TED Book Club Selection - November 2011

 Today, the lastest TED Book Club Selection arrived, Walter Isaacson's biography Steve Jobs.  What an appropriate choice!  Both TED and Jobs stand for Technology, Entertainment and Design. I've received many comments on my posts about TED book selections, showing that many people enjoy hearing what the folks at TED have chosen.  So I decided to post this, even though I've barely begun the book.
 

Jobs life is linked to three inspirations in my own life: Clayton Christensen, TED and Ian Sharp. 

 

It's said that Jobs was inspired by Clayton Christensen's book The Innovator's Dilemma, and that it was pivotal in molding his views about innovation.  I've talked about Christensen's ideas in previous posts (such as this one).  I celebrated the fact that The Innovator's Dilemma was chosen as one of the six best business books of all time(click here), and that Christensen was named the top Business Thinker (click here).  These posts explain why I think Christensen's ideas are so important, and if you examine the trajectory of Jobs' career, you can see his products as an illustration of Christensen's theories.  Consultants from Innosight (the firm founded by Clayton Christensen) had a great article about the innovation lessons learned from Steve Jobs.  I've seen lots written about Jobs recently, but that assessment is my favourite.

Jobs' life is an illustration of the very essence of the TED conference.  So many conferences bring together people with shared interests in a particular field.  They are very focused, and can often provide deep information, but seldom any true inspiration because they simply reinforce an industry's entrenched way of thinking.  TED is different - it brings together people from a wide variety of disciplines and the sparks of creative and innovative thinking fly.  Jobs similarly capitalized on the breadth and depth of his interest in technology, entertainment and design in the breathtaking innovation in his products.  In just the first few chapters, there have been appearances by people I've met at TED like Larry Brilliant and Stewart Brand, and the index reveals more to come.

The description of those early days in Silicon Valley brings back memories of my early days in  timesharing (now called cloud computing) in the early 70s in Canada.  I worked for I.P. Sharp Associates, a pioneering software and network communications company, led by the brilliant and unassuming Ian Sharp (shown at left).  Ian's penchant for hiring bright people resulted in a company full of them.    Like Jobs, many 'Sharpees' had dropped out of university  (often leaving the US motivated by the Vietnam draft).  Like Jobs, some of them had nevertheless earned a BA (brilliant & abrasive) or a BE (brilliant & eccentric).  Ian exhibited huge tolerance of eccentric behaviour as long as people were contributing and were respectful of their colleagues and focussed on solving customer problems.   Jobs' success arose, at least in part, from the diversity of his interests and his appetite for ingesting ideas from many fields. Ian's disregard for people's area of specialization meant that I.P. Sharp was seething with people from diverse backgrounds - computer science as well  as education, mathematics, biology, music and many fields.  (It was also full of 'minorities', because Ian seemed blind to nationality, religion, skin colour, or sexual orientation).

Authorized biographies often present a somewhat varnished version of events.  What has surprised me so far about this book is that it shines a glaring light on both Jobs' brilliance and his less desirable traits.  Jobs and Wozniak have just founded Apple, and Jobs' trademark chutzpah, passion and single-minded drive are already evident.  The reality distortion field has made its appearance.  So has Jobs' arrogance, although that aspect of his personality remains to be polished and honed.  His penchant for abuse and his 'anti-loyalty' is disturbing to read about.   Perhaps it's a final comment on Jobs' unfailingly high  self-esteem that he was willing to support a book that could present him in such an unforgiving light.

 

Glenburn Tea Estate

Our last stop in India was at the Glenburn Tea Estate, a large working tea plantation at an altitude of 3,200 feet in the Himalayas.  From our room we could see Mt. Kangchenjunga, the third highest mountain in the world at 28,169 feet.  (For reference, Everest is 29,029 feet.)

We had to get up early in the morning to see the mountains, because by 7 a.m., they are cloaked in cloud.  It really brings home the tales of climbers who wait for a break in the weather to make their final ascents on these huge mountains.

It's hard to express how awesome these mountains are.  That picture above was taken from 130 kms away, tipping the camera up.  On the first morning, we missed the view of the full mountain, but we now suspect the very tops of the mountains were visible that day and we mistook them for clouds.  Your eye just doesn't look that high for mountains, until you see the full range and realize "Oh my goodness, those mountains really are touching the sky!"

Burra Lodge  at Glenburn is the original bungalow built in 1859 by a Scottish tea company, and magnificently restored by the current owners.  The Water Lily Bungalow (shown at the left) was built in 2008 and has been furnished with antiques and tasteful decor, right down to traditional antique baths and gorgeous teak floors.





Our room in the Water Lily Bungalow was named the RungDung Suite after the nearby river. 

That window seat was my favourite spot to sit and read and absorb the mountains.  My husband chose the patio for the same view.

One of the lovely features of Glenburn was the large dinner table which seated all 18 people staying there.  (There were several children as well, who were fed before the grown-ups.)  Glenburn is very popular with expats who live in Delhi and want to escape the chaos for a serene holidays, and most of the guests fell into this category.  Our place cards seated us with different people each night and the conversation was lively and entertaining.




Another great thing about Glenburn was the wonderful gardens.  We hadn't seen a lot of flowers growing in gardens in India.  (In fact, I was always curious where those thousands of flower petals came from for all those rangolis we saw).  But Glenburn was a refreshing burst of flowers for souls starved of flowers.  We talked to the gardener one day, who said he had been taking care of Glenburn's gardens for over 50 years!  Here are some of the lovely flowers:

Turbans

During our recent trip to India, I became fascinated with turbans.  There were many beautiful turbans, in a variety of colours, and wrapped in rather exotic patterns.  One man demonstrated to me how he wrapped his turban - he did it so efficiently it was amazing.

These turbans aren't simply decorative though.  The colours of the turban indicate who you are; for example in one region shepherds wore an orange turban, in another area yellow.  Although we were assured many times that the caste system is dead in India, most of our guides self-identified the caste they were from, and often identified others that way.  So it still seemed fairly top of mind to me.

I've appended some photos of turbans I particularly liked.  You'll notice that most of the men wearing these turbans are older, so perhaps the practice is melting away with the younger generation. The exception is where I was taking pictures of hotel employees wearing local dress; they were much easier to pose so there are a few of those

Best 50 Business Thinkers

Clayton Christensen has been ranked #1 in the Thinkers50 assessment of the best business thinkers of our day.  The Thinkers50 uses ten criteria to evaluate thinkers: originality of ideas; practicality of ideas; presentation style; written communication; loyalty of followers; business sense; international outlook; rigor of research; impact of ideas and the elusive guru factor.  The thinkers are judged by a panel of advisors and includes votes from people who have answered the question "Who is the most important living management thinker?"  

Christensen's work is covered in several books, but his most influential contribution comes from the formulation of disruptive innovation theory first proposed in The Innovator's Dilemma, recently named one of the best six business books of all time by The Economist.  (see my post on this topic here).

Christensen's acceptance speech is a departure from straight business talk.  He waxes philosophic about the parallels between business theory and its application to personal life.  He refers to Mintzberg's work on the difference between deliberate and emergent strategy - the deliberate  being a unwavering pursuit of a specific intention with a fixed strategy, the emergent being a process where a series of actions in response to external situations or realities develop into a strategy.  Clay uses this framework to conclude that he doesn't want to leave it to chance what kind of person he wants to be (deliberate strategy), but that he entrusts how he gets there to emergent strategy that adapts to unknown threats and opportunities.  He is integrating this kind of thinking and discussion into his teaching at the Harvard Business School.

   

 I was proud to see several Canadians featured on the list.  

Roger Martin, Dean of the Rotman School of Management (and my boss, since I teach there as an Adjunct Professor), vaulted to sixth place.  Martin is best known for the concept of integrative thinking as a way of solving business problems, and design thinking as a path to success in business. 

At the ninth rank is another Canadian (who also happens to teach at Rotman), Don Tapscott,  who writes on impact of technology on society, including such books as Growing Up Digital and Wikinomics.

Can we count Malcolm Gladwell as Canadian?  He was born in England and now lives in the US, but he grew up in Canada.  So let's count him as Canadian.  Gladwell is one of those journalists who investigates patterns and presents new possibilities in clear and understandable language.  Books such as The Tipping Point, Blink, and Outliers have engaged the public in presenting new ways of thinking of things.  Gladwell made it as #10.

Coming in 30th position was Henry Mintzberg of McGill University, recognized for his work on organizational theory and emergent strategy (as described above).

 I heard recently that publishers estimate that only 30% of the business books people buy are actually read.  This kind of honour helps filter the books that I really should be out reading.

The Ultimate Question

Fifteen years ago, I attended a talk by Fred Reichheld, then a Bain consultant and now a Bain Fellow.  Reichheld's message was simple.  Treat your customers right and earn their loyalty.  That's cheaper than being trapped on the treadmill of constant customer churn and the expense of attracting new customers to replace those you've lost or driven away.

Reichheld supported his argument with cold facts showing the increased profits and growth that came from a focus on customer retention.  He later compiled that material in The Loyalty Effect published in 2001.

His message resonated with me, because I've always believed that if you keep your customers happy, revenue and profits will flow.  The fact that it resonated is probably why I remember the talk to this day. 

Last night I heard Reichheld again, in conversation with Roger Martin, Dean of the Rotman School at University of Toronto, who's just been named one of the Top 50 Business Thinkers.  Reichheld talked about his new book The Ultimate Question 2.0, the follow-up to his previous book The Ultimate Question.

To Reichheld, the ultimate question is "How likely is it that you would recommend our company to a friend or colleague?"  Responses are scored on a scale of 1 to 10, ranging from 'not at all likely' to 'extremely likely'.  The Ultimate Question introduced the concept of a Net Promoter Score which is obtained by subtracting the percentage of people who respond 1-6 from the percentage of those who respond 9-10.  In other words, the score is intended to measure the people who really really like your product or company after netting out the people who don't like your product or are indifferent.  It's a harsher metric, but one that gives you a better idea of how people really feel.  We know that people can err on the side of politeness when  answering such polls, so neutrality should really be considered a knock on your product.

The Ultimate Question 2.0 fleshes out the concept with examples of companies who have adopted  the Net Promoter Score as the core of their business philsophy.  You can't just start surveying people and calculating a Net Promoter Score - that is just a superficial and meaningless approach.  You have to follow up with the people who responded to the survey and get to the bottom of why they rated you the way they did.

Reichheld talked about Intuit, the software company behind Quick Books and Turbo Tax software.  Intuit has adopted NPS and embedded it deep in their culture.  Product designers talk about the Love Factor: at Intuit, it's not enough to keep customers satisfied, you need to make them love the product.

Reichheld is wonderful to listen to - down to earth, articulate and avuncular. He talked about good profits versus bad profits.  Bad profits are when you make a short term gain, but at the cost of alienating your customers.  He gave a couple of examples of such bad profits - phone companies that lock you into miserable contracts, or airlines that falsely advertise low prices and then stack on the extra charges.    Reichheld argues that although they may deliver a quick hit to profits, such tactics will never result in a company that is successful in the long term.

Reichheld acknowledged that he was becoming more moralistic as he grew older.  Age gave him the freedom to advocate his ideas, not just because they make good business sense, but simply because they were the right way to treat customers.  What a nice philosophy.

Jodhpur

Jodhpur is an interesting city of a million people.  It's called the Blue City because of its indigo painted houses.  This is done because there is something in the paint that repels insects - another example of ecologically sound traditional practices in India.  Our hotel, the Raas, featured lots of red stone cut in interesting shapes, and had the upper stories painted blue.

We had a beautiful view of the Mehrangahr Fort from our hotel balcony.  This picture of the fort catching the sun at dawn also catches the hotel pool - a touch of the old and new together which rather appealed to me.

What the picture doesn't capture is the mosque that was just off to the right with the loudspeaker that announced prayer at 4:45 in the morning, right at the level of our room.  If there's a scale for how loud a loudspeaker can be, this one had to be a 10!  The hotel handed out ear plugs, but they were insufficient.  It was a shame, because it was such a nice hotel in every other way.

We visited the fifteenth-centry Mehrangahr Fort, perched on the hill above the town.  Legend has it that to build the fort the local ruler had to displace a hermit, who promptly uttered a curse that the place would always suffer from water scarcity.  Although he built a house and temple for the hermit at the fort, the ruler felt compelled to bury a man alive in the foundations of the fort to propitiate the gods and remove the curse.  The family of this man still lives in Jodhpur, supported by the local ruler, and the extended family is invited to special events as honoured guests.

Another grisly aspect of the fort was the plaque with the handprints of the 30 wives who self-immolated upon the death of their husband in 1843.  Sati is now banned in India but it is amazing that it was still being practised as late as the 19th century.

The fort had many lovely rooms and a good museum. A  sign that had me laughing out loud was the no smoking sign.  This sign was posted outdoors, something we saw a few times in India.  One of the remarkable things about India was the dearth of smokers we saw around the country.  Almost all the smokers we saw were Europeans.

Dabbawallas

In Mumbai, about 5,000 dabbawallas deliver 200,000 lunches a day to city workers.  The system started in the 19th century and perseveres today, although apparently the number of lunches has started to decline.

A dabbawalla picks up freshly made hot lunches from homes in the suburbs in mid-morning.  Our guide pointed out that you better have the lunch ready when they arrive - even if it's a bit before their scheduled time - because if it's not ready they go without it!  One dabbawalla collects many lunches and takes them on special dabbawalla trays, loaded onto bicycles, pushcarts or carried on their head, and takes them to the train, where they are placed in a special car on the train.  When they arrive at the Churchgate station in central Mumbai, they are picked up by more dabbawallas and sorted for delivery to their final destination at 12:30.  Empty tiffin boxes are returned home in the afternoon.  The tiffin boxes pass through several hands and travel on bicycles, handcarts, trains or on heads to reach their destinations and undergo several sorting processes along the way.

The amazing thing is that this is a totally manual process, and is based on a proprietary (some say secret) coding scheme that is used by the dabbawallas, many of whom are illiterate.  You can see the coding painted on the traditional tin tiffin box below; magic markers are used on the cloth bags and thermoses which are more the modern fashion.  I got a picture of a partially sorted tray of tiffins.

Does the central sorting station make you think of FedEx's hub in Memphis?  It certainly did for me.

And it's not quite fair to say the entire process is manual.  Dabbawallas are now accepting orders through SMS.  It is also SMS which is also killing the old habit of slipping messages into the tiffin box - why do that when you can fire off a text message?

Being a dabbawalla is a traditional job mainly held by people from the Pune area of India. The organization has very little management superstructure and is held in a charitable trust.  Dabbawallas have to make an investment of two bicycles, a wooden crate for the tiffins, white cotton kurta pajamas, and the trademark white Gandhi cap.  All the profits are distributed at the end of every month and come to about $40-$80.  It costs less than $4 for the customer to have this amazing delivery service for a month!

What is astonishing about this system is its incredible accuracy and timeliness.  Forbes magazine awarded the system Six Sigma certification in 2001, based on its 99.999999% accuracy rate which implies less than 1 error in 16 million.

Having read about this system, I was fascinated to see it, and expected to observe high intensity and even frenzy at the sorting stations.  However, we watched the tiffin boxes being sorted on the sidewalk outside Churchgate Station and the scene was totally calm, even leisurely, although very organized.  We'd been told the dabbawallas weren't fond of people getting in their way and taking lots of photos (understandable), so I have limited good pictures of the whole exercise.  Here's a picture of some of the trays ready to go; it's a heavy load for one person to carry or push.  Some bikers head off with tiffins hanging from every part of their body and the bike!

For those who think that a successful organization absolutely requires rigid top-down management, the Nutan Mumbai Tiffin Box Suppliers Charity Trust of Mumbai is a great counterexample.

Towers of Silence

Indian Parsis (or Parsees) are members of the Zoroastrian religion and descendents of the original Parsis in Iran.  The number of Parsis in India has been dwindling, and may number as few as 50,000, mostly concentrated near Mumbai, with forecasts that the number will fall further to about 23,000 by 2020.

Zoroastrians believe that a dead body is contaminated and must neither be buried (where it would pollute the earth) or cremated (where it would pollute fire).  In order to avoid this pollution, dead bodies are placed near the top of an open circular tower, exposed to sun and to birds of prey.  After about a year, the bones are collected in an ossuary pit at the bottom of the tower, and the final deterioration of the bones is assisted by applications of lime.  Eventually rain water washes the remains through various filters out to sea.

The name Tower of Silence was given to these towers by a British translator in the 19th Century. I had heard of Towers of Silence from two separate sources: an article four years ago in The Economist, and in A Son of the Circus set in Mumbai and reviewed in a previous post.

We visited the "Hanging Gardens" at the top of Malabar Hill in Mumbai, an upscale residential area in Mumbai.  The Gardens are a lovely urban oasis in a busy city, with a pleasant view over the smog-covered city below.  They sit immediately adjacent to the Mumbai Tower of Silence.  The park is built on top of an enclosed reservoir; it's said the reservoir was originally enclosed to avoid contamination from the Tower of Silence.

There is a major problem these days with the towers: the vultures on whom they depend are being devastated by diclofenac, a drug used to treat cattle (as described in detail in this article from The Economist).  Vultures not only help with human bodies in Towers of Silence; they are a key part of the Indian ecosystem in getting rid of the carcases of cattle and buffalo.  Since Indians don't eat much beef and revere sacred cows and since there are about 200M cattle and buffalo in India used exclusively for milk, Indian farmers have depended on vultures to dispose of their carcases.  These cows have been the carriers of diclofenac to the vultures.

Both vultures and Parsis are dwindling in numbers.  Sadly, it's a question of who will outlast whom.  The good news for the vultures is that diclofenac is now banned (though farmers are allowed to use up their old stocks), and there are conservationists breeding vultures in captivity.  Meanwhile, Parsis are experimenting with other techniques such as installing solar relectors to speed up the action of the sun.

Riding a Camel in Jaiselmer

Riding a camel is not quite as easy as it looks when you see Lawrence of Arabia loping across the sands in a movie.

When we were in Jaiselmer, our tour included a late afternoon ride across the sand dunes on a camel.  We had been in the Thar Desert for some time now, the third largest desert in the world after the Sahara and the Simpson in Australia.  Most of the desert has been rocky desert and, after the best monsoon in years, it has been uncharacteristically green. However, there is a small area just outside Jaiselmer with dunes. 

Jaiselmer is a major tourist magnet. Jaiselmer itself boasts a huge fort on the hill, like many places we've visited, still populated by 5,000 people inside that fort. It had many havelis (mansions) with richly carved ornamentation. It was the first place we really felt the press of tourists, as we met many tour buses on the road to and from Jaiselmer, intermingled with the many army vehicles (Jaiselmeer is only 100 miles from the Pakistan border and the military is quite beefed up here).  Many of the tours were domestic tourists.  Jaiselmer is the setting for many Bollywood movies, and that draws Indian tourists the way Salzburg draws fans of The Sound of Music.

 
So, you've been waiting to hear about that camel ride. We had seen camels beside and on the road for a few days as we headed west in Rajasthan, but at the Sam Dunes, as they're known, there were hordes of camels, with their brightly colored saddles and streams of people setting off single file to the dunes.

Our guide picked out a camel for me and then led me around the left side to mount the camel, which is sitting low on the ground with his knees folded under him. Suddenly the camel jumped up, much to the dismay of the guy holding the reins, not to mention me!!!!! So, on to choose another, hopefully calmer, camel. I gingerly sat in the saddle, and the camel straightened his back legs. At this point, one is perched precariously at about a 70 degree angle pitched forward toward the ground. The camel then rockily gets off his knees and stands up straight and you breathe a sigh of relief that you haven't pitched forward off the beast. 

The most uncomfortable thing is that the camel is very wide, and the saddle holds you in a tight position, so your legs are spread very wide, resulting in a lot of pressure on your hips if you're built like me. Anyway, we got off to a lumbering walk, accompanied by two guys, one young and one ancient, holding the reins. 

Except for when the camel was going downhill, or when he lowered his head to crop some brush, it was relatively comfortable swaying ride, except for those darned spread legs.  So I decided to call it a day and head back to the 'camel parking lot'. Immediately, the two guys, both the young and the old, whipped out their mobiles to call back to our driver who came out partway to meet us and put me out of my misery - quite literally. Quite an experience all in all.

Highway Driving in India

It's said that you need three things to drive in India: a good horn, good brakes, and good luck.

Horns are used incessantly in India to indicate that you are about to overtake and virtually never to show impatience or irritation. In fact, trucks usually have signs on the back requesting you to 'Blow Horn' or 'Horn Please'. A rear view mirror seems to be the appendix of an Indian vehicle, a vestigial organ of no discernible current use.

Turn indicators are also vestigial organs. However, manual turn indicators are sometimes used. On the busy road connecting Mumbai to Delhi we were trapped behind a long line of transport trucks which our driver deftly passed, often a few at a time. We were puzzled by the man hanging off the left hand side of a big touring bus in front of us standing on the running board. (Remember we're driving on the left hand side here). We finally figured out his task; after the big bus had overtaken a truck, his task was to warn trucks that the bus was coming back in to the left lane and the truck had to slow down to let him in.

Brakes are important because you never know when you're going to have to slow to a crawl for a piece of road that has been completely washed out by the monsoons or for a speed bump which may appear even in a 4-lane highway.  And then there are cows, sheep, goats, bullocks, camels, water buffalo, pigs, chickens, and dogs which may amble, stand or lie in front of you. Then there are the vehicles overtaking a car from the other direction and straying into your lane. The oncoming vehicle is expected to slow down to give the driver time to return to his own lane, or perhaps take to the shoulder to let him keep coming. Size matters in these contest. Everyone gives way to buses or trucks. Then come jeeps, cars and vans like ours. The auto-rickshaws are lower on the totem pole, and motorcycles and bikes bring up the rear.

Our driver was always alert, cautious and we were very thankful to have such a competent driver in these conditions.

Most of the accidents we saw were overturned vehicles, not too surprising, given that so many vehicles are wishfully loaded - 'I wish I had a vehicle that could legitimately carry this much stuff'. 

Whereas in Canada a pedestrian can be fined for jaywalking, in India, pedestrians always have right of way.  Simply walk into the road, raise your hand just above waist height and give a gentle to and fro waving motion and the cars (mostly) stop for you.

Driving - and crossing streets - in India is an adventure!

** Apologies to anyone who has read before.  I accidentally deleted several posts and am restoring them

Why Do Cows Lie in the Road?

Coming to India, one has been prepared to expect cows on the road. The odd one, here and there. What I hadn't expected was the sheer number of cows, on the streets and alleys in large towns and small, and on the highways. And not just walking around - lying in the middle of the road! Rather dangerous, one might think, even in India where cows are sacred animals and carefully avoided. 

The explanation? In the extreme heat, some of the chemicals from the asphalt are emitted from the pavement, and those chemicals deter mosquitos and other bugs.

** Apologies to anyone who has already read this - I accidentally deleted a few posts and am now reposting them.

Divali in Mumbai

If you look up Divali on Wikipedia, it is described as a festival of lights honouring good over evil, celebrated by both Hindus and Jains.  There are five days to the festival, each with separate significance.

But in Mumbai, everyone we asked described Divali as the festival to honour Lakshmi, the goddess of prosperity.  This festival has been highly commercialized because it is considered an auspicious time for important purchases and proper observances will set you up for a prosperous upcoming year.  Hence we saw huge billboards and newspaper ads encouraging people to get out there and shop: cars, furniture, home renovations, but most of all gold, both as a jewelry and an investment.

Divali is called the Festival of Lights but it seemed to me it could equally be called the Festival of Flowers.  Buildings and cars were festooned with flowers, mostly marigolds, and rangolis were painstakingly shaped with flower petals on floors everywhere.   Markets were full of clay saucers, to be filled with tiny candles floating in oil, and placed decoratively inside or outside buildings, or within rangolis.  We saw a rangoli etched out with glittery powder and sprinkled with candles on the pavement in front of one shop, which was very pretty as it sparkled in the night.

We had spoken to some hotel staff about Divali and when we arrived back from breakfast, we were greeted with wide conspiratorial smiles.  When we opened the door to our room, we were surprised and delighted to see that our room had been decorated for us, with a rangoli, and an elephant (representing Ganesh, the elephant of good fortune) decorated with flower petals.

Divali lasts for five days and Mumbai is reputed to celebrate most vigorously, especially with fireworks and firecrackers.  We were at Marine Drive to enjoy the first night of Divali.  Marine Drive is a boulevard that borders the bay in Mumbai, with wide sidewalks for strolling and a cement wall for sitting to appreciate the view.  It gracefully curves around the bay and is dubbed 'The Queen's Necklace' at night. 

On Divali along Marine Drive there were clusters of people were setting off things every few feet - six-foot high sizzlers on the ground, noisy crackers that startled you with loud bangs, beautiful fireworks shot into the sky.  The cacophony was continuous and the air was filled with smoke.  You had to keep your wits about you, as you might be standing looking at one display, to find another being lit right behind you, or perhaps a dud firework that had been shot high in the air coming to land near you.  I found this short video on YouTube which captures the randomness of the firecrackers and fireworks very well.

It was such a contrast to Canada, where everything is so controlled, with planned fireworks by municipal authorities, let off by certified fireworks people, and with the crowds a specified safe distance from the point of lighting.  Here very young children would dash up to the fireworks with sparklers to light them up.  It was up to the crowd to be alert and stay clear of the explosions on all sides.  It was similar to the Duresha celebrations where giant effigies 90 feet tall were burned, and people were standing very close.  The effigies were supported by guy wires to force them to fall in place, but any surprises would have been quite devastating to the crowd.  It was great to be part of something so different. 

One lovely custom of Divali is that on the third day, brothers are supposed to visit their sisters.  The sister ties a rakhi, a colourful thread, around the wrist of the brother, signifying the strong bond between brother and sister.  The brother brings a gift to the sister.  One of our guides said that he had given his sister a card.  That seemed a bit modest compared to what we'd heard about.  It turned out to be a credit card!  His sister is studying in university and he had offered to help her, but she had declined preferring instead to earn her own money as a tutor, he said proudly.  I think he is quite confident his credit card won't be abused.  In a society of multi-generation families, where the wife lives with her husband' family, this custom to strengthen the bond between brothers and sisters is quite heartwarming.