I often read the posts and watch the videos of Tarak Fatah. The guy has some guts to speak his mind fearlessly without worrying about what others will say. I’m sure people who follow him would understand. In one of the recent posts he informed that he was suffering from cancer till about four years ago and emerged victorious. He posted some of the videos of his hospital stay too. It was so refreshing to see someone going through a crisis and taking the events of life so sportingly.

My thoughts started wandering when I saw this. Many examples came in my mind of the people who conquered life threatening ailments and multiple crises in life. Most people we can think of are the celebrities whose life often is an open book. But even a cursory look at people and situations around us will show us many such examples of personal courage, strength and ability to handle the situations with equanimity. Few months ago we heard about the actress Manisha Koirala’s battle, again with cancer and her emerging victorious. All this happened when she was going through a personal crisis of separation. But then, she managed well. Examples may be endless in this regard, like Ajit Jogi staying an active politician despite paralysis and wheel chair bound or Amar Singh staying the course despite a difficult kidney transplant operation. There are many opposite examples also where we find people are unable to handle the success. One of the famous examples is that of the first superstar in India, Rajesh Khanna. Once he became successful it went into his head and was eventually responsible for destruction of his professional and personal life. There are many such examples around us when we see that people are unable to handle success or riches or even too much of love. An abundance of these things make people think that they have birth right on them and slowly arrogance creeps in till this abundance starts fading.

Few weeks ago I was listening to a beautiful song from the timeless and ageless film ‘Waqt’. This film was made by legendary Baldev Raj Chopra – BR Films. All his films were classics and had a very strong societal message in them. This film was all about the importance of ‘Waqt’ – time. It is the ‘waqt’ that is most important and not the human beings or their desires. I have no intention of telling the story of this film here or its virtues, but the fact that the people of this film and their life have been the biggest proof of the concept of this movie. Mr. Chopra left this world at a ripe age of 94. But when he left the BR Films banner was in extreme financial distress. Could anyone have imagined it couple of decades ago? Sunil Dutt, another legend, had a difficult life and lost his beloved wife to cancer and saw his only son becoming a drug addict. It led him on the path of public service. Sadhna, famous actress, lives a lonely life in Santa Cruz in Mumbai with many a visit to police stations and courts on account of property dispute of the flat she lives in, which supposedly belongs to singer Asha Bhosale. Achala Sachdev, died a lonely death at Pune with neither son nor daughter being interested in her. Female singer in this movie is Asha Bhosale. Her life story is also so inspiring. She has gone through multiple crises but stayed the course. Why I considered it important to write this was to connect a filmy story to the real life of rich and famous and bring out the theme that I have today, of the ‘situations’ and our ‘response’ to these situations.

I’ve now seen many summers in my life. But still every day, every moment I find something more to learn. I try to observe the situations in my life as also around me and in the life of people around me. There’s so much learning in this that it won’t be possible for me to write it here in few paragraphs. But it’ll be worth its while to mention few such cases. I’ve seen many people losing their jobs resulting in temporary crisis in their lives. Some people, in fact very few, went into a shell and had a shattered life, whereas some others fought back. It took them couple of years to emerge stronger and rise higher than their previous jobs. I’ve seen people losing loved ones in their lives. Some gave up, had an impact on their mental balance and eventually died a lonely death or some others who emerged stronger, involved themselves in social causes and lived their lives to fullest. Often we hear about people who’ve lost limbs or part of their bodies, but continued to live their normal lives. Two examples shall be worth mentioning here. One, of Lt. Gen. Vijay Oberoi (Retd.), who lost his leg in action in 1965 war as a young captain. But he soldiered on and rose to become the Vice Chief of Indian Army to retire with dignity in 2001. Two, of Lt.Gen. Pankaj Joshi (Retd.) of Gorkha Rifles, who lost both his legs in 1967 in a mine clearing mission. But he too stayed the course, to command an armoured brigade, an armoured division, a corp and eventually became General Officer Commanding in Chief of the army’s central command. All these examples only show how the strong willed people calibrate their response to the situation to emerge victorious, to emerge on top, to ensure that the situation doesn’t overwhelm them but they manage every situation.

To come on the other side, I’ve also seen many youngsters who got success early in their lives. There are many people who got the corner rooms in early 30’s. But the question is how many of them eventually retained those rooms till they were 50? I’ve seen very few. In most cases where the success has come early I’ve seen that people are unable to handle it. People become arrogant, over confident, greedy for money, even faster growth of their companies and themselves which eventually results in destroyed careers. World over there were many billionaires created by the software and related areas. Other than few like Bill Gates of Microsoft or Steve Jobs of Apple, how many have managed their response well? Where’s Sabeer Bhatia, the creator of Hotmail? If you have a cursory look at the CEOs of the Apple Inc, it’ll be so easy to see the difference between Steve Jobs and others. Everybody who became the CEO of that great company was in the same situation, but only Steve is known. It is he who’s response to the situation of his being the leader was truly the leader’s response. These are early days to predict what’ll happen to the modern day czars of e-commerce in India.

By observing life’s situations on a longer time frame one can largely see three categories – Success days, stable days and challenging days. Anyone’s life history will show all three categories, some less or some more. Often leaders have more of challenging days, but they still surmount the obstacles and maintain their leadership stance. As human beings, we can’t wish away or demand some of these categories as per our desire. These days will come at the appropriate time. But what we can do is to manage our response in all three situations to ensure that irrespective of the situation we don’t allow ourselves to be overwhelmed and manage each situation with grace, humility, equanimity and confidence.

My Little Thought Of Life is that instead of lamenting about the challenging situations, getting bored in stable situations or getting overexcited in the success situations we need to understand that all these situations are a part of life and will come and go alternatively. But in each of these situations we need to be conscious of our response, which should be deliberate, conscious and without attachment, to the extent possible. Just like success need not make us arrogant, failure and challenging times need not make us despondent. Each situation has something more to teach, something more to make us grow and something more to make us happy.

To my friends and readers, I wish an ability to be conscious of the situation without getting overwhelmed and an ability to have a calibrated response in every situation.