THINK POSITIVE

A friend of mine bought an expensive SUV last year. At the time, I had asked him whether it was really necessary for him to spend so much on a car that he wouldn’t use that often. For which he said that everybody would be so impressed by his expensive SUV. For a year or so, all his posts on social media were filled up the pictures of the car at different places.   A year later now, when   I asked him about his car, he said that the maintenance and running costs are very expensive and that he is regretting his decision of buying an SUV. It has become a liability in his life. He further said that he should have opted for a smaller car that would have been more suitable to his city lifestyle.   Similarly, another friend of mine bought a flat couple of years ago at an expensive location in Bangalore. Although not big enough for comfort, it was very expensive because of its locality. I had told him that he should buy a bigger home which was just a bit further from the newly bought f

The other day while I was randomly browsing the internet, I came across an interesting article on stress in life and I wanted to share it with you. So, take a glass and fill it up with water. Hold the glass for a minute or so. It’s not so heavy, is it? But, if you hold it for an hour, you will start developing pain in your hand. If you hold for 6 hours, your hand will be numb and if you hold it even longer, you will feel that your hand is paralyzed.   Here, the weight of the glass is irrelevant. What matters is how long you are holding it. The longer you hold it, the heavier you will feel.   The stress and painful memories in our life are also like the glass of water. When you think about them for a short time, you will feel nothing. They will begin to hurt if you think about them longer. And if you think about them all the time, you won’t be able to do anything else. You will feel like you are paralyzed.   So it is important for us to remember to let go of our stress and p

It was an early morning, as I was just entering home returning from out of town,   I heard the voice ‘Hey Manoj! How are you?’   When I turned around, I saw a senior colleague of mine who had just retired a couple of months ago.   We started talking and I asked him how is his life after retirement? He said it is relaxing and peaceful. Those were his words. He said he is looking forward to enjoying his retired life and received his first pension just a few days before. We chatted for a while and I wished him a happy retired life, then he left.   In my tenure of two years working with him, what I saw was that he used to spend most of his time at work. He would always show up an hour or so before office hours started and most of the time would be the last person to leave. He was a mentor for many newcomers including me. He was a very senior person who retired with 41 years of service.   Back in the 1970s, he was appointed under my grandfather who was a Staff Inspector in Railw

Today I completed my 8 years of service in the Indian Railways. Appointed at the age of 21 years on the 13 th of June 2012, the journey has been no less than wonderful and exciting. Of course, things were quite difficult at times, but they taught me to be a better version of myself.     Not many of my relatives and friends know that I qualified in the NTPC exam for the job. Many of them think that it was just bestowed upon me.   Presently, being a Chief Vigilance Inspector at such a young age makes me feel proud. Probably, one of the youngest ever in Indian Railways. It’s not the end though, got a long way to go from here and I am looking forward for it as well.   Looking back at my college days, what really surprises me is that I never wanted to join the Government services. As a matter of fact, I resisted my job offer at Railways for quite some time. Also, upon completion of my graduation, I had a job offer from Infosys which also had promised me to fulfill my desire for

It was an early summer hot noon and I was sitting after a hefty meal when I heard one of my friends shouting. His friend was making an apology for a small mistake that he had committed. He was trying to tell him about how it was not intentional and was just a mistake. But, my friend was going on and on shouting about his mistake and saying he should not have made one. Normally, I don’t interfere when two people are arguing but, this one was going on for quite some time. Seeing the pathetic condition of the other, I jumped in and tried to settle them down. It took quite a while before they settled down. Later in the evening when I was sipping a cup of tea, I remembered an incident wherein a friend of mine had made a serious mistake that had badly affected me. Although it was a big deal, he had me convinced that it was not intentional and I had forgiven him. It was none other than the same person who was not ready to forgive his friend. This made me think, Isn’t it in our n

It was in early November when my friend Vipin invited me to attend his wedding at Azamgarh which was on 16 th Feb. 2020. Since I did not want to miss his wedding, I had decided well in advance to attend it. My initial plans were for a couple of days and to fly in and out from Varanasi. But, it was nearly a year since I had been on a long tour. My last one was the amazing tour of Nepal in December 2018. Time had come for me to revitalize my mental well being, which I always get from traveling. So, I decided to avail a few more days of leave and visit the less explored North East of India. Two of my friends who were also invited decided to tag along. We obtained the Inner Line Permit (ILP) through online from the Arunachal State Govt. which was very hassle-free. We attended my friend’s wedding and spent a couple of days exploring Varanasi. Later, we arrived at Guwahati at 06.30 pm on 18 th Feb. Although, it was still evening the early sunset times of the North Eastern states

As I was having a conversation with a friend of mine, a question popped into my head when he said that he is not happy doing his current job and is doing it only for the sake of money. Is money really that important? – was the question. Immediately I asked him, “What would you like to do if money was no object. How would you enjoy spending your life?” He quickly replied, “I wanted to be a school teacher.” I was surprised because I never expected it from a friend who is a tech-savvy, spent almost a decade in the leading IT firm and who always seemed to be happy with his job. At that moment, he imagined his life as a teacher. Mere thinking of his life as a teacher brought a different kind of smile on his face, something that I had never seen before. It was a smile of content which vanished soon after he came back to reality. Are we all doing the things that we don’t want to, just for the sake of money. Why does money matter so much? I scratched my head for a couple