I hail from a lower middle class family and have seen the trials and tribulations of life. As I grew up in a government employee’s sole income , we did not have the luxuries of life at home. No TV, fridge or car at home and we had to sleep on mats and on the floor. This financial condition of our family did not deter our spirits nor prevented us from getting the best education possible and the values, which have always kept us happy and contented in life.

After my education, when I started my career in a public sector undertaking far away from my home town, my income was minimal but the opportunities to learn were unlimited. It laid the foundation for my career and also gave me the knowledge, skills and attitude to craft my own career .

I then moved to private sector after almost a decade and a half and each of the organisations I worked for took me to different parts of the country and the world. Each city taught me life lessons in plenty and each country I visited widened my perspective.

My family supported all my decisions in my life. This made my children live and study across different cities in the country. They never cribbed or sulked. On the contrary, I would say that every movement made them more adaptable to change. Today I am confident that they will survive and thrive in every situation they face in life, where ever they live and work.

Marriage as an institution that brought balance to my life. My spouse has been my life long partner sharing my joy and sorrow with equal measure. She has gone through all the tests of life along with me without winking an eye lid and has enabled me to achieve whatever little I could in my life. I owe to her for what I have accomplished in my life and career so far.

Family as an institution has been the foundation of my life. Learning the basic values from my parents, I moved on to set up my own nuclear family. Having lost both my parents at a very young age, it compelled me to take responsibilities and moulded me into a mature person to deal with life in all its dimensions.

My children have equally supported my growth and development in my career. I have experienced the dislocation in education and its impact on your academics on your education. They have sportingly moved from city to city along with us without any complaints or any drop in their performance. Hats off to both my daughter and my son.

God has been kind to me and my family throughout my life. I knew the value of money at a very early stage of life. After thirty eight years of corporate life, when I retired I can say that I am fully self reliant on my financial well being today. However, I have been happy right through my life. I have got all that I wanted in my life and may be it is time to give back in equal measure now.

I have always believed that this world is such a beautiful place to live. Why do many of us spend most of our time crying about what we do not have in this world ? On the other hand, will life not be happier and joyous for us if we celebrate all that we have in the world. Many of us are so privileged that we have a place to live in, good food to eat and a happy family supported by friends and relatives.

Life is beautiful like the neelakurunji flowers blooming once in twelve years in the Coorg hills as in the photo above.

I feel it is time to change our attitude to life and living. It is time to celebrate every day of our lives for all that we have and not regret for some things we may not have. It is time to realise how privileged we are as compared to millions of other people, who struggle to get two square meals a day.

If we celebrate life and live happily, we create a beautiful world around us and realise how wonderful the world is. The day to start celebrating life and the world is today and the time to start is now.

S Ramesh Shankar

3rd February 2020

Most of us are born preachers. We love to give advice even before we are asked. This habit has been inherited from generations. I do not know whether it is in our genes or not but it is prevalent around the world in human beings.

One of the interesting insights I got from “Vidhurshastra”, a Hindu relic is “Never give advice to an adult, unless asked for”. I read it only a few years back and since then have tried my best to follow. Although, I must admit that I fail once in a while and go ahead giving free unsolicited advice.

I feel less annoyed at Preachers per se. The category of people who preach before they practise is the one I find amusing. I can narrate quite a few interesting anecdotes from my life where I have experienced this.

The first instance was I went for routine annual medical check up. I was found overweight by a few kgs for my age. The physician who examined me looked at my reports and enquired if I exercise everyday. I told her that I walk and do yoga every day. She said without blinking her eye that I need to exercise more to lose weight to maintain good health. She was technically right. But coming from a person who was atleast ten kgs overweight for her age was very amusing to me.

I have seen many parents advising their kids to refrain from smoking and drinking although they feel quite normal to smoke or drink daily in their lives. These preachers not only put off their followers but end up as hollow and nobody will be willing to listen to them. Their kids may have to listen to them till they grow into adolescents and then they would rebel as they see a wide gap between what they say and what they do.

I have seen social activists fighting for great social causes like anti dowry, domestic violence against women and treating servants humanly etc. However, if you peek into their own personal lives, we find they take dowry , consider domestic violence normal in their own homes and treat their servants inhumanly.

Children will always follow what you do rather than what you say. Its good to practise before you preach. If you wear a mask always, kids need not be told to do so. They will do it on their own as in the photo above.

This reminds of the next category of such phoney human beings. They are the so called religious leaders. They are present in almost all the religions. They preach abstinence and dignity of women and practise the other way. They exploit the emotional vulnerability of women and men and misuse their position of significance in society.

I do not want anyone to get me wrong. I am not against anyone giving advice to anyone. However, I feel it is unfair to give advise on anything unless we follow it before we give suggestions to others. If I do not follow something, I have no moral authority to give advise on the same to anyone – irrespective of whether someone seeks it or not.

My mantra in life is simple. Practise before you Preach.

 

S Ramesh Shankar

24th Jan 2020

I am sure most of us would have made multiple new year resolutions to lose weight and become fit. A friend interestingly told me that “mobility leads to physical fitness, and calmness leads to mental fitness”. I was awe struck by this sentence. I reflected on it and realised that there is so much insight in this sentence.

Life is a fine balance between being physically fit and mentally fit. If you need to be physically fit, you need to keep moving your body. You need to exercise and control your diet so that you are able to maintain your weight and maintain your physique.

On the other hand, if you want peace of mind and be mentally fit, you need to ensure that your mind does not wander and is calm at times. Our mind wanders faster than the speed of light and most of the time we are thinking and not listening to others. We respond before someone completes a sentence. All this leads to stress and thereby to many mental disorders like depression etc.

One may think if you are physically fit, you are healthy. It may not be true. Similarly, if you are mentally calm (since you have your mind under your control) does not necessarily make you healthy as you may be obese and may have poor physical fitness.

All of us go through ups and downs in life. We have high and low days. We have our successes and failures. On the other hand all of us want to be fit – both physically and mentally. While most of us resolve to improve our physical fitness, many of us are not able maintain to our mental fitness.

We tend to blame the environment, the work stresses, the climate change and all external factors for our state of being. We forget that both physical and mental fitness is well within our control. Nobody has prevented me to have a daily physical exercise routine. Nobody has asked me to take all the stress to my head and further pass it on to my colleagues and family members.

So, we need to ask the questions to ourselves. If we honestly do, we may find the answers too. What do I need to be physically fit every day ? How do I manage my mental wellness ? Am I the only guy or girl facing stress in life ?

Thus, if we are honest to ourselves and make up our mind to challenge ourselves every single day of our life, we will change. We need to move our bodies to be physically fit and keep our mind calm to be mentally fit.

If you silently admire the gushing water in a falls, you can experience calmness although water is in motion as in the photo above.

Let us choose an exercise or a game of our choice and be self disciplined to follow a regimen every single day of our lives. We need to commit to ourselves that we will not allow any stress in our lives to hamper our well being. We will neither allow stress to impact us nor will we pass it on to others in our network in the family or the organisation.

Life is after all a fine balance between action and calmness. Let’s try.

S Ramesh Shankar

9th July 2019