Happy Holidays

My aunt and uncle were here last week for dinner -- from Assam. Doorbell rings. It's our friend -- a man dressed in a sari and as Santa Claus. We all had dinner together. Globalization indeed.

Pre-Madonna Material Girl

We had a sangeet tonight and my mom set out to do Naya's manicure...

Naya: Only paint the nails on one hand.
Aita: Why?
Naya: Because I need the other hand to cook!

Ramayana in Effect on Christmas

Mommy, I am Hanuman and you are Sita. Sita, you are such a good cooker!!

Googling a nation's pulse

http://www.livemint.com/2007/12/28001559/Googling-a-nation8217s-puls.html

Growing up, my brothers and I always made fun of one particular phrase my parents and relatives used: Latest.
The definition was pretty much literal—hip, cool, trendy. But its grammatical applications I questioned.
“Her saris are always different, for each occasion,” would say my mother. “She is the latest.”
“Kuch Kuch Hota Hai was too good. Ek dam latest,” would say my cousin, piling Indian-ism upon Indian-ism.
Now, the folks at Google have given us a global equivalent and new moniker for the intangible idea behind latest: zeitgeist. (Fittingly, the word that means “spirit of the times” and exudes a certain robust universality comes from the German.)
Last week, the search engine giant that made its brand a household verb released its top 10 lists of fastest growing searches worldwide. This year marked the first that India got its very own Google Zeitgeist.
By the looks of it, we are obsessed with Mahatma Gandhi and Sania Mirza, technology and Aishwarya Rai. We love our Orkut and holidays in Kerala.
But after browsing with interest the lists, divided by terms, celebrities, athletes, politicians and places, I somehow felt the latest zeitgeist really doesn’t represent the pulse of this nation. It does not capture the tier II cities or the dichotomies of New India that everyone has become obsessed with understanding lately. Every other day, I field an entrepreneur’s phone call asking for help making sense of it all (free consulting, basically). I politely decline, citing a conflict of interest as a journalist.
But the lists, coupled with the end-of-year impulse to assess progress and make projections, spurred me to delve a little deeper. I bypassed the aggregated data that makes up the Zeitgeist and looked into what we are searching for day to day, using a tool known as Google Trends, unveiled in May 2006. Google Trends essentially neatly organizes which nations search for what and which are the most popular searched terms on a given day or week.
Take, for example, the week ended 21 November: four of the 10 top trends were related to teachers recruitment board exams. One trend was a website for government staff selection, while another related to the common admission test (CAT). Another was the National Institute of Industrial Engineering.
For comparison’s sake, on the same day, the US top trends included the high-profile murder of a woman, road conditions in Iowa and how long a turkey should be cooked in the oven. (It was the day before Thanksgiving.)
The key difference, of course, is that ours is an aspirational economy. Theirs is already there. (Whether you actually want to be cooking turkeys and obsessed with the weather is another thing altogether).
On Christmas Day, Google Trends shows that the Americans wanted to know about a tiger killing a tourist at the San Francisco Zoo, the retailers and restaurants open on Christmas, and sales for the next day.
In India, we too got into the holiday spirit, asking about Christmas and New Year SMS-es and how many reindeer Santa Claus has. But we also wanted to know about the Railways Recruitment Board in Ranchi and how best to file our taxes.
The day-to-day trends strike me because they conjure an image of hordes of youth in cyber cafes hungry for opportunity, watching the clock to ensure they don’t go a minute over an hour. I picture people who still see jobs at railways and public sector undertakings as safe bets, who might not realize the possibilities that await in a private sector craving talent as it never has before.
I asked Vinay Goel, head of products for Google India, what he made of the difference. He cautioned that the Zeitgeist is intentionally aggregated and summarizes year-long trends and search terms, not the most popular day in and day out. He also notes a distinction in content sought in India and the US.
“Where is the local electrician, plumber?” he asks. “The local electrician here has never been on the Internet. …What I see happening now is a lot of people are trying to get a lot of that basic local information. …The US folks don’t necessarily use Google as much as a navigational tool.”
While he meant navigation in the technical sense, it’s an apt metaphor for what a search engine still means an India—not to bake a turkey or chance upon some grisly photos of victims of violence—but a road map for life. Really, it is an apt metaphor for the India that still is.
This economy is often framed as one facing an acute talent shortage. Google Trends tell us we need to rethink this notion. Clearly, a large segment of the population is attempting to leverage technology to gain access. For all who gripe about the dearth of talented candidates, it is a reminder that we must meet the Googlers halfway, perhaps help them become the latest, too.
Your comments are welcome at widerangle@livemint.com

Not Really Indian debate continues...

Check out this article in Outlook by Ramchandra Guha on the other worship in Decmber -- of the NRI

Then check out this response.

Warning registrattion required but well worth it. Then tell me what you think.

New year, new workplace

Wider Angle
livemint.com

Come next year, forget working out. First, let’s just get the working part right.
In this season of resolutions made, promptly followed by a season of resolutions broken, I think the Indian workplace is in such crisis that we actually all need to resolve—once and for all—to make 2008 the year of the liberated, balanced, empowered, integrated office.
It is easier than it sounds. And Indian managers especially have a daunting challenge ahead.
Consider the dire findings of a study Mint reported on Monday. Indian corporate leaders are far more “task-focused”, less “social” and “participative” than North Americans, according to a survey of 100 managers across India conducted by executive recruitment company Korn/Ferry International, in association with International Market Assessment (IMA) India.
Translation: Indian bosses need to get out of their offices more, get a little dirtier in the ditches alongside their workers, make clearer the mission of their companies and actually show the staff what a flat hierarchy means. And then they need to make sure middle management is doing the same.
Place that imperative against the backdrop of the hypergrowth so many companies are experiencing right now and getting in touch with our softer sides might seem either impossible or the easiest thing to put on hold.
Yet, our survival depends on it.
Cliché as it sounds, empowered workforces are the only way to spur innovation, creativity, new ideas—the stuff that keeps us all in business really. The problem in implementation thus far has been that human resources (HR) departments’ efforts tend to border on the gimmicky. Think of all those useless office worksites that result in sprained ankles from three-legged races or teetering on a wire suspended between two trees.
So, here’s a suggestion for Resolution No. 1: Stop trying to bond us with ropes and handkerchiefs. Leave the races and role-playing exercises to athletes and actors. Instead, retreats should be used to discuss mission and drive its importance home over and over again. Why do we do what we do? For whom are we doing what we are doing? If your employees don’t know the answer to these questions, no amount of agility on a tightrope is going to save them—or your company.
Resolution No. 2: Thank them for working. Feedback, or the lack of it, is often cited as the main reason people leave an employer. Indians suffer from no lack of bluntness (in this festive season, can we also spare the overweight employees asked to dress up like Santa?), but we are sparse in our praise and downright jealous when it comes to stellar performers. Force yourself to regularly see the good— and thank those responsible for it. The words of one worker this week are still ringing in my ears, “I am a simple, easy employee. If you tell me I did a good job, say, once every two weeks, it will make all the difference in my life.” Encourage bottom-to-top evaluations and ban HR jargon such as “360-degree performance measures”.
Resolution No. 3: Pay more than lip service to embrace diversity and family-friendly policies. If your office is currently under construction (these days, whose isn’t?), are you asking the designer to include space for a gym, crèche, a room to pump breast milk for new mothers, smoking lounges so the halls don’t stink? Do you offer paternity leave, too? Are you making the transition back to work easier for new parents, and making sure younger employees have role models who balance work, home and all that falls in between?
Resolution No. 4: Earn the respect you command. We are still far too obsessed with titles and pedigree. I always work harder for bosses who aren’t afraid to slog with me, whose actions implicitly mentor and warrant mimicking.
Resolution No. 5: Stop accepting the way it’s always been. The only way to be different is to, well, do things differently.
Lest you think I just lecture, here’s a glimpse into my workplace goals: In 2008, I will better manage up and down and around. I will pay more attention to star performers and hardest workers and not take them for granted. I will set specific tasks for the meetings I hold; I will show up better prepared for the meetings for which I am summoned. I will seek training or mentors to help me improve on weaknesses. I will take more time out with individual colleagues and family members to listen and learn. I will limit the nights I bring home my laptop—if I must use it, it will be preferably after my daughter has been read to and fallen asleep. I will have one day where I literally switch off, Facebook to BlackBerry.
On 2 January, when we all report back to the grind, I’m hoping to join many of you in starting anew to create new energy at work, unfurling passion beyond the paycheck. From our happiness to our country’s continued growth, much is at stake.
Your comments are welcome at widerangle@livemint.com

Add Spanish tot her list

Naya (reading to herself): Come on, Dora, let's say it in Spanish. Ek, dew, teen, panch, cuatro!!

Bedtime stories

Naya: I can't find my Goldilocks book.
Me: It's okay. I know the story. It's in my head.
Naya: No, Mommy, stories are in your mouth.

A clash in class, of class

http://www.livemint.com/2007/12/13232123/A-clash-in-class-of-class.html
By S. Mitra Kalita

The shooting has been called “American-style”, “reminiscent of American values” and “a case of violence familiar to US schools”.
In reality, it is none of the above. This week’s tragedy at the Euro International School in Gurgaon demonstrates a collision of the India we once were, the India we aspire to be and, sadly, the India we continue to accept.
At the outset, I concede not knowing how and why two class VIII students killed a 14-year-old in the sanctum of school. But a few facts and conversations with educators and residents make clear that our quest for answers might better come from examining our own behaviours than the West’s.
The day after the murder, I headed to the suburb just south of New Delhi —the outsourcing hub that can at once remind me of New Jersey’s identical housing developments and manicured landscaping, Miami Beach’s art deco towers over swimming pools and golf courses, and oddly, my ancestral village of green fields, jagged boundary walls and herds of goats and cattle.
And that is why so many people begin their description of Gurgaon by saying, “The thing about this place is it’s really a gaon.”
Because of the way Gurgaon came to be acquired and built gradually, large swathes of farmland were parcelled out even as villagers hung onto their pockets of homes, which cluster in the shadows of sleekness. Some took profits and bought into new societies clinically named “sectors”, renting out the old place to migrants or relatives.
Flush with cash or rental income, locals seek the same power—purchasing and political—as the newcomers, observes Sanjay Sharma, who runs a real estate company and the portal, Gurgaon Scoop. They shop in the same malls, attend the same resident welfare association meetings and send their children to the same schools.
But they are not the same.
“There is a struggle between people who are here and people who have come from outside,” says Sharma, a returnee from the US. His attempt to videotape a community meeting in his sector recently resulted in a brawl and seven stitches on his upper lip. “Locals here are quite bottled up. They have money but they are not well read.”
Locals concede as much, pinning their hopes on education as equalizer.
Satinder Grewal, an advocate, traces generations back to Bijwasan village on the Delhi-Haryana border. Some land has been sold, while more— about Rs50 crore, he estimates—remains in the family’s possession.
“A new awareness is coming to Gurgaon and locals, we want our kids to learn English,” says Grewal.
By virtue of shunning government schools, the families of the three boys involved in the shooting seem to hold this aspiration. Media outlets reported that the family of the victim, Abhishek Tyagi, moved into Gurgaon city from their nearby village so he and his sister could attend Euro International.
“They hoped their children would get a better education,” a neighbour told The Indian Express.
Despite its international label, the school’s website says it follows the Indian Schools Certificate Examinations. Misleading name aside, I wonder what role coveted private schools play in bridging the places such youth come from—and their methods of conflict resolution—with the global exposure they promise. School officials did not return calls, emails or text messages.
Police say the gun came from one suspect’s father, a property dealer. Why so many in Gurgaon feel they even need a gun is a question as loaded as the weapon. Status symbol, yes. A response to the general lawlessness outside gated compounds, indeed. Police also say real estate agents brandish guns because so many transactions are a combination of cheque and cash (translation: illegal).
As Katherine Newman articulated in her book Rampage: The Social Roots of School Shootings, shootings occur only when many factors converge, all necessary, but none sufficient on its own. In the suburb these teens called home, not much more seems needed to create a hotbed of conflict and confusion.
As he heard of the shootings this week, Sharma asked himself and his neighbours: How far have we come?
“Civilization comes into the picture when you restrain yourself from violence,” he pronounces. “Gurgaon is getting worse.”
Of course, clashes—by class, caste, profession—now mark countless cities and towns developing their geographical and metaphorical fringes. On a corner of Sharma’s desk, for example, sat this week’s Outlook magazine, its cover depicting two women smoking and dancing. The headline: “Why Bangalore hates the IT culture.”
Yet, it is naïve to say India’s social ills are borrowed from the West; sex, drugs and violence have been a reality of life here for decades. We would better serve our youth by wiping the grime of corrupt, dishonest ways off the mirror. One teen’s death warrants at least one clean, hard look at ourselves.
Your comments are welcome at widerangle@livemint.com

School Daze

We went to an orientation at Naya's school today. It is the Navakriti school, founded by the people from the famous Mirambika school, next to the also-famous IIT (which has shared research on preschool education) and NCERT, which is trying tto change Indian schools from rigid to creative. The sessions started off with meditation and a flower offering to The Mother and Aurobindo. I will confess that my first thought was that this wasn't necessarily the type of place for me or my kid and that maybe we should have stuck with a more commercial school.
But then the parents were asked to line up for circle time and we had to clap our hands and sing songs like kids. I warmed up fast. When we were led down a marigold-strewn path that was decorated along the sides with children's artwork and led into the outdoor amphitheatre, I was feeling like I had bought in. Thankfully, I relaxed and nodded in approval as educators detailed the philosophy of "integrated education", combining the child-centered learning I like about Montessori with the freedom movement of Aurobindo Society schools with the focus on nature as a way to nurture of the hippie movement with quantifiable research on how these are the most important years for a human being's intellect formation. It is hard to practice not saying "DON'T" all the time to a child but I certainly would rather embrace the "DO" and "GET DIRTY" philosophy than what I see in so much of child-rearing.
I should explain why we switched Naya from her old school in the first place. It was a wonderful experience when she was 2. Her teacher Alka was loving and really helped Naya in her adjustment. One of our fondest memories in Delhi is of Naya on stage dressed like a bear, swinging her hips, telling the twins dressed as giraffes how to dance better, and singing her heart out about Jinny and Johnny.
But when she moved up to class for age 3, she started bringing homework asking her to colour a banana yellow. When we went to school for the Independence Day celebration, she didn't seem happy to be on stage at all and a representative from a bank droned on and on about the need to save for our kids' education. The same bank snapped pictures of the babies and asked us for our mobile numbers for delivery - which meant they wanted to make another sales pitch in our living rooms. The last straw came during diversity week when the representative for America was... Ronald McDonald.
It was Delhi at its worst.
I begged and pleaded all the marquis schools to let us in - Step by Step, Magic Years, Learning Tree, Ardee. No seats. Why had I not thought of this earlier?
I did what I do whenever I panic. I researched, reported, asked everyone I knew. Thankfully, a woman who randomly met at a birthday party for a colleague's daughter said she had just been to Navakriti, loved it but because of the distance, she didn't enroll her daughter.
Nitin spent one day at Navkriti, while we both observed another Montessori near our house. I don't think we were really familiar with Aurobindo method at this point but we loved all the space to play (it is about an acre, which is really really rare in Delhi) and the fact that they encourage kids to play in water and get dirty. I also liked that there weren't expat parents there (sorry, I know I am one) and that I saw a little girl with a motorcycle racing t-shirt on and I gathered one of two things a) it was a hand me down from an elder brother or b) she was very firm on what she wants to wear and her mother lets it be. I liked that. (So many of these Delhi playschools have Prada on the kids AND the parents.)
Anyway after three hours of orientation today where I heard from the most articulate teachers I have ever encountered in India about why they do this, what they learn (NOT what they teach) I felt hope about Indian education for the first time since I got here. One of the parents even stood up and asked about efforts to integrate classrooms so poor children and rich children could be educated side by side -- and that the learning methods would extend to the less fortunate. Charity by volition in Delhi!! There also is a lot of art and creativity with natural substances like twigs and stones and dyes and flowers. They teach the alphabet not through drill like A is for apple but more through stories.
We were just about to start looking for another school for Naya but alas she misses the cutoff yet again this year. After today, I think another year here -- if all goes as they preach -- is a blessing.

Wider Angle

livemint.com

Do we really want little girls to grow up into damsels who need to be saved, always by wealthy and powerful men?
Wider Angle | S.Mitra Kalita
I wish the princesses would stay poisoned, in deep slumber, locked in towers. Really, they should just stay away.
For my daughter’s third birthday, celebrated in the US, she received a half-dozen odes to junior royalty, on T-shirts and pyjamas, tiaras and wands, even a huge pink rucksack stamped with the Disney characters who have been princesses: Ariel, Jasmine, Belle, Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella.
I thought India would be safer.
Then, the other day as I bought a lehenga for a friend’s baby, the store attendant says in broken English, “Beautiful. She will look just like a princess.”
It got worse this past weekend when a Wall Street Journal story, published in Mint’s Lounge, reported all the ways Disney is innovating to keep little girls dreaming of being princesses—even until they become grown-ups (think brides dressed like Snow White prancing down the aisle). Still, I chalked the phenomenon up to the wacky ways of the West, until I came to this line:
“Disney has been trying to introduce the brand in countries like India, where it launched a search for an Indian princess.”
My heart sank. We are not safe.
Leave aside the marketing gimmicks, for a moment. What is it with this newfound aspiration to princess-hood? We cannot even blame little girls because the desire is so clearly something we are encouraging, looking for, egging on. Why?
The feminist writer Peggy Orenstein got so fed up with America’s obsession with princesses that she penned a New York Times Magazine article last year on the subject headlined, “What’s wrong with Cinderella?”
Her conclusion really summarized my frustration: “Maybe Princess is the first salvo in what will become a lifelong struggle over her body image, a Hundred Years’ War of dieting, plucking, painting and perpetual dissatisfaction with the results. …In the end, it’s not the Princesses that really bother me anyway. They’re just a trigger for the bigger question of how, over the years, I can help my daughter with the contradictions she will inevitably face as a girl…”
Despite a few progressive exceptions —namely Diana, although she got much cooler after she stopped being the prince’s prize—princesses basically connote major neediness, damsels craving saving: often with a kiss, sometimes true love, always wealth and power.
In India, many of our girls sadly require a different kind of “saving” (in the womb). Then if they make it, they still grow up against messages that undermine them as less worthy and capable, for no other reason than gender. And now we are asking them to be princesses, to dream of the days when a man will enable escape?
It seems such a step backward from all that has suddenly become possible in this economy for women.
By now, my fellow mothers are either nodding their heads in agreement or have just relegated me to the crazy stepmother category.
The Walt Disney Co. India clarified that the search for the Indian princess was a one-time event staged last year when the products were introduced in India. “Princess is one of our extremely popular franchises in India,” said K. Seshasaye, Disney’s India spokesman. “When the toys were launched, within 45 days, the licensees told us all the products were off the shelves. ...Basic family values are pretty strong here in India. And Disney stories around princesses encourage these girls to take the right values.”
What’s the harm? you ask. They’ll grow out of it. They’ll grow up to be astronauts and managing directors.
Will they? Have they?
This week, a study released by education training institute Career Launcher shows the number of women who receive coaching for the Indian Institutes of Management entrance examination is between 28% and 33%. Yet, batch profiles at the prestigious IIMs indicate that just 10-15% of students who gain admission are women.
Despite a steadily increasing female presence on campuses, the discrepancy between those who aspire and those who gain admissions stems from more men having engineering backgrounds (a popular precursor to B-school) and more men having work experience, the study found.
About one out of 10 students in the nation’s top B-schools is a woman —yet double that number wants to be there. And we still want our little girls to be princesses?
As we opened the gifts at the birthday party, I hung on to my mother’s first words to my daughter in the delivery room, minutes after she was born: “I hope you grow up to be president.”
Already, India has achieved the milestone my mother alluded to, while the US is just beginning to consider it: A female president.
Skip the marketing hype. Our girls need to move on to bigger titles—the kind they can earn and seize themselves.
Your comments are welcome at widerangle@livemint.com

Out of the closet

A story I really liked working on about -- of all things -- the Indian version of the closet.

http://www.livemint.com/2007/12/07003357/Out-of-the-closet.html

Latest

Mommy, your husband said to close the door.
- Naya at midnight

House of the Rising Sun exhibition studies and paintings

Each photographic study is followed by the resulting painting, except the last one, in which case the painting is still in progress.
Each painting is 30"x60", oil acrylic and tea on canvas.

Subtle

"You and me are girls. But who does Papa have?"

Maliciously funny

Nitin put up these glow-in-the dark stickers in our bedroom. I was furious because it makes it look like a kids' room, as though Naya sleeping with us isn't enough.
Mitra: Besides Gautam (our landlord) will not like it.
Naya: That's okay. We can just kill him!

Making of an NRI Part Deaux

http://www.livemint.com/princeton.htm

Hindutva or Peta...

i don't eat meat. It's too hard for me -- Naya

Making of an NRI

http://www.livemint.com/2007/11/26221806/Ivy-ambitions-Six-Indians-wal.html

One-year anniversary

A labour of love

livemint.com

wider angle

For a change, let me quit complaining.
A few days ago, my family and I celebrated one year of living here—a journey I have largely shared with readers in this space. And yet because our transition has taken place inside the fast, bumpy ride that is India’s, reflections tend to veer towards criticism: poor infrastructure, unempowered workplaces, corruption, a lack of inclusive progress.
My husband and I expected some of these conditions when we arrived, an American-born journalist and an artist looking to find opportunity—and a bit of themselves—in the country their parents left more than three decades ago. Even before we arrived, we had been admonished to sanitize negative opinions or keep them to ourselves.
“The last person Indians want to hear about India from is an NRI,” a friend of mine, who abandoned India six months into what was to be a three-year assignment, ominously told me. (Apparently, the abbreviation I have repeatedly defined as Not Really Indian also stands for Non Reliable Indian or Not Required Indian.)
The warning partly prepared me for the feedback occasionally offered to this column, from the salutation that began, “For our dear misled author,” to the accusation, “I’ve been reading your articles for a while and most of the time its (sic) more cribbing than anything else. … all your exposure to the US makes you feel a little different from regular Indians in India.”
It’s true. Just as I was conscious of being different every day of my life spent in the US, I am conscious of being an outsider in India. So, when people here and elsewhere check in and innocently yet oversimplistically ask, “Do you like India?” I feel stumped to provide some kind of right, honest answer. To somehow encapsulate all I am doing and feeling, all India is doing and not doing, the four-steps-forward-and-two-back phenomenon, appreciating how far we have come, lamenting the distance we still have to go.
Yes, we.
After a year of trying to create and define a home, my answer actually boils down to something just as simple as the question: I want to belong and believe. I do love this country.
I love the rhythm of life, the entrepreneurial sounds of vendors in the morning and less-predictable fireworks when Team India wins at night.
I love to see colleagues at work dipping rotis into the same dish without inhibition or fear of germs. Initially when I stared, their reaction always was: “Do you want some?”
I love that even as I stress out before every function, switching from sari to black cocktail dress to jeans with high heels, I know each style will be acceptable and likely have plenty of company at the affair.
I love that Indian music no longer needs to be relegated to CDs or the iPod; I can just turn on the radio for the soundtrack to my life and mood.
I love Indians’ hunger for news and information, keeping up at once with the Sensex and global crude prices, Trinamool Congress leader Mamata Banerjee’s tantrums and the race between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.
I love that in my house, I speak Assamese to the maid from Orissa who speaks Hindi to my Punjabi husband who speaks English to me—and somehow my daughter has learnt all of the above to complete the circle.
An anniversary may be a meaningless milestone to some. For me, the past year has been nothing short of transformative, as a manager, as a mother, as a storyteller, as a product of this soil—albeit one generation removed. I concede that, like many Westerners, I arrived thinking I had more figured out than I did; in humbling me yet guiding me, India has imparted life-altering and life-long lessons.
I am grateful for the new relationships formed with family which suddenly can afford to call my mobile or even visit, engaging in my daily life and routines. Sure, the newfound interference sometimes annoys me and my decisions are always second-guessed—but this is the welcome reality of family life, replacing the artificial and temporary adoration shown to the American cousin and her Samsonite suitcases of cheap perfume and nail polish as gift. Sometimes, when relatives fill my home in New Delhi (very often), I recall a visit to my father’s birthplace just a few years ago. A distant cousin asked if she could touch my skin to see if I felt any different.
Every now and then, it’s worth remembering, in many ways, how far I have come, and India too. I love that possibilities today, for people like me to software engineers to retail workers to rural youth like that cousin, can feel endless, at least once the link is made between opportunity and seeker. That is the feeling I try to hang on to most, the belief in a nation and its economy and its people.
Yes, I love India. And that is why the harder truths and criticisms must resume next week.
(Your comments are welcome at widerangle@livemint.com)

Love the work or the brand?

http://www.livemint.com/2007/11/15185438/Love-the-work-or-brand.html?atype=tp

Wider Angle

Infosys Technologies Ltd used to be the best company to work for. Now it’s only sixth best.
So says a workplace survey released this week by Mercer Consulting and market research firm Taylor Nelson Sofres, published in the magazine Business Today. In a pool of about 100 participants, Microsoft came out tops.
Somehow, I doubt human resources managers at Infy are losing any sleep. So steeped in tech lore is founder Narayana Murthy’s commitment to his employees and an empowered workplace that an Internet hoax has been making the rounds for some years now where he says, “Love your job but never fall in love with your company—because you never know when it stops loving you.”
You can tell it’s a hoax because in some iterations, Murthy’s comments come in a memo admonishing software engineers for working so late. In other versions, he’s delivering a speech at a mentoring session. An Infosys spokeswoman Thursday simply clarified, “He did not say this.”
Still, in light of the magazine’s listing and summer placements under way, the sentiment of what our employers really mean to us warrants dissection. Have Indians finally moved beyond attaching their worth to the brand under which they toil, versus the work they are actually doing?
In the case of Generation SMS, the answer largely seems to indicate they want to. After all, it is their market. They can demand more responsibility and birthdays off. They’re willing to work like dogs—but want to bring the pooches to the office, too. Work from home once a week, off a laptop in Goa at Christmas. Say no, and another employer is happy to make the hire.
Among the elite business school set, the usual suspects such as Infosys have been replaced as employers of choice by financial services and consulting gigs. And even those with a few years of IT experience are seeing greater value and growth in smaller companies and start-ups.
They don’t need a survey. They’re in control.
Yet, unfortunately, when it comes to employment in India, bragging rights need to extend far beyond employer and employee—what will we tell the neighbours? One chief executive of a medium-sized company in Gurgaon tells me he has to inflate salaries to make up for the lack of cache he has as a brand-name employer—even though he too offers a gym, transport, free food, not to mention job growth. In the US, I hear quite the opposite: friends at large companies crib all the time that they would take a more meaningful job at a smaller company in a heartbeat—if only they could afford the pay cut.
“In India, at the entry level, the name really matters,” said Rashmi Bansal, editor and publisher of Jam, a youth magazine and website. “Status is still very important.”
Yet, it can be stifling.
If we are going to borrow western practices, such as top 10 lists and company rankings, it might be time to bridge generations and perceptions. Why not shock, then impress, Uncle-ji with his nephew’s 250-member sports marketing firm making the cut because it offers sabbaticals and 100 hours of training annually?
A Mercer spokeswoman declined to share methodology, but said companies with more than 200 white-collar workers can nominate themselves for the survey. The upcoming rankings by the Great Place to Work Institute India, to be published by The Economic Times this summer, plans to add narrower surveys on Indian companies deemed friendly to working mothers, younger workers, etc.
Especially with a workforce growing more transient, what constitutes a great place to work one year for one person does not necessarily the next. The same hire who valued a great canteen might covet a crèche later on. The woman who demanded a car service to pick her up might find, as a new mother, she wants a room to express breastmilk. And so while we can itemize our desires from employers, that list will change as we—and our economies—do.
In Fortune’s top 100 US companies to work for, divided into small, medium and large businesses, the top 10 inevitably includes a supermarket chain with tens of thousands of workers—white, blue and all collars in between—across the country. I happened to be interviewing the pastry chef at a store in New Jersey called Wegman’s a few years ago and he told me he had just returned from Europe.
“For vacation?” I asked.
“No, for training,” he said. Wegman’s is No. 3 on Fortune’s list.
No. 1 is Google, which made sense to me this week as The New York Times reported on a masseuse at the company who sold her stock options and became a multimillionaire. She now has her own masseuse, a sign—I assume—that some people will always prefer the company to the work.
Your comments are welcome at widerangle@livemint.com

Happy one-year anniversary!!

So I tried and tried to get family and friends to submit guest posts for one-year anniversary with no luck (except Sanjib, good ol' reliable himself). Fittingly, it fell throughout the weekend - we left on the 16, arrived on the 17 and I started work on the 19th. One-year later, we experienced a typically Delhi weekend--crazy. Staff meeting on Friday with idlis, vadas and sambar. Dinner for my 13-year-old niece's birthday in Gurgaon. Morning meeting Saturday for work, visitor from Hong Kong. Rushed to another kid's birthday party with Naya, missed the cake but she liked her "return-gift". Picked up Nitin who was at an art exhibit and then the Habitat Centre for a meeting. Came home, put lipstick on, ran out the door for an A.R. Rahman concert. Ran to dinner afterward with Nitin's cousins. Back and edited copy, asleep at 2:30 am. Awake at 8, dealt with copy and weird notes with boss, finished queries on copy, sent it along, gave Naya a bath where every orafice is now spanking shiny and clean, fed her lunch, ordered chaat, heated lunch, took a shower. Ding dong. Cousin and sister-in-law here for lunch as they leave this city for Kolkata. They eat. Other friends came over to see them off. Back in kitchen to make tea. Take Naya to play date. Go shopping for next week's birthday party gifts. COme back and here I type. Thank god I didn't have a Sunday night dinner party as I had wanted to to celebrate...

My column this week will likely muse on India - one year later. Stay tuned...

She is her grandmother's granddaughter

Lately Naya has been taking a timer we have and pretending she is on the phone with family members. While I was working on column tonight, I overheard the following. Keep in mind, it is one-sided but in her pretend, she actually waits for the responses:

Naya: Oh, Rahul, how are you?
PAUSE
Naya: Happy Diwali!
NODS AND LAUGHS
Naya: Soooo did you get married?
PAUSE
Naya: Not yet? Too bad

Then she "hangs up"

Naya: Sanjib, how are you?
NODS
Naya: Happy Diwali!
NODS AND LAUGHS
Naya: So are you coming here?
PAUSE
Naya: Ok I'll see you tomorrow. Did you marry anyone?
PAUSE
Naya: Oh too bad.

Diwali

We did a Diwali/kali puja in our own madeup way. I tried to postulate in prayer but Naya kept kicking my head so I got up and just folded my hands and thanked god and asked for blessings. Naya, her usual impish self, tried to eat the mithai (sweets) I had laid out as an offering. "That's for god," I told her. "You can have from this part," showing her the box.
She obliged.
THE NEXT MORNING...
Naya comes running to me in the living room. "Mommy, God didn't eat the mithai!"
"Oh..." I said stumped. Should I say god is pretend? Like Santa Claus? That we would give it to poor people instead?
Then she went to the mandir, grabs the Ganesh idol and tries to force-feed him the sweet.
Seeing me giving no answers, she ran into Nitin's studio.
"Papa!" she said. "Ganeshji is not listening to me. He HAS to eat the mithai."
Note to self for next Diwali...

How holidays can work

Wider angle by S. Mitra Kalita
livemint.com

Growing up in the US, my father’s office Christmas party was as much a part of our family tradition as the tree and presents. Every December, we took the train into New York City to admire lights and toy trains in the company’s lobby. Cartoons played for hours in the auditorium. Free lunch in the canteen was much nicer than McDonald’s to us three kids. Then came visits with Santa Claus and gifts, things such as binoculars and craft sets.
We would stop by my father’s office and I’d staple everything I possibly could, while my brothers flung rubber bands. I remember feeling proud that my dad had an office, and somehow I realized through those visits that this company made him the man he was and, in many ways, the comfortable family we were. Around the holidays, as teachers and television asked children to think of those less fortunate, my gratitude strengthened.
Long ago, in my teenage years when such affairs began losing their lustre anyway, the parties suddenly stopped. Cost-cutting, my father said.
The employer happened to be Citibank.
Chances are, readers of this newspaper have followed the departure of Citi chief executive Charles Prince this week and the turmoil at the company and, more generally, in financial services over losses related to subprime lending. Already, compensation experts are sending Wall Street a warning that bonuses might remain flat or fall this year—for the first time in five years.
In my new home that happens to be my father’s old, on this last day of business in the traditional Hindu calender, as we honour our staff with gifts and gratitude, as we pray for more prosperity often on the backs of these same workers, I remember the holiday parties as the earliest lesson I received about employer obligation to families. I remember loyalty that was a two-way street—and how that spilled over into consumer habits as we grew up. I’ll ponder how it is that Indian firms can hang on to the ethos even as loyalties change and we brace ourselves for the cold that’s been promised as the US sneezes.
This past year has been rocky for Citi, its thousands of laid-off employees and investors like me (disclosure: I dumped babysitting earnings into the stock in 1990 and my father has always managed it for me).
My life has been marked by a certain loyalty to the bank, from those parties to my first investments to my first mortgage. As Citi grew and shrunk, merged and laid off, I joined frustrated consumers in wondering if the right hand talked to the left.
Prince’s letter of resignation links the need to unite strategy in and out of the workplace: “Our strategy to operate as a real company—not a collection of acquired businesses—with a focus on our infrastructure, our clients, and a strong unified brand and employee culture—is the right one,” he wrote. “But... the rating agencies have recently downgraded significantly… I am responsible for the conduct of our businesses.”
As I read those words, I thought of the company’s role in the life of an immigrant mining engineer in 1972 with no finance background—and the ripple effect that support had on many more. Citi hired my father through a temporary staffing agency, liked him enough to give full-time work and then paid for his MBA. He retired after more than 30 years at the bank in various roles, finally as a vice-president.
My two homes this week—the US and India—are experiencing a dichotomy that makes me cling even harder to my belief that companies employ whole families, not individuals. And that it’s no coincidence that the greatest places to work better innovate and create the best choices for consumers.
Somehow over the last few decades, this sentiment in the US has been lost with the passage of time, especially as we measure time with monthly targets, quarterly earnings and fiscal calendars. Understandable, but also noteworthy is the fact that workers who stick around are motivated by more than money.
That’s why my favourite Diwali mornings in India have been spent in factories and workplaces where the big bosses bless more than their books—employees and their families.
Industry body Assocham, or the Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India, says corporate India’s spending on Diwali gifts likely increased by 48% to Rs2,000 crore compared with Rs1,350 last year. I’d like to think it’s about more than the gift, but about the duty we all have towards one another. And to allay some of the cold that India might catch, we must figure out ways beyond money and gifts to empower and appreciate.
As I bought gifts this week for the staff at home and my colleagues at work, my shopping companion said to me, “This is all so clichéd. Do these things really come from the heart?”
To keep the good times rolling, they must.

Deevaleee

Nitin: "Umm I can't tell if this is Diwali or the apocalypse."

In these fast times

Wider Angle | S.Mitra Kalita
livemint.com

I happened to be at a meeting over a five-star lunch on Karva Chauth, the day that some Hindu women fast for the protection and well being of their husbands.
“Fruit salad?”
I said no.
“Water?”
I declined, shaking my head.
The moppy-haired man sitting across from me couldn’t take it anymore. “What is this nonsense? Isn’t it the 21st century?”
“Yes,” I replied. “That’s why my husband is doing it too.”
He still acted annoyed, as did many women slightly older than me encountered throughout the day. Their sentiment reflected that judgemental strand of feminism, passed from one generation to the next: We did not work so hard so you’d throw it all away—and for a husband!
So get them to starve, too, I say.
These allegedly flat-world times are altering our Indian landscape by the minute. It should come as no surprise that religion and ritual have become security blankets and authenticity badges for many in my generation, and even more so for those behind us. In my case, I married into a Punjabi family that has been celebrating the holiday for as long as anyone can remember. But I doubt any of my husband’s ancestors, like him, saw their wives sacrificing food and decided to join in the name of mutual love, protection and equality. (Okay, so there was a little bit of cajoling from the wife, along with company from other temporarily henpecked cousin-brothers and brothers-in-law.)
I was exempt from my first two fasts as a married woman—probably among the few times being pregnant or nursing came in handy. During the festival season in the fall of 2005, I happened to be reporting in Gurgaon at the India office of Convergys Corp., the world’s largest call centre operator. Hordes of women lined up to get a look at the moon, and pulled out pictures of their husbands before touching milk and water, then something sweet, to their lips. A few days later, I was present again for the fiercest rangoli (the process of arranging flowers into shapes and patterns) competition I have ever seen. Finally came Diwali night, which was again celebrated with a puja inside and pop and punk from a deejay outside.
One could point out, as I did in a story for an American newspaper, the dichotomy of the call centre workers interacting with the US and the UK on the phones even while their “Indianness” remained intact. Now, after living in India for almost a year, I’d say the Western exposure is precisely why they are asserting their said native identity even harder.
Thus, it’s not your imagination that with each passing year, the need to get rituals in the festival season “right” strengthens; besides, the commercialism and consumerism certainly doesn’t hurt those two booming institutions of worship in the new India —religion and retail. In many ways, Indians are now experiencing what us Non Resident Indians (trying our hardest to prove we are the opposite of Not Really Indian) have known for some time: confronted with foreign influences, sometimes you seek out the little pockets of familiarity and cling, master and pontificate. And that is why your American cousins can perform Bharatanatyam and recite dialogues from Kuch Kuch Hota Hai and tell you precisely when cricketer Mahendra Singh Dhoni broke his own record. In the US alone, more than 150 temples serve an estimated Hindu population of 1.2 million—with dozens more planned.
Sadly, the turn towards religion also can ignite unhealthy passions. This year’s Karva Chauth, named because it is celebrated four days after the full moon, also fell four days after another big news event in India: the Tehelka expose of the planning, plotting and official sanction of the 2002 massacre of Muslims in Gujarat. As soon as I saw the report, I wondered if chief minister Narendra Modi’s re-election bid had just been clinched.
What does this have to do with Karva Chauth? Everything, actually.
Indians can react to their newfound place in the global world in a few ways —regardless, the source of support for a harmless holiday and a harmful politician remains the same. At one extreme is losing who we are completely, scoffing at remnants of the old. At the other is becoming so absorbed in our assertion and definition of India that we exclude everyone—and ultimately ourselves. Somewhere in between is the hope we can bow to tradition yet blend progress, as the countless couples who fasted together this past week can attest.
How and why and whether we engage religion in our daily life has come to matter more than ever. We are not grappling openly enough with gestures and philosophies we have taken for granted for centuries, touching feet to our division of labour.
After all, there’s ritual and then there’s reality.
Your comments are welcome at widerangle@livemint.com

Where's 911?

I had a helpless India moment last night. We were driving back from my MIL's after a typically delectable Punjabi feast after a Punjabi holiday that required us all to fast (well required me but Nitin did too). About a kilometer into the journey home, we came upon an overturned truck. It must have just fallen because we saw a man break out through a window. About four guys tried to hoist up the red cab of the truck with no luck. Seeing our car, they gestured to our driver to go help. He did.

And then jumped back in the car and attempted to maneuver around the remains. I gasped and looked down, then looked away. And then morbid human nature took over and I stared -- a man was on the ground, covered in blood and quivering. I could hear the men nearby in Hindi saying he needed help but shouldn't be moved. I looked specifically at his head and I am cringing as I type this but I couldn't tell where it ended and the road began and there was a thicker residue oozing onto the ground. I too began shaking. I thought only enough to cover Naya's eyes.

"Shouldn't we stop or help or call someone?" I said to the driver.

"If you wish," the driver said.

But who? I don't know the 911 equivalent in India. And truthfully, while there are efforts to launch emergency services etc, they haven't quite taken off nationally yet. I scrolled through my mobile, wondering if maybe the presets had such a number. No luck.

I tried to call our health reporter, thinking she had just done a story on one such said service. She didn't answer.

We were nearly 1 kilometre away and I was feeling like the worst person in the world. Should we have just tried to fold the guy into our front seat and rush to a hospital? How could I leave a fellow human being on the ground like that? I might sound melodramatic but it's really what I was thinking.

Finally, I call my brother-in-law, who lives nearby and is resourceful. I started to tell him where we were and to ask if maybe he knew a doctor or hospital that could be dispactched when we saw it -- a police car.

Now you have to remember that the police (slogan in Delhi: with you, for you, always) have made a living in India never being there when you need them. And they are known to be among the most crooked of institutions. But I had a feeling like all my gods had planted that car there in that moment.

"Accident. Very urgent. 1 kilometre back," I yelled. The driver did the Hindi talking, while Nitin and I both made gestures to hurry and get help.

We proceeded on our way. I wonder if the man made it. I wonder what he said and thought. And sadly, I wonder hoe he felt when he saw our car veer around him.

Festivals

I have decided (in case my fellow Assamese brethren care) that being an Assamese married to a Punju is the best combo. Here's why:
Durga Puja
Diwali and all its adornments
Bihu
Festivals for much of India focus on one holiday - in the east, there's puja; in the west, Ganpati; north Diwali; south Deepavalli and maybe Onam? But if you're an Assamese Punju combo, we get it all. And so our last few days have demonstrated:

Durga Puja worship in Assam in a crazy section of Guwahati with five pandals clustered together, rides, food, bazaars and an overall great vibe that makes Delhi's CR Park (Bong hood) look like Christmas in Tel Aviv or something.

Then a Navratri party in Delhi a few days later. (Those fun-loving Punjabis have adopted it and love it as their own. We are more than mere posers since Nitin's dad grew up in Ahmedabad and Nit did a fellowship there).

And these last few days have been Diwali parties - cards till 5 am the other night, melas, invitations to more, Karva Chauth is tomorrow. Not that fasting is fun but gifts and the husband joining in certainly are...

And then we Assamese are lucky enough to have two Bihus, which match Lodi and Vaisakhi... And include more dancing, revelry and food...

Read this if you like happy ending epxat tales

She is staying.
I sat her down and presented four options -- stay at status quo with a major salary increase, stay with a moderate increase and I ask part-time Didi to do laundry and dishes, stay at same salary and I hire another woman part time, or go with our blessing and love. She chose a combo of option 1 and 2. I laid it on thick. I said we loved her like family and that if she had a problem, she needed to tell me. I even told her to look at how Nitin and I fight as a model for how people operate in a house (hah:). I said I worried that if she goes to another household to work, they might exploit her and make sure she doesn't get to eat meat and chocolates and hound after her to open a bank account and take English classes. She laughed and said she also worried about someone new coming to take care of Naya and that Naya wouldn't like that.
She did say she wants to be upstairs by 11 pm, which I have no problems with. I told her that when guests come, we can get the food ready and I can simply microwave. I also told her we will have fewer guests so not to worry so much.
I told her she should still go visit her mother and father, and she said no. I said we can fly you there for a week. She said no. I asked if me and Naya should come. She laughed. "There's no electricity there," she said.
"That's how my father grew up," I said. "That's where we used to stay when we came. We'd be okay."
"I know," she said. "You come from a poor family." (Not quite but I didn't correct her.)
"That is why I keep telling you to take those English classes. Maybe you can be like my father."
She laughed again. I cried, ever the brown guilty liberal expat.

Don't read this if you are sick of expats complaining of maids

Felicia is leaving. I knew this would come but I thought we had until December when she said her mother wanted her home for at least a month and then maybe for the full year. But today - after reviewing her contract with the agency - she said she will be leaving November 5. I still haven't gotten a straight answer on why or where she's going and I wonder if it's because she doesn't really know. She's always been moody, that's for sure, but what's family if not moody. I suppose I am most upset because this insults my liberal expatty ways of thinking we treated her pretty well "for a servant". But if I take out my emotion--as I am sure she too must be doing--a job is a job and perhaps there are more glorious ones that burning eggplant on the stove for our weekly bharta or cleaning my kid's bum or washing my underwear (in machine, not by hand). We pay her more than most local Indians pay their maids, and also give her lots of offs. But we pay less than the expat set, partly because she doesn't speak English nor know the beauty of our Amrikan khanna like hamburgers and pasta. Felicia being a part of the now Old India, indirect communication reigns, so this decision to leave early could really be an emergency at home she is afraid to tell us about, a desire to go see if she can make more money elsewhere or maybe work less for a family that doesn't have any kids or as many guests as we do, or maybe she is in love with someone and I have been underestimating her. Maybe maybe maybe. I, of course, am giving her a dose of Indian right back and sulking and generally not speaking to her. Real mature, I know. Tomorrow I guess I will have to try to talk to her again. We stay in touch with our old nannies from the US but somehow I think it might be different here, which is the saddest part of all. I wonder if I will have these questions always.

Of latrines

Just back from Assam. I shouldn't brag but everyone extolled the virtue of Naya's flexibility and easiness. While I think she did get more naughty on this trip, I agree. Case in point - when she enters a latrine bathroom now, she knows to gingerly lift up her skirt. That's my girl.

Hit the Road, Rage

Stressed-out workers vent their anger and aggression in the one place they have control: the driver's seat
Wider Angle | S.Mitra Kalita

www.livemint.com

At 8.15 on a recent night, Viraj Kalra was driving home and a car rolled back into his Hyundai Santro.
That wasn’t the worst mistake of the evening. Honking was. Kalra says he simply pressed the horn, first as a polite warning, then with annoyance.
In response, the driver got out with a hockey stick in hand, opened Kalra’s door and took aim.
THWACK. Onto the Santro’s bonnet.
The next strike, Kalra prayed, would knock him unconscious right away. The raging driver swung back again.
And the light turned green.
Seeing the vehicles around him revving to go, the man released his grip, stayed in character enough to mutter an obscenity to Kalra, jumped back in his car and drove off.
Kalra, vice-president for new businesses at PlanMan Consulting, recounted the story in a mass email.
“The incident came as close to ripping the human fabric into shreds as any,” he wrote. “At this point words like ‘society’, ‘civilized’, ‘rules’ and ‘humane’ sound shallow.”
This week, another one where the Capital’s deadly roads made headlines, I caught up with Kalra to see if he had any perspective on why drivers—across the country, not just New Delhi—seem so angry, why driving has gotten so dangerous.
His answer inspired me to break a pledge I made when I moved to India and began writing Wider Angle: no columns complaining about traffic. Rest assured, Kalra’s response is right up our alley.
“Honestly the kind of work that all of us do now, we carry a lot of pressure even into our cars and into our driving, our spaces,” Kalra said. “You probably need an outlet, and the psychological profile is that we are more stressed than a decade ago.”
The only India-specific survey I found to address the roots of road rage was released in June by LeasePlan, a vehicle leasing and management company. In India, it says, the main causes boil down to drivers going in the wrong direction (64%), drivers who cut queues (61%), excessive honking (57%) and aggressive driving (57%). Nearly one-third of respondents ranked New Delhi the place with the “worst drivers,” followed by Bangalore (16%) and Kolkata (12%).
But that doesn’t really get into the heart of the drivers who stage verbally abusive and violent tantrums. I doubt the survey asked if they ever gave someone the finger on the road because they couldn’t give it to their boss. Or if the shouting at fellow drivers in queue stemmed from the wife threatening divorce over all the late nights at office. Indeed, we do carry our moods into our cars with us and fellow harried drivers fuel the cycle of dysfunction and destruction.
Research conducted by a psychology student at the University of South Australia found that people experiencing significant stress in the workplace develop shorter “fuses” in managing their anger, influencing their behaviour on the roads. Among workers under constant stress who feel undervalued, underpaid and under-appreciated at work, even minor situations can trigger anger and uncontrolled aggression—unleashed on the motoring public, researcher Ben Hoggan concluded.
“These people release their frustrations on the road because it is a convenient location for them. They feel invincible within their protective steel barrier,” he said. “It’s their space on the road and if people invade that space, the drivers believe they are well within their rights to attack other road users.”
Drivers who kill and throw hockey sticks can be dismissed as crazy—but what about the swearing, swerving rest? On the roads, unlike, say home or work, stores or restaurants, hierarchy becomes unclear and exudes irony. The guy driving the Mercedes likely can’t even afford a Maruti, an understandable source of rage. He perhaps can’t tell his employer to back off, so he acts out in the one place he has control: behind the wheel. The same I have seen from female drivers, who actually brag more often about being ruthless on the road.
Perhaps the fiercest rage in recent months has been over the Blueline bus fiasco, its fatal casualties approaching about 100 people this year. There have been rightful concerns over driver qualifications and whether those behind the wheel of commercial vehicles receive adequate training, testing and screening. The same questions can and should be extended to a lot of drivers on the road. Enforcing existing traffic rules is a start. So is toughening the test to get a licence in the first place. Perhaps our children’s generation needs to learn to drive in school.
But in a country defined by chaos, corruption and endless tests of patience, I am doubtful these actions will immediately cure our road rage.
Something more is causing us to lose our cool, it’s only partly about everybody else’s incompetence. Accepting that fact might be the first step to regaining control.
Your comments are welcome at widerangle@livemint.com

Guests guests guests

A few of you have asked where we are -- I wrote a column on this once and I am pasting it in below. But I think I am really starting to appreciate my mother more and more after moving to this country. The first week back from the states brought my aunt, uncle and cousin's wife. Then came a few days off. Then my cousin and her husband.
Topping it off with my meeting with a publisher, the worst work pressures I have had in a while, Naya's school changing and my suitcases STILL unopened from the US, I think I am ready to collapse. Oh and there was a retreat thrown in there to strategize The Future of My Employer. And a birthday party. And the column. Felicia's toothache and indecision on staying or leaving. I am a wreck (well, more like a drama queen)...
Real bits of conversation from the last few days:
Relative: It looks like you've gained weight in these few days.
Me: Yeah, how the @#@$%@ do you expect me to get to the gym if I have to feed you breakfast every morning?

Another:
Relative: Wow you work really hard. (door open, AC on)
Me: Yeah, well, someone has to just to pay the electricity bills around here.

I love my family, I really really do. We moved here so much to reconnect with them. But it is absolutely amazing to me how history repeats itself... Off to Guwahati on Friday so I can be the guest for a change ;)


Wider Angle | S.Mitra Kalita font size

Last week, I had nine overnight guests. The previous week brought just three.
This being India, I know that doesn’t shock you.
Atithi devo bhava. The guest is divine. We’ve all grown up hearing it. The ministry of tourism is even using the philosophy in a marketing campaign to promote Indian hospitality. And at no time do we feel it more than June and July, as families head off for holidays—some of them in our houses.
There’s irony here because one person’s relaxation becomes another’s (read: mine) added workload. And that’s on top of, of course, the wage-earning work we’re supposed to be doing 40-60 hours per week. Employees can use the guests-waiting-at-home excuse to leave office early once in a while, but nine times?  
It makes me wonder if it’s time for an update to the sloka, given the constraints and stresses of modern Indian households. Should we ask guests to take pre-paid taxis from the airport, fetch their own water and wash their own underwear? Should stays be limited to three days? Should a collection bowl sit atop the fresh towels on the guest bed to offset our skyrocketing gas and electricity bills (especially in these summer months)?
Yet, each time I thought of saying something recently, I bit my tongue and remembered the refrain. I recalled images of my mother carefully matching towels from the closet. She fried fish, rolled rotis, squeezed limes. And I remembered the countless visits that I, the American cousin, made to India when others treated me as divine, making my favourite dishes, pulling threads out of my beloved pomegranate, shuttling me to zoos, forts and temples. Guest, after all, is god.
Because the people who might govern such elements of Hinduism were too busy over the last few days protesting kissing, sex education and artwork, I turned to those on the front lines of implementation: my fellow working women. They tell me they have quietly made some amendments of their own.
“I don’t compromise on my son’s time,” said Megha Nihalani, a Delhi-based travel agent with lots of family abroad and some in Mumbai.
Last year, her husband was chauffeuring an uncle and aunt to Hardwar when her nine-year-old son, staying back at home with her, developed typhoid. Distraught, she made her husband turn around and come right back, the holiness of Hardwar unseen.
In the Nihalani household, this month and next will be “100% guests”.
But volume, she said, was highest in January, when 17 relatives trickled in and out. After that experience, Nihalani said she was more than happy to offer some tips to cope. Saying no, we agreed, was really not an option.
Nihalani says she never lets her travel company take a back seat to the visiting company. A common request she makes: “Aunty, can you lay down the plates while I do my ticketing?”
Towels, I asked her. How do you manage all the towels? And laundry?
She laughed. Same philosophy—guests might be god, but they are self-sufficient ones. To understand these intricacies and instructions, arrivals are given a few minutes of orientation to Nihalani’s home in Mayur Vihar, from the towel cupboard to the jugs of water and empty glasses.
“Your clothes have been laid out, please take whatever is yours,” she’ll say. “Here’s the glass, here’s the water, please help yourself.”
This reflects an attitude shift in Indian home hospitality, said brand consultant Lulu Raghavan. Her employer, Landor Associates, counts Jet Airways and the Taj hotel chain among clients.
“As nuclear families are being set up, a lot of the attitudes are very western,” she said. “Our generation doesn’t welcome guests with open arms as much. Typically, both the husband and wife are working. When guests come, they just sort of upset everything. In Mumbai, people put up with it more than any other city because hotels are so expensive.”
As an assurance to me, she also cautioned that guests’ expectations are similarly changing. They might want to venture to sights on their own, even eat out for a few meals.
“It’s so generic—what is Indian hospitality?” she said. “If you take the worst elements of Indian hospitality, it’s overwhelming. You just want to be left alone.”
If all our vacation time is spent taking around others, then when do we get to relax?
“It’s what we need to do staying in India,” Nihalani said. “This is something we cannot avoid. But what I have started doing now is arranging them and not letting them take over my house, my time, my work.”
On our first night of freedom this week, my husband and I went to someone else’s house for a change. Around midnight, my mobile rang. It was a friend in Dubai.
“Do you mind if I stay with you for a few days in June?”
“Of course,” I said.
For the months of June and July, it looks like office will be my escape.
Your comments are welcome at widerangle@livemint.com

A toddler's post9/11 world

Today after calling on Nitin's aunt (Guddi Masi), I went to Sarojini Nagar market with my aunt and uncle and sister-in-law (Bhanu Pehi, Peha and Rishika). I have been trying to hunt down tasteful black and silver sandals and finally spotted a pair so I took my shoes off on the carpet before the stall to try them on.

Naya, of course, also did the same and the laughing attendant told her, "Aap peheleh bara hogaya aur baad please ao" (OK my Hindi aint great so I might have dropped a few words but he basically said -- You get big and then you come back please). Anyway she, too, laughed and started to pat my legs down. My uncle asked what she was doing. Used to the weird child--and admiring my feet--I paid no attention.

Then she said in a sharp voice, "Turn around."

I did, just to humour here.

"Hands out," she barked.

I burst out laughing. Taking my shoes off triggered her to pretend we were boarding an airplane and she was patting me down and pretending to wand me!

(Postscript, when I was talking to my other sister-in-law in Hyderabad tonight, Naya kept interrupting with "what's her name" and "what's her baby's name". Then when she overheard me saying the baby had been sick, Naya said "please ask what is the doctor's name." I did and my sister-in-law also began laughing and said, "Junior reporter Naya! You are breeding another you...")

Stand by your woman

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In the waiting room of the Mrs India contest, progressive men embrace their wives' dreams as their own
Wider Angle | S.Mitra Kalita


The woman who would never be Mrs India woke at 5am to a jet-lagged child demanding cereal. She turned to her husband a few hours later and said, “What does the perfect wife and mother in India wear?”
Through his sleep, he groggily grumbled, “An Assamese outfit.”
She gave him a look. “It’s sponsored by Gladrags.”
Eyes closed, he mustered a joke: “Isn’t that soft porn? Skip the blouse.”
By now, regular readers, you surely realize the woman was me. But finding nothing in my cabinet ironed or quite glamorous enough, I grabbed jeans, a kurta and a notebook and decided to simply do what I do best—talk to those who have it more together than I.
So many reasons, I listed in the car while applying my make-up, that others should represent married womanhood in India. Besides, I left my easy-wash liquid sindoor stick at home.
Finally, I arrived to auditions in New Delhi for Mrs India, a national search staged by Gladrags magazine and under way until 20 October. Just a handful of people were there. Nobody was in Indian garb, and my choice of jeans was actually dead-on. But deferring my dream to the discovery of something or someone interesting, the reward came right away.
The waiting room of Mrs India auditions was filled with progressive men.
***
This week also happened to celebrate the girl child. In Chennai, street theatre, a film and a photo contest with the theme “We also can do” marked the day. Among New Delhi’s middle class, never keen to miss a holiday, some mothers took their daughters shopping in appreciation.
But there’s another person deserving advocacy and marketing campaigns extolling her worth: bearer of the girl child. She already knows what she can do—and usually she does too much. Somehow, her plight gets lost between the rush to save unborn female foetuses and break glass ceilings.
Modern Indian women’s role thankfully featured at this week’s India@60 meet in New York City, organized by the tourism ministry and the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII). Co-sponsored by Yale University, a panel of female leaders cited studies showing men actually prefer their spouse to work outside the home.
Of course, they often want her to be everywhere else, too: the kitchen, the nursery admissions office, the grocery store and produce stalls, the in-laws on the weekends, playing and cheering the golf game, and on and on. If there was ever a critical mass of superwomen, they exist in India. And like this economy, our expectations are ever-growing. Meanwhile, society, which includes us women, gives men a pass from being all things to everybody.
***
Every now and then, though, you happen upon the exceptions. Like would-be Mrs India’s husband.
Amit Kumar, a software engineer, took the day off to show his support. And Mukesh Singh travelled by train from Jammu for the same reason.
Stereotype them as stage husbands, but it was a Monday morning at a Chinese restaurant—no one was there to appreciate the food, let alone the trophy wives filling out forms downstairs. So, why did they show up?
“Before marriage, you think about beauty, family background, education,” said Kumar, a spectacled, smitten man. “But after marriage, if she really cares about her husband, she should have some activity for herself. She has her dreams.”
Implicit in his presence, and offer of moral support, is that her dream is his. This “activity”, Kumar said, gesturing around, wasn’t a bad choice. He added that he had been feeling guilty since their wedding last year. Her company asked her to move to Bangalore—a post she declined because of his higher earning job in New Delhi (Oh, the predictable post-wedding “transfer”. Don’t you just wish employers would get a spine and spell out their preference for unattached women?) Still tired after a journey from Jammu, Singh told me he lives to make his wife’s life easier, and vice versa. He works in pharmaceutical sales, she in automotive sales.
“And we are equals at home, too, so I am always supporting her by cleaning the house, cooking the food,” he said. (In case you’re as sceptical as I was, here’s the official word from his wife, Sarika: “He makes kheer, sabzi and can roll chapattis. He says he wants to see me in a high post, so he can take care of the house.”)
To be sure, the entry form for Mrs India asks about cooking, kids and in-laws. Before all that, though, comes the career question. If she has one, great, the organizer said. If she doesn’t, that’s okay too.
Perhaps there’s a lesson to draw from stage husbands and apply to other sectors, for these men in waiting seemed to share and appreciate the burden and beauty, pain and possibility of a wife’s work. As the CII summary of the global women’s panel concluded: “The agenda should now be to work on the Indian man.”
Your comments are welcome at widerangle@livemint.com

On my first night back in India...

of course my parents dragged me to a pahty. Rooftop. Jor Bagh. Single malt. I am a real diva. The only people I befriended were from Bhutan and Sikkim. I gave everyone else -- and the host -- this look...

They're here...

The guard at Indira Gandhi International Airport kept saying, "Arey Madame, please, piche jao." Please madame, move back.
I was waiting right smack in the middle to catch a strain of her after a week away. And I was rewarded for that. As soon as Naya saw me from a few hundred feet away, she began laughing and running to me. It was the very bestest feeling I think I have ever had...
But followed by sadness. In the car, when I called my mom to say they were here, Naya took the phone and her lip trembled and she said, "Aita, I missed you." Then she burst into tears and wouldn't take the phone.
On the way home, she kept saying she didn't want to go home.
Nonetheless, she had a similar joyful reaction of running around when she saw Felicia. I changed her and we settled in with The Lion King book. In the middle of the story, again she started crying -- no reason.
"Did you bite your tongue?" I asked.
She shook her head.
"Then what's wrong?"
"Aita," she sobbed. "I want Aita."
"Should I call her on the phone?"
She nodded and I did. My mother happened to be at a wedding.
"Mamu!" I could hear her shriek through the phone.
Naya just cried and cried. She wouldn't say anything.
I hung up, we finished the book and she went to sleep.
Today she has been fine, excited by the stuff in her suitcases. But she reminds me more of myself than ever before - but even more sensitive and mature.

Homeland Insecurities Indeed

Naya and Nitin are on their way. Naya apparently cried at the airport when she was leaving her grandparents. That sounds familiar. She said, "I want to go to India tomorrow."

Gaffe or gaffay or gaff?

Customer service complaint number 456. I hate that we are always handed one menu when we go to places that are tres mehengi (expensive). I used to think it was because Nitin is a man (grrr) and waiters assumed he'd order. Last night, during a girls' night with my two P-pals (Padmini and Pavani) we were handed only one menu. Why they do that?

This Truth Shore Hurts

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Americans have largely accepted outsourcing, but have legitimate concerns over inefficiency and poor qualityWider Angle | S.Mitra Kalita


In 2005, I was at a wedding in Ohio and someone seated at my table—a software tester—had nothing nice to say about offshoring. She hated the lack of control over team members in India, their hesitance to ask questions and a time difference that didn’t allow for instant communication. She quit her job in frustration.
Earlier this month, I was at a wedding again, this time in Maryland, and happened upon even more Americans who deal with India on a regular basis. After initial pleasantries about “all the changes in India” and an eventual shedding of inhibition, they largely had the same complaints.
The last few years have been filled with news of Indians moving up the value chain in contracts awarded, creating an assumption that initial “back-office” tasks were performed to relative US profit and satisfaction.
While surveys gauging productivity and client opinion might show such, the ground reality, shore to shore, team to team, worker to worker, actually yields a fair amount of discontent. My admittedly anecdotal discovery comes as Indian services providers fear a strong rupee and skyrocketing salaries will mean work lost to competitors in China and Mexico, Russia and Eastern Europe, Vietnam and the Philippines. And this is precisely why teams in India and the US separated by thousands of miles—and the more immeasurable rift of misunderstanding—need to begin a blunt dialogue.
I figured I’d get the ball rolling this week with some thoughts from The Americans, all of whom I promised anonymity in exchange for raw, no-holds-barred honesty.
“There is no entitlement with US businesses. We’ll drop India for China the same way we dropped the US for India in the first place,” one manager told me from his perch at a technology company that is a household name across the world. “Heck, it’ll be easier as there will be no internal backlash.”
He’s had mixed experiences with offshore teams, specifically praising the cost savings and access to a large labour pool. Often, though, he finds a lack of accountability. “The crappy companies come in after a horrendous project, blame my team when it was clearly their fault... and then ask to take over our entire operations,” he says. “They want the end-to-end business, but they do nothing to gain my trust that they can handle it.”
Turnover, many American managers agree, remains a significant problem. One told me that just as she learned to pronounce someone’s name, it was time for a replacement.
“It’s great for their careers and I totally understand why they do that. But it puts an added pressure on us onshore folks,” said a manager in North Carolina. “We’ve just spent time and money on technical training, only to have to start over now. I don’t know how that’s supposed to make our business more efficient.”
This particular manager said she was training three Indians offshore and one American onshore at the same time in the same task. “The person in the US was able to complete more work, which was of a better quality. I don’t think she was smarter than the others—the India team was far more educated and had more technical experience. The US person was not afraid to ask questions and used her time more wisely.”
For too long, critiques of offshoring from the US have raised the defence mechanisms and insecurities of Indian workers, who decry the westerners as bigoted and closed-minded. In these 13-odd months before US presidential election, services companies have been devising strategies to fight anticipated anti-outsourcing rhetoric from politicians. Yet most of the people I talked to in recent weeks have accepted the model and rarely begrudge Indians taking jobs. Rather, they had legitimate concerns over the quality of work and an overall lack of efficiency.
To be sure, workplaces that rest on the offshore model have been aware of and obsessed with fixing these problems for years. But the changes have not kept pace with, say, the rupee, which continued its sprint yesterday.
One strategy consultant outside Washington, DC, epitomizes why Indians should urgently address their shortcomings. His business process outsourcing unit operates in the US, India and Ukraine. “They are younger in Ukraine, a lot sharper, more dedicated, work less hours but produce the same or more, take pride in their work, no attrition problem, no 20%-every-year demands,” he said, conceding that scaling up was a problem, but would not be elsewhere.
As for that wedding guest who first raised the red flag, I tracked her down this week through Facebook. Thankfully, she told me, she no longer deals with offshore teams. But she stays in touch with the people from the old organization and had bad news: “Quality has gone down and they lost too many customers for the particular project. …They are sunsetting the product.”
Your comments are welcome at widerangle@livemint.com

Pics from Ang wedding

Felicia and the dishes

My dear friend Manish said he stopped reading this blog once I complained about servants. I don't think he was entirely right but what's accuracy to a bunch of desiwriters like us? Anyway, this isn't a complaint but a random observation. When people come over, Felicia has a hierarchy of dishes that she has devised. The woman who threads and waxes and massages gets her tea and snacks in plastic-like dishes. The driver's is in stainless steel. On a daialy basis, me and Nit get the crockery from Dilli Haat. Our guests get the imported blue plates from the US.

Before Manish flogs me, I should say that my mum has a similar system with her china for guests, ranging from VIPs to drop-ins -- but servants don't figure anywhere in that. The cleaning lady -- like us -- always got her lunch served up on Corningware. (As an aside, once my parents told the cleaning lady to help herself to orange juice and toast when she showed up in the morning. The woman (who was Polish and I say that as fact) must not have completely understood because she took the whole half-gallon container and the half-loaf home!)

US and back again

Hopefully Nitin will post pics of the trip to let you know how flower fairies, burdae parties, beach trips and the eight-state soiree (yes, we even got Rhode Island and Delaware in there!) went. But I was struck on the plane ride by how I used to fly to India really excited to see all my family and then would return to the US really depressed and heavy-hearted the whole plane ride back. (It was so bad that I didn't even like to travel after Assam -- just wanted to come home and wallow until normalcy kicked in with the start of the school year). I think the answer is to be an RNRI -- you feel excitement going both ways and situations in both countries drive you to escape to the other... So it was for me on this lone journey (Nit and Naya are staying another week, and I always say I am fine without one of them but both??) back.
And the other thing is that being out of India for a few weeks and re-entering brought back that sensation and thrill of arrival -- the smell that combines dust, urine, sweat, incense, sandalwood, rosewater and all the exotica that is the script of Indian writers/homecoming queens like me.

Return of the Native

Wider Angle
http://www.livemint.com/2007/09/14005444/Return-of-the-native.html


It would not have been a return home, of course, without questioning where home really should be.
My husband and I were up late one night this week at his parents’ place in Massachusetts, exhausted from shopping for socks, vitamins and macaroni and cheese, when I finally asked the big question, “So do you think we should move back?”
“Back” for us would be these United States, where we were born to Indian immigrant parents and where we happen to be visiting. He paused. “Yeah,” he said. “But not for a while. There’s still so much going on in India.”
Fundamentally I agreed with him, but reminders of our lives in the US dangled like carrots: diversity and efficiency, privacy and loving neighbours, museums and story hours at the library. So for a refresher on India’s possibility, I sent an email to the man who initially planted the seed and inspired my move to New Delhi: Prakash Grama, past president of the RNRI Association. That stands for Returned Non-Resident Indian. (I am neither a returnee nor an NRI but such abbreviations in India tend to be inclusive by their oxymoronic nature.)
Grama and I met in Bangalore in October of 2005. I was working on an article for a US newspaper on the wave of information-technology professionals returning to India and Grama was linking the recently repatriated with volunteer work. He had lived in the US from 1988 to 1998, when he moved to Bangalore to grow a software services company, Span Systems Corp., he’d founded with his brother. Back then, he recalled, the idea of moving back to India was a sign of failure. That turned with the century and, by 2005, Grama estimated up to 40,000 people had returned to Bangalore alone.
“In the IT industry, there’s significant value for people coming back,” he told me over lunch. (By “back,” he meant India.) “And here you are not just accepted into society, you’re recognized at the top.” Follow opportunity, he had told me. Although he warned me that if I did, something very strange might happen: I might feel more Indian in the US and more American in India. He also ominously told me that some NRIs return to India but get so frustrated with issues from work culture to servant politics to the in-laws dropping in that they head right back West.
I had lost regular contact with Grama so I wanted to update him on our new RNRI life and thank him for asking me to look beyond the rain and traffic that defined Bangalore that day. Imagine my shock when I received his response this week: “Coincidentally, I have relocated to Dallas with my family!” I picked up the phone, filled with curiosity. What happened to being on top? Had India let him down? How could the head of the RNRI Association pull another R?
He laughed when I began peppering him with questions. “I always seem to be in reverse tide,” he joked. “In 1998, people said, ‘You’re crazy.’ And then that became popular and now I’ve come back here.
“Maybe I’m ahead of the times...”
He added that it was “90% a business decision.” The company had been growing quickly and the only way to sustain it and snag larger clients was for one of the brothers to relocate to the US.
This week, The Indus Entrepreneurs, a networking group of South Asian business leaders, released a survey that says about 60,000 IT professionals have returned to India, encouraged by development in infrastructure and salary increases. The survey found respondents keen to return to India to “protect their kids from the Western culture,” according to a report by the Press Trust of India.
Ironically, Grama said his children’s future was one factor that actually lured him back to the US. “I was concerned about the rat race for kids there,” he said of India. His daughters, now in a public school in an affluent Dallas suburb, miss their friends but don’t miss the immense pressure to hit the 99th percentile on board exams.
I told Grama that my husband and I, along with lots of returnees, have had similar conversations about schooling—although we were hopeful after recent overtures to open up Indian education, both in curriculum and investment.
When we met in Bangalore, Grama gave me the first inkling of returnees’ identity crises: over that lunch, he laughed as he told me he used to drive 60 miles on Sunday to get to temple. In India, he rarely ever made it—even with one across the road.
This summer, Grama told me he has been to worship several times, most recently for a pooja when he bought a Honda Pilot. I never make it to temple anymore, I thought. “But I’m not where the action is,” he said, seemingly reading my mind.
“You are.” And so even as he lives in my native country and I in his, Grama and I followed the same advice: We each followed opportunity home, thankfully a fluid and fleeting place these days.
Your comments are welcome at widerangle@livemint.com