God S(h)ave India

There was a serious announcer with what seemed like breaking news. She talked about this movement to groom Indians (males presumably) by making them clean-shaven. I have not been to Punjab recently, but my guess is that the state may have far less people to target. Is India so jobless that their hirsute citizens do not shave or are advertisers really bereft of ideas.

I plan to write to a few of my favourite celebrities like Vir Sanghvi and Shekhar Kapur to stand up for their rights and protest this campaign. Closer home, my husband's uncle who is part and parcel of our family and is called Dadhi Thatta (.....loosely translated from Tamil, it means the bearded Grandpa) is quite a handsome chap even at 80 plus.

I have frowned at ads for fairness, bleaching etc. To be honest, a lot of people aspire to those standards and may find those ads useful knowledge. This kind of propaganda however is worse. I hope they figure out other creative ways to promote their grooming aids.

M S ( M Subramanian)... My HR Icon is no more

In my twenty plus years of confident strides, I have not been much in awe of many people. MS is one of those few people. I was very saddened when I saw a small obituary declaring that he passed away on November 10, 2009.
I did my very first assignment in Competency with him when he was with Madura Coats . He had the cleanest desk I had ever seen. Yet he could produce any document that he needed within a few minutes almost magically. He was extremely busy and I have had to chase him for appointments. he would give me an appointment four weeks away. And I would not have to confirm it . He would call me if there is any change. I did some designing work and then it did not take off. One fine day I got a call from MS. He asked me to raise an invoice for the work done since the actual workshops were getting delayed. Here was a person who was paying me even before I thought it fit to ask for any money. The workshops did happen and they were really great. It was the best learn while you earn assignment one could ever get. Through sheer association, I was shamed into being a bit more organised.

My association with him continued with work outside Coats under the EFSI banner.
MS was first diagnosed with Cancer more than a decade ago. Like all things, he took it in his stride. Even when the disease raged unabated , he continued his professional association in some form or the other. He was hoping to beat it and attend the graduation ceremony of his daughter Vidya in the US. He could not make it to US because of his ill health. He did grittily fight on to see his daughter married. That fight is now over. The cancer has won a very bitterly fought battle.

MS is well known in HR circles. He deserved to be a far bigger celebrity than what he was. He was extremely intelligent, was rooted and very generous. May his soul rest in peace.

Neither fair nor lovely

I was always put off by the concept of a fairness cream. There was nothing very fair about that whole idea. Not even the gender balancing act of a fairness cream for men could change my opinion. But it is a multi-billion rupee industry. That could now become a trillion one. This is how. I recently saw an advertisement by a brand which I trust a lot and which is to the best of my knowledge new to this category.

Now that one's self-esteem is boosted by this new skin tone, it is time to push it down once again. Your face is alright, but oh dear! What about the rest of the body. Even in deep winter some parts might show. Summer may be far away , but you have to prepare for it. So here is this fluid which can be poured all over your body to get it to that same brightness. The marketeers have now managed to get you to hold the tiger by its tail. There is perhaps a solution. If one stops using that skin deep fairness cream which got you into this mess, you have a cheap and natural remedy.

Nobel for Obama

The Nobel"peace Prize " has been awarded to Mr Obama. I am racking my brain and the newspapers to find that one bit of information which will convince me that he more than anyone else deserves this award in this year itself.

I admire Mr Obama greatly and was thrilled to bits when he won the Presidency. (Not being a US citizen, I could not vote...) Even now I support him in his efforts. If he manages to bring health care to all or makes progress in the Palestine-Israel cause, he would be a deserving candidate.

The Afghan war if anything shows no sign of stopping. Mr Obama politely refused to meet the Dalai Lama, the first US President in 20 years to do so. These factors are not a crime . However his eye is on the economics of the US and not on peace. I wish the Nobel Peace Prize committee or whoever decides such prizes gives us a break and finds substantial men, women or organisations dedicated to Peace for bestowing this wonderful award.

Considering George W Bush was on the shortened shortlist many times in the past few years, I guess the Committee has often just stopped short of embarrassing itself.

Be all that you can be... Not necessarily

I am on a diet for the first time in my life.... The Diet includes most things I like. It still cramps my style. That style in my native language is called "Sappadu Rami". A long standing friend of mine loosely translated it as "Piglet". I realised her affection for me in not shortening that lovely word. And all this came about since I took this term meant to maximise potential too literally. I am all I can be and more. The silver lining to this is that I am able to lose about a kilo a month.


The second area one should not maximise potential is credit card debt. I did not fall into that trap because shopping exhausts me. And I was born a decade too late to be comfortable enough with the Internet to merrily click and buy stuff. In the heart of my heart , I am suspicious about this whole thing. My laziness does propel me to use it for banking and trading.. but not much more. The same argument goes for taking loans beyond one's reach which mortgage all possible future earnings


The US Army has had the Slogan--"Be all that you can be" for a long time. The results of becoming part of that potential maximising exercise has not always been a happy experience. If being all you can be involves warfare, conquests etc..., you may want to pause and reflect.


\What one needs to do is to go back to old theories and be all that you can "Comfortably" be. Mr.Abraham Maslow called it self -actualisation. To reach it there are certain things you need to be able to check out as accomplished. they are:
This achievement is grounded in reality and not fleeting.
It lacks prejudice and does not depend on someone else' rise or fall. Wanting to be the best looking person in the Gym is asking for a lot of potential heartbreak.
It is motivated by growth and not deficiency.

I hope to get there someday . I am on the look out for goals which are worth striving for. Care to join ?

Transitioning ahead of Time

It is now 12 years since my father Prof.Y Satyamurthi (1931-1997) passed away. I started my freelance career in 1994. My very first assignment was a 1 day programme at Maxworth Orchards ( Which ia also no more...) I did it with him by my side as a co-faculty.
Before I started off my own, we zeroed in on the name Transitions . He helped draft this note describing my one woman outfit which I had named as TRANSITIONS. I remebered this because a local management School has asked me to design an module (I will make it interactive since that is the way I like it) to help transition their students into their working life. There will be hopefully some inputs which will help them experience , if only briefly , what it feels like to be a part of the work force. I want to share this which seems to hold good. So here it is:


Transitions from
Loyalty to Competency
Cost Centres to Profit Centres
Selling to Marketing
Intuition to Information
are driving individuals and organisations to self - development and subordinate development as an integral part of the managerial process. TRANSITIONS undertakes `IN- COMPANY` programmes on a `ZERO BASE CONCEPT` beginning with identifying training needs and skills inventory.

Transitions from
Pyramid Structures to Flatter Structures
Centralisation to Decentralisation
Single Business to Multiple Businesses
are seen even in traditional organisations. TRANSITIONS is available as consultants to carry out Organisation Restructuring , Business Clinics , Performance and Potential Appraisals, designing `COMPENSATION PACKAGES`, developing HRD Systems and Personnel Information Systems.
Transitions from
one POSITION to another
one FUNCTION to another
one LOCATION to another
one ORGANISATION to another
are more transparent and frequent in today’s changing world order with the focus on globalisation, competition and customer orientation. Today’s high fliers are the hoppers and quitters who have the `ACQUIRED SKILLS` ready to be procured by organisations short of `GIVEN SKILLS` . It amounts to pinching Paul to pay Peter, very often at Paul’s request. . This is an ongoing process and TRANSITIONS plays the role of a catalyst to organisations in bringing ROLE < > INDIVIDUAL alliance.

Please let me know if you think this is still relevant.

Ciao

Dr P.P.Gupta..... My learnings from him

I learnt that Dr PP Gupta who was the Managing Director of CMC when I joined in 1985 passed away on July 5,2009. He has many achievements to his credit and the credit he got for his achievement was just not enough. However there are thousands of people like me who here impacted by him in the most positive way. He was the kind of Business head who was an HR person's dream.

He believed truly in a culture of trust. He used to say " The cost of not trusting is too high and it is better to severely punish a breach of trust rather than have a culture based on lack of trust." He used to narrate a story from his times in England which I shall repeat with his divine permission.

He along with his wife lived in England and those days they used to have milk bottles. Both Dr Gupta and his wife would go to work and keep the empty bottles out and pick up the filled ones when they returned. Except for some prank on Guy Fawkes day, not once had they missed the bottle during their long stay in England. These are the incidents which reinforced his belief in the trustworthiness of people.

I still have my old CMC manual and its statement of vision and mission etc... Dr Gupta was the reason so many of us have such happy memories of CMC. I am sure he is improving the culture in Heaven as we speak and the smaller lords are being empowered to be open and participative and speak to Indra.

I did not report directly to Dr Gupta. But my boss Uma Jain did and she was secure enough to let us interact directly. That enhanced my learning's and understanding of my profession and values. THANKS A MILLION PPG . I pray that your family finds the strength to cope with this immense loss.

The King (Of Pop) and I----A tribute to MJ

My first brush with Michael Jackson was in 1984...I was definitely Desi and didn't know much about Pop Music. We had a professor who graciously introduced us to this strange thing called "Aerobics..." Being fat and not fit, I signed up and we moved our feet and flailed our arms to some really nice Music... And then in a few days we were moving our feet to some great rhythms and could sing along and say "Beat it" at all the right places. I bought an audio cassette in Mumbai and listened to it all through 1984-86.
My next dalliance was when I was in the US with my infant son. I woke upto MTV and the beats and found it quite entertaining to pick up my son and dance while holding him . Even though Thriller was not recent, it was played quite often. I also did some aerobic routines to home to a self compiled cassette which was mostly tracks from , what else but "Thriller"
Cut to Scene 3. My son is about 5 years old and has this plastic guitar. For no particular reason , he is a fan of this pop star who wore white sox, gloves and had the bestselling album of the century. He went to his fancy dress competition dressed in a black tight fitting pant and had gloves and a hat. He had white sox and black shoes and he belted his heart out and tried to moon walk. He was very happy even though he lost to a boring doctor on call .
Cut to my last encounter... I had become quite archaic and clutched onto my audio cassettes. This was the third "Thriller" Cassette I had. I however had to move on to a CD version. Dangerous, off the wall etc are familiar terms , but Thriller is what has always ruled my heart.
Michael Jackson was one of those icons who made me feel global. After all he managed to thrill the entire Globe.

The Indian Resilience and why Bharat will still be mahaan.

Folks,
It all ended well,
My son and I are feeling swell,
We were undaunted
And hence were counted.
The mark on the Index finger has quite a story to tell

"Jaagore" helped us hope
and we didn't at least have to exchange any note
Just to be able to give our vote.

The process of getting voter id cards was over a few weeks back and we were very pessimistic. We clutched to our acknowledgement slips which proved that we had given our details as required. We also kept visiting the various sites where we could find out if we were included in the electoral rolls. We were apparently not on the list till a week ago.My son tried a last ditch effort at night on 22nd April and lo and behold our names were there. So we quickly took down the details of Part numbers and serial number. It was now a family affair. My husband got up early on 23rd and made a round of nearby booths and found out the one where we were listed. I have to credit the "Jaagore" website in keeping our hopes of voting alive. In its absence we would have not thought of taking our other ids and going. In the end it was all a breeze. On reflection, I guess this is how most of our people in India manage. Somehow at the end of the month most of us are still standing and smiling and hoping.
Three cheers to the IT guys who maintain the Chief Election officer, Karnataka's website. They seemed to have raced against time to update these lists.

Election gets personal

I have an enthusiastic, awake young son who has just attained voting age. He wants to vote. We got the Form 6 which is needed to obtain the voter id. This is to be submitted to “Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike” office. (This is the way the government wants us to give our cheques and DDs . So those hell-bent on these changes have not fully updated to the not so new name of our city.) . It must be a series of coincidence that I found the place open only on my 5th or 6th attempt to submit the form. That ultimately happened in the month of September. After that we were supposed to get the photo id. But that chance never came. We went to our HELPLINE set up for our constituency in Bommasundra, a suburb of Bangalore. It was full of duty conscious people patiently waiting for their turn outside what can at best be described as a tightly pulled down shutter. It would open once in 30-40 minutes and as many people as could, would squeeze in. After two such surges, we were close to our “Open Sesame” moment. People were getting impatient and tempers and decibels were going up. This was a good two hours after we arrived and 3 hours before the helpline was supposed to close. At the third surge, it was close to a stampede and one cop who most would be voters thought was drunk took it upon himself to use his lathi. At first he gave it to a dozen or so people and then he started hitting the ground. This is when a helpful senior looking cop advised us to simply go home and come back later. We pride ourselves as being a big democracy.

We are probably the largest pool of people who will go to any length, to try and vote. How many become actually eligible is a big question. I still remember the TV footage where late Pramod Mahajan was helplessly stating that even his name was not on the electoral list. The impression it has had on the enthusiasm of my 19 year old is what led me to write about his

Quest to give a vote….

The point to note is that I am awake
I never shirked when it was time to take
A risk or a vital decision to make.
The point to note
Is I am ready to vote.

I applied, and applied and then re-applied
I cajoled, I hustled and bustled and I tried
And unlike what “Jaagore” implied,
The path to cast a vote is narrow, not wide,
And it is thus that for me, democracy died.

I am no poet but a writer and critic.
The story to be told is tragically pathetic
A boy of just nineteen is already bitter
“I Voted” is something he perhaps can never twitter

http://www.jaagore.com/

Reflecting on my parents'gifts so I can march Forth

Marching forth necessarily requires reflecting back. I have been thinking about what it is about the past which has kept me still standing. My parents are no more. Before passing on, they have instilled in me a sense of independence, gratitude and a sense of proportion. They made us cook and clean and learn all the basic work for which we had help int he form of maids and drivers etc. Only when Iwas transplanted to the Land of riches (at least erstwhile..) the U.S of A that I appreciated that upbringing.

My father sold his flat in Mumbai and retired to Chennai because it gave him enough money to buy another flat and have a good financial back -up. He refused to buy a car and instead had a reliable Cab service which he would use once or twice a week. When we visited, A cab in very good condition and a driver were at our service. That driver knew the entire city like the back of his hand. It felt far more luxurious than owning a car.

My parents had simple needs of a basic kind. Cofee, vegetarian food , and a few good weatherproof friends . That has been soaked up by me and that was perhaps the reason we look at the functionality of our possessions much more than the prestige attached to owning it. We do like to have PCs and laptops with the latest software and unlimited RAM . The areas where we have such aspirations are limited.

From my childhood, I have always thought of this particular date as the one when I think of moving forward. For the past few years I had forgotten that. This year I need all the tools I can get to cope with the forces which are working to make me feel downcast. Fortunately they are right now restricted only to the economy. I too am happy with tea, food and friends and I don't see being without them ever. And I am grateful to my parents for this wonderful cushion they have helped me build. This post is being written on 4th March (Indian Standard time...). The date will probably show as March 3 . Just goes to show that Indians are generally marching ahead of competition.

Rogues can turn into Gurus

Satyam and Ramalinga Raju are in news today for fraud and other economic crimes. But it has happened in the past.
A former securities trader allegedly responsible for the largest-ever bank fraud found a new job, as per a report in May 2008 in the Le Point website. Frenchman Jerome Kerviel, whose unauthorised transactions cost French bank Societe Generale $8.22 billion, has been working since the beginning of April as an IT consultant for a firm near Paris. The head of the company, Jean-Raymond Lamaire, gave Mr Kerviel refuge in his home when the affair broke in January 2008 and promised to hire him as soon as he was released from prison, the Associated Press reported. Mr Kerviel is facing several charges, including forgery and breach of trust. If convicted he could be jailed for up to seven years and be fined a maximum $1.26 million. He is apparently still managing to be out of any prison.

Frank Abagnale , now a law abiding citizen who has been immortalised by Mr. Spielberg in the movie "Catch me if you can" pulled off some unbelievable capers mostly Economic in the nature of offence. He has even done assignments for the federal government in the US assisting them in catching scamsters.

My submission is that Mr. Ramalinga Raju should be sent tio jail if found guilty. Then he can give many pointers on how to improve transparency and prevent others from stating ASATYAM in their balance sheets or in their dealings with any of their stake holders. He can be a Guru on improving Corporate governance. Aftr all he fooled enough people to get an award for it last year.