Baba!

Father - That's what the word means to many children in India, including me. I don't know what prompted me to write about him, probably his 64th birthday on 2nd of February!

What should I write? It is very difficult for a person with limited writing abilities like me to describe my feelings for him. There are a lot of emotions in my mind right now, too many to describe. Whenever I sit back and think about him, my mind fills with a pride, for he is wonderfully likable. He has the uncanny knack of finding a soft spot in the toughtest of cookies, a fine example of which would be his relationship with my Grandfather. It was very difficult to get into the good books of my Grandpa, forget maintaining your place there and yet Baba was always at the top pf it. I never heard my Grandpa complain about him, in fact he was always all praise!

I wonder how he manages to be so likable, to make happy every person he is connceted with, knowing well that there is hardly any chance that the favour will be returned. And I think that's just the essence of it. Baba is always ready to help anyone who know him or asks him. All his gestures are very natural, nothing artificial or fabricated, just to earn a few brownie points. He helps people because he likes to, not because he will later be able to ask for favour in return. Baba may not have earned huge loads of money, but the goodwill that he has earned over the years is keeping him in good stead, and I am sure will continue to do so.

I will not put Baba in the highly educated class, because all he has to show for a degree is a part-time BA. But degrees can't buy wisdom, it has to be present in the system. Testimony to the fact are some far sighted decisions he has taken for us, his family. These decisions gave his three sons the leeway to take more risks than he could, to achieve things he could not. He is open to new ideas, which makes him a good listener and quick learner - qualitites which helped him make an immense impression in his 35 years of service. He can be a calming influence in chaotic situations, for come what may - he won't panic. He is not a control-freak and allows people to make decisions and work the way they want to, just watching from a distance - quality of a good leader, which he was at his workplace, but never had a title to that effect. He has allowed us to choose what we wanted to do with our lives and stood behind all our decisions, for he is supremely confident of the three of us and knows that we live by his values!

Finally, I know that I have troubled him a lot (probably the most) - knowingly and unknowingly - without being scolded for once. I have many such situations, which I won't cite here, for they are the constant reminder of his importance to me. It is getting too late now and I must sleep as I have to resume work at the office in the morning. My workplace is a lot different than Baba's, but his methods still work!!!

Why we are the way we are!

The focus of this article will be a book I finished reading a couple of hours back, although the thoughts are really an amalgamation of four books I have read recently - The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand, The Bhagavadgita by S. Radhakrishnan, The Argumentative Indian by Amartya Sen and Games Indians Play by V. Raghunathan, the book in focus here. These books have given me - iff I dare say so - a very good, if not thorough understanding of why people - specifically we Indians - behave the way do in certain situations. In fact, the book by Raghunathan very effectively explains why we are the way we are!

Raghunathan uses the concepts in Game Theory, prisoner's dilemma and iterative or multi player prisoner's dilemma - the latter being applicable to many real life situations we encounter - to explain the Indianness of us Indians. And what is this Indianness? It is our utter selfishness, our tendency to free ride, our tendency to maximize individual gains at the cost of others' losses, our tolerance towards injustice, corruption & unfair behaviour, our habit of blaming or pointing fingers to others for anything that goes wrong, our ability to talk a lot and inability to act - the list goes on! And yes, we can also be adamant enough not to accept all this or intelligent enough to rationalize this behaviour. You may not believe me, but Raghunathan will make you realize all this using proven tools.

If you have read about Prisoner's Dilemma (PD), you will know that the best solution to it is when both players choose to cooperate. That is the solution which will keep their losses at the minimum, but rational people will sometimes fail to see this! We have very few interactions of this kind in real life though. Real life situations involve many people continuously interacting with many others and that is where the Iterative PD comes in picture. That means one has to decide whether to cooperate with the other or not every time the two are involved in a transaction (which could be as simple as greeting each other), keeping in mind that this situation may occur many times afterwards. This is where one's character comes in play. The best thing to do in this context also, is to continue to cooperate forever and maximise the collective gains instead of giving in to the temptation of short term gains at the cost of hurting the relationship. And it is the latter that we Indians choose to show at all quarters in life owing to the qualities listed below.

We are among the most intelligent people on this planet, yet we fail to recognize the fact that defecting for a small short term gain will hurt our own future. And, we tend to do this a lot more as compared to quite a few communities from both the western and the eastern worlds. We also use our intelligence to work around all the systems we establish for collective good and make them ineffective, instead of concentrating our efforts on maintaining them. At times, our actions are motivated by our desires and sometimes contradict with our duty, yet we do not see anything wrong in them. This book will tell you why we fail to do the right thing, even though we are so intelligent. I feel, every Indian ought to read this and introspect on what needs to be done if we want to see a developed India.

I mentioned three other books at the beginning of this article. Let me establish the connection. The Argumentative Indian has helped me understand the ability of us Indians to argument. Amartya Sen gives a wonderful historical account of our argumentative tradition and shows how it helped India to develop as a secular society, where people with varied faiths and beliefs were allowed to live peacefully. He explains what drives our thinking and does not fail to mention the importance of keeping an open attitude towards the thoughts of others. Had I not read that book before reading Raghunathan's book, I would probably have not accepted his criticism of us Indians so easily. The connect with The Fountainhead is established when Raghunathan shows the importance of making objective decisions i.e ask yourself "am I doing the right thing" before you take any action and act accordingly irrespective of the behaviour of the others. That is what Howard Roark in The Fountainhead is - the epitome of objectivism. Raghunathan also establishes the connection between game theory and the Gita, when he explains how game theory validates the Karmayoga explained in Gita. This book reinforced many of my beliefs formed after reading the Gita.

I have always believed that books have the potential to change the way one thinks. The books I have read have changed my way of thinking steadily over the last couple of years. More thoughts and more books in the posts to follow!

It's Not About the Bike

If you know Lance Armstrong, it will not be difficult to guess what this little snippet will say. This is an attempt to push the readers of this post into reading his autobiography - I won't say review because I do not qualify to be a critic of books!

If you have not heard of Lance or read about him, let me tell you that his is a comeback story beyond the capacity of human imagination. It thrills you, just to think of a guy who came back from the doorstep of death to win seven consecutive editions of Tour De France, probably the most arduous bike (bicycle) race on the face of the earth. Just imagine, a race where 200 cyclists compete over 21 stages, covering 3500 Kilometers of roads in France in all kinds of terrains & weather conditions. And this guy won it for seven consecutive years from 1999 to 2005, as if it was a piece of cake, huh!

And he did this after fighting off Testicular Cancer, which was already in the last stage at the time of diagnosis. Yet, he is not superhuman!

The book starts like any typical autobiography, with the events in Lance's childhood, the sources of all the anger he was filled with, him getting hooked on to Athletics, early achievements in triathlon (involves running, swimming and cycling), and eventually his decision to pursue only cycling. He then describes his entry in professional cycling and early failures - including one at Tour De France. Then comes the rude shock of being diagnosed with cancer and the way he narrates the events, you can actually feel the pain Lance and his family must have been subjected to. You can't help but get inspired by the way he goes through the treatment - cancer being the only disease where the treatment is more painful than the disease itself. And then there's the comeback, the process of getting fit to ride the bike, and then ride it for really long spells at a high cadence. There also comes a stage when he gives up cycling, after going through the frustration of failures in his first attempt at comeback to professional cycling, only to be pulled back into it by a friend who won't give up on him! He describes all this candidly, keeping the reader involved, using a language an average reader will be able to relate to. The book is so fluid in its content, you will want to read on till the last page once you pick it up!

What's noteworthy is Lance's introspection on going through the disease, where he says he learnt a lot from cancer and it changed him for good. He probably would not have achieved success @ the Tour had he not gone through cancer, as it changed both his physical as well as mental make-up. I think it takes some resolve to say that after you have virtually been through hell!

The book gives you an insight on the true value of life. It tells you life is not only for worrying about a 9 to 6 job, a housing loan, marriage, kids and their future and finally retirement! Of course, not all of us can go and compete in the Tour De France, but we can at least find out what matters as much to us!!