Sep 22 - Seaplanes, camping & soccer

At about 7PM on Sat Sep 22, I tore my Achilles tendon - playing soccer with my daughter, her friends, and their dads.  Textbook symptoms - the sensation of being strongly kicked or hit just above the ankle, turning around to see who did it, and the spongy feeling of losing the ability to support the foot.

Not the best way to end a weekend in the idyllic Camp Orkila  (but for the 150+ father/child pairs) on Orcas Island, but as I keep telling myself - it could have been worse...  for one thing, it happened nearly at the end of the trip, incredibly fun up to that point; also, one of the dads in our troop was a physician and knew a thing or two about splints; and finally, my splurge on flying with Tanvi to/from the campsite via seaplane turned out to be a really smart idea.

Time Passages

Of late, Shilpa and I have been arguing a lot. Our arguments have been about one thing, and one thing only… FOOD! Quality, quantity and rate of consumption. I think she eats too slowly, too little, and not enough of the right stuff. She, on the other hand, wonders why fruit roll-ups don’t count as fruit. Of course, I mention only for context that she is six and I am, well, a little older than that.

The pattern is usually the same – Divya and I call Shilpa for dinner, to which her guarded, exploratory response is “So what am I having for dinner?”. A response of “Mac & Cheese” elicits whooping cries of joy, but most other responses typically initiate a litany of groans, moans, whines and squeaks. Once at the table, my modus operandi tends to be even more predictable, consisting of four distinct phases:

1. Sucking Up: “Great job, Shilpa! You’re doing so well, eating so quickly! We’re so proud of you!”
2. Plea Bargaining: “Please baby, eat up quick so we can go read a bedtime story / watch Boston on YouTube / watch REM on YouTube / eat dessert / read two bedtime stories. Just eleven more spoonfuls, pleeease?”
3. Spreading FUD: “How can you grow strong enough to be a gymnast if you don’t eat your spinach? Yes, to be a good guitarist you have to eat your veggies. If you don’t want your bones to be weak you better eat the yoghurt.”
4. Brute Force: “Next spoonful, NOW! I’m turning on the timer, NOW! Seven more spoonfuls, NOW!”

On most nights I enact all four stages of coercion, but the ending is almost always the same – Shilpa mad, me madder, dinner still uneaten.

Today was no different – I was drained from the histrionics of our dinner theater, and Shilpa as usual had tuned out my soapbox antics. By the time I told her I was done arguing and she was free to leave the table, she really had had enough. And left – went upstairs to bed without so much as a backward glance; no “I’m sorry, Dad”, just an implied “see ya”. I guess I don’t blame her – I had had enough of me too. But I was still mad.

And so I sat in my office, listening to recordings of her as a four year old, singing nursery rhymes and songs from our time in India. You know, the usual self indulgent, self pitying journey down memory lane, mourning “the little girl who was now all grown up”.

And thankfully, today I was dealt a strong blow, upside the head, by The Obvious. True, she was all grown up, and yes I was concerned about her eating habits but that wasn’t entirely what this was about. What I was really mad about was that I could no longer get her to do what I wanted, that I could no longer “time-out” her into submission. This was about Shilpa marking her boundaries, her independence, and letting me know what she was going to do.

I reeled back – this was so obvious. I could no longer pay lip service to “treating her like an adult” – I had to actually do it. And more ominously, if this was going to be my reaction to a bowl of uneaten yoghurt, rice and potatoes, what kind of beast was I going to be when things got more interesting – clothing choices, strange hair styles, maybe body piercings, parties, boys…BOYS??

No, I don’t think I am ready to face that future. Not quite yet. I need more time. In fact, if you don’t mind, I think I’ll head right back to my office, to don those headphones and listen to a four year old sing Itsy Bitsy Spider in Hindi – this ostrich isn’t ready to get his head out of the sand.

And So Begins The Task...

Tomorrow morning I sign in at @amazon.com, after nearly a year off the treadmill – give or take a few days. Both events seem a bit unreal – I never actually expected to take a break this long (despite planning for it), and I never really thought I would work for a company other than Microsoft (even though I strongly believed that I needed to).

I am writing this today only to document what it feels like on the eve of this new beginning (or end, or end of the beginning, depending on how you look at it). I feel certain some day in the distant future I will want to be reminded of it.

Twelve months is a long time, and certainly the second half passed significantly faster than the first. Starting with the relocation from Bangalore in January, and ending with our recent decision to move to another house in Seattle, it has been a hectic few months. I mention, of course, only in passing, that we also had a baby, just to keep things from getting boring.

I had anticipated a rush of activity after Tanvi’s birth, as I pondered what I wanted to do with my life, and juggled being a Dad with the intensity of a job search. Being a Dad – to Shilpa and Simba – certainly did take up some time, all good (there really wasn’t much I could contribute to Tanvi’s nursing efforts ☺). But the so-called search for a new direction in life turned out to be surprisingly anticlimactic, and perhaps one of the biggest lessons learned during this hiatus.

There tends to be an assumption – at least within my demographic – that an open ended break from work represents either a bid for retirement (a term that defies strict definition), or the pursuit of an irresistible entrepreneurial calling. Retirement is a subject best left well alone, but it was a fair question as to whether I, like other lemmings, was destined for “start-up fever”.

Easy answer – NO!

Typically, it takes two out of three conditions to kindle the startup fire in one’s belly – a) a healthy appetite for risk, b) an original idea, or c) a well fed bank balance. Possessing very little of a), and drawing a complete blank on b) and c), this was an easy question to answer.

But the deeper lesson here was even more fundamental – that perhaps my career decisions no longer needed an Inner Calling. I had started my time off defining an earnest set of objectives, things to be accomplished during this break, and through their accomplishment, effecting the discovery of something profound that burned within me. I had it all planned – after all, that is what eleven years of conditioning in the business world had taught me to do. I explained all this to a friend, who asked me a simple question by way of reply: “why not enjoy the journey instead?”. Why not indeed!

Paying attention to the journey, instead of identifying the stops, turned out to be invaluable. It taught me to recognize the things I enjoyed doing, and why. More importantly, I began to truly understand the motivation behind the professional choices I had made over the past decade. And I began to let my goals go, because they needed to be let go. Very important stuff. And my aspirations began to condense around a few simple truths.

A discussion of these truths is better left for another time, suffice it to say that I firmly now embrace the notion that a job is only a means to an end. I no longer expect to begin the day driven by the challenges I face at work. I wish instead to wake each day, seeking to continue a comfortable, mellow existence, despite the needs of my career. And that makes all the difference.

But my final evening of freedom is now here, and I see long forgotten emotions distantly announce themselves (like the Sunday evening blues). But in a departure from the past, there is also a blinding sense of clarity, and the reassurance that every li’l thang’s gonna be awright…

The Next Chapter Begins

And so, at long last, the long reckless weekend comes to an end.

After more than 9 months of dijjing/vegging/bumming/vela-ing around, I am getting back on the treadmill.
This afternoon, I accepted an offer to join Amazon as Finance Director for all of their non-media businesses.
It is a cool role – Finance Directors tend to be very COO-like at Amazon, which feels (for better and for worse) a lot like a startup compared to Microsoft.

So why not Microsoft, you may ask.
It was a tough choice – MS was the default choice, and I spent a ton of time talking with them.
I also spent time hanging out with an unfunded entrepreneur, a funded startup, a public small business – pretty much covered the spectrum of companies.
But in the end, the opportunity to do something different, at a larg-ish company, learning operations, as a bigger fish in a smaller pond, tilted the scales.

As the song by Styx goes, “Don’t let it end, I’m begging you...”, I wish I could continue the life of a, well, how do I say this, bum.
But sobriety comes in many forms, in my case, watching a bank balance count backward like a ticking bomb in a James Bond flick.

So what were the highlights/memories/lowlights of this break – since you are all dying to know – I will ramble on just a bit longer, in no particular order:
Reading more than a dozen books in 4 months, including a bunch of Gabriel Garcia Marquez (the surest way to escape reality without resorting to restricted substances)
Mid morning dates with the wife in Bangalore – lunch at McDonalds in the Forum Mall, followed by a matinee in the multiplex. No better way to spend half a day.
Pre lunch naps.
Post lunch naps.
Squash, squash, squash.
Cricket on TV every day – the best way to get from one nap to the next.
Watching India play Pakistan in Bangalore – Inzy’s 100th test, and where Sehwag’s batting was worth the price of admission, until..... ...Day Five, when India folded pathetically.
Watching India thrash S.Africa live in Bangalore after approximately 17 glasses of beer – 6 before the match even started...
Flying to Chennai in pouring rain, with the ridiculous expectation that the India/SA ODI would happen – such was the extent of our delusion that Krishnan uncle and I actually sat in the pouring rain at the stadium for a couple of hours, hoping for a game. We reluctantly gave up when the ground staff flung their buckets to the four winds and swam off the field. Dad-in-law got a nap, I read some Gabriel Garcia Marquez.... (no beer in Chepauk)
Ice cold kingfisher on the lawn on a sunny day, scrabble with Dad/Mom/Rajiv/Divya, hot fried seer fish (coated with rava – yum), nap. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Rafting on the Ganga, flying off the raft into The Golf Course (a Class 3+ rapid), drinking copious quantities of freezing water (and god knows what else), freaking out.
Starry nights by the Ganga, hot paranthas, and vodka + sprite – my friend Sanjay Rao and I spent a week out in those parts, just us boys. As he would say, “Superior”.
Driving Shilpa and her friends to school every morning – three 4-yr old girls playing psycho mind games on each other, one 4-yr old boy banging his head maniacally against the seat while trying to open the car door, asking if I could, please, just for fun, smash into another car.
Driving Shilpa to school most mornings in the Mini (back in Seattle), with her singing lustily along to her favorite Heart, Indigo Girls and Foo Fighter songs.
Three nights in the Maldives with Divya’s parents and Shyam (this was before my time off, but too magical not to mention) - the most amazing place on earth.
Three nights in Kumarkom with Amma/Appa – again magical, seeing the pictures makes me want to weep.
Chai on the front porch most evenings with the Bishts (our next door neighbors)
Laphroig with Anil Bisht most evenings, after the chai.
Ripping 500+ CDs onto my iPod.
Sleeping well every night, and realizing that I really had not done that for most of the prior ten years.
Catching little Tanvi as she came kicking and screaming into this world – it’s amazing to consider how that one instant, when the baby enters the world, is so incredibly intensely moving.

You get the idea – I can keep going on an on.

In any event, it’s been a great time, and I strongly strongly strongly recommend it.

Further On Up The Road…

“I am very sorry sir, but the dog will have to remain in his cage until you have physically removed him from the airport premises. We cannot risk disease and contamination. Those are the rules.”

Thus spake the customs officer, and so it had to be. Disease and contamination – he was kidding, right? I could hear 1,276,893 mosquitoes taunting me with giddy giggles as they jostled in line for their late night continental buffet at the baggage claim area in Bangalore’s HAL International Airport. I was tempted to ask the man whether his concern was in fact directed at infections that Simba may contract in this environment – ha ha ha – but thought better of it. There would be ample opportunities for sarcasm and frustrated outbursts in the weeks ahead.

So instead, four of us able bodied men dutifully and unsteadily carried Simba’s crate, with a bewildered Simba in it, into the warm Bangalore night, and there he was ceremoniously given his freedom, watched by a brooding street mongrel out for a midnight whiz, and a few hundred human spectators.

It was October 5th 2003, and we had arrived.

We had had our doubts about the India assignment – I’ve said that before. The experience until then had been a borderline C/C+. The house hunting thing had not gone well. I had found us an apartment on one of my combination reconnaissance/business trips, and Lloyd, our relocation agent had moved quickly to botch the deal, blaming (obviously) a crooked landlord.

Nervous, we all flew out – from Seattle to Bangalore – to see what appeared to be a promising home. Lloyd had sold it to us hugely over the phone, and my mom and dad had checked it out, giving it a strong thumbs up. It was indeed a lovely house, except that it apparently rented as we walked the fifty meters from the driveway to the front door – so said Lloyd. As it turned out, not only had it rented during that short walk, but a dozen painters had also raced in ahead of us, and were busy a-painting the place (for the new tenant, no doubt) as we peeked in. This was bullshit!

We began to freak out, just a little. I mean, I had signed the offer, we were committed to the India gig. But first things first: I took Lloyd out behind the tool shed (or whatever is metaphorically appropriate) and issued the warranted spanking. And Lloyd responded apologetically with the universal Indian head wobble – which, to the uninitiated (yours truly, for example) means “Yes, I hear every single word you said, it is crystal clear. But it does not necessarily mean that I can, will, or intend to, act on your words. In fact, I may not even understand the language you are talking in. However, with an attentive, energetic and well coordinated head wobble, it is my experience that you will stop speaking soon.”

Sigh.

And so we drove, at Lloyd’s bleating insistence, just a little further down the road, to Whitefield – home of the Sai Baba, snakes, and soon, us – and got our first glimpse of Adarsh Palm Meadows, the preferred destination of discerning expatriates from every corner of the world.

To Be Continued...

And You May Ask Yourself , “How Did I Get Here?”

Rewind to the summer of 1991 – as I prepared to leave Bangalore for a stint at business school in Rochester, NY, an astrologer our family was then consulting with (on various matters of considerable cosmic significance, no doubt) made a vaguely portentous announcement to my parents: your son will return to India at the age of thirty five.

My reaction: unlikely, but sure, whatever.

In July 1991, I had only one goal – to get the hell out of Bangalore, and India, before I lost the drive to do it, and instead continued to drift along as a modestly successful software salesman. It was a decent life – it paid for pitchers of beer at Oasis, gas for the bike, cigarettes, and general sustenance. But I also had this nagging feeling that I did not “fit” in this picture, and that change, any change, was an urgent necessity. And so it came to pass – two years in Rochester, an interesting drive across the United States to Seattle (unemployed, with degree in hand), followed eventually by a little over a decade at Microsoft.

Fast forward now to April 2003 – I was back at work as the head of Microsoft IR after a two month sabbatical, most of which I had spent on the couch watching the Indian cricket team reach the finals of the World Cup. At our first one-on-one meeting upon my return, John (my boss) asked me what I had learnt during this valuable time off.

Honest answer: Um, well, like, hmm.
What I blurted out: John, I would like to spend some time working and living in India.

I was wholly unprepared for, and alarmed by, the momentum of what happened next. By the summer of 2003 I had committed to a two year stint in India helping script Microsoft’s strategy there, found a place to live in Bangalore, and we were packing to move. It had not been an easy decision, and Divya and I had debated long and hard about whether this was the right time for a move of this magnitude. In the end it came down to a few simple truths: we were at an age where we could take risks and be adventurous, we both needed to know whether or not living in India was a long term option and this had the makings of a great dress rehearsal, Shilpa would have an incredible time with her grandparents, and there were no restrictions in shipping our dog Simba into India. And so we took the plunge.

On June 21, 2003, at a surprise birthday party that Divya threw for me, I turned 35.

Darn soothsayers!!

To Be Continued...

There & Back Again - Two Years In Bangalore

“You know, you really should capture your initial thoughts about what it feels like to move back to the States on paper” remarked Sanjay. “Write about them when the thoughts and feelings are still fresh.” I agreed distractedly, mentally filing that idea in the already bursting “Plans that either come to naught, or half a page of scribbled lines…” section.

It was the evening of January 9th, 2006 and I was doing my final round of goodbyes. The movers had come and gone, and in the brief space of two days, transformed our lovely home of the last two years back into just another house, empty, bare, and unbearably sad. We were all packed, making final shopping forays to fill whatever space remained in our suitcases, and grabbing bites at our favorite eateries (soup and salad at Sunny’s for Divya, mutton biriyani and Guntur chicken at RR for me).

There was a sense of detachment and numbness, a surreal acceptance that tomorrow life would continue just as it always had in Bangalore, but suddenly everything would be different for us as we winged our way back to Seattle, to continue a life we had left behind, in a home almost frozen in time.

And so we departed early the next morning, closing the book on a period in our lives that we had begun with a million doubts, and ended up enjoying more than we ever imagined possible. On the flight, I found myself thinking about what Sanjay had said, and I realized he was right – writing about one’s experiences made sense only if it was fresh enough to capture those fleeting, sometimes disjointed thoughts that race through our minds as things happen in real time. I would do it.

However, this decision also unwittingly unleashed The Beast. As friends, family and co-workers who know me well can attest, I am not readily given to pithy phrases, succinct explanations, and simply communicating “the gist”. I prefer instead the long, verbally grandiose form, and when in doubt, to begin with the singularity, lest the reader lose any thread in the plot. Hence the somewhat Tolkien-esque title for this travelogue, if that is indeed what it is.

To Be Continued...