power of women: make you believe in yourself

yesterday i did something i would hardly imagine I would dare to do it but thanks to the administrative ladies i met at the coop super market who instilled lot of confidence in me and made me believe i can do it .... i dont have lot of driving experience really ... i drove a bit in hyderabad, India in 1998 then the first car i bought was golf in 2009 and learned proper driving in switzerland  and got my license here in 2012, i drove about 50K so far but then i did not drive any vehicle bigger than golf ... yesterday when we bought some big items for our garage at coop which we could not carry ourself,  we were initially asking for delivery at home which obviously costs more and as well the time but the ladies at the shop were encouraging me to take their delivery van on rent on hourly basis and insisting me do it myself and not to worry as its easy to drive vehicle.

somethings are really very different here which you must appreciate ....time and again you realise here no one works with a business mind as when you are ready to pay for delivery costs you would wonder why are they insisting you to do yourself and more importantly encourage you in spite of the fact they know you have not done before ...

we came out with our goods in the trolly ....this young girl accompanied with us ..when i saw the big vehicle which i need to drive in a moment i was literally sweating .... but with a smile on her face she gave me a short lesson on how to drive an automatic vehicle... " look this is so simple, c'est facile, go for it"

"oui oui oui .... merci beaucoup!" this is the least one should say but this the most i can actually say in french .... as i took out a tissue from my pocket to wipe off my sweat ....

Believe me I drove this van for about 8Km door to door,  taking out from parking,  manoeuvring it on different speed zones and turns, coming home, dropping all my goods that i bought and finally taking it back to the same parking lot i picked it from

no wonder you see lots of women driving almost everything on earth here and this is how they learn ... its a kind of environment that makes you grow, believe in yourself and encourage you to do things that have never done before and in fact help you actually do it ...  giving you a sense of achievement, independence and pride ...

three cheers to those ladies @COOP... hip hip hurray :-) thanks so much. You are just Awesome.

Student Teaching A Student To Become A Coach To Teach A Student

there are somethings in life i never did it so far and i thought i will never do it ... i was so much so sure about that but the more your resolve is, the more you get pushed to do things that you never did before and never want to do ... there is always someone out there to prove you wrong ... yesterday it was one of those days ...

Yesterday it was for the first time in my life I went inside a swimming pool with my daughter, i had been there earlier as well, motivating her, giving her mental support and was watching her learn swim,  from a safe distance through glass sitting in a restaurant watching while having a sip of cup of tea was quite a happy moment to see her doing thing that you never did it and more happy that i don't have to take up that hard task ... yesterday it was a bit different, i had to actually go inside the pool, scary ....uhhhhhhh

i was actually pretty nervous when we decided to go on a swimming lesson...she was behind me to take her to the pool and i was avoiding it for a long time ... not knowing what to do and not knowing swimming and getting inside a pool was a very scary thought ... but nevertheless wanted to give it a try ... she was very excited to realise that we  have plans to take her to the pool and looking at her excitement i could not back out and and when she realised i'm getting scared with the thought, she scared me all the more saying i need to also jump into the pool and put my face inside water holding my breath, she wanted me to do all the things she was scared to do but again like her teacher she was a bit motivating too when she said
 " look don't be too scared, I can be your teacher and you can hold my finger and I will help you learn ... "

last thing you want to do is disappoint a kid ...  we packed our belongings and we left for our swimming lesson. i bought myself a swimming short on the spot, i never had one as i never ever attempted it in my whole life. We then bought ourselves two tickets ... i requested my wife to check if they have any coach so that i can still escape at the last moment... and unfortunately it was holiday and no coach was available and they told us lessons are only available during week days... and my daughter was insisting that I should accompany her ... there we got our two tickets in our hand and we were walking towards the gate...gate to the world of unknowns
i was following my daughter and i just did not know how and what to do next ... we left our valuable belongings with my wife who decided to watch the fun from distance from a restaurant (it was her time, lucky her :-)...as we were about to swipe our cards, i asked my daughter do you know if I can come along with you and she said yes affirmatively ...
"look there you see lots of men and boys in the pool so just follow me i know where i have to go and what we need to do, I come here every week with my school mates and this is where we enter , just swipe my card, i go first and then you follow me"

I said "ok, i just follow, i have really no idea what i shoud be doing really", and as we entered the room, it was very obvious that we ... rather i was in wrong place ... there were lots of girls/women changing ... look Shona i'm sure we are in a wrong place and now that we bought and used our tickets  and i dont want to go back and buy another set so lets pray and wait for sometime and i'm sure some one will find us and escort us to right place  but for now lets find a place where we can just hide and find a place for two of us to change the clothes ... you find a place and while i just follow you, i mean really blindly this time ...  i'm not really watching around ... find a place quickly ... we found a corner where we were about to settle down ...

i heard some female approaching us talking to us in french, i realised i was caught ...
"look i'm sorry, i just don't know where i'm",  I started talking even before she started asking me
there are lots of advantages of not knowing a language and this is one of those ... not knowing a language can rescue in such cases... i did not understand a thing she said to feel bad .. while she was talking to me in french i was telling her in english,
"i'm sorry, i just followed my daughter who wants to learn swimming and here i'm ....and you know i did not want to come but she was insisting ... "
she was pretty cool , she realised i dont speak french ... so she started speaking in broken english ... "how old is she"
 ... i said " she is 5",
 "here it is allowed from 8yrs with men, up to 5 yrs you have to go to men's changing place that's the on the other side as you enter the passage ... come with me let me take you there .... "

thanks so much .." i was relieved that she is really kind and helping ... she dropped us in the right place ... we did not really need to buy another set of tickets .... my daughter then guided me on what we should be doing , where to leave our belonging, where to hang our clothes, where to take shower and as she said now follow me and as we washed our legs  and we saw 4 pools ,... one was very small I could make it out that its for enfant and another one was for kids ... i did not even want to look further "Shona, this one for kids is pretty cool and lets get in here"

as we enter the pool i was relieved to see that water was not very deep and there is really nothing to worry and i will not get drowned in this one for sure ...
"ok now that we are here, what should i do next ..", i asked my daughter

"now listen to me i like to practise swimming on my back ... you have to hold my head and move backwards  while i move my legs and try to float "

... i said ok , "let me try ...."

after she shouted a few times i think i could get it right ... without knowing "abc" of swimming here i became a coach ... that's like a dramatic turnaround in my fortunes .... i'm sure kids around me must be wanting to learn from me as well ... and especially on weekends when there is hardly any such service available in switzerland ... if i get serious, i can start a decent side business as its about CHF 100 per  hour and i can make decent living here ... Thank you Shona, for teaching me how to teach swimming ... next time if someone comes and requests me for a few lessons, i would not be surprised :-)

If you were to watch the video first, everyone would think i know it swimming very well and i'm kind of a coach but then truth is all i know, i was just walking in the water, doing things that my daughter told me to do ... never come to conclusion while looking at things, make sure you understand the context behind it :-)

------ Leaving this aside, note that i'm a good coach, please let me know if you want to learn swimming :-)

Lessons of Life: Success is how much of a Kid is left in you

people find their inspiration or motivation in different things, some folks read books, auto biographies, watch TED talks, listen to speeches from great people who made the difference ...
what inspires you the most? where do you get your lessons from? who is your best teacher ? who is the real guru?

your kids are your best teachers ... sometimes you just got to listen to them and they teach you the secret behind the life, how they grow and how they conquer things around them, its amazing to see their perspective at they way look at things which makes it look so simple ... as we grow old we just should try to find that kid in ourselves and for sure world surely will be a different place ...a far better place :-)

the lesson i got from my daughter, watch the video, i'm sure you will enjoy it.

you will realise why do they learn languages so fast and pretty much everything they do, they just don't have fear of failure, for them success is just keep trying and keep improving yourself everytime you try. Awesome.

Shona Kids Channel: Learn how to make bracelet

This morning when i was playing with my daughter we decided to make a video together while folks back home watching us on skype. We thought this video will help kids learn by watching them like the way we grown ups learn so we thought it is a good idea to post it. I was blown away by her performance, presence of mind, act of teaching and very practical way of learning and trying and retrying and never give up attitude and with lots of love as we did it together in one take. I'm sure you will enjoy I hope it reaches all the kids and we will come back with the next one once she has something to share.

Internet connects the world, we need to connect these small kids across the globe to make wider impact on education as these kids eventually will carry on the legacy and take it to the next level.

Lets take sharing knowledge to a new level,  if you know something, just share and help everyone learn, each one becomes teacher and student by taking a turn. Give KnowlEDGE that extra edge.

Watch out the video here:

GURUKUL: Virtual Class Room

Internet is a virtual world with no boundaries and it is a knowledge power house open to all and its wealth of information which is instantly and always available. Knowledge, Media, Information, Education, Social, Political  content can be made instantly available to anyone everyone, anywhere and everywhere. Internet is growing exponentially in India and the last mile is offered by smart phone, its very common to stay connected all the time but are we tapping right virtues of internet?

The question we should ask ourselves is are we making the good use of the internet and connected world, are we getting good knowledge that is available in abundance and  Is it really reaching to masses that can benefit from it? Can this content be made available to all to benefit all and provide equal opportunity to everyone irrespective of who you are and where you live.

While experiencing enormous collaboration at work while working at Cisco and getting inspired every time I get to immerse into, I always feel everyone should get to experience it. I often tend to miss this experience on my trips to India and interacting with people around and always have  this feeling that we need to apply our learning experience to do something to help everyone benefit from it. In the internet age, the world should advance equally irrespective of physical location and no one should be deprived of opportunities to learn and grow. We need to bring everyone close to good virtues of  internet by providing best of the world academic, educational, knowledge, inspirational content available on internet to help learn and guide one and all.

The internet realities in India are far from this. We all know the landline phone connection is not available in all places  and is not very common and it is not affordable to have high speed internet at home to do something meaningful and few who have one at home it is not guaranteed to be used for the good cause and at home since you are usually alone time spent on internet may not be worth it. We do have internet cafes but its not controlled so whoever visits cafes land up spending time in browsing, chatting and literally killing good amount of precious time  So there is indeed a need for a internet vitual platform where anyone who wishes to learn something joins a group of equally motivated person to extract the best possible from virtual world for an enriching experience.

There are Great folks like Salman Khan  of Khan Academy who deserve applause to what they are doing to revolutionise the educational field to provide excellent recorded educational videos on all possible subject covering all topics and world's best universities offering many courses online to reach out to all aspiring students all across world and equally TED shares very good inspirational videos from the people who made significant mark on their field to name a few,  we are only planning to do our bit to provide a platform where we can can connect people to people  and provide them with best of the virtues of internet and to do all the right thing to help them grow academically, technically, professionally, mentally by connecting them to the right content from the right people in state of art facility to make the time spent in the virtual world an enriching experience.

GURUKUL virtual class room is our attempt to do very small thing on top of enormous great work already done by others. But we believe in education and learning in all forms and for all age groups and we want every one to get benefitted in this world transformed by Internet.

In this age of internet and connected world is governed by unwritten rules and ethics, if you know something and if you learn something in the virtual world, the only way to pay back is to share this knowledge with others. We just want to follow our heart and help brilliant minds get together with no boundaries whatsoever in virtual world with one motto in mind lets learn together, lets advance together and leave no one behind.

We are proud to announce that we are beginning our first services at Parbhani, first of its kind in the region and probably first of its kind in India  and it will be run by my sister and her husband Mr and Mrs. Avinash and Sangita Parlikar. Join me to wish them a great success. Thanks so much for your help.

GURUKUL VIRTUAL CLASS ROOM
Subhedar complex
Shop No F2
Kranti Chouk,
PARBHANI- 431401
MAHARASHTRA
INDIA

P.S: My brainchild for 2016 in 3 weeks of Christmas vacation:-), I'm sure it will make a difference :-) small or big depends on how well you want to stay connected in virtual world.