Why Does Generosity Come Bundled with Control?

Generosity is one of those qualities we like to believe we possess in abundance. Most of us would describe ourselves as reasonably generous people. We help when we can, we share resources when someone needs them, and we offer advice when we believe it might improve someone else's life.

Yet, I have increasingly noticed a pattern in my own behaviour and in those around me. Acts of generosity often carry with them a quiet expectation about how the recipient should behave afterwards. When those expectations are not met, the emotional response can be surprisingly strong. In recent times, I've grappled to wrap my head around three ways in which I've seen this phenomenon play out.

First, many of us are charitable with our house help and other staff members, giving them gifts during festivals, a generous pay hike, or hand-me-downs from our family. These gestures are usually well intentioned but often come with a more egocentric side. When the recipient does something we dislike, perhaps taking leave without notice or refusing a task, the disappointment we feel is often disproportionately large. 

Second, we curate experiences or give gifts to our friends, such as a commodity that is difficult to procure or an experience that we have made come alive for them. Yet, when the friend consumes the gift or experience in ways we do not expect, irritation creeps in. When the experience is scarce or difficult to access, we often become gatekeepers, subtly expecting certain behaviour from our friends in return.

Third, we offer medical, professional, relational, or experiential advice out of genuine care. Yet we sometimes feel surprisingly agitated if the recipient does not follow it. A friend who ignores our advice about a health decision or job change can evoke frustration that feels oddly personal.

These situations are quite different, yet there is a common thread. Well intentioned generosity often sits uncomfortably alongside a strong expectation about how the other person should behave. Which has led me ask repeatedly: why does generosity so often come bundled with control?

A useful place to start is the idea of reciprocity. Social psychologists have long argued that human societies are governed by a powerful norm of reciprocity. This norm suggests that when someone gives us something, we feel a moral obligation to return the favour in some form. Perhaps originally introduced to sustain cooperation and social order, this need has possibly become deeply embedded in our collective worldview. From this perspective, generosity can become a subtle instrument of power. If I control a resource, money, information, or access, , gatekeeping it away can create leverage. 

Another possibility is that generosity is entangled with our own convictions about what a good life looks like. Each of us has a mental model of how one should live, work, and experience the world. If I recommend an event, an experience, or health advise, I am implicitly saying that this path is superior. When someone ignores that recommendation, the reaction we feel may not simply be disappointment. It may also be a quiet judgement that the other person is being inefficient, irrational, or careless.

The final reason could be ego. Advice is a subtle form of identity signalling. When we give someone advise about health, career, or relationships, we are implicitly asserting competence. If the advice is rejected, our ego possibly interprets that rejection as a verdict on our judgment. The agitation that follows may therefore be less about the friend’s decision and more about a bruised self-image.

This desire for control may therefore not reflect outright malice, but social norms, personal convictions, and ego that shape who we have become. Whatever be the reason, separating generosity from control could be deeply valuable for several reasons:

• First, we are frequently wrong. The other person understands their context, their body, and their emotions in ways we never will. Advice that works in our circumstances may fail in theirs. 
• Second, generosity becomes far less emotionally taxing when it is detached from expectation. This allows us to give more, which research suggests increases well being and life satisfaction. 
• Third, separating generosity from control makes us more trustworthy. When people know that your advice comes without pressure, they are far more likely to seek it.
• Finally, it may encourage humility by making us realise that there is no universal template for a good life, in turn making us calmer, perhaps even slightly zen, about how others choose to live. 
  

Over the past several years, I have been experimenting with approaches that help me live a fuller and lighter life by being more generous without carrying the baggage of expectations. I am sharing them here, not as templates to be followed but as prompts that support others' reflections.

The first hack is an irrational commitment to human agency and autonomy. Respecting autonomy means accepting that where someone ends up matters is only as important as how freely they get there, even if these approaches appear inefficient or misguided. Even bad decisions made with autonomy can sometimes provide greater happiness boost than the technically correct path.

The second approach is to cultivate a scientific temper. When someone ignores our advice, we should treat it as data to test our hypothesis, rather than defiance that catalyses irritation. Perhaps they know something we do not. Maybe what we believe is right doesn't work in their context. Extreme curiosity is the fulcrum on which such temperament rests.

The third possibility is to play the long relational game. Friendships are not debates to be won, but synergistic systems that evolve over several years. Building the emotional muscle to let things pass or forego the need to be right might often be a superior relational strategy.

The final approach is to set inalienable norms in advance. For instance, deciding that your house help receives a certain number of 'no questions asked' leave days removes the emotional weight of unexpected absence. Similarly, deciding not to judge a friend’s taste in entertainment can eliminate countless small irritations. These rules may feel unnatural initially, but over time they become second nature.

It would be unfair to suggest that the expectation of control is always a bad thing. It often reflects deep care and, practically, helps us guide people toward better outcomes. But when a gesture does not carry an invisible contract, life feels lighter. The time and emotional energy that we once spent on disappointment can be redeployed elsewhere. In that sense, loosening our grip on control is less about moral virtue and more about making life simpler, calmer, and easier.

Old age, and the bouquet of interests.

 I spent much of this past week in Mumbai, starting a project to help a frugal but mighty nonprofit measure and articulate its impact. Between the multitude of meetings and some time on the field, I spent my evenings meeting friends - some old, some new, and some in-between. All of them started with the usual but much needed catching up: jobs, moving across cities, relationships, how we're feeling and what's top of mind for us. With those out of the way, however, we got talking about thoughts that we often don't find time for in the busy-ness of our daily lives (or the shallowness of the social media era). Our aspirations, fears, sense of self, heartaches, etc. Needless to say, my soul felt nourished afterwards!

A common theme that was part of all these conversations was about our parents and how their post-retirement lives were playing out. Some saw their parents struggle with the sudden lack of purpose and motivation once they quit the workforce. Others found that their parents had cultivated a community and interests that were helping them power through testing situations like cancer diagnosis in the immediate family. Some spoke about how one parent (typically the mother) had made the other parent (typically the father) the center of their universe for decades and suddenly found themselves excessively dependent on the spouse. Across these stories, the common thread was one of coping with a transformational life event, especially at a stage in life when so many things that defined the previous few decades - children, job, work friends, etc. - wither away. 

What differentiates those who cope well? Despite this terribly small sample size (which the economist of me would castigate me for), it seems to me that those who cultivated other interests beyond just work and the immediate family. These interests, be it sports, culture, community, learning, etc. did not need to end with the job and therefore became a sense of continuity and purpose for people post-retirement. The retirees who spend hours playing sports or talking to a community they'd always been in touch with, or going for art performances, usually found themselves happier. Those who didn't have these interests often found themselves leaning more into the lives of their family members in ways that are often unhealthy. It is no surprise that being busy after retirement helps, but the fact that this sense of purpose can come from many different avenues was new to me.

However, it seems that one needs to cultivate these interests several years before retirement. It's challenging (if not outright impossible) to develop them after retirement. Getting into sports later in your life will always be an uphill climb. If you haven't developed the patience and focus to appreciate art, that will take a long time to build. Making friends and finding a community gets difficult with age any way. It reminds me of the rule-of-thumb that to be good at something, you need about 10,000 hours of practice. As one ages, those thousands of hours just seem more daunting. These conversations made me realise the importance of keeping these interests alive, even when work and family alone seem to occupy all the hours of our day. Perhaps it's the one day a month at a play. Or a day a week playing sport. Those who coped well after retirement seemed to have kept their attention and interests diversified, even if the space each of them occupied varied over time.

These past few months have felt busy, and the fact that I find my work meaningful means that I could spend many extra hours on it without blinking an eyelid. Occasionally, it's felt like a struggle to go watch a performance or spend lots of unstructured hours with friends or to even go for my cherished morning walk. The conversations this week made me realise that the struggle may well be worth it. Much like the investments that we need to make in mental and physical well-being, these are perhaps investments we make in our social and emotional wellbeing. That, eventually, lead to a richer life!

The unending, pervasive anxiety

If, like me, you're prone to anxiety, you might've realised that it doesn't go away with changed circumstances. Instead, it morphs in innovative ways to perpetuate its presence. I'm on a journey to get better at managing it everyday, much like I would a lifestyle disease.

Thankfully, I do not exhibit the physical symptoms of anxiety - breathlessness, sweaty hands, etc. Instead, I experience a pervasive and crushing feeling of doom. In response, I wish the day ends sooner. I binge-eat. I look for other distractions; often unhealthy ones.

It feels incredibly lonely and hopeless. Lonely because it is difficult to explain this anxiety to myself, let alone to a friend or well-wisher. Hopeless because at some point, I start fearing how anxiety makes me feel rather than anxiety itself, opening an infinite loop.

I often look forward to changed circumstances - a vacation, completion of a project, a job switch, etc. - in the hope that it would lower the anxiety. I've repeatedly been surprised by my mind's ability to find new ways to worry. This made me realise it won't fully go away.

These days, I try to actively manage anxiety every day. There are lots of useful resources online on how to go about it. One way is intentional breathing; just observing the rhythm of breath helps me feel calm. Reading, especially right before sleeping, also helps.

Better eating is another - even if not immediately helpful, it comforts me to know that I am building towards long-term resilience. Ditto for exercise, whose immediate impact is more obvious. Even on days I can't get a full workout, I try to do at least a few stretches.

Most importantly, I've found it useful to treat my anxiety not with trepidation but with curiosity. Understanding my mental patterns helps manage them more effectively. For e.g., I worry a lot about money; asking myself 'why' has made me deal with it in healthier ways.

I can't control being anxious and over-thinking the smallest triggers. What I can try to do is to compartmentalise them, so that I do not miss on the many joys of everyday life. After years of worrying through good days and bad, I'm keen to find that healthier balance.  

Sadness - an old friend

This has been a difficult week. Exactly one week ago, I got refractive eye surgery (colloquially known as lasik) done to my eyes. While the results have been remarkable, I still experience a lot of blurriness in my vision. Nights, in particular, are quite extreme. I have both light sensitivity (which means headlights really hurt my eye) as well as difficulty in seeing in poor lighting. On top of that, this week at work was somewhat rough and there has been some breakages at home. It has really sapped my energy and made me feel despondent yet again. Sadness - of that pervasive yet ambiguous kind - is back in my life.

Yesterday, I was sitting among some well-wishers, who were discussing how I've reached a stage in life where few things excite me. I do not know if they are right or wrong. Of course, I feel that I still get excited by the prospect of self-improvement, by grand projects like my book, and by the little joys of life, such as reading. But perhaps they are correct in the sense that I fail to experience (or at least emote) the way that most other humans do. Perhaps there is something amiss in my emotional compass. Perhaps there are notes that have been permanently erased.

Just like with my eye, I worry - despite all the rational things that my brain says to me - that I might never recover. Perhaps there are eyes that are just too weak and damaged to recover from whatever the surgery inflects on them. Perhaps there are souls that are just to damaged by visible or invisible traumas to ever feel as happy again. And then they seek happiness in familiarly and in comfort. Like cleaning of the houses. Getting done of the tasks. Pursuit of other world pleasures and successes. But these things fade out over time, and the joys that they lead to - as temporary as fleeting sand - just disappear.

But I have no choice but to keep fighting. Because there are people whose happiness is forever linked to mine - my parents, for example. I still remember how my first bout of depression back in college - an incident almost a decade old at this point - left them as concerned as they were confused. I guess one fights and continues because one doesn't want to let people like them down. 

And there's the other part of me, which says that we continue because we believe we can work hard and find out way. We work hard on our health, so that we can be in physically better bodies. We work hard on our careers, so that we can have more wealth and personal satisfaction. And we work hard on our relationships, so that we can have good times with loved ones in future. I don't know if the pursuit of happiness is ever truly successful, or whether it is one of those mirages that human society has created to enslave its people in the rat race.

But God - or whatever cosmic power/fate/chance there is - has been kind, and I owe it to that power/fate/luck to keep going. I often think about my own mortality, and the pointlessness of all of this. But if this is all meant to be pointless anyway, then perhaps the only good use of this life - and the time here on Earth - can be the pursuit of others' happiness.

P.s. a random thought just passed my mind. Tomorrow is my birthday. And I have a tradition of becoming reflective/sad on the day preceding my birthday. It's funny to see how some things never change.

Still Just A Boy

 This weekend, I binged on the show Ghar Waapsi, which tells the story of a 28-year old Product Manager in Bangalore who loses his job and therefore returns home to Indore for a few months. This forced return home made him reflect on how much he was leaving behind in pursuit of his so-called dreams. The joys and sorrows of being with family. The leisurely pace of life. The friends and social networks who show up for you no matter what. It was a simple and straightforward story of coming back home.

The show unearthed some emotions that I had hidden deep within me. I left home slightly earlier than most of my peers, when I decided to stay back in Delhi for my twelfth grade while my parents moved to Kolkata after my father's retirement. Since then, I have only twice spent an extended period of time with my parents - once between college and my first job, and the second after that job and before going to England for my post graduation.

More importantly, I chose a path that saw me hit the heights of academic success, but involved me changing my emotional DNA. I became obsessed with success, and I embraced the cycles of emotional turbulence it brought with it. This emotional turbulence, in turn, saw me raise emotional barriers that neither my parents nor anyone else could scale. With a single-minded devotion to my career advancement, I did not invest similar energy in my familiar relationships. I let my introversion run amok, and let many of these relationships wither away.

When I watched the show, however, I realised that somewhere under the hard exterior I always maintain, there's deep emotional vulnerability.There's still just a boy - one who feels that he moved forward way too fast, who would rather spend a leisurely weekend with family than live his corporate life from weekend to weekend. I am not sure who I am. At times, I feel I really enjoy my work because I find meaning in it. That is how I breezed through the pandemic-related lockdowns, in fact.

But another part of me worries that this is not enjoyment, it is obsession. The same obsession with success that caused the earlier emotional issues I just spoke about. Somewhere along the way, I fear that I've lost sight of who I truly am. I yearn for the innocence of my childhood. I crave the little joys that used to fill my otherwise mundane life. I think of the late 1990s as some glorious, idyllic time. An occasional samosa takes me back to when I used to walk to the shop and get samosas for the entire family. Fish curry takes me back to visits to my relatives' homes.

Recently, I met many relatives and family friends after a long time at my brother's wedding. It was like a little time capsule - uncles and aunties who I hadn't met in years. My heart filled up with warmth at their sight. Mishra uncle and aunty, at whose home I had spent many weeks after I returned to Delhi from Vizag in 2003. Or Yeolekar uncle and aunty, with whom I have early memories of travelling to Rajasthan. Arun Kumar uncle and his wife, who still tell me stories of how I used to ring the phone of their house.

While I'm sure I'm far from the only one to experience such nostalgia, I worry that I am hurtling away at rapid pace from all vestiges of that life. I am continuing with the single-minded obsession with success, and not making any effort to retain the bonds that defined my growing up years. I form deep but nonetheless transitional friendships at work, and keep moving from one to another. In summary, I feel very worries that all those aspects of my life that made me happiest will not be part of my future.

I remind myself that there is still time. I can still go visit my elderly uncle and aunt who live in the same city. I can still pick up the phone to call my old friends and family. I can still put myself in places where I make friends outside of work. But I don't. I keep continuing down this path of chasing something at work; in life. And while I'm tired of chasing, I'm addicted to it to. Only when the pursuit of happiness becomes as important to me as the pursuit of success - only then, perhaps, will I find what I am looking for.

The Mask of Leadership

 It's now been over seven months that I have been working at a start-up. What began, in retrospect, as a gentle initiation into the operational side of things has evolved into a foray into fierce and turbulent waters. To say that it's been difficult would be an understatement. Every day, every week, I experience a whole gamut of emotions - exhilaration, disappointment, frustration, joy, and so many other colours of life. 

The one experience that I least expected to be as dominant in my life as it has turned out to be is managing my team. When I joined, the team reporting into me - directly or indirectly - consisted of seven people. I identified hiring as a major challenge and immersed myself in it. Today, there are 24 people in my team. That's twenty four times the maximum number of people I had managed before this.

Before this stint, the one person I used to manage at any point in time received my undivided attention. I could spend hours every week getting to know this person, both personally and professionally. We were more friends and confidants than manager and reportee. It helped that they came from an academic and social background that was fairly close to my own. It also helped that I had enough time to compensate for their occasional inadequacies, as I'm sure they did for me too. 

With my current team, none of that is true. They come from backgrounds and parts of the country that I am completely unfamiliar with. With some of them, their career and personal aspirations are completely alien to me. And, most importantly, the law of numbers wears me down. I can no longer spend as much time with them individually as I used to with my earlier reportees. My strength - of forming deep, meaningful bonds with people around me - seems no longer relevant.

Moreover, the day-to-day pressures (and, oh, the month-end bhasad) of start-ups further impacts these relationships. When I experience pressure to meet targets, I often lose my patience with those around me, and come across as a hard taskmaster. And in fast-growing Indian start-ups, that abrasiveness is not atypical at all - in fact, it is seem to be an important way to get work done. Softness and nuance - once my key strengths - are seen as distractions at best and counter-productive at most.

So, I haven't yet found myself in this new setting. Do I play the sherpa or the disciplinarian? Do I use carrots or sticks? Should I be friendly or firm? Will vulnerability at work - a trait I strongly believe in - be perceived as weakness by my reportees? If I'm being stern at work, how do I avoid carrying that heavy emotion back home every day? These dilemma come up at my workplace every day, and I haven't yet found a good response.

In life, however, the only thing that has always worked well for me is service. When I've found myself most lost, I have immersed myself in service for others. In college, this manifested in trying to help my friends do well in extra-curricular activities. At work, it was to help my one reportee be his best self in front of the management. Service gives me a sense of direction, a sense of purpose, and a feeling of lightness/weightlessness. Service is when you are so immaterial in your own head that almost nothing as the potential to affect you.

What service means in a team of twenty-four is something I will try to find out in the weeks and months to come. But I can already imagine what it would feel like. I imagine that it means having difficult conversations without once doubting the bona fides of the other person. It probably means feeling nourished and well taken care of, even in the most trying of circumstances. It means an unflinching commitment to your reportees' professional development, as an end in itself (and not just as a means to getting better productivity at work).

 I also have a fairly good sense of the kind of leader I don't want to be. I don't want to yell at people or belittle them in public. I don't want to have to censor myself while providing feedback - in fact, I want to lead a team of winners and create a meritocracy, but one that has character, ethics and care at the center of it. I don't want to tell people things about my reportees that I don't tell them directly. I've seen these traits in some leaders around me, and are things I vehemently disagree with.

When thinking of myself as a leader, I am often troubled by what my maths teacher told me about Emmy Noether back in undergrad. That she was a brilliant mathematician, but could never be a good teacher because she was not comfortable in front of large groups. In 1:1 settings, she excelled. Could I - as a strong introvert - suffer from the same challenges as her? Only time will tell.

But while I let life play out, I am certain of one thing, and that is how I want to be remembered by those I work with. A person driven by values, ethics, and a sense of service to those around him.

Staying Healthy and Positive During the Lockdown

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio from Pexels

It's now been nearly three months that Indians have been in some kind of lockdown. Social distancing and work from home have become the new normal for many of us. Worse still, cases of Covid-19 in the country are only increasing, and it is not clear when this nightmare will end. All of this creates a deadline cocktail of anxiety.

Like most others, I too have struggled to cope with the challenges that these unprecedented times have thrown up. My financial and other privileges have, of course, kept my situation much better than that of many less fortunate compatriots. But all of us are unique, and both rejoice and suffer uniquely. Therefore, while reminded ourselves of our good fortunes, we should also be acutely aware of how we're feeling, and ensure that we're keeping healthy.

Needless to say, over the past three months, I have tried many different ways to keep myself mentally healthy and energised. In this blog, I am sharing a few things that have worked for me. Your situation might not allow you to do these things, or they might not even work for you. My purpose in writing them down is that some things might resonate with you, and could be the beginning of a conversation you have with yourself.

• Exercise - I cannot stress this enough: regular exercise helps keep your mind in good spirits. I was lucky enough to have ordered some equipment right before the lockdown, and that has allowed me to work out nearly everyday. There are, of course, days when I really don't want to go through the motions. But a gentle nudge, and encouraging myself to work out just a bit, helps. I would also recommend keeping your phone away during exercise. I find this helps create a space where one can detach from work completely. I also find it useful to walk back-and-forth both within and right outside my house, and to find a way to soak in fresh air.

• Eat Healthy and Regularly - Another old favourite. Since I live alone, I need to manage my own eating habits. In the initial days of the lockdown, like most others, I also had to cook my own food, clean my own dishes, and do my own grocery shopping. Even with the cook now back, I'm often tempted to either postpone meals, or order something unhealthy but delicious. However, I realise that we may be in this for the long haul, and eating healthy helps keep both mind and body in good shape. Therefore, I eat lots of fruits, and try to eat my meals regularly. At first, I used to order a lot from restaurants because the great food cheered me up. But it became repetitive over time, and now I try to cook myself often to keep things diverse. It's been especially challenging because I'm trying to be vegetarian since the beginning of the year, but I've thankfully held up well thus far. 

• Stay Connected with Friends - Social distancing can lull us into a state of social indifference, where we feel that reaching out to people is a chore. This is a risk especially for introverts like me, who don't need as much social interaction. In many cases, we may simply not be accustomed to only hearing or seeing our close friends digitally. Moreover, many of us in the corporate world might find that we need to schedule things with friends before we can call them. But we need to realise that we're social animals, and interacting with other humans is a simple human function. I have re-discovered the joys of video calling, and frequently speak to many friends. I take the liberty to call them without 'scheduling' things, to encourage the culture of lowering barriers.  

• Follow a Schedule - Work from home is challenging for many people because of the blurring lines between work and home. If I don't feel like doing something now, I can do it late at night or over the weekend anyway - it's all the same! I've struggled with this too, especially because I live in a studio and the physical boundaries just don't exist. I must also confess that in the first two months, I gave into a very toxic cycle of no separation between work and personal life. I'm getting better now - for example, keeping emails and work away on weekends. It feels great, and I feel refreshed on Monday mornings. Even during weekdays, I've started avoiding India-based calls after 5 PM. Trust me, it helps. It's not always easy and not always possible - especially if, like me, you really enjoy work. But it's important. Our minds aren't designed for months-long treadmills. You may not feel it now, but your mind will eventually give you the signs.

• Enjoy Life - This could be the new normal for a few months or years of our lives. We can't stop living life, in the hope that it will all be back to normal soon. We live in a very uncertain world. Between geopolitical tension, economic contraction, civil unrest, and another pandemic - who really knows when our lives will next get disrupted? The key is to treat ambiguity and disruptions as 'normal', and not (completely) pausing life while waiting for things to go back to how they were. I've found solace in three things. First, I've been reading a lot and try to keep most of my weekends just for reading. Second, I watch a lot of shows and movies online - something I wasn't into earlier, but find very enjoyable now. Thirdly, I eat ice cream more often than I otherwise permit myself to. Every person has to find what works for them. I don't think the idea should be to push oneself and learn a new skill 'for the future', but to do things one enjoys.

Small Man, Big World

  The futility of life is difficult to accept. Many of us are troubled by the fact that our actions and our very existence is meaningless in the bigger scheme of things. We turn to creative ways to mollify our bruised egos and battered souls. Some of us turn to religion, an archaic institution that should find no place in a rational scientific society. Religion helps us feel that each life has a direct connection with a supreme being, and is therefore part of a cosmic plan. Others turn to little acts of kindness, and try to make a difference in the lives of those immediately around us - friends, family, the downtrodden etc.

The latter path is certainly appealing, but it runs into a dead-end when one realises that the primary determinants of their lives are systemic issues like the economic models countries follow, or the level of freedom and liberties it guarantees to its citizens. Of course, little act of kindness can make a material difference to the lives of the beneficiary, but can individual action ever fully compensate for systemic failures or oppression?

My profession takes me to the core of the problem. For years now, I have been working on social protection and digital rights. The very foundation of these issue is the nature of the citizen-state covenant. Both are determined by the nature of government we created, how this government views its citizens, whether it trusts and empowers them, and how it deals with perceived threats to its existence.

When working on these issues, I cannot but feel overwhelmed by the enormity of the forces I'm encountered with. Let's take the example of India. The nature of the Indian state was determined by the cataclysmic events during partition, and the need felt by our founding fathers to create a strong government to hold the country together. Therefore, they created a constitutional architecture that borrowed heavily from colonial-era laws, and which provided the government significant freedom to impinge on human rights. This led some like Constituent Assembly member Somnath Lahiri to remark that the fundamental rights have been 'framed from the point of view of a police constable.'

Over the years, there has been a steady and gradual accretion in the power of the state. This process has been further accelerated by the advent of technology and the ability to place digital leashes on an individual's behaviour and even thoughts.

Therefore, every time I think of where my work is really headed, I experience feelings of despondency and anxiety. Despondency because I feel that my work cannot really make a difference, and that forces that are exponentially larger than me are at play. Anxiety because of the fear that those who feel threatened or offended by my thoughts might retaliate.

Quite ironically, then, I think I might find refuge in what the Bhagwat Gita says - "कर्मण्येवाधिकारस्ते मा फलेषु कदाचन, or that you have the rights over your actions, but never over its results. Therefore, perhaps my limited role in all of this is to keep doing what I think is the right thing, without worrying about whether it leads to anything at all.

Perhaps the collective strength of thousands like me, each chipping away at that elusive goal, might mean something substantial in the larger scheme of things. And even if it doesn't, perhaps I will end this lifetime with the satisfaction that I tried my best.

I worry about the state of liberal democracy.

As 2019 draws to an end, I can only look back and be thankful for a year where I learnt a lot. But, like for many of you, these past few weeks of the year have been an emotional roller-coaster. Many of us found ourselves questioning the direction of our country and the values of those around us. Many of us realise that this is the beginning of issues that will polarise our society in year to come. As preparation for that long haul, two reflections stood out for me.

First, there is an urgent need to defend the right to protest peacefully, even of people that you disagree with. On 16 December, I took a major step in my journey to be a responsible member of society when I showed up at Town Hall in Bangalore to join a peaceful protest. While I certainly had a view on the merits or demerits of the CAA, that wasn't the point. I was protesting to protect the right to protest peacefully. That week was an eye-opener for me! The police repeatedly created impediments for the peaceful protests I joined, first by detaining and threatening some of us, and finally by taking away the fundamental right to assembly by imposing Section 144 in Bangalore. There have been many other instances of disproportionate use of state power to quash protests - bones broken, libraries tear-gassed, private property damaged, and families separated.

At the macro level, I believe that creating an outlet for citizens to voice their discontent is good for the stability of the country. If such outlets are not created, the discontent will brew within individuals and then find more extreme manifestations later.

Closer home, I have taken many decisions in my life where I respectfully disagreed with someone in power, and am much better off as a result. Right from the job I chose, the MBA I didn't do, or the relationships I engaged in - I have been fiercely independent in each of these decisions. Of course, many of these decisions turn out to be wrong. But the very act of standing up, taking ownership, and being able to speak truth to power has helped me grow. To me, this freedom is the foundation of my life.

Therefore, I want each of us to be able to experience that freedom. It could be something as banal as the freedom to hang out with your friends, to choose what you wear, to stay out as late as you want, to study what you want, to take up the job you like, or to love and marry whoever you want. Or it could be something as consequential as the kind of government you want or the policies you think it should follow. It all really boils down to the same fundamental concept - should you have the right to live your life without being unduly restricted by those in power - family, society, businesses, or governments - as long as you don't harm others? I believe yes, and which is why I was on the streets protesting the disproportionate use of force on protestors and to protect the right to protest.

Second, I have also realised that there's so much misinformation and hate circulating on social media platforms like twitter, and communications platforms like WhatsApp. And as Amber Sinha rightly points out in his book 'The Networked Public', this issue cannot be addressed simply by providing the right information. Such misinformation campaigns work because they exploit underlying social and cultural factors to drive hate and outrage. Moreover, the sheer volume of misinformation will likely make constant fact-checking difficult. In fact, Gartner has said that by 2022, we will be exposed to more incorrect than correct information.

I am still very overwhelmed by the complexity and scale of the issue at hand. Societies are complex structures, and therefore require careful and thoughtful application of mind in order to succeed. But misinformation and inciteful content are like termites eating away at the foundations of modern society. Over the past few weeks, I have seen it play out both on mainstream news channels, as well as WhatsApp groups. It is a different experience to read about it, and quite another to see it play out on an issue that you care about.

Put together, these two issues threaten the very basis of liberal democracies. It's not just an Indian problem - the world over, we are seeing the gradual slide of democracies. For years, I have grown up under the assumption that liberal democracies are the 'steady state' of humankind. But let's be honest - these are very new forms of governance that have gained traction only over the past seventy years or so. It is fairly possible that democracy as we knew it will soon die.

That worries me because freedom has meant so much to me. With it, I have everything; without it, I am nothing.

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* - I saw commentators and acquaintances speak about how the violent crackdown was an appropriate justification to damage to public property. But that's looking at this all wrong. In my work on privacy, we often talk about 'proportionality', and these incidents brought the concept to life. Should police break your car if you jumped a traffic signal? If someone from your neighborhood murders someone, should the entire neighborhood be lobbed with tear gas to find that one person?

Taking a break

Let me start with a confession. I think I am a workaholic. That doesn't mean that I work all the time. In fact, I regularly take out time to go to the gym and meet friends. But even when I'm doing those things, I'm usually obsessively checking for emails and thinking about work. The next major meeting I have, or the documents I'm working on, or the feedback I've just received on my work. In fact, I meet most of the 7 signs and 3 character traits of workaholics that this Forbes article enlists.

Because I don't really work long hours, my physical health continues to be unaffected. I get time to eat healthy, work out and sleep well. So far, so good. But the mental stress and exhaustion from constantly thinking about work takes a toll. Every 4 months or so, I find myself completely disengaged from work and unable to carry on. Then I take a few weeks off for a vacation. But even when I'm on vacation, I refuse to stay away from work. I check emails and work on flights, during breaks, at nights and any other time. Research published in the Scandinavian Journal of Psychology found that workaholism is correlated with higher prevalence of attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), anxiety and depression. Many of the findings are behaviour patterns that I observe in myself. Compulsively checking emails, sometimes every 2-3 minutes, is one. Trying to organise my workday and fretting over irrelevant deviations from schedule is another.

Vacations can be an excellent way to unwind and rein in your workaholic tendencies. Over the past two years, vacations have become an integral part of my life. But these vacations weren't always what they were meant to be. I still remember my first vacation after joining Omidyar Network. Nico and I went to Thailand and Cambodia, but I used a lot of that time catching up on work. The next trip to Japan was even worse. I signed myself up for an investment committee meeting, constantly read work-related documents, and stressed non-stop about an investment proposal that I had been championing internally. I came back from these 'vacations' slightly refreshed, but experienced burn out within a few months.

I then thought a lot about how I can make my vacations work for me. I took inspiration from the four rules of an effective vacation that writer Chidike Samuelson enlisted - pause everything that suggests work, treat your mind, treat your body, and catch up with your life. So, this time that I'm in Australia, I successfully kept myself completely cut-off from emails for a week. I tried to replace the phone with a physical book. I tried to spend my meals either having a conversation, or reading the book. I take the time to sit and ponder, without feeling the pressure to do anything. Not all of that has been successful, of course. I still go on twitter, which has become a major part of my workday. On Friday, a Government committee released a report on a topic that I had been following closely. That led to a few days of disequilibrium.  But the general upward trajectory is encouraging and gives me hope that the next vacation would be even better.

But vacations will only come once every few months, if not years. It is important to keep the body and mind healthy in the meantime. That will help me avoid the kind of brain-splitting burnouts that I experience every few months. There is plenty of advice out there on how to deal with work. I found these seven tips especially useful - eat nutritiously, exercise, uni-task, breathe, schedule non-work stuff, take tech time-out, and know that balance is constantly evolving. The one that I find most challenging is uni-tasking. One of the most important differences between management consulting and my current job is the explosion in the number of things I need to work on. At any given point, there are 8-10 major streams of work that are screaming for attention. Some of my days are spent just jumping from one to the other, addressing the most urgent things in each. That leaves me very dissatisfied because my brain doesn't feel particularly challenged, and I start wondering if I'm even contributing anything. Uni-tasking could therefore be something I focus on when I go back to work.

Incase you're wondering if I'm all negative on workaholism, I'm not! Being in love with my work has helped me tremendously in life. I look back at the frenetic pace of things back at college and I wonder where I got that energy from! But now that I'm in a slightly comfortable position in life, and possibly at a mid-20s crossroads, I need to think about where to go from here. The sprint is over, and the marathon requires a different set of skills. Writer Jessica Stillman has talked about five differences between workaholics and high performers - having specific goals, setting targets, varying level of effort, being proactive, and not seeking external validation. As I head back to work from my two-week vacation, these could serve as useful goalposts to keep in mind.

Humility in Public Discourse

I believe that it’s rather easy to be a ‘good’ person when it’s all going well, it’s when you’re tested that holding on to those ‘values’ gets difficult. In the past two years, few things have tested my composure as consistently as Twitter. What I have realised during my two years on Twitter is that public discourse is driven by perception and emotion as much as by the truth. I have found it very challenging to try and have a meaningful conversation in that setting, while maintaining an unbreakable bond with cold, hard facts.

Working on issues that are seeing a very active and polarised discussion is never easy to start with. I have been aggressively tagged and attacked either personally, or as part of my organisation. The ‘guilt through association’ syndrome and conspiracy theories abound on twitter, and I’ve seen my fair share of that. Some days, I’ve woken up and read something blatantly incorrect being written about my work and it makes me both upset and angry. Towards the middle of last year, I realised that I was carrying that anger with me through the day. It was taking a toll on me, both physically and emotionally.  It just wasn’t working for me – I was neither feeling happy, nor able to convince anyone on twitter who attacked my work.

That’s when I decided that things have to change. I’ve followed a few guiding principles that I now want to try and articulate.

Speak more with less

Twitter is a rather loud place - several people I follow tweet multiple times a day. At times, I found myself tempted to follow their lead by tweeting my reaction to several news or articles I read. That was, however, rather delusional of me. Nobody really cares about my opinion on things. The pressure to react quickly also meant that I didn’t take time to process and read more about things. This was also contrary to my natural tendency, which is to investigate things before making a comment. Therefore, I now try to post if and only if necessary. I try and focus on things where I have something new to say, or to demonstrate my support for an organisation or a cause that I really care about. The contours of what is important will evolve, of course.

The one-day response rule

The beauty of twitter is that with a few jabs of my fingertips, I can post a very public response to someone who’s criticised or questioned me. However, the individual at the other end has exactly that ability as well. Therefore, we end up in a place where we’re constantly going back-and-forth, almost like a prisoner’s dilemma game. Moreover, the initial fight-or-flight reaction, which on full display on twitter, isn’t necessarily the most useful. Time heals everything, and part of the reason that it is able to do so is because it helps us overcome the first emotional reaction, and think through issues. Therefore, I now resist the temptation to reply immediately to a provocation on twitter. By day two, I’m most likely to choose not to respond. Even when I do, it is more likely to be a less confrontational tweet than I’d have put out earlier.

De-escalate and take offline

I have met many people in life who are very aggressive online and yet exceptionally kind and gentle in real life. Our social media profiles, including facebook, linkedin and twitter, are rarely a reflection of who we really are. I continue to believe in the innate goodness of human beings, driven to do ‘bad’ things because of anger, greed, lust, revenge and other vices. Therefore, I believe that meeting a critic in person is a much better way to engage. We will be forced to spend many minutes, not a few characters, getting to know each. I have not yet found an adequate substitute of a face-to-face meeting. Therefore, I try to reach out to individuals and set up a real-world meeting. The few times that I’ve been able to do that, I have found the exercise very effective and cathartic.

Be good, say good

This is the most ambiguous and difficult of all. When faced with a barrage of negative comments, how does one maintain equanimity and continue to engage positively? I have found it next to impossible, for two reasons. Firstly, ‘goodness’ requires more patience than rudeness. Therefore, it is a massive time sink, which few of us can afford with our busy lives. Secondly, goodness is very easy to make fun of, and a ‘good, kind’ person risks very public humiliation. Therefore, this remains an aspiration for me. I hope that one day, I can move towards being a very positive person. For those who know me well, they’ll realise that it is going to be very challenging. But, well, what’s life without challenges.

So, these are my four norms of maintaining humility on twitter. This post, of course, is about public discourse. But I believe that if one can do this on twitter, other interactions should be a cakewalk. Twitter brings out the worst in us, but it is when we are confronted with our worst that we can demonstrate, to ourselves and those around us, our best.

Humility in Venture Capital

Those who've followed my blogs for a few years will know that humility has been a recurring theme. Ever since the high scores in Grade XII exams and the resultant media exposure catapulted me into a position of local prominence, I have struggled to balance my feeling of having 'achieved' with the need to remain humble. As reflected in this post from 2013, I tried to argue that humility is important for a process of continuous learning. Lack of humility, I ruminated, would cause me to filter out uncomfortable discussions and contrarian viewpoints. However, as my professional and personal journey increased, I realised that it was an inadequate behaviour. I came across several self-assured and rather aggressive people whose display of supreme confidence in themselves caught the attention of people around them. Those who were meek and reflective simply didn't seem to have the same gravitas. That's when I started distinguishing between internal and external humility and wrote about it in this post from 2015. The idea was simple - I exist in service of an idea and, sometimes, I would need to demonstrate external arrogance, so that my idea can propagate. However, internally I should always be humble so that the process of continuous learning doesn't stop. In 2016, at the cusp of beginning my journey in philanthropy and venture capital, an incident that I talk about in this blog made me think once more about the qualities that I really value, and humility came up on top again.

Which brings me to the point of this blog, i.e. my continuing reflections about humility. As a funder, especially one backed by the generosity of a single individual rather than just financial returns-oriented investors, it is very easy to get carried away. Even though every such organisation (including mine) has many checks-and-balances and, in any case, I'm at a junior level, such organisational details are mostly unknown to those I interact with. Therefore, the perceived power I have to determine what we fund creates a strange (and unsettling) power dynamic in many conversations I have. A colleague put it well recently - in every conversation, both you and the grantee know that there's a hammer on the table and you can use it any time you want. The key is how to have an honest conversation despite that. There is a lot of hubris in what is called 'the investor community'. For example, a relatively junior peer at another firm gloated that entrepreneurs would "such my c**k" for funding.

The problem with such hubris is that it is only illusionary. Our perceived power comes only from our membership of a particular organisation; that power is as fleeting as our membership of the organisation itself. Our membership itself may be due to several extraneous circumstances that we can barely take credit for. In my own case, my entry into Omidyar Network was because of an internship posting that a friend forwarded to me. There might have been many others, far more deserving of the job, who just didn't happen to see such postings. I happened to be in the right place at the right time - that's very little to gloat about!

Second, I continue to see entrepreneurs as people to look up to. It would be very easy for them to do what I do. In fact, many entrepreneurs I know started their careers in similar organisations as mine. However, I continue to believe that I can't do what they do. Therefore, if I believe that I can turn up at a meeting and tell an entrepreneur how she should be running her business, I'm only fooling myself. At best, I can serve as a knowledge agent, using my networks and wider view of the market to suggest ideas to her. If I really knew so much about what makes a successful start-up, shouldn't I be an entrepreneur myself? Any arrogance, therefore, is merely a delusion.

Finally, I go back to my earliest thoughts around filtering out different viewpoints. Much of investing is to get a grip on different sectors. That is particularly true in my situation because I'm working in a nascent sector where the 'template of success' has not yet been established. Therefore, I need to treat every conversation as a learning opportunity. For that to happen, I need to approach it with humility. Anything else would make me a partially blind investor at best and an unsuccessful one at work.