Are We Being Influenced Beyond Reason?

'When a ring light becomes a qualification'

There was a time when an influencer was somebody who had earned the right to influence you. He or she knew a subject well enough to make their opinion worth hearing. Their standing came from what they knew, not from how many people happened to follow them.

Now all you need is a smartphone, a ring light, a confident voice and the ability to look seriously into a camera while saying something that sounds vaguely profound.

And there are so many of them. They have sprung up like blades of grass after rain. Open Instagram, TikTok, YouTube or whichever platform we acquired this month, and somebody is ready to tell you what to eat, how to sleep, how to lose weight, make money, live longer and look younger. You begin to wonder whether you are living your life or following instructions from people living theirs on a screen.

Travel influencers have some of the most extraordinary jobs on earth. They fly First and Business Class around the world and describe it in minute detail: the seat that becomes a bed, the champagne, the caviar, the pyjamas, a verdict on the scrambled eggs at 38,000 feet. And every one of them, without fail, shows us the toilet: how big it is, how lavish it is and, apparently, whether the flush deserves a five-star rating.

And this is a career.

Meanwhile, many of us are at home debating whether turning the air-conditioning down by one degree will make enough difference to the electricity bill. I am not jealous; I am simply wondering whether I made a few questionable career choices.

The trouble begins when popularity is mistaken for expertise. Now everybody seems to be an authority on health, money and happiness. Someone will announce, with great gravity, “Seven things you must stop doing immediately if you want to live longer.”

Seven? Why seven? Why not six or eight?

And what qualifies this person to advise me on longevity?

Apparently, 427,000 followers is enough.

A million followers cannot turn an opinion into a fact, and a ring light is not a qualification.

It is easy to laugh at the airline toilets. It is much harder to laugh when the advice concerns somebody’s body, because that is where this stops being funny.

Body image already troubles many young people. A survey of more than 21,000 of them across six countries found that only 45 per cent were satisfied with their body size. Into that anxiety step health influencers, promising a “quick way” to lose weight.

The advice can be alarming: skip meals, live on liquids, exercise for hours. None of it comes from a doctor or dietitian, yet a teenager who watches the same face every day can begin to treat it as gospel. Several former pupils, now parents of teenagers, have told me they worry about what their children eat and where they learned it. Young people can sometimes trust a stranger online before a parent or teacher.

Then there are those selling the dream itself. A car at nineteen, a mansion at twenty-two, a millionaire at twenty-six. The lifestyle may be exaggerated, but a teenager may not know that. Recent research from the US and Norway found that social media is now a major influence on how young people think about their future careers.

Some months ago, a former pupil asked me for advice. His teenage son had been admitted to a college in Canada but wanted to become a holiday influencer because he loved travelling. Eventually, he listened to a counsellor and decided to go to college.

Influencing is a career, and some people do it well. But behind the successful ones there is usually knowledge, experience, talent or years of learning. For a teenager, walking away from education because an online career looks glamorous can be a costly gamble. The years spent learning cannot simply be recovered later.

Social media has also made it possible for people with little or no training to give health, financial and lifestyle advice to millions within minutes. In professions where bad advice can cause serious harm, we expect people to have qualifications and to be clear about their expertise. It seems reasonable to expect the same transparency online. If you are giving specialist advice, people should be able to see what qualifies you to give it.

There are genuine experts who use social media well. Doctors, scientists, educators, chefs and athletes can share useful knowledge with millions who might never otherwise encounter it. That is influence in the proper sense: knowledge reaching people who can benefit from it.

The problem is not influence. It is unearned influence.

But we have a part to play too. Every view, like, share and follow tells the algorithm that we want more. We can become a little harder to influence. Put the phone down. Have a conversation without filming it. Eat a meal without photographing it. And perhaps listen to people who have spent years learning something rather than simply to the person with the biggest following.

And perhaps we can bring back one small phrase that has almost disappeared from social media:

“I don’t know.”

There is something reassuring about someone who can say it. Real knowledge does not need a ring light, a discount code or a million followers. Sometimes the person worth listening to is simply the one who knows what they are talking about.

 

Please Let Children Be Children

Kids need room to struggle, and time to do nothing.

I am supposed to be the expert. Yet when my six-year-old granddaughter gives me that look and asks for a second chocolate, and her three-year-old sister copies her, I hand over two. Their mother is not amused.

I know what I should do. After more than 40 years in education, I have told parents that children need to hear the word “no”, to lose sometimes and to solve their own problems. Then my granddaughters appear, and the theory quietly leaves the room.

It seems the girls have already worked out how the system runs. Yesterday they handed me their list for Santa, and some of the requests were rather outrageous, including a pink pony with a long tail. I must accept some of the blame. I had told them to write to him well in advance because the jolly old man gets very busy, and they took my advice very seriously. Perhaps Santa needs a gentle word with Grandpa.

It also made me think about how different their childhood is from my own. When we were growing up, children were simply allowed to be children. On holidays we played outside until it got dark, and then we knew it was time to go home, or there could be repercussions. We cried, we were rewarded, we were sometimes told no, and we learned about boundaries without anyone having to explain them. We were noisy and messy and entirely ourselves, and we learned about the world by living in it. I do not say that was better. It was just different.

Childhood today is different again, and much of it is lived in a hurry. In neighbourhoods across the UAE, we rush our children from an improvement class to a game to another activity. Every one of these things may be worthwhile, but put them all together and children can end up exhausted, and so can their parents. I say this with sympathy because I understand exactly why we do it. We want the best for them.

As a principal, I often spoke about this, and one moment has stayed with me. I once asked a pupil, “When do you just lie on your bed or sit on the sofa and do nothing?” She gave me a look that said, quite clearly, “Are you mad?” At least, that is how I read it.

Her parents later told me why. She ate a meal in the car on the way from one activity to the next and changed her clothes there too. It was one mad rush, six days a week. She was a real go-getter, and so were her parents, but she often looked tired, sometimes exhausted. I have never forgotten it.

Even the most motivated child needs time to stop, breathe and simply be.

Doing nothing has become almost unthinkable, for children and increasingly for adults too. Yet quiet time is not wasted time. It is when the mind gets a chance to rest, and when a child invents a game, wonders about something or simply thinks. We know what constant pressure can do to a child’s mood, sleep and joy in learning.

We say we want our children to be resilient, but resilience only grows when there is something to recover from. I have watched parents become quite worked up over a squabble between two children at play, something the children themselves had forgotten within minutes.

I understand it. Love makes it hard to watch a child struggle.

But a child who falls, gets up and discovers that falling did not destroy them has learned something no lecture can teach. And a child with no spare time has little room to fall, or to get up.

So where does that leave our schools? They have changed remarkably in my time, and that progress gives us the confidence to ask a gentle question: are we preparing children for the world they will inherit, or for the one we grew up in?

The world they are growing into will not run on timetables. I relied on the bulky Encyclopedia Britannica, and ChatGPT, Claude and other tools are a big improvement. I would not go back. But when answers arrive in seconds, the skills that matter most are the human ones: asking good questions, judging whether something is true, listening, disagreeing respectfully, saying sorry and admitting, “I was wrong.”

None of these appear on an examination paper, and most of them grow in unhurried time.

Perhaps we could start small. One afternoon a week with nothing planned, and see what our children do with it.

We cannot prepare them for every possible future. The best gift we can give them is not another qualification or another carefully planned activity, but the confidence to ask questions, make decisions and cope when things do not go to plan. Sometimes it is simply an empty afternoon.

I say that as an educator, and, rather more humbly, as a grandfather of two little girls who knows exactly what he should do and occasionally does the opposite.

What is yours will find you

 

What Is YoWhat Is Yours Will Find You

Not every disappointment is a blessing, but some only make sense much later.

“What is yours will find you.” I have always liked the saying. To me, it speaks of something we all eventually learn: we can work hard for what we want, but we cannot always decide how things will turn out.

It sounds comforting, but it can also be misunderstood. Some people take it as a reason to leave things to fate. If something is meant to happen, they believe it will happen anyway, so there is little point in working too hard towards it.

I have never seen life that way.

If you want something, you have to work for it. You have to prepare, take chances and put yourself forward. You cannot simply sit back and expect destiny to do the work for you. But effort has its limits too. Working hard does not guarantee that you will get the particular outcome you have in mind.

I have spent much of my working life on the other side of interview tables, interviewing teachers and leaders, and I have seen this many times. The person who wants the job most is not necessarily the person who gets it.

I remember a young teacher I once interviewed. She was bright, capable and extremely well prepared, but she wanted the job so badly that it seemed to get in the way. She had rehearsed her answers and was trying to give us what she thought we wanted to hear. In the process, we weren't really seeing her.

We didn't appoint her.

A year later, she applied again. She still wanted the job, but something had changed. She was more relaxed, answered honestly and wasn't afraid to admit when she didn't know something. She wasn't trying to be the perfect candidate. She was simply herself.

We appointed her.

It stayed with me because there is a difference between wanting something and needing it so badly that we become consumed by the outcome.

Perhaps we do this more often than we realise. We become convinced that a particular promotion, career, relationship or opportunity has to work out because we have invested so much in it. We start to confuse effort with entitlement.

Life doesn't always agree.

I learnt that lesson myself many years ago in Pune.

There was a time when I was quite sure I was about to become a principal. I wanted the job badly and believed I was ready for it. If I am being completely honest, I thought I deserved it. I had worked towards it and had begun to imagine myself in the role.

Then it didn't happen.

I was deeply disappointed. At the time, I could see only what I had lost and couldn't understand why something I had worked for and felt ready for had not come my way.

It was, although I didn't know it then, a turning point in my life.

Looking back now, I can see that had I become a principal in Pune at that particular time, the course of my career could have been very different. The opportunities that followed, the people I met and the journey that eventually brought me to Dubai might never have unfolded in quite the same way.

Sometimes what we thought was a disappointment was simply something whose significance we could not see at the time.

And don't I know that.

I have learnt not to romanticise disappointment. Not everything that goes wrong turns out to be a blessing, and some disappointments remain just that. But time has a way of changing our perspective. At the moment something happens, we see the event. Years later, we may begin to see where it led.

That has made me more comfortable with uncertainty. I still make plans, work hard and want things, but I am less convinced that I know exactly how my life should unfold.

Perhaps that is where fate or destiny has a place — not as an excuse for doing nothing, but as an acknowledgement that we are not entirely in charge.

We do what we can, then we live with what happens. Sometimes, it takes time to see the whole picture.

I think that is the more useful meaning of “What is yours will find you.” It doesn't mean everything we want will eventually be ours, nor does it mean every closed door is hiding something better. It simply reminds us that we cannot always judge something by the way it feels when it happens.

The life we eventually live is shaped by many things, including the things that didn't happen.

I know that because of Pune.

And I suspect most of us have a Pune of our own — a job we didn't get, an opportunity that passed us by, a relationship that ended or a plan that didn't work out as we had hoped.

At the time, we wondered why.

Years later, we may see it differently.

I certainly do.

I still don't know whether everything happens for a reason. But I have learnt that not everything has to make sense when it happens. Sometimes, you understand it only much later.urs Will Find You

Not every disappointment is a blessing, but some only make sense much later.

“What is yours will find you.” I have always liked the saying. To me, it speaks of something we all eventually learn: we can work hard for what we want, but we cannot always decide how things will turn out.

It sounds comforting, but it can also be misunderstood. Some people take it as a reason to leave things to fate. If something is meant to happen, they believe it will happen anyway, so there is little point in working too hard towards it.

I have never seen life that way.

If you want something, you have to work for it. You have to prepare, take chances and put yourself forward. You cannot simply sit back and expect destiny to do the work for you. But effort has its limits too. Working hard does not guarantee that you will get the particular outcome you have in mind.

I have spent much of my working life on the other side of interview tables, interviewing teachers and leaders, and I have seen this many times. The person who wants the job most is not necessarily the person who gets it.

I remember a young teacher I once interviewed. She was bright, capable and extremely well prepared, but she wanted the job so badly that it seemed to get in the way. She had rehearsed her answers and was trying to give us what she thought we wanted to hear. In the process, we weren't really seeing her.

We didn't appoint her.

A year later, she applied again. She still wanted the job, but something had changed. She was more relaxed, answered honestly and wasn't afraid to admit when she didn't know something. She wasn't trying to be the perfect candidate. She was simply herself.

We appointed her.

It stayed with me because there is a difference between wanting something and needing it so badly that we become consumed by the outcome.

Perhaps we do this more often than we realise. We become convinced that a particular promotion, career, relationship or opportunity has to work out because we have invested so much in it. We start to confuse effort with entitlement.

Life doesn't always agree.

I learnt that lesson myself many years ago in Pune.

There was a time when I was quite sure I was about to become a principal. I wanted the job badly and believed I was ready for it. If I am being completely honest, I thought I deserved it. I had worked towards it and had begun to imagine myself in the role.

Then it didn't happen.

I was deeply disappointed. At the time, I could see only what I had lost and couldn't understand why something I had worked for and felt ready for had not come my way.

It was, although I didn't know it then, a turning point in my life.

Looking back now, I can see that had I become a principal in Pune at that particular time, the course of my career could have been very different. The opportunities that followed, the people I met and the journey that eventually brought me to Dubai might never have unfolded in quite the same way.

Sometimes what we thought was a disappointment was simply something whose significance we could not see at the time.

And don't I know that.

I have learnt not to romanticise disappointment. Not everything that goes wrong turns out to be a blessing, and some disappointments remain just that. But time has a way of changing our perspective. At the moment something happens, we see the event. Years later, we may begin to see where it led.

That has made me more comfortable with uncertainty. I still make plans, work hard and want things, but I am less convinced that I know exactly how my life should unfold.

Perhaps that is where fate or destiny has a place — not as an excuse for doing nothing, but as an acknowledgement that we are not entirely in charge.

We do what we can, then we live with what happens. Sometimes, it takes time to see the whole picture.

I think that is the more useful meaning of “What is yours will find you.” It doesn't mean everything we want will eventually be ours, nor does it mean every closed door is hiding something better. It simply reminds us that we cannot always judge something by the way it feels when it happens.

The life we eventually live is shaped by many things, including the things that didn't happen.

I know that because of Pune.

And I suspect most of us have a Pune of our own — a job we didn't get, an opportunity that passed us by, a relationship that ended or a plan that didn't work out as we had hoped.

At the time, we wondered why.

Years later, we may see it differently.

I certainly do.

I still don't know whether everything happens for a reason. But I have learnt that not everything has to make sense when it happens. Sometimes, you understand it only much later.

Sometimes Growth Looks Like Not Fitting In Anymore

 Sometimes Growth Looks Like Not Fitting In Anymore

The WhatsApp Group That Never Arrived

A few months ago, a group of us were sitting together one evening, talking about old times, old friends and the usual stories that become more entertaining every time they're retold. Someone suddenly said, "Why don't we all go to Allahabad?" It was the kind of suggestion that could easily have been laughed off. Instead, within minutes, everyone was interested — the wives too, which is usually a very good sign when several families are involved.

Soon we were discussing dates, flights, hotels, food, drinks, whether we needed a hall, what music we should have and, inevitably, what we'd do afterwards. Someone even suggested a WhatsApp group for the preparations. We all thought that was an excellent idea. I am still waiting for the WhatsApp group.

Nobody has bought a ticket yet, and if I'm honest, I don't think this particular trip is actually going to happen. But as I thought about that evening afterwards, I realized it was never really about organizing a reunion. We were talking about going home.

The Place We Came From

For me, Allahabad is not simply a city on a map or a collection of childhood memories. It's home in a way that's hard to explain unless you've left somewhere that shaped you. It's where I grew up, went to school, spent my teenage years and made friendships that have lasted for decades — back when I had no idea these ordinary days would one day become precious memories. We were simply getting on with life.

I've been to reunions of pupils I taught many years ago, some now in their forties, and there's something wonderful about meeting people after so long and discovering that an old friendship can return within minutes. There's also, of course, what time has done to all of us. We remember each other as young men and women and then meet again with more kilos, fewer hairs and considerably more lines. Some of us now approach a low chair with the caution normally reserved for a flight of stairs. But once the conversation starts, none of that matters. The teasing returns, the old stories come back, and somebody remembers something everybody else had forgotten.

That's what I imagine when I think about Allahabad — not a city frozen in the past, but a place that still holds the people we once were.

When Things Stop Fitting

There's a point in life when you notice that some things that once suited you perfectly no longer do. I don't mean clothes, though that's part of it too. I mean roles and expectations.

Early in my leadership career, it mattered to me that people liked me — that they understood my decisions, agreed with them, and left the room happy. Leadership cured me of that rather quickly. As a headmaster, I once made a decision a group of staff clearly disagreed with — no argument, no raised voices, just a definite coolness around me for several days. The younger me would have worried about it for weeks. The man I'd become simply thought: I've listened, I've considered it, and now I have to take responsibility for the decision. It was oddly freeing, discovering I could carry that coolness without losing any sleep over it.

Families teach the same lesson, more gently. The child who once needed your help with everything arrives one day with opinions of their own — their own home, their own way of doing things — and the role that once fitted you so naturally has to loosen its grip. Stepping back, you learn, isn't the same as stepping away.

Going Back, Without Going Back

Perhaps that's why the thought of Allahabad has stayed with me.

If we do go, I know exactly what I want to do. I want to walk through our old schools, wander the famous markets for the jalebis and the curd, and see just how busy that once-sleepy little town has become.

And there is somewhere else I want to go. A quiet corner of a cemetery, where someone I lost many years ago still, in some way, feels like part of that place. It isn't something I've planned aloud or spoken about with the others. But if I make it back to Allahabad, I know I won't leave without going there.

That contrast would probably be the most striking part of any visit. The town in my memory has changed — buildings gone, new ones risen, streets that once seemed enormous now perhaps looking surprisingly small. But somewhere among all that change would be the places that take me straight back.

And we would have changed too. We would arrive carrying everything that happened afterwards — careers, marriages, children, mistakes, disappointments, friendships, and all the experience accumulated over the years. We can't recreate the Allahabad of our youth, because we can't recreate our youth. But perhaps that isn't what going back is about. It's about standing in a familiar place with old friends, recognising how far we've travelled, remembering the boys and girls we were without pretending we still are.

Whether we'll actually go, I honestly don't know. Most likely, life will do what it usually does — the dates won't align, the WhatsApp group will stay unmade, and Allahabad will remain, for now, a place we talk about rather than visit. And perhaps that's all right.

That evening already gave us something no trip could improve on: a few hours of being simply old friends again, with no titles and no schedules, just old stories and the people who shared them.

And perhaps that's enough. We don't need to relive the past. We can simply be grateful that we once belonged there.

Keep it simple

 Morning reflection - Keep it SIMPLE

One thing I’ve always tried to do, both at work and in life, is keep things simple.

But sometimes I find myself listening to someone, nodding along, while thinking, “I really haven’t understood what they’re saying!” And I wonder, why do we make things so complicated?

This morning I came across a quote that caught my attention: “Peace of mind comes from simplifying life.” It immediately resonated with me.

When I speak to teachers and leadership teams, particularly through Bright Sparks, our GEMS programme for emerging young leaders, I often talk about clear communication. Say what you mean. Write so people understand. There’s no need to wrap a simple point in layers of jargon or complicated language.

And there’s certainly no need to use big words just to sound impressive. I always joke that there’s no need for all of us to try to be Shashi Tharoor when it comes to the English language!

I think the same applies to life. We already have enough to deal with without making things harder than they need to be.

As I get a little older, I find peace in wonderfully ordinary things. Sitting and playing with my cat, even talking to her as though she understands me. Picking up my guitar and playing for a while. Or watching yet another rerun of Friends — probably for the nth time — and still laughing at the same jokes.

Nothing extraordinary. Just things that make me happy.

Perhaps that’s the real lesson. We spend so much time looking for peace in the big things that we overlook the little things already giving it to us.

So, the next time you’re confused because you haven’t quite understood what someone is saying, or you’re trying to work out what they mean when giving you instructions, think of this little morning reflection of mine. Maybe think of me and have a chuckle.

Then ask yourself: “Couldn’t this have been said a little more simply?”

After all, life is complicated enough. We don’t need to help it along.

The Bishop's School, Pune

Grateful

 MORNING REFLECTION- GRATEFUL

This morning, I woke up and my first thought was simply: thankful.

Not for anything in particular. Just thankful.

I thought of my parents, my relatives, my friends and colleagues, and all the opportunities life has given me. 

I thought of Allahabad, as it was the place where I was born, studied and grew up. I have fuzzy memories of the places I stayed in , the two schools I studied in and the friends I had. A few still remain . I started working in Allahabad as well. At GEEP FLASHLIGHT INDUSTRIES & at THE BHS.

As a young man ,I often wondered what life would hold for me. What would I do? Where would life take me? Much of the future was unknown.

Looking back, I know hard work, sincerity  and dedication played their part. They still do. But I also know that isn't the whole story.

There were miracles along the way. 

There have been so many moments when life took an unexpected turn. I found myself in the right place at the right time. An opportunity appeared. Something I hadn't expected worked out. And sometimes, when one possibility seemed to be disappearing, another appeared almost out of nowhere.

One moment stands out. A window seemed to be closing for me in Pune, and almost at that very moment, another opened for me in Dubai.

I didn't plan it. I couldn't have. I simply took the opportunity in front of me. Only later did I realise how much that moment would change my life.

Perhaps that is why I feel so strongly about one thing: don't give up. Whatever you are facing, hang in there. Life will always bring difficult people, difficult circumstances and frustrating days. What has helped me? Self-belief, optimism, music, good people, keeping it real — and being able to laugh at myself. Sometimes, you just have to keep going.

We don't always know what is waiting around the corner.

This morning, I found myself thinking about my journey, the people I've met and the opportunities I've been given. And I felt a deep sense of gratitude to God for the abundant blessings .

Gratitude for the journey, for the people, for the opportunities and simply, for being here.

The Bishop's School, Pune 

ALLAHABAD CIVIL LINES  NOSTALGIC MEMORIES

The LOLLYPOP Man

 THE LOLLYPOP MAN

 I can picture it even now — Exhibition Road, the traffic held up, a long line of boys spilling out from the school gates, some impatiently edging forward, and one of our support staff standing firmly in the middle of the road, lollipop stop sign raised high. As a master, I saw this scene countless times.

And somehow, that simple picture has stayed with me.

Who remembers it?

The boys were crossing from the school campus to Jeejeebhoy Ground — the Simba field — and back again. Occasionally, a teacher would take on the duty, and sometimes even Mr Beaman himself.

It was a small but important part of the daily rhythm of The Bishop’s School, Pune — care, kindness and a sense of duty.

Though the boys did not always make life easy! In their hurry to get across, some would suddenly dash into the road, completely ignoring the raised sign. I’m sure there were a few heart-in-the-mouth moments for the person trying to keep them safe.

Later, the same arrangement was used on the road between St Margaret’s field and the new Roberts Block.

It’s remarkable what the mind chooses to keep. Years later, an ordinary scene like this can bring back the boys, the masters, the grounds, the games and the countless little routines that made up our school days.

Were you ever one of those boys waiting to cross Exhibition Road? And do you remember the lollipop sign — and the person holding it?

Were you ever asked to hold it and help boys cross over?

The Bishop's School, Pune