The Turnaround

Put up or shut up!

My leadership all a twitter... game's up!

Toiled and toiled with all our might

Nary a hope in sight!

One sank the Titanic for sure

But ours was blessed de jure

ALM Champs, Sprint mails, MVP Summits

Oh! What a joy to get those plaudits

Fired on all cylinders together

As Marketplace became all weather

Elastic clusters went smarter

Release exploded all a thunder

And Test slowly revealed its wonder

Was it too good to be true?

As DevOps Projects turned Azure bluer than blue?

Oh! As the ennui set in

From SFO he flew in

Did the unthinkable with GitHub

Set the industry on a hubbub!

As the monsoons begin to retreat

After a lovely deluge of treats

This old man must turn a new leaf

In millennials, his belief remains deep!

Today it happened

Was it really a vision or just my imagination? The intense love, that warmth I felt in my heart as I lay there after the stretches and Pranayams…

I thought of that hill again, but not as a treacherous shock of sharp, knee twisting rocks… I saw myself on top of the hill, singing, happy, overjoyed at the achievement.

Then just one thought – to sing like that each day - to love my inner spirit for not being afraid of the hill.

A surge of warmth spread through me. Not a balm to soothe the pain - just purity, allowing me to love myself again.

I have no guilt anymore, no regret, no pain. I will walk up that hill again with Anju just as I had wanted to on that day. To leap from rock to rock with her, to sing again.

Leuna had come to me in that gust of wind as I struggled with the song. She was there to tell me all would be fine.

I am not afraid anymore because He is with me.

This too shall pass, become a lingering happy memory, a memory for which I would hurt my knee all over again - if that’s the cost of blessings, so be it.

The veil lifted as the warmth hit – a transparent curtain of judgment that left only this intense peacefulness behind. I sang in the bathroom, hopping from side to side, just like that day on the hill. I was alive again!

Why do we need to suffer to see this love? Is it because recognition starts with pain? Is the ego so strong that it needs to be beaten down first for the inner peace to emerge?

Hamaari Poori Prem Kahaani!

For all the hurts, For all the rebukes, This is my way of saying sorry...

So said the caption with the rose

Little did he know that this prose

Would bring them ever so close

In heart and in spirit

They came together as one

Facing all and everyone

For true love will bow to none

Wasn't all roses and wine

To love the other, each had to pine

Since both were changing with time

Their joy knew no bounds

When they heard the lovely sounds

Of a bundle several pounds

As the Sitar played fast and faster

Her giggles turned to squeals of laughter

They were ever more blessed thereafter

Their deliberation reached a filibuster

So afraid his love would not muster

Listened to her, the Mister!

Soon our little one was a big sister!!

Tickle tickle with all his might

Nary a giggle, her breath all tight

Her little secret, don't you know?

No means Yes, Yes means No!

Hearts so near, yet so far

Penning poetry, hiking hajjaar

While he "relaxes" at Munnar

Awake @ Camp Noel

Al vida - an ode to Microsoft

Farewell my friends... my friends...

Even though they called us fiends

I never sensed any evil ends

Just a slow march to mediocrity

A sense of extreme complacency

At the height of our ascendancy

Down and hard you fall, seems to take no time at all...

So said David Gilmour

I couldn't agree with more

Seems more and more true

As the B's begin to rule

And the A's pass through

Goodbye... so long.. farewell...

Softie to a Noogler swell

The frog has jumped the well!

Written just before I left for Google. 

Two painful years later I was back to Microsoft, a very very different Microsoft!

Mademoiselle - Musings aboard EK 225, 6 AM PST, Feb. 24th, 2012

I mean, we are a hilarious bunch. The other day, a newspaper heading showed some Italian diplomat greeting his Indian counterpart with a kiss on her hand. The expression on the lady diplomat’s face was so quaint; it seemed almost incongruous to see her try so hard to appear European. I would have expected her to greet with the sterile “Namaste” but, we digress...

So, here we were at the dining table, the newspaper having arrived on time and I showed it to Puja and Arti. What happened next was quite out of the world: I was on my feet, Puja as well and we broke into endless “Mademoiselle’s”.... Puja and I, Arti and I, Anju and Arti, so on. A full complement later, we all rushed off to our schools/office.

[Good tea, hot! hot!!,, Listening to “Irish Birdsongs” by Seamus Byrne]

The more magical moment happened last night as we all hung around the bedroom. Before we could even realize what transpired, we broke into a spontaneous game of “Mademoiselle”! It was so fresh and full of laughter! Touch wood!!

Reaching such higher planes happens in minute pockets of time. One instant later and you have a totally new way of bonding with your loved ones. These are the real blessings, Om!

[Later on the flight read this article about the French discontinuing Mademoiselle - go figure!]

Everybody, Somebody, Anybody and Nobody

This is a little story about four people named Everybody, Somebody, Anybody and Nobody. There was an important job to be done and Everybody was sure that Somebody would do it. Anybody could have done it, but Nobody did it. Somebody got angry about that because it was Everybody's job. Everybody thought that Anybody could do it, but Nobody realized that Everybody wouldn't do it. It ended up that Everybody blamed Somebody when Nobody did what Anybody could have done.

I have always seen my role as a leader to be a combination of a coach, cheerleader and a brutally honest mirror to those around me. Someone who holds them accountable, gives concrete feedback and thus helps them improve. Of course, feedback is a two-way street – I also need to be open to critical feedback and ready to change and grow.

One of the consistent areas where I see myself providing feedback is around initiative and ownership. This story above is a quintessential challenge most employees face: that of waiting for leadership to be handed to them.

I follow a golden rule: if someone brings up an issue, that person gets to solve it. After all she/he was passionate enough to bring up the issue in the first place!

Over time you can get one of two behaviors: that people stop bringing problems your way or that they start to think of solutions before coming your way.

So, which one is it for your teams?

On FITJEE - excerpts from letters to my daughter

Did you know that your friend and her mother have started Yoga to deal with the stress of FITJEE*? If it gets them fit, that will mean 50% success.

Get it? No?

Aaah… let me explain… see FITJEE consists of two parts: FIT and JEE that when juxtaposed form what is in the modern world the moral equivalent of the Gulag and Paradise all rolled into one. The former, the pain of endless repetition of Free-body diagrams on foolscap paper; the latter, the Golden ticket to millionaire dreams and endless servings of chocolate ice-creams. If one attained FIT’ness, but didn’t make the JEE that would be 50% success since FIT and JEE are both 3 letters long which is 50% of the total of 6. Q.E.D.

The above may seem flippant or cynical but the underlying truth is even more bitter. For 3-4 years our youth devote endless hours trudging to special classes, solving problems in Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry in the hope of cracking that grueling examination we have to come to know as the JEE. An examination that yields a numerical value that serves as a life-long badge of honor for the lucky few who make it. For the rest this examination is simply the first reality check on several dimensions - IQ, focus, ambition. 

But does it matter that much really? I claim rank #2004 in the JEE of 1987  - they declared 2003 ranks if I recall correctly:-) I went to BITS Pilani, the other premier Engineering college of our day. Of course there were the REC's, Roorkee, Guindy, and many more of that ilk. But the sting of not making it to the IIT's remained with us for a long time. It began to wear off only when we realized that life was so much more than what examinations measure. I have had several IIT'ians as my colleagues and friends, very smart many of them, very focused most of them, very normal all of them. I feel strongly that the IIT's have their rightful place in our education system.

Yet many other avenues exist for pursuing our dreams. It is not the be-all-end-all by any means. People spark to their potential at all stages of their life. Not everyone needs to spark on that day.

* Its really FIITJEE but that doesn't change the rest...