Branding of Gods.

Everything in this world has a gestation period, some things for a longer time remains popular in human minds and is sooner or later replaced by something new in the same segment of the former popular thing. The same thing is similar and familiar with ‘God’. God may be one but human have made him into many and every human has its own God now a days.

So this makes me think, “is there a reason that people are looking for someone specific (GOD) to take care of themselves?”

-The answer for this question is as simple as the marketing concept of branding suggests, that one name has a brand life and people tend to choose the most popular brand and in search of that they are choosing something specific for themselves.

Remember the days when human beings did not know about the Sai Baba. Where they not happy? Were things not going right? Was not life as it is today? Human being is a such a complicated species created by the Supreme Power whose want has never been satisfied, they are not happy with one thing, they always want to switch from one thing to another ( i.e. from one brand to another and in this case from one God to another)

Given the opportunity to work on this topic by Dr.Ravi Paturi (Director Aurora’s Business School), I have gone through many articles on branding and few books related to history of cultures and religions especially focusing on Indian context. The difference in opinion and belief of people I have found here is drastically changing by influence which can be observed as a type of branding.

For instance:

Ø Before Mughals in India, Hinduism was at its peak and was being branded and reinforced by Aryans,

Ø Then during the reigns of Harshavardhana, the branding of Buddhism grew and went up to central Asia.

Ø Then After Mughal Invasions, people started believing in Prophet Mohammed and this was branding of Islam in India.

Ø Then came the British Rule which branded along with western culture, Christianity in India.

Ø And now we can see how people are getting switched from believing in one God to another as the situation demands inside the boundaries of same religions i.e. from Lord Venkateshwara to Sai Baba, from Haji Ali to Ajmer Shareef.

These type of branding is not only taking place in the form of changing Gods or religions but it has also giving foundation to new types of markets and are providing opportunities to brand differently.

If we see typical Indian shops, a decade back used to have shops name on any of the God or Goddess name like Durga, Vishnu, and Krishna etc. Slowly this pattern was changed with names of god Venkateshwara as Balaji, Venkatesh, Tirupati, Govinda etc. And the present boom is of the name ‘Sai Baba’. I can quote many examples for Sai baba being used and made a brand, like Sai Baba was made into a TV show which was hugely popular and from that came DVDs and Cds of this show. We can observe the same kind of pattern with Lord Krishna’s Branding. If we take example of ‘Green Gold Animation’, their popular show Chota Bheem’s 2^nd part was ‘Chota Bheem and Krishna’ which is a big hit which later started selling books, key chains, notepads, mugs etc on Krishna and Chota Bheem.

Same thing goes with the LOGO for this kind of Branding of GOD.

If you see a cross you recollect Christianity, The OM goes for Hinduism, The half Moon with a Star makes us recollect Islam, A man Meditating tells us about Buddhism and so on. This is also a great thing in which the religions have branded their own God with different Logos.

The same thing can be observed with the attires of some communities.

Especially in south India, the people who follow Lord Ayappa, tends to dress in black clothes. Like wise the people who are of Sikh community ties a turban on their forehead which makes it clear to others that they belong to Sikh Community. The same goes for people who wear white long coats belongs to Christianity and may be a Father of the church, the people who wears a white small cup like cap over their head and keeps only beard without mustache are Islamic.

So to conclude, as the taste and preferences of people are changing their faith and belief are also changing. And from centuries together this concept of Branding related to Gods and Religion is going on and has been developing at a rapid speed. One can foresee a brighter and bigger market for these brands in coming years.

GO India, Shake the World....

15th August, just another national holiday for some... A day to be proud and revel and bring out the patriotism for others... This Independence Day, let’s not shy away from saying out loud and wishing others a "happy independence day” or merely laughing when someone wishes u in turn... lets stand up tall and wish everyone... and salute proudly to the fluttering tri color. Here’s something to remember by for the day...

The year1947 saw the birth of a new India. It’s been so long since that August in 1947. What a great and tumultuous time it was. We today far away from the epicenter of all the actions which had happened 63 years ago in our country are not really touched the way we should be . During that period news did trickle down though, and we did hear about the unrest, riots, Gandhiji’s fast and many more.

AS early as June 1947, the viceroy has announced that the British Indian Empire would be partitioned into nations of India and Pakistan. This announcement sent a chill down every Indian’s spines. Every Indian wondered how we would function with a portion of a country cut off. Of course most of us were upset. But that was before we realized that everything around us was changing. Eventually we ourselves were changing. But today we have proved the world what we are. We are the best of the best and we can do anything what other powerful and advanced nations can do.

I would like to divert your mind to the speech Mr. Jawaharlal Nehru ji had given at the midnight of 14th August, 1947. He said “Long years ago we made a tryst with destiny, and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge, not wholly or in full measure, but very substantially”. He went on to say “Freedom and power bring responsibility. The responsibility rests upon the Assembly, a sovereign body representing the sovereign people of India”.
A touching, inspiring speech that infused in every Indian a feeling of hope for the future of the country.

With great respect to what our beloved Nehruji has once said I would like to note it down that: Today we are cursing the ministers and politicians for many things but did we ever ask over selves who are the one who brings such politicians to the assembly and provide them chairs. The answer would be one word “WE”.
Unless we provide a chance for a person to enter our house and encourage him to do nonsense with our family member, no one will dare to do it. Likely unless we provide a chance to such people who are not capable of being ministers they can never become ministers. So I would say a word I always hear in an Ad of Tata tea “Jaago India”. Hope this word clicks our mind and next time instead of blaming others we start cross checking over selves and the reason for the faults in politicians, policeman, government officials etc.

Dear Friends it has taken more than 2 centuries and more than a billion lives to bring India to what it is today. So please try to contribute whatever you can socially, morally, monetarily or in any other form for its development. It’s our country and we are responsible for its development and as well as its downfall. So from today “stop blaming and start working”. Work for your country as you work for yourself and your family.

Lastly I would like to quote what Gandhi ji has once said “In a gentle way you can shake the world”

Go India, Shake the world…..

DRUGS for Success...!!!!!!!

Drugs for success……!!!!!

I often hear people saying that they want to succeed in their life. But when asked them how will they succeed they have no proper answer. Recently I happened to interact with a school friend of mine who was very much worried about his career and was seeking my advice on how to start up his journey to the most dreamed about concept of Success.

I myself was not able to deliver him a perfect answer for the questions he had. So I asked him to give me some time so that I come up with a great answer to his extravagantly great question. For a week my baffled and lazy mind was wandering in the large store house of my brain searching for the best answer to the question of my friend. So finally I came up with a great idea to help him out.

I fixed a meeting with my friend after a week and I gave him the following speech:

My dearest friend. Success is the largely and hugely demanded thing in this world. People dream about it day and night but they never try to fulfill it or take any step to reach it. They just fantasy success but they don’t make it realistic and when life plays its saddest music over such people, they curse there luck.

To be successful you must do unreasonable things. There are two types of people: people who do Unreasonable things and the people who do Reasonable things.

Unreasonable people are those people who try every single minute to reach towards their goal and who will give up everything (like their laziness, sleep, enjoyment etc) to get towards their goal. They are the people who will get up early and start a great beginning everyday to reach their goal. They are the people who always aim high and have a passion for doing something great in there life.

On the other hand Reasonable people are totally opposite. They are lazy, they sleep more than they work, they do not work hard. They just want Success to be served them as food is spoon feed till they are young. They are not realistic. These kinds of people just dream. They are only best at dreaming. They think to be successful is very easy task.

In short Unreasonable people refer to Realistic people and Reasonable people refer to Non Realistic people.

Now when, I have given you the definition of Unreasonable people and Reasonable people. Let me give you a small mantra to be successful in life. But before giving you the mantra you have to promise me for one thing that you will never tell it to any person because I will be in trouble.


So the mantra to be successful is:


Have DRUGS...........................


Yes you heard it rite to be successful you should have DRUGS. Now your fully loaded brain may be thinking why this idiot is asking us to take Drugs. So to protect my self from the legal aspects of the court I would give you the meaning of DRUGS according to my context.

By Drugs I mean
D: Doing
R: Realistic
U: Unreasonable
G: Goal
S: Setting in life.

That’s Drugs for you. If you set realistic goals and do unreasonable things everyday to reach it, you are successful.

So please before you take any step it’s a request that the following article written by me is a philosophical article so never take it seriously and have Drugs which are medically termed for success..

Deliver the Lecture how much required.

Whenever I give some presentation or debate, before I start speaking, I tell myself this story:

A renowned Management Guru entered a large lecture hall to deliver a lecture on Motivation to the employees of a large industrial organization.

To his horror he found that the large hall was empty except for a young man seated in the front row.

The Management Guru asked the solitary audience who he was.

“I am a Cook in the Industrial Canteen,” said the young man.

The Management Guru, pondering whether to speak or not, asked the Cook, “You are the only one here. Do you think I should speak or not? Tell me frankly, should I deliver my lecture?”

The Cook said to the Management Guru: “Respected Sir, I am a simple man and do not understand these things. But, if I came into the Dining Hall and saw only one man sitting there, I would certainly give him food.”

The Management Guru took the Cook’s insightful answer to heart and with full gusto began to deliver his lecture.

He spoke passionately for over two hours delving in great detail on each and every aspect of the theory and practice of Motivation.

Immensely proud after his virtuoso performance, the Management Guru felt highly elated, on top of the world, and wanted his audience to confirm how fantastically illuminating and effective his lecture had been.

So the Management Guru asked the Cook, “How did you like my lecture?”

The Cook answered, “Respected Sir, I told you already that I am a simple man and do not understand these things very well. However, if I came into the dining hall and found only one man sitting there I would feed him, but I wouldn’t give him all the food I had prepared in the kitchen.”

Moral: The story makes it clear that the lecturers should try to deliver their elite lectures as per the capacity of the so called brain fitted at the head office of very individual’s body. It says that u should deliver how much required but not more. Teach for the sake of making a learning environment for the students but not just for the sake of teaching…..

THE CRACKED POT - A Teaching Story

Let me tell you one of my favorite teaching stories.

This one is for parents, teachers, mentors… especially those who want to achieve their unfulfilled, unrealized and unrealistic ambitions vicariously through their children and protégés and hence put a lot of pressure and drive the poor kids, overwhelm them with high expectations…and everyone wants their kids to stand first (winner takes all and loser is left standing small philosophy).

This story is also for those perfectionists, at the workplace and at home, who expect everyone to be perfect like themselves and this quest for perfection makes everyone’s life hell…
Read on…

A water bearer had two large pots, one hung on each end of a pole which he carried across his neck.

One of the pots had a crack in it, and while the other pot was perfect and always delivered a full portion of water.

At the end of the long walk from the stream to the master's house, the cracked pot always arrived only half full.

For two years this went on daily, with the water bearer delivering only one and a half pots full of water to his master's house.

Of course, the perfect pot was proud of its accomplishments, fulfilled in the design for which it was made.

But the poor cracked pot was ashamed of its own imperfection, and miserable that it was unable to accomplish what it had been made to do.

After two years of enduring this bitter shame, the contrite cracked pot spoke to the water bearer one day by the stream, “I am ashamed of myself and I apologize to you.”

“Why are you feeling so guilty, so penitent, so repentant …?” the water bearer asked the sad cracked pot, “Tell me, what are you so ashamed of…?”

“I feel sorry that for these past two years I have been able to deliver only half my load because this crack in my side causes water to leak out all the way back to your master's house. Because of my flaws, you have to do extra work and you don't get full value from your efforts,” the pot said full of remorse.

The water bearer felt sorry for the old cracked pot, and in his compassion he said, “As we return to the master's house, I want you to notice the beautiful flowers along the path.”

Indeed, as they went up the hill, the old cracked pot took notice of the sun warming the beautiful wild flowers on the side of the path, and was consoled somewhat.

But at the end of the trail, the cracked pot still felt remorse, shame and a feeling of guilt because it had leaked out half its water load, and so again the pot apologized to the bearer for its failure.

The bearer said to the cracked pot, “Did you not notice that there were flowers only on your side of the path, and not on the other pot's side…? That is because I have always known about your flaw and I took advantage of it. I planted flower seeds on your side of the path, and every day while we've walked back from the stream, you've watered them. For two years I have been able to pick these beautiful flowers to decorate my master's table. Without you being just the way you are, he would not have this beauty, these lovely flowers, to grace his house.”

Moral of the Story:

There are no winners and there are no losers – everyone is a winner in his or her own way. Each of us has our own unique flaws. We are all cracked pots. But it is the cracks and flaws we each have that make our lives together so very interesting and rewarding. You've just got to take each person for what and who they are, and look for the good in them – most importantly, we must look for the winner within us, maybe hiding deep inside our own selves.

There is one more thing I want to say.

Most of us seem too self-conscious about our weaknesses and spend too much energy and resources in the process of trying to correct our imperfections and hence neglect our strengths.

Why not forget our weaknesses, our imperfections, and focus all our resources on improving our strong points…?

That is what great persons do…they just ignore their frailties and concentrate all their efforts on enhancing and bettering their strong points, their forte, and achieve great heights…so that’s the way to excellence – nourish your qualities and ignore your weaknesses and be a winner…it works…you can take my word for it…

All the Best

THE POWER OF LOVE
Love gives the power to heal any wound,
to move mountains,
to pass each day successfully,
The love u showed on me gave me strength to make it through my worst days,
Our love pushed me,
motivated me and
strengthened me to be for what I am now!!!
I finally understood that love can conquer anything if it is pushed far enough!
I love u so much!
You are special to me!
It is really powerful!
Give me a chance and I will give u this world,
Yet ultimately my love is more beautiful than this world
And I will give you my love!!!!

Hamara Bajaj, An Indian who stood by Indian..........

Like most middle class children in India, I have been literally brought up on it. And when I hear those unforgettable words, ‘Hamara Bajaj‘, they mean a whole world to me.
It is very difficult to imagine my Grand father without his scooter, the reliable workhorse that has stood by him, always. To me it symbolizes everything that he stands for - his sacrifices, his struggles against all odds, his perseverance, honesty and diligence towards everything, and even his love and care. It is a complete picture in itself, but pictures would be incomplete without it.
And that phrase holds for India as a whole, a complete era gone by captured by one symbol - ‘Hamara Kal, Hamara Aaj, Hamara Bajaj‘. The proverbial common man summed up in all his hopes and failures, a spirit that refused to die amidst dreams that could never fly. The ‘license raj‘ India was the potholed roads all around, and the scooter was the common man, diligently negotiating the twists and bumps on two small wheels, shouldering responsibilities much beyond his capacities but seldom complaining - those were our fathers (and their scooters), weren’t they?
How can one forget those days of ‘Hum do, Hamare do‘? It was perfect for those ‘complete family’ rides, when car was a luxury much beyond the common man’s reach and the ‘Nano’ was not even known as a dream. The humble scooter was trusted, loved and depended upon, like family. And it marched along, matching every step with the common man, taking every pothole in its stride, sometimes breaking down but never giving up. That was ‘Hamara Bajaj‘, which delivered India from the hopeless days of ‘license raj‘ to the unbound aspirations of liberalization and globalization.
And having done its job, our friend and companion for two complete generations is walking off to sunset, all by itself. All good things, they say, must come to end. But it might be more than just a coincidence that the genesis of ‘Nano’ lies in the picture of a family of four traveling on a scooter, the picture that moved and inspired Mr. Ratan Tata. Like the proverbial friend who always gives, this was perhaps the parting gift from a true friend and companion, ‘Hamara Bajaj, Hamara Kal‘.

YOU DON’T NEED TO BE 100% RIGHT!!!!!!!!


When Theodore Roosevelt was in the White House, he confessed that if he could be right 75 percent of the time, he would reach highest measure of his expectation.

If that was the highest rating that one of the most distinguished men of the 20th century could hope to obtain, what about you and me?

If you can be sure of being right at least 55 percent of the time, then you can go down to Share Market of India and make Millions of rupees per day. And if you can’t be sure of being right 55 percent of the time, why should you tell others they are wrong?

You can tell people they are wrong by a look or a intonation or a gesture just as eloquently as you can in words and if you tell them you are wrong, do you make them to agree with you? Never! For you have struck a direct blow at their intelligence, judgement, pride and self respect. That will make them want to strike back. But it will never make them want to change their minds. You may them produce at them all the logic of Plato or Socrates but you will not alter their opinions, for you have hurt their feelings.

Never begin by announcing ‘I am going to prove so and so to you.’ That’s bad. That’s tantamount to saying: ‘I m smarter than you are.’

That’s a challenge. It arouses opposition and makes the listener want to battle with you before you even start.

I have developed a simple philosophy to such situations in ma life and that is.
“Be wiser than other people if you can; but do not tell them so.”

So from now if you are going to prove anything, don’t let anybody know it. Do it so subtly, so adroitly, that no one will feel that their intelligence or self respect is challenged……..

Lastly I would like to add what Socrates said so beautifully, “One thing I know, and that is that I know nothing.”

GOD WRITES A LOT OF COMEDY>>>>>>

Every morning my heart strikes between few thoughts. I get up do my usual morning stuff and sit for a while thinking how to spend the day. I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day. I find each day too short for all the thoughts I want to think, all the walks I want to take, all the books I want to read, and all the friends I want to see.

Then out of confusion I close my eyes and think what could have been done and I get only one answer for this question of mine, “I think I've discovered the secret of life - you just hang around until you get used to it.”

And this thought makes my unused brain to think and I keep on thinking and I get no answers. Few days back I got the answer for my question and my brain was satisfied.

I had gone to my uncle’s place and was watching Mr. Bean, a comedy show on television. Watching that show my 12 yrs old cousin added with laugh, “bhaiya, If God was a comedy writer, how nice the world would have been na?”………

The question asked by the little kid had such an impact on my thinking that I started wondering how would life has been if God had written it in a comedy way.
Then I came across a thought running here and there in my brain and my heart said “God writes a lot of comedy... the trouble is, he's stuck with so many bad actors who don't know how to play funny.” Here was the best thought I had ever thought about. So I decided not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, and concentrate the mind on the present moment.


I have a simple philosophy of life now: Fill what's empty. Empty what's full. Scratch where it itches.

:GLASS HALF FULL THAN HALF EMPTY:


In this conservative world, I have often come around many people, who always curse their life and luck. Such people are referred as PESIMIST by others.

I don’t refer such people as PESIMIST but will refer them as LOOSERS. Actually such people who curse their luck are curse for the on going development in the society. Such people always see the Glass as half empty in every situation. Such people are cynic and are the real looser. Instead of getting something from the life, they curse life and loose everything.

I love what Mr. Rooselvet Franklin quoted “I DON’T SEE A GLASS HALF EMPTY IN A GIVEN SITUATION RATHER I SEE THE GLASS HALF FULL”. Here it goes, one of the best life lesson in a single sentence.