sweet dreams are made of these

So Jispa is living my freaking dream. Ok… sorry Jasmine, OUR freaking dream. The joker is in Germany for an exchange program. It’s not really an exchange program but it’s a vacation in the form of an exchange program. They will stay at a school hostel and attend school for a few days but are not really completely living with a German family for a few weeks and attending school and all that. But hell. It’s still an exchange program. I wanted to go for an exchange program when I was small.

I remember seeing something like that in the papers about a free exchange program and wanting to join. I sent the letter and the papers and everything and when I got an invite (or just before or something), I saw that you have to pay for your air fare. The air fare to US in those days was around a 100 thousand rupees, which was way above what I could definitely afford. Also I had to pay for small incidental expenses etc. I think it was a period of 1 year where I could study and stay with a family there. Or was it one month? I don’t know. But what I do know is that obviously my dad wouldn’t pay that amount and I was in India with a broken dream. I am not sure if I was upset with dad. I think not. I think I was in this respect at least, quite understanding.

We knew money was at a premium and that dad was at home after his heart attack and that we were trying to run the family on investments and a children’s nursery that my mom ran. It was a nice and popular nursery – Angel’s Nursery. It generated quite a bit of income for the family when we needed it the most. I remember my brother and me being taken by dad on his scooter (with a side car attached) to the various localities and catchment areas and going door to door and stuff pamphlets in the letter boxes and doors. I remember liking the job and quite enjoying the experience. It was invariably on the vacation before the school season for new admission starts.

So I do understand not being sent for this vacation. Right now, with the new house and the 6 months that we had without one of the houses on rent and the Chembur gymkhana membership and all… we are pretty broke. Jasmine and me and wondering and calculating the money in the bank accounts. It’s fun. Luckily I am not stressed as much. I have been through much worse. At least here I am asset rich and cash poor. So when the Germany trip came in, we still said yes, knowing that we will figure it out.

I stopped taking stress on a lot of issues. We will figure it out as we get along life. Jasmine and I discuss that Jispa is young and atleast she should enjoy. It is difficult for all three to go but at least one can go and see it. She is going to Germany, see Nuremberg where the trails were held after WW2 and she is going to Salsberg in Austria. Oh freak. She is completely living my dream. But I am not complaining.

The joker that Jispa is, is not understanding that these are our dreams. I have told her to send pics and talk to us and describe things to us. Share the experience with us. But she is not likely to do so. She likely to go there and act all secretive and at best we will get her experience from her Instagram feed. Such an ass she is. Possibly when she is 30 or possibly 40, when she reads this post, she will realise what a pain she was.

Dreams are funny things and when you mix parenting with them, they can get potent, liberating and restricting at the same time. We parents have to balance it and Jispa has to balance it. She can’t do something or not do something because of us, but we expect her to do or not do because of us. What is right and what is wrong? There is no right and wrong, there is only tension. Tension as opposites reconcile. This tension makes the job interesting, painful, memorable and rewarding. No tension no fun.

Last weekend a kid came home. I had taught her 8 years ago. She came for gyan and advice and chit chat. She had remained in touch, on and off I must have met her after 8 years. It was damn cute. There was the tension of me being her teacher but also the tension of now being a peer in some way.

Yesterday I was super proud as well. It always happens when a kid I have taught comes home and spends time with us and asks for advice. This one was from  the current batch I taught. She and her friend decided to start a cold brew coffee company focusing on really authentic cold brews. She came over for advice and to get me to taste her coffee. It was seriously awesome coffee and I really enjoyed it. Since she wasn’t taking money for the coffee, I made her my special paneer burjee… and then we fed her icecream and we showed her how to make caramel sauce etc. At the end Jasmine and I sat with her and played a few card games. It was so much fun. I know I am some time away from retirement but then this what I would love to do when I retire. Talk to old friends and students, play cards, talk marketing, give free advice and take free coffee from them. It’s the best combo ever.

Teaching has given more joy than anything else. That it helped me improve my speech delivery and improved the basics of what I teach is secondary. The joy that I get when these kids reach out to me, talk to me and give me the love and respect that have for me. It is invaluable. This why I teach and this why I cannot give up. I have made teaching a fine art of teaching logic, concepts and stand up foolery. Just this week I was to give a 12 minute talk on techmarketing at a forum. I did not quite know beforehand what I wanted to speak about but a few days before the talk, I wrote down 20 concepts that would be important to digital marketers as they try to go upon their journey. These are from my personal experience and could be quite controversial or plain different, depending upon the context.

I knew I was good, but suddenly 5 minutes into the talk I started having fun and I started enjoying myself on stage. My stand-up routine started and I started having a load of fun. In the end I was short of time and I started doling out advice in rapid fire mode and the tempo went up and up and up and I was talking as fast as I could. It was serious fun. I have never before had so much fun on stage ever. And the stage was a big one! It going to be telecast on TV later. Here is the not so telecast quality of the same. In 24 hours it already has got more than 500 views. I was on fire! It was an important high point in my professional life so far. Not because I gave gyan on stage. I have done so many times before, but never have I enjoyed it so much. And never before have I done it like this, pushing the limits of my irreverence combined with intelligence and experience. Full time pass.

Here see the full video here.

I really enjoyed this. At first I had put the word f*#@king in every slide. Trying to make an impact. There is an extra alphabet there just for you to know that the word isn’t what you were thinking of but a more politically correct FREAKING. Then the sponsors raised a few valid questions and were urging me to be prudent. I agreed and I sent them one with all of them deleted. As luck would have it, they played the original slides at first and I had to gently remind them on stage. Suddenly as I ran through the presentation, they smartly changed the presentation and the result was that in the middle all the sanitized slides came on. I guess the impact was made. Social was  abuzz with the F*#@KING presentation and the points I raised. Alls well that ends well.

how little

When we grew up in an India of less resources we fought for more and more for ourselves. The age was characterized by have nots and an amazing string of shortages. I have heard stories (probably not apocryphal) about 7 year waitlists for cars. I know for sure that when my dad came to Mumbai from Dubai, he bought the Bajaj Chetak scooter and got it immediately by paying in foreign currency. I think it was almost exclusively available in foreign currency. A lower end brand was available if you paid local currency.

Like idiots we fought and discussed all the issues that lay before us. Corruption, economics and everything else. The big cause as we and almost everyone saw it was a Malthusian curse of over population. It was only natural to think so. When you have less to go around, you think the best solution was to have less demand to start with. Everything boiled down to lowering population. Having less children was patriotic. First I remember the family planning programs having this slogan – hum do humare do. (we two ours two), alluding to one couple having two kids.

I remember noticing when the not so subtle shift happened to the program showing one couple and the male child simply removed from the posters. It was one couple with one girl.

All of us looked forward to the China model where they strictly enforced a one child policy to curb the effects of population growth and enough and more statistics emerged which showed that while being larger for now China will soon be eclipsed by India as the most populous country the world. We would have the ignominious reputation by, I remember, something like 2035! Wow that was a scary statistic. If you thought there wasn’t enough, here – have even less. Compete with more people. Eat less food. Wear less clothes. It was crazy.

I am suddenly reminded of these arguments as on Independence Day I was at the club where there was a bit of flag hoisting and celebration. The chairman or someone got up to make a short speech and he highlighted the population problem. He obviously was from the 60’s. I sniggered to my wife that he definitely hasn’t heard about the demographic dividend. China with its one child policy has another weird set of issues. You have older population that now has a much smaller younger  population to support it. India seems to have a, what they now term as, demographic dividend. A larger younger population earning money for a smaller older population. Some even split India into four zones and talk about how the demographic dividend has already been witnessed in the west and south while the north and east are now poised for reaping the benefits while a host of factors need to be considered.

So it’s a bit of a U turn that we see. Similarly such views are also seen in immigrants. At first cities flourish thanks to the waves of immigrants that come in and then we suddenly hate them with the right wing stroking fears of ‘them’ overpowering ‘us’. Then we want to throw them out. Then different statistics come out explaining how the immigrants that come in are the best brains from around the world and that if we shut them out our own innovations die out and we as a city we will die. Today India’s (arguably) two richest cities – Mumbai and Delhi are completely immigrant led. You would struggle to find anyone in these two cities who could trace their ancestry for greater than two generations. I haven’t found any son of the soil in Mumbai at least, nor known of anyone like this in Delhi.

Such u turns are common and thanks to the amount of reading I do –I am reconciled to them. In fact the law of unexpected consequences shows up almost in everything. In a lot of my life I have seen myself turning around and questioning my own beliefs. There are two sides to the coin. These days I have been far less opinionated on a lot of issues. I have spoken of this in my earlier blogs as well. This has also led to me blogging a lot less. If you have fewer opinions to talk about you obviously are going to talk less. Unless of course you have this space and time to rant on both sides. It becomes difficult to talk to start with.

You can hear about a bit of it the demographic dividend and other stuff at this talk.

And here is the link to why population growth is required –

In fact I never would have imagined seeing a story title like this  - ‘Low Birth Rates: Causes, Consequences, and Remedies.’ Remedy for LOW BIRTH RATES? I thought that was the cure. Oh man… how little we know. How little.

http://www.becker-posner-blog.com/2013/08/low-birth-rates-causes-consequences-and-remedies-becker.html