Sunday Posts

When I was in college, I thought I knew what would happen to my life. I knew where I would live – that was easy: Four generations of my family lived in the same house. I knew what I would do – follow either my grandfather into the family business or my father into college teaching. I also knew who I would marry – well, at least my parents made up their mind about that. Of course, none of that happened. The world around me changed and all the assumptions I grew up with disappeared one by one. I ended up living five thousand miles away from my family home, being in a profession which didn’t exist when I was in college. By the time I married, my parents had given up on the idea that they knew what would be best for me.  But, looking back,  while  I would love to say that I took the risks and followed my heart, I didn’t do anything of that sort. Rather, at every turn, I tried to fit in, be consistent, keep my commitments. I did not try to dent the universe, as Steve Jobs ...

Everything is business, we are told. Business, the discipline of making profits, is, to us, a higher ethic to strive for. In fact, it is the only ethic left standing. The Governments and its leaders style themselves as Corporate Leaders, rather than trying to be Statesmen; the Universities want to be 'business-like' rather than being 'academic'; charities and community organisations are expected to operate 'like businesses'; and even in families and relationships, being 'professional' is seen as some sort of ideal. And, this idea - everything is business - pervade education, regardless of the subjects taught, and we are constantly bombarded with assessments, deadlines and deliverable. But what does 'Business like' really means? There is no one crisp definition, but there are some key concepts that pop up whichever way one defines it. These are 'outcome', 'measurement' and 'efficiency'.   In any enterprise, being ...

Being on the start-up scene in my mid-forties, I am right in the middle of the discussion about age and generations. In summary, the point most investors make is that one needs to be twenty-something to have a realistic chance of founding a billion-dollar business, an assertion that, unlike many other assumptions of the investment community, can be empirically proved. Of course, I, and people like me, can only feel bad about this - with little chance of becoming billionaires and no chance of becoming twenty-something - and be compelled to build counter-arguments, such as older entrepreneurs are better at building businesses in sectors like Education. However, whatever one may try, the common-sense logic of younger people having more energy and less commitments are hard to beat, and indeed, for most of us, pointless to contend against. However, this does not stop me from musing about age and generations. I am from that generation which fell right in the middle of the switching of ...

I look forward to read Karen Armstrong's Fields of Blood , which is waiting for me at one of the stops of my inevitable work tours. Ms Armstrong's point, as I picked up from the reviews, that religion can not be held directly responsible for violence, intrigued me, because that is precisely what I believe. I, therefore, look forward to engage with her argument and understand the other point-of-view. I am indeed not dismissive before I managed to read the book, but hoping that she has something to offer more than the assertion, oft-repeated, that no religious doctrine is actually founded on violence. It must be noted, at this point, that while this is a common defense (that no religion encourages violence), it is, by no means, the common understanding. A large number of people in the world believe Islam directly encourages violence, given the acts of Islamic terrorists in the recent years. Indeed, a previous generation, having experienced worldwide bloodshed incited by imp...

I am in between two trips, which, different as they are, perhaps represent my moment in life rather accurately. I came back from New York, after a work trip. During this, I got to see some sights, including the General Assembly of the United Nations (courtesy an old friend) and the Global Headquarters of IBM, including the CEOs offices etc. In many ways, they were similar - a representation of global ambitions, political and commercial - and representative of a long history of progress. Particularly notable was the Herman Hollerith Room across the corridor from the IBM Board Room, named after a pioneer in computing and the founder of one of the companies that later became IBM, which is used for sitting the guests visiting the top Global executives of IBM (including serving as Prayer Room for visitors from Saudi Arabia when needed). This room featured a tabulating machine that was used in one of the first US census, just like the other various artifacts of technological history th...

Stricken by Jet Lag, I am up and wondering in a hotel room looking into the sea in Kota Kinabalu: Somewhat the perfect setting to be thinking about 2015! One may think these moments are more suited to think about past than the future. But, despite all the ups and downs in my professional life in 2014, I have not spent too many sleepless nights last year. And, the ones I did, I owe them less to anxiety and more to Jet Lag, something, when I was younger, I would have considered to be some kind of badge of honour! And, in this saga of sleeping and not sleeping, I guess lies the big story for me for 2014, and the things to carry forward next year. The fact that I am even looking forward to 2015, despite the fact that I have effectively failed to do what I set out to do (and in the process, incurred debts), is a good starting point. Through 2014, or even through 2013, I somewhat acquired one crucial twenty-first century skill, the ability to live on the edge! I emerge with a sense of ...

Half year gone - should I repeat the cliche that time's flying - and I am on the threshold of a new thing. A new 100 days plan will be handy, and I intend to set this in motion from tomorrow. Let things change and fast. So, here is the last six months: Our plan to get the business off the ground with a strategy that we decided upon late last year has failed. Focusing on one territory and a couple of partners was a risky plan - I did foresee this bit but didn't win the argument - and rather predictably, when this under-delivered, we were out of time. I spent a great amount of time as an Adjunct Tutor, feeling claustrophobic and waiting for a miracle, but kept my already overdrawn bank account on a life-support. And, towards the end of a rather tentative, but boring, six months, things started coming together in the form of interesting ideas and interesting projects. I am just on time to make a fresh start. It is not that I have not achieved much in the last six months....

A friend complained, I don't know how to be happy. Point taken: If happiness is about being content, I surely show symptoms of being unhappy. To be fair, she wanted to make the point that I possibly had everything that one could reasonably want, and therefore, I should drop the anchor and try to achieve steady state. I tried to counter and justify myself, which is quite usual in such friendly arguments. In the end, it became almost a religious argument, without invoking God. I should be happy with what I was given, and make the best of it, she contended. On the defencive as if I am accused of being too greedy or ambitious (growing up in suburban India before the liberalisation, I am not used to treating those emotions as virtuous), I was laying out an argument that I saw life as an one-off opportunity to change the world, and since I have not achieved this yet, I couldn't rest. Though it may sound a bit crazy and overtly quixotic, it is exactly what I believe. In the end, s...

I keep doing this and I am at it again. A new start, that is. I love this sort of game, it gives me the spirit to go on even when things are difficult. So, that is it then - a new day and a new start yet again. I have made it a habit to live my life in 100 day chunks, and one such run finished yesterday. When I started the last one, indeed, I didn't know where my life was going. My brother's untimely death completely threw me out of gear, and I decided to lie low and not to do anything new: Just survive, was the motto of last three months. But this was meant to be temporary, and I am at the end of it now. It sort of coincides with my birthday and completion of a year in my new job, sort of milestones by themselves. So, I wake up at 5am this morning and resolve to start my life afresh yet again. In a way, such renewals keep me going. Often, the pressures of life - the fact that I am parched in England while the life became more difficult for my father in Calcutta, now that he is...

These days, time is a bit heavy as it is full of reflection, every moment seems to stop before it is over, with a pause almost and a throwback into time I can see but can't get back. My movements, which must follow a routine and crucially, the railway time-table, are laden and almost slow-motion, burdened with the ever-present question of what I could have done. In a way, I am reminded of Katherine Mansfield, like her fly stuck in the ink, forever trying to dry itself and fly again and forever dragged down. But I also feel light, as if in a train. Time is such a carrier, as if I don't have to move on myself but I am being moved into. As days pass and suddenly I know that January, which turned out to be the cruelest month of my life, is almost over, it seems a different age and time that I was thinking of: Suddenly, with a flick of a calendar, what was my day-to-day reality seems like a movie, where I was an observer and which I mistook for reality. I play silly games: Like sayi...

I discovered a word : Serendipity. I came across this before, indeed, but never understood it. This was one of the more exotic bits of my adopted language, which I kept neatly tucked away, never needing to use it. It was as beautiful and as unnecessary as the three Persian princes of Serendip , the story that gave us the word. I traveled around, but never liked the expression - if you don't know where you are going, any road will take you there. For all what I am, I am a dreamer, a planner in disguise. It made no sense to arrive somewhere I did not plan for. Or not to want something that I do end up having. The real life experiences are just the opposite - I do not get where I want to go, I scramble for what I want. This is indeed exotic, out of the way, as unreal as those little princes of Persia. All wonderfully miscellaneous for the busier ends of life. The point is, indeed, as it must be said at this Christmas pause, that all the busy ends, all these busyness, all planning, are...

It is one of those moments: I am tired of my rusty old self and want to make a fresh start. So, no mid-life crisis for me. That would be against the principles I grew up with: Never mind the difficulties, keep working and things will happen to you. Sort of thing my grandfather, who built a successful business from the scratch, would have approved. He went by some sort of Asian value - 'the man who rises up before dawn 360 days a year, never fails to make his family rich' - but this may as well pass by the name of 'protestant work ethic'. But, whatever it is, it serves me well. Despite the inescapable ups and downs, recessions and all that, it helps to keep my head down and keep moving. This is what I am doing right now. I had to write off my last few years of work, relationships and all that, and make a fresh start. But that was okay: I could condition myself to think that my life is starting afresh and I must be humble enough to absorb the difficulties and keep my mind...

Viktor Frankl defends idealism, why we must believe in others to be what they should be, rather than what they are. Deeply moving and inspiring, this comes as a gift in the middle of my despair. I am struggling with my innate idealism, something I inherited and grown up to believe, in the face of the usual mid-life crisis, a point where I start thinking where I am going and how much I have lost being a dreamer and not a realist. However, here is a man who has seen it all, who has seen the moral bankruptcy of incomparable magnitude, and yet kept his faith and believed in the ultimate goodness of mankind and the meaning of life.

I am back from Mumbai , where I spent an interesting few days over last couple of weeks. My work happened to be in the same neighbourhood where my brother lived, in Powai , and which I visited several times since April 2008. This time, visiting after a gap of a few months, I noticed several new restaurants , including one by Sanjeev Kapoor , the celebrity chef, which has come up near Mainland China in Powai , a chain restaurant which has already made its name for great quality food. On the other side of the road, there were another very expensive Kebab outlet. I stopped by at the Crossword outlet which I used to frequent, but noticed that they have also opened another extension outlet only a few yards away, near the Rohtas Hotel, where we enjoyed an expensive, yet delicious and enjoyable, buffet lunch. However, all the while we were driving in and around this locality, the talk centered around Recession. It was a touch ironic that we talked about job losses and the slowdown in recrui...

I write this sitting in Finsbury Park. Not an ideal day to sit in the open, the sky is overcast and there is a slight drizzle, but then that did not deter scores of others sitting here around me. On the green, an unusual bowling game is being played, by two teams of aged pensioners. I have just finished the meal deal lunch I got from Boots, but decided to stay a few extra minutes here. Just like when I came to England five years back. We landed up in the city slightly ahead of time for appointment and needed to sit down somewhere to eat. We used to have packed lunches of roti and bhaji those days. Susant took me to Finsbury Park, only place he knew around the area where one could have a quiet lunch. I remember my amazement seeing those open air lunch crowd, at ease in such a little square. When you live in a city for too long, it gets into your blood. Like London for me. I remain an Indian, at heart, and care for Indian issues and carry Indian sentiments. But, then, I have lived in...

Two people forced me to write this post about India's Caste system. First, Narayana Murthy , the famed founder of Infosys , who said in a recent interview that India is not a nation of doers and pointed to our Brahminical tradition of undermining physical work as the reason. And, then I met Dr. William Boyd, a Kiwi banker who worked for Natwest in London and now resident in Malaysia, in Manila, who turned to be surprisingly well informed about India's culture and tradition and we had an enlightening conversation about caste over lunch. Dr. Boyd, unlike others, were deeply respectful about India's culture and that made me feel good. Talking about the caste system is always an embarrassment, as most Westerners I know look at it as a terrible social practise which makes India a really backward place. Dr. Boyd was different - he was speaking my language.- and was telling everyone else at the lunch table how caste was actually a system of division of labour that helped India ...