The Psychology of Corruption

The view that India is a society riddled with corruption and almost terminally crippled by it is a stereotype that is reinforced in the Indian newspapers on a daily basis. A brief glance at the front page of The Times of India newspaper, I can see stories of bribing of MP’s votes in a nuclear deal and army officers found guilty of a housing scam.   Evidence of the perception – and the stereotype of corruption the country appeared in comments by two Indian Supreme Court justices during a 2007 bail hearing of a former state chief minister who had been sentenced for violating the Prevention of Corruption Act of 1988, “The only way to rid the country of corruption is to hang a few of them from a lamp post,” the justice declared adding, “Everywhere, we have corruption.  Nothing is free from corruption. Everybody wants to loot the country”.

Is rampant corruption merely a question of basic human immorality, or is there something more complex that happens in our relationships with one another and the ways in which we derive our self-esteem? A hugely popular social sport in the elite clubs of Bombay is to chatter about the extent to which the various clubs are corrupt, especially, how much a large brown envelope under the table should contain in order to gain membership.

Imagine if you will, in a mahogany walled meeting room of one of these old colonial clubs, the all-male, elderly Executive Committee are having their quarterly meeting, when suddenly, a man barges into the room and begins a lengthy tirade against the committee.  He is accusing them of gross misconduct and corruption in the form of receiving bribes from contractors and of giving free club membership to members of the police to get them “on-side”.  The Chairman, visibly frustrated, censors the dissenting voice by having the man forcibly removed from the room.  What this dissenting voice has to say is effectively silenced.  The Chairman then adjusts his tie, and instructs everyone to turn to item 78 on the agenda - whether to invest in an additional swing in the children’s area, near the pool area.  Without exception, everyone in the room is struggling to suppress an array of emotions, including the Chairman who continues to pet his tie in the way a child might pet a small dog.

It is true to say of the executive committee that the dissenting voice is no longer among them; they are free from his presence, from his insulting laughter and his comments. But in some respects, nevertheless, the repression has been unsuccessful; for now he is making an intolerable exhibition of himself outside the room, and is shouting and banging on the door. More repression ensues as the security-staff are told to remove the man immediately.  Which after about 20 minutes, they do.

What this reminds us is that censorship and suppression never quite works effectively or compliantly. This is perhaps one of the most powerful teachings of psychoanalysis – that repression is rarely entirely successful.  That evening in the bar, the man who is dispelled from the room, along with fellow club members, are sipping their whiskey’s and begin to question the motives of the Chairman – “If the allegations aren’t true, why didn’t he let him talk?” says one person, adding “was he in on a deal?”   Of course, many others in the bar overhear the now animated conversation, the volume fuelled by alcohol so much so that a journalist is busy taking notes on his blackberry on the table behind them. Two days later, a news item appears with the headline “Corruption at One of India’s Elite Clubs”. 

But what of the expelled man who made the original accusations?  What happens to him now?  He is of course at home, not to be seen at the club, concerned whether the two police officials might be exercising the real price for their ‘free’ memberships, by hurting him or a member of his family, as the anonymous phone call suggested.  Meanwhile, the Executive Committee decide it is important that they have the right to permanently evict any member from the club in the future, should they feel that they aren’t “serving the interests of the club well”, whatever that means.  So at the next AGM, they propose an amendment to give the committee the powers to effectively dismiss any dissenting voice and essentially remove the members of their basic civil liberties.

Sadly in many working groups, dissenting voices are intolerable; to be silenced and or characterised as mad, in a manoeuvre to justify the expulsion of individual(s) and any accompanying more sinister acts that may ensue.  But why such terrorism towards dissention? Why such fear of thinking and speaking out?  According to Freud and I think this is a hugely neglected aspect of his work, many adults never acquire a true moral conscience.  In other words, what they have is no internalised prohibitions on their own behaviour, no true sense of feelings of guilt concerning how they behave or the consequences of their actions.  What these adults have instead is social anxiety. This social anxiety concerns firstly the fear of being caught doing the wrong thing in the eyes of one’s peers or social circle and secondly, a fear of loss of love which contains an inherent loss of regard by others.

So the herd-like behaviour, devoid of thinking, is essentially about a fear of not being loved.  Of course a person with a higher sense of self-esteem, of greater regard for oneself, is less likely to act immorally. After all, if your moral compass is strongly internal and of your own, you won’t need to receive your self-esteem from others or in a stack of bribes in quite the same way.

What this also implies in my thinking is the best way to deal with people who lack a true moral conscience is to “out” them, or ostracise them and increase the very thing they fear most, social anxiety.

Of course, one might also attempt to emotionally hold a sense of rage, as well as, empathy.  Easier said than done perhaps; after all, it is the poor who suffer most at the hands of corruption.

The 7 Gifts of Choice for A Happy New Year

“DO NOT BE CONCERNED  about such things as differences of nationality, of age, of colour of skin,” the carpet seller told me, “The only one difference that matters, is the closed heart or the open heart. When I sell my carpets, I charge a much higher price to those with a closed heart and cheap, cheap, cheap for those with an open heart.” The practice he taught me, to maintain an open heart, was to walk amongst the poor in the city, to make human contact, to connect without the dismissive act of simply handing over a few rupees. A blind man I encountered was begging with his hand out, taking his hand in mine, as we sat together on the pavement. He touched my head, slowly. A little girl I met spontaneously kissed my arms and I found myself spontaneously kissing hers. A wandering Sadhu and I held eye contact for what seemed like an eternity.

One day, when I returned to the carpet man, an American tourist was insisting that he buy a particular carpet hanging on the wall, proclaiming verbosely, stamping his feet, that he would pay any price, but to no avail, it was not for sale. My carpet friend explained to me that the man’s heart was very closed (if not his mouth) and the carpet would not be happy with him, “It will be good for him not to get his way,” he told me, “This way, perhaps he will make a little room for God in his heart.” He then poured more tea and another day passed as they always did, without me ever buying a carpet.

Most religions of course, call upon us to surrender to a higher power, to live beyond merely self-driven goals and the endless pursuit of trinkets, carpets, dramas and other worldly ideas that in our deluded way, we believe will bring us contentment and peace. In the Bhagavad Gita it says, “Who so foresaketh all desires and goes onwards free from yearnings, selfless and without ego – He goes in peace.” These were the words chosen for a remarkable and loving woman with whom I spent many hours of silent eye contact and laughter and who passed away this year. Whatever matter we discussed, she would either ask you to focus on gratitude or simply say, “God is great.” God bless you my dear friend and important teacher.

A Course in Miracles, (the path I follow) not unlike the Gita in some respects, reminds us that the first obstacle to peace is the desire to get rid of it. In the text, the ego part of ourselves is portrayed as a somewhat greedy adolescent, thrashing around, with endless self-centred desires to manipulate, control, stand-out from the crowd, get what it wants regardless of others, all of which fail to bring any sustainable happiness whatsoever. In the teachings of Jesus, who I confess I had a huge crush on as a child, the ego is essentially a revengeful character – if I don’t get what I want I’m coming after you. This ego of course, these desires, these yearnings, only exist in the mind, hence, why the traditions of mind-training are such a central idea in most religious practices.

In meditation, India’s finest tradition of mind-training, one is taught to observe, in physical stillness one’s mind, the antics of the adolescent ego and is various wailing demands for attention. A simple way to experience the utter insanity of your own mind is to sit still for about 20 minutes and simply focus on the movements of your breath, in and out. Notice what rubbish enters your mind, how the ego loves to inflate itself in grandiosity, self-pity and irresponsible mutterings that the world isn’t doing what you want it to do! The ego loves to complain about what it is not getting, rather than a firmer voice that asks if you are not getting, maybe you should ask how you are not giving. In the Buddhist traditions of non-attachment, including non-attachment to thought of course, I remember a teacher explaining to us, “Treat all your thoughts as guests at a dinner party, do not spend too much time on any one.”

The idea that in order to be happy, you need hair extensions, hair implants, a fake smile, a young attractive girlfriend, a fast car, drugs, diamonds, five apartments and bar in your living room that would shame the British Raj, are all merely thoughts that arise firstly in the mind. The biggest con of the ego, it’s favourite devise is that of comparison, the idea that if you have more than someone else, work harder, achieve more to run away from yourself, you will feel an elevated sense of who you are. Perhaps you do, fleetingly and can swagger for a moment as a winner for a while. However, such feelings are never sustainable, because deep down, you know that this happiness is fraudulent and merely based on destructive or distancing urges and a deep sense of not feeling good enough at all.  In short, you smile to the crowd, and cower in the mirror, if you dare look that is. What appears as a call for some change of things in external manifestations, is perhaps really a call for an inside job, a change that begins in the interior, in the mind. But changing the internal thoughts of matters regarding self-worth, one’s very ideas of what we need to be happy, requires reflection, being still, a rather ruthless interrogation of oneself and a commitment to peace. What a blessing though, our evolution is in our own hands! It means I can indeed to choose to change my thoughts, and indeed what I utter.  Or as Marianne Williamson, a teacher of A Course in Miracles puts it, the devils not out there in the world – it’s worse or better, depending on how you look at it - the devils in your own mind.

Many years ago, I was asked to give a talk at a New Year’s dinner hosted by one of the American Investment Banks. “On what precisely?” I asked my client. “Anything inspiring about the New Year,” he replied. So the topic I chose was the “The Seven Gifts of Choice.” These Seven Gifts I talked about are the gifts we give ourselves: (1) The willingness to consider that you do not necessarily know what is in your best interests, (2) That maybe there is a greater plan to events and occurrences that you do not understand, (3) Whatever you choose to do begins first in your mind, from either a closed or a loving heart, (4) Purification of the mind is always necessary, through meditation or contemplation, (5) To hold any grievance against another is like eating poison and hoping they will die, (6) Whatever shows up in your life that you do not like, take a ruthless inventory of how you yourself have manifested the problems you have, (7) The best gift you can give yourself is to live with gratitude for all the wonderful people and the gifts that have come your way on life’s journey.

Happy New Year!

   

Training Children to be Liars and Mimic Men

IF YOU WANT TO TRAIN WOULD BE ADULTS to become liars and manipulators, hit them on a regular basis as children, or at the very least, deny their emerging sense of reality.  This is one of the basic tenants of developmental child psychology. Personally, I am revolted to the core by parents who deem it perfectly accept to inflict violence on children. I cannot even begin to write about it without my body flinching.  I welcome a day when violent parents who think it is perfectly acceptable to hit their children, yet wouldn’t dream of slapping a misbehaving adult dinner guest, are themselves subjected to the highest form of penalty and punishment. This disclosure of my position regarding violence towards children out of the way, I shall continue, adding that there are many forms of violence towards children, not merely of the physical kind.

At Crosswords bookshop, in South Bombay, one of a chain of bookstores hideously branded yellow and black, rather  like a DIY warehouse, having finally located George Orwell’s Animal Farm in the wildlife section, I watched a charming small boy, about six years of age, leaping around, with a keen interest in a photography book on tigers.  Attempting to lift the rather heavy table-top book to show his mother, who was on her mobile phone, he dropped it on his foot and he began to cry.  His mother, bent down to comfort him and check that he was okay and nothing was broken. No that isn’t what she did; he was rewarded for his interest in nature, by being violently slapped twice across the back of his legs. 

In all my time in Bombay, beginning around 2005, I have not seen one slum dweller, one street person, one vagabond living under tarpaulin ever hit a child. It’s not that I haven’t looked. It may of course be that violence towards children by the poor is a much more secret affair, or an unwise image that may reduce the day’s takings from begging, or indeed that they don’t have the means to bribe their way out of any citizen protest.  I have seen however, rather too many moneyed mothers, dangling expense Western designer handbags, dripping in diamonds as though dressed for an Arabic karaoke night, behave in entirely animal-like and violent ways towards their children. 

This is not however, aggression that is entirely out of control. What is clear is that the majority of parents who physically abuse their children in this way, seem to have limits. They go only so far. Two slaps on the back of the legs is acceptable, three is not.  Most beating of children is within some bizarre and cruel personal register of what is acceptable.  Three bruises, is fine, four is not. Can give a vigorous slap across the head from a hand, but not a baseball ball, can poke the child with pencil, but not a meat-cleaver. There is much more calculating going on than first appears.

What all this has to do with creating lying adults is very simply.  The child comes into the world without any ability whatsoever to distinguish between his inner world (what’s going on inside him) and the external reality (what is going on outside of him). Achieving this awareness, this distinction, is a remarkable developmental achievement and a profoundly important one.  The capacity to distinguish the inner from the outer, is of course facilitated under the best circumstances, by the caregiver, primarily, the mother. One of the most important ways that parents help this come about is by mirroring the child’s mental experience. In a sense, teaching the child how to mentalise events, to think, to form their own understanding. So the good enough mother at Crosswords (not the one I saw), these moments of facilitation, would in some way reflect to the child what he has just experienced, perhaps something like, “Ouch, little Haresh, that must really hurt,” nicely entering into the world of the child, adding perhaps, “But we must run along now, granny is expecting us for tea,” maintaining parental authority and a reminder that others like granny have their inner world and feelings too.

When parents more consistently than not, deny a child’s experience, his thoughts, his feelings, or the actual reality of physical abuse, his experience of the world is invalidated. He learns how to be a fake, he’s had good childhood training after all, to wear a mask (hitting doesn’t hurt, isn’t real), to be strategic in relationship, rather than intimate (how am I going to make sure I don’t get hit again) and to be confused about his own sense of what is going on (this feels bad but mum says its fine).  Fundamentally, he has been deprived of developing a viable sense of himself, his thoughts and feelings. What this means, is the important line, as the child heads towards adulthood, between fantasy and reality, is not even made of sand, it barely exists, to the point that his internal cues are so vague, so undifferentiated that he will search to make sense, to make meaning in the reflections of others as a form of substitution. His thinking about things has been made illegitimate and thus his capacity to think for himself is likely to be retarded. Inevitably, as an adult he will have emotions that he can’t make sense of and many confusion. He is of course then, highly vulnerable to the influence of others, to mindlessly following the crowd, or flip-flopping between seeking approval here, then there. Winnicott, the British psychoanalyst called this phenomena the ‘false self.’   

This lack of an authentic self is rather humorously portrayed in Woody Allen’s film Zelig, with a character who quite simply takes on the appearance and behaviour of whoever he is talking to, whether it is a psychiatrist or the Chinese man in the shop.  Devoid of any real consistency, the false-self character cannot be true to himself or others because his compass, whether moral or otherwise, which developmentally for adulthood if all goes well will be internal,  is in fact external, in the hands of whoever is currently influencing him or whatever fantasy of identity is imagined. It’s not a huge leap to see how this may set the path of corrupting, corruptible citizen. What strikes me as the consistent pattern of the lack of authentic self in adult clients I see with such a history of gross parental neglect (although whether they can digest this is the case is a different matter), is a profound inability to be alone. Perhaps, one might surmise, to be alone, without the reflection of others, means to feel one does not exist at all. One such adult client, inclined to live in his world of pretend play, just as he had found comfort as a child, dreamed of doing all sorts of things with his life, travelling around the world, yet rarely did these manifest as external reality that would have afforded him some real satisfaction and relief.  As Winnicott put it, “Real milk is satisfying compared to imaginary milk,” as it always is, adding, ”The point is, that in fantasy things work by magic, there are no brakes on fantasy.” This brings to mind crashes, as well as brakes with the corrupt Indian pilots, allegedly found with forged CPL’s (Commercial Pilot’s Licenses) who didn’t in fact have any qualifications to fly so much as a paper plane. What is being forged here is not merely papers, but identity, a form of adult play-acting, with potentially horrendous consequences.

So what are the practical implications of what is being said here? As parents, in order to facilitate the development of healthy adulthood in our offspring, it seems rather all too obvious to say perhaps, that we must try to be truly constructive, to understand the thoughts and feelings of our children and not hastily dismiss them whether with language or a fist. It’s not enough for a parent to simply pay off the police when their fifteen year old son’s drink-driving is clearly showing early signs of alcoholism. Beneath the symptoms, we must dare to patiently explore the cause and what is probably, an unconscious cry for help or get outside help for the child. Of course, the difficulty with doing this, is that we have to face our own inadequacies as parents which maybe no easy task, especially for the parent with a fragile sense of self and self-worth.  One important point that I find myself invariably raising when I work with families, is that a wonderful way to deepen the everyday experience of love, is when a family can say to one another, “I love you, and I like it when you tell me about your day, and I don’t like when you don’t call to say you’ll be late.” What I am suggesting here, is that loving someone and finding certain behaviours okay and not okay are two very different things. Families, like businesses, need honest feedback loops, even dare I say in a hierarchical culture like India, from children to their parents, whatever age, so that everyone can grow and develop. A family of course, where behaviour is primarily strategic, i.e. goal oriented, rather than intimate i.e. love oriented, will find this a deeply challenging step to take, something that has to be both unlearned as well as learned.

It would be the highly irresponsible to underestimate the reality that in the city there is very little in the way of education for parents and rather poor feedback loops between teachers and parents regarding children’s emotional development. Urban India, perhaps naturally so, given its stage as an emerging world economy, rather energetically, focuses on a child’s excellence in tangible results, qualifications, grades and so on.  Understandable as this is, the emphasis on achievement can have crippling effects on the child’s emotional development, no matter how well intentioned by parents. Many of the parents I talk to whose children are at the elite private schools, particularly from European backgrounds, find the academic pressure on the children to excel, without true regard for their emotional development painfully foreboding, and worthy of leaving the city. Perhaps what stands out most in my work in the city, compared to other major capitals in the world, in fact whether in Mumbai or Delhi, is there is yet to develop a culture around parenting and child-rearing that is characterised as a learning journey in itself, where it is perfectly acceptable to discuss strategies for helping little Santosh develop, without an overbearing sense of shame, or parental inadequacy.  This I think, links to the excessive need, perhaps through insecurity, to be seen to know what one is doing as a parent (the performance of the false-self?), and it would seem, largely only to seek professional help when the child or adolescent is acting-out to such a degree that they are truly at risk, in the rising cases of anorexia in the Mumbai of children literally losing their lives in the golden cages.  Simply judging a child’s odd behaviour as stupid, out of control, without attempting to understand what it is meant to achieve, i.e. entering the world of the child, is perhaps one of life’s greatest, greatest cruelties.   To view a child’s distress, as simply some sort of karmic curse, (yes this happens, I assure you), rather than face-up to the fact that the child is being raised in an financially affluent environment, yet where there is the poverty of frequently absent, argumentative, highly neglectful parents, maybe be comfortingly and magically fateful for mum and dad (they aren’t responsible after-all), but thoughtless gross stupidity. Perhaps they might counter, it is their karma to be the terrible parents they are - a full-stop on any development and change - the curse of religion. Utter nonsense.

More than any other life activity, parenting will bring-up for all of us, memories, experiences, of our own childhood, the bad as well as the good, as I know only too well. I always tell parents, that the best we can hope for is to commit to evolve as parents and do a little better than our own parents.  The truth is, we can always invest time and energy just as we would going to the hairdressers, learning what it means to be a good enough parent, if in reality it is important to us. As a start, some of the best writers on children’s developmental needs are just one click away on the internet, the likes of John Bowlby, Donald Winnicott and indeed India’s Sudhir Kakar.

Sadly, India has only very recently made corporal punishment in schools illegal, and as with many laws in the country, it is extraordinarily difficult to implement and monitor. A recent study found that over 74% of children in Maharashtra state schools have experienced physical violence from teachers.  It is easy to dramatize the effects of physical abuse of children by quoting the numerous cases of suicide of children, particularly those reported following brutal treatment in schools. However, it seems to me that the fakery, the manipulation, the notion of relationships as merely as instrumental to achieve one’s own selfish gains, an inability to trust oneself, projected on to others, an excess of consumerism as a way of masking emptiness,  that potentially arises from the development of the ‘false self,’ poses an even greater challenge to India’s development. The country must invest more adequately in the education of teachers, a deeper understanding of the developmental trajectory of children, their psychological needs and the damaging consequences of physical violence. Personally, I believe educating teachers and parents, cultivating interest and learning in the exciting and remarkable world of children’s development is the No 1 priority for India’s development as a noble nation. Not worth hitting for, but certainly worth fighting for. 

Masculinity, Sexuality & Renaming the City Mumbai

CHANGING NAMES is of course an attempt to create an image, to bolster an identity, however illusory, simultaneously suggesting and negating certain affiliations. Several years ago, living in East Sussex in England, there seemed to be a flurry of name changes by friendly acquaintances who were followers of the hugging saint from Kerala, Amma.  Tracey originally from Basingstoke suddenly became Anoushka. Such new names, along with a bindi now on the forehead and an attraction to wearing loose-fitting baggy white clothes, signified the enactment of otherness, a sort of spiritual exoticism that separated them from the usual villagers, especially the rather trussed-up members of the Parish Council with their dull language, tweeds and wellington boots.  I was bizarrely dull by comparison, suited and booted, ready to catch the 6.20 morning train to the city. Of course those most challenged by the insistence that Tracy is now Anoushka, are her parents. “I’m sorry dear, I’m calling you Tracy and that’s that. It’s what I’m used to and it’s what I know you as.”

 Name changing, hinting at loss, or indeed hope, inevitably requires adjustment, the ease of which will of course depend on its constant performance, the reiteration in the written as well as spoken word and how meaningful it is to those required to articulate it.  It was November 1995, that the city of Bombay was officially renamed Mumbai, much to the consternation of many communities in the city. The government of India had finally acceded to the Maharashtra State demands, and the name of the city was changed on all official documentation and representations.  The state government, headed by Shiv Sena, and the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), argued that the renaming was intended to highlight the local origins of the city’s name derived from Mumbadevi, the local goddess of Koli fishermen, who originally lived on the islands that became the city of Bombay.  The “we” for which the Shiv Sena and the BJP claimed to speak for was the ordinary Marathi speaker. Significant minorities in the city, opposed the renaming on the grounds that Bombay’s cosmopolitan character should be reflected in its name, whilst others, hailed it as representing a positive decolonialisation of British Bombay.  

The leadership of the Shiv Sena, a movement that began in 1963, by Bal Thackeray, initially garnered support from the youth clubs (mitra mandales) and such places in the Marathi dominated areas of the City, by appealing to an aggressive brute-force machismo of the body, rather than that of the intellect, providing a sense of belonging and self-esteem to young frustrated men in the metropolis. The bedrock of the Shiv Sena brand is a forcefully masculine sexuality (think saffron robes a huge sword) in keeping with a thrusting urban centre that ridicules intellectuals and the Congress as effeminate and wet. Thackeray’s calls to “brothers, sisters, mothers,” energised hundreds of thousands of Marathi’s to “be proud,” and “to assert yourself.”  Leaving aside for one moment, accusations of violence, treachery, and murder, inflicted by Shiv Sena it’s important to understand how this operation of power works so effectively on a psychic level, in mobilising idealisation and commitment amongst the inhabitants of the city.  The leadership of the Shiv Sena, in the mid-1960’s, created a network of local “Shakha,” simple venues, in both middle class and low income areas of Bombay and Thane, a network of local welfare strategies providing assistance to those who were struggling with such things as a difficult landlord, corrupt officials or having problems with civic amenities

Much of Shiv Sena’s power came from Bal Thackeray’s motivational use of rhetoric in speeches aimed at such people, to stand-up for oneself, not to sit idly by and allow life to simply happen to you.  These are powerful leadership lessons in how to strengthen, at least a large part of a community’s sense of liberation and empowerment.   For the anti-authority, disenfranchised, anti-elitist under-class, the generations of bodies displaying their historic malnutrition, Thackeray’s highly public and aggressive style, gave them a sense of certainty, of absolutism that the city was in tough and firm leadership hands, a powerful authoritative fantasy of containing the city’s anxieties, that they could metaphorically take more space in the urban landscape. Unlike perhaps the Congress party, or indeed the British left in the UK, the Shiv Sena brought a vibrant sexuality to bear on political leadership, an understanding of the machinations of psychic fantasy, rather than a limp rhetoric of defeated victimhood and rational narrative that loses supporters, somewhere in the gap between the endless debating and dull rhetoric of ‘for’ and ‘against.’ Rational language - that uses facts to bolster debate, overused lacks of potency, often masking, excusing non-action and apathy, which clearly is not Thackeray’s style.  He uses a raw assertiveness of “Do it and do it now,” no explanation required.   His incessant repetition of statements (a strategy called “broken record” in leadership communication), his one-liners, provides a psychological sense of leadership determination and security.   His vicious attacks against Bombay’s elite heralded a confidence in the working man, by making his very lack of intellectualism, i.e. not being effeminate, a virtue and source of pride. 

 For many, the Shiva Sena felt like a powerful and dynamic force of energy, that was determined to unlock invisible elitist chains (even if it created new ones), the fantasy of a  powerful laxative against constipated bureaucratic systems, the dully wishy-washy leadership of some of the other parties, that gave the culture of the city the impression of one riddled with obstacles, as Suketu Mehta, author of the magnificent  book on the city, Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found, put it, a Bombay that always says no, rather than yes.  Do not underestimate, as I have found, to get anything done in Bombay/Mumbai, whether registering an apartment, opening a bank account, having a phone installed, getting a new gas cylinder, concluding any business matter whatsoever, resolving any interpersonal dispute, tolerating endless procrastination and failure to make any assertive decisions, a characteristic of the city that requires the absolute patience of a saint. Similarly, much time wasting is involved on expending vast amounts of energy talking-up various dreams, how wonderful it will be to do all sorts of amazing things, with an enthusiasm that borders on mania, only to dissipate as quickly as a popped balloon.  Somewhere in the gap between that fantastic idea and implementation, complacency and a sense of depression pollutes the already toxic air, “There’s nothing I can do, it’s hopeless,” is a familiar retort, or worse, a passive-aggressive distancing, the loud resonance of absolute silence and phone calls that are not returned.  English and a woman, I find it just deeply ill-mannered.  No matter how many times I am told, “Well this is India.” 

On a psychic level, any form of “Can-do,” that actually involves the rigours of follow-through, rather than tiresomely procrastinates, or simply dies in despondency, will inevitably appeal in a city where blockages and dead-ends are commonplace. Let’s face one very clear fact about Bombay: many of the inhabitants of the city, attracted by the Shiv Sena are desperately poor.  They are painfully diminutive in height, in weight, in muscle, in build, displaying the everyday reality of the collective body of malnutrition.  In an elevator, a lift boy will stand next to me at some 4 foot 9 inches, painfully thin, with tiny hands a frail body and feet that belong on a 10 year old, whilst I tower over him, my privileged 5 foot foot 9 inches, and with 3 inch heels to boot. We are a tragic comedy. Macho leadership, the law of the father, no matter how ruthless, the Shiv Sena seems to understand and appeal to the aching city’s psyche that longs for the rhetoric at least, that it acts and just damn well gets things done and says this is not right. 

This powerful leadership, in constructing a positive macho identity (often for the diminuitive body remember), inevitably reinforces itself by pointing out what it not, creating the idea of enemies in the Shiv Sena’s highly dramatic alleged targeting of South Indians, communists, “Blood-thirsty slum dwellers” or “Cunning Muslims.”  Thackeray’s style, arguably reminiscent of Hitler, provides a powerful combination of dictatorial and charismatic leadership, increasingly many fear, the future for not so much Hitler’s Jews, but Thackeray’s Muslims especially.  It is well known that Thackeray admires Hitler’s “Determination to oust anti-nationals from Germany.” Hitler’s rhetorical methods were of course, to dehumanise the other in a kind of medicalising language, as a cancer, a sickness.  It is clearly not helpful, nor in my view, rarely correct to think of any perceived enemy, whether indeed it is Hitler, or of course categories like the Jews, in merely non-human, animalist terms. This is of course what we are inclined to do, and enormously tempting, lazy indeed, even perhaps inevitable when we are subjected to hate and terror. When a group, or indeed an individual deliberately sets out to inject intense anxiety in others, it is highly likely we will lose our mentalizing capacity, to step back for example and think. Hate and anger are reduced by thinking. Thinking is reduced by hate and anger. We are in a bind. In a somewhat fearful state, we are inclined to disassociate, to shut down, or run. 

Tyrants like Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot created culture psychoanalysis terms “splitting.”  Not only are you either for or against me as the head-honcho, the world is divided into simplistic good and bad categories. What is more interesting perhaps, rather than the merely psychoanalysis of individual leaders, is of course the psychology of the group. How does it happen, and understanding this is vital in my view, do a group of people become so regressed, that they blindly accept any ridiculous propaganda and lies, in one massive group introject (swallow whole). Equally, what are we ourselves judging, whether a group of people on mass, or a single person, that may just be another introject? As psychoanalysis points out, the hint will be that our mentalizing function is absent. We may loath for instance, what we call “Suicide Bombers,” simply because we too are regressed in a group psychology, devoid of any real thinking about the subject, to carelessly name such people in this way,  rather than thoughtfully understand that the concept of  istishad, which is entirely different and is  indeed martyrdom in the service of Allah.  Dare we mentalise the perspective of the other? The profound difficulty of doing so described so beautifully in Nelson Mandela’s diaries, who made a difficult transformational decision, yes a loving decision, to live beyond hate, despite having every justifiable reason to do so.

If Marathi identity, is to be the new elitism of Mumbai that inevitably at the very least on a rhetorical level, will necessarily spit out other identities at the very least in language, the very cosmopolitanism of the city is under threat. It would I suppose for any party to be rather uncool and say we are the “short people” party. Yet, condone the Thackeray’s as much as you like and debate the rights and wrongs of their actions, but they understand and live every Harvard Business School edict on charismatic, assertive and transformational leadership, by fully focusing on the internal world, the collective psychology of the city’s inhabitants.  A lesson many leaders in India and elsewhere would do well to learn from and get out of their heads, into their bodies.

It’s quite right of course, in this name change of the city, to consider the sense of place for the elites of many communities, such as the Parsi’s, the Muslims, the Gujarati’s (and dare one add the British) who created Bombay.  One must of course, inevitably turn towards history, to attempt to make sense of how the name change emerged.  As I understand it, originally, Bombay was the territory of the Sultan of Gujarat, who was murdered and forced to give it over to the Portuguese. It would seem, no Indian rulers, whether Maharaja or Maratha, attempted to claim ownership of the soggy islands.  This wasteland of Bombay, was then given as the dowry by Catherine of Braganza, during her marriage to Charles II of England, fo the British Crown. The Gujarat’s were among the first people who moved to Bombay in pursuit of trade and commerce, partly, as the port of Surtis was getting rather crammed. The Parsees privately invested heavily in the development of Bombay as a port, as did the Bohra Muslims from Surat, which one might argue set in motion the process of the evolution of Bombay and its emergence as the financial capital of India.  Many of the extraordinary heritage structures of the city, schools, colleges, the stock exchange, reflect the diversity of this historical investment that arguably is rather negated in the symbolism of the word “Mumbai.” 

“Be careful writing about this name change,” cautioned a friend in the city, “The Shiv Sena is very powerful.”  The story of the Bollywood Director, Karan Johar, makes this point rather clearly.  In his movie Wake Up Sid, Johar was called by the Shiv Sena, to apologise to Raj Thackeray, for having a character in the film refer to the city as Bombay, rather than Mumbai.  Karan Johar responded to news reporters, who knows with what degree of gritted teeth, “I apologize if I have hurt anyone’s sentiments and have agreed to put a one-line disclaimer, stressing this right at the start of the film.”  Former MP Kirit Somaiya, claimed that the BJP was instrumental in the renaming of the City from Bombay to Mumbai, commented, “Nobody has the right to refer to it by the old name when it has already been renamed as Mumbai,” he said.  Raj Thackeray voiced his unambiguous authority on the matter by saying, “If any producer dares to rename this city and refer to it as Bombay, then my men will protest in typical MNS-style,” he warned.

Is there a wave of change for the city that is reflected in the symbolic change of name to Mumbai?  There have been riots and communal difficulties in the past, but perhaps not on such a scale as recent years, that makes many people concerned that it is no longer the city it used to be, that Mumbai is not like Bombay, implying that this is necessarily a bad thing.  Salman Rushdie, whose setting for many of his influential novels is the city, said, "The tolerant, open-hearted, secularised Bombay has gone. And I think this [new] Bombay is still interesting, it's still a great capital, it's still a huge buzzing metropolis. It hasn't lost that."

Inevitably, fears run deeply, that the city is becoming increasingly colonised by Hindu nationalist forces, claiming to speak for the ordinary Marathi person, or indeed the everyday elite. Personally, I find myself using both Mumbai and Bombay when talking about the city, for which I do not feel apologetic.   In the depths of the south of city, one hears the name ‘Bombay’ reinforced more often than ‘Mumbai’, travelling north, into the somewhat more youthful area of Bandra, ‘Mumbai’ is proclaimed with more frequency, then heading towards the district of Juhu, the heartland of Bollywood, well it seems rather irrelevant when the city is largely referred to as “Sin City” anyway. 

No matter how much Anoushka insists to her father that he calls her by her new name, she will always be Tracy and that’s what he’ll call her. Although I did notice when I last saw him that he asked if ‘Anoushka’ knew I was in the UK. Similarly, Mumbai will remain Bombay for many people, perhaps particularly so for the elderly, even if many have followed the Shiv Sena insistence that they change the appearance of their shop-front from “The Bombay Beauty Parlour,” to the “The Mumbai Beauty Parlour.” Some things, simple take time to transfer from the head to the body of the city. Thackeray seems to understand this, even whilst refuting its legitimacy and those that decry his leadership as simply ruthless, divisive to be feared and/or resisted, would do well to look a little closer, to mentalise, even if only as a powerful case study in transformational leadership, power of language that is straightforward and unambiguous.

   

When We Don't See Eye to Eye

AT MUMBAI AIRPORT, on several occasions, I encountered a thoroughly annoying immigration official.  He had a habit of spending an excessive amount of time, staring at each and every page of my passport, then occasionally looking up at me with a rather dour face, refusing it seemed, any real human contact.  The usual two minutes with this official, the high-counter separating our two worlds, was stretched out to what seemed like an eternity, but was probably in fact an irritating six or seven minutes.   He’d tilt his head to stare at the Hong Kong stamps as though lost in a daydream, change the angle of the passport to look at the South Africa stamp, and then ponder over the visa for Australia or somewhere or other. At one point I was convinced he was counting the rather numerous stamps for the Muslim country Morocco.  What was I to make of him behaving in this tiresome way? Was I a potential drug smuggler, a terrorist or some other such threat in his eyes?

In the absence of any explanation as to why he was doing this, he became in a sense what Freud would call a blank screen, ready for me (us) to project my own image, my fantasy, my creation and interpretation of this man. “Suspicious bureaucrat,” I thought more than once, reducing him to a popular category of Indian. “Don’t form judgements,” a higher, less self-centred part of me insisted for the better, “Be curious as to why he is doing this.”  Grudgingly, on about the fifth occasion, I asked him why.  “You are the only person I see with a passport,” he told me. “Who was born on the same day, the same month and the same year as me.  I will never see all the places in the world that you do. It was then, that our naked faces made eye contact. “I look at your passport, to see where you have been lately and imagine these places.” 

I felt ashamed. I also felt that disturbing ethical pang, a matter of human rights, of who gets to share at the table of world travels, in this moment of recognition.  I felt uncomfortable and yet nourished, although certainly not cosy in this proximity we shared. He was making an ethical claim on me.

This man of course, had up until this moment been simply a lazy invention of my own mind, kept like a stranger, neutral, at a safe murderous distance. The philosopher Emmanuel Levinas calls the way we de-humanise the “Other,” reducing them merely to a category such as bureaucrat, as I so shamefully did, or by race, gender, nationality or some other such thing, totalization. Before my eyes, immigration man came to life, his humanity restored, just like the image emerging in a Polaroid photograph.  Curiously, I now unthinkingly, without any effort, see every immigration official as potentially this man. For this important lesson in human contact, I remain grateful to the man who shared his humanity with me, and thus helped me regain my own.

At the same airport, after several days working pro-bono, where a group of us explored team strategies for preventing forest-fires in Rajasthan, a weighty Indian man, wearing a conspicuous amount of gold jewellery,  bashed his trolley with some force, into the back of my legs (raised with good old English manners, I was of course hoping for an apology). I was clearly blocking this man’s way, as indeed were the people in the queue ahead of me.  The second time he did this, politely, but firmly, I asked him to be careful.  His response was to shout, “Go home, you British don’t rule India anymore,” and promptly scuttled off in the opposite direction.  I was of course, like my immigration friend, dehumanised in this moment, collapsed into nothing more than a category of foreign rulers.  What am I to make of why this man behaved in this way?  What invention in my mind do I create of him?  Do I follow my lazy temptation, to impulsively write him off as some sort of self-centred Punjabi?  What might I say to him that would shake his perception of me out of this label that he chooses to define me by? What I would have to do of course to deepen our contact, break out of the box of confinement he has placed me in, to listen, to inquire, to connect, to share something about myself, in order to bring colour, to make my mark on the otherwise blank screen where he simply writes “colonial”.  In my imagination, I want to say to him:

I am a little bewildered by why you want to label me as some sort of foreign ruler.  This is not how I see myself, yet oddly I feel a hint of guilt when you say this, as though my Britishness makes me somehow complicit with the historical subjugation of the people of India.  How peculiar that what you say should evoke guilt in me? I sense I want to defend myself as though I am on trial for the sins you perceive committed by others from my homeland, and to say to you that I am not guilty. Am I guilty, asks a voice in the back of my mind. I maybe someone from Britain, but I am more than that I want to declare; I am also a mother of a beautiful girl who is striking in her care others.  Are you a father? I am a daughter of elderly parents for whom I feel the deepest love and respect. You are a son. 

I want to ask you what has happened, whether something has hurt you and that is why you are so agitated. I notice that you hardly breathe when you shout. And I want to tell you that when I grew up, as a child, in a rather affluent suburb, there was a park close-by with swings where I got to know and became best friends with a Punjabi girl, who came from a poor estate from the other side of a main road. My parents and I swept up the broken window panes after British racists smashed through their living room window. Is it my guilt that wants to say this to you? And I want to say that my friend and I, together, crossed more than one divide.

Perhaps you judge me not just for the colour of my skin, but because I looked so grubby with my wild unruly hair, having spent half the night bear tracking, or perhaps because I am a professional woman (and maybe you don’t like those, I judge) or maybe you were simply having a bad day. I cannot know unless you share yourself with me.  I want to say, I want to understand….      

            Levinas writes in his work on ethics, that “The tie with the Other is only knotted by responsibility,” and our responsibility begins by understanding the narrative, the version of the Other, beyond any simplistic invention that exists in the mind that may bear very little resemblance to the reality of the Other. Listening, the ultimate hospitality towards the Other, is exhausting, makes you sweat as Scott Peck describes in his book The Road Less Travelled.  It disturbs your rigid views.  We know, that distorted perceptions of the Other have real repercussions, sending a chill through whole communities breeding fear, human suffering and persecution across the globe.  It is not simply a matter of us being nicer, but possessed of more of our natural humanity, our curiosity our intelligence to assume that we long to join with others, and a knowing, an acceptance, that to feel disturbed is to be human. “I wish I hadn’t got involved,” a bid for distance, the pain of ethical pangs, confusion, disturbance.  Fear that real human contact is simply too intense, too alive.

To attempt to keep the other as the perpetual stranger will not rid us of inner disturbance.  In Stephen Covey’s book Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, he describes an everyday moment when he is sat alone on the subway train, and is joined by a man and his three unruly children.  His intolerance grows as the children noisily running up and down the carriage, until he finally blurts out to the man “Can’t you control your children?” The forlorn looking man replies, “I don’t know how, we just left the hospital two hours ago, their mother’s just died.” 

Levinas is an interesting philosopher of ethics of the encounter with the Other because he places firmly at the centre of liberal ideas an emphasis upon our responsibility towards the Other. What if the man in the car that you are waving your fist at and honking your horn at has just left the hospital? We may simply not know.  To make possible that the Other be more than simply a stranger in such encounters, creates a rupture in our cosy self-containment, we become a little un-glued by their interruption, not so much by an internally, logically dictated  command, but in Levinas’ s view, because we are actually compelled to serve the Other, that is a pre-cognisant part of being human.

I remember, some fifteen years ago or so, teaching a psychology seminar at the University on the subject of altruism.  Why, the class discussed, did some people seem to go more out of their way for others, what is it about these people, some of whom would even risk their lives for others? Interestingly, one of the key findings is that these extraordinary people didn’t think, they simply acted, doing the right thing without any sort of internal engineering of the pros and cons.       

The voice of the Other is of course at times the dissenting voice.  In Richard Hackman’s research, he analysed the black box data from flight crashes, finding that invariably there was a dissenting voice that predicted the problem that then ensued. The voice was ignored.  It was invariably from someone more junior in the flight crew, whose lowly status, bestowed fewer rights to speak and importantly, be heard, with dire consequences and not infrequently, the loss of lives.  Similarly, having been asked to conduct a sort of ‘what’s going wrong’ exercise for a Swiss bank, that involved listening in face-to-face meetings, as an outsider, to the opinions of their staff around the globe, I presented my findings to the board in Zurich. I gave them one flip-chart page with the image of a bomb about to explode. I told them that in my view, their entry into the U.S. market, would fail for two reasons.  Firstly, it was based on a form of underdog envy of the American firms, that created a psychological swing between grandiose beliefs in the bank’s collective ability and a profound sense of incompetence and secondly, a lack of actual skill, or understanding of the way the U.S. market works and a viable strategy.  Sadly, I was both unable to influence them and my predictions proved to be rather accurate. Bang, almost. One of the board members, a year or two later told me that, “If you’d been a man, they’d have been listened to you.”

        I’m rather inclined to think that we are never able to shirk our  responsibilities to others, whether the ethical pangs come in our waking hours, or indeed take us hostage to insomnia.  Perhaps our sleeping pills, our anxiety drugs, are really an attempt to numb the sense of persecution we feel, the very weight of our deep seated awareness of our ethical obligations towards others. Only, let’s be clear, the persecution is coming from ourselves, it’s an inside job. We keep others at a distance so we don’t get unhinged, confused, or overwhelmed. But what is the alternative? Levinas once wrote that you cannot murder someone, if you have to look the person in the eye.  Perhaps therein lays all the answers.     

Shedding Tears At The Movies: What Are We Really Crying For?

BOLLYWOOD CINEMA  produces a vast outpouring of escapist films that focus on the experience of the Indian who moves abroad, seeking fame and success, invariably to return to the preferred Indian homeland of family values.  The films I am curious about, are those that focus on the experience of the outsider (of which I am one of course) who comes to live in the Bombay; how does this film capital of India, portray the city on screen, indeed the country and her legendary hospitality towards the stranger?

Typically, in the early sequences of these outsider in Bombay films, we meet a decent, if rather naïve soul, who arrives in the city from a village or overseas, with a small suitcase and bountiful optimism.  The cameras locate us in the city, through shots of railway stations, black and yellow cabs, bustling anonymous crowds, the inevitable Gateway of India scene, mobs, gangs and the people who live on the streets.  Bombay is invariably gazed upon by the newcomer as a place where anything is possible, in what appears an exciting cauldron of diversity, if somewhat disorderly metropolitan life. The Indian doctor from London, in the film Aamir, arrives looking rather dashing in his elegant Western suit, with a confident air about him as he struts through Mumbai airport.  Within moments, in a dialogue with an immigration official, he quickly learns the harsh reality of the city’s prejudice against Muslims and a tale of the kidnapping of his family and terrorism ensues, that results in his death.
In Kalyug (2005), we meet Renuka, who arrives in Bombay from Jammu in Kashmir.  Looking a little lost and forlorn at the railway station, as she waits patiently, sitting on her suitcase, her prayer beads in her hands as she recites the mantra Aum Namah Shivaya, (signifying she is indeed a Hindu not a Muslim).   Of course in true Bollywood girl-meets boy form, she falls in love.  Her affects are towards a family friend, Kunal, whose father, a Hindu pundit, was killed in an all too common Bombay train incident, a refugee who once fled to the city from terrorists in Kashmir. Renuka’s happiness, is as short-lived as her marriage to Kunal, when she discovers a ruthless pornography racketeer, has secretly filmed the couple’s love making on their wedding night and made it available on a website called indiapassion.com.  She takes her own life, the degradation quite simply too unbearable for her, by throwing herself from a balcony at the police station to her death. We later learn that the pornography ring is headed up by a woman called Simi, a monstrously calculating character, (a bit of a drag queen looking character in a black gown and negligee), who simply measures the benefits of Renuka’s death, in terms of the improved ratings for the website, thanks to the press publicity.

If there is a psychological theme across all the movies we watch, it must surely be  that they represent and negotiate some sort of loss for us– loss of the people we love, loss of innocence, loss of hope, loss of spontaneity, loss of freedom  - and thus enable us to vicariously perhaps, negotiate our own psychic difficulties with such feelings at a safe distance. There are some fabulous Bollywood films that tackle loss in a highly dramatic way, such as Kal Ho Naa Ho, Mohabbatein and Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehan. John Bowlby, perhaps the world’s leading expert on the psychological dynamics of loss, warned us, “There is a tendency to underestimate how intensely distressing and disabling loss usually is and for how long the distress and disablement commonly lasts.”  Perhaps the unconscious pleasure at the movies is our working through of this, the vicarious and painful work of mourning. By forming conscious or unconscious identifications with the film characters – their struggles perhaps becoming ours, or our own projected onto them – there is the added pleasure that movies often offer neat wish fulfilment and sturdy conclusions, somewhat more elusive in our everyday lives.

The widowed husband in Kalyug negotiates the painful loss of his love and their life together, by embarking on a journey of retributive justice, to Zurich (interesting Switzerland often pops up in Bollywood cinema as a place where couples dance happily around trees) to seek out and overthrow the pornography racket that led to her death.  By this time, we learn he has no other choice, as the Mumbai Police are corruptly involved in the pornography ring.  Kunal tracks down Simi, the  wicked female boss of the pornography business, who we learn is actually involved in the human trafficking abroad of poor Indian girls into prostitution. Gradually, Kunal forms a mutually empathic relationship with the bosses own daughter, Tanya and together, they expose and bring down this hideous sex industry.  In a twist, rather like Arthur Miller’s play All Our Sons, (although in this case all our daughters) Tanya posts footage of herself and her lesbian girlfriend’s love-making on her mother’s pornography website.   Simi, horrified at what her daughter has done, demonstrates her lack of empathy for anyone other than herself, typical of what we would term a person with a characterological disorder (think of a charming sociopath), incapable of dealing with any loss whatsoever, whether it is her loss of status, of her daughter, or importantly, her image in the eyes of others.  She  turns a gun on Kunal, as though attempting to murder the very reality she has of course created.  But she fails, Simi, the monster, is shot dead, by her own daughter.

Freud, and here I am not sure I agree with him, seemed to suggest that there should be an ending to mourning, some sort of completion, in order to alleviate the onset of a state of melancholia.  Kunal seems wiser, to know his loss will be with him as much a part his existence as the limbs of his body.  But what does he do with that loss, what sort of creative conversion of pain might he be capable of?  It is to the values of his homeland of Kashmir, to the life priorities that his father has bestowed on him through his lived example of caring for others.  At the end of the film, Kunal tells us that even exacting revenge has not brought him peace. That he now truly understood what his father meant, "that the only way to remove pain from your heart, you must remove the thorns from the feet of others who are suffering.”  So, he takes one of the girl he has helped  escape from the degradation in Zurich into his care, in the City of Bombay, the place where he lost the very two people, he loved the most, his true love and his father.

The innocent hopefuls, in these films, in the midst of dirt, confusion, contamination, frequently find themselves exposed and vulnerable in a city at the hands of corruption, exploitation and manipulation,   the dark side of the City’s mantra, “Anything is possible.” Understandably, they are unable to read the cross-cultural and codes, the darker intentions that are inclined to assume everyone is an opportunity to exploit, beneath the surface of appearance of kindnesses.   Of course, the sort of vulnerability for women, or perhaps more accurately femininity in this City is horribly apparent. The hopeful’s nemeses, the dream-destroyers, come along, in various forms: the cruel villain, the feckless charmer, the out for himself chancer-come-gamesman. The police and authorities are often portrayed as collusive in crimes, in injustices and as villainous as the worst protagonists. The City, is therefore commonly portrayed as a place where there is nowhere to turn, no place of safety, no adequate rule of law, merely a dark hidden anarchy in the hands of the greedy and immoral, for whom human suffering accounts for little. It is a city that embraces the masculine and expels the feminine.  The dynamics of all these things, the newcomer to the City only learns through wretched experiences. The title of the film Kalyug, might been interpreted as the Hindu myth, as the age of Kalyug, that  speed, the enemy of reflection that will spread fantasy with such velocity that humans, in their pursuit of escape, will ultimately destroy themselves. Masculinity, out of control.

In Ram Gopal Verma’s recent film, This is not a Love Story, the innocent naive female arrives in the City, gazing at film posters of Aishwarya Rai with her fantastic ambitions to become a film star. After many failed auditions with odious film-directors, merely interested in exploiting her innocence and having sex with her, she finally succumbs, collapsing into the city’s presumed norms of how to make it in the film world.   Her husband, on finding the Director in her bed, impulsively murders him. Allegedly, the film is based on a current legal case in Bombay, the results of the trial remain to be concluded.

Of course the hopeful who comes to the psychologist’s consulting room, perhaps wishing to create a more comprehensible  arrangement of words to represent what they feel, is often living in an urban void of empathic company, willing to care enough and take the time to listen without judgement, or crass instructions and prescriptions.  In the urban space, there are many beautiful watches, but often little time. The human urge for reparation is of course, then inevitably thwarted without true empathy.  Kalyug is an exceptional film, for the depth of the empathic voices and states, which is set-up early in the film, when Kunal’s lawyer, sits alone with him, (think camera rolling slowly) and gently leans forward and simply asks him, “Tell me all about you..”  Not a Love Story, on the other hand, jars through the very absence of such compassion, its portrayal of ruthless manipulation and self-interest, yet you know the camera, even if the characters are not, is compassionate. The film is effective and haunting for these very reasons.

Music, the ancient tonal sounds of India, the reverberations, the echoes of wailing and longing, is one of the most delightful elements of the more sophisticated Hindi and Bollywood films. If you don’t like this music, you won’t like Hindi films.  Like the depths of the wordless unconscious, the true home of our dreams, it connects us with an earlier knowing of ourselves at a visceral bodily level, the place where all young feelings begin and live-on.  Perhaps this is why we sometimes cry at the movies, our bodies understand our loses, even if we do not dare to risk finding the words to explain what is going on in ourselves. That pre-verbal body-hint is perhaps the young child part of ourselves willing us to deepen our understanding of what it is we are mourning for.  Is it singing of our loss of a treasured one, of our innocence, or simply a loss of our capacity to care?  And how do we lament the losses we have inflicted on ourselves, in our rush to focus on less worthy investments? 

In the U.S. there are therapists who I gather do some sort of movie therapy.  I imagine you explore not only what sort films you invest time in and perhaps why, but what specific elements of a movie grab at your emotions, at that young bodily self of yours. Is it when the lovers’ part, or someone is abandoned, or do you find yourself drawn to moments of reconciliation? Is it the act of retribution of injustice, or  perhaps a moment of awakening, when a character learns the extent to which they have been hurt and manipulated?  Is it when father and son, finally make amends and learn to love one another more fully?  A Bombay client once told me he didn’t watch Hindi films, saying, “They just make me cry.”  All the more reason to watch them, to know what needs comfort and attention one is aching for, beneath the tears.

Lately, I notice I feel unusually emotional when a character in a film, kindly and sensitively attends to the heart and soul of another, for no other reason than good old fashioned decency and respect. I don’t need a therapist to explore why I am drawn in this way.  This is a city of excessive masculinity - by women, as well as men - of performative fakery, strategizing and manipulating of people, that seems increasingly to makes homeless the very heart of the India I love, her femininity, her care for others and her tender intimacy.  These films, it seems to me, are essentially tender portrayals of how the city is killing-off the real foreigner – femininity itself. Kunal, in Kalyug, we know by the end of the film, will not allow that to happen to him, however painful that might be.

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My Top Ranking Leadership Hero in Mumbai

            Extraordinary acts of leadership come from many sources, rarely in my experience, just from those with the most positional power. Over the years, any leadership coach is likely to develop a private little book, at least in the mind, of their top ranking leaders and today, I want to share with you about my top of the list guy in Mumbai.

But first, imagine for a moment, you are working in your team and after hours of arguing and debating, you finally agree on your plan of action. Then suddenly, from left-field, the CEO does a complete turnabout, reneges on the decision and starts to dictate an entirely different game-plan. What are you likely to do? Will you speak up, will you be silent, or will you do something else?

The psychoanalyst might suggest that it is worth exploring how as a child, you dealt with such turn of events, say at a family mealtime. What this hints at, is the unconscious link between your first team, i.e., your family, its unique culture, are likely to shape your leadership, especially in group moments. Back in your family or origins, did you for example, accept the injustice that your brother took all the cakes, perhaps because you felt you had no choice? Or did you stand up for your rights? Or even yell the house down, or perhaps appear to accept things and act out your anger a little later, in a perverse brand of sabotage, like putting a frog in his bed or something. For those who experienced their parents, i.e. authority, as figures you can never please, whatever you do, how is a child did you cope?  Wander off alone perhaps withdraw at least in a visceral form of agitation even you mouth stayed firmly closed. 

What you actually do now as an adult of course is what matters, being (hopefully) less entangled in the physical, childlike dependence and dynamics of authority, depends of course on the freedom with which you navigated your way towards adulthood.  This involves those dreadful moments of awakening that you don’t always get your own way that you will like the rest of us, suffer losses. In psychoanalysis, this is understood as the “depressive position,” the difficult negotiation of loss of childhood, into adulthood and the trials and tribulations of independence.    

I firmly believe that the challenges of group dynamics, ranging from the small business meeting, to the nation level negotiations, the challenges come from what is evoked in our first group in life, when we were very young, and in our new group, our desperate need to belong.  It seems the world of groups is divided in two: we are wonderfully creative, truly present in the moment, or somewhat back in that family mealtime and most of us swing between the two, neither of us entirely one or the other.

 A few years ago, observing a team like the one I described earlier, just as the CEO did is about-turn, I watched as the largely passive group of men, became utterly silent and pensive, jaws locked tight, as if the headmaster were stood in front of them with a threatening cane. Then finally, the regional head of Asia, who over the years became quite a hero-leader of mine, rose slowly to his full 6ft height, his chin reverently downwards and quietly said, "Just because my lord is not acting as a Lord, does not mean a Samurai should not act like a Samurai."

Immediately, the red-faced CEO apologised and returned to his earlier commitment as agreed. No dull language with all the creativity of a motorbike handbook, no more endless debating and time wasting. The verbal sword was on the table, a line was drawn. What is interesting about his man, as is with all higher levels of leadership, is that his actions were thoughtful, yet entirely based in the particular moment. He did not speak with his mind turned towards the next financial bonus round and what he would or not get.  He did not wonder if he might lose his job, he just powerfully stayed connected to himself, trusting, as I know he does, in a higher faith that always supports truth and purpose.  

When I shared this story with my teenage daughter Emily, that evening, she simply said, with a total lack of surprise, “Yeah mum, sounds like he’s not for sale,” as she continued to eat her Spaghetti Bolognese. If only in business, people would learn to speak as freely as kids. Interestingly, though, timing is again an important element of her response.  In a sense, she is saying “not for sale right now.” The research on higher levels of leadership is bewilderingly contradictory.  On the one hand it is saying “now”, this moment and on the other, thinks beyond this moment, beyond even your own lifetime perhaps.

When I was teenager, the targets of my hero worship, were David Bowie and the activist/playwright, George Bernard Shaw. Both were plastered on the walls of my bedroom. David and George, an odd pair you might think, but on reflection now, I see the common thread; both willing to do something unexpected with words, to create a new story, create movement in the cul-de-sacs of commonplace speaking. Take these Bowie words for instance (it’s Changes, so sing along if you know it): So I turned myself to face me/ But I've never caught a glimpse/ Of how the others must see the faker/I'm much too fast to take that test. Or George Bernard Shaw’s humour: Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve. 

My top ranking leadership hero in Mumbai, head and shoulders above all others is Madhav Subrahmanyam. Madhav is from Bombay, and was recently voted by the UK Guardian newspaper, as one of the top 50 individuals in the world, most likely to save the planet. This leader, for the last 7 years or so, has been working relentlessly to protect the tiger from complete extinction. 100 years ago, there were around 100,000 tigers; today there are less than 3,500. As Bittu Sahgal, one of the leading environmentalist’s in India puts it, “By protecting the tiger, we are protecting India's forest, and we end up protecting our water sources. It’s not just that we say there are no tigers and if there were tigers that would be fine, it’s not that. It’s symptomatic of something much larger, it’s across the world.” The main threat to the tiger, according to Madhav, is humanity: “If humanity will only be humane to a human, then we are using our brains in the worst possible way. Instead of helping other species, we are only trying to advance ourselves. We are encroaching on other species and destroying them.”

Madhav is 13 years old.

As with most extraordinary leaders, not only do Madhav's actions stand out from the crowd, but his use of language, his way of speaking makes you alert, engaged, you just want to listen. You want to know what is coming next, when he speaks, it's vibrant, alive, just like the words of our Samurai man, earlier in this piece it is the sound of transformation.

Madhav started his fund-raising when he was about 8 years old, by first polishing shoes, washing babies (“No nappy changing please,” I remember on his signboard) and arranging flowers, for a few rupees. Compelled by a passion to do more, he went on to start the Madhav Tiger Fund. Encouragement and good quality attention in Madhav’s life, came from Bittu Sahgal (whoops, add another hero to my list), who is also editor of Sanctuary Magazine and runs the educational programme Kids For Tigers, where the two met. Madhav was concerned, whether poachers or the people who protect the animals, the wildlife wardens, get paid more (Poachers sadly of course.) “It’s obvious,” Madhav says, “If there is more money in poaching, that’s what people will do.” So to rectify this, Madhav raises money, and puts the funding towards the schooling of the wildlife warden’s children and providing financial incentives when the wardens go the extra mile to protect specific wildlife.

When Madhav was 9 years old, he played a key role in our film Inside India’s Forests, produced for the Conservation Action Trust in Bombay. The gang of us who made the film were Lizzie de Planta, Pavan Sukhdev, Debi Goenka, Bittu Sahgal and I. Madhav had just raised about 15 thousand U.S. dollars, from making and selling tiger quilts with his mother.

The importance of how the effects of such early attachments in young children’s lives create the sort of adults we become was the subject of a week-long conference at UCLA. Amongst a sea of scientists and psychologists, the Dalai Lama addressed us on the importance of love. In response to asking the audience if there were any questions, a bright young girl, aged about 10 years old I guess, asked him ”Why are you so happy?” He replied, “It is simple, I had a very nice mummy.” The other heroes who deserve our respect are of course, Madhav’s parents, who with enormous dedication have nurtured their son to become a person who truly lives beyond merely his own self-interest, for all species not just humans. His mother, Pavitra Rajaram’s parenting philosophy is as clear as her son’s sense of purpose. She says:

When children see things the way nature intends them to be, they understand that

that's the natural state and that is something as parents we can do very, very easily. Don't take your children to the zoo, don't show them animals behind bars, don't take them to the circus and see elephants and lions jumping through hoops. That's not the way nature intended them to be. Take them to the forest, show them the trees…

Whatever is shaped in childhood, largely by us parents, is our ultimate legacy to the future of this planet. In the boardrooms of tomorrow, we will either have adults with the courage to do the right thing, and stand by deeply held beliefs, knowing what those might be of course, or those for whom my daughter would say, are simply “For sale.” If our children learn from us, that all they need to do, to get what they want, is demand like a toddler, to ignore the views of others, whether it be a person, a tiger or an ant; that is perfectly normal to simply buy whatever they want, or mindlessly destroy something else in order to get it, whatever species that maybe, human or otherwise, we ultimately have put our planet up for sale. Children are oddly wise, they pay attention to what we do, not what we say.

And yet, there is Madhav and others like him, who have a profound sense of personal identity, a strong compass of right and wrong to help him navigate through life's grey areas,  from strong loving attachments with  others, rather than merely towards possessions and other kinds of ownership. There are also many children, who simply need the care of others to flourish in thw way Mahdav has.  Who knows where his incredible passion, his care and his determination will lead. In an interview for Sanctuary magazine, Madhav says, “I want to make an impact on the world’s carbon footprint by working actively to reduce it. I want to do this by making changes in my own life and using my voice to help others make the change too. I want to be a director and use film as a way of exploring and communicating my thoughts and ideas.”

Bittu Sahgal, Madhav’s mentor, has honourably dedicated his life not only to protecting nature and educating children. Advising a young child who was concerned about deforestation, he encouraged her to stand-up and speak, saying that the trees "Simply do not belong to the adults who cut them down.  Its like adults are stealing your pocket money, or your school bag, or anything else that belongs to you, just because they are more powerful." Most importantly, he truly listens to a massive proportion, literally 100’s of 1000s of India's young people, encouraging and really empowering them to have a real voice. Many of whom started out in the Kids for Tiger Club and have gone onto some fantastic occupations in the journalism,  film, and conservation.  

When Madhav’s mother says, we need to consider, “When children see things….,” she reminds us to think deeply about what our kids are actually exposed to, what they feel, what they think. Do our urban children merely see shopping malls, computer games, manicured gardens and expensive hotels, or are they actively nourished by natural living systems, by rivers, by forests and thus truly begin to learn the interconnectedness of all things? What happens right now with leaders of the future will ultimately shape who they become, as well as, their capacity to care for others and all our species. This is the peculiar reality of acts of transformational leadership: it is both completely in the present and yet into the future, beyond one’s own lifetime. 

Perhaps this is why Madhav can teach us that saving the tiger actually means saving ourselves. That makes him my leadership hero.

 
Resources for this article:

There is a great animation about India, the work of Madhav & Bittu by Claus Lundin on youtube, go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qN9S1JVQzAQ

Sanctuary Magazine Asia, go to: http://www.sanctuaryasia.com/index.php

Kids for Tigers, go to: http://www.kidsfortigers.org/

Conservation Action Trust, go to: http://www.cat.org.in