238 Monday Musings – A disturbing epiphany

238 Monday Musings – A disturbing epiphany

Last week I had a disturbing epiphany as I met my school English teacher after decades when I visited her in the school she teaches now in Bhubaneswar. The joy of seeing her is beyond description. I saw in amazement how she is still the same - selfless, soft, warm but reticent in her expression of warmth. I can only hope that she would have seen in me that her work has had unimaginable powers and would have added to her faith in what she has been doing all these decades.

I told her in the brief meeting that my lasting regret in life was not to have studied literature, considering that she taught us English, and that I wasted my prime studying the eminently boring and unimaginative world of the sciences. I wanted to tell her more and more about this regret, the pursuit of which was curtailed by the overhang of paucity of time in our rather short meeting. I wanted to tell her that more damage has been done to Indian youth by the pursuit of making them engineers and doctors in the last few decades that the collective damage unleashed by TV, drugs, burgers and Baywatch, the quartet I believe are each devastating enough in their own might. I wanted to tell her that she should have told me then and there that I should have taken languages as my vocation and not bothered to tame the calculus, Newtonian mechanics and pharmacopoeia, which in any case I have not used to change even a bulb or change diapers after having spent sleepless nights agonizing over it.

As I was coming out of the school I was taken to a room where over a dozen students were studying earnestly for their IIT. On a notecopy opened in front of me was the scary serpent of the integrative calculus and I realized that calculus is still out in the open – traumatizing yet another generation. Someone should take retributive if not legislative action on calculus! Don’t they have courts or public interest litigation around these things? Can’t we have a signature campaign to ban calculus before the age of 60 – I guess only the senile should study it but that is exactly what you become if do study it before 60. I desperately wanted to ask the hapless child if he liked languages or sports but did not have the courage. I had a disturbing epiphany – the more things changed the more they remained same.

On my journey back, i remembered every one of my classmates in school, how they were, what were they instinctively and intuitively good at and what career choices they made, how aligned these choices were to their natural flair and most importantly how much of what they studied are they using in the work that they are doing today. I will keep the good doctor in the batch out of this list on humanitarian grounds, but when I think of a person from my batchmates in school who are doing anything remotely productive with their education, I can come up with only one bloke, who after his hotel management degree, cooks Indian food and sells Indian tea in London to bored and nostalgic Indians and the exotic obsessed Brits. I would have never imagined way back that he would ever feature in a list I will make which has praise for him, but one must give any devil his dues!!. So hats off Awinish – keep fleecing the Brits – they deserve it.  

As for the rest – wait for your epiphany. Disturbance is guaranteed.

Guru

Monday Musings 237 - Pain in Praise

Monday Musings 237 - Pain in Praise

Praise can be London weather or Mumbai traffic – totally and utterly unpredictable. What appears like sunny and smooth can soon be grey, cloudy and a depressing snarl. Here is sample to illustrate the point. What do you notice in an otherwise effusive praise that goes like this – “you carry yourself very well and you dress up well; at you age I think you are quite fit”?

In what was turning out to be the best confidence booster for someone just turned 40, the script went horribly wrong. Irredeemable damage. This is not what he was prepared for. The whole thing appeared to be working out quite well till the descriptor ‘at your age’ punctured the ego that was just beginning to inflate. Only a 40 year old who has just been reminded by a twenty something from the other gender can really understand the havoc such a statement can unleash. What began as a fairy tale ended up like a horror movie – as if turning 40 was not enough.

Most 40 year olds would tell you that the bloody number does not do justice to what they feel about themselves. The 20's are times when one wants to do stuff and can actually do it although one may be not be able to afford it always. The 30's one can afford it, can do it as well and often end up doing it although sometimes not knowing why. At 40 however one can certainly afford it, think that one can do it but often realize that the Rubicon may have crossed. Ask him to climb 10 flights of stairs for example and feel the heart trying to jump out of its place(valid for most cases) or wear low waist-tight fitting-neon clothes and see others heart actually jumping out its place! A Chinese proverb says it so well – “If only youth knew and age could”.

Then there is the counter attack of language, particularly in the way phrases are structured,  like – 'age is just a number or a state of mind' or 'I feel 20 even if am much older' 'I am ageing gracefully' and many other humbug like this. I think it is valiant effort by the not so young to use argument to win over facts, use decibel to drown truth. The mirror might reflect back strands of grey, the body might have wobbly knees, the face might betray shadows and lines and some  other sundry clinching evidences might be telling a different tale but the denial is strong and steady. The more intense is the realization of ageing, stronger is its defense. Parlours and gyms make merry – and some very sophisticated con artists run marathons!

So coming back to incident I am still unsure about how should this be allowed to register. Should it feel extremely good or shall it be a rude awakening. One cannot help but smile – I guess this qualifies as black humor - stark but funny. The poor lass who was just being nice and cordial would not even be aware that she let the cat amongst the pigeons (or would the phrase ‘bull in the china shop’ be more apt).

Friends might console that the script could have been much worse. It is a close shave they say, ‘You do look you age’ is far worse than ‘you don’t look your age’ isn’t it?

Small mercies, eh?

Guru

Monday Musings 236 The fickleness of muscle memory

Monday Musings 236 The fickleness of muscle memory

As a wannabe writer i feel i do not have range. I tend to write about only a few things more and more. This self view haunts me. I guess i will have to live with it or keep struggling to expand the range. This preamble was needed because the trigger to this musings is yet again my ongoing relationship with running. 

Last week i ran another of my half marathon amidst the picturesque locale of durshett - a jungle track in the western ghats, amidst drizzle, lush greenery, a stream flowing along and grey and cloudy skies and hints of waterfalls in not too distant hills. I struggled through the distance that i had believed that i had mastered over the last 5 years through and having participated in almost a score of such runs of 21 kms. Nothing is more damaging to a runners self esteem than the sight of his timings plummeting to practically what it was 5 years ago!. It is the equivalent of a writers block or a stars next movie going bust (i like the comparison - it glamorizes my grief!). 

Last 6 months have been a case of poor practice and irregular running and it showed in the timings and the over exhaustion and limb aches even before i had reached the mid way mark. I should have known better than to be surprised by the outcome because i have had one of the most erratic running discipline in the last 6 months ever. However buoyed by pure self confidence and a notion of past achievement, undeterred by the grim face of truth, i ran and faced my comeuppance. 

So here are my lessons from the fall from grace in a manner of speaking. 

1. Muscle memory is weak. So is talent and capability. Even a brief slowdown in practice would show. A famous violinist allegedly said is once "if i do not practice for a month the audience know; if i do not practice for a week my wife knows and if i do not practice for a day I know'.

2. Muscle memory is also fickle. It goes away sooner than the click of a mouse (blink of an eye is so passe). So is expertise - which has to be kept on its toes all the times. I have never experienced the 'sharpening the saw' phrase in stronger force ever - what if i was jolted by it. 

3. Muscle memory is not a dependable ally. Self confidence based out of the comfort of 'i have done it so many times in the past' can be unpredictable and delusional. It usually sets us up for a royal fall. 

While i am determined now to train myself back to the capability levels of yore, the big question that has been haunting me since the run is - "what other areas of my expertise is rusted for the want of practice and i am not even aware of the rust"

What about you?

Guru

Monday musings 235 - Turning points

Monday musings 235 - Turning points

“Life’s most turning points are the ones that we never thought we would cross”.  A colleague of mine sent me this and says the author is a 21 year old. Such profoundness is rarely associated with 21 but I guess wisdom to some comes early and to some never.

I am a sucker for stories people tell about themselves. My fascination to hear what people have to say about their journey so far, how do they describe their own narrative is fueled by the intrigue to see how human beings witness themselves. These stories tell how universal are the themes of unmet aspirations, unrequited love, the notion of being wronged by the world, haplessness, the lack of choices etc are. The details change but the narrative remains by and large same.

The top 10 themes I find reverberating in those narratives in no particular order are as follows -

1. I wish there was more money  available for me to do what I wanted 
2. I wish there was more guidance available for me to tell me what was right 
3. I wish there was more status available for me to back my own standing
4. I wish I went to a better school/college.
5. I wish I was better with words – mostly around English speaking/writing.
6. I wish I got the love of the person that I cherished 
7. I wish I had made better career choices – the companies I continued to work for or left too early 
8. I wish I was a better in managing my boss/supervisors (note this is self view – reality may be exactly opposite) 
9. I am very non-political – wish I was more savvy in negotiating the work place intrigue (note – this is self view and may not be shared with others!!) 
10. I wish I was better at showcasing my work (note this is a self view and may be a case of poor work itself)

Increasingly I am becoming a believer of randomness – that life does not follow a closed circuit pattern that can be controlled beyond a point. The good old luck does play its benevolence or havoc as the case might be. I kind of like what Daniel Kahneman, the Nobel laureate calls as the ‘skill bias’ – that is the overarching tendency of performers, particularly in the corporate world, to ascribe their success to their own abilities. We are what we are as much as a result of random events that contributed or accentuated our successes but we end up gobbling the entire credit for it. The corollary is equally true in that case – that those who have not managed to do very well have themselves to blame for sure but may also be plain victims of random events – like birth, economy, circumstances et al

More on this some other time because this time I have to go back to the quote above. The issue of randomness to me is also about having to take a turn we never thought we will ever take. 

We never thought we would do some things ever in our lives. Most of us have gone through circumstances we never prepared ourselves for – actually never imagined that one day we will have to see this day or that, or have to cross this path or the other. We are sometimes blessed  but mostly condemned to face all that we face, cursed to do that we end up doing. It is this damnation that shapes the narratives of most lives. Even the good that is today sometimes is born of what appeared then as the eternal damnation. The turning points were crossroads we never thought we would ever have to come to much less take a left or right from there. 

I guess we have much to blame the turns for and much to thank them for too. What we do changes from moment to moment.

Guru 

234 Monday Musings - Literature in Organisations

234 Monday Musings - Literature in Organisations

Only the fools are absolutely sure. They seem to have all the answers. Certitudes are their signature. Most others live their lives seeking something or the other and not being sure of either what is to be done or what will be the outcomes. In an increasingly outcome oriented world that can be such a burden, dilemmas rule the roost. Insights are rare if at all and so is quest for existential questions - so personal to each one of us. The yawn between what is and what should be is increasing by the day. Each one of us have an opium that we have found to numb our senses towards the assault of these questions. The only place at least I have found answers is good literature - and to think that I wasted the prime of my life figuring out chemical formula of amphetamines and making a cross section of the tongue of a cockroach in a smelly laboratory can be very depressing. what a colossal waste of that limited quantity stock called life!

I am coming to the conclusion, although i have not reach there conclusively yet, that the business world must teach its practitioners soft subjects like literature and philosophy as much as they teach the areas of strategy, enterprise profits and execution. A literature blind person perhaps is utterly unprepared for the nuances of life, people and situations. Ability to appreciate fine arts transcends in its impact from mere appreciation of the  art form to sensitivity towards the sociology of an organisation. I repeat, an art blind person is unlikely to even understand that sociology of an organisation leave aside its deep impact. IN the pursuit of delivery his deliverance is served in this ignorance. 
I remember once reading about Gurcharan Das, the ex head of  P & G who had credited his degree courses in Philosophy as having deep impact in his ability to guide his business.

However we do see early signs of this being dabbled with albeit in fits and bursts. How come business is trying to search its answers in epics and mythology? How come movies are used as case studies to teach leaders? I know of courses in some universities who use classics in literature to teach nuance of business lessons. How come the western management literature has looking at the orient more and more to solve the mysteries of organisation building - is it because they are rich in literature, mysticism, parables, myths and stories? 

Yesterday in a concert in memory of the late Jagjit Singh, the singer Javed Ali sang a relatively unkown gazal of the mastreo, which had this elegant couplet - 

"laa mai tera Ved padhun

tu meri Quran samajh"

(let me read your Ved, and you should understand my Quran" 
This by far is a rich way of acknowledgement of diversity of perspectives. Anyone who appreciates the beauty in these lines is likely to deal with the difference of opinion at workplace far better than those who understand reality in mono chromatically and for those who do not appreciate stuff like these are unlikely to discern the finer issues at work place. 

Who knows, Kabeer may have more answers than Kotler!

Guru 

233 Monday Musings – Chicken or Egg – Aristotle style

Monday Musings – Chicken or Egg – Aristotle style.

Apparently it was Aristotle who said something to the effect “Act virtuous and you shall be virtuous”.  It is not lost that he did not say “think virtuous and you shall be virtuous”. I find this interesting enough to muse about it.

At the cost of over simplifying Aristotle, what he might be saying is that behave good and you shall be good. It does not matter what you think but as long as you are behaving right the result is the same. So what it would mean is that if a criminal does a good, he is good to the extent of this specific action. Cut to the organizational context – as long as a leader is behaving right, nothing else matters. One can always argue that he will not behave right as long as he thinking is not right. I will deal with this subsequently but at this stage what it would mean is that if by some way we create a template of agreeable behaviors or desirable behaviors and there is a strong governance around that, so much less energies will be spent trying to ‘change the thinking’ of folks. (As I am writing this, I cannot believe this line of thinking because it goes against the grain of everything that I have learnt so far – but why argue with Aristotle – the bloke was a genius!)

In the line of work I am in generally and otherwise too, we hear so much about the need to ‘change the thinking’. The underlying algorithm is that behavior is governed by thinking and hence if thinking can be improved, changed or modified then behavior can be changed and hence someday this change can be seen in results.  A slight modification to that is also that thinking comes from feelings and that comes from our beliefs and so on and so forth. There is so much scream on this subject all around. Most behavior transformation programs without fail begin with attempting a reflection on understanding our own wiring and how that wiring is governing our behavior. It is no one’s guess how much this effort is yielding fruits.

May be we should listen to Aristotle. May be the answer is to shorten the path and focus only on action or behavior. Thinking is like sedimentation rocks, layers get created over so much time and events that the whole pursuit of wanting to change it might be annoying at best and frustrating at worst. A leopard rarely changes his spots! Why not tell the leopard to behave in a certain manner and lo behold we have a cat instead! A leopard is a leopard because he is violent and prone to attack all and sundry. What if he is told to behave himself, which in the beginning he is unlikely to agree to, but on suitable carrot and stick based taming I am sure his ‘actual behavior’ can be controlled – although I must admist his basic instinct might remain the same. I am sure that is how the lions are tamed in circus. Imagine all the wild beast we see in the circus or say whales who respond to instructions were put through ‘thinking changing’ programs. How ridiculous. Cut the chase – focus on behavior – what you think be damned. I am beginning to see the brilliance of Aristotle!

Is it really that simple? Not sure. All I know is that this bloke Aristotle cannot be ignored so easily.

Guru 

Monday Musings 232 - Fortuitously forty

Monday Musings 232 - Fortuitously forty

I wonder sometimes what Ganga feels while it springs from bhagirathi, and hurtles down the mountains with youthful vigor, mostly untamed and flirting with her constraints, herself and her co passengers always on the edge. I wonder if she is even aware of her destiny and the fact that the mountains may be the place where she took birth but her end will come some 2000 miles away in faraway unknown land, far far away from the surroundings that she would know as home.

I wonder what she feels when she assumes the calm of the plains as the incline vanishes. I wonder what goes through her soul at Haridwar where she experiences the tapering of the vigor and the composure it will acquire without much warning. I wonder she was mentally even prepared for the the long arduous calm that lies ahead. What if she always imagined that the jump over the cliffs will last forever?

I wonder if she is bored as it travels through the gangetic plain haunted by the memory of the earlier avtaar and experiences angst for a life not long ago. I wonder if she misses her wayward ways, the swing of her hips, the hope in her meander. I wonder if she questions the supreme confidence that she had about herself and her ability to chart her course. Did she really chose her course or did she not? Does she even ask this question and does she know the answer? 

I wonder whether she even knows as it crosses into Bengal before turning into Hoogly that she is now the beginning of her last leg. She is in her prime but the tapering off is about to begin. Is she satisfied with the way things have turned out or does she have regrets?  

I wonder if she even remembers the banks she has crossed, or if they are etched in her memory and she will be able to recollect those villages, hamlets and cities effortlessly or if she will struggle to trace a smile here and a tear there. 

I wonder what if Ganga were to know that no one else remembers her much accept the fact they are accustomed to her presence and i wonder what the banks would feel if Ganga has only a hazy recollection of them. 

I wonder if Ganga ever wants to trace her journey back and relive her journey and should that chance be given if she would do it in exactly the same way or will she change the course and character of her odyssey.

I tuned 40 and i wish Ganga could talk to me and let me know her heart. 

Guru