Decision time - Saddest day yet

Tuesday, 4th March 2008 - Decision time (Team composition)

This black Tuesday is the saddest day yet in our team's history since we came up with the "brave but stupid" idea to participate in the Oxfam TRAILWALKER 100 km walk/run event.

When we assembled our team during late November 2007, we had a small problem. We had ten members who were actively interested in participating in the 100 km fundraising walk. That was two more than the eight that we could register in two teams of four each. We had made a conscious decision at that time to have ten people in the overall team expecting that a few would drop out as we progressed with training. Time went by and although many of the ten members had privately doubted their own ability to walk 100 km at that time, everyone was drawing upon the inspiration and contagious enthusiasm from the team as a whole.

We commenced training in earnest and all ten members attended the weekend sessions on the actual trail. We instituted a weekly team meeting, every Tuesday, to discuss our progress and pain from the previous training session. Soon we started to do the really intense sessions where we walked for 10-15 hours continuously, sometimes in the dark and in the rain. Although none of us ever raised the troublesome topic of how to trim down the team of ten to two teams of four each, that problem was always on our mind.

The Oxfam Trailwalker is a team challenge. Every team can have only four members. We had registered two teams from our organization - the "Satyam Snails" and the "Satyam Slugs". Although we were ten walkers in our overall team, we could only have eight on the day that mattered - April 11, 2008. That day was looming quickly and moreover we had to soon change our team member names on the official forms to the eight that would actually walk the event.

We had all hoped and planned that two team members from our team of ten would opt out by themselves because of personal reasons, lower confidence, injury or lack of fitness. As things turned out everyone became fitter and more confident as we trained harder, making our original assumption and plan, to have two extra members, incorrect.

There were seven male members and one female member when we had first registered the two teams. Subsequently two more women joined the team to make it seven male members and three female members in the team. Recently, all seven male members unanimously decided that all three women would walk on April 11 2008 which meant that two men had to make way for two women in the final eight. This unanimous decision was made on the common belief amongst all men that the three women had shown exemplary courage and resilience on the tough walks and deserved to go through. Also every man valued, respected and promoted diversity in the team. I personally believe that had there been a fourth woman in our team of ten, another man in the team would have gladly given his place to her. Despite the potential disappointment that would set in on being excluded, this chivalrous quality amongst all the male walkers is indeed commendable.

So it was then that we had to make the difficult decision on this Black Tuesday on which two male walkers would be left out of the seven. When it looked like there was no other practical option but to pick five names from the lot of seven male names, one of the male walkers pulled out at the last minute expressing that he would be happy to sit out because it was becoming harder to stay away from his family on training days. They had a two month old baby in their household. It then came down to picking five names out of six to determine who would walk and who would be the unfortunate member to sit out.

Although everyone knew that the outcome would be painful, I cannot possibly describe the disappointment, sadness and pain that we experienced when we had to leave out one of the most deserving of all men. Not only is he a perfect gentleman, he also has the highest probability of finishing the event amongst the ten walkers. Fate had delivered one of the cruellest blows to our campaign by eliminating one of the most deserving.

After we had drawn lots to unfortunately eliminate this unlucky member, I felt like somebody in my family had died. I couldn't speak and I had great difficulty holding back my tears, so I left the room and went for a long walk to discover how I had failed. It became very apparent to me that this was a case of leadership failure on my part. I had simply focussed on the wrong thing and had made it happen. Instead of thinking positively and dreaming big, I had thought and planned in a negative manner all through. I had anticipated failure on the part of two members even before we had walked a single step on the 100 km journey. I should have foreseen and visualized that all ten would walk the distance and that would have prompted me to add one more team in the event from our organization. That would have created a different problem of finding two more walkers to fill the gap, but that problem would have been be a lot less painful to solve. It would also have meant that we would have raised more funds for Oxfam. Here was a simple but unforgettably painful lesson life had taught me. Incidentally, I have never failed whenever I have dreamed big or undertaken challenging initiatives with a positive frame of mind. I have failed whenever I have doubted myself or listened to negative people who have said something was not possible.

When I broke the news to the women later that afternoon, they were inconsolably distraught. I understood their feelings well. Two of them were feeling very guilty because they thought they had deprived the two men of their places because the men had formally joined the team ahead of them. They were probably also feeling severe pressure on themselves to finish the event because they had taken someone else's place. Troubled minds behave in strange ways. Negative situations promote more negative thoughts and it becomes a downward spiral. The next few days went by in a phase of deafening silence, sadness, disappointment and dejection. We kept thinking about how these two members who were coping and how disappointed their family members and personal friends must be feeling. After all, our family members are on a high with great pride in our endevour. How would they suddenly feel to discover that thier father, husband, son or brother would not be walking the 100 km event as they had originally thought. It will take a while for us to regroup and recover and hopefully we will rediscover our morale during our long weekend practice session. It may even take a bit longer than a week or two.

I now believe that this team member will walk on the final day. I don't know how, but I know he will and I know that the eight, nine or even ten of us will cross the finish line hand in hand on April 11, 2008 - perhaps with one or two others who haven't walked with us before. There is hope for without it there is nothing left.

Venki Prathivadi,
with great sadness and unconditional acceptance of responsibility for committing this unpardonable mistake.