Prisoner Of Your Own Fears

My Toastmaster Level 5 Speech Video and Content.

Friends call him a live cricket encyclopedia. And why not, Shantaram is a diehard cricket fan. Today is the day he was waiting for a long time. India v/s Australia final. After witnessing India’s bowling performance in the first half, Shantaram was quite sure India will be lifting up the cup. While watching the Indian Batting in the middle overs, he left his seat to grab a cup of coffee. When he returned back, to his dismay, he noticed India lost a key wicket. “Look at those crazy fellows. One good chance they have got to beat Aussies and they are beeping[sound] it up.” He said angrily to himself. This sequence continued a couple of times. Every time he left his seat, India lost a wicket. He got desperate and fear of losing started grappling his mind. He decided not to leave his seat until the match gets over. With more ups and downs, however without losing any wicket, India won the game. Shantaram was probably the happiest man in the world; however, he became a victim of one of the most incomprehensible phenomenon of the world. Any idea what phenomenon am I talking about? Toastmaster and guests, yes this phenomenon is called Superstition, which has gripped millions of people around the world centuries after centuries and has force them to believe in something which can never be explained using normal equations of cause and effect. Today, I'm going to talk about how it influences people in a subtle way and how we can take a small step towards curbing it.

Most of the superstitions are usually harmless. Wearing your lucky shirt, lucky tie on your interview, writing an exam with a lucky pen. So what exactly is the problem with being superstition? Superstition is so powerful that it leads you to attribute your successes to something outside yourself. This essentially means that you are held back from unleashing your own inner strengths and abilities. Loss of confidence. First problem!!! Next is even if something negative happens one is not going to attribute the failure of the outcome to the superstition. The person will start blaming other factors and not the superstition. I happened to witness a perfect example of this in the recently concluded Indian Premiere League, IPL. Match after match, Mumbai Indians kept on losing, however, Mrs Neeta Ambani was not willing to give up her superstition of having sit Zaheer Khan and Praveen Amre beside her for the entire match. One never kills his/her superstition and because of this the pile of superstitions keeps on increasing and then we graciously pass the baggage to our children who follow these superstitions blindly. Second problem !!!

Superstition is a part of the very being of the humanity and getting completely away from it is next to impossible. Even the great philosophers, famous scientists, engineers were and are superstitious. So how we get rid of it? Well, we can make a brilliant start to challenge our superstitions by start taking risks for not so important tasks where failure does not hamper us in any way. And then increasing our risk appetite slowly. For example, in case of Shantaram, if India had lost, he would suffered a setback momentarily. But not for ever. I remember when I was in 11^th standard preparing for a competitive exam, my obdurate mind would instruct me to do lots of stupid stuffs. “kapil, hold your breath for 45 seconds or else you will not score well in tomorrow’s exam”. In a day I don’t remember how many times I did this thing. So I decided to take risk, not do such stupid things and spend more time concentrating on studies. The risk paid off and I started believing in my abilities. Since then, I’ve tasted both successes and failures many times, but every time I savor success I know it’s only myself that I need to congratulate. This gave a boost to my confidence and allowed me to softly, slowly, steadily kill many of my superstitions.

To conclude, I would like to empasize that these little rituals of magic are so much part of our culture that we question them, forget questioning them, we dont even notice them. I appeal everyone sitting here to not allow yourself to become prisoner of your own fears. Don’t let superstition rule your mind and wreck your life. Instead, try hard, reaaaal hard, to overcome your fears by inspiring confidence in yourself, inspiring authority in your decisions, inspiring trust in your actions. You will then realize and enjoy the person who is truly you and not someone like Shantaram.

WWE: Perfect Entertainment

My Toastmaster Level 4 Speech. Don't have the video, hence, posting the content.

The talking has stopped, the action has begun; this is going to be a one night of hell in a cell. One second, you see a fiery fist, like a ton of bricks, smashed on the opponent's skull; the other second you witness a monstrous insurmountable body flying through the air and striking the opponent's body. Yes, I knew the fights were scripted and choreographed. I knew that the brutal blood bath in the middle of the ring was planned. However, I loved watching these fights. And my love for the game continues even today. Imagine two iconic players engaged in a fearsome battle just to entertain the audience. Imagine an arena where use of metal casket, metal chair, and sledgehammer are legal just to entertain the audience. Imagine a billion dollar industry that has got no mission but just to entertain the audience at any cost. Wow. It’s a perfect entertainment. And that’s what WWE; World Wrestling Entertainment is all about.

Toastmaster, Fellow Toastmasters and guests, today I'm going to step into WWE arena and punch out reasons for watching WWE fights even today.

Well, WWE is a simulated sport that combines acting, theater and wrestling. Among the three, I've enjoyed the acting part of WWE most. Not only the wrestlers act, but also the Chairman, the management committee members, the commentators and you are not going to believe it, even referees. Let me paint a picture of how a referee brings an element of entertainment in a WWE fight. Sometimes during a match, a wrestler will knock down the referee. And to emphasize the boldness, the braveness, the brazenness of the wrestler, the referee will act as if he has lost consciousness. After sometime, when the wrestler has done all the damage on the opponent, the referee will spring to life. But wait, he wont stands up on his legs. Instead, to further dramatize the situation, he will crawl slowly towards the center of the ring, inciting roaring crowd's enthusiasm, excitement and exhilaration. With all energy left, he will tap 3 times on the floor. NOW that is articulation and acting at its best.

The next part I enjoy about WWE is smartly anchored stories, ie the theatrical part. Every fight of WWE is superbly written and executed. WWE fight stories are like forest where if one loses the track for few episodes, he is bound to get lost. One week you witness two wrestlers teamed up and fighting against another team and then few episodes later, they would be feuding against each other. WWE would project a wrestler as a haunted spirit, who has got magical powers and resides in the dark valley of Bermuda Triangle. They would even stage death of a wrestler and initiate a fake FBI investigation. The investigation further would heat up equations with numerous other wrestlers and the story ends up creating catchy drama and much awaited high profile fight. Gosh!!! Too much creativity and I bet if anyone doesn’t laugh watching such episodes.

Now the wrestling part. WWE is not a professional sport; therefore, the wrestlers have to be very careful while executing their steps. One wrong step can end a wrestler's career and may be even life. Jumping off the rings, slamming on the floor are not very simple moves. I say these are not simple moves because I experienced it first hand. I remember I had an ugly fight with my schoolmate on the basketball court. After exchanging few heated words, I galloped in the air and performed a stunt of my favorite wrestler. My entire body was in the air, horizontal. And just when I was about to execute my final act, ie hit him with my legs, my opponent tricked me. He simply moved one step back. And here I was suspended freely in the air. I cycled my legs, but nothing happened and then the gravitational force took control of my body. I landed, no crashed, on the cemented floor, hurting my hand and chest badly. This incident led me to believe that how difficult it is to stage a fake fight that looks real on camera. I respect wrestlers for bringing out such a kind of entertainment to audience while hurting their own body.

As a kid, I never understood, why the concept of fake fighting works. Why do WWE producers think that the audience would believe in their masterly modulated fights or stories? Well, the answer is simple. WWE works as a Magic where if one can fool the audience, even for a second, then you get to see something really special... it is the look on the audience faces. Audience knows the truth but still can’t believe what they have just witnessed. It’s a perfect combination of acting, theater and fight that entertains the audience. And that’s what WWE is all about. Entertaining the audience.

Lets Talk

Remember the movie 12 Angry Men, or the Indianized version Ek Ruka Hua Faisla, where 11 of the 12 jurors hurriedly agreed that the convicted boy killed his father and, hence, should be awarded the punishment. Only one of them wasn't sure and in his response he asked all others to talk.

I saw this movie long time back, however, I got to understand the meaning of the whole movie around 10 days back. This, again, is with respect to my dilemma over choosing NUS or ISB for MBA. In this case, I was mimicking the 12th juror and wanted to talk about pros and cons of each institute and, finally, arrive at the conclusion. In the process, I talked to close to 15 people that really made me help taking a thoughtful/fantastically analyzed decision. And now almost everyone I talk to agrees with my reasoning. This was exactly the case in both movies as well.

Now, whenever I'll be confused, I just have to make sure that I go out, meet people and say: 'Lets Talk'.

My First Management Lesson

I got to learn my first management lesson from my elder cousin brother, Sachin, when I was in a huge dilemma over finalizing NUS or ISB for my MBA. When ISB result was declared on Feb 10th, I had a mixed feeling as I had admit from NUS as well. I called up Sachin's elder brother, Nitin, who is working in Shell (Hague, Netherlands). We decided to have a conference call in the night. After that I called up Sachin and told him to attend the conference. He agreed. Then he asked me what is Nitin suggesting. I told him that he would place his bet on NUS.

Around 11PM we started the conference. Nitin preferred NUS and Sachin ISB. In the middle, I was analyzing their opinion. After approx 40 minutes, having discussed a lot we departed. It was an inconclusive talk. I knew I had to research more to make a decision. For next 2 days, I talked to ISB alums/students and made up my mind to go to ISB. I called up Sachin and told him about my position. He sounded amused at my decision. I told him that even you preferred ISB that day. He laughed and told me that he asked about what Nitin is inclined at only because he could take the other side and represent ISB. Otherwise, there was nothing to discuss in the call. Both of us would be talking about NUS and I would have got influenced by a biased conference call. He then told me that he also thinks that NUS is a much better destination at these circumstances. I, then, told him that I've only talked to ISB's alum/student for last two days. He quickly pointed me that this is because I've heard only one side of the story. He asked me to talk to people representing NUS.

I talked to many NUS folks then and finally I'm headed to NUS. During these 4-5 days, I got to learn my first Management Lesson (thanks to Sachin brother): "It is important to have views from all sides while discussing a strategy/case. If not, then your final result/decision is biased."

MBA Journey - Part 1

My journey to get into an MBA college has finally ended. I applied to 3 universities: Kellogg, ISB and NUS, this year and got admits from NUS and ISB. Earlier Kellogg gave me a false admit. It was a tough decision to choose NUS over ISB, but, after talking to so many people choosing NUS seemed to be more strategic.

In this post, I'll just discuss about my preparation for the GMAT exam.

Well, to be frank, my journey to MBA started during my last semester in IIT Bombay. My elder brother, an IIM Bangalore Alumnus, preferred to do a foreign MBA over an Indian MBA and, hence, guided me to prepare for GMAT examination. He told me to take the exam before graduating from IIT because the score remains valid for 5 years and, hence, makes sense to take the exam before getting into the corporate world. I did a one month preparation and scored just 660. I was kinda happy because I targeted 650 and I heard that above 650 is a good score. But, once I entered the job market I realized that at least 700 is a must to apply in good colleges. I was in no mood to take the exam then, so deferred it. But, importantly, I made a conscious effort to read articles, editorials seriously to improvise my grammar. I did that for almost 3 years. Truly speaking, learning grammar is a fun. There are rules, so if you know them it becomes a cake walk to spot a mistake.

Then after 2 years, ie in 2006, after making a trip to California I decided to prepare for GMAT seriously. During this time, one of my very good friend, Dhruv Garg, took the exam and scored 760. I took complete advantage of him and discussed strategies to click the score. One of most important ones I remember is to take the date when one is half done with the course. Mostly people take the date first and then start preparing. Bad Idea. What one should do is familiarize oneself with the course, take some practice tests and identify how much time is needed to be completely fit for the exam. With this intention, I prepared for at least one month and then took the date keeping in mind about the limited time I had for studies. Another strategy we discussed was to never take Kaplan tests. Standard of Kaplan test is way higher than the actual GMAT standard. So, why bug yourself with difficult questions. Kaplan acts as a de-motivator.

When I started, I felt quite comfortable in solving sentence correction and critical reasoning questions. I had some serious trouble with reading comprehension. I was scoring reasonably well in stars, biological related comprehensions, however, when it came to philosophy, humanities related comprehension I was getting screwed big time. So, I discussed this problem with my friend Dhruv and he suggested me to change my strategy to answer such types of comprehensions. I tried several strategies such as writing a line about what has happened in a particular para, writing only keywords (such as however, therefore, but etc.), reading the question first and then reading the comprehension, etc. The one that really worked was writing the keywords. Writing these keywords helped me understand the tone of the paragraph.

I never spend too much time on Maths. For essay writing, I understood the basics from Official guide to GMAT and gave one week time of preparation. I referred to following books/materials for preparation:
1. Official Guide to GMAT
2. Manhattan Sentence Correction (Awesome Book)
3. 1000 questions on Sentence Correction, Reading Comprehension, Critical Reasoning (search on net)
4. ETS and PowerPrep Tests (I scored 720 and 740 in 2 ETS tests)

This was my strategy to crack GMAT and in the end it worked out pretty well. Scoring 750 and 5.5 (essays) was something I never thought of, but then while I was writing the test I got the feeling that I would score more than 700.

My Walk Towards Old Age

I forget things, places, names etc..

Recently, many activities have happened to me that reinforced my belief that I don't have a sharp memory or I've reached the phase where "old" people start forgetting stuff . Really, Am I getting old? I got embarrassed recently when I forgot the name of my teammate while I was having snacks in the cafeteria. I was watching the television. As he passed by, I wanted to call and ask him to increase the volume. So, I, hastily, raised my hand to call him. But then I stopped. I just couldn't recall his name. Amit, no anuj, no shit !! whats his name. Finally, I gave up and did this: "whistle, oye, could you increase the volume please?"

And, can anyone forget a girl and that too a hot one? Not many, but I did. In my office, we (My friends and I) used to call a girl '2nd Floor'. It has nothing to do with his seating location being at 2nd floor. But the way she used to comb her hair was unusual. We thought that the starting point of pony tail was a bit higher than usual. So, 2nd floor it is for referring her. She worked in the office for a short period of time. After 3-4 months, one day my friend (Devesh) and I were going out for dinner and while talking he referred to the girl as 2nd floor. I just could not remember her face. I asked Devesh to tell her name and he, cunningly, replied "we never try hard to know anyone's name. We just know her by 2nd Floor." Bull shit !!! What the hell. And now all I was interested in recognizing her face. I, immediately, called our third friend and he gave me some hints and I could finally locate the 2nd Floor Neuron in my brain. How can anyone forget a girl's face? Awful!!!

I'm seriously contemplating whether these are the signs of me walking towards old age. May be its usual, but I need to be more proactive in remembering things. Anyhow. Would grandma's philosphy of eating 5-6 almonds a day work? I guess I should try.

Black Dog

Last year I decided to taste all kinds of Whisky and Rum to understand what I like. I tried numerous brands, of course GlennFiddich and Black Label are still out of range, and finally settled with Black Dog. I loved the taste. However, explaining taste of a Whisky to anyone is a difficult job. So, whenever someone asks me why I prefer Black Dog, I take help of Bollywood's Super-Duper movie - Shahenshah. In a certain scene, Amrish Puri, after a brief interaction with Meenakshi Sheshadri, decides to order Black Dog instead of the regular one. Prem Chopra gets intrigued and asks him for a reason. Amrish replies:

"Jab bhi me koi hasin titli dekhta hoon, mere ander ke sainkado kutte bhokne lagte hain. Unhe shant karne ke liye me Black Dog peeta hoon."

haha. It gives me great pleasure when someone asks me why Black Dog and I pay tribute to the movie by repeating this dialogue.