I know social media has become powerful in recent times and let us see if it can help me out locating a friend. I don’t have much detail but I am sure if you help in sharing this post, I might be able to reconnect. I am in Mumbai from 7th-12th Oct, 2012. Hoping that this blog post is able to connect me up before I am back in Bangalore.
Name: Priti Mistry
Age: Must be approx 45-50
DOB: 13th Oct
Profession: Used to be a tutor with Agrawal Classes in the early nineties ( IIT JEE )
उन्मुक्त आसमान मैं, भय रहित उड़ चलो
बंधनों को तोड़ के, उड़ चलो उड़ चलो
काल के ललाट पर, चिन्ह छोड़ दो प्रबल
जोश की मशाल ले, उड़ चलो उड़ चलो
राह मैं जो आएँगी, मुश्किलें विशाल सी
तोड़ के हर ग्रहण, उड़ चलो उड़ चलो
है प्रकाश अल्प यहाँ, है तिमिर अति प्रचुर
ह्रदय से तुम प्रकाश कर, उड़ चलो उड़ चलो
विश्व मैं तो हैं कई, बाँटने के तंत्र षड्यंत्र
जोड़ने की लौ जला, उड़ चलो उड़ चलो
I used few lines from this poem in a ZopNow ad.
2 years back. Oh ya, 2 years back. A lazy day I decided to get started with something. I wish I could say I was visionary but frankly speaking I was not. The goal was simple and more a personal one. Take 15 mins out of the daily grind and listen to songs which I have enjoyed.
My relation to music has been from very early childhood. The days when my dad used to return from office and sing songs for us ( me and my 4 siblings ). It was part of a routine. Some of the songs which were regular were – Mere saajan hain us paar, Aap ne yaad dilaya to mujhe yaad aaya, Dard-e-dil dard-e-zigar etc. Then one fine day we got a old style tape recorder at home. The first few cassetes were Udan Khatola, Baiju Bawra. The songs repeated again and again and music became an essential part.
The second brush with music was when I was preparing for IIT. I used to study for 10-12 hours at a stretch and music playing on radio was always there for company besides mom waking up at midnight to cook something for me and my brother. That phase introduced me to a broad variety of music directors. Understood the difference between their musical styles.
The third musical wave came when I got into college and stayed in hostel. Here I got introduced to Ghalib and lot of Urdu poetry. The relationship deepened. Ghalib and Nusrat were two dominating influences. Did listen to some western music also but mostly restricted to John Denvers, Cliff Richard and Elvis.
And then the unthinkable happened. Corporate life and usual life issues took me away from music. And it was a long duration. Almost 10 years. I hardly had much music during this time. And then one fine morning it came back. Back with a bang. BBG got started as more of a personal venture but I was amazed to see how people identified with songs. More and more people kept joining and kept sharing their memories associated with the songs. But we were a more or less a virtual entity at that point.
And that is when meetups entered the scene. We decided to organize meetups in every city. The first one happened in Bangalore and it was an amazing experience. And then Mumbai which was a great experiences. Lot more cities came to fold like – Pune, Ahemdabad, Bhavnagar, Ghaziabad and Hyderabad. Everywhere we went we got so much love and affection from everybody. The BBG family kept expanding. The music connected all of us and BBG became a platform to bring happiness to people via music.
All I can say is that it has been a fantastic journey and if I start counting the names of people to thank it will run into pages. When we do events and see people happy, it fills us with so much of joy. When we go to unknown city and come back with hundreds of friends, it makes our soul happy. That is what BBG stands for. Our endevour to make people happy.
It is a good time to reflect on what we have achieved but we still have to go a long way. We would like to hold events outside India. We would like to help more artists who are in need. We would love to see mainstream talent emerging from BBG platform. We would love to see more and more people losing stage fear and sing infront of an audience. We would love to see more and more people spending sometime every day devoted to music. We would love to see music healing the wounds created by boundries.
Miles to go before I sleep, miles to go before I sleep…..
Disclaimers first. I am no movie buff. Very occasional movie watcher. And even if I do it is mostly with my daughter so mostly kids movies. No idea how I landed up with this one. I guess Taco bell Chalupa ads and a nice walk in nice weather was the biggest motivation.
So one more secret to share. I tried my hand at ad making recently and tried to visualize and direct a 30 sec commercial. And I realized during the process that it is not easy to visualize a scene/story and then get the team to translate it to action. So I watch movies much more closely now.
First things first. I like the idea of the movie. How a kid with constraints aiming big in life. I am sure lot of us can relate to that, atleast I can. And cricket is a topic which is so close to all of us. Only 3 characters in movie who span across 3 generations. The first half mostly focused on showing relationships between these 3 characters. I thought that while Bomman and Sharman’s roles were carved out nicely, the kid got a raw deal. I guess since most of the people who make the movie are adults, they tend to ignore how to make the kids character stand out.
And then comes the real hero of the movie Ferrari. The way Ferrari comes into the picture is a bit comical and it’s role has been over exaggerated. But then I guess exaggeration is always used as an excuse for making things comical. As Ferari enters the scene, the story turns from realistic to artificial which aims at creating funny scenarios in return. Some of the scenarios are funny but lot of them not. The story diversion to the corporator and his son was annoying as well as useless. It was neither funny nor necessary. And then comes the item number which was injected with hardly any co-relation to story. Vidya looked good but the item song looked like that they did reverse engineering on the story to accommodate the item number.
The end was too dramatic and almost kill the genuineness with which movie started. I mean what was the need of showing him on TV and all the drama associated with it. My only suggestion to director is that if you want to make subtle comedies, learn from Hrishikesh Mukjerjee and if you want to go on the other side, David Dhawan is not too bad either.
Overall a confused movie with good performances from Sharman and Bomman. The kid did not get much chance to showcase skills. Certainly worth a watch in the days of even more stupid movies.
15th Oct, 2011 in Pune.
Priya had asked me if I could invite one of her friends to BBG Meetup in Pune. Me and Sameer figured out the address and landed up at his home. And that was the first time we met Kedar. One word describes my meeting with him – Inspiring.
He is a spastic, wheelchair bound, and can not use his left hand but he types on computer with three fingers of the right hand. He was our special guest for the event. He has passed 10th from national open school and also Finished CDAC DIT course and Web page designing course.
Initially we were worried if it will be too inconvenient for him to spend time with all of us but his parents made all the arrangements so that he can have a good time. And those six hours were amazing. Kedar was overjoyed in the company of music lovers and all of us sang so many songs.
Despite his challenges, Kedar has undertaken the work translating books to Braille which helps other people who are visually challenged. It takes him unimaginable amount of effort to do this but he does this and sets an example for all of us. Each book translation costs 15-20K.
If any one of you is interested in sponsoring a book, please let me know. I can make arrangements for your contribution to reach him directly.
More info on Kedar - http://sites.google.com/site/kedarindurkar/my-achievements
Some 2 guys who land up in my office all of a sudden – “Mukesh sir! We have come to remove sun film from your car”
Who the hell are you? And I am not Mukesh. But how did you figure out that I want to get rid of my sun film.
These are not the guys who have MBA degrees and use complex business intelligence tools to figure out customer intentions. Usual blokes with good common sense.
More conversation and I did not try to clarify that I am not Mukesh. That is what the security guard on ground floor told. With the amount of driving I do I am sure I will pass as Mukesh’s driver. They asked for Rs 600 to remove the sun film. I bargained and got them to 500. So these guys figured out an opportunity created by our dearest Supreme Court. They are going around in HSR Layout area and seeing cars parked on the road side which have sun film. They approach the office and check if they can remove it and they are all set with their sun film removal kit.
So in 45 mins I had my car back without the sun film. Bright and shining glasses with 100% transparency. The guys were experts in the job of removing the sun film. I was so happy with the service that I gave them Rs 600 instead of Rs 500 I bargained for. They thanked and also told me that they are into wood work business and they can also paint houses or offices.
So here is what I learn from them in such a short time span
- Timing is important. I mean there was no point in doing this sun film business a month back or may be even after a month.
- George Bush once said – If we can’t bring them to justice, we will take the justice to them. Same holds true in business. Either get your customer to your business or get your business to customers.
- Grab the initiative. Lot of us are so hesitant to talk about our business. If we have a value proposition, open your mouth. Bole to bindaas ho ke.
- Cross sell your products. Only in movies girls fall for guys or vice versa because of just one thing. Same holds true in business also. Try to sell diverse things to your customers after figuring out co-relations between products.
OK, enough gyan for the day. Get back to work folks.
Cross posted from my company blog – http://blog.zopnow.com/2012/02/10/36-24-36/
कभी एक शब्द का मुझे
हर घड़ी इंतेज़ार रहता है
कभी एक शब्द के लिए
मेरा दिल बेकरार रहता है
कभी एक शब्द कैसे पल भर मैं
सारे रिश्ते बिखेर देता है
कभी एक शब्द हम को यादों के
जंगल मैं घेर लेता है
कभी एक शब्द दिल के दरिया मैं
कोई आस घोल जाता है
कभी एक शब्द जाने कितने दरवाज़े
एक घड़ी मैं खोल जाता है
उसी एक शब्द को कहे
कोई आज मुझ से भी
उसी एक शब्द का मुझे
हर घड़ी इंतेज़ार रहता है
So first of all let us define what is the objective of education. Some chase God and others chase wealth and lot many chase things which even they do not know. Let me define what I think everybody tries to chase or at least should try to chase. I define that as happiness. All of us chase it in various ways but then the problem is that once we reach a goal which makes us happy, we get greedy and want to have more of it and new goals appear on the horizon. But then lot of psychologists define happiness or sadness as aberrations from the situation you get used to and human beings have been a mostly adaptive species which cuts us both ways. We have the capability to be happy or sad in any situation based on our attitudes and thoughts. Another aspect of happiness is it’s sustainability and it’s existence without causing unhappiness to others. So here I arrive at my primary hypothesis, the goal of integrated education has to be to create individuals who are capable of keeping themselves happy most of the time without making others unhappy. I am sure lot of people might have a different opinion but let us proceed with this hypothesis.
And now comes the main question. How can we teach kids to be happy? Aren’t kids already happy?
Mark Twain once famously said - Never let formal education get in the way of your learning.
But what if we could plan our education in a way that learning is also encouraged. Our education system does cover lot of academic information and also teaches a lot of ways to earn a living. BTW it is important to for education to cover how to earn a living. Empty stomachs do not cause much happiness.
So the first thing is to teach how to apply brain in ambiguous scenarios. Life unfortunately or may be fortunately does not unfold in predictable manner. You can not prepare kids for all possible scenarios. You need to provide a thought framework which enables them to handle ambiguity. Unfortunately classrooms are not always the best places to learn. I remember a prof in IITK who used to ask students to observe things in campus and suggest better solution. You need to throw ambiguity to kids at an early stage. The framework develops not by finding a solution but also by thinking through what possible solutions can be.
Citizenship/Social Responsibility/Community Living has to be a taught subject. I was talking to a friend recently who is Income Tax commissioner and he was talking about why paying taxes has to be taught to kids. Let us accept it. Our mind becomes more rigid as we grow old. We need to learn few things early. Kids need to understand rights and responsibilities as early as possible.
Values over habits has been my favorite subject. Let us face it. The influences are many and you as a mentor, parent or teacher have a limited time to influence kids. You are competing with SRK, Sachin and Katrina Kaif here. Don’t waste your time on habits which most of us do. Figure out the values you want the kids to pick up. There is no universal framework on what the right value system is but focus on values over habits. A girl/boy friend will ensure that your kid learns to take bath and brush teeth daily but knowing that telling truth is important is not something you can learn all of a sudden at a later age.
Another important thing is to make kids understand how we can coexist with others. And it is not just about people, it is also about environment and other life forms. There have to be enough tasks which involve team work and dependency on others. Being socially aware is key to understanding the dynamics of relationships and I am sure that all of us will agree that good relationships are one of the biggest source of happiness for most of us.
As they say that Philosophy is the mother of all sciences. I think it has to be taught at a early stage. It enables an individual to raise fundamental questions about our belief systems and think through in a more elaborate manner. This again forms a great foundation for kids to develop an approach which enables them to experience things beyond senses.
Health and Nutrition are also things which often get neglected in our education system. It does not matter much when you are young but it matters a lot at a later stage. It is not possible for us to become health conscious all of a sudden. If these concepts are explained at an early age, kids will find it easier to adopt healthy lifestyles.
BTW do you think did I digress from the main topic of happiness? Actually no. Few popular ways of achieving happiness are
- Achieving something – A good value system ensures you choose the right thing to achieve and ability to handle ambiguity builds you the right skills to achieve it
- Relationship – understanding dependencies from an early age always helps you handle things better here.
- Handle Adversity – I feel a philosophical orientation always helps in analyzing adversities in a better way. It enables you to look at things in a disconnected way and new solutions emerge when you do that.
- Good communities – Responsible citizens create better communities and good communities create happier people.
- Good Health is an essential aspect of happiness. Teaching it early helps.
Comments welcome.