It is a race…and all run!

I was traveling in this metro train to the railway station to catch a train for trip sometime during early November this year, the trip didn’t happen because of the train delays that day, well…that is a different story.

I was so tired and had all the plans to take a quick 30 minute long nap while my metro train travel. I got to sit from the time I boarded the train and after I set up my luggage and all, I was all set for my nap. It felt really good when I closed my eyes for a while. Soon after 3 or 4 stations , about 10 minutes into the journey, I heard some words ‘IIT Rourkee’, ‘civil engineering’, ‘tuition’, ‘board exams’, ‘physics’, ‘p-block elements’, ‘periodic table’ etc. which interrupted my sleep. I saw in a little haze in front of me, two school-going boys standing and chatting all this. They were not very well dressed, but the uniform showed they were from a good school, one of the boys had a batch which read ‘School Captain’. And while I overheard their conversation, I came to know that he was a topper in the Chemistry subject. The world for them seemed to revolving around preparation for the engineering entrance exams and seemed to be ending on becoming an engineer. “Oh GOD! Not again”, I thought. But this is the reality, it was because it had been a while since I heard or saw such things around that I was shocked more.

I met this boy a few years back who was preparing for engineering, and this conversation reminded me of him too. I went to their place during Diwali time and this boy came from his IIT coaching weekly exam. I am very much fascinated with the subject called Mathematics and I love solving sums related to integration especially, there is something in it! So, I took his question paper and started seeing it and it seemed quite familiar and nice to me. I wanted to talk to this boy, and wanted to ask him about how he answered the questions and about his aspirations and so on, this boy was just not speaking, I saw a strange kind of a fear in his eyes which looked up from the floor just once during the 1 hour I sat in their home. Talking to his parents, it felt like their world is just the boy, and his engineering and absolutely nothing else. They had extreme dreams around him joining one of prestigious engineering colleges in India, and it felt like life would end if he didn’t get into one such college in one such course!!!

I thought of myself, ‘What are we doing to this boy! Does he really want to do all this? Is he capable of doing this? What if he doesn’t clear the entrance? I was afraid to even think of that option, and I prayed that he clears it somehow (seriously!). What if he clears the entrance but is not able to cope up with the actual course! Why is he pushed into this shell and refusing to come out of it now and see the world without the IIT or the engineering!”

I felt like asking him to just try giving up all this once, and ask him what he wants to do. The thing about becoming an engineer had been totally ingrained into him so much for probably many years now that he probably never got time to think of his own interests and what he actually wants to become! He doesn’t know himself! He is very much away from his own self <sigh>. It feels like just because everybody is running, we run too. The entire education system seems to have become a routine machine, the course content is practically not possible to be covered in the time frame given, in any grade of our system. Many of us adults would fail in a proper conceptual test for basic concepts, I bet! I am forced to recollect movies like ‘3 idiots’ and ‘taare zameen par’ when I see such things.

I feel like saying to all, ‘please stop, stop, stop running the race, and pause for a while, and think, take time to talk to yourself, and recognize your own self.’ But to whom should I tell, to how many can I tell! The winners are not the ones who run the race of the masses, they are the others 🙂

Is this India?

I went to the JLN (Jawahar Lal Nehru) stadium to watch the Athletics events of the Common Wealth Games, 2010 held in New Delhi. Yes, the same games, which were doubtful to happen, which almost created a huge shame for our country.

It took hours to enter the stadium and I was thinking of coming back home, every moment till I got into the stadium. No proper ticketing counter, mandatory to take a printed ticket even after booking online, standing in the queue for hours, total chaos at the counter, fights across the counter on the people coming in between the queue, policemen waiting to take out their frustration on the public and what not!, And all this resulting in a major disinterest for watching the matches any more. I didn’t know if I would be able to see the events inside, and even if I was able to get in, didn’t know how much time I would be able to spend there given that we had a specific end-time for the events that day.

But when I saw the stadium from the ticket counter once more, I felt if I have come there after a long tiring journey, it makes sense to put in all the efforts to get in and see the stadium, if not the events, at least. Finally, after a hour or so at the ticket counter, we got our tickets and got a chance to get into the stadium. Since it was late, there was little rush on the way at the security checks and others. Slowly, we moved towards the entry of the stadium. Our seats section was just at the place where we entered the purview of the stadium but we misread the ticket and that’s how we got a chance to actually take a round trip of the entire stadium from outside. While I was going round the way, I heard noises which I only heard in the television till then. The roars of the public was just as it is in the television and at some instances, the roars were so loud that I could relate a India-Pakistan final cricket match enthusiasm. It was feeling so good, now I wanted to enter the stadium.

I took the staircase of the section where I was supposed to be seated, and a ramp after that and still a small staircase further. There were about 15 steps in the last leap of my way into the stadium. I took them one by one…each extra step I took, the roar of the crowd got louder to my ears. The last step I took, and I see a BRIGHT lighted lush green oval-shaped area surrounded by maroon area with white partitions vertically across it.

It was an AMAZING feeling seeing it. It took me a while to figure out that there are many events happening simultaneously and when I realized that I could locate the players. Then my attention moved to the cameras around, I had never seen such a view before, and the announcements happening, and the notice boards updating the events, and the scores, and so on, and the medal ceremony of the events that have happened etc. I stared at all these for a while each, to get a feel of them and I knew, I would write a blog on that 🙂

Soon, the 400 mts race for females was starting and there was an Indian participant in that. The names were being announced and the moment the Indian name was announced, there was a huge roar around the stadium, and it took me a while to absorb and believe that the crowd is us! The race started and the Indian participant was about 3rd when it just started, and each second, she went on picking up the pace and from then, with her, along her path of the race, moved the roar too in the stadium. 200 mts now and she was the second. Just a few seconds later, she came towards the place where we were sitting and fortunately it was about 1/4th away from the end point of the race. While she was coming towards us, she was almost close to the first one in the race, and within a second, she crossed her and became the first one. With every hundredth second during that second of her crossing the threshold, the roar increased in decibels, and it was a unanimous enthusiasm that was coming out of the crowd, louder, and louder, and even louder, and I am sure it must have contributed to the first-comer Indian by reducing her time for completion by at least a few hundredths of a second.

I wondered, ‘Is this the same frustrated crowd of our country!’

‘Is this the same India which doesn’t even bother to help the fellow-beings!’

‘Is this the same India which doesn’t care of the dirty streets that we walk on!’

‘Is this the same India which has so many disparities among one another!’

The answer is, Yes, it was the same India, enjoying together, at its. It was the same crowd which was encouraging together to make our country proud. It was the same crowd that had struggled badly for hours together, to get into the stadium, to enjoy this moment of pride. I recollected all the cricket matches in which India performed amazingly, and was thinking what would have been the crowd’s live roar during those matches.

True, it is our country that is a classic example of many colours and shades of colours put together. But sad is that, the crowd & the environment was very different just after the exit from the stadium 😦

When you start your career…10 years late!

It was 20th September, 1999 when I had joined my first job. When I tell anyone that I have so many years of experience, people are generally astonished! I just smile. But it is not so much fun when I look back the path that I had left behind to reach where I am now. I sometimes wish my path could have been different…but when I also feel ‘if I were not that, I would not have been this’. Still, TEN years, is not at all a joke, especially when your resume had to discount most of it! But the fact that one has come a long way to reach here almost start a career afresh, is definitely commendable.

You have spent so many years working, have gone through a lot of ups and downs, been a top performer in every work that you have done, and so you have learnt more than anyone around you everywhere till now, and moved forward, leaving everyone around, behind. The advantage of this fruitful learning is that you understand almost everything that is happening around you – starting from empathizing with the staff and the security to visualizing what the CEO must be going through in a current situation. You have the confidence to take up utmost manual/operational to utmost strategic initiatives. You are able to use many of the skills that you have acquired all through your journey, in whatever you are doing, linking and using random things to simplify the tasks that you have in hand, & this simply builds a lot of enthusiasm. Your cab driver discusses his situation with you and you know what he is going through, see a news piece about 100% FDI debate in retail sector and you can understand the core of it, you see the book ‘Good to great’ in the library and you are able to talk about it. It is definitely a lot of fun and belongingness, and I should admit, especially if the company is Google ☺

But there are challenges, mainly since you are able to grasp just about everything and learn new things so fast. You are on the look out for a new thing all the time, and it is a little challenging to have a boss when you have been your own boss for a long time. Thankfully, Google doesn’t give me the opportunity to feel there is someone bossing me, nor does it fill my enthusiasm so fast that I am on a constant look out for new things all the while. It is damn amazing to be a part of this company and the kind of things that this company does and at a scale it does is simply unimaginable!

So, when you are starting a career 10 years late, its fine, if the company is Google ☺. And you can take a deep breath on this big achievement of yours after such a struggle and hard work, and say to yourself “☺”.

Don’t know…

About 45 years back, this couple was blessed with a girl child and the journey of this little child goes like this…

When she went to school, she took more time to grasp things than others in this so-called school that her parents sent her to…
She grew up being a ‘dull’ child at studies, or as labeled by everyone else that stuck to her mind and she herself used to say, “I am a dull child”…but she was innocent enough to not take that as her excuse for anything…

As per all, she was very fearful child, this other adjective did the same what ‘dull’ did to her…and she started considering herself as ‘fearful’…
Everything that would stop her from moving forward in her life was done to her…very softly, it was the attitude of the people around her. All these adjectives about her were so popular in and around her that they could refrain families from asking her out for marriage proposals. She was given these same adjectives as reasons for why she is not getting marriage proposals. Worse, with these labels, she was not allowed to do anything to develop herself, but to sit and wait for her marriage to happen. What a nonsense! She was sent for some vocational courses though, while she was approaching 30, to make her a little verse to some education. Approaching 30 is again a sinful danger, especially when the girl is not married, not for her or the family, for the society or community (I hate this word). So, when marriage proposals were not coming as desired, one odd proposal came of a divorcee who wished to marry again, after few years of his divorce. No body in the family knew about the first marriage and details, they only checked out a little bit about the family background, and everyone of course was much aware and cautious of the only fact that the girl was approaching her 30th year of life. She got married to this guy. With all her labels, she was okay-looking and knew her responsibilities well.

She started off her married life by having beaten up by her husband; the husband strangely gave the same adjectives as reasons for his intolerance.
She was never taken on any outings, forget the vacations or holidays. She was never allowed to accompany him to anywhere he goes. She has 2 kids now, no label came in between that, her husband found her fit for this. On and off, she has to suffer for her husband’s rituals, what rituals would you want to follow when you are not a proper human! Several times, the woman (the girl then), approached her family and asked them to take her back to her home, she refused to go back to her husband. But this family said it was her home and her husband is her God, no matter what he does with her. She literally cried, shouted, struggled, fought with her family to adopt her again. But all these adjectives that described her became the reasons for her not being able to survive without her husband. She went back, with her heart nowhere.

Very recently, almost 20 years from then, when I saw her, among everything else, and her 2 kids grown-up now, I noticed her hair in a strangely abnormal condition. I didn’t ask her but the little while I was there with her, she told it herself that she had not combed her hair or touched it for 9 months now, because it was her husband’s votive prayer and she would comb or touch her hair only after further 3 more months. My jaws literally dropped and I really had tears in my eyes and I wanted to comment but I was too emotional to utter even a word, but I didn’t want her to make that out from my voice.
How could she survive all this for more than 20 years now!!! Isn’t this a classic case of a waste of a girl’s life? Why do they want to do all this to a girl, and in this age!!! Where is the society, which gave her all the labels and happily got her married, now or for the past 20 years when she is going through this torture! Why did the society send her into this trap and sleep peacefully! What wrong did she do to her family, to herself, to the society! Wasn’t it fine if she continued with her vocational course studies and was just happy with her own little job that she could potentially get after such courses! Why couldn’t anyone empower her towards being independent and only continuously ingrained wrong thoughts into her mind!

Totally shocked!

Coincidences..too much!

Sometime during April 2005: I was traveling from Vizianagaram to Ahmedabad with my grandparents in the train, we had 4 berths reserved for us. My grandfather was quite a talkative person, he just initiated a random conversation with one of the persons sitting on the side-lower berth. And I observed this stranger enjoyed the conversation a lot, he was talkative too.

February 2007: I joined EI at Ahmedabad, and it was my 2nd week in the office. Some 8-10 of us used to sit and have our lunch together. This person who had come back to office from a tour joined us that day for lunch. He introduced himself to me and I did too. He asked me, ‘I think some years back you were traveling with your grandfather? And he was talking all philosophy and all?’ I said, ‘yes, yes, was that you?’ “Yes it was me. Duniya gol hai (world is indeed round!)” “Oh my God! That’s great!” This stranger is Gopalakrishnan Iyer.

February 2004: I was in Ahmedabad and a few of we friends had this good memorable dinner at McDonalds. We had taken pictures in the outlet and it was a great time for a few hours there. We were frequent visitors to that outlet.

July 2009: I joined IMT-Gzb for this Executive-PGDM program, and met Prashant, and we were in the same study group. In a casual conversation, he mentioned he did his Hotel Management from IHM, Ahmedabad. “What?” was my reaction, more because I love Ahmedabad and I expected him to have a very good opinion about the city too. But also because my younger sister was the current student of the same college. Well, he mentioned he was working with McDonalds there at Ahmedabad. “What? Which outlet?”, I asked. “Rudra point, near Fun Republic”, he replied. “What? When were you there? I mean, which year?”. “Why? 2004.” “What! We did parties there in that year, I am sure you were there in the store when we had come.” “Yes, pretty much!”

December 2001 to April 2003: I used to teach in this school in Ahmedabad and after I left the school, my students from 12th standard had joined NIT, Surat after their 12th.

Sometime in August, 2009 when at IMT: I was standing in the queue in the mess when this 2-year MBA student standing next to me in the queue said, “You are Sridevi, right?” “Yes, how do you know?” “You know Tanmay from NIT, Surat. He was your student at Maharaja Agrasen Vidyalaya, Ahmedabad”. “Yes, of course, I know him very well, Great!.”

The first day at IMT: I was running around for the orientation and all.
There came a voice from behind: “Excuse me.”
“Yes”.
“You are Sridevi Sarkar.”
“Yes, I am.”
“You are Kaushik Sarkar’s wife?”
“Yes, I am.”
“I am Sneh Madhur, Kaushik was my batchmate at KREC.” – that was almost 10 years back 🙂
“Oh! Great!”

____

July 2010: I was there in Hyderabad for the training at Google and my batchmate from IMT, Vijay responded to my email to the group wishing me luck for my new assignment. He mentioned one of his childhood friends works with Google too. He had checked out my connections in LinkedIn to note that this childhood friend was one of my connections.
I was surprised I had met this friend in the training sessions. It was a good coincidence!

____

July 2010: One of my students Nikunj called me up after may be 3 years. We had a little chat about what I was doing and what he is doing and all. He was of course very happy & thrilled to note I was joining Google soon. I asked him my another student Sharad’s number and by the time he forwarded it to me, I had already joined Google. I called up Sharad and told him this.
“Wow!”, he reacted.
“Yes!”, I said.
“Hey! One of my batchmates from school has joined there too.”
“I said, okay I will find out.”
When I came to Gurgaon office, I met her up and we mentioned to each other about our association with Sharad and all. Good!

Some of these coincidences could be because I had moved a lot from here and there, but so many of them? Just interesting!

Complex concepts-Simple events

When I used to discuss with my boss Vishnu at EI about my personal targets, usually monthly, he used to ask me to divide into smaller ones and measure the performance weekly. I truly admire him for the guidance and mentorship that I got from him. I generally used to feel the targets would be really small when seen weekly, but when I used to have an update call with him at the end of every week, I really used to feel so good that I could achieve what I had planned for. This works amazingly well!

I see this happening not only in my work assignments, simple tasks like exercising in the gym – let’s say we take up cycling for 15 mins target. Have you ever wondered, initially when we start and notice after feeling that we have done a lot of cycling, that the time passed is only 2 mins. It is in this situation that the above formula applies. When we notice that 2 mins on the digital clock of the cycle, think that we have to do only for 5 mins…what a relief! Once we complete those 5 mins, we wouldn’t actually want to stop merely because of the enthusiasm that the achieving of this small target has created. You may notice this would happen after the next 5 mins as well, and even after 15 mins, the same task must have changed into a lot more exciting one now, than when we started it.

This works for even simple things like taking the stairs up till the 6th floor. Divide it into 3-3- or 2-2-2, achievement of the first 2 would boost the energy a lot to make achieve the other 2’s very easily, and you would be left out with a lot more energy to go up even more. But then it is good to control the excitement to be consistent achiever…:-)

That’s the magic of dividing into smaller targets. At least we have the satisfaction that we have achieved something even if we are not able to achieve the fullest. Thinking a little more deeply into this, the magic lies actually in ‘defining’ the goals, if we don’t define them, we wouldn’t feel the achievement since that cannot be defined too. Right!

Well, I just get random thoughts like these to connect the ‘concepts’ that I read/studied somewhere, to the simple events happening in my daily life.

Living with uncertainty!

This picture appeared in today’s TOI, prompts me of an eternal phenomenon – uncertainty.

These villagers, whose village has been swept away, would know that the waters need to subside, they have to subside. But this belief comes with a lot many questions – will the water subside? When will the situation get normal again? How would we make our living after the situation gets normal?

But what drives them is the belief that it would be normal one day, has to be normal one day, it may take time, don’t know how much, but it cannot remain like this. And one more thing – their effort to make it normal, in whatever way possible – not only for their ownself but for all others around them who are coming along with them.

We all face situations where there is nothing but uncertainty all around – when, how, what, where, why; almost all questions!

But the vital thing here is to keep up the belief, no matter what happens and keep working towards the goal that we wish to achieve. Believe me, this belief carries such a power to turn everything around, this belief takes you towards the goal in an astonishingly systematic and planned manner, keeping all our situations and circumstances in view, and finally our end goal is reached, in the best possible manner.

The irony is that we don’t realise we are moving towards our goal till we achieve it, it is only when we reach that we look back and realise how systematically things have happened in the best interests of us as well as our near and dear ones who are directly linked to our lives! The most important thing is to keep the belief in our subconscious mind while putting in the best efforts in whatever comes on the way – you never know which act of yours would make or break the path that you are subconsciously taking!

Given that the beliefs are truly strong enough, if the goal is not reached, either our beliefs or goals are not rational and in the best interests of all, or the efforts that we have made are not the best ones!

A bit of philosophy probably…but its quite true!

Recognition! Recognition! Recognition!

I give food to my Bruno in a bowl and generally in time, he is normally hungry at the time of his dinner (his metabolism works fine :-)) and he finishes it in a few minutes time and comes to me to tell me he has finished or if I am around, he conveys with his eyes that he has finished. To appreciate him, I clap and say ‘yayyyy! Go clean the bowl properly.’ And he goes and cleans with full enthusiasm to make it look unused.

My 1.5 years old nephew Dhairya falls down often during his play, now that he has started walking and learnt running too. When he falls down, my sister pulls him up, smiles, claps and says ‘strong boy! You shouldn’t cry.’, and he looks at her and back to his play again. Now it has become a practice in the family, when all of us are around and he falls down, we all clap and laugh (for a reason that we are actually making a fool out of him, at times he actually hurts himself by falling down but we won’t let him know :-), children learn from the way we behave!) and say ‘Dhairya is a strong boy! Get up! Yayyyy!’ and Dhairya is back to play again!

Moral of these instances is ‘everybody needs recognition!’, a pup, a small child, and in this quality, even we adults are no way behind. We may not know consciously that we need it, but we do need it and that is a very important driver for any of us. But many of us fail to understand that we also need to recognize people around us, at our workplace, at our personal relationships front, all around us.

I like the phrase by David Novak, CEO of Yum! Brands (The vision – Building the Defining Company that Feeds the World), ‘Recognize! Recognize! Recognize!’ which he talks about as one of his strategies of Yum! Dynasty on ‘How we win together’. I read this statement in his letter in the Yum!’s annual report 2009 that recognition says “I care about what you do. It matters.” The depth in this sentence is immensely powerful!

Recognition can be in any form, it depends on the individual’s innovative capability to design the ways to do the same. And this, in any form, works!

These kinds of small things are very critical and might be easy to initiate but need consistent efforts to maintain, as Jim Collins puts it in Good to Great and Build to Last.

Thank you Prashant, for pestering me to read the report.

Thank You!

I wrote my first piece of writing in January 2003 when I was teaching in a school in Ahmedabad, for a magazine which was to be published to mark the celebration of successful completion of 10 years. It was a small piece on the importance of Mathematics in daily life, quoting certain small examples so that all the students from primary, secondary and higher secondary classes could understand.
As Malcolm Gladwell says in his book Outliers, from then till about last year when I started writing publishable articles, I guess I have spent just above 10000 hours developing my writing skills.

Now, I can claim ‘I write!’.

And it is amazing to know that what I write is being read. Once when I displayed the title of my latest blog post on my IM status message, Hardik who was my student once upon a time sent me an IM saying ‘ma’am, I had not completed reading your earlier post and you have already posted one more!’. I was thrilled to understand he reads my blog regularly, in the blog language, follows my blog.

I recently posted another blog post and as usual, displayed the title of the blog (‘Do we teach? Or they learn?’) on the status message of my IM (google talk). The next day I saw another student of mine, Tanmay online and sent him a correction in his status message. He corrected the message and replied, ‘so Ma’am, in my case, they teach’. I didn’t follow it and asked him a clarification. He clarified, ‘Ma’am, your blog post’. I had a pleasant smile on my face though he couldn’t see it which was a sign of the exhilaration cause by the reinforcement that I am being read! We had a good discussion about teaching and learning for more than a couple of minutes.

These small notifications encourage me a lot, to write! Thanks to all the appreciation – Tanmay, Hardik and all others who read my blog.

Thanks to the internet & blogging sites, which have empowered many like me and provided us with a platform where we can be ourselves, share our minds and hearts out.

Do we teach? Or they learn?

This question was in my mind for a long time now, and my work at Educational Initiatives Pvt. Ltd. was the trigger for this question, I had mentioned to my friend and colleague Nishchal at EI that I wish to write on this idea for a newspaper to share the idea with a larger audience.

The trigger revitalised when I met my 22 months old nephew Dhairya and observed him for a few days to understand his actions. When my sister tries to get him ready for any outing or anything, he sits and observes his mother with a lot of thoughtfulness. She makes him sit in a chair or any other comfortable place, puts his clothes one by one, puts his socks, in winter a sweater, a cap, gloves, then shoes – this all takes about 10-15 mins and all these minutes, he observes his mother and submits himself to his mother. Every action of his mother during this time and generally, is being observed with a lot of depth and concentration. My sister says, ‘chalo Dhairya, bathing time’ and this little one leaves everything he is doing and goes towards the bathroom. His mother says, ‘chalo Dhairya, dinner time’, and he comes towards his small table and chair (arranged for dinner), leaving all that he is doing as it is.

The question in my mind is how this little one, just 22 months old, learn all this! Did my sister teach him all this? Or did he learn by himself? I am quite sure the latter is the answer. He must have studied the patterns between my sister’s words/phrases/sentences and her actions.

Children have their own minds which comprise of many questions, the quest to find answers for the same, and there is a lot of evidence showing that they work a lot themselves to answer the curiosity. But, we adults don’t give them the space to think on their own. Each child would have his own thoughts, and his own ways, pace and level to answer those thoughts and queries. We superimpose their innocent minds with so many things from their childhood in the name of education that they are left with no time to think on their own and finally, get confused when the concepts we teach them contradict their thoughts.

Not sure what the solution to this is, since it would take pretty long for the education system to improve! May be, just be patient enough to let the child learn by himself, giving him the required inputs in the right intervals in a right order and the way he understands them.