Signs

This has been the saddest experience of my life, as I was very close to my mom in spite of the distance. She was a loving and caring woman who loved life and people and it makes me very sad that she no longer will be able to enjoy the life she loved so much. She loved to travel, to eat, to meet friends, to watch movies, to read books and to be with her family and even though she was 80 years old and with poor health for the last couple of weeks, it’s very difficult for me to comprehend that she can no longer inhabit this world she enjoyed so much.

I’m eager and happy to get on with work, knowing that all business problems always have a solution, which is not the case with health and life issues. I’m looking forward to seeing you and talking to you at the soonest occasion

My manager's mother passed away recently and she was away for close to a month. When she came in, she sent a very touching note, a part of which I have pasted here (without her permission). I found the last line very interesting. 'Knowing that all business problems always have a solution, not.....'

I sometimes wonder that our lives are so complex, difficult and for most parts out of our control that may be we yearn for that feeling of control, that certitude which would enable us to say, if we do X, Y will happen and so on. And it is this nature of business i.e. problems can be solved and that most things are causal, that, it is so alluring, that many people give 'business' so much importance, sometimes at the cost of other also important things in life.

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I am turning out to be a big believer in signs. I have noticed that I am in a unclear situation, I have been fortunate to read ‘signs’ that have made me pause, re think, re assess and decide the right course of action. And every single time I have recognized and acted on these signs, I have chosen the 'better option'. I can't call it right decision, but definitely the 'better option'. This signs talk sounds so mumbo-jumbo, hocus-pocus right? Let me try and explain.

By signs, I don’t mean some sudden writing which appears from nowhere but I think I mean an intuitive feeling. A phenomenon, where I am able to comprehend a situation for more than what it looks at first sight, go behind and beyond and understand what it means in a broader context. I know all this talk of signs sounds like witch craft or something but it is not.

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There is this other article I read - 'How Will you measure your life’ by Prof. Clayton M Christenson in the Harvard Business Review. The article raises interesting points and has drawn diverse reactions. I reproduce one part of it here that I quite liked.

It’s crucial to take a sense of humility into the world. By the time you make it to a top graduate school, almost all your learning has come from people who are smarter and more experienced than you: parents, teachers, bosses. But once you’ve finished at Harvard Business School or any other top academic institution, the vast majority of people you’ll interact with on a day-to-day basis may not be smarter than you. And if your attitude is that only smarter people have something to teach you, your learning opportunities will be very limited. But if you have a humble eagerness to learn something from everybody, your learning opportunities will be unlimited.

That is an astute observation. While we are not all pricks by default, meritocracy which we all swear by as the panacea to all problems in the world, is in my circles at least, defined by certain restrictive cues like the name of school or college, designation on our visiting card, the locality where we have bought houses, vacation destinations, fortune 500 ranking of our employer and so on. And we often compare ourselves with people who are better off or in our perception have accumulated more tick marks on list that invariably has items similar to the ones listed above. And these people become the smart people we want to associate with/ learn from and hence by the nature of limited capacity, energy, time, we don't seem to learn things from the rest. Thus it is not by choice that we ignore or close our minds to others, but just by social conditioning.

Of course, this also begs a larger question. How should we define merit?

Random Ramblings over a weekend

It has been a couple of weeks since I wrote something here. Work has kept me busy, and is going to be so for the next couple of weeks.

Enough and more has been said about Sachin Tendulkar, especially in the last few weeks. SRT, in '90s as Rajdeep Sardesai, writes in his column in HT, represented the energy and enthusiasm of the new India that was emerging from unshackling of the socialist era. He changed the paradigm. He transformed the [self] image of Indians from being quiet, striving also-rans to a force to reckon with and more importantly decimators of opposition. Not too many people realise this, but the jingoistic fans of today would have little to cheer if SRT had not laid the base, back in the mid 90s.

Watching him play is pure bliss. It is a privilege to have witnessed his knocks both on TV and in person. This is an article written in 1988, about SRT before he made his debut, by Harsha Bhogle. Here is a man, who fulfilled his destiny

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There is Metro rail construction near my office in Bombay. There has been some construction going on in my office area, ever since I moved to Bombay - be it flyover, underpass, foot over bridge and now metro rail.

The construction has made the road so narrow that there are traffic jam lasting an half an hour is common every day. This means that no auto-rickshaw is willing to venture near my office both in the mornings and in the evenings. A 5 min ride from my home to the office translates to 15 min wait for the auto rickshaw in the morning, and a 30 min wait in the evening. Many a days I walk back home- a 20 min walk. If there was a pedestrian track, footpath etc, I would love to walk to work and back. However, I have to wade through horrible traffic and carbon monoxide emitting automobiles. Not at inviting option at all.

I am exasperated with the situation. I have been patient enough for past 3.5 years, hoping that things will get better, but no. The city of Mumbai has terrible infrastructure. It sucks. Roads are bad, traffic is worse, public transport isn't planned. For Bombay-ites or mumbai-kars, this city is the best-est place in the whole wide world. Start a conversation about Bombay/Mumbai, and words like cosmopolitan nature, open society, live and let live, enterprising nature and of course.. 'spirit of Mumbai' is thrown at you. Spirit of Mumbai is like 'Mere Paas Maa Hai' statement. No one knows what it is supposed to mean, but once uttered, it cannot be countered by logic.As a fellow blogger once wrote,' [In Mumbai] where people wore the badge of cosmopolitanism like an honour to outshine the irksome space crunch and commuting chaos.'

I am not able to justify to myself the insanely high cost of living and the terrible quality of life. If one doesn't live in south Bombay, Bandra or such areas, and /or does not have an own house, he definitely is up for a very tough time.

Net, Teleconferencing, Video conferencing, Virtual presence all have changed the way we do business. I don't necessarily have to be stationed where my partners, suppliers, customers and banks are anymore. This will surely make people and businesses consider options beyond Bombay in the near future. Businesses and people will migrate away if the infrastructure isn't stepped up significantly. And that migration may be to a city a few 100 kms away in Gujarat. People who have not visited Gujarat in the past 5 years should go there now. Check out the physical infrastructure that is available across Gujarat. A financial capital is coming up which is already the talk in the business circles.

Sachin Tendulkar says that Mumbai belongs to all Indians. He speaks the truth. Mumbai has come to typify all the problems that India faces in different parts of the country. Poor infrastructure, terrible or no planning, lack of coordination, resource constraints, linguistics/ regionalist politics and so on.

Ps: I know every other city, town, village in this country faces similar problems, if not worse. I am not comparing Bombay to any other place. I believe I have earned the right to crib about the city after living here for past 3.5 years.

The above paragraphs may be too harsh and negative. I have chosen to highlight only the negatives. I am quite aware of that.

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Have you guys seen ‘Ajab Prem ki Gajab Kahaani’? If you haven't then you guys have really missed something.. errr... someome - Katrina Kaif. Sigh! She is beautiful, pretty, gorgeous.. Oh! I could go on and on and on.. Anyone who can arrange a for a small tete-e-tete meeting between me and Katrina and take a picture of both of us shall be rewarded beyond his/her imagination. He/She shall be praised a thousand times in this world and the next. He shall get special mention in my blog, my twitter, facebook, email etc. I shall sincerely pray that his/her [day] dreams come true.

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I was in Bangalore a week ago for my cousin sister's wedding. It was something we all have been looking forward to for the past so many months. We all arrived 3 days in advance to participate in the sangeet and also help out in the wedding preparation. In spite of one's best efforts to execute a wedding successfully and going out of way to please everyone, people will crib. Period. Especially about the food and khatirdari - reception/ ease of movement/ travel to and fro from the wedding hall etc.

I was in charge of the transportation, logistics, reception and send off committees. Ok, there was no committee, only two of us - me and my uncle. It was a huge logistical nightmare. There were 132 people coming from out of town from the boy’s side and around 50ish from our side. The people were put up in 4 different service apartments. People had to be received from the stations (bus/ train), transported to the service apartment then to the wedding hall and back and all this multiple times over two days. Not everyone had to be present for all the functions and a few people of course had to be accorded special attention.

We had a 3 hour first day meeting to take stock of the trains, planes and buses people were coming in. Being the MBA, I drew up two huge flow charts, one to chart out movement of various people and the other for the vehicles. Quite meticulous planning, I must say.

The next two days were whizzed by. I started my reception work on Friday evening at 7.30 pm at the station and continued till 10.30pm. Then the next batch was expected at 3.40 am on Saturday morning and so on till the last group arrived at 7 am. The Platform ticket checker and I bonded over chai at 3.30 am with me cribbing that one should be allowed to by platform tickets for a day. The fun was when one of trains was late and it upset our vehicle flow timings. Much joy happened! Anyways I will spare details of the next two days, but I would say that to the untrained eye, things went off smoothly. And what more, I was also involved in a lot of festivities and had a lot of fun too!!!

And now that the cousin is married and all, all eyes are trained on me. I was told 1657 times by people I knew and didn’t, that route was clear and I should be next. I don't think my route was ever blocked... Anyways, there is always time when the inevitable happens. Its going to be my time soon!

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I am totally envious of people who have talent in music. I have dabbled in music a bit myself. I learnt Violin, Hindustani and Carnatic for a sum total of 7 years under 3 teachers. Every time I changed a teacher, the teacher would insist that some unlearning and learning was needed, and hence I had to restart or go backwards by a few years/ months. The net result of all of this was that, I almost always never proceeded beyond a point. Sigh! Anyways, the positive of all of this is that I have a basic understanding and a high level of interest in music but my knowledge about it is minimal. I made attempts to restart my violin lessons learning again, even in Mumbai, a couple of years ago. However, once my teacher moved out of Bombay, I lost the enthusiasm to find a new teacher and re-learn everything.

I am slowly discovering music for myself, especially Carnatic classical, jazz and world music (Shakti, Myntra, Rhydhum, Buddha bar etc). I so wish, I was proficient with an instrument. No, not a concert performance level proficiency, but a level where I could make music with gay abandon. As a blogger put it, [to be able to play] With the sort of combination of shamelessness and talent that a lot of us aspire to.

There is a certain joy, happiness and bliss in making music. Being lost in that moment is magic. Well, the next best thing is to enjoy watching when others make music. Check this link out. Don't miss it The two performers are out there absolutely enjoying the moment.

Single in the City

NY Times website has this interesting section called Schotts Vocab. This page captures interesting new words/ phrases from cross the world like

Stealth Wealth : Shopping discreetly (“stealth spending”) or buying unbranded products (“hidden luxury”) in an attempt to make one’s consumption less conspicuous during a recession.

Twitchhiking : Traveling using transport and accommodation provided (solely) by fellow Twitterers. (Twitter + hitchhiking.) - Read about the project here.

Today, I came across a something interesting.

Guyological Clock - “The phenomenon of single career men in their late thirties who suddenly experience social pressure to get married.”

Well, in the American context it would be late thirties, but in the India context for guys it is late 20s, and girls would be mid 20s? Also social pressure in India is more of family pressure, I guess.

Well, my case is different, I must say. My poor parents are facing an unrelenting barrage of questions on why I am not hitched yet or in the process of being hitched up yet. So much so that they are dreading family and social functions. None of those questions reach me and I am quite well shielded from my relatives. My parents, under tremendous pressure, looking for an outlet decided to confront me one fine day in the recent past. The trigger for this conversation was that a family friend of ours (for 30+ years) had just announced that both their sons (my age and two years younger respectively) had girl friends. (I knew that through Facebook hah!) And no, it does not end there. The mother ( S Aunty) had spent a weekend each with the two girls shopping, cooking, bonding and had given strong thumbs-up to their sons' choices. Of course there were some small adjustment issues but overall it was a clear yes.

Now my mom, I think, was facing intense peer pressure. So she calls me up and in highly agitated state says that I am not doing anything to help her situation. She demanded to know why I was only adding to her problems in her old age. (Wildly exaggerated for effect - she is only 51). I was confused. She demanded an explanation from me on why I did not have a girl friend and now she was under added pressure of finding me a 'good girl', a responsibility she thought she would be absolved of.

I was flummoxed here. This was a completely new situation for me. Projecting past experiences of Indian society, it was only natural to assume that finding the right girl or guy for their kids, would bring ultimate joy to Indian parents. Clearly, there had been a tectonic shift in societal thinking and I had been unaware of it. Added to the suddenness of the conversation, there was much embarrassment for me. My mother was asking me direct questions like why I don't have a girl friend.

Readers would realize that in era B.D (Before Dostana), these were innocuous questions often asked by uncles and aunts (prodded by parents of course) at family get-togethers to ostensibly embarrass the kids. Those questions meant nothing then. However, we live in circa 2 AD (After Dostana) and such questions are not simple any more. They are layered and nuanced. It is not just the answers that you give, but the manner (and mannerisms) with which you deliver it are all captured for post -processing. Suddenly, I started regretting an earlier conversation with my mother where I had raved about Dostana. It my defense it was only because I found Priyanka Chopra smoking-hot in the movie. Of course I carefully censored the smoking hot part and spoke only about the movie, which could well have been the trigger.

Luckily for me, my mom was under no such delusions (phew!) and the topic quickly moved on. She started recollecting her conversation with S aunty, where S aunty had described in vivid detail how nervous she had been, probably, more than the girls, on meet-the-parents day. By the end of the conversation, I realised that I was no longer in touch with reality around me. Potential mom-in-laws being nervous during meet-the-parents day was clearly not the norm according to all the popular TV serials with high TRP numbers.

I have heard and passed through the days in college when there used to be an underlying peer pressure to have girlfriend/ boy friend. I am even living through and surviving these much disturbing days where most of my friends are married. But clearly, I am caught in new territory faced with this unique parental pressure of having a girlfriend. Sigh! Being single just got tougher.

Na-umeed tho nahi, Nakaam hi tho hai

I was talking to this friend of mine. She raised a few pertinent points. Points which I have been pondering over for a while. It seemed as though I was listening to myself.

We are often put into situations not of our own making. These are definitely not the happy situations. So how do we deal which such situations? huff and puff about them? Get charged up emotionally? rant and blame others? Take responsibility and look for solutions? May be there is that master key, that magical answer to all problems ever. Or maybe, there isn't. But this post is not about finding solutions. That sadly, my MBA indoctrinated mind does all the time, even when not asked for.

As we go through the situation for extended periods of time - the rational part of me knows that lambi hai gam ki shyaam, magar shyaam hi to hai (this shall also pass), but we can't be rational always na? How do we answer questions like 'why me?' to ourselves? Why weren't we successful at the genetic lottery? We know people have bigger problems, but our problems are ours and they are big and they are important right? Why should I be tested and forced to learn 'life skills' when I don't want to? Is hoping for a simple uncomplicated life, asking for too much? Why do we have to be strong and normal so that people around can feel better or secure? Aren't we also not allowed our moments of madness?

The light at the end of the tunnel is more hope than anything else. The optimist in us is desperately looking for green shoots. And when he can't find one, he digs deeper within us. The deeper he goes, more skeletons both real and imaginary tumble out of the closet. These scare us. And we know that we could do well without them. But somehow we are unable to ignore them. We rewind and replay every moment and generate 'what - if' scenarios. The rational mind knows that this is of no use. In fact it is only a downward spiral. Vacillating between extreme self confidence and self doubt, we feel burnt out. The phoenix will arise and the tide will turn. No doubt there. But is crash landing a necessity?

Any who, please have a look at this wonderful short story-film. This was nominates for academy awards for the Best Live Action Short Film. I assure you it will leave you with a smile. Sigh! Now I wanna Tango!