Reaching There

For most of us the best days of our life were the childhood days. Everything was fresh and exciting. A piece of paper to a toy gave us a world of endless possibilities. Each and every moment we were ready to learn new things. Almost nothing felt boring. Lack of ideas or no time for play was boring! God! Everything felt like a source of endless possibilities. Success, failures, disappointments, anger, selfishness and other emotions just felt like a phase that would bring something and then go. Fast forward twenty odd years ahead, you're in your twenties nearing thirties (or any age you are in). Life has become a drab and you are pushing your way through it. A piece of paper is just a piece of garbage. A toy, I can't even understand now why I played with those "things"! The moments of learning have given way to a seemingly endless race of fighting for the next level of success. The excitement of finding something new in small things has faded away and financial wants...

A week ago I was on a train from New Delhi to Kanpur. As the train whizzed along the outskirts of Delhi it momentarily halted near a wasteland. Needless to say it was full of garbage, covered with wild bushes with a small murky water body in the center. Obviously it was a dumping ground for all the waste human beings can generate. Something I wouldn't have given a second look had it not been for what I heard next. "Itni achchi jagah main itna saara kooda, (Such a beautiful place but so much waste covering it)" remarked a child, staring out of the window with curious eyes. Of course his parents didn't pay any heed to this. But this simple observation stuck with me for sometime. It made me take a second look at the land. Now I noticed it was a green patch of land with some wild plants and a few lotuses floating in the water. Surrounded by a lot of half-constructed houses this land may have been a small playground. I could even make out a few wild flowers that had sprun...

Inside an Actors Studio: Steven Speilberg I recently watched Steven Speilberg's interview on James Lipton's Inside the Actors Studio (on youtube!). One of the biggest piece of adivce was his answer to how he direct child actors in his movies. There are quite a few movies in which his story was told from a point of view of a child (Close Encounters of the Third Kind, E.T., Empire of the Sun). He answered "I don't treat them like children I treat them like my peers". He further added that the moment he begins treating them like children he would become the overbearing adult. This gave me an indirect lesson on how manager or a team leader should treat his team members. He should treat them like individuals who have their own individuality, personality, aspirations and emotions. He should respect their existence in the team and listen to their opinion with a "porous" mind. The reason I used "porous" mind because such a listener gives the oppor...