shant gadhadhari bheem, shant

Everyone gets used to everything. Once I met a Chinese lady who was on a study trip here. We got talking at a mutual friends place and I asked her, “how is it possible for the Chinese to live without real freedom”. How can the government control everything and the Chinese become used to it without revolt?” She said “its just the way of life and you get used to it. Without meaning disrespect, but in India there is a tribe which pushes one of its own daughters into prostitution. It’s just it. Over a period of time you don’t know what else”. I guess it’s true to some extent. People are great at adapting to surroundings and get used to it. I always wonder. Like in some regimes like North Korea, how could a mad cap dictator survive with the kind of atrocities committed by him? Don’t the people revolt, know that it’s stupid and this cant work like this? I guess not.

Many years ago I had a long and memorable chat with my dad. It was when I was in school. I argued that non violence was the best means. We were so many of us. All we needed was one Indian to kill one British and we were done. We outnumbered them by a large margin. It doesn’t work that way. I think George Bernad Shaw said ‘Progress depends on the unreasonable man’. He is right as well. People prefer status quo but status quo must be challenged. I want change but I am also part of people. So what am I? an unreasonable man or a status quo man?

I think a lot depends on age. When I was much younger I was impatient. Time was running out. I would hop jobs and go for the best offer, the best job and flirt with many. As age progressed, I found myself ready to play the waiting game. Waiting waiting waiting.  So did cobwebs grow under my back side. Have I lost the fire I once had? Well yes and no.

Oh yes the bland rage that I had is gone. I am no longer the angry young man I once was. Ready to change the world and refusing to see logic and patience. But I guess you can’t ever continue with that rage. It burns you and those around you. You learn to shimmer and crouch and learn to direct it. Not hitting every ball and waiting for the right ball is also aggression. Dour defense is as aggressive as flashy stroke play. It’s how you define aggression.

I was and still will always be extremely aggressive. But the manifestation has changed. It comes out differently. I miss the idiot I once was but I am also thankful that I am no longer the idiot I once was. One realizes that the world can’t be changed in one day. It takes time and patience. Also one acknowledges that the world’s priorities are different from yours and it’s definitely not true that yours are the most important priorities alive. So this kind of patience is critical to the living and adapting to the environment around you. Especially, if you are the aggressive sorts. Aggression is a means to an end.

I have also learnt that naturally aggressive people and toppers and people in high places can’t just tone down that easily. If some has reached somewhere they have reached there by aiming and working towards it. And if you think they are not aggressive. I think you must think again. Its only that their priorities or world wisdom tells them something that you don’t know. When I was much younger I would be eager to criticize and complain. Now I hold my horses.  It’s important to understand the context and put yourself in their shoes. Now figure, are you really that sure of the situation. Are you jumping to conclusions without assigning probabilities? Like today at the gymkhana I overheard some conversation where the person said ‘that is the solution. That’s the only way to solve it.’ It struck me hard. I have learnt to say more often than not “that SEEMS to me as the solution to the problem”. Because you never know.

Recently Rahul Gandhi got screwed in the media for the interview he had on a news channel. He answered randomly to questions asked. No matter what he was asked, his answers were something else. Woah. Easily one of the worst possible interviews. He lost a lot of his urban English speaking fans. But hell, I am not ready to haul him over coals yet. He is definitely not stupid. I always like to look at the other side. Why did he say thus? What was on his mind? What would have been the strategic reasoning behind it? Was he that naïve? I don’t believe that the truth is that simple as it is made out to be. Yes it sounded bad, but was there another game that was being played?

Restraining aggression is easily one of the most difficult things to do. Rather let me reword that one  - Redirecting aggression is easily one of the most difficult things to do. Curbing your natural instinct while honing it so that you don’t lose your mojo is just a bloody difficult thing to do.

I am reminded of my boss who used to say “shant gadhadhari bheem, shant”. If you are born after 1980 you won’t really get the reference. This was from the epic serialised version of the Mahabharat, wherein the eldest of the Pandavs continuously held back the biggest of the Pandavs, namely Bheem. Shant – Peace. Peace.

And talking of being used to something. I love my desk in the mornings and I am so used to it. I will really miss this when I leave. As and when I leave.

lucky boy

This post comes as an interesting follow up to the last post. I have always believed that a good last performance is just that, a good last performance. There is no reason t0 believe that the streak will continue. You have to work hard and push for it at all times.

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/ulterior-motives/201006/when-will-streak-end
“Eugene Caruso, Adam Waytz, and Nicholas Epley looked at this issue in a 2010 paper in the journal Cognition. They find that you are most likely to assume that a streak will continue (the hot hand) when the cause of the streak is seen to be someone's intentions. You believe the basketball player will keep hitting shots, because he intends to make the shots.
When the streak is caused by some kind of mechanical device, then people believe the streak will end (the gambler's fallacy). The roulette wheel is a mechanical device that does not intend for the ball to land on either black or red numbers.”

While it is an interesting and erudite study, what set me thinking is the effect on our thinking given our tendency for anthropomorphism. That is giving inanimate objects human traits and mental characteristics. This seems to affect us more than what we think.

I guess all this while I assumed I was being clever while giving life to so many objects. We talk of many things as if they were living creatures. Like many Parsis will tell you that you must name your car if you want it to run smoothly. Of course here naming your car or your cricket bat will only ensure you feel more for it and that you will treat it a bit better. You might think a bit more before you run it over a ditch or you throw it around after you get out on a duck. These might actually nudge you into taing better care of your stuff and it will only come back to your advantage. But on the other hand, companies… sigh… giving companies (yes your job included) people like qualities misleads you into thinking that they are real. I have always told people don’t love your job, you might then expect it to love you back. A sure fire recipe for disaster. But I guess thinking of it as a person we might expect it to behave in a pattern and we might be blindsided to the randomness associated with an inanimate object.
As this author says at the end “At times, it may make sense to treat a company like a person. Companies have managers who make decisions and these decisions may properly be cast as intentions for the strategy that will be followed in the future. At other times, though, this language may get in the way. There is a tremendous amount of randomness in the stock market. When we talk about it in human terms, we gloss over all of that randomness.
In the end, we should try to be a bit more mindful about when we assume that streaks are the results of an agent's intentions.”

Small note: the other day Jasmine was telling Jispa not to sit on her raquet while playing badminton. I explained to her that you must treat your sports equipment with respect. They give you pleasure and you rely on it to play well. You must always treat it with kind affection and never mistreat it. I firmly believe that. There is discipline required in sports and taking care of your equipment is an essential ritual of this discipline. I guess we never had rich access to all sorts of hep equipment and the fact that you must take care of what you have is something has gotten ingrained in my system. Jispa is obviously mush better off but a discipline on the ground will go a long way for sure.

Over a period of time I have tried clearing my mind of all the illogical processes that might have crept inside. Removing it of all superstition. Be it praying for an occurrence or playing the bhajans (prayers) the first thing when I start the car. Slowly but surely I might dare say I am 98% cleared. Touch wood. God willing the rest 2% might go or they might stay to keep my sanity in face of unpredictability.

Yesterday we shifted to the second floor. I had to choose my seating from four seats. I hate this. I prefer someone making the choice for me. I don’t want to choose an unlucky seat. But this time I had the choice, which I did not really want. One lady told me to take a particular seat. You must face north or something like that. I was tempted to go with the choice. But it took some amount of resolve for me to think clearly. These guys had converted two cabins into four cubicles. They basically removed the doors of the cabins, left the glass wall on the one side (too expensive to remove) and added the extra desk. Thinking logically, I choose the brighter cabin, the bigger desk and the place which might allow me to put an extra chair for people who might be required to come and discuss stuff with me.
Here it is. Since the next person who is to share the space with me isn’t around yet (not yet hired) as of now I am getting used to a large space all to myself.
Here it is!

Trimurti

Knowing a word is interesting especially when it describes a feeling. After writing about catharsis yesterday, I experienced it. Hehehhe now I know what I expeirencied. After two and a half years of beautifying my desk I got rid of everything. All the photos, greeting cards, everything on the desk. Completely. It is bare bones clean. See the before and after pics… from super creative to super clean.

mmmm…does it reflect a new way of thinking. My guys were wondering what came over me. They were almost scared that something’s gone completely wrong. I have been thinking about getting rid of it all for sometime now. Too many people were commenting on it and calling it beautiful. I don’t like when too many people like it! Now slowly let me think of something new to put on it.

It’s also in many ways symbolic. One of the best management theories I read was concerning, Brahma (creator), Vishnu (preserver) and Maheswara (destroyer). This was from Circle of Innovation by Tom Peters. I had read it years ago while browsing at Satyam centre at Churchgate. Those were the days that I could not afford to buy books. I hope Jispa never has that problem. So I created it, I preserved it and now I destroyed it. Every company needs a mix of this if it has to survive and grow. I so believe in it. After two and a half years I am trying to actively destroy a lot of processes, thinking and way of doing. Only from the ashes of the present will we be able to do anything more path breaking.

Despite the difficulties, all the frustrations, there is a joy in having done something as well as you could and better than others thought that you could. – JRD Tata. Very true.

I picked that up from the Kishore Biyani’s book, it happened in India. When the book first released, in all my arrogance I did not pick it up. a big launch, widely distributed, how could it have given me all the intellectual fart that I so crave for. I will learn constantly that I must not judge a book too soon ands not to get intellectually arrogant. It’s turned out pretty decent with enough leanings and anecdotal value. Not bad at all. Once I complete it let me see make an ‘intellectual’ comment.