Some months ago, I was sitting on the steps of the Taj at closing time waiting for my driver to show. When I finished saying goodbye to my friends, four young Brit women accosted me with “You’re Indian right?” I shrugged and looked around as if to say “I and a hundred others”. They clarified: “No I mean you’re Indian Indian, not someone who grew up somewhere else and visiting?” I reassured them. Then they said “So tell us where is the real India?” I smiled and replied “In the brochures”. It didn’t produce an answering smile so I wondered if the accent was really some obscure Middle-American one. I asked and they were definitely from the UK, so I assumed – quite rightly as it happened – that they must be on some sort of “spiritual journey”. I asked them to describe the place they meant. It was the brochure but I’d already used that line and it hadn’t gone down well, so I decided to give them some good copy to put on their blogs.
Think of India as a music store, I said, with every kind of music there is. When you enter the store, it’s all playing at once, so all you hear is discordance and cacophony. You need to walk around a bit, get used to it. Then you will begin to hear individual styles and instruments and you’ll find something you like that you’ll want to take away with you. But the important thing is that the store cannot tell you what you are likely to want, you need to figure that out yourself. There was more on the theme but my closing gem was: You can either see the muddy pond or the lotus blooming in it. Similarly, you can look at the lotus as a flower or as the seat of a goddess. You can see that goddess as good or evil. India is up to you. In fact, the place you seek is already in you – you just have to locate it.
I was going good when a compatriot of theirs with the full complement of the national sense of humour and a fine sense of carpe diem rescued them, saying he lived here and was having an after-party if they were interested. He told me in an aside that if I dropped the lotus motif, I could go too. But my car had arrived so I declined politely, wishing him success in his endeavours. I was going give the tourists some yogic parting advice but was foiled by the Guardian-reader pointedly holding the door of my car open. It was a good end to a great evening.
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Friday, October 09, 2009
Schrödinger's cat
“What the hell does one talk about on a first date?” is a hard enough question, but it’s not as bad as working out what can only be called a pre-date. Since the crucial teenage years were marked by frizzy hair and the (erroneous) belief that I was fat, my education in that direction is rather stunted. This is probably why boyfriends have mostly entered my life through neutral, non-threatening portals such as work, study or friend-of-a-friend gatherings. It must be admitted that that is where I’m at my best. Friends first is the only formula that works for me (maybe more so now that the fat is quite real). And I’ve never lost a single friend, my poor efforts at staying in touch notwithstanding; my break-ups with the said boyfriends seem to have simply consisted of returning them to the friend state.
I’m absolutely useless on first dates. I feel myself seizing up or getting silly and there’s precious little I can do about it. Being of an age where everyone I know is keen on setting me up whether I want it or not, I have a lot of opportunity to see myself like this and I don’t like it at all. Email beginnings are fine of course – I’m a writer after all – but they inexorably lead to the face-to-face moment of truth, which probably creates much Jekyll-and-Hyde confusion for the party of the second part.
In the cafe I currently patronize, I’m always surrounded by teenagers in various stages of hooking up. I should envy them the hair and the poise, except it’s certain that most of them must be feeling fat and frizzy inside. So what I really admire is their ability to bell the cat nevertheless. Not only did I squander my teenage years sitting very still under a bushel, but am also wasting the present ones doing the exact same thing. Instead of proper dates, I opt for elaborately casual meetings that I have to invent terms for and end up never knowing whether I’m coming or going. And pretending that it doesn’t matter.
What it comes down to is that I’m not a first-impression person. Like a good pot of stock, I need ages of simmering to bring out the good stuff (have developed an interest in soup lately). The good thing about not being a teenager any more is that I’m perfectly okay with that. Perhaps I don’t need a date so much as an imaginary boyfriend. Shilo, when I was young…
There’s a much better piece in the Times by Sathnam Sanghera on the subject of dating in your thirties.
Schrödinger's cat, the detailed version.
Schrödinger's cat in the version I like best. A snippet from the Big Bang Theory.
I’m absolutely useless on first dates. I feel myself seizing up or getting silly and there’s precious little I can do about it. Being of an age where everyone I know is keen on setting me up whether I want it or not, I have a lot of opportunity to see myself like this and I don’t like it at all. Email beginnings are fine of course – I’m a writer after all – but they inexorably lead to the face-to-face moment of truth, which probably creates much Jekyll-and-Hyde confusion for the party of the second part.
In the cafe I currently patronize, I’m always surrounded by teenagers in various stages of hooking up. I should envy them the hair and the poise, except it’s certain that most of them must be feeling fat and frizzy inside. So what I really admire is their ability to bell the cat nevertheless. Not only did I squander my teenage years sitting very still under a bushel, but am also wasting the present ones doing the exact same thing. Instead of proper dates, I opt for elaborately casual meetings that I have to invent terms for and end up never knowing whether I’m coming or going. And pretending that it doesn’t matter.
What it comes down to is that I’m not a first-impression person. Like a good pot of stock, I need ages of simmering to bring out the good stuff (have developed an interest in soup lately). The good thing about not being a teenager any more is that I’m perfectly okay with that. Perhaps I don’t need a date so much as an imaginary boyfriend. Shilo, when I was young…
There’s a much better piece in the Times by Sathnam Sanghera on the subject of dating in your thirties.
Schrödinger's cat, the detailed version.
Schrödinger's cat in the version I like best. A snippet from the Big Bang Theory.
Friday, October 02, 2009
Moving on
Being the sort of person who always reads the manual, I did a lot of research the first time I decided to quit smoking. There are three things wrong with all the quit-smoking programs I read online:
1. They give you rational reasons for quitting. But nobody ever smokes for rational reasons, so surely you’re unlikely to quit based on them?
2. They assume you’re trying to quit because you’ve come to hate it as a non-smoker would.
3. It’s a one-size-fits-all approach. Nowhere did I find anything I could relate to. The reasons they listed for smoking didn’t apply to me, The methods for quitting seemed to my argumentative mind to be inadequate. (E.g.: Finding something else to do with your hands is too much like a bluff just waiting to be called). So I only took as much gold as I could usefully carry – the list of withdrawal symptoms.
The rational parts helped after I went through the actual quitting part, to keep me safely smug. But as it happened, smugness only went so far and crumbled completely under the onslaught of a lovely café in the rain and remembered pleasure. So, not effective finally.
Then I read an unusual article on the subject in The New Yorker. In it, David Sedaris wrote: ““Finished” made it sound as if he’d been allotted a certain number of cigarettes, three hundred thousand, say, delivered at the time of his birth…he had worked his way to the last one, and then moved on with his life. This, I thought, was how I would look at it. Yes, there were five more Kool Milds in that particular pack, and twenty-six cartons stashed away at home, but those were extra—an accounting error. In terms of my smoking, I had just finished with it.”
It made me understand fully what I meant when I told people that I knew I would stop one day so I was going to enjoy it fully while it lasted. Now, a year later, I have half a pack of cigarettes in my dressing table that’s several months old. There was no dramatic renouncing of the habit, not even conscious thought. The cigarettes that are gone from there were simply my last ones. My lighters still lie scattered around, I see the pack every morning when I dress. But there is no wrenching here, no panic. Most of all, there’s no denial. I acknowledge that I want it and love it, but choose not to anyway.
I stopped one cigarette at a time. I didn’t smoke the first one, then I didn’t smoke the second, then the third, fourth, fifth, the next pack, the one after that. I didn’t walk gingerly through it either – I met smoker friends for drinks, continued to gather outside the office and have tea with smoker colleagues. I kept the crutches close throughout, but the packs of Nicotinelle and candy remained unopened. Eventually I gave them away.
Sitting here now, at another lovely café in the rain, I can see the cigarette shelf behind the counter with “my” pack in it and I feel nothing, not even nostalgia. All that’s left is a professional evaluation of how careless the display is, all that beautiful packaging wasted by poor lighting and bad positioning. The only nostalgia I feel is for a job that I was very good at but practically killed me. Much like the cigarettes in there, I suppose, Except that that never matters. As another smoker writes: “I am convinced that smoking will kill me, but I am not sure this particular little cigarette will.”.
Weirdly, the first time I tried to stop I had the full complement of the emotional withdrawal symptoms listed – it was very, very traumatic – but none of the physical ones. This time my body reacted violently, but there was no heartbreak, so perhaps I really had come to the end of my “quota”.
I will always be a smoker, though, whether I use the feature or not. I’m glad of it.
1. They give you rational reasons for quitting. But nobody ever smokes for rational reasons, so surely you’re unlikely to quit based on them?
2. They assume you’re trying to quit because you’ve come to hate it as a non-smoker would.
3. It’s a one-size-fits-all approach. Nowhere did I find anything I could relate to. The reasons they listed for smoking didn’t apply to me, The methods for quitting seemed to my argumentative mind to be inadequate. (E.g.: Finding something else to do with your hands is too much like a bluff just waiting to be called). So I only took as much gold as I could usefully carry – the list of withdrawal symptoms.
The rational parts helped after I went through the actual quitting part, to keep me safely smug. But as it happened, smugness only went so far and crumbled completely under the onslaught of a lovely café in the rain and remembered pleasure. So, not effective finally.
Then I read an unusual article on the subject in The New Yorker. In it, David Sedaris wrote: ““Finished” made it sound as if he’d been allotted a certain number of cigarettes, three hundred thousand, say, delivered at the time of his birth…he had worked his way to the last one, and then moved on with his life. This, I thought, was how I would look at it. Yes, there were five more Kool Milds in that particular pack, and twenty-six cartons stashed away at home, but those were extra—an accounting error. In terms of my smoking, I had just finished with it.”
It made me understand fully what I meant when I told people that I knew I would stop one day so I was going to enjoy it fully while it lasted. Now, a year later, I have half a pack of cigarettes in my dressing table that’s several months old. There was no dramatic renouncing of the habit, not even conscious thought. The cigarettes that are gone from there were simply my last ones. My lighters still lie scattered around, I see the pack every morning when I dress. But there is no wrenching here, no panic. Most of all, there’s no denial. I acknowledge that I want it and love it, but choose not to anyway.
I stopped one cigarette at a time. I didn’t smoke the first one, then I didn’t smoke the second, then the third, fourth, fifth, the next pack, the one after that. I didn’t walk gingerly through it either – I met smoker friends for drinks, continued to gather outside the office and have tea with smoker colleagues. I kept the crutches close throughout, but the packs of Nicotinelle and candy remained unopened. Eventually I gave them away.
Sitting here now, at another lovely café in the rain, I can see the cigarette shelf behind the counter with “my” pack in it and I feel nothing, not even nostalgia. All that’s left is a professional evaluation of how careless the display is, all that beautiful packaging wasted by poor lighting and bad positioning. The only nostalgia I feel is for a job that I was very good at but practically killed me. Much like the cigarettes in there, I suppose, Except that that never matters. As another smoker writes: “I am convinced that smoking will kill me, but I am not sure this particular little cigarette will.”.
Weirdly, the first time I tried to stop I had the full complement of the emotional withdrawal symptoms listed – it was very, very traumatic – but none of the physical ones. This time my body reacted violently, but there was no heartbreak, so perhaps I really had come to the end of my “quota”.
I will always be a smoker, though, whether I use the feature or not. I’m glad of it.
Thursday, October 01, 2009
Stargazing
Away to one side of the driveway, coconut palms grow deep in tall grass. In the middle is a gazebo, even quieter than the path. On the other side, a clutch of potted plants gives way to a little hut and a trailing vine. If it weren’t for the small signs saying “Nursery”, “Crafts” and “Café”, these could have been farm buildings. Further down there are craftworky things and interesting clothes hanging in small doorways, a staircase leading to a pastry shop, the original house and garden. Lake View Farm has found a great way to keep from turning into flats or row houses.
Hidden down yet another pathway is Tranquilitea, a tiny tea shop with big arm chairs on an open patio. They sell a startling range of teas grown in the Nilgiris and make a mean crepe. Sitting there is a delight. You just sit. And sit. Drinking in the green quiet with your tea.
And when you walk about later, spend too much on a pair of earrings bigger than your face and wander round the back, you look over a hedge with surprise into a lovely leafy neighbourhood, probably the very first of Whitefield’s “new” settlements. This is no cookie-cutter gated colony, but individual houses built on separate plots that together had been another farm called Taralaya.
I stood there and thought only that I would like to have a house in this nice place, quite unable to picture the farm of my childhood. As I continued to gaze hungrily over the wall like Rapunzel’s mother, little pieces started to resolve themselves. I noticed a sapota tree, then a few more and then many, everywhere, realizing without conscious thought that our orchard was not all cut down.
A cow lowed somewhere, somebody’s Alsatian barked, and I pictured it suddenly. Far away to my right, a house, in front of it, a rose garden, and behind, a kitchen one where my Dad grew strawberries that my brother and I picked illegally before they were ripe. – my distrust of strawberries probably stems from there. Straight ahead, a haystack we were not supposed to climb but did anyway, and beyond that, cowsheds where I saw a cow giving birth. I was of course not supposed to be there. To the left of those, poultry sheds, the business end of the farm. I don’t remember any lawlessness there, so they probably didn’t interest us much. Hens are dull. Or perhaps they were just well-guarded.
I came slowly by degrees to the place where I stood – I think I was almost exactly at the place where a brave but foolhardy dog named Max was buried after being bitten by a cobra he followed into a hole and killed.
Hard upon it came the thought that the place used to be riddled with snakes, which was why my parents never went in much for picturesque leafy hedges, and I stepped back hastily. It’s still a nice neighbourhood, though, and I would like to live there. With seven snake-spotting dogs.
Hidden down yet another pathway is Tranquilitea, a tiny tea shop with big arm chairs on an open patio. They sell a startling range of teas grown in the Nilgiris and make a mean crepe. Sitting there is a delight. You just sit. And sit. Drinking in the green quiet with your tea.
And when you walk about later, spend too much on a pair of earrings bigger than your face and wander round the back, you look over a hedge with surprise into a lovely leafy neighbourhood, probably the very first of Whitefield’s “new” settlements. This is no cookie-cutter gated colony, but individual houses built on separate plots that together had been another farm called Taralaya.
I stood there and thought only that I would like to have a house in this nice place, quite unable to picture the farm of my childhood. As I continued to gaze hungrily over the wall like Rapunzel’s mother, little pieces started to resolve themselves. I noticed a sapota tree, then a few more and then many, everywhere, realizing without conscious thought that our orchard was not all cut down.
A cow lowed somewhere, somebody’s Alsatian barked, and I pictured it suddenly. Far away to my right, a house, in front of it, a rose garden, and behind, a kitchen one where my Dad grew strawberries that my brother and I picked illegally before they were ripe. – my distrust of strawberries probably stems from there. Straight ahead, a haystack we were not supposed to climb but did anyway, and beyond that, cowsheds where I saw a cow giving birth. I was of course not supposed to be there. To the left of those, poultry sheds, the business end of the farm. I don’t remember any lawlessness there, so they probably didn’t interest us much. Hens are dull. Or perhaps they were just well-guarded.
I came slowly by degrees to the place where I stood – I think I was almost exactly at the place where a brave but foolhardy dog named Max was buried after being bitten by a cobra he followed into a hole and killed.
Hard upon it came the thought that the place used to be riddled with snakes, which was why my parents never went in much for picturesque leafy hedges, and I stepped back hastily. It’s still a nice neighbourhood, though, and I would like to live there. With seven snake-spotting dogs.
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Sigh
There’s a strange thread on the Bangalore Bikers Club forum. An otherwise sane and thinking human being has asked for pictures of “Bangalore Biking Cuties” to add to a presentation about cycling in Bangalore. (In his defense, he did not invent the… well, cute phrase, but just ill-advisedly used something that was said elsewhere.) Naturally, it has led to some of the said cuties protesting the term. Yet others have defended it saying, among other things, that “the men in this group have always been respectful towards women”. What one has to do with the other is hard to work out.
A friend of mine has responded with well-worded reasoning, so I should just provide the link to it and shut up, but in my self-appointed role of Last Word of/in Wisdom, it’s really hard to keep quiet.
My first reaction was blank horror on behalf of Joshine Anthony who cycled all 919 km of the Tour of Nilgiris in 2008, including a 7000-foot climb. I’ve talked elsewhere on this blog about gender condescension in a sports context. No matter how good the intention, referring to women cyclists like this just implies that it’s a secondary wing, introduced at best as a concession, and at worst to add a bit of colour to the proceedings. It’s an injustice to serious cyclists.
Purely from a communications point of view, how much more effective would that message have been if it was something like: “Need representation from the women cyclists”? Well, you may only be asking for photographs, but you probably would have also got involvement – perhaps new ideas, women willing to participate more actively, to go with you to make that presentation to corporates, to use their networks too for the common good. Now you’ll have enough photographs, sure, from the cuties and from those who will be big enough to rise above the pettiness, but that seems so meagre compared to what it could have been. There will be women who will get involved anyway, some because insensitivity is not a solely male prerogative and some because of, again, rising above. But it will not start the transformation that it could have.
And surely concepts like respect need to be approached with circumspection, not bandied about carelessly? In my experience, those who feel it tend not to feel the need to state it. Not one of the 20-odd men that completed the same distance in TFN ’08 gave the slightest indication that they thought of Joshine in any terms other than, simply, a fellow cyclist. This is very different from telling her, for example, “I respect you Joshine for being a woman cyclist who completed the tour”.
If the male cyclists were referred to as Bangalore Biking Hotties, then calling the other half cuties would have probably been okay. If it was used ironically, that would have been fine too. But I think this is another of those things that you either get or don’t. It cannot be taught, be we never so strident.
Just checked the thread again, and saw that several women are now pointedly supporting the cause, and drawing their skirts away from the protesters. Perhaps one person's sensitivity is another's needless political correctness. I still stick to my point, though.
A friend of mine has responded with well-worded reasoning, so I should just provide the link to it and shut up, but in my self-appointed role of Last Word of/in Wisdom, it’s really hard to keep quiet.
My first reaction was blank horror on behalf of Joshine Anthony who cycled all 919 km of the Tour of Nilgiris in 2008, including a 7000-foot climb. I’ve talked elsewhere on this blog about gender condescension in a sports context. No matter how good the intention, referring to women cyclists like this just implies that it’s a secondary wing, introduced at best as a concession, and at worst to add a bit of colour to the proceedings. It’s an injustice to serious cyclists.
Purely from a communications point of view, how much more effective would that message have been if it was something like: “Need representation from the women cyclists”? Well, you may only be asking for photographs, but you probably would have also got involvement – perhaps new ideas, women willing to participate more actively, to go with you to make that presentation to corporates, to use their networks too for the common good. Now you’ll have enough photographs, sure, from the cuties and from those who will be big enough to rise above the pettiness, but that seems so meagre compared to what it could have been. There will be women who will get involved anyway, some because insensitivity is not a solely male prerogative and some because of, again, rising above. But it will not start the transformation that it could have.
And surely concepts like respect need to be approached with circumspection, not bandied about carelessly? In my experience, those who feel it tend not to feel the need to state it. Not one of the 20-odd men that completed the same distance in TFN ’08 gave the slightest indication that they thought of Joshine in any terms other than, simply, a fellow cyclist. This is very different from telling her, for example, “I respect you Joshine for being a woman cyclist who completed the tour”.
If the male cyclists were referred to as Bangalore Biking Hotties, then calling the other half cuties would have probably been okay. If it was used ironically, that would have been fine too. But I think this is another of those things that you either get or don’t. It cannot be taught, be we never so strident.
Just checked the thread again, and saw that several women are now pointedly supporting the cause, and drawing their skirts away from the protesters. Perhaps one person's sensitivity is another's needless political correctness. I still stick to my point, though.
Thursday, September 10, 2009
Facebook: The glue of small things
Elizabeth Bernstein is the latest among several columnists worrying that her online social network might destroy her real-life one, with complete disregard for the illogic of that.
I think blaming Facebook for the fact that you or your friends may not take the time to actually meet is a particularly grand abdication of personal responsibility, even for a time that has made that into a fine art. And about the people who don't have time to keep in touch but have the time to update their pages - well, if they didn't want to call you, they would have found other things to do anyway.
The example in the article of someone being upset at being de-friended by his ex is just bizarre – isn’t that the natural thing to do when you’ve just ended a relationship? I’ve hit the “remove friend” button to celebrate far smaller endings! A jiltee keeping too close an eye on the activities of the jilter and other kinds of stalkers are not new. Going online is just another way of doing it. As for intrusion, you can choose not to see people’s quiz results or photo albums and who gets to see what on your page. You’re not really at the mercy of anything, so all the angst is a little overdone.
One of the points in the article is that people can get more aggressive and indiscriminate when they’re typing than they would face-to-face. This is true in some cases, but it’s also worth noting that someone whose social abilities break down before a keyboard probably didn’t have too many of those to begin with. The couple who bickers on an FB wall are likely to do so in your living room too. The person who updates his status with flossing details would probably also share this information to your face, as would the one who wants to talk about last night’s dream. These people were always in your life – you were forced to listen to them at work, in the supermarket, at the bus stop, on the train, in the gym, lift or lobby. Now you also hear them online. The difference is that you’re free to ignore the status updates. In fact, if you didn’t log on every thirty seconds, you wouldn’t even have to know they’re there.
FB probably doesn’t bother me because I have a stunted social conscience and tend to turn off social contact like a tap when I’ve had enough of it. But apart from that, I frankly enjoy it! When your siblings are scattered around the world and your closest friends are far away, Facebook is a magic window. I’m at a point in my life where most of my preferred phone numbers have area codes and time zones. I can’t make an international call just to tell someone what someone else said this morning, nor is sharing everyday trivialities over email a good idea. It’s the worst thing about long-distance relationships, a hollowness that comes of never having enough small things to fill it. To me, this is what the status update, wall post or photo comment is about.
Perhaps the reason Facebook inspires so much love-hate press is because - ironically - it's a pretty accurate representation of our "real" social world, and it makes us uncomfortable to see it in all its ugliness.
I think blaming Facebook for the fact that you or your friends may not take the time to actually meet is a particularly grand abdication of personal responsibility, even for a time that has made that into a fine art. And about the people who don't have time to keep in touch but have the time to update their pages - well, if they didn't want to call you, they would have found other things to do anyway.
The example in the article of someone being upset at being de-friended by his ex is just bizarre – isn’t that the natural thing to do when you’ve just ended a relationship? I’ve hit the “remove friend” button to celebrate far smaller endings! A jiltee keeping too close an eye on the activities of the jilter and other kinds of stalkers are not new. Going online is just another way of doing it. As for intrusion, you can choose not to see people’s quiz results or photo albums and who gets to see what on your page. You’re not really at the mercy of anything, so all the angst is a little overdone.
One of the points in the article is that people can get more aggressive and indiscriminate when they’re typing than they would face-to-face. This is true in some cases, but it’s also worth noting that someone whose social abilities break down before a keyboard probably didn’t have too many of those to begin with. The couple who bickers on an FB wall are likely to do so in your living room too. The person who updates his status with flossing details would probably also share this information to your face, as would the one who wants to talk about last night’s dream. These people were always in your life – you were forced to listen to them at work, in the supermarket, at the bus stop, on the train, in the gym, lift or lobby. Now you also hear them online. The difference is that you’re free to ignore the status updates. In fact, if you didn’t log on every thirty seconds, you wouldn’t even have to know they’re there.
FB probably doesn’t bother me because I have a stunted social conscience and tend to turn off social contact like a tap when I’ve had enough of it. But apart from that, I frankly enjoy it! When your siblings are scattered around the world and your closest friends are far away, Facebook is a magic window. I’m at a point in my life where most of my preferred phone numbers have area codes and time zones. I can’t make an international call just to tell someone what someone else said this morning, nor is sharing everyday trivialities over email a good idea. It’s the worst thing about long-distance relationships, a hollowness that comes of never having enough small things to fill it. To me, this is what the status update, wall post or photo comment is about.
Perhaps the reason Facebook inspires so much love-hate press is because - ironically - it's a pretty accurate representation of our "real" social world, and it makes us uncomfortable to see it in all its ugliness.
Monday, August 24, 2009
Joe
In my fairly long but strangely unchequered career, I've been lucky to have had mostly mentors rather than bosses. But even in a line of giants, Joe stands out.
Recently, I stood up in front of about 70 people and made a presentation. It's not the first one I've made, so it was not a big deal, and that was exactly what was special about it. It's a long distance from the person I was at Joe's first appraisal of me seven years ago. He looked calmly at a defensive writer and said "I agree you don't really need it when you're a writer. But if you want to grow into something more, you have to be able to talk." Then he told me the crucial thing I needed to know: "Making a presentation is not about showmanship. It's just about telling a group of people what you know or believe in." And changed my view of my job, what I could do and how far I could go. He introduced me to ambition.
He grew up in Africa, went to graduate school in San Francisco and is Lebanese at heart. He had a parrot in his office that adored him like a dog and brought a happy German Shepherd named Pablo to work occasionally. His opinion is brutally frank and his compassion, disarming. He's eccentric and moody, but his scrupulous sense of fairness is only matched by his self awareness. I have co-worker friends who for some reason were not considered "my people", so I know that life with Joe was not all joy. But I was very squarely under the mantle and so felt no growing pains for six years, though I was making gigantic leaps as a person.
His annual appraisal of me consistently included the emphatic words "too nice", which graduated to "stupidly nice". My essential nature and first responses have not changed. I still find it hard to correct someone I like but because of Joe I do it anyway. I still shy away from confrontation but I will speak up against injustice. I still want people to like me but when I have to I will nevertheless go ahead and do things that will get me disliked. I was taught well.
Most of all, Joe gave me a role model, a template and manual that I refer to a million times in my working day. He only asked that we did the best we could and enjoyed ourselves doing it. He inspired absolute trust, which for a creative team, translates into having the confidence to take risks. He knew that his team's loyalty was the index of his success, their triumphs, his own.
That seems clear and logical, but when you're in the fray and surrounded by the loud and the hasty, it is easy to forget. Away from Joe's guidance, work is a particularly nerve-wracking episode of Survivor, but I brought with me four magic words that work without fail in any situation: "What would Joe do?"
Recently, I stood up in front of about 70 people and made a presentation. It's not the first one I've made, so it was not a big deal, and that was exactly what was special about it. It's a long distance from the person I was at Joe's first appraisal of me seven years ago. He looked calmly at a defensive writer and said "I agree you don't really need it when you're a writer. But if you want to grow into something more, you have to be able to talk." Then he told me the crucial thing I needed to know: "Making a presentation is not about showmanship. It's just about telling a group of people what you know or believe in." And changed my view of my job, what I could do and how far I could go. He introduced me to ambition.
He grew up in Africa, went to graduate school in San Francisco and is Lebanese at heart. He had a parrot in his office that adored him like a dog and brought a happy German Shepherd named Pablo to work occasionally. His opinion is brutally frank and his compassion, disarming. He's eccentric and moody, but his scrupulous sense of fairness is only matched by his self awareness. I have co-worker friends who for some reason were not considered "my people", so I know that life with Joe was not all joy. But I was very squarely under the mantle and so felt no growing pains for six years, though I was making gigantic leaps as a person.
His annual appraisal of me consistently included the emphatic words "too nice", which graduated to "stupidly nice". My essential nature and first responses have not changed. I still find it hard to correct someone I like but because of Joe I do it anyway. I still shy away from confrontation but I will speak up against injustice. I still want people to like me but when I have to I will nevertheless go ahead and do things that will get me disliked. I was taught well.
Most of all, Joe gave me a role model, a template and manual that I refer to a million times in my working day. He only asked that we did the best we could and enjoyed ourselves doing it. He inspired absolute trust, which for a creative team, translates into having the confidence to take risks. He knew that his team's loyalty was the index of his success, their triumphs, his own.
That seems clear and logical, but when you're in the fray and surrounded by the loud and the hasty, it is easy to forget. Away from Joe's guidance, work is a particularly nerve-wracking episode of Survivor, but I brought with me four magic words that work without fail in any situation: "What would Joe do?"
Saturday, August 22, 2009
The best thing I've read this week
Approach people w/
happy curiosity, it will
disarm them.
This was written on two Post-it notes left inside a book. On "Forgotten Bookmarks".
happy curiosity, it will
disarm them.
This was written on two Post-it notes left inside a book. On "Forgotten Bookmarks".
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Favourite random things of the week
Favourite Quote
“The more colourful you are, more the possibility of you being respected as a living animal on Kerala roads,” says a cyclist friend who did a trip in full cycling regalia from Kochi to Athirapally Falls (approx 165 km) along Kerala’s homicidal highways.
Favourite Eavesdropping Situation
The table next to me seems to be engaged in either a chemistry-free date or chemistry-ridden interview. It’s been 30 minutes and it’s still unclear. Aha, it’s neither – it’s a “proposal” meeting and he may have just blown it by not responding to a joke she made, and then paraphrasing it back to her as his own. Then again, you never know: maybe she finds it endearing.
Favourite Bit of News
A call-centre taxi driver was returning home on his motorbike after work – and got run over by a call-centre taxi.
Favourite Find on the Net
“With the Backing of the USDA, One Lady Seeks to Remove One Man's Elephant that he's Loved and Owned for Over 25 Years.” Read all about it.
Favourite Bit of Unease
Listening to Obama’s election night speech again today, the lustre seemed to have dimmed a little. At the time it seemed a sincere speech – well-written, yes, but not too much so for a good orator – and more importantly, it seemed humble and understated, two traits alien to US politics. But listening to it now, it seems too crafted, too much a product of the ultra-evolved communications industry for comfort. Words are powerful in the hands of someone who knows how to use them. Godmen and other confidence tricksters have known this since the first caveman managed to get a group of other cavemen to hunt his mammoth for him.
“The more colourful you are, more the possibility of you being respected as a living animal on Kerala roads,” says a cyclist friend who did a trip in full cycling regalia from Kochi to Athirapally Falls (approx 165 km) along Kerala’s homicidal highways.
Favourite Eavesdropping Situation
The table next to me seems to be engaged in either a chemistry-free date or chemistry-ridden interview. It’s been 30 minutes and it’s still unclear. Aha, it’s neither – it’s a “proposal” meeting and he may have just blown it by not responding to a joke she made, and then paraphrasing it back to her as his own. Then again, you never know: maybe she finds it endearing.
Favourite Bit of News
A call-centre taxi driver was returning home on his motorbike after work – and got run over by a call-centre taxi.
Favourite Find on the Net
“With the Backing of the USDA, One Lady Seeks to Remove One Man's Elephant that he's Loved and Owned for Over 25 Years.” Read all about it.
Favourite Bit of Unease
Listening to Obama’s election night speech again today, the lustre seemed to have dimmed a little. At the time it seemed a sincere speech – well-written, yes, but not too much so for a good orator – and more importantly, it seemed humble and understated, two traits alien to US politics. But listening to it now, it seems too crafted, too much a product of the ultra-evolved communications industry for comfort. Words are powerful in the hands of someone who knows how to use them. Godmen and other confidence tricksters have known this since the first caveman managed to get a group of other cavemen to hunt his mammoth for him.
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
It’s the illusions I recall
I heard a rumour that my old school is soon to be shut down. That’s my only school – I entered it for kindergarten at two and a half and left it with high honours at 15, class monitor, house captain, school prefect, prizewinner, teachers’ pet but nevertheless a very popular know-it-all, who did not yet know that that would be the last time she would enjoy certainty of victory.
It was a rural school, many students were the first ones in their families to be literate. There was a strong teaching ethic that had nothing to do with the syllabus, and a deep influence on the small community that Whitefield was at the time.
Around the time I entered high-school, the small private concern had entered a disproportionate stretch of glory. We became a centre where other schools came to write their school-leaving exams. We shone in state-level sports and cultural meets. Our name was heard in high places and our school band went to greet visiting government luminaries. Our chief guests grew more distinguished every year. Our teachers were volunteered as polling officers and advisors on textbook committees. We were the preferred guinea pigs for Education Board types, so new perspectives entered our classrooms now and then, usually in the English classes (or these are the only ones I remember). In later years, I studied with some formidable teachers of English literature but it was those visiting academics who really shaped the way I read and write, opening windows where none had existed.
Other shutters were removed too, quietly and forever. There was (still is) a school for the blind across the road and some students from there were sent to study in ours, a lesson in self-sufficiency long before it was fashionable to think of the disabled as differently abled. My mother was one of the group of teachers in my school that crossed the road and learnt Braille to make this happen. Most alumni my age will remember at least one blind child in class. One of these children is now a very senior official in a bank, another is a translator in the UN. It still bothers me when someone hurries to assist a blind person with what they believe is compassion but is really presumption, and am gleeful when the helper is shaken off impatiently. Then there was “moral science”, which was a secular teaching of principles of the “honesty is the best policy” variety. Religion only entered intellectually in the language text books through poems or stories from the major religious groups.
But I went to last year’s School Day celebration and found a mere facsimile of the place I remember. “Moral” overwhelmingly means Hindu now. Eid is a day off. Christmas is a foreigner. The Guru Granth Sahib is a mystery. Even the Buddha gets no air time. The strange parochialism that is being celebrated across the country has permeated into the staff room where teachers have long been required to wear saris, leaving no room for diversity in the form of a skirt-wearing kindergarten teacher named Lillian or a music mistress called Miss Dunn swathed in awe-inspiring frocks. No blind children play football with the sighted ones. Professors do not take poetry classes for 14-year-olds on teach-the-teacher visits.
It seems the school I knew is long gone anyway, I’m just glad it existed for a while. I have to admit though that the tartan band uniforms are much better than ours used to be, as is the band itself.
The rumour turned out to have got it wrong - it wasn't the school that was ending but the tenure of the head mistress. She used to be my maths teacher, one of the strong influences of my school days, and with her goes the last of the old guard. I guess I have no more reason to visit the school, for school days or anything else.
It was a rural school, many students were the first ones in their families to be literate. There was a strong teaching ethic that had nothing to do with the syllabus, and a deep influence on the small community that Whitefield was at the time.
Around the time I entered high-school, the small private concern had entered a disproportionate stretch of glory. We became a centre where other schools came to write their school-leaving exams. We shone in state-level sports and cultural meets. Our name was heard in high places and our school band went to greet visiting government luminaries. Our chief guests grew more distinguished every year. Our teachers were volunteered as polling officers and advisors on textbook committees. We were the preferred guinea pigs for Education Board types, so new perspectives entered our classrooms now and then, usually in the English classes (or these are the only ones I remember). In later years, I studied with some formidable teachers of English literature but it was those visiting academics who really shaped the way I read and write, opening windows where none had existed.
Other shutters were removed too, quietly and forever. There was (still is) a school for the blind across the road and some students from there were sent to study in ours, a lesson in self-sufficiency long before it was fashionable to think of the disabled as differently abled. My mother was one of the group of teachers in my school that crossed the road and learnt Braille to make this happen. Most alumni my age will remember at least one blind child in class. One of these children is now a very senior official in a bank, another is a translator in the UN. It still bothers me when someone hurries to assist a blind person with what they believe is compassion but is really presumption, and am gleeful when the helper is shaken off impatiently. Then there was “moral science”, which was a secular teaching of principles of the “honesty is the best policy” variety. Religion only entered intellectually in the language text books through poems or stories from the major religious groups.
But I went to last year’s School Day celebration and found a mere facsimile of the place I remember. “Moral” overwhelmingly means Hindu now. Eid is a day off. Christmas is a foreigner. The Guru Granth Sahib is a mystery. Even the Buddha gets no air time. The strange parochialism that is being celebrated across the country has permeated into the staff room where teachers have long been required to wear saris, leaving no room for diversity in the form of a skirt-wearing kindergarten teacher named Lillian or a music mistress called Miss Dunn swathed in awe-inspiring frocks. No blind children play football with the sighted ones. Professors do not take poetry classes for 14-year-olds on teach-the-teacher visits.
It seems the school I knew is long gone anyway, I’m just glad it existed for a while. I have to admit though that the tartan band uniforms are much better than ours used to be, as is the band itself.
The rumour turned out to have got it wrong - it wasn't the school that was ending but the tenure of the head mistress. She used to be my maths teacher, one of the strong influences of my school days, and with her goes the last of the old guard. I guess I have no more reason to visit the school, for school days or anything else.
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