Vjbreathes

Preparation for meEATings.                                             I know preparation for meetings can be a pain. And the intensity of the pain depends on the duration of the meeting, the purpose,agenda, and more importantly the attendees;) for ex: If we have a performance review meeting with a stringent boss, it can be as painful as it can get.. In some rare cases, the meeting can be a pleasure too. Ex: If you have a strategy meeting with your crush from the other vertical , it just can't get better that, especially if she/he is seated bang opposite you. In such cases, its like ..The longer the better.  And meetings are also socializing sessions, an exercise of your vocal skills, your lingual skills and your acting skills too. I know a lot of people who act the...

Vince Lombardi once said, “Individual commitment to group effort-That is what makes a team work, a company work, and a civilization work.” As I ruminate on this quote, I can’t help but admire the effective moral that this quote summarizes. Getting the best, many a time means giving the best. For me, ‘giving the best’ to whatever, whoever, whenever is a form of considerable commitment. When you demand commitment, an automatic implication is to also commit commitment. Brilliant feats have been achieved through extraordinary commitment, in the fields of sport, social service, research and so on. Nadia Comaneci’s feat of the first perfect 10 in gymnastics, the example set by Red Cross society, having delivered humanitarian aid to nearly 600 million people in the last one year and the discovery of the God particle seem to reinforce the fact that extraordinary commitment is possible. But then, what are the issues confronting people who are not able to vouch commitment?   The a...

Look into the darkberry, you gotta see the pie, if you don't see the pie, then you're blind in an eye..... Hey look into the darkberry, you gotta see the sky, if you dont see the sky, then you are a dumb guy..... Now look into the darkberry, you gotta feel the high, if you don't feel the high, then you better go n die. Did you buy a phone , or did you buy the spy, Move on Darkberry, Welcome i-phone 5!!!!

I wonder, if free will were exercised fully, considering only the paramount consequences, our interaction with each other, our actions and deliberations would be so much different."The gullible human mind" is so used to behaving predictably and in a patterned manner. Amongst all my colleagues, I can predict the reactions and behavior of 90% of them with 99% accuracy. And, i don't enjoy it. Isn't this commonness UNAVOIDABLE? There needs to be some variety, you need to be irrational sometimes and you need to behave differently on occasions. I am not advocating "extremes" though. We need to develop an appetite for "outliers" and be comfortable with the idea of "outliers". When I wore a shade of pink to office the other day, some of my colleagues couldn't accept this deviation. They felt the color was "odd" and "girly". I felt devastated. I had spent 18 minutes(which is far above the average shopping time for men) in ...

Let Go The power to 'let go' is a very important for every human being. Especially in this age of ever changing lifestyles and priorities. At a philosophical level, it' s called "Vairagya" in Sanskrit.  Advancements in technologies like ICT have made it almost mandatory for people of this age to be able to 'let go'. To be able to 'let go' is now a skill and an ability, and an important one at that. 'Change or perish' is the need of the hour. Change from Windows XP to Windows Vista and then a shift to Windows 7 and finally Windows 8 is an excellent example of how the 'let go' principle has become a norm. Further, it is also being observed that companies are investing their time and energies in making people understand the importance of this principle, and they call it by different names like "re-skilling", "unlearning", "re-learning" and so on. This also holds true to conventions and beliefs of peo...

Rang De (https://www.rangde.org/) is a pioneering web based social initiative that supports rural entrepreneurs with cost effective micro-credit for business and education. Through an online portal, Rang De enables individuals to become social investors by lending small sums of money to borrowers from low income households listed on the website. Launched on 26th January 2008, Rang De’s mission is to knock out poverty in India. So far, Rang De has raised social investments of Rs. 100.3 Million and impacted more than 17,000 borrowers with the help of 4,200 social investors. Many of these borrowers have been able to create or expand their business (ranging from cow-rearing to bag-making to managing tea stalls); while a few others used their loans to pay for the education of their children. To make this scheme sustainable, Rang De works hand-in-hand with local field partners (often local NGOs) who identify potential borrowers in local communities. Once the borrowers’ business plans are an...

Raghu Dixit- A musician turned magician! When my facebok page had an update about a tour called the “Freedom Bus Tour”, organized by Rang De and supported by Raghu Dixit on Aug 10, I saw an opportunity to meet my icon. I signed up for this tour without even probing the purpose. For me, it was just an intervention by God towards ensuring a fan-idol meeting. I signed up for this tour with a minimum expectation-MEET RAGHU. But then, the experience I had in this tour was mesmerizing. In fact, I gained much more than I expected. I gained knowledge of how poverty is gripping several people in India, even though a lot of us think about India as a ‘developing’ nation. I guess, several villages and towns of this great country are still “underdeveloped”. We boarded the “freedom Bus” on 13 Aug and reached Pusad   on 14 Aug. The locals welcomed us with roses and delicious ‘poha’ . “Pusad” is a small town in the Yavatmal district. I met a few rural women entrepreneurs operating in th...