who would have guessed?

Right now elections are on our head. with the General elections coming up to decide the prime minister of the country the imagination of the nation is fired up. On one side the incumbent Congress ruled by the family and a seemingly inept young candidate – Rahul, is pitted against the big man from Gujarat with a massive PR blitz – Modi. Its fun to watch the two in action. The congress seems to be commiting one blunder after and another and Modi can seem to do no wrong. He has tall claims and promises and promises a lot. The young scion bumbles and struggles to take grand and prefers the boring grass roots approach. Good intentions in my book, but good intentions can’t do much for PR.

But the fun bit is that I love to see the way Indians are divided along these lines. It’s stupid. They have this amazing love for the right wing fascist dictator who simply claims and promises without really doing anything. And the young Turk gives plenty of guffaws to his detractors that even the diehard loyalist finds it difficult to support him. But people don’t understand the cause, the lies and the commonsense around the entire thing. The economy is not that easy to run. It has a mind of its own and is affected by global factors and things far beyond its control.  And blindly supporting one against other is an act of stupidity. Then comes the AAP party. Built on the anti-corruption stand, this party has tasted success in Delhi only to do even more fun and entertaining stuff. Their chief minister Kejriwal, another seemingly well intentioned guy is prone to protesting even while being in power. Surrounded by a string of leftists he tries to restore the power to the people. He probably never read the book ‘animal farm’.

No no… I don’t have any solution. I am not the stupid devil’s advocate who swings both ways. I have my views and I am going to vote selfishly, in my favor. The world be dammed. That is if I vote at all. But the pressure is pretty strong. I can’t be seen without a mark on my finger after Election Day. In a world of self-righteous people trying to uphold dharma, I would be a complete misfit. In any case these days if I open my mouth I am a conversation ender. The other day in the car while I was dropping some the kids to the station on the way home, somebody spoke about Rahul’s speech and Modi. I opened my mouth and there in three minutes I achieved absolute silence. WTF. When you simply question belief and ask tough questions people are forced to think twice. And that’s the first time they do it and hence the silence. But I have learnt to keep my comments to myself over these years. Keep quiet and let the party flow. Don’t kill it.

Forces of economics and collective human nature are not easy to fight. The trick is to manage the situation and push for small bits of change. You must have your philosophy in place and then slowly work towards it. Small bits of change will push the policy over a period of time and thence the population. Very rarely would big change be effected in a small period of time and rarely in the way that you would have envisaged. Being nimble and smart and taking small steps towards a direction is what gets you anywhere. That is the advice of an older man, I guess.

Also I came across this video which sums up the entire equation. Here is a bunch of comedians who figured out that this all tamasha is a bunch of crap and designed to have divisive opinions where no underlying exists. It’s a house of cards. A fuc*&INg Ponzi scheme.

That is the role of free speech in life. The ability for people to bluntly say what they want, poking fun at anything they wish to criticize. It’s so bloody important. I have tried my best to keep that in the house. One must poke fun openly and bluntly and one must have the grace to accept it and also have a retort. Most of the time we are impervious to such blatant humor at our expense. I try and be open to it. While in a position of power in the office in my team, I am naturally the big guy who crack jokes at anyone. But then there are some in the team who cock a snook at my position and decide that I am fair bait as well. They are the young and the irreverent and they keep me on my toes. These are few and far in between and I keep them very close to my heart. They keep me in check.

At home I am fair game for Jispa to also similarly be made fun of. She can take my case anytime. Sometimes I do have to check her and tell her she is being rude but most of the time I hope I am fair game. Such fun ribbed criticism is what keeps us in check. The ability to say openly and to accept while having a retort is what keeps the lubrication of a family going. Jasmine is slightly more sensitive to this. She gets upset and that time I tell Jispa or make a sign to stop. Not everyone can handle it easily, with a sleight of hand. But not having it altogether is a crime I do not want to commit.

It’s not been an easy journey for me to be happy about such comments. It has taken time and effort and bit of wisdom and self-belief topped by oodles of self-deprecation for me to reach here. I had two elder siblings who would push me to the edge with their brand of humor. Then I had NCC where the atmosphere is pretty unforgiving. Then was office. You learn over a period of time. Sometimes I give Jispa a hard time and Jasmine tells me to stop irritating her. But I told Jasmine ‘you Jispa doesn’t have siblings. She is not going to be picked up on by anyone at home. I give her a bit of a hard time sometimes just to fill in the gap. She should learn to be picked up on and learn to deal with it in a smart way’. My siblings were pretty tough on me. Pretty tough, especially for someone who kept loyalty and love as the primary standard. So it was a bit of a letdown. I am not doing the same to Jispa, just a few gentle nudges towards what having a set of irritable siblings mean.

Who would have guessed  - the health of a democracy can be gauged at its ability to laugh!

one cause, two ideas

Reading is always cool. Its always fun to read an interesting book. But I completely love it when I get a series to read. When you like a particular topic and then you get two or three books one after another to read. My favourite example was when I read Wisdom of the Crowds, followed by The Search followed by The Google story. It seemed like a trilogy of sorts. They all contribute to a deeper understanding of the topic.
While a series in a particular topic is fun, I have had the greatest fun reading two books which are in opposition to each other. Their roots are so similar but the protagonist choose to take drastically different paths to reach what essentially be a single goal. A prophet of hate versus an apostle of peace. Forgive the clichés. But the two books I have had the greatest fortune of reading back to back are – Malcolm X and Invictus. One is the biography of Malcom X, the big black leader from US who spread hate against the ‘white man’ and the other is on how Nelson Mandela spread peace and reconciliation with the ‘white man’. Invictus was originally published as playing the Enemy. I think they changed the name once it got made into a movie ‘invictus’.
But the two books offer an interestingly stark opposite. Both the men faced discrimination thanks to the color of their skin. They both came back from their jail terms, completely changed. But I just loved how one preached hate and the other went out of his way to preach love. Their mission in many ways was the same… uplifting their people.
Malcolm X answer was to create greater differentiation. Change the religion, build higher walls and create greater cohesion. Though he seems to gave changed his world view after coming in from his trip to Mecca. But still there was still hate and anger in him. A rabble rousers with strong oratory skills. A debater who could twist and turn topics on its end. A bull dozer.
Contrast with Mandela who it seems had basic oratory skills. Whose greatest weapon was the charm offensive, who wanted to win hearts and reconcile with those who hated him. In the books he comes across as a shrewd but honest politician who smartly managed those around him to ensure they are enlisted for his greater cause.
Both books to my mind were a bit disappointing. As in they weren’t that bad but they had the potential to be absolutely great. But then on the other hand if they had used to much prose then they would risk being even more one sided than what they turned out to be. But still that is no excuse not to read them. I understood a lot about the segregation in both the countries, while it also helped me reinforce my stand on dialogue. Malcolm taught me what not to do and Mandela taught me what to.
As a kid I think I was fooled into thinking that those with the strongest and forceful argument said with the most emphasis is what is needed to succeed. All this would get enforced by the guys who win the debates and elocution competition. Complete emphasis on the style of debate rather than the substance. I have always felt that simple well thought of arguments are pretty much lost on the judge. The crowd and the judge fall for the Malcolm X of the speakers. These boys (like me) believe that just because they have superb oratory skills they can succeed in life. They use their power or talking and debate to get them out of shit all the time. Office are full of bosses that get swayed to powerful speeches and presentations. What is the substance of the same? How should one dig deeper and find a solution. How one should avoid rhetoric and focus on simple truths and principals that get you forward.
Over aperiod of time, I have come to slowly hate my argument skills. I find it irritating that I have to use empty arguments to make points. Simple concepts simply explained have no meaning for people. And I possibly am not patient enough. Sometimes I feel hat the means justify the end. Give them the oratory that they require and forget the small simple truths… as long as you know you are doing what’s right.
Similarly it is also difficult to sell some vendor internally if the vendor comes across a s timid sweet guy as oppose to the brash suit clad big show. Style is so dam important. There is no dearth of the flaky rascals who put so much emphasis on style and completely gloss over substance. They are obviously getting results and hence they continue to do what they are doing.
What to do. Stay at the grid… keep at it. and pray… books like this remind me that I must keep my guard. I must not let myself be misled by the flaky guy.. that’s easy. More importantly I must be aware of the simple sweet guy who possibly has more substance than anyone else. I have tried many of these in the past. They have invariably been good. They have given stellar results, but the bosses just do not seem to care. We will change the world for sure. Its take one soul at a time. One project at a time. We need to notice and support more Mandela’s and fewer Malcolms.

Clarification- I got nothing against Malcolm X. I think he seems to be a genuine but a bit confused guy. He was shot early before he could possibly understand himself. He was possibly as important to black America as another black leader. To my mind he was young blood led by someone. My emphasis is on their styles and the choice they took. To my mind both are heroes who tried to change the lives of their people. That is commendable enough. I just believe that one way is far superior to the other. I still believe in ‘gandhigiri’.
Also both are the truth, both had a reason, both had valid arguments. i dare say - a case of opposites reconciling. They did - I dont knwo how but in my mind they did.

dam!

Probably because it was on my mind, or probably because it genuinely fits, but this post today from one of my favourite websites http://www.xkcd.com/ to mind works best to illustrate the point I was trying to make on yesterdays blog.

After posting yesterdays blog I was not so comfortable with it. Something inside of me kept rankling. What was it about that post? Is my postulate wrong? Was I in error? Are there too many outliers to this that I have missed out? The more I thought the more I seem convinced that balanced and erudite minds often tend to be open about their conclusions. Of course you have the instances of scientists going mad because no body listened to them and they kept repeating their thesis to disbelieving audiences. Probably that’s a caricature we have from the media creations we see. Most smart guys I know are secure about their knowledge and are keen to hear relevant arguments on their findings or knowledge.
It took some soul searching to figure that the reason I was uncomfortable is that I was pissed at the world for this. This was the stupid thing. How can I preach equanimity if I get angry at the world for not being balanced and for being one sided? Relax. People need not follow all your values, no matter how right they seem to you. Getting agitated is one thing; the fact that it affects itself is an issue. Will have to learn to let go. I will have to learn to keep quite. I can change knowledge, add to it, debate it but it’s probably too much of a task to change attitude. Will have to learn to pick fights.

One random stupid joke comes to mind.
While swimming, two fish hit a wall. The first fish told the other “Dam!”