Saturday, September 22, 2012

SHEER BEAUTY - Ab Kya Misaal Doon - Aarti (1962)

LAST POST Obituary - Pratap Dattatraya Joshi (6.3.1932 - 22.9.2008) RIP - Remembering an Honest Soldier and a Good Man - September 22

http://karvediat.blogspot.in/2012/09/september-22-remembering-honest-soldier.html

SEPTEMBER 22 - REMEMBERING AN HONEST SOLDIER - LAST POST - AN OBITUARY


Today is the 22nd of September - the death anniversary of my late father-in-law Brigadier Pratap Dattatraya Joshi who we affectionately called Daddy. 

How time flies! 

He passed away in the early hours of 22 September 2008.

Four years have passed since the inimitable Pratap Dattatraya Joshi left for his heavenly abode. 

Lest we forget him, before I go to sleep, let me sound the Last Post” once again.

As a token of my remembrance, here is the obituary LAST POST I wrote for him when he left us on the 22nd of September 2008.

LAST POST

Obituary - Pratap Dattatraya Joshi  (6.3.1932 - 22.9.2008)

In the early hours of the 22nd of September 2008, Pratap Dattatraya Joshi, breathed his last, and departed for his heavenly abode, at the Deenanath Mangeshkar Hospital in Pune.

Pratap Joshi was an epitome of simple living and high thinking. Born on the 6th of March 1932, he imbibed sterling values from his father, DP Joshi, a Teacher and Scout, a legend in his lifetime.

A product of the prestigious First Course of the National Defence Academy (or 1st JSW, as he liked to call it), Brigadier PD Joshi was certainly not the archetypal pompous hard-drinking handlebar-moustached high-falutin Colonel Blimp type of Officer. He was a simple, down-to-earth, Spartan, unassuming, dedicated, sincere, patriotic, scrupulously honest, erudite person possessing a golden heart filled with humility and compassion. Throughout his distinguished career spanning 37 years, and even thereafter, he spread happiness, benevolence and goodwill owing to his cheerful disposition, kind-hearted nature and inimitable sense of humour.

Forever young at heart, Pratap Joshi did not suffer from the Auld Lang Syne Complex. After retirement, unlike most retired armymen, he never lived in the past, languishing and brooding about the “good old days”, but moved on with exceptional enthusiasm and childlike zeal to his new loves – music and social work.

Starting from the scratch, he studied classical music with sheer dedication, resolute grit and passionate zest for many years till he was bestowed with the prestigious post graduate degree of Sangeet Alankar. Then he taught music to one and all, free of cost, making special efforts to teach the needy and underprivileged.

Travelling extensively, and roughing it out in the heart of the mofussil, to rural and far flung regions, he made a significant social contribution to enhancing primary education in backward areas, as the Chief Trustee of the Natu Foundation Educational Trust. He eagerly contributed his expertise to Jnana Prabodhini and for improving the efficiency of Hospitals.

Pratap Joshi loved animals, especially dogs. He always had pet dogs, and showered his unconditional love on them and all the dogs that he came across in the neighbourhood, pet and stray. It was distressing to see Dolly desperately searching for him soon after he had gone away from us forever. We shall always remember the love with which he snuggled and cuddled Sherry, our Doberman girl, when she was a baby.

He had a genuine zest for living, and enjoyed every moment of his life, indulging himself in his favourite foods, movies, travel, music – anything he liked, he did it! He laughed, and made others laugh.

I first met Pratap Joshi in March 1982 and he left such a lasting impression on me that I became his fan ever since. He was my father-in-law, more like a loving father who I could count on to stand by me, advise and inspire me, in happiness and in adversity, and I shall forever cherish every moment I shared with him. 

My son, a seafarer, was his favourite grandchild, the apple of his eye. 

It was a pity he couldn’t be with his beloved grandfather during his last moments as he is sailing on the high seas. 

Such are the tragedies and travesties of life, and death.

We will miss you dearly “Daddy”. 

You lived your life to its fullest and loved all of us from the bottom of your heart. 

We are sure you will shower us with your blessings from your heavenly abode. 

You were a noble and virtuous man who always did good to everyone you met and wherever you went. 

Pratap Dattatraya Joshi  (6.3.1932 - 22.9.2008) - RIP. 

May Your Soul Rest in Peace.

VIKRAM KARVE

ROHAN TARANG WAKAD PUNE - Real Estate Realty Home and Property Guide

Rohan Tarang is a nice place to live at the best location in Wakad Pune.

Well designed bright and airy apartments, nice friendly cosmopolitan IT crowd, good ambiance and superb view of the Mula River, well connected yet quiet and relatively unpolluted, Rohan Tarang is the only residential complex in South Wakad, quite far away from the din and bustle of North Wakad which has become an overcrowded concrete jungle.

The proximity of Rohan Tarang to Wakad Village enables one to enjoy a nice village-like atmosphere and one can walk down to to the verdant, unpolluted and uncrowded, serene and green park in the Mhatoba Temple Gardens on the banks of Mula River.

The cons are the lack of social infrastructure required for modern living and non-availability of Landline Phone and Broadband Internet Connectivity (BSNL, Airtel and other ISPs have not laid optical fiber cables so far to South Wakad) and erratic internet and cell phone connectivity via wireless.

Hopefully things will improve as development takes place.

Sunday, September 16, 2012

TIME MANAGEMENT GUIDE - HURRY BURRY SPOILS THE CURRY

MONDAY MORNING PEP TALK

Lifestyle Management

TIME MANAGEMENT GUIDE

ARE YOU A VICTIM OF HURRY SICKNESS
Hurry Burry Spoils the Curry
By 
VIKRAM KARVE

HURRY SICKNESS - DEFINITION and MEANING  

A central element of lifestyle management is the skill to creatively balance achievement and work success with leisure activities, family life and social involvements.
         
Another critical aspect is the ability to feel comfortable at work and at home and to enjoy the experience of whatever is being done at that moment.

But nowadays, most of us are obsessed with getting results or completing one’s task. 

When task completion becomes more important than enjoying and understanding the work or activity one is doing at the given moment, a sure victim of “hurry sickness” is born.

The resultant constant sense of urgency is the trap of hurry sickness. 

You rush to “get things done” to the point where it becomes an obsession.

Breaking this syndrome requires that you learn to enjoy experiences for the pleasure they give. When you gain pleasure from an experience, there is no need to get things done painstakingly.
        
Enjoy experiences, not rewards, and things will get done automatically without any constant stressful sense of urgency.

Hurry Sickness, as defined from a psychological perspective, is:

“A pervasive and progressively urgent need to complete task in order to obtain rewards at completion without regard for other aspects of the work experience and by using maladaptive time strategies.”

They key causal factor in hurry sickness is the progressive need for task completion.

Enjoying what you are doing is neglected with a morbid urge to getting it done as quickly as possible, no matter what the activity.

The need for task completion extends to non-work involvements as well.

For example, activities like eating, playing, romance, making love, sex, leisure, having fun, loafing, taking a stroll, recreation, leisure, sports, pastimes, hobbies, holidaying, exercising, lazing around, dozing, enjoying music, cooking, gardening, doing nothing. 

Your Hurry Sickness interferes with the enjoyment of these experiences because of the persistent inclination to hurry up and finish it off.

Getting things done has become such a strong need because the payoffs or rewards for completion have assumed primary importance.

Your work experience has taught you that rewards always come at the end of the activity after you have put forth great effort to achieve a goal. 

You do not realize that happiness is not a destination but the manner of traveling.

Not only do you feel a sense of personal satisfaction from your achievements, but tangible rewards, such as promotion, cash incentives, awards, and advancements are given to you as well. 

With time, these rewards have become clearly linked with your self-esteem.

Each time you “succeed”, your ego, your inner self, sends a message to you which says: “You have done well. You are a commendable person because you succeeded again.” 

Your need for this kind of reassurance has become stronger than you would care to admit.

Time-Urgency quickly becomes a strong internal driving force towards task completion. 

Your life becomes a frenzy of completing one task after another. 

You are obsessed with time and wasting time becomes almost a mortal sin.

You strive to maximize your productivity by using time ever more efficiently, but you also have a sense that you are controlled by time and you don’t like it. 

Time is both your challenge and your enemy.

A telling sign of hurry sickness is that even while relaxing, you constantly fight the time-urgency that causes you unrest.

Another way to seek to increase your output is to adopt maladaptive time management strategies. 

These questionable tactics do help you get more done over the short run, but you pay a heavy emotional price.

You now do everything faster, you have learned to “multitask” or “double up,” to do two or more thing at once, and you are constantly preparing for what is coming next before you are finished what you are doing now. 

The insidious trap is that you get something done quickly even when there is no reason to get anything done at all!

Because of your emphasis on task completion, you focus on finishing without regard for other aspects of the experience. 

In short, you have lost the ability to enjoy yourself while doing anything because of your incessant drive to get to the finish line. 

Because of this change, you have lost the ability to emotionally rejuvenate yourself.

Chronic fatigue and pessimism are symptoms of this malady of Hurry Sickness.

SIGNS AND SIGNALS OF HURRY SICKNESS

Here are some behavioral signs and signals that indicate hurry sickness:

1.     Eating  

You now eat in the office while continuing to work or you just skip meals altogether.

You multitask while eating.

At home, you finish meals well ahead of everyone else and eat in bigger bites without savoring the taste of food.

Sharing pleasantries at the table is minimal because you cannot sit long enough.

Ask yourself – are you eating mindfully and relishing every morsel of your food? 

Are you totally relaxed and unhurried when you eat? 

2.     Sex

Relaxed and romantic sex and leisurely love-making is but a pleasant memory.

The frequency of having sex has reduced and even when you do indulge in sex, it is a quick encounter and you are off to sleep or you move on to some other “important” or “urgent” activity. 

Sex is less spontaneous and more mechanical these days – sex has become another hurry-up-and-get-it-done activity. 

Worse, you often indulge in “faking it” in order to get it over with in a hurry so you can quickly get on with the more “important” and “productive” things in life – your “high priority” activities!  

3.     Communications

Your interpersonal communication patterns now focus squarely on the negative. 

Feedback to others emphasizes mistakes and failings and you rarely compliment or offer sincere support to anyone these days. 

You don’t take the time any more for pleasant chat with family and colleagues. 

You make demands instead of working cooperatively with others or team-building.

You even stop talking to yourself (intrapersonal communication). 

And hey, are you on your cell-phone most of the time?  

4.     Leisure

You put aside less time for relaxation and you enjoy it less when you actually try to relax. 

Time-off is now more of a hassle than it is worth. 

When you sit still, you feel uncomfortable almost immediately.

You have lost the ability to “do nothing” – it’s difficult for you to loosen up and enjoy an idle hour relaxing, doing nothing. 

Ask yourself why you work. 

Introspect, reflect and contemplate on this question and realization will dawn upon you that the primary reason you work is to be able to enjoy your leisure - yes, we work to earn money so that we can enjoy our leisure.

So why aren’t you taking a vacation every day and learning how to enjoy your leisure with full awareness? Of course, if you are lucky and learn to enjoy your work, then your work will seem like leisure. 

5.     Family Life 

Family members now “report” events to you, but you share little of yourself with them. You and your spouse argue more than you talk.

The satisfactions of family life have diminished in quality and quantity

Your impatience is just as strong at home as it is in the office. In both your work life and your family life you display a sense of hurry.

HURRY SICKNESS - CURE REMEDY AND MITIGATION

(HURRY BURRY SPOILS THE CURRY)

If you are a victim of hurry sickness, your initial tendency is to effect and expedite your “cure” in a hurry too

But this hurry-up-and-get-it-done attitude may actually sabotage your recovery. 

What is required is patience, perspective and the ability to deal with setbacks in healthier ways.

It is easy to blame hurry sickness on the pressures of the job and what you “have to do to survive” and on the insensitivity of the complex modern world. 

While each of these perceptions has a grain of truth in it, the fact remains that most of the responsibility for hurry sickness lies within you.

Your drive to get ahead is the real root of the problem and the fact is that you have lost all sense of perspective. 

Until you accept personal responsibility for your present state, you will not be in a position to confront and reverse the real mischief, damage and harm caused by hurry sickness. 

Remember the well-known story of the hare and the tortoise. 

Decelerate your life a bit, slow down, walk leisurely instead of driving and do not carry or switch off your cell-phone where you can.

Do not multitask, do one thing at a time with full awareness and mindfulness and learn to enjoy the experience of whatever you are doing. 

Ask yourself: Do you believe in multitaskingAre you a victim of Hurry Sickness?

Why don’t you rid yourself of this malady and enhance your quality of life? 

Of course you can get rid of Hurry Sickness! 

Just stop multitasking and focus on whatever you are doing at the present moment. 

It is very easy and it works - you can take my word for it.

So Dear Reader - just RELAX 

Remember: HURRY BURRY SPOILS THE CURRY

VIKRAM KARVE
Copyright © Vikram Karve 2012
Vikram Karve has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.
© vikram karve., all rights reserved.

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About Vikram Karve

A creative person with a zest for life, Vikram Karve is a retired Naval Officer turned full time writer. Educated at IIT Delhi, IIT (BHU) Varanasi, The Lawrence School Lovedale and Bishops School Pune, Vikram has published two books: COCKTAIL a collection of fiction short stories about relationships (2011) and APPETITE FOR A STROLL a book of Foodie Adventures (2008) and he is currently working on his novel. An avid blogger, he has written a number of fiction short stories and creative non-fiction articles in magazines and journals for many years before the advent of blogging. Vikram has taught at a University as a Professor for 15 years and now teaches as a visiting faculty and devotes most of his time to creative writing. Vikram lives in Pune India with his family and muse - his pet dog Sherry with whom he takes long walks thinking creative thoughts. 

Vikram Karve Academic and Creative Writing Journal: http://karvediat.blogspot.com
Professional Profile Vikram Karve: http://www.linkedin.com/in/karve
Vikram Karve Facebook Page:  https://www.facebook.com/vikramkarve
Vikram Karve Creative Writing Blog: http://vikramkarve.sulekha.com/blog/posts.htm
Email: vikramkarve@sify.com        

 
 vikram karve., all rights reserved.
© vikram karve., all rights reserved.