RamGanapathy.com

Tag: books

  • Short Story: Double Rainbow

    Monday finally arrived and Vikalp reviewed the events of the last week: the school gate closed on him, the new cycle deserted him, and the exams defeated him. The most upsetting thing was his parents blamed him for the bad turn of events. It was as if he agreed to be transferred to this all-boys school for the eleventh standard, to be in this non-descript place all day with these unknowns who write unmentionables on the wooden beams under which the bald and bespectacled chief of staff Charles Rangaraj sir announced last week of a new Physics teacher replacing Ms. Sheetal.

    Ms. Sheetal, this graceful lady amongst a gang of pot-bellied sirs. Who famously began her very first class with a greeting, “The future doctors and engineers of Coimbatore!”, as if she was certain of their destiny. Suddenly, Vikalp’s world was newborn. The way she described Young’s double-slit experiment was like watching a mystery movie. The day she explained Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle he went home dazzled. He swam along with variables of equations flying narrowly through the slits of a panel in a dark room and emerged as a rainbow on a wide screen. A double rainbow. He whispered things in his sleep. His grandmother recited her prayers. 

    Mostly, it all went over and around his tiny head. He would nag Mugil to explain what Ms. Sheetal taught. He stepped into the school library for the first time. “I don’t want to do engineering. I want to be teacher”, he promised Mugil. He was mesmerised by the wild trips Ms. Sheetal took the class, from the quantum to the infinite. How could she suddenly vanish?

    The school assembly had started when he entered. Shooed away by the watchman again, he climbed the gate to peep into the parking area. No sign of Ms. Sheetal’s lady-bird. A large cycle with a red seat resembling his own leaned against the wall. The assembly went into a hush and the choir boys sang their blues celebrating Hope and Grace and the Love of the Lord. Vikalp turned around and walked home.

    He went to Mugil’s house in the evening. “How’s the new teacher?”. Mugil peered into his eyes, smiled.

    The next day he arrived at school early and went to the toilet. Adjusting his hair, tucking in his shirt, he asked himself, “Teaching Physics, eh?” Charles Sir entered the mirror. “Come and see me in my office”.

    Vikalp knew he was in trouble. He took a detour via the staff room to see if there is a new face. The physics teacher’s desk was empty. On the book shelf across, he spotted a photo of an old woman’s face. Is that…?

    He ran towards the staff parking lane. The red-seated cycle stood straight.

    Vikalp hated standing outside Charles sir’s room. The peon scanned him face to bottom. My shoes dirty? My shirt tucked out? He scorned the rules and rituals of the school and its men.

    Vikalp hated standing inside even more. “So, you like Physics all of a sudden? Your father tells me. Your marks don’t tell me. Take Commerce. Easier for you”.

    “No sir. I will study harder, sir”. He evaded further questions, except for the probing words on a blue banner behind Charles sir: “Are You Smart?” 

    He returned to the staff corridor, browsing the shelves with a quick glance, and still catching the red-seated cycle in the corner of his eyes. The bell rang. He saw the Maths sir walking past, staring at him.

    Late. The class was silent, which meant the new Physics teacher should be in. He imagined all possible excuses. Or he could go home. Something urged him to try.

    “Sir, may I come in?”, he threw his request at the back of the new teacher’s head.

    “Yes, you may”, the man turned around. “Sit down”.

    Adjusting his hair, tucking in his already well-tucked-in shirt, the new sir addressed the class proper. “The future doctors and engineers of Coimbatore! My name is Vikalp. I too studied in his school, in this very room. The carvings are still up there.” The class giggled. “We had this wonderful teacher, Ms…”

    Vikalp sat gazing at the man, the blackboard behind him blurring into a dark room with equations dancing along and getting sucked into a narrow slit and emerging as a double-arch rainbow.

  • 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.

  • 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.