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.

Ode to my most adorable aunt

Today I would like to dedicate this blog to my most adorable aunt Ms Jayalakshmi, who died at the age of 98 at Trivandrum. She was a human being par excellence. I have had the privilege of learning from her entire life.

Born to a humble lower middle class family in Trichy, she grew up in Tamil Nadu and Karnataka during her childhood. After marriage she settled in Salem, Tamil Nadu. She moved to Trivandrum with one of her sons after the demise of her spouse and decided to settle there for the rest of her life.

A person who taught us more by her silence than her words. An epitome of patience like her elder brother who was my father who was a reservoir of patience and kind heartedness himself.

She taught us invaluable lessons on life and living and I would like to summarise some key learnings from what I could assimilate over the years :

A. Live life with a smile always : She had gone through multiple crisis in life but I have never seen her cribbing about anything in life and her smile was ever present despite all the troubles in her life.

B. Compassion & kindness : In her lifetime, she may have dealt with many people who were unkind and unfair to her including friends and relatives but her compassion and kindness for the members of her family and all her relatives and friends was unparalleled.

C. Patience : Her patience was unlimited. I have never seen her frown or get angry at any instance or any person. Her ability to absorb the most difficult of life challenges with a smile was worth imitation.

D. Power of silence : Like my father she had this innate and enviable ability to communicate more through her silence than her words. Both the brother and sister taught invaluable lessons in life through their silence. They proved to all of us silence is more powerful than words and we often talk much more than we listen.

E. Listening : Her ability to listen to all generations was worth emulation. She had the ability to be affectionate and actively listened and acknowledged through her smiles and her eyes. This made us realise as to how important it is to listen than to speak.

F. Self dependant : I have seen her doing all her chores by herself almost till the age of ninety. She cooked her own food, washed her own clothes and even cleaned her own space. She never depended on anyone to take care of her even at old age.

G.Live for others : She sacrificed her life for the welfare of her family and relatives. She gave everything she could without expecting anything in return. A life dedicated to the well being of others is expression of love unconditionally and true service to God.

I can write a book on my aunt and what I could learn from her. But today, I want to pay my last respects to her by promising to myself that I will try my best to practise what she preached through her actions rather her words.

May her soul rest in peace. Om Shanti.

S Ramesh Shankar

10th September 2022

How do you define success in life ?

Success in life could mean different things to different people and that is absolutely fine. It is like beauty could be defined differently by everyone based on their own perceptions in life. While some of us may think that creating wealth is success, there could be others who define success as helping as many people in their lives.

Each one of us look at the world through our own lenses and define success in our own ways. In my view, an individual has a right to define or redefine success the way they want to as long as they do not decry the definition of success by others.

The word success is defined by us based on our own life experiences and perceptions of the world. We are born in a family which is the basic social unit of society. Our family moulds us in a particular way and we form our idea of success.

Then as we grow up, go to school and college, our teachers help us in refining our concept of success. This further gets reimagined when we enter our career as a professional or an entrepreneur. Our journey in life adds to this definition and we keep re-inventing ourselves as we grow up.

Our friends and colleagues also influence our thoughts, deeds and actions. Certain life events impact our world view and we keep reflecting on “ what success and happiness means to us in life ?”

As I said earlier, there can be no right or wrong answers to this fundamental question of life. Each of us have a right to look at it the way we want to and keep changing our definition as we experience life over the years.

The only caution could be that we should not look at others from our world view of success. A sportsperson may look at an Olympic medal as their ultimate success in life. A career professional may want become a CEO. On the other hand, a social worker may be interested in saving human lives in every possible way.

We cannot say one is more successful than the other. If we look at so many ordinary women and men, who have been conferred with national and international awards, we realise that success can and will mean different things to different people.

I would go one step further. Let us define and redefine success with every learning in our lives. It is evolutionary and has to be so. There can never be a beginning or an end to success. It is like excellence. Success is a moving target in life and it can best be defined by the individual only. The moment others try to define success for an individual, it becomes redundant for that individual.

Let us learn to experience life in our own way and define success the way we want to see the world. It is like some people may like to see the sun rise, while some others may enjoy the sun set. Neither of this group is right or wrong.

If you do not like to see sun rise or sun set but want to enjoy only the moon, it is your choice and you have the absolute right to ignore the sun and only watch the moon. Success is indeed ephemeral and it is up to us to make it tangible the way we would want it to be.

As in the photo above, success could mean “capturing the right moment” for a professional photographer.

We need to learn to live life in absolute and not in relativity. As long we want to compete with everyone around us and live life vying with others, success will always elude us.

Let us evolve success in life our own way on every single day in our lives.

S Ramesh Shankar

9th August 2022

Life is beyond brands

We all grow up in our childhood from different socio-economic backgrounds. Values are instilled in us by our parents, family and society around us. We grow up aspiring to do better in our lives than what our parents achieved through their grit and determination.

We realise that life is not a cake walk. As we finish our schooling and enter college, we experience the competitiveness of life. As we graduate out of college, we get clearer on what we want to do in life. Today, we have the opportunities to pursue what we want and aspire for. The world is an open playground for us.

We dream big and as we begin our career we realise that life is not an easy drive. We dream of acquiring all the best material things in the world, which we only dreamt of in our childhood. However, as we move on we realise that we cannot get everything we want in life the moment we dream of it.

Today everything in life is signified by a brand. We end up living and breathing brands. Aspiring from small brands to big brands is a natural evolution of human aspirations. However, in the process we sometimes may forget that we need to first build our own life brand before we acquire other brands.

We need to realise that brands we possess do not reflect our personality. Nobody in life remembers which suit you wore or which hand bag you carried for a meeting. What people remember is how you treated them and what is the lasting impressions you left in their mind as a good human being.

Human values are beyond brands. We need to realise that we have to first build our brand by living human values of gratitude, humility, respect and trust. This may be a difficult lesson to learn in life. It may be easier to acquire materialistic brands in life but more challenging to live human values.

At a young age, we all believe that the best brands we possess reflects our personality. We tend to believe that people admire us for the car we drive, the suits we wear or the watch we possess. This may be an illusory belief. It is natural and all of us have gone through this stage in life. However, the earlier we realise that human values are more valuable in building our brand in life than all the best materialistic brands we possess, it is better for us.

Life is a journey of continual learning. We all make mistakes and learn from them. This learning journey is no different. There may be nothing wrong to aspire for the best brands in life the day we have earned them through our own sweat and blood. But it is important to realise that the best brands we possess do not reflect our true personality as a person.

As in the photo above, this young girl is looking pretty in a simple white dress, which may not even be branded.  So is life.  You are not valued by the brands you wear or possess in life but the values you live and the way you treat people around you.

Let us learn to first build our own unique brand in life by living our values and then we may realise that all other brands in life fade away in the background.

Life is learning journey.

S Ramesh Shankar

23rd June 2021