Starting with Vinayaka Chathurthi

 

Vinayaka Chathurthi takes a special place in my heart, for the success story related to my career at Northern Lights. Whatever I am today, career-wise at NLTD, the credit goes to our very own Vinayakar.

Here’s a short account of the background and the most recent occurrence, that too, on this very same day, today.

8 years ago, I had a huge responsibility of single-handedly beginning a pilot project – that had to be transitioned from the US team, post my visit to the office location in Toccoa, GA.

When I returned to Chennai post my trip, I felt so lonely and challenged. I was simply not confident about how it would all pan out. However, I was truly blessed enough to get to start the project on the day of Vinayaka Chathurthi. I still remember letting the US team know the significance of Vinayaka Chathurthi and they were genuinely happy for this auspicious start of the project.

Lord Ganesha helped with every obstacle in the way and offered all the strength I needed. Thankful that the project is now successful and we have a team across 2 locations and multiple sub-projects. By far, ours is the biggest team in the office, with what started off as a pilot project. Humble beginnings indeed.

8 years later, on the very same occasion of Vinayaka Chathurthi, a day before I plan to begin meeting my boss on a weekly basis, post a maternity break, I receive a new replacement laptop from office. Like a child, I went running to Amma and told her that I got my new laptop on the day of Vinayaka Chathurthi today. She was resting and almost half asleep – but all she said was – keep it in the Pooja room next to the Ganesha idol where we did a pooja today on account of Chathurthi. I had the exact same thought process as she did.

Although I have a couple months still to rejoin work, I wanted to stay in touch with work and get started in a small way and it couldn’t have gotten better – a wonderful precedence to the very beginning or rather, a comeback, with a responsibility higher than ever before in my life – that of being Amma of Niraamaya.

I am thankful to Lord Ganesha for helping me slowly get back to the groove, that too, exactly a day after Vinayaka Chaturthi. Surrendering all that’s lying ahead to Ganesha and getting started humbly, yet again.

Happy to be writing this piece on the new laptop, my first document on Vinayaka Chathurthi.

Thank you, Pillayarappa!!

 

Happy Teachers’ Day!

“A Good Teacher is someone who leaves a mark in your life, beyond their area of expertise and knowledge. “ 

“Acharya Devo Bhava.” Shri Gurubhyo Namaha.”

There are some teachers who’ll be etched in your heart forever, here’s why:

To that loving 🥰 heart from kindergarten whose song I still sing - If you’re happy and you know, clap your hands! If you’re happy and you know, tap your feet…! Thelma mam, Happy Teachers’ Day

To that teacher whose training in Hindi still makes me write and remember Hindi — Blossom Mam, Happy Teachers’ Day

“Debit what goes out, credit what comes in.” Debit the receiver, credit the giver.” To that one mam who changed the world for me with her way of teaching - something as annoying as Maths became so user-friendly to me through her Accountancy classes, that I still remember the golden rules of Accounting from 25 yrs ago! I don’t detest Maths that much, you made me confident through your way of teaching Accounts, and vested confidence in me. Thank you dear Reena Mam, happy Teachers’ Day!

To that sir whose principles of supply and demand still dictates my understanding in Economics. To that teacher who uses layman’s terms to help explain the value of economics, with something as basic as Tapioca! Tony sir, Happy Teachers’ Day!

Finally, To Sir, with Love: I owe my English to you. Thank you for spending time with me after class to have those beautiful conversations. I began writing so much, only to take after you! Look what you’ve made of me. Happy Teachers’ Day dear  Madhu sir! To that secret crush 😅simply because of your intelligence and humility.

An Ode to Amma on her special day ✨🧿

The saddest thing I still have etched in my heart is how I was robbed of my childhood with you for the initial 15 yrs of my life. Am ever grateful to God for having moved on separately with you post that. Whatever it is, I will love you more every single day. You’re the one who I hope to be like, for my little daughter…I’d consider myself successful if I am able to do at least half-justice. The only person who understands my emotions as a mother, the only person who has been spending sleepless nights with me since my delivery…the only person who shares my workload without even me asking for it.

Warmth, love, coziness. Amma🖤🧿✨ My most favourite human, bestest of best friends, partner in crime, my cheer leader, my music partner, my management guru, and what not. You have this uncanny ability to bring out the best in me, always. Thanks for being my unsung guardian angel. The amount of struggle undergone by you is unfathomable. Still, all I’ve seen is, you smiling and being patient. It takes great strength to gather this kind of courage to stare at adversity and challenges and smile with ease. Taking things as they come and not making a hue and cry of them calls for resilience and determination. Thank you for inspiring me daily Amma. Epitome of Patience and Emotional Intelligence. 

Just very few pics we have with each other, yet we know each other so well! I pray to God for your good health and peace of mind. May you be protected from all evil eyes 🧿 May you be surrounded by good vibes.  🌈 ✨❤️🤍

There’s never enough that I can write about you… Words will fail before your heart ❤️ 

Happy birthday my Best ❤️ 

The Language of Crying

No I am not a cry baby. Because crying is my language: It’s my only way to communicate. Next time my baby hears the word cry baby, if she had the mouth to frame words: she’d smack back saying - hey you, go get your research done well! This is the only way I can communicate! 

What’s language after all? It’s a medium of expression. Even with all the diction and face to face interactions, adults fail miserably in communicating, forget communicating, they find it hard to even talk or complete a sentence without preconceived notions or judgement. 

So all the baby knows, is to cry. Cry to communicate everything. Consider this, imagine ringing a bell for every little thing. How do you spot the difference? Granted if there’s a different bell tone for each type, and it’s all well demarcated, you can tell because of the pre-programming. You cannot interpret with artificial intelligence to understand the types of crying of newborns. Each to one’s own as well, btw. It’s not so that the neighbour’s kid cries in a certain way and hence I’d take it that mine cried for possibly the same reason, or may be an older grand child probably cried for some reason. There’s only so much you can do to calibrate. For the rest, it’s a painstakingly rewarding process to understand the types of crying and attending to it on time, every time. It takes grit and high levels of patience to understand the behavioural patterns round the clock, to get why your little one is crying. As with the pregnancy, every child is unique too. Of course, there could be commonalities, however, there’s no shortcut to understanding the reasons of crying of your own little one.

And so began my journey with motherhood, trying to understand those extended cries of hunger, to those little ones, to the disgruntled ones, to needing of my warmth, to the discomforts, to the little sounds, to when she’s about to doze off, and what not. What’s even more emotional is the fact that I end up crying myself seeing the little one cry…without any rhyme or reason.

It’s just like troubleshooting, you have a few checkpoints, that are your SOS guide, like a Triage Handling Mechanism. Thanks to my project handling experience that came in handy, the most important aspect that I could easily adapt was the notes-taking portion and staying organised, with a lot of discipline. It may sound so old-school, but it’s definitely worth every second. How would you respond if the house is on fire, such is the urgency with which you’d need to act when dealing with newborns. Imagine the amount of preparation that needs to go in throughout the 24 hrs! The last few weeks have been a great blessing for me in every way, because every hurdle was an opportunity in understanding my little one’s language a little better. It’s not so much that I have a mastery over it, yet I am beginning to construct sentences with the help of my newborn. See how they are your teachers already?! 

This full-time occupation at hand is an opportunity to build tons and tons of patience and perseverance. The most important trick of the trade is to keep yourself levelheaded every single time, and NOT PANIC. 

So cry on, my baby. It’s never a sign of weakness! You’ll know that it’s a beautiful vent for clogged emotions. In your case, it’s for the basic needs after all! 

Each to one’s own. Let’s remember that, before making judgmental cries!

Notes from a Melomaniac - Happy World Music Day - 21st June

 

“If music be the food of love, play on…” Shakespeare’s renowned Twelfth Night begins with these words uttered by the protagonist Orsino, who is lost in love with Olivia. This sentence is etched in my head since school days, such is the power of language and music, itself.

So, a day without music? Nah, I don’t know what it feels like! Does one forget to breathe after all? All music lovers have their own private connection with music – through their playlists from different times. Each song has a story, a memory associated, some good, some sad, or some, that are just filled with a random emotion, some for the rain, some for a bright sunny morning, some that just put you to a peaceful sleep, some that give you a musical hug, or some that give you a hearty cry, letting you vent it all out, without any human intervention. These are the private moments with music that you build, and maintain over a period of time.

Thanks to my cousin (my big brother), who first introduced me to this haven, by helping me carry music along. He gifted this precious Sony Walkman, through which I could listen to music on the go, especially during train journeys. Those were the days when AR Rahman’s songs were a rage, and the Walkman became an addiction, a must-have travel package, without which I didn’t know what a train journey was. The sound of the train touching the fish-plates used to be synonymous with that of ARR’s music – one such album is Dil Se.

Having grown up listening to ARR first, I then dug backwards – Ilayaraja and MSV, with the help of my mom’s craziness associated with music. Carnatic is a different genre altogether, and it’s like an acquired taste with foods. My playlists expanded in no time, quite rapidly with all types. As much as I love Carnatic and Western Music, I have this extraordinary madness for Raja Sir's music. The list is just endless, can you assess the depth of the ocean? Such is the depth of music as well, it’s unfathomable, and is an endless treasure, never failing to keep you sane. It's like music for each mood you are in. Carrying music with me stuck to me as a trait, thanks to my brother for sowing these seeds early enough.

The therapeutic values of music are already proven well enough, so much so that with my own experience during my very recent pregnancy, I engaged myself with this self-stress-busting activity of singing and listening to music, which kept me sane enough throughout the period. After all, the benefits of listening to the music you love, even impacts fetal health in a positive way, I can vouch for this, as am seeing a live example of it in my child, post-delivery. If ever you thought how would infants understand music, just a couple weeks ago, I happened to listen to music being played in the Neonatology Intensive Care Unit at the hospital where I had the delivery – this is a place where they keep infants/newborns under observation and treatment for various reasons. When asked to the duty nurse about the music that was being played in this unit, she said with a smiling face that they were instructed by the doctor for music to be played, as it promotes pleasantness, leading to better sleep in infants.

Music helps build so many human connections, by building bridges directly into the minds of people, where even words fail to do their job. Sharing a thought vs. Sharing a song makes a difference of sea and earth, it immediately stitches any scars or fortifies existing connections! The excitement of sharing a liking for similar music knows no bounds.

Without further ado, wishing you all a Happy Music Day. Engage in some form of music or the other, sing your heart out and bask in the mirth of music!

Leaving you all with a collage of my favorite music related quotes.

False Positivity

 

Positivity is one of the most overrated emotions – as though if you’d turn on a switch, in no time, the brain would communicate to the heart to wash out the negativity and pump in positive cells in the blood stream!

Welcome to the Utopian World of Optimism!

In the name of optimism, there are groups, clubs, organisations, social media pages, a million search results, and pop-up feeds asking you to stop the negative thinking right away and ingest positivity.

Granted that having a healthy and positive mindset, does help with a better view of any given situation. However, in order to firmly accomplish that, you will need to first acknowledge the negativity. Before you replace the negative thought with a positive thought, you will have to be careful in not suppressing the negative emotion in the first place.

Understand the situation, think through the negativity, and the rough patch that you are going through. Follow it up by venting it out to someone who is emotionally intelligent and trustworthy. Remember that both these parameters need to be mandatorily met for you to vent the feelings out. Level-headedness first, and if they’re level-headed, to a large extent, they’d most likely be trustworthy as well, but double-check for your own safety. If you don’t have any such people in your circle, kindly refrain from sharing. Instead, turn to praying or self-meditation. Even isolating yourself for a bout of tears is extremely helpful in letting out the emotions. The whole point is, you will first need to get the emotion out of your system in order to get to the next step of adopting a better frame. Think of it like trying on different frames at an optical store, you’d first remove one to wear another, right?

This may sound like a lengthy process while transitioning from one frame to another, however, it could be solved sooner than you think, if only you pause for a moment and accept the reality first.

This post is in no way a preaching against optimism – if you carefully exercise some of your emotional intelligence, you will understand that for the positivity to last in your head, it certainly helps to let the dust settle and then take the optimism on, head-on!

It takes mindfulness and tons of patience to practise this method, however, it is an extremely rewarding experience. You might think that it would take a long time to get the emotion out through this process, however, if done in a timely manner when you are actually feeling it, it works wonders. It’s much better than having to suppress the feeling and forget about it, as the repercussions of this are unhealthy and like deposited fat, you’d have deposited emotions, that yield zero interest. It would instead compound and make things even worse!

In essence, if you ever get the chance to help someone through such a situation, please do them a favor by helping them acknowledge the negativity first, rather than shunning it right away. Once you acknowledge, you are already onboard for helping them through the next train of thoughts – after all, when there’s a weed in the plant, don’t you first help it by cutting that out, to let a new leaf grow?

Make human contacts warmer – talking through helps, consider holding hands or offering a hug (if you can), these go a very long way to pacify and instill a sense of calmness.

Next time you feel low, angry, distressed, irritated, or any other synonym related to this feeling, remember that it is okay to be not okay – Batteries have both sides too! Just remember to not dwell in these thoughts for long, take a break, and offer yourself some distractions. Mindfully then practise the art of acknowledging the negative situation and then realign yourself. It’s as simple as that.

Disclaimer: This is based on a true incident that happened to me as recent as last week, in an absolute state of distress due to post-partum; until I heard a couple of words from my doctor who just said something very simple to me – I am sure you would feel stressed it’s okay to be that way. Just Feel It first and then move on!

That’s it – that’s all I needed, and not some fancy positivity rant-filled advice. With that, I just needed some alone-time to cry it all out and then have a conversation with God. My wireless connection got stronger after all!

 

 

 

Advice about Advice

For advising in itself is an art. There are subtleties to it, which need to be handled with care. Remember you’re dealing with live emotions when you rattle out your piece of advice. How much of it gets into their head, depends directly on the tone, and the content of info you want to pass along. Just because there’s a lot coming from your experience, it doesn’t directly give you the passport to infiltrate the listener’s head with information overload. There’s a tactic and a method to this craziness called Advice. 

There’s absolutely no problem if we aren’t good at this technique, we just need to hold our horses and slow down. Sugarcoating words like my 2 cents, my suggestion, etc., would make zero sense if the listener isn’t in the frame of mind in the first place. 

With that said, here’s a paradox about it. Still try the advising technique, by doing an easy temperature check of the emotions and situation, and then start in small dosages. If it works it does, otherwise, save for another time, when it’s appropriate. The fear of the other person failing miserably could take precedence over your instincts, and that’s probably what’s prompting your rant-driven advice. But this can be easily spotted through your temperature check of emotions, where you can easily tell how prepared the person is. It’s as simple as that. High amounts of Patience levels are required for both parties. 

If all this seems too much, it’s absolutely normal to stay quiet, and just keep the person in your prayers, which will go a longer way, than a failed verbal attempt. 

As I write this, I vouch for every word and punctuation of this piece, as this is exactly what l

follow with everyone, alike, to my best possible knowledge. I also have a list of people who constantly return to me for advice. The proof of the pudding lies in the eating, isn’t it? To advice, and be advised, it takes a great deal of mind positioning and awareness of the present situation. If you let your own thoughts run like a train, there’s no way, people would pay heed, which will possibly lead to your own isolation. 

P.S. No hard feelings. This was a much needed let-out.