Reality has limits, imagination has none

Mahhhennnndra Baaahubaleee… that’s me 😊. When I was small, I knew I was some kind of a miracle child. When I came out, I didn’t cry like other babies. They all cry in minor scales. I cried in ekdum sharp F-Sharp. That’s the same scale in which Sunny Deol cried mai nikla gaddi leke and Sunny Leone cries when she’s not faking it. Mosquitos miss the scale by half a key. All babies smiled for 10 minutes from the moment I was born, and everyone at Surya hospital knew that something significant had happened.

I grew up not quite liking where I was. Bilaspur was a small place for my huge thinking. I didn’t feel challenged enough killing mosquitos and catching dragon flies. An occasional snake didn’t excite me enough, as someone told me most of them didn’t have any venom. Then I watched Jurassic park one day, and instantly realized that’s where I wanted to be. I would often sit in the little pani ka tanki in the pichwada of our railway quarter, close my eyes and imagine sitting on the head of the largest dinosaur, holding its horns and riding it like a pony. It was pure joy. Closely matching in degree of joy to an occasional fart while I was inside water as a giant bubble rose up brushing my back.

I would flap my hands while in the tanki and pretend to swim. I was preparing myself to swim in the sea someday, as that’s where I could catch the whales and sharks. I would not tell anyone any of this. These were my secret goals – to go where nobody else dared to, to do what nobody else dared to.

I grew up to know that Jurassic Park was fiction, and dinosaurs didn’t exist any more. But I thought they meant it’s scientifically possible to make them like they did in the movie. I decided I’d learn to make them, so that I could kill them. So I wanted to study biology after 10^th, but they decided my IQ wasn’t high enough for learning science. I landed up in arts. I didn’t care what history, civics, economics or political science meant – how are they ‘arts’ anyway? I decided I wouldn’t lose sight of my goal.

Shah Rukh said if you want something deeply enough, the whole universe will help you get it. Sheela said she knew you wanted it but you were never gonna get it – Sheela ki jawaani. She was wrong, you needed to want it deeply enough. I was going to reach my secret goals. If reality had limits, my imagination had none.

It grew more and more interesting now. Riding dinosaurs started to seem like child’s play. I could make myself small enough to sit behind a butterfly and tickle its ears while it flew in the garden. Once a butterfly sneezed and the jhhatka threw me on a heap of cow dung. It didn’t taste like palak paneer like I had thought. I once ate a green chilli and bit a nasty dog on its tummy. It ran towards the honeycomb on the nearby tree, barked at the bees and they dropped some honey into its mouth. The dog never took panga with me again. I created a python in my mind, held its mouth while the tongue was out, and dipped the tongue into cheezy dip. She rolled her eyes, she wanted jalapeno dip instead. How dare she? I ate the chocolava cake all by myself, to punish her.  In my love for F-Sharp, I once took on myself the mission to fix the hum of mosquitos. They needed a messiah to elevate their scale to that of the enlightened ones. I turned myself to 3 millimeter long and held on to the tail of the biggest mosquito I could find at home. After flying for 10 minutes in random places, she started hovering around my dad’s ear. She started her hum in F. She went on for a minute, and I could not take it any longer. I jumped and held her neck and pressed the right node, and there she was doing F Sharp. My dad sensed something was unusual. He farted it out – no sound, no whistle, only gas. So boring. I said my byes to the mosquito and jumped into my dad’s shirt. His farts needed fixing.

Originally written by me at Pagdandi during the Pune Writers’ Group meetup on 26th May 2019. It’s based on one of the themes given on the spot – “An unemployed millennial chooses daring quests and giant slaying over yet another 9-5”.

Sun, moon and the twinkling stars

Aadya met him just a few days back. She wasn’t in love, she told herself. After all it was just a few meetings. And they can’t be called ‘dates’, right? ‘Arranged marriage is not about love’ her friend Riya would often tell her. ‘You have to be practical, find a guy that you can settle down with’. But Aadya could feel a heartbeat inside her that she never had before. She had earlier met 9 guys, but with Aakash, it was different. She wanted to meet him again and again. She enjoyed hearing his infectious voice, seeing his smile that would take her breath away, and most of all his eyes that wouldn’t stop gazing at hers. She was clearly attracted to him.

Riya had got married a year back, and was already expecting a baby. They had a house in the most posh locality of Pune. Her husband was the CEO of the most well-known start-up in Pune… a 40-under-40 sort of guy. She had no mother-in-law. There were 3 maids, 2 nannies and 2 drivers. Everything was taken care of. What more could she have asked for, Riya would often say during the once-in-a-week phone calls she had with Aadya.

Aadya had a gift. She could hear a voice and grasp the joy, pain and every emotion in it. She could look into an eye and notice the smallest tear hidden somewhere deep inside, and find the infectious trace of a little smile within. And even though Riya tried hard, she couldn’t hide what her voice gave away. Yet, Aadya never commented on it. But last week when they met, Aadya let her eyes talk to Riya’s and within moments, Riya was in tears. If there is beauty in pain, Riya personified it. Her lips had the dryness of a desert, her gray hair looked burnt – dead yet burnt many times over. Her eyes were screaming for help, yet the emptiness within was scary – as if it had accepted defeat, lost all hope of a better life. Her skin, which once was like a feather of the most precious and rare bird that existed only in heavens, was empty, dull and lifeless.

Aadya was sad to see her friend so much in pain. She was also scared of her own future. Was she making the right choice? She wasn’t marrying for love either, she thought. Then, what was she marrying him for? It was a question that was bothering her a lot, literally giving her sleepless nights. She was constantly in debate with herself – ‘Could it possibly be love? Or attraction? What is love, anyway? How does he feel about me? What if it is temporary – whatever it is?’ She knew he was genuine, his smile was genuine and his eyes didn’t lie. She admired his hesitant touch when he shook her hand. She admired the nervous twinkle in his eyes when he tried to figure out whether she liked the dish he ordered. Most of all, she loved how he sought to find out how she felt about every plan he made, whenever he made one. And that he was willing to make amends when she didn’t like something. She felt guilty that she wasn’t equally collaborative when she took the lead. ‘Am I as right for him as he is for me?’ ‘Would he eventually understand me?’ – well, she knew that understanding a person is a pursuit which can take a lifetime. Even she was a puzzle to herself at times. And what if she couldn’t connect with his mind in the true sense, what if her instincts fooled her? ‘Marriage needs work, I am willing to do it’ – she told herself. ‘But, is he?’

But most of all, there were the what ifs that scared her to the core. ‘What if some day I see in his eyes what I see in Riya’s? What if I hear in myself the pain which says I no more believe in life, its joys and its possibilities? What if my skin pales with each cell screaming that it can’t hide the sorrow within any more?’

Riya controlled herself, and in a minute her tears went away. A few more moments later, she smiled at Aadya, followed by the same familiar, naughty giggle that they continuously shared at the back bench in college a few years ago, over little things that nobody else understood besides them. Aadya smiled back. Riya turned her eyes towards a handsome young man on another table, probably on a date with a pretty girl laughing in a flirtatious way. Riya gently whispered – ‘Bitch!’. And they both laughed louder than they ever did before. Aadya was so overwhelmed that moment that tears of joy trickled down her cheeks. And suddenly she noticed that Riya, at that very moment, looked totally transformed – as if they went back to the old days when life was care free and fun. Her eyes were glowing with pure happiness and her skin had the moist luster of a baby. And Aadya realized yet another truth about life – it always has its ways to offer happiness and hope.

And she decided to jump right in!

Originally written by me at Pagdandi during the Pune Writers’ Group meetup on 19th May 2019. It’s a short story based on one of the themes given on the spot – “Every emotion a human feels becomes written on their body. One day a woman is found with empty skin”.

Warm gas takes you higher... May be not.

There's no saying like this, but I would say it - "Warm gas takes you higher". This is true for a lot of people - especially the MBA sort. Although these days MBA is increasingly becoming a redundant degree, and MBA's are increasingly becoming redundant in organizations, a lot of people still spend loads of money to get the stamp of stupidity to get valued among the stupid peer group. I don't deny there is tremendous amount of learning packed in the rich curriculum of a B-School. But the irony is that out of all that can be learnt, very little is really of interest to anybody except the professor. And for those who do take active interest in learning, their worth is only in helping others pass exams in case the prof is too crazy about his shit. Coz the jobs don't need any of that. So even if you've learnt all the fancy stuff, you'll have to trash it to get something else into your head once you start working post the degree. And that something else is usually the kind of stuff you could have done better when you were younger and sharper, and had no fire in the ass to become a leader. Or the kind of stuff that anyone can do, but just that you have a degree and the role is made to require the degree, you sit there playing the role. It's all bizarre, but money has strange ways of finding the kind of people who deserve it. In other words, you need the degree to get that job. As the world is designed and run by human minds, some of which created these crazy degrees. And powerful people tend to pull up other people who share the same madness as they do. Powerful indeed depends on the limited environment and context. That's how networks of similar individuals get formed who together play the game if it is mutually beneficial.

Things are changing though, at least in the tech world, but the network phenomenon still has its traces. People with certain skills do get paid a lot, often many times more than MBAs. That may be coz a lot of these companies are owned by non-MBAs. So the network effect I mentioned may still be working to some extent. However, there's a much more prominent demand-supply factor at play here. And definitely warm gas can hardly take you very high here!

Here she comes!

The past month and a half have been one heck of a journey, and it's just the beginning. Our little baby girl is giving us great times, sometimes with her composed silent gazes and sometimes with her cute cries. She's indeed a puzzle at times, especially when we find her uncomfortable with something for hours and can't figure out what she really wants us to do, or when she has had everything she needs (we think!) but still doesn't sleep.

I often lift her in my arms with her face towards mine and sing to her all kinds of songs. She stares right into my eyes and just listens. It's like a musical show exclusively for her - where she has the best seat and there's no one else to share the fun with. She has many other kinds of fun with her mom, including the intimate experience they share of breastfeeding. They also talk a lot more, and it's lovely to see them enjoy their time together.

Ever since the little one came out, she has filled our minds with so much of herself and everything about her, that the memories of the long journey Shruti and I undertook to get here are fading fast. Here she is, our little daughter, right in front of our eyes... we always had her in our hearts... we even had a funny name for her and our little family since long back, when Shruti and I met and dreamt of her and us together.

Our lives are changing to adapt to the new member in the family. She deserves the best. I am sure every parent wants the same for their children. Looking forward to the times ahead. Hope me and Shruti can make them interesting and fun for the little one and us.

The difference right partner can bring!

I was at Balewadi Stadium in Pune on 1st Jan evening to watch Badminton matches between Hyderabad Hunters and North Eastern Warriors. There were two men's singles, one men's doubles and one ladies' singles. While there were visible differences in pace and aggression between the men's and women's singles matches, what struck me big time was the far higher level of pace and aggression of the doubles match. I developed a little theory - that assuming all players are almost equally capable, in a doubles game, the fact that you know you have a partner covering an area which you don't have to bother so much about now, and also that he/she is there as a backup if you miss a shot, adds immensely to your confidence and ability to make aggressive and risky moves, and also to do better in your area of responsibility. I have tried in my mind to extend this theory to life in general and conclude that having a partner positively impacts one's approach to life. I am sure it does in many ways but there could be many negatives also showing up if the partnership doesn't click; which is true of Badminton also, but life is way more complex than a game and there are many more factors that go to make a life-partnership really effective and synergistic. Otherwise, the negatives can make it all go out of control. Compatibility in a 1-hour game with limited and well-defined rules is much easier to find than in life in general - too many variables that matter, and many among them with random, inconsistent, unpredictable and funny values! So... it's complicated. When it works, it works.

"Corporate" thoughts

I have often said that companies, especially large ones, are huge collections of lazy people staying on for salaries. Except for a few hard working folks scattered here and there, the rest do as much work as is sufficient and spend the rest of the time in activities which I categorize as waste. The value of most of the sufficient work that they do is also questionable. Even many of the hard working ones actually end up working hard on wasteful activities without realizing it, and often also feeling proud of their effort - which is sad coz the system has really cheated them or made fools of them.

Waste is of many types, and comprises much of what happens in companies.

Here are a few kinds:

• Process waste
• Reviews
• Documentation
• Accountability / Ownership overhead
• Blessing management
• Confused leadership generated waste
• Directionless tasks
• Top-down outcome push
• Reckless & Careless planning
• Poor communication
• Forced creativity
• Looking busy
• By doing meaningless work
• By lying, pretending, misreporting
• Laziness overhead
• No-Motivation / No-Interest overhead
• ... and so on

The fact that in spite of all this waste generation companies do get great things done is really commendable. It just means to say a mass can still achieve things of great value which a person or smaller groups of people cannot.

As I was sipping tea near my home during one of my tea breaks while I work from home, I was observing people from near-by offices, also taking their tea breaks. I felt amazed at how so many people are playing some roles in their companies and earning some money for themselves and their families - the money which then makes a lot of other things happen - the food and all the necessities, the stuff in their homes, the kids' schools, the medical bills, the vacations, etc. etc. Those were all middle-class white-collar workers. But isn't this true about all the billions of people of this world - they're all somehow making some money and making their families' lives happen! It's not at all a fair or equal system - especially if you for once look beyond the middle-class, both above and below - a lot of people do very little to earn disproportionately high amount of money, and a lot lot more can't make ends meet and many are even forced to die. Capitalism offers a way of distributing resources through trade and employment, it indeed claims to be fair theoretically, but is far from so, because the theory assumes humans far different from the real ones. But it does probably lead to a more efficiently growing system as compared to other alternatives. And yet, we see all this waste because of the human elements of power, politics, laziness, greed, varying levels of trust and varying levels of hope - and where an individual falls in the hierarchy affects which is the dominant human element that drives his/her actions. And then these very elements force companies to structure themselves, in ways that allow those on top to exercise control and have the companies somehow deliver outcomes.

There are 2 types of businesses in my view:

1. Volume focused - these are businesses that want to sell in huge volumes, and are typically not into high-end or high quality products. Their products are therefore not in the premium or expensive category. These businesses employ a lot of people with average to low skills - as one of my bosses used to call us - just hands & legs. As expected, the salaries of these people aren't great.
2. Quality focused - these are businesses that make really awesome products or deliver really amazing services - of the kind people are willing to pay a lot for. So obviously these products/services are expensive and can be placed in the premium category. These businesses employ a few but really good and highly skilled people, and pay them very well. Plus, the high quality also requires high level of mechanization, automation and state-of-the-art in terms of production or delivery techniques.

As volume-focused companies grow big, they often tend to forget which type of business they fall under or perhaps get carried away because of pressure to increase sales. For the sake of creating differentiation or for bringing more value to customers, they often try to shift their narrative to say things about themselves which actually belong to the other bucket. Although customers for these businesses do appreciate someone bringing greater value or better quality, they actually, really, want it cheap. So, the whole talk on high "quality" gets limited to the narrative and is soon forgotten. It's also not safe for the company to take it too far and imbibe much into its offerings - because (a) the customers don't want it, and (b) the company can't deliver it - especially at the price the customer can afford, and with the kind of people the company can afford.

Similarly, the quality focused companies should not deviate from their core business type, otherwise they'll lose customers for sure.

The issue, however, is  that companies need to constantly compete and evolve such that they are able to beat competition consistently, and are able to stay alive for long. Being creative by staying within the boundaries of the business type is the key, but it's important to keep in mind that the boundaries are not rigid. Yesterday's science fiction is today's reality. And yesterday's rocket science is today's everyday gadget. That's where companies need to be smart, so that they are able to identify the right envelopes to push and the right boundaries to adjust, determine their focus and set the right priorities.

To tie the 3 aspects I've talked about here - I think a truly successful business leader needs to get the following right:

• Eliminate all kinds waste
• Build an efficient, motivating and fair organizational structure and work environment
• Ensure the business focus is rock solid, and the leaders are capable of imagining the future without deviating from what the business fundamentally stands for.

Need for overhaul in how we learn

The way we educate our children in schools and adults in colleges and beyond is largely based on a teacher delivering a lecture, and asking questions intermittently to gauge the level of understanding of the knowledge recipients. There may be a test during this lecture or later on to further assess the learning outcomes. A few teachers use props and simple experiments to elaborate topics further - like the famous demonstration of swinging pendulum and its amplitude by Walter Lewin (click here) - but they are still largely just transferring knowledge from teacher to student and then using some means to confirm it happened to a satisfactory extent. This methodology has always been a topic of debate among educationists, and there has generally been a consensus that such instruction-based teaching and learning methodologies are not the most effective. Yet it's the most commonly used method because of 2 reasons: (1) It's the most convenient form of knowledge delivery for a teacher, and (2) It's the most convenient way of knowledge reception for the student, although highly passive and lacking any real-time processing of the information received. "Convenient" here means that it doesn't require any major effort or challenge for the teacher or student beyond the transaction of information transfer; it involves minimal consumption of energy to validate the information, relate it to something known or taught before, process it to draw insights beyond what is said, even think it over to an extent that the mind starts having questions (rather than the students "coming up" with questions for "class participation").

Now, it's the whole system designed in a certain way. And breaking out of it completely is not possible as parts of it require mandatory adherence. For example, school education has to end compulsorily with the students clearing the "board" exams conducted by authorized agencies of the State, and which becomes an eligibility criteria for college admissions. And colleges need to have their own mandatory affiliations. So we basically have an education system that is forced to adhere to specific syllabus and testing methodologies. The State would always want such a control, not only to ensure a certain standard of education in the country, but also to drive a certain form of content and thought process that is in its best interests. The latter has been a tool of the ruling class for ages, and the access to the kind of information like we have today hasn't lessened its impact. We've only ended up with people becoming agents for propagating their kind of information further. Being part of this world and yet breaking out of this carefully crafted model is impossible. Even if you start from scratch in an unknown colony in Mars, you would ultimately end up with the same power games and someone wanting to control how the others learn.

I started writing this article hoping to stress the need of taking educational institutions out of the frameworks of boards/affiliations and authorized syllabus. This, I thought, would open doors to creativity in how education is imparted and learning is approached. But I've realized there will always be someone who'll decide what's in the interest of the student to learn. Given that we can't totally break out of this human element, we could still aim at designing a system that ensures better learning and that builds smarter and wiser individuals who can not only think right, but also learn about everything from different angles, are able to build the right correlations, reach in thought where nobody has, imagine what nobody has and together be more creative and empowered than what the current approach allows. And also pass the exams and get the degrees they need to, but really understanding their true worth.

Techniques like peer instruction seem quite effective, especially - and this is my view - among more disciplined and mature students. It also requires that the teachers be trained to execute it effectively. And to draw most from peers, a student needs to be an extrovert to a considerable degree; and so do teachers; and that's a problem. Introverts have a tough time everywhere! Is it that majority of professional teachers are introverts and are more comfortable at delivering a lecture rather than creating a more communicative, participative and indulgent form of learning?

Would love to know what others think.

Here's Eric Mazur talking about peer instruction and how he thought about it: