A blog a day (#4)

 SUCCESS

I had an interesting experience a few years ago when I was teaching Six Sigma course for MBA students in an institution near Bangalore. The course was for all students in the initial years, but later it was made a core course only for students specializing in Operations Management. This worked fine for me since it would be easier to explain the concepts of Six Sigma for a homogenous group which comprised almost entirely of engineers. So I attempted  a couple of things for the first time in my teaching career. I started by asking the students to write down their expectations (in terms of learning) from the course. Since almost all had a basic idea of Six Sigma, they could write what they expected to learn. I collected their sheets of paper and made an effort to redesign certain elements of the course and my presentation to satisfy most of the expectations that the students had mentioned. The result was satisfactory for me and at the end of the program, I returned the sheets to the individual students and asked them to fill up the course feedback form based on how effectively their individual expectations had been met. I was unanimously rated excellent by all students. Among my "successes"!

The same batch asked some interesting questions on professional life, career choices, corporate life, etc that they would ask me since I had established quite a rapport during the program. Towards the end of the program, there was a query on "Success" and what I thought were some attributes of someone being called "Successful". That was an interesting question and I hadn't been asked such a question earlier in my training career. I had to think on my feet and I came up with a small exercise that I thought could help me in collecting my thoughts and at the same time making the students participate in our "collective definition of success".

I asked the students themselves to write down 3-4 points on what they wanted to be after 10 years or so. I also told them there is no need to be exact here. Just write down what you want to achieve. They took about 15-20 minutes to write down. I asked each of them to read that aloud in class and keep that sheet as a guide for them for the future. I also told them that they are free to expand or edit their goals as they progress.

Having done that, the question of how to know if one is successful, still remained unanswered, though I suspect a few smart guys had already realized where I was going with all this!  I concluded by saying that each person assesses his/her own achievement with respect to the goals they set for themselves. If they find out that they have achieved their goal in the timeline they set for those goals, they can feel that they are "successful". The common meaning is generally what OTHERS THINK OF YOU, not how you assess yourself. My contention was that success should be a self assessment measure rather than a measure of others about us since each person with whom we interact would superimpose their definition of success on us and we would be confused.

A blog a day (#3)

BEDTIME STORIES

How do you put kids to sleep? When they are infants, a softly sung lullaby would do the job. My wife used to invent lyrics for the lullabies and put them to sleep. My children were never difficult and would sleep without much effort, barring the occasions when they were unwell.

My singing abilities are 1 on a scale of 1-10 with 10 being the best singer ever! Being so "notes-challenged", I didn't dare frighten my kids with my lullabies.

My work started when my children had learnt to speak and understand sentences. That was the time I showed what my capabilities were. I had a store of good stories that I had read, a good imagination to distort (humorously) some of them to entertain the kids, and a reasonably good vocabulary to put my thoughts to words. So I had a good time regaling my children with bedtime stories.

A favourite of mine was a story titled "Paati and the apple tree" (Paati in tamil is grandmother). It is a story of how an old lady (grandmother) who lived alone in a house with a garden and an apple tree outwitted a fox which would steal apples from her tree. I had told the story to my children from the book/comic book that we had bought and that was nice, but what was funnier was that I used to embellish the tale with my own additions - grandma boiling milk and watching and counting the apples, grandma distributing the fruit to her visitors from the village, etc. There was always something new; and on occasions my children would try and correct my story. The funniest twist to the story that is  remembered by my children till now is the reversal of roles. The story that I told was titled "Apple and the paati tree". So they imagined many grandmas hanging as fruit from the tree and the Apple living in the house. Unfortunately such humorous twists to the story resulted in my kids never sleeping while I told the story. They would be laughing and wanting more of the story! 

My wife had a story too. That was a story of "Atree rishi and his wife Anusuya". Now that story my wife told them in the same way that she had read, except to modify some elements of the story to make them understand the tale. The story was repetitive and to this day my sons say that they don't know how the story ended, since they were asleep by the time half the story had been told. 

Bedtime stories should be repetitive and boring! That puts kids to sleep quickly.

A blog a day (#2)

BACK TO CHENNAI

24-Feb-2020

As we prepare ourselves to shift bag and baggage to our own flat in Chennai tomorrow, I look forward to the stay in Chennai again after a gap of little more than 24 years. I left Chennai for Bangalore in the winter of 1995 after getting a job there. My family joined me in the summer of 1996. Two of my three sons have left the shores of India for studies/work and aren't likely to return to India to settle down. Elder son doesn't want to leave Bangalore and has refused to come to Chennai with us, instead preferring to live alone in Bangalore. My first stint in Bangalore was in 1977 when I was just 20 and came to this city to do my undergraduate studies in IISc. Twenty years later when I came to Bangalore to take up an employment, there were significant changes in the city. Traffic was insane even then, more due to the absence of any peripheral roads, and the lack of any proper and punctual city transport infrastructure. Mekhri circle would be a huge choke point back in the mid 90's and the construction and opening of the grade separator there eased the traffic significantly. The city grew and with it grew the number of relatives from my side as well as my wife's. So we had a few families to visit often, though the distance and traffic made us reduce those visits over the years.

I will be carrying a lot of memories with me and it will take some time to adjust to the new surroundings and neighbours as we settle in. 

UPDATED ON 24-Nov-2020

An update after 9 months (to the date). I wrote that down and after coming over to Chennai forgot all about it. Forgot that I blog, forgot that discipline to do a meaningful task is important, forgot having a schedule and sticking to it!

Within a month of moving in and just as we thought we would start moving around Chennai to visit our relatives and friends, the government imposed a lockdown due to the Covid 19. Getting out of the house was a no-no for the first three to four months and the slowly I started going for my morning walks nearby. Travelling more than a few kilometers has been absent and being stuck within the four walls has been rather a different experience for me and my wife. As I remarked to a few friends of mine, this is probably the longest duration that we (my wife and I) have been stuck in each other's presence!

What are my learnings from the lockdown and "staying-in" will be in a future blog.

But we are in the midst of a cyclonic storm ⛆ that is likely to cross the coast of TN (close to Chennai) within a day as per forecast. Hope the 2015 rainfall is not repeated. 🙏

A blog a day (#1)

DOING NOTHING

My blog writing has never been a regular affair. While doing nothing today, I was thinking why not be disciplined enough for a few minutes a day and create a blog a day for the next 100 days. Guys! That is the target I have set for myself. Inspired by my two nieces who have their own writings and have gone on for many days with great regularity. If they can do it, why not me? That is the thought that assailed me today while doing nothing. Yes, nothing. 

What is doing nothing? Is that even possible? Doing nothing isn't even sitting in front of the TV, meditating or lying down, since all these are acts and by definition, if we are doing any of these, we are actually doing something. Not nothing.

To my limited intelligence, I will define "Doing Nothing" as an act of not doing anything productive. So it could be binge-watching the fifth episode of a web-series, or watching two movies on TV back to back without concentrating on the task.

I may choose some topic, incident, or anything that I think will make some sense and write a few words every day for the next 100 days and if I can do it for a 100 days, my next target may be 250 days! I have never been disciplined in my life and set out to accomplish anything to a target. So this is going to be a first for me.

WISH ME LUCK!

See you tomorrow with one more blog!

Webseries

August 2019

I have studiously kept away from watching all the mega-serials on TV for the last many years; and I don't think I have missed anything! I have a like for movies - Hindi, Tamil, and English. I occasionally have watched other international films - but mostly I avoid them unless they are acclaimed ones with a good storyline.

Well, after returning to Bangalore form Muscat last year, I have been besieged by my sons to watch webseries - and they insisted I start with "Breaking Bad" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breaking_Bad). Well after much persuasion I decided to "bite the bullet" as they say and to motivate me, Anirudh, my elder son gave me company. He would insist I watch a couple of episodes each day. And so my tryst with webseries began. I loved the series and within about a month finished watching all seasons and all episodes.

Next, as they say, is history. I have since watched Chernobyl (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_(miniseries)) and then came a few Indian webseries (Criminal Justice, Hostages, Breathe). While watching the last named one, my friend suggested I watch "Money Heist" - a spanish webseries about robbery in a bank. Now I am getting interested in these. I hardly watch movies and instead think that the future of storytelling on TV is going to be miniseries.

Memories

We have been having a series of discussions at home between me, my wife and sons regarding what I can remember and recount of my memories of my childhood and college life; life in Bangalore during the 70's and other associated things. Yesterday evening my wife while reading the book "Idols" by Sunil Gavaskar asked me if I remember my day at Chepauk in 1975 on Pongal day when G R Viswanath scored that memorable 97* against the mighty West Indies.

Well, it is difficult to acknowledge but the fact is that my memories are limited to only a few events in a particular chain of events. Like if one were to ask me to recount what my memories were of the day when India famously declared war on East Pakistan and the about two weeks' of battle in the Eastern and Western fronts, I would hesitate to say that my memories are of a few random events viz the blackouts and we affixing black paper on windows, the occasional jeep with siren warning us to switch off all lights, the news broadcast over radio that was played over the school playground, and the motorcade near our school welcoming the Army General, Lt. Gen Aurora! Barring that, other memories are probably residing in some dark niche.

The 1975 historic innings of GRV is again of a few random "scenes" and not a sequence of events like a movie. No. And I feel sorry for myself that I am unable to remember various events in my early life. I remember vividly the resounding applause whenever Bedi and later Chandrasekhar stoutly defended a ball or two from the WI pacers thereby giving a few additional deliveries to GRV to score runs. It was a memorable day for me to watch a test match for the very first time courtesy my relative who gifted me the day's pass to watch the match. However, I couldn't remember each and every incident from the day. How sad!

There have been other memorable days in my life - other than the two I have mentioned above. But again, those are only a few random incidents; nothing of any substantive value. Well, the upside here is that my brain is free of any clogs and can keep accumulating more such random memories throughout my lifetime rather than remembering terrabytes of information of a random or memorable day!

Most famous victory

07-Jan-2018: India beats Australia in the Test series down under 2-1 with the fourth test at Sydney washed out. Unprecedented victory by Virat Kohli and his team-mates.

I heard press reports and saw a couple of videos of press interviews of Kohli and Ravi Shastri, the team coach, on the victory and not only they, but also most of the ex-cricketers and commentators mention that this victory is the greatest by any Indian team in history.

While I commend the team and the support staff for this famous victory and for the way the team dominated in all the tests - except for Perth where the Australian bowlers gave back what their batsmen received in the other test matches.

My mind goes back to 1971 - India in West Indies and India in England. Both West Indies and England were superior teams in relative terms than the Indian team then.

My mind goes back to 1983 - Cricket World Cup in England. Australia, West Indies, and England were far superior to the Indian side then.

So which series victory was superior in the history of Indian cricket?

We are the number one test team in the world now - as per ICC rankings. So we are expected to win. India in 1971 and 1983 were nowhere near the pinnacle of test rankings or ODI rankings (though there were no rankings then). India wasn't expected to win those series, but win they did.

So which team performed better? You decide.