Ghosting: Vibrant Threads to Silent Dreads

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Amit Ranade was grandson of the legendary Girdharilal Ranade, a man whose word was considered more valuable than gold in busy markets of Ahmedabad. When Amit took over Vibrant Threads, he did not just inherit a massive factory and rows of high-speed looms, he inherited a name that stood for reliability. Amit sat in his office overlooking dusty roads of Ahmedabad.

Burden of Avoidance: Loss of Trust

He was now boss of Vibrant Threads, a company known for quality cloth. Amit was a clever man, but he suffered from a peculiar weakness. He found it very difficult to give people bad news. He thought staying silent was better than causing disappointment. This habit of Ghosting was about to cost him dearly.

It was a hot Monday morning when Jiya, his best designer, sent a crucial email. She had developed a new type of moisture-wicking fabric for a massive international sports brand. This contract was biggest opportunity in the history of the firm. Amit opened the file and felt a knot in his stomach. The design was perfect, but cost of new looms needed to weave it was way over budget. Amit did not want to say no to Jiya, but he also did not want to admit that company was tight on cash. Instead of calling a meeting to discuss a phased rollout or a budget adjustment, Amit did what he always did when faced with pressure. He simply stopped responding. He closed the laptop and decided he would deal with it later.

Tuesday came and went. Jiya called him three times, but Amit watched his phone vibrate and did not pick up. He figured that if he did not answer, Jiya would simply wait. He did not realize that silence is never just silence, it is a message of its own.

He ignored the emails. He ignored the WhatsApp messages. When Jiya knocked on his door, he told his secretary to say he was in a deep meeting with the bank. Amit thought he was being clever by staying silent, but in leadership, silence is a deafening noise. By ghosting his team, he was effectively telling them that their time, effort, and talent did not matter. He was trading hard-earned trust of his grandfather’s era for a few days of temporary peace. In a leadership role, clarity is the only currency that matters. By choosing to ghost his lead designer, Amit was defaulting on his primary debt as a boss.

By Wednesday afternoon, atmosphere in Ahmedabad office had turned sour. Jiya was sitting at her desk, staring at a blank screen. She could not move forward with the yarn orders or dyeing process without Amit giving her the green light. Since her leader was invisible, her work became stagnant. Downstairs in canteen, workers gathered over plates of khaman and hot tea or thepla and chutney, the whispers started growing loud. People noticed that Amit was avoiding design floor. Absence of a leader creates a vacuum, and in Ahmedabad, people fill a vacuum with gossip. Rumours spread that Amit had gambled away company funds or that global deal was a scam. They began to wonder if factory was planning layoffs. Ghosting had created a vacuum, and anxiety was filling it up.

Fabric Mill to Rumour Mill

Thursday brought a final chance for Amit to fix things, but his fear won again. Jiya sent one last message asking for a decision. Amit read it, felt the familiar sting of anxiety, and put his phone face down on the desk. That night, Jiya, feeling insulted and undervalued, accepted a position at a competing firm in Surat. She felt no loyalty to a man who treated her like an unread notification. Jiya was now updating her resume. She took a call from a rival textile mill in Surat and booked a bus ticket for next morning.

The end arrived on Friday afternoon. International clients flew into Ahmedabad for an unannounced factory tour. They wanted to see the fabric that was supposed to change the market. Amit, sweating under his linen shirt, led them to production area. He expected his staff to have something ready out of habit, but he found looms silent and tables bare. There was no prototype because leader had provided no direction.

No Leadership, No prototype, No Clients

The clients did not even wait for a cup of tea. They walked out, and word of disaster spread through local industry by sunset. Amit sat in his grandfather’s old teak chair, realizing he had committed ultimate sin of leadership. He had inherited a legacy built on strong handshakes and clear words, but he had lost it all because he was too afraid to speak. Ghosting had not saved him from a difficult conversation,  it had ensured he would never have a seat at the table again.

Amit realized too late that his silence had not just avoided conflict, it had guaranteed a catastrophe. Reliability is foundation of authority, and he had cracked that foundation by being unreachable. His reputation in Ahmedabad market took a massive hit that day. Employees learned that their leader would disappear when things got tough, and global brand took their business elsewhere. Amit learned a hard lesson that a simple no or a request for more time would have saved his business. Ghosting is never a strategy; it is just a slow way to lose everything that has been built. Ghosting in the fond hope that problems will get fixed or with an attitude of “they can go to hell” will take you exaxctly there – to Hell.

Sometimes, Bad communication is better than No Communication

Graduate Unemployability – Humanware or Hardware Issue?

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This article comes as my take after I read an article on a popular Skill Development and News aggregator Platform on Graduate Employability. The graduate unemployability crisis has a hidden root cause. While we focus on hardware of education, we keep ignoring the human-ware. Shiny campuses and high-speed Wi-Fi mean nothing if the person at the front of the room is disconnected from the modern world. We are producing lakhs of graduates who aren’t job-ready because you cannot inspire excellence if you haven’t lived it.

Infrastucture Remain in OEM Packing Until it is Scrapped
PC: Gemini

In many Indian colleges, teaching is a fallback, not a choice. Faculty often teach subjects like cloud computing or digital marketing without having spent a single day in a tech firm. It’s like trying to teach someone to swim using a textbook in a dry room. No matter how modern the syllabus, a teacher just reading PowerPoint slides makes employability a distant dream.

Bridging the Gap: A Practical Roadmap

To fix the system, we must redefine job-description and titles of a Guru in modern times:

To revitalize the educational landscape, we must bridge the gap between ivory towers and real world. This begins by democratizing expertise through Professor of Practice model, rather than limiting industry veterans to elite institutions like IITs, we should bring those with two decades of on-the-ground experience into every Tier-1, Tier-2 and Tier-3 colleges.

To keep classroom knowledge from stagnating, Industry Sabbaticals should become a standard requirement. Teachers need to immerse themselves in corporate environments for several months every few years, absorbing latest technical tools and high-stakes hustle of modern workspaces.

However, systemic change requires Incentivizing Quality. Teaching must be transformed into a financially lucrative and socially prestigious career path, one that actively competes for the attention of top-tier engineers and managers.

Finally, classroom experience itself must evolve. Faculty training should prioritize Facilitation over Rote Learning, shifting instructor’s role from a sage on stage who merely finishes a syllabus to a guide on the side who masters art of sparking deep, critical discussion.

The Mindset Shift

Pouring capital into high-end hardware and sprawling glass campuses is a superficial remedy for a deep-seated educational crisis. Without a foundation of exceptional teaching, these assets are little more than expensive set dressing. It is a classic case of White Elephant Syndrome, institutions invest crores in advanced machinery primarily to dazzle regulators and parents. Yet, since faculty often lacks practical expertise to integrate this tech into a real-world context, equipment ends up mothballed under plastic sheets, serving as a monument to wasted potential.

The gap between intent and impact is most visible in curriculum. Updating a syllabus is not merely a clerical exercise, it is about bringing those subjects to life and should be an art form. In the hands of an uninspired educator, even most modern curriculum remains new wine in a very old bottle. This stems from a fundamental misallocation of resources. Indian institutions consistently over-index on physical infrastructure because it is visible, marketable, and easy to quantify. Meanwhile, soft infrastructure, rigorous teacher training and competitive salaries, is neglected simply because its value is harder to capture in a brochure.

Lost Navigator
PC: Gemini

Finally Syllabus is a map, ship the infrastructure, but the teacher is the navigator. If the navigator is lost, however accurate the map, ship will never reach the port of employment, no matter how shiny the vessel.

Detach to Discover

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For a long time, I believed that my value was measured by the weight on my shoulders. I equated a frantic calendar with importance and saw stress as a badge of honour. In that world, silence felt like a weakness, and the idea of walking away looked like an admission of defeat. I looked at the concept of Sanyas, renunciation, and saw it as an escape hatch for those who couldn’t handle the heat of real life.

Burden of Importance: Value is Stress

I couldn’t have been more wrong.

I’ve come to realize that true renunciation isn’t about running away, it is a movement toward clarity. It is the deliberate act of dropping the mental baggage I didn’t even know I was carrying. When I chose to step into this mindset, I didn’t abandon my duties. I simply stopped obsessing over who got the credit or whether I was winning in the eyes of others. I discovered that it takes far more internal grit to stop seeking outside approval than it does to keep chasing it. While I once thought power was about holding on tight, I now see that real authority is the ability to let go of labels and the need to possess things.

Great Unburdening: Dropping the Mental Baggage

Maintaining a mask is exhausting. I spent so much energy trying to please everyone and keep up appearances that I had nothing left for myself. Choosing to let go freed me from that burden. It shifted my perspective from reacting to every external spark to staying centred in my own awareness. This isn’t a lazy path. It is a bold reclamation of the mind. It demands brutal honesty, a detachment from results, and the discipline to remain still while the world around me is in chaos.

The irony is that by facing my inner self, I became more responsible, not less. I stopped being a victim of my fears, which allowed me to act with actual purpose. When the ego is removed, actions become sincere. I no longer do things because I want a reward, I do them because they are right. I learned that Sanyas has nothing to do with the clothes I wear or where I live. It is a state of mind, the courage to cut away the noise until only the essentials remain. It is perhaps the bravest thing I’ve ever done, giving up the illusion that I control the world to finally gain command over myself.

Action in Inaction: Being like the Hub of the Wheel

I see this most clearly in leadership. We are taught that a leader must be a figure of constant motion, defined by a heavy workload. But the most profound strength comes from that same heart of renunciation. It takes immense courage to step back from the ego’s need to micro-manage every outcome. In a culture that prizes the hustle, the truly powerful person is the one who sheds the fear of failure. This creates a level of clarity that most people simply don’t have.

This leads to what I call action in inaction. In the middle of a crisis, the natural instinct is to panic or stay busy just for the sake of it. We often confuse doing something with doing the right thing. Now, when things get chaotic, I practice a form of mental stillness. My internal state remains unruffled even as I navigate the storm. This isn’t passivity, it is the disciplined ability to observe a situation without being drowned by its emotions. By renouncing the fruits of my labour, how I will look or what I will gain, I am finally free to do the work with total excellence.

When you embody this stillness, you become a stabilizing force for everyone else. I think of it like a wheel, the outer rim spins at a dizzying speed, but the centre remains perfectly still. That centre is the source of power. It allows me to see patterns that others miss because my vision isn’t clouded by personal anxiety. It is far easier to stay busy and stressed than it is to stay calm and effective. Leading from a place of detachment requires a mind of steel and a fearless heart. It has taught me that letting go is the most active, demanding, and sophisticated work a human being can do.

Command of Self

Take-aways

When we stop acting for a reward, our actions become clean. We aren’t manipulating a situation for a specific ego-boost, we are simply doing what the moment requires with 100% of our focus.

Contrary to our belief that control comes from gripping tighter, fact is that gripping tighter actually creates friction. By letting go of ego’s need to control the outcome, we eliminate the anxiety tax that usually drains our energy.

Coming to the analogy of wheel. The speed of the rim (external world and events) is irrelevant if the axle (internal state) is secure. If the centre wobbles, the whole structure collapses.

Dropping the mask isn’t just a relief, it’s a massive energy gain. Authenticity is efficient.

It is easy to be busy. Busy is a distraction. It takes brutal honesty to sit with oneself and realize that the frantic calendar was often just a shield against the silence. True authority is the ability to remain unruffled when the world demands a reaction.

Trade the heavy “weight on shoulders” for a “mind of steel.”

It is a Task: Work to make it work

Finally, living this way is arguably the most difficult undertaking a person can choose because it requires a constant, conscious rebellion against every social instinct we possess. From the moment we are young, we are conditioned to believe that our identity is a collection of trophies, titles, and the frantic speed at which we move. To suddenly stop and declare that these things are hollow feels, at first, like a betrayal of the self. It is a lonely path because the world rarely rewards silence; it rewards the noise of the hustle. Staying still while everyone else is running requires a level of internal courage that most will never tap into, as it forces us to confront the very fears and insecurities we usually hide behind a busy schedule.

The true challenge lies in the fact that this isn’t a one-time decision, but a thousand small battles fought every single day. It is the discipline to stay calm when a crisis hits, the strength to let a slight go unanswered, and the willpower to work toward a goal without letting the potential for failure or success shake your foundation. It demands a “brutal honesty” that strips away the comforting lies we tell ourselves about why we work so hard or why we need certain people to like us. Ultimately, choosing this state of mind is an act of high-level spiritual and mental engineering. It is the sophisticated work of a lifetime, proving that the greatest form of command isn’t over a boardroom or a nation, but over the chaotic landscape of one’s own heart.