‘small Big Bang’

‘Do or die’, this is what William Shakespeare said about the available choices in life. Drilling in, we find that Shakespeare did not include unsuccessful people in the category of doer’s. According to him, most of the people are dead. At the same time we need to accept the fact that these ‘dead people’ also were doing something, according to social standards. Should ‘doing’ be redefined? Myself for sure will say ‘yes’ because there are clearly two types of people, the first insisting on imitating successful people and the next who carve their own roads. It is those from the second group that Shakespeare called ‘doers’. Interestingly, it is people from this category who usually soar high in life. I think that the present generation is afraid of following individual insights, identifying own aptitudes and living by that. Imitating the most successful has become our popular strategy, not knowing that history never repeats at 100% accuracy. Once a mentor is reported to have advised, “Read something no one else is reading, think something no one else is thinking, and do something no one else is doing.” 

It was in August 2014 that Indian IIMs jointly released a book, ‘small Big Bang’, which contains detailed stories of thirty most successful Indian entrepreneurs. All these successful individuals could manifest what they intended. To them, doing was not peddling through the old much trodden tracks but attempting a strategy of their own everywhere. Global business skills were automatically flowing in. How can I forget another father story in which a son was advised, “It was Amateurs who started Google and Apple.” Yes, it was amateurs who established Microsoft and face book and it was a professional who built RMS Titanic. 

Sometime back, I remember to have read the story of a father remarking on his dream about his son. He said, “My dream is that my son decides what he wants to be.” This answer might appear quite odd to modern parents who have clear cut ambitions on their children. Ambitions and expectations are good unless they damage or distort the future of others, son or daughter. The young, with no earnings of their own, easily succumb to what others want of them and become what they actually never yearned to be. So what? A generation is built up around socially acclaimed professions and we find people terribly misplaced everywhere. We have cruel doctors and kind executioners, corrupt social workers and clean criminals, wealthy clergy and poor laity. Most people end up unhappy and pass away with a bad conduct certificate stating that this person never used his/her inherent talents. When shall we let others chase their dreams?

Joseph Mattappally