`Dirty` Vidya Makes A Definitive Statement

`Dirty` Vidya Makes A Definitive Statement

Watch `The Dirty Picture`. It’s a cleansing experience.

Vidya Balan has arrived, as a star. She was always a good actress, but with her `dirty` role in `The Dirty Picture`, she has made a definitive statement not only about her acting skills, but also about how one person can carry the whole film on her shoulders. Yes, here we are talking about a female lead and not Amitabh Bachchan, who, in his heydays, made co-stars look like a juggernaut grafted into the script just to keep the superstar entertained. 

`The Dirty Picture`, to my mind is one of the cleanest films made in recent times. Of course, you need a different thought process to appreciate just how clean it really is. It exposes the double standards that prevail in our society and threatens to break open the darker side of people. One of the dialogues in the film – and there are many such gems – hits you hard: Jab sharafat ke kapde utarte hai to sabse jyada maza sharifon ko hi ata hai. In an instant, it cleanses you of your dirty thoughts and makes you see the film in a totally different light from thereon at least. 

Utmost credit must be given to the dialogue writer Rajat Aroraa for coming up with many gems in the film. If Amitabh Bachchan over the years lent credence to many memorable dialogues with his heavy baritone, Vidya Balan has immortalized each one of them with her subtle delivery and an expression of `delightful sarcasm` few actors or actresses before have ever dished out.   
   
Actresses over the years have indulged in sensual scenes. Many of them even carried out those scenes with grace, but Vidya went miles ahead to meet the genuine needs of the character, and invited not ugly glances, but awe and respect for being honest to the core about the character she was essaying on screen. 

Often, a good script is said to get the best out of an actor, but to my mind, in this film, the actress got the best out of the script. Vidya Balan elevated a good script to a space of immense substance. Vidya, through her thoroughly soaked-in-the-character performance, elevated every element in the film to a space of cinematic immortality, despite the film running the risk of looking crass, sleazy and vulgar in several of its frames.  Yes, it must also be acknowledged that such a film is unlikely to have passed through the censor board in its current form even 10 years ago. Physicality and sexuality in urban society have undergone a perception shift in post-liberalisation India.   

Vidya, it seemed, was not just playing a character, she imbued the late Silk Smitha, from whose life the film is inspired, with dignity and respect. She almost seemed to be on a mission to do that. The mission was not to make Silk simply turn in her grave, stand up and take notice, but to provide the world with `the other perspective` about such `other people`. 

For a lot of actors, a great performance is also a time for reinvention, as bettering your best is nightmarish stuff. But for Vidya, this one is a `breakthrough performance` and not a `peak performance`. She has raised the bar like few can ever do. The only reason she could do it was, she risked extinction. If even for a few seconds she had come across as vulgar in any part of the film, she would have been relegated to the archives of `the unglorious`. In the film, she did not walk on the edge, she walked the edge itself, and in the process gained an edge her competitors could probably have never foreseen.

Vidya Balan, after much struggle (Do you know that she was sacked from 12 Malayalam films? To know more about her inspiring story, please read the Brunch issue of The Hindustan Times, dated December 18, 2011), has arrived on the big stage of Bollywood. I don’t know whether she will essay another such bold role. But one thing’s for sure, she will always be hailed as `the pioneer and demi-God of bold roles with substance` in Hindi films. Watch `The Dirty Picture`, if you haven’t already. It isn’t really dirty, you see! It is just frank, on-the-face and says it just as it sees it.

As we rapidly move towards the close of 2011, the top three questions being asked are:
1. Will Anna Hazare get the Lokpal Bill he wants?
2. When will Sachin Tendulkar score his 100^th international hundred and
3. Did you watch `The Dirty Picture`?

Well Done, Vidya!

Will India Catapult, Or Capitulate?

Will India Catapult, Or Capitulate?

This piece is a reflection on the India-Australia test series, which has started on Boxing Day.

The much awaited and talked about India-Australia test series is well and truly on at the MCG. India, slow starters in test matches, especially in away series, are hoping to upset the applecart of the Aussies in their backyard. It is a tribute to the team and captains of the past decade that pundits and cricket lovers in India are actually expecting the team to win their first ever series  in Australia. This, despite the 4-0 drubbing at the hands of England in England recently.

After the drubbing in England, the `tigers-at-home-lambs abroad` tag has resurfaced in more than just hushed tones. But people are still willing to believe that it was an aberration, and things are going to be just fine in Australia. There are reasons to believe that this could happen. 

Firstly, they will play for pride – for the loss in England and also for Sydney-gate. If not for Sydney-gate in 2008, India may well have ended the series with honours even. Secondly, the legends -- Tendulkar, Dravid and Laxman -- are most likely on their last tour to Australia, and, if so, destiny will not grant them another opportunity to win a series Down Under. Thirdly, MS Dhoni, who has been hailed as India’s best captain, stands his true test as skipper. The loss in England highlighted yet again the timeless theory that a captain is only as good as his team. To make matters worse, key players in the side suffered injuries, and two of the legends – Tendulkar and Laxman – were off form. However, amidst all the ruin in all three formats of the game, Dhoni showed character and kept navigating a sinking ship to the best of this ability. But not winning the series in Australia will only raise questions over his ability to raise the stakes for his team abroad. 

There is no doubt that perhaps after a period in the ‘80s, this is the weakest Australian team to face India, and if it is not plagued by injuries, this is the strongest Indian contingent Down Under. India’s brief surge to top of the test rankings however had a glaring hole – no series win in South Africa and Australia, without which some pundits maintained, and rightly so, India did not deserve to be called the best test playing nation. Of course, the ranking is now gone, and so India can just concentrate on winning in Australia. If they win the series, as they should, at least given their strengths on paper, they are likely to create enormous self confidence for themselves, and awe and respect from people around the world. 

There is no doubt that the team is aware of both the expectations as well as the opportunity. If India win the series, for Tendulkar, if he scores his 100^th ton too, this would be the climax of a dream career – longest test career spanning over two decades, 100 international hundreds, test series victories in Pakistan, England, West Indies, New Zealand, and Australia, and a World Cup win. I don’t know whether Tendulkar should be compared with Bradman, but surely, there will not be another Tendulkar, and that is what colossal institutions are all about – there cannot be another one like them. For Dhoni, it would mark the culmination of what Saurav Ganguly started – the habit of winning test matches abroad. A series win in Australia will also mark a new beginning for Dhoni, as he would now be more on cue to create his own legacy as a Indian cricket captain.

But as they say, cricket is a game of glorious uncertainties. After all the analysis, what really matters at the end of the day is what happens between the 22 yards. While there is great anticipation about India going to the next level as a test playing nation, for all you know, Australia are planning a revival which could mark the beginning of another dominant era for them.
At the end of it all, we will know, whether India really catapulted, or capitulated, yet again!  

Rahul Dravid – A Cricketing Statesman

Rahul Dravid – A Cricketing Statesman

This piece is dedicated to Rahul Dravid -- the `Great Wall Of Indian Cricket`.

Year: 2001. Scene: Eden Gardens. Context: Second test match between India and Australia, India following on. Day 4: India lose no wickets as VVS Laxman and Rahul Dravid bat through the day. They are involved in a 376-run partnership in the Indian second innings. Day 5: Partnership broken; Laxman out for 281 and Dravid for 180. India win test match and eventually series by winning the next test at Chennai.

This was the partnership that changed the face of Indian cricket, and mind you, for a nation obsessed with Tendulkar and his cricketing exploits, mostly batting, his contribution in this match was with the ball in the second innings. This partnership created a never-before-like self belief in Indian cricket, and it moved from strength to strength from thereon. While VVS Laxman’s innings of 281 is a top-of-the-mind recall, it is not easily remembered that without Dravid’s 180, the match and the series would have been lost, leading to a humiliating loss of face at home.

Rahul Dravid has been like the quintessential younger sibling who has to fight to retain his eminence pitted against a dynamic elder one. If Tendulkar is the Big Brother of Indian cricket, Dravid has been the anchor, the second best, whose quiet demenaour, unassuming behavior and unglamorous style of play is not a viewer’s delight and offers little news value off the field. In a world of fast paced cricket defined by instant gratification – or instant dissatisfaction, depending on whether you end up on the winning or losing side – defined by the T 20 culture, Dravid is the `boring` connoisseur of test match cricket -- grafting, plodding, structuring, and eventually delivering.

If Sehwag is the murderer of bowling attacks, Tendulkar the master of contexts, and Laxman the artist using a bat instead of a brush, Dravid is the stuff text books are made of. Just as you cannot breach through text books without painfully simmering through them in detail, how much ever you dislike them, you cannot breach through Dravid’s defence unless he decides to play slightly away from the body, just to show he too can be susceptible at times to the temptation of flirting with danger. They call him the `Wall`, but bowlers will tell you when Dravid is in his zone, he actually comes across as a standing institution, on which you can at best create a few cracks, but not break through it. He is what defines test match batting – here we are of course discounting Sehwag’s views on the matter. In that sense, Dravid is the real successor of Sunil Gavaskar, who brought pride and elegance to defensive strokeplay. 

The Bradman Coronation speech delivered by Dravid this week -- the first non-Aussie to do so --  in Canberra was just like his batting – astute, structured, straight, unapologetic, with no `ifs` about anything. In his speech (You can read the transcript of his speech on http://www.cricketcountry.com/cricket-articles/Rahul-Dravid-s-Sir-Don-Bradman-Oration-full-transcript/9069), he came across not as a cricketer, but as a cricketing statesman. His views on the overall state of cricket gives an insight into the thinker in him. It shows his brain does not just record and process information needed to play a winning innings for his country, but it also cogitates upon the game in the larger interest and greater context of cricket as a sport. It is not rare to have distinguished sportspeople becoming `experts` about the game once they retire, but it is indeed refreshing to see someone like Dravid deliver a statesmanlike speech and air his views without fear in the prime of his form, if not in the prime of his career. 

In his speech, the holistic analysis of the state of world cricket, besides highlighting the Indian character of life and living, in a manner only a true Indian can, is a classical example of rising above one’s limited context, yet remaining rooted to from where he has emerged. Statesmen carry in their mental frame a worldview and not just a view of their immediate surroundings, and Dravid did just that. While playing for India, he has an intellectual paradigm about the overall state of the game built into the central processing unit of his brain. 

Rahul Dravid, on that day at Canberra, did not just stand up for himself, but stood up for his team, his country and the sport which has made him what he is – and mind you, he’s not finished as yet from constructing an even greater colossus. Thus, he was at once Indian, at once global, at once a visionary, and at once an ambassador of a game which is torn between its various formats, financial pulls and pressures. 

The Bradman Coronation was a perfect backdrop to yet another potentially explosive India-Australia test series, starting on Boxing Day. Will the statesman-batsman Rahul Sharad Dravid, on perhaps his last tour to Australia, manage to give the Aussies the knockout punch this time? We will wait and watch.              

The 12 `Mosts` Of Indian Test Cricket

The 12 `Mosts` Of Indian Test Cricket

This piece is dedicated to the 12 men in white who caused a turnaround in the black phase of Indian test cricket, when losing abroad was a given. Not anymore!

Indian cricket in the last decade has turned a corner, and it took quite a while for it to shed the `tigers at home, lambs abroad` tag in test matches. The turnaround -- notwithstanding the astonishing aberration in England where they received a 4-0 drubbing in the test series (hopefully, the upcoming Australian series will prove that it was really just an aberration) -- happened over a period of time and it took the arrival of Saurav Ganguly as captain, in an environment rocked by match fixing controversies, to turn the tables for India.

Of course a captain is only as good as the team and the system that throws up players. But over the last decade, India has been blessed with players of such outstanding quality, temperament, class and caliber that the team is now both respected and feared. Perhaps it will be another decade before such a conglomeration of `stars` will assemble to form a cricket team of such brilliance and substance, not only in India but across test playing nations. But even for this team not winning a test series in Australia and South Africa remains a major gap in overseas performance -- of course, the upcoming Australian tour can address one of the gaps. But winning test series in Pakistan, West Indies, England and New Zealand are more than significant achievements.Yes, lack of a test series victory in Sri Lanka in a long time is also a pain point, but it also testifies to the difficulty level of beating Lanka at home. 

In any case, the significant members who have created this transformation -- mind you, it's been gradual and there has been nothing dramatic about it --  deserve to be paid a tribute. This blog is just that -- a tribute to the 12 `Mosts` Of Indian Cricket through one line descriptions. These 12 men brought about the transformation in India's test cricket performance:

1. Saurav Ganguly -- The Most Inspiring Captain 
2. Sachin Tendulkar -- The Most Consistent Batsman
3. Virender Sehwag -- The Most Destructive Batsman
4. Rahul Dravid -- The Most Dependable Batsman
5. VVS Laxman -- The Most Elegant Batsman
6. Gautam Gambhir -- The Most Focused Southpaw
7. Anil Kumble -- The Most Accurate Bowler
8. Harbhajan Singh -- The Most Excitable (not a bad thing of course) Bowler
9.Zaheer Khan -- The Most Crafty Bowler
10. MS Dhoni -- The Most Cool Leader
11. John Wright -- The Most Trusting Coach
12. Gary Kirsten -- The Most Approachable Coach

While Saurav Ganguly, Anil Kumble and both the coaches have moved on, they have left behind a legacy for others to take to a culmination point. The other guys are not finished yet -- far from it.

PS: Can we forget the selectors? Kudos to them too! They deserve it.  

Power Of Failure

Power of Failure

”I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.”  -- Thomas Edison

This piece is dedicated to the most important principle of success: If you can’t fail, you cannot succeed.

Welcome to the world of failure, paradoxically, the most powerful theme and attitude in the world of success. If love is the most beautiful emotion in the world, failure is the most difficult to handle. However, as we will see later, the key difference between successful people and the not so successful ones lies in their ability to fail more often.

Early in life we all learnt a quote: “Failure is the stepping stone to success.” However, for most people in this world, this is just one more interesting proverb, whose depth and significance are not explored beyond the contours of the English language. This is fundamentally because our education and social systems penalize us for failing. In our lives, the fear of failure is greater than the desire for success. Children in school fear failing due to the consequences back home. Somebody who gets good marks is rated as better than somebody who gets less marks. Thus early in life, children learn the art of protecting their space, unhealthy competition and lack of respect for team work, which they carry into their adult lives.

Ironically, however, some of the most successful people in the world are those without a glorious formal degree. But such people diligently and painstakingly acquired real life education, like leadership, selling, wealth creation, etc. Amazingly, some of the most successful businesses in the world are run by so-called deemed `academic failures`, but for whom highly qualified people work. Recently I was part of an interesting discussion where one of my friends said how A Graders work for B Graders who work for companies started by C Graders.

Thus, education can be categorized into two parts: formal and real life. If somebody was a great performer academically, that is no guarantee for success in the real world, and if somebody did not do well academically, his/her obituary need not be written.

One of the great aspects of real life education is the ability to fail often and learn from those failures. There is no bigger teacher than failure in this world and that truly is the power of failure.

Thomas Edison famously said: ”I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.” 

(source: http://quotations.about.com/od/stillmorefamouspeople/a/ThomasEdison3.htm).

The power of failure lies in the way we respond to it. Edison’s perseverance changed the way humanity lives. The success of Michael Jordan, iconic basketball player, lies in how many times he failed. An article on the internet says: “In a famous ad campaign launched by ‘Nike’, Michael is quoted as saying he has:

• Lost almost 300 games (that’s more games than many NBA players have court time in)
• Missed over 9000 shots at goal (again more shots than an average NBA player even takes)
• 26 times he was given the ball to take the game winning shot and MISSED

Jordan goes on to say the reason he has succeeded boils down to his constantly failure and used failure as motivation to shoot for success. In other words Jordan viewed failures as stepping stones towards success; his shooting average was just below 50% so to score he would have to take two shots, one to fail the other to score.” -- (source: http://www.businessinsider.com/thomas-edison-and-michael-jordan-were-failures-2010-9).

Take a closer look at the last sentence: “Jordan viewed failures as stepping stones towards success; his shooting average was just below 50% so to score he would have to take two shots, one to fail the other to score.” What we learnt early in life about failure being a stepping stone to success comes alive powerfully through this example. 

Let’s take another example from the sporting arena. Kapil Dev took 434 test wickets. But for that he had to bowl 27,740 deliveries -- (source: http://www.liveindia.com/cricket/Records.html). This implies that 26,872 deliveries did not succeed to pick up a wicket. But by failing these many times, he became a great bowler. Power of Failure! It makes you great.

Failure however does not become your strength unless you learn from your mistakes. Most people give up after a few failures because they find it difficult to look within and learn from those mistakes. It is absolutely OK to fail, but it is not OK not to learn from those failures. After all, only if you LEARN will you EARN, as the word earn is part of the word learn.

The great lesson from the examples of Edison, Jordan and Kapil Dev is that successful people fail more often than failures do. This is true in every department of life, be it sports, selling, entrepreneurship, etc. But the trick lies in persisting and not giving up. Just imagine what a great loss to human potential it would have been if the three gentlemen had given up. Their persistence not only made them successful, but also a role model.

I am no Jordan or Dev, but in my own humble way, I have learnt to absorb the power of failure.  I failed in Std 12 in the Science stream. I then had to shift to the Arts stream, and eventually I completed my M.A (Politics). Some time in 2003, one fine day I decided I wanted to be an independent trainer and quit my job. I failed and within a few months had to return to a job and I joined Max New York Life Insurance as a trainer. That proved to be a turning point in my life. I learnt a lot and continued to pursue my dream of being on my own. I once again in 2009 quit my job to be on my own, but this time with the help of the lessons learnt from the 2003 failure and with better planning.

As an independent trainer I fail more often today than ever before. Often prospective clients say `No`, or some training sessions do not receive good feedback. But each time I do a bad session, if I diligently work on the lessons learnt, the next one works out better.

Friends, failure is a part of life and the only way to grow. We all failed to walk the first time we tried. We all failed the first time we tried riding a bicycle. We all failed the first time we tried our hand at cooking. But did we give up? So don’t worry the next time you fail. Don’t get disheartened if success is delayed. Just remember, the more often you fail, greater would be your success.

Fall in love with failure. Persist, Learn, Don’t give up. Success will then chase you all your life.

Training -- A Great Purpose

Training – A Great Purpose

This piece is dedicated to my profession, training, and to all trainers, who on a daily basis light up people's lives with their KASH -- Knowledge, Attitude, Skills And Habits. This is both a perspective as well as a reflective piece. Dedicating my first piece to training is my small way of expressing gratitude to the training profession and to all trainers who have shaped my personality over the last so many years.

I feel inspired to write to all of you about training and its purpose. Pardon me if you find it a bit autobiographical. My attempt here is to build a context for all of us in training based on my own experiences and the perspective I have built over 20 years of training and coaching.

My journey as a trainer started way back in 1987 when my brother Ravi forced me to enroll myself in a course in Public Speaking. If ever my brother had done me a favour, that was it. Life took a full U-turn from thereon, as I grew in self confidence and within months I had started my independent classes on public speaking.

Even as I meandered away from training for a few years (I spent six years of my prime youth as a journalist), I yearned to get back to it and literally missed the classroom and academic environment. By the grace of God, I got back to training (this time as a full time professional) and once again I was on my journey towards fulfilling my purpose in life -- training people to make themselves and therefore their life better.

As I reflect back upon the last 20 years or so, the transformation I have felt through learning from expert trainers is truly amazing. The trainers have been from various walks of life -- public speaking, journalism, Reiki, insurance sales, motivation, facilitation skills, etc -- and each of them brought to the table a uniqueness that moved beyond the subject and provided an insight into the trainer's personality, and not just the training.

While each great trainer was a subject matter expert, there was something common, and that was he/she had made training a purpose and not just a profession or activity. Training is truly a great purpose. It provides each one of us on a daily basis an amazing opportunity to impact, influence and guide people to become better individuals and professionals in their chosen field.

While training has various forms -- sales training, soft skills training, etc -- actually all training is behavioural training. In sales training, for example, actually we are moulding the behavior, temperament and outlook of people towards selling. Therefore, it is logical that there be an output linkage to training, as otherwise for the participant, the purpose of becoming successful in a particular field/profession is not fulfilled. So, in sales, it is measured through certain output parameters, in technical training, it is measured through the knowledge of the participants, in entrance test training, it is measured through how many students get through the test, and so on and so forth.

The purpose of training is to help our participants move from an X level of expertise/knowledge/skill to an X+ level, with a clear focus on not just measuring progress, but whether the participants have reached the desired level.

This calls for two clear focus areas for all trainers: Building a vision for yourself as a trainer and constantly working on your training delivery skills. As a trainer, you cannot directly influence results, but inside your temple called the classroom you can deeply influence the people who are supposed to get the results. For this, it is important to realise that just as a film set is the action ground for an actor, the classroom is the action ground for a trainer. Just as an actor expresses himself according to the given situation through emotions, gestures, expressions and dialogue delivery, we too as trainers have the opportunity on a daily basis to passionately express ourselves and deeply impact others through our classroom performance, like facilitation skills, subject knowledge, delivery, discipline, etc.

To become a great trainer therefore, we must constantly upgrade ourselves in the following areas:

1. Language development, including the English language, as it is the global language of communication (proper grammatical expression and choice of words is critical)

2. Constant improvement in our classroom delivery skills (for finally what matters is not just what we say, but how we say it)

3. An extensive reading habit on not only your subject matter of training, but a wide variety of subjects, as it helps build a wider perspective

4. An internal analysis of each training program that we conduct

5. A close study of participants' feedback post each training session

All these are critical to help us become dynamic trainers, and build an intellectual/spiritual dimension to our life and training.

The intent of this piece is:

1. To help all of you reflect upon the opportunity you have created for yourself in your life to impact and influence people and

2. To identify your core strengths and areas for improvement as a trainer.

I urge each one of you to feel proud about the choice you made to become a trainer, and also build a vision to be recognised as the best in class in the training industry.

Hope you find value in what I have shared with you. Look forward to your feedback and comments.

God Bless You!