The secret of my "success"

I am asked this question sometimes… Before you start grunting oohs and ahs, please read through…

Success is a very relative matter. A certain Stuart Charles Glyndwr MacGill might be seen as an unsuccessful player because he did not get a chance to play enough for the great Australian team… only because the MacGills decided to copulate around the same time certain Warnes were doing the same and were able to produce a much better offspring (when it comes to cricket!) named Shame, sorry Shane, who made sure that MacGill stayed out of the Oz team for most of his career. Had MacGill been in any other country or was borne at a different time, he would have played at least 100 test matches… he ended up playing only 40 odd while Shame played 140 odd… Playing 2 spinners in an Oz team is unheard of (Btw, Has anyone seen Cameroon White bowling? Someone rightly said that he won’t be picked up as a spinner even in Zimbabwe team… with this kind of quality, no wonder Aussies are losing)… Coming back to success, while a Stuart MacGill is more or less a loser, a relatively senior one-of-100 in one-of-100 company might be genuinely seen as successful by some… it could be naivety (some of my relatives think that I am the 2nd most powerful person in my company after the President… I don’t try to break the delusion of obvious reasons) or for some 1-of-100 is still 1-in-100 and hence good enough (alas! that’s a very low benchmark!!)

Sometimes I wonder if the other person is trying to take my pants off (in an intellectual way) when he/she is asking me that question… Or may be they want to make sure they don’t do the things that I did or do to be successful!!

In any case, I play safe. My standard answer is “Act Busy”. The answer is both genuine(I will come to the point soon) as well as funny and serves both the classes of people. The naïve ones think I am being humble while the smart asses (the ones trying to take my pants off intellectually) get beaten in their own game.

I strongly believe that one can’t be too busy in his or her life… if someone says s/he is too busy, there could be only two things – 1. s/he is lying or 2. s/he is trying to achieve impossible (for example, if someone wishes to jog a marathon every day, they would be “too busy” in other things to achieve this or something similar)…

I always have time on my hand. Time is never an excuse for me. Some examples – I always get time to watch 8 hours of one-day cricket match; I slept for 3 hours last afternoon; and I always get time to write this stupid blog…
At the same point of time I ensure that I look busy – impresses the boss, impresses the colleagues, impresses the team, impresses the family… essentially I can get away by doing less in professional as well as personal life…
Trust me – “Act Busy” works if you are a mediocre like me and don’t have very high goals…

In case you are still with me, here are some tips on how to “Act Busy” –

1. Don’t sit in the headquarters. Be stationed in a different city. The boss is smarter than you and will figure out soon if you are very close to him physically. I have been able to achieve this with last 3 of my bosses and it hasn’t hurt.
   
2. Don’t pick up all the calls. But make sure you call back and call back at some unexpected hour (i.e. between 8pm and 8am). Btw, make sure you pick up the calls from unknown numbers – else you might miss the chance to get that credit card or that home loan that you have been waiting for since you were borne.
   
3. Make sure you do pick up some of the calls – especially when you have given X the time for a call and Y calls. When X calls, switch over between X and Y several times. This is bound to show you as busy and important!
   
4. If there is call scheduled with your boss, make sure you call a friend of yours just before the boss is about to call. Apply #3 when boss’ secretary calls at the scheduled time. This is bound to impress secy as well as the boss (remember to explain that you were speaking to a prospect for that 100M$ deal)… and I can’t tell you enough about the importance of impressing boss’ secy (that can be a separate blog in itself!).
   
5. Don’t reply to mails… WRONG! If someone gave you that stupid idea, don’t follow it – it would only end up showing you incompetent. Trust me, it does not work. Do reply to some of the mails. There are some rules here also…
   
6. Reply to the most unexpected mails.
   
7. Reply to the group mails.
   
8. Reply to the mails in the evenings or early mornings (there are ways of doing this without actually working in the evenings and mornings).
   
9. Make sure a glut of mail goes out of your mailbox in a span of 15-30 minutes (“mail diarrhea”). Two things – the other person remembers getting mails from you at unearthly hours (“brand recall”); secondly, because of the mail diarrhea, some of the mails would be missed which means less trouble for you (in terms of return mails and action items)
   
10. Make sure you keep lot of unread mails in your mailbox. Allow others to peek in (or in a meeting, project it on the screen by “mistake”). People are bound to notice.
    
11. Do not settle your expense accounts for long periods and when you do, don’t forget to write a blog cribbing about the red-tape in your company.
    
12. Don’t take vacation when most of the people take i.e. Diwali, Christmas etc. Make sure you work “hard” during this period. Trust me, scarcity is very valuable.
    
13. Travel! You don’t need to work while traveling and you still get to log “on-duty” hours…
    
14. Spend lot of hours in the office. The hours logged look good and you get away from doing mundane domestic chores. Thanks to internet, there are enough things you can do to kill time. For example – last week I found this great website called www.wikihow.com... It covers pretty much everything from “how to survive a fall from an airplane” to “how live in a car”… The latter would definitely come handy if I am fired from my job or thrown out of my house or both if certain influential people in my life stumble upon this blog…
    
15. When the boss calls unscheduled and hence you are not able to apply trick #4, make sure you put the boss on hold and tell the empty table and chairs in your room – “Guys, urgent call from the boss. We will have to reschedule the meeting” (Caution – Don’t try this trick if you are on video phone).
    
16. Keep your calendar busy. Create some dummy entries so that your calendar seems full on any given day. (Caution – Don’t “open” your calendar completely else one can figure out that you are playing around)
    
17. When you walk around (mostly aimlessly), walk briskly and look worried… very worried as if tsunami has struck the city and its your duty to save it… avoid smiling at people…

In a nutshell, successful or not, if you want peace and at the same time want to feel and be seen as important by others, follow my mantra – “Act Busy”… It’s also one of the surest paths to “success”…

What's the good word?

The origin and journey of words across geographies is a very interesting subject. Any and all the languages in the world are infested with foreign language words and of course, words sounding similar, having same meaning and root… for example, father, pater (German) and pita (Hindi/Sanskrit) sound similar, have same meaning and have originated from the same root word.
A more interesting aspect is migration of the words – sometimes retaining their meaning, sometimes completely changing, sometimes used for a different purpose. Many a times, the pronunciation gets corrupted so much that it’s difficult to figure out that it’s a foreign word and not native to the language.

Here are a few of my favorite words from different categories –

1. Dahi – Dahi is popularly called curd or even plural curds(!) in English. If you check the dictionary meaning of curd, it does not mean dahi but rather chhena (the milk product used to make rosogulla and other sweets). In fact, if you ask for curd in a shop in the US, you would get blank stares. You need to ask for yogurt instead. The popular (Indian) notion is that yogurt is not actually dahi but a close cousin of dahi which is not really true. The fact is that curd is a distant cousin of dahi!

2. Narbhas - In Bihar and Jharkhand, rural as well urban, narbhasana is often used word which essentially means “state of confusion/fear/scare”… Pandeji narbhasa gaye, wo gaye hi nahi (Mr. Pande chickened out, he did not go). It struck me very recently that narbhas is not really a native word in Bhojpuri or any other Hindi dialect in Bihar/Jharkhand. It's nothing but "nervous" pronounced in a convoluted way. How this word made inroads into even rural Bihar is anyone’s guess.

3. Myad - In Maharashtra, myad is often used word to describe someone crazy or stupid. For a long long time, I genuinely believed that it was a native Marathi word adeptly used by my not-so-educated Aunt as well as my grandmother. Only after I started living in Pune, I realized (and that also took a while) that myad is nothing but mad, just like pyad (pad), syad (sad) and glyad (glad)!!!

4. Compromise – I used to live in a toughish neighborhood with lots of street gangs of yound people, each full of themselves and protecting their "honor" and territory. I never fell for it (and fortunately so!) and kept away from any major association though I had many “friends” in many of these groups. I used to play with many of the kids who later started carrying knives and guns (katta). I though I had nothing to learn from these guys (in terms of traditional education) till I stumbled upon the word “compromise”. A gang would compromise and change its stance when it realized that the other gang is much more powerful. The word was used in the right way and with the right pronunciation. I have no idea how this word made it to the unlikeliest crowd of people in a English starved city.

The dictionary meaning of compromise is essentially “to settle for a middle ground”… basically accept something which is not the best and may be go for the second best.
Then why funny headlines – “caught in compromising position”… oh yeah, they compromised and settled for the sex instead of watching TV since there was no power?!
Sometimes, it’s used for a totally different purpose. For example, some people compromise on a 2-bedroom house and go for 3-bedroom one!

It has other practical uses. For example, if your parents really find a really good girl for you, how do you ditch your girlfriend? Well, very easy – tell her it’s a “compromise”, you have to give in to the parents wishes and hence you can’t marry her and hence you are forced to marry the other girl (who by the way is better looking, brings in more money, is more educated, has better manners, has a better lineage, no nakharas and no scandals)… say a sweet “Oh sweetie, it’s a compromise! But for this compromise, I would have married you!!” and get out...

Btw, I realized that no one can touch Dhoni. I tried and got completely boycotted. I launched a scathing attack on Dhoni in my last posting and the result was not a single comment on the post– it hasn’t happened before!

Dhoni baba is tired

Oops! I was wrong. The poor officials turned lucky turned poor again – thanks to Monika, Gold at Beijing and Bindra’s outburst – in that order. I was expecting Bindra to take care of Mendis but he trained his gun on the officials instead! Well, looks like this chap is clear of his priorities – officials now… Mendis can be taken care of later…
Or may be Dhoni has figured out a better way to handle “Mendisis” (sounds like a disease, no?) – we won the one-day series after all… I am sure Dhoni’s idea must be costing less than 30L to BCCI… and in that case, Bindra can kiss the 30L promised by BCCI goodbye!

People and newspapers are already talking about Dhoni being the test captain as well… Poor Kumble… but does Dhoni want to play test matches?? If my memory is right, he refused to play the test series against Sri Lanka last month because he was “tired”… hmmm, that’s interesting… very very interesting! One plays some 20 IPL matches under scotching heat and does not tire and just a month after that, he is tired because of “too much of cricket”! So mister Dhoni, why did not you take a break during IPL? Why did you play each and every match?
Wait a minute – aren’t you the highest paid IPL player (Mundu endorsements extra!)? And isn’t it true that you get paid full only if you play every match? If you decide not to play a match, proportionate amount of money would be deducted from your fees? Well, that explains…
By the way, can you tell me how many ad shootings you did while you were “tired”? One Pepsi ad for sure – both Dhoni and Sri Santh missed the Sri Lanka trip and only these 2 guys are there in the given ad… and some Mundu ads for sure which have mushroomed up on TV…
Now, now, don’t tell me that ad shooting is not as tiring… I am sure all the bollywood actors are not lying when they say it’s lots of hard work!

I think Dhoni is very lucky… I see luck playing a bigger part in his success as a captain rather than some high funda strategy… The commentators go gaga over his cool demeanor… All this makes sense when things are going good. Ganguly’s aggression was his biggest “asset” when he was winning and biggest “liability” when he wasn’t!! Let things go bad (don’t start cursing me - it happens with every team and every captain), the same commentators would say – “what kind of person is he? No impact even when team is losing. He needs to show some emotions, aggression and show to the world that it matters”… and so on!

I think the issue is something else, this chap is an expressionless dud(remember Clint Eastwood?)… Can’t you figure out by watching his ads? Anyways, works well for him (at least for now)…

Btw, if you spot Dhoni and Bindra together, they would mostly be exchanging notes on “Mendisis”…

Gold and Supari

Poor Monika Devi and lucky officials! Abhinav Bindra’s Gold killed the most exciting story till then, i.e., “politics of nothing” and changed the focus to some real stuff. This is really exciting stuff. India has 9 golds in the history of the games now – same as what Phelps got in the current version of the games.

For a brief period (a few hours) I thought may be we have found a sport that Indians can excel in – first Rathore and now Bindra. It’s all about focus and concentration – mental strength rather than physical strength… then in the evening I saw the footage of Bindra’s way to glory… the moment I saw his superman like suit, I realized the sport must be beyond the reach of most of the common people.
My doubts were confirmed when I got to know that this dude is rich and practices in his personal air-conditioned shooting range (while other shooters cribbed about the lack of proper infrastructure in India).
The newspapers the next day were full of all the money showered by various – PM, CMs, BCCI, Lalu, sporting bodies et all… with the value going up to Rs 1 cr!! And what was dad’s reward to his prodigal son – ahem… a Rs 200 cr hotel!!! It not only humbled all rewards and awards (as far as $ figure is concerned), it made me realized that this dude is not rich… he is very very rich…

But wait a minute… one unlikely name in the long list was BCCI – that’s “Board of Control for Cricket in India” – Rs 30L. Why would a cricketing body which can't spend on it’s own infrastructure would do something like this? They have some of the worst cricket stadia in the world – Bangalore is one of the worst. Once I paid Rs 5K to watch a match between India and Australia – travel from Pune costed me on top. Before it was washed off by rains, I could see 2/3rd of the ground. I was given a hole to watch the match from for the Rs. 5000 I spent on these jokers. Every time there was a high shot towards the 1/3rd of the invisible ground, I had to guess and judge by crowd’s reaction if it was a catch or a 6 or a 4. And then there was a pillar right in the middle bisecting the pitch into 2 parts. Guess I was fortunate enough to be able to see the stumps, well in fact spot them from my hole.

Coming back to Bindra - one of the things the gold did was that it lightened the pain of the humiliating test series defeat in Sri Lanka. But why would BCCI reward him or pay him? Are they thankful that the attention was taken off cricket and there was less of flak for the Sri Lanka debacle?
Or may be IS Bindra (one of the top officials of BCCI) is related to Abhinav and he wanted to reward his biradari-wala!
I think the real reason is something different – it’s a Supari… yes Supari. Very clearly, Ajanta Mendis was the difference between win and defeat for India. But for him, we would have definitely won the series. And he is young, has just come in – its not only the current series… if this lad continues to bowl like this, we can kiss the next world cup good bye already… so what’s the solution? Take him out… literally! And hence the Supari to Bindra, the sharp shooter…
And what a brilliant way to pay the money – Khule-aam!!
This might sound like dark humor to you all… the time would tell…

The politics of nothing a.k.a. India in Olympics

Monika Devi tests positive for banned substance… Monika claiming innocence (weightlifter in tears – it was pretty ironical)… Monika claiming it was to get Shailaja Pujara in… Monika cleared of the charges (how does that happen?)… But it seems it’s too late and her name is already withdrawn from Beijing Olympics…

Frankly, the whole thing smells of rat, stinks... stinks big time. The timing was perfect. An announcement on a sample taken on June 6th! An announcement made at such a time that even if it turns out be wrong, it would be too late for Monika to take part. Though it’s all circumstantial and I might be completely wrong here, I think Monika played spoilsport by going to the media and making very direct statements and thus foiling the chances of Shailaja.

I saw this very funny interview given by Shailaja which was given in Telugu. The subtitles read something like this – “I have been told that I am not selected for Beijing. The only way I can go is if Monika falls ill or is caught of doping.” Dunno whether it was before or after the Monika doping news came out but hello! “caught of doping”… who says such a thing? Well she missed couple of options like “Monika running away with an Iraqi weightlifter”… I suspect Shailaja is a bit naïve but there are others who are not!!

In any case, what are we fighting for exactly? Of all the news items I have read or seen, I did not see any which even remotely mentioned that we lost a medal. While I am no authority on this subject (in fact I had not even heard of Monika or Shailaja before this controversy), I am kind of sure Monika was not even close to getting a medal…
Isn't it “politics of nothing”??

Btw, Anup Sridhar won the first round today pretty easily... Lets wish him all the best!