Mirza Yawar Baig – Life lessons
AI: Summary ©
The speaker describes their life and experiences living in Guyana, the Amazonian rainforest, and the wild dog killing a friend and a wild dog. They later describe their experiences with learning to take life seriously while learning to extract every drop of learning, spending many hours on a horse and swim in the river, and eventually seeing a wild dog kill. They eventually went on a Royal Enfield in India and spent many hours on a motorbike, on a Royal Enfield, while they faced a white doe and saw a wild dog kill.
AI: Summary ©
In the name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most
Merciful, All praise is due to Allah, Lord
of the worlds, and peace and blessings be
upon the messengers and prophets, Muhammad, the Messenger
of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him
and upon his family, and peace and blessings
be upon him.
After this, this is a new kind of,
what is it, reminder that I want to
share with you, which is really sharing stuff
from my own life, which I hope will
be enjoyable, as well as a means of
learning, Inshallah.
On October 20, 2010, we are now in
2024.
On October 20, 2010, I was 55.
So I published a book on that day
called 2010-2010-55.
Because that's how we write dates in India
and everywhere in the world except the US.
We write the day first and then the
month.
In the US, we do it the other
way, which is the month first and the
day afterwards.
So this is written in the English or
the Indian way, if you like.
2010-2010-55, which was 55, the book
contained 55 life lessons that I learned in
my life.
So let me share some of these with
you.
Those who read the book, please forgive me,
or read the book, please forgive me.
And those who are motivated, read the book
and get it on Amazon.
Those who would like to learn more about
my life, there's another book of mine called
It's My Life, which is for the princely
sum of $7.
I'm most grateful to Allah that He gave
me the life that He gave me for
only $7.
Alhamdulillah, wajib.
So as I told you, I turned 55
on the 20th of October, 2010.
And that's the title of this book, 2010
-2010-55.
I reflected on the lessons that I learned
in my life, which I think has been,
alhamdulillah, an unusually rich and active and exciting
life lived in India, in Guyana, in America,
in Saudi Arabia, and in travels in other
parts of the world.
I wrote this book as a tribute of
thanks to all those who added value to
me and taught me formally and informally and
invested in my learning.
During my childhood and teens in India, through
the 60s and 70s, I spent all my
vacations walking in the jungles of the Sahyadri
Mountains in Adilabad district in Telangana, living with
my dear friend and mentor, Uncle Rama, Venkatrama
Reddy Sahib.
Imagine the excitement of a 15-year-old
with a .22 rifle or a 12-bar
shotgun walking with one golden companion, Shivaya, all
over the jungle, bordering the Karnapa River, just
Shivaya and myself.
At times, Shivaya and I would walk in
the night to witness a Sambar mud bath
and sit behind a tree, quietly watching majestic
Sambar stags roll in mud and then stand
up to shake off the excess, coated in
an armor of mud which, when dry, protects
them from biting insects.
Sometimes we would hear the call of the
tiger as it set out for work.
I learned to read tracts which tell the
story of all those who passed that way.
I learned the meaning of smells which tell
their own stories and sometimes can mean the
difference between life and death.
But the biggest lesson I learned was to
take life seriously while having fun and to
extract every drop of learning.
In the late 70s and early 80s, I
spent five years in the Amazonian rainforests of
Guyana bordering the river Burmese.
I went there when I was 19 or
20 and lived alone in Kokwani on the
river Burmese.
During weekends, my friend Peter Ram Singh and
I would take our boat on a trip
50 to 60 miles, sometimes 100 miles upriver
and camp on the bank or on the
sand bank and sleep in hammocks.
It was our code of honor to not
take any food on these trips and live
off the land from our hunting and fishing.
As an emergency fallback, we would take some
raw chicken guts in a plastic bag.
If we didn't manage to catch any lukanani
or to shoot any aguti or kanji pheasants,
we would trawl the chicken guts in burpees
and sure enough we would get a bite,
piranha.
Great eating as long as you know how
to keep clear of the teeth and retrieve
the hook.
I would see alligator eyes shining like diamonds
sprinkled on the dark waters during our night
patrols to check our fishing nets.
During one trip, Peter and I accidentally caught
a 22-foot anaconda in our fishing net.
It was so heavy that both of us
couldn't lift him clear off the ground.
I met people who lived 30 to 40
miles up the Burmese River in houses on
stilts in small forest clearings where they grew
a few vegetables, hunt and fish for their
meat and don't come to town for months
at a time.
No water except the river, no light except
the sun and the moon.
Sometimes it's a single family of Amerindians.
Sometimes it's a couple of families who live
by one another.
Their children play in the forest and swim
naked in the river.
Yet I never heard of a case of
piranha bite.
Never figured out that one as the river
is infested with piranha and they love to
bite.
Why that didn't happen with these people, I
don't know.
These families always grow the best honey, which
they would sell to people like me who
turned up on their doorstep or to take
to town in exchange for a couple of
bottles of country liquor.
Deadly stuff in more ways than one.
I spent 10 years in the 80s and
90s in the rainforests of the Western Ghats,
in the Annabelleys, in India.
And further south, planting tea, coffee, cardamom and
rubber.
I spent many hours tramping up and down
hills and valleys, sometimes at a height of
8,000 to 9,000 feet on the
famous grass hills.
At other times, wending my way in sweltering
heat through the thick forests on the Ghats,
where the sun almost never reaches the earth.
One day I escaped an angry charging bull
elephant by what could only be a miraculous
divine intervention.
All my tea garden workers believed that I
was divinely blessed from this day on.
A belief that, of course, I did nothing
to dispel, because who could object to being
divinely blessed?
On another instance, I walked up to a
red doe kill, a wild dog kill.
They moved away and sat in a circle
watching me while I ensured that the slumber
hind that they had brought down was dead.
They are very merciless killers, because they don't
have the ability to kill properly.
So, they do that in a way which
is not neat, to put it politely.
On a forest road in the Annabelleys, I
once had a face-off with a huge
Gaur bull.
I was on a motorbike, on a Royal
Enfield, but eventually he decided he didn't hate
me enough to eliminate me and moved away,
allowing me to move on, on my Royal
Enfield motorcycle.
My greatest joy was to camp on a
huge rock outcrop called Banjapare, in Lower Sethumudi
Estate, where I was the big boss, the
manager, sitting on a platform in a tree
to watch elephants come to drink in a
nearby stream.
When the elephants left, the Gaur would come,
bison.
Finally, when everyone had gone their way, my
companion Raman and I would descend and light
a fire against the bitter cold, smoke a
couple of beedis and drink hot sweet teas,
and wait for the sun to rise.
Gradually, the sky would lighten.
The orange glow would show, and then the
majestic ball of fire would come up over
the edge, the edge of the horizon greeting
us across an expanse of forest and tea
gardens.
What really is the value of such a
sight?
As I say, I was never good at
math.
Some things are simply priceless.
The important thing is, in all this, is
to ask yourself, what did you learn?
Out of all of this, I can say
that I learnt two extremely important lessons in
my life.
The first relates to the fact that, essentially,
we are all in control of our lives
and ourselves, and no matter how powerless or
powerful we may believe we are, there's always
something that we can do to make a
difference.
Therefore, my first lesson is, I will not
allow what is not in my control to
prevent me from doing what is in my
control.
Let me repeat that.
I will not allow what is not in
my control to prevent me from doing what
is in my control.
The second one relates to the fact that
everything we do counts and defines us as
human beings and becomes our legacy to the
world.
Therefore, the second lesson is, all that we
choose to do or choose not to do
defines brand value and character.
All that we choose to do or choose
not to do defines brand value and character.
I ask Allah to help us to live
a life that is worthy of the time
that He gave us and to end it
in a way where He is pleased with
us, at a time when He is pleased
with us.