Valmiki Syndrome

Ashok Banker

Description

Maxing our career is our 'dharma' in this age of Kali. But at what cost?Working parents don't see enough of their children, couples barely spend time with each other, young men and women become strangers to their families and friends. And here's the irony-most of us mention our families and loved ones as the main reason for why we strive towards success, without realizing that we stand to lose them in this very quest. So how do we strike a balance between our careers and our families?In his first major work of non-fiction, bestselling author Ashok K. Banker goes back to Puranic sources to address this question. He writes of Ratnakaran the bandit, who made a living out of killing and looting to support his family, and his transformation into Valmiki, the sage. Using his story and contemporary stories from today, he shows us how they contain the answers to today's most pressing issue: how to prioritize, manage, and enhance our personal as well as professional lives. Insightful, thought-provoking, and utterly inspiring, The Valmiki Syndrome is a map to the most elusive treasure of modern existence-personal fulfilment.

Informations

• Publié par: Random House Publishers India Pvt. Ltd.
• Date de parution: 17 mai 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9788184002911
• Langue: English

Extrait

Published by Random House India in 2012
Copyright Ashok K. Banker 2012
Random House Publishers India Private Limited
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Random House Group Limited
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United Kingdom
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EPUB ISBN 9788184002911
For sale in the Indian Subcontinent only
Contents
Introduction
Part One: A Perfect Life
Part Two: Who Am I?
Part Three: Whom Do I Wish To Be?
Part Four: How Do I Become That Person?
Part Five: The Valmiki Syndrome
A Note on the Author
Introduction
W e seem to be neck deep in a culture dedicated to the cult of self help.
As in, help your self . As if nobody else matters and we each exist in our own independent universe.
Betterment, improvement, education, everything seems to begin with the self these days.
Not that it s wrong in itself. The self is important. Vital.
Sure, we need to earn money, we deserve to live well. Eating healthy is good. Staying fit is great. Being beautiful and sexy is desirable, sure.
But there s a point beyond which it becomes an obsession.
All our lives seem to be dedicated to doing nothing else these days. Earning more. Owning more. Buying more. Getting, taking, achieving, improving.
But is that all we re about?
Is that the only thing we want to do with our lives? Live for ourselves? To the point where people will proudly proclaim that the only books they read are self-help and biographies-with the latter being considered a more advanced form of self-help literature: self-help by learning from the examples of other successful people.
Is this all there is to life?
When our ancestors set down the wisdom and insight they had painstakingly accumulated over generations and millennia in the form of scriptures, they didn t intend for those works to be used to show us how to squeeze more profits from the stock market. Get a sexier body. Build lean muscle mass. Get richer quicker. Reduce an entire holistic philosophy for living life into a 45-minute exercise session thrice a week. Or cram a meditational methodology into a one-week detox course for overstressed yuppies.
The Kama Sutra was not intended to be used as a sex manual depicting 101 positions.
Dharma was not a concept created to teach corporate executives the importance of business ethics.
Yoga was not intended to be taught as an alternate form of aerobics.
The Bhagwad Gita is not a management textbook.
The Ramayana is not a misogynistic religious tract about Good versus Evil.
The Mahabharata is not a manual on the art of war.
And this book, The Valmiki Syndrome, is not a self-help book, or a how-to book, or a manual, guide, textbook or codebook for anything.
On one level, it is a set of stories. Call them parables, if you prefer, with one unifying theme, each one about a very different person.
But all facing the same questions that I ve been asking here in this Introduction:
Is life only about self help?
Is the whole purpose of existence just to get rich, or get rich quicker, or richer, or sexier, leaner, fitter, faster, higher, stronger?
Is life some kind of never-ending Olympic meet with a gold medal at the end?
Or is it something more?
If we know the secret or acquire the power and become as successful as that small minority of privileged people, is that it?
If we achieve all our career goals, hit all the right marks, get all the right rewards, have we fulfilled our dharma successfully?
If we get everything we set out to grasp, grab it and hold on tight, build it and grow it, expand it and consolidate it, enrich and empower ourselves, will we be truly ecstatically happy then?
Is one crore enough? Or will it then be two crores? Or ten? Will we just keep running like the hounds on a dog track, chasing that plastic rabbit round and round?
If you re looking for a magic pill, I don t have it.
There is no secret here. Or power either.
Just questions. Stories. A plea to pause and think, evaluate and address.
I m no guru.
I don t have all the answers. You do. We all do. Together.
Knowledge is knowable by anybody and everybody. That s why it s called knowledge.
The answers are right there in your heart and mind. You already know the secret. You already possess the power.
You don t need me. You don t need a guru.
You don t even need this book.
You just need to put things in perspective, balance out your life and priorities, and keep things real.
And that s tough.
It s difficult as hell.
Maybe the stories in this book will help you gain some insight into your own life. Maybe this book will help you think about a problem you didn t want to even think about until now. Maybe it ll get you to the point where you ask the questions-or even find the answers.
I think it might. I hope like hell it will.
I hope it will work as a kind of reassurance that you re not alone-that none of us is alone.
We re all facing the same challenges, struggles, problems, difficulties, transitions, adjustments, conflicts, day in and day out.
Like Suhasini. Like Sara. Like Ratnakaran. Like Ranjit.
We re all just trying to keep it together. Move it along. Work the system one day at a time. Get to where we re going.
And if this book helps to make that job easier, helps to shine just a little more light on an area of human relationships that s emotionally confusing and even conflicting at times, helps to look at a complex problem in a simpler, more manageable way, then that s really all I hoped it would achieve.
Love, peace, and good reading to you.
Ashok K. Banker
Andheri, Mumbai
January 1, 2012
PART ONE
A Perfect Life

Na kashchinnaaparaadhyati The person who has not made a single error does not exist. Valmiki Ramayana, Kaand 4: Parva 36: Shloka 11

R anjit could always track how well he was doing in life by the look on his wife s face when he came home.
The year he got the biggest bonus of his career and bought a house with a zero per cent interest company loan, she was happier than he had ever seen her since they met. They drank wine together, danced to soft music, and finally, went to bed. Later, they lay awake half the night, talking about the future, spinning candy castles in the air.
The next year, the recession hit the company hard and his department was downsized. He was told he would have to take a pay cut apart from the fact that all his company stock options (including his cumulative bonuses of the past ten years) were now virtually worthless, leaving himself and Shonali anxiously wondering what would happen about the flat (the loan was barely half-paid, the flat was still in the company s name), her interest in him seemed to shrivel and wither away much like the lady of the night plant on their bedroom s windowsill that remained obdurately non-respondent to all her attentions. She often wasn t there at home when he returned, off at a kitty party or a friend s house, and when she was, she rarely glanced up from her TV serial or glossy magazine, muttering a polite Back early today? even when he came back at 10.30 pm, and by the time he had washed and changed and was sipping his first drink, she would already have gone to bed, leaving him to sit alone in that living room that looked like a film set.
This past year, though, things had come full circle. Now, she was once again alert and attentive, listened to him when he talked about work or his plans for getting back in the big-time. It wasn t exactly like before but it was better than the days when she had barely acknowledged his existence. At moments, he would glance at her beautiful profile and wish it could be this way forever. But something inside him knew that it was only because the company had ridden out the recession so well, the market had climbed back up, his stock options were worth a substantial fortune again, and because he had made the wise decision to exchange some of those stock options and pay off the company loan so they now owned this sprawling SoBo flat free and clear. And, of course, the new BMW 710 down in the garage and the 4.79 carat solitaire on her ring finger didn t hurt either.
Now, Ranjit is thinking of getting a divorce. He feels insecure, unhappy, unsettled in his marriage. The depression resulting from his wife s changes of mood-which always seem to mirror his own changes of fortune-has sent him to a therapist twice a week. The therapist feels he is projecting his own guilt on his wife and over interpreting her perfectly natural responses to his career ups and downs as an unintended criticism of his own masculinity. She feels the issue goes to his own self-esteem and sense of masculine pride in being able to provide for his mate.
He feels he doesn t know how to feel, what to feel anymore. He only knows that if his career dips once more and he has to see that that look on Shonali s face once more he would rather drive his Beemer off the Worli-Haji Ali Sea Link.
Ranjit isn t the first man on earth to see his own worth reflected in the eyes of his loved ones. A man s sense of self-esteem, his own evaluation of his worth in the world, is drawn from the responses of the people surrounding him. We may not all want to be movie stars. But all of us must wonder, if only for a moment, what it feels like to have crowds roaring at the sight of your face, people everywhere wanting to press your hand, touch you, hear you speak, expressing their admiration, love, fanatical devotion to your work, your achieveme