Build your Character

“The gold ones,” She said. “Why”. Naveen was curious. “Because they seem cute.” “Why do they seem cute?” “They are beautiful”. “The white ones are beautiful too. They even have finer fins & better shine.” “But the gold ones swim more smoothly.” “Do they?” Naveen was always unsatisfied with the simple answers. The doorbell rang. “Maybe it’s your uncle”. The aunt wiped sweat from her forehead & rushed to the door. Before letting the uncle walk in she warned,“Naveen have a question”. Naveen is a 15-year-old boy with pale white skin, brown eyes & skinny body. In the middle of adolescence his thin haired golden beard, which matches its color with straight silky hairs of the scalp, covers half of his face. The key quality of this snub-nosed boy is his strong compliance to fundamental duties of every Indian citizen, one of which is, to develop a scientific temper & the spirit of enquiry. “Which one is your favourite fish?” He burst to his uncle. “Go...

If he wasn’t angry, his hands would have been intact. If he wasn’t angry Jai would not have to die. If he wasn’t angry Kaalia would not have to prove his loyalty to the salt. If he wasn’t angry Basanti would not have had to pose as a dancer to the dogs. Yes, I am talking about Thakur of Sholay. A wonderful classic masala film made in 1975. I saw it the first time when I was 15 & then 4 times more till now. Have you watched it? You must if you haven’t. Hey, wait! Where are you going? Don’t leave my blog in between, you can watch Sholay in a while. Dhuk Dhuk! Dhuk Dhuk! Dhuk Dhuk!  The tramples of horses can be heard. A brown horse is running ahead with a bearded & a bit untidy man sitting on its back who is being chased by a uniformed police officer on a white muscular horse. If someone had measured there speed then, I am sure it would have been found to be more than the speed of wind running past them. The man on brown is Gabbar, while the one on white is Thakur...

It was a dark cold night. The wind was blowing heavily through the trees. Peepal was shouting somewhere deep in the black. My brother was driving the car with aim to reach till the speed of light. It was ten in the night. We in the group of four were returning from a trip and were in the middle of a jungle. We seemed to have lost the way but continued on the road with hope to find a familiar sign. Suddenly in the illumination of headlights, we saw a police officer standing on the side of the road, with his bike parked. In the reaction of milliseconds, I hit on my brother’s shoulder & said “Stop, Stop. Let’s ask him the way.” He shook his head in disagreement & carried along the way. After we passed some distance I asked him that why he didn’t stop the car. He slowed down a bit & questioned me – “How do you know that he was a police officer?” I simply replied, “because he was wearing the police dress & had a police bike”. He said “then you weren’t watching closely. His...

I devote this entire post to the most important practice of life which most of us fails to do. If you have read my previous post “why aren’t you happy” you have had known by now the purpose of life for which we all should strive (refer https://buildyorcharacter.blogspot.in/2017/12/why-arent-you-happy.html ). Pursuance of self actualization & transcendence needs is the ultimate source of happiness & satisfaction in human life. Abraham Maslow in one of his statements said that, every human has a need to grow & use highest of his potentials in the right direction. This need if hindered by any way, leads to a sense of guilt & unworthiness in one’s life. But there is a major difference between knowing things & doing things. So how to devote oneself to achievement of such needs? In the words of Stephen R. Covey “you can’t build a house, if you don’t have a map of it”. Thus planning combined with action is the prerequisite for achievement. We can’t lead a useful ...

Long long ago… Oops! It’s actually not that long ago. I just heard most of the fairy tales in my childhood this way, so I thought it might ignite your interests too. Anyways. A week ago I was travelling in metro. I generally choose second coach of metro & stand on the bridge between the first & the second coach (only quirky ones will understand the reason). It was a Sunday, so there weren’t those middle aged pushy uncles or “thoda to adjust krlo” aunties. But still my peace was disturbed when I found an old school friend shouting at me “Dhruv, How come you here?”. We greeted each other with a hug. Than those same old general questions started – what are you doing? Where are you going now? Ooh! Now you are a big man? Whether is nice na? blaw blaw blaw…… Suddenly he said “Dhruv you are just the same man. You always seem to be happy? How the hell you do that?” Without giving it a thought I just said “because I am very optimistic”. He accepted the answer but didn’t seem to be...

“Give me six hours to chop a tree & I will spend the first four sharpening my axe”. This famous line was being said by the sixteenth US President Abraham Lincoln. What actually he had in mind while speaking those lines? While thinking of this I made my very own version of his quote. Yaa you got it right, I am a bit lazy kind of a person who always look for shortcuts. I actually found it very difficult to remember those 15 words so I divided them with my lucky number 5 to cut them into three magical words – “Plan Before Move”. Okay I will explain the concept to you with a short story. In school days, there used to be a friend of mine. He was orphan from birth & he lived next to my house. We used to go to school in the same bus & that’s where our friendship started. How exactly we met that’s a different story which I won’t tell you now as it will consume 3-4 pages of this post. His name was Chintu (please don’t laugh on his name, as it was being kept by his mother when ...

If we ask a student of today that why he does study, he will give answers like – to secure good marks, to earn a degree, to gain respect in the society, to make their parents happy etc. But these are really subtle answers, they aren’t well thought of. We as humans are in a habit of not going too deep to a question as it requires efforts, it takes time, it threatens our present schemas. We just do things without thinking much of their actual aim and consequence. The ultimate aim of education is to build both Intuition & Conscience. Intuition is the ability to predict future. By having the knowledge of past & present happenings we can reasonably predict what will happen in the future. If we can predict we can plan for it. If we can plan, we can prepare ourselves for it. Conscience refers to the ability to judge between right & wrong. Better a man is educated, better he will distinguish right from wrong. The more right decisions he make the better character he wi...