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 Wider ANgle. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Wider ANgle. Show all posts
Thursday, June 19, 2008
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
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.
Get IIMs out of matchmaking
They are supposed to be the best and the brightest, the future business leaders of this booming nation that needed them ready yesterday. They attend classes that encourage innovation, thinking outside the box, challenging convention.
Before taking on corporate India though, students at the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) need to apply their lessons a little closer to home. Job placements have been unfolding this week at several elite business schools. Like years past, a sea of stress and black suits marks both sides of the table.
Indeed, interviews should force preparation and cause some palpitation. But the placement process has evolved into a scramble for a certain “A” list on “Day Zero” with the crumbs left for companies deemed second-rate in the alphabet soup of IT (information technology) and FMCG (fast-moving consumer goods). The lousy feeling, of course, extends to the students who are interviewed by these once sunrise darlings of the placement process and so, their experience goes a little something like this:
“Investment banking represents a challenge and I love working with numbers and I aspire to go overseas.”
Rejection.
“Consulting plays to my greatest strength—strategizing and problem-solving. I love working with clients and building relationships quickly.”
Rejection.
“FMCG is booming. I have had many opportunities to go overseas, but home is where the action is… Patna to start, you say? I’d go there. Tier II towns represent our future.”
You get the picture. Suddenly, a large chunk of the batch has multiple personality disorder as they very horizontally hop among “verticals”.
In many ways, the placement process represents the culmination of what’s wrong with business schools today. Students don’t know what they want. Understandably. At IIM Ahmedabad, the class of 2008 consists of 43% freshers. At Harvard Business School, the same batch has an average four-and-a-half years of work experience.
While the premier Indian School of Business (ISB) and even the IIMs increasingly encourage applying with experience, the number of MBA aspirants whose exposure to the workplace amounts to visiting parents at the office is scary. Even that other brightest of the bright group—graduates of the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs)—fuels the trend by applying for IIM right after graduation. Work experience? A whopping month of internship.
Besides links with the private sector and superb infrastructure, a part of the reason for ISB’s success is that students do their best learning from each other. They can swap stories about dealing with difficult bosses, wooing international clients, and the pluses and minuses of certain sectors.
Sadly, ISB’s pioneering spirit falters when it comes to placements; its campus last month, according to observers, felt as much a circus of stress, tension and inadequate interviews as its government-run counterparts this week. Business schools also need to recognize that there is nothing wrong with less than 100% placement; graduates who take time to find their passion or dream job or start a business should be celebrated.
Besides candidates, employers also jockey for prime recruitment positions and try to strong-arm candidates into taking their offers. Obviously, the integrity of the recruitment process can help determine whether or not an offer is accepted. Why then are companies bad-mouthing other employers, forcing decisions to be made right away, even refusing to participate if they don’t obtain a Day Zero entrance? A lot of top business schools, in response, now have two Day Zeroes—mere semantics to assuage ego.
The American way is not necessarily the solution either. For example, I attended a government-run college and, despite a stellar education, can’t remember a thing the place did to help me get a job. My brother, alternatively, attended one of the Top 10 universities in the US and went through 40 interviews before choosing a gig. Neither scenario is ideal.
But to the US’ credit, in good economic times and bad, employers generally give coveted candidates time and space to make a decision. They bring them back to meet more people, tour the office, dine with immediate supervisors and future colleagues. It helps ferret out the candidates who are just GOP—good on paper. Any recruiter in India can regale you with tales of the surfeit of GOPs at the IIMs.
There is little reason for institutes to play the role of meddlesome matchmaker. Career centres, information sessions, advice on interviews, resumés, even wardrobe—all of those are still needed. But IIMs can best serve applicants and the private sector by staying out of the way. If students had to fend for themselves as adults and home in on goals and desired profile, they might focus less on the brand and salary—and more on the work.
Before taking on corporate India though, students at the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) need to apply their lessons a little closer to home. Job placements have been unfolding this week at several elite business schools. Like years past, a sea of stress and black suits marks both sides of the table.
Indeed, interviews should force preparation and cause some palpitation. But the placement process has evolved into a scramble for a certain “A” list on “Day Zero” with the crumbs left for companies deemed second-rate in the alphabet soup of IT (information technology) and FMCG (fast-moving consumer goods). The lousy feeling, of course, extends to the students who are interviewed by these once sunrise darlings of the placement process and so, their experience goes a little something like this:
“Investment banking represents a challenge and I love working with numbers and I aspire to go overseas.”
Rejection.
“Consulting plays to my greatest strength—strategizing and problem-solving. I love working with clients and building relationships quickly.”
Rejection.
“FMCG is booming. I have had many opportunities to go overseas, but home is where the action is… Patna to start, you say? I’d go there. Tier II towns represent our future.”
You get the picture. Suddenly, a large chunk of the batch has multiple personality disorder as they very horizontally hop among “verticals”.
In many ways, the placement process represents the culmination of what’s wrong with business schools today. Students don’t know what they want. Understandably. At IIM Ahmedabad, the class of 2008 consists of 43% freshers. At Harvard Business School, the same batch has an average four-and-a-half years of work experience.
While the premier Indian School of Business (ISB) and even the IIMs increasingly encourage applying with experience, the number of MBA aspirants whose exposure to the workplace amounts to visiting parents at the office is scary. Even that other brightest of the bright group—graduates of the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs)—fuels the trend by applying for IIM right after graduation. Work experience? A whopping month of internship.
Besides links with the private sector and superb infrastructure, a part of the reason for ISB’s success is that students do their best learning from each other. They can swap stories about dealing with difficult bosses, wooing international clients, and the pluses and minuses of certain sectors.
Sadly, ISB’s pioneering spirit falters when it comes to placements; its campus last month, according to observers, felt as much a circus of stress, tension and inadequate interviews as its government-run counterparts this week. Business schools also need to recognize that there is nothing wrong with less than 100% placement; graduates who take time to find their passion or dream job or start a business should be celebrated.
Besides candidates, employers also jockey for prime recruitment positions and try to strong-arm candidates into taking their offers. Obviously, the integrity of the recruitment process can help determine whether or not an offer is accepted. Why then are companies bad-mouthing other employers, forcing decisions to be made right away, even refusing to participate if they don’t obtain a Day Zero entrance? A lot of top business schools, in response, now have two Day Zeroes—mere semantics to assuage ego.
The American way is not necessarily the solution either. For example, I attended a government-run college and, despite a stellar education, can’t remember a thing the place did to help me get a job. My brother, alternatively, attended one of the Top 10 universities in the US and went through 40 interviews before choosing a gig. Neither scenario is ideal.
But to the US’ credit, in good economic times and bad, employers generally give coveted candidates time and space to make a decision. They bring them back to meet more people, tour the office, dine with immediate supervisors and future colleagues. It helps ferret out the candidates who are just GOP—good on paper. Any recruiter in India can regale you with tales of the surfeit of GOPs at the IIMs.
There is little reason for institutes to play the role of meddlesome matchmaker. Career centres, information sessions, advice on interviews, resumés, even wardrobe—all of those are still needed. But IIMs can best serve applicants and the private sector by staying out of the way. If students had to fend for themselves as adults and home in on goals and desired profile, they might focus less on the brand and salary—and more on the work.
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)
Friday, August 10, 2007
Black breeds green
http://www.livemint.com/2007/08/10002111/Black-money-breeds-green.html
Black money breeds green
My peers flush with cash inspire envy. What splits our worlds: a salary slip, lots of taxes and a little bit of integrity
Wider Angle | S.Mitra Kalita
I, too, would like some black money.
There, I said it.
Such a statement is not politically correct for people like me: advocates of honesty, integrity, transparency, doing the right thing. But lately, something else has been washing over me, something really dangerous in these inflated times.
Envy.
It started at the jeweller a few months ago while running an errand for my mother-in-law. Another woman walked in, saw a multi-tiered ruby necklace, didn’t bargain and threw down a few lakh rupees—in cash. As she left, the man behind the counter answered my incredulous expression: “Happens all the time and is happening more. Her husband works in real estate. She doesn’t even ask me the price half the time.”
I didn’t buy a coveted pair of earrings—too expensive.
Bling fever struck again in April in Guwahati, where my parents, still living in the US, own a second home. My mother has been after me to buy a proper signboard with their name and address. Less than a kilometre from the house, I chanced upon a beautiful one, etched in silver to match a silver gate. I looked in awe at the bungalow it guarded. “Wow. Maybe something like that.”
“You definitely can’t afford a sterling silver sign!” my cousin said, bringing me back to reality. “This house belongs to a motor vehicle inspector.”
The last straw was last week when my husband and I finally found a flat we could buy, fix up and turn into a home in this India we are trying to make our own. We asked an architect to take a look.
The broker called as we were on our way. “It’s gone,” he said. “The buyers already put money down.”
“Is there anything we can do now?”
“Half in black,” he said curtly. “You can’t compete with that.”
Oh yes, I can, I thought. I move in the same circles, shop in the same malls, vacation in the same places. Our children are educated side by side in the same fancy private schools. Bring them on.
Yet, every month comes the fundamental reality and dividing line: my salary slip and a long column of deductions for taxes. I bitterly thought of “them” last week while scrambling to find receipts for my accountant showing proof of payment for a refrigerator, overseas student loans and tuition fees for my daughter’s preschool.
Of course, those of us in this middle class are much more fortunate than so many Indians, inspiring begrudgement ourselves; the reminders of what I can’t have are rare. In some places, such as Assam, the pay for civil servants is such a pittance that breadwinners’ insistence that they bribe to survive is almost warranted. I say almost because even that admission comes after decades of debate with family members. “You don’t live here,” one distant cousin said years ago. “For us, it’s not so black and white.”
But now I do live here. And I scarily see how the white moneyed move into the tainted zone.
This confession of my own hunger for cold cash comes just days before the whole world will celebrate on 15 August the success story India has become. Lesser known is that 1947 also happens to be the 60th anniversary of the Prevention of Corruption Act.
Consider the government’s own words back then in explaining the measure: “Opportunities for corrupt practice will remain for considerable time to come. …There will be for years… extensive schemes of post-war reconstruction involving the disbursement of very large sums of government money. All these activities offer wide scope for corruption and seriousness of the evil and possibility of its continuance or extension in future are such as to justify immediate and drastic action to stamp it out.”
On this issue, little has changed in 60 years, perhaps even worsened as the government rolls out funds to bridge the two Indias and devises ways to inspect (read: cash in on) the rush of new entrepreneurs and their ventures. Those businesses then practise similarly innovative methods of bookkeeping. We have entered a sad state of acceptance, possibly defeat.
As we revel in India’s freedom next week, it would not be hyperbole to suggest that British imperialism has been replaced by something just as disturbing and powerful, reeking of the abuse of privilege and a sense of entitlement. Even as an economy hungers to open up, those who stand to lose the most from a consumer’s right to choose are holding back a nation and its potential, driving up prices and making the climb quite arduous for the rest of us.
Thankfully, supposedly, the government is getting stricter on tracking just where our money goes. Soon, finance ministry officials pledge, it will be hard to dump large amounts of cash unnoticed into my favourite things, ruby necklaces to three-bedroom flats. I welcome that—and the day that envy gets replaced by another raw and not-so-nice human desire: revenge.
(Your comments are welcome at widerangle@livemint.com)
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