The Little Fish, the Big Lake and the Small Pond

Once there was a fish who lived in a big wide lake. She loved her life, frolicking in the water with her friends all day. She was one happy fish!

Then one day, someone picked her up from the lake and put her in a small pond. The little fish was distraught. She missed her lake and her friends sorely. And there wasn't enough water in the small pond. It was drying up, becoming smaller every day.

One night, the little fish was overwhelmed by sadness and anger. She cried out loud- "Why me? Why did you take me away from the lake I loved? Why must I live alone and in such a small pond? How long before this pond dries up and I die?". 

To her surprise, a voice answered- "Little fish, I took you out because the big lake was toxic. It had been so for some time and was growing day by day but you were unaware of it. Had you stayed in the lake, you would be dead by now, choked by the poison."

The little fish realized that what the voice said was true. The water in the small pond was indeed clearer than the lake water. Her eyes could see far and her scales were shinier than ever before. She hadn't noticed this because she was so busy feeling lonely and scared. Having heard the truth, her anger and sadness disappeared. She felt grateful for what she was given- a second chance to live! 

The next day, it rained heavily and continued to rain for a whole week. The little pond filled up until it was almost as big as the lake.  The little fish could swim for a long time before she would reach the shore. And she was no longer alone- there were other colorful fish swimming in the pond!

The little fish was happy once again, happier than she had ever been before. 

Public Transport

(What an unromantic title for a poem!)

I hate travelling by train

Being forced to see unhappy people

Up close

So many people are unhappy,

Trying to lose themselves in their phones, or books

Or arrogance

I often scan the compartment

Seeking one kind face

Not one kind face on some days

I prefer buses

Although they take forever

And drivers drive badly

But at least I can breathe 

And look at the outside world

Greener than the one inside

Of course

I like taxis the best

Alone, safe, with my loneliness


(PS: I live in Singapore, which has the best public transport system in the world. Like many Singaporeans and expats living here, I don't even own a car.)

Pei Du Mama

Having grown up in India and seen abject poverty at its worst, I am not easily swayed to pitying anyone in an affluent country like Singapore. After all, even the poorest people here have a house to live in and food on their plates three times a day. But something changed yesterday.

There is a Korean woman who lives opposite, a floor below ours. I can see the back work-area of her apartment whenever I go to mine to dry clothes or to feed Anakin. Having spent a lot of time at home in these last three months, I have had a chance to observe her and her family. The first time she caught my attention was when I heard a woman shouting in an unfamiliar language and in an almost guttural manner. I was quick to peek out of the kitchen window and noticed that a thin small-built woman was in the work-area shouting at a young boy. This repeated a few times over the next few days. Shouting of any kind disturbs me a lot, and I took an instant dislike to the woman. 

Suddenly this woman was everywhere- in the lift as I was taking Aloka out for a walk, in the lobby when I was waiting for a taxi, in the condo bus going to the train station, and in 711 buying provisions. Perhaps it was just the "yellow car" syndrome at play here- she had been doing the same things all along, but I had only recently become aware of her and so I found her everywhere. 

It took me a while to understand that she was a "pei du mama" or "study mother", a term for mothers who accompany their kids to Singapore so that they can study in Singapore schools. Their husbands stay back in their countries to earn. These mothers are typically from Korea or China. This woman's whole life revolved around taking care of the physical needs of her two children, sending them to school, receiving them when they returned, sitting with them to do homework, taking them to tuition classes, bringing them back and then making sure they studied some more. The shouting was part of the ritual of doing homework. The older daughter was obedient but the younger boy was hard to control- thus the shouting. To this, I had my usual snobbish reaction to mothers who can't control their kids- disdain!

Yesterday, as I was leaving for my dance class, I slowed down to fix my shoes. I saw the same woman sitting on the bench in the lobby. She looked lost in her thoughts, sad thoughts I am sure, because her whole body looked defeated. Her skin was pale, she wore no makeup, her clothes looked washed out, and she was alone, perhaps waiting for her kids to return from tuition. I suddenly realized that I had never seen her smiling or having fun with her kids. Not once. Even when the kids were being kids and horsing around in the clubhouse a few days back, she had looked haggard and harassed. 

What was her life like? What was it about? Did she do anything for herself? Was she anything to anyone, other than a mother to those kids?  Was all that maniacal shouting an expression of her sadness and fear? Was there a guarantee that all her hard work will pay back and her kids will grow up to be successful, whatever that may mean? And even if they did, would they ever be grateful to this woman who sacrificed her whole life for them? 

I was suddenly moved to pity for this woman, who shares so much with me- both of us have two kids, both live in a foreign land, and both are single parents in our own ways- and yet is a world apart. 

The F word!

For 45 years, I never used the word. Up until 10 years ago, I even flinched when someone used it in a conversation. I prohibited its use in my home. Atreya knew he would be thrown out if he ever used it at home. 

The first time he used it in front of me was in Mongolia, when we had just arrived at a freezing mountain resort after spending 7 days in blistering Gobi desert. He begged me to allow him to use it and because I was in a holiday mood, I did. He used it say "It's f***ing cold". Mom was shocked but it was so cold that we all agreed with the sentiment and giggled. The closest I got to using the word was when I made "whuck" a part of my vocabulary, thanks to Tina Fey in 30 rock. 

Then, a switch as if got flipped in February this year around the time I was about to leave my job. Suddenly the word became the best, and sometimes the only, way to express a number of emotions in a number of ways. It became a favorite adjective, a noun and a verb too. The floodgates had been opened and never closed after that. 

Atreya couldn't be happier with this change in me- he looks at me with a sort of awe and appreciation whenever I use the word. I do take care not to use it in front of Aloka, who is like a sponge and picks up words and expressions from me every day. 

For someone who never used it before, wouldn't you agree that it is a f***ing amazing transformation?

(P.S. Sorry mom!)

Portrait of an Instructional Designer

One of my consulting assignments involves helping clients identify vendors with the right Instructional Design (ID) talent. It got me thinking about my own experience with Instructional Designers in the last 15 years in the industry. Who were the best Instructional Designers I worked with? What was special about them? What did they do to stand out? When did I realize they were exceptional?

In this article, I try to answer these questions but not by describing the skillsets or competencies of Instructional Designers. There are many good sources of that. Instead, I will share stories about my experiences working with an exceptional Instructional Designer. After all, this is an article about ID and isn’t storytelling one of the most powerful instruments for learning?   

At the Start
The year was 2003. We had recently won a large deal to develop courseware for an online MBA program. I had been closely involved in producing the prototype and was exhausted after weeks of an intensive design, review and redesign cycle. The project was now with the production team and a new Instructional Designer, Myra, had been assigned the task of developing the first course. A week or so into the project, I received a rather frantic message from Myra saying she needed help with the course. My heart sank. I had too much on my plate. How much of this project will I have to take on from the newbie?

Myra and I had a call in which she shared the challenges she was facing when developing case studies on the subject of New Enterprises. The content she had been given was academic and conceptual. She just didn’t know how to start writing a case study using that. She was also new to this type of content and had never written a case study before. I gave her some spiel about thinking about a real-life situation in which the concept being taught would be applicable and then ensuring that the story remains realistic while conveying the learning point. I followed it by an email with an idea of a telecom company using their existing customer base to push a new product. The idea was very vague and would take a lot of research to ensure it was appropriate and then some creative writing to make it effective. The truth is that although I spent half an hour or so advising her, I knew it was too much to expect and was mentally preparing myself for months of hands-on hard work on the project.

Two days later, I receive an email from Myra requesting me to review the case study she had written. It contained a believable scenario about the telecom company, followed by an intelligent quiz about the learning point and a summary. The case was realistic, detailed to the right depth, and pitched correctly to the intended audience.  The entire piece was eloquently written and obviously well-researched. There was none of the stilted awkwardness that is the bane of scenarios. For someone who had never done this before, it must have taken a huge amount of hard work and a leap of faith to come up with this. I had been proven wrong, and what a way to be proven wrong. To top it, Myra had the humility to thank me for this product of her hard work!

The Next Few Years…
Over the next few years, we won the contract to develop 10 more titles for the same customer and the team was expanded to increase capacity. Myra became the resident expert, gaining the trust of her team, her customers and the subject matter experts (SMEs) alike. The last was not an easy task, since the SMEs were academicians and Myra didn’t have any background in business studies.  It was only later I discovered her secret. In addition to reading a lot of material on the subject, she used her extended network of friends and family members to learn more about the subjects she was working on. She cross-checked everything she wrote using multiple sources and ensured integrity of her work.

Then came along a course that needed something quite different from what was usually expected from her- creating fake content! The idea was to teach students that not everything you see on the Internet is true or correct, even though it might look authentic. This time, I sought Myra's help and requested her to help me develop content for a webpage that might look real at first glance, but had subtle authenticity problems visible only upon close scrutiny.

She responded by writing a fantastic piece about extra-sensory perception (ESP) in dogs. She concocted data showing that dogs behaved peculiarly at the very moment their masters left their offices for home and quoted serious-sounding experts on other theories and experiments on dog ESP. She also added pictures of her dog and mine at relevant places in the article to give it that extra punch. Although the premise of the article was ridiculous, she made it believable, totally readable and very funny. Somehow I knew that our super picky client would accept it in its original form. They did. Call it my ESP!  

I believe that Myra's voracious appetite for reading, and of course her sense of humor, had a big role to play in her coming up and executing on this idea. 

Later…
In the last couple of years of our association, Myra got involved in another very interesting project. The subject matter was ethics, the audience was staff of Fortune 500 companies and the presentation style was completely scenario-based. I had developed the first few courses in the series myself, so was deeply aware of the challenges involved. First, the entire course was dialog driven. Dialog had to be authentic for American audience. Second, situations had to be relevant to employees in corporate America. Third, the messages were not always black and white or prescriptive. Fourth, original content needed to be created. This was not a conversion project.

Myra used the first few courses as the building block for the next set, reusing and extending the main storyline, redeploying the interactive templates, adapting presentation and interactive strategies from other courses being developed around her, and working with the media team to make incremental changes to the existing visual style. And as always, she prepared herself for the project- she got her head into the ethical issues faced by corporate America by reading and researching about them.

One of the first topics she worked on was diversity. How to write a scenario on diversity without sounding condescending and preachy was, in my opinion, a big challenge. Myra developed a simple realistic story about a Manager agnonizing over his team composition for a Japanese client. Her story dealt with issues of stereotyping and generalizing in a polished manner, without making the Manager look like a bigot. In fact, she succeeded in creating a character that came across as a regular person with perceptions and concerns that most people have. In ID terminology, she made the protagonist relevant to the audience, thereby reducing barriers to learning this type of content. The dialog she wrote was smooth and polished, and real. It was no surprise that yet again, the customer loved her work! We won the contract to create 15 courses for the client over a period of two years.

In Conclusion
While I have decided to leave the task of deconstructing Myra's skillset to the readers, I would like to highlight a few core attributes of her, more like life skills, which were instrumental in her success as an Instructional Designer. These are resourcefulness, right amount of confidence, lots of guts, sufficient diffidence and self-doubt to know when to ask for help, wide exposure, willingness to learn, intelligence, humility, and absolutely no fear of hard work.

On Becoming a Person

Today, while cooking Aloo Paranthas for the family. I was suddenly taken back 27 years. The year was 1984. I was 19, almost the same age as Atreya today. I was newly married and recently introduced to that space in the house called the kitchen. During my last visit home, I had learned from mom, verbally, how to make Aloo Paranthas. And here I was, proudly making paranthas for my new non-Punjabi family- a doting husband, an equally doting father-in-law, a little cautious with her feelings yet supportive mother-in-law (or mama as we called her), and an indifferent brother-in-law.

I recall feeling horridly hot and sweaty in the kitchen but very proud of my crispy great smelling paranthas. The secret was in the amount of ghee each was getting soaked in. It was criminal (ghee was expensive and a health risk, there was shortage of money, and mama was a health freak) but I was totally unaware that I was doing anything remotely wrong. I didn't care because I didn't know. I remember seeing mama's face looking a little concerned, but she did not say anything. Perhaps she was afraid of being the proverbial critical mother-in-law or perhaps I was too happy and unaware to see through her expressions. The dinner was a smashing hit, with the family devouring over 30 paranthas, which had in turn devoured a whole can of ghee!

This incident is more than just a random memory. It illustrates my personality in the first few years of my marriage and my relationship with mama, my mother-in-law. When I first got married, I was too young to have strong opinions and boundaries. I accepted mama as a person to be respected and listened to. I was blind to her reservations about me and her criticism of me and even if someone had told me that she had valid reasons of disliking the girl who married her young son too early, I wouldn't have understood. In any case, no one told me. She, in turn, warmed up to my simplicity and became kinder to me than was her nature. We were truly close and fond of each other and things remained like that for the first 4 or 5 years of my marriage.

It was the change in my relationship with her that first signalled to me that I had finally grown up into a person with a specific identity. It is sad that my becoming a person robbed both of us of the simple trusting and kind relationship we shared with each other.

The Almost Inspired!

I recently noticed my newfound interest in inspirational quotes. Earlier, I couldn't be bothered about them. It then occurred to me that the value of inspirational quotes is only to those who are "almost there". To others, they are nothing more than clever words. But when you are on the fence, looking across to the other side in terror and worrying yourself sick about the correctness of your decision, then these clever words suddenly assume a strange power, the power to nudge you over to the other side.

What would we, the almost inspired, be without inspirational quotes? But more importantly, what would inspiring quotes be without us?