ALEPH

Read it on someone's blog...

‘My assets are the occasions I made others smile and the situations I experienced inner joy and peace in these years. My liabilities are nothing but the opportunities I lost for excellence to become a world class citizen’.‘Hell is when we look back during that fraction of a second and know that we wasted an opportunity to dignify the miracle of life. Paradise is being able to say at that moment: ‘I made some mistakes, but I wasn’t a coward. I lived my life and did what I had to do.’

Few Things I Learned...

There are two ways in which we can learn, during a small projects which we call internship. One is a very particular technical knowledge ,which can be knowledge about a particular organization or a particular type of problem and the solution of the problem which organization is currently facing. The other is a very general knowledge ,which can be mainly the insight you get just by working with people, processes, problems. The main differentiation between these two types is while first is very particular in nature and is NOT applicable to other situation while the second is very generic and is applicable to other situations also which helps you develop insight. This essay is about second type of generic learning.

The first and very important thing which I learned during this project is that organizations can be more disorganized than you might feel. I think the main reasons for this situation is departmentalization. Due to this departmentalization free flow of information is blocked which leads to problems. The more I read about this, the more I feel this system based on ' silos ' should be abandoned. I feel automation in any form will not solve the problem, even though it reduces it to a great extent making information available. Ultimately it is the management will, of creating a system of sharing information, which will change the scenario.

The second thing I learnt is that not all people in an organization know that they have problems. Even if they are aware they might not know the extent to which the problem is deep or complicated. It might seem very simple to say that more co-ordination between departments is required but the actual implementation of a system to make so can very complicated.

Third point which I would like to mention over here is the availability of employee's time to give you right information. Since I have taken up this assignment as a consultant, information is very essential in solving a problem but people are not available to provide you right information. Thus it seems consultant should only take up an assignment if management is committed. Management should make sure that the information required by consultant is available.

More often it might also happen that problems and solutions are both known but people are not ready to change. In this kind of a scenario a consultant can suggest solution once again but it is the management which has to force/sell the solution to employees. A consultant will sell solution to management and management has to sell it to employees, it's not a job of a consultant to sell the solution to each and every employee in an organization.

Again emphasizing the same point once again that it is the management which has to committed to bring about change in an organization and without it's will power problems will stay regardless of how many consultants are appointed or which Enterprise Solution is implemented.

I-Card

I was traveling to office today by office bus. Got a window sit so morning sunlight and air were pleasing me. I decided to listen to some songs and so was listening to few songs which are there in my cell phone. I was looking out of window and started thinking about the book I am currently reading, Zen and art of motorcycle maintenance. I was thinking about Kant, Hume, Inductive and Deductive logic, religion and what not. Soon I realized that I had reached office and had to wear an I-Card.

I felt as if this I-Card is telling me that I can not think of Philosophy and Religion and Kant and Hume now. I must better start concentrating on how I can reduce the cost of logistics. Strange as it may sound, had this I-card been a human being I would have asked him who are you to tell me what to think and what not to think, but then I immediately felt how naïve this feeling was. Company is paying me for my brain. How can I ask such a question to I-Card. I have worked for 16 months before this assignment but never felt like this before. I don't know why?

Is it because my loyalty is different towards 2 companies. Earlier I worked as a full time employee here I am working as a consultant. This is not true because I loved or hated to work equally in both the places.

Or it is because that now I am certainly feeling that I-card is no longer a symbol of belongingness or pride but a modern form of mental slavery.

May be I am being too harsh on I-card. It may be only because of mental fatigue, a result of week long (Non) working.

Now I understand it's because I don't see any meaning in the job I am doing it's not worth 2 months of my life. It can be finished in 10-12 days. It's because I am forced to spend my time doing nothing. This is what I hate, most wasting my time. Not that I am not learning new, I understand if I don't learn new every day it's my problem not theirs. The frustration is catching on and I-card is not to be blamed.

Zen and art of motorcycle maintainance

This is an excerpt from the book I am currently reading.Zen and art of motorcycle maintainance. This excerpt is pasted here for myself so that I remember these words for a long long time.Hope you like it.

I should talk now about Phædrus’ knife. It’ll help understand some of the things we talked about.

The application of this knife, the division of the world into parts and the building of this structure, is something everybody does. All the time we are aware of millions of things around us...these changing shapes, these burning hills, the sound of the engine, the feel of the throttle, each rock and weed and fence post and piece of debris beside the road...aware of these things but not really conscious of them unless there is something unusual or unless they reflect something we are predisposed to see. We could not possibly be conscious of these things and remember all of them because our mind would be so full of useless details we would be unable to think. From all this awareness we must select, and what we select and call consciousness is never the same as the awareness because the process of selection mutates it. We take a handful of sand from the endless landscape of awareness around us and call that handful of sand the world.

Once we have the handful of sand, the world of which we are conscious, a process of discrimination goes to work on it. This is the knife. We divide the sand into parts. This and that. Here and there. Black and white. Now and then. The discrimination is the division of the conscious universe into parts.

The handful of sand looks uniform at first, but the longer we look at it the more diverse we find it to be. Each grain of sand is different. No two are alike. Some are similar in one way, some are similar in another way, and we can form the sand into separate piles on the basis of this similarity and dissimilarity. Shades of color in different piles...sizes in different piles...grain shapes in different piles...subtypes of grain shapes in different piles...grades of opacity in different piles...and so on, and on, and on. You’d think the process of subdivision and classification would come to an end somewhere, but it doesn’t. It just goes on and on.

Classical understanding is concerned with the piles and the basis for sorting and interrelating them. Romantic understanding is directed toward the handful of sand before the sorting begins. Both are valid ways of looking at the world although irreconcilable with each other.

What has become an urgent necessity is a way of looking at the world that does violence to neither of these two kinds of understanding and unites them into one. Such an understanding will not reject sand-sorting or contemplation of unsorted sand for its own sake. Such an understanding will instead seek to direct attention to the endless landscape from which the sand is taken. That is what Phædrus, the poor surgeon, was trying to do.

To understand what he was trying to do it’s necessary to see that part of the landscape, inseparable from it, which must be understood, is a figure in the middle of it, sorting sand into piles. To see the landscape without seeing this figure is not to see the landscape at all. To reject that part of the Buddha that attends to the analysis of motorcycles is to miss the Buddha entirely.

There is a perennial classical question that asks which part of the motorcycle, which grain of sand in which pile, is the Buddha. Obviously to ask that question is to look in the wrong direction, for the Buddha is everywhere. But just as obviously to ask that question is to look in the right direction, for the Buddha is everywhere. About the Buddha that exists independently of any analytic thought much has been said...some would say too much, and would question any attempt to add to it. But about the Buddha that exists within analytic thought, and gives that analytic thought its direction, virtually nothing has been said, and there are historic reasons for this. But history keeps happening, and it seems no harm and maybe some positive good to add to our historical heritage with some talk in this area of discourse.

When analytic thought, the knife, is applied to experience, something is always killed in the process. That is fairly well understood, at least in the arts. Mark Twain’s experience comes to mind, in which, after he had mastered the analytic knowledge needed to pilot the

Mississippi River, he discovered the river had lost its beauty. Something is always killed. But what is less noticed in the arts...something is always created too. And instead of just dwelling on what is killed it’s important also to see what’s created and to see the process as a kind of death-birth continuity that is neither good nor bad, but just is.

JUST A VIEW.

I read a very interesting article few days back...it was about socialism. It was a simple story to explain why socialism fails.The story was about a teacher who tell his class that socialism will be followed in the class.In class test teacher averages all the scores and gives same marks to everyone,in the next test the students who didn't study well for the first test don't study at all and those who studied study less to ride on a free wave.Thus gradually grade of the class keeps falling until everyone fails in the test.Towards the end the author of story claims,pretty naively though, that this is what socialism all about.
It was a simplistic view of socialism and author went on to tell merits of capitalism,very briefly though.I felt it was very naively constructed story.Few things I would like to comment:
1)Socialism failed,capitalism didn't survive either: I study in a class where I meet people day in and day out.Few of them don't even deserve to be near a B-school,but they share same college and class because in a world of capitalism your status is not based on your capacity but on how much 'wealth' you/your father has acquired.The argument that morale of good student would break in socialist class holds true even in capitalist society.
2)Socialism commits a mistake of assuming every human being is equal,capitalism makes a mistake of assuming individual who has more 'wealth' is certainly better(of higher class) than the one who doesn't have it.
3)No country in the world has ever been a perfectly capitalist country,had we formed one I am sure it would have failed even miserably than socialist countries
All I am saying is no country would prosper without the right amount of differentiation between people, not based on only wealth but other factors as well.

STRANGERS.

Why does it happen sometimes that you see someone and feel that you have seen them before, you have some connection with them? Why does it happen that you know someone very little but feel that you know them quite well? Why does it happen that you meet someone for a very short period of time and they take exit from your life, you hardly spend some time with them, you hardly know them but you feel they could have been your BEST friends? You see them and feel it’s just the ‘error of positioning’ ( i.e, Different time, place or both responsible for non-acquaintance). You never forget them.

You spend a hell lot of time with few of them, they become your best friends but still remain strangers and you feel had you given more time to them this friendship could have been different, you feel you would not have had to meet them like a stranger next time you meet them.

I don’t understand this, and like Einstein said ‘How on earth could you prove scientifically a phenomena like this?’. Strange is the role of these ‘strangers’ friends in our life. Strange.

THE WOODEN BOWL....

I guarantee you will remember the tale of the Wooden Bowl tomorrow, a week from now, a month from now,

a year from now.

A frail old man went to live with his son, daughter-in-law, and four-year - old grandson.

The old man's hands trembled, his eyesight was blurred, and his step faltered

The family ate together at the table. But the elderly grandfather' shaky hands and failing sight made

eating difficult.Peas rolled off his spoon onto the floor.

When he grasped the glass, milk spilled on the tablecloth.

The son and daughter-in-law became irritated with the mess.

'We must do something about father,' said the son. 'I've had enough of his spilled milk, noisy eating, and food

on the floor.'

So the husband and wife set a small table in the corner.

There, Grandfather ate alone while the rest of the family enjoyed dinner. Since Grandfather had broken a dish or

two, his food was served in a wooden bowl.

When the family glanced in Grandfather's direction, sometimes he had a tear in his eye as he sat alone.

Still, the only words the couple had for him were sharp admonitions when he dropped a fork or spilled food.

The four-year-old watched it all in silence.

One evening before supper, the father noticed his son playing with wood scraps on the floor.

He asked the child sweetly, 'What are you making?' Just as sweetly, the boy responded,

'Oh, I am making a little bowl for you and Mama to eat your food in when I grow up.

' The four-year-old smiled and went back to work.

The words so struck the parents so that they were speechless. Then tears started to stream down their cheeks.

Though no word was spoken, both knew what must be done.

That evening the husband took Grandfather's hand and gently led him back to the family table.

For the remainder of his days he ate every meal with the family. And for some reason, neither husband nor wife

seemed to care any longer when a fork was dropped, milk spilled, or the tablecloth soiled.

On a positive note, I've learned that, no matter what happens, how bad it seems today, life does go on, and it

will be better tomorrow.

I've learned that, regardless of your relationship with your parents, you'll miss them when they're gone from your life.

I've learned that making a 'living' is not the same thing as making a "life".

I've learned that life sometimes gives you a second chance.

I've learned that if you pursue happiness, it will elude you

But, if you focus on your family, your friends, the needs of others, your work and doing the very best you can,

happiness will find you

I've learned that whenever I decide something with an open heart, I usually make the right decision.

I've learned that even when I have pains, I don't have to be one.

I've learned that every day, you should reach out and touch someone.

People love that human touch -- holding hands, a warm hug, or just a friendly pat on the back.

I've learned that I still have a lot to learn....!

STORY OF EXCELLENCE....

This is a mail I received.....good one.

A German once visited a temple under construction where he saw a sculptor making an idol of God. Suddenly he noticed a similar idol lying nearby. Surprised, he asked the sculptor, "Do you need two statues of the same idol?" "No," said the sculptor without looking up, "We need only one, but the first one got damaged at the last stage." The gentleman examined the idol and found no apparent damage. "Where is the damage?" he asked. "There is a scratch on the nose of the idol." said the sculptor, still busy with his work. "Where are you going to install the idol?"

The sculptor replied that it would be installed on a pillar twenty feet high. "If the idol is that far, who is going to know that there is a scratch on the nose?" the gentleman asked. The sculptor stopped his work, looked up at the gentleman, smiled and said, "I will know it."

The desire to excel is exclusive of the fact whether someone else appreciates it or not. "Excellence" is a drive from inside, not outside. Excellence is not for someone else to notice but for your own satisfaction and efficiency...