Tag: Life

A Random Walk Down North Mada Street, Mylapore

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The Navratri Season is just round the corner. The appearance of host of roadside shops selling idols (Kolu Dolls) and various other items associated with Navratri serve as precursor and curtain raiser for the festivities to follow. For a first time observer North Mada Street in Mylapore (adjoining the Kapaleeswarar Temple) is a puzzle beyond comprehension. A casual glance at the street during the busy hours of the day will stun anyone with its chaos of several orders of magnitude and an order within all this chaos.

It’s my firm belief that Chennai’s Road Transport Offices should conduct all their driving tests in North and South Mada streets of Mylapore. If they find these street not to their liking then they should try North and South Mada streets of Triplicane. Anybody who passes this driving test in first attempt is an amalgamation of Superman, Spiderman, Batman and all the other Marvel Superheroes. There is so much economic activity happening in and around temples, I sometimes wonder if ancient kings had economic consideration in addition to the religious consideration in the building so many temples and places of worship.

A walk down the North Mada Street during the busy hours before or during the Navratri season, despite all the discomforts is joy worth experiencing. We would be awestruck when we witness these endless shops selling dolls and idols in multiple permutation of size, color and material, to the same extent as walking into a colorful garden in the height of spring. Over the years, in addition to making generic idols the shop keepers have started making idols resembling deities of famous temples.

The highlight of this year is the ‘Srirangam Sorkavasal Idol Set’ which is quoted at Rupees Fifteen Thousand (!!!). By the way, negotiating for price with these street side vendors is an art form that even the best negotiation experts will not be able to teach us.  Yesterday I went to North Mada Street to look at these shops and take a few photos. As it was a Sunday, it was crowded than a usual. A couple of poor policemen who were on duty there were having hard time regulating the traffic. I had leave within an hour but I enjoyed every minute of my walk in that street.

Srirangam Temple Idol Set Srirangam Temple Idol Set - Side View

Tirumala Temple Thiruvannamali Temple

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Inertia

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When I went to bed yesterday night around 11 PM, I had set the alarm for 6.15 AM and 6.30 AM. I wanted to wake up early and go for a Morning Walk at Besant Nagar Beach. I am not a morning person and I am desperately trying to adjust my sleep cycle so that I can wake up early. Most days I feel not so fresh in the morning if I wake up around 6 AM. During week days I get some kind of support from my wife and daughter as my daughter has to go to school at 9 AM. Today being a Saturday (August 22, 2015), they had no urgency to wake up until 8 or 9 AM. When the alarm rang at 6.15 AM I gathered enough strength to walk till the alarm which was placed on the table about 5 feet from our bed. I reached for the alarm and put in on snooze and went back to sleep.

This, the lack of discipline and the urge to pursue something that is in my long-term interest, has been one my biggest struggles through my life. I have started on so many personal projects but lacked the discipline to pursue them day in and day out and hence have discontinued them as soon as the initial enthusiasm wanes. I have played cricket, football and volley ball at various times in school but never had the determination or discipline to pursue them seriously. My dad sent me to Tennis class, which I discontinued within a year. I went to Hindi Coaching class during my higher secondary school and discontinued it (within a month) after the teacher made an embarrassing comparison between me and a kid who was about six years younger than me. I went to math tuition during my 12th standard but did not attend it for the full year.

After 12th, I went to Engineering Coaching but was never serious in attending it despite going there along with a close friend. During my second year in College I went to a Computer Science Institute to learn C and C++ but discontinued it too. I had enrolled in Gym four times at various points in life but after attending for about four to six months regularly, I would drop off. I enrolled for Guitar class in Bangalore but after two months I dropped off yet again. I took Photography as a hobby and invested in an entry level different DSLR camera too; once again the result was the same. It’s as if I have embraced Inertia as my religion.

And today was no different, I was to succumb to inertia. The wake-up call from the alarm at 6.15 AM felt like a nuisance to a man who had made inertia his life-time best buddy. Yet, destiny intervened in the form of a full bladder. So I woke up reluctantly. I did not walk to the bathroom, rather I walked to the Balcony to take a look at the sky. It was very cloudy and peek at the road made it clear that it had rained through the night. ‘It’s going to rain so better get back to sleep,’ I heard a voice in my head. ‘What’s the big deal? Anyway you like going out during rainy days. Remember all those days when you used to come home from school completely drenched in rain and joy. Better get ready and go for your morning walk, you lazy moron,’ a counter voice in my head. So dragged myself to the bathroom, got ready and walked out of my flat to leave for my morning walk.

When I came outside my flat, I could see that the sky on the eastern side (near the seashore) was almost clear. Thank God, I did not get fooled by the passing clouds. After riding my bike through one of the greenest stretches of roads in Chennai for about five to seven minutes, I reached the beach. Contrary to what I had thought the beach was crowded just like any other weekend. The sun was already out but was hidden behind a blanket of clouds.  The beach looked more like a garden with bees buzzing all around. There were groups of people walking or jogging. There were groups of people sitting on the parapet wall/ pavement chatting about… all things under the sun. There were others playing volleyball, football, etc. There multiple bunches of people immersed in their sessions of laughter therapy. At various points along the beach road I could see people haggling with street vendors over the price of flower, vegetables or fruits.

Near the two wheeler parking, a street vendor was trying to entice morning walkers to buy tender coconut from him as he used to do every day. A group of people were selling hot idlies and other breakfast items from their Maruti Omni van. Around the right corner just diagonally opposite of Cozee Restaurant were different bunches of friends and acquaintances who were trading few days of their lives for few puffs of tobacco smoke. And there was crowd in the nearby tea shop too. Nothing comes close to the joy of having a hot cup of tea or coffee on a rainy or cloudy day. Not to forget romantic couples trying their luck at finding secluded spots in a crowded beach in broad day light! There were catamarans in the sea with anxious fisherman risking their lives for their daily earning. I envy all these morning people. I wish waking up early in the morning could be much easier for me.

I went for my daily routine which a couple of rounds of walk around the block of houses overlooking the beach road. The Clouds threatened to rain and play spoilsport but decided to play Good Samaritan and went on sleep mode after sending down a light drizzle. The drizzle did not dampen the spirit of the people in the beach and they were going about their routines as usual. It was as if the Sun had unlocked the Pandora’s Box with his rays but out came Life in all its glory and there was no looking back even if the sun himself was still handcuffed by a rogue clouds in the eastern sky.  As for me, today’s battle with Inertia has been won but I recognize I have to wage a life-long war with this buddy who refuses to leave me even after knowing that I badly want him to leave me alone.

Admire the Achievement not the Achiever

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A few weeks back as I was talking to one of my college friends. He mentioned to me that he had visited our college the day before to attend the inaugural ceremony of an indoor stadium. Former Indian cricket great Sachin Tendulkar was the chief guest for the function. He had gone there with the hope of getting an autograph from and a photograph with Sachin. It seems that the organizers had arranged or rather hoped to have a breakout session with Sachin post the inaugural ceremony and had invited a lot of people including sponsors, executives from the companies that recruit from our college etc. for the inaugural ceremony.

However post inaugurating the stadium, Sachin left without taking part in the breakout session (Not sure whether Sachin was aware of the plan for a breakout session). A lot of people (including my friend) went back unhappy as they could not get to interact with and/or take a photograph with Sachin. I was wondering to myself as to why my friend and so many others like him would take the day off and travel long distances to get a glimpse of a person who has stopped playing cricket for more than two years now. Are they fans of the phenomenal cricketing skills of Sachin or just Sachin? If they admired the way Sachin played cricket, they would have been better off watching the recordings of many a blistering innings that Sachin had played in his long career than traveling to my alma mater.

If people had been inspired by the good qualities of Sachin (like focus, hard work and dedication to attaining mastery in one’s chosen field) and wanted to follow on his footsteps, they would have stayed focused on their work that day instead of going to the inaugural ceremony. I am confused as to whether people had chosen Sachin as role model to seek inspiration for attaining greatness in their own life or just as an entertainer. Why is that most of us decide to remain passive rather using our role models as inspirations in transforming our life?

When former World Chess Champion Grandmaster Viswanathan Anand was challenging reigning World Chess Champion Grandmaster Magnus Carlsen in November 2014, I had badly wanted Anand to win back the world crown. Anand hails from my hometown Chennai and I, like a lot of other Chennai folks was hoping that Anand will be able to avenge his defeat from the previous World Championship held in 2013. But Carlsen defended his title in style. During the course of a chat with a colleague I had mentioned how dejected I was because Anand had lost once again to Carlsen. My colleague mentioned that in the larger scheme of   things, having a new and young world champion (Carlsen is much younger to Anand) would be good for the Chess World and a lot of youngsters would be inspired to take up Chess at a more serious level. Now that I think about the episode, I feel that my colleague is right. The better of the two players won the Championship, so why should I be unhappy about it. If appreciating a good chess player was all that mattered to me shouldn’t I be happy irrespective of who won?

We all have had or continue to have heroes/ role models in our lives. Initially we would start admiring a particular person (e.g. Rafael Nadal) because of one particular skill or characteristic. However with time we would be interested in all sorts of activities of our hero; from the kind of dresses he wears to his last vacation, etc. Most people would go to the level of spending day in and day about getting to know each and every piece of information about their favorite star; they would even take a hell a lot of pride in doing so. They will also start mimicking their favorite star by having the very same bandana or hair style like their favorite star. Worse still they might even start buying the brands endorsed by their favorite star despite realizing the fact that he or she might not be an expert in that product field and might also have a vested interest in endorsing a brand. Yet people assume that they have a divine obligation to follow whatever their favorite star says and does.

People have role models or heroes because understanding or following abstract concepts is difficult. Once we use someone as an example for that concept then we can easily grasp it. Understanding skill, discipline and hard work might be difficult without quoting an example of person who displays all these in a particular field, e.g. Rafael Nadal’s skill, discipline and hard work in the Tennis World. Having a hero or role model is not bad in and of itself. The problem arises when you lose sight of the fact you started admiring Rafael Nadal for his skill (that he displays on the field) and the discipline and hard work (that he puts into his trainings off the field) and instead make him your fashion guru, investment guru and social etiquette guru, etc..

Hero Worship is one of the many maladies affecting modern day. Does following superficial aspects about our favorite sport star or film star really help us in becoming a better people? More importantly does this celebrity culture help the society at large? Blind hero worship has several downsides: celebrity brand extensions (beneficial for the celebrity not for his or her fans), political dynasties (beneficial for the politician and his family and definitely bad for the society), acts of vandalism and violence, people being misled into doing things or buying stuff which might not have done without endorsement from their heroes and last but not the least herd mentality.

Whenever we decide to elevate someone to the pedestal of our personal hero or role model, it is very important to ask these questions to ourselves:

Why qualities that person makes you admire him/ her?

It is always better to remember why we started liking a person in the first place. And we should not try and translate the admiration for a particular characteristic of a person to admiration for that person as a whole. For e.g. we need to question ourselves: “How much ever I like and respect Anthony Robbins, does it make sense for me to accept financial advice from him?”

What do you do with that admiration?   

Most of us express our admiration for our heroes in all sorts of wrong ways or rather in ways that are not beneficial to us individually or to the society as a whole. The manifestation of our admiration can take several forms: from the simple following of our heroes fashion statements to emotional and illogical Milk Abhishekams for our hero’s cut-outs to the very dangerous forms like vandalism and acts of violence (e.g. an obsessive Steffi Graff fan stabbing Monica Seles). I remember a scene from one of my favorite Tamil movies, where the hero’s teacher advises him. The teacher asks the hero not to blindly mimic him but to use the admiration for the teacher’s musical skills as a catalyst to grow and bring to fore the unique skills within the hero.

A couple of years back I was watching the video of Suki Sivam giving a talk on leadership qualities in a school function. During the course of the talk, Mr. Sivam mentioned that he generally dislikes signing autographs. During the Q&A session one of the students asked him why he dislikes signing autographs and shouldn’t he oblige and sign the autographs for his fans/ admirers. Mr. Sivam mentioned that rather than wishing to get autographs from their heroes/ role models, the students should aspire/ aim to become someone who would sign autographs for others. Meaning rather than hunting for others autographs the students should spend their energies in becoming an achiever themselves.

Does our hero still display/ espouse the very same qualities for which we started admiring in the first place?

This question becomes important so that we are actually following a person with the qualities that are desirable to us. It helps to prevent us from making emotional and illogical decisions like continuing to support a tainted celebrity (e.g. Lance Armstrong) or support a political dynasty in a democracy.

  1. We would all do ourselves and this world a great favor if we realize these fact:Rather than having Sachin Tendulkar or Rafael Nadal or Leonardo Di Caprio or Warren Buffet as our hero, we should try to a be a better version of ourselves. The society will gain a lot if each individual is able to become a better version of himself or herself by a mere 10%.
  2. Never let our admiration for role model’s achievements translate into hero worship. While we continue to admire and seek inspiration from their achievements we should never admire them.