When I discovered power of concise writing

Right through my college days, I used writing to connect with relatives and friends (I had penfriends I regret to have lost contact withL, though at times, this writing would stretch a bit.  But my friendship with a sweet and talkative girl who had come to spend summer with her elder sister in the neighbourhood led me discover the power of concise writing.

In some part of my life I was a shy guy, found it difficult to initiate a talk with a girl, even more if she was beautiful which this new neighbour definitely was! Talking to her was tough but she initiated. She dominated the talking and my part was restricted to one word aids of ‘yes’, ‘no’, ‘ok’, ‘hmm’ and likes simply to convey I was listening.

In spite of her constant encouragement I found it difficult to talk to her and she had even warned me to end friendship if I failed to talk just like the way she did. My transformation to a chatterbox was impossible but I thought of a middle path because I had started liking her more than a friend.  

I gifted her a chocolate box, a crystal dolphin (she loved dolphins) and a 5”x7” Hallmark card before she left for her town. This simple card had a cute kitten peeping from the bush image on the front page and on the inside page it had set of three words (it was not ‘yes I do’ or ‘I luv u’) but it worked.

I never needed to explain my lack-of-words to her ever. I always cherish the good memories with this friend and those who may be interested in knowing, the inside page read ‘Shy but interested.’               

What am I doing to my life?

This question may make many of us sad, leave many clueless; leave others in bad taste but I think now I have a vision which I want to share. In my life, up till now, fear played an important role in my upbringing and how I tackled fear proved even more significant role. 

For a few days I was going through bad patches, too much thinking about wrong decisions I made in life, troubled sleep, no help from psychological sleeping, yoganidra, worries about things that concerned, and then I realised, no wait, I’m still alive and have choice to change. 

Have seen how wilful change in perspective, approach and attitude make difference. Regained confidence, restarted working on mental plans I had made early this year. I have acquired knowledge, gathered insights, have better social understanding now; I've also learned to make adjustment with people who were strict-no-just-coz-not-my-type before. 
       
I had lost touch with myself, in customizing, during these years; I'm assuming my own form.  Now that I have a vision, I’m engaged giving it a desired shape. Understanding fear in a better way will speed up the shaping for sure.

Way to eternity

Before we close our eyes forever, we are habituated to receive our daily dose of death. We fear, we die; we hesitate, we die; we hurt, we die; we doubt, we die; we limit, we die....

It must stop.

How to Drive Your Sales in Holi?

Driving sales in Holi

With Holi fast approaching, this would be the top most question before the retailers’ engaged in selling on store fronts virtual or real. The answer is establish the connect as no other way could be as effective than connecting with the spirit of festivity for driving your sales. In countries like India the spirit of festivity will always have its significance as we like to cherish it with our friends, families and known ones.  Because of scarcity of time and our hectic life schedule we seek every opportunity to meet with friends and relatives, to gift and also to show-n-share our buys which is provided by festivals like Holi.  

Get a connect

When it comes to selling, retailers think colours, natural Gulals, ethnic wears and ingredient for foods prepared on Holi are the things which can best be sold on Holi, what else?! But you can sell fashion accessories like watches, sunglasses to cars, bikes, mobile phones and anything you wish to sell off your store. The key is to get the connect. You have to do the homework on what all you wish to sell, how you will be communicating to your target customers.

Marrying the connect with Holi theme

The idea of marketing and promotional activity should be to strike a match between the product you’re selling with Holi. Holi being the festival of colours, you may well play around your products in different colours supposedly depicting the positive aspects, attitudes. Say for example green in Indian context is often associated with feeling of love, friendliness and happiness. Similarly all other colours even white and black for that matter has its significance, all you need is to marry the colouring idea with the Holi theme. 

         

Having said that, it is also important to ensure that this message is not out of fervour and context as one of the mobile major brand was selling its top brand with tagline of ‘Let’s Play Holi This Diwali’ made by JWT India ad agency. You need a logical and rationale way of representing your products. For this you must think on how to pick your words and message for selling smart.

Is not it the materialization?

Absolutely not! Everyone likes to stay connected to the roots and in India we do it by celebrating every occasion with families, friends and in our wider communities across the nation. And by adding some activity even if it’s a buying to an event or festival you are definitely giving prominence to the festival. Those who are searching for a product will anyways buy it sooner or later, by presenting your products in sync with the festive spirit you are only adding sparkles to rejoice.

So go and soak your spirit in colours and enjoy your sales too!

Lest The Acid Fall On Us

The pain, the trauma, the agony, the feeling of being in a society amassed by timid people, lifelong suffering for the victim and the family, endless infliction of amiss on every sight of the defaced... I fear if these should be the outcome of righteous resistance against licentious barbarian brutal act. I am always of the opinion of corrective punishments but I can never think of anything lesser than capital punishment for such heinous crime. 

I feel sorry how none of us talk about this episode. How can we be so insensitive? That the culprit's lives be snatched is undebatable. What I can invite people to debate is whether these monsters who've committed this crime should be publicly executed or shot in full public view. It is not just defacing of one's face, it is the sheer contempt of nature's law of 'respect for the dignified life for all, irrespective of sex, race or anything else'.

We saw how little time our Hon'ble President took to reject the mercy plea of 26/11 lone surviving terrorist. In less than 2 days time, decision was taken, file was sent back to Maharastra Govt. with Home Ministry's approval for the execution. Why can't they form a law to tackle such heinous crime? Lokpal, corruption, everything can wait and should wait for we must enforce laws to expedite sentencing of such criminals at the earliest.

Won't it be great if Hon'ble Supreme Court takes into cognizance of such acts and formulate a law for the benefit of the citizens? Acid attacks and rapes are crimes that must not wait for someone filing a PIL to draw attention from Hon'ble lawmakers. Who would like to see a face burnt, dreams shattered, life ruined? None of us. Alternatively till the time a law to tackle such crimes is formulated and strictly enforced, we can also urge few professionals to do nothing to do the justice with these criminals. 

When these criminals are taken up for hearing, we can urge policemen not to let them cover their faces. People of a civilized nation very well know how to treat these criminals so when these  criminals are being taken to custody or hearing, we can urge the policemen to do nothing (at least for a few minutes). I am supremely confident that  justice will be done in no time. When such criminals approach lawyers to take up their cases, they can again do nothing... Sometimes such inactivity from certain professionals can go a long way in creating a civilized nation.

Till the time laws to tackle such crimes is formulated and enforced, we can also urge the netizens, the bloggers, media and social fraternity to keep the issue up and spreading. Radical transformation is not to happen but definitely we can start moving in bits. I resolve to do my bit by writing, highlighting and circulating...What's your bit friends...?

5 Minutes to Writing Excellence

Awareness is the key aspect that often goes missing when we start writing an article. If it is a professional piece of work, we tend to include the routine nuisances of the content, context and the jargons. This too is somewhat easy as we learn the way to get around as we face the challenges on a day-to-day basis. But when it comes to personal write-ups then the problem starts as we loose the grip. The awareness of the context falls and we tend to deviate from the topic.  One of the effective ways to check this problem is to turn on a timer and set it up for 5 minutes and begin writing. Once we start writing with such a limitation then our mind works well and remains aware throughout the writing process.

Five minutes of writing also helps us to stay focused as it is easier for us to stay focused for a shorter duration of time in one go without putting too much exertion or restraints on the mind. In face when we keep the focus of 5 minutes then it also becomes easy for us to take time out from our busy professional or personal routine to do the write-up.  Short duration of the focus makes it easy applicable and we can plan for a series of such focused writing when we work on a complex project which requires high degree of attention.  It also works when we write on a fun theme as the focus helps us deliver the best.

Contrary to the common observation, the limitation does no harm to the quality or creativity of the writeup. Since we know that we have limited time and to write something on a topic, this is the block that I have planned, it starts a preparatory exercises in the head and sets the motion going. Ideas start flowing in and you really do not have to work hard to bring the beautiful things on paper. It is a fact that what you inscribe on paper is nothing but all that is on your mind. The 5 minutes limitation only accelerates the process and allows all the relative ideas to drop on paper.

The beauty of 5 minutes writing is that you do not require much of editing, because most of the time, the editing is required when we write something which is out of context and which we do often. But when the writing is relevant and does justice to the theme then the scope of editing gets limited only in the areas of grammatical mistakes, misplacing of punctuation.  Such type of editing does not require too much time. Say for example if you write 500 words in 10 minutes then you would require just 5 minutes to do the editing. It is because you do not write anything irrelevant in a limited timeframe.

This rule of 5 minutes writing has done wonders for me and could definitely do the same to you as well!

Humanity Deprived of Sensitivity

Once in a month I go to a temple, and last Sunday I went to ISKCON as part of my monthly ritual and the moment I entered the gate, I saw two men carrying an old lady on their shoulders. I paused for a minute and noticed that the lady could hardly stand on her own, let alone walking on a normal surface. I saw these two men requesting the lady guard to body check the old lady and allow her to be taken inside the gate from the men’s entry once her checking is done. These two men never denied the checking or asked for leniency in security checking. They were just pleading to let the lady enter through the men’s gate or let them enter through the women’s gate after they’re checked at the other gate.

What followed after that left me upset for the day. The lady guard listened to none of their pleas and convincingly told these two men to let the lady stand on her own. She said nothing would happen, and if it did she would take care. There was another lady standing at the gate who seconded the first lady guard. As the fate of the old lady had it, the men let her at the mercy of the guard. The lady was standing with the guard’s support and the moment this guard bent down to check her, she uncontrollably fell to the ground. To these lady guards this was so amusing, they could not stop laughing. I rushed to help that lady, and by that time these two men too came close..as they had sensed this fall.

I felt bad and could not stop myself from arguing with these two insensitive lady guards. When I told them that they must not make fun of it..they said, bhagwan ke ghar me girna to achcha hai bhai sahib (it’s ok to befall at god’s place, brother)..I also felt bad as why do these people not understand it is not important to come to such places, no matter how divine or virtuous it might be when you are humiliated in such a way. Why on earth one must struggle to access divinity.

But why people come to such places is my least concern. I am more concerned with the insensitive attitude of the staff. Just because one cannot walk on her own, she should be deprived of her wish to move to the place where she finds some respite. Must she be confined to her home? We talk of equality, universal accessibility, infrastructural growth…boasting of our growing status in comparison to the west and this is how we treat those who are as important to the society as we are. This reminded me of the struggle of one of my mentors, the founder of accessibility. Now I can feel how difficult her fight has been, mainly because she has to fight against the indifferent and insensitive attitude of people rather than mere lack of infrastructural resources.

But I believe in happy ending and though this incident left me disturbed for the day but it also pushed me to seek corrective action from my end. I took the pledge, I will not expect others, the society, the government machinery or the people concerned to act but I will definitely do my bit.