Footprints on the Mountainside

Heh. It’s a life long project. I’m 31 now, and I still don’t know what I want to become when I grow up. There are so many passions to indulge in. One life - so much to do. I’m making a note of my most wanted futures for this life time, in an attempt to get them on record. Regulars here know that this is subject to change - of course.

Yeah - so go on - yell at me for infecting your mind with these tempting little dreams and don’t blame me if you want to do these too.

1. I want to develop a small farm. Organic farming is something I am really interested in. I plan to build a spacious home on the property, which I will be using to run programmes in as well. This home is going to be constructed with natural materials. Mostly stone and mud with some wood. Planning to make the property self-sufficient in terms of energy needs. Solar power and bio gas for cooking, heating water, light and electricity. Perhaps wind/water mills for electricity as well. Totally organic produce, which will provide for most of the food requirements of the people living here. Horses and dogs complete the picture of course.
2. I want to become a mahaout and live a wandering life with my own elephant for at least 2 years. I don’t know much about elephants, but I’m a willing and hard worker, not to mention experience with other animals and a sharp brain. I will learn.
3. I want to raise my kid away from the stereotypical city attitude. Living in the city is fine, but there is a whole world to explore, and chips are not the tastiest food on the planet, television and films are not the best source of entertainment, and having fun need not always be noisy. I’d like my child to learn the value of living straight from the heart. The importance of running full power behind dreams that we are sure about. Yeah I know I don’t have a child yet, but that is a matter of time.
4. I want to put my memories on record. I’ve had some incredible experiences in my life, and am constantly advised by friends and family to write a book about them. I will. I don’t know how fascinating it will be, but I dare say its not going to be something that can be put down easily.
5. I want to do something really nice for the environment. It could be in the form of creating awareness of environmentally friendly options and responsibilities in far flung regions, or it could be working in a forest department to help conserve the resources and protect the animals or it could be something I haven’t thought about yet. But I will do it.
6. I want to get people tempted by solar cooking. Its really easy to build a solar cooker and it works to save a lot of money, natural resources, energy and effort. So why not. For those who don’t know, solar cooking uses heat from the sun to cook food. It is slow cooking, so the food doesn’t char and burn, and the utensils are really easy to clean quickly. The slow cooking retains most of the taste of the food and makes it really delicious. You can put food to cook and skip off to do your own thing for a couple of hours without haunting the kitchen or worrying about it boiling over, burning, or setting fire to something. You save electricity / gas / kerosene / wood / whatever you use for cooking. An efficient solar cooker is really cheap and quick to make, so if you need to cook more, you can simply make one or two more cookers. They can store flat and hardly take space when not in use. They can double up as a fridge at night (reversing the cooking process). If it gets old, you throw it out and make a new one, without worrying about the expenses. Tempting - isn’t it?

So much for now, but stay tuned to this page. I’m bound to drop in and make additions and revisions.

I had gone to an organic farm at Bhadsavale in Neral on the 11th and 12th to conduct a training programme for the students of SIES college - Matunga. I had conducted similar programmes for them last year, and this was now a somewhat established training practice they were trying to adopt in the place of the industrial visits that are mandatory for the students.

The students were excited to be visiting a real organic farm that was well maintained and catered ot their basic comfort requirements, so that they could really enjoy what they were getting into. The completely unexpected nature of the trip was an added bonus.

Out reasoning behind this tour was that while education provides the students with knowledge related with the subjects they have chosen, it does precious little to empower them with the crucial personal and inter-personal skills that are so vital in flourishing in the careers that their mark sheets help them enter. In many orientation and induction programmes for corporates, the biggest challenge for the new professionals seems to be adapting to this world of self-responsibility and accountability. Outbound training programmes are often designed for recruits to help them get into the flow of professional life faster. What if such programmes could be introduced as a part of education and preparation for a professional life? We feel that they would allow the students to get into action much faster at work, while improving on their capabilities and potential for learning even in their educational lives, by helping keep the focus firmly on the applicability and goal of their education.

Of course, such programmes cannot be conducted completely to compare with corporate programmes, as a lot of the sense of responsibility and stake in performing well only comes after an experience of a working environment. However, many other factors can be addressed well and enjoyably - not so much in terms of absolute perfection, but creating an understanding of individual status in terms of capability as well as an awareness of the need to consciously attend to the development of soft-skills. Such personal “targets” often include communication, planning, execution, co-operation, co-ordination, being oranized, ownership of responsibility, listening skills, etc.

These two days with the SIES batches went well. The first day was students from the banking and insurance batch, and the other day was accounts and finance. Young, enthusiastic and well motivated participants on the whole. The crunch came with the discipline. Not the end of the world, but yes, the levels of discipline were low enough to cause the participants real problems in their performances in the activity. But the good part is that they started improving almost immediately to adapt to the situations in question.

On the whole, the group was led very strongly by some individuals, while the others followed in a herd. Reminded me of the good old days in college, where being part of a group was far more important than being individual. Its a tough balance to strike. It creates very predictable problems in terms of poor planning, as there is no opposition to ideas that forces refinement.

The communication was pretty good all through, as were motivation levels, talent and innovation. This was one group that could have been outstanding had they managed to get themselves organised and focussed on the goal, rather than the “herd”. Planning, discipline, and assertiveness on an individual level, could have seen some remarkable acheivements.

But then, I’m expecting beyond what exists as usual. As student groups go, this one was quite good. In the world of experiential learning, no matter how good one is, there is always room for improvement, and no matter how terrible one is, there are always some strengths, so feedback is always going to throw up new directions. The trick lies in keeping what we want, and changing what is not working.

I am planning to conduct some outdoor experiential learning programmes specially for couples this year. I saw a need, when I caught an angry exchange between a husband and wife there the wife accused the husband of neglecting her in favour of his friends, and the husband claimed that she just wasn’t “on the same frequency”.

This is very similar to problems we see in corporate and other training programmes, yet, there is hardly anything that targets such an important intimate relationship in terms of facilitating harmony. The more i thought on this exchange, the more I was convinced that it is definitely worthwhile to invest time in ensuring quality relationships with our spouses.

To plan for the programme, which by now was inevitable (in my mind), I decided to focus on common areas of difficulty in husband-wife relationships, so that they could allow me a framework to plan my programmes around. Here is a list of what I see as the cheif hurdles to harmoniour co-existence in couples.

1. Great expectations of an ideal: These are actually stereotypes. Their chief problem is their unrealstic nature. Those ideals are not based on the person they are applied to and therefore are often seen as accusations when lack is expressed. This includes everyday things like “You should keep the house tidy” or exotic ones like “If you loved me, you would…..” The bottom line is that we can expect something from people, but expecting from concepts is always going to create fitting problems when we attempt to apply them to real people. It would be far better to expect from a person, and be willing to make an investment of personal effort to come half way. eg. “I think that if we work together, the house can be tidied quite easily” and then proceed to walk your talk.
2. Immersion in “roles”: When people start playing and seeing the role, more than the person. When Anna becomes “my wife” more often than Anna the person. This kind of brings a certain anonymity to feelings. You may feel anything about Anna, but as your wife, this is what you think of her. The problem with this is that if you do it often enough, poor Anna has no way of knowing if you even think of her any more, or is she only a wife now? How many of us honestly make continuing efforts to keep discovering new interests and experiences our spouses collect? Do we really love some person who is now obsolete and is replaced by someone with different interests and more experience than we think?
3. Taking for granted: Small things that attracted the couple together start becoming the background music, and the search is on, for a “spark of novelty”. The whimsical nature that once charmed, is now the usual when it does something outstanding, and the ultimate carelessness when it fails. The effort to find novel details in what we find charming is often replaced by an effort to find something altogether different. Well….. common sense tells me, if I have an apple, I can look forward to its taste, its smell, some apple cider, an apple tree….. and so on. There is a problem, if I hold an apple and search for the scent of citrus, while ignoring the apple smell, because its always there.
4. Lack of creative expression: This is when efforts to convey a point stop considering it worthwhile to explore ways of communicating that will lead to maximum acceptance or an effort to make them interesting. Facts stated, and to hell with how they are perceived. What happened to the time, when you even dressed to tempt, and paid attention to everything you did and said, to please and gain acceptance. Why expect the fascination the efforts earned for you, if those efforts are now absent? It was a result of what you did. You do it again, and you’ll see the results again.
5. Insufficient communication: Very often, small irritations are not addressed until they become big issues. Small things are easier to deal with, than greater things. It is far more easy to say “Please call if you’re going to be late” than reach a position where you need to say “You never care that there is someone waiting for you at home”. It is a worthwhile initiative in terms of hurt for both. I may not realise that I am doing something that hurts you, but if you point it out and I see that it hurts you, I am unlikely to want to do it regardless of what you feel. But if I am in the habit of doing something that turns out to be something that has been hurting you for a long time, I am likely to feel left out that you didn’t feel close enough to tell me so, until you were forced by circumstances.
6. Auto-pilot: The married life becomes the launch pad for “real life”, where the married life ceases to be a significant facet of life and is simply consigned to “situation”. Well…. situation it is. However, this simplification overlooks that it is a situation you want. Overlook it often enough, and it will cease to matter. If the home is consistently considered to be a “non-happening” place of stability, it does help by making us more stable and balanced in our interactions with the world. But this source of stability also needs updates, if it is to work as planned. You cannot take a snapshot and hide behind it until eternity. For the home to truly bring that balance into our lives, we need to be alert to the stuff happening inside it. To see what is not working, to figure it out, to keep relationships fresh and involved, so that they are close by us. It is not the walls that are the home, it is the people in it and you’re one of them.
7. Independent dreams: Well… dreams are always personal, but when we fail to communicate them with our spouses, until the first concrete action is taken, they suddenly leave the spouses out of the process, and turn them into spectators. In such a situation, i would feel completely left out and considered incapable of being trusted with dreams and plans or of constructive contribution. I would have felt that I was being considered irrelevant to the core wishes of my spouse and that would definitely have hurt me and made me feel unsure of what could turn up later.
8. Acceptance of failure: We wouldn’t dream of accepting that we failed at work and meekly resign. Yet, many couples accept that they failed as a couple and contemplate divorce/seperation. No relationship worth having comes easy. To a certain extent, maybe, but if one has to go beyond that, it takes considerable skill and efforts. Accepting failure is simply admitting that you cannot get along well with someone on a close level. I fail to see how “people change” is applicable to such a great extent in explaining away this failure. Where were you when the people were changing that you couldn’t adapt to it? Professional scenarios change far more frequently, and you don’t even get to live with them. Yet, it is interest that sustains this constant adaptation, and if you cannot sustain interest in a spouse you fell in love with, it is indeed a failure - a failure to take relationships beyond the initial levels. Divorce may seem an easy option, but it doesn’t teach you anything expect “running away worked” and you run the same risk, until you learn to be careful to keep a caring eye on the relationship.
9. Greener pastures: There is a certain ease and novelty in new relationships, that seems far more attainable than sustaining a relationship. The tempting “start with a clean slate” attitude fails to take into consideration, that every relationship will progress to deeper and more difficult levels. One can constantly keep making fresh beginnings that pose less risk, but these willl also bring less stability, until they can be enriched to a certain level. Most relationships I see failing are more out of personal shortcomings than incompatibility, and these problems will haunt the person until he or she learns to deal with them.
10. The evil of compromise: Compromise is an essential aspect of life. It is easy to compromise on smaller things than take hold of ourselves firmly and make the compromises that matter. A compromise that works as a temporary patch to a lasting problem is very tempting to make, but hardly helps in the long run, while a compromise that fixes an issue well is difficult to identify and commit to, because if often brings a sense of “losing” an argument. Quick fix compromises need regular patch ups, while the more difficult ones last longer, but are difficult to make in the first place. It takes a lot of courage to resolve a difficult situation through compromise.

Enough said, I think.

The New Year is almost here, and the greeating cards with best wishes are flooding in. Just today, I received some 34 greeting cards. Many of them were from people I don’t even remember. I doubt if I am going to read them all - ever. Perhaps some of the really interesting ones, I might read.

If this is the state of my cards, what is happening around the world? How many trees have died, for cards, no one even bothers to read?

I rarely use paper for my work. And when I do, I use both sides, most of the time. It not only keeps the number of papers more controllable in terms of storage, but also helps me be more organised with a computer, leading to an efficient information storing and recovery method, which ends up saving a lot of time and effort for me.

Raka is also very particular about being careful with resources, and we often collect the clean plastic bags we have and return them to shops so that they can be reused.

I am sure we make a difference - however small. What if the many of us could actively involve ourselves into making tiny changes in our habits, to create a massive positive influence on our planet?

With this in mind, I went to the WWF website and got this information to share with the readers here, so that anyone interested, knows exactly what they can do and can begin, without further ado.

I’m not inviting anyone. It is your planet as much as mine.

Save Wood and Paper Return unwanted mail and ask for your name to be removed from the mailing list. Always use both sides of a sheet of paper. Use e-mail to stay in touch, including cards, rather than faxing or writing. Re-use envelopes. Always recycle paper after use. Share magazines with friends and pass them on to the doctor, dentist or local hospital for their waiting rooms. Use recyclable paper to make invitation cards, envelops, letter pads etc.

During Holidays Go on holiday during the off-peak period to prevent over straining resources - you’ll also avoid the crowds. Find out about your destination before you go on holiday - it may be an environmentally sensitive area. Doing this will also ensure you are informed of what to see and any local customs. Find out about places before you visit. You may be visiting a environmentally sensitive area, in which case you must take extra care to stay on footpaths and follow signs. Don’t travel by air if you can avoid it because air travel uses up large amounts of fossil fuels and creates greenhouse gases. Avoid taking things on holiday that you will throw away. Dispose of any rubbish responsibly - it can be hazardous to wildlife. Ask your travel agent or tour operator what they are doing to be environmentally responsible. Use public transport, cycle or walk instead of using a car. Use facilities and trips run by local people whenever possible. Don’t be tempted to touch wildlife and disturb habitats whether on land, at the coast or under water. Be careful what you choose to bring home as a holiday souvenir. Many species from coral and conch shells to elephants and alligators are endangered because they are killed for curios or souvenirs. Don’t leave any rubbish at the beach - turtles are often killed by plastic bags they’ve mistaken for jellyfish and many items take years to degrade as well as being dangerous. Boats and jet-skis create noise and chemical pollution which is disturbing to wildlife - don’t keep the engine running unnecessarily.

© [date of material] WWF. Some rights reserved.

I came across an interesting page that compares a piece of writing with an algorithm based on study of the differences of usage of language between the two sexes. This study can be found here. Curiosity is a virtue, or so I thought and promptly proceed to paste in a few articles from various areas of this site into the “genie” and see the results.

My results hit male as often as female. Is it that my writing style is masculine or that the genie is wrong? As far as I know, I’m female

The paper is quite interesting, and explains the findings from study of various samples and the differences the statistics bring out. Some differences are that females are more “involved, while males are more “informational”. This link to the genie puts these findings into a form, that you can submit writing into and have it see how the your writing reads out.

With a name like Vidyut, many people already confuse me to be male (all other Vidyuts I know of are male). Perhaps this is another thing that may be adding to the confusion?

Can’t say. Definitely worth exploring.

I often find behavioural differences between males and females, as well as differences in thinking styles. I find women more expressive and quick to reach out, while men often seem to be more into doing stuff, but not talking much about it, unles it is well within comfort zones. Women are quick to react to new events and try out new stuff, while men fare better in terms of consistency.

And so on…. but I’d better not bore people with unresearched findings. I’m just tickled about someone going to these extents to document the differences.

Comments and opinions welcome!