Visionary or Illusionary?

I was waiting for that moment for the last three months. When the name of my team was announced it was the proudest moment for me. When people around us started clapping,  Me and my team went ahead and started sharing our success story.

It was about an innovative strategy that I initiated in my area of operations when I was in pharmaceutical industry.  We had a product that was clinically proven to improve the hair growth for the people with bald head of a specific type.

Company sent us some posters to be kept in the clinics.  I thought of that in a different way. Taking a deviation from the process i had decided to put majority of posters in hair care saloons and beauty parlors. Each poster having the name of a particular doctor in that area. This strategy did work and we are today sharing our great work with remaining teams in front of top management team.

It all went well for next half an hour. When the adrenaline rush subsided, we sat on the dias along with the big visionaries of the company.

The next person who came to speak on our success story was one of the senior most member of the management team.

Before he started showering appreciation on us, he has decided to ask us certain questions.  The questions went on in the following manner.

Great Manager (GM) : what is the population of the area that you people cover ?

ME: Around a crore people spread accross four districts.

GM: how many people in that population may have bald head?

ME: say ....ammm... 20% ....

GM: that is 20 lakh peopke.

GM: how many will have access to doctor?

ME: around 20% (how on earth I know all these)

GM: that means your target market potential is 4 lakh people.

        How much did your team sell to get the recognition of this nature?

ME: 2000 bottles... (by now the smile disappeared on my face)

Think big.... understand the potential.  Work towards that. Let us achieve at least 50% of the target market potential.  Then we can celebrate. ?...... this speech went on....

That was the first time I saw a manager becoming a visionary delivering a great speech.

What he can never understand is to make the communication about  the said product to reach the 20 lakh target population I have a team of five people and unfortunately they are not salmans or sachins. They are just medical representatives. 

After this incident it became a common practice for me to listen to such illogical visionary (illusionary) speeches whenever a big manager comes for a visit.

All the time the discussion starts with the population,  goes into percentages,  multiplications,  additions,  deletions and comes to one conclusion, that always scares every one around.

What these illusionary managers don't bother is,  what are the resources at our disposal.  Be it number employees,  their skill levels, additional support systems, budgets to reach such a wide spread clientele.  For them nothing practical matters.

I don't find any great difference among illusionary managers or the political leaders who promise heaven on earth every five years.

Gandhi is an illusion

"We need to have values if we were to look for a long term growth. I am not expecting anyone of you getting into any kind of shortcuts". The speech of a so called leader went on for an hour.

It has become a routine for me watching these business leaders talk on regular basis. The words may change. But the matter remains the same. Each leader talks about topics of National and International interest in small regional or rural meets.

Even Gandhijis,  subhas bose will feel inferior infront of them for the kind of value system they preach. If abdul kalam has 2020 limited vision,  here comes our leader with 8080 vision.

Country, economy, serving people, larger interest, employee satisfaction..... Hold on I am not typing AAP Kegriwal election speech. It's our leader delivering the emotionally valuable (I mean speech with values)  speech and the audience were only clapping feverishly at every opportunity given.

The leadership memorial (memorable) lecture comes to an end. If I ever wished of shaking hands with a great leader with inbuilt value system,  my wish became reality today. The only thing I could not do is touching his feet to gain some punyam.

Now it's time for party. The valuable leader is the centre of attraction. The positive aura that he created starts slowly vanishing.  He shares the  tricks and stunts that you can do to succeed.  Your brain stops processing data.  Brain is not an excel sheet where you can undo the earlier move and fill the same cell wih some nonsense.

But by the end of the party you end up doin the same.

Why to blame politicians talking about gandhi on stage and behaving like godse behind?

We have most of the people who do the same thing Everyday and every moment.

Do we need to bother about them????

We only need to pretend that we bother about them.

HONEY BEEISM

The mountains are beautiful is an understatement. The train that I am travelling from trichy to Madurai is taking me through kodaikanal range of mountains. The mountains wore a green fur coat presented by nature. They looked fresh as they took bath in early morning rain.

It has been my routine to enjoy the beauty of nature whenever I go to Madurai. But what looks so beautiful in the light, looks quite scary in the night time while I am in the return journey.

Two sides of coin beauty and scary. Probably god has designed everything in the world with two dimensions. Relationships, people, things, everything seems to be having more dimensions each time we look at.

I hear often people saying how good the olden days were. And I am sure today also will become a golden moment to cherish in the future.

School days become golden moments when you enter the college. College days become moments of joy when you enter the job. First job looks green when you are in the middle of the career. Your working life becomes memorable when you are no more able to move your limbs at your old age.

The question is when we can feel good about today at a future date, why can’t we feel blessed everyday and enjoy each moment?

Even the god was not successful in making the world a perfect place. Why should I worry about making it one.

People bully us. People are dishonest. People don’t listen to us.

My values don’t accept what happens in the world around me. I feel betrayed.

But this is how life is designed. What looks scary now may look beautiful at a later age when I get more maturity to understand.

My mother would have looked like an enemy when she tried to empty the crocin syrup into my mouth when I was shivering with 103 degrees of  temperature. It might have been the scariest moment of my childhood.

The doctor uncle might have looked like a Dracula when he inserted the needle of a syringe into my shoulder to make me better.

Let us understand when there was no light (maturity) everything looks scary. When the light of maturity dawns then at a later point in life all this will look sweet.

Let me not postpone the happiness of today for the one reason that the world is not perfect.

Let us enjoy present as present and future as future.

A honey bee is accosted by thorns, bushes, lizards, humans when it searches for honey.

But it knows two things:

1.       While getting honey all these obstacles are there

2.       How to get honey without getting into these traps

People say practicality bites. But a honey bee doesn’t has theories in mind. It is blind because of  the need.

Let me pray the god to give me the attitude that is driven by purpose and blind in theory.

Good day.

Professionalism or Profitism ?

There was a super market. It started with a great idea of giving discounts to people every day on every product. It was a great hit when it was a small store. It was an instant success. The super market started opening more stores. The founder thought in simple terms. If one store can give him “X” amount of profit then 10 stores would give him 10X profit was his thinking. Anyway the people liked the concept of real discounts that the store offered.

It went well until the day when the number of stores increased to an extent where one family was not able to manage the entire operations.

Then came the concept of professionalization of business. Then came various departments. HR, Marketing, Infrastructure, Accounts, Finance, Operations, Training, Sales, Supply chain management, Purchase… the list is endless.

Now each department is headed by a person who is called as a” professional manager” who is distinctively different from rest of the people in the department because of the suit that he wears, phone he carries, laptop he uses and finally the language he uses.

Each of his sentences will have words like profitability, bottom line, cost control, long term strategy, values… He is the messiah of that department.

He was given targets to meet.

A purchase manager purchases

A store manager stores

A sales manager sells

A finance manager manages cash

A HR manager recruits all the above people to do the job.

Everybody has a job to do. Everybody does their job. Everybody excelled in their own function. They met their targets.

But the company went into losses and it suffered an irreparable loss after this sophisticated professionalization of business.

Managers won. Organization lost.

I am not going to do an analysis on balance sheets or profit and loss accounts or any dimensional studies to find out what went wrong.

It is a simple thing that went wrong with this company. It is the same thing that is going wrong with so many so called professionally run companies.

A purchase manager is given a task of buying at prices lower than the market price. He had an excel sheet to show that he did buy the things at lower prices and the amount he saved by doing his job.

But when it came to the store, the sales team found that the purchase department bought something that they can’t sell even at dirt cheap prices. But they found a way to sell that. They sold it to local wholesale agent by offering him the incentives that they make on such sale. Incentives that are given to build loyal customer base are diverted to wholesale agents. Sales team excel sheets showed growth.

Marketing team made colorful advertisements that advertised about products that were never bought by purchase department and never sold by the sales department.

When customer walked into the store he was welcomed by the empty racks (as wholesaler already bought stocks). But marketing team could capture customer footfall in the store in xl sheets too.

At the end it was XL sheets that showed growth and the balance sheet that showed erosion.

A confused owner took a call and decided to close this professionally managed store.

Professionalism is not about power point presentations, xl sheets, using some jargons.

 It’s all about using your expertise to ensure that your work is productive for the organization, not just for yourself.

Somebody hires us not to make us great. But to make his organization great. If in the process we too become great then it’s a different issue.

Just think of a human body that consists of more departments or functions than any organization can have.

A heart to pump “X” liters of blood

A kidney to filter “X” liters of blood

A lung to treat “X” liters of blood

What would happen if each of the organ just bothers about it’s own function and doesn’t care about other organs.

Answer is the person would die. But the organs too die.

If we are organs in a company, then the company is an organ in the industry. Then the industry is an organ in INDIA.

Let us understand that our work has a bearing on everybody, when we work in an organization.

A professional is somebody who knows how to manage his work in all the circumstances with the end result in mind, that is organizational health.

Building the financial muscle

It takes hard work to build a six pack. It takes even more hard work to build a six digit bank balance.

There are many websites,many magazines and lot of financial gurus to tell you the ways to build the wealth. This article is not about risk return ratios, asset allocations, or investment vehicles. Its about something different but important.

"I wish I should have saved more. I should have spent less this month. I should not have bought that latest mobile. I should not have partied that much".

These are some of the very common remarks that are made by most of the people at the end of the month. Surprisingly this was also the time where they tend to take some tough decisions to be implemented in the next month. But in the next month, when month end comes again the same situation arises.

In financial language people call it lack of financial discipline. After observing my own behavior apart from some of my friends behavior I tried to address this problem from a different perspective.

Every month in the beginning I also sit with a pen, paper and a calculator to do a simple budgeting activity for the month. I allocate money for various expenses. Together as family we decide to abide by the plan.

The first week the plan runs well. The second week it becomes weak. The third week it fades. The fourth week we don't require that plan any more as the budget that we allocated to most of the things has already overshot. Since we can't print currency notes like our central government does to fill the deficit, we do that with the help of a CC. You guessed it right it is Credit Card.

This cycle if continued for five to six months results into a big credit card debt. Then an article in a financial magazine approves the practice of taking a personal loan to pay off the credit card debt citing the interest rate difference and savings that you make by doing that, you promptly jump at that option and add a new loan to your portfolio.

Your strong determination not to use credit card will work until you find a beautiful combo offer of 81 inches LED TV with a home theatre with EMI option pops up in the front page of the news paper.

And the story goes on and on..

So what is going wrong with our finances?

Are we lacking discipline?

NO... my answer is we are trying to have too much of discipline which is injurious to our financial health.

Just imagine you decided to get a six packed body. You went to the gym the next day. Started working five hours a day from the day one. What would happen after two days of such rigorous exercise. Probably you may not be able to get up for a complete week.

It's rather impossible to hold the water in hands unless you practice so much.

Money is like water in your hands. The gaps in your grip are several.. a I Phones, I pads, LED TVs, eating out, tablets,  Make my trip.coms, partys, that woo you everyday to spend.

A determination in the beginning of the month to say NO to all these is like starving your mind and it will be looking for an opportunity to break your determination. With each day it only accumulates more energy to attack you.

Solution !!!. if you are getting Rs 100 and trying to allocate to discretionary expenses only 2% to 5%, (discretionary expenses are those eating out, shopping etc) then you are literally starving your mind of it's discretion to spend. ( in the end you end up spending more than 20% on the same)

Better practice to follow is to be a little liberal with these discretionary expenses.

Say allocate 10% to 15% of your net salary for them.

After two or three months you try to make it more leaner, bring it down to 10%

When your mind gets adjusted with this for another three months then you can bring it to less than 10% level.

Let us understand that financial planning is more psychological than mathematical. Once we have disposable income then only all the calculations will help us.

Happy saving.






 

Gadget Dreams

"Look at this person, he was born in a poor family. Worked hard. Studied well. Now he is a software engineer in USA. You know what he drives a brand new Lexus car. His salary is more than XX million dollars. This is how you should be successful...."

"Have you seen this photo in this magazine. This person worked so hard that he finished the XXXX professional course. Now he has got his own consultancy. Look at this, recently he constructed this big bungalow costing 5 crores...."

I was overhearing a mother coaching her young son during one of my recent train travel looking at the photos from the magazine that she borrowed from me.

We don't lose single opportunity to coach our children to be successful. No doubt we want them to be successful. But are we telling them the real meaning of success or trying to just give them the thought that success means acquiring so many gadgets in life whether big or small?

Great salary.. big bungalow... big position.. work at abroad..  big caaaars.. i phones.. dining at five star.. travel by flight.. designer suits.. exorbitantly priced perfumes..farm houses.. holidays in foreign destinations.. great bank balance... the list is endless.

The more one acquires the above the more successful he is.

When we read the rags to riches stories like Bill gates, Michael Dell, Richard Branson, Steve jobs, Ambanis, Narayana Murthy most of the time the focus is on the wealth they amassed. People are baffled at thousands of crores of wealth that these success icons accumulated.

To get there we have always a success formula written in stone..

Read well.. work hard.. don't waste even a minute.. make it to IIT, make it to IIM, then join a overseas conglomerate and you arrived in life.

Is it something like human life is meant for amassing wealth? Are we missing some vital link here?

Probably we are only looking at the glamorous side of the success icons. (excuse me for being partially judgemental)

The attitude that these success icons developed towards work and life, the discipline which they acquired, the vision with which they worked seem to be completely ignored.

Why not we concentrate on building character of children than just making them ready to be money machines?

Why don't we teach them life skills like being emotionally balanced, having clarity on what to do in life (I am not talking about IIM or IIT) ?

Why can't we concentrate on  making them the better human beings?

Then should we ignore the hunt for money concept?

NO.. but let not... the hunt for money become the only purpose of life.

If having so many gadgets and having lavish life style only are the success parameters then Dawood Ibrahim also should be considered as most successful person.

 

Are we having enough stress levels in our life?

I think it was late midnight. The room was completely dark. I don't know whether power is gone. I could not understand as to why I woke up in the middle of night.

I could hear a peculiar sound coming from some distance. It looked like sound of a thousand horses running feverishly. I concentrated. I could hear lot of commotion outside the room. I was totally confused.

Got up from the bed with a jerk and went out. I was shocked. I was not in my house. What I thought my bedroom was in fact a tent. It looked like I was in some military camp. Then came a much more rude shock.

There were people who were running helter skelter around. Most of them did not look like from modern times. They looked like artists from a movie on medieval times.My brain stopped taking notice of all these facts long ago with shock after shock it underwent.

I could sense an imminent danger racing towards the camp with the sounds of horses and the hoarse voices getting closer.

I started running away from the camp. Suddenly someone held my shoulder. It was a soldier. He looked astonished at my running away. Looking fiercely at me he handed over a big sword. I was not able to hold that with one hand, it looked pretty heavy. Though I could not understand his language, I could sense that he was ordering me to defend the camp not to flee.

The inevitable danger arrived in the form of some hundred odd soldiers. It looked like a huge army of soldiers.  All the people carried heavy swords. I looked at the people in our camp. They were trying very hard to defend the camp.

People were dying  around. It was a horrible and bloody war. I tried hiding behind a tent. I was sweating earlier. Now even that too dried up. I was face to face with death. It was only a matter of minutes before I would join the lifeless bodies that are scattered around. I lost the energy or desire to flee to save life. It seemed that I had prepared to die.

I don't know how much of time I lived that near death experience. I woke up again, this time in my bedroom. There were no more horses and soldiers. Death disappeared but it already sank into my mind. It took more than an hour to get the nerves back.

The book on Chengiz Khan I was reading before I went to sleep was still there staring at me.
It was not a biography of a person who successfully invaded vast part of the world in the medieval era, it is the description of life and death that played hide and seek on a daily basis. Whether one is alive or dead is decided by who wins in the game each day. It was a time where future came not in years, months or even days. It's about whether one will survive to take the next breath or not.

Work- life balancing, managing stress, de-stressing techniques, diet management, treadmills, entertainment, modern facilities... none were there.

We experience stress, they experienced physical and mental pain, the pain of death.

We experience fear of lack of comforts, they experienced fear of death

We feel about uncertainty in having good life style, they felt about a situation of lack of life.

Aren't we blessed...

Haven't we advanced in lives?

We may have problems.. but doesn't the severity of the problems came down?

Let us enjoy the life...

 Let us remember the fact that human race can sustain much more stress, much more uncertainty and fear..










 

TEN THOUSAND MISTAKES

There are historical places, historical cities, historical quotes too..

Thomas Alwa Edison made ten thousand mistakes before he could find electric bulb is an evergreen quotation that probably would have been repeated more than a million times in all the sales meetings world over.

Each time one sees the thought provoking quote on the screen with the picture of Edison with a bulb in hand, it re energizes us for a fresh round of work.

Recently one of my senior colleague has been transferred to a different location. He was trying to contact some of his old teammates of that location over phone. Since we both worked in the same location earlier I also was a overhearing the conversation.

None of the people who worked in that location three years earlier were there in the organisation. All of them moved into different companies and some of them into different career paths also.

The last call went to a person who struggled to be successful but was not able to succeed in those days.

This guy worked hard. Never cheated. Used all his energy. But always used to end up long, short of the targets for promotion or increments. Two years of hard work brought him nothing but frustration at the end. None of his managers were able to fix his problems. At last people started saying that his stars are bad.

After me moving from that location, I heard that he resigned and went off.

The remaining story unfolded in front of us from the phone's speaker.

Contrary to our expectation of a dull voice full of pain, we heard a very vibrant voice beaming with confidence. I became temporarily blind as only my ears worked.

After leaving this company he joined one local real estate company. He could witness a phenomenal success and with each sale bringing a fortune for him, he himself started real estate venture within a short time. The stars that were blamed for his failure in insurance seemed to have joined hands together to help him this time. Now he got into construction of apartments. Just two years made huge difference in his life.

"I am successful today because I was not able to understand or sell insurance policies that time sir" He ended the conversation with these words.

I could not imagine this guy who never was able to sell insurance policies, joining yet another insurance company to try his luck and continuing that gruesome journey and losing all his confidence.

We get only one life. Just ask yourself is it worth making ten thousand mistakes in life unless it is for something as big as Edison's invention.

For most of us the definition of success is not such a great invention. It's being independent, comfortable, wealthy, satisfying job or profession.

If X profession doesn't work then let us look for something different. If X company is not the right place to work then let us not shoulder the herculean task of making the company a better place to work unless you are the CEO.

Life is short, Working life is even short, then why should we keep doing what we don't like or what doesn't reward us for LOOOOOONG.

Think for yourself....

India can't become America !

Clean roads, lush gardens, sky scrappers, honest govt employees.. the list is endless when you compare US with India.

This article is not about being patriotic or not patriotic, this is about why we are the way we are at present.

What was the reason behind our behavior. But this is based on my simple commonsense, not on any historical data or anthropological data.

Something for you to enjoy reading and think over...

"Four hundred gold coins and huge amount of gold and diamond ornaments were found while digging the foundation for a new house"
                                                        - Claims a local news paper

"My grand father gave 100 acres land to my father, and I got 200 acres from him. Now I have to give my children at least 400 acres"

                                                     - Vision of a father

"My son who studies MBA in the foreign university is going to be the next managing director of my company"

                                                    - MD of a professionally managed big company

When the CM/PM/MLA/Minister/corporator dies his son/daughter/wife will be the person chosen for replacement.

I tried searching for such kind of incidents in US web space for the last four days, but the google search failed to find.

From the days unknown we Indians earn not just for us. We earn for our next two generations at least. I am not talking about spending for education or marriage of our children. But it is beyond that.

We want to inherit a rich legacy to our children. House, land, jewellery, business, bank balance every thing that has got a value need to be handed over to our children when we leave.

Here is a simple calculation: if Rs 1,00,000 per month in current days is enough to have a good lifestyle, then Rs 5,18,66,353 (five crores and 18 lakhs) are enough to live for the next 100 years even factoring the inflation.

But we find people in govt/private services trying to amass wealth through unethical means. Anything that we need has got a price. Be it a ration card or driving license. Anything that is built be it a small gutter or big project has an element of corruption.

There is an undelying desire to be safe and settled that has been present for centuries together.

I was astonished to see that the term "getting settled in life" is used mostly in Asian countries, particularly in India than in west.

Getting married
Having a house
Having a stable job
Having children
Having good bank balance
Having enough name in the society

These are the common characteristics that are associated with the so called "getting settled".

We need to settle first in life. Then we need to ensure that each of our son/daughter/son-in-law should settle down.
If the god allows us to stay some more time here, then even our grand children should settle down in  life.

Just imagine when somebody is trying hard to create this settlement, how trivial it appears for him the ideals of morality, ethics etc?

Which takes over the other.. settlement or ethics ?

Our great ancestors behaved in the same way. That is why you find tonnes of gold ornaments dumped in temples, houses, foundations.

Our grand fathers tried to build a legacy.

We are in the process of building the same.

Do we need clean roads, lush gardens, skyscrappers, ethical officials OR SETTLEMENT ?

Working hard to build a legacy for our children is not a mistake. But searching for wrong ways to build right legacy for children is crime.

Let us think... And I dont want to sound as if this is the only reason for our behavior. There could be several more too..

IIT to LKG !

Nitin, Murugan, Deepa, Vel, Haneef..... my son handed me a long list of friends who need to be invited to his birthday party. But there is a challenge. All of them are from different areas in the city and too young to come on their own.

But he wanted all of them to be there when he blew the candles on the cake. I had to think of a serious strategy that facilitated this. He even suggested me picking up each of them from their house and dropping them home. But unware of these kind of plans I bought only a car rather than a bus.

At last we decided to shift the party to the school itself where all his friends can be present at one place.

Thirty little angels sang the birthday song and wished my son when he celebrated his birthday at school.

We had invited the school principal and other teachers too. After the party is over I got a few minutes time to speak to the director of the school.

This person belongs to north India. He went to IIT. Had corporate experience.He had a passion for teaching. Once he was comfortable with his finances he tried his hand in teaching. It is not being a professor at a college, but he wanted to impact the young generation at an early stage which he believed will serve a much better purpose of serving the country. ( I was inspired too)

As he liked the philosophy of this school, he joined recently and started experimenting with his ideals.
He not only manages the school, but ensures that he practically teaches in the class room at least for two to three hours a day.

I had a doubt. An M.Tech graduate teaching a LKG class, could be pretty easy task. What satisfaction he gets in teaching such lower classes ?

His answer opened a new dimension in my trainer's brain.

He said and I quote:

" Teaching lower classes is more difficult than teaching higher classes. Teaching means breaking the complex issues into "simple most form" that can be eaten and digested by the pupils. Teaching is not display of knowledge but teaching is imparting of knowledge"

I think this is a lessorn worth learning for many of the people in learning and development function.

Many a times we see the people using lot of jargons, phrases, making the subject more complicated. This way of communicating in a training session serves only one purpose. It is to show the participants how knowledgeble the trainer is.

The purpose of traing or coaching is not to show our knowledge. It is to make the participants understand the subject.

The trainer who can break down the complexity of the subject and deliver in small pallatable pieces to the learners is the trainer with true purpose.

Training programs are meant for transfer of knowledge. They are not fashion shows where the trainer tries to showcase his personal capabilities.

Identity syndrome

Dr ABCDE.  Bsc, MBBS, FSINS, FAMS, AFST, NIME (Ukrain), NAMIS, ARMIS, FSNST.

My colleague was shocked to see this board when we went to meet a doctor who gave us appointment to listen to our insurance plans. Though I was not able to reproduce all the degrees that the board listed, I still remember eight to nine degrees that were written on the board which probably contained all the alphabets the English has got.

When we entered the clinic it looked like a museum. The walls in the huge hall bore all the certificates that were awarded to the doctor. There were several patients who were patiently trying to understand what kind of person they are going to consult. 

Most of the certificates were from less famous countries like Ukraine, Czechoslovakia etc. This was not an end. There were several photographs in costly frames that adorn the walls. The doctor took photographs with every possible person in the world who was in a white coat.

My colleague was shocked. He never thought that anybody can get these many degrees and so called diplomas. When he patiently counted they exceeded the life span of a person, around 80 in all.

Before I could explain him how one gets these kind of cheap diplomas and fellowships by just passing some online tests the doctor called us inside.

Though I could not see any great number of patients waiting outside, the doctor acted very busy. He displayed his wisdom. He tried to look familiar with anything that is under the son. It was an hour of time waste where the doctor spent most of the time proving that he is not less than a noble laureate. He was not there to listen to our product. He only had one clear agenda, enacting his own advertisement show. He had one album full of his certificates and photographs which he kept inside as his walls were not sufficient to put them upon.

It made me to remember one incident that taught me a lot as to how a human being should be because one is called  HUMAN BEING.

When I was in Dr Reddys labs I had been to one of the famous hospitals in Andhrapradesh. It was Satyasai Institute of medical sciences in a place called Puttaparthy.

Built by the famous Satyasaibaba trust this hospital is meant for providing super specialty services to poor patients who can't afford such expensive treatment outside.

When myself and my colleague entered the hospital for the first time, it did not look like yet another hospital rather it looked like a temple that provides peace of mind too.

We went to meet one of the doctors. There was a person in white clothes and a badge of Satyasaibaba outside the doctor's chamber. These are the people who come to do voluntary service. I just asked the person if the doctor was inside. He was extra polite and was very cordial too. He went inside and informed the doctor about us. While waiting to get inside the doctor's chamber we started chatting with the old person who looked very ordinary.

He did not look like south Indian. After a small probe about the person's background we were more than shocked. He was an old IIT graduate who further went and continued his studies in MIT, USA. He worked as professor and dean in many universities where people love to get admission world wide. He was invited by the government to head some of the important committees that made policy decisions. At last he served his alumnus IIT as director and retired. He still is in advisory role for Govt of India. All this he told as a matter of fact. To my dismay I could not find even a small trace of ego. He devotes one month of his time every year to serve the people and  that is how he ended up in this hospital as an attendant for patients. I asked him if he could ask for a better job. His answer is a lesson of a life time.  

"God chose me to do the service. Whether it was as a professor or as an attendant. The choice was of god. I am here to deliver his wishes."

It left a deep impact on me. As Swamy Vivekananda says, accumulation of knowledge is good but unused knowledge is like food undigested, it does more harm than good.

Degrees and diplomas don't make us human beings. Wisdom makes us. Craving for recognition up to a certain age is normal. But with the age if the chronic craving continues then it is called IDENTITY SYNDROME.

Somebody who failed to develop solid attitude and character always tries to depend on external means to derive value. 

Let us strive for achieving something worthwhile rather than spending whole life to prove that we are great to others. It.s waste of LIFE.

Does money bring more stress into our lives?

"Money makes life comfortable,  but along with comes the stress also.
I always feel that it is better to vote for peace of mind rather than this mad race for money”

 

I could attribute these words of my colleague to the context in which he told. I had been to Tiruvannamalai a place where lord Shiva is worshipped in the form of a  mountain. And it is considered auspicious to do a circumference by walk to the sacred mountain.

 

After finishing my work at the local branch office, I have decided to go for the same. And my senior colleague also wished to join. We were in the middle of the same when he uttered those words.

 

It was a late evening and the weather was so pleasant. We have the huge mountain on our right hand side and there were several small temples across the path. We had already visited a few temples.

 

It was more like a physical but philosophical journey and I could easily understand why he said, it is better to have more peace of mind than more money.

 

I just smiled and offered no further discussion. After walking another half a kilometer we found a small colony of houses beside the road. It seemed to be a colony that belonged to poor to very poor people. We could see the small, one room houses, children playing in the open, all the people sitting on cots that are laid literally on the road side and the ladies cooking meals in the open. My colleague  stopped there for a while which I thought was to give a little rest to the paining pair of legs.

 

But he stood there to watch the people around more closely.

 

“Look at the faces of those people, they might be poor but they are not un happy. They might not be having even the basic facilities that we enjoy but they are happy. Why can’t we be content and live life rather than running the race of life?”

 

I did not interrupt his flow of thoughts because my flow of thoughts already started.

 

Many a times we may see the people who get into this ” temporary satisfaction syndrome” for a short period of time and life never changes post that.

 

I just tried to answer two questions that seemed important.

 

1. Is it money that brings the stress along with it

 

2. Can we be happy in life with less amount of money ?

 

Money is just a tool that can be exchanged for something we need or desire.

 

We need or desire for more money only when we have more needs or more desires.

 

As a human being anybody has certain basic needs that doesn’t need a big fortune to take care of.

 

But it is a gradual enhancement in our life style that makes us hungry for more money.

 

In earlier days too people used to earn lot of money. But there weren’t any significant changes that could be seen in their lives. I never found 80 inch wall hanging televisions, ultra modern furniture, designer kitchens. Even a toilet is a toilet, there were no branded toilets. We lived without fabric conditioners, one minute noodles, microwave popcorns.

 

When all these became our basic necessities then earning more money has become a necessity. It is no more an option.

 

Most of the time we blame rising prices but there is one more culprit, rising needs.

 

Earning money is an option. It is our needs/desires that decide the degree of our earnings.

 

Once you are on the top of consuming cycle there is no way that you can slowdown your earning cycle.

 

My second question is can we be happy with lesser amount of money.

 

People can be happy irrespective of the amount of money that they possess as long as basic needs are taken care.

 

It is not that the amount of happiness is directly proportional to the amount of money that your wallet carries.

 

As long as we can live with the minimum needs we can be happy.

 

But does our modified life style allow us to be happy?

 

Certainly not.. let us think more…

 

Can sales be a process driven function ?

I have two incidents to share. Both are different but have something in common-structured work

Incident 1:

Around two months back I had been to a power plant to meet a customer. He was the head of operations there. After finishing our sales presentation he was courteous enough to show us around.
It was a plant that runs in three shifts, eight hours of each. There were around eight hundred people working.

He explained us that the target amount of production is decided by the company head office. Each department like procurement, operations, maintenance knows about the exact targets and work accordingly.

An employee is supposed to report at his work place at the exact shift start time and there will be no exceptions as the finger print detector records the exact time of entry and exit.

I could see a perfectly systematic and smooth flow of operations going on. There were no idle employees. Everybody is fully engaged in what they are supposed to do. We could also see ending of a shift as the big siren announced the end of shift an army of fresh set of employees entered the premises.

I could see satisfaction mixed exhaustion in the eyes of  employees who finished the shift and walking towards exit.

Incident 2:

A visit to any State Bank of India branch at around 11 o clock in the morning can be termed as an adventure. Huge number of people flock the branch. We have still people who hate to use plastic cards and prefer metal tokens to withdraw the funds physically from the branch. All the counters in the branch are full with customers.

 A young and intelligent guy post his graduation, works hard with numerical, logical and all other problems and ends up as probationary officer in the SBI only to find himself solving the problems of two hundred plus people a day. An hour of being in queue I could see that he was not able to even pick up his mobile to attend the personal calls.

In case of the power plant the employee is forced to work because of machines.

In case of bank the employee is forced to work because of customers

But in case of sales, most of the times it is either the pressure to deliver or in a few cases the desire to be a performer makes a person work.

Most of the days a large part of the day is either wasted or not utilized properly in any sales function.

When the end of the month approaches, there will be mad rush and even twenty four hours will not be sufficient.

There are smart sales managers who try to make the people to work by igniting the desire to be performer.

When the company tries to implement systems like online recording of appointments, sales calls made then they are using the factory model of making the people to work because of machines.

But most of the times it is short lived. Slowly people start taking exceptions to the system. Though sales is a different kind of function where certain degree of flexibility is required, too much of flexibility seems to be breaking the very essence of work.

Let the organisations think of having a balanced process to engage people in a productive way which will reduce the heart burns and disappointments for the sales people.

Do we have forward thinking ???

He was never serious about studies. Dropped out of college. Tried learning some weird skills like calligraphy. If at all we find someone with the above set of features do we really bother to encourage him?
But when we read or listen to the founder of Apple, Steve Jobs we feel inspired and impressed.

I read a stack of books with such stories which never fail to provide the constant inspiration at times of trouble.

But a jolt of realization struck me today morning when I received a phone call from an unknown number.

I had a colleague when I was working in Dr Reddy's Labs as Area Business Manager in Kurnool. He used to work hard and a very intelligent guy.

I had always one motto in life. Work hard, prove yourself, get promoted. These are the three principles through which I evaluated people always.

This colleague of mine worked perfect. But he looked like lacking something. He was not excited about the career path that the company offers. In sales when someone finishes his targets and doesn't get you any trouble it is more than enough for the boss. But here it is not the question of targets but the excitement that was missing.

One fine morning he gave us shock. He came with a resignation letter. Those were the days where resignations were quite rare. Though he was not in my team, I had good relationship with him.

More than the resignation, the reason that he gave for that looked absurd for me. He was  telling very confidently that he was going to learn something related to computer software. He wanted to change his career.

For me it looked foolish. A person with no prior experience in computer software, who already spent good number of years in sales industry, thinking of getting into computer field looked very illogical.

I still remember our stand outside tea shop meeting, where I offered him my gyan about why he should continue to work in his current sales role.

The more I offered my logic the more adamant he became.

I heard about him for the next one year. People used to share about he buying a computer, practicing some software course at home. All this looked much more purposeless for me. I felt strongly that, since he was not able to work hard in his current role, he found some excuse to spend the time.

Slowly the information about him stopped reaching me when I moved out of Dr Reddy's and shifted family to a different place.

I was unpacking my laptop today morning getting ready for the day's work at office. The mobile rang and it displayed an international call coming in.

It took some time for me to recognize the caller. It is the same colleague whom I thought was wasting his time with computers.

He lives in US now. He went through all the struggle before he reached there. Worked in Bombay for a small salary, worked in South Africa, then finally landed in US.

I felt very happy for being wrong.

But this episode opened a new window for me to think.

To decide whether you are successful or not,  is it Working hard, being in the same career, looking for great appraisals, looking for career advancement alone are parameters ?

If someone tries to pursue his or her dreams should we label him/her  as a person  trying to avoid the work ?

Not that everybody writes a book about themselves and creates a fanclub like Steve Jobs or Bill Gates.

There might be several untold stories of success like the one that I narrated here.

Let us not have just back ward thinking where our heart can appreciate a person who became a legend.

Rather let us encourage a person going to become legend too.

WORK OR ARGUMENT CHOICE IS OURS

Blame will not bring results

Recently I was travelling from Chennai to Trichy in a bus. This was probably the first ever A/c bus ever manufactured in the world. The moment it started I felt that I was in some mechanic shop as I could hear all the parts making noise independently and together.

It was cool inside the bus in  the hot chennai summer.

An hour gone bye and suddenly the cool air gone. Thought that the driver switched off the A/c.

It's not the driver but the bus itself switched off the A/c on it's own.So A/c is gone.

Since it is an A/c bus all the windows are closed. Started sweating.

One more hour gone... slowly getting adapted to the sweat. Sleep was trying to take over the despite the humid and hot condition inside.

Suddenly life seemed to be a lot peaseful. No sounds bus was silent. Now the engine is gone.

Getting up in the middle of the sleep is a gradual process to many and i am not an exception.

But suddenly somebody was shouting. When the voices became loud and abusive I could no more sleep. Somebody was fighting with somebody.

When I got down from the bus I found two groups of people fighting with each other. A careful observation (since it is too dark out there) revealed that there are no outside decoits but it is our bus passengers in two groups fighting with each other.

The topic was clear after a while. One group is arguing against the Govt (that runs the buses) SETC (transport corporation) transport ministry and all other involved in running the bus. Their argument is about how bad the buses are managed.

The other group is pro-govt and arguing against the first group. In the dark I could see two people standing at a distance enjoying their smoke. I too went there to find out who these matured human beings not participating in the quarrel.

To my amazement they are driver and conductor of the bus. 

When I asked them what needs to be done so that the bus will start again, they smiled and told a shocking news we have to push the bus.

I asked them in my broken tamil whether the same is told to the fighter passengers.

"Yes it was told and after that only they started fighting."

I remembered the video that I saw sometime back in one of the training sessions.

It featured a kid who took the responsibility to push a tree that blocked the road and started pushing it alone.

I just invited the conductor to join me in pushing the bus. He agreed. Driver entered the bus and sat in the seat.

Me and the conductor started pushing the bus. Both sides of fighters started watching us. The bus did not move at all. But the movement in the fighters got reduced.

Slowly one by one came. After five minutes of lonely pushing, now we have company of another ten people to push.

The bus started and our journey started.

When we have problem at hand why should we create more problems by arguing....

 

Did we forgot the art of being grateful

Loans to repay, expenses to bear, younger brother yet to get employed, sister needs to get married, father retired, the list seemed to be endless, when my friend started narrating his problems.

For his life is full of problems and even god also left him alone to face them on his own.

I am talking about an incident that happend around ten years ago.

I agree that he had lot of problems and probably limited number of solutions. As they were the days where sales jobs offring great salary were rare.

Probably this might have motivated him to seriously consider and work for the government job as a teacher.

One year of his preparation for the teacher selection exam in Andhrapradesh yielded him the result.

I still remember the day he came to me with a pack of Asha Chocolates from Nutrine company to convey the news.

I met him after another one year. I was expecting him to be happy. But to my dismay he was not.

He had new list of problems. He was placed around 100 km away from his home town by governement. He had to cook his own food. Work was very difficult. Headmaster of the school doesn't like him. Salary is not sufficient to meet all the expenses.

As every year the pongal or sankranthi festival makes me to go home, I met him the next year. By this time his sister got married. Brother got some job. And he too managed to come near to the home town. Now he is able to stay at home itseslf.

But again his dissatisfaction did not die. The scooter that he bought for daily commuting is drinking petrol, His brother could not make it to a government job, his fellow teachers could get a preferential treatment in the school.....

And the last one that stuck was, god was never good to me even after me putting my level best effort.

This is the incident that I am able to observe in length. But I generally see the people who are never happy about anything that they get.
I had a colleauge who got a lakh of rupees as bonus. I was expecting him to share the same happily. But after a month when I asked him about this, he was not at all happy. He was telling that the one lakh is nothing in current scenario, where a plot is costing fifty laks and so on.

I am sure that even if he gets fifty laksh still he will have reasons to cry further.

Just remember the days of our childhood where a small cup of icecream was able to make us happy.
Watching a movie, getting a plastic electronic watch, getting a new pen all of them are reasons of joy.

Then when we grow why is that each reason to feel joy is turning to be pain?

Moral Values : Are they to talk or to practice ?

We always see the people talking about values a lot, but seldom practice. It's not about any big theory, it's about things like "people should be honest, should not take bribes, do one's duty perfectly".

If you translate them into dictionary language they may be like "integrity, morality etc may come.

I just thought about, is there a division in the society ?

Is it that a part of society is ethical and moral while the other part is unethical and immoral always ?

I would like to address this question with the help of some incidents.

Incident 1:

I was watching news in the tv. It was about three people who died in river kaveri in rural Tamilnadu. The three people went into kaveri for a holy dip in the river. Unfortunately they were not aware that due to unlawful sand mining in that area, the depth of the river has increased many folds. The moment they walked a few steps into river they slipped into the abyss created by sand mafia and within seconds they were no more.

All the villagers came and some were talking about the un lawfull activities of the sand mafia, the political connections etc.

Can we conclude that these are the people who practicing and living in the right way?

Incident 2:

For another few days the focus was on sand mafia and un lawful mining of sand in the rivers where so many reporters took pain in surveying the width and breadth of kaveri river.

Astonishingly after few more days when most of media people abandoned kaveri, the un lawful sand mining started again. In one of the news report I could see villagers working as labourers and doing the mining.

When the un masked reporter asked questions to the masked laboures as to why they are involving in such activity, the answer was "livilihood"

I am not going to say anything about this livilihood issue. But when I know that my livilihood costed the lives of three people just a few days back I dont think that reason is valid any more.

Now let me come to the basic question I started with, is there a section of society that is ethical and other part that is unethical ?

The conclusion that I can arrive at is NO

When people are in trouble because of somebody's unethical or immoral behavior then we become value leaders.

If we have a chance to any short cut then we don't bother about the values.

To give you some more examples:

1. If I can buy tatkal train ticket in black market, I don't bother about the values. If I could not get booking, then I blame the people for doing the black marketing.

2. If I can get a recommendation and could get a job, I don't preach values. If I lose my job opportunity because of somebody else getting it in a wrong route then I will be a value champion.

3. If I am able to avoid the queue and could get a seat in the bus then I dont bother about values. If I find, when I enter the bus that there are no vacant seats, then I talk about behavior of people in Singapore and how disciplined they are.

Though my intention is not to say that everybody in society is opportunist, but we find RAW VALUES very rarely.

If we can talk and practice values most of the time (not when we lose) then I think our life (society) will improve.

Does the technology increase the efficiency of an employee ?

My smart phone reminds me of my friend's birthday. It also reminds me that I had to send an official mail at a particular time. It tells me to do shopping. It also tells me where to shop. It shows me the way when I drive. I am very comfortable about this payless, non complaining (only for power it craves) very reliable assistant that I have.

But the question that came to my mind is, did it really help in improving my efficiency in my work or my personal life?

13 years back when I was in pharma, I had a team of four people working in four different parts of Andhrapradeh. Initially I had no mobile phone. Applied and in long waiting list for the land phone.
There were no digital organisers. All the communication was through letters sent through post or courier. In case of emergency the only option was to send a telegram and wish it had reached the concerned.

A book and a pen did everything that is needed. It would be once or twice in a month that I used to visit the place of a representative and meet him in person. It was the only time to communicate to him. Once I leave the place there is no way I can communicate to him directly.

Every time I need money I had to go the bank before it is closed, take a token, wait for the kind hearted teller to call my name.

When planning for a tour it consumes an hour or two in booking a ticket in a train or bus where I had to be physically present at the counter.

Lot of things to remember, lot of time to get the things done. But did business suffer ?

The answer is a strict NO.

Now a days.. I spend typically 50% of my time communicating with my team on various issues. Hours together are spent daily on a fancy thing called "conference call". A truck load of MIS analyzing the numbers in every possible angle that newton can invent arrives everyday.

Bud did all this made the work or comfort at personal life improve ?

The answer could be NO

Earlier days I know what I need to do for the day at the starting of the day. My team too knows what they are supposed to do on a particular day (which was decided monthly once through something called tour planner and was adhered to)

Time spent on comupter, phone and other gadgets was less. Time was mostly spent in the field.

Less number of analyses were made. It was commonsense that made the people to take corrective measures if something goes wrong.

I had leisure time that was really leisure time.

Then what is that this entire digitalisation of business brought ?

A question that I feel that everybody should ask themselves.

Let us understand, gadgets, technology may help to some extent. But it is basically human beings that improve the bottom line.

KNOW YOUR DNA BEFORE YOU DECIDE TO DO SOMETHING NEW

There was a CEO of a large FMCG comapany making a statement that "Indians are willing to pay extra if the product offers value. It is not the price that impacts the decision of consumer in today's world"

Minutes later came one more interview with yet another CEO of a retail chain. He went on saying " the success of his retail stores is in discounts and offers that it offers. "Indian consumer is very price conscious"

Within ten minutes I heard two CEOs who head very large companies saying completely contradictory statements, both backed by their logic and experience.

Are they contradicting... yes but still both of them seem to be correct.

Any organisation builds it's strategy based on market research and logic. Powerful theories supported by huge data base are made and presented to the boards.

Let us see if whether Indian consumer is price conscious or value conscious.. (from my subhiksha retail experience)

Godrej sells Rs 10 per packet hair dye, whereas Garnier sells Rs 100 pack. Godrej has it's own market and Garnier too.

People spend good amount of money when they buy formal shoes. But seldom they spend on socks. Most of the indians buy cheaper socks and costly shoes.

Most consumers buy shampoo sachets in bulk rather than buying a bottle. But don't bother about money when they buy over priced detergent powder.

People become value conscious when choosing an LCD tv but become price conscious the next moment when they buy a voltage stabilizer for the same.

I feel that we can not categorize customers as value conscious or price conscious. A customer can be value conscious as well as price conscious in different occasions. One can also see the behavior of customer becoming more price conscious during month ends.

The point that I would like to make is, while companies try to analyze different theories before they formulate a strategy it is more important to spend more time on which strategy suits,  than which strategy is correct.

Even Garnier can enter the Rs 10 sachet market and still can capture market share that is dominated by Godrej. But the company needs to ask itself whether the change in the strategy can be implemented profitably. In other words every company has it's own strengths. If the new strategy or the new segment that the company is evaluating is going to further strengthen the same then it can go ahead.

As small car and mid sized segments are growing, even Mercedec Benz also can view entering this budget segment and can be profitable too. But the Benz DNA is different. It would give more returns for the company if it spends more time and money on it's strength and innovate.

EVALUATE THE STRATEGY BUT KEEP AN EYE ON THE DNA OF THE COMPANY BEFORE YOU TAKE A DECISION.

A cricketer can play foot ball too if he puts effort. But the question is "is it worth doing that"

Well defined plans fail due to poor execution WHY

A few days back I was watching a T.V program " Man Vs Wild". While I feel great after walking for a few kilometers during morning walk, here was a guy walking kilometers together in the dense forest. It gave me huge motivation and I instantly decided to jog everyday rather than walk routinely. Also I felt the need for the new shoes to support my new decision. For the next few days I  felt so good with my improved stamina and started imagining if I could accompany the person in the TV show. It all went as planned for a week.

It was the 8th or 9th day after my new Stamina Improvement Regime (SIR) started. The alarm started as usual at 5 am indicating me to wake up for the SIR. Before I decided o hit the snooze button my brain started citing reasons like, delayed sleep last night, unusual power cut that disturbed the sleep... the reasons that looked more than genuine, were endless. When the reasons reached the desired level I decided to excuse myself for the day.

In the second week of my SIR the frequency came down to three times a week from everyday in the previous week. Then slowly it became once in a week.

When I was trying to understand as to what was preventing me from doing what I passionately wanted to do, I could find a few similarities in the organisational behavior too.

People go through huge amount of data before taking decisions in an organisation. Spend lot of time in making plans for execution. Think of "if and buts" and prepare blue prints. Then the execution starts with a big hype. Everybody talks about the new strategy. It becomes the talk of the town. People at the lower levels resist, discuss, rebel but have no choice but implement.

Implementation levels improve over a period of time.The strategical fever reaches newer levels. Then something happens and the execution levels continue to appear to be normal but they are no more normal. Exceptions start taking place. After a few months it's only exceptions, except the plan everything else gets implemented. People say the strategy is wrong, impractical. Then the board decides to find one more strategy and the whole new exercise starts again.

I share here an incident that happened in Trichy (the place where I live) that could give some clarity as to why execution levels fall over a period of time.

Tamilnadu Government took a decision to make wearing helmet compulsory for the people riding the bikes. Police department for the next one month strictly checked and fined the people who are not wearing the helmets.People too bought the helmets to avoid fine. For a month or two everything went well. Then slowly police department reduced their focus on checking the people on roads. From a small minority of people who were not wearing helmets, in the initial days, more and more people started riding without helmets over a period of time.

Now in most of the cities in tamilnadu people no more wear helmets. But in case of Trichy it is completely different. Here majority of people still wear helmets. Let us see what made the strategy work here when it failed in most of the cities.

Trichy police in the first three months ensured that they kept the check points for every two kilometers. If you are not wearing helmet while driving then you are sure that you will be caught somewhere on the road. It brought the fear in the people.

Then when other cities reduced the check points Trichy police maintained it for another three more months.
Even after an year and half still though the number of check points are reduced, you can suddenly find an inspector checking and fining the people without helmets on the road.

Trichy police department is able to convert the FEAR into HABIT.

Implementing the strategy is the responsibility of the employees. But continuous, un diluted monitoring of the same is the responsibility of the organisation. If organisation fails to monitor then employees fail to execute.

A long execution and monitoring time to convert the strategy into habit is what I thought could be secret.

TAKE LIFE AS IT COMES. IT IS NOT AS COMPLEX

We pay lot of attention to everything in life. Try to ensure that all the things are in place. Want to leave a mark of ours on the life. If it is for ourselves it would be okay. But slowly we start insisting others also to be in line with our thinking. 

Here is a powerful incident which changed a little of me and made me to rethink of MY WAY.

A few years back we had a very friendly neighbor. He was old. Started his work as a petty shop assistant, then became the owner of his own petty shop. But never he had any petty thoughts and always ensured that he grew.

Over a period of time, he saw tremendous success in his business. He lived all his life in tiny houses, never spent a single rupee on something unnecessary. He had a luxury allergy (allergic to luxury). He lived a simple life even Gandhi would be envious of.

His sons got into business slowly. They too were successful. One night it dawned to him that all his co businessmen are living a descent life but it is he who is making even his children and grand children to suffer because of his OWN WAY OF THINKING.

Though he never shared as to what caused this drastic change in his thinking or i am not too sure whether there was a banyan tree in his house to get him the enlightenment, but everybody in his house felt too happy about the change.

As a first step he started constructing a luxurious home in the place of the "about to collapse house he lived for one more than a half century. 

When everybody has a habit of talking about how many bed rooms a house has got, somehow this old man replaced the bed room parameter with bathroom. He kept on telling everyone that this house has five bathrooms.

Money makes many things possible, it took just seven months for the house with five bathrooms to be completed.

We too were present in the house warming ceremony.

His family seemed to be very happy and he too looked very satisfied on that day.

After a week he came to house and was sharing how happy his people are, and how great the house was. I too was happy that at least he is enjoying his money in his old age.

A month later I happen to go their house. House looked great, but people were not !

I could not understand what went wrong within a month. That evening I got the answer when this old man came to our house.

He started narrating his problems. He had a lot of belief in vastu. While constructing the house he had a mental picture as to which son will be occupying what bed room (bath room in his language).

Unaware of this all the three sons (joint family) had their own way of decorating their own bedrooms. Once the house is finished our old man started this vastu presentation and insisted that everybody should live according to his dictum. Nobody liked this. There started the BIG FIGHT. It was silent fight initially, later it grew into noisy fight.

Earlier they were living in a about to collapse house, now they are living with collapsed relationships.

I tried telling him with all my scientific, logical, mythological, devotional logic that he can leave those bathrooms to their choice. But he had a superior way of thinking which never accepted all this.

The same scenario continued for two more weeks. One fine morning all his sons and their families purposefully planned and went for a long tour leaving this old man and his wife in the house.

They needed a break and he too deserved a break.  

I met him again. He was not happy anymore. He felt bad for his children behavior. Kept on complaining. 

After three days early in the morning I saw big crowd in front of his house. When I rushed in, I found him lying in a freezer box lifeless. His sons were yet to come from the tour. I too was motionless for some time.

The person who argued a lot about how the house to be used is no more. His last days were not his happiest days. 

Life seems to be permanent to everybody when they are alive. It's a minute or a few seconds that would separate the body and life. Then no more I am a husband to a wife, father to a child, employee of a company, owner of house or anything else. I don't know what I am. 

Only one question came to my mind: Do we need to be so particular about each thing in life, can't we enjoy the life as it comes (while putting our effort) ???