Santhosh's ramblings

I hear the word “meltdown” quite a bit these days, at least in some of the circles I move in. For some of you, this might be a new term. When I was growing up, I knew of only three types of meltdowns.   The first was the wax of a candle melting down—something that happened daily in our house due to the frequent load shedding in those days. The second was the danger of a nuclear meltdown, a concern that arose as we grew up amidst the construction of many nuclear reactors and the arm flexing of nuclear powers. And lastly, we heard about snow melting down, which led to flash floods in the northern regions of the country.   Each of these has its own distinct character. The wax melting down is intentional; it was created to melt down and, in the process, to keep giving light. Eventually, when all the wax is gone, the light burns out, leaving behind only the burnt remnants of the wick. But this burnout happens only at the end of the candle's life—until then, it keeps burning on!...

A few events happened over the last two days, which give reason for these reflections.   Yesterday, in an online training forum, I was there early, and a friend from a remote nation was also present. As we waited for others to join, I asked the customary question left to us by the British, “How are you?” Before I could finish my question, he had returned the same question. I gave my regular answer: "Good." So, I asked again, "How are you?" His response was not what I expected. He said, "The week has been tough; some catastrophic events happened at work, and I am still recovering." He did not want to explain further, so I said sorry and left it.   This morning, I received a message from an old acquaintance from whom we had asked for some help on a work-related issue. The message started like this: "Things have piled up unexpectedly, and I am at my wit's end." An unusual message from such a senior person.   It is not often that either I or othe...

A few days back, I suddenly remembered a toy that we grew up with. The wind-up toys. They are wound up and keep walking and finally fall over, when the winding completes its work. I think I remembered this because I was feeling like one. Keep on going till you drop dead! This is what life is, for many of us. Some of us have no choice, but others like me, have a choice to slow down. But then, I have  lived like this always and so it has become a life style.  Judith Shulevitz, in a 2003 article wrote this "   We could let the world wind us up and set us to marching, like mechanical dolls that go and go until they fall over, because they don't have a mechanism that allows them to pause. But that would make us less than human. We have to remember to stop because we have to stop to remember." (See reference below).  She starts this article with this story from Freud's era.  " Sandor Ferenczi, a disciple of Freud's, once identified a disorder he called Sunday neuro...

It was yet another day in Delhi. The morning routine at 6:15 AM was to switch on the water pumps, to pull in water to the tank below and then push it up to the tank on the rooftop, during the one hour the water was available.  To make life easier, most houses have an "alarm indicator" which signals when the tanks are full. The best way to do this is to first fill the top tank by pumping up the water and then fill the lower tank by pulling in water, a cycle that repeats every day. But today, something was amiss. From the moment I switched on both pumps (I did it together), the indicator of the tank below was constantly making sounds – like a broken record: "The tank is full, please switch off the motor." (Yes, we have talking indicators – like the railway station announcements). Like Moses who stepped aside to see why the bush was not burning down, I decided to see what the issue was. It was a very encouraging scene. The water was coming under so much pressure that e...

What makes an organization different? I am not talking about successful or great organizations but different. Different means making a difference in the world and transforming lives.   I was sitting in the back of a conference hall listening to the leaders from 19 hospitals reporting on what has happened over the last year. A few observations from what I heard:   1. Leadership with a bigger picture: Leaders who understand why they are doing what they are doing. They have clarity that institutions and organisations are merely platforms to make a difference in the contexts where they are placed. Leaders who prioritise vision and values above  self, people above institution, and larger mandate above money. Their lives open to be transformed and through those changes others are challenged to change too.    2. Leadership in their prime age: One might ask, what is prime age? With our nation having more than 55% of its population under 35 years of age, the average age ...

In a recent conversation with a friend who is an innovator in agri-business, he told a few of us, we do a lot of “body mimicking’ in our innovation. He is trained as a doctor and what he was saying was that they learn from human body in their innovative inventions.   In one sense is this not what we see all around, in human inventions too? Let us look at a few examples.   Look at the Central Nervous System.  20 billion neurones in a 2.5 m 2  surface area packed into small space of the skull, which controls every thought, action and emotion in our lives and the whole body! The fast and the slow memory, the random-access memory, the back-up memory etc.  Is this not what computers and smart phones mimic? Small processors packed into a confined small space which can do much more than what it appears to have the capacity. Mimicking the neuronal networks that was there much before chips were discovered!   The ability of the brain to do self-learning, pi...

Traveling into an economically challenged nation, is a learning experience if you listen beyond what you see and hear.  As you walk into the airport arrival lounge what hits you is the normalcy of the context. Duty free shops as same as ever, people crowding these shops – but mostly foreigners, with shops offering multiple deals. But one you reach the money exchange counter and looks at the rate of exchange, it hits you. For you as a visitor, it is very economical, but one starts realising things are not too ok.   As you drive into the city, everything seems normal as usual. Till you start listening to stories. The taxi driver earns about $ 30/- a day with exchange rate about 300/- per dollar.  Of the 30, a third goes off to the owner. He told me, I am hoping to go off to Europe as a manual labourer. There is no use staying on here.  But then he said, “for some there is much money too sir! He said, last night I picked up three boys in the early 20s a with a...