The Magic of Being Your Natural Self

This is a rant of an idealist, set in a very specific B-School Context in India.

With the placements season going on in business schools, the general atmosphere in the batch is pretty tense. You have to be at a B-School to experience and understand it. People go around like zombies, from one process to the other, getting rejects. It’s more of a relief, than exhilaration when people get through. The best of people begin to doubt their own credentials and confidence. Even those who aren’t involved in the process feel extremely tense for the ones that are.

And it is a fashion to blast the HR practices of companies and find faults with them Find biases, find inexplicable processes, selection and rejection bloopers and lambast them. After being together for 2 years, you pretty much have an idea who fits where.  But then, do they see things that you dont understand? Anyhow, the point is, you feel a sense of uneasiness gripping you seeing a lot of the artificiality around.  A feeling of being constrained, the walls closing in. Prepared answers, manipulated personalities, canned sales pitches and what not. Admittedly, a lot of that is required to get through the processes that are designed that way. Especially when some processes end with unexpected selections or no selections for hilarious quoted reasons. You may just get mad and reach a point where you begin to question the basics...on where this is headed? Is everything artificial? Is there no semblance of sanity? Having said that, to be fair,in general,mostly it happens that deserving people get though, if not the best. Yes, it is a "Selection" not a "Elimination". Be noteworthy or show a spark or a thoroughness or a fit to get selected.

Q : So does the treasure called capability always require dressing up? An artificial packaging to get it to sell?

That is when some things happen which come as a breath of fresh air. It reaffirms your belief in the goodness of the world and the intrinsic happiness in life, in its purest form. It was exhilaration and joy that had to be seen to be believed, when a colleague got through a company, after thorough five-six rounds of tests and interviews. But the most notable was when I heard the narration of the interview experiences. It was the most hilarious I have ever heard, and probably will ever hear. But it was remarkable in its absence of any artificiality or pretence. Just a simple case of personal characteristics,raw skills, and strengths and weaknesses coming through in the open in the most natural way possible, almost crudely. The success hinging on the most basic of things, raw potential, primal capability and suitability of personality. Nobody dare classify it as mere providence. Me being me, I analysed of course. And analysis clearly showed what went right, logically, behind the scenes. It restores a semblance of sanity after seeing many seemingly crazy (maybe crazy because we dont see the logic) HR processes. Whats more, it is a kind of foolproofing system which greatly enhances the probability that you are really going into your area of interest, and will do what you  like in life. You'll enjoy it, and be good at it.

It surely reaffirms the belief that the world isn’t too bad after all. And it brings a huge smile.

A: No, the treasure of capability can sell on its own in some cases, and be a winner.

Cheers, and here’s wishing all the best to all the fellow B-Schoolers going through this torture right now. It usually works out when we believe in ourselves!

Learnings of Titu the Frog

Titu the frog went to Barabara School in the Amazon rain forests.  Titu had a large transient group of friends but his best friends during the time of the incident were Nunu the tortoise, Ratty the squirrel and Tomco the cat. The four friends used to study in the same class. Mostly they also sat on the same bench and ate together. They also went swimming together.

Titu was good at outdoor sports in general. Being a frog, he was a master high jumper, a good basketball player and a fair long jumper. Nunu, ratty and Tomco were the indoors type and passionate about snooker. They played indoors on most evenings. Titu did not have much interest in it but he would go along with the flow and play snooker with them. They enjoyed and had a good time together. Months went by and Titu kept trying his hand at snooker, occasionally winning a game or two.

One day there was an outdoor sports clinic organised at their school. But Titu had a self concept that he was cool and needed no training. It was shameful to attend such useless clinics, which only very serious animals attended.  He firmly believed other animals would make fun of him if they saw him go for such clinics. He would much rather have a beer party with the snooker group . An interesting thing happened when Nunu and Ratty went to the neighbouring forest to participate in a regional snooker competition. A three member team was required, so Titu tagged along. And for it, he missed his athletics team selection at Barabara. More such instances happened. Most interesting was when succumbing to the strength of the flow, Tutu even attended a snooker clinic on the recommendation of his friends, despite his strong self concept. Snooker clinics are typically much longer than Athletics clinics. Of course he lost interest after a few days, but he spent a lot of time attending a large part of it. Athletics training suffered on account of it. Also, Titu had a healthy physique. But  he often shirked going to the gym and keeping fit.

Then came the Olympics year, the moment of reckoning. Titu was selected to represent Barabara School for high jump at the World Animal Olympics. After the team was announced, Titu became nervous. He had lost his touch and could not even touch 80% of his personal record. It was then that he found his calling. He took a decision to ace the competition. He wanted it badly. He would still hang around with his friends and have a lot of fun  but also began persistent and focused practice. He would get up early in the morning, run ten rounds of the school playground and do strenuous exercises in the gym. He specifically went to a neighbouring forest to attend a high jump clinic. He would spend his evenings bettering his own high jump records. His snooker friends would egg him on at times. The ability was always there, slowly the confidence also came back. His concentration skills, honed by hours spent at the snooker table also helped.

To cut a long fairytale ending short, Titu won the gold medal at the World Animal Olympics and set a new world record anyone is yet to break.

This story came to mind when I was discussing career choices with an Industry person today. After fifteen minutes of nonstop advice, where I could barely get in a word he said “But, please don’t listen to anyone..Err..Listen to everyone but do what your heart feels like. What you intrinsically feel happy about. Irrespective of how popular or sought after or not it is.”

 Pretty clichéd but that reinforces a strong learning over the past two years. The most important is to understand yourself as a person, and do what suits you best. As they say, if you do what you like, you’ll never have to work a single day. He signed off saying, some people like structure and stability while some like a fast paced environment. Some might thrive in making a baby in nine minutes while some would put their foot down and say it will take nine months.

Titu's Learnings

• Leverage your intrinsic competence
• Hone your skills, Practice and Prepare, there’s no substitute for it
• Make your own life decisions, irrespective of the herd or the flow
• Taking a stand doesn't compromise your social relationships, have the best of both the worlds 
• The probabilty of success is mainly limited by how badly you want it
  
• Confidence is a magic pill

Crossroads

Protagonist(s): The typical young Indian woman in her early 20s, well educated, free, with a broad perspective of the world.

Disclaimer: The views are just opinions derived from observations and analysis of a biased male eye across a broad spectrum of females. And of course exaggerations at places to make the point. Each individual is unique and hasty generalisations might be grossly invalid. But food for thought nevertheless.

The other day I was having a conversation with a friend I had come to admire. The discussion moved onto “purpose in life” and i was literally shocked and dumbstuck when she said the purpose was to “have two kids and enjoy on husband’s money”. Not for a moment am I suggesting that it is a bad purpose in life to have. But while it might have been said in jest, the undertones cannot be ignored. Especially when it came from one of the people who talk a lot of independence and freedom of choice. There are a lot of things for which you respect people and certain instances which erode that respect a lot. So how do we resolve this paradox?

For all the talk of progress and women’s liberation and choices for women, it is sometimes sad to note that choices and independence and individuality and freedom is defined very narrowly. As the freedom and choice to select your husband. And that becomes almost the only decision that matters in life. Talking of a decision making process, I was told “I won’t think that much even before my marriage”. The ultimate decision. And then two kids and happily ever after. Then the freedom to wear certain kinds of clothes, or drink or smoke or many small things.. But then is it freedom without responsibility? Like a little tween who rebels to have all the freedom to party and play with an assured supply of pocket money and the assurance that the parent would bail him out if ever he faces a crisis? How often have we accused the “chauvinistic Indian male” of constricting his wife and not allowing her career to blossom? Of course there is also the "clever" male who wants a wife who works but is “homely”. Nobody minds a double income.

Looking at the other extreme of the spectrum, one friend says marriage is the last thing on her mind and she would do it if ever she felt like it. Independence and independence through career is most important. She can’t even imagine how some girl could decide to marry and sacrifice her life. I was shocked again. Is marriage akin to sacrificing her life?. Now isn’t that tough to digest too? Irrespective of her career progress, would’nt she end up feeling “empty” ten years down the line? Does “progress” mean abandoning a family life and going for a mad rush? We know how the western societies have “evolved” in this context. But can “evolution” here be equated to “progress” or “for the better”?

Just to briefly touch on a whole can of worms, add to this the explicit reservations and the not documented but oh-so-explicit “affirmative action” and “equal opportunity” practices followed. Why then make such a big deal of the liberation and freedom?

So, for all the talk of liberation and “progress”, any typical young Indian woman finds herself at the crossroads today. Career decisions on one hand and the family pressure for “marrying and getting settled” on the other. The crisis multiplies manifold if she has a huge set of gosipping and matchmaking relatives on the one hand   and a set of ambitious peers on the other. The differences in response of each woman, the priorities and the behaviour she exhibits and the satisfaction derived from each aspect of her life may be shaped by the sociocultural context of her upbringing. Since India is a vast country of a zillion different languages, dozens of religions and beliefs, swanky metros, upcoming small towns, sleepy. villages. And of course, most importantly, the huge difference in personal characteristics of being a romantic, being dreamy, being ambitious, need for affiliation, need for achievement and so on.

I hope she finds her way and reconciles the discordance. All the best!