Steve Jobs: The New Age Mahatma

A P Parigi

Wednesday, October 5, 2011 will always be remembered as the day when the world felt deeply sad over the passing on of the ‘ New Age Mahatma’. While it was known that he was ill, yet I was overwhelmed with sadness. An era had come to an end. As Jobs once said in a public address, “Death is very likely the best invention of life”.

Who then was Steven Paul Jobs? Living thousands of miles away from the US, my knowledge, like that of several million people is through the internet and the media. It is universally acknowledged that Steve was a public figure. Steve Jobs was arguably the most influential CEO in the world. He was routinely voted as one of the most influential and powerful people in the world. To my mind, he was one who mastered the art of connecting a company with a product and the consumer; in a way that history of markets and brands has never witnessed. A person whose life was distinctly marked with pronounced failures and successes; one who had a simple philosophy of life. He said you need to have fait, hope and trust.... in something!!

Let not failure ever stop you from following your instinct and listening to your heart. It’s in this simplicity lay the genius of Jobs. It is this philosophy that makes him the spiritual guru of technology; an embodiment of the entrepreneurial spirit. In the ultimate analysis, one realizes that he had a natural gift to reach out to the everyday individual in the global market. It is believed his inventions popularized the phrase “killer apps”.


The Apple Store in a way is the ‘Mecca’ of the young and the old alike. I always felt I would miss out on the latest tech happenings if I missed visiting an Apple Store during my visits to London and New York. During my visits, I thought the look on the face of several visitors gave one the impression that they had come to visit Steve Jobs!! While this may be an exaggeration, in a way it sums up the ambience at the store. At the core of Steve’s genius lies the fact that his product was one you could use in your everyday life. He touched an emotional chord in millions of us. Jobs was a multi-faceted diamond.

Death has no logic. I dare say, so do the events in the life of a genius like Steve Jobs. It is being debated in some quarters what made Steve Jobs a huge cult hero. Was it his upbringing, the beliefs and values of his adopted Jewish parents Clara and Paul Jobs, or was it his Syrian-American genes? Was it his spiritual experiences at the Hare Rama Hare Krishna temple or was it his meeting with the holy sage at Varanasi, India? Such debates will continue. However, there is no denying the fact that history will respect and record that Steven Paul Jobs is the ‘New Age Mahatma’.