Happy Place

‘Richmond upon Thames had just been named the happiest place to live in Britain…’, Simon turned, opened his eyes and lifted his head up a bit when he overheard this remark. Two middle-aged men - probably in their late fifties - were walking past him. Their aristocratic look, in heavy, oversized black coats and dark-chocolate-coloured mufflers, was not lost in the morning’s foggy visibility. The overnight biting cold, on the other hand, had turned Simon pale. His cardboard bed and patched-up blanket had only enough warmth to keep him alive. Having been awake most of the night, unable to sleep for lack of warmth, Simon’s fatigue got the better of him in the early hours. His precious sleep had been interrupted by the audible voices of these gentlemen. It had been about a year since Simon had been made redundant at a large warehouse of a global e-commerce company. Robots had replaced people like him, and ever since, things have been tough for him. After losing his job, he lost his rented one-bed apartment, unable to afford the rent. Since then, he had been forced to move out onto the street and has been rough sleeping. He neither found employment nor any help. All he could get every day were random acts of kindness from random strangers, which would provide some food, just enough to scrape past the day. Every day for the past 6 months, he would spend the day hours searching for employment, only to end the day on a disappointing note and find refuge in a ‘safe’ corner of a street. He had no fixed place to sleep. It depended on where his day’s search would end, but for the past couple of months he had been mostly returning to his present place. Much of that had to do with the fact that some school-going kids would leave him some bread every morning. That was the only bright spot in his otherwise dark life.

‘What a coincidence’… he thought; his temporary abode happened to be in the happiest place in the city. 

Simon’s morning parcel had arrived: a few slices of bread wrapped in a piece of the daily newspaper. As he unwrapped his ‘breakfast’, the bold headline on the crumpled newspaper didn’t escape his eyes. It screamed of the same news as the announcement, that which had broken his sleep. Though only part of the article was left in the torn paper, it seemed that this conclusion had been drawn based on a survey conducted by an online home rental agency. 

Being in the same area for months makes you familiar to residents who live in the area, most of whom don’t pay any attention to him. Hence, they would pass by, him lost in their conversation. Unwillingly and without any effort, some of those words would fall into his ears. When this occurs consistently over months with the same set of people, one starts to understand some of the things going on in their lives. 

Like the Holmes couple, for example - both of whom were facing redundancy risk in their respective organisations- or the Smiths, who were going through a nasty divorce; or the young man Jamal, who was jobless like him despite having a university degree; or the old Martha, who had been living alone after her husband recently passed away. They were all happy and unhappy in their own ways. Simon wondered how such surveys were done - maybe they were talking about the big parks in the area where most people didn’t find time to walk every day; they walked busily past it, or the beautiful houses that people used to sleep in at night while spending their lives paying the mortgage or it may be about the riverside areas, a river whose water was becoming dearer by the day.  Simon didn’t have much time to spend contemplating such matters - after all, he had more urgent matters to deal with. 

But his health had been failing lately. He had developed a bad cough - maybe because of being constantly out in the cold. At times, he would cough incessantly for hours, spitting blood occasionally. He had somehow been holding on to a fading hope and his cardboard bed.

Last night was one of the harshest this winter. Temperatures had been sub-freezing. Simon was still asleep, covered from head to toe in this patchy blanket. The school kids left the bread pieces without waking him, as they did every day. The day went on as everyone walked busily past him without noticing him. It was past midday; Simon was still asleep. When the same school kids walked past him after the school day ended, they noticed that, unlike every day, the bread slices wrapped in newspaper were still untouched and Simon was still asleep. They didn’t know his name, but they were the only ones who noticed him. They went and alerted the policeman standing at the corner of the street. Emergency services arrived and tried to wake up Simon. But he lay unfazed, motionless.

They checked his pulse and his vitals. There was no sign of him being alive as they shifted his ‘frozen’ body onto the ambulance. A small crowd had gathered around him… Simon had never before gotten so much attention, and somebody from the crowd exclaimed, “Finally, he is in a happy place!”

Indeed…

(Artwork: Arnab @symphoniesoftheseamusic)

Dog in a Porsche

Tom, Dick and Harry’s car closed in on a white Porsche. As the traffic signal turned red, Tom’s eye caught a dog’s head popping over the beauty's rear windscreen. Tom, who was behind the wheel of a 2001 model truck that made visits to the garage every month, remarked, ‘O, wow!! How lucky is the dog that it gets to travel in a Porsche! To that, Dick remarked, “You don’t get it… this is all karma. This dog must have been a rich man in his past life who must have done some bad karma to be born as a dog, but some really good deeds as well to be still driven around in a Porsche.” Harry became visibly upset over Dick’s comment: ‘How dare you be condescending towards dogs! Are you suggesting that dogs are inferior to humans, that you are linking their birth as dogs to bad karma?”

Harry’s angry reaction triggered Dick as well, and a heated exchange between them ensued. Tom continued to drive, trying not to get distracted by the loud altercations between Dick and Harry. But it was becoming increasingly difficult for Tom to drive, as the intensity of the altercation between Dick and Harry continually intensified. So, he decided to take a detour off the motorway, and as he hit the muddy track, a pack of street dogs started chasing the car, barking angrily with a visible frown. The scene inside and outside the car didn’t feel much different to Tom. His thoughts were rudely jolted by the sudden sound of a tyre bursting - and obviously, the car came to a screeching halt. 

The sudden noise and halt silenced both Dick and Harry, both of whom were understandably shocked. The detour had proved to be costly, and both the front tyres had met their match. Tom called up a mobile tyre repair company, and help was on the way. Meanwhile, after a brief pause,  Dick and Harry resumed their heated arguments - this time in a more animated fashion than before. Tom interrupted this very important argument and asked Dick how his Karma theory explained the street dogs. This added salt to Harry’s wound,  and now he started shouting expletives at Tom as well. Tom retreated quietly and turned to the tyres, which needed to be replaced. 

Meanwhile, the mobile van of ‘Patchwork Tire Repairs’ arrived - “What a fitting name”, thought Tom. Bob arrived with his two assistants, Rob and Job. Bob watched over Job while he got the work done and Rob collected the money. 

Meanwhile, the continued battle between Dick and Harry reached their ears, and they asked what the hullabaloo was all about. After knowing what had ensued, Bob remarked, “You guys have got it all wrong, it not about the dog, it’s about the owner of the dog. He may seem like a dog lover but he actually uses the dog and the Porsche as his trophies - an emblem of his success. Rob, his assistant, quipped, “ A cat would have been better!” Job was not one to remain silent. He added philosophically, “I feel all of you are overthinking it; it’s just a dog and a Porsche and nothing more.” 

Bob wasn’t happy to see his assistants expressing divergent opinions and asked them to find their own transport options back to the city. Meanwhile, Dick and Harry, disillusioned with each other as much as with Tom, left on their own as well. Tom, watching his ‘friends’ depart, drove off, not sure whether the dog and the Porsche owner would ever know how much commotion they had caused unknowingly.

Sadly, all of them chose their beliefs and respective narratives over each other. I guess our beliefs and intentions shape our narratives, and narratives in turn shape our beliefs and actions. That then becomes our ‘construction’ of reality. In the modern world, Tom, Dick, Harry, Bob, Rob and Job all represent the AI algorithms who are ‘motivated’, ‘trained ’, and on a mission to spread their narrative to grow their tribe of like-minded individuals. Did you meet any of them?

Angel’s Share Engagement Strategy

The radio never stops buzzing, does it? Listening to the radio has become synonymous with my car journeys. And no matter what time you tune in, someone is always speaking, or the day’s news is being played for the nth time until you have practically memorised the headlines.

On this occasion, however, the gentleman on the radio was talking about the ‘angel’s share’. Interestingly, when whisky is being aged, a small portion evaporates. This lost portion is referred to as the angel’s share, implying that angels secretly ‘steal’ their share of whisky. I was both amused and amazed by this imaginative metaphor.

This fact reminded me of my childhood.

Whenever something special was being cooked at home, my mum would look for someone to taste it while it was still in the pot, so that necessary adjustments could be made and the final dish would be perfect by the time it reached the dining table.

This tasting process was a little tricky, because a misjudgment could mean the dish ended up less than perfect, spoiling the culinary experience for others and limiting the accolades for my mum. But the tasting process also meant an extra piece of meat or fish — the angel’s share.

As I grew up, I perfected this art of tasting and gradually became the most dependable set of taste buds at home. I have retained this reputation to this day, including when I cook. More than the joy of getting that extra piece of meat or fish, it was the thrill of being the first to experience something special and of making a small but important contribution to perfecting the final product. Developing such discerning taste buds has also helped me build reasonably good gourmet cooking skills, largely through my understanding of taste and spices.

What if organisations offered employees a similar privilege — the opportunity to experience something first and play a meaningful role in making it better?

A similar angel’s share approach has been used by some companies, especially technology companies, which give their employees early access to new products and encourage them to use them before a wider launch. This soft internal launch plays a key role not only in perfecting the product but also in understanding it from a customer’s perspective.

Feedback received from employees helps improve the product’s features and value proposition. Indirectly, it can also make employees more empathetic towards customers’ needs and what they look for in a product or service, thereby encouraging a customer-focused rather than purely engineering-focused mindset.

This practice is commonly known as ‘dogfooding’ — employees use their organisation’s own products, often before their public release, to identify problems and suggest improvements. Personally, I think ‘dogfooding’ is a horrible way of describing something that can have such a profound impact on a company and its community.

I call this the ‘Angel’s Share Engagement Strategy’ — an approach that engages employees internally while bringing organisations closer to customers externally, simultaneously fostering skill development, innovation and organisational competitiveness.

What makes this strategy particularly compelling is its potential to resonate with Gen Z and Millennials, for whom opportunities to make meaningful contributions can be powerful drivers of engagement.

Interestingly, Deloitte’s 2025 Gen Z andMillennial Survey found that 89% of Gen Z respondents and 92% of Millennials considered having a sense of purpose important to their job satisfaction and well-being. This reinforces the importance of creating opportunities for employees to feel that their contributions genuinely matter.

The strategy can also strengthen customer engagement by drawing on insights and feedback from employees who belong to the same generational cohorts as the target customers, helping organisations develop offerings that resonate more strongly with their end users.

Give the angels their share and be blessed! 🙂 Have you?

Between Rumblings & Grumblings – The Journey of Life, What We Hear, What We Become

It was early morning, and the usually busy platform of the tube station bore a deserted look. Besides me, there were 1 or 2 more souls waiting on the platform for their train. I glanced for the nth time at the digital display board; my train was 4^th in the queue. The last train had just left the underground station, and I could hear its rumbling sound for much longer in the morning silence before it grew fainter and ultimately died out. This rumbling will again start as the next train approaches the station. Between these rumblings of the trains, there was a strange blanket of silence that wrapped the whole environment in its shroud. At some point, this whole place will be filled with people and will be drowned in a cacophony of sounds that in itself would make no sense, yet will be filled with hundreds of small and big conversations, each one of which would have a story and a past.  

Life feels so much like this tube platform. We are all waiting to board our trains, either starting a new journey or continuing an old one. And even though sometimes we might be on the same train as others, our compartments are different; and even if we happen to be in the same compartment, our seats and situations aren’t the same. Each one is a passenger, each with their own joys, sorrows, resentments and anger.  Some who haven’t been able to find themselves a seat, or know that their journey is going to end or change very soon, choose to stand. Some are carrying their heavy baggage, others choose to travel light. Each one is in a different level of comfort and strife, each fighting their own struggles in life. Some can afford the luxury of first class, while others make their way to the general compartment. Some have a companion, some are lonely, while others choose to be alone. Some are chasing dreams, while others are ruing on missed chances. Some are too busy to talk; others are busy talking. Some are taking a chance; others are waiting for one. Some are curious about the possibilities; others are anxious about the impossible. Some have ear to the ground; others are floating above it. Some pay attention, while others go through the motions. Some get down too soon, while others go right up to the terminus. Some journeys turn out to be memorable and others forgettable. In the end, all journeys will end, and nothing will remain except those dying rumblings and grumblings. What then will matter is not the journeys as much as we carry what they have made of us; did we find our music in the rumble or lost our minds in endless grumble,  did we touch a soul, did we bring a smile, did we create a hope, did we reflect for a while, did we stop to support a stick, did we lend hand to one who is weak, did we wait for someone and did someone wait for us.

It’s less of how it started, more of how it ends, and what we do between the start and the end. And this is why some journeys are remembered while others are forgotten too soon, some inspire, while others feel like a helium balloon.

My solitude was broken once again by the thunderous roar of the approaching train, the 4^th train, my train. I have to leave now and begin another journey…