Published in Devlok, Sunday Midday, Dec. 11, 2011

Listen to this story. One day, there was a snake called Kailya, who poisoned the waters of the river Yamuna, killing cows and cowherds who dared take a dip in it. The cows and cowherds complained to Krishna who went to the river and challenged Kaliya to a duel. After a ferocious fight, Krishna managed to subdue the serpent; to celebrate his triumph Krishna danced on Kaliya’s hood cheered by all the cows and cowherds. Defeated, Kaliya left the river and everyone could enjoy the waters of the Yamuna without fear of being poisoned.

Now, listen to this story. Krishna asked Kaliya to leave the river Yamuna as his venom was polluting the waters and killing cows and cowherds. Kaliya refused. When asked why, he replied, “This is the only place where I am safe. If I leave this bend of the river, I will be attacked by Garuda, the eagle, who will eat me. That is why I stay here. I do not want to poison the waters, but what can I do? Where can I go?”

In the first story, Kaliya is a villain. In the second story, Kaliya is a victim. The first story makes us experience rage and heroism. The second story makes us feel sad and compassionate. Which story do we tell our children?

Yes, every story has a hero and villain. But very rarely do we ponder on the origin of villains. No one is born a criminal. Necessity makes us criminal. Then need gives way to greed, and before we know it, crime becomes a habit. Yet, the seed of villainy lies in victimhood. We break rules because we find them oppressive. In breaking rules, we feel liberated. When rules make us insecure and unhappy, we become lawbreakers, hence criminals. Kaliya feared Garuda and this forced him to stay where he was. He lacked the confidence to move on. His fear poisoned the river waters and transformed him into a villain. Krishna realizes that. And so leaves his footprint on the hood of Kaliya. This is the mark of the cobra, created to tell Garuda to leave Kaliya alone. It is the mark of protection.

That is why in Hindu mythology, gods never kill the villains; they do ‘uddhar’. They liberate the criminal. What does this mean? It means Krishna takes the trouble to understand the fetter of fear that transforms Kaliya into a villain. While solving the problem of cows and cowherds, he does not ignore the problems of Kaliya. Every victim has to be saved, even the villain.

Today, we are eager to make people villains – slap them, penalize them, punish them, tie them up, beat them up, throw them in jails. Perhaps along with punishing them we also have to consider paying attention to the concept of uddhar – and deal with crime with more maturity and wisdom rather than self-indulgent outrage. Or is that too much to ask of humans?

Published in Speaking Tree, Dec. 18, 2011

When the British came to India, they found Hindu practices very confusing. They came from a very different religious template, one which had a book (the Bible), a clear leader (Jesus), an institution (the Church) with earthly representatives (the Pope and priests). Every one they were familiar with, from Jewish bankers to Islamic empires, followed similar templates. Determined to make sense of it, they set up the Oriental Society that sought and translated the holy books of the Hindus, Veda and Gita included, even if books per se did not form the core of the religious practices.

Amongst everything, they found one religion that fascinated the European – Buddhism, whose template fit the European mental model of religion. It had a clearly defined leader, a clearly defined path and a clearly defined insitution: Buddha, Dhamma and Sangha. Scholars could date Buddha because Buddhist canon kept referring to the days of Siddhartha Gautama’s birth and death. That made him historical, real to the scientific mind and valid to the Christian mind that saw history as an unfolding of events that started with the Original sin.

They figured he lived five centuries before Jesus Christ, and in many writings referred to him as a prophet. They realized that Buddhism had spread all across Asia over a thousand years but its influence had waned because, they concluded, of the Brahmins (who the British held in suspicion) in India and Muslims (who the British despised) in Central Asia. Was this conclusion sincere or strategic, we will never know.

But to the common man who adored Buddha across Asia over centuries, the very European need for historicity did not matter. What mattered was the idea of Buddha, an idea that transformed dramatically from traditional thought (Thervada) referred to disdainfully as the lesser way (Hinayana) by the Mahayana or later Buddhist schools that spread to China and thence to Japan. In the latter schools what mattered more than the historic Buddha was the mythic Bodhisattva, who was not just wise but also compassionate.

Jatakas told the stories of the pervious lifetimes of Siddhartha Gautama of the Sakya clan. In each of these lifetimes he performed exemplary acts of compassion. Everything and everyone in the cosmos owed him something. To repay this debt, he was given a fine body and a fine mind and a fine family and great wealth. But instead of enjoying it, he pondered over his fortune. He noticed that not everyone has what he has; and what he had would not last forever. This led to contemplation, introspection, and reflection. Wisdom dawned. He became the Buddha, the enlightened one.

Wisdom gave him peace but it also revealed that others were not at peace. So in compassion, he became Bodhisattva, sprouting many arms, reaching out to every other living creatures, enabling each one to also reflect and realize, at their own pace, why fortune will forever wax and wane. Now beside him sat Tara, the feminine force who evokes compassion in him, forces him to acknoweldge the others who are not-yet-Buddha.

Across Himalayan kingdoms, for the past thousand years, Buddhism has mingled and merged with Tantrik ideas, and a whole host of Buddhas and Boddhisattvas have emerged, many visualized in passionate embrance. This is Vajrayana, the path of the thunderbolt, with a Buddha very different from the first images of the serene and monastic Buddha, first carved by Indo-Greeks of the Gandhara school, five hundred years after Buddha attained nirvana.

Published in First City,  January 2012

A sorcerer once requested the legendary King Vikramaditya of Ujjain to fetch him a Vetal or ghost that hung upside down, like a bat, from the branches of a tree that stood in the middle of a crematorium.  Not wanting to disappoint anyone who approached him, Vikramaditya immediately set out for the crematorium determined to fetch the Vetal. “Make sure you do not talk to him. If you speak, he will slip away from your grasp,” warned the sorcerer.

Vikramaditya entered the crematorium, found the tree, and the Vetal hanging upside down from its branches. He caught the ghost, pulled it down and made his way back to the city when the ghost started chatting with him, telling him all kinds of things, annoying him, yelling into his ears, cursing him, praising him, anything to make him talk but Vikramaditya refused to succumb to these tricks.

Finally, the Vetal told Vikramaditya a story, a case study one might say, and at the end of it asked the king a question. “If you are indeed the wise Vikramaditya, as you claim to be, you should know the answer to the riddle. But how will I know if you are truly he, unless you speak? And if you choose to stay silent, I am free to assume I have been caught by a commoner, a pretender, a mimic!” Too arrogant to be called a commoner, the king gave the answer. And it was a brilliant answer, one that made the Vetal gasp in admiration. And then, he slipped away and went back to hang upside down from the branches of the tree in the middle of the crematorium.

So Vikramaditya had to walk back to the tree once again and pull the Vetal down once again. Once again, the Vetal told him a story with a question at the end. Once again the Vetal told the king, “If you are indeed the wise Vikramaditya, as you claim to be, you should know the answer to the riddle. But how will I know if you are truly he, unless you speak? And if you choose to stay silent, I am free to assume I have been caught by a commoner, a pretender, a mimic!” Once again, the arrogant king gave the answer. Once again the Vetal gasped in admiration. And once again he slipped away.

This happened twenty-four times. The twenty-fifth time, a tired and exasperated Vikramaditya, sighed in relief. He had succeeded. “Have you really?” asked the Vetal, “How do you know the answers you gave the previous times were right? Each decision was subjective, not objective. You thought you were right, and so you spoke. Now you are not sure of the answer, and so remain silent. This silence will cost you dear. You will succeed in taking me to the sorcerer who will use his magic to make me his genie and do his bidding. His first order for me will be to kill you. So you see, Vikramaditya, as long as you kept answering my questions, rightly or wrongly, you were doing yourself a favor. You had to keep chasing me, but you stayed king. Now that you doubt yourself, and stay silent, you are sure to end up dead.”

At the moment of decision-making, decisions are not right or wrong. They are right or wrong only in hindsight. He who takes decisions proactively, he who is not afraid to let the Vetal slip away, he who knows that life is about solving one problem after another, is Vikramaditya.

To improve decision-making, Vikramaditya has to visit the crematorium where the past hangs upside down like ghosts and confront the Vetal. This is where learning takes place. This is where he hones his skills. The Vetal is the mentor, the trainer, the coach, the teacher, the guru, who presents the past as case studies and asks questions in the form of riddles and puzzles. Does the Vetal know the answer?

Maybe yes, maybe no. It does not matter. What matters is that Vikramaditya answers the questions and solves the problems. Every answer, every solution, is subjective; only time will reveal if they are right and wrong. If Vikramaditya refuses to answer, he will end up destroying himself and his kingdom. A leader matters only as long as he seeks to solve problems.

Vikramaditya must always go to Vetal; the Vetal must never go to Vikramaditya. Vetal is Saraswati. Unlike Lakshmi and Durga which can be given, Saraswati cannot be given. She has to be taken.

The crematorium is not a place where business happens, but it is here that the mind is expanded and beliefs are clarified. It is a place of new ideas, new thoughts, new frameworks, that facilitate decision-making. The more Vikramaditya visits the crematorium, the more he expands his mind, the more he gains Saraswati and the more attractive he becomes to power and prosperity, Durga and Lakshmi.

The process of gaining Saraswati is two fold. There is the outer voice called Smriti and the inner voice called Shruti. Smriti means that which can be remembered hence transmitted. Shruti means that which can only be heard but cannot be transmitted.

What a teacher teaches a student, what is passed on through texts and puzzles and riddles and questions and case studies, is just Smriti. These can be parroted and passed on. These can be mouthed to impress people.

But real learning happens when the aspirant listens to his own voice, the inner voice of his mind. This is the only voice we hear. This is Shruti. Only when Smriti provokes Shruti, do we internalize wisdom. It becomes part of us. When this happens, we do not have to provide references for our knowledge (“This idea comes from that teacher”). We become the source of the knowledge (“This is my idea”).

Books and lectures are Smriti; they can be remembered and passed on. The reader or listener can allow it to provoke Shruti. Only when they listen to their inner voice and truly ‘get it’, will this knowledge of the past transform into timeless wisdom. The way to this is to introspect on it, personalize it, rather than intellectualize it. Frameworks appear when we see the mirror and are comfortable with the reflection.

As long as frameworks are meant to change the world, not ourselves, Saraswati will remain Vidya-Lakshmi, skill that grants prosperity, but not peace. We will stay trapped in Swarga, like Indra, eternally on a shaky throne. We will never find Vaikuntha, where Lakshmi sits at our feet, and we always enjoy the rhythmic swing of the waves.

Every king whose rule extends up to the horizon, the Chakravarti, is no different from the Kupmanduka, the frog in the well. The walls of his kingdom define his well. However great the size may be, it is but a drop in the canvas of infinity. There is always scope to grow, outgrow the animal within, stop chasing Durga and Lakshmi, and make them chase him instead. For this he has to cut his head.

Vetal cuts the head. Shruti cuts the head. Cutting of the head is a metaphor for intellectual as well as emotional growth. Intellectual growth may make us more skilled and less insecure, but it does not enable us to empathize. The point is not to be knowledgeable; the point is to be wise. And in India, wisdom happens when knowledge combines with empathy, gyan with karuna.

Published in Devlok, Sunday Midday, Dec. 04, 2011

I recently went to the exhibition of Sudarshan Sahoo, master stone carver from Orissa at Jehangir Art Gallery. As I was watching the images, my eye fell upon an image of Krishna, standing with flute in hand. What caught my eye was the nose-ring worn by Krishna on the right side of the nose (women traditionally wore it on the left side, and men on the right). I smiled as few notice the right-side nose-ring on the face of Jagannath, the form in which Krishna is worshipped in Orissa. Noticing me smile, the sculptor said, “Krishna of the Raas-Lila wears everything that women wear. Not just nose-rings but also earrings and a long plait. His eyes are lined with kohl and his feet are painted with alta and made red like a dancer. He is God who is comfortable in female attire.”

In temples across India, amongst the many attires of Krishna is one called Stri-vesha, where he dresses as a woman. Krishna is shown wearing a sari and women’s jewelry. Some identify this as a form of Mohini, the divine enchantress, an avatar of Vishnu and Krishna. Some say this is Krishna dressing up like his mother Yashoda to amuse her. Some say this is Krishna being punished by the Gopikas.

The story goes that tired of the pranks of Krishna, the women of Gokul once got together and decided to dress him as a girl. The lyrics “Nar ko Nari banao”  (make the lad a lass) is a popular Thumri composition. They grab Krishna and make him wear a skirt and blouse and paint his hands and feet with alta. To their surprise rather than being upset or angry, Krishna participates in the activity. “More jewelry,” he demands, “and better make up.” Thus what begins as a punishment ends up as a joyful activity, a game, a leela.

In another story known as “gore gvala ki leela” (the game of the fair cowherd), Radha and Krishna one day exchange each other’s clothes. Krishna dresses up as Radha and Radha dresses up like Krishna. This is done at Radha’s insistence, as she wants to feel like Krishna. But then she realizes even though she wears Krishna’s clothes her heart is still Radha’s. “Oh Krishna, you can look like me but you will never know the pain in my heart when we separate.” To remember his beloved Radha, some say, Krishna wears Stri-vesha.

In still another explanation for stri-vesha, it is said that after a night of intimacy, when it was daybreak, Radha and Krishna hurriedly put on their clothes only to find that they had worn the other’s. And everyone in the village wondered who this beautiful new dark milkmaid was and who was this handsome new cowherd.

In Tamil Nadu, amongst the local transvestites and eunuchs known as Alis, is the story of Aravan, a warrior who had to be sacrificed on the eve of the battle at Kurukshetra. But he did not want to die without a wife who would weep over his dead body. Since no woman wanted to marry him, Krishna turned into Mohini and became his wife, showered him with affection, and wept for him on becoming his widow. This event is enacted each year near Pondicherry in the temple of Koothandavar.

The mood that Krishna evokes with this feminine adornment is one of love and affection and play, a breakaway from the rigidity of those who control and comment on society today. Little wonder then that the poet-saint, Tukaram referred to Vithal, Krishna’s form popular in Maharashtra, as Vitha-ai, Mother Vithal.

Published in First City, Dec. 2011

The best way to destroy a culture is to destroy the kitchen. For it is in the kitchen that a language is spoken that addresses the eye, the ear, the nose, the tongue and even the skin, all five senses, something that all of us are exposed to since childhood but few of us realize. By cooking Chinese food in the Chinese way,the Chinese mother makes her child Chinese. By cooking Zulu food in the Zulu way, the Zulu mother makes her child Zulu.

No child is born with an understanding of culture. As the child grows up his mind is shaped by thoughts of those around. But these thoughts are not necessarily communicated through words, and certainly not the written word. What the mind receives are not instructions but patterns. And patterns have always been communicated through symbols, stories and rituals.  The kitchen is full of symbols and rituals that shape the mind of the child. Change these symbols and rituals and you change the thoughts of the children and with it the culture of an entire community. It is a surprising fact that this has not been realized or noticed by child psychologists. Perhaps the humble kitchen as a place of learning seems to be farfetched for the modern mind.

A traditional Indian kitchen was a sacred space. It was decorated with auspicious signs. Sometimes, it doubled up as the puja room. In many households, you are not allowed to enter the kitchen with footwear, you are expected to bathe before lighting the kitchen fire, you are not allowed to eat unless you have taken a bath – all this clearly gave the child a message, food is not just for filling the stomach, food is something special and sacred, the offerings of the yagna of life. Without food, there is no existence. Today, the kitchen is changing in character. The aim is to create a kitchen that is highly efficient and effective and sanitized to satisfy the needs of the working couple. It almost seems like a factory: a good fridge, a good dishwasher, pressure cooker, gadgets to mix and grate and pound and mince, microwaves to quickly heat food. It is clean and quick, everything wrapped in foil and plastic, no stains, no smells, no vapors. What is the message? Cooking is a chore, an industrial activity, food is merely nourishment for the body, of functional value primarily.

What changed the kitchen from temple to factory? Is it the rise of secularism that saw food scientifically and rejected all sacred notions as silly superstition? Is it the rise of feminism, the Western variety, which saw the kitchen as a prison created by men for women? Kitchen duties, once the soul of the household, became a burden. There is a desperate need for quick solutions – easy to cook food, readymade food, outsourced food, food cooked by a cook, to liberate the lady of the household. Food ordered from outside has become more exciting than boring daily kitchen fare. The message: everything can be outsourced, everything can be industrialized, even the hearth.

It is in the kitchen that the Indian child learns the concept of ‘jhoota’ of pollution; how food that has been tasted by someone else spoils the food. One never tastes food while cooking and one never offers tasted food to the gods. Eating ‘jhoota’ food is a sign of love and subservience; we eat the ‘jhoota’ of gods and elders. In a Chinese kitchen, the child learnt how using chopsticks is the sign of civilization; only barbarians used hands, knives and forks. They learnt how a good cook always cuts food in tiny pieces so that they are chopstick-friendly. In a Roman kitchen, the child learnt that it was a luxury to be eat food while lying down. In India, eating while lying down was akin to show disrespect to food.

In the Indian kitchen, the child learnt to value approximation over exactness. Cooks never measured the quantity of salt to be added; it was all by judgment, salt to taste. Recipes were never written down but passed down through apprenticeship. One figured out proportion visually, by seeing the amount of food before, and through smell, never taste. Cooking therefore had to be creative, demanding opening up of other senses, beyond the taste buds. The cook was expected to rely on his eyes and ears and finger tips and nose, anything but the mouth. The absence of recipes indicated to the child that life was not about formulas. You had to work with what you had and be creative at it. It also meant that wisdom could not be stored outside human beings, in documents. The dish had no independent existence outside the cook. When the mother died, the particular taste of her dal went with her.

The masala box is a powerful tool to explain adjustments and accommodation. Every masala box had the same ingredients – but the proportions used by different cooks created different flavors. Bad food could be made good by adding another spice. Thus everything could be managed, with a little bit of creativity. With readymade masala packets coming in, the tastes are getting increasingly standardized, a sign of what may be called Westernization.

In most parts of the world, people sat around the hearth and ate around it. In deserts, meat cooked over the fire was cut and served on flat bread. In cold climates, a pot hung over the hearth around which the family gathered. Whatever was caught and collected during the day was put in the pot – thus was born the soup and the broth, to be eaten with bread.  In Islamic countries, food was served on a single dish to evoke equality and brotherhood. In Punjab, the notion of a collective oven to make bread created the romantic notion of ‘sanjha choolah’ where women gathered to gossip and bake bread at dusk just as they gathered around the well at dawn. In China, eating together with all dishes placed in the center, was a sign of unity. In Europe, food was served initially in the centre of the table and you ate what you could reach or was passed on to you by your neighbor – the precursor of buffet food, where each one is for himself, though everyone has access to bounty. Later, as manpower was increasingly available in rich households, food started being served by servants. In the 16^th century, eating with forks and knives gained popularity; before that,all was finger food. How you ate food and your understanding of subtle flavors and aromas became a measure of your aristocracy.

In India, food was always served on a thali, either made of leaves (organic hence disposable) or metal (inorganic hence needed to be washed). Everyone ate in separate utensils, to reinforce the idea of ‘jhoota’. The women served the food. The men of the household ate first, then the children and finally the women. This was hierarchy established. Good food in India had much to do with caste hierarchy: food cooked in ghee, and by Brahmins, was highly prized, resulting in the employment of the ‘maharaj’ in royal and affluent households. The cook in these places had a higher station than the members of the household and so had a greater control over the kitchen fire than even the women of the household.

In most cultures, feasts are associated with festivals and rites of passage such as marriage, childbirth and the end of bereavement. Food was a powerful tool to establish religious and communal identity. Kosher food ensured that the Jewish people retained their identity as they wandered the world seeking a home. In Muslim households, the holy month of Ramzan is marked by fasting by day and feasting at night; everyone breaks the fast with dates on sighting of the moon. In many Christian households, during Lent no egg, or fish, is eaten leading to large consumption of eggs after Easter. Hindus become strict vegetarian either in the month of Shravan or the month of Kartik. Sour food is not eaten on Fridays to remind the household of Santoshi, the goddess of satisfaction. The kitchen fires are not used for several days when a death occurs in the family. Hindus offer Shiva raw milk, Krishna butter, while the goddess is offered lime. Thus through rites and ritual, food comes to acquire meaning.

The way food is eaten also has impact on the way we think.  Imagine eating a proper four course meal: first there is the soup, then the salad, then the main course and finally desert. Everything is controlled and sequential. Now imagine eating a thali: everything served simultaneously, the salad, the rice, the roti, the curries, the sweets, even the chutneys and papad. The Western meal is served in a linear way while the Indian meal is served in a cyclical way. The movement of the hand in Western food as the meat is cut and forked, is highly linear while the finger moves circularly while tearing the roti or mixing the rice. The Indian dishes are not eaten individually but have to be mixed, a practice that is uniquely Indian. So in Western cuisine, we taste what the cook serves but in Indian cuisine we taste our own mixture. This is the height of customization. Could this be the reason why Indians are so individualistic and resist working in a team as a group?

Published in Corporate Dossier, ET, Oct. 07, 2011

A king wanted the perfect groom for his daughter. So he travelled to the abode of the gods to find out who was the perfect man ever created. When he returned with the information, the world had changed dramatically: a hundred years had passed, his daughter and his entire family had died and no one remembered him. He was told that time flows faster in the realm of the gods, what is a day there is a hundred years on earth.

In another story, the gods asked a hermit to fetch them a pot of water. As the hermit dipped the pot in the water, he saw a beautiful girl and fell in love with her and asked her to marry him. She agreed then and there and so the hermit became a householder and had children by the woman, and the children had children of their own. In his old age, there was suddenly a great flood. The river broke its banks and washed away everything: his home, his children, his grandchildren, even his wife. He was left alone, without anything, when suddenly he heard the gods shout, “Please pull the pot out and give us the water!” The hermit realized he was dreaming while dipping the pot in the water.

In the first story, what seems like a day turn out to be a lifetime while in the second story, what seems like a lifetime turns out to be a second. In the former, time contracts. In the latter, time expands. This is a common theme in Hindu mythology. What makes time change qualitatively is attention. When you are concentrating, time contracts. When you are not concentrating,time expands.

Nikhilesh loves working with Mark. Mark has the ability to turn every project into a game with so much fun that everyone comes early to work, leaves late, no one feels tired. Time passes so quickly and weekends feel boring and terrible. Nikhilesh does not speak of work-life balance. Work is life and life is work. His wife enjoys seeing Nikhilesh this way as he brings the energy and joy of work back home to the delight of everybody.

Nikhilesh had a very different experience when he worked with Dinakar. Dinakar was no fun. Every meeting was a drag. Everybody had to fill in long reports and long forms. Everything was read and discussed but no one really paid attention. Every minute of the meeting was documented and filed and circulated. It was torture to go to work and joy to return home. But the boredom and irritable mood at office travelled home and Nikhilesh would often snap at his wife.

Mark managed to contract time by making everything a joyful activity. Dinakar expanded time by making everything a boring chore. Time passes fast when we are having a good time. Time moves slowly when we are not.

The best way to  figure out organization culture is to see how people behave during lunchtime. If they are eagerly waiting for the break, then it means time is passing slowly at the workstation. If they forget the lunch break, then they clearly are doing something at the workstation they are enjoying a lot. Time is constantly contracting and expanding at the workplace.

Published in Corporate Dossier, ET, Oct. 21, 2011

Krishna brought the Parijata tree from Swarga, the paradise of the gods, and presented it to his wives: Rukmini and Satyabhama. Rukmini was Krishna’s poor wife who had eloped from her father’s house on Krishna’s chariot and had come to Dwarka with nothing except the clothes on her body. Satyabhama was Krishna’s affluent wife who had been given in marriage to Krishna by her extremely rich father Satrajit. She had entered Krishna’s house with a huge dowry. Satyabhama never lost an opportunity to dominate Krishna’s household with her wealth. So it was rather surprising that when Krishna presented the Parijata, Satyabhama insisted that it be planted in the garden of Rukmini. Everyone saw this as an act of graciousness, but Krishna divined Satyabhama’s intention.

A wall separated the gardens of the two queens. Satyabhama’s garden was located in the east, in the direction of the rising sun. The Parijata tree, planted in Rukmini’s garden would grow towards the sun and all the flowers would fall into Satyabhama’s garden. So while Rukmini would do all the work of taking care of the plant, Satyabhama would literally reap its benefits.

Realizing Satyabhama’s mischievous intentions, Krishna declared, “Since Rukmini will be taking the trouble of watering the plant and tending to its need, it is only fair that the plant bloom every time I spend time with her.” And so it came to pass that every time the flowers bloomed, Satyabhama knew her husband was with his other wife and so could never really enjoy the beauty of the Parijata.  Satyabhama finally apologized to her husband for her pettiness that he clearly did not appreciate.

As a manager and boss, it is necessary to understand the intentions behind the actions of our team. Appearances are often deceptive. Krishna could have made Satyabhama’s mischief transparent but that would have only led to denials and rage. Instead, he took decisions such that the message was passed without anyone’s dignity being wounded.

When Jivan Seth decided to divide his business between his two sons, he saw the elder son more than eager to let the younger son get the car dealership business, so long as he got the restaurant business. Jivan Seth realized this was because potentially the car dealership business had more risks that the restaurant business which was older and on more solid ground. He did not like the public display of affection shown by his elder son. He was being clever and mocking Jivan Seth’s intelligence and he clearly did not care much for his younger brother’s fortune. Confrontation would only lead to angry denials so Jivan Seth came up with a different solution. He declared that the two companies would be divided unequally with the condition that the operations belong to the minority stakeholder. Thus, the elder son got the maximum share of the car dealership business but would operate the restaurant business while the younger son got the maximum share of the restaurant business with operating rights over the car dealership business. This was not completely viable, but by simply raising this suggestion, Jivan Seth clearly communicated his displeasure. And the two sons got the message.