I have a relative who is a follower of a Concept of Living, as instructed by a Guruji or a Pundit.
She teaches his teachings. She teaches mainly Yoga and Meditation, both profound practices to feel and explore the Soul.
She is old and a widow. She has been through her share of shit, and she has pulled off life well. Her daughters are well settled and prosperous.
She would talk about kriyas and asanas, and how they can transform the way you live your life, bla bla bla.
The Guruji may be right. He could be leading the otherwise blind people towards a harmony.
But our stupid people are T#$%^*&YUIY*&^(*&)(*)(*.
My relatives elder daughter is pregnant. All relatives were invited for a function, a high tea and a great evening at their place.
It turned out that the grandmother had made elaborate spiritual arrangements for the day of the delivery.
a. There was a white cloth in which the baby will be draped first thing after being born. It was the same piece of cloth that was spread over the chair the Guruji sat on. This will seemingly increase immunity, and cover the baby with the Guruji’s graces.
b. There was a silver spoon, which will feed the first mouthful of milk the baby would take. This was the same spoon the Guruji used to have some kheer during one of his tours. This will give the baby some sort of good stomach. I didn’t catch the exact context.
My head started reeling in the disgust at the unhealthy things my mind started thinking at that moment.
The Guru must be a bad man I thought at first, to exploit such people. I even told my wife that the lady must have brought the Guru’s langot and make her son in law wear it to be able to make his wife pregnant. My wife was naturally mad at me. But I didn’t see any difference in my thinking and the lady’s, other than the fact that I was deliberately trying to berate the Guru for exploiting his people.
When I went into things further, I understood that the Guru was not a Swami or a monk. He was just a teacher, who was trying to teach people.( I still don’t understand why a teacher must wear a Buddha and sport a long, flowing beard) In the process he has amassed much wealth on behalf of his trusts and temples, and charities and things like that. He was just running a plain business line. That of serving up one’s soul on a platter. He would tell you how to feel your conscience, how to be good, and how to be true, how to love. He would teach all the tenets of humanity as if it were new. He would add a few things here and there, and then try to make it sound unique and interesting. There would be bhajans and trance sessions, and people are just mesmerized not at what his teachings have evoked, but by the man himself.
He just is plain more intelligent than many of you. You think his eyes radiate a power. You have gone there to liberate a heavy soul. How could you look at the eyes of a man who you think is liberated? You, with your low self esteem have already lost the power to look at such a person in the eye. The Guru is confident because he knows no one would dare to look him in the eye. In the end it is all about the domination and subjugation. People nowadays don’t just need religion to be spiritual, they need to be taught.
The Guruji is exploiting his talents alone and nothing else. He never asks for anything more than attention.
His followers exploit him and other people.
They make classes out of their learnings of his teachings, they form new orders and ashrams. They make money out of his brand aura and create superstitions like carrying away his robes and cutlery. This sets a precedent and I am sure I would see the langot of the Guru on ebay or Christy’s, London for millions of dollars 20 years from now.
In the end, it is the disciple who is outsmarting the Guru. The disciples who went to liberate their soul, end up soiling their soul further. The Guru doesn’t bother either. It is just adding up to more brand awareness.
The Guru is running a perfect business, a public limited company.
a. The promoter drives home in a Merc bought by the company – the Guru does the same thing
b. The promoter invests the returns he gets in the business, and takes home only an allowance, thus he is not taxed – the ashrams buy land, start schools and money spinning operations
c. The promoter is not liable in case of business failure. The ashram can similarly shut shop and need not answer any one, even the Government.
d. A smart promoter would develop his executives to lead his business and be relieved – Gurus have always done the same thing. Hasn’t every religious order faced succession politics, malice and crime, just like our corporate successions?
We all think the Guru is doing charity, by teaching idiots like us. He is just running a school for adults on the subject of living.
Monday, August 31, 2009
Bossing around the bush
We have a General Manager in our office. He is one of the many in our myriad of levels. They have matrix reportees, and have a matrix reporting structure themselves. It means, he will get to screw people from a variety of departments and in turn is mauled, torn, ripped and raped by Senior General Managers, Managing Directors, CEO’s and Chairmen. It is a pitiable plight for these people neither at the top, nor at the bottom. The guy in the bottom is always safe. He will be subjected to all of the above things, but at a smaller scale.
The junior people in the organization are ‘groomed’ to be plundered, bled and raped in a larger scale. This is called the fast tracking of someone’s career. There is not a single boss I haven’t felt sorry for, for the humiliations he goes through to be successful, to be a progressive go getter, to become a leader of an organization. It looks ridiculous.
There are bosses, and then there are bosses. Every boss is different, and unique.
I had a boss, my first boss, who was an expert in undressing you. He would get a great pleasure to see stand there quivering, covering your vitals for virtual fear of castration. One would always want to take him out with one super blow, because he would always be looking to fell you. I thought I felled him with one nice left uppercut when I resigned from the company and gave my exit interview, but he has come to my company now! So you never punch your boss, even when you are leaving the organization.
Then I had a boss who was slippery as an eel. No one could grab him, and squeeze him. Reneging on commitments, double crossing almost everybody, soft spoken and suave. You would want to murder him, but he will talk you out of it. His bosses would scratch their heads on his logic, but they know something is wrong deep down. They would have the “let me get my hands on you” looks about them. But he was in no way an arrogant person. But he too had a big ego, to make things look to others the way he sees it.
Then I had a boss who was very different from the above. He was gentle, always neutral, unprejudiced, and a perfect gentleman, every bit very selfish. He never took anyone’s side other than his own. It would be a wonder when he would be getting promoted, when all of us who made the performance would get content with ‘better luck next year’. Then we all got together and decided that – OUR BOSS NEVER WILL HARM US, BUT HE NEVER DOES ANYTHING UPLIFTING EITHER. Don’t do good, and don’t do bad. It is a sickening thing to be there with a boss who would be ignoring you for the good you did and also for the bad you did.
Then I have a boss here who talks so much that he trips over with laughter. He tries to be funny, and very often manages to move us to laughter. But he is very bad at subordinating work. He would expect you to pick up things as you go. He would say Vinod is responsible for a, b and c. Amit is responsible for b, c and d. Jayant for a, b and d. So no one knows what he is getting to. Someone would like a, b, c or d, and would get it done. Someone like me who is a bad team player, is doing something like equity trading, and reading google news.
Then I have another boss here, who I don’t know how he became a boss. In meetings, or presentations, he would be the best listener, encouraging you with his wide, wonder filled eyes. Then he would ask the question that is most diagonally opposite to what is being communicated. He is a funny guy. You have to send him a mail, and call him up and tell him that something has been mailed to him. He would be cloistered in his cabin all day, then he would jump out of cabin and would be staring over your shoulder asking the most trivial thing like have you sent me a mail. He never uses his desk phone or intercom. He has become a subject of study for me here in Pune. I would like to narrate something that happened in the canteen with him.
Today, a friend and I were chatting in the canteen, and having some snacks. So Mr. Kutty, I would call him that from now on, walks in, and joins us. I introduced my friend to him. His name is Ramesh; he has joined us just last week. He is from a company called Eicher, my ex employer.
So he asked Ramesh, “So Ramesh how long you were with Eicher?”
Ramesh replies, “Two and a half years, sir.”
Kutty rejoins with enthusiasm, “Who was your boss is Eicher? I have many friends in your ex company. You know, VRVS was a very good friend of mine.”
Ramesh was filled with awe to this Kutty who seemed to know every person in Eicher Motors and especially the charismatic Country Marketing Head of the company.
Ramesh replies, “Mr. Lakshmipathy, sir. He is a GM there.”
Kutty’s eyes lit up with a widespread recognition. It seemed even to me that he would know this Mr. Lakshmipathy.
Kutty becomes serious now. “Let me recollect.” He seriously is trying to plumb into the depths of his memory. “I knew someone by the name of Lakshmipathy.”
Kutty remained silent for a few moments.
“I remember now. His full name is Lakshmipathy Balaji. I do recollect that I have spoken to him once.”
Ramesh, my friend started smiling in a derogatory way, poking me with his glances and pointing to Kutty as if he had made a big mistake worth heckling.
“Lakshmipathy Balaji is a cricketer sir. My ex boss was Mr. T. Lakshmipathy sir, and he has never played cricket in his life.”
I caught the joke now, and started laughing and Kutty, the true sport that he is, started laughing too. Then he abruptly nodded his head, in a very matter of fact manner and disappeared into his cabin. For us it was the turning point of the day. Then things started moving fast, and we were telling to this joke to the PD guys, who told it to the MES guys, who told it to the VI guys, who told it to the Engine guys, so on and so forth.
Bosses are like this. They try to pull smart things through. I haven’t met one boss who tries to prove you wrong every time. Whether he is wrong or right in his opinion, he would get pleasure by proving you wrong. He thinks people accept his opinion because he is more intelligent. People always accept it because he is the boss. They don’t point out his errors ever so often. They expect a boss to know his own limitations. Such a one is respected.
In my organization, a structural change was happening, and senior people who were in the field were rounded up and herded off to an assessment center. It was conducted by a third party agency. The results were rumored to be a negative for almost all the senior people in the organization. They were pulled up during feedback, harshly reminded to lead well, and then sent off with their commissions. Their negative scores or lack of competencies translated to reprimands, and pointed reactionary feedback was deemed enough for them to take up higher responsibility.
A boss who is not a good leader will always goof up with his juniors. They will not respect a person who is their leader, but is not leadership adapted. Leadership adapted means someone who moves into a leadership role, will have to adapt to many things like developing people, training, motivating, etc. Our leaders are never trained to lead. They are trained to boss around, and they do just that.
No company has a leadership policy manual. But every company will have an admin manual, HR manual, compensation manual. No company tells its leaders how to behave. The best the leaders can do is moderate their natural instincts. A very aggressive bulldog can be trained to be a pet. But it is better at being snappy than the good sheep dog.
Leaders have to be trained behaviorally. We have programs that tell the qualities of a leader. But no one tells how these qualities come about in a person.
It is said that assertiveness is a pre requisite for being a good leader. Every leader knows that. But some one who doesn’t know how to assert himself will just finely or roughly ignore suggestions, and term them as stupidity. He will stop receiving suggestions for fear of offending him.
It is said that a leader has to take responsibility. People understand things differently. Some leaders will try to do all the things themselves, in the process choking their juniors’ creativity, professional rigor and self esteem.
It is said that a good leader must be able to advocate his views. People misunderstand their steam rolling into advocacy.
Whatever trainings I have attended on the above subjects don’t even remotely refer to behaviors and attitudes. They focus on matrices ‘copywrited/patented’ and on role plays. Half the time people end up trying to show that they are good leaders even before the whole thing started.
Trainers have to depend on all these ‘tools’ because there are no demonstrable examples of leadership styles. If they are, I don’t know where they are. They can be found in biographies and auto biographies, where people hire writers to write good about them, or are vain enough to write good about themselves all by themselves.
The thing is this: People don’t know how to behave socially.
The junior people in the organization are ‘groomed’ to be plundered, bled and raped in a larger scale. This is called the fast tracking of someone’s career. There is not a single boss I haven’t felt sorry for, for the humiliations he goes through to be successful, to be a progressive go getter, to become a leader of an organization. It looks ridiculous.
There are bosses, and then there are bosses. Every boss is different, and unique.
I had a boss, my first boss, who was an expert in undressing you. He would get a great pleasure to see stand there quivering, covering your vitals for virtual fear of castration. One would always want to take him out with one super blow, because he would always be looking to fell you. I thought I felled him with one nice left uppercut when I resigned from the company and gave my exit interview, but he has come to my company now! So you never punch your boss, even when you are leaving the organization.
Then I had a boss who was slippery as an eel. No one could grab him, and squeeze him. Reneging on commitments, double crossing almost everybody, soft spoken and suave. You would want to murder him, but he will talk you out of it. His bosses would scratch their heads on his logic, but they know something is wrong deep down. They would have the “let me get my hands on you” looks about them. But he was in no way an arrogant person. But he too had a big ego, to make things look to others the way he sees it.
Then I had a boss who was very different from the above. He was gentle, always neutral, unprejudiced, and a perfect gentleman, every bit very selfish. He never took anyone’s side other than his own. It would be a wonder when he would be getting promoted, when all of us who made the performance would get content with ‘better luck next year’. Then we all got together and decided that – OUR BOSS NEVER WILL HARM US, BUT HE NEVER DOES ANYTHING UPLIFTING EITHER. Don’t do good, and don’t do bad. It is a sickening thing to be there with a boss who would be ignoring you for the good you did and also for the bad you did.
Then I have a boss here who talks so much that he trips over with laughter. He tries to be funny, and very often manages to move us to laughter. But he is very bad at subordinating work. He would expect you to pick up things as you go. He would say Vinod is responsible for a, b and c. Amit is responsible for b, c and d. Jayant for a, b and d. So no one knows what he is getting to. Someone would like a, b, c or d, and would get it done. Someone like me who is a bad team player, is doing something like equity trading, and reading google news.
Then I have another boss here, who I don’t know how he became a boss. In meetings, or presentations, he would be the best listener, encouraging you with his wide, wonder filled eyes. Then he would ask the question that is most diagonally opposite to what is being communicated. He is a funny guy. You have to send him a mail, and call him up and tell him that something has been mailed to him. He would be cloistered in his cabin all day, then he would jump out of cabin and would be staring over your shoulder asking the most trivial thing like have you sent me a mail. He never uses his desk phone or intercom. He has become a subject of study for me here in Pune. I would like to narrate something that happened in the canteen with him.
Today, a friend and I were chatting in the canteen, and having some snacks. So Mr. Kutty, I would call him that from now on, walks in, and joins us. I introduced my friend to him. His name is Ramesh; he has joined us just last week. He is from a company called Eicher, my ex employer.
So he asked Ramesh, “So Ramesh how long you were with Eicher?”
Ramesh replies, “Two and a half years, sir.”
Kutty rejoins with enthusiasm, “Who was your boss is Eicher? I have many friends in your ex company. You know, VRVS was a very good friend of mine.”
Ramesh was filled with awe to this Kutty who seemed to know every person in Eicher Motors and especially the charismatic Country Marketing Head of the company.
Ramesh replies, “Mr. Lakshmipathy, sir. He is a GM there.”
Kutty’s eyes lit up with a widespread recognition. It seemed even to me that he would know this Mr. Lakshmipathy.
Kutty becomes serious now. “Let me recollect.” He seriously is trying to plumb into the depths of his memory. “I knew someone by the name of Lakshmipathy.”
Kutty remained silent for a few moments.
“I remember now. His full name is Lakshmipathy Balaji. I do recollect that I have spoken to him once.”
Ramesh, my friend started smiling in a derogatory way, poking me with his glances and pointing to Kutty as if he had made a big mistake worth heckling.
“Lakshmipathy Balaji is a cricketer sir. My ex boss was Mr. T. Lakshmipathy sir, and he has never played cricket in his life.”
I caught the joke now, and started laughing and Kutty, the true sport that he is, started laughing too. Then he abruptly nodded his head, in a very matter of fact manner and disappeared into his cabin. For us it was the turning point of the day. Then things started moving fast, and we were telling to this joke to the PD guys, who told it to the MES guys, who told it to the VI guys, who told it to the Engine guys, so on and so forth.
Bosses are like this. They try to pull smart things through. I haven’t met one boss who tries to prove you wrong every time. Whether he is wrong or right in his opinion, he would get pleasure by proving you wrong. He thinks people accept his opinion because he is more intelligent. People always accept it because he is the boss. They don’t point out his errors ever so often. They expect a boss to know his own limitations. Such a one is respected.
In my organization, a structural change was happening, and senior people who were in the field were rounded up and herded off to an assessment center. It was conducted by a third party agency. The results were rumored to be a negative for almost all the senior people in the organization. They were pulled up during feedback, harshly reminded to lead well, and then sent off with their commissions. Their negative scores or lack of competencies translated to reprimands, and pointed reactionary feedback was deemed enough for them to take up higher responsibility.
A boss who is not a good leader will always goof up with his juniors. They will not respect a person who is their leader, but is not leadership adapted. Leadership adapted means someone who moves into a leadership role, will have to adapt to many things like developing people, training, motivating, etc. Our leaders are never trained to lead. They are trained to boss around, and they do just that.
No company has a leadership policy manual. But every company will have an admin manual, HR manual, compensation manual. No company tells its leaders how to behave. The best the leaders can do is moderate their natural instincts. A very aggressive bulldog can be trained to be a pet. But it is better at being snappy than the good sheep dog.
Leaders have to be trained behaviorally. We have programs that tell the qualities of a leader. But no one tells how these qualities come about in a person.
It is said that assertiveness is a pre requisite for being a good leader. Every leader knows that. But some one who doesn’t know how to assert himself will just finely or roughly ignore suggestions, and term them as stupidity. He will stop receiving suggestions for fear of offending him.
It is said that a leader has to take responsibility. People understand things differently. Some leaders will try to do all the things themselves, in the process choking their juniors’ creativity, professional rigor and self esteem.
It is said that a good leader must be able to advocate his views. People misunderstand their steam rolling into advocacy.
Whatever trainings I have attended on the above subjects don’t even remotely refer to behaviors and attitudes. They focus on matrices ‘copywrited/patented’ and on role plays. Half the time people end up trying to show that they are good leaders even before the whole thing started.
Trainers have to depend on all these ‘tools’ because there are no demonstrable examples of leadership styles. If they are, I don’t know where they are. They can be found in biographies and auto biographies, where people hire writers to write good about them, or are vain enough to write good about themselves all by themselves.
The thing is this: People don’t know how to behave socially.
Monday, August 24, 2009
What the rag picker on Mumbai - Pune Highway called me
When I was walking back to the guest house today, it was raining a bit. It was trying to rain properly, you know the wiggly rain, between a good hard rain and the moaning, crying drizzle.
It was very still, no breeze, no air. The atmosphere was suffocating, but it always feels good to walk in the rain, so I was just walking down. Sometimes, when we do what we like, we turn back to see if someone else is doing it. Do I look an ass hole? This question burns the nape of our neck every time we follow something close to us. If this close to us thing is far from everyone else, we just cower down into ourselves, biting our heart into submission.
The road, the Mumbai – Pune highway I was walking on, seemed empty. People had taken shelter, in the vestibules of road side shops, within petrol pumps, and within any enclosure they could find. All that was going on on the road, was the art of driving cars over puddles of water, so that the water splashes on the people who are hardy enough to walk in the rain. Even I like doing such things. It is such fun to see people run away when a car approaches for fear of muddying their trousers.
I also was looking around, just to check if I was looking the idiot, getting wet in the rain in Pune, the swine flu capital of India. I guess I must have just gone on walking. There was a rag picker who was well covered with a plastic overall who was diligently and nimbly going on with his work.
“Tere jaise admiyon se swing flu aata hai. Geela hote ho jaan bujkar, foreign jaate ho, najane aids, swing flu late ho……..pagal ho kya?”
“People like you bring swine flu. You get wet for the fun of it, you go abroad and bring aids, swine flu, and what not. Are you mad?”
He was not even looking at me, but he was loud enough for me to hear him, and he was referring to me. There was no one else around.
His wisdom tells him a lot of things. I don’t know in how many dimensions he thought in, but I could work out some number of angles in what he uttered casually.
a. Rich people bring rich diseases from rich places. The un-immunized man does not have the money to get cured of unique diseases. This is true in so many instances. Common flu & cold decimated from the Conquistadors wiped out entire South American civilizations. Transport and travel brings disease.
b. He is classifying me as belonging to a group of people who are very rash, and up to their nose in enjoying life. They try to drown in it, compared to his scraping dust bins day in and day out. At the same time he could be esteeming himself for wearing his odd looking patched up rain cover.
c. He is unable to digest the fact that I take my life so lightly. By god, I could catch swine flu and pass over to my maker very quickly.
I was stupefied, not at that moment. But his sentence kept forming in my mind for the next five minutes. The full import of what he was thinking got to me when I entered the apartment complex. I stopped at a tea shop, was having hot cha, when I saw that I was not alone. People old and young were walking by, though far and few, as if nothing had happened. They were soaking wet, but they never really did mind. So I was not alone.
But what mattered was this. This was the first time, something someone very far removed from my own class of people had said to me had affected me or stuck to me. This is odd. I travel a lot, meet a lot of people, but this is a comment regarding my lifestyle.
Often, we just hear what we want to hear. The rest gets drowned out intentionally at first, but unintentionally later on. I think I am following a fling by getting wet in the rain, and for the rag picker on the Mumbai - Pune highway, I am a perfect idiot, a social menace. That’s a point of view I never expected to be encountered with.
We always form a vision of ourselves, and once we have a pride in our own self, people around us just start portraying our image to us. This becomes our environment, our emotions, our tastes, our friends, our habits, our everything. But suddenly, a rag picker on the Mumbai – Pune highway thinks I am a social menace! What originality!
Sometimes, we just forget that every rag picker, beggar, destitute, slum dweller will have an opinion on us. We just get overshadowed by ourselves and our image. We go to work, read a few things, invest, get married, and yet without knowing, we think this is the right thing to do & the right way to live. We could be trampling a lot of things on the way, without getting off our sleep walk.
Maybe, people like me, and people like you, who have internet in their homes, offices, the connected guys you know, who go to work with their brains alone, who have reduced the labor with the body to a lower social class, are a social menace. Because people like us are what - 2% of India and the other 98% may be thinking of the 2% as a menace.
I know what you will be thinking now. How will the rag picker survive, if people don’t earn enough to throw away stuff? We are making his livelihood, could be a starting point.
It was very still, no breeze, no air. The atmosphere was suffocating, but it always feels good to walk in the rain, so I was just walking down. Sometimes, when we do what we like, we turn back to see if someone else is doing it. Do I look an ass hole? This question burns the nape of our neck every time we follow something close to us. If this close to us thing is far from everyone else, we just cower down into ourselves, biting our heart into submission.
The road, the Mumbai – Pune highway I was walking on, seemed empty. People had taken shelter, in the vestibules of road side shops, within petrol pumps, and within any enclosure they could find. All that was going on on the road, was the art of driving cars over puddles of water, so that the water splashes on the people who are hardy enough to walk in the rain. Even I like doing such things. It is such fun to see people run away when a car approaches for fear of muddying their trousers.
I also was looking around, just to check if I was looking the idiot, getting wet in the rain in Pune, the swine flu capital of India. I guess I must have just gone on walking. There was a rag picker who was well covered with a plastic overall who was diligently and nimbly going on with his work.
“Tere jaise admiyon se swing flu aata hai. Geela hote ho jaan bujkar, foreign jaate ho, najane aids, swing flu late ho……..pagal ho kya?”
“People like you bring swine flu. You get wet for the fun of it, you go abroad and bring aids, swine flu, and what not. Are you mad?”
He was not even looking at me, but he was loud enough for me to hear him, and he was referring to me. There was no one else around.
His wisdom tells him a lot of things. I don’t know in how many dimensions he thought in, but I could work out some number of angles in what he uttered casually.
a. Rich people bring rich diseases from rich places. The un-immunized man does not have the money to get cured of unique diseases. This is true in so many instances. Common flu & cold decimated from the Conquistadors wiped out entire South American civilizations. Transport and travel brings disease.
b. He is classifying me as belonging to a group of people who are very rash, and up to their nose in enjoying life. They try to drown in it, compared to his scraping dust bins day in and day out. At the same time he could be esteeming himself for wearing his odd looking patched up rain cover.
c. He is unable to digest the fact that I take my life so lightly. By god, I could catch swine flu and pass over to my maker very quickly.
I was stupefied, not at that moment. But his sentence kept forming in my mind for the next five minutes. The full import of what he was thinking got to me when I entered the apartment complex. I stopped at a tea shop, was having hot cha, when I saw that I was not alone. People old and young were walking by, though far and few, as if nothing had happened. They were soaking wet, but they never really did mind. So I was not alone.
But what mattered was this. This was the first time, something someone very far removed from my own class of people had said to me had affected me or stuck to me. This is odd. I travel a lot, meet a lot of people, but this is a comment regarding my lifestyle.
Often, we just hear what we want to hear. The rest gets drowned out intentionally at first, but unintentionally later on. I think I am following a fling by getting wet in the rain, and for the rag picker on the Mumbai - Pune highway, I am a perfect idiot, a social menace. That’s a point of view I never expected to be encountered with.
We always form a vision of ourselves, and once we have a pride in our own self, people around us just start portraying our image to us. This becomes our environment, our emotions, our tastes, our friends, our habits, our everything. But suddenly, a rag picker on the Mumbai – Pune highway thinks I am a social menace! What originality!
Sometimes, we just forget that every rag picker, beggar, destitute, slum dweller will have an opinion on us. We just get overshadowed by ourselves and our image. We go to work, read a few things, invest, get married, and yet without knowing, we think this is the right thing to do & the right way to live. We could be trampling a lot of things on the way, without getting off our sleep walk.
Maybe, people like me, and people like you, who have internet in their homes, offices, the connected guys you know, who go to work with their brains alone, who have reduced the labor with the body to a lower social class, are a social menace. Because people like us are what - 2% of India and the other 98% may be thinking of the 2% as a menace.
I know what you will be thinking now. How will the rag picker survive, if people don’t earn enough to throw away stuff? We are making his livelihood, could be a starting point.
Sunday, August 23, 2009
Cooking in the Quarters
I live in a transit quarters run by my company in Pune. It is a 3BHK apartment in a large complex called Empire Estate in Chinchwad, Pune. This is one of the many quarters run by the company in Pune, with probably a hundred in the country. To accommodate executives who are traveling on business or for people who get transferred, and yet are to settle down in their new place, like me. These properties are owned by the top management who lease out such properties to the company. It’s an old boys club. Every ex-CEO will have a thing leased out to the company. However, corporate governance is not what I am thinking of now.
The transit quarters are an eco system of their own. I have been in the quarters in Zaheerabad, Worli, Khar, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Chennai. You will find all sorts of people camping there for the night.
There will be a very old manager, Mahindra for life sorts. Then there will be the new joinee. There will be one protagonist like me. Everyone hates these places, which resemble a temple chatram or a common camping ground like a sarai, where people stay out of necessity. One can see the irritation of all people around, at the white walls, the medimix soap, and the Bajaj almond drops hair oil.
Everyone staying here, including myself, want to stay in a neat hotel, with variety in food. But the company is cutting costs or is being economical.
There have been instances when junior people are asked to leave just because some one more high or important in the company is coming in, and room has to be made for him. It is just irritating to have to pack up at odd times. It happened to me once in 2007, and I vowed never to walk into a company quarters again. Now, I am here again, and the experience has not sweetened much.
The same bland food. One would think the Mahindra transit quarters throughout India have a common menu. Roti, dhal, 2 subji’s, rice & curd. I have been in this place for a month, I have not tasted anything else, not even once. It doesn’t matter which part of the country you are in. The menu is the same.
One Sunday last month, when I was alone here, I decided to cook for myself. I could manage with a couple of south Indian dishes. But the caretakers here took it as a big insult, and would not let me into the kitchen. I tried coercive methods, then sometime later I appealed on compassionate grounds. They decided to make me dosas for dinner, and made me such dosas that I never repeated my mischief again.
I think they have been instructed not to entertain guests cooking for themselves just to make people leave sooner. If I am able to cook to my own taste once in a week, I would be pretty contented to live here, and the company would not want that. So it’s the same atta everyday, so people run out due to the monotony.
What would I not do to have rice mixed in puli kolambu/pulusu. Then curd rice, with a fried fish.
The caretakers are 2 teenagers from Gorakhpur in UP. There are 2 boys, cooking, keeping and sleeping in the house. They are in contract, with a recruitment company that files in boys from the village to work in such places. They can’t speak English or the local language. They are very respecting, decent and well behaved. They have been groomed to provide equal service all across India. Any Mahindra guest house in the country will have someone from Gorakhpur for sure. I don’t know how the connection came about or why.
The transit quarters are an eco system of their own. I have been in the quarters in Zaheerabad, Worli, Khar, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Chennai. You will find all sorts of people camping there for the night.
There will be a very old manager, Mahindra for life sorts. Then there will be the new joinee. There will be one protagonist like me. Everyone hates these places, which resemble a temple chatram or a common camping ground like a sarai, where people stay out of necessity. One can see the irritation of all people around, at the white walls, the medimix soap, and the Bajaj almond drops hair oil.
Everyone staying here, including myself, want to stay in a neat hotel, with variety in food. But the company is cutting costs or is being economical.
There have been instances when junior people are asked to leave just because some one more high or important in the company is coming in, and room has to be made for him. It is just irritating to have to pack up at odd times. It happened to me once in 2007, and I vowed never to walk into a company quarters again. Now, I am here again, and the experience has not sweetened much.
The same bland food. One would think the Mahindra transit quarters throughout India have a common menu. Roti, dhal, 2 subji’s, rice & curd. I have been in this place for a month, I have not tasted anything else, not even once. It doesn’t matter which part of the country you are in. The menu is the same.
One Sunday last month, when I was alone here, I decided to cook for myself. I could manage with a couple of south Indian dishes. But the caretakers here took it as a big insult, and would not let me into the kitchen. I tried coercive methods, then sometime later I appealed on compassionate grounds. They decided to make me dosas for dinner, and made me such dosas that I never repeated my mischief again.
I think they have been instructed not to entertain guests cooking for themselves just to make people leave sooner. If I am able to cook to my own taste once in a week, I would be pretty contented to live here, and the company would not want that. So it’s the same atta everyday, so people run out due to the monotony.
What would I not do to have rice mixed in puli kolambu/pulusu. Then curd rice, with a fried fish.
The caretakers are 2 teenagers from Gorakhpur in UP. There are 2 boys, cooking, keeping and sleeping in the house. They are in contract, with a recruitment company that files in boys from the village to work in such places. They can’t speak English or the local language. They are very respecting, decent and well behaved. They have been groomed to provide equal service all across India. Any Mahindra guest house in the country will have someone from Gorakhpur for sure. I don’t know how the connection came about or why.
Friday, August 21, 2009
To get fresh air!
I live in Pune now. Far, far from Chennai. This seems like a foreign country to me. This is a foreign language they speak. I am unable to get any chilli bajji here, or for that matter many of the things I had taken for granted Tamilnadu.
I have moved into Marketing now. I now handle Product Planning for our company, one in a team of 5 people, managed by a senior GM. I have been in sales for 4 years now, and I am going through a major transformation, at least so I thought when I was asked if I would be willing to move into marketing.
My immediate thought was the escape from month ends and targets. I knew there would be stress in any job, but this would not require a lot of travel. And I could go to office and come home every night to my family.
I decided to make the move despite the not so rosy financial situation we were in. I was of the opinion that one has to make a few sacrifices to get ahead in life, and in the long run, it would be alright.
I had been wrong on a few things.
I never knew how much I would miss the regular travel I have been taking for a nuisance the past 4 years. To go to office everyday is a thing I hate, I realize now.
I assumed sacrifices will be made by me readily. Now to think of selling my beloved motorcycle, the Zahir, and my first car, White. I feel like a morally corrupt person to throw off things. So much for my love of things. But I just cant see my things, my automobiles, bath tub, , being used by somebody. It is like abandoning a pet. Would they feed it properly, would they have a covered parking space, etc. Shit, the list of worries on this front go on like anything. So I decided not to make the both the sacrifice for my career aspirations. I decided to bring them here, and use them as sparingly as possible, without getting caught by the cops. It may seem impractical, so my wife and parents say.
I thought marketing was the natural progression for a sales guy with a management education background. I was excited when I though I would be managing a brand. It was what people do sitting in HQ, telling people how to advertise, how to campaign, how to promote, etc. Now when I am in this shit, I see meetings happening with ridiculous agendas:
• Project Planning of Product planning programs
• Market opportunity analysis process – to develop a template for understanding market opportunities and standardize the process of delivering products/brands/value, etc……blablabla……..
• There will be a meeting tomorrow to discuss the key take aways from the last meeting. Each member is to bring a write up on the above subject.
• The actual amount of time spent in thinking and executing the actual work will be 10%. The rest is spent doing fancy things, completely unrelated.
People are a lot more sophisticated. They like giving things names, making presentations to the top management – mind you, they literally fight for doing this. They like being snobbish, give themselves airs, trying to look intelligent. At the end of the day, they are being strictly professional, just what the employer wants. They would call meeting the customer for feedback as VoC – Voice of Customer. They would call a detailed project objective as PRF – Product Request Form. This gateway, that gateway, Gateway of India, etc. It’s designed to make morons sound intelligent. When I came in, it all seemed very intelligent, but to know what each term means, all these people here are running a swindle. Conning people and getting ahead in life.
People generally try to look very busy. But you go within what they do, they play solitaire most of the time, and they browse wikipedia, google news, ebay, solving the Friday puzzle in our intranet, etc. This means there is a lot of time for people to think about their environment and their colleagues, generally to be idle and think bad and not so bad things about people. Politicking is very common, and from where I came, all this did not matter. You were worth the gold for the numbers you showed in every month’s review. Here it is different. You are worth who you know. Your worth is in being in the good books. A rebel doesn’t fit in, and so does a person with a different attitude.
People in the office are stagnant. One can say this from their blank stares and bland smiles. There is no josh in anyone. There is no laughter in the office. So much work to be done, and people are just wary of small talk and time waste.
I don’t know how this will read to people who have had desk jobs their entire career, but I think this is not what I should be doing. I would become a stupid professor, a jargon crunching asshole and a scheming fox.
To meet 100 new people every day, I would give anything. To stop this suffocation, I would give anything.
I have moved into Marketing now. I now handle Product Planning for our company, one in a team of 5 people, managed by a senior GM. I have been in sales for 4 years now, and I am going through a major transformation, at least so I thought when I was asked if I would be willing to move into marketing.
My immediate thought was the escape from month ends and targets. I knew there would be stress in any job, but this would not require a lot of travel. And I could go to office and come home every night to my family.
I decided to make the move despite the not so rosy financial situation we were in. I was of the opinion that one has to make a few sacrifices to get ahead in life, and in the long run, it would be alright.
I had been wrong on a few things.
I never knew how much I would miss the regular travel I have been taking for a nuisance the past 4 years. To go to office everyday is a thing I hate, I realize now.
I assumed sacrifices will be made by me readily. Now to think of selling my beloved motorcycle, the Zahir, and my first car, White. I feel like a morally corrupt person to throw off things. So much for my love of things. But I just cant see my things, my automobiles, bath tub, , being used by somebody. It is like abandoning a pet. Would they feed it properly, would they have a covered parking space, etc. Shit, the list of worries on this front go on like anything. So I decided not to make the both the sacrifice for my career aspirations. I decided to bring them here, and use them as sparingly as possible, without getting caught by the cops. It may seem impractical, so my wife and parents say.
I thought marketing was the natural progression for a sales guy with a management education background. I was excited when I though I would be managing a brand. It was what people do sitting in HQ, telling people how to advertise, how to campaign, how to promote, etc. Now when I am in this shit, I see meetings happening with ridiculous agendas:
• Project Planning of Product planning programs
• Market opportunity analysis process – to develop a template for understanding market opportunities and standardize the process of delivering products/brands/value, etc……blablabla……..
• There will be a meeting tomorrow to discuss the key take aways from the last meeting. Each member is to bring a write up on the above subject.
• The actual amount of time spent in thinking and executing the actual work will be 10%. The rest is spent doing fancy things, completely unrelated.
People are a lot more sophisticated. They like giving things names, making presentations to the top management – mind you, they literally fight for doing this. They like being snobbish, give themselves airs, trying to look intelligent. At the end of the day, they are being strictly professional, just what the employer wants. They would call meeting the customer for feedback as VoC – Voice of Customer. They would call a detailed project objective as PRF – Product Request Form. This gateway, that gateway, Gateway of India, etc. It’s designed to make morons sound intelligent. When I came in, it all seemed very intelligent, but to know what each term means, all these people here are running a swindle. Conning people and getting ahead in life.
People generally try to look very busy. But you go within what they do, they play solitaire most of the time, and they browse wikipedia, google news, ebay, solving the Friday puzzle in our intranet, etc. This means there is a lot of time for people to think about their environment and their colleagues, generally to be idle and think bad and not so bad things about people. Politicking is very common, and from where I came, all this did not matter. You were worth the gold for the numbers you showed in every month’s review. Here it is different. You are worth who you know. Your worth is in being in the good books. A rebel doesn’t fit in, and so does a person with a different attitude.
People in the office are stagnant. One can say this from their blank stares and bland smiles. There is no josh in anyone. There is no laughter in the office. So much work to be done, and people are just wary of small talk and time waste.
I don’t know how this will read to people who have had desk jobs their entire career, but I think this is not what I should be doing. I would become a stupid professor, a jargon crunching asshole and a scheming fox.
To meet 100 new people every day, I would give anything. To stop this suffocation, I would give anything.
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