The Red Balloon : An enchanting movie experience

The red balloon will stay with you forever. It can make you wrestle with the very idea of what a story is. A great story is incomplete. A story is never complete in itself. A good story becomes complete when the audience or the reader merges into it. A great story transcends the desire for completion. The red balloon ends after 34 minutes but it stays incomplete. ‘ What is the story about’ has ready simplistic answers at hand. ‘What does the story mean’ has no one answer. And that is so beautiful about experiencing it. Searching for the answer leads us onto the familiar conceptual tool-kit of metaphors, allegories. We can bandy about words like narrative and structure and impose some sense. And this movie just like its red ballon floats away from the sense-making world. Which is why it is such a compelling watch for all those who seek to make a living out of story-telling, be they artistes, writers, or trainers. The movie restores mystery and magic to its unassailable place in explaining what makes a great story possible. And…

How to Slack off on Your Gym Workout & Sabotage Your New Year Resolution!

It is not if you break your New year resolution, it is when. And on that positive note, let us begin. Here are the masterly tips to make or fake on the way to a fitter, slimmer & healthier you. You know as well as I do that the journey is better than the destination, don’t you? Let us do all we can to prolong the journey. First tip : Choose wisely. It begins with the choice of the gym. Gyms with personal fitness instructors are a strict no-no. They are not to be tolerated. Personal fitness instructors are sadistic monsters, aren’t they? They get paid for counting reverse from fifteen to zero while you are busy hauling boulders on your shoulders. And guess what, they make a hash of even the counting. They slow down the count just when you are pushing yourself to the limit egged on by the steady momentum of their countdown. How cruel can they be! So, don’t choose these monsters. Choose a gym where a number of people will work out together under the eyes of one instructor.…

Can People Open up & be Authentic in a training program? – An experience.

Can people open up and be authentic to the core in a training program? I have an interesting experience to share. We, a group of coaches, were in a self-discovery workshop. Most of us were regular acquaintances, some could call each other friends, and a few were new to the majority of attendees. What connected us was that we called ourselves coaches and we had a monthly meeting fixture for all things coaching related. In this workshop, we reached a point where people started giving feedback. One person at a time received feedback from all the rest, one at a time. So, when one person spoke, everybody listened. This was candid feedback about how I perceive you, what I appreciate about you, and what I don’t! And as these things go, everybody was getting hooked onto what was being said. It happens all the time, doesn’t it, that when people stop being politically correct and shed formal niceties, they become irresistibly compelling to each other and the whole group! As we were going about the whole thing in turns, we awaited a quiet lady; let…

Less Direct, More impactful. Thoughts on training.

Aspiring to be a better communicator? Expand your vocabulary. Modulate your voice. This is familiar advice. The direct approach. Could the areas to work on be less direct, and more impactful? An individual becomes a better communicator if the area he or she has worked on is clear thinking. If there is a quality workshop or a course on ‘effective thinking’, I would advise every individual intent on becoming a better communicator to choose that over a communications training program. I believe it will be more impactful. No individual on becoming a better thinker fails to communicate better. Further, an individual becomes a better communicator if he or she has become one with silence. Yes. Silence. We learn to inhabit silence and our peace and comfort grows. In that space, we find immense power to regather our real self. We become one – with silence, with ourselves, with the moment. Better communication results. Let us move onto a group scenario. If an entire unit of people at the same level – shop floor assistants, telecallers or operations staff – is…

Waking Up before a Crisis : What Every Citizen Can Learn from the Chennai Floods

Chennai is flooded with water. Chennai is also flooded with warmth. People are reaching out and helping each other. A crisis brings us together. Together, there need not be a crisis. If we pull together beforehand, we can prevent a crisis or limit the damage.Provided we think, plan, and do the right things. What are they? One by One. Thinking : Thinking what?  A good start would be to clear our minds. Get this : “Nobody ever gets credit for fixing problems that never happened” Would you agree? There is no fame and glory waiting for us. No distractions. Clarity of purpose. We do it for ourselves. Next, ask, ” In what way are we contributing to the problem?” Yes, we must think that! The problem begins in how we perceive our role as citizens in governance.We believe that casting a vote is the only thing to do. Who cares about things going wrong in between elections? We patiently await the next polls. Meanwhile, vested interests continue causing irreversible damage to our habitats. They pass laws and undertake actions, all of them leading to polluting…

When it rains

When it rains.. I smell new books. I hear the crackle of brown paper-covers; a dress for the new books. I scamper across to hold my own school dress – a crisp white shirt and blue shorts. I see the rain chase away street urchins, and lo behold! The pranksters with no mom and dad to rein them stand their ground and put their face up to the rain, a playfully defiant gaze at the sky, saying, ‘show me what you have got!’ I envy those kids, our vacation is over; they know no school, no regimented life. They know freedom like I have never known! I count my hours of freedom in school, the short recess, the long one, the free periods, the bunked ones! For me and my school friends, the rains bring mixed tidings.. We are thrilled to be back together after the vacation; and stare blankly from our long corridor towards our school ground; our field of dreams submerged under the water. Cricket is out..Damn the rains.. And then our eyes light up!The beautiful game. Football.…

Sylvia Path on Nature, the Sea , The Eternal & The Ephemeral

Written even before she turned 19, this is her diary entry. A visit to the Massachusetts coastline. A gifted writer becomes the sun. And gives light for us to see & experience the beauty of the soul. “On a relatively unfrequented, stony beach there is a great rock which juts out over the sea. After a climb, an ascent from one jagged foothold to another, a natural shelf is reached where one person can stretch at length, and stare down into the tide rising and falling below, or beyond to the bay, where sails catch light, then shadow, then light, as they tack far out near the horizon. The sun has burned these rocks, and the great continuous ebb and flow of the tide has crumbled the boulders, battered them, worn them down to the smooth sun-scalded stones on the beach which rattle and shift underfoot as one walks over them. A serene sense of the slow inevitability of the gradual changes in the earth’s crust comes over me; a consuming love, not of a god, but of the clean unbroken…

Beautiful Movie Scenes – The Shawshank Redemption

  Andy is destined to live out his life in prison for a crime he did not commit. In the company of inmates being robbed of hope, slowly & steadily ; as their souls are being hollowed out. Andy is useful to prison authorities. He gets to move around the premises in the course of doing his work. One day as a friendly prison official is in the washroom, Andy puts on music. The music casts a spell. This is a scene to experience. “I have no idea to this day what those two Italian ladies were singing about. Truth is, I don’t want to know. Some things are best left unsaid.I’d like to think they were singing about something so beautiful, it can’t be expressed in words, and makes your heart ache because of it. I tell you, those voices soared higher and farther than anybody in a gray place dares to dream. It was like some beautiful bird flapped into our drab little cage and made those walls dissolve away, and for the briefest of moments, every last…

The joy of playing

They were playing football but had thrown the rule-books away! There they were. A big group of 5-6 year old boys & girls in a rain-soaked muddy ground. Puddle patches at some places. Goal posts standing to attention. What do these kids do? Ignore the goal-posts. Stay away from the wet but even parts. Search for the muddiest parts. Kick-off there & begin the game. A slightly different one. Imagine a team of runners carrying a flaming torch. Recall the energy,the purpose, & the direction set by their run. Take away the purpose & direction. What you have is pure,unbridled energy. Bubbling energy! These kids were bursting with energy & the ball was at their feet! The football was their flaming torch. There were no two teams. This was ‘one’ team of twenty odd kids running for fun with the ball for company! They were pushing the ball together. There it goes into the mud-pools. Perfect! Time to dig it out & splash about the mud & water! Out of one & head towards the other! The puddles of water…

Quotes & short-burst expressions – Regularly updated

MESSAGE FOR READERS ACCESSING THIS PAGE FOR THE FIRST TIME What is creation? Creation is a lousy word. It’s a lousy word that confuses what you really do to perform a simple little procedure. Creation means create something out of nothing. In the beginning, God created Heaven and Earth. Okay, only God can do that. We can’t do that: We’re human. So let’s throw creation out, and let’s talk about connectivity. What you are trying to do is connect things together.You’re trying to practice connectivity. – Eugene Schwarz I like reading quotes. I have read many. As Eugene Schwarz would say, I am now practicing connectivity by writing down my own quotes & short-burst expressions. I am very sure what I say has been said before. I believe I become something more in the act of saying things my way. I learn to connect. Something I value. Every now & then, I will be updating this list. To see how I view what I said once upon a time, to feel good about myself & to be inspired to connect…