Seeking Shawshank Redemption

Don’t be defeatist dear, its very middle class — The Dowager Countess of Grantham, Downton Abbey

If you are feeling a bit low and blue, and the stress of March is Mine is getting to you, then today’s column is for you. Tomorrow, as we cross the month’s half way mark, ponder over what the Countess says for a bit. It is exactly what separates people who transcend huge obstacles—mental, social, physical and economic—like in the film The Shawshank Redemption, to the class of highly successful people. People who can climb up from depths and still bounce back.

However this notion is often romanticised. We love the story of the underdog who defy the multiple pulls of their circumstances and stands victorious. The scene in The Shawshank Redemption, where Andy Dufresne, after crawling out of the tunnel from Shawshank prison, stands with his arms outstretched to the heavens in gratitude with huge drops of rain falling on his face, brings joy to viewer. 

Why? The Shawshank Redemption is a story of each one of us. It is the story of Andy Dufresne who finds himself, wrongly accused for the murder of his wife and her lover and sent to prison. 

It was my turn, that's all. I was in the path of the tornado. I just didn't expect the storm would last as long as it has — Andy Dufresne, The Shawshank Redemption

Just like Mr. Dufresne, is unfairly put in prison, we also find ourselves as unwitting and unjustified prisoners of happenstance and perhaps even karma. Sometimes our prison sentence is a few hours and sometimes a lifetime. What people must remember is that Mr. Dufresne spent 20 years chipping away at rock and stone with a small hammer to make his eventual escape and later reunite with his friend. 

Time and the hammer to chip away at your circumstances is the lesson here. Even if it takes 20 years. We have covered the topic of time in earlier columns. Now is the time to cover resilience. 

My course instructor said something rather interesting. Every negative emotion has huge capabilities to build a strong platform. Every Positive Psychologist will tell you that the emotion of sadness should be properly acknowledged and perhaps harnessed. Sadness makes you withdraw from the situation. In that withdrawal, it gives you time to introspect and to check the inventory of resources that you have at your disposal. 

The most important inventory item that we often undervalue is the people in our lives. Those social connections that we have at our disposal have immense value waiting to be unlocked. 

To me, that is the most important lesson of Shawshank. Mr. Dufresne found social connections in prison; amongst social outcasts consisting of robbers, murderers, rapists and addicts. 

Sometimes you stick to the task for yourself, or in the case of Yuti Mehta, you persevere for the people to whom you owe a sense of deep responsibility.  Ms. Mehta was not a fashion graduate, but she decided to undertake an adventure in the world of fashion. She started the venture with a view to pursue her own happiness, which was not in the money. In her words, “It all appeared interesting. But only when you are in the cycle, you know the pressure a startup can create”.

Then the vagaries of fashion, which is perhaps one of the most unforgiving of industries, hit home. High manpower cost, demanding customers, unyielding deadlines, uncertainties of design success, inventories and fixed costs and, of course, cash flow. In her work, she uses hand embroidery, a skill that is diminishing and becoming expensive as machines take over the task of embroidery. She saw no future. A time came when she decided to pack up and announced it to the people who worked for her. Her work was a source of income for tailors and highly skilled embroiderers. The tailors could take their task to any other fashion designer. But embroiderers had nowhere to go. There was not much work left for them in the market. She realised, “I am responsible for them”. 

As simple as that. She was responsible. 

“Age old techniques are not appreciated because cheap computer embroidery is available in the market. These poor uneducated but skilled guys understand nothing about computers, but the fact that their livelihood is in danger”.   But then, realisation dawned! “There are almost 15 of them, earning their livelihood from my business. I decided to push further just for them”.

Is it for a deep meaning or purpose in life? Absolutely, positively, not! “Creating happiness and employment for them (the embroiderers) is the change I now wish to see. After all, I am the lucky one.” 

In my career I have presided over the closing of units, downsizing and “correcting” business units. The best advice I was given by a very wise person came in two phrases. First, make sure that it is absolutely the last option that you have and that you have personally explored all other options. Second, once you decide, do it quickly and with a great amount of dignity. A word not often used in corporate life but lived through by Ms Mehta. Something tells me Ms. Mehta gets her redemption every time she hands over assignments to the people and makes life a little bit better for them. 

But then, you would think that it is all very fine for a young girl to take this risk and carry on.  Let me switch tracks completely. Arvind Verma, is a CEO of a large instrumentation company called Aimil, which he built from scratch. What makes Mr. Verma unique is that an accident left him paralysed waist down, a wheelchair bound paraplegic at the age of fourteen. His zest for life and the growth of his company is simply infectious. I was giving a keynote speech at an offsite in his company, and I was taken aback by the energy he derives from his employees. The zest of learning something new and unrelated to the instrumentation business was palpable in the room.  The secret source of Mr. Verma lay simply within.

To make sure your prisons can never get to cage you. Do not let your Shawshank imprison you. 

I have to remind myself that some birds aren't meant to be caged. Their feathers are just too bright and when they fly away, the part of you that knows it was a sin to lock them up does rejoice. But still, the place you live in is that much more drab and empty now that they're gone. — ​Red Redding, The Shawshank Redemption 

I know what you are thinking, it is all very fine, when you are a independent designer or a businessman. But what about ordinary people?

Then you must meet the ever resilient Shobha Shandilya. At the peak of the 2007 recession, she went to work for a new security services company in their Human Resources function. Unfortunately the company folded up. Her employees came to her asking for jobs. “After listening to their troubles of running the family, I responded, ‘It is not possible for me to get you placed unless I own a company’. Everyone got very excited and encouraged me to do the same.”

She launched PLN9. Since it was a male dominated industry, wherever she went, she was viewed with perhaps veiled amusement, because it was unusual for a woman to run a male oriented security forces company. Sadly, her biggest obstacles came from  within. One of her employees cheated the company. Another employee, a lady who was her first hire, diverted all of PLN9’s business by opening a parallel company with her husband. The same people who were being helped by Ms. Shandilya became her biggest obstacles in life. 

In my view, perhaps her most important resource was her family. Her family helped her pursue her dream and gave her the spirit to fight back. Today PLN9 has a turnover of Rs. 100 million and as the country grows and more  businesses sprout up, you will see her guards standing sentinel to them. 

In the toughest of times families come together. They make sure that no Shawshank can ever try and hold you down. 

This reminds me of a gentleman who I met, perhaps a year back, during a workshop. He now runs a really nice restaurant in Gurgaon. When bad times came calling, they have this uncanny ability to come calling when you are the most unprepared. The fortunes of the Sahdev family went into an unending free fall. From being millionaires they had barely Rs 50 in their pockets. Not only did his financial fortunes flounder, Arun Sahdev’s health took a dive and he could not work for a while. 

So who came to the fore? His father, at the age of 76, decided to start working again. He would change two trains, and travel 50 kms to reach his work place in scorching Delhi heat, to set right the family fortunes. Mr. Sahdev then transformed his health and started doing multiple jobs to gather capital. Over time, a family dispute got resolved which he used to launch a small restaurant called ‘Amchi Tawa’. Together with his wife, Shalu, they innovated traditional recipes. The entire family rallied together. In the words of their daughter, “It was just the love for each other that kept us going. We always believed in him and that it would pass. It did and we are proud”.   

The Sahdev family is perhaps one of the loveliest families you will meet in business. “It was the future of my children. I should not leave them to their destiny, with nothing to inherit,” Mr. Sahdev said. I think he sums it perfectly when he says, “We know we are always there for each other, which is normally something just said but seldom done”.

There is a beautiful scene in the movie, where Andy Dufresne starst playing the Marriage of Figaro by Mozart, over the public system in prison.

To this, Red Redding says—

I have no idea to this day what those two Italian ladies were singing about. Truth is, I don't wanna know. Some things are best left unsaid. I'd like to think they were singing about something so beautiful it can't be expressed in words, and it makes your heart ache because of it. I tell you those voices soared, higher and farther than anybody in a grey place dares to dream. It was like some beautiful bird flapped into our drab little cage and made these walls dissolve away, and for the briefest of moments, every last man in Shawshank felt free.

So how do you feel free? A coaching client asked me, “How can you social connections set you free?” This is the exercise I have for you this Monday. It was just last week that Barbara Fredrickson released this intervention on social connections.

Each evening, for the next 5 days, review your entire day and call to mind the three longest social interactions you had that day. Thinking of these three interactions all together, consider how true each of the following two statements is for you:

During these social interactions, I felt “in tune” with the person/s around me.

During these social interactions, I felt close to the person/s.

Rate the truth of these two statements on a scale from 1 to 7, on which 1 = not at all true, and 7 = very true. 

Record your answers anywhere, like in a notebook or a computer spreadsheet that you create.  Simply use this activity to reflect on whether your potential moments of positivity resonance were in fact realised. At the end of 5 days, reflect on the process. Did anything change for you? If so, describe how. What might you do differently in the future to increase your feelings of closeness and of being “in tune” with others?

I was my own first guinea pig. It felt so good. Some of the interactions that I had were very depressing because they involved rejection from clients. When I reflected on it, I realised that I had received some very good feedback from people who really cared about me. I realised my proposition was incorrectly communicated. The presentation decks will now undergo a huge change. My mind, somehow decided to build on the learning and re-construction. I would strongly suggest this intervention for you. 

After all, it’s your March. We are already halfway through our dreams. This Monday, I wish you many positive connections, which lead you towards abundance. In case you are still interested in The Shawshank Redemption, do watch it. 

Andy Dufresne writes to Red, “Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies. Fear can hold you prisoner. Hope can set you free.”

When Red is release from prison, he sets out to find his friend, he says to himself,  “I find I'm so excited I can barely sit still or hold a thought in my head. I think it is the excitement only a free man can feel, a free man at the start of a long journey whose conclusion is uncertain. I hope I can make it across the border. I hope to see my friend, and shake his hand. I hope the Pacific is as blue as it has been in my dreams. I hope.”

This is the fever of March. The month of spring. The holy month of Lent. I feel a little like Red, and I cannot sit still.  Remember this March is Mine and it is meant to set you free. The March starts with you and with a little help from your friends.