VK Saraswat | Vijay Kumar Saraswat

There’s a saying that goes, “Familiarity breeds contempt”. Familiarity is easy, it’s comforting, it’s simple - we know our way around things , we wake up to a certain way of going about our day, we eat the food that we’ve grown up on, we go to familiar places when we’re low because they bring us memories, we like spending time with friends from school and college because of the easy rapport we share, we listen to songs that lift us up when we’re low, we like to go down the same winding lanes, we sometimes re-read the same books, rearrange the same solved puzzle, rematch an old classic… My point is, familiarity has a strange solace that makes it easy to go back, tempting even. But it’s the uncharted territory that brave harts would rather follow. Take it from the achievers, the weird ones, the new breed of experimental scientists , the startup   gurus, the hackers, the bloggers, the marketers, the small business owners, the chefs, the artists, the authors - it isn’t ab...

“Daring ideas are like chessmen, they may be beaten, but they may start a winning game” Have you ever thought of trying something new, something different? Did you ever watch something happen and think you could make it happen better? Has your mind stumbled upon something that was too good to let pass, without a second thought? Ideas happen; they happen to all of us. Some of us choose to act upon those ideas, some of us ponder, some of us let them go. In this interwoven chain, there’s reason enough for us to believe that ideas are the first step of enterprises. The largest, most successful enterprises in the world are all built up on one premise - the effective incorporation of an idea. I decided to write this post for all the budding entrepreneurs of our country. We as a nation are filled with hope, growth potential and an unwavering belief in our abilities. What makes a man successful? We’re not going to count sheer luck as one of the factors here. M...

In the first part of this series I spoke about the importance of tackling stage fear. As children, some amount of anxiety to perform in front of an audience (even as an adult ) is absolutely normal. Everyone gets a little nervous when you’re up to face a group of ideas in front of a group of people, there are a whole lot of fears that include presenting your ideas and opinion in a concise way, putting yourself out there to be criticized and trying to sell your opinion to people. While some amount of stage fear is natural, people showing excessive taciturn behaviour may develop other drawbacks and handicaps later in life. I had mentioned a little incident from my childhood in the previous post on stage fear. It was my first ever participation in a debate. It was a competition hosted by my school in Gwalior and I was to speak on Science and Religion. I was this shy kid, who had been home-schooled for the most part and here I was in front of an audience, waiting for my t...

My position demands quite a lot of public speaking and addressing events and conventions, and other such public events. Almost often, I get invited to speak at the dais, facing the audience and the cameras to give my opinion or something, to speak of a decision made or to announce plans made by the body I’m currently associated with. I must say, that I’ve come to see it as a privilege today more than I did years ago, where I would tremble at the very thought of having to speak in front of an audience. It’s but natural, I think, for when we’re children to be afraid of public speaking. Some call it stage fear, some say “you’re a shy child” when we refuse to perform in front of relatives who come home while sometimes, you’re just a taciturn of sorts. Stage fright may be a small issue while growing up, but later often manifests itself in many ways - you may not be an active participant in college activities, you may not be very confident in job interviews and you may not be ...

A common question today’s youth have is the decision they make for their career, their professional calling or their “permanent job” if you will. A career decision today is tougher to make today than it was in , say, my time. There are so many options, so many new fields, sub fields and increased resources to cultivate a career in any of these fields easily. How then, do you figure out what you need to do in life ? Do you opt for a ‘safe’ government job, follow the family business, jump into the growing tide of budding entrepreneurs today or just follow your passion ? The internet has allowed a lot of creatively aligned people to monetize their passion - sites like pinterest allow you to earn online through very little investment, youtube blogging is a dream job for many , other blogs and social networks have their own promotional things that they offer their subscribers - in short, it is easier, much easier today to chase your goals. A good photographer today ...

If there’s one thing the whole world can agree on, it is their mutual hatred of Monday. There have been countless jokes made on the horror story that is Monday. From kids wanting to cut school to office goers cribbing to get past their weekend, Monday is probably the most ill-treated day of the week. What about successful people? Do they hate Mondays? Do you ever hear them talking about Monday woes? Is this the deciding factor between the successful people and the not-so-successful people? To be honest, it is really easy. It is really easy to get caught up in the weekend, it is really easy to let the laidback Sunday noon flow onto a monday morning, it is really easy to want to extend that period of relaxation and carefree weekend time a little longer. But it isn’t about what is easy, is it ? Often, a lot of people I meet tell me they spend half their Mondays wishing Monday didn’t happen at all. How is that helping? For office-goers, particularly those who wor...

Do you have a dream ? Do you long to one day bask in the glory of something you’ve yearned and worked for, all your life ? Do you wish to be different ? To create change ? To change the ways of those around ? Do you wish to see a miracle, or better still, create one? Our lives and dreams are constantly evolving, just as we are. With each cell that dies, and each new cell that comes to be a part of our existence - we change. In fact, for real we aren’t really the same person we were a few years ago. Put simply, every cell in our being is recycled and replaced by a new one every few minutes. So the next time someone tells you, you’ve changed, ponder on the fact that you really have. Isn’t it remarkable then, that despite all these changes in our bodies, our brain still contains all the data it should? That we can look at old photograph at ourselves and go, “hey, that’s me” , that we can run into an old classmate and relive those college memories even though we’re balding w...