It was broken when you bought it!

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“Ahsu, your new walkman, its broken from the side, you just bought it yesterday” cried my uncle, who had borrowed my cousin’s walkman to listen to a song, as we drove down to Nepal. “No Dad, it was broken when we bought it”, said Ashu. My cousin, Ashu, at seventeen, had done what most people his age usually do, put the blame on someone else. I call it the ‘I didn’t do it syndrome’, and frankly I don’t think its age related. Most people suffer from it at some point of time in their lives.

If I was to transport you to my childhood, back in the tea gardens, when my mother’s expensive crockery went missing, she usually created havoc in the house, and hours later the servants came out with a chipped cup or saucer or quarter plate. “Who has done this?” That was a regular question, my mother asked. The standard reply was “Memsaab, it was broken when you bought it”. Did shopkeepers sell broken pieces? Were customers naïve enough to buy broken pieces? Or were the servants smart?

I often wondered if our servants believed in the Zen philosophy, which says you can either be obsessively careful with expensive crockery, and live in fear that you’ll drop it, or someone will chip it, or an earthquake will come and it will fall out of the cabinet, and burden yourself, or you can imagine that it is already brokenbecause it is going to break someday. Then, every time you drink from the cup will be a pleasure.

So definitely the cup was already broken when i bought it? So also was the rest of the bone china in the house!

The law they say can be applied to personal relationships, job, success and money. If you give up feeling that you need things, you can appreciate them more fully.

This is a total contradiction to the “laws of attraction”, which says if you think of something positive and want it with all your heart, the universe conspires to give it to you. Negative thoughts send your gifts farther away from you. So by thinking that the teacup is already broken are you actually speeding up its breakage?

If what they made was to be considered broken by everyone at large, would Versace, Lenox, Faberege, Baccarat or some of our other brands make crockery at all, I wonder. Would our retailers sell crockery under the label of ‘damaged/ broken’ in place of ‘breakable/ handle with care’?

Going by this philosophy, Obama’s message in place of ‘Yes We Can’ should have been, ‘we have already lost, and no we cant, lets see what we can enjoy henceforth’. In place of ‘Audacity of Hope’, we would have a book on ‘Caution of Despair’.

What about relationships? Would people get married thinking they are already divorced. What would happen to the holy vows of matrimony? Maybe they would read, ‘we are already separated, so lets see what we can gain from each other and how long we can enjoy the company.’

How about the bones in our body? Are all 206 of them broken from the time we are born? Maybe then, all of us should come with labels that say ‘manufacturing defect’.

While most people all over the world fret over broken crockery, lets also think about the man who made a masterpiece with it, a man called Nekchand, and his masterpiece, the Rock Garden in Chandigarh.

Why do we resort to “it was broken when you bought it”? Is it merely because it is easier to put the blame on someone else? Or is it because we feel that taking onus for our reactions will leave us in a compromised state, or have us face consequences? Or is it merely because the line sounds like music to the ears, “It was broken when you bought it!”

A Cinderella Story Retold

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DOES ONE SIZE REALLY FIT ALL ?

My shoe size is 6, and today I belong to the rather long list of women with a 6 shoe size. For a teenager, it was rather large, and I often wondered, ‘What if Cinderella had a shoe size 6?’ The result would’ve been the courtiers coming back to report, “Prince eighteen women and one man fit into the shoe, you can choose whom you want to marry, and the man is rather sweet looking”.

Talking about sizes, at a 5”9’ I have a rather petite figure, and a few years ago I remember going to Weekender Kids to pick up tee-shirts for myself. If we were all similar, we would come in regular sizes, 5 X 4 or 6 X 5, which would mean 5 feet tall and 4 feet wide for a woman, 6 feet tall and 5 feet wide for a man. Now, wouldn’t that be boring. Just imagine, no more Mr. India or Miss World contests, no more getting that designer to specially design a dress for you (everything would be your size), and no more spending endless hours on yoga/aerobics or exercise.

Men are often advised, ‘Women are attracted by a little bit of mystery and unpredictability’, and this more than often ends up in a man trying to be mysterious, unpredictable, but turning out to be outright weird. There goes the woman of your dreams, running out through the front door. Gentlemen, find what works for you, and your lady love. Every person is different. There is no ‘one shoe fits all situation’ in real life. Necessity, they say, is the mother of invention, but if we had everything that fit, would we strive to attain something better. While there is no point in re-inventing the wheel, have you ever tried running a truck on cycle tyres? Would you attach a Maruti 800 tyre to your BMW?

To me, a ‘one shoe fits all’ situation is like looking for a travel blog, and finding job placements, health, motivation, morbidity, share market, news, all stuffed on the same page. Just imagine the time you would waste in scanning through unnecessary stuff only because you decided to take a short trip.

“What is the secret of your success?” How many times have we looked at a successful person and wondered? What if I told you the secret? What if I told you the magic that makes it work? People who say there are rules to success are only partially correct. While there may be guidelines to success, there is absolutely no sure shot method to prove than any method is fool proof. Also, if plan A works for a particular person, there is no reason to believe that plan B can’t work for you. For all you know, you may need a plan Z.

Then there are the other extremes, ‘Suresh is such a loser, he has a dream job, a dream wife and a dream car, yet he sulks all day’. My friend, for all you know Suresh may have a tax problem, or stress that kills him. Maybe your dreams are his nightmares, when he coughs up for maintenance. They may be your dreams, but he may dream differently. The key lies in knowing what you want and achieving to find it, and you do not need Cinderella’s Fairy God Mother.

A former world contestant was advised before a championship, ‘nobody wears jeans to a contest, you have to be in a business suit.’ He wore the jeans, and he won. Every person is brought up in different circumstances, we come from different backgrounds and we have different talents. So if Emma achieved an Award, and you achieved the same Award, you and Emma may be two completely different people with two completely different contest levels, and completely different weaknesses and strengths. We often hear people say, ‘practice makes a man perfect’. In my case, too much of practice wears me out. How much is too much? You will know.

The magic lies in creating your own magical formula. The secret is in finding what works for you. Whether you are a size 6 or a size 4 or a size 11, whether you have flat feet, or arched ones, whether you prefer heels, or flats, you are unique and precious. Find that unique shoe that fits you.

The Living Legacy

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I could see my father’s image pop out of the scroll as the lawyer was reading my father’s will, “Last will and testament of me, Prakash Arora,”…. …and after that everything went blah, blah-blah, blah-blah. The interesting part came when I heard “ To my darling daughter Ritu, I leave, a boat.” I always dreamt of cruising the world in a small luxury boat, maybe it would even have a casino, I thought. There was the Sea Princess of your dreams and now I was going to get it ……but the next words the lawyer said ensured that my Sea Princess sank ,“Ah yes, Miss Arora”, she said, “here’s your boat.” A paper boat!

My mind reeled back to a five year old Ritu, who had rushed indoors at pitter-patter, the first drops of rain on the window-sill. My father had looked at me and said, “come Sweety, let me teach you how to make a paper boat”, and with his deft fingers he had carefully and cleverly folded the paper to form a boat, hypnotic and beautiful, and father and daughter had stepped out in the rain, and set the boat adrift in the rushing muddy water, and watched it toss from door to door. What my father was doing then, was creating a legacy. One that would help me enjoy the monsoon, the rain water and paper boats forever.

Kabir has rightly said, ‘Kadli seep bhujang much, swati ek gun teen’. The first drop of rain, that falls into a Banana tree forms camphor, into an oyster forms a pearl, and into a serpent’s mouth forms venom. Each one of us is as unique and precious as the first drop of rain. The legacy we leave behind, camphor, pearl or venom is our choice.

Margaret Thatcher got the legacy of ‘commitment to service’, from her father, a shopkeeper. A dyslexic child grew up to become General George Patton because his father left him ‘courage to conquer’.

We can all become immortal by leaving living legacies, not only for our children, but for every life we touch. A famous Chinese proverb says, ‘the faintest ink is more lasting than the strongest memory’. ‘Letters from a father to a daughter’ made Pandit Nehru immortal not only for Indira Gandhi, but also for the world at large. Dr.Ralph C. Smedley’s living legacy is a not-for-profit organization called Toastmasters International.

Everything including life is temporary. It melts away like ice. Leave living legacies that will last beyond the mists of time. Create timeless treasures.

I am reminded of the famous ghazal of Jagjit Singh, ‘Woh kagaz ki kashti Woh baarish ka paani’ Take my wealth, fame and youth, but return to me my childhood monsoon, the rain water and my paper boat.

My paper boat sails on. A living legacy that reminds me of the time that I spent with my father that has made me the person I am today. I can see my father no more, but he is still with me, as a living presence.

How would you like to be remembered, what will your paper boat be?

Hinglish comes of age!

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‘Arcot Easwaran has claimed that when the whole world is switching over to English, Mr. Vajpayee has shown disrespect to it by addressing the U.N. in Hindi. Leaders of many countries such as China, Japan, Russia, France, Germany and Spain address the international forums in their own national language. Do they all disrespect English by doing so?’

Oct 1, 2003, The Hindu.

What’s this obsession amongst us that we have to use English to sound cool or sound “sophisticated”? Why do we have such prejudices against people who cannot communicate effectively in English and have to resort to Hindi to get their point across? If our mother tongue is Hindi, we should use it to communicate not just at home but at other places as well.

The introduction of English to the Indian linguistic landscape opened with the dawn of the British colonial era. English began to develop roots in Indian education. A blueprint for India’s educational policy was laid down in Lord Macaulay’s minutes (Feb. 2, 1835). Macaulay stated the mission for the British Raj, to create “a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals and intellect.”

I sometimes wonder what language Indians will be speaking 50 years on. Looking beyond the horizon of current events, two trends look likely to dominate our linguistic future. One, a rapid spread of English across India, including the aspiring lower middle-classes; the second – the unprecedented popularity of Hindi, even in the South, thanks to blockbuster Hindi movies and the universal appeal of Hindi TV programs like Indian Idol and Kaun Banega Crorepati.

The brain of an average Indian is divided into two parts, the first part is obsessed with marks and the second is obsessed with English. We form impressions of people on how well they speak English, and if a person talks in an American accent then he or she is the cream of the crop.

I’m not denying it, I fall under the same category, but what I wonder it is so. Hindi is our national language and much more difficult than English any day (that is why I stopped studying it). Then, why do we just classify people who communicate in Hindi equivalent to people who are illiterate? It’s the most embarrassing thing in the world and I guess this happens only in India!

At the intersection of these two trends is the fashionable collision of two languages. Hinglish, the aspirational language of the lower and middle middle-classes and the fashionable language of drawing rooms of the upper and upper middle-classes. Similar attempts in the past were considered downmarket, contemptuously put down by snobbish brown sahibs. This time, it’s in. some examples: ‘Life ho to aise’, ‘Josh machine’, and ‘Dil mange more’. Radio has found the same adoring response to ‘Hello hi, aaye hai!'

The PAT

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When was the last time someone patted your back? When was the last time you gave someone a pat on the back? If you’re reading this article give yourself a PAT on the back. Come to think of it we are overjoyed when someone gives us a PAT on the back, and yet when our good work goes unnoticed, or the result isn’t as we expected, we are depressed. That is when we really need to give ourselves a PAT on our own backs.

I am going to tell you a formula that will help you win in every situation. Give yourself a P-A-T. P stands for Positivity, A for Action and T for Tenacity.

P – Positivity: Be positive (and I don’t mean your blood group). Have an open mind and a positive attitude and half your battle is won. When Edison’s lab burned down with all his experiments (over 10000 of them), he said, “Good, all my mistakes are burnt, now I can start afresh.”

A – Action: No work would ever be done if we just stood there waiting for something to happen. The Gita clearly says, “Do your karma, do not worry about the fruit.” You need to act to make things happen.

T – Tenacity: Be tenacious, be perseverant. From a man who could not read out a report, it was tenacity that carried M.K.Gandhi to become the greatest communicator of Indian History, and preach non-violence to the world.

You just gave the project your best shot and your boss failed to notice, so what? You had a brilliant idea of tackling the problem, but they weren’t interested in listening to you, so what? You deserved that promotion and someone else got it, so what?

Some will, some won’t, so what and who next? Give yourself a PAT. Be positive, do something about it, and try till you succeed. You will end up being a better person, with a better job and a better life.

The PAT on the back factor was huge in America recently. People saw an opportunity not just to feel proud of their country, but also to feel proud of themselves. Barack Obama won. His formula was simple too. “PAT”. He oozed positivity, acted as was expected of him, and was perseverant. It was no surprise that Obama won.

Recently, sharing a cup of coffee with a friend at Barista, I noticed a bulletin board, which proudly displayed the “Employee of the month”. I looked behind the counter to see the smiling face, with a star on his shoulder, efficiently whipping the cream, pouring the coffee, and handling the billing. Clearly, many organizations have realized that giving out cash bonuses, awards, recognitions can result in less absenteeism, higher morale and more productivity.

When a junior or colleague does well, do give him a PAT on the back. Your son or daughter has done well in the class, pat his/her back. Your team just lost the cricket match, give your teammates a PAT with a “well-tried”. Your best friend just lost someone dear to him, give him the “I’m here for you” PAT. Give somebody a PAT on the back, and make a difference in someone’s life. Best of all, give yourself a PAT on the back for being the wonderful person that you are.

What Have You Got to Lose?

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“No, it can’t be done,” said people to a man named Thomas, as he kept on failing at his experiment. Had he given up, today we would be still living in the dark. He failed for a thousand times until finally he made a bulb that could glow. And what did our hero Thomas Alva Edison have to say? He said he had learned 1000 ways that did not work until he found the right technique.

Often we do not try for fear of losing, but even if we lose, aren’t we winning? Winning experience, winning friends, and winning sympathy.

“Oh you were good !” “Hard luck, but there is always a next time.” “The judges were partial, I liked what you said.”

These are the words I have so often heard, naturally, after losing contests. And what has it got me… plenty of friends.

I was a teenager, when I first stepped in for a state-level speaking contest, with shaking feet and sweaty palms, and I asked my mentor and sounding board, “Do you think I should participate, uncle?”

His answer was simple, “What have you got to lose?” and that was that. Sure enough I lost the contest, well actually came a second, but lost the first place all the same. But I had won!

Overnight, I was the queen of the college with my picture in the papers, acknowledgements and smiles from passers-by, and a lot of applause wherever I went. I had gained popularity and I had gained friends. But the best part of all, I had gained experience. After that there was no looking back. Needless to say, I had gained confidence. The winning streak continues still.

People usually ask me, “What if we do not win?”

My answer is simple. You guessed it, “What have you got to lose?”

If you think you are losing your face or reputation by losing a contest, admit the fact that you were not good enough in the first place. The problem is that we are looking at our loss so subjectively that we do not look at anything else. Not even at what we have gained due to the loss. We keep staring at the closed door instead of looking at the new windows that are opening for us.

“How do you do it?” people often ask me. Well it’s as simple as 1, 2, 3.

1. Think laterally. 2. Think without boundaries and limitations. 3. Think of what you are going to gain.

We have to find what works for us, and what we can improve about ourselves. The secret behind converting a loss into a win is what we gain out of the experience.

A famous doha reads: “Jin dhoondha tin pahiya, gehre paani paithi Main bhapura duban dara, raha kinare baithi.”

Which means, “Those who strive, conquer by jumping into the waters, and I, scared of drowning, sit at the shore empty-handed.”

Every day is a new beginning. Go on, give yourself another chance. In life there are no guarantees. Do we stop picking roses because a thorn could prick us? Do we stop walking because we might fall? Do we stop swimming, because we might drown? Do we stop driving, for fear of having an accident? Do we stop trying just for fear of failing?

Then why do we stop believing in ourselves? Why do we stop taking more chances? Why do we stop participating in contests or experimenting in life?

Find the technique that works for you. What have you got to lose?

The power of words Do you suffer from the “read my mind” syndrome?

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My brother Raj had a huge crush on this girl ever since his adolescent years. Now in his late thirties, he still blushes at the mention of her name. Today, she has 2 kids, and is happily married…to someone else. Why? He did not ask her to marry him, he never told her he loved her, or had a crush on her, and he never said she mattered.

“Ask and you shall receive. Seek and you shall find. Knock and the door shall be opened unto you.” These words of Christ express a natural law; mainly, the world responds to those who ask. Why then are we afraid to ask, to use those words.

During my school days, I used to dread competition, “what if I lose?” The habit continued, till about a year ago, when I did an inspirational speech. The speech was delivered, and I could almost see the winner’s trophy, when they announced, and winner is…XYZ. They didn’t announce my name. Sure enough, I had lost, or so I thought then.

A little while later an old acquaintance walked up to me. He put an arm around me and said, “Ritu, was what you said about your father having a near death experience, true?”

I confirmed it was. “You see, I have a special child, and I face a challenging situation at home every day, your speech fills me with hope.” I could see his eyes were moist.

A couple of days later, a friend called up, “Ritu, that speech of yours, the one about your father, well it inspired me so much, I hope some day I shall be able to inspire people like that.”

Another acquaintance had quoted the same speech for his icebreaker.

Then it happened! I realized that if I said something and someone made it a part of his/her life, I had touched a life. I hadn’t lost that contest. I had discovered something that worked. WORDS.

My favorite song by Boyzone runs, “It’s only words, and words are all I have…to take your heart away.”

It is indeed a pity to hear someone say, “If she really loved me, she would know how I feel.” Or worse, “We have so many arguments, maybe we aren’t meant for each other.”

My advice for such couples is that your better/bitter half is not a mind reader. Humans are capable of expressing through words, and experiencing infinite emotions. If you are arguing, congratulations, you are on way to getting to know the other person through the art of expression. Expecting someone to read your mind, is like putting a newspaper out in the sun and hoping it will burn. Use words as a magnifying glass, to direct the sun rays, and the paper will burn. Still suffering from the “read my mind” syndrome? My remedy is, marry a mind-reader, or better still date a brain scan.

My father used to say, “Words are like arrows, once out of the mouth, they can never be taken back, one needs to be careful with what one says!” Another powerful saying goes, “be careful, what you ask for may come true” What if you never asked for anything, you would never get what you could have got had you asked for it. You would never know what you missed. As a child I loved a pair of pink shoes that I saw once at a store. Every birthday, I would secretly hope that my parents or someone would gift me those shoes. Every birthday, you’ve guessed it, I didn’t get those shoes…because I didn’t ask for them. Last year, Christmas time I walked into the store with my mother, looked at the shoes and spoke out loud, “Ma, may I have these pink shoes, please?” Today, the shoes sit in my shoe-rack as a gift from mom.

Percy Ross has aid, “The world is full of genies waiting to grant your wishes.” You need to use those words, to marry the girl of your dreams, to influence someone, to get your emotions across to the person you love, or to get the shoes that you want. To learn what you can get you need to ask for what you want.

Often, when a person is gone, we give long eulogies, but how many of us bother to tell a person how wonderful he/she is while he is still with us. Use those magical words… be it “I love you” or “I am sorry” or “Will you be mine” or “This is what I meant” or “May I have this” or “You mean the world to me” or “You matter” or “You made a difference to my life”.

Use the power of words. Keep talking. Keep writing. Keep influencing!