FOR ONE MORE DAY

Like the earlier works of Mitch Albom, this book is brushed with the theme of life and death. But, it’s not about life and death. Like his earlier works, Albom has employed the medium of life and death to explore something else, something so evident and yet so evasive. In this book, it’s about relationship.

It’s about taking relationships for granted and realizing its value only after it is too late. While the mother-son relationship is pictured in this book, but the underlying sensitivity can be applicable to every other relationship. With respect to the story in particular, I will rather leave it untouched in this post.

The novelty factor is missing as this book bears certain similarities of approach as in “Five People….”. So, probably for someone who is used to Albom’s mode of expression, the excitement factor might take a hit, nevertheless I recommend this book strongly. Especially, in the kind of nuclear life we are getting used to….with personal ambitions shading the sweetness of relationships….this book will indeed give you something to think about.

SOME OLD HABITS WELL PRESERVED

Some hold habits getting lost…some new habits getting developed….and in this process I feel I have left my blog untouched for quite some time. Not that I am short of topics to write, but the new habits seem to overpower me into adding more novelty into life.
My experience with books continues…Mumbai has forced me to continue my readings during commuting….and since commuting never ends, reading has remained one of those habits which is still well preserved. It’s more than two years since my entry into this enigmatic city and I am still to understand how this city turns home for so many millions. Life cannot be more difficult and yet the influx continues. Anyway…we will reserve this discussion on Mumbai for some different post. My intention of this post is to mention the last few books, which I read….each of which I will be discussing in different posts.
1. The Last Lecture
2. The God of Small Things
3. For One More Day
4. The Enchantress of Florence
5. The White Tiger
Five completely different genre of books in different settings….one about how to live life, one on society, one on relationship, one about fables of medieval world and one about India.

THE AUDACITY OF HOPE

In his early twenties…yet enriched with multitude of experience. Half American and half Kenyan, early childhood in Hawaii, parents getting divorced, moving to Indonesia to stay with Indonesian step-father, staying with grandparents in Hawaii….this is indeed a childhood that possesses the sensitivity to carve out a successful story for others to read. As if the family aspect were not enough, this childhood was exposed to racism in the developed world and poverty in the developing world. The first book by US President Barack Obama “Dreams from my Father” is a narration of experiences, about society and life…in US, Indonesia and Kenya. It’s about youthful confusions about identity and race. Last but not the least, it’s a biographical account of the first twenty odd years of a phenomenon called Obama. Who knew then, that this guy will beat all the odds…against origin….against experience…against life…to become the most powerful person in the globe.

More than a decade after his first experience as an author, Obama wrote his second book. This book is about the answers. Though it’s more of a political address, resembling a political ideology, but something within it seem to provide an answer to the questions that were raised in the first book….about race, religion, family and work and about politics....as it should be. This book titled “Audacity of Hope” stresses the importance of reality vis-à-vis blind optimism, a pragmatic approach towards politics…and the way it should serve people…creating value based opportunities, unstained by racism and religion. Politics is not sensation…its something moderate.

“What’s there in a name?” – They say. But here is a name for a political address of twenty minutes which made a presidential candidate out of a relatively junior senator and a name of an international best seller……The audacity of hope!!!...

Excerpt-
“In the end, that's what this election is about. Do we participate in a politics of cynicism or a politics of hope? John Kerry calls on us to hope. John Edwards calls on us to hope. I'm not talking about blind optimism here -- the almost willful ignorance that thinks unemployment will go away if we just don't talk about it, or the health care crisis will solve itself if we just ignore it. No, I'm talking about something more substantial. It's the hope of slaves sitting around a fire singing freedom songs; the hope of immigrants setting out for distant shores; the hope of a young naval lieutenant bravely patrolling the Mekong Delta; the hope of a millworker's son who dares to defy the odds; the hope of a skinny kid with a funny name who believes that America has a place for him, too. Hope in the face of difficulty. Hope in the face of uncertainty. The audacity of hope!!!”

BUDGETING AND BLACK SWAN

I have been involved in the corporate budgeting exercise for the last two years (though in two different organizations). Numerous events have filled in this gap of one year between the period of the two budgets. One of them is the experience of acquainting myself with two books of Nissim Taleb – “Fooled by Randomness” & “The Black Swan”. You know you are influenced by a book when you feel the essence of book getting reflected in any other activity of your daily life and these books are so ornately designed to do that.

In these books, Taleb stresses the role of high impact, highly improbable events (which he calls black swans), which most people ignore (to make predictions and forecasts). He is against derivation of general rules from observations and stresses the incomputability of the probability of the consequential rare events from empirical observations. Taleb is known for his severe distrust of models. He is not against experiments and fact collecting but warns against generalizing into theories.

“We respect what has happened ignoring what could have happened. In other words we are naturally shallow and superficial and we don’t know it. We see the world as structured and comprehensible.”

We make our budgets, based on forecasts and backed up with sensitivity analysis models. Our sensitivity analysis is a model which rarely accommodates the possibility of a black swan. We trust the past. We seem to understand the present. In the absence of any black swan type of events, we tread the normal path….But in the event of a black swan…”who knows”.

My first budget experience never considered these events (I have started calling them black swans) which became visible only after they happened – the financial crash and the drastic fall of oil prices being two major ones. As I am in the process of preparing next year’s budget, I keep on wondering the black swans which will make their presence felt during the course of the year.

BEAUTY, SPIRITUALITY, CONFUSION AND PC

Penning down thoughts is a healthy habit….at least I feel so…of course it’s highly personal in which way one might prefer recording his/her thoughts. For some reason, which I am still unable to explore, I like to record my thoughts on books in this blog. One reason might be that when I revisit some earlier post I can link myself with some aspect of my past, which has, in some subtle manner, become a part of me…
It’s not only about reading a book. It’s also about when are you reading a book…and under what circumstances you are reading this particular book. Reading a Paulo Coelho book, while commuting in a morning Mumbai train can be different from reading the same book after a day’s work. It’s not about the lag in connectivity of your internal assimilation of the author’s message...it’s rather about how the day’s process keeps on adding layers of periodic reflexes which by the end of the day influences your views on your earlier interpretation of the book.
Let’s restrict to Paulo Coelho at the moment. His works are a mix of beauty and spirituality….about the discovery of an individual’s desires, fear, courage etc….Many individuals feel that this mix of beauty and spirituality creates an intensely inspirational self search within. They feel that most of Paulo Coelho books (Alchemist, Fifth Mountain, Pilgrimage, Eleven minutes, Zahir, Maktub, Valkyries…) are extremely rich in their content of the level of inspiration.
I enjoy the works of Paulo Coelho…..more so while making my early morning commute to the office….when a day is just about to start… The morning train presents you with the first glow of the morning sun, the thinning fog, the hills, the sea….creating the perfect ambience to delve deeper into what Paulo wants to say. Interestingly in most of books, Paulo uses different elements of nature (the deserts of Egypt, the Steppes of Kazakhstan, the deserts of California, the mountains of the ancient Israel and Lebanon etc.)…and this is a great way of integrating the exterior beauty with interior spirituality.
As long as you are in the morning train, you seem to relish his thoughts, the way he writes, the ambience he builds, and to some extent you can indeed enjoy a refreshing feeling, which can probably be classified as an indigenous version of spirituality.
But then, the day moves ahead….you are in the office….you take a quick look at your diary….you systematically read the mails…you start filling in your plan sheet for the day. You get back to the reality…stepping down from the elevated level you had reached during your morning train journey. Your records remind you that there is a presentation to be made to the senior management, elucidating your plans for the year…your mails bring you the news that one of your clients has gone bankrupt…its painful to realize this and more so especially when there were receivables to be realized from them. You visit the news channels to get the feel of the daily oil prices….your business is so closely linked with the oil prices…and sadly, the oil prices are hovering only in the USD 40 per barrel mark….
Which is the latest tender to be filled? How do we obtain prequalification to work in some new location? The list of questions that demand an answer keeps ever elongating. There are quite a number of new ships to be delivered the course of the year and they have to be committed…with “reliable” clients. By reliability, I mean they should not go bankrupt without paying us our receivables. But then, how to know who is reliable under this market situation.
Finally amidst all the confusion, speculations, and optimism….the day ends. You get back home….you make phone calls to those who matter most to you, you realize that for your dearest ones, the day is not much different…though mapped in a different setting.
Its almost midnight. In another 6 hours, the next day is going to start. You ensure that your laptop and important files are well arranged in the bag. And there you see, the Paulo Coelho classic is lying within. You take it out…read some of its lines….and ask yourself “Is this the same book which I was reading today morning?”
The next day begins….and you start commuting….and open your book where you had put the marker the previous day….and start reading it….just as you did it the previous morning...reaching the elevated levels of indigenous spirituality.

INTERESTING

"It is a strange desire, to seek power, and to lose liberty; or to seek power over others, and to lose power over a man's self." - Francis Bacon

SO FAR....

SO FAR…
Six years of professional life…or was it just a blink….
Three different companies…..three different industries…..three different roles…..
Shipbuilding….Power Transmission and Distribution….Oceanic Oil and Energy Exploration and Production…
Technology….Finance….Business Development....
Once again its about the ships....this time not building them...but learning how to use them to create wealth......