RamGanapathy.com

Category: Uncategorized

  • Markings On The Wood

    Madhu was in the class room. The desk had scratches and markings everywhere. He sat, slouching a bit and looked up. The wooden beams crisscrossing the large, ninth standard A section class room had markings, scratchings and writings. They were not Thirukurals. Lewd and rusty things said by fourteen year old boys over the years. How did they get up there ? Did they scratch on it before it got erected?

    Vignesh came back from the playground. He looked and breathed tired. He smelled too.

    “Move aside, da! I have to complete it before the mad man comes”, he said. “Did you finish?”

    “Oh, I know. You would have finished already!”, he kept charging at Madhu without waiting for a reply.

    He then jumped over Madhu’s back and landed on the bench. He put his hand under the table and unearthed folded foils of white sheets. His style. He didn’t like notebooks like the rest of them. He wrote in pieces of paper and clipped them, stapled them, sometimes even knitted them with twine threads. He was messy.

    Madhu checked the blackboard. The blackness brought about by the cleaners in the morning was long gone. It was grey. The white chalks and multiple erasing in the morning class by the physics teacher Vanan. Chalks. Well, chalks were all over the place. Small, rounded missiles they became at the hands of the always-angry teachers.

    Vanan, the large-teeth fellow, carried his cane always and wrote his equations with a screeching sound that swallowed all the silence of the class of hundred and five boys, all stunned by his whirling sound of whiplash.

    He liked to pick up on Vignesh, his favourite. He would ask the trickiest of questions at the most unexpected times – when Vignesh dozed off for a mere millionth of a second.

    “Sir! Sir! Sorry Sir!…”.

    Whip. Whip.

    “What is Newton’s second law of motion?”

    “Sir! Sir! I don’t know, Sir! Please sir!”.

    Whip. Whack.

    “Just coming to school every day, well dressed, filling your stomach, and like a donkey, carrying bag full of books, but not opening them, ever”. Vanan’s caustic remarks were directed at the whole class. It was a prefix to the violent act that followed.

    Taking in a long breath after uttering each phrase, swinging his cane up in the air, pausing a moment for pure theatre, swinging it down while breathing out and lurching towards the poor boy, he lashed at his buttocks at an angle tangent to the convex, tender flesh.

    Vanan laughed like a yoga guru and a warrior, all in one.

    “Sir………r!”

    Vignesh was more moaning than pleading. The last sound of the afternoon physics class.

    It was quiet ever since. The whole class wrote “F=ma” one thousand times as an imposition, in white sheets, notebooks and soiled scraps.

    It was Newton’s law but Vanan’s regime.

  • Old library, new squiggles

    I am at the Quyeanbean library. Specifically, my hands are on a white table engulfed by a green fortress of a desk partition blocking an old window overlooking an old city. A city they say, is one of Australia’s historic inland cities. The city looks like a country town. I say that even though I never lived in country towns, never visited them much. Perhaps my impression of a country town is from cowboy movies where lean Clint Eastwoods stand in the middle of a mud-dirt road holding a gun, eyes wrenched, with a hat obstructing cold, grimsome looks.

    I take a sip of the flat-white-with-one-sugar. One sugar, I always insist. I never check what or how much the barista adds to the cup. I don’t even know the composition of the so-called flat white. It’s not white. It’s brown. Well, I don’t even know that for sure, I drink with the lid closed. It tastes brown. And it’s not flat by any means. Flat means bland, spineless, tasteless. This coffee is hot and deceitful. This coffee, or the first sip of it, already induced enough neurochemicals in my system, enough to make me write this piece, sitting at the desk, leaning closer and closer to the page, my hands scribbling squiggles of blue ink on a yellow page, my breath bouncing off the page, mixing with the slice of coffee I just ingested. My elbows are squeaking and slipping by the shake and thrust of my writing hand.

    I write a lot these days and I seem to flow on forwards by a stream of consciousness, dwelling on the moment. My face is stiff, lips curled, eyes clasped on the topic that I found or made sense of, from the string of last few words imprinted on the page. My hand isn’t stopping, it suddenly relishes the attention it’s got. It is writing and at the same time being written about.

    Who is writing?

  • Floating on the floor

    It is 1:30 in the afternoon, the radio is on, placed on the table – the only table in the house. Paati(grandmother) has just settled down on the kattil (bed) with a double pillow. I am sitting down, on a mat, opened my geography book. Listening to the violin’s pull and swings (Carnatic music), I was bored. I hated it, but also liked it for some reason. It made me feel sad. The music itself, and the fact that I am alone at home with Paati, not with my “friends” who might be doing more interesting things like playing cricket or climbing trees – things I suck at. The reverberating music caused paati to doze off almost, yet I cannot sleep. I look at the ticking wall clock – it is stuck at 2:20 for a long time. I like watching the second-hand tick tock its way around. The clock has a funny face. It laughs at me. I am offended. I go back to my book. The stomach cries out a few burps. I slightly relax my posture. From sitting straight on the floor, I now lean back to my left using my elbow as the balancing fulcrum of my body – which all of a sudden says fuck it, and goes full horizontal.

    The song diminishes, the literals are repeated – the vocalist says “sa”, and then “re” and very soon switches to “sa” but he doesn’t say “re” – he sticks to “saaaa” and so it goes. The violin stays strong, the percussion instruments – a mridangam and a ganjira – sounded so tiny and diminished that the vocalist must have shushed them to the background. I cannot see them – a TV in the house was still a few years away. But on that Tuesday, on a warm and sultry afternoon, floating on the floor under a twirling ceiling fan that made a hiss at every turn, my mind slipped on the words from the book which was about South American Inca civilisation, its mountains, how arid the conditions for agriculture were, and reading big words like “metamorphosis” and what not.

    The violin was wailing now, and the vocalist had receded to the background. The mridangam and ganjira were talking to each other through their beats. How can they repeat each other so correctly? I dwindled, diminished and descended on a slope that slowed me down, until the music and my mind came to a complete stop.

    Oh I better wake up. I have to finish this lesson before I can ask Paati to let me go play outside. The clock still laughed when it moved its second and minute hands so slowly at me. It keeps at 2:20 still. Is it playing with me? Oh, no it is 3:20 now. But it is still laughing. Paati snoring and I am looking at the hissing ceiling fan and it slowed down suddenly, circling slower and slower until it stopped.

    Power cut.

  • New Map on an Old Wall

    Three weeks ago, the entire kitchen wall in our office was filled with maps of the world. Diversity and inclusion week was being celebrated. We were asked to highlight the place we were born, by pasting coloured stickers on the map. Australian continent is deemed down under, but we placed Australia at the centre of the world. I mean, the wall.

    Last week at office, I noticed a new map of Australia on the same wall. A different one, with blurred border lines separating a huge number of “states” and “territories”, all highlighted with various colours, with new names. New, to me – a recent immigrant.

    As a child, I loved colouring maps. I was fascinated by borders, routes and names. 

    “Where are the border lines?”

    I always wondered how the boundaries of states and nations were made. I don’t remember much, but I would ask, who drew those lines and how. During trips to a temple in the adjacent south Indian state, I might have pestered my dad or an elder cousin, “Did we cross the border already?”, “Where is the line that i saw on the map?” I wonder if they might have pointed at the river and the mountain ranges as the bus entered the border town. I never understood.

    Years later, the much grown up adult me would figure it out. Those borders on the map are not real. They are a socio-political construct. Nothing to do with geography.

    “Routes that create territories”

    In the past, the invaders and colonisers used maps to discover new territories. To then change the landscape, peoples, culture, everything. They say Map is not the territory. But those conquerors used maps to make new territory. Bruno Latour says, “The great man is a little man looking at a good map”.

    We trust a map so much these days that we are lost without it. We take it literally, or almost fatally, as this German driver did (from a story I read in an old copy of Readers Digest).

    The semi-conscious middle-aged man was being questioned at the hospital after his accident, “Why did you drive your car at high speed directly at the barricades. Didn’t you notice the exit was blocked for repair. That too, on a sunny day?” His reply, “I followed the GPS on my car”.

    Names: old – new – old

    The city I grew up – Coimbatore – is near the foothills of the beautiful hill station, Ooty. Its historical name is Uthagamandalam. The British made it their summer capital of the south. The name was a mouthful though. They tried pronouncing, but made a mess of it, naming Ootacamund. The locals might have resented it, even if they couldn’t have resisted that change. Eventually, it became Ooty. 

    Thirty years after the British left, the local government decided to change the name to its old Uthagamandalam. Still, a few locals resisted this change. But they might have figured:

    If the names could be changed then, 

    the names could be changed now.

    The new (old?) colourful Australian Map

    That map on the kitchen wall last week was to mark the National Reconciliation Week. The AIATSIS map is a “visual reminder of the richness and diversity of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australia. It was created in 1996 as part of the Encyclopaedia of Aboriginal Australia project and attempts to show language, social or nation groups”.

    Maps, with its borders, routes and names, decide the way we see the world. They don’t just tell us where we are, they determine who we are.

    Perhaps, we don’t stop with a new map on the old wall.

    We bring the old map back to the new minds.

    (This is from my speech delivered last week at our Toastmasters club on the theme of National Reconciliation Week in Australia, which is all about “relationships between the broader Australian community and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples”. Please note, while I am still learning about this important topic, my attempt was to touch on the related topic of maps, through stories, anecdotes and insights.)

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • How to survive a meeting

    When I started working (I mean, working as opposed to the many months of training sessions) in my first job, I noticed people in the team spending a lot of time inside meeting rooms than at their desks. The work assigned to me involved coding a piece of software – at least that’s what I thought; soon it became clear to me that without talking to the seniors and colleagues i cannot get anything done. Not that it was unexpected but it astounded me that i spent more time writing emails and talking than coding. Worse was when i struggled to obtain availability of meeting rooms and subject matter experts. Thus it was evident that communication skills were as relevant as computer skills, especially when one tries to share ideas and seek improvements to make a collective decision.

    I should have seen that coming. It was during the final years of college as we were preparing for job interviews that I encountered this construct called Group Discussion.

    We had to debate on a topic and you are judged on how well you make your point. We were given the controversial one: to agree on the most effective form of government (in the subcontinent): democracy or dictatorship. I was still struggling to put my views across, mainly in English and was intimidated by the bunch of guys who waxed eloquence on the principles of democracy, while being struck by the plain and simple logic evoked by the other group who championed dictatorship. I was still waiting for my friend to open his mouth yet – I knew him as a sharp and fierce communicator – when I was prodded to speak. I kept fumbling along and made a mess of the only speaking opportunity. I was in a 50-50 mode mentally, but could not express that at all.

    Formally, a meeting is defined as a situation when two or more people meet, by chance or arrangement. Effective interactions and collaboration among workers are the building blocks of successful organisations. The power of collective human consciousness is unparalleled. It is quite important to structure such gatherings since otherwise, they quickly degenerate into a platform for egoistical arguments and cacophony.

    There are many simple rules for running meetings which I think are not so simple. There are companies that take it very seriously. Last week, i read about Jeff Bezos’ rules of running any meeting at Amazon, which included no power point presentations apart from insisting everyone to silently read memos for the first half of the meeting. That reminded me of a suggestion I made to my team many years ago. I was still a rookie but I had the gumption to strongly recommend that the entire team be forbidden from talking to each other for the first three ‘silent’ hours in the morning. I was not the most popular person in the team.

    While I m not criticising the very purpose of social interactions in a corporate environment as such, I want to draw your attention to the fact that a typical knowledge worker in this age has less time for him/herself. More than 70% of my work time gets spent on meetings. They come in various terms and forms: discussion, idea generation, design thinking, status update, issue tracking, planning, synch up, stand up, get together, morning prayers, kitchen cabinets and what not. I read this somewhere: “a meeting is a chance for people to share their own confusion with a broader audience, contributing to the collective chaos.”

    How to survive such meetings? How to conduct one? Enumeration can come to the rescue. When you make a simple list of items to be addressed and stick to that, you can at least complete the meeting if not solve world hunger. The real challenge is to come up with such a list.

     I remember a particular issue-tracking meeting that occurred during a critical phase of the project. My manager asked the team about the progress of resolving defects which were pending for weeks. “We have made very good progress in the last two weeks; many of the issues are resolved; some of the remaining ones are being corrected; most of the corrected issues will be tested by tomorrow”. It took a whole thirty minutes for the boss to determine the list of issues in the first place.

     Can we try to be more objective and mainly focus on data, facts and actions, while ignoring the emotions involved? At your peril. You see, meetings are also occasions where people vent out their frustrations, and real human connect occurs only when you let others express themselves. My own inadequacies in the listening front is well documented in my previous blogs. Having said that, I believe it is cruel to let someone go on in their line of argument when everyone realises it is a rabbit hole, especially with the time constraints we live with.

    Ideally, a meeting is just a means to an end. An end outcome that moves the team forward. Actions are assigned and a direction emerges. In reality though, meetings need not always be so serious and I will run out of space writing about many funny episodes. For instance, I have seen people rushing to point at others as action owners, often at those who were absent.

    But many a meeting occurs in a hostile/political environment where unwritten rules manifest and items not in the agenda dominate the proceedings. In such situations, a significant amount of time is spent post-meeting to minute the discussions and document actions which gives an opportunity for the host to shape the outcome of the meeting even as he was unable to influence it while it occurred.

     Though one should not treat a meeting like a war zone, it is fascinating to see people trying to have the last word. But usually the ones who are able to listen to differing view points, forge relationships and offer creative alternatives emerge as real change makers. They make everyone think and realise it was worthwhile spending time away from their desks.

     My college friend demonstrated that many years ago, when finally his turn arrived during the group discussion. As the crowd was already dissected into democracy advocates and dictatorship worshippers, our man got this to say. “I think we should try democratically electing a dictator”.

  • Catching the Bus

    Yes I remember that very well. Every day from when I was 11 until joining college, I went through this routine which was painful but necessary part of the day.

    Catching the bus. Entering it; finding your spot; and more importantly, getting out unscathed.

    No, it was not simple.

    The first day to the high school – around 10 kms from home – was also my first ever bus trip by myself. Standing amidst a crowd of busy people at the bus stop – school kids big and small, families, and irritated, lonely office goers – I remember feeling anxious but proud of being on my own.

    Imagine the 80’s in India. A typical bus stop at a middle class neighbourhood. No mobile phones. You have to chat with strangers otherwise the wait for the bus would feel much longer. Usually I was with friends and occasionally my parents would decide to start early to office and give me company.  But mostly I found myself among a crowd of unfamiliar people.

    Suddenly there was a jostling. I look towards the end of the road.  Appears like a mirage, but it was indeed the bus emerging from nowhere. The red and white coloured metal box carrying a sea of humanity is going to stop near me anytime. And I need to figure out a way to get in and find some space to stand if not sit. Already, the sound and sight of that beast  had made me nervous, especially the ear piercing horn announcing to the world that no one dare stand in the way.

    Everyone gets ready; no queues, no courtesy. Bags are lifted from the ground; conversations pause; a sense of alertness kicks in. Families make strategies – who gets in first to look for seats for others and who should carry the heavy bags etc. As the bus stops, I realized one of the fundamental assumptions going wrong. You expect a bunch of people getting down to make space for ones getting in. That never happened. But no one seemed to care. Everybody barged in. Actually, my attempt to get in to the bus was effortless (alas, not painless) since, all I did was to stand in the way of this bulky guy who wanted to desperately get in. The raging bull that he was, he ensured I was shovelled right into it.

    There were days when the arriving bus wouldn’t stop near us. You see, the driver would want to keep his sanity (and his job) when he knows there is a physical limit. He might prefer to avoid a stampede and stop a lot farther from the bus stop, hoping to only offload people and not let anymore in. But he is unaware that we are also good sprinters and nothing would deter us from making a mad rush towards the bus.

    Most days we make it. Entering that way as an unwelcome passenger, you need to avoid making eye contact with the driver (or the ticket conductor). I look back at the scene now and it resembles the one from the movie Avatar where Jake Sully waits for his dragon on the top of the mountains. While everyone gets their carrier, he is left wondering if he would ever have a chance to be on top of his own dragon until when he is assured by his girlfriend of the tribe ,”You choose your Ikran, but you have to wait until it choses you”.

    Some days I get up late and I would already know that the only chance to get to school in time would mean that I run and run towards the bus stop. There are other factors too at play: the straight but uneven path from my home to the bus stop via a dumping ground; speed and position of the bus that has already commenced from the previous stop; probability that it would even stop close to bus station. I never had to struggle for real life examples when I learnt Pythagoras theorem, Trigonometry, Newton’s laws etc. at school.

    Catching a bus was not just an event. It now seems to me as a metaphor  for grabbing opportunities, taking risks and wriggling my way out of the crowd to find a spot. It has prepared me well for the real journeys later.

    To travel away from a familiar home to new places full of hope and unknowns.

  • Sound situations at work

    The soundscape at my work is made up of talking and music. I have to communicate a lot – talking in particular. My job as a bridge person between sales and delivery, only accentuates that. Apart from meetings and discussions in the office, I dial into many conference calls with people I may not have met, holding animated and robust conversations.

    I also like listening to music, as I (used to) write code and (now) crunch numbers. In fact, I’m listening to Zen meditation music as I write this blog. Music (and random noise?) has also played a part in me getting in and out of certain tricky situations at work.

    My team member once forgot to switch his personal phone into silent mode before a conference call with our stakeholder from another country. He was already stressed out, being in the spotlight with most number of defects found in his code. Exactly at the moment he was asked, “Can you please present the root cause analysis?”, his phone rattled with an unusual ring tone – of a film song prefixed with a dialogue: “Start music!”. This became a case of lost-in-translation since the guy at the other end had no clue about the interrupting phone call and had assumed he was being yelled at!

    I’m sure you have had to request – during conference calls – someone to go on mute when they inadvertently add an echo or an irritating background noise. I sometimes wonder if people dial into calls while binge-watching Netflix :). I too was a culprit on an occasion. No, I wasn’t enjoying a movie. Working from home that day, I forgot to mute myself as I got into an important call hosted by our vice president. I was standing on my balcony facing my neighbour’s house being renovated. The clattering noise of metal agonized the leader on the other end. At one point, he gave up and said, “Someone please mute. I hope this is not the sound of our customers hammering us”.

    It’s not just my phone that I want to mute. Mostly, I struggle to listen during conversations, often interrupting with my own ideas and arguments. While I don’t want to offer any excuses, my role does require me to act as a catalyst and perform a certain level of moderation. I could do better for sure.

    I recently learnt about the communication tactic of using pauses in a business discussion, from this BBC article  the subtle power of uncomfortable silences. In a negotiation, such “a pause between someone speaking and your response can be a surprisingly power tool”. It talks about how silences are valued differently based on cultural contexts, for instance, how the “Chinese negotiators are very, very aware that Americans like to fill silences” with something and “possibly make concessions without the Chinese having to do anything”. And how it can help us “get beyond the emotional response and to start thinking cognitively”.

    I also liked a Business Insider article describing how Steve Jobs used an 8 second pause while he responded to an insulting question about his strategy, with a deep and empathetic response.

    I figured, calming music is all fine but it is still a distraction. Silence and stillness is what I yearn. I remember being introduced to meditation as a child but I failed to attain any level of focus or calmness. I should try again, more sincerely.

    Perhaps I should start with depriving myself of any sound. The other day, I was tempted to buy the noise-cancelling headphone offered at a good discount. It was still expensive, so I gave up that thought of buying. Not before trying it out though. And I realized, even the $499 Bose equipment would only come close to – without actually delivering what I was hoping to attain in those few seconds. Absolute silence.

    Maybe sleep would deliver it. As I finish writing this blog, I look forward to some sound sleep.

    Only to be woken by an alarm.

  • Hi, who are you ?

    Embarrassing.  It felt worse than what this word suggests. He was not a friend – merely an acquaintance,  but we used to travel to school together, waiting endlessly for the bus to arrive, jumping into it even before it came to a halt, rushing to grab the best seat. But at that time when he spotted me in the same bus, it had been three years after school and we were going to different colleges and never had a chance to catch up.

    His name ? I just couldn’t get it.

    He caught me blinking even as he excitedly shook my hands and enquired about the new phase of my life. I still managed to have a full thirty minute conversation without having to refer to his name. That was until when my new friend turned up and I had to introduce the strangers to each other. “Meet my school mate, ummmm…”.

    Oops.

    Eventually, I discovered my erstwhile fellow bus traveller as Gopi – the name I struggled to fetch and the one he had to announce it himself. It was awkward. Yeah, that’s the word.

    I have good memory. Anyone who has passed their exams from an Indian University during the 90’s would be never found wanting on that aspect. But I have always struggled to remember names of people. I have tried various techniques – to picture film stars of similar names, or to understand its meaning and co-relate to their personality etc. It all went for a toss, when I began networking at the work place, meeting so many people from different cultures and countries. Add to that, the challenges in pronouncing them correctly.

    Turns out, that are some good reasons why this happens. An article from the Daily Mail explains why the brain struggles to retain a name – a random information with little connection or correlation to the person. One of the reasons it says is that we may not be so interested in the person and hence the brain would hardly make an attempt. I wonder if it is also due to the enormous amount of data feed that goes into us every day.

    I saw an old interview of the veteran Tamil film actor, late Poornam Viswanathan who was once a news reader with All India Radio. He recalled his broadcasting days – he had the great privilege in announcing India’s independence in his Tamil bulletin. At 5:30 am on the morning of August 15, 1947, swelling with pride, he had begun, “All India Radio…seithigal vaasippathu (news read by) ……….”. He forgot his name! After a few excruciating seconds, he recovered from the brain fade and went on to declare his name followed by the most important news that he ever presented.

    These days, I employ this trick which works well in some occasions: I ask for their last name, appearing to store their contact details in my phone book. Most of them go on to say their full name. Even when they don’t, its OK since that’s more than half of the information.

    Recently, when I spotted an ex-colleague at the far-end table of a restaurant, I used linkedin profile search to confirm my guess, before walking up to greet him by his name. It worked.

    But he was still struggling to recognize me at all.