MMXX VISION AND HOUSTON

I have now been reminded by human resources that my last note for the year is expected. They say, I do!

What a year it has been, with a Malthusian catastrophe brought upon by a pandemic. We have seen new ways of working and living, a Presidential election and natural calamities in abundance. We have had to maneuver our business to avoid being a casualty like some many others around us, take pay cuts, stay interned and keep the show going. Ugh!

In Jan, I thought 2020 would be a near-perfect year. Like 2020 vision. 20/20 vision means you are able to read letters from a distance of 20 feet like any “normal” person could do. Sadly, stats show that 6 out of 10 people have imperfect vision so maybe “normal” is not so normal.

I hate the term new-normal but since it's widely used let me ask you - how do you like the new Zoom/Teams/Webex world? Have you attended a meeting wearing a proper shirt with just shorts or joggers under the camera’s view? Or become expert in handling the mute button, when a nearby dog or child has decided to express itself rather too loudly! Or marveled at your newly found skill of toggling the camera icon, “share screen” and mute button, while attending to something else? As a friend jokingly said – “I have unwavering attention when watching Netflix while on Zoom calls”.

Ironically, the year was named "International Year of Plant Health" by the UN. We now know that 2020 is on track to be the very worst year ever for the planet’s plants in terms of bushfires, locust swarms, and cyclone activity. Australia saw 46,050,750 acres burned due to bush fires and the USA reported 52,113 wildfires that had destroyed 8,889,297 acres. In the Brazilian Amazon, 5,400,000 acres were destroyed.

As for humans, oh my, we were not spared - 77m people were infected with Covid, with 1.7m dying, thus far. Every way you look at it the numbers are large and depressing except for one bright spot - as Matt Parker, tweeted, at 2:02am 20.2 secs on the 20th of Feb 2020 the time would read 02:02:20.20 02/02/2020 – a beautiful palindrome.

Which brings me to math, and Creola Katherine Johnson, US Presidential Medal of Freedom winner (the highest award a civilian can get) who died at the age of 101 without much of the world even knowing who this great woman was – namely, her work on orbital mechanics that helped NASA plot Apollo 11’s trajectory to the moon. More famously she helped the ill-fated Apollo 13’s crew fly back to earth with her back up charts and calculations. We all remember the iconic phrase, “Okay, Houston, we have a problem” which was derived from astronauts Swigert and Lovell telling NASA that a part of their spacecraft had exploded.

Jack Swigert: “Okay, Houston, we’ve had a problem here.”

Houston mission control: “This is Houston. Say again, please.”

Jim Lovell: “Uh, Houston, we’ve had a problem.”

Well, well, the world certainly had a problem in 2020 and we made that Houston call to God for sure. Luckily, a chap called Stephane was paying attention.

On Jan 22, 2020, China locked down Wuhan. Soon after, on a cold morning, Stéphane Bancel, read an article on the Wall Street Journal about a virus in China and the 59 people who had gotten sick. He then started to make enquiries because his company, Moderna (a company working in stealth mode at the time and where Bancel was CEO) had a vaccine that could engineer body cells to produce pathogens to start an immune defense. The rest is history. Moderna’s vaccine, one of two on the way to be mass produced, raised the company’s value to $54B! Imagine that.

Yet, with all its tribulations and misery, 2020 has been an amazing year for many reasons – firstly, in our short lives, where one appreciates all gifts, this was one more year on paradise, our lovely Mother Earth. Secondly, our company grew faster than most other comparable businesses (in keeping with our CAGR of 54% since inception). It is really a good show and I want to thank my BORNies, our partners and clients for that. With over 50 logo wins and more awards than we have ever won, a resilient good-human workforce, a tissue-friendly integration of BORN into Tech Mahindra, I could not have asked for more.

Thirdly, the reaction of first responders, nurses, doctors, researchers, and medical crew to produce 2 vaccines which have a 95%+ efficacy in such a short time has been awesome.

Smallpox, which devasted humans back in 3 BC and was rampant for over 1,000 years was finally dealt a fatal blow with Edward Jenner’s vaccine in 1796. Yellow fever had a run for 500 years before Nobel Laureate Max Theiler’s vaccine stopped it in 1951. COVID-19 has had a run for 1 year and it looks like we may be able to battle it. And win.

With that hope in our hearts, and a prayer for a good, normal 2021, allow me to wish all of you a happy holiday season. The UN has named 2021, International Year of Peace and Trust.

Onwards. Upwards. Peacefully. Trustingly.

Your fearless follower.