Roots and Wings By Raksha Bharadia

Ok , with this book I agree to disagree on most of the aspects because we are blessed with "Information" which we know is right and which is endorsed by most of the books written on children. However, I give her (Raksha Bharadia) a thumbs up for doing so much research on this topic and yet cutting down the number of pages to 300+. This is an achievement by itself because there is no 'one' short answer as to "How we need bring up our kids?"

There is always a room for improvement and there is always space for a blunder; we do it occasionally. So read this book with a pinch of salt.

On one hand, Raksha wants to let loose the strings and let kids do what ever they feel like doing and on the other, she explains on how we need to undo the "DO" and that's a little funny aspect of this book. Take for example, she asks parents not to be 'Entertainment Directors' and let them through trial and error figure out the best way of coming out of a problem. No doubt they will figure out some way, but what's the guarantee that its the "Right" way. :)

That's where she falters and according to me, it is "Unacceptable" since she has put so much of effort on the topic. Believe it or not , she has given reference to 100+ books in 300 odd pages and yet the irony is - A contradiction.

One of the most striking errors in the book is "- the Interviews". She has spoken to so many celebrities on how we need to bring up kids and the obvious answer, all of them gave is 'Space' - Give kids the space they want; give them their choice and complement their mistakes by asking them to reason out what went wrong!

This reminds me a quote on the American children -"In the United States today, there is a pervasive tendency to treat children as adults, and adults as children. The options of children are thus steadily expanded, while those of adults are progressively constricted. The result is unruly children and childish adults." ~Thomas Szasz

So all in all, pretty disappointing to me personally. But I thank her for giving some references and books which I always love to have it in my library! Thumbs down but before we wind off , remember this Shloka -

Laalayeth panchavarshani, dashavarshaani taadayeeth |

Praapthethu shodashe varshe, putram mitravad aachareeth ||

Tend to kids with love for first 5 years, mend them for next 10 years and be a friend - A soul for ever from then on!!!

why I want to Join Rotary Club !

Recently I cam across a foundation called CRY and they wanted some help from the professionals like us. Though I did help my bit but was not satisfied and had lot of open questions like - How do I become a part of the larger cause
How can I make difference to the human kind
How can I impart values to my daughter (Her name is Saanvis and she is 2 years old) - I would want her to be associated with noble causes and I believe Rotary would provide a platform.
How can I help myself to be a better person
How do I know my effort yield the results I would love to see.. ( I donated some money to CRY but I could never see as to how it helped a kid )...

Above all this , I want to be part of a social networking who is reputed , who can bring a massive changes ( And I believe thats very important) , who can be TRUSTED !

I read lot of books and would like to mention one of them . You can read the review here which I had written : http://be-a-ware.blogspot.com/2009/09/leaving-microsoft-to-change-world-by.html

So am pretty much clear that , you need a bigger platform , you need a larger community and you need leaders to move this world out of the crisis and I believe I can bring tremendous changes to the community as well....So rotary I believe can help me set this direction

looking forward to hear from you soon !

thanks
kiran

The Power of Your Subconscious Mind by Joseph Murphy

This Book with 300 odd pages has taken me exactly 21 days to complete. Not that it's boring but it's practical!

Unless we have something to gather out of the read, we will never be able to appreciate anything. If you solve the problem of relativity, you thank Albert Einstein for letting us know; and that's exactly the same experience with this life changing book. Life skills and so does the attitude, is hard to come by. Especially in a world of disgrace, hatred, confusions and irritations, it becomes more difficult and catastrophic to be "what you ought to be" - A human with peace and tranquility in your heart.

Spot this - We always complain, we always have qualms and we always have fears of many things and beyond that we do not think. If we did, we still continue to carry those baggage until we are clear - the storm has passed by and again a new beginning of new fears accost us in our lives.

All these are actually stemming from our own thoughts and misdeeds and edging that as an the art of the behavior into the "Sub Conscious" Mind. It is this secondary mind which is controlling everyone and it has been trained to do so by our thoughts, attitude and feelings. "MIND" is like a start button and "Sub Conscious" is like the engine. It can never run until someone triggers it do so. This secondary mind has tremendous and absolute energy to do anything and alas by the time we realize, it will be too late in our life.

So this book is a real game changer (But I agree it becomes boring too); and it indeed takes a lot of your time to go through and implement.

I would not want to comment on what I gained from this book because everyone's mind and hence sub conscious mind is relative and the benefits will be different.

For a change, I found a "Life Skill" book which is more practical and makes logical sense to everything we do in our lives. It takes a lot to be a good human being beyond and within our world and this book can be a starting point. As Joseph Murphy told "The Power is within you" and we all ought to live in a Better world than we are in today!

The Choice by Og Mandino

There isn't a time when we have to decide which side we need to part with. There are many strings attached to the decision we make in our lives. To that extent, the choice has become a dilution of many buttons we often take into consideration. But then you know for sure that these decisions in our lives are oblivious and have virtually zero impact in our day to day activities. I personally know a world wide support manager who quit his software job and chose to be a pilot. There is, this author who quit a 3 million buck salaried job to write a book!

How can we ever justify their decisions? How can we ever find a rational thought process for this tangential jump? How can we ever imagine we could be one of them?

You can and you alone can be the one who could buy in all these crazy natto stuff. (By the by, natto is a stinky fermented Japanese food :) ) You know why! As most of the successful creatures on this earth are the ones who have taken the die hard turns in their lives. There is no logic but rather a plain truth and that is 'they believe in their true self'. They know they are born to do just that!!!

Otherwise how can we ever justify Steve Job at one point of time leaving Apple to discover Pfizer. Can you believe that? I would never have done that but then he did, for he found is own path to succeed and that's the key.

Nobody but just YOU ALONE can tread the path, you think leads to success.

"The Choice" isn't a good motivational book but rather a good and overly perforated one which will highlight a subtle thing - A successful man isn't good till his family and friends thinks he is!

Good to have one in your cup board!

There is never an End and thats life !!

Joe E. Lewis
You only live once - but if you work it right, once is enough.

Samuel Butler
All animals except man know that the ultimate point of life is to enjoy it.


Life should always work like a binary. it should and it cannot be a bubble on the water...You never know when it explodes....We are the decision points and more specifically , you ALONE can be the decider of this game of LIFE....every step , every thought will lead to a point where you need to take either right or left but most never decides and walk the life as it comes and thats where we fumble....LIFE unfolds itself for those who want to listen , for those who want to feel and for those who want to move ahead in their own path.Nothing can stop them , not even their own self can make them sit at one side and crunch them...thats the beauty of being a binary in our own lives...when you are in that mode , you are very clear about your thoughts ....the decision you take may be wrong or right but you still hold your pride because you CHOSE THAT PATH...well! every bad decision will invaribaly lead to the BEST DECISION in your life....So be a binary , make the choice of wisdom because you know you will always have a second chance because destiny is always a choice you made the previous night !!!!

What Would Google Do? by Jeff Jarvis

Do you know Facebook is by and large the single largest Human network dreaded even by Google. Google re-invented itself into many forms and it's all because we helped them to grow. That's the power of Human network. Take any company and you will see traces of this pattern every where. Google did an extra ordinary move to give the control to US and we made a difference to this company.

But Google has many ethical questions it needs to ask itself. The Company still does not share its Ads revenue and we do not know what it does with our personal data. Some say, they make money by bumping the priority of the page rank. But yet in someway we have lot to learn from this company. In fact when Google decided to launch Google news, it did not know whether to sort by date or sort by relevance. It didn't do anything and let customers decide what they wanted. It released a beta (in fact most of the Google products remained in beta for more than 3 years :) ) and there it comes - many customers wanted them to sort by date and they flooded the company white boards with this request. You see! customers will eventually push you to their way and Google respects that feeling. It did sort the Google News by date.

We need to be a platform for our customers to resolve their issues. They will use us as a tool to achieve what they want to achieve in their business model.

Remember Dell with all its awkward customer centric services, lost market in its desktop and notebooks till Michael Dell called it a shot one day and told the employees to listen to the customers. They just did nothing more than listening to blogs, feedback and giving control to the customer to prepare their own desktops. Now Dell forms a major threat to any company who would want to enter into this market.

It's funny but true that we hold something very close to our heart (like our source code :) ) and it does nothing more than bringing our customer more pain.

"What would Google Do By Jeff" has thrown open lot of patterns which every company is going through, be it open source companies like Red Hat, mixed source like Novell and closed door like Microsoft.

The question is can we open up, give control, collaborate, provide a platform for the customer, listen to them through Google, blogs and wikies and give them what they want rather than make them to come to our home page and search for a miniscule out of an horrendous data, flashes and options in our home page.

To that extent, you can differentiate the home page of Google vs Yahoo. Open google.com, you see an editable field. Google says nothing about its company, brags nothing about its search, but it follows the customer where ever he goes. It embeds its videos, blogs, wikis, flashes, ads to to customer's home page. It makes the google map mobile; that's the power it gives to the customer.

And go to Yahoo.com, you will be lost with abundant data thrown open to already confused & frustrated customers.

While reading this book, you will be pleasantly surprised about what your Company could be. You'll be posed with questions like does it have a human side, does its existence make sense and many more intriguing yet interesting dwells.

Happy reading!

What's love got to do here !!!!

every relationship in this world has its own set of rules....to think of , if you don't love someone and if he still continues to love , then thats called LOVE .if not it becomes pure attraction .....relationships blossom if you don't expect anything out of it and just pour your heart out...Love does not have ends or means. its just as plain as water ...if you see , you will find nothing but when you drink it draws your thirst.....its so very true for every bond we share with others.....

So fall in love , again and again and again..but yes with the same person :)

Siddhartha By Hermann Hesse

Enlightenment is within , at least that's what people say..but then Hermann has a different opinion...Enlightenment is with"out" you !!! Its as if the body and soul are just made to experience both good and bad...Bad is not bad to be experienced...It just happens and when it does it just means that you are bound to go through it and there is no escapism....looks very very naive but life has its own set of hidden agenda for each of us and hence bad is just not bad either to you or to the people around you

Young Siddharata learn to fast , to think and to wait and this is what he has adopted from Samanas but yet he is not quite sure he is "self" and hence lands up in "Samsara" experience which he devours later..but soon he recalls its not the fate but a necessity to go through all these experience to be self and to be grounded.

For him setting goals is limiting your thoughts and manipulating the nature of your mind...A soul with no goal and no objective and deathly attached is better than a soul with a purpose....

Some of these does not really fit into our world but this is one off the track book which really make your thoughts flow to an era of enlightenment and nirvana

I enjoyed the book but will I adopt it ? ...perhaps not but then I really relished reading through Hermann Hesse's thoughtful writing .....

A different book of its genre(1960's) which is worth a try.