Livin’ on the Edge!

October 16, 2022 ~ Rishi ~ Leave a comment

This post is in fond remembrance of the roller coaster. Not that amusement parks have gone anywhere but it’s been ages since I visited one, so apt for me to pay my respects.

And not just because I want to go to such a place. Of course, who wouldn’t want to forget all worries and be childlike for those brief moments when you experience bliss (unless you’re freaking out about the possibility of a loose screw somewhere!).

It’s also because thanks to a few planned and unplanned trips, this past month made me remember the good old roller coaster again!

You see, when you travel on roads in India, that’s the feeling you live with all the time. Who said we don’t know how to have a good time. We do it every day of our lives.

As has often been written and mentioned, driving on Indian roads is an art. It’s one that all of us learn pretty much as we grow up and only hone as we get older.

It’s like an enthralling, never ending ride. You keep swerving and swooshing all around. Sometimes out of choice. Sometimes out of compulsion to avoid hitting someone. And sometimes just so that you remain alert while driving!

So, as it happened during my trips, I was mindlessly observing how most people drive. Sitting on the other side of the driver gave me all the time in the world to indulge in this guilty pleasure. And then I observed some more as I drove around town recently.

Well, most of us Indians drive crazily. Period. We don’t know what is a straight line, what is a lane, what are signals for, what is meant by road signs, why there needs to be space between two vehicles, why we need to drive on one side of the road if it doesn’t have a divider in between to separate up and down traffic. The list is endless.

But this is still ok. Our best behaviour is around a signal. When we all are supposed to come to standstill. It’s almost as revealing as attempting a psychometric test. Let me try to explain.

As soon as we near a signal, if it’s a green light, we want to cross over come what may. Even if that means running over someone. Or jumping the signal just as it’s changing colours. We pride ourselves on the ability to beat the timing. After all it’s all about living on the edge…

Even better is when the signal turns red. The vehicles come to a screeching halt. And then everyone starts swerving here and there. As if standing at one place is a crime. The bikes navigate every possible angle to squeeze into any open spaces. It’s like water taking the shape of the maze and filling up all the vacant areas. We don’t leave even an inch. Because of course why waste space! And don’t you forget, the marginal gain is much higher than the few seconds we would lose being two steps behind.

As the signal turns green and we start again, we start to play hide and seek. Swerving and changing lanes at will without any indications, driving as close to each other as possible with absolutely no margin for errors (we are born Schumachers!), honking mindlessly, swearing unconsciously. Mimicking a hungry snake trying to make its way through the ground, wanting to catch its prey at any cost.

Until we reach our destination, we keep up this behaviour. Because no one likes changes, you see. And then as we park and get out, we mention to ourselves “Indian traffic is getting worse by the day”…

For us, it was a hectic but satisfying ride. After all, we beat 3 autos and 5 cars to our destination. To an uninitiated onlooker, it might have been the best example of living on the edge. And how not to drive…

Short-term View

October 9, 2022 ~ Rishi ~ Leave a comment

There are people who do the right thing, no matter what. And then there are those who try to do something to take advantage of the situation or get through by any means, even if it means dishonesty.

I often try and behave in the former fashion and naturally like people who also try and do the right thing. I somehow am never able to agree with or like those who try to take undue advantage or are dishonest.

Last week, as we were on a trip, I experienced an incident of the latter type that left a bad taste in my mouth. It was a minor one involving the taxi driver of the cab we hired for our trip. As we ended the trip and had to pay the remaining charges, the driver came up with some false claims and insisted on getting paid for it. While it was a small amount and didn’t affect me much in any which way but what it did end up doing was negating any respect I had for that individual.

As we carried on with our trip, that evening when I sat down with the cool breeze of the lake shore, I reflected on his behavior and what may have caused it. You see, he had behaved immaculately till then but as soon as it was time to depart, he acted with a certain amount of dishonesty and greed. So, it was unexpected for me.

But as I thought deeper, it occurred to me that we often try and take a very short-term view of things. Whether it is something about work or in dealing with others or at home, we often get caught in this quagmire when faced with a choice. Do we think about it from a long-term perspective and are ready to forego certain advantage or benefit in lieu of the relationship or service standard. Or do we think about it from a short-term perspective and try and extract the maximum at that specific moment.

Most service industries or places around us believe in the short-term benefit policy. Why yield when we can get more? Not realizing that in the process the customer leaves with a unsatisfied experience and probably never comes back. On the other hand, those who truly put the customer first provide for a superior experience and have customers for life.

Extending this a little, even in our relationships when we prioritize short-term we gain little in the long run and actually end up fracturing them. But when we focus on the long-term and ensure priorities align accordingly, we continue holding those relationships for life.

In fact, even with any kind of work or activity we undertake. If we keep our focus on the long-term, we get deeper and more involved, benefiting ourselves and enriching our experience. On the contrary, anything attempted with a short-term focus generally is a very superficial one.

Basically, long-term pays more than short-term. We still choose short-term sometimes, neglecting this universal truth. Perhaps because of circumstances, perhaps because of helplessness, or perhaps out of habit.

Whatever it may be, better to think once before deciding on anything with a short-term focus. For while we may gain immediately, we don’t know what all we actually end up losing in the process…

Strong and Weak

October 3, 2022 ~ Rishi ~ Leave a comment

Strength is always considered a virtue and weakness a thing to be avoided. But what if we have been thinking all wrong?

When I was undergoing training at the Indian Military Academy, we went through the toughest of routines in our initial days. It was a routine that’s usually the case for most armies but not normal for civilians.

So, naturally it took us time to adjust our bearings or even consider it as possible. A lot of us cribbed about it in those initial days. Most of us got used to it in a month or so but a few who couldn’t left.

We thought of ourselves as stronger than them and much more worthy! Naively…

All of us tennis fans had a tear in our eye when we watched Federer for the last time and the way it all happened.

However, someone completely clueless about tennis, who saw just a picture of Federer crying in a post match interview after losing (not his last one but some of the earlier ones), may think of him as a sore loser.

Not knowing that here stands a once in a lifetime champion, who’s crying not because he lost but because of the love and support he had received from the crowd and how he felt about it. He was just letting his emotions show.

How wrong would that assumption be about the strength that Federer, or for that matter any other champion, carries within him…

Travelling in the Nilgiris mountain ranges yesterday, I was telling my daughter about how people live in these places. How they build their dwellings and carry on with their usual life

I also told her about the big mighty mountains – how they appear so strong and capable of supporting so much. And yet, with so much pressure on them to support the tourism economy, they are also fragile.

My daughter couldn’t grasp initially that the mountains could be weak but as we discussed more and I related it to the environment, she could begin to understand how they could get affected.

An aspect most of us adults know but ignore – that while the environments around us are strong today, if not cared for, could turn weak and wither away!

—

These seemingly unconnected threads ran through my mind over the last couple of days, as I let it wander into free space. But as I looked back, I realised that all of them had one connection.

An assumption about strength and weakness that reflects our usual worldview but isn’t correct. It leads us to behaviours or thoughts which are not the best aligned with the situation or with the people involved.

And yet, knowingly sometimes, we commit this same mistake again and again in different contexts…

Roots

April 10, 2022April 10, 2022 ~ Rishi ~ Leave a comment

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…

Boundaries

March 6, 2022March 6, 2022 ~ Rishi ~ Leave a comment

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!

What Changed?

February 20, 2022February 21, 2022 ~ Rishi ~ Leave a comment

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…

In Comparison.

October 10, 2021October 10, 2021 ~ Rishi ~ Leave a comment

It was the summer of 96. I had just settled down into a new place and passed out of 9th grade.

It was also a season of change. There were changes everywhere and in my group of friends too, everyone was getting a new bicycle.

In those days, we used to ride our cycle to the school and pretty much everywhere. So for every kid, a bicycle was the most prized asset. In small towns across India, this used to be a pattern with kids going in for changing bicycle designs every 2-3 years.

96 was one such year. But I felt miserable. My current cycle was 4 years old now and due for an upgrade. There was a new design in town and with most of my friends now owning the new design, mine felt automatically old.

And yet, my father won’t approve of it. He explained to me that I can carry on in my current one for another year at least and he will get me a new one the following year.

I was devastated and couldn’t comprehend why I couldn’t get the new model. So I again had a chat with my dad, trying to coax him. He told me to shake it off and gave me some analogies to explain that I shouldn’t be comparing myself to others and rather be happy and thankful about what I have. It took some time but that lesson hit home.

I didn’t ask for a new one again until next year, when he himself readily agreed to buy one. I was overjoyed and needless to say, treated it like a prized possession.

What I didn’t realise then but do now was the way he made me understand an absolutely necessary fact of life. Stop comparing yourself to others. And be happy in all circumstances.

That lesson has stayed with me since then. Often, as is natural, the urge to see how I am faring against others crops up and tries to push me down the road less desirable. It’s only these lessons, which somewhere got etched in my memory, that have helped me reset my compass.

This week as something again propped up on the horizon and the inner voice tried to push me in that direction, I was reminded of this lesson about not to compare and held myself back. As I shook myself off that track and reminded myself to stay true to my own path, I realised that this comparative approach is often just an innate desire to prove to ourselves or to prove our worth to others.

It is a strange feeling, taking away the fun of what we have done and pushing us into a corner where our mind starts believing that we ought to do better. And more often than not, it wins in overpowering our minds and polluting it.

It is perhaps due to the fact that we have always viewed competition as virtuous. Or perhaps due to the reason that we believe in ourselves and want to outperform. Or maybe just because we see others behaving in this fashion and join them.

Whatever might be the case, we owe it to ourselves to keep a check on “these feelings” and be mindful to walk our own path.

For truly that is when we can seek and hopefully find happiness!

The secret to better experiences

September 26, 2021 ~ Rishi ~ 1 Comment

Saturday morning, I and my little one got up at almost the same time and as it was the weekend, lazed around in bed “talking”.

As we spent the next 30 minutes having a hearty conversation, the topic centred around how she should speak up rather than feeling something in her heart or mind but not blurting it out. She is a sensitive child and I wanted her to understand it is ok to speak up and let the other person know if she doesn’t like something rather than bottling her feelings inside.

We got through that conversation and did multiple other things during the weekend. But the entire 2 days, this was a theme that kept recurring in my mind…

We are by nature socially active and thrive in the company of others, whether its family, friends, or colleagues. However, there are groups where we feel and act better than in others. It might be because of multiple reasons that we have different experiences in different groups, but in my analysis most of the times, the one thing that really defines the experience for me is what is the level of communication in that group.

I didn’t realize it until I had a sub-par experience during one of the most seminal phases in my youth. It wasn’t my first bad one with a group. But I was perhaps more matured than before. And as I thought about it, I had a difficult time understanding the reasoning behind why it so happened. But as I reflected back on it in solitude, I figured that the communication between me and the others in the group wasn’t really great and it contributed majorly to the experience I had.

Ever since, I figured that if I want to make the most of what any group has to offer me, I better communicate and do it well. And that has been the most important focus area for me as I passed through different experiences in the professional and business world.

What has constantly amazed me though is that most of us don’t realize the importance of communication and the role it plays. Most of the times, we take it for granted and assume that it is going to be at a de-facto good level. What we miss out is that it takes two to tango and building the right level of confidence in each other’s communication takes time and effort. And if not handled in the right manner and early enough, we can miss the boat.

In fact, not just in our professional relationships, even in personal ones, communication is the key to thrive and succeed. If we let it slide, it can soon create a crack wide enough for the relationship to get stuck there. It can happen in the best of relationships and the only way to guard against it is to be mindful of it at all times.

Critically, according to my limited experiences and from what has worked for me, just being honest and upfront works most of the times. Something that our polluted adult minds refuse to believe at times.

Perhaps we need to unshackle our minds and speak directly through our hearts to rekindle our relationships and improve trust and understanding. Or maybe, just communicate better and frequently to remove those clouds of misunderstandings that start forming every now and then.

Or probably just keeping it simple like my daughter, who promised me after my boring lecture on Saturday morning, “Ok dad, I will not keep things to myself now onwards, I will speak out and share my thoughts as it is for the other person to understand me better. I know, I will feel better that ways”…