07.07.07
Yeh Multitasking Badi Hai Must Must
“O my God. To be a student of Grade Nine and to have a father as cantankerous as you! Cried my daughter when I told her to stop listening to the i-pod while doing her mathematics homework.
“So I am cantankerous?” I shot back, while heading for the Webster’s to check what exactly it really meant.
I thought that by cautioning my daughter against mixing music and mathematics, I was doing my bit towards becoming a more responsible father. Was I not just trying to ensure that her daughter’s mathematics homework went off well?
“What if the nasal wails of Himesh Reshamiya make you forget that the angle inscribed in a semi-circle is always a right angle. Or if the crooning of Sonu Nigam lulls you into the believing that the sum of three angles inside a triangle can be greater than 180 degree.”
“ O Papa, I am listening to Shakira and not to any of your mulligatawny soup singers for God sake! So the triangle and the angles will be just OK. Don’t you worry.”
“But my dear, you have only one mind, and mathematics is all about concentration. How can you read one thing and hear something else and yet do the square root of the addition of squares of base and altitude to arrive at the hypotenuse.”
“Come off it Papa, you wouldn’t understand it. Anyways, it is not your problem really. My homework is my problem. I am responsible for it and I am accountable to my teacher for it tomorrow. And believe me the solutions to the mathematics questions are found faster when the music fuses with the fuzzy logic of theorems.” My tiny girl with big ears and bigger spectacles tried to explain to me, as I looked bewildered.
“ But how is it possible, I say….” I protested.
“It is possible Papa. This is called multi-tasking”
“What do you know about multi-tasking, my dear?” I was getting nervous at my girl’s newly acquired jargons.
“Come on Papa. I have heard you say this several times to your colleagues. Don’t you remember what happened last Friday when we had all gone to watch the “Pirates of the Caribbean” and you got the call from your Boss? You were explaining to him that you were with a customer and would call him later. I later asked you to explain that how could you be with a customer when you were actually inside a Cineplex. You remember what you said… that you were seeing the movie and at the same time you were also communicating with your customer using your Blackberry. You said you were multi-tasking.”
“And Papa when you write these blogs while in office and yet manage your office work, don’t you do multi-tasking? I heard you tell Mom that she needed to manage her school job and home affairs much better. What was it that you told her to do? Yes, you told her to enhance her multi-tasking skills”
“Papa. This is an era of multitasking. The housemaid does it when she speaks to her friends over phone, while frying the fish in the cholesterol free oil; the dentist does it while he passes message to his attendant to sell his shares online even as he starts to drill into the patient’s molars; the courier boy on the bike does it when he swirls his bike through the maze of cars even as he speaks on his mobile, placed between the upward left shoulder and left leaning head.”
“ So Papa. Am I so incompetent that I can’t manage my mathematics homework while listening to Shakira”
Satisfied with her explanation, I move away. Happy that I did my job and she is doing hers, I reach for my Kingfisher can. I go to my easy chair and sink my head in the newspaper. The face that emerges from the sports page is that Sharad Pawar, the man who has mastered the art of multi-tasking. He is the Minister of Agriculture, a sector that employs most men and women in India. A sector which is plagued with unending natural calamities- floods today and famine tomorrow. A sector that occasionally sees suicides of it biggest stakeholder-the farmer. A sector which requires its head-honcho to work 24*7.
And yet Pawarji manages to find time not just to see a game of cricket, but also to oversee its entire affairs. Not content with the tasks associated with his being the sole leader of his NCP and being the CEO of Agriculture Company of India, he also presides over the Board of Cricket Control of India. The impressive mug shot of Sharad Pawar has a headline that says that he will take over as the top dog of International Cricket Council in 2010.
What else will he be doing in 2010? Eyeing the deputy Prime Minister slot. Who knows?
So single tasking is out. Multitasking is the in thing. If I can do it, the boy on the bike can do it, the dentist can do it, the housemaid can do and even the great Maratha does it then why can’t my just-burst-into-teens daughter do it?
I hope the mathematics teacher does it too. Watching India Idol while checking the homework notebooks of Grade Nine!
The author is a management consultant &a freelance writer. Send welcome at sudhir_bisht@rediffmail.com
Amit said,
July 7, 2007 at 3:13 pm
Dear Sudhir,
This is very lovely. In fact as I write this comment, I am also singing a lullaby to my little son!
Good One
sajjad Ali said,
July 8, 2007 at 1:15 am
This si really relevant.
Everyone is multi tasking today. Since there are so many things a person can do at one time.
The blackberry has truly changed my life :).
Munish said,
July 8, 2007 at 4:46 pm
Interesting. But Sudhir in 2010 Why should Sharad Pawar not try for PM’s position? Just a thought, I say!
Venkatesh A. said,
July 10, 2007 at 5:24 pm
“Multi Tasking” has been on since years, but the only difference is that we have coined a word (from the computer world) for this now. Our paretnts were also doing multi-tasking by successfully doing offfice job along with a lot of other jobs like sending money for educational expenses, meeting up with appointments (personal) etc. The only difference is that with the advance in technology, multi-tasking has become easier and no. of tasks completed/ achieved in a shorter time leaving some time for you to spend for yourself.
Multi-tasking has become even more relevant today, with the demands on all fronts increasing, while increasing our own capacity in this area.
chinmay said,
July 10, 2007 at 7:21 pm
good one
RAMESH MYNAM said,
July 10, 2007 at 9:29 pm
It is more relevent during appraisal times as bosses always says that you need to do multi tasking ( not applies to them)
but in day to day life it is very essential
nice one.