Your client meeting is at 10 a.m. in a city two hours away. There is a flight at 4 a.m. and the next is at 9 a.m. You can take the first and maybe finish some work on the way. Or you can request the client to reschedule. What would you choose?

If you are the kind who would compulsively pick the 4 a.m. flight, skip sleep altogether (“might as well finish some pending reports and nap on the flight”), you are keenly aware of the rising number of people being laid off and the churn in the upper ranks of the corporate world. Or, more likely, you are yet another victim of workism.
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Not too long ago, journalist Derek Thompson described workism as “the belief that work is not only necessary to economic production, but also the centerpiece of one’s identity and life’s purpose; and the belief that any policy to promote human welfare must always encourage more work.”

More recently, in his TED talk, Azim Shariff, a psychology professor at the University of British Columbia, noted that we tend to see a harder-working person as a “more moral”, better work partner, even though they add no extra value. He describes workism as a culture that forces all of us to participate and punishes us if we do not keep up. So, “we end up putting more and more in regardless of what comes out the other side.” The more laborious the job, the greater the appreciation even though there may be no direct correlation to tangible results. Everything else becomes less important.

A senior management consultant (“no names, please”), currently helping an MNC bring about a culture change observes that workism is a convenient term to describe what is happening at work. “Workism is a series of corporate behaviors that have seeped into organizations over a period of time. It requires a conscious change in senior leaders to break the mold—like focusing on smarter delivery than longer hours, like linking performance to results than efforts.”

It even extends to everyday attire. “We have this senior leader from the old generation who refuses to be seen in anything other than his suit and tie whether he is addressing two people over coffee or a dozen in the board room. Then we have a whole bunch of smart youngsters always clad in denims and tees, who would rather walk in, deliver, and get out than hang around and be seen to be busy.”

So, is it just a matter of bridging the generation gap? “There is a lot more,” my consultant friend tells me.
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“The biggest challenge before us is to define the goal. The goal is not about the hours we put in and what we wear at work. Surprising as it might sound, we found the youngsters to be clearer about the goal than the seniors; they have a surprising level of clarity on what they would like to do and not to, in their work environment and are willing to defy the stereotypes.”

​The team is now attempting a radical management exercise where the newbies on the block would talk about the organization’s goals in informal meetings with the seniors. This inversion of the pyramid is sure to spark conflicts initially. “But It’s worth the try. What better way to motivate individuals than by declaring that we will measure you for what you deliver, not for all those hours you clock in. We expect this to usher in a positive entrepreneurial mindset and a sense of real purpose.”

Charlotte Kramer, author of The Purpose Myth: Change the World, Not Your Job notes that “70% of millennials want to quit their jobs on the grounds of lack of purpose, and this should be no surprise; the positions we take were created to fill our pockets (if we’re lucky), not to fulfil our dreams. To think otherwise is to suggest that one’s individual purpose can be matched with a corporation’s purpose.”
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The challenge for organizations today is to inject every member of the team with a common purpose regardless of one’s role. That’s where culture-change exercises are likely to become more common across domains—to change good old feel-right workism to measurable, no-nonsense purpose-ism. The organization should be sensitive to the individual’s purpose; the individuals should willingly buy into the larger team goal.

You took the later flight but after persuading the client to meet you for lunch at place you knew was her favorite. Not once did you open the laptop, but by the time the desserts arrived, you had convinced her of the positives of working with you. In turn, she convinced you to stay back and address her top team where you did use the slides to make a convincing case. That quadrupled your workload, but you chose to sleep during the late-night flight back home. You knew tomorrow would be excitingly busy. Moral: There are times when the “lazier” 9 a.m. flights are more productive than the "harder working” 4 a.m. flights. 

A coincidence is a matter of pure chance. Except when the timing of the incident defies logic and forces a non-agnostic glance up.

In the movie I am watching with my wife, a rich grandmother resorts to unconventional means (like spraying pepper on those trying to help) to rescue her servant’s daughter. The girl is smart, and they had formed a bond from the time the little one started shaping alphabets from dough. Then circumstances trap the girl in a situation where she is exploited.

Of course, her conditions are different from that of Sush. Yet, that girl in the movie, teaching other children to speak English, did remind me of Sush, the real daughter of a real servant, who used to work at our place more than a decade ago.

Sush, then seven, did not think much of my teaching, the stories I told her and even outwitted me in the “spot-the-place-in-the-map” game we used to play together.
 
I was about to ask my wife, if the girl in the movie bore some resemblance to Sush, when the doorbell rang. I paused the movie while my wife went to open the door.

It was Sush!

She had come with a box of sweets and a sweeter announcement that she had passed her grade 12 exams with top marks.

We invited her to join us in the room where we had been watching the movie. The cloud of economic uncertainty continued to hover over her family, now larger with her little sister. Yet, her sunshine nature was undimmed.

She hoped to become a Master of Business Administration one day. She had picked up a small job where she was by now “comfortable”, giving her enough confidence to master business one day.

Yes, she spoke fluent English and was very comfortable working on the computer at her job. Those are important skills, I lauded her.

No, she was not very comfortable with numbers—neither math, nor accounts. Yes, she knows it may not be possible to do only what she likes; and she must do it well, whether she likes it or not. I applauded her spirit.

The 18-year-old sitting and talking to us barely looked bigger than the little girl we knew then. Yet, her confidence was several notches higher.

While we were talking, I located the blog I had written about her. She stopped talking when she saw the image of the little Sush on the monitor. Halfway through reading it, she started crying. The tears just wouldn’t stop.

When she finished reading and got her tears under check, I asked her why she had cried. “I remember everything. I was always so happy coming to this room, being here. I must have this," she pointed to the blog. "Please give me.”

I shared the link with her. And assured her she was welcome to visit us whenever she wanted.

When I wrote “At 45-minute school with Sush” I had never imagined that I would be spending another 45 minutes with her 11 years later. For a change, this time she agreed to do some homework. She would write about her memories of those years. Perhaps she would explain those tears and share some of her dreams?

She may or may not submit that homework. But when we resumed the movie, it was difficult to unsee Sush whenever that frightened, English-speaking, fragile-looking servant girl came on the screen.

The movie ended happily, showing the girl being cared for by those who loved her. She was set to live happily ever after.

We are sure so will Sush. And that would be no coincidence. Because Sush writes her own script.

Last Sunday, the day the world celebrated mothers, was no different for this mother. Her two sons, 33 and 31, are growing without hunger, pain, joy or sorrow, thanks to her. But do they even know her?

Sometimes they do in the dining hall what they ought to do in the bathroom. Or do in the kitchen what they ought to do out in the yard. Radhamani would discover after cleaning up the mess that the younger was down after another epileptic fit. She would rush to find someone to mind the elder son and then rush to the hospital to fix the wound.

She has just one persistent sorrow. That they don’t know her, her love. Every moment, she pines to hear them calling out to amma. There are times when she is cleaning the vessels or sweeping the yard, that she would hear that call. She would look up eagerly, only to realize nobody had called her.

Writing erases pain

Writing offers her relief. When she writes, her sorrows get erased. She has already published three books in Malayalam.

She had a small government job. Father was a sweeper at a bank. Mother was a housewife. After finishing his work, in the afternoon, her father would go to pick jackfruit leaves which he would bundle up and take to the market to sell. Her most cherished moments were when she and her mother joined him to help pack up the leaves and carry those to the market.

Radhamani had to displease her parents when she decided to marry her childhood friend, Raj. Both families objected. But the couple stuck to their decision.

Radhamani and Raj had their first son nine years after marriage. They named him after the poet they both loved — Shelley. Two years later was born the second son — Sherry.

The boys were a little late to start talking. When Shelley was three and half, their regular doctor felt something was wrong and recommended admission to a larger hospital. Both children were diagnosed to be autistic. The parents were advised to pray.

“I realized the truth that they would need my help to go through life. Gradually I regained strength.” Radhamani had no option.

By this time, her father was dead. Radhamani’s family returned to live with her mother. When both of them left for work, Radhamani’s mother would look after the boys. “The boys would be at a special school until the afternoon. Then mother would feed them and take care of them.”

Waking up to cruel reality

Radhamani’s world collapsed when her mother passed away. That’s when she came to know firsthand how tough it was to bring up the boys.

When the boys were 8 and 6 respectively, a heart attack claimed Raj. That shock haunted Radhamani for a long time. Now, it has been 25 years since he moved on.

She learnt that the boys had no clue about death when the family went through Raj’s cremation rituals. They were in no position to do whatever they were expected to do as sons. That whole night Radhamani spent crying.

“I know when I die my sons will forget me within a week,” Radhamani states calmly. “Yet when I go out somewhere, they would be waiting at home. Waiting in the hope that I would get something to eat. That waiting is enough for me to live on. Else I would have taken my life long ago.”

Finding refuge in words

People tell her death lurks in her stories and poems. Radhamani knows. “It is my writing that keeps the thoughts of suicide away. That is why my writing smells of death.”

“After I die, someone should adopt my children. I hope the government opens a facility to take care of such children in every district. That is my appeal, my prayer. Then I can die in peace.”

This is based on a report dated May 14, 2023, in the Malayalam newspaper Mathrubhumi, written by Sajna Alungal. Illustration based on images accompanying the story. 

Is it possible to have one foot in surface science as an experimental physicist and the other playing bass in a heavy-metal band? Welcome to the life of Alessandro Sala! 

When he is not setting the stage on fire, Sala is “investigating the properties of nanostructured surfaces, 2D materials and organometallic molecules with a scanning tunnelling microscope.”

When he is not exploring the intricacies of surfaces, he plays bass for Rhapsody Of Fire, a heavy-metal band “that has sold more than one million records throughout its 25-year history and regularly tours the world.”

So, what’s the big deal in playing some music after work? His musical role “requires month-long absences from the lab, early-morning flights and dark leather clothes.” (Wonder if the molecules would act differently if the scientist observing them wore dark leather clothes and carried a bass guitar!)

Science and music

Writing in Nature, Sala says, “Good time management is key to having the best of both worlds.” If that sounds like a cliché, it is an art he has scientifically perfected over the years.

His strategy is to find separate spaces for music and science. “I accept master’s candidates and temporary lecturing positions only if no big tour is scheduled in the following semester. I train my postgraduate students to be completely independent, so they can keep working when I travel.” And he attends conferences only in May, June, September and October; the band tends to tour in the other months.

He arranges his parts in new songs mentally over a couple of months and condenses all recording sessions into a couple of weekends. He shares his musical commitments with his co-workers and carefully plans lab activities so that work and music are always in tune. Yes, Sala does attend lab meetings remotely so that he is always updated. No rehearsals while doing lab work, except that “while I’m immersed in an experiment; I do listen to good music, though.”
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Delightful duet

​Has one profession had an influence on the other?

His colleagues are happy to use his scanning tunnelling microscope during his scheduled absence. Also, “in the lab, everybody is capable of using every instrument, and often we help each other on our scientific projects.”

In the music industry, all events from composing new music to live tours are routinely planned around two years ahead. “I treat research branches like albums: every couple of years I revise them critically, and I am not frightened to start a new one, if needed.”

“When I come back to my lab after a month of sleeping on a tour bus, my mind is ready for new scientific ideas, and I feel free to dedicate myself to a scientific task within a well-defined time frame.”

How does one describe Sala’s life—a symbiotic symphony or a delightful duet?

There is the real game of life for most people, and there is the virtual life of massively multiplayer online gaming that is the only real thing for many. A recent report suggests that gaming will soon be the real thing in life, and everyone would be a gamer. Brent Baldwin, once a gamer himself, fervently hopes this future will not come to pass.

In Baldwin's story, “a collection of so many things from my own life”, the gamers in the future are a lost generation, educated but unemployed, living “in a world too expensive and too hot for in-person gatherings.”

Yarro, the central character, lives in a bare minimum pod with no kitchen. For Yarro, “the lack of a kitchen meant more room for a fully immersive gaming rig, which was the height of human existence.”

He hates to go the place where his dad lives (“Miss you, son”) because he does not want to “endure the sun and the heat outside his pod”. Also, because Yarro doesn’t want to run into anyone “who would pester him about ‘not calling’ or ‘how have you been’ or ‘I’m so sorry about your mom’.”

Yet he ends up going there because Sisho, a member of his “posse” had uncharacteristically not logged in for two days. Imagine! A gamer not online! He got to know from a fellow gamer that Sisho was in a hospital near his father’s place.

Sisho had almost died from “nutritive failure.” In non-gaming, real-life words, Sisho was so engrossed in the game that he did not pause to eat and had almost starved to death.

After leaving the hospital, Yarro goes on to visit his father.

Standing in his childhood home, Yarro remembers his parents’ laughter. “How it used to seem so fake, until it was absent. For most of his life, all Yarro had really wanted was to get into a gaming rig and explore other worlds, but for a moment he imagined himself as his Dad, alone day after day. Sisho had the posse waiting for him. With Mom gone, Dad had no one.”

​Do read Yarro's story and ponder about the future that awaits all of us.

A few minutes ago, I came across a scientist’s prediction that technology will make humans immortal by 2030. By 2045, “we will multiply our effective intelligence a billion-fold by merging with the intelligence we have created.”
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Can we harness some of that artificial intelligence to undo the damage we continue to wreak on the outside? And to restore the fragile love and fraying care within us?

That is one animal which does not feature in this documentary. Yet, its call to heed the elephant in the room is not a whisper but a shriek.

Thanks to the push provided by the Oscar-fuelled social media, I finally saw The Elephant Whisperers a couple of weeks ago. Loved it! Made me relive the only time I had the opportunity to give an elephant a bath, in Dubare Elephant Camp, Coorg. I have always been in love with the gentle giants. Oscar or no Oscar, I would definitely watch the documentary again for Raghu and Ammu, and the beautiful visuals.

There are no such beautiful visuals in the documentary I saw a couple of days ago--All That Breathes. No, this is not an attempt to compare the two documentaries. They deal with the same truth we live, but in different ways.

While The Elephant left me feeling good, Breathes left me feeling guilty, uneasy. I don’t think I will ever be able to look a bird in the eye after watching Breathes.

Let me not spoil your experience of watching it and forming your own impressions.

​Just think of all that breathes with us on this planet. And somehow surviving in the filth that has become our ecosystem. We struggle to survive even with fellow members of our species. While we orate, shout, fight and burn, who has the time to worry about birds dropping from the sky?

How can we possibly keep breathing when we consciously and unconsciously create conditions that make it difficult to our fellow residents to live in health and peace? Kites are using cigarette butts as insect repellents in their nests. Should we applaud their ingenuity or be ashamed by our own self-centred callousness?

All That Breathes is set in Ghazipur, where I was some years ago. Then as now, working away in the shadow of the infamous garbage mountain, artisans create pieces of art from waste. Perhaps, there is hope yet?
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Or should we tell that to the birds?

“The earthquake was in Afghanistan,” the old fruit seller said, “but Delhi too was shaken.” He was handing over the second plastic bag my friend had demanded as a backup for the first one bulging with apples and mangoes.

My friend smirked and walked with me to the car.

“What did he mean by that?” I asked.

“Oh, he is nice but a little mad,” my friend replied. “He does not like it when people ask for plastic bags to carry the stuff they buy from him. He used to plead with everyone to get their own cloth bags. He gave up when people stopped buying from him. Crazy guy!”

What does that have got to do with the earthquake?

“He keeps lecturing that we are all one. Earth is gifted to us to by God, it seems. We must all protect it or we will be left with no home. As if, if I stop using a few plastic bags, the planet would be saved. Ha!”

“I doubt if he is even literate,” my friend continued, “but he talks of climate change. Yes, the very words. Climate is changing because God wants to give us a warning, it seems. This earthquake must have been God shaking his fist … ha, ha, ha!”

He was still laughing when I dropped him off before his gate.

I think I will carry a bag or two with me from tomorrow. And I will walk all the way. Why bother with a car when I am supposed to be on my morning walk.

No, I am not thinking of that crazy old man. But why am I thinking of my baby born last month?

You must read if you wish to write. If you are a writer, you must find your reader. You must weigh your words to deliver maximum value. Early lessons.

I started reading early with no ulterior motive. That crept in soon after the professor checked my essay on the college canteen. You are a good writer, she said. Be at it, she advised.

She went to on to make me a part of the editorial team of the junior college magazine. I had arrived, I was sure.

Then I found myself standing at the college gate pleading with all who entered to take a cyclostyled (yes, that used to be a thing) copy of The Junior Rag. The idea is to find your readers, and for that you must go to them, my teacher had said. All I could find was juniors and seniors alike treating the Rag as just that. For the next few days, I stayed clear of the waste bins and random flying bits of paper.

During my year in journalism college, I respectfully approached the instructor. I was carrying a sheaf of painfully typewritten pages. On the pages were words sure to pull readers to the resort I was helping sell. It was my first step into the exotic world of copywriting.

He flipped through the pages as if he were looking at some animation. Then he casually transferred the bunch from one hand to the other as if weighing the pages. “you can expect to get …” he mentioned a price, gave me a patronizing pat, handed the pages back dropping some in the process and moved on.

More recently I cleared out a huge stack of yellowing newspapers from the attic. Each carried a story with what was once rarely obtained, my byline. Explosive exposures, tearful tales, faithful facts. All by a writer who had, as my boss once put it, “strayed” into journalism. The scrap dealer dumped all the bundles on a large weighing scale, checked the weight and counted out the compensation. No, I did not linger for another backward glance.
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Today, when yet another potential client asks me to quote my price per word, per page or per hour, I revisit my early lessons. Then I weighed every word because I valued the reader. Now the buyer weighs content that must be optimized to be found. 

Procrastination is how you make the most of your time. While you are at it, do thieve some to enjoy yourself. After all, I have just about 800 left and you too have not much left, given that each of us has 4000 weeks, give or take a few.

That’s Oliver Burkeman’s estimate. Just that number immediately tells us what really matters, what is precious. TIME!

So, you have your ways (prescribed and digital) to tame time, you think? “The more you struggle to control it, to make it conform to your agenda, the further it slips from your control,” says Burkeman in his famous book, Four Thousand Weeks.

The problem, he says, is that time management techniques don’t acknowledge that time is limited. When you try to manage it, you no longer enjoy it.

Time was when we worked by the sun. Rise, shine and set, all with the sun. Then came the industrial revolution that made time another asset to divide and exploit.

Are you among those who pine for a bonus 24 to add to your given 24 in a day? It can be liberating if you accept the limit. “The paradoxical reward for accepting reality’s constraints is that they no longer feel so constraining,” says Burkeman.

What if you had all the time in the world to be at your device or at work? After all, there is so much to get done by EOD.

Once you accept time is finite, how do you make the most of it? Burkeman has a few suggestions. Know what must be done now, procrastinate or even neglect the rest. Limit what you take up and know you must choose and settle for some. Most importantly, enjoy what you use your time to do.

As the author puts it, the only way NOT to waste time is to use some of it "wastefully focused solely on the pleasure of the experience.”

Burkeman prescribes giving up some control over time and sharing it with family and friends. You will gain emotional riches when you prioritize the out-of-range, in-person kind human connections over the online.

Want to know how well you gel with time? Burkeman suggests four questions to ask yourself:

• Do you avoid new activities, fearing the outcome may cause discomfort, uncertainty or disappointment?
• Do you hold yourself to impossibly high standards?
• Do you live today as a journey to the person you feel you ought to be?
• Do you hesitate to pursue an activity in which you don’t feel you have the expertise?
• Would you approach something differently if you didn’t need to see its completion?

Accept the answers and get going. Enjoy it while it ticks. 

Dr Christiaan Barnard, the pioneer in human-to-human transplant, had visited India when I was in high school. Not sure if that was the trigger, but around the same time I developed this great interest in medicine, specifically in cardiac medicine.  

Even browsed through all of Gray’s Anatomy when I was supposed to be reading Economics much to the amusement of an indulgent family doctor. As a bonus, I had this fascination for science fiction. So, save little details like studying medicine and learning surgery, my heart was set, well, on heart.

Thank God, that didn't happen! They say heart surgeons are dying out. I thought only writers were at risk. Looks like technology is set to bypass my dream surgeons, too.

According to The Economist, until “the late 19th century, surgeons were convinced that the organ was so delicate that even touching it would cause death.” When cardiac surgery emerged around the 1950s, “it quickly became one of the most prestigious and well-rewarded branches of medicine, dominated by vaunting men who gloried in their power to save those doomed to die.”
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In 2008-09, heart operations in Britain were at an all-time high of over 41,000 only to fall to 31,000 10 years later. As against this, from 10,000 in 1991, the implantation of stents increased ten times to over 100,000 by 2020. Reportedly, there is ever less work to go around the estimated 250-plus consultant surgeons in Britain, a number that has remained "largely static." 

What is happening? Is a ChatGPT cousin taking over heart surgery? 

When Simon Akam, the writer of the article asked Dr Dincer Aktuerk, a consultant surgeon at St. Bartholomew’s about the future of the profession, the answer was arresting: “I don’t think that the conventional cardiac surgeon, as we know it, will exist in a few years’ time.”

Dr Richard Galloway, a surgical trainee has chosen to focus on orthopaedics. The rationale is more head and less heart. “Everyone’s going to need knee replacements,” Galloway told the writer. “You’re in good business there.”

Back in 1976, while in India, Dr Christiaan Barnard had told a journalist: “You can't be a heart surgeon and be tense.” Tense they are today, going by what Simon Akam has revealed.

I wonder, the next time I meet my writer friends over pints of a morale booster, and we again aver that no technology can ever replace us, will I also run into some cardiac surgeons asserting that no wire can slip through and cut the scalpel out?