Old and New

~ Rishi ~ 1 Comment

While old is gold, new is like morning dew.

The past few weeks, this theme was knocking on my mind’s door. And as we spent time this weekend with friends and family reminiscing about the old times and talking about the new things, it was enough to kindle my thoughts…

A lot of times, we see the old paving the way for the new. The old rescinds in the background, yielding the field to the new. And while the new has learnt almost everything to that day from the old, post that transition the new is expected to tread its own path.

But as the new starts off, it emulates a lot of things that the old did. Not out of a lack of choice but because of a sense of familiarity. Sometimes the new diverges, gradually or sharply, to new forks. Even then, the fork has some connection to the past and the old.

When the new disrupts something drastically, it’s because there are things that happened in the past that led to the new transformation. The new way displaces the older one completely and becomes the new normal. And then after a few years or decades, gets displaced with something better. But all progress happened because there were some new fundamentals which were surfaced by the old, were made sense of, and applied in different ways to yield the new.

So, while the new is fresh and different, there are always traces of the old. And as new evolves and becomes better and then becomes old, it gains an appreciation of how the old helped along the way.

Likewise, in our lives, there are a lot of new things that happen which sit perfectly well with the old.

Like how we coexist with our children and our elders. Respecting each other and enjoying the wisdom of the past with the fun and frolic of the new.

Or the way we do stuff with new technology but deploying mannerisms which have been known to us for years.

Or when the old and new worlds come together physically, like in traditional towns and cities. And create a beautiful mesh of how to view the world in a continuum and not as separate epochs.

Or in the way we relive old memories with our friends and family and cherish the times gone by. At the same time enjoying experiences with the new people in our lives who we spend more time with now.

Ultimately, both are great in their own right and it’s never a fight for supremacy. It’s in fact a synchronous melody that plays out in our lives every now and then!

The more we remember this and understand that it is never an either-or choice but a balance between the two, the more harmonious our life becomes…

The Team

~ Rishi ~ 1 Comment

The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. So said Aristotle.

The past 2 weeks, as I worked out of our London office and met people in the team, a lot of them for the first time, these old words rang true.

It’s been a deeply interesting subject for me for sometime now. How does a team click together? How does it become a high performing one? How do you maintain the bar you set and raise it higher?

It’s been equally fascinating to also understand why some of these things work and some don’t. The answers or observations can be quite different, depending on what perspective one employs.

What’s true however is there are some specific tenets which propel or hinder us on these fronts.

Trust is a big one. If there’s trust between people who are on the team and they believe in each other, progress is easy and performance dramatically improves as a byproduct. Lack of trust destroys and inhibits members, pushing the team further down the rabbit hole. I have seen this firsthand and experienced both sides of the coin and I must say, trust is the no. 1 thing to establish.

Respect is another. If the members cannot respect one another and their leader, the team won’t go anywhere. If on the other hand, there’s respect, even the most difficult situations can be navigated with ease. Again, something that I have had the good luck to experience and learn from first hand.

The other natural one is competency. If people on the team aren’t competent enough, do what you may but the team won’t be able to scale up and perform. This is also the most tricky as we tend to define competence narrowly and test it within specific sub-contexts only.

While these 3 tenets are basic and critical to team success, there may be more I am not covering here which are crucial. What’s important though is for us to understand that a lot of times we overlook them.

In our quest to prove ourselves the best or just to ensure we are doing enough to keep our place, often times we compromise on these building blocks and end up experiencing sub-par team dynamics.

It isn’t our fault. This is natural human tendency. We lean toward it unknowingly, trying to protect our individualistic interests.

But what we could do to get out of this trap, is to remember that we are doing well or being shown in good light because of the cohesion we or other members have within the team. It is because of them that we are able to move seamlessly and achieve what we set out for.

Keeping our ego and individual interests aside, working with others to build trust, respect, and competence. To enrich ourselves and the experience we gain from being in the team.

For above all, the foremost reason for being in the team is to be able to contribute and grow together, learning from others! Great teams do this at a collective as well as an individual level…

Roots

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You can take the (wo)man out of the country but not the country out of the (wo)man. The same is true for most people, Indians more so.

We have one of the largest populations. Combined with a high literacy rate, a lot of us are now spread out into the far reaches of the world. But still then, even if it’s been a few years or a generation that the person may have been out of India, you can still find some resemblances.

This whole week, I have been in London for work and meeting a lot of interesting people from different walks of life. Colleagues who have relocated, friends staying here for more than a decade, strangers working elsewhere who I came across, et al.

It probably is also a bias that I have, that I noticed similarities in the Indian cohort rather than with others. But that’s more because of my limited understanding of those cultures. Anyways, that’s a natural tendency I believe because we are all prone to this bias.

Coming back to the point, I realised that depending on where we have been brought up, how ingrained some of the nuances are in our nature. We may not be intuitively aware of those but if we ponder over it, it’s easy to notice.

So, for adults who were raised in India, the roots are still predominantly there and their beliefs, values, behaviour aligns with the home country more. They may have stayed in a new country for a large part of their adult life but will still associate more with their culture than the new one.

However, it’s not as simple for kids. Those who have been born or brought up overseas and been there most of their lives, they associate more with the new country. And while their parents may still be thoroughly Indian in their outlook, they aren’t.

Good for them if they are going to stay in the adopted country, as it is just so much more easier to acclimatise with the native folks.

It is also a function of how independently the parents let the children evolve as they grow up. Do they still enforce things that they believe in or are they open to new ideas, methods, and cultural traits that the younger one(s) want to adopt.

And this is true not just for people relocating to another country but even to other regions within large countries like India. We often get trapped into the way things are done in our home town and don’t adjust to the new culture, standing out from the crowd.

Not to say that we move away from where we began from but more to highlight the fact that we need to assimilate and evolve. After all, change is the only constant and most times is for the good.

As we all fan out in different directions, sometimes within the country and sometimes outside, and settle down, it is for us to think through and align ourselves with the new. To make our lives less stressful and more fun…

The day that was supposed to be…

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It was evening. Walking back from work, ‘he’ was thinking how could it have been him and how did it even happen.

Eventually tired of thinking and walking, he stopped near a lamp post and leaned against it. He couldn’t take it any more. The weight he was carrying in his mind made him slump down on the street and he landed with a thud.

There were no people nearby, only passing vehicles on the road. With each passing car, his shadow was elongating and running on the facade of the nearby building. He was oblivious to it.

They all assumed he was sitting there for some reason. No one bothered to check in. It was as if he was but a mannequin on the road, left by some disorganized owner.

The man sat there for what seemed like eternity. He kept on thinking about how the day he anticipated he will taste success, turned out to be a dud and a huge embarrassment. How things didn’t turn out as expected. And how will he face others now.

As the clock ticked on, his mind only went down the rabbit hole. It had convinced him that no one would be happy with the outcome he had managed and he had only himself to blame. At some point in time, as he reached the nadir, a speeding car whizzed by. The driver was probably drunk and honking the machine incessantly.

He looked up startled and realized that he had been sitting there on the pavement for long. Gathering his bag, he slowly walked the remaining couple of blocks to reach his home.

As soon as he rang the doorbell, his kids came running and his wife opened the door. They all smiled at him and hugged him. He hadn’t anticipated this and was slightly taken aback. Still trying to gather himself, he pushed along with the family into the living room and settled down with them. They were still holding tight on to him.

After a couple of minutes, as the heartbeats settled down and calm returned, he looked up. His wife was crying happily. His kids were still glued to him, not leaving his side. One of them spoke, “We missed you so much Papa, where were you? We thought you wouldn’t come home today.”

He looked at his wife puzzled. She pointed to the clock. It read midnight. She explained that as usual, they had been expecting him since dinner time and when they couldn’t reach him, had asked his colleagues. No one knew why he hadn’t reached home and no one could place him. They had all been worried and had been biding their time for the last few hours.

Looking askance, he asked “It isn’t the first time that I have returned home late. Why this strong a reaction from all of you?”. And then he remembered. It was the monthly family dinner. They had all been eagerly waiting for him to come back home and celebrate with them.

But he, foolishly had let a temporary setback at work affect him so much that he had forgotten his date with his family.

As they embraced each other once again, he realized that even if everything else fails, he has his family along. And what to make of the day is unto himself and only himself!

As per estimates…

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We all have a perception about ourselves. Of what we stand for, who we are, how we are doing, and so on. How does this perspective compare with what others think of us?

This week, this question came up repeatedly in front of me. In the form of some interactions, what I was reading, watching. Almost seemed like all roads leading up to it!

Interestingly, I wasn’t compelled to think about it too much until today, when in the evening, watching the brilliantly made movie, Coda, I realized how much of an influence it has on us as an individual…

All of us gain awareness about self at a pretty early age. As we grow up, that persona only becomes more refined. Of course our experiences and surroundings shape that up but we hold on to it because that’s who we believe we are.

During specific phases of our life, this persona is confident and in the right place. What we do or don’t, is generally agreeable to others. But in a lot of cases, this perception doesn’t match. Sometimes, we go overboard with the self-evaluation and end up on the wrong side. Worse, some times, we underestimate ourselves and believe we aren’t as good as we are, robbing ourselves of the experiences we should have.

It’s not just about how we evaluate ourselves. It is also about how others look at us. At rare times, the people around us believe in us more than we do and at other times, we inspire little confidence in others.

It is also about how we view others around us. And how we are evaluating them. Because at times, we consciously or unconsciously slot someone in a particular category based on our biases, our world view, or just on the basis of what others say.

Whenever the perception balance tilts to one side, it causes disruption. And distortion. Within us. For who are we if not a product of the society and the people around us. If they believe in us more than we do, it creates a lot of pressure. If they don’t believe in us as much as we do, it creates frustration and anger or sadness.

As I thought about my own journey so far, all these three have occurred in varying degrees. I have had good confident runs, have learnt a couple of hard lessons being overconfident, and have had occasions when I felt overwhelmed or not up to the mark.

Some of the biggest learnings in life have however happened when I have conquered mine or other’s underestimation. When I have had to challenge myself to achieve what I or others assumed wasn’t possible or doable.

The key then is in our hands. If we feel underestimated or below par, it is up to us to raise the bar. Or if we underestimate someone incorrectly, it is up to us to accept them when they raise their bar.

Because, as per estimates, we will be on the wrong side a lot of times!

Who’s the Leader?

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I was awestruck. There we were, enjoying ourselves on a short vacation, when my 6 year old mentioned something that made me pause and think hard.

As it happened, we were just back from a boat ride at the resort and were taking a walk near the river side and talking amongst ourselves about random things. It must have been a couple of innocuous things that children do, for which we would have told the little one to not repeat. The moment we said so, she replied, “Mumma, Papa, you are not a leader and you shouldn’t be telling me about what to do and what not to do”.

Taken aback, I asked her, “If it is so, then are you a leader already and will you decide what you should do?”. She replied, “No Papa, none of us are leaders. Only God is”.

It took me a minute literally to grasp what she said. It must have come from her mind based on some random conversation she would have had with her friends. But it was profound and made me think more about it.

As those words continued to run in my mind for that evening, I realised that one part of it couldn’t be truer. That we aren’t and cannot be leaders all the time and should stop behaving as one…

True for those who run an organisation or a team. You may be leading a team or a function or a company but it’s not because of only you that work is happening or progress is being achieved. There are many contributing factors and we ought to keep that in mind, lest we believe too much in ourselves and in that over confidence go down the hill.

True for those who run a family or behave like a leader just because they are older than the others in the household. We may be grown up enough or may have seen more years under the sun but that doesn’t give us a right to lead in all settings. Indeed, there are instances when the younger ones know much more about something and they must show us the way.

True for all of us who assume the leadership role naturally because we have been told that being a leader is what counts. Indeed it does if we know the stuff. If not, it pays to let others take the lead and show us the way.

Conversely, a reminder for those of us who think they are junior or not experienced enough and shy away from leading. For they may not have the numbers against their age but they have something that others may not – enthusiasm to try new things and less fear of failure. And others could genuinely benefit from their leadership in unknown situations.

After all, while leaders can be born or made, it pays to learn all the time to lead better when the right opportunity arrives!

The Unknown…

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It’s summer time. At least in Bangalore, where I stay, summer has arrived. The sun is getting hotter every day and the fans have been switched on.

With summers, comes the love for water. Cold water. And as it happened this weekend, the love for swimming in cold water.

Most covid restrictions now lifted, kids in the society I stay in, decided to take to water like a force unleashed. Combined with a new instructor ready to teach the new ones, it was fun and frolic in water like not seen in the last 2 years!

Today, as I took my daughter to the pool, and watched her have fun while learning the basics, it was interesting to see how the small kids were reacting to being in the water. It so happened that at the same time I was also talking to my father in law. He being an ace swimmer, we were chatting about our daughter’s classes and he was narrating his experiences with kids while teaching them how to swim.

We talked about how the experience with water can be a lot of fun for some but can also be terrifying for others. The ones who enjoy being in that water, swear by those experiences. The ones who are terrified or in it for the first time, aren’t as happy and may want to avoid it the next time.

Long after we had come back home, that conversation and those scenes from today’s splash in the pool remained with me. And showed me some light…

All of us have our own way of handling things. Things that we feel good about – those which we know or can relate to – we handle them with ease. Things we don’t feel good about – those which are strange or new or unknown – sometimes confuse or terrify us. We gravitate towards the first kind and try and steer clear or are less receptive to the second kind.

However, according to my experiences and perspective, life doesn’t get built by doing those easy things. They can anyways be done. What makes or breaks us and our life is what we don’t know about – the unknown. Our experiences with them and within them and our responses and behaviour in those moments teach us a lot and help us grow.

And yet, while this simple thing is known to all of us, time and again when we are faced with the unknown, we grapple with and within ourselves. Not knowing what we should do and whether we will do the right thing. A lot of times, in that fear of the unknown, we shirk the path less travelled and stay our current course.

Back home, when these thoughts played out in my mind, they opened up my vistas. There was something running within me for the last few days, which was troubling me because of it’s unknown nature. I wasn’t sure of what I should do. I was perhaps thinking a lot and becoming confused in the process.

As I cleared the fog in my mind today, I realized that while there may be unknowns, it is best for me to move forward and give it a try. While there is a balanced chance of it not turning out as promised, there is also a good enough chance of it leaving me with an enriched experience.

After all, as someone said, life is one big adventure and we must try something new and unknown all the time…

Boundaries

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These days, I have found a new avenue to brighten up my evenings. A stroll on the rooftop terrace of the apartment where I stay.

It is an invigorating way to spend the evening. As the sun is setting down, strolling through the terrace makes for a calm and soothing time, away from the daily chores and pulls and pushes of work. It not only lightens up the evenings but also acts as a source of inspiration at times, watching the sun go down and the cool breeze blowing across.

This saturday, as I was indulging in this new pass time, the hues on display in the evening sky were magnificient. The sky was overflowing with different colours and shades and it seemed like a symphony. To engage my little one with some activity, I asked her to absorb the scenery and paint it once she is back home. As I was asking her to do this, I noticed that the sky seemed to have lost all boundaries that day. And it just became more beautiful to see and get engulfed in.

Later on, back home as she was absorbed in the painting, I took up some reading material saved in my reading list for some time. As I glanced through that list, I couldn’t help but notice that a lot of that material was about boundaries.

Boundaries that we are experiencing and noticing all around us. Whether in the war going on right now or the controversies appearing in different nations. Whether in our culture today or the conversation for tomorrow. Be it about caste or race, be it about income or power, be it about stardom or success, or be it about privacy intrusion or obscurity.

In our present world, these boundaries are being created artificially. Understood superfluously. Applied randomly. But followed quite rigidly. Leading to a lot of intended and non-intended consequences.

We are moving into such tightly defined philosophies that we are becoming intolerant. We are becoming so blind sided that we are not able to fathom the other side’s perspective or the mistakes of our own side. We are getting so enamoured by what we believe in that we are ready to do whatever it takes to keep the status quo, challenging nature which only knows how to change.

So, while we may be hyper connected and socially networked, we are poorer off with the missing perspectives and the necessary camaraderie required to live peacefully. We have accepted these boundaries somewhere in our sub-conscious mind or have learnt to live with them as normal.

Perhaps time for us to learn from the natural elements and try and blend in more, keeping our thoughts and opinions aside. For when we do that, is when we get to create symphonies so strong that it paints our lives in all those hues that I saw in this saturday’s evening sky!

“The Price”

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It’s been 20 years!

20 years have passed by after that moment when I first heard those words from a senior doctor’s – “It will be better for you to accept and get medically boarded out”.

The year was 2002, I was in the Military Hospital in Pune, having been on bed for more than 4 months. Hospitalized due to a cervical fracture, holed up with fellow officers, it was a feeling of helplessness, without a clear view of how my life post hospitalization will shape up. I had had multiple conversations with the doctors and while my condition had improved slightly, it was a long road to full recovery ahead.

It was then, during one of those mildly cold mornings, when the senior doctor visiting me broached the topic. I was taken aback. It wasn’t something I had prepared myself for. But he told me with a lot of clarity that while I will pay the price with a few lost years, it will be better for me in the long run with a lot of options outside the armed forces.

I took sometime to discuss, deliberate, and get convinced on the path ahead and ultimately decided to pay the price of those few lost years. I came out, adapted myself to a new life, and have had a lot of great experiences over the years. Have I lost out on something? Yes, probably a lot would have happened with my life if I had decided to stay back in the Army. But then, I took a call and decided on the price I want to pay.

As I was reflecting on this passage of time this week, I realized that we constantly take decisions and choose between multiple options, each of which extract a price.

Most kids who take up a sport seriously and choose to focus on it as a career option, pay the price of going through a disciplined regime, when other kids their age are enjoying a carefree life.

Most bachelors who choose to move out of their parents home and go to a different city for career prospects, pay the price of living uncomfortably when they could have had a more easier life.

Most people who move to a different country forego the familiarity of their own place and people they know, to venture out into the unknown world.

Those who decide to work in a role or job that is demanding, pay the price by handling stress and possibly later on with their disturbed health.

The ones who in their old age choose their home town over living with their kids, pay the price of being away from their son/daughter and their grandchildren.

It doesn’t mean that the price that we pay always takes a toll on us. It also gives us a lot of things. The kid who plays the sport well and learns lessons for life, irrespective of whether she goes on to become a champion or not. The bachelor who matures faster than the others his age and makes a mark on his own. The immigrants who gain great exposure and gather new experiences in a distant land. The professional who earns a good income and respect in the industry. Or the elders who enjoy their later years surrounded by people they have known over the years rather than being in a new place.

It is our willingness or reluctance to pay that price, that determines how our experience turns out. For if we choose whole-heartedly, we will make something out of it. If not, we can turn into a dud.

The last 20 years have taught me a lot of things. But the most important thing that I have learnt is this – whatever I choose whenever in my life, I must live that option completely, without thinking about why I chose it or what if I had chosen the other options. And definitely not worrying about the price I have to or had to pay on this path.

Makes life simpler and fuller…

What Changed?

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Picture this. It is somewhere in the 60’s. A person is sitting on a bed is listening to the radio, which is the primary mode of entertainment and connection with the outside world (apart from newspapers ofcourse).

The radio is playing an advertisement and right after that there is an announcement from the future by one of those mad scientists. The scientist proclaims that in the near future, we would be able to see live video feeds in our homes on a world-wide network which everyone plugs into and it will become our go-to mechanism for everything.

What is the likelihood of the ordinary man with his radio on, believing in this? I would like to think, very less. He may just ignore it all as rumblings of some stupid mind. He would proudly proclaim radio as the best thing that happened in his generation and get on with his work.

And now imagine that person, old, perhaps in his 80’s. Sitting in front of an internet enabled TV with a smartphone in his home controlling the experience. It has turned into a reality. So long for his proud proclamation about the simple radio. Heck, he can now login to any radio channel in the world and listen to it!

This is change! Guaranteed, destined, and having arrived within a single person’s lifetime.

What is amazing is, this ordinary person adapted to all the changes life and society brought on over the years. His life became better (or worse?), it became easy (or more complicated?), and it became more liveable (so we claim!). All those advancements, not just in consumer technology, but in every other sphere of life, resulted in massive shifts. And this person lapped them all up!

We, in this day and age, have stopped questioning what is possible technologically and have rather started to take bets on when will it happen. The pace of change has hastened over the last couple of decades and continues unabated. And we continue to adapt to it in the same rhythm, to make the best use of it as per our understanding.

And yet, the change which is ever so welcome in our lives, hasn’t yet permeated to the same levels in our individual thinking about how will the evolution be in terms of social context, behaviors, and motivations. We still believe that what has happened with us, the way we have lived our lives, is how the next few generations will also experience it. It has been true for most of us but there is no guarantee it will stay the same for our children and beyond.

This week, as I was talking to a friend about how the lives of our children will unfold, I realized that I subscribe to this theory of societal change and therefore, want to consciously not plan too much for it. Not that I have anything against supporting our daughter as she grows up. It’s just that I don’t really know how her life will unfold or what motivations will guide her choices.

I don’t know how she will want to live out her life. If she would even want any help from us. Will money be a useful metric for her or not. Will she want to have a stable career or be someone who would rather accumulate experiences doing multiple things. Will she want to have a partner or not.

I could go on with the questions. But you get the drift.

The choices she will make, I believe, are surely going to be different from the ones that aided my decisions. And it doesn’t make sense for me to plan for too much but rather adapt myself and support her in the way that feels apt for that time and to her mind.

Don’t know if what I am thinking is the right approach or not. What I do believe though is that our relationships and the society will surely change in the next 60 years, just like it has for that person who is now in his 80’s…