The Last Lecture, lessons in living by Randy Pausch

"We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand."

“What will you do if you are told you only have a few days to live?” This is a question we ask while interviewing celebrities. Most often the answers range from wanting to have fun like they have never or spending time with family and friends. The answers are pretty straightforward and not out of the ordinary.... possibly because they know this is a rhetoric question and they are not really ‘going to die’. However, what if you truly know that you have only a few months to live! What will you do?

“The last Lecture” Lessons in living by Randy Pausch is one such book which tackles this question because Randy is someone who has only a few months to live! Randy Pausch was a professor of Computer Science, Human Computer Interaction, and Design at Carnegie Mellon University. Diagnosed with ten tumors in his liver, he was given only a few months to live.

A father of three young children and married to the woman of his dreams, he could have easily felt sorry for himself. But “that wouldn’t do them, or me, any good”, thinks Randy. So while embracing every moment with his family and doing the logistical things necessary to ease their path into a life without him, Randy comes across a chance to deliver his ‘Last Lecture’. These lectures which were routinely conducted at Carnegie Mellon University were also videotaped. “The last lecture is a common exercise on college campuses. Professors are asked to consider their demise and to ruminate on what matters most to them...What wisdom would we impart to the world if we knew it was our last chance? If we had to vanish tomorrow, what would we want as our legacy?”

‘The Last Lecture’ would give Randy the one chance to show his children, when they grew up and understood, what he really was.

This book is Randy’s Last Lecture, which he delivers to a packed auditorium of 400 plus students and faculty. While it would have been natural and understandable for Randy to talk about his cancer and his insights into the decease; he instead decides to base his lecture on achieving his childhood dreams. “...despite the cancer, I truly believed I was a lucky man because I had lived out these dreams. And I had lived out my dreams, in great measure, because of things I was taught by all sorts of extraordinary people along the way. If I was able to tell my story with the passion I felt, my lecture might help others find a path to fulfilling their own dreams.”

This is a book about a regular guy with oodles of passion for life, for living and for his subject. While I won’t give away Randy’s lecture, I will pick a few quotes that resonated with me very well. These make perfect sense in today’s world and are things we need to teach our children to enable them to lead better and more fulfilling lives.

“The instinct in our house was never to sit around like slobs and wonder. We knew a better way: Open the encyclopaedia. Open the dictionary. Open your mind.” That's so true. I always believe “when in doubt, ask!” Often when I myself am giving lectures about PCOS and Thyroid in colleges, I always encourage the audience to ask questions. Ask questions to me and to the doctors sitting there. No question is stupid or irrelevant. Opening the mind is vital to growth. We are lucky to have the encyclopaedia, the dictionary and Google to help us out. So ASK!

Randy talks about how grounded his parents were and how that helped keep him grounded. For instance after he got his PhD, his mother would introduce him as “This is my son. He’s a doctor, but not the kind who helps people.” How many of us would say that? We live in an era where boosting yours and your child’s ego plays precedence over his/her real contribution or worth. Don’t get me wrong. My children are precious to me; but I think knowing and understanding their potential is more important than gloating over fluke wins!

Randy talks about his football coach – Coach Graham and how he used to ride his students hard. “Coach Graham worked in a no-coddling zone. He knew there was really only one way to teach kids how to develop self-esteem: You give them something they can’t do, they work hard until they find they can do it, and you just keep repeating the process.”

Personally I believe this book should be made compulsory reading in all colleges irrespective of the stream chosen. This is a book which is a ‘self-help’ book without really being one. It’s an inspirational book which makes you want to work harder, try harder and thank God for the little pleasure in life.

I borrowed this book from a library, but now I am going to buy a copy to keep in my collection. This is a book I want my children to read when they grow up. This is a book I want to keep revisiting everytime I feel low, this is a book I will hand over to anyone losing hope and finally this is a book I will cherish.

Randy lost his battle with pancreatic cancer on July 25^th, 2008; but in his “Last Lecture”, he left behind a story to be retold.

In his words “I was trying to put myself in a bottle that would one day wash up on the beach for my children. If I were a painter, I would have painted for them. But I am a lecturer, so I lectured.”

#Thelastlecture #RandyPausch #selfhelp #lessonsinliving #internationalbestseller #life #death #professor

Losing Amma, Finding Home. A memoir about love, loss and life’s detours by Uma Girish.

Age is just a number... you are never too old to outgrow the need for your mother. Her tender care, love and above all the warmth in her kitchen make her indispensible. When my mother passed away in 2013, I missed her but thought she had prepared me enough to survive without her. Survive I did, but not a day passed by without me wishing that she was just a phone call away. During that period when I questioned if I had done enough for her, if I had made her proud and if there had been a way to save her; I chanced upon this beautiful heartfelt book “Losing Amma, Finding Home” A memoir about love, loss and life’s detours by Uma Girish.

This soulful book is ‘a heart-rending narrative of losing a parent, living through the pain and transforming it to discover one’s true calling and life’s purpose’. This is the story of Uma, who barely four weeks after arriving and settling down in Chicago with her husband and fourteen year old daughters hears that her 68 year old mother has been diagnosed with Stage 4 breast cancer. Torn between the need to stay back and help her family settle into a new place, new environment & culture and rush back to India to be by her ailing mother; Uma feels helpless. Like any normal individual, Uma’s first reaction on reading about the cancer in her sister’s email is to turn to God! “I pleaded and bargained with God; convinced myself I was going to wake up from a nightmare any minute now. I raged at HIM; apologized, before pleading and bargaining again.”

In this book, Uma talks about coming to terms with the harsh reality of an ailing parent who might only have a few days left. She is forced to suddenly reverse roles and play a parent to her parents’; she is forced to take decisions, she is forced to sit down and take stock. The chapters following her mother’s demise; I identified with so strongly that even now when I read them I tear up. The shock, the denial, the feeling of despair, the emptiness right to the bottom of your gut... I went through all of that.

From the time I could remember, my mother always spoke about how it was important for a lady to die a sumangali (a married women). Uma too talks about it. “In the Hindu tradition, dying before one’s husband is the highest honour a married woman aspires to. To leave her earthy abode, all of herself – mind, body and soul – to the one man she made vows till her last breath. Her greatest reward comes in death.” My Amma too got her wish. She went a sumangali, dressed in her wedding sari, with a huge bindi on her forehead.

The pain and anguish that her father displays is also so touching. “What will I do without you.... how could you leave me here and go away....” is what he says when he sees her. These are scenes we often see in movies; but reading about it after having seen your father go through the same is heartbreaking.

Uma moves on from there to trying to find herself and find a purpose in life. Slowly she limps back to normal. She finds a job at a retirement home, she takes help of a counsellor and she finds hope.

This is a book where each page made me re-live those months following my mother’s demise. I understand that it was not a cure for my melancholy, but it was release. I had not reacted traditionally when my mother passed away. I had not fainted, or fallen on her, or stretched out, or sat in a corner crying my heart out. Don’t get me wrong’ I did cry.. but silent tears that only she would have understood. Reading this book helped me release all those tears. I cried at night, I cried while reading the book, I cried in the bathroom, I carried when no one was looking. In the end I felt lighter, I felt like I was finally ready to let me mother go free, I was ready to release her from the cage I had put her in.

Now when I think of my mother, I remember her laugh and the way her tummy would shake at my silly antics. I remember her sambar and the crispy star appams she used to make for me. I miss her, I do. I miss her when I write posts from the heart and they get appreciated. I miss her when my daughters’ do something funny and I want to tell her, I miss her every time our Bengali sari seller comes visiting. But now every time I miss her, I see her smiling at me from wherever she is, telling me that she is finally peaceful, free and that she will be with me whenever I need her.  

This book is a thorough tear jerker and will make even the stone hearted weep. This is a book from the heart and for the heart. This is a book for those who have lost a dear one and for those who are looking for help coping with the pain. Finally this book is about finding hope.

Uma Girish is a certified dream coach, grief guide, author, speaker and bereavement volunteer (yes there is such a job) in a hospice. She is passionate about helping women find meaning in their loss and awaken to new purposes. She also facilitates a grief group at a retirement community. You can contact Uma at www.umagirish.com

#LosingAmmaFindingHome #loss #bereavement #amma #mother #pain #cancer #missingsomeone  

Dear Popples, Love Letters From An Unlikely Mother

“It is the job of stories to exemplify and exaggerate goodness. Goodness is not sticky when it is mundane.... If we want a society of goodness, kindness, compassion, courage and excellence we must tell stories of extraordinary goodness, compassion and excellence. And the extraordinarily good, kind, compassionate and courageous is called a hero”

This is what this book “Dear Popples. Love Letters From An Unlikely Mother” by Anouradha Bakshi is all about. It is about compassion, goodness, kindness, courage, extraordinary courage and much more. It is about love, about being drawn towards someone, living lives and most importantly it is about truth.

Simple at best, the book is an easy read and can be read at a stretch of between books or even after years. “Read it straight as you turn the page or read it as per the index. The story will emerge. And it will be the way you wanted it to emerge. In life we don’t often have that privilege” says Anouradha right at the beginning.

The book is a wonderful collection of letters that Anouradha writes to Popples in a bid to explain how he came into her life, how he changed her life and how & why she let him go from her life. Before you make any more assumptions, let me reveal that Popples is a little boy who Anouradha first saw when he shy of being one year old. Unfavorable circumstances and terrible fate landed little Popples in a pot of boiling curry.

“The stage was finally set; all the props and protagonists in place;

the drunken parents, the tiny room with hardly any space and no option

but to keep the stove next to the bed.

It must have been a good day at work as there was a bottle

and also some fish to turn into a spicy treat.

As the fish bubbled happily in the pan, the boy slept soundly

and the inebriated mom stepped out.

The child woke up and not finding his mom tried to get up

and landed in the fish curry pan.”

The doctors at Safdarjung Hospital gave burned, bruised and completely swathed Popples ‘Nil’ chances of survival. From here on, we can get a gist of the story. Anouradha takes in the boy, helps nurse him back to health, gives him an opportunity to have a better life, sends him to a good school, has help pouring in from all quarters and across the world in cash and kind and so on and so forth. Simple!

However, it is not so simple afterall! This is a beautiful story of little Popples who loses everything and yet gains so much. This is the story of Anouradha whose maternal instincts awakes and yet who lets go of Popples because she wants better than the best for him. 

This is the story of Anouradha’s past, about her grandparents & her parents. This is the story of misery, triumph, heartache, longing, love, innocence, maternal instincts and above all of faith, hope, good will and HEROS. This is also the story of ‘Project Why’, an organisation which works with disadvantaged children and women in New Delhi. It reaches out to over 600 children and runs early education programs, prep classes, Primary and Secondary after school support programs, day cares and life skills program for children with disabilities. You can visit www.projectwhy.org to know more.

  

Read “Dear Popples” if you love emotions; read it if you believe in unconditional love and read it simply because you love reading.

Of the many things I took away from this book is the part where Anouradha shares Richard Needham’s quote “Strong people make as many mistakes as weak people. The difference is that strong people admit their mistakes, laugh at them and learn from them. That is how you become strong.” However not all of us are strong and Anouradha goes on to say “My experience of life had shown me something else in this ballet of mistakes and forgiveness, and that is the necessity of moving on and not looking back because the entire merit of forgiving comes to naught if the person is constantly reminded of his or her omission or asked to change the past, something that can never be done as time only moves in one direction. If you forgive, then you must be willing to start anew. That is when you have truly forgiven with your heart.”

#dearpopples #bookreview #anouradhabakshi #projectwhy #child #children #childcare 

Dying to be me by Anita Moorjani

“I had the choice to come back.... or not.

I chose to return when I realized

That ‘heaven’ is a state, not a place...”

Cancer has always intrigued me. I saw a very close relative fight the decease, beat it and then let down his guard and succumb to it. It was scary to see a healthy man shrivel and become half the man he was and then finally slip away into the beyond. I wondered what transpired when he was leaving his body and moving into the unknown. A few years later, we had to rush my mother – a heart patient to the hospital in an emergency. She was serious. The doctor told us to inform the family. We prayed, waited with bated breath till the doctor came back and told us that she was responding to the treatment and on the way to recovery although the next 24 hours would be crucial.   

Thankfully she recovered and we were back home after tiring 15 days. One day soon after, as I sat with my mother, she spoke about having walked into the light! I sat up, tried to joke about it; but then was intrigued and I asked her to tell me all about it. She spoke about seeing a light and walking up to it. She spoke about seeing her long departed parents and favorite uncle. She spoke about a sense of calm. She said that they had asked her to prepare for a journey and to pack all her belongings and her gold jewelry in a box! Not wanting to hear any further and absolutely scared of what she was going to say, I joked and told her that maybe she should have slept some more and then she would have probably heard her dad tell her to give all her gold to me..her daughter!

That was a long time ago. Now it’s been close to three year since my mother passed away and there is not a single day when I don’t think about that conversation. What was Amma trying to tell me? Did she really have a NED? What made her come back? Did she regret coming back? Questions that have no answers....at least for NOW!

With all these in mind I picked up Anita Moorjani’s “Dying to be me”, my journey from cancer, to near death, to true healing. This is a true story of a woman – Anita Moorjani who battled cancer, seemingly lost the battle, had a near death experience where she found a new meaning and returned to life completely cured. She has taken it upon herself to share her experience and her understanding with everyone who cares to know more. She freely shares her thoughts and her understanding of cancer, “illness, fear, healing, love and the true magnificence of each and every human being”*!

The book kept me awake all night. Her childhood, her growing up, her finding love, her illness, her quest for answers, her coma... I identified with them all...although I have not experienced them personally. However they seemed to answer some of the questions I had with regards to my mom. The portion where the male nurse is unable to find her veins and says she is not going to make it, Anita in her out of body phase thinks, “He sounds so helpless. He’s ready to give up on me, and I don’t blame him.” I remember my mother telling me about how she was aware of the nurses and doctors working on her and how she seemed detached to the event.

I cried as I read about Anita’s failing health, skin lesions, falling hair, lost appetite. I cried when she left her body and met her long departed father and friend. I read with concentration the conversation she had with her father and I sighed a deep sigh of relief when she came back. I read with surprise and amazement when her cancerous body healed itself and I finally closed my eyes and wondered at her explanation.

I admit, some of the chapters on self discovery and loving oneself still confuse me; but I am willing to give it time. Only time, maturity and maybe my personal understanding of myself will simplify these explanations. Till then, I recommend this book to anyone who is seeking answers to some difficult questions about the self and about the universe.

Before I end I will quote one paragraph which makes complete sense to me. I have always believed in “purpose”. There is a reason someone comes into your life, a reason why you meet someone, a reason why something happens and a reason why things work or don’t; there is a reason for everything and every season. 

I quote, “I saw my life intricately woven into everything I’d known so far. My experience was like a single thread woven through the huge and complexly colorful image of an infinite tapestry. All the other threads and colors represented my relationships, including every life I’d touched. There were threads representing my mother, my father, my brother, my husband, and every other person who’d ever come into my life, whether they related to me in a positive or negative way. .. Every single encounter was woven together to create the fabric that was the sum of my life up to this point. I may have been only one thread, yet I was integral to the overall finished picture.”

#bookreview #dyingtobeme #anitamorjani #lifeafterdeath #cancer #dying #autobiography #truelifestory