Monday Musings 270 - Roots

Monday Musings 270 - Roots

Many years back I had read the famous and controversial in parts book ‘Roots’ by Alex Haley which traces the history of an African American to many generations back to the wilds of Africa. The book had left quite an impact on me – and I am told that it had had a similar impact on many others since the time it was first published in 1976.

I had started to wonder how it feels like going back to ones roots – particularly when it is way way back in time. I had wondered how Alex Haley would have felt when he would have gone back to the same tribe in Africa and realised that he came ‘here’. (I was not aware of some of the controversy about the historical authenticity of this pursuit then so it was easy to be carried away by the emotional whirlwind about such a thought)?

What makes us wonder about our roots? Do all of us wonder about it in the same measure or whether to some this possesses more than others? What makes some feel so differently about this question than others? Is it better not to be touched by this question in the realisation of the futility of this pursuit – for what conceivable material benefit will emerge out of it? What will it solve ultimately except may be an additional to the treasure trove of trivia that we carry with us all the time?

However to others it is an important search – it is the beginning of the formation of identity. The ties of place, kinship, family tree gives us the overarching shade of a shared past – some kind of a banyan tree which helps us to feel anchored. We do not float unanchored – we have something to hold on to – for whatever it is worth.

As I progressed through the book then I could not help asking myself if there was a latent desire in me to search for my roots – may not more than a century as Alex Haley had managed to do – but may be fifty or 70 years. I don’t know what I told myself then but there were parts of the book when the travails of ‘Kunta Kinte’ the lead protagonist so to speak became so overwhelming that it was difficult not to be choked. I could not identify what was so overwhelming in that tale that was touching me in such inexplicable way. In hind sight I can say that the seeds to search my roots were sowed. I had to go back to the place where it had all began. It took a decade for it to fall in place.

An hour back I returned from the place where possibly a century plus years ago the family tree could be traced back to. I met a small one room mud walled – no roof ruins approximately the size of 100 sq ft of what is left of it. I am trying to make sense of what it means for me now that I have been to such a place - exact place, where once life flourished and which is in ruins now - and which in a very philosophical way is a precursor to my being.

Increasingly we are living in places where we were not born and raised. I wonder if we will miss going back to whatever we call as our roots – may be not a 100 years; but may be where we were raised and have memories of. I wonder if it is worth dying anywhere else. As a young boy I saw the anguish of not being able to die his ancestral village in my grandfather and could not fathom that emotion of his. Today may be I am just beginning to understand that. May be all of us have a deep seated need to connect with our roots – whatever they are; and maybe we just don’t know it yet.

One begins to wonder – how many variables come together to ensure you are where you are. It could have so easily been something else.  

 Guru

Monday Musings 269 – As I wake up..

Monday Musings 269 – As I wake up..

I ask myself - what is the first emotion I feel as I wake up? As I open my eyes and the slumber wears off and I become aware of being alive, not yet becoming aware of where exactly I am opening my eyes but only the awareness that I am indeed still there – where the weight of my situation has yet not burdened my soul. What do I feel in that few uncorrupted seconds? Not what is on my mind or what I am thinking but how am I feeling?

Do I wake up with a feeling of some kind of heaviness? There is no real reason to feel this way for everything is fine but the dawn of wakefulness is heavy, like the child who enters a dark room in his own house – he is comforted by familiarity of the house and yet discomforted by the dark.

Do I wake up with a feeling of dull alarm that the body intuitively feels when it is in danger which is yet not corroborated by facts but is palpable in the bones so to speak? There is no reason to feel this way for everything is fine but the dawn of wakefulness comes with an inexplicable anxiety, like moving in a wilds, the jungle – comforted by our abilities to meander through and yet acutely aware that it is the wilds that we are passing through.

Do I wake up with a feeling of weightlessness, a feeling of no feeling at all? I become aware of everything, my body, my surroundings, my situations and I feel nothing. I am here and yet I am not here. I am levitating above and beyond almost making fun of the mundane. I am untouched and detached. Actually detached is not the right word - detachment is deliberate, a conscious attempt to severe attachment; this feeling is a stage deeper – as if I never had an anchor or ties or reasons. Like clouds.

Do I wake up with a feeling of unadulterated joy – as if I feel like dancing the moment I become aware that I am awake. There is no reason to feel this way but I am almost looking forward to getting up. There is a zing in my being that wants to give life a fresh shot. I surprise myself with this energy even as I am only becoming aware of being awake. It’s like the mountain spring which is hurtling down the slope, with no purpose but only still being purposive in its flow.

Do I wake up smiling? I am smiling as the first shimmer of wakefulness is emerging from the dark abyss of sleep. I have no reason to smile but I feel like smiling, there is some vague happiness that I know exists somewhere deep down, in the acute realisation that I have more than I need, in the comfort that I have more than what I thought I will ever have, in the thankfulness that I have more than what many others have. I wake up with gratitude although in this twilight of wakefulness and slumber I am not yet aware of the word ‘gratitude’ for this stage is beyond language – so I wake up smiling, for no apparent reason at all.

Do I wake up in a hurry, an abruptness that is so jerky that it shatters both – the calm of the sleep and the joy of getting up? I have noticed an egg hatching  and an cow giving birth to a calf as a kid in my village and I was always intrigued about the ‘slowness and the gradualness’ of the process. There was no abruptness to it. Abruptness  kills. Young children wake up gradually, adults wake up abruptly. It is a fait accompli or can something be done about it?

I am becoming more and more aware of how I feel in that fleeting moment, where sleep dissolves and a young day of wakefulness is born.

Monday Musings 268 -Kabeer in Lunyakhedi

Monday Musings 268 -Kabeer in Lunyakhedi

Around a 100 kms from Indore is Lunyakhedi, a village made famous by perhaps its most accomplished son, Padmshree Prahlad Singh Tippania.  Lunyakhedi is the epicentre of what can be safely called the ‘Kabeer belt’ of India – the culturally rich malva region of central India. Prahladji is a very well known folk singer of national and international repute who sings Kabeer in the quintessentially Malva style, with a tamboora in one hand and manjeera in the other.

There are more ‘fragile stickers’ that the airlines paste on his dholak cover than would be scratches on it, which indicates that the extent he has taken the sound of Kabeer through his singing.  A humble school teacher who breaks into the maalvi dialect more often than not, lives Kabeer even as the world perceives him to be only singing him, is an absolute delight to watch, meet and talk to. He is child when he cracks up, a philosopher when he makes a point and a saint when his fingers caress the tamboora.

Every year this time around he hosts a few people in his village for 5 days of singing and talking Kabeer – a kind of workshop if you may call it. This year I was a part of those lucky few. My comrades were a picture in contrast – A few classical music aficionados, a music band lead vocalist, a few Corporate types, a mother with a kid, a few school teachers, others with journeys best left un-described – all with Kabeer on their lips, mind and heart. I am not sure where these 5 days came from and where have they gone because they rest lightly on my memory, for I struggle to chose words to describe them fully and completely – and yet I know I did walk on those sands. I have the experience; I do not have the perfect expressions.

So what did we do for 5 days? Outwardly we sang Kabeer (for the record – others sang – I listened; me singing would have been a disruption!), discussed what he said and what he meant and what it means now; However inwardly I think each one of us were in our own journey. Simple questions – but big questions; Questions about meanings, meaningfulness and meaninglessness, about futility, about connections, about simplicity, about relatedness, about being wanting to be good but struggling with it, about going beyond symbols and connecting with the essence, questions about denials and projections, questions about the known and the unknown, about boundaries and liberation, questions that have answers and mostly questions that do not have easy answers. Everyone had his own personal tryst with the questions of their lives – and may be for a moment through Kabeer they also figured out the futility of questions. Being was more important than becoming!

We must know Kabeer more deeply than we know him today. Kabeer is the voice of sanity during the times of tumult; he is also the voice of revolt in the times of utter ludicrity; He is the voice of masses during the times of shameless elitist dominance; Kabeer is the voice of simplicity when it paid to be pedantic. Kabeer is the voice of reprimand during the times of nauseous politeness and he is the voice of connection during the times of vitriolic intolerance.  

Most discover Kabeer on their own and out of fortunate serendipity. People like Prahladji have done more to reclaim and rediscover Kabeer than institutions that were supposed to do that job – but then that has been the story of Kabeer even when he was alive – institutions always failed him; he was a darling of the masses then as he is now.

I don’t know what exactly we brought back from those 5 blissful days in that world – maybe we left a part of us back there and maybe we brought back a bit of Lunyakhedi with us. My love for Kabeer has only entered a new level and the love of Lunyakhedi has only begun. It will be difficult not to go back there soon.

Guru

PS: Having authored a book based on Kabeer's writings I had begun to imagine I know a bit of Kabeer. This ego was punctured in the first few hours only at Lunyakhedi. Kabeer continues to punctures egos even today. You rock buddy!!

 

 

 

Monday Musings 267: The many shades of Rains

Monday Musings 267: The many shades of Rains

I write this facing my balcony and gazing at the haze caused by heavy downpour that is so characteristic of Mumbai. The overcast skies have open up like they have some kind of mandate to accomplish. Rains arguably are the best season of all. Most of the reasons that make rains enchanting are the sentimental kind, a kind of mush that one associates with the matters of the heart. (What the heck, even cubiclewallahs had a past, didn’t they?)

Adults hate rains mostly, unless you are a farmer – and I suspect if any of the reader of this post has a job description that has farming even the footnotes. The same adults used to enjoy rains as kids. There is no better joy than poodle crushing, something that can safely be assumed as a precursor to candy crush. The jump from one poodle to the next, unmindful of the soiling clothes and wet shoes, was an unparalleled joy. It was breaking free from the rhythm of the mundane, a rebellion against the chastity of routine and cleanliness. Most kids developed mysterious naval ambitions during rains – the paper boats which would glide through the small trail through the neighbourhood. I bemoan my kids missing this simple joy – the price of vertical condominiums. May be they will find something else to miss when they grow up.

Getting drenched meant different things as a kid and in youth. Returning home with not a follicle dry meant welcomed by an overzealous mom to reprimand camouflaged with dramatised concern. It would usually be followed by special treatment of hot tea and snacks. Untimely spicy snacking was the best thing about rains as a kid. Is the space of enjoying getting drenched shrinking? Everyone seems to be too scared of the kids falling sick. I have long ago come to the conclusion that the instinct to protect from harm has done more damage to our loved ones than our carelessness – but that has got nothing to do with rains.

The youth associates with rains in a more romanticised ways. There is some or the other association with rains that makes a gaping hole in their heart. Rains have a melancholy about it – youth experiences this ache freely and openly. Adults are too dead and busy anyway. They are busy protecting their leather shoes.

I believe most other seasons have nothing to give. They are prisoners of their character. Summer and winter cannot help but be what they are – oppressive. Spring is yet to decide whether it is summer or winter may be a mutant between the two. Autumn by design is forlorn, like a dejected lover. They hardly have anything to offer. All that happens in these seasons is despite them, not because of them. Rains are different. They are temperamentally givers. Rains carry bounties and they open up their hearts without favour and discrimination. They are like grandparents – large hearted, easygoing and always in the mood to give. Rains create conditions for life to flourish.

Guru

PS – so what do middle aged Punjabi men do when it rains? Well they look for their drinking glasses. Come to think of it, they do that even in summers, winters, autumn, spring or any other season. Why make an exception!!

Monday Musings 266: Even if Trump gets trumped!

Monday Musings 266:  Even if Trump gets trumped!

The recent issue of ‘The Economist’ says something very interesting about the possible nomination of Donald Trump (the issue went to press before he actually was nominated by the republicans). In summary the article argues that irrespective of whether Trump wins this November or not (and most likely he won’t), the American discourse in general and the Republican discourse in particular will no longer be the same for a very long time to come. They trace back this phenomena to the last century or more to a list of stray insurgents who appeared on the political scene of America from the 1800’s till date, who said dramatically idiotic things for those times, contested elections, lost gloriously and handsomely but even in their loss sowed seeds of the idea that they championed – which later on in some form or shape became mainstream, sometimes in a few years and sometimes in a few decades. Hence the conclusion, Trump may not really lose even he were indeed to lose the election.

The hypothesis appeals to me, even though Trump does not. (In fact I so enjoy the idea of someone like Trump in America – its sweet revenge; I am no longer particularly ashamed of my political class – even the USA has them!).  The hypothesis is this – that a radically new thought, which appears contrarian, bold, audacious, even stupid or taboo when postulated for the first time, summarily rejected by the electorate for which it is postulated for, may still be worth its while – for it may oen the door for at least a conversation to begin on the subject thereafter.

This hypothesis is sufficiently proven in the realm of ideas (imagine someone proposing a telephone or internet for the first time or say flying for the first time), or in the realm of social issues (imagine the backlash when someone would have proposed abolishing caste practices or Sati 200 years ago) or in the realm of inventions/technology.

I want to take a look at the hypothesis in the organisational context. A new practice, a new model, a new way of doing things, a new assumption, a new idea – which is radically different from the way things are, is met with characteristic grunts and disdain. Sometimes the idea gets shot down at the drawing table itself. It is these set of ideas that have not been accepted yet that are of intrigue to me.

What if we are proposers of an idea and in a brainstorming session it gets summarily rejected and comprehensively denounced? Even worse what if it is mocked? It appears that the authors of such ideas who are at the receiving end of such vitriol must take hope. History teaches us this. Even if the idea is rejected, it may have at least injected the idea in the canvass of discourse. The first time it may meet with disdain, the next time it will meet with rejection (at this stage you are considered worth opposing at least!), the chances are bright that the third time it will get with a ‘slot to debate’.  It is at this stage when one must take satisfaction that the idea has been given sufficient credibility – enough to merit a debate and opposition. The idea has received validation. Opposition is the highest form of engagement, perhaps more powerful and more fulfilling than agreement.

Voltaire had said, ‘No one can stop an idea whose time has come’. However what Voltaire perhaps failed to mention that before the time of an idea does come, there are multiple people who must have talked about the idea amidst derision and mock. It is on the shoulders of those unsung heroes that the glory of future strongly sits.

A wise and very senior leader shared in a candid moment that many times he has had to stay with an idea for more than a few years and build comfort and consensus around it before it got accepted. It was an invaluable lesson.

So the next time I may lose an argument around an important, path breaking, radically new proposition, may be I shall argue again – and again.

Monday musings 265 – An ode to Alvin Toffler

Monday musings 265 – An ode to Alvin Toffler

The rock star futurist Alvin Toffler passed away recently. I remember picking up his book ‘The Future Shock’’ during my B school and miserably failing to read it beyond 50 pages. The book and its content did not catch my fancy, which by the way speaks volumes about me more than it speaks about the book or the author.  Years later I picked a copy of it from the dusty (but famous for its collection of titles) pavements of South Mumbai but the book somehow remained unread for many more years. I finally did scan through it around a decade back.

Many of the pet themes and conversation embellishers that we use today in the corporate world can actually be traced to Alvin Toffler. Some of the Tofflerisms are now a part of everyday language and when we look into them in the light of the fact that they were said almost 40 years back, they acquire the halo of brilliance. For instance sample some of them –

1. ‘’Change is not merely necessary to life — it is life."
2.  "The illiterate of the future will not be the person who cannot read. It will be the person who does not know how to learn."
3. "Change is the only constant."

And mind you – all of this was said was only one person!! (Actually two – if you include his wife, who collaborated on most of his work). Anyone who is interested to know which and how many of those predictions of Toffler came out to be true must pick a copy of the book and marvel at his prescience. It will also not be wrong to say that Alvin Toffler made the job of a futurist look sexy.

The sequel to Future Shock was ‘’The Third Wave’’ published in 1980. Some of the ideas postulated in this book may have appeared as fictions during the time of its publication but appear to be clairvoyant brilliance now.

For instance the thought that there will be a roll back of the industrial era creed of standardisation (towards customisation!!), and that there will be progressive attack on the notion of the nation state from below (increasing clout of regional/decentralised) and the top (rise of powerful non national entities like corporations, religions and cartels) or the eclipsing of monetary wealth by knowledge and information, so on and so forth.

Toffler went to write many more books and his ideas were built on by the subsequent generation of futurists. In his death Toffler may have triggered in me an interest in his works. Hopefully I will do better this time and stay with the study.

A few other Tofflerisms that the cubicle-wallah may find interesting for his consumption are -

1. ‘’Most managers were trained to be the thing they most despise – bureaucrats’’
2. You've got to think about big things while you're doing small things, so that all the small things go in the right direction.
3. “You can use all the quantitative data you can get, but you still have to distrust it and use your own intelligence and judgment.’’
4. “The future always comes too fast and in the wrong order.”
    
   Rest in Peace Mr. Toffler.
    
   Guru

 PS - Sometimes (though not always) a good way of preparing for the road ahead is to look at the road covered.

Monday Musings 264 - Groucho in the Cubicle

Monday Musings 264 - Groucho in the Cubicle

I have always admired reading Groucho Marx whenever someone sent me an isolated quote of his. On a lazy Sunday afternoon I decided to a bit of background reading on his witty one liners. On the other side I have always bemoaned the lack of humour in the corporate world. I think the cabin and cubicle guys compete with politicians and lawyers in the race to take themselves a tad too seriously. All of them believe they are going to last forever and if this earth is going around the sun and the seasons are changing then a large part of the credit for it must go to them.  They must visit the graveyards – the damn place is filled with people who thought the same.

Groucho somehow knew this lot long before the cubicles got filled with the self obsessed.  I think I shall use the following quote of his as an opener. ‘’I worked my way up from nothing to a state of extreme poverty’’. This sums up quite well the bay-to-cubicle-to-cabin-to-wherever journey.  As my boss of one time use to say – ‘’he has stopped contributing to us; we have decided to promote him’’

Meetings are a great invention. Whoever invented it must have been a genius. Actually it is the right word – people definitely meet; some might argue, they only meet! Groucho commented ‘’before I speak I have something important to say’’.

Every day we meet people we would love to forget. Thank God there is some benefit of politeness that our schools taught us or there would be more dead people than we have in Syria today. Groucho the philosopher knew it half a century ago – ‘’I never forget a face but in your case I will be glad to make an exception’’. He also said – ‘’Next time I see you, remind me not to talk to you’’.

The number of hours we put at work is a subject of intense debate. It is considered to a surrogate of how much you contribute. Groucho had remarked ‘’No man goes before his time – unless the boss leaves early’’.

Management is getting things done. Principles behind action and consistency behind them and other sundry constraints must not get in the way. There is one for every occasion. Groucho was proud to have said ‘’these are my principles and if you don’t like them, I have others’’.

There are times at workplace when the sheer inanity and banality can make a rock wince. Thank God they have bars. When someone at work says, Gosh, I need a drink, he is indicating that he is on medication and it’s time for the next doze. Groucho supports when he says, ‘’I am not feeling well, I need a doctor immediately. Ring the nearest golf course’’.

The boss is all – a verb, an adjective and a noun. Disagreement with the boss is a cul-de-sac; a Hobson’s choice. You might hear Groucho speaking during such an interaction - ‘’who are going to believe – ME or your own eyes’’.

Finally I cannot slot this last one by Groucho, so I leave it your discretion – ‘’Please accept my resignation; I cannot belong to any organisation that has me as a member’’. 

Smile Please.