Thankfulness is a State of Mind

Last few months I have not posted anything here. I suppose I am not in a sufficiently "surrendered” state of mind to create words that bear the true imprint of thankfulness. I will wait until that occasion when I am seized by gratitude and my innards start throbbing with renewed awareness of how others contribute to my happiness.

Thankfulness is a state of mind. Even adversity should be thanked. Shri Aurobindo has once said thankfully about his year-long imprisonment in Alipore jail, “The only result of the wrath of the British government was that I found God.”

Thanks

Bino Paul has been such a good player in team teaching "Business Research". This was offered during Feb-April 2005.

I learnt a lot and Bino says he too learnt a lot. From the student feedback it is evident that this has been true for the students too (7.99 on a 10 scale; quite heartening for Business Research!). More satisfying were the comments of several students who said that the course has made a significant change in the way they are thinking about research and the research process.

Thanks again

Again there is the urge to thank those who helped me last few days. First those who contributed to the research compendium that would be released on Convocation day - 2005. My colleagues Professors Nagabrahmam, Satyajit, Vidya, Natarajan, Gururaj, Badri, Jaba, Lalitha Sreenath and M.R. Sreenath who cheerfully met the deadlines. Thanks to all the stduents contributers including Rex who were called so many times over the mobile at odd times. Very very special thanks to V. Ramakrishna who dropped in at the most appropriate times to help with the corrections and computer settings. So also Uma Sri who was most helpful and extremely time conscious.

Thank You

My thanks to my colleagues, Jaba Gupta and Chowdari Prasad, for their joyous appreciation of my blog. I am also deeply thankful to Professor Ganesh Bhat.

I am reminded of how Peter Senge and his team start their Fieldbook on “The Fifth Discipline.” Apparently among the tribes of Northern Natal in South Africa the most common greeting, equivalent to “hello” when translated would be, “I see you.” The other person would respond solemnly confirming his existence, “I am here.”

In many traditional cultures there is still the recognition that the very identity of one’s being is authenticated, and continues to be authenticated regularly, by the “social” others. How simple and wise!

The authors go on and ask us to compare this with the assertion, “I think therefore I am,” the famous western-civilization-defining statement of Rene Descartes. All of us know that this is the dominant perspective for all the “civilized” people all over the world. Is the wired world, ironically, going to change that?

Thank you all

A chain of events started this blog involving several persons, all belonging to TAPMI, the institution where I teach and learn and think and express and research on management. And I want to thank them all. First it was my colleague, Badri who once had suggested that learning HTML is important. He seemed to say that it is important because one can use it to express oneself and be heard more effectively. I found myself thinking further… of the use of the new media to define oneself and be in a state of exchange with so many interesting people all over. This idea was reinforced by another colleague of mine, Bino, to whom a personal e-site is a self-defining, self-identifying artefact.

While the idea of a site was active in my mind, Director Nagabrahmam asked me to edit a student-faculty research compendium. During this process of editing, which is still being completed, I am interacting closely with a student of us, Swarnasrikrishnan. ( http://netrikkan.blogspot.com ). He taught me one evening how to write some basic commands in HTML and initiated me to the world of blogdoms. Thank you all