Author: S Ramesh Shankar

Born in Trichy, Tamil Nadu, India, I have been brought up in different parts of India. Graduate in chemistry and post graduate in personnel management and industrial relations. Have been a HR practitioner for 38 years in the industry and have experience in working in steel , automobiles, FMCG and engineering industry. Was head of HR for Siemens in South Asia based out of Mumbai till March 2019. Currently founded hrishti - joy forever, a social enterprise to give back to society and work as Chief Joy Officer.

The quaint river

I travelled to Bheemeshwari, the banks of Cauvery just about 2 hours drive from Bangalore . I had arrived here with a friend to do some editing work. We wanted a place, where we can be one with nature and we found this one was ideal.

While the river flows across uninterrupted, the birds spread their joy through music and the clouds revolve around the hills. The animals in the forest are living peacefully as we see the peacocks and deer enjoying the silence of the forest.

While, we as humans can take a lot of credit for all the technological advancement, which mankind has benefited from, we are equally responsible for destroying nature by all our acts and deeds.

When you come to a place like this, you realise that there is so much more to learn from nature. A morning walk before the sun rises in the East lets you hear the sounds of nature in its best form. Then as the river flows down the hills and plains you can hear the crocodile crawling across the river and making his presence felt.

One feels as if the world has come to a halt when you be with nature. There is absolute freedom for man and the animals and birds around him. We neither spoil their daily routine nor they come in your way of work. Today, we realise how much we have moved away from nature.

As I write this blog, I can hear the chirping of the birds almost like an orchestra. While we may not understand the language of the birds and the animals, they are rhythmic and make you listen to them and enjoy their tunes.

On the other hand, they also convey to us how much noise we create around us disturbing their daily joy. The best thing I learnt about nature today is to let them be themselves. We should not disturb their daily lives and they will not interrupt ours.

We sometimes feel as if we are the masters of the universe and have a right to live life our way and not allow plants and animals to live life their way. It is this selfish nature of man, which destroys nature.

If we travel to remote villages and hills, we realise that humans continue to live along with nature and respect them as they are and not as we want them to be. Today we travel away from the city to experience nature in its purest forms.

However, if we are willing to learn from our friends and relatives living in hills and villages, we may realise that if we let them be as they are then there may not be a need for us to travel to discover nature.

Life is no different from nature. If we allow people to live the way they want to be, then they may flourish. If we impose our beliefs and our values on others, then they may dissent and even oppose it. Our duty is just to create a culture of openness and authenticity around us. This may be true in our families , organisations and society at large.

Let’s learn to live and let live.

S Ramesh Shankar

16th March 2023

 

Live life your way

We all grow up with some role models in our lives. We dream and aspire for something and most of the time it is driven by the environment around us. I remember I lived in an army campus and then studied in a school located within an Air force station and this made me dream of being an Army officer and then a pilot.

As you grow up these dreams fade away as fast as they first appear in your lives. Although I still admire and salute the Army and Air Force personnel, I moved on to pursue my career as a HR professional. There is nothing right or wrong about these choices in life.

Similarly, we look up to role models in the family and people around us. Sometimes film personalities or even sportspersons inspire us to be like them. We try to make our hairstyle and even dress sense like the role models we admire in life. This is mostly when are transitioning between adolescence and adulthood.

As we become an adult, we realise that there is huge gap between our real world and the illusory world we were dreaming of. Now we suddenly start feeling our feet on the ground and become clearer on what we want to do in life.

Our ability to define our own life becomes more refined. At this stage, we realise that we are fully capable of living our own lives, our own way. However, some of us continue to live in an imaginary world and still try to ape others and want to be like them always.

There may be nothing wrong in admiring the best in class and learning from them in our lives. However there is a subtle difference between learning from the best and just aping their styles. In my view, it is better to live life our way, rather than try to live the life of others.

Our parents, teachers, friends and relatives may help us mould our lives. However, it is for us to cast our own mould and make ourselves fit into that mould. It is perfectly fine to recast the mould from time to time and refine our priorities in life. Nobody else knows us better than ourselves.

However to live and imitate the life of others is a waste of our own time and resources. If we try to imitate others and try to be like them it may be like an illusion. It may be like a mirage, which will disappear sooner than later in our own lives.

Life is like a marathon. We may need to live life one day at a time. Our goals and priorities in life will change with age and our circumstances. This is perfectly human and we need to accept this reality. It is great to look around and learn from the best. But, it may not be a great idea to imitate others.

If we look around the world in any field, the best of people have defined their own lives. They are not bothered of what the world thinks of them, but they make the world think that may want to be like them.

It may be time to live life our way from today.

S Ramesh Shankar

12th March 2023

Life exists before and after us

All of us feel good that we play a significant role in our own lives. We may have great responsibilities at home and also play a vital role at work or our own business. However, at some stage of life we start believing that the world may not have existed before us and may become extinct after we depart.

This may not be true in reality. At home, we start believing that we are the fulcrum of the family and similarly at the work place we think, everything may come to a stand still the day we are not around. Let us examine this and do a reality check through some real life examples.

Let us examine it from the family perspective. As a parent ( mother or father), we may be thinking that we steer the family and shoulder all responsibilities till some day our children grow up and we realise that they do not need our support to lead their lives independently. Now, they may feel the same and believe that without them the family cannot move forward till they get married and have kids who grow up and make them redundant for their survival and growth in life.

Our work life is no different. Many of us may have grown from junior to middle and and senior levels of management and would have shouldered significant responsibilities. The day we start believing that we are indispensable , our learning and growth may come to a standstill. The likelihood of a downfall from this stage is more than any future growth in life or career.

This phenomenon I have referred is a false imagination of one’s importance in life. While I am not saying that each of us do not have a vital role to play in our own lives and work but if we start believing that life did not exist before us or may not be there after us we are living in a fool’s paradise.

We always have to live with humility and be grounded. Life has been there before us and will prosper after we leave this mortal world. Our ability to make ourselves dispensable in life and work will make us more respected. Our ability to delegate and share responsibilities in the family and the workplace will make us more valuable than the other way around.

The more we share, the more we learn. Our value has to be felt in our absence not by our inability to develop our family or team members but our ability to make them self reliant. Learning is a life long journey. The day we start believing that we have arrived and there is no further need to learn, it could be the beginning of our end.

The best leaders are those who leave when people may ask – “ Why now ?” They will not wait for someone to ask – “ Why not now ?”. It is like the world champion players retire when they are at the peak of performance and not when they may get dropped from the team for lack of performance or leadership.

Let us believe life does not begin or end with us.

S Ramesh Shankar

11th March 2023