You Are The Company You Keep

To be honest, I had lost all hopes on India's progress. I stopped reading news about India a long time ago. I had started to believe that all that's going on in India is, corruption, poverty, violence, cheap media, and a stupid race for money, power and fame.

I had never had a doubt about the smartness of India's people. I still strongly believe that Indians are the smartest people on Earth, but the problem is, we don't use our smartness in the right direction for many reasons. Most of the time, we use our smartness only to make more money, and then the remaining smartness is spent to find smart ways to show off that money. We, Indians waste our smartness and energy in unnecessary emotional mayhem and trivialities of social life, and it's not just my observation but Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam also says the same thing in "Wings of Fire."

But lately, my opinion about India is changing. Mainly because now I choose what to read, hear, and see about India. You know, we let media control what we read, hear and see, and that's the biggest mistake we make. As a result, we never see the real picture, and the bigger picture.

Last year, I read somewhere, you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with. This quote scared me to death. It is so true. I never realized that before. Even the Geeta says- "your mind takes the shape of the thing/person you think about the most."- but the sad reality is we don't always get to pick these five people.

That got me thinking that how can I find at least one great person who would be willing to spend their time with me ? Obviously, I couldn't find anyone. But then it hit me, that I don't have to physically spend time with that person. In this digital media, we can always choose the people we want to spend time with by listening to them, watching them, or by reading about them. Then I started to read the autobiographies of some great people and boy, did that bring my average up !

But then, I was still craving for the company of the regular people like me, who are not so out-of-reach like Dr. Abdul Kalam, for example. Then I started to look for innovators, entrepreneurs, the people who are bringing change in India one step at a time. Fortunately, I did find such people. I found some great books on Amazon that feature the lives of these people, who are regular people like us, but they have a vision to change India for better.

I just finished reading "Indian Innovators", and now I am reading "Inventive Indians", and I still have "Great Indian Business Stories" to read. These people are so inspiring that I think these books should be taught in the schools and colleges of India. I don't understand why the third-class books of Chetan Bhagat get so much audience when we have such great books and people to read about. No one talks about these people on Media. It's such a shame.

The people I am reading about in these books are simply awesome, and I am very grateful to them because they have given me a new ray of hope, they have given me the consolation that at least someone is working to make India better. They have reassured the reality that you have to be the change you want to see in the world. I get more excited when I see young people bringing change through technology, media and education. I love the idea of bringing change through entertainment media.

I have stopped watching TV ever since I came to the US. I only watch videos on my laptop, mostly on YouTube. In the recent years, some awesome YouTube channels have emerged with meaningful media that nudges at the hearts and brains of the younger generation and makes them think. Just watch "Pitchers" from TVF and "Man's World" from YFilms on YouTube. These series are much better than any Television series and bakwaas Bollywood movies for that matter.

I am a big fan of Pitchers. This series has seriously got me thinking about my long lost dream of entrepreneurship. But enough talking for today, I will talk about this more in the next post.

In the meantime, watch this series: