As I saw it

This year, December 6th fell on a Saturday. So what's the big deal? There is a December every year and the 6th day of the month also comes every month. So what's the big deal on it coming on a Saturday this year? Well it fell on a Saturday even in 2009. As in most of the Decembers in Delhi that day was also mildly cloudy and crispy cold with some sunlight sneaking through. Something happened that day that I will never forget in my life; something I will forever remember in my life. I had to take my son to his paediatrician for a regular check up and I was driving my mother-in-law's old greyish-blue Maruti 800 with the number plate ending in 4245. Just as we turned left on the Delhi-NOIDA link road from our Mayur Vihar Phase 1 colony, I noticed the weather and also the bleak, expressionless  faces  of the other drivers on the road. They all looked sad and spiritually constipated. Nobody seemed happy. Maybe they were all focussing on their drive and the road ahead even as the...

I am a mind mapping fan, though some people would say that I am beyond being a fan. They might say that I am a fanatic when it comes to mind mapping. I will always wear that as a badge of honour. Nevertheless, what you see attached is a mind map structure I drew for some of my participant-managers at one of my clients in NOIDA. Self-awareness is an important component I believe in and I designed it in their leadership journey. So, have a look at the mind map structure I created in one such session and see what all comes up in your mind in response to the first level of branches you see. Add them as further extensions/ sub-branches of the first level branches you see in the attachment. Would you be comfortable creating it about yourself and share it either here or with me in DM? For those who choose to share, I will share a further version of this mind map structure that I have created on my mind mapping software. As I learnt from Mr. Jim Cathcart , 'All leadership begins with self-...

25 years isn’t even a ding in the universe’s scheme of things but for dings like me, it is something. Exactly today 25 years ago, I completed the first ever training programme that eventually set the course of my career across diverse industries and sectors. It was on 6th and 7th of November in the millennial year 2000 that I got the opportunity to conduct a two day training programme with my then senior colleague Neha Jain and our Director Mrs. Maja Daruwala for the prison staff and non-official visitors of the prisons in the Gwalior division in Madhya Pradesh. It was all thanks to the invite by the late Justice Gulab Gupta, the then Chairperson of the Madhya Pradesh Human Rights Commission who invited the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI), the NGO where I began my career 26 years ago, to conduct training programmes in the prisons of the state. While it’s a long story before and after that invitation, I will briefly share the most important lessons I have learned along the ...

I was meeting an old senior friend of mine, Anjali Arora, yesterday after nearly 17 and half years and it felt like we just had met even the day before that and we had a great conversation. During the conversation, the following lines flowed out of me: I am interested in knowing more about people than knowing more people. And looking back, that has made all the difference.

Dear Bapu, Even as I grew up and differed in some of our views and even as I have greatly benefitted from all your statements, this is one quote that has been the invitation for me over the last 25 years to continuously examine myself and those around. Many a times this makes me sad to see the reality that's still around but at the same time this is also a great inspiration for me to keep walking and keep growing quietly in my own way of truth and love. Thank you Bapu for a lot of things. The Good Boatman - the book about you by your grandson Rajmohan Gandhi is quite a revelation about you, especially your intent behind your misunderstood and misquoted Brahmacharya experiment during the riots of 1946 following the direct action day call given by Jinnah. Bapu, I hope I can one day do an imaginary podcast with you where I have lot of things to share with you and also ask you a lot of questions. I have been planning to write a Letters to Bapu series but haven't got around to it ye...

Recently I came across a message twice that read something like this: Unless you are capable of violence you are not capable of true peace because unless there is a streak of violence in you, you are essentially harmless. I know the vocal and verbal violence I am prone to and the violence that lurks beneath the surface looking at all the injustice and unfairness in the world. It’s a violence that I manage to become aware of and try to keep under check and manage to do so, most of the time. But when it erupts, my family members and an occasional neighbour see it and hear it. From the age of 10, I have been inspired by Mahatma Gandhi and what he tried to do with the lurking anger at the injustice of it all. I do not claim, by any stretch of imagination that I am anywhere close to him in terms of non-violence or his self-mastery. Maybe I have a couple of generations to go and maybe I need to be meditative at least 8 hours a day in the midst of a noisy and chaotic traffic signal; daily for...