Selected Writings

Balak Ram Gigoo owned a provisions shop in Srinagar, Kashmir. His son was Gulab Ram Gigoo. Balak Ram’s sister, Sangri Devi, was the wife of Sudarshan Mian, who lived at Rainawari in Srinagar. Gulab Ram Gigoo managed the estate of Ved Lal Dhar, who owned lands and orchards. His monthly salary was ninety rupees. Besides, Ved Lal Dhar used to give him rice and fruits. Gulab Ram spent his whole life as the manager of Ved Lal Dhar’s estate. He used to visit Maharaja Pratap Singh, who respected him. Once one Dr. Bal Krishen took him to Allahabad to meet Moti Lal Nehru. The two stayed in Anand Bhawan for five days. Actually, Ved Lal Dhar had asked Dr. Bal Krishen to do so. Gulab Ram knew Arabic, Persian and Urdu very well. He studied the Quran, and Persian and Urdu poets. The family had a domestic help named Krishen Das who served the family for thirty years. He looked after the two cows, made butter and ghee and at times distributed these among the neighbors. There was a big piece of land adjacent to the house on which Krishen Das used to grow vegetables and fruits. He visited the relatives of the family often who paid him tips. Whenever Gulab Ram went to the orchards, he got fruit in abundance for the family, relatives and neighbors. One day, at the age of sixty-nine, Gulab Ram died suddenly while smoking hookah in an orchard.  He had two sons: Madhu Ram Gigoo and Nand Lal Gigoo.

Madhu Ram Gigoo was born in 1893 in Srinagar, Kashmir. He studied up to matriculation at Biscoe School, Srinagar. He was a good swimmer who had swum across the Wular Lake twice and was awarded by Tyndale Biscoe. After passing matriculation, Madhu Ram Gigoo learnt laboratory work from one Dr. Doon, who had come to Srinagar from London. Tyndale Biscoe asked Dr. Doon to take up Madhu Ram as an apprentice. The boulevard had been constructed. Dr. Doon constructed a house at the foot of the Shankaracharya hill. He opened a clinical laboratory in a room of the house. Madhu Ram used to go there every day. He was fluent in English. Two brothers, Dr. Nev and Dr. Alter came from London. Dr. Nev became so popular in Srinagar that people called him ‘Nev God’. He was very kind towards everyone and treated his patients with love, understanding and compassion. All the English were Christian Missionaries whose mission was to convert people to Christianity. Dr. Alter made Madhu Ram Gigoo read the Bible and cram psalms, and took him to the Church on Sundays. Then one day Dr. Alter asked Madhu Ram Gigoo to embrace Christianity. Madhu Ram Gigoo converted to Christianity in the Roman Catholic Church in Srinagar. He was given the new name Michael Bhan. That day there were festivities in the courtyard of the Church. Christians became happy and celebrated the event. They beat upon the drums and sang songs. Four English ladies and a Muslim (a convert to Christianity) from Bihar came to Madhu Ram’s house at Khankah-i-Sokhta, Nawa Kadal, Srinagar. Madhu Ram’s wife Dhanawati and mother were there. Photos were taken. A relative spread the rumor that Madhu Ram Gigoo had married an English Christian girl. Actually, he was already married to Haer from Khrew, a village in Kashmir. The new name given to Haer in her husband’s house was Dhanawati.

One day, Madhu Ram Gigoo told the members of his family that he would go to the house of his mother’s parents in Rainawari and stay there for four days. But he told his grandmother that he was going to Punjab in connection with his job. He went to Kabul, Sialkot, Peshawar and some other places. In Afghanistan, he went in a bullet-proof vehicle to the tribal area where he met the head of the tribals. From there he went to Rome and met the Pope. He studied Christian literature there and learnt the basics of Greek and Latin grammar. He went to Great Britain, Denmark, Switzerland, Turkey and other countries. In Turkey, he met Mutafa Kemal Pasha Atatürk and those who were leading Turkey towards modernity. He wrote a book, The Snake in Kashmir, which was published in Rome. On the orders of the Maharaja of Jammu and Kashmir, the book was banned in Kashmir and its copies were burnt on the road.

Madhu Ram Gigoo came back to India and stayed in Bombay (Mumbai) where he met Mrs. Annie Besant. Annie Besant asked him why he had converted to Christianity when Hinduism was vast. She asked him to learn Sanskrit, read the Hindu scriptures and then re-enter the Hindu fold. There Madhu Ram Gigoo met K M Munshi, Leelawati Munshi, Rahul Sankrityayan and many other luminaries who were Sanskrit scholars. He spent some months in the company of such people. Then he went back to his home at Khankah-i-Sokhta in Nawa Kadal, Srinagar. Three years had passed by then. The news spread throughout the city. One day, Pandits assembled at Rughnath Mandir, called Madhu Ram Gigoo and asked him to explain why he had converted to Christianity. He replied: ‘I did what I wanted to do.’ He did not listen to Dr. Bal Krishen, Ved Lal Dhar, Hargopal Kaul and all others, including the secretary of Maharaja Pratap Singh. Such was his stubbornness and arrogance.

After some days, he was asked to present himself before Maharaja Pratap Singh in his court. The Maharaja, on the advice of some influential Pandits, asked him to give a written apology. Madhu Ram Gigoo held the pen in his toes, signed the document, left the court and came home. After some time, Diwan Munshi Dass got him appointed Food Inspector and was posted in the government hospital. 

After some months, Madhu Ram Gigoo met a Pandit Sanskrit scholar at Ganpatyaar and asked him to teach him Sanskrit grammar and the Hindu scriptures. He studied elementary Sanskrit, learning books by Damoodar Satavlekar and Panini. Then he devoted time to the study of the Vedas, the Gita, the Upanisads, other scriptures and the commentaries on them. He memorized the Rig Veda. It took him four years to do so. He read Max Mueller, Manu, Ramayana, Mahabharata, Shakespeare, Ruskin, Milton, Froude, Carlyle, Swami Vivekananda, Kalidas, Aurobindo Ghosh, Wordsworth, Lala Har Dayal, Guru Dutt, Behari and others. He studied Persian and read books written by Urdu and Hindi writers. He studied the Quran under Maulvi Abdullah, who lived at Nawab Bazar in Srinagar. 

Madhu Ram Gigoo became an ardent Arya Samaji and introduced Vedic philosophy to the family priest Lassa Bhayu. He directed Lassa Bhayu to go to Ladakh and convert the people of that place to Arya Samaj. Two people laid the foundation of Arya Samaj in Kashmir: Janki Nath Vidyarthi of Habba Kadal and Madhu Ram Gigoo. They used to go to the Mughal gardens on Sundays, deliver lectures and propagate Vedic thought. They were against idol worship and abstained from eating meat. On some days, Madhu Ram Gigoo went to Kheer Bhawani (Tulamula), made speeches and was beaten for propagating a thought that did not believe in idol worship.  

One Gowri Shanker gave Madhu Ram Gigoo and Janki Nath Vidyarthi a place to carry on the activities of Arya Samaj and to arrange meetings of persons inclined towards religion. Discussions were held there about Vedic dharma and social reform. The aim was to free the minds of the Pandits from outdated customs and rituals. One Maulvi Ahmad Shah was taught Sanskrit and Hindi. He studied the Hindu scriptures. In 1934, Rabindranath Tagore came to Kashmir and read out poems from his book Gitanjali in the auditorium of S P College. Then he met the poets, writers and intellectuals of Kashmir in the house of P N Kaul Bamzai. Mahjoor, Master Zinda Kaul, Gwash Lal Kaul and all the luminaries of Kashmir were there. Madhu Ram Gigoo introduced himself to Tagore as an Arya Samajist. He talked about the contribution of Brahmo Samaj in reforming Bengal. It was there that P N Kaul Bamzai’s translation of a poem by Mahjoor was recited by a Kashmiri poet. Davinder Satyarthi had helped in polishing the English translation of Mahjoor’s poem. Madhu Ram and Janki Nath Vidyarthi used to walk through the streets and roads of Srinagar with torches in their hands during nights and shout at the top of their voices: ‘Back to Vedas. Vedic dharma is the best.’ Then they delivered lectures at various places and read out passages from Swami Dayanand Saraswati’s Satyarth Prakash. This continued for a number of years. They read books written by the great Arya Samajists of  Punjab and Gujarat. 

Madhu Ram Gigoo and Kashyap Bandhu worked tirelessly for social reform. They saw to it that the Pandit women gave up the complicated pheran and wore sarees. The people did not take it lightly but reacted vehemently. He got in touch with the Arya Samajists in Punjab and Gujarat, who came to Srinagar and held talks with him on religion, Indian culture and social reform. Anand Swami (Khushal Chand, editor of Milap) along with other Arya Samajists used to come to our place at Khankah-i-Sokhta, Nawa Kadal, Srinagar every summer. Madho Ram Gigoo knew Balraj Madhok, Subramaniam, Rishi Kumar Kaushal, Lala Lajpat Rai, Din Dayal Upadyaya, Swami Laxmanjoo, A K Ashai, Neela Cook, Jagdish Chander Chatterjee and others very well. Rahul Sankrityayan used to interact with him whenever he came to Kashmir. K M Munshi and Leelawati Munshi came to his home when the former was the governor of Maharashtra. Hargopal Kaul, Shiv Narain Fotedar, Shridhar Joo Dulloo (who had embraced Buddhism), D P Dhar’s father, Ram Joo Dhar and Shyam Sunder Dhar were his close associates. He used his influence in Punjab and saw to it that D A V College was established in Srinagar in 1944. Dr. Sri Ram Sharma was the principal of the college. Every Sunday he went to Arya Samaj at Hazuri Bagh and conducted the hawan. He was made the president of Arya Samaj, Maharaj Gunj. He got some Pandit widows remarried.

Madhu Ram Gigoo retired from service in 1950. He opened a clinical laboratory at Maharaj Gunj in Srinagar. He named it Imperial Clinical Laboratory. It was the first clinical laboratory in the state of Jammu and Kashmir. He passed away in the National Hospital in Srinagar in 1868 after a brief illness.   

Netra Pal and other Arya Samajists performed a hawan. Throughout his life he had utter contempt for the complicated rituals performed after the death of a person. 

I found thirteen rupees in the pocket of his shirt when he died. I purchased some books on Hinduism published by Bhartiya Vidhya Bhawan. The books are still with me. Besides, the two microscopes that he had bought for the clinical laboratory are in my possession. He was a tall man with pink cheeks, clean, fashionable, fearless and punctual to the second. He wore achkan, churidar pyjamas and a turban. He was very selective about the colour of his clothes. He used to smoke the hookah in the mornings and evenings. He always carried a walking cane with him. He read to me chapters from Lala Har Dayal’s Hints for Self-Culture when I was in school. He used to say ‘Thank you’ to me when I put the embers in the chillum meant for the hookah. I understood the importance and beauty of the two words when I grew up.

Madhu Ram Gigoo’s brother Nand Lal Gigoo studied up to tenth standard. He was an apprentice to a doctor named Fateh Singh in Amira Kadal, Srinagar, Kashmir. Dr. Fateh Singh taught Nand Lal Gigoo whatever he knew about medicine. After five years of apprenticeship, he opened a medical shop at Fateh Kadal. He was married to one Kamlawati of Rainawari. He wound up the medical shop at Fateh Kadal and shifted to Pampore because he was appointed a doctor in Khadi Bhandhar there. He was an R M P (Registered Medical Practitioner). He was a simple and saintly man. His only son, Moti Lal Gigoo, opened a medical shop, Moti Medical Hall, in Pampore, married there, started a saffron business, constructed a house and passed away there. He was a lover of life, a man with a very large heart and friend to many.       

Madhu Ram Gigoo had two sons, Omkar Nath Gigoo and Dwarka Nath Gigoo and one daughter, Kamlawati. 

Omkar Nath Gigoo studied up to tenth standard in Government High School, Bhag-e-Dilawar Khan, Srinagar, Kashmir. His father, Madhu Ram Gigoo, asked a doctor practicing in Amira Kadal to take him as an apprentice. Then he attended Kashmir National Hospital. There Dr. Wasper, Dr. H F Rawlence and Dr. Kulbhushan taught him laboratory work. Omkar Nath Gigoo became their assistant. He worked with them for eight years. In 1950, his father asked him to work in The Imperial Clinical Laboratory at Maharaj Gunj in Srinagar. He ran the laboratory till 1990. In October 1990, he, along with the other members of his family, migrated to Udhampur in the Jammu province.  

Omkar Nath Gigoo was a very simple man who had no personal possessions. He never entered  a temple to pray. He loved cleanliness and order. He was addicted to the hookah. He never wore the underwear, undershirt and full-sleeved sweater. He had no friends. His obsession was cleaning the whole house and polishing the shoes. He listened to the news in the evenings religiously. He was a lover of sofi songs. He loved charity. Every day he used to give coins to the children. He was not money-minded at all. He loved sitting. He was an excellent narrator. He would narrate the minutest details of the events of World War II. He was married to Durga Dewani of Drabyar, Habba Kadal, Srinagar. She was given the name Uma Shori.  Omkar Nath Gigoo died of Alzheimer’s disease in Udhampur in 1999 after having suffered excruciatingly for three years and nine months. 

Madhu Ram Gigoo’s younger son, Dwarka Nath Gigoo, was born in 1926(?). He was a precocious child who did matriculation from the Government High School, Bhag-e-Dilawar Khan, Srinagar, Kashmir. He loved singing. One day, a wandering mendicant told him that he could be a good singer if he took cloves every day. He started eating cloves. He used to eat many cloves a day. His well-wishers tried to dissuade him from doing so, but it was all in vain. He passed intermediate (FA) from S P College. In 1944, he joined the D A V College, which was housed in a building adjacent to the Bund close to Lal Chowk in Srinagar, Kashmir. As a student he read Urdu, Hindi and English poetry. Dr. Sri Ram Sharma was the principal of the college. Balraj Madhok and Dr. Subramanyam taught him there. He read European and Indian fiction and philosophy. He read Ramayana and Mahabharata. He learnt Sanskrit and read many Sanskrit writers, including Kalidas, Bartarhari, Bilhan and many others. He crammed the passages from the writings of some Sanskrit writers. He would recite English, Hindi, Urdu and Kashmiri poetry for hours together. He was a very fashionable man. Some other man asked him to put the seeds of the brinjal into his eyes. But some people stopped him from doing so. He read books on astrology and palmistry and read the horoscopes and palms of hundreds of people. His teachers at D A V College loved him and were sure that he would do very well in life.

In 1945, Dwarkanath Gigoo fell ill. His lungs had been affected. One Dr. Rawlence treated him. He remained at home for one year. Those days, he started writing poems in Hindi. Those poems were published in the Martand. Rajkamal was his pen-name. A music teacher taught him how to play the banjo and sitar. He, in spite of his illness diagnosed as tuberculosis, played the flute. He started drawing, sketching and painting. He painted many landscapes and portraits. He gave a solo art exhibition at Bisco School in Srinagar and one at Nedous Hotel. He passed BA and started making preparations for an MA in History. But health was bad again. He passed B Ed from the Gandhi Memorial College, Srinagar Kashmir. He participated in the poetic symposiums and developed friendships with other painters and writers. He went on writing poems in Hindi. In the meantime, he attended Vasanta School and taught there for many years. He did an MA in Hindi from the University of Kashmir. He interacted with Kishori Kaul, Kaushalya Wali, Bansi Lal Jalali, known as Arun Kaul, Bansi Parimoo, Sant Ji Sultan, Akhtar Mohi-ud-Din, Bansi Nirdosh, Autar Krishen Rahbar, Prem Nath Pardesi, Braj Behari Kachru, Mohan Raina, Soom Nath Bhat, Nisar Aziz, Rattan Lal Shant, Shashi Shekhar Toshkhani, Dina Nath Nadim, P N Pushp, Bankay Behari, Master Zinda Kaul, Jia Lal Nazir, Jagdar Ji Zadoo and many others. Rahi Masoom Raza came to his place at Nawa Kadal in Srinagar. He became the president of the Hindi Sahitya Sammelan and played an important role in the propagation of the national language, Hindi. He taught at the Roopa Devi Sharda Peeth, Khalsa High School and the post-graduate department of Hindi, University of Kashmir, Srinagar, Kashmir. Then he attended Gandhi Memorial College in Srinagar and taught Psychology and Philosophy there till his death in SMHS Hospital, Srinagar on 14 April 1978. He was a versatile teacher and could teach many subjects. He had a ready sense of humour and was witty. He had married his student Savita Mathur of Alwar (Rajasthan) when he was working for the Gandhi Memorial College in Srinagar. 

Dwarka Nath Gigoo ‘Rajkamal’ was a very romantic man. He had affairs with many girls. He was tall with black hair. He was very careful about his hair and hairstyle. He loved watching films, reading, writing and painting. 

I used to call DN Gigoo ‘Rajkamal’ GASHA, and he used to call me NIKKA. He gave me love in tons. I haven’t got that kind of love from anybody else. He is always present in me. He tolerated my eccentricities with patience. He introduced me to films, books, painting and writing when I was very young. He made me read poems by Ella Wheeler Wilcox, Tagore, Sarojini Naidu, Nirala and Sumitra Nandan Pant. He made me watch films like Kaarigar, Durgesh Nandani, Jhanak Jhanak Payal Bajay, Dr. Kotins Ki Amar Kahani, Do Aankhain Bara Haath, Wamik Mirza, Aulad and Jagtay Raho. In the fifties he accompanied me to the cinema halls Palladium, Amrish Talkies and Regal in Srinagar to show me the films of Dilip Kumar, Raj Kapoor, Dev Anand and V Shantaram. When I was in school in the fifties, he took me to either Amrish Talkies or some big hall (I don’t remember) where I saw some English men enact scenes from Shakespeare’s plays. Later, I was told that it was Shakespeareana run by Geoffry Kendal. I also saw Prithviraj Kapoor perform in Amrish Talkies. I started writing diary in 1958. I wrote pages every evening. Nothing happened in my young life because I am the only child of my parents. My grandfather, grandmother, father, mother and (Gasha) DN Gigoo never allowed me to mix and play with children in my neighbourhood.  We didn’t have a radio at home. A neighbor used to play his radio on a very high pitch. When I grew up, I developed an interest in English, Hollywood, Japanese, Italian and Korean films. He made me read Great Philosophers written by Thomas and Thomas, Mahabharata and Ramayana by Ramesh Chander Dutt, The Story of Philosophy by Will Durant, Lust for Life by Irwing Stone, Kamayani by Jai Shankar Prasad, Madhushala and Madhukalash by Harivanshrai Bachchan, Nirmala by Prem Chand and the three short stories of Chanderdhar Sharma Guleri. As I grew up, I read many books written in English, Hindi and Urdu. I read many short stories and poems written in Kashmiri. I read some novels and many short stories written by Germans, French, Russians, Japanese, Latin American authors, etc. The Hound of Heaven by Francis Thompson and The Song of Honour by Hodgson are my favourite poems. Devotional songs cure my dark moods. 

An evening in the summer of 1990

Udhampur, Jammu Province

I am sitting on the steps of a ghat. In front of me flows Devika, Ganga’s younger sister. The light is fading. A body has been burning on a pyre for a long time now. There are no people. Smoke from the burning pyre is rising to the sky, turning it black. The smell of burning flesh and the crackle of burning bones are the only trace of life.

The sun has set. The moon is out.

A flute tune flies from somewhere. My gaze doesn’t leave the burning pyre. The flames are dying, at last. Time lingers. Only a heap of ash is left with a crown of embers adorning the pyre. He who might have lived for almost a hundred years is gone and will never come again to the ghat as he might have every morning and evening to offer prayers and to take a holy dip in the waters of Devika. Devika, his only savior and the saviour of all those who live and die here. “All those who come to her and bathe in her waters are redeemed.” So goes the belief!

The tune comes nearer. In front of me stands a flute seller playing upon a flute. He plays a pahadi dhun. His gaze is fixed on me, his fingers tapping rhythmically on his flute. The melody is beguiling. Looking into my eyes, he stops playing and hands me his flute without saying a word. His expression conveys everything. 

“I have no money,” I say to him.

“Don’t worry about the money,” he says. Keep the flute and pay me when I am around the next time. 

By the time I place my fingers on the six holes of the flute, he is gone. The song comes to an end but the melody is still playing in my ears.

Some days later

Sitting in a corner, I try to play the flute. A jarring sound is all that I hear. I try again and again. Still the same jarring sound…

Some days later

My father takes me to meet ‘Masterji’, his friend and colleague who teaches music in his college. His name is Bushan Lal Kaul. He’s tuning his sitar when we enter his quarters. “My son wants to learn flute,” my father says. “Are you ready?” Masterji asks. “It will take years.” I nod. “Come tomorrow for the first lesson,” he says.

The next day, he teaches me how to hold the flute and produce sound. “We will get you a new flute sometime. This one is out of tune and not meant for serious learning,” he says, referring to the flute man’s flute. 

One year later

The terrace of our rented house

I practice the alankaar Masterji has taught me. I begin my days with Ahir Bhairav and end them with Chandrakauns. 

A day in the summer of 1992

Delhi

Despite being blind (having lost his sight to small pox in his childhood), Masterji leads the way in the dark and dingy lanes of Delhi’s Chawri Bazaar. We are on a trip to the capital to get his sitar repaired at a music instruments shop. Buying a new flute is also on the cards. 

Having nowhere else to stay, we spend the night at a makeshift camp for migrants in Delhi. The next day, we take the train back to Jammu. I am the proud owner of a new flute. 

A day in the spring of 1993

Masterji’s quarters

Teaching me Raag Durga, Masterji says, “I will talk to Omkar Nath Raina’s son. Go to him to learn the nuances of flute.”

A day in the summer of 1993

A village on the outskirts of Udhampur

I am sitting by the roadside, waiting for my guru, Anil Raina, to return from his school where he teaches music. Two small girls are bathing a calf in a pond. The sound of splashing water and the laughter of the girls has me in trance. “Why are you sitting idle and wasting time?” my guru chides, breaking my reverie. “You should be doing riyaz even while waiting.” 

A day in the winter of 1993

I am sitting on the terrace of our rented house. On the terrace of the adjacent house is a newly married woman combing her hair. She’s from Jaipur. Her husband is a fighter pilot and posted in the Udhampur Air Force Station. They are new arrivals in Udhampur. 

She: Where have you been last few days?

Me: I have been around. Where else will I go?

She: Then why haven’t you been playing your flute?

Me: I was unwell. 

She: If you are feeling better, can you play today?

Me: How about tomorrow? I still have cold and cough.

She: I haven’t been able to comb my hair properly ever since you stopped playing.

One day in the summer of 1994

Pandit Bholanath Prasanna’s house, Allahabad

I play a bandish in Raag Multani. Panditji listens quietly.  Before leaving, I touch his feet and seek his blessings. He gives me three flutes. Two of the flutes bear his finger impressions. “Always sit at your guru’s feet,” he says. “Someday, music will save you.”

One day in the summer of 1995

Udhampur and Jammu

I visit my gurus for the last time. “I am going to Delhi. I got admission in JNU to do MA in Literature,” I say. I offer them gurudakshina—money I have earned by giving tuitions to Class 10 students. Both of them refuse. “A day will come you will know what gurudakshina is,” they say.

A day in November 2020

New Delhi

A deserted street

I am returning from a grocery store. I park my car by the sidewalk to sanitize my hands. Out of nowhere appears a flute seller with a bunch of flutes attached to a pole he’s carrying. Upon seeing me, he starts playing a film song. A familiar film song! I lose the track of time. He stops playing and hands me a flute, pleading me to buy it. 

“Please, Sir, I have no money,” he says. “During the lockdown, I wasn’t able to earn even a single rupee. I will give you a good discount if you buy a flute.” 

I inspect the flute and play a tune. The man looks at me with wonderment. 

“Sir, you know how to play,” he whispers. 

Me: Where are you from?

He: District Budaun, UP

Me: You should do something else to earn a living. No one is going to buy flutes these days.

He: Selling flutes is family tradition. I won’t do anything else even if the heavens fall. Please buy a few flutes since you know how to play.

I hand him some money and buy a flute. I play a film song. The same song I had heard on the ghat 30 years ago.

The man breaks down. “Sir, I know this song. I wish I knew how to play it.”

Me: You should learn how to play this song. It will take time but you will learn eventually. You will be the happiest man the moment you start playing it exactly the way it should be played.

He: Sir, I have no ration to feed my family. Can you buy me some rice and wheat flour?

Some days later

The flautist from Budaun appears in the street once again. He is playing the song I played. Apart from flutes, he’s also carrying a bunch of colourful balloons for sale.

Had that flute man not given me his flute that evening at the cremation ghat on the banks of Devika in Udhampur, I would not have known anything in life. 

I am yet to repay him for his gift. I am still trying to play that song.

We spend our days engaging with prospects and customers to understand their problems in proper perspectives, capturing requirements and expectations, articulating our understanding to reiterate our capability and conviction to address problems, conceptualizing and proposing solutions, enabling success, improving experience, measuring value, generating delight, and ensuring expectations are met and visions realized. All of these, including everything else we do at work, have a purpose—to excel, not just individually, but collectively, too.
 

As you know, some of the pressing issues occupying the minds of business leaders of the world today are related to progress of society, advancement of culture and morality, preservation of environment, refinement of human values, and enrichment of human condition. Evolution in thought and not just in lifestyle is emerging as a new imperative. Businesses, therefore, are re-envisaging their role and vision, and aligning them not just with current human needs but also with the needs of a world they strive to create.
 

Consequently, understanding a problem and conveying the understanding through a technology or a business perspective alone can be myopic. In other words, a seemingly minor social or epistemological aspect, at times, is as vital and relevant as a complex technological or business aspect. (A technical requirement is fulfilled solely to realize a larger business objective.) You would concur that there are far more critical dimensions to business issues than are often imagined by traditionalist solution providers. Cognitive, social and ethical dimensions are often overlooked. Aren’t they?
 

Business engagement, thus, calls for an entirely different imagination. At the heart of this differentiated imagination is a crucial skill, namely articulation. After all, what good is even flawless understanding if it’s articulated poorly?
 

So what does articulation really encompass? Mastery over a language? Ability to speak and write well? Structured communication? Cognitive ability? The two key distinguishing elements of articulation are clarity and effectiveness. How do we then metricize articulation to determine and measure its quality and efficacy? What could be the criteria for its evaluation? How do we assess gaps in our articulation competency? Lastly, how do we refine?
 

This brings me to a more fundamental question. What’s the value of articulation in our lives? Don’t you think this question has an existential relevance, too? For instance, if we don’t possess articulation skills, then how do we establish who we are, what we do, how we’re perceived and why we must exist. In Descartian parlance, one could say, I articulate, therefore, I am.
 

After all, God is in the detail. And that detail, in context of our roles, is nothing else but an ability to articulate clearly, correctly and purposefully.
 

Is excellence in business or any field achievable without excellence in articulation? Isn’t it high time we looked at articulation and its importance differently? What do you think?  

In 2002, I was on an assignment with a US-based pharmaceutical company. My work involved editing documents pertaining to drug development and manufacturing. The training I attended in the beginning helped me grasp the rudiments. ‘We are in the business of saving lives,’ the quality manager in charge said to me, sensing my diffidence in trying to position my capabilities in her project’s larger context. In that moment, my perspective changed completely. Editing documents sent to me for corrections was no longer an ordinary, solitary affair. As days went by, I got to learn more and more about the complexities of drug discovery and development. My exploration led me to the world of disease, of human anatomy, and of mortality. I read about Alzheimer’s and how pharma companies had been struggling for years to develop effective treatments for this dreadful condition afflicting millions of people in the world. I was reminded of my grandfather’s last days. Working on the assignment revived memories of how I had prayed for a cure for my grandfather’s incurable ailment.
 

One day, I got to attend a seminar on Good Documentation Practice (GDocP). The faculty — a retired director of USA’s Food and Drug Administration (FDA) — shared interesting facts about how poorly maintained documentation had resulted in multi-million dollar lawsuits and regulatory penalties for many pharma companies of repute. In some cases, manufacturing plant shutdowns were linked with failure to comply with documentation requirements. Good Documentation Practice forms a critical and non-negotiable aspect of FDA’s code of federal regulations for pharma companies. A slightest violation can trigger a disaster for a company in the business of making our lives better through medicines. Inevitably, the quality of documentation, too, determines a company’s right to operate, said the former director. ‘Always remember,’ the director said to me after the seminar, ‘that lives depend on the work you do, and your job is to make good documentation even better, not just because it’s required for compliance but because it’s the right thing to do.’ Hearing these words, I stopped thinking of myself as a mere editor of language. The value of not only correct grammar, but also improved clarity in articulation dawned on me. I could now see the whole importance of documentation, not just for compliance, but in the valuable act of saving lives.
 

Thereafter, I got to work on drug safety and clinical trial documentation. Imagine what’s at stake if you miss correcting a seemingly insignificant ambiguity in a sentence concerning an adverse event (untoward medical occurrence in a patent administered a drug during a clinical trial). For example: [Give subjects Mr. A and Mr. B two doses of CHP10 three times a day]
 

Even in other sectors such as aviation, telecommunication, healthcare, banking, etc., good documentation of products and services is indispensable for our well-being. The word ‘good’ simply signifies correctness, clarity, completeness, conciseness and consistency. Imagine taking off on a Dreamliner’s debut flight and stumbling upon verbosity and vagueness in its safety instructions. Or a confusing How-To in an internet banking app — quickest way to bankruptcy!
 

One shudders to even imagine the impact poor documentation quality may have on companies and, possibly, their customers—people like us. Somehow, the thought of even a single unhappy customer is unsettling to me.
 

Limiting the meaning of communication to speaking and writing alone would be to grossly misjudge its value and influence, socially as well as commercially, in the current times. Communication encompasses not just the command over a language, say, English, but comprehension, conceptualization and, most importantly, ordered thinking and its precise articulation. An idea or a product or a service, no matter how good, might not find easy acceptance among consumers if everything about it (use, relevance, benefits, etc.) is not communicated effectively. ‘When capability becomes commodity, competition becomes communication.’ Fine communication, therefore, is a key differentiator when it comes to business and individual success. It’s what sets great leaders apart from the rest.

Working across an array of documentation-intensive projects for two decades has given me rich insights into what goes wrong and why.
 

Mine has been an unwavering endeavor towards capability creation. To address inadequacies in technical and business communication, I have time-tested and proven remedies and practices that come with lasting benefits. If adopted earnestly, these practices can refine us personally as well as professionally. Besides, the resultant improvements will put smiles on the faces of our customers, particularly those whose have neither time nor resources to spare for authoring and training.

Do share any anecdotes or experiences that have remained with you and opened doors of perception. After all, saving lives and fostering happiness is a shared responsibility.
 

For more on the role of good documentation in the Pharma Industry, you can read my white paper here. 

Ethics and the Tatas have been synonymous with each other ever since the first Tata Company came into existence more than a century ago. For more than half a million people who are part of the Tata Group, ethics is not just an obligation, but also a belief, a way of life. Doing the right thing isn’t just limited to how business is done, but also how one thinks and acts, and conducts oneself in society, and treats others. Following the law, the rules, and the regulations is easy. But doing the right thing requires altogether a different principle. It requires character and integrity and honesty, not just of the intellect, but also of the soul. It requires conscience.

Edward Thurlow, the famous British lawyer who also served as Lord Chancellor of Great Britain in the late eighteenth century, once said, ‘Corporations have neither bodies to be punished, nor souls to be condemned; they therefore do as they like.’ This has often been misquoted as, ‘Did you ever expect a corporation to have a conscience, when it has no soul to be damned, and no body to be kicked?’  

Conscience is a word that seems to have lost its meaning, its relevance in the modern world marred by petty rivalries and narrow-mindedness. In the corporate world, too, people play by the rules, though they may not agree with all of them, given their inherent prejudices and interests. Humans, by nature, are self-centered. They follow rules half-heartedly, partly because they don’t have a choice, and partly because they are fearful of the consequences of not abiding by them.

At the heart of the great rulebook of the business world lies the world of righteousness. Of the knowledge of right and wrong. Of humanism. Of compassion. Of goodness. 

JRD Tata’s worldview is guided by the Zoroastrian philosophy of Humata (Good thoughts), Hukhta (Good words), and Hvarshta (Good deeds). These three beautiful words—the credo of the Tatas—are inscribed in the crest adorning the foyer of Bombay House. 

What comes from people must go back to them is what JRD Tata believes. The acquisition of wealth, for him, is utterly meaningless if it doesn’t lead to the betterment of the human condition. His vision for the Tatas is precisely to be an enterprise with a conscience. This is what sets him apart from the rest. This is also the legacy of Jamsetji Tata. Real wealth is beyond earnings and assets. It multiplies. It’s immeasurable and undiminishing. All the good that’s reaped here can never be lost. 

That such a vision continues to be cherished the world over for more than a century is a testament to its timelessness. Even today, it inspires us to dream of great things that will leave a lasting impression. The vision and philosophy of JRD Tata will shape the moral and intellectual outlook of future generations, too.  

The question we must ask ourselves is how do we protect and uphold the legacy and the rich ethos of the Tatas? How do we call for the demolition of barriers that impede and prevent progress in thought and action? More importantly, how do we become better humans, and cultivate happiness so that we’re able to make others happy?  

We must learn to raise the bar, set high standards, and never give up. We must learn how to be fearless. We must learn the meaning of courage and conviction. We learn the beauty of humility. We must learn the value of commitment. Commitment not just to the people we serve, but to a collective conscience, too. The conscience JRD Tata talks about. 

First published on TCS Blogs: 

http://sites.tcs.com/blogs/digital/why-user-experience-matters-more-than-ever-today/

The world today is in a state of dramatic technological transition. We are becoming more and more dependent on smart apps on a daily basis. Inevitably, the time we spend in front of software interfaces has gone up considerably. We have become immensely choosy, too. It’s the quality of experience alone that essentially dictates our choices and preferences.

In 2009, we hosted a high-ranking delegation of one of our customers in the airlines sector in our state-of-the-art User Experience Lab. Our mission was premised on the question: How do we make life simpler, easier, enjoyable, and more meaningful for our customers?

We decided to show the delegates why user experience matters. We were aware of the competition our customer was battling in the airline industry at the time. British Airways led a formidable pack that included Singapore Airlines, Air India, and others. We examined the websites of these airlines to glean their strengths and weaknesses from a user experience perspective. We set up a test environment with a clear test objective, identified a couple of test participants, and made them book tickets, first on our customer’s website, and then, on the website of its closest competitor. We recorded nearly everything using the equipment we had in the lab. The users’ keystrokes, their on-screen actions, gaze movements, facial expressions mapped to emotions such as delight, irritation, disgust, impatience, indifference, etc., gestures, verbal responses, and even physiological parameters like the galvanic skin response, heart-rate (ECG), and electric activity of the brain (EEG).

The purpose of the experiment was simple and clear. To record, observe, study, and measure the users’ behavior, reaction, response, and experience while they interacted with the websites of two competing airlines. We used the data to draw up a comparative analysis of the users’ overall experience with the two websites. We then arrived at certain indicators of the websites’ performance against the goals we had set at the outset. Our analysis was based on irrefutable data and reliable evidence, leaving no room for subjectivity. We employed the principles of ergonomics to interpret the findings and identify areas of improvement in design and interactivity of our customer’s website. “Your discovery is stunning,” affirmed a senior executive after reviewing our analysis and recommendations.

We had successfully drawn our customer’s attention to the fundamental question: Is the website helping the airline gain more customers and improve its market share? To us, a simple acknowledgment and recognition of the value of a discipline often accorded low priority in software design models mattered more than anything. We wanted to prove that user experience is not just an optional, good-to-have attribute of a product, but an ability of a product to free up the precious time of its users so that they are able to spend it on better and wonderful things—watching a game with friends, for instance.

Forrester reports that airline websites continue to score low in user experience. Why should booking a ticket or searching for deals be an ordeal or even a ‘task’? Why should we be forced to read verbose instructions, fill lengthy forms, make tedious selections, and navigate cluttered taskbars, menus, and screens? Why should a transaction be time-consuming? Why should we be made to endure fatigue by being forced to remember things, to labor over difficult decisions? We users are complex beings capable of extreme reactions and unreasonable demands and expectations.

The purpose of an IT solution should be to know its users, their needs, likes, dislikes, habits, compulsions, limitations, aspirations, etc. And, to give them exactly what they want without making them want it. With the Hippocrates app, for instance, MedCredits simplified doctor-patient interaction to such a degree that submitting a case file is as pleasurable as snapping a photo and sharing it with a doctor by the click of a button.

A 10% improvement in a company’s customer experience score can translate into more than USD 1 billion in revenue.

In today’s digitized and gamified world, where attention spans are increasingly shrinking, where users make a decision to ‘exit’ or to ‘stay’ in the first three or four seconds of their engagement with an interface, and where learning is an intuitive process with little dependency on human cognitive capacity, an engaging and compelling experience alone is the secret to customer loyalty and retention. After all, this is about winning our customers’ hearts and making good things happen for them.

We are witness to groundbreaking innovations in interface and interaction design. Interfaces have become behavior-oriented and persona-centered. Interactivity is minimalist. Communication is accomplished largely through visuals. Anticipatory Design is the in-thing.

In a few years from now, when physical entities like the monitor, the mouse, and the keypad become obsolete, and when our interaction with an interface will be solely through voice, motion, touch, or gaze, imagine the role Anticipatory Experience Design will play.

Some years ago, I was on an assignment with a global pharmaceutical company’s UK-based research center. My role entailed regulatory compliance. It was the time when Big Pharma was heavily investing in information technology (IT) to boost efficiency, streamline operations, and optimize costs. Even today, the spiraling costs of pharmaceutical R&D and the enormous risks involved in drug development continue to be the key drivers for IT adoption in Life Sciences.

There is, however, a peculiar challenge. Scientists, accustomed to working with pen and paper, are averse to using lab software. ‘It is disconcerting,’ a scientist working at the research center confided to me, complaining about the convoluted interface of an off-the-shelf drug safety system. Clearly, the concerned system fulfilled the business and regulatory needs, but failed to make its users happy.

Things haven’t changed much even now. At the heart of the software usability problem today is a poorly designed user interface, which assumes that its users—doctors and pharmacologists working in labs and clinics—would effortlessly be able to decipher how to use it.

The scientific community’s tacit disapproval of software with complex interfaces and cumbersome interaction isn’t completely unjustified. A lot is at stake if a design or interaction flaw in software used in Life Sciences is left uncorrected. Apart from causing comprehension problems for users, usability and design defects can impede R&D efforts. The present day scientists working in labs continue to be faced with productivity pressures. They deal with complex and humongous scientific data on a daily basis. Data entry and analysis forms an integral part of their research work. As such, they expect software apps to do almost everything that’s required to perform their roles. Furthermore, it is essential for them to be utterly focused on scientific research work without having to struggle with software usability issues. After all, they can ill-afford to spare any time for anything other than research.

User experience (UX) thus has come to assume an extremely vital role in case of software used by people working in Life Sciences. However, the approach to designing software ought to be far more user research-based if the software is to serve science and scientists better. The following aspects must be considered to achieve user-centredness in software design.

• Identify users at the very outset. Study their work environment minutely. Learn how they actually work in labs and clinics
• Contextualize and internalize users’ behavior, temperament, goals, needs, motives, aspirations, preferences (both stated and unstated), cultural mores, and existing challenges or limitations pertaining to work, life, time and space. Narrativize the users’ stories by delineating personas, and sketching empathy and journey maps. For instance, the story of a particular user, Dr. Ann Marie, a 40-year-old medical research scientist with a team of 5 pharmacologists spread across two continents, should also coherently reflect the story of the entire user group. Asking the right questions to establish good alignment, therefore, becomes necessary in user story mapping
• Identify and prioritize task workflows on the basis of factors such as frequency of use, relative importance, uniqueness, existing issues, and business criticality. This is done collaboratively and in consultation with real and potential users.
• Adopt a user-participatory approach to conceptualization of design, and its validation and testing. Analyze user feedback, and play it back to the users to ascertain what improvements they’d like. This helps in justifying and carrying out continuous refinements, particularly to realize the desired experience.

A human-oriented ‘design thinking’ approach to software development makes the software precisely empathetic to users’ physical and emotional needs. In real terms, it leads to user-centered visualization and better personalization of interface, information and interaction. The end-goal is simple: to empower users and to enrich their lives.

Towards the end of my stint at the research center, I got to attend a seminar on Good Clinical, Laboratory, and Manufacturing (GxP) Practices. The faculty—a retired director of USA’s Food and Drug Administration (FDA)—shared interesting insights about challenges and opportunities in the Life Sciences Industry. ‘Always remember,’ the director said, ‘we’re in the business of saving lives, and our job is to make good solutions even better, not just because it’s required for compliance but because it’s the right thing to do.’

The ‘user interface’ used in Life Sciences represents scientific knowledge. Its design should be so smart that understanding and application of knowledge are maximized. In the years to come, advanced innovations will revolutionize the way scientists and clinical research professionals will think and work. It’ll be all about precision in analytics, intelligence, and decision-making. Completely digitized and powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI), Robotics, 3D Modeling, Internet of Things (IoT), and VR/AR, the ‘Laboratory of the Future’ is set to herald a new dawn in the world of genomics, and drug discovery and development. User experience will be a critical measure of its success.

One sees the whole significance of user experience design, not just for compliance, but also in the valuable act of ‘saving lives’.

Also published on TCS website.