kneed some more love

Jispa had an assignment in English on Elon Musk and his 120 hour work week. Ya. It’s a bit of a tough thing to keep a 120 hour work week going. I work five days a week and I think I can manage 60 hours. I come to work by around 815 after dropping Jispa and then I get back home after 9. I think I am overdoing this but, right now there is a magnitude of issues hitting and it would take at least 2 – 3 years to sort some of the issues.

2 – 3 years. Yes. One of the things that I have learnt over a period of time is that work in large organizations take time. I have seen this company since 18 years. The calls taken 18 years ago come to haunt us afterwards. It takes that long to unravel the mess caused. With large heads sitting everywhere, it’s a time consuming effort to unravel the whole thing. You also need to hire right, put the wheels in motion and then you start seeing the efforts. Patience.

But thing is about work life balance. Work life balance. I don’t know about it. When I go home I try not to work. On weekends, I try and largely succeed to stay off my laptop and work. I figure that I spend so much time in office that I don’t need more time to give it. I was speaking to Jasmine and I was explaining the sexy work that I was doing in office and how I was pushing a young kid to do it. Even on weekends. My belief that at 43, I wish I had a chance to push myself at 23. Life would have been different. Hence that’s why I have figured that it best to push the kids at work. I now have little or no regret to see them working on weekends or late at night.

Someone asked me if I was a workaholic. I don’t know. The definition is “a person who compulsively works excessively hard and long hours.”  I think the key word is compulsively. I work hard and long hours but I don’t do it compulsively. I am happy to not work. Right now we have to achieve much and do much and that’s why I work as hard as I do. It definitely not for the simple joy of working that I do it. I would much rather not work so hard. I would rather go home, watch a movie, run around, swim, and play badminton… whatever.

Coming to which. At the start of the month I had the good fortune of going to Israel on a work trip. It’s a lovely country and the people have shown what a resolute bunch of people with no shared national identity but a shared religion and a sense of a shared history of persecution can do. Jews around the world have come and set up their land and lived together creating a thriving country from nothing more than a desert. As every Israeli will tell you, they sleep with their one eye open. They are hated by their neighbors who would like to finish them off in an instance. It’s a global melting pot. Especially thanks to Jerusalem, which is the holy place for Jews, Christians and Muslims, all together in one crazy tight part of the city.

This character of making the most from less and the cut throat competition coming in from immigrants all over the world, make Israel a culture you can only learn from. They always want to make the most from the least. Their products are top class thanks to their legendary investments in technology and the fact that they don’t have enough people or resources forces them to design products that are simple to implement and self-serving. It’s difficult to explain in terms of tech but the simplest example of this is in irrigation. They are country who invented drip irrigation. A perfect example of irrigation technique that uses less water and people for the maximum impact.

I went running there, every morning. I travel very badly when I am without family. I sleep late, I laze in bed and just generally I am a grumpy guy. So I decided that with my new found passion for running, I should pack my running shoes and kit and go running there every day. We were staying next to the beach promenade and that would definitely be an added reason to go running every day. So I did go running religiously. It was great run. Beach side, water points along the way. Lots of open gyms. Everyone running there. It was awesome. I saw a lot of locals playing beach volleyball on the nets laid out for the people. It was the perfect recipe for disaster.

In the evening after a lovely swim in the Mediterranean Sea (bucket list tick) while passing the beach, I couldn’t help but notice some locals goofing around. We started playing with them. They were playing volleyball but like football volley ball.  The kid came out in me and the bucket list number 2 kicked in. We joined in and a few stunts later, I fell in pain. I have been taking care of my right knee for so many years. It keeps getting dislocated and I keep putting it back. This time around, while attempting, god know what, my right knee gave in. Oh freak. It didn’t dislocate but it did twist enough to give me problems. It went for the rest of the trip.

When I was back in office, I was gently trying to kick some kid in office when my knee buckled in again and I feel to the floor. It was time to go to the orthopedic surgeon. An x-ray and an MRI later, the verdict is out. I have severe ACL tear. In both knees. Which means surgery, one by one in both knees. Okay. That is fun. It also means being out of action for almost a year from most sports. Oh shit. In way I was / am really disappointed. I was doing great. I had restarted running and I was doing 6 to 8 kms at one stretch without too much effort. I could have gone on and on for long. But as Jispa was counselling me “don’t regret it. You did go out in style.” Ya. I sure did. Now what. Well surgery will follow. They supposedly take my tendon and stretch it to become a ligament or something. It’s a minimal invasive surgery. Also there is the matter of a meniscus tear in the right knee that requires shaving off. Sigh.

I have always looked at the bright side of things and while at it, I thing this knee thing was a blessing in disguise. I had so far refused to see the orthopedic. It turn out that if I don’t get this fixed now, I might have needed knee replacement at 55. That would have been pretty painful I guess. At 55!

On another note. We have been enjoying our new home quite well. We seem to be lazing around at home most holidays. Stepping out for a quick meal nearby and watching Netflix. It’s a neat big house that I might have dreamed off, all my life. Neat and tight. The big TV in the hall also seems perfect, as we lounge around and watch Netflix and Amazon Prime. And the best part – we have kabaddi season starting soon.

Kabaddi is the thing that we family bond over. Especially when we understand the sport from close quarters and get some inside dope. Fitness has come to kabaddi and we now are seeing the benefits of this in the players as they get better. It has been a lucky break for me in my life. Things that come to you just because you are open to new experiences and learnings.

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.

Eat a lot of chocolates

The Pro kabaddi league is off to a great start. I happen to be in the middle of the entire drama as one of the teams is owned by Uday Kotak in a personal capacity. Like always I love being exposed to a variety of experiences and being involved in a sports team is definitely amongst the most interesting experiences of a lifetime.

The first thing was naming the team, then some designs and some posters… I have blogged about being involved in the making of the song and video… here is the final video

Man it was amazing fun!

The matches have started well in earnest. But I see quite a few issues that need to be ironed out. At the start itself I had told the team to focus on diet and nutrition along with training as a core requirement. Budget constraints pushed it out of the reckoning. I had my chance again when we lost two close opening matches. I saw what the team was having. They were having energy drinks and protein drinks at no predefined intervals. No plan no thinking only drinking. This made no sense to me. Thanks to Jispa and her sport I am aware of a few things. You need carbs before the matches and you need protein after to recover. Simple basics and you have to be hydrated with electrolytes and not with high sugar energy drinks. Sugar is a killer. And where the F are the bananas in the entire picture? The team was without any such food. Hence I got the ear of a senior guy and I directly rammed it in. This team is eating all wrong. They are getting wrong nutrition and wrong training.

I see being a team owner as a kind of responsibility. A responsibility to all the players that you have bought for your team. They need to be taken care of. Especially in kabaddi when the players are from the hinterland and are not really well off or are not really exposed to the scientific training mindset. These guys are players whom we need to groom and prepare for the long run. They will go back to their teams and they have to tell everyone and spread the word what they have learnt. So now thanks to Jispa I could push my point across and thanks to that we have got a budget sanctioned for a trainer and a masseur for the kabaddi team.

Then I remember the experience I had with the cricket team and then the interaction I had with Anil Kumble once and how he spoke about enjoying practice and I found that a big thing. Even Tendulkar and Dravid can get bored doing the same net practice every day. That’s right. You may be the best in the world but you can still be bored at doing the same thing every day. The idea is to have fun and do a wide variety of things that can get you to be the best at what you are. Its fun and a challenge.

The point being that life is a collection of experiences. You build on what you experience. On what you learn from anywhere. I never knew that Jispa’s swimming and an event with Anil Kumble along with my cricket playing would help me help a Kabaddi team and then who knows where this experience will take me. I am reminded of the movie Forrest Gump and eth famous dialogue of life being like a box of chocolates. Here look at this scene… its lovely and extremely philosophical.

Life is like a box of chocolates. Only thing is that you have learn from every chocolate you eat!

here.. one more bonus video!

how do you say ghyeun tak in French?

There is so much you can learn from people. Especially if the people who you meet come from different backgrounds than yours. There is a great cultural exchange and it leaves everybody much richer. I blogged about this some days back – when we got friendly with our French neighbor - Andy. She was this massive lady who was in India on a secondment and was with us for 6 months. We only got to know her in the last two months and got pretty friendly. She was sweet and she was open. Open to sharing and open to learning. When both collide it makes for a great conversation.

We had good fun moments along the way as well. I realized by talking to her how racist we can get. She spoke about how being a racist is frowned upon and in meetings it is a complete no no. I realized that one has to try and stop being a racist everywhere to be truly neutral. In one office meeting one guy very insensitively spoke about the M word. A lot of us if office are actually racist and see Muslims as different from ‘us’ all. They give into the hype and they are completely taken in by it. When I was much younger I have seen the Mumbai riots and I fell to the fallacy of us versus them. It took me many years to come out and tell myself and the world – screw you. Stop being a racist. I keep arguing that it’s not a religious issue but for many it’s a social issue. The marginalized take to crime and brotherhood as they probably have no other option. If they are given stability and opportunity, crime will automatically fall. In every city there is a pocket of crime and marginalization. The more we propagate the cliché the more it will stick. It becomes self-fulfilling prophesy. In meetings I see people talk loosely about it. In one meeting a senior person spoke disparagingly about Muslims. It was just after my many conversations with Andy where she spoke about ticking a colleague off for being racist. Inspired I ticked him off – I told him you are being a racist. The conversation ended. I think it’s a start. This will take time but people will have to realize not be so. There are different people in this world. Their culture may differ from yours. It is up to us to be sensitive to all of them. To embrace this difference and enjoy them. It’s tough at many times, but to accept and to enjoy the difference is the first step to growing up and learning.

I keep looking out for titles to watch with Jispa. I want her to expand her scope of films to enjoy. So I think about movies I watched as a kid and try to get her to enjoy them. One such movie was Escape through Victory. Almost everyone my age and above would remember this movie. It was a Doordarshan favorite. English movies would be played typically on Friday evening at around 10. This movie was about a POW camp in WW2. Here the POWs have a match with the German national team to prove to the Germans themselves about the Aryan supremacy. With Stallone as a goalie and Pele playing a role as well, the movie quickly achieved cult status when I was a kid. I remember Pele doing a bicycle kick to score. So when I saw it at the library I brought it home. We called Andy to watch it along with us. Andy hails from Lyon in France and it seems Lyon was the base for the underground resistance during the German occupation in WW2. Andy’s family was also involved and at some level a few were even captured and executed. So her perspective was very real and very vivid as compared to anything I might have heard or read before. About how after her grand mom’s death, they found a cupboard stacked full of sugar. She knew that in war Sugar will be heavily rationed, the spectre of the cold war always loomed. In the movie at the end, thanks to the brutal German play and the one sided referring, the crowd goes behind the POW team and they start singing. Thanks to Andy after all these years I understood the significance of the act. Andy started singing along with them. They started singing the French national Anthem.

Then Andy explained the anthem (La Marseillaise) to us. And wow what a rousing violent anthem it is. Here is one part:

Grab your weapons, citizens!
Form your batallions!
Let us march! Let us march!
May impure blood
Water our fields

No wonder you can sing it at a football pitch and expect the team to kill and maim. In contrast the Indian anthem plays on as an ode to peace brotherhood and harmony. Not that I have anything against it but it’s not what I want to play and listen and imbibe before a sports event. You would need a different song.

And immediately I was in charge of doing an anthem for the Puneri Paltan kabaddi team. My brief to the lyrists and composer was simple – the French national anthem. I want the people to feel the passion, the beat the lyrics must inspire to kill , to attack and to maim… no brother hood here.

An excerpt:

Kasske pakkad,
jamm ke jhappat,
Todun, modun, gheyun taak!

The song came out amazing and then I spoke to Andy about it and told her how she inspired me to do this song!

Once the video comes out, I will put it up.

But its fun to have learnt so much and already begun to apply it everywhere… that’s the fun of cultures crossing and meeting. And our elders, idiots that they are still insist on opposing cross cultural love marriages…

…

Full French anthem and the Puneri Paltan anthem as follows.

La Marseillaise

Let's go children of the fatherland,
The day of glory has arrived!
Against us tyranny's
Bloody flag is raised! (repeat)
In the countryside, do you hear
The roaring of these fierce soldiers?
They come right to our arms
To slit the throats of our sons, our friends!

Refrain

Grab your weapons, citizens!
Form your batallions!
Let us march! Let us march!
May impure blood
Water our fields!

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

This horde of slaves, traitors, plotting kings,
What do they want?
For whom these vile shackles,
These long-prepared irons? (repeat)
Frenchmen, for us, oh! what an insult!
What emotions that must excite!
It is us that they dare to consider
Returning to ancient slavery!

What! These foreign troops
Would make laws in our home!
What! These mercenary phalanxes
Would bring down our proud warriors! (repeat)
Good Lord! By chained hands
Our brows would bend beneath the yoke!
Vile despots would become
The masters of our fate!

Tremble, tyrants! and you, traitors,
The disgrace of all groups,
Tremble! Your parricidal plans
Will finally pay the price! (repeat)
Everyone is a soldier to fight you,
If they fall, our young heros,
France will make more,
Ready to battle you!

Frenchmen, as magnanimous warriors,
Bear or hold back your blows!
Spare these sad victims,
Regretfully arming against us. (repeat)
But not these bloodthirsty despots,
But not these accomplices of Bouillé,
All of these animals who, without pity,
Tear their mother's breast to pieces!

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Sacred love of France,
Lead, support our avenging arms!
Liberty, beloved Liberty,
Fight with your defenders! (repeat)
Under our flags, let victory
Hasten to your manly tones!
May your dying enemies
See your triumph and our glory!

Refrain

We will enter the pit
When our elders are no longer there;
There, we will find their dust
And the traces of their virtues. (repeat)
Much less eager to outlive them
Than to share their casket,
We will have the sublime pride
Of avenging them or following them!

Refrain

--

Puneri Paltan theme song

Eh kass ke pakkad,
jamm ke jhappat,
todun, phodun, gheyun taak!

Kabbadi kabbadi Kabbadi kabbadi (2)

Kab kab kab Kabbadi kabbadi
Kab kab kab Kabbadi kabbadi
Kab kab kab Kabbadi kabbadi

Eh Puneri Paltan aaliiiii (tutaari)

Arre chodenge na…
arre modenge ha…

Hey chodenge na…
arre modenge ha..
inn lakeeron se aagein hai apna jahaan (2)

Rokein humein,
aisa kissmein hai dum,
na bacchega koi,
mitti ki kassam…

Chyaa maaila gheyun tak!
eh sodu nakko!
ek phodun tak!

(Chorus)
Kasske pakkad,
jamm ke jhappat,
Todun, modun, gheyun taak! (3)

Aasma kar dekhle,
kiss mein kitna zor hain,
Chingaariyaan nahi,
hum bhaddakti aag hai!

Ragon mein daudti, (hey)
zidd jeet ki, (hey)
bas khel hi nahi
yeh mahayudh hai (2)

Chyaa maaila gheyun tak!
Kasske pakkad,
jamm ke jhappat,
Todun, modun, gheyun taak! (3)

Puneri Puneri Puneri Puneri (2)
eh majhi Puneri Paltan aali aali re (4)

Todun, modun, gheyun taak!