Sagar Shah

I’m not a regular blogger….nor am I an avid thinker or philosopher…..But there are some events, visuals or stories powerful enough to force my lazy ass to write. One such visual caught my attention when along with my mother, I happened to visit a vegetable market in my locality. We were buying vegetables when suddenly a group of monkeys decided to “visit” the market. Monkeys co-existing with humans is not an unusual or rare occurrence in India. And for most people it’s not too scary either. However, in the vicinity of Street food vendors, vegetable vendors etc, we usually see people making loud noises or waving a stick or shoe to scare them away. Primary motive for the reaction is to safeguard their produce. And of course, there is a hint of fear at the possibility of being harmed by the monkeys. I too, was expecting a similar scene …A commotion of hawkers running with sticks, shouting to scare the monkeys away. Panic and frenzy across the market with customers ducking behind the mak...

  Chapter 1:- The Journey Begins   We landed in Delhi. FINALLY. After months of waiting and preparing, weather playing villain till the last minute, flights getting cancelled and the memories of our previously cancelled trek haunting us all the time.   This time we made it. Like many Himalayan trekkers, the first leg of journey usually brings one to Delhi. One can also fly directly to Dehradun. However, tickets to the national capital from major Indian cities are reasonably priced as compared with Dehradun. We boarded the metro which took us to the city center at Connaught place. After exploring a bit, we chose a south Indian joint to have our most important meal of the day. After having our fill of some Idli with delicious chutneys, we visited the charkha museum, spent some time at Starbucks, grabbed a few burgers for our lunch and again rode the trusted metro to Kashmere Gate. This was the next leg of journey and our boarding point for the bus to Rishikesh. After ...

A dog thinks: My owners feed me, love me, provide me with a nice house, and take good care of me... They must be gods! A cat thinks: My owners feed me, love me, provide me with a nice house and take good care of me... I must be a god! Attitude makes the difference.

Want to go somewhere? Hate public transport? Don't want to haggle prices? Simply tap on your smartphone and a genie will appear with a car! Convenient modes of payment, air-conditioned rides, and the feeling of being wee-bit more superior and sophisticated. Sounds familiar?! That's the radio cab services for you. They entered the Indian market a few years ago and their immense popularity in the major cities cannot be more pronounced. Everyone with a basic smartphone has access to them. Be it referral amount, free rides, adhoc discounts or half the running km cost of Auto-rickshaws. These radio cab operators are doling out perks to attract more and more customers. I once had a word with a cab driver and they're paid anywhere between Rs. 18-25 per km. by the operators. And they charge us anywhere between "completely free" to Rs. 15 per km. Ever wondered how on earth are they making profit? Yes! They're not. In fact they're making heavy losses. As per Ec...

Eras have passed, thousand thoughts spared, hundreds of books written, and yet....it seems so difficult to find! Human beings and their ultimate quest for happiness.  What is happiness? What brings happiness? Can we define it? I think the meaning of happiness is unique to each one of us. Precisely why, no book, no person, no religion can show you the path to eternal happiness. And yet, if you observe closely, it's always inside us. Human beings are happy creatures the moment they are born. Ever looked at toddlers and kids! They are happy for smallest of reasons. That is the most powerful emotion they possess. No wonder we miss our childhood when we see them. So something is different, something changes. Or rather, is buried deep inside us, layer by layer. Happiness is so tender an emotion, it's easily overshadowed by expectations, material desires, fear, anxiety, frustration et al. And yet, it's so flexible, it manages to peek through this dense fog of emotions. Happy peopl...

Driving at the speed of 10km/h in the maximum city, with rains lashing against the windshield showing us our helplessness against it's ferocity. There I was, in the back seat of car, with my best friends. All annoyed with the endless traffic, winding up several kilometers and crawling at snail's pace. Adding to agony were the choicest of bad songs being played on local radio. Frustration slowly started creeping in. It had been almost 2 hours. We eventually came to terms with the situation and waited for traffic to ease. Suddenly things changed. We once again became the cheerful bunch of buddies that we were. So what changed? The traffic, the music, or the weather?? I guess our attitude towards the situation changed! We were more patient in dealing with it. We realized that all we could do is keep driving and wait for traffic to clear. And that's how it mostly works in life too. Keep working hard, come to terms with reality and be patient. Frustration fills in the void left ...

Here I was, wide awake, well past midnight. Listening to the pitter patter of rain drops in a new city. Trying to settle down, trying to make friends, trying to calm my nerves! We tend to hide our deepest emotions so well. It would all seem so normal to an acquaintance, to raise a suspicious eye on that aloofness, that disconnect. That weak side which each one of us have.  Why do we defend it so ferociously? Would heavens fall down if you admit you are weak at certain point in time? Guess not! And still we make futile attempts to cover that side up. How then will it become stronger if not in the eye of the storm?! Does it not really help to open your heart out to someone? To let someone in? Feel your true emotions as you feel them? Yet how foolish would we be if we open up to those we don't know! What a waste of time, energy and emotions would it be to discover that the person doesn't care to listen to your emotions! Hence the importance of friends and family in life. The impo...

  1. Fall and Rise   Today, when I slipped on the wet tile floor a boy in a wheelchair caught me before I slammed my head on the ground.  He said, “Believe it or not, that’s almost exactly how I injured my back 3 years ago .   2. A father's advice   Today, my father told me, “Just go for it and give it a try!  You don’t have to be a professional to build a successful product.  Amateurs started Google and Apple.  Professionals built the Titanic   3. The power of uniqueness.   Today, I asked my mentor – a very successful business man in his 70’s – what his top 3 tips are for success.  He smiled and said, “Read something no one else is reading, think something no one else is thinking, and do something no one else is doing.   4. Looking Back   Today, I interviewed my grandmother for part of a research paper I’m working on for my Psychology class.  When I asked her to define success in her own words, she said, “Success is ...

Vanilla Ice Cream that puzzled General motors’!!!! An Interesting Story Never underestimate your Clients' Complaint, no matter how funny it might seem! This is a real story that happened between the customer of General Motors and its Customer-Care Executive. Pls read on..... A complaint was received by the Pontiac Division of General Motors: 'This is the second time I have written to you, and I don't blame you for not answering me, because I sounded crazy, but it is a fact that we have a tradition in our family of Ice-Cream for dessert after dinner each night, but the kind of ice cream varies so, every night, after we've eaten, the whole family votes on which kind of ice cream we should have and I drive down to the store to get it. It's also a fact that I recently purchased a new Pontiac and since then my trips to the store have created a problem..... You see, every time I buy a vanilla ice-cream, when I start back from the store my car won...

A Business executive was deep in debt and could not see any way out. Creditors and Suppliers were demanding payments. He sat in the park, wondering if anything could save his company from bankruptcy. Suddenly an old man appeared before him and asked, "I can see that something is troubling you seriously". After listening to the executive the old man said, "I believe I can help you". He asked the...man his name, wrote out a cheque and put it into his hands saying, "Take this money, meet me here exactly one year from today and you can pay me back at that time". Then he turned and disappeared as quickly as he had come. The business executive saw in his hands a cheque for $ 500,000 signed by Warren Buffet, one of the richest men in the world. "I can erase my worries instantly" he realized. But instead, the executive decided to put the uncashed cheque in his safe knowing that it might give him the strength to work out to save his business and to use ...

One of the mistakes many of us make is that we feel sorry for ourselves, or for others, thinking that life should be fair, or that someday it will be. It’s not and it won’t. When we make this mistake we tend to spend a lot of time complaining about what’s wrong with life. We commiserate with others, discussing the injustices of life. “It’s not fair,” we complain, not realizing that, perhaps, it was never intended to be. One of the nice things about surrendering to the fact that life isn’t fair is that it keeps us from feeling sorry for ourselves by encouraging us to do the very best we can with what we have. We know it’s not “life job” to make everything perfect, it’s our own challenge. Surrendering to this fact also keeps us from feeling sorry for others because we are reminded that every one is dealt with a different hand, and everyone has unique strengths and challenges, according to Law of Karma. The fact that life isn’t fair doesn’t mean w...

A kindergarten teacher decided to let her class play a game. The teacher told each child in the class to bring along a plastic bag containing a few potatoes. Each potato will be given a name of a person that the child hates, so the number of potatoes that a child will put in his/her plastic bag will depend on the number of people he/she hates. So when the day came, every child brought some potatoes with the name of the people he/she hated. Some had 2 potatoes; some 3 while some up to 5 potatoes. The teacher then told the children to carry with them the potatoes in the plastic bag wherever they go (even to the toilet) for one week. Days after days passed by, and the children started to complain due to the unpleasant smell let out by the rotten potatoes. Besides, those having 5 potatoes also had to carry heavier bags. After one week, the children were relieved because the game had finally ended. The teacher asked: "How did you feel while ...