154 Monday Musings: Good-byes

154 Monday Musings: Good-byes

Good-byes can mean so many things. Good-byes often come along with some kind of discontinuity, a departure from the usual, a shift from how things are or have been. Good-byes mean separation, distancing, moving away, sometimes permanently. Humankind generally does not like good-byes. All of us are comfortable with certain kind of departures and discontinuities and uncomfortable with other kinds of good-byes. Often the enormity of good-bye is determined by the number of discontinuities it will cause and the number of relationships it will distance us from and what do those relationships mean to us. Adults find good-byes more traumatic because with increasing age they have less and less left to offer to new ones, so a good-bye for them is like an investment gone bad. Their own emotional poverty scares them when its time to say good-bye.  

How does one deal with good-byes? Each one of us has built a certain threshold to good-byes called the good-bye tolerance and a good-bye response mechanism over the lives we have lived. Good-bye tolerance indicates how much of the strain caused by the good-bye are you able to take in your stride. Do good-byes disturb you generally? Does the prospect of going away, separation, and realizing that the presence of people around you, that you had got so used to, almost to the point of believing it to be a permanent presence, causes something to churn inside you - or are you comfortable with the thought. Do you lose sleep and are generally irritated by that thought in an otherwise perfect life? The amiss is inexplicable, the void is undescribable, the vacuum is like a footsore, not fatal but reminding you of an imperfection at every step - the only difference that its an heartsore and not a footsore!!

The good-bye response mechanism is the methods we chose or have practiced to perfection to deal with those changes that come along with good-byes. Some immerse themselves in other pursuits with a vengeance to take their mind away from the turmoil unleashed by the good-bye. Others shut themselves out - withdraw into themselves and try to make themselves 'vulnerability proof'. Some will deny, others will resign. Some will curse, others will squeal. Some will be quiet others will be vocal. Some will express others will hold.  

I have wondered what goes on in the mind and heart of the person undergoing a good-bye. Does he feel the heaviness in his solar plexus, the dryness in his throat, the dullness of his senses, the bottomlessness in his mind, the numbness in his thoughts, the abyss in his heart? Do adults feel the same as adolescents even if they retain the bravado and the aura of self control? Does the calm, the certainty around the eventuality make the feeling of unease any less significant? Finally do you express or do you still remain in control. Adulthood is such a strange business.

I stand at the cusp - the point where one journey ends and the next one begins. There is the burden of a good-bye at this moment that i have to bear. There is a burden of attachment, likings, fondness, respect, awe - and may be a strange concoction of all of the above, which some call love. As i bid good-bye to so many, i want to say to them " I leave behind a part of me with you - hold it with you and i take with me a part of you that i will hold dear". I have said good-byes too many times in life and i tell myself they don't matter and they don't bother me much. I guess i try too hard to tell myself that and betray my  feelings.

Good Bye.

153 Monday Musings: Doing things differently and more

153 Monday Musings: Doing things differently and more

Shiv Khera brought this to the popular consciousness by declaring that winners did not do different things, but did it differently. I shall not get into whether this describes complete truth or a slice of it, instead i shall recount an instance that caught my fancy recently that bears some  testimony to the above maxim.

We all travel by airlines and listen to the inflight demonstration of safety instructions with ennui and ill concealed disinterest. I would be very surprised if even a frequent flyer will be able to discern the difference between the instructions of any two airlines. The monotone of most announcers and their own apparent lack of conviction in what they are speaking does not help either. It is amidst this banality and undifferentiated mediocrity, one cannot help but notice the script of the IndiGo airlines during their in flight instruction. No wonder they currently rule the skies today and are the largest domestic carrier today. A classic case of doing things differently and benefiting from it. 

The IndiGo announcer would among other things speak about the various languages that the crew speak on that give day. They would also comment that they knew that most of flyers would be disinterested to listen to them that we should still listen to them for our safety. 

What amazes me is not that their script is different from others because of all the elements of the flying experience of an airline, the nature, quality and delivery of the inflight safety instruction is not a differentiator or even a determinant of customer satisfaction. It is precisely for its inherent mundane-ness and a very low pecking order of importance that makes IndiGo's effort to be different even there makes it so notice worthy. 

My lesson goes a bit deeper than 'being different' - be different even when and where people do not expect you to be. Differentiation, the classical strategic concept applied to organisations, products or people has some obvious indicators. The world expects you to be different at the obvious levels. The question is, can we be, retain and sustain 'being different' at levels that no one expects us to be - levels where no one would notice except our own quality consciousness, our own sense of dedication. Probably one reaches that stage when you are not being different for being different sake, but when you create value from being different. Its not showmanship or brownies that you are accumulating, but delivering credible value.

Finally a word of caution - have something different before you claim it or else it will the case of the famous Maggi Hot and Sweet tomato sauce - its been more than a decade that i am searching for what is so 'different' in it - i guess even Javed Jaffri is still searching.

Guru

152 Monday Musings: Two and a half seconds in 100 years

152 Monday Musings: Two and a half seconds in 100 years

This is probably the longest journey mankind has ever undertaken. In times of instant gratification and quick fixes, this is a humbling reminder that great journeys are often those that take time. If one looks at the world records held for the most important race in the sporting world, one which crowns the winner as the fastest human being in the universe, the 100m men race and traces its timings across the last 100 years, one would be left gasping at the enormity of a simple and small number.

The list of winners and timings vary basis various sources, but according to one source,   (source:http://www.factmonster.com/ipka/A0106405.html) one Thomas Burke ran the race in 12 seconds in 1896 and lets begin to trace this journey from there. Many other sprinters pushed the boundries and the celebrated US runner Jessie Owens knocked off a cool one and a half seconds and clocked 10.3 seconds in the year 1936, a good 40 years later than Burke. The 10 second barrier was broken in 1968 by James Hines who clocked 9.90 seconds. It has taken the next 60 plus years to push the envelope by another half a second, when Usain Bolt clocked 9.62 seconds a few days back. So the arc of time has travelled more than a hundred years to make progress worth 2 seconds and a bit more. Read it again and let the enormity of it seep in - 100 long years and a progress of just 2 seconds. It cannot get any more overwhelming or grander than this. No other figure with its innate 'tiny-ness' has been so impactful in the history of human progress. It tells us so much about us, our pursuits, and our relentlessness - and it also, if we bother to apply it, puts so many things in perspective.

It tells us that real progress takes time, really long, and frustratingly long period of time. It also tells us that many people will come together and push thier boundries a tad fraction of a second more than the last one and in doing so will push the history of the species an inch forward. The future will stand tall only on the shoulders of the past. It tells us that the agonising wait is so much worth it. It tells us that some times real progress is imperceptible to the naked eye and to really appreciate this try imagining the duration of 2 seconds - its equal to blinking of the eye!!. It tells us the virtues of being at the job and chipping of the rock painstakingly before the statue in it reveals itself.

The story of these two seconds tell us to take a hard look at the growing importance of speed in many aspects of our pursuits today and forces us to question the contemporary wisdom on quick fixes and overnight success. Swiftness is a virtue but not always. This might be counterintuitive to the ways of the world today, but there is enough evidence in the natural world to indicate the virtues of slow progress. All natural processes take a certain time - like procreation, blooming of flowers, ripening of fruits so on and so forth. Anything less than that time is considered unnatural and yields a result which is sub optimal and in most cases abnormal, dysfunctional, and bitter. 

Kabeer says

Dheere dheere re mana, dheere sab kuch hoye

maali seenche sau ghada, ritu aaye phal hoye

(Things take time; Even you water many times, the fruit will bloom only when its time for it do so)

Guru

Monday Musings 151 - We must have a plan

Monday Musings 151 - We must have a plan

"Life is what happens to you while you were busy  making other plans" -John Lennon

We must have a plan - thats the refrain one hears so often. I have dished that advise on many unsuspecting victims many a times. I am an ardent believer of having one all the time. In fact come to think of it, I have more than one all the time, given how in myriad ways the cookie crumbles these days.  

A plan gives things an element of certainty, a feeling, howsoever fragile and pseudo it might be, of being in control. The plan is the anchor in choppy waters, that may or may not suffice when time does come to test it, but till that time at least, it gives a warm feeling of comfort and surety.

 What can be more endearing and warm than to exactly know how things are going to unfold, events are going to pan out, stages are going to unravel, even if it means in the eye of your mind. In all probability their unfolding in the realms of imagination is more joyous than in reality - for in reality they unravel only once, but in the eye of your imagination it does over and over again. Think of all your 'plans' so far, some of which at this date may be referred to as childhood fantasies or adolescent wishful thinking, but which at that time certainly qualified as plans, and fulfilled or not, they still have the capacity to make you smile and give you that warm feeling. One must have plans.

One must have plans and one must not take them seriously. One must believe in them, one must have faith in them, the way one believes in God or has faith in the 'goodness of the world', but one should not be naive enough to be carried away by their certainty. A belief in God should not take away our eye from the devil; a faith in the need to be good should not make us oblivious of the fact that evil exists as much or more. One should make plans and one must be aware of their fragility.

Much as this paradox is difficult to be retained in one head without becoming insane, there are moments when the 'glass must break', if only to keep your rendezvous with reality. It’s almost akin to why a child must be exposed to all kinds of illness during childhood in mild forms so that the body recognizes the need to build immunity against that and much larger illnesses. Small plan must go awry so that we prepare for larger plans going awry. One must have plans and some of them must not fructify.

Can you discern your plan blooming or going to dogs in slow motion? It’s as difficult as watching a flower bloom - you can figure out that the flower has bloomed, but you cannot discern its each step. The bloom is the proof or the disaster.

Imagine how would it be to be able to watch a plan bloom and a plan go bust, but in slow motion. You can do it only if you are a hell of an observer. You must have the heart of angels, the courage of gladiators and the eye of a sage.

Its great fun. 

Guru 

Monday Musings 150- Monday Musings is five.

Monday Musings 150- Monday Musings is five.

Monday musings turns five on 9th of July. I would not have remembered this, had an old colleague not called up recently to inform me. It is certianly a personal milestone that is significant for me, although i am acutely aware that for most it should hardly matter. Here are some of the reflections of an ameteur's attempts at creative writing.

I started writing short pieces in English only when i was well past thirty. English was not my first language for the first thirty years - actually it was practically not my language at all for the first twenty years or so. Hence, the attempt to write in it was simultaneously an act of courage and a leap of faith. The first few steps were very tentative and clouds of self doubt always loomed large. A lot of us write for pleasure and for self consumption or at best share it with a close circle of friends, but writing for public consumption, where there is always a risk of an adverse comment or a barb or a critique, is a different kettle of fish. I was however daunted more by the prospect of discipline, of having to churn out a piece monday after monday. As one would see, that five years and a 150 Monday Musing's later, the success on that count is roughly 60% ie i have been able to churn out a Monday musing 60% of the mondays thus far. I think i have done good by my initial projections.

I have realised in these five years that writing is both an act of craft and an act of discipline and the latter is more difficult than the former. The Genius may look for an act of inspiration to be able to put together a piece, an event, a strand of a thought, a motivation so sublime that its expression will be nothing short of a masterpiece. More often than not however, a lot of observations are wasted, triggers are let unattended, which could have been tales worth telling. I forget more triggers than i remember. I realise if i do not attend to them then and there, the moment is lost. Its difficult, nay impossible to remember it later, much as one tries to struggle with memory or conciousness, a pursuit as futile as remembering last nights dream - you know its there somewhere, vague and hazy but cannot describe it. I regret not nurturing those triggers. I lament the loss of Monday Musings that could have been.

There are times when you feel strongly about something but the expression eludes you. Even as you finish the piece there is a residue than rattles inside you, that is the only proof that you have not justice to the thought or the subject. You have not completed the story and only you know it.

The harshest comment that i have ever recieved about Monday Musings from someone who has followed it closely for quite some time now, is that it is not someone who is living the subject. It appears to the reader that i am not a participant to the drama that i am writing about, i am just a bystander, an observer who is passive and has no stakes in the story. Fair point and accepted.

An imperfection about my writings that i am acutely aware is the singular lack of diversity of subjects. I seem to be writing more and more about the same things. My reportaire is limited or may be i am scared to venture into the unkown. I plan to change that in the coming five years.

As i look back for five years of writing, however intermittent it has been, i feel satisfied and hopeful, because i have managed to sustain it longer than i had estimated. I feel thankful to those who have followed my musings whenever they could, even though they had options of reading more gifted and accomplished writers. If the first five years are any indications, i have all the reasons to look forward to the next five. May they be more purposeful and intense.

Guru 

Monday Musings149 - The sounds, smells and stories of Varanasi

149 - The sounds, smells and stories of Varanasi

If myths, legends, folklore and anecdotes determine the antiquity of a city, then Varanasi, or Benares or Kashi has no dearth of it. A total of 5 hours may be a tad too less to make a view about a city that is considered as the oldest in India and arguably the oldest in the world, but they are certainly enough for Varanasi to make an impression on you. 

Varanasi is an antiquated city, with the old mixing with the very old. Even modern signs and images are represented through metaphors of the ancient. The amount of traffic, both in terms of intensity and speed  that the hardly 3-4 feet alleys that cris- cross the city like veins can accommodate, is only seen to be believed. Human density is mindboggling. And the city still goes through its rites, undeterred by its limitations.

There are two parallel stories of Varanasi - the story of the city, its inhabitants, and its trysts with history, rulers, religion and temples and there is the story of the river Ganges and the entire universe of rituals that it supports and upholds - and beyond a particular time both of these merge together. The story of Varanasi can as well be the story of the river Ganges. One just has to delayer the 5000 year history - every decade and century has added its own layers and left behind its own imprints and followers, each believing that Varanasi belongs to them, never realizing that Varanasi is bigger than them - they are but just one layer. It seems everyone owns a part of Varanasi, and the city has enough to give a piece to give to everybody. Let me give you an example - Of the dozen of names of the Ghats on which people take a dip, sample three name - Narad Ghat (a God or His contemporary), Harsihchandra Ghat (a legendary King), and Rajendra Prasad Ghat (Indias first President) !! What a span!!!!

Varanasi is the city of salvation and liberation. People come here to die, for that is a death worth living for. Pyres burn round the clock on two of its Ghats, Manikarnika and Harishchandra Ghat, particularly the former, a cremation that guarantees salvation according to Hindu beliefs. The sight of the burning pyre, one after the other, is poignant and overwhelming. One can sit in silence and watch it for hours deep in thought at a sight that is enthralling and intimidating at the same time; and when one forces his eyes off it, the thought that ricochets in the mind is 'What’s all the fuss about?' 

Folklore has it, that every fifth house in Varanasi is a temple. It’s not an exaggeration. Although Varanasi may be a city of Hindi legends and folklore, other religions are equally represented. The Kashi Vishwanath temple access is nothing short of a miracle – through dark alleys, where perhaps even sunlight has no access, made more cumbersome and a tad irritating with all the police presence. Mainstream Gods coexist with the occult, the male divine along with the female divine. There are dozens of mosques, a historically significant Sikh gurudwara, and a few churches and finally there is Sarnath, the Place where Budha gave his first sermon after enlightenment. What an eclectic collection of spiritual possibilities – almost like a super mart of religions – the consumer has a wide choice.    

There is ‘Chaorder’- a chaotic order in the sounds – the thousands of bells from the hundreds of temples, the call of the muezzin from the mosque, the buzz of a million believers, the tinkles’ of a thousand rickshaw pullers, the groan of a hundred of automobiles can be a strain not only on your eardrum, but also on your soul – and after a while, when you get used to it, the silence is deafening.

The day ends with the spectacle of the Ganga Aarti, an ode to the mighty river. Two set of priests perform a perfectly synchronized aarti, with consummate ease and harmony, bringing the day to an end for the river, by offering faith, and seeking benediction. As one watches the lit Ghats from the opposite side, atop a boat gliding on the water and become aware of the sound of bells, and the smell of camphor and that of water itself, the thought hits you – that the Ganges has seen this sight for thousands of years, day after day – and then one is no longer sure about the entire concept of time.

One needs a hundred year to understand Varanasi, and may a life time to experience it completely, and even then one would have experienced only a part of it. There are sounds that I can still hear, sights I can still see and smells I still carry. I may have left behind the city, guess the city refuses to leave me behind.

Guru

148 Monday Musings: To do or not to do - is my business!!

148 Monday Musings: To do or not to do - is my business!!

 

Imagine you living in Mumbai for 20 years and not having visited Marine drive or imagine you living in Agra for 20 years and not having visited the Taj or having lived in Delhi for 20 years and not having visited the Qutub Minar!!

What goes through your mind as you imagine any of the above? And then imagine you living wherever you have and think of all that you haven’t visited or done or experienced for long.

Here are 10 thoughts that go through my mind.

1. Life is busy and I just got busy.Being busy is not a sin, is it - and once you are busy with some thing, you are bound to miss others. Its queer, unusual may be, but what’s the big deal - everyone misses something or the other.

2. At times I did not have the right company who could enjoy the joys of visiting something so quintessentially linked to the identity of my city, a joy that quite literally belongs to my city only - and to no other. There are hundreds like me.

3. Aren’t there more important things than visiting the Marine dive, the Taj or the Qutub Minar or any other such thing? I mean, come on, what’s this fuss about a non issue? Why dont you talk about what i did?

4. Cognitively it means not much, in the sense that I was not wasting my time - was I? I was doing other equally or perhaps more important things. But it could mean something at a deeper level. Let me think about it?

5.Lets not be judgmental in ascribing too much significance to this - I did what I had to and going to these places did not seem important in the scheme of priorities that I had then. I will go or not go to places and do things or not do things based on time available or what appeals or what is important to me. It’s my context and so shut up.

6.I might have been doing other big and important things all this while, but small, inconsequential things have their own meaning and significance. (As I write this, it’s the first rains in Mumbai and I can see over a dozen kids playing in the rains below in the society park, and a few adults too!!). There is fulfillment in innanities and more importantly they are rich source of memories for the future. Have you wondered how we seem to remember moments where we let go more than the moments we were restrained and in control.

7. Are there other things also, the joys that I have missed, inadvertently but surely, that I can catch up now on? Let me make a yearly list or a 'bucket list'!

8. Two quotes that have stayed with me for so long suddenly come back. "If only youth knew and Age could?" and the second one by Mark Twain "20 years from now we will only regret what we did not do, rather than what we did"

9.I will not be burdened by the wieght of the 'what ifs' and 'could have beens'. I will only be liberated by the possibilities of 'what can be'.

10. Sometimes poignant misses like these are important to be experienced - they reveal to us the innate imperfection of life, its fundamental nature is incompleteness; and in revealing this imperfection and incompleteness, these experiences indicate to us the struggle and joy of trying to make it perfect.

Guru