MEET KETAN BHAGAT
From the outside, Ketan is a typical 37-year-old middle-class common man living in Mumbai. Other than being the brother of India’s most influential writer, and receiving an occasional compliment for his sense of humor, Ketan’s persona is so common that one doesn’t even need to describe it. Just look around, and you will see someone like him… saturated salary, protruding waistline, receding hairline, old marriage, rented house and a car which is on EMI. Often seen bribing police constables, watching television debates against corruption, passing time at the bar… the kind of person who sends more Facebook requests than he receives. His Twitter account has more tweets than followers. That’s Ketan Bhagat! Present everywhere, noticed nowhere.
Yet, scratch the surface, and inside you would uncover a zealous storyteller waiting to take you through a powerful transformational journey. A few years ago, as fatherhood embraced Ketan, his world changed. While changing diapers, Ketan found his mindset changing. When the child took a bath, the father felt cleansed. As Ketan started experiencing such divine tranquility in his naughty toddler’s presence, a newfound wisdom and story tumbled out of the author. Child/God is that story. Every newborn is unique, perfect, happy and light. His parents are usually the opposite. Yet, parents teach the child. Believing every child to be God’s manifestation, Ketan has tried to learn from his child. Child/God is Ketan’s second novel. His first novel – Complete/Convenient – was a bestseller and is currently being adapted into a Bollywood movie. Before becoming a novelist, Ketan did stints with television and print media. Occasionally, Ketan is also invited as a motivational speaker. To pay his daily bills, Ketan works for an IT MNC in Mumbai. SPEAKING TOPICSSome of the topics he has spoken on in the recent past.
OPERANT CONDITIONING Operant conditioning is a method of learning that occurs through rewards and punishments for behavior. Through operant conditioning, an association is made between a behavior and a consequence for that behavior. For example, when a lab rat presses a blue button, he receives a food pellet as a reward, but when he presses the red button he receives a mild electric shock. As a result, he learns to press the blue button but avoid the red button. Operant Conditioning techniques are usually applied to train wild animals. Most common is the way lions are made to dance and jump around in circus. In humans, this technique is used to raise children wherein we reward or scold a child depending on how he responds to a particular stimuli. In the session, Ketan will introduce the audience to Operant Conditioning and then explain to them how different the life of a lion in a circus is to that of a lion in a jungle. Ketan will then move on to show how our upbringing and education system operantly conditions us to mindlessly keep reacting to cues resulting in us behaving like circus lions. This, as per the lecture, is the main reason why most of us do not ever realize our own potential and purpose. The lecture moves on to illustrate a few celebrities who have been able to successfully break free from the society's operant conditioning and discover their potential. In the concluding part, Ketan quotes The Holy Geeta to provide guidelines to the audience on how they too can break free from the conditioning of their mind and find success. THINKING The underlying theme is how people's success in life is a result of their thinking. In the initial part of the session, Ketan will talk about how every child is born with a capacity to think big and wild. This is how we all were born. But somehow the way we are raised and educated, the mind itself gets covered with so many layers that we lose our ability to think differently. Ketan then move onto examples of how we as a society are limited in our thinking and so consequentially some people are becoming rags-to-riches celebrities by doing simple things differently. The concluding part of the session covers some principles of The Holy Geeta that are simple, practical and can be followed to unveil the layers that have boxed our mind. The session is humorous and full of relatable real-life examples. Ketan doesn't believe in dry gyan :-) LESSONS THEY DON'T TEACH IN SCHOOL & COLLEGE. This one's very popular in the college circuit. Examples of lessons that I speak of are: 1) Life is illogical whereas our education system only prepares us to think and act logically, 2) in college, everyone studies the same thing, gets time to prepare, gives the same exam and then results are announced. Life is the exact opposite. First results come, then we give exam, then we sort of learn our lessons and our lessons are unique to ourselves. |
|