I feel like a loser

Albert Einstein once said,"Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid."

I honestly don't know how I'm feeling right now. Am I outraged by the world's inability to accept and promote diversity? Or am I slowly (and painfully) coming to terms with my shortcomings? Am I withdrawing into a shell, to try and come back strong? Or am I tending to give up on life, like I've done earlier? I do know that I'm having this terrible feeling (again) that whatever progress I've made in life has been shallow - that it has been achieved only in arenas that see very little human interaction. What have I achieved in any field where one needs to interact with, move and lead other people?

I grew up being constantly told how shy I am - and I almost wore it on my sleeve as a badge. After all, weren't all the "well-behaved" kids supposed to border being shy? I couldn't have imagined that in the process of growing up, it would snowball into something completely different, something that I am grappling with. When someone in an interview told me "you're not half as good as your CV", it was as much praise for my achievements as it was an indictment of my failure to back it up in personal interactions.

I find myself morbidly fearful in social interactions. I don't know why. And I also realise that this message has been drilled into me with such ferocity that even if I wasn't destined to be this way, I have become this way. I now wonder how much I am what people made me believe I am. When people said I'm intelligent, I went ahead and become more so. When people told me I am shy, I went ahead and become increasingly so. What others say about you probably shapes what you think of yourself (especially as a kid). I am also a strong votary of the point of view that you become what you think. By transitivity, what people say about you is what you become. I now wish that when I was in my formative years, somebody had held me, supported me and forced me to go out there and interact with the other kids. That's a skill I missed to pick up, and I suffer as a result.

As one moves up in life, the pyramid before you becomes progressively smaller. Hence, your interaction with each member of that pyramid becomes increasingly important. This is when your social skills start kicking in. Someone once told me "your raw talent, your intrinsics, can only take you a certain distance in life." I refused to accept it, but now that I think of it, it is a truism that I cannot deny. No matter how hard I work, what I do - at the end of the day, I will reach a plateau.

However, everybody cannot do everything - and perhaps my inability on this front is what feeds whatever I do well on other fronts. It torments me, yes - but who hasn't been tormented by their shortcomings before? So why not be at peace with oneself, and keep doing what one does well? 

So, there are two paths that I see from here - one is a reinforcing image of myself, doing what I do well. The other is a radical shift in trying to do things that I am bad at. Somewhere in the middle, perhaps, is the correct path. The search for the correct path will be eternal, and the question facing me is the sacrifices I am willing to make to search for it. Because everything has a cost, a price.

2013

2012 was a year that had changed my life forever. The CAT result catapulted me in a very different space both professionally and personally. It gave me the confidence that everything that had happened before was not a fluke - gave me confidence that I could hold my own against my brethren who had chosen an engineering path, and who I've always viewed as mentally superior beings. Then the final results of the economics (H) course gave me further confidence that I had achieved something I (and a lot of others) never believed I could do. I had never felt as vindicated as I did the day I topped the class. I would be forgiven for thinking that I would never see a year better than 2012. 

But 2013 fulfilled me in ways that I've never been fulfilled before, and it is funny that it came at work. My way of thinking, perspective towards life and towards economics changed while I was working on a project at McKinsey this year. I took baby-steps towards self-actualisation. I learnt to accept myself more completely, to be conscious and expressive of my feelings and to be an 'extremist' proponent of my point of view. Nothing that I had ever achieved before taught me to love myself! This is precisely what I learnt this past year - that no matter what I do, no matter what I achieve or I don't - I AM, and hence I should love myself.

I met some very interested people last year, and I was awed and inspired by them. A true guru is one who enables his shishya to be independent, and I was taught how to be independent. I observed keenly, and then blended the learnings into my own way of living. I felt enlivened and excited by this personal experiment. Till then, I had very successfully trained my mind in any which way I wanted; last year I perhaps took the first steps in training my soul.

I have loved thrice, and in my fair evaluation, failed each time. But last year I learnt how to accept the failure of my love. I also learnt that it isn't always necessary to be there; because every time I feel thankful to my mother's gentle care, I also feel proud of my father's stern demeanor. I could keep indulging my friends' inadequacies (as they have often indulged mine), but at some point a change of tact is necessitated - and this realisation has allowed me to experiment with different modes. Today, I think both of them are on a path that will give them more happiness in the long term. What else could I have asked for!

As I am writing this post, I realise how much I've changed in the last one year. When I think really hard does the Rhodes Scholarship come to my mind. I am finally learning to value other things in life - like the time spent in Europe and Thailand! It is the experiences, the paths, that I remember, and not the end goal. 

My only prayer for the coming year is that my feet stay firmly on the ground. God has given me far more than I deserve. I want to be a worthy beneficiary of God's grace. I want to be a source of joy to my friends' lives. And I want to fulfill that burning ambition at the root of my sadness - to be a good son, a good brother.

Well, it has been a really long time since I wrote something on my blog. For most of this year, I have also not maintained a journal. What started out as an attempt to save time in what was turning out to be a busy work life as a consultant has now turned into a more principled stand. My journal was always meant as a disciplining device - I started it when I started disciplining my mind back in Class 7 or so. Now, since I do not reflect on my activities at the end of each day, I do not feel the need to change an unproductive phase of my life. My idea was to start living life without crutches, and I do not feel I'm doing a good job of it.

I have often been called arrogant, and I deflected that criticism (both internally and externally) by arguing that arrogance is a refusal to change. I was always a proud individual who would be very sensitive to public criticism, but also someone who would internalise what even the worst of enemies would have to say about me, and then act on it. This made me willing to change, and hence not arrogant. Now that I do not have my journal, I take far more time to internalise and react to things, and hence my resistance to change has increased. Now, in the true sense of the word, I am turning arrogant. For example, earlier if my best friend would say something critical of me, I would think about it while writing my journal. Now, I try to forget it as soon as possible (so it doesn't screw with my happiness), and hence I do not change.

That brings me to the question of motion in life. Motion is a beautiful feeling, a great distraction. It is also a sieve that separates the ephemeral from the persistent. I have found it a massively useful tool to not get stuck on to a certain feeling, emotion or person. If I try to move on in life, I will either forget the thing, or remember it. If I forget - it is a sign that it was not important at all. If I still remember it, that is a call for action. I have seen far too many people - some of my closest friends - ruin their happiness because they get stuck on to something. People change, situations change and life itself changes. Your happiness will only be guaranteed if your mind shows the pace and agility that the world and nature around you will show.

I strongly believe that if you want to be truly happy in your life, you need to detach yourself and be an involved observer in the world (what I now refer to as the 'Vishnu' model of enlightenment). At every step, you have to be conscious of the things happening around you, and your own feelings. At the same time, you need to realise that most things in this world, and most emotions you feel, are temporary. A break-up, for example, is not going to give you the pangs beyond a part of time. I personally emerged strongly from a terrible relationship crisis. Yes, it took me a bout of clinical depression and nearly a year to completely come out, but I did it. Today, I can look back at that time with no bitterness - and I wish I had known back then that it never matters. But well, it is the falling down which taught me how to get up, and for that I am forever grateful.

This is not my first post on arrogance, and will certainly not be the last. Given that arrogance is something that is felt, and responded to differently by different people - accusations of arrogance will continue with most individuals till they die. Very often, arrogance will be a natural accusation for someone who goes on to transform or revolutionalise things - this is because years and decades of indifference make some institutions so cold to internal change that only a heated external force will be able to transform it.

What I have tried to do is to crystallize my thoughts and come up with a definition that is both specific and actionable. In that spirit, I define arrogance as a unwillingness to change. I am all for people with strong opinions, for I believe that it is such people that can get the world around them moving in a particular direction. However, even this revolutionary genius must, in its heart of hearts, be open to its fallibility.

When people call me arrogant (especially in a materialistic sense of the word), a part of me does feel hurt. Primarily because all the struggles that I have been through seem to be ignored when such a judgement is passed. For example, when my espousal and praise of an iPad is construed as materialism, I go back to the days when I would have to take the DTC bus every alternate evening to go to a dingy cyber cafe and start filling my US undergrad applications. Those applications bombed, not because (I believe) I did not materially have the goods, but because of my lack of knowledge and information. Today, the iPad is a ready window to a world of information. Not only does it help me keep track of news all the time (unlike my first few months at McKinsey when I didn't have the time to read papers), but also to be quick in replying to people who reach out to me, to post on Absolute Interview etc. The iPad, hence, is an enabler - as much as it is a materialistic indulgence. Yes, it hurts me when people accuse me of having turned 'elitist' or materialistic. 

However, it is extremely easy to rationalise away this discomfort. That people do not know my entire history, least of all the struggles hidden in my past, will always be true. Not even my best friends know all about how and where I came from. The reverse is also true - I do not know people well enough. Does that mean we do that judge people? No - that would certainly make the world extremely boring and indecisive. I would encourage people to be judgmental and form opinions. The only caveat I would put in is that this judgment based on half information should not be functionally important, and should not be 'arrogant' in my sense of the word - i.e. unwilling to change.

On the flipside, I am enjoying this phase of my life where I'm being 'arrogant' in the conventional sense of the word - spiteful, disdainful, impatient and extremely sarcastic. Firstly, after having spent a couple of years avoiding those traits, I find accepting them extremely refreshing. It is a new and exciting phase of life. Secondly, I find that it has made me more effective in my dealing with people. It enables me to be bold and brash, to call a spade a spade and hence to get to the point quickly. Since I know that my fundamentals are rooted in my introversion and my humble beginnings, I am sure that I don't run the risk of over-doing it. Plus, as long as I am keenly aware of this, I'm sure I won't cross the path of no-return.

Here's a final submission. I feel extremely pained by the egocentricity of people around me. Some of them who turn to our common friends in order to wash dirty linen in public, another set of people who cry and post on facebook about their (self-inflicted) pain and suffering. It is their loss of context that surprises me. I do not complain about the fact that they don't 'care' enough about me - they shouldn't care about me excessively, and for once in life I can say 'it doesn't matter' with my hand on my heart. What bothers me is that they forget that they are irrelevant in the bigger scheme of things, and hence their 'pain and suffering' and 'tears' is only a fraction of an irrelevant thing. In life, they are holding on to maya, which if they hold on to any longer will cause their conscience to be put into slumber, perhaps a phase of self-pity and decay. Instead, they must unshackle themselves and experience rasa, or the manifestations of life, including its joys and sorrows. That will be the path to a happy life, I believe.

Here's an article that has been trending on facebook today. It argues how marriage is a selfless act, and that it is the spouse's happiness that should decide whether one gets married or not:

http://sethadamsmith.com/2013/11/02/marriage-isnt-for-you/

I'm not anywhere close to being an expert on marriages, but here are my two cents on the subject. I have a few points of vehement agreement - for example, that best friends should fall in love.

However, this post is to highlight my points of disagreement with what has been said, and here they are:

• Just logically, the article fails to explain why it is important to keep the other person's happiness as the top-of-mind consideration. It addresses this when it says - "the more you love that person, the more love you receive." This is obviously a self-centered argument. Except for the altruism of making someone happy, why is it important? No answers there.

• Sridevi says in English Vinglish that someone who is not happy in a relationship also cannot make others happy. This is very critical from my perspective. A happy soul can be a powerful beam of hope and joy for lots of people, and hence if there is a source of constant discontent in the person's life, would it not be better to cut it off? Would you rather make 1000 people less happy than make this 1 person happy? Why not be a man/woman of the world?

• People will often say "I did this for you, I did that for you." Now that means this individual is very self-centered. Will a marriage/relationship succeed if one of the parties is such? Why should the other, less self-centered person not break this bondage, free himself/herself up and be a source of joy to people who more deserve it? 

• I fundamentally believe that people who make a list of what all they did for a relationship aren't people worth being around. Plus, if all you did is not good enough, why should one even bother about you? Second, often times it is not what you do, but what you don't do or restrain yourself from doing that proves how much love you have. People who in their childish exuberance do what they think is in the best interest of the relationship are likely to vitiate the atmosphere so much that it is better to exit.

In conclusion, I do agree with the Walmart philosophy that one should return what one doesn't like. Relationships and societal norms are creations of human beings, there is something more fundamental that is out to be achieved by people - something that isn't dependent on these human boundaries. It is what takes you closer to that goal which is important.

Leaving college

If you have ever experienced the numbness of bottling up an overwhelming feeling, you will know what I am talking about. I knew it would hit me hard, and hence I got done with it as swiftly as I could. As I picked up my luggage and made my way from my room in Mukarji East to the small gate behind the Principal's house - a path that we would frequently use while going to grab a bit at the South Indian Cafe - the weight of the moment was overpowering me; but I promised myself not to look back, not to feel weak and never, perhaps, to say that I want to undo that moment.

We were one of the last to leave college that summer, and had said several goodbyes, and often shed a few tears. The moment of our own separation, hence, was pushed into the future. There was, thus, nobody to bid us a goodbye, except for the friendly college dogs. I was probably happier that ways; when I was leaving, the place felt dead, as if it had nothing to give to me. That sense of finality, of completing, was something that made the moment more tolerable.

Deepika Padukone says in Yeh Jawani Hai Deewani that memories are like a pack of sweets - when you open it, you can't have just one. That truly encapsulates the experience I had the previous night, while clearing my residence room. Gifts that had gathered dust in one corner of my room, objects that had a strong naphthalene stench from years of storage in the trunk and kind words that my friends had written for me - they all came back to hit me really strongly. I was moved enough to make one final dash, to go to South Delhi to meet a friend I had had a fallout with. It was the most impulsive decision of my life.

Next day, after watching a movie with my friends, I was all ready to leave. The packing had been done the last night, the clearances obtained and the memories neatly tucked in a cherished corner of my brain. I went to the room earlier occupied by my first year roommate, looked into the empty room and closed my eyes. The cycle of college - freshers coming in, graduates passing out - would go on even after we were gone. It was much like the cycle of birth and death, and that day I got a glimpse of how it would feel to die. It is in these moments of bereavement that one seeks solace, and like Kate Winslet said in Titanic, I promised to never let go - of my friends, these memories and learning.

Then, with the help of Gaurav, I picked up my luggage and went to the waiting taxi. I promised to never look back, never miss college. Because I knew that I had hidden the pain of separation somewhere, and if and when I'll open that part of my heart, there will be no end. I hold on to that moment of time very dearly. Someday in the distant future, in a tranquil moment with my friends (now all old men and women), I will open that capsule, and be overwhelmed. Till then, the show of my life must go on.

P.s. A lot of other things happened that day, of course. I've mentioned only the things I would like to remember when I read this post a decade down the line.

Over the past few weeks, as my knowledge of the deprivation of India's citizens has grown, my faith and belief in education in higher economics has declined. A senior once told me that at a time when the world is growing disillusioned with the 'unrealness' of economics, we as a discipline continue to focus on mathematics and statistics as a major, major component of what we do - and hence drive further into 'unreal' territory. For example, if I were a policy maker, would it help me to be spend days in my armchair and be 100% accurate about my answer, or put two and two together, and provide a broadly correct answer. In consulting, we call it the '80-20' answer - as long as I have discovered 80% of the answer (and arguably the more important components), is it worthwhile to spend effort looking for the other 20%?

My view of the economy has turned more sharply into a 'production and distribution' mechanism. By production, I refer to goods and services that augment human happiness or welfare. I use distribution in a very generic sense. For the economists who seek to change our country, the final agents who act upon our recommendations will be people who are not at all acquainted with economics. I wonder what will be more likely to move them to action - to say that my regression has been corrected for X,Y and Z errors; or to weave the insights together into a compelling story of 'so-what's'.

What has helped me in the past few days is some very elementary notion of how people behave, especially their social behaviour. Concepts such as externalities, public goods, asymmetric information etc have been the concepts I can most often refer to, when reading about India's social issues. To draw insights from the heap of data before me, I have not yet found reason to look at advanced statistics or mathematics. It is logic, and some basic idea of correlations that have been most helpful. For everything else, I can refer to the published knowledge of people who are far more erudite than I can hope to be.

There is a broader theme I would want to answer at some point, but I'll provide a flavour of that here. I find our collective distaste of the 'corporate sector' very jarring. We often paint it as a selfish, ruthless and inhumane world. But here I have learnt skills that my education (in economics, or otherwise) would have never taught me. Here I have learnt the basic idea of economics, to economise! It isn't always necessary for me to kill myself in the relentless pursuit of perfection, to engage in debates that will change neither my life, nor anyone else's; it is here that I have learnt most to value others' time, and my own; it is here that I have learnt to be respectful towards contributions that people in other fields are making - for example, by the simple method of calling them 'experts' (thus acknowledging our own lack of expertise). It is here that I have learnt to come out of the ivory tower, and have learnt humility. When among economists, I am as proud of my training in consulting, as I am about my training in economics among consultants.

The final set of questions I have to answer are - how can I ever hope to be a good economist if I'm not there on the ground (by 'on the ground', I do not mean 'rural surveys' or 'visits'. I mean being part of the people who are generating value in the economy)? how can I hope to change the world if I am cut off from it? How can I hope to lead change if I am distant? How can I change people's lives if I am more into numbers and statistics than into people?

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Disclaimer: This article is written in the spirit of questioning. Since I have not received postgraduate education in economics, I am ill-equipped to comment on its utility. One day, I hope to pursue higher education in economics - however, I do not want to go into it with even the slightest notion that economics is the saving grace of humanity. Only then, I believe, will my education withstand challenges.