Girish's Blog

With the large number of gurus, tantriks, priests and prophets in the market and in recessionary times, you need to find yourself a good guide. However, you should know that your tantrik is up to no good when he asks for Rs.300,000 to book air tickets and catch a rhino. According to the complaint that the 30-year old woman who was looking for a groom filed, "Shah said that sacrificing a rhino would remove all obstacles and within a week's time I'd get married. I paid Rs 2.95 lakh to perform the puja. He told me that he would book air tickets to go to UP to catch a Rhino and will return after completing the puja."

Probably as part of our culture, or as part of our education, we've been indoctrinated to aim for accuracy and completion in our work and that work is not done until it has attained both these objectives. Bob Sutton's "The Cult of Done" Manifesto  has a different take on "doing" things There are three states of being. Not knowing, action and completion. Accept that everything is a draft. It helps to get it done. There is no editing stage. Pretending you know what you're doing is almost the same as knowing what you are doing, so just accept that you know what you're doing even if you don't and do it. Banish procrastination. If you wait more than a week to get an idea done, abandon it. The point of being done is not to finish but to get other things done. Once you're done you can throw it away. Laugh at perfection. It's boring and keeps you from being done. People without dirty hands are wrong. Doing something makes you right. Failure count...

N.Ram, the red-flag waving editor of The Hindu and champion of the People's Liberation Army, just returned from a trip to Tibet and reports that the atmosphere was "relaxed". He added that there was no sign of strain or suppression there as people were filled with excitement and the atmosphere was festive. He also says, "The contrast between the old and the new is very powerful, demonstrating what the Chinese government and the system have done for Tibet. Meanwhile, the New York Times reports that authorities have imposed an unofficial state of martial law on the vast highlands where ethnic Tibetans live, with thousands of troops occupying areas they fear could erupt in renewed rioting on a momentous anniversary next week. And Beijing is determined to keep foreigners from seeing the mass deployment . The NY Times also reports that "many of China’s six million Tibetans chose not to celebrate Losar, the Tibetan New Year, in order to mourn Tibetans who suffered ...