Living Life v/s Leading Life

On the pleasant evening of Sunday, 1^st March 2020, SEVA volunteers along with friends and families seemed full of excitement to celebrate SEVA’s 26^th anniversary.

There were multiple reasons behind the excitement. Multi talented chief guest Dr. Mahesh Joshi had chosen interesting topic: “Living Life v/s Leading Life”. Dr Joshi was also going to entertain with popular Bollywood songs.

SEVA enjoys the patronage of volunteers. Few are associated since inception and many from 10 to 15+ years. Recognition of such volunteers with memento on anniversary day motivates new volunteers for sure.

Dr. Joshi reached the venue well in advance. Tall personality sporting dark Indian suit enhanced with red pocket square was perfect blend for the speaker and concert performer. Senior accompanying artists Mahavir and Sridhar helped Dr. Joshi to ensure perfect music arrangements. Simultaneously laptop was being checked for notes related to talk; everything with confidence, friendly smile and a down to earth attitude. Dr Joshi himself wears multiple hats and empowers others for the same. Sound controller Rahim from his team was  doing photography too.

Ever smiling Madhu Verma anchored the event with perfection. 

Prayers by Saroja and Valli added divine touch to the ceremony. 

SEVA Director Raj Tapadia explained SEVA’s vision and ongoing activities in welcome address.

Language of Dr. Joshi’s speech was very simple with touch of humor and examples to keep the listeners glued. 

Dr. Joshi appreciated SEVA volunteers for their art of listening.

Dr. Joshi believed what is learnt is important than number of years spent and shared his knowledge. Very swiftly topic was introduced, elaborated and summarized towards conclusion.

Most of the audience chose ‘Living Life’ over ‘Leading Life’; same like result of study at Harvard. 

Living is not just breathing but can be correlated to terms like enjoying, satisfaction, beyond oneself etc. Dr. Joshi named them as feelings. 

Living is a passive process but creating feelings like happiness is active process termed as ‘Leading Life’. When you lead your life in the right manner, it translates to feel  good about life;  living life to its fullest.

Search for happiness leads to unhappiness; search for satisfaction makes you dissatisfied. So think of action plan to live life.

From Dr. Joshi’s experience there are 

3 pillars to lead life: Purpose, direction and value system. Clear purpose gives right direction. This is helped by values inculcated. If value system is not aligned to objective that is holistic in nature, you can take wrong decision. This leads to unsecured and unhappy feeling.

There are 3 enablers to lead life

• Physical Health
• Mental Health - Emotional quotient and emotional intelligence is an important facet as to how you  enable yourself to lead to living life.
• Wisdom to choose right and wrong beyond domain knowledge

Influential people prioritize things compared to ordinary people. 

Decisions depend on circumstances. Study conducted at Harvard involving 800 persons over 70 years of span concluded that “Healthy relationships lead to happiness” however unhealthy relationship over long duration is detrimental. So right choice is necessary. For right decision, go back to value system, use wisdom to choose right.

Obstacle in journey of leading life is ‘Lack of desire or inner urge’. Best example of inner urge is: Royal couple foregoing Royal status and leading normal life.

Living life has subjective element and can be measured in happiness, satisfaction etc. However, leading life is objective. 

Leading Life involves 3 achievements:

• Wealth earned
• Relationship that gives sense of accomplishments, sense of belonging
• Impact for yourself, family and society

The way you are leading life determines the way you are living life.

In initial part of life materialistic things don’t matter to you. Feeling of being loved, respected and wanted brings happiness so we are living life. Then we start leading life – wealth, achievements. However, we stop living life because of wrong priorities, wrong decisions. We get unhappy and it impacts the way we are living life.

There is improvement in quality of life. It is path to lead the life. It's impact is not understood on living life so illness, suicide, divorce have increased.

Living life is passive element, an outcome, not the action. Leading life is active, more proactive, an action resulting in experience to feeling of living good or bad life. 

After acquiring wealth, impact in society, regard, respect, travel etc. do you stop urge to achieve more? Is the plateau is reached? This was the thought Dr. Joshi left with the audience.

It was time to start much awaited concert. Dr. Joshi knew all the songs by heart; he was confident to take song names  on the fly from crowd. Songs just continued flowing one after the other. Rapport with musicians was perfect to accommodate the flow.

Crowd was getting  soaked in lovely songs and failed to realize sudden downpour outside the auditorium; that conveyed God’s blessings. Dr. Joshi’s songs in Malhar raaga and dancing rains were like jugalbandi. 

Short power cut period also didn’t hamper the enthusiasm of singer and audience. Spice was enhanced by adding Bengali song. Audience was encouraged to sing and clap saying it is oxygen for the artist. From Rafi, Manna De, Kishore Kumar, Sehegal all singers came live. No one wanted this treat to end but timing could not be ignored and Bhairavi raaga was started to conclude the concert. ‘Laga Chunari me Daag’ song with tabla by Sridhar mesmerized the crowd. Swift transition to Pandit Bhimsen Joshi’s ‘Mile Sur Mera Tumhara’ was cherry on the cake.

 Vice Chairperson Thiagarajan gave concluding speech.

Mind is the reason that brings freedom and bondage. Most callers coming to SEVA are in bind, they don't know that freedom already lies in them so volunteers empower the callers.

Importance of decision making was narrated with Nachiketa and Yamraj's story. In decision between preya, "what is pleasant", and shreya, "what is beneficial.", Shreya will take you to right place.

Clarity of purpose leads us. This used to be referred as Purushartha.  Charity is Dharma. Earning in right direction is Artha. Man and Woman in alignment of values, thought, purpose and way of life is Kama. Moksha is freedom - give up Dharma, Artha, Kama. Sense of detachment.

A good life is to know other person's pains, needs and be of service then only life would be meaningful.

Sridhar Vemuri gave vote of thanks.

After the concert, one lady met Dr. Joshi and gave biggest compliment. She lives in a neighboring building and magic of good music brought her to the  auditorium. This made the artist’s day.

Dr. Joshi’s good qualities were noticed one after the other. He was so humble that he insisted to stand in queue for buffet.

All bid good bye with wonderful memories, and best wishes to SEVA to bring brightness to many lives.

Celebrating 1000 Full Moons

My uncle (chote phupaji – father’s younger sister’s husband) Mr. Balkisanji Jajoo is completing 81 years today - Sahasra Chandra Darshan. It signifies that he has seen 1000 full moons in his life. We pray for many more full moons in his life and his blessings in our lives.

Phupaji is like father figure for us. He has special quality to easily mingle with any age group.

My Dadaji shared a special bond with him as stock market buddy. Memories go back around year 1975 at Pune. Around 4 pm, my Dadaji (grandfather) would call Phupaji’s Mumbai office and ask him in Marvadi language, “Kai keve market?” (What was  the trend of stock market today?).

I always admired how Phupaji considered his spouse’s father (my Dadaji) as own father. After Dadaji’s demise in 1992, Phupaji emotionally said, “Many incidences of my association with him are just passing in front of my eyes”.

Back then, Phupaji would pay many short visits to my parent’s place at Pune during his work related travel. He would take special interest in explaining Science related concepts to me. We get inspired with his fond memories about IIT, Mumbai where he has completed Masters in Metallurgical Engineering with Gold Medal.

Seeing off family member visiting foreign country on work was a big family event. Family photo wishing Phupaji ‘Bon Voyage’ at Santacruze airport has special place in our family album.

Being Marvadi, Phupaji always enjoyed being self employed. He shares about struggle period as how material was transported manually for his startup.

Though Phupaji quit job following passion for business, he had graceful exit. He had excellent rapport with Late H K Firodiya (Founder of Kinetic Engineering Ltd). After my engineering, Phupaji fixed an appointment for same day with one phone call to Hastimalji’s PA. It was a great experience to interact with the legend. Hastimalji took keen interest in my project with Automotive Research Association and returned the research paper later after reading the same.  Hastimalji’s passion to keep learning in spite of being head of successful company creates a mark in mind.

Phupaji fulfilled his dream to setup foundry to produce high precision castings. In those days, he implemented gender diversity at factory for controlled employee behavior leading to good productivity. Funds were spent with caution, office had to look good so he chose bamboo for cubicles; great look in least cost. However, circumstances were not in favor and Phupaji had to leave the factory ownership. This setback was handled with courage.

Phupaji speaks only to the point and observes more. Once while traveling he noticed one teenager co-passenger. With his body language, he could make out that this young man is on wrong path. Phupaji tactfully spoke to him, brought him home and later united him with his family. Had Phupaji ignored the boy’s behavior, one life could have gone in wrong direction.

Phupaji has keen interest in many subjects other than academics. He has out of the box thinking. As children, we used to get fascinated during visit to his home. We were always attracted to collage made with cutouts from magazine in drawing room.  We felt awestruck when Phupaji explained the concept of collage as "Depiction of life from his eyes".

Phupaji’s guru’s life size statue in meditating pose, passes positive energy at Phupaji’s home.

Phupaji always encourages Bhuaji to keep learning as per her interest. Bhuaji would run library in their society and we children used to enjoy all books during our visit.

Phupaji is fond of good movies, once he tweaked his schedule a bit to watch Kamal Amrohi’s  great movie Pakiza during his Pune visit. Good balance of work and enjoyment. He is also fond of good food that he consumes in limits.

Phupaji’s deep study in spirituality and magneto therapy benefits many.

He is a true fighter. One of the few cases I know to quickly bounce back to normalcy after stroke. He started exercises at hospital bed itself and later devised techniques to build muscle strength.

Calculated food, exercise, meditation, knowledge sharing, positivism... guide us with more secrets of energy! 

Phupaji, keep inspiring us!

What you become during the journey!

Serial entrepreneur Abhay Deshpande is well known in the Indian start-up circuit as the e-commerce enabler for building India's No. 1 e-commerce platform MartJack (acquired by Capillary Tech).

The current venture RecyKal is pioneer in waste management sector.

Recently, Abhay received the award ‘The mentor of Hyderabad’ from prestigious YourStory and Telangana Innovation cell (A govt of Telangana Initiative) group. Another feather in cap!

On Sunday, 23^rdJune, 2019 evening, Abhay’s close friends who reside in same community, celebrated his success - felicitation as ‘Mentor’. This informal function was planned as total surprise to Abhay.

His better half Pornima had managed to maintain the secret. Pornima had convinced Abhay with story of dinner with kids as part of father’s day celebration. After all, Pornima has mentored the celebrity ‘Mentor’ 😉

Abhay’s professional achievements have been covered at multiple online posts where Abhay has given the credit to family, team, his dreams and hard work. However, candid conversation amongst friends and family gave different perspective about Abhay’s qualities those make him the outstanding human being that he is today.

Abhay has traits of his grandfather who had supported many persons at home town, ‘Nanded’. Now Abhay is doing mentor-ship at broader platform.

Abhay is blessed to be part of supportive and encouraging family.

Memories go two decades back. Nitin Padmawar and Girish Kasliwal heard 1^st time about Abhay at engineering college as legend who had passed before them. After graduating, Nitin & Girish started software business. Responsibilities were divided based on strength; Nitin was hardcore techie and Girish worked towards business development.

While chasing same government contract, Nitin & Girish met Abhay for first time as competitor. Gradually interaction started and like-minded brains formed a team to build success story.

Nitin who is hardcore techie, appreciates how Abhay makes him visualize the dream as own. Eventually Nitin falls in trap and brings the dream to reality. Recently, Abhay had convinced Nitin that it would be fun projecting world cup cricket match with friends and family at community’s club house. Abhay can identify potential candidate & delegate. Though not being a cricket fan, Nitin enjoyed arranging all connections & hardware for the match 😊. It was sheer fun while cheering India to victory.

Nitin clearly remembers struggle period. Abhay once convinced team to build product search engine to fetch discounted price from each vendor. For team, challenge was to access data. Abhay proposed to build system itself to procure data. Dream big and strive to achieve!

Girish jokingly recalls that Abhay never wrote software programs but knew how to apply them practically. Abhay & Girish both handled business development. They worked from adjacent cabins and managed deals depending on own strength.

Pornima’s father (Papa) Mr. Ramesh lightheartedly shares dream about Pornima desiring to marry a person doing various odd jobs. Is Abhay bringing the dream to reality by excelling in diversified fields?

Abhay set first office for ‘MalaMall.com’ at Khairtabad. Papa visited to meet Abhay as prospective groom. Around year 2000, online business was new; Papa joking says, “still he doesn’t understand what Abhay does 😊”.

Abhay’s struggle, can be co-related with a story about British mountaineer girl. This girl was saved after being buried under snow for 4 days. This accident lead to leg amputation. But girl did not loose hope and she conquered Everest using artificial limbs. This desire to struggle to achieve the goal in spite of failures is Abhay’s quality.

Abhay continues to correct previous mistakes; for example, team members are now chosen depending on their capability.

Abhay laughs while remembering registration of 200+ domain names each time new business idea was struck.

Abhay can foresee next problem. When others feel there is no escape from problem, Abhay will show another aspect; real out of the box thinking.

Abhay with his go-getter attitude and positive impatience continued to bring new dreams to reality. Team is growing. Abhishek (aka Bittu) at RecyKal, Prabhu at payment related portal and list goes on.

Pornima’s popularity as leader goes back to college days. While contesting for Student’s Council, opposite party had kidnapped her but finally released as Pornima was a strong contender. Poornima excelled at studies too; received offer from leading MNC’. However, she preferred to handle family responsibility so that Abhay could work peacefully.

Pornima proves the saying that, ‘there is a woman behind every successful man’.

Daughters Aarya, Aadi, appreciate mother for playing role of both parents during father’s busy schedule. They are proud of their father and feel, he can work with total dedication as mother efficiently handles home front.

Abhay enjoys positivity amongst community friends. His 1^st major success was achieved after coming to community. After hectic day, relaxed evenings or active mornings with sports (like cricket, lawn tennis, table tennis etc.) amongst friends recharges his energy for next day.

Abhay has striking quality to eat food with respect. He is a very friendly, humble and modest person; always ready to help! It can be to help to physically carry gas cylinder for neighbor or to negotiate property deal; anything where Abhay can help.

Some friends connect over sports, some over charity and other common interests.

Few connect to him over his desire to share knowledge gained from his experience. He is even ready to visit your home and guide; this small gesture builds great bonds.

While mentoring Abhay asks, what kind of feedback do you want? Sugar coated or straight? It is heartening to know that 90+% people prefer straight feedback.

Abhay is a great leader in business as well as in sports. During intra-community cricket, people prefer playing in Abhay’s team as Abhay can make opponent loose using strategy to mentally deviate opposite team.

There are so many qualities young generation can learn from Abhay. He is living role model.

Extension to quote that applies to Abhay: “It’s not the destination. It is not the journey. It is what you become during the journey.”

“…Napi hain mutthibhar zameen, abhi to aasman baki hain”.

We all wish all the best to Abhay, family and team!

The Inspiring Story of Abhay Deshpande: How a CEO Made a Successful Exit Inspite of Every VC Turning Him Down!

From Malamall’s Bust ToMartJack’s Multimillion Dollar Exit: Abhay Deshpande’s Entrepreneurial Baptism By Fire

Why does this made-in-India product get e-commerce like no one else? The Martjack Story

The art of survival

Hyderabad :MartjackCeo Abhay Deshpande On Startup India (YouTube – interview in Marathi)

Stimulating Sunday at Glorious Greenfields

Welcome Greenfield farm. It is Zenobia (Zen) and Sarosh Rustomfram’s dream that has come true with their efforts of 2+ decades. 

Participating in Zen’s professionally tailored activities based on Outward Bound  while connecting with ‘Mother Nature’ at Greenfield is an enlightening experience. Various groups from different walks of life  get benefited from these activities. Can you believe that it just through word of mouth; no publicity via website, advertisement etc is needed! Today members of ‘Seva Counseling Centre’ are participating in activities. Aim is to enhance their counseling skills while enjoying together, away from city’s hustle-bustle.

Zen is psychologist and works as counselor with NASR school and ISB. Zen explains that ‘Outward Bound’ is an old outdoor pursuit inspired during WW II (year 1941) to enhance young sailor’s capacity as a team member to excel in difficult and daunting tasks. This technique had protected young sailors from succumbing to the torpedo like dangers of the Atlantic Convoys.

Zen and Sarosh’s memories about Greenfield’s inception and growth are still fresh in their minds. Two decades ago, Sarosh was totally involved in his family business, ‘Rustom Bar’ at Koti that is busiest area of Hyderabad.  Zen was also busy as psychologist and counselor.  Sarosh used to miss his tea estates at Assam dearly. One day, they decided to listen to their heart and bought these 2 acres of land that was stamped as infertile in those days.  With their efforts and arrangement of water source, presence of single tree is enhanced to un-countable trees now.  Multi-facility farmhouse caters to all needs now but initial make shift home in Ambassador Dickey is still fondly remembered :)

When first camp of ‘Outward Bound’ was initiated, Zen was not sure if participant would show up on successive day. However, Zen was pleasantly surprised when participants came before time as they had found strong content in Zen’s program and there was no looking back from that time. 

Did you know Greenfield attracts many migratory birds from nearby Gandipet Lake?  Can you listen to the bird chirping; are they announcing their happiness about fruit bearing trees reserved for them at the farm?  Look at these busy squirrels & dancing butterflies making the atmosphere livelier. Colorful blossom on trees is indicating the arrival of spring. 

Wow Sevaites have reached before 9:30 am, their allocated time. Zen and Sarosh are joined by Benzer the Labrador in welcoming and guiding the guests  to classroom. Does classroom remind you of Shanti-Niketan?  Enjoy nature in absence of walls but be assured about roof’s protection from heat and rain.

Plato’s quote on blackboard is saying it all: You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation. 

Zen is mischievously pointing to adventure activity related equipments on adjacent ground but what is her real plan? Well, Pandora’s Box of surprises is slowly opening.

As first activity, randomly form pairs. Exchange fact about individual that group does not know, share feeling at particular moment and mention thought coming to mind.

As second activity, complete funny but virtually impossible task. Observation and repetition can lead to perfection.

Now Zen is taking the group to show how yield of farm is consumed at farm itself.  Cattle hay is grown at farm for the pair of plouging bulls. There are lot of fruits and crops like groundnut, wheat and vegetables like tomato etc. Effort is made to remain 80% organic. Compost manure is produced in the farm itself. Scientific approach of growing pest preventing plantations seemed really appreciable.  

Group is experiencing nostalgia about school days while testing raw tamarind. Zen is explaining characteristics of all plants; it is known that Neem tree possesses cooling properties but it is not known that tamarind’s warmth can lead to fever after 2-3 hours.

Zen is now suggesting that each participant should spend 10 minutes at their favorite spot in farm and bring back natural thing that would relate to trait of own personality.

Let’s exchange thoughts those were discussed in first activity and share relation of nature with own personality. Collected natural items are like Crossandra  (Aboli) seed, fruits like sweet lime, coconut, tomato vegetable, flowers like Jasmine, Hibiscus, curry leaf and Bougainvillea, tender leaf  of Mango, grass,  hay, pebbles, ash, wind etc.  Everyone is feeling the peace after finding own natural connection. Thought exchange and sharing of feelings is important for counselors.

Series of showers on sunny Sunday are stimulating surroundings and glorifying greens at Greenfield.

Third activity is completion of logical group task under specific restrictions. This is thoroughly enjoyable and thought provoking activity for leaders and followers to build team spirit.

Last activity is about challenging human sense organs to express and respond to mutual faith.

Simultaneous to activities, delicious breakfast, lunch, snacks and tea (with biscuits/popcorn) are being personally served by gracious and charming hosts at appropriate times.

Activities leading to adrenaline rush like Burma Bridge etc.  are reserved for next visit.

 

Never realized how day passed and it is time now to give feedback, convey thanks to Greenfield team and bid goodbye. 

The experience will be cherished forever.