Talks with the former self over a glass of Lassi :P

Last night my friend told me that our prelim papers are gonna be really really checked as in corrected, for few minutes I actually got nervous, I am solid sure am flunking in the first two, the third I gave was so tiring with sickness, I left it halfway, fourth I didn't give at all and fifth, oh it was good, pretty good. This makes me think, when they say, things go bad, wait, simply wait, it's not the end until it's good. However, the noting point was it was a two minutes anxiety, I was done with it then. I feel the line from Greys Anatomy, that when you have too bad things to think upon, sleep over it, works for me.
I did, Morning I was a different self altogether, calm and done with the thought, that's another thing I slept nagging at that friend of mine that why on Earth you told me that papers are gonna be checked, she knows me pretty well, by pretty well I mean she even knows that perfect moment when someone taunts me and am gonna simply run away from there, I hate taunting back so am kind of a person who will actually cut the convo.
She read it all later and buzzed in the morning apologizing that she didn't think I would react this way. Well, I told her, am done with those thoughts.
Am less anxious with age, that's the best thing I have learnt over the time, I don't show or put my nervous emotions on display, it just doesn't come out, however I have learnt that infront of your besties, you should show it all, rather pour it all, it helps :)
They know how to get you through. I was looking back today, of how I was at those past success moments, the academics I rocked and there was one thing common amongst those years, I didn't have friends, I seriously didn't. Should I conclude I am at my best without these relationships along, like someone recently told me, if you want to live in present and be a success, be selfish, stop talking to people, be mean he meant. I tried connecting these two things, should I stop talking to people, the closed ones I have around, and then something struck me, my former self never got good people, all it had was so called friends who were always concerned of beating the other one in studies, show off types who just wanted to tell what all they had done in studies, would make you scared to death, and would really stress you out, that's why I stayed away, coz yes am a JUGAAD fellow, I don't study everything under the sun, I am not a kind of person who does it all from the day one, there were topics I did on exam days too, simply put, I have been a smart worker and here I am today, trying to follow habits of hard workers.
Bloody hell, sometimes we are just too silly, under estimate ourselves and follow others.
Accept yourself, you are really good, and all that helped me in past was CONFIDENCE, something I have lost completely now.
I am making come back!
It took me so long to realize these things, I don't want you to take that long, really!
Accept and love who you are, you are an Angel!
Just do it your way, if it has worked for you in all those years, don't experiment at this fag end, you won't be really happy happy, I have been there, there is something someone inside you who will say, stop being unfair to me, lemme just be me.
I did, later though, but better :)
Secondly of that the thing of not having people around you, that's true to certain aspect and certain people(who are likes I mentioned above, show off ones) , now I see around, I have two really good friends to hold my hand, they never let me feel low or down, one who makes me realize that she's in the same boat and that she's with me, she's seen me crying really bad, and she was laughing all through coz she found it funny, she really is a sweetheart! And the other who time and again tells me, Nikita, you can do it! If you can't who else, how I wish we had interacted in school days, dude you would have added minimum 10%to my scores, you are simply wow!
If I have to decide on staying away from these two, I will better choose not giving CA at the first place :P
It's good to have good people around, so choose wisely!
And use your own success formulas, we have heard it from people that be your unique self, listening to such stuff is one thing, when testing times come you actually realize it's easy said than done!
These were my bits of talks with my former self, she just roared in, gal, go your way, am dying to see you succeed :)
Time to make her happy! 

Desirable Difficulties

The first part is a copy paste from today's Mint Lounge, excerpts from Malcolm Gladwell’s forthcoming book: 'David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits and the Art of Battling Giants'
From what I have been reading Malcolm Gladwell in his previous book 'Blink' (ongoing read) there's this thing about him, the moment you start off you will observe a lot dots he scatters around and takes you along connecting and flash... when you you reach the end dot and get your hand off you will have a whole picture made of the thoughts he wanted to share with you and ponder upon.
So this was a bit of disclaimer that don't get confused by the initial start of the Article, keep reading until you reach the end, absorb each of his fact and you will see the magic of thought in your brain :)

Start the read and you have my bits of his psychology at the end (rather my experience out of the same)

If you do a brain scan on a person with dyslexia, the images that are produced seem strange. In certain critical parts of the brain—those that deal with reading and processing words—dyslexics have less gray matter. They don’t have as many brain cells in those regions as they should. As the fetus develops inside the womb, neurons are supposed to travel to the appropriate areas of the brain, taking their places like pieces on a chessboard. But for some reason, the neurons of dyslexics sometimes get lost along the way. They end up in the wrong place. The brain has something called the ventricular system, which functions as the brain’s entry and exit point. Some people with reading disorders have neurons lining their ventricles, like passengers stranded in an airport.

While an image of the brain is being made, a patient performs a task, and then a neuroscientist looks to see what parts of the brain have been activated in response to that task. If you ask a dyslexic to read when he or she is having a brain scan, the parts that are supposed to light up might not light up at all. The scan looks like an aerial photo of a city during a blackout. Dyslexics use a lot more of the right hemisphere of their brains during reading than normal readers do. The right hemisphere is the conceptual side. That’s the wrong half of the brain for a precise and rigorous task like reading. Sometimes when a dyslexic reads, every step will be delayed, as if the different parts of the brain responsible for reading were communicating via a weak connection. One of the ways to test for the presence of dyslexia in a small child is to have him engage in “rapid automatized naming.” Show him one color after another—a red dot, then a green dot, then a blue dot, then a yellow dot—and check his response. See the color. Recognize the color. Attach a name to the color. Say the name. That’s automatic in most of us. It’s not in someone with a reading disorder; somewhere along the way, the links between those four steps start to break down. Ask a four-year-old: Can you say the word “banana” without the buh? Or say, Listen to the following three sounds: cuh, ah, and tuh. Can you combine them into “cat”? Or take “cat,” “hat,” and “dark.” Which one of those words doesn’t rhyme? Easy questions for most four-year-olds. Really hard questions for dyslexics. Many people used to think that what defines dyslexics is that they get words backwards—“cat” would be “tac,” or something like that—making it sound like dyslexia is a problem in the way the words are seen. But it is much more profound than that. Dyslexia is a problem in the way people hear and manipulate sounds. The difference between bah and dah is a subtlety in the first 40 milliseconds of the syllable. Human language is based on the assumption that we can pick up that 40-millisecond difference, and the difference between the bah sound and the dah sound can be the difference between getting something right and getting something catastrophically wrong. Can you imagine the consequences of having a brain so sluggish that when it comes to putting together the building blocks of words, those crucial 40 milliseconds simply go by too quickly?

“If you have no concept of the sounds of language—if you take away a letter, if you take away a sound, and you don’t know what to do, then it’s really hard to map the sounds to the written counterparts,” Nadine Gaab, a dyslexia researcher at Harvard, explained. “It may take you a while to learn to read. You read really slowly, which then impairs your reading fluency, which then impairs your reading comprehension, because you’re so slow that by the time you’re at the end of the sentence, you’ve forgotten what the beginning of the sentence was. So it leads to all these problems in middle school or high school. Then it starts affecting all other subjects in school. You can’t read. How are you going to do on math tests that have a lot of writing in them? Or how do you take an exam in social studies if it takes you two hours to read what they want from you?

“Usually you get a diagnosis at eight or nine,” she went on. “And we find that by that point, there are already a lot of serious psychological implications, because by that time, you’ve been struggling for three years. Maybe you were the cool kid on the playground when you were four. Then you entered kindergarten and all your peers suddenly started reading, and you can’t figure it out. So you get frustrated. Your peers may think you’re stupid. Your parents may think you’re lazy. You have very low self-esteem, which leads to an increased rate of depression. Kids with dyslexia are more likely to end up in the juvenile system, because they act up. It’s because they can’t figure things out. It’s so important in our society to read.”

You wouldn’t wish dyslexia on your child. Or would you?

******

...What do we mean when we call something a disadvantage? Conventional wisdom holds that a disadvantage is something that ought to be avoided—that it is a setback or a difficulty that leaves you worse off than you would be otherwise. But that is not always the case....I want to explore the idea that there are such things as “desirable difficulties.” That concept was conceived by Robert Bjork and Elizabeth Bjork, two psychologists at the University of California, Los Angeles, and it is a beautiful and haunting way of understanding how underdogs come to excel.

Consider, for example, the following puzzle.

1. A bat and a ball cost $1.10 in total. The bat costs $1.00 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost?

What’s your instinctive response? I’m guessing that it is that the ball must cost 10 cents. That can’t be right, though, can it? The bat is supposed to cost $1.00 more than the ball.

So if the ball costs 10 cents, the bat must cost $1.10, and we’ve exceeded our total. The right answer must be that the ball costs 5 cents.

Here’s another question:

2. If it takes 5 machines 5 minutes to make 5 widgets, how long would it take 100 machines to make 100 widgets?

The setup of the question tempts you to answer 100. But it’s a trick. One hundred machines take exactly the same amount of time to make 100 widgets as 5 machines take to make 5 widgets. The right answer is 5 minutes.

These puzzles are two of the three questions that make up the world’s shortest intelligence test.* It’s called the Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT). It was invented by the Yale professor Shane Frederick, and it measures your ability to understand when something is more complex than it appears—to move past impulsive answers to deeper, analytic judgments.

Frederick argues that if you want a quick way to sort people according to their level of basic cognitive ability, his little test is almost as useful as tests that have hundreds of items and take several hours to finish. To prove his point, Frederick gave the CRT to students at nine American colleges, and the results track pretty closely with how students from those colleges would rank on more traditional intelligence tests. Students from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology—perhaps the brainiest college in the world—averaged 2.18 correct answers out of three. Students at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, another extraordinarily elite institution, averaged 1.51 right answers out of three. Harvard students scored 1.43; the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 1.18; and the University of Toledo 0.57...

Can dyslexia turn out to be a desirable difficulty? It is hard to believe that it can, given how many people struggle with the disorder throughout their lives—except for a strange fact. An extraordinarily high number of successful entrepreneurs are dyslexic. A recent study by Julie Logan at City University London puts the number somewhere around a third. The list includes many of the most famous innovators of the past few decades. Richard Branson, the British billionaire entrepreneur, is dyslexic. Charles Schwab, the founder of the discount brokerage that bears his name, is dyslexic, as are the cell phone pioneer Craig McCaw; David Neeleman, the founder of JetBlue; John Chambers, the CEO of the technology giant Cisco; Paul Orfalea, the founder of Kinko’s—to name just a few. The neuroscientist Sharon Thompson-Schill remembers speaking at a meeting of prominent university donors—virtually all of them successful businesspeople—and on a whim asking how many of them had ever been diagnosed with a learning disorder. “Half the hands went up,” she said. “It was unbelievable.”

There are two possible interpretations for this fact. One is that this remarkable group of people triumphed in spite of their disability: they are so smart and so creative that nothing—not even a lifetime of struggling with reading—could stop them. The second, more intriguing, possibility is that they succeeded, in part, because of their disorder—that they learned something in their struggle that proved to be of enormous advantage. Would you wish dyslexia on your child? If the second of these possibilities is true, you just might.

......................................................

Well, I could strongly connect to his thought. I had my past experiences to believe in the psychology of Desirable Difficulties.

Often while going through the struggle we end up becoming stronger and smart enough to tackle the whole thing. Writing my 12th Board exam with Left hand completely fractured just a day before the exam was one such experience. I remember sitting in the hospital all through the evening absolutely calm and composed as if it's nothing big, everyone around me was so hyper and certainly I too could have got influenced. However, I chose to be the opposite in reaction at that moment. In that one month the only part of my left hand which was workable was the tip of index finger and I guess the tip of second finger to some extent. I did not get the Plaster fracture thing done, I forced the Doctor to get a slight lesser heavy thing so that I don't have one more distraction added (the Plaster thing causes hell lot of itching ) to which the Doctor had warned that my last chotu si finger could stop working completely as the damage was severe, but still I was stubborn enough to get it done my way

I actually learnt using those two tips of fingers so well that I would put margins on the paper by somehow holding the scale with those fingers. And more than that the willpower I gained in those days was immense. It made me realise that your physical limitations can be pushed off by your mental stability.

I got the chotu si finger's wound healed in flat eighteen days and that took the Doctor by surprise, though when one observes that finger closely even today it has that bent left which could have been healed better, but nevermind I became a stronger myself in those days.(P.S.: I managed to top my college in those Board exams)

Second such incident happened before my CPT exams. Just like most of the students even I planned that I will cover it all from May last week and by 20 June I will be able to give my exam. I started off around 26th May and then the day came, 1st June and in the morning I find myself unable to open my eyes coz I was affected by conjunctivitis. I couldn't read anything till 18th Night and those 18days were another roller coaster seriously :D My friend Disha would sit all day around me reading out each and every page of the Modules .. My goodness.. Thanks to her.. (P.S.: I cleared CPT with 140/200 .. passing being 100 .. )

After all this seriously believe me, I consider getting ill, fractured, whatever physical pulldown, a good omen for me. I come out winning out of the whole thing. 

I m like, bring it on babyy :*

Desirable Difficulties :)

Note: I am waiting for another desirable difficulty for my upcoming CA Final exams :P (else I will create one :D)

 

Have A Passion !!!

It was probably the April of 1974. Bangalore was getting warm and

gulmohars were blooming at the IISc campus. I was the only girl in my

postgraduate department and was staying at the ladies' hostel. Other girls

were pursuing research in different departments of Science.

 

I was looking forward to going abroad to complete a doctorate in

 computer  science. I had been offered scholarships from Universities in the

US. I had not thought of taking up a job in India.

 

One day, while on the way to my hostel from our lecture-hall complex,

 I saw an advertisement on the notice board. It was a standard job-requirement

notice from the famous automobile company Telco (now Tata Motors).

It stated that the company required young, bright engineers, hardworking and

with an excellent academic background, etc.

 

At the bottom was a small line: "Lady candidates need not apply."

I read it and was very upset. For the first time in my life I was up

against gender discrimination.

 

 

Though I was not keen on taking up the job, I saw it as a challenge. I had

done extremely well in academics, better than most of my male peers. Little

did I know then that in real life academic excellence is not enough to be

successful.

 

After reading the notice I went fuming to my room. I decided to inform the

topmost person in Telco's management about the injustice the company was

perpetrating. I got a postcard and started to write, but there was a

problem: I did not know who headed Telco.

 

 

 

I thought it must be one of the Tatas. I knew JRD Tata was the head of the

Tata Group; I had seen his pictures in newspapers (actually, Sumant

Moolgaokar was the company's chairman then). I took the card, addressed it

to JRD and started writing. To this day I remember clearly what I wrote.

 

 

"The great Tatas have always been pioneers. They are the people who started

the basic infrastructure industries in India, such as iron and steel,

chemicals, textiles and locomotives. They have cared for higher education

in India since 1900 and they were responsible for the establishment of the

Indian Institute of Science. Fortunately, I study there. But I am surprised

how a company such as Telco is discriminating on the basis of gender."

 

 

I posted the letter and forgot about it. Less than 10 days later, I

received a telegram stating that I had to appear for an interview at

Telco's Pune facility at the company's expense. I was taken aback by the

telegram. My hostel mate told me I should use the opportunity to go to Pune

free of cost and buy them the famous Pune saris for cheap! I collected Rs

30 each from everyone who wanted a sari. When I look back, I feel like

laughing at the reasons for my going, but back then they seemed good enough

to make the trip.

 

 

It was my first visit to Pune and I immediately fell in love with the city.

 

To this day it remains dear to me. I feel as much at home in Pune as I do

in Hubli, my hometown. The place changed my life in so many ways. As

directed, I went to Telco's Pimpri office for the interview.

 

 

There were six people on the panel and I realised then that this was

serious business.

 

"This is the girl who wrote to JRD," I heard somebody whisper as soon as I

entered the room. By then I knew for sure that I would not get the job. The

realisation abolished all fear from my mind, so I was rather cool while the

interview was being conducted.

 

Even before the interview started, I reckoned the panel was biased, so I

told them, rather impolitely, "I hope this is only a technical interview."

 

They were taken aback by my rudeness, and even today I am ashamed about my

attitude. The panel asked me technical questions and I answered all of

them.

 

Then an elderly gentleman with an affectionate voice told me, "Do you know

why we said lady candidates need not apply? The reason is that we have

never employed any ladies on the shop floor. This is not a co-ed college;

this is a factory. When it comes to academics, you are a first ranker

throughout. We appreciate that, but people like you should work in research

laboratories."

 

 

I was a young girl from small-town Hubli. My world had been a limited

place.

 

 

I did not know the ways of large corporate houses and their difficulties,

so I answered, "But you must start somewhere, otherwise no woman will ever

be able to work in your factories."

 

Finally, after a long interview, I was told I had been successful. So this

was what the future had in store for me. Never had I thought I would take

up a job in Pune. I met a shy young man from Karnataka there, we became

good friends and we got married.

 

It was only after joining Telco that I realized who JRD was: the uncrowned

king of Indian industry. Now I was scared, but I did not get to meet him

till I was transferred to Bombay. One day I had to show some reports to Mr

Moolgaokar, our chairman, who we all knew as SM. I was in his office on the

first floor of Bombay House (the Tata headquarters) when, suddenly JRD

walked in. That was the first time I saw "appro JRD". Appro means "our" in

Gujarati. This was the affectionate term by which people at Bombay House

called him.

 

 

 

I was feeling very nervous, remembering my postcard episode. SM introduced

me nicely, "Jeh (that's what his close associates called him), this young

woman is an engineer and that too a postgraduate.

 

She is the first woman to work on the Telco shop floor." JRD looked at me.

I was praying he would not ask me any questions about my interview (or the

postcard that preceded it).

 

Thankfully, he didn't. Instead, he remarked. "It is nice that girls are

getting into engineering in our country. By the way, what is your name?"

 

"When I joined Telco I was Sudha Kulkarni, Sir," I replied. "Now I am Sudha

Murthy." He smiled and kindly smile and started a discussion with SM. As

for me, I almost ran out of the room.

 

After that I used to see JRD on and off. He was the Tata Group chairman and

I was merely an engineer. There was nothing that we had in common. I was in

awe of him.

 

One day I was waiting for Murthy, my husband, to pick me up after office

hours. To my surprise I saw JRD standing next to me. I did not know how to

react. Yet again I started worrying about that postcard. Looking back, I

realise JRD had forgotten about it. It must have been a small incident for

him, but not so for me.

 

"Young lady, why are you here?" he asked. "Office time is over." I said,

"Sir, I'm waiting for my husband to come and pick me up." JRD said, "It is

getting dark and there's no one in the corridor.

 

I'll wait with you till your husband comes."

 

I was quite used to waiting for Murthy, but having JRD waiting alongside

made me extremely uncomfortable.

 

 

I was nervous. Out of the corner of my eye I looked at him. He wore a

simple white pant and shirt. He was old, yet his face was glowing. There

wasn't any air of superiority about him. I was thinking, "Look at this

person. He is a chairman, a well-respected man in our country and he is

waiting for the sake of an ordinary employee."

 

Then I saw Murthy and I rushed out. JRD called and said, "Young lady, tell

your husband never to make his wife wait again." In 1982 I had to resign

from my job at Telco. I was reluctant to go, but I really did not have a

choice. I was coming down the steps of Bombay House after wrapping up my

final settlement when I saw JRD coming up. He was absorbed in thought. I

wanted to say goodbye to him, so I stopped. He saw me and paused.

 

Gently, he said, "So what are you doing, Mrs Kulkarni?" (That was the way

he always addressed me.) "Sir, I am leaving Telco."

 

"Where are you going?" he asked. "Pune, Sir. My husband is starting a

company called Infosys and I'm shifting to Pune."

 

"Oh! And what will you do when you are successful."

 

"Sir, I don't know whether we will be successful." "Never start with

diffidence," he advised me. "Always start with confidence. When you are

successful you must give back to society. Society gives us so much; we must

reciprocate. I wish you all the best."

 

Then JRD continued walking up the stairs. I stood there for what seemed

like a millennium. That was the last time I saw him alive. Many years later

I met Ratan Tata in the same Bombay House, occupying the chair JRD once

did. I told him of my many sweet memories of working with Telco. Later, he

wrote to me, "It was nice hearing about Jeh from you. The sad part is that

he's not alive to see you today."

 

I consider JRD a great man because, despite being an extremely busy person,

he valued one postcard written by a young girl seeking justice. He must

have received thousands of letters everyday. He could have thrown mine

away, but he didn't do that. He respected the intentions of that unknown

girl, who had neither influence nor money, and gave her an opportunity in

his company. He did not merely give her a job; he changed her life and

mindset forever.

 

Close to 50 per cent of the students in today's engineering colleges are

girls. And there are women on the shop floor in many industry segments. I

see these changes and I think of JRD. If at all time stops and asks me what

I want from life, I would say I wish JRD were alive today to see how the

company we started has grown. He would have enjoyed it wholeheartedly.

 

My love and respect for the House of Tata remains undiminished by the

passage of time. I always looked up to JRD. I saw him as a role model for

his simplicity, his generosity, his kindness and the care he took of his

employees. Those blue eyes always reminded me of the sky; they had the same

vastness and magnificence.

 

-Sudha Murthy

(Sudha Murthy is a widely published writer and chairperson of the Infosys

Foundation involved in a number of social development initiatives. Infosys

chairman Narayana Murthy is her husband.)