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Have you heard about SPIC MACAY (The Society for the Promotion of Indian Classical Music and Culture Amongst Youth)?

If your answer is NO, try to search for it on Google.

The following story dates back to 2011. This incident made a lasting impression on my life. I was awakened to the meaning of the muscled word “Power”.

Students were organizing a cultural event at TERI University, New Delhi, and an esteemed guest of SPIC MACAY was supposed to grace the occasion. We were fortunate to have Pandit Rajendra Prasanna with us that day who plays the flute as well as shehnai.

We had planned for the event well in advance and all the arrangements were in place except one. We had completely forgotten to identify someone who could introduce the guest to the audience.

Pandit ji as well as some of his fellow musicians had already arrived on the stage. When I requested a couple of students to initiate the introduction, they politely declined. Finding no other way, I quickly referred to Wikipedia to find a few lines to say about our guest for the evening.

The sun was about to set as I hesitantly edged close to the mic. An audience of more than 150 that included Professors, students and college staff had already taken their seats in the amphitheater. I took a few deep breaths until waves of dizziness lessened and started the introduction.

In order to avoid further discomfort, I didn’t look at the audience at all. I just tried to focus on few lines that I had scribbled on a small paper a couple of minutes back.

For the next several minutes, there was a pin drop silence except for my voice. That really unnerved me. I finished the intro and requested Pandit ji to start playing his musical instrument.

Panjit ji took the mic and said, “I really liked the calm and slow manner in which you introduced me.”

That sentence was sufficient to put an end to my struggle of the last 10 min. I walked to my friends sitting in the amphitheater to enjoy the rest of the evening.

For the next 20 min or so, Panjit ji played beautiful classical ragas on his long flute. He was aptly supported by a Tabla player and few other musicians. The evening looked beautiful with soothing music and a cool breeze blowing across the place. However, at that moment, I was unaware that I was about to discover something so celestial that would change my overall perception. 

Then Panjit ji took out a very small flute from his bag for the next performance. All of us got super-excited as he described few memories about this flute before he blew his magical air into the flute. When he began playing, it felt as if a divine space transcended at that moment.

There were two medium-sized trees on both sides of the stage. When Panjit ji paused for a few seconds after playing the small flute, a large flock of birds came from nowhere and sat on one of the trees. They started chirping as the music had stopped. All of us were surprised except Panjit ji. He resumed playing his small flute and the birds stopped the chatter. Panjit ji came to a halt again after a couple of minutes and birds resumed their twittering. It felt as if the birds were part of the jugalbandi (a performance in Indian classical music).

A few moments later, all the birds glided over the musicians and sat on the tree on the other side of the stage.

To witness something like this was miraculous. Panjit ji continued playing his flute for some more time and the birds enjoyed the music for the entire duration. When the birds flew away, they had already left an extraordinary memory for all of us to cherish for the rest of our lives.

Panjit ji felt extremely emotional and we echoed his sentiments.

This episode unleashed a new definition of “Power”. When you can influence others with your love and passion for any activity, without applying any force, you have discovered a vast source of untapped energy. You can use this power to change the world.

Friends are forever, someone said, as I took the last local train to Hi-tech city, Hyderabad. Minutes later I was in the middle of myriad of thoughts, good enough to complete a philosophical trilogy. As rest of the travellers cherished their stories of friendship, I was kept reminded of Amit, my old friend. Amit, the only one who was able to qualify:

Look from the middle, they are plenty,
Come near the sea shore, there is one in twenty.

My heart started pounding as I was engulfed with what happened to Amit and I just couldn’t stop there as I started looking for my Parker pen and a piece of paper.

25 years ago when Earth saw the first glimpse of Amit’s cute face, no miracle happened. However as everyone’s parents from middle class families’ dream of their children to become doctors or engineers, there was no exception in his case as well. Now when he wakes up in the morning, he becomes part of the race, a never ending race of becoming successful in life. He has to work hard at office, keep on improving his skills and go higher up in the carrier. Buy a new home, get married to a simple and understanding girl, take care of children; it has been the protocol for everyone.

His elder brother, Anis dreamed of the same 7 years back and now heads a big organization. Anis is now well settled and has lot of plans to take his company to the fortune 500 list.

The youngest one Arjun, is into final year of engineering and appearing for interviews to get into a MNC and keep his foot on cherished information technology industry.

Until now Amit’s family has given the perspective of a happy family and everyone seems to be happy. But his mother is suffering from one of the most dreaded diseases i.e. cancer and she into 2nd stage. They have very less time left to bring her back to life. If they take 1 more year, she will be into 3rd stage and after that they just have to wait until she takes her last breathe.

Amit has lot of ambitions in his life and his elder brother has to make his company the best among a lot. His younger brother has just 1 year to enjoy his final year, just 1 year to get into a good IT company and just 1 year to enjoy the days with friends, which is the best part of everyone’s life.

They have everything with them except time for their mother.The three brothers don’t have enough time to take care of their ailing mother as they have higher ambitions. What a shame? Shouldn’t they take care of their mother? However the fact remains the same. The mother, who spent all her life just to see her kids to become successful, does not have much time left. All she wants is everyone’s time to look after her.

Our world is heading towards an unknown yet very dangerous, an unseen yet very devastating, an unheard yet very destructive phenomenon, “GLOBAL WARMING”. The earth which supported human civilization for the last 6000 years to achieve the current success, can we let it die? It’s already in the 2nd stage of cancer and we just have 40–50 years left before it dies of the effects of this slow poison. We, the children have to work together to get our mother of this living hell. All our mother needs is time from her children, some time to think of her problems, ways to get her out of this trouble. Mother has heart bigger than universe, so she maintains fine equilibrium between all, even any of her children creates problems. However when her pain becomes unbearable, she responds in the form of cyclones, floods, volcanic eruptions; and those have just intensified over last few years due to Global Warming.

So my dear friends, let’s take some quality time of our busy schedule to help our mother out of this trouble called “Global Warming”.

If not Earth, then Where
If not Now, then When
If not You, then Who…

I am glad that you made it through entire article. Share your comments below.

In this cutthroat competitive world, we are always pushed to complete things before the deadline. We are competing with colleagues to get that promotion, racing against fellow drivers on road to reach the destination faster. This pressure has impacted our peace of mind adversely and we often don’t realize this. 

Many people take up running and the pressure to finish the run faster creeps into their mind. They go to a practice run and try to outrun their partner.

Ask few runners, “How was your run today?”, they would most likely respond saying, they finished in a certain amount of time. It’s not wrong to express it in such a way, but solely focusing on timing (unless someone is a professional runner) limits the experience.

Remember that if you want to treat running as your hobby, make it enjoyable and not a pressure game.  

PC: Pexels.com

When we start to learn something new, we need to commit some time and energy to learn it. Many times, it requires us to devote time every day. As humans we get so intimidated by contemplating about bottlenecks that we don’t even get started. When we muster some courage to get things going, many unforeseen challenges crop up to stop our progress.

This sounds familiar, isn’t it?

Then what is that thing which can keep us going?

Inspiration lasts just for few days. Motivation doesn’t last forever. Self-belief often gets us going, but as challenges surge, out mind comes up with lot of doubts that instill fear. If we think having a partner to accompany us might help the matters, we may be proved wrong as well. Partner will have his/her excuses as well which will only complicate the matter.

That leaves us with no other reason than “Attitude”. That’s right, our attitude is the key factor that will play the most significant role in our journey. It will help us to stay afloat when tide is high. It will repel all the negative emotions and allow us to channelize our focus and energy to actual objective. It will give courage to eliminate the disapproval of naysayers.

When going gets tough, ‘Attitude’ keeps us going.

What keeps you going?

In 2018, my sister Rashmi underwent treatment for cancer at AIIMS Delhi. She went to the hospital twice a week, underwent chemotherapy and many more side effects of treatment.

During that time, I visited AIIMS 10 to 12 times within a month and the scenes were gruesome. A 5-year-old boy suffering from leukemia, a poor old woman sitting with her husband in pain, hundreds of depressed people due to their ongoing war with cancer.

On a particular Monday, I was with my sister for the weekly consultation. We reached the hospital by 1:00 pm and I took a token with serial number 57 from the counter. We waited for our turn for the OPD starting at 2:00 pm. Patients and their attendants started to gather outside the OPD. By 2:30 pm, there were close to 300 people in a small place and there wasn’t any space to move even an inch. The mic-announcement system at OPD had stopped working sometime back. So, the security guard would announce the name of the patient and if one could not go immediately then his or her turn got canceled for the day. The patient would be asked to come again and take a future date for consultation.2

For a disease like cancer, everyday counts. Missing an appointment is the same as asking for more trouble and putting one into more pain.

I had to wait for 3 hr and 15 min until the number 57 was announced. For that entire duration, I stood at only one place, keeping both my mind and ear alert. I couldn’t allow the chit-chatting of 300 people to break my concentration. But it was tough.

By the time we managed to come out of the hospital, it was almost 6:00 pm and we were really exhausted. And there were only 6-7 doctors who were attending to the patients in the OPD. Consider the stress on the doctors at the end of such sessions.

On many occasions, people usually visit AIIMS Delhi when they have exhausted all their options elsewhere. This hospital gives them the last hope. Consider the pressure on the doctors who know that if they don’t treat the patients well, then the patients have no where to go.

On the last day of the visit, I met the head of Cancer department to thank him for the tremendous effort being put by his team. He had a smile on his face. He mentioned that due to huge inflow of patients that far outweighs the current capacity, the hospital face huge stress; yet the doctors and medical staff try to make best possible effort.

Although it has been almost 3 years since that incident, that conversation is still fresh in my mind. During this grave time due to COVID-19 situation, the doctors and medical staffs continue to put effort to bring our loved ones out of danger. Doctors and medical staffs continue to put their own life at risk to save lives.

But when I see attack on doctors, I feel sad and helpless. I understand that there are some medical professionals who take advantage of current situation, but that doesn’t mean we should see everyone as the culprit.

Sharing this picture which is made of photos of doctors who lost their lives due to COVID-19. Small steps in our part may help us to save precious lives of doctors.

1. Wear double mask

2. Take vaccine (let’s take which ever vaccine is available immediately instead of thinking of Covishield vs Covaxin)

3. Say few kinds words to front line workers every time you meet them. They are under tremendous stress. Few nice words can make their day.

4. Follow Social Distancing

5. Have Patience. We need it the most at this time.

COVID-19 lockdown substantiated my belief that physical activity immensely helps physically as well as mentally.

I took inspiration from my uncle and started 100 day running challenge on 11th July 2020. I wasn’t sure if I would be able to continue the routine even for a week. 

But I managed to clock 214 consecutive days of workout until I thought of taking a break.  

During this period, I had to deal with illness, injury, anxiety, failure, and many ups & downs.

Biggest takeaway for me has been to train the mind that no matter what happens, keep moving. 

There is no substitute for hardwork and consistency. 

So, pick up yourself out of bed every single day and go for a run my friend. 

You will be amazed by the difference running can bring to your life. 

Consistency is the key to unlock your immense potential.

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