This piece of literature is almost directly inspired from Dr.Pawan Agarwal's lecture at TEDxSSN, which to say the least, was immensely inspirational. Most good speakers succeed because they raise questions, getting their listeners to think. There are very few occasions when plain FACTS inspire you.
Of course, the Dabbawallahs are India's only Six Sigma certified organisation, with 1 error in 16 million transactions (!!!), zero technology- all trademarks of a remarkable management marvel - good enough to awaken even the most unmotivated and slumberous soul on earth. But when Dr.Agarwal's words hit me, there was some kind of a radiant energy in them, an experience which fails words. He got 3 standing ovations in his 20 minutes, all spontaneous. He had to request the audience more than once to stop clapping because he didn't have enough time to finish talking.
What was the power he had ? What was the power that made the predominantly Tamil audience laugh to his Hindi jokes ? I was bamboozled. He was no Winston Churchill or Abraham Lincoln whose poise and language could move stones. He was no celebrity either. In fact very few people in Chennai (from my personal experience) actually know who the dabbawallahs are. But there that day, nothing mattered. All that mattered was that the audience was swaying to his words, and to his presentation slides. The flow of information from him was astoundingly fluent. In fact, I now get the feeling, it might have been enough for him to just stand silently on the stage and think - the audience would still have got his point.
Now I know what impact a Management Guru who doubles up as a Master Communicator has on you. You start thinking you are some big statesman yourself. And that India is made up of 1 billion of these brilliant souls. I understand that a few people might now take exception to me deriving patriotic sense out of something as remote as the dabbawallahs. But I see the connection a lot more clearly.
With a huge count of humanity right from my building's watchman to the FOSS founder, Atul Chitnis, I have discussed about "what works in India?". But nobody's given me the answer better than Dr.Agarwal himself. And the answer is, no matter how much Liberalisation, Globalisation, Privatisation,Population, Corruption, Renaissance, Revolution, not to forget the immortal T.R's Suppression, Oppression, Depression changes our country, our primary characteristic will remain the same - We will remain Indians.
Indians who like living life BIG, Indians who like working hard, Indians who like making money, Indians who are ambitious, Indians who like to live dreams, Indians who are jealous of Tendulkar and SRK, Indians whose life's biggest moment is coming on TV (better if its with SRK himself), Indians who would give anything to be Manmohan's Singh's grand Nephew's best friend's neighbour ("You know Manmohan Singh is actually my neighbour's close relative and often visits him ? I know him pretty well."). Indians who believe and rather disappointedly admit that Britain is the greatest nation in the World ("Even beggar speaks English there, no?"), who would swear by the fact that China is nothing in sports when compared to India ("They don't even have a cricket team"), who think India is a "superpower" already ("We won T20 World Cup"), who think USA is exploiting our country (for once they are right!)
Yes. Indians are in an eternal quest for two things - glory and opinion - and often one fulfils the other.
The fact that we all chase glory is not very disputed. In a nation of 1.2 billion people, each person wants to be unique.Each peson wants to be different. (And Aamir Khan has made the quest all the more important, showing a "different person" who wins the world, in most of his films.)
And being the largest democracy in the world, we have developed a rather awesome thirst for opinions. I remember this Insurance ad where Rahul Dravid tells us "Everybody has advice to offer, but take the advice from the right person." So true. Every Indian has an opinion. We have 1 billion cricket selectors ("Piyush Chawla???WTF!!!"), 1 billion political analysts("Next time Amma thaan."), 1 billion lawyers (or rather judges "he was given only 6 years ? Should have been 14 years. Indian courts are bad"), 1 billion gossip-mongers ("Shahid was found in Pryanka's house" "Cha no, Ranbir was found in Katrina's house"),1 billion Rocket Engineers ("They should not have launched PSLV in eastern side during karthika maasam when wind comes strongly from south west side"), 1 billion news analysts ("Raja talked on phone to Radia, so they both have 'link'. Apo Kanimozhi vaazhka?").
So yes, India is a big crucible of glory-seekers and opinion-givers. Everybody would like it best to get glory out of their opinions. This is a very healthy sign. In a few decades, the Indian mind will evolve. Then we'll have Indians who research on what they say and hence Indians will become the most knowledgeable people on earth. A few decades still later, Indians will be able to think ahead on what will be the most likely occurence. India will then become a centre for global research in everything. We'll have the thinkers, we'll have the learned, and then there will be GLORY. The cycle will be complete. The duality will be fulfilled and Glory will become Opinion and Opinion will become Glory. That will be when India will regain its position at the top of the world order. That will signal the end of the cycle of life. India will be restored to the top of the wheel again and hopefully the wheel will stop moving after that !
P.S: Literary Patriotism is a very murderous emotion especially if you have GATE exam the next day. GATE=epicfail !!
