The importance of perception

It is important that the demeanour reflects the purpose.

Create a perception. Build it up slowly.

Every action should be aimed at building up the intended perception.

A handshake, a smile, a snub, a pat ..everything ought to be immaculately timed to further the objective.

Any deviations are not permitted.

Being free spirited would only dish out confusion.

Why Arbitmind is ranting about the importance of perception all of a sudden ?

Because everything that has been written above is in direct conflict with his self.

Yet he cannot deny the veracity of those lines.

Maybe, sometimes what we all believe are not the best of beliefs.

Maybe beliefs are like choices. You can just choose to believe something & act accordingly.

If Arbitmind did not believe in those lines , that has been a wrong choice.

Its never too late. Or...is it ?

..Stones...

(more of a reflection of the  state of mind rather than a post)

After the Mumbai Indians VS the Chennai Superkings Match , Arbitmind remembered that Sachin had quoted "People sometimes throw stones at you and you have to convert them into milestones"

Very True. Trust legends like Sachin to inspire lesser mortals like the Arbitmind.

Go...Buy...

This had to happen someday. 

Business Sense versus Cricketing Knowledge having a public go at each other.

The Indian Premier League has had b(r)ought in a huge amount of glamour to the sport.

Well...not that cricket was suffering from any lack of it though..specially in the sub-continent.

Undeniable though that the the first edition of the IPL surely elevated the excitement to

hitherto unknown territory. Much of it was largely because the franchisees did cough up huge sums-- for

the players and infrastructure as well as promotions.

And the Public just loved the show. Even the cricket was of top quality.

However, that was just the tip of the iceberg.

What IPL had most significantly done, was to subtly place terms  like 'franchisee', 'investment', 'returns', 'profits', 'break-even' alongside  the more familiar jargon of 'deep midwickets', 'yorkers' & 'square cuts'.

The IPL had placed business barons, top-of-the rung actors & business conglomerates

right in the driver's seat. One would not fail to notice that previously cricket , business & Bollywood

would interact in a predictable fashion. You could have a cricketer-actress linkup, a cricketer endorsing a product of a business house or batsmen having certain logos on their bats. The point here was that nobody intruded into each others territory(notwithstanding Ajay Jadeja's foray into filmdom :-))

Hence you would not find Sunil Gavaskar's comments remotely connected to Shahrukh Khan's & vice-versa.

Then IPL happened.

Now, when Mr.Sunil Gavaskar slams John Buchanan in his column it is Shahrukh Khan who has to stand up 

to defend the coach of his team. Nothing wrong in that though.( Its Something like your Boss defending you in

public from an outsider-whatever may be your equation at the workplace.)

To be honest, Arbitmind doesn't find anything unnatural in the whole saga of a comment & a '..buy a team..' retort. 

What is striking though is that the IPL has bought people who are masters in their respective  domains & at the same time  completely ignorant about the others' trade... withing striking distance of each other. 

Gone are the days where every Indian captain/coach would face the ire of former captains every time he would lose a match & gulp it down.

Captains/Coaches could not reply back...'Go make a team & lead them if you are so concerned'. Reactions to criticism would be as insipid as a 'Krishi Darshan'..ostensibly because being a smart alec in front of media persons was not something that the Board took very kindly. In the IPL age, team owners do not have such constraints....& hence Arbitmind presumes..one would see a whole lot of such ripostes in the near future. 

After all no investor really likes to be told what to do with his money until & unless the advice is coming from a  Warren Buffet himself. Neither would an all time great cricketer have a very kind view about a movie actor's cricketing acumen.

So get ready for these jibes & jabs...they will continue for some time. 

Neither Business nor Cricket is a pushover in this land & in these times.

Manipulating Luck

Being superstitious often comes naturally to most of us.

Arbitmind hazards a guess -

most of us have a lucky shirt, a lucky pair of shoes or something to that effect tucked away somewhere.

Back in school Arbitmind had this concept of  a lucky shirt.

Nobody drilled that concept in...it was one of 'those' brainwaves - the kind which

seemed to strike Arbitmind every once in a while .

Every half-a year during the examinations,the first paper would invariably be English. 

It was one of those subjects where Arbitmind would do well.

Now who or what should get the credit for this?

Using his 'profound' logic & insight Arbitmind would conclude that the white shirt which he wore

to the exam hall was behind his success.

Washing the shirt would wash off the good luck charm too. A stern warning to a disgusted mother would  follow..."the shirt was not to be touched"...There was a series of question papers to be negotiated and the shirt was his magic wand.

Things would go up to the extent that by the time the Chemistry exam ended Arbitmind would come back home & hide his shirt because his mother had made up her mind that the goodluck charm needs to be washed off for a greater good of the society in general & the surroundings in particular. 

By the time the Statistics paper ended(which was the last exam), Arbitmind(with the goodluck shirt on) would have had transformed himself into a public health hazard. 

Tathagata(the guy who sat behind Arbitmind during the examinations) had plainly voiced his disapproval once.

The poor guy could not take the olfactory torture anymore.

Even then things did not change. Arbitmind risked the ire of friends, parents & teachers for the sake of the white shirt...the good luck charm.

(Remember : behind every excellent marksheet there is a soiled shirt)

The question is does it really help ? The obvious answer would be a 'NO', the most plausible explanation for Arbitmind's above mentioned folly would be 'teenage naivety'. 

So why are such superstitions such a widespread phenomenon then ? 

What makes even mature, level headed people succumb to such superstitions ?

..& for that matter superstitions are not restricted to teenagers or the proclaimed naive.

Arbitmind believes attributing such behaviour to simple naivety would be an over-simplification.

A stronger reason can be that all of us, in our own little ways try to manipulate our luck.

We tend to explain events as 'cause & effect phenomenon' & believe that outcomes can be manipulated by extrapolation. 

Someone wears a certain tie before every important client meet. Someone uses a certain

bat every time he goes out for an important cricket match. 

Sometimes things go beyond the individual.There are mass superstitions as well. 

Cricket teams believe that if the first wicket to fall is a run out it spells doom for the team.

Ask a BITSian. While going for a test, very few dare to look up

towards the famed clock tower of BITS,Pilani. Legend has it that anyone who does so has a disastrous test.

(It is altogether a different matter that Arbitmind has had numerous disastrous tests even when he did not

look at the clock tower.)Both are examples of collective attempts at manipulating luck.

Luck, though, has its own ways of smiling upon people...thoroughly unconcerned with individual or collective efforts at manipulation. 

That's experience.