MEETING ROBIN SHARMA

SANGEETA WADDHWANI CAPTURES THE EFFERVESCENCE AND MODERN WISDOM OF THE PROLIFIC BESTSELLER

Talk about a powerful Friday morning! I had been feeling guilty of seeing a very alluring new book by this self-styled interpreter of 21st century human maladies, THE 5 AM CLUB, sitting on my work desk for days. Between transcripts, page-manufacturing processes, the wealth it held out for me seemed so near and yet so distant. Yesterday was also Valentine’s Day and being happily single, I decided to have a date with this book and took it out to dinner with me.

I was drawn into the grace, powerful juxtapositions and ideas propounded by a character called The Spellbinder – clearly a life coach modelled on the author himself – in a heartbeat.

There were insights that immediately reminded me of fabulous Indian mythical stories. Like the idea that most of us never wake up to our potential, because we don’t optimise our waking hours… Particularly the decluttered, non-digitally polluted morning hours.

I told Sharma that on a flight I recently came across the book KUNDALINI, which narrated how Hanuman forgot his own capacities…his infinite powers that made him a dreaded super-baby cursed by sages to forget he was a super-powered being. It was only when Rama’s mission needed him to cross the ocean to Lanka in one giant step, that he was re-awakened to his own true and limitless capacities.

Sharma smiled at the story and said he hadn’t read too many epics from India but they were certainly empowering. As we chatted, I pointed to a quote from Sufi poet Rumi in his book..about it being good to have one’s heart broken so many times, that it opens! I shared with him how many friends of mine had never quite seen the positive side of hurt, disappointment and heartache….and he totally concurred. He said one of the benefits of a sacred early morning ritual is to acknowledge and process all the traumas one has undergone, and not store them in one’s physical cells as emotional toxins. So many illnesses stem from such osmotic residual emotion…cancer is almost always rooted in this, he shared.This and more will be a part of our forthcoming interview to feature in HELLO!’s March edition. Our edition is all about creativity and art…but what greater way to create than to rebuild oneself..inside out?