You would love this piece!!!

‘Life Ho to Aisi’’

By Virender Kapoor

It was like any other good day and he was feeling very satisfied and happy. He had finished his usual breakfast of eggs and soft breads and was sitting on his favourite cushioned seat which was always reserved for him. Out of the window he could see the morning hustle and bustle of the town- people rushing for work. What a dog’s life these guys lead, he thought. Thank God he was so lucky that he didn’t have to do all this for his comfortable living.

       Kids had left for the school by now and the elder’s were both out for work. Thinking of the kids, what a storm they create in the morning for their mother. Poor lady had to give them a bath, cook their breakfast and pack their lunch before she could attend to her own affairs. And there was always an argument on something or the other between husband and wife. He could never figure out what was all the fight about. Over the last twelve years he had been observing everything without saying a word. Oh not again, Nair’s our neighbors had started a fight as usual, shouting on top of their voice. Once they go away for work, peace would return. It would be Sharda Bai, the maid servant who would be the only one left to get the house in order. Sun was nice and bright and he was ready to move out to the garden. This was his favourite place, next to the nature he thought as he stretched himself moving out of his chair. Birds, butterflies and squirrels were his best friends.

He would spend a good time of the day in the garden, which was so meticulously maintained by the mali. He made the best of it. Having taken in a lot of oxygen which did good to his appetite, he would be ready for lunch. Sharda Bai always cooked something special for him and would always give him company for lunch. She was very affectionate and caring, God bless her. A good siesta after lunch and then the brats would be back. By now he was missing them. Sometimes they made a lot of noise, watched TV and listened to loud music which he never liked. Whatever it was, they were after all a part of my family, he thought. They loved him and he loved them so much. Life was so beautiful, it couldn’t have been better.

The door bell rang, oh it must be the brats back from school. “Fluffy, where are you?”, they shouted. He got up and ran towards the door wagging his tail in excitement-as usual, a thoroughbred Labrador.

Return on Investment-
What ROI can you expect from a Post graduate Management program.

Virender Kapoor

It is an irony and also a reality that today people look at education as a financial instrument. While it is good to know what you are getting into and what’s in it for you, it may not be right to view education as an instant cash cow or an ATM for that matter. This is a typical mindset of ‘instant gratification’ and it is time that young India understands this in the right perspective. It is unfortunate that parents and students have a myopic view in this regard. That is why many young boys and girls get mislead into choosing something that fails to pay dividends later in life. Good education is a long term investment if one still insists on looking at it as an investment.
Let us look at a simple example as an illustration. An IAS entrant or any first class gazette officer in the early seventees started his career with a pay scale of less than Rs 500/- a month. Forty years down the line, after the sixth pay commission his salary is pegged today at around Rs 80,000/- a month, which comes to a hundred and sixty times jump! This happened because he or she got into the ‘right track’ and a right grooming thereafter. Building up the knowledge base and grooming is what a good education will do for a student and hence will enable him to get on to the right track.
In case of a management discipline one must look at it as more vocational than educational. A good management program must not only give you a degree so to say, but should put a student through a grilling process so that a fully baked product is created which is ready to be employed. Such a program should be able to change your track. This is the key and the essence of education which students and their parents must understand.
OK, so you are on the right track and let us say after your two year management program you are employed at Rs 30,000/- per month. Taking the multiplication factor of 160 arrived at earlier – though corporate sector gives you higher and faster raise than the government jobs- your remuneration in the last year of your career would be Rs 480,000/- per month which is a whopping 5.76 Crores Per Annum. Don’t forget you have also earned progressively for full forty years.
So what do we learn from this simple arithmetic? Good education is Sarswati and money is Laxmi. You run after Sarswati and Laxmi will automatically follow you. There are no two ways about this. I get surprised and also dismayed when some students seeking admission to a management PG program make their choices largely on the fee factor and the kind of first job they expect from campus. Some of them are so ill informed that they feel that their first job should get them their entire fee back in one year. This is the biggest folly.Why do they forget that a good education and training will equip you to earn with compounded returns over the next four decades. But the bottom line here is that you must go for a program which can groom you, grill you and make you job ready. So don’t kill that proverbial Golden goose that can give you a golden egg everyday in order to get all the eggs together

Can we make our youngsters more resilient for their own good?

A recent incidence shocked the entire nation, where a fifteen year old school boy stabbed his teacher to death in Chennai. The teaching community was hurt the most. It was a well thought out action and the boy stabbed the lady a number of times in the class room till she dropped dead. The reason for this ghastly action was, that his teacher had sent out a written complain to his parents, pointing out the boy’s recurring failure in her subject.

 Whenever any such incidence occurs, there is an immediate uproar in the society and after a while there is an absolute silence.  Suddenly Socialites, psychiatrists, journalists, educationists, bureaucrats, social workers and even NGOs jump into the fray. Each one of them coming up with their own version of , “Why it happens and what can be done to prevent it in the future”. Most of the ‘debaters’ suggest quick fix solutions which may never work or come up with ideas which can never get implemented. Unfortunately- as if to avoid the situation- many of us even manage to point a finger at our education system, which indirectly means the teaching community. Instead of simplifying the problem we try to complicate it or circumvent it every time. As they say history repeats itself and we never learn from history.

We seem to be gradually falling into the ‘western trap’. As we progress on the materialistic front we are losing big time on the human behavior of our people – especially the younger generation. The worst is that we look for solutions from the western society which itself is struggling to keep their children in control. Let us face the fact that every need of a child belonging to even the so called ‘middle class’ in our country today is being easily met and most of the children therefore cannot take no for an answer. Parents who were earlier struggling to tame their kids , gradually gave it up or may be gave in to the pressures of neo modern society. In recent years, on the contrary many of them have joined the bandwagon and have started encouraging their children to indulge – if you can’t beat them join them! Perhaps that is the easiest way out. ‘Parental pampering’ is the order of the day and parents feel that they own the schools and the teachers just because they pay the fee. Schooling and bringing up your children is much more than ‘Pay and Park’ and realizing this is the basic start point to address this problem. How much of counseling in the schools can we afford to carry out in terms of time and money? Even if we manage to do it across all schools the question is, will it work without the involvement and understanding of the parents? 

Solution to this problem lies in looking at it the Emotional Intelligence way. In his book, Danial Goleman beautifully states that Emotional Intelligence is nothing more than those old fashioned things like will power, resilience, delayed gratification and ability to bounce back after failure  or even coping up with an insult for example. Today we all over react to the word ‘punishment’, especially in the context of schools . Let us understand that life is a journey full of rewards and punishments. You do something good in life and you are rewarded, you do something wrong you are punished for that, it is as simple as that.  If a child puts his hand into a fire he gets hurt ( punishment) so that he learns not to repeat it. That is how nature works and that is how the law of the land is also formulated. Penance is a punishment given by a priest for committing a sin   and that has been an accepted norm. Is this not important to teach all this to children to prepare them for life which is no bed of roses?

Today self esteem is the most delicate entity. An individual’s self esteem is as fragile as a piece of porcelain and is most easily shattered at the drop of the hat. Good missionary schools used to give “Good conduct” and “ Bad conduct “ badges to students which were to be worn by the students for the whole week. Students took it in the right spirit and that is what is important to understand. Nobody called it humiliating or demeaning then; Neither the parents nor the society .It prepared you to face insults , ups and downs and realities of life. For how long we need to protect a child from the realities like failures, pressures, disappointments and dismay? Getting bad report cards from a teacher cannot and should not trigger a murderous knife attack as it happened in Chennai.In the larger context it well may be the reason for road rage, street brawls and even divorces.

Let us examine the age factor as well. Can we keep treating a school student like a ‘child’ from 3 years to 17 years and 11 months of age and then hand him over voting rights one fine morning when he is 18? Here after he is responsible for everything he does, whether it is violating a traffic rule or committing forgery for which he can be jailed. How in the heaven can we expect a sudden transformation from him when you have kept him in the cotton wool for so long. It is like a domesticated tiger being left out in the jungle. He will not be able to face even the wolves!

We need to treat children differently at different age groups and try to build in the resilience component  and patience as they gradually mature. It has to done collectively by all the stake holders – parents, schools and most importantly the society. We need to relook at this problem and an old fashioned approach may be in order. People are moving back to ancient techniques of Yoga, meditation, Pranayam and Ayurveda for physical well being and with great success. Building resilience with a bit of reward and deterrence can show us the way.

This Blog is to bring awareness and provide content for all the intellectual minds who think different and need  some food for thought... You will get some new ideas , new flavors and some thought provokers..
 enjoy..

Virender Kapoor

If

If you have Jugaad and you are honest,well meaning,ethical and don’t lie;

If you have Jugaad and you love your country,you are patriotic and you love your countrymen;

If you have jugaad and you are forth right, have courage of conviction, have self esteem and pride;

If you have Jugaad and you can stand up against corruption ,fight injustice,care for the society;

You will be an asset to this world and others will be proud of you, my son.

Folks here is an interestingPiece from My Book " Heart oVer Matter- Your Mantra For Success"... A Concept I created Mappin Emotional Intelligence to Sunsigns...

It is amazingly accurate....

 YOUR EMOTIONAL BIO RHYTHM

Virender Kapoor

Going through the pages of this book you would have realized as to how very complex we human beings are. Our behavior, basic characteristics and our abilities to deal with the world and our environment differ from person to person. These abilities and temperament for each of us is very complex. That is why we also call this complex human behavior as an individual’s nature. This implies that these noncognitive aspects of our character are to some extent given to us by nature. That is why there are some who are very cool headed and some of us fly the handle and lose temper at the drop of a hat. These human instinct and basic qualities like will power, strength of character etc make a deep impact on each of us and to a large extent dictates as to how we interpret the world .Each one of us therefore has a unique Emotional Bio Rhythm-the way our emotions and characteristics shape our life-which is the key to improving our individual performance.

Emotional Intelligence –as described  –is a mix of an individual’s nature, characteristics, traits and attitude. On EI plain we all possess certain strengths as well as weaknesses; most of us have more strengths than weaknesses. To improve upon these weaknesses are like “Emotional Optimisation”.

To optimize, one must first be able to understand and realize what one possesses-what the nature has bestowed upon us. People are born under twelve zodiac signs. These sunsigns are as per English calculator. People born under a particular sunsign possess certain peculiar traits. These can be analysed and mapped on to the abilities that fall under the domain of Emotional Intelligence.

In Heart Over Matter,I have expanded the scope of EI by looking into and integrating EI with aspects like our likes and dislikes, relation between heart and head ,our basic emotional structure,passion,determination,motivation ,drive ,commitment,integrity,principles ,mind set and even values.

In a way I have covered the entire domain of human competence which can be labeled as “Ones character and Personality”. Within our character and personality map all these qualities are loosely coupled and loosely defined. It is not possible to quantify these traits and represent them as numbers. We call it Emotional Quotient but it would be very difficult to assign a number to ones EQ-at best it would be some sort of an approximation of a very subjective analysis.

Sunsigns define the character and personalities for people born under different sunsigns. Here also the characteristics are loosely defined and loosely structured. It is more of a narrative rather than a grading system. I feel one needs to leave it at that .If these can give us a gross feel about our basic character, we can take that as a start point for moving towards optimizing our abilities.

Surprisingly these characteristics pretty well match up with things like our sense of humour,delayed gratification,perseverance,optimism,patience,trusting others,impulsive nature, caring  for  others and so forth.

Sunsigns divides the earth’s 6.5 billion population into 12 distinct Zodiac signs. These are considered the twelve basic personality types. People in these groups get their characteristics or personality traits from whatever sign that the sun was passing through at the time of their birth. Since these sunsigns go across a time zone there is an imaginary boundary line between two signs. This imaginary line is called a ‘Cusp’. For simple understanding, people born close to these boundaries tend to have characteristics of both the signs.

As you read your Bio Rhythm as per your sunsign, you will realize that many of the characteristics match with your character almost hundred percent. Some of these match to some extent and you would say “Hm…this could be possible” and some don’t match at all and you say “Oh no! This is not me”. But if you take the sum total you will find a number of traits that match yours. Even if it is 80% profile match it becomes a useful tool.First, you can be conscious about your strengths and weaknesses and second you can make an effort to bring about a change in yourself. Third you can understand your personality and avoid those situations, jobs and people which do not go along with your personality.

For example if you are the one who cannot work under pressure and tension as per your Emotional Bio Rhythm then you must avoid taking jobs that have an environment or expectation which will have you under pressure.

Your “Self profiling” and Emotional Bio Rhythm put together can give you a fair idea as to how to deal with life, which direction to move into and what type of area of work to choose that goes along well with you.

Therefore you work on two plains together, emotional optimization and optimizing your life according to your temperament. 

I feel politicians are the most creative people..Look the way the entire crafty precision was used to put Pranab Mukherjee as the winning horse by UPA and congress.

This is the first one....I feel I have a lots of Blogging coming in the coming days..