So long, Farewell 2017

As the old year makes way for the new, 

Pat yourself for having come through,

Acknowledge the hits, reflect on your misses too...

Remember life continues in the way it should,

You will nurse feelings of happiness at times and, also be subject to the blues...

New beginnings will be many, closures a few,

Don’t loose sight of the goal-post, but enjoy your journey too!

And that folks, in sum and substance, is my  new year message for you.

Wishing you the start of memorable journey as you draw the curtains on this one. 

- Mark.

Bon voyage!

😊💫

Rained Out!

The deluge caused by torrential rains, in Mumbai last evening, brought out how trying times provide opportunities to bring out latent leadership traits in people. Yesterday was all about 'what happens when opportunity creates shared purpose'!

When people are propelled by a collective sense of purpose - as they were yesterday - there's no telling what can be achieved.

I believe a collective sense of purpose works on the upside when coupled with empathy. It creates a bond so strong that few obstacles, if any at all, can withstand the force.

That downpour last evening  ended up eroding years of societal and religious divides in a matter of minutes as people came together from all walks of life to ensure that this 'maximum city' functioned as it should - efficiently! And all because they believed in the identity of 'The Mumbaikar'. It gave them a sense of purpose, a comforting hope. Who you were didn't matter as much as what you did, to address the crisis. And being recognised for what you did wasn't as important as was making a difference in how you did it. That's Leadership at its core. Period. And Mumbai, my lovely, just see how you showed it to all who cared to see! ☺️

So many nameless faces,
...as many helping hands,
recognition that barely mattered
And none of it was planned!

Madras rasa 🎶

Happy Madras Day people! 

If you are from Madras or have spent any period of quality time in this singara city, you would have definitely felt a strong love for it (I have and, I love it!). That is because Madras is more than just a city. It has a distinct personality. A unique persona that is almost impossible to replicate! 

It's where: 

# music sings in taalam to the raagam of math, 

# where the 'traditional' weaves seamlessly into the silky folds of the 'modern', 

# where, the inseparable combination of vadamanga pickle and thayair-sadham tease and tingle the tongue as they satiate hunger in delight like no other culinary feat can

# where coffee is as intoxicating as the 'tanni', 

# where paying obeisance at the 'kovil' is as revered as it is with paying it at the temple of knowledge

Madras - a decoction like no other, where time brews at its own lingering pace to the pressure of frothy change!

Pic location: Kapaleshwar kovil, Mylapore, Madras.

Mentor Me!

“Ajay is a talented boy, but padhaai mein uska bilkul dhyaan nahi hain. He enjoys playing football and wants to be a footballer. But he needs to get through school first and finish his basic education.” And with these words began my journey as Ajay’s mentor. It’s been ten months now since then and Ajay and I have now become friends who meet every weekend discussing a gamut of interest areas ranging from Messi to the milky-way.

A reserved teen, Ajay, when I first met him through Mentor-Me India’s (MMI) mentoring initiative, was difficult to communicate with and, wary of my efforts in trying to reach out to him. Communication, I was told, was going to be one of the big challenges I would encounter in my mentoring journey with him. Add to that the swinging temperaments of a moody 16 year old whose view point of the world swayed along a callibrated scale that ranged from consuming passion to abject indifference, with skepticism playing the balancing act across the two extremities!

I knew it was going to be an uphill task when I signed-up with MMI; and the demand on my time is not what I’m referring to. Nothing quite prepares you in your journey as a mentor, as much as the experience of going through that journey itself. You may prepare all you want but make peace you will eventually with the fact that you’ll never quite be prepared. And so much as I would strategise and plan activities to break ice and befriend my mentee Ajay, he’d seem one-up on me, everytime, in derailing all of those with an agenda that’d convince me he was out to teach me a thing or two about dealing with ambiguity and, convince me that there was no such thing as coming planned for our encounters. That learning still continues!

I am now wiser in knowing that relationships – of this kind or any other for that matter – are organic. You could wish for them to be this way or the other and plan accordingly; fact is no amount of wishing and planning will get you anywhere. You’ve got to be at it and in it to experience what it has to offer and then take guided calls to manoeuvre it in the interest of the involved stakeholders. And nothing teaches you that better than an experience like this (marriage of-course is the other!)
 
So while I now mentally go about figuring how to make my interactions with Ajay a lot more engaging through fun and learning, I have also learnt how to curate plans on the go when he chooses to take the lead in structuring how he’d like to spend the session. It makes me happy to see him do this because to my mind, this is proof of the needle having moved on the behavioural compass along the axis of time. Ajay today is seemingly more confident and communicative than he was ten months ago. While he still wants to be a footballer, he now also realises that he likes studying (he’s been a first class student even with all of that last minute studying) and that a good academic foundation besides the quality of his game, will help him bag the necessary scholarships for a career as a sportsman.

And while I’d like to believe I’ve had some role to play in this transformational journey of his through our regular mentoring interactions over the year , I believe he is mentoring me more that I could have imagined mentoring him through the process. He continues to teach me an invaluable lesson – all children and youth deserve to be treated as individuals in their own right with unique identities of their own. I’m humbly learning that you may not agree with all of their opinions or world views but listen to them you must, show them respect, you must! Doing this has helped catalyse the buy-in process and built my credibility with Ajay. Importantly it has taught me, as much as it has him, to value and work on real-time feedback, besides promoting healthy debate for acceptance and exchange of divergent ideas. Nothing facilitates tolerance and builds healthy respect between individuals as much as this exposure.

Experiences such as these have made me realise while we all have our own journeys to make, no two journeys are ever, if at all, the same. And so there can never really be one best approach to addressing a situation because best in itself is relative.

Thank you MMI for reinforcing this learning through the opportunity you’ve provided!

Soap & Lather...

After a long while, I must confess, I have found myself addicted to a television soap. The last time I felt so excited about watching a television series was way back in the good ole' Doordarshan days of the 80's and early 90's - before satellite television announced its arrival on Indian shores.

Script writing for Indian television has undergone a drastic change since then. Infact, it wouldn't be an exaggeration to state that scripts these days are ludicrous in their very concept.  The strength about writing for television is in its inherent ability to get through to a cross-section of people to assimilate and absorb information differently, provoking, if not encouraging them, to respond and react in ways that maybe even they didn't know they were capable of. It is a powerful way of bringing in societal change through reflection, without any impositions. Sadly, Indian television has failed us all on this premise.

Imagine my surprise then at serependitiously catching a  gripping Turkish series play on Indian television at prime time! For a series that has its origins in a book, the Turkish serial, Fatmagul is quite a treat to watch. A refreshing storyline, the plot brings together a host of issues ranging from socio-cultural differences impacting human relationships on the one side to an ever increasing economic divide and its implications on collective consciousness, ethics on the other. And all of this pirouetted around a rape, raising disturbing questions, some of which may not even have answers!

The plot is gripping and the performances are immensely engaging to the point that it makes me feel like a bystander watching the story play out in real-time, experiencing the motions of it all along the journey from one episode to another. I particularly like the way roles have been chalked out to give sufficient latitude of expression for individual performances without overpowering the treatment of or compromising the storyline; This to the extent that even the ominous background score and scenic locales are used like rivets to anchor the plot from the sidelines without obstructing the story as it unfolds or take away from the performances.

The acting is rich and subtly highlights nuances in expression that only go on to make the performances even more believable and convincing as the story comes alive in the viewers mind.

Happy days are here again - on television, with international serials like these and their ilk being aired for Indian audiences who crave for meaningful visual content that appeals (as against appalls, given the saas-bahu drama we otherwise get to see unfold on our screens) to their cerebral sensibilities. Truely, as far as quality of Indian television goes, there are (imported) soaps and then there's (desi) lather!