Every crisis is an opportunity. That is the way to look at life. If we can find ways and means to convert every crisis or challenge in our lives into an opportunity, we will be better of. It is better to look at life as a chain of possibilities rather than a string of problems.

The lockout in India and many countries around the world is a necessary condition for us to fight a virus, which we do not know much about. While many of us are cursing the government and everyone around us for the situation, some of us are converting this crisis into an opportunity.

Some may ask how do we convert every crisis into an opportunity ? Let me illustrate my point with a few examples – both from my personal life and work life so that we look at possibilities rather than challenges. Let me start with the personal life first.

While we have all the time in the world, some of us are getting bored with it. Some others are wondering what to do. I decided that I will use this time to do housekeeping in our entire house. Every nook and corner of the house got cleaned. All our documents were put in place and arranged systematically. Our clothes were sorted, junk identified and disposed and surplus things segregated to be donated to people who need them more than us.

Similarly at the workplace, we have an opportunity to look at how do we reduce the cost of our operations. We can form teams to innovate and give ideas to cut process delays, make improvements in the way we have been doing things. We can challenge existing systems and processes and get rid of all waste in the system.

In most organisations, material cost accounts to 70% of total cost. How do we reduce this cost ? Even in labour cost, we can think innovative and reduce the same by trimming salaries rather than manpower. For eg. we can reduce senior management salaries by 20%, middle management by 10% and even workmen by 5% in consultation with the unions. This may reduce our overall cost by 10% without having to make people lose jobs. This requires proactive discussions with the unions and preparing employees to face the challenge together. The CEO and senior management could lead this effort by voluntarily taking a 20% cut so that they lead by example.

I am willing to volunteer to partner with any organisation to share ideas and see through till implementation for optimising their costs, especially employee costs without manpower reduction. My services will be honorary and if you achieve your goals, you can contribute to my cause of “preventing blindness amongst children by donating directly to my partner organisation.”

We are in a war like situation in India and most of the countries of the world. We in India are lucky that we are a democratic state. We have an elected government at the centre and in the states. We need to trust our leaders and believe they have more information and wisdom than we have in dealing with this crisis. In a war, we need to trust our leader and follow her or him like a true follower. Followership is more important than leadership in any crisis situation. Many of us are using social media to spread rumours and negativity. This will not help us in any way. Let us spread positivity and salute the front line warriors who are sacrificing their lives to save us.

Each of us can contribute in our little ways by staying at home and be self disciplined. We can support the poor daily wagers by helping them with food, shelter or any other means. Even if each of us take care of the servants who work with us and other low paid employees in our community or workplace, we would be doing our bit to get over this crisis.

As in the photo above, our security guards are supporting us in distributing newspapers, watering the garden, collecting wet waste, housekeeping and many other errands, which is much beyond their job descriptions. This will make them multi-skilled, which will help them in their career too and earn more than they otherwise would.

Let us be happy and proud that India is much better off than most nations in the world. The good news is that the governments at the centre and the states are working together to fight this crisis. We as individuals and communities need to support the government in fighting this war against the virus together.

Let us contribute our little bit every day.

S Ramesh Shankar

14th April 2020

Every one of us has the freedom to choose our religion in a democratic state. We may be Hindus, Christians, Sikhs, Muslims or Buddhists. In my view, all religions lead us to the same destination. The routes could be different but the goal post is the same. Each religion teaches you multiple ways of attaining your goal. At every stage of life, you realise that you have to improve a lot to reach your ultimate station in life.

Am I religious ? I am not sure. My definitions of religion is ” To be a better human being, every day I live, enjoying myself and making life enjoyable for everyone around me in whatever ways I can.” I am a Hindu and proud to be so. Hinduism is one of the most liberal religions in the world. It gives you alternative paths and allows you to choose what best suits you. It neither imposes any rituals on you nor directs your behaviour or actions. The same may be true for most modern religions of the world.

However, I do believe that “Religion” has become a business in the world today. The causes for this belief could be life style and stress of people today. We are constantly competing in the world and want the best of everything around us with minimum of efforts. We are in a rat race and never satisfied with what we have. Our greed invariably exceeds our need. This leads to unavoidable stress and then we fall prey to religious leaders who exploit this emotional vacuum in us.

We tread on a dangerous path out of our own choice. We want to conquer the world before anyone else. We are willing to sacrifice our health and life to achieve our goals. Sometimes, we may be willing to compromise on our values to realise our dreams. This leads to degeneration of life and also may impact our health. It not only makes us physically vulnerable but emotionally too.

While technology today could help us detect and cure physical illness, it may not be able to cure our emotional strain. We then turn to our family and friends for emotional support. When friends and family do not have the time or patience , we go to the religious gurus. They could be from any religion you follow. All religious gurus tend to exploit the situation we are in and make this their business.

We are willing to spend a lot of money to get rid of this emotional trauma. We do not realise that we are responsible for putting ourselves in this situation. We cannot blame the world or our family, friends or colleagues for putting ourselves in this quandary. Then we approach a religious guru. Most religious leaders today are running religion like a business. They look at how to exploit your weakness into monetary gain for themselves.

These are the actions, which makes me lose respect for the religious leaders. I sometimes feel bad even visiting temples or other religious places because the leaders create an atmosphere of greed in these spiritual places. Anything and everything can be monetised. You can have a darshan of God faster by paying more money. We forget that all humans are equal in front of God. We are happy to flaunt our money to get closer access to God or their forms.

If I reflect, I would like to blame myself for this state of affairs. We, as individuals have through our actions made religion a business. Our greed is exceeding our need and thus leading to religious exploitation. We start believing that we can busy anything and everything in life through money. The day we realise that money cannot buy everything in life and least so happiness, we may be better off.

As in the photo above, we have to restore the sanctity of religion by our own actions in every day life.

It is time to reflect ? What do you think ?

S Ramesh Shankar

Learning is a life long journey. I was sitting with my grandson, who is 7 years old. He asked me if I knew how to use Instagram on my phone. I said yes. He asked me if I could take a photo of his with the whiskers of a rabbit. I told him that I did know how to do it. He readily agreed to teach me.

He advised me to open the app on my phone. He then showed me as to how change the setting on the phone and then take a selfie as in the photo above. I was quite stunned. It was great learning to use a mobile app from a 7 year old.

As children, we are inquisitive and curious. We learn continually by observing others and things around us. When I asked him as to how did he learn it – he said that he saw my son doing the same on his phone. As we grow up in life, we possibly forget to be curious. Our inquisitiveness is buried within us. We feel shy to ask questions and thereby our learning retards.

It is time to look back and learn from childhood. If we cannot turn the clock back, we can observe young kids around us and learn from them. Another incident made me realise how simple observation can be of great learning value. My grand son was at home for his school vacation. We were playing with each other. Then he wanted to download a few games on my iPad.

I gave him my iPad and enquired which games he would like download. He glanced through the app and shortlisted a few. When I was about to download, he told not to do so. He informed me that every app has a preview. We should preview the game and only if it is interesting, we should download the app. It would otherwise be waste of money. I could not believe that a young kid of 7 years could be so knowledgable on how to carefully download game apps from the internet without wasting money.

To be honest I was not aware of it. This helps learn an important lesson in life. We all are good learners as kids. We observer everything around us and learn. We do not hesitate to ask questions when in doubt. As we grow up our observations skills fades away and hence may be our learning ability also diminishes. We are scared of asking questions when we do not know so as to hide our ignorance rather than learn from others who know.

It is time to reflect. It is time rekindle the child in us. It is time ask questions of curiosity from everyone around us including kids. It is never too late to change. It is also never too late to unlearn, learn and relearn.

Time to restart is today ?

S Ramesh Shankar