Emotion is Contagious

In a very real sense we have two minds, one that thinks and one that feels.

Daniel Goleman, in his groundbreaking bestseller – Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ, challenged our notion of what it means to be smart.

The emotional center of the brain, Goleman argues, being more primitive, is involved in every thought and in every decision. It is that chamber which flickers into life when you see a movie that moves you, or read a book that inspires you, or listen to music that makes you want to cry. Being enormously powerful, it has the ability to override all rational thinking.

Most of us have had moments when strong emotions like anger had clouded judgment; when anxiety caused distress; when deep grief led to total paralysis. Look into your own life. Your inability to quit smoking even when you have solid reasoning that it is lethal. Your inability to let go of someone who is not meant to be. Your inability to resist getting drawn towards people like AK, for his words touch your heart more than your mind. Little emotions become captain of your lives and you obey them without realizing it.

So intellect, as it appears, comes down to your ability to strike a chord between reason and emotion.

But it is easier said than done. Especially harder for those few who are more emotionally driven. Those who feel deeply. For they seem to be more at risk of getting hurt or swayed away.

So I ask myself: Instead of getting destroyed by these crippling and overwhelming feelings, how can we use them as means to achieve our goals?

The answer is emotional intelligence. Rather than the triumph of heart over head, it is the unique intersection of both. It refers to how we manage ourselves and our relationships, how self-aware we are, how motivated we feel, how we manage distressing feelings, how emphatic we are and how well we tune with others.

The greatest leaders have all used emotional intelligence to achieve their ends. When Martin Luther King presented his dream, he chose language that would stir the hearts of his audience. Hitler spent years analyzing the emotional effects of his body language – the hand gestures and other movements to be a powerful speaker. Most of the world’s tipping points- starting from the birth of nations, the beginning of revolutions, the rise and fall of stock exchanges to the act of falling in love with someone – have not so much to do with logic as emotions.

Moreover, emotions are contagious. Negative emotions more so than positive ones. We are wired to mimic others moods, facial expressions and behavior to reach an emotional agreement. If someone smiles at us, we automatically smile back. If a friend is grieving, we too become sad. The incredible thing is that this reciprocity of emotions is not just limited to individual level; it can be harnessed and magnified into formidable forces. Hitler understood this only too well. That he was a monster can hardly be questioned; the fact that he possessed a kind of mad genius and a keen understanding of how the masses think is equally unquestionable.

In modern world too, emotional tides flow high. The world might look like an immovable, implacable place. Well, it isn’t. With the slightest push- in just the right place – it can be tipped. First, you identify and understand your own emotions, then you learn how to control it – you don’t let it trickle away; you damn it, you develop it, let your mind get drowned in it; and just at the right moment, you unleash it – the tidal wave which spreads the seeds of change – of creation, of innovation and of transformation.


In a primitive sense, we are not so much as creatures of logic as creatures of emotions. By touching emotion, you get the best people to work for you, best clients to inspire you, the best partners and the most loyal of the customers. According to Goleman, in a study of skills that distinguish star performers in every field from entry level jobs to executive positions, the single most important factor was not IQ, advanced degrees, or technical expertise; it was EQ.

Logic is of significant yet finite use. Even to reason effectively, you need emotion. You need to feel the subject you are reasoning for.

To know what you want, you have to have feelings. Stronger your feelings, stronger is the intent.

And stronger the intent, greater the propensity to discover, change and achieve.


Intersection of the Arts and Technology

Steve Jobs final slide during the unveiling of iPad 2 in 2011 emphasized the theme of his life: A sign showing the corner of Technology Street and Liberal Arts Street.

“It’s in Apple’s DNA that technology alone is not enough. We believe that it is technology married with the humanities that yields us the results that make our hearts sing,” Jobs declared

His goal, he long maintained, was to stand at the intersection of technology and the humanities.


And as I approach the end of Jobs biography, I realize how true his words were when he said:

“The reason Apple resonates with people is that there’s a deep current of humanity in our innovation. I think great artists and great engineers are similar, in that they both have a desire to express themselves. In fact some of the best people working on the original Mac were poets and musicians on the side. In the seventies computers became a way for people to express their creativity. Great artists like Leonardo Da Vinci and Michelangelo were also great at science. Michelangelo knew a lot about how to quarry stone, not just how to be a sculptor.”

Just seeking to develop a tool to address a need is not enough. The crucial framing of issues by connecting unrelated nuggets of information is essential for innovation. And that is what humanities teach. You learn how to contemplate and frame questions differently. Creative and metaphorical thinking intensifies the analytic process and you get to see and appreciate the protean perspectives of different individuals and groups under new light. After all, seeing things in a new way is what drives innovation.

Moreover, it’s not only about art vis-à-vis science. Rising above this age old dichotomy, we realize that though every discipline, be it research, technology, medicine, marketing, advertising, movie or philosophy have their own ways of dealing with problems, but often the best ideas to make great products come from cutting across disciplinary boundaries.

Continuing with the example of Apple, it is easy to see how it uses the killer combination of hardware, software and services to create great user experience. That too without being the best in any particular technical area. Rivals miss the point when they stress individual features in their products and how they can beat Apple on memory or pixels or battery life. For, more than the individual elements, it’s the overall package that makes the impact. And Apple excels in this very act of putting together a combination of product, software and service such that the combination is more profound than the parts.

Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert comics, famously shares the same mantra. In his own words:


It is in our nature to classify and put in boxes the things which we encounter every day; as we crave for “order” in our minds to get a false sense of empowerment at being able to systematize the chaos around us. Our higher education is the perfect example where students are supposed to specialize in certain fields, while being totally unaware of the opportunities and answers which they can find in others. Best education occurs when students embrace the idea of well-rounded intellectual development taking a good mix of humanities, physical and social science courses.

History confirms that many significant advances in art, business, technology and science have come from cross-fertilization of ideas. Mendel was a philosopher and meteorologist before he founded the science of genetics. Arithmetic and geometry were separate before Descartes, there was no analytic geometry. So were the sciences of electricity and magnetism before Oersted, Faraday and others created the field of electromagnetism. So were astronomy and physics before Kepler borrowed from each to create modern astronomy.  The list could go on. The bottom-line being that you never know when and how nuggets of knowledge cutting across disciplines can combine together to transform our future.

Quoting Da Vinci: “To develop a complete mind, study the science of art; study the art of science. Learn how to see. Realize that everything connects to everything else.”


Not Frightened to be Creative

Having recently watched Ken Robinson’s talk on creativity, I learnt a small story about a little girl busy doodling in the class.

“What are you drawing?” the teacher asked her.

“God” she said casually.

“But nobody knows what God looks like.” the teacher said.

“They will, in a minute.” the girl replied.

This simple story shows the incredible power of a child’s imagination. She has the ability to question, inquire and produce original ideas. The reason behind her originality is that the kid is not frightened to be wrong.

We all are born creative. The desire to create is what lies at the core of human soul. But as we grow up, we become afraid of being wrong. We live in a society which stigmatizes mistakes and failures. So we tend to play safe. However, the safe crowded path might actually be dangerous. Lethal, in fact. Since we kill what exists at the core of our being – our own creative selves; even as we wear a facade to flow with the “trend”. As Picasso had said, “Every child is an artist, the problem is staying an artist when you grow up”. 

Out of all the factors, it is our present education system which chiefly ensures that we grow out of creativity. Their main role seems to produce degree-possessing mechanized individuals capable of doing jobs where they can give and take orders. Though there is nothing wrong in doing a job just to earn money so as to support one’s family, but the problem arises when we start deceiving ourselves into believing that we don’t have the freedom to choose otherwise. It would be mauvaise foi (bad faith) according to Sartre.

Bad faith occurs when we lie to ourselves. The greatest lie we tell ourselves, dare I quote Paulo Coelho, is that at a certain point in our lives, we lose control of what’s happening to us, and our lives become controlled by fate. We all indulge in this kind of bad faith one time or the other; in most cases, by sticking with the safe, easy, default ‘choice’ and failing to recognize the multitude of other choices that are available to us; believing that we are at the “mercy of our circumstances”.

So creativity, in our present social context, boils down to how authentic we are. The more authentic we are, the more freedom we acknowledge, the more creativity we unleash and more epic our journey will be. Moreover, it is really hard to lie to oneself if we listen to both our heads and our hearts. The truth is not always fun; most of the times it’s highly painful. But being honest with ourselves is the only way to create, empower, inspire and innovate the greatness that the world so desperately needs.

It’s a misconception that creativity is a talent or a gift that only a few have. Creativity is not a talent; rather it is a way of operating. It is the power to connect seemingly what is unconnected. As Steve Jobs had said, “Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, the just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while.” A creative person wants to be a know-it-all. He wants to know about all kinds of things: ancient history, mathematics, current manufacturing techniques, planets, medicine, literature, horticulture etc. Because he never knows when these ideas might come together to form a new idea. It may happen immediately, or few months later, or few years down the road.

However, we will face a lot of creative roadblocks as we become adults: there are rules about what’s allowed and what isn’t, how we are supposed to behave and not behave. Though the rules serve their purposes, one should not be afraid to responsibly break them at times. It’s vital that we maintain the wonder that our younger selves had and not lose the true instinct of what is beautiful and awe-inspiring.



An Agenda for the Nation

Indian democracy has become much more chaotic in these past few days. High voltage drama is unfolding with politicians playing fast and loose with whatever they have in their kitty. Be it words, curses, pepper sprays, knives or resignations. It is understandable, given the big showdown is just a few months away. Every arrow in the quiver is used to woo the voters: freebies, anti-corruption pitch, new statehood, minority rights, majority appeasement and what not. And this daily ruckus leads to our greater disenchantment with politics.

Will our politics forever be like this?

Will our leaders always use cheap tricks and short-term promises to assume power at the cost of economic freedom and development that this nation so urgently needs? Are we so parochial that fist-fighting, hurling mikes and spraying pepper in the parliament is the present reality of our “vibrant” democracy rather than setting up definite long-term agenda for the country?

Slowly, the once hopeful citizen starts to believe that India is too vast and varied with too many voices. And that it’s nearly impossible to come up with a general agreement over almost anything.

But is it as complex as it may seem prima facie?

Are our problems as irreducible as the volume of our media or the hyperbole of our politicians?

The answer, I think, can be best answered by one of the greatest minds in India: Narayana Murthy. Poverty, if we look deeper, is the root cause of all evils. And the only solution, he says, to the problem of poverty is to create more jobs with good disposable incomes. Such a solution requires entrepreneurs who convert ideas into job and wealth. It is not the responsibility of the government to create jobs. However, it is the responsibility of the governments to create a fair, transparent, speedy and incentivized environment for these entrepreneurs to succeed. We already have too many people employed in very low wages in the agricultural sector. Hence, we have to create more jobs in manufacturing and service sectors. Thus, we need more and more entrepreneurs. And at the same time we need more engineers, scientists, bureaucrats and politicians who have a mindset to encourage entrepreneurship.

This is the only way and should be our only agenda. Take any developed democracy and you will find that their success is more due to individual initiatives than on any state driven policies. The system may change with better policies but society changes with better values. It is too easy to blame our rowdy politicians or corrupt bureaucrats but hard to take responsibility for our own reality. After all, reality is something we actively create. We have become a nation that is good in rhetoric but poor in action. We have to realize that our legacy will be written not in our words but in our actions. It will be written by the rising entrepreneurs of this nation who recognizes the problems, seek solutions, evolve profit-making ideas and work hard to implement them.

But for that to happen, Murthy says, we need excellence in our choice of work. Why is that India does not boast of any product of international class and recognition? Simply because we don’t pay enough attention to excellence be it business, sports or arts. Murthy urges us to seek excellence in whatever we pursue irrespective of how small or big the job is. And it can be achieved only by relentless training and constant self-improvement.

However, excellence can prosper only in an environment where it is recognized and rewarded. So what is holding us back in creating such environment?

Chetan Bhagat points at our schools and colleges. Here, he says, a part of Indians’ unique psyche namely servility develops.


Our education system hammers out our individual voices and kills our natural creativity; turning us into servile, course-material slaves. No subject teaches us imagination, creativity or innovation. Curricula is designed for no debate kind of teaching. Millions hate what they are made to study but they do it anyway, putting tremendous faith in the content, believing that maybe in future it might be of some use. But the world is changing fast. Has our course-content been updated accordingly? Who are those who make the content? Are they capable enough to impart our youth the skills to develop their own unique talents that can create and innovate? Or are they just preparing us to mug up and get grades?

It is the frightening servility in us which stops us from asking questions. We have to break the cycle so that we don’t pass on the trait to the next generation. It’s time we question the status quo; think creatively and try to create an environment which rewards excellence and entrepreneurship. It’s time we shed all the rhetoric and focus on the basics.

Not everything needs to be complex. For most successful ideas are ludicrously simple.


What is Wrong with Us?

Why can’t we trust each other?

Why is there so much of factionalism in India?

Recently a young tribal woman was gang-raped on the orders of a Khap panchayat in Bengal. An Arunachali boy was allegedly beaten to death in Delhi last week. A few months back UP saw the worst violence in the form of Hindu-Muslim riots. Manufacturing has become stagnant; bureaucracy, as always, is sluggish; growth is slumping and inflation is high. On top of everything, scams and scandals of unimaginable magnitude have rocked the moral foundation of the country in the last couple of years.

But above all these burgeoning evils of rapes, crime, corruption, greed and incompetence; something that has eternally been pervasive in India is poor team-work. Dissension and disloyalty has always affected national competitiveness. And this theme of poor teamwork runs throughout Indian history.

Take the battle of Plassey in 1757 for example. It was the tipping point of Indian history. Bengal led by young nawab Siraj-ud-Dowlah came in conflict with the ambitions of Robert Clive and the East India Company. However, nawab’s own commander and banker betrayed him and shook hands with the British. The British won the most decisive battle in India and changed its history.


But what is the cause of our divisiveness? Is it our diversity? Is it the caste system?

Sudhir Kakar, the author of The Inner World: A Psychoanalytic Study of Childhood and Society in India, says that it begins with the Indian bride, who is not fully accepted in her husband’s home until she produces a male child. She is so grateful when a son is born that she indulges him to excess. As the boy grows up, he remains close to the mother and distant from the father. The end result is that the boy grows up narcissistic and has a weak ego and a weak sense of the self, one that needs the support of authority figures. He needs appreciative, older, hierarchical figures, even late in professional life. His relationships tend to be vertical and “control oriented”, and he is not good at forming horizontal, cooperative relationships with his peers. This translates into poor teamwork. In an organizational setting, such a person tends to behave in an egotistical manner. Either he wants to control people below him or be controlled by those above. In contrast, a good team player is self-confident and forms easy and healthy relationships based on equality.

I don’t know how valid this hypothesis is. But more I look around me, the more I believe that this “control-oriented mindset” of either being domineering or submissive is the most fundamental cause of most evils of our society. It’s all about pushing narrow personal agendas than bothering about collective good. Ones at the bottom shy away from taking real responsibility as they believe they are “victims of circumstances” while the “babus” at the top don’t flinch to loot the nation as they see their gains as “fruits of hard-work”.

India is neither an individualistic society like the US nor a collectivist society like Japan. The US is long regarded as the “land of opportunities”. If you are willing to work hard, you can make it in America regardless of which class, race, region or religion you come from. While here in India, the command mentality of the bureaucracy stifles the entrepreneur and the farmer. You won’t even get the license to start your venture until and unless you have the right “contacts” or “influence”.

Japanese on the other hand are collectivist in their approach. In 1854, after suffering a humiliating defeat by the West, they recognized that their ancient civilization is too flimsy to defend them against superior Western technology. Instead of holding on to their past, they humbly went to school during the Meiji Period and vigorously started acquiring modern learning and skills. Soon they became so good that they eventually beat the West at its own game. But if you look at India, you see that social life revolves around the family or caste. It does not encompass the whole community. Perhaps this is why our streets are dirty while our homes are spotlessly clean.

We rarely evoke patriotic collectivism (except in cricket but that doesn’t serve real purpose) nor do we celebrate individual responsibility for most of us feel like being “victims of circumstances”. (E.g. us IITians: “since the system here is corrupt, we are helpless but to settle overseas”)

So if not individualistic or collectivist, what are we?

We are, I am forced to believe, an “egoistic” society – one that has a weak sense of its own self. If the girl exposes a bit too much, well then someone has to teach her (or at best rape her). If someone spells slur at my race or religion, I need to hit back with double the venom. Better start a riot. Since my friend is evading taxes; why shouldn’t I?

Though this line of thought might seem cynical, there’s no denying the fact that changes need to be made right in our family dynamics. Soon they will manifest in our society and economy. As our economy expands and becomes more integrated with the global economy, there will be greater competition. When companies fight for survival, there is less luxury for egotistical behavior. As with increasing competition, cohesion should increase. Moreover more women are working, so there is less time to overindulge the male child; so perhaps there is hope that the Indian male will grow up with a healthier ego and as a better team player.


Sometimes to hold on, You have to let go

I wish I can control things the way I want.

It’s like I am a small kid going to the top of the hill with a kite. I know how to unwrap the kite, how to make the loop and how to pull the strings. But the kite doesn’t fly without the wind. It’s always a mixture of control and abandonment. The sublime art of holding on and letting go.

Some say life is all about what you make out of it. While others say it is all up to fate – one which is woven into your soul. I think it’s somewhere in between.

I can try my best but still might not succeed. I can try and fight to gain control but only to an extent. It is easier to control the little things like shaping the paper to make the kite, choosing the colors to brighten it and attaching a sturdy string to hold it. But when it comes to larger and more meaningful things, like drawing a heart in the sky, a lot depends on the wind.

Then comes the moment I fear the most. A swift gale and the string escapes my hold. And I watch helplessly as my kite slowly drifts away. I wish I could do something. Maybe I did the right things wrong. Maybe I pushed it way too far to pull it back.

My heart is filled. All I can taste is this moment. Sisyphus could have found a nice companion in me. For now I too am conscious – aware of the absurdity of my fate.

But I am still looking up. I don’t give up even if the skies get rough.

The kite didn’t break; and it didn’t burn.

I just have to start all over again.

And there is lot to learn.


Reason behind the Partition

“A man always has two reasons for doing anything: a good reason and the real reason”.

The year was 1937.

The Muslim League, campaigning on liberal communal lines, had lost heavily. It secured less than five percent of the total Muslim votes, losing to the congress even in those places where Muslims were in majority.

Jinnah, the towering leader of Muslim League is faced with what we can call as the “chasm in the being”. His bag of communal demands was empty; most of them have already been accepted. It wasn’t a hidden fact that Jinnah wanted to be treated as an equal to Nehru and felt insecure that his party was being treated as a secondary, communal organization while Congress claimed to be the sole nationalist organization representing all Indians. He had to decide: either to continue with his liberal communal politics which seemed to have exhausted its potentialities or to abandon communal politics altogether. Both would mean an end to his political career or at best a mediocre one.

However Jinnah found another option. One of extreme communalism. One based on fear and hatred. One based on cries of Islam in danger. And he put behind all the force and brilliance of his personality to drive home the theme that the Congress wants not only independence from British but also complete annihilation of Islam in India to establish a Hindu raj. The once “Ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity” now wanted nothing less than a separate state of Pakistan to “save” Islam.

Ten years. For ten years this poison of fear and hatred brewed. What followed next was the carnage of the partition riots: hundreds of thousands were killed; innumerable women raped and abducted and millions had to move across hastily constructed frontiers to start their lives from scratch. It is ironic that more blood was shed fighting ourselves than fighting the colonisers.


Once Pakistan was formed, Jinnah hoped to go back to liberal communalism or even secularism. In his Presidential address he stressed upon equal rights for all citizens irrespective of one’s individual choice of religion. But it was too late. He soon died of illness. The monster that he spawned not only divided India but would eventually eat up his own concept of Pakistan.

Prime Minister Nehru stated upon Jinnah’s death: “How shall we judge him? I have been very angry with him often during the past years. But now there is no bitterness in my thought of him, only a great sadness for all that has been … he succeeded in his quest and gained his objective, but at what a cost and with what a difference from what he had imagined.”

Following the line of thought, I am forced to question the inevitability of partition. I wonder if it was an outcome of personality clashes between flawed individuals. Individuals whose personal ambitions changed the course of history.

Its indeed true that ideologies do have consequences.