MONDAY MUSINGS SEASON 2 - EPISODE 320
30th June 2025
Failure action plans
Here is a quick action plan to prepare to face failures in life
1. Accept Duality: Life is a mix of joy and sorrow, success & failure, profit & loss. Learn to take both with equanimity. 2. Detach from Outcome: Focus on effort, thought and intention and not on the results. The results will come—or they won’t. You still win. 3. Surrender the Fruits: Leave the outcome to God. You are not the final controller. 4. Stay Steady: Whether praised or criticized, stay cantered in who you are. 5. Learn and Rise Again: View failure as new learnings for the eventual success.
The #BhagavadGita doesn’t ask us to stop trying. It teaches us how to try with devotion, not desperation. Failures don’t define you. They shape you. The Bhagavad Gita tells us we are souls on a journey, and everything we face—success, failure, joy, heartbreak—is a chapter in that sacred journey.
Determination in the mode of ignorance
यया स्वप्नं भयं शोकं विषादं मदमेव च | न विमुञ्चति दुर्मेधा धृति: सा पार्थ तामसी || Bhagavad Gita 18.35||
yayā svapnaṁ bhayaṁ śhokaṁ viṣhādaṁ madam eva cha na vimuñchati durmedhā dhṛitiḥ sā pārtha tāmasī
This sloka is unique and requires deep understanding.
The five most dangerous negative thoughts are Svapnam, bhayam, shokam, vishadam, and madam. They are dreaming, fear, lamentation, feeling of dejection, and deception, respectively. These negative emotions stress us and waste our mental energy and hence to be avoided.
Dhritih is determination. Determination is a positive trait, and here Krishna says that determination not to give up negative traits is more dangerous.
One who is determined not to give up these negative traits (though knowing well that they are not good) is showing determination in the mode of ignorance.
You may ask why is dream a negative trait? Swapnam here means laziness or excessive sleep. Sleep is essential but excessive sleep is not good. Similarly, fear is a natural and required emotion but ‘unwanted fear’, like #FearOfFailure, is to be avoided. Similarly, grieving is a natural emotion. We will naturally grieve at the loss of a close family member but for how long? Lamenting should be avoided. There is significant difference between grieving and lamenting.
#GrievingVsLamenting
Lamentation has a negative connotation that grief frequently does not. Lamenting involves repeated mental replaying of something bad that has happened and staying emotionally fixated on the resulting negative emotions. Grieving is natural and lamenting not.
While lamenting is often considered undesirable and unhealthy, grieving is considered, overall, neutral and is often necessary for a person to gain closure at an emotional level after the loss and then to move onward toward emotional healing. Understanding the difference between the two in this sense is important because we may otherwise stay emotionally wounded and may even become emotionally stunted.
When grieving turns into lamenting
However, some people may stay lamenting long, incessantly replaying the memories of the loss and doing an endless post-mortem of what led to the loss without arriving at any constructive conclusion. It is like keeping the hand in the sling forever and refusing to ever do any activity, even small, with that hand. Sling is essential after an accident to recover from the loss but cannot remain permanent.
Grieving and lamenting through the lens of the gunas
From the perspective of the three modes of material nature, grieving is a natural component of the healing process. When it is done by a person in a constructive way that promotes their healing, it can be said to be in sattva-guna, the mode of goodness. In contrast, lamenting is said to be in the mode of ignorance; this is what the Gita refers to in 2.13 and 18.35. Such lamenting leads to further aggravation of the mode of ignorance in that person. That is, the person becomes increasingly ignorant about the overall nature of life and the ways of coping with life’s inevitable losses.
Determination is usually associated with positive thoughts. Krishna associates determination with negative thoughts also in this sloka, Determination required to remain courageous but what determination would be required to be fearful, to continue to lament, to remain lazy, etc?
We shall continue in the next episode.
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Adapted from newindianexpress.com
From beggar to boss
Today’s positive news page is that of a positive determination to turn the agonies to achievements, failures to fulfilments, not to remain lamenting forever.
Among the many autos that crisscross Mangaluru, a few bear a distinct sticker: ‘Free rides for expectant mothers and elderly trans persons’. These autos are symbols of quiet rebellion, compassion, and a relentless pursuit of dignity — driven by a transwoman named Ani Mangalore.
Born and raised in Raichur district’s Maski taluk, Ani’s story is neither linear nor simple. Like many from marginalized communities, her life has been a series of battles — most of them fought alone, with society on the opposing side.
Ani was assigned male at birth, but from a very young age, she knew she was different. She had what she calls “female instincts”.
Despite the internal conflict, Ani powered through her early life with an impressive academic record. She scored 79% in her Bachelor of Arts degree and earned a free B.Ed seat at the Government College of Teacher Education in Mangaluru, a feat many in her village considered rare and commendable.
Gender transition and rejection
But halfway through her B.Ed course, Ani’s personal evolution became more visible. She began her gender transition — physically, emotionally and socially.
What followed was a period of deep despair. Determined to support herself, Ani knocked on the doors of several offices and restaurants. Rejections became routine. “They wouldn’t even let me finish my sentence before saying ‘no vacancies’,” she says. Her identity as a transgender woman became an unspoken disqualifier.
With survival at stake, Ani found herself pushed to the margins — reduced to begging on the streets, like many transgender individuals in India who are denied formal employment. “I remember crying all the way home once. That night, my mother said something that changed my life: ‘Stop waiting for others. Be your own saviour’.”
Taking her mother’s words to heart, Ani enrolled in auto driving lessons. She was determined not just to drive, but to own autos, to ensure she would never again be at the mercy of someone else’s prejudice.
She was aware that she would not get a bank loan to pursue her dream. Between 2023 and 2024, she negotiated with auto drivers who were planning to sell their used vehicles. Without formal loan approvals, she took over their EMI payments, agreeing that the autos would be transferred to her name once the dues were cleared. She has already acquired four autos and is still repaying around Rs 1.5 lakh in pending EMIs.
She rents out the autos for Rs 200 per day, but with a twist that reveals her deeper mission. Ani makes it mandatory for her auto drivers to follow two unique conditions: they must give free rides to expectant mothers, and not charge elderly transgender persons, a group she says is “often abandoned and forgotten”. Each vehicle carries a sticker that proudly declares these commitments — small but powerful messages that signal inclusivity and solidarity.
Her autos mostly operate in and around Deralakatte and nearby rural pockets, where many of the transgender community reside. “I don’t want others, especially the elderly, to face what I did. No one should have to beg to survive,” she says.
Multiple roles
Today, Ani wears many hats. She is an entrepreneur, a certified personal gym trainer, and now, an actor in an upcoming Kannada film — another bold step into a world that has traditionally excluded trans people.
Yet, her ambitions stretch further. Ani dreams of establishing a home for elderly transgender individuals, a space filled with care, dignity and acceptance. She is seeking government support for land allocation to turn that dream into reality.
“Most of us end up begging or in prostitution, not by choice but because there are no alternatives. What other options do we have?” she asks, raising a valid and haunting question that echoes across India’s transgender communities.
Ani believes that awareness and acceptance are key to long-term change. “We are not strange,” she says with a wry smile. “We’ve existed since the times of the Ramayana and Mahabharata. People forget that. It’s time they remembered.”
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Conceived, compiled and posted as a weekly newsletter #MondayMusings in LinkedIn every monday consistently for the past 320 mondays by Jaganathan T (www.authorjaganathan.com)
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PROMOTIONS
