Breaking the Bread

When we plan a multi-day trip, we usually choose a good hotel to stay which has breakfast facility. One of the main reasons is that, if you start the day with a good breakfast, that alone will keep your spirits high throughout the day. It is also the time for you as a family to recollect some of the beautiful moments from the previous day.

Considering this, on our first ever trip to Europe as a family we decided to follow the same plan. After experiencing the joy of European breakfast in Germany in a hotel, our next stop was at one of the most enchanting tourist destinations in the world, Switzerland! 

We decided to try something different this time. We found a lovely apartment at Bern through Booking.com with the option of breakfast included. The description spoke about bread, eggs, jams and a few other associated items available for breakfast. We were quite happy with the deal and also the location, as it was perfectly placed to reach the attractions we wanted to cover while being there in Swiss.

After crossing the border of Germany and Switzerland, we made a quick stop at the famous Rhine falls. By evening we reached our place of stay at Bern. It was not dark yet since it was summer. The instruction from the apartment owner was clear on how to access the apartment. We followed that and settled ourselves well for the night. 

We woke up the next day and just like how we experienced breakfast in previous hotels, we were hoping to see a welcoming spread of morning delicacies. Nothing happened. We tried contacting the owner and that was when reality struck. The description in Booking.com apparently meant, breakfast items were available in the apartment, but we had to prepare that ourselves! Bread was placed on the kitchen table. Eggs, jam and butter were in the fridge. Cooking utensils, oil and rest were available at our disposal in the house for us to make the breakfast. Coffee powder, tea bags and sugar were neatly sitting on one corner of the table, and they seemed to be mocking at our misery.

As soon as we recovered from the initial shock, we decided to prepare the breakfast. We got the eggs done. Coffee was also prepared and finally it was time to have them all together with the bread. We opened the packet of bread, which was dark brown in colour, seasoned with wholegrains. Those were the times, when we were yet to be fully into brown bread-based diet. Nevertheless, we were game to experiment this new type of bread. 

That was when shocker number two greeted us. We felt the bread was as hard as a piece of plywood that we thought we will need an axe to break it! Even after we managed to break the bread to pieces, the greatest challenge was to eat it. It won't be an understatement if I said, that was the most tasteless bread we ever had in our life! Since we were getting late and had to have something, we managed to gulp down the thing they called bread and headed out to our destination for the day.

A lesson well learned not to blindly trust and guess everything written on travel sites. When in doubt, ask! 

Happy travels...

Brave, not stupid!

Stand tall, the world tells you.
Corporates speak the same, but do they mean it?
Now that, is a priceless question!

Speak your mind, the world will sit, listen and applaud.
Do that in a boardroom, they may sit, listen, but applaud, will they?
Now that, is a priceless question!

Go the extra mile, the world will walk with you in gratitude.
Try the stunt in office, and without perceived value, will your sponsor even take a step?
Now that, is a priceless question!

Challenge the wrong, the world will march along, with righteous ones next to you.
Similar stories in corporate world, do you not see such people around you with growth stunted?
Now that, is a priceless question!

When all seem to be lost, the world tells you to hang on to the last resort, eternal hope. Strange, is it not?
Now that, is not a priceless question, because corporates tell you the same, but do they mean it?

Ladies and gentlemen, now that, is another priceless question!

Priceless stories galore...

Fearless in Darkness

Picture this. It was well past midnight, and you were at home, the same place where you had been living for the past eight years. You were enjoying a sound sleep, with your sweetheart sleeping peacefully next to you and your kids sleeping in the other bedroom. The time on the clock displayed half past two. You woke up feeling thirsty. The room was pitch black. 

You realized that you forgot to place the water bottle in the room before hitting the bed. This meant, you had to head to the kitchen where the bottle was kept. You had to walk a few feet from the bedroom to the kitchen. The big question is what would you have done? Would you sacrifice the need to quench your thirst or defy the darkness, walk to the kitchen, drink water, come back and continue sleeping as if nothing happened in the world during those moments?

Personally, I never found it difficult to navigate in darkness. While the initial moments after I woke up in the middle of a night were always a bit of challenge, my brain usually got used to the dark environment quite soon. I could then make myself go around the house and helped myself with a bottle of water or anything else I needed at night. 

But one day we had to rearrange some items in the house. Some of the furniture had to be changed places, so were a few plants. That night, around three in the morning, I woke up thirsty. As always, with my usual confidence, I headed to the kitchen. Little did I remember that some of the items around the house changed their locations. Before even I knew, I tripped on a small table and hit my head on the wall after losing my balance. It served as a good reminder not to take anything for granted, even when you are in a familiar environment, with the same set of items placed around you.

Now think about your office space. The corporate world is a big bad jungle. You will see all kinds of people around you, who have different behaviour traits, just like the animals in a jungle. Over a period of time you may develop a level of comfort with many of your colleagues. You may think the same, when it comes to your engagement with senior leaders in your organisation. You may find it quite easy to deal with all of them any given day.

Having said that, just like a jungle, you may suddenly come across a danger that was lurking in one corner that you never noticed before. All of a sudden, that one friendly colleague may reveal the personality of a traitor. The boss whom you deeply trusted may transform into the worst bully you had ever known. The executive leader of your department whom you admired and even revered may display the true colors which really turned out to be nasty. All of these may suddenly sweep you off your feet. Just like how the rearranged furniture made me trip one night, when I thought everything was normal.

All of us, being humans, naturally tend to trust people over a period of time. That is how we are designed. But always remind ourselves that someone whom you considered as a known angel may truly be an unknown devil in disguise. 

Hence, while being fearless in darkness may make you feel like a knight, be aware of the presence of predatorial instincts in the corporate jungle, so that you do not trip yourself and become a prey. You do not need to wait to learn this from your own experience. Watch your seniors, listen to their stories and adapt your own course of journey. This will help you detect potential threats, fight those battles you could win, but more importantly retreat from others which is not worth the fight to win another day. This will ensure that you do not end up on the wall-of-sympathy in your organisation for being the unfortunate prey, who chose not to be careful about the changing dynamics of the office environment. 

Watch out and be safe! They are all out there...

PS: Inspired by Stranger Things and real-life experience of seniors.

When Tipu Sultan got me fired!

One of the best things that happened to us while growing up in India during early 90s was that we were not spoilt for choices. Life was much simpler. We had just one service provider for TV programmes those days called Doordarshan. There used to be two channels, one broadcasting national level programmes mostly in Hindi and the other one with programmes in Malayalam, the local language of Kerala.

Being a boy of primary school age, one of the best series that attracted my attention was an epic portrayal of Tipu Sultan, the fearless warrior king of Mysore who defended the kingdom from British invasion during late 1700s. Episodes after episodes spoke volumes about his valour that I could not watch the programme without getting goosebumps.

I was quite intrigued with many battle sequences portrayed in the series. Nevertheless, there was one scene where the Sultan was seen drawing his majestic sword that he used in many of the wars. The music that accompanied was equally brilliant which immersed the viewers into the real battle itself! All of these happened ages before the world had even heard of the term virtual reality.

As many young kids in those days, I loved to imitate everything that a hero did. Right after one of the exciting episodes, I decided I needed to have a sword. Now, the biggest question was, where could I find a sword?! A real sword was obviously out-of-question for a ten-year-old boy and those were the days, as I mentioned earlier, when the choices were quite limited for everything, including toys. The best thing about those constraints were that you would find opportunities around you and did not need anyone to define it for you. And boy! Did I not find the best available sword in the whole neighbourhood? Absolutely!

Ever since I could remember him, my dad was majorly into gardening. With great difficulty, he must have got a plant named Sansevieria Cylindrica, a succulent commonly known as African Spear. It had stems, green in colour which looked quite a lot like a sword with round base and pointed edges. I promptly cut one of those stems and held it high, even with greater pride than Tipu Sultan himself, admiring my newly found weapon of power!

The next question was how I could hang the sword on my ‘royal armour’ which was a pair of shorts. Innovation came quite easily those days. Mom had kept a roll of jute thread in the kitchen for the purpose of tying cardboard boxes for storage. I cut the thread at a length that was enough to go around my shorts and did a perfect knot so that the sword can be placed right through the loop where it could stay without much support. Thus, a true legend was born, the Sword of Tipu Sultan of Kerala!

The sword lasted for a couple of episodes. That was when the local Sultan faced a major challenge. Being a plant, the stem of Sansevieria Cylindrica started getting dried up. After a few weeks, the sword was quite skeletal in shape. I realised with pain that it was neither good enough to fight the British nor even a stray dog that appeared on the streets once a while. Obviously, a Sultan cannot continue his rule without a sword.  

My eyes went back to Sansevieria Cylindrica. Within a few weeks, a portion of the plant started disappearing. Swords were made one after the other. The reign of Sultan continued without much of an issue, till the time my dad figured out what was going on!

What followed was something you will never come across in the recorded history of India. I vaguely remember running around the backyard of our house holding tightly to the last of my ‘sword’ with dad chasing me down without even realizing that he was chasing the Sultan of Kerala!

Strawberry Tales

Kerala, the southernmost state of India, is one place that enjoys tropical climate throughout the year. While I grew up in Kerala in 80s, it was quite normal for the backyard of many houses to have fruits such as pineapple, papaya, mango, jackfruit and even passion fruit. Many years later it was a pleasant surprise to me while travelling to some of the famous beach destinations, people over there referred to these fruits as exotic!

Having said that, one of the fruits that eluded our taste buds was strawberry. In fact, I would assume none of the people in my small town of Changanacherry had even seen one in their lifetime till then, unless they were among the minority who travelled to places across the globe where strawberries grew naturally.

That was when my dad started a business to sell ice creams, the first of its kind and scale in our hometown till then. Among the many flavours we received from Lazza, the ice cream brand produced in Kochi, strawberry was one. While the ice cream had a beautiful baby pink colour, the only connection it had with strawberry was probably the flavour. After a few months of opening of the shop, one day when the new stock of ice creams arrived, we had a surprise!

There was a new flavour called fresh strawberry. Unlike the usual flavour, this one boasted of having actual strawberries in the ice cream. It was true! While not as fresh as you could get, the ice cream indeed had pieces of strawberries in it. It was a moment of truth for all of us in our area that day! History was made where we could see and taste a new fruit for the first time ever in our life! Strawberries! Year 1993.

It took many more years for me to experience a real fresh strawberry. In fact, I had to cross the Atlantic and land in the US soil to gift my tastebuds the real feeling of a fresh strawberry fruit. I was in Atlanta, working for the client SITA. The cafeteria at SITA's office was where I got to see my first real fresh strawberry. Year 2009.

But even with this I was yet to see an actual strawberry plant and pick a strawberry fruit from the plant directly. It was meant to happen many years later. Another decade and a half it took for me to experience something so refreshing as to see strawberries hanging from its plant and plucking them and experience the real taste of strawberry as fresh as it could get. Ruby and I was on our family vacation trip then, along with our little ones. We were on a road trip from London to Scotland and had stopped enroute at a strawberry farm named Cairns. A very special sight awaited us where thousands of strawberries hanging from the stems of the plants in a greenhouse environment, beckoning us to be picked and enjoy the real taste of the fruit. And we did exactly that! Year 2024.

You may ask, what is the big deal about this? It is just another story about someone getting to try some fruit. There is a little more to this than what eyes could fathom. 

We all crave for many things in our life. Some of these will happen as soon as we wish for it but there are others that you may have to wait for the right time. Trust me, when the time comes it will turn out to be exactly how it was meant to be. Anything before that would have been nothing short of an unwanted experience which you may even want to forget in your life. 

So, if something has not happened yet for you, just wait for the right moment, and never lose hope. Good things do happen to good people. 

God bless!

Authority of Love

The other day I happened to hear a story. Quite a funny one, which I am sure most of you would have heard before. Here it is:

One day, a class teacher wanted to help her children understand the difference between authority and absolute authority. Mat, a smart chap raised his hand and said, ‘Authority is when my father tells us children what exactly are we supposed to do.’

The teacher was impressed and said, ‘Very good Mat. Now can you tell us what absolute authority means?’

Without even a bit of hesitation Mat replied, ‘Absolute authority is when my mother tells my father what he should be telling the children on what they are supposed to do!’

While the humour is quite evident, there is a stronger emotion that runs in every family where you see this happening. It is not the position that drives authority, it is the deep respect and love for each other that a father and mother in a family portrays to their children. The kids may or may not understand the nuances of this love while they are small, but eventually they will get this and learn to appreciate the ways of a family.

Come to think of it, the way authority works in the corporate world is not too different. It goes without saying that there is an inherent authority associated to a person’s title or a position in an organization. But what is interesting is the fact that authority alone does not command respect.

I was fortunate to work with some of the leaders who earned tremendous amount of respect from their teams, not just because their title demanded it, but because they decided to showcase their love in the form of empathy above authority. When you have bosses like that, you will give a hundred percent of yourself and at times maybe even more since you just love them for what they are and not what is written against their designation.

I consider myself equally fortunate to have worked with a few managers who belonged to the other side of the fence for whom authority meant absolutely that and nothing else. I remember them, not because I admire their ways of working, but kept that experience close to my heart so that it constantly reminds me of how not to be a leader like them!

If you consider yourself as someone with authority and next time your team agrees to do something for you, ask yourself this question. Are they responding to your authority with love or is it just absolute authority and nothing else?

Never to Fear & Never to Hate

Finished watching a ten-episode series named Imperial Receipts where Dr Shashi Tharoor states facts about British colonialism of India and narrates with absolute passion some of the historical moments including humanly unthinkable atrocities that were unleashed by the British rulers those times. Some of those moments may even be blood-curdling to most of us who live in a civilised modern world.

While it should be a painful reminder of our past, both for the colonised and the coloniser, I loved the way Dr Tharoor ended with a conversation that apparently happened between Nehru and Churchill during 50s, post India's independence. Churchill said, he was surprised that Nehru did not hate them and was able to be civil with them, after all what they did to India. Nehru replied, stating he was taught by a great man, Mahatma Gandhi, never to fear and never to hate.

Whether the above conversation truly happened or not, nothing seemed to be more relevant in the modern world and should serve as a great reminder for leaders across the world, in politics or corporates, to learn from the mistakes of our past and live a better present to create a beautiful future for the coming generations!

Here is the link if you are interested:
https://lnkd.in/dvT4hDTN