Today's positivity | Are we Red-lining our minds at a high RPM?

I know the title of this post makes very little sense.
Allow me to tell you two stories, and maybe you will like to re-visit the title.

Story 1: Jon drives a manual car. As he knows nothing, he presses accelerator to the full while driving in 2nd gear, and never up-shifts the gears beyond. The car has a history of making a lot of noise and vibration. But it does drive and gets Jon from point A to point B.

The tachometer (RPM gauge) is constantly red-lined.

One day the car stalls and the engine gets permanently damaged.

**


Story 2: Jon takes a lot of stress about everything. He is a sincere lad but is always loaded with emotions - high on them. He always pushes to the limit for even mundane things. Everything has to be done in a perfect way (according to him), every goal has to be achieved in the best possible way (according to him), every dumb-bell curl has to be achieved in the best possible way (well, according to his gym trainer!). As Jon knows nothing, he is always motivated and concerned about everything. His ears are always red with blood soaring through his systems.

The blood pressure monitor is always red-lined.

One day, well, let's say that Jon realizes the car could stall and the engine could get permanently damaged.

**

Now, you are an intelligent reader. You don't need to re-visit this post's title. But let's do it anyway, for Jon's sake?

Are we Red-lining our minds at a high RPM?

It looks to me that we are. I personally feel that I had been pushing myself in a lower gear for some-time now. I look around and see that most of us are doing the same. We keep pushing our luck on deadlines - professionally and personally. That's how we have been operating since childhood. While the responsibilities keep on increasing, there is no attempt to up-skill our brains at handling these responsibilities. We are in an ad-hoc trial and error experiment constantly. There is mostly no strengthening of the mind to handle all these, ever-increasing stress pointers.

Now, you'd ask where's the positivity you promised in the 'Today's positivity' blog-series this post is a part of?

I am also about to complete 3 months of daily meditation now. And I am beginning to realize that daily meditation is helping me shift my mind's gears up. I am realizing that daily my mind is getting equipped better to handle these stress points.

It is too early to say anything - too less data.

For the time being, let's just say that I have stumbled upon an interesting analogy:

'Meditation helps us in shifting up our mental gears to handle increasing stress in a better way, just like a car operates at a higher speed smoothly in higher gears'.

Will keep sharing more observations on this analogy as I chug along my life. Please comment if you have any thoughts to share on this.

--
Alok A. Kumar
June 4th 2019

P.S. If I were you, I would have commented : But what if our minds have an automatic transmission instead of a manual one? That's a thought to explore in some other post.

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Today's positivity | My experiences of Isha Kriya

As shared in earlier posts, I have been experimenting with Meditation lately. After reading a few articles on internet, and watching a few Pranayama videos on youtube, I had developed a Pranayama regimen for myself, and was following it daily (More, here.)

It had been a good progress and relief. And then I stumbled across something called Isha Kriya by a gentleman called Sadhguru.

While talking about Isha Kriya, somebody on a meditation forum was saying, "When the student is ready, the teacher will appear." Good enough, I said.

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A No-nonsense Guide to Getting your Voter ID Card made | Fast & Easy

✅ You have rode the wings of success and are living the city life, leaving behind your sleepy hometown to its yawning spreads.

✅ You are earning a decent salary in the fast lane and consider yourself a Dilliwallah, Bombaywallih or the wallah-wallih of any metro city of India worth its salt.

✅ You take pride in it.

But you know you don't belong here. Not just yet.

Because you don't vote. You are 'that' migrant population which confines itself to air-conditioned rooms on the election day, enjoying a holiday when the whole nation is supposed to be on its streets.

You champion political ideologies on social media none the less.

Why? Because you don't have your name in the electoral list of the city you live in, and hence, you choose to not vote.

Guess what, it is time to change all that. It is time to get yourself a voter identity card and time to go vote this election season.

Here's a simple, step by step how-to get your name registered in the electoral list. It is tried and tested for Delhi, in February 2019. 

Step 1: Go to National Voters' Service Portal by clicking here.

Step 2: Be sure to check your name in the electoral roll first, for your constituency. It is an option on the left side of the NVSP homepage. Lazy bums like me could click here.


Step 3: Back on the homepage of NVSP, there are 6 options - you need to click on the link that applies to you the most.

There are two scenarios:

Scenario A. You are applying afresh (you don't have an EPIC number in any other constituency) - Click on the first option (Form 6)

Scenario B. You are not applying afresh (you do have an EPIC number in any other constituency) - Guess what, still click on the first option (Form 6)

Scenarios don't matter. Your vote matters.

(Note: In form 6 itself, there is a field where you can enter your old EPIC number. Election commission is supposed to delete the old EPIC ID after successful verification and issuance of your new EPIC Id in the new constituency.)

Fill up Form 6. All the data fields are self- explanatory. If you have any doubt, please feel free to comment below. we will try to answer all the queries (till the elections are over. post that, see you in the next elections!)

Step 4: Now comes the most gratifying and yet the most useless part: Tracking your status!

One the NVSP homepage, there is an option called 'Track Application Status'. Click on that link and enter your reference number (the one you got after successful submission of form 6 in step 3), and you will see a real-time process completion chart. I was impressed with this!

Author's note: I had submitted my application on January 27th, and the whole process got completed within a month (On Feb 26th). I received the Voter Identity card on March 18th, by post.

Step 5: Once the status shows accepted (which it should, if you have submitted all the legit documents), your BLO would call you and schedule a visit to your home to check the documents. Once he/she has done that, your name will be added to the electoral list and you will be issued a nice voter Identity card which you can use as a valid identity document everywhere.

Step 6:  Say 'Yay'! You are a legit voter now.


So there, you have it! You still have some time and a handy step-by-step note on getting your name included in the electoral list of your constituency.

Go ahead and gear yourself up for the national festival of the biggest democracy of this world!

--
Alok
March 19th, 2019

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Today's Positivity | Some Beautiful Quotes On Gardening

Day #7. So I have been meditating everyday for some days now in the mornings. And each day I look forward to a few positive thoughts while meditating.

I hope to share these experiences with the readers of arbitSpecs. (You can read my earlier experiences here and here).

Today, like everyday, I completed my meditation and opened the eyes slowly to this:

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Today's Positivity | The Anxiety Chest

Day#5. So I have been meditating everyday for some days now in the mornings.

Each day after I complete the pranayamas (to find out more about what I do in those 15 mins, click here), I sit for some time in meditation and observe my thoughts, accepting everything that comes along.

I have decided to blog about some of the positive thoughts that come to my mind. This is an experiment to spread some more positivity in and around my life. You're welcome in this experiment. :)

So today while meditating, a thought came which I like to call 'The anxiety chest'.

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Confessions Of a Corporate Guy Who Never Meditated

So I have been one of those corporate people who have thought meditation is for broken people. I have thought, "It is a good thing. May be a great thing, but I don't need it. Like I don't need that organic cold pressed fruit juice those crazy people sell to health freaks. May be the juice is great, but I don't need it."

I mostly confused meditation with medication, and like they said  नीम हक़ीम  खतरे जान.

So I mostly stayed clear of people who talked about Dhyan and my idea of getting closer to spirituality at most was listening to good sufi songs by AR Rahman ( and others. More on that in some other post)

But boy, I was wrong!

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Poets of Masai Mara

A short business trip to Kenya extended to the lovely African Savannahs of Masai Mara. You can figure the camera was bad. But the experience is undesribable. Poetry and musings may better elaborate the heaven I've been through. I would urge everyone of you reading this to plan a trip to the Masai soon. You'll come back a changed person.

Oh, heaven is a place on Earth.

The Perkin's Tent from Harry Potter

The shaky small ride

The mud runway in the middle of the jungle

Read on :)

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How the investigator bias is ruining your life

A late evening dinner with extended family. Someone was fickle minded about having a lasik surgery done because of the risks google suggested. Ofcourse, at the end of the day- it IS a cosmetic surgery. Why take even a 1% risk?

A doctor, happened to be on panel.

Said it's true. But the bias has occupied mind space to an extent of disturbing extrapolition.

Diagnosed that someone with an investigator's bias.

Are you a victim too?

Watch the video below to get in zone first 😛

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9 thought trip concepts that I've put up in my room

Okay, so here's some snapshots of the wall in my room
(Like Randy Pausch in the Last Lecture, I've been a big fan of scribbling things on my wall, even until the tender age of 26. And then my mom found out. I had to set up a canvas)

Read some interesting stuff that I've penned down (or pinned up) over the years :)

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Thoughts on the Sea

I need the sea because it teaches me,
I don’t know if I learn music or awareness,
if it’s a single wave or its vast existence,
or only its harsh voice or its shining
suggestion of fishes and ships.
The fact is that until I fall asleep,
in some magnetic way I move in
the university of the waves.
-Pablo Neruda

Pablo Neruda was deeply in love with the sea. It is easily reflected in his poems, as well his lavish avant-garde homes that face the sea, are decked with wood and provide the ambiance of being on ship.

Who in the world does not love the sea(except those who get sea sick?)

But I want to delve further. What makes us love the sea?

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Sense makes food!

The Varq Restaurant at Taj Mansingh Hotel, Delhi may be defined as my own personal epicurean epicenter, for I crave to visit it any and every chance I'd get. Of course, this is not the only place which brings that epic epiphany relating to the existence of the the mastery in culinary arts, but still, it just served as a good example to start off with this blog post.

We are all aware (I hope) of the nasal role played in our food tasting experience. So, talking about the five senses, we may cross off the olfactory and gustatory ones. 
The tactile one is also of prime importance as can be heard in the phrase "Maa ke haath ka khana" (the food prepared by the mother). The conclusion arrived at from a related cocktail discussion was that there is some sort of an energy that is transferred from your finger tips to your food when you eat with your hands (now, don't blame me for going against table manners).

But I wanted to go beyond the somewhat obvious inferences. 
How far can our visual and auditory senses affect our eating experience?

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We're all addicts...

...and I'm not talking about smoking, drugs, alcohol, sex or porn. We're all addicts of a different substance.

Guess what I'm talking about?

100 points for correct guess below:


Read on to get what I mean, if you want that is. 😝
(Honestly, I did this drama to try out the google forms का quiz feature. Mea culpa )

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Journalism Ethics. Defamations and Fake News.

2.5 minutes. 

That's all I ask for before you spend another 5 minutes glancing through the post. (Tried to make the post easier with headers this time 😁)

Interesting / contextual?
Read on.

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Diaries and Disneylands

Casual talks at late night parties. Everyone loves talking about Elon. That's what leaders are. Topics of conversation. 

Here's a starter. Heard it at a similar party.
Walt Disney didn't live to see the Disney World.  He died 5 years before it opened. On the day the Florida park opened, someone commented to Mike, the creative director, "Isn't it too bad Walt Disney didn't live to see this?"
"He did see it" Vance replied, "That's why it's here".

text ref. What Leaders Do: A Leadership Primer (By Dave Browning)

Source: Pinterest; here

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DIY : Lost your Philips Trimmer Charger? Here's how you do a cool #Jugaad

Ummm, chargers are a messy business (including those wireless ones, sigh!). Specially those which are specially made for special devices. 

Yes, I am looking at you, Philips trimmers (and shavers and all things similar). You know, I totally understand your business idea. Sell the whole set for some 1500 bucks and sell spare chargers for some 1000 ones. Fools like me would go for a new set, and fools unlike me would hand you over 1000 bucks anyway.

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What the Surya Namaskar means for my Quarter Life Crisis

 As we welcome International Yoga Day into its third year, I would like to thank the Surya Namaskar for helping me get along with my quarter life crisis with relative ease.

When I was 6 odd years old, some astrologer dude told me to look at the Sun daily and say "Om Surya Namaha" 12 times. Somehow the habit stuck. But it wasn't until recently that I looked up the actual names of the sun, and the meanings and the yoga postures associated with it.

But am I glad I did that during my early 20s. Yes, I know how you, me and we all feel at this age.

Doubtful about what we want, what we just did, and what we're going to do. Where is the impact we were supposed to create? Weren't we supposed to make a difference? Either stuck in a job where the growth seems impossibly harder than we thought or still figuring out what do with our underrated lives.
But the stories we used to read, and our parents, teachers, didn't they always say that we were special? (Heck, my parents even named me विशेष). We can't even compare to our over achiever parents when they were 25, let alone friends of our age!
Should we go for a debt-inviting MBA? Can we just quit and travel the world, hitchhiking? Or should we just go to the Himalayas and settle down as an ascetic? Or let's just take our non-paying passion full time! And passion, where is passion in our ever failing relationships?  Constant questioning if we really want to be with this person long-term — and maybe even debating whether it's too late to find someone else. Failed searches for the right one, failed attempts to sustain the right one.

Being a twenty something is indeed scary. The Depression Alliance estimates that a third of twenty somethings feel depressed.

"If, as we're constantly told, the world is our oyster, it's definitely a dodgy one. Unlike the midlife crisis, the quarter life crisis is not widely recognized. There are no 'experts' to help us. We have no support apart from each other."

Damian Barr, author of the book Get it Together: A Guide to Surviving Your Quarterlife Crisis

 So here's my attempt at supporting a troubled fellow.

My perceptions and understandings about this wonderful meditative practice, called the Surya Namaskar; and why we should imbibe them.

And how it can save us.

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3 personal productivity hacks

Yes, you've seen this, read that. Another one of the millions of productivity blog posts out there. But why should that be a problem? I love to read and experiment all productivity tips I can, because hey, it's a different kind of pleasure altogether to waste time for productivity.

Now ever since I've joined in capacity as a director at my family business, and trying to manage a not-for-profit part time, and multiple other things, I've been exhausted with e-mails, whatsapps and phone calls and going through my month without accomplishing a thing (or feeling so)

So that's that. Here are my 3 personal productivity hacks, which I hope you can incorporate in your corporate lives.
1. No No
2. Go Go
3. Re Re

Do comment with a tiny thanks if something helps you

Cheers!

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That redemption called learning.

Last evening, while I was trying to learn how to raise my head upwards to breathe while continuing to thrust back my feet in that blue blue pool of a leisure time, I couldn't help but notice the purity of learning, as a process itself.

With my peer group, I too seem to have grown up. The 4 years 'hands-on' experience adorning my linkedIn profile pretends to say a lot; like most of of my peer group, I too have reduced learning in an alarming way.

Most of the times, we who are now done with our college and university days, and who are supposed to be contributing to the society through gainful employment are busy implementing things we already know.

Most of the times, we are busy showing to the world, we know.

Last evening when I was in the pool, i was facing a simple binary case - the world there was not bothered about me telling that I knew. Either I knew and continued swimming with intermittent breaths taken, or I didn't know.

I clearly didn't know.

Then came the learning part. I can not help myself but romanticize the whole process of learning. While the trainer tried his best giving me all the instructions, I again found myself alone, with water.

Assimilating is as important as being tutored.

It reminded of my pre- JEE days. Lots of things to study, lots of teachers - each claimed to know their fields, lots and lots of books, practice sets, notes, exam papers to be crammed.

And I now romanticize it all the way I used to, more than 10 years ago. Me studying in a corner of a room, with a dim table lamp illuminating my mind silently. The first phase of learning is accepting you don't know. Then you hunt for the right tools that make you know.

Then you learn. Sincerely, feeding in your thoughts the inputs that will give the desired output. 

You can fool the world that you know. But you can't fool yourself. The only way out is to learn. And nobody else can learn it for you. It's an amazing feeling. Knowing, practising things that make you a better version of yourself. Sessions when you talk to yourself, recount how many times you have gulped the swimming pool water before you have taken that one small breath before you go down again. Times when you question yourself why can you not do something. And go after it.

Learning redeems one. 

As I looked up beyond that blue sea of a swimming pool, the lone moon in the dark sky tended to tell me in a clairvoyant voice, "Maybe, we're all here to learn."

-
Alok
9 Apr 2017

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aS Shorts#2: A collection of s(h)orts!

Ever heard of Creative Limitation? I came across this concept when I was designing a writer's haven for my architecture thesis (yeah, sounds all cool but it wasn't). So the idea, succinctly put, is

We need to first be limited, in order to be limitless

Think about it. A haiku restricts your syllable count. Acrostic poems limit the letter your sentence starts with. The last page of your school notebook has so little space yet produces such exquisite ink doodle masterpieces! To be totally contextual, I saw it with my writer's block. I couldn't get ideas for stories, didn't know where to begin, where to end. Until I came across a few questions in quora, which also lead to me experiment more with this creative limitation concept.

1. Entire story in monosyllables
2. Five line rhyming poem starting with 'Shoot me honey'
3. Twenty word story with a twist in the last word
4. Ten word heart wrenching story
5. Five word intriguing story

Go on. Also, a challenge to the reader (yes, you) at the end of this post.

Edit 20/11/2016: Just came across this brilliant article on mental floss. It explores 8 extraordinary examples of 'constrained writing'. Quite intriguing I must say. My creative juices have already started flowing.

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An Ocean, A Bike and a Beach – What makes for a good road-trip!

“What makes for a good road-trip?” asked she, sitting on the pillion as we cruised ahead towards Alibaug. I wondered. Was it the bike, the road, the pillion, the rider or the emotion?

“Emotion. Road-trip is an emotion”, said I. “It is liberating. It makes you forget that you have a home, a job, and your mundane routine. I think that is what makes for a good road trip.” She nodded her head in agreement – I saw that in the rear view mirror. I also saw her clicking this pic.

Wait a minute, I think his travelogue needs a better narration. Let me attempt! 

It was my birthday week, and she wanted us to go to some remote place, away from the ever bubbling maximum city. We chose to go to Kashid via Nagaon and Alibaug. And boy what a decision it was!

The trip started with us packing all our stuff in small bags and tying it all up onto Faisalwa (my Avenger 220 cruiser). We reached ‘Bhau-cha dhakka’ – a small time port in south Bombay. The name is funny but it is actually well-christened. For 150 bucks, some 3-4 ‘Bhaus’ (Bhau = Brother in Marathi) pushed my Avenger up on a small ferry.

A bike on an ocean. Ain’t that amazing!?

A couple of hours later, we got down on Rewas fort. From there started a rather refreshing bike trip to Alibaug. The road is single lane, and pretty empty on weekdays. On one hand you have hills, and on the other, the ocean. Tall grasses lined up the road shoulders and we cruised ahead humming songs of Lucky Ali.

(aS Note: The helmet was taken out momentarily only for the photograph. Pl. wear helmets while driving and ride safe!)  

A bit about the tarmac and road safety here. At places the road was super smooth, but intermittent were stretches full of gravel. It was becoming even trickier at the turns. I was noticing a fellow biker who was ahead me for some time. He wasn’t wearing a helmet and calling his style of driving rash would not be an exaggeration, judging by the way he was swinging his fazer side-ways. Suddenly a tractor came out from the left and I did see this biker almost hitting the mega-vehicle. Thank God for his brakes and well threaded tyres. I also applied the brakes and thanked God, for I was maintaining a comfortable distance from the biker. I bent forward and looked at my front CEAT tyre and felt a re-assurance. I always make it a point to check my bike’s tyres before cruising out. Maintaining safe distance from heavy vehicles ahead is a deliberate choice, and maintaining comfortable speeds of around 60-70 kmph with a Helmet on never killed anyone! (Bad pun, I know!) A quick and timely disclosure here. I’m chronicling my road trip adventure for CEAT Tyres in association with BlogAdda. And you thought product placements were only a thing in the movies! ;)

Anyway, this small incident did not dampen our spirits and we went ahead with the road trip, stopping for lunch in Alibaug. And then we skipped its beaches for better places ahead. At night we stayed at a small private homestay at Nagaon – a place almost mid-way between Alibaug and Kashid.

I just cannot further this travelogue without talking about the sereneness of Nagaon beach. Imagine this. A beautiful sunset with ocean till the horizon and a glossy thin layer of the water extending on the beach, touching our feet in waves.

It was mesmerizing. I took my Faisalwa for a ride on the beach while she clicked pics. Have a look.

(aS Note: The helmet was taken out momentarily only for the photograph. Pl. wear helmets while driving and ride safe!) 

The Babe, the Bike and the Beach.

The next day we biked ahead and reached Kashid. A secluded place with another beautiful beach and waves. We came across a wonderful resort adjoining the hills which bracketed the small beach town. Amazingly well designed resort with rooms having private balconies overlooking the hills and the ocean. The night went on a high. Quite literally. It was an amazing experience, lying on the grass on a random balcony on the side of a random hill, overlooking an ocean as random.

Cheers to the places life takes one to!

With a couple of content hearts and travel-worn souls, we headed back the next morning. 

(aS Note: The helmet was taken out momentarily only for the photograph. Pl. wear helmets while driving and ride safe!) 

The Alibaug-Nagaon- Kashid trip definitely raised the bar for our future road travels. And some months later, we went to Goa. But that’s another story for another time! Keep visiting arbitSpeculations.com/travel for the next update! :)

Admin.

arbitSpeculations

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