Does He know a mother’s heart?

 

I have borrowed this title from Arun Shourie – the renowned journalist, author, ex-minister but ultimately a mortal human being.  I read this book many years back and though I may not remember it verbatim, its content has kept haunting me ever.

The book is about his special child and the physical and emotional stretch that the couple has gone through in their life in bringing him up. He has shared spiritual answers to anxious parents’ questions from exponents of different religions. But even as a reader, it is difficult to accept the principles of Karma or any other explanations coming from other religious advocates. More so, when you are the affected parent. And then you do doubt – does He know a mother’s heart?

I had another friend who had a special child. Like Shourie’s fears as to how would he carry his child as he got older, I have seen my friend struggling to carry his son – as both got older. My friend and his wife have braved the associated physical and emotional stress with a smile – apparently. But did He see inside a mother’s heart?

I had lost my sister under tragic circumstances and I have seen my mother’s pains to reconcile to that loss. She gave up on all celebrations and had never taken even a pinch of sweet after that for many years until she passed away. She never gave up on her prayers but having seen her unreconciled agony, I doubted if He knew a mother’s heart.

We are a Celiac parent. My wife, whenever she comes across a dish her daughter loved but she could no more take, she breaks into tears. Her eyes give a forlorn look, when my daughter carries a box of salad to her office parties -  so, she doesn't miss out on the gathering that she loves to move with. She looks at the page 3 eatery reviews with exasperation, the ones that mother-daughter bonded on in the past but now are out of bounds. Some tears drop from her eyes, some flow back deep into her heart. She gets hyper with her fears. She gets pained when others don’t even understand the intricacies and high level of meticulousness that maintenance of it requires. She keeps questioning on the rationale of such an injustice. And on those occasions, I too veer towards losing my faith – does He even know a mother’s heart?

The ’Karma’ theory is a de-leveler though. You are rich or poor. You are from any cast or creed. You are a lowly worker or a chief justice. The ‘Karma’ doesn’t seem to leave anybody. But we do see often that not all righteous people around us living a happy life and not all wrong ones being paid back by the ‘Karma’. The believers attribute this to the cross-life span of the ‘Karma’. And herein lies the disconnect. Unversed and doubters like me question the paradigm where the wrong-doers are not made aware of their wrongs in the same consciousness and in the same life. What good it is when a life ends without the realization of its wrongs and when the memories do not go across the two lives. In corporate parlance, it is like doing an appraisal without sharing the feedback.

In corporate world, I have seen bosses who would like you to be a faithful follower. You apply your mind or express your reasoning abilities countering his, you risk losing a privileged position. Does the spiritual world work the same way? Do we not have a right to question? When I see small children suffering, and the believers attribute this to ‘Karma’, I feel being let down. Is that the child’s ‘Karma’? or is that the parents’ ‘Karma’? Or, does He really not know a mother’s heart?

Yellow in my life …… the sequel.

 

 I had written a blog titled ‘Yellow in my life’ about 10 years back. And here is how the yellow still continues to dazzle me…..

https://hesh-iyer.blogspot.com/2016/07/yellow-in-my-life.html

 Yesterday, it yet again was a momentous occasion for me when I boarded the brand new ‘Yellow Line’ metro, which was inaugurated by the Prime Minister just 10 days back. This stunning cute little tube was dodging me for over 2 years now. Originally slated to be launched in 2023, I was thrilled at the prospect of going to my office at Electronic City using this metro – as that would have been a door-to-door service for me – without the hassle of catching the only office bus that would leave at 8 am sharp or without worrying about driving through the peak hour traffic that would get worse on a rainy day.

As the launch kept delaying, quarter after quarter, it missing the deadline of 1^st June 2024 was the last nail in the coffin as I was to retire from service on the 30^th June 2024. So, finally I retired last year, burying my long-standing desire of traveling to office on a metro, beneath those mammoth pillars of the double-decker metro line mocking at me.

My love affair with trains goes back to the childhood memories of my long journeys from Kanpur to my native near Kumbakonam, via Chennai, during summer vacations. It used to be a 2-day affair providing us an unforgettable experience of socializing with co-passengers while traveling through half of the country. The fun was in sharing each of these experiences with my school friends, who were mostly local and had either never traveled on a train or had just made a trip of a few hours to their respective native towns. Some of these stories were real and few were pure fiction to impress my friends.

My village was just behind the Tirunageswaram railway station, which was only 6 kms from Kumbakonam town. Most of the village folks and kids would travel to Kumbakonam every day for work or for their schools. As the schools in South would reopen early in June, unlike the ones in Kanpur that opened every year on the 8^th July, most of my playmates would start going to school towards of end of my vacation. Seeing them off in the morning at the station (I am not sure if there was a concept of platform ticket at that station but in any case, my first cousin was the station master there), I used to be amazed and used to feel envious about the fact that one could even go to school on a train - while I just walked to my school back in Kanpur.

Over the years, circumstances forced me to rely more on flights than those chugging beauties for my travels but my love for them never faded. Therefore, it was no surprise that once the metro came near my home in Bangalore, my preferences for the malls or eating joints quickly changed to the ones that were closer to a metro station. I couldn’t go to school or to work on a train / metro but no one could take away my pleasure of riding on a metro for a cup of coffee.

Knowing perhaps my love for the trains and having heard my unfulfilled desire that I expressed on my retirement day, my colleagues invited me for a talk to the office yesterday. And having enviously watched my colleagues traveling to office on the metro last 10 days, I finally had my day yesterday. And true to their style, what a beautiful infrastructure has been created by Infosys for the convenience of its employees. An exclusive exit from the station, a long 200 meter fully covered exclusive corridor hanging on the air, protecting them from rain or shine,  directly landing into the campus on to a large airport like lounge with those familiar x-ray machines and the turnstiles. What a privilege for these employees – who may or may not even recognize that.

Well, the yellow beauty did ditch me by not arriving ahead of my retirement but my first kiss of the beauty will remain etched in my memory – what a great experience it was, traveling in comfort and landing straight into the Infosys Metro Plaza on the campus. And I hope this wasn’t the last kiss.

 

None of the Above

 

In college, I took several competitive tests, some with serious intent and others just for the heck of it. Most of these used to consist of multiple-choice questions. While it was fun attempting most of these tests, one thing that invariably perturbed me was the option – None of the Above.  It not only caused confusion, it also restricted me from smart-guessing answers to numerical problems, particularly where the speed of response mattered a lot. One thing that I learned while hiring candidates in my organization was that we should know what the candidate knows and not what he doesn’t know. Therefore, many years later, very recently, when I was setting up the question paper for my MBA students in a college, I made sure that there was no option for NOTA.

The mischievous NOTA has continued to hound me years later as well. Despite all the articles that I have read and all those videos that I have watched from contemporary psychologists on women's psychology, I have continued to commit mistakes. These psychologists warn that when your wife complains about something, it is not to seek a solution from you. You just need to listen and appreciate the challenges. Unfortunately, I have built and lived through my career by finding solutions for my clients and therefore, the very same natural instincts that helped me build my career have repeatedly failed me at home.

Very often, my wife would run out of ideas for the evening meal. As she would grumble about it, the solution provider inside me would come with multiple options. I would rattle out options of Paneer, Aloo-Matar, Lentils, or Sambar. And, lo and behold, she would dismissively pick the NOTA and would end up making Kadhi-pakora. I will have no problems with the option but just that not meeting up to the challenge would sometimes hurt the solution provider in me.

When it came to buying a gift for someone, she would seek my suggestions. Acknowledging the NOTA risks, I would generally refrain from making any concrete suggestions. But my wife had worked for long in the corporate world.  And like a pro manager, she would remind me that one of the traits she liked in me, before our marriage, was my choice of innovative gifts. And I, like an overzealous software developer, would jump into my solution mode. But all my suggestions of bouquets, clothing, gadgets, and curios would finally end up the NOTA fate.

But as the much-cliched adage goes, every cloud has a silver lining. I am sure, at some point, my wife would have been presented with a list of suitors by her parents for her marriage. And instinctively, she would have responded with a NOTA. And then, as I approached her directly, with the sole and solitary option, there was no space for a NOTA.

The FOMO Economy

 

There has been quite a hullabaloo about the growing Concert Economy in India. A few music concerts in the past few weeks have been extremely popular and have raked in good moolah for the organizers. Coldplay, Ed Sheeran, Bryan Adams, Dua Lipa, and our own singers like Dilit Dosanjh and many others performed to an overflowing crowd. A few analysts, however, have attributed this to the FOMO (Fear of missing out) factor.

There are legions of genuine music enthusiasts who live and breathe these artists.  At the same time, there also are many piled-on audiences who have little or no interest in music. They are there just to enjoy the extravaganza and experience the other surrounding fun and frolic associated with these events. The investment of time and money is worth the Instagram-worthy moments that it offers.  Over the last few years, enough has been spoken and written about the experiential holidays and experiential gifts. This is just a part of such an experiential event that no one wants to miss out.

The current craze of experiencing the mega mahakumbh event is another such example. Yes, there is a religious sanctity attached to the event. Yes, some devout believers would have never missed even the 12-year occurrences over their lifetime and this was a rare 144-year event.  But going by the current number of devotees who have already taken a dip in the holy confluence of rivers over the last one month, it is much beyond that. Many are otherwise faith agnostic but have not missed this opportunity to be part of this. Just because they wanted to be in the count and didn’t want to miss an opportunity to secure social media hits.  And then more followed, perhaps, due to the same FOMO factor.

Last week, another familiar event took place. The delightful spectacle of state elections in the national capital. And as it happens, the media circus of the counting of votes and the announcement of results was no less than a gala event. From high-decibel anchors to mild-mannered philosophical experts and from sagacious psephologists to political rivals at each other’s throats – they were all there on the TV to make their points. For some, it was an intellectual feast and for others, it was pure entertainment. In India, we carry strong opinions on our cricketers and the judgment of the selection committee as also on the polity and the broader voter response during elections. Therefore, an election doesn’t pass off merely as a process, it evokes emotions for some and provides validation of stand for others.

I was wondering, if there will be a time when even the election result analysis will not be limited to the TV audience, it may well become another extravaganza hosted by these anchors in large arenas. The euphoria involving such detailed analysis, the leads, the ups and downs, and the results will all be watched live by the audience. Like the award functions, the event will blend politics with other fun, frolic, food, and drinks to keep everyone engaged. Social media posts and the relentless FOMO will ensure the cash registers keep ringing. Who said democracy couldn’t be entertaining?

O Marketing!

The other day, while driving, I was trying to change the channels on my car stereo to listen to some good songs but all that I got was the standard FM channels that mostly played the latest sponsored songs and tunes. Not to take away anything from the new tracks and their composers but listening to the same tunes the entire day, across different channels, was too overwhelming. I longed for the old Vivid Bharati kind of broadcast that played popular songs on listeners’ requests. Unfortunately, the Vivid Bharati channel was playing a talk show then. 

Branding and Advertising always existed in my childhood but Marketing as a skill and a critical function emerged more prominently in the post-Manmohan era. Over the years, corporate marketing has moved from a tentative experiment to assuming a CXO-level function across organizations. Be it an everyday selling of consumer goods or a niche software product, the marketing function plays an important strategic role. 

In the current digital era, however, the lines between marketing, influencing, and lobbying have kind of blurred. The marketeers today seem to be taking an easier path by relying heavily on influencers and lobbyists – who seem to be playing a larger role than the pure marketeers. Do a Google search on any product or service, you invariably find a few sponsored offerings matching your search. The social media influencers have created such an aura around them that the otherwise well-educated and skilled youth also consider switching their careers to this new-found profession that gets them a much higher and seemingly easy buck. 

The lobbyists have existed for long – to influence the policymakers at corporate levels. It is legal in some countries, while in others it is a covert operation. But social media influencers are all in open. Be it page-3 of a local daily, a book review, a health column, a new launch brand, a new-found super food, a new restaurant in your neighborhood, a new fashion trend or a new weekend tourist destination – all of these are pushed by a bunch of social media influencers. The new term for them is ‘content creator’ and I read somewhere that we have 2.5 to 3.5 million of these content creators in the country now.  And you don't even take it with a ‘pinch of salt’ as another influencer told you that it was not good for your BP.  While genuine marketing is like going to a well-stocked and attractively colourful fresh vegetable market in the morning, the influencer-led business is like going to a dimly lit vegetable vendor at night and getting a few rotten pieces passed on with your buy.  There is no accountability whatsoever. The influencers don’t overtly represent their recommendations but they do have a vested interest most of the time. 

As late as this morning, a cousin of mine shared in the family whatsapp group, the details about a temple in Bithoor – an obscure little town near my birthplace Kanpur – and asked me if I knew about it. Frankly, in my 20 years of childhood and schooling days, I had heard of Bithoor only in the context of Nana Sahib and Rani Laxmi Bai. But surely, it is the social media influencers who had pulled out ostensibly an architectural and religious gem from the hinterland up north and presented that to my cousin down south in Chennai. So, it is not all bad with the social content creators, perhaps. Building a base of followers is the stepping stone of an influencer – and that’s where, possibly, some genuine knowledge sharing or marketing happens. 

Like the might of a crowd-pulling politician or a movement, the power of an influencer with millions of followership cannot be undermined. And, like the dread of a hafta-seeking local goon, the million-followed influencer shouldn’t become an all-powerful hafta-seeking digital goon. The authorities need to streamline this new skillset of influencers before it becomes a menace, and the genuine marketeers should draw their territory to stay clear of the thin bordering line.

The 100-gram Conundrum

 

The 100-gram Conundrum

 

My very first memory of ‘100 grams’ is that of my childhood. In the extreme winter climate of Kanpur, it was those 100 grams of roasted peanuts, bought for just 1 rupee,  that worked as an elixir to beat the severe cold. On a winter afternoon, the 100 grams of shell peanuts were a cozy companion for me and my friends on my terrace or in the school playground.

It may sound politically incorrect in the current context to say that the 100 grams was a large quantity to last over an hour’s gossip. In today’s context, we strongly believe that 100 grams is too small a quantity to deny a medal to our own Vinesh Phogat. Reams of arguments have been written across newspapers, magazines and social media raising enough hullabaloo over the actual weight of 100 grams, just short of challenging even the MKS system. The proponents of the conspiracy theory have just missed quoting one important caveat of the definition of a gram. As the definition says - for greater precision, the mass may be weighed at a point at which the acceleration due to gravity is 980.655 cm/sec2. Now, that is something our attorneys should also check.

I have always been classified as an underweight since the time I first heard about the term BMI. Despite that, my weight has never been 50 KG as far as I remember. Therefore, it surprises me no end to know that a well-built wrestler could also fall into this category of weight.  To top it all, the act of shredding 2 Kilos of weight overnight also amazes me. My close friend Upadhyay had recently published a screen-shot of his weighing machine proudly claiming a 5 KG drop in his weight over 5 months of hard work. Or, is that only a girlie thing to fret over 100 grams? My wife, who maintains is healthy BMI, too gets hyper over a 100 gram increase in weight whenever she checks it on a Sunday morning. And then she moves the weighing machine to every room to recheck the weight – she seems to remember her school science very well and is always doubting the exact gravity and the variance of that across rooms.

But this 100 gram of weight,  in the current context,  is just not equal to the roasted peanuts. It is worth a real metal. For a Haryanvi Olympian to return without a medal is like a Malayali returning from Gulf without gold. Both will be looked down upon in their respective states.

Our cricketers, however, find all this noise around 100 grams of weight and thereby denial of the metal quite nonsensical. They have always exceeded the expected weight of a sportsperson and still have been able to carry loads of golden metal whenever they went abroad. And they never had to wait for 4 years to get their next chance for the metal. They are also equally intrigued by the inability of Vinesh to drop her weight by 100 grams. They have a very simplistic solution for the same – she should have just removed her gold chain which would have dropped the weight by more than 100 grams. They just don’t comprehend the difference between the gold they buy on every foreign trip and the gold that our athletes get a chance to compete for, once in 4 years.

The arbitration appeal may go either way. Our heavyweight attorney, to our delight,  may end up making light of the contentiously heavy 100 grams. But Vinesh is going to carry this weight of 100 grams all her life and that could feel heavier than the biblical cross for her.

A Forced Lefty

 As I was handing over the keys of my car to a valet at a hotel, I realized that I had gradually become a left-hander over the last two months. I was, otherwise, a compulsive right-hander as far as a physical exchange transaction was concerned. I would unfailingly check others and shamelessly point out to shift to the ‘right’ hand from the ‘wrong’ one.  You don’t forget some of the rules ingrained into your psyche by your orthodox upbringing.

I have been going through an excruciatingly painful bout of ‘frozen shoulder’, that had only worsened over the last two months. And all this while, how and when I have unknowingly and seamlessly shifted from being a northpaw to a southpaw – I have not noticed.

Being a keen student of behaviorism, I wanted to see if this motorial malfunction of my right arm and thereby the renewed activism of my left hand has brought about any cognitive change in my personality. Enough reams have been printed by the research scholars on the intellectual primacy of the left handers. Some of these studies have concluded that the left handers do well in mathematics and in sports as well. 

To check the impact of my renewed status of handedness, I challenged my daughter to play a game of table-tennis with me. While I could never match her TT skills with my right hand, I thought with a transformed hand orientation, I should be able to beat her. But the result was much worse. I consoled myself that such a change required some practice to adjust and get some expertise and hence would need time and moved on.

Next morning, there was a big news about the hefty fines introduced on traffic violations. The whole social media was full of memes around this topic. Some carried a chart of fines and penalties imposed on different kinds of violations, a few others painted scenarios and asked one to guess the total amount of fine chargeable as per the new rules. This was pretty straight forward, I thought.  But every time I tested my mathematical prowess, it proved otherwise. I misjudged a penalty or overlooked some compounding.  My new found left handedness did not add to my proficiency here either.

As I entered the kitchen I saw my wife struggling to take out a bottle from the top shelf. I stretched my left hand to reach out and said – I may not be able to lift my right hand Honey but my left hand is always there for you. She smiled and a silly me went on to say – or you get a home slipper with high heels. She never liked commenting on her height and snarled at me – you are getting too lefty with your comments these days. Better do your physio more seriously and get back to the right sooner. And I retracted immediately, realizing that the cognitive change had indeed happened but on the ‘wrong’ side.