Monday Musings 223 - Randomness - the lost ideal

Monday Musings 223 - Randomness - the lost ideal

"Work destroys your soul by stealthily invading your brain during the hours  not officially spent working - be selective about your profession"

"In nature we never repeat the same motion; in captivity (office, gym, commute, sports), life is just repetitive-stress injury" - 

by Nassim Nicholas Taleb in "the Bed of Procustes"

The subject of work has always intrigued me, particularly the dimension of work which is beyond the aspect of 'making a living' out of it. The fact that there are infinitely more who work to make a living than those who work for the love of it only makes this issue more pervasive and in some ways perverted. It does not requires a genius to figure out that the pursuit of making a living is the central theme of being a social creature and should one fail to do it in the maddening pursuit of doing what one loves, hell shall fall.

Nassims first pearl of wisdom is uncanny and poignant. It is no secret that modern cubiclewallah takes work home in more deceptive ways than the obvious. The simplest and the probably the least harmful amongst them is to take the 'physical' work home. The more ubiquitous and probably the more damaging is those aspects that he takes 'stealthily' home. These are the anxieties, the spillovers, the worms of intrigue that remain in him, unbeknown to him and in most cases outside his abilities to resist. They rob him of his authenticity - in leisure, in family and in solitude. Each one handles this systematic invasion in his own way. Some may be actually good at leaving work at work, but if Nassim is to be believed, it rarely happens. My guess is that most learn to live with the corruption of the soul rationalising that it is the price of being success full in the work that they are into, even though it may not be the work that they would have wanted to. I am intrigued not with the phenomena anymore but how i wish i knew how each one is dealing with it. It would make a fantastic viewing - an engrossing cinema of sorts. 

Nassims second pearl of wisdom is amazing in its observation. Come to think of it that in nature everything is random, nothing is repetitive, while in modern living everything has a routine, a pattern - and whatever is repetitive must remind us of captivity, for in only captivity that motions need to be repeated. Free living is about randomness. Modern living shrinks the space for randomness. Even the weekend leisure is becoming repetitive - friends coming over, going out so on and so forth. Even gym, which is so healthy, is about receptive patterns. Pure joy comes from randomness. Repetitiveness can only make you a prisoner and engender ennui and boredom. Only randomness provides succour and freshness. It is the balm for the soul. I keep wondering about how often i do something really random - and the answer is not very kind. 

So here is what i tell myself. Life is supposed to be random - not repetitive. But randomness in the times of primacy of 'making a living' requires courage or may be clarity preceeding courage.  

Randomness may the lost ideal. Can i rediscover it?

Guru

Monday Musings 222 - The Procustean Bed, Work and Relationships

Monday Musings 222 - The Procustean Bed, Work and Relationships

Procustes, in Greek mythology was someone who had a queer sense of hospitality. He would entertain his guests well and then make them lie on a bed. If they were longer than the bed he would chop off their legs and if they were shorter, he would stretch the victims till they equaled the length of the bed. In today’s times we do not need a Procustes to do this. Each one is sufficient to inflict this to himself.

Essentially the bed of Procustes indicates perpetrating the violence of chopping or stretching self to what we ought to be or have. What we were meant to be or have can go take a walk! What we are and do have be damned! Ironically and tragically it is not Procustes who is perpetrating this violence on unsuspecting victims but the ‘I ’who is doing it.

This violence is most visible in two spaces – at work and in relationships.

All of us have notions of what is our ideal work with ideal designation and with ideal money. Usually it is at variance with what we have. So we become active Procustes. We mindlessly and incessantly chop parts of it that is not up to our liking. We ignore those aspects of it which are such a terrible drain even if that is core to that work. We abhor certain activities which are a part and parcel of that role which are not what we enjoy but if removed it has the potential to adversely impact the role itself. We want to do only parts of it – either the creative side of it, or the leadership side of it – and rarely the administrating side of it or the networking side of it. There are parts of our jobs that we would be so happy to hand over to Procustes!

Apart from the procrustean chopping, there is also the tragedy procrustean stretching at work. The perpetual desire to want more keeps us perpetually dissatisfied with our current situation. The notions of success at every stage, heavily deriving from our own sense of ambition and fuelled by peer comparisons, keep us precariously on the edge of dissatisfaction.  What we do not have from our work is the single largest source of angst today, may be with the exception of relationships – of all hues.

The Procustean tragedy corrodes relationships too. There is always an expectation mismatch that is plaguing it. Something that is supposed to only be the source of joy, companionship and bliss becomes a source of unending grief. We want more when we cannot have it – the bed is only so long! So begins the soul destroying task of stretching – of putting ourselves through the very excruciating process of wanting more, in the process either ignoring or giving up what we had the fortune of having. Strange are matters of human want!

Yet other times we want to chop off certain things about a relationship that we do not like. It’s like saying I do not like Violet from the rainbow and let me remove it. Even a child knows that if you do so, you have deformed the rainbow and the rainbow will not exist anymore. Yet again we risk what we have at the altar of what we want. Strange are the matters of human want!

The Procustean bed has an explanation in poetry.

Ye Dil bhi ek bachhe ki manind hai

Ya to ise sab kuch chahiye, ya kuch bhi nahi

(The heart is like a child – either it wants everything or nothing)

Guru

Monday Musings 221 – The Left, The Right and The Cubicle

Monday Musings 221 – The Left, The Right and The Cubicle

Way back during my B School, at the peak of the Israel- Palestinian conflict, during a country report presentation where I had chosen to study Israel, my professor asked me a question – “so as a businessman would you invest in Israel?”  I had poured over the history of Israel way back to their first displacement  thousands of years ago in the run up to that presentation and had developed a soft corner for perhaps the most traumatized people on this earth in the name of their faith and also perhaps the most resilient. Such was the impact of what I read that I forgot that I was answering a business professor not a sociology one. I got a C minus or its equivalent  because I answered ‘Yes’ because the professor opined that here was a case of a poor manger who had allowed his sentimentality overrule his rational judgment, a prerequisite for being successful in the corporate world. Israel never left my consciousness since then and neither did the C minus.

The business world at most levels shuns the issue of political affiliations or sympathies because the belief is that these two are distinct worlds and the employees political beliefs do not matter and hence are not material to his business decision making and thus must be kept at a distance. I am sure there is great merit in this, but I am increasingly coming to a conclusion that these might be important after all. Let me argue it out.

The right of the political establishment usually believes in economic liberalization but has strong views about individual liberties and how much that should be allowed. Indian right has strong views about religious freedom, freedom of expression of speech, gender liberties, rights for LGBT, as the American right has strong views about the church, abortion rights, LGBT again so on and so forth. Similarly the left of the political establishment in India or Europe usually believes in liberal stance on issues of individual choices like religion, gender, sexual preferences so on and so forth but has mixed up economic priorities which often lead to depressed economic growth. One does not have the best of both worlds!!

Leaders have to live in the two worlds of the ‘right’ and the ‘left’ together – and higher up they are the more critical this balance is.

Leaders have to deliver results under very trying internal and external circumstances. This demands from them a world view which believes in the delivery of business result and if it means a sacrifice of the individual liberty, for the larger good, so be it. Such leaders in their own mind are being true to their raison d’ etre, which is take a task to fulfillment. It is not that softer aspects like co creation and co option, sensitivity to human emotions, tolerating dissent, respecting divergence of thinking are unknown to them but in their hierarchy of criticality these are subservient to the grand objective of “geting the damn job done”, a sentiment that is very rightist.

Increasingly organizations are measuring, highlighting and hence becoming sensitive about leaders who not only deliver results for them but are also upholders of individual rights, liberties, tolerant to all kinds of diversity and for the want of a better word, philosophically speaking believers of humanism. No wonder the universe of behavioral training and leadership development programs borrows so heavily from the world of belief, philosophy and sociology. These are influences which are essentially leftist.

The conundrum is as follows – will a person with right leanings ever understand, appreciate and adopt liberal principles in his leadership style? Will attending all leadership development programs to develop such sensitivity work at all? And will bleeding heart liberals ever be consistent in achieving results or allow their bleeding-heart-liberalism cloud their business judgment. A C minus in real life can be disastrous.

 Guru 

Monday Musings 220 - The Run is bigger than the Runner

Monday Musings 220 - The run is bigger than the runner

Claiming that I ran my first full marathon, a neat 42 kilometers will be both, a truth and a lie. It is true to the extent that I reached the finishing line in one piece and supported ably by two aching limbs and yet it is a lie because what I did in the last 10 kms cannot be called a run even if one were to be blessed with a hyperactive imagination or a penchant for the hyperbole. I did something between a walk and a crawl in those kilometers, supported by conversation with a fellow lady runner who was in equal distress. As far as my own distress is concerned, let me only comment that male distress often takes a U turn when it meets the distress of the opposite gender.

Even though my amateur attempts at long distance running are a few years old now, nothing had prepared me for what I experienced. Here are a few things that I discovered.

The first one is that all long distance runs, marathon being only one of them and one can safely treat life and career and relationships as others of the ilk, is about dealing with unpredictability. One can prepare and one must, but at the end of it all, one has to deal with at least one thing that he was never prepared for. When that happens and something or the other  will happen, there is no solution as you are in the middle of the run, you only deal with it. Now dealing with a problem is different from solving it. One realizes through the experience of marathons that in long runs, one does not always have the luxury of a solution – one only has resort of ability to deal with it.  So the big question I asked myself – can I deal with a problem even when I cannot solve it?

The second experience is about the whole array of things around preparing for the long run. My experiment of the 42 without too many training attempts at the distance clearly showed in my shoddy timings and a weak end. Motivation, energy, enthusiasm is good to have and probably are critical too. However a runner buoyed only by them will discover that they are insufficient if not fickle. Long runs are run on the dint of old fashioned practice, training, regularity, discipline and diligence. My last 30 days tapering of the practice, indiscipline of diet and dilution in diligence was never compensated enough by the power of passion. So even if there is the shadow of unpredictability looming large, there is no substitute for preparation. So the big question I asked myself is how often do I submit to the lure of allowing my sense of passion rule over my sense of preparation – and how much of my outcomes are a result of it?

Long distance running is different from all other competitive sports because in no other sporting activity, maybe with the exception of mountaineering, even competitors respect each. In some sense each one is running his own race, competing with his own timings, his own limitations, and his own sense of self. When you see a fellow runner in pain or in trance – and these are the only two states runners are in the last few kilometers, the emotion that gets generated is not that of competition but of respect – for you know what he is going through and what has taken for him to reach here.

Even though all of them covet the place on the podium there is no animosity or jealousy or a pettiness of mind – but the magnanimity of heart that blooms out of respect. He is running his race and you are running yours. Even if there is competition, it is uplifting and not petty. One cannot imagine a runner who appreciates the nature of the long, very long run, do anything that is petty. The nature of the run is such that it uplifts even those who might have tendencies otherwise. So the big question I asked myself is how much everyone around me deserves so much more RESPECT for what they have endured and still have the gumption and courage to be in the run.

Finally and I am saving the best for the last – the big realization is  that when all is said done and everything is done and dusted, every runner worth the salt that he loses recognizes that whoever you are and whatever your timings are and howsoever large are your accomplishments and talents, the run is always bigger than the runner. Often in other runs like life and work, runners start believing in their own indispensability and importance a tad too much, only to be jolted to reality sooner or later and often in a manner that is tragic and painful. My suggestion to those who are lucky enough not to have received such jolts so far is  - run! You just need one long run to realize that the run is bigger that the runner – any runner. 

Guru

Monday Musings 219 – …and it passed away!

Monday Musings 219 – …and it passed away!

A year passing away is at best a symbolic event, if at all it can be called an event – for in reality nothing really happens on that day. There is nothing big bang about the day, the year passes away in sleep really. So like all his ancestors 2014 also will pass way tonight. May its soul rest in peace.

Each year has its own biography, adorned with events and idiosyncrasies, for each year we give the year an opportunity to swing from the heights of imaginative brilliance to the lows of mind numbing stupidities. It is through this concoction the year acquires a flavor, so distinctly its own. At the end of 12 months, on the day of its passing the specific events are forgotten and may be they are irrelevant, only the lingering taste of it remains. It’s like food. Once the food is cooked and eaten, only its zayka remains. Now zayka is an interesting word – it means a combination of taste, aftertaste and flavor. The question then is what is the zayka that is left behind as the year has passed. That and only that matters.

The counter question is equally powerful – does passing off of a year really matter? What is the fuss about passing off of the number on a measuring tool called the calendar? The sooner we recognize the ephemeral nature of things, people and fortunes, the sooner we shall rest in peace – pun intended. Our significance in the larger scheme of things is always a heightened mirage, a story of indispensability we have been telling ourselves only to delude the mind, quite well knowing that the world will go on even without us, may be a wee bit better. So this soul will drink an extra glass in exasperation while everyone around him will drink in celebration.

I like the internet forward which says it best – “we all have two lives. The second one starts when we realize we only have one”.  It can be a truly liberating view. In the last few years, just like everyone I have made a few resolutions, missed following most of them by the end of January, but managed to limp forward with a few of them. I don’t think there is anything wrong in making resolutions but it will be naïve to believe in its magical ability to make things any better that what they were, a fact that will become amply clear by end of January or at best by end of March. The recognition and the realization that there is only one life or its miniature version, that this year will exist only once can be very burdensome or can be very liberating. It decides our attitude towards that very abstract notion called time.

I ask myself what is my attitude towards time and get no clear answers. Do I treat it like a perishable goods and hence with soft hands, fearful to spend it on things that do not merit spending something as precious? Do I treat it with nonchalance of a king, who knows that he has enough and more of it and hence treats time with disdain? Do I ignore it like one would ignore seasons, for they come and go, of their own accord and over whom we have little control – for we can only chose our clothes and not the season? I ask myself much more and get no clear answers.

So I also ask myself, how should I treat this day which shall pass away in its sleep? Should I treat it as just another day or should I make an event out of it, just like many around me are making? I don’t have clear answers.

Guru

Monday Musings 218 - Two things

Monday Musings 218 - Two things

The title may be a shameless rip off, but then who cares when the point I make it is original. Then I also ask myself what if the point is equally a rip off and I tell myself who cares as long as the articulation is new. Didn’t someone say, the tale is in the telling!

So here are the two things. The first one is actually a question that I wonder about. Let me share the set of questions first and then I will share what makes me wonder about it. What makes the beginning of a trend? When can one say that something or someone ‘created/started/ignited’ a thing which others picked up and soon many more started to do or talk or write about and hence one can safely call it a trend? What happens when established names, celebrities and icons pick up, accidentally or deliberately, what may have been dealt with already by a novice or a newbie, but by sheer virtue of their established stardom walk away with a lion’s share of the credit of having started the trend?

Three novels hit the Indian market in the last few months with practically the same theme, if not the same plot. The protagonists, male or female from the heartland of Bihar and their story of adjustments, trials, exploration and discovery in the hallowed corridors of the Delhi University. The contrast is pretty obvious – Bihar and its teeming millions, uncouth and desi in the popular imagination, an archetype popularized by the inimitable Lalu, set against the sophisticated and elitist Delhi university. Sparks had to fly! First came the bilingual ‘What a loser/Loser kahin ka’ by the new kid on the block, Pankaj Dubey, then came ‘Half Girlfriend’ by the celebrity author Chetan Bhagat and finally ‘Your dreams are mine now’ by Ravindra Singh, another established name.

So who started the trend of spotting that there is a story in pitching these contrasts against each other and weave a story around it? It is an amazing context that was begging to be explored. Imagine in erstwhile Hindi movies how class was the context that was juiced out for decades – the rich girl/poor boy or vice versa. The story itself was immaterial as much was the potential that such a contrast provided, something that was fascinating enough to be written about in the confidence that thousands will be keen to watch. The person who spotted this potential of the plot was a genius. Once spotted many more added their genius in exploring in multiple shades and nuances this basic plot. Pankaj Dubey, by that yardstick and in that sense, must take the credit for spotting the potential of the story that lies in the tales of thousands of students that come from mofussil India and what they go through in the elite educational institutions in the process of adjustments and integration. I also believe that the choice of making the protagonist from Bihar was equally a stroke of brilliance because Bihar represented the most entertaining version of that caricature. However a point must be made in haste, that for Pankaj, in contrast to the other two authors, it would have been not only a literary pursuit but also cathartic – for he himself was the Bihari in DU. Only he would really know where the shoe pinched. So take a bow Mr. Dubey for giving voice to people like us, who have had similar stories. (By the way I can offer you another plot – how about the deadly combination of being a sardar from bihar in big institutions – do you smell a book in that entertaining concoction? In case you do, do not forget to pay me royalty fee!!)

The second point that I wish to make is really how amazing this experience really is. I am sure across decades the student migrants from the belly of India into the hallowed campuses have engendered a hundred struggles. These struggles sometimes funny, sometimes tragic forge a personality or destroys it. The responses have been seamless assimilation or traumatic alienation or any shade in between these two extremes. The elite or the urban would never understand the impact of these struggles for this was never their journey to be understood or empathized and hence a non issue. I also know for sure that in hindsight most of these stories are happy stories because they leave the protagonist stronger and better placed to deal with that bitch/dog called life. This struggle may not be romantic or grand enough but for the person who has gone through it, is significant enough. So here is three cheers to all those from the hinterland who will land up to the urban universities in India every year with starry eyes, a desi heart and an ‘aluminum box on his head’

Monday Musings 217 - Two tales for the cubiclewallahs

Monday Musings 217 - Two tales for the cubiclewallahs

Two conversations over the last week stayed with me – one was the disdain wreaked on me by friends back home on an innocuous question like “What do I really do at office” and the second was a conversation about what keeps some managers interested in their teams even when they move on.

The first generation job holders find it difficult to explain to his/her brethrens back home as to what do they really do at office. They understand work in simple terms – if you are a farmer you till the land, if you are a driver you drive the car, if you are a miner you enter the mines, if you are shopkeeper you open the shop every morning and sell, if you are a doctor you wait for folks to fall ill so that you can offer cure and if you are an engineer you make things. My folks understand work through the prism of the life of an ACC cement township, where every morning hundreds would trickle in every morning at the sound of a loud siren that would indicate the beginning of the 8 to 4 shift, an afternoon siren at 12.30 to indicate lunch and an evening siren at 4 to indicate end of shift, when the same thousands would trickle out – a tad tired and a tad dirty. In between what they really did was not difficult to understand – some ran machines, some picked up stuff, some made entries so on and so forth.

They found it difficult understand just as I found it herculean to explain, what I really did at office. For instance the notion of attending and calling meetings one after the other the whole day and then repeat it 5 days a week was pretty amusing to them. For instance a childhood friend after having struggled to understand what we really do in those meetings remarked, “So when do you guys work?” I kept silent. Another friend was not that kind when he remarked “so you make all that money by a few people sitting in a circle and just…err….talking and doing nothing, is it?” I swallowed pride but smiled but have not talked to him when he added “we do that all the time but our parents quite disapprove of it”.  

I am sure someday they will realize that we are a hard working lot and earn our pizza with the sweat of our brow…mmmm….ok not really sweat of the brow, but we do sweat. The notion of work is in the hands and head of the worker and just like one man’s food is another man’s poison, one man’s work can be another man’s leisure.

The second thought was around how do managers behave once they move on to another role or another company? Do they keep calling old team members to find out what is happening and whether the world has actually come to an end? There are some matured ones who stay away consciously and purposefully because they recognize that what is worse than a breakup is to call up your ex and check about the new partner.

However many are not matured enough. They would relish calling the old team members to figure out how is it working with the new person and subtly fish for compliments as how things were so much better under him/her than now. Indispensability is the aphrodisiac for managers. There is unmatched joy in hearing about the ‘good old days…with him of course”. Subordinates are also smart because they understand the subtleties of this call and fuel it appropriately while praising how ‘meaningful/enjoyable etc” life was under the previous regime. Such managers damage the purpose of continuity in the teams those they had nourished and built, but more importantly they betray their own insecurities, which is up for display for those whom he had led with the assurances of high conduct only in the recent past. I feel sorry for them and then I ask myself if I had some something similar consciously or unconsciously ever. Suddenly I don’t like what I am writing and so I stop.

Guru