“It was a very long day of work, Rohit glanced at his watch , yes it was 7:30 pm,  his weekly report to his boss in Boston was still pending, there were yet couple of priority mails he need to respond. He couldn’t believe the day has passed off so soon even though he started working early at 8 am. If only God had given him two more hands and one pair of extra brain . He always envied how his fellow colleagues Hari and Michael left office everyday at 5 pm and managed to play tennis. ” What is it that I am missing ? ” he asked himself. His doctor appointment he has been postponing since last two weeks , he had been failing on his promise to take his family out for a dinner since the last two week.”

           How many a time did we find ourselves in the shoes of Rohit’s dilemma. I guess its quite often for many of us given the fast pace of our life to find ourselves in this puzzling situation. Inspite of working hard , we find ourselves caught up in this time pressure , we seem to find no enjoyment in the work we do rather tie ourselves in the web of stress , fatigue and mental exhaustion. Is there a way around ? I guess the answer is “yes if I really want to ” . I came across one such shining example of one of my earlier mentor Senthil in this regard. Senthil was  heading a team of 200 members and was flooded with requests, emails both from his customers and internal teams. It was at this time he was going through a personal tragedy which was regarding the poor health of his mother. But in the midst of all of this , he chose to remain calm and managed a smiling face . Not only he delivered all that his job demanded from him, but he remain focussed and maintained excellent working relationship with everyone in his team. I know it is not possible for everyone of us to be like Senthil , But its worth reminding ourselves of how much we can push ourselves in such difficult situations, remember beyond every dark cloud there is a “silver lining”.

Robin was sleeping  …..but then he woke up one day and found that everything around him has changed..the road which he complained was muddy and full of stones has become suddenly bright and shiny, the papers he hated in his exams unexpectedly he found himself grasping and remembering every bit of it . The food he hated in the corner shop all of a sudden seemed so tasty….the chrous he listened sleepily in the church dramatically seemed so melodius…..Was he awake ? or Was he dreaming ?

     Many of us has perhaps become “Robin” many a time, we see ourselves in mirror everyday but what the mirror fail to capture our state of awakeness, sometimes the gloomy world completely engulfs us and make our small failures seem bigger than they are, this makes us feel shattered and hopeless. But its important we wake up our mind from the shackles of our failures and look at the bright pictures life has painted for us mixing a tingle of positive yellow, creative green, imaginative sky blue and reddish sunrise.

Lets wake up every moment from the thought of our failures !

On 23rd March, 7 am, we launched our Career Refining Portal: www.getsetgrow.org It was indeed a very great ocassion for us , Finally after getting stuck in the planning phase for 7 months we could move ahead with the prototype and release of version 1.

Our current task is to work all round by collecting the requirement list of all potential students/working freshers for whom the site is dedicated to. Well, we are not yet near to what we want to achieve , but everyone of our volunteering team is ambitious and dreams to make it one of the most useful sites for students ,working people.

I would request you to visit our site and help us make it Grow by giving your valuable ideas.

Cheers!
Let’s Get..Set and..Grow!

It is a paradox of life that perhaps the most interesting people is found in most unusual place. Yes , it was one of this places where I met Joeb. Aged 20, height 167 cm , fair complexion – this lad has a uniqueness difficult to find. He introduces his customers with a big smile “How can I help you ?” , soon the customer would be Joeb’s very good friend for the next few minutes. Joeb likes to make light humour and ensures his customers are in good spirit and highly satisfied by his service such that they do not mind tipping him a few extra pounds. Well, you might be wondering what is Joeb’s profession ? Well, by profession this Mauritian boy is a Hair dresser , he runs his dads shop for some hours of the day located near Plashet Grove. Needless to mention his shop is full with customers of all ages during the few hours in which he is serving. On my appreciation of his positive attitude, he stated “I know people are always with lots of worries and they get less time to feel relax , I take it up as a mission to make my customers forget some of their worries in the 5-10 minutes of their life they are spending with me” . He credits his skills to his trainer Tony Longman in London. This boy, fluent in french, english and hindi, has a good career plan. He plans to work for few hours in his dad’s shop while completing his graduation at college. Later he plans to work as an apprentice and dreams to be a fashion designer someday.

Back in India , I recall of my similar experiences , I miss the Joeb effect very much, Yes it is much cheaper in India for similar service but alas there is no Tony Longman available in India to train the hair dressers and also motivate them to think big like Joeb does…!!!

 

Very often I am confused of the pace in which ones life goes on, when I was a kid my goal was to study hard and stand first in class ; unfortunately I could never achieve that  , gradually I grew up to be a youth and reached college, our focus was now to grab the best job by preparing well for campus interviews, suddenly one day I discovered that I was working in a mnc and most of our focus have changed to working harder and getting a better appraisal rating with better salary hike . If I could have a “Pause” button in my life and ask myself these questions : “Is my life Rocking ?” ,” What I need to do, to make my life Rocking ?” , I find myself struggling to find an answer . Well, after watching the movie “Rock On ” , this was the question I asked myself today. I guess, many of us like me , might be feeling that we are lost in our own small circle of life which mostly includes our work and family.  Is that a problem ? The answer could be both “yes” and “no” . “No” because few of us are everyday fighting through many constraints and perhaps there are no choices other than focussing on the small circle. Again the answer could be “yes” to many of us including me, who have many choices but rather than focussing on making things happen are happy and contented with our small circle. 

I recall reading few years back, that Sir Thomas Alva Edision had so many ideas coming in his mind that he had to maintain a Diary  tracking all his ideas. Even after his death it was discovered that there were another Diary of Ideas still untouched but on which he could not work upon. Inspite of suffering through partial hearing loss in his early childhood, he has gifted us with the electric bulb  and other devices and also laid the foundation stone of GE. Imagine if Sir Thomas Alva Edision had time to work on his unfulfilled ideas possibly, who knows , the world could have been gifted with some other path-breaking discoveries.

 Looking back at our lives today, I see ideas dying every day and every moment in our daily life !!! Not that all ideas can be implemented , but I think we should have faith in ourself and push ourselves for making some progress in our ideas which we think are brilliant, are immensely passionate about implementing and mostly will gift us with the uncherised joy of achievment, one misses everyday. It could be any childhood idea which one could have dreamt of any associated ourselves proudly with it. It may not have much necessity today when we are lost in our own small circle of life, but it really matters a lot to us if we really implement it and manage to make it happen. I think thats the moment when we are “Rocking on in our life ” !!!

 

Its been few months now that I have been travelling in London Tube , and everyday I experience something which is my first time in life . My todays experience was meeting someone dressed as one of our ancient soldiers . Dressed in black high heeled shoes with a leather belt and body -pierced in ears , eyes, nose our Mr Brave , aged about 40, sat down coolly sporting visible muscles, apparently oblivious of the silent stares generated among his curious fellow passengers. I admired his high sense of modern fashion , he had a dyed brownish hair erupting from back of his bald head and extending till his waist over his greenish robe. Only missing thing was perhaps his sword. My eyes could not stop rolling over him  . I regretted missing my camera  else it would have fetched a good photogenic moment.. This made me think that organizing a Rapid-fire fashion show in London tube and giving spot awards for the most interesting dressed ones can be a great business idea. Anyone ready to sponsor this ?

The most visible sight about tube commuters is reading books and magazine. Coming from a different country, I find this a good cultural symbol. Even in the rush hour in the morning, I find girls mostly lost in two things, one their beauty-kit or reading a last bit of their crime thriller squeezing between two already pressed passengers. The men I find mostly sleeping  or glancing through “Metro”, the daily tabloid.

The tube drivers I guess are the most courteous of all. For every minute of a delay in journey, they apologise to the passengers 3 times. There is one line in London tube which I guessed have heard a million times by now. Guess the Line !…….Well it is the line “Mind the Gap”. I remember on my initial arrival days I use to feel intrigued by the fact “ why they are repeating the single line so many times ? ” I have seen 5 times more gap between the train and the station in my country, but never there was ever an announcement being made for that.

The advertisements in the tube are really cool ones . The advertisements claim to do wonders they can help anyone overweight to reduce their weight 50% in 30 days. . Whether you have a broken roof, u need a blind date , need a lowest cost car insurance , or beautifying your body parts , there is a solution for all. Luckily I did not think of verifying those yet.

Overall it is a good experience for me and I look forward for posting my new stories soon

Evening time on Saturday’s are generally good ones to watch movies and I could not help but remain hooked to two movies.

 

 The first movie I watched was “ I am David”. The story was of the life of a boy who left the concentration camp filled with brutal memories of war and death and how he learns to smile one day. While watching this movie it reminded me of the other day when me and my friend Akhilesh were walking down the Norwich street, we met up with an old lady, she appeared lost, not sure where her next destination would be, her eyes greeted us with curiosity and we could not help her much but exchange a casual “Good Morning, How are you?” in the most cheerful tone. It did cost us nothing, but she felt a bit more relaxed and shared a smiling glance at us. Anne Holm in his 1963 written novel has similarly portraited David’s life. David grew up in the concentration camps seeing deaths as the most obvious sights everyday, this made him have the most unsual eyes which any painter finds tough to depict and explain!

How many a times we come across such interesting expressions in our regular journey by tube ? I know , we live by our own worries and curse our destiny for  our miseries, only perhaps if we could know the more deeper sorrows hidden in the many Davids around us, the eyes we look at but could not comprehend what it means, it could be the eyes of agony or pain or of confusion and mistrust……there might a hidden language telling us a story !!!

 

The next movie I watched was  “Big Fish”. It depicts the picture of a story telling father Edward Bloom who tells the most simplest of stories of his life with unusual fantasies and creativity which his son , Will, never believes.The movie is a store-house of simple philosophies of life with the message of helping everyone and leaving your footprint in someone else’s life with sheer determination and honest effort. While watching this movie I could not help thinking of 3 years back when one my mentor Sir Aravind Srinivas, asked me , “What would you like to be ? A Big Fish in a small pond  or A small fish in a sea and growing up to a Big Fish one day” Well, I chose the later , It was not that the transition was a smooth one, I am spending lot of my times making mistakes , but every mistakes only teaches me one new secret which might help me becoming a Big Fish one day. Looking around me I find today lot of my friends are constantly lost in conflict whether they would stay in the Small Pond and live like a Big Fish, or get lost in the challenges of the sea and struggle everyday to become a Big Fish someday. I know there is nothing like a perfect answer to solve this dilemma, all I hope that we keep recognizing the effort the Big Fish has made in a small pond and helping all the small fishes, in whatever way we can, to become a Big Fish in the sea one day. Who knows!!! someday you may become a Big Fish in the sea in this process!!!

Hi Friend,

 

Greetings to You!!!

 

Just thought of writing my first post here. One topic that I thought of posting here is about Sustainability, which is one of the most used words in today’s world..Well what is Sustainability? Put simply, it is ensuring that we are able to sustain whatever we do and move it forward to the next level of maturity in our society. Now lets focus it around a blog called say “Youth Unite ” (www.youthunite.wordpress.com ) and ask ourself this question, is Youth Unite following sustainable practices everyday? , for example, are we able to generate youth interest and come across with solutions which will solve some of the problems the young generation are having today? If the answer is yes and if we see a more surge of youth participating actively in this blog and some real actions and progress in this direction definitely we can say that we are Sustainable.

 

Sustainability is focussed in all spectrums involving our society, firstly w.r.t companies , one area could be to check if they are following sustainable practices while recruitment of candidates which will give every candidate the equal opportunity to apply irrespective of their caste, gender, disabled status, marital status etc. In respect of environment this could be about recycling everything most efficiently. Today in London, I find most big companies putting the recycled percentage of their products, for example if you buy a greetings card, the % of the card prepared from recycled paper is mentioned, No doubt, the more we recycle materials, the more we are eliminating waste and using it in a more meaningful way.

 

The above are just a few examples to start with. Now, you might be wondering why I am writing about this, Well, I believe that today our youth being the flag bearer of the society has a responsibility to build a sustainable world. How will they contribute? The answer is by three simple steps:

 First Step: to imprint the thought of sustainability in your mind and relating to everything affecting our society positively by asking yourself this Question : Is this process or product sustainable ?

Second Step: to find the answer to your first Question, you may not be aware of the answer, in that case discuss with friends and find out how it is sustainable.

Third Step: Incase the answer is that, the product or process is not sustainable or score low in sustainability, Our responsibility is to innovate and find out a way to make the product or process sustainable.

 

To end my writing today, let me try to narrate a small story already heard by many but worth reading once more:

One day, there was a high tide in the sea and a strong wave brought thousands of jellyfish far inside in the sandy beach. It was quite natural that if the seawater does not come again and take away the jellyfish back to the sea the jellyfish would all die. There were many tourists in the beach. Everyone watched silently how thousands of jellyfish are going to die. Suddenly there was a young boy who was doing some strange act, everyone watched as he kept on throwing some of the jellyfish into the far sea untiringly one by one. When one of the senior member of the tourist asked the reason for his rather strange act he replied smilingly, “ I know that most of the jellyfish cant make it to the sea soon and they will all die in a hour, but I am doing my bit, Atleast I know I have saved some life”.

 

Let us all be like the young boy and save many lives by being sustainable……