Tag: Shakti Ghosal

Another night. Another World Cup. Another reminder that sport is often life, compressed into ninety minutes.


Just after midnight, my wife switched on the bedroom television.

“We’ll watch for a little while,” we told ourselves.

It was well past 2:00 a.m. when we finally went to sleep.

Some football matches don’t merely decide who reaches a World Cup final. They quietly dismantle the assumptions we carry into them.

Like millions around the world, I had convinced myself that France would find a way. Kylian Mbappé had been in breathtaking form throughout the tournament. The media had almost made it sound inevitable that France would be playing in the final.

But football has an inconvenient habit of ignoring predictions. Spain didn’t just beat France 2-0. They educated them.

From the opening whistle, Spain controlled the rhythm of the game as though they were conducting an orchestra. Rodri, Fabián Ruiz and Dani Olmo seemed to have all the time in the world. Every French pass near the Spanish goal arrived a fraction too late. Every misplaced touch was punished. Every attempt to speed up the game was calmly absorbed before Spain slowed it down again.

What impressed me most was not Spain’s goals. It was their patience.

In an age where everyone celebrates speed, Spain reminded us that control is often the greater strength. They never appeared hurried. They trusted the process, trusted each other and trusted the game plan.

Perhaps the most striking moment came after the final whistle. There were no excuses. Mbappé admitted that France had been outplayed. He spoke of the tactical shortcomings, the lack of communication, the technical mistakes and Spain’s superiority in controlling the midfield. It takes courage to win. It takes even greater courage to lose with honesty.

That, for me, was the lesson of the night. Spain didn’t produce magic. They produced mastery.

As I finally switched off the television sometime after two in the morning, I realised that the World Cup had once again offered a lesson far beyond football. The game does not always belong to the team with the biggest stars. Sometimes, it belongs to the team that plays the better game. And perhaps life works that way too.

In musing…… Shakti Ghosal

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

Beyond Resilience: Some Reflections on India’s Economic Story


I found the Chief Economic Adviser’s article on the subject both reassuring and well argued. It reminds us that India’s economy today is certainly stronger than it was during earlier crises. Better macroeconomic management, diversified energy sources, healthy foreign exchange reserves and timely policy interventions have undoubtedly made us more resilient.

Yet, as I finished reading, I was left with a few thoughts.

The first is that we should be careful not to confuse resilience with invincibility.

This particular crisis ended before it could become truly prolonged. Oil prices eased, shipping stabilised and global markets regained their footing. Had the conflict continued for another few months, the pressures on inflation, fiscal balances and household budgets would have been much harder to manage. Good policy deserves credit, but so does good fortune.

Secondly, the article understandably highlights the role of government.

 Equally deserving of recognition, in my view, is the quiet transformation of Indian industry. Over the past decade, businesses have learnt to diversify suppliers, manage inventories better, hedge risks and adapt far more quickly than before. Much of India’s resilience today rests as much in its boardrooms as in North Block.

The article also reminded me that our biggest vulnerabilities remain largely unchanged. We continue to depend heavily on imported crude oil, fertilisers, semiconductor components and several critical minerals. These are strategic dependencies that no amount of short-term policy management can fully offset.

Perhaps the most important takeaway, however, lies elsewhere.

The Gulf conflict is unlikely to be the last major disruption we face. If anything, geopolitical tensions, climate events, cyber risks and technological disruptions are becoming the new normal. The question, therefore, is not whether India can survive the next crisis. It is whether we can prepare for it before it arrives.

That, to me, should be the next chapter of India’s economic story.

We need to move beyond resilience and build anticipation. Greater energy independence, stronger manufacturing capabilities, lower logistics costs, globally competitive skills and deeper investments in future technologies will matter even more than crisis management. Equally important is developing the ability to think in scenarios rather than forecasts—to prepare for multiple possible futures instead of assuming that tomorrow will resemble yesterday.

The article rightly celebrates how far India has come. I would simply add that the journey ahead will demand a different mindset. The winners of the next decade will not necessarily be those who recover fastest from shocks, but those who see them coming first and are ready before everyone else.

That, I believe, is the real opportunity before India. It is no longer enough to be resilient. We must become anticipatory.

In musing….. Shakti Ghosal

When Time Took the Hill Road to Kurseong


Nirvan Retreat- Where time stalls till

A couple of weeks ago, over an evening drink at the Calcutta Cricket and Football Club (CCFC), a friend casually mentioned Kurseong. The name somehow lingered long after the conversation had moved on. Ever since my ankle surgery earlier this year, I had been dreaming of escaping to a quiet corner wrapped in green, where the loudest sound would be birdsong and the fastest thing in sight would be drifting clouds. I scarcely had to drop hints to my wife Sanchita, she was more than ready and Kurseong quickly graduated from dream to destination.

Four nights at the Nirvana Retreat ( it advertises itself as the place where time stands still) were booked, followed by the to-and-fro flights to Bagdogra. The monsoon tossed our aircraft around just enough to remind us who was really in charge, but we landed safely and were soon winding our way up the hills. Every bend seemed to reveal another postcard—the tea gardens, little hillside homes, and forests wearing a soft veil of mist.

The long and winding road…..

Our balcony overlooked towering pine trees standing like silent soldiers in green-grey uniforms, their pointed helmets disappearing into drifting clouds. Kolkata, with its humidity, traffic and relentless pace, already felt like another country. There was no television worth watching here. Nature had taken over the programming.

oplus_262176

The hills invited long walks, but wisdom prevailed over enthusiasm. Recovering knees have a language of their own and mine spoke with remarkable clarity. So, instead of trying to conquer the hills, we surrendered to them. We embraced a different adventure—the increasingly rare luxury of doing very little, and doing it without feeling guilty.

Each morning began with meditation on the balcony as the mist slowly swallowed the pines before releasing them again, almost playfully. Unknown birds held conversations in a language neither of us understood, yet somehow it all made perfect sense. Then came our familiar ritual: the kettle on, two cups of fragrant Darjeeling tea, and unhurried conversations that needed no destination. We discovered that silence, shared with someone you have known for years, can sometimes be more eloquent than words.

Breakfast was delightfully confused—hot puris and sabzi giving way to eggs sunny side up, toast, sausages and the incomparable Makaibari tea. The ever-smiling staff seemed personally invested in ensuring that no guest left the dining room even remotely hungry. Resistance, we soon discovered, was entirely futile.

We faithfully visited Dow Hill School on behalf of a friend who had boarded there during his childhood, only to be politely prevented from entering those hallowed precincts by an immovable security guard. Some memories, it would seem, are best revisited through stories rather than school gates.

Dow Hill school

The mist also conspired against us at Eagle’s Crag and the Chimney, ensuring that the famous panoramic views remained a matter of imagination. Yet the ancient pine forests more than compensated. Walking beneath those towering trees, lovingly planted by the British generations ago, one could not help but marvel at how some acts of planting outlive the people who planted them.

Kurseong Chimney
A Pine Forest of Kurseong

A description of Kurseong would be incomplete without mentioning the historic Hill Cart Road—the town’s bustling lifeline where shops, cafés and homes jostle for space, and where the iconic Darjeeling Himalayan Railway toy train track (did not see the train passing through when we were there) meanders through the streets with unhurried confidence. As pedestrians and vehicles patiently made their way, it felt like watching history politely negotiate with the present.

The highlight for me, however, was the Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose Museum. His letters, photographs and personal artefacts quietly brought history to life, reminding us that extraordinary lives are often built upon ordinary moments of conviction and courage.

Netaji Subhas Bose’s address as President of Congress Party

We returned with few spectacular photographs but something far more valuable—a reminder that the finest journeys are not always about seeing more. Sometimes they are about slowing down enough to see ourselves again. In a world forever urging us to move faster, Kurseong gently whispered a different lesson—that there is quiet wisdom in standing still.

In musing……. Shakti Ghosal

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

The Forest We Never Fully See


About a year back, I happened to sit at the lunch table with one of the participants of a Leadership workshop I was conducting. Let us call him Arun.

As I tried to engage him in a polite conversation, I found him to be withdrawn and seemingly lost in some other thoughts. When I enquired about this, he blurted out, “Professor, I was trying to relate what you said in class to my interaction with a colleague. Every time we discuss a new project, she starts asking so many questions. By the time she’s finished, we’ve lost momentum.”

I asked, “What would you say makes her do that? Is it something she perceives about you?”

Arun smiled, “Probably that I move too fast.”

oplus_10485760

“Could it be that both of you right?” So saying, I took out my pen and drew a rough sketch on a piece of paper.

“Imagine a large forest,” I said. “Now imagine two people standing at different windows overlooking that forest. One person sees a waterfall. The other sees a mountain trail. Both are describing the same forest. But neither is seeing the whole picture.”

Arun leaned forward, “So you’re saying that’s what happens at work?”

“Every day,” I said. “We often assume that because we share an office, a company, a language, or even a country, we share the same perspective. But we don’t.

Each of us arrives at work carrying years of our very own specific experiences, beliefs, successes, disappointments, cultures, family influences and personal values. We may be looking at the same challenge. But we are never looking from the same window.

Arun was quiet for a moment. Then he said, “So when I think she’s slowing things down, she may think she’s reducing risk.”

“Exactly.”

Arun nodded slowly, understanding dawning on his face, “And when she thinks I’m rushing, I may simply be focused on opportunity.”

The conversation shifted. We stopped talking about who was right and started talking about what each person could see that the other could not. That’s when something interesting happened. The earlier uncertainty seemed to disappear, curiosity taking its place.

I have noticed that many workplace conflicts begin with a simple assumption: “If I see it this way, everyone else should see it this way too.”

But diversity is not simply about nationality, gender, age, language or background. It is about perspective. It is about recognising that another person’s life has given them a view of the world that is different from ours. And that can be valuable precisely because it is different. The irony is that organisations spend enormous amounts of money searching for innovation, yet innovation is often hiding inside the perspectives we dismiss too quickly. If everyone in a meeting thinks the same way, the discussion may be comfortable. But it is unlikely to be transformative.

Before we left, Arun said something that stayed with me. “You know Professor, I spent the entire time of our interaction trying to convince her to look through my window. Maybe I should spend more time looking through hers.”

That, perhaps, is the real gift of diversity. Not that it makes agreement easier. But that it makes understanding deeper. The world does not need more people defending their windows. It needs more people willing to explore the forest. And every time we replace judgment with curiosity, comparison with appreciation, and certainty with learning, the forest becomes a little larger than we imagined.

What if the next breakthrough in your life is waiting in a perspective you have not yet taken the time to understand?

In musing……                                                     Shakti Ghosal

Proud to be Middle Class Indian


There is a particular species of Indian that flourished magnificently in the decades before online shopping, food delivery apps and children who believe Wi-Fi is a fundamental human right. I refer, of course, to the Indian middle class, of which I remain a reasonably well-preserved but vanishing specimen.

We grew up in households where economy was not merely a virtue; it was a performing art.

My earliest lessons in finance came from my parents. Nothing was ever thrown away if it still possessed even a faint pulse of usefulness. Plastic bags were washed and dried like delicate garments. Glass jars enjoyed a second career storing everything from spices to mysterious screws. A rubber band could expect a working life longer than that of many government administrations.

Food was treated with similar reverence. I learnt from my mother at a young age that leaving rice on one’s plate was considered a moral lapse bordering on criminal behaviour. Leftovers were not leftovers. They were tomorrow’s menu opportunity. Last night’s dal would return disguised as parathas. Yesterday’s vegetables would reappear as a perfectly respectable breakfast. In our kitchen, nothing retired. Everything was merely transferred to another department.

Clothes followed a similarly circular economy. My elder cousin’s shirts descended upon me in stages. By the time they reached my wardrobe, they had acquired wisdom, faded dignity and collars that had survived several rounds of repair. I never considered this unusual. The idea that some children received brand-new clothes simply because they had grown seemed extravagantly aristocratic.

School textbooks were inherited too. I recall books arriving complete with underlined passages, examination tips and occasional sketches that transformed national leaders into members of a travelling circus. Education was affordable because the same books appeared to educate multiple generations.

Then there was transport. A Tonga ride cost four annas. Four annas! I had been made to believe that such a sum spent without caution could destabilise our home economy, especially during the last week of the month. Consequently, we walked. Distances that modern people would consider suitable for expedition permits were covered cheerfully on foot. If a destination could be reached in forty minutes, spending four annas to arrive in ten was regarded as reckless financial behaviour.

And bicycles! Every middle-class household seemed to possess an ancient bicycle that had belonged to an uncle, a grandfather or possibly a forgotten Mughal emperor. We too had one and it lay peacefully in the courtyard for years until the day I had become old enough to learn cycling. The relic was resurrected, repaired and polished. Following instructions from elders, I climbed aboard with great optimism and immediately fell off. I was told that this trial process needed to be repeated until either I learned to ride or the bicycle surrendered.

Birthdays were modest affairs. A new shirt. A special meal. But what I would look forward to were the gifts of the ludo and the Chinese checker sets. I remember the occasion when I received the princely sum of a ten-rupee note from my uncle, surely during one of his generous and careless moments. That ten-rupee note was treated with the seriousness of an international investment portfolio. Weeks of deliberation preceded expenditure. For me, the pleasure lay not in buying, but in deciding.

Electricity was another matter. Leaving a fan running in an empty room could summon my father from astonishing distances. He possessed an almost supernatural ability to detect unnecessary power consumption. Lights were switched off with military precision. Water taps were closed firmly. Waste was viewed as a personal insult to future generations.

Looking back, none of this felt like hardship. We never considered ourselves deprived. We simply lived with the understanding that money was earned with effort, resources were finite and contentment did not depend on owning the latest thing.

Even today, I cannot throw away a half-used notebook. I switch off lights in hotel rooms. I feel guilty wasting food. Somewhere inside me lives that middle-class boy, still walking to save four annas and still trying to balance himself on an ancient bicycle. And truth be told, I am rather fond of him. For he grew up learning a lesson that seems increasingly rare: happiness is not about how much you have. It is about how little you need.

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

Book of the Month review by Outlook India


Aditi Chakraborty is part of the editorial team of the Outlook India group. She has recently done a ‘Book of the Month’ review of ‘The Last Writer of Kolkata and other stories.’

Aditi writes:

‘Shakti Ghosal, in his new book ‘The Last Writer of Kolkata and other stories’, draws a fascinating balance between speculative imagination and deep human struggles that the characters endure. It is a book that highlights technological advancement with emotional vulnerability and social disruption.

Interestingly, Shakti’s stories do not begin with technology; they begin with human dilemmas. An ageing couple confronting abandonment. A man wrestling with memory and cultural erasure. A mind questioning engineered conformity. A community facing ecological collapse. Once the emotional conflict becomes clear, the speculative framework grows around it organically. Readers may enter through the futuristic premise, but they remain because the emotional stakes feel recognisable. The future changes settings; it does not abolish vulnerability.

Environmental collapse, engineered echo chambers, and optimised living appear throughout the collection. Yet the author emphasises that ‘The Last Writer of Kolkata and other stories’ is a work of fiction and not to be treated as a prophecy. However, he agrees that there is a cautionary dimension. Fictions can illuminate trajectories already visible in the present. For instance, climate anxiety is not speculative. Nor is algorithmic influence speculative. Similarly, the pursuit of frictionless efficiency at the cost of emotional depth is not speculative. These are contemporary realities. What his book allows us to do is emotionally inhabit the consequences before they fully arrive.

Despite the unsettling worlds in the book, there is a recurring emphasis on love, dignity, and human connection at the centre of these narratives. “I do not believe technology, however transformative, can erase the fundamental emotional architecture of being human. Civilisations evolve. Systems collapse. Tools become more intelligent. But a parent’s concern, a child’s longing, the dignity of memory, the need to be seen, the quiet courage of human connection—these remain stubbornly persistent,” he explains. For Shakti, love is not merely sentiment. It is resistance. Dignity is resistance. Choosing connection in increasingly impersonal worlds is resistance. “If my stories contain unsettling futures, it is because I wanted the emotional stakes to feel urgent. But despair alone makes for shallow storytelling. I am more interested in the resilience of tenderness.”

The complete Book of the Month review in Outlook India can be found here.

https://www.outlookindia.com/amp/story/announcements/news-media-wire/book-review-shakti-ghoshals-the-last-writer-of-kolkata-and-other-stories

The Day Strength chose Silence


I paused when I saw this photograph.

A tiger—nature’s embodiment of power—lying quietly on the face of the Buddha. What struck me was not the contrast, but the harmony.

As we grow older, many of us spend years trying to get rid of our inner tiger. Our anger. Our ambition. Our ego. Our restlessness needs to prove ourselves. But perhaps wisdom is not about killing the tiger.Perhaps it is about teaching it to rest.

The tiger is still there. The strength is still there. The fire is still there. But it no longer needs to bare its teeth at every passing challenge.

I have met people who were gentle because they were weak. And I have met a few who were gentle because they were strong enough to choose peace.The second kind are rare.

Looking at this image, I was reminded that the real journey is not from power to powerlessness. It is from power to self-mastery.

When the tiger learns to rest, the Buddha smiles.

In musing……         Shakti Ghosal