BITS OF BEAUTY

On By PGR NairIn PoetryLeave a comment

Wordsworth, in his beautiful poem ‘Daffodils’, rapturously narrates how his heart was imbued with infinite happiness at the sight of a sea of daffodils. For him, daffodils symbolized the joys and happiness of life.

“I wander’d lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vale and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host of golden daffodils:
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze”

There are many occasions in our life when we are exposed to fleeting visions of beauty that adds enchantment to our mundane existence. I recently read the following passage written by Maupassant in an essay collection and was struck by it. I wanted to utter ‘carpe diem’ and thought to jot down some lines on its import.

“From time to time I experience strange, intense, short-lived visions of beauty, an unfamiliar, elusive, barely perceptible beauty that surfaces in certain words or landscapes, certain colorations of the world, certain moments….I’m not able to describe or communicate it, I can’t express it or portray it. I save these moments for myself….I have no other reason for continuing, no other cause for keeping on….” (G. Maupassant- French short story writer, famous for his story –“The Necklace”)

I believe all our lives are replete with such “strange, intense, short-lived visions of beauty”. Mortal and immortal moments mingle in abundance in our everyday existence. It could be the smile of a destitute, the alluring voice of someone you talked to on a dreary day, an old couple in romantic embrace on a beach at sunset, the spotting of a full moon as you drive home in a hurry, a tawdry artefact that lingers in your memory on a visit to an ordinary home, the glow a tomato like a red lantern in a vegetable shop, an itinerant musician intensely involved in playing a violin at a subway station. The list is endless. Your mind gleefully captures and retains it to beam before you on a day when you search for a blade of grass to smile at. In such moments one experiences something incomprehensible and piercing, both extravagant and absolutely fundamental.

Wordsworth in the last stanza of the same poem condenses this evocative and restorative power of beauty as follows:

“In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils”

We can see such shards of beauty even in  boring films and novels, a vision that visits again, a line that delineates something essential about life. Without these momentary beauties, life could be appallingly intolerable.

Perhaps these ephemeral revelations of beauty are coupled in a strange way with melancholy moments. Yet in retrospect, they bring a smile than sneer. We don’t truly know what causes beauty though grief may be more explainable.

This mixture of impermanence and permanence, the blending of what vanishes and what remains, is a blissful ingredient of our reality. Let the glow of such brief and beautiful moments act as our cheerleaders.

A DATE WITH DAVID

On By PGR NairIn StoriesLeave a comment


 ‘Oh! You’re going to Italy. Beware of pickpockets’, my globe-trotting friend warned us.
 We are in Florence. My friend’s words keep ringing in my head. I am obsessed with my left back pocket so much that my left hand is stuck to my left butt.
We enter Academia Gallery… tourists teem before Michelangelo’s ‘David’, the most beautiful statue ever crafted by human hand. With my left hand on my left pocket, I am devouring ‘David’.. his burning eyes, seductive lips and adorable anatomy. My wife vanishes into the crowd. My younger son nags me to give 1€ to view ‘David’ through a televiewer.. The crowd surges forward..Click..Click …and my left hand goes to my left pocket and I feel a numbing emptiness…
I cry out….Thief! thief! My wallet is gone! My wallet!…
My wife rushes in and shouts
‘Oh PGR, it’s there in your right hand!’
Apparently, I had taken it out to give money to my son and kept it in my right hand

(165 words)

5-55: BABY TALES

On By PGR NairIn StoriesLeave a comment

These are ‘55’ words micro fiction written by me during a creative collaboration contest in Sulekha.

LOVE
It was after months that they were having this rapturous rendezvous. They couldn’t control any longer and disappeared behind the green cover of bamboos, which offered camouflage,   to quench their lust. It was then she sensed a tremor and noticed a man videotaping them.  “Get lost idiot! We too need privacy”, the lady parrot hollered.

JEALOUSY
She was younger, taller, smarter and prettier. She was everything that I longed to be but could not. I repeatedly downplayed her but she emerged more confident with a strange vengeance. Gradually my husband started getting closer to her. That is when I regretted for the first time the creation of her – our daughter.

HATRED
She opened the mail box with a sigh.

26th January…Dying to see you!

Click! Delete

8th March…Forever yours!

Click!

4th April…My Sweetie

Click! And she moved on, gliding the cursor over each subject line, pressing DELETE.

Red eyes aching. Pale lines vanishing.

She paused. A photo!  His rapturous embrace….

Click! Click! Click! Click!
Delete Account.

GREED
As a prolific blogger, her blogs always topped in the most commented section in Sulekha . She had just completed her 500th blog. After her incessant persuasion to be bloggers, we joined Sulekha and sought her advice to begin blogging.  She politely said, ‘Do blog to your heart’s content, but comment only on mine.

PHILANDERING
Where is the belly ring I bought you? John asked
Mary fumbled.
John took out the ring with “MJ” inscribed on it from his pocket.
Mary gasped. “Where did you find this dear”?
“I got it from Sophie’s” , John quipped. “Edward had gone there straight from here “
Both stared in long silence

Remarks:
All creation is a process of destruction. There is one which I feel can be classified into the off grade category. I post it below
HATRED-2
He was dying.
I softly said, “I had long waited to be near you’.
His eyes flashed open  and fumed liked a volcano
I sensed the eruption of hatred from his eyes and his gasping, convulsive mouth.
Smilingly, I poured a spoonful of water into his mouth.
He swallowed the liquefied hatred and passed away.

UNEXPECTED REUNION

On By PGR NairIn StoriesLeave a comment

By Johann Peter Hebel
Translated by John Hibberd
(The story extolled by Kafka as the most wonderful story in the World)

At Falun in Sweden, a good fifty years ago, a young miner kissed his pretty young bride-to-be and said, ‘On the feast of Saint Lucia the parson will bless our love and we shall become man and wife and start a home of our own’. ‘And may peace and love dwell there with us’, said his lovely bride, and smiled sweetly, ‘for if you are everything to me, and without you I‘d sooner be in the grave than anywhere else’. ‘When however, before the feast of Saint Lucia, the parson had called out their names in the church for the second time: ‘If any of you know cause, or just hindrance, why these two persons should not get joined together in holy Matrimony’ -Death paid a call. For the next day when the young man passed her house in his black miner’s suit (a miner is always dressed ready for the funeral), he tapped at the window as usual and wished her good morning all right, but he did not wish her good evening. He did not return from the mine, and in vain that same morning she sewed a red border on a black neckerchief for him to wear on their wedding day, and when he did not come back she put it away, and she wept for him, and never forgot him.
In the meantime the city of Lisbon in Portugal was destroyed by an earthquake, the Seven Years War came and went, the Emperor Francis I died, the Jesuits were dissolved, Poland was partitioned, the Empress Maria Theresa died, and Struensee was executed, and America became independent, and the combined French and Spanish force failed to take the Gibraltar. The Turks cooped up General Stein in the Veterane Cave in Hungary, and the Emperor Joseph died too. King Gustavus  of Sweden conquered Russian Finland ,the French Revolution came and the long war began, and the Emperor Leopold  II was buried. Napoleon defeated Prussia, the English bombarded Copenhagen, and the farmers sowed and reaped. The millers ground the corn, the blacksmiths wielded their hammers, and the miners dug for seams of metal in their workplace under the ground.
But in 1809, within a day or two of the feast of Saint John, when the miners at Falun were trying to open up a passage between two shafts, they dug out from the rubble and the vitriol water, a good three hundred yards below the ground, the body of a young man soaked in ferrous vitriol but otherwise untouched by decay and unchanged, so that all his features and his age were still clearly recognizable, as if he had died only an hour before or had just nodded off at work. Yet when they brought him to the surface his father and mother and friends and acquaintances were all long since dead, and no one claimed to know the sleeping youth or to remember his misadventure, until the woman came who had once been promised to the miner who one day had gone below and had not returned. Grey and bent, she hobbled up on a crutch to where he lay and recognized her bridegroom, and more in joyous rapture than in grief, she sank down over the beloved corpse, and it was some time before she had recovered from her fervent emotion. ‘It is my betrothed’, she said at last, ‘whom I have mourned these past fifty years, and now God grants that I see him once more before I die. A week before our wedding, he went under ground and never came up again’. The hearts of all those there were moved to sadness and tears when they saw the former bride-to-be as an old woman whose beauty and strength had left her, and the groom still in the flower of his youth; and how the flame of young love was rekindled in her breast after fifty years, yet he did not open his mouth to smile , nor his eyes to recognize her; and how finally she, as the sole relative and the only person who had claim to him, had the miners carry him into her house until the grave was made ready for him in the churchyard.
The next day when the grave lay ready in the churchyard and the miners came to fetch him she opened a casket and put the black silk kerchief and red stripes on him, and then she went with him in her best Sunday dress, as if it were her wedding day, not the day of his burial. You see, as they lowered him into his grave in the churchyard she said, “Sleep well for another day or a week or so longer in your cold wedding bed, and don’t let time weigh heavy on you! I have only a few things left to do, and I shall join you soon, and soon the day will dawn’.
‘What the earth has given back once it will not withhold again at the final call’, she said as she went away and looked back over her shoulder once more.
Postscript
It was  couple of years ago while reading Elias Canetti’s (1981 Nobel Prize Winner for Literature) autobiography, ‘The tongue set free’, that I came across the mention of this story which Franz Kafka had hailed as ‘most wonderful story in the world’. This story appears in the German writer Johan Peter Hebel’s (1760-1826) only story collection titled, “The Treasure Chest”.  I am glad that I lived to read this story which I too consider as one of the rare gems in literature.

Walter Benjamin once made the striking claim, when writing about Hebel, that “death is the sanction of everything that the storyteller can tell. He has borrowed his authority from death.” He was referring particularly to the story “Unexpected Reunion”.

Hermann Hesse called Hebel’s book ‘The Treasure Chest’ ,  ‘a summit and jewel of German narrative prose’; and Elias Canetti said ‘I don’t believe there’s a book in the world that engraved itself on my mind as perfectly and as minutely as this one.’ He “secretly” measured each of his books against Hebel’s style. ‘The Treasure Chest’ is not unlike a child’s box of treasures, and that is part of its charm. It inspires uncommon fondness in the first reading itself .Its contents are unpretentious and they are presented with such an allure that even the most sophisticated of readers may accept them too with a smile of pleasure.
The sheer variety and brevity of his stories (some as brief as a paragraph) is amazing. They are simple and agreeable to even a casual reader .They include weird, funny, touching and good-humoured ones too.  Hebel had as sure a grasp of the world as he had of the way to amuse his readers. Nearly two hundred years after he wrote his stories, you’ll get the point of Hebel in about a minute. No wonder,  Hebel’s admirers included Goethe, Tolstoy and the brothers Grimm.
Hebel posessed unique style and aesthetic tricks. The key point  is that he succeeded in describing simple people and made a meaningful order of the world shine through their everyday actions. In every detail, he had the whole in view. This “holistic” trait of his writings is very contemporary.
I remembered this story only a day after Valentine’s Day (Perhaps this is the best Valentine’s story ever written by anyone). This is the first time this story is made available in the internet and I am glad of it (The world is still not awake to savor this most beautiful story). But,  if there are any copyright issues, I may delete this post without any compunction. So save your copy now!

(The picture posted at the beginning is the scanned image of the  sketch that accompanies the story)

Do read all comments as I have chipped in my thoughts on the story in the comments section. Your discussion on this story will enrich this blog.

My Experiments with Lies

On By PGR NairIn HumorLeave a comment

My mother taught me to tell the truth and shame the devil. I once told the truth and shamed my father.

I was once attending a talk by Swami Chinmayananda, a magician of words, wit and wisdom. In the midst of his talk he paused and asked the audience a question ‘”Has anyone read the 25th chapter of ‘Bhagavath Geetha’? Everyone in the audience including yours truly yelled back “Yes, Yes”. “Very good”, he continued, “Of course, there is no 25th chapter in the book and you are the right people I want to talk to”. Dear readers, you are the right people with whom I can share my experiments with lies.

Telling lies is something that our tongues are more tuned to than telling the truth. We all have a penchant for corruption of truth. That is why we develop our sense of rumor very fast and certify the saying that “Truth is stranger than fiction”. Yet we are not liars in the strict sense. We just arrange truth in our favor.

When I was a student, I liked the subject ‘Statistics’ very much. I never knew that it had something to do with my personality until I read a quotation of Mark Twain- “There are three kinds of lies ‘ lies, damned lies and statistics.” I understood later that statisticians are superbly smart guys. I will tell you an example. A hundred men went into the forest to cut wood. They took two women with them for cooking. When the winter was over, two men got married to the two women in the group. However, a statistician reported that 2% of the men married 100% of the women. So like this statistic, I have revealed a lot in my life, but always concealing vital truths.

As an engineer I would associate some mechanical properties with a lie. Unlike truth, a lie is quite flexible, stretchable and has better yield strength. A bit of a lie added to truth is like copper added to gold, which enhances its ductility and strengthens it. Truth is wooden and static. A lie is effusive and dynamic. Truth is constant while a lie has infinite variations. Truth operates on one gear whereas a lie has multiple gears. Liars have sweet tongues and so they become splendid speakers. They win more friends and companions than truth-sayers. I think it would be terribly lonesome up in the heaven with nobody there except God and Mahatma Gandhi blinking at each other. Life is always more comfortable and peaceful under the blanket of a lie.

Consider literature or fiction. It is lying that has made the human language so beautiful. Think of the most hilarious story you have read or the best romantic movie you have watched on the silver screen or even the loveliest ad on TV. They are all enchanting because they are all tissues of lies or figments of imagination. So, if you want to set the world on fire, you should be a capable liar.

As lie is more practiced on a daily basis than truth, let us examine some of the multiple benefits of it. Consider our politicians. Do you think a mere politician can aspire to become a chief minister or prime minister without perfecting his talents in lying? No chance! Conceiving cock and bull stories, learning libels, fabricating forgeries and frauds, scheming scandals and scams are the lessons they easily learn for their ascent in their political career. Strategies for deception and counter deception are in their genes. I was really impressed when president Clinton confessed with a rare poise before the press conference  – “I have nothing to do with that woman” -when we all knew as clear as a day that he had everything to do with that woman. In Kerala, two well-known politicians met on a common platform in the midst of their election campaign. One man told the other – “Let us straighten out our things. Here onwards, I will stop telling lies about you. “Well, that is fair,” replied the other politician, ” I promise, I will not tell any truth about you.”

While telling truth is a good policy, it is not the cheapest. When invitations pour in for marriages and birthday parties, a good lie can often save time and money. Now, when it comes to your daily routine of passing positive evaluations at the home front, everything from the tasteless toasts to fashion and fads of our females, telling a sweet lie is sweeter than having a tough time with the torture of truth.

Our film stars and beauty queens will secretly vouch that a lie is more youthful than the wrinkled truth. If a cat has only nine lives, a good lie will survive many lives and generations. A lie in time can save many embarrassments and is the best protector of our name and honor.

Now, look at our children! They learn lies faster than truth. When my friend Sunny came to our house with his family, he told us, “I have plans to make my youngest daughter a lawyer because she is a good liar.” I had no option but to support him as I was wedded to a pack of lies, my wife being a full-blown lawyer. Sunny’s wife asked us, “Isn’t it a problem the way our innocent children thoughtlessly crack lies?” Having faced many embarrassing moments from the mouth of my kid when he was small , I said, “Not half the problem madam as when they tell the truth at the wrong time.”

What is called for in telling lies is craft for duplicity. My wife is always concerned about my eye contact with her whenever I give her some explanations and excuses. It taught me a lesson — When lips lie, eyes tell the truth. So I am in the process of taking some lessons for my eyes. When I select my friends, I ask them whether they are honest. If a man says he is honest, that is straight explanation that he is crooked. My difficulty in practicing lies is that I don’t have enough memory capacity to be a successful liar. Another difficulty I face is when I tell a lie my palms get sweaty. But when I tell a truth, I sometimes see all the people around me getting sweaty.

Finally, to tell the truth, I think nakedness is something unwelcome both in the mind and the body. Clothe it with a bit of lie to feel yourself warm, comfortable and attractive. As Francis Bacon said, “Truth may perhaps come to the price of a pearl that shows best by day, but it will not rise to the price of a diamond that shows best in varied lights.”

There is a Proverb: “Tell a lie and leave the place.” Dear readers, I make my exit.

SIX SIGMA FOR YOUR LIFE

On By PGR NairIn Motivational articlesLeave a comment

(Given below is the transcript of  a speech I made at the concluding ceremony of the 8 weeks long Youth Leadership Program (YLP) for school students held in Jubail, Saudi Arabia in January 2012)

Dear YLP Coordinator, Fellow Toastmasters and my dear students

Good Evening!

Today you are concluding your first and possibly the most important chapter in your public speaking training. I am sure that the lessons you have learned in this Global Toastmasters YLP would help you to power your progress in life.

Apart from communication skills , I thought on this occasion to  dwell upon SIX  other FACTORS  you could imbibe at an early stage to achieve  six sigma perfection in your life.

The first one isKNOW

Every morning and evening in Monticello, his home in Virginia, Thomas Jefferson measured the temperature and atmospheric pressure. He owned hundreds of slaves but this Jefferson did himself, to be aware of what was around him. We are an indoors culture, especially in Saudi,  and that is one reason we invent so little. Pradip Krishen , the husband of Arundhati Roy, wrote a book on the trees of Delhi, but few of us can identify the trees or the birds around us. We simply lack the curiosity to know them.

 Thomas Edison’s perspiration wouldn’t have produced marketable incandescent light bulbs without some other factors. Curiosity was his greatest strength: “If I try this, what will happen?” Now, repeat 10,000 times. Thomas Edison would NEVER have gotten 1093 patents without a mountain of curiosity. A man without curiosity is spiritually dead. Even when your passion is low, curiosity can be a calming diversion. If passion is a tower of flame, then curiosity is a modest spark—and I believe , we can almost always summon up a modest spark of interest about something. The urge to know is one of the most important assets of a cultivated human being. Do cultivate this urge.

The second one is ‘MAKE’

In the period of their intellectual maturity, Tolstoy began making shoes and Gandhi began to make fabric. These two very great men decided that the most noble thing a man could do was to work with his hands. Consider making small things, useful things, like a bench or a wooden spatula or a small vanity bag or wallet. Such work is uncommon in our culture, but Indians were once great craftsmen, so it lurks in your blood. Make some models for science exhibitions, draw a painting, sculpt a figurine  . Create something that is useful or artistic. There is an ineffable pleasure in crafting one’s own creations.

The third one is ‘FIX’

When we immigrated to Canada, we  moved to a 2 bed room apartment in Toronto. As part of furnishing our apartment, we bought couple of book shelves from Walmart . As you know, most of the such things come in disassembled condition and you have to sit patiently , apply your mind and reassemble it  fixing each piece in its right place. Honestly, I was poor in this task while my wife and my elder son did it with perfect ease. Even today my wife taunts me and say- “  Who awarded you the engineering degree”?  So, beware of handing over to me something to fix or repair . It would be like feeding something to a shredding machine.

One thing that separates Indians from Europeans is our helplessness before breakdowns. Our absolute reliance on plumber, mechanic, chaiwallah and IT man means that we understand little about the way things work, their mechanics. In western countries like Canada, every male is self-reliant and is often a plumber, a car mechanic, a carpenter electrician and a house painter molded into one .  They enjoy fixing things themselves. Merely disassembling the basic parts of something and putting it together again will bring knowledge. America’s high schools have something called “shop class” where all students learn how to work with wood and metal. We don’t and must teach ourselves to fix broken things.

The fourth one is ‘GROW’

When I was child, my father used to take me to our paddy fields and the fertile land around our house. We used to grow sweet potatoes, tapiocas, plantains and many tubers.  I was there right from the seeding stage and I still remember the wonder in my eyes when the first bulb or seedling appeared in the soil . I used to water them. The biggest thrill was to harvest and see the size and shape of  the tubers that got hatched beneath the soil. My joy knew no bounds. I relived that joy of growing something out of one’s own soil while reading a very beautiful book  titled “Life and Times of Michael K” by  the South African Nobel Laureate J M Coetzee.  Even if it is just one pot or a little patch, to plant, nurture and harvest a living organism is something all of us should experience. Work with your hands and cultivate something in your home garden. Few things are as rewarding to man as being able to grow food, or flowers.

The fifth one is ‘SING’

 Music is an expression. Expression of what? Emotion. The melodic instruments like guitar, violin and flute evoke emotion by imitating the voice. The percussive instrument—the drum—imitates the rhythms of life’s movements: breathing, walking, dancing. In the hierarchy of musical instruments, the human voice is ranked No. 1. The Hindu-Muslim vocal tradition of north India is the single most expressive form of music in the world (this superlative isn’t true of Indian dance). So is the case with western classical music ranging from Beethoven, Mozart, Brahms, Schubert and the like to modern composers like Debussy, Schoenberg and Sibelius.  Learning and appreciating any kind of soulful music will enrich your life as few things can. Though my voice is hardly velvety, when occasion demands, I have learned to sing at least a few Kathakali Stazas. However, today your YLP coordinator Toastmaster Safire has taken all precautions to ensure that I won’t yield to that temptation.

The last and the most important one is ‘READ’

When Benjamin Franklin, the great statesman, inventor and scientist was dining out in Paris, a guest posed a question to all. “What condition of man deserves Pity”? Each guest proposed an example of pitiable condition. When Franklin’s turn came, he said “A lonesome old man on a rainy day who does not know how to read.”

When I was in my 6th grade, my father gifted me the first volume of Encyclopedia in Malayalam language. My mother, who was a teacher,  told me that she was sending an amount from her meager salary on a monthly basis so that I could own a full set of encyclopedia. Fellow Youth Leaders, I must honestly confess today that life happened to me just because I turned those pages.

Of all the diversions of life, there is none so proper to fill up its empty spaces as the reading of useful and entertaining authors.

The failure to read good books both enfeebles the vision and strengthens our most fatal tendency—the tendency of that frog in the well.

There are books so alive that you feel that you are engaging in silent conversation with them. You’re always afraid that while you weren’t reading, the book and its characters have undergone change. It appears to have shifted like a river; while you went on living, it went on living too, and like a river moved on and moved away. As Samuel Johsnon rightly said, “A writer only begins a book. A reader finishes it”

Reading is a mental trip through an author’s mind. It helps us to experience many things through the development of our imagination. It allows us to go places we might not ever go. In fact, reading is a discount ticket to everywhere.

Dear Youth Leaders- Read..read..read until your eye lashes are tired with fatigue

That concludes my six sigma for your life.

It is my sincere wish that learning these practical traits can bring in triumphant transformation  and enrichment to  your life evermore.

Good luck and good night!

PS:

Here is a newspaper report on the event

http://arabnews.com/saudiarabia/article573846.ece

THE PAIR SPEECH

On By PGR NairIn Motivational articles6 Comments

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(Key Note speech delivered on 31 January 2013 by DTM PGR Nair, sponsor of Global Toastmasters, at the finale of Youth Leadership Program  organized by Global Toastmasters Club )

Division Governor, Club President, YLP Coordinator , my dear Youth Leaders , fellow Toastmasters and guests

Good evening!

Global has an unbeatable tradition of holding the best YLPs and this one is no different. Being a founder of the club, I feel proud to stand before you and address you on this valedictory evening. I salute all my fellow Toastmasters who have toiled behind this important event.

I have titled MY key note speech as the PAIR speech. Well, PAIR is just two pairs of letters. But they hold a lot of meaning for me. The letter ‘P’ stands for ‘POSITIVITY’.

P-POSITIVITY

In May 1984, my cousin Satish Nair was writing his CA examination in Mumbai. Suddenly he collapsed and was rushed to the Bombay hospital. It was diagnosed that both his kidneys had been congenitally shrinking and he needed an immediate kidney transplant for survival. His father EK Nair who happened to retire from his service as an Accounts Manger on the same day later donated a kidney to his only son. Satish regained his health in a span of six months and successfully completed his CA Exam.

Satish by nature being an enterprising and hardworking guy set up a consulting business and made a flourishing growth in it. Meanwhile, he took the initiative to set up the first cadaver Kidney Bank in India.
As his doctor assured him that he could get married, a matrimonial ad was given in a Newspaper stating all facts. Alas! No partner could be found. In 1993, a girl volunteered to marry him. We were thrilled by her act of sacrifice. However, after marriage, she seemed more interested in his bank deposits and business ventures than in him. Slowly, yet horrendously, Satish realized that his life partner had expected him to die soon so that she could secure all his assets. Satish had become a victim once again. A legal battle won him a divorce. But the inner battle resulted in the failure of his transplanted kidney. As a result, he underwent another kidney transplant, this time the donor being his mother. Unfortunately, it also did not last long. Satish had been undergoing dialysis thrice a week till 2013.

In all these fights against a battalion of adversities, my cousin exhibited magnificent emotional strength and positivity as if he had transcended his suffering. His defeats appeared more triumphant than his victories. The grinding wheel of adversity only sharpened his mental blades. He became more genial and cheerful and started writing humorous articles in web pages and posting hilarious jokes in Facebook. His smile in rough weather taught us that even in the depth of winter, there lies within us an invincible summer.

Last year in January, my cousin finally succumbed to the unbeatable boxer- Death- after giving a tough fight. When he died, he was one of the top 10 service tax consultants in Mumbai. His Facebook friends were shocked as they didn’t know that he was undergoing so much pain all these years because in all his activities he radiated only joy.

There is a famous Kennedy quote: “When the going gets tough, only the tough gets going”…

Satish continues to be an inspiration for all of us in my family. A victim of shrinking kidneys, a victor in kidney transplant; a victim of marriage, a victor in his business; a victim of a failed kidney, a victor in founding a kidney bank; A VICTIM IN THE EYES OF THE WORLD ‘ A VICTOR BY HIMSELF. My cousin is the most exceptional example of positivity I have seen in my life.
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Dear Children, cultivate positivity in your life and never ever be disappointed about anything. It makes a big difference in your life when you stay positive. If you see the world and yourself through a lens smudged by negativity then you’ll find much misery. If you look outwards and inwards through lens brightened by positivity you’ll find much to be happy and appreciative about.

A-ACTION

The next letter is A and it stands of Action

Though I am a Toastmaster, I love more people who act rather than talk. Words can be twisted into any shape. Promises can be made to lull the heart and seduce the soul. But actions never deceive or confuse us. Actions of men are the best interpreters of their thoughts.

My uncle EC Nair, a retired high school headmaster, is a man of few words. In fact whenever I meet, our conversations dwindle into monosyllables. Yet many a time my uncle has proven to his friends and relatives that he is a man of the moment and when crisis dawns, he changes into an entirely different persona.

In July 1988, my wife Raji Krishnan was pregnant with our first child and she was in the 9th month. Apparently during the same period my sister was also pregnant with her first baby and her date of delivery was 3 weeks before Raji. So when my sister was hospitalized, we shifted for a short while from Cochin to Vayalar, my hometown, so that someone would be there at our ancestral home. On July 15th my wife was alone in my house and suddenly she sensed some wrong signals and felt great discomfort. Apparently the amniotic sac in her uterus had broken resulting in heavy fluid loss. Luckily she was talking to a neighboring woman when this happened. She virtually ran to reach my uncle’s house, located a KM away. Within no time my uncle arranged a vehicle and came with some people to carry my wife in a chair to the nearest road and she was rushed to a trustworthy hospital. Just because of that timely action by my uncle, the doctors could save my wife though the baby died an hour after the delivery.

Again, when Satish in my first story was first detected of Kidney disease, this very same uncle, without telling anyone, sold a piece of his property and sent 25,000 rupees in 1984. My granduncle EK Nair, Satish’s father, for many years used to tell everyone how this sum of 25,000 he received from his nephew gave him the confidence to go ahead with Kidney plant transplant for his son which then incurred an expense of over 1.5 lakh.
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So dear youth leaders, embrace actions than words. It has more eloquence and nobility. Remember, even Vivekanada advised Karma Yoga or the Yoga of actions. Karma Yoga is a mental discipline which allows one to carry out one’s duties as a service to the entire world, as a path to enlightenment. . We have to work as hard as we can, give the work our best quality effort, then step back and let the results take care of themselves. Action purifies the soul.

Uttishthata jagrata prapya varan nibodhata
Arise, awake and stop not till the goal is reached.

I- INTUITION


The third letter of pair is ‘I’ and it stands for Intuition. Intuition is a hunch or a gut feeling and if we followed it, we just might be happier. Intuition is the sound of the soul. We feel this intuition at unexpected moments and in periods of time set aside for silence. It is also very good at sending warning bells about people or events and if we listen it keeps us safe.

I came to Saudi Arabia on Nov 28th 1997. My flight to Chennai from Cochin was on 27th Nov . On 27th early morning at 2:30 AM, I received a call from my sister that my father, a cardiac patient, had been hospitalized and he had sunk into a coma. Early morning of 27th, I rushed to the hospital near Aleppey and saw there a crowd of my relatives. I went to the doctor’s home located near the hospital and asked his opinion about my father and told about my predicament of rushing to Airport in a couple of hours. The doctor said that he could tell anything positive only if his kidney started functioning. Consultations with my relatives only confused me. They wanted me to stay back as it wasn’t the right time to leave the country. I was in a dilemma. I moved away from them and went to the garden of the hospital. I stood near an almond tree for a while. I could hear some inner voice telling me that my father was going to survive. I told my relatives that I was leaving and asked my sisters to take care my father. On the morning of 28th, before boarding Saudia flight, I made a call to my sister from airport and she said that my father’s kidney had started functioning. My father lived another 18 months and I had the opportunity to visit him twice before he bid his final good bye.

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Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Nobel Laureate, one of the greatest novelists of this century says in his memoir that everything he has done is based on intuition. Once he went for a dinner in a reputed restaurant. As he reached there, he saw in the restaurant an unfamiliar sitting pattern including some strangers dining there. He thought of not dining there and went back to another restaurant in the city. The next day he opened the Newspaper and read that many people who had dined in that restaurant he originally intended to dine, died of food poisoning. So your intuition can sometimes save your life.

I believe before you seek advice from anyone, you must seek advice from yourself. I believe that your inner voice seldom cheats you. Albert Einstein has said “The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.” You must train your intuitive mind – you must trust the small voice inside you which tells you exactly what to say, what to decide. Follow your instincts, that is where wisdom lies.

R- REMEMBERANCE

Humans are more inclined to forget than remember. Very often we forget both the people who have been with us in our journey and the events that transformed us. In a few years from now some of you may act as of you don’t know your YLP coordinator Azziz Siddique , our dynamic president Asif Siddique or DTM Safare Mohammed, the poster boy of Toastmasters. My request to youth leaders is to keep a good track of your accounts, especially your debts and remember to return it if situation demands it.

Again I return to a childhood incident when I was studying in the 7th grade. My grand uncle EK Nair, the father of Satish, has been my role model. During one of his vacations from Mumbai, he asked me to go with him for a walk. He wanted to meet his childhood buddy whose house was located about 3 KM from our home. His Name was Narayan Thirumeni , a Brahmin by birth. When my uncle studied for his B.Com, the only college available was SD college near Alleppey. Since my uncle’s dad had no means to make any hostel accommodation, Narayanan Thirumeni invited my uncle to stay and study with him at his ancestral home in Alleppey as they were then a prosperous family. After our long walk we reached Narayan Thirumeni’s house. The sight we saw gave a jolt to my uncle. Times had changed. Thirumeni and his wife had been living in a dilapidated house. His only son had vanished into some unknown terrain as a Naxalist. His daughter had run away with someone belonging to another caste. Apparently, they didn’t have means to offer us even a cup of tea. After a long chat, we left his home and during the walk I realized that my uncle was visibly upset. As we reached the village square, he straightway went to a grocery shop, gave a good sum, and instructed the shopkeeper to deliver to Thirumeni’s house Rice, Sugar and Tea for one year and said he would pay if there was any unsettled payment when he returned the following year.

Witnessing of this simple incident has never been erased my heart. I see it as an exemplary act of gratitude in remembrance of what he had received from that family almost 45 years ago when he was a student. I believe gestures of such genuine gratitude come from the heart.

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As Emerson rightly said- “Cultivate the habit of being grateful for every good thing that comes to you, and to give thanks continuously. And because all things have contributed to your advancement, you should include all things in your gratitude”. Let gratitude be the pillow upon which you kneel to say your nightly prayer. The great Roman Orator Cicero has said –“Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all others.”

Dear Youth leaders, that concludes my PAIR speech

In a few years from now you are going to face the brave new world. Many things may not turn out as you have dreamt. Your ship may not come. You may not win mega buck lotteries. You may not become a flashy Software Engineer in Infosys. You may not win formula 1 car race. No one will give the key to a new city, and even if they did, it may not open even a can of cat food. You may get good jobs and bad ones. You may meet Mr Right or Miss Wrong as your partners in life. A few minutes from now a speech contest among you is going to take place. Some of you may win and some of you may lose. I am telling everything you don’t know about this life.

I am not being cynical here. Despite all these, If you stay positive and govern your actions based on intuition and remember to pay your debts in your journey, you may excel in your life. Based on my experiences and my observation of others I can say with utmost honesty that like in Hindi Movies happy endings are the rule rather than an exception.

Dear Youth Leaders, You are living in incredibly exciting times. Take your wings and fly. Let Global Toastmasters be the wind beneath your wings.