World cup is upon us, one more time. For someone who has followed all the world-cup closely since 1979, here are few of my predictions:
Peter was tired – he could not clearly make if he was tired, sleepy or jet lagged. He was tossing and turning in his bed for a while. He had drifted in and out of sleep several times. But now, he was very much awake, wide awake. He had just returned from his business travel far east, where all his firm's manufacturing has been relocated to. Peter managed the supply-chain for his company and he was quite good at it; and very successful. Although he has been typically traveling at least once in a quarter, recently, they have been becoming more and more of an ordeal. The enchantment and the mystique of the Far East no longer held magic for him. On travel, he yearned to be back home and he had started missing his family more – it looked to him that travel made him realize how little time he spent at home with his lovely wife, Simone and their kids – (just) teen-age daughter Jess and their son Jamie. On the flight home, he had played his long-forgotten favourite band, Pink Floyd’s music on his iPod. The lyrics,
Home, home again
I like to be here when I can
When I come home cold and tired
It's good to warm my bones beside the fire
Far away across the field
The tolling of the iron bell
Calls the faithful to their knees
To hear the softly spoken magic spells
stuck and he replayed it over and over in his head ("Hmmm...I should get back to listening to them more often", he told himself). Come tomorrow, Sunday, he would be at Church hearing those soft spoken sermons, sitting close to his family. "Damn", he muttered, "if only I could sleep tonight".
He twisted around and looked on the other side – his 3 yr old son Jamie was sleeping against Simone. Jamie was special; literally he was a special child needing a different kind of attention and upbringing. Peter worried about Jamie a lot – mostly because, he had no idea what the future held for Jamie and if he would be independent, after they were gone. One saving grace for them seemed that he was the second child behind Jess; and hopefully Jess would be there for Jamie after them. But, Jess – Jess, Jess, Jess, he sighed aloud. He had stopped by her room, before getting to bed – she was asleep, but his lips seemed to be screwed in anger and brow arched in sleep – perhaps going through a bad dream. As he had stood by the door-way, watching her, he did sense some of the struggle Jess is going through – he had no time for her; and Simone was overwhelmed handling and taking care of Jamie. Even if Jess was going through some problem, neither of her parents would know; worse not only they did not have time, but were perhaps telling Jess on what she should be doing, without even understanding what she is going through. Deciding that he would spend some quality time with her this weekend, he had gone to closer her bed, bent down, looked at her closely – his heart swelled; he had softly kissed her forehead, adjusted the blanket – Jess seemed to cuddle up and relax in her sleep, lips uncurling and brows straightening out.
He sighed aloud again and swore – perhaps too loud, that Simone stirred in her sleep – she opened her eyes and smiled weakly at him. He already felt guilty to have woken her up, when he let himself in the first time. Now his tossing and turning had woken her up again. Peter was sure that Simone’s day would have been swamped working with Jamie, keeping up with him and various programs. As Simone drifted back to sleep, Peter continued looking at her – he ran his fingers through her hair; he loved her a lot and was constantly amazed at her dedication to the cause; although he could not recall the last time he told her that - that of his love and his appreciation. He resolved again – to create and spend some time with her. And with Jamie and with both of them. And with Jess. Simple, he realized, he just needs to spend more time at home.
This line of thought distressed him further and anguished him. Peter realized that he is not only going sleepless, but he was creating possibilities of waking up the family. He got up softly, paddled out – swallowed a sleeping pill and went and lay down in the guest room. As he slowly drifted back to sleep in the guest room, he thought tomorrow could be a different day. Atleast he was not in the foreign country amidst of a different culture and language. At least, he was home. In that knowledge, Peter slept… alone.
Excerpted from the yet to be published book of “50 ways Peeve, Grieve and Cleave your caller – how to handle the Tele-marketeers, who call you and solicit to sell something that you told them that you didn’t need yesterday morning, evening, today morning and 5 minutes ago”. Randomly picked a few of the methods, the same way my phone number gets randomly picked by the Soliciting Sally (aka Sai Lakshmi). The more and more these methods are adopted my more and more folks, we will hopefully see a drop in calls and these tele-marketeers truly forming "do not call registry" amongst themselves.
#5: Seek every bit of info
Ask Sally for all the information about the product – each and every bit…every bit. AND the bit, OR the bit and XOR it, then ask again. If it’s a credit card, ask her to read out the rules and instruction at the back of the form and explain each and everything of what it means. Ask her for comparisons between various credit cards. If you feel like, ask her about the origin of credit card – if possible quickly google for it and set out to educate her. Here Sally may insist someone could meet you, politely decline, saying unless you understand of what it mean you could not waste time meeting anyone. But ensure that Sally understands that you are interested in the product. At some point in time in this analytical detail conversation with a scientific bent, Sally is bound to give up.
#15 Sell back to them
Pick a favourite product of yours or the product of the company that you work for. Pick a product that she is very unlikely to have – like a parallel processing computer – Ask here if Sally has one. If not, launch into a monologue as to how that would change her life and make her look good in front of her husband or boyfriend or both. Get to every detail. Ask her name, age and her address, so that you can send a sample. Sometimes these details can help transition into method #21, particularly if you are jobless on that day.
#21 Ask her out
Very effectively used by someone I knew. Patiently hear out all the details of the product and then finally tell her that you would buy the product only if she were to come and meet you personally and sell it. Feign innocence – tell her, you were interested in buying the product, since she was so interested in selling it. Insist that it is something called an “unique buyer-seller relationship”, that Peter Mucker talks about; and that is something pious that cannot be broken. Quote from some holy and quotable quotes of how such relationships are pure and blah
#28 Can you hold Please ?
Tell Sally that you are very interested with the product. Exclaim excitedly, “wow, that’s exactly what I was looking for… great, great, great”; sound a bit distracted and ask if she could “hold please”? Then leave the receiver on the desk for a while and go on with your work; after couple of minutes, repeat the “can you hold, please”. Repeat until Sally gives up; or alternately, you could be cruel and after the 3rd hold, you could tell Sally that you just realized that you already have the same credit card. If you really want to have more fun, quickly glance at your mobile, note the number where Sally is calling from (most likely a board number) and give it back to her as a friend’s number who would be interested in the card.
#33 Indulge in Babble
Hear Sally out for 30s and ask her if she could answer a question – then pick up the nearest newspaper and continue to read a news item unhindered and without a break. Just go for it. Somewhere, you would see that Sally had disconnected
#42 Run a Survey
As soon as you figure out that Sally is a tele-marketeer, profusely thank her for calling you and tell her that you are doing a research on Tele-marketeers for your PhD and you just need to get a few details – ask Sally about whatever you want to from then on – her education, her location, what shampoo she uses, why she uses it, what other product she considered before making a decision – go on for a while, then profusely thank her and disconnect.
#48 The old and Trusted Method
Get angry that you were called in the middle of something that you were doing, shout at Sally, increase a blood pressure and stress level. The author apparently does not recommend this at all.
#50 Register your number in the upcoming TRAI’s “Do not call Registry”
You could do this and hence publish your number to every other telemarketer, who due to some quirk of fate or stroke of luck, haven’t laid hands on your numbers.
I woke up this morning at around 7.30AM – there was something disturbing (for the lack of better word) that my morning sub-n-half-conscious-mind was not used to – I guess, that woke me up. I heard a myriad of voices - fortunately, those weren't in my head :) ; they were various calls of variety of birds. As I lay listening to those, those that seemed to morph into a rhythmic symphony, I could pick out the streak of various birds calling out. There was this long and plaintive call of the mynah; the hoarse caw of the crow – some unidentifiable voices of the birds – it would have been the perfect setting for an ornithologist. The best was yet to come; I walked out to the balcony and the air was s-t-i-l-l and fresh. There was this indescribable crispness to it – a cool whiff that touches you softly and washes over you. In the cusp of summer, the morning sun was gentle and trying to break through a light fog.
I stood enjoying, this musical in such a wonderful setting; then as wakefulness set in, it dawned on me. The usual cacophonies were conspicuous by their absence – no acrid smell of the exhaust smoke, no horns blaring, no sound of a macho-biker revving up, no bedlam of huge buses, and most importantly, no jangling of the nerves. The strains of the perfect morning had taken away any signs of stress.
As I enjoyed the moment, I realized this was how the world was before the industrialization took over; perhaps this was how my forefathers woke-up every morning in their villages when they took off to till the lands. It occurs to me now, that it is really not a very bad idea for us to have bandh, at least once a month, that closes down our city and opens up the world, instead.
My soul has always been
A lush lawn of green
Tended and watered by
My perennial dreams -
Dreams of promises and freedom,
For all, plenty and then some.
Then came the summer
Of hard truths
The drums of gunner’s
beating to shattered myths.
Incarcerated, cruel reality
Stared back hard at me -
The facts, pinning me down,
With a cruel frown,
Buried the faith in me
deep into the barren brown.
Broken, regret swells up to choke
down my fears
My Utopia dissolve up in smoke
In Triumphant's boos and jeers.
The hope, after a wait in vain,
trickles out of my heart;
Only the silt of sorrow remain
(with a noose) To rend me apart.
The Perspiration
Case Study #1: Excellence
Just before this semi-final there is lot of talk about how the gap has been narrowed - either he has improved or Federer did not develop any further to increase the gap. Thus thought the contender, Roddick. He had just beaten Fedex in an invitational off-the-record-book tournament. Roddick was meeting Fedex in the semi-finals of Australian open and coming into the match assuming he had a legitimate chance at beating him. The first set did not seem otherwise - Federx broke Roddick first, Roddick broke back Fedex; that seemed to spur Fedex on; he just elevated himself to a zone and then won 11 games in a row, including a second-set 6-0
demolition, destruction and devastation of Roddick. It was so obvious, when a point that was seemingly lost by Fedex turned around. A Roddick fore-hand drive at the net had pulled Fedex beyond the forehand tramlines; Then, Roddick seemed to have put-away Fedex’s return into the open court; Fedex scrambling back, improvised (rather innovated) a back-hand passing shot. Crowd erupts; and the man, permits himself a smile and an acknowledgement with his raised-racquet. In mid-game, quite rare. The match clearly showed that Federer comes into every match truly believing, without an iota of doubt, that he can beat anyone. To me, that itself gives him a "set" advantage. Pushes his opponent to win 3 out of 4 sets – that is almost impossible at this level; Secondly, Fedex seemed to have this great ability to evolve and dynamically change game-plans during the game.
At a young 25, his confidence, toughness and importantly, his tennis-intellect is extraordinary. I’m sure behind all these, there are tons and tons and hours and hours of practice and hard work; coupled with a steely mental determination. Sometimes I can’t make out if he is perfecting excellence or excelling in perfection. Maybe that’s an upwardly moving bar for him.
Case Study #2: Reinvention
There is one other young man, I am very impressed with. Dinesh Karthik. He was the wicket keeper of the Indian team, and then he had lost his slot to Dhoni. Seeing Dhoni perform, Karthik decided that it will be tough for him to come into the team as a keeper. So he decided to reinvent himself – he started concentrating on his batting and opened batting for his state and zonal team and made good enough scores to come into the team as reserve keeper. When he got a chance as a keeper in a tour match, he performed well with the bat; well enough for him to get into team in a 20/20 match and score runs that won him the man of the match. Then into the test team against RSA when Dhoni was injured – took his chances and into the Indian team as a 
pure batsman; there made a winning score to get the Man of the match one more time. The point I would like to highlight is this – there are many examples of how players have reinvented themselves as batsman. But in Karthik’s case there is another aspect that stands out, deserving italics :); Keepers, throughout their lives have stood behind and close to the stumps – hence they do not develop a strong throwing arm and cannot field in the deep. Karthik seems to have worked that one through and he is now acknowledged as an outstanding fielder either at close or in the deep; his fielding ability is talked about in the same breath as that of Yuvraj and Raina.
For a young man of 22, this is truly exceptional. He could have been a victim of circumstance. Instead, he chose to be a player – in his mind, there was no option, but to get back, even if he were to redo things completely. Including having the courage to relearn new skills. In that, he has made himself more versatile and hence increased his sustainability. I believe this has started with his mental outlook of refusing to be a victim and seeing possibilities, truly believing in his mind he can get there. And he has. Even if he never plays for
The Inspiration
As I was on my morning run, a streak occurred to me. I usually do stretches, walk a while and then jog 3 laps on the track. As I was on the first lap, thinking about the above two gentlemen, I wonder if I could push myself. I decided that tiredness would not be an option today; and I ended-up finishing 9 laps. At the end of it, I realized that I have a legitimate shot at, what I assumed to be an impossible physical activity for me – running the mini-marathon (7km) - I will run this year at the Bangalore event. I realize it is not just physical, its mental. I have been inspired. Thank you, Raja Federer and Dinesh Karthik.
Her View:
I have dreamed about this my life time – perhaps all women do. In another few minutes I will be marrying someone of my dreams; well, not exactly, but will do and importantly, I am glad that I’m marrying him. I had met him in a function at our workplace, about two years ago. He and I belonged to the group that had volunteered to organize the event for the company. This is where I had met him. Initially he seemed to be quite a nice guy; eventually, he just turned out to be nicer!! We are doing fairly well at job and his family seemed nice, with him being the lone-son. There was also some kind of excitement as I look forward to my life with him. In spite of all this, I still have butterflies in my stomach. I suppose, there is a certain amount of apprehension when one commits to something as big and as lifelong as marriage :-) … The past few days were hectic, with all the running around, invitations, shopping, fixing up stuff and so on. At the same time, the emotions over the past day were on a roller-coaster and sometimes were very confusing. There a just a few moment left; in a minute or two, I would be Mrs. Somebody... I wish I could walk to the groom’s room and talk to him one more time; and how I wish, I could peep into his room and see if he is going through a similar predicament…
His View:
I was going through a predicament. Just two minutes or so to go. Two years seems as if I’ve waited for this for a life time. I’m quite apprehensive and anxious. I look at the TV in the room. It was a CCTV showing the marriage pandal. I absent-mindedly look for the remote; perhaps I can switch channels and get rid of this tension. There is just so much anticipation here and I can hardly sit; there was excitement and lot of nervous energy; I pace around the room, look at my clock; perhaps very little time is left now! I wonder what the future would hold… as I pace around, I hear the beep of my mobile. and there is this text message from my friend: “2 passes with 19 & 14 yards. 1st down at Mid-field and 22 seconds to go… AND Brady is intercepted!! Game over!!! Your
Ps: Part of the story is true, since I was the one who sending the periodic text message; However, the groom and bride’s thoughts are a result of my imagination...
Few days ago, a news-story on one of the premier English news channel caught my eye. The fact that I’m writing about it, does imply that there was something that I do not agree on ! :) - not that they care, but it has kind of become my favourite whipping horse.
Maybe I should start that Media-Watch blog !
Coming to the point here. The news item that got about 5 minutes of air-time in the news and several re-runs was about an Indian born, US emigrated Gujarati girl getting into the US Army. The news-story was title, the “first Indian Girl in the
I found the same with both Kalpana Chawla and Sunita Williams. They are not Indian citizens. They have nothing to do with
There are lots more of
Those are the real “First-Indians”, literally and figuratively speaking.
Having just moved into
We had found a nice apartment that was in the quieter part of the town and settled down. As we settled down, we got to know people around. Over the past six months, there was one family that endeared itself to my wife and I. It was a family of a mother, her son and the daughter. The son was in the final year of the engineering, but in a different college from the one I taught in and the daughter was still in the 12th. The lady of the house had lost her husband quite early and worked in a government position and had brought up her kids with a sense of decency and responsibility. We had liked the kids immediately; gradually, the kids – Dilip and Deepa started frequenting our home. There were lot of times when I came home and found Deepa helping out my wife. Dilip too had gotten familiar with me and called me “professor-uncle” and discussed with me on various topics. For us it was nice to have kids at home and we actually welcomed them into our house and kind of gave them unfettered access to our house. I found Dilip to be an extremely nice kid with simple tastes, wanting to keep his mother happy and wanting to do well. He was also a dreamer, who constantly dreamed and aspired to greater things. The only problem being, I found his efforts really did not commensurate his dreams; and he seemed to have set his boundaries around what he actually knew or what his circle of friends told him; to me there seemed to be a big gap between that and the reality out in the world. As Dilip came to me for advice, I came to know him better and deeper. It was not uncommon that Dilip would say that he had done his exams very well and end up getting around 60%, that too in a state where 80% and above was normal - I found out that he actually had done well for the questions he had attempted. For the rest, he always dismissed it with a wave of his hands and explain why the other portions weren’t important and how his seniors had told him that people who come in for in-campus interviews did not ask any questions around that and why it was important to know the portions he knew very well as they were key to a job! As a teacher and as someone who was well-versed with on-campus hiring, I found his point of view bordering absurdity; The fact that getting higher scores will get him above the baseline cut-off required for meeting the job-eligibility completely missed him. I tried to get this into him, but he had this disarming smile of a simpleton that was just impossible to get angry at him.
About 2-3 weeks ago, he had come home seeking some clarifications, just ahead of his semester exams. We got talking and he told me that he had been quite unlucky. After a bit more back and forth, I had found that he missed on an on-campus job interview. He just missed the eligibility by about a 2%. The cut-off was 65% and his aggregate was just below it. He continued that his friend who had gotten much lesser than him in the past two semesters had made it, while he missed out.
“I find it strange, how come?” I had asked him.
Dilip explained, “No, professor uncle, he had actually scored more than me in the earlier semesters; his aggregate is just over 65%. Now, he has gotten through the first two rounds and most likely will have a job by end of tomorrow”
After a pause, he added, “I am just plain unlucky”.
I had felt exasperation slowly build up in me. “Dilip, so what in your view is Luck?”
He was surprised at the question. Finally, after some thought he had said, “Uncle, it is about finding something by chance that one wasn’t expecting”
I helped him out, “So, it is about being in the right place at the right time and unexpectedly finding the opportunity”
He agreed, “Yes, yes”.
I continued, “Dilip, this is where you are wrong – it is not just about that – it is about being in the right place at the right time with right preparation”. I stressed on the “right-preparation” part one more time. “If you aren’t prepared well enough, there would be times when you would not see the opportunity, even if you are around at the right place and at the right time”.
I added lightly, “For all you know, the opportunity can come, stare at your face, tap you on your shoulder and then knock you over; and without the preparation, you will just get up, dust yourself and walk-on and let the opportunity slip-by. So, essentially, lucky people are those who had worked hard putting in the right preparation”
Dilip became thoughtful and slowly nodded his head. I had hoped that I had gotten to him.
That was several days ago. Today, I had no lectures and settled down at home to work on the research paper I was helping a PhD student with. Earlier in the morning, Dilip had come home to say bye to me and told me that he had his 7th semester exam start today. I had wished him all the best and had hoped within me that he has prepared well. As I was immersed in the thesis, I heard Dilip’s voice – it was early evening and Dilip walked into my home-office.
I looked up at him enquiringly.
“Uncle I did my exams quite well – There were about 4 questions that I really knew well and I’m sure I would have max’ed it. I am quite contended about what I did”
I was glad, “I’m happy for you Dilip, so what do you expect?”
“I should get around 70%, uncle”.
I was surprised – I’d peg his score at 60% then. “But I thought you did very well…”, I trailed off, enquiringly.
“Yes uncle, I did very well on the 4 questions that I had answered. There were 3 other questions that I answered so-so. Those questions were from the syllabus I had not really prepared on – I heard those topics are un-important”
I was aghast.
Dilip concluded, “Just did not expect this; I was really unlucky, uncle”
Hmmmm.... In 19 years from now, where would I be ?**
