Connecting souls...

Our family roots matter the most. Family is a space where you do not have a choice to choose your parents, but we do get a choice to inculcate the values and skills of our family members. It is ultimately a karmic connection. But do we get any time to sit - pause - reflect on how many values we learn from our own family? At times, those old family stories at family get-togethers seem like a dreamy story, but actually, they teach us some amazing lessons!  Today, I took a pause to remember and feel the greatness and grandness of my grandfather, Shri Vasantlal V. Mehta, who left for heavenly abode on 25 June 1982, leaving behind a large family and a legacy of family values.  We are grateful to him for giving us the legacy of honesty, respect for parents and elders of extended family, work and life ethics, honesty and wisdom, and most importantly courage to lead a simple yet impactful life. I want to document his journey here so that it serves as a reminder of how good and fortuna...

When i started understanding the power of one single thought during my mindful living reading circle, i realised that it is all about my mind playing games with myself. Many a times, I feel i used to live in my own world of mind world which was affecting me to a larger extent. Then eventually reading multiple books, learning about mindset, experiencing mind body connect and then feeling the bliss of soul. I am still on the journey to make my mind more calmer during difficult times. Want to share this blog on the  power of our human thoughts is unbelievable. 10 Lessons from the book “Don’t Believe Everything You Think”. (It is an excerpt from the book and no copyright is violated here as the intention is to share the book and its wisdom) 1. The root cause of our suffering is our own thinking. 2. Stop thinking and end your problems. 3. Do not let the behavior of others destroy your inner peace. 4. Our feelings do not come from external events, but from our own thinking about the even...

when a dear friend chooses a complete different route to enjoy and celebrate her existence on this earth, then we dont have any other choice except to respect her choice and witness the part of her journey. Life is beautiful but this friend Megha chose to attain jain monkhood (diksha) by renouncing the wordly desires. Over a period of two decades HLCC friendship with her, we have neither gone for a movie, hotel food, outing, nor we have celebrated each others bday by cuting cakes. But we were always there for each other in good and bad times. our friendship was so much intact and strong. She always used to care for me snd shared the religious wisdoms and encouraged to do small small tasks for inner wellbeing. Her strong will and wish to choose this path was well taken by the family after many efforts. One year back in january she had shared the confirmed news of diksha, and yesterday her diksha happened. It was tough and still tough to believe that she will not meet me when i want to m...

 The best time in the classroom is when a student challenges an educator like me not on the content but on my attitude and aptitude as an educator. Happy to share the interesting event with my first-year Infrastructure management students where I turned the table for one student Mr. Vyas who was less interested in the theory aspects of Government Tendering and tried to distract the class by doing some or the other distracting thing. Of course, he had some medical concerns, but still, he was less interested in theoretical sessions. After trying multiple ways of asking them to pay attention, as a last hope, I allotted him the task of doing the role-play on the same topic "Government Tendering" and asked him to choose other team members who could help him in doing the said roleplay. Heet Patel and Harshraj Rana took responsibility as team leaders. I kept a small ray of hope that they will perform well, but till the last minute, they were not ready. I was in mixed thoughts. What ...

Aah, god is smart enough to teach me a lesson (always). I had a superego of being strong headed girl, but when it comes to family, I realized that I am not. What I didn't learn in these many years, god taught me in these 4 and half days (somewhere around the Month of March 2023).  Few Lessons learned  In front of god, we have 0.0001 % importance so we have to be kind enough with grace and gratitude whenever we live our life. Jainism and its way of living protecting even microorganisms is the best way to live life. Live and let live.  Only mental and emotional immunity is required to handle some challenges when it comes to medical concerns of family  Live each moment without any grudges. Live in now moment says Eckhart Tolle World DOES NOT come to your rescue, only your loved ones are there. So not to worry for the world, but DO worry for our own loved ones. Spend more money on building emotional - mental - physical well-being. Communicate straight away rather than pi...

I saw this (very) young couple named Aaru and Dilip in one of my weekly meditation circle where I could not realise (unless akudidi told me)  that they are having more than 80% visual impairment. When we finished our one hour silent meditation circle and it was time of round of reflection, Dilip talked about how we can cultivate oneness with the God and how beautiful life is and he shared some shlokas of Bhagvad Geeta and kept on talking about philosophy of life and how jainism changed his perception. Both of them are living a routine life with minimal earnings, they are eager to work on different projects, they are travelling most of the time through public transport within city area, participates in many religious- spiritual - leisure activities and overcoming daily challenges and still waiting for another better day... ... it has been months, since I met them. But their smile is contagious. Their aura vibes are pure. They show fearlessness and courage to stand and make their exi...

(my companions during online teaching sessions)  It is a moment of celebration to recollect and remind that it was for the first time on 24th March 2020 morning 8.15 am class where I had to take the online session and teach my students the subject called as "Civil and Property Laws".. Aah, since then till today 24th March 2021, the journey of online teaching is still on. The lockdown happened, online student-teacher engagement began and the journey of unlearning-learning-relearning began in front of digital screens - screens of all shapes and sizes ~ laptop, tablet, phone, smart devices, and whatnot.  I dedicate this one year to  my students of all educational institutes with whom I have been associated as Adjunct Faculty| Visiting Faculty | Guest Faculty. These creative | young | energetic | positive | hardworking souls motivated me to explore more in terms of subject and in terms of class activities so that class becomes more engaging, more fulfilling, and less bor...

Over these many years, "book" has always remained a constant companion to all of us and we all must be having some bonding with books. Since childhood, I have seen people around me not only surrounded by different books but also obsessed with reading and writing books. It must be in the year 1990s, where I and my sister were taught the Jainism Philosophy by our grandmother where she had determined to get a Gujarati-English Translated books and made us understand the importance of "Samayik" and "Pratikraman" ~ (the Jain ritual of maintaining certain vows for 48 minutes and the Jain ritual of seeking forgiveness respectively). To date, we are well versed in those rituals without referring to the book because we understood the logic and the need to know the rituals. The book and her handwriting on the book gave goosebumps on this World Book Day...Books have been a priced possession - irrespective of language, interest, and genre. Being into a family of profe...

મકાન માં રહેતા દરેક વ્યક્તિના મન માં શું ચાલે છે એ જો પરિવાર ની અન્ય વ્યક્તિ ને ખબર પડી જતી હોત તો કદાચ મકાન "ઘર" માં બદલાય જતા વાર ના લાગત. કેમ એવું થતું હશે કે ઘર માં વ્યક્તિ જયારે હાજરાહજૂર આપણી સમક્ષ હોઈ છે ત્યારે આપણા મન માં એ વ્યક્તિ ની ભૂલો, વ્યક્તિ સાથે ભૂતકાળ માં થયેલા કોઈક અણબનાવ અથવા કોઈને લાગેલુ ખોટું, અથવા તો એ વ્યક્તિ સાથે ક્યારેય ચોખવટ ને કરેલી બાબતો ઉપર ની આપની ભ્રમણઆ ઓ ને એવી પૂર્વ ધારણાઓ કે બીજા સાથે વાત કરે છે પણ મારી સાથે નથી કરતા અથવા એમને મારી સાથે વાત કરવી જ નહી ગમતી હોઈ વિગેરે વિગેરે આ અને આવું ઘણું બધું આપણા માનસપટ પર સતત રહેતું હશે???? અને જયારે એ વ્યકિતે "છે" માંથી "હતી" થઇ જાય ત્યારે આપણે એને યાદ કરી ને એજ વ્તક્યિ ની સારી વાતો કરીએ અથવા એ વ્યક્તિ જ આપણા માટે ઘણી વિશેષ હતી એવું સતત બધા ને દેખાડયા કરીએ..અને કદાચ એ વ્યક્તિ સાથે ન બોલેલી વાતો નો ડૂમો હૃદય માં રહી જાય. પછી નીકળતા જુના ફોટા ના આલ્બમ ને જૂની વસ્તુ ઓની માવજત અને ઘણું બધું ...ત્યારેજ આપણને આપણી જતી રહેલી વ્યક્તિ ની યાદ આપણ ને પાગલ બનાવી દે છે. ફેમીલી કોર્ટ ના કેસ જયારે ...

I am looking back at my journey of life from July 2018 and I am wondering whether our "Past" imprisons us or we learn from our past and improve ourselves. Aah, I not only love the word "Self" but I adore too and that's why I am back on my own blog. (word called "laziness" stopped me coming back on this lovely space called "connecting souls"😌😌 Let us put a pause and wonder how far we have loved ourselves in true sense. Do we actually move ahead putting our past - (Disclaimer: Past certainly means ONLY breakups, failures, setbacks.. of course the loss of our loved ones from this world is inconsolable but we gain joy by remembering them in best possible way)    and live in our present moment.? Do we actually "accept" our present by putting our past aside? Do we actually cherish the good moments and bad moments of our life and learn from the said phases? Do we sit with our self and appreciate our self. Yes, believe me, it make...

We all have our own set of "fears". I too have few. But as a family, recently, we overcame one such fear "fear of bypass surgery". When we randomly visit a doctor for a small checkup and when we end up diagnosing a big one and that too for the head of the family, we feel disheartened, distracted and dejected by God and suddenly our thoughts start wandering from past to present to future. Suddenly our heart starts beating so fast and we become clueless about the unexpected life situation. Recently, In April, I underwent the same emotions as I and my father share a unique bond of not only loving each other but always ending up discussing our set of logic with each other and because of this, we could reach to the doctor and get a signal of dad's bypass surgery.  (God has its own way to give signals and keep us on track, we just have to listen and feel those signals carefully, Thank God for one such big signal) The point is when I (and rest of family) heard the na...

I remember the school days where first day of vacation used to begin, but the same excitement was there on the first day of re-opening of the school. As report card used to upgrade me to another level of education, say from 7th standard to 8th standard, my excitement used to be there in getting new compassbox, new bag, new books with fresh smell, new pencils and rubbers and pens and all kinds of accessories, and most importantly new "uniforms". Aah, those new uniforms used to be excitement. Even today, the uniform and the people in uniforms have always fascinated me. Be it of security guard uniform or hospital white uniforms or courts black coats, or for that matter the restaurants having their uniform savvy servers or be it Army-Navy-Air force officers in their uniforms. They carry their pride and their responsibilities on their shoulders. ... Recently, while taking breakfast in one of the premier hotels in Nagpur during my solo trip (self enjoys luxury.hehe), I came th...

While attending one of the wedding last week, I was wondering that how much time we as a human being invest to showcase our self in clothes. We go to shopping clothes (which is the best time for our self), then we invest time to choose matching accessories and shoes and all required cosmetics and bags eye wear, headgear etc and we spend money on all of these according to our individual's capacity. We want to look best where ever we go and hence we shop and we "wear" our choices...We tend to look best because we want to showcase our self best...ofcourse I believe in the statement "that first impression is last impression", however, I add more to it and that is the soul's beauty and inner strength. ... Why a society at large, forget to bother about the "soul" empowerment and beautifying soul alongwith beautifying outer personality? Why we generally avoid to invest in the alternative remedies which is there to beautify our thought processes? Why th...

Wah, what a day yesterday it was..I was invited to judge one of the elocution competition at my alma mater H L College of Commerce. It was nostalgic moment to go to the same auditorium where I have been part of competition during my college days. I got chance to associate myself with two best educational management - HL / AES / Ahmedabad University and Nirma University in two different capacities - one as a student and another as a faculty.. The main role of any management involved in higher education is to empower youth with knowledge as well as skills. I believe the college and university plays a major role in shaping the future of a student not only with the lectures, but students learn leadership lessons, time management lessons, discipline, crisis management, hands on experience with working with different teams and above all the friendships these students earn in the university.. .. I am also fortunate to be associated with my alma mater H L College Alumni Association immed...

Since childhood, I have observed that old things, non useful things are disposed off during the Diwali vacation as it is considered as moving towards new year and hence old things should be disposed off. One such "bag" is lying in my backyard which is waiting to be disposed off...The bag is taken care of by the maid as she considers it very important. For my home, the bag is not useful for several reasons, the same bag is important for that maid as she can put many and important things in that bag...My thought process goes beyond this unutilised baggage and its disposal.... ... ... we tend to dispose of the unutilised things with super speed, but we never even attempt to dispose off the "unutilised thoughts" " negative thoughts" "prejudiced thoughts" "past stories" "past hurdles" from our mind... Why? why is it that we don't care to remove those disturbing thoughts - just because we cannot see them? just because they ...

Soul connections is all about knowing each other within... Unconditional love can heal wounds, distress, stress and the best example of unconditional love is our parents...Whatever we children do, the parents have so big heart and they forgive us... ... Cant we also forgive "our" people who has caused hurt to us - intentionally, unintentionally??? The moments, memories we nurture in good times - is it so easy to forget them in hard times... ... soul connections is beautiful feeling....hope we all get our souls connected with "our" people...

I observe and I  observe closely and I think too :) Recently, in one of the intellectual discourse on an important theme of Intellectual Property Rights , I came across more than ten speakers who talked on the theme with complete different insights. I was like wow! a single human being is itself a book. With whatever schooling we have, with whatever job we are employed in, still we - human being - human heart and mind is itself a book. ... I was wondering can this be recorded by us? Recording in terms of dialogues, in form of stories, in form of letters, in form of audio visual small spots... Not to show anyone , but for our own satisfaction and for our references... Not to boast anyone, but for the family generations to carry on... Not to tell anyone, but to make our own people good and worthy.. I am yet to try, but I would like to record / document my mother's kitchen experience in form of recipe book in her own voice, my father's academic experience in form of ...

I am smiling while pondering upon the whole episode of not following my father's advice while finalizing my visiting card design.  ( I guess l ike all elders),  he also claims that we elders have more experience than you. After few minutes discussion, I finalized my creative version of visiting card and asked the printer friend to print. While doing so, I had ignored the dads advice of keeping bigger fonts for "contact details" as it is of prime importance, as my mind had focused on 'my created aesthetics' rather than technical aspects... ...When I saw the  printed visiting cards, I was happy they turned out well, however, I realized that I did wrong to ignore dads advice of increasing font size....I was like, yeah if I had agreed upon your advice, it would have been more beautiful... On my own, I "learnt" not to use this size fonts next in visiting card..... ....the very moment, I wondered this was a very simple small routine activity which I expe...

a "word", a "sentence" a "thought" a "conversation".... whenever we think, or speak, or utter a word, or we converse, are we really conscious about the same...? Since fifteen days, I am experimenting with this idea of "speaking consciously" I remain conscious while speaking ( ofcourse, I have failed at times for not being conscious ), but then, I realize that with this conscious efforts, I have restrained my negative thoughts to simply go away from mind. This exercise is serving two purposes  1. My control over thoughts  2. My control over powerless words...  The idea of being conscious in all things we do has its own charm. We stop powerless thoughts and we can consume the energy in doing productive work. The idea of being conscious while speaking or conversing gives an attempt to think from other perspective. When we speak, we are unconsciously in in our own perceptions. We want to communicate our thoughts in best...

Today, morning is vibrant due to kite festive mode on.. More than three decades, I have witnessed terraces around me with innumerable sizes of kites, loudest music, shouts and roars of people and lots of food coupled with some thrill of competition between neighbours..Best time ever to remove the hidden frustrations by cutting kites... We dont know whose kite has tangled with ours, still we humans enjoy doing that with every tangled kite...I wonder whether experts of kite flying are experts of life challenges also?? ... kite flying expertise requires to continuously keep an eye on sky - far reaching vision, it requires the expertise to tie the kite and thread -  balancing mind and heart, it requires an expertise to know what kind of air around it is - best possible crisis management    and  certainly it requires to accept that if one kite gets cut, we need to tie another one and start flying another kite, without wasting a single moment - to let go the failure / l...

A couple named Chaganbhai and Jhamkhuben must be in their mid fiftees, having less than 1 lakh income per annum. Chaganbhai being a government class 4 employee and jhamkhuben being a maid at several places where she gives household services like cleaning vessels, washing clothes, doing sweeping etc. Jhamkhuben has not taken any formal education but she has tremendous practical insights of the world... They live in  very small house and in that house, they had courage to nurture four daughters namely Dadam, Anita, Meena, Heera and one son Jeetu. Due to legacy of household work, daughters from their young age were helping their mother Jhamkhuben. I am witness to this routine more than two decades... I have seen Jhamkhuben and chaganbhai managing their resources in terms of marriage, delivery of daughters and daughter in law , hospitalisation of one or the other family member and still they have their extended family in their village near Rajasthan. Many a times, we unintentionally s...

Yesterday, admist my research work, I was in need of Sticky Notes (one of the best innovation) to mark some papers and I marked the important ones, and I got relaxed that in future, I only have to go through those marked sticky notes.. This simple routine of using sticky notes gave me a thought that can we have some platform in home and / or office like a wall of 'sticky notes' to unstick our disturbing thoughts / emotions / grievances towards each other...? Cant we simply write our complaints on those walls and leave it aside so that they don't bother us or our minds and hearts?. While largely observing families across the globe, I realize that many of us don't even talk or share our family dilemmas and the thoughts keeps on burning us or our bodies and minds...Why we are not able to even pour out our hearts to let each other know - be it family member or be it office colleague and communicate them about each others dilemmas? Why we wait that other person should u...

The public gatherings like flower show, kite festival, book fair and biggest ever kankaria carnival (many more, which I am not aware of) organised by Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation and the people who must have conceptualised these ideas should be applauded... I am sure, when they must have brainstormed on these ideas of inviting a plethora of residents across city and beyond, they must have thought of security, hygeine, parking and free of cost entry etc. and year by year these brainstormed ideas are further brainstormed... I want to read those minds back then and ask them : as a person were you having the desire of reading books or celebrating joy or nurturing flowers & hence you thought to extend to public? Or as a citizen, you also wanted to be part of such happening things.., hats off to those who keep on brainstorming, hats off to those who executes, hats off to those who protects!!!! But, I also want to put my dot of observation that all administrative machinery whether s...

I always feel that for a healthy communication, you require speaker and listener otherwise it will be called as one side communication. But do we require such opposing mindsets always when some good thing happens? Recently I went to see the celebration of tradition, culture and literature at Kanoria Lawns known as Gujarat Literature Festival, where I was thrilled to see lots of young people (young in age) interested in gujarati literature and participating in various sessions where renowned speakers were invited. The celebration was of course a kind of "feeling proud as Gujarati being" . and then suddenly I heard that one of the renowned Literature Academy in Gujarat had opposed such kind of festival and had asked its renowned literary authors-members to stay away from not only attending but to stay away from being speakers at several sessions... My dot of curiosity kept me thinking that why always good things are opposed. What might be the thought process of opposer who...

Welcome to my blog "Connecting Souls"! I like to observe, I like to express, I like to speak, I like to cry.. Major part of my learning is through observation and this way, my thoughts turns into stories. 'Connecting souls' is a platform where we are unknown to each other and yet we can connect our dots  - dots of faith,  courage, empowerment, happiness, sadness, dots of inspiration and many more dots...in short, connecting our hearts and souls. This blog will be a platform to share my thoughts in form of stories - observations - remarks. I used to write and gift my writings to few selected people around me and used to let them know about themselves on their birthdays or such occasions, however, now I am taking this journey of writing and expressing my heart - a little forward. I wish to start 2018 with a new hope and positive energy. Let Connecting Souls inspire you and your soul. Wishing you all a very happy and graceful 2018 and hope you will help me t...