visit to Madhumalai

It was a long pending break which we looked forward to from many days. Just one day before , it looked as if we need to cancel it , but finally we made it and then , Did we enjoy it ? I would definitely say a overwhelming "YES , We surely enjoyed it !"
Located at around 90 kms away from Mysore , Madhumalai is a very enchanting place similar to many other forests in the Nilgiris range. You can get loads of info if you google it , so will skip all that stuff in my blog.
We started out from Maruti Mandir at around 8 AM on Oct 18th and reached the Monarch Safari Resort at around 3:30 PM. En route we enjoyed in the bus with Gautham also joining in singing songs and playing games. The evening was spent in relaxing and visiting the Elephant Camp and Night Safari. The safari proved to be quite a disappointment as it was pitch dark and nothing much to see apart from some wild bison's. A morning safari would have been good. Nevertheless , the sight of the elephants ( see pic ) was awesome.

The next day morning trek in the wilderness was simply superb. It was a total green stretch of around 8 kms leading a small enchanting stream of water over few rocks. Water is clean and tempting to wet your feet before return back to the Monarch Safari.

Managers need to look at Space..

People managers sometimes face a dilemma of how to make a reportee exhibit his full potential. I would put across the below factors and one of them i think is the "space" or freedom provided for him/her to grow. So here goes my thoughts ....
Formula : Talent + Hardwork + Space = Sucess
As its famous quoted Success is indeed 99% perspiration and 1% inspiration. All the managers recognise talent and hardwork. This is common and is usually spotted and appreciated by all managers. Annual reviews, checkpoints and meetings more often address these two points. But I feel that a managers role shouldnt be restricted to these alone. What goes in that 1% inspiration surely contributes to a bigger chunk of the 99% hardwork. So , i think its pretty commonsense to see what might be an individuals perspection of his source for inspiration.
This bring us quite nicely to the third factor - Space. Space might be just one of those contributors to the inspiration for some people. So, an exceptional manager would look beyond the first two factors and come to the third "Space". Space can be generally viewed as a "responsibility" or a "growth area" which would be suitable to the reportee and which would make him realise some more of his potentials. A manager would need to assess himself first . He would pose the below two questions to himself
1) How do i make the reportee realise his full potential?
2) Am I helping the reportee by giving him space and freedom to grow?.
3) How could i contribute to see that there are no mind-blocks with the reportee
4) Finally, have i fully understood what "space" to provide and have i communicated that to him ?
It is indeed true that excellent mangement is nothing but facilating the team to work at their best possible potential.

Bhojan and Bhajan

Oh , what a wonderful sight is that of the Vishalakshi Mantap , as I saw it from a little distance enroute the drive from Bangalore city towards the Ashram Campus on Kanakapura road. The last right turn leads into the Ashram and I got a glimpse of the elephant to the right side while driving towards the parking lot.

Little while back , it was a beautiful drive on the NICE road joining the Mysore road to the Kanakapura road. There was a slight drizzle on the way and I could see all the clouds planning on a heay downpour in the evening. By the time I reached the VM, it was raining quite heavily. It turned to a heavy downpour in a short while with thunder and lighthning adding to the sound and visual effects.

It was an enthralling late-afternoon on Saturday, May 24th, 2008. I had taken vacation the entire week to spend some quality time with Gautham. On this day, I had ventured out to attend the Satsang though the evening had prospects of a heavy rainfall.

As I was waiting alongwith hundred of devotess for the Satsang to start , a thought came to my mind on how the event would be held at VM due to the rain. It was soon answered by a volunteer requesting all of us to assemble at the Dining hall as the Satsang venue was changed to the Dining hall instead of the VM. So, we all ventured again into the rain , not that it mattered , as we were already wet. As we reached the Dining hall , there were sounds of bhajans and could see that some devotees had already started satsang.

Guruji joined the Satsang in a few minutes and then I was lost in time with the bhajans and flow of love and gyan in the talks in between. As HE mentioned, the satsang in the dining hall made sure we all had both bhojan and bhajan togehter there. Its HIS presence, what can one ask for ? Indeed , how priviliged I am to attend this.

And coming back to the heay downpour, someone remarked it had stopped sometime back when Guruji came to the Dining Hall. "Aap aaye , bareesh gaye" were the words the devotee used.