M4

I’m a consultant, a ‘con’sultant. One of the group of tens of thousands of people in tens of organizations who claim to be masters in their trade, who claim to know about running companies better than the people who run companies, though many consultants have never run a real company- let alone build one. Well, that’s the charm of it all- you get to tell people how to mind their business! Come on, you can’t deny it’s fun! Ever taught a little kid how to hold a cricket bat? Imagine now that little kid is a Sachin in the making. And imagine the teacher being someone like me whose knowledge of cricket ends with ‘an over has 6 balls, and they use just 1 ball really to bowl all 6 times’. Yeah, that ironic! Now that we got that out of the way, here’s what we do in a simple sentence: “we ‘guide’, ‘mentor’, ‘lead’ the legacy of yesterdays’ great firms to the bright dawn of the tomorrows” (Please don’t tell my boss I put it in 1 sentence, he’d treat anything shorter than a full pres...

Recently, I have been working on a consulting engagement for a Disaster Management Agency of one of the first-world nations; there had been reports of a fraud in flood insurance claims disbursal. While my job involved figuring out how to predict and avoid such a mess in the future, the task also carries digging into the past and identifying the events that led to the current state of affairs, so to say. As I ploughed through transcripts of thousands of conversations, I realized how vastly different the concepts of “devastation” and “homelessness” are between the people of that mighty nation versus the perceptions of our own compatriots here in India. People there seek government grants and insurance claims (funded by taxpayer money) to repair the wall paint in their basements and to replace consumer electronic appliances- clothes driers, room heaters et al.- that have been damaged in a flood. For a large part, the rest of their homes, the superstructure, the rooms and the res...

“Who smokes beedis these days!?” said my friend. “Quite a lot of people that can’t afford cigarettes…” I replied automatically. We were in a corner booth at a quaint, charming place called Koshy’s early this morning. This place is quite popular with the locals for its English breakfast, but I noticed how much the place looked like your typical eatery scene from the pages of an a British novel. It was quite early in the morning and we barely beat the church-crowd by just a few minutes to get a seat in this deli. On this occasion, that strong beedi smell that intruded our senses came from a few night watchmen we just passed, catching up during their morning tea breaks. As we made a quick arithmetic, we realized that those watchmen must be making no more than 4000 bucks a month and probably had quite a large family to fend for. A simple pack of cigarettes (at 200 bucks) is almost 5% of their monthly wage and it was obviously a luxury they can’t afford. Now, I could go on givin...

That’s the secret- Letting go… More of the small/trivial things you let go and the sooner you do it, more will be the peace you’ll have and you’ll have it sooner too. It is true that these smaller things take up little spells of our time, effort and mind space. Also true is the fact that we usually tangle ourselves in a gazillion of these small things- day in, day out- and they add up. Ask yourself, when was the last time your mind was empty- utterly, totally empty- of all thoughts. Sitting quietly on a park bench, our mind goes for a jog alongside all the people strolling in the park- he’s fat, she looks good in the sun, look at that cute kid, god how I wish that stupid bird would shut up and so on. When you are not too occupied with your head inside your smartphone, that is. And for the hyper-sensitive, attention-deficit youngsters of today (of which I am one myself), it takes very little to push them over the tolerance threshold- dusty roads, vague signboards, faulty g...

Says everyone, but I’m sure nobody- not one- means it, ever. No matter what they say about themselves, everyone has a huge bloated ego and when you say something to their face that they is contrary to their beliefs, it is certain that they’ll fight tooth and nail to refute it. Hence the prevalent use of terms like ‘with all due respect’, ‘no offense’, ‘with due consideration’ etc. intended to ameliorate the situation. Ironically though, when people use these terms, they seldom mean it and that leads to hilarious circumstances sometimes- hilarious to the audience, I mean. These situations are far from hilarious to the speaker and to the recipient; the recipient will take offense, without exception and the speaker will have many an indignant person to deal with. So the next time you tell your boss something that starts like this- “with all due respect sir…”- take my seasoned word that it doesn’t matter at all what you say after the phrase. That time you say ‘no offense…” to you...

Recently, I’ve moved to a new city. Being just out of college, all friends from before moved to different cities for work. So, I just happened to have moved into a new circle of friends. And things changed. These are loud, totally random and unpredictable, binge eat and drink like a fish; their apartment is a pseudo dump. But over the past few months, I liked hanging out with them- it’s easy, natural and somehow I felt at home there with them. That was totally unexpected for me- I mean, this is not the ‘me’ I knew. So, that got me thinking- have I been keeping bad company before or I didn’t yet know what this new company is doing to me. Here are some things that struck me in retrospect: These guys don’t have facades- no pretences. Doesn’t mean they don’t do stupid stuff or have their privacy. Just that they don’t have anything to hide. We respect one another’s secrets. No patronizing. All of these are elder to me at least by a couple of years. And of course in better job...

So, here I come to this famed hub of technology in southern India. The weather couldn't be more different from the original Silicon Valley- the rains longer, the wind stronger and the nights colder out here. What a welcome! A friend had to leave the city almost as soon as I arrive, tossing all our plans out the window. The universe does have a sick sense of humour. The people-oh, the people! There are so many of them that I began replacing "crowds" with "herds" in all my speech. These herds are so much alike- in shape, size, packaging, labelling, tagging and what not. The whole sight and sound of 'em is so alike that not a day goes by without the song "Little boxes" ringing in my ears. And all these people choose the exact same schedule to travel to and from work- the exact same two hours each in the mornings and the evenings. Either they have a masochistic love for spending several hours a day stuck in traffic or they have that l...