Welcome to my new blog. The topics, ostensibly, are Leaders, Institutions, and changing the world for the better. As Omar Khayyam wrote: "If per chance we were to dare/ To alter this sorry scheme of things entire/ Would we not shatter it to bits/ And then remold it nearer to our heart's desire?" (I am wary of the ‘shatter it to bits’ part; Hippocrates had it right, “Above all, do no harm”, but the spirit of the lines gets me.)
A better world is like all those beautiful Sanskrit phrases, "सर्व जन हिताय सर्व जन सुखाय" ("To the welfare of all; to the happiness of all") not to be substituted by "बहु जन हिताय बहु जन सुखाय" ("To the welfare of the majority; to the happiness of the majority"). Beware of the latter; when you are willing to accept some as outside the pale of welfare and happiness that leads to fascism. Also, let me throw in, right at the outset, those lovely lines from the Upanishads "असतो ..". On second thoughts that is for another blog. And I do not want to be mistaken for a devout Hindu. False identities, like false beards, were never my style.
And why write blogs? As Robert Frost said” Talking is like the water faucet on the lawn; Writing is like the one upstairs. If you open the faucet on the lawn too freely the one on the top will have no water to give”. I have always been a talker. From the time I remember life, I have talked my way through/at/with everything. Lewis Carroll had me in mind when he had Alice say, “How do I know what I am thinking till I say it?” And talking has stood me in good stead; given me fame when young, money when middle-aged and joy always. I have never been more alive than when I am speaking on-stage, or off-stage with good companions. Since I have been a good companion to myself for many years now (it wasn’t always so), I have very enjoyable conversations with myself. But, frankly, I do prefer, from time to time, other humans to converse with.
Nevertheless…I am a closet-frustrated writer. I wrote plays (2), short stories, poems (yes!), and such, and a 640-page tome, my proudest achievement. None of that has been sustained, and I have wanted to write with as much ease as I spoke. The time has now come to sing freely on paper…well, on the screen at least. And a blog is a creation meant for free, stream-of-consciousness prose. It is improv theatre. One can ad-lib and float it out there into cyber-space, like the proverbial bread cast on waters, arrows into the void. If there is a reader and she enjoys it, fine. But, she would be the second reader – I am the first. Writing is the fulfillment of a long-cherished dream. And I will not be denied it, thanks to the invention of blogs.
Back from wandering to the topics... I said the topics are ostensible because I am essentially a wanderer – wandering, sometimes purposefully, some other times, as we say in India, 'just like that' – between the worlds of the abstract and the concrete, reality and fantasy, intellect and imagination, fact and fiction, rational and irrational, and yes, sanity and the other. This blog, both in its content and style, will wander all over these worlds (with my readers' permission of course, all two of you, poor things, what choice do you have since blogs are protected by the First amendment). My epitaph, if there were one, would be: "he searched; he tried; he kept searching and trying till he found it or the end, whichever came first". Hence this blog will have prose, poetry (in whatever language the spirit so moves), proverbs, quotations (definitely).
I have always been very fond of stories, metaphors, analogies, similies, and proverbs. (So much so, once my boss, when I was in my first and only job which had a boss, told me rather testily "Metaphor, Jai is not the Truth".) I get it, this fondness for proverbs etc., from my mother, Sheshamma, who will hence forth be referred to as Amma, to whom this first blog is dedicated. She always had the appropriate saying for the occasion. Jumping to mind at once are: "ಹೊಳೆ ದಾಟಿದಮೇಲೆ ಅಂಬಿಗನ ಮಿಂಡ"("Once you cross the river, screw the boatman," – to highlight the ingratitude of a relative; in the original Kannada this is far more colorful and risque!); "उदर निमिथं बहुकृत वेषं " (“To fill the belly many disguises” – Sanskrit; a trenchant comment on phonies or conmen).
Amma knew just enough Sanskrit for devotional prayers, scores of them that she taught me to learn by heart. I still remember and recite them in certain moods, but don't tell anyone because I am, at worst, an atheist and, at best, an agnostic. (god help me, a small 'g' would do; I wouldn't want to distract the Big 'G' who hopefully is doing something about the mess She has created down here on this planet. I suspect it is a 'He' though; Men, my fellow-genderites, make such a mess. And my confession about lack of faith perhaps lost me the Fundamenatalist vote but gained me my two children's). Oh, many other proverbs for later blogs straight from Amma to the world.
...where was I? I wander; I meander. As my Professor, Arthur Shedlin (God rest his soul), told me once, “Jai, when I ask you what you had for breakfast, you don’t have to start with the origins of the universe”. I do not believe in straight lines. I think life is a helical spring, no beginning no end and you move through it one loop at a time, resting like a mountaineer in the evenings enjoying the sunset and burning golden snow-clad peaks and imagining the next day’s ascent. My writing and thinking is all directions but straight. So, I get lost sometimes when I have strayed far into a segue. Then I ask “where am I?” and someone always, bless their listening souls, tells me where I was. (I once climbed a hill on a rock face and got totally lost. Luckily, there was a shepherd on the next hill within shouting distance, and I would shout to him in Kannada: “Am I going in the right direction?” He would tell me right or left or ok, keep going. I arrived with as much glee as an explorer of a new continent.).
Ah, the topics. I have in my title for this blog "Leaders & Institutions". (Bear with me those of you who have come to this blog to read about these; I do intend to write about them, but just an indulgence for this time when I can sing the invocation to welcome you and tell you about the play to unfold).What is "Leaders & Institutions"all about? All my life (which sometimes seems very short – just yesterday I was a teenager and sometimes I am Methuselah, present at the creation as the Lord's third valet) I have been a worker who works with leaders, potential leaders, aspiring ones, failed ones and phenomenally successful ones. I have known and been with factory foremen and the Chairpersons of Boards (Yes, Virginia; there are Chairwomen though enough to count on one hand), the bankrupt and the billionaires (5-6 of them give or take a few), young and old – a veritable Noah's Ark of leaders. All shapes, sizes, varieties and characters. As Shakespeare put it, approximately (any one remember the exact words?) "Some are born, Some attain, and on Some it is thrust upon".
I was once in a golf cart with two men, one who is now an ex-President of India and at that time 6-months from the post, and another who is probably a future President of India. Introduced by the future Prez to the imminent Prez as a leadership expert, I was asked, "Do you really think leaders can be made? Don't you think they are born? Either you have it or you don't, isn't it?" Given that these were two self-made men who had achieved iconic status by the dint of their own mettle, by the sweat of their souls and some luck, the question was clearly rhetorical...and the right answer, in Their company, was: "Of course, Sirs. They are for sure born and not made". But the right answer, in your company, is a little more complicated...and a subject for another entry.
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