कभी एक शब्द कैसे पल भर मैं
सारे रिश्ते बिखेर देता है
कभी एक शब्द हम को यादों के
जंगल मैं घेर लेता है

कभी एक शब्द दिल के दरिया मैं
कोई आस घोल जाता है
कभी एक शब्द जाने कितने दरवाज़े
एक घड़ी मैं खोल जाता है

उसी एक शब्द को कहे
कोई आज मुझ से भी
उसी एक शब्द का मुझे
हर घड़ी इंतेज़ार रहता है

And now comes the main question. How can we teach kids to be happy? Aren’t kids already happy?

Mark Twain once famously said - Never let formal education get in the way of your learning.

But what if we could plan our education in a way that learning is also encouraged. Our education system does cover lot of academic information and also teaches a lot of ways to earn a living.  BTW it is important to for education to cover how to earn a living. Empty stomachs do not cause much happiness.

So the first thing is to teach how to apply brain in ambiguous scenarios. Life unfortunately or may be fortunately does not unfold in predictable manner. You can not prepare kids for all possible scenarios. You need to provide a thought framework which enables them to handle ambiguity. Unfortunately classrooms are not always the best places to learn. I remember a prof in IITK who used to ask students to observe things in campus and suggest better solution. You need to throw ambiguity to kids at an early stage. The framework develops not by finding a solution but also by thinking through what possible solutions can be.

Citizenship/Social Responsibility/Community Living has to be a taught subject. I was talking to a friend recently who is Income Tax commissioner and he was talking about why paying taxes has to be taught to kids. Let us accept it. Our mind becomes more rigid as we grow old. We need to learn few things early. Kids need to understand rights and responsibilities as early as possible.

Values over habits has been my favorite subject. Let us face it. The influences are many and you as a mentor, parent or teacher have a limited time to influence kids. You are competing with SRK, Sachin and Katrina Kaif here. Don’t waste your time on habits which most of us do. Figure out the values you want the kids to pick up. There is no universal framework on what the right value system is but focus on values over habits. A girl/boy friend will ensure that your kid learns to take bath and brush teeth daily but knowing that telling truth is important is not something you can learn all of a sudden at a later age.

Another important thing is to make kids understand how we can coexist with others. And it is not just about people, it is also about environment and other life forms. There have to be enough tasks which involve team work and dependency on others. Being socially aware is key to understanding the dynamics of relationships and I am sure that all of us will agree that good relationships are one of the biggest source of happiness for most of us.

As they say that Philosophy is the mother of all sciences. I think it has to be taught at a early stage. It enables an individual to raise fundamental questions about our belief systems and think through in a more elaborate manner. This again forms a great foundation for kids to develop an approach which enables them to experience things beyond senses.

Health and Nutrition are also things which often get neglected in our education system. It does not matter much when you are young but it matters a lot at a later stage. It is not possible for us to become health conscious all of a sudden. If these  concepts are explained at an early age, kids will find it easier to adopt healthy lifestyles.

BTW do you think did I digress from the main topic of happiness? Actually no. Few popular ways of achieving happiness are

- Achieving something – A good value system ensures you choose the right thing to achieve and ability to handle ambiguity builds you the right skills to achieve it

- Relationship – understanding dependencies from an early age always helps you handle things better here.

- Handle Adversity – I feel a philosophical orientation always helps in analyzing adversities in a better way. It enables you to look at things in a disconnected way and new solutions emerge when you do that.

- Good communities – Responsible citizens create better communities and good communities create happier people.

- Good Health is an essential aspect of happiness. Teaching it early helps.

Comments welcome.

Here is how I made it. It might not be the most correct way but I love it this way.

Pongal – Roast half katori moong dal in a kadhai till it becomes light brown. Take one katori of rice ( I used basmati ) and wash it and add it to roasted moong dal. Add approx 4 katoris of water, salt and some ghee to it and cook it in the kadhai. Fry half katori of kaaju in ghee and keep it separately. In a pan take few spoons of ghee and add ginger pieces, hing, jeera, mustard, pepper and kadi patta. Add fried kaju and cooked rice/dal also to it. Mix it well.

Chutney – Take 4 tomatoes and make a puree in a mixer. In a pan take some ghee. Add mustard, salt, hing and kadi patta. Add tomato puree when mustard is done. Cook for 10 mins on low flames and you are done.

Here are some visuals.

I have sinned. Not once but many times. This was during my Avatar as a restaurant guy. My sin is similar to what lot of people do in that domain but it still is a sin. Haven’t you ever ordered food from a restaurant and waited for food at home. You get hungry and angry at the same time when food does not arrive on time. You call up the restaurant guy and he promptly tells you that it will be delivered in 5 mins. The proverbial indian 5 mins which can last for any duration. I have done the same with so many customers when I was running Potluck.

I knew it was wrong but I still did it. I had no ways of predicting and figuring out where my staff was. Tough for me to figure out the location of my staff as well as my customers. Now we decided to change things in ZopNow. We do know that great logistics is a key piece to solve the eCommerce puzzle and we are hell bent on solving that. We are enabling GPS tracking on all deliveries and also enabling our customers to see where the delivery is in real time on a map.

Hope you enjoy this new feature.

Keep Zopping

Birla

Zindagi ki kadwahat, Aur safar ki gard ko
Dhote dhote hi, Na jane kitna waqt guzar jaata hai

Sambhalo chaahein jitna, ashqon ko palkon ke tale
Jab sailab umadta hai, to had se guzar jaata hai

Nahin likha hai har ek ashq pe, pochhne wale ka pata
Kandhe ko dekh kar, khud-ba-khud hi utar aata hai

Mere ek ashq ki, keemat hi kya hai is duniya main
Pani ka katra hi to, un ko nazar aata hai

Ham bhi ho jayenge gum, kisi roz kisi mode pe to
Aise jeene se to, ji apna bhi bhar jaata hai

Ek ashq aankhon se nikalta hai, Aur dil main utar jaata hai

So take a little bit of oil/ghee in a pan. Add jeera to it. Now you take vegetables and cut them into small pieces. Some of the things you can use are – green peas, gobhi, carrot, potatoes. Even if you have 1 or 2 of them, it is fine. Fry it well so that the vegetables get fully cooked. Add 1 katori of rice puree to this once vegetables are done. Add 2 spoons of aam ka achar with lot of achar masala in it. Use the type of achar which does not have the hard part of mango in it.  Add salt to taste. Add some water if it is too thick. Add cooked rice to this and mix it well. Have it with sweet chutney or raita.

But then the moment arrives and you realize that your assumptions and projections need to get aligned with reality or the other way round. And you have to bend all of them to make them converge. I know the toughest one to bend is reality but who told you entrepreneurship is easy anyway. This is the moment you wait for and prepare for all the time.

Our “Aha” moment at ZopNow happened happened last week. We launched our service for entire south Bangalore. Next few hours went in just seeing Real Time stats on Analytics and watching our logs. Few issues here and there but no major issues came up. We also did a marketing event on Sunday and tried to sell our services to home makers. We got good response and some of them also converted to buying customers. Overall a satisfying weekend to see all parts of our business kicking in.

I know it is early days and we have a long way to go but then memories of first few steps are always special. For a software professional, the moment of truth is when you can create a product so usable and simple that even a kid can figure out things. My moment of truth came when my 9 year old daughter completed the shopping without any problems. She just overheard me telling my wife that we launched. She just logged on and finished the shopping. I asked her how she did it and she did it in approx 3 min again despite the cartoons coming on TV. I got a chance to record that you can see for yourself how easy we are trying to make things for you.

Keep Zopping folks….

If you are a Bangalorean, you obviously know what Congress Peanuts are. The red spicy peanuts which you get at every bakery shop across the city. If you are not lucky enough to be a Bangalorean. Here is an easy way to make it.

Take split peanuts without skin ( not even the dark brown one ) and take some oil in a pan. Add Hing ( Asafoetida ) and Haldi ( turmeric ) powder and fry the nuts nicely. Add chilli powder and salt to taste. Be liberal in using the chili powder as it should be spicy ans should look red in the end. Now your Congress Peanuts are ready. Store them in air tight container.

Now you have done all the hard work, it is easy to make what we wanted to start with. Take a bun and cut it into two halves. Apply butter liberally on both sides and fill it up with Congress Peanuts. Enjoy the yummy dish with hot filter coffee.