THOUGHT OF THE DAY

Safest place for a ship is the harbour but it was never built to stay there....

December 22, 2013 at 10:49am

Kamatchi was born in 1898 in Kattikulam, Tamil Nadu. Those were the days when a female child was raised with the sole purpose of getting her married off. So was Kamatchi. By stitching together subsequent events in her life, we gather that by the time she was twenty-five, she had five children from her husband, Thalakaswami. He did not care much for her, and one day just went away.




The eldest daughter was all of twelve and the youngest was two and a half years old when Kamatchi decided to take charge. We do not know how but she left Kattikulam and finally landed up in Madras in a state of destitution. She looked for work – not an easy thing in 1926. Around the same time, there were recruitment agents looking for rubber plantation workers for British clients in Malaysia.Kamatchi signed up and sat in a sailboat with the five children in tow, and arrived at a rubber plantation to become a ‘tapper’. As Kamatchi went to work, the oldest daughter took up the task of mothering the other four. Two of these were the in-between sons who started going to school. Kamatchi and her brood braved on under a hutment of a swampy rubber estate until 1945. Then came the Japanese, and took away the two boys as slaves to build the bridge over the river Kwai in Burma. This was called the ‘death railway’ because people seldom returned, falling to the rampant bouts of cholera, typhoid and malaria.




The war was over and the Japanese retreated, but Kamatchi’s little boy never came back. The older son somehow did and went on to complete his higher education, eventually becoming a headmaster. On his return, he took complete charge of the surviving siblings, and asked Kamatchi to retire.In 1966, she passed away, a single mother – leaving behind her legacy in Malaysia, a country with the highest number of people of Indian origin.Kamatchi’s son, in turn, carried on her lineage. One of his sons, Dr Vignesh, was narrating this fascinating story of courage as he was driving me to the venue of the Malaysian-Indian Economic Summit in Kuala Lumpur.He grew up to qualify as a veterinary practitioner. All his siblings are in the mainstream of Malaysian society today. I asked him about his recollections of Kamatchi. When Dr Vignesh was a boy, Kamatchi’s sunset years had begun. Life in the rubber estates had left her an asthmatic. But she remained until her last, the matriarch who was a go-getter, who knew no fear, a motivator and a fighter.Though she believed in God, she was non-ritualistic and exhorted her children to rely on self-help. She used to say: "You have to take charge; God does not come through the tin roof to dole out bounties."We study leadership and decision-making in business – a subject that fascinates us. We debate if leaders create circumstances or vice versa. We talk about decisions and momentous ones, with the power to create generational impact. In all this, we analyse character in leadership, and use analogies from political history and military conquests because business leadership hasn’t been in existence long enough to create narratives with directional value.




My mind goes back to 1926. I see a twenty-five year old, illiterate woman – nah, girl. She is with five children; the youngest by her bosom. Six human frames and a small bundle of cloth, representing her departure from the past. What would have happened if Kamatchi had stayed on in Kattikulam, bemoaning the runaway husband and seeking the alms and mercy of village elders? What would have happened if she had killed her children and herself? What if she had abandoned them? I shudder and seek solace in the miracle of now.In all this, what was the most important decision that Kamatchi took? For me, it was the one to dislocate herself from Kattikulam. That single decision changed the fate of three generations. It was the potently unsafe option. Kamatchi did not go to business school but lived the saying that "the safest place for a ship is the harbour but it was never built to stay there."- The spirit of Kamatchi by Subroto Bagchi.

THOUGHT OF THE DAY

Why walk when you can fly

Once there was a king who received a gift of two magnificent falcons from Arabia . They were peregrine falcons, the most beautiful birds he had ever seen. He gave the precious birds to his head falconer to be trained.Months passed and one day the head falconer informed the king that though one of the falcons was flyingmajestically, soaring high in the sky, the other bird had not moved from its branch since the day it had arrived.  

The king summoned healers and sorcerers from all the land to tend to the falcon, but no one could make the bird fly. He presented the task to the member of his court, but the next day, the king saw through the palace window that the bird had still not moved from its perch. Having tried everything else, the king thought to himself, "May be I need someone more familiar with the countryside to understand the nature of this problem." So he cried out to his court, "Go and get a farmer."

In the morning, the king was thrilled to see the falcon soaring high above the palace gardens. He said to his court, "Bring me the doer of this miracle."


The court quickly located the farmer, who came and stood before the king. The king asked him, "How did you make the falcon fly?"

With his head bowed, the farmer said to the king, " It was very easy, your highness. I simply cut the branch where the bird was sitting."



We are all made to fly -- to realize our incredible potential as human beings. But instead of doing that, we sit on our branches, clinging to the things that are familiar to us. The possibilities are endless, but for most of us, they remain undiscovered. We conform to the familiar, the comfortable, the mundane. So for the most part, our lives are mediocre instead of exciting, thrilling and fulfilling.

So let us learn to destroy the branch of fear we cling to and free ourselves to the glory of flight…..!!!!!

THOUGHT OF THE DAY

A Little Knowledge Goes A Long Way.

     Once upon a time there was a high IQ cheetah who couldn’t run at a top speed of 120 km per hour. As a result, the Thompson’s gazelles that he chose to chase easily outran him and he was never able to get hold of one. Thus, in order to survive, he was forced to catch rodents and frogs and other small animals which lived in the Serengeti.

Of course he had to do this surreptitiously because if any of the other cheetahs ever found out it would be terribly humiliating for him. “What’s the use of being the fastest land animal in the world,” he would often say to himself, “if I can’t even run down a decent high speed deer for dinner?”



So one day he went to a cheetah who was renowned for her astonishing speed and blurted out his predicament. “I have all the evolutionary adaptations that enable our species to run as fast as we do, including large nostrils that allow for increased oxygen intake, and an enlarged heart and lungs which work together to circulate oxygen efficiently. Also, during a typical chase when I can accelerate from zero to 100 in three seconds my respiratory rate increases from 60 to 150 breaths per minute.
"And, while running, in addition to having good traction due to my semi-retractable claws, I use the tail as a rudder for steering which allows me to make razor sharp turns, necessary to outflank prey who often make such turns. And yet”, he concluded lamely, “I can’t manage a top speed of 120 km an hour no matter how hard I try.”

“That’s interesting,” said the other cheetah who was staring at him wide-eyed by now. “Because you know, all this time I thought my nostrils were for only for smelling and my heart and lungs for keeping me alive. During a chase all I ever had time to notice was that the surroundings became a blur, my breathing increasingly deep and heavy, and by the time it’s over I’m pooped for the rest of the day.
"As for my claws and tail, I just try to keep them clean. But, like I said, this is amazing stuff. If we were to live together I could do the hunting while you can teach me things about myself and the world so that I too can become as knowledgeable as you.”
So the two hitched up and soon the Serengeti had two cheetahs that couldn’t run at a top speed of 120 km an hour and had to live off rats and frogs instead of gazelles to the end of their days.

Moral: A lot of knowledge is also a dangerous thing.

THOUGHT OF THE DAY

THOUGHT OF THE DAY

 Only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing. - Socrates

       .Every person sees the world differently, depending on his nature and vision of life. The ignorant person and the wise one – both encounter the same world; but what is the vision of a person of wisdom?How does he think, feel, and respond to the world?Someone went to a realised person and asked, ‘I know that you are an enlightened one, but what do you do all day?’The wise man replied, ‘I sleep, i get up, i take a shower, i eat and then i work.

‘That is nothing different. I also do the same.’‘But when i sleep, i sleep,’ corrected the enlightened person.‘When i wake up, i am awake. When i bathe, i bathe, when i eat, i eat and when i work, i work.’The man protested, ‘But i do all this as well! Are you trying to fool me?’‘You still do not get the point. When you sleep, you dream. And even when you are awake, you are really asleep because you live in a dream world only,’ explained the wise man. ‘When you take a shower, you begin to think of all the things that you have to do that day. When you eat, your mind is somewhere else. And when you are at work, you think of home. Generally your mind is miles away from where you are.’A wise person may look the same outwardly, but his mental state is quite different from ours. Some great souls are very relaxed; others are dynamic men and women of action and great organisers. Their behaviour can also be quite unexpected and unpredictable.Story Of Four Brothers: Once there were four brothers. When their father died, his property was divided equally among them. Since one of the brothers was a monk, the other three protested about his share. According to them, the monk did not have any need for his share of the property. But the monk fought back, and insisted on his right.

One of the disciples knew the greatness of the monk, but when he saw him fighting with his brothers, he wondered about him. In order to test him, the disciple approached the teacher at a time when all the four brothers were arguing, heatedly, over the property.He asked the monk to explain the meaning of the line from the Bhagwad Gita, ‘Anger leads to delusion.’ The monk smiled, took him aside and asked him to wait until he had finished the drama!From that day, the disciple never doubted his teacher. He realised that the monk’s anger was just for show and it was under his control all the time.It is said that it is easy to indicate Brahmn, but very difficult to describe a knower of Brahmn. This is because such a person cannot be classified as one thinking or acting in any particular manner. All speculations and imaginations have to be thrown aside. Even though the person performs all activities, he is really beyond them.

Ramana Maharshi once said, ‘Who can ever comprehend or imagine the state of the enlightened soul?’ The characteristics of a wise person are understood only by another wise person. Therefore, the only way is to become wise ourselves.

THOUGHT OF THE DAY

Thought of the day -

 

 More Minutes:-

A woman sat down next to a man on a bench near a playground at West Coast park one fine Sunday Morning.
"That's my son over there" she said, pointing to a little boy in a red T-shirt who was gliding down the slide.
"He's a fine looking boy," the man said. "That's my son on the swing in the blue T-shirt."
Then, looking at his watch, he called to his son.
"What do you say we go, Jack?"
Jack pleaded, "Just five more minutes, Dad. Please?" "Just five more minutes."
The man nodded and Jack continued to swing to his heart's content. Minutes passed and the father stood and called again to his son. "Time to go now?"
Again Jack pleaded, "Five more minutes, Dad.
Just five more minutes." The man smiled and said, "O.K."
"My, you certainly are a patient father," the woman responded.
The man smiled and then said, "My older son John was killed by a drunk driver last year while he was riding his bike near here. I never spent much time with John and now I'd give anything for just five more minutes with him. I've vowed not to make the same mistake with Jack.
He thinks he has five more minutes to swing. The truth is, I get Five more minutes to watch him play."
Life is not a race.
Life is all about making Priorities
Give someone you love, 5 more minutes of your time no matter how busy and you will have no regret forever.
Once you have lost it, shall be lost Forever....
Life is an uncompromising reconciliation of uncompromising extremes.
Life is real!  And the grave is not its goal.
LIVE LIFE BEFORE YOU LEAVE LIFE... 5 More Minutes.😊☺😃😊☺😃

Very Emotional Heart Touching short Story

One day, a poor boy who was selling goods from door to door to pay his way through school, found he had only one thin dime left, and he was hungry.
He decided he would ask for a meal at the next house. However, he lost his nerve when a lovely young woman opened the door. Instead of a meal he asked for a drink of water.
She thought he looked hungry so brought him a large glass of milk He drankit slowly, and then asked, “How much do I owe you?” “You don’t owe me anything,” she replied “Mother has taught us never to accept payment for a kindness.”
He said… “Then I thank you from my heart.”
As Howard Kelly left that house, he not only felt; stronger physically, but his faith in God and man was strong also. He had been ready to give up and quit.
Years later that young woman became critically ill. The local doctors were baffled.They finally sent her to the big city, where they called in specialists to study her rare disease. Dr. Howard Kelly was called in for the consultation.
When he heard the name of the town she came from, a strange light filled his eyes. Immediately he rose and went down the hall of the hospital to her room. Dressed in his doctor’s gown he went in to see her.
He recognized her at once. He went back to the consultation room determined to do his best to save her life. From that day he gave special attention to the case.
After a long struggle, the battle was won. Dr. Kelly requested the business office to pass the final bill to him for approval.
He looked at it, then wrote something on the edge and the bill was sent to her room.She feared to open it,for she was sure it would take the rest of her life to pay for
it all. Finally, she looked, and something caught herattention on the side as she read these words…… ” Paid in full with one glass of milk.” (Signed) Dr. Howard Kelly.
Tears of joy flooded her eyes as her happyheart prayed: “Thank You, GOD, that Your love has spread abroad through human hearts and hands.”
NOW YOU HAVE TWO CHOICES.
You can SHARE this Story on and spread a positive message or ignore it and pretend it never touched you
“It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge.” – Albert Einstein

Heart touching story~Friendship

An Inspiring Story on Friendship….Touching….This will touch your heart!!!!!!

In a battle, a soldier prepared 2 bring this wounded friend back from the field.
His captian said,
“Its of No use! ur friend must be dead”.
But soldier still goes & brings back his friend.
Seeing the dead body, Captain says
“I told u its of no worth. He’s dead”.
The soldier replies with moist eyes:
“No sir, it was really of worth…..

When i got to him, my friend saw me, smiled & said his last words:

“I KNEW YOU WOULD COME”……
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Rare, Precious, Trustworthy, True, Strong friends…. are always there when you need them the most….