Tolerence and Immunity

The green light goes ON and I let my feet go off the clutch and step on to the accelerator to make my way pass one of the 8 lights I come across while going to office. Of course - the vehicles which were suppose to stop at the same instant when I had started moving do not care to stop and they all continue to move as if they never saw their light going amber and then red. I move ahead and at the sight my car and all the vehicles following me, moving on, the vehicles on the other side start slowing down and finally stop... still you see some shameless two wheelers or auto rickshaws dodge their way cross the red light. This happens everyday at every light I pass and gets on to my nerves.. several times I felt like getting down my car and yelling at them.. but.. haven't done it so far. Reminds me of the "Dombivali Fast" and sets me thinking as to how long and far do we keep tolerating the culture of violating traffic rules.. Its never ending...

This is me at one end of the spectrum and let me see myself on the other end..

Since my childhood days have been dropping (then my mom use to call it and now my wife calls it "throwing") my wet towel either on the bed or the sofa. From the reactions I have been seeing after I get caught "throwing"... I am sure they must be getting the same agony as I get when I see someone jumping the light.. But then they to tolerate and with grudges though pick it up and put it out for drying or into the heap of clothes to be washed.

Both these instances mark tolerance of people to indiscipline. We see ourselves on either end of the spectrum - quite often on one and less often on the other depending on how disciplined and good citizens we are. Quite often we tolerate others and are tolerated by others and at times we get beaten/beat others for their mistakes/wrong doings.

We find this happening at workplace - we tolerate unresponsivenesses of people, we tolerate lack of participation from people, we tolerate bureaucracy, we tolerate sloppy work, we tolerate ambiguity, we tolerate delays and many more things.. depending on how expressive one is, the vice is either tolerated or bashed.

It is not that we tolerate all the time.. one fights / rebels against these irregularities/deficiencies at times with varying degrees and I do that very often.. At times it offends people at times it sets spanner in the wheels and at times its treated as feedback and we see people acting on it for a change. I have found many like minded people having less or more tolerance to the system than me and making it a point to express their anguish/feedback. At times it is sarcastic and destructive with no intent to give the other person a chance to change/improve and at times it is constructive but not enough push to see the receiver change and the third category is the people who give the constructive feedback or bashing - whatever you call and see the issues getting fixed over a period of time through constant follow-ups.. a rare Gandhian category..

There is another category of people we see in the system..
Sometimes, some people in the system, having stayed in the system for long start tolerating things - they get immune to the anomalies/inefficiencies.. They not only get immune but easily dodge the system and find the least resistance path to get across - this improves the effectiveness of the individual but weakens the system. The new people who get into the system do not make their way through such system with ease.

I am not sure if all this makes sense to the readers and probably when I read this next time, going to edit it to make more sense out of it.

cheers for now, mahesh

Six Degrees of Seperation

Hard to believe that its has been mathematically proven that every person on this earth - includes the President of India, Prime Minister of India, Shahrukh Khan, Amitabh, bin laden, George Bush, Madonna, Bill Gates and Sam Palmisano etc. etc.. and btw, Raveena and Aishwarya too are not more than six hops away from knowing you and me. Its matter of finding of the right hops. check this out : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_degrees_of_separation

Well now, drifting a bit away from the math and getting a bit sentimental...

What about the neighborhood - do we know six neighbors in our society well ? I am not sure about you, but honestly speaking I barely "know" two. At the last IBM offsite I was talking to one of the colleague about how professionals in our industry get drifted from their roots and loose the social contacts and sometimes social skills/tolerance too. I reflected a while thought of some of the reasons - the continuous movement away from places where we have grown up and done our schooling/colleges was the obvious one. Beginning the teenage, until the time I moved out of Mumbai for job and then getting married I have had the best friends, hobbies and social interaction. That seems to have completely lost since I got into the job, drifted away from Mumbai and got married.
What scares me is the effect it is going to have on my future and not much about my present. At present we hardly have the time.. We are damn busy at work and with the kids and sometimes some fun. What happens when we have moved out of jobs ? The situation is scary - no hobbies, no moments to cherish and of all things NO URGENT MAILS TO CHECK !!

It has been a while

It has been a while since I blogged.
Although had several spurts of good bloggable thoughts, incidents and maments.. did not capture them and yet again sitting late night on a Sunday with none of those topics which could have been good writes..
Today I was at the Shilpa Society's General body meeting. Maann... It was a major political drama with heated arguments and debates.. It looked like a parliament session, probably worst than that.. I pitied the managing comittee's members who were trying to maintain the calm and decorum, but a couple of culprits kept scratching the surfaces. Overall it was an interesting affair...