Author Archives: Rashmi Dixit

My life journey began in a small village in Kanpur, U.P. I was raised by my grandparents for the first four years of my life. During the day I found myself running amidst the farms and the open sky, squinting at the sun. At nights I would sleep under the stars counting them and making weird patterns. The moon was my sleep partner then. My writing journey began at the age of thirteen, in Mumbai, when I bunked a class and found myself hiding from my maths teacher, amongst children, who were writing poetry for a competition. I wrote too, and to my surprise after a week, I was announced as the winner. Couple of months later I found myself battling lung tuberculosis, I was in complete isolation, but poetry gave me company. I wrote some really dark poetry around life and death and how beautiful death was. My writing and my imagination since then has been my greatest friend and confidant. After my Post graduation in Microbiology, I was hired as a Scientist by a Multinational organisation. However, my soul kept humming a different song, although I was considered to have high potential and was known to be highly competent. After my marriage and two children, and nine years of corporate career, I jumped into humanities. I started conducting leadership workshops and interventions for organizations and I still do. My work helps me connect with the various aspects of human behavior and thus takes me closer to experiencing more of who I am. As a life and executive coach to several people, I observe their brightness and beauty, in their language and actions, and help them to see what I see. This helps them unleash their own spontaneity and experience more of who they really are. My work is my passion and it helps me grow. It makes my writing become more mature and rooted. Both writing and painting are meditative processes for me and help me explore new worlds, while creating deeper presence for myself. I love to indulge in life, and I cheer for the same. I get excited and enthused about new ideas and great stories. I cry watching emotional scenes in movies and can easily get hooked on to some romantic drama. I love gardening and can be seen communicating with my plants in the mornings over green tea. Rest you will find in my posts here.

The Importance of Doing Nothing

The phone rings, “Hey! how are you?” “How is life?” “What are you upto?” Busy?”

As soon as I hear this…something inside me says, “Tell you are Busy? and there is so much to do and then quickly disconnect”

So many days I end up not picking up the phone. These are tough questions for me, and disconnected superficial answers don’t interest me. Another question is “What else?” If there is nothing, absolutely nothing to talk about, this question is the saviour depending on who asks it first. So if you are smart you will pick this question immediately after “hello”.

There are sometimes when I am meditating, or completely relaxing, doing nothing, just being and the phone rings, I get paranoid. It is almost like, now you are caught doing nothing, you got to be doing something. If the pressure of doing something makes me pick the phone, and I muster the courage to say, I was doing nothing, then I open an entirely new Pandora’s box. Then the person on the other side will talk about how that person is busy all the time, and there is so much to do and no time. Goals to be achieved, shopping to be done, etc. etc. Leaving me with a tinge on guilt, some pressure to find something to do and restlessness.

Recently I started evaluating this. It started with a self doubt, Is there something wrong with me? am I the only one who has free time. Seems like nobody else does. Slowly this self doubt transformed into self preservation. May be I really am very efficient and end up finishing all my home and office routine in time and even earlier than time. The voices in my head kept discussing, just like a brain storming meeting in a corporate board room with no way forward. The voices kept going round and round. It was three days and I was walking alone on the street. I really had nowhere to go and nothing to do. I had packed off my children to school and my husband to office. I had finished clothes and utensils, it was a no office work day and I was free. I looked at people brisk walking, exercising and running to work. It was only dogs and I who seemed agendaless. My mobile rang and I looked at the number, it did not seem familiar, so I took the call, It was a bank offering loan. I hung up after the caller introduced and kept walking, what would I do with a loan? The sun was getting fiercer so I sat under a tree in a garden and saw squirrels, aimlessly running up and down the trees. As I watched them just being and playing, I realized my condition. My condition was only human. No other being, bird or animal seems to be in a hurry except when they are hungry. There is no busy-ness or no business to tend to. We have created our own ways of keeping busy and then turning them into full time occupations. We become occupied by our own business and have no time to relax. In fact we also term it a taboo if we hear of someone not doing anything. “Doing” is very important,”Having a goal, a purpose” is very important, being in a firefighting situation seems to be the right situation to be in (you are like a Hero), and we end up living a extremely stressful life. We sometimes don’t realize that we are stressed out even when we are on a holiday. While on a holiday we wonder if we have seen what all had to be seen, and whether this was a good deal. Some may spend their entire life making their life’s agenda, some may make an agenda and follow it and some will live forever in self doubt. However, I have observed that relaxation, peace and happiness comes to those who have an open agenda, and don’t drive towards an agenda, they just be and stand in their power. There is something about these people, where everything falls in line…it is almost as if the universe is serving them, every step every moment. These people are more alive and present, they are more available. They have innate acceptance and detachment qualities. I resonate with these agendaless people, in my moments of being. They don’t want to make a call, nor are in a flurry to change the world, they are just being, they listen and connect deeply. They don’t speak until they decide, they seem to be holding a big picture, a big picture, which connects all the dots.

Image Courtesy: http://fullrangecrossfit.com/category/wod/

The Yearning for Work life Balance and What Does it Mean!

In many of my facilitation and coaching sessions, I hear the participants lament about the lack of work-life balance, that they experience. They also constantly talk about how is it completely de-energizing or de-motivating them. Many of them say that, they feel inspired to see the way I balance my work-life. It used to surprise me earlier, but now I understand what they are talking about. I feel, I am clear on my priorities and that just helps me plan my work better, or even say ‘no’ to work that doesn’t interest me. Just by doing this I save enough time for activities that energize me and my family. I feel there are three main aspects at the root of the work-life balance, if you are able to work around these, then work-life balance doesn’t look like an herculean task anymore.

1. What is your long term Goal?

Is there something you aspire to do in the future, some dream that you want to come true? If you haven’t thought of this, then “take a break” to find this purpose. You may go away to a forest, or do some social work, Vipassana or just take a long nap. In Native American Shaman cultures, there is a process that a teenager had to go through, this process was a Visioning challenge. Where the teenager entered a forest and lived there for two or more days all by himself, only on his means, it is said that when he returned, he was transformed and knew what he wanted from life. Similarly in early India the Gurukul provided guidance to the path, which became your Dharma.

2. Is your Goal connected to what you are currently doing?

The connection may be direct or indirect. For e.g: Currently you may be doing a job to earn money, which will help you bring the dream to reality. Or, you might be already working towards the dream. The point here is, how aware are you of your present being related to your Goal or Dream?

If it is not, then you might be facing what I call as “Incongruloma” this word is not in the dictionary, so I will explain. Incongruloma is a confused state of being, where you are not sure, why you are doing, what you are doing? Also the confusion seems to continue to increase like cancer. In this state it seems like things in our life are being driven by someone else and we have no control over our own lives. Mind you this is a illusionary stage and it is easy to get out of it, if you learn to “take a break”or “take a chill pill”. Learn to say “No” to something that is not worth your time and “just stay”.

3. Create a list of things that are important in your life and that make you happy. Both at work place and in your life otherwise. Relive the moments and relish the emotion that you feel in your body. As you will sit quietly relishing all the moments that have given you happiness you will experience “Cheriscity“. Cheriscity is happy electric pulsation through your body, you won’t find this word in the dictionary again. Once you know the feeling of Cheriscity, all you have to do is create more and more of it for yourself and others.

When you follow the above three guidelines, you will observe that your balance will show in your work-life. It is the inner imbalance that makes us feel that our work and life is imbalanced and most of the time there is someone else to blame for it. It could be either our organisation, or our boss, if nothing else, we end up blaming our parents and our government.

We find our balance when we know what is it that we are looking for? It then comes naturally to move in the direction that takes us away from the rat race, which causes “Incongruloma” to finding spaces that create “Cheriscity”.

Image Courtesy: http://www.careerattraction.com/finding-balance-clock-can-improve-career/

The Need of Gender Integration and The Perils of Gender War

The Gender war has been eternal. I am not sure whether we can call this a war, sometimes yes, but the tussle between the genders is more like it. I get to see it everyday in my interactions with my son and daughter. They are two different individuals, with different thought processes, but there is something inherent in them by the virtue of their gender. I have not been able to put my finger on what exactly it is. But it looks like my daughter ends up processing thoughts and dreams inside of her more than my son does. My son seems to be more present to what exists in the moment, whereas my daughter seems to wonder about what could be. Now this could be a simple personality difference between them, as well, but somehow after observing the two genders at home and outside. I have realized that both serve certain functions. Also gender is just the outside, there are many men who are more feminine and gentle than many women, who seem to possess more masculine traits.

I remember a scene from book “A most Dangerous Method” where Sabina Spielrein tells her mentor Carl Jung, there is a woman in every man and a man in every woman. The statement made by her, made me realize that the gender differences exist only as a projection, of what we don’t accept in ourselves. So a Man in a Woman’s world would be someone who is tough, good in numbers, will take responsibility, can earn for the family, can take decisions, will have great financial acumen, good at Maps etc… and other things, that a woman may not be good at, or doesn’t wish to do. On the other side a Man would expect a woman to be gentle, soft spoken, great cook, good teacher, good mother…etc.. stuff that a man would not like to get into. Here the projection may differ from Society to society, family to family and person to person, so not one image would fit all. However through years of conditioning, there are some judgements that we have about both the genders. If a man seems too soft, he must be Gay…if a woman seems different she must be a Lesbian. Then we may suffer from moral judgements around Gay and Lesbian communities. So much of luggage and so many judgements around how a man should be? and how a woman should be? Who creates these wars, of course we do. First we have a war within ourselves our own masculine and feminine, who need awareness, understanding and acceptance and then we project it to the outside world.

When I see extremes it pains my heart. There is female foeticide at one end and feminist rebellion at another end. Both men and women suffer from this extremism. In another blog of mine I had explored role patriarchy in my relationship with my in-laws. Patriarchy has been one of the main causes of the mis-understandings between the Genders. It has always divided one against the other through societal conditioning and hence never allowed complete acceptance. It has not allowed the men to accept the woman in them and the woman to become comfortable with the man in them. The journey to acceptance can be long and arduous but that it what will bring healing in the Man- Woman relationship inside each of us and outside of us. That is when the Shiva and Shakti integrate in us and show us a clear path and clear goal.

Families today are still not looking at integrating and accepting masculine and feminine in themselves and are disintegrating. It is important that this integration becomes a important part of, how we live our lives.
Corporates today can continue to focus on business and not the feminine- masculine integration, but it will all have to change in coming future. For that integration alone will get better team functioning, innovation and new creativity.

Image Courtesy: http://www.glam.social/understanding-men-and-women-why

Do you agree with Deepika Padukone and Vogue?

There has been a lot of controversy over Vogue campaign called #MyChoice. The campaign pushes the idea of making choices as women/individuals and empowering themselves with their choices. The choices include the choice of working or not working, having sex before or after marriage or even out of marriage, producing children or not producing children, wearing whatever suits you. etc. While this campaign is quite accurate, though there are certain debatable things as per the reactions pouring in.

What are your thoughts on it?

The Elite Gone

I was often teased in my school for mispronouncing an English word or making an inappropriate sentence. In the society that I lived, going out of India and speaking polished English were considered important virtues. Although we had Hindi and Sanskrit as languages, they weren’t just as important, everyone would speak crude Hindi and make fun of Sanskrit and it was, ok. Also in our society the children, who moved out of India, actually were the ones, who were considered successful. I might sound a bit cliched but yes that was the perception carried by most. My upbringing taught me certain behaviours, which became patterns in my personality, until the awareness rose. I would enlist some of those behaviours/ feelings;

Making sure I talk in good English most of the time (To a point where It almost became difficult for me to have conversations in Hindi without using English words)
A feeling of Separation from people who did not talk in good English. So not engaging with them deeply.
A feeling of Shame in adopting my cultural or traditional practices. Trying to look and behave in a manner inclined more towards the west.
Feeling shrunk in a board room full of suited men and women. Behaviorally there would be a change in accent or I would mirror the people around, I would end up losing myself. I was always looking for acceptance.
Being internally angry with my family members for not being elite and classy.
Not being able to eat food at corporate parties, and pick only finger food, as I didn’t know what to do with the fork and the knife and where to place it. It was something I tried learning but couldn’t.
The last and the least was, my reaction to successful people. If I was in company of people perceived to be successful, I would feel like i was some outcaste. I would either not interact with them, saying things like “It doesn’t really matter” or if I did interact with them, there would be a Power tussle and rebellion. This would result in bitter interactions, with all such people. It was almost like I was rejecting them, before they could reject me.

In some places and situations my behaviours served me, and brought me to a place, which I considered to be success. But it was mostly on the outside, inside, I was still battling with the native within me. Within me lived a nature child, who didn’t care, about the fork and the knife. It wanted to touch the food feel its texture and relish every morsel with an sensuality unknown to the elite. This child wanted to dip its fingers in the warm colors and paint the house bright, it wanted to fold legs and sit in a corporate board room, wanted to hug a cuddly suited man and stay far from the guy who smelled of tobacco. For this child there was no classification, no language. It was, as it was. I met this child up close and personal, as I grew in my journey towards awareness of who I am. Initially I would be skeptical about letting the child out, its spontaneity was new to me, but I soon realised the deep connection that, this being allowed me with myself. It was unconditioned by several years of colonisation and capitalism. This intuitive, spontaneous being was full of compassion and deep connections, it showed its tears, wounds and joy easily, it was light. As I made friends with this child, I started accepting myself internally and external validation significantly reduced its importance. The elite capitalist and hoarder in me still rises at times and tries to suppress the native nature child, but now I am more aware and listen to its voice keenly at all times. It holds me with compassion and loves me unconditionally, It allows me to love and express myself in ways that were unknown to me. My native being allows me to come home and feel safe, belonged and whole.

My Childhood Days

I was born and raised for first four years of my life in a village called Mandhana, in Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh, in India. My childhood memories are pleasant and connected deeply to the soil and its people. The seasons were an important part of my life then, I remembered the change of seasons by the fruits and food that got made at my grandmother’s home. The smell of drying mango filled the warm summer wind. My visits to the temple for yummy prasad were very frequent, I would visit the temple more than twice a day, just for the prasad. The prasad in turn for me was a magical potion, which would get all my wishes fulfilled. At night I would lie under the sky and watch the patterns made by the stars. We had charpais (beds made of rope and had wooden legs), during those days, the beds would be put down only in the night, and as soon as the sun rose, the beds would be up too. This gave open space for running and doing other household chores like grinding, drying of papad etc. We had no furniture, only old wooden or aluminum trunks. Whole day we would play in the mud or with the farm animals. My favorite place was a huge store room of grains in our house, me and my friends would climb on the grain mountain and slide down, when no one was around. Those years of my life and later the summer vacations spent in my grandmother’s house nourished my soul and made my roots grow strong into the soil.

Image Courtesy: https://www.flickr.com/photos/mxn__tsk_div__nfr/8754079071/

Story of Chaos and Self acceptance

Chaos seems to have a negative connotation in most of our minds, but Chaos is necessary. It gives us something to do, it keeps us busy, many people live there life through chaos. It might sound strange but it is true. Have you seen people around you in a hurry, wanting to reach somewhere, wanting to be someplace? If you ask them their favorite color, they might look at you as if you have gone nuts. If you ask them what is it that they do in their free time, they give you, the “what a loser!” look.

They engage themselves in work, which they feel they are doing for family or significant others or just for proving a point. But inside there is a longing to be accepted and they would do anything for it. Humans would do anything for acceptance and validation of other humans. It is a human condition. Some may call their validator God, some may call Guru, some might just have friends who validate and some may be a part of a group or organisation. We all seek acceptance and validation of who we are? our thoughts and our being. This awareness of what I seek, creates a shift in how we approach life.

If we choose to be ignorant about ourselves, then we do so at our own peril. It needs courage to own up, who is it that we are seeking acceptance from? This is a big one. Till we continue to seek acceptance from the outside world we will live our lives in chaos, which can’t be sorted with our efforts alone, because there is an outside element involved. So a large part of our life will be then spent on engaging and influencing with this outside element. Sometimes the chaos will look unsurmountable and we go numb, so we just live our life without asking any questions. Our advice to others is, don’t think so much, don’t question so much, Relax man, chill; while saying this to others at some level we also say it to ourselves. We just can’t handle the chaos so we just look away, while it continues to stare at us in our faces.

The outside world and the chaos in it, is an reflection of our inside world, so if we shifted the focus from outside acceptance to self acceptance, our journey would take a entirely different turn. We would be aware, if not comfortable with all parts of ourselves and not projecting it on the outside world. We would be aware that all that affects me in the outside world exists within me, this awareness makes me more accountable for my thoughts, words and actions . We would start experiencing the world in a deeper way and would establish a healing connect with it. There would be chaos, but along with chaos their would be an inner voice of the higher self, allowing us to connect with the elements of nature and link our senses with it. We could then have faith in our intuition and work with nature in harmony. I dream of such a world, and I know it already exists, a part in you and a part in me.

Image Courtesy: http://beautifulchaosapp.com/

The Treasure

There was so much clutter in the room, the broken roof was a relief. It allowed air and light inside the musty over crowded room, which was full of old furniture and newspapers. “Why doesn’t he get the room cleaned ever?” Amravati thought to herself. The dust now irritating her nose, she rubbed her nose hard, but wasn’t able to escape the loud series of sneezes that followed. “Oh God! I will die sneezing”, Amravati thought to herself. But this was the only good place to hide, no one will come looking for her here, she knew. She just wanted to be away from her family, wanted to be alone.This was an old attic room, which no one had used, and since her mother’s death, so she was told, it was used as a dumping ground for old stuff. She cleared the dust with her duppatta and sat on a broken chair. She looked around and saw an old hand crafted table with a yellow flower motif and a bright red color tin box. This couldn’t have been my dad’s choice, Amravati surmised. According to Amravati her father lacked taste and nothing colorful or beautiful could be his choice, in fact the old colorless aluminium trunk was definitely once used by her father, she concluded, as she stared at the trunk distastefully. Her eyes roamed from one pice to another, as she judged, which one was her fathers. Something at the centre of the room caught her attention, as if it had just appeared. How could she have not seen a bright parrot green wooden box with beautifully carved butterflies on it? Amravati couldn’t close her mouth, she gasped at the intricately carved butterflies, how could this box find place in her house? she wondered. Whom could it belong to? She was curious. She quickly moved to hold the box and gently blew the dust from it, her lips making a fine ‘O’. She wiped her lips with the back of her hand, just in case she had some dust sitting on her. The lock was rusty and came off with a light tug. The hinges were rusty and cracked as the box opened.

A dried flat rose and a jasmine gajra greeted Amravati to the inner realms of the box, which contained a different world within itself. A small card size painting of a woman clad in a orange and light green checked sari with thin gold border, smiled at her coyly. Amravati was struck by the soft eyes that looked at her adoringly, the gaze made Amravati’s eyes misty with tears. She knew this had to be ‘mother’. She caught her tears on her lips with her tongue. Salt, she thought, but this is so sweet, this moment of just looking at her mother gazing at her lovingly, unconditionally. Amravati’s tears couldn’t stop, it was as if a river, which had been blocked or dried up had resurfaced and was flowing.

Image Courtesy: http://uneviedartiste.blogspot.in/2012/02/painting-in-progress-treasure-in-sea.html

The Birth

It was a sultry, sunny afternoon. Some noisy kids were playing on the roofed terrace in the neighborhood. Everything looked bright and there was sun in everything. The colored clothes that were drying on the rope looked like beautiful colored fairies dancing to the tune of the wind, they were warm and everything smelt of the sun. The Earth smelt of the Sun. You will know what I am talking about, if you have been in a sunny afternoon in a village mud house. The description of the smell itself will transport you to that afternoon, to experience the love making of the Earth and the Sun, which creates such wondrous, sensuous and warm Indian afternoons. It was such a bright afternoon, when Amravati was born in a small corner room of the village mud house. Sometime back, there had been groans and cries of the mother trying to push the baby out of her system. But now everything was still and silent. Even the leaves on the trees were not moving. The Sun seemed to be covered by the dust in the soundless wind. The afternoon grew patchy and a new born girl’s cry cast a dark shadow on the village.

A woman and two men standing at the door of the room rushed inside, to see what remained of Amravati’s mother. A young woman lay on a bloody bed, whose lower body was completely drenched in blood. An old woman held, a puny, little, blood and fluid, smeared baby in her outstretched arms, expecting someone to take notice of her. Amravati was crying incessantly, as if complaining angrily about something to someone. Suddenly the new borns cries were smothered by loud moans and wails of her father, who held on to Amravati’s mother’s body tightly. “Don’t go…don’t go”, he wailed. The afternoon was filled with sounds of sorrow and grief. The relatives and other village folks rushed in to console a distraught and broken husband. Amravati was now quite. She had bathed and was neatly put on a corner bed by the good old woman, who then sat besides her.

Image Courtesy: http://www.kshamabade.com/warli-painting

The Shadow

The room was dark and her heart was beating loudly, like a roaring tiger wanting to get out of the rib cage. Amravati could hear her own breath, there was no other sound, she sat in anticipation. Something inside her knew that there was someone else in the room. She waited as the clock ticked away time. Her eyes got droopy with sleep, but she did not lie down, she knew, she had to keep guard. Slowly she reached out for the water jug kept at the bed side. She held on to it like a weapon, her breathing becoming fast. There was a dog or was it a wolf howling somewhere far away. She could hear someone walking, or was it the trees rustling in the verandah. Amravati shook her head to wake up and see in the dark. Her hand still holding the jug. She sat there for a long time, listening, to all the noises, far and near, some making her heart beat faster and some making her wanting to shriek and call for help. Breath, breath; Amravati said to herself. After a while her head tipped off as she gave way to sleep, but she shook herself awake and resolved not to blink. The room was full of ghosts, the cupboard seemed to have taken form of a massive shouldered giant, with rectangular eyes. Her white duppatta on the chair looked like a old woman, sitting and staring at her. The tree outside the window looked like a strange figure staring at her. They all were looking at her and she looked back at them squarely, steadying her breath. The standoff continued till a knock on the door startled Amravati and the water from the Jug spilled onto the bed. She got up with a curse on her lips. The room was not dark any more and the sun rays were streaming through the window, where the tree stood clapping its leaves and the chirpy birds flew around it.

Amravati looked around, all the ghosts seemed to have disappeared. There was another knock at the door. She straightened herself and squeezed her dress to get the excess water off and walked towards the door. Her heart still carried the anxiety of the night and her eyes felt tired from the staring at the ghosts. “Amu…Amu” , she could hear her father call out. Amravati quickly opened the door. “Appa!” she screamed with excitement and hugged her father. Appa Rao was startled at this rare show of affection from his daughter. “Oh oh…Amu!”, he gently pushed her aside. ” Hope you slept well and were not scared?” her father enquired as he walked into the house. “Scared, of what? I had a very sound sleep.” Amravati said yawning and stretching.

Image Courtesy: http://hqwallbase.com/113492-shadow-of-the-moon/