Singing in the Chorus

I love singing. It is an ability that is inborn and instinctive in me. Back in the 80's and 90's when I was a kid and lived in the Railway colony in Bilaspur, I had a secret life of my own where I would instantly pick up any Bollywood number that fell on my ears - the lyrics would be imprinted on my mind which would set it up for me with the tune. I'd sing it out - loudly, when nobody was listening to me, and in my mind, when I didn't want to be heard. I dreamt of going to Mumbai when I grew up and trying my luck in Bollywood. Udit Narayan was my guru, like Dronacharya was of Ekalavya. I learnt all my singing by listening to his songs. His voice mesmerized me, and I tried to copy him.

Fast-forward a few years and I was in IIT Bombay. I was selected - rather volunteered and didn't get rejected - to sing in the chorus for a bunch of songs in the Performance Art Festival (PAF), where hostels 8 (my hostel) and 10 (the UG girls hostel at that time) were together going to perform a play. It was called Asakt, and the team had chosen quite a few nice songs to be included at various points during the play - So gaye hain from the movie Zubeidaa, Hillele jagjor duniya by the band Indian Ocean, Dhuaan dhuaan from the movie Mission Kashmir, O nadiya jahaan teri rukh jaaye - don't know the source of this beautiful song. Except for the first song, the rest of them were to be sung by a male - KK, a 5th year senior was going to sing all of them. I, GP and a few girls from H10 were the chorus-team, and formed part of the overall music team. Being in the music team was a big advantage for a freshie, as now he didn't have to do the prod work, which included carrying long bamboo sticks around for making the sets and all the stuff for the backdrops, etc. - basically slogging all nights doing whatever the seniors asked him to do. But it was seen and, I guess, indeed was a good opportunity to network with the seniors, if you really cared for that.

The music team also had 2 guitarists - Kedar and Srinath, and a lady who played the Synthesizer and also sang the song So gaye hain. Sorry to have forgotten names of all ladies here. I remember the guys' names as they were from my hostel and I had further associations, not so strong, with them during my later years at IITB.

I envied KK as he was the lead singer for so many songs. He sang very well - was probably the best singer in the campus at that time - and was probably a trained singer. He played many instruments too. And in addition, it was his last year at IITB, and his last chance to sing his heart out and be heard at that scale. He truly deserved it. He was the music director for the show.

Being clubbed with a girls hostel, H8 guys had a unique opportunity that year - to work with the girls, and it was supposed to be fun. The girls didn't do much of prod work which involved lifting weights and setting them up. So that part of the job had to be mostly taken up by the guys - who must have cursed the lottery or whatever that led to us getting paired with the girls hostel. But from the perspective of winning in the competition, partnering with girls gave a competitive edge for sure as their contribution in cast, acting, script and music is unmatched otherwise by guys. And when girls are around and watching, guys perform better too.

I was an extremely shy and introverted kind those days, and had a tough time acting cool or talking to guys who seemed cool or whose first language was English. The music team seemed like full of such guys and girls. I didn't have much of a concept of conversation, communication, sense of humor and flirting in English, which for me was purely a language for official purposes, exams, lectures, letters and emails. I am a shade better now, having seen and dealt with more of the world over the years, but I can still be seen replying in Hindi when someone who I know speaks Hindi well but still asks me something in English. And in addition, I don't like mixing languages when talking... so that confuses my blabber even more.

This music team had daily practice sessions for many hours starting after dinner and till late in the night. The venue was a small room at the back of the B-wing of H8 designated as music room. While the lead singers and the guitarists had a lot on their plate having to practice all the songs and the music, the chorus-team was relatively idle. Me and GP used to go on time each day.

GP used to be highly enthusiastic about this. He would look excited, engage well with the seniors and explicitly wish for the success of the show - and looked, and am sure was, quite genuine. I, on the other hand, was always disinterested, bored, indifferent, silent, introverted, disengaged and lost. And I am hardly ever able to successfully express my strong wish of anything becoming successful, coz deep down I am often okay even if things screw up. This would be good for a saint, but for normal humans, wanting something strongly helps one achieve it. And expressing it well helps build the team spirit.

When the chorus-team's turn came to sing during the practice sessions, I'd sing along with GP and a couple of girls... some humming, some lines. I used to pour all the Udit Narayan I had in me into those few lines. But that's not how you sing in the chorus. You have to sing such that your voice blends softly with those of others and you hear one breezy sound. But I found singing in the chorus very boring and unmotivating. It felt like being in a herd where you have no individual identity or scope for recognition. More importantly there's no scope for putting forth your best performance and enjoying that moment. Any attempt at leaving a distinguishing mark for yourself is considered a mistake. And with that, you are expected to still draw some satisfaction in hope that some day you'll have your chance to sing in front.

The hope wasn't without a basis for me, as KK would pass out and a few years later, I was going to be in my final year, and if I was good enough, competitive enough and assertive enough of my seniority, I'd be allowed the lead position too. But I didn't find such a slow progression exciting, and didn't even participate in such events after my 1st year. I know that was stupid, but I did what I felt like. I did an even more conventionally stupid thing - I dropped out of the Surbahaar team (which did an orchestra every year), after getting selected in their auditions when I was in my 1st year at IITB and performing in that year. I did get 1 solo song to sing - Mai nikla gaddi leke from the movie Gadar - an Udit Narayan number - all for myself - along with 2 girls and 2 guys who sang the chorus... KK got 9 songs that year! But even the Surbahaar team did more than a month of practice and I couldn't enjoy all those long hours with that bunch of cool guys and gals for reasons mentioned above. And the thought of doing that every year didn't seem exciting to me. I signed out by not turning up the next year, and the team didn't seem bothered to ask me why. They might have noticed I was missing. Probably I didn't really matter the way I was. May be now I am more the kind of person who'd fit it. But if I stayed on somehow in the team that time, I could have benefited from the progression and got many more solo songs in the later years, and may be my personality would also have got upgraded for good. But I was stupid, lazy and careless - listened to my reluctant side.

Outside IIT, such progression is highly unlikely in the field of art. One doesn't generally see a guy singing in the chorus becoming a lead singer after some time. One doesn't also generally see dancers dancing behind hero or heroine in bollywood numbers becoming heros or heroines themselves. It rarely happens that someone starting his career as a comedian or a villain becomes a hero later on.

But in companies, most people do start their careers by being part of the 'chorus-teams'. However, unlike a musical piece, in offices one does have an incentive and encouragement to create a differentiation and recognition for himself/herself and work out a faster path to the top. And there is place for those who want to hide in the herd - out of choice or compulsion - and be lost without anyone knowing until someone notices a voice missing and to be filled in, or needing replacement.

In any case, chorus is still an important element of a melodious song, even if the singers in it don't get any credit and are left unknown. It's partially about the reference frame. The micro you go, you can identify leads within chorus, although not singing like it's a lead coz the singer also has a reference frame, and in that, he/she's part of a chorus. Go macro and leads may merge to form a chorus, albeit cacophonous coz their reference frame gives them a lead perspective. And of course, going micro and macro does not make much of sense if the listeners are also bound by their reference frame, like we are. So it's on the singer to break out of the choruses of life and be heard... by others and himself... the audience he/she chooses... and the song he/she sings!

SochVichaar 10+

SochVichaar turns 10

This blog became 10 years old last month. During these 10 years, I have written my views on a wide range of topics. Some of the views have evolved over these years, may be quite a bit in a few cases, even after I wrote on the topic. Perhaps if I end up becoming a great man, and then die, this blog will serve as a good tool for analyzing my views and how some of them evolved from 2006. To give a sense of the evolution, I must keep revisiting many of the topics I write about. And since I often don't remember what I wrote last time, and get too lazy to go back and check, I guess the views in an article I write can be good representation of my thought process at that time, without my mind holding itself back to maintain consistency with its past. But if my blog has to really show a true evolutionary picture of my thinking, I should blog more often and on all kinds of topics. So, like before, I'd resolve to write more and write more often. I've often thought about doing a-post-a-day, but then it never worked out, coz I could neither work with such discipline nor get the required support from my mind with a consistent flow of thoughts to create content from... laziness and lack of interest, in other words. Which brings this post to the thought that my mind is already struggling with:

When so much more can be done, why am I doing so little?

The growth mindset
Most, if not all, organizational models are based on a premise that every person wants to grow. And growth has more-or-less the same definition everywhere - growing up the organizational hierarchy: more accountability + more money + more authority. And it is probably assumed that every person wants this kind of growth, would get motivated by it and would see it as an incentive to do his/her job better. As I was writing the last line, another possibility struck me. Perhaps the very model of the current work-world is to pull up people who get motivated by growth as offered by the model. For people who define or understand growth differently, the model only offers them resources to survive, but no opportunities to grow. And it has a way of ruthlessly purging people who don't successfully strive or pretend to strive to grow within its framework. And if growth is really a basic need for even those people, they will be left frustrated and aimless... unless they are creative and fortunate enough to find the path that will lead them towards growth - the way they want it.

In both professional and personal endeavors, I am struggling to find my definition of growth - something that would motivate me to try harder, do more, aim for more, and achieve more... more of what? - that's part of the definition I am seeking, I guess.

May be most of the people are also just seeking, while still playing the game, pretending to be aiming for the victory as per the game's rule-book. Among the rest, a few who are the real players of the game have fun playing. And a few die of inaction. And as in everything, there are shades of gray.

The pleasure mindset
Are we just seeking pleasure in whatever we do? Life doesn't carry a fundamental meaning at an individual level, except for whatever we assign to it to make sense of our lives - just coz our minds are capable of questioning our very existence. And at a very basic level, we have things that make us feel good in various ways and degrees, and things that make us feel bad in various ways and degrees. And it seems we constantly seek what makes us feel good. Some of us are wired to feel good in ways different from others'. And with strength of numbers for all kinds of people in the highly populated world of today, we even have strong movements to establish rights of all kinds of individuals to seek pleasure in their way - as long as nobody else's pleasure is harmed to any significant degree.

One can argue that not all forms of pleasure lead to earning a livelihood. But it can be argued in return that in seeking to maximize pleasure, one actually goes for options that give highest pleasure, and those that can earn for a person would give him/her more pleasure than those that don't. Scientists, for example, do science for the pleasure it brings to them. Sportspersons derive pleasure from the sport. People stuck in boring frustrating jobs, yet not moving out, are only maximizing pleasure as they fear they'd be in a risky and less pleasurable situation if they go for the alternatives they can see. Sometimes there is temporary sacrifice of pleasure in trying to reach a state of higher pleasure later on. So, one is always seeking a local maxima of pleasure and has a global maxima also in mind.

Is growth just another mode of achieving pleasure? It seems so to me to some extent. And the difference in what various people consider as growth may actually be the difference in which act gives maximum pleasure to them, and in how would the degree of pleasure change with variations in the act; and transition to higher pleasure state would be considered growth. Of course growth can be fast or slow here. But having said that, I feel growth has other dimensions to it which are not ultimately pleasure-seeking. Growth is ingrained in us in that we all start small - physically - and grow big, and mature, and ultimately die. It's a way of nature. And to grow is perhaps a natural urge which one can't get rid of, even if it is frustrating or painful. But as thinking individuals, we still differ in what we consider as growth.

The laziness mindset
This applies when one is reasonably well off, such that the next few meals are not at risk. And with that context, a lot of humans carry out an input-output optimization - such that they get maximum returns from minimum investment. Although popular quotes say that something earned by working hard for it gives maximum happiness, in my experience, at an ongoing basis, one is happier when things come easily rather than when they come with a lot of labor - i.e., one always looks for maximum returns from minimum investment - if it can apply and make sense for money, it can very well apply to all forms of investments including time and effort. It is this guiding force that explains large numbers of free-riding lazy employees all over all organizations in this world, drawing salaries - ever demanding more - and doing as least as they can, playing politics, delegating or escaping work, and everything else that you and I very well know. If there are carrots, there are sticks as well, and to ensure the ass also carries you while it walks ahead, you have sit on top and keep showing the carrot, offering occasional bites, while the stick has to sometimes hit where it hurts, so that the ass keeps moving at an acceptable pace.

I think our actions and choices, including how much I blog, are driven by the above 3 mindsets - not all in the same degree of course, and there could be one/two dominant mindset(s) at times. Realizing this is important to make better choices in life and also to feel better about those choices. If nothing, we'd learn not to blame the situations and the world. It's us.

Startup India, Standup India

Startup India, Standup India - seems like India is now promoting both startups and standup comedy in a big way! What if it really did? Firstly, to make a joint pitch for the two - sort of bundling products - there has to be some logical connection. For one, startup founders would make good standup comedians in my view - they all talk a lot, they all take pride in thinking crazy, and most of them are extroverts. And if they are guaranteed good money, they'd definitely jump in. The second connection that might be looked at, is some crazy babu going by this line of thinking - if the government were to act like a VC, and had to entertain these startups for funding or whatever, then it has to be entertained in return. So these entrepreneurs have to perform some standup comedy. It may seem weird the first time you think about it, but it would soon start making sense. Anyone who has seen the program Shark Tank on TV - where entrepreneurs stand in front of investors and make their pitch - would know that the imagery is not very different, although the content and nature of discourse is. But as we can imagine, government officials don't think and act like conventional investors. They'd any day enjoy some standup comedy more than boring and unintelligible discussions on top-lines, bottom-lines, equity and shit like that. And once the comedy session is done, they can discuss some other lines over chai-samosa.

The vision of the government is amazingly supportive of entrepreneurship, and like never before. And, as one of my friends said soon after Modiji announced the incentives for startups, if we are not starting up even now, we probably never will. Although the incentives may not be practically of the kind and scale that would make it a cakewalk for millions of Indians, the positivity of outlook and supportive policies can make all the difference.

I am reading The Lean Startup by Eric Ries. Have finished only 43.9% of it so far in 3 weeks - quite slow by any standards. I don't know how, I've lost my habit of reading. Just like I got it 2004 from nowhere. May be it'll come back. Anyway... The book is about the right approach for building startups - the lean way - avoiding wastage of time, money and other resources. It talks about quickly building MVPs (minimum viable products) out of ideas, testing them out on samples of the target audience, testing alternatives, comparing, trashing, improving, developing, launching, testing more, improving more, and going on like that iteratively. It says - don't just go on to develop the full product thinking you know the customers want it; rather develop pieces of it to try out the concept and get feedback... and do that continuously to reach higher levels of learning and product maturity. This makes a lot of sense in theory. But execution in this manner requires tremendous alignment of thought process with the theory. I have to know more to see if it works. May be I should test this approach and see where it takes me. But there's higher risk the approach would fail for me if I don't "believe" in it at the outset. It's like trying to reach god while being an agnostic deep down. The lack of belief in the goal or the path to it will always prevent you from applying 100% of yourself behind the goal. Anyhow, I have not taken thheka to prove Eric Ries right or wrong. If his method doesn't work for me, I'll figure out what works for me and proceed. More important is that I have to get my startup moving and scaling up.

First things first... I will start practicing standup comedy from today. Wish me luck...

See you soon!

Mountain

Norway wants to shift its border by 20 meters so as to gift a mountain to Finland, which has none while Norway has many taller ones! Read about it here. If only all countries could be this friendly, the world would have been very beautiful. But friendly gestures are done when countries are in friendly terms. And in most cases friendly terms is a phase, until there is some bad spark somewhere because of whatever reason - an illegal immigrant, a terrorist attack, a resource sharing conflict or a passionate sporting event. But such is the world and its ways. There will always be friends, non-friends and foes, different ones at different times.

But let's focus on another aspect of that gesture - gifting a mountain!!! I mean of all things... a mountain! Those guys must be really obsessed with risen masses of land - the Norwegians and the Finns - one to think it's a treasure they have and the other to miss them enough to consider it a gift. May be the latter actually meant - shuru kisne kiya - when it accepted the gift. If there's real joy in all this, it's cool indeed. But then, what's the fun if things are indeed as they are shown to be? Still... a mountain? Really? It's a strange obsession humans have - for all things sticking out - more the better. A similar obsession is with making tall buildings. There's this recent news that Saudi Arabia is building a 1 km long tower (read here) - 200 floors tall - I guess so tall that the highest floors would be in clouds whenever they visit Saudi Arabia. Would be fun to stand on the terrace and pee into the passing clouds that would go and cause rain in another country! Must be great living in the desert and doing hankypanky with clouds that are not yours anyhow.

In India we have some of the tallest peaks in the world. Our neighbors also have some. Some of our Gods live there... no kidding! I recently saw the movie Everest. It's one sad story of trekkers and their expedition to scale the tallest peak going terribly wrong. I once went with a few friends of mine to climb the tallest peak in the Sahyadris - Kalsubai. We didn't really know it's the tallest when we went there. It was a lazy Sunday morning during the rainy season, and we just wanted to go somewhere for fun. So, clearly, we didn't prepare much for something this big. I don't want to describe this whole trip... long-story-short - we gave up after climbing half way up - it got dark and scary, we ran out of food and we were tired. Well, I don't know if it was really even "half" the way up that we went, but what the hell! I even write in my CV in the extracurriculars section: Avid Trekker - scaled Kalsubai - the tallest peak in the Sahyadris! Well, I did visit the place... That's how CV's go. You do a few lines in Java and you are qualified to write Java under your skills. You get something self-published and call yourself a published author. You stand for some time in a hip-deep swimming pool and say you know swimming. It's fair.

Speaking of mountains, there's mountain of work piled up. Lemme take care of it. It's only like that one Finnish mountain, though - not very high. So can take it off soon. Bye for now.

May be...

Being from these elite institutes of the country puts a great pressure on you to do something that the world admires. Especially in times like now when lots of young guys and girls fresh out of college are starting interesting ventures. Many are failing of course, but we are told that's part of the game. As this new breed is sweeping the business world, people my age are wondering how to catch up. But most of us would soon behave like all older generations - claim respect just coz we have some gray hair! And gulp all ego.. and, while the heart gently weeps, work for these youngsters who are clearly not as smart as we are... come on, elders are allowed to think that way about those younger :)

I myself have had dreams, most of which I forced myself to see, of owning and running companies. And discussing such ideas, or thoughts about ideas which don't come, is one of the most favorite topics of gossip among most people in their 20's and 30's in urban India. The other hot topics being girls and sex for guys, and guys and relationships for girls! (Well, I am just guessing for the latter.) Right now I am part of 2 whatsapp groups where startups keeps coming up as a topic. One is of my friends from IIT and the other is of my friends from IIM, The IITians seem to have more interest in anything related to entrepreneurship - which I can safely generalize about all IITians, as can be seen even from the large number of founder CEOs who are IIT alumni. But not many who are IIM alumni (IIT+IIM not considered under IIM). A very basic reason for that is the culture in these institutes. In the 4 years at IIT, we hear the word Entrepreneur so much that many IITians get inclined to adopt that as the way to go about in life. In the 2 years at IIM, all we hear to that extent are "CV", "Resume", "CV Point", "CGPA", "Job", "Globe" etc. etc. And so all most MBAs want to do is make a good CV, get a high paying job and "globe" their way to the top! And therefore, drawing an inference here from the general observation, in my whatsapp group with friends from IIM, conversations on entrepreneurship lack any real masala.

Anyhow, this bug - entrepreneurship - just flies around without biting me. I am not sure if startup CEO life is what I want. Sometimes I feel these things have been stereotyped too much, to create an unnecessary psychological differentiation where none exists. May be things are not too different either way. May be the barriers to entry into that world which are mostly mental are created by its inhabitants to make themselves sound cool and their achievements too big for common people to aspire for, But then, I am obviously not qualified to say all this as I've never even stepped into that land and felt it for real. I take back what I said... will say it again after I experience it myself and if I ever do. I find this funny - taking back something said and recorded... but since it's considered a legitimate way of striking invalid communications, let's abuse it!!!

The thought of creating stuff that the world finds useful - makes their life easy or fun - is quite exciting. For lazy people, the excitement lies in the thought itself and in nothing beyond that! A true entrepreneur, I feel, should theoretically be a doer, and should love execution more than ideation. Is that true? For great thinkers, there are ways in which thinking itself can be something that can influence the way the world works and even earn money for them. Lazy people have ways to be doers in the world of today. I think I am somewhere in the mid-point in this matrix of traits - thinker, doer, lazy - perhaps a state many call the comfort zone. Probably need to stretch in some of the dimensions, and add an element of risk - may be, I can be an entrepreneur too!

Startup recruitment - the madness needs a method

Placements and offers at IITs will again shoot up the roof once the season starts in December. We'll again hear about overseas job offers by the likes of Facebook and Google with large dollar salaries - even larger now in rupees as the currency keeps dwindling. And now we also have these startups, most of them with weird names, paying huge salaries, like 20+ lacs, to 20-somethings.

I guess in all generations you see people younger than you making more money than what you did at their age, and even what you make now. The bases for salaries are not complicated... coz they are not objective. It may just be a hype cycle each time, leading to crazy valuations. And then there's a price war of some sort - to price same guys higher than what competitors do. In that crazy competition to buy talent, no company really tries to find out whether those prices are realistic, i.e., whether the return on investment on hiring a particular guy or gal at a certain salary would be positive, and by when, if at all... what are the short and long term returns expected from such an investment... how much of professional growth is the company capable of offering any person it hires in his/her area of interest, whatever be the strength of the business model of the company. This should be an important point to consider particularly in the IT industry, especially when choosing among candidates for hiring, coz the industry is composed and driven by individuals of a certain kind - mainly powered by knowledge and analytical skills - thinking individuals, whose skills have short-lived relevance but whose abilities to evolve is tremendous - and hence, so is the hunger for growth. The highly rampant hiring and firing in the rapidly developing tech / tech-enabled start-up landscape is unhealthy for the intellectual and emotional well-being of such talented individuals, and therefore the industry should treat its talent with caution... as smart and talented individuals, rather than commodities with x y z skillset.

Most of the contemporary managers and even CEOs of these start-ups do not have a mature understanding or point of view on these things. They do most of their hiring in an ad-hoc manner and expect everything to settle and resolve in the long run. Can't really blame them for their lack of experience or foresight, coz while that is truly their weaknesses, these are still extremely complex issues with lots of variables at stake for the people running the businesses. Large companies absorb their flab - if they consider some of their workforce as such - until they have to shed some, and economies of scale allow some sustainability to them, in spite of the inefficiencies. For start-ups, even leaders with the right intentions fail to find right and good solutions for managing their human-resource-pool. In the absence of any standard systems and practices, and resources and scale to afford those, things often get unimaginably complex.

Here are some random real-life cases that are eye-openers of some sort:

• A guy with 4-5 years of technology experience, struggling in his current job, is offered a salary of 98 lacs INR per year from a startup that was recently in news for wrong reasons. 
• An e-commerce startup which had multi-million dollar investment was forced by its investor to hire only IITians and to push the employee count to 20+ in a few months time. The startup ended up hiring fresh graduates from IIT at 10+ lacs INR salary. Those guys failed in their jobs coz lack of any work-experience and absence of training programs in the company to groom fresh recruits.
• Highly skilled employees getting burned out due to being heavily overworked - 100+ hours per week - and forced to quit companies and sometimes even industries, just coz most of the other employees are not competent enough to handle tasks at work.

All these examples suggest that there is something wrong with the way startups recruit and groom their guys to make them true professionals.There was a saying in the 80s in the US among HR managers in the context of recruitment - no HR gets fired for hiring from Stanford and MIT. It seems the same logic is applied in India when it comes to recruiting from the IITs. Some sweeping assumptions:

• This guy has good grades from an IIT - hire him - he'll build our next-gen product! 
• This girl is in a good company - hire her - she must be good coz she's got this big brand on her resume! 
• This guy has a high salary - let's pay him higher and get him - there must be a good reason he's paid that high!

If the above rationale fail, there's still an ultimate rationalization for everything arbitrary - the founder's gut feel. Nobody can dare question the decision of a 24 year old founder of a company who not only set it up, but also managed millions of dollars in investment. In a nation this hungry for jobs, who would really doubt the wisdom of a job creator? But things are soon changing as the nation now is also having to get used to getting laid off in masses. Although it's been rare for placement committees to question salary figures and structures of companies and the sustainability of their payout promises, they're beginning to do that now - the Zomato blacklisting from IITs is the latest example.

The salary offers by some startups are so insane and out of whack that it's surprising they are not questioned by investors for offering such large salaries while their loss-making business models evolve randomly with no strong analyses or arguments backing their decisions, that go with endlessly dragged excel sheets with ever increasing growth to back the monetarily obese recruitment. And the investors turn blind eyes to all this drama, as their bonuses are tied to short-term bets, hoping a majority work out in a booming market. You can't blame a herd for grazing where it's green as long as the grass is growing. It's considered fair in capitalism to try to get a bigger bite. Someone who cautions the group that the grass may get exhausted if eaten at that rate is only considered a fool. The wisdom - as taught by dominant economic thought - is to eat the most you can when all are eating, and conserve your energies for when the grass is gone. The weaker ones will die of hunger, the grass will regrow to satiate those who remain, and the cycle goes on. You are not supposed to question as to why there have to be cycles, coz when you do, you are called insane and kicked out of the race... and there has to be a race.

Everyone is in a hurry now. And in recruitment at IITs and IIMs, the hurry is by design - to create mad rush and chaos, and thereby a hype for the institute. In my experience it neither benefits the candidates nor the companies. A friend of mine heard his ex-boss say this to his CEO - you can't put 9 ladies together and expect them to deliver a baby in 1 month. Very short placement periods - like a placement week - often lead to random candidates getting hired for random roles. Large organizations don't feel the hit so badly when misfit people play crucial roles, as there is already a flab that can be afforded due to economies of scale that cushions things out. But in startups it is impossible to grow strongly when certain parts are weak... and all of the few parts of a startup are very crucial. High quality products have their own lifecycle which cannot be expedited beyond a point just by investing heavily and blindly and falling prey to people-pricing wars.

It is therefore high time everybody questioned their decisions and the way things are bubbling up unnecessarily:

• Investors: Do I have the scientific and economic basis to invest in a certain company? Am I unnecessarily forcing my biases to run the companies in my portfolio? Am I setting the right terms and guidelines to help groom my companies for long term success, rather than making headlines for investment volumes and crazy salary figures?
• Founders / CEOs: Is my hiring based on the right principles? Am I doing justice to the talent I am hiring and to my company in return? What is my explicit and implicit messaging to attract talent - do I project the vision, mission and culture of the company, or the salary I offer?
• Employees: Is this the right salary for me - for the capabilities I bring and the expectations of my role? Is the company's business model sustainable enough to pay me this salary with the expected year-on-year growth for the long term? Will I be groomed as a professional in this company?

A company is not just about the money it makes by managing all stakeholders. It impacts lives of all stakeholders including its employees and customers. In the long term, companies tend to achieve a balance through natural corrections. But for a startup, if all the talk is about money and none, or little, about the value it delivers, there are definite alarm bells which will be heard sooner than later, albeit all the funding and crazy valuations. So startup founders need to introspect and build their foundations most wisely, and set the right examples for future generations of entrepreneurs.

The bubble is not bursting. Only those who have inflated beyond their capacity or have skin too weak are releasing the winds to the stronger players.

With thoughts from Manish Kumar and Ravindra Naik

The God Delusion

The Tolerance/Intolerance debate is going so crazy, it sometimes sounds funny how people can take sides without even looking at the culture we represent, and even more basic, the species we are. I definitely won't say much out of line, coz I am no Shahrukh Khan. Nobody can ensure I am protected from some crazy bunch of guys motivated by an ideology. Or perhaps a hungry bunch of idiots who are motivated by a guarantee of their next meal.

One thing is religion - one's concept of the unknown - and another is all the bull-shit stories written around it, to make the unknown sound very real and manifested in earthly stuff. The need for it in the human mind has been exploited by the smart to control the minds of the dumb masses, and over time all that fiction started sounding real, so much so that now even the smart guys take it at face value. And understandably so - coz most of us are not in a position to question everything with hope of getting a satisfactory answer. That's true even for the so called scientific facts, which are again based on trust and belief that someone must have researched all that following reliable and acceptable procedures and came with genuine readings and valid conclusions. And even if all that's documented, who has time and interest to verify all the stuff! Just like a 6th standard science book says matter is composed of atoms and molecules, some book also says there was a man called Ram who was incarnation of a God called Vishnu. I didn't question the existence of atoms, as I want to be a man of science. Even if I did, I am told there is a way their existence can be inferred. I trust that as well. I can't trust the existence of Ram (or Vishnu) nor the non-existence of him, coz nobody tells me there is a basis to prove it, nor to disprove it. Understandably so, coz any theory for the unknown cannot be proved by definition. And if it can be proved, then it ceases to be a theory of the unknown. There is perhaps a point where known and unknown intersect... and moving beyond is our constant endeavor - either through science or through god. While Science only gives us a feeling of trying to move to higher levels of knowledge and deciphering the unknown, God directly places us in the unknown realm, albeit fictional. But we are gullible humans with short life-spans and looking for excuses to stay motivated and for ways to make sense of this life. So god always wins, beyond a point. That point is where science ceases to be helpful, although it may continue to be interesting.

My secret, silent and lonely life at IIT Bombay from 2000-2004 had long hours of introspection and discussions with myself about truth, life, meaning and beyond. Long walks in the campus, and walks in the hockey field at mid-night - on the fine grass there - were absolutely fantastic. A parallel at IIM Lucknow during 2009 were long jogs around the campus in the dark. Unlike the kind of best memories most people have of these stints, my best ones are these long quiet moments of introspection, which I enjoyed tremendously. I can't claim to have found what I was looking for, but these beautiful moments did mould my personality and points of view to make me who I am, to some extent. There are also a few adventures which form part of my fond memories of these times - one was crossing the extremely dark trail in the jungle behind H8 (IITB) from chinks (that time) to campus guest house at mid-night during the time when the Panther scare was at its peak. In fact a few days before I did that one guy was chased by a panther at night... that guy managed to save himself, but was bedridden with fever for a few days. I don't know what came on me to challenge myself to do it at 3.00 AM - but I crossed the whole dark trail - so dark that one cannot see anything at all - I was lucky no panther showed up and I came back to my hostel safe and sound. It was a stupid thing to do, of course. But I pushed myself and did it... in the name of adventure, I guess. I don't regret it. But I guess I wouldn't do it now, at this age. There is indeed something about the early 20s that makes you take crazy risks. Some take good ones and make their life. Some take stupid ones and recall those memories for life.

There were many of my batchmates at IITB who were followers of ISKON faith. It's a large community of Krishna followers who marry science and teachings of Gita and talk your brains out even if you don't give a damn. They used to sell crazy books in the campus and tried to convert more people into their ideology. That was their little adventure of youth I suppose. There is an ISKON temple in Juhu where many of them went in the weekends for free delicious food. But they talked like real psychos most of the time... anything extreme seems nuts... even Science, and especially when it's combined with god to create some supershitty nonsense. But they were harmless folk. Very tolerant, if you were tolerant to their ideology.

Anyway, after last 2 paras of seemingly unrelated crap, let me come back a bit. I hear lot of people speaking and acting about religious intolerance these days, and a lot of people pointing fingers at them, saying they are politically motivated, citing instances in the past when they did not act in a similar fashion nor raise a voice. I think those pointing fingers need to understand that the strength of numbers doesn't always emerge, and for a herd to form for raising a topic that induces fear otherwise, it takes a lot of chance and coincidence. And people draw strength from the herd once it gets formed, for whatever reason. So a lot are able to speak up coz they have the strength of numbers acting in similar way. A lone shouter may be silenced by our crazy gangs with political support. A group shouts, then it becomes a nation-wide debate... while the group has the security of being part of a herd. So understand and acknowledge, rather than getting defensive and pointing fingers. We all know what we truly are, what our culture truly is, what unites us, what divides us and what India should really be. Let's not fool ourselves and let's not fool each other. Time to clean-up our culture!