When the Going Gets Tough, The Tough Gets Going... To Goa!

It’s been raining like a bitch over the last few days. Now people who do have a life have been cribbing about their weekend being spoilt. I would do no such thing because it’s not like I go out partying every weekend. For me, it was just another normal weekend when I stayed at home, cleaned my apartment, cooked, did my laundry, had a friend over, spoke to another half a dozen people over the phone, read and planned exotic vacations to exotic locations. But the rain does get you down and it does perpetually remind you of all the things in your life that you would want to change. Of course, Anna Hazare finally ended his fast and the dance of democracy itself was entertaining enough to keep your blues away. But even my new-found admiration for Dr. Jayaprakash Narayan was not enough to cheer me up.

Things have been pretty slow at work. While I believe that my job is safe for now (not because the company can’t do without me, but because I am too cheap to be fired), a lot of restructuring is happening around me, and I no longer have any clarity regarding my role/objectives/mandate.

Then I am obsessing about what to do with my life. Should I just write CFA like everybody else around me (that should keep me occupied for the next five years till I give up)? Should I go abroad to some Ivy-League University for some fancy one-year course and study something impressive (Public Policy, International Relations, Media and Communications)? It will be quite an experience but the middle-class accountant’s daughter that I am, I can’t help worrying about the opportunity cost, not to mention the cost itself. Also, what will I do AFTER one year, once the course is over and I am back to India with no job and a 20-lac loan? I am pretty sure I don’t want to go through the MBA/Finance/Economics grind all over again.

Also, Mumbai is sort of getting on my nerves and I just want to get away. So I have been doing a lot of research. Ajanta Ellora, Coorg, Kumarakom, Ganpatiphule, Angkor Wat and Sri Lanka are some of the places I want to visit in the near future.

But as of tomorrow, I am going to Goa, AGAIN: a place that never fails to cheer you up, a place which has a lot of memories and a place which is so beautiful in the monsoons that it takes your breath away. Even if it’s an impromptu trip, even if it’s to celebrate the bachelor party of some random stranger and even if it means going back to the same old places. At least 66.6% of Room No 213 is going to be there, but the remaining 33.3% will be thoroughly missed.

So it’s time again for lot of cleavage, bare legs and beer bellies (none of it mine), it’s time for cheap alcohol, it’s time for soaking up the rains.

It’s time for Goa…

Should I Write CAT Again?

First there were SC/STs…

Then came the OBCs…

Now it’s time for the women and non-engineers…

Finally it’s the ‘lowest of the low’ species, the kind you wouldn’t touch with a bargepole, the kind your parents had nightmares about, the kind who would be reduced to holy matrimony at 21, because the academic/professional/corporate world shunned them: yes, the NON-ENGINEER WOMEN. Especially if you are an ARTS GRADUATE like me, then, well, you have no hope.

But, but, but NOW, the premier management institutes in India have decided it’s time to finally sit up and “emancipate” this downtrodden, intellectually disadvantaged species by “donating” GRACE MARKS to US. Yes, all the six new IIMs along with IIML and IIMK are now introducing measures to “address the gender inequality in their campuses”. IIM Rohtak, in particular, is awarding, hold your breath, 30 EXTRA MARKS to NON-ENGINEER WOMEN. Flunking all the engineering entrance exams is finally going to pay off!!

I still can’t decide whether to laugh or cry, whether to be offended or liberated, whether to brush it off as yet another idiotic idiosyncrasy or a noble intention to “encourage diversity” in oestrogen-starved Indian B schools.

I have never subscribed to the cut-off based admission process, be it CAT or any other management entrance exam. Not because I failed to crack Quant cut-offs in my two attempts at CAT, not because I can’t calculate 1/17th of a million under a millisecond and definitely not because I think entrance exams give an “unfair advantage to engineers”. Honestly, they don’t. The syllabus is based on your 10th std Math, and if you managed to get through your Boards, you are as good as anybody to write CAT, without the crutch of “grace marks”.

But I sincerely believe that there should be more to a worthy application than a 99.99 percentile in CAT and your entrance exam score should be just ONE of the parameters, even for a shortlist. In that respect, I think SPJain, SCMHRD, TAPMI and MICA are much more evolved in the way they shortlist candidates (I won’t get into the admission process of ISB or B schools abroad because their target audience is different). Now, there will always be counter arguments of lack of transparency, but I would rather risk not knowing why I didn’t make it despite a high score than being reduced to a number.

I am all for diversity on campuses and I fully support some of the recent changes like introducing a written assessment task instead of a GD, taking account of the overall academic record as well as work experience along with CAT scores. But I just don’t agree that awarding grace marks to girls/non-engineers/dusky people/short people is the best way to go about it, because, well, they are so rare.

By that logic, I am an East Indian, non-engineer, short, dusky girl, and therefore I should have automatic admission.

May be it’s alright to have a qualitative aspect to the selection process…

May be cut-offs are not so sacrosanct after all…

May be, just may be, you can still be a decent manager even if you can’t figure out the probability of that damn spider reaching that corner of the room, given the complex web of complex numbers…

Elevation...

Every morning I meet this middle-aged man in the elevator sharp at 8:20 a.m.: he is there with his copy of the Economic Times, his lunch box and his laptop bag. We exchange polite smiles, sometimes we mourn the weather or the traffic and sometimes we just stand there silently. He is the most soft-spoken, harmless-looking gentleman and yet he scares me. He is the nightmare; he represents everything that I dread fifteen years from now: the pink paper, the lunch box, the 2 BHK apartment in suburban Mumbai and most of all the tired, quiet resignation to the mundane life. That elevator ride almost becomes a time machine ride: a peek into the future which I am headed towards, but don’t want.

What can possibly be worse than this existence, I ask myself. Well, I could end up being his wife…

Lonedependence...

I have been on my own for almost a year now: by ‘on my own’, I mean without roommates/flatmates, without someone to come home to, without a daily support system and without someone to share birthdays/celebrations/sorrows/expenses in the middle of the night. Of course I have people I meet/talk to regularly but it’s different from sharing an apartment with someone. Initially, it was very scary: who is going to fight with the broker? Who is going to fix the tubelight? Who is going to negotiate with the plumber? Who is going to cook and force it down my throat? Most importantly, who will deal with the maids? (which explains why I don’t have one now)…

But now, I have got used to taking care of myself and while it’s lonely at times, it’s peaceful too. There is something addictive about independence (emotional, financial, social) and after a point it becomes a habit. So much so, that you guard it fiercely, you create a fortress around you and you strengthen it one brick after another. God forbid, if anyone/anything even threatens to squeeze inside, your heightened sense of self-defence forces you to destroy it immediately. You no longer reach for the phone, you no longer stare at the email sitting pretty in your drafts folder and you no longer argue…

You just let go. And you discover a new world: a world full of new opportunities, new aspirations and new challenges. For a change, you live for yourself, you live to make your dreams come true, you try things that you have never tried before. May be it’s not conventional wisdom, may be it’s not something you were conditioned to do as a little girl, may be it’s selfish to some extent: but it’s still what makes you happy…

Finally, you begin to live and live on your own terms, finally you have the courage to explore and finally you become independent, in the true sense of the term…

Newton's Laws of Corruption...

It’s been a strange week so far: we celebrated Independence Day on Monday and the very next day it was pointed out that like most things, freedom too is relative. We are free only till we exercise it according to the boundaries defined by our ‘leaders’, we are free only till we toe the line of the government and we are free only till it’s convenient.

Now ‘convenience’, ‘compromise’ and ‘collective good’ are words that I would never understand. I still believe in black and white. You are either right or you are wrong, you either love someone or you don’t, you are either corrupt or you are not. It’s like math: there is no such thing as ‘it depends’.

So we have all seen/read about the circus yesterday when Anna Hazare was jailed in what could only be described as an ‘undemocratic move’ and he in turn, refused to come out of the Tihar jail despite being offered a release. Anyway, I am just a soon-to-be-fired analyst and not a journalist/celebrity/social activist, so I shall refrain from voicing MY OPINION (partly because NONE OF MY FIVE READERS CARE WHAT I THINK). Instead, like the five-year-old that I am, I am going to make it very very simple: as simple as Newton’s Laws of Motion (which, for the record, I never understood).

1st Law: If a system is at rest it remains at rest until it is acted on by a resultant Anna Hazare
There is something so comforting and convenient (there, the C-words again) about status quo that we cling on to it, despite knowing in the heart of our hearts, that it’s no longer working. Like our legal system for example. We all know what happens if we go to court: years of long-winded struggle, expense and SLOW DEATH. It’s just easier to give in and compromise, because the law doesn’t protect us.

2nd Law: Force equals mass times acceleration
This one is self-explanatory. If everyone is doing it, it must be right. And the more people do it, the more accepted it becomes, so it becomes a vicious cycle. The parallel channel is more efficient simply because more people are queuing up for it. It’s simple demand and supply.

3rd Law: For every action of corruption, there is an equal and opposite criticism
We blame politicians, bureaucrats, cops for taking bribes. But what about us, the common people, WHO ARE ACTUALLY GIVING THOSE BRIBES? Yes, it’s convenient, it’s quick and it’s tempting. Sometimes, it’s about “our future”. So, next time we hand in that stash of cash for that coveted engineering seat or the twenty bucks to the cops for a quick fix to a speeding ticket, may be we can take a time out before we lay down our lives for ‘Anna’s cause.”

Some of us are born without values, some of us lose them on our way and some of us fall prey to the 3 Cs…

R-Rated

So it seems like another recession is around the corner, and every time you utter the R-word, you automatically turn to the HR team of every global investment bank: how many, in which locations and which teams? The risk of you being among one of THE ONES magnifies especially if you are in a support function (polite way of referring to the cost centre). So as I read about our competitors cutting staff across the globe (the number runs into thousands for most banks), I waited with bated breath for a similar announcement in my company.

Sure enough, it was there. I read about our dismal 2Q results, about cost reduction and headcount rationalization across the bank, but it only sunk in when a mail was marked to OUR TEAM of fifteen people informing us about the “tough decisions that lay ahead” and how “every team has to contribute to this cost cutting”. Incidentally, I was the second person marked on the mail. Ironically, I had just finished my mid-year appraisal, and despite the fact that DK Bose doesn’t seem to like me, it was a generous review with considerable sweet nothings thrown in. Not that I believe everything that HR and top management tells me. They are like shrinks and consultants (yea, I worked with one previously): they just tell you the obvious, which you already know. Anyway, here I was, hailed as being an “excellent performer who has exceeded expectations” on one Friday, and being subtly threatened, the very next.

I don’t deal well with double standards, nor can I be diplomatic. So, for instance, if I want a promotion, I say “I should be promoted” and not “I am ready for the next level”, or if I want a raise, I say, “Give me more money” and not “financial aspect is not an important consideration, but I would like to believe that I am fairly rewarded for my contributions.” So, after receiving this very disturbing mail, WHICH WAS CLEARLY DIRECTED AT ME, I called up my boss, and demanded that if he was firing me, the least he can do is to tell me now (before I renew my rental agreement). While he hastened to assure me that I had nothing to worry about, I am not convinced. I think I should quit before they fire me; I think I should graciously take the high road and salvage whatever pride while I still can; I think I should go back to school, and this time not a B school but a J school.

Finally, I have become a successful I-banker: I am insecure, I am desperate and I have a Plan B. Ahh, I have finally arrived (though it’s almost time to go)…

Modern Day Cinderella

As little girls, we have all read and empathized with Cinderella: her vulnerable beauty, her quiet subjugation to the constant tortures of her stepmother and her ugly sisters, her fleeting moment of glory as she was blessed by the fairy godmother, her Prince Charming, but most of all, her escape from her paradise at midnight before it all came crashing down.

Mercifully, today, in urban India, we no longer have to put up with the vicious stepmom or the bullying sisters, we no longer need the fairy godmother and her magic wand and we also don’t need the Prince Charming to rescue us from life: we have education, employment, alcohol, chocolates and beauty magazines to empower us. But the running away from the ball is still a part of who we are: on most occasions, like Cinderella accepted the domestic tribulations as a part of her life, we also learn to deal with the daily miseries (office politics, inflation, plumbing mishaps), but just as she ran out on the perfect evening, we often run out on things/people which/who make us happy, because we are scared.

It’s midnight again: time to run away, time to get back to the familiar humdrum of life, time to put the perfect evening behind…

Groundrules for Guys

You want to take your girlfriend shopping… take her to Pantaloons
You want to check out hot women on the pretext of taking your girlfriend shopping… take her to Zara

You want to watch a movie with your girlfriend… go for Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara
You want to make out on the pretext of taking your girlfriend for a movie… go for Cowboys and Aliens

You want your girlfriend to meet your friends… invite her to your place for a soccer game
You want to go for a boys’ night out without upsetting your girlfriend… invite her to join you for a soccer game at the cheap local bar

You want your girlfriend’s folks to like you… tell them you are non-smoking, non-drinking, non-flirting
You want your girlfriend’s folks to hate you…tell them how non-smoking, non-drinking and non-flirting guys are practically NON-LIVING

You want to ask your girlfriend to marry you… change your relationship status on FB
You want your girlfriend to break up with you… change your relationship status on FB

Paintbrush...

The colour palette…
The brushes…
The plain white paper…
The smell of charcoal…
The clothes lying on the floor…
The kohl-rimmed tear-stained eyes of the most beautiful woman…

The portrait… smudged with red ink…