The difference between Success and Happiness

 

It is easy to get confused between success and happiness, often mistaking them be similar.

'Success' is getting what we want.

'Happiness' is wanting what we have got.

Success is a product of striving, and every striving is a journey. Journeying is like excellence, we never really arrive, for beyond each peak we conquer, another stands awaiting conquest.

Happiness on the other hand, is a state of being, it only needs an awakening, and a realisation.

In spite of the individual possessing the capacity and potential to be happy, we rarely permit ourselves the privilege of being happy. This is because Man the individual subordinates himself to Man the social creature and is thus doomed to be unhappy.

Constant criticism of and dissatisfaction with what we have by the individual trying to live to the standards and expectations of others and of society at large, finds it difficult if not  almost impossible to be happy. 

Happiness flowers within us, when we let go of expectations, and simply wallow in existence.

A first step is an appreciation of, and gratitude for what we are and what we have.

Who we are, will emerge in due course of time.

Happiness is most visible during the stage of childhood. Where innocence envelops us. The child unperturbed by the past and unconcerned about the future lives in the present.  That is why children are happy just enjoying the passage of time. 

This characteristic of children is worth emulating, while we teach our children about life, they are teaching us what life is all about.

Winston Churchill, a hero or monster?

 

My Anglo-Indian schooling conditioned me to be an Anglophile. Amongst the long list of Britishers I admired was Winston Churchill (1874 -1965). So when I learnt that a BBC 2002 poll on the 100 Greatest Britons of the last century, the British people chose Churchill as the greatest.

I decided to learn more about Churchill. It is painful to see your hero fall. I was dismayed to discover not a hero but a witty, evil, inhuman creature.

While Hitler and his Nazi cohorts took 12 years to round up and murder 6 million Jews on the basis of an absurd racist ideology, Racist Churchill took less than a year to gleefully kill between 4 to 5 million Indians.

Churchill exported the entire bountiful harvest of Bengal to Europe and deliberately starved Eastern India. He adamantly turned down appeals from two successive Viceroys, his own Secretary of State for India and even the President of America to stop the holocaust.

Unlike Hitler, slick historians and politicians of a victorious Britain glorified their own achievements and had Churchill duly glamourised and immortalised.

Australian biochemist Dr Gideon Polya has called the Bengal Famine of 1943-44 a “manmade holocaust”, the greatest disaster in the Indian subcontinent in the 20th century. Over 4 million Indians died because of an artificial famine engineered by Churchill's deliberate and direct policies".

Areas comprising present-day West Bengal, Odisha, Bihar and Bangladesh had a bountiful harvest in 1942, but the British diverted vast quantities of food grain from India to Britain, contributing to a massive food shortage in these very areas. Thus is while Britain already had more than adequate food stocks.

In her well researched book Churchill’s Secret War author Madhusree Mukerjee tracked down some of the survivors who revealed a chilling picture of the effects of hunger and deprivation.

“Parents dumped their starving children into rivers and wells. Many took their lives by throwing themselves in front of trains. Starving people begged for the starchy water in which rice had been boiled. Children ate leaves and vines, yam stems and grass. People were too weak even to cremate or bury their loved ones.”

“No one had the strength to perform rites,” a survivor tells Mukerjee. “Dogs and jackals feasted on piles of dead bodies in Bengal’s villages.”

The ones who got away were men who migrated to Calcutta for jobs and women who turned to prostitution to feed their families. “Mothers had turned into murderers, village belles into whores, fathers into traffickers of daughters,” writes Mukerjee.

Mani Lal Bhaumik, the first person to get a PhD from the prestigious IITs and whose invention of excimer surgery enabled Lasik eye surgery, has the famine burnt into his memory. His grandmother starved to death because she used to give him a portion of her food.

Even the diehard Anglophile Jawaharlal Nehru, felt compelled to condemn the British action.

Legendary freedom fighter Subhas Chandra Bose, offered to send rice from Myanmar, but the British not only rejected the offer but censored news of Bose's offer.

Secretary of State for India and Burma, Leopold Amery, denounced Churchill’s “Hitler-like attitude”.

When the scale of the emerging holocaust became known Amery and the then Viceroy Archibald Wavell beseeched Churchill to release food stocks for India, Churchill did nothing except respond with a telegram asking. 'Why Gandhi hadn’t died as yet?

Churchill’s excuse, currently being peddled by his family and supporters, was Britain could not spare the ships to transport emergency supplies. However Mukerjee has unearthed documents that challenge this lie.

She cites official records that reveal many ships carrying grain from Australia bypassed India on their way to the Mediterranean. Churchill could have saved millions of Indian lives but he chose not to.

Churchill was a racist who hated Indians for every conceivable reason and mostly because Indians expressed their desire to be free. At a War Cabinet meeting, he blamed the Indians themselves for the famine, saying they “breed like rabbits”. His attitude toward Indians both Hindus and Muslims may be summed up in his words to Amery: “I hate Indians, they are a beastly people with beastly religions.” and Churchill's 1899 book 'The River war', "Islam in a man is like rabies in a dog".

The author Mike Davis in his award winning book Late Victorian Holocausts points out that that there were 31 serious famines in 120 years of British rule compared with 17 in the 2,000 years before British rule.

15 Million Indians died because of Colonial Genocide.

Some fools, arrogant, vocal and ignorant about real history try to convince others that British rule was a glorious period in Indian history.

Nothing could be further from the truth. India's share went from 25% of global GDP in 1750 to 1.8% in 1947 (when the British left India).

Inexplicably these enslaved Indian minds still pine for their former colonial masters.

Are Indians really free?

We can consider ourselves free only when we break the shackles placed on our culture, mind and economy by colonialism, Marxism, religious fundamentalism and pseudo secularism. Only when we contribute to a greater India and a better humanity, can we claim to be free.

None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.

~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Temple of my Soul

Depending on our experiences and our learning both formal and informal, religious, social or otherwise we come to generally believe in the East that 'I am a soul with a body' or in the West, 'I am a body with a soul'. Atheists believe different things or disbelieve almost everything.

Who am I? Almost all of us will never know the answer though many will seek to know so we can only believe.

I believe, 'I am nothing more than energy concentrated in the form of an eternal soul, housed within a constantly ageing body and driven and controlled by my mind.'

When the three interrelated aspects of our existence, body, mind and soul, are in harmony with one another we can claim to be at ease and healthy. When the natural rhythm, pulse, and synchronisation is disturbed we suffer from a case of 'dis-ease' and hence the origin of the term 'disease'.

All traditional practices of health such a 'Ayurveda' (the knowledge of life) have focussed in restoring the balance and harmony in 'dis eased' beings both within themselves and with the rest of existence.

All these thoughts and beliefs remain theory until we experience major dis-ease or imbalance, as I happened to experience by physical injury very recently. Medicines and treatments alleviated my pain but were not making me healthy. I suddenly realised that while I was nourishing my soul and mind I had all but neglected my body, the temple of my soul.

Now I understood why traditional Indian temples were not only places of worship but each a 'Gurukul'. A Gurukul being an integrated centre for transmission of theory and practice of a wide range of subjects, physical education and practice of yoga and meditation, music and arts, literature and culture, etc. with a learned, wise and experienced Guru at the very centre. This formed the backbone and basic core of Indian civilisation until it was significantly damaged by neglect, corruption, invasions and imported ideologies.

A neglected or unhealthy body adversely affects our ability to function both physically and mentally and impedes the realisation of our spiritually.

We are at our prime of our physical health between age 16 and 20 years. After that our bodies begin to decay. Our joints begin to stiffen and we lose about 8% of our muscle mass each decade, hence our strength, stamina and flexibility degrade. Our brain cells begin to die more rapidly than they are regenerated, and eventually we can suffer from conditions like dementia.

Both ancient and modern scientific thinking agree that a healthy body and mind can be achieved by following some universal truths.

• Exercise, either by imbedding physical activity such as walking and climbing in our daily routine or develop a workout regime. I have discovered the latter with the help of a good trainer to be fun and very effective.
• Proper diet and nutrition in moderation provides the right fuel and energy eliminating 90% of dis-ease.
• Avoid intoxicants and artificial stimulants, wherever and whenever possible.
• Get sufficient and fitful sleep (Physical exercise helps a lot in this regard).
• Constantly challenge and recharge the mind by continuous learning and contemplation.
• Nourish the soul by meditation.
• Harmonise the mind, body and soul by practice of pranayama and yoga.

Scientists have discovered by studies and many of us by experience that exercise, yoga and meditation increases the feel good factor (caused by hormones like endorphins) and sharpens the mind.

It is useful to remember, the body benefits from movement, and the mind benefits from stillness. Hence physical exercise, sport or various sports, coupled with hobbies or interests that challenges the mind, nourishes and strengthens it.

Sadly like most people, after leaving school at age 16, I had stopped exercising and working out, as a result over next 47 years my body has decayed and weakened much more rapidly than it should have.  

The good news is that because of our son Pavit's nagging and his part ownership in Hotfut sports and ILESEUM clubs I had easy access to numerous gyms and good trainers.

As a result our entire family have begun to work out regularly. I have discovered that while ageing cannot be reversed, a lot of health can be recovered and restored.

I wish you all good health.

Interesting Links:

• Not every teacher is a Guru ~ Guru Wonder
• The importance of the Gurukul system and why Indian education needs it ~ Times of India
• How New Brain Cells Regenerate ~ Very Well Mind
• The Adult Brain Does Grow New Neurons After All, Study Says ~ Scientific American
• Hotfut sports
• ILESEUM clubs ~ Inclusive Localism For Excellence in Sports Education and Urban Living Management Clubs

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