May your choices reflect your hopes, not your fears

May your choices reflect your hopes, not your fears – Nelson Mandela

Fear is one of the strongest emotions—in both humans and animals. One of the greatest motivating factors for the decisions that we make is fear. Fear of the future, fear of the unknown, fear of being rejected by society, fear of losing out in the race, fear of losing your loved ones.

And then there is the fear triggered by an immediate danger, which is so overwhelming that your body secretes alarm pheromones in the sweat. Animals, of course, have long been known to have the ability to ‘smell fear’. From a purely scientific standpoint, though, what they smell are the ‘fear’ pheromones.

For a long time, it was a matter of speculation whether humans can smell fear, but a team of researchers at Stony Brook University in New York showed through experiments that people cannot just smell the pheromones secreted during fear, in fact the emotion can be ‘contagious’. The team taped absorbent pads to the armpits of 20 novice skydivers - 11 men and nine women - on their first tandem jump. The pads soaked up sweat before they leapt from the plane and as they fell. This sweat was transferred to nebulisers and volunteers for the brain scanner (who were not told about the experiment) were asked to inhale it. The results, as published in New Scientist magazine, showed that the volunteers' amygdala and hypothalamus - brain regions associated with fear - were more active in people who breathed in the "fear" sweat. 

The research was, in fact, funded by the US Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency - the Pentagon's military research wing—which fuelled speculation that they were trying to isolate the fear pheromone for use in warfare; to induce terror in enemy troops. 

Even without the research, it’s not difficult to see that fear is indeed contagious. Rumours of impending doom are known to travel like wild fire: a case in point was the widespread fear of the year 2012 because the Mayan Calendar ended right there. It takes very little to spread panic— even without pheromone-tactics.

In fact, the difference between animal and human brains can make fear a potentially deadly emotion for us. Because of the greater complexity of our brains, the fight-or-flight response initiated under threat can cause the brain to misfire—causing us to be in perennial defense mode. That is, we would be imagining threats and dangers all around us, forever feeling insecure, which becomes extreme in mental disorders such as schizophrenia.  But even ‘normal’ people have a tendency to fret too much about potential threats and situations that may or may not arise.

Perhaps that’s what Mandela meant when he exhorted us to base our decisions on hope, not fear. It isn’t that we must give up being rational or prudent, or not evaluate the risks of our decisions. It doesn’t mean you skip that seatbelt because you hope you’d never be in an accident. Simply put, it means envisioning the things we’d like to see transformed to reality, and consciously taking initiative towards them. It means filling our minds with positivity for the future. That way, we wouldn’t be falling prey to the constant tendency to imagine the worst. We also wouldn’t be losing out on opportunities that we missed due to fear of a bad outcome.  Coming from a man who led an entire nation towards their hopes, you have good reason to apply it. 

The Mouse Charmers: stories of the pioneers of digital enterprise in India

From snake-charmers to mouse-charmers: that’s how Anuradha Goyal sees the evolution of brand India in her digital-entrepreneurship based work The Mouse Charmers. Goyal, who earlier co-authored CII’s India Innovates Series, has produced a masterpiece on what she explores and elaborates best: business innovation. The book is essentially a case-by-case exploration of some of India’s best and most popular online businesses—and encompasses everything from their origins and modes-of-operation to their revenue models and technologies involved.  

She has clubbed the digital innovators into three distinct categories: commerce, content and connectors—based on the purpose that they serve. The commerce category stars some of India’s biggest online businesses: Flipkart, MakeMyTrip, CaratLane and BigBasket, while the content category features names like Zomato, ImagesBazaar, Games2Win and Chai with Lakshmi. The connectors mentioned are Shaadi, RangDe, CommonFloor and IndiBlogger. Enterprises such as RedBus and Edewcate receive brief descriptions, too. There’s also a separate chapter devoted to the entire ecosystem that makes it all happen at the speed of a click.

Goyal’s research is thorough and detailed. She finds out how high-end e-tailers like CaratLane sell precious stones online, how they manage the now ubiquitous Cash-on-Delivery option, and how they even provide upto 5 options to be selected for trial at home. On the other hand, she also finds out how online grocery store BigBasket fulfills orders for perishable food-stuff whose quality simply cannot be ascertained by the user online. BigBasket is particularly a very intriguing study, simply because of the nature of products that it sells. How they maintain the inventory of different types of produce with different types of shelf-life— from packaged FMCG goods to fresh fruit and vegetables, how they manage their procurement and logistics and the kind of customer service they deliver makes for engrossing reading. The author recounts an experience that perfectly illustrates the personal touch: she had to reject an order of bananas because they were too ripe for consumption. A credit note was issued to her account, but what’s more, the local service manager sent her another bunch at no cost. When she enquired, he said, “Ma’m you wanted bananas today and though I may have returned your money, your need is not fulfilled. So, I have sent you bananas.” That’s some customer service!

Technology, of course, plays a key role in the interactive user-experience that boosts these portals. The book shows how most of the online enterprises prefer to keep the technology innovations in-house. Most of them tried outsourcing, but, as is the common refrain, the pace of innovation required to keep things simple and business-attracting is possible only with an in-house team. You’d be amazed at the numerous types of customized systems developed to suit each enterprise’s unique nature.

The book hasn’t focused only on the retailers, though. The challenges faced by content sellers such as Zomato and Games2Win are well documented. You’d be interested to know how the former ensures authentic reviews for your palate, for instance, or how the latter created Indianised games, one of which features our Prime Minister and how they actually wrote to the PM’s office to try it!

Goyal picks some very interesting cases of social-impact entrepreneurship, too, such as RangDe, which picks up from Mohd Yunus of Grameen Bank fame, providing microfinance through crowdsourcing. Their amusing and extremely creative campaigns are a great feature: World Cup Fever where you could make whacky pledges on cricket outcomes and win a prize or the Mother’s Day Campaign where you lent money to mothers for their children’s education and the site send your mother a greeting card mentioning the good work that you are doing!

This is a book offering great insights into the world of online entrepreneurship, and is ideal for those wanting to study it as well as those wanting to create their own space in it. For the rest, it is an intensely satisfying experience to look ‘behind the page’ and involve ourselves more closely with it.

The Mountain of Light: Story of Kohinoor, biggest brightest diamond ever

A drawing of the original, uncut pride of India

The Kohinoor Diamond was one of the most coveted objects in Indian history, its romance and splendour unsurpassed, its form hidden in the mist of swirling tales. The Mountain Of Light by Indu Sundaresan is a history of the path traced by the 186-carat diamond all the way to the crown jewels in England. This is a true historical account, rendered fascinatingly by Sundaresan, who explains in the Afterword what parts of the book are based on real episodes and which ones are the embellishments of her imagination.

The first recorded account of the diamond comes from Mughal Emperor Babur, who received the stone from an Indian Raja. From there it moved to Persia and Afghanistan, where the name Koh-i-noor was bestowed upon it by Nadir Shah. Our story begins with Shah Shuja, deposed King of Persia, in a wrestling match with his companion Ibrahim, in the Shalimar Gardens, where they are living as “guests” of Ranjit Singh, ruler of the Punjab. Ranjit Singh has been promised the Kohinoor by Wafa Begam, wife of Shah Shuja, in return for the Shah’s freedom from imprisonment in Kashmir. How Ranjit Singh extracts the diamond from this woman of supreme intelligence is a tale that immediately charms the reader into the story. Ranjit Singh is the man who breaks the curse of the Kohinoor—that only a woman could safely possess it; no man could hold it and keep his kingdom. This man kept the Kohinoor for thirty years, and kept the British at bay, too. With his death came the annexation and the slow movement of the Mountain across the seas to another woman: the Queen of England.

The Kohinoor, after being recut in Amsterdam

From the first page, Sundaresan transports you far back in time, to fountains in pools with the base strewn with jasper, agate and carnelian “which created a glitter of colours under the water”, a minister with a set of false teeth made from ivory after he lost his own teeth in an attack, tent poles studded with rubies and emeralds and the Koh-i-noor itself—the stone that could feed the entire world for a day.

Sundaresan’s writing gives you the feel of watching an epic movie, so visual is its quality. From the British encampment fashioned in the style of Ain-e-Akbari to the scene of the Governor General and his sister stuck on an elephant that refuses to budge from the river even as it sprays them with water, every line flows fluidly. The emotions are refined with the same elegant hand, every chapter carrying a different set of characters and a different tug at the heart. In the latter half, the book changes scene and moves to England, with Dalip Singh, Ranjit’s son—who is in the care of the Logins and has accepted Christianity, being showered with a multitude of titles and favours by the Queen. In the end, though, rejected as a suitor for an English girl, he bitterly realizes that even though he’s Indian royalty, he’s “not good enough for a young British woman of little fortune and no pretensions to nobility.”

In the crown of the Queen of England

Although Sundaresan does not pepper the book with patriotism, objectively showing both sides, the darkness of colonialism and its deceitfulness is on full display. The Kohinoor, which is the connecting thread of the various fragments, reflects the fortunes of India’s royalty. At the very end, the Queen has the diamond recut and when Dalip holds it again, it’s been reduced to 106 carats from 186. “It is weightless upon my hand, its heft cut away…this is not a mountain anymore but a mere bump in the horizon…it isn’t the Kohinoor diamond…” So too, of course, the grand royals of India faded into oblivion, devoured by the British empire.

This book is a splendid work of art, a grave tale told with much romance and subtle meaning. You would take a long time to come back to reality.