Mundane Myriad

Your Indianness is established when you are rushing in the peak hours of traffic along with varieties of other vehicles, starting from tractors to cars, spread across 3/4 lines in the not so wide road, heading in one direction, few bikes & auto rickshaws wade their way exactly in the opposite direction & stare at you as if it's you who is violating the traffic rules.. 😳😳 As I was settling down in my seat in the train for an overnight journey, spreading the white bedsheet given by the railways on my allotted seat, my co-passenger from the front seat, spreads his legs, rests his feet right on the top of my bedsheet & strikes a conversation, "aur aap ki kahan tak ki safar hai"? (How far will you travel)...on learning I'll get down by early morning, he suggests "tab toh aap ko jaldi sho jana chahiye" (then you must sleep early)... I suddenly felt some apnapan (warmth) in that rawness of dirty legs still resting on my clean bedsheet, kind of feel...

The evening of 10th December, 2016 would be one of the most memorable days in my life.  I was in Istanbul at that time. I was invited as a Keynote Speaker in the “7th International Conference on Governance, Fraud, Ethics & Social Responsibility” jointly organized by Bahcesehir University, Trakya University and International Group on Governance Fraud Ethics & Social Responsibility forum to deliver my speech on CSR . The day was full of activities with the conference rolling out, speech by various speakers including me, intermingling with conference participants from various places across Europe and so on. In the evening, m y local host, the Conference President and Professor in Bahcesehir University, Prof. Ipek, and her husband Giuseppe, who is an Italian settled in Turkey, invited us for dinner- me, my friend from Trakya University, Turkey, Prof. Kiymet, and another conference delegate from Albania- to one of the hot & happening places in Istanbul, Taksim Squa...

As a child, I'd often think probably God is up there, in the heaven, above the clouds, in the sky.... when I fly above the clouds now, I don't see Him there in the sky... then I realise probably He is down there with us, among us, within us.... And as they say, "To Him we come, to Him we all return"...