Simple Words of Wisdom

- 3 minute read. One more year has passed and 2022 is just around the corner. A new year brings in new hopes and aspirations. Most of us see changing of year as a big change happening. We take resolutions in the hope of adopting good habits or quitting old habits. Although my experience tells me that, most of them don’t last for more than a few days. In fact, many of them are broken on 1st January itself! :D But when looked at it objectively, it’s not difficult to see that when a year changes, nothing actually changes; except the way write the date. Problems in the world are not going to vanish just because a new year has arrived . Poverty and inequality will continue to exist, Covid-19 is not going to disappear, global warming is not going to end; not just these but any problem that the world has on 31st December will still be there on 1st January! Same is the story of problems of our lives. Any big events, like Jeff Bezos starting Amazon, Alphabet’s founders starting Google, developm

  - 4 minute read Finally, after a long, long time, I have written the fourth article of the series "Decoding Happiness".  We all want to be happy. We do everything to be happy and yet happiness eludes us. What is this mystery? Why can't we live happily ever after? Or can we? In this series of articles, “Decoding Happiness” we will try to explore the mystery of happiness.  This is the  Fourth article  of the series. I suggest you must also read the other three article so that you can master the art of happiness. For your convenience, I have provided the links to previous articles right here: Article 3:  Stop chasing happiness . Article 2: Stop worrying dude! Article 1: Ice cream cannot make you happy. I hope you will find these articles helpful. Do let us know your thoughts by writing the comments below. So, lets get started...  The Evil of Comparison Yesterday, I and my friend decided to have a dinner outside. We chose a dhaba (a roadside restaurant) which was opened ju

  “It is impossible to understand girls” is a statement we all have heard. Well, I am not going to say anything or against it. I want to share an interesting phenomenon which may help boys understand girls’ viewpoint better. Not just that, it may help girls to understand themselves better. Years back, I had read a small post about something called “The Light Switch effect”. I am sharing it with you here as it is: “Women use their emotional state to define reality. When a woman feels an emotion, she uses this as her objective reality. The decision she makes based on her reality may seem like total nonsense to a man, because she has determined her reality based on the only prime truth she knows: her emotional state. If she is sad, she tells you “you made me sad”. She didn’t decide her emotional state, you did. Changing her emotional state is outside the purview of her control and hence you are the culprit. So, that means the emotional state she is experiencing means that you have

  - 2 minutes The debates and discussions on what kind of world we live in are eternal. Pessimist say it’s the worst possible situations. Optimist say it’s the best. And an ordinary person doesn’t say anything! So, is this world a heaven or hell? Or its just another ‘ordinary’ world. In my opinion, the world is a place filled with all shades of all colours. What you chose to focus on is totally your choice. Let me explain this with an example: Most of us believe that while being on the road, they get more red lights than green. Scientist on the other hand differ. They say that the probability of getting a red and green light are in fact equal. While there might be more red lights experienced in a short period of time, the average gets evened out over the long term. But they why do we feel its not so? Why we feel that probably our stars are not aligned well and we are doomed to face more red lights that green? While, in reality, we are facing same number of red and green lights. Re

  Yesterday, a friend forwarded this message on WhatsApp: “O-ve blood required urgently for a patient in M Y hospital in Raipur. Please contact on this no: +91- 98XXXXXXX6” Now, as there was no date or time mentioned in the message. So, I asked him out of curiosity “kab chahiye? (when is it required)” “I don’t know” he replied. “Why don’t you call and ask? The contact number is there in the message” I knew that either this message is old or circulated by someone just for fun because it’s the 3 rd time I had received it in recent times! When I told him this, he was adamant that its impossible that the message is fake or old, because he just received it in a family Whatsapp group, by someone he trusted. Now the funny thing is that as far as I know, there is no M Y hospital in Raipur. M Y hospital is in Indore and is one of the biggest one in Madhya Pradesh. I asked him that there is no MY hospital in Raipur, but he insisted that there is one. Seeing his confidence, I thought

  If you are living in India, you must have certainly heard this statement regarding marksheet/ degree certificate: "A single paper (marksheet/degree) cannot define my future". And ironically when it comes to jobs, people expect them to give job based on that paper itself! These are the 7 reasons why India has a high rate of unemployment: No education only literacy: While India has a few institutes which are top class, others are simply pathetic. Ever since independence, our education seems to have been focused on literacy. Even in higher studies, in most of the universities, the goal has been to impart technical literacy, scientific literacy instead of technical and scientific education. While literacy enables one to read and understand the those technical terms, it doesn't promotes one to create something beneficial for the society and nation as a whole.   Lack of R & D:  There is a dearth of quality research in the country. Many times researchers' only motivat

  (3 minute read) It does not take a genius to say that we all become happy and sad numerous times. For most of us, happiness giving moments are very few, and the remaining time is filled with frustration and boredom. We all want to be happy. We all do everything we do for the sole reason of becoming happy in life and yet we don't succeed a lot. What is this mystery? Why can't we live happily ever? Can we?  In this  series of articles ,  “Decoding Happiness”  we will try to understand the reality of happiness.  In this series of articles, we will shed some light on different aspects of happiness one by one. This is the  Third article  of the series. We recommend you read the  other two article as well  so that these articles together make a better sense. Click on the following links to access the other two articles: Article 1:   Ice cream cannot make you happy Article 2:  Stop worrying dude! We want to make these articles a learning experience for you. We want you to freely com

(3 minute read) When I was in school, one day, one of our teachers encouraged our class to appear for Special Class Railway Apprentices ( SCRA) exam. The exam is held at national level. When he told us no one of got excited about the idea as in that year, they had 16 positions (only!) to fill. We mentioned it to him that Sir, there are only 16 positions and he casually replied that “so what if there are just 16 positions, you just need one!” While he was certainly true, we didn’t really bought the argument and thought him to be kind of crazy to say so! We are estimated to have 130+ crore people in India. A majority of our population is young and given that we also have a high rate of unemployment the number of candidates competing for any job position is very high. Also due to a high percentage of young population and a few number of good institutes,  the same is true for admission to these elite academic institutions. But do we really need to worry about the number of competito

  Yesterday, my friend and I decided to meet at Sayaji Dwar for some yummy snacks. For those who don’t know, Sayaji Dwar ( in Dewas) is like a local food joint where various stalls of street food serve their customers. While I was waiting for him, I saw another girl standing nearby. Before you let your imaginations run wild, let me tell you that she was selling balloons there. “She must not be more than 10 years old” I thought. She was wearing a maroon hoodie jacket which was adequate to battle cold that day. She wore a salwar which didn’t quite reach her ankles- much like jogger jeans. “One, two, three…Eleven” I counted her balloons. A bunch of 10 balloons in her left hand while one in her right hand. Each balloon was attached to a straw-like hollow, plastic stick. The stick of the balloon in her right had got detached. She immediately vexed to fix it. But since she was holding a bunch of balloons in her left hand, she was having some difficulty. She fixed it and continued to stan

  - 3  min. read (by Pratik Badgujar)  There were once two places named Hikalu and Pikalu situated hundreds of miles away. Hikalu was situated in an arid region- a desert. The water availability was very low. Dust storms, the limited possibility of agriculture, scorching heat in the day and chilling nights were the norm. Pikalu was situated in a forest. There was no shortage of food and water and was blessed with pleasant weather round the year. One day, the elders and great thinkers of Hikalu sat around and thought about how can we make the lives of our people easy? How can we ensure the prosperity and might of our people? So, after a lot of discussion, they thought of an idea to identify the best practices of survival and thriving and write it down- pretty much like a constitution. They decided to name it “The Great Hikalu Manual”. The manual contained instruction on do's and don’ts. Every resident of Hikalu, started following the manual and hence the lives of the residents

  - Pratik Badgujar 3 minute read “Do smart work instead of hard work” is a popular adage in college placement training sessions as well as in the corporate. Smart work- achieving more output with lesser efforts. Technically, the ratio which measures it is called Productivity. Productivity = Output/Input But knowing the term won’t make you a smart worker instantaneously,   right? So, what to do? How to become a smart worker? Is it even possible to learn doing ‘smart work’? or is it that some people are just born smart workers? Let’s explore: Ingredients of smart work:   Understanding the fundamentals: Strong fundamentals is the most important requirement. No matter which field you are working in, how boring or interesting your job is, without strong fundamentals, you cannot do smart work at all Zeal  to reduce your effort constructively: Well, you may have come across many people who have the best fundamentals and yet they are just stuck in whatever they are doing. Such peopl

  Hi, Today I want to share with your the best motivational quotes, which I like the most. Whenever I feel depressed and demotivated, I read or remind them and find motivation instantly. I hope they will help you too: Quote 1: It always seems impossible until it's done.  - Nelson Mandela  Pretty must self-explanatory! Not just researchers, but many common people across the world have achieved feats that were once thought to be impossible to accomplish. And trust me, being a researcher myself, I have experienced it myself. Quote 2: This one is by James Clear, the renowned author says: "Sometimes people think lack of clarity as a lack of motivation" Sometimes it's just that you don't know clearly what your next step is and hence sit perplexed. This is misinterpreted as a lack of motivation while it is actually a lack of clarity. So, whenever you don't feel like working on your project, studying for exams or so on, do a rain check if its the lack of clarity of wh

  The world today is full of fake news. And more than that, the world is full of useless, crap information. While fake news makes you dumb, useless news doesn’t serve you any better. Here are some great YouTube channels which can make you smarter than your peers. So, doesn’t matter you are a student or a professor, a saint or a seeker, a pro or a dabbler, it is equally important to have correct and latest knowledge about the world we live in. Seeker:   Number of Subscribers:  5 million The Channel Describes itself as “Seeker empowers the curious to understand the science shaping our world. We tell award-winning stories about the natural forces and groundbreaking innovations that impact our lives, our planet, and our universe.” Here is the link to the channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/DNewsChannel     Insider: Number of Subscribers: 7.4 million Insider is what great journalism about what passionate people actually want to know. That’s everything from news to food, c

Pratik Badgujar 6 minute read Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam in his book "Vision 2020"  envisioned India as a superpower by 2020.   It does not take an expert to tell that we are still far far away from achieving that feat. In spite of almost 75 years of independence, we are still considered as a developing country and not a developed one. But what went wrong? In all these years of independence, India has achieved some remarkable feats and yet there are areas in which we have not performed so well. What is holding India back? India is unique in many aspects. It is certainly quite different from western countries like the US, Europe etc. It is very difficult to implement textbook strategies in Indian conditions. Here are issues which make governance a difficult task compared to any other: Diversity: “Unity in Diversity” is what we all grew up with. India is truly unique due to the sheer number of languages, dialects, cultures, religions, climates it nurtures. This diversity is said t