Remembering VG sir ahead of his birthday

Picture courtesy: The Hindu

Veerappa Gangaiah Siddhartha Hegde unleashed the power of coffee for our benefit. The serenity of the CCD ambience was our true oasis in the urban desert. Its soothing aura, optimal lighting, and the reassuring rest rooms invariably more than made up for the monopoly and monotony of the staple beverages, sandwiches, biscuits, and cookies. For long, CCD was one of the best options to spend time or even kill it. This value prop is yet sterling in a country like India.

How could such a business be deemed a failure, notwithstanding the mounting debt, possibly flawed decisions, and even suspect fund deployments that may have collectively caused the debacle. Given a diligent founder like VG sir, a turnaround would certainly have been around the corner had the lenders cared to look beyond the obvious. VG sir's business model didn't fail, his backers failed him while his detractors made merry. 

Scores of business ventures bleed like hell everyday but continue to run pompous ads across every form of media. Many dubious entities get acquired by the glorified big fish of insatiable appetites, and many armchair strategists regularly puke sermons on rescuing genuine value props from the eddy of doom and destruction, warming the globe while trotting it without good reason.

Why was then VG sir left alone to contemplate and commit suicide? 

Especially when this investment banker-turned entreprenuer and farmer had given it all to his pioneering coffee chain of more than 1,700 outlets spread across India. 

Why was he knowingly or unknowingly forced to demonstrate the truism of his tag line "A lot can happen over coffee"on a fatal note.

Had he still been in our midst, VG sir would have turned 62 on August 29. Tributes have been pouring in with unfailing regularity ever since we lost him, but the heartfelt words of IndiaPlaza founder Mr. Vaitheeswaran convey the unsaid, and continue to ring true:

"...when he stood alone on that bridge, with nobody holding his hand, he may have taken that sudden decision. He may have told himself, I have not been able to sleep for so many days, if I just jump, I can sleep in peace forever. I totally get it."

An OG called BG

The protagonist of this thought piece was introduced to me by one of his former colleagues, an archetypal specimen of a self-consumed tribe, one of those fairly proficient developers who pack some really good bits in book form but expect the world to find profound bytes in their authorship where none exist. Yet, I am indebted to this middle man for doing me an altruistic favor: leading me to a rarest-of-rare maverick who is averse to the very idea of broadcasting his thought leadership as he believes he has nothing new to say! His humility aside, what he says is as profound as profound can get, and that too in the simplest of ways, a heartening contrast to the umpteen thoughtless leaders who say a lot only because they have a say by default, thanks to a carefully cultivated visibility, which in turn breeds automated influence. 

Meet Baishampayan Ghose, or BG, as he is known to friends and peers, the non-conformist who lives life king size on royal terms in a consciously subaltern manner, a rare species in a league of his own, free of claims and stakes. 

 

In this thought piece, I have steered clear of tracing his umpteen trials and triumphs of seeding and exiting companies. Instead, I focus on his restless soul that has kept him gainfully restive all along his life and work progression. A loner by choice in his formative years, he spent substantial time in his engineer uncle’s work den, toying with gadgets and instruments and unravelling their anatomies and mechanisms. His fascination for computers defied the humble, tech-free environs of his native Agartala, but he more than made up for the forced deprivation with his voracious reading and relentless experimentation with computing and web development. Notably, his affinity for engineering developed in a family of professionals from unlikely streams; his dad is a doctor and mother a government official. 

BG’s search for a computer science course took him to Shivaji University in Kolhapur, a distant land far away from home. Disillusioned by the arid nature of the syllabus and the job-centric mindsets of peers and superiors, BG dropped out of college and carved his own syllabus based on the knowledge gathered from MIT OpenCourseWare and Stanford curricula. This was a trying phase of his life where he faced rampant social rejection and severe family admonishments but he braved it all led by his steely resolve and the decisive method in madness. Unlike most drop-out mavericks, BG re-joined college and duly graduated with honours, albeit also armed with actionable insights, thanks to his experiential learning as part of the free and open-source software projects, deep diving into Python on Ubuntu and Debian.

 

The rest is a lot of history, some geography, and a bit of civics. His corporate stints and track record as a founder are well covered in the public domain. There’s little point retracing a well-documented journey in linear fashion. Instead, what merits quality attention is his roving eye and probing mind in each stint and venture, fixated on unearthing insights on branches placed high above those yielding low-hanging fruits. 

Like his penchant for learning a new language in quick succession– whether C, C++, PHP, Perl, Ruby, and Python, led by interest and not instruction 

Like his first preferred language, Lisp, having been mesmerised by founder John McCarthy’s phenomenal AI strides

Like his first corporate stint which was guided by Lisp, not salary, perks, or position

Like his reverence for immutable data structures which germinated from the learnings of a business problem, wherein he made code changes to what he presumed were unique objects but which in actuality were references to the same object, causing the change to be applied n^x times instead of nx times. The business consequence: the website of his then employer, an online travel tech player company, flashed negative prices, and ended up losing INR 10 lakh in a mere two hours through free ticket sales

Like the priceless learnings of his start-up stints, which taught him that product value props thrive on the wings of financial sustainability of a ready (or willing) marketplace, not simply disruptive innovation

Like his faith in functional programming languages and his prodigious tryst with the lisp dialect ‘Clojure’, well known for its BDFLs and highly opinionated practitioners, which BG believes, keeps it alive and kicking, a language that helped him  with software development at the speed of thought without bothering about classes, interfaces, and design patterns   

Like the premium he puts on cultural fit ahead of skills and competencies. The former, unlike the latter, can’t be acquired. A good team player with organic humility and genuine empathy for users is an absolute must, given that software is built by people for people.

Like his firm belief in mulling over a problem instead of mauling it with mercurial quick fixes, as also in the judicious balance between aptitude and pragmatism

Like his clarion call to students urging them to articulate their real needs rather than waiting for the academic institutions to evolve, to develop the affinity for abstract concepts, to read original papers rather than showcase views based on Hacker News 

Like his utopian prescription of a more industry-attuned education system striving to help students cultivate the ability and agility for original thinking and ethical explorations rather than manufacturing assembly line engineers to serve the vested interests shaping and steering a programmed shop floor 

 

For BG, a language is good if it serves the said purpose, not because it is ranked higher by stakeholders. For him, good guys stand tall whether they come first or last, and knowledge is the only degree that counts; a PhD can’t help if FizzBuzz yet appears a daunting challenge. 

One of his formative startups was called ‘Infinitely Beta’ given its work ethos of rapid learning and experimentation. The title suits him instead given his vision, mission, and values governing life and work.  One of his goals going forward is to venture into agriculture by becoming a farmer. 

Knowing him, he will make the most of the greener pasture, both literally and lyrically! 

Moving from intent to content: ‘Fit for purpose’ communication

Over the years, I have conducted these freewheeling sessions across different geographies - whether pan India, US, UK, Central Asia or Africa - from the scenic town called Horley near London to a sleepy village called Nakuru in Nairobi, from the Mount prospect locality near downtown Chicago to the central business district of Almaty, Kazakhstan, from the pious landmark of Rishikesh to the tribal pockets of Meghalaya, and from the Haddo market area of Port Blair to the awesome terrain of Alangar in Karnataka - for diverse target groups - whether MNCs or SMEs, PSUs or NGOs, kids or housewives, salaried or self employed, contractors or workers, children of plush societies or urchins from slum pockets...

The workshops conducted for deprived sections are delivered free of cost. 



Some of the popular workshops and modules:


Poetry of Mathematics and the science of languages

From Classroom to Workplace: managing the academia-industry transition

Learning beyond the confines of Arts, Science and Commerce

Learning through Music, Literature, Films & Theatre

Probing the Child's mind: No child's play

Decoding gender sensitivity, financial literacy, career planning, and life & language skills

Why get better at communication? 

o A brief on communication challenges of the ‘playground’ called Workplace

o What is Fit for Purpose communication and how it helps? 

Cutting across cultures: Camaraderie beyond comfort zones 

• The Pivotal Role of Language, History and philosophy in cross-culture communication
• Edward Hall’s concept of low-context and high-context communication
• Persuasion and assertion in a multi-cultural scenario – I, we and us.
• Managing a global team: Consensus stems from cultural relativity
• How to become a culture catalyst – going beyond acceptance and tolerance
• Interactive discussion on interesting specifics of cultural contexts – American, European, Asian 

Thanks to the arid, bureaucratic mechanisms of conventional NGO bodies, proletariat activists and CSR practitioners across the globe, social responsibility, knowingly and unknowingly, has come to harbor several blatant assumptions about the larger cause of end-beneficiaries (often generically slotted as ‘target groups’ or ‘deprived’ communities) Conveniently overlooked in the process is the plain fact that their deprivation is only circumstantial and in no way indicative of the instinctive and intellectual capacities inherent within the community. Contrary to popular perception, the supply-side forces, in the mad rush to emancipate the downtrodden, are themselves found deprived when it comes to even reading the minds of the audience, leave alone identifying its needs,. In peddling their jargon-heavy black and white prescriptions on financial prudence and general well being, they are knowingly and unknowingly oblivious of the expressions of playful amusement and suppressed yawns that the so-called ‘deprived’ reserve for the seemingly ‘privileged’ - - stemming more from doubt than disbelief. 

As always, members of the audience, across all age groups, often surprise you with occasional quips and counter questions that help you learn more than you seek to teach. The more you interact with them, the more you marvel at the depth of their instinctive knowledge, fertile imagination and the zeal to become willful change agents. We are more than sure some of them will become change architects of global credence in good time. Here’re only a few of the lingering echoes:

One bright school girl from Devarjan, a tiny hamlet near Latur in Maharashtra, had a simple argument “Why doesn’t the government simply print more notes to eradicate poverty?” All effort to elucidate the consequent vicious chain of increased spends, demand-supply gaps and soaring prices didn’t seem to impress her. We wished to hold a special session exclusively for her post the session. Unfortunately, the unbelievably wooden and pompous school authorities seemed hardly bothered which was really sad.

A differently abled adolescent, who had accompanied his mother to one session held in conjunction with Don Bosco Technical Institute Kurla, proved a much better listener than most of the other ‘normal’ participants. His sheer effort to get involved, often urging others to be attentive, was truly a moving experience.  

Chinmay Bidarkar, standard VIII student of Sri Ravi Shankar school, Latur impressed one and all with his mathematical genius, solving compound interest problems with effortless authority and yet strikingly unassuming in his replies. Clearly a great Indian mathematician in the making!

Ujjwala from Sawantwadi and Deepak from Jharkhand, astoundingly mature for their age of 16 and 18 years, proactively articulated the value of communication in their own words.  

Pranjal Garg of Kendriya Vidyalaya, Rishikesh, Amit Kumar Singh of Port Blair Kendriya Vidyalaya, Anjali A R, Naveen T, K Venugopal and A Santosh of Kendriya Vidyalaya Adoor were among the sterling scorers in the quiz held in schools all over India. 

Ms. Varsha Dixit, a key official of the Thane Municipal Corporation showed exceptional vision and extended all help in organizing offbeat communication skill workshops for the corporation staff. Similar sessions have been planned for the Safai Kaamgars on stress management and financial literacy.

Sharada, Anagha, Geeta, Savita and Varsha, all enthusiastic lady entrepreneurs, actively participated in an innovative role play enactment during a Don Bosco session at Borivali, realistically simulating a loan proposal meeting with a bank official and summarizing the learning for the benefit of the audience.

Mr. Chandrasekhar Burande, noted architect and citizen activist, took the lead in successfully organizing IIFL workshops in the schools and colleges of Latur, Devarjan and Udgir.

Ms. Sonali Kulkarni, Principal, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar School Latur and Mr. Amarr Prabhu, Principal, Don Bosco Technical Institute, Kurla – both young and dynamic achievers have raised the bar for their noble profession with their untiring and selfless devotion to the larger cause of their institutions.  

Ravi, serving staff member from Goa’s Tourism Development Resort in Miramar; Raju, Vada pav vendor from Varangaon near Jalgaon; Giri, auto rickshaw driver from Pon Nagar, Pondicherry; Rai, an ever-smiling steward from a hotel in Shillong’s Polo Ground area; Joshiji, a PSU employee from Rishikesh; Nishigandha, a health and hygiene activist from Thane’s Manorama Nagar; Dinesh, a clerk from Alangar, Mudbidri in Karnataka, Sandeep, a local vendor from Belgaum in Maharashtra, Alex, a transport business agent from Pune - all showed exceptional leadership qualities in assembling their respective communities in real quick time for short sessions on value-added communication.

Kalwa Pipeline case study

But the most satisfying of all initiatives till date was the theatrical intervention exercise we did with the children of Kalwa Pipe Line, a discarded slum pocket of Kalwa, Thane’s neighboring suburb. Their slum is adjoining a pipeline and hence the name. Ironically enough, proximity to the pipeline has done little to solve their recurring water scarcity problems which continue unabated. But their inventive reconciliation with reality and their ingenuity to work around it amidst the despondency and disappointment is a wonder story beyond words.  



Meet the Kalwa Pipeline champions of change: Asif, aged 11, is one of the most vocal and vociferous social activists we have ever met. A pocket-sized dynamo, he is a born leader when it comes to enforcing discipline and urging his peers to stay focused during the life and language skills workshop for ‘jyada se jyada fayda’ (maximum gains) as he succinctly puts it. Arif, Asif’s elder brother aged 20 works as a scavenger and runs errands for money but has now taken the lead in explaining the value of money to the community. Chandni, a child laborer, a promising girl of 16, now provides coaching to little children in dance and music, Sonali, 17, explains the virtues of small savings to ignorant adults and Afreen, 18, has taken upon herself to teach English to her folks. And last but not the least, thanks to Santoshi, a housemaid of over 35, who got all these kids together at her matchbox place for the sessions as also the slum theatre experiment. The kids, who obviously had no prior experience of public speaking, went on to deliver a hard hitting satire called “Jhagde pe jhagda” (squabble upon squabble) in the vast auditorium of Thane Municipal Corporation following rigorous practice in a short span of time. Today, almost all of their long standing problems yet remain unanswered but the new-found vigor from the slum theatre and financial literacy experiment has made them even more determined to fight all odds with greater resolve. 

Of all things, they are now extra vigilant about saving money for productive purposes like quality food and essential household utilities and constantly check their fascination for things they don’t need but long for, thanks to tempting TV ads and peer pressure.