clever? No. Clear.

i think the single best innovation that has happened from the time i was in college to now, for a young guy is simple - the availability of coffee shops. Simple affordable coffee shops that are open for just hanging around. When Jasmine and me were going around, the single biggest issue overtime was - khan jay. Where to go? Right from 91 till 00, the big question was where to go to get some private conversation going. Where do two love birds go for sitting and staring into each others eyes. Where do they hang out, by themselves or with their friends, where do they while away the most part of the day. 

Jasmine and me used to try and be with each other all the time when in college. The problem was simple - we could be in college till a point of time - after that where could we go? Where to go for some privacy, some conversation, or simply to just hang out and chill. Where? Often we would search for new places - a garden perhaps (yuck), some restaurant but they would want you to leave after eating and finally the movies. Movies at least gave you 2 hours of together time, but cant really talk and know each other in a movie theatre,; you are merely spending time with each other, not ‘knowing’ each other!

We ended up seeing a lot of movies with each other. It was the best of times and watching movies wit each other has given us the most amount of joy. of course i was perpetually broke and we had to rely on Jasmine’s tuition fees to keep the romance funded! There is no cheap place for romance.

So when i saw the first coffee shop open in India, it was well after my marriage. It was in the year 2001 i think where i first experienced the coffee shop in the form of Barista. It opened its outlet near Sterling at VT. I clearly remember my first time there. We had gone with jasmine and a friend. I also remember ordering a cappuccino which i thought was awesome and a great drink. I remember enjoying it and thinking that this is a great concept. And the fact that one could simply spend hours at the place simply enjoying the coffee and the experience. Th idea of working from a  coffee shop, meeting at a coffee shop, talking at a coffee shop. I remember ruing the most - the fact that these things were not available to me while growing up with Jasmine.

But still, i am not complaining too much. First we used to sit often at the Barista outlets. Even as a married couple - one of things you need the most is spending quality time with each other. The ability to spend time talking, reading and discussing things is good but most important feature is the change of environment. With Jasmine sitting at home the most part of the day, it was a welcome change of routine and scenery when I got home late evening. this was after Jipsa was born and things got sour at home with mom and Jasmine. Mom and Jasmine would not know how to get along and Jasmine would be dying to get out. So we would take Jispa and go out for a walk and invariably land up at the Cafe Coffee Day outlet near our house. V-inu was also staying in Matunga at the time and so he too would join in. At one time our third friend from college days, Dinesh was back from Paraguay and so all four of us would step out for a coffee with Jispa in tow. The coffee shop gave us an environment to escape from it all and give us a chance to just simply hangout. I remember it being the best of times. It gave us immense joy.

Barista has long faded away - i dont know if its still in operation… Cafe Coffee day is there but somehow the quality doesn't stick and then we briefly tried the Costa but now Starbucks for some reason is winning hands down. I love this place. I have no clue why. I come often to just hang out at Starbucks. In my last job there was a Starbucks that opened near the office. From the first time i went there, I knew this was my place. I have been here so often that i have my own set of memories here. the best Starbucks ‘feel wise’ has to be the Horniman Circle outlet. The one near my new office at Bandra is also one crazy hot bed of activity. It is huge but is stuffed whenever i visit it. But still this cute one near my old office - the Starbucks at Prabhadevi in Century Mills Building has to be my favourite. There is something about the vibe of the place that is hard to beat. I am not a big believer of vast - in fact i wouldn't care too hoots about it. But there is something i feel nice about when i come here. I like the people, the atmosphere, the lay out, the fact that its on the first floor, everything. I think at the end  - every place is about the memories. here i have the best memories. In my last job, i was doing great, i had achieved some real big stuff and all without any strong support from the management. In fact i was completely gainfully unemployed. Whatever i did, I did with almost half a day to spare every day. I face a lot of criticism, ignorance, lack of understanding , cynicism etc. People had no clue what great stuff was happening. Whenever i wanted to escape it all, i would go to this Starbucks. typically with a team member, i would run away and have a nice conversation with them. i built my relations with them at this place. I remember running away from all the issues and getting joy over a cup of coffee in this place. Even now, i like to come here from time to time. I like to have the coffee here. One staff knows me well and makes for me my cup of coffee. She knows exactly what i want - one cappuccino, soy and dry. Its the best place for me to be. Its my space.

Of course its got nothing to do with the coffee (almost nothing). Someone told me once that the lighting at a Starbucks is designed to give you corridors and spaces of privacy in an environment thats fundamentally public. Sure - there is a warm feel to it. But i think the most of all - its is what you experience. So far I have experienced nothing but joy and escape from drudgery here. And this is what i associate from this place and hence there is an emotion. 

Brands must realise this and recognise this and keep it close to their hearts. Every small thing matters. The menu design, the pricing, the lights, the crowd you attract, the service, the quality of the people serving. Barista was awesome but in the end it had too many owners and no one person to spearhead the experience and keep it sacrosanct. The coffee quality changed and then the atmosphere. The last time i had been there - the place was full of stupid monetising schemes run by the head office - there was a counter put by red bull (i think) and then by a chewing gum company and then they wanted to sell t shirts and merchandise and other crappy stuff. Everything that could be used to crowd the place was used and then it degenerated into a chaotic environment. Monetising the place may help in the short run but is stupid to do in the long run. people will see the chaos, they may not complain but they will feel it and slowly the crowd dwindles. I have seen it happen over and over again - one small charge levied, one small feature removed, one small change just to be clever. Who will notice - lets do it and then - it will slowly fail! people notice more things than what we give them credit. Small things matter. We keep cutting corners and disaster strikes over a period of time. We have this one year concept in firms for accounting. This accounting logic will dictate the bonus we pay our people - the kind of work we do in one year is the amount of nous we receive. When the life of the business is supposed to be over a 100 year period why should bonus be yearly. How will what i do this year help the firm in the long run. It may not necessarily be right for now but will be right after three years - who accounts for that?

In my last firm i steadily built the foundations of the digital practice that will pay dividends for years to come. Even if i have left the firm it will keep paying dividends. While everyone might acknowledge the benefits of the same - doing it does not give any benefits to me beyond the value it adds to me as a professional.

The solution I think is for the firm to give yearly and three year bonuses. The three year bonus has to be for steps taken in the long run. It forces people to think for the long run. People should wonder what is it that I have done that will impact the firm in the next three - five years. What is it that will make the customers happy. What steps I will take that will come back to bite me in the bum and make the firms’ image poor in the eyes of the stakeholders. 

Now working in a start up funded by VCs there is an even greater problem. Quarterly numbers. People have to meet quarter in quarter numbers. People are running every quarter. Quality businesses are not built by the quarter but are built by the years of being in the business doing the right thing. When you think quarterly how can you build for long? People will simply think about flipping a deal, passing the buck and letting the incentives just matter for the immediate. Who will reward long term business decision taking? I understand the speed is important. A firm that cannot build of speed is extent but this quarter on quarter business planning will kill viable good businesses before they get a decent shot at success.

Recently a lot of start ups are in the use for going bust. The growth was simply not sustainable. Giving free money away and playing the game of incentivising customers cannot run forever. Even good companies start wilting under pressure. A lovely food  rating app that does really well was in the news. It raised money on the back of projections that they will sell ad space on the app. Possibly here we are talking about restaurants who advertise on the app promoting their meals. The CEO wrote a letter to all employees blaming the sales team for not delivering upto promise. That letter leaked and caused havoc on social media. The app was doing well simply growing its user base and getting people to use, rate and browse the app. Its a good app. Then possibly an over committed number was used in a business case presentation and then that became the number to live and die by. Or possibly the sales guys genuinely underperformed. the young CEO was possibly a great guy to design and manage an app but really sucked at managing a sales team. Whatever the reason - the sales did not happen and the blame fell on them. IN any case - whats the role of the CEO? writing stupid mails to the entire team and showing his displeasure or simply folding his sleeves and getting to work with the sales team, region by region. Either improving performance or simply recalibrating the target to be more real and rooted. Writing mail helps none. I don’t know why CEO’s have this grandiose notions of writing mails to all staff. It helps none. i can understand that in case there is an immediate controversy or that the firm is being slammed in media, but beyond that this mail writing culture is stupid. Very large organisations sometimes need it as the CEO cant really talk to tens of thousands of employees but if you have a good management team in place, you normally dont even require to do this. Just talk and solve the problem.

In start up environments there is a lot of hero worship. Everyone who religiously follows another start up head. They are all insecure. They are constantly raising money, constantly trying to outdo the other in PR and constantly trying to be in the limelight. I think this culture of writing mails comes from some other startup CEOs writing mails to all employees that get viral. So if a CEO of a successful start up writes a personal mail to all - then I must as well. 

I feel entrepreneurs are crazy - they are crazily optimistic people. They see everything with rose tinted glasses. I don’t think practical real people can become entrepreneurs. These guys dream all the time. They equate themselves to other people who have made it and believe that can pull it off as well. Not all will make it. In fact a crazy small number of people will really make it to any real scale. But everyone believes it is them that will do it and they are really that smart. They seem to discount their shortcoming and have a super sized view of themselves. But seriously - they really really believe in how everything will just unfold and work out for them. They know it and they sell it. they sell it all the time. I think its just their own ability to believe and sell it to other smart people who join in, led by their vision, is the major reason that they succeed. Only a hyper enthusiastic sales man can convert a sale, regularly.

So thats our man.

Coming back to the first point - yup the coffee shops have been amazing for me and for a number of other people. It has become my oasis of calm and frenzy at the same time. The place is just beautiful. In so many cafes there are people sitting check by jowl, someone working, someone flirting, someone interviewing, someone chilling and someone at a kitty party. Its amazing. Also with the com boom now - someone is sitting and pitching to an investor or someone else all the time. Its a lovely environment and as far as I am concerned, simple companies that focus on the core experience and keep it uncluttered like Starbucks, are the ones marching a steal over the others. People will come to your location and walk a little more, but the atmosphere matters. I don't think any coffee can really pass a blind taste test. No one coffee is seriously superior in the average customers mind frame as long as you don't really botch it up by downgrading or varying your blend. All you need to do is to keep your core proposition clear and stick to it. I remember reading the biography of the Starbucks CEO, where he developed it and passed it on to others to run it, only to come back and clear things up. Starbucks started losing it till he came back and refocussed the company on the core service. The simple message being: Don’t try and be clever - be clear!

we are what we ... eat, sleep, see, talk

i am a big believer of experiences. Experiences teach more to people than anything else. these experiences over a period of time define who you are and what you think. Of course you must be open to learning from all experiences. The positive ones teach you stuff and the negative ones teach you stuff. Everything is designed to teach you as long as you are open to learn from it. 

This weekend we came from a long Diwali weekend break. We had straight five days of holidays. We made the most of it. Jasper was in camp at Japaloupe. She has been there once before. they teach horse ridging there and they have a whale a time. So Jasmine and me were virtually free for the week. the first couple of days we went to my friends house in Pune and from then on to spend three nights at the Hilton property at Shillim, near Lonavala. 

The Hilton property is a 5 star deluxe one. I had been there once before with office guys for an offsite. Th place is crazy expensive and definitely doesn't justify the price in my head. But Jasmine’s brother had bought a large number of nights in advance and was going to have a lot of them unused, so we made a plan and we went there with Jasmine’s family. Free stay at the Hilton was always welcome. On the last day we had to go to pick Jispa from the camp and then get her to stay with us for one night. While travelling as a family we have always stayed in simpler places. I think as technology and internet has advanced the price of interesting places where you stay has actually gone down. We now probably stay cheaper than ever - some times in inflation adjusted terms or sometimes in absolute terms. We never stay at the 5 star properties. So sometimes I feel that as a family i should be taking Jispa to a few five stars. Sh should not grown up in awe of them or not knowing how to behave in them. She must be used to all types of stay options, from a 300 buck home stay to  a 250$ star rated property. So I happily took up the option when my brother in law proposed the same to me.

There at first i wondered when he did not take the all meals option. There is no other place nearby to eat. its a huge property, in fact its so huge that you order for cars to take you to the dining area and back to the room. there is no way you are going anywhere else for meals. He turned out to be right. If you take the all meals package you end up eating at the buffet all the time at the cost of Rs2,500 a head. Its way too expensive and most of the time you don’t want lunch after your late and heavy breakfast. Then for dinner you have a choice of eating elsewhere and not at the buffet. They have two other place you can go to eat. One place that was described in their brochure caught my eye - The Green Table. this was connected to the spa and was billed as an organic restaurant. Jasmine’s brother had been to Hilton many times but never went there as once it was closed for some reason and then he did not get a good review. I knew enough to know that in many ways our tastes in restaurants and experiences don't match up. i always like new and different experiences - and he tends to like the predictable and consistent experiences. I would never ever book a  large number of nights in one place to start with. So I had told Jasmine that we should try the place.

I didn't bother so much about it as I was happy where the family was but on the last day, Jasmine decided ot bring that up as an option for dinner. only my nephew agreed and hence Jasmine, Jispa and my nephew decided to eat there. When we reached there the menu seems extremely exotic and we wondered if we would like it. The kids tried ordering while i was talking to the chef for my vegan food orders. I asked him if the portions were enough for one of two and then i learned that restaurant was a Fine Dine concept. One portion was enough for one. Oops. Then i ordered my stuff and then turned to the kids. The kids wanted to order soup as one by two. one by two is a lovely Indian concept. you order soup typically One by two. You order one soup and they then split it into two bowls. This is good for most restaurants including the high end ones. When they tried it here, they were politely refused. Hah! then i explained the fine dine concept to them.

I have had dinner once before at a Fine Dine. You go in and order your meals by the courses. I had eaten at the Zodiac Grill at the Taj. This was as fine dine as you could get. This was when one team at the Wealth management office where I was, had done a large deal for a mutual fund. I was the chief negotiator for the firm and I got them a dinner at the Zodiac Grill. The mutual fund team invited me as well and I got  taste of the Fine Dine experience and I remember it till now. It is a bit of a lovely experience. Also the food is so well plated and decorated that you like to just look at it. Then the flavours - these flavours are cooke din to give a bit of surprise and nothing is done to overwhelm the taste buds. A little salt here and a little sauce there and just a hint of a single type of flavour not messing with the others.

So here also the fine dine was absolutely exquisite. It was a great experience. The tiny portions, no strong over powering flavours, the amazing textures, the palate cleansers… My nephew and Jispa had a whale of a time. Jasmine who at the start was not so sure of the place too enjoyed the food. We have the money now but going and spending so much at a restaurant never did hold that much of an attraction for Jasmine and me. First spending money is an issue and then eating is an issue - we don't really enjoy eating that much and then spending so much money to EAT! Woha, thats too much. So this was a good opportunity. Lady luck beens good to me these days, i have a little spare money and the holiday was free so i could spend on the food.

What i was amazed at is that Jispa could also appreciate the food. For a kids these days that are burgers and pizzas fanatic who cant chew, fine dine is a bit of a concept. But Jispa enjoyed it and we ended up discussing and sharing plates and morsels with each other. taste this - taste that… Did you get this taste, isn't this quite interesting - blah blah… We went on and on. The vegan stuff was also good. The waiter told us that i was the second vegan patron there. The first vegan there was - guess who - Aamir Khan (bollywood actor). So they knew exactly what to serve. they even whipped up  mousse kind of desert from hazelnut paste and peanut butter which was amazing. The experience was something to savour. food can get interesting if you know how to appreciate it.

Of late I have begun to understand food to some extent. I think people in general are getting better with food thanks to Masterchef, but i think i have begun to get a greater understanding of it after i turned vegan. Now i smell food, see it, taste it, try and decipher the flavours etc. Its an interesting journey. I am trying to understand this better. the texture as well. Jispa and me have started having these conversations on the table at restaurants. I think none of us will ever become a foodie but and live to eat but i think its interesting to understand food and be able to appreciate it. You go across the world  and food is something you can appreciate. Like the last time i travelled on research - i tried food everywhere. I have actually trained myself to understand it, like it, appreciate it… and sorry about this - learn from it. Someday i would love to talk to a food historian. We are what we eat!

random rants of a father of a lovely lady!

there

The answer to the question that if i am going at the speed of light what happens when I look back?

Obviously it wasn't as simplistic as I made it out to be. Which just proves how dangerous is it to have half knowledge. I keep saying this and people don't believe it that all the knowledge that i have is very dangerous. after reading so much over these years, i have amassed a lot of knowledge but nothing super deep in one field. It gives me amazing breadth, the ability to pull off examples that are from seemingly unrelated fields nut what it definitely does is makes me very very vulnerable in a field of experts. Most others wouldn't even venture there, but with my limited knowledge, I would venture into the territory and get caught out.

Its a good thing I am in marketing. I need to get as much exposure as possible. I have over the years been able to play to my strengths, which is take inspiration from various unrelated fields and apply to business issues and try and take a creative leap. This has so far bode well for me. As I get older I use these experiences to make a point or talk deeper through the matter. But then the age old problem catches up. I hate it when it happens - the problem when one articulate meets an inarticulate. or an open articulate meets a closed inarticulate. Basically i will be using all sorts of references and data points to prove my point and then the opposite guy will just stop the conversation. They will refuse to discuss the issue. They say they cant argue with me or they don't want to argue with me or something to that effect. That is a complete piss off as far as i am concerned. Why would you not want to discuss your issues openly, just because you can articulate it well enough? Especially if you are closed to the thought. If you are simply inarticulate but open you will quickly realise that I try my best to articulate your side as well. That unnerves some more of them. Why would I be doing that? Do I really want to help them or am I just taking their case. The smarter ones understand and the secure ones love it, but a large majority - i think i just let go.

The art of keeping quiet and let them rant is something I have developed over a period of time. Just let go when things are not going great - conversation wise. Keep quiet - think deep - relax. your own thoughts are fun things to be.

Speaking of which Jispa has had her share of own thoughts which are running at some obscene rate of acceleration and change. She is a teen and her synapses are getting formed every day. She changing and along with herself - we all are trying to keep pace. She had always hated haircuts. She wants them long but she doesn't know how to handle them. In the past I think she has liked only one haircut. Haircuts is something Jasmine and me have decided is a battle not worth fighting. You decide what you want and when you want - we refuse to get involved or tell her what haircut or tell the hair dresser. Stay away from this ticking tim bomb as much as possible. So suddenly when jasmine told me that she needs to go for a haircut with Jispa i looked at Jasmine with a quizzical look. “dont tell me. i did not do anything. your daughter came to me directly and asked for a hair cut’. Its always ‘your daughter’ when these kind of events happen. The nice things are always done by her daughter. My daughter does all the stuff that leaves us perplexed. So they went for a hair cut. When they came back and i opened the door to see her, I was stunned. This was by far the best hairdo that i have ever seen my daughter with. Her hair were all in shape, they were combed well (obviously blow dried) and looking spectacular.

I suddenly realised that she was now a young lady. She had suddenly gotten much older. I looked at her and told her exactly that. Jasmine looks at me with a bewildered look. It seems from the time that she got her hair cut to the time that she got home, she was messing around with her hair. It wasn't that good, the hair is looking all puffed up, this is not right, that she was going to wash it, or at the very least, she was going to wet some parts of her hair, that she was going to tie it up blah blah. She did mess around a bit. Then Jasmine and i just said - fair - do what you want to, just once before you do anything, lets take a few pics, just so that we know for ourselves what you are capable of looking like and then you can do whatever you want. We took a few pics and one with me and her, i put on FB. This one was the one that garnered the most amount of likes that i have ever seen. in the first couple of hours itself - it crossed a 100 likes. At the tim of writing  - it is stable at around 235 odd. Hah! A simple pic that has no background, no real story, just a  pic of me and my child looking like a lovely lady and there -boom - its breaks the internet as far as I am concerned. As Jasmine was telling me - its not me but Jispa getting all the likes! Yup I agree. 

Facebook is a reflection of the kind of society we live in. young single women putting up pictures of themselves tend to garner a larger share of likes from suitable males than anyone else. Similarly a 40 year old male (me) will garner the most likes when seen in the company of his child or wife - looking all family and all. As that is what is what is expected of me, looking good with family, the archetype of the  loving and caring dad who finds his soul in his family that he cares and provides for … 

What is Jispa?

Yesterday i was having a nice conversation with Jispa and her friend Sheel. Sheel is a smart boy who with Jispa in her nursery. Sheel went to a different school but now he has come to join Jispa’s school in the 8th standard. Jispa had to practically repeat her lower Kg as the cut off for her current school was off by a few months. hence she is the oldest in her class and Sheel is one year ahead of her academically.

Jispa has been having evening school thanks to her annual concert. He annual concert has been a really boring affair. I think i only enjoyed it in the first two years after which i think generally the quality degraded and the novelty wore off. I hate those concerts. they are normally ill written with bad acting, bad direction and fundamentally a crap script. Then they have this rule that every kid gets to go on stage with a role no matter how small. So they end up with the lead character role being distributed amongst two tree kids. Even the villain roles are played like thus. So the first time I was wondering what happened to the hero - where did he go? who is this other guy in the same costume… till it dawned on me the great benefits of having an egalitarian and democratic society in a school concert. Total anarchy reigned. so inspite of being  highly involved dad I decided once or twice to just give it a miss. Jispa too doesn't care too much for it. She knows how dumb her concerts are and how amazingly ridiculous her costumes are. The worst is always the final days where she has to dress up and go to the concert with her stupid costume and face with make up. Jasmine has hardly ever used make up. But she has a complete set with all colors just for Jispa’s stupid concerts. I am hoping to miss this time’s one as well.

To manage crowds the concerts are performed over two days and yesterday was the first day when we went to pick her. Sheel was hanging around and we decided to drop him home. Since it was late we went for dinner first. Sheel is the quite intelligent smart guy who likes to read. And he tends to ask nice and intelligent questions and he loves to eat. So when we took him to dinner we started talking about lactose intolerance. It was a nice conversation that went from genetics to darwinism to Einstein. I felt nice.

I was explaining that lactose tolerance is actually a mutation because mostly people should be intolerant after they are around 4. As a human race we started eating so much lactose only in the last few decades. Cheese milk butter was not as plentiful earlier as it is today. Thanks to the modern dairy industry. So Sheel asked me if then over a period of time will people eventually all become tolerant - laws of adaptation since we eat so much lactose in our daily lives. Then was my proud moment i recollected from a book i read eons ago - Survival of the sickest - “Fittest you mean?” he asked me. Nope Sickest. What we consider today to be sick may have been the reason for survival in the years gone by. For example the sickle cell anaemia may be an issue today, but it helped people affected by it survive malaria - hence those sick with it were the most likely to survive. Similarly hemochromatosis being baneful to survive the bubonic plague which ravaged a large part of Europe.

This was a nice conversation after a long time.

I have had this feeling for some time that Jispa doesn't really value my knowledge. For her talking intelligent stuff to her dad is something that she takes for granted. in the middle she refused to have these conversations with me. She would ask irrelevant questions, needlessly dumb down the conversation and sometimes, just stop asking questions. I was quite annoyed with her. Till i realised that this is the way life is. I don't think she will realise the value of all the stuff that I read. When i first go to a place they go crazy and listen to me all day. Then when they hire me - I am on a tap. No body values knowledge given on a tap. i find this extremely irritating but i have learnt to deal with it.

So yesterday when i was talking to Sheel, Jispa also joined in. And this time, i continued my focus on talking and maintaining eye contact with Sheel. The ploy seems to have worked. it was a conversation with Sheel that she could join in - a different kind of conversation. It ended being highly esoteric - that the speed of light is constant and even if you running with a torch and you switch it on - the speed of light will remain the same. The last question before ending dinner was - if you were travelling at the speed of light and you look behind - what will you see? - Jispa said - everything black. At the time i thought thats right - but i guess right now searching further - i realised its much more a difficult question to answer. it ranges to black to frozen to a question of behind not existing at all!

See the problem of too much bull shit info! But sure you get the point and i got a conversation.

well done sonny boy

Who is Sonny Bill Williams. Well. He is the Sachin Tendulkar of New Zealand. If google searches are a metric, this man ranks as the amongst the top 10 from eh country, eclipsing some real hot women stars. Its always the women stars that you need to beat, isn't it? I came across this guy today as i saw, what is to my mind the most inspirational video  that i would have ever seen.

Sonny is a New Zealand rugby player. He is adored and worshipped amongst those who follow rugby. He is also a heavyweight boxer, amongst the top 100 in the world. that would make him by most archetypes an extremely aggressive person, who you wouldn't want to mess with. Imagine Tyson playing Rugby. Now that is a crazy ass kind of personality. Sonny also at the start of his career got into all sorts of trouble - caught making out with a model, pissing in the alleys and drunk driving among other stuff. It seems something happened - a change to Islam and the guy turned. he is now clean, doesn't drink and is a role model for kids.

But that is still not inspiring to me. A lot of people turn around in life. Some thanks to a question of faith and some for some other reasons. People turn. I am not so crazy about seeing people turn. its commendable but NOT that crazy. But When a perceived archetype of a jock shows he is an athlete - that moves me like nothing else.

See the below video. Its really crazy. The New Zealand All Blacks are the most crazy rugby team in the world. feared all over they start their session with a Maori haha that gets them all worked up and puts fear in the hearts of the opposition. This team just finished a world cup campaign where they ended up as the champions. At the end of the match the players who would be at the highest level of their testosterone filled bodies are taking a lap of honour in front of a delirious crowd. A kid try to run in and meet their hero. This kid gets brutally tackled by a security officer. I think he was a bit too serious about his job, but then he is trained to react knowing how crazy and drunk a fan can get. The next thing that happens is that our champion immediately restrains the security officer from doing more harm, takes the kid and shields him in his burly hands. he hugs the kid. Other players too help in keeping the security out of the kids reach. One player pulls out his All Blacks warm cap and puts it on the kid. Thats still humanity and empathy. But what the Sonny proceeds to do next tells us a lot about his mind.

Sonny then still hugging the boy talks a little to him. I think he asks him where his folks are and then escorts him to his folks in the crowd. He doesn't need to do that. That is a human being knowing how to achieve complete closure on the empathy that you show. He knows that the kid had a rough tackle and that the security wouldn't be too cool with him, he takes the boy all the way to the crowd where he hands him over. AND THEN does something that i wouldn't even think of. He spontaneously removes his medal that he received for the world cup and hands it over to the kid. HE GIVES AWAY HIS WORLD CUP MEDAL!

I had a lot of cricket trophies on my table a few years ago. Medals, trophies and other paraphernalia. One day I decided that its stupid. The achievements were nowhere near as good. They came against stupid players with little or no skill. I hardly did anything of note against any thing of quality. So i junked every trophy I had and I junked every certificate i got. Most of them were stupid and nothing but ego feeding, navel gazing crap of no real value. What would i gain by showing off what I had (or rather little) achieved. Nothing. As you grow up the value chain as a corporate professional, you get even more crap to display on your desk. People who think they want your mindshare by simply giving you a certificate of appreciation with your name on it in the hope that you will not throw it. I have met more than one professional who takes a lot of care and effort to display the range of trophies that they have won over the years along with the certificates of meaningless value. Why would they do that? And some of these have been seriously large people in their fields with a lot of achievements that they need not prove to anyone about. So - i threw out a lot of stuff. better to not keep than to keep vanity junk.

But Sonny… Sonny gave away what everyone else will consider an heirloom. It is something that you will hang on your wall for infinity, it is something of real value, it is something that your grandkids will remember and cherish. It is a manifestation of all you have achieved. It is your proof that you were amongst the world’s best! and you just gave it away to a boy who was treated rough? Would you give away something you have worked all your life to achieve… well its not everything you have achieved but it is the physical manifestation of all you have achieved.

I have had the pleasure of working two outstanding individuals. One is Prem and the other is Rajesh. They showed me what true compassion and humility is all about. After those two - this is one thing that I am not likely to forget. This is greatness absolute greatness. A true athlete knows that while the standards of performance he sets out for are for himself, at a fundamental level, he is what he is because of the fans who love him and adore him and want him to succeed. An athlete is nothing without his fans. Respecting your fans is the greatest thing you can do. And what Sonny did was a show of humility and respect - no is above the game but no one is above the collective audience who watches the game. 

A stitch in a long time!

On a Saturday a long standing wish came true. After a long time, I finally got some stitches!

When i was a kid, I used to jump around all the time. I was a hyper active child with ants in my pants. Running around everywhere and jumping on anything. I remember getting hurt all the time. Falling, scrapping, cuts, wounds everywhere. Both my knees bear marks of the fun i had, and along with that both my elbows as well - and both my eyebrows!

I remember three instances of stitches very well. All of them happened when i was less than 10 years old. In no particular order - the first one. A place as exotic as Nepal. I was jumping from one bed to another in the room in Kathmandu. I so clearly remember jumping around and thats all i remember. It seems i jumped from one bed to another and in the process of doing so - I rammed into the air conditioner in the room. I had to be rushed to the hospital and that is the origin story of the mark on my eye brow above my left eye. My mom tells me that I kept shouting that i am not going to cry “i am Jeetendra” or so she says. All that bravado disappeared the moment i 

The second one - I remember waking up in the middle of the night as I had fallen down from my bed. My dad comes in and asks what happened, and the next thing I know - I am being wheeled to the hospital in Dubai. It seems they heard me crying and came in. I fell off the bed and the side table had a sharp corner that cut through the eyebrow on the right. Shit hit the roof in the middle of the night. Then dad had the corners rounded and I always had a fear of sharp edges near the bed. Thats why i never had a sharp edge near mine or Jispa’s and thats also why I would always throw a few pillows on the floor near Jispa’s bed. Even the floor can get hard.

The third one was when I was playing in school with my brothers friends. I remember jumping over a pile of concrete bricks arranged  in way that the diagonal point is pointing upwards. The top point just cut through my trailing right knee. I remember seeing my white flesh and two red lines passing through. Then all the friends came in and rushed me to the school clinic. They bandaged me and the main doc said call his home and send him. This task was left to the peon. the peon calls up and tells mom that its not a big thing and it seems ok. Mom was like, ok send him in the bus. In the evening when dad reaches home, he sees the wound and boom - we rush to the hospital. It was a big wound and the stitches were painful. The scene is that since it took so long to get the stitches, the marks remained. I used to play with that fleshy bit for a long time to come. Now that I think of it, I haven't had the chance to really look at the scar since a long time.

After that I had a lot of falls and tumbles, but thankfully never stitches. In fact I used to try an avoid them. I remember once or twice get bad cuts but I used to be scolded for the falls and so I tried to get them fixed without stitches. Just keep them together with the dressing. in fact at one point i had so many wounds that parents did not even notice that i had one more!

So after that when I grew up I always wondered what it would be to get stitches. And I never did get any. Till last week before last. I was at a  friends place and to make a call I entered the balcony. I must closed the glass french windows behind me. As I was talking the call dropped. I tried calling but it did not connect, so to get back in I turned around with the phone in my right hand. Bang, Crash - i hit the glass door with my hands and the glass cracked and came down. At that time when all the glass came crashing down, I remember thinking about another close shave that i had. Once with Friends we had gone to the Barista coffee shop at Regal cinema. There was a kid with us - a bit of a hyper kid. Suddenly before anyone knew he had got out of the cafe and was on the footpath going somewhere. I screamed ‘Ali’ and tried to go behind him. As I pushed the door to get out, crack - the glass door had a small thing to stop it from opening outside. The door simply split in half horizontally and the top part remained where it was and the bottom part simply pushed ahead. The crack of the top part  was just above my hand and the sharp glass simply scratched my hand mildly leaving just white scratch marks as if done by fingernails. That was a close shave. Even one inch lower would have been enough to cut my skin real bad.

So as the glass of the door crashed down, I thought abut the door in Barista and thought - wow another close shave. Jasmine came rushing in from the other side and saw me and was wondering what happened. Nothing really i said. I checked my right hand - ok - the phone was still there - intact. And then I saw my left hand - the glass had cut through the webbing of the first and second finger by making a cut at least an inch deep. A clean cut that i could see through and through. I then told Jasmine “Jasmine - I will have to be rushed”. She tried to remove the glass so that I could get out. By then the bleeding had started and it was a rush of blood. My friends also ran in and then i got a towel and everyone started wondering where to take me. I suggested a few hospitals but Jasmine was clear. Hospitals would take too much time and the traffic was not worth risking. I guess everyone thought that i would possibly bleed to death.

The thing about being 40 and getting hurt is that you know how to deal with the situation. When I got cut I did not even feel a thing. So when i saw the ugly cut, i could have panicked. But to my surprise, i did not. I kept my wits about myself. I stayed cool and calm. We discussed hospitals and treatments and were generally cool. I remember thinking about a joke and laughing. I remember seeing Jasmine very troubled, so I tried more to remain calm and happy. Take charge and relax. Control your speed of thought and see everything in slow motion. Thats the bets way to do it. Any times a theoretical question is asked of you an you never know what you will actually do in such  situation. When the chance came - i was happy I redeemed my self. Controlled action. When everyone is going to panic, the least you can do a patient is not panic. I was happy that my wits were good enough to even flex my fingers soon after the cut and then telling my wife - all cool, no nerves cut or something worse (basically thats the tendon cut test, as I learnt later)

So then we rushed to a clinic that was open on Saturday and got my stitches done. It was a fun experience. First to stop the flow of blood, the compounder asked me to hold my hand high up in the air post which the doctor took me in for the stitches. After putting a local anaesthetic he started sewing up the wound while we walked about things in life. It seems he was a childhood friend of my first cousin and we spoke about some common stuff. I told him that i was happy to see him without ties as i had read somewhere that the tries carry the most amount of pathogens and add no practical value to a doctors life. He said he ditched the tie once he saw that a light coloured tie had become dark around the knot from dirt that comes with everyday handling. 

I had gotten stitches before, but i wanted to see the procedure for my self. This time I could see it well enough. i was in my spirits and happy. The doctor had asked me if i would prefer a local or a general anaesthetic that would put me off completely. Crazy - I got a wound this big after 30 years - i wasn't going to leave this chance to see the procedure in person.

I guess i take this learning thing way too seriously. I have to have to learn from everyone and everything. What a life if not spoiled by learning!

gyan ka boon

“Do you have any time when you and the family are just chilling at home, doing nothing?” my boss asked me. That was a tough question.

It started pretty innocuously. There was a long weekend coming up and boss asked me, what my plans are for the weekend. Oh I was excited. The plans were pretty simple. I was meeting up some fitness experts for the kabaddi team. While I do my new job, i am also involved with the kabaddi team as a consultant. I am getting paid for it but largely its a job I doing as a favour for my old boss who owns the team. its run by the son of the big man. the BigMan who owns the bank i worked for is a great guy. He is sweet and largely fair. I owe a lot of my life to him in the end. After all i spent more than 14 years working for his firm. I see this as some way of repaying back to the family. Sure i worked for them and gave them growth and money but they have also been nice to me and repaid me back in many ways. Those 14 years have largely remained very happy and i can look back on it with a certain sense of happiness and accomplishment. So I couldn't say no, when the son wanted my help while he was studying for his management degree.

Also the fun bit is that I am connecting to sport thanks to this. I am able to help take kabaddi to a higher level and hopefully some of the athletes also benefit from this. When they go back with better techniques, better systems, better processes; it makes for a better sporting nation. But then thats easier said than done. these jokers are the typical stereotype of Big Moose. They want to eat a lot and work a lot.  One champion who is going to be our captain while signing with us was very clear. He said that he know what we did last year. We had a diet plan for the players. He said that kabaddi players don't need diet. They eat and play. He wants his sweets, his gulabjamuns, his rasmalais and the lot. Sure. As long as you play and perform - here eat this shit. Bum!

So I was meeting people over the week end and then i had to do some studies with my daughter and then something. So my boss looked at me and asked me “Do you have any time when you and the family are just chilling at home, doing nothing?”. Err. he got me thinking. I couldn't answer. When was the last time we were at home doing nothing? Then he laughed triumphantly - “there I got Jaimit quiet for the first time. Normally he always has some thing to say or some story or something or the other”. Well he is right on two counts - I am always with something to do or the other. My weekends are spent with family doing things or studying or watching movies or at friends or I am teaching or doing some consulting or working with other new startups. The second count - the amount i read or listen to podcasts or something, i always have something or the other to contribute to a conversation. Some story, some anecdote , some gyan. So much exposure helps me be a smarter person and I always try my best to spread what I know all around. I know sometimes it might be understood or interpreted as Smart Alec but hell - it goes with the territory.

So to take my last blog post forward - constant curiosity is what got me here. I am constantly curious. That with a pathologically ingrained desire to help others and spread word, makes me a weird character. learn a lot and spread a lot. Keep giving a lot of gyan. My wife has the most fun. She also calls me the gyan giver. She takes jibes at me for this. Every time she will ask me who did you give gyan to. I think she understands this nature of mine. She has seen me grow from an insecure dumb ass with a lot of verve to this avatar of mine. tons of understanding, gyan and connections. She is used to me meeting people at random places and in cities around the country. I think its a good thing. Will have to figure how it pans out in my life. But i think so far its been a boon rather than not.

Pandora is it.

Jasmine reads my blog diligently. But not because she needs to read it but i suspect its just that she had it in her feedly link and it shows up there. She has hardly ever said anything about anything that I have ever written. She is a quiet spectator to the blog. So yesterday i was pleasantly surprised when she out of the blue remarked – you haven't written in a long time. Yup, I told her. My mind hasn't been clear.

You know having the best intentions aren't enough. I had the best intentions that as i join the new place i would write everyday. It would be a great experience trying to articulate and note down all my experiences as i see them for the first time in 11 years. A  new company, a new environment, a new culture. I would be excited and all fired up about cataloguing all my experiences. But i guess, nothing of the sort happened. First, this place sucks by giving a keyboard. I am so used to a key board that i find it pretty irritating to write on the laptop key board directly. Bah.

That is one hell of a bad excuse for a blog that is dedicated to my daughter. But then if my wife asks me for something, how can i not give her, so in fact of the matter that i hate typing long on the laptop, here i am writing this post. Of course there is enough of stuff to talk about...

Last month was a revelation as far as Jispa’s studies are concerned and we have decided to focus on studies every Saturday. This way there is no pressure to study just before the exams and it leaves me free to explain stuff in my own way. This time, I dont know what I was teaching but i ended up listening to the Great Hargesia Goat Bubble along with her. This a great radio play that explains how asset bubbles are formed and how markets react to them, create them and then how they eventually go bust. All using the story of goats. Its a 40 min play which i sat through with Jispa, explaining to her while pausing it where it got a bit technical. Jispa and I really enjoyed this one. Then we moved onto History and math and other stuff. History is even more fun. Indian history is simply understood by reading the official school book. Its enough history to understand a lot of what you read around you. Right now its about Babur and the advent of the Mughal kingdom in India. After Babur, Sher Shah packed Humayun off and ruled Delhi till as Jispa told me – he shot himself while cleaning a rifle. This last bit is possibly apocryphal. But the poor guy supposedly would have never let the Mughal rule take hold until he died early. He is the same guy who laid the foundations of an ably administered kingdom which the Mughals used.

So that is awesome fun. I am going to keep reading her textbooks and other related stuff and enjoy all about growing up with the pains of exams.

I think another thing i must make her do is simply google or read at least the main wikipedia  page of any character she encounters in her history book, or the main wiki page of anything she studies. It just might give her another angle to what she is studying.

Chemistry is another thing i am rediscovering. I was always reasonably good at it. So now, only a few videos later, i can explain largely most of the stuff to her. In fact the videos are so good that i don't even require to explain stuff to her. She and me just watch the videos together and then we are done.

This weekend I took sometime off to give an interview over a con call. I apologised as the call took an hour long. After that i apologised to Jispa saying ‘sorry, interview for a new job’. She was wondering that I just got a new job.

I told her that right now I am in high demand and that this is something I have to do at this point of time.

I told her that the single most important quality that i have that got me here is – now this set me thinking – I wanted to say something that completely summarises my life so far and leave something simple and interesting. I said – the single biggest quality that got me here was ‘constant curiosity’ . that came out nice, considering i thought about it for about 2 seconds. That is true. I have been curious about everything and that has led me to constantly try to learn and experiment and improve. “ah” she said “so you are like Pandora”.

Sigh – my entire life being brought down to Pandora. What else are daughters meant for?

process over results

This month is possibly going down as the most confused month i have had since a long bloody time. Ever since i started the blog, one thing remained firm - at least one post a month. I thought that this month is going to be an epic month. I would have just started working in my new firm and there would be plenty of updates and hence plenty to talk about. The truth is that there was plenty to talk about and plenty to update.  A lot of things happened in this month. i think the problem was reverse, so much happened that actually a paralysis happened on what all to talk about.

The new job has been a roller coaster of emotions. Too many emotions to handle. I tried working hard… really hard, i tried giving freedom, i tried letting go, i tried everything. Sometimes things just cant move that easy. 

on the home front - there was another battle of epic proportions! Jispa had her exams and this time she was to prepare for it on her own. Five days before her math paper she asked for help. I sit down with her only to realise that she not only requires help - she requires a complete revision of the entire portion. Everything. She might have understood while the teacher taught but now, its gone for her head. I had to do almost every sum in the text book. So in 5 days i had to cram in a few months of work. the stress and the tension of all this was extremely high and impossible to handle. We were so angry at her. Overtime we used to ask her and she was maintained that she understood and had studied her portion. But when we did math - she was completely off. So everyday i would reach home and get her to study. we would do sums from the notebook. Certain stuff, i could teach her, but certain stuff, she had to teach me before i understood enough to teach it back to her. How was this even possible… I have no clue. On one occasion, we had house the powers of youtube to help us. Finding the squad root of a number using division method. This was something completely alien to me and Jasmine. So we studied on youtube and then explained what Jispa had written in her notebook.

This was a project that Jasmine and me had to do together. In the end - it was so intense that it consumed all our free time. We were so pissed at Jispa. She would have failed for sure if we had not intervened. At the end - her paper went off pretty ok. there was one question which a real googly. something that required me to think quite a bit before i could safely answer. Jasmine too was confused on that one. this was not even something that was taught in class. I don't understand this - I understand asking questions outside the base, but asking questions that aren't tackled in class at some level - i disagree. but still it did really matter. We told Jispa that now onwards - you are not studying only by yourself. You will study on Saturdays with us and you will do a lot of math. Also i told her - give your exam with no worries - now whatever you get in math we wont tell you anything.

Jispa sis not quite understand this. Why would we scold her and make her study and then tell her to forget about the marks. Its simple really. Process matters not results. thats what i have always maintained. If you insist on studying on your own and not want us to interfere then you get good marks. But if you get us involved from the start itself and allow us to help you and push you to do better, then in the end your results are our results and we are in it together. Math we did together. We should have started earlier and done better, but its ok now. you have got enough stress from us on this itself. So now lets focus on the exams which you give without stress.

I have had the stress of exams for a long time. I hated them. For many years afterwards i still got nightmares on giving exams. that i have reached the exam hall and i am not prepared for the papers. i am blank in front of the paper. I did not want to give this stress to Jispa. Invariably there is enough on her. It seems after the math paper - a lot of kids cried.  Around 10-15 girls and a couple of guys cried that either they could not finish or the paper was tough. Jasper didn’t. thank God! After all - it was just a  math paper and nothing much beyond.  there is no point stressing so much. Even the class topper cried. Whats the point in being topper, if you cry after the paper. Seesh.

So now i am dying to see how I fared in the math paper. Or how we all fared in the math paper. The stress of this is too much to bear.

So that came along with my new job and screwed my brains twice over.

It was a great month. Also this new job, i sit outside in the bay and i dont have a keyboard draw and it hurts to type so much on the laptop, plus i have taken a mac for the first time… ohhh… this is going to be painful! But at least - i hit the one post per month minimum program!

belong

Its been three days at the new office for me now. The first day was very tough. I spent the day battling a sense of depression. It come from various sources – a stong missing of my old team and the new office which somehow doent know how to welcome a new person. I remember the last time I was at a new place. It was 11 years ago. My first interaction with my new team was an offsite. Here I remember feeling like shit and alone and not knowing whats going to happen. I did not know if I could belong here.

This place was also a nightmare on the first day. When my old team celebrated a birthday at office and sent me the photo, I was completely upset. Smashing a cake on everyone at a birthday was my thing. By the time I left it was a ritual for everyone to smash a cake on everyone and then take a selfie with all the constituents. This time I was not in photo and instead there was my replacement. That was not fair.

I returned home in a bad mood and was not sure what I wanted from life. It carried on till the next day morning and then I did not have time to sulk as I had one meeting afetr another. Suddenly after the second meeting – shit changed. Something happened and I got my groove back. I got out of the meeting and started taking charge of the numbers. I got the relevant people in the teama nd started barking orders left right and centre, I started teaching how the numbers must reflect, started attacking the existing way of doing things, called the team one by one and started talking to them. I spoke to each one of them and asked them what they were doing what they wanted to do in life. I started talking to some of founders and asked them what they wanted to do in their streams of business. Then I started cracking the whip on everything I could see.

Now I am in control, now I am back and suddenly nothing is new to me.

Yesterday I was telling Jasmine, All it needed was me to believe in myself and my abilities. The first day was just an abberation. Once I believed in myself and knew that I belong here, everything else just fit into place. I asked the right questions and got the right direction. I pushed for what I wanted and the people all fell in line.

Of course right now, the guys must be wondering what kind of a mad man they have as a boss. This guys comes in at 8 am and then leave a little earlier than 8 pm. Constantly pushing, showing agression and urging them on while laughing, cracking jokes and suddely calling a spade a spade.

Of course I have matured in the 11 years. With more than 17 years of work experience, I know how to push the bar on work to be done. The first day as I said was an aberration, it was an important transition day. The second day was even more important – now I know that I can and that’s easy. Just trust your instincts. Like the first day for a  new batsman on forign soil for the first time in a test match. You prod, you poke, you sulk, you move around. You get a few overs in, you possiblyget out and you don’t know what hit you.

When you come back for the second innings or the next day, you have had time to reflect and to look back at yourself. Then you tell yourself to just chuck it and trust yourself, and enjoy your time. The first ball hits the bat and then things fall in place. When I played cricket I have opened many times. I always liked to go to the non striker first. It allows you to get a feel of the match. I also always liked to listen toteh sound of the first time the ball hits the bat. I hate to get out without even touching the ball with the bat. Once I feel that, I know I can bat and then I know I belong and then its on form there.

I started here by the numbers and the way we looked at them. I got my team to start working on them. To start analysing them in a way that made sense to everyone who needed to analyse them. Things started falling in place from then on. Analysis is something that I have always been good at. Getting numbers in a format that aided decisions is extremely important but a few get it right. I cant understand why it would be so difficult, but now I have had years of training on it.

So yes, the first ball was outside the off stumo which I left. The next ball was on the stump which I defended firmly and the ball raced away between covers to the boundary line. I belong.