soul searching

Well after a break - and posting humour toons on my blog i decided it was time that i got back to my writing self. Creating toons was probably not my cup of tea - but probably writing comes more easily to me. Mostly because I can let my mind wander with ease and pen down the thoughts as soon as they occur - easy like 1-2-3. So here it goes........

How do you tell yourself, “no, don’t do it”. Is it even possible to just tell yourself no? How do you explain to another person that there impression of the situation isn’t what your feeling? Can they see something that you don’t?

Last night I goofed up. Actually totally f###@ up. I listened to the negative voices inside. Instead of thinking about things in a positive way, trying to say some affirmations or an affirmative prayer, I let the negative feelings rule my thoughts. How is it that you try so hard to keep on the sunny-side of life, but always end up going back to the dark clouds. This is the way that you give up control in everything. Then life and the people in your life take you on a roller coaster ride. Instead of just using the tools at hand, it’s like you hand yourself over to low self-esteem, depression and negativity. And then you end up here.

I guess I need to look for a change in life as my wife feels that it is time to walk away. I can understand that as life hasn’t been easy for the last several months. After the ups and downs of various anti-depressants and the crazy that some meds bring about - my irrational behaviors and her inability to let a little light shine through - I guess we are in troubled times now. It’s hard, though. This is the first time that I have really felt what a great relationship feels like.

When it all started I was very determined to not do all of the things that I had done in the past. I WAS SIMPLY NOT going to make the same mistakes. I’m sure you can see where all of this is going….you get confident, comfortable and lazy. The layers peel back and I started taking it all for granted. Then suddenly this realization dawns upon you – and you end up there. It sucks, the realization that you have once again done all those things you swore you would never do. Look to that person for all of the things that you can’t give yourself. It’s like this false sense of self.

Now the question is, how do I live with myself? How many times do you mess up and move forward? How much of your own self-destruction can you take? God, when is enough just ENOUGH?

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h-a-n-g-o-v-e-r life........

The post party syndrome also commonly known as the hangover can be pretty awful experience especially if it occurs on a Monday morning. It signifies the rocking time we had while partying over the weekend. Coming to terms with it both physically and mentally can be a bit daunting especially when we realize that the party is over and now it’s back to work. When it comes to me, it’s quite unusual. In fact I simply love hangovers. Here by hangover, I don't mean the one we get from alcohol but the one we have after the end of a fabulous era. For me hangover is an extensive recollection of the good times we had. And in this whole recollecting thing I always end up screwing up my present. But the scary part is that getting over any kind of hangover can be pretty tough.

For me life was a party until very recently, I realized that the party got over a long time ago and everyone had left and I was the only moron who was left behind. The truth is that I was in denial for such a long time that I forgot that I am 27 already. I am no longer a kid or an indifferent teenager who can get whatever he wants by simply manipulating his parents, friends or simply the people around him.

Yes, hangovers can be pretty tough to get rid of but once over, we realize that its time to move on for the better. Life always moves on…..

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Happiness: Who's line is it anyway?

The first thing that any careful discussion of happiness has to deal with is the fact that the term happiness has many distinctive uses. We speak of happy moments and happy lives. Thoughts about what would count as happiness may conjure visions of pleasure on the one hand, and success or achievement on the other. At times, we might think that happiness is just getting what we really want. Sometimes we say that happiness is what really matters in life; other times, we say that there’s more to life than mere happiness (as when we claim that someone is happy when she shouldn’t be). At the root of the term, of course, is the notion of hap or happenstance, and so happiness is also connected to the notion of good fortune, or luck (blame me for spending too much time on the internet perhaps trying to quench my thirst for knowledge albeit it's omnipresence).

And yet we often think of happiness as something that is not simply a matter of luck, but something that we can bring into our lives by effort, money, pleasure etc etc. Claims that any one of these ways of using the term happiness points toward the correct definition of happiness are mere assertions, which turn a blind eye to the other ways we use this term to successfully communicate something about a moment, a person, or the ideal of happiness itself. It is quite easy, when discussing the nature of happiness, to descend into a verbal quibble which simply has no principled resolution.

If we try to take some particular way of thinking about happiness and make it our standard, then we always run into problematic cases. That’s what my experience says………..

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the beauty of simplicity.....

"......the time has come to unleash the creative potential of our scientists and innovators at grassroots level. Only then we can make India truly self-reliant and a leader in sustainable technologies....propose a national foundation for helping innovators all over the country. This fund will build a national register of innovations, mobilize intellectual property protection, set up incubators for converting into viable business opportunities and help in dissemination across the country.''

This is what screams out loudly on the homepage of National Innovation Foundation. I was scouting through a pile of documents looking for a particular one when I suddenly came across a certificate that I had obtained from them during my MBA days at IIT Delhi – me and my team of 4 AV, KB & N reached the zonal finals of a b-school competition hosted by NIF & IIM Ahmedabad. How we reached & finals and that too managed to actually do the scouting in record time & submit the B-plan is a different story altogether.

I don’t remember the dates specifically but it was the second last day of entering the competition. That we registered – it was good till then. Then we sat on it for over 20 days thinking that one would finally take the initiative. Then with 6 days till deadline the panic bell rang. Two from the team decided to give it up and not submit the plans at all – while dutifully me and AV decided to go forward. The night we were supposed to leave for Rampur a remote town in UP, AV walked out citing some problems. Some insane force actually took over and in an hours time I was off with KB to the bus depot to somehow reach Rampur minus any concrete directions to it.

We managed to change a couple of buses & hitch a ride of a tempo and then take a hike for a couple of kilometers – reached our destination took the info of the ‘tile making machine’ and off we went. (It’s a different take that we took a detour to Nainital that afternoon and got back somehow to Delhi next morning – bouncing all night on the last seats of a dilapidated Volvo).

With 3 days till submission we were in a dilemma – the plan was on tile making machine.(figures are close approximations of what we obtained from the inventor)

Cost to setup = Rs 8000-12,000

Raw Materials = Rs 100 /day

No of tiles made = 50/day

Labour Charges = etc

Price of tile = 3 (approx including labour charges)

Cost of a similar tile in market = Rs 5-8

Cost advantage per tile = Rs 2-5

Now looking at the overall picture and the rural economic conditions we decided the best use would be for someone to set up a sort of small workshop with say 20-50 machines which then would not only provide steady employment to people in the locality (believe me the peoples’ economic condition in Rampur was deplorable), and our concept was supported by the inventor as well. Also although the cost advantage of Rs 2-5 per tile was huge one had to keep in mind logistics and sales costs. So individually selling tile making machines we found out was not a viable option at all.

Net-net we aired the same views in the competition and the entire crowd was appreciative of our logical conclusions (even the team that won gave us a standing ovation), but in the end we could not make it to the all-India finals because of the simple fact – we had gone out of scope. The B-plan was that of a “tile making machine”, and the judges contested that I should have prepared a plan that would have enabled them to sell these machines to individuals – how weak an argument when the per capita income is less than Rs 10,000. Just imagine that of uneducated simpletons in rural India. Take again in consideration sales & logistics costs – how would that be borne. These were questions they never addressed. Sigh………

Today I look back and the entire episode makes me smile – with due respect to the judges, I felt then and still feel that simplicity is often the key success factor in innovation. While in retrospect the business model would probably make sense with people with management degrees tweaking the business model every now & then making it complex at each stage to juice out efficiency, the end user who was the rural Indian would be completely at sea manufacturing the stuff, distributing it, and selling it subsequently. That to after spending a couple of years earnings for buying this machine.

Whoa!!! I never saw any sense in that then. Even now as I study various businesses and interact with various people both in and outside my company, this fact emerges every time that simple process planned & executed efficiently, was the indication of success in every organizational function.

“This single point of administration ultimately increases the simplicity of running complicated systems while reducing the cost of ownership a great deal. This is what enterprises are looking for and need”

- Don Becker

Maybe that’s why we are in business.

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the board regrets to announce that . . .

. . . that the chief typewriter monkey’s wife has been afflicted by food poisoning after a round of panipuri & vada pao (indian burger) from the vendor down the street corner and it implies that he shall be busy running to & fro between the hospital & home running various errands - this also means that there will be no posts for the next few days.

However, the board recommends the archives for your reading pleasure.

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natural conclusions......

Some people are just endowed with the ability to make the right decisions at the right time (or at least I believe they have). Look around at hundreds of successful investment bankers or industrialists or even an odd common man who has risen to great heights based of this fact alone.

However when it comes to making decisions in my own life, yours truly has often been swamped with trouble. Advice has not helped much either – people say listen to your heart, chose your gut instinct while management gurus preach us to visualize what we want. There are so many ways to make a decision - (yet all assume) that I know, deep down, what's best. The fact is, I don't know what's best, and really, I never will.

Also, I don't trust my "man" inside either; I'm a typical Indian and tend to be on the overly emotional side. Listening to my heart would cause me to fall in love too fast, make too many purchases (my credit card bills would shoot off the roof), eat and drink too much, basically moderation would be out the door (well it has not happened as of now but I live in the constant fear of this fact).

So what do I do? My past experiences in life generally has helped me develop an innovative yet insane (profoundly) methodology - I take the choices I have, and think which choice - having not been chosen, would I regret the most?

It's the polar opposite of what everyone normally suggests, but I've found it helpful because I also have a fear a failure (who doesn't, right?). That fear sometimes causes me to make the safe choice. What if down the road I look back and think about that choice that wasn't so clear? Will I regret not even trying?

My best friend gave me some similar advice, which was basically that you should choose the option with the most unknowns; it'll be a better learning experience.

Making a decision is difficult and whenever I'm feeling stressed out about it, I also try to remember to be thankful that I have the power to make the choice. Some aren't so lucky I guess

I end this post with one more line that existed on my signature in outlook earlier…….something this Indian follows even to this very day.

Before you start some work, always ask yourself three questions - Why am I doing it, what the results might be and will I be successful. Only when you think deeply and find satisfactory answers to these questions, go ahead.

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the shades of life…….

Recently I was reading an article on an old newspaper that roughly equated every human being’s happiness chart to the English alphabet U, with the narrow tips representing the emotional & spiritual highs of youth and old age and the trough in U i.e. the obvious depression representing the vagaries of mid-life crisis.

Ah! Youth! The age of idealism - when the world was my oyster. I relinquished every luxury in order to change the world and romance, of course, conquered all. When my wife/girlfriend played a major part in my life and I was prepared to spend hours and hours hoping to catch a minute with my partner. At that age it is not possible for me to imagine that a good night’s sleep would become more desirable as age catches up with me. This is the story of life obviously when I was young. The recklessness, the urgency, the extremes of emotions felt. When people are in it, it is often wrenching and tumultuous. But it’s often love felt at its purest and happiness bordering on euphoria.

Again in old age, I believe from observing people around me - people are struck with ailments of old age and stuck with the age old marital partner. But there is a deep contentment among them for having stuck it out so far. They have a sense of achievement and both partners know that one or the other would die soon. This gives rise to a kind of detachment and appreciation for life. Just the thought of being alive is a big high for most of us, I believe.

Finally onto the period that I’m getting into - the mid-life. After reading that I will soon be in the deep flat end of the ‘U’ of happiness - I wallow in self pity. Less comforting is the fact that it would be some time before I start climbing the thin limbs of ‘U’ on my way to serene old age. Middle-age is probably a time when we lose our dreams and begin to accept the reality. We consolidate - we adjust somehow in our lives, careers, jobs, relationships and so on. We try to be happy – somehow trying desperately to pretend to be happy when deep down we know we wanted that little extra in our lives – that could have but did not ultimately materialize. People turn to philosophy and religion comes to the aid of many disillusioned souls who frantically try to mind the meaning of their unexciting lives.

But then again I believe all is not lost. These examples suggest that life eventually comes to a full circle. Or at least a full ‘U’. Somehow this Indian never gives up.

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who wants to be a millionaire.....errr

What is soul searching? These days some of my friends are into soul searching. I listen carefully to their versions but never understood what it is all about. One of my friends’s said it is about finding what you really want in life. I feel that if I try too hard to find out what makes me happy and if I cannot get it I will be unhappy.

So basically I guess I am searching for unhappiness.

Yahoo claimed that it has come up with a soul-search engine some time back. They declare that it would help users find what’s deep inside them. I don’t think I am ready to use it to find out what I really want. I feel that as a married man and a family I have some responsibilities. I feel that it is selfish to neglect my loved ones who are dependent on me to find out my real passions.

Firstly the process requires lot of thinking leading to emotional trauma which I am not sure if I can take it with a full time job, and a family. I guess I should take a break from my job and let go of my responsibilities to pursue some thing which I am not sure of. But at the end of it say I found out that I really love to do a certain something which will not fit into my day with my current responsibilities then what? I will be disappointed and that will affect my daily routine.

Then I thought may be I can start soul searching once family is well settled, my wife settles down with her job and I can finally spare some time. But that is optimistic thinking because who knows what is in store in our future. I need to be practical about what I am giving up. I need to have a contingency plan if my search fails.

I feel that if you are single and you did realize that you need to do some soul searching it is perfect timing. But if you are in the age group of 20-30 then you are missing on the romance, dating and all that kind of fun which will never come back later in your life. What if I did find some thing I really like, but may be I do not have any experience in that field and I try it out for couple of years and I feel that I am not good at it then what?

Life is all about being happy. If I can find contentment in what I have and what I do I guess that is enough. Listening to my friends from the past year made me think about soul searching. But I don’t think I want to do it, at least at this point of time in my life!

Any parallels here people??

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