DEATH - THE ONLY TRUTH

Why do I live ? Whats the ultimate goal of my life ? Everyone asks themselves this question at some point of time. I too wanna seek the answer to these profound queries. And in this pursuit I have been rattling my brain cells for days now. The answer seems obvious but i could not get there. Where will I be at the end of this life ? Life : what does it mean ? Any living being has a life. Living : what is that ? A common man's biology text book says any thing that breathes is said to be living. Well, breathing alone does not sustain one's life. You eat. Eating and breathing, gas for the nose and food for the mouth, the two essentials. Hmmm...does it stop there. Oh poor boy...not at all...thats just an animal life. We are humans. The self-proclaimed studs who are battling hard to make this world a better place to live in.

Studs, who claim to possess the sixth sense (God only knows what that is), armed with this new found sense are turning tables to create a WHOLE NEW WORLD. Finding solutions to all problems that exist. Hmmm...fools..little do they realise that they themselves are the genesis of all problems. The race that possesses the sixth sense are not able to figure that the best solution to any problem is the NEMESIS OF THE GENESIS. Pity the poor souls, fighting day in and day out solving problems only to find the birth of a new one the next morning.

REDUNDANCE, would be the apt word for our life. I, you and everyone with so called sixth sense were born only to create problems. Just a tool to wipe out the system and bring it back to ZERO for it to sprout again. I you and every other dickhead is nothing but a pair of pruning SCISSORS. We are born to kill ourselves. The only aim of LIFE is to annihilate. ANNIHILATION...total annihilation. Little do we realise that we were born to die. We go through the agony of 70 odd yrs to die. DEATH...seems far from BIRTH...it only seems.

DEATH- the most gruesome for us. Seeing a bus running over a someones head...with the skull opening up like a dropped egg and not just opening but slithering into tiny pieces like shattered glass...the skin tearing apart into shreds, the countenance lost- the countenance that boasted of looking so handsome and beautiful and smart and what not...with all the blood erupting out like a volcano just out of its dormancy...and the cells that provide the so- called sixth sense released out into nothingness, fresh out of a big bang...

The meaning that was attached to life is lost...jus a fraction of time...the life disappears into...hmmm who knows where..but all that is left is dirt...for all the scavengers to feed on...vultures to peck at the bulged out eyes...few billion insects to pick out their part of flesh...dogs feed over the bones...A life so much preserved and cherished is lost in a jiffy....the ultimate end is death...little do we think of this..gruesome it is...insane...makes one paranoid....but the truth...THE TRUTH....

BORN to DIE is the TRUTH....the only purpose of ones life....the only meaning in ones life....DEATH....

Here to Die

A CONJUGAL BLISS

Are managers born or made was a critical question of yesterday….but today it’s about leaders. Are they born or made? Leadership is a conglomeration of various qualities like communication, analytical, decision-making, convincing and motivational abilities, clairvoyance, charisma, shrewdness, spontaneity and above all rigid-dynamism. Now what is this rigid dynamism? Seems to be an oxymoron. By rigid dynamism I mean to say that the leader should be very stubborn in his change and should be able to converse and convince others with his underlying reasons and make them emulate him. These qualities cannot be built up by mere practice but are dependent on the inherent personality of the individual. So a leader…”rather” in polished terms leadership qualities are born with the person.

So can we say that there is nil contribution on part of the society in building a leader. Does this mean that all our leaders were born as leaders? Then what role does the society play in nurturing an individual to become a leader?

Well, the answer would be: The society does play a major part in building a leader. But how?

There are 2 aspects to a leader. One is How he is going to render his services being a leader. This is dependent on the qualities imbibed in him…the leadership qualities to be precise. These are the ones born with him. These are the ones that help him render the service he wants to. These are the ones that compliment him in his desire to do whatever he wants to do as a leader. These are the ones that help him sustain the leadership at the fundamental level. These qualities are the ones that show him as a leader.

The other aspect is the What of a leader? The leaders’ thoughts, his ideologies, his attitude, his values, his conduct, his vision, his perspective and the purpose constitute the What of a leader. In a nutshell, it is nothing but What the individual would be pursuing towards as a leader.

All these depends upon a plethora of variegated factors that include the kind of education imparted on him, the coterie in which he lives, the way in which he was brought up, the people who have accompanied him in his journey thro’ life, the situations and circumstances that he has faced, the people who have inspired and affected him and in general the role played by the society in shaping him as an individual.

Here, I would like to stress upon the difference between the How and What of a leader. ‘How’ is the basic underlying abilities that help him perform the functions as a leader but ‘What’ is the character exhibited by him as a leader. Though the ‘How’ might overlap …its very rare…that the ‘What’ of two persons overlap. This ‘What’ constitutes the individuality of the leader.

Here, I would like to quote Mary Parker Follett, the great administrative and management thinker of the early twentieth century

“The individual is created by the social process and is daily nourished by that process. There is no such thing as a self-made man. What we possess as individuals is what is stored up from society, is the subsoil of social life.... Individuality is the capacity for union. The measure of individuality is the depth and breadth of true relation. I am an individual not as far as I am apart from, but as far as I am a part of other men. Evil is non-relation.”

The essence of the quote is that individuality is not possessed but is a result of man’s interaction with the society.

One such interaction is the education that man gets through academic institutions. This form of interaction plays a major role in shaping up the man’s character, furthermore the ‘What’ of a man…and to be more relevant to today’s speech the ‘What’ of a leader….

Education and leadership are complimentary to each other. One helps in building the other and vice versa. Education plays a major role in grooming leaders to the extent that it provides the knowledge to the individual and more precisely helps him know something about everything and if possible…everything about everything. It introduces an individual to various fields existing and thereby helps identify himself, his interests, talents and in general it helps an individual to recognize his own identity. This is the most important function of education. It is highly impossible to perform without identifying oneself. As said by Guruji in a recent article for the New Indian express “Even a constable will perform to his best only when he realizes the full power of the position he holds and identifies him with it”.

Kalviya, selvama, veerama – synonymous with Goddess Saraswathi, Lakshmi and Parvathi. Different ages have been dominated by one of these. During ancient times, a brave man was considered supreme and was identified as a leader. Then it was the age of the wealth where the rich became leaders. Today is the age of knowledge . A highly knowledged person can acquire the other two .Today, this knowledge is provided by formal education in institutions in a highly competitive scenario. In this age, this knowledge builds the mental set up of a future leader and thereby decides what he will be doing as a leader. So today’s education and the way it is being taught is supremely important because it has enormous influence on tomorrows activities of a leader. Be it negative or positive, this influence is gargantuan. This implies why education is so important in grooming the leaders for the new millennium.

Education should be provided in every nook and corner of the country. There should not be an elimination process to choose the candidates but a process to select all competitive candidates and provide them with quality education.

Education should be provided in a more realistic form….making the students realize that what they are learning is not something over their head…but that they are learning only about their life. It should be packaged in such a way that each subject by itself tells the students their own significance in real life.
No sort of prejudiced opinions should exist in textbooks….especially in the school level….the books should represent the views of the masses and not the masters or the authors of the books.

No nation can be built on spineless people. The students should be made to realize that education is not a preparation for just a career but it is actually a complete preparation for life…a preparation to face life. And indeed this is the major drawback of today’s education system. It portrays a view that it is to build oneself for a career and earn a living. Let’s all realize that career is just a part of life and not life itself.

Students should be introduced to all the subjects cutting across all barriers in the school level itself…that would include history and geography from the perspective of life, psychology, philosophy, theology, economics, law etc….and these should be imparted irrespective of the stream that they choose in their higher secondary education.

The structure of the subjects should be filled with real life case studies to substantiate their significance in real life. This case study approach will help a great deal in having a good understanding of the subject.

After all one basic quality that a good leader requires is pragmatism and these approaches in the education will definitely make one a more pragmatic person.

Now, who is to bring about the change in the educational system to build tomorrow’s administrators and workers. It’s today’s leaders who will decide the fate of tomorrow’s leaders. It’s today’s leaders who have the power to structure today in order to have a better tomorrow. So one generation of leadership is build upon the other.

Leaders with their prior education frames today’s society and thereby builds tomorrow’s leaders. It is a vicious circle. The boon and bane of this circle at various stages depends on the relationship between leadership qualities and education.

A marriage of the two is sure to bring out a society of supreme quality. A conjugal bliss.

Thank you….

SALT SATYAGRAHA REDEFINED....

Salt, one of the most essential and a very basic ingredient of food. There probably are very few food items that doesn’t use salt. Not only does it add taste but is essential for all life forms on earth as it is a major source of various minerals. It is available in plenty on the earth and it holds a very special place in India’s struggle for independence.

The Salt Satyagraha can be termed as a landmark in our struggle for independence as it turned the face of our struggle. This started when the British imposed rules that salt cannot be produced in India and all Indians have to consume the salt brought down by the British. It hurt the sentiments as well as the life of thousands of Indians. This was yesterday.

Today, the same salt, the most basic ingredient, available all across the near 3000 Km coastline in India costs Rs.6 per Kg. And more surprising is the fact that there have not been any sort of tangible discussions raised on this.

About 10 to 15 years back the Govt. of India made it mandatory for all salt manufacturers to iodize the salts and that only iodized salts should be sold in the market. This was done to prevent the deficiency of iodine which was prevailing in the interior landmasses and that salt is the only source thro’ which iodine can be given to the body.

But the fact is that the salt produced from the coastal regions need not be iodized at all as they have the required amount of iodine already present in it (people along coastal regions hardly suffer from diseases like goitre), and that it is only the salts produced from the rocks in the interior landmasses like some states in North India that needs to be iodized (goitre is present only in places away from the sea). But producing salt from these rocks is nothing but intruding into the ecology because these rock salts are the only source of salt for the animals.

Now, the MNC’s enter this scenario. They invest in salt production and iodization. Competition is inevitable where MNC’s are present. So, they need to market their products in the economy. The result: One finds advertisements for a basic food item “salt” in the prime time television hours. Imagine the amount of money going into these advertisements. On whom is the expenditure dumped on? On us. As I said before we are paying Rs.6 per Kg of salt where iodized salt can be obtained for a meager Rs.3.

What are the USP’s of these salts that makes us pay such an amount without any hesitation?

These salts are free flow namaks. They don’t stick on to your hands. They are moisture free. These are the most common unique selling propositions of these salts.

Isn’t there a limit to fool people and isn’t there a limit to get fooled? What is the difference if the salt has moisture or not? Is it going to affect it? Is it going to poison the salt and make it useless?
These are nothing but means to fool the people. Imagine the amount of wealth one garners by manufacturing and selling a basic food ingredient, the salt which available in plenty all around us. There are thousands of other products which are getting exploited just like salt is.

Such dumping of products and consumers succumbing to it is the major reason for the rich-poor divide to increase in India. Many cottage industries which are dependent on such basic products get affected because of unfair competition.

India is still a developing country and policies need to be framed keeping in mind that the first duty is to provide food to all the citizens, preserve the industries that feed the poor, that give them their life. Will such needless expenditure help in this?

It is a state of pity that salt which aroused our passions against the British has failed to do so in the so-called modern era. Have we turned numb not to feel the blood-sucking by the MNC’s and the certain Indian Institutions which compete against them?

Isn’t it time for another Satyagraha, folks?

Cipher

P.S.:- You can mail in your comments, suggestions….or contact me at aravindpadmanabhan@gmail.com

GODS MUST BE CRAZY

GOD- The designer, creator, maintainer of the universe, the billions of galaxies and stars within, the planets and their satellites and last but not the least the so-called gifted life forms that exists in a few pebbles of the universe. For atheists and agnostics who read this article, GOD is not a person who does all this but a personified form of the enormous energy that goes into the working of this wonderful system.

A simple thought for a few minutes about this system would expose us to an umpteen numbers of questions, which will definitely make one think that GOD is for sure the craziest person one would come across. What made him create a system that exists as of today and not something else? What is his rationale behind the creating life forms and make them die? What is his idea when he deliberately places a prey for a predator and a predator for a prey?

Then, what is position of man in this prey-predator cycle? He definitely is the most supreme form of life placed at the topmost of the pyramid. He has no predators to worry about. But a look into the life of all that lives on earth would indicate that man would be the last to lead a peaceful life. If GOD has all the powers to do whatever he likes why has he chosen to give his most supreme creation a life without peace? If he is the one who created man’s mind, why did he make the minds to think differently? Like-minded people all over the world would have made a heaven out of it. Why did he choose to give the maximum energy to a new born and made the old the least active? If only he had done all these we would be living in utopia.

GOD definitely is the craziest among the lot. The above questions for sure expose GOD as one who has made mistakes in HIS design, enough to put his creations to suffering. But HE is not as crazy as one would think.

A logical thought to the above questions would lead us to the concept of maintaining the right balance in a system. This is what we learnt in our school days: The food chain. This was done to ensure that no single life form dominates the earth. Well, even if it dominates it would not be able to sustain itself for long without the support of other life forms. For example, a deer feeds on the plants. If there is no check on the deer the plant spread is going to reduce drastically, thereby, it is danger to both the plants as well as the deer. So, a lion is created to be a predator to check the deer population and sustain the system. And the population of lions in the world is kept less than that of the deer’s and the deer’s less than that of the plants to strike a right balance to sustain the system. This is how all the life forms are placed in the earth.

The same design places man in the apex of the food chain. Wouldn’t he dominate the world if left uncontrolled? Indeed man is dominating the world. Wouldn’t this lead to the collapse of the system if left unchecked? Yes, it will. So, who is going to control man? The answer would be ‘man’ himself.

GOD has very intelligently made one man’s meat, another man’s poison. HE has ensured that no two men would think alike, but has seen to it that they have conflicting interests. HE has also limited the resources available to place one man against another. Even then this design is not without loopholes. Man can think. His mind has enormous powers. Wouldn’t he be able to decipher GOD’s design? If he does, wouldn’t he act in such a way to negate it and save himself? Mind you, man will see the design from a self-centered perspective and not in its truest sense.

To prevent this GOD has limited man’s age and as he ages his energy as well as activities goes down drastically. By this HE has ensured that when man becomes the wisest by acquiring knowledge, he would not be able to do much with it. As George Barnard Shaw rightly said,” Youth is wasted in Young People.” Also no man can realize the true potential of his mind.

Another proof for this design would be one of man’s deeds itself: ’The Law’. By definition, laws are a set of rules created to save man from man.

So, GOD seems crazy to us because HIS logic is beyond an ordinary human brain’s thinking. After all, it is basic human nature to call a supremely intelligent person a ‘fool’.

But, one question remains unanswered. Why does GOD want to design and run this complex system? Is HE so jobless?

This says that there is only one fool-proof system in the universe and it is the universe itself. So, next time you see men arguing or fighting over ideologies, interests, space, material, do not break your heads as to why this is happening, because if it doesn’t happen humanity cannot exist. It is a part of HIS design.

Now, answer this question. What do you call a person who tries to decode GOD’s logic?

Cipher

AN AUTOGRAPH TO STARTWITH....

Hey people, this wonderful world of blogging has finally spread its spheres of influence, wide enough to pull this not so net savvy personality into its wraps. Well, let me introduce myself to start with as is the custom. Cipher is nothing....yeah it is zero but without this zero there would not have been any modern civilisation.....this page from this day will contain all the scribbles of this cipher who would try making this civilisation a better one with his scribbles......and so the scribbler is born....... Born in the medical college hospital, chenglepet which is small township about 60 kms south of chennai, i was christened after Lord Vishnu as Aravind Padmanabhan. As is usual with many of the south Indian families I was taken care of by my grand parents till about the age of 4, when my parents thought I was fit enough to join school and admitted me for basic school education in chennai. This place is where my real life starts. I am as I am today because of chennai. I grew playing alonside the service lanes in the ever haunting Mount road; getting bedraggled at the long beaches of chennai (which is the second longest beach in the world for the local junta); sailing across the biggest garbage dump, the river cooum; travelling over the most difficult terrain one would ever come across, the chennai roads; idolising the evergreen tam (I mean tamil) movie heroes; gaping at the huge hoardings( for all those who dont know chennai is also called the hoarding city) and at the ever shortening skirts of girls which are short enough to excite you but long enough to hold your breath; and once in a while in between all these i did find some time to attend school and college to come out as a successful engineer from the world famous IIT-MADRAS........ And this place which is supposed to make one a technical specialist in the chosen department, but made me a hard core generalist interested in anything and everything but civil engineering which was my field of study.....pity me.....neither could I do justice to myself nor to my subject.....but people, this place though has failed in teaching civil engg. to me, it was successful in grooming me as a persona who is interested in fields as diverse as politics, social and economic issues, religion, and its conflicts with science, field of entertainment and page 3, sociology, psychology, philosophy, history and geography, and soft skills like debating, oratorical, posing arguments, discussions and above all gossiping....and has inspired me to know about anything and everything under the sun......oops but civil engg........ Hmmm......not to bore you anymore about myself.....i with all the blessings from my fellow bloggers will start writing and share all that is worthwhile to do so......see you soon with my next piece of shit.....which i will try in making it a shorter
one......

Cipher