In Gist

2007 is moving on... joining the ranks of history, to be relegated to the dustbin and maybe be dusted once in a while for what it taught us.... That is what a whole year does to us. It rarely teaches one lesson but when it does, that single lesson transcends a lifetime and the learnings are there to stay.

This year for me has been... in a few words... satisfying.... Dunno whether using this word is politically correct but the year has shown the linkages between karma and the results that follow. It was a year wherein I was most involved with my work and having learnt that loving your work is not enough.. it is the ability to make things happen while doing things that you like is what matters. I woke up to the year with a slight pain, in the form of some misunderstanding that threatened to push me into drab moods. But luckily that passed and along with it, more incidents that - in passing - appears to be testing times. However, I am cool with those very people with whom I had an issue and realized that it really does not matter if you fight along... what you stand for is what matters and nothing else. However, the biggest learning during those turbulent few weeks in early 07 was the rather strange sermon from my father to go and say sorry to the opponent. That was startling for it was as unexpected from my father as any analogy possible. He insisted that I go and say sorry for an issue that was not fully my doing and I did so.. Whew... it was tough doing that but that single ride to his house and submitting a letter telling him to come back was like washing off several moments of dust from my body... My father in his age, taught me a new thing... that arguing is fine but one must use it as his strength and not his fault.. Adore him for that....

Anyways, I had much work to do and little time to fight over and so went back to good work. Those three months till early April was the most intense phase of catharsis in my little time on earth....working day and night, sometimes for up to 18 hours and continuing it for week upon week upon week... 14 Sundays on a stretch.... no leave... whew.... the output is there to be seen http://www.hindu.com/br/2007/11/20/stories/2007112050021400.htm , not exactly a monumental work but nevertheless, something I am deeply proud of... my first real piece of work that was achieved through some high end team work... the book titled Honey Trails taught me besides everything the virtue of purely creative hard work... and in that phase also co-wrote the annual report.

Months passed and I have learnt or rather still learning how to balance my work, but then came the surveys across forests of the Nilgiri where for a month I just roamed around and learnt a wealth from the trees and the people who live amongst those trees. Work wise, did a lot many more things including a lifting experience with students from Valley school where we tried out talking about nature to kids who absorbed most of what we had to say.

The year has continued and I have been still working on a hundred different things and trying my best to achieve a high quality of performance in whatever I do... High performance is not striving for perfection, i learnt but striving for excellence... a lesson that shall hold me in good stead over my rendezvous with mother earth.

In retrospect, I began contributing articles for the popular media, the written media...I went out of the nation for the first time and am going more in the coming months.... I learnt that good nurseries are build by delegating supreme power and responsibility to the hands of the doer, I went to the forest at least once in a month, I traveled a bit, especially remember Gokarna, I am still learning to adjust to people who may not be remotely interested in my way of life but rather prefer their own...... I don't know whether it is true but I felt that I have grown up a bit.... into a world where anger generation need not be the first impulse of man, where team work is essential, where creativity is not a pool to lift from but a talent that needs to be honed, where dong your own thing is the best way to doing everything else better..... A single year can teach a lot and not necessarily teach but show the way... which 07 did in a pretty good measure.... above all, it showed that the ancient wisdom of karm yog leading to results if you do not attach yourself to the karma is one of the ways, the lords operate up there.......