Written on Sand October 7, 2005

As a small boy, I was always fascinated with sand. In places I grew up, sand was easy to find. By the river bed, at construction sites and by short-lived rivulets that ran like fiery rivers after a spell of rain, next to paddy fields. The sand bed designed by unseen, deft fingers stayed on till a cow's hoofs went over them. I could spend hours looking at the patterns or playing on the sand dumped at construction sites. Today, bang in the heart of India's Silicon Valley, the only time I see sand is on my way to work. I see the trucks carry sand to construction sites I can no more play at. But my mind goes back to my childhood and the sand trucks bring me the memories of Koraput in Orissa. As a three-year old, I used to watch the occasional truck, groups of young adivasi women called "Nani bais" perched on the back. They wore bright sarees up to their knees, tucked flowers of the forest on the well plaited hair and sang in chorus as the trucks moved past me. At work and singing! Sometimes, as dusk fell, I would see them return - this time walking past - the women always held each other at the waist and walked in a single row - the men behind and they would be inevitably laughing or singing in a hauntingly beautiful chorus. That's my first impression of people at work. Today, I do not see them when the sand truck moves past in the traffic of Bangalore. But I notice something very interesting. The trucks come loaded from the river bed many miles away - nobody perched on them. Then they stand in some parking site - waiting for a buyer. The sand they carry is neatly stacked and every few days, the pattern changes. Sometime, they are loaded and then neatly patted to look like a pyramid, sometime like a mountain, sometime in yet some other shape. It occurs to me that the men and women who load them, have a mundane task but they have fun doing it and use their creativity on the sand as they go about their job. Some days, when the gulmohar trees are in bloom - you can also see a twig or two of bright bloom inserted on the top of the sand with the spontaneity of a child at play. Very similar to what we have all done as children by the sea, after building a sand castle. Today, I saw something even more interesting - I saw a parked sand truck - the loaders had willfully etched the Nike swoosh sign on the entire body of the sand. I am sure this is not part of a Nike campaign, but there it was. Until a buyer will come by, take the truck and the load is dumped. The artist will not be around to see the signs gone but he or she does not care. The creator had fun at work. How many of us sing at work? How many of us put our own swoosh sign on the sands we load? It occurs to me that we have left the child behind somewhere as we have gone to school and college and donned our business suits. And we complain about the spirit of innovation and lack of creativity at the work place. What is innovation and creativity? Is it in the mind or is it in the output? Is it in many small things or is it in a big bang of a great idea that will change the world forever? Is it something that flows out of designated minds in a R&D lab or is it in the hand of the "Nani bai" who improvises by plucking the flame of the forest - tucking some of it in her plaited hair and hoisting some on the sand? Or is it in the jamming they do, composing on the fly because they have never known how to read music, never been trained in any formal way? Innovation and creativity is a state of being. It does not get taught in MBA classes. It shies away when simplicity is shorn and we seek sophistication. It is not what gets guided through reward and recognition mechanisms that companies seek to fervently put in place like a net cast over a sea that has no life below the waves. It is a flow, a spontaneity and a continuum. It is in the profound anonymity of the artist of the sand truck who I will never see - someone who is telling me the importance of trying doing something new and doing it differently while loading the sand truck of my life today. Source : http://digvijayankoti.blogspot.in/2009/04/subroto-bagchi-speaks-all-articles-by.html subroto bagchi