Award yourself

On a recent outbound official trip organized by my employer, there as usual was a cultural night, an award ceremony, presentations by leaders, good food and fun trips. We, all the employees, look forward to it every year with enthusiasm. It is an event to meet people from all over the country, across functions, share experiences etc. The most interesting part of this outbound, which deserves a blogpost even after two months, is the award session.

Awards are given out for best performers who walk thru the crowd proudly and collect it, and come down the stage feeling heart bulging with success. This singular event has different types of impacts on different category of employees. The first one is the awardee. As it is supposed to be, it will be very motivating for him/her. It will be a lure for the other 'almost there' category of employees for doubling up performance next year. There is a third category, who does not take it very seriously and happily drinking the free wine and it is another ordinary evening for them. There is a fourth category, where I fall. The ones who become sad or envious or thoughtful or a mix of many other emotions.

Let us call this feeling 'gloomy' for the moment. This gloomy feeling, arises in me, not only in award sessions like this. It comes when there are disparities in life, in general. Disparities in promotions, disparities in CTCs, disparities in infrastructure of workstations, disparities in the living standards of colleagues, and many more. And the underlying tenet of this gloominess, is my value system which says no two human beings can be compared and no life is even a tad more important than the other.

Analysis of this value system for my own benefit:

Is anyone more important than the other?

In this game of daily life, if we are attached to materials, or even if we are not, we are invariably working towards sustenance of human lives, in various forms. All of us. Starting from the person who jumps into the manhole to clean the underground drainage system, to the MD of a company which produces garments for him, to the guy in the gas station who fills the MD's car with gas for him to go to office and review the profits, to the farmer who makes food for all of these, I can go on and on. In this deeply interconnected world, who is important and who deserves praise? Can anyone perform alone without this support system? Is it not one collective job of human sustenance and nothing else, that the earth and all the people in it are working for? Having said that, the question comes to awards for an individual for high performance. Does it makes sense? To my mind, it clearly does not.

Contributions - Low or High?

There can be low and high contributors to this sustenance game. I have planted 100 trees and contributed to the sustenance. Does that make me eligible for an award? To my mind, again it does not. If there are contributions to the sustenance support system, it is out of the things drawn out of the same system. So where is the merit?

Who qualifies for award -  Let us hear from Lord Krishna himself:

The only person qualifying for the award is the one who knows that, he is drawing things conscioulsy out of the sustenance support system (he calls it Yagna in the 3rd Chapter) and gives back things consciously to the same system. The fact that he draws more or gives more, does not really matter as long as he knows that it is for and of the system. That's what Krishna says.

Would like to quote from Gita on the above event:

3.5 of Gita: Karyate hyavasah karma sarvah prakruti jair gunaih - All beings do the karma helplessly as per their nature - All beings include the boss, the employee, the MD, the manhole guy and the gas station guy

3.9 of Gita: Yajnartharth karmanonyatra Lokoyam karma bhandanah - All actions you do which are not contributing to the Yajna, bounds you to this world - Which means though the awardee gets award s/he is still bounded unless he realizes that he is only drawing something from the Yagna or the sustenance support system and it is a privilege to be returned graciously.


If this knowledge goes deep inside, then every action and every word in our day to day life is an award which we bestow upon ourselves.

Written at 1:28 AM 28th July 2017, Colombo.

My blogperience

My first post was in April 2010. Right from it, I have posted a few posts.
Mostly to keep logs of what I think and What I do and to find people with similar interest and also to quench the thirst of writing in public.

But sadly, its not upto my mark. I wanted my blog to be filled with a lot of visits, discussions, comments and to create a big public awareness and a meeting spot for cultural discussions, spiritual discussions and sometimes a hangout point for a bored youth. Too much eh?  Yeah...It should be....

But where is my blog now? Its just a nanomicron in the cloud.
What should I do to make my blog a hub?

1.Be thematic. But before that find what is my theme? It could be travel, It could be people etc. A blog should be a one stop for one particular thing
2.Be creative. In words, In design, In flow. Be Crisp.
3.Be-lieve that my blog can become popular because there are more people in the world looking out what they need.
4.Send links to as many as possible. Advertisement works. Cant rely on google all the time to direct to my blog.
5.Key words are the key.

Following these one can make a blog popular. The journey begins......

A world of Books and a company of words

It started when I was studying third standard in Thirukkovilur.

It was a friday evening, in the year 1993 (I dont remember the month).  I dropped my overweighing school bag in one corner and rushed to get rid of the uniform thing.   My mom was busy in the kitchen making coffee.  The aroma of the coffee always reminds me that everything is OK at home and it sort of rejunuvates the tiresome typical school boy in me.

It was a melancholy evening for me, though the following Saturday and Sunday are holidays. I thought "Oh! wat to do with my time in hand? I have no homework to do, no exams approaching, I have two days holdiay, Tomorrow I will go and play hide n seek in the temple backyard, Sunday, I will watch TV and play cricket....All set for two days...But what exactly should I do now? Ok, will try something new..."  and Suddenly my English Text book fell in my view... A week back my English teacher had read us a story from that book. I found it interesting at that time. I was keenly listening. Even as a child, I remember myself as a moody and reserved kind of a schoolboy. But inside I always looked for something interesting to wonder upon.

Soothingly warm steam from the coffee with its aroma relaxed me and I was just reading the story which my teacher read to our class. The story was about an adventurous boy who goes on a tour with his uncle and cousin, accidentally finds treasure box from a haunted house after escaping various dangers.
Exactly that was the time when my mind got haunted by haunted things.

From then on, whenever I felt boredom, loneliness, sad, happy, or whatever feeling which can occur to an 8 year old friendless moody kid, I started reading stories which are in some way either adventurous or ghostly. Every bit of spare time I got, I entered into this imaginary world built of books.  Sitting in one place in my room, I travelled to Arabia alongwith Sindbad, got shipwrecked with him and brought back treasures to home, Went to wonderland with Alice, Played the prince in Cinderella and Sleeping beauty, acted the invisible friend to Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn, and lots more... I also picked up my classmate girls as cinderella, snow white or Rebecca Thatcher... No they didnt know till date that I picked them up as my heroines in my imaginations.... All these I did, sitting in a corner.... I enjoyed that fantasy. These characters soothed my friendless soul. I started building a dreamworld with these characters.

And till today it continues... Very recently, I read The Scarlet Pimpernal.... And it continues to be my all time favourite...You know what... Sometimes I try to imitate Percy Blakeney but only when Im alone. Otherwise I dont want to lose my self. Sometimes I even thought, what if I became a split personality. But I believe nothing happened as yet. Now, I dont want to miss the theme. I enjoyed so much these books and the wor(l)ds in it that I became addicted to them.

Once when I was sitting with Sherlock Holmes in the Baker Street, London in the year 2009, my friend suddenly woke me up. "Oh! It was just a dream good God", I said to myself.

Whenever I find that there is no interesting books around, I started writing. Writing reduced my stress, brough me down and made corrections when I was too much flying high, and brought me up when I was drowning deep. When writing, I started to write for me and only me. The words proved to be best companions when lonely. Most of the times I dont know what to write, but still I write about the vagueness of my mind. After writing I feel like the burden shifted to the paper from my drooping shoulders. Days passed in the company of words and books. Paper became my dumb companion, Words became my wise friend and books my world!!!  This world of books is so virtual that the real pain also seemed to be virtual. What is more interesting is that the real world itself started seeming virtual.

Days rolled on like that and lately, I started picturizing myself as a charecter in this book world. I started observing myself very keenly, standing outside of me, like an author studying his prospective characters from real life. I started thinking my day-to-day events as pages in a Book. It felt like I was not living my life but just filling the pages in my lifebook. Allowing God to make a novel with me the protagonist. It passed thru various chapters say thriller, romantic love story and comedy.


I am loving it too. With the very thought that its just happening in a story written by the Greatest author, life moves on.... It will....