Lesson on effective time management

Recently I picked up a book titled Letters from a father to his daughter by Jawaharlal Nehru more out of curiosity than anything else. Though I have not finished reading the book yet, there are certain aspects of the book that has fascinated me a lot. First and foremost, the immense knowledge, Mr Nehru had in science, history, and geography, to name a few.Today we have vast sources like Internet,print media, mass media etc. through which we can discover new things and gain knowledge about them. Today we can almost find anything we want by just typing the word in Google search engine and hitting enter but at that time, i.e. around sixth seventy years ago when only source of knowledge would have been books, that too limited, to have such knowledge is really appreciable.

Another thing I liked is, his style of writing the letters, the way he has narrated and explained everything in it, simple brief and precise .History is boring for most of us, I remember either sleeping, sketching or day dreaming in my history classes, sometime even completing my homework so that I could play for some more time rather than listening to my history teacher telling us about the Harpan culture, French revolution etc. but honestly the letters I have read so far are not only informative but also interesting,enjoyable and worth reading.

But the most striking feature (according to me) that has left me wondering is the place, time he has written those letters. We all complain about insufficient time, often we give excuses of not having time to call our friends, visit our relatives, read books etc. don’t we? And here is a person sitting in a jail, under hostile conditions, unfriendly atmosphere, under immense pressure, fighting for country’s freedom , still having the will and the patience to write letters. Instead of grumbling, howling, being depressed, he utilized the time he had, took this opportunity to write letters to his daughter. A great idea to be in touch with his daughter who was at that time studying far away in Mussoorie while he was in a prison in Allahabad. By writing these letters he was solving twin purpose of communicating with her as well as educating her about the evolution of mankind, religions, tribes, animals etc. and therefore arousing in a 10 years old girl the the curiosity to learn new things and find more about them. What an effective, efficient and a wonderful way of time management .Isn’t it.