Some fun moments

“Hey Habi! Whats going oooooonnnnnn”

6 months into the MBA and 5 months to go. I just realized today how incredibly diverse people I interact with on a daily basis. The above is my southern friend Chris’ friendly drawl. Most people I have met so far have trouble pronouncing ‘Abhishek’, so ‘Aabi’ it is. As much as I love diversity, I hate being led on tours. While being hustled with a bunch of tourists by loud, overenthusiastic guides may remain the world’s preferred way of traveling, I enjoy entering alone into new sorroundings, letting the solitude foster a silent, expectation-free, trusting bond between the two of us. The university has a plethora of such hidden delights, which I keep discovering accidentally. Some memorable experiences –

• 1. Swimming in the O’Connell pool for the first time, which is a full Olympic sized indoor pool freely available to university students.
• 2. Dinner at Gator Dining, with a 24-dish salad spread, Italian, Mexican and Mediterranean counters for food, unlimited beverages and desserts, worth every penny.
• 3. Lake Wauberg, with facilities for rock climbing, kayaking, beach volleyball and more.
• 4. Drifitng into the political science building, with its congressional décor, dark burnished wood flooring and low overhanging lamps.
• 5. Downtown Gainesville, with tons of partygoers thronging the pubs and discos.
• 6. Playing the basketball intramurals, winning 3 games and partying afterwards.
• 7. Meeting and learning from a plethora of new people, Cameroonian, French, Chinese and of course, Floridan.
• 8. Football games at the swamp! 90,000 loud , cheering fans egging on the number one rated gators onto SEC dominance.

What is right?

What is right? As long as something does not hurt someone is it right? Which moral codes are valid, which are simply brainchilds of a fanatical mind? What i value most in a human being is his or her respect for himself and his/her honor for others....Beliefs and practices come in second. Some of the best people i have known, some of my closest friends drink like fish, party like crazy and a lot of wrong things. Yet they are people i can count on when times get rough. A lot of 'respectable' people are the kinds who spend their entire lives in the pursuit of fame, wealth and status. People who could appear sensitive but are so cold-blooded that it scares me. Who is right? How can one judge a person to be good or bad - is it because he/she does not smoke/drink/socialize? Is it because he/she is outgoing and daring? I have had plenty of friends of both kinds who are flawed but wonderfully caring people, and i have plenty of those who live like moths, chasing the flame that consumes them. I get confused at times.

A bit on cultural sensitivity

“Who Am I?” – such a profound multi-dimensional question! The quality, and the timing, of the answer are directly proportional to worldly and spiritual success.

When answered sincerely at the end of a profound meditation, it creates moksha. When answered correctly, during preparation of college admission essays or job interviews , it helps make smart decisions and achieve career success. Interviewers are always trying to gauge the candidate’s persona and genuineness through their questions. When introspected before a social gathering, it could lead to interesting conversations and new friends.

Yet, it is a hard hard question to answer. How do we arrive at the answer? A rare few individuals manage to answer this question on the basis of pure insight. Most of us discover the answer by scanning people around us. Ok so that guy is tall, which means I am short. That guy is poor which means I am rich. That girl scored 75% while I scored 90%, which means I am smart. Obviously, we have certain dreams of how we want our lives to be, things that would make us happy. Now, wise men say that happiness is a choice – but the devious mind calls for confirmation and proof to trust oneself and others and be content. Either one can trust that he/she is capable of facing the challenges in life, or he/she can face the challenges, succeed and then trust that this is possible. The two often form a circle, with trust leading to accomplishment leading to more trust and bigger challenges.

I read a wonderful article recently from the Harvard Business Review on how to adapt to cultures and work with people. Titled “Cultural Intelligence” , Earley and Mosakowski, HBR October 2004, this paper indicates two kinds of intelligences – emotional intelligence, which allows us to define who we are and how we are different from others, and cultural intelligence, which is understanding the values and beliefs that drive different groups. Meditation helps develop both – a keen awareness of who I am and going beyond the emotions, and a sharp perception to discern what works and does not work with people. One need not be a football of anyone’s culture, but being sensitive is important. There are three ways of doing this – through the head, through the heart or through the body. Training through the head involves understanding the beliefs, customs, and taboos of new cultures. Learning form the body involves mimicking small gestures the way others do it – it could be a simple way of shaking hands or small mannerisms. A Michigan professor found that candidates who were perceived to be culturally more similar to recruiters often had better chances of landing the job. Learning from the heart involves being strong to face setbacks and failures and keep moving. People can do that if they believe in their own efficacy. If they persevered in the face of challenging situations in the past, their confidence grew. Confidence is always rooted in mastery of a particular task or set of circumstances. This is where seva is so important, it teaches one to persist, to redefine their limitations and to break them, and to keep moving ahead.

Competition and Contemplation in a 10k race

I ran my first 10km race today. Organized by the Living Well foundation and the University of Florida, it was a contest between students and faculty. The track was pretty, with a lake and woods along the way.

What was most interesting was watching the thoughts and emotions arising in my mind:

1. Pre-Race:

I was a little awkward for this was my first competitive 10k run. I have always run alone, for my own sake, and was nervous about running with others. What if i burnt out, or couldn't finish? What if the others were really good? How could i hope to compete with americans who are so much fitter and train so much more for such events? Maybe i should have stayed at home and studied for the imminent exams.

I just kept saying 'No' to these thoughts. Afterall, how can i ever know what is good/bad for me without doing new things? How would i know how good/bad i am without doing things? I am scared by the thought of restricting myself to a limited set of beliefs and learning little about the world. And this kept me going on.

2. During the race -

I had nearly 25 people ahead of me in the first 5k lap. A part of me was saying run or you would be left behind, another part kept saying go slow, dont burn yourself out. I ignored these thoughts, as they are so tiring, and settled into a steady breathing rhythm and kept running at a pace slightly faster than comfortable. Instead of looking to the leader, i would look to the next person ahead of me and catch up to them one by one. By the second lap, i was in third place.

I was helped by the interval training i have done for the last month and a half. This involves alternating between jogging and sprinting. Plus i have been having a more protein rich diet.

3. End of the race-

Throughout the second lap, i kept my focus on the two guys ahead of me and kept gently accelerating to catch up. They had a 120 m lead which i eventually cut to 20m, and i finished third in the race, at 44:11 seconds, 20 seconds behind the second placed guy. Not a bad debut!

I felt a mixture of emotions - euphoria, that i had not only completed the run but had actually been successful against runners who had participated in many more events. My small mind, which was filled with doubts at the begining, was now dying to get back and announce to the whole world that i had won, i had won.

And then i thought, how futile, how juvenile is this mind, which measures my worth based on how the world is, rather than trusting my capability. Guruji had mentioned in 'Feelings and Fools - "How can a piece of wood (an award) be the most important thing in your life? Don't you know that you are good?" And i felt much calmer and clearer then.

In all competitions i have participated in, the winner is always a person who believes in himself, before comparing himself/herself with others. And that self belief is beautiful.

Jai Gurudeva!

Jesus is the only way

Saw a brilliant Jewish preacher lecture untiringly for 5 hours today at an open courtyard about why Jesus is the only way. Students heckled him incessantly but the man was unrelenting. He fervently believed that the Bible was the only way and all those who were not Christians were not good human beings. He was jeered, abused, ridiculed and challenged incessantly by students for the whole time but he kept talking, he never yielded. This was a man who was ready to face anything for his faith and could not accept that there was any other way other than that of Jesus.

I asked him "I am not a Christian does that mean i am not a good human being?" He said, "No". I asked "Are only Christians good human beings? He said "Yes". I asked him "Why is that?" He said "Do you believe 2+2 is 4?" I said "No." He was at a loss. Then he said "I cannot explain to you why 2+2 is 4. It would take too much time." I said, "Then you are being illogical". I said "I have seen another Muslim leader who was 5 times as convinced as you are that his was the onlyway. He addressed an impressionable crowd like you today and He was also right." At which he started objecting "There is a reason why muslims are not right, do you want to know?". I said "You know people like you are the reason why there are suicide bombers in the world today." And he repeated "There is a reason why muslims are not right, do you want to know?" I said "No" and i walked away with the man speechless.

Been ages

Its been a quiet life for some time. Florida Gators are rated the top (american) football team in the country, and we have a 85,000 capacity stadium on campus. Fooball games here are a festival - preceded by tailgate parties, which mean music and beer being served outside the back of a truck and people pitching small tents and picnic at spots around campus. The college football season commenced a couple of weeks ago and the opening game was fun - with a packed stadium covered in orange and blue (our colors), chants, noise and cheerleaders.

I have a lighter term with fewer courses than the summer, so the pace is more sane. Have been playing more basketball and doing a lot of running. Also started swimming recently, which is now my favorite exersise. It is light on the joints and heavy on the muscles and lungs. Plus the recreational facilities in the university are phenomenal - we have two olympic sized swimming pols available free of charge to students.

The university is very very colorful at present, with 49,000 new students entering this fall. The boys hostels (fraternities) and the girl's hostels (sororities) got done with their rush weeks - which is the week where these halls finalize which students get into their halls. Gainesville has beautiful weather presently, with plenty of student-run activities to commence in the weeks to come.

The aftermath of a hard exam

I survived the summer term, where in barely 12 weeks, the students took 10 courses, which meant dealing with 20 exams, 28 assignments and case studies, 2 presentations, 4 professional development seminars, in a culture I naively thought I understood based on all the TV and movies I had seen. Who said being a nerd was easy? Competitive studying is so similar to competitive sports. They require brutal focus, stamina, a disregard for self-preservation, willingly yielding the right to life and prioritization to the extreme. Not to forget, keeping up the self-motivation when everything else seems so rosy and pretty and tempting. I have always been impressed by good students who perform in their acads and extra-curriculars. Unsurprisingly, most of the toppers I have known since 7^th grade have been very well-balanced individuals.

Although I am no expert in the field, there are a few things about studying I can share.

What does it take to do well in studies? Greed would suffice. I am yet to come across high scorers who did well in exams without meaning to. Our society demands performance, results. A good, high-paying job largely goes to a well-performing individual. Companies talk about hiring well-rounded individuals, but that means they want good students with good social skills as well. So what can we do to get better?

As mature individuals, we need to realize that exams exist! They are a part of your life, not an anomaly recurring every 3 months. I wonder how some people manage to live through 20 years of studies claiming how bad this exam was and how well they would do in the next one. There is no next time. The subjects can change, the questions may change, but the basics for studying stay the same. That’s why good students stay good students almost throughout.

Taking exams and studying well have helped me personally as well. As an individual, I would often be scared when held accountable for a job. I would often be the last person to take on new challenges. Exams are brutal because they seem to inaccurately summarise your complex, multi-dimensional personality in cold, impersonal numbers. To do well, you would have to get involved with your time, energy and emotions. You would have to respect those grades. The shortest way out of a problem is through it. When you work completely towards doing well in exams, you would discover greater confidence and mental toughness, because of all the challenges you willingly undertook.

How to do better? Here’s the age old formula – have a time table and a schedule for how you shall cover your syllabus. This is really important because it channelizes all your energy towards the task at hand. Scheduling is an art, practiced and renewed. The next, more important step is, sticking to the schedule. This part usually hurts. Your mind will play tricks on you, not co-operate or focus, etc. But you are greater than your mind, and regularly doing kriya, meditation and short satsangs by yourself will help you recharge your prana and come back to your commitment.

You may have to swallow your instincts of self-preservation and study like it’s the last thing you have to do before you leave the planet. The mind may alternate between dementia, depression, whoops of elation, dullness, lack of energy, loss of muscle tissue, throbbing headaches, vacation fantasies but you will be perfectly fine with some kriya and exersise. i mean, studies never killed anyone, although my roommate at IIT came close when he contemplated poking his finger in the switchboard to end his 'final exam' misery. But you shall live, and with good marks!