When the end is near ....

While browsing the net I found this interesting article in NY Times.

This article reminded me of the book Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom which I read sometime back. This book tells story of Morrie , a retired professor who one day discovers that he does n't have many days to live and his lessons to the author who is a former pupil.
The author is busy with professional life when he gets to know about the professor's condition and decides to pay him a visit. The one visit turns out to be a weekly flight to Morrie's home where each time Morrie has lessons on life for the author.These visits have a profound effect on the author. It is a thought provoking book and touches your heart.
Another book on a similar genre is "Chasing Daylight: How My Forthcoming Death Transformed My Life" by former CEO of KPMG Eugene O'Kelly . At 53 he was living a very busy lifestyle of CEO having very little time for himself and his family when he finds out he has cancer and has few months to live.(reminds me of the hindi movie Anand)
He decides to plan his death and the few months he had on his side. He decides that he will meet all his friends who were near and far and meet them once for final time and "unwind" .
In the book he says that all his life focussed on building and planning for the future .Now was the turn for him to learn the true value of the present.
These books and the article reflect how knowledge of death transforms a person and gives him one last chance to introspect....

Coming back to the news article here is a excerpt from the lecture which I really liked.
"OK, let’s talk about football. My dream was to play in the National Football League. And most of you don’t know that I actually – no. [laughter] No, I did not make it to the National Football League, but I probably got more from that dream and not accomplishing it than I got from any of the ones that I did accomplish. I had a coach, I signed up when I was nine years old. I was the smallest kid in the league, by far. And I had a coach, Jim Graham, who was six-foot-four, he had played linebacker at Penn State. He was just this hulk of a guy and he was old school. And I mean really old school. Like he thought the forward pass was a trick play. [laughter] And he showed up for practice the first day, and you know, there’s big hulking guy, we were all scared to death of him. And he hadn’t brought any footballs. How are we going to have practice without any footballs? And one of the other kids said, excuse me coach, but there’s no football. And Coach Graham said, right, how many men are on a football field at a time? Eleven on a team, twenty-two. Coach Graham said, all right, and how many people are touching the football at any given time? One of them. And he said, right, so we’re going to work on what those other twenty-one guys are doing. And that’s a really good story because it’s all about fundamentals. Fundamentals, fundamentals, fundamentals. You’ve got to get the fundamentals down because otherwise the fancy stuff isn’t going to work. And the other Jim Graham story I have is there was one practice where he just rode me all practice.You’re doing this wrong, you’re doing this wrong, go back and do it again, you owe me, you’re doing push-ups after practice. And when it was all over, one of the other assistant coaches came over and said, yeah, Coach Graham rode you pretty hard, didn’t he? I said, yeah. He said, that’s a good thing. He said, when you’re screwing up and nobody’s saying anything to you anymore, that means they gave up. And that’s a lesson that stuck with me my whole life. Is that when you see yourself doing something badly and nobody’s bothering to tell you anymore, that’s a very bad place to be. Your
critics are your ones telling you they still love you and care."

us vs U.S.

This week the Engg vice President of the company(the headquarters are in US) for which I work is on a visit to India center in Bangalore.
He had a interesting discussion with our team .It is a relatively small company with about 400 employees.
He discussed his personal experiences in B'lore ,specially the traffic and the autorickshaws. Walking on bangalore roads according to him is a harrowing experience ,you never now when u are going to get hit. According to him at the intersections it is the bicycle riders who determine who will cross first.:-)
His observations certainly have merit .In India we do what is called 'instinticutal driving' ie we follow our instincts while driving and not the traffic rules.
Coming to the second part of discussion ,the topic was what is the difference between working in India and working in US .
One issue which is most often discussed in the software sector is the quality of work we do in India. The fact is that most of the design work which is the most creative part (and therefore most satisfying) happens in US or Europe. We in India most of the times do some development ,maintenance and testing work.Pure design and development in the high technology sector at least, happens rarely .And this is true for all the technology companies.

Now the question is why this is the case ?
The first thing is the market. The market for which the design happens is in Europe/US.SO naturally requirements come from there.So the design happens there. Second and perhaps the most important factor is the skill .In skill we lack behind the Engineers in US/Europe.For example the software(and hardware) development in US has been going on in US since the early 1950's whreas we started only in late seventies.
We still lack the manpower required for high-tech technology development.
There is a third very interesting reason.
The software sector in India is witnessing a massive growth.The salaries are increasing at 20% per year due to large demand supply gap. This is resulting in frequent job hopping by the employees. Now in high technology sector domain knowledge is very important.But if engineers change their domain every 3-4 years it becomes difficult to get experienced domain experts which is basic to any high technology design and development work.
The VP compared the growth in India's IT sector to that of Singapore.In 1970's Singapore was just a emerging economy like ours.At that time it witnessed tremendous growth in manufacturing sector and in annual salary hikes were in the range of 20%
(same as Indian IT sector) The then Singapore govt.(it was ruled by dictator then) used the opportunity for the overall development of economy .Now Singapore is considered a developed economy.Incidentally all the manufacturing has moved from Singapore to neighbouring geographies.May be India can learn a lesson or two from Singapore.

It's so simple to be happy but so difficult to be simple.

Yesterday I was watching Bawarchi on TV. It's one of those movies which you can watch again and again without getting bored .The great thing about Hrishikesh Mukherjee's movies is that they always have something to teach. Watching a Hrishida's movie is like learning life's lessons.
A common thread that runs through these movies is the idea of simplicity.The characters are simple ,most often they have simple desires .The settings are simple and the stories are simple. It's this simplicity that is so difficult to achieve.Simplicity has its own beauty.
In our life (as the protagonist of Bawarchi says) in pursuit of larger goals we stop caring for small and simple things.It's these small joys that make our life. These simple things that define and make our life.But more often than not we ignore them. This idea of simplicity can be extended to every subject.For example in science it's understanding of the fundamental concepts that is required to solve complex problems.
It's our inability to deal with simple things in life that leads to our life's miseries.Take for example Dr. Bhasker's character (Babu Mushai) in Anand .Before he meets Anand he was fedup with life because of the misery he saw in the world as a Doctor and cancer specialist. It's Anand who teaches him to enjoy small things in life that make our world. Same is the case in Mili where Jaya Bhaduri's character transforms Amitabh Bachchan
Alas it's not easy to be simple. Being simple is just like being yourself. Seeing everything in right perspective and just being honest. Is n't it so ?
Looking at the larger picture we ignore the small strokes that make life.We tend to cloud our thoughts and our perspectives about others and life's situations sometimes with extreme emotions. We care more about results and less about the approach. So we miss the fun of doing things. It's the journey that matters more than destination ,for we spend more time in the journey.Everytime we too need a Anand to teach what real 'Anand' ,life is.
Of course life is not always simple.But then it is also not complex.It's we who make it complex .
So try to keep things as simple as possible.
PS:In whole of the movie(Bawarchi) Rajesh Khanna is wearing the same khaki dress.I can't recall any other hindi movie in which the hero wears same dress througout the movie.