Tuesdays With Morrie - A professor's last lessons

Recently I had the privilege to read a wonderful book titled ‘Tuesdays with Morrie’ by Mitch Albom. Initially I was little skeptical about the book thinking this would be another of those ‘self-help’ books from the American stable. However, since it was discussed in the Corporate Ethics class, I thought I would give it a try. While it may read like a typical ‘self-help’ one, it is a true story and is not a feel-good type. The author, Mitch, did have a college professor Morrie Schwartz who had got this rare disease named Lou Gehrig’s disease and was dying a slow death. Mitch spent 14 Tuesday with his beloved professor in his last few months of life and chronicled what the professor of sociology had to say about life, love, death and many other topics based on his own experiences and learning. The book has been adapted for a movie by the same name and you can listen to some of the original recordings of the conversation between the author and his professor at http://www.albom.com/video.html.

To me, the book was more like a reminder rather than new lessons. When we live, we live as if we are never going to die and waste a lot of time in petty things and do not enjoy the time we have on this earth. And when it is time for us to die, we are never prepared, we have too many things ‘yet to do’, ‘yet to experience’ etc. It would be interesting to ask oneself, ‘what if today is the day for me to go? Would I still be doing what I am doing now? While talking about ‘Emotions’, the professor says, often we don’t let our emotions show because we think that would be silly. But, that stops us from experiencing the natural emotions that God has given us and we are stopping the flow. And only by letting the emotions run, we can really detach ourselves from these emotions. Detaching oneself from the experience or emotion does not mean that we don’t experience them, rather we soak in them and understand their true meaning.

On the topic of aging, some interesting perspectives have been thrown in. I think many of us age unmindful of the fact that we are aging. Then suddenly we discover a bigger bald patch on the back of our head or a friend makes a comment on how one looks, that we become momentarily conscious of the fact. We should be unhappy about aging if aging did not make us any wiser. If we are as ignorant at 32 as we were at 22, well, we should have stayed at 22. But, if we can understand life better and appreciate it more at 32, should we still remain at 22?

What do we mean by wholesome living? Is it a life where all our material needs are fulfilled and we have all the money and all the toys that we care for? Or is it a life full of love, a life which is devoted to the community around and a life that creates something positive? The answer is obvious when questioned but we rarely think about it. We are in a permanent hurry and we are never in the moment, always looking for the next big thing that is going to happen to us. Morrie explains how he used to wave and smile at people who wanted to get ahead of him in traffic.

People become mean when they feel threatened. This is something I have experienced many times and continue to experience even at campus. Life seems like a zero sum game; if someone else gets something, means I am not getting it. I have to deprive someone of something so that I can have it. We go about life with this mentality most of the time. However, the truth is that the feeling you get when one gives something to someone, is many times more fulfilling than the feeling one gets when consuming the same. We need each other to feel good and feel happy and we cannot build this community with fear and greed. Thus goes another one of Morrie’s dialogue with Mitch.

The last part of the book talks about forgiving, others and more importantly self, for things that one should have done but could not do. One has to make peace with living so that we can make peace with death. All of us have to die, its natural. But, we don’t die like plants and animals. Because as humans, we have relationships and relationships live on, our memories live on, of course, only if we have loved and built relationships over the years. When Morrie is asked what he would do if he had a healthy 24 hours, Morrie does not wish for anything extraordinary or fantastic but, just a nice breakfast, walk in the nature, spending time with friends, having a nice dinner at a restaurant and dancing away the night and then have a good, deep sleep. Just an ordinary day but how many such ordinary days we spend without really appreciating what we have and what could be taken away with a stroke of bad luck.

I wish many more of us will read this book and get reminded to love, laugh and live.

Be a conscious Consumer

With the retail boom that is happening in India, consumers have a lot of choices. While that is true, customer service and after-sales support still fall short of western standards. A few precautions can help stretch your rupee a little further and can save you from a lot of harassment. The first and foremost is to PRESERVE THE BILL. While this takes a little effort, this can come really handy as my recent experience proved. I had purchased a Levi’s Jeans about three months back from the store in Vastrapur, Ahmedabad. I had been using it fairly regularly and few weeks back noticed some stitches giving away. I was not sure if I can get it repaired but I had the bill and I gave it a try. I took the pair to the store and they accepted the item for repair. Since I did not get a call within a week as promised, I gave them a visit yesterday. The store manager did some checking and few phone calls and at the end of about 15 minutes, asked me for the bill. After a few more minutes of conversation, he allowed me to take any replacement with the similar price, which I did with pleasure!

A friend of mine had purchased a BOSE IPOD Docking station from the USA and in less than a year, the system croaked. He took it to the BOSE showroom in C.G. road but without the bill, which he has lost, they won’t repair. The system is still lying with them and my friend has tried even the US store for a duplicate bill but in vain. One easy mechanism that I follow is to designate a folder or a drawer only for bills and I throw all bills inside. I look at the bills only when I need to take something for service/repair or if I am leaving the place and hence need to sort and store the important ones. One more mechanism that works well is to scan a bill and keep a e-copy. This also takes care of fading of the bills.

The next important thing is to TRY. We often feel it is a small thing or it is kind of embarrassing to take back something to the store. The important thing here is that the product did not perform as per your expectation or specifications. If someone has to be embarrassed, it has to be the manufacturer or reseller. Of course, if we have mishandled something, it is not their fault and we should not try to take advantage of their customer service policy. While in the USA, I have seen people using something for 2-3 months and then returning back to Walmart or Sears on the pretext of ‘did not like it’. This has led to severe erosion of trust on Asian customers. This kind of behavior is definitely wrong. However, if the item has malfunctioned or does not work as per specifications, one must try for a repair or exchange at the store. Now-a-days, customer service and reputation are much more important to a company than the loss associated with replacing one defective article. There is too much competition, there are too many malls vying for a share of your wallet. So, be aware and be a happier consumer!

Abount being frank

I often credit myself as being very frank and straightforward in my dealings. Of course, pre-MBA I was absolutely straight-forward and un-diplomatic and I think I had my share of love and hate due to this. Since I am at the fag end of my MBA education here, I was wandering what to do with that particular aspect of my personality because I think I have changed from a hard-core techie to a manager during this time. Techies are a different breed, especially software techies because most of the things are a Boolean 0 or 1 to them. Either it will work or it will not, nothing in between. It is very easy to deal with techies because either you love them for what they do or you hate them because they don’t do things. When you are undecided about someone and don’t know if you love him or hate him, you are probably dealing with someone who is about to become a manager. I have seen and worked with several techies during my career in two software biggies of India and usually this theory has worked well.

Now, manager is a different beast all together. There is no Boolean 0, 1 in his case. It could be 0 and 1 at the same time also. Managers are truly caught in the middle between people they manage and people managing them. The same technical explanation does not convince both parties equally. In this context, can I be honest about what I think or feel on a particular topic in the organizational context? If the boss asks me to do something which I feel is almost impossible to do or is not the best thing to do (in my opinion), should I still go ahead and accept? Earlier, my answer would have been ‘No’ but I think now, my answer would most likely be ‘Yes’. The reason for this change is simple. I am not too sure about the thing. Management decisions are not very black and white and irrespective of how many McKinsey frameworks or BCG models one applies, the choices are still subjective. It could go either way. So, unless I know for sure, can I differ with the boss with confidence? Another reason why I feel I cannot speak my mind with the historical freedom I have enjoyed is the widening of audience and inability to control interpretations. This was not an issue while speaking to a group of likeminded fellows who understood the language, the context and the implications. There are so many different stakeholders for a manager that it is almost impossible to bring them to a common platform to ensure similar interpretation. So, better be to exercise discretion than face possible embarrassment. Any negative symptom from me is bound to get amplified while travelling upward or downward, though the same cannot be said about positive symptoms. So, if a task is to be done and I express slight negativity about the task, it is most definitely not going to get done. That’s another reason why I have to be careful about what I speak. And who knows, the negative impression could be due to insufficient homework or lack of trust in the abilities of the people around me.

The Secret - personal experiences

I want to talk about ‘the secret’ again today because of something that happened a couple of days back. When I had read the book ‘The secret’ and wrote the first blog on the same, I had wanted to watch the movie. I went to the website www.thesecret.tv and thought I could watch it. But, what I could do was watch a trailer only and for watching the movie online I had to pay some money through a credit card. I hesitated to pay and wished there was some other way by which I could watch it free. However cheap that thought may have been, I did linger with that thought for a while. And two days back, I got a copy of the movie from a Professor of a course called Managing and Creating Creativity. The professor is Krishnesh Mehta of NID (http://www.nid.edu/people_faculties_m.htm) and he gave us two movies to watch and one of them was ‘The Secret’. He has never talked about it and I don’t know how that became part of the course, but, the fact is that I have the movie.

This makes me talk about a few other things that I think are connected to ‘The Secret’. When I was studying in Roorkee (IIT Roorkee), I would travel through Kharagpur of West Bengal while going to Delhi or coming back from there. The tall tower of IIT Kharagpur used to be visible from the station. I would watch the tower and think to myself, wish I could study here. And the thoughts stayed with me for a while. When I was about to graduate from Roorkee, I had decided to join JNU at Delhi where I could do an MPhil in environmental geology and prepare for Civil services. I had given interview at IIT Kharagpur also and when I inquired about my selection there through a friend studying there, I was told that I was not selected. I spent the day in slight frustration, ordering the chef in the mess to make an Omelet of 12 eggs and all sorts of crazy things. Later, the friend called back to say that she had made a mistake and had checked the wrong department. I was selected. Somehow, the idea of staying in Delhi did not work out and I joined Kharagpur. The thoughts came true.

Similarly, it happened for IIM Ahmedabad. The iconic brick building and the idea of studying in the best B-school in India had always been with me. I had sat for CAT in 2000 for the 2 year program and had not got selected for IIMs. I had continued to work and for next seven years, never thought about MBA. Towards later half of 2006, I had started seriously considering doing MBA again and since I was in the USA, I was planning to do it from a US B-school. At that time, I realized that IIMA has started offering a one year program for executives. I wrote GMAT and applied for it. I was interviewed in New York and even though the interview went well, all the candidates were pretty good and I thought my chance was slim. The day the results were supposed to be out, I had not slept well at night and woke up early and opened mail. There was a mail from IIM A and I just closed my eyes and said let it be a ‘Yes’. It was ‘Yes’ of course and here I am at IIM A about to finish my course.

Now, it is time to talk about something negative that I perpetrated upon myself just by my own thoughts, I think now. I did my summer project (more like a winter project for us because it happens in December) in Hyderabad and one of the reasons for doing it there was that I could take possession of my flat that was getting ready there. For the whole month I was running after the builder, the supervisors and the engineers and though many ups and downs, at least I was hopeful that I would be able to get the flat handed over on the last Friday of my stay there. I had seen the flat on Thursday, some pending work was to be completed still but I had the assurance from the block engineer that it would be done by Friday morning. I started out for the site on my scooter after a good breakfast. I could not believe that all my dreams are finally coming true and even though there was a great deal of effort from my side in that month, I almost felt as if it was effortless. I almost started asking myself, how could everything work out so smooth? How come there is no trouble? And then my scooter sputtered for a while and stopped on the middle of the road. It would not start again. I thought I will find a mechanic nearby who could come and fix my scooter. I walked for about 1.5 km before I could find a mechanic but he refused to come to the site. I walked back and hauled the scooter to the mechanic. He fixed it in a few minutes and I was on my way. When I reached the flat, one of the main tasks was still pending and that was to change the door. In spite of my repeated pleadings, it was not making progress at all. Towards evening, the engineer got a door from the store but there were no carpenters to fix it. Upon my insistence, somehow he procured two carpenters and asked them to complete the work asap. I thought they would do it by night and after watching them for a while, I went down to have a cup of tea. By the time I returned, I was aghast to see that my original door had been taken down, new door was not fixed and there was no trace of the carpenters. I was really angry and frustrated. I called up the engineer and there was no response. I just informed the project manager about the situation and left for home. It was late in the evening and I was tired and while driving, the clutch wire of the scooter broke. It was like the last straw but luckily there was a mechanic nearby and he fixed a new wire. I reached home at 10 PM, tired and dejected. I did not speak to any one, ate my dinner in silence and went to sleep.

Could it have been caused by my thought ‘how could everything work out so smoothly’? I don’t know but it may have been.

PS: On Saturday I managed to get possession of the house after all other work got completed. Another interesting thing happened on Saturday too but it is a story for another day.

The Secret

I would like to talk about an interesting book I came across named ‘The Secret’. You may have read it or read about it. There is also a movie called ‘The Secret’ (www.thesecret.tv). I read the book while sitting in a class that I was not enrolled but wanted to see how the teacher was teaching. It is not really a voluminous book and it is shorter than normal size books with bigger fonts and lots of white spaces on each page. So, reading was relatively quick except for the notes that I was making. The book gives the following secret.

Your thoughts make you. You are what your thoughts are. That is due to the law of attraction. The law of attraction says, like attract like. So, when you think a thought, you are also attracting like thoughts to you. Affirmative or positive thoughts are 10 times more powerful than negative thoughts. One way to master your mind is to quiet your mind. Meditation quiets your mind, helps you control your thoughts and revitalizes your body.

‘All that we are, is a result of what we have thought’ – Buddha.

The feeling of love is the highest frequency you can emit. The greater the love your feel and emit, the greater the power you are harnessing. It is impossible to bring more to your life if you are feeling ungrateful about what you have. Why? Because, the thoughts and feelings you emit as you feel ungrateful are all negative emotions. The daily practice of gratitude is one of the conduits by which your wealth will come to you. Another powerful tool is visualization. The reason visualization is so powerful is because as you create pictures in your mind of seeing yourself with what it is you want, you are generating thoughts and feelings of having it now. If you have been there in the mind, you will go there in the body.

Everything is energy, you are an energy magnet. So you electrically energize everything to you and electrically energize yourself to everything you want. You are a spiritual being. You are energy and energy cannot be created or destroyed, it just changes form. Therefore, the pure essence of you has always been and always will be. The universe emerges from thought. We are the creator not only of our own destiny but also of the universe. You get to fill the blackboard of your life with whatever you want. The only thing you need to do is feel good now!

The Idea for Tinaplanet

Tinaplanet stands for 'There Is No Alternate Planet'. This is my idea for creating an organization that works for our planet and its environment. Our Planet has been under stress for a long time now, even since the industrial revolution happened. The population of the planet has doubled in last 10 years and the rate of growth has not slowed down. The economic developments at China and India in recent years have led to massive increase in consumption of earth's resources and energy. This has led to major pollutions of all kinds and is having severe impacts on the land, the trees and the air. Our anthropogenic view is causing extinction of species at the rate of almost one a day.

You might ask why one more organization when several environmental organizations already exists. There is Greenpeace, there is WWF, there are international bodies for Climate change etc. etc. I believe every bit counts. Tinaplanet is a concept that every one of us can use to think about the impact all of us are making on the Earth and the Environment and if we can reduce it. Can we leave this earth to our next generation as we would like to find it if we are to come back?
If all the people in India and China start consuming the way Americans do, we would need seven planets and not just one to sustain. Some people say seven is an exaggeration; we would need only 3 more!

Poverty is bad for the environment. As people become more prosperous, they start caring for the environment more. On the other hand, as people become richer, they start using more energy and cause more pollution. But, does that mean, we have an inherent conflict here? Should the poor remain poor so that the rest can enjoy the resources and the clean environment? The answer is "No" and that is because, it is not ethical and it is not sustainable. We cannot and should not stop the development of people's living standards but need to find ways to reduce the negative impacts. The idea of Tinaplanet is to do small small things that still add up to significant benefits. Currently, Tinaplanet is just me but if the idea stands the test of time and I get enough friends to support this, it can become a platform for doing something good for our home, our planet.