Musings...

Wow what a fabulous run it was!! Amazing people be it the organisation (RFL) (click on www.thefuller life .com to know more), its team, volunteers, doctors and their team, the partners and of course the runners. Everything was great. As mentioned, I got into RFL office where there was a buzz of activity; all of them busy collecting things for the trip to Hesserghatta (outskirts of bangalore - takes about 2 hours to reach) and in the midst of that handing over (with lots of patience ) to the runners; explaining the runners about the route, helping them collect correct T shirt (lovely T shirt - designed by Farah one of the runners - she runs very fast). They took down all things needed for the run and we left in a tempo (about 16 of us) -a bit crowded but who cares? The group consisted of a couple from chennai, one guy from mumbai, another from hyderabad and other runners from Bangalore - siva, bhaskar, partha, hari, etc. We chatted about running and other runners and where all we ran

I went to my sister's (Didi) house that is close to JP Nagar; I had left from lalbaug gardens by rickshaw and it was literally an expedition to reach her house. Once we reached the nearest landmark i think it was Dayasagar institute, the road to her place was more of muddy type with lots of up and downs. I must have rung her up upteen times but she and attimber (brother in law) took it in good spirit. We lost our way and luckily found some people who were returning in bikes; these gentlemen showed us the way to reach the road leading to her house. We retraced and i saw my sister who got into the rickshaw and led me to her home. The rickshaw guy was nice and took the agreed amount even though he had to go to electronic city which was quite far from this place. (Didi's). We then went to her home and both she and attimber were very hospitable even though it was 11.30 pm and past their usual bedtime. She made hot milk for me and then i went upstairs to sleep. She had this huge r

I read about this globalisation on this blog http://churumuri.wordpress.com/ - he quotes an article by former US attorney general Ramsey Clark in The Hindu : * i havent read the full article but what is quoted initially had struck me some time back about another creeping syndrome that we all have got affected by. Earlier we had a physical conquerors like the british, french, spanish persons. Now we are getting conquered (and dont even realise) by american organisations (mainly USA), the british, japanese etc. When we want to eat we think of mcdonalds, the KFC, etc. for perfume, it is the french ones- similar with other stuff such as mutual funds (mostly americans and japanese), lingo use of words such as last mile, inc - we normally use kilometres and ltd company (not Inc which is used by americans), our food of course has changed in many ways to dry food - pizzas, sandwich, burger, hot dogs, etc. - lunch ordered during meetings are invariably dry food- i mean we cannot have work

Today I though i would do a bit of walk (about 40 minutes) after the long run of yesterday - I participated in Ultra marathon (which i will mention some other time). For a change the walk was without any intention except having to reach home in about 40 minutes and even that wasnt strictly sacrosanct. So i took this road from home to lokhandwala jogging track by the short cut ( the longer one is by the main road which has high traffic- not a good idea to walk). So I walk on this road peacefully.. no, one guy has to walk by and hit me (and forgetting about apologising, he didnt realise he hit me) and walked to his destination. I think we have become completely inured (indifferent is equally true but inured is better as it is linked to violence) to people, things, etc. that we don't realise that we a violating the world, the people and things in it or even ourself. The good part immediately followed unexpectedly; a BEST gently stopped behind me without even a single horn; amazing :

Recently I went to Bangalore and the three days were really wonderful- I sort of lived in a dream world - when i came back to Bombay the dream continued for some more days..:) Left for Bangalore this Friday (14th December, 07) by Indian airlines - the trip to airport was by rickshaw as usual - I was disturbed (was I?) by the sight of a man at the roadside - he was asleep (or dead?) and no one including me (consoling myself i was getting late) did anything to help- is this how city life is like - completely focussed on oneself to the exclusion of everyone except perhaps one's love one? Went to the bookshop and bought a book by RM Lala (amazing guy who wrote about JRD Tata) the airline left in time (incidentally i was the last passenger) and landed Bangalore in time - no delay as is frequent these days . I went to the office and finished my work; the guys in the office were very helpful and took me for lunch and also helped in direction to where i was to go; i also had a nice cup of

Marie Curie is reported to have said, "Be less curious about people and more curious about ideas." Just the way I think too; a bit of clarification or the way i feel about this idea. It is so fascinating to be curious about ideas as that gives us a lot of learning and yes, one can be curious about how people behave, what motivates them- of course what people do matters but more in a way of matching what they say and what they do!

Today after a long time I used public transport and boy was it fun! I had to go to Churchgate and since I was to reach by 5 pm and was getting late, I ventured to use the public transport. Initially to station, I used a rickshaw and on reaching Andheri station, I stood in a queue (not very long), got my ticket and hopped into a fast train. I was almost feeling like this is something new (like someone using train for first time almost:)) and wonder of wonders got a seat at Bandra - of course today being Saturday and the reverse direction, i could comfortably sit down. The crowd seemed the usual set of some Gujjus playing cards, a father daughter sitting together wanting to get down at Dadar; the only major difference was the ubiquitous mobile handset with many people; of course unlike the hoity toity, these people didnt pretend to get calls! As is usual, there are these usual hawkers in the train; what was unusual this time was this time there was a reasonably sophisticated gentlemen wh

I recently went to Hyderabad on office work (conference) - most of the time I was in the Hotel since it was a conference. Interesting time - (the organisors arranged for ghazal nite! more of that later); Left by Jet lite (formerly Sahara) - managed to upgrade myself to business class - simply went and sat there when i saw some others sitting there and some seats were empty - in any case, the boarding card mentioned free seating :) The sad part is jet & kingfisher seem to have too many customers - when i enquired at bombay airport at the jet counter, he reacted as if i had come from some small village. Both the airlines seem to have stopped issuing customer feedback form- kingfisher went to the extent of saying that magazines are meant only for business class and they can't provide me magazine; Anyhow waited as usual at the airport - these days one spends more time at the airport as compared to the flight time - great business opportunity for enterprising people - have some en

I was watching a spider running away in the bathroom since water was coming near it; I then wondered, how does one organism learn from another? Is it like the story (or experiment) of 100 monkeys where 100 monkey learns and the same automatically spreads to others? Like are today's generation smart/have wide exposure due to reason of critical mass? or is it something else altogether? Are city animals smarter than jungle animals? or is just that organisms develop learning based on a combination of environment, heredity and own skills? Or is it nothing other than an intelligent power be it God or consciousness or Power (to avoid controversies) permeates everything which learns from circumstance or events and becomes the intelligence it is? Or does the Power becomes the way it is to match the requirement of the environment? Would Gandhi have become a leader he was had he never returned to India? Would Einstein have formulated the theory of relativity if he was encouraged in the class?

Just imagine if we never had the concept of age? and lets further imagine that we didn't break our lives into ages? Of course the flip side is we won't able to celebrate birthdays but we can always get around it by celebrating anytime any day? Anyhow this thought came up when one of my nieces and I were chatting and she had gone to a party and someone raised this issue feeling old. But do think over... do we actually feel old? Doesn't the thought occur only when someone says it? Don't many of us have the feeling of always wanting to be young? There are only two issues to the thought of age - firstly that physically we are not able to do certain things and secondly when society looks askance if an old person gets married to a young person saying "think of your age before marrying, he/she is young enough to be your daughter/son" this again comes out of the multiple barriers/categorisation that we keep putting - which paradoxically comes out of our need to s

"The voyage of discovery is not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes. " so says Marcel Proust a French writer. Today i was watching an interesting episode from a serial "one life to love" - NDTV - They come with very good themes on living our lives fully and one of the persons who really lived such a life so it is said is Leonardo da Vinci who wrote or practiced so many aspects of the world be it art or even medicine. Our lives have become so fast that we have no attention to the process and set our sights only on goal. This is so be it in office where only goal matters; when we eat, we are busy watching TV or rushing to finish, when we travel to our workplace or home, the attention is to reach not the process; Have we lost the ability to enjoy beauty of the present? Imagine eating a luscious mango - can we enjoy its fragrance, its flavour, its color, its taste, its soft feeling and the sound of our teeth biting into its soft flesh? In short can we pay

Bono lead singer of U2 as quoted in Rolling Stone "I used to think that one day I'll be able to resolve the different drives I have in different directions, the tensions between the different people I am. Now I realise that is who I am. I do feel that I'm getting closer to the song in my head. I wasn't looking for grace. But luckily grace was looking for me." When I read this, I immediately felt in kinship with him; all my life i feel like doing multiple and different things, I have worked on multiple functions, studied in many schools; I have even dabled in many learnings like learning to play guitar and key board, to dance, to act, learn video editing. Not only that, I also want to be in multiple sports, do multiple functions, listen to many kind of music, read all sorts of books, There are so many things I want to do in this world; perhaps explore live in many facets. Unlike Bono, I still don't know what or where i am getting closer to but like him I am st

Today was a nice engaging day; Skyz and lokhandwala resident association had planned a 5 and 3 km competition the money which went towards community development. There were so many participants - guessed about 400 plus. It was sponsored by some corporates including Centurion Bank of Punjab. The event was starred with some celebs including Uday and Sujata Pawar (badminton couple), Karan (tennis) and bollywood/tellywood of course - can you have an event without bollywood being present? Rakhi sawant and Abhishek (not Bachan) and Negi of the chakde fame. The flag was waved off at about 8.02 and the event started. We ran from lokhandwala near joggers park, went down main lokhandwala road , turned towards the circle, went towards four bangalows and retuned via indian oil nagar. It was inspiring to see so many people run including senior citizens; i was particularly inspired to see people of 40 plus running; i managed to cross the second one but the first one kept his distance and was much be

The last two days were quite nice in terms of my marathon practice. The first was on this Saturday (6th Oct, 07); I woke up (had to literally push myself as i am primarily a night person) and left home(Lokhandwala Mhada, Andheri Bombay) at 5.40 AM; and glory of glories, I reached CCI (near Marine Lines, Bombay) at 6.15 AM (just 35 minutes). It was a lovely drive even with some traffic around; I stopped at Bandra as there was a crowd of muslim devotees engaged in their morning prayer who were disturbed my some mentally challenged woman ( i think); I passed via Shivaji park and it was wonderful to see lots of people on the road engaged busily in walking or running. I drove further to marine drive where it was equally lovely to see the sea, the sun about to rise and it was almose daylight and the groups of many persons running or walking energetically on the road adjacent to the sea. I waited for Dr Rajat from Bangalore with who I was to run this Saturday; He had already started with his

When one thinks of invention, our mind immediately goes to something complex like a scientist sitting in a lab researching on a new medicine or an IT professional planning on a new product that business requires. But what about the millions of small inventions that are being created daily on a minute to minute basis by lacs and crores of people across the world. What about the common idli ( a south indian fast food speciality) that can be created in minutes or the concept of marriage, the concept of sister and brothers that seem so natural that we take it for granted! Or using washing machine to make lassi, the many inventions such as languages, creating of NGO (though why they are called non governmental organisations instead of organisations for social causes)? Is urdu nothing but some language shown in a mirror and used to write as a secret code? Was Rakhi ( the indian practise of a sister tying rakhi on a brother's wrist) created to protect the sister by the brother or a ploy b

Is there any difference between invention and discovery? Invention is suppose to be something new that one has created and discovery is uncovering something that exists right? In what way is invention of electric bulb different from Einstein formulating theory of relativity or someone uncovering (not discovering) an obscure temple in a remote cornet of the world or perhaps under the sea? Is discovery supposed to be of things that are existing, known to people or entities that are close to where they live and not published? Isnt it arrogance to say that Columbus discovered America when there were native "Red Indians" (again arrongance to call them Red Indians) living there for many years? And inventions? How did Einstein formulate the theory of relativity or Newton to formulate gravity? Didnt they suddenly get a flash (which meant that some existing ideas flashed into their mind) and then they formulated it? And Edison, didnt he get an idea of bulb (externally if I may say so)

Running & keeping fit apart from eating fresh food are some of the few pursuits that I have consistently pursued for the last ten years. Running probably needs a lot more physical and mental stamina since one battles with oneself and there is no competitor to beat. It is not easy to get someone to run with you unless you are in a locality where there are lots of runners. Things are changing in India, at least it is more published and I noticed that there are quite a few runners at Shivaji Park ( Dadar , Bombay) and Marine Drive. Bangalore is very active and i receive lots of information on weekly runs. I started quite small about 5 years back (running that is )when I ran my first long distance (about 4 kms ); that gave me the courage (?) to run 7 kms the next year in the annual Stanchart marathon event. Not looking back, I attempted the next jump to 21 kms and have been running consistently for the last three years. Running marathon needs lots of patience, mental toughness an

Climb training for corporate challenge CHANDREYEE CHATTERJEE Malli Mastan Babu atop Mount Kilimanjaro After scaling the seven highest peaks in seven continents in record time, IIT and IIM alumnus Malli Mastan Babu has taken the first step towards using treks and expeditions to offer leadership training to corporate executives. The 33-year-old recently led an expedition to Uhuru (Mount Kilimanjaro), the highest peak in

Hearts beat for India, five head honchos unfurl Tricolour on Mt Kilimanjaro Pune-based management trainer conceived the exercise that combined patriotism with management lessons Sunanda Mehta Pune, August 21: If Kavita Gadgil, founder of Abhijeet Air Safety Foundation, unfurled a replica of the first tricolour hoisted by freedom fighter Madame Bhikaiji Cama in Stuttgart University, Germany this Independence Day to commemorate 60 years of Independence, five head honchos from Pune, Mumbai, Bangalore and Nellore climbed up the snow-covered Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania to do the same on August 15. The feat was no ordinary achievement. For, barring one, none of the climbers were professional mountaineers for whom the only peaks till now were the kinds that displayed their company’s performance chart. Yet, in Tanzania they battled icy winds and inhospitable terrain as a part of Reach for the Sky expedition that aimed at reaching Kilimanjaro, rated

This is a true story of a team of five that successfully attained summit of Mt. Kilimanjaro on the historic day of 15 th August, a special date for India; and that too against odds that would have not been easy for professional mountaineers. Look at the odds against this small group of not so young mountaineers in their late 40s except for the team leader, the able and professional mountaineer Malli Mastan Babu who has the distinction of being the fasters 7 seven summiter in the world http://www.1stindian7summits.com/default.html. The team had no prior mountaineering experience It chose the second toughest of the three main routes to reach the summit The average fitness of the team was very low To compound that the team for the first time joined on the 8 th August to begin the trek It further decided to stopover by sleeping in a crator that is not normally done by most people (in fact many people descending after the summit mentioned that the spot was very cold