Many people said there was nothing original about that opinion. But at that time, you could not have told me that. I was sure that I did my own thinking, so then, it had to be right! I was holding on to my conviction. I was relating to what the Landmark Forum Leader had to say as someone who was just doing his job for what he was getting paid for!

Well, there was another part of all this that was personal. At another layer of this conversation, I was making my husband Ramesh Bhaskaran wrong. I knew he was fully committed to establish the work of Landmark in Chennai. I was afraid that he was spending too much time with Landmark and was not giving attention to his business and family. But I did not see that it was a fear. That it was me who was afraid, and that it was my concern. Instead I complained about it and everything else around it.

Despite it all, transformation did its work. One day I had a heart to heart open communication with Ramesh and told him what I was going through in terms of missing his presence at home. After my sharing he really got present to my world and I could see the big difference it made on him. From then on, I could see my beloved husband planning his week in such a way that he gets to spend quality time with our daughter, Sneha who was 4 1/2 years old and me. 

That I made such a difference in our life just by communicating and to see the impact of my action - made me stop and rethink about all what I had thought of Landmark. Maybe then I began to do my own thinking. I got to see what so many others had seen before me. That it was pretty ordinary to be a skeptic in our world where cynicism was glorified in various channels of the news and what traditionally made the money for the media.

After that breakthrough I had the luck to speak with Mahesh Nambiar, the Center Manager of Landmark in Bangalore. I was wondering then what would I hear in the course if I had done it with an open mind as was recommended originally. He invited me to review the Landmark Forum, which I did in June 2005.

Now that I got my ears open to hear what there was to hear … What I got present to in the Landmark Forum this time was that I was so engrossed with my own little problems that I never even thought of taking on the bigger problems in life to make that difference in our community. 

This just struck me when the Landmark Forum Leader, Balvinder Singh Sodhi was sharing how and when he decided to take on this work by quitting a cushy job as the CFO of Microsoft. When his son was born, he took a stand that he would see to it that his son would grow up in a world of total harmony and peace, and not in our world where the acceptable headlines was about hatred, war, crimes, etc. I was so deeply moved. This had always been my dream too, to see my daughter grow up in a world where each individual is in peace with the other.

Well, once the Landmark Forum was over, I had no difficulty enrolling people as I was present to my own dream and knew what I had to do to make this really happen. I now looked forward to the creation of new possibilities in our own community. I enrolled myself to the Assisting Program to support the first ever Landmark Forum in our own city of Chennai. 

What I got present to was how powerful the work of Landmark could be in Chennai. This was an opportunity to bring transformation to our ordinary world of cynicism as a victory for all. Here I stood together for this unimaginable future for all my near and dear ones as Ramesh and our great team of graduates have always been standing for.

Shobha Nair 

Visit Grads in Action and find out how our fellow graduates make a difference all over the world.

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The First Ever Landmark Forum in Chennai, India.
(November 2005)



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