Tag: Psychology

Agonizing over a cast – painting our own rainbow

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The first day my son saw me with the cast on my leg, he asked me if he could draw on it. I said he can do it later. I was not sure if I was going to have the cast, so I did not allow him to draw.

But on the evening of the penultimate day on which I was supposed to have the cast removed, I asked my son, “Do you want to draw on my cast?”

“Yes,” he ran out of the room as he was replying. He came back with his sketch pen set, sat near my leg, and started drawing on the cast. The first one he drew was a skull similar to the ones we see in danger symbols.

I looked at him. “Dei, I have a fracture, and you are drawing a skull on the cast.”

In response he looked at me with the most mischievous smile that an eight-year-old could come up with.

He continued to draw—a crescent, a star, a candy, and a two-tiered birthday cake with a candle on top of it. Then he looked at me and said, “I am done.”

“Go and call your sister.”

When she came in, I asked her, “Do you want to draw?”

With a smile she started drawing cute Japanese doodles. In between she asked if I had a wish list. I asked her to bring the book ‘How to Draw Almost Every Day’ from the bookshelf.

I flipped through the book and pointed to doodles one after another. She drew for about an hour. I ended up with 24 doodles on my cast. I even published a blog post with a photo of my cast with the doodles as well as a haiku about it.

When I was listening to my wife convey the doctor’s message about a week ago, it was a hopeless situation. If anyone had told me that day that I would manage to retain the cast for the entire duration of eight days, I would have mocked them. But I did manage to retain the cast for the eight days that the doctor had advised.

This stage is only the first and most important phase in the six-plus weeks required for recovery. There are still so many ifs and buts. But I am hopeful of the best outcome.

So, what are the lessons that I learned from my inner battle?

  • Our long-term mental resolve is much better than what we assume it to be in the immediate aftermath of an adversity.
  • The mind is like a parachute. If we want to make a situation work, we will be able to gather the resolve to make it work.
  • More than the physical ailment, it is the lack of control over one’s own situation that hurts the most. So, always focus on what is under our control and take solace from it.
  • Seek out inspiration from a source appropriate for the situation, even if it is someone much younger than you.
  • Do not let a good crisis go to waste. Use it as an opportunity for self-discovery. You will be in for a surprise.
  • Lean into your bonds. Laugh or smile at whatever sliver of the situation that deserves a laugh or smile.
  • Tap into the collective wisdom of humanity for help.
    • I heard about the story about God Murugan and the Tamil sayings from my grandmother when I was a toddler nearly forty years ago.
    • I heard the “mind is like a parachute” quote from my B-school professor nearly twenty years ago.
    • Nearly ten years ago I came to know about a) the Marshmallow Test conducted on American children by b) an Austrian-born psychologist from c) an Irish professor working in a B-school in Spain, d) from his talk at TED Talks, a forum started by an American and a Britisher via e) YouTube, a technology platform started by an American, a German, and a Taiwanese.

This essay is part 5 of the 5-part personal essay series – Agonizing over a cast

Part 1: https://yogesvr.xyz/2025/10/05/agonizing-over-a-cast-the-crybaby/

Part 2: https://yogesvr.xyz/2025/10/21/agonizing-over-a-cast-the-bad-news/

Part 3: https://yogesvr.xyz/2025/10/22/agonizing-over-a-cast-conjuring-up-scenarios/

Part 4: https://yogesvr.xyz/2025/10/23/agonizing-over-a-cast-the-zen-master-in-the-house/

Agonizing over a cast – the Zen Master in the house

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There is an episode in Hindu mythology in which God Murugan, being a cosmic child, would teach Pranava Mandhiram to his dad, God Shiva—one of the trinity of gods in Hinduism. Because he taught his dad, God Murugan got the title of ‘Thanthaiku Mandhiram Sonnavan’ (translation: The one who taught the sacred hymn to his dad).

With every passing hour of my battle with the itching sensations, I had a profound sense of respect for my son, similar to the reverence that a disciple would have for a Zen master. Maybe kids have an inherent optimism and chirpiness that guard them against such adversaries. That’s something that could not be matched by worn-out souls of forty-somethings. Nonetheless, I decided to use my son’s resolve as an inspiration. If he can manage to have a cast for seven weeks, I can at least try and manage for a week.

Somewhere in between all my ruminations, an insight hit me—I am facing my own version of the Marshmallow Test with a twist. Do I want to endure a lesser pain (cast) in the short term, or do I want to endure more severe pain (two possible surgeries and casts) in the long run?

I first heard about the Marshmallow Test in the TED talk ‘The Discipline of Finishing’ by Conor Neill. ‘The Marshmallow Study,’ or ‘The Marshmallow Test,’ is one of the most famous psychological studies of the second half of the twentieth century. This study was carried out between the late 1960s and early 1970s at Stanford University and was headed by a distinguished professor by the name of Walter Mischel. The key finding of the study is that the ability to delay gratification (self-discipline) in kids, more than intelligence, is a much better predictor of future success.

Once I realized that my situation was a version of the Marshmallow Test, which pain I needed to endure became clear to me. It’s relatively easy to have a moment of realization but very difficult to consistently act based on that insight. The short-term pains, like the real or imagined itching sensation on my left leg, are very concrete. They are effective in drawing our attention towards them. In contrast, long-term pains or gains are very vague, like a daydream. So, I used a combination of insights to come up with my coping mechanism.

In his TED talk, Conor Neil spoke about endurance high-performance athletes. They only worry about the immediate challenge in front of them—sometimes just about one step at a time. I decided not to think about the remaining five days before my next visit to the doctor. I decided not to think about an entire day, not an hour, not even a minute ahead. I decided that I will focus on what I will do when the itching sensation hits.

One of the key insights from the Marshmallow Test is that distraction is an effective strategy when faced with an immediate temptation. Kids who were able to succeed in the Marshmallow Test were able to come up with multiple ways to distract themselves from looking at the short-term temptation or prize in front of them. Whenever the itching sensation hit, I tried to distract my mind. I was mostly successful. We usually consider distraction to be a bane. But, without the ability to get distracted from adversities and bad luck, we would be constantly ruminating about them and pretty soon end up as a nervous wreck.

The human mind is very resilient and tends to cope very well with adversities. After a couple of days, there were only fewer instances of itching sensations and the urge to scratch. I also noticed that mostly the itching sensation subsided after a few seconds even if I didn’t scratch.

In addition, the grip of the cast also loosened in a couple of days. This reduced the episodes of itching sensations further. In fact, the grip loosened so much that I had to see the doctor a couple of days ahead of schedule, as I was worried that the cast was no more effective. The doctor mentioned that it was normal for the cast to become loose with each passing day. He tightened the cast by tying a gauze cloth around it. I felt uncomfortable for the rest of the day but was pretty much unbothered from the next day. I am reminded about a comment by one of my professors during MBA days: “The mind is like a parachute. It works only when it is open.” Once I decided that I wanted to have the cast for the entire duration that the doctor prescribed it, I was able to come up with coping mechanisms against the discomfort of the cast. I did not stand in the way of my well-being.

This essay is part 4 of the 5-part personal essay series – Agonizing over a cast

Part 1: https://yogesvr.xyz/2025/10/05/agonizing-over-a-cast-the-crybaby/

Part 2: https://yogesvr.xyz/2025/10/21/agonizing-over-a-cast-the-bad-news/

Part 3: https://yogesvr.xyz/2025/10/22/agonizing-over-a-cast-conjuring-up-scenarios/

Part 5:  https://yogesvr.xyz/2025/10/24/agonizing-over-a-cast-painting-our-own-rainbow/

Agonizing over a cast – conjuring up scenarios

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There are a couple of Tamil sayings that I’ve got to implement over the next few days:

  • Vallavanukku Pullum Ayudham

Translations: A capable man will turn even a grass into a weapon.

  • Siru Thurumbu Pal Kutha Udhavum

Translation: Even a small splinter can be useful as a toothpick.  

I became a samurai warrior fighting against the itching sensations that my mind started throwing at me. My armory consisted of two plastic scales (one flexible and another non-flexible) and a comb. The comb was part of a gift set given to my daughter by one of my sisters a couple of months ago. When I had a first glimpse of this comb, I thought to myself, ‘What a weird-looking comb. Which idiot has designed it?”

After the usefulness of its pointed tip in getting through my cast and helping me to scratch the itches, I would say he or she is a genius. My soul wants to stand on top of the Eiffel Tower and declare to the world, “The designer of the comb deserves an iF Design Award and a Red Dot Design Award.”  If I came across the designer today, I would even kiss his or her hand with the same reverence that underlings had for Don Corleone in The Godfather.

Once I heard a comment in a documentary, “The best of our dreams and the worst of our nightmares never come true.”

After getting the cast on my feet, there was one scenario that I used to ruminate endlessly. What if a mosquito enters into my cast with the precision of a Japanese Kamikaze pilot conducting his bombing sorties? Once inside the cast, what if the mosquito sips my blood with the sophisticated pleasure of James Bond sipping his martini? And in response I would be agonizing over the unfairness of life like an indentured laborer in one of the 19th-century British colonies. Luckily for me, this phantom of my imagination did not come true.

And whenever I would reach out inside the cast with a scale or comb to scratch, the Shastri and Manjrekar in my house would come uninvited for a pitch report, sans the mikes.

One of them: “You are ruining the structural integrity of the cast.”

My mind voice: “This is a cast. Not the RMS Titanic.”

One of them: “The doctor is going to scold you for messing with his creation.” My mind voice: “He is not my father-in-law, and this cast is not his daughter.”

This essay is part 3 of the 5-part personal essay series – Agonizing over a cast

Part 1: https://yogesvr.xyz/2025/10/05/agonizing-over-a-cast-the-crybaby/

Part 2: https://yogesvr.xyz/2025/10/21/agonizing-over-a-cast-the-bad-news/

Part 4: https://yogesvr.xyz/2025/10/23/agonizing-over-a-cast-the-zen-master-in-the-house/

Part 5:  https://yogesvr.xyz/2025/10/24/agonizing-over-a-cast-painting-our-own-rainbow/

Agonizing over a cast – the bad news

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So how did this start?

Tuesday – 23, September:

Around 8 PM, I was taking the washed and dried clothes lying on the bed to the sofa in the living room. I had placed one bunch of clothes on the sofa and was coming back for the remaining clothes.

I was walking into the bedroom in an absent-minded way that only middle-aged Indian uncles can do when they reluctantly do household chores. I have a tendency to walk fast from time to time. This time I was walking fast in an absent-minded way towards the narrow passage between the steel bero (almirah) and wooden cot in our bedroom. As I was taking the first step into the passage, my left foot hit one of the two large wooden blocks supporting the weight of the cot. The edge of the smallest toe and the one immediately preceding it on my left foot.  

Within a split second, the impact transmitted a shooting pain to my brain. My vocal cords involuntarily made an acoustic projection of a painful scream. I managed to sit down on the bed with tightly clenched fists and my upper and lower rows of teeth in airtight formation.

On hearing me scream, my wife, who was on a call, cut the call and asked me, ‘Are you ok?’ I did not answer her immediately. My mind was quickly scanning through its database of painful memories. Being housed within a body that had endured 45 years of life of falling down, getting hit with cricket balls, more falling, bumping against walls, furniture, etc., it could quickly recognize that this one didn’t have an equivalent entry.

“I think I have fractured my toe,” I blurted out.

Once the pain receded a little bit, I placed both my feet side by side. The smaller toe on the left foot had moved outward compared to the little toe on my right foot.

“Not good… not good,” I said to myself. 

I tried to lift all the toes on my left foot. I was able to lift them despite the pain.

“Ah, good,” with a sigh of relief.

As we started discussing if we needed to see a doctor, the little toe on my left foot started swelling like a thin sheet of damp maida dropped into boiling oil.

“Oh no… oh no… oh no, no, no.”

We decided to go to the Ortho clinic in Mandaveli. It was around 8:30 PM, but the clinic was not far from our house. When we reached the clinic, they were already closing it for the day. The assistant opened the door to the doctor’s room. He was about to leave, but we caught him in the nick of time.

The doctor made me sit on a long wooden bench. He asked me to lift all my toes. Then he pressed the injured too. There was so much pain, I started to shout.

“The toe is fractured. But it’s swollen, and there are so many blood clots around it. It’s not a good idea to put a plaster around the toe or a cast around the leg now. I will prescribe you some tablets. Come back on Thursday evening with an X-ray of the left foot. I will put a plaster around the toe and a cast for the left foot,” the doctor delivered the bad news in an ambivalent manner.

As he was busy prescribing medicine, I tried to indulge in oodles of self-pity.

“Be thankful that the toe did not get dislocated. Otherwise, you would need a surgery right away. This will heal in about six to eight weeks,” the doctor tried to console me with his expert advice. Yes, it was comforting to hear his opinion, but in a very darkly comic way.

After buying the medicines, we got into an auto to go home. On the way we spotted a lab still open. We went in to get the X-ray taken. One look at the X-ray, the technician said, “It’s a hairline fracture. But it should heal in six to eight weeks.” 

I looked at the X-ray. The crack looked deeper and much more visible compared to the one on my son’s X-ray from January.

On reaching home, we decided to cheer up the damp evening with burrito bowls for us. The thought of my fractured toe and the possibility of a cast around my left foot made the Barbeque Paneer Burrito bowl taste like Rava Upma.

This essay is part 2 of the 5-part personal essay series – Agonizing over a cast

Part 1: https://yogesvr.xyz/2025/10/05/agonizing-over-a-cast-the-crybaby/

Part 3: https://yogesvr.xyz/2025/10/22/agonizing-over-a-cast-conjuring-up-scenarios/

Part 4: https://yogesvr.xyz/2025/10/23/agonizing-over-a-cast-the-zen-master-in-the-house/

Part 5:  https://yogesvr.xyz/2025/10/24/agonizing-over-a-cast-painting-our-own-rainbow/

Agonizing over a cast – the crybaby

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Friday – 26, September 2025:

“I don’t think I will be able to have it for eight days. Can you go and ask him if he can remove the cast and just put a plaster around the toe?” I asked my wife while sitting on a metal chair in the waiting area of the ortho clinic.

“It’s not a good idea. You need to have it for the broken bone to heal,” my wife replied.

“I don’t think I will be able to have it. Can you please go and ask him?” I asked in a tone that combined both desperation and frustration.

Reluctantly my wife went into the doctor’s room to check with him.

It started raining heavily as I waited for my wife to come out. I could hardly think about anything apart from the multitude of sensations originating from beneath the wet cast on my left leg.

There were three other groups of people in the waiting area besides me. There was a college student who had come along with his mother. He had a pink-colored bandage wrapped around one of his feet.

There was an elderly woman who struggled very hard to even climb the two steps leading up to the clinic. A younger woman was with her.

There was a third group of several people. It was hard to tell who was the patient in that group. The group were very animated, talking among themselves as well as moving from one part of the waiting area to another.

After a few minutes a middle-aged woman and her adolescent son, who were completely drenched, came into the waiting area and sat in the chairs facing me.

The door to the doctor’s room opened, and my wife came out. She came and sat next to me and started, “He said that the crack is slightly deeper. If you don’t have the cast, the toe won’t heal. And then you might need two surgeries—one to keep the wire for the fracture to heal and one to remove the wire after it has healed. He has prescribed a tablet to reduce the itching sensation. I think you will have to retain the cast for eight days. It is for your good only.” My wife had the look of a Nazi general delivering the terrible news to Adolf Hitler.

A sense of defeat clouded over my mind. The rain was still in full swing. The college student was getting restless. He wanted to go home. His mom pointed out that it was still raining heavily and they could not go on their two-wheeler in that downpour.

In a few minutes, the downpour reduced to a slight drizzle. My wife and his mom went to the nearby pharmacy to buy medicines. He got lost with his phone.

‘What happened?” I asked him.

“I broke my foot while playing football in college,” he replied cooly.

“How long did you have your cast?”

“I had two casts for a total of thirty days,” he responded with a triumphant tone of an adolescent who had just completed his rites to passage into adulthood.

I looked at him but did not follow-up with another question. He continued to look at me briefly and then retreated into his digital world. I went back to languishing in mental agony.

After a few minutes his mom came back with the medicines. He started walking towards the gate. In a few minutes I heard the retreating sound of a scooter.

My wife came back in an auto. She came back and wrapped a carry bag around the cast. We got into the auto to go home.

That night I could not think of anything else other than the discomfort caused by the dampness from the cast seeping onto my skin. I watched stand-up comedy on YouTube for a long time. But none of the jokes were as effective as the dampness from the cast.

Sunday – 28, September 2025:

I asked my wife to check if the ortho clinic is open so that we can go and remove the cast. She called the three numbers printed on the prescription sheet multiple times. No answer.

I then asked her to call her former physiotherapist. She dialled and started, “Hello, Mam…” The conversation continued back and forth for nearly twenty minutes. The conversation sounded more like their catch-up call.

When my wife finally placed her mobile down, I looked at her.

“She said that she won’t come and remove the cast.”

“Did you ask her if I can remove the cast myself?”

“She mentioned that if you don’t plan to go to that doctor again, then you can remove it on your own.”

“So, what should we do now?”

“Why don’t you try and manage until tomorrow? We can go to the clinic tomorrow and get the cast removed.”

As we were talking, my mom walked into our room to inquire about the conversation with the physiotherapist. My wife went on repeat mode. She explained the situation to her.

“A small child had a cast for so many weeks. He can’t even manage for two days,” my mom commented with the disgusted tone of a math teacher reprimanding her student who can’t recall Pythagoras’ theorem.

My mind voice: “Thanks, Mom. That was so helpful.”

She was referring to my son. In January my son fell from his cycle and incurred a hairline fracture in his right elbow. He had a cast for SEVEN LONG WEEKS.

They both looked at me with the same disappointed look of Sanjay Manjrekar and Ravi Shastri reviewing the dismal performance of Indian batsmen in the fourth innings of a WACA test match.

As I did not respond, they decided to entertain themselves with their own mother-in-law versus daughter-in-law verbal volleys.

My mom lobbed first, “I took care of my son without any major injury for so many years. See what has happened under your able reign.”

My wife smashed a backhanded return, “My son had a cast on his hand for seven weeks without any complaints. Your son can’t handle the cast for two days. Your son is such a crybaby.”

They both argued with the same animosity of an elderly couple reluctantly working out a schedule of taking their pet dog for morning walks.

My mind voice: “Enna vachu comedy kemady pannalaye?” (Rough translation: Are you guys using me as a prop for your comedy show?)

This essay is part 1 of the 5-part personal essay series – Agonizing over a cast

Part 2: https://yogesvr.xyz/2025/10/21/agonizing-over-a-cast-the-bad-news/

Part 3: https://yogesvr.xyz/2025/10/22/agonizing-over-a-cast-conjuring-up-scenarios/

Part 4: https://yogesvr.xyz/2025/10/23/agonizing-over-a-cast-the-zen-master-in-the-house/

Part 5:  https://yogesvr.xyz/2025/10/24/agonizing-over-a-cast-painting-our-own-rainbow/

STEPPS TO MAKE ANY IDEA CONTAGIOUS

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Contagious

In the book ‘The Tipping Point’ published in 2000, Malcolm Gladwell popularized the idea of ‘The Law of the Few,’ and stated that, ‘The success of any kind of social epidemic is heavily dependent on the involvement of people with a particular and rare set of social gifts.’ Essentially what this means is that when messages or ideas spread in a society through word of mouth, rapidly like an epidemic, it is due to special influential people. Identifying these influential people and getting them on board to support our idea or cause would mean that our idea or cause would spread through the society like unhindered forest fire. However there has been a lot of criticism for ‘the law of the few’ most notably from Duncan Watts, author of ‘Six Degrees.’

In ‘Contagious,’ Wharton Professor Jonah Berger argues that irrespective of who originates or passes along a message, it can be contagious if it has six key attributes. The author has devoted a chapter each for these six attributes.

  • Social Currency – The basic premise of this chapter is ‘We share things that make us look good’
  • Triggers – This chapter is built on the central idea, ‘Top of the mind, tip of the tongue’
  • Emotion – In this chapter the authors illustrates several cases to drive home the point, ‘When we care, we share’
  • Public – This chapter is built on the central idea, ‘Built to show, built to grow’
  • Practical Value – The key message from this chapter can be boiled down to, ‘News you can use’
  • Stories – The core of this chapter is built around, ‘Information travels under the guise of idle chatter’

In the words of Jonah Berger, ‘Harnessing the power of word of mouth, online or offline, requires understanding why people talk and why some things get talked about and shared more than others. The psychology of sharing. The science of social transmission.’  The author uses a number of psychological studies and real world examples to drive home the point that the inherent attractiveness of any message/ idea can be enhanced so as to make it worth sharing in the minds of its recipients.

Just to ensure that Virality is not an end in itself, but a means to an end, the author has this piece of advice for anyone trying to implement his methodology, ‘When trying to generate word of mouth, many people forget one important detail. They focus so much to make people to talk that they ignore the part that really matters: what people are talking about.’

The most important consideration as per the author is that, ‘ensuring the idea not only goes viral but also to make it valuable to the sponsoring company. Virality is most valuable when the brand or product benefit is integral to the story. When it’s woven so deeply into the narrative that people can’t tell the story without mentioning the brand or the product or the company.’

Even if we are not a marketer, ‘Contagious’ by Jonah Berger is a book worth reading just to understand why we hit the ‘share’ or the ‘retweet’ or the ‘forward’ buttons for some messages while ignoring a vast majority of the messages that we receive.

The Power of Myth by Joseph Campbell

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The Power of Myth

Yesterday I finished reading ‘The Power of Myth’ based on a televised conversation between Comparative Mythologist, Joseph Campbell and TV anchor, Bill Moyers. The book set in the conversational style and makes for an easy read.

The sentence ‘Myths are clues to spiritual potentialities of the human life’ appear in the opening chapter as well as the closing chapter of the book. And that’s one of the key messages that this conveys. The other key theme discussed in this book is the similarity or proximities between myths from different cultures, places and times. The close association, as per Campbell, is due to ‘certain powers in the psyche that are common to all mankind.’ As per Campbell, ‘Every mythology has to do with the wisdom of life as related to a specific culture at a specific time. It integrates the individual into his society and the society into the field of nature.’

Some of the countless nuggets of wisdom from the book:

  • Every religion is true in one way or another. It is true when understood metaphorically. But when it gets stuck to its own metaphors, interpreting them as facts, then you are in trouble.
  • If you think that the metaphor is itself the reference, it would be like going to a restaurant, asking for the menu, seeing beefsteak written there, and starting to eat the menu.

 

  • Compassion is the fundamental religious experience, and, unless that is there, you have nothing. (A very important observation given the current series of religion based hate crimes).
  • You get a totally different civilization and a totally different way of living according to whether your myth presents nature as fallen or whether nature is in itself a manifestation of divinity, and the spirit is the revelation of the divinity that is inherent in nature.
  • Life is pain, but compassion is what gives it the possibility of continuing.
  • It’s characteristic of democracy that majority rule is understood as being effective not only in politics but also in thinking. In thinking, of course, the majority is always wrong.
  • Giving birth is definitely a heroic deed, in that it is giving over of oneself to the life of another.
  • Making money gets more advertisement. So the thing that happens and happens and happens, no matter how heroic it may be, is not news. Motherhood has lost its novelty, you might say.
  • Our life evokes our character. You find out more about yourself as you go on. That’s why it’s good to be able to put yourself in situations that will evoke your higher nature rather than your lower.
  • Mythology is not a lie, mythology is poetry, it is metaphorical.
  • The myth is the public dream and the dream is the private myth (just brilliant).
  • A legendary hero is usually the founder of something – the founder of a new age, the founder of a new religion, the founder of a new city, the founder of a new way of life.
  • In order to found something new, one has to leave the old and go in quest of the seed idea, a germinal idea that will have the potentiality of bringing forth that new thing.

 

  • You must have a room, or a certain hour or so a day, where you don’t know what was in the newspapers that morning……. This is a place where you can simply experience and bring forth what you are and what you might be. This is the place of creative incubation.
  • The earth does not belong to man, man belongs to the earth. All things are connected like the blood that unites us all. Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself. (People carrying out the destruction of the ecology in pursuit of a fat bank account, please take a note.)
  • People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life. I think that what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances within our own innermost reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive.
  • What we’re learning in our schools is not wisdom of life. We’re learning technologies, we’re getting information. There’s a curious reluctance on the part of faculties to indicate the life values of their subjects.

When I was watching the movie Troy, based on Greek epic Iliad, I was struck while watching the scene in which Achilles is killed by an arrow piercing his heel which is similar to a scene from Hindu epic Mahabharata, in which Krishna is killed by an arrow piercing his foot. After reading this book, I now realize that there are countless similarities between mythologies from different parts of the world.

There is one striking conversation in the second chapter in which Moyers reads verses from the creation story in Genesis and Campbell gives equivalent verses from other cultures ranging from the Pima Indians in Arizona, the Hindu Upanishads from India and the Bassari People of West Africa.

There is another conversation in the book about a story from Persia that Satan was condemned to hell because he loved God so much. I remember the The parallel episode to this from Hindu stories where the gate keepers of Vaikuntam, the heavenly abode of God Vishnu, are cursed by a group of saints. On the intervention of God Vishnu they are given an option between staying away from Vishnu for six births if they praise Vishnu in each birth or staying away from Vishnu for three births if they denounce him in each birth. Not able to bear the thought of being away Vishnu for six births, they accept to denounce him and are born as Asoora (Demon-like) kings in their next three births.

Reading ‘The Power of Myth’ is the best way to realize that humanity as whole shares the same roots, shares the same resources, shares the same fears and ultimately shares the same fate on this earth. As they say: ‘God is Love and Love is God.’ Love life and let all life forms live and flourish on this beautiful planet. May the power of sanity be with us and lead us to embrace the God within each one of us.

Animal Farm by George Orwell

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Animal Farm

One of my MBA professors once said, ‘If I have to talk sense, I can make it even in five minutes; I don’t need a whole hour.’ Animal Farm by George Orwell is small book (a novella – 95 pages in Penguin Book that I read) that makes a lot of sense even though seventy years have passed since it was first published. The author wrote this fable/ allegory or fairy tale with Soviet Union under Stalin in mind and yet a vast majority of the situations and observations are applicable even today’s world, even to democracies like India.

Such is the brilliance of Orwell that while reading some of the lines in the book, I was reminded about news items that I have read in the recent past. Take for example this line from the book: ‘Two cows, enjoying a drink at the pool, would exclaim, “Thanks to the leadership of Comrade Napoleon, how excellent this water tastes!”’ On reading this line I was reminded of the umpteen number of times how the success of government schemes are attributed directly to the efforts of only the Chief Minister/ Prime Minister. Another one: ‘Squealer always spoke of it as a “readjustment,” never as a “reduction.” On reading this one I got reminded of how Hillary Clinton claimed on TV during a prime time interview that FBI Investigation against her is just a “Security Review” and “not an investigation.”’ Not to forget the barrage of ‘my statement was taken out of context’ or ‘my tweet was taken out of context’ statement that you get to hear these days.

Another brilliant line from the book, ‘Somehow it seemed as though the farm had grown richer without making the animals themselves richer – except, of course, for the pigs and the dogs.’ This line could just be an apt criticism against today’s Capitalism and Globalization. I was also reminded of the growing income inequality and the recent Bernie Sanders campaign which focused a lot on the income and wealth of the richest one-tenth of one percent of Americans.

A gem of a statement from the book, ‘All animals are equal. But some animals are more equal than others.’ On reading this I was reminded of how a loan defaulter billionaire was allowed to leave this country, how the hit and run case of a Bollywood super star has progressed nowhere in over a decade and how even a retired judge was also in favor of clemency for a Bollywood actor convicted of possessing a gun.

Or this wonderful line: ‘Throughout the whole period of his seeming friendship with Pilkington, Napoleon had been in secret agreement with Frederick.’ This line reminded me of how parties that competed against each other in assembly elections become allies by the time the Lok Sabha elections are around the corner, within just a few months.

In the end Animal Farm is about a few simple truths:

  1. No sooner than the objectives of a movement are achieved, the ideals behind the crusade are forgotten
  2. The leaders of the movement who get elevated to power centers soon forget the people and enforce policies that are beneficial only to themselves, which would aid in extend their reign.
  3. Without proper checks and balance any system would fail in the long run
  4. Blind faith and apathy of the people are as dangerous to the people and the country as nepotism, corruption or tyranny.

Animal Farm is a must read for anyone irrespective of their political ideology. It is a short but brilliant book. Hats Off to George Orwell for writing this timeless Classic.

Book Review: ‘Flow: The classic work on how to achieve happiness by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’

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Flow

If there was one book that was consistently quoted in the books that I read last year, it was ‘Flow: The classic work on how to achieve happiness by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.’ So I had this book on my ‘To Read’ list for quite some time. Even after I have finished reading this book, I still have trouble pronouncing the author’s name. The book is also not a breezy read kind of book and it takes a few pages to get used to the author’s style of writing. Some of the words and phrases that I came across in this book are completely new to me. But the concept that the book deals with has had so much appeal that as per the author it has been translated into 14 different languages.

The basic premise of the book is that happiness is not something that happens to a person. The author argues that Happiness is a condition that must be prepared for, cultivated, and defended by each person. This book summarizes decades of research by the author on the positive aspects of human experience — joy, creativity, and the process of total involvement with life that the author describes as Flow. To put it simply Flow is nothing but the state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; the experience itself is so enjoyable that people will do it even at great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it.

The author lays out the common characteristics of optimal experience, i.e. Flow: a sense that one’s skills are adequate to cope with the challenges at hand, in a goal-directed, rule-hound action system that provides clear clues as to how well one is performing. The author also addresses through individual chapters on how one can achieve Flow in activities that require physical skill, in intellectual and artistic pursuits, in one’s current vocation as well in interpersonal relationships. Towards the end of the book the author also handles how one can integrate discrete Flow activities in life into one unified Flow experience. It would be worth paying extra attention to the last chapter, ‘The making of Meaning.’

Some of my favorite lines from the book are:

‘Contrary to what we tend to assume, the normal state of the mind is chaos.’

‘A person can make himself happy, or miserable, regardless of what is actually happening “outside,” just by changing the contents of consciousness.’

‘Few things are sadder than encountering a person who knows exactly what he should do, yet cannot muster enough energy to do it.’

‘The reality is that the quality of life does not depend directly on what others think of us or on what we own. The bottom line is, rather, how we feel about ourselves and about what happens to us. To improve life one must improve the quality of experience.’

‘Potentiality does not imply actuality, and quantity does not translate into quality.’

‘Purpose, resolution, and harmony unify life and give it meaning by transforming it into a seamless flow experience.’

Overall the book would need extra investment in attention and time but it’s worth the effort. After all the book deals with how any journey can be worth pursuing for its own sake and there is no better place to start following the idea than in reading this very book that espouses the idea. The central idea of the book is so important that following it if not mastering it will greatly enrich our life.

SUCCESS

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SUCCESS is the destination which most people if not all of mankind intends to arrive at. The meaning of success could be different for different people; but in popular culture reaching the top echelons of ones chosen field along with the associated fame and money is considered to be success in professional life. It is also generally agreed that true success is a combination of success in both personal and professional lives. But why do a small proportion of people in any generation succeed while a vast majority of people fail? What is the single most important characteristic that determines future success? And when can we spot the traits for future success in a person? It so happens that one can spot the indicator for future success as early as four years of age!!!

And what is the characteristic that is used to determine if a kid would be successful in future? Is it the kid’s linguistic skill? Is it his or her inborn talent for certain sporting or artistic pursuits? Is it the kid’s ability to develop and retain friends? Or is it the early promise that the kid shows for easily learning math and science? The answer to these questions is an emphatic NO. The characteristic that can be used to determine future success is self-discipline or one’s ability to delay gratification. The study which identified that one’s ability to delay gratification is the single most important predictor of future success is probably one of the most famous psychological studies of the second half of twentieth century.

This study was carried out between the late 1960s and early 1970s at Stanford University and was headed by a distinguished professor by the name of Walter Mischel. The study itself is popularly called as the ‘The Marshmallow Study’ or ‘The Marshmallow Test’ both in the intellectual circles of psychology as well as in popular press and mass media. In essence the test is simple: A group of four year old kids were taken into an observation room one at a time. On a table in front of the kid, the researcher would place one marshmallow/ cookie and a calling bell. The researcher would instruct the kid that he would leave the kid alone in the room for some time (usually about 15 minutes) to attend to some urgent work. The kid can eat the marshmallow any time he wants by ringing the bell. But if the kid can wait till the researcher returns without eating the marshmallow/ cookie, he/she will get two marshmallows/ cookies. The research obviously led to two groups of kids: the ones who could not wait till the researcher returned & ended up eating the marshmallow and the group that was able to delay its gratification and wait for the researcher to return and hence was able to earn two marshmallows/ cookies. The researchers tracked both these groups of kids (as much as possible) over the next several years. They found that the kids from the second group were more successful (health, professional & personal) than the kids in the first group. Professor Mischel feels that the skills we use to delay gratifications are the same ones that we would use to make good choices in life.

I first heard about this study in the TED talk ‘The Discipline of Finishing’ by Conor Neill. The fact that we can determine if a kid will go on to lead a successful life by 4 years of his/her age and the fact that self-discipline and not intelligence is a good predictor of future success are equally mind blowing. Since then I have come across authors writing about this study in newspaper articles and books. In another TED talk by Joachim de Posada, he talks about his experience of replicating the ‘Marshmallow Test’ in his home country and the implications of the results. The video of kids trying to overcome the temptation of eating the Marshmallow is hilarious.

The New Yorker published a detailed article in 2009 that provides vivid details of the study and also includes interviews of some of the participants in the original study. A more recent article by The New Yorker recounts how the psychologist (Walter Mischel) who conducted the most famous study on self-control had trouble quitting his habit of chain-smoking. Walter Mischel is a legend in the field of psychology with a number of honors to his name including the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award from the American Psychological Association. He is currently a Professor with Department of Psychology at Columbia University.

A long overdue book on the ‘Marshmallow Test’ by Professor Mischel himself was published in September 2014. Professor Mischel recently gave a talk at The RSA (Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce). Professor Mischel answered a number of questions from the audience and went on to clarify that the intention of his study was never to preach self-denial.

As I was watching the video I was wondering if what is true for an individual could be true for a society as a whole. What if self-discipline of members of the society at the individual level would translate at the aggregate level into increased success (higher Human Development Index) for the society as a whole? It would be interesting to look at the results of such a study. I wish the ‘Marshmallow Test’ and its implications would become popular among the Indian public. I also wish that the emphasis of Indian parents would be more on teaching life skills (psychology, personal finance, better civic sense, communication skills, better decision making, etc.) to their kids rather than just providing their kids with formal education at good schools. It would also be nice if Indian politicians and bureaucrats in charge of devising the curriculum for Indian schools would also include these skills as a part of the curriculum rather just focusing on Mathematics and Science.