Author: Ajmal

change | influence | build

Posted on by Ajmal


In my recent article “Instilling Compassionate Prudence“, I had touched upon the theme of giving the extra effort and aspiring to emboss our signature and professional acumen in any kind of work we are engaged in, be it in any realm. This post is kind of an extension of that theme and in a way, augments those frameworks discussed. Quoting from a very old interview with Steve Jobs (1955 – 2011),

“When you grow up you tend to get told the world is the way it is and your life is just to live your life inside the world. Try not to bash into the walls too much. Try to have a nice family, have fun, save a little money. That’s a very limited life.

Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact: Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you and you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use.

Once you learn that, you’ll never be the same again”

These changing, influencing and building aspects are truly profound. Be it a job or a project or any sort of endeavor, we are basically streamlined to do any of these on a broader viewpoint in the grand scheme of things.

Steve further notes:

” And the minute that you understand that you know if you push in, something will pop out the other side that you can change, you can mold it. That’s maybe the most important thing is to shake off this erroneous notion that life is there and you’re just going to live in it versus embrace it, change it, improve it, make your mark upon it. Once you learn that, you’ll never be the same again.”

Happiness in the ordinary.

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We are living in a time where all the talk is about happiness. Governments put up initiatives to enhance the happiness of citizens, employers trying to introduce policies to enhance the happiness of its employees. Everyone as a person is also trying to explore avenues and alleys to discover happiness and fulfillment. Netta lately shared with me a wonderful post from the Instagram profile of Freddy Birdy and we read it together lying down on the couch. It was so enchanting and beautifully written so that I decided to have it shared here as I didn’t find it anywhere else online and also serving it my usual art sauce of illustrations crafted by The Border of a Mind Studios. Hope this is worth your time and thanks to the original author for this wonderful piece.

The pursuit of happiness.
All our lives we spend wondering WHAT it is that will make us happy.
Wondering if we ARE actually happy.
Wondering if we WILL ever be happy.
Wondering if we will find everything we ever dreamed of.
But happiness.
We know in our minds what we THINK will make us happy.
The perfect job.
More money in the bank.
The ultimate partner.
Children who get straight ‘A’s.
A dream home overlooking the city.
A beach house parked next to the sea.
Love.
Platinum credit cards.
Always turning left once you enter an aircraft.
Never looking at the right-hand side of a menu.

Fame.
Followers.
Likes.
Attention.
Success.

A Lamborghini (Countach).
Unlimited Exotic travel.
Great Metabolism.
A fat paycheque.
A slimmer you.
Space on a magazine cover.
Permanent residence in someone’s heart.
Something.

We travel to new cities.
We attend all the parties.
We climb up another rung of the ladder.
We do things we KNOW will make us happy.

And we wonder why despite living our dreams,
happiness still isn’t our reality.
When will we realize that happiness
is in the ordinary, the mundane and the lacklustre?

Happiness is how you make somebody FEEL.

It is in ordinary everyday things.
not in life goals.

Happiness is the opposite of a plan.
Happiness is NOW, this minute, this microsecond.

Happiness is never taking anything or anyone for granted.
It is the scent of freshly brewed coffee on the WAY to work.

It is not a new car, a new iPhone,
a new watch or a new PERSON.

Happiness is the absence of grief.
Happiness is writing a thank you note to a friend.
Happiness is listening.
It is taking your dog for a walk.
And making dinner for your child.
And singing in the shower.

Happiness is one more pat of butter sliding down a hot, naked toast.
Happiness is a porch light on and waiting.
Happiness is the promise of a doorbell.

It is in the secret of eyes meeting for the very first time.
It is in fingers touching accidentally in paper popcorn holders at the movies.

Happiness is not in counting currency notes.
But your blessings.

Happiness is not what others think of you.
Happiness is what YOU think of yourself.
Happiness is the smell of a new book.
Or the smell your lover’s clothing hanging on a bathroom hook

Happiness is not your child’s report card.
Happiness is your child’s happiness.

Happiness is not a 21-course menu degustation.
Happiness is a 5 Star bar discovered in a lunch box.
And greasy omelette pays with friends at 2 am

Happiness is laughing at the same joke
again and again and still again in your head.


Happiness is staring at a familiar WhatsApp message and smiling to yourself.

Happiness is a large plate of Maggi.
Served with FOUR forks.

Happiness is your first mango of the season.
Or the last installment of a loan.

Happiness is not a ten thousand rupee perfume on a duty-free counter.
Happiness is the scent of your lover’s NECK.
Or familiar arms holding you close in newer ways.

Happiness is watching a loved one snore softly in deep sleep.
Happiness is also forgetting. Forgiving. And letting go.

Happiness is training your mind to unthink
Lastly, happiness is not about counting
stars, staring together at a new moon, riding unicorns,

chasing rainbows or dancing barefoot in the twilight.

Your happiness always lies within you.

instrument.

Posted on by Ajmal

“If the photographer is interested in the people in front of his lens, and if he is compassionate, it’s already a lot. The instrument is not the camera but the photographer.”
— Eve Arnold

The above is an illustrated portrait of my brother, who is an avid photographer.
500px gallery  |  Instagram gallery   |

“You don’t make a photograph just with a camera. You bring to the act of photography all the pictures you have seen, the books you have read, the music you have heard, the people you have loved.”  — Ansel Adams

The Parable of Mexican Fisherman

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The parable of Mexican fisherman is a very famous read on the internet and the way it bespeaks perspective and purpose is indeed ardently profound. I came across this couple of years back on an online magazine and it’s a piece of text that time and time again helps to anchor aspirations and contextualize ambitions. I hope it’s worth your time. I’m adding some illustrations from my archives so as to attempt to give you an eye-ball read. My footnotes and thoughts on this interesting parable is towards the bottom of this post.

_____________________________________________________

An American businessman was standing at the pier of a small coastal Mexican village when a small boat with just one fisherman docked. Inside the small boat were several large yellowfin tuna. The American complimented the Mexican on the quality of his fish.

“How long did it take you to catch them?” The American asked.

“Only a little while.” The Mexican replied.

“Why don’t you stay out longer and catch more fish?” The American then asked.

“I have enough to support my family’s immediate needs.” The Mexican said.

“But,” The American then asked, “What do you do with the rest of your time?”

The Mexican fisherman said, “I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, take a siesta with my wife, Maria, stroll into the village each evening where I sip wine and play guitar with my amigos. I have a full and busy life, senor.”

The American scoffed, “I am a Harvard MBA and could help you. You should spend more time fishing and with the proceeds, you buy a bigger boat, and with the proceeds from the bigger boat you could buy several boats, eventually, you would have a fleet of fishing boats!”

“Instead of selling your catch to a middleman you would sell directly to the consumers, eventually opening your own can factory. You would control the product, processing, and distribution. You would need to leave this small coastal fishing village and move to Mexico City, then LA and eventually NYC where you will run your expanding enterprise.”

The Mexican fisherman asked, “But senor, how long will this all take?”

To which the American replied, “About 15-20 years.”

“But what then, senor?”

The American laughed and said, “That’s the best part. When the time is right you would announce an IPO (Initial Public Offering) and sell your company stock to the public and become very rich, you would make millions!”

“Millions, senor? Then what?”

The American said slowly, “Then you would retire. Move to a small coastal fishing village where you would sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, take a siesta with your wife, stroll to the village in the evenings where you could sip wine and play your guitar with your amigos…”

_____________________________________________________

If we ponder on the takeaways of this parable, it’s really nailed on the head. It propounds the theme of being in the moment and exploring instances and avenues of contentment and fulfillment rather than being dismayed and debilitated by an uncertain future. It also offers recollections on taming expectations and scaling it reasonably on a baseline and very importantly, stresses the laser focus on purpose and what really matters. It also moots the idea of discovering and appreciating the small things in life and being focussed and grounded in a sense of calm and not being carried away and washed out by the hustle and bustle “bandwagon”. God bless!

Garden

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” Every garden scheme should have a backbone, a central idea beautifully phrased. Every wall, path, stone, and flower should have its relationship to the central idea. ”
– Edwin Lutyens


Indoor garden at Genie’s Cove.
The central idea here is obscure minimalism.

Small Business – Lines of thought

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                                                A busy shopping street in Istanbul, Turkey

“When you buy from a small business, you are not helping a CEO buy a third vacation home. You are helping a little girl get dance lessons, a little boy get his team jersey, a mom put food on the table, a dad pay a mortgage, or a student pay for college.”

This is a pretty viral note on the internet about small businesses. I remember my dad forwarding this message and is definitely worth pondering.

In a beautiful article originally written for Holdfast Gear by Matthew Swaggart, he writes:

..One of the many emotions that one can feel daily is pride. No, not the ugly kind of pride that thrives on elevating the self above others, but the kind that warms your heart. The kind that you feel when you see your little boy get his first base hit. Or when you walk your little girl down the aisle. The kind that makes you feel an immense sense of gratitude for gifts, experiences, relationships that you realize you really aren’t worthy of.

Recently I’ve encountered some experiences related to my work that, as I have processed them, have caused me to feel a great sense of pride and gratitude for being among a group of individuals who are really a new breed – a group of individuals who have emerged in recent years as change agents in a new, recovering economy. I’m talking about those in small business…

If we really think about it, we can discover a lot of awe-inspiring stories around us. It’s true that many large brands have had small humble beginnings and might have gone through their struggling stages, but small businesses, in the initial states where they are filled with passion, zeal and hard work definitely resonates the above themes.

                                                Another busy shopping street in Istanbul, Turkey
Mathew Swaggart further writes:

The landscape of today’s economy for a startup can be unfamiliar and treacherous terrain. With all of the heart and soul that is wrapped up in starting a business from the raw material of your life, researching, developing, marketing, and delivering a product becomes a highly personal endeavor

Recollecting a recent experience, few years back, I had used services from Tiny Suprise, a gifting company based in Chennai, India for sending some gifts to Netta for her birthday. Not only did the quality of the product impress me, but the entire experience from the perfect timing of the deliveries to the quality of the packaging was top notch. I have been reading about their story recently. I did have other options which are pretty big names in the Indian online gift landscape but trying a relatively new company gave a fresh experience overall. Tiny Surprise may soon cease to be a small company and may turn out to be pretty huge. The same approach even applies to smaller grocery shops near our homes serving only nearby communities and can’t afford huge online portals with their mammoth logistic empires. Definitely, these are all relative and perspectives can vary for different people, but it’s nevertheless very inspiring to see small businesses transforming struggles into catalysts for growth. The quote at the beginning of this article echoes in my mind. God bless.

                                                A lamp shop in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

Instilling Compassionate Prudence

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I always dream of this societal framework everywhere wherein, every person gives his best in whatever they do. Even if he/she’s a novice, I truly believe one can perfect his craft by being proactive, enthusiastic and passionate about what they do. This sort of prudence is something that can positively impact anyone you engage with. On a broader realm, this applies to companies and their engagement with customers and if we move further broad, that’ll change the world. For instance, if somebody is working in a customer care team, he can put in extra effort to bit more gentle and considerate with their clients. Being too gentle may not required by work scope, but that really makes a difference. Similarly, an artist who works professionally can put in extra bits and pieces to make his craft bit more detailed and enriching. Imagine a gardener charged with the task of pruning certain plants as a part of his job. Seemingly monotonous in the first instance, he can put in extra effort to make his output much more beautiful and add his personal touch to it. I had previously written something about “job from the heart“.  We’re not talking about meeting customer needs, but exceeding what they expect from you. This sort of a spirit truly brings in sort of fulfillment in everything that we do. This urge of always trying to give our best, improving ourselves and perfecting our craft helps us grow internally.  And the best way to be prudent is to make our best efforts to surround ourselves with people who uplift us, encourage and compliment us. This is not a motivational note or something similar, but I always thought of writing about this wholesome approach of instilling prudence in whatever we do.

Be it any work that you’re engaged in, I wish it to be filled with beauty, positivity and a state of mind often manifested in the quality of work we deliver. This sort of engagement with other people in different realms of life is what I believe defines us on a deeper note.  God bless you, friends!

Outlast

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“The best use of life is to spend it for something that outlasts life. Life is like a cash register, in that every account, every thought, every deed, like every sale, is registered and recorded. Life is not lost by dying; life is lost minute by minute, day by day dragging, in all the thousand small uncaring ways. We are here to add what we can to life, not to get what we can from it.” – Fulton J. Sheen

Illustration by The Border of a Mind Studios.

Virtual Reality(VR) Spiel

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I got my first hands-on experience with a professional VR system last August. The set I tried was an HTC vive. I had assembled a classic Google Cardboard system couple of years back to get a tiny glimpse of how an entry-level VR system works, although not the best in quality owing to its cardboard body and lower quality lenses.

The headset makes use of  “room-scale” tracking technology, which allows the user to move in 3D space and enables interaction with the environment through the use motion-tracked handheld controllers  Gyrosensors, accelerometers, and laser position sensors are generally used to track the position of the head. A plethora of additional accessories are normally accompanied with a VR unit for expanded experiences depending on the function of the accessory.  Special thanks to dear friend AR for his kindness in showing me these stuff knowing my sort of invasive curiosity in these things. In the short time frame to try it, I could test Google Earth VR and also the inevitable test app of any VR experience you name – Roller Coaster. Google Earth’s VR basically allows you to casually stroll through any international destination you could think of. They’ve facilitated enhanced content for locations of international interest and adds to the fluidity and overall richness of glancing at them and being ‘present’ in that space. Roller coaster VR version of vive was the most immersive among the similar ones I have experienced so far. On a broader note, the shift of experiences to this “out of home” sequences stands in pretty stark contrast to the quintessential social media narrative of documenting experiences and sharing it on a social platform. In VR, since the entire experience is on a virtual space, I normally reckon it as a benefit due to the exclusivity of the experience, though people might differ in opinion on that aspect depending on the way they organically intuit.

Nate Goldman puts it well on the Great Escape :

“...in this era of social media escapism, even those aren’t enough. We take out our phones and escape further into the screen, placing greater importance on the documenting of an experience rather than the experience itself. Virtual reality stands out as one of the few new experiences that preclude that option of escape — and instead demand our presence. We may not be in the physical world, but we are completely immersed in a new one: no splitting our attention or pressure to prove we were there. It’s just you, whoever you’re with, and the game. And in this day and age, that in itself feels like a new idea.“

Invisible Strings!

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“ Joy is like pure clear water; wherever it flows, wondrous blossoms grow. Sorrow is like a black flood; wherever it flows it wilts the blossoms. The universe is a complete unique entity. Everything and everyone is bound together with some invisible strings. Do not break anyone’s heart; do not look down on weaker than you. One’s sorrow at the other side of the world can make the entire world suffer; one’s happiness can make the entire world smile. Wherever you go, east, west, north or south, think of it as a journey into yourself! The one who travels into itself travels the world.” ― Shams Tabrizi