student defines the teacher

Its summer time and the water is warm. This is the time to start your swimming again. Jispa was telling me that you will now struggle with your water feel and you will not enjoy the swim if you restart swimming after a long time. She is right. Water feel is a real issue in swimming. You tend to get water feel after a few swims and you get a feel of the water as you glide past pushing it behind. It’s like timing in cricket, there is no way to get it by theory but when you do get it you realize you have the gift and then you keep going. After a layover many batsmen work on it in the nets to get the timing and then they struggle to retain it. The batsman who are called gifted are the ones who just have it in them from the start and seem to effortlessly get it at all times. They may not score runs but they always time the ball and hence we call them gifted. I think water feel is the swimming equivalent of being in form and timing the ball.

I have always struggled getting back into the water and getting back into top shape. Somehow the water doesn’t feel right and the body doesn’t respond well to it. I end up struggling to hit the level of work out performance that I was capable of before the break. It was very difficult for me to understand it but Jispa summed it up pretty amazingly for me and called it water feel.

I entered the water and swam with Jispa for a while. She is a joy to watch in the water that she makes her own. While I swim on the surface of the water she will dive and swim under me with her face to me and keep blowing bubbles while kicks and moves ahead. It’s a really funny sight. Then I told her to see me swim and help me correct my strokes. I was pretty impressed by her instant correction points. Among other things she told me not to fight water. “don’t fight water. Let it flow easily. Remember Finding Nemo movie which said – fish are friend not food. Similarly Water is your friend not your enemy. Don’t fight it. Be smooth. Get your motions to be smooth.” She was right. I was pushing water to get ahead. I was trying to hold water and get it behind me. Then I understood a bit about the legs movement and I found myself moving quite faster and more “fludically” than before. Nice.

The best part was not just being able to swim better but the fact that Jispa now could simply see me and correct me at a very, can I say philosophical level? Not just the techincals of pulling the hand through, kicking in a particular way or something, but moving while not fighting water. That was one of the best advice I have ever received while swimming. Don’t fight the water. Now every time I enter the water, I will swim knowing that I need fight water but work with it. Water is not my enemy, it is my friend; and that this was taught to me by my daughter. These learnings are worth their emotional and technical weight.

Then she showed me something she figured about doing in water. She went to the bottom of the pool and faced up, and then she blew bobbles in the form of rings. These rings would then float to the surface. It was awesome. I loved that she could do that. I too tried to do it and after a few tries I did a swell job as well. Jasmine, as the judge agreed, that my rings looked rounder than hers. That felt good.

As a teacher, I think the best thing is when your kids teach you more and help you understand more. You love a kid who questions you and then applies your learnings and pushes you to do better. And then you get the feedback that this learning was applied here and this was the result. Teaching without learning and learning without application is pretty much useless. You have to constantly apply and see the result of your actions. That is good learning. I have taught so many kids over the last 14 odd years. I remember that I first started teaching when Jasmine was pregnant with Jispa. Over the years, I have taught scores of kids and tried to explain various different concepts to them. I don’t know what all I have taught but I hope that some kids take away something interesting from all that. Some lesson that must have struck some bell at some point. God only knows where and what. I see teaching as a kind of social service or a social good. It is my way of giving back to society something in a meaningful way. I hate giving money away for anything. I prefer giving time and energy and knowledge. This true giving. Money seems to be the simplest way but it’s not what I want.

One kid who worked at my friends start up, got friendly with me as we worked professionally. AS she realized that I taught at schools, she wanted to accompany me there and learn from my lectures. I was happy to have her join the class. Looking at her even Jispa joined in.  This kid seemed different. She had a curiously strong urge to learn a lot and start applying. She listened made notes and then started discussing my lectures with her colleagues and started applying stuff at work. This was interesting and incredibly rewarding. She would tell me on how what I taught was applied by her and how it affected her work and her colleagues. How this enriched her environment and her job. That felt nice. Slowly an acquaintance became a student and now a friend. I am sure as she grows older and in stature the relationship will be grow more equal. Today one of my best buddies is one lady who worked with me around ten years ago – Sonal Shah. She too learnt a lot from me and I learnt a lot from her. We have been with each other many times and I have even rehired her when I moved to a new role.

These experiences helped shape me and give the joy from teaching. Some kids will remember me and some will forget me and some will curse me (hopefully few here). But at the end – if I can make a difference to at least one in a class who can then affect others in turn and start a possible chain reaction – that will be just so awesome.

Today in the morning while I was in the Gymkhana early after dropping Jispa, I realized that it was the birthday of this new kid who has been attending my lectures. I hate wishing happy birthday. It’s something stupid and highly impersonal. I like writing a note. And when you have had a groggy night thanks to the AC being switched off and then on again, with the fan being full (that’s a old grouse with my wife), one tends to get a little philosophical. And with that mood I wrote her a note.  A long one for whatsapp. But I thought it merited being reproduced here. It has enough lessons for me and for those who read it and for it to be passed on. Here, groggy mornings can produce philosophers. (I think I think best in my half dreams and in long showers. Really. Seriously)

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Hey kid. I am not the one who likes wishing on birthdays. I don't do that. I think it's stupid and a complete waste of time and energy. Too many jokers who don't mean anything to me catch me and wish me and appear to love me. Aaahhh.. but then don't let the cold of a damp 41 year old put water on the red enthusiasm of a young 28 year old. (Did I get the age right).

Enjoy your birthday and your life. You have been an amazingly great student for me. At some core level, I have found greatest joy in teaching and imparting my learnings to people around me, that I care about and those that care about me. In you I see someone who just wants to squeeze maximum possible from me. That encourages me a lot. And in teaching you, in talking to you, in discussion with you, I end up learning a whole lot myself. I learn about my thoughts and that of a young turk. These thoughts are invaluable as they are considered and honest. It's like a game I loved playing as a kid. I would fling a crazy ball against the wall in the house and try and catch it on the return. I would then impart spin to it and throw it and the catch it. It was tough and an amazing fun game to play. I hope u know what a crazy ball is and what happens when u fling it at a wall, with spin.

As you grow older you will realise that you have a debt to pay. If I were to listen to you then you have a debt to pay on my account. I seemed to have taught you a lot. My great guru, Dharen, never asked me for anything but I still want to give me my right thumb. So, I think the best way to pay him is to teach the world to be more considerate marketers, and through that change the world. I think he would appreciate that the most.

Funnily, as I pay my debt in this way, it gives me greater learning and greater Joy and the act of paying off the debt makes it paradoxically larger. So, I have to pay it more and more. Never did I realise that paying off an EMI on an usury would be so much rewarding.

Creating such a debt made my life rewarding. Very rewarding. It allowed me to connect to lovely people like you and some others as well as not so lovely people who turned out quite caustic in the end. But even a fire that signed the child left him a message.  But like we all know the reward of playing with fire more than compensates for the occasional burn.

I hope you find your debt and u find paying it rewarding.  I wish you many such debts of joy. To receive and to repay. Hopefully they add meaning to your life the way they added meaning to mine. And Dharen doesn't even know it that he can create an angulimal from my many thumbs.

I wish I could wished for everlasting happiness and live and everything that a fairy can offer. I am no fairy and you are no doe in front of headlights.

Birthdays are a good time to be philosophical, both from a receiver and a giver perspective. They have their uses afterall. A time to reflect and to ponder. But then, not too much. It's more a time to soak in all the unwanted, unrequited, unreal and unfelt love as well. There is perverse joy in that as well. Enjoy that while the optimism of youth is yet unscratched by the cynicism of grey.

So that's it. If u reading till here and you have reached here without a yawn drawing tears and making it blurry, I think I have possibly conveyed what I needed to. Not wisdom but experience.

There... Pass it on, no backs. (Did you girls play this game)?

Enjoy.

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meeting the master

Lets start with something crazy

Reality is what we take to be true,” pioneering physicist David Bohm asserted in 1977. “What we take to be true is what we believe. What we believe is based upon our perceptions. What we perceive depends on what we look for. What we look for depends on what we think. What we think depends on what we perceive. What we perceive determines what we believe. What we believe determines what we take to be true. What we take to be true is our reality.”

What I take to be true and what I therefore believe my reality to be is largely shaped by the one man in my life that I met and had the good fortune to work with. Dharen Chaddha. I worked only for a year with him in consulting only to come to a conclusion that consulting is not the thing for me. I would much rather prefer the boring life of a working doer than an intellectual life of a great consulting master.

But the main point is that Dharen gave me almost all the intellect that I claim to enjoy today. The best part was that he did not do it by trying to teach me or by trying to inculcate something in me. He was just there. He did what he did and I could just not help but be affected by it. His presence was enough. I merely worked with me and then later on inculcated in myself all that I thought I could learn from him. Reflection, silence, thought, ability to paraphrase conversations, patience, taking people along, using wisdom received from others, actively listening, believing in the books people write… everything. In short, I would say I learnt to think from him. That is the greatest gift anyone can give anyone else. The learning on how to think. How to approach, how to behave…

I am an atheist or an agnostic, but I have a God, and I have met him. He stays in Bangalore.

I haven’t had the chance to meet Dharen in the 13 years since I left the firm. How could I? What does one do when one meets God? How can I talk to him? What do I talk to him? I would feel so weak and so dead. What would happen when I meet him. Hence I must have spoken to him only a few times in the 13 years. But I never ever had the guts to ever meet him.

Hero worship is a funny thing. You can worship someone forever and have a dronacharya – eklavya relationship but when they come in front of you, you don’t know what to do. Dharen is my hero. I want to think like him, work like him, communicate like him. I am nowhere near as good as him, but I want to try and bring in the best of what I can inside of me, what I have learnt from him.

So this time, I was with family in Bangalore, I messaged him and he promptly called back. With family, I had an incentive… I wanted Jispa to meet him once. I wanted to show her my God, my inspiration and a lot of credit for what and where we are right now. So we did plan to meet him. I asked Jispa “you want to meet my God?” I told her about Dharen. She knew a bit and she knew that I treat him thus. She was ok. I explained to her that he was the greatest influence on my life and my thought so far and I would love for her to meet him once, at least. She was game.

When we went there, as we were reaching I was wondering how I would react. The mere thought of him would bring tears to my eyes. Now I know what Elvis fans would feel like. Many times whenever I have spoken about him to anybody or thought deeply about him, I can’t help the tears that come in my eyes. I choke up and it’s difficult to control. So I was wondering how I would survive meeting him. What would happen, would I just break up, would I just collapse, what would happen.

As we reached his home, he came outside to greet us. There I had to fight back my emotions and stop myself form crying out then and there. Jasmine noticed it and then spoke about it. Ya. That one was tough. So I managed to stay ok meeting him after a long time. !3 years.

The meetings went off well. We chatted on a few things. I have always believed that he struggles to talk to common people. It is difficult for people like him to come down to our level, though I am sure this is something that he will surely not agree to. But I have seen him, think and wonder what to tell or talk. Then he would make his point and it would be laborious as he tries to explain the point he is making, carefully choosing his words. If the person on the other side is not quite as sharp then it would result in a really funny conversation. At momentum, we would laugh at the client’s inability to grasp Dharen’s words of wisdom. People have to move up to appreciate it and to completely grasp the complexity that he brought to the table with his words. Clients struggled, normal people struggled and that was one of the points that I knew was the final clincher as I decided not to consult anymore. If people can’t take the wisdom of Dharen, then I have no chance here. I could not meet anymore jokers and try and convince them on the intelligence of marketing or business strategy. In many ways I thought he was too intelligent and way too sharp for the clients he was consulting.

I then asked if I could show Jispa the study room. Dharen said “sure, but the study room has been shifted to a new room, but let’s see it nevertheless”. We took Jispa up and while we were going up I was telling her about an experience that made me think of Dharen as some kind of super human. We were working on a project in his study that was full of books and then he suddenly asked me to remove one book, that he pointed out. It was “Eldest Son: Zhou Enlai and the Making of Modern China, 1898-1976”. He then took the book and read a few pages from the start and then pointed out to the paragraph he wanted from it and then he asked me to read it. I was dumb struck. It was one book out of the millions he had read and he just picked it from nowhere and then it was a paragraph from this thick book that had struck him. And he had the ability to get it back again. This was Dharen for me. This was the genius I would revere and I would never be able to match up to. This was the legend that I passed onto Jispa.

Then he led us to the study where a smaller fraction of the books where there. As we just walked around, Jispa pointed out to the book – the eldest son. Yes it was there. The same book, that made the legend in my mind. I picked it up and looked at where I had found the passage. There it was – the passage, with a blue pen mark. I showed it to Jispa, there it’s still here, and this is the very same book. At this point or hereabouts, I broke down. Literally broke down.

At this point I just couldn’t control. I was laughing but I was crying also at the same time. It was weird, crying for no reason; a surfeit of emotions running through. I couldn’t pick any reason I should cry except that I was in the company of my God.

What a moment – My daughter on one side, my guru on the other and the book of the legend in my hand and Jasmine looking on.

Afterwards I asked Jispa about it. I don’t think I have cried in front of my daughter before. She said ya – you were laughing and crying at the same time. Short of fainting, she said that I probably behaved like what her friend would if would have met her rock star hero. Yup. Dharen is just that for me.

I was happy that the family met him. I don’t think there would too many instances later. Jispa must know who was one of the most important influence in my life and by that logic – a largish influence on her life.

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When Dharen saw the paragraph in the book that I was referring to he said – Yes. Zhou Enlai was shaped this way as he was the eldest son. I resonated it with that paragraph perhaps because I was also ‘the eldest son’ and that’s why it had an impact on me.

The paragraph from the book -

“Why, why did people love him?” one of two American newsmen asks me that evening. “After all, he made a lot of mistakes. Why is it that people weep when they speak of him?”

It is difficult to say why. Except that, somehow, because of him, we all felt life was worth living. Even when everything went wrong. “Perhaps because he never forgot to care. Even his mistakes were because he cared. He couldn’t help caring. It was bred in him. He was the eldest son.”

Eldest son, eldest grandson. In the Confucian scholar families of China, the eldest son was marked out for uncommon responsibility and duties. The eldest son, or failing him, the eldest grandson, must provide care and education for all the younger male children in the same generation as himself and for their offspring. He must also provide comfort, food, and lodging to the two generations above him, parents and grandparents. He must be a model. A model of filial piety, of traditional virtue, upholding family honor and status, sacrificing himself always so that the family will thrive.

He is the embodiment of the Confucian tradition, the magic bond with the past, his life one of unending care, responsibility and abnegation.

Tsunghuai, a young man of forty, says to me, “I think that Zhou Enlai, throughout his life, was unconsciously marked by the fact that he was eldest son, eldest grandson.” 

A lot of this I think is me but the problem is that I am the youngest son, the youngest grandson. While I grew up I believed that I must be the model of filial piety, of traditional virtue… blah blah…. So that the family will thrive. But there was one problem. I was the youngest son, the youngest grandson. On both sides. The youngest son has a different role to play. He has to be the rebel, the growth, the ability to push it all out. But I was different. I was confused. I held values that were not expected of me. I had a tough time I think in the end trying to balance the two opposites of what I feel and what I should be.

I think a lot of this is the opposites reconciling inside of me when I go about my teaching. I am the older guy but also the youngest cool son. I should have the ability to relate to the kids while giving sage advice as to what to do in life. I think as I grow older I am probably losing that deft touch and that ability to connect with the kids. There is an age a life stage and a role. These need to be relevant to each other to create an impact. I think I had my chance while I was really young and learning along with my teaching these kids. I think I must reinvent myself and look beyond what got me here. What got me here will get me there. Possibly I have to change it just a little, not too drastic, just a little change here, a little there. So I continue to be relevant but yet retain my core that makes me, me.

Gowing up is reinventing yourself every few years, trying to manage the change around you so that a little of you is there while a lot of you is changed. Or risk being irrelevant to the environment around you.

I have been writing.... elsewhere

I have written stuff that has appeared in press before but it was always for someone else. Sometimes for the business head, or sometimes on a product. But this one was published in my name. It’s not a great achievement for sure. Online sites are always hungry for content… but hell… it’s there, isn’t it?
I don’t expect great views, reviews, comments but the essence of it is pretty much strong. It is pretty much strong marketing fundamental stuff. That I am ready to risk my neck out. Read on only if you are marketing inclined, else it’s not likely to be of much use. Though I did try to simplify it.
Thanks Dharen if it sounds good. And if it doesn’t – I am sorry. I probably did not get it right.
http://www.exchange4media.com/45298_font-colorredguest-articlefont-so-you-think-that%E2%80%99s-a-nice-ad-eh.html

how we learn

What a wild four months I have had. The research is finally over and so is the presentation. These four months are much like the 10 months I spent in Momentum Consulting (2004) working on the cement ACC project. Working like mad and meeting tons of people, connecting with them, hearing their stories and understanding their relationship with the category its takes a lot of out you, both physically and mentally. In the run up to the presentation for at least ten odd days I couldn’t sleep properly. Not that was a stress of the bad type but more like Eustress. Stress that helps you perform helps you do better. One of the things in Momentum was a constant pressure. And I remember working till the last minute trying to get the presentation in order. We would think and work and sleep in front of the laptop and then get up and work again. I hardly saw my daughter or my family. This would be on till the actual presentation. We would also be working during the breaks, trying to improve the presentation. Obviously this gave us no time to improve the look and feel of a presentation. The presentation I remember making was black text on white background. In the super final presentation, I had some time to make a small ‘gussa meter’ where I showed the rising frustration of the home owner. But still nothing much.
This time I was determined not to repeat the mistake. The presentation was on Wednesday and I wanted to finish everything before the weekend. I sat late, pushed hard, pushed everyone and I finished the core of it well in time to give us two full days to work on the look. And then a Friday to just make small corrections or modifications. It was done well in time. I relaxed on the preceding weekend and was relaxed as to the presentation in the run up to the D day. The only thing was how to avoid a backlash. How I must not step on toes, how to get the point across without getting defensive walls up. What a challenge. I wanted to call my God Dharen Chadhha and take his blessings before, but somehow I couldn’t. But after the marathon meeting which I presented for 12 straight hours, I could only thank him. It’s not just the technical side of marketing that I learnt from him that I used in the presentation. The equally important bit was handling 25 people on the other side.
Research presentations are notorious for being potentially volatile and hostile. You typically encounter closed and hostile minds. I remember seeing Dharen in such meetings, addressing concerns, keeping research sacrosanct, agreeing and convincing, accepting and moving and guiding the group. Invaluable lessons in managing board rooms. If Dharen with his vast knowledge and experience could be so humble in a group, can listen to the real banal of all arguments without being dismissive, can have amazing patience and a keen ear, then who am I ?
He was the first guys I called back. Thank you for teaching me so much. Thanks a lot; I learnt so much from you. I am sure my experience with Dharen has made me a better manager, marketing person and more importantly a better parent. He wondered – a better parent – yes sir, you taught me to open my mind, to read books, to understand various versions of truth. You taught me to think. That has made me a better parent. I don’t know if it has made me a good parent but it definitely made a better one.
I was so dam emotional talking to him. I could only mutter thanks and appreciation. But what a learning experience for me this whole presentation was. I was in charge, leading the brigade and being a Dharen on my own for the first time. 26 heads in the room, luckily not hostile but one wrong foot and the hostilities would have broken through. It took me some time to recover from that effort. Yesterday I woke up late wound up at around 2 from office, relaxed and lazed around only to catch sleep at around 9 pm. That was the first decent sleep after a long time. No lucid dreaming about presentations or research. Uff… it was fun … hectic but fun.