Saturday 30 March 2013

Why Bollywood does beautiful forevers

Bollywood India

For the same reason that Sweden does crime fiction.

Camilla Lackberg
Sweden's best selling crime writer, Camilla Lackberg, explained to The Independent why a country as sedate as Sweden has spawned such a crop of world-beating crime writers. Her thesis is it's because Sweden is so safe. "Crime stories are our version of sitting round a camp fire and telling tales. We enjoy being scared under safe circumstances. That's why there's no tradition of crime writing in countries that have wars."

Basically, fiction provides the ingredient missing in real life.

Which is precisely why Bollywood is syrupy sweet. India still is poor. Life in India still is tough. Fiction needs to provide the sweetness that is so elusive in real life.


Another India

Monday 25 March 2013

Learning monetary policy from Monopoly



Ben Bernanke, Mervyn King and D Subbarao ought to play more Monopoly. That would teach them a thing or two about the perils of an expansionary monetary policy.

I learnt about the dangers of monetary expansion last weekend, when my daughter challenged me to a game. I nearly lost inside half an hour. I landed on three houses at Oxford Street and had to mortgage King’s Cross and Liverpool station to survive; the end seemed nigh. But then I picked up £200 as I passed Go, then another £150 from Community Chest, and an hour later both my daughter and I were in rude financial health.

In effect, I’d been bailed out by an expansionary monetary policy.

Monopoly has fixed nominal prices (i.e. a hotel room on Pall Mall always costs £625). However the real price of that hotel room is constantly declining. The Bank pumps £200 per player into the economy every round, so money supply is constantly increasing, so “sticky” prices keep getting smaller compared to the money in the game, so, on average, everybody feels richer.

Hotels on Pall Mall and Vine Street are life-threatening early on. As the game develops, the board fills up with houses and hotels, and landing at a hotel on Pall Mall is a mere flea-bite. By now the action has shifted to Mayfair and Park Lane. If the dice roll such that all players survive long enough, even a hotel on Mayfair stops being life-threatening.

From that point on, the players are no longer playing Monopoly, they are playing Comfortable Oligopoly. In this game, the veneer of competition is maintained, but the Bank ensures that nobody actually goes bust, despite the fact that nobody is taking any real risks or making valuable things. There is no natural way of ending this meaningless game. My daughter and I stopped our game only when higher authorities stepped in and decreed that it was lunchtime.

So, policy makers, play a few endless games of Monopoly. Learn that in the short term, monetary expansion can save a few dads from going bust. Learn also that monetary expansion that goes on and on and on robs the world of meaning, until the real economy finally breaks through and produces lunch.

PS: I wonder if the great monetarists Milton Friedman and Robert Lucas suffered through a few endless games of Monopoly?

Saturday 16 February 2013

Umwelt

Umwelt: this word deserves to be in more common use. It means "the world as it is experienced by a particular organism".

It comes from zoology, specifically ethology, I found it in this book on dog behaviour. Umwelt has the sense that a dog's, or any organism's, experience of the world is bounded by its range of perception. This range of perception forms a bubble the animal lives within. This perceptual bubble in turn limits (and distorts) the range of emotion and action the organism is capable of.

Human experience is equally circumscribed by perceptual bubbles (except that the more interesting perceptual bubbles are cognitive, or maybe maybe linguistic, rather than sensory). We need a word for those bubbles. Let umwelt be that word.

Let umwelt takes its rightful place in the English lexicon, alongside gestalt, zeitgeist, schadenfreude and cousin weltanschauung.

Sunday 10 February 2013

The wind beneath my wings does NOT make me fly high


Bette Midler singing "Wind beneath my wings"
















Actually, it's the wind above my wings that makes me fly.

Air flows faster over the upper surface of the wing, which lowers pressure, and therefore provides lift and enables flight. The mechanics are the same for a airplane wing, a frisbee, a sail, a swinging cricket ball or an eagle's wing. Similarly, the spoiler blades at the back of F1 racing cars are designed so the wind passes beneath the wings. This pulls the car down towards the tarmac, and provides stability.

This science is complex enough to provide many engineers with a lifetime of work, but is neither new nor controversial. It follows from Bernoulli's principle, which I was taught in 8th class by Kanaka Eshwaran-Miss (aka Kinetic Energy-miss).

So why does Bette Midler keep showing up on Muzak tracks around the world singing:

"I can fly higher than an eagle,
'cause you are the wind beneath my wings"?

Wrong! The wind above her wings makes her fly high. The wind beneath her wings brings her down to earth. Ignoramus. Fancy dress Fatima! Bougainvillea! Pithecanthropus! Odd-toed ungulate!! Nit-witted ninepin! Squawking popinjay!

F1 car, that uses wind beneath the wings to stay low















Airplane, that uses wind above the wings to fly high
















PS: I'm kidding. It's fun to win an argument conclusively in an age of "it depends".

Saturday 26 January 2013

My beloved homeland: the 1990s



I’m homesick.
I want to go home,
to a place where I feel safe,
to a place where I know stuff,
like I know that democracy is good,
that capitalism will save us from poverty,
that the Rio summit will save the planet,
and that Sanjay Manjrekar’s immaculate technique will elevate him to Gavaskar-esque greatness.

I want to know that MTV VJ Sophiya Haque is cool, achingly so,
and that institutions reinvent themselves,
sort of, like, Tony Blair reinvented the Labour Party.

I want to know that if I follow my passion,
try really really hard,
give all I’ve got to give,
give with my body, mind and soul,
that I will find not just success, but fulfilment.

Papa I want to go,
Mama I want to go,
Show me the way to go home.

Tuesday 15 January 2013

How do you solve a problem like Maria Sharapova?

Maria Sharapova and Grigor Dimitrov, in Milan

News from the Aussie Open is that Maria Sharapova has a new boyfriend, fellow tennis pro Gregor Dimitrov. Is this guy Maria's Mr Right?

The great Tamil lyricist Kannadasan might be on the pro-Dimitrov side of the argument. One of the greatest love songs he ever wrote, naan pesa nenaipadellam nee pesa vendum, goes: "naan kaanum ulagangal nee kaana vendum", meaning, "you should see the world's I see". This is a deep insight. Understanding each other's worlds is a critical (and under-celebrated) aspect of love. As an East European tennis pro, Grigor Dimitrov has a better chance of really getting Maria's world, than, say, a Tam Bram management consultant.

On the con side of the argument is yin-yang balance, a theme I've riffed on before. Maria is one tough cookie, she has plenty of yang in her soul. She needs a guy with dollops of yin-energy for them to be in harmony. Ex-boyfriend Andy Roddick clearly didn't fit the bill. Apparently, ex-fiancee Sasha Vujacic did't either.

Maria Sharapova and Roger Federer, in Sao Paulo
The problem is, professional sportsmen with yin-energy are rare. But they do exist. Roger Federer is a great example.

So will Grigor Dimitrov be Maria's Mr. Right? It depends, on whether Grigor can be more like Roger Federer than like Andy Roddick, and I'm not talking about winning grand slam titles.

Wednesday 9 January 2013

Samudra Manthan: a stitch-up or a path to salvation?


Samudra Manthan
My children were listening to a story. I was sitting with them, squirming with discomfort.

The story was Samudra Manthan: about the churning of the ocean by the devas and asuras that produced Halahala, the terrible poison, and Amrita, the nectar of immortality. We’d chosen this story because it is one of the nicer, less gory Indian puranas, but I still was uncomfortable, because it story reads like a divine con-job.

The devas invite the asuras to work with them to churn the ocean, implying that they would share the Amrita. Yet, when the Amrita does emerge, Lord Narayana shows up disguised as the beautiful Mohini, gives all the Amrit to the devas and none to the asuras. This was justified because the devas were devotees of Lord Narayana, while the asuras were not. Bascially, its okay because “they” are not God’s people.

To my ears, this moral logic sounded a bit like the logic that European colonials used to justify the genocide of Native Americans, or that Nazis used used against the Jews. I needed to step in and re-frame this story. I needed to find a reasonable interpretation.

It turns out that my grandmother, Kamala Subramaniam, had been similarly troubled by the Samudra  Manthan story, and had thought through its implications. I found a considered, and positive, interpretation in her translation of the Srimad Bhagavatam. Here’s her take:


"The incident of the churning of the ocean must be pondered over. The devas and asuras were both working towards the same end: finding of Amrita. Both worked strenuously and equally sincerely towards this end. They both pulled the mountain Mandara with the snake Vasuki as the rope, and both efforts were equal: as a matter of fact, the asuras put in more work since they had more powerful arms.

As a result, however, the devas enjoyed the benefit while the efforts of the asuras were all wasted. This was because the devas had surrendered themselves to the Lord. They had taken the dust off the feet of the Lord, and their labour were duly rewarded.

Men of the world, when they strain their minds, their riches, their actions and other similar things towards benefiting themselves, their children, their homes and their personal happiness, their actions become all futile. If however, man does the same things dedicating the actions to the Lord, man’s actions will never be fruitless."

I like the Samudra Manthan story partly because churning the ocean is such an easy metaphor for the life-work of a karma yogi, of people like you and me who work to earn a living and raise a family. The point of this metaphor is not that God will appear at the denouement, and distribute goodies to “us” but not to “them”. It is that dedicating one's life-work to the Lord, whatever you conceive Her to be, is its own reward.

Looked at this way, the difference between the devas and asuras is not intrinsic or inborn. The difference arises from the way they frame their lives, the lens through which they choose to see their work. The devas dedicate their work to the Lord, they experience bhakti, and bhakti is the difference between the Amrita the devas experienced, and the bitterness and cynicism the asuras must have experienced.

ॐ  नमो  भगवते  वासुदेवाय.

Sunday 16 December 2012

Be an interesting guy

Dom Barton of McKinsey & Company
I'm on my first day at a new job. I've just joined McKinsey and Company, one of the world's finest organizations.

My cohort of new joiners is meeting the Global Managing Partner, Dominic Barton. Very nice for our first day in. Dom welcomes us into the firm, tells us about the firm's heritage and values, and gives us some perspective on what it takes to succeed at the firm. Dom's advice: "Be an interesting guy".

Not client-centricity, thought-leadership, value-creation or some such corporate-speak, but "be interesting". Interesting.

That advice really resonated with me. To me, being interesting is a goal in itself, an essential part of a life well-lived. That is sort of why I started this blog, and keep at it; it keeps open a window to worlds other than family and work-life.

Easier said than done. My blog posting rate, and the complexity of my posts, have dropped off sharply since joining McKinsey. But still, it is nice to know that Dom Barton thinks being interesting is good for your career.

Sunday 25 November 2012

James Bond style woozling


Sitting around staring at brick walls is called "woozling" in my family. I just discovered that James Bond woozles too. From this interview with Daniel Craig:

"I keep an energy level up through filming and then as soon as it finishes I just relax and drop. We all do. You’ll find most of the crew kind of sitting around staring at brick walls because it’s been full on, all day, every day. "

Sunday 18 November 2012

A simple solution to America's fiscal cliff problem



Allow congressmen to vote in private.

This isn’t my idea. I’m channelling the noted political philosopher, Sir Humphrey Appleby. Sir Humpy explains to Jim Hacker in the very first episode of Yes Minister that Jim’s election winning slogan, “Open Government”, is in fact an oxymoron. You can be open, or you can have government, you can’t have both. I’m also channelling Fareed Zakaria’s excellent (and serious) book, The Future of Freedom.

Zakaria’s argument is that most American politicians are not stupid. Most of them don’t want to drive off the fiscal cliff. Most of them would happily cut a deal to avoid disaster, if they could. They can’t. Because they lack the privacy needed to cut deals.

For most of America’s history, Congress could do its work in private. Politicians could imply one thing while talking to constituents, go to Washington, exercise their better judgment on what is best for the country, and go back to their constituents with a shrug and an I-tried-my-best story. For most of America’s history, that worked well enough.

At some time in the 1960s some well-intentioned people thought pols should not be allowed to tell lies to the public, and decided to make their deliberations and voting records public. As a result, politicians live in a fish bowl, utterly at the mercy of special interest groups. They can’t exercise mature judgment, and therefore can’t fulfil the design of representative democracy.

This shouldn’t be hard to explain. Perfect transparency is unhelpful in most everyday contexts: in family life, in sports teams, with friends or at work. But, unfortunately, even my ardent inner optimist doesn't think politicians are going to be allowed to escape their fish bowl world any time soon.

Wish you were here, Sir Humpy. We miss you.

Sir Humphrey Appleby

Sunday 11 November 2012

Hommage: Yannick Noah chante Bob Marley


I've been tripping on Hommage this morning. Its an album of Bob Marley songs, covered by Yannick Noah, a delicious double-dose of nostalgia.

Here's the album's trailer video:

 

Yannick Noah: stolen from Africa
















Also discovered that Yannick's son Joacim Noah plays pro basketball for the Chicago Bulls. Will he do cover versions of Ziggy Marley one day?

Yannick Noah in action










Joacim Noah in action

Saturday 3 November 2012

Re-imagining Snow White


Snow White and the Huntsman
Just watched Snow White and the Huntsman. Enjoyed the movie, in much the same way that I enjoy watching Brendan Nash bat. 

Brendan Nash in action
Nash doesn’t strike the ball especially sweetly. However, as a white guy playing for the West Indies, he asks some interesting questions of unspoken assumptions, and for that reason is one of my favourite contemporary cricketers.

Similarly, Snow White and the Huntsman suffers from wooden acting, and a plot line that occasionally stalls. However, it does challenge the assumption that fairy tales are meant for children, and therefore need to be told in a brightly-lit Disney-esque style. This telling is dark. The palette is wintry: all greys, blacks, browns and whites, broken only by the occasional splash of blood red. This menacing mood works. It feels more true to the dark heart of the Grimm Brothers’ story than Disney’s incongruously cheery style.

I would love to see an even more radical reinvention of Snow White. Say, one in which Snow White is offered the throne, and refuses, because she prefers to live in the woods with her beloved dwarves. Unfortunately, this telling isn’t that adventurous or brave. It’s about style, not revolution. But its still worth the watch just for its style.

Saturday 29 September 2012

Michaelmas: the original thanks-giving festival

St Michael
Yesterday, Saint Michael saved me from a terrible fate.

I could have wasted my Friday evening watching the Indian cricket team getting savaged by Australia. Instead, I attended a very pleasant Michaelmas service at my children's school. I was grateful for having been saved from hours of TV-misery, and was a little embarrassed that I had no idea what Michaelmas was. Such ignorance is inexcusable in this age of Google, and so, I Googled-up Michaelmas.

The interpretation I like best is that Michaelmas is an autumn festival. It is a thanks-giving to the earth for the bounty of summer, a moment of reflection as the earth and the spirit turn inwards for renewal through the winter. Rudolf Steiner - the inspiration behind the Waldorf school my children attend - thought Michaelmas and Easter were the year's most important festivals, yin and yang, each completing the other, together forming the circle of life. Looked at this way, Michaelmas is like Pongal, the harvest festival of South India; Michaelmas is Shiva to Easter's Brahma.

If Michaelmas is so important, why is it so little known? Competition, maybe? In Britain, the Anglican church replaced Catholic Michaelmas with the Harvest Festival. In America, two big-budget blockbusters, Thanksgiving and Halloween, sit in the same perceptual space. In Latin America, Santa Muerte is venerated in autumn, typically on November 1. The top Google search term associated with Michaelmas is secular: Oxford and Cambridge refer to Fall Semester as Michaelmas Term.

Why is the heroic warrior-angel Michael, who defeated proud Lucifer in battle and cast him out of heaven, associated with this introspective autumnal festival? It isn't obvious. The Archangel Michael might have been a Christian element layered onto a ancient and much-beloved pagan tradition, like Christmas. Regardless, St. Michael has done me a good deed this weekend. Today is his day. Happy Michaelmas!

St Michael vanquishing Satan

Thursday 27 September 2012

Meister Eckhart on Noble Work

"Our works do not ennoble us; we must ennoble our works"

- Meister Eckhart.

I came across these words at a corporate training program, and liked them enough to latch on. 

It is easy to think school teachers and nurses do "noble work", and that plumbers, fork-lift operators, and corporate appartchiks like me, don't. Meister Eckhart's perspective feels more helpful, and more true.





Saturday 22 September 2012

The difference between the United States of America and the States of a United Europe, explained on a taxi ride

NYC taxi
I was flying from New York to Frankfurt. I got a taxi in New York. My cabbie was a brown skinned guy with an accent.

"Where are you from?", I asked him.

"I'm from Queens" he replied.

"Really? From the Queens?"

"Yeah, man. I live in Queens." He didn't sound like a Queens native.

"How long have you lived there?" 

"Six months. But I'm from the Queens. I live in the Queens" he insisted. 

"And before the Queens?"

"Gautemala" he replied. "But all that was a long time ago, man. Now I'm from Queens."

I reached Frankfurt and got a taxi. Again, my cabbie was a brown skinned guy with an accent.
Frankfurt skyline

"Where are you from?", I asked him.

"I'm from Turkey", he replied.

"How long have you lived in Frankfurt", I asked.

"My grandfather came here in 1952. But I am from Turkey."

I heard this story years ago, at a business conference in Budapest, as an explanation for why the states of a united Europe will never morph into the United States of Europe. This was back in 2005, when the European project felt secure and looked like a stunning success.

It comes back to mind frequently because the future of Europe is so much in the news. For instance, the latest Economist has this story about Jose Manuel Barosso, the president of the European Commission, speaking of a the EU becoming a "federation of nation-states". I guess he didn't vet the idea with his cabbie.



Sunday 16 September 2012

Khalil Gibran on how Jeffery Johnson became a murderer

"Oftentimes have I heard you speak of one who commits a wrong as though he were not one of you, but a stranger unto you and an intruder upon your world. 

But I say that even as the holy and the righteous cannot rise beyond the highest which is in each one of you,

So the wicked and the weak cannot fall lower than the lowest which is in you also." 

I came across these words thumbing through The Prophet, and was ported to this story about Jeffery Johnson, the Empire State Building gunman. In it, Johnson’s mother talks about how she can’t comprehend how her kind-hearted little boy, “who loved the Boy Scouts and animals, and grew up into a patriotic and thoughtful man”, snapped and turned into a calculating murderer. Khalil Gibran’s uncomfortable thought is that the murderer was always in there, lurking inside the kind and thoughtful man.

David Brooks, the NYT’s conservative cloumnist, agrees with Khalil Gibran. Writing about Robert Bales, the American soldier who murdered sixteen sleeping Afghans in their family home, he quotes CS Lewis, who believed “there is no such thing as an ordinary person, each person you sit next to on the bus is capable of extraordinary horrors and extraordinary heroism.”

Thursday 30 August 2012

Why Andrew Strauss shows MS Dhoni's captaincy in such good light

Andrew Strauss
Andrew Strauss retired yesterday. Strauss is a good egg, a decent chap. He has been a fine player and captain, has served cricket well. It is sad that he is retiring.

What made Strauss' retirement even sadder was the timing of his announcement. It came a day after England were crushed by South Africa, with the batting crumbling yet again. Kevin Pietersen hammered a century for Surrey that day, to highlight what might have been but for the rift between the English captain and his best player. Strauss and the England management didn't want to talk about KP. The media clearly did, understandably so, because the KP melodrama highlights both the best and worst thing about Strauss' captaincy.

Strauss' greatest achievement, and his greatest weakness, is that he built a team in his own image. Strauss is a diligent, hard-working, respectful, determined, virtuous, fair-minded guy who puts the team's interests above his own. Andy Flower shares his personality. Strauss and Flower have built a team that values and develops players with Strauss' temperament - like Cook, Trott, Prior and Bresnan - whose game is built around discipline and professionalism. I'm naturally sympathetic to this approach. It feels proper and just that the Protestant (or Tam Bram) ethic should pay off, will pay off.

Unfortunately, this is simply not true. All international cricket is now very professional. Paradoxically, that means discipline and professionalism are no longer differentiators. The difference between competent teams and great teams comes down to a handful of geniuses with outrageous god-given gifts. Some of these favourites of the gods - like Muralitharan and Tendulkar - are nice guys who generally share Strauss' ethos. But the gods are capricious. A disproportionate number of the players the gods have bestowed the greatest gifts on - Shane Warne, Chris Gayle, Shoaib Akthar, Yuvraj Singh, Freddy Flintoff, Kevin Pietersen - are egoistic prima donnas.

I can imagine that it is really hard to be on the same team as arrogant superstars: travelling together, sharing a dressing room, sharing meals, year after year. However, a team needs great players more than it needs unity. Bob Woolmer's first action when he became Pakistan's coach was to bring back Shahid Afridi and Shoaib Akthar, which surely wasn't easy for captain Inzamam-ul-Haq, but it was the right thing to do. Leading a cricket team (at any level, actually) is about holding together a naturally fractious coalition. I'm sure Strauss knows this intellectually, but unfortunately for him, that part of the job didn't quite work out.

By contrast, the captain who has done brilliantly at this aspect of captaincy is MS Dhoni.

MS Dhoni with former captain Saurav Ganguly
In a way, Dhoni was dealt a much tougher hand than Strauss. Every team he has led has been chock a block with galacticos. He became captain unexpectedly, when Rahul Dravid resigned after winning a test series in England. In his first test match as captain he was leading Tendulkar, Ganguly, Dravid, Laxman, Kumble, Harbhajan and Zaheer (I don't remember why Sehwag wasn't playing). Each of these players was already a legend in his own right, Dhoni's natural seniors in life and in cricket. Dhoni didn't try to impose his style or method on them. He accepted them as they were - from Dravid's gentlemanliness to Harbhajan's in-your-face aggro - and the grace and charm with which he did that somehow enhanced his authority.

Over time, his task didn't get easier. He has had to manage Yuvraj, Sreesanth, Munaf, Kohli - difficult characters all. He has had to deal with the selectors, the sponsors, the media. MSD has been up to the task every time. I wish I knew how he does it. Regardless, in the frenetic world of Indian cricket, brimming over with outsize egos and chips-on-shoulders, Dhoni's contribution as captain cool has been huge, dwarfing his substantial contribution as a keeper, batsman and tactician.   

Gilcrist caught Strauss bowled Flintoff circa 2005
Looking back on Strauss' career, the English media are going on about his back-to-back Ashes triumphs as a captain. My favourite Strauss moments actually feature him as a player: his catch at Trent Bridge to dismiss Adam Gilchrist in the 2005 Ashes, his century at Wankhede in 2006 to set up England's first test match win in India in twenty years, and his back to back centuries at Chepauk in 2008 (under KP's captaincy) in what turned out to be a losing cause. I'd be very happy to buy Straussy a whiskey-sour at the bar, or a Jagermeister if he so prefers, to raise a toast to those moments.

England's next test match series is in India. As a partisan India supporter, I am not unhappy that Strauss the batsman will not be in the squad. And I'd be delighted if the England management take a "principled" stance and decide to tour India without Pietersen. I'm sure our team would rather be bowling at James Taylor and Johnny Bairstow.

Monday 27 August 2012

Beautiful Ashes: Sally Mann introduces her exhibition at the Fotografiska, Stockholm



















In Samuel Beckett's "Endgame", the madman Hamm stands at the asylum window staring at the beautiful seaside vista, and can only see ashes. His friend begs him to look again, but he turns away. He can only see the dark side.

We need to be able to see both the beauty and the dark side of things, the cornfields and the full sails but the ashes as well. I see them both at the same time, at once ecstatic at the beauty of things and saddened by that ecstasy. The Japanese have a word for this dual perception, mono no aware, it means beauty tinged with sadness, for is there any real beauty without the whiff of decay?

For me, living is the same thing as dying, and loving is the same thing as losing, and this does not make me a madman like Hamm. It makes me better at living, better at loving, and better at seeing.

- Sally Mann. 

I came across these words at the Fotografiska Museet, Sodermalm, Stockholm, which is showing an exhibition by the American photographer Sally Mann titled A Matter of Time. Sally Mann's edginess, her mono no aware perspective, was especially welcome after a couple of days of relentlessly positive tourist commentary. Thanks to my wife for taking the kids to watch the changing of the guard at the palace, while I explored the outstanding Fotografiska.

At the Fotografiska, in Stockholm



Candy cigarette, by Sally Mann

At warm springs, by Sally Mann

Wednesday 15 August 2012

The Palio di Siena: an alternative to Olympic nationalism


Palio di Siena at the Piazza di Campo

There is a general perception that a great sporting event that harks back to antiquity and delivers a profound political message has just concluded. This perception is understandable. I thoroughly enjoyed the London Olympics, which ended last Sunday.

However, arguably, an even greater sporting event that harks back to antiquity and delivers a more profound political message has not yet kicked off. It happens tomorrow, on August 16. It won't take two weeks, it lasts for less than three minutes. I'm speaking of the Palio di Siena, the bareback horse-race between rival contrade, administrative divisions of Siena, that has been run around the Piazza di Campo, the central town square, since 1581.

The Palio is preceded by a magnificent pageant in which the rival contrade present their standards to a cheering populace. The honour of leading this pageant is given not to one of the contrade, or to Siena itself, but to Montalcino, a hill town about twenty five miles south of Siena, to honour the heroism of the Republic of Siena at Montalcino.

The standard of Montalcino
The story is that the Republic of Siena, which had existed since the eleventh century, was defeated and occupied by Florence in 1555. However, a hardy group of seven hundred Sienese families retreated to the hilltop fortress of Montalcino. They established the Republic of Siena in Montalcino, and continued to resist the might of the Medicis for four years, finally surrendering in 1559. All of Siena, including Montalcino, was now absorbed into the Duchy of Florence, but the Sienese people were allowed to keep their customs and identity. A generation later, the Sienese people chose to remember the Republic of Siena at Montalcino, and gave Montalcino pride of place in their Palio. Hundreds of years later, the conquering Grand Duchy of Florence has also ceased to exist, but the grit and the guts shown by the Sienese at Montalcino will be honoured again tomorrow.

What I love about this story is that it emphasizes that nations are mortal. Sovereign entities - kingdoms, duchies, empires, republics, whatever - die as inevitably as you and me. There is no shame in death, per se. The Republic of Siena at Montalcino seems to have died honourably and continues to be revered, unlike, say, the Soviet Union. This simple fact, that no sovereign nation will live forever, is surprisingly hard to perceive, partly because nation states are generally longer lived than human beings, partly because of the layers of sanctification wrapped around nation states.

The Olympics contribute to this sanctification of nations. In our times, when identities and institutions are increasingly constructed across global, national and local layers, there was something strangely anachronistic about watching national flags being raised and anthems being sung at medal ceremonies through the games. So I'm looking forward to tomorrow's global webcast of this ancient and intensely local rivalry (on Siena TV, there are also excellent clips on You Tube). A glass of Montalcino's legendary Brunello wine might add to the excitement.

Contrade flags at the Palio


Tuesday 14 August 2012

Much Ado About Nothing, set in contemporary Delhi, playing at the RSC in Stratford-upon-Avon



Watched the Royal Shakespeare Company's production of Much Ado About Nothing last weekend, and loved it. The magic ingredient? It's set in contemporary Delhi.

This production isn't really about finding new psychological depth in Shakespeare. It is about relocating Shakespeare to India, and enjoying the play of images, sounds and textures that that creates, and it does this beautifully.

At times, the decision to set Much Ado About Nothing in India feels obvious rather than inspired. Shakespeare's story-line is exactly the same as hundreds of Bollywood potboilers. It features two couples, one soppily besotted, the other constantly duelling, daggers drawn. It features elaborately staged situations and misunderstandings that shift these couples in and out of love. It is excessively interested in a woman's maidenly honour. It features loyal servants, a buffoon of a policeman, a wise priest...it is as desi as butter chicken and scotch whiskey.

Beatrice and Benedick
On a jhula
What made the show for me was not the Indian setting per se, but the rich detail in which this was recreated. The ambient sound in the foyer, before the show, was the soundscape of an Indian street: an autorickshaw's tuk-tuk, dogs barking, a street vendor's call, snatches of music. The ropes defining the line to the box office were marigold garlands. Beatrice and Benedick discover their love for each other when seated together on a swing, a jhula. The guards of the Prince's Watch are armed with hurricane lanterns and lathis. The detailing is spot-on, not just authentic but exuberantly so.

This touched a set of feel-good buttons for me, and I'd assume for a lot of my friends and family, because it mirrors how we think and feel about India. Sure, India has problems. Serious problems. But we are not defined by our problems. We are defined by our zest for life, which shows up in our culture - in colour, in music, in flavours, in texture - and it's that zest for life that was showcased at the Courtyard Theatre in Stratford upon Avon. Thank you RSC. And in case I don't get around to posting again tomorrow - Happy Independence Day. Jai Hind!


Saturday 4 August 2012

Is Maria Sharapova Russian or American?

Maria Sharapova carries the Russian flag at the Olympics
Is Maria Sharapova American, because she lives in Florida, having learnt tennis at Nick Bolletteri's academy? Or is she Russian, because she feels Russian and is proud of being Russian?

This question has generated a bit of a storm in a tea cup. Maria Sharapova had the honour of carrying the Russian flag in the Olympics, and was obviously thrilled about it. However, Tennis magazine journalist Peter Bodo was very upset about this and went on this rant:

"I get tired of hearing Sharapova, who lives in Bradenton, Fla., go on about how thrilled she is to represent her native Russia... I find Sharapova's attitude ungracious, and mind-numbingly so...

Maria seem more like a deluded character out of a Tennessee Williams play than a formidable "brand" and money-making machine. That's just plain weird; too weird to be true. I guess the money, creature comforts, and other attractions of the U.S. are more appealing than a life spent drinking in the piney mountain air of the Urals, or bobbing around in a boat in the headwaters of the mighty Don—great as it is to represent Russia in the Olympics!"

This is not just bad-spirited, it is outright stupid. It took me less than ten seconds to find out that the distance from Maria's home town, Nyagan, to the source of the River Don, in Novomoskovsk, is 1760 miles or two and a half days of driving time. Did John McEnroe, America's proudest Davis Cupper, ever go bobbing around in a boat in the headwaters of the mighty Mississippi? It is easy to dismiss Peter Bodo as a shrivelled-up, narrow-minded American git, but personally, I find his narrow-mindedness even sadder than that: Bodo himself was born in Austria and has spent pretty much his entire life reporting on a genuinely global sport.

Bodo's bile predictably generated a ton of negative reaction. Since then, Tennis magazine have tried to row back, with their more thoughtful columnist Steve Tignor writing that "I can’t begrudge her a desire to feel a link to her family and its history". But, like another American called Mitt Romney found out last week, what has been said can't be unsaid.

I myself am proud to have serially failed the Tebbit test, like every other expat I've met in Britain, and like every Englishman or Scot I've known who has lived abroad. That puts me squarely and naturally on Maria's side of this question. So I'll be hoping even more fervently than usual that Maria beats Serena Williams to win the Olympic gold for Russia. It's a long shot - the bookies at offering 4:1 on a Maria win - but she's still got a shot.

Tuesday 24 July 2012

Daniel Barenboim conducts...learning to lead like the great conductors

Daniel Barenboim conducting the West Eastern Divan Orchestra

The BBC Proms, on TV this week, features the West Eastern Divan Orchestra playing the complete cycle of Beethoven symphonies, conducted by Daniel Barenboim. The West Eastern Divan Orchestra are an ensemble of accomplished musicians from the Middle East, with a compelling story about trying to bring understanding and harmony to that troubled region; they are playing Beethoven's symphonies, unquestionably some of the greatest music ever conceived. Yet the advertising tag-line reads "Daniel Barenboim conducts...". Is this fair? Does the conductor add so much value that he deserves to be the headline act?

I don't have a closed-ended answer to that question, but I am convinced that a conductor adds real value. This is thanks a one of the most memorable business leadership development programs I've attended - The Music Paradigm, with Roger Nierenberg.

This program is built on the premise that a leader in a business corporation is like the conductor of an orchestra. In a business, a machinist, statistician or accountant knows much more about her or his speciality then the Vice President or General Manager every will, like in an orchestra, the violinist, flautist or cellist are more skilled at their respective instruments than the conductor will ever be. The General Manager or the conductor is needed to bring the amazing individual performers together, harmoniously, to make music. The Music Paradigm session starts with members of the class, like me, sitting in the midst of the orchestra. Gradually, as everyone gets comfortable with the setting, members of the class volunteer to step up to the podium, pick up the baton, and conduct the orchestra (with Roger Nierenberg's help).

Roger Nierenberg helps a first-time conductor
What made the Music Paradigm unique, different from the dozens of other team-building or leadership development sessions I've attended, was the experience of stepping up to the podium, picking up the baton, and hearing this virtuoso orchestra responding to your gestures by making music. That was powerful, memorable, profoundly emotional, and completely unlike anything I had felt before.

My classmates and I had a debrief after the Music Paradigm session, and our takeaways were very consistent. We all were NT personalities in the Myers Briggs' framework; science or engineering majors who had experienced success as problem solvers. We were veterans of various leadership programs, and had several years of people management experience. We were used to thinking about leadership in terms of setting direction, getting buy-in or sponsorship, pulling together resources, defining roles and responsibilities, setting up incentives - as a series of problems to be solved. What we were less used to was leadership as an emotional experience. Music as a metaphor made it obvious that a conductor's, or leader's, main contribution is in establishing an emotional connection with the players and with the music, that that emotional connection makes the difference between a competent professional performance, and something that sounds very different, an inspired or visionary performance. My classmates and I may not have disagreed with that thought on a PowerPoint slide, but music brought it home in a way that PowerPoint can't.

Itay Talgam's TED talk makes the same point, with video clips of some of the twentieth century's greatest conductors in action. Maybe the next iteration of this talk will include Daniel Barenboim conducting the West Eastern Divan Orchestra. Enjoy...

Thursday 19 July 2012

Ithaka is to some what Tatooine is to others

Luke Skywalker strides towards the twin sunset on Tatooine

I'd posted yesterday about the poem "Keep Ithaka always in the mind", in which Ithaka is a metaphor for home, for integrity. Other classical traditions have their own Ithakas, their own sacred places that stand for integrity. For instance, Star Wars fans might think of Tatooine - the desert planet in a galaxy far, far away where Luke Skywalker was raised - as their Ithaka.

The mythic, metaphorical Ithaka has a physical analogue: the island of Ithaki in western Greece. It turns out that Tatooine also has a physical analogue: Tataouine, in southern Tunisia.

George Lucas filmed the desert landscapes of Tatooine on location in Tunisia, the Breber architecture in Tataouine is recognizably the inspiration behind Luke Skywalker's childhood home. Apparently, he borrowed the name of a local town as well. Adherents of the Jedi faith are now making pilgrimages to Tataouine. The World's latest Technology podcast has a story about a Jedi knight, Mark from Norwich, who got married at Tataouine.

If only the people in power would uphold Britain's traditions of tolerance and include the Jedi religion on the census questionnaire, conversion to the Jedi faith would hit a tipping point...pilgrim traffic to the Tunisian Sahara would take off...the Tunisian economy would improve...the Arab Spring would be reinforced...inexpensive and effective nation-building in the Arab world!

Berber granaries in Tataouine, Tunisia

Wednesday 18 July 2012

Keep Ithaka always in your mind...



Came across another classically inspired poem. This time, I didn't randomly spot it on the tube. It came to my inbox in a farewell email from a Greek colleague, Clementina, who dedicated these lines to us:

Keep Ithaka always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you are destined for.
But do not hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
so you are old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you have gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.

Ithaka gave you the marvellous journey.
Without her you would not have set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.

And if you find her poor, Ithaka won’t have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,
you will have understood by then what these Ithakas mean. 


Ithaka as a metaphor for integrity reminds me of:

"You, who are on the road, 
must have a code, 
that you can live by. 

And so become yourself...".

Ithaka is where you learn that code, the code itself, and where you get to when you've lived by that code. Echoes of the Bhagavad Gita as well, "not expecting Ithaka to make you rich" maps directly to "कर्मण्ये वाधिकारस्ते मा फलेषु कदाचन".

Clementina found some beautiful words with which to acknowledge us, her colleagues, for being a part of her unhurried, marvellous journey, her Odyssey. Cheers Clementina! May Ithaka remain always in your mind.

Wednesday 11 July 2012

Jan Morris' Fourth World: In Praise of Idleness


Ox Travels has been resident on my bedside table for several months now. This is a collection of stories by travel writers, each story based on a meeting or encounter that happened while on the road. The stories are evocative, charming, and at about ten pages per piece, are not too demanding - ideal for a dip into another world before drifting off to sleep.

One story I just read in this collection is The Fourth World, by Jan Morris. The Fourth World is Morris' term for the virtual nation of kind people around the world, who together should be a powerful force for the good:

"My own experience, after seventy odd years of the meandering life, is that there exists a kind of vast supranational community whose citizens are essentially kind.

...the qualities of this virtual nation of mine can be elusive...But I know them by now, and I recognize them in all their myriad guises. I have recognized the signs in statesmen as in housewives, in taxi-drivers as in actresses and tycoons - a look in the eye, a smile, a gurgle of laughter is often enough. I knew I was in the presence of an initiate when, one day in the high Himalayas, alone in the high snows, I met a wandering holy man with whom I shared not a word or even a gesture, just an instinct.

...over the years I have come to realize that these people constitute a vast and powerful freemasonry...

I think of them one and all of constituting a Fourth World of their own...an association as wide and varied as my Grand Diaspora, bound only by decency and humour, would surely be unconquerable..."


Morris proceeds to give an Edinburgh barmaid an impassioned spiel about the latent force of the Fourth World, which is the "encounter" in the story. Regardless, I found this notion of the Fourth World seductive. My experience is also that most people, everywhere, are basically kind. I went to sleep thinking that, surely, basic human decency, kindness, the latent power of the Fourth World, will be harnessed one day to make the world a better place.

When I woke up, however, I remembered a paper I read in B-School which shows why it is so hard to engage the power of the Fourth World. Basically, people are kind when they have time on their hands. The same people stop being kind when they get busy.

The paper in question is "From Jerusalem to Jericho: A study of Situational and Dispositional Variables in Helping Behaviour", by Darley and Batson (thank you Google). This study looks at whether or not people stop to help a man slumped in an alleyway, moaning with pain; whether or not people behave like the Good Samaritan in the biblical parable. It found that people with time on their hands stopped to help. Those who were under time pressure, including those who were bustling off to give a lecture on the Parable of the Good Samaritan, did not help. This wasn't a small effect, it was observed in almost all the subjects of this study. People with time were kind, people who were in a hurry were not.

Looked at this way, Fourth World citizenship is situational. It increases when people are feeling time-rich. Perhaps the best thing organized religion did to promote kindness was to enforce the sabbath, to give people the experience of being time-rich, to create a space where time is in our hands, where we're not in the hands of time.

Idleness serves a deep moral purpose, as citizens of the Fourth World and bloggers know...