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!
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Sunday, November 25, 2007
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)
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)
Sunday, November 18, 2007
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
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...
My column this week will likely muse on India - one year later. Stay tuned...
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
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.
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.
Sunday, November 11, 2007
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...
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.
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.
Friday, November 9, 2007
Tuesday, November 6, 2007
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
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
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)