Day 1 : 29th Sep 08
My first trip to an exotic new and far away land…ALONE. Am a bit nervous and excited on how I could pull of the next 4 days, enjoying every bit of it and returning content having made a good trip. It was a decision taken at the spur of the moment. Initial plans to Dubai tumbled as Sophie was travelling to India and Richu had an option for a trip to Salalah.
I am at the Qatar International Airport waiting for the connecting flight to Bangkok; delayed by an hour and now estimated at 9.45 pm. I had second thoughts about carrying my laptop. But it turned out to be a time saver and a redeemer for my dead blog waiting for the last few months to get some fresh new words. I strayed through the airport terminal …and disappointingly discovered that the airport do not offer ‘Airport Lounge’ access for Diners Club members.
I remembered to call Shanavas and wished him Eid Mubarak.
Finally settled down at Costa café with a large Café Latte and delighted to find that my laptop found a wireless network. Plugged my ears with music from my folders – Atif Aslam soothed them with the ‘Tere Bin’ number.
A group or 5 arab young men at a corner table playing cards, a European couple next to my table wiping away the spilt soda from the table and her clutches, that sprayed on to them while opening it (one of them had shaked it quite a bit), an arab young couple taking their photo on the mobile with his wife resting her chin on his shoulder…
Chairs kept on changing the faces of their occupants…there were tired faces, chirpy kiddie faces and faces dipped in paper back books yellowed at the edges; all waiting to continue the journey.
Ashaji entered with the ‘Mera Kuch Saaman’ number and I closed my eyes for a few moments of tranquil ecstasy.
Monday, 29 September 2008
Thursday, 15 May 2008
Corporate Culture … the dilemma of the East!
An Irish executive broke the thin glacial silence in the loo with a puffy fart. There was a sudden moment of stillness among the others busy leaking into wall closets. The Irish guy laughed out and made the inappropriate exhaust looked funny. It worked …others too felt it was an uncontrollable funny moment of air seepage. I too felt the same….but then does an exhaust from an eastern outlet would be treated the same? It would have easily brought in an air of embarrassment and questioned the very basis of personal hygiene and public conduct.
Along with the English language, corporate culture moulded in the cold speckles corners of the western boardrooms over the decades, by spirited men in cotton blended woollen suits, has entrenched the world (at least the common wealth nations and other territories where the west had influenced) in building and fine tuning the governance framework.
Hence the corporate cultural symbols are mostly western and every new entrant, naively gazing at the maze ahead, is expected to pick up the nuances and ever evolving cultural ethics at a pace that demands an instant metamorphosis.
If your pedigree had not peeped out of the fringes of small towns and highland villages then you are in for tough days. You are always on the lookout of being conscious of being relentlessly right in the way you exchange greetings while meeting clients, conducting oneself at meetings, having the fork on left and knife on the right and clearing the cutlery from outside working towards the big white china; and of lately to be seen in corporate power lunches having more of salads, brown and high fibre breads and fruits.
The east had always been tolerant to new cultures, religion and food habits and so for the corporate culture as well. A typical bollywood adaptation of a local would be a bhaiya in white dhoti and baniyan with a one room office adjacent to the go down/whole sale outlet perched on the glazed floor bending forward resting their overgrown belly and elbows on a wooden desk cum drawer that opens up to accommodate bundles of cash and registers that need to be used ad hockly. A few meters away an assistant, one of the few lads who had done well at the village school especially in arithmetic, would be eyeballing a thick register with a convex spine -like a rainbow- changing colours to suit the bhaiya’s temperament.
From a floor level desk-cum-drawer to a boardroom, it’s been a huge leap. It’s a fine balance between the real self that’s evolved over years picking up slices of life from the people and the stories around and the sudden impact of a whole new way of life that eats up half of your adult life.
At a time when the West is incorporating more of the Eastern techniques in exploring the power of the inner self into the corporate culture, may be its time for the East to redraw the blue print for a corporate culture rooted in the ancient secrets of power of the mind together with preserving the creators balance of the life’s forces.
Along with the English language, corporate culture moulded in the cold speckles corners of the western boardrooms over the decades, by spirited men in cotton blended woollen suits, has entrenched the world (at least the common wealth nations and other territories where the west had influenced) in building and fine tuning the governance framework.
Hence the corporate cultural symbols are mostly western and every new entrant, naively gazing at the maze ahead, is expected to pick up the nuances and ever evolving cultural ethics at a pace that demands an instant metamorphosis.
If your pedigree had not peeped out of the fringes of small towns and highland villages then you are in for tough days. You are always on the lookout of being conscious of being relentlessly right in the way you exchange greetings while meeting clients, conducting oneself at meetings, having the fork on left and knife on the right and clearing the cutlery from outside working towards the big white china; and of lately to be seen in corporate power lunches having more of salads, brown and high fibre breads and fruits.
The east had always been tolerant to new cultures, religion and food habits and so for the corporate culture as well. A typical bollywood adaptation of a local would be a bhaiya in white dhoti and baniyan with a one room office adjacent to the go down/whole sale outlet perched on the glazed floor bending forward resting their overgrown belly and elbows on a wooden desk cum drawer that opens up to accommodate bundles of cash and registers that need to be used ad hockly. A few meters away an assistant, one of the few lads who had done well at the village school especially in arithmetic, would be eyeballing a thick register with a convex spine -like a rainbow- changing colours to suit the bhaiya’s temperament.
From a floor level desk-cum-drawer to a boardroom, it’s been a huge leap. It’s a fine balance between the real self that’s evolved over years picking up slices of life from the people and the stories around and the sudden impact of a whole new way of life that eats up half of your adult life.
At a time when the West is incorporating more of the Eastern techniques in exploring the power of the inner self into the corporate culture, may be its time for the East to redraw the blue print for a corporate culture rooted in the ancient secrets of power of the mind together with preserving the creators balance of the life’s forces.
Wednesday, 16 April 2008
Silent Discovery
each time the dark silence looms
methinks -- an evergreen soul!
as each leaf falls, green or yellow,
the upheavals in the cold breeze go unseen
i live in the wings of time
i believe the world melts with me
nowhere do i hear the inevitable footsteps.
while lost in the musings of the green,
the coldness of the dark creeps in . . .
I see the upheavals in the cold breeze;
the evergreen shell breaks.
no more do i stare at a few above!
beneath i see thousands . . .
avaricious desires drift with the breeze
the pristine soul glitters.
as the sighs, moans and the incense cloudsfade,
the mind wanders and finds the lost path
the path through the enchanted woods . . . !
methinks -- an evergreen soul!
as each leaf falls, green or yellow,
the upheavals in the cold breeze go unseen
i live in the wings of time
i believe the world melts with me
nowhere do i hear the inevitable footsteps.
while lost in the musings of the green,
the coldness of the dark creeps in . . .
I see the upheavals in the cold breeze;
the evergreen shell breaks.
no more do i stare at a few above!
beneath i see thousands . . .
avaricious desires drift with the breeze
the pristine soul glitters.
as the sighs, moans and the incense cloudsfade,
the mind wanders and finds the lost path
the path through the enchanted woods . . . !
Tuesday, 15 April 2008
Domestic help.....why export it?
I was on phone with my mother in India. At 60 she still spends a considerable time in the kitchen that had metamorphosed over the years… from red oxide paved cement floor to tiled glazed flooring, from earthen stove to imported gas cooker and a puffing chimney paved way to a exhaust fan blackened with oil, spices and dusty cobwebs. She was extremely lucky on one aspect – for most…. the life line of a modern kitchen – domestic help. There was this family of 4 sisters, from the nearby district with roots in Tanjore, who took over our kitchen in the last 3 decades. They made their entries and exits chronologically as each of them reached their marriageable age.
Sandhya made her debut when the youngest of the sisters left last year. Unlike the sisters, she was not a resident domestic help. She lived 10 minutes of long-strided walking from my house and started her chores at 7.30 am and left (I should admit) exhausted at 5.30 pm. She was a mother of a 2 year old and 4 year old who were taken care of by her widowed mother. I was glad that my mom was happy that sandhya had fitted into the cast that had been moulded for 3decades by 4 dark sisters with a graceful servility that was imagined to be difficult for a new tribe to ensconce into.
She was in a hurry to hang up the phone as Sandhya had to leave work early today to attend the Sthree Shakti (Women Power) meeting. Not knowing what this government funded program was aimed at, I was anxious to know what does a high school drop out and mother of two working as a domestic help, doing at these meetings and whether it did help her to ease her life’s troubles.
There was a silent revolution gaining momentum in the rural areas and she was a link in that long chain connecting thousands of women witnessing a blooming emancipation and self-sketching their empowerment under this program. The program gave them a platform to launch small scale entrepreneurial programs like paper basket units, revival of handicrafts techniques on the verge of fade out among others thereby creating self sustainable units and creating jobs in their neighbourhood.
Sandhya earns Rs3000 a month from her job, lives with her family and finds time to engage herself in social programs creating additional revenue streams for her family. What about the gulf maids? Are they better placed than Sandhaya? They earn double the salary and live in air-conditioned apartments in the Gulf. There ends the glossy side. The price they had paid for this is a huge loan from the local loan sharks to pay for the Visa, ticket and agent commission. On an average majority of the maids do not stay for more than 3 years. They reach home richer by a few chiffon sari’s but still need money to pay-off the debts that helped them to reach gulf. The trauma of living away from family and kids and in some cases the physical trauma endured are scars that may take a long time to heal.
Every town and village has scores of aged parents and working couples who need domestic help. Then why do nations export domestic help and get branded as nations brimming with maids and labourers.
Sandhya made her debut when the youngest of the sisters left last year. Unlike the sisters, she was not a resident domestic help. She lived 10 minutes of long-strided walking from my house and started her chores at 7.30 am and left (I should admit) exhausted at 5.30 pm. She was a mother of a 2 year old and 4 year old who were taken care of by her widowed mother. I was glad that my mom was happy that sandhya had fitted into the cast that had been moulded for 3decades by 4 dark sisters with a graceful servility that was imagined to be difficult for a new tribe to ensconce into.
She was in a hurry to hang up the phone as Sandhya had to leave work early today to attend the Sthree Shakti (Women Power) meeting. Not knowing what this government funded program was aimed at, I was anxious to know what does a high school drop out and mother of two working as a domestic help, doing at these meetings and whether it did help her to ease her life’s troubles.
There was a silent revolution gaining momentum in the rural areas and she was a link in that long chain connecting thousands of women witnessing a blooming emancipation and self-sketching their empowerment under this program. The program gave them a platform to launch small scale entrepreneurial programs like paper basket units, revival of handicrafts techniques on the verge of fade out among others thereby creating self sustainable units and creating jobs in their neighbourhood.
Sandhya earns Rs3000 a month from her job, lives with her family and finds time to engage herself in social programs creating additional revenue streams for her family. What about the gulf maids? Are they better placed than Sandhaya? They earn double the salary and live in air-conditioned apartments in the Gulf. There ends the glossy side. The price they had paid for this is a huge loan from the local loan sharks to pay for the Visa, ticket and agent commission. On an average majority of the maids do not stay for more than 3 years. They reach home richer by a few chiffon sari’s but still need money to pay-off the debts that helped them to reach gulf. The trauma of living away from family and kids and in some cases the physical trauma endured are scars that may take a long time to heal.
Every town and village has scores of aged parents and working couples who need domestic help. Then why do nations export domestic help and get branded as nations brimming with maids and labourers.
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