The Art of Timing

(Published in Banking Services Chronicle April 2006)

When you go to a doctor, he diagnoses your illness and administers medicines. The medicines work and the illness disappears. You are a happy man again. O that life were so simple, logical, mathematical! Unfortunately, it is not always so.

What happens is something like this. You have been prescribed a four-day course but nothing happens for two days. Or, worse still, the illness subsides one day but resurges on the next. At the end of two days you are faced with a dilemma: should I wait for the next two days or should I see another doctor?

I don’t think I am in a position to answer that question because there are several factors that need to be taken into account. But what interests me in this problem is the timing — when to wait and when to see another doctor. For, the art of success lies largely in the art of timing.

Take the case of Laxmi Niwas Mittal, the richest Indian and the third richest in the world. He does not have a great lineage like the Tatas. He does not enjoy state patronage like the SAIL. And yet in a span of a couple of decades he has emerged as a steel tycoon. In fact, LNM is the largest steel group across the globe — a position that will only strengthen if it succeeds in its bid for Arcelor, the second largest. Mittal stands where he is because he timed it right. Whether it was in Mexico or in Kazakhstan, he bought weak steel companies and laughed his way to the bank when the boom was back.

It is his sweet timing that made Saurav Ganguly such a great batsman. The Prince of Kolkata could never match the footwork of Sachin Tendulkar. Nor was he ever as impregnable as Rahul “The Wall” Dravid. And yet he timed his shots so well that he was adored the world over as part of the Indian triumvirate of batsmen.

One wonders, however, why the Bengal Tiger does not show the same sense of timing in quitting active cricket. You respect him for his never-say-die spirit. He is ready to struggle for his place in the Indian side like any other ordinary cricketer. But you also feel sad for him — a sadness that swings from sympathy to anger — when he is humiliated time and again. Ganguly’s predicament is comparable to the patient who is ready to wait for a couple of days more before he sees another doctor.

In general, princes are not much known for their sense of timing. When the princely states merged into the Union of India, only a few of them had the wisdom to jump into the arena of democratic politics. Others preferred to languish in the powerless comfort of the riches they had amassed. The few who showed a sense of timing continue to be rulers.

India has also erred in this sense of timing. We formulated the New Economic Policy in 1991 but by then the China bus had moved miles ahead. As a result, we accelerate but yet remain unable to catch it. One can understand that Nehru modelled the country on Soviet lines because the USSR was the rage of the times. But one fails to understand why Mrs Indira Gandhi embraced statism till as late as the Eighties when even the red China had begun to look marketwards.

Timing should not, however, be confused with opportunism, which connotes a negative sense. What HD Kumaraswamy did in Karnataka cannot be admired as a masterly act of timing. It needs to be condemned as crass opportunism. The timing that wins long-lasting admiration is predicated on the piety of intent.

And coming back to cricketing analogy, one must know as much to time one’s innings as one’s shots. There is an appropriate moment for everything in life. The successful person is one who has learnt to recognise these moments.