The Crazies

The Crazies
No peak remains unconquered. The question is if you want to be the one to do it or you want to step aside for someone else! When George Mallory was asked,"What do you so badly want to scale Mount Everest?" his answer was,"because it's there"! How often do we turn away from our peaks?
Spent the last few days trying to motivate a bunch of associates settled in a comfort zone seldom sensing the need to wander far from it. Thinking of wandering far from known confines can give the best of us the heebie-jeebies!
Came up with the starting lines of this post during one of the conversations! How do you fill life with purpose and not spend it looking for it? We are all on a mission. Only a handful few ever get to know what that mission is. Is it then possible to believe that what we are doing now may be a part of the grand design? But then what about the mavericks who stretch the envelop? What is more important, to keep at it or try and turn it on its head, finding answers to the questions or asking the right questions?
We would probably still be living in caves of Africa if some crazies had not asked some questions and ventured out far on a limb and a prayer, to seek! Who knows if any of them did find what they sought? What we do know is today we inhabit six continents!
I hear a rocket uses 120% of it's notional energy level to blast off! And even that is not enough to take it onto higher planes in it's trajectory. Booster rockets need to be fired off! Is there a lesson there on how to manage our life, our relationships, ourselves? Food for thought.
Till later...

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I tells you... Dateline Santiago de Chile

I tells you... Dateline Santiago de Chile

I tells you? Is that a typo? Did I hear it right? No, its not a typo and you bet I heard right. Will come back to it, though.
Chile is on the other side of the earth as India. Nestled in the undulating Andes, it's a constant roller coaster of the modern and the ancient. Chile, at least most of it, formed part of Peru and Chileans, mostly, descend from the Mayans. They go back a long long time. Though, today it's a melting pot of the Peruvians, the Venezuelans, the Colombians and so on so forth, but mostly Central Americans.
As a country, it's a visual treat. Miles and miles of pine forests framing acres and acres of vineyards on both sides of very modern expressways! Santiago, with a population of over seven million, is the largest city. A hundred km away is the port city of Valparaiso, or as they say, puerto. It looks like a city which acquired a mind of it's own in defying its planners! Here the Pacific gently caresses the lower Andes. Mankind, perhaps, visited this place to see this play of the ocean and the mountain from its shoulders and never left. The whole city is like a carpet spread on the slopes. And nestled next to it is the beautiful quaint town of Vina del Mar. Sun, sand and surf! Children, young and old, frolic on the beach! Bodies, young and able, jump in and out of huge waves on their surfboards. People come here to reclaim a piece of life from their daily routine.
On my next visit, expect to visit the southern part, close to the Polar cap and take in the views of snow clad Andes!
5000 km long and hardly 200 km wide, the country is almost the shape of a chilli. Though, I'm assured the two are entirely unconnected. A beautiful country inhabited by beautiful people!
Now on to "I tells you...". I had a couple of colleagues, engineers both, here with me for a couple of days. We have 18 official languages and more than 8000 dialects, or so I read somewhere. The language of global commerce, English, too, hasn't remained untouched from our diversity. We seem to speak it, if not in 8000 different ways, definitely in as many ways as there are parts of India that we come from. I've witnessed people from other countries needing translation from what we, at times peddle as English, into the English that the world at large speaks! And I'm not talking of Queen's English. And then there are gems like, I tells you, we are very confident and we want to make you confident...
Is it time we took a step back and introspected if we are ready to make it an Indian century? Or at least compete with the Chinese to make it one?
On a lighter note, here is a joke borrowed from a friend:
A woman asks her husband, busy throwing darts at the board imagining her face to be where the bull's eye is, "honey, what are you doing?" Husband: "missing you!"
Till later...

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