Living in a well-wired world

Unless a big fat Bollywood wedding happens sometime soon, we're unlikely to be rid of Sanjay Dutt's sorry plight being shoved down our resistant throats by TV channels, newspapers, and magazines. Haneef is a smart guy. He couldn't have picked a better time to land in India. Had he landed after Dutt's wave-and-swagger jail entry, the media would've by now thrust a microphone into his days-old daughter's face and had experts in their studios interpreting her gurgles. In their race to upstage one another, the visual media especially has managed to equate the sublime with the ridiculous: At 9 p.m. IST, all are equal. And every news item whether newsworthy or not, deserves a panel discussion with pro and anti issue panelists along with the hysterical anchor creating a screeching din which can set off a lively debate in your own drawing room where the family is eating in front of the TV and happens to be divided on the issue. Virtually everyone can now express themselves, be heard and read; you can record your antics on a camera and put yourself up for show; you can blog and be boqueted and/or brick-batted; you can read on any issue happening in any corner of the world, form an opinion, and mouth it. This is a freedom most of us are determined to enjoy (including yours truly) which has got people everywhere talking more than ever before but it really hasn't dulled our prejudices - the opportunity to know more hasn't necessarily made us more broad-minded or accepting of one another; we're just more aware now that there are more people than we suspected around us who we dislike and who dislike us and, horror of horrors, we can't do much about it. We've heard it said forever that communication promotes better understanding - there's very little evidence that this hypothesis is true; if there has ever been better understanding between peoples due to communication it's usually been to serve a specific purpose. If you and I can be mutually beneficial to each other in some way, we're more likely to cooperate and put up a pretence of understanding and accepting each other. The benefits of living in a well-wired world are plenty but the wires do short circuit frequently.

Dr. Wayne Dyer - 10 Secrets for Success and Inner Peace

I just finished reading Dr. Wayne Dyer's 10 Secrets for Success and Inner Peace. It's a good book to read - like most books on elusive concepts that human beings hanker after. If Dr. Dyer's success in his chosen field is any indication, it's evident that these secrets work. Here are his 10 secrets:

1. Have a mind that is open to everything and attached to nothing.
2. Don't die with your music still in you.
3. You can't give away what you don't have.
4. Embrace silence.
5. Give up your personal history.
6. You can't solve a problem with the same mind that created it.
7. There are no justified resentments.
8. Treat yourself as if you already are what you'd like to be.
9. Treasure your divinity.
10. Wisdom is avoiding all thoughts that weaken you.

I enjoyed reading the book - Dr. Dyer has devouted a chapter to each of his secrets, but I'm not sure I came away feeling peaceful. If anything, I felt more restless than before I picked up this book because I can't really follow most of these; either I'm a real McCoy rotten apple of the human race or these formulas are hopelessly simplistic. I'm sure I don't want to die with my music still in me but that's hardly a secret; Thoreau said in the 19th century that most of us "lead lives of quiet desperation" which translates to the same thing. "There are no justified resentments"? Really? That's a hard one to swallow. I'm not sure if it's a good thing or a bad thing, but this book threw up more questions for me than it answered. I think I should take the safe way out and "embrace silence."

When Cultures Collide

In the Zulu language, there are 39 words for the colour green. A green leaf in the sun has a different word from a green leaf in the shade; a moist green leaf is different from a wet green which is different from a bone dry green which is different from green at a distance of 10 feet which is different from green at 10 feet with one eye closed...in English, there's just "green" with a few adjectives to describe its different shades. An Englishman therefore can never understand or experience "green" in the same way that a Zulu can. Our language defines our understanding of the world in more ways than we can consciously acknowledge because human beings think in their language. If people from different cultures cannot experience "green" in the same way, is it any wonder that so many nations of the world are at loggerheads? Wars - on battlefields, on sports fields, and in boardrooms - happen when cultures collide.

"When Cultures Collide" written by Richard D Lewis is a fascinating and absorbing read about the peoples of our world. In dynamically crafted language that is clever, fast-paced, and witty, Lewis documents how people dress, think, talk, act, and react to one another in different parts of the world. Spanning Latin America, the Arab countries, East and West Europe, the Balkans, the Nordic countries, America, Africa, Asia, and Australia, "When Cultures Collide" details in breathtaking richness and brevity, the customs, manners, morals, taboos, food habits, body language, values, thinking, listening, and communication patterns of this multi-cultural world. Its gripping pace makes "When Cultures Collide," the best non-fiction page-turner that I've ever read. Lewis subtitles his book 'Managing Successfully Across Cultures,' and his book is written mainly from a business perspective but it couldn't be more relevant in today's strife-ridden world where the closer we're thrown together, the further we seem to pull away from one another.

Throughout the book, cultures collide in delightfully comic ways with hyperbolic Americans, diplomatic Japanese, self-effacing Englishmen, no-nonense Germans, proud Arabs, and the self-absorbed French trying to get along inside and outside the boardroom.

How do the Germans and the Japanese, the Finns and the British, or the Chinese and the Italians strike a business deal when "for a German and a Finn, the truth is the truth. In Japan and Britain, it's alright if it doesn't rock the boat. In China, there is no absolute truth. In Italy, it is negotiable"? For the Japanese, honour is supreme - they should not lose face (and they shouldn't be seen to make you lose yours) - and that's more important than "truth" as a German sees it; a German will call a spade a spade but if an American uses that expression on him, he'll take it quite literally and probably look around the room for a gardening tool. An Italian thinks truth depends on the situation - if a lie serves your purpose, then that is the truth: it's better to be practical and get what you want than be "truthful" and stupid.

Different cultures respect different values. A punctual Swiss or a German will not be amused by the laid back, impulsive, improvising-by-the-minute Brazilian or Spaniard who will arrive at a cocktail party 2 hours after the appointed hour (with a friend, trying to conclude a deal they began last week). This wrecks the carefully planned Swiss or German timetable. The opportunistic, fast-talking American likes to cut a deal at the first meeting; Arabs, Russians, Japanese, and Chinese like to build personal trust before they build a business and will find Americans "who will forget your name the day after the deal is made" extremely rude and insulting.

The fatalistic Indian's karmic concept of time (if things don't happen at the appointed time, they eventually will...some time...maybe in another reincarnation), the "no-manual-for-correct-behaviour" Aussies, the Mexican's loquacious rhetoric, Danish congeniality, and the low-key Canadians - all jostle for space when cultures collide.

Richard Lewis' riveting study of human behaviour across the globe is recommended reading for anyone interested in being a global citizen; if you're not interested, you will be once you pick up this book.

ABHOSTTBBLO continues....

Autorickshaw - a 3-wheeler public transport buggy; 'autos' are the only motorized vehicles that can simulate a horse ride without a saddle in the Andes on a horse that's trying to get away from gun fire. Alien to human emotions, 90-degree angles, and the rule book, auto drivers perch at angles ranging from 45 to 65 degrees to give their carefully folded passengers a lively and unforgettable ride through urban India's it's-all-happening-here streets.

Peace of mind - a concept made scarce by George Bush, peace of mind is now the hottest selling topic for wannabe writers. Peace of mind is something you have until the moment you pick up a book on it. There's no absolute peace of mind - it just depends on who's trying to define it where. In Iraq, Afghanistan, parts of Africa, Pakistan, and the "West Bank," peace of mind means not getting killed; in the rest of the world, it means not knowing who's getting killed where; in America, peace of mind means killing everyone everywhere while skipping around the world with a goofy smile, a twinkle in your eye, and bombastic rhetoric. In Italy, it's watching someone at the lunch table being garrotted with a piano wire while licking pasta off your fingers and crying with the opera soprano. In the Arctic, no one knows or cares what peace or mind is which of course is true peace of mind.

Stock market - one of modern day's greatest mysteries, the stock market can take entire economies to the cleaners simply because it rained in Timbuktu while semi-paralyzed men in drenched shirts, loosened ties, and glazed eyes have fingernails for lunch and heart attacks for dinner trying to understand why the Dow Jones cannot behave as ordinary as it sounds.

Global warming - this new-age terrorist dumps ice and snow in deserts, dunks England's head in the swimming pool, unleashes winds that can transport Japan to China, and excites stock markets all over the world; has redefined "weapons of mass destruction" but has been unable to rearrange the molecules that make up George Bush.

Maverick

When Ricardo Semler inheritted his father's company, Semco, the employees expected a dyed-in-the-wool Semler Senior clone who navigated his ship with absolute authority and control. Ricardo Semler turned every rule in the book on its head and finally threw out the rule book tself to make Brazil's Semco the world's most "unusual workplace" which has a 2000-long recruitment waiting list.

Semler's overhaul hinged on workplace democracy, a concept that is ad-libbed by most big organizations but is little more than hot air. In most immature companies, workplace democracy functions pretty much like Indian democracy: I'm the boss so regardless of how stupid I am in my head, you will do what I say. You're free to disagree but that's where your freedom ends. I give you the right to disagree and reserve the right to ignore you.

Semler started by talking to his employees and listening to them - really listening to them, forgetting for a moment that he is the boss - and then taking every single critical decision that he had to make, to a democratic vote by his employees. He trusted that his workers knew more than him because they actually worked. He also knew that for employees to trust him, HE had to trust THEM first. Building trust slowly, distributing decision making democratically, practising absolute transparency in every single department, and finally literally throwing away the verbose company manuals that dictate an employee's every breathing moment within company premises, Semler built an organization from which he could ultimately fire himself: He had so completely delegated decision making that most of his employees were jacks and masters of all trades having worked in many different Semco departments.

He never pretends the journey was easy. People mocked his vision, many were scared to empower their subordinates, some of his managers told him that the employees were not mature enough for such an experiment. Needeless to say, there were plenty of nay-sayers. Some ideas weren't as successful as he'd hoped but Semler tried them all; he jettisoned unsuitable baggage and hauled aboard those that could withstand the long haul. Ricardo Semler converted those he could; those he couldn't, he let them go and they ultimately found organizations that were more suited to their style of functioning in which they thrived.

Semler believes that true capitalism is true democracy. He is aware that workers are a company's biggest and almost only asset and every bit of profit the company makes belongs completely to the people who toil for it. Semco's profit sharing plan is devised by the employees - they decide who gets how much; employees set their own targets, their own bonuses, their own salaries and even have a say in choosing their bosses! Semco's books are completely open (and they don't have too many of them) and to show how serious Semler is about transparency, he has ensured that every single Semco employee down to the janitor knows how to read a balance sheet. Shunning cabins, hangers-on, ego massages, and other frills, Semler has ensured that he and his managers never lose touch with the people who make Semco what it is.

Semler realized early into his transformation exercise that managers typically dislike sharing information with the employees. This is true of most organizations. Supervisors feel their powers will somehow diminish if their subordinates know as much as they do. Semler's greatest challenge was to address this sense of insecurity among his managers. He did whatever was necessary to address the issue - talking to stubborn managers, convincing them to experiment with his ideas before rejecting them outright, converting some, hiring new thinkers, and throwing out those who didn't fit in.

The result is Semco, Brazil's most sought-after company by job seekers. Can there be a better tribute to an organization? Organizations must have the will and the vision to decide what their culture is going to be regardless of their size. Whether it has 10 employees or 10,000, the organization's culture cannot and should not change. For this to happen, employees must be involved and the only way to involve them is to simply involve them.

Semler says throughout his book how easy it is for big organizations to make a killing at the cost of their employees' health and happiness. These organizations typically follow a top-down heirarchy that always runs parallel to each other and never seems to meet at any point. They are inhabitted by people with different goals, different ideas, different interests. While this is desirable, Semler says it is absolutely imperative for everyone to be aligned at some point for the organization to grow in a healthy way. Unlike companies that obssess with all the trappings of democracy but never follow any real democracy though they constantly preach it, Semco walks the talk. Their idea of democracy is not limited to allowing employees to call their bosses by their first names and keeping their cabin doors open but discouraging anyone from walking through the doors by isolating themselves in their beloved cabins.

Organizations may argue that it is impossible to sustain Ricardo Semler's concept of worker empowerment as the organization grows. Semler has demonstrated that when it comes to using common sense and being a good employer, size doesn't really matter.

Ricardo Semler's "Maverick" is a must-read for all company bosses who are serious about workplace democracy.

When God Winks

In "When God Winks," SQuire Rushnell talks about the "power of coincidence" that "guides your life." Having "interviewed scores of people and researched hundreds of coincidence stories in hopes that a new perspective on such synchronistic events would help others enrich their own lives," Rushnell is convinced beyond doubt that through the course of all our lives, God winks at us a million times - a God wink is what we call a "coincidence."

Rushnell's introductory chapter in "When God Winks" ends with a section titled "My promise to you"
"First, you are under the influence of a cosmic guidance system, and every day you receive little nudges to keep you on your chosen path.
Second, tracking the coincidences in your past will create an astonishingly lucid account of your life, while providing clarity to the grand possibilities on the road ahead.
Third, you can learn to harness the power of coincidences to enrich your future and to strengthen your inner convictions that the life path you've chosen is indeed the right path for you.
Lastly, you'll see that coincidences happen for a reason, and that's to let you know one thing: You are not alone."

Over the course of the book, Rushnell relates numerous career coincidences, relationship coincidences, spiritual winks, Holocaust survivors' tales, lost and re-united stories that happened because of an amazing series of God winks, "the winks of dates," "the winks of numbers," nick-of-time winks, even "cosmic humour"! Rushnell has recorded a treasure of serendepities that God generously sprinkles on our paths in our life journey, most of which we even fail to notice. Rushnell tells his readers: "As you embark on this marvelous process of discovering the winks in your life, I ask you to keep your mind open to possibilities you have never imagined and to be prepared to take action steps toward goals and dreams that may now seem distant."

Do that and read "When God Winks" by SQuire Rushnell. If nothing else, it's comforting to know God has a sense of humour!

"What we think we become."

Humanity's greatest thinkers have saluted the power of the mind. The Buddha said "“All that we are is the result of what we have thought. The mind is everything. What we think we become.” All through mankind's history, philosphers, statesmen, even scientists have told us that the most powerful instrument available to human beings is their minds. It's scope is quite literally limitless. We don't need to look far to know this truth. We're surrounded by greatness and excellence - the man who first landed on the moon, the billionaire's empire built from scratch, demi-God sportpersons, inventors, those who achieved excellence in art - they're all people like you and me. They just stretched a little longer. ""What we think determines what happens to us, so if we want to change our lives, we need to stretch our minds," says Wayne Dyer a "life coach" and motivational speaker. What keeps us from achieving our own greatness is our zombie-like everyday motions of existence which we have to come to believe and accept as our life. We exist in suspended animation, and one day--too soon--it's time to go home. We're scared of our dreams because we don't believe we can achieve them, so we clutter our mind with frivolous trivialities, argue for our limitations, nuture them carefully, and go from one failure to the next with a stoic stupidity that would be laughable if it weren't so tragic. We draw negativity to ourselves because we refuse to believe that good things can happen to us. If you constantly tell the Universe that you are its greatest liability, the Universe will agree; but if you free your mind completely of your self-perceived limitations, if you refuse to accept your own negativity and the negativity of others around you, if you constantly believe in your dream and work towards achieving it, if you just never ever give up, the Universe will respond to you in astonishing ways. Think about it! Nothing, absolutely nothing, is impossible to you! There's no obstacle that doesn't hide a piece of the sun behind it, there's no failure without a lesson that you need to learn, and there really is no human weakness--not one--that you cannot quash if it stands in the path to your dreams. "Your mind is an instrument, a tool. It is there to be used for a specific task, and when the task is completed, you lay it down. As it is, I would say about 80 to 90 percent of most people's thinking is not only repetitive and useless, but because of its dysfunctional and often negative nature, much of it is also harmful. Observe your mind and you will find this to be true. It causes a serious leakage of vital energy," says Eckhart Tolle, best-selling author of "The Power of Now." Believe it! NOTHING IS BEYOND YOU. Believe it completely. Drench your subconscious with this thought. Dare to dream your wildest dream and watch the Universe open its doors for you. But even for the Universe to do that, you have to be ready and you have to know when to walk through the door when it opens for you.

That 70's Show

When she was yanked out of obscurity and nominated as the UPA's presidential candidate, no one was more surprised than Pratibha Patil herself. Take a look:

Millions of Indians wrote in to newspapers, journals, magazines, blogs demanding a second term for Dr. Kalam, India's most popular President. Some went on air with their appeal. We were simply ignored. Democracy in India means giving us our right to express our opinions while reserving the right to ignore them completely; decision-making lies in the hands of the IMFH (Indian-made foreign husky).

A jellyfish will have more spine than our "Honourable" Prime Minister. With his watery face and bleating vocals, Manmohan Sing (does he need the 'h'?) has ensured that we will never be taken seriously in any international political forum even if we're now recognized as an emerging Asian economic power.

What we needed to complete the picture, of course, was a controversy-ridden, half dead, one-foot-in-the-grave, the-other-in-mouth fossil whom our unfortunate defence heads have to salute. Look at her again, ladies and gentlemen. Doesn't it make you swell with patriotic pride at our Commander-in-Chief! Then again, our defence minister is a dhothi-clad 5-foot nothing. There must be some karmic justice in all this somewhere. You just have to find it.

ABHOSTTBBLO continues...

Multi-tasking - A euphemism that means an inborn or acquired talent to ruin as many tasks as possible simultaneously. A multi-tasker is someone who can talk on the phone while cooking, watching the baby, and working on the computer. Obviously this someone is a woman who has the ability to watch milk boil over very calmly as she--again very calmly--tries to prevent her baby from eating a knife while her PC quietly self-destructs in a corner and her significant other watches WWF in a semi-conscious state. A man’s idea of multi-tasking is watching TV AND eating potato chips.

Indian National Congress - The Grand Old Party of Indian politics, INC Inc., is now a privately owned enterprise run by an IMFH (Indian made foreign husky). An organization of living debilitated fossils with virtually all of its young leaders 6 feet under, the defining character of INC Inc., is dementia.

Bollywood - A 5000-old Sanskrit term from India’s rich cultural heritage that means ‘dance,’ Bollywood is the name of the biggest movie-making industry in the world – the Hindi movie industry. It is also the only movie industry in the world where 5782 directors have used the same script to make 10,865 films with 50,847 songs, 50,847 dances in 3498 locations with 85,432 costumes. This script was written in 362 B.C. by a man who wore bearskin, had long straggly hair, and regularly clubbed women to death.

"Falls alarms, do not picnic"

The shrieking fire alarm made me jump out of my skin. RRRRUUUNNNN, RRRRUUUNNNNN, RRRRRUUUUUNNNN, it screeched urgently. Around me, people stared intently at their computers, chewed gum, chatted, laughed – they were oblivious to the fire alarm. I’ve always been intrigued by this: if they were caught in an unexpected downpour, the same people who now sat through the fire alarm chewing gum, would run out of the rain like they were heading for a bomb shelter. We treat a silly shower like an air raid siren and a fire alarm like a coffee break bell! We’d rather be burnt toast than be wet!! Had anyone ever heard of "priorities"!?! Did they expect the fire to walk up to their workstations, tap them on their shoulders and say "Hello! Shall we sizzle on the dance floor?"!?!?!? Had everybody gone MAD!?!?!?! (Did anyone notice the gradual upward rise in punctuations??????!!!!!?????)
As I worked myself up into a righteous fury, a message flashed across our screens: “Falls alarms, do not picnic.”
Then, a few seconds later: “FALSE ALARM, do not picnic.”
Well, well….and then: “Sorry, PANIC.”
“Panic, people, panic!” I yelled and bolted like a bat out of hell screaming “Fire!! Fire!! Run!! Run!!”
It was only after I had clattered down a full flight of stairs at supersonic speed that I realized
a) No one else had picnicked…or panicked…or whatever.
b) There was no fire alarm blaring.
c) My left hand was attached to someone’s right.
I turned and met a pair of icy eyes. “Whoa!” I yelped and staggered backwards, “Who are you?”
“My sentiments exactly,” the owner of the hand replied frostily. “Thank you for saving my life. Now, if you don’t mind….” she yanked her hand out of mine and turned on her heel and stomped out.
“You’re welcome,” I croaked.
I tried to slither back in unnoticed--I crouched and duck-walked but someone spotted me and called, “Welcome back!!” and I got a standing ovation. Where is that damn earthquake when I need it...!

MORAL OF STORY: 30 minutes a day 4 times a week, practise duck-walking.