RETROSPECTION - 2013

        I have never been on a roller coaster. So, I cannot tell if 2013 has been a roller coaster ride for me. Sure, I had my ups and downs. I had moments of ecstasy and spent moments in low spirits too. I experienced the joy of achieving something and also the despair of failure. I have enjoyed the luxury of new entities and also the agony of losing something. There were situations where I overcame my fear and found the courage in me and also there were situations where I succumbed to fear and did not move forward. I have slowly started to say 'NO', but there were occasions where I could not give a 'NO' , even if that was what I wanted to give. There are situations where I fell, but I also got up, gathered myself and moved forward. Sometimes, I was not motivated enough to get up.

        If I am asked to choose one thing that 2013 has taught me, I would say it taught me, " I should be the reason for Everything in my life". If you are not the reason for everything going on in your life, then you are looking at life with a wrong perspective. Very soon you might end up losing control over your life. 2013 taught me that you should be able to cultivate in yourself every emotion you want to experience. And, you should be able to nurture them or destroy them according to your will. In other words, you should be capable of experiencing all the emotions which took birth in you because of external sources, even without those external sources. You should not only be able to encourage them, but if situation demands, you should be able to let go of those emotions. 

        Till 2012, I had complete control over my life. I am not boasting. I am saying it is boring. That year, I completed my studies and joined a company. I have become a regular IT guy. Apart from running two marathons, I don't remember anything special. May be because there is nothing worthwhile to remember. That definitely says it was a boring year. But what was good about 2012 is that, last few days of 2012 triggered a new phase in my life. I started experiencing new sets of emotions and feelings, which I thought were either non-existing or I might never experience. I began to understand myself. I started loving myself. 

        Regarding people, 2013 made me realize two things. People can be the reason for your happiness, but they should never be the sole reason. People come to your life, bring you happiness and then they are bound to leave. Special people are like one of the many passing clouds, that change the climate, by drizzling they sprinkle cool water drops on your face, give you moments of bliss and then move on. Then it gets sunny again, indicating you that the moments have passed by. You can never find happiness in searching for the next cloud that brings you forever rains, instead of tiny showers. You will be spending rest of your life waiting for the clouds to bring you rain. You will be ignoring those tiny showers, because you are busy waiting for abundant rains. Instead, I learnt that, you should start doing things that bring you happiness, rather than searching your happiness in others. I learnt not to waste my time waiting for things to happen. I realized, man can only be happy by keeping himself busy grabbing every opportunity for happiness. If you feel that only others can bring you happiness, you are never going to get it. 

        The other thing I learnt about people is about their deadliest weapon. Any man who makes you feel guilty for which you are not responsible is dangerous. You may not think so, if you knew the motives of the other person. Feelings of guilt can make a man do anything. Nice people are vulnerable to guilt. Make Rama guilty of not obeying his father, he will spent his life in exile for eternity. Bad thing is these people accept guilt even without questioning themselves- Do I deserve to be guilty? So, the dangerous man is the one who can inject you with guilty feeling and make you do whatever he wants you to do. So, think a lot before you feel guilty. Do you deserve it?

        I had explored and traveled a lot compared to previous years. All these experiences taught me something about myself. Here are some of the things I learnt about myself this year

1. I love running

2. I love riding two wheeler (both cycle and bikes)

3. I feel mountains and hills as my home( thanks to trekking)

4. I too am not immune to feelings like love, jealous, envy, etc..

5. I prefer living my life by myself, without any company like family or roommates.

6. I am self motivated, but the dose is to be administered regularly

7. I have a hair loss problem :P

8. I like photography, not in the way of uploading pics in facebook, but play around with camera. Neither a professional nor an amateur. Someone who just loves to click. 

9. I prefer apathy to most of the other emotions (Damn you world!!)

        I had a whole lot of new experiences this year. I traveled places, met people, made friends. I ran three marathons. Visited 4 new places. Read new books. Here is a glimpse of my 2013

February 10: Auroville Marathon

        It was my third marathon overall and my second Auroville Marathon. During the run, I met an old man aged 68. He had already run more than 15 marathons. He started his marathons when he was around 55 yrs. His company during the run truly motivated me to finish the marathon. I generally dont practice for marathons. So, I need lots of determination and motivation to finish it.

Koilsagar 

    Another memorable event in the month of February is the first trek with GHAC. I went to Koilsagar. It was a day and night trek. We camped on the top of a hill- a fort in ruins. I lied down and gazed at the stars. It was after a long time I was looking at stars filled sky. The view was mesmerizing. I was so lost in them that, I didnt knew that rest of the team had a campfire kind of session- without fire though- until they told me the next day. I was gazing at the stars for more than 5 hours. My words fail to depict the scene. So here is a pic, which might give a glimpse of the night sky. And I was looking through the telescope at saturn in the pic.

Star gazing 

In the morning, we all jumped into a nearby lake and you know what we did there :P

April 14: Birthday of Pinky

        This was the first grandly celebrated birthday among we three friends. We ate lots of cake, chicken and ice cream. Actually, April 14th was not her birthday, but we didn't mind changing date to suit our comforts :P

April 20 : Off Road Cycling trip Cholavaram

         This is my first cycling trip. To give you an idea abt the weather, I will tell you this. This trip was on a summer saturday in Chennai. Trip started at 5am and ended at 10pm. We cycled in the hot sun covering a lake, cashew farms and some villages.

                     

June 22: Aravapally 

        This was my first attempt at climbing hills. It was a one day trek . We reached the place by 9 AM and got back to the base of the hill by 5 PM. This simple trek made me realize my interest in treks.

August 25 : Hyderabad Marathon

        This is my First Marathon in Hyderabad and the toughest one so far. It took me lot of effort to finish it. It is at this marathon, I got my first leg injury. I have covered so much of Hyderabad in a single marathon which I didnt cover in bus.

September 21-22 : Nagala Foodie trek 

        This is my first trek with Chennai Trekking Club, previous one being a cycling trip. This was the easiest one so far. All we did was reach the entrance of Nagala forest, cook ( soup, salad, barbeque,etc...) and sleep for the night. We started walking into the forest in the morning. When we reached the pre-determined spot, we cooked breakfast. There was a small pool. We played in it for sometime, came out, cooked our lunch and had a feast. Then we headed back and reached the entrance of the forest by 6 PM. I was back in Chennai by 10 PM.

              

              

             

                               

November 8-11 : Boat ride to Papikondalu and night camp at Kolluru bamboo huts

        This trip was organised by GHAC as part of their GHAC-Travel and Leisure trip. And it IS a leisure trip !!. All we did was eat, play, sleep and enjoy the beautiful nature around us. First a boat ride for 5 hrs with tasty fish for lunch. Then, camp in bamboo huts. Eat chicken and fish for dinner. Camp fire. Sleep. Get up in the morning and play volleyball in sand. Then get into Godavari stream and enjoy the cool water. Get back to huts, get refreshed and again eat fish and chicken. Then return back. All I remembered about the trip is the scenic beauty of Papikondalu and tasty bamboo chicken.

                         

                          

                  

                          

    

December 1 : Chennai Marathon 

        This is my second Wipro Chennai Marathon and 5th overall. I was not sure if I can make it because I put on 5kgs compared to my previous marathon and I didn't practice. And I finished it. With this, I decided to stop full Marathons for a while and run only half marathons.

December 8 : Uncle's marriage 

        At last the long awaited marriage in my home is celebrated grandly. It was memorable because, it was a marriage performed after a gap of 15 years and also an occasion where I get to meet all my cousins, although we missed one. This marriage gave an opportunity for the entire family to gather at a place.

Me, with my cousins and my mother, with her four sisters

December 14-15 : Kondaveedu and Suryalanka beach

        I do not call this trek tough, but the toughest I have done so far. I reached Vijayawada by 1:30 AM and from there to Guntur by 3:30 AM. I met rest of the GHAC trek members and reached Phirangipuram by 6:30 AM. We had breakfast and reached the base of the Kondaveedu fort by 7 AM. Kondaveedu fort was situated on a group of hills. Our goal is to trek the kondaveedu fort and the hills as much as we can and reach the base by 3 PM. But little did we know about the outcome of our decision. One of the locals intimidated us saying that we cannot climb a particular hill. We started with it and climbed it. Then we aimed at second hill. We reached the top of it. We still had time. So we conquered the third hill. We got down the hill by 4:30pm. And when we tried to recollect all the hills we had conquered, we realised that we would not have moved an inch if we were informed earlier about our targets. In one of our organisers, Chandu's words , "the moment you see your destiny in a trek, you will lose interest in the trek ". I agree with him totally. I felt it was more about exploring rather than reaching destinations. 

              

                  

              

                  

                              

                                      

              

                         

       We had our lunch at Guntur and started to Bapatla for our night stay. We stayed at a beach resort. Enjoyed good food and camp fire. We woke up early the next morning at 5 AM. We took a walk along the beach, enchanted by the beautiful sun rise and occasional sightings of dolphins. Later we vacated the resort, had our breakfast and found shelter in a palm leave shed. We then played in the water and then started back to Bapatla for lunch. We reached Guntur by 6pm and our organisers procured us tickets for the movie Hobbit. I enjoyed the movie, although some of the team slept in the theatre. The trip ended with a sweet called "Malpova" brought by chandu. That felt like a fitting end to the trip

             

             

             

             

             

             

            

              
                                            

December 22 : Campus recruitment

        This was a surprise. I went to my own college to help my colleagues in recruiting students for the company. All I was hoping to do was conduct the written test, correct the answer sheets, short list the candidates for interview and leave the venue.

        And I did that. But, not just that. I have interviewed students too. For the first time I had a perspective to look at interviews from the point of view of interviewer. I saw what an interviewer observes in a student. It was never about rich resume - although big companies shortlist you based on resume - it was more about what you are and how can you project yourself honestly. Then the interviewer judges whether he can recruit you or not. I know that honesty doesn't work in placements. But, you need that to make your life at company peaceful. Bluffing now will only put you in trouble at workplace. If your company finds that you are different from what you projected yourself in the interview, you will land in trouble. I have interviewed four people. I only tried to judge them on what they speak and how confident they are on what they speak.

Book Worm

        Apart from travelling, I read many books this year. Here is the list of books I read this year. A short comment on each book I read .

1. Lord Of The Rings : Many events in the book are entirely different from the movie. To say it rightly, they adapted the novel very well to the movie

2. Catcher of the Rye : A short novel which says " Dying for a cause is immaturity, living for one is maturity "

3. Jane Eyre : Story of an orphan girl. Felt like many movies have copied from this novel. 

4. Motor cycle diaries : You know about this book. 

5. Animal farm :  A sattire on social inequality

6. The oath of vayuputras : The last in the Shiva Trilogy. Worst of the three parts

7. The Perks of being a Wallflower : Story of an introvert
8. Karamazov brothers : A story of three brothers in Russia 
9.Life of Pi :  You know about this
10. Nemesis : Typical crime novel
11. Train to Pakistan : Fiction story based in time period of Inda-Pakistan partition

        I wish to read more books next year than this year. But it may not be fulfilled owing to my other wish of reading "A game of fire and Ice". It already has 5 books. 2 more yet to be published. 


No adios, no welcomes. Here comes the abrupt end to the blog . 

P.S : I planned to write one blog each for the places I visited. It just did not happen. In 2014, I try to change this habit.

  

Meaningless

        I have grown desperate to write. Something. Yesterday, I came to library with the sole purpose of reading and writing. But I couldnt read beyond  pages and didnt write a single word. My mind stopped functioning. I tried hard to think of a topic to write something about. But I couldnt come up with one. So, today  I decided not to think of any particular topic to write about. I just want my pen to keep moving and the ink flowing. So, I am writing down everything that is going on in my mind - any thought or ideas. So, sometimes I might write two sentences that are totally irrelevant to each other. This part of my writing doesnt speak of any particular idea or thought. It is just a photocopy of whatever is going on in my mind now.  I might lose track of what I was thinking when I try to articulate sentences in a meaningful way. So, this writing might as well end up being a meaningless piece of literature. The only gaps I take in between are when I give rest to my hands. I write and then type. Speed with which I type and I think dont match. So, most of the times I end up losing my thoughts if I type. So, I prefer writing. Later, when I am at leisure I might type it and post it somewhere.
Posting something reminds me of my blog and the pending articles I was supposed to write. If I remember correctly, there are three articles pending - one on a trek with GHAC, another on a cycling trip with CTC and another on my trip to tirupati.
I give a break to my hands from writing and look at my locket. Is it a Yin-Yan symbol made of stone bought at Mahabalipuram. Many thoughts are flowing into my mind and many questions to ponder over.
Yin-Yan is a symbol of duality which says opposites dont oppose but compliment eachother. It also says everything has something quite opposite to its character in it. Hence you see a dark spot in white part of the symbol and a white dot in the dark part of symbol.
So, even if are a good person, you have a dark side inside you - sometimes hidden from others - which you are afraid to reveal to the world. It (dark spot) is well hidden from all sides by the white( your virtue). That dark spot can be anything - your past, your obsession with something. There is a very less chance that others knew about this dark spot of yours. And you are always afraid that people might come to know about it - especially if it is your past, which you cannot change. You do not want to reveal it to the world, but you might feel like telling about it to your dear ones. Because, one day, they might know your past and leave you. But will they forgive you for your past? What if your past is unforgiveable? You can easily forgive a crime, but not a sin. Everytime you think of your dark past, you hate yourself. You couldnt forgive yourself. You suffer agony for committing a sin - a sin which you cannot reveal to anyone, not even to your dear ones - for you are afraid of losing them. The only person who can forgive you is the person who has the same past and thinks about it the same way. Not even you can forgive yourself. Past is not just a story - a haunting reality that gives you nightmares.
What is the relation between sex and love? Regarding this topic I am totally disinclined towards taking any lectures from scriptures which have been manipulated since centuries. What are the necessary traits of a person who thinks he or she can have sex only with the person whom they love? This is a person who, even trying his or her best , cannot proceed to have sex with a person whom they dont love.
What are the necessary traits of a person who says that you can have sex with whomever you like but you will always love only one person in life? What makes him or her detach sex from love? Or why is there a relation between sex and love?
Indra was cursed for having sex with the wife of a rishi and he doesnt even love her. We can strike him off from the discussion by tagging him as a sex maniac. But doesnt sex maniacs fall in love? How do you define a person who says " I love only you and I would sacrifice my life for you, but I will not stop having sex with others" ?
And when you say  that your partner cannot have sex with anyone else other than you, are you not putting restrictions on their freedom?
What is the role of marriage in sex and love? What is a marriage? For me, its nothing but an approval from the society to have sex with the person whom you marry. Why do we need society's permission to live with a partner? All you need is your partner's acceptance. And why do I need society's permission if I dont want to live with my partner anymore? As said in a song " marzi se jeene ki bhi mein kya tum sab ko arzi du. Matlab ki tum sabka mujh pe mujh se bhi zyada haq hai "
Got a phone call. Lost track of all my thoughts.
You can never know what a person can do and what a person cant. You judge a person's capability by his or her previous actions you know of. But how can you take into consideration about his or her actions which you are not aware of? How reliable is your judgement which is based on facts you know but doesnt take into consideration the facts you have never heard of? To what extext can you go to help someone and to what extent can you go to forgive someone?
The fan is not working. I am sweating and I am hungry. But I am desperate to write.
I have a story in mind. I wanted to write a book on it. But then another story came into my mind. I wanted to write a movie script on it. But I couldnt begin neither of them. I am ashamed of my lack of dedication. Hence this desperation to write something - eventhough meaningless.
Theme of the book I wanted to write is " The only entity that is worth fighting for and dying for is a woman" Because eveything else can be made by man. Woman is what a man can desire for but cannot create it. Many men in history realised this.  Hence many battles fought and fortunes lost. They knew kingdoms can be won again and wealth can be earned. But there can never be a second woman who can make your heartbeat skip. If you are accusing me of objectifying woman, wait till I finish the book.

I resume writing

Lingering thoughts,

broken phrases,

morose mind,

lethargic life

Some prompt, some haunt,

some disdain, some challenge

I resume writing

Winter rain, chilled weather

bathe my bare skin

Cold breeze, hot coffee

give me life

Your memories

bring a smile from unknown lands

I resume writing

Burning desire, hot passion,

a small wish

Undeserving dreams, unfulfilling wishes,

accumulating emotions choke me

Cry for freedom

reaching the skies

I resume writing

Takshashila Shala

Who the hell are these people? What do they think of themselves? What is it that they want to achieve? Why is it that it is so important for them to achieve that they gave up their high paying government jobs and took this path? What is it that drives these people and what is it that gives them hope that they will be successful? Or are they at least thinking about the probability of success and how long it would take for them to see the results of their efforts?

These are the questions that stormed my mind when I entered Takshashila Shala on 6^th Nov, 2011 at IIT Madras, Research Park. To give a brief introduction, Takshashila shala is a group of think tank people, who organize seminars and round table conferences around the country, invite distinguished people in their own fields to speak and educate the people in public policy making. They believe that change can come through better policy making and those policy makers have to be educated.

This is the day’s schedule. There will be talks going on in three rooms and you can chose whichever talk you want to attend. Each talk is of 40 min (20min talk + 20 min Q&A). Five minutes break to move to other room. Talk begins at the gong of the bell and ends with another gong of the bell, no matter what.

The first speaker whose talk I attended was Mr. Raj cherubal. He is a social activist from Chennai. He contested in recent counselor elections in Chennai and lost. His talk mainly contested of his experiences during the elections. There was not even a speck of disappointment for losing the election. But his joy lies in realizing that there are people out there who want better governance. As governance doesn’t affect the old people much, they were demanding money, while the youth who knew about him, took the whole responsibility of campaigning. His campaign team consists of a lawyer, an IT professional, a marketing strategist, etc.. He did a door to door campaign which the contestants from major parties cant even dream of doing for the fear of facing rejections. Also I met two more people who contested for MLA representing Loksatta party (called as Makkal Sakthi). They were very young. They truly represent the idea of youth into politics. One of them is 28 yrs old while the other is even young and recently married. While they both lost in elections, they reasoned saying they took a very late decision to contest in elections and didn’t have enough time to interact with people. Both of them were part of anti-corruption movement in Chennai.

Mr. Raj Cherubal’s lecture began with a very thought provoking question. If you want to join politics, where do you start from? What is the starting point? Also he says that there is a very high market for young intellectual people in parties who realized that only these youth can win elections for them in the future. So, if you want to join politics join a party is what he said.

Next, I attended a lecture titled “righting copyrights” by Mr. Pranesh from Bangalore who works on copyright policies for a software company. He stated some astonishing facts about copyrights. However bad u sing a song, even in a bathroom you are still violating copyrights law. A mere click on “share” button on facebook, a mere re-tweet is a violation of copyright laws. I put my point saying that our civilization would not have reached so far, our tradition and culture would not have carried down for a long time if we bothered about copyrights. Whatever knowledge my father, grandfather, etc impart me is not their own, so they are violating copyright law, it at all there was a law. He agrees and moves further into the topic. Even if we are publishing something giving due credit to author either in an article, a book or merely sharing some one’s status message on facebook you are still breaking the law. Bell rang and the lecture has to be stopped.

I met him at the end of the day and had a small discussion. He concluded saying, “Stop thinking to live a life without violating copyrights law. You just cant. Its better that copyright law be restriced to some areas only.”

Next  is a lecture on India’s problems with Sri Lanka. As the speaker Mr. Suryanarayan worked for the fisheris department he restricted his talk to fishery problem between India and Sri Lanka. He mentioned some facts which no one in Tamilnadu, including fishermen and politician would agree. Talk began with narrating a recent prosecution of a tamil Fishermen in a court somewhere near Cochin. Then he explained the historical perspective of the issue and came to the present problem. The problem is this. There is a border line in the sea between Sri Lanka and India. No fishermen are allowed to cross the border. Crossing the line is treated as civil offence and they will be prosecuted by the court. For some reasons, fishing is banned in Sri Lanka.  While in India trolls are used which destroyed the entire ecology of ocean and there are no more fish. Despite many requests and warnings by Indian authorities, Indian fishermen began to venture into Sri Lankan sea. They even went so deep into the Sri Lankan territory that coastline of Sri Lanka is visible to their naked eye from their ship. Then Sri Lanka resumed fishery. Now Tamilian fishermen began to cut the fish nets of Sri Lankan fishermen. They didn’t protest. The problem actually began now. Sri Lankan army mistook the Tamilian fishermen for LTTE, began to shoot them and dump their fish into sea. They are not ready to take the risk of arresting these people and enquiring whether they are fishermen or LTTE. This angered the Indian government.  But the Sri Lankan government presented the satellite pictures of Indian fishermen crossing the border and entering Sri Lankan territory.

A thought provoking question was raised during the trial of a fisherman. When asked which country he belongs to, he replied that he belongs to sea. He has relatives in Tamilnadu, Sri Lanka, Andaman and Maldives. So which country does he actually belong to? He has no idea about the concept of passport. The reason for treating him as Sri Lankan fisherman is that the ship which carried him was registered under Sri Lankan government.

Next talk was by Mr. Kanchan Gupta, a journalist from Allahabad. He talked on why laws alone cannot work to remove corruption. He began with Gandhi’s violation of salt law with Dandi march. Discussion went on and an idea of second republic discussed. I am entirely new to this idea and have to know more about it. It kind of seemed like substituting a new system in place of present system of governance.  Kind of a second republic. Most of the people, including the speaker is in favour of this idea, but he strongly believes that it can never happen, even if there is a provision in constitution for this.

Next was lunch . 65 bucks for south Indian meal, which cant even fit in any corner of your stomach. I remembered Andhra mess.

First talk I attended in afternoon was my Mr. Gautam John. He works for a NGO. He has done lot of research and experiments on how to improve quality of primary education in government schools. He came to a conclusion that contract teachers and incentives for teachers are the only way to improve the quality of primary education.

Then was a talk by Mr. Vijayanand from loksatta(makkal sakthi) party on his experiences in political engagement. He was a businessman in USA. He gave up the business, came to India and joined Makkal Sakthi party. He spoke about his activies in the party and the response of people from different parts of Tanilnadu. He introduced to the two youngsters who contested in elections in Chennai and lost about whom I mentioned earlier. After the talk , I met these people and enquired about the fate of Anna Library. They said that they have filed a case in court and the court has issued stay order in converting Anna library to hospital. Then has a small discussion about RTI issues, as they had a lot of experience in sector.

Talk by Mr. Sameer Wagle was on private equity and entrepreneurship. He gave some suggestions regarding decision making in choosing a company to invest, when to withdraw, when to put up the company for public listing etc..

Final talk of the day I attended was by Mr. B. Raman. I entered the talk 2 mins late so I wasn’t sure of his qualifications. He should have been retired from a very high position in the security division of India. His talk was different. He did not encourage Q&A session. He said it would waste time in answering silly questions. So he spent the entire 40 mins on the talk. He came up with an disappointing fact. Every security failure in the country is because of Intelligence failure but not because of smartness of terrorists. He says we don’t have advanced technology, don’t have enough resources, no necessary finance, and more importantly the recruitment process is not providing the best people. He urged for a change in recruitment process, but it was never achieved. He spoke about the glory of intelligence in their ability to look 30 years ahead and make strategies. The success of formation of Bangladesh was given to Intelligence who saw cultural, geographical, economic differences between East Pakistan and West Pakistan. This helped in formulating in an idea to separate to nations. Also he gave the credit to Indian intelligence which along with Russia helped Americans to win in Afganistan.

All talks were ended by 5:40pm. I had some interaction with Mr. Pranesh regarding copyrights and also with Nitin Pai, the brain behind this entire concept of Takshashila. He said, at present they are concentrating on conducting these talks to educate people, to bring cutting edge discussions among people on strategic affairs and policy making. They are offering a 12 week course on public policy making, starting from January first week. Its an online course. First batch begins in January 2012. In the long run, they are planning to establish a university which educates people on the policy making.

Party at Bike & Barrel. After a brain storming day, I expected to relax there. But to my disappointment, I didn’t find even one person from fairer sex on a Sunday night at a pub. I came back to campus with my friend Revendra, .  He said something that I couldn’t argue anymore. He said,

“Don’t hate people who try to discriminate on the basis of caste, religion, creed, location. They are just ignorant fools who can’t understand that these things are of no value. Be human. Show some sympathy”

At the end of the day I felt it is a very long run, but someone has to run. And these people have begun the run. Takshashila shala deserves the name.

P.S: I have put my flowing memories and thoughts on the paper. So there might be chances of typo errors or wrongly framed sentences. Please ignore them.

My attitude on ATTITUDE

                 What is an ATTITUDE? I have been trying to answer this question since three years. After lots of research, analysis and a small help from Psychology class, here I have the answer.

                Before proceeding to answer this question, it is very much necessary to let ourselves think and realize the already existing answer we have for this question. We cannot overlap two answers. You should either not have an answer or have some answer. If you have an answer you should be able to completely understand it, irrespective of it being a right or wrong answer. If you found a new answer to the same question, you cannot just accept it just the way it is. First, you need to make room for the new answer. As the space is already occupied by an existing answer, you have to wipe out the old one. But you can’t reject an old answer just because you got a better answer. You have to start questioning the previous answer, unearth the flaws and mis-concepts in it which you failed to realize earlier. In other words, you cannot embrace the new answer unless you logically conclude the mistaken identity of the old answer. Unless you do this, you will be merely accepting the new answer, afraid to question your own stand, afraid of not having an answer, afraid of having a wrong answer. This can only make your thinking unreliable and unstable.

                What is not an attitude? Behaviour of a person is not attitude. Most people call it bad attitude when they don’t like the behaviour or others. Their behaviour might be arrogant, discouraging or of any other negative trait. Instead of stating that the person is arrogant we say that the person has a bad attitude. Try asking yourself what is a bad attitude. You will end up explaining the bad behaviour of the person. Behaviour and attitude are not the same.

                Confidence is not attitude. Confidence is the way you behave. Lack of confidence doesn’t make a person possessing wrong attitude. Confidence, outgoing, extrovert, etc.. may mean good attitude to many but still it is not called attitude. All these are the person’s characteristic qualities he developed over his life span or has undergone a crash course to attain the particular behaviour kind. All the soft skill trainings you come across doesn’t teach you attitude. They teach you how to behave, how to react, how to respond.

                The big problem lies here. It is an observable fact that people have an affinity towards the usage of words like “attitude”. They start using it whenever and wherever an opportunity knocks, irrespective of content and meaning. This widespread usage has given “attitude” a wrong representation and discovery of its true meaning has become a great achievement for layman.

                Then what is an attitude? Attitude is neither good nor bad, neither right nor wrong. Attitude is a skill which your experience and thinking teaches you. It is your guardian angel that guides you at every instant of life. It is not a quality which can be judged as good or bad. It is an essential possession of every man. Whatever quality you exhibit, whatever decision you take, whatever way you behave, all have a common source, a genesis for the entire process. It is attitude.                 Attitude is not static. It is ever changing. Its change is based on your new experiences and thoughts. Do not make a mistake here. Old attitude is not substituted with new attitude. Attitude is a self-evolving skill.

                In a crude way, attitude sometimes is called as opinion on some issues. As long as you think in the right direction and add experience to it, your opinion can never be wrong however contrasting it may be with others. Others opinion is based on their thoughts and experiences. The main reason why opinions may not coincide is the difference in experiences experienced by people. For different people, different experiences teach different things. So you cannot say a particular person’s opinion is right or wrong. You can only say so when you notice a flaw in their thinking process.

                How can you understand a person’s attitude? There are two possible ways. One is behaviour. A person’s behaviour towards something-person, idea, issue- tells about his attitude. As said earlier, attitude is the genesis of all the processes that run in your mind. So your behaviour is based on your attitude. Your behaviour is a combined result of your attitude, your mental condition and circumstances. These three aspects need not necessarily complement each other. The dominant feature dominates the behaviour pattern. So sometimes you end up behaving completely against your attitude. So behaviour can tell about a person’s attitude, but it need not always speak the truth. Hence, behaviour is not a reliable source in knowing a person’s attitude.

                Other is direct interaction with the person. There are many ways to know a person’s attitude in this method. You can have a friendly chat and know his/her attitude. You can give a formal questionnaire and ask for answers. There is only a minor problem with this process. What kind of questions do you phrase? Do your questions cause any ambiguity to the reader? Is it possible to misinterpret the questions? Taking care of these issues will help you in forming a reliable set of questions in knowing a person’s attitude.  Your part is almost done. Now all you have to do is to wait for the answers and interpret them. Ideally he/she would give the answers. But there is always the probability of circumstances affecting the credibility of his/her answers. Especially, the mood of the person and the relationship with the person posing the questions will affect the answers. So this method is not flawless.

                To conclude, as long as a person decides not to reveal his attitude, there is no way you can judge his attitude. And he can even mislead you. You cannot prepare a person to judge his attitude. Let the man be free and then his attitude shows up.

                Some people have helped me in my research on this topic, especially Krishna Chaitanya. And I have used some people as my subjects for my research without their consent. A sincere “sorry” and a whole hearted “thankyou” for their cooperation.

P.S: Even though many people know the true meaning of “attitude”, they are still prone to committing the mistake of misusing the word.

“Habits don’t die easily. They have to be brutally murdered”