The Chords of Life - Vineet Tandon

Covid Pandemic has changed the world for many of us and Digital Inclusion has become an overnight priority. With schools being shut and classrooms moving to digital, the gap between thos who have access to digital and those who do not have only tells us part of this challenge. So many children that i personally know of have given up studying because they don't have either a smartphone or a laptop or a computer. Those who have also one of these also cannot afford data recharges needed every month to be able to access online education. While this is good news for entreprenuers and telco providers (they have an opportunity to bridget), this is certainly not an encouraging statistic for the nation where few million students complete education and enter the labor market every year. 

It was with this thought in the background, when i came to know of the concept of Digital Daan, i reached out to Osama Manzar, Founder & Director of Digital Empowerment Foundation (DEF) to understand the initiative and learn more. Osama started DEF at a time when Digital had not yet arrived. His struggle for years at the beginning of his career, leadership in setting up digital initiatives for leading print media houses, experiences in social enterprise, entreprenuership, ability to innovate, experiment and create opportunities are a phenomenal account that one can listen and learn from. 

This episode of the Podcast, titled "Tum Kya Jaano Dosti Kya Hoti Hai" takes a trip down the memory lane of what Friendship used to mean in the early days of my life, when i was still in the school. Internet has not yet arrived and friendship experiences were all in the real world. We would sit and chat (not text) for hours, spend quality time doing nothing (productivity was yet to be discovered) and fight on things that these days we would simply ignore. 

Today, as i scroll over the list of hundreds of friends i have on social media, i feel that absolute numbers don't really mean anything. What matters is how deeply we have interacted and engaged with a few quality friends from this list and how much value we attach to these real relationships. 

Dr. Raj Dravid has over 40 years of experience and has led leadership roles at IL&FS Skills and Centum Learning Africa. Dr. Raj personal career journey spread over four decades is testimony of the fact that success in career is very much a product of hard work and doesn’t happens overnight. Here are a few interesting takeaways from this Podcast – In Conversation with Dr. Raj Dravid:

1) There is no substitute for on-ground experience: If you think that you are from a premiere institution and you can start working on strategy and take high level decisions without working on the ground, you are destined to fail and learn the hard way.

2) Embrace Change: Covid19 has taught the world a few hard lessons and the best one to take forward is to embrace change. If we are not resilient and don’t embrace change, we are going to be left behind. Learn in his own words, how Pager Industry was introduced and wiped out in almost 14 months'.

3) Everyone needs a job & dignity of work: If skills that we provide people with are useful on the job or create employment, there are high possibilities that people will come for it, undertake training and will settle for jobs. The failure that we see today when people are let go with the onset of Covid-19 is because we never created that environment where workers were treated as kind of extended families.

4) Favorite Quote from The Podcast: Ask people one question, “what can you do to help others so that they can in turn help you”.

5) Love for Music: In the words of Dr Raj, “Music gives you oxygen and allows you to extend creative expression in life”.  He enjoys listening to Carnatic Music, Marathi Music, Chamber Music and enjoys Ragas and classical Hindustani as well. He has authored a book titled “Listening to Bismillah Khan” which is a standard textbook in multiple universities.

Humble beginnings and playing the right bets - is how I would describe the phenomenal journey of Kamal Karanth, Co-Founder, Xpheno (Extend Your Expression). A Post Graduate in Microbiology, Kamal started his career as a sales trainee in a pharmaceutical company and rose to phenomenal heights where he lead leadership positions for two of the largest staffing companies worldwide including MaFoi and Kelly Services. 

Born and brought up in in a middle-class family in Karnataka, Kamal family followed cricket and movies very seriously. The challenges he faced in the early days of life armed him with right package of discipline, change and relationships that formed the source-code of his successful journey and shaped him as a person.  

Listen to this authentic, unplugged and interesting journey in this brand new podcast episode of #TheChordsofLife. 

In this special episode, i am happy to share a unique perspective on life, careers and inspiration by none other than Dr. Ashutosh Karnatak, Director Projects, GAIL India Pvt. Ltd. I first read his book Yes You Can way back in 2008 and never imagined that one day i will meet him and have a such heart warming discussion with him on various aspects of life. 

Dr Karnatak was born in an ordinary family, had very ordinary schooling and yet he managed to rise to being the Managing Director of such a large Public Sector Undertaking. His passion towards Karma, commitment to make teams succeed and revolutionary ideas like "Plus Meditation" makes him a leader worth talking about. 

A lot of people reach out to me to ask how can they take a leap in their creative careers - like how can they be successful musicians, how can they monetize their talent and become successful artists so on. Being a musical motivational speaker myself, i know these challenges are very much there and i also know there aren't any straight forward answers. 

March 20 was International Day of Happiness and the theme chosen for this year was being Happier Together. However, with the outbreak of #COVID19, forget happiness, the recommended course of action is “social distancing”, so as to prevent and contain the outbreak of disease any further. Can we be happy living in isolation? Does happiness necessarily involve being close to people? Does happiness and its meaning change if our environment change? What can we do to be happy in times of social distancing?     

According to different researches, there are as many definitions of happiness as many researchers are there.  Kenneth Benjamin, Founder of Happiness International says, “Happiness is when your life fulfills your needs” (1). Martin Seligman in his book Authentic Happiness published, Happiness, H = S+C+V, i.e. Happiness is a sum of persons generic capacity to be happy (S), Life Circumstances (C) and Voluntary Control (V). 

Happiness (or lack of it) is omnipresent. Lot depends upon our mental construct how and do we perceive it. For some of us it is in the present moment, for others it is an enduring experience. For some of us, it is about reliving experiences of the past and for some of us it is about imagining the future. For some of us it is an outcome, while for a few others, it is part of the process. For some of us, it’s about spending time alone, while for others, it’s about being with people who matter!   

Here’s how to find happiness amidst times of social distancing:  

1) Use Technology: Whether we prefer solitude or we prefer to live in company of people, technology can be a great enabler for times like these. If you are a people’s person, use technology, do video calls with people who you care about and stay virtually connected! Have a coffee or a drink together over a video call.  The experience may not be exactly the same, but it’s quite closer!  

2) Re-visit Old Hobbies: We all have hobbies which got somewhere lost in the daily grind of life. Revisit some of our old hobbies like playing an instrument, reading books, bird watching or simply anything! Picking up your old hobbies will provide much needed escape from pessimism that’s all over.   

3) Be Innovative: Just because we are advised to be in confinement and isolation doesn’t mean we compound this experience with a flavor of sadness. People around the world are innovating the way they cook, the way they do lectures, the way classes are held, the way they relax and so on. May be its time you decide what you can innovate – may be your next meeting or your next morning meditation practice and share it online.  

4) Pick Up A New Skill: Pick up a new skill, a new language, a course that can sharpen your existing knowledge or can start your journey into something totally new. Attending an online course will not only occupy your mind, sharpen your skill-sets but will also keep you away from the unhappiness that stems from nothingness.  

5) Follow Gratitude: No one chooses to be in the times we are currently in, however, despite all the bad situation world over, follow an attitude of gratitude. There is always something in our lives that we can be thankful for – the fact that we are reading this, the fact we are breathing and healthy, the fact that we can spend this time with our family and so on. Gratitude polarize our mind towards the positive things, thus removing unwanted unhappiness. 

April – July is considered as admission season in India considering that Class XII board exams conducted by leading boards including Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE), ICSE (Indian Certificate of Secondary Education) and various state boards are over. Large number of students need guidance on which career path to follow, which college to seek admission, which exams to apply, understanding the admission process of various Universities and so on. If you are a student who is seeking answers to questions like these, here are a few tips that will come handy in your decision-making process:

# 1: Know your Interests: By the time you have finished your class XII, it is understood that you already have some idea of your strengths and career interests. It is possible to change that, but it is very unlikely that you will take up anything totally unrelated.  

# 2: Know Your College / Counselor:  Know your college / counselor - read every detail before you go for any admission fair or counselling session. All information and knowledge will come useful during admissions time.

# 3: Do Your Home Work:  Go to a counselling session with full preparation, prepare a list of questions you might ask from the counselor, from the college authorities and so on.

# 4: Validate Information: Once you have attended multiple counselling sessions don’t take any information on the face value of the counselor or the brand name of the institution. Why I am saying this is because we live in the world of information overload and unless you re-check and re-validate all the information to your satisfaction, blind trust on it can land you in trouble. Ask mentors, teachers, seek guidance from college seniors and so on.

# 5: Evaluate Future Prospects: Whatever be your assessment of the future course of action, always evaluate the decision with yardstick of future possibilities. For example, there is no point in joining a less popular course of a reputed college, since there must have been a reason for its low popularity. 

Of the many challenges Indian Education System faces, one that always bothers me is the quality and quantity of teachers in the Indian Education System (across schools, colleges, universities and autonomous institutions). 

I mean at First there is more than adequate shortage of teachers in the country (despite of the fact that we keep talking about our demographic advantage); Second, teaching is no where closer to being considered as a preferred career of choice (which means most individuals who are in teaching are rarely cut-out for the task) and Third teachers who are serious about their profession and willing to put their heart and soul into it, rarely have good mentors and rarely do they have a clear career growth path. 

In my quest to seek answers to some of these questions, i reached out to Ashok Pandey Sir, Educationist and Director Ahlcon Group of Schools who passionately shared his own journey and shared his perspective on "What does it take a school teacher to transition into a school principal"? 

If you are a teacher seeking career growth or a school leader seeking inspiration to groom next level of leadership, this podcast offers a very passionate account from the life of a teacher, mentor, educationist and a thought leader! 

A lot of people get confused when they hear the word passion and the confusion is amplified many times over when we hear Global Leaders, Sportsmen, Thinkers, Hollywood and Bollywood actors & actresses using the words like “follow your passion” in their interviews and tweets. The problem worsens further when the most authoritative names in the world of media publish stories with contrasting headlines: For example, there was an article published in New York Times titled, “Why Find Your Passion is such a terrible piece of advice” and Time Magazine published an article “How to Find Your Passion”. 

Loosing one's eyesight can be one of the most traumatic experiences one can ever have! How does one emerge successfully from such a situation? Nupur Jain lost her eyesight due to a medical condition, but never lost her vision! Nupur worked hard to earn a graduation from LSR college and a Post Graduate  degree from Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) Mumbai. A President of India Awardee, she currently works at GAIL India as Senior HR Officer.

Lot of students in India who are in the final year of their college worry about placements. Few of them get placement support, however, not everyone is lucky enough. This is because, opportunities are limited and they want to ensure that they make most of every opportunity given. In this podcast, students will learn about the three important things they will need to keep in mind to emerge successfully during the campus placements interviews.