A New World: TimeLapse 2020

A lockdown-time meme said " Year is 2020, but life is like Test" Indeed, last year was undoutedly the biggest game-changer of human history in recent times....2020...the year of Pandemic...the year of Corona...& how it has led us to a "New normal!". But it has remained hardly a temporary affair. We are already into 2021 , & still in partial restrictions...awaiting complete vaccination...plus apprehending a 3rd wave with terror & uncertainty. On a personal front,initial phase of lockdown didn't bother me much, being already used to staying in a remote township, ...rather i was curious about how my urban friends react to the ordeal. But, yes....a lot changed. MNC's realized that WFM is more productive,....layoffs/ salary-cuts re-implied security of Govt jobs, ...........e-learning industry got a boost, while tourism sufferred....& Mask/santizers became the new Gold/silver. & of course, Health Care Workers reaffirmed themselves as the real Gods. But, what did we learn from the entire scenario...& its sheer unprecedentedness? 1. We can stay indoors & still have a good time. 2. Never take time for granted & postpone plans. 3. The skeptical are actually realistic, not paranoid. Well...easier said than done as after all,"Man is a social animal". Even today as I see pics of religious gatherings...irrespective of community...in respective festivals...from the eid-crowd to counting days for Durga Puja...we can never live alienated....at least in a country like ours. So, even as I myself miss weekend outings,fortnightly home-visits via train , yearly trips,....yes, I do feel claustrophobic....but then I keep nurturing the pending parties, travel plan, meetups...very secrelty...somewhere inside this exhausted heart.

Feminism Flip-sides

'A man's world'...that's what a female colleague of mine named the industry where we work...the Power Sector.Indeed, it is a male-dominated work-area as I've also seen in the last 3.5 years...but, wait...isn't the entire world ...however unfortunate that is?
But, is a man's world actually adverse to a woman or the other way round?...For instance, in my organization, females are quintessentially that endangered species who'll get favorable postings/transfers, if not on joining, invariably post-marriage( in case they are not marrying a colleague),continue in that posting for time unknown...maybe life-long...in a transferable job... & also get the 'favorable job-area'...something which is noticeable specially in my stream HR....as girls are the 'soft entities' for whom it's not safe to deal with workers.
I have absolutely no problems with legal obligations as Women not allowed to work in evening/night shifts in a factory( though recently amended in Maharashtra)...or much-needed welfare measures as Maternity leave, Child Care leave. But, when paying the same salary, equal designation & simultaneously permitting option to exercise choice w.r.t job-area is nothing but sheer discrimination...period!
Yes, we need feminism...but by over-protecting a female at work-place, we are neither empowering them nor ensuring ubiquitous safety for them.

Spontaneous Slangs: 2

Amidst all the applause surrounding Virat Kohli's dream-run with the bat,I suddenly chanced upon a video on youtube titled" Virat's MC/BC compilation". Indeed,if any Indian cricketer can give the Australians a run for their money in terms of on-the-field sledging , it's Virat, though as I heard,of late, Sachin Tendulkar has played an active role in calming down this 'Angry young man'of Indian Cricket.But , not everyone can necessarily remain as composed as a Sachin or Rahul Dravid under truly enraging provocations....not just in a cricket-field ,....but also real life.

But, is such spontaneity actually natural,instinctive reaction or just an exhibition of restlessness,mistaken for machismo??

Even the 'bhagvad geeta' says one who remains level-headed under all circumstances is the 'Ideal man'...but any normal person, who's not a hermit would say that's 'eutopian man'....or a senseless robot who remains indifferent to even worst of insult aimed at one's family-members.

Yes...Of Course,,,,Jesus passively forgived those who crucified him & Gandhiji proclaimed "An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind"...but is it good enough for one's own persona & spine to leave everything to Karma & be just a silent onlooker??

That reminds me of one of the most celebrated chapters from 'Sri Ramkrishna Kathamrita'...where a docile snake fedup with children disturbing it continuosly by hurling stones, gets the supremely valuable advice 'Don't bite,but hiss.'

Hence, one doesn't need to go over-board with anger & bring oneself down to the level of the assaulter.on the contrary, true resilience lies in dignified retaliation. people say, bell the cat at 1st night. Truly, it's much better to reply to a nudge with another & end things there than smacking after several nudges. Scores settled.

A peon with a Phd!

After two years of working as an Officer in a Psu, I've finally got an assistant who is younger that me.It has happened just when it was getting increasingly difficult to deal with sub-ordinates, older in age. Since one can't be too harsh & too docile either, respectful professionalism is what I found most effective in getting the job done. Nevertheless, handling someone junior in designation as well as age/experience is supposedly easier. The young executives coming in PSUs also is a good sign for the ageing organizations. But, keeping aside factors like age & experience, what about qualification. If formal education is deemed to be a testimony for merit/eligibility/capability/intellect & other such qualities, then candidates with degrees like engineering/postgraduates opting for clerical posts is definitely a mismatch.But the highest shock came from the news of Phd s appearing for peon post in Govt-recruitments in states like Bihar. There,surely is a paucity of jobs in the entire country, compared to the huge number of applicants...a big demand-supply gap.But, if this lacuna has to expose a shocking inference like an inverse relation between education & money, it's scary.As the world turns more & more consumerist with every passing day, college-kids adhering greater importance to easy-money than long-term education, the dignity/gravity of higher studies fear risk of diminishing fast. It's like....more you study,your eligibility incereases, but your employability reduces. Private companies, till date the mainstay for recruitments, would want cheap resources with basic qualifications to do a particular job, and hence, folks with extra alphabets after their names, lose out...or do they??
I remember considering myself superior(foolishly enough!)to my peers studying in general streams, as I was doing a professional degree myself.But,even though I bagged a job before them, 10 years down the line, I see them all settled in the States, earning in dollars, while I have managed just a few hikes in INR. So, indeed the importance of higher study can't be undermined even today, but post-graduates/doctorates need to be guided properly about career-prospects properly by their guides, and not exploited so that thier years of hard work in classes don't become futile. Also, moral support from family is extremely essential so that one doesn't become insecure enough to join 'any job' for raw money just to compete with the next-door guy/girl, if the latter is buying a flat/car at 25.Higher study certainly is pain-staking , often gets dragged, but the seeds of struggle sown in one's prime truly makes one reap all the benefits in the long run. Therefore, getting into 'any job' is a trap, but patiently waiting for the 'right thing at the right time' is what makes a real winner!

Spontaneous slangs

'Banspree'....a hashtag-ed word which caught my attention in a friend's FB-post sometime back.It was referring to the successive ban imposed on several recent ' allegedly outrageous'cultural ventures like 'AIB-roast' & "Fifty shades of grey". The respective reasons for such flak are 'excessive use of expletives' & 'obscenity'.Now, the big question is "Why now?".Such exhibition of unabashed emotion is definitely not unprecedented. Author EL James has predecessors like D.H.Lawrence who literally shook the world with his super-sensuous 'Lady Chatterly's Lover' which adorns bookstore-shelves even today...& so does Indian renditions of the 'Sex,truth & books'-genre like 'kamasutra'. However,in this post, I would be focussing on the topic of 'use of slangs in public medium '. There was a time when censor board was skeptical on the said issue & F-words in Martin Scorsese-Gangstermovies & suchlike would be silenced & replaced by 'hell'/4-stars in subtitles. Even today, expletives used by participants of reality shows like 'Roadies'/'Splitsvilla' are carefully 'beeped', though the uncut versions are readily available on Youtube. Likewise, Raghu Ram, the ideator behind these MTV-shows, in reply to stern criticism from Aamir Khan, pointed that 'AIB-video's are released only on the internet, with viewer-discretion advice, & also argued on Aamir himself condoning random 'gaali-galoj' in his own production 'Delhi belly' .Indeed,on celluloid, a far more flexible stand is taken, especially in bengali films, as directorslike Buddhadeb dasgupta, Goutam ghosh, Rituparno ghosh, Anjan Dutta, Kaushik Ganguly, Srijit Mukherjee ,Mainak Bhowmik & Raj Chakraborty have made films, inundated with swear-words that have worked wonders with a conceding audience. In fact, it started with as long back as Tapan Sinha's 'Raja' about anti-socials in the 70's & the culmination can be said to have been achieved by director Q, who have actually ended up making a film, with the title itself being an expletive, not to mention many more throughout the film. Now, the mastermind makers behind these so-called 'work-of-art's, when questioned about the suitability of such abundant usage of 'beepable's , have readily justified " We thought such characters would be talking like that only, in our real lives". Fair enough! as long it's the genuine reason & the whole ordeal is not for garnering bigger TRPs. While ideators behind such films/shows continue to coin 'censorship' as 'moral policing' & a threat to freedom-of-expression, it is also very important for creative people being aware 'Where to draw the line' .Even Satyajit ray used slangs in a couple of his films, but they never felt contrived, as they were demanded by the situations , hence spontaneous!

Development vs Employment

“Necessity is the mother of all inventions”-Plato.
We all move forward…at least that’s what we wish to…try to. However, with advancement, often comes the burden of sabotage, in some form or other. Recently, I happened to watch a couple of films, which addressed this issue, though in very different ways.
“Xagoroloi bohu duur”(It’s a long way to the sea”) one of the most critically successful works of Assamese movie-giant Jahnu Barua, tells the story of an old boatman , entrusted with the indispensable job of carrying inhabitants of a remote village across a river to the city-life on the other side, & how his life gets shattered when a bridge gets constructed on the river. The film portrays how in course of making a convenient way of crossing the river for the villagers, the livelihood of the poor boatman gets snatched away. Collateral damage, as people say! Small sacrifices for a larger cause. Ironic indeed!
I watched the newly colorized version of ”Naya Daur”, B.R.Chopra’s vintage saga on the theme ‘Man vs Machine’ & was amazed to see, how within the ambit of making a mainstream song-&-dance hindi-flick, the director has put forward a strong message, that of endorsing/patronizing the peaceful as well as useful co-existence of manual labor & machine-driven efficiency.
Even in our daily lives in a country like India, we witness a similar scenario with Rickshaw-pullers & Auto-drivers operating along the same route. Passengers opt for the former if the latter is not available. So what do the poor labourers do? Remain as men at the mercy of machines?
Even, in the organized industrial landscape, automation has led to umpteen job-cuts, resulting in organizational-development, but at the cost of creating unemployment. Being an erstwhile IT-professional, I get disturbed at the lame manual modus-operandi followed in the PSU, I presently work for. However, a potential ERP-implementation , though held up owing to the severe digital-divide prevalent in the half-old workforce, would invariably put the relevance of the staff working in the file receive-despatch section at stake….& had it not been a PSU, probably they would have been handed pink-slips. So, how do we solve the bottle-neck? The way-out is pretty linear. Man only has created machines….hence, it shouldn’t be the practice that machine destroys men & their lives. If we need machines, we also need work-force to operate them. Therefore, let there be mandatory development, but it must not throw people out of jobs, rather, bring more of them in!

Manager ‘Babu’

‘Management’…the buzz-word in contemporary educational & industrial landscape! After all, what is so enticing about the concept of ‘Management’ that attracts people, irrespective of age & class??...Actually, being a ‘manager’ according to popular belief, is akin to being someone important, someone whom people look up to. However, this glorified image of a ‘Manager’ is fairly a recent phenomenon. It was not like this always , specially the feudal era , when the real leaders were the landlords, whereas their affairs used to get managed by the ‘Nayab’s , a refined version of a clerk, which during the British era, started getting framed by the ‘Euphemism’ called ‘Manager’, followed by a typical ‘desi’ suffix…’babu’!
Truly, even today how much of the job done by so-called managers is ‘managerial/strategic’ in the true sense of the term , & how much of it is actually outright clerical?? 1000s of management-schools across the world, umpteen MDPs happening round the year, self-help books propagating ideas on ‘how to manage your life’ becoming bestsellers & their authors, consequently, getting termed as ‘Management Gurus’…are all these actually worth it or….adherence of over-importance to ‘Management’ as a concept??
Even MBA-students themselves confess, after passing out of b-schools & joining the industry, that two years of studying management-theories & organization behavior is hardly of any use at workplace. Popular opinion says that ‘management’ is an inherent trait, as fundamental as any other emotion like bravery or laziness or hypertension. Going by the said theory, Home-maker Mom’s can be perceived to be the best managers! Indeed, if it’s all in the mind , & everyone has it to greater or lesser extent, why an ‘MBA’?....Is it just glamourizing or packaging??
The answer, according to me, is a definite ‘No’ if an individual/professional is engaged in assignments strategic enough necessitating analytical insights & managerial acumen. But, often specially in govt organizations , Mba’s holding managerial positions are working as ‘glorified clerks’ only, doing mundane routine-jobs, without having any opportunities at all, to add values to their organizations. Many of them are possessing experiences of woring on challenging case-studies in their MBA-course, & winning award in national-level competitions…but, are just lost in the dreaded ‘Tunnel-vision’ of PSU’s. What happens invariably after that is that, the fresh-minds from b-schools become like the typical ‘Manager-Babu’s of the feudal era , spending useful working-hours reading newspapers, gossiping about transfers & DA-hikes & anitipating a fat salary-rise in the next pay-revision. But, this is remotely close to the classic concept of a ‘manager’. Prior to the feudal era, there was the age of kings & emperors when, the minister of state, was actually the most intelligent, at times, cunning person working as the personal advisor to the ruler. Even in the game of chess, the minister has the greatest power, more than the king. Also, the hindu mythology projects the shrewd ‘Chanakya’ as a manager, who was actually a philosopher as well.
A manager, I feel, sould actually be an Ideator, someone who innovates & leads. Regardless of how much any goddamn facilitator or co-ordinator likes the tag of a “manager”, even in the guise of a hotel-caretaker or a head-clerk, the term ‘Manager’ has to be reserved for someone who truly deserves to be at the tip of a pyramid, by dint of foresight , intuition & humanism.