Seek, Plunnge and more..

We are six months old now. Read more to find out our first baby steps here... #communication #creativity #confidence #joyoflearning #curriculumfor21stcentury

  School of Meaningful Experiences took its first baby steps and is now 6 months old. We successfully wrapped-up our 9-day summer camp last week. 21 awesome teens from all over Bangalore, some as far as Nagarbhavi, Malleshwaram, Hebbal, JP Nagar besides Koramangala, HSR Layout and Indiranagar joined the camp. I am very grateful to their parents who braved the notorious Bengaluru traffic every day…

School of Meaningful Experiences – the first quarter.

On Feb 20th 2019, I touched the milestone of “First Quarter” of the School of Meaningful Experiences (SoME). I feel a tremendous sense of gratitude towards God and all of you. Thank you for your wonderful support and look forward to more of it as I move forward in this journey. This blog post is to share with you a quick summary of how I got here and where am I headed with SoME.

I decided to…

Jogging in boxer shorts!

On Saturday mornings, I drop my daughter to her dance class and then walk in a park nearby. I love that place. It has a jogging track, nice benches to sit around, a mini playground for kids and even an outdoor gym. On one such Saturday, after dropping my daughter, I was enjoying my walk in this park. Suddenly, a young fellow, maybe in his thirties, zoomed past me and caught my attention. He was…

Boredom could be good for you. But it is hard to deal with it. Read more why and how you should try to get bored once in a while.

Every summer, I conduct boot camps on oratory for teenagers. Most of my work is with MBA students, entrepreneurs and senior business executives. So working with a younger group is a refreshing experience. But, making them sit in one place to think and reflect is impossible since they get bored and distracted easily. So I had to pack many activities which were fun for them but left me exhausted.…

Here’s your reward… No thank you. I don’t need it.

In the last few weeks, two events caught my attention. One event was that Mr Rahul Dravid, The Wall and the coach of the under 19 cricket team, turned down the reward money given to him by the government after the team won the world cup. Instead, he asked that the amount be equally distributed amongst the team management and the support staff. Mr Dravid is a rare breed and this is not the first…

People like Omkar are the glue of this world. They play a very important part in keeping things together and making things work for someone else.

The best movie I watched this year was “Dangal” – a story of a father obsessed with a dream of making his daughters into award-winning professional wrestlers. But this blog is not about the main hero Amir Khan or the girls and the difficulties they had to face. This blog is about a character from that movie who won my heart – Omkar, played by Aparshakti Khurana, and many more characters like him…

How do some people get away with their flaws like for example Farhan Akhtar's singing and Richard Branson's speeches? Read more to find out

I am a big fan of Farhan Akhtar. In 2001, he came out with a movie called “Dil Chahta Hai” and redefined Indian cinema. He is extremely talented and proved that he can script and direct movies. In 2007, with “Rock On”, he proved that he could act as well. But wait, he does not stop there. He also proved that he can sing and this is where things get interesting. He has also proved that he can be a…

I was quite sad to read about Arjun's suicide. As a society we are not open in discussing failures and treat it like a scar that tarnishes our image. As a first step, I am sharing my own trough of sorrow and how I am coping with it. Please share your own stories and help any Arjun out there from going to the other side.#failureaintbad

The last few weeks have been very strange for me personally. I was dealing with a major setback in my life and was wallowing in my “trough of sorrow” — a term made famous by Paul Graham of Y-Combinator and explained beautifully by Joe Gebbia of AirBnB in a must-listen podcast called “How I built this”. And then a few days ago, I read about the shocking suicide of a 24-year old student. He was in…

Remember, just like how food gives nutrition to our body, books give nutrition to our brain. So pick a book and nourish your brain.

Kitaabo: The Blue City Literature Fest for Children concluded in Jodhpur last week. The initiative was conceptualised by my friends Ira and Vikas with an objective to encourage kids and teens to read more books. Being a teacher of management subjects and an author of nonfiction myself, I curated a list of few nonfiction books for teens and shared the list in my sessions at the Kitaabo Fest. This…

I know many of us dread coming on stage. We think that we will make mistakes and make a fool of ourselves. But see how Patti Smith teaches all of us a lesson on how to deal with such a situation #nervousonstage #fearoffailures #whattosaywhentoshutup

2016 has been a remarkable year for literature and music. For the first time in history, a Nobel Prize for literature was given to one of my favourite songwriter and singer – Bob Dylan. Times, sure are a changing. Last weekend, Patti Smith attended the prize distribution ceremony in Stockholm on his behalf and sang one of his songs- A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall. I watched the entire song and was…

Want to start your own online course? Here is a guide to get you started...

Online education is a reality and will only become more pervasive in future. One can either ignore or embrace it. There has been a healthy debate on whether it will replace the classrooms. My personal view is that it is a powerful tool that will definitely complement learning for a student. And as a person who started his career in technology and has seen how it transforms lives, I chose to…

My Dad is my favorite teacher. Every time I go back to my home-town to visit my parents, I learn a thing or two from him.On the occasion of Father’s Day, I thought I will share a wonderful lesson that I learnt from him during my recent visit. My Dad built his first house after he retired from his job.The locality was new and slightly outside of the city. There were very few houses around at that…

Don't we skill ourselves for our jobs in the corporate world? Parenting is a BIG challenging job of our lives too. But are we skilled enough to handle that challenge?

A terrible monster lurks in lakhs of homes in India and is threatening the lives of the teens. This monster slowly captures the minds of teens and keeps increasing the pressure like a bench vice. This monster is called “stress of studies”. In the last few weeks, there have been many teen suicide cases. Most of them were connected to poor results and stress due to exams. Just yesterday, a district…

What are these dots? How does one CoLLect them?- Part 2

It all started when one of my students popped the question “Sir, have you heard Steve Jobs’ speech at Stanford?”. I said yes and also told him that I have seen the video so many times and used it as a case in my MBA classes, that I remember many of the lines as well.  The student continued “he mentions about connecting the dots and I haven’t quite figured that out. I mean, I want to be an…

CoLLect the dots. Stop worrying about connecting them- Part 1

This post is a summary of my lecture with a bunch of smart young student entrepreneurs few days ago. It all started when one of them popped the question “Sir, have you heard Steve Jobs’ speech at Stanford?”. I said yes and also told him that I have seen the video so many times and used it as a case in my MBA classes, that I remember many of the lines as well.  The student continued “he mentions…

The other day, I was returning back home from campus. The traffic was unusually congested because of rains caused by a huge cyclone on the east coast of the country. Cars were moving bumper-to-bumper and tempers were high. Everybody wanted to get home as fast as possible.

At one point of my journey back home, their comes an underpass. Those who want to go towards the city have to go through it.…