My Mother Superior

My mom turned 80 today.  She is not around anymore to celebrate that.
She was a feisty kid brought up in Kolkata for her formative years. She did extremely well especially in that haloed subject , Maths or Kanakku as all TamBrahms know it. She always got 100 out of 100.
World War 2 arrived and Kolkata was not considered safe anymore So my Grandpa sent his family back to his village when she was around 12 years old. Since the village did not have a secondary school, her education stopped after 8th standard. She was soon married off and that put an end to any expression of her feistiness as well.

Soon she was in Delhi and then at the age of eighteen my dear brother Ganesh was born. Two years later Ramesh and then another five years later, moi arrived.  Looking after the brood in addition to unmarried sister in laws, father inlaws and motherless nieces meant that my mother had no breathing time. All this changed by the time I was three. Our fortunes also seemed to have changed since I don't remember any tough times which my brothers sometimes recall.

My mother brought me up to think that I was as good as my brothers. I had no concept of gender inequality and still cannot relate to it on a very personal level. My husband is an opionated person, but equally unfair to all genders. my son is actually a firm believer and practices gender equality. he goes dutch irrespective of the dining companion's gender. If there is peep about them paying, he gladly accepts. I have also learnt that lesson from him.  Now back to my mom.

She was fearless. My father shifted to become a professor in Mumbai. That place was quite desolate and the building (with4 flats) was called Booth (as in Ghost , not the famous assassin)  Bungalow. She would see scorpions and snakes and either drive them away or very calmly call the watchman.
In the weekly bus trips to market she would lug the maximum amount of vegetables , in spite of having a congenital birth defect where she could not straighten her elbows completely. She didn't think herself handicapped and did more than most able bodied women  do. My siblings and I had varied tastes. my mom would make 3 different tiffins for us, all by 6 AM.  She of course was our alarm clock. This meant a few occasions when I was woken up at 3.25 to catch my local to my college in Sion for my  Science practicals, because she in her grogginess saw it as 5.15.
She adjusted herself extremely well to all weathers, cuisines and cultures. She had the knack of getting along with all the maids, watchmen, plumbers, electricians etc.  They would turn up for my mom on time, even if they didn't when my sis in law called them. My sis in law called Mogha Rashi.
And believe me, I have seen it at work.

In her later years she developed Diabetes.  Now her doctor became her good friend. He called her his model patient. She was fiercely independent in her own way. She looked after herself, taking her medicines in time. We didn't have to hide the sweets or the sugar box. She went for two long walks. one to Marudeeswarar temple in the evening and another one round the block to say hi to her boy friends, the neighbourhood vegetable vendor, grocer, milkman, carpenter, plumber etc.  Even when frail, she was easy to look after.  My Dad generally got all the kudos from his relatives. My mom deserved it even more. Maybe they saw her as an outsider always. She was very simple, guileless and generally meek around them in the beginning.

After my dad passed away, she became even more independent. She stayed alone and managed almost everything. She went for her check ups and made sure she cooked proper meals and not some lame duck one just because she had to cook for her one person.

My father's  death followed by Ganesh's sudden demise at 45 took its toll on her mentally. She suffered a massive heart attack and was in and out of consciousness for 21 days. She not only survived but built her health back. After this , she could not stay alone. She shifted in with me in 2002 and stayed until she died peacefully in 2008. I was surprised at the number of people who turned up on that day. Entire house staff in the apartment apart from my friends and relatives had come without any intimation from me. They had all seen her on her walks or spoken to her sometime or the other.  She was 73 and went gently in her sleep.

I have started walking like her, yawning like her and looking like her. I am pretty happy about it. Hope I get her energy as well.
 

Perspectives on Money from cradle to adulthood

Money makes the world go around and it makes people go round the world.

In my time we counted money and most of us had seen our parents earn just enough to be counted in about 10 minutes flat. Then the amounts increased, the currencies and the assets varied.

My perspective changed as I saw my kid look at money in a different way. Karthik is an articulate kid who voiced his thoughts well and asked questions. My husband was abroad most of the time he was growing up. Since I had help and I ad grown in India and it was a reasonably priced place to continue my citizenship, he was brought up here. Surrounded by family and friends. My dad was retired and spent a lot of time with my son. When he had to go to a bank or something , he would say he is going to "Office" . That is what Karthik had heard his own dad say.  He also knew that you got "Money" if you went to office.
Very soon, he figured out that "Money" in US was a lot. The next time my Dad went to office, Karthik declared " Thatha.. (Grandpa in Tamil).. You don't have to go. My dad is earning enough for all of us.

The next perspective came when I went off to work after a nice 3 year holiday where I was with him. He was not too perturbed because now I too was going to get money. I cam neck from my first day of work. I was touched by the enthusiastic greeting. So we hugged and chatted for just a little while. e then put out his hand and asked fr "Money". i told him I did not have any. He was annoyed and told me that I should not work for free. That is the tender age when the concept of bank was introduced to him. He listened patiently and had many questions. " How do I know that it will go in there?" . "How much was it.. It was a tiny amount." "Do you count it?" He then went onto extrapolate it and asked about his Dad's salary and I converted it into rupees. That was when he asked another question,"Does he have to take a day off to count and make sure they are paying him correctly" . I think a few people in Finland and other bankrupt banks could have been as cautious as him.

If anything, I am a proud parent and I cannot give a parenting tip here. Trust your kid with money and they will be wise with it. I learnt this accidentally when we wanted to stop Karthik  from drinking too much Soda. He was about 8 or 9 years old. We used to give him a tiny allowance . We increased it but said he had to buy all the soda from his allowance. The tyke stopped drinking Soda almost altogether. He gulped it down at restaurants etc where it did not come from his kitty. The amounts increased substantially over the years, but he has been careful about very large amounts too.


I definitely thought he was going to be very money minded. He is too. I am very happy that this is more in terms of money consciousness rather than pure greed. He now works abroad and earns a bit more than he spends. he keeps asking me "Shall I send you money?" . In his mind. he only needs a 3 month expense back up. he lives in a country where that is the maximum period when he can be without a job and stay. He is quite confident that we will share the money we have so carefully preserved if he were to ever need it.

I will stop writing just in case I get mushy and emotional about this very fiduciary topic. Post your thoughts and maybe we can make a primer on Money and Kids. 

Grassroots innovation. "Bai"Chara

I just returned from a meeting entitled "Orbit shift". It was about innovation. They passed out fortune cookies with very different thought provoking piece of writing. So the guy next to me took two cookies  to gain more wisdom, I presume. When he broke open the cookies, he found time tested wisdom. This I surmised from the fact that both the cookies had identical wordings . I don't remember the earth shaking advice at the present moment.  Now that I have done the traditional bit by starting with an anecdote, let me come to the meat.

We were all asked about the one innovative thing we had done. If I had sent this into the featured speakers, I would have got lots of publicity and a footnote in a book authored by SOMEBODY ELSE. So folks, you  got to help an Aam Aurat like me by publicising this blog entry of mine .

My innovation started with a path breaking thought. House hold help called "Bai" in Mumbai can be hard working, trusting and intelligent to understand business models. This post has nothing to do with any "Bhai" although it does include male household help henceforth called "Baiya".Together they form "Bailog" 

My revolutionary idea was to pay the inhabitants of "Bailog" daily wages. It worked something like this.

My Bai asks for 2500 Rupees. I bargain and beat her down to 2000 actually satisfying both since she expected to get 1800. I now add a 10% amount to this. This is then converted to a daily wage assuming a 30 day month. This way, she gets 2200 if she come on all days. If she (or he) is absent for 3 days, she still gets 2000. So there is a 3 day leave inbuilt. As expected, there is resistance. However, when at the end of the month, they get more for not being absent, I am the last one they ditch. of course February is a  month which brings its share of heartburn.  There are certain other things as well. When they don't turn up, they don't get paid. However, they still have to call in to inform. If this happens once too often, then they are put on notice. All fair for me, right? Wrong.

They get paid their full salary for all those days when they can't work because my house is locked. 

And I have 15 years of experience to convince me that this works. What is more, my "Bai"s have become arithmetically very savvy. And attrition because of lack of employee engagement is next to nil. 

PLEASE TRY THIS AT HOME IN INDIA. 

Nirvana or redundancy

I am hardly 50 (Ahem). My son is 24, has a good job, lives on his own in a different continent and is self sufficient. I had spent more than fifty percent of this first two thirds of my life being a caregiver to son, mom, uncle etc. My husband is poorly trained in domestic matters. He did manage to live off frozen foods and  eating out when he was in the US.

Recently I hopped over to my son's continent and spent a month there. I was on the receiving end being told to eat properly, comb my hair etc, all arising out of the immense affection and the fear of being mortified in front of friends. My cook quit on me about six months back. So hubby was on his own. Alas. India too has its myriad frozen, vacuum packed microwaveable everything. So now that little edge I had of being superior when it came to domestic matters has been nullified.

My work is enjoyable and all, nut not exactly transformational. So now I sit and wonder , what is it that I can do which no one else can. I have been giving money to what I feel are deserving charities. I can set up a trust and that can go on without my presence.

I am not depressed. I am contemplative though.  I am happy that I have managed to become redundant. The existential question has hence  seized me for the moment. I try to avoid it by Pranayama, online activities, phone calls , acting as agony aunt etc. But it EXISTS.  Two of my mentors passed away soon after very monumnetal events in their kid's life , like marriage, going away from house etc. Their souls seemed to be instinctive about their usefulness. mine is not so eveolved. So you will hear from me in a few weeks for sure.

Business of business cards

I have been on my own for more than 15 years and hence I need a business card. Traditional wisdom is that you should collect as many cards from as many people as possible. It goes on to say that you should also distribute it to as many people as you can. At one point I believed I could spot the guys and gals who were branching off to an independent business by their eagerness to give out their cards. The same people a few months ago would either not have sufficient cards or forgotten them in their hurry to arrive at events on time.

There are reams  written on how a card should look, how it should be handed over with both hands in a manner that the receiver is able to read your card etc. And then there are reams on contours, design , texture and many other aspects of the card itself.
I had lots of thoughts on this and some of it was clarified when I read Abhijit Bhaduri's piece in Economic times today (March 5, 2013).

I too have seen this flurry of activities where business cards are exchanged. I am not very good at it nor am I well organised. I don't have separate space for my cards and the ones I receive. I feel very comfortable in Indian attire and hence do not have a handy pocket to whip my card from. So speed suffers. On many occasions, I have forgotten the cards at venues, especially when there are tables kept in circles where we play musical chairs.

Business cards  cards are not always the best way to keep some one's contact. Those who are influential will not have their cell numbers. They will give you a switch board number which will have multiple levels of gatekeepers who will all ask the same questions, pretty much like most customer service call centres. Then they change companies. Smaller companies change their website. The bigger ones have firewalls and if you end your profile as an attachment, you go directly into spam or the email will be blocked.

In India these are still called visiting cards. I guess we don't really know the origin of the word that well. In the days of  people like Jeeves and Cadbury , meaning Butlers, people  would visit (or call, hence the name  calling cards)  one another by showing up unannounced at a home and handing a calling card to the servant who answered the door. Such cards generally only had the name of the caller. No contact details like address, telephone numbers etc were given. There were no logos and emails and email ids  did not exist.   In India , since we could happily and loudly announce our presence , the calling card was unlikely to have been in vogue.

Now with everyone having the a vCard with the visiting replaced by Virtual, Business cards may soon  go the way of typewriters and rotary phones. Personal touches still make a difference. I find that a direct approach where you ask for the person's cell number or email id and write it in a small black book works best. If they don't want to give it to you, it saves your time  and if they do, you can send SMS or email and ask them for a meeting.

MBA -Master of Bogus Activities

I am now at an age where I am at  crossroads. Most of my duties as caregiver to my tiny tot, parents and in laws have ebbed off. I can afford 3 or 4 square meals, a roof and a vast of expanse of cloth needed to cover my modesty. So while I make professional appearances and do paid work, I can afford to do pro bono work as well apart from giving to my chosen charity . One such chartiy is in our native place. As any true blooded Indian knows, that is the place your parents or grandparents were born or lived. This village is deep in south India in Tenkasi district of Tamil Nadu.  it is called Sri Sai Subramanya Charity trust and they essentially rum remedial or after school tuition classes for a few hundred kids. The mothers of these students mostly roll Beedis and the fathers are agricultural workers. SOme of the kids also do chores and supplement the meagre family income. The trust gives them books, clothes apart from th classes. they also try to expose them by taking them on excursions to waterfalls, Zoos and dams and such places. Visitors who have are educated and exposed to the outside world are encouraged to interact with the students.

I was one such visitor. The founders of this trust Lakshmi Ramakrishnan and her husband Ramakrishnan ( Who is also the founder of Amar Seve Sangam and a receipient of many national and international awards like CNBC Awaaz's Rea Hero Award)  asked me to talk to about 40 students of Class 9 and 10 and their teachers  about variour career paths in an interactive way. So I asked them to tell me what they wanted to become, what course they would like to do and why were they inspired towards that course,

They talked about wanting to become teachers ( 60% of the girls had that as an aspiration), engineers, police officers, doctors and a couple of lawyers as well. They were encouraged to ask questions and they asked me about my career. i told them that I had done an MBA. They had not heard of this at all. I expanded it and tod them it was a Masters in Business Administration. SO they wanted to know what kind of a skill that was and I gave them some examples. They then wanted to know what inspired me to do MBA. The kids had talked about how they were inspired to see their teachers, how doctors had cured their grandmom and how lawyers would uphold justice etc. MBA seemed a very materialistic choice in comparision. They then interrogated me on my inspiration and I told them that I had met some cool people in my dad's office and I wanted be like them and that is how I found out about this course. Soon enough 2 of the youngsters wanted to do MBA and that did indeed please me.

Many readers of this blog would have heard of Abhijit Bhaduri's book on life as an MBA student, entitled Mediocre But Arrogant where if you are into a management institute , you will surely go out as an MBA. In retrospect basic sciences etc seem so much more scholarly, especially sinceyou will not work under someone who is less qualified than you. Many people who are succcescful do an MBA as a learning. I did as mostly a means of earning. When i started working, the very process of working taught me a lot. So in retrospect, many activities were bogus. and I have almost honed the art of earning through important sounding work and activities.

I an an excellent Master Of Bogus Activities.

Little one''s little love

As anyone who knows me would know, I have a son. He is a big boy now. He was little once. He is not demonstrative, but shows a little hint of affection once in a while.

Between 1997 and 2002 we visited the US quite often , mostly spent the months of April and May there. And it is in this period that mothers' day is celebrated . At first he couldn't understand how my birthday could change. He after all had a mother with a birthday in August. Then he figured that it was a day that mothers are felicitated and gifts are brought for them etc. In the US my son would do small chores and collect quarters and he had a few dollar saved.

A few days before one mothers' day, he made me wait outside Lechters' (one more victim of bad times in US) and he bought me a beautiful set of knives . I was very pleased. It had set him back a good 9 dollars, almost half of what he saved. The day before mothers' day, he spied a magnetic clip withTAZ ( a comic character modelled on the Tasmanian Devil) and I like it and bought it for 3 princely dollars. On our return , my kiddo sidled up to me and said, "You know that the knives cost a lot of money. Will you please buy them for yourselves and accept Taz as my gift.

And that love for us continues. As I already mentioned he is a big boy with the right to vote now and even earns money on summer jobs and internships. And I am expecting nothing but great love in the form of something cheap from him when he visits me in Bangalore from his temporary base in a US university. 

Appreciating my Origins- Where I am from

This is a piece of poetry I wrote in a confluence on "Appreciative Inquiry. Here it goes:

WHERE I AM FROM

I am from my mother's womb
       With my dashing father as the Groom
I am from joyful Kolkata
       And from Koti and from Kota
I was made in Delhi's Patli Gali
       With Ingredients from Bengaluru's Puttenahalli
I am a minx  and a sphinx
I beam with my brother's love
   I came into my own when he carried me to play
In our grandparents. coconut grove
I exist and so I am
  To celebrate I eat cheese and ham
And I cherish the doors that DID not slam.
I came to be a mother and  had to bother,
    and smother and ponder over that little bundle of wonder
I am the earth, wind and the fire
       and The Higgins-Boson whose proof mighty minds desire

I am more than where I came from  and there is more to where I came from
I came from nothingness and I aspire to go back to that  nothingness
In that nothingness await my precious sire and my mother and my brother
All eager to once more with  love drench me and to smother
and strip me of my ego and  show me the vastness of the nothingness

Gayatri







 

My new pre-occupation

I have enrolled in a course which will lead to my being certified as a Professional coach. It is a pre-occupation for 2 reasons. The first reason because it occupies a large part of my day on most days. The second is because I hope to make it part of my occupation from June 2012 onwards.
I have a separate blog on my coaching journey which is still stuck at the starting post.

I have many friends who earn more than just a decent living through coaching. They were serious people with lot of experience in corporates with a few certifications tucked in as well. Moreover, I viewed them as patient people who tolerated fools far more than I did. They were good listeners.
LISTENING is a big monkey on my bag. Chattering is my strength..... However one fine day , in the course of a few hours, I had enrolled in this course, in no small part because of my patient friends who felt I had it in me to coach.

Here I am now, really enjoying my journey. This seems like a honeymoon period. I have mostly got positive feedback . With this new alliance, I am hoping to make this honeymoon last a lot longer than the belated one I tool 18 months into my marriage. My long suffering partner from my first alliance is patiently hearing my chatter as always. This time it is all about coaching.
Join me in my travels and travails.

Stories from my father land

I attended a ceremony which is conducted when a person reaches his/her 60th birthday. My cousin reached that milestone and decided to invite friends and family to one such ritual based ceremony. If the birthday boy or girl is married at this stage, they celebrate it by having a marriage ceremony. To westerners and uninitiated Indians, this is like renewing your marriage vows. I went to cheer the couple and meet assembled family and friends.
I met quite a few of them after more than a decade.

Having described the context and the setting, I will now come to the gist of this narrative. I was pleasantly surprised that people were keen to narrate incidents about my father to illustrate how much he meant to them. Since it is 14 years since my father died, this was a surprise and a pleasant one as they showed my dad in a brilliant light. One long lost cousin's husband recognised me and it seems it was because my walk was exactly like that of my dad. If my intellect was half as sharp as my dad's, I will be thrilled. A few of them said they still followed his advice and one person has even safely kept a 20 year old letter from my dad.

Every now and then I will meet someone who will feel a kinship with me because of what my father did for them. And very few of these were material things. One person talked about his systematic nature. Another about his meticulousness and yet another person about his fairness.

There was one particular narrative which I had not heard before.
My father, Prof Y Satyamurthy was the CEO of a small sick unit which was taken over by Crompton greaves and he was on Crompton Greaves rolls. This was in Pune and those were the days when Mumbai and many pars of Maharashtra was ruled by labour union leaders. In particular people feared Datta Samant. He was one tough cookie. He walked into the office with some other people who I guess were union office bearers. my Dad was on the other side with his management team. Before a word was spoken my Dad handed over a list and said that those were the management demands. Datta Samant was surprised to say the least. He started raving and ranting that he would not tolerate this. Management could not make demands. My dad said that in those pages he just handed over were the details of what was essential to run the company. If those cannot be met, the talks were over. Datta Samant left fuming and furious.
I cannot vouch for this since this is a second hand narrative. Apparently Datta Samant came back to the table two days later and they reached a quick agreement. Then he said that this was the first management which he had met which had honestly and transparently shared all the details of the company and it's position and that he was impressed with the thoroughness with which this was documented. If this had happened in 24/7 news coverage, my dad would have been more famous. However I am what I am because he did not care to dwell on these since he generally believed in humanity and he cared two hoots about visibility.

What I have learnt from him is that I should be true to myself. I should not laze around because others do or work harder to please others. My father worked very hard and enjoyed it. He lived a hundred years in terms of what he achieved though in chronological terms he only lived till he was 66. I know he is one of my guardian angels since life is generally good to me.

Jobs and Palin-Way of the world

Steve Jobs died at the age of 56,  at what can be considered a young age. Almost every life I know has been touched by Apple and at least one if its products. For some it is buying and enjoying the product. For some like me, it is dealing with incessant demand for money to buy those product. For a very close friend , it was the dilemma of how to get her two sons to share the one precious I=Pod their rich NRI uncle presented. My firs brush with Apple technology was way back in 1986 when a colleague fresh from her PhD in BYU in USA came back with a Mac and she had this "Hide the boss is coming " single click feature which instantly transformed any game you were playing or any frivolous other things you did in office time into a businesslike spreadsheet. Nice touch eh!
I have heard that Steve Jobs did not believe in Market research. I am thankful for that. Collecting opinions from random people who can never imagine how things can be better. I heard many people comparing Jobs to Edison. It seems a very apt comparison. To twist Mark H McCormack's words, "If Steve Jobs had gone to Harvard, we would be typing on bigger keyboards and seeing bigger screens. Thank God he didn't finish college. So the world is worse off for losing someone who could show you a better way.

God (now Steve Jobs is up there to guide him)  works in mysterious ways. While he took away a genius, he saved us as well. I heard an announcement that Sarah Palin has decided to drop out of the presidential race. That brngs a bit of cheer back into my life. I don't know why she decided that. I hope she sticks to it.
I prefer watching her fish, trek, hunt and cook etc. Sarah Palin's Alska is where seems at home and hope she stays there.

Chin up...

101 % cut off

Long long ago in what seems like a different galaxy, I did not get admission to VJTI in Mumbai since my mark was half a per cent below the cut off which was a modest 84%. If my dad had been a defense personnel or better still SC/ST , I would have been in. Not having such luck, I joined B.Sc and life went on quite smoothly in spite of this admission hiccup. I had some 10 marks grace for having been in NSS (National Social Service) under whose umbrella for wo years, I read to a brilliant blind person by the name of Ramakrishnan. I used to read Statistical equations to him and he would instantly grasp it. The point is that if I and my fellow NSS mates had maxed our papers in 12th and had grace marks, the cut off could have been 101 % .

I heard that there were 880 eligible students with a cut off of 100%. Not surprising at all. The irony is that if they didn't have that as the cut off , someone who got 100% could be denied admission.

It is high time we had an exam like SAT which would be common for the state boards, CBSE, ICSE , NIOS and the lucky home tutored students. It is a standard test which can be taken any number of times at convenient times. You do not have to worry if you happen to catch the flu or have a hairline fracture in one of your fingers. And you get the same score irrespective of the evaluators. Sounds heavenly.

The least we can do is track these 100% club members and see where they land up after a decade. That would be an interesting read. TOI, DH , Businessline, are you listening?

Silver Jubilee Re-union (SJR) XL-85

We had out SJR on 26th and 27th December 2010. The poem is horribly written and desperately rhymed. Some of the words would not have any meaning unless you were in XL between 83 and 85.

This is an Ode to our SJR
Because to some the entire 2 days was all fog and a blur
We had to miss TM and Arun who have passed on
Others should plan so that they they make it to the next reuni-on

Lord Srinath was present with his wide stance and Eyes
But seriously, missing most of the fun of SJR was hardly wise.

There was a lot of food, fun and Madeira
Some clicked photos with Maggie, not knowing that it was Fr.Guidera

There were lot of egg rolls and cold Coffee.
We had a wonderful meeting with Mrs Sarin and her superb High Tea.
Everywhere people went, in their midst they used to suddenly find Me.

There was a tiny girl who gave us TLC and is called Padmini.
Her energy and presence made me think she had a twin just like Gemini

We were blessed to have a RARE visit from Mary
And there was a PEARL in the form of Mother EARTH,
The amount that people indulged was monumentally scary
Thank God most us are back to our home and hearth.

The GENESIS of this penning was a poem by Moochi,
Which was read out by our own conjurer,we shall call Harry Puttar
We all visited Bistupur, but most missed Sakchi,
I shall now stop since reading this poem is utter torture.

Made my day

As anyone who knows me would know, I have a son. He is a big boy now. He was little once. He is not demonstrative, but shows a little hint of affection occasionally.
Between 1997 and 2002, we visited the US quite often, mostly spent the months of April and May there. In addition, it is in this period that mothers' day is celebrated. AT first, he could not understand how my birthday could change. He after all had a mother with a birthday in August. Then he figured that it was a day that mothers are felicitated and gifts are brought for them etc. In the US, my son would do small chores and collect quarters and he had a few dollars saved.

A few days before one mothers’ day, he made me wait outside Lechters' (one more victim of the bad times in US) and he bought me a beautiful set of knives. I was very pleased. It had set him back a good 9 dollars, almost half of what he saved. The day before mothers' day, he spied a magnetic clip with Taz (a comic character modelled on the Tasmanian devil) and I like it and bought it for three princely dollars. On our return, my kiddo sidled up to me and said, "You know that the knives cost a lot of money. Will you please buy them for yourselves and accept Taz as my gift. It is also very nice. And please return six dollars to me. I am a poor boy working hard and we will leave for India before I can earn his back. SO I said OK. And Taz still adorns my fridge after all these years. The knives and the fridge are different.

Flash forward to present day and age when my son has voting rights and is of an age when it is legal in India to marry. He visited China and was there during my birthday. In one of our Skype exchanges , he told me that he had bought me a dragon in genuine jade. I was very happy about this gesture. He came back and gave it to me. Then after a few hours he blurted out that of all the things he had go in China, this was the most expensive memento and so he wanted to keep it in his room. He gave me a dragon he had, made of some non-jade material. He then gave me a T shirt with a photo of the dragon and told me that he had ensured that it was my sixe and that it was not the cheapest one available.
I have a feeling the T Shirt may outlast the dragons.

No use by date for India

A friend of mine had posted a link to Shekhar Kapoor's blog about how he got his blackberry repaired in six minutes in the interiors of India. Indians have always known the ground realities. When we look for a house in a high rise being next to what some would call slummy areas is not always a disadvantage. And it is fun to shop and walk in these areas.

I was walking by today and as I often do, I looked at sign posts and shops . My son has put a few pictures up in his blog . There are signage like Government Bhang shop, Charas and Ganja shop etc. today I saw a uniquely Indian shop. The shop's name was "Using Items sale" It was a second hand goods shop. But in typical Indian way, it was true. We buy items still in use viz Using Items. I hope Oxford takes notice of this meaning of this phrase. When I have limited money I want a car in use , not a has been used car.

HR Carnival is over

Just woke up after a good night's sleep which is what was somewhat missing with calls, emails etc going into the night for the past week. No photos yet since I don't take pictures with my cellphone usually. However I can report that it was quite a foot tapping evening and we had a decent turnout. Here's what happened.

We had a talent hunt with about 20 odd participants. These were all HR professional/post graduate students who are very talented in arts like stand up comedy, instrumental music and of course dance. Alongside was the more serious part of the carnival called HR Showcase where more than a dozen companies talked about some of their HR challenges and how they overcame them. Then we had the games and fun portion for kids and kids at heart. I could not find time to get my caricature done ... next time maybe. I must mention our event managers. "Event mechanics" who did a fabulous job.

Our chapter president Harish D suddenly asked me to speak and I stumbled big time... Public speaking was my Achilles' Heel and remains so in spite of friends giving me many opportunities to improve...This stuttered speech was to get the souvenir released and acknowledge those who contributed to it . I forgot a few and remembered most. There were smiles all round and I took them to be genuine. And the souvenir looks professionally done.

I thought I worked hard on the souvenir. When I saw the results of the carnival and the scale, I realised that my colleagues in the EC like Anuradha Mahesh, Siddhu and Gubbi have earned the right to rest for at least two or three days to recoup. I never thought I would say this... but the timing of this Bandh is fortuitous... And that is my last word for now.

HR Carnival---The fraternity is headed to NIMHANS!!!!

Today, July 4, 2010 is the day when the hectic activities of the past 2 months culminates. We are part of National HRD Network and are in the EC ( Execution committee.... those who get executed for not doing things and even doing things...)
Our annual day has been delinked from our AGM and has now been dedicated to pure networking, fun and maybe some learning. We are ready with everything from cotton candy to erudite HR Showcases. I was involved in getting the souvenir ready and it is being released today as well.
I did some writing, some detective work, a trip to printers, learnt about fonts. Learnt a few tricks used by advertisers etc. Hopefully it will hava all the advertisements ond only minor mistakes. I shall post the events of today by tonight.

In the meanwhile we are headed to NIMHANS. We are also hoping that the HR fraternity in Bangalore also heads that way to visit. BY the way, many of our spouses who are not part of this function of HR believe that this is the right place for us. And we have quite a few doctors to treat us as well.

For those who are not familiar with Bangalore, NIMHANS stands for something like National Institute for Mental Health And Neuro Sciences and it is a top notch place in this field.

Committee and horses and camels

They say that a camel is a horse designed by a committee. I am part of a committee and unnecessarily active part at that. And I believe the saying should be reversed. We set out to make a camel and cannot reach the necessary heights and we have a donkey on our hands.

Every committee has two sets of people . Those who do and those who promise to do. And I will not even get into who takes credit for that Donkey.

Robert Copeland said that "To get something done, a committee should consist of no more than three people, two of who are absent." We are all familiar with committees right from our school days. Sports/ Culture/ and many more. And there is an apparent glory attached to being members of committees which are meant to lead all those who are not members.


My son at a young age of 12 refused to be part of any committee whatsoever. His teachers complained that he did not want to take any responsibility. He in turn said that he did not want a position where he was mostly expected to do the teacher's bidding. That this line of thought has some merit was brought home gradually to me.

Milton Berle had the last laugh when he said that , "A committee is a group that keeps minutes and loses hours."

A matter of time.

I was sitting comfortably with my son (just past teen) and I was telling him how I liked my new routine and felt very good about it. He listened carefully and then said,"Oh! So you have now got used to you new weight , is it?" That set me thinking. I thought about two little stories which I will now narrate in my clumsy fashion.

There were two men arguing vehemently, There was a Jesuit Priest dressed in his official outfit not far from them. He and another by stander were observing this fight. After a while one of the word warriors went to the priest and the priest took him aside and heard him. The priest said, You are right, my son..."This could only be seen by the by stander.

Next the other party came to the priest and the priest smiled and heard him. Again he said, You are right, my son." Both the parties involved in the arguement seemed calmer. This of course agitated the by stander. He now went to the priest and protested that there was no way that both the parties were right. The priest smiled and said, You are right, my son" and went away.

The other story also involves a parishioner and a priest. The priest heard out all the trials and despairs narrated to him patiently. He sympathised with the pain being endured. At the end of it, he sais, All will be well in two years time. The parishioner was happy and exclaimed, I will be better off and not have these troubles." The priest replied, "Not necessarily. The time will be enough for you to get used to your present state."
Sooner or later " All Izz well"

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.