Hi, I am Manoj Krishna M
Principles of life – Self, Slow, Stories, Space, Silence and Smiles
Works with an MNC for my living, currently settled in Trivandrum, Kerala, India, enjoying life with my family-my wife, two lovely daughters and my father.
loves to dream and talk.
trust the art of storytelling for all my interactions, whether to self or to the rest of the world.
Loves to spend time with artists, art lovers, students, young professionals and startups. Enjoys arts, especially kathakali and kutiyattam, any form of music and literature.
Dream is to setup a space for humans to collaborate – an ideation lab, an arts studio, a library and a café -then be with people all through the day.
I Love
Story Telling
Whether it is written or oral , I always love to tell stories. I don’t distinguish between real stories , inspired stories , pure fantasy or even a mix .
“Stories constitute the single most powerful weapon in a leader’s arsenal.” Dr Howard Gardner
Arts
I don’t have the skills to perform, but I love appreciating arts . I am a great fan of Keralan art forms, especially kathakali and kutiyattam . I occasionally write about my experiences and thoughts about them.
Strategy, Coaching and Mentoring
Love to help individuals strategise for their future, in their business roles; then mentor them and coach them by listening to them , talking to them and walking with them. All I expect are some smiles on their faces.
Self
Create a personal space for myself and spend enough time for only myself – look inwards , retrospect, enjoy external and internal silence.
“Love yourself and watch…today, tomorrow, always.” – Budha
Who am I
It was in the later half of 20th century when my parents decided to formally push me into the world of letters , study and examinations. They decided to follow the old local practice of making the child write the first letter on a plate of uncooked rice. They took me to the local priest on the auspicious day of Vijayadashami when I was just touching the milestone of three years in this world..
My cousins and aunties testify that I was quiet and normal , even enthused to a large extent , looking at other children who were crying loud and using all their power to resist this act. I think those children were real visionaries who did foresee the torture awaiting them after that day and as usual I was not so concerned about the future.
After a while my turn came and my parents made me sit on the priest’s lap , while he held my right index finger firm to guide me write the first letter in the plate filled with rice. Suddenly I made myself freed up from his hold and ran way . After a few failed attempts to bring me back, they continued the process ; picking the rest of the children from the queue. A few minutes passed and to every body’s surprise I ran back and occupied the priest’s lap and wrote my first letters without any resistance or dislike.
That is me! Even now, I live according to my interests and will , which of course keeps on changing from time to time without any rational.
Dr. M V Narayanan is a professor, scholar and an art critique with in-depth knowledge about KERALAN theatre art forms , especially Kathakali and Kutiyattam. He has written a beautiful book named ” Space, Time and Ways of SeeingThe Performance Culture of Kutiyattam”, which is a great reference for any art lover. I am not going to discuss about neither Dr M V Narayanan nor about his book, but wanted to pick one of the qualifiers he has used to describe the peculiarities of Kutiyattam , the only major Sanskrit theatre form currently existing. ” Exceptionally Slow and Unhurried” is the term he used to describe the performance approach of Kutiyattam.
Born in a normal and peaceful village in a southern state of Kerala in India, I started my life enjoying the slowness of the ecosystem where I lived. We had people walking slowly or riding their bicycles as if it is a slow race. They made it a point to greet each of the passing by fellow human and at least exchange a few words. We had people sitting on those wooden benches in front of the shops discussing anything and everything ; whether it was regarding the cold war between USA and the USSR, the local temple festival or even a family issue. Even their conversations were exceptionally slow to reflect their unhurried minds.
They had the time to visit their neighbours or relatives without the guilty feeling of wasting their precious time. They spent hours watching the mahouts make an elephant bath. They even had the time to watch and encourage the local children play. They never got bothered about big lifetime goals to achieve; they were not even aware of such things, I believe. Their only goal in life seemed to be ” to live happily” and nothing else. They might not have heard about that million dollar statement ” Time is money ” . For them time was something to spent in return to happiness, not to earn money. They didn’t multitask, they didn’t chase the goal achievement plans and that may be the reason why they could think, talk, walk and act slow.
As I entered my mid adolescence I got transported to the city of Trivandrum , where the life became a bit more fast , of-course not to the level of any metros. But things changed as I became part of the IT services boom. Multi Tasking became the most sought after skill, competition became the buzzword, your colleagues and team mates became your potential competitors. The mystic world of career goals and life time goals surrounded me like an invisible demon. I started getting threatened by the fear of becoming left out. I also started running fast as one among the crowd, to be a winner but never reached a finishing point. There were always a few people ahead of me. There were coaches who stood on the sidelines and pretended to encourage us. There were refreshment points which made us feel energised, but only the finishing point kept itself out of our sight. The claps around were so loud that we couldn’t stop.
It was in by early forties that I moved to central Kerala as part of my career, leading a forced bachelor life. The evenings started providing some free time and I started going back to the festival grounds of Kerala. Elephants , Percussions and Kathakali came back to my life, in addition Kutiyattam also became an addiction. I again started seeing people who were not in hurry; spending hours infront of the performances, elephants and festival grounds . I too started joining them ; unhurried during the nights and again back in the race during day time.
Slowly I realised that whole through the last 15 years I was part of a crowd running rounds after round on an oval shaped track. We were trying to beat the person in the front and after them the people who ran behind us also. It was a never ending race and wanted to change.
That realisation lead to a deliberate slowing down and I started getting time to see the details, enjoy the beauty of life. I added “Slow” to my principles of life. In the early years of this decade I came across the book by Dr M V Narayanan and the sentence ” …the exceptionally slow and unhurried manner in which the performance progresses…” got engraved in my mind.
Dr Narayanan continues “.. time is magnified and expanded in proximal viewing , and those minute features of action that would go otherwise unseen at the normal speed of ordinary life come to be performed and seen with clarity”
Yes, I am seeing and enjoying things in life with more clarity as I have become “Slow”.
I was only in my lower primary school ( age between 5 and 10) when the following incident occurred. It was related to a temple festival in our neighbourhood. As I told in my previous note our village was mostly a peaceful area, and hence any small incident of crime or unlawful activity get discussed a lot, as they are very rare. During one of the festivals there was a major clash between two groups and the police had to intervene with force to disburse them. It became a major news and the local pages of regional newspapers carried even some snaps of the incident.
A couple of days later my mother came back from office with a news to break. She called my grand mother and the maid we had at home during that time. I was also summoned to the court. She asked me straight ; ” how is your broken hand now” . Everybody was surprised, they never had any clue on something happening to my hand. A bell rang in my brain but before I could run my mother stopped me. With a laughter like a cracker she explained the incident.
On the very next day after this incident got publicity through the newspapers and all , I went to school with a sling around my left hand . I managed to smuggle a cloth piece in my school bag and wear that as a sling once I entered the school bus. Of course the students asked about the sling and I confidently told that my hand got broken during the police lathi charge at the temple festival. The poor children asked more about the incident and I explained what I heard from many sources with a few additions from my imagination also, as if I was an eyewitness.
While I was emerging as a star, our class teacher came in and asked about the sling and the children around me explained all what I told them. She asked me more and since it was point of no return I retold the story.
I never knew that my class teacher knows my mother and they travel in the same bus in the morning. She asked my mother whether I was there in the temple during the incident and my mother said no. She quoted my teacher ” Rajam, he will become a good story writer . The story was so really compelling .You should ask him to read books ” My mother asked her back ” did you believe his story ” and my teacher replied ” no . no. he made two mistakes. He told that he went alone, which I was sure that you will not allow and he told about elephants running and that temple don’t have elephants for the festival “
My mother encouraged me to read good books and periodicals, which made me familiar with good literature. My father and my maternal grand mother got me closer to Hindu Puranas and epics. They used to tell one story each every night to make me and my brother sleep.
Even now I tell “stories”, but most of the time make some mistakes which clever people understand easily.
Dr. Devdutt Patnaik is another writer whom I love to read. Even though I am not in alignment with all his thoughts , I like the way he thinks and supports his thoughts with beautiful anecdotes, references and stories.. He often refers to a story; the story of Alexander the Great’s encounter with a Gymnosophist while he was on his campaign to India.
Devdutt narrates this encounter to highlight the contrasting world views of Alexander, who is in pursuit of conquests driven by ambition , and the Gymnosophist who is more focussed on inner peace. It is also being used as an example to make a point about the different thought processes that exist in this world.
More than the message of the story, an answer given by the Gymnosophist rang a bell in my mind. Alexander raises a question ;” What are you doing “, and the Gymnosophist replies ” experiencing nothingness”. What a beautiful concept !! “experiencing nothingness ” !!
Even though there are many explanations and theories around the concept of “nothingness” , I didn’t go behind those heavy and complex ones. I just went after two of the direct and simple thoughts on nothingness; ” own space ” and ” silence ” . It was the physical space and physical silence which I went for initially. Fortunately , I was in Bangalore then, living as a single in a fairly large company guesthouse with lot of loneliness available at my disbursal. I started creating lonely spaces and silence around me. Sat alone in silent environment and thought about myself; reviewing the recent past -self review, thoughts about possible corrections.
That was not the end, slowly I gained the skills to create my own space and silence with a crowd around. I used my weekly shuttle between Trivandrum and Bangalore in the semi sleeper buses to practice those skills.
But the ultimate goal is to “experience nothingness” in the true spirit; creating that imaginary cocoon at your will and remain in that with out anything bothering you.
Create my own “Space” and “Silence” , whenever I need them , and allow the rest of the world to enjoy their own.
During the early years of the second decade in the twenty first century, I took a bold ( with out much thought) step to venture into a pure sales career. Of course, I was supporting our sales team with pre-sales and marketing, but it was mainly for the Europe and Americas. I struggled ; struggled big time in the early part of that career and I was mostly alone during that journey. My only relief was Mr. I Narayanan , a pretty old gentle man with immense experience in various businesses. He was not my boss, but we shared the same office floor.
One day , while I was having a tough conversation with one of our clients Mr. Narayanan opened the cabin door and entered. I asked him to take a seat with a hand gesture and continued my dialogue with the client. It went for another ten minutes and I hang the phone with that infamous four letter english word; suddenly realised the presence of Mr Narayanan. With an apology I looked at him. He was there to invite me for a dinner with a few of his friends, which he used to do. While he was turning back to the cabin door, he suddenly stopped and turned back to me ” Manoj, you should learn the habit of smiling even when you are at the receiving end ; I mean while on the receiving end of the telephone and in the other sense also “.
I left it there, but thought about his words when I was driving back to the guest house. The next day I went to his cabin and asked more. “what difference does that make, he is not seeing me right ?” He replied with a smile “that reflects in your tone”. It was a new pointer for me and I started following that.
But the real change happened a few years later, I got introduced to a new term ” Feel the smile” . It was Osho usage : “In that moment, start feeling a smile — not on your face but all over your being — and you will be able to. It is not a smile that comes on the lips; it is an existential smile that spreads just inside. “
Smiles bring down the tension , between and within . But as Osho said , a Smile which is just not present on the lips but very very soft, delicate, fragile — like a small rose opening in the belly and the fragrance spreading all over the body. Keep smiling.