Life is what happens to you.....

“Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans,” thus spoke one of the great oracles of our times aka John Lennon. This is for some of you younger folks - John Lennon was one of the Beatles; he was the most prominent face of the Beatles.

Recently, I came across a blog post by an ex-IBMer; she provides some wonderful insights in her blogs. Here is the link to her blog http://whenfridayswerefridays.blogspot.com/2009/10/ten-things-to-do-when-you-leave.html

The ten things she has on her list:

1. Go to the Gym
2. Cook
3. Read
4. Master the laundry process
5. Pay attention to what the kids are doing
6. Annoy your spouse
7. Learn what a savasana (shavasan) is
8. Write a book
9. Get some vitamin D – from the sun
10. Watch Mad Men

This list is by no means exhaustive, and she acknowledges as much by asking her readers an open question about what is on their list.

This list is also not universal, some of these things may not apply to you at all :). I mean, what Indian man knows how to cook or how to do the laundry? Or, who, in their right minds would go to cramped, ill-equipped & astronomically priced gyms? After all that is not why you ordered the chicken biryani and Patiala Johnny walker for dinner, did you? And isn’t annoying the spouse something that you don’t have to learn – it just comes so naturally:).

It is the reactions which I read with much interest. Some of them felt that this was a superfluous list in that, except for numbers 7, 8, and 10, the rest should be done all the time – irrespective of whether or not you are a part of corporate America (or Asia, or Europe).

I happen to agree with this kind of reaction, while pleading guilty to neglecting some of these for some time.

I do not go to the gym, but I more than make up for it by clocking up some 30 miles per week on the roads of Atlanta. In the process, I also get a lot of vitamin D – from sunlight; in fact, despite being brown skinned, I have two distinct shades of brown on my body, the exposed parts of my body being darker than the covered parts. I will readily confess that cooking is not my idea of relaxing or spending my leisure time and that I never really picked up cooking as a child or as a young man. I also do the laundry at home, and I can say with some satisfaction, that I have really mastered the laundry process. I also practice yog(a) and I think I have mastered the Shavasan(a).

However, this is not about what I, or you, do. This is about what I, or you, do not do. As a young man, I used to be a voracious reader. Now, I just buy books and stack them in my bookshelf. In fact, I keep adding the names of books to buy to my list of to-do’s. Needless to say, the stack of unread books keeps growing. A long time ago, it seems like a lifetime ago, I would have finished a book in one sitting. I do not know when I quit reading books; maybe when I got addicted to TV; maybe when I go addicted to the Internet? I don’t know. I will not blame work, for that did not stop me from reading earlier in my life. I have now consciously started reading, even if it is only five pages that I can read before going to sleep.

Because of my traveling, I do not get to spend much time with my children. And, here is the sad part; even when I am home, I do not spend much time with my children. I have two very lovely daughters; I really love them very much. However, until this past semester, until my older daughter’s school started to put her assignments on the school intranet, I was not really aware of what she is/ was doing in school. I now, try to spend some time with her everyday, trying to talk to her. Not just about her homework, but about other stuff as well. In short, I am trying to be a Dad again. My younger daughter is still content to be cuddled and being told a bedtime story. I get the cuddling part, but I have not really mastered the art of story telling – not every night! Why? What holds me back? Once again, I do not have an answer.

I have also been planning to write a book. I even started on it, but, needless to say, it lies untouched and forgotten for the past one year.

Meanwhile, my list of to-do’s keeps getting longer. I sometimes, correct that to frequently, get the feeling that there are many things undone and life is passing me by. I do not know what I am waiting for to live the life that I had always dreamed of. The one in which I would be tending to the flowers in my garden, and the kids would be buzzing around close by, asking a million questions about all the plants and the flowers. Or, the one in which I would be sitting in my favorite chair and reading my favorite book, and the spouse would be hovering close by and trying to annoy me all the time. I am probably waiting for the dream home that I want to buy, or I am probably waiting for the vacation that I have been planning, the one in which I’ll have all the time in the world and I will not have to think about work. I don’t know!

This post has taken some time. For the simple reason, that in the time since my last post, I have decided to make, and have made some changes. I have now decided to follow the Nike slogan; no more planning, ‘Just Do It’.

I have started to read – I have already read one book and I am on to my second. I also got back to writing my book, but I didn’t make much progress there.

I will keep you posted on my progress, I’ll be delighted to share yours.

P.S. - I would like to thank my friend Sanjay Jha for the caption of this post; I have shamelessly stolen it from his gmail 'status update'. I'd also like to thank him for his insightful comments on some of my earlier posts.

मेरे पापा और मेरी बेटियाँ

जब मैं छोटा था तो पापा और मेरी आदतों, पसंदगी-नापसंदगी में कोई मेल नहीं था, पापा बाएँ तो मैं दायें वाला हाल था। पापा को सुबह जल्दी उठने की आदत थी; मुझे देर तक सोने का शौक था। पापा सवेरे उठ कर थोडी ही देर में हम सारे भाइयों को उठाने क लिए आवाज देने लग जाते थे। उठने की इच्छा तो तीनो भाइयों में से किसी की भी नही होती थी लेकिन हमारे घर का माहौल ऐसा नहीं था कि पापा की बात नहीं सुनी जाए। बात काटने का तो सवाल ही नही था, अधिक से अधिक थोडी देर तक अनसुना करने का नाटक किया जा सकता था। मजबूरन उठाना ही पड़ता था, भले ही रविवार का दिन हो और कहीं आने-जाने का कार्यक्रम भी न हो। सवेरे सवेरे उठ कर नहा धो कर हमें पापा के साथ पूजा पर बैठना पड़ता था। जाड़े के दिनों में सीमेंट की ठंडी फर्श पर हाफ-पैंट में बैठना कितना कष्टकारी होता है,यह वही बता सकता है जिसने यह कष्ट झेला है।

पापा को खाने में हरी सब्जियाँ पसंद थीं, मुझे हरी सब्जी का कोई शौक नहीं था। पापा शाकाहारी थे, मैं मांसाहारी; हालांकि हमारे घर में कभी भी मांसाहार पकाया नहीं गया है।

पढ़ते वक़्त मैं रेडियो पर गाने लगा दिया करता था, इस से मुझे कोई समस्या नहीं होती थी। पापा के ये पल्ले ही नहीं पड़ता था कि पढ़ते वक़्त कोई गाना कैसे सुन सकता है। जहाँ तक मुझे याद है, पापा ने सिर्फ़ दो फिल्में देखी थीं; उसमें से भी एक फ़िल्म वो बीच में से ही छोड़कर कर आ गए थे। मेरी तो फिल्मो में जैसे जान ही बसती थी। यों बसती थी. कहना ग़लत होगा, मैं अभी भी बहुत ध्यान लगा कर सड़ी से सड़ी फ़िल्म देख लेता हूँ।

जैसे जैसे हम तीनो भाई बड़े होते गए पापा अपने अनुशासन की पकड़ ढीली करते गए और हमें काफी आजादी देने लग गए।

समय बदला, मेरी पढ़ाई ख़त्म हुई। मैंने नौकरी शुरू की और कुछ दिनों में मेरी शादी भी हुई। आज मैं उम्र के उस मोड़ पर खड़ा हूँ जिस पर कभी मेरे पापा थे। मेरी दो बेटियाँ हैं; बड़ी बेटी ग्यारह साल की है और छोटी पाँच साल की है। मेरी छोटी बेटी ने अपने दादाजी को सिर्फ़ तस्वीरों में देखा है, लेकिन मैं उन्हें पापा की कहानियां सुनाता रहता हूँ।

बड़ी बेटी छठी क्लास में है, और छोटी प्री-स्कूल में। दोनों को सवेरे स्कूल के लिए जल्दी निकलना पड़ता है। मुझे याद नहीं है कोई सुबह ऐसी गुजरी हो जब उन्हें डांट न पड़ीं हो। रोज सुबह थोडी देर तक मैं उन्हें प्यार से उठाता हूँ; धीरे-धीरे आवाजें तेज होने लगती हैं। मैं तो बचपन में बिना कुछ कहे उठ जाया करता था, मेरी बेटियाँ बिना शोर-शराबे के नहीं उठतीं हैं।

किसी तरह हाथ-मुंह धोने के बाद जब वो स्कूली कपड़े पहन कर नीचे आती हैं तो फिर एक और जंग शुरू होती है खाने को लेकर। दोनों शाकाहारी हैं, और यहाँ स्कूल में उनके खाने के लायक कम ही सामान मिलता है। इसलिए दोनों खाना साथ में ले कर जाती हैं। उनके हिसाब से अगर खाने में रोज बिस्कुट और चॉकलेट दे दी जाए तो सबसे अच्छा; उस से उनके स्वास्थ्य पर पड़ने वाले असर से उनको कोई मतलब नहीं है। कैसे उनको कुछ स्वास्थ्यवर्द्धक खाना दिया जाए जो उनको पसंद भी आए, इस पर रोज सिर फुटौवल की नौबत आ जाती है।

शाम को जब वो घर आती हैं तो होमवर्क किस तरह ख़त्म हो, इसके लिए मैं उनके पीछे पड़ा रहता हूँ। मेरी बड़ी बेटी को मेरी आदत लग गई है, वो भी पढ़ते वक़्त गाने लगा दिया करती है, फर्क इतना है की वो टीवी पर गाने लगाती है, और उसका सारा ध्यान टीवी पर ही रहता है।

आज मैं सचमुच उसी मोड़ पर हूँ जिस पर पापा थे। कूल डैड बनने के मेरे सारे इरादों पर पानी फिर गया है, और मैं रुल डैड बन कर रह गया हूँ, बिल्कुल अपने पापा की तरह। मजे की बात यह है की मुझे इसका कोई दुःख नहीं है। मुझे पूरा यकीन है कि पापा भी, चाहे वो जहाँ भी हों, मेरी स्थिति पर चुटकी ले रहे होंगे।

Embedded Consultant

I have been working as a consultant for the past 12 years. I spent the first five years of these working full-time for three different employers, each of who sent me on client assignments ranging from 3-6 months. Business was good, the sales teams were doing their jobs and I did not have to worry about the next assignment.

Since the past 7 years, I have not had the luxury of a sales team to support me; I’ve had to undertake my own job hunt. I got my first independent assignment courtesy a friend who did his best to dissuade me from taking the job even though he himself had given me the job lead. The reason that he tried to dissuade me was that I was married and I had a young family. Consulting is not kind to family life, nor is it high on stability.

The project was initially scheduled to last 6 months; it went on for 3.5 years. I was contracted to work for the ‘direct client’; there were no middlemen involved. I worked almost like an employee – my commitment to the client was not less than that of an employee. In turn, the client treated me like an employee; my contribution was not measured by the time that I spent in the office at my desk, but by the work that I did and by the quality of that work. If I put any overtime on my timesheet, I did not have to have prior approval for that; my manager generally approved it without asking any questions. I was, as I call it, an ‘Embedded Consultant’.

In these tough times, I am sure that all independent/ small-business consultants would love to be embedded consultants. So, what is it that makes you an embedded consultant? How do you reduce your 'redundancy factor'? To zero, if possible?

The first thing, as I have already noted, is the commitment to your client. If something needs to be done, it needs to be done. Be prepared to go the extra mile; even if you suspect you are not going to be paid for it. Do it once, do it twice, and you’d have established your bona fides. The next time you are required to go the extra mile, it will not be the unpaid extra mile. Your client will definitely recognize your contribution.

Second, do not draw boundaries, artificial or real. Let me explain what I mean. My expertise (?) is primarily in the area of Oracle Applications. However, I have a ‘knowledge surplus’ in other areas as well; meaning that I know more, than the average Joe, about stuff in other areas as well. So, when average Joe walks up to me and asks me for help in formatting an excel worksheet and/ or plotting the data on a suitable graph, I try to help. Of course, I let average Joe know that (1) I am not an expert on Excel, and (2) more importantly, I am taking time away from my Oracle work to help him. Maybe, it just earns me brownie points, but these are invaluable brownie points that I earn. When the time comes to renew/ extend the contract these brownie points could suddenly be the difference between extension and termination of the contract. If I were to ‘jargonize’ this, I would say that it helps to have transferable skills and a ‘knowledge surplus’ in multiple areas.

What do you think? I’d love to hear back from you.

Jai Ho!

I am working with a company which has an office in India. It is used mostly for work that involves technical development and support/ maintenance of existing systems.

This office is staffed by mostly junior level consultants who work under the guidance of a few senior consultants. Most of them have never been outside India, and the lure of being called onsite for short-term assignments is one of the factors that makes many of them stick with the company.

One of the main reasons for an India office is reduction in costs. However, another important reason is also to be able to provide 24X7 support to the company’s clients in the USA. Needless to say, this requires the consultants in India to put in very long hours every day; pardon me, I should say every night! The consultants are also required to get leave/ vacations approved beforehand – not only by the India Office manager, but also by the USA project manager that they are working with at the time of making the leave request.

One of the consultants working with me sent in a leave request recently. This person is a brilliant consultant; he finishes his tasks in double quick time, and then asks for more. However, despite being a brilliant technical mind, he, like many Indians, who have not studied in English-medium schools, writes better English than he speaks. However, he still writes ‘traditional’ English. So his leave application went something like this “Most humbly and respectfully, I beg to state that………………….”. Those of you who did not study in an English-medium school will recognize this style of writing applications as something that you also learned in your high school days.

I never wrote a leave application like this. In fact, I had a minor run-in with my branch manager when I was working for the State Bank of India; this was more than 15 years ago. The branch had run out of standard leave application forms; you just needed to put in the dates for your vacation on these forms and your manager would approve them. As I said, the branch had run out of standard forms, so I just wrote a one-line application asking that I be granted leave for one day for personal reasons. My branch manager was shocked to read that one-line application – it did not make a request; well there was the mandatory ‘Please grant me leave’ part, but there was no hint of a servile request at all in the application, which is what the branch manager was looking for. It was just a regular request; I have leave due to me, grant me that leave. What particularly riled the branch manager was that words/ phrases ‘humbly’, ‘beg to state’, ‘eternally grateful’, 'your most obedient servant' etc. were missing from my leave request.

My colleague’s leave application reminded me of this incident, but it also set me thinking about the origins and/ or possible reasons for this kind of behavior. What kind of behavior? Ok, here it is – that of treating the boss like God, the ‘sarve-sarvaa’ ( a typically Indian phrase which means one with supreme authority over all that (s)he surveys) of your life. Is this something that we have inherited from our colonial past? Or, is this something that has come from our own hierarchical society and the British merely strengthened it?

I believe that it is the latter, although the strengthening made it so much more institutionalized. The British had a vested interest in doing so. They had to rule and that required them to be treated like the superior race, the chosen people. It also required them to constantly remind the lowly Indian of his/ her place in the scheme of things; the closing phrase in application, “I remain, Sir, your most obedient servant” was merely one of the language tools that they employed to good effect. This is in stark contrast to the lack of hierarchy in the English language. Notice that there is no respectful form of ‘You' in English, like we have in many Indian languages, ‘Aap’ is the respectful form of ‘You’ in Hindi, and is used for elders and people who enjoy a higher station in life than you do.

So, what impact does this have in our regular day-to-day life? There’s no doubt that Indian society is still very hierarchical and that this hierarchy is all-pervasive – it is also here in our work culture. We fawn over our bosses, and generally do not question their judgment / decisions. As a result, the decisions made are not necessarily the best decisions. I am sure that there is much more; more on that sometime later.

What can we do about this? How do we make our society, our workplaces less hierarchical? How do we promote more open debate and less of reverential dogma that passes for good decisions?

Looking for answers.

latest cricket scores

Still haven't found any answers to my questions to myself, but I'm trying to let go of some of the labels that I put on myself.

That's not as easy as it sounds. I had always labeled myself as not very strong physically. And then, on Sunday August 16th, I ran 7 miles without stopping for even a second. I had never done this in my entire life, not even when I was in high school. I did not break any records, not even for my age group. In fact, earlier in the day on Sunday, a little wisp of a girl, a Russian named Olga Kaniskina walked(?) almost double that distance in marginally more time that I took for my 7 miles. I repeated that performance; no, I bettered that performance on Sunday, August 23rd - I ran 8 miles without stopping even for a second. I even managed to reduce my average time per mile. This gave me a lot of satisfaction and happiness. Not many people, that I know and who are in my age group, can do that. I have started to think whether I should peel that label off myself.

How do you get the labels that are assigned to you? In my opinion, most of these labels are self-assigned. If they are not self-assigned, they are actively sought. Most people use them as a door-opener, an introduction to a closed group. You go to your child's school picnic where you do not know anybody; you introduce yourself as your child's parent. Next picnic/ meeting onwards, that becomes your defining identity. In other cases, people use these labels to actually set themselves apart from a group that they are in. You go to a rock festival and proclaim yourselves to be a connoisseur of opera; next time you meet people from this group, you are labeled a snob. You didn't self-assign the label in this case, but you actually sought it by trying to actually set yourself apart from the rock lovers.

Do these labels serve a useful purpose? In other words, are they required? I believe that while labels do serve a limited initial purpose, they have a habit of outliving that initial usefulness and, therefore, ultimately become constraints on you rather than enablers. Going further with the examples that I just cited, your child grows up and moves on from that school to another, and ultimately to a job, but you will forever be defined as your child's parent by other people in that group. Same thing with opera lover; your tastes change and you start listening to rock music, you even start loving it, but you'll forever remain the stuck-up snob to the initial group. People's opinions, beliefs, judgments have a tendency to be inertial - they change at the rate that a glacier moves.

Moreover, most of these labels are defined by external factors. External factors have at least two shortcomings. One, they tend to be transient; two, a factor that may be important to one person, may not be important to another person. Most external factors can vanish any moment - a powerful politician may lose an election, and may be thrown out by his own party, or worse, be forgotten by his own party. A popular film star's movies may bomb at the box office, and her backers may start doubting her pull at the box office, whereas another generation never really believed that she ever had that pull at the box office. Beauty? Not only is it transient, but what is beautiful to one is plain to another. Wealth? In these depressing economic times, do I even need to talk about the transient nature of wealth?

Can we get rid of labels? To steal a phrase from Barack Obama's campaign, yes we can. I believe so, because I believe, in the first place, that I assigned that label to myself. I can refuse to assign myself a label. I am what I choose to be.

Who are you?

Sitting in my hotel room, I am switching channels to catch the latest NBA game. Turns out , there is no game tonight. I chance upon a show called 'The Bachelorette' on ABC. It's the premier of the show - there are 25, no, make that 30, white American males trying to win the heart of this girl called Jillian Harris. Her claim to fame? She was one of the contestants who made it to the last four of another reality show called "The Bachelor". Of course, she wasn't the one that the Bachelor chose; she wouldn't be doing this show otherwise. This is her chance for redemption - she got dumped on TV, now she can dump 29 men.

Anyhow, I do not intend to discuss ABC and reality shows. It does seem a bit surreal, though, to see the ancient Indian practice of swayamvar being packaged as a reality show for a divorced-from-reality tv audience, circa 2009.

Back to the show! 30 males trying to win the heart of this girl. all of them come in and introduce themselves. 'Hi, I am XYZ, I am a general contractor', or, 'Hi, I am ABC, I am a Financial Analyst'. It set me thinking about one of the oldest existentialist dilemmas - who am I. Have you ever wondered who you are? Or, are you one of those sure-of-yourself, got-everything-before-you-are-thirty, successful guys in life, and have never thought along these lines before now?

I, for one, have wondered about this many times. And, I have diagnosed myself with multiple personality disorder! To my wife, I am her husband who is never perfect, but she still loves me. To my daughters, I am a imperfect but loving father whose sole reason to be is to take care of them. I do not grudge them that certitude; I wish I had that kind of asurance myself. In my college days, I was many things to many people. To the people who envied my popularity with the girls, I was the Casanova. To the general students, I was the eternal neta/ politician - dishing out favours and collecting votes. To my friends, I was one of the funniest guys with my ready repartee and unfunny jokes. To my professors, I was one of the more intelligent and troublesome students.

Back in college, I thought, I was just being me; I was just behaving normally; I was just being a regular guy. If you didn't know how to talk to a girl, that didn't make me a Casanova. If you couldn't solve a Maths problem, that wasn't my problem! I always got irritated with some of these impressions of me. To me, they represented a selective impression of me - kind of like the six blind men describing the elephant. No one saw the true me, the complete me. I thought I was the sum of all that the other people saw me as.

Now, I am not so sure. I am still many things to many people. But, I don't know who I am anymore. Well, I didn't ever know that, but I wasn't interested in knowing that earlier. Now, I want to know that. Not only that, I even wonder about my raison-de-etre. I do not have any answers. Do you?