ROADIES' AUDITION AND THE YOUTH OF TODAY-Learn to be YOURSELF

MTV Roadies is the most popular show among the India youth today. Though I have not followed all the episodes of any season but I never miss the auditions as I find so many astonishing facts about the youth of today. The way Raghu and friendz make them zero in on what they actually are is worth noticing. This is more of a concern rather than entertainment. It is pathetic to learn that the future of India lacks a vision, a goal to attain and are running blindly to have name and fame. For them 'easy money' is all that they want, when they are being asked 'what is the quality that you have to become the winner?' they stammer, say anything, boast of their physique and beauty, want to prove themselves but don't know  their own 'self', what is that they want to prove is again a blind reply, something that they failed to prove in some part of life, may be a compartment in some subject at High school or a fail in Secondary results, a feeling of not having enough power to hit back a classmate or senior or last but not the least to prove the parents that 'I am worth something'........... an endless list.The shows of this sort fascinate them the most as you become a rock star overnight, you are being watched at TV no matter what you do whether you bring shame to your family by using the abusive language at its extreme or being proved a cheater or a good for nothing fellow, and you have ample opportunities to make money....easy money in a short time(with no offense to the tasks that are really tough and some of the  very creative ones)

Exactly the same situation is faced by them when they face an interviewer, they write something in the resume and speak out a different thing.They write they 'want to work in an organization where I get maximum chance to learn' but at the back of mind goes 'where I get maximum chance to earn'. The same goes in my counseling sessions when I ask 'why do you want to do MBA?, the answer comes, 'I want a good job?' , 'what kind of job is good for you?' no answer, 'what is the profile that you are looking for?' 'don't know', where do you see yourself after 5 years?', 'not sure', 'I want to do MBA to become a good businessman', what business do you have in your  mind?', 'any'.......

This gap of 'what you want' and 'what you say you want' is an alarming situation for a country which has a phenomenal population of youth.The skill gap, employability everything else revolves around this. Though such shows are a source of entertainment but  some useful lessons that you can draw form these auditions are:

• Know Yourself
• Be clear about your thoughts
• Be yourself
• Be focused
• Have your goals set and put a deadline on them.
• Don't ever try to pose yourself as what you want to be but accept what you are.
• Acknowledge your weaknesses.
• Don't assume, prove by doing not by saying.

The feedback and comments are welcomed at suphia.q@gmail.com

Why not use the money of the uncountable scams to subsidize petrol??? Will Lokpal do something about it??

The increasing rate of inflation, price hike and poor infrastructural facilities and a phenomenal number of scams are causing consistent disappointment and distrust among the citizens.Though Anna Hazare's Campaign against corruption and the Lokpal Bill sounds promising I am not very much convinced with it, there should be an ultimate solution to all these problems which could be possible only by some of the radical changes and out of the box tactics.

One such type could be rather than keeping corrupt politicians to jail, their looted money and their personal property as well should be utilized for a common cause. Take for instance Suresh Kalmadi, A Raja, Amar Singh etc. sell all the personal wealth of these people (of course with due consideration to their families, but they too have to suffer the misdeeds of their dear ones as the property gets registered in their names only) and subsidize petrol which is blowing the middle class off.  And if this becomes law that anyone who is involved in corruption he will be deprived of his personal property and the amount itself will be confiscated, I am sure they will dare not cheat the millions of people whose hard earned money is being poured into the system in terms of hell lot of taxes as when it comes to your own loss or you know that if I do such act my family is ultimately going to suffer then only you will realize the importance of all that money which goes into all such scams. If you look at Harshad Mehta's case, the tremendous amount of money he made will be sufficient for generations to generations of his irrespective of the punishment he got and though the accounts were seized but in the mean time he had enjoyed all the luxuries of life whereas people might be starving to death at the same time somewhere.

It should be made mandatory for the govt. to disclose the amount seized in various scams and cases and to give an account of how that money is used publicly. All the govt. schemes and grants are aimed at BPL people and needless to mention how fruitful they are, no scheme has ever been formulated for the middle class strata who actually bears the burden of tax as poor are exempted, rich are evaders, the salaries employees which form the chunk of middle class have to pay the tax honestly and with the same honesty have to bear the burden of price hike as they need to adjust their budget, their salaries will not get adjusted.

When I heard that petrol prices are going to increase because the govt. could not subsidize it anymore, the first question that came to my mind was why not use the money of the uncountable scams to subsidize petrol???

Hindi For Foreigners, English for Indians-Be proud of your mother tongue.

'Hindi For Foreigners, English for Indians'.

This is the proposed title of a book I am working on, the draft is almost completed. It consist of mostly the lessons I prepared to teach foreigners. While teaching these lessons to the foreigners (mostly from UK and some from Arab) I learnt so many fascinating facts about the language which I had never thought and was unaware of  and believe me they made me feel proud of knowing the language. My first mentee to learn Hindi was Phillip, a man from London who knew a bit of Bengali.He was in his 50s when he approached me to learn Hindi. For me it was the first experience to teach my mother tongue to a foreigner. I took it lightly and started preparing lessons for him, but  to my surprise it was tough.. very tough....right form alphabets to phonetics to sounds, required a thorough preparation as Hindi is a phonetic language with aspirated and nasalized sounds whereas English is different in all these aspects. I searched, researched and learnt about it and the first lesson is done. As it was my first experience and probably one of its kind in Bhopal as there are no institutions that provides Hindi learnig classes, it was difficult for me to decide how much should I be charging for the classes and as always I discussed it with my family but not that happy with the response, my family underestimated the worth of their own language, their mother tongue and asked me to charge very low saying 'you are not teaching English, you are teaching Hindi', I was taken aback and told them the importance of Hindi in terms of its richness. I explained them that Hindi language is so very rich if you look at the script, the phonetics and the sounds and a special mention of the culmination of various other languages like Persian, Arabic etc.
And above all the feeling of pride that one must associate with the mother tongue. South Indians are a good example of that, they feel proud to speak the regional language of their region may it be Telugu or Tamil, they place it above the National Language. Don't want to indulge into that debate of imposing Hindi language over them but one thing that must be appreciated is the way they have developed themselves in terms of education and technology. There, the regional language has never been an obstacle in their growth unlike many under developed states of the country e.g M.P. where you find a huge gap of talent just because they cannot speak good English. From the elementary level, regional language is taugh in South and there is an absolute freedom to innovate and produce research papers in the local language whereas here I have seen it for myself , a lot of deserving candidates lag behind just because they are poor in English Communication.People here write 'poor communication in English' as their weakness and which is of course is the very accepted concept.

'Poor in Communication' is our weakness not 'Poor in English Communication'. We must be proud to speak Hindi and have a clear stream of thought in order to innovate, invent and evolve.

What matters the most is the sense of pride.

WHAT IS YOUR HUMAN QUOTIENT??...............MP TOPS THE LIST OF RAPE CASES

Just going through the headline in HT today, figures for 2009 released by NCRB(National Crime Record Bureau) for ' Rape cases', MP being the highest among 28 major states, West Bengal second and UP third.

I feel disgusted frustrated and what not when I hear any rape case, it took one week for me to come back to the normal life when learnt about the entire story of Aruna Shaunbag , but don't have words to describe the state of mind when I heard a case of 'Incest' for the first time, it is painful.... so very painful to even think of such a term. Don't have the details of the case I watched on TV where a father raped his daughter and she became pregnant, then the mother lodged a complaint, my hands are shiverig to write and shattered to think of the life of that girl and the one to whom she might have given birth.........?

No women empowerment, no law, no police, no policies can do anything about these cases. You can never empower the 'weaker sex' unless you are over with the very concept of 'weaker sex', the wiring of 'weaker'is to be dismantled and that can only be done by wiring of another concept called 'Humanity'. Unfortunately 'being human' is not taught to us in a formal manner, 'life skills' which play a very important role in shaping up one's character find no place in the curriculum. At the adolescent stage-between primary and middle classes when the youth needs a lot of attention and inculcation of good habits, there must be formal training of their minds.Whether MP with majority of population is uneducated rural or metros where the majority of the population is educated urban, the 'animal instinct' remains the same.

But again though this is not diverting from the topic but yes going to a different area, my point here is that in the society as a whole this inhuman act of rape must be wired as something which is not human, the punishment of this offense should be exile from the human race. The concept of 'biradari se bahar karna' must be applied here and needless to mention that the 'biradari' must be the entire race of human being.
 

DISCOVER THE HAPPY HORMONES IN YOU

Many a times we come across incidences like someone bumped our car and we at our extreme anger look at the person and are about to say something and a sweet smile on his face suddenly reduces the intensity of anger and a little later the anger goes off. Also if you see someone fall on the ground or slipped on a muddy road makes you laugh. The response to such things could be different if you have a different approach, you might become more angry if you see a smile on the person's face who had bumped your car or you might not react at all if someone slips.
The only way to be happy is to discover the 'Happy Hormones' in you. No, I am not taking about the Serotonin or the Endorphin rush, it is not about the chemical composition of the body or mind but about your thought process, your way of reacting toward things.Children remain happy most if the time just because they react to things in a different manner without any logic n reasoning.I still get scolded on laughing in front of someone on any trivial thing but there are instances in everyone's life when you can't resist yourself laughing but you shouldn't as it will go against the norms of behavior.(one instance came to my mind right now is in a strategy building meeting my boss encircled with all of us  started writing the future plan and the first thing on the blank page was his saliva, imagine......)
Well, how can you discover the happy hormones in you? It is as simple as anything the more you look at the things on a lighter mode the more easy they become.Laugh as much as you can and of course a true laughter is different from making fun of someone. Whenever I am depressed I give myself a big smile and laugh at petty things and sometime at nothing and believe me it works, someone is getting angry at you and you divert his mind on something that makes him laugh really works.(unless the issue is not grave otherwise it will backfire at you).The company of kids is a wonderful source of being happy, you laugh to make them laugh, you run, jump, do all sorts of nonsense acts just to see them happy and then gradually you also seems to laugh on such non sense things and make a habit of enjoying little things.

Remember every thing that makes sense may not make you happy.