Small steps towards great world

We have grown up believing that the student life is the most beautiful phase of life. It is the time when we got introduced to the world and learnt the nuances of practical life. It is the phase when we got best of our buddies, with whom we played, fought and reconciled and then, through the rest of the life, have carried that nostalgia of childhood friendship. I remember, we used to have only two sets of examinations in a year, the mid-term and final-term (half-yearly and annual, in some schools) and rest of the year used to be a fun going to school and colleges. We perhaps, used to look forward to next day, to hit the school. I was so obsessed of going to school that I continued to go even when it was only fifteen days for the board exam to begin and one of my senior teachers had to counsel me, “ beta, there is no class happening now a days and you should study back home. Don’t worry, after fifteen days, you will be back to school for writing exam”. The advice was so comforti...

They say that when you dream of something, there are 3Vs which may make you closer to your dream – Visualize, Verbalize and Vitalize. Visualization is important for the bigger picture, while by Verbalizing, you close the ways to go backward. Both of these make you bound to Vitalize or enliven your dream. This piece of writing is all about the second ‘V’ – Verbalize. While I had a long-cherished dream of penning down a fiction one day, by verbalizing it today, I want to close all doors behind me so that I cannot escape in anyway. I want you all to point your fingers towards me, if I cannot make within the dreamt timeline. I also want you all, as good friends of mine, to chase me, to question me on the progress, to push me towards the wall so that I complete the fiction in time and go for publishing it. My bouts of writing spells are very irregular and I suffer from ‘Irritable Creative Syndrome’ (ICS), where, I tend to fall prey of creative constipation repeatedly and tend to g...

I was having a soul-searching discussion with one of my childhood friends who is associated with one of the premier organizations whose tag line says “Imagination at Work”. This friend of mine has joined them as a Management Trainee around 20 years back and is still continuing with flying colours. In an era, when continuing in any organization for long seems to be cliched, our discussion eventually centred around that point, “what made you stick to a single employer for so long?” He proudly proclaimed, “my everyday at this organization, is a new day”. Are all professionals equally lucky to enjoy a ‘new day’ everyday or get entangled in unavoidable mundane routine stuff? While strategies and putting the thinking-cap happens sometimes, most of the professionals find themselves in spending around 70% of their time in routine staff. Gone are the days when people used to have assistants, secretaries, short hand experts under their command, more of self-help is the trend today. So,...

TRUST is always seen as an integral part of any relationship. A relationship, whatever it may be, gets maturity with the factor of trust getting built into that. Sometimes trust is seen as a paranoid factor, why should I show that I trust someone? Or for that matter, if I trust someone, my exhibited behaviour will automatically demonstrate that, I need not consciously show that I trust. These are some confusions which creep a thinking mind. Does trusting someone also indicates that we are a bit obsessed or possessive about the person? Or in other words, does possessiveness sometime questions the trust factor? So what is more desirable, trusting someone blindly or feeling a bit possessive about that person? Sometimes it feels like a balancing act, a perfect balance between the exhibited trust and little bit of possessiveness may usher in sweetness in any relationship. The key factor, is always an open communication. Whenever there is a question with the trust factor, let us qu...

The long beeping sound of the fax machine is monotonous. Though the machine has become a rare sight in any office now a days, but during the late 90s, any office used to be incomplete without a fax machine. (That reminds me, my present day business card also talks of a fax number; I need to check whether the machine actually exists in the office!!) So, I was quite used to the beeps after I spent around two hours in the Central Office of Steelcorp Limited, a steel trading company having its corporate office in a busy business street of Kolkata. The office was in a two storied building, on the second floor. Narrow corridors leading to the ‘Central Office’. That was my first interview, a call received with the help of my then would-be brother in law, who forwarded my profile to the Head of Human Resources. The head, Mr. Biswas, instructed me to write an essay on “one hour in an office”, extended some pieces of A4 papers and vanished. I was all alone, in an open cubicle, with varie...

The day started in a normal note. The irritating 5.30 am alarm, the brisk morning walk, half an hour of power yoga   and a cup of green tea. All seemed to be so normal and routine, till the time newspaper arrived and I browsed through it. It was the news of an old man dying at the age of 104 years. That’s not a young age to die! This is not the age when you term it a premature dying. Then why it was such a news which made my day a little bit of sub-normal?   The person in news was Manohar Aich, an Indian body builder. The “babuboli” or “pocket Hercules” (a nick name given to him because of his short height) credited simple diet of rice, dal (lentil) and fish for his stunning body. Such a simple lifestyle and such an extraordinary life (Mr. Hercules, Mr. Universe, Winner of World Championship of Spring Pulling, three times Gold winner in Asian Games).   All these regenerated a thought in me, do we really become what we think? 2500 years ago, Gautam Buddha sai...

Known-known faces, are they half-known? A full life makes the faces full-known! This was my preconceived notion when the idea of a re-union was being nestled. I had been debating with myself, whether to be or not to be there. I was confused whether the ‘known’ faces might turn up to be ‘half known’ after two decades of separation!! Twenty long years, is not a short travel. I remember, during my student days, I used to go through “Employment News” regularly to look for job vacancies. And for most of the HR jobs, the minimum post-qualification experience required were 15-20 years. That was quite an absurd requirement for a fresh college pass out, who was only having an MBA degree and a bagful of aspirations in his possession. Now, when I look back at the 20 years which I spent in corporate rat-races, then I realize, oh, what a journey!! Though the journey, sometimes, was tiresome and difficult through hilly terrains and rough patches, but whenever an oasis was found, it was...