Grey Matter

This is an afterthought of my previous post.Everybody needs to enjoy one’s work.The driver definitely was enjoying his.This reminded me of a session i had with someone called Raja Subramanian,who professionally was an auditor but had spiritual leanings like a monk. As a part of the session we had a card game to be played out between the participants of the session.All the participants were strangers to each other so i thought it is an exercise to make people get to know each other,after all we all were required to stay there in the ashram for 3 days.

The game started with the announcement from Raja that the winner will take a prize money of RS.200.The game was pretty simple to be played out between 4 players. There were many such four player groups playing among themselves.After completion of the game,every time the group was reshuffled with other groups to make each player play with all the other participants and the game played out again.The permutation and combination worked out to be a lot of games to be played by everyone.And since the game was in such a manner that not much expertise was required many people were fancying their chances of winning the prize money offered initially.It was really fun playing those games.Everybody there was enjoying every moment of it…OK almost every moment of it except when they are on the losing side.But even when they lose they would be excited to play the next match since they all knew they seem to learn from every game the rules.The rules were pretty simple but its just that some people take longer to understand than others.They need couple of matches to be lost to get to know the rules of the game thoroughly.

After a few grueling round of games i managed to be on the final four to play out the game. By now all the four of us have become experts in the game and have developed a few strategies to win by our selves. Each had his/her own idea of how to go about to win the game.And finally there was a winner.No,It wasn’t me.The winner was asking for his prize money but Raja called upon the person who was first to get out of the game and gave her the prize money.That is, in other words, the loser got the prize!

The winner had a little bit of argument, helped by a few others who held that this was unfair, with Raja. To which he said he would explain the whole thing the next morning.

The next day he asked us whether did we enjoy playing the game regardless of who the prize went too.Everyone agreed that they enjoyed it including the winner who thought the prize money should have been his.He then pointed out that everyone of us started out as novice just getting our feel of the game and then quickly learnt techniques and aquired what ever little bit of expertise we could.He then added that we were quick to point out when someone wanted to cheat and blowed our whistles.He then asked the winner of the series whether it hurts to find out that the loser got the prize money.He said yes.Raja promptly replied “Thats how the world works”.

Raja started explaining the whole point of this exersice.Think your work or profession as the playing of this game.The whole point of work is to enjoy every moment of it.You should seek to constantly upgrade your skills as you gain expertise when you play the same game over a period of time.As you blew the whistles when you saw somebody cheating on the game,you must not allow cheaters to interfere with your work and spoil the fun for you.Blow the whistles,honk do whatever.But never leave them.And though money could be part of your motivation to work,it shouldn’t be the only motivation.And finally for the winner nothing could take away the fact that you were a winner.Even if some loser got paid in an unfair way.The world works like that.

According to Raja,”work is like a mental gym,where you get paid for building up your own mental prowess!”

I haven’t posted something on the bustling category for a long time.Thats partially due to my resistance to make fun of people who travel along with me in MTC and mainly due to the fact that i don’t recollect most of the events at the end of the day.But today the driver in the bus i was traveling, made my day.He might have been a mad man but he had a terrific sense of humor that a lot of people flocked around him to hear his speech.I was engrossed with my own thoughts and didn’t notice his speech until a huge roar of laughter from the fellow passengers interrupted me.I started observing the driver from that time.

Note:The driver was speaking Madras Bashe(Tamil in its adulterated form).There could be some pun lost in translation.

He saw some guys drooling at the women in the bus stop,made a comment “Thirunthuma ithungellam”[Will these creatures ever change] and switched on the wiper! It wasn’t raining.But still he put on the wiper for the front mirror.You may think what’s so funny about this.But there is a allegory in Tamil called “Jollu Vadiyarathu”[Saliva coming out the mouth without the consciousness] for drooling.So the driver is symbolically preventing the saliva falling from those men by switching on the wiper!

Then came the signal.The traffic police let all the vehicles go but stopped the vehicles in the lane exactly when our bus was going to cross.He was standing just in front of the bus showing his hand.Instantly the bus driver started singing “Mama Mama Yema,Mama Mama Yema”[Uncle,Uncle Why are you doing this].This is a famous old song in Tamil.Here too “Mama” is to refer traffic police.All police men are referred as Mama and police station/jail is referred to as mamiyar veedu[Aunt's House] due to reasons unknown in Tamil.

The traffic police let our bus pretty quickly not making it to wait for a long time in signal.As a courtesy gesture our driver honked,honked,kept honking until the traffic police saw him.The driver saluted him cordially and said a “Thanks Mama”.

The driver kept doing his acts so nicely (I have just written 2 of them here ) that kept most of the passengers entertained.He was enjoying every moment of drive too.
And for once i was having more than my money’s worth of ride in Bus.Thanks to the entertainment factor.