open the mind

Another weekend and another bunch of movies seen.

When you have a national level swimmer in the house, parenting becomes a little difficult.  You Want her to do well but you also don’t want too much pressure while she does well. For many years at home we never did have a TV and when we did, we sure as well never had the cable TV connection. TV never did make anyone smart. Now we have the chromecast and we watch some sporting action like a few IPL matches, some international cricket matches and we are waiting till we get through to the kabaddi season. That would be fun. Now that Jispa has figured how to download, we watch a few movies as well.

I see how the TV on demand and the mobile phone is spoiling our habits at home. Before we had time so, we went out, read books, magazines, slept, talked etc. But now, the mobile is eating away so much of time of the family. I absolutely positively hate it. Mobile for me evolved as medium for office work. Hence most of the time when I am at home, I keep the mobile away. In the middle I found myself addicted to FB. Now I kept the icon out of the home screen and hence I hardly have anything to do on the phone. Games as well are completely boring for me. So, my mobile usage is limited to browsing Instagram at times, window shopping at other times and checking on my FB feed when I post something. Since I post quite infrequently, that too is not an issue. I understand that tech is important to be given to these kids but a mobile phone is too much of a risk. We have given her a mobile phone and now an always on data connection but we are always vary of how she uses it and more importantly HOW MUCH she uses it. At first she went crazy and we lost her while walking, while in the car, while on the bed, while eating… but we have successfully pulled her back.

I had a chat with her. I had to explain that yes, while I understand that she uses the mobile often and it quite a necessity, but it’s a complete waste of your time while you are on vacation. Right now, she is training for the Nationals. He priority is swimming, eating, resting, reading and watching movies. Things that she can’t do the rest of the year. Watch movies as much as you want and read. Keep the mobile off limits, don’t respond, don’t check your whatsapp, keep the notifications off.

After a nice conversation, things seemed to have turned. Also, while chatting with her I got her interested in a few books that I thought might be interesting to her. I used the right words in pitching the book. I told her these books are highly seditious literature. Seditious. What does that mean. Look it up, I said. Sedition: conduct or speech inciting people to rebel against the authority of a state or monarch. That’s all our young rebel needed to get interested.

I see a streak of rebellion n her. I think she is an independent minded individual who is prone to thinking differently and takes pride in being different. Some of it can be blamed on us and me in particular, but I think this is a lot of what she is possibly from inside of her. She has a rebellious streak in her. And unlike me, she isn’t that overtly aggressive. She has a very pleasant nature and an ability far beyond her age to see reason and at times – the futility of an argument. But yes – a very interesting rebellious nature and a healthy disregard for authority, or let’s say, not blindly subservient, while remaining within the boundaries of law. But whatever, I did play on this nature a bit and got her interested in books that question the current state of governance as we see it. It helped that the first of such books was a book called ‘Curfewed Nights’ by Bashrat Peer. Thanks to Jispa learning about Hamlet, we saw the brilliant Indian Bollywood version of the same called, Haider. This was co-written by Bashrat Peer and a lot of his experiences while growing in Kashmir were shown in the movie. It is quite a lovely book and an excellent insight in to the mind space of a Kashmiri growing up under the rule of the gun. After the insurgency in Kashmir, the armed forces have dominated the space and to grow up in your own land and be constantly under the threat of a gun (from both sides) can be quite a bit of a stress filled childhood. The book is an excellent read for a young kid growing up to an understanding of the nation state and the resultant tensions that are in built in it. It is an interesting perspective. Nest I gave her ‘Hello Bastar’, which talks about the rise of the Naxalite movement in Bastar. Another book, where the people feel let down and dominated by the ruling nation state and where the people feel like subjects and not citizens. It is only recently that I realized the difference between the concept of the subjects of the nation and the citizens of the nation. The third in the line of books that she read in the miniseries is Gilani’s ‘My days in Prison’. This editor of a Kashmiri newspaper was falsely incarcerated in prison for a year or so, and the book recounts his case and his experiences bordering from the comical to the incredulous. The fourth in the series which she picked up but was unable to close read as it was a little boring for her was – “Until my freedom has come: the new Intifada in Kashmir.”

In the last 15 odd years, I have read like crazy and I have preserved all the books in only one hope; Jispa will read it. There is also the thing that some day I might refer to them again, but the real big reason is simply for Jispa to read it. My hypothesis is simply that if I surround Jispa with books at arm’s length, and good books, then she would have read enough to expand her horizon at a younger age. Compared to her, at her age I was a dumb piece of shit. I started reading only about 14 years ago, and she is 14 now.

But however – I am so happy that she is reading these books. That she is expanding her horizon and that she is understanding and appreciating these books. Many people have asked me that when you read so much how do you remember? It’s just not possible to remember so much, or is it? Nopes. It’s not possible to remember so much. In fact, for me, even if I remember one small thing from every book I read, however small, just one itsy bitsy thing, then I think I have done well. I have forgotten the names of the books I have read and in many cases, I have forgotten the contents of the books. But that is not the reason you read books. In the long run, I have realized that the most important by product of reading a variety of books, especially by good thinkers, is that you get to learn a new, better, smarter way to think. You are not easily influenced by arguments but have understood that there is duality of opinion and interpretation of truth. You realize that as times change, beliefs change, people change we are influenced by many factors that beyond us. This simple understanding of the world view helps us shape our thinking and that is more important than anything else. A shape change in the thought puts your brain into another orbit altogether and that is hard to measure when you are reading books. These changes come slowly but surely. They seep into the crevices of your cranium, helping you structure thought and conversation. This is the invaluable effect of reading tons of books and meeting tons of people. I am so happy that Jispa is now reading these books and not some shit fiction. I hate fiction. I understand that a person must read some fiction, fiction that is beautifully written. But to read mostly fiction and that too pop fiction is disastrous. This way you not read useless stuff, but you also waste the time to talk interact, learn and shape thought and behavior.

Possibly I am doing the wrong thing. Fiction is also by itself lovely for people who love it. It gives meaning to them. But I can’t help it. I see it as utter total crap, and I can only teach what I believe in. this is what I believe in. So Jispa – I am really sorry. I don’t know what I have possibly done. Have I treated you wrongly and possibly guided you in a direction that wasn’t your own to discover. I really don’t know. All I know is what I know. I know what gave me joy and what gave me happiness. Not knowing a God gave me happiness, reading non fiction gave me happiness, playing sports gave me happiness, spending time with family gave me happiness, hugging my loved ones gave me happiness. I think fatherhood is all about transferring my source of happiness to you. I also realise that it’s about allowing you to find your own happiness. I have been accused in the past of being over bearing, being too big a personality for your own good. While I have always protested that I have given you freedom, I also realise that as a personality I might have been far too big for your own good. I guess it cuts both ways. You also get the benefit of all that I know but you probably miss out on discovering your world on your own for now. Possibly this will last till you are 18. Then possibly you are on your own. Possibly and hopefully you wont need my personality or lean on me.

This blog is to serve that purpose itself. To allow you to lean on my thoughts at your own pace. Read it when you want, sit behind and reflect, think through. Possibly you will have kids nad you will have choices to make yourself. Possibly you will have bad bosses and you will have to face some music when you don’t want to. Possibly you want to read stuff and understand stuff, more than what you already know. There are a lot of possibilities on what you may want to do. These  blogs are a way of me being there for you at the pace you want me to.

With a family history of heart trouble, my mortality is not lost on me. I am well aware of this. A good insurance cover, a gymkhana membership, a home and a blog. I am content that if death stares me in the face, I would have done most of what I could have done to ensure that you and Jasmine are good for period in which you can set up your own lives. This is important to me. This what I strived for all my life. Live enough to manage.

Now life is at an interesting stage. I have achieved a basic security that can set you guys up. I have just another 3 to 4 years before you are independent and I wonder what I will do and what Jasmine will do. Sit and do some gardening? Some investing? Some consulting?

It’s very important for life to have some purpose. Wake up in the morning have something purposeful to do. Right now – I am between jobs and I haven’t been busier. I am meeting people, packing my day, doing things, writing blogs (long ones), consulting for friends, advising and everything else. It’s been a hectic time out if it were. Having a purpose is so important.

In fact on the other side – having a purpose has become so important to me that even a game of badminton serves a purpose for me. A purpose to have no purpose. As my very dear friend Sonal Shah tells me – Jaimit – you need to relax that brain of yours. She is right. I need to.

But I cant. My brains work all the time. Even while sleeping. While eating, while playing. They are constantly trying to decipher, read, understand, make notes, store notes – everything.

Sometimes I feel this is just the thing that I want to pass onto to you – an ability to constantly learn from everywhere/ everything. But at the same time, this is what I don’t want to give you – a mind that’s never at ease. You should get your mom’s temperament, a sense of stability along with my analytical brain with all its chaos. This would be an amazing reconciliation of opposites.

There is a lot to learn from your mom, you know. I learnt so much. Of course when you grow up together there is an obvious lot of things that both learn from each other. The biggest thing I learnt from her is to give and to love every one. I used to call her Florence nightingale as she would go out of her way to help someone. I wondered if that was good and that she would be doing it my cost. But over the period of time I realized that defined who she is and then on – it started defining who I am. Funny nah. There is a lesson in here somewhere. What is the lesson? Sometimes you don’t need to spell it out completely. Life is full of stories and lessons are something you drive from them.

These blogs have a lot of lessons, but they are mine, not yours. You have to just listen to the stories and listen to the lessons I have learnt but the stories are clearly the more important part. Within the lessons, the important part is how a story affected me and drove home a lesson for me. The lesson by itself is always impossible to understand by simply listening to someone else. That’s why you can get morals from Aesop’s fables or Panchatantra stories but you can’t really get life lessons from there. These you get through a few hard knocks on the head. Then the stories suddenly will have a different meaning for you.

So that’s the reason to write this blog. The happy side effect is clarity of my own thought, and an ability to write which I think the blog has honed. It’s funny how meaning this blog has given me and how much joy. Writing this is time well spent. Reading it? I have no clue. That is something that you have to say after 20 years. Was this worth it? Did this have insights, did this have stories, did you get entertained, did you learn something, did it inspire you, was it useful as a pick me up? What I think, rather I hope, is that this blog someday should be like a Holy Book of sorts. With all its varied writing and time scale, you should be able to pick up any part of the blog at any time and read anything, in whatever mood you are in and find some thing – something that you are looking for or not. Its like soul food, and to the religious its like the book to find answers. When you are searching for something, you will see answers in everything, from the bizzare to the mundane. This blog can possibly be that. Everything you want it to be. Now that’s own grandiose reason to blog. What are you writing? I am writing my bible with all idiosyncrasies and my narcissisms and my observations. I am writing my bible.

Coming to which – since I haven’t ever taught you religion – I never found any use for it till I read a very interesting book – Connected by Nicholas Christakis. The book started really bad and I wondered if I could ever finish it. But I stuck around as it kept explaining what I thought to be obvious. The book at first was simply giving scientific evidence for something that was known to us all – th epower and the ways on how social networks function. One interesting point he made which was my “I told you so” moment was when he was explaining that in one study, female alcohol consumption made everyone’s alcohol consumption go up. This is something that I have always warned all my girlfriends against. I have argued that you must not drink with your husbands. Both of you must never drink together. And you guys must never ever have alcohol at home. Have simple rules like – never drink alone, never drink together with each other (if one drinks the other stays dry) and stuff like that. To my mind when women drink all hell breaks loose. No – not that I am a male chauvinist or a feminist – I am simply being a pragmatist who has seen things happen when women drink. The way society is structured is that women hold the seat of moral authority and restraint in our society. They stop excesses and they stop breakdown of values we want to hold dear. They hold us to our thoughts and our own restraints. We men hold the seat of power and at best we have whimsical restraints put on women. Hardly ever we have too many moral constraints. We tend to get away. With more women entering the workforce and taking the traditionally male seat, the women seat is getting vacant. No man will ever sit there for now and the emptiness has a danger of leading to anarchy. When women drink, men think its ok to drink more. If women drink, men think its ok to drink everywhere and often enough. They feel it’s completely ok. From there rises addiction and dependence, and from there rises trouble. I have been lucky, early enough Jasmine was this constraint and I never did end up drinking. Now I have seen enough trouble being caused by drinking and I shudder to even touch the bottle. Keeping drinks at home creates another catastrophe – now you signal that any day is good enough and any occasion and lack of thereof is good enough to stay and drink. And this is the signaling you do to your partner and more dangerously – you do to your child. I have told so many girlfriends of mine – drink as much as you like – but think a hundred times before you have booze at home. This is now crazy madness potential. You are now courting trouble that can snowball out of control. But finally now I have scientific study that says simply – “the Framingham social network reveals that drinking behavior clusters to three degrees of separation, as do smoking and obesity. But the flow of influence does not pass through equally – instead, drinking appears to be greatly influenced by women. If a woman starts drinking heavily, both her male and her female friends are likely to follow suit. But when a man starts drinking more, he has much less effect on either his female friends or his male buddies down at the bar. It is not clear why this is so, but it suggests that women are the key to the spread throughout the network, and they may therefore be the key to successful interventions”

So, as you read – the study doesn’t give reasons. The reasons I wrote are my own assumptions. But there is a clear case of cause and effect. That itself was important to me in this case.

Another brilliant analysis that the book then wrote was on the importance of religion in the social network. That if man is a social animal then religion is a natural result of our social skills. This was a crazy revelation for me and I never did think of it in this way.

 He says – “One way to make social networks stable is to arrange them so that everyone is connected to a node that can never be removed” This line in itself has far deeper meaning than everything else. He then continues “There would then be a short path from each person to every other person through this particular node. But even the most popular person in a society could not fill this role, since, realistically, a single individual cannot be connected to absolutely everyone. And even if someone could be connected , the effect on the network would not be permanent because humans are mortal.

But considerations do not apply to God. If God were seen as a node on a network, large groups of people could be bound together not just by a common idea but also by a specific social relationship to every other believer. People could perceive a specific social tie to others, and everyone would be one degree removed from everyone else. People who felt a connection to God would have a way of feeling connected to others, because through God everyone is a “friend of a friend”.

He then writes – “A key function of religion, in other words, is to stabilize social connections. Investigations of the fundamental ways in which the mind works further support this idea. For example, functional MRI studies show that during religious feelings and altered states of consciousness, the parts of the brain that regulate the sense of self in time and space actually STOP FUNCTIONING (emphasis mine).  This contributes to the sensation that “all are one” and may help us overcome a built-in rigidity in the way we perceive our position with respect to others. In essence, the brain is fooled into believing that social boundaries do not exist or, equivalently, that everyone is connected to everyone else. Thus, people who would be willing to do something to help their friends suddenly have many more friends and may be more motivated to act on their behalf. In this way, a religious movement can bring together disparate groups of people to achieve a common goal, from caring for the poor to building great structures to, alas, launching war of rival groups.”

This is crazy deep stuff. But so obvious in hindsight. It shows that no book is wasted. Stay in there, be invested, you never know what you get. Religion is a natural consequence of social fabric and a need (basic, primal and genetic) of human. In other words, we are hardwired for religion and God. That’s why we personify him, give him emotions and thought and hence connect with us all as easily as possible. Now everyone in a given religion, is imply one friend away from each other. In democracy, this God is the constitution that everyone swears allegiance to. And the world – possibly it is the common world trade agreement that we sign off on. Now everyone within a trade agreement is simply connected to each other by one step. Leading to greater prosperity, greater harmony, greater peace. No two nations entrenched in trade go to war. Wow this is a crazy a-ha moment. Now religion for me has moved from a blind useless structure designed to subdue, control and restrict to a form of a need that enables harmony, common agreements and connections, leading to greater prosperity for all. Wow. Wow. Wow. The more we agree to the book of common law and common rules for trade and prosperity the less will be the impact of The Lord!

This is crazy Aha.

Not that I am turning religious – but it now gives me meaning to understand other people’s religious dispositions. And not arrogantly blame them or judge them for being religious, after all, they only have their genes to blame. So now by cutting religion from my life and from Jispa’s life as well, we have possibly robbed a strong pool of connections from which to leverage out of. But it isn’t so easy. Once a Jain, always a Jain. You cant get yourself extricated from this that easily. So, in effect she now has two pools, the Jains and the atheists, and with some convenient jugglery – Hindu. But what a revelation this book has been in this one sense. That’s the great thing about reading so many books, disparate books, different topics and different issues.

Read Jispa read. That is what makes me alive. And you – you also have the gift of being able to listen to music. Music refused to be listened to by me. It never did give me any great meaning. You now have audio, video and written word. Hey – that’s an awesome thing going for you. Now, seriously, now I am jealous. Your parents turned out pretty decent after all, at least so far, well… in some respects, largely, hopefully, probably…assumedly, ok fine… we will wait and see.

Last update – the book that she is reading now is ‘behind the beautiful forever by Kathrine Boo. This is also of a bit seditious book… evil snigger.

shopping list merges with the bucket list

One more item off the bucket list.

Recently after our home was redone with a lot of thinking and effort from Jasmine and me (Jispa’s inputs as well). Afterwards Jasmine is on a project to clean up each of cupboards. The big one she left at the end was the one in which the books are kept. That is one massive thing to do. Slowly but surely she removed all the books and placed them on the side. We then classified all the books and then started putting them in the cupboards. This gave me a chance to look at all the books that I had bought and read before the advent of the kindle. I don’t want to part with these, partly because of ego, partly because I think that I might need them again and partly because I think that Jispa might one day read a few of them. This time around some shitty books I definitely threw away, but they did not number in double digits. Yesterday while I was giving them to Jasmine as she put them inside, I told her “you know, some of these books are really bad” as I handed her Warren Buffet’s insipid and devoid of any insight autobiography. “I can throw at least a third of the. They are that bad. What say?”. Jasmine nodded and then answered “while we still have space, keep them. When we don’t have space, we will see”.  That was a significant endorsement from Jasmine on all the books that I have kept over the years. More than anything she knows what these books mean to me, from whichever perspective.

While rearranging the books, I came across quite a few titles that I did not read then and I relooked at them. Many a times, the book can wait till its time has come. Just because you don’t find it interesting at the time does not mean that the book loses meaning. It simply means that possibly the timing was not right. It like bosses. No boss is mean in an absolute sense, it’s just that you and the boss haven’t reached a tuning that is conducive to working together. Yes, it can be the bosses fault at many times, but at a core level it’s a question of tuning. Or in the case of books, a question of timing. In my life, there have been so many books that have worked for me at a later time in life. So many times, that I have tried reading a book but have left it on the shelf only to rediscover it years later and get its importance. I was possibly just too naïve to understand it at the point. In any case, these books have taught me a lot and I have learnt (as I have always maintained) more to think in a certain way as opposed to really taking a point by point lesson from it.

Now that Jispa is much older, I am happy that some of my books are something that she finds some interest in.  Once she came for one of my lectures and she saw me talk about the book “why we buy”. Many times, people ask me, if there was one book that they should read from all the books that I have read in my life, one book that was the best ever, I reply without thinking “why we buy”. It is the single most amazing book that I have read about marketing in particular and management in general and is completely entertaining. The author has done nothing but observe people shop and then proceeded to write a seminal book on all his findings. How people shop, how they walk in stores, layout of stores, how people behave with children, men shoppers, women shoppers, babies etc. The lessons are simple. You observe and then you understand. Once you understand the answers are commonsensical to anyone. Marketing is just that. Using good research and solving issues you spot. This book also shows how shoppers around the world are similar, dads around the world are similar. We all behave in similar fashion if confronted with similar stimuli. In many ways shopping seems to be a genetically imbibed thing amongst all humans.

So, after hearing my lecture Jispa was pretty excited and wanted to read the book. She asked me for it. I promised her that when I climb up and rearrange the books, I would keep an eye for it and get it for her. This was the opportunity I was waiting for and I removed it for her, along with a few more books. She started reading it and we started discussing it. Then one night as she getting to bed, I showed her a trick that I often do with this book.

I started flipping through it and asked to stop me at a random place. Then I would randomly start reading any paragraph. The book is so dense and full of insights that any random para starts making sense. You don’t need any context or build up. It just makes sense. So, I read it to Jispa as she was sleeping like it was a bed time story. She would suddenly say stop while I was flipping and I would read her a para or so. No discussion required, no understanding required, it just made a ton of sense.

What a lovely book and what a lovely moment for me. Reading a marketing book to my kid as she slept – that too the best book in my life – An item off the bucket list!