Should you really cover up?

I have long been wanting to write about this monster called ego, that stands between human growth and stagnation. I partly touched upon this in my "change" post, but wanted to unwrap it in a harsher way.

Facebook fell prey to hackers recently, and claimed that it was a browser issue. I do not deny the genuineness of the claim, but I was very surprised to see stereotypical messages posted by my friends working in Facebook - "There have been inaccurate reports of Facebook accounts being hacked. This is not true, and no accounts have been compromised." And this was at a time when there were a dozen newspapers reporting about many thousands of Facebook accounts being hacked worldwide.

There was a post I wrote a couple of years back, when Mr. Chidambaram, as Home Minister claimed that India is a completely safe country, safer than many other countries of the world. And this was at a time when India was bombarded with bomb attacks every two weeks. How does being safer than many countries qualify India to be a safe country?

I don't deny that a company or a country should talk responsibly, but is this just responsibility? Yes, we are used to hearing the CEO say "We are looking forward to the strongest results in our history", just a week before the company would fall overnight. Yes, we are used to hearing the Central Bank say "Our economics are fundamentally strong and rationally sound", just a day before the stock market would witness its sharpest fall. But the letdown is, we are so used to these cover-ups that we've internalized this vice within ourselves too. Let us take this head to head.

There was an article recently that slammed the idea of giving Bharat Ratna to Sachin Tendulkar. The rationale was that any country's highest award is supposed to be given to someone who has made a difference to the lives of people. I do not want to talk here about the article itself, but about a comment that disagreed with the author, noting that India is a young nation and that we need to pat ourselves even for small achievements. I didn't quite understand the logic here because, I thought we were one of the oldest nations, claiming to have built marvelous cities when the rest of the world didn't know what civilization was.

Why talk about unrelated people? Try criticizing a good friend of yours, you will know. And when you lie down on bed that night after being surprised by the way your friend reacted, just introspect and find out how you had behaved all your life for any criticism you had faced.

Is this just normal human behaviour? Or is this self-righteousness? Or is this pride? Or is this ego? If even after tens of thousands of years of existence, mankind has not got egos out of their way, I'm afraid this can be called normal. If we can't even conquer ourselves, what are we trying to prove with our existence? If shame is the first step towards accomplishment, it's high time we took shame on ourselves and started accomplishing.

Let us stop covering up, let us start uncovering the beauties that exist within this wonderful creation called mankind!

May have been for business, but a trip nevertheless

It was a business trip to meet industrial customers of Western India. Cement, Textiles, Chemicals, Fertilizers, Pharma, Rubber, Power, Metals - you name and I can now smell them all even from a distance.

I flew down to Jaipur and the trip started from there. Joining different team members on the way, I had to cover ten cities in two weeks, so I didn't stay in one city for more than a day. Except for a couple of train journeys, I mostly took the road, travelling through some of the most rustic parts of rural India.

It was of course a huge learning opportunity for me to understand the business, interacting directly with customers. But this post is not about that. I seem to have discovered the child back in me during this trip and this post is about that. I may not do anything about it for some more time, because I still haven't solved the riddle of how or why I should retain things in me that I feel are not of any use to this world, but at least I was happy that the child in me was still alive.

Almost all of these factories had huge lawns covering a wide landscape, and I felt like playing in those lawns; I don't remember when I last felt that. We visited Nirma factory, and I wanted to sing the Nirma song, but you know, I was on a business trip. We visited Chittorgarh, and I wanted to visit the fort, but no one seemed to be interested. There were these cooling towers in the plants that had water dripping down like a waterfall, but no one was playing even in those. Oh yes, this was a business visit, I was not supposed to play in those either.

Ah, am I talking about being a child and such things too often now? Am I beginning to lose track? Am I starting to feel individual happiness is the way to collective harmony? Come on, it can't be.

Ok, we will leave that for now. The most wonderful part of this trip was interacting with the rural people of Rajasthan. So naive, so unsophisticated. We stopped at many roadside shops and had authentic Rajasthani food. I may have liked the food even better if I was not running temperature, but I surely enjoyed the food getting served by them. Wish I could just become one of them! But wait, I still haven't figured out how to be useful to this world by being one of them.

May have been for business, but this was a great trip nevertheless!

There will be another day

"On a train from Shimla to Delhi, there was a halt in one of the stations. Sachin was nearing century, batting on 98. The passengers, railway officials, everyone on the train waited for Sachin to complete the century. This genius can stop time in India!"

There will be a myriad of articles felicitating Sachin Tendulkar's 100th international century when he eventually gets it, but I felt like writing one today, not to praise his mastery of the game, for which there are enough, but about the person that I see in him.

Yes, I was also one of those who couldn't see his guilty face when he walked back to the pavilion after making just 18 runs in the World Cup final. But the guilt on his face today was not any batsman in the world would've had to endure. He walked back after making 94 and the disappointment in the crowd was still the same. It wouldn't have been hugely different even if these were not the occasions of the World Cup or his 100th century. The truth is we just can't see him make anything less than a 100, every match. Such is the expectation that he has been shouldering for two decades now.

What makes him the person that he is? "Excellence is not impossible, if you marry a phenomenal work ethic to the talent that you are born with. Combine that with perseverance, and you've Tendulkar". True! But I would say he is probably one of the most praised as well as criticized.

He has heard a billion comments from a million people who never in their life have played a game of cricket. Yet he listens to them modestly. In fact, his disposition to listen to everyone did not make him a good captain. But that is not his fault, that is his character. You may not find him talk inspiringly on the mike, but that is not his fault again, he is just shy and reserved. He may not be the person who excels in pressure the most. Still, that is not his fault, that is his personality.

He is the best when he is his natural self, and that is to be the child that he is. He runs between the wickets as if just that one run was needed to win the match. He is elated taking a catch as if that one wicket was needed to gain the match. He doesn't take guard without a match practice the previous day. He doesn't face a ball without his helmet on. Because to him every match is his first. Because he knows he can't take things for granted. Because he knows he still has so much to learn. But more interestingly, because he knows he has to go on. And on. And on.

There will surely be another day for Sachin, but time we took lessons not just from his bat, but from his heart too.

Just another, not lemon but, lonely tree

"Never regret anything that once made you smile" - I read this somewhere and my emotional and rational personalities had to fight again. It could be "anything" or "anyone", but "anyone" is easier to debate about. Its direct meaning is obvious - if someone made you smile some day, do not regret when the relationship turns sour some other day.

Yes, it is difficult to connect back with the same closeness after either some tartness or a natural separation, but I feel earnestness can win anything. While I feel no void created by one thing can ever be filled by some other thing, if only everyone makes that effort to understand the truth rather than the externality, I think the voids themselves may cease to get created.

But if I've to analyze this crookedly, I'm not sure if this world was meant to be loved so much that you let a void be created in you. Even if it does get created, only you're responsible for it, because you let that happen. However the void itself may not be a bad choice compared to not having had that relationship at all. If the void happens, the only regret should be for having strained the relationship itself and surely not for having had it. Or maybe it is, if you're prepared to wage a lone battle.

The hurling questions and the warning replies

Shane Warne proposes to Elizabeth Hurley with a 30,000 pound diamond ring that very closely resembles what Prince Charles gave Princess Diana. This is the top headline on any news channel you would've tuned into, yesterday. I've never liked poking nose into the private lives of unrelated people, but there are a few general questions here that are a little uneasy to answer.

The simpler ones first. Are diamonds really so precious considering that the diamond cartel artificially keeps the prices of diamonds high by ridiculously reducing their supply, is question one. Are diamonds really human-safe considering that scores of humans are tortured and beat to death in the fields of Africa, is question two. If you have answer to the first question, you almost have figured out your way to happiness. If you have answer to the second question, you almost have figured out what is right and what is not. But considering that none of us could've immaculately figured those out, we will leave them free.

Let us create a better question. Are sports and entertainment two fields that do not contribute to human progress but celebrated the most? Though the fact about celebrity status may be true, the fact about contribution to human progress may not be. In a way, everything contributes to everything, isn't it? Anyway, human progress cannot be the only motivation behind something. And it's really individual preference and discretion to choose who should be made a star. Hence the question three about whether it is a great idea to create celebrities out of movie stars and sports heroes, and not out of space scientists and social workers is also difficult to answer.

All these are so subjective questions that can be extrapolated to most things, if not everything. So before we can create one more question, let us batter these a little more. If diamond is artificially over-valued, almost every other thing is too. If diamonds are not human-safe, almost every other thing is not life-safe in some way. If sports and entertainment do not contribute to human progress, almost everything else can be argued against in the same way. So let us ask a more practical final question. Are these disparities in earnings and rewards right? Is it not an irony that a porter has to whistle and applaud a film hero cast as porter in a movie? Shouldn't it be the other way around? What is skill and what is not? Who are we to decide?

If a restaurant's business is counted in a country's GDP, so should a mother's cooking be. If a school's business is counted in the GDP, so should a father's teaching be. But should we really attach money value to things invaluable? Maybe it's a better idea to just leave them noble?

Is it then a better idea to leave the real heroes of the world materially uncelebrated? I would say yes.

Whose happiness is it anyway

A little long ago, I used to think that people should do what makes them happy, and that when everyone does the same, the world is going to be a happy place. But when I later realized the inherent flaw in this logic, I felt timid. How ignorant was it to assume that the world will have the maximum happiness if everyone does everything that gives him or her the maximum happiness!

With due respect to the concepts of free will, I will have to acknowledge that they are so alluring that you will be enticed to believe that individual happiness is the way to collective harmony. But then, it takes a little bit of extrospection, if I may be allowed to construct that word, to realize that the other way around may perhaps be a possibility, but pure individual happiness may not lead to collective harmony.

So, does everyone have to sacrifice own happiness for the bigger harmony? In some cases, they may be sacrifices that are worth making, but in most cases they may not be sacrifices in the first place. I can give you a few examples. If you think stopping on a red light is making you unhappy, then there is some problem with you, not with the system. If you think not coaching a junior is the best way to ensure your own safety, you've got the fundamentals of ecosystem wrong, the ecosystem itself is not wrong. If you think blocking imports is the best way to grow trade inside the country, it's again a problem with your understanding of economics, not with economics itself.

Before the examples get more complex, if you have still not learnt to derive self-happiness out of keeping the system happy, then I think it's you who has to grow before the system can start growing again. If you believed individual happiness comes before collective harmony, think again, you might be cutting off the branch on which you're sitting. There might be many ways to not have individual happiness while upholding collective harmony, but there may be at least one way for each one of us to ensure both. After all, the system comprises of all of us. The question is not about whose happiness it is, the question is, whose happiness is it anyway?

The balance, the poise and the equilibrium

My blog is essentially "my take on life", as a friend of mine used to describe. Many of my posts are born out of some lateral thinking spun from an agreement or a disagreement I would have with worldly affairs, or just sprouted out of an experience, an observation or a discussion. But there are some posts that are all of these. This is one such post. I seem to suddenly be relating this to everything, everywhere. In fact this entire post is taken out of what I wrote somewhere else. 

 

Contrary to the popular adage that claims you cannot both have the cake and eat it, there is a balance you can mostly strike with everything in life. This balance is not exactly like eating half and having half, but this is almost like having as well as eating. For example, you can be patient for success as well as be impatient for progress, you can be responsible with age as well as be sparkling with childhood, you can be serious at your job as well as be playful with your people. And you can apply this to your integration with the society too - you can very well be adhering to the societal norms as well as be protesting them in your thoughts, you can follow a rule as well as break it, you can be very similar to the rest of the people as well as be very different. 

 

Maybe there are hundred ways to not be all of these together, but I feel there is at least one way for each of us to be all of these and still be ourselves. We do strike this balance with most things in life, just that we don't notice, and consequently fail to extend it to the rest of the things. Think about the clothes we wear. Do we wear it for the world or for ourselves? Both - we cover ourselves up, but we wear what we like. 

 

Imagining it poetically, I feel each of us lives in two worlds - one inside and the other outside. The inside world is for us, we can include only the things and people we want to. And then there is the real world where we have to operate within the reigns. But once we realize the freedom within ourselves and the harmony we need to create outside, it's only a matter of time before we can expand this inner space and accept that the inside world is just part of the outside world. The acceptance already means that we're happy both being ourselves in our world and being like how others want us to be in the outside world. 

 

It may look like a trade off, but it's actually a balance, a balance on limits that keep expanding as we know more, learn more and grow more. It is this balance and poise that, I feel, could give us the equilibrium that we would not want to miss.

To Plus or Not to

I'm a huge fan of the idea of social networking, after all man is a social animal, but I decided to play the devil's advocate in this. If you find animals more social than humans are, I'll concur with you in a different post, but this post is only about humans.

When I created my Orkut account many years back, I looked at it with awe as well as with fear. With awe because it let me connect with my oldest school friends with whom I would've never got a chance to connect otherwise. With fear because it was making more of private information, public. But evidently not being able to meet the needs of gen-Next, Orkut began to rust. People slowly bid adieu to Orkut and started embracing Facebook, with the hope that everyone would migrate to Facebook someday.

Facebook inspired more awe as well as more fear and clearly went on to become the social networking leader. But I'm hearing about Ice Age again. Is it time for one more migration? Is it time to ditch all our old friends once more and continue with the hope that there will be light at the end of the tunnel? Oh yes, if change is for good, let it happen.

I clicked on a Google+ invite, but thanks to my office network that blocks all social networking sites, I was not able to proceed. If my office thinks that these sites will make me less productive and less useful, have I made myself less productive and less useful over the last few years? If the little time I'd to do anything else was gone on the internet doing the so called less productive and less useful things, did I make less out of my existence these years? If I just did what gave me momentary happiness without thinking all of this, did I really make worth of my Creation these years?

To Plus to not to? I'll postpone the decision till I get more enlightenment.

If change is for good, let it happen

Pre-Darwinists or post-Darwinists, evolutionists or intellectualists, capitalists or socialists, change has always been a sought after phenomenon among everyone. I'll restrict myself to the intellectual change and also to the change that happens for good, because I can't really have my freedom writing about the other changes. But whatever the change is, it's a fact that if we don't cope up with it, we're only exposing ourselves to some tough time ahead.

I think I've seen four kinds of people with regards to their willingness to change. While I've broadly tried to categorize people here, which in the first place is a wrong attempt by itself, it is fair to note that all of us traverse among these different categories during different confrontations and phases of life.

1. The proud and immutable: These are the people who are partially self-righteous and are very difficult to induce change into. For example, if they believe in something, they're probably going to feel superior about their belief and silly about any other belief that they might reject other beliefs. These are the people who don't seek to rationally evaluate the confrontation.

2. The proud and hungry: These are also the proud people, however they're open to change. For example, if they believe in something, they may or may not feel superior about it but will surely accommodate any other belief, at the least. Sometimes however, these people are a little stuck on not losing what they're that they fail to look at change in an unbiased open manner.

3. The humble and hungry: The crave in these people to know more and grow more is so very evident because they do not let their pride interfere with knowledge. For example, if they have a belief, they know why they believe in it and so will be able to figure out the rationale behind any other belief too. They don't just accommodate other beliefs, they appreciate and accept too.

4. The humble and mutable: These are people who dangerously tread at the border. For example, today they might believe in something while tomorrow it could be something else. They just go far beyond accepting to actually embrace. They may not make popular leaders, but they surely create conducive confrontations.

Trying to find out which category is better is like trying to find out whether the tiger is better or the deer is, in the ecosystem. Everyone has to exist to complete the ecosystem. For the sake of the concluding paragraph of this post, let me try to differentiate personality from character. Personality, I feel, is something with which people try to identify us and is unique to us. Character, I feel, can usually be classified as either a virtue or a vice and is something we imbibe as we go.

I think as long as we save our personality and change our character for good, we're in the right direction. I'm not sure how much it's possible though to disintegrate personality from character, but life is not that simple anyway - sometimes we've to change our personality too. If change is for good, let it happen.

The relative necessity and the absolute luxury

I think it was when news about Ambani's luxurious home in Mumbai penetrated the Indian media, I thought about this again. People had all kinds of abuses about this act of his, which in the first place was very much his personal choice. If you questioned Ambani's choice of building a luxurious home, you're probably not too far from questioning Ambani's choice of getting married, which he obviously made many decades back without anyone's frown.

Let us leave the discussion of evaluating what is personal and what is not to a different post, right now let us focus back on luxury and necessity. I think while we're a little generous talking about necessity in relative terms, we're very scrimpy when it comes to evaluating luxury. This evaluation is even more skewed in a country like India, where the disparity between the rich and the poor is huge. For example, when you buy a small car, there is always someone, who can't afford a motorbike, who thinks you're spending on luxury. When you buy your big car, there are even more people who think so. And when you buy a luxury car, almost the entire country is going to be thinking so.

The value chain of abuses is so complete that it starts right from the slippers and clothes you wear to the cars and houses you own. I think before we start questioning people about the lavish slippers they wear, the pricey clothes they own, the expensive cars they drive, or the luxurious homes they stay in, we should just look behind us for a moment. Before we preach them altruism, we should evaluate if we would sell our car and donate it to the poor. Before we preach them detachment, we should examine if we can stay in a house that is as much cheaper.

If necessity is relative, please let luxury also be relative.

The damn love and the goddamn marriage

My mom still talks in wonder, how as a kid, I climbed a fragile tree and was sitting directly above a well when she saw me. Sparks of childhood, perhaps. I'm sure every mom has numerous such things to tell about her kid.

However the sparks don't continue for long, maybe because we grow out of those or because life's responsibilities creep over us. And as we realize those responsibilities, we start to stay away from adventures that could cause liabilities to ourselves or to people around us. We self-impose restrictions on our own freedom that can otherwise hinder us from catering to those responsibilities. Some of those responsibilities are true, and are probably related to our life's purpose if there was any, but many of those are false, and are probably related to our attachments.

As we grow even older, we may also develop what I would like to call the "detachmental indifference", that helps us reach a more mature, more stable state, from where, doing or not doing something, or having or not having something, does not make a significant difference to us. We may not perfect this for a long time, so we may try to combine the partial indifference with our conscience, to guide us during uncertain moments till then.

When I was possibly at this stage, I found myself in many interesting dilemmas. While I didn't want to leave existing false responsibilities unfulfilled, I was so bent on not creating new such ones. While I didn't want to withdraw from existing attachments, I was so bent on not forming new ones. But then there are some things you can't resist beyond a point, especially when you don't know how to. Voila, I've now decided to fall prey to the very unit called the family, that so much bothered me, that I believed primarily upheld human selfishness, that I believed even makes love selfish, and I'm sorry to say so again, that I believed even makes love impure.

The one question on this I want to ask God continues to be the same for years - "Did You create man so he can love everyone equally or did You create man so he can love the world in tiers?" Not having got the chance to meet God so far, and evidently not having found the answer to this question so far, I had no other option but to yield.

But what is all that the society trying to do with marriage?

Don't we want someone for ourselves?
Sure, but if there was no family and everybody was there for everyone else, why do we need someone for ourselves at all?
Don't we want to bequeath our own genes?
Exactly, that is the selfishness I'm talking about.
Won't human species go extinct otherwise?
If we really thought so, we should be saving the millions of children dying in Africa and Asia, before trying to create and save our own.
Don't you think a family is bringing some order in the chaos?
Yes, agreed, and I guess there stops all the reasons for marriage. I think any other reason to falsely sanctify marriage is ill-founded.

This is just my opinion. It can be as right or as wrong as yours is.

A wrong topic ends with a wrong conclusion because it had a wrong analysis, let me come back to this with a better analysis after finding out why marriage has survived for so long to create the order we so dearly need in our system.

The damn love and the goddamn marriage

I need a couple of hours to write this down ... let me see when I can do that.

The disremembered invisible reign

It was a while back when I had a discussion with a friend about whether humans are born bad and then imbibe good qualities or are born good and then acquire bad qualities. I’ve read articles that talk either way, so maybe it is not a clearly known fact. Today I got the time to reflect on it again.

If we’re supposed to learn moral ways of doing things from others, it means we were born bad and then try to grow good. But if you ever watched a kid grow, you would’ve been intrigued by the way the kid started to tell lies. It would've become obvious to you that nature’s adaptation process has touched the kid too. So, are we born bad and then we become good or are we born good and then we become bad?

One argument can be that if something comes naturally and easily to us, that’s probably our original self. Vices come naturally, but virtues have to be practised. If you’re someone who loses temper at the drop of a hat or someone who loses patience for every small botheration or someone who tries to procrastinate as much as possible or for that matter someone with any vice (I assume this includes all of us without exception), you’ll know what I’m talking about. But then you might not have had the vice to begin with, you would have acquired it as you grew. So, the question still remains unanswered.

Another argument can be related to chaos theory. One thing that I both admonish and admire about nature is its chaos. Though every single thing in nature tries to live in anarchy, there is a beautiful control that exists – the invisible reign of nature. As much as renowned philosophers might want to call this anarchy the free will of nature, self-proclaimed philosophers of the modern era (I think this again includes all of us) would want to call vices in people as free will too, especially in an attempt to support the existence of vices in themselves. But I think we willfully or ignorantly forget to correlate the invisible reign of nature to the invisible reign of conscience. Or maybe we tune our consciences on the fly, heavily biased for ephemeral gains, satisfaction and happiness.

Whatever may be the argument, most of the above accusals can be sanctified if we just take a moment to step back and perceive our own invisible reign of conscience. But where is the time to perceive conscience in an era where we don’t have time to even sleep well. I’m sorry, I think I asked for too much.

Top three learnings?

A friend asked me what my top three learnings from MBA were. I said I need to think about it, and now I got the time to think. Leaving the technical part that includes finance, accounting, statistics, economics, operations, etc., the remaining part of MBA, as is rightly rumoured, is more or less a training in common sense, with a scientific structure to it. Depending on your experience, exposure and education, this remaining part might fall under one of these in different proportions:

1. Things you already knew that get proved
2. Things you thought you knew but get disproved
   
3. Things you never knew
   

Maybe a couple of the technical learnings will be in my top three, but I'll just focus on the "remaining" part that is non-technical. My top three out of those would be the ones below.

1. Null hypothesis: I mentioned this in an earlier post too. If you’ve to prove something, assume the opposite and disprove it rather than assuming what you want and looking for the first opportunity to prove yourself. Interestingly, most of us will appreciate this but would hardly practise.

2. Sunk cost fallacy: When you’ve to make a decision, do not consider all the prior investments, but consider only the future investments. Of course, you can’t ignore all that have gone into something and can't just focus on all that need to go in. So, you won’t accept this if you wrongly interpret, but there is truth in this. Think about it, else reach out to the internet.

3. Game theory: Game theory mostly talks about making your move depending on how you expect your opponent to move, which also means the opponent is doing the same, and so the theory advises you about making a win-win decision. But there is a subtle corollary to this. Make your first move keeping your last move in mind. Rather, take your first step thinking about how you want your last step to be.

As I was thinking these, flashes of classroom scenes and the one year journey lit through my memory. The registration day, the orientation week, the first class, the first quiz, the first assignment, the first exam, to the last class, the last exam, graduation, friends, music, fun … what nonsense, let me stop the emotional rubbish!

The complexes that won't die

I'm not a psychologist to talk about human complexes, but I want to store here what I've understood so far about one such pair - inferiority and superiority complexes. Because I don't have a formal education in these, I will just call them mediocrity and meliority complexes. Meliority may not be the right word to use, but it sounds rhyming, so I will just continue. I'll try to keep this equivocal, because I'm still finding it ambiguous myself, as is true with most of the topics that I write here anyway.

A villager looking at the city life can get two kinds of feelings, either a 'wow' or a 'yikes', that can keep internally transitioning, in different magnitudes. Somewhere during one of those transitions, he might convince himself with a "No, this is not for me" feeling, and when posted with arguments from the other side, he could get defensive. On the other hand, a person from the city could have an opposite feeling during one his transitions between 'wow' and 'yikes' about village life. He slowly starts to convince himself saying "My God, I can't live here", and when posted with an argument from the other side, he could get snobbish.

While the apparently mediocre person in the first example, during his defensive conduct could appear to be having a meliority complex and while the apparently meliorative person in the second example, during his snobbish conduct could appear to be having a mediocrity complex, those might not be the right interpretations. Combine these with human emotions and cursory feelings, you have an intriguing case study to analyze. As long as mediocrity brings in strength and meliority brings in humility, we're in control of our emotions. But the moment it swings the other way, we're inviting trouble, not just for ourselves, but for people around us too.

Given the fact that we live in a world that is far from ideal, it is difficult for anyone to be devoid of such feelings. When we've a mediocre feeling about something, it's so difficult to get rid of it unless we can substitute the feeling with a sense of achievement over either the same thing or a different thing. And when we've a meliorative feeling about something, it's so difficult to get rid of it unless we become empathetic and believe that we could have very easily been on the other side. Even if nothing of that is possible, I think if we take the pain to listen to others as well as spend some time being introspective, we may be able to put these complexes to rest over time.

Won't complexes die? I don't think so. But you can think!

It is during these moments that ...

Nature always awes us. The night sky looks so beautiful when you just look up lying down on grass, but you're left breathless the moment you start imagining that our own sun is a star and that every other star could be hosting a set of planets too. Maybe there are million other earths? Maybe there are humans in each of them? Maybe they're not humans at all?

I was just watching the videos from Japan and started wondering about nature, again. Houses floated, cars washed away, thousands killed. How good is our house in a storm? How good is our car in water? How good is our life in death? Yes, our prayers are with the Japanese, but I've no clue how prayers help someone in suffering. Maybe they do, I don't know how God operates. Wait, I think I don't even know how I operate.

In a team meeting a couple of years back, as my manager announced the demise of one of my team mates in the US who had died of stroke, he said "It's during these moments that you realize work is just one part of your life. The company will run the same way without you, but your family may not. Spend time with your family. Go, enjoy with your friends. Do things that you always wanted to do." As he was saying this, his eyes started becoming wet. Yes, he was telling this to himself too.

True, it's during these moments that you realize that you're just a small part of something big you never can imagine. It's during these moments that you understand that all the races that we've created for ourselves are so untrue. It's during these moments that you question yourself if you were ever useful to anyone. It's during these moments that you wonder how many people you have made happy. It's during these moments that you start believing that life is for living.

Whose love is it anyway?

India could've been the land of sages and serpents, but the serpents have now transformed into cell phones. On the face of it, India might appear to be the domicile of the poor and the needy, but inside this mysterious place is the thirst and hunger to beat the world and be number one. You step inside and the vibrancy will touch you. This is a nation that is transforming.

But one thing has long stood the tide of transformation, the Indian wedding. Neither has the money spent in nor has the prestige associated with weddings changed for centuries. Statistics say ten years of savings are wiped out during every Indian wedding. And this trickles down all the way to the bottom. Banks say most farmer loan defaults happen because the borrowed money is not spent on agriculture but on weddings instead.

But all of this is not to celebrate the union of two souls that were in love for many years. In fact love in most Indian marriages starts only after the wedding, for the couple had just got introduced to each other a few weeks earlier, through their parents, and couldn't have managed to fall in love yet. If the introduction happened the other way around, well, you'll not find too many like that, but if any, such marriages will not happen without frown from the parents or scorn from the society.

But then, is one kind of marriage progressive and the other, regressive? To answer this question we need to know if one marriage is happier than the other. Again, statistics don't say so. You talk with couples, they don't say so either. Well, then there is no logic in arguing about which one is better. Probably the one that better upholds love, will and hope is better. But whose love are we talking about here? Whose will? Whose hope? Wait, do we even care about these four-letter words anymore? I'm not sure. I hear a few other four-letter words much more often these days.

Whose marriage is it anyway? No, I think the question should be whose love is it anyway!

Humans belong to the most civilized species?

Bangladeshi fans hurl stones at the bus carrying West Indian players who were on their way back to their hotel. That's because Bangladesh were bundled out for 58, possibly the lowest total in Cricket World Cup. Police say the fans mistook it for the bus carrying the Bangladeshi players. Whatever it is, I don't think this demonstrates any kind of civilizational act. I remember Dravid's house in Bangalore being guarded for a few days after India's first round exit in the previous world cup. The terrorists are not far behind either. The cricketing world cannot forget the free shooting attacks on the bus carrying Sri Lankan players in Pakistan a couple of years back.

Not very long ago, I remember there were bomb blasts happening every other week, in different parts of India. I think Australia or New Zealand refused to come to India for a cricket series during that time. And Indian newspapers blasted them saying they're chickening out. How irrational was that! If we risk our lives everyday, why do we've to expect others to risk their lives too? If we are fools, why do we've to expect others to be fools too? When last did India play a game in Pakistan? So, aren't we chickens too?

Maybe a good moment to relate this with our growth process. I still remember when our home minister rubbished away the rationale behind the US travel advisory to Americans in India post the Taj-attack, when he said "India is a completely safe country, safer than many other countries in the world". Didn't India issue a travel advisory to Indians in Egypt? Aren't we evacuating our people from Libya right now? Don't we make fun of the security situation in Pakistan? Come on, if we're bad at something, let us accept it, only then can we grow. By desperately resisting and defending, we're only losing an opportunity to grow. And by ridiculing, we're only becoming worse.

As I'm saying this, I'm thinking for myself, occasions in my life when I've desperately resisted or defended, or ridiculed. But I'll save myself for some self-blasting till some other time. Impatience, Greed, Wrath! And we call ourselves humans? Revenge, War, Blood! And we call ourselves civilized?

The trip is about to be over, the journey will continue

Management, as cliched as it can get, is we all know, both an art and a science. The truth about such things, that are both art and science, is that how much ever scientific you get, you can never substitute an artistic skill. But then science will give you the analytical toolkit that will help you sail through uncertain situations easier than if you believed just in art. An MBA will surely get you one such toolkit, not just for career, even for life. But then I can't vouch for this right now. I don't know if I can vouch for this ever, because life is a complex piece of heavily interrelated connections, that you can't really pin-point the cause-effect relationships so clearly.

The last one year was surely exhausting, but never did I've to think if it was all worth, because one, such questions are exclusively patented by the travails of the construct called marriage, and two, the learning more than compensated for any reason that could've made me feel so. It might not be the most politically correct statement to say that this was easily the best way I could've spent this one year, but I think that's almost true.

Every good thing comes to an end and so does every bad thing too. Whatever it is, it's all about to be over. Or is it? With every ending comes a new beginning, isn't it? Before I can find the answer to whether management is an art or a science, I need to find out if life is an art or a science.

The trip is about to be over, but the journey will continue.

Leap of faith

There used to be a time when I believed there was only one "good" and one "right" thing. Blame it on ourselves, blame it on our books, blame it on our society, or maybe there's no one to blame here, but that is where most of us begin.

However, over the years I started to realize that there could probably be one "right" thing, but there are surely many "good" things, for good to me could be bad to you. I had indications that one fine day, I will also accept the fact that there is probably no such truth as the one "right" thing either. And that is happening. I've started to accept that right in one context need not be right in another, and the analysis of the context is subjective. I've almost started believing that anything did with an intention that "perceivably" creates better harmony is good and is right. But perceiving better harmony is not really easy. You have to weigh all that you can, and if you can't, there are always "rules" and "guidelines" our ancestors have created to help us out.

I'm happy that I've been capturing this transition of mine in this blog. Rationality-Emotionality, Detachment-Attachment, Good-Bad, Right-Wrong - I have dissected all that I could and am very much looking forward to more dissections. Thanks to all of you for all the torture you bore from me all these years, I might spare you a little going forward because I'm just about to get caught in a vicious cycle of attachment and achievement.

If you protest against gravity, you can probably be the best pole-vaulter, but you've to come down eventually to accept the realities of nature. When you do come down, you realize that the world is in fact more beautiful from the ground than it was from the top. Or maybe it's not, I don't know. After a long protest with myself about why I should get married, I finally decided to give up. Now life seems more beautiful than it was before. Or maybe it's not, I again don't know. There are only a few things that we can control, for everything else, there is destiny.

It is not difficult to guess, yes, this is an announcement. She is doing her masters in surgery, and I asked her one day, "Do you know there is a life where you can use the knife and cut, but nobody's life is at stake?" She exclaimed "Oh wow!" and I continued, "That will happen if we get married, I will make sure you don't come out of the kitchen. Are you game?" I'm not sure if she got my poor joke, but poor girl, God save her! Fine, let me talk seriously.

Between the devil of marriage and the deep blue sea of life, we've chosen the devil and together we've decided to cross the deep blue sea. Was that serious enough? I don't think so. Sorry, I guess I've lost the seriousness in life.

To invoke the blessings of Lord Destiny and to seek all your wishes, we're getting wedded later this year. It's a long time still, but our contributions to the $25 billion Indian wedding industry have already begun. Leap of faith they call, and we've decided to take the leap, just as everyone else decides to. Where is this leap going to take us? Well, time will tell. But right now, it's celebration time, why think about dirty philosophies!

Glad till the dancing stops, and the lilt of the music ends.
Laugh till the game is played; and be you merry, my friends.
(John Masefield)

An idle Sunday and a devil's workshop

I wanted to create a real video something similar to this, with maybe Agam doing the music, but all I can do right now is a PowerPoint slideshow. Will do something better some other time.

Thanks to all those who clicked these pictures and to Manickam Yogeswaran for the sound track.

Is good parenting the need of the century?

I recently read an article “Teaching Kids Patience”. "Today, parents cannot digest the idea of making their child wait for anything from a chocolate to a car. Most parents do not understand the psychological principle of delayed gratification because they themselves are a generation of impatient people. But impatience can cost you money, relations, pain and suffering. The best way to teach your children patience is to set an example and be patient in your own actions."

In another article on "Good parenting can stop teenagers from drinking", I read "Don't be too strict or too affectionate towards your children as it could double their chances of going wayward. Parents need to realize you need to have both accountability and support in your relationship with your kid. Make sure that it's not just about controlling their behaviour - you need to combine knowing how they spend their time away from home with a warm, loving relationship."

In another article I read about why Asian kids are stronger in maths than their American counterparts. It has been found in research that till they are around the age of 10, both the Asian and American kids are at par in their mathematical abilities. But it falls for American kids on an average after that. This is because when the American kid performs bad in maths, the parents tell him "That's ok, maybe you're not an engineer. You might be good at something else", but the Asian parents tell the kid "If you are willing to work hard, nothing is impossible".

In a speech by Dipak Jain, the former dean of Kellogg, I heard him say - "The biggest advantage of Asia, especially India and China is the parenting. It is very rare in other parts of the world to see a parent wake up at five in the morning, make coffee for the child and put him to study. Even when there is no money for the next meal, parents in these countries take pride in sending their children to school."

The world is changing, as it always does. There are so many great facets of the Western culture that I admire. It was when I went to the US that I understood what it means to follow one's heart. But I think it is so important to strike the balance. While we absorb all the good things, it's important to not give up what we're originally good at. This holds for many of us who treat life like a business too, because that's what we're taught in business schools anyway.

Is parenting mankind's core competency? If yes, let us continue to carry forward the parenthood we'd been blessed with.

What is your generation?

There are different generations of people we encounter and just as how many of us do, I too spend time analyzing the differences among generations - grandparents, parents, friends, and nephews and nieces. Today as I was watching some movie song in the cafeteria during dinner, I started attaching people to the different generations of songs. Most of what I've watched are Indian, so I started correlating generations of people with those of Indian movie songs.

I thought I'll classify Indian movies with regards to how the songs are shot. This is not a strict classification, because every movie or generation of movies has a mix of all of these, but if there was only one way to classify movies based on how the songs are shot, I would classify them this way.

The earliest generation was when most part of the movie was just songs. People didn't talk, they conversed in songs. Yes, this was the generation of my grandparents.
Wow, people had so much patience to just sit and watch all this!

The second generation of movies had songs where the hero and the heroine kept walking, now and then trotting or making some pleasant dance moves. Surely this was the generation of my parents.
"Well, the sitting people have started walking."

The third generation of movies had songs where you had no clue where the hero and heroine were running to, dancing all the way, but they kept dancing and running. Ah, this was my generation.
"Finally people have started running. Sometimes they had groups behind running and dancing too."

The latest generation of movies have songs that can wake you up in the middle of the night. They have the fast rhythm and impatient dance steps. Right, this belongs to my nephews and nieces.
"If you keep running, is this where you will end up?"

I don't have the time right now to analyze what I wanted to get at with all this, maybe I'll do it some other day.

Some things I had noted down long back

I wanted to write different posts on each of these, but I'm not sure if I'll find the time for it soon enough. So, let me at least note them down here. These are based on articles that I've read from different sources at different points in time. I didn't care to store the sources, so please excuse.

A) I've read about friendship and relationships at many places, but this one was different. This was not something unknown but it was very blatant and I liked it. You're not a great friend:

1. If you're friends with others only to use them
2. If you manipulate friends for your own benefit
3. If you spin stories to save your face
4. If you messed a relationship between two friends
5. If you complain about all your friends to every other friend

B) There are different degrees of selfishness. While with one logic you can classify any selfishness as selflessness, you can apply a counter-logic and classify any selflessness as selfishness:

1. I order: You can do anything for yourself
2. II order: You can do anything for your family
3. III order: You can do anything for your friends
4. IV order: You can do anything for anyone
   

C) There are different degrees of self-sufficiency. I don't know which one is better, but I feel the last one is the most difficult, because that's the self-sufficiency that comes out of an informed attempt to analyze both having and not having something, while you very well know what each of those mean:

1. Natural self-sufficiency: When you've sufficiently indulged in something, you get a natural feeling of cloyingness and then you no longer depend on that. That's a naturally stable state.
2. Artificial self-sufficiency: When you're self-restraining from the start, you've never indulged, but you're not sure how you'd handle given a chance to indulge. That's a metastable state.
3. Voluntary self-sufficiency: When you deliberately give up something after you very well know what it means to indulge, you reach a nobly stable state.

There is nothing I want to conclude nor are these related, I just felt like storing them, so I did.

Sometimes ...

Sometimes, peace is the most belligerent form of war
Sometimes, silence is the most powerful form of speech
Sometimes, modesty is the most appealing form of presentation
Sometimes, simplicity is the most sophisticated form of expression
Sometimes, love is the mightiest form of retaliation
Sometimes, renunciation is the purest form of love
Sometimes, being yourself is the greatest form of you

All my ISB courses

Some had asked me for courses that ISB offers. It is available on this link, but let me also store here the courses I did, just so I can answer later when someone asks me "What the heck did you study at ISB?". The first four are core terms and the last four are elective terms.

Term 1
.... Statistical Methods for Management Decisions
.... Financial Accounting in Decision Making
.... Marketing Management
.... Managerial Economics

Term 2
.... Competitive Strategy
.... Decision Models and Optimization
.... Global Economics
.... Marketing Decision Making

Term 3
.... Entrepreneurship
.... Operations Management
.... Managerial Accounting and Decision Making
.... Corporate Finance

Term 4
.... Management of Organizations
.... Government, Society and Business
.... Investment Analysis
.... Strategic Analysis of Information Technology

I am trying to complete a double specialization in Strategy and Marketing. I hope I am able to, maybe I might just end up with one if I don't have the energy to do enough courses in term 8. The ones in [brackets] are those that I just attended without taking them.

Term 5
.... Pricing
.... Entrepreneurial Decision Making
.... Corporate Development, Mergers & Acquisitions
.... Business-Business Marketing
.... [International Finance]

Term 6
.... Power and Politics
.... Marketing Services
.... International Marketing
.... Negotiation Analysis
.... Managing Teams
.... [Financial Statements Analysis]

Term 7 (kept a little light for placements)
.... Technology Strategy Consulting
.... Strategic Challenges for Innovation based Start-ups
.... Economics of Strategy

Term 8
.... Consumer Behaviour
.... Rural Marketing
.... Indian Financial System
.... Project Management

I don't think I could have found any other better way to learn so much in one year. I am sure any MBA program around the world is equally wonderful, if not better. For that matter I think any kind of education is going to teach us wonderful things. But wait, isn't life itself a wonderful teacher? Ok, let me stop philosophies and get back to talking about ISB. The prominent disadvantage of ISB compared to other top B-schools of the world is that other than the exchange students, there is only a handful of students with no Indian origin. But one distinct advantage is that most of the professors here are visiting, so the world's best faculty teaches at ISB.

Just give up life before you come for an MBA and I assure you there will be sufficient compensation. But before that, prepare for three months and take the GMAT :-)

Some interesting quotes from class

Statistics: "When you've to prove something, assume the opposite and look for reasons to disprove it, rather than assuming the hypothesis and looking for the first opportunity to prove it." True, else we are just going to fall trap to confirmation bias. That was during a class on null hypothesis test.

Corporate Finance: "Assets are classified into two types, based on their relationships with the market. High beta assets are like bad friends, they rise with the market and fall with the market. Low beta assets are like good friends, they rise when the market falls. They are the ones that will save you during bad times".

Management of Organizations: "When a frog is thrown into boiling water, it leaps out immediately. But if you put the frog in water and boil it slowly, the frog dies. It's because the frog incrementally thinks the temperature is fine, until at some point, it gets killed. In a mouse experiment with water, the mouse is thrown into water, but is pressed inside whenever it tries to come out. After repeated such trials, when the mouse is thrown into water, it sinks even when you don't press it down, because it no longer tries."

Corporate Development: "It is good to be smart, but don't think you can substitute hard work with smartness. Smartness can probably take you to the top, but won't keep you there. If you think you're smart, I can find ten guys smarter than you're. But if you tell me you are hardworking, I might not be able to find someone more hardworking than you're."

Pricing: "When you find your first job, keep your last job in mind. Get into the job that will take you to where and how you want to retire." It was a reverse application of game theory.

Power and Politics: "Facebook has kindled narcissist instincts in people. Within our networks, we have started believing that we're celebrities and have started updating with statuses like 'I've bought a puppy'. Such is the power of networks. Build your network and gain power".

Managing teams: "Most leaders are extroverts by nature. But during an experiment, it was observed that extrovert males tried to show leadership skills only when there was a girl in the group, not otherwise. And many researches later have also found to prove the same." Guys never change, do we?

Negotiation Analysis: "If you want to convince a guy, send a girl and vice versa for a girl. However there is a difference. In the former case, if the girl just taps the shoulder of the guy, the guy is almost convinced but the same is not proved so far for the latter case." We cheap guys!

Economics of Strategy: What may appear irrational behaviour is often quite rational to the other person who may simply have a different belief system. Consider yourself to have failed if you assume others are irrational.