Comfortably Numb

Time was when my generation was young. And pain was our fuel.

Time was when rebellion was our default state. Rebels without a cause maybe but rebels still.

Time was when  money was just those few notes in our pocket, soiled and crumpled, something to pay for the cigarettes and the bus fare and the occasional street food treat and not a string of electronic zeros defining our self-worth.

Time was when we rooted for the underdog because we were him and not because it made us feel good.

Time was when we had the freedom of the dirt road instead of being prisoners of the white lines of the freeway.

And then life happened.

Success happened. The underdog became someone who didn't make it and the devil did take the hindmost. And money became the deep shadow in which forgotten, long dead dreams lay.

Middle-age happened. And as the aches and pains of an aging body multiplied the aches of the soul are forgotten.

Life happened. And we all became comfortably numb.


PS In the 70's when I first heard "Comfortably Numb" from the seminal Pink Floyd album "The Wall" I thought of chemically-induced mind expanding trances. How was I to know that 40 years or so down the line it would take on a meaning almost exactly opposite? Whatever the meaning, it remains one of rock's greatest songs with an all-time great guitar solo embedded in it. Enjoy.

             

                                                         

                                                              "Comfortably Numb"

Hello,
Is there anybody in there
Just nod if you can hear me
Is there anyone at home
Come on now
I hear you're feeling down
I can ease your pain
And get you on your feet again
Relax
I'll need some information first
Just the basic facts
Can you show me where it hurts

There is no pain, you are receding
A distant ship smoke on the horizon
You are only coming through in waves
Your lips move but I can't hear what you're saying
When I was a child I had a fever
My hands felt just like two balloons
Now I've got that feeling once again
I can't explain, you would not understand
This is not how I am
I have become comfortably numb

O.K.
Just a little pin prick
There'll be no more aaaaaaaah!
But you may feel a little sick
Can you stand up?
I do believe it's working, good
That'll keep you going through the show
Come on it's time to go.

There is no pain you are receding
A distant ship smoke on the horizon
You are only coming through in waves
Your lips move but I can't hear what you're saying
When I was a child
I caught a fleeting glimpse
Out of the corner of my eye
I turned to look but it was gone
I cannot put my finger on it now
The child is grown
The dream is gone
And I have become
Comfortably numb.

                  

The Value of Money

Money. I have always had enough to meet all my needs and most of my ‘basic’ wants. But never have I had enough of it to take care of all the numerous fancies that regularly cross my mind and heart.
Until sometime ago I used to believe that the very rich do indeed fulfill all desires and therefore at least in that context must be very happy. After all don’t they say that you can never be too thin or too rich?
And then I met, after a gap of a few years, a couple I had known well. The couple had seen their annual incomes climb from being tens of millions of rupees a year to the stratospheric heights of thousand of millions. Chiefly as a result of the commodities boom that so characterized the period preceding 2008.
As Jyoti and I drove down, for a dinner appointment, to the seven-star hotel they were staying in, I looked forward to seeing the glowing transformation in looks and well-being that I thought immense wealth must bring.
As we drove back home that night I was in a mild state of shock.
We had a met a couple of individuals in despair. They had flown in that morning in their private jet and had shopped all day for diamonds without having the time for lunch. As they gobbled down dinner the worry lines on their rather haggard faces only underscored their talk:
“Of needy relatives who expected them to help out (can you imagine the greed!). Of cars costing thirty million rupees having been driven all of 300 kms in a year (where after all were the roads in this benighted country where one can drive such a car?) Of the armies of servants who ran their various homes across the world and who could not seem to fully conceal their feeling of unwanted intrusion when the masters came in, after a gap of months, for a short stay. And what of the Naxalite threat? Well the police and the security were taking care of that, though can you imagine even the police had to be paid what amounted to a regular salary? Of course, when they travelled, the private jet allowed then to fly over all that danger crawling on the ground though sometimes, one must admit, the weather they flew in seemed just as dangerous.”
What happened? Does really big money always do this? What is money?
At its core money is supposed to represent human effort.
Money represents a day’s physical labor or an hour’s use of skills honed over decades or the complex organizational skills and risk-taking abilities that is required to coordinate the efforts of large numbers of people.
However somewhere along the line (a few seconds after it was invented I suspect) money shed its representative context making it an entity by itself.
Individuals could accumulate it without any reference to the human effort they had exerted and to close the increasingly vicious cycle, they could then use it to distort the value of the efforts of other humans so that they could accumulate more money.
However human effort is an integral part of nature. Centuries of a system that distorts the value of an integral part of the web of life produces negative results. The increased level of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere and the resultant greenhouse effect are measurable and now much discussed and debated.
The increasing concentration of the value of the efforts of many in the hands of view is just as dangerous.
And just as those of us who have the largest carbon footprint become fat and sick, so also those of us who increasingly hoard and distort the value of the efforts of an increasing number of our fellow human beings become, at the core, miserable.
Not everybody who makes big money is a distorter. There is many a rich individual who treats big money as a reservoir of value to be dammed and converted to power that gives increased value back to others. In doing this, these worthies earn true respect and the happiness of quiet self-esteem.
It is only when money is seen as a possession for personal use that big money distorts not just the human community at large but very visibly the “possessor”.
Money represents a force of nature which when distorted produces disaster.
Pink Floyd, as is their wont, rocked to the true value of money even as they mouthed cynically the twisted role it currently plays in most human activity:
Money, get away
Get a good job with more pay and your O.K.
Money it's a gas
Grab that cash with both hands and make a stash
New car, caviar, four star daydream,
Think I'll buy me a football team
Money get back
I'm all right Jack keep your hands off my stack.
Money it's a hit
Don't give me that do goody good bullshit
I'm in the hi-fidelity first class traveling set
And I think I need a Lear jet
Money it's a crime
Share it fairly but don't take a slice of my pie
Money so they say
Is the root of all evil today
But if you ask for a rise it's no surprise that they're giving none away

The Discipline of Change

Change is the new greed.

About a year ago, greed was good with everyone. Then comes disaster and the only one who seems to have done alright in the past twelve months is Mr. Obama.

And what is Mr. Obama all about? Change of course. And hey presto, change is the new greed.

When greed was good money was, so to speak, the currency.

Money, get away.
Get a good job with good pay and you're okay.
Money, it's a gas.
Grab that cash with both hands and make a stash.
New car, caviar, four star daydream,
Think I'll buy me a football team.

Money, get back.
I'm all right Jack keep your hands off of my stack.
Money, it's a hit.
Don't give me that do goody good bullshit.
I'm in the high-fidelity first class traveling set
And I think I need a Lear jet.
(excerpt from Money a number on the album Dark Side of the Moon, Pink Floyd)

Now that change is the new mantra, the currency is earnestness. It is quite heartening how all our politicians this side of forty are suddenly in their mind harbingers of change.

So don’t be surprised as we have change all around us in a couple of months. Quite literally that is. On ubiquitous posters, wall paintings, TV, radio and press ads.

All of it funded, of course, by the abundant harvest of old greed even though the change is the new greed.

And change as the theme of the season will soon fall upon that other field, besides politics and advertising, that so depends on platitudes: management consultants and experts. What would you except after Satyam?

I am all for change. Really I am.

What makes me a cynical about the current brouhaha about change is that it is the page three types and the same old scoundrels in our country who are embracing it. This trivializes the theme and I am worried that this will delay the taking up this theme seriously by people who can make change happen.

Change is not an idea or even an objective. Change is a discipline.

When change is only used an empty slogan or a new peg to hang the same old platitudes on, it will swallow its users.

An embracing of real change over the past few decades has led to the China success story. In contrast the theme of change in Russia after the fall of communism has in a large measure been rhetorical and the negative results are clear.

Real change is a hard taskmaster. China has mounted the tiger of change (any allusion to Mr.Raju’s infamous tiger is unintentional) and if China gets off before the tiger is satiated it will be definitely be clawed badly if not eaten.

Change is the deepest theme of the evanescent world of Maya. Change is the dance of Shiva.

The makers of change start at the roots.

Mr. Obama started his campaign for change at the very roots of the political process. The roots of power in politics lay in your grass roots support.

There was a time when this support was built from where it should naturally be built. The French Revolution, the Russian Revolution and the movement for India’s Independence are cases in point.

However most of current politics had got lazy, perhaps as most of current society.

This lead to politicians banked on inheriting the grass-root support of entrenched political parties and getting funds from entrenched special interest. The politics of the stagnant status quo naturally followed.

Mr. Obama started from the grass-roots. He and his team sweated in building a grass-roots army of volunteer neighbourhood to neighbourhood. Bringing into the political process individuals who otherwise would have remained clear of.

Mr. Obama and his team built most of his funding dollar by dollar through people donating in the tens of dollars.

There were of course many who donated in the thousands and even millions of dollars to Mr. Obama’s campaign.

But the strength of the ready army of small donors with no entrenched interest but that of change brought a better life for the many counterbalances and keeps in check the special interests of those who donated in the thousands and the millions.

This counterbalance is what gives Mr Obama and his administration the strength to stand up to the special interest of the status quo as he goes about delivering change.

But this is not the only reason why I back Mr. Obama to deliver on his promise of change. Not fully perhaps but substantially. It is because he and his team keep on, according to reports, hoeing the discipline of change after Nov. 4th 2008.

Consider this excerpt from an article by Joe Klein in Time titled “Barack Obama Promises New Destiny. Work Begins Today” about how Mr. Obama and his team set about the task of delivering change where the rubber meets the road:

Quietly, the Obama transition team reviewed every government agency "to find out which specific programs were working and which weren't." It was a terrifyingly brisk and comprehensive process, especially compared with the dust storm produced by the last Democratic President, Bill Clinton, during his chaotic transition period. "During Clinton's transition, you had all these people writing ad hoc papers about what to do at this agency or how to deal with that policy, but that was an extension of how Clinton's mind works," says one of the many Obama aides who is a veteran of the Clinton Administration. "Clinton had this great horizontal intelligence. He could pull an idea from a meeting he had in northern Italy and apply it to spreading broadband service through Iowa. It was amazing but not exactly efficient. Obama is more vertical. He pushes the process along, streamlines it. We had one 25-to-50-page policy paper for every agency."

The discipline of change is not just about the willingness to go the root and work long and tirelessly to make change happen root and branch.

It is also about nurturing the integrity that enables one to choose the steep and thorny route over the easy short-cut just because that way is right. Consider this excerpt from the same Joe Klein article:

In the midst of the transition, President Obama was faced with a telling policy choice: whether to declare a temporary sales-tax holiday. His economic advisers loved the idea. It would provide immediate consumer stimulus, a direct jolt that might unclog the commercial arteries. The money could be easily passed from the Federal Government to the states, which administer sales taxes. But Obama resisted and finally rejected the idea. "He thought it would provide a temporary benefit, that it had no substantial or lasting policy impact," a senior transition adviser told me. "I think he was remembering the campaign, when Hillary and McCain favored the gas-tax holiday, which he thought was frivolous, and he opposed it for that very reason — if we're going to spend money, let's spend it on investments that will make us stronger in the future."

Will Indian politics find its Obama?

I believe we will find ours within the next decade. I also believe it is not someone we heard of today in the national press.

He is perhaps in politics already. Perhaps a grass-roots worker of one of our main political party dreaming the dream that will bring change to India’s politics.

I also believe that an Obama is waiting to happen to the world of business.

As the old verities fall in the world of capitalism, the new paradigm is not going to come from the very experts who failed us in the first place.

It is going to come from a group of outsiders who will revisit global business from the roots up.

When that will happen it will be another manifestation of the discipline of change.

Breathe, breathe in the air.
Don't be afraid to care.
Leave but don't leave me.
Look around and choose your own ground.

Long you live and high you fly
And smiles you'll give and tears you'll cry
And all you touch and all you see
Is all your life will ever be.

(excerpt from the song Breathe from the Pink Floyd album Dark Side of the Moon)