There is something more to life than, water bottles!!!!!

48 degree temperature, 2’o clock in the afternoon, the sun is scorching, blazing and the heat is anything but bearable.

There is a tall multi-storey building being built at one of the prime locations of Ahmedabad. In that locality there is an office where a friend goes to work.

On one afternoon when he was going to the office, he saw a boy. The boy was barely 6 to 7 years old. The boy was carrying water for her mother who was working as a labour in the building that was being constructed.

My friend thought that it was too much of a load for the kid to carry two big water bottles at a time, hence he tried to help him saying “let me take one for you” the boy started crying. It was only later that my friend realized that the boy was crying because usually people used to snatch away the water bottles brought by the kid.

He further noticed that people even did not allow that boy to use a lift. So much courteous behaviour towards a kid in a compound of such corporate area!!!!

He could not stand this; he took the boy assuring him that he would safely take him up to his mom. He went into the lift. Some people scorned at him for bringing in a dirty looking kid in their neat lift. Nobody spoke anything though, while getting out, my friend broke the silence “he should know that there is something more to life than just saving one’s water bottles from goons”!!!

[1] Based on a true story, shared by a friend working as a tax consultant at big firm

TOGETHERNESS

Togetherness

Alone I can't change the world
Alone I can't find my way
Alone I can't be remembered
Alone I can't build an empire
Alone I can't be admired
Alone I can't end hunger
Alone I can't be the best man I can be
But together we can.

-Kholekile Monakal

The present article borrows the last words of the poem, “together we can”; and explores the importance of togetherness in the various events and learning of our lives. We would also try and isolate a few important things that may help us fare well when we work together.

Presentations! This exercise of our college is the best way to learn the importance of togetherness. Some of the readers already know that, while what you do individually is important but it is also important that the whole group works well. Often it seems difficult to find right coordination in the beginning when so many strangers are put to work on a common goal. Gradually as the time passes those strangers become friends and that is the time when the goal of the exercise is nearly served! Someone does the editing of all the slides, some searches for matter, some formats the slides, some arranges for speakers, some keeps the time of the whole presentation and some tries to think of intelligent answers to possible questions, when all the things work in this synchronized manner the learning and the quality of the presentations are at their sublime. (Best)

Working together would be perhaps all the more important when we finish our education and enter a job or business or any other work for that matter. The very basis of modern day business lies in the division of labour. And ability to work in a team comprising different people is a precondition to the successful division of labour.

Tempted to take the idea of “togetherness” a step higher, I would like to ask you a question. Do you think that any large scale movement, such as our freedom struggle or end of Apartheid or movements to reduce carbon footprints can ever be a success if millions of people were not to be together?

Same way the problems of the present time like terrorism, global warming, economic recession and dire disparity in distribution of resources will also not end unless we all come together to address them.

In all of the above examples the common thing is that people have united or will hopefully unite to achieve an objective. Unity may not always be easy to attain, but I am sure that effort to attain some of the following things will help us stay together on many important missions in time to come.

o Courage and compassion to support others

o Ability to sacrifice personal interest toward the general interest

o Understanding of the bigger picture

o Tolerance towards different opinions

o Commitment to the objective

Just as there are many problems in the world, there are many possible solutions as well. However in all those possible solutions we need to put the integrated effort. Clearly, in future the ability to work together will determine the quality of our lives. I am committed take the quality of our lives on a higher plain. Are you?

And you thought it affects my life????

• · We think that losing one’s sight and hearing capacity makes one vulnerable but Helen Keller shows it is not like that.
• · We think that having pancreatic cancer was the worst blow of destiny to a man, but Steve Jobs shows it is not like that.
• · We think that it is that an athlete, who comes back after cancer, cannot perhaps play his sport anymore, well Lance Armstrong shows it is not like that.
• · Losing everything in a natural disaster means we have been hit hardest by god, but so many survivors of such brutal blows show us that it is not like that.
• · We thought that being removed disgracefully from captaincy and thrown out of team with reprimand meant an end of a sportsman’s career, but Sourav Ganguly shows us it is not like that.

So many examples are around us. It is easy to neglect them labelling them as an outlier case. What is difficult yet important for us to learn is that in all these conditions individuals faced situations which seemed, as bad as- if not worse than- death. Yet they continued, went on with force, fun and faith.

In the end, what seemed insurmountable once was only a small halt in a great journey.

Most of our problems that we face, do not really affect our life as significantly as we think they do. Think about it, believe it.

Foreign language Teacher

He was a passionate teacher; this could be proven from the fact that even though he was appointed on just temporary basis he used to stay back in the library to help children in their learning. He taught French to the students who were primarily supposed to learn law. To these legal eagles, this subject was merely peripheral.

At best students were insouciant to learning French and at worst; they were unwilling, at times even ridiculing him for his efforts. Yet he kept going on in his efforts to teach him this language he so much loved.

One day a little more sensitive student came to him and told, “Sir, your efforts are good but you know, this class is not made up of students willing to learn this language.” He paused to judge his reaction but got none, he continued “we just want to pass this subject and move on, as it is in a three months course one can’t learn a foreign language.” He paused again, and then continued, “I hope you understand that sir”.

“I am happy that you care for me kid,” He replied with a smile. “But let me assure you son, I know it from the day we began classes, I also know that you people know that I cannot fail you in this paper. However I appreciate your kindness, for reminding me not to expect anything but ignorance from this class. Thanks”

Their conversation ended there, both went on their own ways. It seemed that the student was feeling some sort of discomfort as he saw that the class was not even respecting the efforts that the foreign language teacher was putting in. He respected him, and wanted to express it in the behaviour towards him too, but was not being able to do so. Maybe because he was not courageous enough to stand out as odd in class.

Throughout the whole course he continued to feel that discomfort, part of that perhaps stem from the fact that his father was also a teacher, teaching a foreign language to students in some other town.

The course ended, even the year ended, but the boy could never convey the gratitude and respect, he had for that teacher. Neither did the teacher think it fit to revert to that one odd kid.

I at times wonder how inflexible and cruel can our systems be to the sensitivities of human emotions???

Pillars of professionalism

Power, position, pay package, profitability and of course profile………….

“You are what you do” is a famous statement in most widely (wrongly) quoted book, “the art of war”. I have heard this statement mostly from professors teaching competition and marketing strategies. Certainly B-Schools have their environment which compels you to believe and think only on the lines of position, profile, authority, business sense, profitability, pay package, brand name and of course power.

The question we often forget to ask all the while we are in school is that all there is to one’s existence?

Is there no other dimension to our identity? Why we always tend to classify everyone on only these lines, which we are taught to be the pillars of professionalism.

Even these pillars are very tenuous; they exclude some of the very basic and essential characteristics.

This process of commoditizing individuals, in certain set of characteristics, categories and classes is very dangerous. It prevents us from looking at those things which are beyond MBA. Things like basic goodness, honesty, ability to sacrifice, courage to blow a whistle etc.

There are so many day to day instances where we need not be super humans, but only simple individuals, but alas, simplicity is being fast rubbed off from our minds and hearts…..!!!

Turgid Truth

"The great source of both the misery and disorders of human life, seems to arise from over-rating the difference between one permanent situation and another... some of these situations may, no doubt, deserve to be preferred to others, but none of them can deserve to be pursued with that passionate ardour which drives us to violate the rules either of prudence or of justice, or to corrupt the future tranquillity of our minds, either by shame from the remembrance of our own folly, or by remorse from the horror of our own injustice."

Adam Smith
"Turgid Truth", Theory of Moral Sentiments, 1759

An afterthought on relationships...... some time back this was a note in my diary, I indeed was not wrong!!

On my recent trip I met a lot of my friends telling me that they were now “committed”. This made me feel odd at first. “I always thought you were focused more on career” was the reaction from me when one of my friends came to meet me with his (girl) friend. He gave me a stern look for this one!

Honestly speaking I was wonderstruck to find some of my friends all of a sudden declaring so big news that too with such high speed! At the same time I also felt a little ashamed at being agonizingly slow in that race to relationships!!!!

On my bus trip to my hometown Bhavnagar, from Ahmedabad, I brooded over this issue a little, just to ensure if I was the only one to be the last among all the runners. To my distress, I was certainly alone. Not only was I alone, people whom I wrote off as dumb and un-cool, also were ahead of me!!!! I felt a jolt. Little while later, a thought dawned onto me.

Why not being in a relationship is taken to be as a stigmatic or shameful thing? Like many other things, relationships are also possessions. Some have it, some may not have it. I felt the whole issue of being committed is slightly overrated.

While I agree that finding a match for oneself is certainly a sign of social guts and that an achievement of it is certainly something one would like to share with/ express to the entire world. However I believe that such a communication should never be a driving force of any relationship.

If it is, than that relationship is nothing more than a marketing gimmick, of a very cheap kind!!!!