Maybe the Wall has some answers.

Monday, November 30, 2009

Button-eyed Profundity

So I'm in a brown study
over some things gone by;
a little green, a little blue
And I do, I do try

to see a little less red
(it helps you remain in the pink);
better crimson than yellow
is what I like to think.

I rack my grey cells over
the black, in-between, and white.
Then I sit and write some poetry
Arbitrary and trite :)

Sunday, November 29, 2009

Truth - and closure

Dear ______,

I write to you today because I'm never going to be able to tell you this in person. Don't ask me why. It is very obvious why!

When I first met you, I didn't really care. You were just another new face among the tens of others I had recently met. The circumstances we met in didn't do much to get things off to a particularly rosy start either.

When I began to spend more time with and around you - purely because I had no choice - I actually found myself wishing either you or me out of the place. I concluded that I didn't like you much.

So I have no idea why, the first time you didn't show up like always, I was unable to enjoy the sort of day I'd been wishing for. I have no idea why it would put me in a bad mood to find you in one, and I certainly do not know why I began to go about with a silly grin on my face on the days that we talked about this, that and the other.

I have no clue when you began to matter so much. I still don't know why. You're wrong for me. All wrong. You don't fit my ideal combination of Roark and Darcy and Wodehouse. I don't know why you still mean more than that combination ever did, and I admire and dislike you in equal measure for turning that paradigm on its head for me. Who gave you the permission?

I reasoned with myself that it was yet another teenage crush coming two years late, and I knew it would bide its time and cease to exist afterwards.

I was right. It did behave like a crush. Long after I'd bid you goodbye, I found myself so engrossed in the present and the future and everything in between that you became just another hazy memory. You were different from the other hazy memories, though. Those others are never accompanied by a smile or a pang, or both, sometimes.

Something happened recently that brought you back into sharp focus for me. You're just another name on my phonebook and Facebook account now, and I am, thankfully, far enough past the 'lovestruck' stage to be able to talk to you like I do to anyone else. I'm also far enough past that stage to be able to smile and shake my head at everything. Quite the wise woman! :)

There's less than a one-in-a-million chance that you will ever read this...and there's absolutely no chance whatsoever of you getting to know that it is addressed to you. But if you do read this, do glance at the post just below this one, and you'll know why I chose to write to you today :) This is one of my moments of truth...and what is a moment of truth without acknowledgement?

Thank you for the memories, and for teaching me to look beyond Darcy and Roark. I'm still hung up on Wodehouse, though. Did I ever tell you you have a great sense of humour? :)

Love,
Crossworder

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Over a Late Breakfast

You've got to be really well-prepared for your exam, or else really sure that you're beyond damage control, when you sit and ponder management theories a day before your Compensation & Benefits paper instead of dutifully revising Dessler and labour laws. And when you're cooking Maggi and writing this at the same time, you are beyond any help whatsoever, which is why you also grin like I am, and check your saucepan to ensure the seasoning is right.

But when I was boiling water for my coffee ten minutes ago, I hit upon some cardinal truths that I thought I must share. At this point, I must request all management purists and aficionados to exit the blog. I can feel irreverence bubbling over in me, and you are not going to be pleased. At the very outset, I remind you that I am a half-baked management graduate with very little knowledge to call my own. That probably explains the irreverence.

- More than once in the last eighteen months, I have found that most management theories are essentially common sense packaged in a fancy framework. Not to take away at all from all the contributors to the field, these are facts that have always, well, existed. That said, I do recognise the importance of realising that these facts exist, gleaning them from the everyday and the ordinary through intensive - and extensive - research, and presenting them to the world in a format that makes sense and is applicable, by and large, to most scenarios. As someone who intends to get into research herself eventually, I'd be the last to say that research in the field is irrelevant (why would I want to devote my life to something I don't believe in, now?), but there is also something to be said for the number of times I have heard people say (and felt myself), "Eh, this is what they're talking about? Of course there will be dissatisfaction if I pay one guy less than his counterpart doing the same work." Or "If you occupy a chunk of someone's mindspace for a reasonable while, he will, more likely than not, buy whatever it is that you're selling him". I could probably be charged with over-simplification. I'll cheerfully concede to the charges. :)

- Ever notice how most revolutionary concepts come from the same set of countries? Japan, the U.S. and the U.K., among others. Japan has practically cornered the market on contemporary management practices. I'd give anything for a peek into the average Japanese brain. Those people astound me. I haven't heard of too many theories coming from, say, Italy or Spain or Russia. I wonder why. Of course, there are studies carried out by researchers from scores of countries. What makes it to most standard textbooks (not that that alone means that the research was any good), though, comes from the same handful of countries. I seriously wonder why.

- We in India have an inexplicable affinity for books and theories that originated abroad. There's nothing wrong with that. Management is about people, and people are - cultural and organisational and economic differences aside - essentially the same everywhere. So whether we use Blum & Naylor or T. Rao to aid our understanding of how they can be "managed" (I've never been very comfortable with the connotation) is not - or shouldn't be - so important. But the problem lies somewhere else. The problem lies in assuming that your education is incomplete if you studied only out of Indian authors' works. Sure, it is...but isn't it equally incomplete if you study only out of McGraw Hill and Prentice Hall versions of foreign authors' books? Why can't we study theories from wherever they are explained best, and allow ourselves the privilege of reading what people from our country have to say about people from our country? And I mean this not just individually, but also from our universities' point of view.


My coffee mug is empty, my Maggi cold, and I am beginning to panic slightly about Comp & Ben. Cheerio, then. And I wish Blogger would behave better on my computer. I can't italicize words, the spacing is awry, and my paragraphs refuse to be disciplined into justification.

P.S.: As on November 30, I've had a decent C&B paper, have also spun yarns on Organisational Psychology...and am really kicked because Blogger is back on its best behaviour. As you can see, my friend, my posts are all justified in alignment...again! :)

Friday, November 20, 2009

Just thought I'd drop by...

Hey there...it's been a while. I'm back. Not back, really, just peeking in to say a quick hi because I missed my blog. Exams are on for another two weeks. In the last three days, I have taken papers in HR Planning & Selection and Training & Development. At this point in time, I can switch recruitment effectiveness parameters and training needs analysis basics no problem. It's all the same. Sounds the same, at least.

Anyway, I am here because I wanted to stop by. There were random streams of thought in my head that I'd put away to explore further here on Blogger...but Comp & Ben has a way of confusing the most sorted heads, and I am befuddled plenty. I still wanted to stop by.

So here I am, with nothing in particular to write about. I could write about how three friends and I just spent two and a half hours watching Ajab Prem ki Ghazab Kahani, and how the movie is pure rubbish but we still had fun trying to see if we could sit through it to the end. I could write about how it feels to find yourself on the brink of growing up, with no excuses left to remain where you are. I could write about the ten different ideas I wake up with every morning on what to do with my life. I could write about the flute seller who roams the streets every day at twilight, playing music that tugs at every heartstring, but never getting more than a cursory glance (and how he plays on regardless, and it is evident that his music makes him happy – and us, too, though we never stop to admit it). I could, maybe, post some poetry I doodled on the back of my Training Models handout. Perhaps I could write about the surreal reality that is the preparation for the Commonwealth Games. Perhaps I could write about the long discussion (or argument, or both) that my roommate and I had the other day - Fitzwilliam Darcy or Rhett Butler? (I still say a blend of Darcy and Howard Roark...and Wodehouse's humour thrown in ;). I could, while we are on the topic, write about my first crush. Or I could begin rambling on one of my random fundamental theories in life.

But when your connection is choppy and your brain addled with labour laws, and sleep is playing peekaboo, it's never wise to begin one of your yarns. The whole point of this post was to say Hi. So hi there…and I’ll see you soon.

Friday, November 13, 2009

Schoolgirl Poetry I : November Rain


Deadlines, in all their urgency
loom large and menacing over me
I smile and gaze out,
blissfully.


Memories, ever rushing by -
restless, like a school of fry
From the present,
my alibi...


Tomorrows playing peekaboo -
promising. Foreboding, too.
I love them golden
and in blue.


Winter chill beneath my feet,
wind and rain and hail and sleet
Where the elements part
and meet.


Silly grins for no real reason,
brought on by mysterious treason
wrought suddenly by
the season.


I'm free, I'm flying north again
I'm wandering down memory lane
Blame it on
November rain.

Thursday, November 12, 2009

Grizzly me

There's something warm and cosy and snug and comfortable about an oversized sweatshirt. It makes you feel like a giant, well-content bear! :)

Sunday, November 8, 2009

Spirals of Smoke

Waqt rukta nahin kahin tik kar
Iski aadat bhi aadmi si hai


(Time is a lot like man -
It can never stay put.)

- Gulzar

Forgive me the poor translation. If there ever was a textbook case of meaning getting lost in translation, this would be it! But it is a beautiful line; again, from Marasim.

Winter is gradually making itself at home. For the first time this season, it was foggy all through today. The mornings are beautiful; the evenings, picturesque.

I was about to post some poetry, but I think it can wait.

Life smells and tastes of ginger and cinnamon. Perfect.

Thursday, November 5, 2009

Full Circle - 2

The '2' in the title is because I remember writing a post titled this way earlier...some time in March, I think. I'm not sure if it's still here, though. Between my own whims and the even more whimsical Blogger, I never am sure what stays and what doesn't.

But life does have a way of coming full circle in the strangest ways. I have had my Airtel prepaid number for five and a half years now. I bought it when I first came to College...and it has seen me through graduation, M&A research, a million highs and lows, scores of emergencies and a thousand impulses. When I finish post-graduation next year, I will leave Delhi. Till then, 98*******8 will continue to define me to my family and friends as the girl who misses more calls than the rest of the world put together, and writes text messages that read like theses.

The reason why I'm talking about those five years and this number is that, if I choose, I can enable calling on my phone at one paisa a second to any number in India. That, people, is a big (albeit expected) leap from what things used to be, not just for me or for Airtel (in different ways, of course), but for telecom in India as a whole. There's a whole lot of economics and marketing and strategy there, but I'll think aloud about that some other time. I just happen to be in a phase where the most mundane things bring back associations, and Airtel and 1 paisa are doing exactly that.

Back when I first got to Delhi, a local call cost 2 bucks a minute, and a single message set you back by a rupee. STD calls (I made a lot of those to my folks my first year, before I went devious and started missed-calling them for every little thing ;) cost 2.65. Roaming charges were nothing short of daylight robbery. So when Airtel came up with their one-rupee-a-day-rental one paisa per message scheme, it was a relief godsend. Rezzies are perpetually broke, so it helped tremendously to have to recharge with, say, 50 bucks a month, and text away to glory for everything from sharing notes on tutes to planning a surprise birthday party.

But I don't remember how much I saved from my allowance with that scheme (whose expiry all Resident Airtel users mourned for weeks). What I do remember, and will always cherish, is the friendships those SMSes helped build and cement. My closest friendships to date are ones that began with random PJ forwards, moving on to banter and longish, typed conversations and growing deeper with exchanges on lectures and life and everything in between. That is not to say that there weren't conversations in person or time spent together or the other things that go into the making of the most wonderful relationships. What 1p/message helped me discover in myself and my friends, though, was the beauty of thoughts, questions, misgivings and smiles articulated as, and as soon as, they occur, without the inhibition that being face-to-face can sometimes bring. And that kind of sharing builds stronger bonds.

And then there came along special rates and lower charges and reduced roaming and, over three years, we'd pretty much begun to take local and STD calling at one buck as the standard.

Till DoCoMo came along whistling. (Pretty interesting how TTSL's GSM service got its name...apparently, docomo is a Japanese compound word for 'everywhere', which suited NTT DoCoMo, Japan's biggest telecom company, just fine as an indication of its network quality. Also, 'docomo' is a portmanteau for 'do communications on the mobile network'...very Japanese English, but interesting nonetheless! :)

And suddenly, all the others were scrambling to provide 1p/sec calling to their subscribers.

For a brand that is new to India, bright and colourful and tiny DoCoMo exudes the endearing energy and confidence of a little child, and has created quite a stir.

And so I was thinking, as I walked past yet another Do the New hoarding this evening, that life has, indeed, come full circle here, too. Now, I can call people for a song if I choose to...but the people I want to call the most are too far away. There's less time, more worries, less candour, more uncertainty. I wonder what it would have been like to spend only a paise a second five years ago. I know what it is like now...but I wasn't looking for this answer :) Short of declaring outgoing calls free of charge (or actually paying subscribers to make calls or send text messages), there isn't much telecom companies can do now. They're on their way down to the bone here.

Maybe I should take a cue from DoCoMo and do the new instead of brooding so much over the past like I am wont to do sometimes. But before I put all this ruminating out of the way and get back to the mad merry-go-round...to all the friends I met, got to know and grew to love over those fifteen months and afterwards, I miss you.

This post is dedicated to 1-paisa-per-message friendships that have come to mean so, so much.