If found, please return to …

Assume you are walking on the road. You find a wallet on the ground. You pick it up and find that there is a lot of money, credit cards and many other valuable things.  What would you do?

·         Will you go and give it in the nearby police station?

·         Will you just keep it, thinking that you got lucky?

·         Will you put it back where it was, as you do not want to get into any unnecessary problems?

·         Will you try to locate the person, who has lost it?

Most of us would, opt for the last option i.e trying to find out to who it belongs to and return to him.

But now imagine if the wallet does not contain any information that helps you to trace, as to whom it belongs to, then nothing can be done about it. Whatever is lost is lost forever.   If there was a photo id card or some business cards in it, it would be probably easy to find who the wallet belongs to, so that we could call and inform the owner.  So, if there is a mechanism of, “if found, please return to” then the possibility of a person getting back what he/she lost, is much higher. Do you agree?

I learned this lesson, after an interesting incident that happened, about a year back. I had bought a new bike and not yet fitted a luggage box. My house and office are located quiet close by. In the evening when                       I returned home, from office, I looped my laptop bag in the side hand grip handle, near the back seat and rode home. On reaching home, I realised that my bag is lost. It had fallen off somewhere midway, due to some bump on the road.  I immediately rushed back on the same route, but I could not find it anywhere. I felt it was lost or stolen. The bag had my mini laptop worth 15K, Rs.25000/- cash and some other files. In a jiffy, I seemed to have lost it all.

My mind was in a dilemma. Should I complain to the police station? Can the police really help me? However with a faint hope, if someone finds it and gives it in the police station, they can return it to me,  I asked my staff to lodge a complaint in the nearby police station. After about 2 hours this incident happened, I got a phone call from a person, who asked me, “Have I lost a bag”. I anxiously replied, “Yes”. He said that he found it on the road. He picked it up and took it to his house. He then tried to trace, who it belongs to. There was no way he could find. Then he switched on my laptop. He opened my offline mail box and he saw my name and mobile number, in the “sent items” folder. So, he just guessed it must be the owner and called that number.

I felt really lucky. I then enquired the way to his house, went and got it and came back home with mouth filled with thanks and heart filled with joy.

There is a saying, “We do not value light until there is darkness”. The same is true, with our belongings. We do not realise the value of them until it is lost. The joy we get, when we find something that we have lost, is an immense experience.

As a school going kid, we kept losing our pencils, eraser, sharpener etc.  Even as a grown up adult, there are few things we are prone to lose, such as Pens, Keys, Mobile phone, Wallet, Travel baggage, Laptop or Tablet PC, USB drive, Books, and the likes.

Here are a few things you can do, to maximise the chance of it being returned to you, if lost (not stolen).

1.       Try to include your name and mobile number in your key chain.

2.       You can put your home or office phone number (not your mobile number) on the home screen or welcome screen of your mobile phone or tablet pc.

3.       Have a few business cards or personal info card in your wallet and laptop bag.

4.       Make sure your travel bag has a name tag.

5.       Have a word document with your name and address in the desktop screen of your laptop or tablet pc. You can also have the same type of doc in your USB drive.

6.       Make small sticker labels of your name, address and mobile number and stick it to your books and other possessions.

7.       Always include sender’s (your) address in your postal letters, parcels and couriers.

I hope you are not, as careless as me. Even if you are a careful person, these tips will be of help. Losing is like an accident. We never know when and how. It is always good to be on the safer side.

By the way, if anyone of you, has a good tip on how not to lose a PEN, please tell me. I will be grateful.

Happy Reading,

D.Senthil Kannan

Article Dated May 2012

The Green Icon

As the convenor of the Environmental Panel of CII Thoothukudi District, for the year 2011-12, I was instrumental in organising a one day environmental conference titled the ECO Summit. We had some of the top brains, who talked on various environmental related issues and how we could proactively engage ourselves, in mitigating the risks associated with environmental hazards and disasters.

One of the key speakers of this summit, was Mr.M.B.Nirmal,  the founder of Exnora International – A NGO based in Chennai who enjoy international repute today, for the enormous amount of work they have done in cleaning and greening the environment. This simple unassuming speaker shared his life story, in a witty way, but it was something that touched our hearts. The audience were both moved and inspired. If each one of us carry this little spark he lit within us, we are sure we will make our life purposeful. I hope sharing his life story, would inspire you too, to stretch beyond all limitations.

Nirmal was basically from a very rich family and they had a number of properties in Chennai. His father, ran into severe business debts, owing to some high risk business ventures and they had to sell all their property and their family literally came to the streets. Nirmal’s mother was persistent that she will not go and live in a rented house after having lived such a rich and royal life. With the very little money their family was left with Nirmal could only find a house in the slum, which he readily bought. It was a very painful period in their life. One of the visitors, who came to visit Nirmal’s family in their new dwelling, asked Nirmal, “Can’t you find a better place to live”. Nirmal was taken back. He had no words to say. He was in such a bad financial situation. It was that day he told himself, “My present conditions do not permit me to move to a better place, but I can make the place I live a better place.” This thought got so deeply rooted in his mind, that he focussed all his time and effort in making this slum, a clean and green place. He educated the people living in the slum, about the need for hygiene and he involved them in the process of making the place, green and clean. In his pursuit toward making the slum a better place for everyone to live in, he used creative approaches and brought about innovative solutions. It was not easy for him to convince people who were in the practice of open defecation, to use toilets. Inspite of creating toilets, no one was using it. He did innovative things like calling“public toilet” as “people’s toilet”.  In order to motivate small children to use the toilet, he painted the toilet walls with animals and cartoon images and renamed it as “Toy-let”. These small changes made a big difference, in people’s behaviour.This created a sensation, in the city and soon many people started coming to him, asking how he was able to do it. By duplicating his success model, more and more places, got cleaner and greener. This is how Exnora was formed.

  

Exnora is nowtalked about worldwide. The amount of toil, Nirmal has to put to make it a reality is something commendable. His untiring effort, determination, optimism, passion and contagious enthusiasm,has made a world of difference. In his own words, Nirmal says, “I am an incurable optimist”.

Today, Nirmal happily boasts about growing 1300 plants within his small apartment. His apartment is being visited by people across the world, who cannot believe their own eyes.Nirmal is 68 year old, but his mind is running at the speed of lightning. When you ask him, what is his goal at the moment, he says,“I want to be recognized as the world’s best thinker of our times.”

And if you think Nirmal is just an environmentalist, you are mistaken. He is a Motivator, Mind Programmer, Humorist, Orator, Trainer, Social Reformer. How can one person don so many roles? This really makes me wonder. He is an exemplary evidence, for those who question the limits of human potential. Let the life example of Nirmal, inspire us to stop thinking in terms of limitations and start thinking in terms of possibilities. For those of you, who are not aware of him, I am happy to introduce Mr.M.B.Nirmal - THE GREEN ICON.

Happy Reading,

D.SenthilKannan

Article dated April 2012

Say NO to beggars

·         Does the sight of beggars on the streets, worry you?

·         Do you feel, sorry for them?

·         Do you want to help them in some way or other?

If yes, please take my advice. Say No to them. What I am telling you, may be contradictory to the popular, that by giving alms to a beggar, we have done him some good, we have gained some good karma or whatsoever but in fact we are doing a social harm of breeding more and more beggars in the country. Tossing a coin in the beggar’s bowl may be considered by few as a sign of affluence and magnanimity, but in fact we are encouraging a social crime.

Begging is a social crime. Begging gives a bad image of our country, to the rest of the world. We are a country with huge intellectual capital, large man power force and many great social, spiritual and business leaders. We need to be looked up and not looked down.  But because of beggary prevailing in our country, we are looked down. Dan Boyle in his movie, “Slum dog billionaire” has exposed this begging practice in India, to the rest of the world. It is such a shame for our country. But we are just happy about the movie winning an Oscar award!

India is developing at a fast pace in terms of economic development. Statistics show, that our GDP and per capita income has increased. If that is true, then the number of beggars in the street should reduce. Is it not?  But in spite of all the positive developments, the number of beggars in India has increased significantly.

While there is so much of labor need in this country, why should people to resort to begging? Believe me, it is not poverty that has pushed them to take this decision. It is a lazy profession they have chosen, to make a comfortable living. Gone are the days, when people felt a sense of shame to beg. Today, begging has become a thriving occupation of many. On an average, a beggar earns anything from Rs.80 to Rs.200/- a day, which is in par with the daily wages of a factory worker. This easy way of making money, has become a preferred source as compared to having to put 8 hours of hard work of a daily labour.

In fact, I too have been supporting this social crime for quiet long. Even when people told me not to do so, I never use to heed to their words. I used to say, “What difference does it make for me, if I shell out a few coins, but at least the beggar can buy a cup of coffee”.

My perception of beggars changed, to a great extent after I saw the Tamil movie, “NaanKadavul” which talks about how begging has become a mob business, like any other mafia activity. In the movie, they show how the beggars are maimed, so that they become icons of sympathy to the general public and thereby they can earn more.  Maiming involves deforming the body, limb or face, by causing external injuries, through crude and cruel means. I thought it was just an exaggeration, but I came to see some live examples of this, in one of my visit to the SabarimalaAyyapan temple. It is then I decided that I will not encourage this practice.

I am not saying that there is no real poverty in this country. Of course there is a lot of poverty and genuine needs. If you wish to help the people with genuine needs, I suggest that you do it through some organized sources like World Vision, CRY, Helpage India or any such organization that is committed to enhance the life of the deprived and downtrodden You can also volunteer to be a member of any social organization like the Rotary Club, Lions Club or Giants club, who are working on specific projects with a long term plan. In this way, you can reach out to the needy, in a more appropriate way.

God has blessed all of us, with a soft heart; so that we are sensitive to the needs of our surrounding and help those are in need. The beggars have capitalized on this emotion of ours and made it a profession. Let us not become victim to our emotions. Let us not encourage “beggary” anymore. Let us learn to say NO to beggars.

Happy Reading,

D.SenthilKannan

Article dated Feb'2012

Are we giving space to others?

Quiet recently, I attended a 5 day TCI workshop. TCI is a unique concept developed by a German Psychologist, Ms.Ruth Cohn.  TCI stands for Theme Centred Interaction, which means a group of peopleinteract with each other on a particular theme. This interaction helps the participant to gain more insight and a better understanding of some real life situations and challenges, from different perspectives. Every TCI Workshop has a theme. The workshop I attended was on the theme, “Do men and women lead differently? We had two international facilitators, Mr.Konrad from Germany and Mrs.Annelis from Switzerland to handle this workshop, which made it more interesting.

The TCI session titles are different and interesting. One of the sessionsof this workshop was, “Drawing together with you and you…. finding my own space”.  In this session, our facilitator formed 3 groups of 6 people each.  We were given chart board with a box of crayons. The instruction given to us was, each group should do a drawing in the chart provided, but the rule is that the members within the group should not discuss or talk within the group. The time given was 15 minutes. This was a nice challenge, because there was no scope for planning what we are going to draw. So, our group sat on the floor together with the chart board in the centre. I took a yellow crayon and started drawing a sun, on the top of the chart. My team members seemed to get a clue, that we could draw scenery together and one of them started to draw a flock of birds with a black crayon and another person drew the clouds with a blue crayon. I soon followed it up, by drawing a mountain range across the chart with a brown crayon. In no time the chart paper became a beautiful scenery with a flowing river, tall trees, blooming flowers, a house, people, cattle and other things.

When the time was over, we were pleasantly surprised to see, that our drawing has come out nicely, inspite of we not speaking a single word with each other.

Now it was time for the facilitators to give their observation of each team. The facilitator, when giving his observations about our team, captured the essence of how we worked as a team. He pointed out that, it was me, who initiated the drawing, which he mentioned as a positive leadership trait. He said a leader is one who initiates. These words made me feel good about myself. He then said something that was like an invisible hammer striking hard on my head.He said, that I did not just stop with initiating the drawing, I went on to use large amount of the space in the chart paper to draw the mountain range. By doing so, I have been insensitive to the space requirements of my team members.  In the large chart paper, everyone should find space for their expression, but by occupying a large extent of space in the chart board, I have curtailed the expression of the other members of the team.

I realised that very moment, what he said was right. It was an eye opener to me.I was astounded to find that our subconscious mind gets manifested by our behaviour, exposing our true inner nature, even without having to say a single word. I felt bad about myself, but did not miss to take the learning of the day.  I learnt that I need to give others their needed space, so as to help them find expression of their true potential. I have been unconscious of my own mistake.When he spotted this out, I realised that I have aninner tendency to do more than what is expected of me. This doing more than what is expected, is not a good trait, when it comes to working as a team. As a team, every team member should feel a spirit of contribution to a project accomplished. By doing all the things, that others could do, we are in fact robbing from them, the joy of teamwork. In team work it is never ‘my work’, but it is ‘our work’.

Most of us commit this mistake unconsciously, at work place, social organisations or even family. We tend to dominate the show. We want to see the end result to be exactly the way; we mentally imagined it to be. But in a collaborative world, this sort of thought infringement would leave a negative mark of not being a good team player.r.A creative collaboration of ideas canin fact give a unique outcome, which an individual mind can never conceive.So, next time, when you are working on a team project, ask yourself, “Am I givingothers the needed space, to express themselves?”.

Happy Reading,

D.Senthil Kannan

Article dated March 2012

The magic of appreciation

Of all the things, I see there is one incentive which I feel really works with everyone. Maybe because, that is the most rarest to find today or may be very few people are willing to share it with others. It does not cost them anything, but people are still so reluctant to give it away. This incentive works great magic with your spouse, your children, your family members, your colleagues, your subordinates and even your superiors. It has always been assumed that the most important factor that drives a person is the money or the fame. I am surprised how this thing, that I am talking about has never been thought about. Infact, I feel that this is the greatest motivator, of all . It is called APPRECIATION.

How many of us, really use this on a daily basis. How many of us know that this can be a effective tool to motivate, your team when all other resources are running dry. Appreciating people is a art, which we need to cultivate in our lives. It is also our moral duty to teach our children the “art of appreciating”. 

A country like ours, which has such abundance of resources, lacks in this great resource called appreciation. If you ask a parent, why they do not appreciate their children for the marks they get, they may say, that they expect their children to perform better and reserve the appreciation for the day, the child gets 100/100, which is never going to happen without the small, small appreciations the child earns for its small, small achievements.

Start to appreciate others and see the benefits, for yourself.  The results would be far more than you would have imagined.

 Happy Reading,

D.Senthil Kannan

The beauty of friendship

There is a far deeper meaning to friendship, than what we normally perceive. While many of us may feel the primary reason for having friends is for social interaction and entertainment, if we look more closely to what it means we will realize that the reasons go way beyond that.

Friendship is not only about spending time with like-minded people so that one doesn’t get bored on a Saturday evening; its purpose is far more meaningful.  It is about love and understanding.  It stretches beyond our family relationships and lends us a support that is different.  It is about a different kind of love.

With our families we are sometimes wary about discussing our fears or difficulties, but with friends often it is easier to discuss our feelings, as there remains a space that is personal yet with fewer expectations.  It is a space that is built on sharing – sharing of our joys and sorrows, of discussion and reasoning, and many other things that urge us to open our hearts to others.

It is in friendship that we also learn to be less judgemental and to be accepting of other people’s differences and eccentricities and to be open to loving our friends even if they don’t think like us or share our philosophies.  Friendship teaches us to be helpful.  To give support and a listening ear to our mates, to be there for them in times of need or celebration, and to be part of their lives as a person that gives them comfort and who is able to understand and accept them for who they are.

Cherish and celebrate the spirit of friendship, everyday

Happy Reading,

D. Senthil Kannan