The Corporate Fairy Tale

We all have read fairy tales as a kid right? Remember those days when your world revolved around the Cinderellas, Rapunzels, Snow Whites or Sleeping Beauty? I, for one, loved fairy tales. In fact, to me fairy tales were like books on String Theory for Sheldon. Ok, perhaps not the best analogy, but there was a time, when I ONLY read fairy tales, and not just the regular ones, but even the most non-descript ones from all over the world, especially Greece and Russia.

Anyhow, over the past few years I have been observing some uncanny similarities between fairy tales and the corporate world. Think about it, every fairy tale would have these standard characters: the beautiful damsel in distress, the loyal (usually gay) friend, the elusive Prince Charming, the irrepressible witch, not to mention the scheming ugly sisters and finally, the all powerful, evil ogre (often green in colour).

Now, consider the typical office environment around you. Let’s start with the easiest, i.e. the all powerful, evil ogre. No points for guessing who he is: the CXO/MD who derives a sadistic pleasure in turning the fairy tale into a nightmare for every employee of the organization.

Moving on to the witch, which is not exactly rocket science, i.e. the immediate boss who reports to the ogre: usually spineless, sucking up to the green monster, petty and making life miserable for the beautiful princess and all the little people around her.

The elusive Prince Charming is also a very interesting character and almost all organizations would have at least one of these smooth talking extroverts who can confidently sweep everybody off their feet (including the witch and the ogre). This is the guy who will speak the most in all meetings, get invited to all the office parties, have all the women swoon over him and walk away with the highest rating and fat bonuses. BUT, there is one small problem. This guy WILL NEVER GET HIS HANDS DIRTY. He will delegate, he will manage and he will co-ordinate, but he will not, I repeat, will not do any work.

As for the loyal friend, he would always be the side kick: dependable, trustworthy and quietly efficient, he will be the person who will rescue the team from a crisis, he will work on weekends and holidays when nobody is around to appreciate it and he will get things done year after year, even though he barely gets noticed or appreciated. Until the day comes when he is tired of the Prince Charming taking credit for his work and he quits, to become a writer or a teacher, most probably in Kolkata.

The beautiful damsel in distress is a rare species in any company, especially if you are in a bank. It’s amazing how someone can get away with doing little or no work, as long as she has a pretty face and a bright smile. Struggling with excel? Why bother with the “Help” function when you can just shrug your shoulders and chat up the colleague at the next desk, who would be grateful for the opportunity to do your work. Of course, the company does its best to groom and retain the beautiful damsel in distress, because her mere presence increases the productivity of the rest of the ordinary folks on the floor, who will try to outdo each other just to impress the girl, blissfully unaware that the Prince Charming is already miles ahead in the race.

As for the ugly sisters, they are the most abundant species you will find in every organization: scheming, bitchy associates, close to the witch, but secretly plotting her downfall. They are the ordinary people with limited skills and ambitions, slightly cowardly, too scared to upset the apple cart and therefore going with the flow, taking pleasure in trivial office politics, but overall happy with the security of the monthly paycheck and the year end handout.

So, where do I fit in? While I started out as a bit of a Sleeping Beauty who struggled to mingle, now I am completely ingrained into the system, very much a part of the fairy tale, comfortably in the shoes of the smallest ugly sister.

While the corporate fairy tale is a long and winding story, it remains to be seen if it has a happy ending…

The Solitary Reaper

As a society we are terribly cruel to single people, especially those on the wrong side of 25. A generation of entertainment and literature has thrived on this topic alone, i.e. the stigma of singlehood. Even the most pathbreaking of movies which are otherwise funny, entertaining and enjoyable give in to the temptation of placating the conventional audience and end up rehashing the “happily ever after” climax that has been fed into our systems ever since we were kids.

But let’s take a moment to celebrate that phase of life which is almost like a nemesis for every human being, so much so that many of us would hold on to an abusive relationship or an unhappy marriage, just to avoid being alone. And believe it or not, being single has nothing to do with your personality, your looks or your paycheck, so each time we are tempted to blame ourselves or we are at the receiving end of some unsavoury judgement, let’s remember that more often than not it’s a personal choice.
Unless of course you are Raj from BBT. In that case, it’s just social awkwardness.

Granted there is a Bridget Jones in each of us, a Bridget Jones who fights multiple battles every day: the battle with age, the battle with those annoying extra pounds which refuse to go away, the battle with wrinkles and the battle to be taken seriously. But within each Bridget, there is also the strong and silent Solitary Reaper, who is capable of rising above these petty concerns and holding her own.

“Behold her, single in the field,
Yon solitary Highland Lass!
Reaping and singing by herself;
Stop here, or gently pass!
Alone she cuts and binds the grain,
And sings a melancholy strain;
O listen! for the Vale profound
Is overflowing with the sound.”
-The Solitary Reaper, William Wordsworth

Because, for the Solitary Reaper, the world is her oyster: she can have it and eat it too…

Where they burn books, they will in the end also burn people

India made headlines this week, and again, for the wrong reasons. Wendy Doniger’s “The Hindus: An Alternative History”, a 2011 book on a different perspective on one of the oldest major religions, will be banned from the country following accusations of offensive, inaccurate and illegal representation of Hinduism. What is probably even more shocking is that Penguin, the revered behemoth in India’s flourishing publishing industry, was quick to strike a settlement deal to avoid any long drawn legal battle, promising to withdraw the book from publication, spurred by India’s archaic defamation laws, which make publishers, not just authors, subject to criminal prosecution.
Now, before we launch into a strident and jarring criticism of the event and plunge into discussions on freedom of speech, constitutional rights and right to information, let’s take a step back and look at the issue in light of history.

Has it happened before, or are we singling Doniger out? The answer is a resounding yes, and if I have learnt anything about my country in recent years, it will happen again! What started way back in 1988, when the Indian finance ministry banned Salman Rushdie's novel “The Satanic Verses” on grounds of hurting religious sentiments of Muslims, has only intensified over the years, with banning of Bangladeshi author Tasleema Nasreen’s autobiography “Dwikhandito” by Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee's government in West Bengal, Joseph Lelyveld's book “The Great Soul” by the Modi government on the suspicion that it implied a homosexual relationship between Mahatma Gandhi and Hermann Kallenbach or James Laine’s book, “Shivaji, Hindu King in Islamic India”, by the state government in Maharashtra.

There are other instances of intolerance galore: for example, Congress spokesperson Abhishek Singhvi went to court against Spanish writer Javier Moro's novel “The Red Sari”, as it was probably based on Sonia Gandhi's life, the hue and cry over the movies like Aarakshan (banned in Uttar Pradesh, Punjab and Andhra Pradesh) and Parzania (banned in Gujarat) or the over-reaction to M.F. Husain’s paintings of Hindu deities.

We, as a nation, are a sensitive lot, quick to get offended, but difficult to be placated, especially with pragmatic reasoning. And no, we do not forget easily, nor do we forgive graciously. Salman Rushdie will vouch for that, given that he was asked to stay out of the Jaipur Literature Festival in 2012, for something he wrote almost 25 years back!

So what is this that makes us so intolerant, so insecure and so vulnerable, especially when it comes to religion and culture? Paradoxically, we belong to the world’s largest democracy which is far from perfect and we exhibit tremendous patience and tolerance to bigger evils like corruption, bad governance, inflation and unemployment. But try suggesting anything which goes against the accepted norms of religious ideologies, it will unleash the hidden Khap Panchayat in even the most educated of us, even if it’s just fiction or art. Is it our politicians who encourage divisiveness by playing the religion card each time they run out of ideas? Is it our deep-rooted desire to “belong” to a particular group/clan and if anything comes even close to threatening that “bond”, we automatically resort to annihilating it? Or is it simply our apathy to anybody who looks different (remember Nido Taniam, the 18-year old student from Arunachal Pradesh who was murdered in Delhi as we speak about banning a book?) or thinks different?

Then why blame Dina Nath Batra, the activist or his conservative association, the New Delhi-based Shiksha Bachao Andolan (ahh the irony of it) Committee, which lodged the complaint against Doniger?

This is not about a single person or a single association or a single book. This is about our collective need to destroy anything which goes against our narrow social and moral compass. This is about the symbolism which is akin to the Nazi book burning back in 1933.

As Heinrich Heine, whose work was also burned on that fatal night at Bebelplatz in Berlin, wrote in his 1820-1821 play “Almansor” the famous admonition, “Dort, wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man am Ende auch Menschen": "Where they burn books, they will in the end also burn people."

His prophecy came true a few years later; I can only shudder at the thought of what lies ahead of us…

The African Fantasy

Did you have a happy new year?
Did you dress up, drink and party till the next morning?
Did you look back at 2013, set your FB page on review and write long, meandering and incoherent status updates?
Did you make unrealistic resolutions, only to break them in the first week itself?
Did you send season’s greetings texts to random people you barely know?

If you did, then tell me all about it till I kill you slowly and painfully by making you watch Dhoom 3. I have somehow never enjoyed “celebrating” a new year especially in Bombay, especially with all the crowd and noise and mostly because I have never found anything to really “celebrate”. For me, it doesn’t change really change anything drastically and life goes on just as it did the previous year. So no, I don’t have much to look forward to in 2014, except may be some specific goals, i.e. vote a new government to power (if only I knew which one), watch a few live matches of the soccer WC in Spain (preferably one in which Spain is playing) since Brazil is no longer an option and of course, find the dream job now that I am on the verge of completing five years in the same industry following my MBA. These are more fantasies than actual concrete goals, and like all fantasies, they are more attuned to the imagination than the reality.

And speaking of fantasies, I ended the year by watching Chander Pahar (Mountain of the Moon), the most expensive Bengali movie ever made, based on the fantasy fiction of the same name by Bibhutibhusan Bandopadhay. Exclusively shot in Rhodesia, it’s a visual delight and a traveler’s multiple orgasm. For someone who has always wanted to visit Africa, this was my three-hour journey through the continent in all its glory: the Victoria Falls, the Kalahari Desert and of course the African safari. While the movie itself was long and tedious, it just sparked my fascination with Africa even more.

If I ever had a fantasy, Africa is definitely one…

The Alchemy of Desire

The case of sexual harassment lodged against Tarun Tejpal has created ripples across the media. Now there is nothing I can add to what’s already being stated in black and white and grey and nothing I say about the plight of women in this country can do justice to the macabre reality you observe around you. But being a girl who lives alone in the city, whose support system is essentially a bunch of friends and colleagues and who doesn't have the privilege of the cold comforts of a protected home environment, I can only shudder at the treatment meted out to a professional woman, who was just doing her job.

Having worked in male dominated organizations, I have often felt a tad out of place at times: not because I faced any harassment, not because I was treated differently, not because of the lack of sensitivity, but simply because I somehow don’t BELONG. There are subtle nuances which add up and one day, it just explodes on your face.

Mind you, organizations try their best to retain the handful of women employees they have, but it takes more than policies to make the workplace truly egalitarian: it requires a cultural revolution and we are years away from that.

However, incidents like this only set you back and the little glimmer of faith that was building up inside you gets shattered by one single blow. Now I am not a feminist who is out there to blast all the men in corporate India. If anything, I do believe sometimes, as women, we demand special status while crying ourselves hoarse for equality. But if I remove myself from the situation as a woman and objectively view it as a human being, I wonder if it’s something that the girl misconstrued or deliberately fabricated for whatever reasons. Based on the rather graphic descriptions, even the most neutral observer would vouch that it’s neither.

So, an inappropriate advance was indeed made which was vociferously rejected, leading to intimidation, threat and subsequent repetition of the act. This is what precisely irks me:

The inability to take “No” when it’s stated in no uncertain terms…
The assumption that professional authority supersedes the respect for personal choices (or the lack of it in this case)…
The audacity of imposing Tarun Tejpal, the noted journalist, on a young woman because he thought he could get away with it…

I have a lot of respect for Tarun Tejpal the writer, but unfortunately I can’t say the same for Tarun Tejpal, the person.

If the alchemy of desire reeks of monstrosity, even the most attractive people stirs contempt…

Criminal Minds

The results of the Crime Writers Association (CWA) poll were announced earlier this week, and much to my delight, Agatha Christie’s The Murder of Roger Ackroyd was voted the best crime novel while Agatha Christie herself was voted the best crime author and Sherlock Holmes the best crime series. Having read devoured ALL of Christie’s books as a kid, I do not quite subscribe to her accolade as the best writer, but I do agree that The Murder of Roger Ackroyd is one of her best works, if not the best.

Now blame it on my upbringing, but I have always had this morbid streak in me which led me into the world of crime fiction at a very early age, both Bengali and English. While I never enjoyed violence, I was simply enamoured with cold blooded murders which were well planned and well executed and which challenged me as a reader as much as they challenged the sleuths in the novels, be it Holmes, Poirot, Marple, Feluda or Byomkesh. This obsession often found me awake through the night before an exam, secretly finishing off a mystery novel rather than studying for a Chemistry paper the next morning.

The fascination with heinous crimes only deepened when I discovered shows like Law and Order, The Practice or Boston Legal while I was still in school and later with Castle, Dexter and Breaking Bad. Even now, I am guilty of blowing off social engagements on weeknights, simply because I just CAN’T miss the rerun of the season finale of The Practice after work. Exaggeration? Not really. Crazy? Probably.

But lately the lure of barbarism has taken a more serious turn as I have now turned to history to walk through some of the real-life atrocities committed by leaders across nations. While my travels to some of these places touched me deeply, what shock me are not the events themselves which are out there and well documented, but the people behind these tragedies, their thought processes, their justifications or simply their denials. May be these “leaders” don’t even deserve a chance to have their say, but nonetheless it makes for an interesting read. Which is why I first picked up Hitler’s autobiography and then Pol Pot’s biography: just to understand how someone can possibly sleep at night or look at himself in the mirror every morning, knowing the genocide he has sponsored among his own people.

History does what a crime fiction can’t: it leaves a legacy of the murderer long after the crime has been committed…

And the Mountains Echoed

I am one of those people who are author loyalists more than genre loyalists. So as a kid, once I got hooked to Satyajit Ray or Enid Blyton or Alfred Hitchcock, I wouldn’t rest till I had read ALL their books, irrespective of what they wrote. So, I devoured Blyton’s Malory Towers with the equal enthusiasm that I reserved for Five Find Outers or the Famous Five, even though the last one I sincerely disliked. When it came to Ray, the scope was wider as I did not just stop with his books, but went on to his movies or even translations, as I have already talked about here.

As I grew up and moved on to other writers like Agatha Christie, Sidney Sheldon, Jeffrey Archer, Jane Austen or Ayn Rand, I usually ended up reading almost ALL their works, even though many of them were just rehashed versions of the earlier ones or simply just not as good. But it didn’t matter: for that one year or so, I would be like a loyal wife, tied to the writer, for better or for worse. Until I had devoured their entire collection and moved on to someone else. The same holds true even for Indian writers, be it the nuanced work of Jhumpa Lahiri, the gloomy magic of Arvind Adiga or even the irrepressible wit of Sidin Vadukut. And I have hated Chetan Bhagat with the same gusto, without missing out on any of his five best-sellers.

And then I discovered Khaled Hosseini during my college days. I finished The Kite Runner in a couple of days, bunking lectures, missing out on meals and dismissing anybody/anything that came in the way during those two days. Assignments, CGPA, social life be damned, I was too intricately involved in the lives of Amir, Hassan and Ali, swayed by a myriad of emotions. No wonder then, when his second book, A Thousand Splendid Suns released when I was in my MBA first year, I had no hesitation in treating myself to a copy, ignoring impending exams, placements and financial crisis. While I found the book distinctly more depressing that the first, the impact it made was significantly deeper, if not more satisfying. May be because it was a story of two women in a society which traditionally treated its women with disdain. May be because the memory of reading The Colour Purple was still fresh in my mind. Or may be because both stories resonated strongly against the backdrop of the trying socio-economic circumstances and my inexperienced, privileged and young mind was shocked to the core.

So this weekend when I got my hands on the recently released third book, “And the Mountains Echoed” by the same author, it didn’t take much to put me under house arrest for two days, postponing chores/outings/drinking plans as I devoured the 400+ pages like a hungry child fresh from a hunger strike. This time it was a brother-sister story underlying the multitude of sub-plots across geographies, generations and relationships.

Yes, it’s true to the Hosseini style of writing: intricate details in the backdrop of history with a tinge of longing…

Yes, it retains the simple innocence of putting family at the forefront: from the father-son tale in The Kite Runner to the mother-daughter struggle in The Thousand Splendid Suns to the brother-sister bond in this one…

Yes, all the twists come together in the end to render it a complete narrative…

And yet, it somehow falls short of the hallmark of a truly great story; it somehow falls short of my expectations; it somehow leaves me asking for more…

The mountain in the background echoes again: may be it’s time to move on…

Alpine Romance

This weekend was orgasm redefined: I spent a major part of it watching India’s young players give a drubbing to the Aussies, as they walked away with the Border-Gavaskar Trophy after a 4-0 clean sweep. I have been following cricket for the past fifteen years, but rarely have I seen such complete domination, and the fact that the Australians were at the receiving end of it, made it all the more orgasmic.

If that wasn’t enough, I spent the nights drooling over my childhood hero, Andre Agassi’s autobiography, Open. While I have been an ardent admirer of his game, his colourful personality, his daring experiments with clothes, accessories and hairstyles, not to mention his failed marriage to Brook Shields followed by a low-key wedding to Steffie Graf had only added to his charm. Call it my fascination with the vulnerable yet rebellious appeal. However, after reading the book, I discovered new aspects of his life which only strengthened my loyalty towards him: his volatile relationship with his father, his troubled childhood, his special bond with his elder brother Philly, his childhood friend Perry, his coach Brad and his trainer Gil, his agonizing years in the infamous Nick Bollettieri’s Academy, his frequent showdown with the authorities due to his on-court antics, his controversial views on his contemporaries including Jeff Tarango, Jim Courier, Michael Chang and Pete Sampras. Now I had grown up watching all these players on TV, but when I read about an insider’s account of how they were as individuals and not just players, I felt a renewed connection to the game, which I admit, I had been neglecting a bit lately, purely because of a lack of personalities. Yes, I love to watch Federer play and I like Djokovic’s clinical assassination of his opponents or Murray’s raw talent, but I miss the colourful personalities of the nineties. Give me an Agassi or a Kuerten or an Ivanisevic any day over the modern day players.

But the highlight was definitely my three hours of temporary insanity when I blew up 20k on clothes, accessories, bags (yes, plural) and a huge suitcase. Imagine yourself among the most stylish clothes in Debenhams, and then imagine a 50% discount on the stuff that you actually like! How often does that happen? So there I was, posing in front of the mirror, wearing a sweater, a blazer and an overcoat on a hot Mumbai afternoon, with people staring at me. But I couldn’t care less, as I lovingly stuffed all of them inside the biggest American Tourist suitcase available. Just to complete the feeling of being totally loved by myself, I gifted myself a couple of oversized handbags in extremely pretty shades, but now I am feeling a bit guilty. Call it the morning-after awkwardness.

If you are wondering what made me splurge on stuff which would never see the light of day in Mumbai, I am not TOTALLY crazy. I am actually going to Switzerland for a couple of weeks for work, and hopefully I can venture into the mystic Swiss Alps while I am there.

The shopping was just the foreplay, the romance begins next week…

Mein Kampfe

Following my tryst with the Killing Fields in Phnom Penh, I realized that my appetite for morbid human depravity is far from being satiated. If anything, it has only been stimulated and lately I had been going back in time, reading about mass atrocities committed by "leaders", trying to understand the twisted psyche that motivated them to commit such outrages.

Which finally led me to Hitler’s autobiography, Mein Kampfe (My Struggle). Now, I had read Anne Frank’s Diary as a child, well before I read about the Holocaust, and therefore I was not able to fully grasp the context of the book, though purely from the literary point of view, being a pre-teen, I could well identify with some of the nuances plaguing a 13-year old girl. But the historical significance of it was quite wasted on me at that point. Later, when I watched Schindler’s List, it touched a chord, but I never explored it further.

However, once I started planning my visit to Auschwitz this summer (yes, I am on a two-week vacation to Vienna, Salzburg, Prague, Krakow and Berlin), I simply had to delve deeper on the subject. So despite all the negative publicity of the book, I picked up Mein Kampfe just to get inside the head of the man himself. Yes, it is an extremely biased portrayal, yes, it’s a tedious task to get through the pages and yes, the language only makes it tougher. But hey, it’s not called Mein Kamfe for no reason!

So on one hand, while I prodded through the book, on the other, I was struggling with my own mind, until, until, until I discovered the magic of the Ultimate Long Island Ice Tea during Happy Hours on a weekday!

Nine drinks later, the struggle seemed to ease off, the vision became a bit blurred and the judgment was hazy…

Legally Blonde

I have always been fascinated with legal dramas or movies: what started as a fleeting interest in The Practice and Ally Mcbeal as a kid, turned into an addiction to Boston Legal, not to mention movies like Kramer vs Kramer, Philadelphia, Primal Fear, A Few Good Men, Erin Brockovich and of course, The Accused. In parallel, I was devouring John Grisham’s books though To Kill a Mockingbird is my favourite.

So yes, I had a soft corner for the courtroom: I liked the idea of justice, I liked the articulate debates, I liked the suspense and most of all, I liked the closing arguments by the lawyers of both parties. While it came across as a noble profession, it had a certain amount of glamour attached to it, and even though I never seriously considered a career in law (thanks to my single-minded focus on being a mediocre engineer from some random college in Kolkata so that I can work with TCS in Salt Lake), Law was something which has enamoured me over the years.

Until this weekend, when I saw Jolly LLB. Now the movie was strictly average, though Boman Irani was at his suave best and Arshad Warsi once again proved that he is one of the most under-rated actors in Bollywood. But more importantly, it showed the gory side of the profession, especially in the Indian context, in which the crisp outfits, the swanky courtrooms and the successful, confident advocates were replaced by the realities of corruption, botched-up police investigation, the power of money vs. the helplessness of the marginalized victims and of course the struggle of a mediocre small-town lawyer with questionable ethics.

And then I realized, there is no such thing as a ‘noble profession’: there would always be people in ANY vocation (think education and think Arindam Chawdhury) who would give it a bad name and similarly, there would always be people who would be honourable, honest and conscientious, irrespective of what they are doing.

Everything has a shade of grey; the trick lies in painting it white…

The Promise

I finally managed to watch Kai Po Che: I had read the book (Three Mistakes of my Life) long back, when I was still young and foolish (now I am just old and foolish), heard people go ga-ga over the movie and decided to give it a 100-rupee morning show shot. The movie was definitely better than the book (though that’s more of a sad commentary on the book), and it did not drive me to insanity like say, any Salman Khan/Shahrukh Khan movie in the last five years.

What I liked most about the movie was change in protagonist to Ishaan from Govind. Having grown up in a middle class neighbourhood in Kolkata, I have seen a few Ishaans as a child: prodigiously talented, passionate, attractive and yet, equally lazy, laidback, undisciplined and directionless. So when I think about successful people (and here I define success in the conventional sense), I see three sets of people:

1.The talented people who are not born with a silver spoon. But they are committed, hard-working, focused and ready to give it everything despite all odds. And you get your Tendulkars, Obamas, Bachchans

2.The talented people from a privileged background. They are genetically gifted, they already have a platform waiting for them and the sensible ones manage to carry the baton forward. The history of sports, politics and entertainment is replete with such examples

3.The talented people who don’t quite make it. They show promise, potential and passion, but over the long run, it fizzles out. Sometimes, they get distracted, sometimes they become victims of their circumstances and sometimes it’s just bad luck, but at the end of the day, they become like any other anonymous citizen lost in obscurity. What follows is either they become a clerk, trying to feed a family of four and passing on the burden of their unrealized dreams to their kids, or even worse, they lose themselves in a haze of depression, drugs, alcohol, frustrations and self-pity.

But while it would be easy to classify Ishaan in the third category, he was also a rare exception, who fought tooth and nail to salvage a raw talent (Ali), to make sure that his gift did not go wasted, to protect him, to nurture him and cushion him from all the mistakes that he himself had made.

And there you go, that’s the beauty of promise, even more so if it’s undelivered…

Strawberry Wine

So I watched Midnight’s Children. The ensemble cast notwithstanding, the movie was slower than the book if that is possible. I am no judge of good literature, and I would give the book the benefit of doubt simply because it was written in the backdrop of political upheaval, and goes beyond the story, beyond the characters and beyond what meets the eye.

But this post is neither about the movie nor the book. And no, it’s not even about Rahul Bose, as enamoured as I was watching him onscreen after quite some time. This post is about older men and why most women throw themselves at men double their age for no obvious reason. Think Padma Lakshmi, think Catherine Zeta Jones, think Katie Holmes, think Jacqueline Kennedy or for that matter, even our very own Kareina Kapoor.

So what is it about older men that attract beautiful, smart and successful women who apparently have the world beneath their feet?

Good looks? I would hardly define Salman Rushdie as a Greek God…

Money? Fame? Intellect? May be, a combination of all, but then again, there are plenty of them around even in our own generation…

Wit? A good sense of humour? Probably, because the more you see of the world, the more cynical you become…

Security? Protection? Warmth? Definitely, because secretly every girl, consciously or unconsciously, wants a father figure in her life, who can take care of her…

But whatever it is, it can’t be denied that an older man wields a charm over women: may be it’s more intangible, may be you can’t put a finger on it and may be there is indeed something called the old world charm…

Rahul Bose, are you reading?

The Charge of the Light Brigade

As my love-hate relationship with the corporate world continues, it never ceases to amuse me that companies can stoop to any level to deny employees they “don’t like”. Mind you, here, “like” has NOTHING, I repeat, NOTHING to do with performance, but everything to do with personal equations. Differences are NOT tolerated, despite all the rhetoric about diversity, and unless you comply to the narrow definition of “leadership”, you are left in the cold. SO, yes, you are not compliant with corporate culture, if you do not:

a)Waste a minimum of 1000 man hours in useless meetings every week
b)Mouth inane jargons and platitudes just for the sake of being heard and not listened
c)Circulate emails with links to WSJ/Bloomberg/FT/Reuters news articles in the name of ‘knowledge sharing’
d)Suck up to seniors and exploit the juniors/comparatively weaker people because they can’t stand up to you
e)Accept that men are a superior species because they are more aggressive, loud and hence naturally endowed with ‘leadership skills’

But now that I have rebelled against the system, now that I have taken it head-on and now that I have laid the cards on the diversity table, the probability is high that I am going to lose the battle, that I shall be back to the unemployment phase which strikes me every two years and I shall deal a further blow to my already volatile career.

And as I continue my eternal struggle to fit in, Tennyson’s words keep echoing in the background:

Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

The Light Brigade has no authority, but only responsibilities…

Thank You for Smoking

Now that all the Diwali brouhaha is over and everybody is back to work, life seems normal again: no empty seats staring at you, no more crackers to distract you and no more blinding lights adorning the roads as if there was a Punjabi baraat dancing on the streets for a week! We are again back to being miserable: ALL of us, and not just me. Good, I.LIKE.EQUALITY.

If that isn’t misery enough, Bal Thackeray decided to breathe his last, very conveniently mind you, on a Saturday evening, after the regular Mumbaiite has finished his half-day at work, had his lunch and boarded the Virar local. Such is the consideration of one of the scariest most respected figures of Maharasthra politics. Of course the fact that life in Mumbai came to a halt for two days with the common man forced to mourn mourning with theatres, restaurants, coffee shops or even supermarkets closing down was a small price to pay. But the spirit of the Mumbaikar cannot be so easily dampened. You thought we would sit at home just because the Mumbai police ‘advised’ us to ‘not venture out unless it’s an emergency’? You thought we would silently watch Oh My God on Colours just because Jab Tak Hain Jaan and Sons of Sardaar were out of contention? NO, we are Mumbaikars, we can instinctively amuse ourselves under ANY circumstances, we decided to throng Shivaji Park to participate in the funeral procession of the icon who has held the state ransom for inane reasons over the years.

But hey, what do I know? I am just the cynical girl, who was stuck at home for two days, without milk or vegetables, feeding on dal and bread like a prisoner, devouring a 650-page political satire on Emergency.

I am a common man, I am allowed my share of disillusionment at the ‘system’, so pardon me, if I can’t bring myself to grieve over the death of a ‘leader’…

A Fine Balance

I am one of those people who hate limelight, any kind of it: be it something as huge as performing on stage in front of a huge audience to something as insignificant as a class presentation. So ever since I was a child, I have consciously avoided being noticed, and given the pint-sized kid/woman I was/am, it hasn’t been too hard.

Strategically, I chose a school which ran like a factory: two shifts of eight hours each, over 1000 kids in a class with about 70 in each section. Hence teachers did not have time for individual attention, they came in a breeze, delivered their speech and went in a breeze for the next class. Students were more like assembly line production, and I was happy with that. I was happy being the average student, hiding somewhere in the last five rows behind tall, bespectacled studious boys, I was happy that the school did not insist on any Romney-Obama style debates or active parliamentary class participation and I was happy that it never insisted on ‘moulding kids into holistic personalities’. Its job was to strictly churn out JEE toppers who would make excellent IT professionals in TCS and Infosys.

Now, obviously since I wasn’t one of those AND I had no ‘personality’ to boast of, I was this shy fat kid with her nose in a novel, whose presence or absence wouldn’t really be noticed. To change things, I decided to test waters outside of academics. I was a pretty graceful swimmer and started training for competitive swimming when I was nine. But as luck would have it, once I DID come into limelight, I made a mess of it by finishing LAST in most events. If that wasn’t bad enough for my already bruised self-confidence, the next frontier was dancing, where, by virtue of being the smallest, I would ALWAYS be asked to perform in the front row, i.e. more vulnerable to the scrutiny of judging parents, relatives, friends’ family, acquaintances and neighbours. And trust me, for a ten-year-old dolled up kid with excessive make-up and uncomfortable outfits, I made PLENTY of goof-ups, at times, just standing helplessly with a vacuous look, gripped by sheer stage fright.

The trauma of anonymity continued in college, when I was new to Bombay, new to the cosmopolitan culture, new to hostel life and overshadowed by girls who were extrovert, popular, uninhibited and completely at ease with the freedom and independence that the city offered. So I recoiled further into my shell, preferring the comfort of the library or my tiny hostel room, interrupted by solitary walks by Marine Drive or the cobbled streets of Colaba, Fort and Metro.

The road to B school admissions was paved with devils, as I got trampled by smooth-talking loud students from Delhi University, fumbling from one GD to another, trying to get a word in, but failing miserably. Somehow, once I did manage to squeeze myself into a decent enough college, it was back to the familiar pattern. I made no effort to ingratiate myself to the professors or the admin staff, happily giving up on easy CP marks, and preferring to write backlog after backlog instead of “forging a bond with the people who matter”. By now, I was comfortable in my old skin, hanging out with a few close friends and devoting myself passionately to Corpcomm, feverishly churning out articles, editorials and news stories. At last, I had found a medium to express myself and the words suddenly flowed, easily, effortlessly, naturally.

Even in the three years of corporate life, I never felt the need to be different, sticking to my thumb rule of minimum small talk, which is very often mistaken as arrogance, rudeness and bad attitude. So yes, I still can’t bring myself to participate in meetings, I still can’t make irreverent conversation with colleagues and I still can’t ingratiate myself to ‘the people who matter’. And now, as I gradually move up the carnivorous value chain, as I assume more responsibilities and as I am required to deal with more people, I feel strangely uncomfortable, slightly inadequate and severely out-of-place.

The shy ten-year-old in me is desperately trying to hold on to the familiarity of the last bench corner, the awkward teenager in me is still hanging on to the comfort of the privacy of the tiny hostel room and the headstrong first-year analyst in me is trying to fend off the evils of sycophancy that is synonymous with corporate life.

The matured pragmatist in me is hoping to maintain the fine balance, while the naïve rebel in me curls up on bed, switched off from the world, poring over Rohington Mistry’s ‘A Fine Balance’, vigorously identifying with the obstinate Dina Dalal…

Worker's Song

Lately I have been doing things completely uncharacteristic of me: like I filled up my self-evaluation form at work for the SECOND TIME IN THE SAME COMPANY! If you know me, you would also know that this is sort of ground breaking, because, this is the longest relationship for me in ANY form (apart from this blog). Also, also, I RENEWED my contract for my house for another year. The irony is of all the five houses that I have stayed in the last three and a half years since I passed out of college, I like this one the least. It has never been HOME, but a very convenient place in a good locality and close to work, where I can just crash at night and not worry about commuting or arguing with autowalas. But I never imagined that I would actually stay on for so long, which is why I had avoided investing in the house, except for the basic furniture and white goods. But now that I do plan to stick around for some more time, I decided it was high time I fixed the basic plumbing of the house. Which meant more expense this month, adding to the personal financial crisis that my life currently is.

What with all the Durga Puja festivities, family visits and now Diwali shopping, I was already in trouble. Add to that the splurging on the smartphone and a new watch. And now that the wedding season is already here, like every year, I lose a few more friends to matrimony, which makes it worse because I have to shell out money for the wedding gifts also. But the major blow came in terms of air ticketing since I have 2-3 trips planned for the first half of next year (in anticipation of my bonus), but I needed to fund at least the tickets for now before prices become unaffordable. I ended up buying the cheapest ones, which turned out to be non-refundable and now even if the rest of the world ends in 2012, certain parts of South East Asia HAVE to survive, along with anon, SH and of course me. No matter what happens, I WILL GO TO CAMBODIA/MANILA IN FEBRUARY because I have already paid for it.

SO, given the Lehman Brothers state of affairs in my life, I spent a major part of the weekend at home, watching football, cursing Andre Santos (how can he swap shirts with RVP not to mention the sheer embarrassment on the field???) and reading Salman Rushdie. Somehow, I had never made it through the intricately detailed Midnight’s Children, but Fury, with all its depressing connotations, turned out to be a surprisingly good read. The only time I went out, I had to take a bus and squeezing myself in the back seat with a bunch of men was enough to make me stay put at home.

Stability, as I am figuring out, is the curse of the working class…

Second Chances

Don’t you simply loathe those people who simply can’t stay at home on a weekend and HAVE to throng all the popular places in Mumbai, irrespective of increasing auto fares, alcohol prices and obnoxious Bandra crowd? Of course you don’t, because you are one of them!

But I am one of those hypocritical people who claim that they are too cool to follow the crowd, that they love their own company and that for them, the weekend is all about cleaning/washing/doing laundry/paying bills, but secretly dress up and travel halfway across the city to try new places/things.

Like this weekend: we had this marvelous idea to go to Gateway of India, hire a yatch and sail for two hours. But it seemed the rest of Bombay had already beaten us to it, and after fighting off the crowd, we did manage to get onboard the Blue Whale and the next couple of hours were simply out of this world, literally. We managed to cruise across the sea, admiring the private yatchs of the Who is Who of Bombay, the light breeze playing havoc with my already messy curls, but the alcohol smuggled into the boat making sure that I no longer cared about it. The sunset itself was straight out of the Kerala Tourism brochures, and suddenly, I was miles away, lost in the memory of cruising through the backwaters of Alleppey and Kumarakom. And while I was living in the pseudo dream, one of my closest friends was actually getting married in God’s Own Country: a traditional Mallu Christian wedding which I so badly wanted to attend, but thanks to circumstances, had to pull out of. We wound up the night with a beautiful view of the Queen’s Necklace from the Hanging Gardens and pigging out on Chinese food. Life was almost perfect, but not quite.

I also read Lance Armstrong’s autobiography, “It’s not about the bike”, and given the recent state of events, I was not quite sure what to make of it. Irrespective of where things stand, he would always remain a hero. You can strip him off his accolades/medals, but you can never take away his place in history.

Life does give you a second chance, but at times, you are too scared to take it or you simply make a mess of it…

Small Wonder

So it’s been almost a week since I have become, you know, smart. But me with a smartphone is still as awkward as Rohit Sharma with a cricket bat, Manmohan Singh with a microphone or Arjun Rampal with a script: I have no idea what to do with it.

Until, until Friday!

Now that I am all ‘socially active’ and ‘cool’ (thanks to this 'awesome' app called What’s App which now dictates my social life), I decided to meet up with some long lost college friend (who would ping me once in a blue moon in the invisible mode and ask probing questions, much to my annoyance), but since we were close once upon a time, we thought we should catch up in, hold your breath, godforsaken Bandra!

So, in the usual course of events, I would get into an auto and argue with the autowala because he would take me through some long winding road, but not being able to do anything about it. But now, with the mind-numbingly simple Google maps, I could just navigate my way to Elbo Room MYSELF!

In the usual course of events, I would listen to my ipod with feeble headphones, the sound of which would get drowned by the din of traffic. But now, the music was simply overpowering.

In the usual course of events, I would be typing furiously, sending drunk text messages to all the people I hate. But now I could be cool and just SWIPE on Whats App, even though I don’t really have anything to say.

I also got together with a bunch of ex colleagues from Company D, and for the better part of three hours, all we did was bitch about what was the first job for most of us. It is so much fun to run down the place with which you share a love-hate relationship, where you have so many memories and which marked the beginning of this long journey to hell.

In the process, I also ran into an old undergraduate acquaintance from Xaviers, who is now working with a major telecom company (and therefore has free passes to all important events sponsored by the company). We were never exactly friends, given the age-old Xaviers-Sophias rivalry, but since now we are both grown up and I want to attend Rani Mukherjee’s Durga Puja next weekend, I was my friendliest best (which, if you know me, takes a lot of effort). The world is indeed small.

And in the middle of a busy weekend, I also managed to get started on my first William Dalrymple saga: The White Mughals. It’s a little confusing to follow the trail of history and research, but so far I am holding on to it.

And yes, I am figuring out my way through this maze of technology, even though my life continues to be as simple or as complicated as before…

When I Became a Stalker

So once upon a time, I was this ordinary citizen with an unpopular blog and he was this famous engineer-turned-MBA-turned-consultant-turned-journalist-turned writer. And of course, by a sheer stroke of luck, he got a book deal with one of the most respected publishers in India, and then became the writer of a best-selling novel. Which, in the Indian context, isn't really a great achievement, but you have got to give it to the guy, simply because he was rib-ticklingly funny. So despite being a strictly average writer, he could keep the reader hooked. And was I hooked!

That was last year. I bought his first book, found it hilarious, recommended it to everybody I knew and put a word about it on my blog in this post. Little did I know that this writer snooped around the blogosphere reading inconspicuous posts by random bloggers who were secretly jealous of him.

So obviously when he LEFT A COMMENT, I was completely floored and started acting like a besotted teenager. I stalked him for the next one week, reading the Wikipedia page on him, his articles on Rediff and Mint and of course, the archived posts of his blog. And then I did what any self-respecting modern young woman of the 21st century would do: I added him on Facebook AND Linkedin and started following him on Twitter. I even emailed him a few times regarding some personal career-oriented confusion and he actually responded! I was like Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction, with better hair.

In a span of a month, I was ready to write a thesis on him and like any diligent stalker, I assumed that I have found my friend, philosopher and guide in a totally random stranger. Ahh, the innocence of youth. On his part, like any self-respecting celebrity, he ignored my FB and Linkedin invitations.

Now the wrath of a wronged woman can be a dangerous thing, and I was determined to ignore him as a writer AND bring down the sales of his second book singlehandedly. So when the second of the three-part series was launched, I was strong enough to resist the temptation to pre-order it. Not only that, I started reading books written by his competitors even if they were really bad, just to get back at him.

But it seems I may have over-estimated my influence over the nation’s young readers a tad too much. Despite my master plan of not buying his second book or not promoting him on my blog, his second book ALSO became a widespread success. And finally, this weekend, I read it, BORROWED FROM A FRIEND WITHOUT BUYING IT.

As much as I hate to admit it, I really liked it and as much as I hate to admit it, I really think he is talented.

As much as I hate to admit it, I really like Sidin Vadukut...

Kramer vs. Kramer

It’s been a hectic couple of weeks, with me working on weekends also. Add to that the rains, the gym and the general messed up way of things. So on Friday night I watched Barfi and then promptly fell sick, bed-ridden for the entire weekend, having recurrent nightmares about the deliverable on Monday. If you thought being alone in Mumbai sucks, try being alone and sick in Mumbai. It’s more depressing than watching Rohit Sharma bat, but it lasts longer.

I did try to cheer myself up by reading The Case of Exploding Mangoes by Mohammed Hanif, a satirical take on Pakistan’s political situation at the backdrop of General Zia’s mysterious death. But even that didn’t work as I kept tossing and turning, red-nosed, eyes permanently swollen, unable to fall asleep. Now I pride myself on being a very strong GIRL, who exhibits none of the GURLY characteristics (i.e. annoying girly behaviour), but in sickness and in poverty (yes, since my dad takes away more than half my salary to invest in all sorts of complicated structured products), I become one of those irritating species. So I did the things which make me feel better: random mean texting, planning my Manila trip early next year with anon and SH, planning our family trip to Pataya with my kid brother and convincing my dad to allow me to buy a smartphone since he maintains a strict control over my finances, which would otherwise disappear in more of clothes, shoes and trips.

Anyway, coming back to Barfi, I consider a movie to be good if it manages to make me laugh/cry. This one made me do both, at times together. While I found the love story between Shruti and Barfi a little unconvincing, the back-and-forth narrative a bit unnecessary and the length a tad too long, overall it was a refreshingly different movie with strong performances, which, as a certain critic put it, “despite being a love triangle, focused more on the love and less on the triangle.”

The usual sensible GIRL in me refuses to think and the emotional, vulnerable GURL in me is incapable of it…