Ramappa decided to take up carpentry one day. “It’s better than simply chopping wood and giving it to others to make money,” he said. “What do you know about carpentry?” his family asked. “I can learn,” he replied. And so he began, toiling in his shed, trying to shape wood into a chair, or a table. Some people laughed at him when he told them that he was a carpenter. “What do you know of...
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I recently reread Viktor Frankl’s “Man’s Search for Meaning”. My favorite passage from the book: “The salvation of man is through love and in love. I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world still may know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved. In a position of utter desolation, when man cannot express himself in positive action, when his only...
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When life does not go according to plan, and it so often doesn’t, you feel distressed: disappointment, stress, anxiety, worry, fatigue, irritation, anger, frustration. The more detailed your plan, the more invested you are in it, the worse you feel when it doesn’t work out. And when the plan doesn’t work out, you make it more detailed, put more effort into it, trying harder and harder to ensure that the...
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When I tell people about Nirvikalpa: The Center for Human Potential, I’m often asked what the word “Nirvikalpa” means. I usually answer, “Beyond the limitations of the mind”. Sometimes I am met with an incredulous or surprised look. After all, most of us have come to believe that the mind is our greatest asset, and that any development of our potential should be through the development of the...
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I passed through Dubai recently, and noticed that almost every Emirati in the news is a “His Highness” or a “His Excellency”. (I am not sure what it takes to be royalty in these parts, but when it comes to honorofics, one expects a degree of restraint.) Anyway, I read this story in the Gulf News. Apparently, a 1 year old baby (her name is Nayana) has been charged with “staying in the country...
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f a developing country is the wild, then a developed country is a zoo. The zoo looks like the real thing, only more ordered. The temperature is regulated. The watering hole is never empty. The food arrives on time. And the predators are kept in check. In the wild, the animal eats what it kills. There is a flood one day, and a drought the next. Predators run free and some animals live long and proud, others are...
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Here’s a piece of trivia ( the sort that if you shared with a member of the KQA , you would get, “Everyone knows that, man!”) : According to his biography, Sunil Gavaskar was exchanged with a fisherman’s son – some kind of confusion about the crib – but an uncle retrieved him just in time. The biographer notes: Gavaskar “sometimes muses on the possibilities of fishing in Mahim, if not for the...
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We are not limited by our self-doubts, as much as by our...
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Hope is a deeply draining emotion. It pretends to sustain us, while depleting the joy of the present moment. Hope is the wish for a better future. Optimism is a belief that a better future will occur. Hope is a life spent in anticipation. Optimism is a life lived in preparation. Hope is a life wasted. Optimism is a life lived...
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The same place can look lively when you feel good, crowded when you are tired, hostile when you feel threatened, and welcoming when you are secure. Our feelings about the world reveal as much about ourselves as they do about the...
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“A lie told often enough becomes the truth,” said Lenin. But what happens to the truth when it’s repeated often enough? The first time someone said, “Smile and the world smiles with you, cry and you cry alone,” the words must have had quite an impact. The freshness of the phrasing, the newness of the thought must have been profound, quite capable of inducing an epidemic of epiphanies. But now,...
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A post from my Medscape blog for psychiatrists: I just read a story on MSNBC about grammar vigilantes. The story says that those who are sticklers about grammar, spelling, and punctuation, have become even more fastidious because of all the stress in their lives. ( Hope they are not reading this blog.) The article is trying to be interesting and cool. I get that. After all how many stories of “the worsening...
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“This patient has no responsibility,” the resident said. Interesting, I thought. Responsibility. Not a word I heard often anymore, at least not since high school, when I was occasionally accused of lacking it. So what did this young psychiatrist mean exactly – no “responsibility”? Depending on cultural norms, I suppose there could be 2 broad definitions of the word. Definition 1. Responsibility:...
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“If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?” Aleksandr...
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“Do what you like, it’s not going to make a difference. I will kill myself.” “You sound determined.” “Life’s not for me.” “How do you mean?” “I just don’t want it.” “What’s a typical day like for you?” “I wake up in the morning, then I walk 4 miles. That’s crazy, right, that I want to die but I want to stay healthy? Anyway, I watch some TV, get something to eat,...
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This post is for serious election nerds only. (You know you’re obsessed with the elections, when you not only read an obscure news story but also feel compelled to write about it) I just read this story by the AP. An anonymous source close to the Obama camp leaked a story to the AP reporters: Apparently, Obama might offer the chief of staff job to Rahm Emanuel, the Democratic congressman from Chicago. The...
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“So, I hear you are going back to India?” asked Dr A, a physician who’s been in the US for more than 3 decades. “April next year,” I said. “You ever think of going back to India?” He shook his head, smiled, and shrugged. Why would I ever want to go back? it seemed to suggest. “You know, the outsourcing will stop, and the Indian economy will suffer,” he said. “The infrastructure is bad,...
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Just saw this video of a McCain rally. Check it out. A funny senior moment, but there’s more to this video. Notice how McCain says, “Senator Obama’s supporters have been saying some pretty nasty things about Western Pennsylvania recently.” He says it with feigned anger, then pauses and smiles. Not to to get all Freudian on you, but it’s a little boy’s smile, like he’s just been caught with his...
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It’s the oldest oak tree in the neighbourhood, or so the previous owner told me and I have no reason to doubt him. It stands 50 feet high, and like the iron pillar of New Delhi, so wide that you cannot put your arms around it. But it wasn’t looking too healthy, and so i called an arborist ( Apparently, that is what the tree removal guys are officially called) to see about getting the tree taken out.
He...
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“Watch it, Rishi,” I said to my almost 2 year old son as we were walking down the road. “That’s a bee, it might bite you.” “Bee biting,” he repeated, then looked up at me and asked in a sad voice, “‘A’ also biting?” Originally Posted on Saturday, August 23, 2008 at...
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