In bed, after stories and books and she's almost asleep.
"Do you like India?"
"What India?" (That's her latest, to say 'what' followed by the concept.)
"You know, where we live. Mommy, Papa, Felicia, Naya... And then there's America, where Ata Toko, Aita, Rahul Mama, Dadi and all live."
"Oh India," she says, understandingly. Pause and the punch line: "It smells, nah?"
Tuesday, August 7, 2007
Cream cheesy
My uncle can get cream cheese for Rs150. I haven't been able to find it for under Rs190.
I got into a fight the other day with a store manager about this (the same place my uncle got his) and after racking up a Rs1147 bill, I was furious that they wouldn't take 1100. I literally threw down the bag and walked away in tears. And then I prowled through INA market, a stinky, smelly, cracked-sidewalk-kinda joint, and couldn't find cream cheese for under Rs250. Finally, I just bought the Amul brand for Rs35 and felt better about life.
Naya saw her second movie in a theater in her short little life -- The Simpsons. She liked it but she said she liked Cheeni Kum and Amitabh Bachchan better. Her first movie, incidentally, was Born into Brothels. I took her when she was about four months old and in a stroller.
I got into a fight the other day with a store manager about this (the same place my uncle got his) and after racking up a Rs1147 bill, I was furious that they wouldn't take 1100. I literally threw down the bag and walked away in tears. And then I prowled through INA market, a stinky, smelly, cracked-sidewalk-kinda joint, and couldn't find cream cheese for under Rs250. Finally, I just bought the Amul brand for Rs35 and felt better about life.
Naya saw her second movie in a theater in her short little life -- The Simpsons. She liked it but she said she liked Cheeni Kum and Amitabh Bachchan better. Her first movie, incidentally, was Born into Brothels. I took her when she was about four months old and in a stroller.
Monday, August 6, 2007
Saturday, August 4, 2007
Sociodermis
Due to no demand whatsoever (hee hee), I'm attaching one of the new paintings I've done here. I would welcome any feedback/speculations so please feel free to comment!
Sociodermis, 48"x36", oil on canvas, 2007
Sociodermis, 48"x36", oil on canvas, 2007
Friday, August 3, 2007
Column on Innovation
Due to popular demand, am going to start posting links to the columns. Here goes today's:
http://www.livemint.com/2007/08/03000254/Too-much-of-a-good-think.html
Too much of a good think
The whole world is innovating over how to make you and me more innovative.
No pressure, though, the next big thing doesn’t actually have to be big, not like Google or anything. Obvious ideas—say, the iPhone—will do fine.
Every other day, we read headlines and studies saying innovation remains India’s biggest challenge, a characteristic its workforce lacks. At the office, we open emails filled with dares to be innovative, rewards and prizes dangled for thought.
What is it about India and its workplaces that’s causing a lack of innovation, a sudden dearth of good ideas?
This surprises me because Indians are the most innovative people I have ever encountered. As a child visiting my father’s village, I marvelled at systems used to create, construct, preserve, to keep foods hot, then cold. And no toymaker can beat the genius of aunts and uncles who entertained us listless kids with home-made inventions and natural discoveries, such as the bubbles made by splitting the stems of certain leaves. Looking back, you can say it was survival, but the innovative behaviour clearly carries on in India’s diaspora. My father, now in New Jersey, is notorious for never throwing anything out, and linking incongruous items and ideas to make life easier—old fencing covers his garden to filter light and support vines, for example. You might call him cheap; I call him innovative.
“One could take a random Indian of practically any background or social class, and put him or her in another country, and he or she would be successful very quickly,” says Uday Karmarkar, an Anderson School of Management professor at the University of California-Los Angeles.
So what is it about this country and its workplaces that’s causing the panic, the sudden dearth of good ideas?
The answer is complicated, beginning with an education system that stresses the “right” answer to increased demands on workers to run more than a back office. Those challenges will take some time to surmount. Still, there’s an even bigger problem, thankfully one easier to fix: Workers are afraid.
They’re afraid of speaking up in meetings that seem scripted. They’re afraid of the manager who ridicules and looks good at their expense. And they’re afraid of being told no.
Consider the scene in a Bangalore classroom earlier this month when Indian Institute of Management professor Ramnath Narayanswamy asked how many of the 70 students before him had work experience. Nearly all raised their hands. More than two years? Still the hands stayed up.
“How many enjoyed your jobs?”
Just two hands remained.
“We feel disempowered.”
“We feel victimized.”
“We have bad bosses.”
The students’ stories came tumbling out, Narayanswamy recounted, speaking this week at a conference in New Delhi on great places to work.
Little sincere creativity can occur in the environments his students described. Instead of formalizing innovation, we need to go back to our roots a bit more. Managers should encourage doses of messiness, disorder, chaos, even lots of mistakes—circumstances that lend themselves to more ideating.
Of course, that risks confusing innovation with a clichéd predecessor: “thinking outside the box”. When I started reporting in India in 2001, a decade after that golden summer kicking off economic reforms, workplace after workplace boasted of kicking employees outside this box, encouraging them to challenge authority and convention. One call centre showed me a jar; each person who addressed a superior as “sir” or “ma’am” had to put in Rs10. The abolition of the word “sir” became the standby when I asked for examples of open, un-boxed workplaces. Six years later, despite improvement, hierarchies are nowhere as flat as they could be. Our bosses might not be called “sir” but we still think of them that way.
To be sure, Narayanswamy warns workers to stop playing the victim game. Tweaking Gandhian philosophy, he says we ought to be the change we want to see at work. But, he also advises, managers’ “most time and effort should be spent at the lower levels of the pyramid”.
I fear the workplace is becoming wooed by fads and not effectively marrying best practices. “Caught up in the innovation hype, the desire to appear innovative is perhaps overshadowing the need to become innovative,” Rajdeep Sahrawat, vice-president of the National Association of Software and Services Companies, wrote in Mint on 12 June. “Moving a water dispenser closer to the staff to save time for drinking water gets cited as an example of breakthrough innovation.”
Having seen some of my relatives’ innovations with water—like collecting rain in barrels before it was environmentally in vogue—I know Indians can do better.
So go ahead. Think. Speak up. Stop worrying about making mistakes and looking foolish. This country’s future is in your head—or at the very least, your boss’ next innovation award.
Your comments are welcome at widerangle@livemint.com
http://www.livemint.com/2007/08/03000254/Too-much-of-a-good-think.html
Too much of a good think
The whole world is innovating over how to make you and me more innovative.
No pressure, though, the next big thing doesn’t actually have to be big, not like Google or anything. Obvious ideas—say, the iPhone—will do fine.
Every other day, we read headlines and studies saying innovation remains India’s biggest challenge, a characteristic its workforce lacks. At the office, we open emails filled with dares to be innovative, rewards and prizes dangled for thought.
What is it about India and its workplaces that’s causing a lack of innovation, a sudden dearth of good ideas?
This surprises me because Indians are the most innovative people I have ever encountered. As a child visiting my father’s village, I marvelled at systems used to create, construct, preserve, to keep foods hot, then cold. And no toymaker can beat the genius of aunts and uncles who entertained us listless kids with home-made inventions and natural discoveries, such as the bubbles made by splitting the stems of certain leaves. Looking back, you can say it was survival, but the innovative behaviour clearly carries on in India’s diaspora. My father, now in New Jersey, is notorious for never throwing anything out, and linking incongruous items and ideas to make life easier—old fencing covers his garden to filter light and support vines, for example. You might call him cheap; I call him innovative.
“One could take a random Indian of practically any background or social class, and put him or her in another country, and he or she would be successful very quickly,” says Uday Karmarkar, an Anderson School of Management professor at the University of California-Los Angeles.
So what is it about this country and its workplaces that’s causing the panic, the sudden dearth of good ideas?
The answer is complicated, beginning with an education system that stresses the “right” answer to increased demands on workers to run more than a back office. Those challenges will take some time to surmount. Still, there’s an even bigger problem, thankfully one easier to fix: Workers are afraid.
They’re afraid of speaking up in meetings that seem scripted. They’re afraid of the manager who ridicules and looks good at their expense. And they’re afraid of being told no.
Consider the scene in a Bangalore classroom earlier this month when Indian Institute of Management professor Ramnath Narayanswamy asked how many of the 70 students before him had work experience. Nearly all raised their hands. More than two years? Still the hands stayed up.
“How many enjoyed your jobs?”
Just two hands remained.
“We feel disempowered.”
“We feel victimized.”
“We have bad bosses.”
The students’ stories came tumbling out, Narayanswamy recounted, speaking this week at a conference in New Delhi on great places to work.
Little sincere creativity can occur in the environments his students described. Instead of formalizing innovation, we need to go back to our roots a bit more. Managers should encourage doses of messiness, disorder, chaos, even lots of mistakes—circumstances that lend themselves to more ideating.
Of course, that risks confusing innovation with a clichéd predecessor: “thinking outside the box”. When I started reporting in India in 2001, a decade after that golden summer kicking off economic reforms, workplace after workplace boasted of kicking employees outside this box, encouraging them to challenge authority and convention. One call centre showed me a jar; each person who addressed a superior as “sir” or “ma’am” had to put in Rs10. The abolition of the word “sir” became the standby when I asked for examples of open, un-boxed workplaces. Six years later, despite improvement, hierarchies are nowhere as flat as they could be. Our bosses might not be called “sir” but we still think of them that way.
To be sure, Narayanswamy warns workers to stop playing the victim game. Tweaking Gandhian philosophy, he says we ought to be the change we want to see at work. But, he also advises, managers’ “most time and effort should be spent at the lower levels of the pyramid”.
I fear the workplace is becoming wooed by fads and not effectively marrying best practices. “Caught up in the innovation hype, the desire to appear innovative is perhaps overshadowing the need to become innovative,” Rajdeep Sahrawat, vice-president of the National Association of Software and Services Companies, wrote in Mint on 12 June. “Moving a water dispenser closer to the staff to save time for drinking water gets cited as an example of breakthrough innovation.”
Having seen some of my relatives’ innovations with water—like collecting rain in barrels before it was environmentally in vogue—I know Indians can do better.
So go ahead. Think. Speak up. Stop worrying about making mistakes and looking foolish. This country’s future is in your head—or at the very least, your boss’ next innovation award.
Your comments are welcome at widerangle@livemint.com
All clear
Angiogram is all clear - thanks to all of you for your checking in and your concerns. Apparently, he was asking for books to read during the procedure. Whew...
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
1,2,3,4,5 Drivers in a Week
So Deepak 2 quit, claiming the commute was too far. "Don't worry, I won't leave until you find someone," he said. His brother-in-law agreed to take the job on Saturday at 11:30 am. By 3 pm, he'd changed his mind.
Then Deepak 2 called Sunday, saying he had to report to work on Monday morning somewhere else and that he couldn't find anyone. (Translation: I found someone willing to pay me more.) Nitin said he wouldn't pay him for the week we worked unless he found us another driver. That got results... He said he had a friend named Misra who would report Monday.
Monday morning brought a man named Pandey. We were confused, but said "He, he moves. Let's have him drive our car." On the way out, a guy named Misra showed up. Too late, we said, but call us tonight if we don't like Pandey.
We didn't. He honked all the way to Vasant Vihar t(to Naya's school) and didn't get out of the car to help me with laptop, bookbag, tiffins and child. Sound familiar?
Nititn released him at 11 with 100 rupees and a half-salute. Luckily Misra called.
We said report to work at 8:30 am so we can see how you drive.
He drove Naya to school and me to work. He helped with bags. He still honks but not as much.
We'll see...
Then Deepak 2 called Sunday, saying he had to report to work on Monday morning somewhere else and that he couldn't find anyone. (Translation: I found someone willing to pay me more.) Nitin said he wouldn't pay him for the week we worked unless he found us another driver. That got results... He said he had a friend named Misra who would report Monday.
Monday morning brought a man named Pandey. We were confused, but said "He, he moves. Let's have him drive our car." On the way out, a guy named Misra showed up. Too late, we said, but call us tonight if we don't like Pandey.
We didn't. He honked all the way to Vasant Vihar t(to Naya's school) and didn't get out of the car to help me with laptop, bookbag, tiffins and child. Sound familiar?
Nititn released him at 11 with 100 rupees and a half-salute. Luckily Misra called.
We said report to work at 8:30 am so we can see how you drive.
He drove Naya to school and me to work. He helped with bags. He still honks but not as much.
We'll see...
Monday, July 9, 2007
Finding Mainland China
On Friday night, Nitin and I walked into a swanky Asian restaurant called Mainland China for our first “date night” in weeks. I did the talking and asked for a table and as soon as my accent and pronunciation of “table for two” gave away my American-ness, a scantily clad woman nearby rolled her eyes and whispered something to her dinner companion. I don’t know what she said but I imagined it to be about the expatriate invasion of New Delhi and our privileged ways.
Just then my mobile rang. It was my great-aunt, a left-leaning writer recounting her trip to my grandfather's village that day and my father's birthplace. There had been a wedding, they'd had pigeon and goat and chicken and lots of native yummy vegetables. We caught up and she asked me a for a favour (Toni Morrison's email so she could get translation rights to The Bluest Eye.) We spoke in Assamese the whole time and the acoustics of the place were such that everybody could hear me.
I know I shouldn't care but I wondered if the woman who had rolled her eyes accepted me as Indian. I looked at another group of twentysomethings with really high heels and really low necklines and wondered if they had conversations like this with family too. I wondered if they had ever eaten pigeon.
Just then my mobile rang. It was my great-aunt, a left-leaning writer recounting her trip to my grandfather's village that day and my father's birthplace. There had been a wedding, they'd had pigeon and goat and chicken and lots of native yummy vegetables. We caught up and she asked me a for a favour (Toni Morrison's email so she could get translation rights to The Bluest Eye.) We spoke in Assamese the whole time and the acoustics of the place were such that everybody could hear me.
I know I shouldn't care but I wondered if the woman who had rolled her eyes accepted me as Indian. I looked at another group of twentysomethings with really high heels and really low necklines and wondered if they had conversations like this with family too. I wondered if they had ever eaten pigeon.
Saturday, July 7, 2007
Our first fire
The first time I ever tried to fire anybody was in 1997 when I was editor in chief of the Daily Targum and an assistant sports editor didn't show up for a part of his job. He laughed at me and showed up to work the next day.
Ten years later, I have made my first fire -- our driver Deepak.
We told him it is because of the communication gap; our Hindi is limited and his English is nonexistent. He's a Class 10 pass (that means he went up to 10th grade) but I don't think he reads signs so well--huge problem. Anyway, consider this week's problems alone: he got into a fender bender, he missed picking up Naya from school because he got delayed elsewhere, he watched from the front seat one day as I juggled Naya, her bookpack, her water jug, my laptop, my purse, a stack of newspapers, my tiffin and my red-hot temper as he just kept sitting.
I know I sound like an elitist but he just didnt get us and I don't entirely blame him. He is 23 and seems like he's never really had to work, didn't have the skills to get a job beyond driving but really didn't have his heart in it.
But who would? It's a job that requires waiting for people all day and having no idea what time you will go home that day. It must be the least empowering thing. I maintain that if India could put its millions of unemployed women to work as drivers, the sweater- and hat- and scarf-making industry here would be booming because they would find something to occupy their time all the time, in the name of multi-tasking, motherhood and survival.
I think we partly failed as managers, too. We didn't regularly tell him where he was going wrong, nor assess him monthly. By the end, it got so bad, it was not worth fixing. And we resented him so much that most of the time we were in the car was marked by being huffy, brewing, silent. It's an awful existence--especially in already-maddening Delhi traffic. We didn't send him cups of tea or ask him to join us for dinner. But we did tell him we will give him a good recommendation if he wants. When we handed him his final pay and severance, his eyes seemed to brim a bit but he stayed stoic and gave Nitin a sort of half-salute, salaam and namaste all in one. Sad.
So we're trying to be better for the next driver and hope he will to us. He's a father to a 2-year-old so he he should "get" it. His name is Deepak, too.
Ten years later, I have made my first fire -- our driver Deepak.
We told him it is because of the communication gap; our Hindi is limited and his English is nonexistent. He's a Class 10 pass (that means he went up to 10th grade) but I don't think he reads signs so well--huge problem. Anyway, consider this week's problems alone: he got into a fender bender, he missed picking up Naya from school because he got delayed elsewhere, he watched from the front seat one day as I juggled Naya, her bookpack, her water jug, my laptop, my purse, a stack of newspapers, my tiffin and my red-hot temper as he just kept sitting.
I know I sound like an elitist but he just didnt get us and I don't entirely blame him. He is 23 and seems like he's never really had to work, didn't have the skills to get a job beyond driving but really didn't have his heart in it.
But who would? It's a job that requires waiting for people all day and having no idea what time you will go home that day. It must be the least empowering thing. I maintain that if India could put its millions of unemployed women to work as drivers, the sweater- and hat- and scarf-making industry here would be booming because they would find something to occupy their time all the time, in the name of multi-tasking, motherhood and survival.
I think we partly failed as managers, too. We didn't regularly tell him where he was going wrong, nor assess him monthly. By the end, it got so bad, it was not worth fixing. And we resented him so much that most of the time we were in the car was marked by being huffy, brewing, silent. It's an awful existence--especially in already-maddening Delhi traffic. We didn't send him cups of tea or ask him to join us for dinner. But we did tell him we will give him a good recommendation if he wants. When we handed him his final pay and severance, his eyes seemed to brim a bit but he stayed stoic and gave Nitin a sort of half-salute, salaam and namaste all in one. Sad.
So we're trying to be better for the next driver and hope he will to us. He's a father to a 2-year-old so he he should "get" it. His name is Deepak, too.
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