side nahi bola!

I see this cricket pitch marked out on the ground near office. I really really miss playing cricket. Cricket was an important part of life. It mattered to me. Playing cricket mattered. It taught me so much about life and about leadership and about the qualities of men! It taught me about playing to your strengths, field and to the strength of you team. Right now I am playing badminton. It’s an interesting sport as well. But it’s nowhere near a team sport like cricket. Here you play to your partner’s strength. The big learning is that you have no option but to trust your partner and pray they play to their strengths. You keep encouraging them and keep giving them tips and hopefully your partner encourages you and keep giving you tips. Cricket on the other hand has a complete huge team that you are playing in. as fielder you are on the move at all times. You are reading the game, the bowling, the batsman and you are trying to predict what is going to happen. When you bat you have to bat for yourself, your team, the score, the batsmen left, the bowlers bowling, who all are left… the complexities are enormous. That’s the reason that a captain is so important in cricket than any other sport. He takes decisions that can impact the game at every minute. Not taking a decision is also a decision. Letting the play drift a bit or speeding things up or sending the right person etc… A captain is almost the game! That’s why it’s a bug thing to be a captain in the Indian cricket team. He gets the best sponsorships and the big deals.

Of course galli cricket is never as complicated. You just go with the flow. In fact the captain’s job is only to win the toss and take batting first. People’s roles and positions are well marked out. Every guy has his pecking order in his brain. Everyone knows who is the best batsman and what is your rank relative to him. So you know before hand whether you will get to open or go one down or where you are going to field or if you are going to be given a bowl. Over time holy cows get established and no captain dare change the holy cow. At best sometimes a little shuffle happens and a little innovation happens but largely everything is set in stone. If the big opener is asked to sit in and go one down, it could cause a huge uproar… but only from that guy. The rest will only be happy to oblige and get first batting. The toss also has a strategic significance. It is extremely crucial to win this toss. This determines the entire game in galli cricket. It is a very simple rule at the core of it. You try your best to win the toss. Because if you win the toss - you bat. Simple. Any captain who wins the toss and fields will get removed from the captaincy. Of course – the team decides the captain. Hence the poor captain in this case is answerable to the team itself. Now the strategic answer to the reason why we bat first – always… its simple you only field for how much you have batted. You bat first, score as much as you want and then you field only that much. Everyone in galli cricket wants to bat. Bowling is a chore and fielding – the greatest boredom known to man. It is quite often that the entire team will get out for a paltry score in single digits. Then the batting team is even more ecstatic. This mean they got their batting, got out and now you don’t even have to field for long. Such are the travails of galli cricket.

In Mumbai galli cricket as the name suggests is played in the gallis – streets. The pole or the wall or a cardboard would be the stumps and one the other side is typically a stone. The topography of Mumbai dictates the rules of the game. The aunty who is ready to stop the game will have her wall  direct shot being given out. So the rules are complex – if you hit the wall one bounce or more – it’s a boundary. If you hit the ball full toss on the wall – it’s a six. But if by chance you hit the ball full toss outside the wall – oops – you are out. In fact most of the time the batsman wil drop everything and start running if he hit a shot too good for anyone else. He better run fast and search for the ball or else the game will simply stop. Other weird rule start coming into action depending on the game. Certain places you get declared runs, certain times LBW is not out, some times there is no stumping, wide has one run or simply a reball and so on. The wide and LBW are the most contentious ones, as they depend completely on judgment and there is no real metric to this. Since the umpire is almost always that of the batting team, the scales are always loaded in favour of the batsman. Hence it makes sense to nullify this for all. No LBW and a wide is simply a chance to ball again without the run penalty. The other fights happen over run outs and catch behind – those are the worst. They result in huge fights as it gets tight.

But the best is when your own batsman is struggling to score at the crease. Here your own team will boo you and in extreme cases the captain, keeping the team spirit as the primary motivation, declares the batsman out. He gets his own batsman back. You can get out, you can hit a bad shot, you can do anything but you do not ever waste balls and make the game boring. Everyone wants excitement. Running between the wickets is also a fun thing. if the two guys have a great chemistry then you can keep running or else, more often than not, you get to witness the most comical of run outs. The most amount of run outs will happen when you will see both batsman stuck on the same crease. One guy will run, the other guy will respond and then realize that it’s not working and then he rushes to beat his own partner to the crease so that the other guys run out. It crazy – because then the both team members will start fighting on the pitch itself, bats will be thrown and the choicest abuse will be hurled while the fielding team will be laughing their guts out. You get the best laughs in these comical situations. The only worry here is that if the fight snowballs and the batsman walks out and goes home – the game could end. Especially if he is the one owning the bat. You never piss off the owner of the bat or ball. NEVER.

I remember one other weird one during the summers. When the game went on in the morning or evening and you were thirsty – you go anywhere but your home to drink water. If you went home then invariably your mom would ask you come back home and then you are doomed. So you never go home to drink water. You always ask a friend.

The funnies of cricket:

Many times you play full catch both hands allowed and one bounce only one hand allowed

Run out on the bowler end is by touching the stone with your leg and catching the ball or by hitting the stone directly.

A half line is drawn across the pitch for knowing which end to throw to get the last man run out if you bat without runner. Otherwise a runner is used on the other end who cant bat.

Sometimes a joker is used if there is an odd number of players. He plays for both the teams but he can’t go in to bat till all the batsman are out and most of the time he cant bowl. He is largely the wicket keeper.

 And the most irritating rule that umpires of the batting team love – if you bowled with out specifying the side you bowled, then it’s a no ball. So basically before bowling you will walk up and tell the umpire – right arm over the wicket – and bowl – otherwise it’s a no ball – side nahi bola!

world war in a bottle!

I am sitting outside in office these days and I have a new best friend. The youngest member of the team is a guy born in 1992. Wow. That is young. To put things in perspective – he was born after Manmohan Singh started liberalizing the country and born a good one year after I started college. That also makes him born after I met Jasmine. Age - after a  point of time is very funny. We are old. I am Uncle. When some entrepreneur friend talks to me – I think it’s my experience that he is after.

So this boy here is right now soaking everything I say like a sponge. I explain stuff to him and he tries to understand it. He googles stuff, learns and then thinks. He tries to ask questions and I am more than happy to teach. I can teach forever. Just yesterday I had gone to the supermarket near my house and bought a lovely French jam (the pack says preserve). Whatever. When Jispa was much younger we tried buying the normal Indian main stream jam that was available. Soon Jispa stopped eating it and we had to finally throw or give it all away. This kid hated jam. But I then later realized that it wasn’t her fault. Our jam is crap. There is no fruit in it. It basically sugar, pectin, color and flavor. Just to call it fruit jam they put some fruit pulp in it. It is crap. So we now buy these jams which have at least 50 percent fruit content in it. It tasty and nice and flavorful.

So when I bought this bottle yesterday, my young neighbor asked me what it is that I have bought. I explained to him that this is World War 2 in a bottle. The second world war was fought outside of eth Americas. I think only one Japanese bomber managed to bomb the mainland (Nobuo Fujita). Fujita later made several goodwill visits to the place of his bombings and was later declared an honorary citizen of the area in US. Really a lovely story. http://www.nytimes.com/1997/10/03/world/nobuo-fujita-85-is-dead-only-foe-to-bomb-america.html Though it seems there have been a total of five attacks on US in WW2 read this interesting link, http://www.history.com/news/history-lists/5-attacks-on-u-s-soil-during-world-war-ii . The most curious of them all is the fire balloons. Ww2 is full of interesting history and the limit (or lack of thereof) of the human mind in the face of crisis. The fire balloons were thought of by the Japanese. The idea being simple. The Japanese realized while flying that there was a current of air flowing towards American mainland at high altitude from Japan known as the jet stream. So someone thought of putting bombs on balloons that would be carried away by the current and drop on the mainland. It required some clever science and engineering as the day temperature and the night temperature would be different and the hydrogen balloon would need to be at a constant altitude to reach across the ocean. So they put in place altitude meters that would drop the sand bags to gain altitude and a valve to release hydrogen to loose altitude, and finally a mechanism to release the bomb in roughly three days by which time it should have been roughly over the mainland. Very very cute and clever. They released 900 of them with the expectation that 900 of them will reach America.  Around 300 of them were spotted and the rest seemed to have landed in the vast open areas causing no damage. Only one incident has been reported where 6 people were killed thanks to the balloon. They were largely ineffective. The funniest part was that the Japanese made the balloons from a paper made from mulberry bushes and they had to be glued together using edible glue called konnyaku. The poor and hungry Japanese workers used to eat the paste while making the balloons. Hehehe. This is the reason I love WW2. It’s full of interesting anecdotes and insights into the craziness of human mind in the face of severe hardship and stress.

So largely the mainland America was unaffected by the war. The war for them was fought on a different front altogether. They had to cross the seas, thousands of miles away and fight. Their supply chains extended across continents. Unlike the Europeans. These guys fought the war in and around the home land. They fought the war in their backyards and in their cities. They fought in in their farms. So the US industry grew around making canned products which essentially were soft and reduced to a calorie and taste devoid of all texture. The Europeans retained the texture in their food as they did not have an industry set to mass produce canned products.

As Indian poor grew a little richer they began to have demand. This demand was essentially fulfilled by big firms trying to give a ton of calories at the lowest possible cost. They turn to the American model. Reduce anything to the lowest common denominator, remove all semblance of texture and make it easy to swallow. I have written about this – the favorite foods are Maggie noodles, pasta, margarita thin crust pizzas and cream biscuits. Nothing with texture.

So when I was asked about this preserve bottle, I was actually explaining about WW2. After such an explanation there was no way I was going to get home without opening the bottle and sharing with everybody. So I ordered for bread  from the pantry (sadly it was the simple white sliced soft loaf) and gave jam sandwich to all. I asked them to feel the texture. The berries, the seeds, the rough edges to the jam. They all loved it. I was amazed that all of them very so surprised to taste it and they did not realize what crap they were eating all this while. I then got the normal kissan jam bottle from the pantry and opened it and asked them to smell that. Yuckkk… I think I permanently spoiled normal jam for them. Good for them. I am introducing the play of texture for them in their mind even for while eating a humble jam.

Here – who would have known that between these two bottles lies the history of war conflict and countless suffering. Just dig in and enjoy the smell, the texture and the taste.

travel woes

Off days and on days. Today morning was an off day. Yesterday I did a morning evening Delhi trip. Obviously I was off color at the badminton court today. I hate flights and I hate travelling. I find travelling in flights very very depressing. I can’t think of a worse thing than a lonely flight. And to add to all this – the cumbersome checking in process and the entire experience. First thing is that you have to reach one hour in advance. Then you have to get your security check done. Why is that there is always a line for the security check. Why can’t airports build for scale  and capacity? I think boarding a flight must be done as painlessless as possible. I book online and then I get my seat online and then I just simply walk in to get zero lines. All check-ins must be open across airlines. Why do you need dedicated counters. This is an absolute waste of space and resources. Just let the airport authorities check you in on their systems. No line and a 30 second check in. Then you proceed to security which is another 30 second check in and then board the plane. The plan has strict door open and door close timings. Suppose I have RFID tags for my luggage and on me, then I don’t even need tickets or check in information. These tags will allow me everything. Entry / exit everything. Simple. Then you just reach the airport and, boom you board in 10 minutes max.

Of course the airports have really improved over the years. Now you have nothing short of a five star experience in most airports. The loos are those you can go in, even for the big stuff. I remember five years ago, I was coming from Delhi and suddenly I had a really bad bout of diarrhea and vomiting. Really really bad. I went to the airport loo at least 4 to 5 times. Extremely tough. I remember thinking only one thing – wow – at least these loos are really clean. It was so bad that I puked just before boarding and then once on the flight. Thank god for air sickness bags and then once just as I landed, I ran into the loo for one final time. Crazy crazy time. Also the number of loos have gone up. Otherwise  there was invariably a line whenever you get off the plane. Now most airports are large and lovely. At the Mumbai Airport I even noticed a family bathroom. A larger room with enough space for a small family. Perfect if you have babies and you need help with both parents doing their bit. Also the airports have enough seating, wifi, shops and eating places. Some airports have a better array of shopping than others. I think shopping and eating are important entertaining points for travelers. Of course along with TVs. With sports and news being broadcast 24x7 there is never a shortage of entertainment. I think now they should install large screens beaming sports. That would be one huge plus for travelers. The other point where the travelers would rate you highly -  keep a large section for discounted brand outlets. People will go crazy. For some reason people think that airline travelers have tons of money and therefore everything is highly priced. You only get expensive brands. My view is the opposite. These travelers are completely bored and need some entertainment. Cheap prices will induce them to binge beyond what they would have normally wanted to and boom – you will have people coming in and carrying off cartloads of stuff. Pile them high and sell them cheap. The first guy who gets this will make tons of money. And brands can always have a sale at airports as people don’t travel so often to airports. It’s not on a call for most people, except idiotic business travelers who do a morning evening to a city.

But still nothing can be done about the stupid airline seats. We want them cheap and the only way seems to be packing us like cattle into the aircraft. What a pain. And when you take flights from Delhi and you have an idiot who just likes to take more arm space than is legitimately his. Why does that always happen on Delhi flights? I hate the hand sticking and hence when I travel by flight I ensure I am wearing a full sleeves shirt. At least you don’t feel iky pushing the a-holes hand back into his seat. I pity the women travelers here.

If I am ever rich or in a position to dictate, one thing is for sure – I will strive for business class for travel. It makes the travel much more bearable. Good seats on flights are a huge thing. Vistara has just started for the first time in India the concept of premium economy. I have to get around to checking out how this works. They seem promising at least in the leg space provided. I think it costs around 30% more. I genuinely believe that if an employee comes back same day then its only humane to offer that choice to the employee. But then… I think moment I become a position of authority I think I will get all completely corrupt in the head and see only cost. Benefits be dammed. I don’t know why this happens. I think the best of intentions go crazy when one is in power. I struggle every day to remain reasonably stable in dealing with my band. To keep saying that these kids are good and you have to trust them. People will behave funnily and in ways you don’t want them to. I have noticed that when I am in office till late, invariably the band is in office till late. When I am gone early, the band has left early. Is it that I keep them late, is it my doing, or is it a psychological response. I don’t know. We corporate types are designed to be complete jerks.

But nevertheless – travelling is a pain. Especially alone. If there is someone alongside it makes for much better journeys. I realized it especially when I was travelling to London. With my family next to me even the arduous 8 hour flight was completely bearable. Alone is impossible. That’s why Kolkata is never on the radar! And with airports being so far away from the city it is another one hour of travel to be added at the bear minimum. So catching a morning Kolkata flight is the greatest torture known to travelkind. And if by mistake you are travelling to Bangalore then you better budget for traffic jams at peak hours. Oh dear oh dear… I so hate travelling alone. I abhor it. I hate it, I don’t like it, I don’t want to do it. But….

why the age of ultron is the age of Jispa

I remember when Jispa was little, she hated violent movies. She would cry if there were movies in which there was fighting or had cars blowing up. Her movies had to be very very clean. She cried in Finding Nemo and she hated me and hit me in the middle of the movie for taking her to watch Ratatouille. She only wanted happiness everywhere.

My big memory was of her waking up in the theatre while I was watching Die Hard 4 and she hated me for taking her. She refused to understand that I was only taking her as it was a late night movie and I was expecting her to sleep through it.

Then she grew a little more when she could watch these Disney movies with dragons and fire and everything else. Whew. I could finally watch a few movies. Recently I was so happy when this little kid got started on to the Superhero series.

I had first tried to get her interested in SpidermanI wanted to see the Spider man and to convince her that it was pretty cool, I got one of the Spidey movies home. It was the one with Tobey in it and was a largely cute version of the movie. Not so dark and but quite happy. She was ok and then when we went for the movie I realized that it was a new interpretation and there was enough conflict in the movie. It was dark and full of crazy violence. Spiderman comes home all bruised and hurt. She was not happy with me.

Suddenly in the last year or so she took up to watching the Avengers! Was it her cousin brother or was it the kids at school or what it was no one knows. But I am not complaining. I am enjoying this. She is now hooked on to the X men series as well. So now when the new Avengers movie is getting released, we have started a countdown to it. She is excited. Jasmine traditionally has been damp water on all these efforts of mine. She doesn’t care two shit about the super hero movies and she would only just about see it because I wanted to.

Hopefully this weekend I would be watching the movie with Jispa. Jasmine is pretty much optional on this one! Today Jispa seemed interested in watching sci fi movies as well. Now what more can a father ask for. There are tears in my eyes as I finally see my daughter grow up and enjoy the simple pleasures in life with her daddy!. Yahoo…

Watch this clip. If you feel the goosegumps you are it and if you don’t… well

growing growing ...

There is a lot of bull shit and child pschyology everywhere. I too believed in a lot of bull shit. There is only one truth. No one really knows anything. I have two three very close kids that I have seen up close and personal. Both these boys according to me have had not so great parenting. They should have been better read, better exposed and made to have sweat a little more. At least that was my egoistic view point. Both these boys have grown up to be amazing people. One nephew has become a boy that I like to talk with. I can converse, he understands and responds. Another boy took a job as a sales guy and by sheer hard work and persistence is climbing up the sales ladder. He takes charge of things in his hand and then attacks the work and gets it done. I like his drive and his dedication. I am impressed. Another hero grows up and reads and learns and grows well. Things change and they change fast.

I am now less and less worried about the real long term implications that we think are caused by our minute bits of parenting. I am sure  parenting makes a difference. Of course. A lot of fundamentals can get ingrained. Some dos and don’t get implanted but… they are also giving more importance than is due. So many kids fight their way on their own and mold their own destiny. I was asking Jasmine – “you know me since I was 15, haven’t I changed a lot?” Jasmine looked at me, thought for a bit and said “yes, you have”. People change. Circumstances force people to change. There are many ways to respond to change and in many ways ‘stressfull change’. Change is stressful and people don’t do it willingly, but people change. How many times can you get slapped for something? Life will keep slapping you again and again. After a point you stop making some mistakes, you grow up, you meet the Buddha in you and boom.. growing happens.

I love to able to talk to these kids. They teach me stuff I never knew. I understand much better when I chat with them and when I discuss with them. There is so much to learn. I understand their issues (I hope to), I get their perspective (again hope to) and I learn. Learning is forever constant and the best learnings are from those much younger to you or much older to you. The youth have so much to share and the old have so much to learn from.

But one thing is clear – I am learning form these guys only one thing. That no matter how much I know, I don’t know a thing. Things are different. Things change and people change. Possibly their cores remain constant. But you never know what the nuance of that core is. The way they exhibit some of that to you changes. And it could be just that little bit that changed it all as far as you are concerned. And when that happens – god only knows.

omnidigi

I don’t think people still get it. I have been trying to shout on the top of rooftops and to everyone I meet. Digital is going to eat your lunch and you don’t even know it. You idiot! There is digital everywhere and in meetings and interviews I stand out like an anarchist. In fact there were two such instances. Once at an important meeting with the super boss Uday, he turned around and asked us what is the future and how do we compete with our rivals. He swung around and asked me first. I think I destroyed the conversation soon by explaining to him that I didn’t care about our known competition. The broking industry is a shitty highly unimaginative and boring space. It’s easy to beat the shit out of your competition because here the people are boring unimaginative and highly lackadaisical. We sit on our laurels and reminiscence on the past days. Knowing that when the market turns the people have no choice but to come to us and invest. Bing bong… here comes the money.

So I looked around, my bosses, egged me on and told me to speak my mind. And I did. I told the gathering that the competition is going to come from some upstart app that will reach out and get the eyeballs and then suddenly one day it will put a buy sell button and we are all doomed.

At another forum, actually it was an interview with a large insurance firm, they ask me about my digital antecedents and boom – I get them all riled up with my ‘digital is all in’ theory. You can’t have half measures in digital. You have to be all in. You have to commit to it completely. Having one stupid digital product guy or having one digital marketing guy is not it. Digital is the mandate of the CEO. He has to commit to it knowing that there is no choice. It’s all in. only a fool would waste money on traditional activities. I look around me at all these other idiots and wonder what on earth is going on. Why cant people see the truth. And then I speak to all these guys from the digital industry, all these startups who are doing some great stuff and showing some real traction. They are loving this and the fact that the older entrenched guys are sitting on their heads and wondering what on earth is going on.

Look around me right now. I was explaining to Jispa that how the taxi business has changed completely. At first we had the simple black and yellows. We would always haggle with them, we would wonder where to flag them down and we would wonder how dirty they were and would wonder if we would get any in the morning. Then came the radio taxis. They came and challenged the status quo. You could book them in advance for a particular time. they came with airconditioning, uniformed drivers and were generally on time and reliable. Most of these guy’s revenues came from airport pick up and drop. I guess the guys who go to airports like the AC and want to keep their travel as airconditioned as possible. And then comes Uber service. No radio calling, no number, no office and hell… no taxis they own. They simply own the app on which you can check on the taxis nearby. No you cant book in advance. you simply start the app and  request for a cab. Strategy is often saying NO. they refuse to take cash. They only take a direct charge on your card. So you jump in and out of cabs without touching your wallet. When the RBI got in and said that’s not allowed… you need a double authentication at the time of payment, they simply tied up with an e-wallet and started doing what they do best. Get a ride without touching your wallet.

Look at all the side effects, the happy stuff. Now people will pay with digi money. All that money leaves a trail. And when you have a trail you can charge taxes. Taxes help people  come into the white and into the economy. Balance sheets get made and balance sheets mean access to credit, means means for growth and leverage. Leverage means more stuff can be consumed and hence produced. Its good for growth!

Digital is good. It Makes the economy more efficient and productive. It allows for boundaries of exit and entry to be removed. It allows for goods and services to reach all corners of society. I genuinely believe that digital will allow more people to grow out of their current situation. Its great.

Here is one type of example

It gives these people a shot at fame and success! They have an equal chance of grabbing your eyeball as Salman Khan. What more an equalizer do you want?

Here a bonus video once we talk about Salman Khan

an old boy's tale

My brother put his lovely old parsi cupboard in my garage. Well actually half of it is his garage and he kept it for ‘safe keeping’. Since both the garages are connected and in front of the building, the building idiots often take our garage for their community dinners. This time they took the cupboard and put it behind in a corner of the building. When my sis in law came to take it, she was shocked and so were we. Somebody had painted it white! Jasmine was sure someone was trying to flick the cupboard by painting it white. We raised a stink with the supervisor and he promised to get to the root of it.

I remember as kids we used to play in front of the garage space in the buildings. The garage that we were playing in front of was abandoned and in a mess.  Then one day on a mission – you know how kids are – we cleaned up the entire garage and threw the mess. It was awesome. Now we could play properly. Some idiot then promptly parked his car. So we bought some paint and wrote on the wall that parking your car is not allowed in here. Now that was something. We did not know whose garage it was and whose car it was… we just took charge. After a few weeks, the actual owner came in and then got inspired to put a gate there and was about to stop us from playing in front of his garage. Only timely intervention by his neighbor and a friend of ours who told him that we cleaned it in the first place allowed us to continue playing. It’s pretty stupid.

Back to the present. We later came to know that the kids painted the cupboard white. One of them apologized to me. I let him be. Kids… vandals…. Yesterday as I was parking my car when I saw this kid who came in and was opening the door of this cupboard. I asked him what he was doing. He said it was his cupboard. I argues with him that it was ours. He said ‘it is ours. We even painted it’. oh dear. This was a throw back  to the garage days. We just took ownership of the garage and took charge and cleaned it. these kids were doing the same  to our cupboard. They did not mean to vandalize. They meant to clean it. Oh dear.

It good that I remember my childhood. Of course I did not shout at them. But I did give them a smallish but cute lecture. I don’t want them in my garage. They scratch the cars… but its good that I remember J

Here is the legendary cupboard. they did try their best!

this too shall pass

No matter what. This too will pass.

Many years ago in my firm we had an ass who joined in who did not care too much about others and was just throwing his weight around. He believed that everyone reported to him and wanted to control everything. We had a few run in’s with him and my reportee had a dotted line reporting to this idiot. Dotted line reporting… that is the stupidest thing in the world. These corporates have these matrix structures. Made popular by the multinational companies, in which you have no clue who is really reporting to whom. So as the marketing head of the business you have a ‘hard line’ reporting to the business head but a ‘dotted line’ reporting to the marketing head of the group. Or in many cases it can be vice versa. No real boss who is responsible for you. With so many bosses and so complex structures, the challenge is to ask the question – who will take care and be responsible for you and your career. The answer – go figure. I think they cause too many issues than they really solve. I hope that someday when I can change the system or if I can put in a system, I will put in a clean and simple system.

But coming back. So that was a real ass and I remember that my colleague was completely stresses and then we complained to the boss. The boss was very understanding and told us that he would take care of it, but at the same time he told us that ‘ no matter how big the problem seems now, in a few years as time passes by the problem will seem very small. Then you will wonder what it was about the problem that looked so big at the time”. Those were wise words indeed. It’s really true. When you face issues they look huge and look insurmountable but over a period of time, they end up looking so small and insignificant. You wonder why you took so much stress in resolving the issues. Another boss told me a fable of a general who was suddenly in the bad books of the king and was about to be put to death. When eth king visited him the general was crying. He told the king that his only regret was not being able to teach the kings horse to fly. The king said that there was no such thing. The general assured him that in a year the horse would fly. The king gave him a grace of one year failing which he would be put to death again. When eth general went home, his wife confronted him saying that she knew that he was fibbing. At which the general said – relax my dear – one year is a long time. In one year – I might die, the king might die or the horse might die. One year is a long time.

That’s so right. one year is a long time. when shit hits the roof for me, I sit back and think a bit. What is it that I need to survive the next few minutes, hours or days. Relax. What’s the worst that can happen. Then I sit back and think through the steps and breathe. The complex decision tree gets done in my head till I reach a point that I know that my decision is this and then I have to wait and see. Then I sleep. Sometimes stress can disturb your sleep beyond imagination. I remember that as an idiot who did not really prepare for his exams in the final year of college, I had nightmares of getting a bad result. The worry was simple, I had a girlfriend whose family I had convinced that I was a super stud. And failing was a real no no. So I had convinced myself that if I fail then the pass percentage of the entire board would be 30 percent. So that was not happening. Then came the next mountain. I needed at least 50% in the aggregate so as to be eligible for the MBA  studies that I had sold to the world that I was going to do. That was crazy. I remember waking up and then calculating what is the bear minimum marks that I thought I would get in each subject and inputting those on the calculator to get the final score. I convinced myself that I would be there! I ended up with 62% - a first class!

Problems are around us every day and they create such a mess and get our BP high, they rob us of our appetite and our sleep. But the truth is simple dear lad – this too shall pass. This too shall pass. After all – one year is a long time J