I left the Marketing & Sales section intentionally thinking that those would be the shelves screaming for attention. I went to the Self Help & Kid’s section instead. But I was wrong in my assumption!

95% of the books I randomly laid my hands on had some sort of a superlative in the title. “Biggest Challenge.. “, “Top 15 Ways…”, “The Best of…” titled books were all competing for attention. I paused to think. Are we running out of superlatives? What words would market products better without sounding fake?

Much like the banner blindness syndrome that render website advertisements ineffective, the book publishers would also suffer from some sort of a title blindness. Much like we fail to see the best ads on websites,  do we ignore the books containing certain words that we intrinsically know to be a hype?

Book marketers do not suffer the wrath of Google for hyping up the names of books, or even to name a book that has no resemblance to the content, but if visitors to book stores starting to ignore books from their names, the situation would be far worse.

How do you react when you read a book with a superlative in the title? How many times do you go in for a book with titles like “Best of..” or “The Greatest…” or even “The Most Important…”?

I had posted the story earlier on the Non-Photographer website. What had struck me about this self proclaimed “Beggar by Choice” is his straightforwardness to denounce the social norms of making a livelihood.

As I continued my project for the next 2 years in the various streets of San Francisco, I realized that that there are too many people who would rather beg than become the so-called “corporate sell out”. Many of them have turned towards their love of music, playing solo on the various corners of San Francisco & working gigs at the clubs in Little Italy.

Over the years of my project, which took the shape of a small photo documentary called the “Street Musicians of San Francisco“, I had come to know many of them personally. And what they all had in common is to be able to live a better life, with some good Karma to feed their strength.

More and more people are trying to break free from the ruthless rat race of corporate survival, refusing to be the corporate guinea-pig & bring misery to others. And technology has opened up the doors to those who are willing & able, those who are smart enough to find a niche & brave enough to make their money on their own.

In fact, this is what got many like myself started on to helping others make money on the internet. And there are no secrets to this! Having a website is a great start to self independence – you can make enough money from a blog itself, to be able to support your family & get rid of the daily embarrassment to your Karma!

If you are smart & hardworking, making your own money & living the life you always wanted is no problem. Not only will you free yourself from the several guilts of the corporate life, you could become a solid support to others in need – a Karma that can only come back to make your life better.

For those of you , who do not know what is “Karma” I ‘ll just take a second to explain that to you.
“Karma” means your actions or deeds .
You and ONLY you are responsible for your Karma , no body else , not even your parents,your life-partner or your children will take the onus of your Karma.

How true it is : when you do a small little action: say you buy a loaf of bread for a road-side beggar , you feel good , you feel refreshed, you feel purified.

Do you know that you should be re-born time and again so that you can purify your soul?
“Purify” is again a “Karmic” word. There are many aspects to it. How can you ensure that you are always correct ? Actually…………..you can never be correct always because you are a Human.

But yes , only you are responsible for your incorrect actions , hence you must pay for it.
You pay for the bad Karma in your life : you are rewarded in some way or the other for the good Karma in your life : sometimes your guilt conscience or your realization is also considered as your good Karma .

The time you begin to think that you are responsible for your Karma , will give you profound peace of mind: you will start thinking life from a different angle. You might also start changing your lifestyle , your taste of music ,food ,etc.

Again , on a second thought about all this discussion out here, you can question me: How can “Karma” explain the fact , that , almost every minute in this world , a girl is raped, every minute in this world a man is killed , every minute in this world, a girl child is murdered, every minute in this world a child is deprived of school and forced to work.

Are these the faults of the girl being tortured , the man getting killed , etc?
How can Karma explain that…..?
This is debatable as I do not have answers for this.

Think about it ……Can you find any answer?

How can you rely on the fact that “Life’s result is not by chance but by choice.” How can you rely on the fact that you are making the correct choice? So…if your choice is wrong, you pay for it.

Sometimes struggles are exactly what we need in our life.
If we were to go through life without any obstacles, It would cripple us. We would not be as strong as we could have been and we could never fly.

So next time you are faced with an obstacle,
A challenge, or a problem, struggle a little… then fly…
“Sometime in our life the light goes out and some other human being comes and blows the flame again .. We should be grateful to those who rekindle the light of our life …..”

At the end of all this, I just say one thing…..
Believe in Karma : and hold yourself responsible for all the odds in your life: you will be enlightened.
An yes fight life , don’t say “Why me?” instead say “Try me…………….”

Sure we all have seen the good & the bad, but what came out of that reminiscence was that there are people who believe that they had all the power to change other’s lives – and more so for the worse!

So why does some bosses behave like gods?

And this is no God in the better sense of the word! Especially in the context of work, when everyone, apart from the owner, is a paid employee? My mentor once said “An organization is a social institution. An institution with 2 rooms. The larger room has one or just a couple of people. They don’t have designations & they don’t care what designation they carry.

The other room, considerably smaller, is stuffed with people, each with a different designation, and each trying to foolishly pride himself with that. What they don’t know is that they will never be in the other room.”

My mentor is one of the richest industrialists from India & runs multi-billion dollar automobile business in Asia-Pacific! And it stuck to me for ever. And we see how true his analogy is every day in our life.

I leave the question open: So why does some bosses behave like gods on a borrowed scepter?

And what do you do when you have to work with one?

Finally, when we were in Saint Louis, MO, I got to meet a few folks from the Humane Society who were rescuing abandoned puppies. And soon, in about a month’s time, we came home with 3 months old Atom (well, his legal name is really Cooper Mitra, but I call him Atom!)

Atom is a mutt – a combination of a Labrador & an Australian Sheep Dog. Like it happens in some cases, his eyes are of different colors – one blue & one brown.

We couldn’t stop there. About two months later, we got Tipsy at the PetSmart’s adoption. Tipsy (again her legal name is Sylvie Mitra) was a three month old Siberian husky. She is too much energy packaged into a small body.

We have posted some puppy training tips & videos of Atom & Tipsy on our website for pets. We created that site to share tips, photos & videos of how our pets are growing up, but mainly because we wanted others to share how to raise puppies without books!

That’s Atom, about 8 months, and lying on my feet while I am blogging from  a hotel room in New Jersey.

So that’s how we have our pets. And boy! How they changed our lives. There are good things & bad things of course. I used to spend a lot of time outdoors shooting pictures & attending seminars on weekends. Now I have to ration that somewhat. But I have started to enjoy spending time with these pesky little ones.

The greatest thing though is having them near me. It’s a feeling of joy & happiness. Spending 10 minutes of my time back from office energizes me now. I can easily forget the stress at work, the tensions at workplace & the ugly politics in a matter of minutes.

So go ahead & get yourself a pet. You can rescue one at your nearest Humane Society or like us, go over to the nearest adoption center. I know PetSmart organizes these adoptions every other week. You have to pay the adoption charges which is about 250 dollars & in turn you get one of the best friends a human can have.

If you are already raising pets without books, be sure to enroll on our website & write about it. With the amount of money we can save in these costly, not so great pet classes, we can get another dog! We did take Atom & to for the elementary class though & Atom graduated with honors!

Believe me, pets can improve your life so much. You will lose your stress easily, you can exercise with them & burn those calories & then, you will always have someone to play with – even if it’s the middle of the night.