The darkness of Sunshine

Exploring something new with this poem. Any critique of this vers libre is welcome.

The darkness of Sunshine

Once there was a white rose,

They called her Sunshine,

Reflected the day's glow around,

Said she was a creation fine

She sang, danced, laughed

In the wind; Little did they see,

Inside Sunshine there was darkness,

Which beneath her glow she hid

One day a bee found Sunshine,

She opened up to the bee

He sang, danced and played with her,

Wished he'd set her darkness free

But Sunshine was daunted,

Held on to her darkness tight
Fragile, she felt without it,

Thought darkness gave her might

She drew herself deeper into darkness,

And pushed away the bee

But such was the darkness,

Potent, that it stayed on with the bee

-Gowrish

Remembering Steve Jobs

Through growing up and work life different perspectives of Steve Jobs kept developing - a great visionary, inventor, entrepreneur, people manager and a contemporary marketer who revolutionized market understanding, product design and innovation. By way of remembering him, here is a collection of my favourite quotes by Steve Jobs on some key subjects.

Life, leading it purposefully and entrepreneurship:

"You cannot connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect ehem looking backwards. So, you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something - your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life."

"Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn’t matter to me … Going to bed at night saying we’ve done something wonderful… that’s what matters to me."

Market understanding and customer needs:

“You can’t just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they’ll want something new.”

"...A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them."

Leadership and people management:

“When I hire somebody really senior, competence is the ante. They have to be really smart. But the real issue for me is, Are they going to fall in love with Apple? Because if they fall in love with Apple, everything else will take care of itself.They’ll want to do what’s best for Apple, not what’s best for them, what’s best for Steve, or anybody else.”

Design:

"That’s been one of my mantras — focus and simplicity. Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains."

“In most people’s vocabularies, design means veneer. It’s interior decorating. It’s the fabric of the curtains of the sofa. But to me, nothing could be further from the meaning of design. Design is the fundamental soul of a human-made creation that ends up expressing itself in successive outer layers of the product or service.”

Managing innovation:

"Innovation has nothing to do with how many R&D dollars you have. When Apple came up with the Mac, IBM was spending at least 100 times more on R&D. It’s not about money. It’s about the people you have, how you’re led, and how much you get it."

Personal excellence:

“We don’t get a chance to do that many things, and every one should be really excellent. Because this is our life. Life is brief, and then you die, you know? And we’ve all chosen to do this with our lives. So it better be damn good. It better be worth it.”

“Almost everything–all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure–these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.”

"Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle."

Death:

"No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”

Rest in peace Steve Jobs.

The hunter, the hunted and the observer: Part 2

(Continued from Part 1: Read here.)

As we were returning from the Hippo pools we decided that we would give it another 30 minutes and then leave the park. I realised I was kind of dozing off in the odd combination of bright sunlight and cool wind, because I was shaken by the excited voice of my guide, "Look there is the gecko you missed the last time". Some gecko, it was a Monitor Lizard full six feet in length, head to tail, with Matrix-green slimy skin. I quickly managed to get a couple of snaps, before it disappeared under the little bridge. I must have gone back to dozing because then I was startled by, "There he is, at last! I am amazed how fast you can go to sleep." We were looking at the back of a Lion about 80 feet away. On the other side we could see a couple of Safari vans silently parked in anticipation of the Simba to do something spectacular.

Calvin had an idea that we should go around the lion and come face to face with him. So, we started the engines and followed a circuitous route down the hill turning left and coming halfway up the hill on a track parallel to our current one. The route was longer than I had imagined because out of the blue we were beside a pond with a hippo in dark pink and grey hide munching away the tall green grass. He looked up at us when we stopped and made a waving gesture with his head. I kept shooting away on my digicam. In a few seconds another Safari van that pulled up beside us. Hippos are shy, I thought, as I saw the giant pink and grey beast turn around swiftly and in a running-rolling motion ease itself into the pond. We backed our car and resumed the little trip up the hill back to the Simba.

Within a few minutes, we were back in sight of the Safari vans parked by the Lion's spot. Somehow thinking that we had to tread slowly lest we disturb the Lion, we parked the car and turned off the engine. Looking out for the Lion walk his way downhill, we realised he was not alone. I saw the Lioness first, crouched in the grass looking intently ahead into the distance. We were just about 40 feet away from the Lioness. Then the Lion emerged behind her in a majestic gait down the hill.

I kept switching between video and still modes on my camera and remembered that this was the stuff that National Geographic shows are made of, isn't it? I could feel the tension in the air, as we realised that the majestic couple was indeed checking out the dazzle of zebras about 300 feet away. "Animals can sense danger, you know. The zebras are not behaving normally as they do," Calvin kept talking. I thought, nothing was normal about this scene, as far as I was concerned. I could hear every little tweet that any bird was making. If I tried harder, I could probably hear the sounds of the zebras. I am certain this natural drama plays out thousands of times around the world every day. But when have I  been a witness to it in real life? I was really lucky that this was happening in the little time window that I was in the park.

Hunting is a patient game. We had played it all morning to sight the Simba couple. Now, we were watching these two lay out the ground for their hunt. It was already about 15 minutes since we landed at the scene and the Lion and the Lioness had hardly moved 10 feet. At this rate, the hunt would take some time to end in a kill. Calvin reminded me that we would not have time to go to the Giraffe Park since we had spent more than planned time here. He knew about my meeting and my flight and he knew the sluggish traffic on Nairobi roads. He had been my driver for the last three days. So, I had to agree with him and reluctantly decided to end the observation of the lions.

On my way out, I was so excited, I made a long distance call to let my wife know what I had just left behind. She could not believe it. She  immediately decided that I could watch a full hunt when we went to Masai Mara together. So, there it was, a plan to Masai Mara was made. I am definitely looking forward to a longer Safari that would come about in the next 18 months. The Mara's been on our list long enough. We better figure out how to check it off the list.

Until then I have to be like the Simbas, patiently waiting, carefully observing, remaining out of sight yet keeping the goal in sight and swooping down on the target in a quick action.

The hunter, the hunted and the observer. Part - 1

I saw the Lioness first, as she looked far into the distance crouched 40 feet away in the dry Kenyan Savannah patch. Almost invisible, she had been elusive through the best attempts of my safari driver and me for the last two and a half hours. The Lion emerged about 15 feet behind her, in his majestic gait and crouched about eight feet behind her. Within a few seconds, he stood up and walked up to the Lioness as she continued to survey the dazzle of zebras. Calvin, my Safari driver and guide, let out a knowing smile and said in his Kenyan accented English "She is just trying to spot the fattest one". I said," You mean the slowest one." He replied,"Same thing. Man these zebras are all fat." I looked at my mid-riff and decided that I should not continue talking and instead work on my camera.

While I would have loved to start earlier, we had started off at 7 AM. No time for breakfast, I picked up a couple of small pies and a couple of doughnuts from a supermarket. I bought extra batteries just in case my rechargeable ones gave away. We reached Nairobi National Park at 7:30 AM and picked up our Safari passes. There were three other cars waiting to check in at one of the seven gates that open into the park. As soon as I started wondering whether the tarmac was laid for all of the 100 odd kms of criss cross Safari tracks, the tarmac ended and gave way to hard red and black earth.

The first native of the park we met was an Ostrich. After that they just kept coming - Impalas, the Wild Beasts (Oke, as they are called in Masai), Gazelles, Zebras and dozens of types of birds that I do not know the names of, but they came in all colours. After about half hour we changed tracks as Calvin spotted a Giraffe at a distance. Somehow, everytime we kept getting closer the giraffe changed directions. I never got close enough for my camera. About the camera - I own some of the best equipment for a prosumer of photography. But, this biz trip was put together on short notice and I could not get my Nikkor Lenses (one of them a 450mm effective on the D70 that I own), cleaned. I am the only one I know whose lenses have fungi on the inner element. And since it is rainy season, I was told they would not risk opening it until seasons changed and the dry winter began. So, there I was with a 100 dollar SLR-like Fujifilm S5800  digicam, which had time and again proved itself for street, landscape and macro photography. But, I knew it was a crime or even a sin to not carry to a Kenyan safari the best of the equipment I had. I was counting on the bright sunlight to make up for any limitations that my  digicam had. Anyway, c'est la vie.

Everytime we passed another private or hired Safari vehicle, the drivers exchanged notes about what each other had spotted. Even in the open wilderness of the grassland with sparse Acacia groves and very rare clumps of palm trees, it was difficult to predict where a specific type of land animal would be. It was about two hours into the Safari and we were getting eager to see a pride of three lions that we kept hearing about. We even chatted up a ranger with a gun and wearing camouflage fatigues. I did not have the whole day. I had a flight to catch in six and a half hours and a meeting (I know), to attend in three hours. So, we again changed routes.

Shortly, we spotted a tower of Giraffes and since we were driving into the sun, they appeared as tall silhouettes in a light blue background. For a second, it felt like being in  Jurassic Park. I had never seen a dozen giraffes together, let alone this close in the wild. We were on our way to what they called the Hippo Pools, where sometimes the lions hung around. While we saw neither the hippos nor the lions, we had a close encounter with congress of baboons (I wonder if the connection between monkeys and the government is a deliberate one). An enterprising guard had set up a small refreshment bar of soft drinks in a shelter near the Hippo Pools. To draw crowds to his little store, he had displayed sun-dried and somehow cleaned up skeletal remains of several animals done to end by the predators. The most interesting and difficult to guess was that of an Ostrich.  ( Continued in Part 2: Read here.)