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.

Does beauty lie in perfection ?

I have always wondered if beauty lies in perfection or otherwise ? I have seen that the truth may lie somewhere in between. I live in a home today which is built by a builder whose architects play around with the beauty in the imperfections of nature.

On the other hand, I used to live in a flat where the architects believed that beauty lies in perfection. In that flat everything will be perfect to the core and almost like a mirror image of each other.

While I admired both the houses and the builders, I always wondered whether beauty lies in perfection or imperfection ? This may be true in life too. I have always been a reasonably organised person in my personal and professional life.

All my things at home will be in its place and all things will have a place in my home. Similarly my office space will be reasonably organised so that you can retrieve anything in reasonable time.

I have met people in my life who aim for perfection as the means and the others who consider it an end. There are some who get highly disturbed even if a small pin is not kept in its rightful place. On the other hand, there are others who thrive in chaos.

Another good example could be our planning process. I love to travel to places. So, while I travel I plan reasonably well in advance, book my tickets, hotels etc. Even if I am travelling by car, I am clear on my route and the place where I plan to stay. However, it may be fun sometimes to tread on a journey where the destination or the route is unknown.

There are people who fear the unknown and there are others who fear the known. So the truth in life may lie in between the two extremes. A teacher who teaches you up to the last alphabet may do a good job but a teacher who enables you to explore the last alphabet may also kindle the curiosity in you.

I am not sure whether perfection adds to beauty or it destroys ? If we plan perfectly life is beautiful but imperfection makes life adventurous. So life is not black and white. It is grey most of the times. We need to learn to aim for perfection but should be willing to deal with imperfection and enjoy the journey instead of cribbing about it.

The beauty of the craft in the photo above may be in the imperfection more than the perfection.

If you buy a hand woven garment most manufacturers will tell you that no two garments will be similar. The hand craft of a weaver is reflected in the garment and hence each garment could be different but may be beautiful. On the other hand, machine made garments may all be perfect to design and no dissimilarities between two of them and this may make it boring.

So, we have to learn to live with imperfections to have a perfectly happy life.

S Ramesh Shankar

18th October 2019

Live in “Absolute” not in “Relativity”

I have always wondered – “What makes people happy ?”. After a lot of thought and reflection, I have evolved a simple hypothesis to be happy in life. Many of us spend our life time living everyday by comparing ourselves with people around us. It even starts in our childhood. Our parents tend to compare us with other children in academics and other activities and thereby rate our performance. Our teachers do the same and hence our society judges us by comparison only.

We grow up that way and tend to live life by comparison. We start with our student days and look at how have we done vis a vis our siblings or friends or relatives. We then worry why our career is slower than our friends and relatives. We lose our sleep if our neighbour gets a new car and we cannot afford one.

Life goes on this way. At work, life is no different. Our performance is assessed in relation to our peers. Even performance management systems are designed to assess performance in relative terms. So we end up as a point of reference in a bell curve. Some doing better than us and some worse.

In my view, the foundation of unhappiness is our living by comparisons. The day we realise that if we live in an “Absolute” way without comparing ourselves with anyone around us, life would be fun and we would discover the formula for joy. This may not be easy as it is ingrained in all of us to live in “relativity”. It starts with family, friends, relatives and society at large. Even countries do not prosper because they live and die with comparisons.

Let us look at why Bhutan is the happiest country in the world although they may not be the wealthiest. This is because the rulers as well the countrymen live in “absolute” terms. The people of Bhutan consider happiness as the means to the end as well the end in itself. They do not compare their GDP or wealth or development with other countries in any other way.

So, it is time for us to sit back and think about it. If we start living for ourselves and our happiness we will not worry about what others do or have. We will be happy with what we have and not die for what others have and we don’t. We need to be content with what we have. This does not mean we should not aspire for higher things in life. Of course we should but not because others have it but because we can work towards achieving it for ourselves.

Every parent should look at the innate talent of each child and let her or him prosper, grow and realise their potential. Every manager should look at each employee as a talent and provide the necessary environment for him or her to grow based on their potential and not their performance in relation to other colleagues.

I am convinced that if I live life on my own terms, there will be less and less reasons to be unhappy. I have tried to be content with what I have right from the day I started my career. With the active support of my partner and my kids, I have been happy most of the time in life. So, this hypothesis is not based on any management theory but personal belief and practise.

We can best learn from children of how to enjoy life in absolute rather than suffer in relativity by comparisons, as in the photo above.

You have a right to have a alternate opinion and I have a right to differ with you.

Let us exchange our views on this issue so that together we make everyone happier every day.

Together we can.

S Ramesh Shankar

10th August 2019

Inspired by nature

Today I got up in the morning listening to the chirping of birds. It was an apt reminder to me to be with nature. I live in a home which is surrounded by nature. Yet I have not yet realised the beauty of nature.

Then I fed the fish and found that although there are seven fishes in my aquarium they do not fight with each other when I put in their morning feed. They take their quota and peacefully leave it for the others to have their food. We need to learn to live and let live like the fish.

Then it was the street cat visiting us. As my wife fed her milk. She not only had it herself but shared with her sibling. The lesson learnt was that we need to share our resources with people around us. It is possible that we are bestowed with more resources than we need. It is time to share.

Everything in nature is inspiring. We can learn all our lessons in life just by quietly observing nature. The self sufficiency of trees or the kindness or the generosity of animals around us. Each of them have something to share and it is up to us to observe and learn.

I looked at the birds chirping and waking me up from my bed. Unlike the alarm jarring in my ears and my pouncing on it so that I can have a short snooze again, the birds inspired me to get up. It reminded me that my sleep was enough and it was time for me to enjoy the beauty of the morning and get on with the chores of the day.

Today with all the technology in the world assisting us in every walk of life, we are drifting away from nature. We can realise this from morning to night. Unlike the birds waking us up, today it is AI in the form of Alexa or google chrome that  wakes us up. Unlike the morning stroll in the forest or amongst the trees, today it is the tread mill where we aimlessly jog just to prove to ourselves that we are exercising.

Every aspect of life has become unnatural. I am a great fan of technology but instead of enabling us to be better human beings it has possibly made us lazier and less natural. This possibly has an impact on our behaviour as well.

Unlike the fish or the cats which were willing to share with others and were selfless, we are self centred most of the time. We are oblivious of our surroundings and our neighbours. In cities, we do not know most of our neighbours most of the time unless there is a crisis.

In my view all this is possibly because we have moved away from nature. It is time to get back to nature. It is time to live naturally. The movements to recycle things in life is a positive step. The segregation of organic and inorganic waste is also a good step. We need to reduce and possibly eliminate the inorganic waste in our lives. I remember as a child we recycled waste within our homes as all of it was organic.

Let us resolve to be in touch with nature and get inspired by it as my friend is seen in the photo above. Let us lead by example so that our future generations will lead a better quality of life.

S Ramesh Shankar

2nd June 2019