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.

Confessions of a non-shopaholic

Marriage on the cards=shopping has its effect of your credit/debit cards.Indeed, ever since my wedding has been fixed, one of the patent questions that has come my way ...'So, have you stared shopping?'..Though, I've never been a shopaholic ,I've observed broadly two kinds of shoppers:
1. who shop with an impulse
2. who shop with an agenda
For the first group, more often than not,it's just shopping for the sake of it...they don't have to wait for ceremonies or festivals or end-of-season sale's, for them it is a perennial extravaganza that goes on throughout the year. However, to be a passionate shopper like this , one needs to have a fat bank-balance, so that any amount can be shelled out anytime for anything that catches one's eye in stores.
But, for the second group, buying things come into the picture only when they are needed...actually, only when they are indispensable.
The big question is, which group is better?
definitely, it's not advisable to be extravagant for one's passion for shopping & pick up anything & everything that comes in the way. Also, it's not right to be miser enough to use things till they become unusable & only then go for buying a new substitute.In fact, very often it's seen that in such situations owing to the urgency of a purchase, the buyer has to compromise in buying whatever is available at that moment, which if not up to the mark gets damaged very soon & has to be replaced again resulting in double investment.
Shopping, I feel should be a balance between need & want , and a well-estimated manifestation of one's affordability combined with desire to fulfill one's own satisfaction.

Why attrition is good for companies??

As I embark on the verge of completion of 1 year in a Govt job, the greatest cause of disbelief to me has become my change in mindset, regarding my job....while I was determined to leave this job as soon as possible since the time I joined, gradually I'm finding myself entangled in the Psu-life & culture. In fact, it is the case with 99% govt employees as hardly any have left or want to leave because they neither want to forego their job-security nor their post-retirement financial security(read 'pension') ,& understandably so. But, is Zero-attrition actually good for companies?? Maybe, on paper, it is the dream for any organization to boast of such utopian retention-stats...but there's also many flip-side's to it. Every organization, big or small, has a pyramidal structure of growth, which invariably narrows towards its tip.Hence, if there's no attrition at all , then the wide base of fresh-recruits are all going to be vying for the topmost position of the company 30 years down the line.Also, zero-attrition implies no mid-level recruitment which means the same employees who join as trainees & stay back at the same place for their entire live, being unaware of the outer world , hence leading to a myopic & claustrophobic organization-culture.Therefore,companies... let some employees leave if they want to , let them look for greener pastures....alongside, let some willing others come in...in short, let the fresh air come in !