Long ago I had received an offer to write a book on ‘Time Management’ from ‘Penguin’. When I went with the manuscript it was rejected on the basis that there was too much ‘spirituality’ in it! They couldn’t figure out whether it was a ‘spiritual treatise’ or a treatise on ‘life management’ or ‘time management’. In which slot would they sell it? You see ‘selling’ of anything and everything is very important. So first the slot in which the ‘book’, ‘movie’, ‘product’ has to be sold has to be fixed. Then the writer,producer should go ahead and work in a freezed frame of parameters. My manuscript did not fit in any ‘slot’. The nadir was when they wanted the advance (I think around 8k) back. So any aspirations on a journalistic career went kaput then and there.

My take on the subject is that everything is connected. Wo we are being flows into everything we do. The way we move,walk,talk,eat,pray. There is a connectivity. And if there is a ‘spiritual anchor’ so to say for our insides (soul) , it will reflect in all areas of our life including the way we mange ‘time’.
A private financer had once purposefully misued a blank cheque given to him as security after his instalments got delayed( Also since my father had stood security for me and when my mother found out, she had a major fight with him. she also took out the money from the post office saving account whose papers had been pledged to him)). He filled in a huge amount, got it bounced and began criminal proceedings against me under section 138C. So it was that I had to go to the court as an accused and as a criminal (bouncing of cheques is criminal). And as I waited for my turn, I would look out from the court to the blue sky above and feel calm. I did this everytime I had a court date. It took more than a year for the matter to get sorted out but the spiritual connection was a great support. So for me the ‘connectivity’ is very important.

Even now when I am very scared, I say a small prayer to deal with the situation. In the office, with my daughter and whenever I need to make difficult calls to difficult people.

Narendra and Dimpi have ‘flown’ to Hyderabad this morning for a site visit. And I say ‘flown’ because for too long they have travelled in sleeper class or general class. Sometimes with reservation, sometimes without.
All the best guys.

Appu is having her exams ( today is the last) and she has been busy studying the entire week. The gas cylinder is empty although we have booked long ago. So will need to look into that. The pipelines supplying water to the house were changed yesterday at quite some cost to ensure a good flow of water.

There has been a miracle and the image of Uniyara on Google Earth is suddenly clear and bright. There could not be a better new year gift for us. The image provided by AVL, Jaipur was pathetic and despite repeated reminders there was no news from them so we were relying entirely on the Google Earth image for the geo-referencing of the khasra maps. Sandeep and Shikha have nearly finished preparing the required maps and hopefully, Sandeep should be able to show the same to STP Ajmer in the coming week.

NATMO has suddenly woken up and needs CMYK films of the maps prepard by us. Initially they were saying that they would do some more editing on the maps submitted by us. But now the latest news is that they are fine with the final maps submitted by us and that we should make CMYK films and submit the same to them for printing. We are hoping (we can only hope in this country) that they will acknowledge our work and name in the Atlas to be printed. But ‘acknowledgement’ is hard to come by in a country where ‘cut’, ‘copy’, ‘paste’ is common and ‘originality’ is not respected. We have written to the Director and are hoping that he would do what is right and fair.

The new office space is getting ready and we are getting ready to pack. The stay in the current office has been tumultous with fights, cops, lack of work, money.

Hope the ‘U turn’ is here to stay.