Self-Respect And Respecting Others!

We more or less understand the meaning of self-respect which is to keep or show respect to one’s own self. A self-respecting person is one who tends to justify his/her deeds or actions or reactions in the intrinsic belief that s/he cannot possibly do or say wrong things, and if s/he gets insulted by others in the process or is asked to do or comply with ridiculous tasks s/he gets mortally offended. Losing one’s self-respect is often the end of the world for a truly self-respecting individual. This, of course, differs from individual to individual depending on the individual’s perception about it and whether his/her sense of self-respect is genuine or cultivated or vain. To this point we will come at a later context. First, we must try our best to explain the syndrome of self-respect or self-esteem further.

 

How does self-respect come about? We have to be clear about one thing that we cannot possibly create self-respect on our own; supposing we can the questions are at which stage of our personality development have we created this: at birth itself or in school/college days or during working life or during married life? Obviously, we cannot provide the answers. Therefore, we must consider this with a detached analysis.

 

Respecting one’s own self is subject to the basic fact that one knows oneself well. To put it in a personal perspective, I know myself well which is dependent on the attributes of my personality: what is my nature, how I speak or communicate to others, am I honest and frank, my beliefs and convictions, do I look presentable or not and so on. Now, for these attributes to develop in us we need a background or a base, and that base is obviously our society and our upbringing. Our personality develops from these: the environment we are born and brought up in, our traditions and beliefs given by our parents, the education we’ve got in schools and colleges, our level of intelligence and presence of mind, quality of the company we’ve been keeping all the time, nature and stature of our jobs or businesses, and most importantly, how the society and the others behave with us, look at us and treat us in all respects. From all these attributes in me I come to know my personality, and convinced in my ability, I start respecting myself or that I become a self-respecting person.

 

Another factor of paramount importance about the syndrome of self-respect is how we treat the others. It is said that we get respect only when we give respect. So, our inability or unwillingness to respect others is a factor of which we are often not aware at all. It reflects our mental state of being, that is to say, how egoistic or condescending or simply proud we are in our outward dealings and how this impacts our self-respect along with relationships. In reality, there is an inverse relationship between our presumptuousness or imperiousness and our self-respect: the more the former the less gets the latter. We may be truly unaware of this process or we may pretend our ignorance about this. Whatever it is, this process impacts the sense of self-esteem in us, and if we still go on with our peevishness then we start getting similar reactions from others and our self-respect becomes vain and showy.

 

This brings us to the point about having a false sense of self-respect. This is only natural, because we cannot deny anyone of the privilege of having self-esteem, and everyone has a right to it, even a vagabond or a thief or a dreaded criminal or all plain corrupt people. If they still prefer to continue living their lives with vain self-esteem, it’s their call, entirely.

 

For us all normal human beings the key to our self-respect in its truest sense, is to go on respecting all others in every stage of acquaintance in our life in every decent sphere of activity, not only for their jobs/tasks/deeds, but also for their good gestures and behavior. And, as we have mentioned earlier, you must not allow ego or pride come in the way of respecting others. Else, one fine morning you may find one of your closest ones complaining bitterly and disconsolately that you had never really cared for or respected him/her in all your life, which would drive you mercilessly in a spree of introspection as to exactly where you had gone wrong: till you find a clue to it you, as a genuinely self-respecting person, will not be able to live on with self-esteem.

 

The crux is then, mutual respect for a healthy living in the society of fellow human beings with your head held high, never having to stare at the ignominy of losing or probably losing your self-esteem. As a bonus, this would further strengthen your relationships with family, kin, friends, colleagues and all acquaintances at all levels of decent activities of life.

Homage To A Spiritual Guru: Vijay Kumar Deutale!

 

We call him Bhaiya that means ‘Brother’; his official name is Vijay Kumar Deutale, originally from Nagpur in Maharashtra. He was tall, lithe, bespectacled and bearded with a predominantly grey tinge. He had a baritone that was always pleasant and soothing to the ears. I don’t remember him ever getting angry or raising his voice. He was always smiling, at times bursting out with free-flowing and pure laughter and merriment. Bhaiya had been known to us since the year 2003, and all these years he had been our spiritual guru, family friend and philosopher-guide in everything he chose to speak about us or we requested him to provide answers to our inquisitive questions. It wrenches away a part of our heart and soul to say that he is no more.

 

Vijay Kumar Deutale was working as a civil engineer in the government of Maharashtra. On a quest to explore life and meaning of life further he took voluntary retirement a few years back and started doing his personal work more intensively along with a stint in a private construction firm in Dubai for some time. Then he came back to India, and around 2017-18 he began experimenting with the medicine supply chain. He had been progressing well in this line, work mostly done online, keeping only a very limited number of close associates. During the lockdown period too, he was going ahead with his online activities, only perhaps missing his daily outings, mostly to his closest friends who had been his beneficiaries: in terms of spiritual advice and guidance.

 

Like Gautam Buddha, Bhaiya too left his family and kin very young in age, took the course to meditation and spiritualism, and made his life a success on his own; only that he never got married. His parents and siblings never approved his ways and, in a way, disowned him completely. Bhaiya had been living alone since then, and making a success of his materialistic career as a civil engineer as he bought his own flat in a central Mumbai suburb a few years back, and had been living alone there since.

 

He was all in his divine elements, like a live god, and was actively counselling and guiding his limited friends/associates/colleagues when a common friend introduced us to Bhaiya in Mumbai. In the days after the introduction we used to feel his presence constantly with us, and particularly during the nights I felt him treading around our home, perhaps to study us in all details. He confirmed his out-of-the-body experiments when I asked him about his nightly rounds. Aided by my rather intuitive nature and active alpha thinking I started having experiences of the ethereal type: Bhaiya helping me to delve into people’s, the ones concerned to us, minds or even bodies to find what was wrong, reading wordless messages emitted by living people in various ways, feeling the presence of good or bad spirits at times and find what the immediate future holds for us or our friends and kin. Whenever we queried him about our future or the justifiability of certain future plans, he used to close his eyes partially, his eyelids flapping, and then embark on a non-stop counselling and future-telling, never readymade solutions, but ways subject to severe conditions or dedicated efforts. Truly spiritual, he never recommended stones or jewels or talisman or anything to wear.

 

Vijay Kumar Deutale initiated his own technique of spiritualism and meditation thanks to his relentless forays into this mysterious and invisible sphere. His utmost thrust was on removing negativity from body and mind, making the body and soul pure. He never bothered what people eat or wear, but emphasized on proper meditation to rid negativity. His meditation technique consisted of selected mantras, depending on the people in consideration, that had to be chanted for a designed time-period, preferably every day. Chanting can be loud in the beginning; with the practitioners gaining command chanting then can be through only moving of the lips, and at the final desirable objective chanting must be done silently, without even moving the lips. As per the goals in life of the practitioners there can be objectives like health or success in work/projects or in relationships assigned to the mantras which means that the positive energy emitted through the chanting can be channelized for the accomplishment of the goals. The said goals can be materialized by making certain pledges to be assigned to the mantra-chanting.

 

His technique was fraught with grave dangers. Bhaiya used to tell us that if someone manages to remove his/her negativity the whole of that negative force bounces back on him, the originator of the process. We were appalled by this fact: the kind of negativity he must be bearing on himself thanks to all his beneficiaries. Of course, at his supreme level of spirituality he was very much capable of throwing off such forces with ease. However, one other fact remained. The negative forces did impact his physical body. For a couple of years, he was tackling with a persistent problem on his left leg up to the thigh, constant swelling and pain. He said this was due to all the forces he had been welcoming on to himself. Perhaps, this integral part of his method partially explained why his physical body ceased to exist so suddenly.

 

Vijay Kumar Deutale knew about this probability too. On various occasions he told us that his divine guru, somewhere in the Himalayas, used to send him errands, what to do or whom to enlighten next. Coming to us, he said, was a divine message and this perhaps was one of the last few errands left for him. As is proved by happenings a few years after our initiation, Bhaiya started reducing his divine practices/counselling gradually, stopping it almost completely after his voluntary retirement and his stints on various earthly jobs. On many occasions too, he used to warn us that he might vanish suddenly anytime and therefore, we or all the people enlightened by him must try utilizing his knowledge fully and fast.

 

Yes, we were astounded by his immense knowledge of almost about anything. Without any formal stint in music he used to tell my wife Ragini about the most profound and intricate things in music: in all forms, from the purest classical to the most modern, theories or practice or anything. He also wrote devotional lyrics to be tuned and sung. Unfortunately, like most normal human beings, we had not been able to gain from his acquaintance fully: on many aspects we were not able to follow his path devotedly and on many practical jobs we could not proceed as he desired. However, only his physical self has gone, we still hope to go on acquiring the knowledge and wisdom from his ethereal self.

 

On the evening of 13^th June 2020, he felt unwell with a severe stomach pain, and informed his closest associate, a lady doctor residing in Nagpur. As per the doctor’s instructions a neighbor admitted him in a hospital in Mumbai. The doctors there reportedly found a hole in his intestines, and a septic that was spreading throughout his body, affecting all the organs. He had to be given ventilator support, a day later. He passed away on the 16^th June 2020. No clinical theories can explain his demise. He left his physical form on divine errands.

 

And, we came to know about this four months later, through the same common friend who introduced us to him in 2003. It is believed now that he issued instructions not to inform anyone, except for a certain family, about his demise. This was most probably due to the fact that he sensed the misery of his close people going through during the prolonged lockdown, and he never wanted to distress or depress them further as long as possible.

 

Vijay Kumar Deutale, Bhaiya, had been a down-earth-person, never resorting to the luxuries of life and always living as a common man. He never made a living out of his divine prowess nor earned money from it; he traveled to everybody’s house whenever requested on his own, taking the local trains or the city buses. And, he had always been publicity-averse, requesting us never to create any form of publicity about his activities and powers. This directive from the spiritual guru put me in an existential dilemma: to tell people about him or not. I wanted to tell his story, desperately. Perhaps, in my meditation one morning, after a very long break, there was an abstract communication with his soul which seemed to permit me on my objective. People, maybe a limited number of them, must know about him and get inspired by his life. He is a celebrity in the field of spiritualism, a silent crusader, and I am privileged to be able to let people know about him.  

Tour of Australia 2020-21: Indian Squads Look To Be A Judicious Mix!

Photo: deccanchronicle.com

The all-India cricket selection committee of the BCCI (Board of Control for Cricket in India) has yesterday finalized the Indian squads for the India Tour of Australia 2020-21 to be played from end of next month under new normal rules due to the pandemic. Three squads for the T20Is, ODIs and Tests have been announced with some significant changes of players/specialists. Rishabh Pant, who is reportedly unfit due to weight issues, has been left out of the shorter formats and included in the Test squad as the second wicket-keeper. This is despite he being the hype of the millennium when he was not selected for the ICC Cricket World Cup-2019, initially, and the Board eventually forced to select him due to Shikhar Dhawan’s injury, but largely due to the pressures created by the Pant fans on social media, the mainstream media hooting for him even with editorials and a range of cricket experts and ex-players crying for his inclusion. However, it proved to be a damp squib, and Pant is yet to prove his mettle in the ODIs and the T20Is. The IPL 2020 in UAE has also failed so far to bring out the ‘best’ in him.

 

The BCCI has also been judicious enough by doing away with the selection of injured batsman Rohit Sharma and fast bowler Ishant Sharma instead of taking the risks. Accordingly, KL Rahul has been named vice-captain for the T20Is and the ODIs thanks perhaps to his current rollicking form in the IPL 2020. His inclusion in the Test squad has been contested though by some ex-cricketers since there are already two wicket-keepers included (Wriddhiman Saha and Pant) and Ajinkya Rahane being made the vice-captain. However, with 18 players in the squad there should be a lot of scope for selecting the playing eleven, and it also must be borne in mind that Rahul first came into international fame in the Test format. His co-opener in IPL 2020 for Kings Eleven Punjab, Mayank Agarwal has also made it to all the three formats.

 

Inclusion of the IPL star of recent years, Sanju Samson, in the T20I squad is significant too; because apart from being an attacking batsman Samson is also a wicket-keeper and he would provide relief to KL Rahul whenever required. Promising pacer Navdeep Saini has also made it to all the squads while spinner Yuzvendra Chahal is retained for the shorter formats and spinner Kuldeep Yadav selected for the Test squad only with R Ashwin coming in. Other offbeat selections from IPL 2020 being that of spinner Varun Chakravarthy for the T20I squad and pacer Mohammed Siraj for the Test squad.

 

The Squads:

T20I: Virat Kohli (Captain), Shikhar Dhawan, Mayank Agarwal, KL Rahul (vice-captain and wicket-keeper), Shreyas Iyer, Manish Pandey, Hardik Pandya, Sanju Samson (wicket-keeper), Ravindra Jadeja, Washington Sundar, Yuzvendra Chahal, Jasprit Bumrah, Mohd. Shami, Navdeep Saini, Deepak Chahar, Varun Chakravarthy.

ODI: Virat Kohli (Captain), Shikhar Dhawan, Shubman Gill, KL Rahul (vice-captain & wicket-keeper), Shreyas Iyer, Manish Pandey, Hardik Pandya, Mayank Agarwal, Ravindra Jadeja, Yuzvendra Chahal, Kuldeep Yadav, Jasprit Bumrah, Mohd. Shami, Navdeep Saini, Shardul Thakur.

Test: Virat Kohli (Captain), Mayank Agarwal, Prithvi Shaw, KL Rahul, Cheteshwar Pujara, Ajinkya Rahane (vice-captain), Hanuma Vihari, Shubman Gill, Wriddhiman Saha (wicket-keeper), Rishabh Pant (wicket-keeper), Jasprit Bumrah, Mohd. Shami, Umesh Yadav, Navdeep Saini, Kuldeep Yadav, Ravindra Jadeja, R. Ashwin, Mohd. Siraj.

 

Four additional bowlers, all IPL 2020 finds: Kamlesh Nagarkoti, Kartik Tyagi, Ishan Porel and T. Natarajan will travel with the Indian contingent as per the BCCI release. All team management members, coach and players not playing in IPL would join in Dubai, and all the squads are to fly to Australia from Dubai after November 10 IPL final.

 

There is, however, still a lot of uncertainty about the final India-Australia match schedule with different sports sites giving different dates for the matches. The final schedule is to be announced only after all the quarantine and other norm requirements are fixed. In all, three T20Is, three ODIs and four Test matches will be played between November-January 2020-21. While Sydney is believed to host the first few matches covering all formats Adelaide would be the venue for the pink-ball day-night Test match. With the pandemic hopefully coming under perfect control by the month of December in Australia cricket spectators could be allowed for the Boxing Day Test at the MCG Melbourne, that is to say, from 26^th December. In spite of the continuing uncertainty of the final schedule this Series is likely to be very absorbing, considering the fact that the Virat Kohli team had won in the Test series last time against the hosts in Australia. 

Meanwhile the schedule of the tour has been finalized with the first One-Day International match starting on 27th November in Sydney. The fourth and last Test match taking place in Brisbane from the 15th January, 2021. The Final Schedule:

Now Showing: Vote For COVID-19 Vaccine And More!

 

Photo: sandesh.com

While there has been a global race among nations for the production of the first effective COVID-19 vaccine India perhaps becomes the first nation to politicize the vaccine that is still a long way off. Yes, COVID-19 pandemic may kindly take note. There has been a lot of ‘finance’ involved in it and so the Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, in a way, had to figure in this. Releasing the BJP Manifesto for the three-phase Bihar assembly elections starting October 28, her party promised to distribute the would-be COVID-19 vaccine absolutely free to all citizens of the state. However, it was not clarified about that segment of the state’s citizens who would not perhaps vote for the party’s alliance as to how to exclude or list them out. Apart from this the Finance Minister further justified her presence by promising around 1.9 million new jobs for Bihar.

 

The directly political populism of ‘vote for vaccine’ has, obviously, attracted a series of allegations and attacks from the opposition political parties. They ask, ‘what about other states’ or ‘not free for the non-BJP states’? The immense pressure compelled the party to come out with a clarification that ‘once the vaccine is approved by the ICMR and available for mass production, the central government would distribute the same to all states at nominal costs, and vaccine distribution being a state discretion the Bihar government (if their alliance wins, of course) would make it available free of cost to all people in Bihar. Well, whether the clarification would hold enough water or not the point of poll politics is made squarely and rather too effectively to the gullible and poor voters of the state.

 

Another point needs to be made here. On one hand, the central government has been urging people to adapt to the new normal norms in the strictest way possible while on the other, for motives of politicking the representatives of the ruling class and others have been blatantly violating the norms for wooing the voters who are the people too. Huge political rallies in Bihar have been open invitations for the virus, with more and more rallies to follow. Not only this, almost everyday some protest rallies are taking place in some places, organized by the opposition or the non-ruling opposition or whatever, and here you see only a few leaders wearing masks, and no social distancing at all. The rampant politicking has been one of the major factors for India taking more than six months to reach the pandemic peak.

 

And then, Durga Puja 2020 is one more issue that stinks of direct political play. Bengalis of West Bengal and Kolkata call it their national festival, rightfully so, and this creates a crisis of sorts for the political parties of the state. No party could afford to hurt the peoples’ sentiments by asking them to worship from home and not visit the puja pandals, the shops and the eateries at all. 

Therefore, the ruling TMC government had, as always, announced financial assistance to all puja organizers more than a month back, and then tried to placate them further by allowing pandal-hopping from the third day onward of the bright-moon fortnight or Devi Paksha, with strict norms, of course. The opposition, particularly the BJP huffing and puffing to come to power in the state somehow, has also been trying its best to please the voters who are the devotees too. Finally, it took the Calcutta High Court to clamp down rules for the Durga Puja 2020 celebrations, making all public puja pandals ‘no entry’ zones.

 

No wonder then that Prime Minister Narendra Modi too found time to inaugurate Durga Puja pandals in Kolkata today, albeit virtually. It is apparently more important now for all political parties to assuage the feelings of the Bangla devotees who are also voters, hurt sourly by the High Court ruling and its refusal to consider a review petition by the organizers. Assembly elections are due in the state in the first part of next year, very significantly.

 

One last point. A COVID-19 vaccine can come the earliest by the first part of 2021 only and that too is dependent on so many other factors. Our humble point being that the more the delay in the vaccine coming the more will be the number of possible beneficiaries, because at least two assembly elections are due early next year and more would follow. Once a promise of free vaccine to the people-voters declared it cannot be denied in other states where the same party is going to try its luck in the upcoming elections.

IPL 2020: Super Cricketing Matches Over the Weekend!

Whenever we get to watch cricket of the highest order involving star national and international players we tend to forget about the format of the game and in which ‘type’ it is being played, international Tests or ODIs or T20Is or commercial league T20 matches, and we consider and cherish such games as treats. This exactly has been the case in all of the four matches of the Indian Premier League-2020 (IPL 2020) played over the weekend, that is on Saturday and Sunday, 17-18 October 2020 in UAE, each of the four matches being a humdinger down the wire, and several national and international cricketers displaying tremendous competitive spirit and superlative cricket.

 

Photo: espncricinfo.com

The first game on Saturday was played between RCB and RR in Dubai. RR set a competitive target of 178, and RCB started the chase on a pitch slowing down and found shot-making increasingly difficult. They needed 76 runs off the last 41 balls when Virat Kohli departed for 43 runs off 32 balls, and in came AB de Villiers. Despite his attacking shots from the word go, it came down to needing 35 runs in the last two overs for a win. The incredible prowess of de Villiers unfolded, and he won the match for RCB making 55 runs in just 22 balls, comprising of 6 sixes and with two balls to spare. He thus snatched a victory by 7 wickets from the jaws of an impending defeat, and RCB needed this victory badly, after its listless performance in the game against KXIP on 15^th October when de Villiers was demoted to number six in the batting order with only three overs to play with, this unusual move by Kohli contributed largely to the KXIP, a team on the verge of being ousted from the tournament, getting a new lease of life. More significantly, de Villiers delivered another superlative knock of 73 runs off 33 balls that helped his team win the match against KKR on 12^th October.

 

The second match on Saturday was played between DC and CSK in Sharjah and it also went down to the last over and last-minute fireworks. Again, chasing a competitive CSK target of 180 DC proceeded mostly thanks to a brilliant century by Shikhar Dhawan as wickets on the other end fell in regular intervals slowing down the scoring-rate. 17 runs were required in the last over, and the new batsman Axar Patel had the strike, not the set batsman Dhawan. And what followed was just breathtaking. Axar, as if on a mission, kept on hitting sixes from the first ball, scoring a scintillating 21 in 5 balls and DC winning the duel by 5 wickets.

 

The two matches yesterday, that is Sunday, the 18^th October, were not only close encounters, but both were also tied ones, keeping the viewers riveted with unending twists and turns. The first match was played in Abu Dhabi between KKR and SRH, both teams desperate for the next couple of points. KKR, Russel still not delivering, reached a somewhat respectable total of 163/6 thanks largely to the unbeaten Morgan-Karthik partnership. Chasing a modest target, SRH, despite a rollicking opening partnership between injured Williamson and Bairstow, faltered eventually losing wickets regularly. Finally, skipper Warner still in command, SRH could not get the 30 runs from the last two overs and the match was tied. SRH had also no clue to the incredible bowling by pacer Lockie Ferguson who was playing his first game of the tournament. In came Warner again for the super over, but fell to Ferguson first ball, and KKR had triumphed finally with new skipper Morgan partnering with keeper Dinesh Karthik overhauling the small target easily.

 

Photo: espncricinfo.com

The last match yesterday was played in Dubai between MI and KXIP. Chasing a competitive MI target of 177 runs KXIP, riding on another super knock of 77 by KL Rahul, failed to score the victorious 2 runs off the last ball of the last over in spite Jordan’s last-minute heroics, getting brilliantly run out coming for the second run, and the match was tied. Bowling the super over MI’s main strike bowler Jasprit Bumrah bowled yorker after yorker kept the winning score for the MI at just 6 runs. However, the twists could not be foreseen even by MI’s season openers Rohit Sharma and de Kock as KXIP’s strike bowler Mohammad Shami surpassed the brilliance of Bumrah by bowling a beauty of an over, and Rohit, again for the defining 2-run for victory was run out with classic precision by a diving Rahul, and the super over was also tied. Things were different in the second super over, because batsmen and bowlers in action for the first super over could not feature in the second. So, Pollard and Hardik Pandya came in to bat the second super over for MI while Jordan bowled it for KXIP. They could manage only 11 runs and the final target was 12 for KXIP. MI's pacer Trent Boult proved to be a poor man's Bumrah. And, Gayle coming in as an opener for the first time in IPL 2020, started the proceedings with first-ball six, and then Mayank Agarwal who earlier saved a sure Pollard six followed it up with the fours. So then, finally KXIP got the much-fought two points and still remained in contention with 6 points. A match, forget the IPL format or type, of historical proportions finally ended. Results:

 

Now, DC with 14 points is set to enter the playoffs, followed by MI and RCB with 12 each, KKR with 10 and the remaining four teams locked with 6 points each, leaving the doors still tantalizingly open for IPL 2020. All the franchises have played 9 matches each so far and 5 matches each are remaining. This new-normal IPL 2020 in UAE, has somewhat reversed the pattern of winning-toss-fielding-first-and-mostly-winning in Indian settings, and has also seen batsmen struggling for runs on rather slowish pitches instead of the undaunted rain of fours-sixes in Indian settings. These factors have made the tournament hard-fought, closer and absorbing as we have seen in the last four matches over the weekend.