Mind it! - The world seems to work against me - 20 October 2014

Mind it! a diary of vagrant journeys within the mind.

THE WORLD SEEMS TO WORK AGAINST ME.

There comes a time in our busy work schedules and demanding family lives that we begin to recognise that this world seems to determine the manner in which we should dedicate our time. We may have the best time planners, the best handheld palmtops, or the best dedicated software to manage our time, but day after day after day, we realise that more than five tasks out of ten are not completed. We make our lists, prioritise and partition our tasks and yet, we are nowhere near the end.

Every aspect of this fast changing world seems to work against us. The bestest time-saving enterprise of the world, i.e. the zero-paper e-mail facility, is supposed to be saving our times, changing our work behavior and yet, we seem to drown in it. I know of some friends who work with 6-10 email services, have 3-4 synonymous email ids, maintain a checklist of email passwords and finally, are never able to get their work completed.

It is certainly exciting to meet up with friends who were lost forever, 20-30-40 years since we were separated at school, neighborhood communities and college and professional lives. Facebook and the earlier much talked about Orkut were magical inventions. We discovered our long lost friends, got to know about who married whom, who was working where and developed internet networks anew, or established net jealousies. New colloquialisms came about, and we realised that envy about the progress of a friend from long ago, or a relative with whom we were not in touch with, is defined as “internet jealousy”. This trait leads one to lose oneself within social networking sites, stalk friends and relatives and destroy work or family hours and damage bonds that actually exist.

The latest quagmire of quicksand with spiraling whirlpools is the attraction to online shopping for books, furniture, jewellery and most welcome, even groceries. Today, I see office colleagues maintain shopping lists, comparative pricing between different online shopping sites, pocket diaries of passwords and log-in IDs, and a watch for sales, deals and offers. There was a time, once not so long ago, when 4-5 office colleagues would meet over Tea or moonlight to watch a movie in the theater nearby. That time has long gone and forever so. Colleagues do meet up nowadays, but they discuss comparative costs on online shopping and try to figure out how and when to pick up ‘good deals’.

The world is progressing and is taking us along with it. We are a daily partner in the progress. There is a lot of fun and joy and pleasure in being able to network with those 4-5 friends who never spoke to you while at school or college, and those 2-3 super intelligent college mates who looked away from you because they would never want to be caught talking to a nerd. So, we are happy chatting away with them and making sure that they understand the progress that you have made, vis-a-vis their life journey that does not seem to have got them anywhere.

Similarly, there is extreme joy in picking up that very cheap air ticket or that 75% discount in that one single book that you were delaying purchase of over the past two years. The “purchase one and get two free” offer is so obviously tempting that you wonder why did people go and spend hours walking around in a market or a mall. The easy-to-manage e-life is so good and so very perfect that it makes the history of the world and the history of human civilization look absolutely absurd and devoid of any possible initiative.

The inherent danger is never visible. The threat from this greatly facilitative world is in the impact on our time and the manner in which it destroys all work schedules and one never gets to recognize it. There is a very simple test. Make a list of ten ‘to-do’ items on a daily basis. Try to avoid repeating them over consecutive days. So, in like fifteen days, you have about 150 ‘to-do’ items to work on. How many do you actually achieve? Keep a watch and move the ones that were not completed, as ‘carry overs’ to the next day. I am guessing that in ten days, one would have more than ten ‘carry overs’ than the ten ‘to-do’ items. That is when you need to write down for yourself, that all your sophisticated attempts at time management are absolutely destroyed with the amount of time that you devote to e-surfing, e-networking and e-purchases.

So, how does one defeat this nefarious strategy of the world to continually distract you, direct your attention to matters of the world that do not really form any part of your work or family lives? You keep purchasing stuff that you do not need and you travel to different parts of the world for the only reason that the tickets were a ‘steal’, and you really did not need to go there. You purchase that great looking furniture only because they said that it was 70% off. But in doing all this, you were drowned in e-surfing for 3-4 hours of your 8-hour work day. It takes about a complete hour to de-addict and get back to regular work in a speedy tempo. That means that 50% of a work day is skipped and wished away in complete disdain.

I was recently invited by a family to join them for dinner. The entire family were known to me across three generations and I looked forward to meeting up with them and enjoying a good meal. The lady of the house was a good cook and I knew that she would have worked very spiritedly to plan and place at least a 3-4 course meal on the dinner table. I also looked forward to meeting my friend’s parents as I had known them through my childhood and their conservative and very orthodox approach to life and prevented me and my friend from indulging in any dangerous or unwanted adventures or lean to any bad addictions. My friend’s school and college going daughters would most certainly want to chat away with me, for I was the cool uncle that was so unlike their boring father.

I was in for a major major disappointment. The lady had ordered in for food from a nearby restaurant and she was proud to let me know that it was possible with a new ‘app’ in her new upgraded cellphone. All you had to do was go – ‘click, click, click, click’ – and “my husband ends up paying for the entire dinner, you know!” – She said, in an endless monologue about her cellphone and how she got in an online sale for Mothers Day. Her in-laws, my childhood harangues, were busy with their palmtops, checking up on jokes being circulated on their group ‘app’. To top it up, the old man scolded me for not having a ‘modern cellphone with good apps and Android and all that’, for how else could he share those good jokes with me? And as I guessed, the old man was actually forwarding the jokes from his group to his son, daughter-in-law and granddaughters, who were sitting in the same room, without reading it out loudly to them.

I thought back to my childhood when my grandfather is reported to have tied me up to his great big wooden chair to prevent me from any escape because he wanted to read and recite the entire Ramayana to me, in great detail. And for years later, my parents would retell the stories of how I would jump around like Hanuman in order to escape from being tied up. I shudder in horror of what would have happened if it was done similarly in today’s e-connected world. The photograph would have been forwarded to everyone in Facebook, and there would have been innumerable analyses of how my grandfather was probably torturing a small kid.

Managing time in today’s world requires disciplined strategies to escape getting distracted and to avoid getting drowned in matters that takes us away from work hours or family hours. It may certainly sound very churlish to advice against doing what the entire world seems to be doing, and to avoid staying connected when the rest of the world is doing so. Take some time out and contemplate. How can one evolve and develop better time management measures within such distractive attractions? Establish a plan, determine goals in every major task and break it up into smaller tasks. Create an incentive plan to reward yourself for completing 3-5 tasks every day.

Ask questions about your working methods and about the output that is achieved. Are you satisfied? Was there a goal to the manner in which work schedule was planned for the day? Or, are you one of those persons who is content to watch the dawn and dusk and not worry about the day in between? Mind it!

Earlier published at - http://intellectualpost.com/mind-it-a-diary-of-vagrant-journeys-within-the-mind/

Who would help cremate her mother? - 14 November 2009

Who would help cremate her mother? Who would be the first to help?
Bharat Bhushan - 14 November 2009

This was about six months after my father had passed on and I had helped him go ahead in an electric crematorium. I came to know about a lady colleague of mine, and that she had lost her mother on that day, and that she had gone on to the same crematorium to attend to the rituals. I looked around in my work place, and found that nobody had wanted to participate or attend the funeral. This was surprising because usually my colleagues were very cooperative and concerned. I met up with another colleague, and he was, as I knew, usually very emotional about such stuff, and he agreed to come with me to the crematorium.

We went up to where the lady's mother was placed and I was shocked. There were no mourners there. The lady colleague and her sister, were the only two persons standing under a shade nearby. The deceased had been placed near the place for the funeral pyre, all ready for the rituals. The lady colleague informed me that her brother had gone in search of a helper boy and the priest for the activity. Very politely, I asked her if there were other mourners, and if they had gone to the river to wash their feet, or if they were waiting nearby. She said, in a cool tenor, that there no other mourners. That was such a shock, for I knew that my lady colleague was a very popular person and quite well networked.

I asked my colleague to help me, and our vehicle driver also came forward, knowing fully well that my intentions were to get into the thick of action. We started collecting cow-dung cakes and firewood, and started piling them up near the location. Very soon, the lady's brother came along and brought about a helper who had keys to a shed with some more dry firewood and cow-dung cakes, and we managed to unearth a rickety trolley and brought about much more stuff to ignite. All in all, there were three relatives, three visitors (i.e., us) and a priest and a helper.

We had to untie the deceased, and none of us had a blade or knife to do it. My vehicle driver came to the rescue once again, and helped untie the sashes. The three of us and the brother moved the deceased on to the funeral pyre, and the rituals began. I could not but help go in flashback, to my mother and father, and how I had taken the easy way out by having them go on to the other world in an electric crematorium. And now, the Circle of Life had come about, and had me do seva at the feet of the deceased lady, help and get involved in the ritual, and actually lift her and place her on the pyre-site. I felt very humbled, and I felt that it was something that must have been naturally meant for me to get involved in.

The ashtalingams of the Girivalam at Thiruvannamalai, Tamil Nadu

The eighth is the Esanya Lingam.

I am reminded of the aspect of the eighth Shiva lingam of Tiruvannamalai, and that the aspect is of walking through the funeral pyres before gazing on the diety. He wants you to know that you have nothing in life, in spite of all your achievements, that you have to surrender absolutely, for that is your final destination. And when you meet Lord Shiva at the eighth ashtalingam on the girivalam, you know entirely that you are empty, and you have given away everything, for HIM to bless you.

You know that you are successful in life, and you know that you have been excellently competitive in life. You are a good officer, a good father or mother, a good husband or spouse, a good son or daughter and all that... but, what is the use of any of this if you are not able to attend to the funeral rites of your parents? What is the use of giving in to other circumstances when you cannot mourn your parents? The worst part of karma in life is of cremating your own child. Nothing is worse than that. The next worst part of karma in life is of not cremating your parents, when they pass on.

The achievements of a good family life, of being a good parent and of being successful is all negated when you are left all alone at the cremation of your parents. My grandfather was known to be a good astrologer. So was my father. The two of them would discuss palmistry and astrology in expert tones whenever they would meet up, leaving my uncle and myself listening to them, patiently. Once, my grandfather surprised me completely. He looked at my father's palm and my palm and announced that I would be of no use to my father, and that I would never be of any support to him, and that he would not get my shoulder to lift him when he would pass away, and that I would not be at his funeral. Instead, my uncle's son and my aunt's son, my cousin brothers, and my sister would be there for him.

I heard it in silence and thought to myself, perhaps, he was correct. For, I was a birdwatcher and an intrepid vagabond traveler, and that possibly, I would be away when the moment would come. But, fate and the future had other plans. On that eventual night, I was alongside him, and my cousin brothers and my sister were nowhere. They never made it to the funeral. He passed on in a different city, from which he lived in, and where he was born. Nobody knew him, but on that morning, when the news spread, more than 200 of my colleagues, friends, acquaintances and staff-employees turned up, stood nearby as the rituals were conducted at my residence, and later, they journeyed to the crematorium, and stood by as he was readied for the rituals.

I met each and every one of them and to some I asked as to why did they come. My daughter's college principal and his colleague teachers had come to mourn at the crematorium. They had never met him. They did not know that he was in town. I asked them. The teachers said that their principal had said, "He was my friend's father, and we should be there." That was that. On that day, when my father's brother stood alongside me, he asked me at the crematorium, "Who are all these people? Did they know your father?" And, I was very proud, and smiling, when I said, "They mourn because it is correct to mourn the passing of a friend's father." And, I thought to myself, "They are all here, the more than 200 of them, they are here, to help me defeat the lines of fate on my palms."