99 Thoughts on Ganesha

99 Thoughts on Ganesha written by Devdutt Pattnaik is a well researched book on Ganesha the elephant headed God loved by millions in India. In the 19^th Century the King of Mysore  ordered the court scholars to make a list of all Hindu gods that are worshipped in his kingdom. In the list finally compiled there is a mention of 32 types of Ganesha that were being worshipped. It starts with Bala Ganapathi, the child like Ganesha and ended with Sankatahara Ganapathi, the problem solving Ganapathi.

Perhaps Ganesha is the only deity, who has seen innumerable forms in the imagination of his devotees. There are similarly many  stories on why and how Ganesha lost his original head and was replaced by the head of an elephant.

A text written in 1751, identified 108 Upanishads in the Hindu Religion, of which there is a Ganesha Upanishad also.

I did not know, for example, when Ganesha’s trunk points to the left, towards the heart, it indicates the more worldly form of Ganesha, while his trunk when pointed to the right, indicates a more ascetic form of Him.

There is a contemporary 5 day celebration on Ganesha between 21^st to 25^th December in the USA every year, that was started by Himalayan Academy based at Hawai, competing with the Christmas.

In Vedic literature, Ganesha is identified as a scholarly man, but there is no mention of his elephant head. It must have been  a later addition. Some would say, it could have been inspired by the Greeks, when they invaded and conquered a part of India. The Greeks had conquered Egypt before they came to India and Egypt was known to have animal headed deities like Horus, Anubis etc.

In the Rig Veda, the word 'Ganapati' is found, which today means 'Ganesha' also.While Rig Veda was composed around 1500 BC, the title Ganesha appears in Puranic texts, which were written about 2000 years after that. ‘Vinayaka’ or ‘Siddhi Vinayaka’ is also synonymous with ‘Ganesha’ these days. But in Manab –Griha- Sutra written in 500 BC, it refers to a group of four trouble making deities. Even in Yagnavalka – Smriti, written in 300 AD there was  one trouble-making Vinayaka.

If you are not a Marathi, you would not perhaps know what is ‘Morya’ in ‘Ganapati Bappa Morya’ that they chant. Morya is because of Morya Gosavi, who was the foremost leader of Ganapati cult  and his tomb is still seen in Chinchwad, not far away from Moregaon, where he was born, after his parents prayed to the Ganesha there known as 'Moreshwar', for a child.

Ganesha is Pillaiyar in Tamilnadu. In Nepal Ganesha is worshipped by the Hindus and Buddhists. There is a tantric Ganesha named Heramba. Ganesha is found in Tibet as Maha-Rakta-Ganapati.. Some images of the Elephant-headed god is found even in Mangolia. He is known as Mahapienne in Burma. In Cambodia, Ganesha has only two arms. In Thailand also two forms of Ganesha are seen, Phra Phikanet and Phra  Phikanesawora.

The book has 221 pages, full of knowledge and information on Ganesha, and the above is only a small summary of the same. The book is written in simple language, nicely divided chapters, and is highly readable. There are many nice and  rare pictures of Ganesha from all across India and Asia. 

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

I read a large number of books on management, which I would generally call ‘toy books’, giving you excitement while reading, but do not have anything new or analytic in nature, which can bring about a fundamental change in your life.  

But ‘The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People’ by Stephen R Covey is not that at all. You have to read this book again and again, refer to it in times of crisis and it must be a permanent feature in your almanac for all time to come. It has passed through decades of practical use by millions of people.

Unlike other books, which attempt to work on the manifestation side of your personality, this books compels you to think and work on the innermost core of your ‘ self’, which starts with your value system. And surprisingly the core values of all human being start with honesty, sincerity and all those qualities which enhances your own esteem to yourself and help you to make ‘the choice’. The understanding that the entire power of making the choice lies with you, even in the most externally threatening situation, is what powers you most. Once you understand this power you will not allow anyone, however powerful he may be, to influence you to make you week, and to make you deviate from your choice.

The elements of the ‘Character Ethic’ are primary traits while those of the ‘Personality Ethic’ are secondary. While secondary traits may help one to play the game to succeed in some specific circumstances, for long-term success both are necessary. To explain  the difference between primary and secondary traits, Covey offers an example. Suppose you are in Chicago and are using a map to find a particular destination in the city. You may have excellent secondary skills in map reading and navigation, but will never find your destination if you are using a map of Detroit. In this example, getting the right map is a necessary ‘primary element’, the ‘Character Ethic’  before your secondary skills i.e. the ‘Personality Ethic’ can be used effectively.

The Seven Habits move us through the following stages:

Dependence: the paradigm under which we are born, relying upon others to take care of us.

Independence: the paradigm under which we can make our own decisions and take care of ourselves.

Interdependence: the paradigm under which we cooperate to achieve something that cannot be achieved independently. 

Much of the management literature today tends to attribute values to independence, encouraging people to become so called “ liberated ” and do their own thing. The real fact  is that we are interdependent, and the “liberated independent” model is not optimal for use in an interdependent environment that requires both leaders and team players. To make the choice to become interdependent, one first must be independent, since dependent people do not have the ability to develop the character for interdependence. 

Therefore, the first three habits focus on self-mastery, that is, achieving the private victories required to move from dependence to independence. 

The first three habits are:

• (1):  Be Proactive
• (2):  Begin with the End in Mind
• (3):  Put First Things First

Next  three habits address interdependence:

• (4):  Think Win/Win
• (5):  Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood
• (6):  Synergize

Finally, the seventh habit is one of renewal and continual improvement, that is, of building one's personal production capability. He has given a nice example of personal capacity (PC) and Production (P) with the story of golden eggs (P) produced by a lucky goose (PC). You have to maintain the goose properly to get one golden egg a day. If in your greed you kill the goose and try to grab all the golden eggs, you in fact loose all the golden eggs, thereafter. I shall particularly endorse for ‘Think Win / Win’ concept. Seek agreements and relationships that are mutually beneficial. In cases where a "win/win" deal cannot be achieved, accept the fact that agreeing to make "no deal" may be the best alternative.
 
 

Temples of Western India

'Temples of  Western India', by Ambujam Anantharaman is an excellent well researehed book on the temples of  the western provinces of India. This is her second book after 'Temples of South India'.The author has made research on each temple in detail and given a coverage of historical and mythological facts associated with each temple.

The book is divided into (a) Temples of Maharashtra, (b) Temples of Gujarat, (c) Temples of Rajasthan, (d) Temples of Goa and (e) Temples of Jain Shrines.

13 Temples of Maharashtra, 14 temples from Gujarath, 9 temples from Rajssthan, 1 temples of

Goa and three jain temples of western India is covered in this book.

If you are in a 'tirth jatra' the book comes very handy. You hardly need a guide. Many aspects, which you would have otherwise overlooked, would come alive, as you would have visited. 

The begins with Moreshwar, at Morgaon, established by Ganesh Yogindra, who is credited with realizing the Mudgal Purana, the textual foundation of the Ganesha cult in Maharasthra. She has studied the Eliphanta cave only 10 KMs away from Gateway of India into the sea. 

Then there is the Ellora rock temple, which took 150 years to complete. It is estimated that 3 million cubic feet of rock was removed to chisel the temple top down. And the Ajanta temple, in addition to the splendid rock architechture, holds the artistic brilliance of painting.

The three famale deities of the Hindus, Kali, Mahalaxmi and Sarawasti are found side by side in the famous Mahalaxmi temple of Mumbai.

Then there is this Sani (Saturn ) temple at Sani Shinganapur. The idol here stands in a quadrangle and there is no roof on the head of the idol. In this village, it is told there is no robbery or theft because of this deity.

The last temple covered in the book is Mangueshi temple of Goa. The deity was shifted to its present place from a location called Kuthali. It is built in seven stories. Near by is the Shanti Durga temple. Here goddess Durga has in her two hands, two serpants, they say these represent Shiva and Vishnu, whose fight was ended by Shanti Durga.

It also covers the Jain Shrines of Mount Abu, Kharataravasi Temple ( also has the idols of Judhisthir, Bhima and Arjuna, besides all Tirthankaras), and the Girnar Temples.

A very readable book for travellers and believers....

The Truth ( Satyam ) of Satyam

Satyam, meaning the Truth in sanskrit, has become the subject of study of several books, for the wrong reason. Two mostly read books are here. One is written by  Shri Kingshuk Nag and the other by a group of writers, Bhupesh Bhandari, Prashant Reddy, Vandana Gombar, Latha Jishnu, Shyamal Mazumdar and Anand Pandey. The title of the first book is "The Duble Life of Ramlinga Raju" and the second is " The Satyam Saga.". The first book is dedicated to “ the thousands of investors who lost thier fortunes in India's biggest financial fraud.” However, the biggest financial fraud has now been taken over by the 2G scam, if the CAG report is to be believed.

The Double Life of Ramlinga Raju

It has nice photographs, particularly a nice photo of Ramlinga Raju seated in his home surrounded by books, more like a professor or a lawyer, rather than an entrepreneur. Satyam was started with 20 employees with a small office in P&T colony, in Secuderabad on 6th June, 1987.The first big customer of Satyam was John Derry, a well known tractor company of Chicago, USA..In total Raju had floated 327 companies, at 12 addresses in Hyderabad, in the names of his near and distant relatives and employees. Satyam Infoway's ADR listing on 19th October, 1999 on the first day of trading was quoted at twice the issue price. In Raju's own admission he started falsifying books of accounts in 2001. His famous letter admitting the same was written in January 7, 2009 after a gap of nine years. 'Maytas', the reason for his ambition and fall is actually what you see, when you write the letters in 'Satyam' in reverse order. Quote from the book " Raju knew that he could neither match Narayana Murthy nor Ajim Premji, as Satyam procured much of its business by quoting cheaper rates. But Andhraites had made him into an icon and he had to live upto his image.There was no way, Satyam could show annual results which were vastly inferrior to those of Infosys or Satyam." In the initial public offering, of Satyam Computers Limited, the Rajus had only 18.78% of equity to themselves, lower by any standard. And this became further lower and lower as the years passed by. In order to trade in his own shares Rajus had floated 5 investment companies, Elem Investments, High Grace Investments, High Sound Investments, Fincity Investments and Veeyes Investments. Before selling his family shares in the market, to avoid market attention, he transferred those shares to some trusted employees of the company, who treated him like God. By depositing money into the Senior citizens' accounts of the family, he avoided tax queries, because no TDS is made from the interest of Senior Citizens. Satyam shares were pledged by him and family to a host of NBFCs in India, and the proceeds went to various Agri companies floated by him and not to Satyam. Clearly, he was loosing interest in the Infotech business, in which he had very little promoter's equity, and was getting interested in infra business, where the return were manifold. Funds from Satyam were used by him to buy 287 properties in major cities of India, none in the name of the company. Of the 760 crores money raised by ADS, only 397 crores, were brought back to India, and the rest were transferred to some unknown accounts, via Bahrain, which the government is still trying to trace. How was he as a businessman? To quote an acquaintance from the book " He was an epitome of good behaviour, he spoke softly and criticised nobody. We used to wonder, how a person so high in life, can be so humble?" He was very hardworking, A workaholic. 

Even after all the episodes, Satyam definitely still had enterprise value left in terms of its business pipeline and human resources, so that it was sold to Tech Mahindra at 1756 crore rupees, with overall cost of acquisition, including public offers going to as high as rupees 2889 crores.

Now I should quote from the foreward of the second book. The foreward is written by Mr. Kiran Karnik to highlight some positive side of the developments. " One of the special features of the Satyam story has been the coming together of the government, its various agencies and regulators, the corporate sector and individual professionals. Not only was there co-operation and coherence, but also a great deal of synergy was created." Satyam as a company was at least saved. Besides, the ghost employees, a large number of real employees, had to leave the bench, but those who could stay back, have been doing what Satyam was designed to do, providing high quality IT services, and still making India proud in the field of IT, in its new avatar as Mahindra Satyam.

The Satyam Saga

This book is  written in a different style and on a broader canvass. In this book various chapters are written by various authors. If Kingshuk’s book is from the Times of India clan, “The Satyam Saga’ is from the stable of Business Standard. A competition indeed...

From Bhupesh’s writing you get a clear picture of the IT business in India, in just a few lines. “Information Technology is not an easy business, certainly not in India, where most companies offer people-intensive services and very few have their own patented software products. In a way it is like running a commodities business”.

The all pervading nature of what Ramlinga Raju did comes out of the following lines.

“Was it as simple as that? Most of the Satyam units are located in software technology parks in order to avail of tax benefits. Each order there is certified by the Software Technology Park of India, a government body, so as to keep track of business done in the park. Then he got past the banks where the money was shown as deposited and then the government, which was paid income tax……”.

He talks of a survey done by certain experts and points out to the following observations :

“About half of the Indian private firms, of the 370 surveyed report that they regularly evaluate the CEO. One wonders, however, how rigorous these evaluations are, given that zero firms reported that the Board had replaced the CEO. We also asked about the CEO’s succession plan, only 30% had any..”

The book also chronicles various financial scams of independent India starting with Ramkrishna Dalmia ( a dig at TOI, I suppose ). It also covers Haridas Mundra, Dharma Teja, Harsad Mehta, and Ketan Parekh.

The book has also photos of official documents furnished by Satyam to the Auditors.

I am not repeating the other parts of the stories, which you shall find in Kingshuk Nag's book also.

Even after reading cover to cover both the books, one may still wonder, why people with great personality, big image and having philanthrpic values, get into this kind of mud, with full knowledge that we are a democratic country with open society, where no secret can be held on to for the whole life. Not only that, here the goverment servants have a very strong constitutional immunity, and it takes only one honest officer to blemish your entire business or political career, in terms of revealing the truth.