Homeless

I am a man without a home, no, not the philosophical sort which you rich sorts search for all your life, the one without four walls and a roof above.Every day or rather every night I search for a place where I can lie down without being disturbed by cops, dogs, rats and any other such creatures. Every morning I wake with the knowledge that my day would end somewhere else. All my belongings are in a big polythene bag which I carry with myself at all point of time. I found it with great difficulty while rummaging through the garbage of a posh housing society, or maybe it was my lucky day.

Dark corners, isolated places are the best to take care of my the bodily necessities, especially the ones you have in the morning. The smaller urgencies are taken care much easily. I can vaguely remember the regularity of brushing my teeth and the feeling associated with it, now a gargle with water (which sometime is clean and sometime is not) is more than enough to last me through the day.Like love, taking a bath happens when it happens, there is not much I can do about it.

Oh, in case you were wondering, I wasn't born on the road, I had a family once. Not so loving though, but nonetheless I had it.In fact, I am almost as educated as most of you are, give or take a few degree / diploma. So how the fuck I ended up here. Let's admit it, you don't give a fuck.There are million ways to go up in life, and there are a billion to go down. Mine was one of them, so there is that.

I tend to get philosophical at times and talk to no one in particular (usually the stray dogs are the best listeners). I would wonder how worrying about my next meal or next bath has made me free of all the other superficial worries in my earlier life, like finding the meaning of life or my calling. Mostly, i call my bluff myself and say out loud, "my life sucks.

Once in a while, I feel oddly buzzed to change my life for better. This feeling lasts for sometime (usually for around five minutes or so) and then it fizzles out on its own. Being on the other side, my motivation gets hampered largely by the fact that your life is not necessarily better. You are equally unhappy, stressed and insecure about your own future like I am. The effort to reach your state doesn't seem to be worth it, hence I wait and continue with my 'sucky' life.

No Strings Attached

Before we humans became too many, we were born with things that we don't get to see today. Everyone was born with strings attached to few other humans. These strings attached people whose destinies were inextricably tangled with each other. Some of them from the same families, some the best of friends and few the true soulmates. As one would guess, it definitely was a tangled mess. Living with strings attached with other people. There was not a single move you can make without affecting the other and therefore people learnt to live, move and act in harmony. They all just knew how to live together like one big connected group, like a flock of birds flying in the sky. They learnt just to be, there every move in sync, doing what everyone needed to do to survive as a group. Strings told them everything, a small vibration, a little tug, a jerk, a whip...it all meant something to them. As if the words were spoken through the strings. Not unnaturally, the world was a quiet place.Then we became too many. Strings got tangled, choked a few and to stay alive some have to be cut.

No wonder the language of the strings was soon lost and forgotten. We started talking, at times shouting because of the distance between us. At times, we weren't sure if we got heard, not sure if we listened as much we should have. The world without strings was a convenient place, not necessarily a happy one. We realized soon enough.

Stil we persisted to at least know the people who would have been attached to us through strings.

Some were easy, our mother, father and siblings. Mostly we found the strings were there, invisible yet undeniably present. For some, strings were conspicuous by their virtual absence. Like a phantom leg, which should have been there but wasn't. How does one know the absence of something which wasn't anyways supposed to be there ? Funnily enough, one always does.

Some strings were difficult to find because of so many false alarms one would find along the way. A thread less conversation, the tacit understanding and maybe similar views. These were the easiest to be mistaken for the strings that should have been there, but time most of the time told otherwise. As time would go, the false ones would breaks and affirm their true absence.Those remained through all the turmoil and roller coasterly ride of life were the strings that defined us. Our happiness, our greatest joys, our sadness and our deepest melancholy, these strings held through it all. These strings connected us to people who were connected with us not by blood, but through destiny, through kismet and most importantly through their own love and faith in us. Some were friends, some were lovers, some were just people who gave a damn about our existence.

Those who understood the play of these strings, realized soon enough that there is not much else to fuss about.Through these strings, they made sense of this world and life, as it was always meant to be. After all, life was meant to be tangled mess, since the day it started.

Stay Beautiful,
Amitabh

Fairy Tales for the Modern Man

In line with the latest fad of "fairly tales for XYZ". Here is my attempt at writing the set for writing fairy tales for the modern man.

In case you are not aware of this fad, please go through the following links:

Fairy tales for the introverts: http://introvertfairytales.com/

Fairy tales for the modern woman: http://thehairpin.com/2013/06/six-fairy-tales-for-the-modern-woman/

Here goes nothing:

# 1:

Once upon a time a guy was in a relationship where he doesn't have to be the understanding or sensitive kind. He could speak his mind without worrying about hurting her feelings. He doesn't have to notice insignificant things about her to make her feel appreciated. He had once told her that he loved her and she knew that he still does and that was enough.

The End

# 2:

Once upon a time, a guy found what he loved to do. He started doing it, the more he did it, the happier he got, so he did it some more. People around him didn't really understand why he liked doing what he was doing, but they were supportive anyways. Over the course of time, he started making a little money on the side because of what he loved doing. Eventually he realized he could
take the plunge, leave his job and still manage to stay afloat. He took the plunge, kept at it and now only does what he loves to do.

# 3:

Once upon a time, a guy had a good job.He kinda loved it. He had enough money to pay his rent, go out when he wanted to and he was fit enough to  drink and eat to his heart's content. He had friends, men and women, they liked his quirky sense of humour and never nagged him about getting married. He met them regularly. He met a few women who respected his independence both in action and
in thoughts, as much as their own.They talked about interesting things, laughed together and did a few other things too. Later, he found someone for whom commitment was not equal to marriage.
They decided to live together. They realized they can't manage to have kids, so they decided not to have them and instead increased contribution to their retirement funds. They lived together till they died.

# 4:

Once upon a time, a guy realized he doesn't like the city so much. There were too many people, too much noise and the colour of the sky was all funny. He decided to go back to his hometown in mountains. He still lives there and loves it.

The End.

# 5:

Once upon a time, a guy realized that he doesn't like his home town so much. There weren't enough fun people, the evenings were eerily silent, the sky was too blue for his taste and to top it all everybody knew him and his parents. He studied hard and got into a good college. He landed a job from the college itself. Now he lives in a small room near the multiplex with his college mates.
He goes to movies every weekend, parties once in a while, holds the hand of the girl he likes in public because no one knows him or care and likes the fuzzy pale blue of the sky.

His parents are still at his hometown and don't give him any grief.

The End

Confessions of a Jeevansaathi Finder

I am writing this because these days marriage is on my mind, there, I said it,so move on already :)

->These days, I understand why people choose to get married. Surprisingly, I can see a point when everyone around me expresses their concerns about my impending matrimonial plans. My best buddies who are married now have ready tips to give to find just the right girl. I listen to their advice carefully and sometimes implement it as well.

->The FB updates on marriage, honeymoon pics do affect me. Deeply. Period.

->I am more active on Jeevansathi.com than on facebook or twitter.

->I think a little less of myself for registering on a website to find a soulmate.


->I am confused about how to write my profile details, should I present myself as the nice, stable, well educated guy that the parents will like or should I go for the cool guy write up that the girls will like. My current profile write up is the first kind in case you were wondering.


->My height on my profile page is more than my actual height (but then so is my weight :P)

->I am keeping a french goatee only so that I look old (or maybe better) enough for marriage.

->Though by this time one should get wiser, I am still looking for love as a reason to get married. I dread marrying someone for "practical" reasons.

->I still have no clue about the kind of person I would want to marry. To act my age, I do rattle off few "politically correct" criteria to others when they ask .Deep down I am completely sold on that marrying your soulmate bullshit :)

->I can now relate to the quote "No woman likes to be loved only for her beauty and no man likes to be loved only for his salary".

->I think less of people who send me horoscope request even before talking to me.

->I find it uncomfortable talking to 3-4 girls at a time about a marriage, it seems unethical, but then this maybe nothing but my MBA talking.

->I find it difficult to tell a girl that I don't like her enough to continue talking so I simply stop calling and hope that she gets the hint. Manning up and telling the truth is difficult, I have tried it once but it really doesn't help anyone.I make up for this chicken act by getting the hint myself soon enough.

->I think the truly regressive nature of our society reveals itself during marriage discussions.

->I have a feeling that eventually I will have to take this decision through a leap of faith and not through my inner voice as I would like to.

->I think that spending lavishly on marriage ceremony is a criminal waste. However, I doubt that I will be able to convince all the "stakeholders" (including the girl) to have a simple and most importantly happy wedding, which Indian marriages seldom are. I have a feeling that I will be judged as rigid, radical and someone with no respect for traditions. Those who disagree with my unhappy marriage comment, please don't judge a wedding by its facebook pics.

->Most of girls I meet are modern enough to raise their voice against dowry, however I am yet to see someone who is modern enough to understand that a dream wedding ceremony (and accompanying expenses) is not our parents' duty or obligation.

All being said, I appreciate everyone on these websites on their own, for taking the chance to find the one they want to spend the rest of their lives with.It is a total chaos with so many people having so many whims and fancies of their own. It takes some courage to put your heart out knowing that it may be kicked around. I know it is not easy being judged for your looks, height, weight, caste, age, educational qualification, salary by some random person.So kudos to these soldiers of fortune for marching on to build a future of their own. You incorrigible bastards, your persistence in this messed up world of online matrimony tells me that there is still enough hope in this world.

Stay Beautiful
Amitabh

I am Secular

I know, the moment I say that I am secular, i will be judged. Infact a lot more than a nobody like me needs to be, but nonetheless it will happen. A few would think what is the need to state something so trivial about yourself, someone would think here comes another (pseudo)secular, bloody arm chair intellectual as if we didn't have many of them already.Few will be downright hostile and question my allegiance to the 'family' and the 'party', ain't all those secular types suppose to be congress wallahs after all ?


But I do stick my neck out and say that I am only secular when it comes to my beliefs about my own religion and other religion. Isn't this what being secular meant to be in the first place ? I believe that all the religions and people who practice should co-exist peacefully in our society. I also think it is important for our future and the only sustainable strategy for human survival.


To clarify a few things, I was born a Hindu, because of the simple reason that my parents were Hindu. When I grew up and started making sense of things, I learnt all the chants (gayatri mantra, hanuman chaalisa, morning chants or praatah smaran and even meal chants or bhojan mantras). I learnt about my gods partly from my parents and mostly from magazines like Nandan, ChandaMama and Amar Chitra Katha. I had faith in the divine power as well (at least I think so ) till a point of time. Then somewhere along the line, I lost that faith and I stopped being particularly religious. I would like to quote some earth shattering event/ incidence for my loss of faith, but I can't. It was a gradual thing and to be honest with you I really can't pin point the moment when I crossed the line from being a believer to a non-believer. As I grew older, I realized that I am lucky to be born in a religion where there is place for even non-believers like me. My parents never forced me to be religious, all my relatives know that I don't believe in religious practices and apart from the mild and playful scolding, it has not been a major issue. "Aaap jo prasaad samajh ke doge woh main mithaai samajh ke kha loonga" (What you gave me as the Prasadam, I will eat it as sweet). So far it has been a peaceful co-existence and I am grateful for that.


Collective identities (i.e. religion or caste) takes precedence in our mind when there are too many people to know individually. Hence, in any city / town with significant size, these identities become important and most people (or kids) brought up in such places tend to put inordinate amount of emphasis on such identities.In that sense I guess I was fortunate enough to be born in a rather small town.I had muslim neigbhours as well as hindu neighbours. As it happens, I had many friends and used to go to everyone house. When you are a child and live in a neighbhourhood where walls are shared between houses, you don't differentiate people based on their religion. We would play around, fight with each other and will know each other parents. I used to call my neighbourhood friend's mother "Ammy" because that is what he used to call her, and I wasn't alone in doing that. She would scold us and give sweets to us as well. If I fell sick she would come over and give my mother some advice about home medicine.My mother would do the same if my friend got sick. Mind you, all the families were acutely aware of our religious differences, the elderly would hardly come and eat something at each other places.Nevertheless it was just individual choice and people who chose otherwise never got anything other than a mild scolding.I feel that people in those days didn't use to fuss so much about inane things.These things were important to them but not so much that they would create a ruckus or kill people for it. I guess what you see in childhood stays with you. I was no different. Hence for me, relgious identity of people have always been insignificant. Hence I call myself a secular person. This is also one of the very few things I feel very passionately about, because it seems so right to me. It seems to me the only sensible way.


I am one of the billion indians who can believe in anything he wants to. By definition, I chose to believe in the equality of all religions hence I am secular. It is not a show of allegiance to a political outfit, or ignorance / arrogance about my national history. It is simply a personal choice, don't read too much into it.I hate it when people equate being secular with being another kind of communal and term it as pseudo-secularism.No matter now improbable they believe it is, there ARE people in the world who do not take theirs or anyone's religion so seriously. For them religious belief are not much different from the kind of food one like to eat. It is simply not fair to judge anyone based on their preference for chicken curry and rice or their religion.


I can understand why people would not believe the proclaimed secular stance of a political party. The politics of ideals and values is long gone and today every single thing being done/proclaimed by a political party to gain/retain votes. However, people like me have nothing to gain by being secular except that it is part of our belief system. It doesn't cost us anything neither it gives us anything, but we still choose to be secular. So next time if I say I am secular, my only hope is that you would believe me without any apprehensions. You would know that I am a simple citizen of my country trying to live the life I want and believing in the things which I consider important. I have no ulterior agenda, sympathies or allegiance to any political outfit.


I am secular because I don't judge people based on their religion. Period.
 

I can't feel anything

The girl has died and I can't feel anything. I say that with a lot of guilt and shame in my heart. I should feel something, like million others who are expressing their grief in the ways they can. Some are posting status messages, some are discussing it with their friends, and some are just feeling sad and trying to overcome the despair.

But I don't feel anything, not even an iota of sadness or regret. I will go ahead and confess that I felt sadder by hearing about the death of Tony Greig than the death of the girl. I wish I knew precisely why I feel that way, but I doubt I do. Make no mistake, my unreasonable feelings have again put me in an embarrassing situation and I am acutely aware of my shame in admitting my guilt.  I know that I should feel something; in fact I should feel a lot more than something, considering the sheer gruesomeness of the incident which led to the death of the girl. She fought hard but eventually she succumbed to the ultimate eventuality. Somewhere deep within we all knew that this would happen, some were aware of it, some weren't. Some had accepted it and were asking for bigger changes, some were denying it and were baying for the blood of criminals who did this to her. Some like me (and I am sure there would not be so many) didn't really care and wondered what the fuss was about.

I am sure I wasn't born this way, it was easy for me to get disturbed by seeing or hearing about someone's pain. In fact, as a child, I would have cried if my brother or sister got hurt. But then I was asked to grow up by my friends, relatives and parents. Since I was a boy, I was told not to cry when I got hurt because that's what guys do, they don't cry, simple enough. Now I shout or yell when I get hurt, I don't cry. Then I grew up a little more and started caring about the world around me, I saw so many dreadful things happening in our country and around the world. I got to know about it from the newspaper, TV and now through internet. My world had truly expanded and so my exposure to unfortunate events of unimaginable cruelty and size. Initially I read about the Ayodhya riots, I felt disturbed and felt like murdering every politician who made people kill each other. Then when I got interested about history, I read about partition riots and riots in 1984. When I read the details of the heinous acts committed by people in those riots, when I met someone who has lost his father and brother in 1984 and moving on, my faith in humanity was lost to a great extent. Those days, I used to feel bad about such things and I did. But then I looked around and I saw people rather unaffected by such things. I was at a loss to understand how they could do that, know about something like this and still not feel anything. Then I heard and read about things which happen in Jammu & Kashmir and the Eastern states. I met someone who was sent away from his home by his father so that he will not be kidnapped, killed by militants or worse by the military. I again felt something, but now that I know that worse may happen, the intensity of my feelings were rather subdued but I did felt something.

After that I got to know about terrorism and naxalism in our country and worldwide. Since I have seen poverty and destitution, I was able to understand to some extent why people take up arms and become ready to die.Bomb blasts were not new but then they became a regular feature of our country news items. One was never sure where would the next bomb explode, I felt terrible when I heard about those, felt lucky to be alive and about not losing any loved one of mine and moved on like many others. By then, I was working; feeling something and being upset was a luxury which I didn't had. More so, it wasn't “professional” and hence I have to put away my already not so intense feelings.

6000 people have died in Mumbai local in last 3 years while travelling between their home and workplace. Now I don't feel much about them. Around 22000 women are raped every year in India (As per National Crime Records Bureau) and 40 thousands women are molested every year. I do not feel much for them as well. I can feel once, I can feel twice but how do I feel 22000 times a year and remain sane.

Ours is not a country for people with feelings. Feelings are a luxury that only privileged people can afford to have. The common people should not feel too much, it will only drive them crazy. My feelings have been reserved exclusively for people who either are my friends or are related by blood to me. This is not something that I have done willingly. It has happened to me over a period of time and I wonder if that is not the case with a lot of people around me. This rather callous attitude towards things that happen around you is a necessity to live in today's world.

I envy people who can still feel so strongly about these incidents, they vent out their feelings through FB, twitter or by talking to their friends and sometimes even writing or talking to a government officials. Some would go to the extent that feelings are important for the change we want and I would like to desperately believe them but considering all that has happened in the past, it’s only a leap of faith and till then I doubt I will feel anything for the girl.

 

#Talaash, #Aamir

Let me clarify from the word go, though this article talks about the movie Talaash, it is not a review. Simply because to review a movie one needs to be fair unbiased and being an Aamir Khan fan I am definitely biased towards most of what he does.

I watched Talaash this friday, at the unearthly show timing of 8:10 AM (First Day, First Show :)).I found Talaash everything that I expected it to be or more precisely everything that I expect from Aamir.

I became an Aamir fan when I saw Sarfarosh and have never been disappointed since. He keeps on surprising me with this consistently outlandish choices and equally consistent great quality work he does with everything he takes up.

The thing that I like with him, is that he can see beyond bollywood formulas, sample these one line summaries of his previous body of work:

Sarfarosh: Young IPS officer working to curb cross-border terrorism

Dil Chahta Hai: Stories of 3 friends discovering themselves

Lagaan: Village plays a cricket match with English rulers to get a tax (lagaan) waiver

Mangal Pandey: Story of the first indian freedom fighter

Taare Zameen Par: Story of a dyslexic chid

Rang De Basanti: 5 people fighting against corrupt politicians

Ghazni: Revenge story

3 Idiots: Life and times of 3 engineering students in India

I guess you would realize that except Ghazni, none of Aamir's movie would fit a prevalent bollywood formula. He did it because someone wrote a beautiful script and he liked it. With the onslaught of inane movies that I see so often, I guess a movie where a script has been written before going on floor, is promising from the word go.Talaash is no different, it is nothing like what would supposedly work at box office, but it is definitely well written. Apart from that you can clearly see that this movie is a labour of love, where people have taken great pains to deliver what they believed in. The sheer visual appeal of mumbai's dark underbelly, the finely etched characters, the brilliant acting, it's all there.I don't expect Aamir to do what I think would entertain me, I expect Aamir to do what he believes in. It is for the simple reason that there are many "entertainers", but there is only one Aamir.

His singleminded focus means that every time we go to see his movie, we are assured of one thing: Quality. You can safely assume that everything that could have been done to make a movie better would be done. You would know that Aamir would do the best job he could do.He doesn't care that much about "typical" audience, which every director/producer claim to know so much about (case in point: the Golmaal franchise, Son of Sardaar, Ra.One, Don2 and last but not the least Jab Tak Hain Jaan). These people know that lots of cars should be blown up and it should be painted in gaudy colours, item numbers are a must, the angle of SRK head tilt which is just enough to make ladies swoon, the dance step which will just click and the funny gags which will make people laugh. Whether you admit it or not, you would agree that in the above list of movies,except Golmaal part 1, it needed someone to write a script before starting to film them.

I agree that movies are for entertainment and hence these movies have their takers, they may not be discerning viewers but are enough in numbers to make the cash registers ringing. However, movies are also about telling a tale, a tale you would not listen to otherwise, of people who you will never come across, of locations you will never go to and of emotions you may never feel on your own. In this mayhem of entertainment focused movies, Talaash is a movie with a story to tell. Is this story particularly entertaining ? No. Is this story makes financial sense for mainstream cinema ? No. However, it is an interesting tale which have been told competently by the Director. It is about grief and mourning, it is about regret and remorse, it is about people without identity hoping for dignity, it is about two people in love who are too burdened by their own pain to help the other, it is about their catharsis and eventually coming back together.

Talaash is brilliantly written and despite of its somewhat outlandish ending, works for me. More importantly, it brings the real star of a movie into focus, the script. Remaining true to its core, it spends plenty of time in building up the characters so that you understand them and hence feel their emotions.

There is no other mainstream star who would dare to star as a cop in a movie who cries more than he fights. Surjan Sekhawat is another addition to Aamir already impressive repertoire of memorable characters.

In an interview Aamir had said that for him to do a Taare Zameen Pe, he has to do a Ghazni once in a while. I guess now we know why he is doing a Dhoom 3 :).

To you from me

Do you want my words or my silence ?
Do you want my love or my assurance ?
Do you want my honesty or my niceties ?
Do you want my dreams or my realities ?
Do you want my tears or my laughter ?
Do you want my past or my future ?
Do you want my anger or my tolerance ?
Do you want my heart or my mind ?

I wish I knew the answers,
I wish you knew the answers,
I wish you believe it to be,
I wish you just let me be,
I wish you yourself be,
I wish together we could be

I know we will not never know for sure
I know that we deserve a little more

But we would be, what we could be
And that is all, it is meant to be.

A not so open letter

Recently a KPMG senior partner has written an open letter to all the recent passouts and MBA grads from his personal experience as an employer. Here is the link for the same:

One of my FB friend has written a wonderful reply to this open letter which completely deserved to go viral. Here is the link for the same. This was inspired by a similar post from the famous Great Bong

Here is what I think of this issue, and definitely this is not an open letter, this is only for people who know me a little and happened to stumble across my blog / FB page.

First of all, let this be loud and clear: THE WORLD HAS CHANGED, and so have the employers and employees.

So here goes nothing:

Dear Employer,

Kindly note the following important things which need your immediate attention:

1. No matter what rocket sciency stuff you think you are doing, most likely you are not. People have made money with much simpler business models and if you are one of them, no shame in it. Consultant can come, make the jazzy presentation for introducing your organization to the starry eyed MBAs, but you must always know the truth. It is one thing to lie, completely another to start believing it. What does all this boil downs to ? Simple, not every organization need to hire MBAs. Before you take that decision , think whether it makes sense to your organization. Please don't go by what a fancy consultant has told you or what your golf-buddies are doing. Hiring MBA is the easiest thing for any organization. Keeping them and utilizing them is the most difficult part. If you haven't been hiring MBA so far, nothing drastic will happen. if you still don't. Why don't you groom your internal employees for these position ? Answer, because it is damn too long a  process and requires patience and effort which like us MBAs no one has. This explains the choc-a-bloc placement weeks at all the premiere b-schools where employers like you make a bee-line to lap up the top talent.

2.So in spite of all my warnings, you still think that hiring MBAs (or CAs for some peculiar organization) is the right thing for you, go right ahead. But there is a catch, these Yum-Bee-Yays you are hiring, won't be like your regular employees. They will come with charmed credentials (because nothing less will do for you), and yes they will treat you as an equal and not some demi-God. They would work hard, deliver quality and expect meaty work profiles, growth opportunity, great freedom at workplace and  not to mention,  competitive salary. Why ? Because if you don't do that, some other employer who could, will happily lap them up. This is the reality of new age talent (and not labour) market. Market as usual, is always right. Remember that.

3. You hired these self-righteous bastards, paid them well, created niche job roles and gave them quality work, still they didn't stay with you. Why ?

Well... first of all, they are young and just like you once were, not sure what they want from their life, those kind will leave you, don't fret over it, move on. Focus on those who chose to stay, they very well might be your future, they are smart, hard working and like working with you.

Second and more important reason could be that your middle managers are just not ready. They are not equipped to mentor / groom / coach these young guns. Sometimes reason could be the fear of being replaced or jealousy. Other times, the reason could be that these manager don't know that providing feedback on performance, coaching them to deliver value for company is the way to deal with these kind. They would not ask for you to handhold them or spoon feed them. They would love to deliver more than what you have asked them. But in return they would expect feedback and coaching for them to become better professional. You see, loyalty lies with their careers / professions and not with the organizations they are working for.Great companies build great culture of performance review and feedback. Just making them do things is not enough, help them do it better. Remember that similar to your other employee, these kinds also leave their bosses and not organizations.

4.Kindly get over the idea of loyalty of any kind from these kind. If you divide last 30 years into blocks of 5 years and take 50 CV each, you would be able to see a marked decrease in the average tenure spent in an organization by an average employee. The pace of work has increased manifold, no longer you have to write that proposal on paper, then get typed by secretary and send it to your boss. These days you make that proposal on your laptop, send that to your boss over e-mail and work done. Result, new age employees are achieving results much faster and hence learning much faster. Future focused organization will need to be aware of it and act accordingly. Every single MBA who has spent 2 years with you and has not seen a marked increased in his responsibility or work profile is a definite attrition threat.In 2 years, he has done what an average employee would have done in 5 years 15-20 years back. Be aware of it and deal with it. And since you would also not hesitate to fire your employees if all is not well, it is only fair. The days when employer was master and employee was servant are over. So grow up (if you haven't already)


Dear Employees (mostly MBAs / CAs),

Kindly note the following important things which need your immediate attention:

1. Though, you may feel that employers in general are not happy about the communication skills (or English skills) of these new age employees, they may not specifically mean you. So don't take it personal. It is a fact that a lot of us (at least in India) come for non-public school backgrounds and fluency in English may not be our strong suit. Though rightly so, it is one of the requirements to survive in today's globally connected world. Nevertheless, most of us do find the kind of job we are good at (because current MBA selection process ensures that anyone who enters the b-school is at least very good at one thing e.g quantitative aptitude and decent in all others). Bottom line, if we have good communication skills, no harm, but if we don't, time we take a cue and get better at it.

2.To begin you will do some amount of clerical work in one way or the other. It is up to you to add value even to that random work. You owe it to your charmed credentials. There has to be a difference in the way you deliver work and a person without that fancy degree of yours does it. That is the only way we can differentiate ourselves. You will not get to do strategic work right away because firstly, organization don't know you well enough and secondly they themselves are not doing much strategically. Strategy in recent times have become a much abused word like friendship or love. Economical cycles have become so rapid that no organization have the luxury of making long term choices (which strategy is) and hence strategy has become outdated concept. I doubt if even the senior leadership of major organizations are doing strategic stuff. Case in point, even after 2 decades of excellence in Indian IT industry, we have not seen a single IT product worth mention from any Indian IT major. When it is difficult enough surviving and holding up as is, who has time for strategy. So no strategy, don't worry, worry when you haven't done anything new in your job for long time.

3.You are the proverbial go-getter, no mountain is high enough for you, EOD deadline, night out for work, working for the whole month without taking breaks on weekends, you can do it all. But what for ? and for how long, do you want to die at 40-45 or become a diabetic / heart patient in your early 30s. If not, then learn to take it slow, saying no and avoid taking things personally. Not every deadline has to be EOD, not every thing needs to be done by you, not every friend / relative is your competitor. Work is important and you have made your point, but you have just started working and you will continue to do so for another 25-30 years, so work accordingly. In fairly cliched words, when in marathon, do as other marathoners do.


4. Now let me tell you something completely opposite to what I just said, in spite of all tall claims of India Shining and being the next superpower, we still are a developing country. What does that mean for us? It simply means that we can not compare ourselves to regulations in France where people work for 35 hours per week (yes they do and any more will mean overtimes wages ...cool, eh ?). Hence despite of all our dreams of achieving a perfect work life balance, it will continue to be elusive, at least for our generation. Work will definitely be a priority. We can not afford to be lazy, being in a country like ours.
This is our time on the world map and to claim our fame, we would need to work hard. But and a big but at that, remember working hard doesn't mean being a workaholic, a fine line between the two. Decide yours and stick with it.

5.MBA gives us a great way to launch our careers but also robs us of many opportunities may be equally exciting or even better. These opportunities may not be as great paying or as stable as the jobs which lands in your lap, but they may be crucial part of our future. We are different from our parents and our seniors. In the famous words of Arthur C Clarke, " The future is not what is used to be". To actually make a mark, we may have to make different choices (in terms of job profiles,industries we choose to work in ). Since MBA with its high status symbol, may make us blind to these opportunities and trends, it is important for us to look at that as well. Imagine if Nandan Nilekani had chosen to take up PSU job (like the trend of times) where would he be, definitely not at rank of a cabinet minister :P.

And I am done sermonizing... well at least for the time being :)

Stay Beautiful

Of decisions of their own

Growing up is a difficult thing. The first and foremost thing that bugs us is the sudden barrage of responsibility. This means, I have to take a decision without being told by someone (or rather scolded) regarding important things in my life. I will have to decide what kind of career I want, I will have to decide what kind of friends I should have, I even have to decide what vegetables to buy so that the Bai can cook a decent meal for me.

This seems to be the first phase of the growing up, it takes time but one gets used to it. Though, there is not much to like (it seemed a nice thing to have as a kid, your own money and your own decision, utterly overrated stuff, now I know :|), one gets by.

The next phase and probably the more difficult one, seems the phase when you have to learn to let others make their own decisions. It would not have been much of an issue if these others were truly others. But the decisions that you worry (or fuss ) over are the ones, being taken by the people who you care about. It is tempting and in fact feels downright moral (at least in our culture) to go ahead and help them make these decisions (by one mean or the other). However, the truth is, that like us, these dear ones of ours, also need to make decisions of there own, mostly for their own good. They do get hurt at times, but if the decisions are their own, they learn from it. The perils of being the surrogate decision maker are not clear upfront and hence it takes a huge amount of maturity (or growing up :)) to resist its temptation. 

It is fairly similar to when a baby first learns to walk.On their wobbly feet, they rise up, their hands and head shaking, they take their first step (only after so many trial runs ), they fall down and it hurts their soft / cute bottoms, sometimes they cry as well, and if you care enough (which you do), your heart is in your throat the whole time, almost ready to come out. But you stop yourself from running to them and taking them in your arms, because you know it is important for them to learn to walk themselves.

But such clarity of purpose is a rare thing in life, and when it comes to letting your loved ones, take their own decisions, one would never know, if it is alright to be a moot (and hopefully supporting) spectator, while they  are taking the most important decisions of their lives. The only thing we can do is to stay with them and not leave, even when they make a decision not to your liking.

As in Maths and so in life, First Principles are the only important things, rest are derivatives :)

Stay Beautiful,

Amitabh