I read an interesting article in a local newspaper a couple days back. Written by a social worker, it described the sad incidences of deaths of children in rural tribal belt in Western India.

What struck me from the article was one simple fact. A few blocks from the houses where some kids died of hunger, there lived a reasonably wealthy man who was a landowner and owned a couple of cars. This man vociferously joined the protests about how the government should have done something to save the hungry kids. But there are no records of him taking steps himself to make sure no children would die in his neighborhood.

As much dramatic the above fact is and as much it feeds right into our aching need of affirming our own moral superiority over others, for one moment we need to stop instantly jumping to judgement. We need to give that person a benefit of doubt and try to rationalize his decision without tracing it to a flaw in character. I think rarely people are bad enough to let a child die hungry if they are in a position to help without increasing risk in their life.

Most likely this person lives in a mindset, which not only a lot of Indians, but people from most of the poorer countries subscribe to. We live in a society where the assessment of risk by an average citizen is “high”. That’s why everyone makes it a high priority to cover up their ass first. They want to amass resources and keep it that way, so they and their kids have reduced risk in their life.

This heightened perception of risk is the root cause of corruption. Because you want to stack up as much money as possible, as soon as possible. This is why we have inflation. Because when everyone sees the prices rising, they increase the prices of the services they offer, contributing to a vicious cycle. This leads to a society where everyone is individually rich, but we all are collectively poor.

This gentleman, who owned two vehicles and lived right across from the dying kids, ignored present plight of others because he was more concerned about his own plight in future. For him, it was purely a risk mitigation strategy.

What people don’t realize is how badly they are harming the ecosystem they are living in. It’s like living in a shared house and taking wood and bricks from the walls and foundation to fortify your own room, just so that you will be protected from other occupants in the house. If you do it too much, the house will collapse you will have no place to live in.

Ironically at some level we all understand this. Yet the rational and logical part of the mind still tells us to focus on our own future risks. This is why we fail to create a society where people trust strangers. This is why we are failing to create strong neighborhood organizations.

If this cycle is to be broken, we have to cultivate social trust.

We have to begin by stopping the blame game. We have to begin by not blaming the person with two vehicles above. We must show him the social trust we are taking about. We must give him benefit of doubt and investigate his thought process rationally. What can we change, without asking people to change?  The biggest sign of lack of trust is an impulse to judge someone.

The child is victim of not lack of food, but lack of trust.

I am waiting for my plane. I see a mom and a toddler sitting next to me. Then comes a stranger with a big laptop and some gadgets and sets up his shop in the seat next to the toddler. He slowly spread out his gadgets and started taking some extra space and occupying part of the chair where toddler was sitting. By no means his stuff was touching the toddler.

But when the toddler’s mom saw this, she lashed out at the stranger. In her mind, her toddler deserved the full seat. Instead of backing off, the man started arguing with the mother. Soon she became furious and called cops. The laptop wielding stranger left the area heavily embarrassed.

I have had this feeling often, that more harm is done in this world by people who mean well. It just got reinforced. I think more harm is done by overprotective mothers and controlling fathers who just want to ensure safety of their kids, than it is done by remorseless psychopaths or criminal masterminds. In the process of ensuring happiness of kids, the parents often inflict more damage on rest of the world.

And this does not seem to be about a person. I have seen women transformed when they have a baby. In fact this is not even just true about humans. I have read it in hunter stories how the most feared animals in the jungle is a female trying to protect her cubs rather than a male trying to protect his territory. Because the male will back off of the opponent seems to strong. But the female will just not back off and will take insane risks including attempt to attack and fight animals much larger than her.

Is our civil mind developed to control the natural, instinctual response? Or are we just programmed biologically so hard that we use our civilized minds to justify the call of the instinct?

In a conversation from that book, the client is describing their struggle to protect someone else from emotional pain. And the psychotherapist asks “How do you know that the pain, the crisis, is not good for them?”

This is a sort of light-bulb moment. Several times I have done things just to protect someone from knowing the truth, just because I thought the truth will hurt them. But almost never I thought that the truth might have brought an adjustment in their thoughts and beliefs and might have made them a better person. I was content playing God, protecting others. Sometimes the issue of concern would  just fed away as time passed. Sometimes the issue kept popping its head and made it difficult to keep the lie, and protection intact.

This desire to control, and desire to play god is at the heart of perfectionism. Calling a task complete is equivalent to giving up your control over that task. That’s why I don’t like to complete things. That’s why I keep procrastinating, because I want to be able to control. Often times I don’t write blog posts for months even though there are several ideas ringing in my head. Writing about them and publishing the post means giving up the control.

And then there is another question in my head. What is ‘Value’ of something? As a rational human being, we are  programmed to seek value in positive, beneficial things. We like to food and we are willing to pay for it. We are convinced about value of education and we are willing to pay for it. We appreciate the comfort and shelter a house provides and we are willing to pay for it. We also appreciate the value in control. If I decide to rent an apartment instead of buying a house, it allows me to live there without committment. Because committing to something is giving up control. So I am willing to pay a little extra to avoid committing and keeping my control.

We live in a society that appreciates and rewards positive things. But are we willing to pay for a crisis that will teach us? Are we willing to pay for bad experiences, inconvenient truths, moral dilemmas, just for the character building aspect?

I don’t have an answer yet. But it’s time to click “Publish” on this post and give up control.

I had just spoken to them about how they need to take better care of themselves, do Yoga and exercise regularly and stuff. For a few minutes I reflected on my sermon. And I realized one thing. The reason I really wanted them to do Yoga had only so much to do with them. It had to do a lot with me. I knew that I would have to be primary caretaker for them if they had health issues and I was making sure their health remains good, so I won’t have too much trouble. Was it in their interest as well? Yes. But I was protecting myself and just because it was in their interest, I was trying to force it on them.

There are many things that are in my interest, but I don’t do it if I enjoy it. I don’t like if they are forced on me. So why should they?

This subtle observation, that I was controlling others because I assumed their responsibility and I was trying to keep my work minimum, lead me to examine other areas of my life. Do I do this to others? Do I do this at workplace?

And I saw this behavior so much around me. Parents do this all the time. Forcing the kids to learn things they don’t want. Bosses do it all the time. Forcing employees to perform tasks that solely focus on this assumed infinite responsibility of bosses.

Over the time, this builds up resentment, anger, aversion. This goes against something very basic inside us. Free will. And any attempt to suppress free will backfires sooner or later. After all, we are all in this world not because we want to be protected, not because we want to be controlled, but because we want to live out our free will.

The secret of leadership, parenting, and reverse-parenting as in my case, is one and the same, and is stated aptly by Lao Tzu in Tao De Jing,

“The secret of cooking the smallest fish, is same as secret of governing the largest empire. With a gentle touch.”

Long long ago there was a great king. One night he was sleeping and in his dreams he saw a monk writing something down.
“Who are you? And what are you writing?” the king asked
“I am making a list of people who love god. In this list there are kings who built many temples, there are rich people who offered great gifts to god, there are monks who prayed to god all their life.”
“Does my name appear in that list?”
“I am afraid not.”
“Thats alright. I understand. I mostly spend of my time delivering justice, building school and universities, and managing state affairs. I don’t belong to that list.” the king said. The monk disappeared and the dream ended.

The next night the same thing happened and the king saw the monk making a list.
“Would you like to know what is this list about?” the monk asked smiling.
The king nodded.
“Well, I am making the list of people liked by god. And o king, your name is at the top.”

To me this story represents Karma Yoga. God is best served by doing our everyday duties. People who entirely focus on rituals to please the God reduce him/her to the level of narcissist.

And while this water shortage went on, most of the youth were busy dancing on the street for Ganapati.

Our pain-and-effort vector seems to be off. Most of the pain of people is related to basic things like food and water and electricity. But most of the time spent by the very people suffering from those problems is not in activities related to solving that problem. These people spend most of their time celebrating, watching TV, playing cricket. Nothing wrong with enjoying life. But if people spent some time working on the basic problems, finding creative and innovative solutions, they would have even more time to enjoy.

What is the root of this pain-response dissonance? Why our efforts are not focused where our biggest pain comes from? Why everyone is working on superficial increase in life standard, like increased salary or car or TV, but not much community action is seen on critical issue like resource productivity? Why people can’t come together and build rainwater harvesting system?

If people came together and built a rainwater harvesting system they could significantly lighten the water shortage. Yes, that system would work only in rainy season. But it would have cascading benefits. Rainwater harvesting will reduce pumping from the dams in the rainy season, thus making the water in dams last longer in summer. Also if lots of rainwater is properly harvested, it would ease the flooding situation in monsoon.

Indian forces charged. Right at the beginning they scored a big point. British Brigadier fell to a bullet. But immediately a senior Kernel took his position. They kept firing consistently from their Enfield rifles. As the Indians came closer, the British kept their positions and the firing continued.

At that time Indian forces did one disastrous mistake. They lost their nerve in front of steady British firing and Instead of staying stretched as a line formation, they all came closer to the middle.

Why they did this? It’s psychology. When things get stressful, we all want to huddle and be close to each other and find comfort in numbers. But on battlefield it is mistake. Because it gives your opponent a big mass, an easy target to shoot at.

That’s what happened. British stayed spread as a line formation. But Indians formed a close bunch. It gave British troops an easy target and many angles to attack it. They fired with increased accuracy. Hundreds of Indian troops died in minute. Eventually Indian forces were completely routed, in spite of their huge numerical superiority.

Indian forces were as motivated as British and as brave as the British. They all were as prepared to die as British were. But it was organization and discipline of the British forces that finally prevailed. Organization and discipline act as huge multiplying factors. 10 organized and disciplined people are as effective as 100 or 200 people who are not.

Often times that is where we as a community or country fail. It’s not the character. Average Indian is as honest or cunning as average citizen of any other country. It’s not about motivation. Indians love their country just as much as any other people in the world. It’s our making a plan and sticking to it is what that needs work.

If we could find ways to better organize our selves and show discipline to stick to the organization, indeed sky would be the limit.

What can we do to get organized?

Perhaps the first place to start is on personal level. Rarely I have seen people from India keep a personal calendar. For us, we wake up and kind of charge straight in the nebulous blob of time in front of us called the day. Then we mostly just do whatever our temporary motivation tells us to do. But that makes it difficult to rely on each other as a team.

Just recently I took a trip to India. Before reaching there, I talked to a friend of mine and we decided to meet on a certain day. But when I called him on that day, he said he was out and could not meet. He had forgotten that he was going to be out when he committed to me. This makes it harder for me to plan my activities with him next time.

If he had a calendar, he would have immediately known his prior planned engagement. We would have decided some other time to meet. We would have met and it would have strengthened our friendship. We are still friends. But meeting in person certainly would have made way to better friendship.

When you keep a calendar, you are not responsible to remember. You are just responsible to see the calendar time to time and do it.

As a result, having a calendar makes you less stressed. So you are more creative, more productive, more intelligent. So you get more things done and feel happier overall.

This is what we need to be in the 21st century. An organized Indian.

In a village there was a family: a father, a mother and a son. The son was grown up but  he did not do any work. The mother always protected him. One day the father got really mad and declared that the son should not be given any dinner unless he worked and earned some money that day.

The next morning the father woke up and left for work. The mother came to her son’s rescue again. She gave him a 100 rupee note and told him to show that as earnings to his father.

The father came back in the evening and asked the son what he earned. The son showed the 100 rupee note. The father grabbed the note, studied it carefully and shouted “You did not earn this, someone, perhaps your mother, just gave it to you.” Saying that the father tore the note in pieces and threw it out of the window. The mother watched as the money went down in pieces, but did not say anything. The son said “whatever” and walked away.

The next evening the same thing happened again. The son showed his father the note given by his mother. Again the father took it, tore it up and threw it out of the window. Once again the son and the mother watched silently.

It went on for couple more days.  Finally one day the son decided he had enough. Now his mother was really hesitating giving him more money. So he went out and sought work. He helped a farmer feed his cattle and earned some money. He helped a shopkeeper move goods around and earned some more money. By the end of the day he had earned a twenty rupee note.

When the father came back, the son showed him his earnings proudly. The father looked at it carefully and did exactly the same thing. He tore it into pieces and declared the money was given to the son by someone else.

The son was in tears. He started yelling at his father. He ran down and tried to collect all the pieces.

When he came upstairs, he found his father waiting at the door.

“Come, let’s have dinner.” The father said smiling. “I know that was the money you really earned. Because you could not watch it being destroyed. You know it’s real value. “

Long long ago, on the bank of a river, there lived a monk. Right across the street from him, lived a prostitute. The monk always hated the fact that he had to live next door to the prostitute. He took every opportunity to rebuke her about her profession. He would take every opportunity to show her what a horrible person she was. In his mind, he always compared himself with her and took big pride in the fact that he was accruing so much good Karma compared to her.

The prostitute was a humble girl. She always respected the monk. She tried not to talk back when he was yelling at her. She felt bad about the choice of profession she made, but was not in a position to get out of it. She would always try to listen when the monk prayed, hoping that listening God’s name would help her wash off some of her sins.

The monk kept on his routine of massaging his own ego by comparing himself to the prostitute. Eventually he got so obsessed that he kept a jar with him and for every one person who visited prostitute, he dropped a pebble in the jar.

The prostitute kept her own routine. She was also watching what the monk was doing. She had a jar too. And every time the monk prayed, she put a pebble in the jar.

One day there was a big flood on the river. Both the monk and the prostitute were washed away and were dead. Upon their death, their souls stood in front of God of death.

To everyone’s surprise, the God of death ordered the prostitute to go to heaven and the monk to go to hell. The monk could not believe this. “What an injustice. You can still find a jar in my house. I have kept count of how many times this prostitute sinned. How can she go to the heaven? There must be some mistake.”

The prostitute also added humbly “I think the monk is right. I don’t deserve to go the heaven. But he does. I have a jar where I kept count of the number of times I heard his prayer. He prayed a lot. So I think he should go to heaven and I should go to hell.”

The God of death smiled and said “The judgement is correct. It does not matter what word is in your mouth. It matters only what is in your heart. The monk’s heart was filled with prostitute’s sins while he was saying his prayers. While the prostitute’s heart was filled with love of God while engaged in lifestyle of sins.  The heart that has love of God goes to heaven and the heart that judges others and is filled with jealousy goes to hell.”

Today I will write a little tribute to one great generation, the generation of my mom and dad. It’s the generation of people who are in their sixties to early seventies now.

This generation was born right around independence. They may not remember the partition. But they remember the pain and the uncertainty, because it was carried on for a while by the nation. Then were born in a young nation, but an old civilization and culture. They had to keep up with time while still respect the culture.

They saw the tide of 60s craziness coming from the West. But more or less they did not  subscribe to it. (Or if they did, they did not tell us because they are our dads and moms.)

They liberated Goa from Portuguese. They fought their best, but they lost in 1962 to China. Many of them perished  in harsh cold Himalayan mountains due to the blunders of delusional Nehru government. But when they got Shastri, they stopped Pakistani aggression in 1965 and scored the massive victory of 1971. Still I remember the stories I hear from members of this generation. Still I remember how they get excited.

They may not have participated in freedom struggle. But their life was not without political struggles. When Indira Gandhi tried to choke democracy in India, they were on road and they got the democracy back.

Some of these men and women went into aerospace founded ISRO. With the limited resources they had, they launched satellites after satellite. Some of them became teachers and within their career span, the rate of literacy in India tripled. Some of them became doctors and nurses and took immunization to all corners of India. In doing so, they drastically reduced rate of death of young children and eradicated polio from Indian borders. Some of them became businessmen and increased the GDP by over 30 times during three decades they were at helm. Some of them became farmers and made our country self sufficient in food production.

They were the first generation that dealt with family planning. They were the first generation who had to take care of their old parents for long time because life expectancy in India increased.

Women of this generation joined the workforce in large numbers. They had to face the difficult task of balancing family and work. They passed that exam with shining colors.

This generation took Bollywood beyond India’s boundaries and made it what it is today. This generation gave birth to some of the greatest singers and musicians and artists.

While doing all these great things, they fought inflation, took care of their parents in old age and raised kids. Their story is the story of contribution and sacrifices.

With this blog post, I honor this generation for all the great things they have done for my generation. They gave us a very stable foundation, stable home, stable country, to rely on. They empowered us to soar into the blue sky, yet assured us that there will always be a home if our wings are tired.

If you know a member of this generation, show them this article.

And tell them that they did a great job….