Life and The Godfather

“Life is so beautiful”
“Be Aware. You are what you are and the world is what it is.”

Who do you think wrote these two immortal lines? Aristotle, Socrates, Pluto? Or is it drawn from the scriptures? If you answered in the affirmative to either of these questions, you would be wrong. These two immortal lines were written by Mario Puzo in two different books. The first line is from Puzo’s classic- The Godfather- ironically uttered by Don Vito Corleone as he was dying of a heart attack. The second is from The Last Don where Don Clerucuzio says these words.

Puzo’s classic The Godfather was published in 1969 the same year in which Neil Alden Armstrong became the first man to set foot on the moon and say the immortal words—A step for a man, but a leap for mankind” Puzo’s Godfather too was leap when it came to the genre of crime fiction. All future writings in this genre would be benchmarked against the Godfather.

Now I admire the book in particular and Puzo’s writing in general for a totally different reason. I think his books contain some of the greatest truths of life. As we rush about the business of living it is so easy to lose sight of the fact that “Life is so beautiful” .That Vito Corleone who built his empire by shedding blood could think of something like this is for lack of a better word amazing.

Take the other sentence—“Be Aware. You are what you are and the world is what it is.” Tell me isn’t it again one of life’s simplest things. Dale Carnegie said it even simpler—Find Yourself and Be Yourself in his classic—How To Stop Worrying and Start Living. How often are we assailed by self doubt when things are not going our way? How often do we think that something is wrong with us when the simple truth is that circumstances are not in our favor if not positively against us. Does that mean that we keep changing to stay in step with each circumstance? Do we lose ourselves in the quest for success ? In today’s ultra competitive atmosphere, we are constantly told as to how important it is to change. Now that is fine and individuals must be open to a certain level of change. Does that mean we abandon our core skills and core beliefs for success? Is success that is attained by such means success at all? Clearly, a line has to be drawn somewhere.

Or take Michael Corleone’s reaction in Godfather when he was told his father’s shooting was not personal but purely business. He described it as “Every bloody bit of it is personal” And it is. Come on when we lose out in the professional sweepstakes say a promotion are we able to see it purely in professional light. Isn’t there always feeling, emotion involved and even a tendency to blame the boss rightly or wrongly.

Let us face it –every bit of it is personal. But be aware-you are what you are and the world is what it is .Then like Vito Corleone you will find that life is so beautiful.

Core Competence and the Home

What is my core competence ? At my work place the answer is very clear : Communications.

I am however a great believer in transporting corporate concepts home. Like I always tell my wife “My strategic vision is to provide a stable revenue stream for the family which then leverages it for present and future benefits.” My wife is very happy to go alongwith my strategic vision and agrees that implementation of this vision is through the exercise of my professional core competence –communications.

She has an entirely different point of view when it comes to my definition of core competence when I am at home. I regard my core competence when I am at home as relaxing which when distilled further means eating, sleeping, playing with baby, and not doing anything else.
She terms me an employable resource when I am at home. There are things that husbands must do when they are at home—go to the chakki and get the atta and not do too—watch TV , sleep and generally relax. She complains that despite her repeatedly saying so I do not work at home and continue to eat, sleep and drink at home. I have often pointed out to her what Gary Hamel and C K Prahalad had said in their seminal work on core competence : A core competence is built through a process of continuous improvement and enhancement. Meaning more of doing nothing at home.

My wife throws back another concept from Hamel & Prahalad:core competencies must not be allowed to develop in to core rigidities. Anyway she tells me with great conviction that what I am displaying at home is pure incompetence, core or otherwise. The argument at the moment rests there. Like a good husband I have decided not to win an argument but focus on core competencies.

Rajiv and Rahul Gandhi

It was soon after the assassination of prime minister Mrs Indira Gandhi in 1984. As I was watching television at home in the company of my family, the screen flashed images of a young Rahul and Priyanka Gandhi. Rahul was barely about 13 years then and Priyanka even younger. My uncle who was in the room remarked “These are our future prime ministers”. This was the dominant thinking among large sections of Indians of that era. After all Rajiv had succeeded Indira and prior to that Indira had taken over from Nehru (after a small interregnum when Lal Bahadur Shastri was PM). It was only logical that Rahul would succeed Rajiv.

As we all know things that things didn’t quite turnout that day. I was reminded of this incident when after the election victory prime minister Manmohan Singh said publicly at a press conference in New Delhi that he wanted Rahul to join the cabinet. Later at a press conference when Rahul was asked as to whether he wanted to join the cabinet he said that his job was to get the youth of India into politics irrespective of whether he was in the Cabinet or not and he appealed to the youth to join politics.

This took me back to his father Rajiv Gandhi. Rajiv had the same appeal to youth. He was India’s youngest prime minister at 40 and the young could identify with him. In an era in which most leaders focused on the caste and the communal calculus, Rajiv talked of computers, telecom and got Sam Pitroda back from the US to usher in a telecom revolution. His Budget of 1985 is today seen as a signpost in India’s economic reform process which got underway in 1991.

Rahul like his father has an appeal that goes beyond the caste and communal calculus. His economic agenda is different form that of his father’s for the simple reason that India is today a largely free economy that banks on the market and not controls. His agenda is that of inclusive growth which in simple English means that the poor get to participate in India’s growth and development.

Rahul has also had an advantage or even luxury that his father did not have. Rajiv was pitch forked into politics and the PM’s chair by the sudden deaths of his brother Sanjay and mother Indira respectively. Rahul has had much more time and opportunity to hone his political skills. He has witnessed a period where his party has been out of power, honed his skills under his mother, and led the party’s resurgence in Uttar Pradesh in the just concluded election. The logical step would be the cabinet and then possibly the prime ministership.

Rajiv ignited a dream in the youth of a prosperous, economically strong India which unfortunately did not materialize during his lifetime. Rahul has grown up in liberalized India and now has set himself the task of taking it further. Time will tell as to whether he realizes his dream or not.

The true significance of 26/11

Yes, I can hear the groans as people read the title and the weary voices which say, “not another one please.”
As I write this article (April 26) it is exactly five months to theday that Mumbai’s major institutions like the The Taj and CST stationfell a prey to terror attacks. Distance from the event lends toperspective.
I am very clear that 26/11 was the day that a nation’s perception ofitself changed. Till then, yes there was talk of a recession. The mood however was largely optimistic and there was still faith in the India story. Newspaper editorials largely talked of how India was finally ready to take its rightful place on the world stage riding on the backof its growing economic clout.
Five months on we know that this is not entirely true. Yes, India does get invited to the G-20 to discuss the global economic problems. On the other hand, there have also been job losses and salary cuts.
And yes, Indians are rushing to take terror cover from insurancecompanies and the IPL has been moved out of India to South Africa. TheIPL shift one may argue is a fallout of it coinciding with the elections and the attack on the Sri Lankan cricketers in Pakistan.South Asia one may argue is the most dangerous place in the world now and India is just unlucky to be there. Think of it 10 years or maybe even five years back would we have re-scheduled cricket matches just because they coincided with elections? Let me make it clear that I do not want to joint the blame game by pointing fingers at governments past and present but am merely stating facts.
This has brought home to us a simple truth. Economic growth is no substitute for security. This is the simple truth that has guided nations for centuries now.
Yes, we have reason to celebrate that the Indian economy is still growing at 5 per cent levels even when most of the developed world is in the midst of an economic crisis with Japan being officially in recession. This growth whether even if it continues will however not compensate for loss of lives. Economic growth has not been an insurance against terror attacks but the reverse in fact has beenquite true in India’s case. Whichever government comes to power in the ongoing elections will do well to remember that. To modify thecampaign slogan in a previous US election-it is the security stupid.That to me is the true significance of 26/11.

The Beauty, Love and Umachander

“So that is what you are upto,” I asked Uma. Uma in this case was not the name of a beautiful lady but an ably built lad of around 15.His full name was Umachander. I had just peered into the mirror which he was holding in his hand, pretending to comb his hair and caught the reflection of the school heartthrob.
I was at that time studying at a school in Chennai and staying in the hostel there as my parents were abroad. Uma was one among my 10 odd room mates. The hostel, school and the residence of the school heartthrob were all a stone’s throw away from each other.

“Hey,” said Uma with unmistakable menace in his voice, “don’t you dare tell this to anyone else.” Not that I intended to owing to what PG Wodehouse described as The Code of the Woosters. Add to this the fact that Uma was about twice my size and I really had no desire to make public Uma’s reflections on the mirror.

This school heartthrob who must go unnamed to what I would call The Code of the Ravindrans’ had caught the fancy of another hostel mate too. He had gone to the chemistry laboratory and on quickly espying an opportunity had appended his initial to her name. Such was the stuff of school romance at the Hindu Senior Secondary School in Chennai. Many like Barkis in David Copperfield were willing but certainly lacked the courage of Barkis to proclaim their willingness.

This is however a hark back to another era and time about 30 years back. It was a world where love was conveyed through the eyes and silence was a much understood language. Unlike today where silence is mistaken for weakness.

There is yet another twist to this tale. This college heartthrob had her fair share of critics too. Her academic accomplishments which primarily consisted of being the class topper consistently were put down to factors other than her ability and application. This was because one of her relatives was on the school board. She however answered her critics in the best possible way—by topping the school in the tenth standard board exams. Not even her worst critics could accuse here of manipulation.
She had mastered a crucial lesson very early in life—the best answer to criticism is performance. She thus showed that she was more than a beauty with brains—one with strength of character too.

Amar, Akbar Anthony

During this weekend I was viewing the haunting melodies of Mohammed Rafi on my DVD when the song ---“Parda hai parda----from Amar, Akbar Anthony came on screen. The movie is of course one of the classics of Indian Cinema and was a signpost in the rise of Amitabh Bachchan as a superstar.

I personally have three dominant memories of the movie.

The first was when the movie was released in 1977 and I went to see it with some family friends with whom I was spending a part of my vacation. We really enjoyed the movie and I loved the scene where a drunk Amitabh Bachchan stuck a plaster to the mirror.

The second came a few months later when again the song Parda hai Parda was shown on the popular film song programme—Chaaya Geet. That was the day it rained heavily and my building was flooded. Further, the building wall broke down and the water from the adjoining gutter flowed into the compound. I began my exploratory mission but before they could taken on anything like the adventures experienced by Tom Sawyer, I was pulled inside home by my mother and slapped for straying from the safety zone.

The third memory is that of when the movie was shown by Zee around 1993. That was when the satellite channel revolution was peaking and people were getting to see movies they hadn’t seen for a while or had even forgotten. At that time everyone was discussing the forthcoming telecast of the movie more than a week before. My friend Vaidy remarked –“Look at the impact of the movie. It has not been forgotten even today”.

Amar, Akbar Anthony of course has been telecast many times since then and will be telecast many times more. These three memories to me are the abiding ones about the movie. My mental images of Amar, Akbar and of course Anthony.

Ruskin Bond & Sudha Murthy: Studies in Simplicity

One of my greater pleasures in life has been reading two Indian authors--- Sudha Murthy and Ruskin Bond. One is the wife of a man who helped script India's success story in the Software industry –Infosys Chief Mentor Mr N R Narayana Murthy. Sudha Murthy has done her duty in life as a wife, mother and is now using literature as an avenue for self expression as well as a means for funding her larger calling in life --Charity. The other Ruskin Bond is a professional writer who chose the path of literature over that of a cushy job and remained single so that he could devote himself to his call in life-writing. Ruskin Bond is a man who still in some ways lives or at any rate writes in a time warp. While he has retreated to the hills in Mussoorie, the settings of most of his stories are Dehradun, more specifically the Dehradun of his boyhood.

Sudha Murthy's stories are spread across the country and while she often likes to delve into the past and recount even old stories, this lady's stories are as contemporary as they get. The two writers’ despite the difference in their background and the settings of their stories have one thing in common--simplicity. Reading both of them is to see writing reduced to its simplest form. Not for them the bombast of words but the simplicty of an idea. Indeed this is the common strain that binds the two authors together. Whether Sudha Murthy is writing about how she taught her grandmother to read or the ungratefulness of a man who refuses to acknowledge those who helped him in his past--her stories manage to reduce the human situation to a level of simplicity which few authors before her have managed. Her stories in English (which is all that I can read due to my own linguistic limitations) may not please the lover of literature but the reader can relate to what she is writing. All of us have seen children taking up the phone and blocking it through incessant use even as their parents watched helplessly. Haven’t we all at sometime not encountered a chattering relative and a poor people who are honest to the core?

Ruskin Bond on the other hand can elevate the art of simple writing to a literary form. While he chose not to study in England and opt out of the usual routine of studying in a Victorian setting his writings are unmistakably literary. The settings of his stories are maybe Dehradun but the contribution to literature is unmistakable. In many way Bond alongwith R K Narayan can be considered as a pioneer in Indian writing in English. Long before it became fashionable or profitable.

Next time you have time on your hands and you are wondering as to what to do not reach out for the television set but pick up a collection of stories by Ruskin Bond or Sudha Murthy. If not anything else, you would have had a glimpse of that long forgotten art--simplicity.