Snakes and Ladders

Sunday afternoon, was a day when I had nothing to do. The house was a mess as it was getting painted, hence the favourite pastime of watching Sooryavansham on SET Max (if not anything else) was not available. And freshly painted walls of whichever colour aren’t exactly interesting.

My six year old decided not to sleep and hence I ended up playing Snakes and Ladders with him. I thoroughly enjoyed the whole experience. It is divine to play with a child. It completely de–stressed me. The pain of the monster at office, the worry of making ends meet at the end of the month, the stress of my growing paunch, receding hairline, greying hair, concern about where my son will study fifteen years from now, anxiety about whether I will have enough money to fund his education, his marriage and my retirement, the fear of ill health striking any member of the family, everything vanished for those fifteen minutes.

The hunger to get a six to start off, getting an accurate number to get the ladder, avoiding the snake, the joy at getting the ladder, the disappointment at getting a snake and the joy at finishing first were infectious. It brought back the child in me and I was extremely happy.  I should do this more often, I thought. After the game, as I was putting my son to sleep, I pondered over the game. And what it taught me.

First of all, it is a brilliant game. One rarely finishes the game, without encountering a snake and falling down. To me playing this game with the child, teaches him / her how to deal with failure. As a matter of fact, it might be interesting to observe the child’s reaction to a snake. In today’s competitive world, where success is measured by marks and the rank in class, we prepare children for success. But we don’t prepare them for failure. They need to be taught to be resilient to failure or to play on after stepping on a snake.

The first time your child gets a snake, they will be unhappy, because it will push them behind in the game. I know of parents, who will cheat and ask the kid to throw the dice again, so that he / she does not encounter the snake. Some will deliberately miscount and ensure that the kid ends up either before or after the snake. This is a huge disservice we do to the child. We have to teach the kid the rules of the game, to play by the rules even if the outcome is not in their favour. As a parent we have to ignore the child’s tantrum and cajole him / her into playing till the game is over. Most importantly we should not allow the child to quit because he / she is losing.

If anybody remembers the game, there is a snake at 99 which brings you down to 7. I think that snake is a great tool to teach the kid never to give up. Obviously you can’t give this gospel to the six year kid, but you need to inculcate fair behaviour, letting him / her lose sometimes and demonstrating that all is not lost even if someone is miles ahead. We are actually inculcating life skills in the kid.

The more I think of it, I marvel at the genius of the creator of the game. I am equally amazed at the similarity it has with one’s career. We get ladders of education, promotion, job changes in the early stages of the career and rise fast. We dodge snakes. Sometimes we step on some which are like bad bosses, tough projects, bad jobs which make you feel you are pushed back. Sometimes life is boring when we get ones and twos and we simply try to avoid that snake which will push us down further, and try to catch the ladder.

The faster we rise, the chance of stepping on a snake goes up. The chance of climbing a ladder is minimal.  That to me is the simple truth and a Eureka moment.

In the first ten to fifteen years of my career, I am used to scaling ladders. Post that ladders don’t exist. Am I ready for another for the next fifteen years of my career to be boring without scaling ladders? And that’s where a lot of us make decisions. Decision to quit the job, get into consulting or into entrepreneurship. Or we get bitten by a snake. Bad ratings, lay- offs.  At this age, we are no longer a child and hence have a huge ego. It is mentally demeaning to accept this fall.  Whether we stay in the game or leave it depends on how we react to such snake bites.

This game has taught me three lessons:

1.      There are quite a few ladders available at the beginning of the game

2.       The higher I go, the chances of stepping on a snake are high.

3.       Closer to the top, there are no ladders. It is a tough grind

Next time I encounter a snake, I hope I have the childlike tenacity to roll the dice... and look at the ladders available. Again to go up, dodge the snake and reach my destination.

My parents had safe jobs. They played Ludo. Today we are playing Snakes and Ladders.

Technology and Roller Coasters

I am sixteen. Sweet sixteen. But my wife says I am getting old. I just completed the sixteenth anniversary of my 30^th birthday last week. They say a person is as old as he or she feels. I dont think I am a day over thirty.

All women start developing a new strand of DNA when they get married. And this DNA is so firmly entrenched it is not funny. It is the DNA of showing the mirror to the husband. While she continues to rib me about being old, I consider myself young.

When she points to my being out of shape, I say round is a shape. She can outrun me, outwit me and outsmart me. But I point all of that to genes and not to age. What do I do if she has a manufacturing defect and is better than me in all these areas? After all I am human.

The one area where she is right pertains to roller coasters. While life is a roller coaster, I can’t sit on one. I am afraid. I don’t know of what, but I refuse to sit on one. She then proceeds to turn the screws by saying,  that a big sign of old age, is that I am slow to adapt to new technologies.

There are four kinds of people in this world. There are people who are technologically savvy, technologically friendly, technology agnostic and technologically averse. I believe I am on the cusp of technologically friendly and technologically agnostic. My wife maintains that I am on the cusp of technologically agnostic and technologically averse. It  is time for me to accept reality as mirrors don’t lie.

When I board a roller coaster, I lose control, especially of my life and safety. My survival depends on the safety equipment, and how my intestines react to the ups and down. I get the same feeling with technology. It is moving at a very rapid pace from being helpful to being intrusive Every website I visit, I end up leaving a footprint and I am not comfortable with that.

Last week I wanted to see how the White House looks. So I entered what I thought was the website of the White House. I was shocked at what I saw. It was a porn site. Just imagine, if I had accessed it from my workplace. I would have lost my job for inadvertently stumbling into objectionable content.

I love innovation. I love the comfort it gives me. But it makes me lazy. Makes me a parasite. Once upon a time, I used to remember the telephone numbers of my friends and relatives. Today, I dont know a single number. For survival reasons, I have to state that I remember my wife’s telephone number. But I dread the day, when l leave the cell phone at home. I am completely handicapped.

Last week the latest version of an iconic phone was launched. There were a host of jokes around how one needs to sell a kidney to buy one. The phone came with face recognition features. Apparently it would unlock only if it recognised the face of its user. There were another set of jokes about how women would be unable to open the same without applying makeup. There is an old saying “Jiska Bandar usise naache?” I am more worried about disasters. What if one is caught in one, and the onlookers who want to help and can’t unlock the phone to identify the person?

As mentioned above, I leave an indelible footprint every time I visit the world wide web. If I search for a flight ticket for Chennai, immediately my screen is flooded with hotel options for Chennai. Artificial intelligence is getting intrusive. I hear that companies are hiring psychologists to view facebook photos and fathom the mood of the person, so that an appropriate product advertisement can be pushed. A day will come when I may start getting sucked into the whirlpool of the internet and the internet will start guiding my thinking.

This is exactly happening with the Blue Whale game. Players are getting sucked in resulting in disastrous consequences. I know of exactly fine people who want to try out the game for ‘kicks’. We are at the cusp where technology will slowly take over our brain, and we will not even realise it. Daily we are getting sucked into it.

I use technology, love it but don’t want it to take over my brain.  I love the highs of technology. But am hugely scared of the lows.

That is why I stay away from roller coasters – real as well as virtual. I am not getting old, I am getting wiser. That is what I would like to believe. But mirrors and birthdays don’t lie