Early morning flights are not very pleasant. Especially when
you are returning from a vacation and have a four year old in tow. We noticed a
big black car waiting to drop us to the airport. I looked at the tyres to see
if it was a BMW. It was not. In the dim light at 5 am, I could not recognise
the logo. My wife suspected something and hence walked around the car. While
the driver was loading the car, she told me it is a.... Jaguar!!!
A casual conversation with the driver, clearly impressed me.
I should call him a chauffeur. He was courteous, well behaved, spoke impeccable
English, and regaled us with tales of local history. Interestingly, he was in
his late 50s. Even on an early morning 5 am road, he was driving reasonably and
not like Michael Schumacher. Restraint, Discipline, the ability to reinvent,
excel within the profession... so many qualities that I learnt from a small
thirty minute driving experience.
As a matter of fact, not only this chauffeur, but all of
them I met in this visit impressed me. I learnt a very important lesson in
life. People who want to excel will do so irrespective of the professions or
the circumstances.
On the way back from the Mumbai airport, got into another
taxi. The driver’s mobile phone was on speaker, and heard a few conversations.
While you have organised aggregators doing business online, these were a group
of offline taxi drivers, forming their own group. If they are not able to
service their clients, they don’t decline them. They just pass on the lead to
their friends. And all of this, using technology. I was simply amazed. The real
innovation doesn’t lie in corporate offices, it exists in the streets.
This brought my thoughts back to something I tried to
introduce in my work place six months back. I worked for the back office of an
multi- national Investment bank. People know their process very well and work
extremely hard. However one of the deficiencies expressed frequently, was the
lack of business acumen and an understanding of world economic events
We have a whatsapp group, comprising of people in the same
team. We use it for communicating and sharing jokes, photos and quotes. I
floated an idea, can we use the group for discussing on world economic events
and their implications. Six months down,
the idea was a non-starter. There was no traffic on the group.
When I compare these two events, I am amazed that semi
literate people are harnessing technology to utilise its potential, while
educated highly paid people ignore the same. The events of the day compared
with what happened over the last six months, give me a paradoxical feeling.
While there is despair over what could have been...there is also hope in people
at the bottom rungs of the pyramid.
I am convinced it is nothing but the hunger and
the will to succeed. Which has led me to rethink about the way I want to bring
up my son. Maybe the vacation was a mistake.