Accidental ‘Chef’

~ Rishi ~ Leave a comment

It’s been something that I have forever been called out for by my wife – my lack of skills in the kitchen! No prices for guessing then, this post is about an accidental achievement that I managed to turn out of nowhere…

As it happened, I was engrossed in my work and decided to take a break in the evening, as I usually do. While preparing my green tea, I saw a couple of packets of milk and so emptied them into a saucepan and put the saucepan on the stove on a low flame to boil the milk.

I must have drunk a lot of antioxidants that day in the green tea, because I forgot all about the saucepan on the stove, while I completed my evening stroll on the terrace and then resumed working. By the time my wife returned from office and found out about my mishap, I was already on a call, oblivious to my achievement!

As some of you may very well know, when we boil milk for a long time on a low flame, it becomes viscous with reduced consistency and the cream clots up in small knots. This preparation, topped with saffron, cardamom, and some dry nuts is often served in different parts of India as a sweet dish called ‘Rabri’. It also happens to be one of my favorites.

So, accidentally, I ended up preparing a sweet dish that I had no intention of (well, of course with my creative wife’s help). My wife, probably happy that the milk had not boiled over and spilled as it usually does under my jurisdiction, decided to click a couple of pics and posted to my parents and in-laws, terming it my creation (not the one in this post, that’s from the internet). They were equally astonished about this surprise turn and were actually quite shocked that I could do something like this, until I clarified about the accidental bit…

While we ate the rabri, which was of course delicious in spite of the accidental nature of its preparation, I realized that this is how life also is at times.

A lot of times, we face difficulties and a lot of heat. Sometimes, we let the heat affect us too much and boil over, spilling onto our near and dear ones and laying to waste our own happiness. When we do that, no one gets affected as much as ourselves. But it still happens in an uncontrollable manner at times, such is our human nature.

However, when we let those difficulties pass through and get by that phase in our life, pretty much absorbing the heat and making ourselves stronger and increasing our learnings, we end up transformed. With some garnishing of new experiences and personal resolve, we turn that phase on its head and emerge to do better than what we could have earlier.

It is then up to us to mould the way life shapes us, if we keep our bearings and don’t get bogged down by those umpteen curveballs that keep getting hurled at us time and time again. For what is life without a bit of clotted dreams and simmering situations!

By the way, as I finished eating the rabri and thanked my wife for all that she had done to make it more delicious than I ever could, I realized that it holds true for a lot of other things in my life. More on that in some other post…

Enormity of our Effort!

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These last few weeks, I have learnt so much working with my dad, to help him give shape to a long held dream of his – publishing a book that my grandfather wrote!

I was born three years after my grandfather passed away. So I have only heard about him from my grandmother, parents, uncles, and aunts. Some of them say I resemble him and that’s one of the reasons that I have been slightly intrigued by who he was, what he did, etc.

Over so many years, I have heard interesting anecdotes multiple times, tried to peep into his personality based on old reminiscing by different elders, and hoped to emulate him in terms of what he achieved in life. Yet, I never quite grasped the enormity of what he did around his literary aspirations.

He was a writer and a poet and quite well known in the central Indian region in his days, with regular articles published in various magazines. He was also very well known locally around my home town and hence I have heard bits and pieces of the kind of work he did in those heydays.

However, what turned out to be the most astonishing fact to me, which I discovered recently, was that he worked for over 14 years to give shape to his magnum opus. Something that he started working on when he had just crossed 40 years of age, and was almost due to complete before his untimely demise. And it wasn’t that he took time off or kept going in loops on some parts of the book.

I was in awe when I understood the enormity of this effort. For someone to dedicate 14 years of one’s life to a single pursuit is not a common occurrence. It takes a huge amount of patience and just continuous persistence to be able to do something like this. And then to not be able to publish it must have pinched him a lot in those last days.

He certainly isn’t the only one in this category. There are so many other examples of people continuing to pursue a single minded goal for years altogether, undeterred by difficulties in their path. Sometimes they don’t achieve what they had set out for but enrich themselves so much in the process. Most of them are champions in the literal sense!

As I thought more about this and how we live our lives, I couldn’t even think of comparing it with how we view a lot of things these days. How for a lot of us, it is about instant gratification and the need for external validation for everything we do. How we want to win everything even before we have understood the real meaning of winning. And how if we don’t get something, we move to the next best thing, forgetting about our original pursuit.

We don’t give enough due to those who continue to persevere and keep going at something specific. We view them as incapable or a failure, when they could very well be on the verge of success. What we miss out is, while they may take time to get to their destination, that duration of effort does not take away anything from their success. For they are the ones moving the needle on difficult things, or things which they probably weren’t good enough at, or just needed that time to find their rhythm and achieve success.

Perhaps we will do well to keep this in mind as we get on to that next project, that next job, that next relationship, or just that next personal goal. The enormity of our effort is not determined by the outcome that it garnered but by the enrichment that it leads us to and the fun had while at it…

PS: Salute to my father and uncles for taking it upon themselves to get this unfinished work published now!

Attachment

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How we get attached to those who are looking out for us? And what they mean to our lives?

As I spent a few days with my close family, including first cousins, uncles, and aunts, this question kept coming to me.

There are many people who cross our paths right from our birth, through our life, till we bid our goodbye. But there are very few for whom we really hold affection in our hearts and feel attached to.

I have written about this multiple times from different perspectives, covering friendships, relations, and colleagues. But as I dug deeper this time, I realised the answer is actually very simple.

Most of us are attached to our parents and our siblings, which is most natural. Maybe a couple of uncles and / or aunts, and maybe a few cousins also form our close circle. While we may have a good rapport with the other members of our extended families, these few people matter a lot to us.

They matter to us because the relationship with them is built on trust but without the weight of expectations. It is symbiotic and therefore benefits both.

This group is like our confidant, our punching bag, and also our supporters from the sidelines. We love them and we fight with them but whichever way you cut it, we spend most of our time with them.

In turn this attachment and affection helps both the sets of people to rely on each other for anything, creating a virtuous circle and helping us keep ourselves rooted and bonded. They mean the microcosm of a perfect world to us, wherein we can do whatever and be whoever, without worrying about anything else.

And that attachment continues even as time passes by and people drift apart physically. For the trust without expectations equation still holds true!

I have experienced this personally. I stayed in a joint family in my formative years and am heavily attached to my uncles, aunts and my cousins. That affection and attachment has continued even though we don’t get to meet each other often.

When we do, we all effortlessly sync in whatever setting we are put in and spend time together laughing, crying, quarrelling and caring for each other. More importantly even when that time ends and we go back to our usual lives, the level of affection and care continues in our remote interactions.

All because of trust on each other without any expectations! Important tenets for not just our close relationships but every connection that we value in life…

Dreams

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It’s a fascinating word, encompassing thoughts that cross our mind. While mostly when we are asleep but for some even when we are awake!

But what do those thoughts tell us? What do they mean?

This has always been fascinating to me. Since childhood, I recall waking up and then recounting my dream(s) to see if there was something interesting hiding there.

Most of those dreams were worthless trinkets. Hallucinations about things I had done that day or in the recent past and which recurred for whatever reason.

But some were exemplary gems. My imagination running wild and taking me down the rabbit hole into unknown lands, making me meet interesting people, telling me great anecdotes, and making me laugh and cry. All while I was asleep.

I remember, after waking up from those gem dreams, I always had a flush feeling of having conquered something. For whatever reason…

Then slowly, as I grew up and entered adulthood, those dreams receded. There were some still which were interesting but none was as exemplary as before. It was as if the imagination was lost in the woods. Without a path back home.

I endured this phase in my life for almost 20 years. Initially in this phase, most of my dreams used to be about training horrors. After all, what do you expect a Gentleman Cadet training in the Indian Army to dream about! But post that phase, it was mostly work related or some fantasy that I was chasing as life changed colors from being single to being married to being a parent.

This long phase made me forget all those sojourns that used to happen in the private space between my ears. I almost resigned to the fact that I will continue to dream about the usual stuff only now.

Until a couple of years back…

Egged on by my daughters dreams and what she made me listen to on an everyday basis, I started remembering how I used to be in those days. I also started turning my creative wheels, writing regularly and thinking a lot about multiple things, in a way I hadn’t applied myself yet.

Perhaps both of these things combined to give me some of my power back. Maybe it was something else.

But I was elated when a few days back, I passed out in the dark of the night and my asleep mind took me down a rabbit hole I hadn’t visited in ages!

It was exhilarating to wake up and think about how the dream panned out. From whatever details I could recall, it did seem like some ride. Maybe not up to the standards of my childhood. But a start, nevertheless…

Selfless Interest!

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Contradictory, right! After all, who in their best mind could think of not acting in their own interest!

We as humans are here on the planet as a living proof of survival of the fittest; and we are programmed to act in our own interest, which is always paramount. How do we do any thing in a way that we benefit from it, directly or indirectly, is an art we have mastered.

It’s in our genes. If not for ourselves, we wouldn’t be alive. Or even if we are alive, we wouldn’t be prospering. Or even if we are prospering, we wouldn’t be on the top of the game.

And so the vicious cycle goes. Day after day, year after year, lifetime after lifetime…

On the other extreme, there are those moments where that selfishness takes a backseat. Specially when we are dealing with something that is so dear to us, we cannot but keep our interests aside to serve that other interest. For some it is family, for some it is their religious or spiritual belief, for some it is even worldly possessions.

But there are very few instances when we experience something which hangs in the balance. Where we act selflessly, don’t win or don’t gain anything, but still go ahead and do it for it is the right thing to do. These are moments that come and go in a jiffy. And when we look back, we realize we did something truly different.

One such moment happened to me this week.

As it happened, while having an interview conversation, I realized that while the person on the other side had some valuable experiences, he wouldn’t be the right fit in my team. I also figured that he was probably not going on the right track looking for a change as of now.

You see, when you are interviewing someone for a role, you tend to become philosophical! 😀

I don’t know why but I switched over and became selflessly interested to help him out. I told him honestly that I would not be able to consider him for the role he was interviewing for. I also advised him to stick it out in his current role and gain experiences that may help him later on.

He was also receptive to the things I was saying and listened intently and was thankful for that exchange. Or maybe I am overreacting.

Anyhow, we ended on a happy note, both being satisfied with where the conversation led to. I felt happy telling him what exactly was running on my mind. And the fact that he appeared to accept it and seemed relieved to hear those words, told me that he was also in sync.

In that exchange, telling the other person what he should be hearing rather than a polite ‘we will get back to you’, appeared more natural to me in that moment. And while I think of it as selfless, as in not being driven by any desire for self gains, it worked in my interest in the context of the interview by closing the loop on that candidate faster.

Not that I have done this a lot. I could maybe count such instances on fingers, among the countless interviews I have taken over the last few years. It’s not because I consciously choose to avoid being direct, just that somehow it doesn’t happen with the flow a lot of times.

But it made me realize that when these moments do occur, they reveal the importance of being able to connect with someone beyond immediate self interest. Rare than most other precious things in life!

Taken for granted.

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We have a lot of people who are a part of our lives. But there are a few of them who are extremely close to us.

These people, who we may call our inner circle, mostly consist of our immediate family and perhaps a couple of relatives / friends. They are the ones whom we spend the most time with or care the most about.

They are also the ones we take for granted. A lot!

These relationships are special to us because they give us the warmth, love, and nourishment that we are seeking. And we in turn feed them with our own compassion and support.

However, after spending a lot of time with each other, we get used to being around. We start behaving and acting in more automated ways and without realizing, start assuming the support of the other person. Or worst, start demanding that support.

This week, as I was reflecting on my own behavior with my inner circle, I realized that there are quite a few instances where I am taking them for granted. I am behaving with them as if they already know what’s on my mind and am expecting them to trust and listen to me or support me. Because I know best!

As I dug deeper into the recent past, I figured that this is happening unconsciously and only because I feel entitled to their love, support, and understanding in everything I do.

What I was missing was that they may not be agreeable to everything I have to say or do. Or they may have their own thoughts or suggestions, which I may benefit from. More importantly, by not considering their perspective, I was doing a disservice to the relationship.

Clearly, I was taking them for granted. And they, being my inner circle, deserved more.

So, I made a conscious decision to stop this unconscious behavior. Decision to not try and enforce what I am thinking but to be aware of other perspectives also. Decision to be aware of the their choices and thoughts and be respectful toward them. Decision to let them be and go through their own journey, instead of trying to nudge them at every point.

For sum of all parts is greater than the self…

When do we Win?

~ Rishi ~ 1 Comment

It’s the one thing all of us want to be on the right side of – Winning!

Whether as a student who wants to get good marks / perform well in the sport or art she is excelling at; or as a professional who wants to give it her best.

Be it as part of a home where we want our family members to do well always; or as part of a team where we want to do everything we can to win.

Look at any sphere of life, that’s what we are aiming for – to do our best, to give our best, to win.

Against odds, against challenges, against circumstances, against life at times!

But winning is not an ends to a means. Mostly, it is just a goal we define for ourselves to achieve. Once we are there, we move on to achieve bigger and better things.

And yet we believe that what we are pursuing is the only thing we should focus on, removing everything in front of us or neglecting the other aspects of our life and our world.

We go on a rampage with our focus, trying to do things in a crunched timeline, pushing ourself to outdo our previous achievements. Without taking a pause to reflect, feel happy, and be grateful for how much ground we have covered.

And we most certainly forget that it’s a process and not a once in a time event. It mostly happens on the edge, eluding us till the time it is almost certain we wouldn’t let go of the pursuit. And hence, very few times it is easy to achieve in a jiffy; takes even lifetimes.

What then, does it mean to win? Achieving what we set out to or measuring how far we have come from where we were?

I believe, it is the latter.

For there is no better yardstick to measure success than the distance we have travelled. We may still not be near our goal but we surely would have achieved far more in the journey to that goal. And even if we don’t reach where we want to, we would have made a difference to at least some folks and some lives.

And in the process, enriched ourselves for our lifetime and beyond…

Commitments

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Why and how we make commitments? What do we do to keep them alive? And how long do we keep going to keep up with them and achieve our end goal?

The last two weeks, after coming through a couple of examples of success that took forever, these questions hovered in my mind. Specially because, I got asked by 3 different, unrelated people about what makes me keep on writing this blog every week. And I searched within to find those answers.

The first example that I came across was of Jonathan Larson, whose life is captured well in last year’s acclaimed movie ‘Tick, Tick, Boom!’. As I watched the movie and then read about him (hadn’t paid much attention to the Broadway scene earlier), I came to appreciate the journey he went through in those 8-10 years before success beget him.

The second example was of Robert Pirsig, whose book ‘Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance’ is one of my absolute favorites. Generally browsing about authors, I chanced upon his story, which I hadn’t read till date. And it’s fascinating. How the book was rejected more than a hundred times before it became the cult success we see it as today.

These writers, and others of their ilk as well as those who continue to amaze us with their perseverance in other fields, tell us one thing. About how important is commitment to one’s dream/goal/cause and if we must resolve one thing that we should absolutely not give up on, it has to be commitment.

To ourselves. To our dream/goal/cause. To the process we are following to get there. And to the people around us who believe in what we are doing and continue to support us.

Even if it is as small a thing as being healthy. Or as big as building a happy family. Or a successful career.

When I reflected and juxtaposed this with my writing journey over the last two and a half years, I realized that while I haven’t reached even within striking distance of my stated goal of writing a book (hopefully books), there’s so much more for me to do. And how I shouldn’t be swayed away or disappointed by the time I have already put in but rather view it as a practice run.

In fact, this blog as an expression of my thoughts is a vital cog in my writing journey. Something, that’s only helping me become better prepared to do what I intend to do and in the process, helping me try so many things.

Yes, I should find more time do write my first book. Yes, I need to start putting in some serious thoughts to shape up the unfinished plots and figure out the overall storyline. And yes, I must do this as quickly as I can.

But even while I get things in order to do all of these and perhaps more, I mustn’t loose track and wait for the ideal time. I should rather continue practicing.

For only when we continue in our quests and keep the flame alive, is when we can hope to find the treasure we are seeking…

The Logical Emotion

~ Rishi ~ 1 Comment

I know this term may seem contradictory at first sight! But delve deeper, as I did, and there’s a lot of unearthing to do…

All of us live by the idea that we are emotional beings and do a lot of things influenced by the emotions that run through us. We also believe that if we remove emotions from anything, we become nonchalant and non-committal. Hence, it is almost logical to deduce that we go through our life journey in large parts guided by emotions.

But if we look at a lot of other things that we do, specially when it comes to our careers / professional life, we like to believe that we are being logical. Or for some of us, even in other aspects of our life, including in relationships.

We also generally go by the belief that most times when we get emotional, our logical self goes for a hike and we end up doing things which may not be in the best interest of ourselves.

But what if there’s a possibility of these two seemingly contradictory worlds co-existing?

This week, as me and my wife spent a lot of time discussing and debating on certain important decisions that could impact us for years to come, I came to realize that this possibility could be real.

We started off with the position that we must decide logically about our choice and hence dissected a lot of aspects to understand what will be the best choice for us. We discussed about our individual perspectives, collective thoughts as a family, and even from an outwardly point of view.

We laid bare all the possibilities of what could go right for us in making those choices and what could go wrong.

We thought about the impact those choices may have on us, our daughter, our parents and siblings, and weighed them on our barometer.

We looked at our choices from a professional and a financial perspective and also thought out different scenarios about what we want to achieve.

Eventually though, it all came down to emotions!

Behind all the logical thinking and brainstorming, we were somewhere also attaching our thoughts to our emotions. And those emotions were complicating the decision making process.

Finally, after a lot of logical discussion, when we couldn’t arrive at a clear decision, we resorted to the ultimate emotional test – what would make us happier?

As we judged the choices and let our emotions guide us to the logical conclusion, I realized that it was a combined play between logic and emotions that got us home. If not, we would still be undecided!

I recently heard from a wise man, “Bring your own authentic self to the fore everywhere, and you won’t have to maintain two different personalities at work and at home”. Extending it a little, I would add, “Let emotions and logic run into each other and help guide you to the right things in life, don’t try and keep them separate”.

Let life be decided not on the basis of one single thing, for it is as complex as complex can be…

Capacity or Constraint

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It seems like a long time ago. The year was 2002 and I was lodged in the Military Hospital (MH), Pune.

I had an injury in my cervical spine and was admitted and then transferred to MH Pune for treatment, as it was known for doctors specializing in orthopedics. There were quite a lot of us in that hospital then. Cadets from the National Defence Academy, Indian Military Academy, commissioned officers from different regiments and corps, non-commissioned officers from all ranks. Everyone who had some complication with any of their bones or joints inevitably landed up there.

With my robotic neck movement (it had been reduced severely due to the injury), I made some good friends within that circle. We used to have a lot of fun talking to each other, hearing stories, reading books, playing cards, and so on. What else could we do being in a hospital, all alone with only each other to take care for.

Apart from the many things we did in those days, I distinctly remember one observation. There were a lot of repeaters among us – people admitted repeatedly for the same injury/dislocation/fracture. We were looked upon with amusement by some others. But the thing to note was, many of those whom I met with such repetitive injury occurrences had one thing in common. They had all got used to living with their injuries.

For some it was shoulder dislocation or wrist or elbow dislocation. They would come into the hospital, get their treatment, get their joint back in shape, and go back. A couple of particular cases, which were very severe, had reached a point where the person could himself reset his wrist / shoulder and put the dislocated joint back into the socket…

Howsoever these people, including me, had got used to our often repetitive nature of injury/pain, it was viewed by us (and I am sure by others) as increased personal capacity to bear/handle/live with pain, but also as a constraint that limited our options within the armed forces.

While after a few such occurrences and the non-healing nature of my cervical spine injury led to I moving out on medical grounds, some of them I am sure continued and served out their full terms. What must not have changed though is the capacity vs. constraint dichotomy, which exists at least in my mind.

As I reflected on these thoughts in one of my quieter moments this week, I realized that there are other aspects in our life that place us in this dichotomy. There are many things that we have a great capacity for but some of them also constrain us.

High capacity to do the best in everything and achieve perfection constrains us from moving fast and breaking things. Or having the capacity to work well with everyone constrains us to sometimes not be our authentic self. Or capacity to assimilate knowledge and process it quickly at times constrains us from accepting the viewpoint that others may have.

Similar is the case with organizations. Capacity to endure mediocrity constrains output. Or capacity to do multiple things constrains focus on those streams which could transform the landscape. Or capacity to continuously succeed at any costs constrains the culture and how people feel about each other and their work.

The bottomline – as we move ahead in life, some of the capacities that we have developed also lead to constraints on other related aspects. We constantly live in such dichotomies and cannot escape them.

What we can do though and is important is to recognize which of those constraints are necessary to be removed. And then moving forward to remove them, even if it means developing a new understanding or unloading some of our capacities!