitude inclines more on assertive thinking with positive approach towards life around us.

2) Build rapport with people & relationships – Social Skills is one of the most imporant part of emotional intelligence. When we manage ourselves better, it gets extended to others in understanding their feelings, emotions and we start to be good listeners with which empathy builds leading to better relationships and broader networks.

3) Communication - With broader networks shapes communication and we fathom the fact of non-verbal communication being used majorly does not undermine the importance of word selection, it’s true that our tone and body language -- which are ordained by emotions -- have a colossal bearing on how we understand and speak to one another. An emotionally intelligent person will find it easy to understand the meaning and motivations of others, and at the same time will do a better job of expressing his or her personal thoughts which also leads to effective conflict resolutions.

4) Nurture creativity and critical thinking – Thinking is an expensive avenue. While both creativity and critical thought process resides in human mind, what governs the situation is more consequential. While creativity also needs lucid mindset. And that arrives with wholesome cognitive and intellectual development whose engrained matter is emotional intelligence.

5) Better decision making and leadership skills – Being a leader is not everybody’s cup of tea. Taking bold decisions both calculative and cautious, needs a fair amount of headship which comes as a combination of analysis, self confidence and instrospection on one’s own strength. Better decisions come from better judgements which inturn comes from clarity. Not only decision making, it also helps with disaster recovery if things gets misaligned. As the knack of getting things done increases, influencing others surges anywhere, even at organizations regardless of official title. An ability to rise above daily exasperations earns people with high emotional intelligence the respect from across the spectrum from top to bottom. One is regarded and remembered for virtues and morally being upright.

While these are the results, think of planting it at the inception of one’s paramount developmental age, nurturing it with right magnitude can give amazing results.

That reminds me of saying to my students often that - I carry an ambition to develop an emotionally intelligent generation.

Living in an Apartment - Know your Social Sensitive Index

Apartment living is common everywhere today. And according to 2011 census data, 27%* of Bangalore population lived in apartments which would have easily doubled by this time which deciphers that people are opting for investing in apartments as their preferred homes for various reasons right from affordability, availability, safety, micro families, relocation, easy accessibility, amenities and many more.

But, much more significant is ‘OUR BEHAVIOR’ in a social set up and living in a community. Are we sensitive with others privacy, choices, cooperation and discipline! Are we looked up as good neighbours! What is the perception we build within the community we live in! Perception solely depends on how we have been behaving consistently.

This is important because majority of the apartment complexes are built in a limited area with small space expanses in between which also leads to many snubbed behaviours.

Social sensitive behaviour index is rated on below overlooked common behaviours in a community:

1.Quack-Quack in common area: Most commonly seen. It does look awkward if voices raise and conversations go with no full stop.

2.Noisy neighbours – Exchange of discourses can be recorded from outdoors. Speaking is different from creating noise and it is certainly a nuisance when heard outside your doors. Few music lovers make it so evident that playing music with amplifiers with ear splitting decibels is another oblivious behaviour. Addition to this is noise from children. It is disturbing to your neighbours if they are screaming, dropping things, or rolling toys on floor or any disruptions whose result is noise.

3.Clean inside filthy outside – Many complain of casting the garbage either in common area, or throw things downstairs either to road or out of window if living upstairs. Accompanying this comes a bigger issue of non-segregation of dry and wet waste, the only reason being irresponsibility of residents. Because of few recklessresidents, others too are penalised for such acts.

4.Someone’s job is none’s job – Saving electricity and water is everybody’s job. Irrespective of number of people in each apartment, sharing comes as equal. So, saving becomes a group accountability.

5.Smoking is injurious inside homes too – Another annoying habit of few residents. No doubt it is your own home, but some habits demand you to be more cognizant about things around you and its impact within a closed environment.

6.Savoury vs stink – With all the due respect to people’s various choices, and understanding India is a democratic country, it is equally important to be sensitive about others inconvenience too when non-vegetarian food is cooked inside Indian homes. If the odour is too strong, a simple act of using fresheners or exhaust fan is certainly a caring act.

7.Elevators on hold – Elevators are meant for convenience, not for entertainment. Wait for elevators, don’t make elevators wait for you.

8.Parking discipline – Limited space with mutual optimal usage demands discipline. Parking haphazardly isn't a sign of a licensed expert.

9.Sustain your amenities – Starting from the community hall, gym, swimming pool etc should be considered as collective accountable zones.

10.Live and let live – Easy to advice, challenging to genuinely extend. It is more significant to be collaborative in a community set up as small conflicts too grow as bitter correlations.

A dwelling place is just not a financial investment. You are investing your time, fostering relationships, build memories, grow, develop and much more which is all a part of life. And as aptly said – Human is a social animal, and when we draw a territory for ourselves, it is important we recognize our radius and other’s diameter with circumference & its extension from where we live.

My Mother – An Amazing Architect.

It was calm evening and a silent surrounding

It was indeed a magnificent sight of my life

Mother Nature – being behind the scene,

Who protects us at every step.

Here was a mother teaching her kid

How to walk step by step.

It was my mother who taught me how to walk

It was my mother who taught me the values of life

It was my mother who taught me how to struggle before succeeding

It was my mother who taught me to discover happiness in small aspects of life

It was my mother who taught me to see dreams and to strive for it for becoming true.

It was my mother who endured all that pain… just for me to see alive

It was my mother who cried when I slept ill at my sit out.

It was my mother who strived while I was budding

It was just my mother who made me a beautiful sculpture

Hats off Mom! You are an amazing architect. 

Note: One of the old penned thoughts dedicated to my mother, getting reposted here on my blog. 

It's you.... My Father!

It was a calm night, with pure moonlight 

Cool breeze over water rippling 

Moon was peeping inside my window… 

Which left me to rejoice each moment of it. 

The wheel of my remembrance went twenty springs back…. 

And it was the same moon on my terrace 

Which used to pose me thousands of questions pushing me to deep sleep. 

Morning used to welcome, leaving me under roof. 

It was you… my father 

Who was giving me shelter from all the chillness of the nights 

Who was protecting me from all the odds of life. 

Who was answering all my inquisitive questions. 

It gives me pleasure in remembering   

All the days where I shared  … 

My ambitions, feelings, dreams and secrets. 

Mind feels refreshed just to rejoice 

All your ways of encouraging me 

All your ways of  being patient, prudent and tolerant. 

All  I  mean  to  say  is  “You are  a  great  father”. 

I'am  proud  to be born to you. 

Note: This was a small snippet dedicated to my 'Super Dad'

SMS or a MESS!!!

hi wu r u @ ofis v r w8ing 4u s imtng pcm l8r oic

r v mtg 2nite wud b l8 4 prty

Does that sound Cryptic? Weird? Strange? As the technology is breeding over, mobile services and its application has entered day-to-day bustle. Once a luxury has become an acute inevitability. The positive influence is that it is affordable, best means of

communication and contact, messaging service, encompassing range and its shape & size. All is fine until it knocks our door heavily. But, irony is that we use the technology not because of its adequacy. Instead our dimensions are diminishing and degrading with the way we are bestowing it.

As you can see the above conversation, none of the words are complete except “Hi”, and some of them seem to be senseless. Its a cruel truth that SMS-Short Messaging Service is growing from Short to Shorter and Shorter to Shortest. And what are we conceding in all this is a big question. What triggered me to write all this were two scenarios.

a) My tutor during a conversation said an examination answer sheet comprised of some short forms that are used in SMS.

b) After this, I kept watching all the mails I receive and some of the chat sessions I had with my family and friends. If we could provoke further, the results are alarming.

An examination paper with short terms instead of formal, complete answers and our normal day-to-day conversations are no more in complete forms. ‘SMS’ was the term introduced for the mobile services with restricted display. But, what is actually stopping us in using the complete, sensible, flawless and meaningful sentences and words in mails and chat sessions, where we have ample of space for body text. Is it our laziness or eagerness in conveying a message or just a wavy attitude to ignore it! If we could put aside all our reasons and become a bit result oriented we have far reaching adverse consequences. The key aspect is due to unnecessary usage of short forms by which the essence of language is lost.

It’s not only the grammatical mistakes in sentence formation, but over a period of time the word ‘grammar’ is logically ruled out of our dictionaries. Usage of punctuations, parts of speech, our vocabulary in written and spoken language just flies away in a star lit night.

Literary works such as poetry, essays, novels etc lose their prominence. Classical works written by Shakespeare and Wordsworth seems to generate running stars in our brains. Basically, when these short forms are used by younger generations, the impacts are still worse. Children learning ‘English’ literally get confused by different usage patterns. As they get acquainted to slangs, the word ‘thankq’ makes no difference from ‘Thank you’. ‘gud luk’ is as good as ‘Good Luck’. The word ‘luv’ is as sweet as ‘Love’. ‘ez’ is easier than ‘easy’. They land up in a state of confusion when they don’t find meanings or synonyms for ‘wanna’ or ‘gonna’ in a dictionary. So, the one which takes a back seat here is just not only the written language but also the original traditional reading habits, and failing to understand the literary works. The days are not far where we need to have an oxford dictionary beside us to read an English newspaper.

To the one who is still confused with our conversation at start, let us put them to comfort. “Hi, What’s up? Are you at Office? We are waiting for you.”

“Yes, I am in a meeting, please call me later.”

“Oh! I see, are we meeting tonight?”

“Yes, I would be late for the party.”

Think about it, what are we compromising with and does it worth the value of what we are loosing on the other hand.

Disclaimer: This article was penned during 2004 during my US stay and is a very old one which was published 13 years ago on few external sites. Now just publishing the same on my blog.