A Dream Job!

Year after year, when its placements time, I hear conversations amongst some of my college friends, juniors, and alumni on who is placed where; who is coming to which institute; what is the bench-mark pay this year; which sectors are hits amongst students, etc. Of-course, in my case, ever since I got my current ‘Bharat Sarkar’ job, I have struck to it diligently for six plus long years for the positives I see in it.

Having stayed here for a while now, I have often observed there are various principles and ideologies in the system I am a part of that I do not entirely endorse; Being the Idealist that I am, I have attempted, albeit in baby steps, to change a few of these in my own ways and achieved limited success.

There were a couple of incidents this week in office and some subsequent discussions with colleagues and friends which led me to take a quick re-cap of these thoughts and to ask myself if there is one such thing called a Dream Job – if so, where does it exist. Instead, isn’t it possible to have a dream for the job that we are presently in and try to accomplish that dream.

Instead of cribbing about the so-called omnipresent “system”, at the cost of sounding clichéd, is it really so difficult to change this “system” through quantifiable, measurable initiatives that will yield some results. In the role and the job that I am in, my dream is to be a part of the organization where:

• it is perfectly fine to have a view of your own and debate it with open minds.
• meritocracy and performance alone rule promotion policies
• it is Ok to question words like “precedence” and “past practice” based on rationale thinking
• it is possible to execute your function without fear or favour
• the staff are genuinely ‘anti-red tapist’ - the mind-set that the bureaucracy and government set-ups are so infamous for
• all cadre of staff – right from the security guard at the main gate to the management is accountable for what they do and own up their work
• skill-sets and interests of individuals are matched with requirements of a work-profile to determine postings
• all unproductive meetings are curtailed, if not to save time, atleast to save on reams of paper that’s wasted, meeting after meeting
• the senior management refuses protocol and is on its own
• lunch breaks are not for 2 plus long hours to go to the near-by exhibitions/fairs or for shopping or a siesta in the library!

On a lighter note, something came as quite a surprise to me in this context. When I was sharing this with some of my friends in the private sector, barring a few of the above, their wish-list seemed hardly any different!! Is the grass indeed greener on the other side?

Any comments?

Do Opposites Always Attract?

Relationships - they are everywhere around us. Best friends; deeply in love couples; doting parents and kids; bosses and their men Fridays, teachers and star students; As I grew up, one question I have often asked myself is that for a relationship to tick – is it essential that the two parties need to be as similar as possible; or is it that opposites always attract.

There have been numerous examples in my own life. I have known the best of friends who are as different as chalk and cheese – different principles and ideologies; different likes/dislikes; different tastes in various subjects like art, music, movies, theatre, politics; different food preferences; they are simply not on the same wavelength. But still, they often seem to complement each other so perfectly that they hardly need a third dimension on any aspect.

And there is the other school of thought – Birds of a feather flock together; Individuals who choose to adopt this belief are almost like two sides of the same coin. They have similar tastes, likes/dislikes, characteristics, beliefs, opinions, preferences, et al. They want to do similar things all the time - the ones who believe that it is so much easier for people with similar attributes to carry on a relationship smoothly.

If we think through a possible rationale for like-minded people to be attracted to each other, it could be because they are least prone to any conflicts and are almost hassle-free - you hardly need to convince anything to your own mirror image.

However, my personal experience has been that even those who fiercely believe in like minds getting together, discreetly wish that a devil’s advocate existed in reality to bring forward different perspectives - after all, what is the fun if you do not have someone near you who can give a reality-check on your way of life. What I have also seen is that the choice to adopt either of the tendencies mentioned above are, by and large, dependent on the circumstances that one goes through at various points of time.

I am yet to figure out myself what works best for me – or whether is it possible, or even necessary, to distinctly skew towards either of these approaches; nevertheless, in most cases, a co-existence of both these tendencies appear almost inevitable!!

The Curious Case of the “Forward” Button

I am a self-confessed email addict – the kind who would refresh my inboxes every 5th second even on a super-hectic day at work. I was one of the early users of the internet / emails ever since school days and this habit has somehow struck even after commencing my career. Currently, apart from official purposes, I use the medium as a tool to connect with friends and family across the globe.

However, I notice more often than not that emails go much beyond sharing updates in lives with your near and dear folks. There are greater mail freaks around – the ones who find it so much fun to share not just worthwhile mail content, but also any kind of jokes or scenic pictures or stories/pictures of religious leaders/gods, celebrity gossips, man-woman gender based fun, and the list can really go on and on....

A little amount of pondering on what can be the reasons for this insurmountable urge to forward mails for no rhyme or reason led to the following possible thoughts:-

• too little work at office, too much spare time;
• it could be like a short break between hectic professional schedules or other chores;
• just an effort in reminding the recipients you still exist;
• you genuinely wish to forward a content that you have received over an email
• the mail you had received had threatened that catastrophe shall strike if you do not forward it to 50 email recipients within 5 seconds of your reading it;
• the originator of the mail had promised to ship across a mobile if you do not break the chain and forward it to 50 mail IDs (I wonder how even the most literate and rationale ones fall prey to this).
• a corporate house has agreed to sponsor the medical facilities of a cancer struck kid for every e-mail forwarded by you in the loop.
• no time to actually write out a mail – so forwards are a novel way to keep in touch (with absolutely no effort other than clicking the forward button)

While I do not delete any mail without reading, I must confess I do not enjoy bulk forwards which are merely transferred without any personal touch. I forward very very rarely, and send only the stuff which I feel MUST be reached to my friends. For someone who hates to have a cluttered mail box, my mail history would hardly be a day or two old at any point of time; and forwards sent on a one to many basis is normally not the most prioritized of all the mails - not even in personal inboxes. I find it more exciting to see my friend’s holiday snaps than the wedding snaps of some celebrity; similarly, its so much more insightful to introspect yourself than through some philosophical quotes forwarded on power-point presentations with soothing music and scenic background pictures.

If only we use our online presence, time and the bandwidth in a more useful manner – it could be for the simplest of joys like catching up with friends and sharing events/updates with the ones who matter or browsing through things which are customized to individual preferences or reading stuff which can bring in some value addition to our lives...

If only we learn to move beyond being rudimentary messengers transferring un-altered content from one inbox to several others, the world-wide web could indeed be a better place to stroll through.

Go, Kiss the World - how about starting with your own Country?

Shortly, its going to be that time of the year again. Schools are in the brink of a vacation close. A time when children and adults alike look forward to taking a break from their hustle-bustle city lives and schedules. My kiddo cousins in the family have already started planning their winter vacation. One of the things that struck me is a trend that I noticed has caught up in a big-way as a trend in the whole concept of vacationing – holidays to foreign destinations.

I was one of the unfortunate (feel rather fortunate, in hindsight!) ones who while growing up in Chennai always had my immediate relatives and family friends in around Chennai, at the most, in and around Tamil Nadu. So, my holidays - if at all I rarely had any time for it after being done with my holiday tuitions and special classes - were mostly a trip to some of my relatives’ places within Tamil Nadu. Of course, I had great fun with my cousin and immediate sisters and our small gang of girls did have a rocking time. It helped me develop a great bonding with them all which continues till date.

Anyway, the circumstances today are very different. Our societies are increasingly getting cosmopolitan by the day. Today, its more a question of peer pressure and it is considered inferior if you do not go to a foreign locale during your holidays and share your holiday stories. It often makes me wonder – how many of the current generation kids have even visited a fair portion of their own city or acquainted themselves with the rich history that India is bestowed with. Though I cannot claim even remotely that I have visited all the “must-see” places in India, I can, with a certain sense of modesty, say that the extent to which I have explored my country only left me feel wanting for more.

In this context, I cannot help but recall a couple of recent trips I did with my family. Firstly, we had covered Southern Karnataka in March - more to fulfill my Mom’s long desire to cover some of the ancient temples that side. Karnataka, truly, is blessed with tons of natural wealth and dense forests. We got a chance to visit some ancient and famous temples each of which had a story to tell from the past. An add-on bonus was some breath-taking scenic landscapes through which we traveled. We covered about 1500 kms extensively by road in about 3 days and the hilly terrain and interior, virgin hill-stations we passed by simply rendered us awe-struck.

Ditto for the 1 day trip I did recently to cover interior Tamil Nadu (Tanjore and Trichy). My parents filled me in with their memoirs of my fore-fathers and their up-bringing in our native places. Some of these places would make for fantastic educational trips for today’s urbane school-going kids. Even the simplest and closest of them all from Chennai (the place I grew up), DakshinaChitra (www.dakshinachitra.net), was popularized to Indians only by NRIs and foreigners who flocked that place to learn about India’s rich cultural history.

But, an un-enterprising Tourism Dept. in India and lousy domestic infrastructure coupled with “I love anything foreign” attitude of parents have ensured a slow and steady burial of a whole body of fantastic history. Today, Singapore is far more superior than Srirangapattinam as a holiday destination; Johannesburg a far more exciting place to visit and freak out than Jaipur.

While its wonderful to embrace the world in all its myriad hues, cultures and continents, its also time we opened ourselves to learn and nurture the places we live in.

I have not written this piece with a closed and territorial mind-set to emphasize that India is better than ‘A’ or ‘B’ or ‘C’ – either as a holiday destination or otherwise. But, before you explore the 7 continents across the globe, doesn’t it feel proud and confident to patronize your mother country before the world. After-all, Home IS where the Heart should be!!

In(ter)-dependence

Amidst pouring rains, choc-a-bloc traffic and blaring horns of co-travellers, I had an interesting chat with a colleague over the level of inter-dependence of single (and independent) women in our societies. On one side was she – married with two kids, financially independent, but with a strong support system at home in terms of her family – narrating how her life has changed post-marriage and the role change she has undergone; and on the other side was me – single, with a fairly decent career, staying alone in the Big, Bad city of Bombay, and most of all, “Independent” – Well, technically, I was, but, didn’t realize my level of inter-dependence until I asked myself a while ago if that part was literally true.

The conversation did let me ponder over the levels of dependence we all have with various elements of the society – to begin with, am hugely dependent on my family as a support system too – though I stay in a different city from them, I land up calling home more than 4 to 5 times even on weekdays; dependent on close friends and the near and dear ones – for all the love and affection and the cheer they bring unto you on days, when you are low or even otherwise; dependent on your pals/chums – for all the fun things to do and make life a lot more lighter; dependent on colleagues – for all the professional assistance required; dependent on maid - for all the household chores and meals; dependent on neighbours and the society that am living in – to take care of any SOS requirements…..and the list goes on.

And I thought I was someone who could survive all on my own by myself even if I were to exist in an Island someday. Well, today was a wake-up call. At the cost of sounding clichéd, it did make me thank god for all the wonderful people in my life.

Independence - Seriously – Does that word even have to exist in our Dictionaries?.

Expressions

As a kid, I had often wondered how sometimes it is difficult to communicate not just with oneself but also with your dear ones. Words would falter only at the most critical of times, even to the most articulate of them all. This could be more prevalent in stages of adolescence where teens tend to become more reclusive. Deep down somewhere, I was probably one such person who found greater solace in expressing to the inner self – Have believed in this part of it, till date.

Thus, began my quest for writing. Initially, it seemed like a Face 2 Book conversation which was more a monologue. But then, as years pass by, its amazing to read through stuff which I have myself written say, 10 or 12 years back, with the mindset and maturity levels I had at that time. When I had gone home (native place) recently, I spent a decent amount of time flipping through my old school/college time Diaries, scrap-books, all the farewell autograph notes from my friends, etc. – in a way, it was more like re-visiting the past.

Blogging, really, is only a more contemporary variant of the same. You document stuff based on your real time experiences in life, the people you interact with, or thoughts that strike you at a particular point in time. As days, and you, evolve, its nice to recall what you were going through during that phase of life. In a way, its like an expression of your ideologies and principles on various things that you experience in your day to day routine – A fabulous medium to express your views and thoughts to people whom you wish to. And So I thought, So here I am.