Your brain is like a computer attached to your body. We can for the time being call it a ‘Neck top PC.’ But this natural gadget doesn’t come with a user manual. The result being many of us fail to USE it properly. Just like your body, your mind needs quite a bit of exercise. As we grow older, it's important that we keep mentally alert. The saying: "If you don't use it, you will loose it applies to the brain too. "Exercising the brain" is an oxymoron. Remember, the brain is nothing close to a muscle.

When we are young the world seems filled with curious wonders, delightful discoveries, and daunting challenges. Our brains are taking in countless bits of information and we are developing lifetime skills. This burst of learning is like the brain World Cup of our human journey. Yet unlike the players of the World Cup, who have a limited time to demonstrate their peak performance, the human brain can continue to grow and improve with exercise.

This is an exercise that can strengthen neural connections and even create new ones. Switch the hand you are using to control the computer mouse. Use the hand you normally do NOT use.

What do you notice?

Is it harder to be precise and accurate with your motions?

Have you felt this sensation before? Most of you would have when you were first learning to tie your shoelaces?

It is a good sign that you are feeling uncomfortable and awkward because your brain is learning a new skill.

There are numerous exercises for strengthening your grey cells with everyday movements. If you are right handed, use your left  hand to brush your teeth, dial the phone or operate the TV remote.

It is important to confront your brain to become skilled at new and novel tasks, especially processes that you've never done before. As for instance, square-dancing, chess, tai chi, yoga, and even clay modeling. Working with modeling clay or play-dough is an especially good way for children to grow new connections. It helps develop agility and hand-brain coordination, this has the same effect of controlling the computer mouse with that hand which you do not use usually.

Travel is another good way to stimulate your brain. It worked for our forefathers, the early Homo sapiens. Their nomadic lifestyle provided a tremendous stimulation for their brains that led to the development of superior tools and survival skills. Perhaps that’s is the reason why we have a highly developed brain today. In comparison, the now-extinct Neanderthal was a species that for thousands of years apparently did not venture too far from their homes. Early humans gained a crucial evolutionary edge from the flexibility and innovation required by their strategic lifestyle, which also led to a more diverse diet that allowed their brains to rapidly evolve.

When you use your brain more you become more intelligent and creative. Why not start these exercises from today. You can improve your reflexes and your personality too. Please note that this is not a user manual but some tips to help you to think.

YOU can, perhaps, gather the guts, on an event, to call a ‘spade a spade’. But not a fad a fad, particularly, if you call yourself a management guru. Your turnover will stop giving you the victorious drumming, should you confess. Of all the subjects meticulously studied, nothing is more 'fad' ridden than the study of management.

`Fiddle-faddle,'' from which the word is derived, means the aimless movement of the fiddler's bow. However, many a management fad during the course of its “life cycle'' gathers enough critical mass to become a craze despite almost everyone privately acknowledging it as all froth. In the process of  “culturing” a fad, the prosaic and tired gain an unprovoked and ineluctable pride and by involvement and they are turned into queer concepts, verbalized and carved out as mantras.

Imagine! We think we know competence but we have to be taught the so called core competencies. I always wonder what this plural is for? Evangelism comes in a downpour; `a walk in the woods', `thinking outside the box', `leverage brand equities', `achieve conformance', `fitness for purpose' and `right first time' and so on, in this new religion. Fad badly needs a guru and a of course a few apostles and a multitude of evangelists, corporate honchos, airy-fiery slogans,(signifying nothing) and a lot of oratory. As the Indian contribution to this tower of Babel, we can add Sanskrit slogans from Vedic management now which will be as mysterious and unexplored as Vedic astrology. And to add fuel to this fier, it will be supported by the Government!!

And then, there are real money-minting opportunities for management consultants if a particular fad can be somehow elevated to the status of haute couture and sold to the government and the corporate. For instance, after paying hefty sums to ISO consultants' organizations with high sounding acronyms, companies can proudly proclaim that they have achieved a world-class cost swamped with the introduction of ISO 9001-2000.

When politicians asked to address the inauguration of management or industry seminars they have their share of vocabulary to be added to the lexicon, high-sounding untranslatable idioms coined by civil service officers who are nothing more than glorified stenographers or euphemistically called ghost writers. Of course, the notable exception is Mr George W. Bush who, in a industry meet said, ``I understand small business growth. I was one''.

It is believed that management science (or an art, as some people define it) despite its energy, is a kind of fashion industry, and helps as much to ensure long-term organizational wellbeing as ``black robed physicians of Dark Ages did prolonging biological health''. Most fads fail as they traverse from “success to excess”. When Corporate pessimists go around proclaiming that TQM does not work. When reengineering’s own advocates concede that it does not work, they blame it on poor implementation. CEOs who are famous for ‘MBW’ or management by walking. The fact is that they often lose their way!

It is not that management ideas or critically the fads, by their very nature are hogwash. But every time the archetype shifts, a new thought process has to evolve to meet the challenges in this age of discontinuity and incredibly tough competition. Those who survive are those who can spot the right ideas from the carte du jour and implement them honestly and quickly.

How far are we obsessed with a foreign language? It’s has out grown from a fashion to a necessity of the time. There are just a handful who can use the language in the right way. All the others have their vernacular influences in the Indianized English they speak. I still remember people in a village in God’s own country (Kerala) trying to talk to British and American tourists. The funniest one was when a inn manager showed a couple pf tourists the authentic boat houses of Kerala. He told them, “Saar,(the malayalam ized version of sir..) please open the window…let the air force come in”!

I remember the face of the tourists till date.   Another incident that gave me a shock was when a sweeper expressed her pride of being busy. She told, “everybody is calling me..i am a call girl”!!

I am told that correct English is not accepted nor understood by the common man. I have no idea how far this is right. If one says, ‘a cow is a four legged animal; many people would look at the speaker with dropped jaws. They perfectly understand when one says, ‘a cow has tow legs forwards and two legs afterwards’.  They have an excuse. The words, “we were not taught properly” is not very uncommon.

But when one word changes the meaning of a sentence, teachers themselves become a laughing stock.  A professor once told his class, there are four types of sexual diseases that you need to study in this semester. You are sure to get one during your exam. There was an initial dead air followed by a thunderous laugh.

If you live on a multi storied building, be careful before you throw something down. The reason, “the understanding people may suffer”.

When the police pocked their nose into a collaboration (a word that suggests big fights) the angry mob fanned them. I don’t understand what fanning the police mean.

There are many words in the almost all Indian languages which doesn’t have a parallel in English. It’s very obvious when it comes to food. In Kerala Uppu means salt, Mavu means flour another meaning is mango tree. But upma is an exotic south Indian breakfast. A direct translation in Kerala would be salt mango tree..?

Bollywood, the movie making industry got the inspiration for name from its American counterpart, Hollywood. There is a strange phenomenon that happens in bollywood. They don’t adapt foreign movies but get inspired by them and make them. They do get inspired by background scores, music leads and accompaniments, and even dance steps. It’s good that Indian directors and producers get inspired very easily.

Taj Mahal - The testament of love..Till very recently I have just seen it in pictures, post cards and movies. (Remember the songs in bollywood, tollywood, kollywood...and i wonder what more). The postcard picture of Taj Mahal does not adequately convey the legend, the poetry and the romance that shrouds what Rabindranath Tagore calls "a teardrop on the cheek of time". The breathtakingly beautiful shining structure of architectural excellence. Persian architecture has once opened the floodgates of designs to India when many massive structures rose up ex nihilo in the historic city of Delhi and the suburbs. I noticed the broken spike on the top of the dome. The tourist guides refused to talk about it. I searched the internet then and there. Here is one time when i really appreciated technology. I got the information I wanted. Once that spike had been covered in gold but this had been removed by the British during their rule in India. The guide didnt want to tell it as there were many British tourists in the group.

I read somewhere it took over 20000 men, 22 years to build the Taj and the hand of the chief architect's hand was cut off to avoid a replica of the Taj. Well was that good enough a deed? There was white marble and blood. Marble white and pure as snow and the red blood of the master mind behind the structure. But still we call it the testament of love. One friend of mine asked me if i knew any woman who build something for their dead husbands. Well i don’t know. There are a couple of women who were known to be embodiments of chastity. They were reduced to nothing more than doormats of their husbands. But i don’t know if they build something tangible that stood the test of time. 

The taj is a tribute to a beautiful woman and as a monument for enduring love. The rectangular base of Taj is in itself symbolic of the different sides from which to view a beautiful woman. The main gate is like a veil to a woman’s face which should be lifted delicately, gently and without haste on the wedding night. The Indian tradition the bride's face is uncovered by lifting the veil gently to reveal the beauty slowly and to arouse curiosity and love.

When one is not in a hurry he sees much more that what an ordinary eye can see. It depends of what kind of person you are. Your feeling depend upon your mental age. If you are a teenager at heart who has refused to mature into an adult, you find the Taj as an testament of love. At a later age you find it to be a grave of a queen or a monument that was build with marble and blood crafted by giants and finished by jewelers.