Cost of Misinformation

As I sat this morning to write this blog I was interrupted by a whatsapp message. Of course these days Whatsapp is the way to share your thoughts or forwarded ones with the world. Back when we SMSed, which seems like eons ago but really it's only 20 years old, we had only 145 characters for self expression and used it with great frugality. Messages used to border on being cryptic and sent regularly by those who had one of those unlimited SMS packs!

But there was something back then as well as is today that most people commit in their effort to share messages: sharing misinformation. The cost of a message is only realized in real terms. That means the real cost of sending an SMS is approx Re 1 and the internet pack for a Whatsapp dramatically brings down the cost of each message to nearly 0.12 paise for a whatsapp message of 20KB which is actually quite a large message. What we never account is the notional cost the reader bears of the misinformation. In case he does not verify the information and does go ahead and believe and god forbid promotes it further, the loss of credibility due to the incorrect information maybe damaging to his repute. Like this informational nugget doing the rounds that India is called India because the British shortened the term Independent Nation Declared In August. Now you don't even need a snopes.com or truthorfiction.com to verify this one. Would the British have decided years before our independence when they called the land India that if we ever free this nation we will do so in August?!?

The other grave danger is in actually following the advice given on these messages. Like the childline number 1098. It has been called so many times by people for picking up leftover party food from their homes that they put a message up on the website saying that they do not feed young children and that they are only here to protect the children from abuse and provide counselling to them.

Information truly is power and with every ounce of power comes an ounce of responsibility of using it well. The 3 question test by Aristotle is excellent for this:

Q1. Is the information verified by you to be true?

Q2. Is the information something positive and good for you recipients?

Q3. Is the information useful to to you recipients?

The next generations will remember us not for how we dressed or spoke but for how judicious we were in ensuring we propagated verified, good, useful and true information!

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When You Connect

When was the last time you spoke to someone? You might be wondering what kind of a question is this but I am serious about the question. Speaking is about having a conversation that is two-way and engaging, that is meaningful and heartfelt, that is reflective and forward looking. How often do we have a conversation of such a kind? A conversation that moves you to the core of your being as it inspires the other to act on it. A conversation that opens new doors while getting you closure on the ghosts you face. Really, how often o we have conversations of such a kind?

I said speak because most of us usually talk and talk without listening. We have so much to say that we hardly have time to listen to others. That fuels their reluctance to share any further and we reach a state where we speak without listening.

But one day, a day when you least expect, someone will come along, asking you to listen, waiting to be heard. Someone will move you to empathize without forcing you, inspire you to reach out and help without pushing you to work. And when that day comes, I urge you to just be present, listen in and speak from your heart and you will find a special connection. Then you will find the strength and the grace to speak!

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The Little Things

Talks at the lunch table are so generic and so drifting that one can never guess where a discussion can end once begun. Today was an exception though and I had a feeling that I would know how today's chat was going to conclude.

It was just on of those dates: 26/11 or 26 November, that date when in the year 2008 some terrorists set foot in Mumbai and wreaked havoc in the city for 3 nights before finally being vanquished by the law enforcers and the armed forces! Most people at lunch were recalling the events of that night, some with personal accounts of hearing the gun shots and grenades and witnessing the funerals of friends and loved ones. But my table hit a different angle. We explored why this terror attack created such a dent on the memories of everyone. The discourse one found on the media was that of this being the first attack on the elitist class of India with the targeted sites being The Taj and Oberoi and the posh locales of South Mumbai. But my view is that this was merely coincidental to a greater element within the attack that gripped us all: Time and Face.

Most attacks planned and executed prior to this were covert and caused an instantaneous shockwave in the media. But after the initial blast people would gather the pieces and move with their life. The mangled trains and blown off buses and cabs would be cleared, the blood washed off the streets, so much so that if you passed by the place the next day you would no even know the damage caused.

But the anatomy of this attack was different. Its shockwaves were felt and generated hours after the attack was initiated and this attack was made out in the open. Within hours we had pictures of the terrorists wielding guns at CST and on the streets of Mumbai. It is something we have experienced in the past: be it the IC-814 hijack, the 9/11 attacks, the Bhopal gas tragedy or other such incidents. They may end up claiming lesser or more lives but what terrorizes us is the coverage it gets and thus the mind space it occupies.

And this is true not just of trauma but of the good things that happen in our lives. We have become adept at remembering the high coverage incidents and diluting the smaller incidents of our lives. It is our style of classifying and archiving that helps us survive. And that's where I have a problem with it: it merely helps us survive and not live to the fullest extent of our happiness and joy. Which is sad because it is the sum of those little days that made you you! Just as it was the sum of that made us aware of the terror around us. But it took an incident like 26/11 to make a choice: to be terrorized or to stand up and be counted in the endeavour to end terrorism. And that is when we decide what gets more time and face!

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Factorial Anniversary

My wife just told me this morning that were celebrating our 6! anniversary. To the mathematically uninitiated 6! is the multiplication of 6 with all numbers below it up to 1 i.e. 6x5x4x3x2x1 = 720days or nearly 2 years.

And I realized we have such a large unit of years to look at life and I think we must consider these other units to realize the brevity of this life we live. Like the next factorial anniversary we celebrate will be just after we complete 13 years of marriage and the 8! anniversary will be after our impossible 110th anniversary! (I have not put a factorial symbol after the word anniversary :D)

There is another viewing glass for the time we are alive called the 'Divided By Five' year. It essentially divides the years of our life into blocks of 5 years each. So if we live up to a ripe old age of 80 years we have lived only 16 units of life. We reach our teens after 2 units, start working around 5 units later and become senior citizens after living 12 units of life.

This is how much time we have. It is not too long. So spend it on things and more importantly on people you treasure and love the most!

Dedicated to Rev Fr Ivo Dsouza (1944 - 2014) who lived 14 units or between 7! and 8! days of his life teaching, preaching, caring, reaching out and inspiring students, teachers and parishioners with his words and actions! We love you Fr Ivo and we will miss you!

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Inspiration

Inspiration can strike you anytime... When you are brushing your teeth or driving to work or cooking or doing any other activity that does not take too much mind space.

This morning I saw an old schoolmate of mine; he and I were student council members and were both fairly lanky back then. In these 15yrs I have gone from stick to drum and here I saw this guy in a good shape doing something I know I should do too: jogging. I know now what I need to do. I new to take time out or my health and make decisions beyond the here and now of hunger! Thank god for the timing and thanks buddy for your inspiration you have unknowingly provided by just doing the thing you do.

I would urge you all too to do good an continue doing it! You may never know who is watching you and who gets inspired by you.

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The Friends Train

There was a group this morning on the local trains here in Mumbai celebrating the 50th birthday of one of their members for the 20th time. These 50-60-70 year olds were like young children sharing slices of cake and handful of chips across the seats and among those standing. The treat are extended even to lowly bystanders like me who gracefully declined on the pretext of a diet! But the laughter and conversations are hard to resist with the giggles getting through you even if you weren't quite what the joke was!

They say from an evolutionary standpoint we evolved from monkeys: a group of animals who without a clear language and clear reasoning still had a strong sense of bonding and friendship with its fellow monkeys. Friendships then were based on dominance and power and one with a bigger butt or stronger body still ruled the roost.

While we may have moved away from the big bum criteria, our need for friendship and the dynamics of a friends circle stood the test of time! From cradle to grave, we go through the effort of making Playgroup Friends whom we cannot even recall playing with in our later years to Kindergarten Friends, School Friends, Building /Colony Friends, College Friends and work friends. Even religion is not spared with Community Friends and Association Friends being part of this friendly crew! Then we have paradoxical groups like Family Friends which honestly speaking needs you to make up your mind: are they Family or Friends?! And then the oddest of them all called Train Friends. While I call them Train Friends they are Friends we make on our commute and could easily mean Bus Friends, Car Pool Friends or Frequent Flier Friends in you corner of the world. They are part of a large tribe of friends we have who are what I call 'Friends by Presence' (referred to hereafter as FbPs) that is they are your friends because you happened to be catching the train at the same time. And yet they are quite like the family you have: You can't choose them, your destiny (in this case your job) chooses it for you! You would perhaps have many such FbPs.

We still have an alpha male (or female in a gender neutral society) who just like a patriarch binds the group together and acts as the pseudo gatekeeper of who enters and leaves the group. We have the matriarch who nurtures the new entrants and calms the nerves in case of an uproar. We still have children in the group and elders within the gang. It's this bonding that drives them to make it on time (almost) every morning and leave the same time every evening. The same camaraderie that drives them to jump into a perfectly empty train and catch seats for their group. And yes the same passion bordering on frenzy that drives ever so often people to stab someone who sits in their seats and break the sanctity of the group.

Nationalism, Religious Zeal, Patriotism, and other associations are forms of FbPs we cherish in our lives. It's what drives us at times to barbarism but it is also what keeps us human. And for that, I think one should stick with their friends: even if they happen to catch the same fast train as you do!

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Bringing Beliefs into Being

"The flapping of a butterfly's wings in one corner of the world could cause a hurricane in the other corner"

This quote that eloquently describes The Butterfly Effect speaks of seemingly insignificant events adding up to create a major change in the world. Wouldn't the same be true of our minds and the worlds it holds within it?

The Christopher Nolan Sci-fi flick Inception explores this idea through dream hacking. They use a person's dream to hack into his subconscious mind and not just extract information but also put ideas into the person's mind. The key elements that came through the idea of Inception are:

a) The change of an idea must be very simple yet highly layered which touches one's thoughts, feelings and beliefs and

b) The new idea must be introduced without the person being conscious of its introduction but the person must be able to sense its impact.

If you look through all the gizmos and gadgetry involved in movie, the thought that a simple idea could change the way we live is extremely powerful. In a world that is filled with many promises of the behaviour alteration programs and confidence camps but perhaps none with a high impact this holds great potential.

Let us explore this through a case study. Till about the age 24 the longest running challenge I had in my life was being underweight. I had spent the entirety of my childhood and teenage struggling to gain weight to no avail. My parents and loved ones also invested significant amount of time coming up with ways and means to help me bulk up but it did not work. And then there came a major change in my life: I moved out of my home to live in Mysore and then Pune. Within about 6months I went from 65kgs to 56kgs and boomeranged back 65kgs. Within a year I was touching 70kgs and within 1.5yrs I was 75kgs!

So what happened? Comparing the 2 states I was in the key differences you can see are:

a) My appetite which was minimal earlier was first lost and then regained with a new found vigour and

b) The fear of change and others' expectations which perhaps gripped me before was replaced with possibilities and independence.

The core belief that drove both these differences perhaps was:

I cannot survive the world on my own!

But then I reached a corner where I had to work in a city away from home and stay by myself. I had to take care of my own health and realized that the world has better things to do than to judge me. And so in a matter of a few months I started eating well and put on an astonishing 17kgs!

All that changed was my belief: I can survive in the world on my own! In fact the new belief helped me become more independent in other areas of my life as well.

Now think about the last time you were in a similar situation: maybe it was a weight issue or an employee motivation issue or a relationship issue or a business challenge or an academic challenge or something entirely different. How many tips and tricks have others given you? How many of them have you tried? And how many times have they worked? And how long have they worked? And how effective have they been? All of us are entrapped by the world's promises that it can solve our problems when the answer to the problems was inside us all along; in our beliefs, feelings and thoughts.

So how do we bring new beliefs into our lives? We can take a cue from an aspect of our life most commonly associated with belief: religion and religious acts. So how do we become part of the religion that we are currently part of (even atheism is a religion in that sense since they too have their own practices an ideologies!)?

a) With simple statements/dogmas at the core of one's everyday living,

b) Reiteration of those dogmas in thoughts, words and deeds,

c) Positive reinforcement of those dogmas through the celebration of every instance it is met.

d) Building an ecosystem around you that would nurture those dogmas deeper into your life.

But the step before the first step is to know you need to take a step. As someone who is working daily to help people realize their potential I have realized that you can never help those who think they don't need help. So start with one area, from one corner, from on thing that you wish to transform and reach to the core belief that is driving it. Who knows, it may change your life completely!

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Love Means A Million Things

Love means a million things to a million people
Love means a million things to me!

It means Hope to someone
It's Patience for another
It is something we earn and not receive
It shatters some to oblivion
It raises some to a new life.
It's so much more than what our eyes can conceive.

It's in the jokes that you crack
It's in the prayers that you say
It's in the silence that speaks between you.
It's in your fights and your brawls
It's in the names that you call
It's in everything you do to be true.

It's in the dreams that you share
It's in the cross that you bear.
It's in just doing the hardest things.
It's in surprising the other
It's being there for each other.
It's when you change so that the other you complete.

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Stop and Proceed

Driving on the roads of India surely is an adventure with everyone breaking every law that the noble RTO (Regional Transport Office for the ignorant) has set for the safety and security of its citizens. There is never a dull moment if you are the in the driver's seat or for that matter even in the side seat! Everytime you drive out, there is a traffic jam or someone cutting lanes or overtaking you from the left or honking their horn or driving towards you with high beam on their headlights or making sudden stops and turns..... Phew. As I said there is never a dull moment on Indian roads.

And we choose to add this frustrating act to the other frustrations that we face in our daily living. I always recall my father's sound advice for Indian roads, "You have to drive watching out not just for your actions but for others' actions as well!" Another adage I always have quoted for our city's drivers is that 'The drivers stuck in traffic jams are forever in a hurry of reaching nowhere great!' And there we sit in our cars imagining what it would be like if we were on the roads in Singapore or Malaysia or Europe.

The other day, I was sitting in the car imagining just that and all of a sudden I thought why not drive like as if I am on the roads of Singapore and Malaysia, Thailand and UK. The next thought that struck me was which one simple rule can I follow. I quickly narrowed in on this one: Stop and Proceed. It means while driving it is advisable to first stop the vehicle, ensure that others are comfortable and that it is safe and then proceed further. I went from one place in Mulund to the other. Many vehicles came in my way, many squeezed through lanes they should not have, many honked their horns when it was unnecessary. Frankly, it got on my nerves not to be able to retaliate with a cut or an overtake or a horn honk. But after a while, after the nerves had settled, I started to see the calm it brought me while driving.

Perhaps as a generation we have channelized our frustrations far too long into our vehicles wielding control over the only thing that goes the way we want it to. But I guess it is time to lower the dipper, stop honking, start driving well and just grow up!

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Disturbing Sounds of Silence

When it comes to sharing stories I am a compulsive storyteller. I love reliving the most memorable moments of my life through them. And some of the best stories of my life come from the days when I was in college pursuing my engineering studies.

A particularly memorable person in that story was the Managing Director of the institute where I studied for 7 years: Fr Orlando Rodrigues. At the first glance, he is like any other priest you meet. But look a little longer, listen to him a while, be in his presence and you will know very quickly that he is something else entirely.

He has this magnetic persona that could calm a chaotic room and light up a dim situation. Highly respected, highly feared and highly loved by people who know him.

After leaving college, among the million memories were the images of Fr. Orlando addressing the students every morning during the college assembly (yes, we had college assembly which blend well with my morning blues) on topics raging from the latest snacks in the college canteen to his sojourns to different parts of the world and everything in between.

He played a key role in shaping my career as well. I remember when we diploma students had approached him to evaluate our prospects of getting admission into degree at Agnels Vashi, he tole us he will do everything possible to accommodate us. In a day and age when lesser mortals would have sold their engineering seats to the highest bidder, Fr Orlando chose to admit his 'children from diploma' and gave us the seats with no donations or development fees taken from us. He came to my rescue once again with a glowing recommendation for my admission process for my MBA program and even after 4 years of passing out could connect with me and relive the memories.

Some years later I got word that he had returned to college after having left for Goa to take care of his ailing brother. I took the opportunity to meet him and reminisce those days I spent in engineering. All along the way, I was sharing with my wife the laughter, the challenges and the victories we had in Agnels and the father-figure role Fr Orlando played in it. I was looking forward to chat with the man with a million stories to tell. To my shock and horror, all I found was a pale shadow of the man. He had suffered a brain hemorrhage and it caused a blood clot in that part of the brain that was responsible for language and words. There he was, a man who still had a million things and more to share, silent and lost in his diary at his desk where he once used to work and deliberate on important matters. The silence was deafening, it was eerie, it was disturbing.

Once again though his situation belied his mettle. In his silence, he displayed resilience and determination. In his posture, he held the victories and milestones he achieved all along the way, from building this institution literally with his bare hands to building its name as a premier education center. In his eyes, he harbored the million stories he continued to share with everyone he met. And as I left his presence and tears rolled down my face, I felt that same deep sense of learning we used to feel after meeting with him and listening to the stories of his extraordinary life. Even through his silence he told us a very brave story.

An Idea of Happiness

What makes you happy? This seemingly simple question is one of the toughest to answer when you think about it deeply. Happiness is such a sought after yet such a vague concept.

The same thing can't make two people happy. In fact, the same thing may not even make the same person happy over a period of time. This makes it impossible for any individual to consistently make another person happy.

So the question to be asked is, whose responsibility is it to make me happy? Is it someone else's: that someone hasn't the slightest idea about what I like, about what brings me joy, what excites me and makes me happy. Or is it I who is the author of my happy story, who is the architect of my blissville? This question although obvious in its answer is the toughest one to ask ourselves. It takes serious efforts to be happier in your life. Let me share with you a list of things to try. I thank The Happiness Project author Gretchen Rubin for this list of simple yet difficult things to try and embark on a personal journey of happiness.

• Go to sleep earlier
• Exercise smarter
• Toss, Restore, Organize your stuff
• Tackle a nagging task
• Act more energetic
• Quit nagging everybody
• Don’t expect praise or appreciation.
• No dumping your sorrows on others
• Give proof of love to loved ones
• Launch a blog of your own
• Enjoy the fun of failure
• Ask for help from others
• Work smart always
• Enjoy the here and now
• Sing in the morning hours
• Acknowledge people’s feelings
• Make a  treasure of happy memories
• Take time for small personal projects
• Find more fun in everything
• Take time to be silly
• Go off the usual path
• Start a collection of things
• Remember birthdays
• Be generous
• Show up for things
• Don’t gossip about anyone
• Make three new friends every month
• Indulge in a modest splurge
• Buy needful things
• Give something up
• Read memoirs of catastrophe
• Keep a gratitude notebook
• Imitate a spiritual master
• Write a novel/story/something creative
• Make time for things
• Forget about results
• Master a new technology
• Meditate on Koans
• Examine True Rules
• Stimulate the mind in new ways
• Keep a food diary
• Laugh out loud
• Use good manners
• Give positive reviews
• Find an area of refuge
• Look to perfect above practices

Happiness is definitely not a destination but a journey. So travel long and travel light!