A square peg in a round hole

...of clichés and weasel words

My bank manager has been a very unhappy man for a long time. Yes, the same guy who has ‘I am not at my desk’ on his mobile phone voice mail. He has now become a good friend of mine because I empathize with him. I listen to him and I try to offer solutions to his (many) problems. He has often told me that he feels he is from a different generation. Much to my chagrin though, he insists on saying that he is from my generation. “Saar, I am from your generation,” he says in a desperate bid to find solace even though he is a good 10 years older than me.

His current problem is that he doesn’t quite fit in with the young and modern crowd at the bank. The young people at his bank are all fresh out of management schools – known as B-schools in these parts. When I hear that term I always ask: “Arre, I don’t care about those. Where the A-schools?”

I once went to the bank to meet with him and was stunned to see a sea of young faces all around. These young folk looked like Emraan Hashmi, Ranbir Kapoor and Virat Kohli in suit and tie. The poor fellow looked completely out of place in an office full of young people with gel-laden hair, tattoos and eyebrow-piercings. They were fresh, enthusiastic and young people: "dudes" apparently. The bank manager was told recently by one of these young dudes, “You are very old school dude,” to which the manager could only muster, “Arre, what are you talking? I did not go to school only. I worked my way up through the ranks. First you learn your facts and then talk.” 

The kids laughed at him.

That was when he called me. He could not understand the language these kids spoke. “They do not speak English. The other day one of them wanted to kick a few tires. I have no idea why they want to do that,” he said and asked me for help.

So I attended a meeting at the bank to assess the extent of his problems. The manager introduced me as an external reviewer of a project that an Emraan Hashmi lookalike and Virat Kohli lookalike were working on.

After the introductions were over, Hashmi and Kohli launched into a speech on a new consumer product the bank was about to launch. I asked them to describe what the new idea was, what it was all about, what made it unique and different and what it would do for the Bank. Four simple questions, one would have thought. No?

Hashmi started off first. He said “We had lots of ideas but we needed to socialize them and workshop this holistically. We started with a blank slate and put in the hard yards. We needed to first chew the fat a bit. All ecosystem synergies were looked at synergistically before we decided that this one idea had legs.”

At this point, Kohli jumped in with his own verbiage: “This is a win-win proposition. If we can foster key relationships, we can create a paradigm shift and score goals. But for that we need to wrap our heads around this and be on the same page. However, we first needed to be proactive and blue sky this, for it won’t be a walk in the park for us. But this idea will certainly separate the men from the boys, the wheat from the chaff as long as we walk the talk. Because, unless we aim for the skies, we will shoot ourselves in the foot.”

I was already exhausted by then. So I put my hand up, stopped them and said I had not understood any of what they had said.

Hashmi said, “I see where you are coming from,” to which our bank manager jumped out of his seat and thundered, “Arre, how do you know where he is put up and why does it mater? Anyhow, he comes from Powai only.”

Clearly, we had a problem.

But Kohli ignored the interjection and carried on, “Look, all we need is to pick the low hanging fruit. For that we need to get a few runs on the board, push past first base and look at benchmarking this gig. We will be happy to loop you in and keep you engaged.”

I still had no idea what they were talking about and so asked for clarification. “Could you tell me what exactly this product is and what it will do?”

Kohli continued, “Oh that’s easy. We are starting with a clean slate on this one. All we need is a few quick wins under our belt. From then on, all we need is to burn the candle at both ends, live it, breathe it 24-7-365 and get past first base. There are a few issues to iron out but we will certainly attempt to close the loop in a key manner.”

“Oh yes I do understand all of that,” I said, at which point my bank manager immediately fell at my feet and asked, “You really do?” 

I smiled at him, looked at Hashmi and Kohli and asked for clarifications on what they were talking about. I said “I know you guys are talking about something important but I do not know what it is.” Then, in a bid to join them, I asked, “Can you give me a thirty five thousand feet view of what this idea is all about?”

Hashmi said, “Oh that is easy. We have been underperforming as a unit. We decided to right-size our operations, wear out our shoe leathers and step up to the plate. At the end of the day, when rubber hit road, we decided that we did not have the bandwidth to do anything other than to stick to our knitting. We stuck to our core-competencies while we thought out of the box. We had to tear down our silos, and harvest fresh ideas. We developed a go-forward strategy, managed expectations and developed an open-door approach to synergise thoughts. We leveraged all talents and brought all minds to the plate. We had put many ideas to the basement and we left many others in the parking lot. But we put a stake in the ground with a winner. It has a wonderful value proposition.”

I was getting highly exasperated with this excruciatingly painful diarrhea of weaselwords. These two boys were extremely well spoken and well dressed (and well paid too). But they also appeared to be good at saying a lot without saying anything at all. By now, I was beginning to develop new respect my bank manager. “Yes, all that is fine, but I didn’t ask how. I asked what?”  I shouted, and for good measure I added with a smile, “This is the third time I am asking what is it that you are attempting to do... and as you know from your B-school notes, generally, three strikes and you are out.”

Kohli jumped in at this point, rolled up the sleeves of his crisp, white, neatly-ironed Pierre Cardin shirt and said, “See, as we said, we needed to address the elephant in the room. We were not right sized. We needed to level-set expectations for we had far too many chiefs and not too many Indians. We hired a change-agent and made him the go-to guy to run with this gig. We empowered him fully and convinced ourselves that he would not drop the ball. We had a hot potato in our hands. So we carefully looked at benchmarks and best practice methodologies to ballpark this. We also carried out due diligence and applied the 80-20 rule to many other ideas that struck us from left-field. We then decided to home run this one. We have built in redundancies for we don’t want to be thrown under a bus and be caught on the hop.”

I had had enough. I said to Kohli and Hashmi, “I don’t think you have compared apples with apples on this product. This idea has to be moth-balled. There, I have declared all my cards. Let's touch base later. We may need to take the rest of this offline guys,” and got up suddenly.

I looked at the bank manager and told him that he was, unfortunately, a ‘square peg in a round hole’ and left.

-- Mohan (@mohank)

One has to protest...

I like obsessions; I have a few of my own. Some are even healthy. And most are acceptable. But what is with this polite obsession with the word "one"? I have tried, and then tried again. It all sounds very formal and all but why, exactly?

The other day, this fellow jumped up even as the plane touched down in Mumbai after a long flight. As he jumped up from his seat, he grabbed hold of the overhead locker as though if he didn't, it would fly off on its own. He then pulled his carry-on bag out of the compartment in under 3 seconds and beamed at everyone as though he had achieved a personal best time in "time lapse between touch down and bag recovery". Unfortunately, the plane braked hard as it touched down. The man flew and along with his recently reacquired bag, crashed into me, all arms and legs and bag! I thought to myself, "What an utter pillock" but smiled at him. I don't do anger at these things. I am now used to utter pillocks. 

He recovered, turned to me and said: "One is very sorry."

That's it. I lost my temper like anything.

"Arre! Are you sorry or are you not? Why hide behind the proud number one? Be a man. Say I am sorry, no? What is this ONE is sorry?"

So, I wasn't upset that he had acquired a PB that no one cared about other than he. I wasn't upset that he had flown across three rows of seats to crash into me. I wasn't upset that I was, by then, bleeding profusely from a gash in my eye; he had eye-gouged me in a manner a professional Rugby player would have been proud. I wasn't upset that my newly procured shirt shirt was now torn; the bag handle had made that contribution. But I was upset by his use of the word ONE. What was wrong with, "I am sorry"?

I am angry these days because we have acquired an unhealthy obsession for an inappropriate overuse of the word 'one'. This abuse is because of what I call political politeness. I think social scientists should start writing scholarly papers on political politeness (PP) as they did on that other insidious monster, political correctness (PC). PP is a deadly evil, I tell you. PP will make PC look like how a dictionary makes Shahid Kapoor's spelling look.

This use of 'one' enables us to escape from personal responsibility for things that we may have done wrongly. Like this "bags and arms and legs" fellow. He wasn't sorry; one was!

The other day I attended a wedding in Chennai. A board outside declared, "Welcome to one and all". What does that even mean? See what we Indians did? We took some usage of 'one' from the British and, much like democracy and the Westminster style of governance itself, we have mangled it, abused it and invented our own inappropriate use cases for that word.

The other day, a fellow said to me: “What time is one expected to be present?” I was stunned. And yes. Again, I got angry. I started shouting at that fellow like anything: "What is this? If you want to ask what time you have to be there then just ask that right? And why pick on the number one? It is a solitary fellow. A singular number. Not plural. It signifies one person, usually you. Also, why hide behind a number? It is a simple number. The Indians did not invent it. Indians only invented zero. Why abuse other numbers? If you want to abuse a number, abuse zero. It is yours!"

As a mathematician, I protest at this inappropriate abuse of a number. I have a right to protect the number from constant torture. 

It is not as if there are no other pronouns available to us. There is a very convenient I, a perfectly polite you and a wonderful we. Use those no?

What time is one expected to be present it seems. What if you and your friend wanted to present yourselves? Will you then ask, “So, what time will two have to be present?” No, no? That would be rather silly. So, use the direct pronoun next time. Please. 

Do not make me angry again. See what I did there. Did I say "Do not make one angry again?" No. Everyone needs to learn like that only: to use pronouns properly.

There are some uses that are correct. One can be used in non-specific, general, and non-direct advice. For example, the use of one in, "I don't believe one should disrespect elders" is appropriate. Try saying that as, "I don't believe I should disrespect elders". That doesn't sound right, does it? Firstly, the general advice is lost. Secondly, the statement, as altered, gives the impression that I am currently disrespectful of elders. 

Can you ever imagine Krishnamachari Srikkanth indulge in this political politeness nonsense? I mean, can you imagine the same guy who said “Boss, you just shut up ok?” saying “Ok tell me, what time should one be there to shut you up”? I greatly doubt it and if you can imagine it, you have a far more forgiving and fertile imagination than I do.  

Speaking of strange fellows, another strange fellow who is part of a volunteer team I run asked me the other day: “What does one have to do now on this project?” How was I supposed to reply to that? I knew, for instance, 10 people were supposed to be working on that project. The first thing that popped into my head was to ask him, “Oh, suddenly only one person is working on the project?” I also found myself wondering why this strange fellow was selfishly concerned only about one member from that group of ten. What will the rest do? 'Which one of the ten people was actually working?' I thought. See? The kinds of doubts that arise from this terribly inappropriate usage of the number one.

I am all for people who are self deprecating in their language. I cannot stand pompous people (and yes, I do not look at the mirror often either). I like people who do not sound self-obsessed and self-centred in their communication, but this is taking a bit too far, no? 

It is a little more acceptable if you are talking on behalf of a whole bunch of people. The ‘one’ in your sentence could actually stand for many and this could well be a plural pronoun. But my question is simple. Why? Can you not just say, “What time should we get to the show” instead of “What time should one get to the show”? What do people have against direct speech? It is the least of very big evils, certainly lesser than the atrocity inflicted on us by Himesh Reshamiyya's music.

The other day I was talking to one fellow... See? This is correct usage of the word one. Not the others. Yes, you can thank me later. Anyway, this fellow went on and on about how he kept failing in life. He then asked if I could mentor him. Till that point in the conversation, I was bored. But then, suddenly, I was bursting with unbounded joy. I had finally found a person to mentor. Earlier that year, I was beginning to beg people if I could mentor them. And true to my dislike of polite politeness, I did not go around asking, “Can one be your mentor”. I asked, "Can I please be your mentor? Please?" Till that point, everyone had said, “get lost”. One is used to getting snubbed routinely. (Got you there, didn’t I?) Okay, okay, I meant I am used to getting snubbed routinely.

Anyhow, that evening, I was ecstatic at being asked to be this boring fellow's mentor. Before he had an opportunity to rethink, I cheerfully and shamelessly said, “Of course, I can mentor you”. I immediately grabbed his hand and said, “Yes. When can I start? How much should I pay you?” I had almost signed him up as a ‘person to be mentored’ when he got on yet another soapbox and waxed eloquent about King Bruce and his Sisyphus-ian spider. I listened to it wondering, “Am I the mentor or is he”. In other words, “Is one the mentor or is the other one”. Then he presented me with the deal breaker. He said, “The moral of the story is that if one fails, then one must try harder next time.” 

I left him with a comment and a couple of questions, as is a mentor’s wont. “Who failed? I am sorry about being harsh but you failed. ONE did not fail. The number one, if you haven't noticed, has been a success all it’s life and it is about time you realized that.” 

-- Mohan

Ps: The 'person to be mentored' ran away at that point. It has been a few years since that conversation with my potential 'person to be mentored'. Do you think I am wasting my time refreshing my email waiting to hear from him?

Ps (10-Oct-2012): 

Subsequent to writing the piece, @yaavanoObba sent me the following (quite relevant) YouTube link.

How clean is your milk?

In an earlier post, I wrote about how we struggled to settle into a new life in Mumbai after living overseas for several years. I continue on that same theme in this post too...

After living nearly 20 years overseas, my Tamil, Kannada and Hindi had gone quite rusty. On reading the above, please do not make the assumption that my Tamil/Kannada/Hindi was on solid footing at some point. To make that assumption would be a bit like Himesh Reshamaiyya saying he could not sing on the night because he had temporarily lost his voice! 

One aspect of re-settling into a life in India that did scare me initially was language. I was worried I would continually make an ass of myself. Even though life had prepared me, through a series of valuable experiential learning opprtunities, to recover well from a series of seemingly hopeless and relentless "Oh!I made an ass of myself... Again!" situations, not being able to communicate in an articulate manner was something that bothered me a lot. 

So, our initial few months were spent polishing and practicing our Hindi. We had to communicate with people effectively in Hindi and it had to be 'reasonably perfect Hindi' we thought. It was only later that we realized that anything goes in terms of Hindi in Mumbai.

But the initial few months were frustrating. We had to interact with numerous tradespeople, workers and suppliers. It seemed as though we just could not get things right in terms of communication.

I believe deficiencies in language are brought out maximally when one is frustrated and/or angry. In those initial months we would often sputter and flounder maximally when we were frustrated with tradespeople or furniture delivery people. 

No one would arrive at the appointed time and those that did would often not bring the required tools or equipment with them. And this would inevitably mean more delays in an already delayed process. Getting the right words out was always a struggle in those desperate moments. We would often launch into English or Tamil in the middle of a high-pitched Hindi-based diatribe. We would then look at each other and break into a laugh. 


Try yelling in a language that you are not totally comfortable with! 

Sometimes we would translate from English to Hindi and get it messed up totally. For example, in response to a request from a friend for us to visit their place on a very busy day for us, I blurted out: "patha nahin yaar. kaan se khelna padega" ("I'm really not sure. We will have to play it by ear?").

A colleague of mine insisted on speaking with me only in Hindi. Indeed he took it on as a challenge that I would be proficient in written and spoken Hindi before I completed my contract in India and before I headed back to Australia! 

In one particular meeting that both of us attended, I wanted to communicate to this colleague that the situation we faced was almost impossible. It was a bad "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation. 

The first phrase that came to my mind to describe our situation was "We are caught between the devil and the deep blue sea". The next thought was "We are the meat in the sandwich". And the third was "We are caught between a rock and a hard place".

So, here I was, saying to this colleague: "hum shaitaan aur neela samundar ke beech mein khade hain!" That comment sank faster than a Uday Chopra movie! 

So, I used the next option and rattled off confidently, "hum bread ke beech mein ghost ban gaye". At that point, all blood drained from my colleagues face. He looked like a bit of a 'ghost' himself!

I gave up on attempting the third phrase. Had I tried, my colleague would have picked up a rock and flung it in my direction.

Translation from one language to another just does not work. 

For example, on another occasion a friend of ours was visiting us. They struggle with their Hindi as much as we do. We were talking about a mutual friend of ours who had a large farm in Australia. Now this common friend specialized in growing fruits and vegetables on his farm. I asked how this friend was doing. In response, after a quick translation, pat came the reply, "Woh to ab ghay me ghus gaya" ("he has entered a cow")!

I immediately choked on the samosa that I was munching! The picture of a hapless Malcolm being stuck in a cow's underbelly was both funny and tragic! It was only when I did a literal re-translation did I realize that what was meant was, "He has gotten into cows now!"

There are several similar lovely examples of single-language (mainly English-to-Hindi) translations, particularly in those early days that provided us with much mirth and also significant learning opportunities! But it is when one has to do a double-translation to convey meaning that you lose the plot quicker than a Himesh Reshamaiyya melody!

An early classic was when Girija was trying to communicate to our maid that yogurt had to be cultured. Now "culturing yogurt" is a process and we hadn't got to that degree of refinement in our language construction. We were struggling with nouns and adjectives in those days. This was a difficult phase. When we got gender right, we'd often launch a week-long celebration! So, pronunciation or lyrical efficiency were not top on the priority list! We had not yet got to mastering the Hindi equivalent for the activity/process of "culturing yogurt".

However, the activity had to be communicated to the maid.

So, what does one do? Girija's mind quickly jumped to the nearest possible translation opportunity, which was to translate from Tamil to English and then, from English to Hindi! Now, in Tamil, this process of culturing yogurt is known as "tozhkaradu". Indeed that word in Tamil is common to the process of "culturing yogurt" and "washing clothes".

So, here we were, on a Monday morning, about to rush out to work. Girija communicated a series of instructions to the maid and remembered that yogurt had to be cultured for the first time at home since we moved to Mumbai.

So she said, "arre haan. aaaj doodh ko... doodh ko... matlab... [double-translation affected effortlessly from Tamil-to-English-to-Hindi]... haaaan! doodh ko dhona hai!" ("Oh yes, the milk needs to.. needs to... I mean... the milk needs to be washed!"

The maid looked at us as though we had just descended from another planet! She must have thought that we were funny people with weird tastes. She slowly re-attached her jaw to her face. She probably did not know what to say. She wanted to laugh, and she did. A bit. But she wanted to be polite too. She also had no idea what we meant and was scared she was taking on a task that would eventually land her in trouble. 

So, she stared at us blankly and said somewhat innocently, "Madam, doodh ko kaise dhona hai? vaise bhi, doodh to safed hi hai" ("Madam, how do I wash milk? In any case, the milk is already white!")

We ran out of the house. 

We purchased ready-set yogurt that evening! 

-- Mohan (@mohank)

Ps: The right phrase for that process is "doodh to jamana hai"