Hers was a wonderful life
MINT
Wider Angle | S.Mitra Kalita
We had a tradition, my grandmother and I. Every few years, during childhood trips to her village of Sadiya on the banks of the Brahmaputra, I would spend the last night with her. She’d scratch my head and my back and mosquito bites. Often, I sobbed, sorrowful over my impending departure.
She was stronger.
And so last week, it seemed only fitting to be there for her last night, along with about 35 other relatives huddled around a bed in my home in Guwahati.
By coincidence or calling, I was there from the beginning of her end. She saw me, who had conned her way into the intensive care unit before visiting hours, and asked if I wanted to sit, have a cup of tea.
A few hours later, she slipped into a coma.
We were told nothing could be done, so we brought her home.
Even as I write this, I feel numb at what it means to lose the only person who so represented my connection to this country in its reality. Like 40% of India, she was illiterate.
Like about half the population, she was married off before 18 (11, in her case). Like nearly two-thirds, she made her living primarily off the land.
And yet, she was one of a kind.
Over the last week, the stories have come tumbling out.
How she threatened the district’s most infamous dacoit, known as Hemen-goonda, with a kerosene lamp at night and called him a dog.
How she got around her illiteracy by lining the girls on the veranda and having them recite their studies to keep each other in check.
How she ensured the household and farm workers always toiled on a full stomach; “that way, they don’t really care if I yell at them”.
How she told my cousins to stop watching the World Wrestling Federation on TV after she learnt, on a trip to America, that it was really all fake.
Deceit, even as entertainment, had no place in her life. I mourn not as much the loss of the person—at 86, she had had a full life— but the loss of a generation that we can never get back.
Their values, however, are something I suspect to which we will, rather must, return.
Just two months ago, when my grandmother fell and broke her arm, I dropped everything and packed my husband, my daughter and a video camera.
As I wrote in a recent column, this tough-as-nails lady grew tender for the first time and thanked me for coming, told me how much my family and my alleged success mean to her.
She spent some time detailing her life’s philosophy, which—given her background and achievement, in spite of it—might hold some secrets for others.
Namely, she was thrifty. She bargained, counted her money every night, reined in extravagance.
Last week, as I rode autos and taxis to get around Guwahati, I could just hear her cringing that the Rs11 bus would have been a much better option.
She defined family broadly, forced others to think beyond their front gate, and in doing so, stirred them to action. She was often the voice called upon to represent civic concerns. In the 1980s, when a politician and singer and artist Bhupen Hazarika came to call, she chastised them for the sorry conditions of roads, schools and health care in Sadiya (as lore goes, she first fed them, then yelled).
By not being educated, she served as the ultimate example of why it matters. During family gatherings, it was often said: “What would have been if she had learnt to read?” The lack of an answer kept her children and grandchildren always reaching for more.
She was a big believer in long-term planning, even for her own death, from heavy gold bangles cut into eight pieces for each of her children to Rs10,000 she donated for the final shradh’s feast to a cream and gold mekhla chador (Assamese two-piece sari) left for my daughter.
When I contacted local newspapers to run her obituary, one editor told me he didn’t think my grandmother met standards; they preferred business leaders, politicians, “people who have made a big difference”, he told me.
“If she were alive,” I retorted, “she’d say that her life might not amount to much, but people like you will serve her dinner in her next life.”
He laughed and relented.
My obituary included these lines: “It was the end of a remarkable journey that began with her birth in the Kamrup village of Gorput to marriage in Baranghati to settlement in Sadiya, where she spent most of her life. In recent years, Mrs Kalita divided her time among her family’s homes scattered across Guwahati. Her heart—and stories—however remained in an India fast disappearing...”
As I wrote, I shed tears of regret. For so many questions and untold stories remained.
Your comments are welcome at widerangle@livemint.com
Showing posts with label Columns. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Columns. Show all posts
Thursday, June 19, 2008
Saturday, May 31, 2008
Cricket
This week's column was inspired by a trip the three of us took last week to a cricket match between the New Delhi Dare Devils and the Mumbai Indians. We were prepared to have to shove through crowds and ask 38 people which way to go but were amazed at the signage, cordoned-off areas, orderly lines and cops who actually knew where gate 6 was. I think the Republic Day parade needs to ask the cricket folks to handle their crowd control. Nitin printed out pages on "how to follow cricket" from some web site. Naya kept saying she was looking for Dhoni. I thought we might get bored halfway through but about 20 minutes into the game, thanks to our friend Seema's commentary and the hordes of people around us, we got really into it. Definitely faster than baseball--which makes me wonder what the heck people are talking about when they say it's a cross between baseball and sleeping or such nonsense. I loved it and even yelled "VIRU" for the star Sehwag... but once Delhi's fourth batter scored low, we thought our team was doomed--and we left. Big mistake. While we were in the car, some guy came to bat and scored 56 runs! Oh well, we learned a few lessons.
Friday, May 9, 2008
Is it a happy mother's day?
www.livemint.com
Is it a happy mother’s day?
Working parents in one survey spend just a half-hour a day nurturing their own kids. It's time to wake up
Wider Angle | S.Mitra Kalita
I know you think it’s you. But it’s not.
The award for Worst Mother of the Year goes to…me.
I turn my laptop on the minute I get home. I pretend to listen to my daughter’s stories as I frantically volley replies on BlackBerry. On weekends, I relish the chance to sleep in and let the maids deal with bath and breakfast and the most dreaded chore—brushing little teeth, especially those hard-to-reach, squirm-inducing back ones.
Two days before the world celebrates the joy and wonders of motherhood and thanks us who have dutifully filled and then emptied our wombs, I hang my head in shame and hardly think I deserve any special attention. Really, as a mother, I am a failure.
Well, sometimes.
Because that’s just the way parenthood is. Unlike our daily jobs, there are no benchmarks to success. Just when you think happy kids are the goal, a child psychologist or teacher will instruct you to let sadness occasionally wash over them, “so they can learn to deal with it on their own,” as one educator recently told me.
Nobody ever chastises working parents. We pat each other on the back, then say: “She’ll be fine. You’re doing the best you can.” Experts advise parents not to give into guilt.
I disagree. It’s time.
This week, The Times of India reported the results of a survey that find working parents spend only 30 minutes “nurturing their own children”. Not surprisingly, more than 85% of the 3,000 working couples in the study gave themselves a negative rating as bad parents. “Parents are working not only out of economic compulsion but also to cash in on their technical and professional qualification,” the study said. “Parents that work long or irregular hours are not available for children after school, and especially to help with the homework, ...and not able to do things together at weekends or eat together.”
Even on Sundays, when companies are allegedly off, working couples report being consumed with the endless tasks involved in running a household: paying bills, cleaning, going shopping.
The study illustrates the net effect of several societal shifts in the middle class. More and more couples are both working. Fewer families have the grandparents around. The demands at work are enormous: first, to sustain the growth in the economy and now to ensure all is not lost in case of a slowdown. Sadly, childcare has really not caught up; due to the sorry state of education in rural and poor India, most people’s maids have not even the nurturing instinct of one Mary Poppins bone. Creches are a fast booming business, but concerns over hygiene, safety and space persist. Parents who spend Rs5,000 on a meal quibble about spending half that to keep a good maid around.
In 10 years, will the neglect show? Is this study foreshadowing a future generation of kids who are needy, lack confidence, resent our success at their expense? Possibly.
Every now and then, when my mothering sinks to the all-time low I describe here, when my husband and I are both on deadlines and our daughter seems to crave even just a glance from us, something more powerful than the desire to achieve and excel washes over me: Mommy Guilt.
It is a most powerful and necessary warning. It inspires me to leave the laptop behind (or at least the cord so the battery dies in an hour). It forces me, no matter how pressed for time, to incorporate my daughter into my daily activities, if only to spend a few more minutes with her; we bathe, we brush, we banter. We reconnect.
This week’s findings, released by trade chamber Assocham’s Social Development Foundation, must inspire collective guilt, triggering changes at home and work. If reducing hours is not an option, children must be more effectively integrated into our lives, shopping to dining out. As parents have moved towards managing without their own parents around, so too might they learn to manage sometimes without another appendage: maids.
The rearing and nurturing of children in India is in crisis. Besides parents taking responsibility, workplaces will need to react quickly with flexible scheduling, not just to watch children but to take care of chores such as doctor appointments and car servicing. The risk of not reacting is to lose a diverse, necessary part of the workforce; according to Assocham, just 21% of mothers with young families want to work full-time, with an overwhelming majority preferring part-time work alongside raising their children.
Even as us working parents beat ourselves up, there’s some irony in what most motivates us: our children. To provide for them, to make the world a better place for them. Working mothers like me, with girls, try hard to set an example of the type of women they can be.
But in the end, our long hours and business plans really mean nothing without ensuring growth and vitality— of our most precious assets of all.
Your comments are welcome at widerangle@livemint.com
Is it a happy mother’s day?
Working parents in one survey spend just a half-hour a day nurturing their own kids. It's time to wake up
Wider Angle | S.Mitra Kalita
I know you think it’s you. But it’s not.
The award for Worst Mother of the Year goes to…me.
I turn my laptop on the minute I get home. I pretend to listen to my daughter’s stories as I frantically volley replies on BlackBerry. On weekends, I relish the chance to sleep in and let the maids deal with bath and breakfast and the most dreaded chore—brushing little teeth, especially those hard-to-reach, squirm-inducing back ones.
Two days before the world celebrates the joy and wonders of motherhood and thanks us who have dutifully filled and then emptied our wombs, I hang my head in shame and hardly think I deserve any special attention. Really, as a mother, I am a failure.
Well, sometimes.
Because that’s just the way parenthood is. Unlike our daily jobs, there are no benchmarks to success. Just when you think happy kids are the goal, a child psychologist or teacher will instruct you to let sadness occasionally wash over them, “so they can learn to deal with it on their own,” as one educator recently told me.
Nobody ever chastises working parents. We pat each other on the back, then say: “She’ll be fine. You’re doing the best you can.” Experts advise parents not to give into guilt.
I disagree. It’s time.
This week, The Times of India reported the results of a survey that find working parents spend only 30 minutes “nurturing their own children”. Not surprisingly, more than 85% of the 3,000 working couples in the study gave themselves a negative rating as bad parents. “Parents are working not only out of economic compulsion but also to cash in on their technical and professional qualification,” the study said. “Parents that work long or irregular hours are not available for children after school, and especially to help with the homework, ...and not able to do things together at weekends or eat together.”
Even on Sundays, when companies are allegedly off, working couples report being consumed with the endless tasks involved in running a household: paying bills, cleaning, going shopping.
The study illustrates the net effect of several societal shifts in the middle class. More and more couples are both working. Fewer families have the grandparents around. The demands at work are enormous: first, to sustain the growth in the economy and now to ensure all is not lost in case of a slowdown. Sadly, childcare has really not caught up; due to the sorry state of education in rural and poor India, most people’s maids have not even the nurturing instinct of one Mary Poppins bone. Creches are a fast booming business, but concerns over hygiene, safety and space persist. Parents who spend Rs5,000 on a meal quibble about spending half that to keep a good maid around.
In 10 years, will the neglect show? Is this study foreshadowing a future generation of kids who are needy, lack confidence, resent our success at their expense? Possibly.
Every now and then, when my mothering sinks to the all-time low I describe here, when my husband and I are both on deadlines and our daughter seems to crave even just a glance from us, something more powerful than the desire to achieve and excel washes over me: Mommy Guilt.
It is a most powerful and necessary warning. It inspires me to leave the laptop behind (or at least the cord so the battery dies in an hour). It forces me, no matter how pressed for time, to incorporate my daughter into my daily activities, if only to spend a few more minutes with her; we bathe, we brush, we banter. We reconnect.
This week’s findings, released by trade chamber Assocham’s Social Development Foundation, must inspire collective guilt, triggering changes at home and work. If reducing hours is not an option, children must be more effectively integrated into our lives, shopping to dining out. As parents have moved towards managing without their own parents around, so too might they learn to manage sometimes without another appendage: maids.
The rearing and nurturing of children in India is in crisis. Besides parents taking responsibility, workplaces will need to react quickly with flexible scheduling, not just to watch children but to take care of chores such as doctor appointments and car servicing. The risk of not reacting is to lose a diverse, necessary part of the workforce; according to Assocham, just 21% of mothers with young families want to work full-time, with an overwhelming majority preferring part-time work alongside raising their children.
Even as us working parents beat ourselves up, there’s some irony in what most motivates us: our children. To provide for them, to make the world a better place for them. Working mothers like me, with girls, try hard to set an example of the type of women they can be.
But in the end, our long hours and business plans really mean nothing without ensuring growth and vitality— of our most precious assets of all.
Your comments are welcome at widerangle@livemint.com
Sunday, May 4, 2008
It's all about who you know
http://www.livemint.com/2008/05/01230250/It8217s-about-who-you-know.html
Wider Angle | S.Mitra Kalita
All he did was “put in a word”.
That is how Union shipping, road transport and highways minister T.R. Baalu defended his move to procure gas for two companies owned by his two wives (yes, two) and sons, companies that happened to be previously headed by him.
According to news agency Press Trust of India (PTI), Baalu admitted he had spoken to petroleum and natural gas minister Murli Deora to ensure gas was allocated. “I put in a word with the petroleum minister,” Baalu told Parliament, according to a PTI report. “What is wrong with it?”
He didn’t add what he very likely also felt, what many of us realize on a day-to-day basis: That’s just the way life goes in India. Everyone uses connections or else nothing gets done.
Right?
If you’re squirming with discomfort, recognition, uncertainty, you’re not alone. For, many of us—from salaried professionals to the working poor —largely accept that bribes are wrong: Paying or gifting someone to grease the wheels is immoral, corrupt. But pulling a favour to get the job done?
It happens.
Think about it. Need to get your three-year-old into nursery school? One after another, the calls go out to principals and board members of elite schools—or their friends and family. Attached to applications are the letters vouching for your child and your character from Prominent People.
How can a retail entrepreneur secure the licences needed to stock yarn, put up signs or even play terrible background music? It’s time to make rounds among The Influential.
This deep tapping into networks is especially acute in this connection-conscious Capital, but other cities certainly suffer their share, too. By no means is India alone, but the problem worsens here because connections, often, must be relied upon to get the littlest thing done.
It is not just the government to blame. Even as the growth of the private sector has spoiled us for choice, it has created new hurdles to getting services smoothly. Well educated and intentioned they may be, but bank tellers rarely have a clue about foreign exchange or money transfers. The cashier who fields your mobile payment has little power to do much else, like print out a bill statement from six months ago. And so we seek out those second and third cousins who work at Citibank and Vodafone for rescue.
Every time I raise this issue, old-timers shrug, saying: “It used to be so much worse.” One writer on the blog, Mutiny.in, reminds, “In the ’70s, if you wanted to buy any car anywhere in India, money wasn’t the problem. The waiting period was. It ranged from a few months to a few years depending on the model and your political connections.”
But guess why he raised this point? Recently, the blogger noted that folks eager to book the Rs1 lakh Tata Nano were already in queue, buttering up dealers and plastering automobile websites with their emails and phone numbers so they could be first.
So, how much has really changed?
Are there just shades of grey between paying a bribe and invoking a connection? In many cases, the answer might lie in our professions. Politicians, journalists, government contractors should be held to higher standards because for them, a favour is rarely just a favour (for a copy of Mint’s code of conduct, visit www.livemint.com).
The more important question is why the straight and direct route is failing so many Indians. Crumbling schools, tight regulations, lack of access, crooked civil servants, all of the above? As with much of middle-class woe, if it’s tough for us, the poor and lesser connected are the real victims.
“The normal systems have collapsed in most spheres in life,” says Arvind Kejriwal, the former bureaucrat who pioneered the right to information movement. “If you normally apply for something, you wouldn’t get it, even if you deserve it, so you need connections or money. The people who have connections feel comfortable about it. But if I don’t have connections, I’ll say it’s a rotten system.”
In Baalu’s case, it has been revealed that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, master of the art of crafting a squeaky clean image—even in India—made “certain references” on the shipping minister’s behalf to secure gas. Of course, the implication of the Prime Minister’s Office getting involved is more damning: Give this guy his gas—and whatever else he wants.
The actions in regards to Baalu and his family’s companies smack of nepotism and cronyism. If only the elected would show so much concern over the public they represent. We wouldn’t even need 10,000 cubic metres, as Baalu requested.
In fact, I think most Indian households would settle for just a letter from the Prime Minister’s Office guaranteeing steady power in these summer months.
And maybe, for good measure, he’d throw in an extra gas cylinder?
Your comments are welcome at widerangle@livemint.com
Wider Angle | S.Mitra Kalita
All he did was “put in a word”.
That is how Union shipping, road transport and highways minister T.R. Baalu defended his move to procure gas for two companies owned by his two wives (yes, two) and sons, companies that happened to be previously headed by him.
According to news agency Press Trust of India (PTI), Baalu admitted he had spoken to petroleum and natural gas minister Murli Deora to ensure gas was allocated. “I put in a word with the petroleum minister,” Baalu told Parliament, according to a PTI report. “What is wrong with it?”
He didn’t add what he very likely also felt, what many of us realize on a day-to-day basis: That’s just the way life goes in India. Everyone uses connections or else nothing gets done.
Right?
If you’re squirming with discomfort, recognition, uncertainty, you’re not alone. For, many of us—from salaried professionals to the working poor —largely accept that bribes are wrong: Paying or gifting someone to grease the wheels is immoral, corrupt. But pulling a favour to get the job done?
It happens.
Think about it. Need to get your three-year-old into nursery school? One after another, the calls go out to principals and board members of elite schools—or their friends and family. Attached to applications are the letters vouching for your child and your character from Prominent People.
How can a retail entrepreneur secure the licences needed to stock yarn, put up signs or even play terrible background music? It’s time to make rounds among The Influential.
This deep tapping into networks is especially acute in this connection-conscious Capital, but other cities certainly suffer their share, too. By no means is India alone, but the problem worsens here because connections, often, must be relied upon to get the littlest thing done.
It is not just the government to blame. Even as the growth of the private sector has spoiled us for choice, it has created new hurdles to getting services smoothly. Well educated and intentioned they may be, but bank tellers rarely have a clue about foreign exchange or money transfers. The cashier who fields your mobile payment has little power to do much else, like print out a bill statement from six months ago. And so we seek out those second and third cousins who work at Citibank and Vodafone for rescue.
Every time I raise this issue, old-timers shrug, saying: “It used to be so much worse.” One writer on the blog, Mutiny.in, reminds, “In the ’70s, if you wanted to buy any car anywhere in India, money wasn’t the problem. The waiting period was. It ranged from a few months to a few years depending on the model and your political connections.”
But guess why he raised this point? Recently, the blogger noted that folks eager to book the Rs1 lakh Tata Nano were already in queue, buttering up dealers and plastering automobile websites with their emails and phone numbers so they could be first.
So, how much has really changed?
Are there just shades of grey between paying a bribe and invoking a connection? In many cases, the answer might lie in our professions. Politicians, journalists, government contractors should be held to higher standards because for them, a favour is rarely just a favour (for a copy of Mint’s code of conduct, visit www.livemint.com).
The more important question is why the straight and direct route is failing so many Indians. Crumbling schools, tight regulations, lack of access, crooked civil servants, all of the above? As with much of middle-class woe, if it’s tough for us, the poor and lesser connected are the real victims.
“The normal systems have collapsed in most spheres in life,” says Arvind Kejriwal, the former bureaucrat who pioneered the right to information movement. “If you normally apply for something, you wouldn’t get it, even if you deserve it, so you need connections or money. The people who have connections feel comfortable about it. But if I don’t have connections, I’ll say it’s a rotten system.”
In Baalu’s case, it has been revealed that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, master of the art of crafting a squeaky clean image—even in India—made “certain references” on the shipping minister’s behalf to secure gas. Of course, the implication of the Prime Minister’s Office getting involved is more damning: Give this guy his gas—and whatever else he wants.
The actions in regards to Baalu and his family’s companies smack of nepotism and cronyism. If only the elected would show so much concern over the public they represent. We wouldn’t even need 10,000 cubic metres, as Baalu requested.
In fact, I think most Indian households would settle for just a letter from the Prime Minister’s Office guaranteeing steady power in these summer months.
And maybe, for good measure, he’d throw in an extra gas cylinder?
Your comments are welcome at widerangle@livemint.com
Friday, April 25, 2008
The Royal Treatment
So I have been holding out on where we went last weekend... Read on...
http://www.livemint.com/2008/04/25000400/A-touch-of-royal.html
Even before any probing, pressing, caressing, the new spa -- Kaya Kalp -- at the ITC Mughal in Agra invokes sensory overload
S. Mitra Kalita
New Delhi
About 99,000 sq. ft of massage and treatment rooms, workout and yoga space, gardens and fountains. Lavender wafting through the air. Stark red pomegranate motifs on floors and walls, a nod to Emperor Babur’s favourite fruit.
Spa junction: Bathe together in the couple suite. (Photograph courtesy ITC Mughal)
Spa junction: Bathe together in the couple suite. (Photograph courtesy ITC Mughal)
But being overwhelmed is not relaxing and so, the real test of the just-opened Kaya Kalp–The Royal Spa will actually be in transporting the stressed-out set to places far, far away from big and busy. Based on my recent experience, it will succeed precisely because of the attention to the little: water fragranced with cucumber and orange slices, the delicate cymbals chimed at the end of an ayurvedic treatment, decorative marble candle holders reminiscent of the behemoth ode to love nearby.
Offerings range from salon standards—haircuts, manicures, pedicures and facials—to elaborate packages known as “journeys” that can last up to three hours. The spa claims it is Asia’s largest, as well as the first in India, to offer the Turkish bath known as a hammam.
And so, I began my journey.
I lay on a marble slab, stripped of clothing, dignity and tension all at once. The steam around me blinded, suffocated, hypnotized but dozens of candles danced through the haze, their light bouncing off tiny mirrors and creating rainbows around the room. Just when fainting felt imminent, hard sprays of cold water awakened and invigorated. In life, two distinct stages force human beings to be bathed at the hands of another: childhood and old age. Thus, the hammam, a meeting of a sauna, bath and massage in one, might startle those of us in the active, independent purgatory of middle age. But it is well worth getting over such inhibitions because being cleansed, lathered, rubbed in this manner felt like the very embodiment of what a spa should be.
“Remember a spa is about water,” reminds Christine Hays, the operations head who has spent the last eight months overseeing the conversion of ITC Mughal’s gardens into this decadent space. She recounts how the spa designers sent pieces of electrical equipment for modern-day treatments and she simply stored them away, explaining: “Everything has to be so natural and hands on.”
For the unique, transcendental experience, the hammam (Rs4,400 for 100 minutes) should be tried. But, if you’re looking for a strong rub with your knots and stress in someone’s firm hands, this might not be the best option. The 30-minute tension reliever (Rs1,500) is a more affordable blend of the pointed nature of Thai massage with the longer strokes of, say, a Swedish.
The entrance to Kaya Kalp (Photograph courtesy ITC Mughal)
The entrance to Kaya Kalp (Photograph courtesy ITC Mughal)
Notably, here, I finally learnt to embrace ayurvedic massage. In massages past, I have often just wanted to get up from the oily table and yell at the well-intentioned women in sync to stop sliding and teasing, to start applying pressure already. For those who value the healing and natural elements of ayurveda, ITC’s spa offers three rituals. I tried the hot herbal poultice massage (60 minutes for Rs3,500), which relies on a ball of herbs dipped in hot oil— “You could eat it,” Hays assures—to move across the body. The pressure of the ball on the joints across my legs and arms was especially welcome. And the soft wad perfectly juggles gliding yet applying pressure; there is none of that panic-inducing feeling that someone’s fingers might fracture your spine.
Kaya Kalp also offers a chakra balancing gem stone massage (60 minutes for Rs3,000) that seemed to incorporate similar elements as the herbal ball, but with the use of stones; this is also the massage given to couples during the Taj Mahal romance journey, which, for Rs15,000, gets the two of you three hours of rubbing, bathing, feeding and loving (the masseurs give you a 5-minute knock as a warning before entering so you can go wild in the tub strewn with rose petals).
Roses and red are striking themes throughout; some massages begin with dipping feet into a bowl of water with petals. The observatory garden outback is still being worked on, and when it cools down, outdoor massages will be added. The pool, which is only for users above the age of 15, follows the sharp lines and maze-like arrangement of the garden. At night, the candles, shooting fountains and sprays of mist overhead inspire literal and metaphoric reflection.
“The Mughals were known for opulence,” explains Anil Chadha, general manager at the ITC Mughal. “They were very aspirational.” That puts them pretty much on par with the target customer here.
Like the backs it kneads, Kaya Kalp has a few kinks to work out. For a place that has promised such a Mughal experience, background music veered into the new age or elevator ambience at times. The couches and interior décor feels heavy, expected of the Mughals, but not necessarily cozy. The addition of some rituals, such as tea or healthy snacks while you wait, might help loosen the atmosphere up.
While prices are affordable by five-star spa standards, a few packages blending the works—say, manicure, pedicure, facial and massage—would likely do well, especially for the stressed who are time pressed. Unquestionably though, ITC Mughal’s spa has admirably fashioned itself into a destination in a city where most are lured by another awe-inspiring structure. So, while visitors are off seeing the fruits of one man’s devotion, stay behind, for Kaya Kalp is a divine place to pay homage to what should be your greatest love of all: you.
http://www.livemint.com/2008/04/25000400/A-touch-of-royal.html
Even before any probing, pressing, caressing, the new spa -- Kaya Kalp -- at the ITC Mughal in Agra invokes sensory overload
S. Mitra Kalita
New Delhi
About 99,000 sq. ft of massage and treatment rooms, workout and yoga space, gardens and fountains. Lavender wafting through the air. Stark red pomegranate motifs on floors and walls, a nod to Emperor Babur’s favourite fruit.
Spa junction: Bathe together in the couple suite. (Photograph courtesy ITC Mughal)
Spa junction: Bathe together in the couple suite. (Photograph courtesy ITC Mughal)
But being overwhelmed is not relaxing and so, the real test of the just-opened Kaya Kalp–The Royal Spa will actually be in transporting the stressed-out set to places far, far away from big and busy. Based on my recent experience, it will succeed precisely because of the attention to the little: water fragranced with cucumber and orange slices, the delicate cymbals chimed at the end of an ayurvedic treatment, decorative marble candle holders reminiscent of the behemoth ode to love nearby.
Offerings range from salon standards—haircuts, manicures, pedicures and facials—to elaborate packages known as “journeys” that can last up to three hours. The spa claims it is Asia’s largest, as well as the first in India, to offer the Turkish bath known as a hammam.
And so, I began my journey.
I lay on a marble slab, stripped of clothing, dignity and tension all at once. The steam around me blinded, suffocated, hypnotized but dozens of candles danced through the haze, their light bouncing off tiny mirrors and creating rainbows around the room. Just when fainting felt imminent, hard sprays of cold water awakened and invigorated. In life, two distinct stages force human beings to be bathed at the hands of another: childhood and old age. Thus, the hammam, a meeting of a sauna, bath and massage in one, might startle those of us in the active, independent purgatory of middle age. But it is well worth getting over such inhibitions because being cleansed, lathered, rubbed in this manner felt like the very embodiment of what a spa should be.
“Remember a spa is about water,” reminds Christine Hays, the operations head who has spent the last eight months overseeing the conversion of ITC Mughal’s gardens into this decadent space. She recounts how the spa designers sent pieces of electrical equipment for modern-day treatments and she simply stored them away, explaining: “Everything has to be so natural and hands on.”
For the unique, transcendental experience, the hammam (Rs4,400 for 100 minutes) should be tried. But, if you’re looking for a strong rub with your knots and stress in someone’s firm hands, this might not be the best option. The 30-minute tension reliever (Rs1,500) is a more affordable blend of the pointed nature of Thai massage with the longer strokes of, say, a Swedish.
The entrance to Kaya Kalp (Photograph courtesy ITC Mughal)
The entrance to Kaya Kalp (Photograph courtesy ITC Mughal)
Notably, here, I finally learnt to embrace ayurvedic massage. In massages past, I have often just wanted to get up from the oily table and yell at the well-intentioned women in sync to stop sliding and teasing, to start applying pressure already. For those who value the healing and natural elements of ayurveda, ITC’s spa offers three rituals. I tried the hot herbal poultice massage (60 minutes for Rs3,500), which relies on a ball of herbs dipped in hot oil— “You could eat it,” Hays assures—to move across the body. The pressure of the ball on the joints across my legs and arms was especially welcome. And the soft wad perfectly juggles gliding yet applying pressure; there is none of that panic-inducing feeling that someone’s fingers might fracture your spine.
Kaya Kalp also offers a chakra balancing gem stone massage (60 minutes for Rs3,000) that seemed to incorporate similar elements as the herbal ball, but with the use of stones; this is also the massage given to couples during the Taj Mahal romance journey, which, for Rs15,000, gets the two of you three hours of rubbing, bathing, feeding and loving (the masseurs give you a 5-minute knock as a warning before entering so you can go wild in the tub strewn with rose petals).
Roses and red are striking themes throughout; some massages begin with dipping feet into a bowl of water with petals. The observatory garden outback is still being worked on, and when it cools down, outdoor massages will be added. The pool, which is only for users above the age of 15, follows the sharp lines and maze-like arrangement of the garden. At night, the candles, shooting fountains and sprays of mist overhead inspire literal and metaphoric reflection.
“The Mughals were known for opulence,” explains Anil Chadha, general manager at the ITC Mughal. “They were very aspirational.” That puts them pretty much on par with the target customer here.
Like the backs it kneads, Kaya Kalp has a few kinks to work out. For a place that has promised such a Mughal experience, background music veered into the new age or elevator ambience at times. The couches and interior décor feels heavy, expected of the Mughals, but not necessarily cozy. The addition of some rituals, such as tea or healthy snacks while you wait, might help loosen the atmosphere up.
While prices are affordable by five-star spa standards, a few packages blending the works—say, manicure, pedicure, facial and massage—would likely do well, especially for the stressed who are time pressed. Unquestionably though, ITC Mughal’s spa has admirably fashioned itself into a destination in a city where most are lured by another awe-inspiring structure. So, while visitors are off seeing the fruits of one man’s devotion, stay behind, for Kaya Kalp is a divine place to pay homage to what should be your greatest love of all: you.
Saturday, April 19, 2008
Accepting exile, sweet exile
From Mint
The Tibetans are willing to die for it. The Americans are in a recession partly because of it. In India, we take for granted just how many we have, how complex it actually is.
Home.
Everyone, it seems, is fighting, longing, searching for a place to call their own. I don’t make light of that struggle, but this week—against the backdrop of the alternative Torch for Tibet relay and my own journey to a place that is allegedly mine—I wondered if the concept of home, as in one geographical location to which we are anchored, committed, rooted, might be inherently flawed.
The epiphany came around 1 o’clock in the morning on the Assamese new year known as Bihu. With my husband and daughter, two cousins and a friend, I sat in a cracked red plastic chair sinking into the mud made by a recent rain and watched a woman crooning into a microphone. She didn’t sound bad, but not great either. Nearby, a pack of young men smoked and I resisted the urge to ask them not to, so close to my three-and-a-half-year-old they were. It had taken us an hour to get here, an hour fighting traffic and other festival revellers. And, that was after a day spent dodging relatives’ demands that I come visit all 50 of their homes in Guwahati even as I explained that the goal of my sudden trip was to spend time with my sick grandmother and show my daughter the beauty of Assamese culture during this colourful month. She has celebrated every year, of course, but always in far-off places as church halls in New Jersey, a friend’s place in Washington, DC and an auditorium in New Delhi.
I thought going home would offer a more authentic experience.
“Where are the dancers?” my daughter asked me.
“Where is the laru-pitha?” my husband chimed in, referring to the sweet foods of Bihu. (When I was a child, my parents and their friends used to buy very all-American doughnut holes and offer them to us as a substitute, unable to find ingredients to make the real thing. Eventually, they learnt to improvise.)
“This is not New Jersey or even New Delhi,” I responded. “It’s not like you can get Bihu out of a box.”
But when a group of guys offstage started fighting each other with sticks and the police hauled a bloodied teenager away by his collar, I agreed it was time to go. In the versions of Bihu my parents regaled me and my brothers with, there was so such violent reminiscence.
Yet, why would they have tainted their picture?
For the transplant, home becomes but a nostalgic figment of the imagination, a make-believe place where you can pick and choose what to crave, to miss, to remember. It is ideal and utopian, even as the quest to recapture it impossible and dangerous.
Somehow, though, we keep trying.
In the case of the Tibetans, it is an understandable desire, an exile that has been imposed. Earlier this month, Mint reported the story of two Tibetan friends who shared a longing for a homeland, a fervour for the movement but held different passports—one Indian and another a refugee card. Explained one young activist: “If you hold an Indian passport, people think you have lost your nationalism.”
If only India did not kowtow to fears and insecurities of China by keeping the torch—a celebratory, unifying symbol of multiple lands and cultures —in a virtual police state with 20,000 officers and countless blocked roads. What a gesture it would have been if India showed the world it was possible to support both an exiled people and the goals of the Olympics. Indians, after all, have mastered the art of straddling multiple homes and loyalties.
And, if only the Chinese understood that the freedom to go back at anytime, to assert one’s place, is what keeps so many of us away. For, all too often there is no going back.
Strangely, this week’s sudden feeling of not belonging anywhere—a feeling I have fought my whole life, from lonely tables in school canteens to the navigation of office politics—was one of great relief, as though a lifetime riddle had just been solved. Like a lot of Indians from places other than the ones they live and work, I will now never have to respond to that eternal question: Where are you from?
That muggy night, we trudged back and crawled under mosquito nets to go to sleep. The next morning, I sat next to my grandmother, suffering from a broken arm, weak joints and severe dementia, as she asked me when I had arrived and when I would be going back to America. We had been through this exercise every day.
I reminded her I live in New Delhi.
“Still, you’re far away. To me, it’s all the same,” she said. “But I am so glad you came. It really means a lot to me.”
I was shocked. My tough-as-nails grandmother has never been the tender, emoting type—except when angry.
A few minutes later, I tearfully touched her feet and kissed her goodbye, realizing her confusion had left me with a lucid lesson and a pure definition of home—among many.
Your comments are welcome at widerangle@livemint.com
The Tibetans are willing to die for it. The Americans are in a recession partly because of it. In India, we take for granted just how many we have, how complex it actually is.
Home.
Everyone, it seems, is fighting, longing, searching for a place to call their own. I don’t make light of that struggle, but this week—against the backdrop of the alternative Torch for Tibet relay and my own journey to a place that is allegedly mine—I wondered if the concept of home, as in one geographical location to which we are anchored, committed, rooted, might be inherently flawed.
The epiphany came around 1 o’clock in the morning on the Assamese new year known as Bihu. With my husband and daughter, two cousins and a friend, I sat in a cracked red plastic chair sinking into the mud made by a recent rain and watched a woman crooning into a microphone. She didn’t sound bad, but not great either. Nearby, a pack of young men smoked and I resisted the urge to ask them not to, so close to my three-and-a-half-year-old they were. It had taken us an hour to get here, an hour fighting traffic and other festival revellers. And, that was after a day spent dodging relatives’ demands that I come visit all 50 of their homes in Guwahati even as I explained that the goal of my sudden trip was to spend time with my sick grandmother and show my daughter the beauty of Assamese culture during this colourful month. She has celebrated every year, of course, but always in far-off places as church halls in New Jersey, a friend’s place in Washington, DC and an auditorium in New Delhi.
I thought going home would offer a more authentic experience.
“Where are the dancers?” my daughter asked me.
“Where is the laru-pitha?” my husband chimed in, referring to the sweet foods of Bihu. (When I was a child, my parents and their friends used to buy very all-American doughnut holes and offer them to us as a substitute, unable to find ingredients to make the real thing. Eventually, they learnt to improvise.)
“This is not New Jersey or even New Delhi,” I responded. “It’s not like you can get Bihu out of a box.”
But when a group of guys offstage started fighting each other with sticks and the police hauled a bloodied teenager away by his collar, I agreed it was time to go. In the versions of Bihu my parents regaled me and my brothers with, there was so such violent reminiscence.
Yet, why would they have tainted their picture?
For the transplant, home becomes but a nostalgic figment of the imagination, a make-believe place where you can pick and choose what to crave, to miss, to remember. It is ideal and utopian, even as the quest to recapture it impossible and dangerous.
Somehow, though, we keep trying.
In the case of the Tibetans, it is an understandable desire, an exile that has been imposed. Earlier this month, Mint reported the story of two Tibetan friends who shared a longing for a homeland, a fervour for the movement but held different passports—one Indian and another a refugee card. Explained one young activist: “If you hold an Indian passport, people think you have lost your nationalism.”
If only India did not kowtow to fears and insecurities of China by keeping the torch—a celebratory, unifying symbol of multiple lands and cultures —in a virtual police state with 20,000 officers and countless blocked roads. What a gesture it would have been if India showed the world it was possible to support both an exiled people and the goals of the Olympics. Indians, after all, have mastered the art of straddling multiple homes and loyalties.
And, if only the Chinese understood that the freedom to go back at anytime, to assert one’s place, is what keeps so many of us away. For, all too often there is no going back.
Strangely, this week’s sudden feeling of not belonging anywhere—a feeling I have fought my whole life, from lonely tables in school canteens to the navigation of office politics—was one of great relief, as though a lifetime riddle had just been solved. Like a lot of Indians from places other than the ones they live and work, I will now never have to respond to that eternal question: Where are you from?
That muggy night, we trudged back and crawled under mosquito nets to go to sleep. The next morning, I sat next to my grandmother, suffering from a broken arm, weak joints and severe dementia, as she asked me when I had arrived and when I would be going back to America. We had been through this exercise every day.
I reminded her I live in New Delhi.
“Still, you’re far away. To me, it’s all the same,” she said. “But I am so glad you came. It really means a lot to me.”
I was shocked. My tough-as-nails grandmother has never been the tender, emoting type—except when angry.
A few minutes later, I tearfully touched her feet and kissed her goodbye, realizing her confusion had left me with a lucid lesson and a pure definition of home—among many.
Your comments are welcome at widerangle@livemint.com
Sunday, March 30, 2008
Columns
Recent ones:
About government in India:
http://www.livemint.com/2008/03/28002017/Good-guys-of-government.html
About the IITs:
http://www.livemint.com/Articles/2008/03/21002013/IIT8217s-new-social-network.html
About Indian marriages:
http://www.livemint.com/Articles/2008/03/14001938/Saving-the-Indian-marriage.html
About government in India:
http://www.livemint.com/2008/03/28002017/Good-guys-of-government.html
About the IITs:
http://www.livemint.com/Articles/2008/03/21002013/IIT8217s-new-social-network.html
About Indian marriages:
http://www.livemint.com/Articles/2008/03/14001938/Saving-the-Indian-marriage.html
Sunday, March 9, 2008
The columns are back
Some of you are not going to livemint.com - shame on you - so I am posting the columns from the last few weeks here in one swoop so you can get my thoughts on the Tata Nano $2200 car, job placements at the Indian Institutes of Management, vocation education and men... Among other themes. Have fun.
Develop skills and minds
http://www.livemint.com/Articles/2008/02/21230612/Develop-skills-and-minds.html
"Please, ba, find me a job,” begins my cousin’s whine.
“How on earth can I do that?” I ask. “Where?”
“GAIL, SAIL, Oil India—any of those would be my dream,” he says.
“You know nothing about gas…or steel…or oil,” I say, exasperated. “Besides, what was all that schooling for?”
My cousin has a bachelor’s degree in economics, a master’s degree in the same, a law degree and is pursuing a master’s in law. He is the most educated among the dozens of 20-something relatives I have—yet has struggled to find steady employment. So, we have this dialogue at least weekly.
Every time I read about India’s talent shortage—or even as I myself frame it using words such as “crunch” and “crisis”—I ponder if the countless youth scattered across the country in my cousin’s predicament would agree with the characterization. According to a report by TeamLease Services, 57% of India’s youth suffer from some degree of unemployability, while 75% of those who finish school make less than Rs75,000 annually.
This week, policymakers and labour ministry officials met in New Delhi to formulate a training policy for India. The government has announced that an area fuzzily known as “skills development” is expected to get a whopping Rs31,000 crore in the 11th Plan, the five-year blueprint that lays out its objectives. Compare that with the mere Rs350 crore spent on skills development in the 10th Plan. Inevitably, finance minister P. Chidambaram’s Budget next week will begin the big boost in spending.
For the ground reality, I headed to the small, shabby South Delhi Polytechnic for Women, which sits behind the prestigious Lady Shri Ram College. It is polytechnics such as this one that the government seeks to replicate nationwide to lift to those who need it most. Ironically, in the mid-1990s, as founder Ashima Chaudhuri discovered that being approved by the government meant limiting seats and offerings, she decided to shirk affiliation and moved to a system of vocational courses that don’t offer degrees, but the promise of jobs. Courses in jewellery design and catering, childhood development and office administration, media and fashion last anywhere from one year to four years.
What strikes Chaudhuri most is that more Indians are coming to her with actual college degrees, unable to find employment because they have no technical skill. For example, I came upon sisters Sunita and Sangeeta Yadav, 23 and 22, respectively, who already had a bachelor’s in education but were studying art so they could blend the two and become teachers.
This astounded me: Shouldn’t a liberal arts background at least instil the ability to input, analyse and produce— the very basics of a job? Especially given the alleged teacher “crunch”.
But another crisis looms—in confidence and comprehension. When I asked Sunita what she was studying, she looked at me blankly.
“Didn’t you say you were taking an art course?” I reminded.
“I don’t consider that studying,” she said. “That’s training.”
Perhaps some of the breakdown was due to my sorry Hindi and her weak English, but the disconnect foreshadows a part of what will be the government’s challenge: to ensure that skills and knowledge go hand in hand, that citizens understand one is nothing without the other.
If that does not happen, sheltered students will continue to look to the same place for employment coveted by their parents and grandparents— the government. Young women, particularly, will seek escape in another institution—marriage.
As we spoke, Chaudhuri was cutting articles out of the newspaper. She posts them on bulletin boards around the simple campus in the hope that students will stop and realize there is a world beyond them and their skill. Even as she does, she concedes that is hardly the role of vocational schools.
“It sounds strange, but we need to not think globally, but locally,” agreed vice-principal A.M. Banerji.
Isn’t it possible to do both? With its massive funding of education and vocational training, the government’s heart and purse appear to be in the right place. But massive poverty and underemployment—against the backdrop of a private sector begging for qualified applicants—force us to first revise the calculus of how we learn, what we learn and why we learn it.
After my day at the polytechnic, I headed for the labour conference, listening to a panel on how other countries have built and repaired their workforces. Envy filled me as slide after slide showed alliances among schools, the private sector and the government. The success stories offered training early, often and repeatedly. In Korea, a sound vocational policy helped per capita income double decade to decade.
Here, the 11th Plan’s spending must inspire Indians to embrace more than degrees or skills—but true lifelong learning.
(Your comments are welcome at widerangle@livemint.com)
"Please, ba, find me a job,” begins my cousin’s whine.
“How on earth can I do that?” I ask. “Where?”
“GAIL, SAIL, Oil India—any of those would be my dream,” he says.
“You know nothing about gas…or steel…or oil,” I say, exasperated. “Besides, what was all that schooling for?”
My cousin has a bachelor’s degree in economics, a master’s degree in the same, a law degree and is pursuing a master’s in law. He is the most educated among the dozens of 20-something relatives I have—yet has struggled to find steady employment. So, we have this dialogue at least weekly.
Every time I read about India’s talent shortage—or even as I myself frame it using words such as “crunch” and “crisis”—I ponder if the countless youth scattered across the country in my cousin’s predicament would agree with the characterization. According to a report by TeamLease Services, 57% of India’s youth suffer from some degree of unemployability, while 75% of those who finish school make less than Rs75,000 annually.
This week, policymakers and labour ministry officials met in New Delhi to formulate a training policy for India. The government has announced that an area fuzzily known as “skills development” is expected to get a whopping Rs31,000 crore in the 11th Plan, the five-year blueprint that lays out its objectives. Compare that with the mere Rs350 crore spent on skills development in the 10th Plan. Inevitably, finance minister P. Chidambaram’s Budget next week will begin the big boost in spending.
For the ground reality, I headed to the small, shabby South Delhi Polytechnic for Women, which sits behind the prestigious Lady Shri Ram College. It is polytechnics such as this one that the government seeks to replicate nationwide to lift to those who need it most. Ironically, in the mid-1990s, as founder Ashima Chaudhuri discovered that being approved by the government meant limiting seats and offerings, she decided to shirk affiliation and moved to a system of vocational courses that don’t offer degrees, but the promise of jobs. Courses in jewellery design and catering, childhood development and office administration, media and fashion last anywhere from one year to four years.
What strikes Chaudhuri most is that more Indians are coming to her with actual college degrees, unable to find employment because they have no technical skill. For example, I came upon sisters Sunita and Sangeeta Yadav, 23 and 22, respectively, who already had a bachelor’s in education but were studying art so they could blend the two and become teachers.
This astounded me: Shouldn’t a liberal arts background at least instil the ability to input, analyse and produce— the very basics of a job? Especially given the alleged teacher “crunch”.
But another crisis looms—in confidence and comprehension. When I asked Sunita what she was studying, she looked at me blankly.
“Didn’t you say you were taking an art course?” I reminded.
“I don’t consider that studying,” she said. “That’s training.”
Perhaps some of the breakdown was due to my sorry Hindi and her weak English, but the disconnect foreshadows a part of what will be the government’s challenge: to ensure that skills and knowledge go hand in hand, that citizens understand one is nothing without the other.
If that does not happen, sheltered students will continue to look to the same place for employment coveted by their parents and grandparents— the government. Young women, particularly, will seek escape in another institution—marriage.
As we spoke, Chaudhuri was cutting articles out of the newspaper. She posts them on bulletin boards around the simple campus in the hope that students will stop and realize there is a world beyond them and their skill. Even as she does, she concedes that is hardly the role of vocational schools.
“It sounds strange, but we need to not think globally, but locally,” agreed vice-principal A.M. Banerji.
Isn’t it possible to do both? With its massive funding of education and vocational training, the government’s heart and purse appear to be in the right place. But massive poverty and underemployment—against the backdrop of a private sector begging for qualified applicants—force us to first revise the calculus of how we learn, what we learn and why we learn it.
After my day at the polytechnic, I headed for the labour conference, listening to a panel on how other countries have built and repaired their workforces. Envy filled me as slide after slide showed alliances among schools, the private sector and the government. The success stories offered training early, often and repeatedly. In Korea, a sound vocational policy helped per capita income double decade to decade.
Here, the 11th Plan’s spending must inspire Indians to embrace more than degrees or skills—but true lifelong learning.
(Your comments are welcome at widerangle@livemint.com)
Does work make you sick?
wider angle
Besides colds, coughs and fevers, another queasy state is making the rounds this week: the dilemma of whether or not to call in sick.
It’s a tricky thing, this sick leave concept. It ranks up there with the un-wired holiday: no laptop, no mobile, no BlackBerry.
Yeah, right. Who’s taken one of those lately?
So on the one hand, there’s your health. Your resistance has been shot by too many meals out, too much travel, long hours at the office, little sleep and lots of exposure to unsavoury elements that breed infection. (As you read this, New Delhi’s mercury has been inching ever closer to zero.)
And then…there’s your job. In this Indian economy marked by harried, hurried, haphazard growth, your presence will not only be missed, but the absence dissected and scrutinized. You are necessary and instrumental to the organization’s growth. Your scheduled presentation is key to the company’s survival. Your employer, if successful, could emerge an industry leader and mark India’s entry to the big leagues.
Suddenly, your pesky cough stands in the way of the nation’s emergence as a global superpower.
Even workers who claim to toil for the most lenient and family-friendly of employers say they feel sheepish calling in sick because their supervisors make them feel bad about it: “Sometimes they do go overboard in criticizing you, even if you’re genuinely unwell, because they are understaffed,” said one lawyer in Mumbai who requested anonymity in exchange for honesty. “Fair enough, but there are many days where you sit around doing nothing waiting for the clock to strike 7.”
But who, I wonder, is sitting around doing nothing these days? If that’s the case, perhaps the persistent requests for sick days from the same employees over and over are a sign of something else. Just what is it about their occasional sniffle that makes them call in sick? This is supposed to be the most exciting economy on the planet—aren’t workers so eager to wake up every morning and help build a new India?
Human resources consultant Jyotika Dhawan says organizations noting a lot of sick time being exhausted need to take a close look at why: “Many employees ‘take a sickie’ because their morale is low and they just don’t like or can’t do their work,” said the director of Helix-HR in New Delhi. “When a productive employee starts turning in mediocre work…lateness, leaving on the dot, leaving work early, prolonged breaks and increasing absences are the most common actions of burned-out employees.”
In this case, the younger age and relative immaturity of the Indian workforce can be a contributing factor to the lack of motivation. After all, managers here might not have yet mastered the art of inspiring people to come to work day in and day out…
“Indians,” one American chief executive of a software company pronounced to me recently, “get more tummy aches than any other nation. Why do they call out sick so much?”
There’re legitimate reasons, of course. Poor hygiene conditions and unsafe water come to mind. (Note to office managers: If you want to keep your staff healthy, maybe it’s time to revisit the stream of brown stuff coming out of the water cooler.)
Some managers I spoke with cite employees who call in sick, but try to win brownie points by checking the occasional email. Employees, of course, have their right to sick leave, but their half-hearted attempts to work might result in more harm than good; the same can be said for those heroes who try to come in and sniffle their way through client meetings—and infect the rest of us, perpetuating the cycle.
Taking a sick day also helps deepen the divide between those ever-warring factions at work: the haves and have-nots. Not in terms of money, but kids and spouses, of course.
“Sick leave is actually supposed to be taken for being ill themselves,” observed Vipul Bondal, who works in public relations. “Relatives/spouse/kids being unwell does not count as a reason.”
Counterpoint: “Most people do call in to say that they themselves are ‘sick’ because it is deemed unmanly (and hence, unprofessional) to stay away from work to look after your sick child/spouse,” says Suchismita Bhaumik, a working mother in Mumbai.
Honesty, they say, is the best policy—but seems rarely followed when it comes to illness; how else to explain the sudden spurt in time off requested towards the end of the year at companies where such leave doesn’t roll over.
One exception came in this gem forwarded to me: an employee’s text message to his team leader. “I’m not coming in to office today because I’m not well. Please don’t call me as I will be attending my sister-in-law’s wedding.”
Now that kind of honesty, I am sure, made his manager sick.
Besides colds, coughs and fevers, another queasy state is making the rounds this week: the dilemma of whether or not to call in sick.
It’s a tricky thing, this sick leave concept. It ranks up there with the un-wired holiday: no laptop, no mobile, no BlackBerry.
Yeah, right. Who’s taken one of those lately?
So on the one hand, there’s your health. Your resistance has been shot by too many meals out, too much travel, long hours at the office, little sleep and lots of exposure to unsavoury elements that breed infection. (As you read this, New Delhi’s mercury has been inching ever closer to zero.)
And then…there’s your job. In this Indian economy marked by harried, hurried, haphazard growth, your presence will not only be missed, but the absence dissected and scrutinized. You are necessary and instrumental to the organization’s growth. Your scheduled presentation is key to the company’s survival. Your employer, if successful, could emerge an industry leader and mark India’s entry to the big leagues.
Suddenly, your pesky cough stands in the way of the nation’s emergence as a global superpower.
Even workers who claim to toil for the most lenient and family-friendly of employers say they feel sheepish calling in sick because their supervisors make them feel bad about it: “Sometimes they do go overboard in criticizing you, even if you’re genuinely unwell, because they are understaffed,” said one lawyer in Mumbai who requested anonymity in exchange for honesty. “Fair enough, but there are many days where you sit around doing nothing waiting for the clock to strike 7.”
But who, I wonder, is sitting around doing nothing these days? If that’s the case, perhaps the persistent requests for sick days from the same employees over and over are a sign of something else. Just what is it about their occasional sniffle that makes them call in sick? This is supposed to be the most exciting economy on the planet—aren’t workers so eager to wake up every morning and help build a new India?
Human resources consultant Jyotika Dhawan says organizations noting a lot of sick time being exhausted need to take a close look at why: “Many employees ‘take a sickie’ because their morale is low and they just don’t like or can’t do their work,” said the director of Helix-HR in New Delhi. “When a productive employee starts turning in mediocre work…lateness, leaving on the dot, leaving work early, prolonged breaks and increasing absences are the most common actions of burned-out employees.”
In this case, the younger age and relative immaturity of the Indian workforce can be a contributing factor to the lack of motivation. After all, managers here might not have yet mastered the art of inspiring people to come to work day in and day out…
“Indians,” one American chief executive of a software company pronounced to me recently, “get more tummy aches than any other nation. Why do they call out sick so much?”
There’re legitimate reasons, of course. Poor hygiene conditions and unsafe water come to mind. (Note to office managers: If you want to keep your staff healthy, maybe it’s time to revisit the stream of brown stuff coming out of the water cooler.)
Some managers I spoke with cite employees who call in sick, but try to win brownie points by checking the occasional email. Employees, of course, have their right to sick leave, but their half-hearted attempts to work might result in more harm than good; the same can be said for those heroes who try to come in and sniffle their way through client meetings—and infect the rest of us, perpetuating the cycle.
Taking a sick day also helps deepen the divide between those ever-warring factions at work: the haves and have-nots. Not in terms of money, but kids and spouses, of course.
“Sick leave is actually supposed to be taken for being ill themselves,” observed Vipul Bondal, who works in public relations. “Relatives/spouse/kids being unwell does not count as a reason.”
Counterpoint: “Most people do call in to say that they themselves are ‘sick’ because it is deemed unmanly (and hence, unprofessional) to stay away from work to look after your sick child/spouse,” says Suchismita Bhaumik, a working mother in Mumbai.
Honesty, they say, is the best policy—but seems rarely followed when it comes to illness; how else to explain the sudden spurt in time off requested towards the end of the year at companies where such leave doesn’t roll over.
One exception came in this gem forwarded to me: an employee’s text message to his team leader. “I’m not coming in to office today because I’m not well. Please don’t call me as I will be attending my sister-in-law’s wedding.”
Now that kind of honesty, I am sure, made his manager sick.
Cover thy neighbour's pay
So let’s say you’re holding the lofty title of deputy senior associate manager and she’s a deputy senior associate manager. She’s in her early 30s. You’re in your early 30s. You oversee four people. She oversees four people. She went to one campus of the Indian Institutes of Management. You went to another.
Should the salaries be the same or different?
In these times of attrition, salary hikes and fast promotions, the answer is not so clear. Chances are, the last person to be hired is making quite a bit more; such is the nature and reality of pay increases in a candidates’ market.
While compensation has completely changed, one thing sadly hasn’t: People at work still talk about how much they make. So, salary looms like the big elephant in the office that everyone knows about and discusses secretly among themselves. Not exactly conducive to creating a harmonious work environment.
Workers themselves are torn on just what is fair. Consider one graphic designer in Mumbai who recently came to discover that someone with his same title—but many years senior —earns about the same.
“He is about twice more experienced than me in terms of the number of years he’s put in,” he said. “I have come to know that his salary and mine are not very different.”
Was he proud of being at the top of his industry’s game? Not really, he said, sounding rather depressed. He felt like he didn’t have a whole lot to look forward to if he stayed on in the company.
“Large companies do underpay people, which is not fair,” he said. “That’s the reason people never wait for increments and prefer to move on for better ‘jumps’.”
Indeed, even as I think young workers are doing themselves the greatest of career disservices as they jump from job to job, a look at the disparities in salary yields the fact that they often have little choice. In some ways, that’s also why the culture of discussing numbers—in addition to the one upmanship rampant in corporate India—persists.
Is equal compensation for equal work possible? No, because there’s no such thing as equal work.
In the words of one manager, “Communism and socialist view on salary does not work in India. Even employees…will want their ‘fair’ share more than others in their peer group.”
Salary is a complicated formula, or perhaps not a formula at all. Managers varied when I asked how they arrived at salaries, but cited one common parameter—what someone was earning before. And even as the guy with the most tenure at a company becomes team leader first, he’s often viewed with a certain scepticism, as though he remains because no other options exist.
“Whenever you have to go out and hire individuals, you end up providing a 30-40% increase to make the move competitive. Many individuals, irrespective of proficiency, end up landing at the higher end of the compensation band,” said Sandeep Chaudhary, a business consulting leader at Hewitt in Mumbai.
His solution is actually not to throw money at good people but reward them with perks and responsibility. “What organizations don’t do a great job of is communicating rewards. It is the least understood topic by business managers today,” he said.
The worst offenders, the managers I spoke to largely agreed, are human resources managers who gossip about the different compensation bands among employees. To combat this, employers should drive home the negative impact this can have on a workplace, even as they assure employees transparency in the areas it can be offered—opportunities, training, job postings and other incentives.
“People do compare and share notes on their packages. I am sickened by it as an employer, but employees relish in it. Smart ones know it hurts them more in the long run. Show-offs don’t last long,” said Prashanth V. Boccasam, the head of Pune-based Approva Corp., a firm that makes auditing software.
The truth is that no two workers are created the same—whether they make widgets or make software. As India becomes a major player in the global economy, two things must happen to ensure our treatment of our own workers is just. First, they need to be paid fairly to begin with. That means looking at the company’s bottom line and ensuring there’s some justifiable division of wealth, and that per employee spending remains higher than peer firms—and salary represents one part of that spending. More importantly, workers need to be given an incentive to stay beyond money, even as they understand why they earn what they do. Underperformers are not underpaid.
Offer fair salaries, responsibility and opportunities to shine—and the work ethic should rise proportionately. The stellar output alone should silence those who complain.
Should the salaries be the same or different?
In these times of attrition, salary hikes and fast promotions, the answer is not so clear. Chances are, the last person to be hired is making quite a bit more; such is the nature and reality of pay increases in a candidates’ market.
While compensation has completely changed, one thing sadly hasn’t: People at work still talk about how much they make. So, salary looms like the big elephant in the office that everyone knows about and discusses secretly among themselves. Not exactly conducive to creating a harmonious work environment.
Workers themselves are torn on just what is fair. Consider one graphic designer in Mumbai who recently came to discover that someone with his same title—but many years senior —earns about the same.
“He is about twice more experienced than me in terms of the number of years he’s put in,” he said. “I have come to know that his salary and mine are not very different.”
Was he proud of being at the top of his industry’s game? Not really, he said, sounding rather depressed. He felt like he didn’t have a whole lot to look forward to if he stayed on in the company.
“Large companies do underpay people, which is not fair,” he said. “That’s the reason people never wait for increments and prefer to move on for better ‘jumps’.”
Indeed, even as I think young workers are doing themselves the greatest of career disservices as they jump from job to job, a look at the disparities in salary yields the fact that they often have little choice. In some ways, that’s also why the culture of discussing numbers—in addition to the one upmanship rampant in corporate India—persists.
Is equal compensation for equal work possible? No, because there’s no such thing as equal work.
In the words of one manager, “Communism and socialist view on salary does not work in India. Even employees…will want their ‘fair’ share more than others in their peer group.”
Salary is a complicated formula, or perhaps not a formula at all. Managers varied when I asked how they arrived at salaries, but cited one common parameter—what someone was earning before. And even as the guy with the most tenure at a company becomes team leader first, he’s often viewed with a certain scepticism, as though he remains because no other options exist.
“Whenever you have to go out and hire individuals, you end up providing a 30-40% increase to make the move competitive. Many individuals, irrespective of proficiency, end up landing at the higher end of the compensation band,” said Sandeep Chaudhary, a business consulting leader at Hewitt in Mumbai.
His solution is actually not to throw money at good people but reward them with perks and responsibility. “What organizations don’t do a great job of is communicating rewards. It is the least understood topic by business managers today,” he said.
The worst offenders, the managers I spoke to largely agreed, are human resources managers who gossip about the different compensation bands among employees. To combat this, employers should drive home the negative impact this can have on a workplace, even as they assure employees transparency in the areas it can be offered—opportunities, training, job postings and other incentives.
“People do compare and share notes on their packages. I am sickened by it as an employer, but employees relish in it. Smart ones know it hurts them more in the long run. Show-offs don’t last long,” said Prashanth V. Boccasam, the head of Pune-based Approva Corp., a firm that makes auditing software.
The truth is that no two workers are created the same—whether they make widgets or make software. As India becomes a major player in the global economy, two things must happen to ensure our treatment of our own workers is just. First, they need to be paid fairly to begin with. That means looking at the company’s bottom line and ensuring there’s some justifiable division of wealth, and that per employee spending remains higher than peer firms—and salary represents one part of that spending. More importantly, workers need to be given an incentive to stay beyond money, even as they understand why they earn what they do. Underperformers are not underpaid.
Offer fair salaries, responsibility and opportunities to shine—and the work ethic should rise proportionately. The stellar output alone should silence those who complain.
No longer kissing cousins
Wider Angle | S.Mitra Kalita
http://www.livemint.com/Articles/2008/01/10231952/No-longer-kissing-cousins.html
We four NRIs (non-resident Indians) sat around the table, dipping pita into hummus, sipping sangria, talking Hillary Clinton vs Barack Obama.
Once our visitors grew comfortable, their real views tumbled out: “Everyone here just wants to hustle you,” said one woman in town for business.
“Nobody in this country wants to do anything for the sheer love of it,” said another, here to organize a music festival, unable to find free performers.
“Well, not really,” I retorted. “You can’t blame people for wanting to make their share if you’re coming in to profit off their labour.”
My husband nudged me. I shut up. The conversation topic changed.
That night, in the safety and honesty of bed, I said what I really meant: “NRIs can be so annoying. All they do is complain about India. Why do they even come?”
The obviously hypocritical question (my family and I moved here last year after lifetimes in the US) remained with me, especially this week as the biggest NRI jamboree unfolded yet again in New Delhi, and thousands of the diaspora were heralded for doing India proud. In panel discussion after panel discussion, delegates attempted a delicate balancing act between decrying the state of Indian poverty, bureaucracy, infrastructure and celebrating Indian culture, values, heritage.
This was my second Pravasi Bharatiya Divas, as the event is known. The first time I attended, in 2004, I was promoting a book I had just written on Indian immigration to the US. Back then, I was an NRI in every definition of the acronym: Non-Resident Indian, Not Really Indian, Non Reliable Indian, Know It All. Pictures of me ran on the front pages of Indian newspapers. I made some appearances on television. When I headed to my parents’ native Assam a few days later, I again was garlanded and applauded.
Between then and now, so much has changed—namely me and India’s attitudes towards people like me.
In a satirical essay in Outlook magazine last month, historian and writer Ramachandra Guha labelled winter the season of the “NRI puja”. He wrote, “When these family NRIs appear, we, mere permanent residents, are obliged to pay homage, altering our own lives and work schedules to do so. It is striking how naturally we slip into the role of worshippers; they, as naturally, into the role of the worshipped.”
Even The Patna Daily has gotten in on the NRI bashing: “Now, if you get a tourist visa and come to America for four months, you are an NRI. If you went to Singapore on a business trip, you immediately acquire the status of an NRI. Oh yeah, let’s not forget about your trip to Nepal.”
An excerpt from a website offering advice to someone about to move to India: “As long as you’re open and don’t show a lot of that ‘Indo-American’ attitude (trust me, a lot of NRIs do it and its [sic] annoying enough to make anyone scream)…”
This time at the conference I was thankfully barely recognized. Now feeling quite at home in India, I looked around and wondered if those gathered really pondered free trade agreements and the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act. (Note to next year’s organizers, most of this crowd worries more about teaching their children Bharatanatyam or setting up temples that can rival Akshardham and Tirupati.)
As the man at the dais began his talk on infrastructure with the words, “We became an independent nation in 1947,” I rolled my eyes and prepared to leave. But first, I turned to the random guy sitting next to me:
“Why did you come here?”
“This is my first time in India,” Dhurmanund Gobin said, smiling. “I am from Mauritius.”
He told me he had just turned 58 that day and pulled out his national identity card to prove it. An identity that showed him belonging elsewhere.
“Our forefathers were very poor people but they worked hard so we could get an education. And they never let us forget India. …When I landed here,” he said, “I felt like I am in my true land.”
I thought of the international arrivals terminal at the airport, especially between the 10pm and 2am. Each time, the crowds gathered to greet NRIs feels thinner and thinner. But the joy on the faces of the greeted and the greeters hasn’t changed much.
A man like Gobind, of course, wouldn’t have family waiting for him; he doesn’t know exactly where in Bihar his grandfather left. And so he showed up to this conference, hoping to belong as he heard how he too could invest in roads and bridges.
His search for identity is one I imagine many global Indians—here, there, everywhere and nowhere—share. This recent tide of NRI bashing feels like an overdue, inevitable threshold. On the other side, we might shed the useless labels and accept and embrace our global, fluid, confused identities. That would be worth celebrating.
http://www.livemint.com/Articles/2008/01/10231952/No-longer-kissing-cousins.html
We four NRIs (non-resident Indians) sat around the table, dipping pita into hummus, sipping sangria, talking Hillary Clinton vs Barack Obama.
Once our visitors grew comfortable, their real views tumbled out: “Everyone here just wants to hustle you,” said one woman in town for business.
“Nobody in this country wants to do anything for the sheer love of it,” said another, here to organize a music festival, unable to find free performers.
“Well, not really,” I retorted. “You can’t blame people for wanting to make their share if you’re coming in to profit off their labour.”
My husband nudged me. I shut up. The conversation topic changed.
That night, in the safety and honesty of bed, I said what I really meant: “NRIs can be so annoying. All they do is complain about India. Why do they even come?”
The obviously hypocritical question (my family and I moved here last year after lifetimes in the US) remained with me, especially this week as the biggest NRI jamboree unfolded yet again in New Delhi, and thousands of the diaspora were heralded for doing India proud. In panel discussion after panel discussion, delegates attempted a delicate balancing act between decrying the state of Indian poverty, bureaucracy, infrastructure and celebrating Indian culture, values, heritage.
This was my second Pravasi Bharatiya Divas, as the event is known. The first time I attended, in 2004, I was promoting a book I had just written on Indian immigration to the US. Back then, I was an NRI in every definition of the acronym: Non-Resident Indian, Not Really Indian, Non Reliable Indian, Know It All. Pictures of me ran on the front pages of Indian newspapers. I made some appearances on television. When I headed to my parents’ native Assam a few days later, I again was garlanded and applauded.
Between then and now, so much has changed—namely me and India’s attitudes towards people like me.
In a satirical essay in Outlook magazine last month, historian and writer Ramachandra Guha labelled winter the season of the “NRI puja”. He wrote, “When these family NRIs appear, we, mere permanent residents, are obliged to pay homage, altering our own lives and work schedules to do so. It is striking how naturally we slip into the role of worshippers; they, as naturally, into the role of the worshipped.”
Even The Patna Daily has gotten in on the NRI bashing: “Now, if you get a tourist visa and come to America for four months, you are an NRI. If you went to Singapore on a business trip, you immediately acquire the status of an NRI. Oh yeah, let’s not forget about your trip to Nepal.”
An excerpt from a website offering advice to someone about to move to India: “As long as you’re open and don’t show a lot of that ‘Indo-American’ attitude (trust me, a lot of NRIs do it and its [sic] annoying enough to make anyone scream)…”
This time at the conference I was thankfully barely recognized. Now feeling quite at home in India, I looked around and wondered if those gathered really pondered free trade agreements and the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act. (Note to next year’s organizers, most of this crowd worries more about teaching their children Bharatanatyam or setting up temples that can rival Akshardham and Tirupati.)
As the man at the dais began his talk on infrastructure with the words, “We became an independent nation in 1947,” I rolled my eyes and prepared to leave. But first, I turned to the random guy sitting next to me:
“Why did you come here?”
“This is my first time in India,” Dhurmanund Gobin said, smiling. “I am from Mauritius.”
He told me he had just turned 58 that day and pulled out his national identity card to prove it. An identity that showed him belonging elsewhere.
“Our forefathers were very poor people but they worked hard so we could get an education. And they never let us forget India. …When I landed here,” he said, “I felt like I am in my true land.”
I thought of the international arrivals terminal at the airport, especially between the 10pm and 2am. Each time, the crowds gathered to greet NRIs feels thinner and thinner. But the joy on the faces of the greeted and the greeters hasn’t changed much.
A man like Gobind, of course, wouldn’t have family waiting for him; he doesn’t know exactly where in Bihar his grandfather left. And so he showed up to this conference, hoping to belong as he heard how he too could invest in roads and bridges.
His search for identity is one I imagine many global Indians—here, there, everywhere and nowhere—share. This recent tide of NRI bashing feels like an overdue, inevitable threshold. On the other side, we might shed the useless labels and accept and embrace our global, fluid, confused identities. That would be worth celebrating.
No longer kissing cousins
Wider Angle | S.Mitra Kalita
http://www.livemint.com/Articles/2008/01/10231952/No-longer-kissing-cousins.html
Stop burping. Only disclose your salary to your mother. Don’t tell your colleagues they are fat, dark or have bad skin.
Finally, a book has crossed my desk —issued by a company, no less—that is actually blunt, useful and relevant, even necessary, for the modern Indian workplace.
In fact, the long list on page 33 of InCorporate: Communication etiquette for today’s workplace makes abundantly clear why such rules are needed. In a section devoted to the art of making small talk, the book advises Indians which topics to avoid.
Consider the banned: politics and religion, personal health problems or misfortune; stories and jokes of questionable taste; remarks about ethnic, racial or gender groups; gossip and hearsay; controversial issues such as abortion; intimate details about yourself or others; one’s income or the price of personal things.
If your family is anything like mine, we breeze through most of those subjects by morning tea.
And so this 103-page guide, published by Standard Chartered’s business processing unit Scope International Pvt. Ltd, offers insight into why assimilation can be so tough for new entrants to the workforce.
Over the last year, we officially became a nation obsessed with “soft skills”. Company after company decries the sorry state of the Indian education system, as well as the lack of exposure of new hires from lower-rung institutes and second-tier towns. The nature of networking and interaction —in and out of the office, the personal becoming professional—is changing rapidly. The chap who doesn’t remember which knife butters his bread warrants forgiveness—and instruction.
Scope International released the book just about one year ago, a part of its desire to give new hires “a strong foundation for stepping into the demanding lanes of corporate life,” writes Scope chief executive Sreeram Iyer in his introduction.
Noteworthy is that little of the book dwells on Scope’s internal ethos or systems. These days, far too many human resources managers seem stuck in the yesteryear of training for lifelong service to one employer or orientations about the mundane: Please download all 56 expense forms off our intranet. The canteen serves vegetarian cuisine on Tuesdays. All leave requests must be cc-ed to the new department of authorized absences.
So, Scope’s straight talk is refreshing. “…be a ‘solution provider’ rather than a ‘reason-giver’,” it advises. Do not instantly hit reply all on emails. Avoid composing emails when emotional or angry. Do not blow noses into cloth napkins; they are not handkerchiefs.
The cellphone etiquette section ought to be adopted by every office and posted as mission statement: Turn phones off during meetings. Avoid long songs as ring tones. (My addendum: Take the device with you as you roam the office or the bathroom.)
Scope spokesperson Shashi Ravichandran notes a difference among workers. “Soft skills are one such area which builds their capability and confidence and grooms potential managers and leaders,” she said. “It helps their development by enabling them to communicate effectively and adapt to multi-cultural landscapes.”
And yet as I came to certain commandments, such as “Thou shalt not eat with thy fingers” or “Thou shall respect two feet of personal space,” I began to wonder if what is becoming accepted as workplace etiquette is really a misnomer for Western etiquette.
What prevents us from dipping into the fish curry or mutton biryani with our hands because, practically speaking, that really is the best way to debone, eat and enjoy? And is it really rude to slip into mother tongues when the urge strikes? Can we see the silver lining in some elements of our unique Indian behaviours; bluntness as a plus point, perhaps?
The answer is ultimately dictated not by cultural supremacy but business. If a client is Western, then leave the Tamil behind and just bring on circuitous conversations about the weather. But if a client is Indian, is there a need to lose ourselves?
Ravichandran assured me Scope doesn’t want “change in our personal traits which make us stand apart as individuals, but change in our style of communication and an international approach to work practices.”
If 2007 wound down with a rebuffed Ratan Tata demanding respect and an apology from Orient-Express (with a name like that, sensitivity seems the last thing to expect), let this year begin as the one where office integration works both ways, or perhaps several. It’s not a bad idea for educational institutes to hand out new rules for the workplace with diplomas, and for companies to do so along with offer letters—with the caveat that exceptions must exist in a world trying to understand India as much as the reverse.
But East or West, the verdict on Kajra Re as ring tone is clear. It is globally accepted...as annoying.
Your comments are welcome at widerangle@livemint.com
http://www.livemint.com/Articles/2008/01/10231952/No-longer-kissing-cousins.html
Stop burping. Only disclose your salary to your mother. Don’t tell your colleagues they are fat, dark or have bad skin.
Finally, a book has crossed my desk —issued by a company, no less—that is actually blunt, useful and relevant, even necessary, for the modern Indian workplace.
In fact, the long list on page 33 of InCorporate: Communication etiquette for today’s workplace makes abundantly clear why such rules are needed. In a section devoted to the art of making small talk, the book advises Indians which topics to avoid.
Consider the banned: politics and religion, personal health problems or misfortune; stories and jokes of questionable taste; remarks about ethnic, racial or gender groups; gossip and hearsay; controversial issues such as abortion; intimate details about yourself or others; one’s income or the price of personal things.
If your family is anything like mine, we breeze through most of those subjects by morning tea.
And so this 103-page guide, published by Standard Chartered’s business processing unit Scope International Pvt. Ltd, offers insight into why assimilation can be so tough for new entrants to the workforce.
Over the last year, we officially became a nation obsessed with “soft skills”. Company after company decries the sorry state of the Indian education system, as well as the lack of exposure of new hires from lower-rung institutes and second-tier towns. The nature of networking and interaction —in and out of the office, the personal becoming professional—is changing rapidly. The chap who doesn’t remember which knife butters his bread warrants forgiveness—and instruction.
Scope International released the book just about one year ago, a part of its desire to give new hires “a strong foundation for stepping into the demanding lanes of corporate life,” writes Scope chief executive Sreeram Iyer in his introduction.
Noteworthy is that little of the book dwells on Scope’s internal ethos or systems. These days, far too many human resources managers seem stuck in the yesteryear of training for lifelong service to one employer or orientations about the mundane: Please download all 56 expense forms off our intranet. The canteen serves vegetarian cuisine on Tuesdays. All leave requests must be cc-ed to the new department of authorized absences.
So, Scope’s straight talk is refreshing. “…be a ‘solution provider’ rather than a ‘reason-giver’,” it advises. Do not instantly hit reply all on emails. Avoid composing emails when emotional or angry. Do not blow noses into cloth napkins; they are not handkerchiefs.
The cellphone etiquette section ought to be adopted by every office and posted as mission statement: Turn phones off during meetings. Avoid long songs as ring tones. (My addendum: Take the device with you as you roam the office or the bathroom.)
Scope spokesperson Shashi Ravichandran notes a difference among workers. “Soft skills are one such area which builds their capability and confidence and grooms potential managers and leaders,” she said. “It helps their development by enabling them to communicate effectively and adapt to multi-cultural landscapes.”
And yet as I came to certain commandments, such as “Thou shalt not eat with thy fingers” or “Thou shall respect two feet of personal space,” I began to wonder if what is becoming accepted as workplace etiquette is really a misnomer for Western etiquette.
What prevents us from dipping into the fish curry or mutton biryani with our hands because, practically speaking, that really is the best way to debone, eat and enjoy? And is it really rude to slip into mother tongues when the urge strikes? Can we see the silver lining in some elements of our unique Indian behaviours; bluntness as a plus point, perhaps?
The answer is ultimately dictated not by cultural supremacy but business. If a client is Western, then leave the Tamil behind and just bring on circuitous conversations about the weather. But if a client is Indian, is there a need to lose ourselves?
Ravichandran assured me Scope doesn’t want “change in our personal traits which make us stand apart as individuals, but change in our style of communication and an international approach to work practices.”
If 2007 wound down with a rebuffed Ratan Tata demanding respect and an apology from Orient-Express (with a name like that, sensitivity seems the last thing to expect), let this year begin as the one where office integration works both ways, or perhaps several. It’s not a bad idea for educational institutes to hand out new rules for the workplace with diplomas, and for companies to do so along with offer letters—with the caveat that exceptions must exist in a world trying to understand India as much as the reverse.
But East or West, the verdict on Kajra Re as ring tone is clear. It is globally accepted...as annoying.
Your comments are welcome at widerangle@livemint.com
Fork or fingers?
http://www.livemint.com/Articles/2008/01/03231601/To-use-a-fork-or-fingers.html
Wider Angle | S.Mitra Kalita
Stop burping. Only disclose your salary to your mother. Don’t tell your colleagues they are fat, dark or have bad skin.
Finally, a book has crossed my desk —issued by a company, no less—that is actually blunt, useful and relevant, even necessary, for the modern Indian workplace.
In fact, the long list on page 33 of InCorporate: Communication etiquette for today’s workplace makes abundantly clear why such rules are needed. In a section devoted to the art of making small talk, the book advises Indians which topics to avoid.
Consider the banned: politics and religion, personal health problems or misfortune; stories and jokes of questionable taste; remarks about ethnic, racial or gender groups; gossip and hearsay; controversial issues such as abortion; intimate details about yourself or others; one’s income or the price of personal things.
If your family is anything like mine, we breeze through most of those subjects by morning tea.
And so this 103-page guide, published by Standard Chartered’s business processing unit Scope International Pvt. Ltd, offers insight into why assimilation can be so tough for new entrants to the workforce.
Over the last year, we officially became a nation obsessed with “soft skills”. Company after company decries the sorry state of the Indian education system, as well as the lack of exposure of new hires from lower-rung institutes and second-tier towns. The nature of networking and interaction —in and out of the office, the personal becoming professional—is changing rapidly. The chap who doesn’t remember which knife butters his bread warrants forgiveness—and instruction.
Scope International released the book just about one year ago, a part of its desire to give new hires “a strong foundation for stepping into the demanding lanes of corporate life,” writes Scope chief executive Sreeram Iyer in his introduction.
Noteworthy is that little of the book dwells on Scope’s internal ethos or systems. These days, far too many human resources managers seem stuck in the yesteryear of training for lifelong service to one employer or orientations about the mundane: Please download all 56 expense forms off our intranet. The canteen serves vegetarian cuisine on Tuesdays. All leave requests must be cc-ed to the new department of authorized absences.
So, Scope’s straight talk is refreshing. “…be a ‘solution provider’ rather than a ‘reason-giver’,” it advises. Do not instantly hit reply all on emails. Avoid composing emails when emotional or angry. Do not blow noses into cloth napkins; they are not handkerchiefs.
The cellphone etiquette section ought to be adopted by every office and posted as mission statement: Turn phones off during meetings. Avoid long songs as ring tones. (My addendum: Take the device with you as you roam the office or the bathroom.)
Scope spokesperson Shashi Ravichandran notes a difference among workers. “Soft skills are one such area which builds their capability and confidence and grooms potential managers and leaders,” she said. “It helps their development by enabling them to communicate effectively and adapt to multi-cultural landscapes.”
And yet as I came to certain commandments, such as “Thou shalt not eat with thy fingers” or “Thou shall respect two feet of personal space,” I began to wonder if what is becoming accepted as workplace etiquette is really a misnomer for Western etiquette.
What prevents us from dipping into the fish curry or mutton biryani with our hands because, practically speaking, that really is the best way to debone, eat and enjoy? And is it really rude to slip into mother tongues when the urge strikes? Can we see the silver lining in some elements of our unique Indian behaviours; bluntness as a plus point, perhaps?
The answer is ultimately dictated not by cultural supremacy but business. If a client is Western, then leave the Tamil behind and just bring on circuitous conversations about the weather. But if a client is Indian, is there a need to lose ourselves?
Ravichandran assured me Scope doesn’t want “change in our personal traits which make us stand apart as individuals, but change in our style of communication and an international approach to work practices.”
If 2007 wound down with a rebuffed Ratan Tata demanding respect and an apology from Orient-Express (with a name like that, sensitivity seems the last thing to expect), let this year begin as the one where office integration works both ways, or perhaps several. It’s not a bad idea for educational institutes to hand out new rules for the workplace with diplomas, and for companies to do so along with offer letters—with the caveat that exceptions must exist in a world trying to understand India as much as the reverse.
But East or West, the verdict on Kajra Re as ring tone is clear. It is globally accepted...as annoying.
Your comments are welcome at widerangle@livemint.com
Wider Angle | S.Mitra Kalita
Stop burping. Only disclose your salary to your mother. Don’t tell your colleagues they are fat, dark or have bad skin.
Finally, a book has crossed my desk —issued by a company, no less—that is actually blunt, useful and relevant, even necessary, for the modern Indian workplace.
In fact, the long list on page 33 of InCorporate: Communication etiquette for today’s workplace makes abundantly clear why such rules are needed. In a section devoted to the art of making small talk, the book advises Indians which topics to avoid.
Consider the banned: politics and religion, personal health problems or misfortune; stories and jokes of questionable taste; remarks about ethnic, racial or gender groups; gossip and hearsay; controversial issues such as abortion; intimate details about yourself or others; one’s income or the price of personal things.
If your family is anything like mine, we breeze through most of those subjects by morning tea.
And so this 103-page guide, published by Standard Chartered’s business processing unit Scope International Pvt. Ltd, offers insight into why assimilation can be so tough for new entrants to the workforce.
Over the last year, we officially became a nation obsessed with “soft skills”. Company after company decries the sorry state of the Indian education system, as well as the lack of exposure of new hires from lower-rung institutes and second-tier towns. The nature of networking and interaction —in and out of the office, the personal becoming professional—is changing rapidly. The chap who doesn’t remember which knife butters his bread warrants forgiveness—and instruction.
Scope International released the book just about one year ago, a part of its desire to give new hires “a strong foundation for stepping into the demanding lanes of corporate life,” writes Scope chief executive Sreeram Iyer in his introduction.
Noteworthy is that little of the book dwells on Scope’s internal ethos or systems. These days, far too many human resources managers seem stuck in the yesteryear of training for lifelong service to one employer or orientations about the mundane: Please download all 56 expense forms off our intranet. The canteen serves vegetarian cuisine on Tuesdays. All leave requests must be cc-ed to the new department of authorized absences.
So, Scope’s straight talk is refreshing. “…be a ‘solution provider’ rather than a ‘reason-giver’,” it advises. Do not instantly hit reply all on emails. Avoid composing emails when emotional or angry. Do not blow noses into cloth napkins; they are not handkerchiefs.
The cellphone etiquette section ought to be adopted by every office and posted as mission statement: Turn phones off during meetings. Avoid long songs as ring tones. (My addendum: Take the device with you as you roam the office or the bathroom.)
Scope spokesperson Shashi Ravichandran notes a difference among workers. “Soft skills are one such area which builds their capability and confidence and grooms potential managers and leaders,” she said. “It helps their development by enabling them to communicate effectively and adapt to multi-cultural landscapes.”
And yet as I came to certain commandments, such as “Thou shalt not eat with thy fingers” or “Thou shall respect two feet of personal space,” I began to wonder if what is becoming accepted as workplace etiquette is really a misnomer for Western etiquette.
What prevents us from dipping into the fish curry or mutton biryani with our hands because, practically speaking, that really is the best way to debone, eat and enjoy? And is it really rude to slip into mother tongues when the urge strikes? Can we see the silver lining in some elements of our unique Indian behaviours; bluntness as a plus point, perhaps?
The answer is ultimately dictated not by cultural supremacy but business. If a client is Western, then leave the Tamil behind and just bring on circuitous conversations about the weather. But if a client is Indian, is there a need to lose ourselves?
Ravichandran assured me Scope doesn’t want “change in our personal traits which make us stand apart as individuals, but change in our style of communication and an international approach to work practices.”
If 2007 wound down with a rebuffed Ratan Tata demanding respect and an apology from Orient-Express (with a name like that, sensitivity seems the last thing to expect), let this year begin as the one where office integration works both ways, or perhaps several. It’s not a bad idea for educational institutes to hand out new rules for the workplace with diplomas, and for companies to do so along with offer letters—with the caveat that exceptions must exist in a world trying to understand India as much as the reverse.
But East or West, the verdict on Kajra Re as ring tone is clear. It is globally accepted...as annoying.
Your comments are welcome at widerangle@livemint.com
Friday, December 28, 2007
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
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
Friday, December 21, 2007
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
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
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
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
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
Friday, December 7, 2007
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
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
http://www.livemint.com/2007/12/07003357/Out-of-the-closet.html
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)
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