Serendipity and Learning

 Over the last year with the growth of OTT - I have ended up watching movies in many languages - some which I understand and many which I dont. But with subtitles, the barrier of language can be transcended.  What is intriguing about movies is the imagination and the stories. Yes. Duh.  But far more intriguing and possibly less obvious is the landscape.  In a Hollywood movie everything happens in NY or LA. In Bollywood much of the events happen in Mumbai or Punjab. In Kerala if it is a Malayalam movie and so on.  Even when they reach a different territory in order to have continuity, a character who speaks the language appears somehow (which again isnt implausible whether in India or abroad).  The imagination happens inside the known geography of the audience (for the most part). And using familiar elements a new story is constructed, yet again. 

This was a story we had in college if I am not mistaken. Perhaps it was in school, but a delightful story it was. The story goes somewhat like this ( reproduced from here ), but the college version we had was slightly different from this.  I t was a dull, gloomy and a depressing morning in a town named Pumpelsdrop in northern England. The Great Depression had brought all the businesses to a standstill. The bored automobile dealer was spending time alone, as usual. But, this seems to be an unusual morning as an odd entity (customer) appeared on the horizon. A man in a bright suit walks up to the dealer and says, "I need to buy a Rolls Royce Phantom II. We have a business conference coming up and I need to impress my customers". Then proceeds to pay 10% of the deal with a single check for 2000 pounds. The rest he says will pay when he takes the delivery.   The auto dealer was stunned. He was delighted to hear that someone is holding a business conference of some kind and ...

Twitter is cool - perhaps the entire internet is. I found this piece on Neelesh Mishra (well, I heard this name for the first time - more on this phenomenon later). And found his stories on youtube. Wow...this is great. And he is quite a story teller. Never heard a story on radio, I must admit...and this is a first for me... Am not an audio learner, but this one was surely interesting...I wish we had story tellers in other languages as well on the internet. And may there are...Maybe there are podcasts and radio stations relaying forgotten stories. Now thinking what can be done with this...

That Pixar principles of story telling post was not a coincidence. The kids wanted to see a movie and as we searched through Chromecast, we saw a movie called Big Hero 6. I had heard from a friend that the kids enjoyed it so I thought, well, why not. I however, was sceptical. Yet another childrens movie - how different can it be. But it was and the children were rolling in laughter, gaping in amazement, debating forcefully, hanging onto the edge of their seats and as the movie came to an end, their eyes moistened. And then the inevitable, post movie discussion - why did this happen? Why did he do like that? How did that happen? Why could it not happen that way? Why did not bring him back? And so on and so forth... A great story makes you do all that. Stay with it for as long as it continues and then it stays with you for a long time...And Big Hero 6 does that...

There is a story behind the Panchatantra. And the Hitopadesha. And the Jataka tales. In the case of the Panchatantras, it is all about teaching a few princes, some things about life. (and the wiki entry confirms it). Vishnu Sharma was entrusted with the task of teaching 'niti' to three princes and he does so using these fables. The five principles (Pancha-tantra) are all about: (from the wiki page) The five books are called: Mitra-bheda : The Separation of Friends (The Lion and the Bull) Mitra-lābha  or  Mitra-samprāpti : The Gaining of Friends (The Dove, Crow, Mouse, Tortoise and Deer) Kākolūkīyam : Of Crows and Owls (War and Peace) Labdhapraṇāśam : Loss Of Gains (The Monkey and the Crocodile) Aparīkṣitakārakaṃ : Ill-Considered Action / Rash deeds (The Brahman and the Mongoose) I read them mostly through Amar Chitra Katha, as I suspect most Indians of my generation did. But I was reminded of them as I read through some modern fables (which I put out in the l...

The Panchatantra, The Jataka tales and the Hitopadesha have been with us long enough (more about that soon). But, let me write now about three business fables I read. The first one is Goal. This to me, remains the definitive fable I have ever read. Its sequels were nowhere close the original. But, if one is to learn about operations and concepts, this is an amazing book. The second one is Team Dysfunctions by Patrick Lencioni. This book actually takes you through how to resolve team dysfunctions and in a corporate environment it shows how to resolve them. And the best part, it also shows that tough decision need to be taken and how that is important in running a passionate team. The third one is on Critical Thinking - called Engage the fox. This book was a chance that I picked it up to read on the kindle very recently. And it has been an engaging story using animals. (Aside, Animal farm remains one of my favorite fables, though the context is slightly different) So, what m...

A few years back, I had the great opportunity to sit in one of the trainings conducted by this “one man army”. He blew us away by his knowledge, his timing and his ability to hold nearly a room full of people with about 10 odd years of technology experience. So, with about 15 people, effectively it came to about 150 years of experience. And he was able to convince us all – regardless of what questions we threw at him – on the subject at hand. The best part of it was that he was not the slick, suave, savvy presenter that you think would do this. His language was quite rusty – not some convent educated fake accented English – he did not use any jargon – he used a lot of common sense and simple examples and in my books, he will perhaps be the best trainer who I have ever trained under. Why? He was able to connect with the audience like no other. No fake smiles, no brotherhood – just pure subject matter expertise – and ability to relate and connect with people and their field of work. Th...