Nalanda - A Dream Place to Live In !!!

This post was largely inspired by the below words 

"No matter what the landscape – whether hills or forests – it takes its goodness from the people inhabiting it "

which moved me to think of what kind of home i would wish to live in 

Nalanda - A Dream Home !!!

 A Space inhibited by rapturous souls,

With a longing to know the truth of life,

Obsessed to embrace all those who come into this space,

And no matter what we give and what life gets back,

Giving would be the ultimate quality of this place,

Filled with loads of love and compassion within,

With this in abundance we live in a plane of ecstasy,

Everything out of nothing is Nalanda’s nature,

Under divine conscious the cosmos conspire,

and life blossoms in million different ways !!!

* Nalanda - Sanskrit word meaning " Insatiable in giving / quest for knowledge"

Disclaimer - I might betray your Convictions !!!

Down these twenty five years, life has been offering me lots of experience most of them unconsciously and some consciously .There had been never a shortage for information from people around me and things that happened around me to clutter my mind.

I put tons of energy to make convictions, every conviction I make fail at some point of time later and this shows the kind of ignorance that has crept into mind while making decisions. Here is a famous quote “ Whatever is not under our experience, doesn’t exist in reality is the crown of ignorance “ 

Economist had tons of theories to their credit and now most famous economic theories fail because of the fact that they predicted based on “ Cetris Paribus “ which means “everything else remains constant”, but in reality it doesn’t work that way.

Same applies for the human life’s, Sigmund Freud said Human beings are irrational - something that holds good for a particular situation or particular person may not hold good even for the next moment or next person. Human being behaves according to the needs, moods, outcomes and humpty number of other factors as a human being is not a gadget to be consistent in the way he/she emote or behave.

With this baseline, for the past five to six years I have been a perfect Good Bad Ugly boy on this earth doing the most prettiest to the nastiest things possible for me on this Earth and I have never claimed myself as good guy.

People start scaling others based on their perceptions, value systems, what they believe to be good and bad on this according to them on this world based on the situations, experiences and people they encountered in their life. But it’s important for everyone to understand the fact that the world doesn’t offer same kind of opportunities, situations, people for every one on this earth. Everybody encounters a unique set of all these and the perceptions, values, beliefs, good and bad are outcome of this.

In my recent times I never wanted me to try behaving or altering my personality in a certain way based upon the needs of the society, because whenever I do that I am going to act. A human being can’t act for long time and hence I always wanted to provoke & blossom the way of being human. 

For me being human is nothing but being inclusive .Inclusiveness for me means accepting people, situation at hand as they are and then trying to act on it in a way i am considerate about .

I never want my loved ones to get into a judgement mode instead perceive me as I am … Prediction models doesn’t work on me as I myself complex by nature. Whether your  prediction models predict me as good ,bad, insane, weak, strong or fair doesn’t really matter for me, I would stay by you whole lifetime to perceive your presence and touch your life by some means instead of trying to fail by judging you.

For a moment I am good and the very next moment I am nasty – Better don’t make convictions on me ..I might not betray you but for sure your convictions !!!

Being Inclusive - Business of Business !!!

Business is all about expansion and whether we do this by exploiting or inclusion is what that determines its success over long run because in this world, irrespective of whatever might be one’s immediate business there is only one business in reality that’s human wellbeing.

Over the last century, India has moved from the feudalistic to democratic leadership and now we are in need for Economic & Business leadership. In this context, it’s greater responsibility of the business leaders to conduct or expand their business by embracing and not disgracing or excluding the marginalized communities.

In a growing country like India with huge diversity in terms of Religion, Values, Skills and Needs . With regard to marginalized communities it's not that they aren't capable to perform,the challenge lies in providing right platforms to reflect their capability and grow.

Each clan is unique by itself and human potential left unexplored in marginalized communities is a biggest hurdle to the growth of individual and nation.Leaving behind 50 % of the population in the growth cloud would prove to be a disaster in terms of provoking terrorism, hunger and socio-economic imbalance.

On the other hand, marginalized communities are greatest potential that remain untapped by the business organizations in terms of capitalizing them on Market penetration, enhancing sales, human talent and building businesses by including them as stakeholders in various capacities.

Social Entrepreneurship is an emerging concept that provides a striking balance between lessening the socio economic divide and profits for the promoter. It’s very important that these entities not only make services and products available to the marginalized populace at affordable price, but also help them to create a self-sustained environment where people can learn, earn and grow to stand by their own on a long run without any handhold.

Inclusive business and economic policies would not only include the marginalized communities in the growth trajectory but also would make the expansion of business entity more purposeful.

Passion + Pressure = Christ !!!

It has been three months since I joined Christ University for my MBA leaving Cognizant. Leaving back cognizant and joining Christ was a tough decision in my life and being @ Christ is even more challenging. 

These three months have been challenging for me in terms of adapting to the so called Christ Culture that includes - Surface reading, Information overload, Book Review, OBT, CIA, End term, 0.49 weightage assessment’s, typical school rules and people with from diverse background.At times what people perceived to be exact fun here was not so for me.

Probably one of my biggest mistakes in my life could be choosing Christ for an MBA but I didn’t have a better option to pursue when I was to choose between Passion and Pressure. However to a greater extend it serves the purpose apart from the fact that it doesn’t pays me well and of course HR’s are never paid well ;).At this juncture another confusion crept into my mind – if HR’s are paid less, then why HR. I had a quick answer for this- Simply bcoz I love it and wish i shouldn't hate it for money :)

My decisions have gone wrong because of considering the fact - “Greater good for larger number of People”. So have to learn to Say ‘NO’ and at times be Self-serving.

Irrespective of whether the Christ MBA had a trajectory for me or not to evolve as a HR professional, to a greater extend in these three months I had people betraying me, exploiting me and making it learnable for me to handle emotions. It was peak of learning experience when even my closed ones were closed ended :)

At the same time, I had lot of people who cared for me to a greater extend and  at many times i wasn’t in a position to respond to those people due to my mood swings.

On the whole these three months got me new perspectives on relationships, betrayal, exploitation and how taking decisions on pressure might have a negative pay off.

With a rocking combo of Passion and Pressure, begins a new trimester with greater responsibility and higher agenda. Believe my buddies - Aditya ,Saro ,Vignesh would make things interesting and worthwhile... May our life’s blossom together !!!

Shyam

Adieu Cognizant!!!

It has been a long wait looking for opportunities to pursue my passion and it’s high time that I decide. Though its risky and unpopular to quit a lucrative job to join a fair B school, for me nothing could compromise passion. So quitting cognizant has been a concrete option to take up something close to my heart.

Going back to the college days the whole reason behind my desire to be here @ Cognizant was it’s  single line philosophy “Celebrating People” and once I am on board the way I experienced its expression is a different story altogether.

 Being @ Cognizant from Dec 2009 till date was like a roller coaster ride starting from the Academy batch days – flunking the exams , long waits for getting into project after coming into the BU, Alienated Chennai Stint for Hartford assignment, Toyota Tremor’s, Amazing Aetna and Wellpoint #168 days.

 Amidst this there were loads of fun with Birthday bashes & team treats, Allepy Trip, Siruvani Trip, Batch mate marriages (quite a lot for batch of 25), Dinner with folks @ my home, batch outings, late night chats, Times together @ Chennai guest house, JA Saturdays, Sunday movies & team Lunch, Thrilling team politics, Lovely lunch gang, Lime Soda’s and few nostalgic moments where life showed its tint of toughness.

Cognizant as a corporate setting gave me an exposure to a Professional setting after college life, Outreach platforms to touch life’s of thousands of children, Pouring Accolades for volunteering that kindled in me the spirit to do more, tons of people from whom I learnt and whom I love, trust as life time companions- would top everything else on my take away’s.

 Having attended nearly around 30 Junior Achievement programs across 2 years igniting the young minds in the schools on "Career with a Purpose" - this would be the best thing I could have done being @ Cognizant. Thanks a million Outreach – JA !!! Your people, awards, enthusiasm kept me going. Would wish to join you back anytime. Way to go and Godspeed Team – JA .

On the contrary, Cognizant could have been better in implementing its value system across board and building process maturity. One simple aspect that would falsify its value – Opportunity filled would be its lack of robustness in providing roles according to employee’s aspirations and this case kindled in me the desire to quit cognizant to pursue my passion of doing an MBA. Yet I do believe it’s still a budding company with its own challenges and would stabilize on this very soon.

Critics apart, It’s written values C-FOOTED would linger in minds were ever I go. I would love to adopt and live by it in any corporate setting.

Thanks a million Cognizant for being my First employer!!! You got me exposure, experience, people and loads of fun(d) :)

With a Cognizant DNA, I look forward to come back to Cognizant after my MBA if there exists a mutually beneficial opportunity :)

Wish all my Cognizant folks exciting careers and pink of health :)

Keep Rocking!!! Emotions Galore - Adieu Cognizant – Keep Celebrating People !!!