Stories from the grassroots | Thoughts on development
My article in today’s Bodhi Vruksha – a supplement in Vijaya Karnataka newspaper that focuses on life, living and spirituality: Bodhi Vruksha 30 Jul 2011
The English version of the article can be found here: Swami Vivekananda and my own journey
– Balu
Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa used to narrate a parable to explain how strong our yearning for God needs to be. He spoke of a disciple who used to repeatedly ask his teacher, “Sir, please tell me how I can see God.” After a few days of being repeatedly pestered by the disciple, the Guru told him, “Come with me, and I shall show you.” He took, the disciple to a lake, and both of them got into the water. Suddenly the teacher pressed the disciple’s head under the water. After a few moments he released him and the disciple raised his head and stood up. The
I was meeting up with an old friend after several years and we decided to catch up with each other over coffee. This friend had worked as a senior adviser in his Government before moving on to work in the private sector. He was narrating his experience of working with two very different bosses and how similar they were despite their working in different contexts. Both were driven, ambitious and demanding of their colleagues, and would settle for nothing less than perfection in what they did. The similarities did not end here. While both could be labeled as successful leaders
One question that people keep asking me is what prompted me to start the Swami Vivekananda Youth Movement when I was just 19 years of age. What was it that may have prompted me to do what was considered non-conformist during the eighties? I have thought about this a lot and much later got to understand how and why things turned out the way it did. Coming from a typical Indian middle-class urban family, the options regarding my future was limited to studying engineering or medicine and going aboard to make a living. With this aspiration in mind, I had