Category: Awareness

What If ……….


We Have Misunderstood Our Place in the World?

I spent the morning watching the animals move across the Kenyan savannah. There were wildebeest everywhere. Zebras moved among them almost casually. An elephant and its cub stood beneath a tree. In the distance, the landscape seemed to stretch endlessly, without walls, roads or buildings to interrupt it. For a while, I simply watched.

A space with no boundaries

There was something strangely humbling about seeing so many creatures occupy the same landscape without any apparent need to possess it. They did not own the land. They did not draw boundaries across it. They did not put up signs announcing that a particular piece of earth belonged to them. They simply lived there.

The Savannah co-existence

And then a thought occurred to me. What if we have misunderstood our place in the world?

For centuries, we have measured human progress by our ability to control nature. We cut down forests and called it development. We dammed rivers and called it progress. We covered open land with concrete and called it urbanisation. We moved mountains, redirected water, altered landscapes and exterminated species after species, making them disappear. And while doing so, we often congratulated ourselves on our ingenuity and intelligence.

The great migration through Mara

But somewhere along the way, we perhaps began to confuse our ability to control something with the right to own it. The savannah seemed to offer me a different philosophy. The animals did not appear to be conquering the land. They were part of it. The elephant did not need to dominate the tree beneath which it stood. The zebra did not need to fence off its patch of grass. The wildebeest did not need a title deed to the earth beneath its feet. They belonged to the landscape without claiming it. Perhaps that is what we have forgotten. We speak endlessly about what we will leave behind. Be it buildings, businesses, fortunes, roads or institutions.  We would strive to leave our names on plaques and our photographs on walls. But perhaps there is another kind of legacy…….

The Zebra did not need to fence off its grass….

What we choose not to destroy. The forest we would leave standing. The river and the waterbody we would allow to remain clean. The animal(s) whose habitat we would protect. The open space we chose not to convert into concrete. The silence we did not fill.

The silence we did not fill….

Standing there in Kenya, I began to wonder whether civilisation should really be measured by how much of nature we can bend to our will. Or how much of nature we chose to leave as it is. Perhaps the more difficult measure is how much power we possess—and how much restraint we exercise. Because restraint requires something that conquest does not. It requires us to recognise that we are not the center of everything.  The realisation that the earth existed before us, the wild existed before our cities, our borders and our ambitions. And, if we are wise enough, much of it will continue to exist after we are gone.

Will this exist after we are gone?

Perhaps we are not the owners of this world after all. Perhaps we are merely its temporary custodians. We arrived without asking permission. We will leave without taking anything with us. Between those two moments lies the brief privilege of being of who we are and our presence here.

We remain privileged to have been here…….

And so I find myself asking a different question. Not simply, what will we build while we are here? But, what will remain because we were here? I closed my notebook. The animals continued moving across the savannah. They had not heard my question. Perhaps they did not need to. They seemed to know the answer already.

— Rudra Bose, the Last Writer of Kolkata

#WhatIf #RudraBose #ShaktiGhosal #TheLastWriterOfKolkata #KenyaSafari #Wildlife #NatureAndUs #Storytelling #IndianAuthor #ThoughtProvoking #JourneysThatStay

When Leaders Rise, do they lose sight of those below?


I happened to read a thought provoking piece on Friedrich Nietzsche and a quote of his in Times of India. It led me to ponder on the Leadership in the Political and Organisational arenas we see today…..

“The higher we soar, the smaller we appear to those who cannot fly.”

Friedrich Nietzsche wrote these words in 1881. They were never meant to suggest that those who rise are superior to those who remain on the ground. Nietzsche was speaking about perspective—the strange way in which distance changes how we see one another.

But I wonder whether there is another, more uncomfortable lesson hidden in those words for leadership.

Whether in politics or in organisations, leaders often begin their journey with the trust, hopes and aspirations of the very people they lead. Success follows. Power increases. The circle around them becomes smaller, more selective and increasingly insulated.

And something subtle begins to happen.

The leader starts seeing the world from a higher altitude. The people below start seeing a leader who is increasingly distant. This is where the slow deterioration of faith begins.

A view from above

Employees who once felt heard begin to feel ignored. Citizens who once believed begin to question. Honest feedback gets replaced by carefully filtered information. Dissent is interpreted as disloyalty. The leader hears more applause and less truth. Ironically, the higher the leader rises, the greater becomes the need to remain connected to the ground.

Leadership is not merely about vision, achievement or the ability to soar. It is about ensuring that people can still see you, trust you and speak to you when you are up there.

The danger is not success. The danger is success without humility.

Political leaders need to remember that electoral victory is not a permanent certificate of public trust. Corporate leaders need to remember that business success does not automatically translate into employee loyalty. Both are temporary mandates, renewed every day through credibility, fairness and connection.

Perhaps the real test of leadership is therefore not how high we can rise, but how many people we can take with us—and whether, while rising, we remain capable of listening to those who are still on the ground.

Leaders must deliberately create spaces where uncomfortable truths can travel upwards. They must reward candour rather than compliance, dissent rather than sycophancy, and substance rather than applause.

Because once people stop believing that their leader understands them, they may continue to obey.But they stop believing. And when belief disappears, authority may survive for a while.

Leadership does not.

The challenge before every leader, therefore, is simple but profound: **Rise. Achieve. Soar. But never become so distant that the people who helped you rise can no longer reach you.**

In musing…….               Shakti Ghosal

 

What if…


…. we do not really know the people who live beside us?

August 2026

When I was a child, every neighbourhood had an unofficial security system. It was called knowing one another. Your mother knew who lived next door. The grocer knew whose son had returned from college. The postman knew which house had a new baby. The stranger was noticed because everyone else was familiar.

Today we have CCTV cameras, biometric gates, visitor apps, facial recognition and digital identities. Yet we often do not know the person who shares the lift with us.

The newspapers tell us that a young man, described by neighbours as polite and ordinary, is now accused of living a different life of a terrorist behind an ordinary face. If the allegations are proven true, it is a chilling reminder that the greatest disguises are no longer masks. They are routines. Terrorism succeeds long before any explosion. It succeeds the day suspicion replaces trust, when every unfamiliar face begins to look dangerous, and every ordinary neighbour becomes a question mark.

That is precisely why a civilised society must refuse both complacency and paranoia. Security agencies must remain vigilant. Citizens must remain alert. But neither should surrender the humanity that allows communities to exist.

As I folded the newspaper, I wondered whether the greatest security failure of our times is not merely that dangerous people can hide among ordinary citizens. It is that modern life has quietly taught ordinary citizens to live among one another without ever truly knowing those around us. Perhaps the strongest wall against terror is not built of concrete or surveillance. Perhaps it begins when a society rediscovers the forgotten art of being a community.

— Rudra Bose, The Last Writer of Kolkata

#thelastwriterofkolkata, #rudrabose, #shaktighosal, #communitylife

The Invisible Architecture of Success


We often admire people’s discipline, without ever seeing the structures that quietly support it.

Some months back, during my morning walks, I started noticing an elderly gentleman doing his exercises in the central garden of our residential complex.

He was there every day, almost at the same time and doing the same routine. For many mornings, I simply admired his discipline from a distance but one day, curiosity got the better of me. I wished  him ‘Good Morning’ and soon we were sitting on a nearby bench, I remarked, “I see that you have incredible willpower.”

At that, he laughed, “That’s what everyone thinks. But it isn’t really true. Not really.”

As I looked at him, puzzled, he pointed towards his wristwatch, “My alarm rings at five-thirty.”

“So does mine,” I smiled.

He continued, “My walking shoes are beside the bed every night. My exercise clothes are laid out before I go to sleep. My doctor expects to see my blood sugar readings every month. And my granddaughter has made me promise that I’ll be healthy enough to dance at her wedding.”

He paused, “Now tell me… where exactly does willpower come into the story?”

For a few moments, I didn’t have an answer. I seemed to have mistaken discipline for determination. What I was really seeing was structure.

As we got up to walk back to our respective towers, he said something that has stayed with me ever since, “Most people wait to feel motivated. I prefer to prepare my environment.”

That single sentence shifted my perspective. How often do we rely on willpower alone? We promise ourselves we’ll read more, exercise regularly, spend less time on our phones, learn a new skill. In my case, it is even, write that book. In your case, it might be to start that business.

Then, when our enthusiasm fades, we conclude that we lack discipline. Perhaps the problem isn’t our commitment. Perhaps, it’s our architecture. It became increasingly clear to me that our lives are already full of structures. Some quietly support the future we want. Others quietly support the habits we’re trying to leave behind.

Success is rarely built on one heroic act of determination. More often, it is built on dozens of small decisions made long before the moment of action arrives.

Before we parted, I thanked the gentleman for the conversation. He smiled and said, “People spend too much time trying to become stronger. They spend too little time making the path easier.”

As I walked home, I realised that remarkable lives are not held together by extraordinary willpower. They are held together by ordinary structures, repeated with quiet consistency. Perhaps that explains why success often looks effortless from a distance.

We see the destination.We applaud the discipline.But we rarely notice the invisible architecture that made the journey possible. And perhaps that’s the first structure worth building.

In musing…….                           Shakti Ghosal

The Future Doesn’t Arrive All at Once


A piece from the Newspaper

When I wrote 2056: The Year of the Water and Fire, I imagined a Bengal where climate change was no longer an environmental issue. It had become a way of life.

This newspaper report made me pause.

It says that Kolkata now loses around 80 hours of sleep every year because of rising night-time temperatures. Think about that for a moment. Climate change is no longer confined to distant glaciers, rising seas or violent cyclones. It is quietly entering our bedrooms, stealing our sleep, affecting our health, our emotions, and perhaps even the way we think.

The future, I have often felt, rarely announces itself dramatically. It arrives in small, almost unnoticed ways.

A warmer night.
A little less sleep.
A little less patience.
A little more fatigue.

Until one day, we realise that what we once called unusual has quietly become normal.

In 2056: The Year of the Water and Fire, I explored what might happen when rising waters, stronger storms and changing climates begin to reshape not just our landscape, but our choices, our communities and our humanity.

Perhaps the greatest lesson is this:

Climate change is no longer about saving the planet. It is about preserving the quality of human life on it.

The Earth will endure.

The question is whether we will learn to adapt before adaptation is forced upon us.

#ClimateChange #GlobalWarming #Kolkata #2056TheYearOfWaterAndFire #TheLastWriterOfKolkata #SpeculativeFiction  #FutureOfHumanity #Sustainability #ThoughtsThatMatter

The Promise We Break Most Often


The strongest form of accountability isn’t to your boss. It’s to yourself.

I still remember a conversation with a young manager many years ago. He had walked into my office carrying a notebook filled with plans.

“I don’t understand myself,” he confided, almost apologetically. “Every New Year I make a list. I promise myself I’ll exercise regularly, read more, spend time with my family, learn a new skill…” He then smiled sheepishly. “By March, I’ve broken most of those promises. Even though I had genuinely meant every word when I wrote those goals.”

I laughed at that. “So have millions of others. Including myself when I was your age.”

I leaned back in my chair. “Tell me,” I asked, “if your Managing Director asked you to submit a report by Monday, would you?  Or if your biggest customer expected you at a meeting at ten o’clock?” Or if your child was waiting for you at the school annual function?”

“Of Course! I would do all of those and on time.”

I smiled, “So you’re very good at keeping promises.”

He looked confused. “No,” he replied. “I just told you I’m terrible at it.”

I reassured him, ” I would say you’re excellent at keeping promises to other people. You just struggle to keep promises to your own self.”

He looked at me for a long moment before quietly admitting, “I’ve never thought about it that way.”

Well to be frank, neither had I, until years earlier when someone had challenged me with the same question. The truth is, most of us don’t lose confidence because we fail. We lose confidence because we repeatedly break our own word.

Every time we say to ourself, ‘I’ll start tomorrow,’ and tomorrow becomes next week… Every time we promise ourselves, we’ll make time for our health, our family, our learning or our dreams… and then quietly move them to the bottom of the list…

Something invisible starts happening. Our self-trust begins to erode. Others may still trust us. Our colleagues may admire our reliability. Our clients may praise our commitment. But somewhere inside, we begin to doubt ourselves. Not because we lack ability. But because we’ve stopped believing our own promises.

I came out of my reverie with a start; my colleague was looking at me thoughtfully. “So, accountability isn’t really about someone checking up on me?” he asked.

I shook my head. “That’s compliance. Accountability is much more personal. It is choosing to become someone whose word matters—even when no one else is listening.”

As he stood up to leave, he closed his notebook and smiled, “I think I’ve been writing goals. What I really needed was to start keeping promises.”

That conversation has stayed with me ever since. The older I grow, the more I realise that confidence is not built through motivational speeches or inspirational books. It is built quietly. One kept promise at a time. Perhaps that is why integrity is such a powerful word. It doesn’t begin with how faithfully we honour our commitments to others. It begins with how faithfully we honour the commitments we make to ourselves.

Because the person listening most carefully to every promise you make… is you.

In musing…..                                            Shakti Ghosal

#accountability, #Integrity, #selfpromise, #goalkeeping

The Most Important Person You’ll Ever Lead


‘Leadership doesn’t begin with managing people. It begins with understanding the person in the mirror.’

I recall a conversation of several years back.

It was late evening and I was preparing to go home. Hearing a knock, I looked up to see a colleague standing outside my glass door, smiling. He was one of the bright managers from our Supply Chains division. As I gestured him to a chair, I sensed something was on his mind. After the usual pleasantries and how things were going at work, I asked what I could do for him.

“Sir, while I seem to be doing okay at work based on the feedback of my Divisional Head, deep down I fear I’m failing as a leader,” he blurted out.

” Hmm! That’s a strong statement,” I replied. “What makes you say that?”

He sighed, “I am trying to be a better leader. I’ve read leadership books. I keep trying new leadership techniques…… but somehow I feel a sense of inadequacy and a lack of being authentic.”

Pondering over what I had just heard, I asked, “When was the last time you studied yourself?”

My colleague frowned. After a few moments he admitted, “I don’t think I ever have.”

“You know,” I said, “most of us believe awareness means noticing what’s happening around us. For instance, the market. Our competitors. Our customers. Our bosses. We become experts at observing everyone else’s behaviour. We know exactly what our colleagues need to improve. We notice the habits holding others back. We can often predict how someone else will react in a meeting. But ask us why we react defensively to criticism… why certain conversations drain our energy… why we repeat the same mistakes… and suddenly the answers become less clear.”

He looked at me for a few moments before replying, “So you’re saying I’ve been looking in the wrong direction?”

“Not the wrong direction. Just one direction.”

Looking out of the window, he said softly, almost to himself, “I’ve been trying to model myself on people I’ve admired.”

“And there’s nothing wrong with admiration,” I said. “The problem begins when admiration turns into imitation. We can borrow someone’s ideas. We can learn from someone’s experience.  But we can never build our leadership by becoming a copy of someone else’s story.”

There was a silence. Then the colleague asked quietly, “So what does awareness really look like?”

I realised that we were now entering the deep end of our conversation. I said, “It is knowing your strengths without becoming arrogant. Recognising your weaknesses without becoming discouraged. Understanding your patterns before they begin to define you.”

I concluded by saying, “It is having the courage to ask not, ‘How do I become like them?’ but ‘Who am I becoming?’“

As my colleague got up to leave, he paused at the door and said, “I’ve spent years trying to improve my leadership. Perhaps I should spend more time understanding the leader.”

The conversation stayed with me. The older I grow, the more I realise that personal growth rarely begins with learning something new. More often, it begins with seeing ourselves a little more clearly.

Self-awareness is perhaps the only mirror that becomes clearer the longer we are willing to look into it. Leadership is not the journey from ignorance to knowledge. It is the journey from unconsciousness to awareness. Because the greatest breakthroughs in life seldom come from changing who we are. They come from discovering who we have been all along. Perhaps the most important meeting you will ever have is not with your team, your boss, or your client. It is the quiet conversation you have with yourself.

Is that meeting long overdue?

Reflections…..                                 Shakti Ghosal

Age is just a number


As I have gone through life , I have found some folks proudly  wearing their age ( and the wisdom that flows from that) like a badge. And others, using a curious phrase  ( which incidentally became fashionable) : “Age is just a number.”

Perhaps. But I have often wondered why some people feel compelled to repeat it so often. The calendar is not the enemy. The years do not diminish us. They simply tell a story.

Yet many of us seem desperate to negotiate with time. We shave a few ( and sometimes a little more!) years off our age, boast of being sixty when we are actually seventy, or cling fiercely to an image of ourselves that belonged to another decade. As we try to convince ourselves and others.

Why?

Maybe because age reminds us of something we would rather not confront. That the world is passing us by and we fear missing out. That life is finite. That some doors have closed. That our bodies have their own timetable. That one day we will have to hand over the baton to others.

The strange thing is that wisdom was never meant to compete with youth. A banyan tree does not apologize for not being a sapling. A river does not pretend to be a mountain stream. Both possess a different kind of beauty.

Perhaps maturity begins when we stop treating age as an accusation and start treating it as an achievement. After all, growing old is not a failure. It is a privilege denied to many.

The question is not whether age is just a number. The question is whether we have learned to wear our years with grace.

In musing …..            Shakti Ghosal

What If…….?


I recall a conversation from many years back. During an overseas visit, I was having coffee with a colleague and I found him looking frustrated and confused.

He pushed aside his tray and said, “I don’t get it. We’ve analysed the issue of increasing our business share from this market from every angle. We’ve got the data, the reports, the projections. Yet we seem to be still stuck.”

“Maybe that’s the problem,” I replied.

He looked at me, uncertainty writ on his face, “How can having more data be the problem?”

“Because sometimes,” I said, “we can become so busy looking for the right answer that we stop looking for other possibilities.”

He smiled politely—the kind of smile people give when they think you have said something impractical, “So what’s the alternative? Ignore the facts?”

“Not at all. Facts matter. But facts tell us what is. Creativity asks what could be.” That seemed to catch his attention. I related a story.

“In the 1970s, a scientist at 3M was trying to create a super-strong adhesive. The adhesive was weak. By conventional standards, the experiment was a disappointment. It seemed a failure. That’s exactly how most people saw it. But years later, someone else looked at the same ‘failed’ adhesive and saw a different possibility. The result was the Post-it Note.”

My colleague laughed, “So one of the world’s most successful office products began as a mistake?”

“Or perhaps,” I said, “it began as a possibility that nobody had noticed yet.”

For a moment, neither of us spoke. Then he said something interesting.

“You know, in our meetings we’re always asking, ‘Will this work?’ Maybe we should first ask, ‘What else could this become?'”

Now we were getting somewhere. The truth is that most organisations reward certainty. We admire people who have answers. We celebrate expertise. We fill spreadsheets, analyse trends and minimise risks. All these are important. But the future is rarely created by these certain aspects alone. It is often created by someone willing to explore a possibility that doesn’t yet fit neatly into a presentation slide.

The more we talked, the more I realised that creativity is not about being artistic. It is not about painting, music or design. Possibilities which flow out of a creative mindset is the courage to see beyond the obvious. It is the willingness to ask a different question. It is the ability to sit with uncertainty long enough for a new idea to emerge.

Before we left, my colleague said, “Maybe we’ve been trying too hard to find the right path.”

“Perhaps,” I replied. “Sometimes the breakthrough comes when you stop looking for the path and start exploring the landscape.”

A few days later he called, “We’ve found a completely different solution. We stopped trying to prove what was possible and started imagining it. Imagining the end goal, without getting enmeshed with how to make that happen, allowed new possibilities to show up.”

That conversation stayed with me. Because in a world overflowing with information, knowledge is no longer the rarest resource. Possibility is. And every great innovation, every breakthrough and every new beginning starts with a simple question:

“What if……..?”

In Musing…….                                                                       Shakti Ghosal

Four Seconds That Changed a Leader


More than a decade after my coaching certification, certain ideas still return to me with surprising clarity. One of them is deceptively simple:

The difference between reacting and responding.

Most leaders intellectually understand this distinction. Few recognise how profoundly it shapes their daily impact.

I was reminded of this during a coaching conversation with a senior executive — let me call him Raghav. Raghav was known for his brilliance and intensity. Quick thinker. Decisive. Deeply committed. But his team described him using another word, offered cautiously and repeatedly: “Intimidating.”

When he came into coaching, his concern was framed differently. “My team has become strangely silent,” he told me. “Meetings lack energy. No one challenges anything. It’s frustrating.”

Frustration, I have learned, is often an interesting doorway.

“What usually happens when someone disagrees with you?” I asked. He looked puzzled. “Nothing unusual. We discuss.”

But leaders rarely observe their own behavioural patterns with accuracy. Our reactions are invisible to us precisely because they are so familiar. So, I asked him to walk me through a recent meeting.

He described a discussion where a junior manager questioned a proposal. As he narrated the incident, something subtle appeared — not in his words, but in his tone. “I explained why the idea wouldn’t work,” he said.

Then after a pause: “Perhaps a bit sharply.” “What do you think the manager experienced in that moment?” I asked. He shrugged. “Direct feedback.” “And if we asked them?” Silence.

The human mind is wonderfully efficient at justifying its own reactions.

**

In coaching, reactions are rarely the real story. Triggers are.

“What specifically triggered your response?” I asked. “The suggestion didn’t make sense.” “Was it the quality of the idea,” I continued, “or the fact that it challenged yours?”

That question lingered longer. Eventually he smiled — the kind that signals reluctant insight. “I don’t like being questioned in areas I know well.”

There it was. A deeply human pattern. Trigger → irritation → sharp dismissal.

Repeated often enough, reactions harden into leadership style. Unexamined long enough, they reshape culture.

We explored a small experiment. “Next time you feel that familiar irritation,” I said, “don’t change your opinion. Don’t soften your standards. Simply pause.”

“Pause?”

“Four seconds,” I suggested. “One breath. No words.” He laughed. “That sounds trivial.” “It is trivial,” I agreed. “And extremely difficult.”

Because reactions are automated. Responses are chosen.

**

Several weeks later, Raghav returned with an observation that genuinely surprised him. “The meetings feel different,” he said.

“What changed?”

“I haven’t changed my decisions,” he clarified. “But I’ve started noticing the moment before I speak.”

“And?”

“The irritation is still there,” he admitted. “But the pause stops me from firing.” That single gap — barely a few seconds — had altered the emotional climate of his interactions.

People spoke more. Defensiveness reduced. Energy returned. Nothing structural had changed. Only awareness.

**

Reacting is effortless because it is borrowed from the past — old patterns, old triggers, old conditioning.

Responding requires presence. Choice. Consciousness.

Who would imagine that leadership transformation might sometimes begin not with strategy, but with something far smaller? One breath. Four seconds.

Just enough space for wisdom to enter where habit once ruled.

In Musing……                                                                                           Shakti Ghosal