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.