As I saw it

This was a parting gift one of my participants from Australia gave me back in September 2013 at the end of a session for the HR Heads of a Finnish company. She said it has Aboriginal art work on the miniature Boomerang. And if you look closely, you will see the artful outline of a Kangaroo in the middle. It was worth 3 Australian $s. And she gave me two of them along with a small room spray. I still have the small spray intact. She had said that the session was really heart touching for her and had made her question some of her beliefs about her true purpose in HR. Be that as it may, I want to talk more about something that happened two months ago which was literally like a Boomerang moment. I was doing a session on customer centricity for managers of a technology company when I happened to play this video clip:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pcIc2zKWDQ&t=66s One of the participants asked me to confirm the location of the Starbucks where the incident had happened. And I conf...

I was talking to a friend yesterday and we were discussing about authenticity. I adapted a quote attributed to Warren Buffet and told her that 'Authenticity is an expensive gift; don't expect it from ordinary people.' Authenticity for me is not necessarily being blunt, rude, loud and inconsiderate. For me the ultimate forms of authenticity are people like Mahatma Gandhi, Abraham Lincoln, etc. - transparent, soft, compassionate and yet fearless, courageous, clear, direct, centered, grounded, firm and truthful. And yet, I further shared with my friend that, it can be so sharp for some people that they would be scared of it, even if it's a gift from our side.

I have been fortunate to have many good teachers in my life - both formal and informal. But today I remember you Prof. Vinay Kumar Srivastava Sir; our beloved Srivastav Sir. I have never spoken about you Sir; not in public like I have spoken about some of my other teachers from my LLB and LLM days. And maybe that was my mistake Sir. I took you for granted that you will always be there in our lives. You are not there in our lives anymore but your being and doing always fill, inform and influence our being and doing. I can say this confidently on behalf of each of your students from that last batch of research methodologies you taught us in 2001-2002 at the Faculty of Law, Delhi University LLM course. You are my role model and benchmark, Sir. And I thank Prof. Upendra Baxi for bringing you to Law Faculty from your department of sociology and anthropology. We were a blessed lot, Sir. I am yet to come across anyone who has bettered your love and affection for your students; your giving nat...

I had called a young friend yesterday to wish him on his birthday. He is a young officer in one of the para military police forces in India and is currently on posting in Kolkatta. Of all the trainees in his batch, I have developed a special affinity and bonding with him. He is introverted, soft spoken, focused, loving, alert and duty conscious. We stayed in touch over Whatsapp and that's how I also learnt of how he topped his course in snipping and could one day become an instructor in his academy. On learning this, I used to send him video clips of the best snipper movies. He even invited me for his wedding two years ago and even though I couldn't go for the wedding I did make it a point to travel to his hometown and wish the newly weds. It was inspiring to hear his family's story from his mother and how all the three brothers have done well for themselves given where the family came from and the struggles they went through. Yesterday, we traced our memories from the firs...