This is one of the curtain raiser articles which sets the stage for leadership, m anagem ent and personality dev elopm ent articles.
1
2
3
4
5
Connecting the Dots
Connecting the dots ….. Recently I was watching the movie 3idiots - One of the Bollywood (that’s the way Indian film industry in fondly called in the world) blockbusters. This movie made me walk down my memory lane by almost 2 decades and made me unfold some of my past experiences…. This is just the beginning of the journey in connecting the dots & the key learning which I would like to share in a couple of forth coming articles of the similar kind. The below narrated story is not complete.. but I believe it just sets the stage. Here the ball goes rolling….. (Story begins..) The first character in my story is about Samir. Samir was my senior at primary school. Samir’s family was an upper middle class & very well educated one. Samir’s dad was an Engineering graduate from a reputed Institute. He was serving the Central Government in a very high profile job. Those days it was like striking gold to work for central government. To top this Samir’s elder brother was a doctor by profession and a very well known personality in that town. Since Samir was senior to me, I never had an idea about his academic performances. But he was famous in the school for his talent in sports. He was very good at cricket & used to play for the school & local cricket tournaments. Those were the days when technology & automobile industry was not as advanced as it is today which is very obviously correct…It will not be today either. There was less penetration of rail transport across the country and in the urban local transport systems, the best travel to the metros would be the luxury/Hitech buses w ith jazzy lights all around the buses with comfortable seats. Technically advanced Volvo’s and similar luxuries were unheard of. Mumbai has been crowned as the commercial capital of India as well as Movie capital. That was a time when everybody in the country wanted to go to Mumbai (or Bombay as it was called previously). Everybody wanted to work in Bombay and all families in the rest of India had a migrant or relative in Bombay(I prefer to use the old name..i’ll tell you why…!). As flashy and jazzy were the buses, so were their drivers. There were hitech buses, government run & other ordinary buses too. But the Hitech bus drivers had their own style and they were treated as demi Gods by the rest of the drivers’ community. In a nutshell the hitech bus drivers had their own status within the local forums. Just to give you a comparison - it’s like a guy driving local car and a guy driving Porsche …...
I
didn’t mean it myself but the status & the treatment which Hitech Driver got within the local community was really fascinating…. Now we go flash back to Samir’s home. It was a clear cool evening and I had just finished my evening tea. I went to meet Samir so that we could go to the nearby playground and play - that was our daily routine. When I entered his home, I realized that the situation was a bit serious because of Samir’s bad assessment results at school. Samir’s father was at his w it’s end and wanted to know the reason for his consistent poor performance at school. I was stunned and non-verbal because I held him in very high esteem….he was kind of my idol!! Everybody at home was angry with him and were giving him good. They gave me a frown as I entered the hall .. I did not like it either.. But amidst all this, Samir was very calm & he kept his cool as he watched the window and everything outside it.
Heated arguments passed and Samir’s dad lost his temper and in frenzy slapped Samir. He caught Samir by his hands and asked him the reason for his failure & his mitigation plan for coping up with it. He was furious that samir was neither interested in becoming a doctor like his brother nor was he interested in becoming an engineer like himself. Now – the next few seconds are frozen in my memory as if it’s a recorded videoclip. Samir manages to hold himself high, looks in his dad’s eyes and says “Dad, I have been telling you all since very long that I want to become a Bom bay bus driver. I don’t really care to become an engineer or a doctor.. That’s not what I am really looking for “ -*-*-*-* There was pin drop silence for a few seconds & a tight slap !!!! I am not sure what happened after that as I ran out & jumped from the compound hall and started running for my life. I never even in my wildest dreams dreamt that Samir - my idol – whose fan I was - was so much fascinated by Hitech Buses !!! and that he wanted to become a Bom bay bus driv er!!! (Story ends.) This is one of the curtain raiser articles which sets the stage for leadership, m anagem ent and personality dev elopm ent articles.
Published:intellectmatrix.blogspot.com Email:info@intellectmatrix.com 9 th March 2010