An Indecisive Indian

  Haiñ aur bhī duniyā meñ suḳhan-var bahut achchhe kahte haiñ ki 'ġhālib' kā hai andāz-e-bayāñ aur   suḳhan-var: eloquent poet andāz-e-bayāñ: style of narration   (Although there be in this world many great poets but the style of narration of Ghalib stands unparalleled)   Mirza Asadulla Baig Khan, takhallus (pen name) Ghalib and Asad, the great poet, was born on 27 th Decmeber 1797. His has been the greatest voice in Urdu poetry and his shairi is rendered in singing and recitation and heard the maximum. Ghalib wrote in a nascent language and not only gave it innumerable embellishments but took it so much farther that he made his thought and words talk to the reader; so gifted was he that the language itself became Ghalib; Ghalib made Urdu, Urdu did not make Ghalib. Such was his charisma that even 200 years after he started writing, his shairi and shakhsiyat  (poetry and individuality) continue to be an enigma for analysis and research by scho...

  Sometime between odd hours and 6 AM on 11 th Dec, my wife called out “ Happy Birthday ” in her sleep, I said, “ Thank You ”, I think we smiled at each other and that was that. The horror started around 6.15 AM when a batchmate, not much of a friend but almost-human all the same, wrote the momentous legend in a rather large batchmates’ Whatsappp group, “HBD, Mani”. And all hell broke loose with batchmates of myriad descriptions inflicting me with vacuous messages exhorting me to achieve the impossible in my remaining life span which they wished would go on forever. “Live forever and keep spreading sunshine like you always do”, “ We rejoice with you as you celebrate your birthday today. The very best is yet to come” and “May your special day be filled with all the good things that you deserve, and may all your wishes come true”. Indeed! Just because some aged guys with nothing much to do except issuing idle decrees that I should now tread the path leading to all good things, I no...

I keep saying in my talks, in jest, that I was hardly an accomplished speaker and therefore keep borrowing from superior intelligence, usually my uncles: my great grand uncle, Kabeer , who lived some 700 years back, my grand uncle, an Englishman, Shakespeare , born more than 500 years ago and my young uncle Ghalib who started speaking to me more than 200 years back. And indeed a battery of similar kinspersons who have spoken so abundantly, meaningfully and elegantly that I can simply forage and scrounge and perorate for hours on life, while keeping it topical for this blog, most specifically on management and leadership.   Borrow and speak I will, but without disclaimers. Because what I speak, and now write, about is gold standard on the ‘ proof is in the pudding’ benchmark. They say that the stereotype leader-manager is a specialist of spiel whereas a more seasoned and successful one goes one better and writes. Now that I do both, and also that I hardly have a leadership role a...