Handling difficult situations

How do we handle a difficult situation when it presents itself?

Difficult situations can come in varied forms. They can be situational, ethical, physical, emotional, the list is endless.  For the purpose of this post I’m looking at one which involves another person. Let’s say we have a difficult situation where we’ve perceived something that’s upsetting.

Difficult situations typically mess with us. They muddle thinking, screw with emotions, cause anxiety, change behavior, and all of these could potentially impact reaction. And because we’re reacting, even before we know it, we could have a much worse situation on hand, perceived or real.

So lesson one, don’t immediately react

Let’s try to first sort it out in our own head. Use our intelligence to understand the situation to the extent possible. Very objectively….. Identify the trigger, get rid of clutter;  we’ll realize we’re making a lot of assumptions.

Lesson two: get rid of the assumptions and zero in on actual issue

Now we need to get clarity, see if there’s something we’re missing. Easiest I think is by talking to the  person involved; how else do we get the other perspective, right? And let’s understand it’s going to be difficult, because we’re in a place of conflict.

Lesson three: yet have that difficult conversation

These conversations can go so easily wrong, can typically get emotionally hijacked as people involved are in an emotionally charged state. So,  a few ground rules which really help:

Keep the emotions out, they put the other person in either an attack or defense state, and then we’ve lost objectivity

Listen!  when the other person speaks, pay full attention;  we’re mostly already thinking of our response, or worse still actually interrupting.  Don’t. The others have an opinion too.

Focus on the problem and not on the person.

See the other perspective. When you do, you’ll find the conflict dissipates, and more often than not acceptance comes in, sometimes even an actual solution.

Ek raat gaane ki

Girija and me decided to mark my move to Bangalore with a night devoted to old hindi gaane. The date was fixed well before I even moved, and inspite of constraints that came up later, as they are so wont to do, we stuck to plan. She did the downloading and I bought deadly speakers the evening before,  I just wanted it right, and it was so worth it.

We started at 9 pm and went upto 2 am, with pauses only for song related stuff, no other talking. That was rule. Girija simply amazed me with her knowledge of detail. She knew not only singer, composer, lyricist, but also the movie, actor, actress and at times the scene, and in one song she blew me when she said they were rosy and something in the movie. Gosh, god knows what that information is worth, but it was still super impressive.

It started with dil ke jharoke mein tujko bitaakar…which apparently Girija was playing for me......:)

I can’t help but mention a few of the songs, cause I know just reading these lines evokes such fond feelings

Tere binaa zindagi se koyi……..from aandhi, which is one of my all time favourites

And there were tons of Rafi’s

Suhani raat dal chuke, na jaane tum kab aaogi……

Khoya khoya chaand,  khulaa aasman….. ankhon mein saari raat jayegii ……

Likhe jo khat tujhe, wo teri yaad mein, hazaaro rang ke nazaare bangaye…….

Hum bekhudi mein tum ko pukare chalegaye…..saagar mein zindagi ko uttare chalegaye

To me this is like second phase of getting music back into life. When I was going for the ten days of vipassana, my mom said, I can understand the no speaking, no reading, no phone, no dinner, but no music? I can't survive that. And I get what she means.

The night of music immersion was an amazing experience, so much so, we’ve decided to do it once every month… insha allah

Epic falls

I've been lagging behind my own writing, actually half way through two posts, and realizing how articulation forces thought and clarity, which in itself is an interesting thought.

Meanwhile, received this 'epic falls' from uncle mohan by email and it's an interesting read, so here it is:
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Epic fails are painful and embarrassing, but they teach us great lessons, even if they are sometimes hard to find.

Famous Examples of Epic Fails

If you’re looking for examples of people who have suffered an epic fail or two (or more) and persevered, you needn’t look far. Plenty of famous people have overcome failure and changed not only their lives, but the lives of others as well.

Walt Disney was once fired for his inability to be creative.

R.H. Macy failed at several retail-related projects and start-ups before starting the retail giant we know as Macys.

Henry Ford almost ruined his professional reputation after several failed attempts at success. Later, he not only founded the Ford Motor Company, he revolutionized the entire auto industry with production line manufacturing.

The one thread that links every one of these people is their belief in their own ability and their unwillingness to quit, even when everyone else told them that they probably should quit.

And if you think it takes money or knowing someone important to overcome epic fails and become successful, how about J.K. Rowling? When she wrote the first Harry Potter book, she was a waitress who was also receiving public assistance.
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And I can add that it's not just in famous and public figures that these absolute turn arounds happen. Look around you, I'm sure you'll find examples in people you know too, you may not know how epic their fall was, but if you tune in you'll see their stories. In fact Uncle Mohan, you are one of my best examples from real life. So hat's off and thanks !

A deep dive into 'acceptance'

Accept what you cannot change, Change what you cannot accept, and have the wisdom to know the difference.  Yes, I'm back there ....:)

Most of us seem to interpret this as 'acceptance' of what’s on the outside, typically acceptance of our own situations or of other people around us, which is what it also stands for surely, but I think a far more fundamental space is acceptance of oneself. That is a much larger challenge.

To know and to accept oneself

When I was in college, a favourite uncle took me to meet a  friend of his, one Mr. Unni Krishnan, who he said was like a munni or a seer, and he said I’d have five minutes to ask him questions. Under that kind of time pressure, I instead asked him to tell me what I needed to know, and he said…… I’ll tell you the three most important things in life; be aware, be aware and be aware.

Today, I understand the significance of what he said. That is the key principle behind acceptance of oneself. To accept, you first need to know, and the way to know is to be aware and alert at all times. And then we slowly become aware of what our real nature is, what really keeps us happy, keeps us in sync and in peace, and mostly in positive space.

By force of habit, we are always identified with the various roles we play through life; child, sibling, friend, lover, spouse, parent, employer, employee and then we’re conditioned to believe that everything we do is right, as long as it’s towards proper fulfillment of the role. 

Through this process we firstly, become dependent on another for our happiness and more significantly, we’re living roles rather than life.

Let’s look at what it means to live life, as it’s only by being true to oneself, can one really be true to any other.  

Trip to Delhi

I was in Delhi to explore possibilities of getting a TBI, Technology Business Incubator status for my company. This is something that comes under the Department of Science and Technology under the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy ( MNRE).  It’s another world, and it’s interesting and amazing the number of options and schemes that the Government has  for development in the area of renewable energy, especially in rural areas. And it’s administered  by these really smart and committed officials too. We had extensive discussions on the issue and I realized I had a lot of pre-conceived notions of ‘the delhi babus’ which were beginning to fall off. There is the intelligence, the knowledge, the money, the schemes, and the will too, but there seems to be a black hole somewhere along the way. Corruption is an easy answer; but then it’s we who allow a few corrupt people to hold us and the entire system to ransom, right?  And  I think this is where companies like Selco and the tons of other NGOs  make a huge difference.  I found that the Government machinery is almost dependent on them for dissemination and also for lessons from the field for policy and ideation. It maybe small in comparison to what’s possible, but it is indeed heartening to see the good work happening.

Another interesting facet of my trip was Gurgaon itself. It’s like nowhere else in India I’ve seen and easily comparable to a Singapore or Dubai. The separation of downtown and suburb, the wide, clean and beautifully landscaped roads, the parks, the tall tall skyscrapers……everything extremely efficient and functional, feels very international. And then we have Delhi. Each time I’ve been here, the beauty of Delhi hits me and makes me proud to have Delhi as our capital. It’s nice to see how they’ve weaved in the modern with the old. There’s history everywhere you look; Yet, it’s so modern.  Just the thought that under connaught place buzzes the entire central station of the metro is so fascinating.  And through all this development, its so wonderful to see the city retain its historical charm, its tombs and gardens, its dhabas where I’ve just eaten my best possible road side paratha. Ah…mouth watering life !

Here’s two pics, which bring this out in a shot…pun intended :)

                                  View from Vishakha's house in Gurgaon

                      A lovely old banyan tree in Harshita's own backyard in Delhi

Ask and you shall receive

I’m so enthralled by this new world I’ve entered, internally and externally……. in the sense of how everything I’ve always wanted is actually manifesting, that I’m now trying to draw out what the process was…… what enabled this space that’s so what I wanted…….. How did it get so right?

The first guiding principle that comes to mind : Acceptance

Accept what you cannot change, Change what you cannot accept and Have the wisdom to know the difference

Not sure if this is Osho or from way before, but it came to me from my mother, and ma, I’m eternally grateful to you for having instilled that in me at the time that you did

Sounds fairly straightforward, doesn’t it?  It is; what it needs is basically a high degree of self awareness; the ability to get rid of the clutter and conditioning, and see yourself for what you really are

Articulation of what you want; this was a process that happened over time, starting nebulous and quickly acquiring clarity, like for instance:

·         to move from corporate to social sector by the time I was fifty

·         key words in the social sector  a) under privileged b) rural c) education

·        working out how much I needed for a living in specific terms

·         external circumstance being in sync with inner being

Having faith and trust in your want and the universes ability to give it to you; a complete giving in to the flow of life

Having the courage to implement the decisions that open up along the path, and doing it with a lot of positivity and love, even the apparently painful decisions and actions done with love take on a whole different hue

And it’s amazing how they all fell in place like a jigsaw that was moving on its own, I just needed to flow….and flow I did

S Cube and a project in Hyd

I got my offer letter today, and realize I’m employed by what’s colloquially called ’S Cube’   

S cube is actually S3IDF, which is Small Scale Sustainable Infrastructure Development Fund, yes a full sentence for a name;  but it makes sense, because it actually does all of that. Let me tell you how….

S³ is a section 25 company, and for those not familiar, it means it’s a social objective company that runs on a revenue model, but where all profits are ploughed back into the company for use towards the objective. The projects that this company takes up are based not only on solar energy based, but on any clean energy. The key words are pro-poor and pro-environment.

While learning about this company, I came across one project which caught my attention because it was based in Hyderabad: This is a project done in the Osmania General Hospital. As we all know, the hospital caters to hundreds of people on daily basis, who come from all parts of the state. While the hospital provides food for the patients themselves, the families of the patients who accompany them have to fend for themselves. The hospital canteen provides meals at a subsidized amount of Rs.30, but for the segment of people who come to Osmania hospital, as you can imagine, even the Rs.30 per meal can be unaffordable. S³ came up with this project where they tied up with HPCL to donate 10 stoves with 10 LPG connections, an NGO to provide basic kitchen equipment like utensils and plates, and the hospital to provide the space. They set up a complete kitchen and found an entrepreneur within the community to run the kitchen on a business model;  a single burner with cooking equipment is lent out on a per hour basis, I think Rs.10 per hour.  It’s called rasoi ghar. Mangalamma, whose husband was there for prolonged treatment is quoted as having said ‘if it weren’t for the kitchen, we would have had to go back without completing  treatment, as I couldn’t afford to buy food. ‘

A really simple but innovative solution to a major difficulty; and what makes it work? That it’s now a livelihood and business for an entrepreneur, and thus sustainable. Now you know what the s³ stands for.

@Afshan, if you’re reading this, and you’re still with the hospital near Charminar, maybe you’ll visit rasoi ghar and let us know how it’s doing? 

Another interesting aspect of Selco...

The fourth day at Selco saw me attending a daylong meeting of forty three branch heads from across all districts of Karnataka, alongwith the horizontal support teams, like training, logistics, accounts et al.  I could easily draw a parallel to the Google operations global meet I used to attend at Mountain View, where all global leads and senior management met to review metrics and strategize for the road ahead. The one significant difference being, that the meeting at Selco was entirely in Kannada.

Selco has, at  ground level, shown that neither formal education nor english speaking are requisites to manifest empowerment, strategy or leadership.

No doubt this has been a long and risky process, but over the years Selco has leveraged local talent across the state, with all branch heads without exception, having risen through the ranks; right down from office assistants and sales executives to manage teams and head branches. They understand the work to the last detail and have intuitively and at times with guidance learnt to master marketing, customer service, top lines and bottom lines. I was amazed to see a manager (puc passed) wielding a laptop and making power point presentations, all in Kannada. They talk the same language of team play, motivation, focus, commitment as well as any of us do.  I understand Harish also did his trials and experiments to get where he’s got. For instance, he had ten of his senior managers locked up in a hotel with two IIM professors, for a period of five days with a fairly flexible agenda, and apparently the professors admitted that they had learnt as much as they had taught.

Even more beautiful to see is how seamless the blend is between the so called çlasses'; Selco also hires folks from the IIMs, London school of economics and the  like and its wonderful to see the complete break-down of language, educational and cultural barriers.

My first week with Selco

It’s been a full week with Selco, an amazing and fascinating first week. I’ve been having an immersion of sorts in what the company stands for and what it does, and I thought I should share some of those first experiences here, as it’s been an extremely intense and deep learning experience.

As context,  Selco has three different entities;

       1)Selco India which is a ‘for profit with social objective’ company with business being in the area of providing decentralized clean energy efficiencies, mostly solar power, with specific focus on the underserved sections of society, in rural and urban India. 

    2)Selco Foundation, which is the research wing with need based research and  innovation  in clean energy usability in underserved communities with focus categorized as a) rural  b) urban c) tribal  d) livelihood  e) education and f) vulnerability

    3) Selco Incubation, an NGO with specific objective to identify and  incubate other individuals and social enterprises to replicate the Selco story, across India and other developing countries

Through this week I visited two of the Selco branches at Manipal and Udipi, where I got to closely observe how the process of sales and revenue balance with the philosophy and culture of the company. I also visited a few solar lighting installations at Udipi, water heating installations at Manipal and a solar based sewing machine installation at Mandya.

My first visit was to a slum in Udipi, a slum which has around eighty families living in basic shacks, of the blue plastic sheet kind, and with no electricity connection whatsoever. There one shack had a part which was converted into an energy center of sorts, with a solar installation which enables the charging of thirty small batteries, which in turn charge as many solar lanterns. Shankar the resident runs the energy center by ensuring all the batteries are charged through the day and he in turn provides solar lanterns  to the other shacks on a daily rental basis. With this, other shacks rent light for four hours a day, and what’s more, we have one person who has been converted into entrepreneur. It was truly touching.

I also visited the house of a farmer whose livelihood comes from running a small dairy of about 8 cows but whose location does not enable him to access grid electricity. The farmer was living in the dark until Selco happened, and he now has 2 lights and a fan being installed, and is looking forward to his children studying better as they can now continue studying even after the sun sets.

Mandya was an even bigger surprise. Just 8 kms off the Mysore highway is this small village of 300 houses where we visited a woman entrepreneur who is running a sewing unit with fifteen machines, supplying stitched shirts to a retailer in Bangalore. She was struggling with just four hours of daily electricity. Selco foundation has innovated and supplied a DC unit for a sewing machine, which is under pilot for a week now. She said that it was enabling her to run the machine for a continuous period of 8 hours and she can now hope to expand her business considerably. This will have huge impact on her livelihood, and will be very encouraging for any other business in the village and also surrounding villages.

I was almost moved to tears in each of these places; essentially to see how life changing the impact of decentralized energy could be on the living standards and livelihood conditions of the households it impacted. And in a country where the official statistic is that of 40% of the population not even being connected to the grid, there is little left to be said regarding the need and the work to be done.