Your Time Will Come

Three days ago, I was rushing to office after a meeting. The day somehow seemed very different. Special, in an inexplicable way. The meeting had gone well too. While waiting at a signal light, lost in the magical voice of the very beautiful Amy MacDonald singing ‘Your time will come’, when I suddenly noticed a teacher of mine from school, standing on the other side of the road. I recognized her instantly, despite not having seen her in over sixteen years. She seemed to be waiting for a cab.

She was one of a few favorite teachers I had in school, which is why I perhaps recognized her instantly. Not that I was her favorite student, or that she was lenient and kind. It was, in fact the contrary. She was one of the few teachers who was really strict; the no-nonsense kind. She used to be notorious, if I may, for her habit of twisting the ear of students who created trouble or didn’t finish homework. I had been on the receiving end of this treatment on several occasions.

Over the ears years, I often wondered why I have so much respect for her and a few other teachers who too, happened to be equally strict if not more. And one strong logical reason that emerged, seemed to be something to do with how they taught. It had something to do with the sheer passion the had for the work they did. Teaching. And I guess that’s what made them great teachers.

These few teachers showed a resolute and relentlessly effort towards educating a somewhat difficult-to-handle bunch of children. What set them apart was probably that they never diverted their purpose from teaching, nor give up on us students, however much we tested their patience. They never held grudges. And best of all, their efforts towards their objective was unwavering and true.

A lot has changed over the years when it comes to teaching, discipline, not hitting children, and so on. And I’m not really am expert on the rights, wrongs and different methods to teach, discipline and mold growing children. But I think the focus and dedication these few teachers showed, had effectiveness written all over it.

I was to take a right turn at the signal, but quickly made a u-turn instead. I stopped the car beside her, lowered the window and said, “ma’am, you probably wouldn’t recognize me, but I’m a student of yours, Shrutin Shetty“. She said she remembered the name. After some insisting, she gave me the privilege of driving her home. It seemed insignificant a gesture for the efforts of a great teacher.

Had I ever enlisted in the army, teachers like her would have been akin to a commanding officer. I had read somewhere about how soldiers are the true salt of the land, and how the training broke them down and rebuilt them into the refined beings they are. That’s exactly what teachers like her had been doing over the years, batch after batch.

As I dropped her off, she asked me why I didn’t visit school. I had only been there once in the sixteen years. All I could tell her was that I will. The real reason I hadn’t gone there, however, has been because in my head, I had set an expectation that my teachers would have of us students. Expectations in terms of us reaching our full potential, making a mark for ourselves. And I still have a long way to go to achieve expectations I felt my teachers would expect from me, ones that would make them proud.

What I didn’t realize in these sixteen years though, is that while I have been busy working on my dreams, and much time will have passed before I get there, but time had not been waiting. This teacher of mine said she’s retiring soon. Not sure how many of the other teachers already had retired. When, where and how would I meet them. Be able to share stories of my trials and experiences from my journey, hear their stories about this long and disconnected gap in time. Such was the predicament that held my thoughts on my drive back.

And through the numerous people in life that I have had the pleasure of knowing, I will always be grateful and indebted to this small elite set of them, people like this teacher of mine. For however insignificant I may still be, they have played a crucial role in making me who I am today. Their undivided efforts towards teaching, indirectly taught me the type of focus it will take to achieve my dreams. And my estimation of their expectation of me will always keep me aiming higher.

NA-NObody

The Tata Nano, cheapest car in the world today, is arguably one of the biggest milestones in the auto industry in recent times, the world over. A close friend of mine, Sheshank Reddy shared an article which talked about how Mr. Ratan Tata, in hindsight, felt the Nano should not have been positioned as ‘the cheapest car’. Sheshank, another close friend, Pradeep Shetty, and I have, over the years, spent numerous hours over numerous pitchers of beer, discussing the Nano. We looked at the brand, the car in isolation, the car in the Indian context, imagined it in foreign markets, and so on.

Sheshank is highly knowledgeable in areas of brands and branding, and he’d throw light on lesser known areas like the powerful impact that appropriate fonts can have on a brand, and so on. Less detailed conversations I have had with several random people over time, has helped me form a rough idea of people’s perception of the Nano.

A good friend, Viz, in his beloved Nano

Americans, for the longest time, has been obsessed with powerful cars. Even the average petite young woman would drive a car powerful enough to lug a mobile home behind it. Inexpensive fuel and lack of public transportation coupled with easy financing made the dream of powerful cars commonplace.

Indians, on the contrary, have given more importance to value, and show. Value includes getting satisfaction from haggling with the grocer for little nothings.

Image: Imgur

Now if you were planning on buying an SUV, I don’t think the Tata Safari Storme would have appeared in your top 5 options. And yet, this tough SUV that has seen well over a decade of sluggish growth, boasted of a 30% jump in sales after the brand was associated with the Indian version of 24 (TV series). That is about ‘show’. Justifying 30% jump, I guess the mindset was that if it was cool enough to be on the show, it’s cool enough to buy.

The Indian economy has been shaky these last two years, mostly compliments of a corrupt government that facilitated several scams. Many industries have kept aggressive growth on hold till there is a more positive and promising outlook. Fuel prices have soared in this period. Yet, despite fuel economy being a key factor in the Indian customers’ car buying decision, Nanos’ sales just trudged along, while SUV sales boasted 2-digit growth rates last year. Somehow, SUV sales seemed to defy common logic and correlations between cost/price and demand, among other things.

I believe the Nano is a masterpiece in many ways, and the team behind it deserves recognition and praise. Mr. Ratan Tata is wrong when he says that they made a mistake by calling it the ‘cheapest car’; because in my opinion, the problem isn’t so much with the car, as it was with our perception.

I read an interesting comment on a discussion board a few years ago. A fellow Indian had justified failure of the Nano stating that buying a cheap car goes against the status of the average Indian and such other reasons. A foreigner rubbished his comment, saying that it was a funny view coming from the citizen of a country which had a large section of the population living below poverty, where the per capita income was unbelievably low, and yet we thought so highly of ourselves, so as to find a great product like the Nano, beneath us to buy. The foreigner thought highly of the Nano, and given a chance, said he’d be thrilled to buy a few of them for his family.

I was listening to Mr. D. R. Mehta speak at a recent awards event. He is founder of BMVSS, famous for the Jaipur foot. He spoke about a visit to the United States, where American politicians were asked to name 3 brands from India that they knew of. They could only think of two, the Jaipur foot, and the Nano. That is the impact the Nano has had, everywhere but at home.

Most car ads in newspapers highlight fuel-efficiency, even if they don’t mention many other key specifications. Even some of the more premium car ads. And everyone’s talking about how affordable and how easily financed, different vehicles are. That being said, simply branding the Nano as, perhaps, ‘affordable’, would have been like winking in the dark, or crying in the rain, or whatever such amusing phrase there is to signify pointlessness. The Nano dream, dreamt by Ratan Tata, was TO BUILD THE CHEAPEST CAR. That takes daring. That takes passion. And that takes commitment. Everyone’s making ‘affordable’, and ‘more economical’ and ‘faster’, but how many are chasing seemingly impossible dreams like ‘most economical’, or ‘the fastest’? The Tatas did, to make a car accessible to a much larger population. And for everyone who has complaints against the Nano, and those who feel the Nano failed, I am reminded of the famous passage by Roosevelt. The man in the arena.

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

To conclude, I will definitely look forward to new variants and more technology in the Nanos of the future. And there was never a fault with the Nano, but the lack of appreciation in the eyes of the average Indian, who failed to recognize the masterpiece our country has created for the world.

The Tata Pixel concept car