Fellowship

Last Thursday - the 98 birth anniversary of poet Vinda Karandikar - brought along a memory (told to me by my father) about the ‘Murgi Club’. Vasant Bapat, Mangesh Padgaonkar, Gangadhar Gadgil, Sadanand Rege, Shri Pu Bhagwat and Vinda met regularly for several years to eat together and spar with wordplay and literary jokes. The ‘Murgi club’ was loosely fashioned after the Algonquin Round Table.

For over ten years from 1919 to 1929, a group of New York City writers, critics, actors, and wits met every day over lunch at the Algonquin Hotel. They engaged in wisecracks, wordplay, and witticisms. Daily association with each other, both at the luncheons and outside of them, inspired members to collaborate creatively.


Many of us are part of such tables of fellowship, where we eat together, engage in wit and wisecracks. But it is pertinent to ponder whether these meetings lead to creative collaborations or empower individual expression triggered by the influence of the collective. Just delicious food and humour cannot be an enduring motivation.

While the principal purpose is to have a good time with persons who can take and give witticisms, the larger purpose that sustains such groups is the food for thought that gets shared at the fellowship table. Hence it is important for the group to have diversity of capacity and competence and everyone has to respect this diversity.

Fellowship should not be just about a group with a common aim or intent. It should not just be about friendships, relatedness or connection between colleagues in a group. It should move beyond fun to interesting collaborations or it should empower individual contributions triggered by the ideation at the fellowship table.

That fellowship table is the most sought,
Which serves diverse food for thought!

- Pravin K. Sabnis

Signals

Imagine a truck traveling up the slopes. The driver notices a red light blinking on the dash board. He ignores the sign of the engine being overheated. Next, he hears some rattling sound. He plays deaf to the signals of alarm.

Still further, he notices in the rear-view mirror, smoke emerging. Yet again, he plays blind to what could be dangerous. There are no prizes for guessing what would be the fate of such a careless driver and his vehicle.


The above analogy connects to a metaphor that is dear… our Mother Earth. Over the years, we have received many signals that project a big disaster. Earthquakes, Tsunami, droughts, floods, landslides, global warming and many other alarms are being ignored by us.

We react in the aftermath but fail to do enough to show that we are really learning anything from successive environmental mishaps. We speak about the tragedy but fail in subsequent action that should ensure that we secure our future.

Environment Awareness should not be just about blank words. The ultimate solution to every environmental problem, from deforestation to pollution lies in each of us taking the responsibility for our own acts. Each time an individual stands up for the environment or acts to improve it, there is a tiny ripple of hope.

Making little lifestyle changes can have a big effect if everyone does it. Whether you take a shower instead of a bath, reduce your energy use or reduce your carbon footprint, the benefits are big. We must inculcate the 4Rs – Reduce, Reuse Recycle and Re-engineer solutions and choices in our actions to save our environment.

Heed signals of the impending devastation
Our environment needs committed action!

- Pravin K. Sabnis

Rainbow

Seven colours bind together for the rainbow to emerge…
Would a rainbow ever form, if they chose to diverge?
- From the poem ‘Stars’ by yours truly

The rainbow is my favourite analogy to use during my unlearning workshops. A ray of sunlight passes through a raindrop and breaks into a spectrum of seven colours. It is pertinent to note that seven diverse colours remain united in the alignment arc. If they were to branch off into various directions, the rainbow would not take shape.

This analogy has a deeper dimension as we celebrate our country’s Independence Day. We are a nation of diversity of variety. Languages, customs, attire, beliefs, cuisine, looks… everything is as wide-ranging as it can be. The dissimilarities are obvious and oft result into differences.

Never mind the differences, we must choose to align ourselves to the real spectrum of the diversity of India. To paraphrase Voltaire, we may disagree but not become disagreeable. We may argue but we must not allow the argument to needlessly widen the rift.

So often, so many of us mistakenly insist on uniformity for alignment. But diversity is stifled by uniformity as the rainbow would lose its essence if the seven colours were to turn into a single hue. Acceptance and respect for the different dimensions of ethnicity, gender, socio-economic status, physical abilities, ideas, beliefs and ideologies will empower the diversity of our country.

Rainbow is born of alignment not uniformity
We must learn to accept the varied diversity!

- Pravin K. Sabnis

Self Control

A Zen story unfolds the exchange between three students who are insisting their master is better than others in terms of self-control. The first one declares, ‘my master can stay for days without eating.’ The second one proclaims, ‘my master is greater… he can stay for weeks without sleep.’ The third calmly stated, ‘my teacher is the best at self-control… he eats when he’s hungry and sleeps when he is tired.’

Like all Zen stories, it holds many lessons… however the most pertinent point is that self-control is not about forceful abstinence but it is about wilful moderation. It is about doing things when needed. It is about doing things at the right time. It is about doing things for the right reason. It is about doing it for the ones that matter.

Let us consider an analogy: three friends speaking about the space in their relationships. One brags, ‘I can stay for days without speaking with my kith and kin.’ The second boasts, ‘I can stay for weeks without meeting them.’ The third wisely states, ‘ I strive to speak to them when I remember them and make efforts to meet them when I miss them.’

So often, so many of us choose to forego our needs… not just the basic ones but the higher ones as well. We must choose to do a little of everything we need to. We must choose to reclaim relationships that have withered with time. We must choose to reconnect with our passion by doing the things that make us happy: hobbies, dreams, discoveries and something new!

Self-control is about doing all the things that matter. Self-control is about doing them regularly in small doses, not in occasional large doses. Self-control is about moderation and walking the middle path between the extremes of over-indulgence and obsessive abstinence.

Between indulgence and abstinence is a middle way
Self-control is doing a little of everything, every day!
- Pravin K. Sabnis

Quizzical

In a quiz, even the loser (who cannot answer a particular query) turns an eventual winner (the knowledge base is widened once the answers are disclosed)… it encourages the spirit of enquiry and discovery in the minds of the participants as well the audience… it helps nurture a questioning mind, a positive outlook and a wide-angle approach to developing new dimensions to our database of information.

Quiz Masters like Siddharth Basu and Derek O’ Brien are personalities who have been able to develop multiple facets in a multi-dimensional world… In fact, Quizzing in India has developed its own, unique flavour because it involves diverse genres of different geographical regions, cultural diversity, a colourful history and an emerging collective conscience…

Whenever, any parent asks me for recommendations to develop the personality of their child, I recommend the embark on a journey of discovery… activity that involves Mother Nature (from sports to trekking), the Library Habit and developing team spirit through participation in team activities… and of course, Quizzing…

Inculcate the attitude of proactive enquiry
Turn quizzical on the path of discovery…

- Pravin K. Sabnis