179 Monday Musings: Bhag Milkha Bhag

179 Monday Musings: Bhag Milkha Bhag

It is difficult not to be moved by the story of the iconic Milkha Singh and despite cinematic excesses in the movie ‘Bhag Milkha Bhag’(BMB) by the thoughtful Rakesh Omprakash Mehra, it is difficult to come out of the movie without being inspired, in small measure or large. You can treat this musing as a kind of movie review along with how the tale touched.

Partition continues to intrigue me. In story after story, where partition is the central character or in other stories where partition is like the subtext, hanging like a shadow, the bloodiest part of the subcontinent’s history has left individuals, families, communities and nations with memories. The angst and literary expression it has generated is rivalled only with the one generated by the holocaust. However it is clearly not been dissected with as many nuances and perspectives. I guess we are not as fearless and large hearted in dealing with our past and its demons. The impact of the partition on the impressionable young Milkha, despite its barbaric nature has been dealt with sensitivity. One would almost miss the humanity of the maulvi saving Milkha’s childhood friend, raising him as his own and getting him married as an alternative narrative to the mayhem and bloodshed. As the friend quips in a scene, ‘Those times were mad and not people’.

The story to finding his calling in running is beautifully told. Children of disasters must find their calling in something that takes their mind away from the pain, grief and squalor around them; otherwise these have a way of sucking human beings into a bottomless abyss. What better way of dealing with them but to drain your body of every ounce of energy, not leaving enough even to brood, complain and be depressed. Running is a release. Running to the level of having tested your limits, is liberating.

Farhan Akhtar’s chiselled body is a treat to watch. For most middle aged men with mild to more pronounced paunches, his physique is not only a treat to watch but also a matter of envy. He plays the physicality of the celebrated athlete with élan, but misses the plot in portraying the punjabiness of the character. He looks out of place in depicting the demeanour, diction and earthliness of a Punjabi youth of the 60’s. He betrays the Bandra-boy roots.

In my view, the crown goes to Divya dutta, who plays the elder sister to the young Milkha. There are two sequences that will make eyes moist. The one where she finds Milkha amongst the survivors and the other when Milkha returns from the army and makes her wear his India blazer. We are told through other accounts that the real Milkha Singh considers the influence of his elder sister as pivotal and through the movie it’s not difficult to see why. If I had the powers I would give Divya two things – this year’s best supporting actress award and second a big hug.

Finally a word on film making. I wish we make more biopics and more sports movies. Our cinematic record sucks on both these counts. Till that time, kudos to Rakesh Om Prakash Mehra for bringing us this story. I hope that it inspires yet another generation, not only to run but how to live. 

Guru 

 

178 Monday Musings: The conspiracy of coincidences

178 Monday Musings: The conspiracy of coincidences

I got introduced to this phrase the day before yesterday and ever since it has been swarming on my mind like a beehive. The basic premise of the phrase is that coincidences, particularly the positive ones, have their own algorithms. They are not isolated or random as they appear to be. When things happen in a way that everything falls in place or when people turn up to help and solve when you are stuck in the most unimaginable way or when breakthroughs fall in your lap or an unrelated chain of events creates ripples which land at your feet, one cannot help but smile at the conspiracy of coincidences. 

I have heard many recount how their project was stuck for long in either bureaucratic maze or resource crunch or a difficult roadblock and then suddenly someone appeared from nowhere and solved it for no apparent gain of his. The conspiracy of coincidence is the savior. 

There are times when you are nursing a dilemma that has become the sore of your soul and you meet someone at the airport or the train and the casual conversation meanders through banalities and reaches exactly at the doorstep of your dilemma. You find that the stranger has been through it or is going through it, and in the course of the conversation either gives you an insight which you were missing it all this while or a solution that your were blinded to or makes you feel puny in the petty way you were relating to the crisis. You are amazed at the conspiracy of coincidence. How did he know what your were thinking or going through?

You are reading a book, researching a subject, following an author and the new joinee at office seems to have researched the subject in a detail that you can't even imagine. He adds a new zing to your pursuit and makes you widen the audacity of your ambitions. You cannot thank the conspiracy of coincidence enough. 

You are nursing a relationship ache. If you are dramatic you will believe it is the end of the world, if your are a realist you will believe it was meant to happen and move ahead and if you are a pragmatist you will find the silver lining - in all possibilities there is a great chance that you are left disillusioned. Just when you are at the tethering end of the rope, dangling precariously from the precipice, you meet someone who is either so naive and happy that you feel guilty at your own corruption of soul and ask yourself 'did i give up a tad too early', or he is so optimistic that you tell yourself 'let me give happiness one more chance'. Either ways, you are thankful to the conspiracy of coincidence, which saved your soul.

I guess, the rainbow of life lends such conspiracies to make it more tolerable or enjoyable - the perspective however is yours.

Guru

177 Monday Musings: Total Recall

177 Monday Musings: Total Recall

What makes companies recall leaders, either in management positions or on the board, after they have either retired or have been sacked before? Narayan Murthy, the venerated founder of the iconic software giant Infosys has been called back to be its executive Chairman. A few days ago, on the other side of the world P & G recalled A.G. Lafley as its chief executive officer after having retired from the company in 2009. The legendary Steve Jobs who was fired from the company he co founded, Apple, was called back to change its fortunes in 1997. Similarly Howard Schultz reentered Starbucks and created a success story. I am sure there are more, some which have worked spectacularly and some which have not. 

These are of course high profile examples that are being talked about in the press, but everyday in organisations this issue gets played out in dozens, and without much fanfare. At its heart, such recalls betray a fundamental question, are some people more indispensable than others? One might couch such recalls in sophisticated glibness, but it boils down to a plea-on-the-knees to such knights in shining armory, 'please-save-us'. Its nothing but an SOS!

Where does that leave the celebrated HR process called 'succession planning'? Can it be really planned? Does a process, fitted with objective talent assessments, development plans, shadow learning, coaching and the whole nine yard of it, guarantee success for the incumbent? Almost everyday, vacuum gets created when incumbents hang up their boots or are shown the door in everyday roles and one is left wondering, if the organisation got it wrong. As the downward slide begins, there is denial to begin with, artificial patience is discovered in the name of giving time, because no one wants to admit that they messed it up, and finally when the stink goes out to the neighborhood, a suitable explanation or scapegoat is found. 

But what if everyone genuine believed that the replacement was indeed capable to shoulder the responsibility, but the cookie crumbled in an entirely different way? What if a fool proof succession planning is actually a myth, a conceptual impossibility?

Yet another dimension to all of this is what is the message you are sending to different stakeholders. The customers, shareholders and the markets will be delighted because they draw comfort from familiarity and track record. But how do employees view this? Employees, usually at one or two levels below the incumbent might view this as the return of glass ceiling? They might view this as a delay in their own aspirations, which impacts their engagement and motivation. A sense of indispensability around one has the potential for alienating dozens. 

Guru

176 Monday Musings: First Jobs

176 Monday Musings: First Jobs

First jobs are always special. They linger on forever. You remember them for a variety of reasons. 
You remember them for not knowing the head or tail of what you have to do. You remember them for the long hours of instructions and endless days of meaningless information overload, euphemistically called induction training. Since no one department can handle fresh nincompoops for a very long time, hence they would shuttle you from one department to another in the name of rotational training, so that by the time the first year is complete everyone knows how utterly useless you and your education is for the real world and from your side you become completely disillusioned by the way the corporate world works. 

For every query, a manual, a section, a sub section and a policy is thrown at you. There is a travel policy which tells you that the kind of hotel that you would want to live in is always beyond your band and that all local travels must have details of where you went and with whom, which often is something you are not willing to divulge. For example why would you tell them that you took the afternoon off and went to have beer with freshers like you and indulge in competitive bitching about whose job sucks the most. There is a leave policy that you need to memorize  even though leaves don't apply to newbies like you. There is promotion policy that you are shown as a tantalizing carrot, but which is something you are not even allowed to imagine for the next three years. 

First job is remembered for endless trips to the printer, photocopier, the printing press and any other clerk job that all seniors did when they were freshers, but now want you to do it, positioned to you as learning the basics, but in reality nothing less than revenge. You often stay till the last because everyone believes, because you are a fresher you do do not have a life, not at least a social one. They believe, like normal human beings, you do not feel hungry or feel the need to sleep every once in a while. They also believe that dumping more work just when you are about to leave for the day at 10 in the night is preparing you for larger things to come. First job teaches you the virtues of smiling at gross stupidity, tolerating lack of logic and finally warming up to the idea that the longer people have been here the more skeletons they have to hide. You learn more about the office politics. cliques, coteries, cabals and history from the guard, pantry boy the housekeeping staff and the lowly support staff, something the HR department inadvertently forgot to mention in their induction. 

The good news is that everyone remembers his first job, at least the normal ones do. The bad news is only a few remember who they were and how they were then. Considering what they end up becoming, its a good thing to remember. Check it out!

Guru

175 Monday Musings: On Road

175 Monday Musings: On Road

Indian roads may be bad for the back but are are balm for the soul. Road travel by and large will score over on all other modes of travel . Air travel is aseptic, clinical and wholesomely lacks character. Train travel is poetic in many ways, at least second class long distance certainly is. More on that some other time,  Road travel is a lot like life. 

Like life, one can chose the road one takes but cannot predict the twists and turns, the traffic and signals, the climb and the fall. Like life, you can make broad calculations about how much time you will take to reach the destination and how comfortably you will accomplish the journey, but beyond that the road journey has a mind of its own. It will slow you down when you least expect it, it will run unperturbed and smooth in patches and then it will run into a rough patch where it will only inch. Many a times you have to take a detour, a diversion because the roadblock is substantial. When the going is good one should make the most of it to cover maximum ground, because you will lose time when the going becomes tough. There will be stops, and you must stop to reinvigorate, both your body as well as the machine you are making this journey on. Rarely but sometimes you may also realize that you have taken the wrong road. 

The road also teaches you to not to speed too much that you lose sight of the view. There is great fun in absorbing the terrain, the barren nothingness that separates habitation, the isolated tree in wilderness holding fort, the wavy hillocks which may have been mountains of yore, the one man walking to his fields out of nowhere. The road travel makes you aware of nothingness and makes you appreciate the calm that lies between cities. One can see life coming in slow motion as one speeds down the road and at that 80kmph. 

At that speed, the mind also becomes fertile. The mind can become still and you can hear the silence in your head, something that you so terribly lack caught up in the din and bustle of existence. The mind at 80kmph can thoughtful and sensitive and can start relaying memories of the past, love and hate of today and vision of the future. It uplifts you to a new level of awareness, should you chose to listen to it. The loneliness of the road tells you of the futility of so many things. You can meet yourself during such a road trip. You may even begin the journey of reclaiming it. 

Guru

174 Monday Musings: Two movies

174 Monday Musings: Two movies

Most movies tell stories. Some become stories. The eighties were generally tacky, gaudy, loud, preposterous, formula flicks which, as some would argue represented the worst phase of Indian cinema. There were typical formulas, of brothers separating, village thakur as the villain  who would often kill the honest father, revenge, the avenging of the sister's honor, a few dances with a dozen costumes, and a hapless crying mother. One cringes when he sees any one of those horrible ones on the TV, even though i am told there is a fan club of that genre of movies, who get together to watch them for old time sake. Clearly, an imminently forgettable phase of Indian Hindi cinema. 

As the eighties was drawing to a close and around 1990, two movies got released and i would argue they represented a decisive shift in Hindi cinema. Qyamat se Qyamat tak, otherwise known as QSQT, a love story with brilliant songs under the absolutely fresh music director duo Jatin Lalit and directed by the young Mansoor Khan, brought back the genre of romance back after almost a decade. Most importantly, the movie spoke the language of the youth, its impatience with the restrictive structures of those times, pretty much coinciding with the build up to the 1991 economic reforms and the anti Mandal commission agiatation. Indian youth was wanting to be freed, and QSQT became a smashing hit riding on that wave. The death of the leading couple at the hands of fighting elders only galvanized the youth to fight against regressive world views. Good melody came back to prominence in an industry which was flooded with cheeky lyrics and extremely forgettable tunes for quite some time then. Interestingly, QSQT celebrates 25 years this year and I am told Amir Khan is planning to do a get together. I hope he also talks about how, in a limited sense, critical was the movie in the history of cinema and the social history of India. 

Ashiqui got released right at the beginning of the 90's, and represented the rush of melody back in Indian cinema. The leading pair, unknown small stars, under the hero's jacket adorned the covers of the T series magnetic tape cassettes. The music was a smashing hit because it was hummable, brought by the brand new Nadeem Shravan, sung by then unknown singers, under the tutelage of the slain music baron Gulashan Kumar - all of them to become household names within years. Ashiqui taught everyone that good music can sell and it can shoulder the entire movie if good enough. India opended its eyes post Mandal, post reforms with the songs of Ashiqui on its lips. Last week Ashiqui 2 was released as a tribute to its predecessor. Whatever be the merits of the movie, it is unlikely that it will capture the youth's imagination in this version as the first version did, owing purely to the circumstances then and the fact that it broke new ground. 

Most movies tell stories, some become stories, for what they end up being associated with. 

Guru

QSQT was the first movie i saw in a theatre. I was 15. Ashiqui was the first cassette i bought. I was 17. I guess that makes both of them personally significant. 

173 Monday Musings: The Signs

173 Monday Musings: The Signs

We look for signs all the time in life, for approval, validation and permission.

Different cultures treat various events, objects and occurrences as good omen or bad. For example in India sneezing or a black cat crossing your way when you are beginning something is considered as a bad sign, but finding a penny in western culture is associated with good luck.  Animals can be symbols of good luck in various cultures like, dolphins ancient Greece, pigs in Germanic cultures, tortoise in Feng Shui, and Red bats and tigers in Chinese cultures. Gifting certain things can be associated with good omens like gifting a laughing Buddha or a used horseshoe, or bamboo. On the other hand breaking a mirror, spilling salt, walking under a ladder, opening an umbrella inside, putting new shoes on the table or calling someone from behind as he is leaving home forebodes bad luck.

Beyond good and bad signs and omens, certain concurrent events are considered indicative. For example repeated sneezing means someone is remembering you, when a lizard makes a sound as you have said something indicates that it is true, crowing of crow means guests are on their way, itching on the right palm means you will receive money.

The ones described above are institutionalised superstition and signs, however we also have our personal signs that help us take decisions, get validated and offer hope. Let me share some that i have heard from friends and foes alike.

A friend wrote the name of the prospective groom on one chit with two blanks and picked one in front of the household deity to see if the divine was blessing the union. Another friend, who was quite attached to her father, discovered her feelings for a gentleman, on the precise day she was attending  her father’s death anniversary, treated it as her father blessing the relationship. Yet another friend, considers the company he works for the best for him, because it’s the name of his mother.

We are unsure and insecure deep inside. We find comfort in innocuous things, events and coincidences, which we consider as signs of divine providence. It assures us, and come to think of it, what is wrong with it.

Look around – there are signs for everything.  

Guru