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Three buckets of action

There is an important criteria what action qualifies for discussion below. I define it as – “Any action done for no direct benefit to the doer but for the person to whom this is being done for”.

Some examples to make this very clear
  • I take a relative of mine to the doctor when s/he is sick
  • I take care of my neighbour’s dog while they are out of town.
  • I guide a colleague when s/he is stuck in work late night by sitting with him/her to fix an issue.
  • I take my brother-in-law for some examination
  • Taking my parents to a temple
  • Giving money to my domestic help for his/her kid’s education
  • Helping ease out traffic at neighbourhood junction
  • Giving money to an orphanage 
Please note that none of the actions listed above have a direct benefit to the doer (i.e. me).

In general in our daily life there is a good probability that everything we do for others is categorised by us mentally as a Help we have done the other person.

The thought is pretty simple, when we do an action for somebody else it falls under one the following 3 categories.
   • Duty
   • Obligation
   • Charity

Let me explain each one of them in detail

Duty – This is something which I have to do for others regardless of what or how I feel about it. These are defined by ourselves .So simply you go ahead and do it when these action present themselves in front of us. Examples of them are
  • Taking care of my sick parents
  • Educating my kids
  • Voting on election day

Obligation – This is something which I have to do for others but I make it clear to them that it is an obligation and I expect something in return. Examples of them are
    • When my neighbour asks me to take of his/her dog instead of quietly accepting and doing it I make it clear ti him – “Sure I can do that. It is little difficult but I am sure you will take of receiving the courier when I am out of town    and you would not mind me giving you contact number”
  • Help a colleague at work but tell him/her  “I can help you with but you will need to help me out next week with the assignment – right?”

The basic point is when you are doing an obligation, make sure the other person has to return the favour in explicit terms. In corporate terminology “Set expectations explicitly and clearly”

Charity – This is an activity which we do and should not expect anything in return and is done of sheer free will. Note this is different from Duty in that there is no external requirement to this activity.Examples of them are
  • Helping out a neighbour drop the kid at school
  • Taking out my wife’s uncle for a shopping who is visiting from out of town.
  • Giving money to my driver when his/her father is sick

Now that we have defined the 3 categories, we need to deal with them. We should be careful in life never to mix the categories which lead us to heartburns, disappointments and spoilt relationships.It is a simple 2 step process
   •  Before doing any activity for others categorize mentally into one of the 3 buckets and do it.
   •  This is the most important step – Do not mix the items in the bucket after the activity is done ever in the future.

So you need to be clear in your mind on how you are doing the categorization and never ever shuffle the contents of buckets. Look at buckets as a post box into which an activity can be categorized and dropped but can never be taken out.

The tough part is that there are activities which can qualify as under any of the above, so it is up to each individual to classify it accordingly. For example I can say that “Doing the laundry or the vessels” is an obligation to my wife ( ok I am going to get a lecture about this statement from my wife) but on the other hand I can also classify it as a duty as a husband or a father. A typical example of falling into the pit hole – I pay my driver some money for his kid’s school fees and at the time of giving the money I categorize it as charity but may be some months later I ask the driver to come on a Sunday and he refuses. I feel hurt recollecting that I helped but he is not helping me or I tell him so now, which is even worse.

To summarize – Help others by categorizing your actions and never change it after you have done it.

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Celebrating 5 years of blogging + Other Milestones

Prolog

It has been a while since i wrote on this blog. Thankfully Abdul Fakhri and Priya Raju have been doing a wonderful job of picking up the slack. 

Fine Tastings

Since this section has not been carried in a while, i decided that it may not be wise to list all the links i liked, many of which i share on my twitter account. Instead i decided to recommend 2 books that i read recently that have had a huge impact on me. The first one is world renowned executive coach Marshall Goldsmith’s What got you here won’t get you there. Marshall has plenty of free resources on his website that you can take advantage of. I am indebted to Sanjay Radhakrishnan for bringing this book to my attention. The second one is Carol Dweck’s @#$%ing brilliant book Mindset . We have been searching for the Soul of Success on this blog  . I would say Carol Dweck has captured the soul of success in her  book. I am indebted to Rajkumar Ravindranathan for recommending this book to me. If you are a parent or a leader, you must read both these books. 

Blog Milestone

I am so happy to announce that we completed 5 years on this blog on June 27, 2009. What a tremendous feeling it is to see this baby that myself and Ganesh hatched grow into a fine sparkling child.  We have now logged a whopping 5,071 comments as of today with 552 posts published.  Compared to last year, we added nearly 2,300 comments in the past 1 year, which is nearly the amount of comments we logged in the previous 4 years combined. The amount of learning that i have received through this blog and the career impact it has had dwarfs the previous 37 years of existence on this planet combined.

My informal surveys amongst the twitterers showed me that blog traffic through RSS is significantly down for the twitterers. I was worried that our blog traffic may have gone down significantly. Fortunately, that is not the case, the traffic pattern seems to be at the same levels when we hit the million page views.  All of these accomplishments would not have been possible without all of you the readers/commenters. Special thanks to commenters –  Subba Muthurangan, Senthil, PK Karthik, Vamsi Poondla, Saraswathi..  

Thank you to all the bloggers specially Abdul Fakhri, Priya Raju, Ganesh Vaideeswaran who have written some fantastic posts in the past 1 year. Hopefully, our not so active bloggers Sreedhar, Sujatha, Sultana, Sibu will blog more this year.  I am also happy to announce that Kumaran Anandan has expressed an interest in contributing to this blog. We look forward to his posts. 

Special Thanks to John Keegan and the Pressharbor team who do a fantastic job of hosting this blog.

Career Milestone

I turned 42 last month and I have been in the midst of making some life changing decisions, in part inspired my Dr. Randy Pausch . After 21 years in the industry, and 14 years in the current firm, i have taken up a part-time role in the same firm as SVP/Head of Innovation. No words of gratitude are enough to thank my management for allowing me to do this.

During the past 3.5 years, i served as the CKO and had the once in a lifetime opportunity of bringing a breakthrough innovation Cognizant 2.0 to production – thanks to a brilliant idea that  my team mate came up with. The teams that i worked with have some of the best people that i have ever seen. They are definitely going to accomplish bigger and better things. I will of course be watching with delight from a small distance away from them. The affection and kindness that my teams showered on me last month is something that will be seared into my memory. Again, mere words are grossly inadequate to thank everyone. 

What Next

While i continue work part time in my current firm, in the other part of my time, i want to chase some of my dreams. One of them is to help Priya Raju with the social entrepreneurial venture she started recently.  The second one is to work on researching the Indus Valley Civilization. I have joined a local research group – Indus Research Center, which is part of the Roja Muthiah Research Library.  There are some passionate people working in that group. I hope to contribute to the initiative and hopefully see that the Indus Script is deciphered soon.  Please wish me luck, as i pursue something that is so far away from my skillset/educational qualifications/work experience.  

Epilog

This is something i always ask every time i do a celebration post. What else can we do to improve your blogging experience on this blog? Please fire away your comments. 

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Can Michael Jackson ‘beat’ Rudyard Kipling to ‘it’?

OH, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,
Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God’s great Judgment Seat;
But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth,
When two strong men stand face to face, tho’ they come from the ends of the earth!
The Ballad of East and West —- Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936)

Time and again, Kipling’s Ballad of East and West comes to life when people adopt intransigent positions about culture(s). Numerous critics have also taken a pause to look beyond what had been analyzed as Kipling’s prejudice and imperialism. Slowly, it emerges that the East-West realities get replayed not just in the lands of the previously colonized but also in Euro-American societies. This is because significant Afro-Asian migrant populations and their subsequent generations have emerged to challenge issues of race, identity and multiculturalism.

I arrive at this question through the demise of the legendary pop star Michael Jackson. The news of his death was uncannily received in the same manner as the passing away of Princess Diana, Rajiv Gandhi and Benazir Bhutto. Time seemed to stop for a second as the news sunk in globally. While they were all celebrities and some had more in common with the others lives, it is how regardless of one’s own cultural background they felt that they had lost someone they knew very well. Such was the power of the images of these personalities.

Michael Jackson is however distinct among these icons. He was a pop star, musician, dancer and composer, had millions of fans across nations and continents, truly a trans-national following. Jackson’s performances have been aped reverentially by artists across the world including India. Numerous members of the Indian film fraternity paid tribute to the departed artist. In the global adulation that followed his death, how do we sift what Kipling had referred to as the East-West conundrum?

While several from the East did actually sit up and take note of the star’s passing away, in his lifetime they frowned upon his music. It was not ‘ours’ they argued! These are several whom one would term otherwise ‘broad-minded’ people who take objection to people from the ‘East’ taking an interest in ‘Western pop/rock’ music. I have come across some instances myself when a compatriot in a worried tone asked me ‘how can you listen to Madonna?’ I beg your pardon. What is the problem in listening to Madonna? In my compatriot’s analysis, her kind of music was not part of Indian culture. Since his origins were more in north India, he preferred any variant of Hindustani sangeet or even classical Hindi film music. Pass! But Madonna had failed in his perception!

Likewise, I was with another colleague listening to the song ‘American Pie’, the cover version sung by Madonna. My colleague shook her head rather disapprovingly. Her judgement was that ‘there was nothing in this music!’ The inference was that this is indeed inferior music compared to our classical musical traditions. This time the colleague was from the south and she too measured ‘American Pie’ against our Carnatic musical traditions. Madonna had failed again in her perception.

I tried to figure out the reasons for my colleagues distancing themselves from Madonna. First of all, it could be that she is a ‘Western’ icon. Second the type of music. It was clear that my colleagues were unimpressed with the music. The very manner and tradition of western pop seemed to be wrong. Indian classical traditions had an aura of almost religious respectability whereas these pop songs were rebellious to say the least, if not even castigated as downright “vulgar” in some way, at least sometimes their video versions.
I differ with both my colleagues. How can you not lend a ear, even in passing, to numbers such as “Like a Prayer’, ‘Papa don’t Preach’, ‘Evita’ ? How can I not be moved, for instance, by Michael Jacksons  We are the World song written for famine relief in Africa? Did not dozens among our generations grow up on, to name a few,  ‘Boney M’, ‘Abba’, ‘Pink floyd’ and ‘Dire Straits’? Is there no ‘sound of music’ in them?

Do we need the fine data or the historical weight of the classical musical compositions to appreciate music? Is it not just the discerning ear and the appeal of the music to the heart and mind that makes for a catchy number? Tastes indeed differ but I refuse to be snobbish about someone else’s popular music traditions. As a friend described, what my colleagues missed noting was that both music (and dance) are universal languages and both classical and popular genres can help build bridges. Even within the Indian pop music scene there have been several cross-overs where classical musicians have rendered some very popular hits.
I have the greatest adoration for our cultural traditions. Our musical heritage (both classical and popular) is a source of inspiration. All I know is that what is different from my very own or what one may call ‘their very own’ does have some value. Perhaps great value. Each tradition, Each culture and Each performer/performance bring something unique to us. I suggest that we own that up. We do so in such a manner that people are ever in doubt about Kipling’s lines and perhaps he always gets disproved.

Perhaps the development of Indi-pop, re-mixes and numerous such variants both in India and the Indian diaspora is the answer to Kipling’s challenge. Besides the jazz-yatra’s, there have been numerous attempts at fusion music between the homeland and its diasporic population, a form of reverse export to the Euro-Americas. Take, for example, the attempt of the South Asian migrant populations in Britain in the form of the ‘Asian Underground‘ to blend elements of western dance music and the traditional music of their home countries.  As a result of their efforts, South Asian music began to influence the UK’s pop mainstream. So, music is like a mighty river flowing both east and west! ***

Again, several are scandalized at the very mention of ‘re-mix’ music as to what it seems to have done to the original but is that not how ‘tradition’ lives on as fusion and synthesis of diverse strands from multiple imports/sources of origin. It ultimately boils down to the listeners choice but lets not narrow down those choices in the name of our tradition, culture and heritage. Precisely because these have been very absorbent and all-encompassing and richer for it. Its not the exclusion of musical traditions that we need to think of but their ‘complimentarity.’ For each tradition has its time, place and meaning.
Michael Jackson’s memory will continue to live on. His music will inspire generations of youth to come. It will cross national, religious, racial and several other cultural boundaries. How we respond to it is a matter of choice? In uniting the world through his music, MJ has thrown the gauntlet at Kipling .

If we see ourselves as throwing open the catalogue of world music to our young ones with a deep knowledge of our classical/pop traditions, they will grow with the knowledge of the choices available and the fundamental oneness of melody as that of human creation. Alternately, they will grow up as closed minds confirming what Kipling has charted out. I for one am for the former course. The floor is open. Lets turn on the music and the dance begin. R. I.  P. MJ !
– – –

*** Some interesting readings:

The dawn of Indian music in the West[music]: Bhairavi
by Peter Lavezzoli
(New York: Continuum, 2006)

Indian music and the West
by Gerry Farrell
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997)

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Does friendship still have any value in the New Millennium?

As someone who has grown up amongst a wide variety of friends, I was taken aback when a friend told me recently that it is increasingly becoming rare when you can have a conversation for conversation’s sake with someone even for a full hour. The implication in that moanful statement was that people have lost interest in relating to one another. That people don’t know or are no longer comfortable in handling relationships! Gone are the days when people enjoyed companionship purely for the sake of it. Now the new mantra was having fun however defined but having fun did not necessarily mean that people were building relationships. I wondered if this is a kind of cynical position or are truly healthy human relations becoming rarefied.

One frequent thought that people drop in response to friendships is that there is just no time. The pace of life, commuting, demands of work and family all have added to a situation where there is no time remaining for keeping in touch with friends. Hence, some relationships get dropped by the wayside. This is often the story of several women who when asked how many school or college friends they kept in touch with, many would not be able to count even one among them. The reason given is once they leave the educational system they get married and all attention, time and energies gets focused on the newer unit that they are part of after marriage. This is obviously no one’s fault but the social structures that men and women are part of, say marriage, elicit such responses from them.

But I am still left with a nagging feeling. It is not all about time is it? One of the factors that I have often heard is that friends whose social status or economic strata changes over a period of time lose touch faster than anything else. A newer unsaid dimension even if they don’t speak about it has entered the picture. The relative difference that has emerged in the material existence of the two friends who have grown together causes some tension. This perceived difference in status tends to diminish the frequency of contact between those who were earlier friends if not root out the relationship completely. Interestingly, factors like caste or race or language or religion or ethnicity tend to be overridden in the early days of the friendship and remain overwhelmed in relationships but class can be an intruder.

What next? We have noted time, gender and class as variables that affect friendships. Workplace/collegiate relations sometimes metamorphose into healthy friendships. This is a larger debate by itself but like class there is a need for caution if the levels of hierarchy of the friends are different. Whether we like it not, hierarchy in organizational contexts does play a role. Likewise can men and women be just friends as epitomized in the classic film ‘When Harry met Sally’? Again, there are ground rules for such relationships and they are very much possible.

Why is friendship important? What is hot about people being just friends? Clearly, these are the only ties that are not bound by blood or primordial sentiments like caste or race or ethnicity or religion or nationality, kinds of compartments within which we work in for most part of our lives. A friend is family indeed but just that s/he is not connected to you through blood ties. Our children are taught in their proverb/phrase books ‘A friend in need is a friend indeed.’ Whenever we are stuck with some issue or problem that we are unable to resolve by ourselves, we immediately think of a friend who can address this for us. Such is the supporting function of friends. But as stated at the very outset, it neither begins nor stops there.

Friendship is about another human presence. It is about the no-holds barred space which we long for in life but find it is all divided up in silos. One can speak one’s heart and mind to a friend and be accepted for who you are as you are. It is commonplace to hear people say in a marital context, “Ah, at last, you have found your SOUL-MATE.” Why the connectivity between ‘souls’ gets confined to marriage or they are only a prerogative of marriage is anyone’s guess? This could possibly be because of a social anxiety that marriage should be accorded the highest form of friendship. This is true but yet presents an incomplete picture because individuals define social spaces as they deem fit. In the process of evolving as a person, the insight of our friends about us are a source of nurture and criticism.

One pre-condition to friendship is that there are synergies between the two people or mutuality of perception and association. Several efforts are wasted when there is a complete difference between the perceptions of the two people regarding what constitutes their friendship and people are then forced to move on in life. Regardless of the type of friendship, trust is a critical factor which affects whether the friendship would last a lifetime or just one of those passing episodes of life.

Among the most important concerns is the deployment or claims or use of the term ‘friend’ in conversations. Numerous are the cross-cultural examples of pub-mates where one of them does not get invited to say the other’s wedding and is shocked, “ I thought that I was his friend.” Sure but did the latter take the trouble to decipher in what sense the term ‘friend’ was used? Don’t we all work with at least three gradations of social interaction? These are acquaintances, colleagues and friends. Acquaintences are those whom you meet on the street or in the corridor at work place; colleagues whom you spend the most part of 8 to 10 hours every week day and friends are those whom we have been talking about.

Popular media and history are replete with examples and references to friendships. Who can forget the mid-1970s classic Hindi film Sholay that celebrated friendship with the famous song ‘Yeh dosti !’ However, in the final analysis, friendship is an aesthetic almost spiritual principle. It is about the divine, sacred and beautiful in earthen human relationships. It is about the lived experience of bonding between people on the principle of common humanity. It is an idea that challenges the narrow-minded spaces that caste or race or religion or ethnicity or even class breed often in society.

May friendships win!

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A Mongrel’s Tale

Have you heard of the Liger? Its the unnatural hybrid of a Lion & a Tigress. The offspring of such a union have agonizing moments of self-doubt & identity crisis. For you see, Tigers are solitary creatures. They are territorial & come together only for mating & raising the young. But, Lions live together, in a Pride. Lionesses within a Pride celebrate Sisterhood, by helping each other rear their young. And a Ligress is torn between its need to be aloof & its desire for gregariousness.

My sympathies are with the Liger, I sort of understand what it goes through. My father is reserved & laid-back, with unbridled curiosity & a scientific temper. He’s a curious admixture of serenity &  irascibility. His flashes of insight are all the more stunning because, he appears stupendously unreactive – a pensive man lost in his thoughts. My mother on the other hand, is a hard-nosed administrator & a chess champion. She has scant need for philosophy, she yawns when a stunning insight is cracked open & presented to her. She has ice in her veins & never flips. Not even when the house is on fire.

I pretty much got both their traits. I’m very peaceful when I write a well-researched post, fiction or book. I’m in my element but, I’m not happy. Peace, Aye. Happiness, Nay. Because simultaneously, I’m conflicted that I’m not “running” something. There are so many things that need to be done, I tell myself. How can I explore or research? So I write a book – Big deal! Isn’t fixing something – anything, however trivial – a worthwhile contribution? Hence, a better use of my time?

And the struggle goes on. One would think I’ll be in Hog Heaven when I’m managing a venture. I’m terribly giddy when I control not just the outcome, but the approach. But, am I peaceful? Outcome orientation is stressful, it takes a lot from you.

A good friend once told me that an ideal profession is one that recharges you. See, in whatever we do, there’s Give & Take. If you perennially give a bit of yourself to your profession & it seldom energizes you – doesn’t make you jump out of bed everyday in anticipation of meeting that day’s challenges – you’ll simply burn out. If on the other hand, your job taps into your pleasure circuit, but  if you don’t offer enough to the world – you may feel like a petty thief, caught with your hand in the till.

Unfortunately, most professions don’t balance Give & Take. For what energizes each of us & when we feel productive are highly subjective & open to debate. I think when there’s a happy medium, a job becomes addictive.

Pardon the preamble, I had to meander through that to explain why I haven’t written often enough in this delightful BLOG. I started a business – a social venture & a start-up – a few months back & that’s keeping me beyond busy. I was ecstatic when I wrote about Sri Lanka, but all the while, I had a gnawing feeling that I wasn’t doing my bit for the society. And invariably, “doing my bit” means – you guessed it – being my own boss & running a business.

You could say that’s because I couldn’t leave well enough alone. But I know that my inner Liger shook its mangy, flea-ridden mane. I’m trying to strike a balance, to find mental energy for both my passions. Its difficult, makes me want to gnash my teeth ferociously, but it sure makes life lively. So, please bear with my erratic writing habits while I lasso the beasts.

“You know what your problem is?” asked a relative, during a family event. Oh, dear Sainted Baptist, Here it Comes, I thought. Such questions put me on my guard, I raise my armor. “Surely, you won’t be angry, Eh? Can I take some liberty with you?”. You may not, I thought. I unsheathed my Light Saber, ready to lash out if needed. After some more circumlocution, the woman blurted out – “You think too much, that’s your problem. You know, just do it!”. She looked up expectantly, like a Jack Russell Terrier might, after performing a nifty trick. I almost patted her head.

I never thought bungling one’s way through life, blind as a bat, oblivious of obstacles, would bring one any great joy. Ignorance maybe Bliss, but that’s not what I would call a tempting option. Sure, there are confused people, who buckle down, thanks to Analysis Paralysis. Confusion & Conflict – Ain’t the same.

Observing our mental dynamics non-judgmentally will not necessarily hobble our functioning. Even in Quantum Mechanics, the Observer Effect doesn’t stall progress, it merely alters the state or position of the particle. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, in my opinion.

I once read that a child gets its father’s gums & its mother’s teeth – or it could be the other way round, I’m not sure. You could say that’s a fair division of genes between your progenitors. But that sure makes life complicated: When life hands us our genes, we need to figure out how to make the disparate, dissimilar parts work – not at cross purposes, chewing each other off – but synchronously, so that we are not constantly bickering with ourselves. I’m working on finding that elusive balance. But in the meantime, I have to sign off. The inner Lion is about to chomp the inner Tiger’s tail, for taking the Sunday off, for – writing.