RamGanapathy.com

Category: inspiration

  • A page from a book is more than that

    I notice my family, friends and acquaintances, not reading books.

    Some of them don’t have time in their lives right now, to dedicate an afternoon to even begin to read from a book they bought many years ago. This blog is not for them.

    A few don’t like to read books, they tell me. They have apparently lost interest in the written word. I am writing this piece, directly looking at them. Yes, I know who you are.

    I am kidding. I promise, I won’t preach why you should read. Nor would I prescribe a bunch of books on this last day of the year. I am kidding again.

    This is more about two moments from my 2021 trip around the sun. One acted as an anchor, giving me a sense of what I loved doing, and another that brought out the force in me, and gave direction.

    The Greeks again

    In February this year, on a lazy Saturday afternoon, I saw a tweet by a speech consultant @JohnfBowe. His article explained how two thousand years ago, the Greeks figured out that public speaking – the art of rhetoric – is a foundational skill to be acquired by everyone. Yeah, for once, it is not all about philosophy when it comes to the ancients.

    I ended up buying his book. It begins with the story of his cousin whose life takes a dramatic turn after joining Toastmasters. The guy never left basement until he was fifty nine years old, but soon got married, and overcame shyness (not necessarily in that order), helped by the world’s largest organisation devoted to the art of public speaking.

    John’s book made me reflect on the way I do presentations. Content is king, they say. I no longer start my preparations researching for what to include. The recipient(s) of the message take centre stage, more than the message itself. Audience is king.

    I reached out to the nearest club in Canberra. I wasn’t shy, but curious. I was welcomed into the Woden Valley Toastmasters club as a guest, a pivotal moment for me this year. I soon became a member, learning how to talk more clearly, persuasively but mainly, to keep the focus on my audience, what would be valuable to them. And to ramble less.

    Incidentally, around the same time in March, I got an opportunity to present SAP’s product strategy at a customer’s town hall meeting addressing roughly 150 members of their IT team. I remember spending more time on the question: What do I want them to think and feel, when I finish talking.

    A random tweet guided me to the book about ancient Greeks, eventually taking me to the Toastmasters, on my way to a successfully delivered talk.

    Winning is the (only) way

    Later in July, I faced a sudden bout of confusion and uncertainty about the way my role was perceived at work.

    One book brought back the fighter in me. It wasn’t a random tweet this time, but a slice of podcast conversation with the NBA star Chris Bosh talking about a book that shaped his thinking: The way and the power – Secrets of Japanese Strategy. Its about how a samurai master deals with confusion and uncertainty; one who controls his mind. One who would not lose. I ordered it immediately.

    I can’t say much more. But reading a couple of chapters, it felt as if I had flipped a switch in my mind. I woke up one morning and decided to win. Not merely adapt or survive or manage a situation. To win.

    You want the whole meal, not juice

    Why bother with a book these days, if one can acquire such insights through tweets and podcasts? I sense, reading a book – even skimming through a few pages – is way different than trying to grasp ideas distilled by someone else – a secondary process. It is the difference between eating a wholesome meal and drinking a juiced up version.

    A book could change the way you think about this world. Your world.

    Three sixty five days from now, on another new year eve, I will want to hear from you about the pages and words that influenced you.
    For the ones in my cohort too busy to read: One page consumes three minutes out of one thousand four hundred and forty minutes in a day. A typical book has three hundred pages.

    I rest my case.

  • Blank

    Blank

    I couldn’t write a blog last month. I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to write one of those self-deprecating takes on a life experience and fill it with wise-cracks. I was struggling for ideas.

    I was actually struggling for words to describe the state of my mind.

    Situation in India

    Everyone seems impacted by COVID, not just counting the unfortunate ones invaded by the virus. The visuals on TV last month were striking – ailing men and women standing in long queues to secure hospital beds, oxygen cylinders or anti-virals. Haunting scenes of bodies that lay queued up in front of a crematorium. Social media, especially twitter was abuzz with cries for help, but in equal measure, with quick and life-saving responses from strangers. The state of my mind tasted like a cocktail of despair and hope. 

    Heavenly prison

    As I talked to my parents, friends, uncles, cousins, ex-colleagues, almost anyone from the land that birthed me, I tried to listen more, but found nothing helpful to offer. My wishful words sounded empty. I watched all this nervously from a safe distance, within the safe comforts of a western country that has a much lower population, a better system, and lucky. Also, cocky. Australia conveniently closed its borders and threatened – with a jail term and a ridiculous fine – anyone trying to come back to the country. The state of mind : angry and helpless.

    Help?

    I am one of the 18 million Indian diaspora spread around the world. What can one individual do, after all ? Of course, I try to support my immediate family and friends in any which way I can – mostly monetarily, given travel restrictions.

    What else could one offer, beyond money and empty words ? I saw Indian-origin doctors offering virtual services to ailing patients in India. I saw millionaires sending flights-full of useful materials. I read about corporates vaccinating their employees. I came across inspiring stories of nameless individuals helping out strangers in dire need.

    I realised then, my craft as a software engineer is not directly useful to my people at the moment. Or maybe i don’t know what to do with my skills – beyond earning a monthly salary.

    What can i do or make?

    Eventually, I joined a small group of the Indian community here in Canberra, who organised a South Indian vegetarian food fair in the temple, to collect funds for a hospital in Coimbatore. We all prepared idlis at home and sold it at the temple. A decent collection resulted that should be helpful. Well, something necessary if not sufficient. As I did my bit around the kitchen, I wondered if this was all I could do.

    The state of mind: feeling inadequate.

    Coping strategies

    Though my family is largely unscathed (fingers crossed), my parents are yet to be vaccinated. I fear we are sitting on a time bomb. Meanwhile, life goes on; work consumes my days, leaving the night wide open for dreadful anxiety. Often in the middle of the night I wake up to check whatasapp, hoping not to catch a text or a missed call.

    When no actions are possible, I turn to distractions. Movies, sports, trivial news in social media, celebrities, anything. And books, especially on philosophy.

    Kural and Senaca

    I turned to Thirukkural – the Tamil classic text from 300 BCE, written by an unknown author (we call him Thiruvalluvar) who has written 1330 non-religious yet sacred verses or Kurals (couplets), seven words each. These kurals are like morals and commandments covering three key aspects of life: virtue, wealth and love.

    There are 10 kurals that cover how to deal with sorrow and despair, each offering a unique coping strategy. A few explain the nature of sorrow and suggest being realistic. A couple of kurals advise us to defend against the incoming trouble. But, a few kurals insist fighting back: trouble the trouble to make it run away, or something of that sort. But this kural below has the best strategy of it all, and I remember being surprised when I first learnt it:

    இடுக்கண் வருங்கால் நகுக அதனை

    அடுத்தூர்வது அஃதொப்ப தில்.

    If troubles come, laugh; there is nothing like that, to press upon and drive away sorrow. (Translation, courtesy valaitamil.com)

    Laughter is indeed the best medicine. But, the state of my mind ? Not funny.

    The Stoic’s take

    In the end, I got a better medicine from the greek stoic philosopher, Seneca, who is now getting more popular after 2000 years.

    Light griefs do speak; while

    Sorrow’s tongue is bound.

    I figured, my mind was at a state where no words or thoughts could spring.

    Blank.

  • Press Any Key to Continue…

    Press Any Key to Continue…

    My boss put two questions in front of me recently, during the half-yearly review meeting. “What is the aspect of the job that gives you joy” – a nice, ego-boosting leading question that lead to a delightful conversation.

    Her next question stumped me: “What is going to be your pet-project?”. “The one activity you could do on your own, during free time. Something you could come home to, when you have had an especially bad day”.

    I drew a blank.

    Homecoming

    This question is significant today, as we perceive time, work and life very differently than just a few months ago. During the pre-COVID era(?), a knowledge worker like me would have separated work and life – at least physically, straddling across office and home each day. We used to talk about work-life balance. These days, there is not much of a discussion about balance. It’s all a blur at the moment.

    A good blur, at least for me. I no longer need to get up worrying about ironing the shirt or to drive to work to be in time for the first meeting of the day. Time is aplenty. (My wife isn’t too excited though – having to come home each day only to see unwashed stained tea cups – one on the table, two lying on the floor and one missing).

    Sorry, I digress. The point is, a different sort of homecoming is necessary to keep our sanity.

    But, a pet-project ? You see, this phrase has two words that sound dangerous to the lazy-me: a pet needs maintenance, while a project needs diligent work towards completion.

    Spend, Manage or Invest ?

    On a serious note, what would i do with a bit of extra time ? Time = Money, they say. There was this crude poster i saw recently that compared how the poor, middle-class and rich deal with money:

    – the ones who have less, SPEND.

    – the ones who have moderate amount, MANAGE.

    – the ones who have excess, INVEST.

    How do i invest this little excess time? Typically i am bored, i look for interesting things in twitter (will write a blog one day, about the gems i discovered by following a few interesting people in twitter during this year), read a bit of philosophy/self-help books, watch movies (these days i’m into Turkish rom-coms). I also play a bit of amateur sports. However, i’m not serious about any of these things. I dabble.

    Making Choices

    To be serious about a pet-project, i have to generate a list of options, make a choice, invest time and energy, report on its progress, and show some result.

    Choice! If i have a, b, c, and d as choices, it is mainly a question of what appeals to me the most. What if there is something outside this list that suits me better? How do i know what i don’t know ?

    One would argue, it is not easy to make decisions even with clearly defined, discrete choices. The red or the blue pill, as Morpheus asks Neo in The Matrix.

    When my daughter and my nephew were toddlers, they used to fight for the best toy. Once, faced with a red and a green plastic trumpet, the kids couldn’t come to an agreement who gets what. It ended like this: my girl grabbed both the trumpets and offered the guy to choose one of those. As soon as he decided on the green one, she knew exactly what she liked. She snatched that very green trumpet from the hands of the baffled boy, and threw the red one to him.

    What to look for ?

    Life is easier as a child. I am more indecisive than ever before and struggling to answer a simple question, with no clear list of options, nor a play-mate to try out a decision tree.

    Perhaps this question should be framed as: what would you “work” on, given unlimited time & resources without any constraint whatsoever?

    I looked around for some quick inspiration – maybe mentors could help? Or the so-called thought leaders – like Paul Graham – who says in his blog, What Doesn’t Seem Like Work, “The stranger your tastes seem to other people, the stronger evidence they probably are of what you should do.” He ends by asking, “What seems like work to other people that doesn’t seem like work to you?”

    Unbounded and Unflattened

    When i look back at my life so far, someone or something has always driven me somewhere. A rank to achieve, a course to finish, a job to get, a project to complete, a step to climb in the corporate ladder, a problem to solve for a customer, etc. Even when i indulged in creative pursuits, there had always been constraints or a boundary.

    I am not sure how to wrest myself out of the set path – even if it is just for a hobby. Something different and random but not trivial; a pursuit that delivers pleasure but no expectation (i certainly don’t want additional responsibility and having to justify to anyone – including my nice and well-meaning manager, who surely will be reading this blog with a chuckle).

    Anything, that amounts to something in the end.

    Anything

    This reminded me of a story about Compaq computers: In the 1980s, their customer support team had to spend a lot of time explaining first-time computer users, who called up to ask “Where is the Any key in my keyboard?”. The users were confused by the message in the computer monitor that instructed them to “Press Any Key to Continue”.

    Where is my “any” key ?

  • Checkmate, Stress!

    Remember that weird state of your mind when you woke up many years ago, totally unprepared for a test? Or while suffering through an impossible and never-ending project that had a huge bearing on your career. And what Federer might have dealt with as he was clutching at straws facing a seventh match point at the Australian Open last month (you might say, his wife Mirka was more at pain, with her hands clasped and eyes closed in a quiet prayer).

    Stress is a bad word. It is so vague, it means everything and nothing at the same time. Im no expert in psychology and have no intention to write a “how to beat stress” blog. I thought of narrating a few personal insights and a lot of borrowed learnings that helped me deal with this beast.

    When i picked up Mind Master – Winning Lessons from a Champion’s Life, i expected World Chess champion Viswanathan Anand’s book to contain sophisticated mental strategies for career growth. The now fifty year old master was once a child prodigy. I am only half way though the fascinating book, but Anand opens up like a friendly mentor. He portrays his vulnerable self when facing a daunting opponent like Gary Kasparov and appears an emotional wreck after a jolting defeat. Beyond his insights on risk taking, persevering towards goals, contextual memory and developing curiosity, i loved the emotional human behind the intellectual genius.

    There are solid lessons from the seemingly quirky, nail-biting warrior’s many duels – most, against his own mind.

    Dealing with Emotions and being fearless

    He talks about how emotions come in the way of clear thinking and decision making. Especially, “After a defeat, it pays to completely change my surroundings, find something new and compelling”. “The mind only recovers emotionally when it can replace an old memory with a new, more pleasant one.”

    He then narrates how different Kasparov was in dealing with a similar situation. The all time great champion was struggling one day in 1987 during his match against Karpov. “Instead of striking his head against the washboard over his predicament, Kasparov spent the entire night playing cards”. The next day, he woke up late, had a lazy lunch and told himself he was just going to keep going.

    As i read this, i got reminded of a similar story narrated by the Sri Lankan cricket captain Arjuna Ranatunga, about his team’s state of mind on the eve of the 1996 world cup finals against the mighty Australians. His team were the underdogs but had played a fearless brand of cricket all through the tournament. Staying in the same hotel in Lahore along with their opponents, he noticed the Australian team having a quiet dinner, while his troops were no were to be seen. When he later found many of them shopping carpets and sarees for their wives, he comforted himself, the cup was theirs: A team so relaxed, cannot lose. And they didn’t.

    Around a year before this match, i was faced with an anxiety attack on the eve of my year 12 chemistry exam. I was hoping to refresh my memory of all things chemistry during the two day break after the physics test. I had to get close to 200/200 in each of physics, chemistry and maths, to have any chance to getting into the tier-1 engineering college in South India.

    I had toiled the whole year on physics, but i messed up a twelve-marks question. Returning home, i felt defeated even as my dad tried to calm me down. The two days before the chemistry test felt like eternity. After spending forty of the forty eight hours self-loathing, fretting and fuming, the fear of failure made me hopeless. But with just a night to pass before the test, i suddenly felt better since i had lost already. I told myself, “I won’t get into the university i yearned for. Let me just have some fun”. I still remember, i was one of the very few who had a smile in the face before, during and after that three hour test.

    Viswanathan Anand too explains how his occasional shift in attitude – embracing fearlessness – landed him spectacular victories. “i have played my most inspired games when my enthusiasm for the sport resurfaced, without the bindings of titles or wins or ratings”…”to play a good game”..”excited about learning something new”.

    My battle was no way comparable to his. Still, when the results came two months after my exams, i shocked myself and my chemistry teacher, scoring a perfect 200/200 – a tough feat at that time, especially in my school.

    From Checkmating to Note taking

    Anand’s suggestion in taking notes as a means to deal with emotions and stress is another revelation. “putting down my observations right after a defeat when the pain was raw and the sting was fresh, I stumbled upon the solutions I had seen but didn’t act upon or the ones I had overlooked.”

    I am no big achiever yet, but i can vouch for this. For the last couple of years, i have been diligently writing down notes in a daily (sometimes, hourly) journal. I make a note of what’s in my mind, what i’m thinking, more importantly, the raw emotion at that moment – feeling fearful, inadequate, blessed, clueless, bored etc.

    Poring over these notes – a treasure trove – i have become a lot more objective, grounded and relaxed. (many of my blogs were born out of those).

    As Anand says about his 40+ years of notes, “without that”…”my experience [is] almost incomplete.”

    Second Brain

    A zillion things go on in our mind at any moment. Offloading much of that – thoughts, ideas, shopping lists, pending tasks – to another system is a stress buster. For the uninitiated, David Allen’s book/methodology Getting things Done is a great place to start. Along the way, i discovered, Tiago Forte’s Building the Second Brain (BASB) techniques quite useful. If you are looking for a contemporary note taking app/tool, i suggest Roam Research – this has been a game changer for me.

    Don’ts

    A few physical techniques like simple exercises, breathing techniques etc, can be transformative no doubt (eg. Paul Taylor’s Mind Body Performance Institute), and i’m not even venturing into the possibilities in the spiritual realm.

    For me, confronting the raw emotion face to face has been an effective way to conquer it.

    One thing i learnt not to do when your loved ones are feeling it, is to suggest, “please don’t be stressed”.

    It is as useless as saying, “please don’t have a headache”.

  • The Karate Lies

    “Say two statements to describe yourself: a truth and a lie. Let the team guess the right one”. A silly but surprisingly effective way to spend a quarter of an hour of an otherwise boring day of sales planning sessions. It was also a chance to get a new perspective about colleagues that we assume to know well. Everyone tried to be clever; a few stated one attribute about themselves super quick while hesitating or scratching the head for the next, which gave them away.

    At my turn, I claimed two achievements: 1) represented my college Tennis team 2) hold brown belt in Karate.

    No one was right about me. Having to assess the lazy, lean, slouching and unimposing fellow, they all could be forgiven for not associating me with martial arts.

    What was your guess ?

    Now, I don’t remember any of the karate stances or techniques, and I for sure cannot punch without hurting myself.

    My father introduced the 8 year old me to karate. He just didn’t enrol me to a class; he would talk to the karate master frequently; watch me train, as he sat on the side-lines. He would attend every belt ceremony. While he encouraged me to be physically fit – he had built up a few muscles himself – i was a lazy kid looking for excuses. I did well academically and insisted holding a book rather than dumbbells and plates (he had custom-built for me). If only I had 10% of his passion.

    Still, I kept up with the karate lessons for the next few years. Getting up at 5:30 am thrice a week, cycling through the dark alleys to the next suburb, I would meet ten more of my sleepish class mates and our no-nonsense karate master smiling at us. He insisted on warming up – made us do knuckle push ups on a hard, sand surface. The actual karate stances (katas) will be taught much later. He emphasised learning discipline, mind control and self-defence, before acquiring skills to flex, punch and kick. “Be alert, block and defend. You will do just fine”.

    Occasionally, he will organise sparring – fighting an opponent – and I would be the worst of the class. I did well on theory and trembled on a real combat. I survived quite a lot of those sparrings by employing my defence techniques (A little bruise here and there wouldn’t count).

    I once had to face-off against a friend – a bulkier boy who happened to be my mother’s colleague’s son. After the fight, as we both walked back home, my mother spotted a bulge on his lips and wondered if he had hit his face against a wall or something (she obviously ruled out the possibility of me ever hitting another human being). “It was a punch”, was my friend’s reply, a clever usage of passive voice. My mother appeared confused as she took that word for a similar-sounding Tamil term “panju” (cotton). I then narrated to her: As he began attacking, I got nervous, crossed my hands and closed my eyes. Perhaps he lost balance and tripped. His face fell onto my hands, landing his tender lips on my tight fist.

    My next “fight” was a real one. During my year 6, a close friend Velan changed character, began teasing and bullying me as he joined a new bunch of mates. He was tiny but challenged me for a real man-to-man fight that evening. I was half thrilled and embarrassed to face-off against my own friend. I was scared too. After school, walking up to the soccer goal post, we looked at each other taking positions. By then, a crowd had formed to witness the spectacle of two bony structures about to create collateral damage.

    Velan punched. I moved my limbs in the air, more on impulse. Next thing I noticed, everyone running towards a crying Velan who had blood on his face. I cried much louder – maybe due to the impending loss of friendship, and also the tasty paruppu vada (fritters) his mom serves.

    These minor victories were exceptions on an otherwise vulnerable bunch of early-teen years. Feeling physically weak/inferior was part of growing up, especially being amongst intimidating (and bullying) class mates. Karate didn’t help achieve any level playing field with them – I stopped mentioning, to avoid being a laughing stock. Even during the many friendly encounters with my younger sister, I remember being easily out-manoeuvred. She never did any karate and had no fear.

    Meanwhile, I quickly progressed from white, to an orange and a green, then blue, a purple and eventually the brown belt. More self-doubt crept in. I looked myself in the mirror, imagining how it would feel to be ridiculed by one and all if I donned a black belt. While dad insisted to keep going, an unfortunate leg injury from a slightly-more-than-minor accident made me miss some classes. That was the excuse I needed to quit, and I never went back to the karate class.

    My father was quite disappointed. My karate master too caught up with me once during a neighbourhood event. I evaded all their attempts and buried my face in books.

    As I kept focussing on my studies and then, career, I have forgotten the karate kid in me. While my friends pumped iron, ran miles and bent their bones in yoga postures, I didn’t bother to move a muscle. I hit rock-bottom during my early twenties. Once with a group of us – boys (men?) teasing each other, I made a fool of myself announcing my brown belt credentials. One of the guys asked me to show if I had still got it – offering to receive my kicks on his body. The more I pushed and slapped with my slender legs, the louder he broke down laughing, as if he was being tickled. Worse, he was the thinnest of us all.

    I did win the truth/lie test at office the other day, but it will certainly be a lie if I claim any karate accomplishment. After all, when confronted, I have had more more losses, hardly any wins and occasional draws.

    As I calm down, I do realise that the real truth is somewhere in between. Karate was not all a losing cause.

    A few years ago, I caught myself in a road rage incident in Bangalore. My car hit an auto-rickshaw while I took a narrow turn, and it was all my fault. With my wife and kid in the rear seat, I got nervous as the thug-like driver ran towards me, signalling at me to lower the window panes. He hurled a few expletives and began to throw punches at my face. Six or seven hits, if I remember correct. My heart was racing, the girls were screaming, but I noticed him getting frustrated.

    All his hits were misses. Turns out, my forearms crossed up and blocked each one of those. My karate master must have been proud.

  • An Original Copy

    “Can you prepare a document in two weeks’ time that maps our product offerings to the customer’s context?”. I didn’t understand why I was excited at this ask from the senior colleague. You see, in the past few years, I had been more assisting others to produce content – be it a solution proposal or a commercial document – as opposed to creating something on my own. Recent changes in the team meant I do a different role – one that requires me to prepare a collateral of innovation ideas, sales plays, case studies and customer stories.

    A week later, the excitement turned into a bit of nervousness. Up early on that weekend, I was coming to terms with the reality: I actually don’t know anything about this customer. Equally bad, I am out touch with recent innovations and product offerings. The feeling soon turned into anxiety, as I realised I have just a week to go and I hadn’t gathered certain details about this customer that I had expected to receive from a colleague.

    You can now imagine why I didn’t publish any blogs recently.

    Finishing a cup of coffee at 5:30 am, a moment of serendipity ensued. I gazed around the bookshelf and spotted my project report from the post-graduation days. Bayesian Theory based Troubleshooting Tree. We didn’t call it Machine Learning back then. “I did create a lot of content back then”. Rewinding further to the under graduate days, the mind wandered around the times of second year engineering, particularly of those anxious days before the Computer Programming exam.

    “Help me with Math and I teach you Computer Science”, a great deal offered by my class mate who was a computer nerd but (surprisingly) dreaded the mathematical elements of the Electro Magnetic Radiation course. He had some past experience in writing code, while here I was, having never touched a keyboard. I had to deal with this upcoming test on C, C++ and FORTRAN, while still confused by some basics of programming. For instance, I never got the difference between an “IF” and a “FOR” construct.

    I duly followed my part of the deal. We spent couple of weekends before the exam working out many mathematical equations and more importantly, some techniques in constructing answers to impress, and pass, of course. He was elated.

    When it was his turn to help me survive the programming test, however, he acted weird. Suddenly his PC went kaput. The subsequent weekend, his mom gave him an errand. Or he fell sick. I was left with facing a prospect of failing an exam for the first time in my life. I realised my class mate had ditched me. Prayers didn’t help either.

    On the day of the exam, seated on the front row of the bus to college, I still had an hour to do something. My neighbour was next to me – who was not (yet) a friend but one who went to the same college – and was busy going over a rugged old book on computer programming. I wondered out loud, how learning a different programming language (BASIC, if you remember) will help him write exam on C language. He then lectured me on how programming is all about logic, common sense and algorithms, and that syntax is just a means to an end while semantics is all that was important. As the time was ticking by, he shared some techniques like drawing boxes and arrows to construct a flowchart, and alerted me to write English sentences in a pseudocode before writing complicated coding statements in C++.

    All those things my bus friend taught me ended up saving my soul that day. I just had to translate what he said to the questions. I took quite a bit of creative liberties in answering that day. I wrote and wrote; didn’t finish until the last bell rang at 3 hours and 1 minute.

    How do I do it again, 25 years later for a different test ? A second bout of caffeine infused a bit of hope. I told myself, i can prepare that document, if I just stick to those exact techniques from those college days.

    I perhaps need more reminiscing from the past.

    I remembered how I made my own version of subject notes, in those days before internet and google: by corralling content from the original Russian author who wrote complex stuff about electron devices, simplify the language and complement by adding notes borrowed from those always-diligent-girls in the first row of our class. And splattering the boring textual content with mathematical equations, electronic network diagrams and name-dropping of jargons here and there.

    I also recall how a few class mates who had never interacted with me otherwise, would come up and say thanks. Little did I know that copies of my notes had reached far off places.

    This wandering trip to the past was just the kick I needed to get started with the document. During the next three hours, I googled and found many interesting details about this customer and their goals, strategies and what not. I also searched for content from internal corporate sites. Eventually I came up with a decent package. It was much easier than I had thought. The moment I realised I was creating something that does not exist, I began feeling lighter. And like those engineering subject papers, I ended up producing a comprehensive document that I felt proud of: an appealing construct of words, images, ideas and proposals.

    In the end, the deliverable was reasonably well received. While I still have apprehensions whether this is going to be greatly useful, it did serve a purpose: to make a start, a pitch and create something original, if I dare say that word.

    Because, it is quite controversial these days to claim anything original. We are inundated with content created by millions of people past and present. The fonts, colours, words, ideas and possibilities – are all out there. You just need to make a new sentence. Create a new perspective by mixing up things. There are several techniques in Lateral Thinking and Design Thinking that justify, or even encourage this copying – or building upon ideas from others.

    I sense what makes your copy original is the context that you bake in. Its a paradox, we all have our own signatures in our stories, creations – whether they are mails, documents, presentations, talks, even texts.

    Remember, you are unique.

    Just like everyone else in this world.

    PS: the scores from the Computer Programming exam from 1996: The mysterious class mate made 88 out of a 100. I surprised him as well as myself: a cool 78. Unfortunately, the bus friend who helped me out, ended up with much less. Perhaps, he stuck to the truth while I wrote a novel. In the end, he turned out be a better coder than many of us and is quite successful in the silicon valley nowadays.

  • Bookshelf tales – Hard landing on a Tipping point

    (This is part 2 of my Bookshelf tales. For part 1, click this link).

    All the preparations didn’t go in vain. I passed the interview and received my first job offer. With a lot of excitement, I moved to a new city to begin my career with Baan (a great company) along with three of my classmates and forty others in that batch (a great company).

    The day we landed, I noticed my friend unpacking more books than clothes from his luggage. He filled out half the wardrobe shelf with his books. Seven Habits of Highly effective People was one of the first books I borrowed from him. I remember feeling inadequate at that moment – after having ignored a friend’s dad’s advice before I left home. He was reminiscing on his bachelor days in Hyderabad many years ago and suggested that I avoid eating out and to do a lot of reading. I perhaps paid more attention to be one own’s cook than to pick up a book.

    Eventually, I began collecting (and reading) some books. I write about three of those, that provide colour and context to my first four years.

    “The Goal” (…and how my trainer eliminated the job of a canteen clerk)

    “What is the goal of a company?”. Mr. Karan Rastogi, the trainer asked us as he began unravelling the concepts of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP). Most of the answers were around producing goods that are useful to society or something in those lines. Mr. Rastogi clarified however, the main goal of any enterprise was to make money.  To be accurate, to create value – for shareholders, employees, and the society at large. It was all going over my head anyway. To make it easier for us, he narrated a story from his management consulting days.

    He was once asked by a major manufacturing company in the northern part of India to identify ways to reduce cost of operations. He learnt that all employees were provided subsidised food and tea at their canteen. A clerk was employed to manage tokens and the cash register. Initially, the workers were quite happy – being able to buy a meal for less than 50% of the cost outside. Soon there were complaints about the quality of food and the long queues in front of the billing counter. Mr. Rastogi initially performed a lot of algorithmic calculations based on Operations Management but soon came to a simple conclusion: it is best to fire the clerk and eliminate his job function, and provide free meals. The loss of revenue was more than made up by the increased employee morale (when they pay nothing, they didn’t complain even when the food was terrible).

    He suggested that we read a novel by Eliyahu M. Goldratt: The Goal, which is rated as one of the top 25 books in Business Management. Read how the central character in the book learns complex concepts like Theory of Constraints, Bottlenecks etc, from real life experiences as he resurrects his career as a struggling Shopfloor Manager. In particular, I enjoyed the part where he goes on a mountain hike with his children and their friends, as they follow each other in a sequence on the way up. Hours later, he finds the last few kids arriving much later than others – due to a fat kid in the middle who slowed down everyone behind. With the insight: “A chain is only as strong as its weakest link”, he goes back to work and fixes his production chain, thereby reducing inventory and increasing profit, thereby keeping his job and getting back with his wife.

    “The Tipping Point“

    As I was browsing through a book shop, I picked up this book that was at the end of the shelf and about to fall. What an odd (but appropriate) title, I thought. Tipping Point. A tip is a point after all. And the author’s last name is Gladwell. Well, I didn’t regret buying it though. It introduced me to the world of social sciences, especially how influential ideas spread virally in a social network (long before the age of Facebook). And more importantly, to non-fiction books that are as gripping as novels.

    “The Power of now”

    A bit of hard landing occurred in the first job as I struggled to deal with expectations. It was much easier to shine as a topper in a class room but not so in the real world. I also had to deal with a literal hard landing.

    One morning, I found myself flat on a hard, newly laid tar road, thrown from my Yamaha RX 135 bike as I narrowly avoided colliding with a patient exiting from an eye hospital, riding his bicycle across the road (he was still carrying some bandages in his face). I had four seconds to respond and I thought I did well not to kill him, even when he unknowingly tried his best to come straight at me with a single eye.

    In an eerie sort of coincidence, I had bought this book “Power of Now” only a couple of weeks before. While I was recovering from a surgery to my broken wrist, I thought it wouldn’t a bad idea to dip into this book about mindfulness and stuff. I couldn’t resist wondering why this happened to me. What if I had joined my friend in his bike that day. What if I had paid more attention during those four seconds. Or maybe earlier.

    A colleague tried to assuage me, “in our roads, even if you are 100% careful, you are only 50% safe.” That made me laugh while still at pain. My uncle’s friend saw me reading this book and said, “Kid, you have many years to go before you indulge in philosophy stuff. You need to do earthly things and struggle in life first.”

    That rang a bell. A year later, I was married and it was many months before I touched any book, especially philosophical ones.

  • Bulk Fiction

    “You are losing the ability to focus on things closer to you”.

    The optometrist’s diagnosis for my recurring headache sounded rather philosophical. As he prescribed reading glasses, he assured me that my eyesight is alright and this is all quite normal in the forties, and I needed to wear them only for reading.

    A couple of days later, I realised I didn’t remove them except when at sleep. It struck me then, “reading” encapsulates plenty of things one does during the day: looking at numbers and texts on my PC when at work, catching a glimpse of the twitter feed on iPhone, reading books over the weekend. Even watching TV/movies involves a bit of reading (subtitles).

    Its not just the insane amount of blue-light exposed to my eyes that was worrying. All the stuff I inhale into my mind each day. what’s going on ? And, whats going in? Beyond work, how do i control the intake of the non-essential content? I began applying some mental filters.

    Fiction vs Non-Fiction

    We could classify all the TV programs, movies, books, social media that we consume into these two buckets: fiction vs non-fiction. Imagined stuff vs reality. To be blunt, the false vs the truth.

    Why do we love watching movies when we know most of them aren’t real? Motion pictures were a revolution in the last century, as disconnected and disadvantaged people were suddenly exposed to a world full of people they had never encountered, of stories never heard before, of places they may never visit. And the information flow that would have not occurred otherwise, though laced with myths, exaggerations and influences.

    But in this age of information overflow, why do we flood our grey cells with fiction? Agreed, imagined stories are fun while most documentaries are boring. We seek drama, meaning, pleasure and escape from reality. Movies and novels deliver those.

    There is another reason why acclaimed writers prefer fiction. Arundhati Roy, a Man Booker Prize winner and a fearless political activist, says she gets more creative liberty (and less trouble from the mob) as she indulges in fiction to tell a real story. In that sense, she claims fiction isn’t untruth. The reader is smart enough to relate to and reflect on the characters and derive their own meanings.

    No wonder these imagined movies and novels leave us emotionally richer and mentally relaxed. Albert Einstein wanted us to remember, “Imagination is more important than knowledge”, and sure enough, many sci-fi novels and movies paved the way for real scientific breakthroughs.

    How about we dabble with a bit of reality? Alas, we are surrounded by the cacophony of news, political events, wedding announcements of celebrities, and cat videos. The irrelevant and ugly truth presented to us each day are the very reasons we run away to a fictitious, imagined world.

    True Stories

    However, it is important to run into the real world from time to time, not away from it. Its not a strain, believe me. There are heaps of true, inspiring stories in the form of documentaries, biographies, podcasts and news. You could start with any domain: sports, science, lives of ordinary, unknown people.

    I indulge in watching test match cricket and tennis(especially when Federer plays). I love the commentary, particularly the way Ian Chappell brings better words to describe the same event I had witnessed. And the words and perspectives of the film critic Baradwaj Rangan are more entertaining than the movie itself.

    A few years ago, i enjoyed watching the documentary, making of Lagaan (Oscar-nominated movie) as much as the movie itself, if not more. The reel drama about a bunch of villagers achieving the impossible bet of winning a cricket match against the British officials, is more than matched by the real life struggle of a passionate (and crazy) team attempting to make a movie in an unforgiving desert.

    If you are intimidated by the term quantum mechanics or multiple universe, watch this fantastic animation story about the famous Young’s double-slit experiment about the nature of light. God, if such videos were available during our school-years. If you want a more entertaining science story, check this out: the story of how man walked from the jungles of Africa all the way across different parts of the world.

    There is this uplifting story of an ordinary bloke, Barry “Nugget” Rees, who never played cricket as such but became accepted as part of the Australian cricketing fraternity, that makes you look at these cricketers in such a positive light (this was before the sand-paper scam).

    Living in the age of fake news, we are permeated by maya(Sanskrit for illusion). The more we filter out the trivial stuff and focus on the what-if’s and aha-moments, the richer we become.

    I came across this quote some time ago: Small minds discuss People; Average minds discuss Events; Great minds discuss Ideas.

  • To find a problem to solve…

    I was so bored towards the end of the day during a short, official trip to Wellington last year that I started reading my own blogs. I soon ventured into my journal entries. For more than a year now, I have been diligently jotting down anything that comes to mind – thoughts, tasks, worries, ideas, incidents, insights – in a spreadsheet. A lot of stuff from work, home and social life.  It has been a game changer for me. Many of my blogs have been composed of these random notes. I also learn so much about myself.

    What struck me was, its all about me, “my” world: my family, my work place, my friends and acquaintances. I wondered if and when would I ever find time or energy to even think about the issues of others – those not related to me personally or professionally.

    No, im not talking about throwing some money away for a charity. I am referring to the act of utilising our knowledge, skills, network and time to create something to make a small difference in someone’s life.

    I didn’t know where to start. I had tried to look for volunteering activities previously: signed up for a mentoring gig but soon realised it was not fully engaging me. While I did not seek additional stress beyond what was already produced by work and life, I still wanted to push myself a bit intellectually.

    I was searching for opportunities when I got reminded of this advice from Arunachalam Muruganandam – the grass roots innovator of low cost sanitary napkins for rural India – when he spoke as part of the panel that included Bill Gates, addressing the “great challenges facing the world” or something like that (scroll to 50 min into this video). “Don’t look for opportunities. Opportunities are lying in the form of problems. Take a problem, use your knowledge and be a solution provider”.

    Think about people whose occupation is all about troubleshooting and fixing others’ problems: doctors, car mechanics, plumbers etc. Even astrologers and godmen. Though many of these professionals perform this as part of a transaction, there is a hierarchy among them in terms of value and respect accorded by the society. Medical professionals would be at the top of this pyramid, since we trust them with our lives. In my own experiences, I have often admired their ability to deal with our problems while being surrounded by a stressful environment.

    However, the kind of problem solving I was thinking about was different: one that came with no obligation, expectation or judgement. Should inspire me, test me, but with no time pressure involved.  Just the pleasure of doing something useful. Where no one’s watching me.

    The previous week, I had watched a reality TV program which featured a kid from a poor family who was also blind. He sang so beautifully. That took me back to the school days and I remembered once writing a test on behalf of a visually impaired classmate (he would speak the answer to me and I would write it, verbatim). I had always wondered how he would read books which didn’t have the braille version.

    I began a search in google: “Coimbatore blind”. It’s my hometown, after all. Clicked on the first link – which was a video interview with Mr. Saravanan who had sight until he was an adult but lost his vision completely over a period of time. I found his number from the video and called him. He spoke to me about his challenges to become physically and financially independent. About how he was promised many things by many people, organisations and the government, over the years. Though he had received some support and assistance, he felt he could achieve a lot further. He never gave up though. Living with his parents, he is independent however, running a coaching centre in the outskirts of Coimbatore, offering students a whole bunch of things: yoga, spoken English, communication skills, spiritual advice etc. He has a computer and a smart phone which help him get connected to the world.

    I explained my background and the intention to help him in some way I could. His expressed his main challenge as being missing out on reading books. Only a small percentage of books have the braille version. He narrated his difficulties in having to travel some distance to read a book of his choice, but the library’s text-to-speech reader device was available only intermittently.

    I found the problem I was looking for.

    As an IT person, I thought it should be so easy to solve this problem. After all, Apple devices, Kindle and so many apps offer AI capabilities (SeeingAI from Microsoft, for instance) and surely, it must be possible for him to just place a device on top of the page and listen on.

    Alas, it was not so simple. Obviously, not all books are available in the digital form. Definitely, not all Tamil books. I also realised, many of these technologies are proprietary, expensive and worse, not so reliable. Even otherwise, how would he read the contents of a letter posted to him?

    After a month of research, I resigned to the fact that I just have to buy him the right product. A time-tested and reliable reading device (Pearl) which is used in schools and universities across the world. I also ordered the software that supports Tamil character recognition. It was a challenge for Saravanan to get this installed and configured all by himself, talking over the phone with the Mumbai based dealer that shipped the device. He later told me the Tamil OCR software didn’t work at all. Nevertheless, he was beginning to read English books.

    It was a bit disappointing in the end that I couldn’t solve his problem fully; and the way I wanted to. With my skill, knowledge and all that. Living at the other end of the world, I was only able to afford some time and money.

    It has been a year now. I try to keep in touch with him and occasionally call him. Earlier this month, during our trip to India, my wife and I met him face to face for the first time.

    He “read” us a page from a book that was kept under the scanner.

  • Can you please pass that insult ?

    Getting up at 5 am on a Saturday and in front of the laptop without even the customary cup of coffee? The wife was startled and wondered what’s gotten to me. That, I would learn for myself a few hours later, as I finished authoring a detailed analysis of the project situation along with some suggestions to mitigate risks. When I pressed the Send button, the email carried more than just the slide deck I had attached. It also took away the residual feeling of something I struggled to put into words the whole night: Why did these guys exclude me from recent discussions?

    We all face situations where we have been left out. What we do in those situations determine who we really are. It tampers with our ego, causes a bit of anger and we take offence. Whether we are part of a team that builds a space ship or if we are jockeys racing horses, or simply playing a game together, sometimes the ingredient that stimulates us to produce an inspiring result is not the respect, trust, or love from others. It just might be an ounce of insult passed on to our side of the table.

    Recently my (now “ex”) tennis doubles partner asked me to consider not turning up for the finals we were going to play in a level three tournament in a modest club in our small city. That way he can partner with a reserve player to increase the chance of winning. (The irony was lost on him that I beat him in a singles match just the previous night). I didn’t go and I still don’t know whether they won. But I knew that was the end of that strange “friendship”. Have I become more serious about tennis? Oh boy! I began playing more often and I even try that single-handed cross-court backhand shot once in a while, forgetting I’m still an amateur who is yet to learn how not to dance while hitting the ball.

    I am not a saint, though. And this has to come out of the system today: I did contribute to someone becoming an inspired table tennis player many years ago by means of my disrespectful behaviour.

    At the end of a relaxed day at work in the Hyderabad office, I was busy playing a game with another colleague. I didn’t pay attention to my friend as he appeared near the table. He was still learning to hold the racket and here I was already able to move the ping pong ball across the net. My colleague and I continued to play games without giving a chance to my friend who waited for an hour in vain. Six months later he surprised (shocked!) me by beating the blues out of me. And sixteen years later he is still a friend (I hope).

    Getting rejected is an awful feeling. Not being given a chance is criminal. Alas, nature does that all the time. It also teaches us how to thrive.

    As a year 10 student, with my eyes looking at an unknown future (I was caught looking outside the window regularly), I was intrigued by this question posed by our class teacher: what do we want to do next?. “I want to prepare for the IIT entrance exams” (the premier engineering institution in India). It was not the laughter from my class mates that put me down. The teacher’s discouraging words: “Son, I don’t think you can do it” pushed me down but only momentarily. Two years later, I eventually failed to get into IIT. But those two thousand hours I spent preparing for that exam, prepared me for the future. In the end, the good old man’s words only increased my appetite to aspire.

    In the climax of the film Seabiscuit (name of the horse), the jockey is on his most important race of his career. The horse and the jockey are injured. They needed more than mere motivation to win. Then he comes with this trick: he asks his friend who is another racer to help by bringing his horse close to Seabiscuit during the race; close enough to tease and “give a look” at Seabiscuit in his eye. Those few seconds were just enough for the trailing Seabiscuit to get spurred and race to victory.

    We all need a kick in the back once in a while. It is a cliché but it sounds nice in this context: when you fall you better try to fall forward. We don’t know why we react the way we do when we are pushed. We cannot describe much in words or convince our loved ones. We choose and avoid some of the battles. But the scars choose us and we remember. We then do the only thing that makes sense when slighted or insulted.

    We fight.