Unmuddlings!!

An artist’s life is the perfect canvas to get closer to moksha. The line came to me spontaneously as I closed my eyes to chart the life of my dearest wife. In the current era of single currency [that is money, unlike the days of barter system], priceless   elevated experiences or personal upliftment cannot but get undervalued. In a world where a software engineer in his twenties earns for his company or self- three hundred dollars per day for writing say less than 300 hundred lines of code, whereas a dancer who has to practice for 300 hundred hours for a 30 minutes performance is probably expected to perform free – the commitment to become a devoted dancer can only be felt and seen to be understood. More so for an ambitious person like Lara with a Masters from one of the leading universities of the world. The decision to take up dancing, over an impactful and luxurious corporate career, says it all. Lara’s stunning beauty and poise as a dancer which juxtapose to mesmerize, a...

Over the past decade or so, I have had the most amazing journey of knowing myself through my instincts. I have had a lifetime opportunity to bare in front of my eyes the myriad instincts that engulf me: elevating instincts, healthy instincts, harmless instincts, mediocre instincts and harmful instincts. Some of them I overuse [read abuse], others I consciously try to avoid. Needless to say, there are many others deeply embedded in my psyche of which I am yet unaware. But I am delighted when I look back upon the path - rather imperfectly treaded – and relish the multitude trials and tribulations I have confronted myself with joyously and with reducing shame. Persevering to identify and ward off the mediocre instincts – many of them a conditionings of an imagined physiological affliction and many others a conditioning of a foolish, misplaced fear – has been fun. The most difficult part of the process of accepting something. Once accepted  it will require due commitment to self-acc...

The last time when you won a close game didn’t you know the results much before you have actually won? Was it your hunch which helped you guess the victory in advance? Or was it your victorious feeling which attracted victory to you. Well, that is principle what Rhonda Byrne is promoting through the amazing book ‘The Secret’ and similar other books that she has written. At a scientific plane, what she says is that frequency we carry and create are the frequencies we attract to ourselves from the universe. This follows the principle of ‘resonance’ and is easy to understand. As a corollary, if we carry a particular type of feelings [which are but vibrations with a particular frequency] all the time, then we attract more of the same to us. If we have good feelings – as an outcome of positive images – we get more of positive outcomes. If we fear bad things to happen to us and carry their bad feelings, then we are more likely to have more opportunity to generate such bad feelings within ...

I have just about started to read ‘The Argumentative Indian’ by the only one Dr. Amartya Sen. The book is making incredibly sense. Written very objectively. It has already helped me (and promises to help me more as I read further) broaden my horizons and erase a few blind nooks of . As if every word has a meaning – and was meant to be there. But still there is this disconnect – the Hinduvta digs – which I have already encountered few times in the first 50 pages. Enough, to want get a little ‘argumentative’ about. Hinduvta bashing, at best with anecdotal evidence but normally with inconsistent analysis based upon inadequate or contrived research, by the pseudo intellectuals ruling and influencing Indian media is a fashionable pastime. But I was a bit surprised by the same tone and [according to me] the same one-sided logic coming from the rarest of gems who is apparently extremely objective while treating almost every other theme. I am not abashed to say that I have a soft corner for t...

I have always tried to zero in on the necessary and maybe also sufficient conditions to be successful. Successful both in terms of personal benchmarks and also in terms of universal paradigms of being healthy, happy and productive. For many years I have had many hypothesis. Some those were junked quickly, and some others dumped after being held dearer for a longer period. Very recently, I seem to have further fine tuned my understanding and like is most issues – settled for the simplified and almost clichéd message. Despite the obviousness of the message – I wanted to write about it again. Because it is probably missed by many, if not most. Certainly during long patches by yours truly. The reason for writing, is not to try to further justify the message. But to introspect aloud as to how many of us can miss them less often. Clarity of Purpose & Path – howsoever easy it seems, it is a wily animal – as I have found. It is very easy to point out when friend or a family member or a col...

We regularly hear of scary stories about aircrafts. Ditto with Indian Railways. In the last few months we are witnessing massive protests regarding widespread corruption in the Indian democratic system. What is our reaction to such situations? Do we ban air travel, stop plying of trains, or invite some other country / person to run the country. No way. Drastic steps are never the solution to a problem. That’s the essence and relevance to the headline. Many well-meaning stakeholders of the engineering education in the state say that the e-counseling is the prime cause and should be done away with. The solution lies in strengthening the loop holes, rather than throwing the baby along with the bath tub. The e-counseling system was mooted in the first place about 5 years earlier to make it simpler for the students – who used to travel from different places to Bhubaneswar to get admissions in engineering colleges. In the process they and their guardians incurred significant costs and went ...

The number of engineering colleges have more than doubled in the last five years, however students appearing for engineering joint entrance examinations have not grown at the same pace. As a result, all engineering colleges [read those affiliated to technical universities] are on the back foot to start with. What has made things much worse for them, is that only 14,000 students have taken admission after the first phase of admissions. This is far less than that students who took admissions last year and just about thirty per-cent of the intake capacity of Biju Patnaik University of Technology [BPUT] affiliated engineering colleges. This is clearly certainly unsustainable. If one examines objectively, it is obvious that a part of the problem is because of the larger issues of employability of engineering students – which ails colleges from all over the country. The other part of the problem are clearly local factors, which have been building up over the past few years. The first proble...