M G Harish

Tuesday, October 30, 2007

Shortcut to Success?!

Well, it has been quite a while since I posted an article in this blog. That's due to the change in my dwelling place as well as my entry into the corporate world. Now I'm residing in the beautiful garden city, Bengaluru (Bangalore). I'm not going to write more about that now, but let me discuss an issue in which the current generation is getting attracted towards: finding shortcuts to success.

What is the most sought thing today? Probably, for most of us, it's money and nothing else. A more important issue regarding this matter is that everyone wants money, but without or minimal effort. But is it achievable?

There have been a lot of organizations which offer a huge money for a small investment, and there are a lot more people who go for them. With the advancement of the Internet and the means of online payments, it is growing even more rapidly nowadays. From offline firms like Amway to the online communities like agloco, from the antiquated firms like AllAdvantage to the emerging ones like eBiz and GISH, each of these firms has its own claims as to how the customer is able to earn a lumpsome amount. They promise to make you a millionaire in a year or two, but none of them has succeeded in this regard till now. Has anyone seen a person who is competing for a place in top 100 in the Forbes magazine just by participating in such organizations and making people members?

I'm not here to accuse these firms as frauds or to compell people not to join them. Each one has the right to do what he/she wants to do. Then why am I writing this article? I just want to share my yesterday's experience here.

My friend called me up requesting me to come to ITPL yesterday evening. He didn't tell any reason, but still I made sure that I went there. It was only after I met him that I came to know that he had called me to give a presentation about GISH, and now, I know that it has turned out to be a very good reason for me to write this article.

It was all about joining this organization by investing some amount initially and then urging others to be a part of it too. For every pair of members that you make, they give you 1000 bucks. And if you are able to have a certain fixed number of customers downline in a prescribed time period, you are eligible for some extra privileges by GISH. But that's not what matters here. An interesting figure he told was that even if you do only one pair of members in a month and consider the same rate of logins by those members and their downlines also, you'll end up with 212=4096 members at the last level in one year. So it's not a big deal to have a large number of people down the line. Seems interesting right? Just think, can you continue with the same growth rate for the next couple of years?? You'll have to have 230 pairs, which means 68,719,476,736 people. Current population of the world is just 10% of that. Where on the Earth do we find those many homosapiens then? Do we have count and include ancestors too and make them members?? There is no shortcut to success. Hard work can only fetch you what you want.

I forgot to mention, the presentation started with the expansion of GISH: Goals, Income, Savings and Happiness. According to the presentor, achieving Goals brings you Income, which when Saved, will give you Happiness. But does money alone ever bring happiness? Every insightful word or adage or Shloka tells that money is the cause of all the sorrows of man. As Adi Shankaracharya has described in Bhajagovindam:

अर्थमनर्थं भावय नित्यं
नास्ति ततः सुखलेशः सत्यम् |
पुत्रादपि धनभाजां भीतिः
सर्वत्रैषा विहिता रीतिः ||


arthamanartham bhaavaya nityam
naasti tataH sukhaleshaH satyam ||
putraadapi dhanabhaajaam bheetiH
sarvatraiShaa vihitaa reetiH ||

Meaning:

Wealth is problem - think deeply on this
There is no true happiness from that
A rich man is afraid even of his own sons
This is true everywhere and forever


Now tell me, do you still think that you can become rich overnight? And even if you do, does that bring you happiness? It is up to you to think and decide what you want to go. Whichever path you take, I wish you all the best!

Wednesday, October 03, 2007

What do you think of yourselves, MindTree Minds?

They were humble, elegant and more social than they are now. They had never shown this frog-in-the-well attitude until that fateful (?) day they got recruited to an Indian multinational company called MindTree. I'm talking about my own classmates and friends who got entitled MindTree Minds when they got selected.

I have been observing this attitude not only in my classmates, but also in friends in other colleges and juniors too. There are a few exceptions, nevertheless. But I stress, only a few are still the same as they were before. What makes me post it here? Because the so called MindTree Minds:
  • act as if MindTree is the only IT company in the world.
  • don't generally combine with people other than MindTree recruitees as they used to be.
  • show off that they are recruited to MindTree.
  • talk about the company all the time.
  • think that they are superior to others, while the truth is that some of them got selected by sheer luck.
I don't know what they think of themselves. Are their minds rotten to the core to be unable to understand the simple fact that they may not be in Mindtree forever? The sooner these vain mindtree minds understand the reality and come out of this dangerous egocentric syndrome, the better. As MindTree tag-line itself says, a tree is known by the fruit it bears. Mind it and get a life, folks!

Your honest opinions are welcome.