Burn the negatives from your heart

I was in Dubai till the third standard and we moved into India when I came into the fourth. One of the fun things that we could do in India that we couldn’t do there was burst crackers. I remember mom and dad taking us to the main market for crackers in Mumbai, the Mohamed Ali Street. It had so many shops that convert themselves into cracker wholesalers for the Diwali season. Mom and Dad realised that we were in this respect at least pretty deprived. We hardly saw crackers and hardly ever got to burst anything more than the basic sparklers that some Indians had smuggled into Dubai. I wonder why someone would smuggle something that is essentially a fun thing at such bug risk into Dubai. I wonder. But did and we used to use them with great care and caution. Take the case of cracker loom (tadaphadi is another desi word). It is basically the cracker that makes a noise like a 1944 WW2 machine gun. Not that I have heard one, but from all the research that I have done watching those movies, I can tell you for sure. I set would have around 40 small crackers. We would dismantle them and use them one tick at a time. That really time consuming and fun.
So in Mumbai, we went berserk and I credit my parents for allowing us to go berserk at the cracker store. We bought sparklers, atom bombs (loud raasi bomb), tadaphadi, flower pots, and what not. My brother’s favourite was the snake. It was nothing but a small black pill on which you put your sparkler or matchstick. From it a long black ‘snake’ would come out. It would emit a horrible smoke and would forever scar the tiles. You could see tiles on the staircase of many buildings scarred thus. One black round mark, where the snake once burned. It was fun and still is but I have no clue why.
Soon we graduated to getting a diwali allowance to buy our fire crackers ourselves. We spent wisely on bombs, rockets and the lot. Carefully avoiding girlie stuff like sparklers and zammen chakris. Though my eternal favourite has always been the flower pot. I have no clue what fascination I have for it. But I remember it being the cracker of choice for me and I would spend a little more on buying the big special flower pot. I would keep it safely and preserve it. The Diwali bursting starts a week before Diwali and we would conserve our crackers to last the whole week. The piece d renaissance would be lit by me at the special moment at the peak of the diwali night. My night / festival was made.
The next day after Diwali was the traditional New Year’s day for us gujjus. And that meant going from cousin’s place to another wishing and greeting each other. It went on for a few years till some politics developed between cousins. One side of the cousins was a squabble over property which gave rise to sub texts in relationships and on the other side was a struggle for dominance. All in all it made for a bitter after taste. Soon enough, the family Diwali tradition changed to getting out of Mumbai during Diwali. If you are not there is no reason to visit them, wot say?
Now many years since … there is no tradition in our family to visit relatives on Diwali or new year day. So we too have followed the tradition of getting out of Mumbai for diwali. This is something that seems to have worked in our favour. Get out of this place. The noise and the pollution has significantly increased over the years making the space completely inhabitable. The one year I was year many years ago made me make up my mind of celebrating Diwali out side in the peace and quiet. When a teeming metropolis like decides to celebrate noise and pollution the only choice you have is to run.
But contrast to that is the Dusherra celebration that happens 20 days prior to Diwali. I love the focal point of the day, which is to make a huge effigy of thr ten headed demon king ravana and burn the hell out of him. This to was something that we were first introduced to while in India. Till then it was just a chapter of our social science text book.
The first one I saw was a huge figure five seven stories tall and full of crackers inside. Bursting it would take all of 30 minutes or more and give a great thrill to many of us. It was clearly one of the high points of childhood celebrations.
Now that Jispa has grown up a bit we tried the last couple of years to take her to Chowpatty and witness the big celebration there also. That too was good fun. For 50 bucks we got the VIP tickets at the RamLeela that was being staged there. And then the end point was the big effigy being burnt.
This time around a couple of months before I saw this kit being retailed at the book store. “make your own ravanna”. A kit that had color drawings and instructions to make your own three dimensional effigy. That was cool I though and bought the kit. I promised myself to make it and figure out if we could burn this ourselves. I missed the Dusherra deadline but I saw and remembered it on the night we were to burn it.
I removed the covers expecting to simply punch out the perforated stuff and assemble it in 20 minutes. How tough could it get.
To my chagrin I saw large sheets with color prints on them. No perforations. I had to cut them all. The prints were nice and detailed which meant even more time in cutting them. The hair, the moustache and the head gear and to add to it, Ravanna has ten heads. What a pain. Some of the stuff was to be cut across circles, which meant plenty of small cuts on the paper so that thy fold in a circle and lots of irritation. The hands had to be stuck to the body using glue, his skirt to the legs, his head to the neck and what not. Very very painful. Jasmine had joined me soon enough and both of us were figuring this big mammoth task. Poor Jispa who I thought would love to do it was quickly sidelined. We had to give her simple cutting work. After some time we realised that the glue wouldn’t be enough and in came in the artillery. The humble scotch tape and the even humbler stapler came in. a stick there a tuck here and a punch in there somewhere.
We had to abandon the project for the night to catch it the next morning. Jispa was unwell and was at home. We tried to take it up again and try to get the pieces to all add up. It was so frustrating and tiring. Jasmine remarked that ‘she is going to love to see this guy burn’. I concurred. It was a real pain putting it all together. I guess we just don’t understand what it is to make life easy for the customers. I mean the least was that they could give was pre-cuts or perforations. I don’t visualise anyone less than a 14 year old managing this. In fact I am planning to give this project to my new team in order to help them get a hang of what it means to have bad design, bad instructions and bad user experience.
Five hours and 15 man hours later the Ravanna was up. Finally standing. The big boy with all his ten heads and a menacing smile with a sword and a shield. There boy. All that sweat was worth it. Here the BIG FELLA is in all his glory.

Since Jispa was a bit unwell, the week passed by with the man remaining on top of our book case. Today we got the opportunity to burn the fella. We called in Jispa’s friend, bought 100 bucks of sparklers, and set the fellow on fire. Like all dad occasions, this too passed by without me really sitting back and enjoying it. I was busy making it stand, then setting it alight and then managing the kids so that they don’t get burnt. But it was fun any ways.
Here is he just before he was burnt.

The last bit was the clincher – Jasmine said “not bad eh? Its worth doing it the next time as well. Lets buy one and keep right away. I don’t think it will be in stock.”
I agree. Haha. After all that work, it did turn out quite a nice experience in the end. A sweet ending is just so important. With the Ravanna, we burnt all the ill will we had towards the guys who sold the dam thing. At the end we were left with sweet memories. I was telling Jasmine that "these things are the best projects. You spend time to make them and then you just have to burn them. You enjoy the process and then the thing also does not take up any space in the house. "

Jai Lankesh!

butterflies

Change is a constant yet we are scared of it. In b school, we had an organisational behaviour professor – Deosthali. Over smart guy. He was a good guy but he tried be over smart. He taught the first lecture and then he told us to form groups and gave us all one chapter to make a presentation. That way the portion is done. Smart ass. He did some over smart for the exams. I don’t remember what, but something he announced and the students just lost it. We staged a revolt.
In class there were two natural hotheads with natural ‘leadership’ abilities. One was yours truly and the other was a guy called suraj. He was from Delhi and made a big noise about how he was a great gift as he was from Doon school. Not too popular but he had a tough streak in him. I too was an ass with a large ego. Naturally we both did not get along and rarely spoke to each other. I think it was as a result of a silly altercation which I don’t even remember.
So this time Suraj took on the mantle and revolted. He got the students all roused up. But there was one hitch. Would I support him? I was the second hot head and he needed me to be there. I could easily move opinion the other way and he revolt would not be unanimous. It would have been seen as a one faction tirade or something.
These developments happened over the evening and I came to know of it the next day morning. We did not have internet or mobiles you see.
The bets thing was that I did not know of anything. Anything as in – I did not know that students looked up to me. I was seen as some kind of leader, or that my opinion counted. I was possibly to busy preening my mane or something. I knew I was a good speaker and in B schools you are known by your presentation skills, which I had in plenty. So I walk in to college to see a bunch of students rushing to me to explain things. They spoke about how Suraj has led the revolt and how he met the dean and blah blah. And today the dean has called all the students along with the prof in question. Ok. So? So will you support Suraj? Will you be there? They wanted to know.
Ok I hated Suraj but the answer to me was simple. Sure I will be there. I might have been an egoistical maniac but I was definitely not political. Thank god for small things. Having ang an ego is enough. Having a political bone on top would be disaster. Everybody was relieved. So many came up and thanked me for supporting the cause. Everybody seemed to know I hated Suraj. And that he hated me. But that was all superficial hate. It’s not like he was sworn enemy. Silly people.
So we led a mass unified revolt. I helped him gather the crowd and got the prof kicked out. People kept thanking me and I heard stories of how Suraj orchestrated the whole thing and was worried that I would not support it and he would get victimised if the uprising failed. Hah! I couldn’t even think that far. It was only after the incident I realised that I had some influence on the batch. I might have been too busy fighting my own insecurities to even notice.
But whats that got to do with change. That prof had taken one lecture at the start. He spoke about change. He spoke about how change is something we are all scared of. How the fear of the unknown is greater than the fear of the known. How the greatest scare is when you don’t know how your dad will react, will he slap you or scold you. If you know you will get a scolding or a slap its easier, but anticipating the shit is the toughest.
In 8th standard I wanted a cycle and something led to something and I got promised a cycle if I crack a certain percentage in class. I think it was 75%. Wow. So I did not really end up studying anymore, but I ended up praying more. Like all good religious boys I guess. This was the second unit test and not the final exams. We kept getting the papers. In the hindi lecture the prof walked in and gave out the hindi papers. Out of a 40 mark paper I saw my scores and my heart jumped out. It was a 11. THAT WAS A FAIL. Forget the 75%. I failed in the unit test. The only time in my life. I failed a test. Man. That was the biggest disaster in my history as a student. I was so shit scared. I tried to explain to the teacher about something in the paper that could get me more marks. H brushed me aside and did not want to even consider. This was the male prof from the heartland. They were always more irritating than the sweeter Mumbai female teachers. I couldn’t believe that he did not even consider that how I, a normally bright student could fail. It did not matter to him.
I think I cried and I cant even describe what I felt. I knew what was shit I would get at home. I reached home and sat in one corner all quiet. I started to hit my desk and study. Now that was the most abnormal thing in the world to do. That was a give away. Dad was at home. In some time I gathered courage to tell him. I still remember the moment when I spoke to him. He got so pissed. One lesson I learnt that when shit happens to your kid, think a bit before you scold. The kid is feeling like real shit in any case. I probably needed a hug more than I needed a scolding. That would have been equally effective.
Needless to add my cycle dreams went poof for the time being. And my prof was right. Waiting for the reaction is worse than the reaction. I think he also said – change causes stress. Man will change when the stress associated with the status quo is greater than the stress associated with change. I have remembered his words though I have been instrumental in kicking him out. Only if he decided to use his brains to teach us properly instead taking the short cut. I have tried to think about it all the time. I try to change and accept it and even look for it. Change is a constant but it is also an essential for growth. Growth is a given.
Right now I am looking at change in the face. I am moving to a new role. It is something I have pushed for and lobbied for. Yet when it happens, the butterflies get activated. Slowly they pop out of the pupa and make their presence felt. Over time I have learnt enough to control them, to understand them and to tackle them. But have I managed to eliminate them. Not a chance.

give me more

When you are doing what you love doing or if it excites you, then you can work for long without complaining. Yesterday my day started at 7 am when I left for my teaching stint at Lonavala. It’s a nice location to have a campus. They also have a nice bunch of students. This is the second guest lecture I am taking there. But they have this really stupid habit. They have the course mentor or the dean sitting in your session. Oh shit man. I don’t need the pressure of a 55 year old veteran sitting in and listening while I am teaching. The last time around there was no dug dug from the dean. The mentor who sat in this time was a bit more active.
I don’t have the expertise of a veteran and I don’t claim to be. But you cant really teach and be as fun as you really want to be in this case. The best way to get your students attention and be one of them is to be anti establishment. What’s the point of being anti establishment when you have establishment sitting in your midst. The students will clearly peck you with him and that’s not a rub off I want if I want to connect to the students. Someone asked something and the bugga ticked her off for asking something silly. HEY IT’S MY CLASS. Let her ask. But I had to diplomatically ward off the pain.
But it is shit that I don’t necessarily need in the class. I need the class to break into chaos, infighting and arguments. I engineer them if they don’t happen, I challenge them, scream and shout. All this hits a subdued level with Mr Establishment. And then comes lunch which I have to eat with more Mr. Establishments as opposed to have some with the students. There is so much to learn from them. I look forward to interacting with them on a longer and informal setting. That’s how one learns. That is one of the important by products of teaching. I hate the Brahmin table for lunch concept.
Then post lunch I drove back to Mumbai and went to attend a meeting for some brand launch. The trepidation that I was feeling for this brand for the last few weeks gave to a good night’s sleep. The assurance that we could crack the ad and the proposition relaxed me a great deal. Over a period of time I have moved into a good work3ethic with my scores being low on the procrastination level and high on the planned level. This one was a brand within the group that required me more as a consultant than as a direct guy in charge. This created many layers of approvals, and a labyrinth that I was not totally in control of. That caused me great stress. Now that that is well out of the way and the focus is on execution, I can breathe.
Yesterday I reached back home at 12 midnight. So I totally drove around 200 kms (4 hours in total), taught for three and a half hours, attended meetings, solved a near crisis and cracked a campaign. All in a days work. But I loved it and at the end my adrenaline was flowing so much that I couldn’t help noticing that before going to bed I didn’t feel tired a bit. When there is a purpose to your day, fatigue stays at bay. There are days when I have got tired doing far less. Far far less.

Jispa and me

Imagination

Jispa loves her silly bands. Among the others, this one is her favourite. Why… it represents two animals

Did you get the two? One way is the rabbit; the second is a penguin/duck kind of a bird.

Competition
Jispa did well in her swimming. She now got into the advanced class. There was a big trial and 6 kids were selected to progress. I think Jasmine was tense, or should I say eager. I was eager but to a lower level. Probably I was fooling my self by pretending to not care. I wanted her to make it but I did not want any pressure from me wanting it. not on myself and not on her. But I am so happy. The competitive batch trains for competitions and demands focus and dedication. This is something that I want her to learn at an early enough age. To focus well and learn well.
Here are the anxious mothers at the selection

Stunts
This is Jispa doing her stunts. She started climbing walls.

I clicked a snap and Jasmine got into the act to click from her camera. Very cool. I warned her that she would look silly if she got too excited. I know myself well enough to know that whenever I do something interesting and there is an audience watching, I invariably make a fool of myself. She started climbing and bang… she hit her nose against the pelmet of the door. Only now she is old enough to laugh at it. that’s my girl. She got hit hard but realised the fun of it!

Tables
I am taking this genetic thing too far. But I can’t but notice the similarities. Jispa now has math tables to do. So it’s me and her in the car learning tables. Four one sa four, four two sa eight.... I was really bad at it and I regretted it my whole life. But I only regretted it and did not do anything about it. for Jispa I am keen to get her to learn them. She got the 2,3,4 and 5 tables easy. Like me she got the 6 times table till 6X5 after which she fuddled. Same thing with 7. I still struggle with anything beyond 7X5. so with her I am learning them myself. Sure I can count fast enough to say them but the fact is that I count, while the magic is to know them by heart. She misses the identical ones that I miss 6X7, 6X9, 7X6, 7X8. These are the nasty ones. I don’t know why I miss them and why she misses them as well. Even what I struggle to a lesser extent – 6X3, she does the same. The only reason I know 6X3 is because I struggled with it and I have burned it into my head. I still need to think. It’s painful. Entrance exams later in life need one to get the tables right. I cant understand how I can get 99% in my math and still struggle with tables. Outside of tables math was my favourite table. Possible that was the only illogical thing that you have to learn by heart in an otherwise highly logical subject. But I keep at it everyday in the hope that it will make her do well. Its justa question of burning it in her head isn’t it

true charade

Am I as good as possibly my blog makes me out to be? While some readers probably felt so but the truth is known to me. I know the size and the placement of my warts. I may not know the ones that are behind my face, the ones that are known to others. If Johari windows are right, as I believe them to be then, the following is probably true, which I believe to be. I agree with what is being said.

"So maybe we feel the need to perform ourselves in some other way. And if you think that what goes up on people’s blogs is really the full content of their lives, of course, you’re quite wrong. It’s what they’re doing in the spotlight. It’s their turn. And this spotlight they can shine it on themselves and they can go in there and sort of dance about and create a persona for themselves. Of course it’s not the whole story." - Margaret Atwood. you can see the video of what she is talking below. This quote comes towards the end.



This blog is a persona. It is what I want to write about. It is what I want to see. Even if it is truthfully and smattered with critical introspection, it is at the end that – a persona. I don’t believe it to be anything more. It would give an insight only to what I would want to reveal / say. Only one of the Johari windows.

Sigh…

the times, they are a ...runnning?

Meet Jispa’s nemesis. The deceptive looking hater of liberty, destroyer of creativity, sucker of imagination, the slave of time and the master of stress. It comes cloaked in a cute hard outer shell. It pretends to lie there fairly innocuous, but turns its sinister head to reveal a tell tale ticker. Akin to a 1980’s time bomb, it ticks ever so steadily, audible enough to create an aura of inevitability, and soft enough not to be threatened by it. Meet arch enemy number one – the kitchen timer.
I have always loved to have a bath. My bath times vary from 30 minutes to 60 minutes. I remember having long baths ever since I was a kid. Must be some fascination with water. I probably need to check if at the time of my birth if India was in the middle of a drought or something. Or possibly the reverse. Whatever. I love my bath now and I remember loving them as a kid. Every time I would on the shower and be permanently lost in the world of make believe. Sometimes I would be a singer, sometimes a scientist or sometimes a gun slinger. Whatever. But I remember that my thoughts would flow as rapidly as the water. I would always be the brunt of the mom’s ire, JAIMIT GET OUT. GET OUT NOW. With three kids in the house, there would always be someone wanting to get in. But it was mom and dad who would get really pissed with me in the shower forever. I would only get out when I would hear knocking. The softer knocking followed by the harsh screaming of mom or the hard knocking but no screaming of dad. It was clear that the latter was more scary and immediate. Mom would say – I want you out in 15 minutes. My sister and brother would poke fun at me – they would count and show me the time. 25 minutes, 45 minutes, etc. but if you thought that was a nightmare. You are mistaken. I couldn’t care less. I was enjoying my shower. A beautiful world where every other worry ceased to exist. Even today my shower is my last refuge. After a hot day’s cricket, a lot of exercise or even a long day, it is the wonderful world of shower that saves me and helps me retain my sanity. I think I have gone overboard here and been unnecessarily flowery, but I do enjoy it a whole lot.
Even today my best ideas come when I am in the shower. I feel like Archimedes, solving a vexing puzzle. My mind is relaxed and the water seems to perk up my brains into a creative stupor.
My poor kid has inherited some of my genetic make up. She is the shower girl as well. She too takes forever in the shower. Playing, dreaming, imagining god knows what. The other day jasmine was really pissed. How did you get the water onto the ceiling? I sniggered quietly. Spraying water on the walls and the ceilings was my speciality. It is fun to have bath with your shower faced up. The water comes down on you as a fountain. Hehehe. To put things in perspective Jasmine gets out of the bath in the time it takes for father and daughter to get wet. So its always a hard thing for others to see our side of the view. But that is being harsh on her. The enemy of imagination is time. Time to get up, time to have bath, time to get ready time to go to school, time for the bus, the next class, sleep, whatever. Jasmine has to manage her schedule and coordinate her time to ensure that Jispa gets to do all that Jispa wants to. it would be impossible for Jispa to do anything if she lets her imagination get hold of her. It was getting difficult for me too to manage this. I know the fun and the imagination that a bath brings, but I also know that necessity of finishing on time. How do I manage the expectations of both mother and daughter. Getting Jispa out was my role as a dad, but I so hated it. So one day in the middle of one of these outburst in popped the solution. The humble kitchen timer. I told jasmine to get one and use it everytime Jispa went for bath. We give her an adequate ten / twelve minutes, before we expect her to be out. The timer ticks on and gives a short ring at the end. Jispa sometimes has to run out or sometimes like today it is a smooth process. While Jispa obviously wants to throw that thing from the window and watch it fall in slow motion, it seems to have resolved some of the stress that time puts on the family. Jasmine also uses it while Jispa is eating. Jisap can dream on wven while eating. Again here I am theguy who hates telling Jispa to speed up. I rather tell her a story or something, while feeding her. Jasmine would get pissed as Jispa is old enough not to be fed by us. Jasmine is right, but I cant bring myself to shout at Jispa for something I think is perfectly right. Dreaming is good. Imagination is good. I am a fast eater and I gulp down my food, but I guess I have become like this after working. FAST FAST FAST. I think we need to slowdown. Relax, smell the …. GET OUT FAST, the bus will leave. Oh gaaawwdddd.
Somebody wisely said that nature invested time to stop all everything from happening all at once. Screw you. True story - Jispa’s read this quote on a Landmark paper bag attributed to John Lennon. It seems Jispa pointed to the bag and told this to Jasmine once when Jasmine found her wasting time “Time you enjoy wasting is not wasted”. Bah! Jasmine did not find it funny. I am still laughing.

its the pain

It’s always the classic. In the quest for finishing the urgent we often don’t have time for what is important. The last couple of years we have had a good slowdown and that meant poor marketing had very little to do. I think I was lucky to have a mind in those years. Those were the days of going home early and spending time with family and ofcourse writng the blogs. I managed to write one blog for every day I was in office. I think the writing made me a better person, in some obscure, self reflecting kind of way. Also I think it has made me a better parent by forcing me to think through my own principles and ideals. And I also managed to discover the power of using RSS. I have been through slowdowns before in my career. I know that the best way to use the slowdown is to really focus inward and try as hard as possible to keep learning and improving yourself. It worked for me in the last year or so. Now that the slowdown is easing off, the pressure on work has gone through the roof with tons of work hitting. Everyday I come in and think about putting in my blog entry and I tread back home unsuccessful. Sometimes I miss the blog writing bit so much. There is so much to write about and there are so many incidents that I wanted to save for later.
Jispa’s school elocution contest was one such incident. It was that time of the year again. We search Shel Silverstien for interesting poems that Jispa could learn and recite. Interesting ones that give adequate tone variation that allow for an interesting learning experience. A twist in the end is always welcome. This year we got her to learn the one titles ‘Sick’. As usual Jasmine’s job was to get her to learn it and my job was to infuse life in it. We worked with Jispa for around a month on this. We had to submit the poem well in advance to the school. On the Friday before the Thursday, on which she had to recite, the teacher told her to change her poem. She asked her to recite the one she had learnt for the interschool competition, last year. That one was Lester. Oh god. And this was when I was in an offsite to Bangalore. So I couldn’t really work with her on the poem as well. But we tried to do our best in the ensuing days and we got her to match readiness. Jasmine and I also decided to register our protest, so we decided to pick her on Thursday and talk to the teacher. We sent that day to realise that Jispa won the third prize. We still made our point to the class teacher and sent the message that we hold the elocution close to our hearts and we believe in taking active part in it. The teacher said that she realised as Jispa told her that we had been practicing for over a month :).
In evening I spoke to Jispa. Did she enjoy the contest? Ya. Did she enjoy learning and reciting the poem? Ya. And after the contest what did you do? “I went and congratulated all the other kids who took part. Especially those from my class.” “Hmm.. why did you do that?” I asked. “because I remembered what you said. to always tell others that they did well, whether I win or lose”. Wow. I felt good. That’s my girl. I must have drilled the sportsman’s anthem into her. It is the way you play your game. So we might have been happy that she won, I tried not to show too much elation. Only happiness. But I really was happy and I told her as much that that is more important than winning.
On teaching…and coaching… I have tried to teach her an interesting new concept that seems to have worked for me. Visualisation. She is learning her swimming well and this Saturday there are trials for the next level. Jasmine is quite irritated that she has progressed well but she seems to keep forgetting certain basics. Cup your hands, reach out and hear your biceps and breathe right. I learnt this stuff from this movie ‘Pride’ and it is similar to what her coach tells her as well. Reach out. Visualisation is something I have learnt in cricket and adapted to my swimming as well as squash. If you are able to think through the technique you can mentally tune yourself to play those shots and they are easy in real life. Same with swimming. I have learnt to swim better purely by thinking about it. So I tried to teach her to think about the swimming technique, cupping hands, reaching out, breathing well. It seems to be working but you never know. We are keen that Jispa takes up swimming well. That would improve her technique, stamina and strength. It also seems to be the thing that we have the right support system for.
She seems to be something of an athlete in the making for now. Its definitely early days and she hasn’t really met competition but I guess the discipline of serious practice and commitment will take her a long way. It is so important to take up any sport in a proper structured manner. I was talking to her on the value of pain and the fact that serious athletes feel pain and befriend it. I told her about a story about Ian Thorpe and that he said he missed pain the most, now that he wasn’t training professionally. The joy that pain gives is something else altogether. Many people ask me what I get standing in the sun for a cricket match and I am not even playing any where near professional. Well, it’s the joy of pain. You can only experience it to know what its like. I hope Jispa experiences it as well.

emptying shelves filling minds

I look forward to getting books that form some sort of series. When you get two or more that form a series in your head and you get to read them back to back, they make for an interesting argument in your mind. But that is not always possible. The next best thing is to get a series of unputdownable interesting books that one reads back to back. When I get these unputdownables, the reading progresses rapidly with the books rapidly flying off my table. I keep the to-read books on my table and the rest get pushed into the cupboards. And I also control myself and don’t buy books till I clear my backlog, else it will rapidly spin out of control with books filling up shelves but not filling minds. Hahaha. I liked that last bit of corn philosophy. Filling shelves without filling minds. I should put that up in the library that one day I will design. Hah!
The last few weeks I have got extremely lucky with my books. I first got the book ‘Born to run’ by Christopher McDougall followed by a book on the Taj Mahal, followed by ‘Employees first, Customers second’ by Vineet Nayyar followed by ‘Into Thin Air’ by Jon Krakauer. They were as disparate as they could get.
Born to Run (see link which also has an interesting video by the author) is about Ultra marathoners and an ancient tribe that loves to run really long distances. I loved it as according to me the marathon / ultra marathon is the greatest ever sport. In my pecking order it lies at the very top. While you compete with others you largely end up fighting with yourself. The ability to pound the ground every step, continuously for hours at a stretch is simply magical. The author also argues that perhaps we survived as a species largely thanks to our unique ability to run long, real long distances. It explains how humans probably survived by simply running down the animals. They would most certainly outrun in the short run, but if you understand them and are able to track them, then you can most certainly run them down by sheer determination and grit. The gazelle will simply run like hell till its body gets over heated and dies. Poop. That’s it. Of course there is a little more skill to it that the book describes in detail. It also talks about our running styles and how with the advent of padded shoes we have been susceptible to more and more running related injuries. And interspersed throughout the book are lovely descriptions of ultra marathon races. They keep you riveted to the book, waiting to see who wins. All in all an amazing book that has immediately moved to my top ten list.
It also makes a point that I completely agree with. It says that one of the most important things about an ultra marathoner is the mind and how ‘nice’ a person he is. The general sociable or amiability of a person is completely important in a long distance runner. This is a slightly less fleshed out point in the book but it makes enough references to keep my mind active to the concept. I think its worth having a look at in detail.
The next book was about the Taj. From when I remember I have always had a fascination for the Taj. I grew up thinking about it. When I first visited it I was a kid, I next visited it when I was 23. At 23 when I saw it I thought it was highly over rated. Over time I have come to think deeply about it. There has to be some mystery about it. What is it that makes the Taj, THE TAJ. Is it merely a makbara or does it have greater significance. Slowly I started understanding it a bit better. I started reading about it at every chance I got. Reading more and more gave me further insights and glimpses into the monument. I can safely say that today I understand it enough to know much more than the average guide who does not understand it nor it nuances. I understood the value of walking slowly from the front entrances and seeing the arches in line. Letting the Taj slowly emerge. Also one great insight to me is to slightly lower yourself and see the image from the pathways before the gate. Then you will realise the perfect form that architect is letting you see. It must emerge, slowly. There is a reason for it to have a gate that shields the monument from view. Else they would have just put it up without the surrounding walls. Why lower yourself. My theory is that over time we have rebuilt roads and pavement to a point higher than what was the original. If you lower yourself on the path towards the monument you will the perfect angle where all the gates come in a beautiful line of sight. But then that’s my theory. It worked for me. Another thing is to visualise the Taj with garden in front being full of fruit bearing trees a ala Eden. It would not look as naked as it is looking now. It was supposed to be full of fruit bearing trees that possibly even contributed to its upkeep. There are old paintings of the Taj that show it with trees in front. Imagine a beautiful white relief in contrast to the dense green eden. The Humayun tomb in Delhi also always held a strong fascination for me. The book also explains the taj in relation to eth tomb. I always suspected that you cannot fully appreciate the Taj without first appreciating the Humayun’s tomb. I was right there. I would like to again and again to Taj to understand it deeper and deeper. So many myths and so many explanations. It is a mystery that needs explanation and resolving.
Next in line was the book ‘Employees first, customer second’ by Vineet Nayyar. I have come to this conclusion since the lat six months that the key to happy customers is happy employees. Satisfied happy and motivated employees make for a great set of customers. Putting customers first takes the focus away from the enablers and is a recipe ripe for disaster. This book I picked up in crosswords and read it back to back, in two hours flat without leaving the shop. I simply placed it back on the shelf. No, I will not deny the author the royalty, but I promised my self that I will figure a way to buy not one but at least 200 books. And get him to speak to as many forums as possible. He has a very valid point of view. He is attempting to change the way we as companies think. I will do everything in power to ensure that the message is spread as far and wide as possible. Putting that one book down will ensure that I will remember to figure out a way to get my signed copy from the 200. How? Wait and watch. Things are already in motion. Vineet – if you are reading this. Trust me. I think I know what you are aiming for and I think I can deliver your objectives. Message will be received very very wide.
Then the next book was about the ill fated expedition on Mount Everest. Another very high endurance sport. A book that kept me awake at night and made me read like crazy. To give you an idea on how much I enjoyed this book – I woke up at 730 am when I was in Bangalore and I just picked it and continued reading it till I finished it at 830 am. I just wanted to complete it.
Now the book on hand is called ‘the human zoo’. I just started reading it. I have no clue how good it is but the opening two paras in the introduction is one of the most hard hitting ones I have ever read – I reproduce it here.

‘When the pressures of modern living become heavy, the harassed city dweller often refers to his teeming world as a concrete jungle. This is a colourful way of describing the pattern of life in a dense urban community, but it is also grossly inaccurate, as anyone who has studied a real jungle will confirm.
Under normal living conditions, in their natural habitants, wild animals do not mutilate themselves, masturbate, attack their offspring, develop stomach ulcers, become fetishists, suffer from obesity, form homosexual pair-bonds, or commit murder. Among human city dwellers, needless to say, all of these things occur. Does this, then, reveal a basic difference between the human species and other animals? At first glance it seems to do so. But this is deceptive. Other animals do behave in these ways under certain circumstances, namely when they are confined in the unnatural conditions of captivity. The zoo animal in a cage exhibits all these abnormalities that we know so well from our human companions. Clearly, then, the city is not a concrete jungle, it is a human zoo.’

Very rare that a book’s opening paragraphs slap you so hard. Very rare. I am dying to read the book to find out how hard the slaps turn out to be.

leading to victory!

One more weekend and one more ‘training offsite’. I do tend to think that these traiing programs are highly over rated and boring. Though like any book, no matter how bad it is, it is never a complete waste. This time it was only for top management. So now we have senior shit with one person per room. So how do we up this further for the even more senior people. We have Suites for them.. Corporate India never ceases to amaze me. Cut to the activity.
The activities are always fun. Far better than the yappity yappity talking that happens in closed rooms. It is interesting to see the people trying hard to understand the games and trying to win them. They try so hard to win. One of the games we played required us to take an estimate of the score before we start the game. The other team had played it before we did and all we wanted to do was beat them. The people try and the way we stop listening is crazy. We try so hard. Competition pushes us to extremes. We stop thinking clearly and start pushing. We assume stuff that never was. We start distrusting. In another game, which required all the players to survive wasn’t actually a winning game. It was a survival game where if all survive all win. People did not understand that as well. They thought it’s an ‘us versus them’ and started by not trusting and by not sharing resources. I was in a team that was supposed to be mute and was stranded on an island surrounded by acid. The only way out was to get the acid proof tiles that the blind team had on another island. That required the lame team to direct the blind team to come to us with the tiles. So obviously the only thing we could do was wait till they come to us. Relax till then. I sat down to bide my time, relax till the tiles came. Post which I knew I had to scramble like hell. It was a bit amusing to see my team mates gesturing and clapping and tryuing to explain stuff to everyone. Getting all excited. When the tiles came I swung into action and was super fast enough to get the tiles to all the stranded players. In time to ensure all win. That’s all that there was to it. Simple stuff. no rocket science. I don’t know if the guys thought I was not a team man when I was relaxing and biding my time, when there was really nothing to be done by us. Relax and wait till the tile comes to us. Post which we run like hell.
I realised an important truth this offsite. Well it is a truth to me. The jaimitism is coined thus – winning and leadership are so over rated. We are so blinded by this thing about leading to victory that we fail to see the process. You don’t really have to win. Teaching Jispa I realised that its not about winning. It is about the process of play. Every time I try and drill it into Jispa – the Olympic credo – when a great sportsperson comes to write against your name, he writes not whether you won or lost but how you played your game. If your process is right and you have done your best, the result will be in your favour. You don’t have to win. Look at yourself, your own limitations and always use that as a pressure tool. Not winning. Sure in a competitive sport you have to out run and out perform to win. And I am not saying that one must be a wimp but if you focus your energies towards yourself and not the opposition then the game is won there itself. You fight hard, every point every game, but you aren’t really fighting him or her, you must be fighting yourself. The opposition is a useful benchmark, but it is not the end.
Similarly leadership. It is so bloody overrated. We understand it as rubbish inspiration and motivation. I think true leadership is exactly what it is not. It is listening to a lot of people. It is getting involved only at grave risk. It is by making yourself almost dispensable. Letting people do what they want to but only being the guide and using your experience to suggest. If you know it well enough then being an example always helps :).
But both of these are so tough to follow. You want to win, you want to lead. At least the kind of personality I am. Severely competitive and severely pushy. I can’t not try. And thanks to my pushing I end up being in a leadership role.
But also I realised that I have matured over the years. I come into my own with people who look upto me. In situations where more than one leader emerges I tend to be quite about the whole thing. Almost disinterested. I guess people feel that I have tuned off, but I haven’t. I only see the futility of multiple leadership. I know if I open my mouth I would be forceful and dominating. That would just upset everything a bit. It is not a battle I wish to fight at this level. And hence my silence.
It is similar when bosses refuse to listen. Too many hot heads will spoil whatever broth was being cooked.
So I try and conquer my urges to win and my urges to lead. Its not easy for me. funny nah. I get this realisation as a truth and I also do not follow it. But I am improving. Slowly slowly I am getting to see the benefits of being stable and level. The benefits of process and pain as opposed to the pain from ‘competing and leading’. I think that this has also come about thanks to me switching sports and taking up swimming. It is a meditative state of sorts. Me swimming against myself. My own technique being used by me to improve and push myself.
Or I am just getting old, hopefully wiser hehehe. .. whatever.

shut up and let go

Yesterday was the farewell party for one of my best ever juniors. She had joined us fresh after graduation and worked with us first for around 6 months. She left to attempt to an entrance test, only to join us back. This time she stayed for over three and a half years. He reported to my junior, but was working closely with me on a number of projects. We are a small team.
She also happened to be a dear friend of a dear student of mine. Over time her fantastic work culture along with a remarkably empathetic mind, she managed to win over many people in the organisation. I don’t anybody had anything negative to talk about her. For me somehow she became all the more special and I had a special corner for her. She was my special trainee and I loved to see her grow. Somehow some people come in your lives in such a way, that they impact you more then you really want to. While I might have taught her a lot, I too managed to learn quite a lot from her. Slowly over many talks I came around to trusting her. She would the only one who would know my computer passwords and I would lean on her for special requests. It was great relationship, almost filial.
So yesterday at her farewell, I was obviously emotional. She had put in her papers as she was getting married. And she also wanted to pursue some business. Leaving a career to get married is dumb but to do strike off on your own is a great thing. I have always been after her to get herself a spanking new management degree. When you are fantastic talent, you nee the polishing effect of an A grade education. That is something I have kept pushing her. I wasn’t sure if my company or any company would ever be able to recognise the value of a person without the polishing effect of an education. I have no clue what a management degree really adds considering the horrible standards. I have seen A listed fresh post grads struggling with simple concepts that talent such as hers grasp in an instant. So while she wasn’t doing any further studies at least striking out on her own seemed like an interesting bet.
Till yesterday evening. I heard that she was thinking about a one year post grad in marketing. I went livid at the party. I blew it big time. When everyone’s turn came to talk something about her, I went on to a long lecture on why she would be making a mistake and started castigating her in public. I would have gone on till suddenly her one time boss, tapped me on my shoulder. I knew that was a signal to stop. I crossed the line. Her boss knew I was getting all emotional. I soon stopped and closed my two bit speech with some postivity.
This lady who stopped her also worked with me for some time and is now a dear friend. She told me to let go. Let her make mistakes, it’s her life. She reminded me of what I once said about Jispa “you always said you will not interfere what Jispa does after she is 18 nah? Now why are you behaving like this with her?” oops. The penny dropped. I was being an ass. A complete ass. I know the lady has potential. Real potential. She is easily amongst the best I have worked with. A fast learner, superb execution and lovely ability to not ruffle feathers. Sure she should get the best, but then she also knows that. She is working within her constraints. She is best aware of her situation. What is my role? My role is to be there on demand. To point what I see wrong. To advice where necessary, to prod where urgent. Just step back and out. They have the right to their own mistakes and their own decisions. You may argue your case but you can’t push it down their throats. Finally, I know too little. I do not know the whole picture. I am blinded with my selfish desire to her succeed. Highly selfish. She may not see it that way. She might have to live her life with others. Taking others along with her.
I got a small dose of what it might feel to see your daughter grow up and do what she wants to. A small dose of what it might feel to be the father of the bride giving her hand away. What it might feel to see her take a decision that may not be in line with what you see as her potential. Sigh………….
Thank you, both the girls. Thank you. I grew up a bit.

Here they are. I am flanked by both these girls. On my right is the one who chastised me and on my left is the one I tried to chastise. And in case you didnt get it, in between is me.

What kind of a guy?

Now what kind of guy would want to see a movie, in which the hero can fly during fights (nearly), beat baddies without getting a scratch, mouth dialogues before and after, dance in the middle of the fight routine as the cell phone in the baddie’s pocket rings. Smashes the same baddies and then asks him to forward the ring tone, is confused if he is a tough guy or a real softie. He is a self proclaimed Robin Hood but you don’t really see him give away the loot to the needy. And of course he is so in love with a dialogue that he repeats it twice in the movie. One to the baddie and one to you for effect. It goes something like ‘after I am done with you, you will have so many holes in your body that you will get confused from where to breathe and from where to let out gas’. He is the same guy who tries to get his girl by calling her to the police station (incidentally, he is a cop) by detaining her father on cooked up charges and announces a reward for someone who makes her smile. The dad is also in the race for eth reward. The dad finally kisses the groom to be and voila – they are in love. No… not the dad and the groom to be, the groom to be and the girl in question.
In extreme anger toward the climax the hero’s shirt tears out as his muscles bulge in anger and he beats the baddie shirtless. And yes, before I forget, there is also a social message in the film. For all those who thought that diesel fumes kill, (spoiler alert – but hell it doesn’t really matter as you have suspended belief itself) the hero in true greenpeace style kills the villain by getting him to choke on diesel fumes. Warning – tractor smoking is injurious to health. And lest you think that the idea was serendipitous, you are given a clear rationale for the same. The movie also a plot line, yes exactly one line. More like one long line with no commas or full stops or any other punctuation save for the exclamation marks which come through after every dialogue or incredulous scene. And those too come in pairs or triplets. The whole movie plays to the gallery much like a under age cricketer who plays a cover drive and stays in the position for a second longer, waiting for the shutter bugs to capture his poise. Wah! Clap clap. The mandatory item number also has lyrics that the item girl, who is incidentally one of the producers, mouths as – I will be a zandu balm for you. I think her name on the producers list was a clear disclaimer for the movie.
Oh what kind of guy would want to watch that kind of film? Which by the reviews and the people around the theatre suggest as the next big thing in Hindi movie cinema. Oh the movie – Dabangg. More like the Da Bang, alluding to the big noise from one of the holes the hero blew in you. The confusing holes? Remember his dialogue… ok ok.. that was a sad joke.
But as I had asked earlier – what kind of guy would see that film? Well the same guy who would write this post in the morning eating yesterday’s over ordered take out pizza, reheated in the micro wave. The thus marinated pizza tastes just like the movie.. real crap for you but you seem to be enjoying it.
OK. I ADMIT. I ENJOYED THE FILM. THERE. YOU SATISFIED NOW. It was horrible cinema, but it was funny. I couldn’t believe it. This is the stuff that people love to watch. I was smirking in my elitist attitude that I am watching what people like to watch. I am actually laughing not at the dialogue but at the people who like this dialogue and find it great. Am I kidding myself? Probably deep down I actually like the movie. I might be enjoying all the sets (ostensibly Indian hinterland), the drama, the fight sequences, the dialogues, the revenge, and the brothers, whatever. Probably I secretly wanted a Salman Khan hairstyle a la Tere Naam. Possibly.

But one thing is for sure, for the screen character to be memorable the reel life would need to meet the real life persona. This gyan is from a book I once read called – the Making of a superstar – Amitabh Bachhan. It is quite an interesting read. One of the points is that your off screen image must be in sync with your on screen image. Salman seems to have got it right. Brain dead, beef image who does a lot of shit and gets into a lot of trouble but you love him… not because he is so handsome and has a beef chunk body; that is incidental, but it really because his heart is of gold. Like the movie as well, you know he is generous.. Why... not because he is actively doing anything about it, but just because he says so. And if you do not believe it, I will bash your skull in.
But the movie is a hit. It is a perfect eid release which ties in with his biggest and loyal fan base. But the hall had people from all walks of life, but it did seem to have a stronger male group crowd coming in. The other movies seem to have gotten cold feet with no one taking on the movie giving it a free run.
But I am not surprised. If news channels we have look like general entertainment channels, then the entertainment channels will have to look even more “enterainmenty”. How low can you go?
No actually you can go lower. The Times of India gave it four stars. The DNA also has some similar lofty praise. And unabashedly claims that you shouldn’t ask fro story or anything else. Ya. Who ever said that a free press is a conscience of democracy? Or any other lofty goal.

I like what Lee Kwan Yew said of free press. He believed that the free press was purely at the mercy of the one rich man who owned it. It was never free and will never be. I did not realise it then, but the more I think about it....

its not just a room, is it?

Back to work after a little tired weekend. We were off for an office offsite to Lonavala. This was a complete bonding offsite which required us to come and do some team activity. This always happens over the weekend. So we left on Friday evening for a three hour drive. We were put up at a resort that was high up on the hill. So at a point the big bus cannot go any further and one needs to get into a SUV or a smaller bus. The end location ended up being quite cool. It is quiet a scenic resort and there is nothing all around except other green hills. Lonavala is being developed like crazy with scores of Mumbai dwellers buying holiday homes in the hill station. The concept of buying a holiday home has really caught on in the last few years. Let’s see how it pans out and whether Lonavala will actually be a buzzing place (defeating the holiday home purpose) or be a desolate ghost town with unkempt and inhabited properties.
The resort we stayed was over multiple levels and okay rooms. More like a good three star property. It was pretty pricey and given the cheap guy I am, this might be the property I might only go free of cost. I wouldn’t pay 10 k per night (inclusive of meals) for something like this. Jasmine and I have learnt the fun of staying in cheap but nice, warm and comfy places. You might not get the great view out of your window when you get up but it might have lots of walks, a bench from where you get the view, or be close to the action in the city. No point paying for a travel and staying in a resort all day cooped up – enjoying the view!
I have been to many company offsites. They tend to be fun if you know the group you are travelling with. It’s most boring when you have joined in fresh and are supposed to let your hair down. After 6 years in the same firm I was pretty cool with the gang. As usual, the suff was all about pulling legs, going through with the activity, ending in a drunken disco party with all sorts of songs being played and all night card parties. Nothing too exciting but nothing so really boring. The only thing is that you end up missing your family. Nice place, nice hotel, good view but no family.
Hmmm. In offsites you normally get to share a room with some colleague of yours. There will always be two to a room. And normally you can’t decide who you would be sharing the room with. That is preordained by the human resources or whoever is organising the offsite. It is up to their great achieved wisdom, that no one can really decipher, who on earth will be sharing with whom. I don’t really blame them either. They have this task and I don’t really fault them, whichever logic they use. I would assume that rarely would lots be taken. It’s normally placed according to some hidden agenda. If it is cross functional bonding then it does make sense to mix the functions in the rooming lists. I personally believed that it would be pretty cool to mix seniority. The junior gets valuable interaction time with the senior and the senior gets a hands on update from a junior’s perspective. So many times such simple stuff is missing in offices.
But this bonding thing always had a catch. The senior guys get rooms all to themselves. Exclusive. I always found that funny. Rather brhaminical. Why would the senior get the room as single occupancy and the juniors need to bond with another? I hated the concept and I kind of might have been jealous of the guys. In any case I never recommended nor endorsed it. For me, my great example was once when we were in Goa and my room for the night wasn’t fixed. My big boss was put up at a five star venue where the event was happening. He asked me to spend the night with him in the room. That would have saved the company some money for sure. I think it was a nice gesture. Not too many CEOs I have seen do this. An exclusive room is something to treasure and relish like other privelges like cabins, office décor, the type of dustbin (true), the laptop or car or whatever. To top it, not is the room exclusive, it is also normally an upgraded room. Better showers, possibly a bath tub, a sitting area perhaps, or even a gallery. Anything to separate from the pelebs underneath.
So this time around when we arrived I rushed in to the reception on whom would I be sharing the room with a bad drunk who snores at night could be disaster to your sleeping plans. As I made it through the crowd which was doing the same, checking the rooming list and calling out to their partners, I asked for my room number and partner. Voila – sir, this is your room. Ya, with whom am I sharing. Whoops. Single occupancy. Hah! I am a senior ass now. Ok. Let’s got to the room. I enter the room to find a sitting area, an executive table, a dining table, a balcony and a separate bedroom. Oh shit. I immediately asked the guy “are all rooms like this?’ he replied in affirmative. I checked with my neighbours. Nopes I was the lucky one. They had rooms that were tiny and their bathrooms did not have a bath tub. Though I kind of wondered what’s the point of having a bath tub, especially when there was no stopper on it. This was embarrassing. I was getting a dose of stuff that I resented other getting.
As some pelebs came in for some or the other reason, they would remark on the room size and I would be even more apologetic. If having single occupancy was not enough embarrassment.
But these things are not going to change in a hurry. I don’t think it will ever change. Organisations will always reward seniority in visible ways. They need not be practical or economical. They will always remain so.
When I am travelling I prefer people having their own rooms. It’s often enough for you to give and get personal space. But on an offsite where binding is an important deliverable, I see no point.
But I kind of realised that after spending over 12 years working your butt off, an exclusive room on an offsite is a small perk that tells you… in a smallish way… that you have begun arriving. Now why would I need a dam room to tell me that. That’s the job of my boss.

the sitting train

No one in office reads anything. It’s quite a sad state of affairs. I can’t even seem to find people who read enough fiction. I have been a non fiction reader. I have nothing against people who read fiction. I personally somehow find it a waste of time. When there are brilliant books that make for a lovely read and are non fiction, I haven’t had the desire or urge to read fiction. Though some of eth fiction that I have read I have quite enjoyed. The da Vinci code and the White Tiger spring to mind immediately. I have also made my thoughts very clear in the past on stuff like robin sharma. Those self help corn ball you are good at heart shit is something I cannot bear.
But then again – I really don’t have anything against people who read that as well. The problem is that people don’t read anything. I guess TV has ensured that you must be entertained sitting on your couch. You only breathe and keep awake. Awake not alert, simple open eyes will do the trick. The TV is loud enough visually and otherwise to keep you sufficiently titillated.
Reading is a great thing that is getting missed. When I see book stores I take heart that people seem to be finding / discovering their love for books. Especially the young ones. They seem to have a wide range of books at their disposal at they seem to be enjoying it quite a bit. When we were kids, I spent a part of my earlier childhood in Dubai. We were quite lucky to be there. At least in some supermarkets there would be a book section, mainly comics, where we would gather and lie down and start reading. These were supermarkets run by Malayali businessmen. They were not meant for a reading experience. So we would pick the comics from the shelves and sit on the cold floor and read. Till one Malayali store keeper would come and shoo us all away. Only to find us come back. Much like the pigeons feasting on open grain. How long can you keep shooing us off.
The greatest thing India ever had; was the Amar Chitra Katha comics. We used to devour them, the tales of valour, intelligence, stupidity and freedom. I guess a many of them were flawed, wrong and as one book suggested – racist. But they still allowed for a lovely and vivid reading experience. The first chance I got I bought the entire set that is in print and kept it at home. I am almost spoiling Jispa by doing this. We would get them one book at a time and sometimes one set at a time. Between us and other kids we would get them all read.
Sigh… reading. I guess that why talks by authors who have written books are so popular. Yesterday I had the chance to attend an Al Ries and Laura Ries seminar. Al Ries and Jack Trout are probably the demi gods of marketing. They first wrote the book Positioning and have then proceeded to write many books since then, together and individually. Good smart guys. But the seminar is meant for those who haven’t read their books. It is meant for the TV generation. They talk about what they have written. It is almost the same thing as reading their books and seeing them convert it into a ppt. Pretty boring. Laura especially is a n extremely boring speaker. She does not even change her tone while talking. Somehow the older Mr Ries is far better and somehow more compelling to listen to.
In the good old days when I did my management, these books were not easy to get. I had taken one copy from my library and photocopied it and then bound it into a book. It is nice to get to now see these seminars. For me personally I recommended the same as it would interesting to go with the team. No matter how boring, there is always something one can relearn from good minds. And I did and I have something that I can action out right away.
But the question that came across my mind is this – at 15 grand a person it is quite expensive. My company agreed to pay for me and my two team members to go and attend the same. But if I had put up a bill for 15 grand, saying I read these books instead, I am not so sure if the company would have agreed.
When I worked in consulting with Dharen Chadha, the rule was that per month you get two thousand rupees as a personal development allowance. This was to be claimed against bills for books, movies, music etc. the thought being that as a brand strategist you would get your reference point / creative spark form any source. You could even learn dance or gardening with that money. It was a small allowance like that that to my mind changed my life. It made me look at books that cost 600 or 700 and buy them. Once the heroin struck it never left me since then. I remember when I finally resigned from consulting, my wife and me decided to keep that allowance going as a budget.
For companies the easy decisions are the ones that look like seminars and group therapy sessions. Something as simple as buying books for reading wherein you might learn and implement much more is not allowed as a reimbursable but a seminar or an offsite or a training program that is boring, not accountable and ridiculous might find greater favour. What to do. Such is the way of corporate life. I don’t think the CEO might feel good thinking that so many of his employees read so much but might feel better that so many of his employees went to a training program. And hopefully they got a certificate at the end of it all. A shiney new certified employee as opposed to a reminiscent germ of a thought in an employee brain.

Before you learn to win you must learn to lose

It is so important to lose right. You might get more learnings out of losing than possibly out of winning. At least that has always been the case for me. And if the stakes aren’t that high, I dare say, it is fun losing.
As a kid we sued to play a lot of games. Cricket, badminton, volley ball, basketball etc. Cricket in the narrow lanes of Mumbai was a speciality. Cricket is a stupid sport in the sense, that a lot is required of an umpire. You can’t really play until you have an umpire. So we would divide ourselves into two teams and start the game. The batting team would need to nominate an umpire. This by design resulted in huge conflict of interest. It was a zero sum game for the umpire. His team wanted him to give decisions in their favour while the other team at the least requested for a neutral approach. In so many cases there will be split judgements involved. Things like caught behind and run outs were especially contentious. There was no way it would end fair. To add to the conflict of interest, it was in the umpire’s interest to get his won guys out as well, if he wanted batting. Then came the issues of no balls, catches which are taken close to ground, the scores and the number of balls left/ delivered in the over. The really contentious ones like leg before wicket, which is completely reliant on the umpires judgement were simply banned from street cricket. For the street bullies this mode of getting out was simply thrown out.
The decisions would come under greater scrutiny when an important batsman would be batting. The opposite team will bay for blood and appeal like crazy, and the umpire will have severe stress not to give out. While when you play domestic matches, matches that are played within your own team, the decisions tend to be fairer. But in case you have a match with some opposite team, the fight levels can climb. And if a ball or something like that is at stake, then fights last for really long and tempers flare.
The cricket rules are also so numerous that sometimes different interpretations seem equally logical. Street football is so much better. There are no real rules except goal posts, the goalie D and handball. Everything else is permitted and no one heard of anything called off side.
Since we are a cricket playing city, fights were de rigueur. And in tournaments they were intense. I was naturally competitive and I had an acute sense of fairness. I would not tolerate injustice, especially if it was done to us. So argument on scores, run out and the lot was something I was routinely involved in. but there were some kids who were known for arguments. They could never be given out unless all their stumps were shattered. Run outs did not exist for them. They were generally the trouble makers and they usually resulted in the game being abandoned. It was crazy. I was midpoint between them and the centre. In other words I was an ass.
My brother, as is with everything that is me, was sitting on the other opposite fence happily looking at the ensuing tamasha. More then once he pulled me aside from the group when I was arguing, ‘why are you fighting? Is there a trophy? Is this a major tournament? does you life depend on this?’. I don’t know when, but certainly not immediately, the penny dropped.
I don’t argue too much with any official. I really don’t care too much about wining matches. It’s the fun thing. I like to play with people who don’t argue too much. Otherwise its just spoils the whole point of the game. Even today when we adults come together and play anything, be it a board game or anything… I rather have fun trying to decipher the various permutations and combinations rather than try and win every game. Sure I like to win but its more fun playing the combinations. I really don’t understand adults trying their best to win at a board game. Trying and scheming and fighting. It’s good for them. It’s good for me as well. It makes the game fun to watch, but then at some point it irritates. Some of them are so childish. They just don’t get the point. Now they are adults so they cannot openly fight but you can see the fight inside of them. Some can’t even accept graciously. And when I win, they assume that I am playing tough. I am just playing fun. I am trying to understand the game. If I get an interesting play I don’t keep it to myself, I try and decipher it for the others. I like to discuss it. This would only help reinforce their belief that I am a real fighter. Oh god.
I used to be like that. I used to love to win. I have changed so much over the ensuing years. The aggression is still there, it’s just better channelled elsewhere.
I keep trying to explain to Jispa that winning is not everything. Yes, when we play we want to win, we try to win, but the aim is not to win. It is to play properly. Get your technique right. Get your teamwork going. Learn from every game. Winning is a by product of stuff that we do. On Jispa party on Saturday we had devised a treasure hunt. It sounds like a great idea but we got mixed up. I thought that the adults would play with the kids. I thought the adults would make the kids understand the game and solve the treasure clues together. We even built in the use of a compass and gave the clues directional bearings. It was fun. But the poor kids just ran around. I don’t think the adults knew how to handle a compass, let alone make the kids understand. So while the adults loved it, the kids probably got a bit tired and bored. And when I wanted the adults to play some games with the kids after the treasure hunt, the adults were too tired while the kids loved it.
I just love the chance to play with the kids. I don’t understand how you can let go of the chance to play with them. I am here, getting them all together devising the games and trying to get them to have fun. All you have to do is show up and show some enthusiasm. I don’t know. Adults like to talk. We get together and talk. Yappity yapp yapp. Use your body, worst case… use your brains. Yapitty yapp yapp… yuck.
Coming back to winning. Jispa was in a team that came in first. There was one clue that all the teams struggled on. We had to give the answer out. For some that clue came in second, for some it came in fifth and so on. At one point all of them were stuck on that clue. So we helped them with the answer. Some poor teams spent an hour before we gave the answer and some poor teams spent about 30 minutes before gave them the answer. As a leveller, I docked the 30 min team 15 minutes as a fairness measure. So as Jispa came in I said you penalty is 15 minutes. Some understood and some just did not. The desire to win supersedes all. Jispa refused to understand. She was almost getting upset. Later after the party I explained to her “kid, its your party. Number one – try not to win in your own party; number two – when a great sportsperson comes to write against your name. He writes not whether you won or lost but how you played your game. Play hard by al means. But please don’t play with winning as your only motivation. Laugh when you win and laugh a lot more when someone else wins. Help others. Learn from other at all points. Concentrate on the technique and game. Winning is not everything.” I also warned her that if I ever see her behaving in an unsportsmanlike manner I will get her off that sport. Respect the game.
Jasmine then remembered a video she saw on facebook. It was of Derek Redmond. Favoured to do well in the 1992 Olympics, while running the 400 meters he tore his hamstring. He fell, cried in pain but got up to hobble and complete the race. His dad also ran on the track to help him complete. Some videos on youtube talk about the relationship and the fact that his dad came in. I see no merit in that. if my daughter also were to fall on the track, my instinct would also be to help her. Nothing unusual about it. But when I saw the video tears dropped. The pain and the agony and yet to hold on to it to finish what you came to start. We showed that to Jispa. It matter not whether you win or lose, but how you played your game. He came to win for sure, but more importantly he came in to compete and for that he had to finish the race.
I like the way Steve Waugh never ever asked for a runner. He did not believe that if you are injured then you need a runner for you. I too hate the concept in cricket. I will bat and hit the ball all over while some one will run for me. Bull. Complete bull. I don’t ever remember asking for a runner ever. I don’t want to ask for one as well. Anil Kumble got hit on his mouth while playing in West Indies. He came on to bowl all strapped up. Sure he did. He is a champion bowler. That’s his job. But people miss that he also came to bat. He is not a batsman. That was not his job; there was no glory in that for him, nothing to embellish his record there.
Here is the Derek video.


See this one. Listen what he says himself. At first he thought he was shot or something. After a few seconds he realised he was in the Olympic semi finals, so he just had to get up and run.

Dominant love?

Devdutt wrote a good piece titled ‘Right to kill my child’. It correctly questions the demands we make on our children and more importantly exposes our true motivations. He wrote the article as “the newspapers are filled with reports of parents wanting to kill their children”.
The key point he makes is “Love is to allow children to grow up, be independent, take their decisions and be responsible for the consequences. Power is about control, dependence, domination, and the demand for obedience and subservience.”
It’s a very pertinent point that he makes. Over the last week I happened to be agony uncle for a few people. One lady wanted to marry someone her choice but not same religion and the other wanted to stay abroad and work but had to come back to get married on parental pressure. Makes me think of the stuff I too might have done under parental pressure.
But more importantly or selfishly, makes me think of the times I might have been motivated by power and not love. I try and let Jispa talk to me straight. Some times I think I let her talk too straight, and I might be actually spoiling her. Like my mom always thinks that I am teaching Jispa to argue. But I don’t see harm in having conversation. I do not want domination and subservience or any other unspellable word. I like the relationship to be healthy and equal.
The other day somebody was at home and Jispa walked away in some cranky voice. I imitated her. She came back and gave me a knock on my head. What on earth. That was hard. “but why are you imitating me? I don’t like it.” Ok. Point taken. “but you also hit me hard. That’s not fair. It’s not right. I am papa” “ok sorry” “ok sorry”. Kiss and make up. That I wonder how much liberty should I give hr. I don’t mind it as I realize that in the end I have the final upper control. If things go out of hand I can immediately scream and shout and get ii back. At that time also, it’s about respect.
I really try to ensure that at all points, it is never about dominance. It shouldn’t be about that, but parenting is something that you do without too much thinking. You hope you hone it over a period of time. And when you have only one child, thats all the chance you can get.
We keep telling Jispa how lucky she is. What a great school she has and stuff like that. Recently she has started telling us how lucky we are. We don’t have to go to school and we don’t have to wake up and stuff like that. Its just a general tit for tat. One dialogue was – you are lucky you don’t have to do math. Hey, do you not like math. “I do, but it’s the subtraction that’s boring. I like addition.”. “Hey, subtraction is addition – just reverse” “How”. ‘How do you minus 7 from 12. You take seven and the go like, eight, nine, ten, eleven, and twelve. You just added 5 to 7 to get 12.” “but I hate borrowing” “arey that’s simple. Hello uncle, please give me one. I have less. So if seven uncle gives one, how many are left?”
That was some fun in the morning. But the banter continued. She went like, you are so lucky mummy, you don’t get to…” Jasmine went back like “you are so lucky that you don’t have to cook and then someone makes a face, you don’t have to wash dishes, you don’t……” I let the final one in “Jispa you are so lucky to get papa and mama like us. We could never scold our parents the way you can” “I don’t scold you” “sure you do. The way sometimes you get angry at me I would have never done like that to my dad. Ask mom if she could ever talk to her dad the way you sometime scold me or get angry at me?” She then asked “you couldn’t scold your dad because he was always building?” My dad was a civil engineer, you see. “No, I just couldn’t scold dad as that was not the done thing to do. It was just different”. Awww. I love papa and mama… awwww…. Banter ended. Poor thing should have hit back saying that we were lucky to have someone like her. That would have also been another irrefutable one.

On a completely different note - This is how I taught jispa and her friend to handle a heavy bag while at the bus stop.

I want to move it move it

I have written before on how I always wanted to study physics. But I ended up with commerce and accountancy. I cannot read even one book on accountancy but I keep reading books on physics. Or any science book with simple English. It makes me jump with joy to see simple mechanisms work and the ingenuity of the manufacturers. I specially love mechanics. One of the first thing I remember dismantling was my mom’s powder case. You have to wind the thing from bottom and it would produce the most beautiful tune from inside. I opened it to get to the mechanism. It has no battery and the sound so beautiful. The simplicity of mechanism had me enthralled for hours. It was basically a rotating drum with pins on it. The drum is connected to a metal comb which gets picked at when a pin of the drum passes through it. I don’t know if this makes sense to you but this diagram should help. It is truly beautiful. I might have been in fourth standard at the time.

I also loved the little carpentry that I could do around the house along with dad. Primarily consisting of banging nails and screws in the house.
Oh the choices we make and where we end up instead. Not that I regret it. I guess I might have gone crazy after taking engineering as well. I might have ended up as a engineer MBA as opposed to a commerce MBA. No great difference. In fact I might have been worse off and would have been confused seeing balance sheets. For what I am doing, I am better off.

One of the other wonders was always how on earth does a sewing machine work? While you do it with one needle and a thread with the hand, in a machine you require two threads, one from top and the other from bottom. As a kid I remember pestering mom, as to why you require two threads. I don’t think mom had too much of a scientific answer to give me. Or too much of any answer to a scientific question. I always wondered. When I saw my wife with the machine I would sit and stare, all fascinated. How does the bottom thread get through the cloth on top? Is there a needle at the bottom also? Why do you require two? How does the thread pierce through and get through the bottom to come back on top? Dam it.
While I could easily break and destroy the old powder music box, I would dare not attempt to open the sewing machine. Not as a child and definitely not even after I bought it for my wife. No way. Jasmine too had no clue how this worked.
The mystery got resolved thanks to a link my wife sent me. Here is the magical mechanism. Explained. I can stare at this gif forever as well. My god. I love the mechanism. The sheer simplicity of it fills my heart with joy. Everything beautiful must be simple. I am really feeling so nice just looking at it.
On the link there is also the Constant Velocity Joint and the “Maltese Cross mechanism, which turns smooth circular motion into segmented second-hand motion for clocks”.

Constant-velocity joints (aka homokinetic or CV joints) allow a rotating shaft to transmit power through a variable angle, at constant rotational speed, without an appreciable increase in friction or play. They are mainly used in front wheel drive and all wheel drive cars. Rear wheel drive cars with independent rear suspension typically use CV joints at the ends of the rear axle halfshafts, and increasingly use them on the propshafts.
It seems they replaced the Universal Joints in some places. The universal joints were simple but could get notchy and needed regular maintenance. It so looks like something that belonged to my dad's premier padmini car.


Pretty cool nah? I remember unlike others I could spend hours at a science exhibition or be at ease in an industrial museum. Like normal museums, even industrial museums must have an audio guide that should explain the beautiful mechanism to lay people. If you have an interesting guide then kids would love going to see things move and engines start. “NOW what would happen if I move this lever?” crank crank sputter sputter.. “Voila the ball has turned onto the opposite side, clever nah!” clap clap clap. And now we proceed onto the cantilever double axle shaft… (don’t look it up – I made that name up from all the mechanical words that sprang to mind).

But just imagine the possibilities of museums. We spend on making them and not on explaining them.

Like this blogger who went to a maritime museum and shot this. I loved the photo she clicked. Only if she knew what it did or I knew what it did and why it is in a museum?

the selfish giant

This post was written on Saturday but posted later. Why is this important? Because this blog has a time value attached to it. Time is the fourth dimension, but is relative. What is all this shit? Well, I have been reading some stuff on quantum physics and I find it completely disconcerting. The journey as it seeks to find the theory of everything. This stuff does not make any sense. But it makes so much when you read it. It is so fascinating but at the same time so bloody mind boggling. Sometimes I wish I had taken physics major. That the stuff I was always good at and I naturally loved. Nowadays it makes for great fun to read this complex stuff and be entertained. It is only possible if you don’t want to remember it all and give an exam. Because otherwise it would be so insurmountable. I even read stuff about us living in mutliverse as opposed to a universe. Whoa!
But the point of the time value of this blog is important as I sit down today and reminiscence on the feeling that got built up over the last year as we hurtled towards yesterday. In the good old days I felt excited and I wanted yesterday to come everyday. I even counted the days to yesterday. Till I was in third standard yesterday was always in my school vacations. We used to live the gulf, where the school shut for the oppressive summers and I could not have my day in the sun in front of peers. Yesterday was an important point in my every day year. So when we first came to Mumbai I was so excited that I would get to celebrate yesterday with peers. I started counting the days I would take to get yesterday. Waiting and counting. If I am not mistaken I even counted up to 45 days. Oh that day. I wore a safari suit in the fourth standard. What was it blue or was it grey. But I was so proud. I must have never been so proud to distribute orange hard boiled confectionary. It used to cost 10 paise for one at retail price at around 6 paise per sweet at wholesale rate. Man I was so thrilled. The first time I had a chance to celebrate my birthday in school and having 60, not just 30 as per gulf school norms. Yeah yeah. It was day in the sun. No wonder I was so excited.
All these years I continued to be excited till something struck last year. It was my own version of the mid life crisis. I started hating birthdays. Not that the thought of growing older hurt. But au contraire I loved getting old. But I started hating getting birthday greetings from people. Why? I don’t know if people really care when they wish and I stopped liking any wishes and I started suspecting them of being mere formality. I also stopped wishing too many people on their birthdays as well in the hope that they would in turn stop greeting me as well. I even got rid of my birthday notification from the social networking sites.
Day before yesterday I sent a mail to HR. they have this practice of sending emails announcing everyone’s birthday. What a complete waste and pain. So I wrote them a mail asking them to please desist on my day. Just. Just spare me. As I get older I have gotten more anti social. In fact I merely got grumpier. Just like the old troll in fairytales. On Thursday being my grumpy old troll mood, I refused to listen to my team request for a luncheon on Friday. In fact once my meeting got cancelled for the morning I put in a request for the day off. I am not even coming to office. The second half we planned to run off to Igatpuri at my sisters bunglow with her family and my brother’s as well.
I make an effort not to remember my birthday. My dream one day is to forget it completely. That will be the day according to me. so I woke up in the morning not remembering its my birthday till I received an sms wishing me. as I came out of the shower my wife and kid sang the birthday song. I like that. I know people who really care, when they wish, it doe fell kind of good. My things with birthdays is the rest of the world not those who care.
I spent the rest of the morning helping my wife clean the house as we were to leave for three days. Roaming around in a pair of jeans, I was trying to get my pedagogy right for the lecture I was scheduled for next Sunday.
Suddenly the bell rang. As jasmine opened the door, I saw my good peon form office – Vinod with a cake in a bag. Oh god. They sent me cake from office. I looked at Vinod. Since I was topless I looked at him and aksed, ‘ are there others around? are they hiding?” he nodded and pointed in the direction. I ran in to wear a t shirt and then came out to discover them hiding near the stair case. SURPRISE!!! My team along with two others who are no longer a part of my team was present. Ok. I really love them. They all came in from office to catch me on my birthday. They had got a chocolate mousse cake which I proceeded to cut and then they took turns splashing it on my face.. Soon enough one spark resulted in a cake fight. All of us including my wife had cake n our face. All with brown melting mousse dripping down on the face.
It was pretty good fun.
Moral of the story – I was a grumpy old troll with a bad attitude problem. Sure enough you get shitty people and people who don’t care but at the same time you get good guys with a lot of love to share. In my effort to alienate those I do not care about or thopse who do not care for me I end up alienating those who do and those that matter. I almost threw the baby out with the bath water. I am reminded of the story of the selfish giant who did not let any one in his garden and winter permanently set in. It only got a bit of spring when one small kid who refused to get intimated by the giant and came and sat on one of the trees. The giant then saw light.
My team refused to get intimated by my ‘trollness’. They said screw you. And they came home and showed me what I might have missed.
Dates are irrelevant to the rational mind. They have no significance. What is the point of celebrating Independence Day. Work hard and be honest if you really care. Don’t sit and celebrate the day by watching old emotional movies on the telly. What is the point of it? Pure symbolism. What shit?
But at he same time, isn’t it a day to somehow remember that we struggled. So many fought so that they and more importantly those to come would be free.
My birthday has no real significance to me and to the rational mind it means naught. But we are all a bunch of people guided by irrationality. I liked it that the team came. I liked celebrating with them. It mattered to me that they felt welcome to come home and the fact that they bothered. It said something to me. it also proved my belief that I might be a troll at times but I am a likeable troll or at the least approachable. Having cake on my face was the ultimate gesture of acceptability.
In the physics book that I was reading I read about the Solvay conference held in Brussels devoted to Quantum Physics. 17 of the 23 delegates were or would become Nobel laureates. Marie Curie was even a double laureate. Einstein was one delegate. It was here Einstein declared in reference to Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle that “God does not play dice”, and to which Niels Bohr replied “Albert, stop telling God what to do”
Wow. Imagine the group where one like Einstein can be told something like that in no uncertain terms. There is respect for the brain but there is also a healthy irreverence. Groups where people aren’t afraid to speak their mind are the groups that I would love to belong to. That is the group that I prefer. A respect but a certain irreverence. A case of opposites reconciling. And to think of it – I almost missed it thanks to my … my…. I don’t know what. Shit. I was lucky. I hope I don’t forget this lesson. In all likelyhood I am going to make this mistake again. It’s going to be difficult. The silver lining for me is that here I made the mistake but my team refused to let me suffer for it. At least I was considered open enough, whose plea for solitude was ignored.
As I grow older I will have many more of these pangs in opposite directions. The greatest fun will always be if in some magical way opposites reconcile.