Point of view

When you win be humble - If you lose bear it : If you have wealth be Generous - If you do not have wealth be honest. I hope you will forgive me for starting with a quote. It sets the tone for the rest of the Blog. As a child in Nellore I learnt from my Father and his Father that to drive home a point it is always best to illustrate it with a story. They used the Geeta. Upanishads, The Vedas and The Panchatantra to great effect in  this respect. I still use the ' Story Telling Mode' to focus my students on the class at hand . It is a wonderful tool to help people to understand the complexities of my Subject.

When I was asked by ARMSASCI to write the Blog I agreed. I have authored many projects, papers etc would it be difficult to produce one page of my beliefs and thoughts? I thought. Believe me it was like asking Gandhiji to become an expert in pistol firing in one day - while organising the Satyagraha may have been child's play for him - firing the pistol may have taken time to master. ....Anyways in Jun I came in contact with the armed forces course. By September I started teaching them. In my long years of service as a professional I have had the opportunity of interacting with a varied lot of people Amongst them I have also had association with Armed forces personnel for a varietuy of projects. So I was quite at home with the course right from the start.  One endearing quality that I found in the course was that they understood the importance of expertise. I was happy to have a clear field for sometime at least.Of course I took care to see that  I did not step on their toes and soon we developed a beautiful working relationship.This uninterrupted run of exposition had to end soon and it did sooner than later. Soon they were asking me pertinent questions and it was a challenge to give satisfactory replies. I relish a challenge and this drove me to preparing more thoroughly when I had a class with the armed forces.

Along the way we had some interesting discussions. Always during the break times. The officers used to say that the break times were too long . The pace of education was too slow they said. I understood this as time management. Wing Commander Yarlagadda used to say that if the classes got over earlier , with shorter breaks then , that would leave time for everyone to either attend to their personal jobs or to their professional duties. " Often people tend to lose focus and the lines between official and personal jobs tend to get blurred; That is when there is rising dissatisfaction which manifests itself in many ways...." I concur with his views to an extent. We also had discussions on varied number of topics - not necessarily related to my subject .  It did not mean that the subject was not illuminating or not educational in any way . I remember when we spoke about the health insurance sector - at that time we came to the conclusion that it is always necessary to read the fine print before actually subscribing to health Insurance. Better people than me have burnt their fingers in this cesspool of health insurance. But in the end it is a necessary evil which has to be taken care of. At another time we talked about hierarchy in the civil stream. I was only too happy to tell them what they would be facing in the future when they took up jobs in the corporate sector...

Feedback is important whether it be your family's health, your children's studies workplace happenings or the quality of ones instruction - not to mention its importance in logistics - it also gives you your worth at the end of the year in the appraisal reports which will help carry out required corrections. This was the subject of my lecture on Friday. and sure enough the feedback received from the class was positive. In fact one of the officers said that the class was very informative and and well conducted and equally well presented. I have always said that feedback is important but when one receives positive feed back then one is very happy.

I enjoyed writing this blog and I hope that you will enjoy reading it. I am sure that it will be reflected in your comments which will be a feedback for me....