Somewhere in Space

Many years ago I came to the conclusion that life was a coincidence by coincidence journey. Look at it this way, the day Aloke Gupta was born, I got married. One of my best friends in school landed up becoming my brother in law.

The day that the legendary race horse Secretariat won the Belmont Stakes and became the first horse to have won the Triple Crown – the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness and the 1 ½ mile long Belmont and etched its name into racing immortality, I met Sanjeev Thomas, a classmate at Loyola who went on to become my best friend, a business partner at times and my soulmate for ever. Because of a strange bangle made of Elephant Tail hair which he had brought from Tanzania he was nicknamed Zulu, a name that stuck till his dying day in the middle of last year.

The year he died was also the year that Walt Disney released their new movie Secretariat that chronicled the story of that legendary stud. It was only after I saw the movie (and I have now watched it at least a hundred times) that I realised why Zulu admired the horse so much and literally hero worshipped him, much to the amusement of a lot of us who had a tough time deciding whether it was a horse or a donkey that was being discussed.

The listing of several coincidences that dotted my life can be a great personal occupation, but it is by no means an enthralling account of some magical life. Because each of our lives continues to be magical only to ourselves and the coincidences tend to lose significance when placed in a more global perspective. After all how would you react if I told you that I almost missed a flight from Chennai to Colombo and only the quick thinking and acting of the Counter Executive saw me through. Only later did I realise that he was a junior of mine at college and a bit of a fan. I must confess that I never met him again and I can’t even remember his name.

As I slowly began to realise that coincidences designed the travels and the destinations of everyone, I realised that they were like sign posts that asked you to turn left or right, take a U Turn or proceed straight ahead. It could all start with a chance encounter, an unexpected discussion or just a series of random occurrences that all culminated into a definite direction.

One of my recent favourite incidents involves a client for whom my friend and classmate Shankar Mani had produced a series of films which were titled “Inspired by the Souls who Transform”. I had as I often do, lent my voice for these brilliant films which were telecast all over the country to viewers and critics delight. When there came a time when the company wanted a corporate film they naturally approached Shankar. But Shankar had too many things on his plate and quite graciously suggested that they approach me to handle the assignment.

This led to a series of jobs that I took up for the company and they soon became one of my larger clients. They were also people who supported me strongly when I had a health problem. They remain good friends who I am forever indebted to.

I often sit by myself and ruminate that the map of destiny that I had sketched for myself several times in my life was dramatically transformed by coincidences that introduced their own pulls and pressures and often changed the very destination of my life and the pace at which I would proceed there.

I wonder if each one of us has similar thoughts and also if each one of us has sceptics who pooh-pooh the very thought of coincidence being a life changing force.

I wonder !!!

On Sunday the 17th of April, 2011 some members of the Secunderabad Club objected to the noise being made at a table in the Air Conditioned Bar at the Sailing Club. Little did they know that this was a get together of some people who were meeting after 40 years. Luckily they excused the boisterousness of the gang. But who were these guys? And what prevented them from meeting for so long?

This was a part of the HPS Begumpet ISC Batch of 1972. A Batch which is almost legendary in school (or should be anyway). It was the batch that gave HPS its first 5 pointer in ISC. It was the batch that brought the Pentangular Trophy to Hyderabad. It was the batch that was the first to be given IIT coaching. And so on.

But it took the India visit of Dr. Pradeep Ramaiah to galvanise this motley crew into action. Several of the members had been meeting off and on as part of their business or as part of their social networking. And inspite of being part of rather disparate circles, had seen the circles meet even if tangentially. But when Pradeep suggested they all meet, it kind of triggered an avalanche of activity and so the luncheon meet at the Sailing Club took shape.

The disappointing thing of course was that Chitrajit Cariappa who had reworked his roster to make sure he was the pilot for the Delhi Hyderabad Delhi sector fell prey to ‘delay in incoming aircraft’ and got stuck at Delhi. But Rajiv Gupta, Vijay Marur, John Chandy. CJ Karira, Pradeep Ramaiah, Piush Bahl, RVS Ramakrishna, Arun Rao, Jaikumar Gupta and Shankar Mani made it a pleasant afternoon for ten.

Because it never was a meeting of ten guys in their mid fifties. It was a get together of ten kids who were barely sixteen. As naughty secrets tumbled out of closets and they reminisced about teachers and the pranks that had been played time lost meaning and the flyovers of Hyderabad vanished and railway crossings popped up like little mementoes.

While I was reading the blog by Alok Kejriwal I had this feeling of déjà vu. I knew I had read something like this before. I racked my brains but to no avail. Alok’s earlier blog on the Tatas and the Marwari had been an enjoyable read so I was not surprised when he articulated his perceptions of everything from a ground floor services company to a high flying company that had a helipad on the terrace. I particularly enjoyed the reference to a 5^th floor company which had kind of middle of the road ambitions and middle of the road prospects.

But still that feeling of ‘heard this before’ persisted and I couldn’t get rid of the itch. And then I saw another blog on Alok’s page – Which train are you Riding? And suddenly everything was clear. I was a ten year old again and going from Calcutta to a small village just outside. Our landlord had a house there with a pukur (pond) and I was being taken there to spend a long weekend.

It was a magical weekend. I saw from close quarters how a play was staged. I helped operate the cyclorama screen and ran the moving credits at the end of the play. I learnt to swim in the pond with a Dalda tin for life support. I ate humongous amounts of fish. And we sang every night. Old Bengali songs of the Rabeendra Sangeet kind. The newer stuff that we kids preferred – songs from Kabuliwalla. And I played with Bappa, Bobbin and Beauty – our landlord’s kids. And then we met Kaali the Jeep driver.

You must understand that a Jeep in those days was a machine to marvel at. It had an open top luxury that we used to love and hadn’t yet become a style statement of hoods. And Kaali the Driver was a fun guy to be around with. Always full of anecdotes. Full of stories. And songs.

The song that etched itself into my memory was a kind of autobiographical song. It went like this. Somewhat.

Kaali Paaglaar Jeep Gadi te cholbi kebhai aai,

Cholay aai, cholay aai.

Third classer jatri jaraa, thela thooli kore taara

Na na na dhadarina, na na na dhadarina, thela thooli kore taara.

The song would go an describe what the 1^st Class, 2^nd Class and 3^rd Class passengers on the train could look forward to and compare that journey with the Jeep ride in Kaali’s vehicle.

I remember even then wondering how Kaali had classified travellers and drawn vivid pictures of what each class of traveller was subjected to in a train. It was quite a study in human psychology for a simple Jeep Driver and for a ten year old kid.

This song became quite famous among the Boy Scouts of Andhra Pradesh as it was the only song I could sing and it seemed to endear itself to all those who heard it even if it was beyond their comprehension.

As I read Alok Kejriwal’s blog and was suitably impressed by his allocation of floors to companies and entrepreneurs, the division of society that Kaali had made more than 40 years ago came to mind and I couldn’t but help thinking that old Kaali must have been a perceptive man ahead of times.

And the tune haunts me today even if I have forgotten most of the words.

A proof reader’s job is more difficult than it looks. Much more difficult. In fact proof reading is an art. Proof readers need to know the language thoroughly. Be proficient with all the language’s nuances and quirks. But remember always that proof reading demands that you don’t read the text in front of you.

Because the art of proof reading lies in dividing bodies of text into clusters and then looking at those clusters visually resisting the temptation to actually read the text. Because it has been proven that when we read text a kind of predictive mechanism takes over and we begin to anticipate words and virtually ‘fill in the blanks’ even before the blanks appear. For example if we see the phrase ‘The grass is’ we most often read it as ‘The grass is greener on the other side’ whereas the text could actually have a typo and read ‘The grass is greener on uther side’. Whereas if we stick to purely visual perusal of random clusters we would have been able to spot the typo immediately because it would stand out in the crowd of familiar words.

I think reading people also follows a similar pattern and demands that we don’t read them in a linear fashion but in a random cluster way.

Let me elaborate.

When we read people we normally have a story in mind.  He was born in such and such place. In so and so year. To such and such people. He went to this school. He partook in these activities. He graduated from this college. And started his career with…he married…you get the idea. Now when we read this person conventionally and follow the logic of linearity we tend to come to several obvious conclusions. Which may not always be right.

Whereas if we had instead divided our knowledge of the person into clusters and did a random scan of the data we could perhaps come to conclusions based on truer instincts.

Try it out. I have. Where normally I would give weightage to several facts like family background, educational background etc., I found that I was letting in a certain amount of bias into the equation. However when I looked at a person as a cluster of unconnected realities my instincts kicked in faster and resulted in more unbiased opinions. And I concluded that the rules of proof reading could be applied to several disciplines. Art, to start with. The proof reading method gives a painting or a sketch a whole new perspective. And similarly, design. Even science. And especially mathematics.

That’s when it hit me that I was but treading paths that had been walked on before. Much before. By the ken of people like that great intuitive mathematician Ramanujam Acharya. They were obviously proof readers. But history calls them geniuses!!!

For the past several weeks questions like which newspaper group has sold itself to commercial interests more obviously and emphatically have become redundant. All of them are the same.

Journalism seems to have boiled down to who paid for which lie or who paid for which promotion.

If two papers fight about something as trivial as Diana Hayden’s relationship with her ailing father while the other maintains a stoic silence, in another instance we are educated about Karunanidhi’s family tree and who is watering which plant in incestuous detail while two papers exist as if the state of Tamil Nadu got washed away in the Tsunami during the age of the Dinosaurs.

But the wholesale manner in which all three newspapers seem to have sold themselves to the Aliens Group indicate that the media today is in Alien hands. The sanctity of the front page is a distant memory. Even today when front pages should have been dedicated to celebrating the World Cup victory our enthusiasm is dampened by the obvious ploys of a really desperate real estate player who thinks advertising with such impact and such consistency will be seen as a measure of success rather than a pathetic attempt at bravado from a company that’s surely going downhill.

But that’s their problem. They are welcome to project whatever they want and God Bless their endeavours. But the newspapers have something called responsibility to their readers which they seem to have forgotten.

They owe it to the readers to be genuine mirrors of society, social change and issues that are current. Not merely commercial propositions.

One of the elements of pride and joy of say the 1983 World Cup is the picture of Kapil Dev holding up the Cup on the front page. It’s a pity that today’s generation will be denied even this simple pleasure inspite of the fact that the World Cup is coming home.

This morning I landed up at a Photography Seminar which promised to introduce the basics to a bunch of students. The photographer Ranjit Sinha, was a friend and I wanted my daughter who is working with me now to get a more formal exposure to the art of photography, so we landed up at 915 am and settled in.

The photographs shown were impressive (as they were bound to be, given the depth and width of the photographer’s portfolio) but what took me by surprise was that every photographic experiment that was discussed was something I had been exposed to in my professional life sometime in the past.

I realised then that I had some seriously talented photographers to thank. Suresh Sheth, Hari Mahidhar, Mitter and Ashok Bedi, Pankaj Shah, Ian Pereira, Sudhir Ramachandran, PS Rao, Satya Kumar, R.Bhagvan, Hadkar and later in Hyderabad Gunshe, Satya Prabhu, Claude Avezard, of course Ranjit Sinha himself, and some whose names I forget just now. The pleasure it was to work with them on diverse assignments was enhanced by the tremendous ‘on the job learning opportunities’ that the shoots provided and I am quite immodest in my claim that I have been trained in photography by some of the world’s best photographers. And my understanding of photography, its possibilities and its limitations is a finely honed skill that has become almost second nature to me.

I also realised that most of my favourite skills had been learnt in the age-old look and learn method. The hours spent voluntarily in mechanic shops as a child gave me my knowledge of motorcycles and automobiles though I must confess that todays semi computerised monsters are way beyond my ken. Of course this also brings to mind the shock on my parents faces when I announced that I wanted to grow up and become a mobike/car mechanic and live in my shed. As I see the cars becoming sleeker and the engine compartments tighter I thank the Lord that I did not persevere with my dream…my protuding stomach and my painful back would surely have been insurmountable difficulties in the trade.

Anyway, learning today seems to have packaged itself into modules of convenience and packages of viability. Photographers choose their specialisation based on market demand and going rates rather than on the innate passion or instinct for a particular kind of photography. Car mechanics are brand specific. And niche marketing seems to be the mantra of the day.

Aah well…I still wallow in the old school magic of learning on the job and flaunt my hard earned skills and carry forth the banner of our Company...Heartworks…because that’s the way I work…from the heart. Passionately.