Perfect Days - A Perfect Movie

 It was a strange first 30 minutes of the movie. 

The protagonist, a middle-aged Japanese man, wakes up, rubs his eyes, goes to the bathroom, brushes his teeth, wipes his face, dresses up in his workman clothes, picks up the car key, shuts his door, gets a can of coffee from the pay fridge, gets into his van, plays a cassette of happy sounding western music and goes about his job. He is a toilet cleaner in Tokyo Toilette and he opens the doors and with meticulous and even fond care cleans the rims and the surface of the pot, repeats this in more places, goes to a public bath, washes his body happily, sits on a park bench in the afternoon, takes a picture with his small camera( not phone), goes to a small restaurant, has a meal, goes home, lies down on the mat, switches on the light, takes out a William Faulkner novel from his well-stocked, neatly organized bookshelf, reads a bit, reaches out for his light, switches it off and goes off to sleep.

This sequence takes 10 to 12 minutes. And the second day, the same 10-minute ( or at least felt like 10 minutes) sequence repeats. So it does for another day and a few sidelights do take place. One is with a much younger toilet cleaner who is doing his cleaning job without the least bit of interest and then a brief stay by his niece Kiko who is reluctant to go back to her mother( the protagonist's sister) who is stylishly dressed and comes to pick her up in a fancy car.

Wen Winder is a German maestro and this movie fetched the lead actor Koji Yakusho the Best Actor award at Cannes 2023. 

The movie leaves an impact long after you see this. Some messages resonate powerfully. You can be contented with life's very mundane daily routines. Setbacks ( hinted in the movie - the protagonist's tastes in reading and music hark back to a more privileged life earlier) are par for the course. A clear sky, some beautiful music, and dedication to duty are enough for a good life. The movie has very few words exchanged, and the action does not even rise above the routine that also suggests, as a friend put it, you are better off by not giving words to your thoughts. Sometimes words can be a source of misery by the associations they bring.   

We the Leaders: My foray into writing a book

 

Leadership is a fascinating subject. Partly because it is part of our everyday usage but it is not easy to explain it, partly because it has so many facets. This is one of the most written about topics in management literature. Academics, top global CEOs. Journalists - everyone had a stab at it.  

I was also transfixed by the idea of understanding it. I still am. The world has seen the leadership of Gandhi, also of Churchill; Jobs, and also of Eric Schmidt. Their styles within even a narrow domain of human endeavour could not be more different.

Who is a leader? What is leadership? How do you become a leader? How much more effective can you be by becoming a good leader? Is it action or is it inspiration? Is leadership contingent or does it have permanent values? What role does culture play in leadership style? Is a Japanese leader different from a British one? Can you transfer leadership skills from a monastery to a commercial organisation?

The leadership puzzle has countless questions. My book, published as an introduction to leadership drew from my experience as a leader of a commercial entity and my readings. 

I thought it would be more appealing to have a short book but the regret I have now is I should have put more on each topic.

But then there is always a tomorrow.

( The book is available on Amazon)

Missing Federer

 The first decade of this century was his. He won his first slam in 2003 at Wimbledon and the last at the Australian Open in 2018. But his true period of dominance was from the 2003 Wimbledon to the 2010 Aus Open when out of 26 slams, he won an unprecedented 16 and was a runner-up in another 6.

The precision of movement, a scintillating backhand, the faint twitch in his facial muscles when under pressure, and supreme athleticism combined with sublime skills kept millions hooked to TV sets when he was playing especially on those Sunday evening finals. That sound of the racquet hitting the ball that was not excessively loud, just a hint of power; the almost supernatural sense of anticipation, and his shots landing on the lines like guided missiles made watching Fed so mesmerising. One of the regrets of my life was when he played in Delhi and I could not go and one of the blessings of the last decade was Federer continuing to play as long as he played. Sports at its finest elevates human experience like nothing else and Fed was the quintessential symbol of that.  

Nadal, Djokovic and maybe Laver did reach his superhuman heights but for accomplishments combined with aesthetic appeal and elegance, he remains unmatched.

Alcaraz is a treat to watch with his drop shots, top spin forehands and athletic ability. Djokovic continues to make us marvel with his tenacity and all-round ability but the void left by Federer can never possibly be filled.   

Milan Kundera dies at 94

 

(From my tribute to Kundera on FB)
Milan Kundera, a Czech novelist, died on Tuesday, 11th July at 94. For me, it is rather personal.

Years ago, I was a participant in a television quiz where apart from general awareness, we had a subject round where we could choose our own topic. I had stumbled into a review of ‘The Unbearable Lightness of Being’ by Kundera in the now defunct Gentleman magazine and then went on to read the book. It was exhilarating.

Over a period of time, I bought a few of his other works. I found his ability to distil profound truths of life through a mix of levity, seriousness, stories of resistance against the repression of the communist regimes in Eastern Europe and also hedonism beguiling. A few stayed with me.

One I always think about is that life moves like the hands of a clock, in a pattern and always repeating the same thematic cycles. I have found this to be so true for myself - it has been chronologically linear but cyclical in so many other ways.

His characters approached the absurdity of existence and an intense desire to experience life in the same breath. They lived and talked as of they were faintly bemused but still flying over all that life threw at them.

Here is an excerpt from ‘The Unbearable Lightness of Being’:
“People usually escape from their troubles into the future; they draw an imaginary line across the path of time, a line beyond which their current troubles will cease to exist. But Tereza saw no such line in her future. Only looking back could bring her consolation. It was Sunday again. They got into the car and drove far beyond the limits of Prague.”

Having told the organisers that my topic would be ‘Works of Milan Kundera’, I discovered that I did not have his entire collection. In those Pre Amazon days, I started scouring all the bookshops in a few cities both personally and through friends. Usually, a lone Kundera would be lying on the shelves and a couple of his works were not easily available. The search however eventually yielded fruit and I managed to get all the missing books in my collection barring one. But in the months after the quiz, I always noticed the same shelves with many Kunderas. Did I play a part in building up that demand? I would fancy so (chuckle).

Kundera lived in Prague and then migrated to Paris. The first one full of both gorgeous architecture and the tragedy of lives and potential snuffed out by a draconian state. And in Paris, one can always sense the existentialism of Sartre, along with a celebration of life through its museums and grand boulevards. Kundera was both - Prague and Paris.

He was also a perennial Nobel contender but somehow did not get it. To me however, though lesser known, he is there with some of the finest: Mahfouz, Barnes, Coetzee or Munro if not Marquez and Camus.
Milan Kundera: April 1, 1929, to 11 July, 2023.

Rian, A Song for My Son

I was so elated when my son was born and this is what I wrote when he was nine months old. What is interesting is that , I still feel the same after so many years.

Rian

Into the flickering lamp of my existence,
You glided in gently,
You created a wavering in the fabric of light and darkness,
And everything changed.

In your unquenchable thirst for life,
You seem like the energy of the Brahmaputra flowing into the sea,
You are my explosive desire to embrace the sky of hope.

And you pluck my hair like it is a bunch of flowers from divinity,
When you touch my face with your tiny, innocent fingers;
You bring the rivulets of pure water,
Of immortality and sunshine, into my life;
Nothing remains the same anymore.

And I want to fight for clean water and fresh air,
I want to jump at joy.

Who said, you are an infant, weak and dependent;
Who said, you will grow up and be like a star in the firmament of life;
To me, you already are the lone star: Rian, my son.

A Poem Dug Out

A diary is an interesting tool to rediscover your past. If you are lucky, you might even understand it a little better. Rummaging through my old diary, I came upon this poem I had written eight years back.

Holy and Grey Ganga

On the road, virgins and the rest look alike,
Sometimes the virgins weep and the others are smiling.
Sometimes the others clutch at their sad and used breasts,
And the virgins dream of riding galloping horses.
It is the strangeness of a magenta and black.

The orange of the horizon is the blood of the Aztecs,
The spires of the Kandariya Mahadev echo the cries of a tortured artisan,
And the inseparable story of joy and tragedy continues.

And in the frontier of light and darkness,
Where Gods and demons dance and caress each other,
Where the wrath of a Rama and the fury of a Ravana,
Coalesce into a tragic stab on my heart,
I look for the purple prose of your blood.

And in the forest of emotions of the earth,
In the holy and grey Ganga,
I look for my dream amid the corpses. (10th July 2001)

Some Media Stories

Here are some of my comments in the media.

http://www.financialexpress.com/news/Entrepreneurship-on-the-shelf/319928/

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1080603/jsp/business/story_9357138.jsp

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/msid-3169545,flstry-1.cmshttp://economictimes.indiatimes.com/.../Inflation_charts_growth_path_for_private_labels/articleshow/3047440.cmshttp://www.telegraphindia.com/1080605/jsp/business/story_9367269.jsp%20- -http://www1.economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/3058848.cms

Resuscitating the Blog

After a long time saw the blog again and got a shock to see that the last post was in April-four and a half months back. And then,I did a google search for Green Monsoon blog which threw up the name of Indiblogger on the first page. They have an interesting cut-off period for defining dead blogs. Any blog which is without a post for four months gets listed under R.I.P. So, it seems, to the world at large this blog is well and truly dead !

But it probably comes like its namesake -the monsoons. It will appear at regular intervals.

But now I intend to make blogging a regular practice and see where it takes me.

The Brave Engineers

It is human nature to start reminiscences when one is a little idle and when I go through my life the time in N.I.T.Rourkela seems the most surreal one. I or rather we did things that seem completely improbable now and depending on the way you look at it they were completely bizarre or just hilarious.

It was Holi. The campus was situated next to a tribal settlement. Suddenly the rumours started flying in campus that a student of second year has been drenched in colours against his will and then mildly beaten up in the settlement. It was enough to start a virtual war against the tribal settlement. The revenge had to be taken-the village had to be attacked.

And it was the fashionable thing to jump into such activities. It fetched you tremendous peer respect and favourable publicity. So here was I, 53 kgs of weight, thin and wearing a spectacles of negative 3.5 power and the only violence I had indulged in was killing mosquitoes. I was desperate to get the glamour and star appeal of the studs who could go to such villages and create some mayhem.

So a group of about two hundred students then marched with broken tree branches, hockey sticks, cricket bats, lots of bluster and bravado. I was there with a twig right in the front. We reached the village after a minor trek and suddenly discovered there was absolute silence and all doors were shut. The brave marching contingent halted –confused and looking for strategy.

Then suddenly an arrow flew from one of the houses. And panic and pandemonium broke loose. The students ran for their lives. I was there in the front and I still remember after almost twenty years my feelings that moment. When I looked back I saw everybody had disappeared or was running like a gazelle and I was the only one left within the boundaries of the village. It is somewhat akin to what an antelope would feel when it sees itself surrounded by a horde of lions in the African bushland. I think I ran though I do not remember where or how fast. In the process I remember outrunning stones, sticks and somehow surviving almost like Sunil Shetty does in the middle of a bullet storm. Bollywood is imaginative but everything they show is not fantasy.

The marauding engineers were that day exposed for their bravery.