cobbling up some knowledge

I hate going down alone. I like to take someone with me for a short walk and possibly eat something or finish some work or something. This time I wanted to go down for getting my shoe laces replaced. They had frayed and I was worried that one day they would just snap. I took Dixi along and at the cobblers, he asked me which ones he wanted me to put  - the cotton ones or the nylon ones. This was all the invitation I needed to get as much information on them as possible. The cotton ones are the ones that look a little old and not shiney. They have a dull matt finish about them. The nylon ones look cool and shiney and you can clearly see the weave pattern on them. But the cotton ones are the ones that you want as they have the necessary friction to hold your boots together. The nylon ones keep opening up as they are too smooth. Hmmm. And everyone goes for the nylon ones as they are the ones that look good. He sells 10 times more nylon than cotton! Ah. I too would have chosen the nylon one without thinking. The cotton ones do look very old worldly.

Then I got him to polish my shoes as well. I was in the NCC since I started college and thanks to that I learnt the art of polishing shoes. We used to have a routine that was passed on. Every Sunday was parade and hence every Saturday evening was the ritual. You sit down with a  brush and a tin of polish and you start polishing your shoes. You polish and polish away. Then you take nylon cloth and then shine your shoes. And if that’s not enough, the rule was to then use liquid polish and put a layer on top of that! Wow that was colossal use or waste of polish, depending on the way you see it. It was a similar routine for all the brass that was there on the uniform. There were brass buttons on the cap, brass buckle for the belts and brass on the shoulder insignias. Here also I had brasso liquid and a cloth dedicated to this. A full 40 minute ritual every Saturday night. I think that’s a good discipline for a 16 year old boy. Some of that NCC discipline stayed on for a long time.

Now I find the process very messy and hence I just step down the office for a quick polish every time. So when the guy picked his nylon cloth to give the shoe a shine, I was wondering why the squeaky noise was missing. He said – it depends, sometime you get it and sometimes you don’t.  Stations in Mumbai were famous for having shoe shine boys. I sure that would a legacy of the British in India. These guys are officially there in every station. Left to our own we wouldn’t have ever thought of having them here. It’s the marriage of the British love for trains and shiny shoes. I told the cobbler that the train guys make a huge squeaky noise when they use the cloth. He said they use a different cloth. I wondered that possibly those guys would have a special secret on the type of cloth to be used that made the sound.

I told Dixi that the noise is a call to action, like a ice cream cart bell. It tells people that come an dget your shoes polished. IN any case, Dixi was reeling under the amount of information that we got while getting a simple shoe lace. One should always ask. These kids call me Jugal… who is Jugal – brother of Google. Because I seem to know so much on so many things. I told Dixi that you guys call me Jugal, but the answer is here. It’s just that I am curious on everything and I ask and hence I know. So next time a topic on shoe laces comes up I will know, how a cotton shoelace is better than a nylon one.

Everyone has something to give as value to someone else. If someone spends time doing something as a profession it’s obvious that they will be knowing some angle of it better than anyone else.  The key is to ask the right questions. And their inner secrets will be exposed to you. ASK

look inside to sell outside

What are job interviews? How difficult they are when you are just starting off?

I remember my first job interviews. It always work when you are confident and you get into the room thinking I don’t really care what happens after this interview. That’s the way you max your interview. You simply tell yourself you don’t need this. but there is a caveat. In the middle of my career I was so high on this that I went into interviews and possibly came across as an arrogant prick. Who wants an arrogant prick?

The key to an interview is not all this – but simply being earnest and sincere. You have to go in confident about yourself. Of course you can’t behave that you want the job, cause that will turn the other guy into an ‘employer’. You want him to turn into a position where he believes that you can actually change his business for him. That’s what I think worked the best for me. I stumbled upon this by chance one day. I was interviewing because I thought I could use a higher pay but not because I wanted the job. So I went and then in the middle of the interview, I asked him about his issues and then tried to explain to him why it won’t work with his current approach and how he could improve. That was the first interview that I think I did exceedingly well. Now I try and convert my interviews into meetings. Friendly meetings where I am trying to genuinely learn about the interviewer and his business. Hopefully we can depart after having an intelligent conversation. That is the best thing to be gained from an interview.

Of course you lose the ones that you have pricks on the other side who think they know it all and wouldn’t be less bothered if their business plan bombed in their face. You don’t want to work with them at all. I like to say a simple thing like you try and play to your strengths because if you do get the job you like to get a job that rewards your strengths. This is actually the best strategy. But try telling that to someone who needs a job change desperately. That one wants to be all the interviewer wants him to be. Then it’s the simple thing of being a great sales man.

I remember some lectures / professors from school. Sometimes you don’t know what made an impact in your life. It takes so much time to know what was the best advice you ever received or the best lecture you ever attended. This one I am referring to my sales professor in b school. It’s a pity that I don’t remember his name.  He started his lecture with a  simple truth – he asked us – what is the most thing that motivates a sales man. After ten minutes of answers that we farted out – the answer came from Cherian – who said – money. I remember the prof calling him and shaking hands with him. That’s it – Money. The other one thing he taught me was that amongst the best thing that a sales man will have is motor mimicry. I am not sure if I get this term right but basically – he talks about the sales man to imitate the prospect. He copies the body language and tonality and almost every mannerism.

On Saturday I was teaching some of this stuff to the kids at college and I distilled my experience in to two words that I thought was very cool. Enthusiasm and Empathy. He first needs to be enthu about his product that he is selling and that has to be translated to the prospect. Only if he is enthusiastic about the product then only is he able to transfer his enthusiasm, because so many times what are we buying? Everything is so similar to each other and there is little differentiation between products and services. And this is especially important if there isn’t a packaged product that we are buying. So we just go by the basic feel of the sales man we are talking to. His enthusiasm is what sells.

Empathy is the foundation of the mimicry that he does. A good sales man is one who feels deeply about his prospect. While he is genuinely enthu about his product, he is also concerned about the prospects life and his needs and his deep unstated / stated desires. This is what makes him want to understand the prospect and then on this understanding is where the enthu builds and BAM… Sales.

This is the same technique in an interview. Genuine enthusiasm about your product or service (Self-confidence) meets Deep empathy (right banter). This is an unstoppable force. I think in many ways Malcolm Gladwell also agrees with me. See below

Free bonus video, the wordings of which are possibly apt for the blog I wrote. It’s a weird connection. I am not saying be selfish but be matlabi in a nice way. There is a niceness inherent in you that you have to harness to get your sales pitch right!

Matlabi, ho zhara matlabi…. I love the song in any case… its got a lovely ring to it!

the futility of a pig wrestle

I guess we just don’t understand what collateral damage is. Or what the value of peace is. We discount what we don’t have and hence we are not hesitant to drum up strife. Our friend from France is here and recently France saw a gruesome terror attack and murder.  The targets were popular cartoonists who ridiculed all religious dogmas including the Muslims. It was sad. Killing cartoonists is taking things a little too far. It just shows how sensitive we are to being ridiculed. Hmmm. After this we had the normal people who of course want action to be taken against a community as a counter measure. Sigh.

Today while I was driving from work, I heard a podcast about vaccination. When the CIA tried to ascertain if Osama Bin Laden was actually inside the compound at Abbotabad, in Pakistan, they recruited a doctor whose was told to go in and collect DNA samples in the guise of a vaccination campaign. After the news leaked out, vaccinations sponsored programs especially by foreign countries took a hit. It seems, vaccinations were banned enmasse by the Taliban, more 65 health officials killed and Pakistan saw a reemergence of Polio with more than 200 infections. Uff.

Was the CIA right in doing what it did? At the time I read the news and thought nothing of it. I would have said sure. If its mission is to kill a national fugitive then its it, go for it. but when you think of the collateral damage it has on society, on children who will suffer from it, and the generations that will pay… you want to think again. I am sure the argument is not that simple. People will make choices given their immediate goal. Who knew what the consequences would be. Surely there would be more killed if the man wasn’t taken out. These are complex questions to which we don’t know how much impact our current actions will have on future lives. Things are fast evolving and changing. Perspectives are changing and nothing is really straight and simple. What to do in such circumstances?

I am visualizing a  Hollywood movie where the polio emergence in Pakistan thanks to this action of the CIA creates a new mutated virus that enters USA and that everyone stops Americans from travelling anywhere and large walls are built around the country. Trust the Hollywood writers to think of any thing outlandish.

I am not for once, preaching inaction. A man has got to do what a man has got to do. But sitting in the confines of safety it is easy to preach war. What we know of its effects and after effects. Israel is still fighting over the land it fought over many years. Who started it, who felt wronged and who is to blame.

See this video and tell me:

Sometimes it is just best to live and let bygones be bygones. Kill, Finish, attack, nip in the bud, these are terms we bandy about loosely. We whip up sentiment and forget lessons from history. I have no clue why can’t just let it be. Why is it so difficult to be a pacifist, why do we need to take action, especially on moral grounds? Today’s newspapers talk about a Goa minister trying to set up a rehabilitation centre for gays and lesbians. What on earth is that? It wasn’t too long ago when Alan Turing was the hero of England for helping them decode the Enigma code used by German communications. Later he was arrested for homosexuality and then ‘treated’ for it. Today we again call him a great hero and apologise for our moral uprightness.

Stop this morality. I love the simple thing of the declaration of human rights – Man is born free and shall remain free. He is free to do what he wants as long as he does not harm others. That’s it. How difficult is it for the courts to acknowledge this?

BTW – Jispa got chosen for the scholarship interview on the basis of this essay she wrote – the greatest invention was that of the declaration of Human Rights!

BLAH! But thing I have learnt in all this. to laugh off when someone tries to rile you on your views. To not get pulled into an argument. As I always tell – when you wrestle with a  pig, he loves it and you get dirty.

Jump jump!

A  few years ago … and I have blogged about this… I used to teach Jispa elocution and then she nominated herself into a singing competition. She thought, it would be simple, dad will teach me. Of course she did not even qualify, with me as her teacher.  This time it was sports day! Her school is actually quite a small school. In sense – that there are only two divisions in her standard – so that 60 kids per year and that too is divided into girls and boys. So in a sports day competition – there is hardly any competition. At best you have to beat 120 girls as the age groups span two years. For sports within girls that a dumb ass number. That is no number. Three fourths in any case don’t know how to run or jump. And from the remaining there will hardly be anyone who does serious training.

So this time Jispa had to choose her track and field events. Go for the long jump and the high jump. I told her. She had no clue what a high jump was. She was wondering how they would judge who jumps the highest. She thought it was like how you jump while standing up, jumping high. Haha. Jispa is so underexposed at times. But I explained how it’s done and left it at that. Yesterday morning I come to know that the trials were on for that day. Ok. How do you explain what to do to jump high? First, one had to explain how high jump actually works. So while going to school in the car, I just simply got her to switch on youtube and search for high jump. There… now you understood. Now she understood what high jump really was. Then I told her that that will not work as that Olympic technique of jumping from your back is next to impossible without serious…. Really serious training. So I told her to search or the straddle style for high jump. She searched for it and understood. I said that’s the way you do it. She got it and then in the evening I got the message that she got a bronze. It was a stupid thing in the end. I had told her a few things that I thought were technique – don’t jump of two legs (I don’t think that’s allowed) and approach the jump from an angle. I told her to throw her upper body when she jumps. I had no clue what advise I was giving her, but it seemed to make sense for me. She then told me that she got the hang of it after a few jumps. They kept raising the bar; till one girl cleared the bar and the other three were left trying. At the end – all three trying for the second and third place couldn’t clear so when it was close to finishing time, the sir just declared from whatever he saw – one girl as the silver medalist and Jispa as the bronze medalist. Whatever. So great. Youtube meets Jispa meets Bronze. That too with Jispa being the youngest amongst them all.

But what I found most interesting is that I pulled out the word straddle style from some deep corner of my memory. I remember reading about this if I am not mistaken in a book we had at home when I was Jispa’s age. It was the Guinness book of world records, in which there was a mention of the high jump record with a photo of one guy with a caption that said, that he was the guy who jumped the highest with the older straddle style of jumping. After 30 years, I came to use that little bit of information to help my daughter do well.

You should always read and it’s doesn’t matter what you remember – you never know what is going to come your way. What is it that you will retain and use and at which time. I used a word after 30 years and it helped explain and mean something to someone I love. What more can you ask for?

So what exactly is straddle style?

And If I had the time I would have possibly discussed this link with her in detail. That would have been fun. Key thing I missed – get your other leg high… but hell. There is only so much you can do with swimming taking away all the time we have.

guide to the future and past

I have on my left hand something that also tells me the time. I bought the Moto 360. It is basically a smart watch. On a lot of the mobile revolution I was wrong or caught napping. When mobiles first came out, I thought they were hardly of any use. Then when Black Berrys made a lot of noise, I was late onto the market. I couldn’t understand what the fuss was all about. What do you get by checking your phone regularly for email? Why would you need that? And of course all those investment bankers in their suits in the lifts, spending eth valuable 30 seconds to see their mail as opposed to simply saying hi, or at the least acknowledging the presence of another human being. So when the iPhone first came out, I too was unimpressed. What use could it possibly have in my life.

The touch screen sensation missed me. I had just upgraded myself to the Black berry and used it for a good three years before one day; the BB gave up on me. I came back from a vacation and it refused to spring back to life. Now I recently saw a friend using the smart watch and I was hooked. My first reaction was what my measured reaction is – I am not spending that kind of money. No way. Why should I spend this money? I am a bit of a gujju here. Does it really add that much value to my life? Do I really need something like this? What use is it actually? I kept thinking about it and I realized that I am what I am because I understand technology very well. I am constantly ahead of the curve in technology, I read technology, I use technology then I can’t let the iPhone mistake to happen again. I must be there in the middle of it all. I must be the early adopter and I must see how it works and evolves. Today I claim to understand Google and what it does for me because I have seen it evolve from what it origins were. I see it as a human. If I understand its soul at its core it will bare it to me, with all its mysteries. So when the android wear 1.0 has launched, I should be stupid not to adapt to it first up. I must.

Coming back to the soul. Technology is nothing but the manifestation of the human mind. It tries to do what a mind has taught it to do. The inventor has a belief and a philosophy. What is that philosophy? We must understand it and we must internalize it. Once you understand this core, you will be in a position to leverage it for you.  Mathematics can do everything; it can twist the universe and bend it. It proves that the world is far more than what we can see. In fact it predicted what you cannot see and hence you have to look out for what you cannot see and then find it – aha – the black holes. But at the end of it, it also has a philosophy, that of its writer. So if you understand the writer then you understand his philosophy and then you can understand its core. Whenever I try t understand some math guy or some algo, I try and decipher its core philosophy. Once that’s done – you can understand where its come from. That’s why history is so interesting. Once you understand where you come from you can predict where you will go… atleast it will give you probabilities.

Here is one – you are what you eat

Researchers have found that people from rice-growing southern China are more interdependent and holistic thinkers, while those from the wheat-growing north are more independent and analytical.

The researchers call it “rice theory”, and they believe the psychological differences of southern and northern Chinese stem from their ancestors’ subsistence techniques – rice farming needs co-operation and planning; wheat farming requires less co-operation between neighbours.

…The last experiment assessed the nepotism, or group loyalty, of the participants. Students were given hypothetical scenarios and asked how they would treat friends and strangers in reaction to helpful or harmful actions. A defining characteristic of holistic culture is that people draw sharp contrasts between friend and stranger.

“The data suggests that legacies of farming are continuing to affect people,” Thomas Talhelm, of the University of Virginia and lead author of the research, said. “It has resulted in two distinct cultural psychologies that mirror the differences between East Asia and the West.”

Talhelm and his team concluded that the co-operative nature of rice-growing has cultivated a culture of interdependence, while wheat-growing has cultivated independence.

“I think the rice theory provides some insight to why the rice-growing regions of East Asia are less individualistic than the Western world or northern China, even with their wealth and modernisation,” Talhelm said.

We went to Elephanta recently and I had read up on it before hand. I had a book that I had bought many years ago but we never did manage to go to Elephanta island. Here we took a local guide but I soon asked him to keep quiet. He got his facts wrong. I started off explaining to the kids what each statue was and the significance of the story behind it. Each one is a picture that tells a moral much like Aesop’s fables. It was lovely. I also did not know how much I knew. Now I plan to read more and more and then I want to be a guide at least to Elephant. I want to explore the island and go often enough. I want understand it more. This is near home, it is exquisite and then let me see if I can do guiding to Elephanta for certain tourists on weekends. I would love to be a guide. Today I know more and I can explain more than most guides on the island. I know the stories and the mythology behind it. The significance of Shiva murals and the other gods in it. Just a little more research and I could be in business. What say? I want to be a guide that says – come along – really low or free to join and work completely on tips. If you like you pay, else it’s up to you. Just like teaching – money can’t be the motivator. In teaching you don’t get or want tips, but here that is critical. If I am able to make it fun and happy for all, who knows, this could be a great source of self-fulfillment. Teaching helps me learn so much, being a guide will also help me. I want to be a guide. Elephant is the perfect starting block.

I was speaking o Jispa about Elephanta and was asking her about the trip. She then remarked that if I loved history and mythology so much, why I didn’t pick it up as a career or something. What to do… in school, I hated history which was nothing but a bunch of dates to remember. I remember asking mom – what use is history to us? Hmmm.. today I try and explain the importance of these subjects to Jispa. They are important. Yesterday I was explaining why civics is important. And I explained how she wouldn’t appreciate it now, it’s almost impossible to appreciate it as a young kid but it is extremely important to understand how we are governed… by ourselves and how the structure is critical to be understood by every citizen. I have to teach her civics one of these days… I hope I can teach it without boring the crap out of her.

driving home a point

Movies like PK and OMG are on one side and movies like Ship of Theseus are on the other side. PK and OMG have taken a stand. God men are really not what they seem. Blind faith is WRONG. You are getting fooled and in many ways you need a misfit to question them all. Both these movies question god men on supposedly logical grounds but unabashedly believe in God. I find the stand a bit illogical. On a premise of cold rationale and logic and science – belief in God itself to my mind is questionable. But let’s not start that debate … not yet at least. But they take a stand and once you take a stand you tend to preach and once you tend to preach you tend to be the same as what you oppose – a preacher. Can you oppose a preacher by preaching? Hmmm…

That’s what I think is wrong with the films. They preach. On the other hand, I believe a film like Ship Of Theseus tries to also take a stand but not by preaching but by discourse, by question. It lays open a situation (rather 3 situations) and doe smore to spread religious belief and further society by question than by decision. But therein also lies a problem. The number of people who have seen Ship… versus PK is starkly different. By a matter of hundreds I would guess.

Tipping Point is alovely book by Malcolm Gladwell. I started reading it but thought at first that it was ok ok, and then my Guru – Dharen Chadha starting reading it one evening and by next day morning he had a strategy presentation to be made out of it. I felt so dam embarrassed and he showed me how to read a book. The book argues that for a fire to start you need a tipping point. To get there you don’t need to sell to everyone. Just the right people – the mavens. Who are mavens? – “A maven (also mavin) is a trusted expert in a particular field, who seeks to pass knowledge on to others. The word maven comes from Hebrew, meaning "one who understands", based on an accumulation of knowledge.” It is these people who need to be touched and then the message is to be passed on. Therefore then Ship is doing a far better job of spreading a question than possibly PK would be. PK would try and spread a message by strong use of media. It tells to believe just so… But if I challenge you to think and then if I challenge you to see other sides of a question, if I plant just a seed in your head, it’s enough. I think a seed is far more powerful than a tree transplanted.

A slow movie in that sense is like a book. A book allows you to reflect, set your pace, reflect, pick up and read on. A slow movie possibly also does that. It continues to grip you but at the same time allows you to question, think and reflect. It allows for a seed to firm implanted. A big bang commercial movie is like a tree that is trying to be implanted in loose soil. It may hold for some time but a strong gust of wind might just blow it over.

Over the years in my teaching style as well, I have moved from trees to seeds. I question, I push, I ask. I keep thinking and urge the kids to think as well. I try to throw seeds in the tilled soil. Earlier I used to throw a conept at them every lecture. Teach and move on. Now I have changed a lot of my style. I have many lectures, all different examples but try and firmly put in one seed. One common seed through many different ways. Who knows which one will sprout, where, when. The idea is to keep hammering one idea… hard. And also I think it’s amazing if subjects in each year can essentially be driven around one idea… one central idea. The rockbed of what you can actually take away from the topic. That would be pretty cool, and usefull. Suddenly subjects can have so much more meaning. Hehehehe… to have more meaning reduce the idea… opposites reconciling anyone?

lies, dammed lies and even more dammed truth

The internet is dead. Long live the internet. Recently I have had this epiphany. Well it’s not that sudden as an epiphany might denote, but it’s come off late. In the last ten years of reading stuff, I have learnt that nothing is the truth. Nothing is the whole truth, the complete truth and nothing but the truth. Everything is questionable. Everything has a bias and everything is subjective. My guru Dharen, said something once. He said – there is science and then there is truth. He spoke about his experience with Parachute hair oil. He said there is science that hair oil doesn’t permeate the scalp more than a certain level and has possibly no effect on the brain function… but there is also the truth that during exam time, my mom puts oil in my hair and then I study and what all I study goes through in the brain. There is science and then there is truth. See – this is the truth – there is no real complete truth. We search for truth everywhere in our lives and place such a premium on it. But in effect there isn’t any! Everything becomes exciting when it offers to tell the truth but then slowly slowly it starts lying. But if there is no truth there can’t be lies as well. But surely there is obfuscation and theories that come from either side as either side use the new propaganda to convince the world of their side of the equation.

Basically I have become a skeptic of everything. Earlier newspapers were the upholders of truth. Today only a fool will believe whatever a newspaper will tell you. But as I see around me – there are tons of fools. A book I read many years ago – called ‘mindset’ by john nasbitt – in which he said –I turn to eth sports page as I know that is the only bit of truth in the newspapers. The score is the score. Today when I came to office I picked up the Bombay time – the tabloid edition of the daily newspaper. A young kid in the team asked me – is that the first thing I read. No – I replied. I read the paper today at home. The first thing I read is the sports page of the Times of India. Then I read some other pages, then I read the first article of the Mumbai Mirror. The Mumbai mirror on the first page will generally take up some expose of something that is ailing Mumbai – some civic or social issue. I like that article. And then to get insights into what the world is veering towards in terms of attitudes and expectations I look at the Bombay times. So first fact, then interpretation and then fiction… as a marketer – all three are important in different circumstances – I would even veer towards saying it’s in the wrong order. Fiction is extremely important for marketers… movies (read: popculture) tell us the most about ourselves…

So newspapers also lie. Then came the internet. The internet with its promise of democratizing information gave so much of it to all and sundry. Now people were not and will be not judged by what they know but how well they will search. This was told to me by a very intelligent man – one of my first mentors – Aditya Shastri. This was in 1997 when I first saw the internet in his office. It was pretty cool. His words have become prophetic. With internet now reaching mobile phones, information has exploded in terms of what is available in the palm of your hand and everywhere you are. So conversations in parties that talk about certain data used tobe done from memory and now if some contentious point comes out – the internet comes to the rescue and closes all conversation. I hope with this getting more and more omnipresent people will be more circumspect in what they talk. They will possibly learn to use words like ’from my memory’, ‘possibly’, ‘likely’, ‘mostly’, ‘I believe’ etc… cause anything said will and can be verified by a quick mobile search.

So I loved that google would be able to help us a lot on spreading knowledge and information. It truly allows us to do tons of research and helps us find the ‘truth’.  I used to joke that whats the internet to believe anything. Tomorrow I would write something and if it ranks on google then would that make it true? Today google has become the answer for what you want as the answer. Whatever you want you will get google to answer that for you. You want to know how microwave is bad for you – there will be billions of links – ditto for why this is all a sham. Just because its forwarded or on a link that looks nice, doesn’t make it true. So many people believe any shit that they see. In the middle there was a video of a lion roaming around in thane… people believed it to be true… er… one question – Which is the LAST refuge of the Asiatic lion? THE LAST REFUGE? You idiot. You don’t get lions outside Gir in India.

So the omnipresence of google is going to be used for both parties – the for and the against. Its up to you to analyse the data presented. The past possibly belonged to the believer – the future with so much data will belong to the skeptic. Everything is but a probability. You play probabilities. You read everything, listen everything, trust nothing and build your beliefs, values and judgment. That’s all.

Inshallah!

Sometimes it becomes so difficult to get the racist out from inside of us. On Sunday was one example – I was standing by the road waiting for Jasmine to pick me up. On the side of the road was a car standing. Oddly – as parking isn’t allowed there. There was no one in the car and I saw that one of the tyres had a flat. On the Back of the car were the words – Insah Allah. I wasn’t  going to stand anywhere near this car.

Many years ago, when I was in 12^th standard, Mumbai faced the most devastating terrorist bombing ever. Some 13 bomb blasts were set off in a span of less than a few hours. That was the first time that Mumbai was hit thus and everyone now understood what RDX (the explosive used) was. I passed through two of those spots just in the morning. I was trying to learn magic with a local magician at Shivaji Park. So I passed Sena Bhavan and Plaza Cinema that morning and the blasts were at around the afternoon. It was a lucky miss I guess. One explosion was setoff at the Bombay Stock Exchange. It seems that in a freak case, one person called up home to say he was safe after the Exchange blast and that he was coming home, and he was caught in the second blast at Worli. That was especially sad.

Mumbai has faced more attacks designed to cause terror since. Once there were a series of train bombings. A friend of mine told me that he was in the very compartment that was bombed. I felt that too as I used the train network to travel to work and home. Then there was the really infamous attacks by armed intruders on the Taj and CST station and The Oberoi hotel amongst others. My office was in the building right opposite the Oberoi hotel and from there I travelled to CST station to come home. That day I left at 6 sharp from work. It seems the attackers were planning to reach CST at 6 pm to cause maximum impact. They were stuck in traffic and reached by around 7.30. I missed those as well by a whisker.

In hindsight, if I was around, and hopefully safe, it would have been an interesting grandfather tale for the kids. Growing up in Mumbai and witnessing these attacks as well as riots of 1991, a Mumbai man is possibly hardened compared to most other cities. It hurts less and life goes on as normal faster than what it possibly would to another. I grew up in interesting times – riots, bomb blasts, attack and gangsters. Of course – the eighties were when the gangsters rules. There was an interesting story in the papers or a shootout or something or the other happening. Things are pretty much silent these days. I think it was a Chinese Curse that said “may you live in interesting times”.  Boring is good!

When I grew up I grew in charged times – the poor Muslim was an obvious target of religious discrimination. The same way a black male in US would face suspicion any Muslim male in India would face similar discrimination. It was us peace loving Hindus versus the fanatical Muslims. It has been a tough and long journey to conquer this racism and rise above. Its definitely not easy.  I try my best to tell myself whenever I see myself behaving stupidly – DON’T DON’T . We can’t be propagating it.

But when I see a car seemingly abandoned in the middle of the road (especially worli) and it’s got allah written on it in bold. I would like to wait a little further away. Nicely behind a tree. Ami being safe… Am I being racist… am !?

bouncing back

Recently an international aussie cricketer got hit on the head while batting. It was freak shot and he sadly went into coma and passed away. The cricket ball is a really potent weapon in the right / wrong hands. I played my entire cricket in the dust bowls of Mumbai. Here when the bowler bowled most of the time he wasn’t that fast – we played corporate cricket – old misfits playing the game. Some would be genuinely quick but the dust bowls of India would not let the ball come anywhere higher than the waist. So when I went into bat I would have minimum padding on. Good gloves are essential as the ball has a knack for variable bounce and pads are of course important. In variably the low bounce would mean being rapped on the pads near the shin area. That was more than enough. No need of helmet or an arm guard. Of course no one ever made the silly mistake of going without a groin guard. That was extremely essential :). I remember the humble groin guard. When Jispa first saw it lying around in my kit she was putting in around her knee. She thought it was a knee guard. Err… yes sure. Only when I went opening or higher up the order I would use the thigh pad. There is no point using the thigh pad after ten overs. The ball stopped doing anything  - no swing, no bounce, it would just sit up there and wait to be hit. In Mumbai with the afternoon heat – even in winters – you are sweating like crazy and hence you want to carry as less padding as possible. The padding would just sit there and absorb the sweat and become heavy. It would become tough to run in them. I remember being hit when I first starting playing on the thigh. After that I don’t really remember being hit at all.

The bowlers would occasionally bowl the bouncer but most of the time it would really be a beamer that slipped out of the hand and that is the easy one to duck out of. I always ducked, never hooked, why do bravado when you get a no ball for it? Once or twice I have been at the receiving end of a well directed bouncer. A well-directed bouncer is bowled to intimidate the batsman and push him on the back foot. In Mumbai grounds, you generally take your guard a step ahead; this negates most of the late swing movement and almost certainly rules out most LBWs. If you stand ahead there is always reasonable doubt that the ball is going to hit the stumps and then you are saved. My captain Arun Solanki always taught me stay in front and out of the crease. And ensure that the umpire sees you come up. Then it’s the wicket keeprs job. The only way to get you back should be that wicket keeper comes up to the crease to keep wickets and then you as a batsman want to come back or risk getting stumped. That’s the way I always played my cricket. Step up and hit. I hardly got an LBW decision against me.

I remember the one time when a bouncer was intentionally directed at me. I had just driven the bowler on the front foot back behind him and got a boundary. The next ball was a awesome bouncer directed at my nose. I jumped and swerved out of it and avoided it. The umpire gave a no ball and warned the bowler. The next ball I still came on the front foot and again drove him. Sorry dude – it takes more than a bouncer to put me on the back foot. After I took a single the umpire told me that the bouncer was well directed and I did well to move out of the line. He said I did it well because I did not get my eyes off from the ball and hence I could adjust till the end and got my head off the trajectory. See the bouncer below. The one near the 1 min and 24 second mark was similar to the way I moved  - a jump and a swerve.

In Mumbai grounds the biggest danger of getting hit is while fielding. With the pitches so densely packed, you have to worry about the other match where you may be standing right where the batsman is looking at an empty spot from his perspective. One strong pull could put you out of action for some time.

Cricket is an aggressive game. Not playing a shot or ducking from a bouncer is an act of aggression. You know the rules; you have to play that to your advantage. Sledging or over hitting aggressively is not necessarily the aggression you want to show.

Here is a bonus video. Not directly related but it’s there – reason. Use cold and hard reason and you should be good. There would be no reason to do bravado when reason will tell you to just be smarter.

sssssh

I was listening to a podcast. The podcast was about being quiet. This was in an interesting program that I stumbled upon – it’s called the TED radio hour. If you have been reading this blog then you must be familiar with the TED videos which are a constant course of fantastic information. The speakers there get 20 minutes at best and the successful ones become overnight worldwide internet celebrities.  This podcast takes these interesting talks and makes a show by creating theme and getting two three talks, stiches them and then supplements them by interviews with the speakers. It’s quite a nice radio show. It makes commuting so much more bearable.

A few days back there was a talk on quiet. It just talks about being quiet and a few talks around it. A few interesting points did come up. One of things I resonated with is the point of being an introvert versus being an extravert. Today in offices or anywhere in social life, being an extravert is being seen as a sign of strength. It’s good to be an extrovert. Leaders are extroverts. We are taught in school to be an extrovert – go out and seize the moment – talk to a 100 hundred people and taught confidently. Reach out and blah blah blah. The speaker argues that in the modern world we have placed a large amount of emphasis on being an extrovert and this is a modern phenomena. Just about a 100 odd years ago there was an emphasis on character that is measured and thoughtful and – introverted.

You know, I was always an outgoing extroverted guy. I couldn’t keep quiet, was happy in the company of people and openly gave opinion on all matters. Happy to take the lead in meetings, talk my mind and do all sorts of stuff. The Quintessential extrovert.  This is what I was taught to do. There are marks given for class participation and I would maximize them. In the last ten years after I started reading I realized that I did not know so much, I taught myself the value of keeping your opinions to yourself. Listen, actively listen! When listening, try and convince yourself that the other person’s point of view is correct and important. This is a difficult thing to do and it is extremely difficult for an extroverted person who jumps to ideas and thinks fast. So my mind works fast and gets the point and I have exhibit extreme impatience while talking…. Dam shit… this creates more enemies and it creates mistakes and it leaves a lot of meat on the table that must be heard completely to have impact in your head.

So its been a 360 degree change for me. While growing up the role models for me were all extrovert but now the role models are in many ways introvert. I am sure the right answer is between the two. I like to brood over, quietly think, and relax in one place with a book. Speak to a few people only on things that are interesting and people who are knowledgeable or thirsty for knowledge. Its interesting how things change.

Two other things I heard on the same program – I knew this story about George  Mallory wherein he was asked in 1924 –why he wanted to conquer mount Everest – He famously retorted “because it’s there”. This is a legend amongst mountain climbers. There is no other real reason to climb a mountain besides the fact that its there, waiting to be climed. This question was asked to a tight rope walker who has walked across various places without a safety net. He retorted with his variation – “because it’s in there”. Which is also true. He does it because inside of him there is something that is in there. Which I thought was cool.

The second thing I was inspired was by the speaker talking about the importance of quiet time. It’s difficult for me to get quiet time. But that is an excuse according to the speaker. If we get time for exercise or going to the gym, then we can definitely get quiet time for ourselves to get our mental balance right. Driving in an around Mumbai is a pain and a blessing in disguise, depending on the way you look at it. I hate the commute but now it has become an amazing opportunity to be in silence and listen to podcasts. I guess podcasts aren’t necessarily silent hour. But it still beats talking to people. I used to use this rule – listen while going to office and catch up on the phone while coming back. Now when I am tempted to reach for the phone and speak on the Bluetooth, I resist and decide to hold on to the podcasts. My silence is golden, you can keep on talking.

My mother would die laughing if she ever read this piece. Her youngest could never be silent and now he is preaching it like he has mastered it. Bull shit.

invention of inventions

Jispa has to write an essay on the greatest invention of mankind. I guess the idea here is that this is going to be such a  widespread contest that the best bet would be to think completely out of the box. I asked Jispa what she thought would be the greatest invention of man. She said it would be the light bulb. Then I asked her to think further. She thought about – fire, wheel etc. when prodded further she even mentioned air conditioning as an option. I think this is her mother’s side of the family gene showing up. AC!? But its ok, I asked her to think further. I spoke to her about great stuff like, the printing press (Guttenberg) or the internet. She spoke about newspapers and others. We also spoke about democracy.

I then explained that in my mind the greatest invention is possibly a philosophical one – the invention of the rights of man after the French revolution in 1789. The concept that all men are born free and shall remain free, equal in the eye of law and are free to do what they choose (limitless) as long as they don’t harm anyone else or take away other people’s rights. This to my mind was a fundamental concept that allowed men to have freedom of speech, thought and action. This is such a simple concept that is so critical in our thinking and for what we take for granted. Democracy, free speech, ability to hold property and various different concepts that we hold dear and for granted come from this simple declaration. It also inspired millions others to think similarly. It seems this was a work that took forward the American declaration.

It contains such simple stuff like as - all persons are held innocent until they shall have been declared guilty; Law is the expression of the general will; Liberty consists in the freedom to do everything which injures no one else; The free communication of ideas and opinions is one of the most precious of the rights of man. Every citizen may, accordingly, speak, write, and print with freedom, but shall be responsible for such abuses of this freedom as shall be defined by law.

Everything that we take for granted was not so as man progressed. I would even think that the reason that man has progressed in the last 200 odd years at this rapid pace is because it essentially democratized speech thought and action. I find these lines extremely powerful ‘liberty consists of in the freedom to do everything’. It is so amazing. Instead of telling what man could do, it simply gave man the right to do everything. It frees man to think on anything. It only restricts a few things. I think this is such a valuable lesson that we as parents or as bosses must take up.

In office we have things like KRA’s – key result areas. These define things that I must do. they in many ways limit my role and responsibility to do things that ensure I get my monthly pay check and that I am rewarded for it. just imagine if a KRA said – you are free to do anything that doesn’t harm the organization. Of course it’s unthinkable. As a parent also it’s unthinkable. Can I tell Jispa you are free to do what you want to do? Everything is allowed unless its expressly forbidden. As I read this charter again and again in a bid to explain it to Jispa I am forced to thin further and internalize it. as ai write about it , I am forced to think about it. It is so important to teach and write about what you think and learn. That is the only way to study! The right way to study. SO I am thinking of how I must  translate this charter for my child or for my office. Everything is allowed unless expressly forbidden. I think here my dad’s formula was right. till you are in tenth standard you will be told what to do and to study. After that you are on your own. No pressure no compulsion. I remember he would not want to interfere till Mom would really egg him to. You are man after you are 15 and then on you are free! Completely free as long as you don’t harm anyone else.

That is so bloody interesting. I hope I am able to keep Jispa free after 15. I hope to release Jispa from the clutches of her parents and the envelope of their warmth and love.

At eth end I was telling Jispa you must close your essay with something like – this was the framework that allowed man to think, in essence it was an invention of inventions. She looks at me and then asks me “you are saying that for drama, nah?” Yes sure. Nice drama nah? But yes since it allowed men to invent stuff and laid the bedrock of free thought – it is basically the invention of inventions!

Bonus video – somebody was asking me why I thought the Mendeleev’s periodic table was so sexy. I researched this stuff and I found this lovely video. You will love it.

tohdi si lift karade

Are we really that mean as a population? I really don’t know how is it that we get so inconsiderate.

We are raised to believe that Indians are really warm people. We value our family systems, we value our elders, we value our teachers, we treat people with respect etc. Of course then we have the caste system to deal with, which in many ways has been replaced by the class system in Mumbai. we don’t know how to treat our servants and our support system. That also to some extent I can allow. After all 5000 years of prejudice can’t be wished away in 50. That’s not the issue. Here I am talking about something else. I am talking about a big issue I see.

Lifts. We just don’t stop lifts when we see someone rushing in. There is no movement. People will know you are there, coming in but refuse to acknowledge your presence. I guess just quietly they will wish for the lift to close and they will simply head up! Are so hard pressed for time? not likely – it can only make a difference of 30 seconds. They will look at the phone, at the indicator on top, at the floor, anywhere but look at you. Some are exceptions to the rule. They will simply stare at you blankly – rather – stare through you as if you were made of glass. Now this is a real reason why in India we require lift men. Once a foreigner asked me in all earnest if the left men were a part of a government job scheme – because that is the only reason to have one – why on earth will you need liftmen in lifts! At the time I thought it’s because of feudal mindset we need these guys to press the buttons for us. We are too high up on the pecking order to do it ourselves. But I guess this is one more reason – or possibly the real reason. It’s because we need these guys to hold the lift for the lack of consideration we show others. I remember my first internship was in 20^th century Fox and it was in an old heritage building - the Metro building where the Metro theatre also ran. There was a lift man because I don’t think anyone else would be able to operate that lift – or they were worried that someone would screw it up. The lift I am sure would also be a heritage artifact. He would sit outside the lift with the door open on the ground floor. Since the lift was not available for going down the door could be open and not really affect anyone. Sometimes when the director or some level like that pressed the lift button for going down, the lift man would slowly get up and bring the lift to the relevant floor. But really the most irritating thing was when you get into the lift. Then he would look at you and wait for some time and then he would slowly get into the lift, then he would wait as if to look around if there was anyone else to get in. the building must have been three to max four stories and would hardly veer have anyone else in the lift but he would wait nevertheless. I even have some memory of him going and stepping outside the building to look if anyone was coming in and then he would enter the lift slowly closing the doors. This was the old style lift where you had to pull the collapsible doors one by one. He would close the doors himself and press the button himself. You were not to do it. You probably would have spoilt it! But the point is that now I understand the real reason for a lift man. We are asses. We don’t wait for anyone. We slam the door on people and we just don’t wait for people to come into the lift.  And educated high ranking officials working on corporate floors do this. When you go to our huge office at Goregaon you will see lifts with employees going up and down. There also nobody ever holds the lift for you if you are running in. also there may be enough space but no one will try to crunch in allowing that one more person to join in the lift. You have to look at people and they will look right back at you and just wait there. There is always space but as one sales man told me – “dil mein jagah honi chaiye”. I think there is no space left in our hearts at all.

Here is one ad that captured it perfectly! I think any ad is a good that captures something we see everyday and show it back to us on screen with a twist!

Bonus bakwaas video that makes everybody on the internet cry bucketful of tears!

close your ears and open your mind

Ah. A Ted video after a long time. I will have to go back to reading and listening a bit more. Some of that has taken a back seat for the moment. The cliché goes that we are so busy doing what is urgent that we forget to do what is important. Thats one has rung true for so long and for so many people and almost everywhere I see, especially in corporate life. I am actually tired of chasing these crazy things we do all the while, and hence I am trying  little bit, bit by bit to reclaim my life. It’s not going to be an easy thing to do. But I see an opportunity to do so for the next few months if things play right. Focus on basics, improve your mind, expand it, read, experiment and learn.

The reason I like this particular video is that the rock star Hans Rosling and his son make some very interesting points. Yes there is tons of ignorance in this world. People feed of it and spread the disease of ignorance.  The problem is not ignorance itself but the ignorance of ignorance. One thing for sure I have learnt by reading like crazy – is that we are all ignorant. Nobody knows anything really. There are only angles and more angles. In our quest for science we have expanded the frontiers of knowledge but they are only theories. I learnt that even Newton’s laws which we hold so sacrosanct in school don’t really hold up and hence required Einstein to help us around. I was telling a friend the other day – in fact I tell almost any one who would care to listen; that after readings o much, I have turned a cynic, an atheist or an agnostic who possibly questions everything. Nothing is taken for granted, no knowledge is taken for sure, everyone has motives and nothing is held to be pure. There is no pure emotion and there is no pure instinct. Everything has layers and is influenced by almost everything around it. I think the best way to describe life is using Shrek – life is like an onion – it has many layers.

I try and remove biases from my life, thought and action all the time but I still fail. I fail miserably but hell, I try. Knowing that I have these biases makes me a cynic. A complete cynic cannot love, learn and live and be happy, but I am a turncoat. I am a cynic but I shut it off to live happy. I love being loved and I happily bask in it while I stop myself from seeing the cynicism in it. It’s like a reality check that keeps it in line. Hans Rosling the video says that biasis come thanks to three things – one – personal bias. Of course this is something that we all have, it defines who we are and how we interact with everyone. The challenge is to see everything through this lens – the fact that we know what we know is immediately a bias. This is what we must fight everyday. Just because we have had this experience then we shouldn’t be sure of it. Like I say – your greatest strength is your greatest weakness. That is the bias in our life.

Second outdated facts – that’s a simple one. we stopped reading after school and hence – bad facts! Its worse than a personal bias. Here we believe so much in the fact but forget one single fact – the time value of this fact!

Third – news bias – this is especially dangerous as mass hysteria is a result of this stupidity. As mark twain (or whoever) said – if you don’t read the news you are uninformed but if you do, you are misinformed. News today is even more dangerous as it takes the form of entertainment and those on TV are seen as credible. And there starts all the crazy idea formation. If you control propaganda you control people’s mind – it is not by accident that amongst the most powerful people in the Nazi government was the minister of Propaganda - Joseph Goebbels.

Listen to a few pearls of wisdom from his mouth -

“It would not be impossible to prove with sufficient repetition and a psychological understanding of the people concerned that a square is in fact a circle. They are mere words, and words can be molded until they clothe ideas and disguise.”

“Success is the important thing. Propaganda is not a matter for average minds, but rather a matter for practitioners. It is not supposed to be lovely or theoretically correct. I do not care if I give wonderful, aesthetically elegant speeches, or speak so that women cry. The point of a political speech is to persuade people of what we think right. I speak differently in the provinces than I do in Berlin, and when I speak in Bayreuth, I say different things than I say in the Pharus Hall. That is a matter of practice, not of theory. We do not want to be a movement of a few straw brains, but rather a movement that can conquer the broad masses. Propaganda should be popular, not intellectually pleasing. It is not the task of propaganda to discover intellectual truths.”

“Think of the press as a great keyboard on which the government can play.”

--

Now the next time you watch news or entertainment or anything else – close your ears and open your mind!

movie memories

Sadashiv Amrapurkar was an actor in Bollywood. Recently he passed away. He was a fine actor. My first brush with him was in his debut film Ardh Satya as the principal villain. I remember watching it with my parents and I remember idle conversations in which my mom said: the movie is not Ardh satya (half truth) but Full Satya. I remember talking intelligently to my friends in the same tone – you should see Ardh Satya – it’s the whole truth or something like that.

My next big brush with him was his really most memorable role in the movie – Sadak. He plays the role of the villain - Maharani – a eunuch who controls the flesh trade in the city.

 This movie was on many levels an interesting one for me. A lot of my childhood was spent on stuff that my brother and sister liked. Right from fashion to music – it was what they heard and liked – and that became the norm for me. Those days it was the time of Sanjay Dutt. My brother loved him. The big guy with long hair, big body and Mahesh Bhatt films. My brother was pretty enamored by his films. Both Mahesh Bhatt and Sanjay Dutt. He liked them both and would spend hours discussing them with me. He even harbored notions of being a big movie producer. His dream was to make a movie with no money at all. All the people would bring in their own monies or work free just to be a part of the movie. He would pride himself on having innovative twists to the plot. In between he would ask me to throw him plot challenges and he would figure the solution. Like how would the hero react to situation etc. Once I decided to really throw him off course. The premise was thus – a hero was entering a town and all the guys with guns are on the rooftops and around and are waiting for him to come in and shoot him. How does the hero come into town and escape? Hah! Obviously we have been highly influenced by too many spaghetti westerns. Think Clint Eastwood. Many years later I realized these were the ‘spaghetti westerns’ as they were financed by the Italians as they loved these western themed movies. The best part was of course the sound – the horse riding and the whistling tune for the theme music. In fact it seems Sholay was inspired by exactly this. They then set the same thing in an Indian context. On a side note – there was another similar movie released before Sholay – khotte sikkey – a similar story of misfit criminals turning vigilantes. So coming back – I thought now I have him. This is an impossible plot – he protested. I stuck to my ground. I remember he later thought about it and came back. His solution – the hero rides into town on a horse and then all the town folk pump all their bullets into him only to realize in the end that it’s only a dummy. They finished ALL their bullets on the dummy and then he walks in fully armed to knock everyone out with ease. I didn’t admit to him but yes, I thought that was pretty cool. Remember these are spaghetti western inspired moves. Everything, especially incredulous is especially possible.

So now we had a Mahesh Bhatt movie with Sanjay Dutt. He had two other movies we loved – Naam and Kabzaa. All his movies had very strong villains. All the support roles were pretty strong as well. There are two scenes which my brother drilled into me as epic. In Naam – the hero walks into a subway to be accosted waiting to kill him. He responds with amazing chutzpah. He tells them that all of them together can kill him but he will not spare the first guy who attacks him. This immobilizes the gang and the hero walks away unharmed. Was this naam or was this Kabzaa – I don’t really know. The second scene is definitely from Kabzaa where Alok Nath is to be killed by two henchmen. He is to be killed in the garden while he takes his morning walk. As they are about to accost him, one guy trips and Alok helps him. Then the henchmen remove the guns. Alok Nath – a Gandhian is not scared and breaks off into a lecture of kindness or something and one of the henchman loses his nerve. The other guy urges him to pull trigger – blah blah – BOOMBOOM…

So when Sadak came in – the posters did raise a lot of hype. The arch villain is a eunuch. I remember watching this movie in Ambernath. We were in a NCC camp there and we asked for an evening off. The CO okayed it and we went in for a movie. The movie was – Sadak. A Sanjay Dutt starrer with Mahesh Bhatt direction. And with an over the top villain – it was the perfect potboiler for high testosterone NCC cadets. There was nothing much about the movie but I remember liking it then. Full action and drama. I think Mahesh Bhatt was well past his prime but all we needed was action and drama. In fact I clearly remember one scene where the hero goes to a red light district. In that district – just in a the scene as extras – there are a bunch of navy uniform clad extras. The whole contingent who was there rose in laughter. That was fun.

So that’s my connection with the gentleman who passed away. Memories...

Bonus - soundtrack of the good bad and ugly

badlav!

Can people change? Fundamentally – can they change?

Well that’s a yes and a no. I am not sure. Now that I am 39 I see myself in many situations where I am advising those younger to me on various issues – parental opposition to love, spouse relationships, boyfriend issues, parenting issues etc. no I am not the oracle or the amazing agony aunt with the power to solve every issue, but I believe that most of the times, a simple ear is enough. I had read this book “if you meet Buddha on the road, shoot him”. It left a huge impact on my life, especially when dealing with these agony issues.

It is a bit humbling to know that, really, I don’t have an impact on other people’s lives. I can impact mine (if at all), and that in itself is a big thing. If at all, people have to take whatever lessons they can take from me and see how it impacts their life. Lessons come in both fashion – thing sthey could do like me or things they shouldn’t do like me. Both are lessons. Here I really miss my dad. I think my dad was awesome. And there was a wealth of experience that died with him. Stuff I could learn about in life. I think if he was alive, we would have fought like hell till I would have been around 30, and then we both would have settled down to an easy truce. We would have found the space for each other and lived it. Sigh… So this blog is my insurance against a vacuum in Jispa’s growth in case she goes far or in case she refuses to talk to me or incase I am unavailable.

So do people change? I have come to the conclusion that yes, people can change. Its difficult for me to say so. Because true nature at the core, in my belief cannot. But it can get layers. Two types of layers – one is a simple channelizing. I have always been aggressive. That is my true nature but I can change from outward aggression to inward aggression. Like the case of this one meeting we had at the gymkhana. There some issues regarding the coach that who had left. A faction was up in arms. It was a tough situation. I remember going in thinking – no point losing temper. We will address every issue that will be brought up. We aren’t doing any wrong and fundamentally, we are ok to resign and give the gauntlet to another one if required. I don’t really need to be working for the swimming pool, if the members don’t want me. So with that I went in and I was happy, I did not lose friends or my temper and the meetings went through a bit of fire but then soon passed over. That was fine. But make no mistake – while I did not shout even once – there was a mad aggressive streak in what I did. Really tough.

The second is the layer of experience. Experience teaches you a lot. It can teach you that your nature is going to screw you in the end and if you don’t change you are in trouble. I guess that’s evolution. And with enough experience everyone knows what works for them and what doesn’t. some idiots will never learn but a vast majority – they always get smarter.

But then Jispa is now trying a third way – genuine trying way. The last six months were hell for all of us. Jasmine, Jispa and I would just not get along on anything. Anything that Jispa did or did not would create mayhem in the house. We wouldn’t know how to deal with it. She would be upset and them I would be upset and Jasmine would be completely frustrated and generally the mood would get really gloomy. Really painful. We tried explaining to het many times, scolding her, arguing with her, sweetly talking to her – everything. There are times when wavelengths just don’t match. But did not give up and neither did she. This time, I had one more chat with her. I explained to her how it is critical to change and how she must. If she wants to do the things that she wants to then she has to do the things we want her to. Oiling her hair before swimming, putting cream on dry skin, getting up in time, eating her food, getting ready on time – everything. Generally being a  good girl. This time she said – sure. Will try to be so.

But I think something inside her changed and she made a huge effort this time around. I had told her – give me 21 days to good behavior. Let’s try it. I read it somewhere that it takes just 21 days of regular behavior to change ones habit. Jispa showed me that a 12 year old can have determination to change and can change. I have changed so much in the 39 years of my life. I can say for sure that 5 years ago I was different from what I am today but it came as a lovely surprise to me that even a child aged 12 can change. All one requires is a determination to do so.

Now she makes a genuine attempt to do what we tell her and in return she gets little more leeway from us. And a lot more love.

People change – they can. 12 or 39. It doesn’t matter. What matters is a genuine desire to do so. I guess if you change and if you like what you get in return for your change – then you will keep the changed behavior. A bit of reward is required. I guess it’s a carrot and stick approach. But change is a must an dit possible.

Bonus – something Jasmine likes to say - Samaj samaj kar samaj ko samjho ye samajhna ek samajh hai, aur samajh samajh ke bhi jo na samjhe, meri samajh me wo nasamajh hai

tech talk tick tock

Technology – I have got so many technology innovations wrong that I almost believe that I have no sense of what the future holds. But funnily I am in a job that requires me to forecast and work towards using technology in our daily life. It’s not that the job description says so, but I guess my interests in technology make me feel so, behave so and be so.

But so many times I have seen myself as an older person not really embracing technology as I should be. I remember I got my blackberry well after a lot of the others got it. I saw it as a tool that people used to become wannabe peoples. People with the blackberries were the ‘I am so uptight that I will pull off my BB in a lift and check it rather than do nothing but look at the lift screen and get bored.’ This was especially trues because I worked in an uptight wealth management set up in a building teaming with investment bankers – all seemingly more uptight than the other. Hence – I resisted buying the BB for the longest time. Then once I got it, I used it way past it expiry date. I used it for three years it so till one day, it gave up on me. Then I bought the tough screen interface form Samsung. And I am hooked for ever to it. One thing I get really scared of doing is buying an apple device. With the restrictive iTunes interface, I really can’t get my head to work with it. See I am getting far older than I thought.

Some time back, I bought a shaving brush and a shaving round. I guess in ten years or so if any one were to read this blog they would be pretty confused as to what a shaving round is. Here, this best describes the round.

Basically a soap on which you vigorously rub the brush to get enough lather and then it goes on your beard. It was fun a start. A throw back to the time I first started shaving. My dad had this which I used after the tenth exams to get rid of my moustache. I was sure that the mouchie was a dam uncool thing to have. So I used my dad’s stuff. My dad realized I shaved and then sat me down and gifted me a set. My own shaving brush, I think a shaving cream and a razor with spare supplies. I think that was the ultimate father son cliché moment. The coming of age. I soon graduated to shaving foams. That was thanks to Jasmine and her cousins from US. Jasmine would routinely get me the cans. I kept the cans going for many years till one day I saw the round at the supermarket. It was cool to be retro I thought. And really really cheap. Till I realized a week back that it’s stupid. It takes more space and more time and given that shaving is the most boring thing to do when you are 39 (and amazingly exciting at 15), just take the latest thing and move on. So back to a fast and quick shaving solution. I am now waiting to get through my blades to figure if I would enjoy an electric shaver. The technology on those things seems to have improved drastically since I first used it many years ago.

And cars – there is one place I always wanted all the technology I could afford. I like to think small when it comes to possessions. And I have always had simple (relatively simpler) tastes in car. I don’t really drool over fancy sports cars and see no real use for them. But I wanted some stuff in my car. Always! Lets take a feature check. Tubeless tyres – who wants to change punctures in the middle of the road – I got that from the second car onwards. Alloy wheels – one friend in MBA had a brother who dealt in alloy wheels. He explained how they were lighter and stronger and cool to look at. Then I wanted rear defogger – my second car onwards. Air bags – safety first – third car had it. then you have stuff like keyless entry. Why would you need keys at all. Push start – all my life I wondered why we need a key to start the car. Just press a button. Isn’t that simpler. And the holy grail of them all – automatic. You need an Automatic. I was done changing gears after 20 years of driving. What a freaking pain. So now my new car is the 2014 Honda City. Push button start, automatic, alloy wheels, rear defogger, Rear parking camera integrated into audio system, key less entry – no button to press – just open the door if your key device is on you, a lock that automatically happens at a speed of 20kmph, sun roof (absolutely lovely useless stuff), airbags, ABS EBD and some other really cool stuff that I don’t know about. But it’s cool. and yes yes – Cruise control. How could I forget that. And the simple audio controls on the steering wheel. I am eligible for something much more than a Honda City from the company but I am ok with this. This is good enough for now. My first car was the Indica, we sold that and bought a Honda City, then we bought a second car – the iTen which we just sold to buy this City. So now we have two Citys. But truly for some reason this car is one that I am truly very excited about. I have no clue why I like it so much. The dam waiting period was 8 months, but I felt that it was well worth it. Japanese trouble free engineering with cool gadgets built in. I know it and I hate it, it’s not nice to covet something so much. it’s wrong. It’s just a car. But I like the leather seats and I don’t want to see them spoilt.

One thing I always wanted at the bare minimum was a clean, rattle free, reliable free car. I hate a car which has a rattling part. Or a car that needs to go to the workshop again and again. I love technology in a car. That’s one place it needs to be. And I figure if I spend at least 90 minutes in a car every day, I don’t mind spending a little on this car; which gives me the comfort I want.

There… now let me leave you with a completely irrelevant bonus video… but is it that irrelevant…?

Bakwaas band kar

Yesterday we were watching the movie Citylights. In fact I have been trying to watch it since two days. I hate the stupid movie. It is really that bad. First, it’s depressing. It’s a story of a couple to whom only bad shit happens. At first I was disturbed. I thought it reminds me of my failings or my issues or my troubles and that’s why I hate it. Yesterday while I was watching it I realized that I hate it as it’s a piece of shit. It’s a couple who are so dumb so dumb that everyone wants to take advantage of them. Its full of old clichés in which people – gullible people come from the villages to the mean bad world and will be taken advantage of by the bad guys. It’s a piece of crap. No one is that dumb really! I have been to the villages, yes some are not yet exposed but they really are not that dumb. They are stupid and they fall for some stuff or the other but nowhere near this. The story is also just designed for cry porn. Show anything just in an effort to make you cry and feel bad. You feel nothing for the characters and nothing for their struggles. Just bad bullshit cinema. I think its amongst the worst we have to offer in the name of realistic cinema. Like this movie  - Queen. I hated that movie as well. A chic who is dumped days before her wedding goes to France and discovers her individuality. Puke on that movie. Everyone loved it and thought it was a great movie. I completely hated it and thought it was over the top. Way over the top. BAH!

But the reason Citylights was at home was because Jispa wasn’t at home. Where’s Jispa. Jispa is busy attending a camp at Japaloupe. That’s a place where the main aim of the camp is to ride horses and have fun. Nice camp reason. We don’t know the place too well, but my nephew used to go there and our friend’s kids go there often. Its pretty popular. In fact its so popular, Jispa knows some 12 other kids who have gone for the camp. Now that’s a nice thing. She is 12 years old and that’s her first camp. My first camp was when I was 15 and the first time I was out of home for a trip was when I was around 14. My friend had come to me after the tenth standard vacations and said – hey there is an ad in the Marathi paper on camp in Boisar – a military camp. It was for three weeks. Wow. I always wanted to go for a military camp and in fact I wanted to join the military. Misdirected aggression! So I went for it. Three weeks of camp, staying in tents and doing lots of fun stuff. The best was when I first say the toilet facilities. I think we were around 300 kids or so and the toilets were basically pits dug with a huge plank of wood on top with holes to let the stuff in. yuck. I think on the first day or so people did not aim right and there was shit around the hole and now no one wanted to go there. Luckily this camp was in an open field and all of us simply went into the fields. I first tried not going for a couple of days, then I remember having a little too much buttermilk on one afternoon and I couldn’t hold on much longer. Into the fields and far away so get some secluded undone spot! Hah! That was fun. We would run, do karate training and march past and other stuff. Then I went for three more camps through the NCC which I joined in college. They were much better with accommodation in dorm kind of places. I remember them as fun and I think it’s best if Jispa stars experiencing some of this.

As a dad I hate sending her where there is risk. Horse riding is as risky as it gets. I don’t like sending her, but I guess the maxim ‘protect where you must, permit where you can’ works well. So Jasmine was keen to send her and I didn’t protest. I too have to teach the kid that the world is there to be explored on her own. Uff. I don’t like her unprotected but this is as protected an environment as ever. Let go Jaimit. Let her go.

While she was preparing I told her of a few rules of camping. Some of personal hygiene. As I know how we were as kids. You need to have your bath regularly. Keep you nails and feet clean. To have your food on time and other stuff. None of which I used to follow too much, but its good advice to give Jispa. (Evil snigger). Then she tells mom – dad is making this out as if it’s a life and death situation. Rascal. She is now big enough to figure her dad’s tricks by now. Full Bakwaas it must be for her.

So there she is off and we are here. We are not missing each other… but that is another story…

seemingly intellectual stuff

I saw the Ship of Theseus last week or so. It was quite a brilliant movie. It had an excellent script. The Ship of Theseus. The Wikipedia explains the though experiment as thus:

This particular version of the paradox was first introduced in Greek legend as reported by the historian, biographer, and essayist Plutarch,

"The ship wherein Theseus and the youth of Athens returned from Crete had thirty oars, and was preserved by the Athenians down even to the time of Demetrius Phalereus, for they took away the old planks as they decayed, putting in new and stronger timber in their place, in so much that this ship became a standing example among the philosophers, for the logical question of things that grow; one side holding that the ship remained the same, and the other contending that it was not the same."

Plutarch thus questions whether the ship would remain the same if it were entirely replaced, piece by piece. Centuries later, the philosopher Thomas Hobbes introduced a further puzzle, wondering what would happen if the original planks were gathered up after they were replaced, and used to build a second ship. Hobbes asked which ship, if either, would be considered the original Ship of Theseus.

Another early variation involves a scenario in which Socrates and Plato exchange the parts of their carriages one by one until, finally, Socrates's carriage is made up of all the parts of Plato's original carriage and vice versa. The question is presented if or when they exchanged their carriages.

It’s quite an interesting question. Something as simple as this leaves people to debate and sit on either side. Sometimes it’s easier to be an Apatheist and say FU. Does the question really matter? I put this thought to Jispa and she says the ship is basically different. It’s a different ship altogether. I think she sees it differently from me. I think the ship is the same. It’s not different.

Now this is making me think. I think I will talk to Jispa again in the evening about it. For me it’s the soul of the ship in its essence that makes the ship. The parts are just that – parts, not the soul. In this case the answer lies with the crew. What the crew believes to be their ship is their ship. To continue the thought experiment with another variation – if 50% of the parts of both the ships are from the old ship, which of the ships is the original ship – it’s where the soul resides. In ship the soul is where the crew resides and believes that it is the ship. But hell...  forget it. Let me see what comes of the conversation with Jispa.

The movie itself is quite interesting – it showcases the story of three individuals who have been affected by a medical transplant. One by option – who goes through soul searching after a transplant. One by reluctance – who goes through a soul search before a transplant and one by force - you screws the soul and faces reality after the transplant. It’s a very interesting take on three angles. Nice work on the story. The best part about the movie is the nice conversation they show in the second story. Here a monk (possibly jain but never explicitly mentioned) has conversations on philosophy with another younger person (not his devotee or religion). A pragmatist versus a spiritualist. I think a whole lot of thought has gone into writing the script and the result is an intelligent conversation. I liked it. it is the best conversation I would have seen in a movie about beliefs and the challenges thereon.
Just for kicks - here is the deleted scene from the main movie - so its not a spoiler :)


 Good script followed by some good acting and some really nice signature wide angle shots. Watch it. Nice movie. The best part – the camera follows the characters in long single shots, even as they move around. It’s like a theatre play or something.

 Bonus song from film with wordings

joker ya teacher?

Jispa’s results are releasing. She is scoring decently well. Except for the languages she seems to be in the As. So I guess the strategy is working fine. More regular work and less pressure studies. More discussion through the year and less mugging; that’s the only way to go forward from here I think. Now I have to sort the language mess. I can possibly get her to do better in English but I don’t think I can be too much of a help in Hindi. I hate that subject.

It’s a shame that Hindi which is what the maximum people in India speak is a language so alien to us. While we were growing up it was clear – you must speak English. English is the way to a good job, great pay and decent career. It’s true as well. If you don’t know your English you surely will be judged and sniggered at behind your back. People put a lot of emphasis on the grammar and the spellings and the punctuations. But seriously – I am ashamed that I don’t know Hindi as well. In fact I can’t even read Jispa’s text book at a decent speed. Bah! But hopefully I will try and get there.

So now every day I sit with Jispa and ask her – what she did in school, which are the subjects taught and which topics were discussed. In the last sem she had the Egyptian and the Harrappan civilization. In explaining that I also explained how a recent book I read spoke about debunking the Aryan invasion nd said that possibly the Rig Vedas were written by the Harappan themselves while on the banks of the Saraswati. This helped her this week as the topic they discussed next was the Aryan civilization. She also countered / spoke up in class while the discussions were on. That’s nice.

All the subjects that are taught in school are interesting by themselves. There is so much magic in history, geography, math, science etc. So much fun inside to know what all is happening. It’s up to the teacher to make it come alive, to make it magical for the students. If the teacher is dry then the subject becomes dry. It’s so important to entertain your students. At first the concept that I had was the old traditional concept, that’s it’s the student’s job to study and soak from the teacher. The teacher’s job is simply to be earnest. But the reverse is actually true. It’s the teacher’s job to ensure that the students learn. Hence to learn the teacher has to be a joker. It is his primary job to entertain. Everyone these days is sued to all time always on entertainment. If you are bored, all you have to do is remove your phone and start playing, browsing or listen to music and shut off the world. As a teacher or a presenter in a conference, the challenge is serious. You have to first entertain then educate. You have to be Patch Adams - “You treat a disease, you win, you lose. You treat a person, I guarantee you, you'll win, no matter what the outcome”. You don’t teach the subject, you teach the person!

I hope that Jispa’s looks back on these days with a bit of fun. I want her to feel that studying was fun with dad. I hope I bring a certain joy for her subjects, no matter how dry they seem. So I keep trying to explain to her, how exciting each subject is and how they help us in our lives. History is also exciting and so are museums. Geaography is exciting and so are the mountains. Math is a part of our daily life and modern science benefits are there to see in our lifestyle. Its amazing. School Curriculum is not the issue. Its all there and fun around you. It’s the teachers that are the issue.

Jasmine good friend is doing a course that teaches he rot be a Nursery teacher. Dam cool. But as a part of her study she has to submit numerous teaching aids. She has to paint Raavan and then paint the Ram story and then something else. And tons of craft and art has it be submitted. How would making all these ‘teaching aids’ make you a great teacher. And how is it that if you don’t know or are bad at art and craft, would make you a bad teacher. Your job is to have fun with the kids, enjoy, teach them about basics, respect, independence and authority. Manners, courtesy and care – that’s important. How much of the teacher’s course involves using eth multimedia tools available and understanding the psychology of the kids and the growth patterns we see in particular ages. Sometimes we are just happily stuck in the dark ages!

Some more bonus Patch Adams quotes. I want to see that movie with Jispa now.

Hunter Patch Adams: Our job is improving the quality of life, not just delaying death.

Mitch Roman: I don't like you!

Hunter Patch Adams: Why don't you like me? You're a prick and I like you.

Hunter Patch Adams: And if we bury you ass up, I have got a place to park my bike.

Hunter Patch Adams: [Patch is trying to convince Rudy not to be afraid of squirrels] What could they want? Your nuts?

And the sermon is seen here