Category: Life Ordinary

  • Oh, you rockstar you!

    Season 1, Episode 3 of The Dewarists brought together Indian Ocean and Mohit Chauhan, in “Maaya” and took me back to 2001. Goa. When Silk Route’s Dooba Dooba was still a popular number and I was loaned the Kandisa tape by my hostel neighbour A. After several months, he stole it back from me. (because I wouldn’t return it voluntarily!)

    httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRhTmRPVrYQ

    As I watched the video on YouTube, I noticed the silver creeping into Mohit Chauhan’s sideburns. 🙂 I suddenly realised that it had been more than a decade since the yellow car slowly sunk into the water and it’s been 2 years since Asheem Chakravarty died. It made me wonder about succession plans for artists and their bands. Yes, some bands do keep evolving, their members change, but their peaks of popularity is restricted to a timeframe – a generation at best. In some cases, the music they created lives on even after them, though the members themselves may have moved on, within this life or beyond.

    But imagine, each member being able to pick out his own successor who is able to recreate the music as well as that extra something that made the band what it was. Imagine The Beatles now with 4 new members doing concerts with a new sound but retaining the DNA that made them great. Quite impossible no? It’ll never be the same.

    And that perhaps explains why they’re special. And it’s not just artists, it goes for people who excel across the spectrum. There is no succession plan they can make. They are unique, ‘single piece’. But then so are all of us, one of a kind. The difference is in scale. What they created left a mark on many more lives. They found something at a point in time that only they could have done, in such a way that anyone who experienced it was changed.

    We do many things on any given day, and many a time we are also rockstars in someone’s life, even for a brief period. Is that purpose enough for us or will we want further? Will we open ourselves to possibilities and grab the chance when it comes? Will we go beyond that and chase opportunities down? Maybe the way we answer this frames our life journey.

    Mann ka panchhi Tan ka pinjara 
    Bin maange ki jail

    until next time, rock sako to rock lo 😀

  • Well. Begun

    Twice in the last few weeks, my hosting service took down my sites citing database problems. The second time, I decided to a slightly more detailed check, and figured out that the rogue database was one of my lifestreaming experiments. Thanks to memolane, I could delete it without fretting much. Coincidentally, that was also the day that I gained access to Facebook’s new Timeline feature, and was inspired enough to start filling it. 🙂

    Though I have connected all my online presence, the blogs retain their individual identity. The only place where they really met was the lifestream. But like I mentioned in an earlier post, Google+ allows me to integrate identities even while allowing compartmentalisation. Increasingly, so does Facebook. Privacy is already a huge concern, and anonymity is not something our institutions can digest. Thankfully, in my case, I do end up behaving as per Darth Schmidt’s adage “If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place” At least I wouldn’t post it 😀

    What I do post however (across both the blogs) are a range of topics – personal perspectives, restaurant reviews, book reviews, my start up and technology columns, travel photos, job notes, and so on. All of these are part of my identity, and technology allows me to distribute it according to the audience. Considering that these parts are already getting integrated on social platforms, one of my ‘projects’ for 2012 is going to be how I can accommodate all of this on a single blog/site. Any ideas?

    Meanwhile, memolane is already thinking of how brands can use ‘lifestreaming’. When Facebook opens the Timeline feature for Pages, it is going to be really interesting! But for now, I’d like Facebook to open up imports from other sites.

    until next time, 1/2.0 done 🙂

  • Reference Groups for Heroes

    Scott Adams had a very interesting post ‘The Comparison Advantage‘, in which he writes about status related stress when “media is changing our reference group. We’re continuously bombarded with stories about people who are fabulously successful.” I’d add that social media is also a big culprit. According to him, the cure is  “to make sure you’re near the top of at least one reference group in your life.”

    With some difference, this is a thought that had crossed my mind long before I read this. But before we get to that, an interesting thing happened. A couple of posts (in Google Reader) after the above, I came across a post by Nilofer Merchant on HBR Blogs titled “Be Your Own Hero“. Completely contradictory? No. But related and yet different perspectives? Yes. This author asks us to junk the ‘Hero Narrative’ and pushes us to be our own hero by following our own passions and not trying to emulate anyone – a “clarity of purpose” for oneself. One of the proposed mantras is also “I shall not obsess over others’ success”, in addition to doing our bit to co-create the future.

    And now we can come back to my thought. I can relate to Nilofer’s views because that was what led me to leave a cubicle and explore the path of being employed by myself. One and a half years gave me an immense amount of learning, one of which was that even with a well thought out ‘personal purpose’ in hand, it was difficult for me to stop comparing. It really didn’t help that the gestation time for it was quite high, and a ‘need it now’ attitude, probably heightened by social media, also played its part.

    After much thought, I jumped back into a cubicle, before which I rewrote the ‘personal purpose’, in which I attempted to factor in the statustics. Putting a full stop to comparison is a long journey, and I’m already on it. An insight (humour me 😉 ) I had while thinking about the ‘compare feature’ was that so far I had been dependent on one of my identities heavily. Mostly it was my work visiting card. So, when comparing, I wasn’t really acknowledging the other things that I was doing, and doing reasonably well. And that is where I mash Nilofer’s ‘personal purpose’ with Scott Adams’ ‘reference group’. I don’t need to top any of my reference groups, but I need them so that my ‘personal purpose’ is balanced between various activities and relationships. That way, I don’t have to kill myself for not blazing a new trail independently. The cubicle job allows me to work on the things I like to work on; the blogs, social platforms and columns allow me to explore other avenues of interest and gives me a sense of worth, and when I need a hug, there’s D and friends and family. I try to make conscious decisions on each of these, keeping the others in mind. Multiple identities, multiple reference groups, all part of the personal purpose. Early days, but the signs are good.

    until next time, try id out 🙂

  • < /life > < death >

    So, ‘Oh Wow. Oh Wow. Oh Wow‘ has now been pretty much immortalised. I began to wonder about last words and coincidentally came across this article around the same idea.  As the article states, Steve Jobs “managed to bring the same sense of wonderment to death as he did to life.”

    Few people, I’d think, would like to dwell on their mortality. I am not sure if it was because this topic was playing in the background (in my mind), but I began noticing a lot of deaths recently. Some old, some middle aged, and famous enough in some context to appear in a newspaper. There were important death anniversaries too. There was also the death of a 25 year old, who could technically be termed a 2nd degree  connection. Jobs knew it was coming, and had probably prepared himself for it. But the deaths I read about happened either after a few days in hospital, or a few hours, or were accidents.

    I wondered how many are prepared for their death, let alone ready with their last words. The 25 year old, from what I read and heard, would just have had enough time to mourn himself and the utter meaninglessness of it all! At least, that was my first thought – so, so early. Set to start his first job next month, life was just about to begin for him. Until a terminal disease strikes or the actual time of death, does anyone even understand the implication of mortality? What would be the last thought playing in the head? Probably we only have enough time to think “Oh my god (non-atheists), I’m about to die”. Some would have their loved ones around, some not. Some might go blank, some would want to say something and they may or may not have the ability to do so. Some would ask a higher power for more time, some might be thankful that it’s all ending. Does the life actually flash before one’s eyes? If so, is that preparation for something else?

    Why did Jobs use those words? Had he only just realised how much he had changed the world? Was it wonderment at the thought that irrespective of what one achieved, this was the equaliser? That this was how it would end, for everyone. Or was it just the awe of everything that he understood as life, coming to an end? Or did he see something else that caused the wonderment – a glimpse of what lay beyond?

    It is often said that the best way to live life is to live in the moment. Does it also include death? Death of the moment? Death of the ‘me’ in that moment?

    until next time, live long and prosper 🙂

  • Mid Season Update

    It’s been just under 3 months in the not-so-new job, and I thought this would be a good time to write a progress report. The social media portion of the job – which includes prioritising objectives, evolving a strategy and roadmap for how various tools and aspects of the social web can be introduced and used in various functions, creating and streamlining processes on a regular basis, setting up measurement parameters and doing some fun experiments – would be several posts unto itself, and the learning curve of setting up a social agenda across the organisation is practically at 90 degrees! But there’s another project I started that has now reached a ‘shipped’ status. :))

    One of the trends that many people seem to agree on is the role of brands as content creators and curators. As the posts on this blog would show, I have believed in branded content for quite a while now. But that again requires an understanding of the landscape, objectives, strategy, creating and executing a content calendar, finding ways to market the content, and most importantly, over a period of time, creating and maintaining a sense of trust with the community and understanding and meeting their expectations.

    After going through rigorous processes – from choosing platforms to content planning processes to back end infrastructure to team structure and all the other steps outlined earlier and more, we finally have a fashion blog for Myntra. Though I don’t plan to contribute further to the blog in terms of actual writing, (yes, the fashion world lives to fight another day 😉 ) I did write the introductory post for the blog. Do check that out here.

    The blog has been active for just a fortnight now. I’ll be glad if you could take a look and give me your feedback, either here or Myntra’s Twitter account or on the blog itself. It’s a first step of a long journey, and it promises to be a fun ride. 🙂

    until next time, in fashion 🙂