Split - Part 2

Ok... now you will ask me "What is the impact of these small, seemingly harmless splits on one's life? These are some of the things almost all of us do and no harm has come so far... Why do you have to exaggerate so much?"

I have only one question for you - "How do I know that the face I am seeing right now and talking to right now is the true face?"

How do I know that when I share something close to my heart, it will remain between us and not be misused?

How do I know that when I crack a joke, your laughter is genuine?

How do I know that when I give you the work, whether you are taking it up happily or not eventhough you are showing excitement?

How do I know that when you say you won't do something, you really won't do it?

How do I know that when you say you will do something, you really will do it?

Ok, too much of you... you... you... I'll take myself as an example...

We are standing at the middle of the road and I keep looking at each and every girl that passes by. If you know that I have a very wrong way of looking at girls... will you feel comfortable meeting me with your wife and sister?

You know that I drink every evening, will you bring your kids next to me?

You know that I pretend to work in front of you, but take too long to finish each work (I'm just wasting too much time behind your back)... will you delegate work to me?

I know what you are thinking... "these splits are still in very small and in unimportant places."

Humanly, it is not possible to have a watertight compartment inside our head... Whatever is our attitude in small things will also be our attitude in big things.

You want to check if you have a split within yourself... I'll give you one single test... (I'm a strong believer in this one)
Stand in front of a mirror and look into your eyes... see how long you can hold your own gaze...
You will either walk away more satisfied or you will walk away thinking...

Split - Part 1

This one's going to be long... Very long... So I'm going to split it into 3 parts.
First lets understand what is Split, then the impact of Splits in our day to day lives and then how do we fix it...

It was sometime ago when I went for an outing with my office colleagues and spouse. As always, I went ahead and freaked out, had fun, cracked my jokes, pulled a few legs, got pulled, enjoyed the trip.
At one point, a colleague of mine asked my wife... "Does this guy behave like this even at home?"... She replied - "He's always like that"
Of course, when we had some time for ourselves, my wife said the same thing - "You behave the same way  even with your colleagues, I expected you to behave properly and talk less atleast in your office atmosphere"

A few weeks ago, some of my batchmates were planning to go for a drinks party. One of them, refused to go along because his parents were in the city and he didn't want to drink and go home when the parents are home.
(I obviously didn't go). That got me to ask a question - "How easy is it for someone to behave differently when he's with a person, and behave totally differently when with different people?"

Look at the languaging of people around us:
When I'm with my dad / mom / spouse, I don't smoke / drink, otherwise its ok.
I don't speak like that in front of boss, with colleagues I can speak whatever I want
I don't think wrong about people when I'm in a temple, I'll take care of that **** when I meet him.
I don't eat non-veg on Fridays, other days its ok.

When I'm with this person, I do this, When I'm with that person, I do that.

In short, when we are with a more respected person, we behave differently. When we are with peers or alone, we behave differently.

We behave respectably when we are with another person because we respect that person. Sad part is we behave in an inferior manner when we are all by ourselves.
When your kids are not around, you smoke
When your parents are not around, you drink
When your boss is not around, you open facebook
When your wife is not with you, your attention is on every miniskirt and hipster around you

Does that actually mean that you don't respect yourself? coz it sure looks like that...

Ok Gulshan... So what... Just because I do something which I want to do doesn't make me wrong.

Definitely not.

The fact that you do something when nobody is watching and that you don't want to do it in front of your loved one... that makes it less than right...

Gulshan... do you think you are Buddha... that you haven't done anything wrong?

No... the only thing I am is a little bit more aware about myself... and I'm on the way... the one true loved one knows when I have done something wrong...

My teacher always says - What I do when the world is watching is my "Personality", What I do when nobody's watching is my "Character".

Is there a split between your Character and Personality??

How far will you go???

You might remember a post titled “Alcohell” which I had shared some time ago. Interestingly that was the one post which attracted maximum number of responses. Except for 2 people who agreed with it, rest all were trying to justify in some manner that “the item” is not that bad after all (that’s what I would prefer to call it rather than using the word alcohol over and over again in this post). Here are some of the interesting ones:

1.      ### - Gulshan, even doctors say that a few ml of red wine once in a while are good for heart.
Gulshan – Have you checked with your family doctor? Does he say the same thing?

2.      ### - Even our parents used to give us a spoon of Doctor Brandy when we were kids and got cold.
Gulshan – Mine used to give me honey, salt and ginger heated well which was followed by hot turmeric milk. Honestly, I think I have survived the colds pretty ok. Plus, in today’s time and age, we have much better medicines available.

3.      ### - (This one was a lady) – Gulshan, I think its ok to have a beer once in a while. Just one shouldn’t do any harm.
Gulshan – If your husband comes home after having beer and kisses you, will you kiss him back. Forget a mug, if he has just had a sip and gives out a very light smell, will you kiss him?
(Her silence was an answer for both of us)

4.      ### - Gulshan, you asked in the post, whether we will give just a drop to a new born? Its not fair to involve a new born baby in this context. We don’t even give chicken to a new born baby, we don’t give food to it also… then is food also bad?
Gulshan – You feel hurt when I speak of a new born right? Do your parents know that you have just a beer once in a while? Are they ok with it?
We don’t give food to a new born because his body is not ready for it yet. Doctors tell when to start solid food and then we start giving it. But I don’t know one single doctor who can tell the age for starting drinking.

5.      ### - Gulshan, what about times when doctors use the item to sedate a patient or to clean injuries?
Gulshan – That’s doctors, they know what to use, how much to use and when to use. And they use surgical alcohol, not some “xxx’s choice” or “xxx’s special” or “xxx walker” for surgeries.

All those who know me well know how strongly I feel against this foul fermented smelly liquid. This is the conviction I have found for myself and I am willing to go quite far to hold on to it.

We all know that advertisements of these drinks are banned in India. So these companies have found a new way for advertising their products… Instead of advertising for “xxx whisky” they advertise for “xxx packaged drinking water”, “xxx music cds” and flood the market with these products. (Of course, they have not manufactured any of it, they just outsource the brand name to some small time local manufacturers)

This is a classic example of Surrogate Advertisement (also known as subliminal messaging or subconscious advertisement)

The effect  of this kind of advertisement is so powerful that even if you ask a non-drinker to name any five alcoholic brands, “xxx” will be the first name he says.

Why??? Because everytime he drinks water, he sees the brand name on the bottle and subconsciously registers the information.

Once, the brand of water supplied in my client’s place was changed to “xxx packaged drinking water”. Next day, I took my own water bottle to work. One of the employees noticed and asked if there was a problem with the water provided there. I said that the bottle contained a label of an alcoholic brand and I did not want it on my desk, so I brought my own bottle.

He looked at me as if I was from some other planet (actually, I’m getting quite used to that look) and said “That’s a bit too extreme”. I just said – “Yep… that it is”

Just in case you are wondering how extreme it could get… let me clarify it for you…

I don’t give treats which involve taking you to a place and getting you drunk...

I don’t pay for any treats which have this item as one of the served…

I don’t directly or indirectly pay for anybody’s drinks…

I don’t use any products so much as containing a name of it… (our mind is something very valuable, it has to be kept pure… And I intend to take care of whatever of it I have)

I don’t consume any medication for cold which contains any form of alcohol… even when consulting a doctor, I request him to prescribe an alcohol free medicine and most doctors are happy to oblige…

I don’t get involved in a gathering where it is being consumed…

I don’t use deo sprays…

I don't take Strepsils...

Knowingly or unknowingly I tend to keep a distance from friends who are it’s regular consumers…

My teacher once told me – “Find a conviction and hold on to it. If you stand for something, you won’t fall for anything.”

I have found mine and I’m willing to go any distance to hold on to it.

You conviction could be anything… vegetarianism, a particular religion, a particular God, honesty… anything…

How far are you willing to go to hold on to your conviction?

For the time being...

This company had spent a few hundred thousand dollars to install a software for tracking all customer information. The software worked fine for first few years. Gradually the company grew and the needs also grew which the software was not able to handle. It was going to take a few weeks to update the customer relation software.
For the time being, till the software gets updated, the employees were asked to update the details in excel sheets.
Do you want to guess what happened next?
Weeks went by.... months too... and the employees continued to update the details in excel sheets.

Over time the issue in the customer relation software was resolved and the product was ready to use, but the employees were still using the excels.

One of those days, I went as an external consultant for some assignment. While passing one of the workstations, I saw the person manually enter some details in an excel file. On further analysis, I found that he was preparing an MIS report based on the excel files and there was a file for every month saved in the shared folder.

I told the manager that there are a few CRM softwares which can be used which will speed up the process why are they not using it.

The manager said that they already had a high end CRM software and I was shocked to know that the manager was under the impression that people were already using this software.

Even more shocking was the fact that a number of employees (joined in the last 3-6 months) didn't even know that there was such a software in the company. Some of the other teams were using this software though.

Apparently the manager had sent a mail to the team leaders that software is upgraded and available. Some of the team leaders had forwarded the information to their team members while others had not.

Why am I sharing this??? Because so often we have so many tools in hand which we may not be using to their full potential.

In this same example, so many people could have asked a simple question and that could have avoided a lot of manual work.

The top management could have asked for a simple confirmation whether the system is working as per requirements...

The manager could have asked the team leaders if everything was working fine...

The team leaders who did not notice the mail could have asked the manager "What is the status of software upgrade?"

The old employees who were working on the software earlier could have asked when it would resume?

The new employees could have come up and asked why so much work is manual... why not automate it?

If the new employees asked, team leaders could have pursued the idea instead of killing it...


In short, an interim solution which was implemented FOR THE TIME BEING had not become a part of the regular process just because nobody bothered to rethink.

A bigger learning I'm taking from here and have been taking quite often in the last few weeks is that a lot of efficiencies can be brought in by asking a simple and very powerful question - "How does this work?" or "Why does this not work?"...

So often we keep doing something because everyone is doing is or because someone told us that's how to do it. We never bother to ask a question "Why am I doing whatever I am doing?"

Think about it...