Thursday, May 22, 2008

Mothers Day surprise

Apart from Mothers day I must say it was an interesting weekend- was there a revelation? There was not a minute when I felt the absence of my mother though she was 200 miles away basking at her mother’s place. From the crack of dawn till the blanket of dusk covered the sky, dad was running around the house, bitchy, pugnacious, flagrant temper and bossy like a cocky hen but without any stretch marks. Where was the mother hen in him hiding all these days? 32 years is a very long gestation period for a man to deliver the mother in him. I was a silent spectator to all that was happening at home this weekend.

Dad has always been the cool cucumber in the house, unperturbed, but it doesn’t mean that he is irresponsible he just likes to walk the journey life with a care-free attitude. I always wanted to by live like him. My dear mother, a lady with the iron heart has been a martinet and playing the game of life by the rule book, may be this was because she had to play the role of father till we were in our teens. Well anyways, it is interesting to see how life brings opposite poles together and how they tide over the ocean of life together. And more interestingly people never remain same; the colors of life keep changing like the seasons. We start at one end of the pole and we walk and walk and at the end of life we end up at the other end without realizing the journey.

All fathers are invisible in daytime; daytime is ruled by mothers and fathers come out at night. Darkness brings home fathers, with their real, unspeakable power. There is more to fathers than meets the eye. Margaret Atwood, Cat's Eyes

Coming back to the (dis) hormonal motherly weekend, dad was up at the crack of dawn which is rare event and even rarer than sighting a blue moon. A man who never even lifted his used silverware after the meal was now at work. One minute he is filling water in the washing machine and segregating whites and colors and next the minute I see him near the storage bin with the bundle of newspapers from the previous day. Is this mother hen on Red bull? My eyebrows went up /:-0

It didn’t stop with just the running around. He was busy giving orders to the servant maid and giving unsolicited tips on how to do dishes, how to economize on the gritty Sabeena, how mop the floors without leaving footmarks and how to hang clothes in the clothes line. I was wondering if he was attacked by a virulent strain of Mami virus or possessed by a Mylapore Mami. He was not trying to teach her, but trying to be her humiliating mother-in-law.

I could see the fury of hurricane Nargis her neatly kaajaled eyes, and pleated portion of her polyester saree was tucked to the right of her hip, she was all ready to wage a war and then stage a walk out. I saw the long serrated knife that I left in the sink last nite after slicing the watermelon and I had momentary vision of Mother Kali, and for a change it was not mom but the maid.

With all this happening in the background I called mom to wish her for Mothers Day and I ended up giving her a progress report on her dear husband. My running commentary was exposing the “desperate wife in him.” It made her anxious, uneasy and she was protective. She quickly dispensed an idea for truce. I interrupted his pedagogy and assuaged the maid with a hot cup of coffee made with extra dash of good decoction and milk without any water. All with a faint hope of cooling her fuming brain and squished ego. I pulled my dad aside and warned him of the repercussions if she quit and I told him I was not interested in doing the dishes or clothes for the weekend.

But he never showed any signs of cessation. Where did dad get all this energy come from and where was the house cleaning wisdom hiding all these years? Was he scared to open his mouth in front of my mother? Now the mother role went to the level of micro managing and looking over the maid’s shoulder. Hope it was only shoulder J and not in between the shoulders.

32 years of living with my dad and I have seen him very responsible but never seen him making petulant comments and micro managing (feminine side). At times I was feeling like running my finger nails against the wall and I wanted to yell “Stop it! I wish I had a camera to record all his movements, words and activities- my dad uncut J. Would Mom really be proud to see him this way or would she be threatened to see the other women in my father? But all said and done she would be surprised to see her role being performed with more punch and vigor. For the first time I felt my father could have been a good stay at home father, but I always knew my mother would be a CEO if she had gone to work.

It was usually mom who would be upset with the maid for her delinquency and shoddy job and my father would assuage her and coach her to take things lightly. And now it is complete reversal of role. It is now my father with short fuse, and whole nine yards. My mother had turned to can cool beans after crossing the menopause milestone, but I guess it is my dad’s turn to go through lap in life, but seemed liked a never ending lap. Do men ever pause?
If the relationship of father to son could really be reduced to biology, the whole earth would blaze with the glory of fathers and sons – James Baldwin

Do I have to wait till Fathers Day to see the father in mom? Some more time to go..

A harried day in my life…

I was driving to work this morning and I was gripped by unfounded fear and anxiety. I didn't know what triggered it and where it germinated from, but it made me all sweaty and my heart palpitating. I was doubtful if I was having a heart attack or was it due to clay oven Chennai summers. My eyes turned sticky and mind paralyzed by fear. May be I should have ask the auto guy to proceed towards the hospital instead?

I felt like life was coming to an end and the only other question that rattled my mind was, how will my family survive after my death? Images of my family painted in penury flashed continuously before my eyes. The auto guy was about the jump the red light, but noticing the cop on the pavement and hit on the breaks bringing the racing auto to a screeching halt with a big jolt in the last second. The inertia threw me around, but I was in a state of oblivion and none of this helped me to come out of my whirl wind of thoughts. Isn't it normal for every bread winner to think this way when it comes to survival or am I imagining and over reacting? I felt the auto was going down a dead end.

I had no clue or experience to handle such situations. But there was this though of turning around and driving back home and disappear into the shell forever. Do I sound like a fearful ground hog running back into the burrow? Is it the cold winter or the long shadow that made it go back? Would that solve the problem? And why do I want to do the disappearing act?

Was it the past, present or future that was making me behave in this neurotic fashion? I knew it was not going to be an easy day at work and at the same time hiding would solve no problem. All the "What If" questions appeared from no where and scavenged my peace and clarity. I was worried if I could make it through the day.

Having no answers to allay my tenuous fears, I let the auto guy drive towards my office with the hope that the turbulence in my mind would soon end. Feeling flustered is not new to me, but feeling threatened was new. My mind was like fish out the pond. Fear never went away and as time went by it made me feel more jittery and anxious. The auto raced through the last set of traffic lights and the never ending drive to work was coming to an end but not the questions. Caught in a quagmire of thoughts I arrived at work.

I swiped the access card and entered the work area, and I knew I was carrying a stranger in my mind, but I conveniently let him stay in my mind and walked to my cubicle like a programmed robot. I plugged my laptop, made myself comfortable in the chair and was starring at the screen like deer caught in front the headlights. And here I am writing it down….

1. Does contentment in life mean being afraid of failure?
2. Does contentment in life mean afraid of taking new risks or walking into unknown territories?
3. Does contentment in life mean absence of motivation to excel?
4. Does contentment mean “been there and seen it all” and not being avaricious?
5. Is it good to be in the state of contentment?
6. And I finally asked myself am I contented with life? If yes, why?

If “Yes” was my answer to question 6 then I had to come up with smart replies to win over my mind. And if “No” was my answer, then again I had to find reasons what does it take to get to the state of contentment and if it is safe to remain in the state?

I felt my mind was being possessed by a strand of virulent virus that crumbles confidence, annihilates peace and leave one emotionally paralyzed. I didn’t know how long the phone rang and how many times he had tried my extension, and for sometime I didn’t know I was a part of this world. My boss stepped out of the room and invited me for a discussion on my past performance. My day ended but question were still hanging over my head like Damocles sword. I was not trying to solve all of life questions in one go.

Sometimes the questions are complicated and the answers are simple – Dr. Suess

Friday, May 2, 2008

Dark side of the jobs boom in India

Have you seen the guy outside your office handing out ICICI bank leaflets and canvassing for personal loans and credits cards? Have you ever stopped for long enough to find out his education levels? How many times have you yelled at the call center girl or hung up on her. Have you looked at the security guard outside your gate in the scorching sun? Do these people have an envious job, corner office and comfortable chairs? Do these people throw away their intellect to do such a mundane and grueling job? My boss often used to say that he would never want to curse his enemy with this kind of job.

Life is all about money in this planet and what varies is the size of dream and desire. A person from the local economic strate would want a roof under his head, while the next level in the economic strata would want an air-conditioner, while the top echelons would want a bunglow near the sea. Guys salaciously watching at the glass house from the outside, take a walk-in and tap into hearts for a naked conversation. You will definitely hear some mournful confessions. Young professional tethered to their seats because of their desires and threatening EMIs, this is the latest scene in India today.

Honestly tell me, have you not felt you are over qualified for a job? Don’t you think your skills are being wasted and your life is rusting? How many times have you got out of the bed with the sick feeling of going to work? How many times have you called in sick, when you are fit and fidel? Even the process of creation becomes Cntrl C and Cntrl V after sometime. All it takes to do any job is attitude and hard work, while education only discriminates and inflates the ego.

The article below talks about the Indian youth today. For some life comes on a silver platter with all they ask for, and for most it is unfair and cruel. Bottom line - People at all levels – Ivy League educated and tier 3 colleges have expectations from life and for most it is very disappointing. Setting our expectations and managing them is never taught in any schools and colleges. Stop comparing yourself with your classmates, colleagues and neighbors. Comparison makes you avaricious, pawns your peace and happiness.

This also throws an important question – are you doing what you like to do for a living? Most of us want to earn more and live in luxury and to do we should pay a price. We take up careers that are demanding and highly competitive just for making quick bugs and go back to bed every day with the dream that “I will live my life and dream once my bank account shows a million dollar”.

Remember, we all have choices to make in life, rather than complaining about our jobs, we must find something we like to do even if it means selling our desires and not self-respect. Every opportunity comes with a price so does EMIs with an extra interest – peace of mind, psychological trauma and more.

Dark side of the jobs boom in India
Shyamal Majumdar
http://www.rediff.com/money/2008/may/01guest.htm
Smita Rajan (name changed), an MBA from one of the lesser-known B-schools in Mumbai, was glad when she got a job at one of India's leading private sector banks in its marketing department. The salary was alright for a beginner and the career prospects sounded rosy enough.A year later, Smita's father has managed a Rs 5 lakh personal loan -- the amount Smita is bound to pay her employer if she quits before two years. "She signed a bond with her employer. But I would rather pay the high EMIs than see my daughter go through this daily torture," he says.Here's his version of what Smita has to go through at her workplace: the 24-year old MBA graduate has to maintain a 9 am to 10 pm routine everyday; her job profile requires her to do door-to-door canvassing for opening accounts; and the monthly variable component of her salary has been cut by Rs 8,500 at least thrice for failure to meet the targets. "You surely don't need an MBA to do this job. My daughter is a psychological wreck as the bank has destroyed her confidence," Smita's father says. The bank apparently has appointed MBAs even to man the teller machines!

To be sure, Smita isn't alone. There are countless other examples of the uglier side of the much-hyped jobs boom in India.Debashis Bhowmick (name changed) is an engineering graduate from one of the lower-rung private institutes in Kolkata. He came to Navi Mumbai to join a windmill company which has its headquarters in Europe. The quality of the job, however, was "slightly better than that of a security guard," he says. Bhowmick, who was lucky enough to find another job within four months, says his earlier boss had asked him to prepare a project report on the security system in the company's godowns.Apparently, the company suspected that a lot of pilferage was happening in one of its godowns. The engineering graduate was asked to station himself in the security office to see the lacunae in the system. One of his observations was that some people left the godown unmanned during lunch time when the security guard went to the canteen to bring food.Impressed with this finding, the boss then asked him to find out whether this was happening during tea or dinner time also, or whether the security guards went to the toilet often leaving the gate unmanned. "I didn't do engineering to observe people's tea and toilet habits," Bhowmick wrote in his resignation letter.

Or, take the case of this first class B-Com graduate who works as a service officer in a BPO. The 4 pm to 2 am routine and the mindlessly repetitive task are bad enough leading to a host of health problems; what's worse is that the company has asked him to practice speaking English with a marble placed below his tongue to imitate the American accent better. The attrition rate in the company is as high as 30 to 40 per cent but they are quickly replaced as there are enough English-speaking graduates available for Rs 12,000-a month job.Talk to most of these first-class graduates, or MBAs, or engineers from the relatively lesser known institutes, and the common refrain is that companies offer unreachable targets, unrealistic incentive temptations and poor work profile.

At a time when everybody is gung-ho about the huge employment boom in India, these examples indicate that many Indian companies are perhaps hiring for the future recklessly without having a clue as to the relationship between qualifications and job profile a fact that prompted Larsen & Toubro Chairman A M Naik to lash out at the IT sector for hijacking engineers when all they required were plain B-Com graduates.But companies on their part say that a pressure-cooker existence is inevitable in an economy that is growing so fast. And that is true even for students who pass out from the premier institutes.On the practice of recruiting over-qualified people for jobs that don't require specialised degrees, companies say this is also inevitable in a country where everybody and his uncle is either a first-class graduate or an engineer or an MBA. But the quality of teaching in most of these second-rung institutes is abysmal and companies often have to pay through their nose to train them. "Even after training, we have no option but to offer these people jobs that are out of sync with their so-called degrees," an HR manager says.He may have a point. Studies have indicated that only one in four graduates from India's colleges are employable. This means till the time the quality of education improves, the other three will have to remain content with either door-door canvassing for savings accounts, or watching people's tea and toilet habits, or honing up their American accents in graveyard shifts.

TN has most elderly living alone


I just got back home from Bangalore after attending the 1st Anniversary celebrations of YogaKshema, an elderly Rehab and there was Chennai edition of TOI lying outside my apartment door waiting to be picked. My filter coffee got even more interesting, was it the chicory in the coffee or in the paper that got me high and anxious?
Read more….
TN has most elderly living alone
One Of 14 Elders In State Has Solitary Life; Chennai No 2 Among Metros

This was an interesting research on the elderly front.
>>Roughly one out of every 14 people aged over 60 in Tamil Nadu — 7.5% to be precise — lives all by himself or herself. Compare that with the national average of 4% or one in 25. For old women, the situation is even worse. More than one in every nine (11.5%) has no companionship or support at home against the national average of 5.5%.

What is happening to Chennai compared to other cities and what skews our statistics? The story would have been more meaningful if it had unraveled the next layers below the soft, wrinkly skin of elderly men/women
1. were they married?
2. were they divorced?
3. were they widowed?
4. any children?
5. children overseas/outside of Chennai?
6. education levels of children?
7. Is it their choice or compulsion?

Let us take a sample space in Chennai city. Knock on every door in Mylapore and they will talk about their sons and daughter living overseas and their 6 months trip to San Jose and San Francisco. The Intellectual city has pawned their sons and daughters to Uncle Sam. Knock doors in Boston, New Jersey and San Francisco, you will find lot of kids guilty about leaving their parents alone in India. The tough job is balancing guilt and money. Our culture is different from the West, until East becomes West and lonliness will be threatening and guilt will weight more than our flesh. It was recorded in my neighbors Will, he didnt want to be kept in the freezer till his sons arrived from Dallas, that was day and a half. The irony is that the wait never ends....

I am single and I know that I will always be single, and I will be a part of the sample population in future. I have long back resigned to the fact that I will grow old and I will by myself, so reality will never bite me hard. There was a time when I used to think how can I live in the house all by myself (when my parents are gone) but when I realized that I can have people live with me the cloud of worry vanished instantly. World is lonely for people who lock themselves in their homes, but when they walk out and be a part of the world or invite the world to be a part of them the loneliness vanishes.

If you are afraid of living alone, take down my email and phone number, call me when you feel lonely and anxious, I will definitely have place in my house.

TN has most elderly living alone28 Apr 2008, 0317 hrs IST,Rema Nagarajan,TNN
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Cities/TN_has_most_elderly_living_alone/articleshow/2989068.cms
CHENNAI: Growing old is a lonely business anywhere, but more so in Tamil Nadu than elsewhere in the country. The state has the highest number and proportion of elderly people living on their own, especially elderly women. Roughly one out of every 14 people aged over 60 in Tamil Nadu — 7.5% to be precise — lives all by himself or herself. Compare that with the national average of 4% or one in 25. For old women, the situation is even worse. More than one in every nine (11.5%) has no companionship or support at home against the national average of 5.5%. Women comprise more than three-quarters (78%) of the elderly people living all alone in the state. Of the four lakh elderly people living alone in the state, 3 lakh are women, the highest in the country.


After Tamil Nadu, it is Andhra Pradesh that has the highest number and proportion of elderly men and women leading lonely lives. There are 3.8 lakh elderly people living alone in Andhra Pradesh, and of this nearly 3 lakh are women. In fact, across all regions in the south, the average number of elderly women living alone for every 1,000 elderly men living alone is much higher than the all-India figure of 2,300. In this category, Karnataka has the highest ratio in this regard followed by Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Puducherry, Goa and Maharashtra, indicating that the pattern is a pan-Deccan phenomenon rather than just a south Indian one. However, the proportion of homes with elderly people in Tamil Nadu is the same as the all-India average. In most states, there are more elderly women than men while in Tamil Nadu they are almost equal.

When it comes to the overall sex ratio of the 60+ population, Tamil Nadu’s figure is lower than even the all-India average, way below states like Orissa, Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh. That’s quite unlike the pattern of the other southern states, which have many more elderly women than men. Tamil Nadu has the highest proportion of elderly (10%) next to Kerala, which has 11%.

It is third when it comes to the absolute number of elderly people, nearly 60 lakh, after Uttar Pradesh with 1.2 crore and Maharashtra with nearly 86 lakh. Even among the metros, Chennai has the second highest proportion of elderly (8%), next only to Kolkata (10%). The statistics indicate a growing need to cater to the special needs of the elderly in Tamil Nadu, given the fact that so many of them have nobody to take care of them at home.