A nautch lower

There was a marriage I got invited for. This guy was a sweet IT guy who left the firm to start his own business. A sweet guy. I was happy when he specially sent a card for me and spoke to me. Of course I would come for his wedding. In morning I was explaining to someone that it’s my philosophy that I typically go to these kid’s weddings. I don’t mind bunking a big expensive wedding but I would go for a small simple wedding. My colleague thought that was pretty cool of me – that I am not affected by status or something like that. I thought a bit and said – nopes. I think you are wrong. I am affected by status. Therefore I go to a wedding of the guy who may be of a lower status. So that I feel invited and special. In a big man’s wedding all are called. You are just some small fish.

But to be true to myself – I rather go where my presence means something to someone. I don’t like going for any weddings. They are a really boring chore.

Our servant since  seven years recently became a grandmother. She invited us to a ceremony a few weeks post the delivery. That day in the evening we completely forgot about it and realized only late at around 9 pm. Jasmine called her if we could come and she welcomed us. She stays in a hut under a bridge. We reached the settlement and her son was waiting for us. We were welcomed inside. It was a small tin room with a fan and almost nothing else. A gas stove in the side with a few vessels was the kitchen. A room made inside the shed was the privacy of the young couple. It felt nice to go. We were obviously the big guys coming in. as Devki (our servant) played with her gand daughter she said to her – look who’s come. Refereeing to Jispa  - she said – see your sister has come. You will go to her house an dplay and learn. She stays in the big buildings.

Clearly it was important for us to come. That is what is important when you attend functions. Is your presence a significant to the person inviting. So many times the invite is just for formality. They invite because it’s just a part of protocol. But when someone like the IT guy, who invited because he felt it would be nice for me to come, then I would love to go.

Coming back to Devki. I asked her a few days later – who else came from the buildings. She said only you guys came. The other lady is not like that. She won’t come. She then said sorry Devki. What sorry I ask. She didn’t want to come to the hutments. Jasmine and I looked at each other. Whew. Its good we remembered at the fag end of the day. Otherwise she would have kicked us as well.

Seeing a hutment where people live is always a bit humbling and I was happy that we took Jispa along. Then only can you get a sense of what privileges we have. We take a lot for granted and we as bankers have no idea what the people really want. Devki has the keys to our house. She comes in the evening, does the work and leaves. But crucially the keys to our house are also the keys to her bank. She keeps er money in a pouch in our house. She has kept a few of her jewelry also with us. She also has stored a few gifts of her grandchild. We are her bank and safe deposit locker. She takes loans from us, deposits and withdraws money and keeps valuables safe. When we think of what the people need what we realize that they need a simple place to keep things safe. Her stuff is not under lock and key and it’s not even worth breaking into my house for. It’s almost nothing to us but a lot for her. She has no use for an ATM or a cheque or working hours of a bank. All she needs is a key. But we give keys only to those people who don’t really need it.

Poverty is a curse and it inflicts itself again and again on people. These guys remain poor because of the system as also by the choices they make / forced to make. Just one statistic floored me. She says in the month or so after the birth of her grand child – she has ended up spending around 25 thousand bucks. Consider this to the fact that she did not have to spend any money on the birth, courtesy the government health service. And she spent around 7 grand on the function we were invited to. Seven grand on food/colas and other stuff. Crazy! That’s the money I told you want for you grand kid when she grows up and goes to school. Save it!

Poverty is a state of mind I guess. Something must have struck my grandfather when he was the only kid that decided to study and go beyond his village. He came to Mumbai and became a doctor. His dad was a humble grocer in a small village in Gujarat. He paved the way for prosperity for his generations to follow.  Moving out of the poverty trap is not just working hard, its also thinking hard. Devki works as hard as any one of us, but as she tells – when her son got married she blew a lot of money in the village on the function – including a nautch girl to dance. It seems including her payment and booze – it cost her 800 bucks. Now her relatives want her to come and organize another celebration. I am keen to go to her village and witness it first-hand. That would be another interesting subject for a travelogue.

 

The joy of giving joy is the greatest joy

Apologies for the alliteration but that is the greatest joy I see.  I may be a teacher at heart – I have tried to teach wherever I can and but I think the underpinning of all that teaching is that I am a performer. So two words describe me – performer (as in the arty types, the loud types, the actor types – not the top of the line types, not the excellent types, not the sales target champion type of performer). The second one is teacher. In marketing we like to put these in two different boxes. One is the motivator and the other is discriminator. The motivator is why need you fundamentally address and the discriminator is how different you are from others in addressing it. So when I think of myself – which word is which. Is the performer the core motivator or is teaching the motivator. Am I motivated to teach and I am a different teacher because I am a performer (I do funny things all the time while teaching) or am I a performer and I since I don’t have any other tricks I figure I get my audience by teaching.

Good question.

But I surely like to perform all the time. I have always wished and looked upon with envy at people who could play a musical instrument. I wish I could. I wish I learnt as a kid. The two instruments that I remember would always catch my fancy were one- the harmonica and second the flute. These are amazing instruments in the fact that these are possibly the easiest portable instruments of all time. you can carry them wherever you want and there you have your music with you in your pocket. Flute wins hands  down purely on the melody bit though.

Ever since I can remember – possibly since I was around 8 I would dream about playing these instruments everywhere. Just put them in your pocket and play it somewhere to someone. Regale an audience. An anonymous audience, an audience that is not expecting your performance. I never ever dreamt of playing on a large stage before a large audience. That never excited me. What excited me were the street performers who played on in the hope that people like what they are playing and danced to your tune. People who played for a penny were the real heroes in my life.

Art is a gift. It has no value that one can put on it. I would hate to price my art. What is the price of making someone smile? That’s why I love to teach where I teach. They possibly give me some remuneration that does not even pay my petrol bills to reach the place. But the joy of teaching – of showcasing my art – is greater than anything else.

Art must reach the common man in a form and manner that he can access it, touch it, be one with it, interact with it. when we won some award at my firm, to celebrate we hired a crooner with a  guitar and one bongo or something and we set it up in office. The office guys went crazy. They started singing with them, one guy took charge of the drum, the other took his guitar and the third (and fourth and fifth and sixth) started singing. It became something that was inclusive and not exclusive. We could have had a stage performance where chairs could have been laid to watch – but this way people interacted with the art and were one with it.

We celebrate Christmas and Diwali and then quickly put a cordon around the thing. You will see Diwali rangolis with cordon around it, Christmas trees with cordons around it, you will in fact see Santa Claus with  balustrades. Who is in the prison – him or us?

I want to break these barriers. That’s why the big mirror bubble at Chicago is what it is. It allows for people to be a part of it, interact with it and be one with it. It does not exclude but include. Everyone’s invited. All it takes is the first curious guy to break the invisible shackle and all hell breaks loose.

That’s why I love flash mobs. Flash mobs take the performance to the people. Thye can feel it, be one with it, it includes everyone into the stage. There is no stage. The performer and the audience, the stage and the theatre is one. It is a fusion of the opposites (a reconciliation of opposites), a burning of the curtain, that makes flash mobs so sexy and so engaging. The best flash mobs are those that are inclusive and interact with the people around. I saw this one today and I found it most lovely. In fact I went emotional. I wanted to do something like this.

This one is really special. What is different about this one from other sis really quite a simple thing. A child pays a coin to start something. She was expecting a simple small thing to happen. Slowly she is amazed by the width of whats on to offer. It took a child with a coin to start it. it was on demand. It interacted in some ways with the audience. That is what made this flash mob so special. Social networks unknowingly caught it bang – the headline screamed - “Best coin ever spent - A little girl donates some coins to a street musician and gets the best surprise in return. Well, that's certainly money well spent.” So there were many other flash mobs involving musicians, but this one was especially poignant. The whole orchestra can come in for a penny for a little girl. Not free – but for a penny from a girl. Sometimes – a penny can be better than free. Most marketers would disagree!

The joy of giving joy is the greatest joy!

tendlya gaya

Last week we had the grand retiring of Sachin Tendulkar. Arguably amongst the greatest batsman to have played the game, I had wondered for many years what would happen to the Indian cricket team when this man retires. I explained the significance of this man to my cricket entertainment and what he meant to me.

I remember first reading about Sachin in the papers when this young school boy smashed to a world record partnership in a school match. He and Vinod Kambli plundered a hapless bowling attack and were heralded as the great potentials for international cricket. Then he got chosen to play Ranji and the Irani trophy ties where he smashed another set of runs. For us Sachin was our prodigy, our Bombay boy who we all owned a part of. We were instrumental in his success. We wanted him to play for India as soon as possible and the newspapers reflected our opinion which was taken note of by the selectors. That was our dream. He was our favorite son.

We followed him to Pakistan and I still remember the way he tore Abdul Qadir, the legendary leg spinner in the one day match and announced his arrival to one day cricket. Our family was very clear – here was the greatest champion of world cricket. He was here. I have great memories of watching cricket with my dad, spending full days watching a game of cricket on TV. India were a  bunch of high potential losers. We were too soft to play the new age of cricket. We had talent but as dad would often say – no temperament. Till we had Sachin. In ODI’s he would come in at 4down or 5 down and get a limited number of overs to play. I remember dad and me clamoring for Sachin to open the innings. And lo behold. I remember waking up early morning in a Panchgani  hotel room to see Sachin walk in and destroy the bowling attack. He used his technique to play lofted shots and forever imprinted himself on the game. And then came the era where we only had hopes on one man. We would get in watch till he got out. I remember having the greatest of stress while he was batting. On one hand you would enjoy his batting and the fact that he took the bowling to shreds but at the same time you knew he could not get out. If he did – we would have no hope left. We would lose the match, the plot and our pride. It was him that the entire hopes were pinned on. I remember my brother and me hanging our heads in disbelief as he would get out. Match is over. I remember seeing the wild frenzy of the opposite team as they did a naked dance and celebrated wildly as they got the man.  It was clear why the entire 22 men were on the field. 11 to get him and another 11 to keep him there. And the world was watching who would win – and when.

My dad was such a Tendlya fan that even when the maestro was on bowling side, he would insist that the ball be given to him while bowling. He was convinced that some magic would happen, and invariably it did. He would pick a wicket, stop the flow of runs… whatever. He would bowl legspin to a right handed batsman and switch to off spin for a leftie. He would bowl seam up and swing it both ways. What a guy. He was born to play cricket. I remember when he suddenly started sweeping. It was something he started later in his career and I remember when he first played a reverse sweep. The result was a boundary (against South Africa).

He gave us such joy, such a joy! Statisticians have commended and condemned him at varying intervals. People hated him later and called him selfish. There have been many undercurrents. I surely stopped arguing with them. Sachin was not a number to me. No number would suffice for the man. I don’t even care about his test cricket. For me it was his one day cricket. I thought that was the only thing he born to play. He was the poster boy of the generation to which I belonged to. Being two years elder to me our growing up has run parallel. I grew up with him and I feel I too have a hand in his fame, fortune and run of luck and form. Being a Mumbaikar Sachin is my brother, my loved one – who taught the world that you can be technically correct and yet score fast and be a joy to watch, that you can be calm and yet very aggressive, that you can contribute by your enthusiasm and your verve. Even though you might never be a gifted fielder but you try hard at what comes your way and yes – your throw will always be hard. No soft throws.

My captain always taught me – look at Tendulkar play. He hits the ball and does not eye ball the bowler. He simply looks down and almost apologetically taps the pitch. It’s like he is saying ‘sorry, shot lag gaya. Ball aisa tha, shot toh lag gaya’. No chest thumping, no blood letting, but mind you – he wanted to win as badly as anyone else.

The other thing I learnt from him is that if you are a great payer – the same qualities will make you a bad captain. On his retirement people opened up and admitted that as a captain he would expect the same from others. For someone who is a natural at things, its impossible to explain or motivate someone to do something. The genius refuses to understand whats so tough. Lesser mortals cringe and awe at achievement.

Some things may easy to me. They were simple when I did them. And it irritates me no end when I see my team not being able to understand it. I learnt that while they can’t do the same, they can do something else that I could never.  Captainship is about patience and lifting your team to do beyond their abilities not match up to yours. Your ability is not the point here. It doesn’t count. What counts is the team. The team must work together and play above the weight. Sachin, in his failings also taught me that. You can’t be hanuman and you can’t win on your own.

Finally I am sure the stats will show that whenever we relied too much on one man – we invariably lost. For all his brilliance he never won us the world cup. We won it when he was just one of the spokes of the well-oiled machine – important but the only keystone. When the rest of the team looks at the man for inspiration and not awe – when the team is happy to have him and not solely dependent – when everyone knows their role in relation to the game and not in relation to the man – that is when magic happens.

Good bad – I have a strong personality. It weighs in on the team at many times. I have learnt to control it a fair bit, reign it in but more importantly give power to the second in line to lead. To push the boundaries of their own, in their own identity.

Sachin was a genius who held our hearts with amazing care. But that was his failing as well. He knew, we knew he could do it – that’s why most of the time he might have failed. You might be the greatest ever but it takes 11 to make a team. All 11. And you cant pull it for long. Even the best have to just do their bit… the rest pulls it alongside.

I really love him and I can’t really see the criticism of the man’s averages. Playing and playing when you can’t get out is something stats will never capture. Understanding the role of a batsman when you play is something stats can’t ever decipher. Stupid people.

You don’t mess with Tendulkar you miss with my memories, my hope, my life.

This may be an automated marketing gimmick from BCCI but to me and his family - I think this is the best i have seen. it means a lot for some stupid emotional reason. Thanks dude.

baazi haar kar bhi baazi jite....

Monday morning we went for the athletic training. Jispa has joined once a week training to complement her swim training. It involves a lot of stretching and some jogging. The lady in charge makes us run two rounds of the racecourse, which is around a little less than two and a half kilometers. I run with Jispa almost as a pace setter. I keep her running; keep egging her on, let her keep a pace. It’s fun to run together at least once a week.

Around a year back I stopped competing with her in swimming. With a dive I could just about match her timing for one 25 meter lap. But around a year ago she beat the shit out of me. With a dive and without a tumble turn I was beaten crazy, and I was huffing and puffing while she was looking and me and smiling. One more round? Buzz off. No way.

So I am happy that at least in running we are starting off together and we train together. This way at least I run with her and share some pain of the sport together. I push her and she pushes me. Once the coach asked us to go for a sprint. While coming back it was great fun pushing her. She is a bit competitive. She is silent and yet I see flashes of competition, nothing of the chest thumping aggression but a desire to push the bar at times. I like that. That race was fun. Towards the end, she went fast, then I went faster, she pushed, I pushed harder… there were at least three such bursts before I won! Yay.

Now this started off a competition between her and me. So every time the coach gets us to do a round the last bit becomes somewhat of a race. This time the coach asked us to run two rounds. The first one should be slow and easy – 17 minutes instead of the normal 15 minutes. And the second one must be faster. Jispa is a horrible starter. She starts complaining the moment we start. My stomach is paining, my ankle is paining. Then she goes too slow, then she will have a shoe lace to tie. She starts really bad. I keep encouraging her. Then at the mid-point she does better and then at the end she finishes strong.

This funny schedule spoils my running style. I like running consistent. So at the start I am forced to run really really slow, which is tiring. So we did the first one slow. And with the winter just about setting in on the second round I got a bit of a congestion…. And something went haywire. I started breathing really hard. I guess I need to restart my swimming to get back into clean breathing systems. But it was really bad at the end. (okay okay – these are all excuses – genuine but excuses)I asked Jispa if she wanted to start the racing bit. She said – no later… I was ok. we do it later. When the last 100 meters were being covered – the little rascal started to run faster. She suddenly moved up a couple of gears. I Pushed my self… and that’s it – there were no more change of gears – she just ran off. I looked and tried but had no reserve energy left – I couldn’t attack. Dam it – where did she get this reserve after running 4 kms? I lost this race. Now she whips me in running as well. that felt really really good.

But now I am waiting for the next one. This time I hope to have clear lungs and nasal passage and this time I will start the race a bit earlier. And I want to beat the shit out of her. I don’t like losing as well. Her aggressive streak is also there in me (that was a bit of an understatement).

Sport has a funny way of showing people’s inner demons :) . It exposes you to a side of personality that normally stays hidden. Not just for yourself but also for others. Running with Jispa is exposing a side of her personality to me. I had suspected that she had this streak but was not sure about it. We always have told her – you need not win – do your best. But I have seen her push herself in different situations. Relays are one place where her timings are the best. But this aggression which is quite, well directed and focused with a kick to win an interesting race…. That’s a nice one. You don’t need to win all the races you participate – only the ones you love to. Choose well :)

Just for record – the second round was 13 minutes.

Its not funny

Vir Das is a standup comic. I had seen him on stage many years ago and I thought he was definitely unfunny. Now many years later he now has gained popularity and is now doing paid solo shows. That’s cool but I don’t see any reason why I should go for the show.

So when our friends planned ado together to see the show I was definitely unamused to start with. Why would I pay to see Vir Das. For those of you who are wondering – Vir Das moment of glory came when was a supporting actor in the movie Delhi Belly. He was good in the movie and  could act as far as I saw it. But still – arrghh… I don’t like comic acts and I can barely tolerate them as fillers between shows. They are not funny enough.

Grudgingly, after irritating and chewing jasmine’s ears for agreeing to go, we went for the show. I then realized that the ticket prices were 1000 bucks a head. SHIT. F&^% Y*&. ARRRGGHHHH. I hate this group thing. The how was designed as ‘the battle of da sexes’. So they kept the ladies seated in one half of the auditorium and the men in the other half. And then he started. To be fair to him. I think he has matured a lot now. He is much better than when I first saw him years ago. He brings a fair amount of energy on stage and to his performance. He talks well and his jokes are ok with a few funny ones. He probably spares no one in his castigation. But I refused to understand how the people when gaga at him and after the show. What’s there to gaga?

I do that all the time. Come in to see my lectures some time. They are the same type of jokes. You play one set of audiences over the other – typically male v/s female an then you support one and thrash the other. In the middle catch some unsuspecting member of the audience and pass a few jokes on him. I do that to one special character in my class all the time. this special character is typically one sweet guy who is usually loved by all but is made fun of and generally works as a good sport. People came out and were speaking about the energy for two three hours and how that is not easy. Well come over. I have had 6 and a half hour lectures and I still scream and shout and crack jokes while discussing serious marketing. It happens all the time.

Ya sure it’s a performance. And surely its nice but I STILL DON’T LIKE PAYING 2,000 BUCKS FOR IT. PERIOD. It’s like this thing where I hate paying full price for a shirt and other stuff. I know its the marketing that’s taking most of the money away so I like hunting for deals and like paying less. My marketing ego can’t let me buy most of the stuff. The same reason I hate business magazines and newspapers. They too are completely manipulated by the business houses. I know what we do in PR. The quality of journalism is bad thanks to the deteriorating quality of journalists. Most journalists don’t understand the domain and only rely on press briefings to take them through. Very little homework and absolute lack of understanding. Who wants to read that crap anymore? Especially if you have seen eth back rooms from where PR operates.

So that’s why I hated the experience. But it was a full house. All seats sold. And people were laughing a lot. I genuinely laughed on a few jokes as well. But still at the end I was bored on the moderate side.

I asked Jasmine and Jispa, if they remember my lectures. They have attended a few. Don’t I perform like that? I make the class laugh a lot and have fun. I crack jokes all the time. I am rude and politically incorrect at times. Jispa was not allowed at eth comic show but she agrees – I scream and shout and crack a lot of jokes while in class and the whole class laughs like crazy. And yes – I do it for a princely sum of Rs 200 an hour.

flights of fancy

Yesterday was a morning evening flight to and from Chennai. I hate these morning evening flights. You wake up at obscene hours and then you return at one such hour as well.

But it’s nice to crib about flights now. I remember when I first started my career; flights were a dam big thing. I would look up to my bosses and wonder if I would ever be in a situation to fly to every part of India. Would I ever be that important? I remember my first official flight. It was to Aurangabad. We had appointed one distributor there and I went to set it up and other such formalities. I had asked my boss for some advice. Flights were a big thing when we were growing up. All holidays were always by train or bus. Largely by train. The second class sleeper train travel. And we loved it. But I was also secretly proud that I had taken flights in my life. Since we lived in Dubai, we would come to India every year for a vacation, I flew in around 18 flights. I remember counting the number later when I grew up. I was a privileged person. No one took flights and especially not international flights. Airports were big things and people would come to receive you and drop you off the airports. So I grew up thinking – wow – flights.

Then came my first one to Aurangabad. It was an amazing feeling when the aircraft lifted off the ground after accelerating on the run way. It was amazing surge of power. The next flights were going and coming from Goa where I had to go to launch a branch. We reached late at the check in counter and we were given the last seats which don’t recline. But hell – it was flight wasn’t it.

And then I joined momentum consulting in which I filled in a frequent flier form and became a silver card holder in just 9 months. BAM! Flights were a routine in my life then. Still I think I was still living the dream of being on flights everywhere, calling from a thousand kms away to reach in under two hours. I think I used to have this ritual earlier where I would call Jasmine before the plane took off and then I would call once I landed. I don’t think that rite lasted too long.

Then in the middle when the economy was doing well and we made some obscene amount of money we would fly off in all directions. I had a few long international flying hours as well. If I thought flying once to Kolkata for a two hour meeting was too much (to and fro same day), then I was once flying to London for a four hour long meeting (that too business class). In fact I was flying so much that once I clearly remember feeling very tired in the car and I folded my hands. The very act of sitting and folding hands felt sore. I felt that could not sit any more with folded hands. That’s when I realized I had outgrown my flying dreams and ambitions.

So yesterday was another tiring day. I felt so tired at the end of it. You wake up early, shower and catch a light breakfast (that’s the best thing I learnt for me), catch a bad, then wait for eternity at the airport then a two hour ride and then a one hour taxi and then full day meetings and the then shit in reverse. Can any day devoid of any physical activity can be so tiring. I would have never thought so. Starting at 4 am and hitting the sack at 11.30 pm and catching sleep on the flights – no wonder I had no energy left to take Jispa running today. No chance in hell. All good intentions died with the 5.00 am morning alarm. Screw you too. Jasmine was like – don’t set alarm and then decide – decide at the start itself. Yah… I know but I had great intentions when I hit the bad. They evaporated at the sound of the alarm. What to do?

google doshi

The other day we were scheduled for a dinner which was happening quite late. So we went to the McDonalds nearby and had a bite.

Jispa while eating the burger asked me “eating the burger makes me feel very thirsty”. “of course” I replied “they put a lot of slat in your burger so that you love it and then of course you feel thirsty. Then to mask the taste of the salt, they add tons of fat to it”. “Why would they want me to be thirsty?”. “well so that you buy coke”. “But then I will simply drink water which they give free”. “Is that so? Go take a walk around and see the restaurant. See every table and tell me what people are drinking”. So Jispa took a walk around the restaurant and came back with a huge exclamation mark on her head. “on every table there is a cola and the only two places where they didn’t have a cola was where there was no food as well.” “There you are. Now what’s the price of a cola at McDonalds?” “umm 15 or 25 rupees” “Go ask and find out” She went and asked and came back with another aghast expression – its 49 rupees. ‘whats the price of a burger” “allo tikki is for 25 bucks”. “and the cost of making it would be around 10 to 15 bucks, possibly. While the cost of serving the soda cannot be more than 2 to 3 bucks. So where do you think is the profit margin. Cola or burgers?” “wow” she was completely amazed by the math. “so if they make more money selling colas than selling burgers are they a fast food restaurant or a cola selling company. You decide”

Now that we were at it I threw another ball “Whats the cost of the happy meal at McDonalds”. “99 bucks” as she found out. “So remove the cost of the burger and coke and see what you get” “25 bucks for the toy?” “yes exactly – they are selling the toy at 25 bucks, which till now you and everyone else thinks is for free! 25 bucks for that toy which I think can’t be costing them more than 10 bucks”. “ya and the quality isn’t all that nice” she said. So thanks to that I explained her “McDonalds has become the largest toy seller in the world.” Wow.” Then I showed her the Hamleys store. “they are bigger in toys than Hamleys as well”. “bigger than Hamleys which sells only toys”. “yes sweetheart, they sell more toys than anyone else. So are they a fast food store or a toy retailer selling colas.”

“see the fun when you have something so overpriced like cola. They never ever prominently mention the price of the colas on their menu. You have to struggle to see it” (it was on a display hidden behind a column). “this way they can combine and sell you value meals and you think you are paying less but in effect they have already overcharged you for the drink”. “isn’t that cheating? Selling colas that expensive” “no they are allowed to charge whatever they want for the cola. A five star hotel will charge you 500 bucks for the same thing. That’s also allowed. It’s not cheating Its marketing”. “I am not telling you lies, I am only selling you differently.”

She was wow. “How do you know all this”. “hahha. I read. And that’s you are going to get in the books I bequeath you. Of course not all of this is from the books or in any one book but you get a sense of stuff around you once you read enough. Then you know how to figure things out as well.” “Google Doshi” was her parting comment. She knows that some of my friends call me that.

But that was a nice conversation with her. She is now big enough to know a lot of this and is able to figure a lot out as well. It’s fun growing up with Jispa.

talk to the MAN

We are professionals. I work in an office and in a large setup. I know what it is to make an organization move and I know how the inter-politics work. And thanks to a lot of wisdom gained I assume I might be smart enough to understand a little about how the market dynamics are.

Earlier when I would speak to an entrepreneur, I used to be a little … haughty… I guess. I probably thought that the entrepreneur would never know the real way a large organization works and the thinking we put into a product. I thought that we are as a tribe smarter than what he is. But over the years I have learnt to respect the wisdom of the businessman. Whatever little he knows has greater value than whatever much I might know. I realized that finally that is the guy who takes the risk fundamentally. He is typically closer to his customer and while he may not have any theoretical construct he makes up for it by having passion, drive and of course the associated headache.

So I find it funny when someone like him comes to take advice from me. I think there is an interesting creative tension happening. He knows his beans but at the same time he also knows that the guy on the other side has some secret sauce that he is eager to learn from. There are systems and processes that a big firm guy knows that an entrepreneur never is exposed to. Or basically learns the hard way. They struggle with this construct. Managing systems and processes while growing crazily is a  marathon task. Typically systems are put in place once the growth rate slows down. Because while you are growing there is no use of a system. A system would make you slower and less responsive to change and adaptation.

So when talking to a entrepreneur my premise is simple – he is always right. He will know more than you and will always be better informed. Even if he isn’t. Its actually not as complicated as it sounds. It’s basically the frame of mind I put myself in when I am talking to him. This way I don’t get too arrogant while talking to him and genuinely start listening to him. Because there are so many times that the guy must be actually doing things without even knowing he is doing it.  Only when you think in this manner can you really understand and dig for clues as regards his behavior. Only then can you have a conversation that is enriching to both. And advice is never what he should do – but it is always what I see with my limited vision. Things that have helped me in my daily life and from that it is up to him on what he wants to take. It is essentially the same thing when you talk to anyone else. You have to essentially talk your experience without really thinking that the same is simply transferable.

I love these businessmen who have set up their own businesses. They have a way of doing things that have got them this far. I love to see them think and see them wondering about change. Some are constantly looking to change and some are constantly trying to maintain status quo. If anything I get a great deal of learning from talking to them. They probably don’t know but I too look up to them in some way. Finally I too take risks on the job, large ones but I know that my risks are not threatening. Sometimes these guys have to take risks that will forever change their lives and possibly take them to a newer orbit.

Hence the premise is always simple – you are right. Now let’s see where we can go from here. Its funny how this has happened over a period of time in my life. When did I swallow my arrogance and when did I decide to move my thinking. Possibly it happened when I realized that I don’t know more than I know and that not all that you know is right. But chuck that.

Coming back, I have also learnt that theoretical constructs are still very valid to anyone. The more I have understood about them by teaching and applying them the more I realize the wisdom in them. Even unstructured situations and growth can be better managed and understood if you have a lens through which you see them. There is wisdom that people have gathered over the years and they come out in these theories that are being made. The trick is to catch the theory, apply, seek for deviations and trust yourself enough to wonder why the deviations occur when they shouldn’t.

I have applied certain theories more than others and more I apply the more I see them (certain ones) as being right. it has improved my understanding of them. The problem is when I have to explain them to the entrepreneur he finds it difficult to catch them. In fact he tends to dismiss them as theories so I have to do the difficult thing and don’t present to them as such. I have to push them in different ways and lead to the same result. It’s a very difficult job. An entrepreneur typically knows his current problem and whatever you say he is constantly trying to find the solution to that problem. He is hunting for solutions to the problem he sees and therefore quickly loses interest if it does not fit or quickly catches a solution he sees a fit. They are always thinking fast and I find it difficult to hold intense conversations with them which require deep thinking about a particular issue. They are used to fast processing…. Quick in quick out kind of processing. I think at first I would try and catch them with a 100 different cases and possibly try to dazzle them with knowledge. But that is of no use to him. So I talk to him, understand from him and then try and just have a simple conversation using his examples and words. This way we possibly reach a better solution that is truer to his real problem.

They learn more from heart to heart conversations than from gyan distribution sessions. The gyan shit is needed for the MBA trying to look smart but the real work is needed by the business man to stay alive, relevant and promising. It’s the real thing man.

naya daur

It’s always nice to talk to more and more people. Especially from those you can learn from and those who can learn from you. Teaching is my passion and I have had strong bond with all my students. I have kept that relationship very strong with my students and I always am there to lend a hand whenever they reach out to me. They get in touch for personal or professional issues and I feel that I should always be there for them. It’s a special relationship that is built on something different from everyday life. I treasure it.

Yesterday I was invited by one of my students to give a lecture to his team on the stuff we do on digital and the way I see digital progressing. And his is a digital agency to start with. I have come a long way in the last three years. I have invested most of professional life and practically staked my career on digital. Digital is it. The problem now is getting the other idiots to recognize the value of what I see in digital. But that is another story. It was a nice talk (I think) that I gave and I think it was well received. I have learnt to talk and crack a whole host of jokes while doing so. It just gets the engagement levels going up.

Afterwards the best bit was talking to the student who has now grown up to be a fine business man leading a team of 100. We were talking about various things in life. The nice bit is always when your student grows up and the conversation is from one adult to another. It’s no longer a top down talk a teacher would have with a student. The healthy respect is still there but fundamentally its an adult adult talk on various aspects of life.

One of the things he said was that he loved this blog of mine. To which I said that I don’t know. These days the blog has been floundering a bit. As I explained to him I realized that the blog seemed to have lost its voice. I think the blog has had different tones of voice over the years. To my mind there have been three so far. Now it needs to find a new voice for itself, for myself. Of course the thing is that parenting is going to be difficult. And it will have new challenges. That’s old hat. I have said that a million times there is nothing new about it. But there is so much else to be talking about. So many incidents to share, so much else to think aloud on. These days my opinions have been tempered, so what they still are there… lets bring them out.

Another thing I realized that I was so happy to see him married and settled. I loved to talk to him and his wife (who runs the business with him). I almost have paternal instincts with my students. Any guy who marries anyone I think – that a nice bride he has got and hopefully she will take care of him. And any female student marries, I think what an ass of a guy she got, I hope he takes care of her. I don’t think Jasmine understood this when I explained this to her. I think it’s a fatherly thing.

So now – I have to find my new voice. Let me try and not get too serious. Let me try and speak about various other things in my life. There are so many things to talk about, speak about and blog about. Let me try and discover my ‘now voice’.

Because most of all I need to enjoy my blogs. It can’t be tiresome bore that it became in the last few months. Complete bakwas. I normally don’t read my own blog ever. I must never ever read any entry of mine but I can’t not have fun writing it. So let’s try and get a new voice. Let’s try and write some random stuff. Let’s see where it leads us. Can I get a new voice of my own?

stomp boom

You see this on the road and what do you think?

Boys will remain boys. When we were growing up these tetrapacks of Frooti were great while full and even more fun when you finish off the liquid. You then basically opened it out, place it on the ground and go STOMP. There would be a large BANG and that would mean a free cracker. Wow! Once I learnt about it from my friends I used the trick to stomp an empty pack wherever I saw it. You don’t care who threw it on the road, all you did was go stomp and bang.

This went on real fine till one fine day when I was still in school I was walking near Kings Circle (I remember this very well) and I chanced upon a pack on the rod. Yes a pack waiting for my stomp and bang. I lifted my leg and let down with a STOMP. A BANG followed and then I was completely taken aback by what happened next. The dam pack was a brand new pack with Frooti inside. I remember seeing in slow motion the yellow liquid bursting through and I was trying to avoid it and a large amount of it flew to my pale blue faded denims to soak them with a sticky sweet yellow liquid. Yuck. Imagine if a glass of mango juice spills onto you.

Once while flying back from London on a business trip as we were taking seats the stewards had placed a glass of mango juice on every seat. Now why would they do that? Why would they put a glass before the passengers are seated and comfortable? That’s a British carrier for you. They don’t care. You are to get your free drink so the faster I put it on your table the better it is for you. You can then come and get uncomfortable trying to maneuver into place while not spilling your drink. That’s the shit bit. As luck would have it, it spilled on my seat and there was yellow sweet sticky liquid over my precious business class seat. The steward tried to clean it with tissues but you can’t really clean a juice spill properly with at tissue box can you? Luckily they had another free seat or else I guess the freaks would have had me sitting on that seat. To hell with business class getting better service or the sort.

So coming back to the pack on the street. Post the earlier incident; I never did ever burst a tetrapack ever again.  Especially the laawaaris ones you find on the street. No way. Every time I see a pack lying unflattened, I am tempted but then I am reminded of my escapade from nearly 25 years ago and I stop. Let an unBOOMED tetrapack remain unboomed. Someone else might come and enjoy that. I am staying away.

And while we are at it – here is one nice dance number going boom boom boom…

And just on dance hits – this song is the greatest hit with those under 13 years old… they dance like crazy with steps and all and they can listen to this all day long…

Radha from Student of the year. I can’t understand how the kids love the movie and this song. With my daughter nd her gang wanting to listen to this all the time I have now begin to hum it at times. Oh god…

its awesome fun

To continue in the same vien with the last post… yesterday I was left alone in the morning with Jispa. My job was simple – feed her breakfast, get her to do homework and the practice math.

First things first – breakfast. That meant looking in the fridge for interesting things to eat. We had the Khulchas and then we had the zataar powder that we bought from London. One of the lovely bits of the London trip was a visit to the Edgware road which has these amazing rows of Lebanese restaurants. The fun bit is that the cuisine is a delight for vegetarians as well. We were spoilt for choice there with the amazing veg offering. In our naivety we entered the restaurant and asked – is there veg on the menu, he almost choked while answering – of course. I had been told about the street, but our host in London had recommended it highly and that’s why we ended up going. That was where we bought zataar to bring it back home. Made in Lebanon to be shipped to London to be brought back to India. So much for food miles.

So breakfast yesterday was fixed. Jispa loves zataar as well. After Jasmine left, I took the khulcha and put the zataar on it. Then I put shredded cheese all over it. Then olives and then a cheese slice. The cheese slice is yellow and the shredded cheese is white. So it gives an interesting coloring to the whole thing. Then in the micro it goes for a minute. Remove it and crumble feta on it – voila you have three cheese zataar khulcha. We absolutely loved it.

Post breakfast we sat to do our homework. I can’t really help her in Hindi. She asked for the Hindi translation of Sports day which I promptly asked Google. It was boringly apparent as ‘khel divas’. Then we got to the math. Here Jispa had to do fractions. After a few sums, I realized that while Jispa knew the sums she wasn’t really very clear about the fractions. She couldn’t visualize the problems. What then happened was a one and half hour session on fractions. Different sets of issues, different problems, different ways of looking at things. I was explaining the basic concepts of fractions to her. Then we went on to LCM and why we need LCM to add or subtract fractions. This helped her quite a bit. She was simply learning how to do the method without really understanding how or why. This way she could solve a few fractions directly without even using the paper. I don’t know how it might have impacted her immediately in helping her solve her sums faster but surely she walked away with a better understanding and a lesser hate for math.

Math is fun, it’s logical and it’s amazing. It’s evolved so beautifully. The multiplication and division and the fractions. They have a life of their own. I love them and now I love the fact that I am reliving them. I too did not know so much about them. While explaining to Jispa I am forced to look at them with a beginner’s eye. Then I am forced to bring them down to simple equations and situations and then look at them fundamentally. I broke it up into pies and pies and how you can get different parts of the pies to add up. I never did see them that way before. It was lovely and Jispa too loved it. She did get scolded in the middle but in the end she still loved it. I guess I must take more such lectures with her. And now I felt that we should have a white board in our home as well. The current one was designed for Jispa to access while she was three.

So Jispa and I are having some fun with math. Then today morning while driving her to the bus stop I asked her again if she enjoyed the session. She loved it. Then suddenly a thought stuck me and I asked her….When you multiply two numbers by each other – let’s say 7X7 you get a bigger number… But when you multiply two fractions ½ X ½ you get a smaller number… why?

Oops… it stumped her and me together. If multiplication is merely repeated adding then ½ X ½ should be 1, then why is it ¼

It took me some time to clear this out in my mind as well. 7X7 is seven TIMES seven and if you do seven multiplied by half you do… seven times half.  So I explained to her that seven into 1 is seven. Then seven into any number less than 1 will be a lower number. And hence ½ into ½ is half of half, hence a smaller number. So any number multiplied by a fraction has to be a lower number.

It seems so easy now. But to suddenly think of it and then logically solve in your head was so much fun. Especially with you 11 year old daughter. I loved it. The only problem is that I can only do these on Sundays or Saturdays when her exams are not on the head. Else it’s up to mom to ensure regularly work happens.

Mom and dad are in many ways opposites reconciling into each other to make parenting as a whole work. Its good fun going up with my daughter.

teach

Sometimes I wonder where do I get all my gyan from. Sometimes when talking to someone I amaze myself. I also did not know I knew all this before I actually ended up speaking to someone about it. I know a lot of reading helps. Most of the time you just dip into your memory and figure out something that you actually read once upon a time and at the right time you were able ot dig it out for complete effect. That’s the easier one to fathom. But the difficult one to fathom is the one that you never knew at all. Like sometimes when I teach math to Jispa – I too did not know that I knew what I taught. Simple stuff that comes out mostly as logical deduction more than anything else. Like the other day spoke about the concept of infinity. How anything divided by zero is not zero but the answer is infinity (or indeterminate as I just learnt from google). Explaining this to Jispa was a nice tough challenge. But after explaining the concept explaining a practical example was even more fun. To keep it short – I explained how if you invested 100 bucks in a lemonade stall from your pocket money and made 50 bucks profit your profit percentage is 505 but if you borrowed that money from someone and you made 50 bucks then your Return on investment is – infinity (or indeterminate). That was fun.

We have been talking about a few things about town planning and today she wanted to discuss it further. I explained that town planners need to understand Brownian Motion. Each dust particle is impossible to predict but a group of them are fairly predictable and stuff like that. Planner need to understand this and make their planning. It was good fun.

Teaching is always fun. It’s the best way to retain what you think you know. There is some concept of unconscious knowledge that resides in all of us. Teaching brings this unconscious knowledge to the conscious self. I love teaching. Teaching keeps my mind running active and alive. The other day my digital agency wanted me to take a class for them on their offsite. They asked for stuff that I normally teach in any case in colleges. One thing stood out from the entire experience. They asked me for what presentation material I might require – projector etc. On no. nothing – just a white board.thats it? No slides no presentation, nothing. No dudes. I know this concept like the back of my hand. I have been teaching these for many years now. That’s the real test of knowing something I guess. So I took what was a roughly 6 hour lecture with only a white board (large). I know what it is.

This knowledge that I try to pass on to my students helps me in so many ways. It improves my grasp of the subject, makes me conceptually clear and makes me revisit the logic again and again. I have found new logic, new criticisms of the model and reinforced my beliefs in them. It’s so important to think aloud. All my conversations with Jispa help me as much as all my teachings with anyone else. Finally it’s a sum total of all things we do. Reading, talking, listening, teaching come together in a potent combination. The thing is to have enough of it.

The fun side is that when you meet a lot of people and read other stuff, you gain a great ability to see the bullshit from the stuff being thrown at you. It’s not easy for people to just simply lob pies at you. You know what shit is being thrown and you can quickly ask the most pertinent questions disarming the pie chucker. It happens in meetings all the time. Never stop learning and never stop teaching what you have learnt.

Coming to random rubbish. Here is one shit piece I saw on the internet. Read and laugh about loud. They say planning a trip gives a high level of happiness and after the trip you feel unhappy. Well that’s pretty intuitive but their conclusion is worth a million bucks – plan a trip but don’t take it…

Plan a trip – but don't take one

 As opposed to actually taking a holiday, it seems that planning a vacation or just a break from work can improve our happiness. A study published in the journal, Applied Research in Quality of Life showed that the highest spike in happiness came during the planning stage of a vacation as employees enjoyed the sense of anticipation: In the study, the effect of vacation anticipation boosted happiness for eight weeks. After the vacation, happiness quickly dropped back to baseline levels for most people.

If you can't take the time for a vacation right now, or even a night out with friends, put something on the calendar—even if it's a month or a year down the road. Then whenever you need a boost of happiness, remind yourself about it.

I am reminded of a joke once told at the family dinner table.

Once a guy took a cockroach and cut one leg and said – run. The cockroach ran. Then he cut one more and said – run. The cockroach ran. This went on till the cockroach was left with one leg. Run – the cockroach still ran as best as he could. After all the legs were cut and the guy yelled – RUN. The cockroach refused to move. The guy wrote in his science journal the conclusion – after cutting six legs of the cockroach, the cockroach turns deaf.

play well

Sports is a big thing for me. I feel as a child we came back to India when I was in the fourth standard and possibly we couldn’t devote enough time to sport as needed. Now I am into sports with a vengeance. So right now my car’s boot is always ready for sport and it always has the equipment and other paraphernalia ready for any sport. I am ready to play every day. Right now I am having a whale of a time. I swim, play water polo, badminton Sunday afternoon underarm cricket and I run. That’s a whole of a lot of activities to be done. Its tiring and I am not so sure how much the body can keep in pace, but for now, I am enjoying it and quite frankly I don’t really care too much on other stuff.

The greatest fun I get from this sporty endeavor of mine is the sports equipment. I love having the equipment ready to play. And I like buying decent quality stuff. You should have the right footwear and the right racquets and other stuff. No point compromising there. Jispa’s swim bag always has adequate equipment. She has two three eye goggles, one specialized for back stroke (dark mirror finish), a few swim caps and a lot of costumes. Normally she needs one but during her swim meets she needs one for every race. This is done so that after every race she can dry herself and get ready for the next race in a dry costume.so she need not run to change in a wet costume.  I saw her smart looking costumes drying together and felt nice.

Now she started running so she needs specialized running shoes. We took her to the sports shop where she tried on her shoes. If she is going to run a bit she might as well buy decent shoes. Again here I think Jasmine and I are living our childhood through her. She bought the Ultra light Skechers. They were expensive but I don’t think I found them expensive. I don’t think sports equipment is expensive at all. Surely they are high priced but considering that you are going to play all the time in them, pound the floor a gazillion times in them, they are to my mid worth it if you find them comfortable. In fact I think Jispa’s shoes are more expensive than any I must have bought for myself. But hell, if you must play a sport, play it well. I do think she needs running shorts as well but that is Jasmine’s territory and in any case it too will come when the time is right.

 A lot of this is wasted over the years. We surely have more swim goggles then we actually need, there is a little amount of waste but when you swim as much as she swims and you train as hard as she trains this is but a small price to pay. Equipment must not stop you from performing. There are swim suits for 40 thousand bucks as well. But they are designed to shave off 0.01 seconds. That too at an international arena. They won’t work at our level. For one – there so much a technique will do, secondly, we have manual stop watches with a greater error rate for timings. It just won’t help as much. When she comes to that level, hopefully I would manage to afford that much. There is one champion who I see comes from a very modest background. I see her swim. Her swimming costumes, cap and goggles aren’t branded at all. She swims with heart. At our swim meet I had a few prizes to give out; I just called her out quietly and gave her the kickboard. She is awesome. She swims lovely. When you see the other contestants coming in their Audi SUVs and wearing expensive costumes and caps, I love to see her dad ferry her in a scooter and I see her dive in with heart and come out trumps. That’s my favorite champion.

Sometimes I feel we give in too much. Should we do less? It’s a delicate balance. I like to let Jispa get her stuff, but I try to tell her to value it. She had a circular from school taking them to a ski trip in Swiss mountains or something. Priced at an awesome 2.7 lakhs or something. Jasmine asked her if she wanted to go. Of course she said yes. Then I stepped in and put a price perspective, explaining the cost of our holidays. “In that case “she said, “nopes, I don’t think so.” Many times when we are buying costumes and the costumes look and feel the same, I simply ask Jispa to consider the price as well. Yesterday we bought the Skechers but while she was trying out the Nike shoes I told her to see prices between the ones she liked. Don’t buy what you don’t like, but between two you like, check the tag dude. It’s cool to check the tag and buy. Completely cool.

 In fact as a marketing person I find it stupid not to check the tag. Is it worth it?

run

Today I ran.

Jispa has been doing pretty good at her swimming. She recently beat a whole of top draw players to emerge as the silver in the back stroke. She’s also been clocking good timings in the rest of the strokes. This is a good thing. We have been thinking about starting her land training as well. Basically the theory goes that you need a secondary sport to augment your swimming. It helps you develop other muscles than those worked for swimming. Earlier Jispa was doing her taekwondo in school until a change of teacher ensured she hated the sport and she stopped it. Jasmine and I were searching for an alternate.

The running bug has caught up with a lot of people and thanks to this a lot of running athletes have become/ started taking running clubs / coaching schedules. Jispa has been amongst the top runners in her standard. But her running style is quite horrible. Her jogging style is also quite bad. She runs taking extra-long strides making her action a kind of jumping hop run. Her jogging is a scrape at every step. Nevertheless she is fast and hence she was selected for her interschool.

I have tried teaching her to run in the past. She always over corrects and I am left frustrated. I surely don’t know how to teach to run. She is better off without me as her running coach. So having no option we took Jispa to a running club with a coach. Hopefully she may learn and it’s a form of a land exercise. We hope it works well without tiring her out. On the first day she ran while Jasmine and I took a stroll. Seeing the runners I was motivated to start running myself.

I love running and I love the rhythm and the fact that it’s such a simple way to push your body. I love it. But I had to give up running after my knee kept dislocating on the slightest provocation. A jump or a false move or any such aggravation. I tried being active by swimming and playing badminton. I have learnt to be more careful and avoid certain movements. But I hate not being able to run, especially run fast.

So today on the second day I gathered courage to start running as a part of the club. I thought I could surely keep pace with Jispa at the run. I was so scared. In the morning I woke and spent an agonizing five minutes trying to gather the courage to run. I almost did not make it. It was a scary fight I had with myself. Finally I decided I can run. Stay in control and run, I told myself.

At the ground I stretched with Jispa and started jogging. It’s a bit of rusty leg with running muscles being dormant. They required a bit of coaxing and I was jogging with ease in some time. I refuse to put extra pressure. I felt nice with the little that I was doing. It’s a start, a lovely start.

I hope to continue with this for some time and see where it takes us. No big hopes, no promises, just simply picking up the bits of my ability and my knee and starting to run. It’s a big thing for me. I love to run and I was denied my love for some time now. And now thanks to Jispa who knows– I may be able to run again. Afterwards during the morning I could feel the muscles around the knee, as if they have got a good exercise. Let’s see how this dam thing progresses.

I want to run, I love it. It’s going to be tough and I hope I don’t screw it up. The trick is to understand the limits and work within them. It’s a delicate balance.

tischiawn

This is freaking hilarious. So would it be Clint Eastwood or Bruce Lee? To someone who grew up on a diet of Clint Eastwood films and was fed the one magic film of Bruce Lee, it’s a tough choice to make.  On one hand you have the legend wooden face who came in these spaghetti westerns (called so because they were produced by the Italians) and shot the shit out of the baddies. On the other hand you have the one film wonder. I think he has come in a few more movies, but Enter the Dragon was the only movie I have seen of him. I think the tragedy was that he died before its release making it a bigger cult. I would emulate both in my childhood depending on the movie I had just seen. Enter the dragon was I had seen many times. In Dubai, when I  was a little boy, the club would have a movie night every week and we would look forward to it. Largely the movies were repeated and Enter The Dragon was favorite. Yaaaiiieee. There comes my Karate chop.

Like any other boy I too had an interest in guns. I loved guns and it helped that I was naturally good at aiming and keeping my hand steady. I loved the guns I had and would play with them every day. even today I would love to play and practice with a toy gun :). I remember playing so much that once the servant in the house put a really small parrot toy in one corner of the room and challenged me to hit it from the other side of the room. And whack… it flew. I was pretty cool. Then I remember trying to hit while moving and all sorts of different situations. It was fun. Clint Eastwood gave me a lot to dream of.

So for sheer breadth of movies and the dreams that followed guess in my head it was clint Eastwood that won. After all I don’t remember ever wearing that yellow track suit but I do remember wearing cowboy boots. The cowboy western image is still more resonant with me that the lanky pants flexi kick kung fu. Guns defeated the nang chaku in my life. Aiiiieeeee….. yaooo… Bang. Poop.

And nothing else exemplifies this philosophy than this scene from the greatest of them all – INDIANA JONES. The epic adventurer, searching the worlds for lost treasure and an unlikely action star.

And here is another legendary one from a Clint Eastwood movie, though not featuring him.

Alexanderian grace

Jispa is getting her teen attitude and she isn’t so much of a push over these days. She can get mighty pissed with us and especially me. Today morning she forgot to take her school shoes when she left with me for her swim training. So she decided to go to school in her chappels. She had another (non-compliant) pair of shoes in the car. I asked her to wear those but she refused. Black chappels are preferable to shoes that are not completely black. Oh hell. I tried telling her otherwise but she refused and I left it at that. It’s her problem. She has to deal with the school authorities and the head. So I let her be. Then Jasmine got on her case and then both of us just let her be. Her issue. While we were waiting for the bus to come in Jispa said today she also had physical education class. Ok that was the limit. Jispa wear your shoes – jasmine and I put our foot down rather forcefully. Jispa said fine. But then she was pissed as hell. “why do you have to scold me and tell me.” “because you don’t listen otherwise” “but that doesn’t mean you have to scold me at the start itself. First tell me properly and then scold me if I don’t listen”.”sorry but on this you wouldn’t have listened to me and we were telling you about it”. “no but you shouldn’t start with a  scolding” “you start listening. I also don’t like scolding. When you were younger we would only speak sweetly, but now if you don’t get a scolding you don’t listen” “no… I do listen” “ok you promise to listen and I promise not to scold. Right now also I am talking properly” “ no you are not”…. You get the drift. Jispa and I were having a conversation in which she was pretty pissed. No she gives me a push back and she gives Jasmine a push back on a lot of issues as well.

I try to listen to her and talk to her if she pushes back, I try not to clamp her down. Speak. Talk converse. If she screams or talks rubbish when there is conversation then I raise the tempo and clamp down, but then also normal speaking and civilized arguments are allowed.

This time she was pissed as hell. She refused to give in. Then I told her “forget, your school bus is coming, you leave”. She refused to tell me bye. I told her “while going say bye dude. don’t leave like that”, She didn’t listen. In fact she made a point by telling Jasmine bye and ignoring me. She was pissed as hell. I am smiling. It’s ok.

Many years ago when my marriage was being discussed, Jasmine’s parents had to finalize the hall in which the ceremony was to take place. Earlier it was the girl’s side of the marriage that bore all the expenses. Now the progressive gujjus have a discussion. Typically marriage is borne by the girl’s side and the reception is split into half or some ratio. Or some such logic. In my sister’s marriage we had chosen a hall which her in-laws made a slight noise. Not too much but a simple question about it is also viewed very seriously. I know the big agonizing issue that went about inside my house but we pressed on nevertheless and possibly it was a non-issue at their end but it created a huge discussion at our end.

So in my marriage Jasmine’s parents were looking at a hall but that one nearer to where we stay and which was the normal choice in their family as well was under reconstruction. So you needed to look elsewhere. So they zeroed in a hall which was nearer to their house but not an upmarket neighborhood. In fact it was a pretty non-descript place. I was aghast at my parents disapproval. Those days I worked in Gujarat and when I was in Mumbai I had a showdown with them. I found my normally liberal leaning dad suddenly turn conservative. Mom was completely unhappy. I couldn’t believe that they were going against the very values they inculcated in me. How can we object with the choice of hall? They said they will pay the whole expense in any case as it was a smaller function for marriage and simple reception. I had a show down with dad on this. It wasn’t pretty. I was pissed as hell. And we didn’t speak to each other. The next day I was to leave for Gujarat and mom and dad offered to drop me to the station. Sure. I don’t think we spoke in the car as well. As I got off, I paused for a brief moment and I turned around and said bye mom, bye dad. I guess dad was waiting for me to say bye. He said bye as well. It was brief period of making up. I guess if guys simply say hi to each other – it’s reconciliation. I remember his face. He too was a bit pissed but he too let it go. It was both side giving an inch and then an el.

I am forever glad about how I behaved. I am so happy and I remember that moment very clearly. I remember that pause and I remember thinking, I must say bye. It is something I will never forget. As it turned out, that was the last time I saw my dad. I know that in the 23 odd years I would have known him he would not have held the last 23 hours against me but still, last chats are last chats. I would hated going through life knowing I refused to reconcile when I had the time. It didn't take much from me or him to forget. It’s ok to have disagreements but at the end you must part as friends, agreeing to disagree at the worst.

I have always hated parting badly. That’s not on. I always tell people to part properly. It’s not that we can’t behave in a civilized manner. Even if people mean you harm, when they leave you have a chance to sow a seed of love. Like Porus, everyone deserves to be treated in a manner that befits them. It’s for us to be Alexander. So it was history repeating all over again. Jispa was pissed at me and had an argument with me. While she left the car, like my dad I too was in the driver’s seat with mom in the adjoining seat. But this time, I tried to say bye but my pre-teen refused.

Awww. Jispa. It’s ok. I understand your rage. It’s a good thing. You are growing up. Push back is good or parents will forever be hovering around you. Just remember it’s never personal and it’s definitely never for keeps. We both are growing up. You faster than us. But in the end – my advice to you is simple. While leaving always have the grace to part well as you never know when you going to get that chance again. You can have a disagreement but do not let that take away your grace, dignity, ears, sense, responsibility and love. It’s tough but to conquer that is Alexanderian. I was really lucky once.

Read more about the epic battle here. Its quite a nice fascinating read ...  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Hydaspes

is it supposed to move or isnt it?

There is nothing that WD 40 can’t solve of course with a little help from duct tape. Both together form a formidable team that can be used to solve almost everything at home.

My first brush with WD 40 was when my dad used it on so many different things. What is WD40 you ask. Tsch tsch. WD 40 is the amazing spray in a blue can which when sprayed on anything will make it move or stop it from creaking. In a home over time everything creaks. Hinges of a door, the stopper that wont stop, the swinging hinges of a swing, the fan, the rollers… everything. I remember dad would remove the WD40 can and pssssttt noise gone. Here is the classic shot of the can. You see the red straw at the side – that is the thing that goes inside the nozzle and helps you direct the spray appropriately. My memories of this bottle is always with the straw. Both would be bound together with a rapidly deteriorating rubber band that half melted and was brittle thanks to the heat.

The other thing was duct tape or cello tape as its popularly called. We would have lots of the borwn tape in the house ready to fix almost everything. Dad was an engineer. He used to have a tool kit around the house and would love to fix everything. Duct tape was the next thing he would use. Just tape it and it would be done.

I can picture my dad on a holiday in his jurta pyjama roaming around the house. Mom would complain about something and dad would examine it. He would either call for the WD40 or duct tape and then a few sprays or tears later – presto – its solved.

Just a couple of days back we had a problem at home. Our fan started giving off a violent noise. A violent creaky noise that would be difficult to ignore while sleeping. I wondered what had gone wrong. Jasmine told me that our maid Devki doesn’t reach clean the fan properly. She simply pulls down the fan blade and dens it while cleaning it. That is the classical Daniel Kahneman thinking fast and slow problem. Jasmine was thinking fast and she was jumping to a conclusion. She put two and two together, saw a cause and an effect and said that Devki must have spoiled it. Possibly the blades are bent. I wondered if we needed to call the electrician. Then I wondered if the fan would fall down on us as something as really wrong with it. I don’t why but I don’t do the ‘do it yourself’ fixing bit these days. I was pretty good at it in the good old days. But now I seem to have given up that part of me. I don’t know why but I think mind experiments are getting the better of hand experiments.

So this time I thought let me look at it myself. I tried aligning the blades. Really rubbish stuff I did. Then I switched the fan on. Still the violent noise was there. So I played around and tried to think about the source. It seemed from the hook by which the fan is hung from the ceiling. So I tried to realign the fan on the hook. It still seemed to be an issue. At varying fan speeds, the noise would stop and start. I told Jasmine that the noise is from the top and she suggested WD40. Yes. Did we have it at home? Of course she said. Wow. I forgot we had the essential ingredient at home. So we took the can – with the withering rubber band from the bathroom loft (always there) and sprayed. I felt like dad all over again. A few sprays here and there and a few more just be sure (like dad again) and we switched on the fan. Poof Noise gone. Simple isn’t it.

I told Jasmine that there is nothing you can’t solve with WD40 or Duct tape. Today as I was searching for the WD40 image I saw this image as well of the flow chart of WD40 and duct tape. It seems the world has gotten this idea well before me. Hehehe.

Classic isn’t it?

eating hats

Choose your words very carefully. You will have to eat them soon enough. But that should not stop you from still saying what you have to.

Over the years it’s amazing how words I have been forced to eat of my own. It’s not a lesson in keeping your trap shut. On the contrary just because I had an opinion and that I opened my mouth about it made me realize after many years that I was wrong. After continuing to open my mouth on a lot of issues pertaining or completely outside my realm I realized that I know jack!

You can’t really live life without having an opinion. We may or may not express it but we will definitely have it and it reflects in our actions. Jasmine and I are different in a way that she never expresses her opinion and I would always volunteer it. But that does not mean she doesn’t have an opinion. In many cases she may have an opinion and a very strong opinion. Her actions will speak louder than the words coming out. But opinion is definitely there.

Now when Jispa was born I so happy it was a girl. One of the reasons was that at least there won’t be a pressure to study. India was shining and there were many field opening out that were not directly related to studying too hard. You need have been the best of the best to make your mark. I reasoned (openely I may add) that while the girl is the same as the boy child, the society puts too much pressure on the boy child to make his mark. While the girl child can get away with whatever she chooses to do, hence the pressure to perform in class is less. While it still may be true that the society treats the boys separately, it is not true that I would ease the pressure on studying on the girl child.

As a parent I realize that Jispa has it in her to perform. She can and must do her best in studies. With her grueling swimming schedule she must make time at every available moment to study hard. From Tuesdays her tests start and we have started teaching her and pushing her to study. Earlier my stand was that keep me off the study thing. I am not going to help her study, after all these are all stupid things and don’t really test understanding.  But there are many flaws. If Jispa must have the freedom to choose then she needs to study now. And it’s impossible for Jasmine to take this burden alone. Its way too tiring and mentally exhausting. So I must pick up the studies as well. My weekend is equally ruined and not to mention, this results in strained relations with my daughter as well.

I try and teach her stuff but I am so dam bloody depressed after all this. One I have to make her study. To do that I have to shout at her. At one point while studying Hindi I whacked her with the book (not so hard though). I forget she is not a boy. It was a whack that boys don’t care too shit about. I also gave her a slap. Again not so hard. But then Jispa protested… no it’s not done. You shouldn’t be slapping me. Mom makes me study and if I don’t understand she repeats and explains again. There, I was the bad guy. I know I mustn’t raise my hand but I really don’t know how else to get her to concentrate. I never slap her or scold her on her grades. That’s a n outcome not the act. While studying, it’s so goddam frustrating. But as soon as she told me, I understood. I protested that it wasn’t hard and it’s almost playful. But she refused to accept it. So then I said sorry and I told her that no more whacks, but you need to start concentrating. It worked for then. But it still was tough on both of us. At start I don’t know Hindi well enough to teach a fifth grader. Then she writes some random stuff in her books from which I have to take up.

I should be slapping her. I shouldn’t be. Even if it’s a light one. It’s not done. My only come back is that I listen to protests and immediately make up.

The fact is that I am ill-suited to making kids study. I can make them dream, I can make them think, I can inspire, but I can’t make then study. That is one thing I can’t do, not in the current system. But I see no option for a lot of study pressure we put on Jispa. She also realizes it, she also wants to push the bar and top, but then it’s up to us parents to bear the cross. And of course eat our own words.

The more I see of life the more I realize the value of hyper-specialisation. The world belongs to specialists. Specialists who take on specific fields and are the domain experts in them. They are the ones who will inherit the earth. Standard average joes will find themselves good work but will never be able to break the ceilings. In good times and bad, it’s the hyper specialists who are constantly up on the curve and adapting to new and new changes in technology are the ones who will be in demand. The key point here is constant adaptation. A hyper specialist carries a curse. Whatever she knows will be common knowledge soon and could be obsolete sooner. So she needs to go deeper and deeper and constantly stay relevant. So I hope to push her to study and I surely hope I don’t push her to choose a field. I wish she chooses a field of her own liking and I am not forced to eat my hat then.

I have eaten too many of my own hats to the point of indigestion. I don’t want to do that. The trick is not to wear less hats but to wear more edible hats – you understand the point?

how little

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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