We don't need no education, We don't need no thought control, No dark sarcasm in the classroom, Teacher leave them kids alone, Hey teacher! leave them kids alone! All in all it's just another brick in the wall, All in all you're just another brick in the wall.
I spent a chunk of my youth chanting along with this Pink Floyd rock anthem. So, I was intrigued to learn that one of the leading lights of the recent student riots in London was the Pink Floyd lead guitarist David Gilmour's son, Charlie Gilmour. The rioters were protesting the government's plans to raise university fees.
David Gilmour thinks education is worse than a waste of time. Yet, his son Charlie believes education is very important, and should be massively subsidized by the state. How did father and son wind up having such dramatically different views?
Or are their views really all that different? On reflection, I suspect not.
Neither father or son really has a point of view on the positive externalities created by subsidized, over-consumed higher education. They are not policy wonks. They are musicians. They are expressing an emotion. I think both father and son are expressing exactly the same emotion.
Jack Black captured this emotion precisely in School of Rock:
"The Man is everywhere. In the White House, down the hall, Mrs. Mullins (the head mistress), she's the Man. And the Man ruined the ozone, and he's burning down the Amazon, and he kidnapped Shamu and put her in a chlorine tank! And there used to be a way to stick it to The Man. It was called rock ‘n’ roll."
I think that is what both father and son were doing. As young men, they were sticking it to The Man. Once upon a time The Man said "go to school". Now, The Man says "you can't go to school unless you pay for school". Regardless, rock 'n roll wants to stick it to The Man.
Admittedly, the son did get a little excessively carried away. But one lesson he will have learnt from his father, and his father's friends, is that sticking it to The Man does not preclude making it up with The Man at some later stage. For all David Gilmour's angst about education, he still sent his son to an expensive private school, and on to read history at Cambridge.
This post is being published on December 25 to honour a deity whose birth is traditionally celebrated on this day: the sun god, Mithras.
I discovered Mithras (or Mitra) while exploring Rome this summer, at the Basilica di San Clemente. Entering at the street level, this Basilica is "one of the most richly decorated churches in Rome". Walk a couple of staircases down, and you're in the ruins of another great church, grand enough to have hosted papal councils, that was destroyed in the Norman sack of Rome in 1084. Another couple of staircases down - it's starting to get chilly now, and you can hear the rush of water from an aqueduct leading to the Tiber - is a cave with long stone benches running along the side. In the middle of the cave is a stone altar with a relief of a boy slaying a bull. This is what remains of the Mithraeum, the temple of Mithras, which was destroyed when the church was built.
Apparently, around 300 years after Christ, the cult of Mithras was one of the biggest of many foreign-inspired religious cults in the Roman empire. Mithras, which comes from the same root as Mitra, the Vedic sun god, was considered Persian. Other popular cults included the Greek-inspired cult of Demeter, the Egyptian-inspired cult of Isis, and the Palestinian cult of Christ. Mithraism was especially important because it was a for-men-only religion, and was popular with soldiers.
A few years later, Constantine converted to Christianity, and triggered Christianity's inexorable rise as the official religion of the world's most powerful Empire. But Constantine had emerged as Emperor after a bloody civil war between the Tetrarchs. He was looking to unite, not divide. He retained his status as Pontifex Maximus, as the symbolic head of the classical Olympian religion. He continued to support naturalist traditions, like worshipping the sun god Sol Invictus on Sundays. He made Christianity more appealing to the powerful Mithraic cult by accommodating its sacred symbols and myths within the Christian canon, including the legend of the three wise men and their gifts of gold, myrrh and frankincense, the taking of meat and blood as holy communion, and celebrating the deity's birthday on December 25.
Constantine issued an edict in 313 AD that declared December 25 to be the birthday of Jesus Christ. Previously Emperor Aurelian, a practicing Mithraist, had declared December 25 to be Mithras' birthday.
Constantine gave his name to his new capital city, Constantinople. But he cut his teeth at the other end of the Empire, in Britain. His approach of integrating elements of older folk religions into a powerful state religion may have been educated by what he observed in Britain, where the Romans successfully accommodated Celtic beliefs within the framework of their classical Olympian religion.
I saw this process beautifully showcased at the Temple of Sulis Minerva in Bath. The local Celtic people had long worshipped Sulis, the Goddess of Healing, at the mineral rich hot springs. When the Romans arrived on the scene, they gave this Celtic goddess a new hyphenated identity as Sulis-Minerva, and turned the hot spring into a thriving Roman Bath.
I believe a similar process also happened at home, in South India.
As Vedic Hinduism spread south through the sub-continent, it encountered a number of very sacred local deities, sites and practices of worship. This spread, for most part, was not orchestrated by empires, armies or a church. It happened through what would now be called "soft power".
This soft power was exercised by expanding the Hindu pantheon, and mythology, to give places of honour to these local deities, so new populations could reach into the philosophy of Hinduism without giving up their treasured local gods.
So, for instance, Murugan, the peacock riding boy-god who resides on Palani hill, was consecrated as Shiva's exiled second son. Murugan gets married both to Valli, daughter of a local tribe's chieftain, and to Devyani, daughter of Indra, the king of the Vedic gods.
Or Iyyappa, another revered hill-dwelling boy-god, is understood as Hariharaputra, the son of both Shiva and Vishnu, from when Vishnu was incarnate as the beautiful Mohini. He continued to live in his tropical rain forest home on Sabari Malai, instead of relocating to Mount Kailas in the snow covered Himalayas. Mythic win-win relationships.
I'd heard this question a few times at my new job, and I just couldn't figure out what it meant.
The context is usually as follows: We are in a day-long strategy meeting. We are running behind schedule. The presenter has walked through forty odd dense Powerpoint slides. The audience has mostly stopped paying attention, and is ready for a coffee-break. The presenter finally beams up the slide entitled Next Steps, to collective relief. Right then, a bright young spark sitting in the corner of the room is struck by a really important thought, and pipes up with "Just one more thing...". The senior pro running the meeting turns to the bright young spark, and gently asks "So, are you having a Colombo moment?"
Why Colombo? Surely the Sri Lankan capital is a laid-back sort of place, where bright young sparks are more given to bowling doosras than to being struck by really important thoughts just before coffee breaks.
I finally cornered the senior pro during the coffee break and asked him what a Colombo moment really is. It turns out that the reference has nothing at all to do with the Sri Lankan capital. The reference is to Frank Columbo, a detective from a 1970s American TV series.
Lieutenant Columbo is a brilliant detective who lulls the murder suspect into a false sense of security with his dishevelled look and his overly polite manner. His signature technique is to conduct a friendly and seemingly innocuous interview, politely conclude it and exit the scene, only to stop in the doorway and ask, "Just one more thing...". This one more thing is invariably an inconsistency in the suspect's alibi, or in the crime scene, which ultimately nails the murderer.
So a Columbo moment is a thought, delivered to a comfortably jaded audience, in a "just one more thing" format, which is so insightful that it cracks the entire case open on the spot.
I attended a paper-meeting last week. By paper-meeting, I mean a day-long meeting of more than ten people, where the materials being discussed are in fat spiral-bound paper dockets (thappis). This was my first paper-meeting in a decade. I loved it.
At most contemporary meetings, or at least in my last company, people stare at discussion documents on their laptop screens. As a result, the body language around the table is just awful. The flipped up laptop screens become symbolic shields. People hunker down behind these shields. Making eye contact is hard. Rapport building - which is what generally makes meeting in person worth the effort - never happens.
With a paper-meeting, the ebb and flow of conversation around the table was so much more natural and human. It was well worth the effort of printing, binding and transporting the thappis to the meeting.
One irritant with paper-meetings is archiving. I still need to follow up with various people for e-versions of the documents shared last week for my files. This was so much easier when people just emailed me their stuff before the meeting. Another obvious, gross, waste is the paper itself, even in recycling-friendly London.
Maybe an iPad is the answer. An iPad's body language is much better than a laptop's: it sits flat on a table-top and is not a natural shield. iPad enabled meetings can avoid the production and archiving issues, and the sheer waste, of printing out reams of paper. Boy, would Steve Jobs be happy if iPads became standard issue business equipment?
Disclaimer: I swear I have not taken money from Steve Jobs to write this post :)
I was at the club, meditating on a cappuccino, while the kids were at tennis class. Muzak played in the background. Billy Joel floated up on the Muzak track, singing:
She can kill with a smile, She can wound with her eyes, She can ruin your faith with her casual lies, And she only reveals what she wants you to see, She hides like a child, But she’s always a woman to me...
I noted that the saddest thing that can happen to art happens when music turns into Muzak. This does not apply to made-for-Muzak specialists like Yanni, Norah Jones or Richard Clayderman. But when the work of real artists, like Jim Morrison, Neil Young or Bob Dylan is stripped of its emotional heft and piped around supermarkets, to people hearing without listening, that is profoundly sad.
Point noted. Billy still banging on:
...She carelessly cuts you and laughs while you’re bleeding, She brings out the best and the worst you can be...
Maybe I just was not in the mood to sympathize with unrequited love. Billy, I asked myself, as he built up to the crescendo...
And the most she will do is throw shadows at you, But she’s always a woman to me.
...what exactly would happen if she did not remain a woman to you? What if she stopped being a gorgeous babe who kills with a smile, who causally throws shadows at poor besotted Billy? Would she turn into a flitty, flighty, fluttering, fairy? Would she turn into a hag, or a fire breathing dragon?
A tautology like “always a woman” is worth stating, even in a pop song, only if it has another layer of meaning, a layer in which it isn’t obviously a tautology. For instance, when Crosby Stills Nash and Young sang, “A man’s a man who looks a man, right between the eyes...” they were pointing to an ideal of manhood, of integrity, that boys should aspire to but seldom achieve. Billy's tautology implies that the only women worth the name are babes, deadly babes, the sort of babes who promise you more than the Garden of Eden.
What about my buck toothed, bespectacled second cousin who chain-reads Agatha Christie? Or my caftan-clad maiden aunt, who is excessively proud of her almond burfi? Neither of them is a crush-worthy babe. Neither of them is the flirty type who might throw shadows at Billy. But surely, they still are women. This is so unfair.
This is what Noami Wolf called the Beauty Myth, feminism's last great battle-front. Women have shaken off many myths of womanhood, expectations which once bound their lives. They are now at liberty, at least in my circles, to walk away from purity, chastity, motherhood, servitude, delicacy, vulnerability. "Frailty, thy name is woman", would not have occured to Hamlet if he had seen watched Serena Williams wallop a forehand crosscourt.
Yet, after all these victories, women are still bound by one final myth, the expectation that a woman must be beautiful, desirable. This final myth leaves women vulnerable to countless soul-destroying insecurities, and open to exploitation by men, and by the market. Besotted Billy's lyrics, unknowingly, are reinforcing this nasty myth. Stupid Billy.
As it turns out, this post is not a political rant. It is about the value of even a little research. I had totally misunderstood the song. Billy gets the shackles imposed by the myths of womanhood, and is on the right side of the argument.
Wikipedia tells me, authoritatively as usual, that this song was written for Billy Joel's first wife Elizabeth. She had become Billy Joel's business manager at a time when his life and his finances were on the rocks. Elizabeth sorted out his finances, became his wife, and managed Billy to platinum albums like Piano Man, The Stranger and 52nd Street. She was considered "unfeminine" in the industry for being a tough-as-nails negotiator. Billy wrote this song as a rejoinder to that "unfeminine" label. "She only reveals what she wants you to see" is not about her decolletage, it is about her negotiating style. Regardless, she's always a woman to Billy.
Another song in The Stranger, I Love You Just the Way You Are, was also written for Elizabeth, and expresses the same sentiment, without the delicious ambiguity.
Unfortunately, Billy and Elizabeth divorced, and Billy doesn't enjoy either Always a Woman or Love You Just the Way You Are anymore. He tries not to perform them. So this John Lewis' Christmas advert, which I think captures the open-hearted spirit in which the song was originally written, has vocals by Fyfe Dangerfield. Enjoy.
The Rafael Nadal Foundation just opened a primary school in India, in Anantapur, Andhra Pradesh. I am especially delighted because Rafa’s name is now linked with education, because, to me, Rafa epitomizes what education ought to be about. Its not really about multiplying matrices or solving differential equations. It is about being educado.
This excellent New York Times article on Rafa describes what I mean:
The Nadal personality stories that circulate among tournament fans are all variations on a single theme: the young man is educado, as they say in Spanish, not so much educated in the formal sense (Nadal left conventional schooling after he turned pro at 15), but courteous, respectful, raised by a family with its priorities in order. Nadal may have the on-court demeanor of a hit man, as far as the party across the net is concerned, but you will never see this champion hurl his racket during a match...
“It’s about respect,” Toni (Nadal, Rafa’s uncle and coach) told me. “It’s really easy for these guys to start thinking the world revolves around them. I never could have tolerated it if Rafael had become a good player and a bad example of a human being.”
What I love about Rafa is that he is lit up not by divine inspiration, but by the fire in his belly. He is not a J Krishnamurthy-esque other-worldly idealist, contemplating the beauty of the morning sun lighting up a dewdrop on a blade of grass. He is not a Christ-like figure who will turn the other cheek. Rafa is not a saint, but a man; a very decent man.
Once upon a time, sport played a central role in education, because it helped produce people like Rafa. Sport makes it easy be educado, precisely because it is fierce, physical and competitive. Decency is not about sappy moralizing. When sport is about being educado, it is not just for elite athletes, it is for everybody. Playing with gumption, respecting the game, playing to win, never passively accepting defeat, its a part of being educado, at every level of play.
Once upon a time, Aussies exemplified these values. Don Bradman, Ken Rosewall, Richie Benaud, Rod Laver, Mark Taylor - all educado. Clive Lloyd's Windies were such great champions not just because they won, but because they were educado. Boys from PG Wodehouse's Wrykyn would know exactly what I am talking about, without needing explanations. Somewhere along the way, something important got lost. Punter Ponting and his punks were congratulated on their "ruthless professionalism" as long as they kept winning, but are despised by the cricketing world now that they have stopped winning. Tennis is exciting again not just because Rafa and Roger play so well, but because of the way they play, re-capturing a spirit which should never have been lost.
And so, will the good people of Anantapur, Andhra Pradesh, take to hitting a furry yellow ball around a geometrical grid? Will they imbibe the spirit of champions past and become educado? I couldn't blame them if they were more concerned about landing a job in an air-conditioned software office in Hyderabad. But, heck, hope springs eternal...maybe the good people of Anantapur will write better software because they are educado, like Rafa.
Cheteshwar Pujara, looking back on his test debut, remembers that “ he (Sachin) told me that God has given you this chance to play; he will help you score runs, don’t worry.”
Pujara’s words give devout Sachinists a rare insight into Sachin's religious thought. To Sachin, it is clearly self-evident that God exists, and that God is merciful and kind. Sachin also seems to be describing a God who is out-there rather than in-here, the Dvaita God rather than the Advaita God. He is not asking Pujara to search for the spark of the divine that dwells within, he is asking Pujara to trust in the Almighty, a power distinct and different from Pujara.
Sachin’s advice worked. Pujara kept his cool and made a fourth inning 72 to steer India to a memorable series win against Australia. That is good evidence in support of Sachin’s theology.
Spiritual faith can’t be evaluated for truth, because its truth or falsehood can never be empirically tested. Spiritual faith can only be judged, if it can be judged at all, by the yardstick of usefulness: does this faith result in better human behaviour or performance? Pujara’s experience suggests that trusting God, and therefore freeing up the mind and spirit to be present in the moment, does improve performance.
Sachin believing instinctively in a God-out-there, in a higher power than man, feels natural. He is so gifted he could make an atheist believe in God.
Radheya and his Guru Parashurama
Yet the Gods are capricious. They can be cruel even to the devout, even to their most favoured sons. The gifts the Gods give so liberally they can take away, especially when they are most needed.
This happened to Sachin at a pivot point in history. After he was player of the tournament in the 2003 World Cup, he was touring Australia with Saurav Ganguly’s team in 2004. India were going toe to toe, eyeball to eyeball, with Steve Waugh’s team, the greatest cricket team since Clive Lloyd’s Windies. India were playing with courage, conviction and skill, matching the Aussies’ every move. Dada, Rahul, Laxman and Viru had all scored career defining centuries.
But where was our best player? Sachin was missing.
It was as if Sachin was Radheya in the Mahabharata, the greatest archer in the great war at Kurukshetra, who lost his skills at the war’s most crucial moment. In the first three tests, Sachin had managed scores of 0, 0, 44, 1 and 37. Worse than the scores themselves was the way he was batting: scratching around, groping for the ball, hanging his bat out to dry.
Now, even Sachin was a mere mortal.
As the series reached its climax, Sachin responded to his mortality by reaching within, by discovering that he was man enough to make his own destiny.
For the final and decisive test match in Sydney, Steve Waugh’s last match, Sachin turned his game upside down. He did not put his trust in God. He did not trust his God-given instincts. He did not play at anything outside the off stump, an area which had been so productive for him over the years. He did not drive at half volleys secure in the knowledge that the Gods would guide the ball to the cover boundary instead of into second slip’s hands.
Sachin playing the shot he denied himself in Sydney
He completely cut out his favourite offside shots. He didn't score a single boundary between point and long-off. He made the Aussies bowl on to his pads, batted all day with VVS Laxman, remained unbeaten on 241, and took India to a position from where Australia could not win.
This was unquestionably Sachin’s greatest innings, and it was completely unlike anything Sachin had ever played before. It wasn’t about incandescent, outrageous talent blowing away the opposition. It was about character and craftsmanship, grit and determination, the gifts of the God-found-within as much as the God-above.
Sachin did not turn his back on the Gods. He was not bitter that the Gods had abandoned him. He accepted God's wrath as graciously as he accepted His munificence. But Sachin was no longer solely dependent on God's munificence; he was now twice-born, having given expression to the God-within as well as the God-above.
On his test debut, Pujara discovered that the Gods can be kind, the Gods had given him a chance to play for India. He found out that the Gods can be cruel, like with the grubber from Mitchell Johnson that got him LBW in his first test innings. He discovered that faith in God can be useful, like the faith that kept him calm during his match-winning second innings. But the longer he plays, the more he will discover that he needs to find the God-within to join the ranks of India’s great players, like Saurav Ganguly, Zaheer Khan, Anil Kumble, Sunil Gavaskar, or that ultimate fighter, Mohinder Amarnath. Or like Sachin Himself.
I spent a chunk of my youth chanting along with this Pink Floyd rock anthem. So, I was intrigued to learn that one of the leading lights of the recent student riots in London was the Pink Floyd lead guitarist David Gilmour's son, Charlie Gilmour. The rioters were protesting the government's plans to raise university fees.
I think that is what both father and son were doing. As young men, they were sticking it to The Man. Once upon a time The Man said "go to school". Now, The Man says "you can't go to school unless you pay for school". Regardless, rock 'n roll wants to stick it to The Man. 
