#168 Reflections on Work, Memory, and Unanswered Questions

Aug 24, 2024

I started a new job in Irvine two weeks ago, and while onboarding and getting familiar with the team and the projects, I was reminded of a theory I read a while ago: Tuckman’s theory on team development.

According to Tuckman, teams go through four main stages: forming, storming, norming, and performing. These stages outline the natural progression of how a group evolves as they work together. When a team first comes together. Everyone is polite and eager to make a good impression. There’s a focus on learning the roles, understanding the tasks, and figuring out how to collaborate. In my case, as I meet the team and get to know everyone’s working styles, I can see that we’re in this first stage of forming. Once people start feeling more comfortable, differences in opinions, work styles, or expectations can emerge. It’s a natural part of growth, where conflicts or challenges may arise as everyone finds their place. This phase is called storming. After working through the differences, teams usually find their rhythm. Trust builds, roles are clearer, and collaboration becomes smoother. It’s that moment when the team starts clicking, and there’s a sense of unity and shared purpose. At the final stage, the team is firing on all cylinders. Everyone knows their role, communication is seamless, and the focus is entirely on achieving goals. It’s where every team aims to be.

It’s interesting to see this process in action as I navigate my new role. Each stage has its challenges and opportunities, and being aware of them helps me better understand the dynamics as I work with the team.

Have you ever noticed how certain faces stick in your memory while others fade away? I’m not talking about family or close friends, but strangers—people you’ve met briefly or even just passed by.

For example, I can clearly remember the face of the guy who taught me sailing in Mumbai back in 2021. It’s been years, but his face is still fresh in my mind. Yet, I’ve crossed paths with thousands of people on the streets, and most of those faces have completely slipped away.

It’s interesting how our brain holds on to some faces and not others. Maybe it’s because of the impact they had on us at that moment, even if it was just a fleeting interaction. Or maybe it’s the setting, the emotions tied to the memory, or just something unique about them that left an impression.

Faces can tell stories, and sometimes without realizing it, we remember the ones that had a small but meaningful role in our lives. That sailing instructor was probably just doing his job, but for some reason his face became a part of my memory bank, and I doubt it’ll ever leave.

It makes me think about all the other faces I’ve forgotten and how each one probably has a story I’ll never know. It’s fascinating how selective our memory can be, holding on to some details while letting others slip away. The brain is like an attic, there’s a limit on how much you can keep.

I watched Gumraah last weekend, and there’s something I can’t stop thinking about. Over the last few weeks, the entire country has been agitated and angry about the horrific rape case involving a woman doctor in West Bengal. The outrage is real, and it’s a response to something deeply disturbing.

So, why am I connecting this to Gumraah? In the movie, there are twin brothers, and one of them commits a crime. But because the court can’t figure out which brother is guilty, both are acquitted. This isn’t just a fictional twist—the end credits even highlight real-life cases, like twin brothers in Germany who were acquitted for theft because they couldn’t be individually identified. There are many real-world examples of this happening.

But what bugged me was the specific crime chosen for the story in the Hindi adaptation. Out of all possible scenarios, they decided to center it around the murder of a man involved in a rape. It’s not that we shouldn’t talk about rape or seek justice in the stories we tell—it’s crucial. But in this context, it made me question why, out of all the possibilities, the narrative focused on this. Would I have even noticed it if there weren’t this agitation in the country right now? Probably not. And maybe that’s part of the problem too. I’m not sure if what I’m saying makes sense, but this connection has been stuck in my mind. It’s unsettling how a concept that could be explored in countless ways was turned into such a painful and sensitive subject, and nobody even cares.

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#168 Reflections on Work, Memory, and Unanswered Questions

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