Is Progress equal to 8% growth in GDP?

I just finished reading “A fine Balance” by Rohinston Mistry. It has been in my “to read” list for a long time. Thanks to my frequent travel I could finish the book in 4/5 sittings. It was a book of shocking human endurance and to borrow from Obama an audacity of hope.

3 thoughts came to my mind.

One as someone who loves to write – “how can someone describe the scenes in so much vivid detail”. Especially, if the author has left the city and stays in some other country. I have stayed in Mumbai, so I could relive the city through the pages of the book. As I read the book it was more like screen play – because I could literally pick the characters from my Mumbai stay and visualize them. It’s an art, I am still quite at a loss. Maybe I will give it a shot by writing a scene from my college.

Second as someone who loves India - “we know/appreciate so little about our past/history/heritage”. I do not know if it’s an Indian phenomenon or it’s just about me being dumb but reading through the travails of Om & Ishvar during emergency days I felt the events described in the book were not very different from what we have read and seen about Nazi ghetto camps. But while tons of books / movies have been made about Nazi but Emergency which I guess played an important role in Indian politics is not something we have read much about. Emergency is just an example but even our history is taught in the LIFO principle – last in first out. The relevance is limited to passing the exams or maybe at another extreme is the politicization of our ideals which leads to an unfortunate event like Babri Masjid demolition.

Third as someone who is part of the new India – on our so called “great Indian growth story”. “A fine Balance” is story of 4/5 characters during the time of emergency that is 1971. We are in 2011 that’s 40 years from the time when the story was written but I am quite sure that we can change the names and the entire story could be happening now. If I walk down Dharavi or any other slum I am sure I can find beggar-master who maims child so that they can beg, migrant workers who have left everything and keep doing odd jobs to survive, public toilet / station as their home etc etc.

I was also reading somewhere that 45% of India does not have electricity, clear drinking water and does not get basic health & education. If we think realistically I can explain that yes India has progressed to – create Infosys, Metro in all metros, commonwealth games, CEO’s, best Institutes where people from all over the world come and study.

It makes me feel proud being an Indian but it also forces me to question whether we have really progressed if half of our population is still living 50 yrs behind.

Devi Shetty – Hand of God!

I have not seen “God”& for a large part of my growing up life I was also a non believer. But, standing outside the “neo natal ward” when I saw “25 new born babies” (just few days old)lying in bed with wires coming out - going in, oxygen mask on their face and their chest heaving in and out - there was only one thought which came to my mind “This must be hand of God”.

So, when you sit down to listen to Devi Shetty on “how all this happened” you literally feel like you are listening to a fairy tale. And it looked like that as he recounted his journey from London to Kolkata to Bangalore and finally setting up of “Narayan Hrudayalaya” (NH) hospital in the outskirts of Bangalore.

What makes NH different?

There are lot of case studies (Harvard) / BBC interviews & articles which I heard and read on the net. Most of it was rational – the scale of operations, an excellent “to do – passionate – caring culture, innovation etc etc”

My biggest learning in the entire session was that “If you believe in a cause and truly believe in it, help will come – financially or otherwise ….”. But you cannot let go of the belief or passion and it can be a completely irrational belief but it has to have the power of doing good or a sense of service to society / mankind it will happen.

I know it sound similar to what we read in “Alchemist by Paulo Coelho” or “Secret by Rhonda Byrne”. Reading it one would take me for an eternal optimist….and maybe a dose of experiential learning has hit my head….so be it…but looking back at least in my life I could relate to quite a few incidents where in we got what I really – really wanted.

Problem is – we chase what we cannot get & what we want we give up the chase even before we start.

On the left a painting drawn by an elephant. A similar picture is framed and kept in his room.

The Common Purpose Journey

It was with a mixed bag of optimism and skepticism that I joined the Common Purpose journey in January. Today, after attending 5 out of 8 sessions I look forward to these Friday sessions as half a day which pushes me to question my “sense of purpose”. And most of the weekends I am tormented till Monday Job List takes over like a giant wave which pulls me in and keeps me engulfed till the next session.

Do we have a purpose in life? For most of us who are nudging 40, our sense of purpose is limited to our jobs, our family (especially our growing up children) and of course our own self. Many of us grew up in lower middle class, got our engineering degree followed by an MBA and landed ourselves a good job which lets us indulge in our aspirations.

The corporate journey which most of us have embarked upon is a journey toward a milestone which keeps shifting every year. But we are happy running because there is a very well defined “sense of purpose instilled in us”. Most importantly you have a feeling that you are in control and there are enough metrics / parameters which defines – measures your purpose.

Every news bulletin on corruption / scam / judiciary have made us cynical and turn a blind eye to what’s happening around. We read, see, hear, discuss vociferously, but making us take an action is like climbing the Everest. Our “chalta hain” altitude or “what impact will this one action lead to” prevails in most of us including me. So, Can I have a sense of purpose for my society, people around me when I cannot have a control? The answer is a definitive “NO”

Some of us feel for the outside world, want to do something – something serious, impactful but the daily workload – office and family is so immense that we end up looking at doing things which will come easy literally at our doorstep. The last action I can remember taking is donating cloths which I do not need and felt very good that I have fulfilled a “common purpose of the society”. Looking back that’s a tokenism which I don’t think I can repeat once more and be proud of.

Most of us are happy to be in this cocoon like feeling of moving, progressing, learning…completely untouched by outside world.

Common Purpose shakes that belief ….It gives you that irrational feeling of jumping out of this comfortable groovy train, break out of this cocoon and make an attempt to fly.

For most of us “having a purpose” is to “make a rational choice or being objective or being result oriented”. I think Common Purpose turns that thought upside down - Purpose is all about “belief-passion-doing good” without expecting a result.

Following these are impressions of my meeting with few leaders who made a more lasting impression in my mind than all business books I have read till now.

Back Again - After a 11 month layoff

Maybe it's a sheer coincidence or maybe there is a sign of destiny, that the last entry I uploaded was exactly 11 month's back.

The rationale was to focus my effort more constructively towards a book and few short stories. Ya, I moved ahead a bit on that, tried to collaborate with a friend ...but let's just say it's work in progress.

If I look back, at my past 1 yr of lay off and almost 5 yrs of blogging - "Creative Writing always come from heart it helps you to express your emotions/thoughts/views and it gives you a sense of accomplishment. It's a feeling which is difficult to explain - At one extreme it's a feeling which I got when Nikita was born to another extreme of baking my first cake. But the process of writing or "to make that effort to write" comes from sheer will power / discipline".

Without both these coming together the BOOK will always be a "work in progress".

During the past yr I kept jotting notes, thoughts, lines all over the place .....but as I mentioned it is all over the place. After a while it dawned on me - "when there is an existing blog, which costs nothing why not upload it here. So here goes!!!

On the right "Pic taken from my room in FAGU around 10 km from Kufri". I like the composition (my family hates that word..but what the heck...they are not gonna read this : - )