Journey for a Dream

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The ordinariness in life

As a child I always wondered (I still do), how famous men & women lead their daily life. Did Gandhi like his day to begin with coffee or tea? How much sugar did he add? Is Kiran Bedi worried about which app is sucking out her phone battery? Does Donald Trump wear the same trouser for 3 days and change his shirts every day or does he change everything every day? I get frustrated that I must wake up 15mins earlier than usual to switch on the geyser. How does Shahrukh Khan manage it, does he at all? I have not obviously become famous myself to know the answers to these questions. Being in proximity with some of these public figures, I have a few “insights”. For instance, I remember attending a meeting with a Chief Minister at his residence. The snack served was quite bland in taste. I wondered whether it bothered him. Would he sprinkle some salt over it? Would he ask his help to replace all the snacks? It was his house after all. What would I do if someone came to my house

A Systemic Transformation?

A system is a combination of a lot of all-s; all the people, all ideas, all their behaviours, all their inter-relationships, all their inter-dependencies, all processes and all boundary conditions. The number of permutations and/or combinations of these factors would amount to infinity. Furthermore, in a world as dynamic and inter dependent as it is today, these factors would also change and evolve ever so often. Think about any “system” - education, agriculture, health, transportation, infrastructure, etc. Every one of them would have all of these factors (maybe even more?) playing on them. So how does one transform a system? Is it possible at all? How can one firstly, grasp the entirety of a system? W ith all of these questions, I entered my office a couple of weeks ago in New Delhi. There was an eerie silence but that was probably because nobody wakes up at 7am on a cold winter morning and lands up at their offices. As I passed time catching up on the latest of Koffee with

Top-Down, Bottom-Up and everything in between!

“Bhaiyya, ek pen lelo bhaiyya . Bhook lagi hai bhaiyya ” said the little girl at the traffic signal in the heart of New Delhi, Connaught Place – the ninth most expensive office location in the world. I barely lifted my head from my smartphone to take notice of her leaning against the auto rickshaw taking me to the railway station. I was typing a critical email to one of the clients about how our work was transforming lives across different states. I saw her for a brief moment before nodding (saying no) my head. Just when she was about to walk away, our eyes met. She was barely ten years old, wore a shabby maroon frock, her hair was neatly tied back and one of her eyes was completely grey. She wore a dejected look. All this happened in maybe three seconds before I turned back to typing my email “…in one of the states, over 22 lakh children are directly empowered to...” My hand shut the phone down before completing the sentence. For the next 20 minutes, I stared into the maddening t

A Rant into the Abyss?

The tragedy of commons is nowhere more visible than on our Indian streets. In his book, Games Indians Play, V. Raghunathan remarks that Indians are privately smart and publicly dumb. I have often myself manoeuvred the chaotic systems in our country in ways that are commonly and privately “accepted” but not politically and publicly acceptable – be it the footpath driving to avoid the maddening traffic, the throwing of handkerchief in an overcrowded public transport system, the odd greasing of palms to bypass the never-ending application process or even calling up a friend’s uncle to book a seat in the upcoming cricket match. If and when confronted by one of our morally upright Shaktimaan like friends, we say (we don’t say Sorry Shaktimaan), “This is how everyone works here”, or “Government should figure out a way to provide better”, or in the best case, “oh, I was in a hurry”. As a socialist nation, Indian since its independence has lifted millions out of poverty. It worked to a l

The Fire

“Symptoms, those you believe you recognize, seem to you irrational because you take them in an isolated manner, and you want to interpret them directly.” – Jacques Lacan, French Psychoanalyst. Waking up every morning to a feeling of loss and anxiety, over a period of time shuts down one’s system. The loss, unexplainable. The anxiety, unintended. Put together a lack of direction and you have the most painful and soul sucking emotions – unworthiness and under-confidence. The duo can bring down any human being! One of the most treasured and relied upon emotions I had was anger. It helped me bring an energy to the table that I couldn’t have imagined, every single day. The anger was not misdirected but channeled well. It could get me through difficult situations by the sheer adrenaline that it generated when in need. Most of my time with my kids earlier was spent thus. Failures didn’t matter because every morning I would be filled with anger that fueled my perseverance. I believ

The Matters of Grey

Insider Trading, Corruption, Nepotism, Favouritism, Conflict of Interest – these are all words one can hear often when Government/Politics is being discussed. These are also words that have enough destructive power to overthrow governments, cause great losses to society and sometimes even death. In an interview with Robert Frost, long after the Watergate scandal broke out, Richard Nixon shouted “When the President does it that means it is not illegal”. When Nixon would’ve directly/indirectly ordered the tapping of phones, was he fully aware of his actions? Did he know what the gravity of the matter was? When I first watched the interview, I found the incident too far to relate to. When the 2G Scam and the Coal Scam broke out, it still was all in the air. I knew it was wrong but I didn’t quite understand the core of it. For more than a year now I have been working with a state government very closely. Associated with its highest office and with an extremely broad mandate, I have a

Sacrifices - A Relook

“He who would accomplish little must sacrifice little; he who would achieve much must sacrifice much; he who would attain highly must sacrifice greatly”- James Allen I have always been at peace with the fact that I have and will have to forgo a lot in order to achieve what I wish to. It starts with a party you wanted to attend with a few friends, moves on to a wedding of a close relative, then on to some material comforts, further along to some relationships you built over years and before you know it you reach a phase where you’re efficiently maneuvering life’s obstacles in order to maintain the focus on your aspirations, on “what matters most!” When Gandhi sailed to India after his stint in Africa, did he realize that he will one day have to sacrifice everything he has, including his life, just to ensure freedom? Was he okay with it? There’s no way of knowing. But questions like these and stories such as his have always inspired me to strive harder. To take the pain beca