Auburn

The sky looked like an assortment of clouds with different colors. At the horizon it was purple on the left, orange at the center and darker to the extreme right. There was sprinkling of clouds with different shades of grey and black. The background had white clouds jaded in the clear blue sky. Skies and clouds are such integral part of memories. Every time I have tried to make sense of them, have tried to connect them to something more meaningful so that I can appreciate them better next time. Yesterday was the day I guess.

The arrangement of the clouds in sky is pretty logical. The heavier ones loaded with water are nearest and the white ones the farthest. The denser ones scatter the sunlight and so they appear black to us. Think of the sky as the supreme state symbolizing ultimate lightness of being and think clouds as human beings. The heavier ones at the bottom and as one gets lighter it ascends until it reaches the sky.

To become lighter, the cloud has to shed water. When a cloud sheds water it can either brings calamity or opulence. Either ways it will be lighter.  Remember how light you felt after a bout of virulent anger? And remember how light you felt after a day of travail for someone’s joy? You were the cloud, cloud heavy with pent-up emotions and you had shed them to bring catastrophe and prosperity.

The interesting part of yesterday’s sky was something else though. It was the auburn color all across the sky. I like to think that the heavy ones who brought calamity will be delivered someday and would bring prosperity to someone somewhere to become lighter once and for all. Till then they would be under the auburn color.

It rained today. Respite from heat of past few days. Some clouds had liberated themselves. Felt sincerely happy for them and hopeful for self.

The Process

The two pictures shown here are both intriguing in their own ways. One apparently is crisscrossed, tangled, complex and the other is organized, symmetric and simple. Life for majority of time looks like the crisscrossed, tangled and complex lines. Hopes, fears, expectations, failures, people, places, liabilities, obligations and so much else. In fact it goes from being simple to complex as we grow up. And this is where it makes me uneasy. I fail to understand that this process of becoming complex from simple is irreversible.

The last line has two important words in it. Lately i have grown increasingly fond of both of them. The first one is "Process" and the second one is "Fail". I firmly believe that the transition from the picture on left to the one on right involves these 2 words numerous times. So there is definitely a process involved but more importantly the process involves lot of failures. Glorious ones at that. After every failed iteration the process evolves itself, till it gets better and simpler. Numerous such iterations result into a beautiful and a simple system. And each failure is a learning for future and improves the pervious system by some amount.

Conclusively I will end with a phrase said by Steve Jobs during Macintosh Team retreats and in which I have huge faith. Journey is the reward. And so either have faith in the process or change the system altogether and start afresh.

Stimulant

Jamshedpur always evokes such fond memories. The place, the people, the food and all the love and care I have received from this place. I was there once again for a short period of time. I talked about confusion at the beginning of annealing. The tangled knots were untangled, I guess during my stay at Jamshedpur.

The effect was clear to me and for the first time in my life I felt the importance of the most talked about emotion in the world. For the first time, I felt, I understood the most basic interpretation of greatest of emotion in the world. And for the first time I understood what Chandra told me, as told to him, about a year ago, during our endless discussion. Not verbatim, but it meant, go, now work for love.  

Love. I have tried and failed time and again, during my thoughtless wanderings, to define it. Leave definition, I never even got close to understand it. But suddenly I felt it in a blink. And then so many thoughts, beautiful and ones those mystified me once came rushing. From Sam Gamgee and Frodo Baggins to Jenny and Forrest Gump. From Andy Dufrene and Red to Arnold saying Hasta Lavista baby. From Neo and Trinity to Howard Roark and Dominique. The twinkle a child seeks in mother’s eye, the admiration a worthy players seeks in his coach’s eye, the praise a student seeks in teacher’s eye, the joy a giver seeks in receivers eye. They all looked bound by a single expression of love.

I felt like crying. All those pent up emotions evaporate by the amount of heat love generates. They evaporate to condense in our eyes in the form of tears and I guess therefore we well-up when in our misery and defeat, someone loves us.

I felt that all the trouble and pain of last one year was worth it. I was working for this love and I wanted to absorb it as much as I could. Love is great leveler and it humbles you. I could feel it then and I can feel it now. At that moment I felt that I am the luckiest and most loved. For a very ephemeral moment, I was fearless. Completely fearless!

Work for Love.

Annealing

It has been days since I wrote last time. I was with too many thoughts, all disarrayed up in my head, leading to perplexity and dread of putting them into some form of writing. Meanwhile, I was going through continuous regimes and schedules developing lot of tension and strain in the process, strain which is internal in the beginning and comes to the fore with time.

Let me get a bit technical now. A slab of steel is made into a coil by rolling. The process of rolling increases the worth of the slab by about 3 times. Rolling involves pressure and pressure results into strains. In our lives too, we go through this process. We work and get rolled to increase our worth resulting into strains inside us.

There are 2 ways from here. Either we neglect the strain or we address it. Negligence results into cracks and ultimately breakdown in tough situations. Addressing it reinforces and increases resilience. I am assuming that latter obviates the former.

Technically, the process of removing strains by heating steel above a fixed temperature, keeping it there for some time and then slowly cooling it, is called as Annealing. In human beings it is slightly difficult to replicate this process. For some it never happens until they break down. The heating agents in our case are emotional stimulants. An emotional stimulant is mostly external. Stimulant can be a touching song, a book, a picture, a movie, a good hard drink and many other things. Just beware of overheating as it burns up the product, reducing its worth.

The second stage is to remain at higher temperature for sometime. This means to be with your emotions, rather than snubbing them. Taking a step back is often desirable. Thinking over, restructuring ideas and notions, talking and sharing with people often helps. It results into reformation. It is called as recrystallization in case of Steel. Slow cooling might happen over few days and often weeks. Take time to cool down.

Annealing, for steel and humans alike, helps to increase stability and provides strength for the tougher times. Longevity is habitually overlooked as a virtue. Longevity at highest level is mark of champions and sustenance at that level is tough.

So next time when you get charged up, don’t trash your emotions. You might do a lot of good to yourself by staying with them and weighing them up. Anneal yourself!

P.S: This article is prequel to one where I talk about a stimulant, a really strong one, I think I understood to a very minor extent.   

Unforgivable

The animosity with the season goes long back. The origin is lost somewhere in the memory but the season evokes the same feeling year after year. This is the season of wrapping up. The season when everything comes to an end, momentary sometimes, permanent most of the times. Everything is evaluated and everything is analyzed. The season of looking back in time and the season of making decisions. The season when friends depart leaving behind the fragrance of their presence and memories which are, beautiful and hence painful. This is the season of parting ways. This is the season of good byes. Unforgivable.
 

The Quiz

A small hot dingy room had varied occupants in it. Some kids and some teachers, though the difference was only physical. It was a semi-final of the quiz competition organized by public school system and informed to respective schools 2 days prior. Quizmasters were fixed on the spot and so were the moderators. There was no audience as transparency is a strict nono in these cases. The scoreboard literally was scores-on-a-blackboard. Anyone entering that room would have taken a leap back into the old times when such things were the norm. And so the quiz kicked off. No one was told of the rules because no one knew them.

After 2 rounds it was clear who would win. In appreciation of the team, the quizmaster asked the name of the school and what happened after the name was told is something which I would never forget. It was something which made me believe why corruption is a norm in our society, why majority of our youth suffers from inferior skill levels and why incompetency is never questioned and sometimes even appreciated. As soon as the quizmaster came to know the name of the school, with naivety beyond belief she shouted in anger, “Oh, that’s why, the question paper is of the same school?” Post announcement the schools which hadn’t even scored a point started crying foul. They got a morsel to feed on.

I was in the audience seeing one of my friends assigning points to the team. I was the scorer in the first round. I couldn’t stop laughing. And so with utmost selfish interest I asked my friend be the scorer. I couldn’t stop laughing on the seriousness I saw on the faces of the people who were putting up this farce. I couldn’t stop laughing at the game being played there, with everyone except kids believing totally in it. I couldn’t stop laughing on the hollow promises we are making, the basis of which is the education system which creates snitches out of our kids. I was ultimately horrified at the sorry state of affairs and the nonchalance of the state.

The events later in the week confirmed some of my underlying fears. We are all part of a big game. The kills we are making in this game are none but those kids who are oblivious of what is being done to them. A Kafkan tragedy indeed.

Dravid

It was year 1996, I was in 6^th standard and this man’s short interview appeared on DD News. He was selected for India tour of England. 16 years later I was watching the video clip where he formally announced his retirement. In 16 years a lot has changed in me as a person. I have a larger, in fact huge appreciation for grit now, a much better understanding of what it takes to take a bad remark and still stand firm and let your work do the talking, much deeper meaning of resilience, strength of character and humility. I have been fortunate enough, I guess, to have seen one such man, who seemed one of our own and who epitomized everything I wrote just now. 

If you look at the career of this great batsman all what you will see the rigor with which he performed his action. Pure actions and just that. Day in day out for 16 years. I don’t remember an instance when one has seen Dravid doing anything else than actions aligned to his duties. Bad form, criticism, scandals, captains, players, coaches, selecters came and went by and so did numerous journalists, articles, opposition bowlers and players and analyst. What they could not change is this man’s focus on his actions. The older he became the harder he practiced. And I guess the root of all the qualities I mentioned is only one thing, the pursuit of excellence by performing your actions under a backdrop of extreme hardwork and honesty.  The quality of not losing focus from your own duty, come what may.

In his own words, I may have failed at times, but I never stopped trying. For him trying to achieve excellence was far more important than the achievement itself. Process is of much more importance than the product. A beautiful process has to lead to a superior product. Actions always supersede fruits.