Sporting Memories

Today is Pongal. May this be the time to thank God, reap the harvest of hardwork and dedication and celebrate success.
Pongal used to be a festival to celebrate with the Sun God. Back home, it used to be wonderful to offer Pongal in a paanai (earthen pot) in the balcony, pray and enjoy a sumptous meal.
Tracking back the days, it used to be fun to eat, watch numerous TV programmes, new releases and so on.
While I track down memory lane, let me write what we discussed this week-end. My flatmates and I were in a serious mood of chatting that we found ourselves talking about all those cute, funny, 'intellectual' games that we used to play as kids.
And I list a few of them here and expalin a few of them.
Hide and Seek
Snakes and Ladders
Ludo
Scrabble
Frisbee
Business
A board game where mock currency is dstributed amongst players, and trading is done, cities are bought, mortgages are performed etc.

Cut the Cake
It is similar to the 'Running and Catching' game. The difference is that when the person who is being chased feels she might be caught, she shouts 'cut the cake'. When she does, another person runs in between the chaser and the runner. The chaser now has to chase this new person. When this new person feels tired, she shouts 'cut the cake' and another person runs between the chaser and the runner and so on....

Chain
A chaser chases a runner. When she catches the runner, both of them join hands and chase another person. When this person is caught, the three of them join hands and chase another and so on..

'Killer'
This is an indoor game played with chits of paper. The chits have 'King', 'Queen','Minister', 'Police', 'Killer' written on them. They are then folded and strewn. The players have to choose a chit. The person who is the 'Police' has to find the 'Killer'. The 'Killer' in the meantime has to wink at the others one by one by ensuring that the Police does not notice him. Obviously, the 'Killer' would not know who the 'Police' is. But he needs to wink at people one by one. And the person who is being winked at by the 'Killer' responds by saying 'I am Dead'. The 'Police' needs to make a guess who the 'Killer' is before the remaining person says 'I am Dead'.

'Name, Place, Animal, Thing'
Each person has a sheet of papaer with four columns- Name, Place, Animal, Thing. A letter of the English alphabet is chosen and each player, writes a name, a place, an animal, a thing starting with that letter. No two players should have the same entry.

Dodge Ball
A huge circle is drawn on the ground. Few players stand inside the circle and the remaining stand outside thecircle. The players outside the circle need to throw a ball at the people inside the circle and ensure that the ball hits someone inside the circle below the knee. That person is sent out of the game. The idea is to remove people inside the circle one by one.

Are these being played any longer?

"C" for Creativity

When someone tells you to creatively solve a problem what do you do? How do you start? Lateral thinking, out of the box solutions seem to be the jargons that every manager is fed with.
With increasing competition in the economic scenario, companies are forced to employ ‘creative’ strategies. With increasing competition from their peers, managers are compelled to deploy ‘creative’ solutions. But what exactly is being creative like? Is it doing something that no one has ever thought before? Is creativity based on facts?
I remember participating in creative writing competitions during college and even won one of them. I just had to think and write a story for which only the first and last line were given by the panel. Simple, isn’t it?
I worked with a multi national company that was bent upon improving employee satisfaction more so for its call center. Employees were given awards for numerous ‘excuses’. A customer complimenting an employee would automatically fetch a gift coupon for him/her. An idea of the employee that the company feels would be beneficial for it would fetch a reward. One of the managers came up with a practice called “peer-peer’ awards wherein boards with posted sheets were stuck on the wall. Any employee willing to appreciate another employee could go to the board, write on the sheet. The first three employees who had the maximum number of appreciations each month were rewarded. Apart from this, parents of all employees were sent a letter signed by all the mangers stating that their son/daughter was a star. Such small things mattered to the employees.
I remember hosting a debate competition at my college. I had prepared a few topics out of which one of the topics was “1+1 = 1X1”. I did not know why I gave that topic but I had nothing in mind then but just plain curiosity to see how the participants would think in a short span of 2 minutes. And yes, the participant who got this topic did justice to it. She immediately conjured up with the idea that 1+1 represents two individuals in the institution of marriage and after marriage they become one thereby representing 1X1. I think that was a brilliant explanation.
Let us take the success of the book “The Monk Who Sold his Ferrari”. With numerous self-development books flooding the book shelves, this was one book that carved a niche for itself. The recipe of the book was different. It had things that had been told to us before but it was packaged differently. It spoke of a story of a successful lawyer who failed at his personal relationship and who was on the verge of a breakdown until he discovered what life had to offer. This story added spice to the book and enabled it to become a best seller.

To be contd...

Digging Around and into the Mind

Gardening is a wonderful experirnce to be totally in touch with nature, forget the mundane happenings and be in sync with the greenery around. During one such afternoon, after a good drive, I was busy mixing manure for the plants in our small garden comprising of flowering plants. It required mixing three varities of organic manure. And after that, Dad asked me to dig around the plants to pour in the required manure for each plant. As I started digging around one plant and started filling up manure and mixing it with the sand, I was asked to dig more. I was told that the manure had to go in deep into the ground surrounding the roots of the plant for it to act. And hence I started digging. And at the same time pondering.
It is the same with life. To grow in our attitudes, values, we need nutrition to be supplied very close to our root-the root being our mind. It is essential to conceive what we want to grow at and apply this thought to our mind that would absorb and reflect it in our actions. The more nutrition we apply to our mind, the more we grow in a healthy manner. The resolutions that we take every New Year need to have a deep will in ourselves to see that they are followed. This conviction stems from the resolute mind. Thoughts keep appearing in our mind and vanishing. We resolve to do a lot of things but many a time, we fail to keep up with our convictions.
Those that stem deep from within have a greater impact.
Nature indeed teaches us lessons in a subtle manner.

A Culinary Lesson on Life

I was very enthusiastic about cooking pasta. It had been a long time since I made it and that day, I indeed wanted to savour it. After having the tomato puree ready and having chopped onions, I set some water for boiling. Once it boiled, I dropped chunks of macaroni into it. As I was stirring them in the water, I noticed that it took some time for the macaroni to get cooked. And as the water started throwing up bubbles, the macoroni started responding to the temperature by getting softer slowly. And as each moment passed, it got softer until it was just perfect to be mixed with the other ingredients.
And that is where it struck my philosophical bent of mind. Under extreme conditions, the macaroni, already hard and bland, reacted by getting softer and so perfect that lead it to being tasty. Is that how life treats each one of us? Probably extreme situations, mould us to become better individuals to sculpt ourselves better that we already are. Probably extreme situations are created to enable us to realise that we have the capability to handle them and react in a positive manner.