Regrets

How do some people claim they don't have regrets? I don't see how even the most cheerful people can live through life without regrets. I guess, when a person says he doesn't have regrets, he really means that he hasn't succumbed to his regrets. He has regrets, but he has accepted them and moved on. Regrets, if let loose to grow, can become all devouring black holes. They suck every sliver of hope and happiness left in you, leaving you despondent and restless. It is a strange state of restlessness, bordering on depression. It doesn't let you focus on things that are positive and can break this cycle of negativity, instead it prods you to continue down the path of self-destruction, leaving you worse than where you had begun. It's a vicious cycle at it's vicious best.

Projections

I often wonder about how all of us tend to project an image. It is a little like role play. We choose to behave differently with different people. For instance, if I run into a pesky neighbour I'd like to avoid, I act all busy and try to ignore him. On the other hand, if I run into a senior colleague I'd like to please, I'm all graces and charms. Then, who is the real me? Am I a haughty snob or a fawning sycophant. I say, I'm both. In fact I'm more. I can be a loyal friend, a generous host, a mean competitor, a swindling fraudster, a caring son, a spoilt brat and every other hue and shade there is out there.  These are just different faces/aspects of the real me. I firmly believe that all human beings are basically the same. We share a common pool of emotions and responses. Some are more adept at controlling them, while some are not. But, then these exist in one and all.

Hence, my theory goes as follows. Don't be hasty in labelling people as good, bad, haughty, selfish, etc. If your first impression leave a bad taste, give the relationship some more time and see if subsequent interactions change your opinion. If you keep running into the bad side of a person, try to analyze and figure out how to net him on the good side. A person that you want to influence might project a mean and harsh exterior, but rest assured he has a caring and reasonable facade as well. You'll have to be smart enought to figure out how to tap that positive emotion in him. As always, the ball is in your court, it's upto you to put in the legwork and play it to your advantage.

Lessons from the Universe

Have you ever wondered about life in the context of the larger universe? I sometimes do. On a clear night, while watching the stars, I cannot help thinking about my place on earth and then earth's place in the solar system, and then how the solar system is a speck in the MW galaxy, and then how our galaxy is a sliver in the universe filled with dark matter that is expanding around a core, and then....I stop, I can't visualize any more. Is the universe held in a container? What lies outside the container? Is there a physical explanation at all?

Else is it all fake - is life a mathematical model of probabilities, or is it a figment of someone's imagination? Like "Sophie's World" - am I just part of somebody else's dream? Else am I character in a script controlled by a playwright? Am I living an imaginary life in a virtual world with illusions of choice? Else, does the traditional religious view where there is heaven above, hell below and earth in between hold? How does one explain chance/probability/luck?

And then I ask the fundamental question - what is the point of thinking about all this? Does it change anything? Does it dilute my daily struggles in any way? Does any of this fall under my sphere of control? If not, then why  bother about this at all? Then it strikes me. Probably the whole point of this is to teach the "Lesson of the Universe". We exist in a multi-leveled universe. There are different spheres of existence. Your circle of influence extends to your universe. Shut up, accept it and live in it. Period.

When you are cast into the sea, staying afloat in the water is tough enough. While you are at it, you may choose to enjoy the swim or wail in despair as you sink. The most pointless thing would be to ponder about the red bulb on the Eiffel Tower, or the validity of the Big Bang Theory.

Douglas Adams', "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" has a wonderful segment where two white mice run an algorithm on a super-computer that cranks up a zillion calculations through a million years to come up with the answer for the meaning of life, the universe, and everything. At the scheduled moment, amidst great fanfare and media coverage, the supercomputer's screen flickers and the answer pops up - "42" - that is the meaning of life. Two digits forming one numeral, what you make of it is up to you. It beautifully captures the absurdity of this quest for a higher meaning - scientific, spiritual or otherwise. What is the point of thinking about after life, before life, life in between, etc. when you have no control over them. What is the point of mulling about things you don't know about, when you have enough on your plate screaming for attention.

Live in the moment - seize the day - that's the "Lesson of the Universe" - joi de vivre - cheers!*

DISCLAIMER: The author doesn't subscribe to anything mentioned in this column. He remains to be as lonely, forlorn, and miserable as ever.

"Eli thinda kathe" - "Story of the mouse"

Besides being a very distinguished Kannada scholar, my maternal grandfather was a great raconteur. Some of his talents have rubbed off on my mother and every once in a while she comes up with an inspired re-telling of grandpa's stories. Sample this -

"Eli thinda kathe" - "Story of the mouse".

When my grandad was a school kid, he had a lesson titled, "Story of the mouse", in his Kannada text book. It was a difficult lesson, and so he never liked it. To avoid studying this lesson, he tore it out of his text book and simply pretended that the lesson did not exist. Right through the academic year, he lived with this make believe notion that the lesson had disappeared from the syllabus. For all purposes, practical and otherwise, "Eli thinda kathe" ceased to exist.

Sadly for grandpa, when the the final exam came, it had many questions from this lesson. Not surprisingly, he didn't do to well. In life too, we tend to do this quite often. We ignore things that we don't like and pretend that they don't exist, in a hope that they would simply go away. Doesn't work. As my Ajja would say - "eli thinda kathe hange" - "like the Story of the mouse" :)

"Open" An Autobiography - Andre Agassi

My favority quote from Andre Agassi's autobiography, "Open", reads as follows:

"Our best intentions are often thwarted by external forces - forces that we ourselves set in motion long ago. Decisions, especially bad ones, create their own kind of momentum, and momentum can be a bitch to stop, as every athelete knows. Even when we vow to change, even when we sorrow and atone for our mistakes, the momentum of our past keeps carrying us down the wrong road. Momentum rules the world. Momentum says: Hold on, not so fast, I'm still running things here. As a friend likes to say, quoting an old Greek poem: The minds of the everlasting gods are not changed suddenly." Chap 21, Pg 253

When I mentioned to a friend from work that I really liked Andre's new autobiography, he dismissed the thought with a smirk saying that all autobiographies tend to be self-aggrandizing by nature, more so ones by sports stars, since they have fragile egos that feel neglected after retirement. Then it struck me that Andre's autobiography is exactly the opposite. He flays himself black and blue. It is like a public atonement of some kind. He lays bare some very dark secrets. It is precisely this kind of honesty, that makes the book such a great read.

For once, you get a glimpse of the price that sports stars pay for achieving great success. The book has it all - the story of a childhood fractured by an obsessive father, rebellious teenage years, the heady shift to the pro circuit, a broken psyche that couldn't hold itself together at the top level, the frustration at being an underachiever, and then the magical turn around, where at the age of 28, Agassi rewrote his script and became the only male tennis player to ever win a Career Golden Slam (all Open titles - US, Australian, French, Wimbelond - and the Olympic Gold).

The book also talks about Agassi's infamous flirtations with women, drugs, booze and junk food. The revelation about drugs caused a media furore when the book was released with many past and current tennis players condemning it, some even asked for Agassi to be punished.

A fascinating insight that emerges as one reads the book is the fact that being contrarian is a deep rooted trait in Agassi. It manifests itself in all aspects of his life - right from his game to his personality, his fashion, his book, everything. As a player, his game was built on baseline slugging, this during an age when serve and volley was considered pristine. His body was not built for tennis, he had a weak back and an average build. Right through his career he had to slog really hard to maintain pro-level fitness. His mind was probably his biggest weakness. He always doubted his abilities. He never had family stability to draw upon during moments of doubt. His obsession with his hair-piece is an extreme example of the kind of insecurity that Agassi lived through. He actually lost his first French Open final because he was worried that his hair-piece would fall off!

His dichotomous nature again comes through, when he claims that he's hated tennis all his life. This is a line that he keeps repeating umpteen number of times throughout the book. He tries hard to convince everyone he meets about his hate for the game. He makes it sound like he's a tennis player because he doesn't know any other trade. No one can quite get what he's saying, neither could I.

Another favorite quote to end the proceedings. This is about his encounter with Leander Paes, when the two played each other in the semis of the 96 Atlanta Olympics. Before Leander's fans get offended - wait a second and think about it, coming from a baseline slugger like Agassi - this quote isn't that inappropriate.

"In the semis I meet Leander Paes from India. He's a flying, jumping bean, a bundle of hyperkinetic energy, with the Tour's quickest hands. Still, he's never learned to hit a tennis ball. He hits off-speed , hacks, chips, lobs - he's the Brad of Bombay.
Then behind all his junk, he flies to the net and covers it so well that it all seems to work. After an hour, you feel as if he hasn't hit one ball cleanly - and yet he's beating you soundly. Because I'm prepared, I stay patient, stay calm, and beat Paes 7-6 , 6-3 ."

Notings from C K Prahalad's "Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid"

I was deeply sceptical about the buzz this book generated when it was first released in 2005. The scepticism kept me away from it for all these years. I felt that preaching to corporations to look at the bottom of the pyramid(BOP) as a viable market and linking this povery allevation was too far fetched and moralistic. I believed then, and still believe now, that if there is a market,  corporations will reach it without you having to tell them. If corporations stay away from certain markets, then it is because they are not equipped to serve them profitably - the issues might range from distribution, to flexibility, trust, product fitment, etc.

However, recently I glanced at this book in the library and it struck me that I had never read it. Reading it from the library meant that I'd have saved myself a solid Rs. 500 by borrowing it instead of buying it. The offer was too good to refuse, and so, I borrowed it. I've been reading from it in small doses, and I must say, I was wrong about the book. It does hold very interesting insights about the BOP market. I still find the bits where the author sermonizes about poverty allevation a little hard to digest. But the sections where he lists down the characteristics of BOP markets and lays a framework for approaching them, are extremely interesting and insightful. As I read the book, I shall keep making notes in this blog entry. Here goes the first one...

1. Do the poor have enough money to spend? CK Prahlad makes an interesting observation about how the general public and marketers get put off by the filth and squalor that surround the urban poor in slums. The dirty surroundings lead us to believe that the poor don't have the capacity to pay, and even if they do have some money, they would rather spend it on improving the condition of their sanitation and immediate living quarters rather than splurging on consumers goods and durables. This is a wrong assumption. Prahlad proves this by citing the example of the Dharavi slum dwellers. Dharavi has no sewage system or running water, and yet Prahlad's study shows that it has 90% TV penetration. This is no exaggeration. On a recent visit to Mumbai, I remember how I was dumbstruck at the sight of DTH antennas sticking out off hutments lining the Western-Express Highway. This effectively disbunks the theory that slum dwellers have no purchasing power and are hence not a viable market. But if they do have money, why don't they spend on improving the condition of their immediate living quarters? As Prahlad says, they choose not do so because they don't have proper title for the land they stay on. Hence, they prefer to spend on movable property like TVs and mobile phones that can move with them, in the event that they have to vacate quarters. If marketers wake up to the fact that there is such a large BOP population that buys their products, they would perhaps be in a better position to tailor their offerings to increase uptake from this segment.

Prahlad also offers an interesting insight about the poverty penalty that slum dwellers have to pay. On average every item that they spend on comes at a higher cost. Slum dwellers pay a 200-300% rate of interest when the borrow money from money lenders. Likewise, all other utilities come at a higher tax imposed by the informal market eco-system that has sprung up in the absence of regular market players. If a financial services company where to figure out a way to serve this market and charge an interest rate of 25% (nearly twice the normal lending rate) they would run a profitable venture that is beneficial to both the lender and the borrower.

Of course, servicing this market is not easy. The biggest challenge is adapting to the cashflow limitations of buyers in this segment. Though this is a major hurdle, it is not intractable. As cited in the book, several companies have managed to work around the problem. In India, over the last few years, NBFCs have started venturing into this market with small customized loans.

Elsewhere in the book, Prahlad says that companies should actively start engaging with these markets and try to incorporate them into their existing business expansion plans. I defer on this view. More on this later...Cheers.

My Rotator Cuff Injury

The latest injury I've picked up is a torn rotator cuff. It happened a month back. While I was rushing up the stairs in Mumbai, where I had travelled for work, I tripped and fell forward and landed heavily on my outstretched shoulders - as if I were doing a push up on the stairs. My left shoulder let out a popping sound, and I knew I was in trouble. The pain wasn't delibitating, so, I ignored it for two days (in hindsight RICE - Rest, Ice, Compression, Elevation - would've helped in those two days immediately after the injury). The day after I landed in Bangalore, I visited my orthapaedic doctor and he diagnosed the problem as a rotator cuff injury.

The rotator cuff is a group of four tendons and muscles that surround the shoulder joint. They connect the bone of the upper arm with the shoulder blade and the collar bone. It is a complicated joint that supports the whole range of motions of the shoulder joint. When a tendon gets damaged here, mobility of the shoulder gets severely affected. There is a throbbing pain that is difficult to locate. It typically originates at the shoulder joint and runs down the outer part of the upper arm. Lifting your arm above the head becomes extremely painful.

Since this area is very cartilaginous, there is limited blood supply to the joint. Hence, an injury to this region takes a long time to heal. From the literature I've read, I believe it takes two months on average for a mild rotator cuff injury to fully heal. My doctor advised me to rest my arm, stop doing exercises of the upper body and give the affected area an oil massage everyday. The oil massage is to generate heat near the joint and improve blood circulation to the area. I neglected the oil massage during the first few weeks, because I didn't know the significance of it. But after figuring out the blood circulation theory, I've been religiously massaging my shoulder and there's been a marked improvement ever since. Many people who've been through such injuries don't know of this theory about blood circulation and tend to give cock and bull stories about why shoulder injuries take so long to heal. After hearing a whole bunch of such stories with exasperation, I did my research and found a seemingly plausible explanation that I thought I'd share with the rest of you out there.

A shoulder injury is extremely frustrating because it severly impedes your fitness and sports routine. I've stopped gymming and playing cricket and tennis for a month now. By the looks of it, it would take another month before a full recovery. Sigh.....if only I'd walked my way up those stairs in Mumbai.

ps: There is loads of online literature on the subject. The following link is a good place to start http://orthopedics.about.com/od/rotatorcuff/tp/rotatorcuff.htm .