Are You Smelling Coffee?

That's what she gave me to smell in a little bowl that resembled Moroccan antique and before I write about it there are a few other reflections that I do not want to miss writing about, influenced by the powerful lesson I took from her as I walked back home.

This week was emotionally enriching , and at the same time tremendously draining too; it was the head and tail of the same coin; all for the same reasons!

Rene's Achievement: Fresh in my mind to write about is Rene's achievement; Rene is an old friend's daughter, doing her 2nd year of Communicative English and Psychology, and has been for quite sometime my favourite as I love to read her mails; the structure and expressions and observations and narrations are all brilliantly superb and yet wierd, with a tinge of insanity that offers her the license to do what she do so well. She use to be a wierd kiddo when she was small; she would answer haphazardly, would be seen sitting on the chair with her legs folded up and chin resting on her knees, hands wrapping her legs, with an absolutely shabby hairstyle; then too, though her elder sister was more studious and disciplined, I use to sense an Arundhati Roy in her, for whatever reasons! She grew up to be disciplined enough to have Wednesdays as her Laundry day, Saturdays as vacuum-my-house day, and Sundays as empty-the-sink-and-keep-everything-annoyingly-clean-day.

She was invited to a Global Conference in Bangkok last week, to deliver a speech on 'Domestic Violence in the Middle East' to an audience including invited UN Delegates; not only did she deliver well, I was told that she was also quoted by two other delegates and secured (earned, rather) two internships with the UN. I was extremely delighted to hear that and I feel proud that I know Rene though she hasn't grown up in my mind than the little girl that she was when I last saw her - a music note that was off pitch!

A Song that inspired: Music reminded me of a particular song that I was so deeply connected that I stumbled upon last week; not only was this song beautiful for me, it also shaped a kaleidoscope of emotions, not because of its lyrics or the music, but the nuances of the tune of the song and the height of imaginations its composition offered to take me through. In listening to it, it had an image that sung to me, it offered a season that I longed for, it stimulated an inspiration and hunger, and the aching that accompanies an insanely thinking soul!!

The song also brought with its melodious voice the sad memory of the tragedy this singer went through as she lost her child who drowned in a swimming pool recently; no parent should live to see their children die, but with the love and admiration I have for the simplicity and humility of Chitra, she should have been the last if ever one should experience such a tragedy!! i wish she is recovering from the loss!!

Two women- one constructive and the other destructive: More than ones own tragedies and our ability to manage them, sometimes you are left broken when you are faced with challenges of others and the tragedies they are put through. Chote Lal's was one such story where he was diagnosed with acute leukemia and was admitted in a hospital in Delhi and Rameeta - a friend of mine for whom he worked was running around to help him survive, find him enough supply of blood units etc.

Even in that cause, there appeared a very narrow minded Indian lady from California who just couldn't see anything beyond the tip of her nose!! I simply wondered how can a woman who is capable of growing in her womb a life for nine months and deliver and grow to make a man or a woman can be so pathetic in her character!!!

Happiness is for the unthinking: With all this and more, this week pulled me more and more into the deep pits of thoughts that I love and hate to be in! A virtual-friend with whom I often engage in quite an intelligent discussion whenever we get chance was quick to quip 'happiness is for the unthinking' and that you cannot be a poet and not agonize!!! Will I trade my ability to think and express for a season full of peace? Will I trade peace and dive into the ocean of aching thoughts and derive from it experience to express? The battle of desires and logic, the conflicts of mind and heart, the rational thoughts fighting against the less powerful irrational hopes and wishes, it creates a lot of bruises all over, leaving behind a bleeding heart! The search for labels, the quest to box this to 'Box-A' and that to 'Box-B', just to justify our educated rational mind to hide and suppress the genuine emotions of our poor irrational heart, is, i realized, a comfortable mask that many of us wear.

Sometimes it hurts a lot; it hurts self, and it destroys others too. Amidst the richness of life around, it hurts to think of the emptiness I create for my own! The only metaphor I could think of that comes close to the intensity of feeling is of the agonizing experience in the dying hours of a prisoner being taken to the gallows - the infinite pain of nearing that emptiness of life, the sensation of wanting to vomit as he is escorted through the corridor before the break of dawn, the helplessness as you look inside and see your own design and the hardship you go through to redraw that design - erase the lines and dots and shapes and forms, and the fingers going numb from realizing how hard it is to redraw, in spite of how much you try!!!

Nonetheless, when facing what appears as the most agonizing experience, and when taking back a few steps through the memories searching for similar experiences, you realize that you've been through it before and survived its storm and kept your roots intact.

That's when I realized too that most of what you experience in life - joy, sorrow, anxiety, anger and so on and so forth - when reflected upon, you realize that the others have experienced of you in the past for almost the same reasons that you are experiencing it in the now. That's when you understand the wealth of joy you shared, or the depth of pain you caused to others whom you associated with.

I wish we can erase the smell of certain life experience by smelling some coffee!

The Perfume Shop: The girl at the perfume shop offered me different brands of perfumes and as I tested one by one on my wrist, I began to lose the ability to distinguish one from other; the ordinary one from the one that added inspiration with its aroma; the thick smell from the smell that brought back years of memories and decades of hopes.

All she did was to give me that bowl of coffee powder to smell, and break the pattern, and smell fresh again.

In NLP they call it breaking the state of mind!

The question is: what if I don't want to break the pattern? What if I want to dwell in the pain of the events and its experience, break open the oyster to find a little pearl of thought to express and revel!!!

It's a defining choice!

Employee Handbook - Is It Serving Purpose?

At least in some part of the Middle East and in most cases in Asia, the Employee Handbook is one that is seen, felt on the first days of induction, followed by it finding a nice place on the side of the study table of the associate in their accommodation (or in their suitcase - which makes it completely out of sight - if they don't have a study table!).

In true reflection, did that serve the purpose, really?! Not, really!!

The question is, at a time when even senior managers put aside Paolo Coelho's "Alchemist" or Dr Covey's "Seven Habits" with a flick of pages in just a few minutes, regardless of the wealth of inspiration /information it carries in it, what do we build-in to the handbook that will make them hang on to, read, understand and implement proactively!!!

From those that I have personally seen, there is nothing much other than Do's and Dont's and when the cafeteria opens, and why you should not wear two finger-rings, and a series of how you will be punished!!!

More or less, it was a whitewashing to protect the employer by saying "See, we told you on your first day, didn't we! You signed on the last sheet, don't you remember?!

As an experiment, and to move away from the 'conventional' handbook, we have tried to incorporate the information of handbook along with the workbook materials meant to be part of the various training programs that forms the 'onboarding' experience.

Which means, the associate will not only have the handbook with her, but will also be 'engaged' with it for the first five weeks of her onboarding, and bring that with her as a 'reference source' to all the induction programs that she will be attending.

Will you call it a handbook? Perhaps not. Does it meet my objective. It surely does, or so I hope!!!

Interested to know more, or do you have a better idea, I would love to hear!

Shahir

21 June 2011

Reflection

It's been a very fast paced month, last month, juggling different priorities and progressing forward, travelling back in memory lane through music and thoughts, and many more!

What will I remember this month for? What will I forget from how I lived this month?

At Work: finding out the right talent and convincing them on why should they work with us is what I was mostly engaged in. One by one, when a position is filled and we get closer to the requirement of associates we want to have, it offered a sense of satisfaction, and a hope that our validation of their talents be true, and that it will add value to the organization we intend to build.

The discussions with potential candidates offered a wealth of learning and experience. I wouldn't want to call it 'recruitment' though that may be the case. The different type of people you meet over the phone, some of them as genuine as one can be, and some of them as wolves in sheep skin, sometimes their desperate plea to give them a hand to come out of their pit and to trust in their ability to deliver than what is seen on their credentials, sometimes the tricks they engage and the baits they throw hoping for a big fish to bite, all of them offered a wonderful experience mainly in understanding people and lives!

There were a couple of candidates who stood out in the process. There were a few whom I hired purely for their attitude than their skills. And there were a couple of them who disappointed me for the tricks they engaged and threw away their opportunities!

Music : Last month also had moments where I took a trip down the memory lane, spending some time listening to a few of my favourite songs! There were some excellent compositions I was listening to, and of all, I just can't let go the energy and excitement I feel when I listen to this piece from Yanni's concert! The Storm of Yanni, a fabulous composition of Vidyasagar in Malayalam, and a nostalgic composition in Tamil from movie Varanum Aayirum were the ones that accompanied me in my walks! Most of all, the bhajan of Mahatma Gandhi, sung by Late Bhimsen Joshi to the music composed by Maestro Ilayaraja was one that anchored my spirits to its roots and helped me be sane!

People: Did I meet anyone so significant whom I will remember for a long time? I happened to connect with someone a few weeks ago who was to me personally a symbol of academic achievements! There was an instant admiration and a lasting impression I had of this lady whose examples of hard work and commitment towards scaling greater heights was phenomenal, that it dwarfed - if not engulfed - many like the lady whom I met at MMA in 2009 who had a list of high ambitions but none pursued. Here was an example of real concrete actions aligned to a clear set of goals versus an ambiguous set of wish lists displayed to gain attention and publicity!!

Literature : I did have moments where I felt very inspired to write a few verses, but I knew there was an utter silence locked in the middle of my chest every time I am at home back from work!! After a very long time, I had a little flirting with Malayalam and wrote a few verses; I loved it actually; I felt it was so sincere and simple. What was most touching for me is when for a few straight days words were escaping my thoughts and I desperately wanted to write something but couldn't! But one day, a few lines came into my mind from no where, and I wrote them down; it brought me some good comments from my friends on social network, through mails and feedback on the posts. It was once again that moment where you feel that writing doesn't come through a conscious attempt to create a masterpiece, but it has to evolve from within; it has occurred to me more than once that when I really want to sit and write, the words would never come to me, and when least expected a set of words would appear as a chain of thought that will then become a reflection of my heart!!! Those posts can be read on my WORDSChamber on Facebook, including "A Dichotomy", "The Walk", "The Road" and other snippets of thoughts.

Disappointments : I missed hugging my children. I may be a brother, I may be a colleague, I may be a friend, I may be a coach or a manager; I may be all that and more, but there is nothing that's as gratifying as being a father, and by that, there is nothing as marvelous as having your kids to look into your eyes and tell you the stories of the day with the seriousness that would dwarf the seriousness you saw in the eyes of the presidents signing Oslo Accord that meant nothing!!

Through days and months, life is growing!!!

A Kaleidoscope, or a Potpourri?

A conversation of two ordinary passengers I overheard in a public transport I took today in Chennai was typical of the daily concerns of an average family in India. There was one who had to share his concern on spending over a 1000 rupees (USD 22) on his son who was running high fever for last three days. As if it would comfort him, the other topped it up with his concern of spending around 20000 Rupees (USD 445) for his daughter's education. The thickness of their emotions got encrypted into two simple lines in this blog, but I understand well the conversations that must have taken place at their homes in the dim lights at night as all the members settle after their days activities!

I am undoubtedly in love with India. Chennai where I live is a place where you cannot travel more than a hundred meters without passing by the sound of hymns or chanting from a road-side temple or a community hall that will have a loudspeaker playing the latest beats - celebrating anything from coming-of-age of ones daughter to a graduation ceremony and wedding, or a kiosk selling beautiful garlands weaved and sold fresh, to merrily welcome a guest or to express condolences to the family of the bereaved!

I am growing a fear when travelling in India, a fear that some may scoff at, and some others may sympathize with. While it may become a great photo opportunity for a visiting traveler to India, I am growing an intense dislike and a strong fear when I listen to the sound of the dangling bells of a bullock-cart pulled by the exhausted bullocks with froth in their mouth, silenced by the sound of horn from the Mercedes behind, and a Piaggio share-auto-rickshaws stuffed with men and women seated in layers of seats symbolizing Indian innovation, with empty tiffin-carrier in one hand and a bag full of vegetables in the other, fighting for space and racing against time, desperate to reach home ; the school children queuing for their buses or dangerously hanging on the foot-boards, the crowd dodging between the different vehicles, animals and buildings, drunken men - rick-shaw drivers to office-workers - lying on the pavements and the thought of their wives and children waiting for them at home for whom a bunch of grapes would have been a delicious treat instead of the bottles of liquor their parents spent their savings on - I am scared of the India I see around me, how much so ever I try to be proud of the India that's projected as Incredible outside of our borders.

On one side is the wrinkles and sunburns of poverty staring at onlookers, in their never ending struggle to make the ends meet, and on the other side are the opportunities that we dream of the country and the power that we are gradually becoming in the world of nations!

I am no stranger to the difficulties and struggles of making the ends meet. Memories of burnt fingers aren't a story of a distant past, and the struggles of being swung from the comfort of being safe and secure with a perfect job and its perks to the dark pit of uncertainty causing cracks on my dreams of a future is as fresh as yesterday. The bitter taste of biting that hard pill is perhaps what highlights to my conscience the shaded side of the life around me. The stories I hear of the people, the colours and wrinkles on their faces, the torn edges of their collars and the stitched straps of their handbags, the raw and rugged life that I see around as a contrast to the clean, organized and structured life that I now have the privilege of enjoying undermines its joy and destabilizes my ability to live in the moment.

The brightness of the moment in the now is eclipsed by the possibility of a reality in the future!

I do not desire this state of mind.

It is nonetheless a state I am traversing through.

It is not about me. It's the unsettling whirlpool of feeling that I am drowned in when I see the life around, one that makes me overcautious and overly conscious of what I have and what I am, making me wonder my eligibility to live my life and have peace with it!!!

What is enough to be sufficient?

Shahir

April 15, 2011

What Naisha Told Me That I Didn't Hear?

It’s not about what she didn’t tell us; it’s about what we didn’t hear her saying. It’s about how we discounted her concerns because it didn’t scale up to our measurement of a ‘real problem’ and therefore it wasn’t given the attention it deserved while we measured it on a yardstick of our experience than with a scale of her size of life!

Naisha is in 2^nd grade; she is our darling girl at home, and a darling child at school too, for her friends and teachers. A compassionate little girl.

She’d been telling us how she dislike going to the same school she is now when the school re-opens. And the reason is, that she had formed an image of her maths teacher as one who will beat, less friendly and compassionate compared to her teachers now. She is not one who would mind someone being strict on homework and discipline etc., for, she has always been one who always met the standards of that sort, and also was good in maths. Her concern was in that teacher not being friendly, and that she’s at times caning the students!

Natural for any child of that age.

What we didn’t hear was the loudness of that concern. A week ago, she brought that up again in one of our conversations, and we tried to make her understand that her concerns are out of place, and that she will begin to enjoy her class etc.

That was the end of our conversation on that subject.

But it was only a beginning of her debate in her mind to find a solution that her parents couldn’t convincingly find!

She might have thought of different strategies; she might have drafted and erased in her mind different plans that would work or not work. And perhaps one morning she would have woke up with a decision, and that decision was to go and handle it by herself.

Little though it might seem to the eyes of us as grown up, that would have been a major decision for her little mind. She decided to go and ask her own maths teacher about what will it be like in the 3^rd grade? She asked “ Sujata miss, who will be our maths teacher in 3^rd Standard?” Sujatha miss – her maths teacher would have felt the concern in that little heart, and bent down , hugged her, and jokingly said “it will be Gayatri miss, and she will give you all nicely!!” and she added “darling, it could be either this teacher or there is another teacher, but both of them are good teachers and you don’t worry about it”

Naisha came back home, and hugged her mother and told her how happy she is and explained what happened with Sujata miss.

The incident disturbed me a lot. It made me reflect on what we are not listening but are just hearing. I heard Naisha’s concerns, but perhaps failed to listen to her feelings beneath. And then, we as parents were oblivious of her little mind working out plans to solve that concern. What would she have experienced with this thought of what to do in 3^rd Grade maths class nagging in her mind? When would she have thought about the different possibilities, and what would have been her experience of that thinking process? Why didn’t we see them; were they not leaked through sighs? Were she watching television in front of us, but her eyes seeing in her mind the images of her interaction with that maths teacher she dreaded to be with? Were she not sleeping, or behind her closed eyes were the flashes of thoughts on how to relieve of this concern?

It appeared to me that it would have been really causing her discomfort which is why she decided to find her own solution the other day.

The whole thing for me is an example of how she faced a situation – big for her size of life – that caused disturbance in her, how our support as parents was not enough and convincing for what she was facing though we thought otherwise, and how she formed a strategy to find another resource to solve her problem.

I wished I knew what she was going through.

I realize more that our children are telling us their life’s experiences, through their silence and through their words. Not everything do we decipher in the midst of our busy life – a busy life that is initially meant for the welfare of these very children. It is for me as a parent to think why she is sleeping early – for it’s not sleeping, but an escape to think of her strategies, mull on her possibilities. It’s for me as a parent to look deeper on why she is not eating her food – for it’s not lack of hunger, but the fullness of concern in her little mind.

It’s not what we see. It’s beyond.

It’s not what we hear. It’s even beyond their words.

It’s about having that ability to hear what they didn’t tell us, to see what they didn’t show us, and be there for them, in their little struggles of facing the challenges of losing a penciil sharpener or sitting in the class of a particular teacher, the ability to see them in the same size and dimension as they see, than as how it appear to us.

Dear Naisha, I just want to let you know that we are sorry that we didn’t hear you; I also want to let you know that I am proud that you are able to find your way; that’s the girl we wish to see you as growing.

Love

Papa

25 March 2011

A Dying Art

At least once, everyone would have experienced the anxiety of that wait for the postman to appear with that precious little thing in his hand, or for the sight of that little envelop in your post-box that has travelled a long distance, or perhaps a few lanes of the town, carrying your name, written with so much of passion at an hour when the world around must have been asleep and the shadow of pen on the paper from the lamp on the table appeared as the hands of the beloved, holding yours!

What a wait that was then!

The joy and excitement of writing a letter; the conversations that takes place in the backyard of mind as we sit down to write, part of which flows on to the paper as words and part of which evaporates into the midnight air as sighs and smiles, the aching to capture them and squeeze through the nib of pen as words and the anxiety from the inability to express in words the lava of emotions boiling within.

You then read it once, through your own eyes. You read it next through the eyes and minds of your beloved. For a moment you attribute to it the voice of your beloved; the next moment you hear your own words; the images resurrecting from the page, senses arousing as the eyes sifts through the words again, again, and again, beginning a conversation of hopes and dreams shared sitting beside, suddenly erasing all the distances of streets, lakes and hills that divided you till a moment ago!

There is a ceremony of closing that envelope, but before that a moment more spent on the page, with a loving smile at a moment in future. The carefully folded page is slide into the envelope, to be sealed with love. The only time you would have spent that long writing a name would be perhaps on the first day when the schools reopen, when the text books are all new and must carry your names, the first writing on them are written with such a care and determination; such and more is the care when the address of the beloved is written on the envelope!

What follows next is the paradoxically delightful and aching wait for the letter to reach the other end. Moments of its journey through the different post offices are calculated in mind, and the imaginations of it reaching there, the moments of it being read and the wait for its reply – adding richness to the experience of living!

On the other end, what a moment that is, to be receiving that letter! There is an urge to open it immediately, at the same time a dictation of mind to simply adore that moment of holding it and looking at your name being written with not-so-artistically-artistic curves and dots and strikes of y’s and I’s and ‘t’s; what would be the closest metaphor to compare the care in which the envelope is opened! And what a battle of mind and heart is to follow when the letter is taken out of envelope! Should I read this word, or see what the next word is? What is in the next line, or is it written in the paragraph that follows? The curiosity is at its height with every word that’s read and every sentence that’s remaining. To read them all at once is the desire on one end, and it should never end is a silent prayer on the other end.

That follows the special moments of writing a reply. Sometimes it's nice to delay, for selfish reasons though. In the space of that delay occupies the words of our conversations, the sharing of thoughts, the laughter that fill, the smiles and sighs that punctuates…. There is warmth in that space, where I know I am conversing and there is an imaginary conversation back to me too…

Anything that can represent the moment of that writing will find space in that reply, in words or in other forms; a lock of hair, a bristle of brush or teeth of comb, a piece of a shawl or a petal of rose, they are all divine forms of insanity when letters are replied to their beloved!

A beautiful letter is a string that connects hearts from distance; it’s a story you would wish to read again; it’s a piece of heart that you would love to embrace in the absence of your beloved; it’s a narration of love when expression of it is hard; it marks the milestones of the journey in love, and it represents the aching of hearts on one end and it presents itself as its cure on the other end. They are with which you wake up. They are with which you sleep. At times, they appear as your only reasons to live, when that’s the only thing you open your windows for.

A dying art that once carried the pulse of loving hearts!

Shahir

March 04, 2011

Trouble-Makers or Patriots?

I am delighted to read this note in "The Hindu" Editorial today that came as a balm to a hurt soul from watching the events unfolding in Kashmir, driven by politically coloured patriotism by a party who's desperately seeking means and methods to regain their lost position, lost primarily owing to the same methodologies they exercised earlier.

What was it, other than a provocative and insensitive agenda, to hoist a flag in the center of a region that every citizen of India know as sensitive given its history? Why rub salt on the wound, than join the nurses who are treating the wound to heal them and integrate to a society where they belong to?

Has Advani Ji lost complete sense of the destruction he caused by one 'yatra' that tore the center of an otherwise harmonious country that boasted unity in diversity? Did he not have even a little remorse for the hundreds of men and women massacred as a consequence of his "Rath Yatra? How many more lives is he and his party-men willing to see lost in his path to gaining power in parliament? Are there no other genuine causes he can fight for, than such provocative-and wickedly-motivated exercises that is again and again throwing India and Indians years behind in their growth - physically and intellectually? When will they realize the need to unite, than disintegrate the country further?

How many more hands do you like to see pleading to stop this communally polarizing politics, and work on an agenda that will improve the lives of our countrymen, and our country?

It calms my soul when I read the Editorial of The Hindu this morning, because it reassures me that there are men and women in India - of all sections of faith and believes in our society - who are willing to, and can, identify the wolves in sheep skin, herding along with the shepherds working hard to develop our nation.

Educated you all are; how illiterate you remain still!!!

Shahir

Jan 27, 2011