Tandarin

I have a hypothesis that people instinctively want to be led by whoever has the most energy.

Sometimes that energy manifests itself in fiery speeches, Hitler being a good example. Winston Churchill was famous for only needing 5-6 hours of sleep per day, and working his staff late into the night.

You often hear about how much energy American presidents have for jogging, chopping wood, or campaigning. In Russia, Putin likes to be photographed with his shirt off, wrestling with bears and what not. French Presidents have enough energy to run the country and satisfy mistresses without missing a beat. I'll bet you could take any two candidates for president anywhere in the world, ask registered voters which one seems to have the most energy, and the survey would predict the winner.

You might say that energy is only one of several necessary traits that a leader needs. Perhaps Churchill's lack of sleep had more to do with his work load than his energy level. Maybe the candidate who has the most energy can shake hands and kiss babies for more hours each day, and it's the campaigning that makes the difference. But I give you Laloo and many bat shit crazy leaders with an IQ of 90, scary hair, and nothing much else going for them but lots of insane energy. Energy attracts followers, even when it isn't backed up by anything else.

The same theory of energy is probably true for the popularity of celebrities. The other day I found myself in a discussion with friends about what makes Mallika U know who, so popular with some people, and so reviled by others. I think the difference has to do with your perception of how much energy she puts into her work.

If you think she's just a lucky rich girl, coasting through life with the help of handlers, you probably have a low opinion of her. If you think that being Mallika is probably a huge amount of work, and she's running her own show, and calling all the shots, you might have a high opinion of her. In other words, if you think she's a person with lots of energy, you like her more than if your impression is that she has low energy.

You've seen what happens when an energetic person enters a room. It raises everyone's energy level, and a boost of energy always feels good. Humans are imitators. When someone yawns, we yawn. When someone laughs, it puts us in a good mood. When someone is a downer, we feel down.

A leader probably does little more than convey a sense that he has a lot of energy himself, which boosts the energy levels of everyone who gets that message. We all like the feeling of energy, so we keep the leader in power so we'll see more of him.

We're all energy junkies, and our leaders are pushers.

How's that????

Education rarely teaches us how we should properly deal with our “negative” side, the side of us we wish not to show to the outside world. As a result, a lot of people spend their entire life searching for ways to get as far away from it as possible, not knowing how to decently cope with its threatening shadows.

I sincerely doubt if anyone has ever succeeded in getting fully rid of “their other side”… People search for ways to climb up to the Heavens, where “all will be good, peaceful and beautiful”, seemingly without realizing that human life is a balance which is preferably kept in a more or less stable, thus healthy equilibrium between both scales of giving and receiving.

Heightening one scale only results in a lowering of the other one so that when we try to run away towards the Heavens, our flight will be compensated by an equally intensifying darkening of our other side. Most people don’t seem to realize this, until it really breaks through in their life of every day, e.g during a midlife crisis.

There are countless ways to become balanced again, and they usually include the very difficult path of letting go. As an example, I’d like to talk about a friend of mine who’s been close to me for almost thirty years now.

His name is Ego. He consults me daily, yet even though he’s been sitting in front of me for all these years now, it’s only been very recently that his chaotic path forced him to engage in a real dialogue with me. For the longest time he would just ignore me. He knew he could not escape sitting in front of me, but he still had the hardest time of facing me.

In his darker days, I sometimes felt as if he would rather die in agony instead of trying to face me. I always tried talking to him, but then he would just play his little game as if I was invisible to him, as if he was the only one in the room. And yet I noticed he could not completely ignore me because I could see his eyes wandering off to the large window, as if in his mind he was trying to escape from my attempts to connect to him; as if he was trying to escape from me within his unnatural dreams of claiming ownership over me.

One day however, he was behaving more fearful and desperate than before. I was still talking into him when he suddenly looked at me in utter fright. In that second, all his protective shields fell off and he stared at me with the gaze of the being he truly is: a naked baby, screaming with mortifying fear as if he had just entered a strange, alien world full of unknown dangers.

He quickly restored his escapist dream and looked back out of the window. Nevertheless, something had happened. It was there. I saw it. Brief as it was, a first glance had just been made. Apparently he seemed to have reached the end of his dreams. It was only when all of his escapist dreams turned into ashen deserts, when he had reached the end of his alien world, that he finally came to realize the inevitability of the situation: he hád to face me or he had to succumb to self destruction.

Although he had hurt me alright by denying my very existence, I still loved him more than anything. In secret I cried for him during these long years of monologue and utter loneliness. He should have known he was not alone in his battle, yet he still could not embrace me, even though I embraced him with all of my Heart.

He preferred to live his life in a silent suffering because he thought it would always be a lesser pain compared to the pain of confronting me. How narrow-minded can one be! The only thing I have to offer him is unconditional Love! But I can not blame him. Not at all. Because he rejected me all these years, I must probably appear to him as the bare Devil himself, as an endless Night lurking in the dark shadows on his path, ready to suck all life out of him.

And it ís draining him, but instead of putting all the blame on me, he should really blame it on his own actions, on his own choice of living his life in one-sidedness. He chose to live his life one-sidedly, so he should accept the extreme tensions resulting from his choice and not put all the blame onto the “other side”, that part of him which does not fit into his picture of how his one-sided life should have to be.

Yet with this first glance, the winter ice seems to be ready to be melted away in the awakening warmth of spring. Gradually, in time, he extended his frightful glances towards me. I tried to comfort him by giving signs (or symbols as they would have occurred to him) that it is alright and that confronting me is the right way to go.

At first he did not notice them, but then, for some reason, he did start paying attention. It was as if he had finally come to the conclusion that he cannot expect the world to change if he himself is not even daring to become more receptive to the change waiting to unfold within himself. It was as if he was gradually forgetting the layers of clothes he had been wearing which had made him into a man, and was now starting to feel the human being he truly is, that helplessly crying baby, washed upon the unknown shores of a land yet to discover.

And so the balance started to shift again to reach its point of equilibrium. At the moment we are still a long way from that, but some important steps have been made.

With a lot of trial and error, he is learning to see the deeper, healing aspect of redemption which lies beyond the pains and suffering of acknowledging one’s own deep responsibility towards himself and the world. He is learning to acknowledge suffering as a way to step down from his almighty throne and to become Human again amidst other Humans.

Nowadays, we are already having small conversations. Even though he is still very tense and his mind is still very fragile, painful and cloudy, he has somehow found a way to proceed more naturally, more harmoniously with the other side of the balance.

So one day, not so very long ago, he came to me and he told me “I have to confess to you some of the things I have done. I feel compelled to bow deeply towards you and the whole Universe, confess my terrible deeds and humbly ask you for forgiveness”. He was weeping deeply and his tears melted with my own. It was the first time that he was not asking for my attention because he felt pity of himself; for the first time I saw him crying tears, not for himself, but for me, others, the world at large and… Life.

Self-pity and self-absorbance became compassion for others. Of course it was only a very small step on the road to redemption, yet a highly important step, because for the first time in his life, he understood the consequences of his deeds, of his one-sided behaviour, and what his behaviour really meant for the rivers of the Life he was given. Perhaps for the first time, his bitter loneliness melted away into the sweetness of his solitude amongst the people and the world.

He wept, and he wept for so long…

He was genuinely moved to the point of finally letting go, because only now was he able to bow deeply enough to humbly ask to be forgiven so he could finally forgive himself and the world.

And so, he confessed…

It’s used to be one of those days when you could sip a cup of coffee and gaze at the huge banyan tree, forever. The streets, filled with people and vehicles, looked quite normal and harmless then.

Being normal, that was the default value everyone took unless you were crazy, or inspired by something or someone. You wouldn’t want to stand out either; well almost.

But we never bothered about an “image” or “being normal” when we were kids. We did what we wanted, and we just said whatever we felt or whatever came to our mind. Even our prayers were so simple, sometimes ridiculous but we had a lot of faith then. Faith in almost everything and everyone around us.

In my teens, I remember the time when I began to talk about girls with my close friends. It was still a very strong issue in those days and I used to declare my opinions and beliefs quite strongly. This I clearly remember shocked my friends, and later, my parents.

I used to tell everyone that I would marry any girl if we love one another, let her be a young girl my age, let her be a kid or an old woman, and let her be a divorcee or a widow. Nobody can or will stop me, if we love one another. And everyone would say that I was goddamn crazy. Come to think of it now, I can never figure out where those ideas came from.

And my prayers when I was a kid… must have uttered just one word whenever I closed my eyes and folded my hands, “GOD!!!” I had asked him to make me a martial arts expert, Superman, a Casanova kind of a man whom women will find irresistible, Mandrake the magician, and so many other superheroes and adorable villains.

Maybe, I stopped believing in him when he absolutely and stubbornly refused to listen to my prayers.

You and I, we were kids then. But each one of us was so unique, from the little scars on our over-active bodies to our small silent prayers.

Society and the whole concept of an ideal and civilized society made us scared. And then came time, the great leveler, and we find ourselves unable to recognize or differentiate one another, anymore.

The problem with being a tyrannical dictator is that there is no career path and no practical way to retire.

If another dictator takes over, the first item on his agenda is turning your head into a bird feeder for his guest house. If democracy breaks out, sooner or later the mob will want to execute you for crimes against humanity.

As a tyrant, your only rational strategy is continued brutal suppression of your peeps. That's a lot of work for the tyrant, and no fun for the peeps.

What the world needs is a program that allows graceful retirement for tyrants, so they have some incentive to step aside. Justice would never be served, but it would be best for the country.

I imagine the tyrant retirement program would provide some sort of international security guarantees and permanent amnesty for the tyrant.

That might require some U.N. forces to guard his mansion or island fortress or wherever he decides to retire. And he would have unrestricted travel rights, in case he wanted to get out of the country for his own safety.

Second, the tyrant would be written into the history books as some sort of founding father type.

He would be, ironically, the father of democracy, having stepped aside to allow it to happen. The history books would be modified to show the tyrant did many good things in terms of national stability, and then stepped aside to allow democracy to flourish.

His multiple genocides would be downplayed. No tyrant wants to get bad press after retiring.

The tyrant would also be allowed to keep much of the money he stole, say up to a limit of $4 billion per tyrant. That's enough to keep him in helicopters and hookers.

You could add some extras, such as putting the tyrant on stamps and currency, or agreeing to keep him on the ones already in circulation. The point is that retirement has to look like a safe and honorable thing.

The story line for the country would be that while a dictatorship made sense while the tyrant was in power, it only worked because of the force of his amazing personality.

And since his country couldn't be expected to find another dictator of such compassion and skill, democracy is the best succession strategy.

This spin might sound preposterous, but when you consider the things your own government tells you, it's not that different.

I know it will never work. But waiting for tyrants to die takes too long, and killing them is too expensive.

Ask those who have been there.

There has to be a better way.

Any takers?

Suppose humans were born with a magical button on their foreheads.

When someone else pushes your button, it makes you very happy. But like tickling, it only works when someone else presses it.

Imagine it's use......

You just reach over, press it once, and the other person becomes wildly happy for a few minutes.

What would happen in such a world?

You could imagine that everyone in the world would be happy just about all the time. People would make agreements with each other to push each other's buttons on a regular basis, thus guaranteeing the complete and utter happiness of all humans.

No, I can't imagine that either.

The first thing that would happen is that we'd create some rules of etiquette saying you can't press anyone's button without explicit permission.

That makes sense, since sometimes you need to get some work done, and happiness can make you lose focus. You wouldn't want people making you happy against your wishes.

The next thing that would happen is that people would realize they can sell the button-pushing service. People would stop giving it away for free.

You'd probably be begging people to press your button and it would just seem pathetic. You might get some takers for a brief button-pushing fling, but it would get tiresome to push another person's button every few minutes all day.

Perhaps some people would give their button-pushing services away for free, to anyone who asked. Let's call those people generous, or as they would become known in this hypothetical world: crazy donors.

Button pushing would become an issue of power and politics within relationships and within business.

The rich and famous would get their buttons pushed all day long, while the lonely would fantasize about how great that would be.

I can't think of any imaginary situation in which long term happiness could come from other people.

The best you can hope for is that other people won't thwart your efforts to make yourself happy.

Thats probably why ... I suppose.... we don't have such a button on our forehead....

This one is dedicated to my good friend Uday with whom I spend most of my teenage in Mumbai. Some of the hysterics Uday would conjure up is something to remember for life…….. Here’s one which just came to my mind....

“Stop! Stop! Stop the bloody rickshaw.”

“Why? What’s wrong Sir?”

“I’ll tell you what’s wrong. Park it. Park it he would say!!”

It could have been five thirty in the morning, could have been the noon or late into the night. But it was the same story always with many a twist and turns.

“See this?” he would say. Showing off a stick he would carry on such occasions.

“Did you have an accident Sir?”

“No. I was born with a walking stick. And one hundred and six screws inside my body. A metal rod is in my thigh and one in my spine.”

“I am sorry Sir. I will drive carefully now onwards.”

“You want me to strip and show the scars on my body? Have the guts to see?”

(Sometimes he would open a few buttons or take off his belt hook. Usually it would suffice as no one dared to ask him to show anything after hearing his miserable tone)

“No Sir. I promise I will drive safely. Come on Sir. Let’s go”

It’s during the ride that he would tell the driver the rest of his story (his story telling abilities could get him an Oscar).

It would go something like this..

"It happened one night. 4 years back. It was a moonless night in Poona. I was newly married then (Uday and myself were then in our teens). My wife was expecting our first baby. I had a good job that paid well. I was going home in an auto rickshaw. The driver was a young man just like you. He kept speeding and I kept telling him to slow down. He scoffed at me and said I am in full control. But he was wrong. He did not see a garbage dumper truck coming from the opposite direction. The auto was crushed like a cucumber salad. It flew into a dark pit nearby. The truck sped away. No body had seen the accident. Vehicles passing on the road after us had no clue that in the pit lay two young crushed men inside a crushed auto rickshaw. My spine had cracked. My leg was in six pieces. There were splinters and blood all over. I had lost my voice to shout. I was slowly sinking.”

“What happened to the auto driver?”

“He died in my arms. I fed him water from a bottle. He was crying as he was dying. Weeping bitterly that he had little children back home. I don’t know when I passed off holding his dead head. I thought I had died too. Woke up in a hospital. Had no insurance. Lost my job. The baby arrived. We were so broke, that my wife had to even sell off all her wedding jewellery, including her mangalsura.. Took me six operations and three years to start walking again."

“Did you get any insurance from the Accidents court? What about the auto driver's family? Did the police catch the culprits?”

“I got peanuts. No idea about the driver’s family. No idea if the truck driver was ever caught. Point is, the driver lost his life and I live half a life”

“True Sir. Very true”

From that point onwards till the destination, the driver would stick to the left side of the road. He would not ‘cut’. He would not speed. He would stop for school children and old people to cross the road. There would be no need to drive from the backseat any more.

OK. Now, this is a fake story. It’s not entirely fake, but hugely exaggerated. The accident was in Mumbai to a friend of ours. It was not a garbage truck but a petite fiat car with a hysteric girl at the wheels. NOTHING happened to the driver but for a few scratches on his chin. Our friend did NOT have 106 screws. No rod in the spine but just one in the femur. And his wife never had to sell her mangalsutra or anything of that sort as he too was not married.

Often, he would add some more colour to his story like the auto driver was the same age and community as the driver he would be with. It’s not rocket science to guess his age. And if you are a true Mumbaikar, it’s not tough to guess the ethnicity of a fellow Mumbaikar.

Thus, some times the driver who died in his arms would be a 25-year-old Konkani Muslim, or a 50-year-old bhaiyaa from Jaunpur or a cocky 19-year-old gutkha addicted Marathi manoos. Some times, whenever necessary, he would throw in another angle like the driver being drunk on duty. This was like getting down two birds with one stone.

This exaggerated story took birth one night when we were returning from college soon after our friend’s accident. The taxi we were traveling rammed into a vehicle at a traffic signal. I was shaking like a leaf in fright and in that stammering confusion, I had blurted out Poona, 106 screws and most importantly the sad sad filmi death of the driver.

Since then, each time he feels that sense of danger inside an auto, he belts out this story off as if it really happened. This story would work every time with total conviction.

After all, “Repeat a lie a thousand times and it becomes the truth” said Hitler’s pimp Goebbels. If one may remember history.

By the way, away from Uday’s hysterics, India is the road accident capital of the world. It seems thirteen people are killed every hour. Every year 150,000 road accidental deaths are reported all over India. There maybe many more that goes unreported for sure.

And yes, since Mumbai police now have stepped up its drive to apprehend drunk drivers, accidents have come down by a good 30 percent. Also, it’s been found through a study that a five percent increase in vehicular speed, increases the chance of accidental death by over twenty percent.

No, I did not make up these figures like the story of my friend Uday. I just googled them.

But yes, it’s possible someone else made them up.

The crucial point I make here is that we all must GO SLOW and NEVER drink and drive.

The phrase “Friends Don’t Let Friends Drive Drunk” is apt here.

Drink driving is a killer. Many a times, innocent drivers who follow every book rule become victims… all because some drunk driver makes a fatal and irreversible mistake.

Take care....

Selfless gratitude; the ability to appreciate the goodness of life while simultaneously feeling deep empathy for the pain and suffering of others, is one of a leader’s most important qualities.

Yet the anxieties of a world rife with terrorism, economic uncertainty, illnesses, hunger, and injustice, can choke the lifeblood from one’s sense of gratitude.

What’s a leader to do?

In closely observing senior leaders from many different walks of life since last two decades, I have seen that genuine gratitude in the face of difficulty is an attribute, perhaps the attribute, that most distinguishes the great from the good.

There are three reasons gratitude is such an essential quality for men and women who are called to positions of service as leaders.

First, gratitude is the key to authentic emotional connection. Second, it is the basis for emotional resilience. Finally, the expression of genuine gratitude unlocks the door to discretionary effort.

Gratitude has been called the aristocrat of emotional connection. Great leaders such as Washington, Churchill, and Lincoln understood the importance of emotional connection.

Even evil leaders such as Hitler, Bin Laden, and Saddam Hussein had appreciation for the power of emotion, but misused it terribly.

“A leader persuades people through reason, but compels them to action through emotion.” And no emotion is more compelling than heartfelt thanks to those who give of themselves in service to a cause greater then their self interest.

If gratitude connects a leader deeply with others it is also a leader’s basis for personal resilience.

Leadership, as I know it, is hard work and is often a thankless task. A leader’s ability to persevere in the face of resistance requires enormous personal energy.

What is true for a leader is also true for those she or he leads. A legitimate expression of gratitude to others for who they are and what they are doing triggers enormous personal energy.

Gratitude is also essential for effective leadership for its ability to go beyond merely generating energy by evoking discretionary effort from others.

In a real sense all followers are volunteers. Even in a despotic situation a follower must ultimately choose to yield or resist.

A recent study by the Gallup Organization in US shows that only about 25 percent of workers are deeply engaged by their leaders; this disengagement has direct consequence with lost productivity.

A key factor in such disengagement is the fact that these workers do not feel valued or appreciated by their managers. When gratitude is appropriately expressed it evokes enormous voluntary effort in response.

In describing what God’s will is for us, an apostle once said, “Be joyous always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances. . .”

In today’s circumstances there can be no better advice for any leader.

Today’s hurried world puts relaxing and quality mealtimes at the bottom of many people’s life. Most families have two working adults so time is limited and kids are scheduled with all sorts of after school activities.

Technology too keeps us busy responding 24/7 to outside stimuli.

What about the adults that live alone…they may not be motivated to make meals special as there is no one to share the bounty. Or for that matter, couples whose children have grown up and not staying with them?

I’ve learned an important lesson recently…. treating my mealtimes as special is nurturing in more ways than just the food. It’s a time to relax and enjoy how I’m taking care of myself and in turn taking care of my wife.

Since I work long hours, I am tempted to grab something after a full day at work. I’ve eaten dinner while watching TV and I don’t really know I’m eating and that’s not satisfying.

Lately, I’ve been setting the dining room table for my lunch with my wife who waits for me even if it is as late as 3pm. I can feel the nourishment immediately in sharing my meals with my love.

I make effort to minimize the distractions and use this time to catch up with our lives, to create a special space to let go of all those little and big “to do’s” that haunt me throughout the day. I’m learning how to feed all the wonderful nutrients that add value to our lives.

No one teaches us the art of dining at home. We feel we have to pay for our meals in order to slow down and relax. The process of creating a meal for others and myself brings me joy and relaxation. I’m not a gourmet cook…far from it..... my wife takes care of that. For me, it’s about taking the time to nourish everyone around us… We all deserve this type of quality in our lives.

All this is part of the journey of caring for myself. If I don’t take care of me…who else wants to take over the job? When I was 2 years old, adults jumped in, but now I’m way past two, so it’s my turn to nurture myself in as many ways as possible. So today, I’m focusing on minimizing distractions at mealtimes.

Making mealtimes, even if simple, fulfilling and nourishing.

What about you…do you normally create a special mealtime?

Or, like me, do you need to learn the importance of truly feeding yourself with a healthy meal, placements and pretty napkins, candles and great company…?

How often I have said to myself “let it go Manju” when I was agitated or upset about something. I’ve also said “let go” to others when they were holding on to a negative thought.

How does one “let go?”

We are attached to our emotional stuff and don’t always know how to release the emotions and free ourselves.

I once shared with a group of my friends an image of getting out of bed and picking up my suitcase before going about my day. I don’t actually pick up a physical suitcase, but rather a suitcase filled with memories from the past, unfinished work, and negative thoughts that seem to come with me wherever I go.

This suitcase is bland on the outside because it doesn’t want me to know I’m being very foolish by picking it up each day.

I’ve reached the age where wisdom should be paying me back for my years on this earth. Sometimes it does…sometimes I’m actually wise. My wisdom now is in the form of awareness. It has taken me a bit of time to realize that I’m now dragging this suitcase. Now that I’m aware how I’m dragging this suitcase around with me, latched on to the back of my pants, slowing me down, and taking a chunk of wellness and joy out of my life each day, what am I’m going to do about it?

It’s like going through your physical closets, throwing out or giving away ‘stuff’ that you have never and will never use. What about my clothes closet? My closet houses a department store filled with different sizes… hoping for the day when I can make my way towards the back of the closet…. to the skinny clothes section.

Well that’s also part of my emotional suitcase…those skinny clothes.

I’ve been thinking about this emotional suitcase a lot the last few months and it’s taken me some time to venture forth and check to see what is inside of it. I opened it last night when a recurring situation happened and I stopped long enough to ask myself how I could see the situation differently.

How many times have I expected the other person to be different…to see what I see? I was in a situation where the other person was telling me how much they were there for me and I was locked in my past memories of all the ‘hurts’ and ‘struggles’ they have caused me. This stuff is in my suitcase.

I couldn’t believe they weren’t aware of their outrageous behaviors, their self-centeredness, and their manipulations. I didn’t say anything to the other person but I sure thought about it. On the outside, I was calm, clear and didn’t engage the person in a conversation of emotional “he said, she said.”

As I was driving, I kept saying “I can’t believe he doesn’t know what he has done to me.” Somewhere in the drive home, I saw how I was holding on to the past.

It was hurting the other person by my insistence to remember, but it was hurting me more because my spirit was carrying such a heavy load. I just asked “how can I see this differently?”

That question allowed me to let go of my need to justify or prove my decisions based on someone else’s behavior. It was ok for them to see it anyway they wanted because it didn’t matter anymore. What felt right to me was to ‘let it go.”

At that moment, I decided what was best for me…because it was best for me.

We all become attached to a belief, a memory or a feeling insisting they are facts…they are reality. They are our reality because our thoughts create what we see. They may not be someone else’s reality. I believe it was in the Course of Miracles that I read “perception is a choice…not a fact.”

In last night’s situation I cleared out a lot of ‘junk’ in my emotional suitcase.

What’s in your emotional suitcase?

Check it out and try to shed off excess junk within….

It feels really great ….. Ask me.