Chennai Story
If you search for synonyms for 'hot' in the word doc, you really should come across ‘chennai’ somewhere in the list, i would place it right under magma and just above scorching. Before long you may hear a conversation like… How’s that girl? WoW! She’s so Chennai!!!
The rest of the universe feels really pleasant once you have lived 5 days in Chennai. Bawa believes, that people should be paid to live in that city. Alas! we happen to be volunteers… But then, we got paid in love and lots of yummy dosas.
A close to a 1000 young people with dreams in their eyes and excitement in their hearts (all pumped in by our team of hot volunteers) turned up for the Utsav. We had fabulous sessions… Sincere questions pulled out Bawa-answers which sizzled the atmosphere with laughter and deep insights. Before we started the Utsav, I requested Bawa if he can manage some rains when we were in Chennai. Bawa replied negatively saying its Utsav out in the open. So I persisted, “Cant we have 5 min at least on the last day”. He dismissively uttered, “ok ok”. I totally forgot about our conversation until it rained for exactly 5 min on the last day and everybody danced wild at yoga-time on the grounds.
People have reported that organizing an Utsav empowers you with people skills or soft skills more than a 2 year MBA degree. Also the stories people share are worth compiling into a best selling book (at least jot down your own tales if you have been part of the Utsav team).
One guy Anil who is a kick boxer had an innovative way of enrolling people. 3 of those he had enrolled confessed on Utsav that they lost to him in grueling duet. His motto seemed to be ‘bash them up and bring them in’. Once Anil while driving on his two wheeler was hit hard by a bus from behind, propelling him down over the railings of the bridge he was going on. Others driving behind were scared to look down at the definite death. But as they looked down they saw Anil waving at them from the truck full of hay which was (coincidentally!) moving under the bridge. Wow! Shooting a scene like that would require at least 10 retakes in a movie. But when the divine is directing, perfection becomes the order of the day.
We played football early mornings. Day one saw the rest-of-the-universe losing 3-2 against the Chennai supercheats (I mean supercats) on the beach. In hindi there is a phrase ‘Naach ne jaane, aangan tedha’ (if you can’t dance, blame the crooked ground). And we did that. We said that the beach sand was uneven, so the next day we went to the university grounds. And we beat the hot ones 2-0. (I was ashamed to reveal the score, ‘cos we had decided on doing 20-love (agreed that’s a lot of love, but Guruji encourages us to dream big).
Had it not been for Amanda who we loaned to play on their side, we would have definitely achieved all that love. The last 2 days, everyone revolted against me and slept in…
We had a Rudra Pooja Monday morning, a lovely Mathemagic session with Bawa and then a delightful romp with Indie (Indiana Jones) at the movies… When I read Bawa’s review on it, I wanted to go and see the movie again. He writes with such passion, precision and perfection. He is so pCool! (adds to the alliteration and complements the pHot).
We railwayed back to the ashram and what an eventful last few days we had here!
To know what happened, come back to this space tomorrow...
PS: This post is by Dinesh, i just edited it, so it says that i wrote it...
9 comments:
Its nice to see that Dinesh Bhaiyya is writing posts regularly....
Please post more guru stories.... :)
JGD
The articles just melts our hearts (pun intended)....Such freshness and humor...amazing.
My Utsav experience definitely helped my build among other MBA skills, my sales skills, and disaster management skills. I hesitate before mentioning disaster management because
a. That is such an inevitable and recurring experience for all Utsav organizers that mentioning it is almost blase
b. 'Miracle Mustering' sounds more appropriate :)
Back to sales skills - for the Bangalore Utsav, i was given the 'important' task of addressing a classroom of CAs and enrolling them for the Utsav. The task was made all the more exciting by the following:
1. The CAs were working professionals who spent all their time outside of work, ew, studying about money.
2. I could not fathom why someone would want to do that, when it did not necessarily translate into making too much money.
3. I was asked to prepare for the talk with a princely advance notification of 15 minutes - this included 10 minutes of travel time.
Most importantly, i realised at the venue that
4. The institute's director had no such notification, nor inclination, to let us speak.
But our Guru takes care of everything, because just when i was given this call, i was busy registering a MS graduate whose specialisation was "Corporate Finance". I quickly enquired with her on what bugs finance students/what does it take to succeed, and quickly structured a talk around the same.
At the venue, while the instructor was incredulous, our team - Ananth and Balwant - kept him engaged/held-off, while i spoke to the class. The talk was a hit!
Bau, i have started writing on Francois Gautier's articles on my blog. Would be honored if you had a look, dropped a comment on the same at ratnaabhishek.blogspot.com
Bawa , u r so simala + kullu + manali.
u make me laugh in the very first para.
feeling fresh.
thanks
shailendra
jaigurudev bau and dinesh da,
yes the bangalore utsav was really amazing.. learnt more while doing some seva during those few days than in my entire 3 years of college+animation workshops and internship...
ps: its nice to see posts by dinesh da.. on a regular basis..
yeah....every time i rethink of that, a chill runs down my heart and at the same time, i feel so grateful to HIM.
Also to my mom, she was the one person who dragged me to AOL at first place, (twas a satsang)and what happened next - i went there an escort to my mom, and came out in tears- simply blown apart by the presence of the person in the photograph (that's how i used to call him b4 i met him after my first part 1 course). That was on 28 May 2006. 4 June 2006- the first day of my part -1 course and exactly 730 days (2 yrs) later - an act which literally cushioned & prevented my fall into the jaws of death - yes...FOr me. UTSAV was literally a rebirth- one of continuous celebration
Looking fwd to UTSAV Aug 2008 in Chennai
Dinesh da admitted to a slip of finger (ala slip of the tongue) when he mentioned the name Chennai Supercheats. I think he must have been thinking of his team (Devang Bhaiya in particular), lol. Btw, it was an awesome experience being part of the Chennai team organizing the Utsav. It was fun playing those football games with Dinesh da and all the folks. My learning in registering people was that my job was to educate and ignore. Before this, I used to talk to people with a certain tinge of feverishness of registering them. But during utsav, there was just no time for all that as we had to reach out to more people. So I just went ahead and talked 2 more n more ppl.
We did all sort of techniques to enrol ppl. One such thing was the night intro talks that I did along with Bharath another volunteer from Chennai. We would go to homes of IT folks (particularly houses wherever Bharath or I had a friend) @ 10/11 in night, ask them to switch off the TVs during an exciting IPL game and then talk 2 them n register them. All in all, Utsav was exciting like nothing else before !!
I had taken a break from work for organizing Utsav in Chennai. After Utsav, when I returned to my work everything there seemed trivial compared to what I had been doing the previous weeks. The week later I was in the Ashram with some of my friends from Chennai and got to meet Bawa n Dinesh da and offocurse Satsangs with Guruji. Now am back in Chennai and miss the Ashram. I hope to come and stay in the Ashram for a longer time in the future, dunno when.
wow that was really chennai to read....i cold feel the chennainess...the rain reminded me of the Bangalore Utsav which we still wonder how it happened... with the rains till the first Soham was said and how it stopped miraculously till the Kriya got over. MBA..hmmm...dunno about that but it is certainly more than an MBA that you get after being a part of the Utsav. YOU are put to test and everything just blossoms in you...there is no option for that to happen...Love, Jai Gurudev gauri
hahaaha! it was a 'chennai' post. good to see dinesh sir over here :)
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