Trust me...

I wish we were a more trusting species.

Disclaimer. This is not an idealist’s candy-floss wish of a world made of rainbows and unicorns. Lack of trust is not just a problem on moral grounds. It is a problem worth a mention because it is economically inefficient. My contention is that a deficit of trust is the single largest source of all wastage in business, in politics, in life. Wherever there is a lack of trust, costs go up. Effort goes up. And yet, despite all our efforts to fool-proof things, the net return comes down.

Think about it. Switch on the TV. Dozens of brands, vying for your wallet. Every toothpaste on the shelf is "recommended by dentists". Every shampoo bottle is the "dermatologists’ favorite". You know all (but one) of them are lying. You don’t trust them. Which makes them howl even louder and lie even better to woo you. Or to hire skinnier girls to do it for them.

Marketing exists because there is a lack of trust.

Lawyers thrive because people don’t trust people.

My mother wastes her otherwise productive time running after the housemaid because she does not trust that she will clean under the bed.

Relationships fail because one (or both) of the partners no longer trust the other.

You need an SEC and a SEBI because corporations cannot be trusted to not burn the world down to ashes if left on their own.

They have a lovely technical term for all of this. Its called "Transactional Cost of Trust Deficit".

Now imagine a world that operates on trust. I tell my subordinate to finish a report by evening, and I don’t have to follow up on him. A company promises a client to deliver on X things by Y time, and there is no further contract required. Think of the time, effort, competence, red tape headaches, phone calls, automobile fuel, paper and ink saved!

The government trusts us to fill in our taxes. Less money is laundered, less money is spent on catching the launderer. With lesser mud to sling, politicians are forced to think about doing something of actual consequence.

With demand and supply being the only two forces in play, with the externality of deceit out of the picture, markets become self-regulatory. When you read in the papers about Reliance not being successful in a business venture, you know it is because there is something fundamentally wrong there. And not wonder whether it is an Ambani-sponsored article so that he can hoard his own company’s shares before he lets you in on the good news he is hiding. Fewer bubbles. Fewer recessions.

Less watchdogs required. So much more time and brains freed up. So much more innovation.

Last but far from least, no more locks. Which means no more keys. One less lost item for me to locate.

Trust others, be honest, be trustworthy. It might have more than just karmic payoffs.

and yet...

So many thoughts inside of me, so many I cannot think.

So many contradictions that, you know there is a Simple link.

I blunder my way around life; and live without regrets.

So many voices in my mind, the music of silence begets.

I am what they made me; I am more than my experience.

So many doubts mock me, everything makes perfect sense.

I am because I am, I am my Why and What.

So many stars in the sky, I must be less than a dot.

Life feels gone in a flash, as Time eternally crawls.

So many thoughts inside of me, it’s a miracle I function at all.

The Ordeal of Vacationing

“Wow! You’re going to Europe? Again? That's so awesome!”, exclaims my hyper-excited friend from work when I tell her why she is rid of me for the next 15 days. Little does she know.

Before the criblogpost begins, the customary disclaimers. I am quite the travel-o-holic. Its an occupational hazard of being a traveling consult-woman (unrecognizably ripped off from the Traveling Salesman). Every morning when I wake up, I need a millisecond to acclimatize myself to the new hotel room I am in and to try and work out which city this hotel room might possibly be situated in. Living out of the suitcase is pretty much the only way I live now. The maid at home in Mumbai is used to washing clothes in a pipeline of bursts. As is the iron-man. (Yes, yes, my sense of humour primarily rests on the rock solid foundation of cheap rip-offs and puns.)

But planning a vacation for family – trust me, that’s a whole other ballgame. Many posts ago, I chronicled the, well, ‘economical’ ways of living we swore by in Europe. I went there as a student, with many partners in crime. The ‘student’ tag was largely restricted to the visa. And used extensively for hoarding student discounts. That apart, it was 3 unforgettable months of poor-hungry-Indian-travels. Between spending nights on city route buses, getting thrown out of railway platforms and using McDonald’s as a public restroom, our travel logs would give the Lonely Planet publishers some serious competition. (Oh, that reminds me. I need to download an e-book copy of ‘Europe on a Shoestring’. Any links in the audience?)

Sadly, when you travel with your family, you have to bid a somber farewell to those masterpiece tactics. When you travel with family, you have to be responsible. You have to look up places you want to show them. You have to figure out the best and most comfortable ways to get there. You have to ensure a roof over their heads and a bed under them, every night in every city on the itinerary. When you travel with family, you have to HAVE an itinerary!

And with the need of an itinerary, arises the need for that necessary evil – the TravelAgent-man. This is a superhero who, for all the money laundering talents he possesses, may well have spearheaded many a hawalas in his day. Keeping a watch on him soon becomes your full-time occupation. For, if left unattended, this man is quite capable of booking the Buckingham Palace for your overnight stopover in London. And then secretively telling you how he ‘had to pull many strings’ to get you a free buffet breakfast for just 150 euros a night. Note that he would say this in a manner that makes you feel obliged to get down on your knees and swear your eternal gratitude to him.

You dodge some bullets from the TravelAgent-man menace. And pray that the number he did manage to hit you with is a small one. Feeling like a blindfolded target in a shooting arena – certainly not the best start to that heavenly vacation.

The good thing about vacation planning is that it does not leave you with time to dwell on bullet wounds. So you brush the feeling aside and roll up your sleeves for Stage 2 – packing. Now, being the compulsive traveler that I am, packing is second nature to me. "So this should be easy", I tell myself, "right?" Wrong. When you pack for Europe, it’s nothing like packing for Nasik, Balugaon (don’t ask) or Delhi – the kind that you are used to. This is no domestic trip where you throw in some sets of your everyday clothes, an extra toothbrush and expect to be all set. This trip demands shopping. Shopping. My Achilles’ heel. Somehow, while he was assembling the perfect woman as part of my creation, my Maker left a slight manufacturing defect. He forgot to add the shopping gene he has blessed most women with. I musts confess that I quite enjoy the feeling of diversity this gives me, not to mention the favour with the gentlemen. But it’s at times like these that this defect leaves me in the cold. Winter gear, boots, backpacks – somehow all the stuff from the last EuroTrip has been devoured by the monster in the attic and I have to do it all over again. Screw you, Murphy.

You find a friend better equipped at this sort of stuff. You bribe him with a KFC burger (what can I say, my friends come just as cheap as I do). And you get him to do all the shopping while you trudge along behind him, holding the bags and the credit card.

The final lap – the documentation. With the family in Delhi and you in Mumbai, this is an act of utmost co-ordination. It involves ugly-ass photographs you hide immediately once the job is done, forms filled in the triplicate, passports being couriered back and forth several times, and, of course, TravelAgent-man manning the entire mission. This stage involves a Visa interview where the scary-moustache-uncle peers suspiciously at you with his X-ray vision from behind that 60-inch thick glass. Just for some added fun, he mumbles his questions in the most inaudible volume. You bite back the urge to request permission to go get your pet African Elephant, as you read somewhere that they can hear infrasonic frequencies. Something about this gentleman tells you that sarcasm might not go down very well with him. So you muster that last ounce of superhuman hearing you hope to subconsciously possess and try to answer his questions best. It all ends with a friendly I-will-take-your-fingerprints-now and duly complete the exercise of making you feel like a sentenced convict. Just 2 more hours of waiting in the room where no mobiles, no iPods and no magazines are allowed. Just 2 more hours of enduring and inflicting some very uncomfortable staring contests with fellow convicts and you are done.

With that Holy Grail stamp on your passport, you are now officially ready to embark upon the journey of a lifetime. As easy as that. Or so my friend from work would think. Little does she know.

"A vacation is where tired people go to get exhausted."

'Dislike'

Most of us probably agree that Facebook is a much treasured abode of stupidity. A harmless, meaningless, time-killing stupidity for the larger part of it. On most days, I indulge in it when the firewall allows. Even relish it. Its fun, we have to grant Zuckerberg credit for that much.

But this, I had to speak up against.

Last year, around the same time, you may recall a spate of status messages put up by your lady friends (possibly, including you) with nothing but a color on it. We all know by now, what it was. This year too, men are understandably puzzled by “I like it on the…” status messages. ‘Likes’ galore. As do comments with question marks (from the males) and knowing winks (from the females). I received my share of emails with my girl friends letting me in on the latest secret. Its that time of the year again. Girls are basking in the glory of their new found furtive thread.

So far, so good. If you want to titillate your male friends, be my guest. Hell, be their guest too, I’ll bet. Flash the colors of your bras and where you like to keep your handbag at home on your status messages all you want. (Yes, I spilled the beans. Shoot me.) But don’t, please don’t, give it the name of Breast Cancer Awareness month to make yourselves feel better about it.

How many of us know the first thing about breast cancer? Do you know anyone who has lost a mother or a wife or a sister to breast cancer? Do you know how painful it is – for the patient and their family? Do you know if there is a cure? Do you even know the symptoms? Forget everything else – if you, God forbid, developed it someday, would you even be able to detect it in your own body in time?

My answer to some of those questions is a ‘no’. If yours is too, then lets celebrate Breast Cancer Awareness month. This October, Google breast cancer. Find out more about it. Ask your family doctor. Tell your friends. Look up some organization that works for it and donate a hundred rupees to them.

But, ladies, I beg of you, please don’t continue falling prey to such shameless marketing gimmicks. (I don’t even know who starts these things. And what they stand to gain by it!)

Those of you who had the honesty and courage to read this with an open mind may be thinking how you never looked at it this way. A number of friends on my facebook account are women whom I know to be intelligent, responsible, sensitive people. Many of them also participated in this as a harmless prank. I am sure none of them meant any disrespect or harm. If you participated in it too, I am sure you didn’t either. Which is exactly why I felt it necessary to share this alternate point of view.

For the record, I am no killjoy. Far from it. Ask my friends. They are all over facebook – just like me! I am just someone who believes that we should be ready to own responsibility for the fun we have. And its implications. Right?