gyan ka boon

“Do you have any time when you and the family are just chilling at home, doing nothing?” my boss asked me. That was a tough question.

It started pretty innocuously. There was a long weekend coming up and boss asked me, what my plans are for the weekend. Oh I was excited. The plans were pretty simple. I was meeting up some fitness experts for the kabaddi team. While I do my new job, i am also involved with the kabaddi team as a consultant. I am getting paid for it but largely its a job I doing as a favour for my old boss who owns the team. its run by the son of the big man. the BigMan who owns the bank i worked for is a great guy. He is sweet and largely fair. I owe a lot of my life to him in the end. After all i spent more than 14 years working for his firm. I see this as some way of repaying back to the family. Sure i worked for them and gave them growth and money but they have also been nice to me and repaid me back in many ways. Those 14 years have largely remained very happy and i can look back on it with a certain sense of happiness and accomplishment. So I couldn't say no, when the son wanted my help while he was studying for his management degree.

Also the fun bit is that I am connecting to sport thanks to this. I am able to help take kabaddi to a higher level and hopefully some of the athletes also benefit from this. When they go back with better techniques, better systems, better processes; it makes for a better sporting nation. But then thats easier said than done. these jokers are the typical stereotype of Big Moose. They want to eat a lot and work a lot.  One champion who is going to be our captain while signing with us was very clear. He said that he know what we did last year. We had a diet plan for the players. He said that kabaddi players don't need diet. They eat and play. He wants his sweets, his gulabjamuns, his rasmalais and the lot. Sure. As long as you play and perform - here eat this shit. Bum!

So I was meeting people over the week end and then i had to do some studies with my daughter and then something. So my boss looked at me and asked me “Do you have any time when you and the family are just chilling at home, doing nothing?”. Err. he got me thinking. I couldn't answer. When was the last time we were at home doing nothing? Then he laughed triumphantly - “there I got Jaimit quiet for the first time. Normally he always has some thing to say or some story or something or the other”. Well he is right on two counts - I am always with something to do or the other. My weekends are spent with family doing things or studying or watching movies or at friends or I am teaching or doing some consulting or working with other new startups. The second count - the amount i read or listen to podcasts or something, i always have something or the other to contribute to a conversation. Some story, some anecdote , some gyan. So much exposure helps me be a smarter person and I always try my best to spread what I know all around. I know sometimes it might be understood or interpreted as Smart Alec but hell - it goes with the territory.

So to take my last blog post forward - constant curiosity is what got me here. I am constantly curious. That with a pathologically ingrained desire to help others and spread word, makes me a weird character. learn a lot and spread a lot. Keep giving a lot of gyan. My wife has the most fun. She also calls me the gyan giver. She takes jibes at me for this. Every time she will ask me who did you give gyan to. I think she understands this nature of mine. She has seen me grow from an insecure dumb ass with a lot of verve to this avatar of mine. tons of understanding, gyan and connections. She is used to me meeting people at random places and in cities around the country. I think its a good thing. Will have to figure how it pans out in my life. But i think so far its been a boon rather than not.

Boss!

Now at this age with a 12 year old kid – you are definitely an “uncle’. You may not like it – but you are the uncle. But sometimes you can get elevated. And if the boys in your daughters class elevate you then you have done something that is a huge achievement.

A couple of weeks back Jispa was at a party. When we went to pick her up the kids were playing in the compound after the party. Jispa got into the car and then I decided to play a prank on the other kids. I told Jispa to watch the fun. I quietly moved my car next to the kids. There were a couple of girls from Jispa’s class whose back was to us. I suddenly revved up the engine and let out a sharp horn and braked. The boys simply looked up and the girls let out a scream and were completely scared. They almost dropped everything they had. In a few seconds the boys knew that this was a prank and were laughing their ass out. Then the boys – the naughtiest and the worst of them came up to my car. I rolled down the windows – we hi fived and then the boy screamed out – “ Uncle – BOSS”. That’s it. No body said – great prank, awesome prank, awesome idea, Great, cool or anything like that. For that fleeting moment – I was upgraded from Uncle to BOSS! On the other window another legendary naughty kidd, hifived and proclaimed me BOSS. What more can I wish for? I was no longer a simple Uncle, I was THE BOSS!

Another self gloating thing. Jasmine and Jispa have been at logger heads over studying. Hence over the last couple of weeks I took over. I learnt from last year that teaching her school is different from teaching at the schools I grew up with. we could simply study the notebook and come out of the exams with flying colors. I learnt that the text book is more important than the notebook. In fact they make it a point to ask questions outside of the notebook that tests your fundamental knowledge of the subject. So this time I have started with the text book and then moved onto the notebook. In English I did not even touch the notebook. More energies were focused on talking about the chapters. But the school likes to raise the bar. One chapter they have is on Prometheus and Pandora and her box. The story goes blah blah blah and Gods give Pandora a box to take to earth. She is advised by a well wisher not to open it. Curiosity gets better of her. She opens it to release suffering and other worries from the box and hence earth suffers from it. At the end – she hears a tiny voice from the box she tried to shut. There was hope inside. She then release hope as well as a balm to all suffering. The question she got in the exam was – why would Zeus put hope in the box when we wanted to send the box as a punishment for all mankind. Wow. Now that’s a nice question. Jispa rose to the occasion and answered – that zeus wanted mankind to suffer for eternity. So if there was only suffering and sadness, they would have fought and killed each other to the end, but hope gives them the courage to live on and then to suffer these for life – for always there will be hope. I was stunned. I would expected a humane answer like – finally he is a god and so he left hope so that his children bear the suffering. But Jispa’s take on it was that Zeus was unimaginably cruel or possibly a sadist. Hope kills you more than anything else in suffering. Hah! Amazing. I told her that it’s a great answer and if you have written it well enough – I don’t care if your teacher doesn’t like it. Nice one. She said – ya. I have always found these Greek Gods to be really cruel in all the stories.

I have read this story as a child and never saw this side of the equation. Why would you put hope ina  box meant to suffer. And a possible reason  as Jispa pointed out is not so altruistic. Possibly Jispa sees it because she does try to think differently, or is it possible because at home we are pretty agnostic towards God and religion. We don’t revere God at home. So she is not brainwashed into the undisputed benevolence of God. She questions his motives and sees him as such – She sees large swatches of black in his behavior. Very very Interesting. Very different from what I saw. I am impressed.

Another one on studying. Yesterday Jasmine called me at lunch. She asked me on Jispa’s science preparedness and if she could get by just reading through. I replied in affirmative. Jispa was done. After I put the phone down I was pretty happy. I was the BOSS. Normally it’s the dad asking mom if the kid is prepared for the exam. Not the other way around. That was the ultimate BOSS compliment!

So now I hope Jispa is really prepared for her exams. We have done it the right way. No mugging but understanding. Slowly and surely done the right way. I was then telling Jasmine – now whatever she gets I will be ok with the results because this is the right way to study – marks are of no consequence.

BOSS!

Bonus Really Bakwaas video:-

power here power there

What’s better than one good book? Simple – two good books. And when they seem to complement each other I truly enjoy the experience. While many times you get to read books that complement each other, very rarely do you get the chance to read them in quick succession. I was lucky recently.
I normally don’t pick Indian non-fiction, but I was lucky to pick two books by Indian authors discussing home grown Indian union issues. One was Curfewed Night by Basharat peer and the other was Hello, Bastar by Rahul Pandita. The first book is about Kashmir and the second is about the Moaist / Naxal movement in India.
I have learnt over many years that India is not the ideal democracy that we grew up believing it to be. The newspapers and the media are not really interested in showing any real side of the truth. The closest I seemed to have gotten to the truth has been thanks to the Tehelka magazine.
These two books, despite all their flaws in writing style are interesting in the fact that according to me they are courageously trying to unmask the government. There is a clear idea of two Indias. One is the urban shining India and the other is the rural India untouched by the growth and modernisation. These books are revealing that there is a third India, the oppressed, raped and pushed under the carpet India. This is the place where the government not only does not care but is actively involved in oppressing and raping its own populace.
When I was much younger I always wanted to join the army. The notion of patriotism had been drilled into my head. Not that it required much drilling by external parties. I managed to drill that into my own head by own will. I wanted to pick up arms and serve the country. That was dream that lasted till very late. Only tons of reading and understanding real stuff later made me realise the false bloated notion of the nation. I refuse to now honour and respect these man made lines.
As regards Kashmir, my first experience with it was as a child with parents visiting the paradise on earth. I don’t remember it being particularly beautiful as much I remember it being arrogant. A people who knew that the world wanted to see them. I then saw it as an adult in the year 2003, and I saw no progress in the intervening 20 years. I saw people shattered, their egos broken, the desperation writ large in their eyes. While I was able to put the two together, only after reading Basharat peer was I able to live the horrors of the people of Kashmir. We could naively say that Kashmir has only itself to blame but the atrocities of the Indian forces and the rape by the powers that be, have also massively contributed to it. While there might have been a fire we managed to really add fuel to it.
Jump to the Naxalite movement in India and you realise that it is nothing but a rebellion against the state that is busy pillaging our resources at the expense of the tribal livelihood. Oh god. It’s horrific on how we manage to do it.
These are also case studies on power. While its clear that for those oppressed the state is the culprit and for those in the comfort of modern air-conditioning the rebels are to blame, to my mind both are completely totalitarian regimes corrupted by power. It is both that extract their meat from the populace. The rebels who pick the gun are reluctant to drop when they realise the power they wield. Power corrupts and is an addiction like no other. And it works at all levels. Even I look at the grass root, as a father the power I wield corrupts my thinking. Sometimes Jispa get the unnecessary brunt of rage which is nothing but a power equation. Surely I think I do it far less (I think, I hope) that what I might have faced; but hand on heart, the power is what manifests on my child.
This power equation is crazy and it is this that makes us cling on to our status quo. We are afraid of change, we forget the reason and the power itself becomes the motive. Like the book on social entrepreneurs I was reading, one do gooder realised that he could not go into get into Maoist bastions and uplift the people. The Maoists have a vested interest in keep the area underdeveloped.
I see this in offices as well. I see too many bosses having a vested interests in keeping their employees only happy enough. How much should I pay him, for him not to go? WTF? They actively supress any learnings and actively ensure stagnancy. As growth inevitably is followed by demands and market forces that put a price on the persons head which the organisation does not want to pay. Why should it? Why should I develop a person only to lose him or her? I have only in the past learnt one thing. Keep pushing the person to grow and learn. The bigger he gets the more the space he pushes around him. The wider his span of vision gets. This only benefits the organistaion, and if he leaves, be happy that he has created a big enough void, so that the new person will have to first fill that void and then try to do some more. I don’t know why the organistaions can’t see this, why the bosses can’t see this, why we can’t this?
Power lies in letting go. Yet we hold on. I so want to let go. I will try at every opportunity but dam it. I don’t see it. I only see it in hindsight. Dam.

change

Typically so far in my career I have been a set up specialist. I have gone and set up systyms for marketing / sales. I have so far not worked on an inherited structure. The only one exception has been my first job where I inherited a structure in sales and I was a miserable failure. But that was twelve years ago when I was a novice and anyone would be able to walk over me.
This time in my new role I have inherited a team and lots of structures and complexities. A lot that I don’t like and lot that don’t really need changing. One of the greatest revelations had come to me around 8 years ago. This when I was inheriting a very small and tiny customer service team. Coming from sales I thought the team was a bunch of dumbos and that nothing could be achieved or got through them. I wasn’t looking forward to this assignment. Nopes. Then when the handover happened, I looked at the girl who was the customer service head and told myself, let’s make it work. I have no clue why I did that. I just suddenly resolved that no matter what I will think of her as a good resource and that we will make her work well. She is a good person unless I am proved otherwise. Magic happened from then on. She started doing much better. She immediately responded positively to me and me to her. We set up processes and procedures that improved and gave teeth to customer service. We started bashing back the sales guys who had made it a habit of bashing service people. Service was bad, not doing their job, a piece of cake etc etc. The sales system got it back this time. Lacunas in the system were identified and ironed. Issues with sales were highlighted. Woes of the service team were stated before the bosses and a voice was created that would be heard. The service head, who was denied a promotion was given one next year. I thought it was a magical transformation. Not of her... but of me. I keep that incident as a guiding light for a lot of my interaction with the team.
It’s always easy to rubbish people and especially if you are inheriting a team. You can always rubbish eth procedures followed and the decisions taken. But to my mind if you believe that everything had a reason and that reason was to the best of that person’s thinking, then you might start seeing merit in it. The fine line between changing things and letting tem remain constant. This is the constant tug of war. Every day I come in to office thinking of what I must change and what I must let remain. Some things I must change right away. Some cultures must be removed from the roots and thrown away and some part of culture must be nurtured. But the most important of all is the people involved. What is going on in their mind. Are they free to speak up and oppose the new boss and new fangled ideas? Every day I see shit and see gems of brilliance together in the same room. The mindset I have is always that the people are good and that they will achieve what they are capable of. If the mindset remains that people will remain the same and that achievement is required irrespective then the actions I take change accordingly. Instead of getting angry or dissatisfied, one becomes the agent of change. Change that is softer on people. Change that is lasting and causes lesser stress. I have had a boss who believed that he had to bring about change. But that change he brought about was at great cost to people. He created a stressful environment and believed that he was an antibiotic (his own words). By that logic I assume he thought that we were bacteria. Then he will treat us as that.
The last few years my epiphany has been that people are the most important thing in the world. Not brands, not customers, not profits. They are all there but they finally stem from the people that you work for, who work with you and those who work for you. Happy people produce beautiful results. I remain guided by one single objective – do what is right for the person. The company, brand and culture will automatically get aligned. Many times what is right for the person is not what is right for the company and then the incongruence of goals results in stress. Sometimes one can change the company’s policies and thought process, if not then the person might need to change. If neither is willing to budge then the company loses the individual. I have never bothered to retain people.
People will stay with you if you have been fair to them. If you have been unfair then you deserve that they go and if you have been fair and they still want to go, that’s cool as well. We just get the guys on board who want a fair deal. A fair wage and a fair environment for a fair day’s work. Good people will see the light of the day for sure. They realise what is fair and what is not. Too clever practices or HR initiatives will only piss people off in the long run. It will only come back to bite you in the butt. If morale is low or energy is missing, turning outwards towards HR may be a bad idea. Responding by gifts, incentives and other means would only delay the inevitable. Like a child who responds to a shiny new toy to stop wailing for a few minutes will only learn to wail after the boredom sets in.
Fun comes from a purpose or a pride that one gets from doing good work. In that sense I am quite happy to be a part of the marketing process rather than the sales process. In sales I have seen too many people sell too much of their soul. Then the company has no other means to reward them than give them shiny new toys again and again. The boss is a barracuda hell bent on achieving targets and he just misses the point of people being there.
So here I am. Every day trying to effect a cultural revolution. Trying to change culture within the organisation. It is not easy. These are not pawns but real people with real feelings. How do I change what must be, retain what is good and have the good sense to distinguish the two. Uff. Everyday and every moment. It takes a lot out of me. I see the incredulous faces when I propose something, when I stop something. ‘but that’s how it’s always been here’. Sure thing dude, but we will change that. Do you believe it must change. ‘yes it must’. Do believe that this change will be good for you? “yes we do.... but?” go ahead then. Go on. GO.
What’s my job then? Backing them in the change that believe in. In the change that will improve their lives and give it purpose. It tougher than what is anticipated. But it will bring about greater joy in their lives. As I was telling one of them. Everyday what makes me go home happy. That we will do marketing history here? That we will do great work? That I will earn lots of money and incentive. NO. The bets feeling I go back with is that somehow I have impacted people’s mind in a positive way. That they will think better, that they will act better and that their careers will improve. They will learn to be better marketing chaps and have better careers than if I was not there.
Like my brother once reminded me of the parable of the boy who kept throwing back into the ocean, the starfish washed ashore. A passerby explained the futility of making a difference to the world by such small acts. To which the boy merely threw one more starfish and said – made a difference to that one.
I AM CHANGING THE WORLD. ONE AT A TIME. IN WHATEVER LIMITED ACOPE I HAVE. IN MY LIMITED CIRCLE. BUT I AM IMPACTING LIVES WHO IMPACT OTHERS. I sure hope he gives me strength and brains.
Today morning itself I read – man’s moral strength is far more than his physical limitations.

its not just a room, is it?

Back to work after a little tired weekend. We were off for an office offsite to Lonavala. This was a complete bonding offsite which required us to come and do some team activity. This always happens over the weekend. So we left on Friday evening for a three hour drive. We were put up at a resort that was high up on the hill. So at a point the big bus cannot go any further and one needs to get into a SUV or a smaller bus. The end location ended up being quite cool. It is quiet a scenic resort and there is nothing all around except other green hills. Lonavala is being developed like crazy with scores of Mumbai dwellers buying holiday homes in the hill station. The concept of buying a holiday home has really caught on in the last few years. Let’s see how it pans out and whether Lonavala will actually be a buzzing place (defeating the holiday home purpose) or be a desolate ghost town with unkempt and inhabited properties.
The resort we stayed was over multiple levels and okay rooms. More like a good three star property. It was pretty pricey and given the cheap guy I am, this might be the property I might only go free of cost. I wouldn’t pay 10 k per night (inclusive of meals) for something like this. Jasmine and I have learnt the fun of staying in cheap but nice, warm and comfy places. You might not get the great view out of your window when you get up but it might have lots of walks, a bench from where you get the view, or be close to the action in the city. No point paying for a travel and staying in a resort all day cooped up – enjoying the view!
I have been to many company offsites. They tend to be fun if you know the group you are travelling with. It’s most boring when you have joined in fresh and are supposed to let your hair down. After 6 years in the same firm I was pretty cool with the gang. As usual, the suff was all about pulling legs, going through with the activity, ending in a drunken disco party with all sorts of songs being played and all night card parties. Nothing too exciting but nothing so really boring. The only thing is that you end up missing your family. Nice place, nice hotel, good view but no family.
Hmmm. In offsites you normally get to share a room with some colleague of yours. There will always be two to a room. And normally you can’t decide who you would be sharing the room with. That is preordained by the human resources or whoever is organising the offsite. It is up to their great achieved wisdom, that no one can really decipher, who on earth will be sharing with whom. I don’t really blame them either. They have this task and I don’t really fault them, whichever logic they use. I would assume that rarely would lots be taken. It’s normally placed according to some hidden agenda. If it is cross functional bonding then it does make sense to mix the functions in the rooming lists. I personally believed that it would be pretty cool to mix seniority. The junior gets valuable interaction time with the senior and the senior gets a hands on update from a junior’s perspective. So many times such simple stuff is missing in offices.
But this bonding thing always had a catch. The senior guys get rooms all to themselves. Exclusive. I always found that funny. Rather brhaminical. Why would the senior get the room as single occupancy and the juniors need to bond with another? I hated the concept and I kind of might have been jealous of the guys. In any case I never recommended nor endorsed it. For me, my great example was once when we were in Goa and my room for the night wasn’t fixed. My big boss was put up at a five star venue where the event was happening. He asked me to spend the night with him in the room. That would have saved the company some money for sure. I think it was a nice gesture. Not too many CEOs I have seen do this. An exclusive room is something to treasure and relish like other privelges like cabins, office décor, the type of dustbin (true), the laptop or car or whatever. To top it, not is the room exclusive, it is also normally an upgraded room. Better showers, possibly a bath tub, a sitting area perhaps, or even a gallery. Anything to separate from the pelebs underneath.
So this time around when we arrived I rushed in to the reception on whom would I be sharing the room with a bad drunk who snores at night could be disaster to your sleeping plans. As I made it through the crowd which was doing the same, checking the rooming list and calling out to their partners, I asked for my room number and partner. Voila – sir, this is your room. Ya, with whom am I sharing. Whoops. Single occupancy. Hah! I am a senior ass now. Ok. Let’s got to the room. I enter the room to find a sitting area, an executive table, a dining table, a balcony and a separate bedroom. Oh shit. I immediately asked the guy “are all rooms like this?’ he replied in affirmative. I checked with my neighbours. Nopes I was the lucky one. They had rooms that were tiny and their bathrooms did not have a bath tub. Though I kind of wondered what’s the point of having a bath tub, especially when there was no stopper on it. This was embarrassing. I was getting a dose of stuff that I resented other getting.
As some pelebs came in for some or the other reason, they would remark on the room size and I would be even more apologetic. If having single occupancy was not enough embarrassment.
But these things are not going to change in a hurry. I don’t think it will ever change. Organisations will always reward seniority in visible ways. They need not be practical or economical. They will always remain so.
When I am travelling I prefer people having their own rooms. It’s often enough for you to give and get personal space. But on an offsite where binding is an important deliverable, I see no point.
But I kind of realised that after spending over 12 years working your butt off, an exclusive room on an offsite is a small perk that tells you… in a smallish way… that you have begun arriving. Now why would I need a dam room to tell me that. That’s the job of my boss.

enriched by talking

How does a multi billionaire get to his hotel after exiting Heathrow airport? Well, like all of us he stands in a line and takes a black cab.

I have been intending to write this piece for quite some time now. I have been a big fan of our vice chairman and promoter. I think he is a very level headed sweet guy. The reason I don’t write his name is thanks to the billion guys in office who must be putting blog alerts on his name. But it’s a simple one – he owns the place I work. So here’s the piece.

I am getting off at Heathrow and am standing in the immigration line. He walks up behind. A couple of guys between us. I say hi and walk up to him. We know each other well. We generally start off talking. We both are having a relaxed conversation. Its obviously not a formal ‘in office’ conversation but a relaxed, waiting in the queue conversation. Always better this way. We generally chat up about work. My thing is that I can’t just give out blatant lies. He asks me how am I doing and am I enjoying and so on. I told him, that our company sucks at marketing and its quite a pain to be in marketing while we fight for our understanding and respectability all the time. But the reason I am working with him is that I love the company. I love the way we work. No stress, zero politics, cool happy working environment and a lot of freedom to do what you want to. He asked about my back ground. I told him about the zillion jobs that I have changed. We were talking about how my kids fight out with sales all the time and the frustration that they encounter. That time he said “Jaimit, tane khabhar che. Te ghat ghat nu pani pidhu che ekle”. That felt nice. All that job hopping viewed in a positive light. But it truly is a positive thingie. Not that I advise it too much for others though.
While we were talking I generally asked him where he was staying and how far was it from my hotel. He said “should be around 5 minutes, why?” Now this thing had been on my mind for some time now. I was told that a cab would cost 60 pounds from the airport that 4800 rupees. That’s way too much to pay even if it was company expense. So I told him as much and told him I was hoping for a ride with him and it could save us some money. In hindsight I some times think that I actually spoke about saving 60 pounds to a guy worth 5 billion dollars at last count. Well… he kinda liked the idea and gave me a lift. We wondered if it made sense to get dropped off at his hotel and take a cab, when I figured that it was best (economically) for me to drop him off and take the cab further to my hotel. We hailed a cab accordingly.

It’s around less than an hour to the city centre. It was one of the best conversations I have ever had, we spoke about work, vision, marketing (we both abhor mass media). When he realized that I was in London for the first time, he took on the role of a guide talking me about the various places on the way and the fun that I should have on the weekend that I was there. He asked me if I had enough money, I kind of vaguely said ‘just enough’. I normally carry less exchange but use the debit / credit cards often enough. He removed his wallet and handed me all the pounds he had in there. There were only about 20. Rest he was carrying euros. “rakh, kaam aavse” I did not know what to tell him. what do you do when your uncle gives you cash? Meekly take it. Mid way into another conversation in the cab he suddenly remembers something and opens his briefcase. He removes a cover and there sure enough – more pounds. He gives me 40 more and says “well, that takes care of you cab at least”. I was like ya, but I have some….. “rakh rakh, kaam aavse”. He insisted that I take something from London for my wife since it’s my first time there. There were so many things we spoke about (kids, parents, growing up, politics etc) but the undercurrent was clear – I was having a conversation with my uncle not my boss. An uncle who is not your dad’s age but more like the uncles that are the youngest in the family and therefore much more clued onto your lives. Dam cool. This will stay with me for a long long time.

I always admired the guy, but now I love him. I hope it remains that way. Amen.

Here is a photo I once took of him. I like it. It’s not your standard boring portrait.