Hey, eat your words!

He had heard of it all. At every corner, the naysayers were there. They were free with unsolicited advice that he should not forget where he came from, that the pinky would only grow to the size of the thumb, and that a sparrow should not dream of flying majestically like an eagle. 

As if the road ahead was not uncertain enough, these doomsday philosophers jumped on the bandwagon to sow the seeds of doubt. Already in turmoil, trying to pull oneself by the bootstraps, the negative vibes are the last that anyone wants to hear. But they yak on...

He was raised in an environment where he was told to respect others and not to tell somebody off on the face; he would just smile it off. 

The element of doubt still lingered, however. The quandary was whether he was indeed doomed to fail. With perceived divine guidance, he persevered. He had the grace of his family as well.

The answer to his doubt must have been answered finally. Not only has he proved his critics wrong, but he now has proof of the whole world’s accreditation to show. All the naysayers can now eat humble pie. The journey to the pinnacle had been fraud with shrapnels and heartbreaks, but what the heck. Hoisting the trophy was all that worth it.

GOPIO, Global Organization of People of Indian Origin, in its continued journey to open cooperation among the people of the diaspora, during its annual conference, honoured POI icons from various industries - security, logistics, telecommunications, etc., from the world over. 

Dato M. S. Murthi
GOPIO International Business Excellence Award 2023
Legal Practice

                         

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

To the naysayers

More than enough people are quick to sneer at India after Vikram's successful soft landing at the Southern Pole of the Moon. On one end, people were quick to say that the whole exercise was a hoax. It is an illusion. Then, others blurted that a country that cannot provide toilets to its citizens and whose population mostly live below the poverty line should not be sending rockets to the Moon (and playing with nuclear bombs). One even threatened to stop monetary 'aid' to India, conveniently forgetting any discussion on repatriation monies after years of looting from India. 

Firstly, everyone knows there is no way for everybody to prosper in sync before society moves up one notch higher. Things happen in tandem. There will be people who will have to do catching up, and there will be those who will lose out in the race for prosperity anyway. The only people who believe that the world needs equity are communists. Again and again, it has been proven that human greed surpasses any attempt at equity and even equality. Four-legged creatures elected to replace their two-legged oppressors will eventually begin standing erect on their hind legs. 

To be fair, India has improved by leaps and bounds since Independence. It has even overtaken its former colonial master as the 5th biggest economy by GDP after being left as the 13th poorest country on the planet when the British left their land. With regards to foreign aid, many quarters deny the usual foreign aid that first-world countries offer to a despotic basket-case government. Monies that trickle into India are investments from which investors hope to draw returns. Some are charity contributions by well-wishers with personal intent, e.g. evangelism and political donations.

With the 'Clean India' campaign in full steam, open defecation is a thing of the past. With many states having 100% access to toilets, open defecation is a thing of the past. 

Paradoxically, the country with the biggest economy must face the same problem. With its chiselled pavements and famous postcode 90120 that it sells to the world, even Los Angeles also has to deal with homelessness, drug addiction and cleaning up the sidewalks littered with human excrement. 

Karma often plays its game most cruelly. The colonisers who robbed their colonies blind now have to be content seeing their descendants being fed by the descendants of their subjects. The innumerable hungry, homeless and impoverished British regularly frequent Sikh soup kitchens for a square meal. 

Our experience from the 1960s space explorations has shown us there are many trickle-down benefits. Besides the numerous improvements in medicine and engineering, it also improves the life of the man on the street. Teflon was discovered. The knowledge to produce heat-resistant garments with adequate cooling technology becomes a game-changer in the day-to-day duties of firemen. Luggage bags with roller wheels have their origin in the space programme. At a time when the younger generation shows scant interest in STEM subjects, these types of ventures will surely rekindle their dwindling keenness. The Industrial Revolution and the subsequent leaps in civilisation did not happen because of economists and linguists but by scientists. Remember the economic opportunities that these ventures that offshoot from space travels. Money spent is not wasted but merely changes hands. Charity and social work can still go on. 

The West cannot handle the paradigm shift in the world order. For more than two centuries, people of the Judeo-Christian traditions held the chalice of power. This century is when the power transfer happens from the West to the East.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

The art and science of knowing of your limit!

When you reach a certain age, everybody around you who apparently shows concern on your well being will give you unsolicited advice asking you to slow down and take things easy, that now is the time to the fruit of your labour and the sweat of your hard work. They would often quote you instances and examples of apparently healthy individuals just dropping dead like flies after a seemingly trivial chore. The way they coax (or put you in a corner), they seem to be cocksure of their facts and pretty soon plant the recurrent seed of doubt, uncertainty and fear in your brain. Admittedly, no matter how much there is of better living condition in the afterlife, we rather grow old, sick, wasted, unwanted and shoved around than die no time sooner, preferably never!
You will slow down, fearing for the worst, the unknown enemy. You become sluggish, puffed up, unfit and fat, poorly coordinated and a ticking time bomb. When your pin is unhooked, you disappear, become another statistic and everyone will move on with life, looking out to dash the hope of another health conscious middle aged man.
Man would not have reached where he has reached now if he had stayed in his comfort zone, fearing the unknown. There would not  be any of our ancestors who would have walked out of the African continent to explore newer pastures, no tomatoes in Indian cooking as tomatoes are native of Mediterranean land, no spices in cooking (the European wanted to find alternate route to lay their hand on these black gold), no preserved foods until refrigeration came around, no pleasures of smoking as the the first puffer would have been petrified to inhale, no simple pleasures in life (scared of retribution in afterlife), no new World as we know it as Columbus would have been stiff dead to topple over at the edge, no Fauja Singh running till the age of 101, no Arnie and no Arnie for post of Governor of California if he were just contented with green card, no space exploration, above us only sky, do not incur the wrath of the unknown force...
True, everybody has their potential and threshold. No pain and no gain they say. You certainly do not want to push yourself to the limits and beyond and to realise too late for goodbyes. It is an art to know your limits. Use the sciences and the signs to reap the maximal benefit out of activities.
I remember hearing a story in my childhood. A sage meditated for months to get his wish granted. He did not want to drop dead but to be given ample warnings. The Gods agreed.
The sage lived close to a century and died in his sleep. In heaven, he questioned the Gods for not keeping to their words. The Gods, in reply, denoted that They kept their side of bargain! The greying, receding hairline, the kyphosis, the joint pains, the reduced effort tolerance, the failing eye-sight, the slow thinking processes and so on.... The sage, the wise one he had been, had failed to notice!

Sure, steady and steadfast!

I wonder how many told 'The Turbaned Tornado'

to retire at 89 and instead play hide and seek
with his grandchildren when he actually embarked

on his first marathon in London in 2000!

Just the other day, whilst immersed in my weekly LSD and my brain soaked in cathecolamines and endorphines, a middle aged seasoned lady runner just whisked pass me. She must be in her middle age with her thick wavy pony tailed silvery hair. Being as typical as a Malaysian can be, I followed my first impulse to compartmentalize her into her ethnicity, which I figured that she must be a Malay Muslim.

I gathered from her lone wolf individual runs that she had been doing, (I never start a conversation with her, I just assume from deductions and assumptions), that she must a loner.

She must have had detractors who must have tried to convince her to don the chastity exhibiting head scarf. There must have been pressures for her to dye her silvery hair to something to the shade near ebony or mahagony.
And naysayers must have discouraged her from running with all the fear mongering talks of injury, theft, assault or even molest.

Ikut Resmi Padi, Makin Berisi Makin Tunduk

Despite all that, she must have stood adamant on her ground, insisting that she would do what she wanted to do.
Nobody has answers for anything in this world. Those with skeletal knowledge of a certain field would boasts of this and that. The more knowledge you have, the more confused and unsure you would be as more answers breed more questions.
I takes a lot of guts and ability to withstand brickbats to stand steadfast on your beliefs.