Simply Living Hardly Thinking

So do you remember it…… Think hard.

A little more. If you can’t remember, I am really happy. I know this is a little bit of sadistic pleasure but ya still it is.

I was trying to find admission in a good school after completing my 10th in Lucknow . The first choice was to study in ST Francis. I collected all my certificates and went to the school and tried to talk the principal to issue me an application form. But that was precisely the issue. I had to talk to the principal and principal will talk only English something which was certainly not my strong point. Anyway my 37 second chat with the guy was enough to convince him that I won’t fit the bill. Anyway at that age, you have a lesser ego and you take such things in your stride and move on.

My next destination Colvin Taluqdars School. That school use to be a reputed school at that point. My friends tell me that it has lost that reputation now.  This place was more friendly for HMT ( Hindi Medium Type ) people like me. I thought this might be my chance to make it big. I was not the genius types but certainly had done some hard work on at least Maths and Physics.  So the interviewer asks me the simplest of Physics questions after the usual inquiries about my possible connections with Birla family. What is newton’s second law ? Oh boy, it can’t get simpler than that. But my memory failed me at the moment I needed it most. I knew all the laws and fundas and formulas around it but forgot which one was second. I was straightforward enough to accept that in front of the interviewer. I told him that I knew all the fundas and all the laws but don’t remember which one is second. It did not take him much time to kick me out.

Now when I look back, these experiences outline few of the fundamental flaws in our education system. The first one being over emphasis on languages and specially english. Nothing against any language in particular but let us get it clear, language is a means, not the end. Memorization unfortunately has been such an integral part of growing up for so many people that they have never tried to understand what they have memorized.

Having cribbed about the education system, I am just glad that I am out of it now and now I can focus more on learning in real environments instead of education. Learning is more important the education

So do you expect a software guy to figure out the existence of a thin invisible line on the road where parking becomes illegal. I certainly did not and as I come out of my office at 9 at night appreciating the fine regex capabilities of Perl and suddenly I don’t find my bike downstairs. I am a bit confused and lost and call up my wife just to check if I really came on a bike to office. Looks like I did.

The security guard in his Nepali accent tells me that your bike might be in Ashok Nagar Police Station. It was tough for me to figure out form his accent that he was pointing me towards Shock Nagar or Ashok Nagar. Anyway got an auto and headed for the police station. Finally when I got the first view of my bike, I realized it I loved it more than I thought I did. The red pulsar reminded me all the good times I had with it and the day when I did 110 km/per hour on it. Anyway all is well that ends and I am back on my bike feeling the Bangalore breeze.

BTW as far as the thin invisible line is concerned, I hope these cops will at least address the visible part. But isn’t that true in software and life. We have so many invisible thin lines around us all the time. In the software world how to find the thin line between over engineering and under engineering, how to make a user interface with enough content and still load fast enough, do I need Oracle for my needs or a mysql or BDB is enough.  In real life do we bribe the traffic cops for convenience or not, do we give money to beggars on the street or not, do we rip that DVD and see it or not.

I guess both personal as well as professional life presents us with enough thin invisible lines so I should rather not bother about the traffic cops who picked up my bike.

PS: I do use the parking lot now.

So what’s in a city name. A New York called as Jhumri Talaiya will still have traffic problems on all the bridges on thanks giving. So is there anything like a city character. Is city an entity which has a mood, character, willpower or culture as lot of media would wants us to believe. Tough for me ot answer as I am no expert on city scientist.

Let me tell you a background of all the cities I have lived in to narrate you my research done in the most unscientiffic and biased manner. My childhood was spent in small towns in Utta Pradesh(Orai, Etawah, Farrukhabad, Fatehgarh). I don’t have much memories of these towns as I had simpler problems to think of at that age. Then I moved to Lucknow when I was around 13. After Lucknow I spent 4 years in Kanpur studying at IIT. I can hardly count that as experiencing the city as IIT was always a city in itself. I have been living in Bangalore from 1995 and do visit Delhi occasionally to meet family and friends. Besides these cities I have also spent some time in Ottawa, Montreal, Wallingford(Connecticut), Seattle and Mountain View.

Let us first talk about Lucknow, the language is sweet and people are courteous. The shopkeepers go head over heels to say sweet things to anyone who passes in front of their shops. Usage of words like Bhai Sahab, Mataji, Bhaiya(not the Mumbai context) is quite liberal. If you talk to people who have been in the city for a long enough time, usage of Urdu in their language adds sugar to the voice.

Bangalore is a place where if you ask directions for a place, there will be lot of people who will almost take you there. In the recent past the traffic woes have certainly contributed to a significant reduction in the warmth of people but it is still manageable. One of the place where I have seen a reduction of warmth in Bangalore is in small shops. Since there are lot of people with high disposable incomes in the city, the shopkeepers do not mind loosing a few. Sometime they are not concerned or a bit rude.

Now coming to Delhi, it is tough to pass through Delhi and not get attacked by a rude conversation. At least I have not managed it for years now. In one incident some guy on the airport just touched my suitcase when I was taking it out of a taxi and his claim was that I will need to pay him for this. In last incident I had a taxi owner was not ready to explain me some extra money he was charging me. In both the circumstances, I would have least resistance to pay money if the questions was asked in Lucknow/Bangalore style. In Delhi the default mode is offensive and courtesy comes later if they are convinced that the other party can harm them.

Talking about cities in Canada, I always found them warm(despite the weather). If you are trying to ski on a slope, there will be enough people who will come over and help you. In US I have seen more of a non-interested culture. People just do not want to accept that other also exist in this world. There is artificial warmness in some patches but not a lot.

What makes me wonder is how a cities character gets defined? Is it about few role models or traffic or economic conditions or history and language. Whatever maybe the reason but it is for sure that people do develop some of their traits based on the city they grow up in. I wish I could steal few good things out of all these cities and build something which is more liveable and warm. What if cities attributes were like software components…….?

Hmmmm….. is it really possible???

Oh yes it is. Few tips from my end to make that transformation….

1. Disconnect – learn how to shutdown your mobile and laptop. Learn how not to leave daemon processes in your mind. Learn how play one instrument at a time and play it well instead of being an orchestra always.

2. Exert – It helps in disconnecting and plugging in you to your self. Maybe you might want to explore how long you can walk or cycle before dropping dead or how many weights you can lift before you become weight(dead type).

3. Kidding – Remember what you loved to do as a kid. Maybe the setting up a drip irrigation system for the plants at home or maybe building a toy train engine using a rubber band or maybe dismantling a wall clock to make a time machine….

4. Meta-Think – Think about what is a good enough issue to occupy your mind share(don’t get into an infinite recursion on the issue). Don’t think about stuff because you have nothing else to do. Do remember you get tired more by thinking lesser by doing. So do not take the trouble of thinking about anything and everything under the sun. BTW your mind might not mind a bit of rest if you offer it.

5. Help – trust me, helping somebody does help you more. It certainly improves the quality of existence(not life).

Sounds familiar, yes it happens. Let us take some time to think why it happens. I guess this is a syndrome which is now an essential ingredient of modern living which is so full of technology and gadgets. I can not comment about other industries but here are few models I have seen in software industry.

1. Borrowed Stress – I remember working in a team where the guy who leaves the office earliest and works least use to feel more stressed then rest of the team which spent much more time. His approach was pretty simple. I don’t have stress as I am doing almost nothing so let me borrow it from others around me as being busy with work is such a cool fashion statement in almost all the social circles. The pleasure of telling your friends and family that i did not get this done because I was busy with work is a temptation too hard to resist and most of the humans do succumb to this.
2. Embedded Office Stress – Some people love to carry there office wherever they go. When they are on vacation they are just waiting to get a phone call from their office on the cell to get an update on the most trivial issue. They will pay 30$ on some airport to get internet access for an hour just to end up reading mails about Tom’s affair with Julia and the breakup between Amy and Rick.   Such people are the slaves of their gadgets and when you see them with their gadgets it feels like a dog and a bone. This category of people derive more stress from waiting for the email or the cell phone call then the content of it. A great Urdu sher on this issue – “Umr-e-daraz maang kar laye the char din, do arzoo main kat gaye do intzar main” – I got an extension of 4 days in life, spent two of them in craving and two of them in waiting.
3. Crib Stress – Some people just love to crib(boss and customers are the favorite targets). For them if you give them an option between solving a problem about which they are cribbing and cribbing, they would probably prfer the problem not to get solved so that they can continue to crib. They derive their stress from the time spent to crib. The also spread it among their colleages using their powerful communication channels.
4. VIP Stress – This is an intresting form of stress. This occurs to the people who feel that the entire organization will collapse if they don’t come to office even for 1 day. They just forget that the organization consists of lots of people who also work for same goals. They carry this feeling of importance everywhere like a stone tied to their legs. As a result they are stressed when they are having Pani Puri with their wife and kids. They just refuse to let this feeling go as they feel this is an important part of them to keep them going. In the longer run they become uni-dimensional and burnt out.

Love to know from all of you other forms of stress you have seen in the industry……..

Had one more agenda during the free time… Getting free lunch at the cost of friends. Convinced one of them to give a party after helping him out on finalizing a hotel. And here we are on the discussion table with the hotel guy to finalize the menu. So what should we order, veg manchow soup – no it has mushrooms, not sure if everyone will have mushrooms. So how about baby corn – i know people in south India love it but not too sure about folks from north. Hmmmmm…. so no one food item which will satisfy all so let us play safe. Order something which has the least probability of being disliked by most of the people. Isn’t that the same compromise all of us make when we need to take decisions. Remember another discussion in office where we made a decision to take an office in the middle of Bangalore so that it is equally inconvenient to all.

The temptation of being fair is too hard to resist and even more is the temptation of being perceived as fair. And both the temptations are equally dangerous. I would have taken the following approach to the office location. Find out 5 top performers in the company and let them decide the office location although rather difficult to extend the same logic to deciding menu for the party. The truth about fairness is that it is not about counting each person as having one weight but taking a weighted average based on performance in organizational context and maybe some other personal parameters in personal context. Choosing the option of ensuring discomfort for all is certainly not a good substitute unless you enjoy getting sadistic pleasure out of such activities.

Coming back to menu, the party is still on. There is nothing like a free lunch – can you figure out that this statement has two meanings based on how you pronounce it…..

Never thought it could be so easy if we could keep things simple in life. I have realized one thing after spending a lot of time doing nothing that we spend half our life in generating options and the other half in choosing between them. If we could lead a life which did not have options things would be so simple.

Few steps towards reaching an option free life….

Step 1 – Always choose the third option. It is always right.
Step 2 – Options are not always good. Eliminate them by using the most used corporate tool – toss of a coin
Step 3 – Never evaluate options. It is a bad habit which will get you in bigger mess
Step 4 – If you do not have three options you can always add “All of the above” and “None”

Try them out and please let me know how you feel after trying them. I would love to know your experiences and comment on them.

Take Care…..