God of small things!

I started writing and my initial posts were much welcomed. Encouraged by the feedback I vowed to write more – and immediately my brother warned “Don’t start writing too frequently, quantity will dilute the quality”. I read an interesting quote the other day, which goes like “Great things in life come in small packages”. Boutique shop/restaurant/saloon is beautiful as compared to the Wal-Marts of the world. Look at the countries, UK, Singapore, Israel, Luxemburg, Brunei… they are all small, well managed and beautiful. Why do MIT / Stanford / IIMs / IITs not open up more branches and spread wisdom? Look at the top executives from big multi-nationals break ranks and join small startups! Why does creativity, when mass produced, lose its charm? why have the sequels bombed at the box office, why successful authors have authored only few books, why do we love a Porsche more than a Toyota?

What’s with this small, less, stuff? I just don’t get it! Why do people throng/yearn to be part of and take pride in being in a member of a small team, institute, event, company, community or even a country? Is there a problem in associating ourselves with BIG and abundant?

Curious George in me kicked in and I landed on this interesting concept… “Small is beautiful” a movement founded by Leopold Kohr a great economist. He is best known for his work The Breakdown of Nations which in today’s times makes sense more than ever! A section of the book…

“There seems to be only one cause behind all forms of social misery: bigness. Oversimplified as this may seem, we shall find the idea more easily acceptable if we consider that bigness, or oversize, is really much more than just a social problem. It appears to be the one and only problem permeating all creation. Whenever something is wrong, something is too big. And if the body of a people becomes diseased with the fever of aggression, brutality, collectivism, or massive idiocy, it is not because it has fallen victim to bad leadership or mental derangement. It is because human beings, so charming as individuals or in small aggregations have been welded onto over concentrated social units.”

The section of the book quoted above provided answers to all my questions in a platter.

Everything in this world started small and had a sense of responsibility and sincerity. This brought exclusivity and charm to it. Everybody respected, admired and celebrated all small things until they grew big. The individual responsibility and sincerity of people of the small entity emanated and shone more than the collective negativity of the entity. But, once the entity grew big, its demand to consume eventually consumed itself.

Look at the US, its demand to consume energy to keep up the growth has eventually consumed itself. Satyam was consumed by the power and money it was required to create it in the first place. The same applies to artisans; initially they consume less intellectual resources to create few masterpieces because it is only needed to supplement their genius. But when they start off big on a journey of mass production, they start consuming more intellectual resources that the line between inspiration and plagiarism becomes a distant blur.

Well, then, does it mean that we cannot produce quality output in large quantities! Is that true? What is the God in small things that makes it beautiful? How to grow big quantitatively as well and still be as admired as when we were small?

According to me the God which makes small things beautiful is responsibility and sincerity! In the pursuit of growth we should not let responsibility and sincerity fritter away, not overlook the “ethics and obligations” which we are bound to. Not consume more than we contribute. Adopt a “responsible growth” path. A growth which is accountable to the environment we live in, a growth which is reasonable and not meteoric and surreal.

These growth stories will not be publicized because they might not be sensational to the media. There might not have been a miracle. It would have been a hard and arduous journey, but we should identify such growth stories in all walks of life, acknowledge, admire and benchmark them for future.

That way we will be able to make everything big – beautiful, exclusive and charming as it should be!

- Ciao

Tickled!!!

Hello friends, I have also started contributing to www.tickledbylife.com - They have carried couple of articles which are already published in my blog. I hope to keep both these activities mutually exclusive.

This TickledbyLife is a concept of Mr. PS Wasu - who is a great motivational speaker and emancipator. The website is a life enhancing site which did lighten up my soul whenever I had tough times. Hope you also like the articles...

- Ciao

Cap of Good Hope!

Recession! Not quite what we expected huh! The dream run, Bull Run, ball of a time… and countless other descriptions of the times gone by all sound distant now, a far cry!

People losing jobs, inability to pay up the credit, no taxes, no revenue to the government, no money in the market, no cash available to extend credit, no new enterprise, banks and companies going bankrupt and people losing jobs, it has come a full cycle. This economic situation has affected everybody, left, right and the center (literally and metaphorically speaking). People grappling with the situation are getting hooked up to anything that remotely sounds, looks or feels hopeful about it.

Look at the 2 million strong gathering for the inauguration of the 44th President of the United States. Do you think they came to see an African American take oath? Not entirely! They came to witness what “audacity of hope” could achieve!

They had come to witness the miracle that was, hope, which fuelled a single man to achieve whatever he did for himself, his family and his country. They see a messiah in Obama and expect him to lead them out of the shambles. I call him a messiah because rarely in the history of mankind have individuals exhibited such courage and been an embodiment of hope during difficult times. Whenever they did, they were immortalized as a messiah. Though he does not have a magic wand to weave and alleviate the situation, at least people think that there is something new to get excited about, something which they could use to sleep over on a difficult night.

Not just Obama, there are people who have looked up to their spouses, family, friends, colleagues, mentors, bosses... So what makes someone a messiah or at the least a mortal who people could look up to in times of hardship? Well, as you might have guessed by now, the answer is HOPE.

I recently came across an e-mail forward which read, “Hope – it is the feeling which you have when you go to sleep without knowing if you will wake up the next day but still have plans already made for it”. No hope is good if you do not trust it. A similar e-mail forward had this following story which was really intriguing. “Trust is a feeling that a one year old child has, when u throw him up in the air & catch him again…he still laughs n enjoys it…in case he doubts, he will cry when u throw him in the air, that means the child is doubting on your capabilities… and whether you would really catch him or not.” Same way...only people who do not have trust in hope, worry during troubled times!

So a positive thought process, the ability to look at the brighter side of things, a good hope with the trust of the little child is the key.

During an interesting conversation with my uncle, I gave him what I thought was a predicament. It goes like “If you ever are in a situation where you, your wife and your father were drowning, and if you get a chance to wish for one person who could be saved, whom you will pick?” – Without a hesitation he replied – “Me”. I was stupefied at the answer and more so the speed at which he answered.

His reasoning was simple. If he was gone, then he wouldn’t need to be worried as to what happened to the other two. And if he were alive, he was confident that he could do at least something about them… Subhash Ghai a renowned Indian film maker once said “Unlike in cinema and everything else, there is no second take in life” – So, if one believes that all they need to worry about is their life and everything else in life can be reclaimed, they sure can relieve themselves of the entire emotional burden which they carry.

I have had few such occasions thankfully as an emancipator. I have tried my best, over a cup of coffee, a mug of beer or across the table. I have shared whatever positive I came across and hope to have instilled some confidence, and positive mindset.

Some of my queer perspectives about this whole new situation did lighten up a few souls.

For example, the social stigma (in India) around “losing a job” is getting eroded by the day. Not long ago before the lay offs became the news of the day, it was a sin if you lost your job. People were worried to such an extent that they committed suicide for losing their jobs. But now, it is OK for someone to loose a job. The society at large understands the situation. In fact retrenchment is discussed in a lighter vein.

Let us take a look at the spending habits. The young generation of Indian BPO and IT folk who started with lavish spending has been caught on the wrong foot in their very first step. They have learnt a simple but valuable economic lesson “Do not spend more than you make” very early in their lives. This is a significant development.

I had a chat with the director of finance of a large multi-national. He had some interesting insights as well. According to him, a down turn in economy is good. This is what differentiates the boys from men, the mediocre from good whether it is companies, people, and technology or as a matter of fact just about anything. He said that this is the right time for some brilliant ideas to flourish. People will now look at the fundamentals of anything and just not the speculation in the market.

So if one were to derive an inference, it is the right time for us to differentiate ourselves. Do whatever we had been wishing to do. To take up endeavors which we had feared might fail. As FDR said during similar times, “We have nothing to fear but fear itself…”

Nothing to worry about other than our own life and wearing the cap of hope with the feather of trust of a one year old kid will make us “The Emancipator”.

(Saint / Faint) Hearted?

Wish you a very happy and prosperous new year!

Reality shows are in vogue on Indian Television. Any channel that you flip will always have an unknown stranger performing a song or a dance. It was one such evening; My wife and I were watching some TV. There was a teenage girl singing her “heart out”. I too, and am sure many of the differently gifted souls like me can sing their “heart out” in their bathrooms or in private.

At the end of the contest, the child walked out and gave an interview where in she justified her poor performance and losing the contest to her sore throat???????? To set the context, my knowledge of carnatic* music is as much as my knowledge of exact location of the Holy Grail. But I can certainly discern the difference between a song and noise, sense and drivel. It was absolute babble! There was no traceable evidence of training in singing/music.

In a related incident which I am sure all of us in India would have read, a child got paralyzed / traumatized because of the comments made by the jury of a reality show. I did watch the fateful show and the performance was pathetic.

During one of my trips to the UK in 2005, The Professional Association of Teachers discussed an idea that the label of failure could undermine pupils' enthusiasm. Liz Beattie, a retired teacher, proposed to "Delete the word 'fail' from the educational vocabulary to be replaced with the concept of 'deferred success".

As I pondered over these disparate incidents, one thing stood out clearly. People have become averse to the competitive atmosphere which we live in. They do not want any more winners or losers. They just want to participate, have “fun”, make a decent living and get on with life without having to compete with anybody. Given the kind of competitive person I am, I never bothered to take a different perspective. I always believed that one should deserve to desire and that there is no way to “succeed” in life without defeating someone/some system. I admired when, the then education secretary, Ruth Kelly retorted against the proposal on replacing the word “fail” with “deferred success” and said, “I think I might give them nought (0) out of 10 for this proposal”

However the rethink instinct did kick in...

The culture of competition, winning and losing, victory and defeat has been propagated since centuries. What was primarily reserved for the historically competitive North American / western culture has come to stay and has influenced cultures which otherwise have always depicted a co-operative means of achieving goals, prosperity and happiness.

I read an article titled “The Case against Competition” by Alfie Kohn. The author notes, Americans typically recognize only two legitimate positions: enthusiastic support and qualified support. The first view holds that competition builds character and produces excellence. The second stance admits that our society has gotten carried away with the need to be Number One that we push too hard and too fast to become winners - but insists on a “healthy competition” and argues that both are wrong. He opens out a third front which says “Co-operation” and “Mutually Exclusive Goals Alignment” yields better results than a competitive environment.

If you come to think of it, in India, especially in spite of our population and the competition we have had to contend with, we were taught to co-operate, let go, take turns in winning, give and take and still to “succeed”. As children we were asked to give up and cooperate in a game for the visiting relative kids. Those experiences did not leave a bad taste; instead we all had great fun. We were asked to give un-conditional love to all our relatives no matter what. Earlier to English education, there was no sense of competition amongst kids and no comparisons were made. Each kid was unique and praised for whatever they did and respected for who they were. Take the example of Pandavas in Mahabarath or the brotherhood in Ramayan. There was never a comparison made, each kid was respected for the unique skill he brought on to the table. These great epics are testimony to our culture or cooperation and not comparative competition.

The following quote by George Washington Carver also struck me hard: “How far you go in life depends on you being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving and tolerant of the weak and the strong. Because someday in life you will have been all of these…”

Does that mean we do not compete at all? Because, it is a general sentiment that competition is what gives meaning to life…

Well, the answer is yes and no. Yes, we should not compete with others, but we should with ourselves. Great paintings, compositions, books, inventions were not made by competing with others. Each one of the greatest luminaries achieved glory by competing with themselves and their last achievement but cooperating with other contemporaries’. The stories of their rivalries are part of the folklore to create an enthusiasm amongst the next generation, just like the rivalries created between say Brian Lara and Sachin Tendulkar.

When I think back, the child’s poor performance was never an issue to me. What bothered me the most was, the justification and self exoneration / self pity!

First of all, I blame the parents for letting their kids compete with others without adequate training. Secondly, for vindicating them for the disqualification using lame excuses. For the parents, probably during their days, pushing themselves hard did not earn the desired psychological or materialistic result. But that shouldn’t be the reason to tolerate their children for not pushing themselves harder or allowing them to cover up their lackadaisical performance and worse permitting the children to settle for mediocrity.

Do encourage the kids to compete with others, but arm them adequately so that they do not get hurt. Enable them to perform better than they did last time and not compare with another kid, never give conditional love and make your kid yearn for it unless he/she did something to deserve it. Teach them to cooperate.

This theory of cooperation by Alfie Kohn could change the way people, societies, countries and humanity interact. The competitive culture if replaced by a co-operative culture will definitely be a sustainable model to extend our stay in this planet as humans.

- Ciao

* Carnatic - Classic Indian Music which is centuries old.

Pandavas - 5 brothers who are the protaganists in the great epic of Mahabharath

Brian Lara & Sachin Tendulkar are greats of the game of Cricket