My First Actual Shayari

I just found my very first shayari that I wrote while digging through my old buzzes. This one I wrote when I was in my previous company and some nasty things happened to me there. This was written by me on Sep 1st 2010

Khandhon ko zimedari ki bhoj ne jhukhaya
Process tho khudh company ne sikhaya
Lessons Learned likh likh ke hatheli par pada E5, E6, HAL ka chala, 
Wiki ne tho poora.. poora career jala dala.

FYI..  Lessons learned is something we used to write whenever we did any mistake or learned  any new things. It was a good practiced enforced by my manager. E5, E6 and HAL were the applications that we used to work on. Wiki was the place where we used to post those lessons learned, where others (team members) could comment on that.

Possible Career by Rasi

Aries: Government job, Police, Military Service, Fire Service, Sports, Engineering industry, Iron factory, boiler plant, brick chamber, pottery work, mining, surgeon, arm manufacturing, cooking, agriculture, trade union leader

Taurus: Jewelry business, cattle shed, money lending, commission agent, financial institutions, handicrafts, fancy articles, scented materials, five star hotels, flower merchants, fruit juice shop, drama, cinema, music, poet, story writer, singer, treasury.

Gemini: Information and broad casting, space dept., education dept. P & T, Telephone, book publishing , mathematics dept, accountants, auditors, law and order councilor, ambassador.

Cancer: Export and Import, shipping, transport dept., agriculture, grocery shop, medical shop, milk booth, vegetable shop, pearl merchant, hotel business, distillery, mineral water selling.

Leo: Government Job, Politics, Administrator, Social Services, Charitable institutions, Engineering Industry

Virgo: Auditing, Accounting, Business, Teacher, writer, retail shops

Libra: Jewelry shop, fancy shop, handicrafts, perfume shop, cloth merchant, money lending, commission agents, bank, Life insurance , law dept., hotel business, bar and Restaurant, Dancing Hall, Beauty parlor, Music, Dance , Cinema

Scorpio: Iron Industries, Engineering Industry, Mining, Agriculture, Electricity Dept, Metal industry, Instrument Manufacturing, precision development organization, raw materials, priest, astrology, mantra and tantra, occult practices

Sagittarius: Forest dept, saw mills, wood merchant, bank, law dept, temple, financial institutions, education dept, ordnance depot, military training dept, social service, charitable institutions.

Capricorn: Hotels, food products, manure and pesticide selling, oil merchant, mining, dealing with spare parts and old articles, hardware shop, leather business, building work, Granite stone and sand business, porters, coolies, drivers, shoe polishing, shoe makers.

Aquarius: Psychology, Astrology, Philosophy, Religion, Teaching, Research and Development, Consultancy, Administration, Oil and Natural Gas Companies, Air Service, Space Dept., Defence service, Fire Service, Jail Dept., Bomb manufacturing, tourist guide, central excise dept, butcher shop. 

Pieces: Education Dept, Religious Institutions, Medicine, Financial institution, Law Dept, External Affairs, Bank, Navy, shipping, temple worker, priest

Graha Drishti

All Planets aspect the 7th house from them. In addition the outer planets, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn have special aspects.

· Jupiter aspects the 5th and 9th houses from him, in addition to the 7th house.
· Mars aspects the 4th and 8th houses from him, in addition to the 7th house.
· Saturn aspects the 3rd and 10th houses from him, in addition to the 7th house.

The Other Side to Drona & Ekalavya's Story

Most of us would have heard about Ekalvya’s story. It’s about how a low caste boy with his utmost dedication, sincerity and devotion towards his master and archery makes himself a best archer and how an narrow minded guru Dronacharya just to keep up his word that Arjuna would be the best archer in the world, mercilessly asks for Ekalavya’s thumb as guru dakshina thereby destroying Ekalavya’s life entirely. Although Ekalavya is still renowned to be a great student and is even taken as example for being an ideal student, a student who obeyed the words of his master without any hesitation, Drona is more seen as an evil and narrow minded guru.

Throughout my childhood I was under a similar impression that Drona was an evil man to do such a sinful act. We’re told the story in such a way that we instantly start hating Drona, start pitying and respecting Ekalavya.

As I learned more about Drona I came to know that he was not as bad as he is being portrayed to be. Infact he was a very good person. A highly learned and a brave Brahmin. This led me to think why did he do such a sinful act by asking a thumb of Ekalavya. First and foremost he is a Brahmin and most often Brahmins are kind hearted and not people who fight for their name and glory. This is totally against what Drona did, cutting a thumb of a person is in no way kind heartedness and the story says that Drona promised Arjuna to make him the best archer now when Arjuna saw a person who was better than him he reported it to Drona and Drona after seeing that Ekalavya can be a big competition to Arjuna asks him his thumb finger as guru dakshina there by disabling him for archery forever.

So were people like Bheeshma, Vidur and Krishna wrong in calling Drona a great Brahmin. No shastra or Vedas justify disabling a person just to keep up ones promise amd after reading about Drona I’m pretty sure that he wouldn’t have gone against it. So to understand why Drona did it I had to go back and understand what happned that prompted Drona to do such a sinful act.

The story goes by saying that, “one day the pandava princesses go roaming in the forest along with their pet dog and Dronacharya.  The dog runs ahead of them and reaches Ekalavyas hut. On seeing Ekalavya the dog starts barking at him. Ekalavya was  practicing archery at that time and the barking dog irritates him and distracts his concentration. Ekalavya gets agitated by this and fires arrows after arrows at the dogs mouth thereby making the dogs mouth immovable and critically injuring the dog. Ekalavya rejoices and starts practicing again. The dog crying in pain goes back to the pandavas. Pandavas on seeing their dog critically injured become agitated but Arjuna who has an eye for precision starts thinking who could have so carefully placed arrow in a dogs mouth thereby stopping it from barking. Drona also see this and all of them go in search of the person who did this to their dog. They all reach Ekalavyas hut and Ekalavya on seeing his master Drona pays respects and on asking says that he is the one who shot arrows at the dog because it was disturbing him from practicing. Drona after listening thinks for a while and says that he appreciates the boys dedication and sincerity towards him and archery and then asks for Ekalavyas thumb as guru dakshina.

So what did Drona think  that made him do such a terrible thing ? Surely it wouldn't be for the word that he gave to Arjuna. Any teacher would be having only to see his student excel and a good teacher never shows partiality. We can say that Drona was a good teacher because he taught Arjuna more than what he taught Ashwathama ( his own son ) because he knew Arjuna was a better student than Ashwathama. So there should have been something highly justifiable for Drona to take such a decision. What could that be ?

Thinking about this I came to a conclusion that archery (Dhanur Vidya)  is no small thing. Dhanur veda says a highly skilled bowman standing in the middle of a town can alone save the town from 10,000 enemies. Hence it gave great power in the hands of the practitioner. But as the saying goes "with great powers comes great responsibilities". So a teacher before teaching anyone something powerful should also judge if the student is responsible enough to handle those powers. Just dedication and sincerity is not enough to judge a student, his capability also needs to be assessed. 


Drona came to know that although Ekalavya was highly dedicated and sincere he was not capable enough to handle the power that came with mastering dhanur vidya (archery). A person who lost his calm just because of a barking dog and hurt it so badly surely cannot be a person who will be able to control his anger in adverse situations. He would not hesitate using his powers on anything and would even go ahead and destroy everything if he gets out of control. Drona understood that the power was not in the right hands and that he has to do something to stop Ekalavya. And the only way to stop him was to stop him from practicing archery and without a thumb a person cannot do archery and hence asks for it as guru dakshina. I have no idea what destruction Ekalavya would have bought if Dronacharya hadn't stopped him at the right time. Although it made Dronacharya a bad man he did take the blame silently to the benefit of the society. Another gesture of a noble man.

We humans always have this tendency of finding fault with a good person portray him bad and showcase a bad person with utmost respect.

Realization

Finally I have realized one important thing in my life today. 

“All of my life's worst problems started as a solution to my existing problems”

How to be Happy

All of us want to be happy. In fact we work so hard, toil ourselves only to lead a better, happier and a meaningful life. Better life because it promises more happiness and leading a meaningful life gives us a sense of achievement which in turn makes us happy.

Happiness is defined as a mental state of well-being, characterized by positive emotions ranging from contentment to intense joy.

When everything is going on in our life as we wish it to happen we're happy. But life is seldom like that. It’s full of surprises. These surprises and sudden turn of events is what makes most of sad or unhappy but looking at it positively this is what makes a life "Lively".

Different people attribute happiness to different things, but mostly it is seen that most of us attribute our happiness to their careers, family & friends. Simply speaking, a person is happy when he has a good job, a caring family and a bunch of good friends. On pushing a little deeper we find that most of them are happy with their present family and friends but are not satisfied with their jobs and come out saying that a better job than the present will make them happier and will allow them to live their life. Ironically most of us have it but still we are not happy. Many of us have a very good job at hand but still we're not satisfied with what we have and are on a constant look out for something more challenging and more rewarding thinking that a better prospect will make our life happier. Research shows that a career influences on 3% of life's happiness which is very negligible compared to the rest. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying one doesn't need a good career, but constantly feeling that a better one would makes us better is an unending quest.

A newer job makes us happy but that happiness doesn't last longer and it’s not very long before you start feeling the same what you had for your previous job. Most of us don't make it explicit because we don't want to be stamped as 'Job Jumpers', but somewhere deep down that lava is bubbling.

Same happens with newer friends, a new friend brings in lot of new things and you start feeling good but going on even he/she becomes boring as you have now known that person. So what is it that makes us happy? New things are definitely not what make us happy, but still we're on a constant pursuit of happiness behind newer things.

The reason for this is all of us inherently have something called 'Happiness Baseline'. This baseline varies from individual to individual. The higher the baseline the longer he stays happy. That is why you see few people happy most of the times. A new job triggers this happiness baseline and as we go above our happiness baseline we feel overjoyed. We want this to continue but it doesn't as it is just a temporary effect and it slowly starts coming down. This entire happiness series can be seen as a triangle wave series in physics going up when a change happens and when things are constant it slowly starts coming down. The fall is steep when you are surrounded with a negative situation. When the fall cuts your happiness baseline and continues downwards is what I call the 'Depression State'. A mild depression state is ok because everyone gets into it at one point or the other but this doesn't stay long because the same above principle works to get you back to the normal happiness state. But if the fall continues without going upward one falls into a state which I call a 'Deep Depression State' and this can be pretty harmful and care must be taken to avoid it at all cause. Motivation by the right person at the right time can get a person back from the 'Deep Depression State'.

So does that mean we can never be happier than what we are? Well, I didn’t say that. All we have to do is change our perspective. Don’t attribute your happiness to things that are constantly changing, instead focus on things that don’t change often.

Here are few tips which you might find useful in your pursuit for happiness:

1.          Smile: Smile often; although this might sound simple, it’s not that easy. But smiling can really work wonders. There’s nothing that discourages your enemy than your constant smiling face. Smile when you are sad and you will find that you are not sadder as before.

2.          Forgive: Learn to forgive, I don’t mean it just for namesake, when you do it do it heart fully. But before you want do it, if you feel like saying that act of him/her has hurt you deeply tell it and then also tell him that you forgive him/her for that act. Trust me, you’ll feel more relaxed after wards.

3.        Talk it out: If you have any problem with anyone better speak to that person and get it sorted out. This works most of the time. If it doesn’t at least you won’t feel it that you didn’t give it a try from your end.

4.         Talk to your family regularly: Honestly, this helps a lot. You will discover that there are many wise people in your family than you ever knew.

5.         Be optimistic: No matter what bad happens to you, never leave the hope that good will not happen to you.

Remember that you need to bend during the tough times to blossom during the good times.

Reason for Recession in America

Lighter Side

My previous manager was a good man giving his employees good amount of freedom at work, understanding them and mainly not yelling at them. One could always see him smile and that made everyone around him feel good. He would come down to a person and talk to him/her in a very polite manner and get things done. No doubt most of the employees liked him.

I usually used to work in the second shifts hence always used to stay late in the office. One day I was surprised to see lights on in my manager’s cabin. I looked at the clock it was 9 P.M. I thought there must be really something important going on or else he wouldn’t be staying this late. As I was thinking all these I saw a ping in my instant messenger. It was my manager. He said, “Sridhar, have you got Rs. 4000/-  with you now, I need it urgently as there will be no banks open till now I can’t go and withdraw the money.” I thought he must be in real great need or else he wouldn’t be asking me like this. I said, I don’t have that much money with me now. He asked do you have it in your bank account. I replied, yes. He then asked me do you have an internet banking account. I said yes I do have it but I have never used it before. He said no problem, can you owe me 4000 rupees.  Thinking that he is real grave need I said yes. Then he said, ok I’ll come down to your place and we’ll transfer it to my account. He also said that he will make sure that he will return me the money by tomorrow evening. I said that’s fine with me. And then he walked up to me and did the transfer himself teaching me along the way on how to do internet fund transfer. He walked away saying thanks to me and I was feeling very happy for being able to help a person in crisis and that person being my manager made me feel even more proud. Also, he being a nice guy helping him made me feel very good.

Three days passed and I didn’t hear back anything from my manager. Again the same situation repeated. This time again he was in office late night and he pinged me asking for more money. I said I only have Rs.3000/- with me He asked me to transfer it to him. I did it without any hesitation. Two days went by again and because of a political turmoil in the city I was working from home. I again got a ping from my manager requesting for money. This time I said I cannot give more than 1000/-. He said he is deep crisis and that any amount would help him. I did the transfer again but this time I was not happy. I started doubting this persons intentions now.

Month passed away and I received my salary. The very next day after my salary being credited I get a call from my manager when I’m in office asking for money. This time I’m a bit protective and started telling him that I got problems of my own. But he was not letting go of it. He swore that he would return my entire amount by the end of this week This time he was not asking for any amount, instead he was demanding Rs.5000/-. Atlast unwillingly I had to transfer it to him.

Months passed and I used to hear nothing from him regarding my money. Pressure started increasing for me at home. But I being me was hesitant to ask him. Slowly I started knowing that I was not alone most of my colleagues had fallen into the trap of my manager.

I started asking him for money but he kept saying some cock and bull story and postponing it. Fortunately one day he called me inside his cabin and returned me an amount of Rs.8000/-  and that he would be returning the remaining amount by the weekend. I was happy to get the amount  because I had lost all hopes of recovering that amount.

Suddenly one day I came to know that he was fired from the company and that he has left the city. I could see my hard earned Rs.5000/- vanishing after him.

Few weeks later I get a call from his dearest friend one of my colleague who owes me another Rs.1000/- and speaks everything with me except for the money that he owes me saying that Madhava is in banglore and might be flying to USA for a short trip.

Then there is a long silence, I don’t hear about anyone from anywhere. Suddenly I start hearing that America is again into recession and that it has lost huge money. I could only suspect one great mind behind it. If you are smart enough you should have by now known the reason why America is into recession again J