Woods vs Trees

An old family story which my late mother used to narrate with relish relates to more than six decades ago, when I was possibly about three or so. Apparently we had gone visiting to one of our family friends. when their  daughter, who was about seven or eight years older than me called me to play with her and her brothers, I apparently refused and she is supposed to have grumbled that I would be happier counting the number of buttons on each person's dress rather than playing with other children. This makes it quite obvious then that this trait of looking at details (like being a grammar Nazi) is firmly embedded in me. After all, an experience of six decades is nothing to be sneezed at!

There are different ways of looking at this behaviour - it can be described as attention to detail or being a perfectionist, for instance or less charitably, as indulging in nit-picking or being pernickety. The description always lies in the eye of the beholder. Be it as it may, this has affected the way I observe things, the way I dress, the way I speak, the way I write and even the way I post on social media. It is almost crazy but virtually every post of mine undergoes a round of editing before I actually publish it.

This near-obsession leads me veering towards OCB or Obsessive Compulsive Behaviour sometimes. For instance, in my last work space, starting from my desk, every little bit had to be exactly in the same place - the book shelf and the books on it, the items of stationery, the computer et al. If a visitor cane to call on me and shifted one of the guest chairs, almost by the time he or she exitted the room, I would adjust it to its original place with millimetric precision. In other words, the old cliche 'a place for everything and everything in its place' seemed to rule my life. As I grow older and become more forgetful, however, this trait is useful - as long as I remember to keep everything in place, in the first place!

When I became a teacher, at first, this led me to correcting even mistakes of grammar in assignments submitted by students. Fortunately I soon realised that this was just detracting from the main goal and making me less efficient. I stopped wielding the red pen on at least grammatical and syntactical errors pretty quickly. I was also quick enough to realise that people generally do not like to see their mistakes being pointed out. This was brought home firmly in a private forum of friends where I pointed out a minor inconsistency in a forwarded joke and got roundly chastised for my pains.

There is a Malayalam saying 'adhikam aayal amrithamum veshum' meaning an excess of even amritam (the Holy Nectar) can result in poison. While the focus on minute details definitely leads to perfectionism and results in a good job being turned in, every time, it could result in missing the woods for the trees, if one is not careful. By and large, today, in all walks of life, the focus is on getting the job done. Excessive attention to detail could derail this process. The art of course will be to strike the right balance.

Will this stop me from being a Grammar Nazi in future? Highly unlikely !

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Theatres - touring and otherwise

In more than six decades on Mother Earth, have seen God knows how many movies in theaters all across India. This is despite my frequency of film viewing in movie halls tapering down through the years from frenetic to regular to occasional to rare. These halls have ranged from bug-infested ones in some small towns of India to some of the posh multiplexes of today and the films themselves have morphed from exclusively black and white versions to their digital cousins today with state-of-the art technical sophistication. However there were a few unusual viewings which form the subject of this post.

A pretty unique experience was seeing a short film in a Cinerama projection - I think, in the American pavillion at a trade fair in Delhi's Pragati Maidan, when it was still called Exhibition Grounds, almost sixty years ago. This was a wide angled projection on a very large curved screen which consisted of three separate screens. Together with surround sound, it made for quite an exciting spectacle. I vaguely remember I watched a motor race.

Fast forward a few decades to Chennai, especially to the main artery of Anna Salai. Before the term multiplex was common, even in the '70s, Chennai had at least three complexes on and off Anna Salai with more than one screen. Since, in each complex, each screen would exhibit a film in a different language, a wider audience was covered. One such complex was the Vecumsee complex which housed three theaters - Safire, Emerald and Blue Diamond. The last named was notable for having continuous shows. One could go in at any time and come out whenever. I remember going to see Dial M for Murder finding the show was half way through and then seeing the next show, continuing till the point where I started.

But this was exactly the way I saw my only film in a touring cinema. I am not too sure they exist today but these were quite common some years ago. Entrepreneurs bitten by the film bug would set up a temporary structure in a big field, usually outside a small town and normally just off a main road to provide easy access for the audience. The seating would be fairly rudimentary, but all the basics of a regular show - a screen, a projection room, a ticket counter, classes of seats - would be present.  After a few weeks, when business flagged, the structure would be dismantled and set up in another town in the vicinity. This is the reason they were known as touring cinemas.

I joined a large group based in South India in their bicycles division as a management trainee in the mid '70s. As part of my training, I had to accompany a couple of sales officers on their regular beat and observe and absorb. One of the places I covered was a small town in western Tamil Nadu called Gobichettipalayam. The Sathyamangalam forests where the notorious bandit Veerappan operated is not far from this town.

The company dealer in this town had a partner who operated a touring theater and insisted that after we finished our work, my colleague and I should accompany him to see a show there. Once I found out that it was an MGR starrer, I was very keen to go as I had never seen till then a film starring this hero.  I remember that the film was called 'Neerum Neruppum' - Water and Fire, based on Alexandre Dumas's Corsican Brothers. It was the story of two twins separated at birth and what made it fun was that one twin could feel whatever the other brother was feeling, even miles away !The audience  lapped it up, being involved to the extent that they would call out to the hero when the villain was treacherously sneaking on him behind his back. Of course the faithful would tell each other also not to worry, the Big Chief (the thalaivar) would turn around in time - and of course he did, to the accompaniment of whistles and claps ! These comments added to the spice of watching the film.

We had actually reached the theater just after the intermission and were well in time to see the villain get his just desserts and were ready to leave when the show ended. However our host insisted that we watch the next show at least till the point where we joined in the previous show. This is why I had no problems of wrapping my mind around the idea of continuous shows at Blue Diamond, a few years later.

Somehow, the idea of viewing a movie in a hall spending a mini-fortune on it (and then probably being disappointed with the film itself) just doesn't grab me nowadays, I would rather see it on Netflix and start and stop my show at my own convenience. There is nobody there to stop me seeing Bahubali for instance in four or five bite-sized bits of half an hour, like I did recently - and the small convenience I liked was that the film starts at the point where I left off last time, when I start seeing it.

Immersion in the process? Co-creation of product or service? So be it !

***

Of comets, viscounts, vampires and gnats!

My father had ambitions of becoming an aviator. He had a few flying lessons but couldn't fulfill this desire for various reasons. When I was very small, maybe five or six years old, I loved to wear his old pilot's cap and flying goggles and use these in my make-believe games, vrooming around the house. It helped that around that time, my father was allotted a Government house in the then developing area of Moti Bagh in New Delhi, not too far from the city's Palam airport - at least as the crow flies.

This was sixty years ago and since ours was one of the last blocks ready, we could see aeroplanes taking off or descending for landing at Palam, almost till they touched down. I was fascinated by these machines and remember vividly being plonked on a stool-like cane moora and resting my chin on the parapet of the verandah of our first floor flat, watching them fly in and out. Since the airport was also used by the Indian Air Force, there were sufficient landings and takings-off in a day to keep the little boy engaged.

Often, my father would join me and watch the planes - maybe with a touch of wistfulness. To keep me engrossed, he started teaching me to identify the planes which flew the Indian skies then - the Dakotas, the Super Constellations, the Skymasters, the small trainer Pushpaks and Tiger Moths, turbo-props like the Fokker and the Viscounts. I became so good that I could even identify many of them by sound without even seeing them. For good measure, my father did not leave out the Air Force planes and taught me to identify them too by sight and shape. Mysteres, Toofanis, Vampires, Gnats, Hawker Hunters are some of the names which come tumbling out of memory.

A particularly strong recollection is seeing one of these birds up close. My father took me with him to Delhi's other airport - Safdarjang one day to receive an uncle who was flying in from a holiday in Kashmir. What tickles me even today is that after the Dakota landed, we could go right on to the tarmac and probably because I was a small boy, I was allowed to go inside the plane and look around.

Soon jets started becoming common in India. The then BOAC (forerunner of British Airways) flew the de Havilland Comet, Indian Airlines operated a few Caravelles with their distinctive shape and ultimately different models of Boeing - the 707, 737 and 747 - started becoming more ubiquitous, before Airbus too joined the party. Captain Gopinath and his Deccan Airways made it easier for the common man to fly and demystified flying so much so that we are quite blase today about web checks-in, security checks, aerobridges, dynamic pricing and the like. One advantage of course of my sixty five years is the thrill of having witnessed and lived through all these changes.

I now look forward to see what my remaining years will bring - Hyperloops and Bullet Trains? Bring them on !

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Accumulators vs. Disposers

Many years ago, when I was just about 7 or 8 years into my career, at the corporate I was working in, I had to entertain a senior visiting executive till such time as my boss came out of the meeting he was having with his boss. One small remark made by this visitor has remained in my mind and guided my way of work for the rest of my career and even in personal life. He said that one attribute he used for appraising his subordinates was what he called their 'bravery' in getting rid of paper!

We were having this conversation in the cabin of my then boss, who was a notorious accumulator and whose desk and room always looked cluttered. In the same organisation, I was transferred later to another department and the new boss was the complete antithesis of the first one. When he got a request for a new filing cabinet, he strode briskly to the existing one, pulled out all the files inside and distributed them to his various subordinates based on what each was handling. He then gave each of them an hour to decide which to keep, the main criterion being that any file which had not been referred to for the last 18 months was to be scrapped. At the close of this exercise, he found that about 70 % of the files had to be discarded. He asked his team to pull out all the papers from these files and reuse the files thus getting some brownie points too for cost saving.

I have used similar logic to keep my work space and home clutter-free and am lucky to have a life-mate who thinks likewise. I really can't understand why people find it so difficult to get rid of junk. Why, I even had an elderly relative who would preserve wrappers of bathing soaps - God knows for what purpose. While we do make sure that important papers like say bank and tax documents are properly preserved, we also take care that junk gets discarded at regular intervals, be it paper, plastics, appliances or even furniture. For furniture and appliances, my wife and I have a simple formula - we do not buy a new one unless we have figured out how to dispose of the old item.

When I went into Academics, about the first thing I did in my cabin was to move as much of the furniture as possible against the wall. This left a very useful open central area and gave the cabin a nice, inviting, informal touch - needed as very often students or even younger colleagues dropped in for some advice or consultation, more so when I acquired Resident Dinosaur status! I can now confess that I used to almost detest going in to the cabins of some colleagues as one couldn't even find a proper place to sit amid all the books and papers. One of the biggest culprit space-occupiers in academic institutions is bundles of evaluated papers. These are to be retained statutorily for, I think,  three years. However, there is no stipulation that this has to remain with the professor. Once the current academic year's results are announced and especially the convocation is done, the papers can be safely sent to storage, duly bundled and labelled. Again, for some inexplicable reason, many profs in the place I worked in, wouldn't do this. I don't know whether this was out of a misplaced sense of importance or a feeling of close mindedness or an attempt at creating an impression of being very busy. My table at work would never have more than a paper or a book on it - usually the one I was reading at that moment and a pad for scribbling down ideas, reminders and important information. If this gave people the impression that I had nothing to do, I wasn't really bothered. Similarly, even on my computer and official e-mail, I would run periodical checks to ensure that all irrelevant stuff or that which had lost its importance didn't find a place. This was the reason that the final cleaning of my computer and personal space just before I retired took less than an hour.

People are either accumulators or disposers and in my reckoning, at least 80 % fall in the first category. I am happy to be one of the minority !

***

The hunt, not the kill !

Now that I have attained the ripe age of sixty five and more so have been a teacher for the best part of the last two decades, I am quite free in giving advice to others. This post is counsel given absolutely gratis to all males, irrespective of age or marital status and is specifically meant for situations where they have to accompany womenfolk for shopping.

1. The male's main role is as an escort. In this role, he may perform additional tasks not exceeding but including chauffeuring, carrying the stuff bought and paying the bills. The last task is purely optional as women are quite capable to handle this function too.

2. In no circumstances should the male offer opinions on the processes of buying, shortlisting and final choice. If asked for formality's (and familiarity's?!) sake, at most, a non-committal 'uh-huh' is perfectly in order.

3. Generally ladies are very sure of what they don't want but not too sure of what they actually want. Hence, any opinion expressed by the accompanying male is not likely to be welcomed, leave alone accepted.

4. When the lady reaches the counter in the showroom, the male's escort duty is suspended and he is expected to withdraw gracefully. While he should be within eye contact distance of the lady / ladies he has accompanied, he may either plonk himself down on chairs provided specifically for this purpose in most establishments, walk around the showroom or even permit himself a small nap while sitting on the chairs. Catching up with Facebook or mail on one's mobile during this time is also perfectly fine.

5. An absolute no-no is to go back to the counter and ask the lady before she calls if she has finished or to tell her that she is taking too much time. This course is bound to result in recrimination.

6. Please understand that the thrill is in the hunt, not the kill.

To my female readers - please do show this to the males you know, so that both of you have a peaceful, pleasant and pleasureable experience next time you go shopping.

Happy hunting oops shopping !

***

The final truth

One day, out of the blue, many years ago, my late father called me. Unusually, he had a paper in his hand with many numbers written. It transpired that these were details of his deposits and investments. He then told me in his wry fashion " I am not immortal". Due to this realisation, he had arranged everything so neatly that after his passing, his descendants had no problem at all in the transfer.

Death to me is the ultimate certainty and no, I am not being morbid. My reflection is more on the futility of many of us who think that we are like Amaron batteries - we feel we will go on and on. We try to acquire more and more, we get more and more tense about less and less, we get offended at trifles .. in the process, we forget how to live. I am most certainly not advocating a minimalist Spartan existence. One does need creature comforts and the wherewithal to obtain these, but one also needs to draw a line somewhere. Read on to get a glimpse of what I think what happens when greed goes overboard. 

One of the subjects I used to teach for post-graduate management students was Business Ethics and Corporate Governance. The name of the subject itself usually elicits groans and yawns and it is a real challenge for a teacher to bring this rather dry course to life. Fortunately or unfortunately, the corporate world across the globe is replete with dramatic examples of malfeasance and bad governance and these stories gave me examples galore to add weight to my sessions. The level of human greed which one came across in these incidents was mind-boggling though I did of course take efforts to highlight examples of good corporate citizenship too to ensure that the aberrations were seen as just that and not as the norm.

Assuming for a moment that you follow my advice and do draw the line, what next ? Think of what happens when a loved one departs this world. The minute the body is consigned to the flames, only memories remain and the number of years lived by that person goes 'poof' . That is the final truth.

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The accidental teacher

About four decades ago, after finishing my PG in Management, I was selling bicycles for a living. One day, I got a summons from the CEO's office. A call from this rarefied level generally did not portend good tidings and I went up fearing the worst. Reassuringly, the meeting went off quite smoothly and all that the Big Chief wanted was a report of impressions formed by me after a recent business tour. The interesting part was that, during the conversation, he told me in some context
" You will make a good teacher". We both smiled and that was that.

The funny coincidence was that in the late 1990s, when I was looking to get second wind into my career, an opportunity to teach at a B-school actually presented itself, reminding me of what the big boss had told me then. I took the chance with a bit of trepidation, slowly eased myself into this profession and almost before I realised it, another two decades flew away. I enjoyed myself so much  that today, I think of myself as much more of a teacher than a sales professional.

What I loved first about this line was the pressure but without any of the tension of a corporate pressure cooker. The biggest challenge was one of communication. After going through the syllabus of the subject to be taught and doing all the requisite reading, converting this to bite-sized nuggets for absorption by students was something I waded into with gusto. I loved the preparation part of a course as much as the actual delivery and when this worked in class, it gave such a glow of satisfaction. As I gained confidence, I started handling even 'dry' subjects like Business Ethics.

Much more important was the input I felt I could give students on preparing themselves for a corporate career, based on my own experience. I obviously had to make sure there weren't too many of the 'when I was your age' stories. Especially at the last phase of this career, I was based at a large campus where the programme was fully residential. Many of the students here used to drop in to my cabin and depending on how free I was, I would lend my ears to share their happiness and hear their worries and anxiety. In the process I formed some really good friends. Many of these relationships have continued much after these people went into industry.

The nicest part of this profession is seeing young people evolve over two years almost before one's eyes - it is a nice boost to one's sense of well-being when one realises that one has contributed to this process, perhaps even without the students' awareness. One of my colleagues in teaching used to tell students that the only two people who would never be jealous of their achievements would be the mother and the teacher. This is so true - even today, when I hear of a former student doing well, the feeling is priceless. This is perhaps the best part of this profession.

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Communication with a smile

I spent my professional life of slightly more than four decades in two distinct halves - initially in the field of selling and sales management and later as a Prof in a B-school. In both these spheres, communication was intrinsic to my job. This blog is thus a reflection on something which I did, day in and day out, for about 40-odd years.

In both the types of jobs, I was right in the middle of the fray. In the former, for dealers or customers, I was the company while to the company, my role was to provide realistic reporting of what was happening in the field, good or bad, or to convey company policies to the other side. While teaching, my role was not only to convey the nuances of the subject in an understandable form to the recipient students but also to act as a medium of communication between the administration / management of the B-school and the students. Reasonably often, not very pleasant news or views would have to be conveyed from one end to the other. This is where I found, having a sense of humour helped, as it made the process smooth. As Julie Andrews sang in and as Mary Poppins, 'a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down!'

However, use of humour has to be cautiously done  for a variety of reasons:
a) the joke could fall flat if the recipient doesn't understand the remark or the language and the context in which it was couched. Worse, in these hyper-sensitive times, one does not who is being offended when and with what
b) the audience remembers the joke, but not the important point which was being made. They might  recollect the joke but not the joker and what he said!
c) the context has to be relevant. If the audience has never been to a McDonald's, it may find it difficult to understand a joke on fast food restaurants or even to relate to such joints.
d) especially while addressing a diverse group, one has to be extremely careful not to step into the areas of racism, gender issues, caste and community or even of off-colour stories.

This is why, while preparing for a lecture, the professor in me would think beforehand even of the jokes or the light remarks which I could use. Despite all this preparation, I did end up in embarrassing situations once in a while. The best solution of course was to apologise immediately to anyone I had offended.

Maybe this is the reason a student of mine gave me this lovely back-handed compliment " Sir, I loved your classes, but didn't understand a word of what you taught!"

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Diseased minds and hate posts

Kerala has just undergone the worst floods in its recent history. Having a Kerala origin, one was quite seriously tracking the situation on both conventional and social media, apart from making regular calls to the caretaker at my wife's ancestral house - the BSNL landline installed there fortunately functioned perfectly during the ordeal.

Positive stories abounded - the three thousand odd fishermen who came on their own with their boats from less affected districts to rescue stranded people, the armed forces who worked incessantly over land, water and air to help the affected, the community spirit in people banding together to distribute relief material and to clean the houses of their neighbours once the waters receded, civil administration and locals working as one single team, the media working quickly and decisively with the authorities not only to direct efforts but also to squash rumours. All this made for very pleasant hearing and viewing.

In India, Kerala is peculiar in that three major religions are practised by significant numbers of its citizens. As per the 2011 Census, Hindus constitute 55%, while those professing Islam are 28% and Christians are about 17% of the total populace. Though politics is often fractious and the people are generally articulate and argumentative, there is not much inter-religion strife prevalent. This feeling of harmony came to the fore during the crisis.

What stuck out like a sore thumb, however, were the noticeable number of posts on social media attributing the causes of the flood to divine causes or to eating habits, instead of just excessive rainfall. I, for one, cannot understand the psychology of a person or a group who gloats at another's misfortune or worse, propagates that help should be rendered only to select groups. Here again the gratifying part was that the more sensible elements in traditional as well as social media helped to isolate and squash such diseased minds.

However, for me, the more worrying part of such hate is its presence at all - that too from well educated and qualified people. While it sounds very nice to repeat the words of an old Hindi song 'prem ki Ganga bahate chalo' (help spread love as wide as the Ganga), would it suffice to change these choleric souls? I wonder.

Maybe the easiest action one can take is to try to reform such elements with whom one comes in contact and if that fails, excise them from your life.

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The death of 'passive voice'

{In grammar, 'The passive voice is used to show interest in the person or object that experiences an action rather than the person or object that performs the action. In other words, the most important thing or person becomes the subject of the sentence'.}

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In our own little academic world, once, during an internal workshop the colleague who was conducting it said famously "I don't care for grammar!'. The delicious irony was that he is an award winning business case writer of international prominence.

This has set me thinking. Is grammar relevant at all today? It is bad enough that English having borrowed words left, right and centre from all the tongues of the world, is a quirky language. Rules of grammar are often even more whimsical. But is this enough reason for dispensing with all of them? That I find difficult to do, having had grammar almost beaten into me by the good Irish Brothers at St. Columba's, Delhi more than half a century ago. The upshot is that I am quite a grammar Nazi who finds it difficult to handle the language as she is spoken today.

Social media, especially Twitter with its limit on the number of characters seems to have contributed immensely to this demise of grammar. Dis for this, dere for there, 1-2-1 for one-to-one and total impartiality in using 'your' and  'you're' interchangeably are almost passe. Another change which has been happening insidiously is the death of passive voice. 

A diagnostic lab informs me that 'my report is ready to collect' while business papers tell me that many companies are 'growing their profits', not that the profit of many companies is growing. I am also told by my bank that I can access my statement through a particular link, not that following that link will help me gain access to my statement. Crisper communication, perhaps, but unsatisfactory to old fogies like me. 

This rant ends here. Hope you enjoyed this post or should I say, " This blog is ready to enjoy" !

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Chronologically advantaged, not old!

Much before I had my management education, my father who was my first guru in many ways gave me a simple mantra for communication - " What Bannerjee says, Mukherjee must understand !"

After this, while at XLRI, Father Tome, the then Director and my Business Communication Professor fleshed this out with his many messages which have left an enduring impact on me. For instance,
i) the importance of understanding one's audience for one's communication, ii) the need to avoid abstractions and use 'thing expression' and iii) the emphasis on being simple and concise were extremely useful starting points in my corporate career.

The fact that I started my career in Sales and Sales Management helped me to appreciate further and implement this learning, dealing as I was daily with people of different backgrounds, having varied levels of education and communicating in a wide array of tongues. Later, when preparing for class as a Prof in my second avatar in my career, these made even more sense. Especially once I acquired a few years of experience as a management teacher, these messages helped immensely in my reveling in handling more abstract subjects like Ethics or Strategy - subjects which not many people like to teach.

But all this practice of four decades flies in the face of the need for political correctness dominating civilised discourse today. Some time back, in a Facebook post, while commenting in a lighter vein on a former neighbour I saw after a couple of decades, I said there was much more of him now. I was promptly accused of body-shaming (whatever that is!). I did seriously think of retorting that in turn, I was being language-shamed in the process, but let it pass.

This over-exact emphasis on political correctness even prevents one from insulting another. Wonder what would have been made of the master P G Wodehouse's remark in one of his books where one character refers to a seedy specimen as a 'son of a bachelor'!

Be that as it may, I have collected some of these examples of correctness and am sharing it for the benefit of the general public.

* A dwarf is vertically disadvantaged
* An obese person is horizontally challenged
* An idiot is cognitively insufficient
* A crook is honesty deficient
* A dustman is a refuse collector

and the one I like best, more so as I turn 65 next birthday, I am not old - I am chronologically advantaged !

***

Spectacular - a chashmish's viewpoint!

('Chashmish' is Hindi slang for somebody who wears glasses - generally not meant as a compliment.)

Quite frequently in life, I have either come across mildly insulting remarks at those who are bexpectacled or just plain hesitation in many when they have to wear one. I have never really understood this.

Ogden Nash famously said 'Men don't make passes at women who wear glasses!' In today's context, of course, this might be seen as a remark with sexist overtones and would probably have been greeted on social media with petitions to change.org. At the least, there would have been a litany of complaints from various aggrieved souls.

In my first full time assignment as a Prof, one of my senior colleagues was in his sixties. He obviously needed reading glasses but would strain to read even the attendance register because of his vanity that he would never ever wear them. He had his wish fulfilled unfortunately because he died suddenly, a bit prematurely.

Yet another gentleman who was my colleague for about a decade wouldn't wear reading glasses because they made him 'look older'. Even though he was just a couple of years younger than me (and I am almost 65 now!) he had to maintain the fiction that he was much younger and this was part of his story.

What is it about glasses that excites pity, derision or just hesitation? I really don't know. If you look at the issue dispassionately, it is just a corrective tool for a faculty functioning at less than optimum. It is as bad or as good as say hobbling on a pair of crutches after an accident or using a hearing aid when one's auditory system starts to go.

I can not only happily say that I have completed more than half a century wearing spectacles but that without my glasses, I cannot even see too much! Having had a complaint called amblyopia, I have also had to wear a patch over one eye as part of the corrective treatment for a few months on two occasions. One of these was just after the Six Day War between Israel and the Arabs in 1967 and I even acquired the nickname temporarily of Moshe Dayan, after the iconic Israeli Defence Minister during this war, who had an eye patch.

My spectacles are an integral part of me to the extent that I can't even remember clearly what I looked like without them. I wear them almost all my waking hours and while in school, they enabled me to avoid participating in games, especially as I wasn't particularly good at physical activity. In fact, they helped me look more studious and intelligent than I really was - an impression which got reinforced when I joined the school quiz team ( even today, my repository of gloriously irrelevant information is pretty impressive!).

The picture was complete when I gave second wind to my career by becoming a Prof when I was in my forties as spectacles are almost an essential prop for this profession. They are extremely useful  for instance, if one is asked a question one can't answer immediately. Taking the spectacles off, wiping them carefully and putting them back on gives sufficient leeway to gather one's thoughts and helps cover the impression that one is actually stalling for time.

I have also found that it helps one almost literally to get a good perspective on life, maybe not rose-tinted, but definitely one with a photo-chromatic coating!

***

Looking out, looking in

A few years back, I dropped into the house of a friend and was surprised when his wife said at seven in the evening that he was lying down. By that time, hearing my voice, this guy came out and said that he was absolutely fine, but having nothing much to do, was lying down. Especially since he had been a very active person and had retired just then, I was a bit perplexed. Recently I visited him again and found a total transformation - from being totally listless on the previous visit, he was back to his cheerful, lively self. I was curious to find what caused the change and found out that he now had two activities - reading and being part of a specialised online forum. From feeling sorry for himself, he now had enough things to do to keep himself busy.

Then there was this very cheerful and positive minded neighbour. He retired and moved away to another city to be with his children who were working there. He did drop in whenever he came to Chennai and I was surprised at how he had become so cynical and negative almost overnight. Conversation revealed that in the new place, he had no friends and nothing much to do.

Both these incidents had happened a few years before I myself retired and gave me clues of how to handle retirement. In my profession of teaching, I could call my own time and once I took the plunge, I made sure that there was no going back. I used the notice period in the organisation to share my expertise with whoever was willing to listen and also to straighten out all the paperwork needed to get my terminal benefits. The latter act played a huge part in my getting all my dues within about a week of my last day, incidentally.

Once I retired, I made sure I had enough things to do and enough stuff to occupy my mind. This is what I learnt from the two incidents with which I started this post. As a retired person, if one broods, i.e. looks within, one tends to become a complaint master, a cynical crotchety codger, ever interfering in all things around one, unpopular and avoided.

Looking out in my book means looking at the world around you and engaging with it. In my case, having been a prof at a b-school, for instance, I have interfaced with one or two institutions to take a couple of classes every week - helps to use my expertise and meet young people regularly. Apart from this, I try to do many things which I couldn't or didn't do earlier.

Based on this anecdotal evidence and extending this logic , I think that is the main difference between positive-minded people and negative-minded ones. The former look out while the latter look in.

***

Of chamchas , spoons and ladles

It is difficult to translate exactly the word 'chamcha' used in colloquial Hindi. Literally the word means a spoon but in day-to-day parlance, it is a derisory term for somebody who is a bootlicker, a lackey, a hanger-on, a sidekick or just somebody who has hitched his star to someone else. Get what I mean? One Hindi word chamcha means all this !

Many years back I was working with an ostensibly public limited company which was in fact family-owned and family managed. In North India, such companies are often called 'lala' companies from the Hindi 'lala' for a businessman. One day, a senior colleague at the branch office asked me to hold fort for a couple of hours as he was leaving early. I asked him if he was going to spend a little time with the family as he was travelling to the company's head office the next day and would be away for a week. His reply stunned me - he said he had to drop in to his tailor's to pick up some white trousers which he had given for stitching. He further explained that since the lalas generally wore white, he wanted to follow suit. Such ideas will not strike you or me, but one who is a chamcha gets this sort of epiphany.

In the same office, with the same colleague, another incident happened which explains further the psychology of a chamcha. A big cheese from the head office visited. This colleague had to go to the airport to receive him, in line with that company's protocol. When they reached the office, said big cheese walks in, followed by my colleague carrying the big man's briefcase and in turn being followed by the office boy carrying the local manager's briefcase. Moral of the story: a chamcha will never let his superior carry stuff and in turn will expect his chamcha to carry his stuff.

In one of the business groups I worked, restructuring on a consultant's advice took place and virtually overnight, from a small independent company, we became a division of a larger company in the same group. When we went to the new MD's office for a review session, we were intrigued to see the second-in-command waiting in the lobby of the building. It transpired that he would do this every day, receive the MD and escort him to his office. Do you want to guess who carried the MD's briefcase?!

Chamchas are just not load-carriers. They can be the boss's cheerleaders too.  When the boss wants to test the waters with a potentially dicey change, he could seed his chamcha to spread this and suss out possible opposition. The chamcha can be the court jester - to laugh loudly at boss man's jokes, even if the joke is on the poor sidekick. Enterprising chamchas I've seen even supervise errands at the boss's house - painting, repairs, gardening, you name it - on organisation time and money, of course. They could take the boss's car for servicing or his pet to the vet or bring his child from school - your imagination is the limit for what else they could do.

Laugh at the chamcha if you will, but also do feel sorry for his insecurity which often makes him demean himself either to further his own career or often just to retain his present position.

***

Of time and untime

Punctuality is something which was almost literally beaten into me by the good Irish Christian Brothers at St. Columba's School, Delhi. It was reinforced in his own quiet way, more by example than by precept, by my father.

This, over my almost sixty five years, has led to my becoming almost paranoid about not being on time. Now that I've stopped being a full-time teacher, I can safely say that I have never been late for a single class. My practice was to reach the venue at least five minutes before the start of the class, arrange my effects the way I wanted it - folder of papers in the center of the table, bottle of water to the right of the folder and marker pens and the duster neatly in parallel to the north of the folder (oh yes - I have borderline OCD too!) and then wait outside. I would walk in again when it was time and start my session on the dot.

The lack of punctuality in many others is one of my pet peeves. As one of my elderly ex-colleagues used to say, "I cannot respect a person who does not respect another person's time and money'. In that organisation, we could not complain much because it was the boss who was the biggest culprit - he would call us for a meeting and invariably walk in 10 minutes later! Why do people get late? Is it lack of planning, lack of self-discipline, disrespect for others, an urge to show one's importance? Maybe it is any or all of these factors. The sad part is that this is one of the easiest aspects to correct in oneself.

There was an exercise which we used as an ice-breaker in an MBA course for working executives, which could help. One of the concerns many students had was on how they would fit in the the rigour of learning into their already cramped schedule. To address this, we would ask each to make a list of their activities on a normal working day. Once this was done, they were encouraged to categorise these activities by slotting them into the four quadrants of this grid:

Invariably each person would be able to identify practices / activities which were eating into their time and reducing their productivity. By doing what this grid advocates, they were able to improve their time management. I myself have used this grid once in a while to account better for my time. I firmly believe that the three most important skills which need to be picked up by an MBA student are prioritising, scheduling and networking. Exercises like these are the first step to getting a grip over the first two. At the end of the day, however, it depends on the individual whether he ore she wants to change and improve or not.

This is why people are not often on time but 'untime'. Untime is a peculiar usage in Chennai's brand of Tanglish (Tamil + English) which actually is used to denote something which happens at odd hours e.g. an international flight which leaves at 3 a.m. It fits here into what I have in mind perfectly, though !

***

Blowing in the wind!

You and I are exposed to a lot of violence today - in the news, in movies, on social media, almost everywhere but if you sit down and reflect, hardly any of us has really faced violent situations face- to- face, fortunately. I talk here of two situations which I faced, separated in time by more than three decades which were quite scary when they happened and are chilling even today when I think of them. This was despite the fact that in one situation, the violence was just a rumble in the background.

The first incident happened when I was doing my PGDBM in the early '70s. It was a balmy wintry afternoon and we were basking in the sun, sipping adhrak ki chaai at the tea stall just outside the hostel gate when we suddenly heard a commotion. We saw an armed mob charging and had just enough time to skip across a small lane and get into the sanctuary of our institute's compound. Fortunately it transpired that they weren't gunning for us.There was another college down the road and apparently, some of the students there had got into a fracas with some Transport Corporation employees the previous day in which one employee had died. His colleagues had come to extract revenge, armed with wooden staffs, iron rods, machetes and even bows and arrows. We watched the destruction the mob wrought on the other college's campus from the top of our hostel building. On the way they didn't spare any of the vehicles parked outside our hostel wall either. I still remember vividly a beautiful black Studebaker car which one of the associates used to bring and the damage caused to it in about thirty seconds. It was just scary.

The other incident took place much later after three and a half decades and spanned a series of events which took place over three days across the length of India. It started innocuously, but tragically, with a phone call. I was teaching in a B-school in Chennai at that time. A new academic year had just started and the new batch of students, in a bid to get to know each other better, organised by themselves a day trip to Pondicherry, down the east coast of India, about 150 km from Chennai. It all went fine till some of them attempted to go into the sea. Unfortunately, the notorious undertow in the Bay of Bengal pulled two of them away from land and this was the subject of the telephone call to me from one of the student group.

Since I was the person who got the call, I felt duty-bound to be part of the small management team handling this crisis and the next two days were a whirl of many activities and much physical, mental and emotional strain. The sea threw back one of the boys immediately and thus liaising with the police and the hospital to collect the remains was added to the list of tasks. Next day, a couple of our team went to Pondicherry to take care of the formalities while the head and I stayed back at Chennai. The recovered body was sent back to Chennai to send it further to the family based at Rae Bareli in Uttar Pradesh, not far from Lucknow. Since the airlines insisted that somebody should accompany the coffin on the flight, I was requested to do so - and this is where the murmurs of possible violence started. Some students who hailed from that area advised me to be careful on this trip especially at the destination as the death was of a youngster and was sudden and emotions would be running high. Fortunately, the organisation had an office at Lucknow and we kept the people there in the loop. The immediate advice was that I should not go beyond UP's capital.

Next day, a relative of the boy, who was working in the South and I took the flight to Lucknow with transit at Delhi. I was under tremendous tension, not only because I had been involved for more than 48 hours in this incident and my nerves were already frayed but also because my senior colleagues at Chennai and the Head Office and my family were tense about my physical safety and continuously told me to take care. We landed in Lucknow and before I could even identify and meet my colleagues, I was swarmed by a group of about fifty people at the terminal, who had come to collect the boy's remains - and they were insistent that I accompany them then and there to Rae Bareli. I first somehow excused myself and met my colleagues who helped me avoid this danger by suggesting to the group that all of us would drive down next morning. They helped them to load the coffin on to a van they had arranged and waited till the Rae Bareli party drove away.

I was just talking with the two colleagues about my arrangement to return to Chennai when another gentleman walked up to them and whispered something. I suddenly saw about ten hefty men, armed with lathis come out of hiding from the background and vanish after being paid. My colleagues told me cryptically that this was my 'protection force', in case the group from Rae Bareli had got violent. This was the moment my hands started trembling in nervous reaction, as I realised that the physical threat had been very real. My return flight to Delhi was early on the morrow and I was advised to leave my hotel as early as possible, to be on the safe side. Fortunately the journey back was quite uneventful.

When we hear of some outrageous incident, our blood boils and if we analyse ourselves, it is scary to find that each one of us is capable of violence in that frame of mind. Is it really worthwhile - all this anger?

To strike a slightly philosophical note, there is this lovely soliloquy of Hanuman in the Sundara Kanda of Valmiki's Ramayana, just after he has set Lanka on fire and caused immense destruction. He suddenly realises that there is a distinct possibility that Sita may have been consumed by the same fire and berates himself for succumbing to anger, enumerating consequences of what happens when anger dominates reason.

From time immemorial, anger leading to violence has been inherent in human beings but can we as individuals control our own actions, words, deeds and posts? The answer as Bob Dylan sang is probably 'Blowing in the wind!'

^^^^^^^

  

Castor oil and communication!

In the Malayalam - Tamil patois which we Kerala Iyers use, the word Avanakkennai (castor oil) is used to describe a colourless person. I wonder why as this oil has such a strong, almost pungent smell.

That brings to me some bad memories of childhood. In our homes, when we were small, castor oil was used as a purgative and we used to dread Saturday mornings. Using a specially designed spoon called a 'potti', castor oil was forcibly thrust into our innards to send us to the potty. The smell itself was enough to make one throw up. Don't know if that is the reason colourless folk are called avanakkennai -as the Iyer mind who coined this term probably felt that such people were purged of all exciting traits!

But how does castor oil connect to communication?

There are many stories in our family about the communication skills of previous generations. This one is about my father's mother, known in the family as Thrissur Ammai. Somewhere in the 1930s, she was taken to Kashi on a pilgrimage before spending many days with her son at Delhi. One day, her sons heard her having a loud conversation with the lady next door. They were intrigued because Thrissur Ammai knew only Malayalam and Tamil, whereas the neighbour knew only Hindi and Sindhi. They peeked out of the door and found the two ladies conversing animatedly in a mix of sign language and their respective mother tongues. For instance, sign language to ask how many children and to answer the question, then miming mustaches to ask how many boys and doing ditto for braiding hair to ask how many girls and so on. As long as my grandmother was in Delhi - maybe about a couple of months - both the old ladies became good friends and would have hours long conversations without knowing a word of each other's tongue. If that isn't communication, I don't know what is.

Actually, communication was in Thrissur Ammai's genes. A legendary story in the family relates to her mother's visit to Mumbai, then Bombay, about a century ago. An elderly lady from a conservative social group moving out of her comfort zone is daunting enough today. She went to be with her son then working in Bombay, for probably a family need like the birth of a child. She was transported from the spacious surroundings of a small town in Kerala to the raucous environs of matchbox-like apartments in a burgeoning metropolis. She settled down and then realised that she needed castor oil for the weekly purge of her grandchildren. She was intrepid enough to find her way to the nearest kirana store to buy it. She didn't know a word of Hindi, Marathi or Gujarati but came back with what she wanted. She asked the sheth in our argot, which obviously he didn't understand. He gathered she needed some type of oil and pointed to the various oils in stock. Finally, my great grandmother decided to unleash the one Hindi phrase she knew. She said 'chota chokra', mimed a small child, then mimed drinking, making the noise 'durrrr', pointed to her own posterior and made the appropriate noise for a loose bowel movement. Mission accomplished - she got her precious castor oil, amid laughter all around !

When I made the transition from a career of two decades in the corporate world to the academic world, it was stories like this in the family which inspired and motivated me. Considering that I survived in academia for another two decades, I probably wasn't all that bad !

******  

Gravity - what goes up must come down !

 A couple of decades ago, I was on cloud nine. I was in a corporate assignment which I was enjoying and where I was doing well. In fact, I had even joked to a colleague that I would like to retire from that company. Not only was I doing well, I was even expecting the next promotion which would take me to a new plane. Did this happen ? No - you guessed right.

The villain's thugs were waiting around the corner  in the form of management consultants and sandbagged my corporate dreams in the guise of a magic word - restructuring. The small company , part of a large group, where I had been working became virtually overnight a division of a larger unrelated company in the group and my dreams got grounded quite soon. Nothing unusual about this story, you would say, except that for me, it set in motion a chain of events which gave my career second wind as a teacher in a B-school. That is another story, however.

My thrust here is on the arrogance and hubris which sets in when one starts doing well. A young cricketer has a stupendous performance in a couple of matches and starts thinking like Chris Gayle that he is 'Universe Boss!'  while a film star has a super-hit and starts strutting around like a peacock, a politician wins a few elections for his party and thinks the electorate will tolerate any of his shenanigans or the CEO of a successful company feels he or she is totally indispensable before reality sets in. How often have we seen all of this happen? But people think they are immune and then get surprised when events overtake them. Sometimes it is almost hurtful to see the impact of these events.

There was this Managing Director of a company I worked in for instance who was a supremely confident, almost brash person, always immaculately suited and booted and who needed a minimum of two lackeys around him - one to carry his papers and one to hold his jacket when he got down to his shirtsleeves to gee up the troops. He had to leave the organisation under a cloud and when I saw him next, after a couple of years I almost didn't notice him. I had been to the temple and saw this middle aged man outside give me a wan smile. It took me a moment to recognise this grizzled, slightly unkempt , diffident person with a three days' stubble and wearing old Hawaii chappals as that super smart MD. Surprise surprise - after the pleasantries, he suddenly announced he had something important to do and shuffled off!

I have seen this so often that when I see this arrogance growing in people I know, I almost get scared because I know I'll soon hear a big thud when that person falls . The arrogance manifests itself in many ways - a feeling that nobody else knows as much or is as capable, a patronising attitude towards others, impatience and irritation, and loud bombastic harangues. Invariably, it sets in motion the reaction of  people at the receiving end trying to bring this person down or sharpening the process of looking for and developing alternatives.

The lines between confidence and over-confidence, over-confidence and arrogance, arrogance and paranoia are very finely drawn and it doesn't take too much time to rev up from the first stage to the last. The other odd aspect about this behaviour is that it is present in people at all levels - not necessarily only in those who are atop the totem-pole.While behaving thus, people forget the force old man Isaac Newton discovered - that of gravity. What goes up doesn't stay up always. It does fall down some time!










         

Of Facebook, fekus and fake news

I belong to a generation which grew up and lived a lot of its productive life before social media started ruling our world. In fact, I was in my late fifties when I took my first step into social media (SM) by joining Facebook and Linkedin.

I do not regret this at all. For one, FB has helped me to connect with long lost cousins and uncles, friends I had in school and college, former colleagues and a large host of young folk who had the misfortune of having had part of their MBA education in my classroom. Social media has also allowed me to pursue some of my interests – I am a part of two groups devoted to Hindi film music and another which consists of fans of P G Wodehouse. It also enables me to connect regularly with a bunch of vicarious sportsmen like myself – those who hardly play any games or sports, but follow national and international sports in a variety of disciplines.

However, one subject I try my best to avoid scrupulously on SM is politics, especially Indian politics – though my resolve to do so gets tested seriously! Having been a Prof for the last two decades, I relish argument and discussion with the proviso that at the end, both parties should remain friends and expand their knowledge. Unfortunately, when strong feelings enter a discussion, accompanied by heat and sound, light and reason make a hurried exit.

By temperament and upbringing, I abhor abuse and violence, even of the verbal variety. SM warriors, on the other hand, are ready to wound, burn and slash for almost pointless objectives. A case in point: a young friend of mine ‘A’ recently made an impassioned FB post on the bestial Kathua gang-rape and murder. Another young friend ‘B’ made an equally impassioned comment, with a different perspective with the use of certain ‘facts’. I had read an article which claimed these ‘facts’ were doctored and mildly introduced this into the discussion and exited the battleground. Battleground indeed because another person unknown to me, ‘C’ joined issue with ‘B’ and the heated, often impolite debate still continues for three days! I have no stomach for such fights at this phase of life. Call me a coward if you want to, but I have severed connections earlier with at least fifty abusive elements at both ends of the political spectrum. It is much worse when specimens of my vintage get into the fray, because they add as seasoning, probable disappointments and bile of many decades of wasted lives!

 The abuse is not only meant for each other – it extends to the leaders of the opposing camp too. I personally hold that leaders should not be referred to as ‘fekus’, ‘pappus’ or chaiwallahs’ on SM, not only in the interests of polite discourse, but also to maintain respect for institutions and offices.  I am not even touching the nadir to which comments on newspaper or news channel websites descend, because the vileness and the vitriol I find there dumbfounds me.

A real casualty of social media is the need for truth and veracity. Photoshopping, distorted perspectives and palpably false news being purveyed with a view to make these viral for limited and vested ends is the latest cottage industry, rapidly burgeoning into a major communication strategy.

So what do we do with this animal called Social Media? Do we ignore it, let it grow untrammeled or regulate it. If the last option is chosen, who does it? These questions, at least at the present juncture, do not have clear-cut answers. The elephant is in the room, but we are still not sure whether to hope it goes away, whether to ride it and see where it goes or whether to use an ’ankush’ on it !

----

Fingers in the pie

During the forty-odd years I worked full time, I was associated with 12 organisations, spanning both the corporate sector and academia. One common thread ran through every one of these organisations; I saw at least one employee being caught fudging bills and making an ignominious exit.

This was one crime which happened at different echelons - the cross-section I came across covered a Managing Director, a General Manager, a Materials Manager, sundry sales executives and even accounts clerks, maintenance engineers and security officers: greed was universal. I am pretty certain that there would have been an'iceberg effect' too- for every one caught, there would have been myriad who got away.

I have never really understood why people push the envelope in this aspect, because this is one area where generally the costs outweigh the benefits. The GM was caught for a false bill for a piddly amount of Rs. 800, for instance and except the MD who was supposed to have got a hefty kickback of a few lakh rupees in a land deal, the potential gain in each of the other instances at best ran into thousands..

What motivates people to behave this way? Is it hubris, is it arrogance, is it living beyond their means? One finds similar behaviour in students too when they try to cheat in examinations. I have even come across a case of a student trying to impersonate another in an online internal test - and being caught ! Not only during exams, hostels are another such area. The institute where I worked longest had a 'no liquor, no cigarettes, no drugs' policy in the hostels, for good and bad and each day, many students were apprehended at the gate.

Maybe the best strategy to be followed by such people should be the Eleventh Commandment - Thou shalt not be found out!

First step

Manifest

A new blog to add to the zillions on the Net.

Why? Maybe I'd like to read what I write (hopefully somebody else will too!), maybe as a platform with a different scope and audience than social media, maybe as a medium to explore and explain my own thoughts .. the possibilities are quite a few

What's with the title? I love puns and this puns on my name. Manifest means easily seen and perceived. I don't intend to use high-faluting language which makes you seek a dictionary or thesaurus. Simple observations, simple thoughts, simple language is what I'll try to present

What will it cover? Whatever seizes my fancy - life in general, books, sports, films, business. I am not going to label or categorise the stuff I will be presenting. There is not going to be any fixed periodicity either.

Hopefully this will be only the first and hopefully again some readers will be there !