A trip through time : Mahatma, LBS, Obama and the Globalised Populace

What does it mean to be in a flow.. and why is the flow of success so dangerous? think about these questions after this positive thought..

2009, Oct 2,
http://in.news.yahoo.com/139/20091002/888/twl-gandhi-s-anniversary-a-moment-to-ref.html

President Obama revers and remembers Gandhi on the even of his birth anniversary.
and i am wondering how many of us really think about him or his ideals .. do we really want to remember him with reverence?

we are moving from being a developing to a affluent society and luxury and capitalism are in . India talks of affluence today and enjoying your earning by splurging on consumerism while America remembers Gandhi and his ideals. our youngsters are discovering 'open-mindedness' and rights to be themselves and not care a damn attitude. Most of us today have very strong opinions about us Indians and we know very little about Americans. On the contrary Americans know a lot about us and are wanting to learn traditional Indian cultural values as the way ahead.

1960 s
America basks in the glory of Capitalism and the land of hope with the big American Dream. there is Luxury and splurging in consumerism as the latest fad. the youngsters discover and build the free sex generation with a heavy input of drugs and hippie culture .Indians shun America for its capitalist ways and the cultural values and we try to preach Indian cultural values to America as the way ahead.

suddenly in the 60s a civil rights movement is born in America but is not noticed. Indians have strong opinions about Americans.

so now do we want to think and ponder on the questions :-

What does it mean to be in a flow.. and why is the flow of success so dangerous?
and
what leads to clarity at the end of the day ? a skeptical start or a confirmed bias?


...good day on the birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi and Lal Bahadur Shastri.

Just to add info Mahatma never thought it was "unclean" to clean and lal bahadur shastri on his foreign visits used to stay with ambassadors and cook his own meals to save foreign currency for the country as he was basically still a humble farmer.

numerical coincidence and not numerology

India sifted out of the Champions trophy .. and interesting is that the format of the tournament had seeded teams.. aus -1 south africa -2 new zealand -3 india -4 pakistan -5 sri lanka -6 england -7 west indies -8 . so what emerges is that all the even ranked teams are to return and the odd ranked team shall go to the semi final. what a coincidence! and this is not numerology please.

numerology will be if we can predict futher ..

Statement of a "Bride"

A chance discussion which i was making animated just for the sake of it led to certain questions that i present here. We were talking of shopping for a marriage and the bride's desire to look very different in an event that is once in a lifetime ( well for most of us in india it still is!).

my dear friend kept on telling me that the bride needs to shop for about a two months in advance for the ceremony and i enquired "what all does a bride need to shop for?". the unobvious answer was "dresses and accessories". unobvious cause if it takes two months to shop , you'd expect someoene to procure clothes for a UN initiative for the whole of Africa in the time duration. however as things are they are ! lols. Making my point clear that its only dresses that need to be bought my next questoin was "How many dresses does a bride need?" again the unobvious answer was 2-3 special ones for the marriage and about 10 for the week or so succeeding ceremonies when people and relatives come to "look" up the bride lols as if a new item has come in for display. so its 13 dresses takign 2 months to get bought and i was also informed that 90% women never wear these dresses more than once or twice ! such a criminal waste of money , i could float a civic organisation in that money and benefit 1 million people over the life of my marriage ! however things are ..they are...

so i asked my dear friend how much time does she need to shop for her dresses usually.. and she says she shops once in four months.. and can buy stuff for the whole year in one day.. my brain cells irked nad twitched ..."why is bridal shopping so inefficient and a criminal waste of time?" we are not celebrities that we need to work on one dress so much .. as if for a designer event lols. the marriage as a designer event is fun .. especially considering that the purpose of marriage is to "solemnise" a relationship between two people or two families.

never the less my worst rebellion was saved until later when i told my friend "its all about showbiz.. there is so much about shopping only to "look good" ( as if your confirmed you never look good otherwise!) and to "show" to people that you too can look good (reminds me of ratatouille.. anyone can look good). The most wonderful thing is that every girl as a bride wants to look different and in her effort to look different does exactyl the same things as a billion other brides and ends up looking exactly like a billion other brides.

So are we doing the wrong things for marriage ceremonies? or are we misinformed of our own desires? or is there a mismatch between actions and desires? or is it that we have forgotten that marriages are solemnised and the celebrations are ought to happen once they are successful adn not anticipating the success which might come or might not come. but most importantly why do we all want to different when to everyone we keep telling "i'm just liek anyone else!" why is it so easy to say and hard to believe that im just like anyone else - possessing the ability to do things my way .. even if its just way a billion other people do it. !

(

The joy of a simple life

I was out on my Thesis Data Collection to the villages of India and i discovered the huge amount of sheer beauty India has..and i discovered amazing small facets of life that can transform one. here is one such facet i learnt in a non-descript village said to be the ancestral village of Bhutto family with a well still named after them.


I had often heard people saying and exclaim in desire that they want a simple life but i had totally failed to understand why they called it simple when they had such complex descriptions of that desired life. Like one wise person had once told me .. he wanted to settle at a place away from the city where all urban facilities would be available and where he could breathe free air and live with people who all loved him and expected nothing of him. Where his servants would take care of all his needs and where his sons and relatives and friends could come and spend their holidays and where he would sit down and write about the factories of software engineers.. i was left wondering.. he wants people to expect nothing from him.. isn't that a tall expectation?


So i went to Indore village near Nasik and i discovered this couple who have a "simple" life. They get up and do their daily chores and drink tea and entertain visitors all day long if the visitors happen to reach this remote village. ( i walked for at least 7 kms from the main road each time i visited the village). the sons take care of the farming and the old man talks to people in the village on how to take the village ahead and improve life for people. he relates to his youth and the freedom struggle and tells everyone how things can be worked out. the lady grows flowers like you can see behind them on the side. they are huge hibiscus and the flowers remain fresh for seven days after plucking !!!.


i suddenly discovered a simple life.. growing flowers..and cooking and eating and sleeping... but flowers are ones that survive seven days and are of such huge size that they are not abnormal. that's a successful life. i am focused on one activity but i do it well , very well and get extraordinary results. that's perfection. i had to touch the feet and seek blessings of the lady before i left.


The old man leads a simple life. he talks to people. he inspired his villagers to form a cooperative water users association that has changed the economics of the village, the surplus has helped start a dairy and now he wants them to set up a shopping complex. he is focused on village development and thinks well and does it very well. he had threatened to break the shop of his cousin when he had declined to help the water user association. he uprooted bricks from the shop wall at the age of nearly eighty and managed to get this man to the village to manage the paperwork as he is the most educated person in the village.


i learnt what a simple life is. i learnt what stuff freedom fighters are made of. i learnt humility as they served me tea and opened up all they had for me and wanted me to stay with them longer. i learnt a little bit of gardening also for flowers always spread smiles and these were surely special flowers.

My Enquiry with TED India

TED.com has become a revolution. It was however hardly known (outside the USA)before it had discovered the Internet and it was not amongst the first to discover the Internet either. So while TED has been seen as the place to be for "ideas worth spreading" there has always been more to it. There is more method than madness inside. There is a pattern and things are predictable if you give it a thought.

TED has been raising expectations with its delivery and the way they have been marketing itself in the past few years. It claims to be the best and the most innovative stuff comes here. TED decided to launch TED outside the USA as recession hit and it was evident that money is now somewhere away from the US.

I managed to attend the TED India launch talk at IIMA about a month ago and i was pleasantly surprised to know that TED is playing it safe and conservative and copying the formula from US to make TED India a success. Laxmi was there and as she answered queries she accepted that TED is very conservative and have had few things not working out in the US and they were all out to replicate the US model in India.

It is here that all the cross cultural theorists need to sit up and take notice.. they have a challenge.. TED comes to India to do a Conference or "share" Ideas worth spreading and says it will replicate the way thins happen in India. I wonder if

1. India is structured like US ...
2. India has the same type of infrastructure as the US..
3. Do conversations happen in the same way in India as in the US
4. Do we share ideas in the same way in India as in the US
5. Is TED India really for Indians or does it want to bring the outside world to India cause there ain't much money elsewhere.
6. Is TED really about innovation if it cant innovate given the well known and not so well known differences across US and India.. not just the continents are different even the contents are different here.
7. Given the new ways we look at the world can TED succeed in India by using the same formula it has been using for 25 years in the US ?

As i had not the benefit of the answers and cause i increasingly feel TED is not about innovation as much as it is about oratory .. i decided to drop the cause of applying for the TED fellowships.

But now i am interested in knowing how TED bridges the divide that cross culturalists so much talk about.. or given its experience do we question if a divide exists at all considering the way India is changing very fast... very fast...

Life is Unfair

I work with all types of structures and institutional arrangements and like to say i work on marginalisation issues as well. This experience today beat all of it. I met a 65 year old person today . Nanubhai asked me my well being and when i asked him his well being he bent down to touch my feet. He is 65 has seen more than double of the life that i have seen in 32 years of my life and has successfully navigated through the changes of time and value systems and i am yet to start doing that.
I came as a student to IIMA campus and was first impressed by Nanubhai, a simple sweeper for my dormitory. he would report to duty at 0730 because he came by bus from 15 kms away. his duty started from 0800 but he would start working before that as he did not want to waste time. he was sharp on dot everyday and before 0900 am my room was spanking clean. i never had to tell him and he noticed when he had to clean and wipe the door, when to remove the cobwebs and when to do a more detailed cleaning. His commitment to his job was unmatched and his dedication to his profession was ultimate and to me he is still an ideal of how it is to work with commitment and devotion. i believe he was one of the best teachers for me at IIM and yet he had to bend down to touch my feet. and he taught me humility. and i discovered LIFE IS NOT FAIR.

The Mystic Quality of Life- Things we can never find an answer

I met an unusual soul last year. On campus it was a usual night to the other mess for dinner ...usually alone apart from two interns Sidharth and Anirudh form IIIT Allahabad who made my summer worth the mess by transforming their lives. Only this night it rained. i was waiting for the rain to get a little less as i wanted to get wet ( i love the rain falling on me) and also didn't want to spoil my already too old mobile which was counting its last few months.

i was joined in my long walk from one corner of the campus to another corner by an unlikely partner - a young beautiful girl who got talking to me. What struck me was her confident manner of talking and her smooth way of being comfortable while talking beyond introductions to expressing joys from her inner self. She was going to receive her first ever stipend the next day and was excited about her first earning :) , we parted ways as we reached our dorms (hostels) after a seven to eight minute walk and talk . i had jokingly asked her for a treat.

We kept bumping into each other on campus and she insisted on treating me as it was her first stipend and all her friends were in delhi. Strangely enough i found her taking me out to chocolate room for a treat where we went to and fro walking. Ramita (that was her name) detailed about her career interests and how she would like to return to IIMA for an internship in the next season as well. She talked of many ambitions and dreams of her academic and career pursuits and i was impressed by her confident self and clear thinking. What struck me was her down to earth attitude , willingness to grow and learn by working hard and ability to focus on the right issues.

we had decided that i will treat her in delhi for a return treat during my next travel as it was very very awkward for me to be treated this way. But that was never to be.

Why would someone open up about their dreams and ambitions to a stranger like me in practically our first ever meeting and talk ?

Why would someone seek to learn from the experiences of my life wihtout even knowing me remotely ?

Why would someone share a happiness with me this way ?

i have answers to none of these in connection with ramita. However i guess there are some pursuits we can never complete and some answers we can never have. i can only thank God for the brief moments where i can share someones happiness and be part of it. i can only thank God for considering me worthy of sharing a special joy like the first earning of a young indian. i can only thank GOD for makign me meet astonishing simple but confident young kids who can shape India's and the global future so differntly with the right training. Ramita could have been one such individual .

Yesterday i discovered on facebook something that was totalyl unexpected. We exchanged hardly one or two off line mesages in september and then i came across this http://www.facebook.com/home.php?ref=home#/group.php?gid=30951019715&ref=mf

This came as a rude shock and brought back the unanswered questions to me. How can death walk in so silently and steal away the unaswers to such ordinary questions and make them so mystic ?

I can only be amazed and dazed by the mystic happenings in life and the unique way it unfolds.. i still wonder what message is stored for me?