Interview with Harimohan Paruvu

Harimohan Paruvu is a cricketer, motivational speaker, and an author whose first published book, "The Men Within", is now a feature film in Telugu titled "Golconda High School", releasing January 12, 2011. I had the chance to interview him recently, and thought the interview would be a good way to restart posting something on my own blog.

Harimohan completed his BE in Civil Engineering from Osmania University in 1988, played Ranji Trophy cricket for Hyderabad along the way, and then earned an MBA from the same university in 1991. This was followed by corporate jobs in Bharat Petroleum, ITW Signode, and IDBI, in areas of sales, investment banking, and project financing. He then quit his highly paid job in 2004 to take up writing full time.

Me: What made you leave your job and start writing?
Hari: I thought I was getting too comfortable, not growing as a person. I realized there were only two things that I could do all day everyday and not get tired of it - play cricket and write. I experimented with writing magazine articles while at IDBI.

Me: Were you afraid of failing at the new venture?
Hari: Not really. My qualifications were always good enough to get a job again if I needed to. Also, I was not only writing novels. I was willing to do other more commercial forms of writing. What sustained me financially early on were things like ad copy, web content, technical writing, short stories, ghost writing, etc.

Me: What was the first novel you wrote?
Hari: It is called The Misfit. It is about being influenced by external circumstances, ignoring one's own instincts, trying to fit in, to please others. It gave me a lot of clarity about my own fears, ambitions, and thoughts about love, honesty, transparency.

Me: Did writing a novel come easily to you? What was easy/difficult about it?
Hari: The Misfit was hard to write. It was based on one single idea - discontent. I was not able to put a good structure on that story. I am still revising it for the umpteenth time, and hope to get it published soon. The Men Within, on the other hand, was very easy to write, since the structure was much clearer. I wanted to apply my knowledge of cricket and management principles to the overall improvement of one's life.

I think that in general, the clearer the idea you wish to convey, the easier it is to write it. Of course, a lot of research is needed, but the writing style just emerges from knowing what you want to say.

Me: What kind of research did you do for The Men Within?
Hari: I wanted to use the metaphor of combat for the cricket matches, and read the Mahabharat, Art of War, the Bhagavad Gita, and other such books. I also read biographies of cricketers and books by cricket coaches. I think breadth of reading is vital to enhance writing.

Me: You also interview a lot of people and write about it on your blog. Why?
Hari: To understand how each person looks at the world. I find it fascinating. My first inerviewee was Jayant Dharmadhikari, the screenplay writer.

Me: What led to The Men Within being turned into a movie?
Hari: I was planning a visit to the US and needed the money! I was thinking about selling the rights to the book for a movie. As it turns out, my brother Ram, a movie producer, showed interest in it and decided to buy the rights.

Me: What are your future plans regarding novel writing?
Hari: I have six or seven projects already in mind, including two or three cricket based story lines, and some other ideas, including comedies.

Me: You have also added motivational workshops to your repertoire. What is the primary idea you try to convey through the workshops?
Hari: That people can do much more than they think possible. Everyone has doubts, fears, lack of focus. I use my personal experience to make the point. In my cricketing career, I gave up too early upon being dropped from the team. In hindsight, I realize that I lacked the mental strength at that time to fight for a comeback. I want people to learn to aspire for something bigger, and to put in more focused effort, to persevere. I am ensuring that I do the same in my writing career.

Me: Thank you very much for sharing your thoughts, and wish you success with the movie and your writing in the future.
Hari: Thank you!

Music has a language

I have heard people say with an air of having said something profound, that "music has no language." I don't really buy it. At least not fully. Yes, it is true that one can enjoy the instruments in the background and the melody without understanding the language, and one can occasionally understand the mood of the song, but that is only part of the enjoyment. The words add a great deal of depth to the feel of the song, and if the language is alien enough, even the mood of the song is difficult to fathom.

I was watching a dance performance by a group of middle eastern men at some cultural show, with a person of middle eastern descent next to me. The men on stage were dancing in a line, holding hands, and the song had some rough, guttural sounds that sounded more like slogans than melody to my ear. I thought the song was something with patriotic fervour and a bit of anger in it. Then the person next to me, enjoying it thoroughly, turned to me and said - "they are really having fun aren't they? This song is about friendship"! I have had similar experiences with Chinese music - I simply cannot follow it, and therefore cannot enjoy it very much, but obviously a billion Chinese people can and probably do.

Closer to home, listening to Hindi songs (or marathi lately, but I will stick to hindi for this discussion) gives me great pleasure, because the words mean something. When the lyrics are good, the songs have far greater power to touch me. There is also the element of nostalgia - songs that I grew up listening to are far more beautiful purely for that reason. I think a person who speaks no hindi cannot get the same enjoyment out of those songs, for, lacking a context and the understanding of the words, the focus is more on the melody and instrumentation, both of which may seem archaic to the modern ear.

There is also a cultural aspect to music - specifically, what a 'good' voice should sound like. Several American friends that heard some Hindi songs from the 60s/70s, told me that they liked the melodies, but the voices were not so good! These were Kishore, Rafi, Lata, Asha, and their ilk! It is possible to simply dismiss the the American friends as being ignorant, but I think it is simply a cultural expectation of what a singing voice ought to sound like.

Another important aspect of singing, also a part of the language, is the pronounciation. I think this can make or break a song, even if the rest of the elements are in place. I had teachers in high school who were native Telugu speakers that massacred Hindi songs when they sang them, despite knowing the meaning of the words, ability to sing in tune, and their obvious enjoyment of the music. What was lacking was the right pronounciation.

Finally, a subtler aspect of singing is the style, which I believe is also influenced by language and culture. A specific example is Mr. S. P. Balasubrahmaniam. I admire him as a singer, and having grown up in AP and having a reasonable ear for Telugu music, I must say he is an outstanding playback singer for Telugu songs. His musical ability is unquestioned. However, whatever songs he has sung in Hindi movies seemed to me like parodies. I examined some of the later songs of his closely and found that he had been coached well enough on the pronounciation, so that was not it. What was different was his style of taking a 'taan'. It was distinctly 'Telugu' to my ear, though I cannot explain what that means. The Germans call it 'Sprachgeful' , a feel for the language (Spelling note: I cannot make the German umlaut symbol on the blog). I believe the singer must actually think and feel like a native speaker of whatever language the song is in. Until then, something is missing.

Short Men

Research shows that short men earn less than tall ones on average, other things being equal. Women also find tall guys generally more attractive than short ones. This does not mean that we short guys are not good in bed, though. It just means we are self-taught :).

Kaka

My father was always called 'Kaka' (uncle) by everyone as far as I know. Only his older brother ("dada") called him by his name Vishwanath, at least in my lifetime. Called kaka by his neices and nephew, the name stuck, and I suppose my brother, upon being able to speak, assumed that that was his name. I followed along, as did my sister, as little brothers and sisters tend to do.

Kaka died in 1992 at the age of 74. Born in 1918, though officially stated as 1920 for the typical reasons in India - to get into school, to graduate at the right time, or to delay retirement. Anyhow, 17 years have passed since he died. My son Nikhil has never known him. I wish he had - I worry that not seeing and being with people like him will leave Nikhil with insufficient role models. The combination of intelligence, good humor, serenity and simplicity is something I have not seen in very many people. Of course I am biased in this view. He had his flaws, I am sure, but they were hard to see from my perspective as a child.

I remember asking him, when I was about 5 or 6, "don't you ever get angry"? I was genuinely puzzled that he never even raised his voice in anger at me, far less raise a hand, when I knew that I had behaved like a brat, which I often did as a kid. And I had seen some of my friends get whacked by their dads for lesser misdeeds than mine. A man of few words, he was silent for a few seconds, then said, "what kind of a man is he that never gets angry?"

I do not recall a single lecture from him about anything. He never told me how to live my life, how to solve problems, how to anything. He would come home from work on his bicycle, give us screaming kids a mini ride on the bike if we happened to be in the vicinity and demanded it. Then a cup of tea, and he would be in the garden, digging, watering, or simply smoking a cigarette and gazing at the plants in silence. The plants thrived under his care, and so did we. Just knowing he was around somewhere was the greatest feeling I remember as a kid. Modern self-help books go on and on about unconditional love - I was lucky enough to have experienced it, and even the memory of it helps when I am feeling down.

It is always hard to do justice to someone's life writing about it through one's limited perspective, so I will not try. My intent is to merely share some random thoughts about my own experiences with people as they occur to me. More about my memories of Kaka later, whenever I find the time to write about them.

Jackets with Needles on the Inside

My friend Sunnie gets the credit for this wonderful analogy. We were discussing how some people in conversations seem to always play the role of victim, ready to interpret every statement, whether neutral or even complimentary, as an attack. He said, "it is as if they are wearing jackets with needles on the inside." Even a hug pricks them.

Fashion

The latest trend in men's fashion, if the Wall Street Journal is to be believed, is V-neck shirts to show male cleavage, now dubbed "Heavage". I suppose they will next put cleavage in the back of pants in an homage to plumbers, and call it "Sewage." Just a random thought :)

Conversations - "Look at Me!"

I have noticed that most conversations among friends tend to have just one theme - "Look at me!" Children will say it simply and directly, adults say it with varying degrees of sophistication, but it generally boils down to that - and yes, even the motive of this blog is suspect.

I find it fascinating, sometimes irritating, sometimes sad, when people in a group try to hijack the conversation with a louder "look at me" than someone else. One person could be telling a story, some interesting experience they had, and another will pipe up with "that's nothing, here is what happened to me", or "my story is even worse than yours". That latter one is more common, for there is a pride that people take in recounting how horrible they have it in their lives. In other words, "look at me, I'm more pathetic than you are!"

P.G. Wodehouse of course summed it up as only he can in his story about medical retreats - how a class system develops based on how bad one's illness is.

The more sophisticated variety of this is of course the person who is smart enough to tell jokes, recount wonderful stories, and generally be the life of the party. People are attracted to this variety of a person, though the underlying message is still "look at me!" I guess the difference is simply that here the reasoning is "look at me because I'm so funny/smart/sexy etc." This blog I suppose falls into that category - "look at me for being so smart and observing this phenomenon."

Akka Ajji, More God Stuff, and Story-telling

My grandmother (mother's side), or Ajji, was to me the representative of what it meant for a person to be a Hindu, being the only religious person around me. Known to all my cousins as Akka Ajji, since most of them perhaps had to distinguish her from their other grandmother, she was simply Ajji to me and my siblings, given that we never knew our paternal grandmother. A rather devout woman, Ajji was the antidote to my rational thinking about the existence (or lack thereof) of God.

We were lucky (at least, that was my view) that growing up, Ajji and Ajoba (grandfather) spent several months of the year at our house, since Aai was a doctor and could take care of them. Ajoba was for some time mostly bedridden. Ajji always woke up early, as was the custom for most people of that generation, and went out walking in the neighborhood, collecting flowers for the morning prayers, which were offered with unfailing consistency at the altar in their room. The altar was a portable metallic temple, with little statues of various gods - Ganapati, Shankar, Ram, Krishna, Lakshmi, Saraswati, come to mind - decorated with newly drawn rangoli in front of it, and fresh flowers of the day within. Along with the flowers were 'Durva', or blades of three-pronged grass that looked like Shiva's trishul (trident) and were especially collected as offerings for Shiva or Ganapati (Ganesh). I remember many pleasant walks with her at 5:30 AM, carefully collecting exactly 21 durva.

It struck me very early on that humans are full of contradictions, and I was acutely aware of my own, with skepticism and faith both existing in my mind on an equal footing, except in her presence. The serenity in her face as she prayed or sang or chanted wiped out any skepticism within me, if only temporarily. I never met another adult in my life who had the simple charm or innocence that she did. She was at once a wise adult and the playful child. Her strong belief in God, in prayer, in all the rituals she followed made me want to believe it all too. I remember several visits to the local temple - Ram Mandir - with her, where as a kid the most joyful experience was to jump up and ring the temple bell.

Ajji's greatest talent was as a storyteller. Apart from us siblings, childhood friends and next-door neighbors Anant and Milind Talpallikar were regular visitors to our house in the evenings to listen to Ajji tell stories. And what stories they were!! Ramayan and Mahabharat were of course the staple diet with a wonderful storehouse of tales, but her repertoire went far beyond those. We heard Aesop's fables, Arabian Nights, and believe it or not, even murder mysteries by Agatha Christie. I still remember hearing her tell the story of "Elephants can Remember", an Hercule Poirot mystery. I cannot imagine anyone else being able to tell a story like that to children between the ages of 7 and 13, keeping it understandble, the suspense intact, and holding their attention from beginning to end. Her memory for details in a story and the overall ability to tell a story were peerless. The constant cry from us kids after a story was "aata ajun ek!" ("one more story, please!").

Storytelling in that sense is pretty much a dead artform in the modern age, with movies and TV taking up the role. Parents read story books to their children still, but to simply sit and narrate a story from memory is now almost unknown, I think. Who has the time to remember?

Chinese Checkers and Bizique (a card game with 8 decks of cards, 2s through 7s removed) were two major pastimes with Ajji. Both games were played with enthusiasm by all family members, and as children, I think they had a big role in improving our spatial skills, strategy, and basic math. Ajji, always childlike in demeanour, was also like a child in another way - she hated to lose at either game! She would throw a tantrum if she lost . Well, almost a tantrum - she would pout, get upset and in general her emotions were plainly writ on her face, a trait that made her all the more endearing. The recovery was just as quick, though. I never recall her holding a grudge for long.

Ajji was a self-published author of her own poetry in Marathi (in several volumes titled 'Antariche Bol') - which, like everything else about her, was simple. Some of the adults in the extended family derided it as simplistic, and then praised it after she died (the typical hypocrisy of the adult human!). I always enjoyed reading it or listening to her read from it.

Ajji died in the Summer of 1988, at the age of 84 (I think) in an old folks home, of burns when her clothes caught on fire. Whether accident or suicide is uncertain. Her impact on my childhood has been tremendous, and shaped some of my basic beliefs about life.

God Stuff

Hari (good to begin with God's name?!) gets some credit for urging me to start a blog and get down to writing, something I always thought about but never got around to doing. Used to do a little writing in college, mostly humour (at least I thought it was!), but then got out of the habit. I always thought there was something conceited about writing one's thoughts - the assumption that someone else would be interested in what I think. I suppose that would be interpreted as problems with self-esteem - I can just hear the new age rebukes! On the other hand, one can write for oneself, regardless of what anyone else thinks. Anyhow, such arguments go back and forth for ever in my head, and I end up not writing anything. So the heck with the arguments, and here goes ...

I might as well start my first blog with God. As early as in the seventh grade, I remember thinking that the concept of God made no sense. I remember a Hindi teacher, Mr. Yadayya Sagar, telling us in class that he would prove God's existence. He dramatically held up a piece of chalk and said, "This chalk did not simply happen, did it? Someone made it. In the same way, someone made all of us, and that is God". I remember thinking that that was a silly argument, for if everything needs a maker, then who made God? I certainly did not voice my objection, for this man was feared by one and all for his famous wall-chair punishment meted out to children, and though I never received that treatment, I had no desire to find out how open-minded he was to disagreements with his opinions. He was, by the way, a very good teacher, quite well liked and respected. Anyhow, I had no answer to the "who made God" or "who made the universe" question myself, and I still do not. I suspect that no one else does either.

The question of why anything exists rather than not is fascinating, but ultimately unanswerable, I think. The most palatable explanation of human existence I have found is the old Indian idea, restated by many in modern times, that there is one consciousness that can only experience itself through myriad manifestations of life forms, humans being among them. It still does not account for why the original consciousness exists rather than not.

Growing up, I found the question "Do you believe in God?" a very awkward one to answer, because I realized very early that there were too many assumptions built into the question, depending on who asked it. What exactly did one mean by that question? If God is simply a label for an abstract force that caused the universe to exist, then God exists by definition because the universe exists. One might as well call the universe God. However, belief in God is hopelessly tangled with ideas of how God expects humans to behave. People assume that belief in God goes hand in hand with all kinds of other things, such as the idea that one must pray, or go to a temple or church or mosque on certain days, or any of a million other beliefs regarding day to day activities. Most human strife can be primarily attirbuted to this - the belief that there is a God that consciously orchestrates events, that there is a particular way he/she/it expects people to behave, and worst of all, that my group or religion is the only one that knows the true way.

I am getting tired of writing now, so I will end with this thought. As I write this first blog of mine, I am also watching the second cricket test match between Australia and India at Sydney on another window of my computer, and despite crazy umpiring on day 1 of the game, India just took a first innings lead with centuries by Laxman and Sachin. So I know there is a God :-) !!