I hit a sixer on the first ball of my new inning. This is
how.
My sixtieth birthday was approaching. Everyone around wanted
it to be a grand event. They gave me a lot of suggestions. I had to comply,
since these came from my dear ones. I fulfilled wishes of all of them, of
course by twisting those suggestions to suit my plan.
Some wanted me to travel. I drove 800 kms on my birthday to
meet some amazing farmer inventors.
Some wished me to go to a temple and perform pooja - I went
to two temples of my choice - IIMA (Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad) and
Gandhi Ashram.
Some wanted me to enjoy exotic food - I ate pani puris with
eight flavours of pani!
My mother urged me to read scriptures on my birthday. I did.
My wife asked me to do something for the poor and for stray
animals. Well, I met only part of her requirements – I gave a big tip to
Prakash, the auto guy, who was my guide throughout my stay in Ahmadabad. The
stray animals bit is pending.
When I started planning for my birthday, my naïve wish was
to spend a day in Gaya where Buddha attained enlightenment and also to visit a
colleague who had started an NGO for women near Ranchi. Alas, my friend turned
it down saying the workshop was closed because of vacations.
My next choice was to meet Prof Anil Gupta, an amazing
activist bringing visibility to illiterate inventors. To my delight, he invited
me to come and stay at IIM. He also arranged meetings for me with a few
organizations.
And so at 3 a.m. on my sixtieth birthday I was travelling
with some research students who were meeting a few inventors.
The first one was a farmer who had set up a small kiln to
make fly ash bricks. He collected fly ash, a waste from large plants, made
bricks and sold them to the same companies. He earned a small profit; the
companies got brownie points for this green initiative.
The next inventor was a farmer some 300km away from the
first one. He had converted his Bullet bike into a tractor/ plough.
Back to Ahmadabad at midnight.
Next on the agenda was to
visit Sristi, an organization that lab-tests medicines invented by farmers.
They also package and sell these on behalf of the inventors. Interestingly, the
labels on these medicine bottles carry the inventors’ names.
The next day was for fulfilling my mother’s wish - read about
Hastamalaka’s verses. These verses are by Hastamalaka, seemingly an idiot who
attained enlightenment in a flash when Adi Shankara (Hindu philosopher – 788AD-820AD)
asked him – “Who are you?” “Where did you come from?”.
The answers to these questions are a gist of Hindu Advaita philosophy.
While reading the commentary by Adi Shankaracharya on his disciple’s verses, I
found a beautiful statement – ‘The desire of every living being on this earth
is to enjoy happiness, all the time and to be, always, free from sorrow.’
Finding this statement really insightful, I built a whole presentation around
this for my workshop planned the next day for some engineering students in their college. It fitted
very well with the topic – ‘how to prepare yourself for the corporate journey’.
The next day was for visiting an amazing school, RiversideSchool. Besides studies, they also build good citizenship in students. One of
the achievements by these students has been to get the local government to
declare some roads ‘traffic free’ on weekends to allow children to play.
I won’t talk much about my visit to the Gandhi Ashram.
Everyone, after the visit, comes out with a determined look on the face to do
something for the people only to forget about it after a while. My visit was no
exception.
My next visit was to National Innovation Foundation. They
maintain register of all grass root level innovations. The register has over
15,000 entries; only some 600+ of them are patented. Any takers to help poor
farmers take their innovations to the patent stage?
And my last day was a big day; meeting Prof Gupta. He told
me about the grass root inventions happening across the globe, about
‘Shodhyatra’, the annual scouting event to identify inventors. He also shared
his pains, one of them being lack of awareness. As a parting gesture, he gave
me editorials of his newsletters of past twenty years. He wished if people
could come forward to translate them in all Indian languages. Any takers?
This is my snapshot of how I celebrated my sixtieth
birthday. If I score many runs in this inning, I can always say, well I started
with a bang. Hope my sharing helps those who are planning for their milestone
birthdays.
