Category: Letters from SG

Letter 8 / 3 Nov 2018. On Cricket.

This is an edited version of a letter than I sent to a closed mailing list. I try to write one everyday to a select set of people. Should you want to get one in your mailbox, please do let me know. The first letter is here. A complete archive is here.
So, I played cricket today. Properly. Bowled, batted and all that. Must have played after a year. And back then, about a year ago, when I played, I would’ve played after decades. With a S. More than one. Serious.

Here are the things that I take away from the experience. Lol. Experience 🙂

A. I enjoy physical activity. I love to move around.
And contrary to what people close to me believe, I am not inherently lazy – its the heat that has made me lazy. And I hate wearing shoes or too many clothes. If I could live in a cold country, I promise I would dress up well and even wear shoes. And I would love to move around.

B. My game sucks.
Of course there are no surprises. If it dint suck, I wouldnt be here. Writing about the experience. But today, it sucked so bad that I am embarrassed. Well, I have never been a batsman but I used to be a pretty handy bowler. And I was a brilliant fielder if nothing else. While I bowled ok today, and batted as expected, I was probably the worst fielder that I have ever been. There was no hand-eye coordination, something that I have been proud of all my life. I MUST improve. And no, I cant really “practise” but I need to get better. May be if I get regular things will improve?

C. My fitness sucks more than I suck at the game.
If I dont get regular and dont improve, I guess it will be ok. I am anyway way past my prime and I cant even imagine playing at the highest levels. But the game today made me realise how unfit I am. And at all levels. Thankfully I wasnt really panting (maybe I dint run too much?) but I couldve run faster, been more agile, fielded better! And after the game, each part of the body was hurting. And hurting as in HURTing. If I had a “functional” home, I would have sprayed myself all over with some painkiller or something. I even wished I had a masseuse to ease the pain. And although its past 11 (and thus about 12 hours since the game ended), my ankles, tendons, calves, knees and the back still hurt like crazy. Well, the Achilles tendon and the knee’s been giving me problems for some time but the calf and the back is new. Side note. When I wear the Nike sneakers, the pain is little bearable. I need to wear them more often, once the weather becomes bearable.

In fact, here’s a lesson. Things that connect you to the ground (Earth), you MUST not compromise and invest into getting the best possible alternative.

A few things that “connect” you to the ground are mattress (and the bed), shoes, chairs, footwear etc.

I dont recall where I read this first but more I think about this, more sense it makes. Its cool if you want to buy a cheap phone, shabbily made dress etc. But your feet take the most of the grunt in the day. You better have great shoes. And no, not fancy or goodlooking ones. But functional ones. And the only two brands that I recommend are Nike and Crocs. Ditto for mattress. And chair. Think about it. Use logic.

D. I love my mornings! I may claim to love nights but I love my mornings even more. To the point that the day my mornings dont go as per plan, the entire day is wasted. Take today for example. In my scheme of things, mornings are not meant for exercise et al. But then a game like Cricket requires a team and for most others, morning is where fitness takes priority!

Coming back. The days I cant get up early and step out of the house and get some things done, I feel terrible and the entire day gets “wasted”. I mean today, all I have done is write for a bit, worked on SoG for a bit and agonised in the pain inflicted by the minuscule amount of cricket that I played!

If I were to club A, B and D, I need to probably find a sport that makes me move around and can be played at afternoons. Or late evenings.

And you could try and understand if you are a morning person or a night person. How do you find out? Not through what you love. But as Charlie says, invert! Question to ask yourself is, “fucking what part of the day affects you the most?” For me, its the morning! You?

E. Sports bonds people like nothing else.
The people I played with, they were probably aged between 20 and 45. And from different backgrounds, interest areas, personalities, varying degree of proficiency and all that. But while playing, most of them had the single-minded focus of the game. And they could do whatever for their team to win. They dint think about their differences and they came together to focus on the game!

Can I take lessons and use sports as as tool to make my team at C4E and all other initiatives more tight-knit?

I have seen team-building games in action at most of the events that I have worked on as an event manager but most clients do it as mere lip-service. They do it once a year and hope for miracles. Can I use create an ongoing intervention that makes my team come closer? Need to think.

And, having said that, I know that sports can also create great divides. I saw it happen today. And we all know about “enmity” between fans of competing teams! So, need to put some thought!

So yeah, thats about it for the day.

Over and out.

Letter 01 – 27 Oct 2018. Hello World!

So this yesterday morning, I saw a tweet about someone (a group of people actually) that sends regular emails to their subscribers and one of the recipients of the emails had sent that tweet. That appreciation tweet said something like “you do a great job”, “its become a daily habit to open the email”, “we become better when we read your emails”.


And like most times when I see a good idea, I tend to copy that? I HAD to copy this one as well! To me this looked like an opportunity to write everyday and improve. 


So, I hereby promise that I will write one letter everyday. Here is the one for day. 

Dear whoever is reading this, 

So yesterday, I made a promise to myself that I will write a letter everyday to whoever may want to read it. Just that there is no agenda or nothing specific that I want to talk about in these daily letters. Just that I like it when I write, I get that peace of mind. Writing is my catharsis. It gives me some relief from the largely dreary and dreamy life that I lead. And more importantly, most times I write, it teaches me new things. For example, I did not even know the meaning of catharsis till the word automatically wrote itself and I had to look up for the meaning. Yes. It wrote itself. Its funny how subconscious mind works. More on this in one of the subsequent letters. For the time being, getting back to the letter.

Thank you for agreeing to receive these letters. For “creators” like me, its the patrons like you that keep us going. If not for you, who would I write for? I may argue that writing doesnt have to serve any other purpose than the writing itself. But then, I am human. And I need validation. And I need some sort of gratification (even if its in my head that someone out there is consuming what I create).

Also, writing allows me to connect with people. Both known or unknown. In fact thats the mix of recipients on this email. Out of four people that I am sending this to, 3 are friends and one is a stranger. I am hoping as I get regular with these, I will get to know more unknowns. And the knowns will know me better. So, in one word, I get to grow my tribe!

The other thing about writing is that it gives me the illusion that I am creating something. And to me, creating is THE thing that I want to stand for. Right now. In the past, I have stood for ambition, material wealth, fame and or impact. Right now, I want to stand for creation. When I say I stand for something, I mean that each of my action is guided by creating. I want to create. I want to support other creators. I want to live in the company of creators. I want to have the creator’s mindset. Even if its crap, I want to create. In fact, if I can help you create something, please do let me know. And even though I advocate marketing, I know when to be discreet. Whatever we discuss stays with me.

I also want to use these letters as a mechanism to seek feedback on various things that I create. I will share things here before I share elsewhere and seek your inputs. Feedback. Whatever.

These letters will also be like a scratchpad to talk about things that clutter my head. These could be ideas that I am working on, thoughts that are making my head go into a spin, issues that affect me, the revolution that I want to bring about and so on and so forth.

If you think about it, these things are actually the things that you write about on your blog. But there is tiny difference. On a blog, once you publish something, the onus is the recipient’s to open the browser, read and feed you back. Thats a million steps of friction. On the letter, however, its a thing that is in your mailbox. Its a thing that is screaming for your attention. Its a thing that you feel compelled to act on. I know some people who have the OCD of opening every email that comes their way. A letter thus ensures that I get access to others. So letters are indeed better 🙂

Finally, this allows me to get into a new habit that two dear friends (Krishna – https://twitter.com/cunfusia and Harshit – harshitsaran.wordpress.com) have been trying to hard to put me into. Lets see if I can keep the habit going and redeem the efforts of Krishna and Harshit.

Thats about it for day 1. As I end this, I have a favour to seek. Two actually.
A, Please do tell me what could I write about tomorrow.
B, And if you had to forward this email to EXACTLY three people, who would those people be? In fact forward it to them. Ask them to “subscribe” to my letters by sending me an email?

Finally, the day you wish to stop getting these, please do tell me and I would unsubscribe you and remove you from the list.

Till the next one,

Thanks,
@saurabh

PS: I know that this letter does not really add value to anyone right now. This is more of a rant of an old man. But with time, I will figure out the magic formula that will ensure that its worth the time!

Oh, if you want to get these on email, please send me your email address. And yes, your privacy is as important to me as mine is. I promise to not share your interest, details etc with anyone else.

Thank you!