My Chacha’s Sweet Tooth
My Chacha, Dr. Nityanand, passed away at the end of January, aged 99. When we reached his home in Lucknow, his body was laid out on the floor of the living room. I touched his feet, lit an agarbatti near his head, and sat with my cousin for a bit.
In the dining room, the cook asked whether I would like breakfast, or tea. No, I shook my head. “I think I’ll have some mithai”, as I noticed the cardboard boxes stacked on the trolley near the kitchen door.
I didn’t see her reaction, but my own sensibilities processed what I was now doing. Sweets mark celebration, or an auspicious occasion, while we were here at the passing of a dearly beloved uncle. Chachaji was a highly respected scientist who had inspired three generations of drug research, and deeply influenced drug policy and pricing in India. We stood at opposite ends of the economic policy spectrum that went from state control to free enterprise, and had spent scores of hours debating our views. But like his father before him, Chachaji always treated my views with respect and consideration, even if they didn’t alter his opinion a whit.
And then there was mithai.
For decades, Chachaji traveled to Delhi several times a year, spending so many nights a year with us that the guest room was referred to as Chachaji’s room. On the way to Lucknow airport, he would stop at a shop that was his seasonal favourite, and carry us a box of mithai - the softest kalakand, the malai ki galauri to which he introduced me, til ki patti layered as fine as parchment. After dinner, whether anyone else joined us, or not, uncle and nephew would open up the box, and savour what lay inside.
Even when Chachaji stopped traveling, the tradition continued - when his daughter Soniya came to visit, she carried a box of mithai that he had specifically instructed,
“Stop at the Chowk shop and pick up the til laddoo for Mohit.”
And in his last years, whenever we went to visit him in Lucknow, my cousins would open up a new delight.
“We sent for this amla ki barfi for you to try”, as Chachaji beamed on.
Which is why I ate a piece of mithai on the morning of my Chacha’s cremation.
Which is why my eulogy at his memorial service was about sweetness, not greatness.
Soniya handed me a box of mithai as we left for Delhi. The pain in her eyes was deep and moving, but there was also the hint of a twinkle, of understanding that this is how I would like to remember her father, my Chacha - with the joy of sharing one of life’s most simple pleasures.
Decision Fatigue
Two days ago, I was gifted an iPhone Pro, a memento for serving several years on the board of a company.
“That’s a generous gift”, my son remarked when I texted him for advice.
Advice, because I use a One Plus phone, which runs on the Android operating system, and I wanted to know how much friction there would be in shifting to the Apple operating system, the iOS. What would be the gains, I was wondering, of migrating to a top-end phone.
A Whatsapp group to which I belong has several geeks, and I reached out to them for advice, as well. The jury is still out, certainly in my head, but as I view the gift, still unboxed, I’m also thinking about cognitive load.
All decisions make a demand on brain processing, and mine is certainly limited. Here I am, toddling along quite happily with my mid-market Android phone, which integrates quite sweetly with my equally mid-market computer running on Google Chrome. Now temptation drops into my path with an Apple - no biblical allegory intended here. And now I’m spending time on figuring out how to deal with this gift. The question pops up, uninvited, between a weekend equity strategy review and a visit to the gym; between a quarterly business review and dressing for a family wedding.
As decisions go, this is not particularly onerous, but it set me thinking about the cognitive loads we take on, the number of trivial decisions on which we expend brain power. And about the delicious irony that this particular dilemma owed itself to Apple, fathered by Steve Jobs, who famously reduced decision fatigue by wearing a black turtleneck sweater, blue jeans, and New Balance sneakers every day.
In memory of Jobs, and much to my wife’s chagrin, I wore my signature white churidar and white kurta to her niece’s wedding, bending to its celebratory nature by swapping my down vest for a tailored woollen Nehru jacket.
Yesterday’s Heroes
At the self-same wedding, I spent time with an older gentleman, by the name of Michael Albuquerque. We had been to the same school, and college, separated by some 15 years. He went on to Oxford, and returned to India, to work in the corporate sector.
“Like me, though I didn’t go to Oxford. Which company?”
WIMCO - Western India Match Company. While we traded names of people we had known at Wimco, I recalled how it was once a coveted employer, one of the exemplars of the box-wallah culture, which drew its managers from the best-educated young men of the time.
I remembered an encounter with the Managing Director of another box-wallah firm, the redoubtable Metal Box, which dominated the market for tin cans, which contained everything from pineapples in syrup to the Dalda and baby-food I sold for my first employers, Hindustan Unilever. By the time I met the Metal Box honcho, I was purveying a different product, the pioneering snack food, Crax, contained in laminated plastic pouches.
“Are you thinking of diversifying into laminated packaging?”, I asked Mr. Puri.
“You mean plastics?” he scoffed, “that’s baby stuff.”
Real men deal with metal… We know how that went - up in smoke, like matches.
When I study the equity markets, and research companies for investment, I don’t think I ask this question often enough - how many of these businesses will be rendered irrelevant by new, more relevant technologies around the corner? Change, when it comes, is rarely triggered by incumbents, who scoff at the infants waiting in the wings. And the biggest fortunes are made by those who drive change, or invest in it.
Metal Box did not lead the shift into plastic laminates, just as IBM didn’t lead the move into personal computers, leave alone mobile phones, which are - at heart - versatile and ubiquitous computers. Legacy auto manufacturers are trying to catch up with Tesla, and CD sales long ceded market share to Spotify.
Coal will yield to renewables, and hopefully nuclear; bank branches to mobile phone apps and fintechs; air conditioning to heat pumps. You can make your own list of shifts, current and future.
But the dominant thought triggered by my conversation with Mr. Albuquerque is this, when you hear a corporate honcho say, “Our business is here to stay”, shake your head vigorously and say:
“Not if you think so, it ain’t!”
Sweet !
Hey mohit ,
Whenever I read your post there’s something that I try to relate to or learn from your experience… and this week it’s the decision fatigue . While I am trying to focus on this one thing in my life right now the limited ability of my mind to focus just on that has made me let go of so many unnecessary “online research” we end up doing for hundreds of things ….
Mohit when you look at young start ups do you focus on any particular sector you have conviction on for the next decade or you rather focus on that start up regardless of the sector they r in ?