An Eternal Optimist

After completing reading a voluminous book "A Long walk to freedom:An autobiography by Nelson
Mandela" i could not resist myself but to write this post.

Who is an optimist? An optimist is the one who keeps one's head pointed towards the sun,one's feet moving forward.There would me many dark moments when his faith would sorely be tested, but he would not give himself up to despair because that way lay defeat and death.

I have found one such eternal optimist in Nelson Mandela. This no-normal human being held his hopes alive for around 27 years when he was fettered in an isolated island . He never accepted the things as they  were especially when he found them to be unjust.He was a fighter of a life time .He fought a indefatigable battle against the apartheid ,against the jail authorities for inhumane conditions of the Robben Island which was his home for around 20 years .

Even though Nelson drew his inspiration from Gandhian movements in India there are some striking differences between their approaches as a whole. For Eg: Nelson Mandela saw Non-Violence on the Gandhian model not as an inviolable principle but as a tactic to be used as the situation demanded.So Gandhi was a man of principle but Mandela was a more pragmatic leader.


Friends here is a story of an eagle :
EAGLE can live up to 70 years, but to reach this age, the eagle must make a hard decision in its' 40's
Its' long & flexible talons can no longer grab prey which serves as food, Its' long & sharp beak becomes bent
Its' old-aged & heavy wings, due to their thick feathers, become stuck to its' chest & make it difficult to fly
Then eagle is left with only 2 options: die or go through a painful process of change which lasts 150 days.
The process requires that eagle fly to a mountain & the eagle knocks its' beak against a rock until it plucks it out
After this, eagle will wait for a new beak to grow back. When its' new talons grow back, the eagle starts plucking its' old-aged feathers & after 5 months, eagle can take its' flight of rebirth & lives for 30 more years

I am sure that people have heard this story for more than once in their life time but i found this story to have some analogy to the life of Mandela and for that matter all the greats who have lived on the earth, for all of them had 2 phases in their life .The first half that is pretty ordinary that most of all live and the second half which is an extraordinary ones.The interval between 2 stories is the struggle , similar to that of an eagle, these people go through and endure without complaining .

So the question is why most people's life turn out to be so ordinary and lackluster ?
Is it something that is pre-etched in person's genes that decides whether he becomes a great personality or a mediocre ?
Answer to this is a plain NO.
Then what is it that matters? It is ,how big one's dreams are, how much one can endure without complaining ,how long one can hold on to his dreams working relentlessly..

 "Don't ever get complacent about your achievement" be RESTLESS. Be Restless to make yourself an artist in whatever art you indulge in , be restless to serve the poor and the society , be restless still you bring  the change in society that you want to see.

There were the words of Mandela after achieving the freedom for South Africa when he was in his mid 70's

"I have walked that long road to freedom.I have tried not to falter. I have had missteps along the way.But i have discovered the secret that after climbing a great hill,one only finds that there are many more hills to climb.I have taken moment here to rest , to steal a view of the glorious vista that surrounds me, to look back on the distance i have come.But i can rest only for a moment , for with the freedom comes responsibilities , and i dare not linger ,for my long walk is not yet ended"

Cooperative model in Kannada movie industry

LUCIA is first cooperative movie in the Kannada movie industry 

A very good attempt by a very talented director Pawan Kumar .He was Indian finalist in Young Performing Arts Entrepreneur 2009 by British Council .He should be credited for his not-so-conventional style of film making and novel ways of budgeting his movies.

As i have always been a true admirer of cooperative model of doing business and Kannada movies , i have tonnes of expectation on this movie.

I wish Dr. Verghese Kurien would have been with us to see the spread of cooperative model ,of which he was a passionate admirer.

To know more about cooperative model :  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooperative

Mr. Pawan Kumar , ALL THE BEST

My experience at IRMA

"When ever you are in doubt or when the self becomes too much with you ,apply the following test. Recall the face of the poorest and the weakest man whom you may have seen & ask yourself , if the step you contemplate is going to be of any use to him? will he gain anything from it? will it restore him to a control over his own life and destiny?  Then you will find your doubts and your self melting away..." These were the words of Gandhi.

I am fully aware of the fact that these are too idealistic and most irrelevant words for today's omnipresent middle class population of India who are too obsessed with the self .But these are the words that lay path to the most satisfying life .Friends ,at the later stags of the life ,when you look back and see, it's not your bank balance but the impact ,however modest ,that you made on people's lives that gives you a real sense of satisfaction and accomplishment.

In life  things can go wrong at any time and they mostly does.But when you look back and pay little more attention, you notice that everything happens with a reason and you see every dot connected.So take life as it comes . Most of us compare ourselves with others mostly friends ,acquaintances ,relatives or someone we barely know to measure our success or happiness without realizing the fact that success and happiness are very subjective .

The other day ,as a desperate IRMA aspirant , was trying to gobble as much knowledge as possible on the institution ,it's alumni ,etc and i was really taken aback to see the kind of passionate people the earth has on it. Here was a gentle-man called Sanjay Ghose who ,literally, gave up his life for the welfare of tribal people. Hats off to this genius yet generous person. Request you to go through his life story ,who knows sometime in life when we may feel lack of inspiration /direction ,these stories may come to our rescue.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanjay_Ghose 

Oh yes , i was to write my experience at IRMA .

It was exactly an year ago when my guru Mr Ashutosh  suggested me about the IRMA when  he thought that i was becoming directionless . Then on ,series of events and discussions with like minded people like Anil ,Vinod ,Pradeep ,Raghavendra ,Shreyas ,Sandeep Jain have strengthened the need of education from institutes of ilk IRMA. I feel that and hope most people agree to the fact that our 16 years of education has not given us anything but a job . So i strongly feel the need for education  that can provide channel to ones raw ideas and make him a true thinker not just a job-seeker at least in the final stages of my educational carrier. With this belief i started my preparation and was able to crack the written test and was called for GD/PI on 30th January 2013.

It was January 29, 6 PM when i was in front of the institute i longed to be part of , it was a kind of dream come true. Institute spread across 60 acres of lush green campus .It was a rear example of a institute providing such a hospitality to it's to-be-students in this age of commercialization of education. During my stay at the institute i came across all the kind of people i.e true passionate as well as those who wanted IRMA as the back-up institute if they fail to make into other money making institutes.

My performance at GD/PI was pretty decent and am very optimistic about the chances. But again i am not the only true passionate to attend the interview .The interview panel may find more passionate people than me to be part of their institute as they have their own procedures to measure candidate's passion. Here i feel the relevance of Dr. Kurien's dream of establishing 4-5 IRMAs across the different parts of the country without compromising on the quality to cater to the needs of the rural people by providing sufficient number of Bare-foot managers as IRMANS are fondly known as.

Know more about IRMA at https://www.irma.ac.in/

After all one thing is clear i.e we need to be sensible human beings .Just to quote an example we spend Rs 200 -Rs 300 for a single movie ticket and the harsh fact is that our respected planning commission of India has defined Rs 22 for rural and Rs 28 for urban as poverty line . Here i may sound foolish to suggest my friends to stop spending but what i suggest them is to spend judiciously .We can use the remaining amount for some good deeds .here i just tried to keep my mind and heart open to you..you may find my opinion completely non-sense for now but i am sure that you realize these things for sure in later stages of your life.
So guys think about this ... ...