All work and no play...

Work-life balance? What’s that? At one level it seems almost absurd to pose the question when work is so hard to come by. Whatever the government

may say about green shoots of recovery, the reality is jobs are scarce. You know that for sure when you’re told the biggest recruiters at IIT Delhi this year were Jalandhar’s Lovely Professional University, started by a mithai-magnate (it picked up 21 graduates) and ICFAI Institute of Science and Technology, (which recruited 17), not fancy names like Goldman Sachs and Credit Suisse.

If things are so bad for kids who’ve been through one of the toughest selection processes in the country and who, till yesterday, were spoilt for choice, imagine how much worse it must be for others hoping to start their careers. And for many already in the workforce who are desperately hanging on to their jobs for want of alternatives. In such a scenario, where not only are jobs scarce, but unlike in the US, there is no safety net whatsoever, work ought to be prized above all else.

So is it strange, even plain stupid, to write a Sunday column on work-life balance? What’s that, many of today’s youngsters with 24 by 7 jobs might ask. Some quaint idea? What’s life if you don’t have work? The counter, what’s work if you don’t have a life somehow never seems to get posed at all.

And so for the generation that’s just started work in the midst of what is arguably the severest downturn the world has witnessed since the Great Depression and for those in sectors hard hit by the slowdown, life is only work, work, and more work. If you’re lucky enough to have a job, you’d better put your nose to the grindstone and slog; from dawn to dusk and possibly till later too. Remember Andy Grove’s, ‘Only the paranoid survive’? Well, barring the public sector, that seems to be the motto in the private sector the world over.

Let me qualify that. The country’s second largest private sector bank, HDFC Bank, has once again shown it is different. The bank has reportedly told its employees it doesn’t want them to spend too much time in office. All employees have been told to shut down their computers two hours after the close of banking and not work much beyond ‘normal’ (10am – 4pm) working hours.

It’s asked them to ‘Go get a life’, says a report in The Financial Chronicle. And suiting action to words, the bank’s managing director, Aditya Puri, sets an example by leaving office at 5.30 pm sharp. Sadly, organisations like HDFC Bank are rare. In most organisations, performance is measured, not by the quantum and quality of output, but by the number of hours spent in office. Never mind whether it is spent productively or not (usually the latter)! Barring the odd day, there is usually no reason why a normal work load cannot be completed in a 8-10 hour working day, yet for most the workday stretches interminably.

Even more unfortunate is the practice (actively encouraged by bosses) of hanging around in office till the boss leaves. This is what makes HDFC Bank a trendsetter of sorts. Not only does it tell its employees to vamoose once their work is done but their boss does likewise. Delhi Metro legendary chief E Sreedharan is another boss who doesn’t believe in his staff ‘hanging’ around. He seldom stays late in office and does not encourage his staff to do so either. Yet Delhi Metro has, time and again, beaten the deadline.

To be sure Delhi Metro is a public sector undertaking (with a private sector work ethos!) But make no mistake! HDFC Bank is not setting it-self up as a sucker when it tells its employees to go home, spend time with family and friends, have a blast, whatever, even as employees at competitor banks ‘work’ their fingers to their bone. It knows all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. Employees cannot be productive if they are cooped up in office all day.

‘Eureka’ moments seldom come while sitting at a desk. In creative jobs, in particular, and these days almost all work is creative, it is important to re-charge your batteries and that cannot happen in the confines of an office. Companies and managements that recognise that more (hours in office) means less quality output and strive to ensure their employees have a work-life balance are the winners.

(Source: Economic Times)

Thicker than blood

Someone quite rightly said that you don’t get to choose your relatives but then you do get to choose your friends.. I guess that God just let us choose the best! I’m not sure how many have been lucky with friends but I should say that I am one fortunate person who has been surrounded by so many loved ones at times when I needed them most that today I feel I can easily attribute a lot of what I am to them..

There are times when you feel like you should be left alone and you are surrounded by ‘them’ and they don’t let you to sit and think, you just wish that they’d just all disappear so that you could sit in corner and lick your wounds in private, but then on a later day you realise that your friends had actually tried to take your mind away from the problem, had tried to fill your thoughts with a little bit of sunshine so that they could see the smile back up on your face..

There are times when you’ve just wanted to talk and felt that the world was not treating you fairly. You just needed to tell someone that ‘It is not just fair!’ as though you’d just discovered the secret of living and then you dial the number of an old friend and pour it all out.

I’m glad there are friends, God knows how dreary life would have been without them.. So let’s toast a drink to them!! Cheers Amigos!

The 'true' stroy of Valentines Day

I just got this hilarious forward from Joe and I thought it ought to be shared...

In spite of what you have been told by everyone, especially the propagandist English media, the truth is that Valentine's Day originated hundreds of years ago, in India, and to top it all, in Narendrabhai's Gujarat!

It is a well known fact that Gujarati men, specially the Patels, (used to?) mistreat and disrespect their wives. One fine day – it happened to be the 14th day of February – one brave Mrs. Patel, having had enough of "torture" from her husband, finally chose to rebel against the system and thrashed her husband up with a velan, the rolling pin that is used to make chapattis. Yes, the same velan with which she made chapattis for him. Only, this time, instead of the dough, it was the husband who was flattened.

This was a momentous occasion for all Gujarati women and the revolt soon spread like wild fire, with thousands of housewives beating up their husbands with the velan. It was a watershed event in the history of love.

Soon, the "chapatti-ed" husbands from Anand to Amdavad, and all of the Patel men-folk, quickly learnt that their women armed with velans were truly a force, and started behaving more respectfully with their wives.

Thereafter, to commemorate that eventful day, on 14th February every year, the womenfolk of Gujarat would beat up their husbands with the velan and the men had to display the supreme joy of submitting to the will of the women they loved.

February 14^th became – as it remains even today – too much of an ordeal for the men and the most awaited day for the women. The wise among the men decided to use Gandhigiri in true Gujarati style to lose the battle and win the war. Soon the men started making offerings of flowers and sweets and gifts to please their 'patni devi's and bought their mercy at a price. And thus began the tradition of velan time.

As Gujarat fell under the influence of Western culture, and the Patels began to settle from Durban to Trinidad, the ritual and the celebrations (or the ordeal?) soon spread through out the British commonwealth, and then to the western countries that had trade relations with the colonies.

In course of time, velan time, got anglicized to 'Velantine' and then to 'Valentine'. As you know, today it is celebrated world over as Valentine's Day, and as people who are proud of 'Indian culture', it is imperative that we celebrate it in the original Indian way, and not in the corrupt westernized and commercial way. 

Back again!

Well.. I wouldn’t describe myself to be a prolific writer and somebody who has the creative juices flowing out through their hands. I guess I am just happy when left by myself to do what I feel like.. but then when I do 

need an output for my vent up thoughts, I do pick up a pen and jot em’ down in my 

diary... 

I’ve been one to keep a diary for years now. Not as somebody who chronicles each day of her life, but on some days when I feel I want to share my thoughts with someone.

It has been not a very difficult transformation to make now that everything has gone ‘online’. You work from remote areas and are connected ‘online’. Your friends who once sat in the very same bench with you in college and canteen and library and now in different parts of the earth are in touch only because they are ‘online’. You network for your work ‘online’ and nowadays there have been more and more instances of people finding their life patners also ‘online’. So I just thought it might be time to just make that move and make my diary an ‘online blog’ too!

With this in mind I’m just making the resolve that I would write in my nomadic and wandering thoughts to paper more often now..