Kanan Jaswal's Thoughts for the Days of October 2021

 01 Oct:     We have a built-in advantage over our problems; whereas they are limited in size, our spirits are not.

02 Oct:     You never forget cycling and how well or badly someone has treated you.

03 Oct:     Treat yourself well because you are the only constant companion you have.

04 Oct:     Right to life is the only fundamental right, all others ought to emanate from the discharge of duties, first by our parents and then by us. 

05 Oct:     We should try to make winning a habit and it should not matter to us if the victories are small and go unnoticed by others.

06 Oct:     We all will be judged by our deeds, not by our intentions.

07 Oct:     You can't be equally creative every day, so, create more and more when you are in the flow.

08 Oct:     Doomed is a nation that is in a desperate search for a messiah.

09 Oct:     We get the real high while living our purpose.

10 Oct:     True friendship results from a meeting of minds, yet it leaves sufficient space for a healthy difference of opinion.

11 Oct:     Aspiring to remain useful to others until the very end is the ultimate in ambition.     

12 Oct:     By glamourising and glorifying poverty, our politicians ensure that it will always be there. Of course, for the record, they will sporadically make half-hearted and insincere efforts to remove this scourge. 

13 Oct:     What do the politicians in power and bureaucrats hope to gain by denying the obvious like the acute shortage of medical oxygen some months ago and now that of coal for power generation?

14 Oct:     Is it too much to insist upon that no Indian should have extra-territorial loyalties?

15 Oct:     India should think of holding an Olympics only when it is rich enough to throw away more than US$100 billion in order to keep an army of international sports bureaucrats gainfully employed.

16 Oct:     One can only feel sorry for a government which has condemned itself to total inaction in the face of a handful of protestors who have so brazenly taken the law into their own hands.

17 Oct:     You can not have a functional democracy without having zero tolerance for lawlessness.

18 Oct:     In India, because of a complaisant state, the right to protest has degenerated to a right to cause maximum inconvenience and discomfort to maximum number of people. 

19 Oct:     In the absence of a redline firmly drawn by the government which individuals and groups can cross only at their peril, it is inevitable that liberty would give way to licence. 

20 Oct:     Blaming the advisors for a leader's bad decision is either stupidity or syophancy or a combination of the two.

21 Oct:     Conducting business honestly in India is a challenge but those who accept it initially find the going tough but highly rewarding later.

22 Oct:     Let long unfulfilled wishes continue to motivate us to work better and better to soon fulfill them!

23 Oct:     Finally carrying out a much postponed task gives us some satisfaction but that is not recompense enough for the opportunity lost.

24 Oct:     Those who have lived well do not cower in the face of death.

25 Oct:     True friends motivate one another to raise themselves from the mediocre.

26 Oct:     While helping others, a certain degree of detachment is necessary because we will not be able to help if we start living their lives.

27 Oct:     If you have no concern for others or for the environment, you can be called literate and numerate but not educated. 

28 Oct:     Everyone from the highest to the lowest in the government ought to internalise the thought that one of their main jobs is to make the citizens' life less difficult, if not easy.  

29 Oct:     If because of us the world is even a trifle better, we will be leaving a proof of having lived.

30 Oct:     Deplorable and despicable, even unfortunate, are those who wish ill all the time of their own country. One can't help advising them to immediately put an end to their misery by emigrating to their preferred land. 

31 Oct:     "Farmers have right to protest but can’t block roads indefinitely, says Supreme Court" (ToI, 22 Oct). Will it be then OK if they block roads for a definite period, say, of two years? The law which rules this country, if at all, is extremely flexible and accommodating.