Writings and Correspondences

Most men would rather die than think. Many do. ~ Bertrand Russell

"The society, which frames the rules, also provides exceptions. When the society insists on the rules, the writer will highlight the exceptions. That's how one can perceive things from the side of the victim. Otherwise the voice of the victim and the marginalized go unheard. Only with this understanding I have been engaging myself as a writer all these years. I do not know if I can continue to write with the same understanding."

~ Statement made by Perumal Murugan in the aftermath of a December 2014 attack on the English translation of his book "Madhorubagam" as reported in Frontline, Volume 32, Issue 5 (March 7-20, 2015).

"If a writer struggles, battles her circumstances, she is not doing a favour to anyone else --- only to her pen. A good pen must write for values, not for those who lay claim to values. Else writers and artistes will end up as mere decorations in shamiyanas and vigyan-bhavans."

~ Ham Hashmat, Krishna Sobti; reference found in the article Singular and Plural by Trisha Gupta in The Caravan, Vol. 08, Issue #9, September 2016.

The above quotes provide a helpful frame of reference with respect to the temper to adopt when penning one's own thoughts. Sadly, they are also reflective of the current challenges in expressing one's thoughts with a sincere ease.

It is also helpful to keep in mind: an act of writing is very different from being a writer. The former will be full of grammatical mis-constructions, incorrect language, lack of consistent editing standards and insufficient thought given to the flow of narrative to aid readability. The latter on the other hand demands a set of standards that one must adhere to. In that sense, the following represent acts of 'writings' and not acts of a 'writer'.

Or, in the words of Big Mama Thornton,

My singing comes from my experience...My own experience. I never had no one teach me nothin'. I never went to school for music or nothin'. I taught myself to sing and to blow harmonica and even to play drums by watchin' other people! I can't read music, but I know what I'm singingng! I don't sing like nobody but myself."
Those who remember this distinction will stand to garner whatever meagre profit that can be skimmed off from the below 'acts of writings'. Those who forget will stand a higher chance of becoming critical when indifference is called for and appreciative when critical scrutiny (not criticism) needs to be deployed in full measure.

The writings below cover topics under organization development in management; socio-political events of interest to the writer; application of learnings gathered from the Pali Canon of the Theravada Buddhist tradition and the Qur'anic world-view to approach common and not so common issues; and some other sundry material.

The writings are deliberately ordered in chronological fashion, even though it may mean that writings on different subject matters are interspersed rather than being grouped by nature of the content. This is because thoughts evolve (some may say harden) over a period of time. More often than not the core set of thoughts remain the same but they find expression in different forms depending on the nature of the subject matter. Thus, it is incorrect to assume that the thoughts expressed in this website on matters of organization development are divorced from thoughts expressed on socio-political issues. A more discerning reader will be able to see through the common patterns of thinking, which hopefully, are easily visible on account of poverty in their number.

More critically, the thoughts at a later point in time are actually simply a more elaborated version of earlier thoughts. This is largely because practice usually follows thinking at a sub-conscious level. The earlier writings in this section can actually be viewed as attempts to capture the sub-conscious; the latter writings as those early sub-conscious thoughts subjected to further correction due to the inevitable sobering effect contact of those thoughts with real-life induces.

However, to aid the reader, wherever relevant, each piece of writing is given a prefix to indicate the nature of the content: OD (for organization development), comment (wherein the source / inspiration for the piece of writing was from some extract, book or correspondence), correspondence (wherein correspondence of the writer with another individual is reproduced), or adjunct where the piece is a follow-on to some other piece in this section. Where no such prefix exists, it is assumed that the title is clear enough to indicate the purpose.