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An essay I wrote about a conversation I had, 10 years ago one night in Pune and the connection it has with my trip to USA that happened last year, has been published by Tehelka Magazine in their latest issue (Jan 22, 2011). This is perhaps my first intended publication in mainstream media and I am glad that it happened. Here is the link to it, valid for at least a week, on tehelka’s website.

I would have called it “Scales of success”.

Many thanks to those who have made this possible. They know who they are.

Soon, I’ll be posting the original, unabridged essay on my website.

“What I don’t understand is”, Steve asked me, “How do you guys leave (jobs) like that”.

We were at the waterfront on the Jersey shore. What started as a warm summer morning hid in itself an unplanned visit to the beach and an unexpected meeting with Steve. I worked with Steve when I joined the company I work for now, back in 2007. We were in two different parts of the world. Steve was (and still is) the Primary contact for a group of applications that I was too a part of. Being constantly at the helm of managing these applications and not a big fan of the job he was handling made Steve lose his temper very often, over the phone, with the team in India. I had worked closely with Steve for more than a year before I changed my project. At times, I had cursed him silently and was astonished at his insensitivity and insanity that I thought he possessed.

And I had never met him.

Then at the waterfront the other day, in a company get-together, out of nowhere, I thought I saw him, eating a hamburger and corn, alone. The self-made name tag on his shirt confirmed my finding and I was stuck somewhat in disbelief.

“How do you guys leave like that? The same year, I think it was 2007, three guys came to US and we trained them for 3 months. They went back to India and they quit! We had two guys replacing them and we had to train those two guys again — this time from India of course!”, Steve complained, getting down to business as if we were never out of it.

Oh, I know what it is. I did not know who those three guys were but I know why they left. And why the management let them leave.

Those three guys left because they came back from US and they knew they won’t get to go to US anymore. They left because most likely another company offered them a good pay package and they needed the money. Why did the management let them leave? Because theoretically, you can’t ask them to stay if the responsibilities they carry could be transferred to another bunch of people. But could those job roles be transferred just like that? Again, theoretically yes. Knowledge Transfer (KT) allows you to do that. Just like they were KT’ed by their American counterparts, these fellows KT’ed to the new guys. Maybe they spent 3 days imparting education that originally came to them in 3 months, but they did it anyway.

Practically, is it possible that one is even eligible to give a KT session on some enterprise application that he has hardly even worked upon? No. Would the management understand this concept? Absolutely not. So they left.

So, in the end, we have:

1. Those three guys, who came back happy and dandy after a trip to America and left happier and dandier to another job, grabbing their fatter pay packages.

2. The two guys who must have recently joined the organization and would be flourishing under the relatively fatter paychecks, KT’ed apps notwithstanding.

3. The management who would be patting its own back for a job well done (organizing KT and all).

4. Steve, in front of the Atlantic shore, whining about it all, 3 years after it happened.

The sad part is that within all this, the management does not question itself. That it is believed that jobs and responsibilities can be transferred like that. In the long run, those two guys would have struggled getting hold of that application and after being subjected to late night calls and Steve’s wrath, would have looked for new jobs. In between all this, there would have been a phase when the production issues of that application would have hit sky high and these guys would not have delivered, so Steve’s anger is justified. The Software Managers do not understand that part. They are unable to map this problem to the anomaly occurred during the 3 day KT. Good programmers develop a need for clarity as they grow in their profession and they are expected to carry that trait while they manage teams later in their career. But what percentage of today’s managers would have been good programmers? Forget that — what percentage of today’s managers would have even had careers as programmers?

As Brooks’s law goes, “Nine women can’t deliver a baby in a month”. You see, code delivery is something similar. But they still expect that. And they continue to think that a KT Session is a magic wand that can work wonders even in the hands of the most mediocre software guys. Management in Software can never be thought as a offshoot branch of traditional shop-floor management. And exactly the opposite is happening – even with software companies in the west. But its a different topic altogether.

Going back, it begs us the question — why this run for the fat paycheck? For that, I had to dwell in some basic economics to Steve. The answer would be in two parts.

When I buy an iPod nano in India, I end up spending 1/3rd of my monthly salary. When I buy that here in USA, I end up spending 1/20th of my monthly paycheck. You could do that calculations for a pair of Reebok shoes, a bottle of Head and Shoulders shampoo or a McDonald’s burger and find the same disparity. Believe me, I have done the math. That is the first part.

If the Indian economy had an inflation rate that most economists would term as ideal, it would be around 2-3%. Sadly, that is not the case. As of June 2010, Indian economy was inflating at 13%. It gets worse – Since 2008, the cooking gas price has increased by 20% in India. A rise in the price of cooking gas shows a similar upward trend for Petroleum. So, While the Americans have experienced a 2-3% inflation for the most part of the last two decades, their Indian counterparts have seen (and continue to experience) much worse. The Americans should not find much to complain about when their employer gives a 5% annual raise but the Indians choose to look away and search for higher paying jobs. And why shouldn’t they? That is the second part.

And somewhere there, with Steve looking convinced and mumbling, “makes sense, makes sense”, ended my lecture on Software Economics.

Months ago, I came across an article written by Col Athale(retd) at rediff.com. I have read Athale’s writings earlier and I have always found myself disagreeing with most of what he has to say. This article too, had a conclusion in the title itself — Peace with Pakistan: Chasing a mirage. But it did raise a very important point which made a very lasting impression about what the future could hold with regard to our western neighbor.

Colonel Anil Athale, in his article, indirectly points out that it was under Zia-ul-haq that Pakistan took a stance of radical Islam as a state policy. As a part of Zia’s adoption of Wahhabism, a very conservative and almost radical form of Islam, textbooks were changed in schools to accommodate religion as the basis of the state’s existence. In effect, what Zia’s textbooks of social studies, speculated to be still in effect, are seeking is “to create practicing Muslims rather than democratic citizens” (2), to put it mildly.

The author of the article should also be credited to taking this up with Prof. Abdul Hameed Nayyar, a prominent Pakistani physicist who is probably more famous as Pakistan’s man of peace. Professor Nayyar was, at that time in 1998, working on what was being preached out of Pakistani schoolbooks. In 2003, Nayyar went on to author a paper that created ripples in the country. “The Subtle Subversion: The State of Curricula and Textbooks in Pakistan” (1) clearly stated that what Pakistan was offering to its school going children was a very flawed version of history, among other things and facts, which were conveniently changed to nurture hatred for any non-Muslim, specially Hindus.

Not only that, the report mentioned that in the post-Independence days of Pakistan, the textbooks offered a much “real” version of history and even had admiration for Hindus. Chapters on MK Gandhi were a part of the curriculum while teachings of Ramayana and Mahabharata were also mentioned. This was contrasting because this text existed after the bloody experience of partition that both the countries went through and two gory wars.

What happened after Zia took over was a very systematic conversion of Pakistan from a democratic state to a country that based everything on religion. There have been many papers published since Nayyar’s, authored by Pakistani nationals and others, who have confirmed and validated the claims made by Prof. Nayyar. The textbooks have time and again mentioned the western powers and India specifically as sworn enemies of the state while endorsing the involvement of military forces in day to day governance of the state.

In his paper titled: “Islam, Democracy and Citizenship Education: An Examination of the Social Studies Curriculum in Pakistan”, professor Iftekhar Ahmad of Long Island University raises another important point that could very well be another branch of the concerns raised by Colonel Anil Athale: Could it be that it is this model of civic and citizenship education that is now hurting Pakistan the most?

Athale continues to say that If the texts of these books were changed for the better, it would still take a good two decades before we see any change coming out. There is no doubt in my mind about the validity of his statement.

Just a day ago, the Indian diplomat, SM Krishna, on his visit to Islamabad raised the issue of anti-India speeches made by LeT chief there in Pakistan. There is no doubt that the hate rhetoric coming out on the streets when Hafiz Saeed gives his speech should be objectionable to people in the Indian Government. What worries me is that the Textbooks of Pakistan, with their unending tirade against India, do not appear to be bothering much to the Indian administration.

References:
1. Islamisation of Curricula – A. H. Nayyar, link here.
2. Islam, Democracy and Citizenship Education – An Examination of the Social Studies Curriculum in Pakistan – Iftikhar Ahmad, link here.
3. Peace with Pakistan: Chasing a Mirage – Anil K Athale, link here.

The Shore point Inn motel stands just the way I would have imagined a motel to be, thanks to Hollywood. They don’t have motel like these anymore, Nick, the motel owner, told me later. It has a sort of, mini tower for a sign board full of neon. They don’t allow it anymore — the signs to be this big and the rooms to be in the layout that they are. Wide, spread across in a “U”, with ample parking in between. In fact, there’s a term for this — Its “Grandfathered”. The rules are exempted for certain situations and Nick’s motel qualifies for it. Well, looking at Nick, he qualifies for it too. At an ideal age for Grandfatherhood, he takes care of this place like a baby.

Sloppy planning and bad luck worked out together for me to land here, at the Shore point Inn. Some guy at American Express messed up my hotel reservation and the usual place here that accommodates people from my office in India was full so a colleague had to do this reservation for me here. He chose this place because he drove by it everyday to work. At a little past midnight, as I returned back to my room after my first meal in a foreign land, I met Nick outside his office, cherishing the misty cool midnight breeze. We ended up talking for about half an hour, subjects ranging from Jinnah to Secularism.

3 days and a few more insightful conversations later, Nick knocked on my door at almost 8, one evening. It was a sight I won’t ever forget and it was one of the most pleasant surprises ever — He stood there holding a what turned out to be a big slice of Fillet fish, sautéed with garlic and lemon in Olive oil on a Styrofoam plate. Trying his best to be unintrusive, Nick handed it over to me and told me that he had thought maybe I’d want to try something American (well, Greek actually, but now American since the cuisine here is multicultural anyway). He owed it to his roots in Greece, his parents who came here and made a life. So, a fisherman friend got him a good catch, one of the best of the season and a prized possession — A Striped Bass. Classic New York Fish, made up by a Greek gentleman and served a generous part of it to an Indian, who was probably a couple of generations younger to him but nevertheless, someone who’d appreciate the gesture.

A couple of days later, one of Nick’s helpers who happens to be a young man from Mexico, Nick himself and I — we got our hands dirty while doing cement work. The wooden fence’s bonds along the Motel boundary had to be strengthened, as the days to come could be very windy. He told me how important this seemingly simple activity was. There he was at it again, taking care of his Motel like his own baby, with his own hands.

When I left Shore Point, I told him that I would keep dropping by. He told me he could tell me the places to visit around here and what lanes to avoid in New York. Honestly, I don’t think I would be using that information much. Visiting places around here could just remain a dream. Especially for someone like me who doesn’t know driving and a pathetic public transport system like in here. But Sunday morning cement bonding work and Striped Bass, in any form, could be enough incentive for another visit.

My first few days in America. And bonds were built.

A couple of months back, in one of his articles at Cricinfo, Harsha Bhogle wrote about India’s triumph at test cricket — Being on the top of the ICC Test Cricket rankings. It looked like one of his regular writeups, one of those you can read out while silently nodding your head in agreement and adding Harsha’s insight to your knowledge of the game. But there was one line, in fact two, that stood out. For once, I didn’t agree. I felt like digging deep and evaluating his statements further.

So what were those lines, then? Here is one of them, and I quote: “Amit Mishra and Sreesanth have had their moments in the sun, and Harbhajan has taken more wickets than many of us think he has“. It sounded like, “okay, lets not be too harsh on this guy, he has not been that bad”.

I am not sure if Harbhajan has ever dug into cricinfo’s statsguru and appreciated its beauty apart from doing some serious retrospection but here I am going to do just that.

Initially, I had thought to keep it simple — compare Harbhajan’s first four years in International Cricket with his last four years. It is still simple, just that I then accommodated his years in between, in my analysis. So, we have phases of 1997-2002, 2006- till date and from 2003 till end of 2005. These are the first four years, the last four years and the years in between.

Since making his debut in 1997, till the end of 2002 (31-12-2002), Harbhajan played 33 test matches. His average stood at a gleaming 26.59. His SR was 60.4 and 11 times in these 33 tests he had taken 5 (or more) wickets in an innings(5WI) apart from the 2 counts of Ten Wickets in a Match (10WM).

In the next phase, from 1 Jan 2003 till 31 Dec 2005, he played 17 test matches with a bowling average of 30.33. His SR was at 62 with 6 5WI and 2 10WM.

More recently, since 2006-till date, our man has played in 32 matches, with a rising bowling average of 37.16 and a SR of 75.0. He has now managed to get 6 5WI and once a 10WM.

Now if you have followed cricket closely, you will agree that mostly in every great bowler’s international career, the first few years are rosy. The bowler is high on confidence, gets wickets, improvises, the batsmen are yet to figure him out and all that. Then comes a time when the bowler starts to lose his sheen, the statistics turn unfavorable. There is a sudden rise with the bowling average. This happened to Zaheer Khan, Bret Lee and more recently with Ishant Sharma. But then it is somewhere here, I think, lies the hallmark of an outstanding bowler, the one most likely to be remembered as a bowling great — something happens and the bowler is back taking wickets, improvising again, devising new ways to get the batsmen out and playing mind games. This is when the form lasts the longest. The class shows. This is what differentiates an outstanding bowler from a good bowler.

So, coming back to statistics, if you were to make a graph of the statistics of such a bowler after he has achieved the above mentioned nirvana, you will see that the graph line goes right up at the beginning and then there is that downward spiral and then, in the third phase, a slow but more consistent rise. Let’s take an example of Zaheer Khan here. Between 1 Jan 1999 and 31 Dec 2001, Zaheer played 17 test matches and he averaged 24.47. Then, starting 1 Jan 2002 till 31 Dec 2006 he averaged 34.58 in 35 matches — an increase of 10 runs per wicket. But then again, starting 1 Jan 2007 till date, Zaheer has played 27 matches and his per wicket has cost him 29.39 — A drastic improvement from his outings between 2002 till 2007.

With Harbhajan, the problem seems that he is stuck in the downward spiral forever. There is an account of his disastrous outings in 2006 and 2007 where he averaged 52 and 46, respectively. These were the years when Pakistan, Australia, West Indies and England — all respectable teams (barring, to some extent, WI) completely outplayed him. But maybe you would think that his average of 37.16, in the last 4 years has mostly been this high because of his past deeds in 2006 and 2007. Maybe — because he then averaged 31.53 and 30.17 in 2008 and 2009. And maybe it was this statistic that made Harsha say that line. The glimmer of hope — that Harbhajan has started to come out of the woods, a beginning of the end of his downward trend goes away when you take a look at what 2010 has been. An average of 72.25 in the two test matches he has played. Perhaps the only thing more horrifying than that could be the fact that one of these test matches was played against Bangladesh and all of these matches have been played in home or home-like pitch conditions.

So maybe Harbhajan is slipping into his spiral again. Just when you think he is coming out of it, he hits a new low. You wish to see him giving the ball more air but he never seems to be tired of bowling fast, flat, almost like Anil Kumble but nowhere near in effect.

The rest of the argument has to start with Harsha’s second mention of Harbhajan Singh in the article. He goes on to say, “Harbhajan Singh desperately needs competition to take him to another level…“; It is clear that Harsha Bhogle thinks that maybe even at a sub-conscious level, Singh is missing Kumble. These guys were bowling together for a good 10 years. But has Kumble’s retirement made any difference?

Since Kumble’s retirement on 2 November 2008, Harbhajan has picked up 48 wickets, averaging 33.37 runs in 11 matches. What do you compare this statistic with? Lets go three years before 2 Nov 2008. From 1 Jan 2005 till 2 Nov 2008, with Kumble mostly in the playing XI, Harbhajan picked up 110 wickets in 28 matches at a horrible average of 36.22.

While discussing cricket the other day, someone jokingly remarked that Harbhajan should be locked in a room with a DVD player and DVDs of match recordings of his first few years in cricket. Harsha may certainly not agree. But what he will surely agree to is that with Harbhajan not playing the brand of cricket we know he is capable of, India’s days at the top of the summit may not be many. And while Harbhajan Singh may show his inclination towards participating and producing Reality shows on TV— at this stage, a Reality check may serve him, and the country, better. Surely, the DVDs would help.

Back in 1996, one day in the school, a friend told me he had a couple of stickers for the Dangerous tour. What was that, I asked. It was Michael Jackson touring India and I would be stupid not to know it, I was told. The tour was called “The Dangerous Tour”. Oh, Michael Jackson. I thought his best song was “Black and White” or something but it was the grooviest thing I had ever heard and had fallen in love with the video, especially because it showed an Indian girl doing Bharatanatyam with Jackson in the middle of the road.

For a boy who didn’t know the difference between “Black and white” and “Black or white”, it must have taken some convincing to do, that this friend eventually gave one sticker to me. It was a prized possession. After much thought, I pasted it on the back of an address book which I was sure I would use forever (The “Black and/or White” confusion was because Philips electronics had used the song jingle and conveniently called it, well, “Black and White”, for promoting their colorless television set on radio).

Then in 1998, an uncle who had studied in the IIT while graduating to Jackson’s music came to visit us. When he agreed to buy me a music cassette while checking out some music at the local store, my hands went to Michael Jackson’s Dangerous. He told me not to go for it. If he were to buy me one, it would be Thriller. I resisted it (because I had never heard of Thriller and I did not want this chance to go waste by letting him buy me something I did not know about). Eventually he had me convinced that it’d be a sin to choose Dangerous over Thriller. That was my first MJ tape.

Then, three years later, one day I went to my best friend’s house. He had an impressive music collection and we had evolved to mp3s. In his CD rack, I found the audio CD of Dangerous. Not willing to lose it this time, I told him that I was taking it home. It had songs I had long wanted to hear. It also had “In the Closet”, which was and remains, till this day, the sexiest song I have ever listened to. The video with Naomi just adds another dimension to it.

Shortly thereafter, in Indore during my first few days of graduation, I met Devashish Bhatt. Quite simply, he was the greatest fan of MJ I have ever met. While discussing music one evening, I told him that “Stranger in Moscow” was a song I wish I could listen to more often. My Sony Walkman was playing UB40’s “Can’t help falling in love”. Dev sang the first four lines of “Stranger in Moscow” for me and then offered a deal – we could swap what our “Walkmen” were holding. So this way, I ended up with the Blood on the Dance Floor tape that had “Stranger in Moscow” and Dev had his UB40 with a host of other cheesy love songs in the “Now that’s what I call Love!” tape.

I was not very generous to Dev in our future dealings. I ended up taking the History Part 1 & 2 tapes and never giving them back.

Then in 2001, in Pune, I met Pushkar Krishna, my room mate’s brother. Impressed by my knowledge on books and music, he took me one day to the infamous Fergusson College road. After a bulk of books and tapes that we carried home, he put a smile on my face by a simple gesture that I remember vividly till this day. He gifted to me Invincible – MJ’s last album.

From my perspective, the best part was that MJ’s music always found a way to get to me. Call it luck, but it just happened. I never tried hard. I never had to.

I graduated to Michael Jackson much later than I should have. But it happened. I traced his music back and forth. In this journey of music, I have met very few people of my generation who actually knew what Michael Jackson was all about — for mine is a generation that has seen Michael Jackson as a fading star. What a pity would it be for those people who now are left wondering, having seen Michael Jackson for the first time on the front page of the newspapers yesterday, in his death. Would he be greater to them in death than when he was alive? Would they ever know what he was all made of? Would they realize the gravity of this loss?

Does someone see the irony in this?

In the overall constructive years of my adolescence, my cricketing conscience was taking shape. So in 1996, when Michael Atherton played the shot and at ESPN they said that it’s the best cover drive you can ever get to see, true to copy book style, I took it to heart.

It was also the year when I formed one of my earliest opinions of the Indian Cricket team of the pre-John Wright/Ganguly era. I noticed that India always lost its first test match when they toured. And then they trailed. If they were lucky, they’d come back with a 1-1 result but that was a rarity. Generally it was 0-2, 1-2, or worse, 0-3.

Indeed, it was ironical that when this particular opinion was formed, the same very series, two boys debuted in the second game of a series that India was trailing and one of them went on to bring a whole new dawn to Indian Cricket; the one on which I have named an “era” in itself. The second cricketer, of course, will be seen as the one who always lived under the shadows but rose to be called the greatest test cricketer India has ever seen.

So the 1996 India tour of England, has been on my mind this evening. Why, you ask? None of the reasons above, I can tell you that.

Well, the India tour of England, 1996 was India’s first test tour after the 1996 World Cup debacle. It was also the tour when Ganguly and Dravid debuted in the second test match, in Lords and Dravid fell short of a well deserved century by all but 5 runs. But why I remember this tour the most is because of one Chris Lewis. A well-toned, dark body, running at full throttle and single-handedly destroying the Indian batting in the first test match at Birmingham, England.

It was horror. A 15 year old test cricket loving boy’s, and I tell you – you won’t find many, expectations lay shattered.

And it is indeed an irony again, that the same Chris Lewis is in prison. Well, maybe not the same Chris Lewis.

It formed some opinions, that series. It still does.