The lost Man

Back to blog after 5 years almost...

The liberation of man has not happened yet. Not only woman, but man also needs a great liberation movement - liberation from the past, from the slavery of life negating values and social conditioning which have been imposed upon mankind by all religions for thousands of years. Priests and politicians have caused a tremendous split in man. They have created a guilt ridden man, who is alienated from himself, fighting a permanent inner conflict between body and soul, matter and mind, materialism and spiritualism, science and religion, man and women, East and West...

Life can be lived in two ways: either as a calculation - in science, technology, mathematics, economics - or as poetry - in art, music, beauty, love.

Every man, from his early childhood, is being conditioned to function and survive in this efficiency-oriented, competitive world, and he joins the ambitious struggle and race for money, success, fame, power, respectability and social status. As a small child he learns to adopt the goals and values of his parents and teachers, priests and politicians, of all vested interests, without ever questioning them. Thus he becomes distracted from his true nature, his original being, and loses the capacity for unmotivated joy, childlike innocence and playful creativity.

He is cut off from his creative potential, his ability to love, his laughter, his lust for life... The way he is brought up by society deadens his body and his senses and makes him insensitive and dead. He loses access to his innate feminine qualities of feeling, gentleness, love and intuition and become a head oriented, efficient unfeeling robot. 

Man needs a new psychology to understand himself. And the basic understanding that needs to be deeply imbibed and experienced is that - No man is just man and no woman is just woman; each man is both man and woman, and so is each woman - woman and man.

My vision of the new man is of a rebel, of a man who is in search of his original self, of his original face. A man who is ready to drop all masks, all pretensions, all hypocrisies, and show the world what he, in reality is. 

Because to be yourself is the greatest blessing in existence.  

People - the lost focus.

One the challenges that I face constantly is making sure that my team performs, and performs well. The dream of any manager is to have an empowered, enthusiastic and dedicated team of subordinates that delivers on the KPIs. Most managers are good people, and they spent adequate time grooming and training their people. Yet most subordinates disappoint us. Where is the gap? What's wrong?

I am not an Ivy league professor nor a Human resource expert. I don't do mubo-jumbo or academic theory. Just real world stuff that I've used myself.

One of the things that I learnt the hard way is that people everywhere are unhappy and stressed out at work. Gallup 2012 Employee Engagement Index says only 29% employees are engaged at work and only 45% are satisfied with their job.

The root cause of non performance is not in manager alone, but also in the broader frame of work. The environment, the culture, the strategy and the policies.

Engaged employees work harder, longer, with more focus, increase productivity, increase customer service, better quality, more satisfied customers, more sales, more profits and better performance. In other words you can have the best strategy in the world, but if nobody cares - it isn't going to matter.

Companies should invest in Employee Engagement. A good EEI score is 4+ on a scale of 5 being best and 1 being lowest. The rule of thumb is 4 + is great and if you see 2 you're going to lose people like rats leave a sinking ship.

You would be thinking, it costs millions to create engaged employees, or to measure EE. It's not. You can get a readymade questionnaire online easily. Run a quick survey in your company. At a very nominal cost you can get the basic hang of things. What are the areas that need attention.

The challenge is Employee Engagement like most other initiatives that matter, is a Top Down initiative. Its easy to implement but difficult to accept the scores of the first survey. And thus most Top Mgt avoid it, and build artificial recognition systems and farce initiatives to show that they care.


It takes just 12 weeks to run a Employee Engagement Survey cycle, and change the skepticism into engagement. Engagement is a habit. Habit of communication, growth, recognition, and trust.

HR Fragrance: Serve Them to Retain Them

HR Fragrance: Serve Them to Retain Them: Interviewed By: Saleh Abdullah Alkhamyasi Gurubinder S Punn With the diverse options available for the consumers in the market, eac...

Acting Crazy

It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity. - Albert Einstein


If it keeps up, man will atrophy all his limbs but the push button finger. - Frank Llyod Wright

Einstine and Wright had some pretty strong thoughts about technology, thoughts that are particularly prescient since they were uttered decades before the invention of the Internet, the Smartphone and the iPad. Consider the following all too typical scenario.

The other night I went out to dinner and a movie. Dinner was at a popular local restaurant known for its chinese food and casual ambiance. As the waitress led us to our table, I couldn't help but notice how nearly every single person had a cell phone lying flat on the table right next to their dinner plate. Literally, it seemed as though most people were eating fish with a side of smartphone. As we ordered and ate, I watched diners continuously pick up the phones, tap some keys and put them back down, only to repeat the same action again and again. Younger people appeared to do this more often, but nearly everyone, young and old picked up their phone at least once during the meal. It felt like I was watching a room full of people enagaging in obsesessive compulsive behaviour.

The same scenes were witnessed at the movie theater also. When the movie ended, every single person immediately pulled out their phones, even before the credits started rolling, and scrolled through whatever it was that they had missed over the last 90 minutes. If I didn't know better I would say that many of the moviegoers were suffering from some form of attention-deficit disorder.

Where does this rapid influx of technology leave us as we cruise into the second decade of new millennium? What we are looking at is a new disorder, one that combines elements of many psychiatric maladies. Its the subject of a new book by Rosen Larry called iDisorder.

Simplify, Simplify, Simplify...

Our life is frittered away by detail.... simplify, simplify!

The mass of men lead lives of quite desperation... I am convinced that to maintain oneself on this earth is not a hardship, but a pastime, if we live simply and wisely. Most of the luxuries , and many of the so called comforts of life, are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind.

Do people ever do what they really wish? What they by nature intended to do, and what they were best suited for. Everywhere I see people squandering the precious substance of their lives in pursuit of material gains. Everywhere I see people feverishly piling up property and possessions, enslaving themselves at the cost of things that really count.

I am sure there is something more to life than the mere collection of treasures.

World's greatest men, wisest men, great thinkers, philosophers have lived lives of simplicity. Can we take any clue from them.

Henry David Thoreau lived for few years in Walden Woods in solitude as an experiment. He then returned to Concord and wrote "Walden". He said Our life is frittered away by detail. An honest man has hardly need to count more than his ten fingers, or in the extreme cases he may add his ten toes, and lump the rest. Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two and three and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million - count a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb nail. In the midst of this chopping sea of civilized life, such are the clouds and storms and quicksands and thousand and one items to be allowed for, that a man has to live, if he would not founder and go to the bottom and not make his port at all, by dead reckoning, and he must be a great calculator indeed who succeeds. Simply, simplify....

So I say what Thoreau said. Simplify your life. Don't waste the years struggling for things that are unimportant. Don't burden yourself with possessions. Keep your needs and wants simple, and enjoy what you have. Simplify, simplify. Don't fritter your life away on non-essentials. Don't destroy your peace of mind by looking back, worrying about the past.

Live in the present, enjoy the present. Simplify!

GP's Gyan: RICHES

GP's Gyan: RICHES

RICHES

Man must be thrifty in order to be generous. Thrift does not end with itself, but extends its benefits to others. It founds hospitals, endows charities, establishes colleges and extends educational influences.

The duty of helping the helpless is one that speaks trumpet-tongued; but especially to those who profess love to God and goodwill to men. Its a duty that belongs to men as individuals, and as members of the social body.

And ironically, It is not necessary that men should be rich to help others.
Nothing is so much overestimated as the power of money. Some people have an idolatrous worship of money. The Greeks had their Golden Jupiter. The lowest human nature loves money, possessions and asks the silly questions - What is he worth? If you say there is a thoroughly good, benevolent, virtuous man! no body will even notice. But if you say "There is a man worth a million of money!" he will be stared at till out of sight.

Men go on toiling and moiling, eager to be richer; desperately struggling as if against poverty, at the same time that they are surrounded by abundance. They scrape and scrape and add penny to penny, and sometimes do shabby things in order to make a little more profit; though they may have accumulated far more than they can actually enjoy. And still they go on worrying, themselves incessantly in the endeavor to grasp at an additional increase of superfluity.

Perhaps such men have not enjoyed the advantage of education in early life. They have no taste for books. They have nothing to think of but money, and what will make of money. They have no faith, but in riches. They keep their children under restriction, and bring them up with a servile education.

At length an accumulation of wealth comes into the hands of children. They have before been restricted i their expenses; and they now become lavish. They have been educated in no better taste. They spend extravagantly. They will not be drudges in their business as their fathers were. They will spend so fast and so much that by the time the 3rd generation comes up there is no wealth left.

English proverb says - Twice clogs, once boots. The first generation wore clogs and accumulated wealth, his rich son wore boots and spent it all, and thus the third generation took up clogs again.

What a miserable end.

A man that makes nothing but money is a poor man.

Self Conquest

"A man's own character is the arbiter of his fortune." - SYRUS

An old Hindu proverb says, "There is nothing noble in being superior to some other man. The true nobility is in being superior to your previous self".
Most of us are aware of this, and are foreever striving to improve ouselves, to correct our faults, control our habits, and make the most of our abilities.

But Self Descipline is not easy. Self Conquest, as every philosopher from Plato to William James has emphasized, is the greatest victory of all. "I have had more trouble with myself than with any other man I have ever met!" said David Moody, the famous evangelist.

The greatest test of a man's character is how he takes charge of his own life. No man need stay the way he is.The mold of a man's fortune, the shape of his life and destiny are in his own hands.

Hamlet is one of Shakespeare's greatest plays, as we all know; and Polonius' advice to Laertes one of the best quotations from it. The father's percepts to his son are so wise and penetrating that even when taken out from context of play, they stand by themselves, vital and complete. Sincerity is inherent in every line. There is almost a spiritual quality to those words.

This above all, to thine own self be true.

Religion or Symbols

Every religion has 3 aspects - values, symbols and practices.

There is diversity in the practices and symbols, whereas the values are common to all religions. The growth of fanaticism, fundamentalism and intolerance in the world today, is because people are only stuck in practices, symbols and customs. They forget about the values - human values.

The dress code of any religion is a symbol. If one does not follow the dress code, but follows the values, Is he / she less religious than the one who is wearing long robes and beads, or carries sticks or swords.

No. Religion is not symbols or practices alone. Don't take me wrong. I am not preaching not to follow symbols or practices. My case here is different.

Don't get stuck in Beard and Salwars and caps and robes. Practice the values first and you will find an automatic desire to follow the symbols and practices. The religion then would be much more fun and act as a guide to live life, rather than a thing to be feared.

Invictus

Arguably the best-remembered work of William Ernest Henley is the poem "Invictus", written in 1875. It is said that this was written as a demonstration of his resilience following the amputation of his foot due to tubercular infection.

This passionate and defiant poem was the source of energy and motivation to Nelson Mandela, who read this for 27 years from his tiny prison, and then freed South Africa. He used this poem to inspire SA Rughby team to become world champions.


INVICTUS

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll.
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

All the best folks...

Let Go

There was joy and there were tears.

My son, daughter and son were going back to boarding school at Nainital after spending 4 days with us for Diwali vacations. Our daughter has been in Boarding school for 5 years now and son for 4 years. The railway station with its crowd and teeming travellers was hardly the place to burst into tears, so I fought for self control. I tried to be angry at the crowd, traffic and dirty station. Like any good Indian I was happy that my children study in good Boarding schools, but my pride was tempered with the prospect of empty nest and loneliness that accompanies it.

The train had arrived. There was time for but a final hug. Anmol sensed the tears before she saw them. Ok Dad Take care. We will meet up soon in Muscat. Its just one month for Winter Vacations. And more over I will call you on Wednesday evenings.

In the last 5 years children have grown up from kids to young adults. I am happy at there personality and traits development.

I let the tears flow as I travelled back on the Metro to home that night. Moist eyed, I clibed up the stairs to my flat. No more blaring music, Play Station sounds, no sudden requests for Paranthas or milkshake, no more incessant stream of kids from the nieghborhood, or the pleasant sound of young laughter.

Its been 5 years that we are going through this ritual. We still shed our tears when saying good bye to our kids. Missing them is part of parenthood.

But then, so is letting go.

On that note, I was listening to the classic english number today, and posted the song on my facebook :

You can let go now Daddy,
you can let go
Oh, I think I am ready,
To do this on my own
It's still a little bit scary
But I want you to know
I'll be Okay now daddy,
You can let go.

Family First

I want to talk to you about family: your and mine.

I know and feel that as parents, you and I share some very important priorities. Just like you, I love my family more than anything in this world and I want us all to be safe, healthy, happy and prosperous in everything we do, both within our family and as we go out in the world.

As parents it is our job to be aware of of everything that can even potentially impact our families.

People enter into our family's world from all walks of life: teachers, coaches, extended families, school bullies, powerful peers and others. Some are well intentioned and some not. These people have priorities and values that may be different from our own and they can tremendously affect how our children think, feel and behave now, as well as who they become as adults. Bombardment from a massive and slick media can undermine morals and values in even the strongest of families if purposeful care is not taken to control and counteract this messages.

As parents, we are certainly not the only influences in our children's lives, so we absolutely must make sure that we are the best amd most persuasive infuence in our children's life.

Family is more important today than in past generations and its erosion is unacceptable.

Purpose of Life

Mona, My wife's younger sister and a very loveable person in our family, wrote to me yesterday. The question she asked is asked by less than .01% people (and no one at her age). Lucky for her she did asked. It made me do some study and some introspection.

I read a book recently written by Mitch Albom titled "Tuesdays with Morrie". Its a story of an old college professor (Morrie)in his last days, a young man (Mitch)who was once his student, and life's greatest lesson. I love this book as it is a true story that leaves you with a great understanding of the question that less than .01% even think about. "What is the purpose of life?"

Morrie the old professor says : "So many people walk around with a meaningless life. They seem half asleep, even when they are busy doing things they think are important. This is because they are chasing the wrong things. The way you get meaning into your life is to devote yourself to loving others, devote yourself to community around you, and devote yourself to creating something that gives you purpose and meaning."

"The most important thing in life is to learn how to give out love, and to let is come in. Let it come in. We think we don't deserve love, we think if we let it come in, we'll become too soft. But a wise man name Levine said it just right. Love is the only rational act.

I reflect on my life and see that above is so true and real. Each word cause confrontation. For me the most difficult one is to let love come in. Any way that's my jorney.

I thank Mona for making pick up the lost thread again. This is such a profound conversation to dwell into. While life is empty and meaningless, it doesn't take to be rocket scientist or a great saint to provide formula of life. Just by dwelling into conversation opens up a new realm of possibilities.

Untill next time...

Marriage Elysium

Bible says What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder. Mark 10:9

It was a wise man who said that it is important not only to pick the right mate, but to be the right mate. And contrary to many popular love stories, it is not during the first year of bliss that most dangers crop up. Marriages do not, like dropped chinaware, smash as a result of that first quarrel.

Marriage is a rooted thing, a growing and flowering thing that must be tended faithfully. Lacking the mutual effort, we are apt to find some day that our marriage, so hopefully planted, has been withering unnoticeably. Gradually we realize that for some time, the petals have lost their luster, that the perfume is gone.

We all welcome daily watering with the little gracious affectionate act. With mutual concern for other’s contentment, with self-watchfulness here and self-forgetfulness there, it brings forth ever new blossoms.

Perhaps the greatest blessing in marriage is that it lasts so long. The years, like the varying interests of each year, combine to strengthen and enrich each other.

I remember Thomas Moore’s beautiful words on marriage:

There’s a bliss beyond all that the minister has told
When two, that are linked in one heavenly tie,
With heart never changing, and brow never cold,
Love on through all ills, and love on till they die.

One hour of passion so scared is worth
Whole age of heartless and wandering bliss;
Ah Oh! If there be an Elysium* on earth,
It is this – it is this!

*Elysium means paradise

This too shall pass away

We canot expect to live always on a smooth and even plane. We all face problems, worries, and fears; we all have our setbacks, our sorrows and misfortunes. They are part of the substance of living, and none of us can escape them.

You must make up your mind to the possibility of sustaining a certain measure of pain and trouble in your passage through life.

We cannot walk through out our life on mountain peaks. There are rivers and valleys along the way, and some are deep and treacherous, some a cruel challenge to human endurance.

But courage conquers all things.

And down through the centuries poets and philosophers have been telling us so in a fascinating ways.

One hundred years ago Paul Hamilton wrote an inspirational poem, which was carried by thousands in their pockets and purses:

Art thou in misery, brother? Then I pray
Be confronted. The grief shall pass away.
Art thou elated? Ah, be not too gay;
Temper this joy: this, too shall pass away.
Art thou in danger? Still let reason sway,
And cling to hope: this, too shall pass away.
Tempted art thou? In all thine anguish lay
One truth to heart; this, too shall pass away.
Do rays of loftier glory round thee play?
Kinglike art thou? This too, shall pass away!
Whate'ver thou art, where ever thy footsteps stray,
Head these wise words: This, too shall pass away.

The philosophy of centuries old Eastern Monarchs repeated by Paul Hayne is a proof that nothing lasts - not even pain.

William Shakespeare said - Come what may; Time and the hour runs through the darkest day,

Lets surrender to the wisdom of these great man and have courage because

This too shall pass away.

Take Care

"Take Care". You take care, TC, You must take care.

These 2 words are used so commonly that in SMS or internet chat most conversations end with them. I was listening to Radio FM from Dubai and the RJ said at the end "Apna bahut ache se khyam rakhiyega".

My wife keeps on telling me the same thing every day from 2000 kms away.

MY QUESTION IS - Is it really possible to take care of oneself. And, if it was so easy, why would 25% of world's population be suffering from Diabetes? Why is obesity all around? Why the gyms are empty and the bars full?

I think human beings are not designed to take care of themselves. They are designed to take care of others.

Lets take the example of a young mother, a girl who never took care of her own health, takes such excellent care of her child's health and hygine. So much so that she gives up her own sleep and comforts to take care of the child for the rest of her life. A mother at age 75 would still take care (or at leat want to take care), of her child the same way, when she was 25.

Second example - A man taking care of his family. He will sacrifice his own desires to fulfill the desires of his wife & children. I live in Gulf. This is a earning ground for millions of people, who leave their families behind and work in high temperature extremly unhealthy conditions, to make the lives of their families better.

Do they care about themselves? They live on basic facilities and highly compromised lifestyles, but make sure their sons and daughters eat in good restaurants and study in decent schools, back home.

So, the question once again is - Can one really care about himself or herself? And the answer is NO. Most of us cannot Take Care of ourself. We are designed to be taken care of by some one else. While we can take care of others.
maybe when we are young and full of energy, we think we take care of ourselves. The fact is ; Its not we, but nature that is taking care.

But once you cross the mid age of 40, you officially enter the old age. And that is when you need more than ever some one to take care of you, and you to take care of some one.

Robert Browning a poet in 1800s wrote in his finest work "Rabbi Ben Ezra" ;

Grow old along with me!

The best is yet to be,

The more things change the more they remain the same

In our work lives, when something isn't working, we struggle with which part of problem to tackle first. Do we start with cost reduction? What about morale? Or should we begin with process improvement?

In our personal lives, it's the samne dilemma - which problem do we work on first? Should we resolve to do better with home finances? Make our marriage more fulfilling? Get rid of ten kilos? Spend more time with the kids?

The optimist says there's oppurtunity everywhere we look. The pessimist says everything is messed up, and it's as though every system is perfectly designed to stay messed up, no matter how many things we try to fix.

We pick the problem to work on, and either we fail or succeed. If we fail, we add "frustration" to our list of problems. If we succedd, a new problem pops up to replace the old one.

You have too much stress, you get diabetes and other stress diseases, to beat the stress you start to overeat, smoke or drink. To solve this, you start to spend time at gym and outdoors, the kids get neglected, your boss complains you are not spending enough time at office. You can't afford to lose the job or the kids or your health and you are back to stress again.

As they say in Landmark - The solution to a problem becomes the next problem. And the more things change, the more they remain the same Why is that?
I spend nearly a decade with transformational work of Landmark and I think fixing things in a patchwork style, does not achieve anything. The end is same as the begining, sometimes even more complex.

Think about the people you know who have wrestled with the same personal problem for years - weight, drugs and alcohol, or an unhappy personal relationship. Although they may say "I want to get help" they dont change or improve. Their actions show a recurrence. Why is it so hard to change? Because wrestling with that problem over and over - sometimes winning, sometimes losing but always struggling.

Our default future has a certain predictable shape.

The more things change the more they remain the same. - So what is the option? There is only one solution that works. That is because it is not a solution. There is nothing to fix, change or imnprove.

Rewrite a future. When you do that your actions shift from disengaged to proactive. From resigned to inspiring and from frustrated to creative. Imagine if everybody in the family could rewrite the future of the family or employees can create a future for the organisation.

That kind of transformation will create a wave of momentum.

Some of you may find the above heavy or confusing. Well all I can say here is transformation is hell of confusion and it rips you apart. But that is the only thing that I have found really works.

No fixing, changing or improving. Just creating a future that fullfills me now and it will be there for ever.

Take Care

No news is good news

When people of my generation (including me) were born, the world was a different place, it was a much better world.

We went to school on foot or in a rickshaw, the children of affluent few were seen on a bicycle. On the way to school we used to cross railway tracks, negotiate a steep climb and sometimes even find way through a water body. Our parents gave us guidelines on safety, but most of us never used it. We fell from rickshaws, got messed up in water or even broke bones speeding on cycles.

There was no mobile phone available, and the parents could not be communicated. Strangers took you to nearest doctor, who treated you for free and some stranger carried us to our home in our torn clothes and lost bags. But, we all got our treatment, no one died on the streets. The mother had no way to communicate the incident to father who was 20 kms away on work, and will return late night. No news was good news.

People used to write letters and address each other as respected father, Dear son, your's faithfully. The receipt of a post card from a dear one, was a source of immense joy and pleasure and sometimes sorrow. There was love and emotions in those postcards and Inland letters. The only news that needed to be communicated urgently by telegram was child birth and death. No news was good news.

In 1970's and early 80's there was one black and white TV in a cluster of 10 homes. Which showed only one channel containing programs of poor quality for 4 hours in evening, one movie in a week and one music show. However it was great source for the entire family or some times neighborhood to sit together and enjoy.

Those were good days.

Today everyone carries a mobile phone (some even two), each home has computers and internet. Each room has one TV. There is communication at finger tips. Emails, SMS, International calls, Domestic free calls and what not. Thousands of TV channels and millions of websites throw garbage at us non stop.

Today the list of dear ones has changed. No one writes letters. No one addresses parents as Dear Parents, Satkar yog, Agyakari or Your's faithfully.

We have more time for colleagues and work, than family. The relationship has become telephonic. Festival greetings are shared by stolen and forwarded SMS and forwarded chain emails. Every one watches different TV channel in a different room. Or listens to my kind of music on his Ipod or mobile phone.

This is time of news at fingure tips, the time of communication.

This is also the time of panic, anger, threat, frustration, pretense, greed and self center. Today we communicate more - and we loose more. We have lost emotions, care, respect, satisfaction and social manners.

Its time to break this addiction. Communicate less. Write letters, use pen and paper. Keep one TV in home and switch off your mobile phone at home.

No news is good news.

Not everything needs to be fixed

Ever since I was a child, I used to look at the people who were undergoing surgeries and deaths, divorce and separations, working in a foreign land and not available to families in need. And I always was clear that there is something wrong in these people. These things happen to others, not to me.

I am different.

The irony of life is all that we hope and are sure of will never happen to us, happens to us too. As they say "The more you resist, the more it persists".

I can recall some incidents in my life too. A collapsed business, a second disaster in business, a legal fight with tenant over non issues, sudden death of a parent, emergency surgery of a child, turbulent shift in country of residence for family, and so on.

I also never imagined that I will be a successful man. Looked like it will be an average life, with a no glamor or importance. But that also ditched my belief. While going through all the turbulence in person life and dealing with disasters, I learned many a lessons.

It is surprising that in a foreign land, where no one knew me 4 years ago, I have a successful and satisfying career and social life.

But the life ironies don't seem to give up. Just when we think - "And then they lived happily ever after" - life kicks you where it hurts the most. And teaches you a new lesson.

So, should we be grateful for these kicks by life, or sulk and crib?

It took me a long time, but I've finally figured it out. When it comes to life, just take it one day at a time.

My wife and kids have gone back to our home country, leaving me struggling for what's next. I have recently been diagnosed of diabetes and stone in my kidney. Another thing I knew would never happen to me. But I just want to tell you, I feel great to be alive, am still invited to chair the social events and conduct high level trainings. I am blessed to conduct children education classes on weekends.

And I maybe here today or in India tomorrow or in USA next year.

I want you to know that I am enjoying it.And this is the way, I will live the rest of my life. As Randy Pausch said "Not everything needs to be fixed".

Home or Foreign? Confusion.

Why do we leave our home and come to foreign lands?

Is it just the lure of a few extra bucks or something else? What is the price we pay for the extra bone in our plate? I have been thinking on the subject for a while. Obviously all thoughts start from one's current situations and confusions.

So while I may try and make this general, the confusion is me.

What the ideal time period and age group to work overseas and specially in Middle East & Africa? Should one come with family or single?

To add to my confusion, their were as many views as people I met.

Armed with all the confusion I started to work on the issue in a more analytical way. And I conclude.

Working in a foreign land is not for the light hearted soul.

One should sell his soul and self esteem, before one lands here. There are freedom of sorts, but at the end of the year, the joy of returning home for a month of holiday says it all. We all long for homeland, because we experience freedom there.

Saving is a myth - specially in Middle East (if you want to maintain the same standards as in your home country).

To my horror and surprise, most people I met actually said saving was the biggest reason to work here. I got so many responses in this domain, that I started to look up my spending pattern. What I got was horrifying. I was spending more money as a % of my income to meet the same nature of expenses as compared to home.

Making it simple, the cost of groceries and monthly household supplies comes to 25% of salary, Education 10%, Utilities 10%, Eating Out 10% and so on. The same expenses in % back home is at least 25% less. So what ever I was saving was flowing out in meeting the cost of living difference. To make the situation worse at least 15% of income every year is wasted on emergency air travel to home & back.

So then why do people come here and slog in high temperatures and different cultures.

As my inquiry became intense I got some very interesting answers.

One type of people are who are newly married couples and they do not want to live with the family. So people escape to foreign land on the pretend of job requirement, where as they come here to enjoy freedom from family ties.

Second type of people are ones who have grown up kids, family liabilities are over, and they want to live a slow and semi retired life. High incomes and low expenses balance is what draws them here.

There is a very interesting third type and majority falls in this category. People who will not get a job for even half of what they earn here. People who do not own a motorcycle, get to drive luxury cars here. Its a mega change in living standards and fulfillment of wish lists. These people can generally be seen loaded with vulgar gold bracelets, chains and more rings than fingers.

But what about me?

Well. I like the region and the culture. Life is easy and slow, but this is no reason to live in a foreign land, away from ones family and culture.

So my advice (as if it matters). - One should come to foreign lands, enjoy the place, learn some thing new, understand new business dynamics and cross cultural operations. But don't stick around for the rest of your life. Go back to you home as birds and cows do. Love your country, contribute your life and time to your given land, culture and religion.

Home is where we belong.