Great Personalities
Yesterday(Feb. 17, 2020), I thought that I should read a few things about great personalities who walked on this earth and should take inspiration from their lives. Without further ado, following are my short notes(if somebody gets interested after reading these things, they can explore further through various media):
- Swami Prabhupada (Feb. 17, 2020)
I was watching a few videos of Gaur Gopal Das(he helps people through his speech) and from there I came to know about his guru Swami Radhanath and in turn, about his guru Swami Prabhupada. He founded ISKCON and spread Krishna bhakti in the Western world 1960s onwards. A couple of things I learned about Prabhupada Ji are as follows:
a. He took Sanyasa(vow of renunciation) at a very late age of around 60 years and founded ISCKON at the age of 70. So late…it made me realize that I should not give my age a lot of weightage(as a discouraging factor) if I want to work towards a cause.
b. Prabhupada Ji developed a lot of content in his last years. This he did mainly by translating a lot of Indian text into English. I also feel that I should develop a lot of content(this post is one way of doing that :) ). Translation and/or re-writing something in other contexts(e.g. Bhagwad Gita principles for Corporate,…) could be a good way. A lot of my acquaintances write articles in data-sciences summarizing their learning about different topics, research-papers, their work. Anyways, I should develop content all the time in the form of text, speech, images, videos.
c. He traveled a lot in the last decade of his life. I also think that I should travel a lot and meet new people and see new things by being there. It gives a new perspective, authority in that perspective and a chance to persuade other people about my thoughts(face-to-face). In many ways, it develops a personality.
(if you want to know more about Prabhupada Ji, then you can start with the Wikipedia article about him, then few videos on youtube where he is preaching his disciples and then a couple of books by him..one that I shall be reading is this :
2. Atal Bihari Vajpayee (Feb. 18, 2020)
I have always liked the oratory skills of Vajpayee Ji and watched many of his videos, especially his speeches in LokSabha and international fora. He joined the freedom struggle(India’s Independence Movement) at a very early age. He developed himself as a poet and since he was educated in a lot of texts, he could deftly employ those in his speeches. One remarkable thing about him was: he started popularising his ideology when his opponents like Nehru and Indira Gandhi were charismatically popular in the country. He(meaning Vajpayee) wasn’t afraid of majority, was favorite of his opponents too, adjusted his tactics with the time and collaborated with a lot of opponents but remained very firm on his principles. After such a long struggle, he became the Prime Minister but his govt. collapsed twice before completing the full five-years term. This five-year term was too marred with many unfortunate events. His life is a good example of a long struggle for a cause he held dear to his heart, success in the end and immense goodwill with almost everybody whose life he touched.
To know more about him, one can read his works. I have read some parts of this book:
3. Premchand (Feb. 19, 2020)
Premchand is one of my favorite authors. I have always enjoyed his novels (Kayakalp, Premashram, Rangbhoomi, Karmbhoomi, Godan, Gaban, Nirmala). One can learn a lot about life from Premchand’s books. Few characteristics of his works:
1. Almost all the characters in his novels are imperfect. They have bad characteristics. But during the course of the novel, almost everybody changes for the good. This is true in real life as well. Everybody around us has some things that put us off. But, we must remember that people have the capacity to change themselves for the better.
2. Secondly, Premchand has always portrayed very strong characters of women. Women in his novel are strong, kind, wise, principled, practical in their approach and capable of big personal sacrifices.
Btw, in my opinion, unfortunately only people who love reading Hindi stuff can enjoy Premchand’s works. I would strongly recommend Hindi speaking people who are in the age bracket of 25–30 years to read all the novels of Premchand and take his help in creating values in their own lives. Any of his books will be very useful in designing your own life. One can also begin with his short stories which can be found here.
