A Mind that litters. A Mind that cleans.

Right from a young age, we've been taught this well known adage, 'Cleanliness is next to Godliness. And we've beaten the hell out of it with speeches and essays, paintings and collages. It is one of those things every Indian of my generation has definitely heard if not spoken, written or drawn about it.

Many years later, as a grown up, my travels take me to different places within and outside India. And it is here that you get to experience the presence or absence of this 'Godliness' we expressed so much in our childhood. While squalor is a common sight in some places in India, we have today reached a stage where some places are able to maintain a spic and span image... well, at least most of the time because despite having an army of cleaning staff deployed, you manage to sight an eyesore of garbage strewn around in these places as well.

It made me wonder what prompts people to dirty such a beautiful places: malls, heritage sites, airports, toilets. Our immediate reaction of course is that Indians just don't know how to keep things clean. However, I consider that derogatory to my own sentiments on cleanliness. On the contrary I think it is extremely "anti-Indian" of anyone to dirty public places, vandalize public property and not maintain the level of cleanliness they would expect from the place.

When you think about it all begins in the mind and the mind will not aspire to be clean if being clean doesn't earn them affiliation or not being clean doesn't result in ostracism. Being a citizen is a more recent mindset for us compared to the long history of abdicating that role to kings and law enforcers. Hence driving the thinking that of 'Being Clean' rather than merely speaking of cleanliness brings the responsibility on all of us. That's when we clean the toilet seats and search for garbage bins to throw rubbish and generally take it personally if someone does something to dirty the public place.

If you subscribe to my sentiments, I would urge you to wear your 'Cleanliness badge' with pride and tell off people as anti-Indian if they are damaging or dirtying  public property. Maybe then we will begin to witness the godliness of cleanliness around us.

Open Field of Learning

While thinking of an imagery for learning environment my mind surprisingly went to the sports field. That is an odd choice for someone like me who is athletically challenged but nevertheless I find it a powerful analogy to the learning environments of tomorrow!

If you notice some public fields have a special feature: they have a section open for everyone to play on; young and old, skilled and unskilled all can come and enjoy and gain from the experience of playing the sport and alongside it is a section cordoned off with nets or posts and therein a coach trains a smaller set of athletes.

While the cordoned off field is structured with limited athletes playing and practising there, the open field tends to be chaotic with more players than the field can handle at time. And yet there is an energy and buzz on this side unmatched by the netted area.

In our organizations, management in all these years have stood for order and structure through the use of control. However, we have recently begun acknowledging the emergent and chaotic nature of management as well and the role it plays in shaping the organisation's culture. In that context, it seems natural to move away from the existing nomination based program-style training events and move towards a self explored, easily accessible intervention-styled learning journeys.

A learning environment where employees are given the full freedom to explore the content of their interest and need, where all are encouraged to reflect on the nuances of their skill gaps and where managers play a the role of talent architects for their team rather than leaders presiding on nomination choices.

Not only does that empower employees to take charge of their learning it also moves the Learning and Leadership teams to focus more on facilitation of groups towards right skills development, constructing unique learning journeys and engaging learners to apply their learning at work rather than worrying about program nominations, logistical arrangements and following up with  participants, managers and leaders.

So go ahead, open up your learning space to everyone and encourage people to manage their own learning journeys!

The Novelty of a Relationship

In every relationship we tend to recall the more memorable/traumatic moments of its timeline. The day your child was born, the day you got married, the day you first met the love of your life, the day you had a major fallout with a loved one, a day of accident or misfortune both of you suffered.

But just because the incident sticks in our memory doesn't make it the most important moments to frame the relationship. The day you profess your love to a loved one is just an outcome of the many days of conversations, going out, being in each others' company, finding ways to make each other happy. Or the day the manager reviews the individual is just an outcome of the many conversations before (or the lack of those conversations!) that big review day meeting.

And we tend to value them lesser because it isn't memorable or novel. And we could tend to dismiss them as unimportant. But is these little moments in high volume that cause the biggest impact on our relationships.

Conversely if you wish to foster a deep and meaningful relationship with someone, don't aim for the 'Grand Gestures' that are few and far between. Instead look to make those minute but multiple 'nudges' of kindness, compassion and love towards the other person/s to turn things around with them.

Only Mother Teresa could've put it so eloquently.
"Not all of us can do great things. But we can all do small things with great love."

The BIGGEST little Step

"The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step" This quote always reminded me that something great begins with something small. But what it doesn't tell you that the first step is the hardest. And, well, how can it? It is a quote; that too by an ancient Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu. Quotes are meant to inspire action, not instruct you towards it.

So how does one take that first step? We have all had our struggles with great endeavours we wanted to complete, good habits we wanted to inculcate, virtuous qualities we wanted to imbibe. I have had my own share of 'trying to gain weight' and then 'trying to shed it', of 'practising to play the piano' and then 'wean myself off the music obsession', of 'starting a blog' and, well, 'sticking on with it'!

There is however no bigger challenge than when you cannot even make a start: a start that has truly switched you from one state to the next. Not just of exercising but of going from being dormant to active; not just of practising the piano for 60 minutes each day but of going from being indifferent to passionate; and not just of writing a blog 3 times a week (contracted the number for myself using the Habit app) but from being stagnant to flowing in thoughts.

I am trying to get myself to care enough to lift that foot to take the first step. And if the cramps of apathy can be relieved from my mental leg, hopefully I can care enough to make a beginning each day and take that illusive last step of the thousand mile journey with the same zeal that I took the first one!

To All The Girls

This one is for all the girls, for all the women I have known in my life.

The highest honour, glory, praise and thanks to the one who gave me birth, who nurtured me at her bosom with sweat, tears, blood and love: my mother.

My blessings and love to the girl who was and is my greatest friend and enemy at the same time, playmate, sounding board, advocate and support: my sister.

My warmest hugs to the 2 women who pampered me silly each time I was in their company, who made feel special and shared their stories and vast experience: my grandmas.

My thoughts and prayers for the woman who looked after me when my mother needed to work, taught me to write, to read and to pray at that tender age: my nanny.

My utmost respect to the group of women who gave me the most priceless gift of all, education and for giving me something far beyond that, the values and lessons of life which made me the person I am today: my teachers.

My greatest thanks to the women who I met at different points of time in life: in school, in college, at work and at play; who shared their unique perspective, surprised me, consoled me, encouraged me, laughed and joked with me in all these years and continue to be an integral part of my life: my friends.

My deepest love to the woman who brought meaning to my existence, significance to my actions and founded my new family with me, she makes each day special and each day is a celebration with her by my side, she stands by me in my joys and closer in my sorrows and gives me a reason to be romantic each day: my wife.

And finally to the girl who made my life complete by her coming into this world, who each day reminds me of the best I can be for the world and who brings a smile on my lips and joy in my heart each time I think of her: my daughter.

The News As We Are

It is great when you can have a slice of life experience in your everyday commute to office and back. Comparisons of the present day to the earlier days (I refrain from the the clichéd term "good ol' days" because it is a loaded term playing into the nostalgia effect we experience) showed a stark difference in one area: mobile was the new newspaper. Almost every person I saw, everywhere I turned I could see people: young and old alike peering into their contraptions of metal, glass and plastic. You may say that's no big surprise; the smartphone has been the single biggest revolution we may have seen in the last decade. But what is really interesting in this is that while nearly ALL of them were consuming information or news of some sort, NONE of them were reading a known news site or e-paper.

The recent US elections also threw up an interesting statistic: Supporters of one party were more inclined to believeing fabricated news of the other party and less inclined to accepting the unflattering facts of the party they support.

And so we are poked and prodded each day with news that bears resemblance to what we feel is true rather than what we know to be true. An election in the free world starts becoming a rabble-rouse, a critique on a policy implementation becomes questioning one's nation and an unpatriotic act and disagreement has to result in defilement. This however is not a recent phenomenon. We have had such form of mud slinging and name calling going on for centuries. It has had many names: rumours, gossip, witchunt, propaganda; the list is endless. However, with each passing century the structures of the press and media got created and they operated with great integrity and commitment to this thing we called 'the pursuit of the truth'.

So what has changed now? Well, everything with respect to the press and media. Press cannot be independent if no one is willing to pay for it. And in that desperation, the agencies have given birth to a medium they don't fully have control over: sponsored news. This medium is all about the clicks and shock value of news. And it takes little help to push news from the realms of fact into the dark allies of fiction. Of those people I saw consuming news, most were from sites like Facebook  and Twitter which manages to put every biased article and subjective view that the user has seen before into his or her path. And just like a tuning fork vibrating at its resonant frequency, they too start receiving news articles that are more a reflection of their psyche than reality.

How do we resolve this breaking news piece? Sadly, this is just the beginning of the things to come. In the tug of war between freedom of press and regulation and discretion of news, freedom always wins. But it will do us well to remember that not all free societies have had a happy endings; not because of the freedoms they enjoyed but because of the lack of discipline in how they enjoyed it.

It would do us well to invest in a news source that values you more than clicks, that values independent and objective journalism over breaking sensationalist news and that stands for news as it is rather than as we are. And this investment is not just monetary, it will be of our time and energy to verify and fact check what we share and read and respect different perspectives before we form an opinion. That is when truth really triumphs!

The Nightmares

Off late I have been getting this recurring nightmare, that I am back in engineering class and I have forgotten to practice my maths all semester and exams are now very near and I don't know how I am to clear. Funnily, I can somehow sense in the dream that I am no longer 20-22 years old but that I am 10 years older and that I have no recollection of what I have learnt.

I wonder what this means. Is it my subconscious mind trying to reconcile the regret of having forgotten all that I have learnt with so much effort? Or is it that I have not used what I have learnt and allowed it to rot away in my memory? Or perhaps is it not about maths at all but about things that are yet to come and that I feel ill equipped of handling then.

Whatever it means, I definitely feel a sense of sadness and want to start going back to learning things I learnt long ago: things like sin²A + cos²A = 1. I actually solved it's proof in my head and realised the elegance of it. Ah, perhaps that's what it is! Maybe it is my subconscious asking me to appreciate the beauty of little things that I have forgotten and put behind me. I remember this feeling. It was the same when I rediscovered music after having left studying it for almost 5 years then. I had a new found sense of appreciation for what I had learnt without much thought. Hmmm maybe that's what it is.